1 10 19 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/66a2f46d8540c3504ff366e7ff124453.pdf?Expires=1780531200&Signature=Lp5%7EbMBmebm64gSRrEhWDOtAfqm5i9QsZ7Oy%7EO7JmZfBjX3g4G%7Eq0mx5SCLMCv-Um7aJfu-cYa8TVQphjVC8dcyYTRjv7bLkcZC5xOqSpb9TfNu5bY3LxK9mOniwlK9wnVjkwQPKlK67hzRODkMbWVeQCBobNeQvPGhFU75z4P%7EmI-dWjj98dedygrUNPKqH-dvQY-nzVBozvTDmeFZ-rTMoA5Yr0z70J6an6jyiRGPvJpyWxtGEdDzlw7cIkZmYKMUdXzEJmv6htKz17nlYWAwml58mR0ejf1ifDXpaBnbNgHszJKF2a5Tvp-52l6atjNb%7EqJ9AbFRf%7EESxqXK7yg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM f827b7b2cc9c0c5a93354e8080c50b96 PDF Text Text PROFESSOR TYNDALL’S INAUGURAL ADDRESS. [From The Inquirer of September 5, 1874.] HE Inaugural Address delivered at Belfast, on August 19, by Professor Tyndall, President of the British Association, has probably come like a thunder-clap to thousands who have read it or heard of it. For here is one of the strongest, one of the most generally acknowledged, representatives of science, the chief, indeed, of the highest scientific society in the world, from the very throne of science —the presidential chair—speaking what will seem to multitudes no other, than the most undisguised Materialism, which to them will also be the blankest Atheism. For it will seem the burden of the Address, that matter alone is the mother and cause of all things, and that beside it there is no other cause. No God, no human soul. When so intelligent a journal as the Spectator thus interprets the Address in the issue immediately after its delivery, we may be sure that thousands of persons will thus interpret it also. And this word of Tyndall, coming from such a source, supported by such pres tige and such authority, will make the hearts of many quail and sicken with fear and sadness. They will feel a great darkness falling on them. The same doctrine they will no doubt have often heard before, but not from such a quarter, with such distinctness, and coming with such terrible weight. They have T �2 thought of it hitherto as the craze of individual and eccentric scientists, but now it comes as the testimony of the whole spirit of science, past and present, spoken through the mouthpiece of one of her latest and greatest sons. And the thought cannot but whisper itself: “ Is it, then, really true, or, if not true, is science going to be all-powerful and make it seem true, and so make it ultimately prevail ? If so, then hope and faith must fade. Religion will have no place. Prayer and preaching will cease. All the various creeds through which we believe and about which we contend will equally vanish. Religious societies will be dissolved, and the whole spirit of our civilisation must be changed, so that it is terribleto think what the future ages may be.” We cannot wonder that already the tocsin of alarm has resounded from many a pulpit. We may be sure that for months, perhaps years to come, there will be heard from thousands of pulpits protests, arguments, denunciations, pleadings, intended to lay the terrible ghosts which this memorable Address has raised. But what is it that Dr Tyndall has really said to cause such sensation and such fear ? He has simply said out boldly what science has been really saying, though often with timid, hesitating speech, for many a year, we may say for many an age. It is this : that matter, as we become more and more acquainted with it, shows itself to us as capable, by its own inherent laws and forces, of developing into all the forms and causing all the phenomena in the universe that we witness or experience. And so with matter given to begin with, existing it may be in its crudest form, but still with all its inherent laws and forces, there is no need of any other Being, any Creator, any God to mould it, for it will infallibly mould itself. It is but the same thought with a wider extension which Laplace uttered : “ I ask no more than the laws of motion, heat, and gravitation, and I will write you the nativity and biography of the solar system.” �3 Yet do not let us be alarmed through mistaking the real force and bearing of this apparently most materialistic affirmation. Observe at the outset the expression, that matter being given with its inherent laws and forces, no other creator is necessary to mould it. Surely not, we, too, say, because the Creator, the eternal former and sustainer, is in the laws and forces : they are but the expression of his action. It is not, then, against the idea of God Himself that the hostility of science, as represented by the President of the British Association, is directed, but against a form of thought in which men in general have clothed God and presented him to their minds. They have thought of Him under the image of a Great Artificer, one who, using matter as his raw material, worked it up by his power and skill into the forms which we behold. It is this thought of an Almighty Artificer, separate from matter, that science cannot tolerate. But the de struction of this form of thought, instead of plunging us into the darkness of Atheism, opens upon us the light of true Theism. It leaves us free to form another far grander and worthier thought of God, that of the In-dwelling, all-forming, and all-sustaining Spirit of the Universe, which it is clear that Dr Tyndall recognises under what he calls a Cosmical life—that is, a life of the Universe. The truth is, that this conception of God as the Great Artificer has been inadequate and erroneous from the beginning. We can now see that it was an idol, because not the highest conception that we can form, though perhaps inevitable to the times of ignorance at which God has winked. And science, like a young Abraham, has sought from its very youth to break the idol in pieces. This is why science has seemed so Atheistic in its tendencies. The legend of Abraham preserved in the Koran is, that when he was a young man he went into one of the temples of his people in their absence and broke �in pieces all the idols except the biggest there. Abraham’s hostile feeling towards the idols was known. He was arrested and brought before the Assembly. “ Hast thou done this unto our gods, O Abraham ? ” they inquired. “Nay, that biggest of them has done the deed : ask them, if they can speak.” For a time the people were confounded with his reply, but soon recovered to say to oneanother, “Burn him, and avenge your gods.” The young Abraham, science, conceived from the first a hostility to the idol of an artificer God set up in the temple of man’s mind, and sought to destroy it. Dr Tyndall’s Address is partly a history of these endeavours of science to break in pieces the idol. He tells how in the infancy of Greek science Demo critus, the laughing philosopher, declared his uncom promising antagonism to those who deduced the phenomena of nature from the gods. Empedocles, who probably met death in his zeal for science in the burning crater of Etna, and then Epicurus, followed in the footsteps of Democritus. In the century before Christ the Roman poet Lucretius boldly announced the doctrine that Nature was sufficient for herself. “If,” said he, “you will apprehend and keep in mind these things, Nature, free at once and rid of her high lords (the gods and demons), is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of the gods.” Whilst science slept, during the Middle Ages, the voice of protest was not heard; but when she awoke again, in the era of the Refor mation, Giordano Bruno, once an Italian monk, again raised the old witness, and declared that the infinity of forms under which matter appears were not imposed upon it by an external artificer. “ By its own intrinsic force and virtue f he said, “ it brings these forms forth. Matter is not the mere naked, empty capacity which philosophers have pictured it, but the universal mother who brings forth all things as the fruit of her womb.” And the devotees of the �5 idol, an artificer god, which he sought to break in pieces, said, “Burn him, and avenge your god.” And the Venetian Inquisitors did burn him at the stake. Taking up Tyndall’s thought, we can now see that the whole progress of science has seemed to strengthen the protest and to give more strength to the doctrine of Lucretius and Bruno, that “ matter, by its own intrinsic force and virtue, brings these forms (of nature) forth.” Newton’s “Principia” went to show that, given, in matter, the force and law of gravitation and the laws of motion, there needed no artificer now to conduct the solar system. The nebular hypothesis of Kant and Laplace set forth that matter originally needed no artificer to mould it into worlds, if we suppose its particles scattered abroad in space endowed with repulsion and attraction. They would of themselves form rings, planets, satellites, and sun. Dalton’s Chemistry showed that if we suppose a few kinds of primordial atoms of different magnitudes, or endowed with different forces and possessing certain laws of attractive affinity, no artificer is necessary to combine them into the innumerable compounds and endow them with the qualities with which we are familiar. Darwin’s “ Origin of Species ” and “ Descent of Man ” suggested that, given certain organic forms of lowly type, no artificer was needed to construct all the countless forms of organic nature. For there were in these lowly forms intrinsic force and virtue, by which they develop into higher forms, and these into higher, until the ascidian becomes the man. Herbert Spencer, and now Tyndall, suggest that even in the inorganic forms of air, water, phosphorus, and a few other elements, there are intrinsic force and virtue to make them at some period or other of the world’s history—Bastian says to make them now—of themselves combine and form organisms of low type, which develop, according to Darwin’s idea, even into higher type ; therefore these inorganic atoms possess �6 a latent life. Huxley would persuade us not only that these inorganic atoms come in organic forms to live, but that in the human brain they think and feel and will. Thus every line of scientific inquiry seems to have led to larger and larger belief in Bruno’s intrinsic force and virtue of matter, making more and more needless the conception of a Supreme Artificer. But we shall be mistaken if we suppose that this antagonism between matter and God—that is, God as the Artificer—has been felt only in the world of science. It has been felt, too, though with less open confession, in the world of religion. It has been felt, it may be, where ignorance was bliss. As long as science was unknown or ignored in the Church, as during the Middle Ages, religions minds could hold the belief in an artificer God without misgiving. But as soon as science began to creep into the Church, the paralysis of faith began. From that moment was acted over again the story which the Greek poets give us of the Theban Sphinx, the beautiful monster, half-maid, half-lion, who, sitting on a rock, proposed enigmas to the passers-by, and those who could not answer them destroyed. Beautiful but terrible science became the Sphinx. She was always proposing to those who came near her the enigma, “How can matter, which seems to have force and virtue in it sufficient to account for all things, have any need for an artificer Creator ? ” And those who could not answer the question were lost as to their faith in God. This, we believe, is partly the explanation of the coldness and deadness that came upon our Churches, especially our Pres byterian Churches, during the last century. Ministers and people had become more educated, they had learnt something of the new science that was rising; and then they heard the enigma of the Sphinx and were troubled. Thenceforth it was a struggle with them to believe. They had lost the child-like faith of �7 their fathers. The old heartiness of prayer was gone. Ministers and people began to be shy of strictly reli gious topics, and to fall back on these ethical common places of which they were more sure. And if this same coldness and deadness has lasted on in some of our churches till our own day, we suspect it has been because there the old conception of God as the Arti ficer has been maintained, whilst all the while the Sphinx has been putting the question which has made it unbelievable ; and that it is chiefly where the new conception of the In-dwelling God has been introduced through the influence of men like Dr Channing, Martineau, and Theodore Parker, that the devotional life has been again quickened and deepened. Truly, then, men like Tyndall and Huxley, Spencer and Darwin, with the terrible weapons of their materialism, do but break down an old and much battered idol which has long been the cause of dread ful doubts, even to its own devotees, and has set religion and science at bitter variance. But in breaking down the idol they are doing us the greatest service. They are letting in the light; they are leaving us face to face with a conception of God before hidden from us by our idol, but which presents him to us not only in a form which science will allow —before which, indeed, science and religion become one—but in a form which is immeasurably grander, more beautiful, and every way worthier of God than that which has been broken down. Let us clearly recognise that, when Tyndall claims for matter that it is sufficient for everything, he is not thinking of matter as that dead brute thing which the mass of men suppose it. To him, as to Herbert Spencer, matter is but the manifestation of a Great Entity, in itself unknown and unknowable. It is but the garment of what Tyndall calls the great cosmical life—the great life of the cosmos—the Universe. What is this Great Entity, what is this Great Cosmical Life, but the Eternal God Himself, of whom, �8 and through whom, and to whom are all things, who “besets us behind and before,” and “ in whom we live and move and have our being ” ? What is this ■conception suggested of the relation of God to the world but that of the Psalmist—“The heavens shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt thou change them ” ? And what is this doctrine of the unknown and unknowable life but that of Job? “Lo ! these are parts of his ways, but how little a portion is heard of him ! but the thunder of his power who can understand ? ” T. E. P. FRITTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTEKEY STREET, HAYMARKET. � 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. 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. <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" /> 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 Professor Tyndall's inaugural address Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [London] Collation: 4 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Signed 'T.E.P.'; possibly Thomas Elford Poynting. The Address was given in Belfast to the British Association for the Advancement of Science on August 19, 1874. Reprinted from 'The Inquirer', September 5, 1874. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London. "The address before the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science was an occasion to state the aims and concerns of the premiere body of elite men of Victorian science. It was consequently one of the most prestigious places from which to pronounce on what men of science should be doing. John Tyndall famously used his address in 1874 to argue for the superior authority of science over religious or non-rationalist explanations. By the time of this address the Association had largely been taken over by the young guard, men like T.H. Huxley and Tyndall. Nevertheless, Tyndall's bold statement for rationalism and natural law was made in Belfast, a stronghold of religious belief then as now and so it was taken as an aggressive attack on religion. The address was popularly believed to advocate materialism as the true philosophy of science. It remains a powerful call for rationalism, consistency and scepticism." From Victorianweb: http://www.victorianweb.org/science/science_texts/belfast.html [accessed 12/2017]. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [Thomas Scott] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1874] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5529 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource [Unknown] Subject The topic of the resource Philosophy Rationalism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a> This work (Professor Tyndall's inaugural address), identified by <a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a>, is free of known copyright restrictions. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts Materialism Natural Law Philosophy and Science Rationalism Science and Religion https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/292604ba735c854c0007d0d9e76d743e.pdf?Expires=1780531200&Signature=gTHDeOm1vpEmg%7EW52Am5YG7A1HQQCTxLaDjwhGVRoErMPPmtbJWalxIKU0GKoYBAIR6PM7bJek8Z3fITW0tuhNChhPYpxa7P4dphBw6au-3cnyWJUnua05XMtWj1coY4bKS%7ESc8yqHYn-7q3p5PDStctyQHqpNitTMtY3zQvh4Q5huON9oSBe%7EFtF1BgjVcDzurmsTPWAT8zyhhNUd-IbKGOCootQkh0eoQenyEVlrygCuB3PPB0QTmB%7EUzpnpWdXFesFeNLrrEOTpJg7CRd9T4KDOWAGG5JRihegIPsmXGvNTLd5hjca8qtHmAj3QpWJp3GLvDnA1allOqbwGbLsQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 0e6fd2ad430af41911cb89b0d2f8f01a 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. 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. <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" /> 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 Essays towards peace Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon) [1856-1933] Westermarck, Edward Angell, Norman [1874-1967] Swinny, S.H. Bonner, Hypatia Bradlaugh [1858-1935] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 91, [4] p. ; 17 cm. Notes: Contents: Superstitions of militarism / John M. Robertson -- Christianity and war / Edward Westermark -- War as the failure of reason / Norman Angell -- Rationalism and international righteousness / S.H. Swinny. Published for the Rationalist Peace Society. Publisher's advertisements on unnumbered pages at the end. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Watts & Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1913 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RA1074 N561 Subject The topic of the resource Pacifism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a> This work (Essays towards peace), identified by <a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a>, is free of known copyright restrictions. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Militarism NSS Peace Peace-Moral and ethical aspects Rationalism War https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/00921a226c52f44cb558de27a679103d.pdf?Expires=1780531200&Signature=nts8TxixL%7EedDR7HSDhacnGGEs1aK2AZ0nY6WtQD-mjTeJewQP6AcXOVqW8TAi9Sr13OKryyAfgLApIXiXoQI3HL8mxAH7nql0ZjNtdND4vgTqK4L3xloIzDvNKUCiI6eaIEWkryilQPBia5QlgOFbbiEwhWsGEMsysOFHwRMfpspF0RZ9GtD-wnVEVhSI-UJH-ha9I%7EYcl0leuc0O6Tk96OzExRdEwcdtgGJARBDVPxxqv-8X7XTWXEC3wwSqDnd-QjE61AOagih10-9tbymb73CUqDy5T%7Ey42OH5%7ESiX5knWctdrL-3uEVzfuQA9qFsMBWe7B-o606kMWG7wdU9A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 0fc84ca232a9106a8e5229be9d8f6573 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. 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. <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" /> 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 Supernatural and rational morality Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bradlaugh, Charles Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 8 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh,63, Fleet St., E. C. - 1886 (p. 8). Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1886 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G903 Subject The topic of the resource Rationalism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a> This work (Supernatural and rational morality), identified by <a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a>, is free of known copyright restrictions. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Free Thought Morality Rationalism Religion Supernatural https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/a420e7d248b892e0ed287b3ff420908e.pdf?Expires=1780531200&Signature=wPEAd1v%7EWTGtDeaAKdEhNrPOvXcln2wcP9dYuvLvhuICE03El6ZmfpNppXlW1vY1g6jihTpDw8IAIJcC%7EuxDkBlrgWvQPYG3Mnek7pyhg-0I-BLvd2BIY73y%7E6qZkc5P%7EwlcUCbgcjJeNcy0KIWdO%7EwaI2LDLgW9hlwMlqibnVXNVTPNjuXCfNgDKkB1N%7E3pb7s13aptggzCrmGQ135KH3CHllqpRji4q9xsB65ltgj37PqTy710XTtx0W4FeCbqrhtCIJjeUT6nFOWke3uOyjz8w-ST7kB%7ENH%7ELUVUadhw7HtMId8LxsxqOUIbamxLFLCRogc1YPcrGaN1ve7YX6g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM ff68873613dab3e634b2903f3c5863fa PDF Text Text REASON VERSUS AUTHORITY. BY W. 0. GARR BROOK. “ Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” Thess., v. 21. PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE. 1871. Price Threepence. �LONDON: PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET, W. �REASON VERSUS AUTHORITY. HE present is a sceptical age. We do not, as in former times, believe, but criticise. Faith, in these days, has no province, but the whole area of human expectation is limited to the range of our reason. If a truth can be shown to be probable, we accept it. If it is not, in our estimation, reasonable, we reject it. We assert, in short, that the instrument and method of our apprehension is the same, whether the thing to be apprehended be an episode in Homer’s Iliad or an incident in Luke’s Life of Christ. If we interpret aright the intellectual position of those who urge this as a sign of our spiritual deca dence, they are, in some sense or measure, prepared to affirm that reason is unrelated to the subject of religion. We should not, they think, consider the pro priety or impropriety of a given religious observance, the reasonableness or unreasonableness of a supposed religious obligation, the credibility or incredibility of an affirmed revelation from heaven, but, with regard to such matters, our reason is to be held in abeyance. Within the sphere of our higher life, we are not to argue, but accept; not criticise, but believe; not ask for evidence, but proceed upon authority. T �6 Reason versus Authority. Taken absolutely and universally, this instruction to us for our guidance needs, we think, but to be touched to be disproved. If everywhere and at all times, within the sphere of religion, reason is to be quiescent and faith supreme, either we must adopt every creed, however opposite, in turn, as the advo cate of each presses it upon us, or we must, under all circumstances, abide by our original religious impres sions, and refuse to relinguish them whatever a deeper experience may say in opposition. In the former case, it will be our duty, to-day, being urged thereto by the Protestant, to denounce Mariolatry, and, to morrow, pressed by the Catholic, to bow down, in utmost reverence, to the Virgin Mother. In the latter, it will be incumbent upon us, whether we are the children of Protestant or Catholic parents, to ask no questions and to listen to no persuasion to change our religious sentiments, but accepting them at first without inquiry, and abiding by them ever afterwards irrespective of their hold upon our judgment, to reduce the problem of the growth or retrogression of Protestant or Roman Catholic sentiment in this country to the question of the relative fruitfulness of Protestant or Roman Catholic parentage. If they who affirm the supremacy of faith and the unrelatedness of reason to religion do not affirm it always and everywhere, they, then, affirm it some times and somewhere, and the question, of course, is when and where. In reply, if we ask the Protestant, he informs us that our reason is to give place to our faith when we read a certain book, but that our faith is to give place to our reason when we read any interpretation of the book which is not our own. The Catholic, in opposition, says, with much show of sense, that if we need an infallible book we must, being often ignorant and always liable to err, need, from the same consideration, an infallible interpreter, �Reason versus Authority. y and offers us that which he esteems to be so. If we .relinquish our reason, however, since we cannot assent to both, we can assent to neither. The double assertion of our duty to accept and not to question is equivalent, in force, to the single assertion to ques tion and not to accept. Where there are two autho rities, each of which denounces the other and claims exclusive obedience from ourselves, it may or may not be fortunate, but it is inevitable that we should withhold our faith till we have exercised our reason. Regarding the position more leisurely, we think that whether or not it may be otherwise defensible, it is not to be expected that we should admit it merely because they who assert it have the strongest possible impression that it is so. They may, as they no doubt most unquestionably do, very sincerely believe that they are not, but, unless they are prepared, in addi tion, to affirm their personal infallibility, they must admit that they may be, mistaken. The positive certainty which they assert themselves to possess in an inward impression which they consider transcends their reason, they must, nevertheless, when affirmed by others on behalf of an opposing conclusion, and, therefore, in their case, on behalf of their own, allow, at least, admits of question. Since Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant, Christian and Heathen, have, in turn, been so assured of the truth of their convictions as to die for them, and such convictions have, necessarily, been not merely dissimilar but professedly antagonistic, it is evident that no con viction can be so strong, and no fidelity to it so persistent, as to yield, therein, any, much less a perfect, guarantee, that their faith is a synonym for the truth. Neither can we consent to the relinquishment of our reason in our religion from the affirmed necessity of an exact intellectual conception of God, and the �8 Reason versus Authority. impossibility, by reason, of attaining to it. Were it true that a certain intellectual conception were essen tial to the divine favour, it would, of course, follow that we might expect the Divine Being to supply us with an unquestionable method of attaining to it. On the other hand, it is to be inferred that if the Divine Being has not placed within the reach of men generally an infallible method of arriving at an absolute knowledge of him, it is because it is not necessary to his favour that they should possess it. The question, then, is, which of the two is the more reasonable alternative ? and the answer, we think, is obvious. Which of the many existing and opposing conclusions, from Catholicism to Rationalism, shall be ours, in our youth, will be dependent upon the accidental circumstances of our birth, and, if we are not to reason but acquiesce in our original religious impressions, will continue to be so always. But, if so, there can be no more unquestionable method of knowing God without than with our reason—rather, the alternative to which we fly will be worse than that from which we flee. The assertion that we should judge for ourselves renders it possible that we should mistake, but the assertion that we should not judge for ourselves makes it inevitable that the greater portion of mankind must do so, and, accord ing to the theory of those who affirm the necessity for an exact intellectual conception of God, to their eternal ill-doing. We must, also, we think, reject the argument that the subject-matter of religion is of that kind which precludes the competency of our reason. Admitted that the divine existence is not cognisable by our senses, it does not therefore follow that we should accept the opinions of other persons with similarly imperfect bodily organs, but, simply, that we should listen to them upon this as upon other questions �Reason versus Authority. 9 with a view to form a correct opinion of our own. Admitted that the certainty of a future life is not to be proved by our reason, so, neither, on the other hand, can we be certain, though we may feel so, with out it. He who tells us aught which we could not know without his telling, must bring proof to us that he has special or exclusive information upon the sub ject, and the only part of us which is capable of dealing with proof is our reason. Admitted that theological truths cannot be known but must be believed, the conclusion to which it leads is, not unreasoning acquiescence in anything or everything which may be affirmed, but a rational endeavour to discover that which, if not certain, is most probable. There may or may not in the circumstance that we cannot know God fully without a revelation, be ground to expect one, but, even upon the supposi tion that one is to be expected, whether or not it has been given, and if so, when and where, and what its purport, must be matter of opinion ; and inasmuch as experience teaches us that men are positive upon such questions, not in proportion to the breadth, but the limitation of their vision, the strength and extent to which a conclusion thereon is positively affirmed is the measure of the necessity for calling it into question. Relinquishing our, so far, merely defensive position, and assuming the initiative in the controversy, we think we are justified in saying that the primd facie argument is opposed to the conclusion. If there is a distinguishing mark of Divine Authorship, it is the relatedness of the means to the end, and the sub ordination of the lower to the higher methods of nature. The unreasoning trust of the child, how ever, is not equal to the intelligent appreciation of the man, and the higher purpose of our life is not in eating or drinking, or buying or selling, or marrying �io Reason versus Authority. and giving in marriage, but in the right understanding and performance of our spiritual relationships. But if our reason is the highest endowment, as it un questionably is, with which the Divine Being has favoured us, and if, even in the estimation of those who differ from us, the highest purpose of our life is not in the enjoyment of the present but in prepar ation for the future, it would seem that if our reason were intended to serve any purpose whatever, it was, in any case, intended to guide us in the matter of our religious hopes and expectations. This impression is confirmed, we do not hesitate to say, by the circumstance that the same persons who call upon us to suspend our reason, nevertheless find themselves under the ceaseless necessity to appeal to it upon the subject of our religion. If we remind the Catholic, for instance, when he presses us to assent to his proposition, that the Protestant also puts in a claim, he brings to our mind the modern origin of the Protestant, calls him a schismatic, and, gene rally, uses his best endeavours to prove that the Protestant claim is inadmissible. If, on the other hand, we inform the Protestant, when he calls upon us to urge his authoritative dogma, that the Catholic has anticipated him, the Protestant proceeds to re mind us that the Catholic is an image worshipper, quotes secular and ecclesiastical history to bedaub his church, and, imitating his Roman Catholic compeer in this at least, uses all his art to persuade our judgment that he is, and that tho Catholic is not, entitled to prescribe our religious opinions. But, if it be true that we should not reason, why do they each play the part of tempter, and solicit from us a judgment ? Is it not singular that our reason should be unfitted to deal with a subject, and yet that, upon it, the several parties to the affirmative should never hesitate to appeal to it. �Reason versus Authority. 11 Surely, of all the transcending mysteries of life, that which most transcends is the mystery that each should systematically deny the competency of an authority to which they appeal, repudiate a right which they equally recognise, advance and with draw, according to the conveniences of their argu ment, the intellectual position, upon which, they assert, hangs the eternal destinies of their race. If the pertinency of their conclusion, however, is not apparent, its wondrous impertinency, if we ex amine it, it will not be difficult to discover. Traced to its mental base, is not the meaning of those who assert that we should not reason but believe, that they have themselves come to a conclusion upon re ligious subjects which they wish, whether or not it is agreeable to our judgment, to impose upon us? Is it not that the training of their youth, the prejudices of their class, or the intellectual preferences they have acquired, point in a certain direction, and that these appearing to themselves to be sacred, they cannot understand, and are not prepared to allow, prejudices and opinions which are not their own ? The reason why we should not reason is, after all, simply that they wish to undertake the duty for us. The ground of their objection is, not that we should come to a conclusion, bat that we should not come to their con clusion. If this be not so, wherefore do they recom mend us to listen to their own polemical discourses ? How does it happen that books written in defence of “ the truth,” as they regard it, are laudable, and only those written in opposition are pernicious ? Of what other solution is their conduct capable when they permit — nay, commend — our disposition to reason, so long as it results in the adoption of their sentiments ? Stripped of its unintentional disguise, the assertion that we should not criticise but accept, �12 Reason versus Authority. is, simply, the assertion that they who make it believe that their judgment is, and that the judgment of those who differ from them is not, to be trusted. Studiously regarded, indeed, the recommendation to us for our guidance is not more intellectually puerile than practically impossible. If the Catholic has faith in the teaching of his Church, it is not because he does not exercise his reason, but because, owing to early training, social circumstance, or tendency of mind, its claims, upon the whole, appear to him more rational than any alternative of which he takes note. If the Protestant is averse to the claims of the Catholic Church, and sympathises with the Anglican or any Dissenting formulary, it is not because he does not come to a judgment upon the subject of their respective merits, but because, how ever ignorant and swayed by prejudice, and however unconscious of the mental operation, his judgment, nevertheless, inclines to the one in preference to the other. Nay ! our reason is the only instrument with which we can assent. Our intellect is the only part of us capable of faith. Diversity in the things to be apprehended involves no diversity in the instrument of our apprehension. Two and two are four, and the mental operation is the same, when the addition is of men or angels. The things which are believable by us, and they only, are such as appear to us to be probable, whether they be secular or sacred. Paith is not opposed to, but is the product of, our reason, alike when it relates to our anticipation of a summer shower and the second coming of the Saviour. Taste, feeling, hope, fear, love, hate, educa tion, or the want thereof, may, as the atmosphere influences the pendulum, influence the judgment; but as the eye only sees, and the ear only hears, so the reason only can assent or dissent, whether the �Reason versus Authority. 13 proposition submitted to it be the physical relation of the earth to the sun, or the moral relation of the human to the Divine Spirit. In conclusion, we must regard the moral as of equal value with the intellectual position assigned us by our critics. The interpretation which they who do not approve put upon the change which they correctly assert is coming over society, is that the present, by consequence, is the less religious age. Other nations and earlier races, they argue, believed more readily because they were more spiritual than we : we are more critical because we are less subject to a sense of divine obligation. Were we as desirous of doing God’s will as they were who preceded or they are who rebuke us, we should be as ready as they to accept their theological opinions and act upon their sense of duty. We cannot accept this interpre tation of our position. Orthodox opinion is sufficiently tyrannous and persecuting to deter any merely pre sumptuous person from lightly setting at defiance the opinion of the many, and asserting, from sheer pride of intellect, as it is called, a new creed. Were there no external disadvantage in professing singularity of religious belief, the force of early association, and the merely superstitious regard which we have for the sentiments of our youth, whatever they may be, would be a sufficiently penal preventive from change, for the sake of it. The ordinary interests of life are too present and pressing to admit of length ened study of religious questions, unless the spirit within, under the impulse of some strong conviction, is constrained to give personal attention to a matter which people generally are willing to leave to the decision of others. In short, so long as excep tional attention to a subject is regarded, not as an indication of the want of ordinary, but of the possession of a special interest in it, it must be �14 Reason versus Authority, assumed that those amongst us who see reason to change their religious attitude and stand apart, do so, not because they are less but more impressed; and they who do not understand and therefore mis interpret their motive will do well, if not because it is rational, because, by an authority which they do not dispute, it is commanded, to follow their example, and “ prove all things, and hold fast that which is good.” � 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. 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. <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" /> 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 Reason versus authority Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brook, W. O. Carr Description An account of the resource Place of publication: Ramsgate Collation: 14 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1871 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CT151 Subject The topic of the resource Rationalism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /> This work (Reason versus authority), identified by <a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a>, is free of known copyright restrictions. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Conway Tracts Faith and Reason Rationalism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/4929b9c5520cb7fe31b86ccd9c1747b9.pdf?Expires=1780531200&Signature=TZFVSdWMGApHyql0PeoQzND9Rl9g8UkS0BiFGaLMsjzefKwZz3UQZ1jBw4asggclHdsa%7E4V5ayyf5gL1CcEhYAphC88CWz3HhOsw3D9O8hIqGsJw63UYxe%7EqA1KOYF0hI7xetxyCQbjPDWWs2KFRIE8jKFxToC5RfejhV2DBKMR3CpJEKdy2mBQ7ps7KQY5eVzkBKBXJ0MyEaU3w0bjVCzkjG8Yido4R4%7EzKfV5wQ%7ERkRXV-uGg-9ppfUnYhyA-oGFNqIFXwNyboN0BW9sRasf1PFks4RQ9UhJniIUnSq3gcGQrFnIGMWWQ9x7bMFoB0ni8yL3M0ooyqFTtS3jkiWA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 25e6667ff182612c52f75f6168cb2877 PDF Text Text RELIGION. TO THE EDITOR OF THE “ HACKNEY AND KINGSLAND GAZETTE. Sir,—As you have for some time past been favouring your readers with the views of several of the ministers of the neighbourhood on Theology, perhaps you will kindly find space for the following views of a layman on what he presumes to call “ Religion,” and oblige, Yours respectfully, I believe in Rational Christianity, pure and simple, or Christian mo rality, as was taught by Christ; in contra-distinction to the adulterated clerical Christianity now so prevalent, and which has almost elbowed the Christianity of Christ out of the world; whereby superstition and foolish rites and ceremonies are substituted in the room of pure morality, true vir tue, and genuine religion. I believe the Christianity of Christ to he “ Peace on earth, goodwill to man,” the love of God and our neighbour, universal charity and benevolence, and the golden rule of “ doing to others as w7e would have them to do unto us,” and not in the incomprehensible creeds and unintelligible dogmas of popular theology. I believe in a God of perfect justice, who rewards the good in exact proportion to their merits, and proportionately punishes the wicked ; such punishments being correc tive and purifying : “ whatsoever a man sows so shall he reap.” That the favour of God and happiness are to be procured by repentance and amend ment; by personal not by vicarious agency. That well-matured reason and conscience are the best guides to be depended on, and if we neglect or re nounce their directions and admonitions, we lay ourselves open to all man ner of delusion and priestcraft, hateful to God and destructive to mankind. That instead of stereotyped creeds, blind zeal, and religious persecution for “righteousness’ sake,” we should promote love, peace, temperance, gratitude, charity and universal benevolence : so as to reduce religion to that plain, simple system^ of aiming to attain that abstract perfection as taught by Christ, wJ^Bjd“ Be ye perfect.” The principles to promote $hese are few and easy: lst/l^^e is a God, an Almighty Creator, to whom all existence belongs and is subject) and who ought to be worshipped by all mankind. 2nd, That by his7 immutable laws, the good are rewarded and the wicked punished here and hereafter. 3rd, That repentance and reformation are .required to obtain the one and escape the other. 4th, That true religion �2 is that which was stated by Christ, “ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and strength, and thy neighbour as thyself.”' To love God is to love all “ Good,” as truth, justice, charity, and every good work ; to love truth is to love the “ God of Truth,” &c. I do not believe in the orthodox view of the atonement, that Christ came to reconcile God to us, but rather that he came to reconcile us to God.. I do not believe in the necessity of his having to be crucified, and to take upon himself the sins of all, before man could be saved ; if such were the case how infinitely grateful we ought to be to those orthodox Jews who cruelly put him to death, in order that we might be saved ! Neither do I •believe in the orthodoxy of the present day, which says “there are three Gods all equal,” and yet so unequal that one God is ever interceding, and endeavouring to appease the wrath of another God ! if so, one must be in the wrong ! I believe in the absolute perfection of a Divine Creator, and who does not thus require to be changed in order that endless punishment may be averted, for temporary sins. I believe that God is love, and that his “ mercy” and not his chastisement “ endureth for ever.” I do not believe in “ original sin” and that man was pre-ordained to be its victim ; nor in the destruction of unbaptized infants, as the Roman and Anglican priests tell us. I prefer Christ’s doctrine ; he says “ of such is the kingdom of Heaven.” I do not believe in that best friend of priest craft,—a personal devil, and who is said to be more mighty than the Allmighty in obtaining the greatest number of immortal souls, thus having power to thwart God’s providence,—nor in a material hell-fire, which is ever consuming those souls. I do not believe “ in three Gods, yet one God” which the Church of England says we must believe or “ without doubt perish everlastingly.” Its creeds are to me downright blasphemy. 1 do not believe that the Bible was divinely inspired” from beginning to end and was all written by the “finger of God.” I believe the Bible was made for man, not man for the Bible, that it is an historical, moral and spiritual teacher, not altogether correct, but containing many truths and many errors ; a compilation of different works by different authors, written at different periods, and by the most learned and wise men of their day, but that neither they nor their works are infallible, as the science of geology and astronomy, and even their own contradictions prove. That men in after ages collected and bound together such of these books as they thought proper and called them the Bible, and that these selfsame human beings, at the Council of Nice, &c., rejected such other books as they thought of less worthy note ; that these men were also as learned and wise as the times would permit, but not infallible and possibly not altogether without prejudice or partiality. I believe real Christianity to be absolute religion, which thinks and works ; goodness towards man, and piety towards God; undogmatic, un sectarian, liberal, broad and free, preached wdth faith and applied to life, being good and doing good. There is but one real rel i gih we need only open our eyes to see, and which requires neither creeds nor catechisms to discern; only live it, in love to God and man, and we are blessed by Him who liveth for ever, in spite of all that priests and their dupes may say to the contrary, for thank God they are not to be our judges, other wise few would escape. �RELIGION. TO THE EDITOR OF THE “ HACKNEY AND KINGSLAND GAZETTE.” Sir,—As you have for some time past beeD favouring your readers with the views of several of the ministers of the neighbourhood on Theology, perhaps you will kindly find space for the following views of a layman on what he presumes to call “ Religion,” and oblige, Yours respectfully, C. I believe in Rational Christianity, pure and simple, or Christian mo rality, as was taught by Christ; in contra-distinction to the adulterated ■clerical Christianity now so prevalent, and which has almost elbowed the Christianity of Christ out of the world; whereby superstition and foolish rites and ceremonies are substituted in the room of pure morality, -true vir tue, and genuine religion. I believe the Christianity of Christ to be “ Peace on earth, goodwill to man,” the love of God and our neighbour, universal charity and benevolence, and the golden rule of “ doing to others as we would have them to do unto us,” and not in the incomprehensible creeds and unintelligible dogmas of popular theology. I believe in a God -of perfect justice, who rewards the good in exact proportion to their merits, and proportionately punishes the wicked ; such punishments being correc tive and purifying : “ whatsoever a man sows so shall he reap.” That the favour of God and happiness are to be procured by repentance and amend ment; by personal not by vicarious agency. That well-matured reason and ■conscience are the best guides to be depended on, and if we neglect or re nounce their directions and admonitions, we lay ourselves open to all man ner ot delusion and priestcraft, hateful to God and destructive to mankind, that instead of stereotyped creeds, blind zeal, and religious persecution for “righteousness’ sake,’ we should promote love, peace, temperance, gratitude, charity and universal benevolence : so as to reduce religion to that plain, simple system of aiming to attain that abstract perfection as taught by Christ, who said “ Be yeperfect.” The principles to promote these are few .and easy: 1st, There is a God, an Almighty Creator, to whom all existence belongs and is subject, and who ought to be worshipped by all mankind. 2nd, 1 hat by his immutable laws, the good are rewarded and the wicked punished here and hereafter. 3rd, Ihat repentance and reformation are .required to obtain the one and escape the other. 4th, That true religion �2 is that which was stated by Christ, (t Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and strength, and thy neighbour as thyself.”' To love God is to love all “ Good,” as truth, justice, charity, and every good work ; to love truth is to love the “ God of Truth,” &q. I do not believe in the orthodox view of the atonement, that Christ’ came to reconcile God to us, but rather that he came to reconcile us to Gods I do not believe in the necessity of his having to be crucified, and to take upon himself the sins of all, before man could be saved ; if such were the case how infinitely grateful we ought to be to those orthodox Jews who cruelly put him to death, in order that we might be saved ! Neither do I believe in the orthodoxy of the present day, which says “ there are three Gods all equal,’" and yet so wnequal that one God is ever- interceding, and endeavouring to appease the wrath of another God! if so, one must be in the wrong ! I believe in the absolute perfection of a Divine Creator, and who does not thus require to be changed in order that endless punishment may be averted, for temporary sins. I believe that God is love, and that his “ mercy” and not his chastisement “ endureth for ever.” I do not believe in “ original sin” and that man was pre-ordained tn be its victim ; nor in the destruction of unbaptized infants, as the Roman and Anglican priests tell us. I prefer Christ’s doctrine ; he says “ of such' is the kingdom of Heaven.” I do not believe in that best friend of priest craft,—a personal devil, and who is said to be more mighty than the Allmighty in obtaining the greatest number of immortal souls, thus having power to thwart God’s providence,—nor in a material hell-fire, which isever consuming those souls. I do not believe “ in three Gods, yet one God” which the Church of England says we must believe or “ without doubt perish everlastingly.” Its creeds are to me downright blasphemy. I do not believe that the Bible was divinely inspired” from beginning toend and was all written by the “finger of God,” I believe the Bible was made for man, not man for the Bible, that it is an historical, moral and spiritual teacher, not altogether correct, but containing many truths and many errors ; a compilation of different works by different authors, wr itten at different periods, and by the most learned and wise men of their day, but that neither they nor their works are infallible, as the science of geology and astronomy, and even their own contradictions prove. That men in after ages collected and bound together such of these books as they thought proper and called them the Bible, and that these selfsame human beings, at the Council of Nice, &c., rejected such other books as they thought of less worthy note ; that these men were also as learned and wise as the times would permit, but not infallible and possibly not altogether withottt prejudice or partiality. I believe real Christianity to be absolute religion, which thinks and ivorks ; goodness towards man, and piety towards God; undogmatic, un sectarian, liberal, broad and free, preached with faith and applied to life, being good and doing good. There is but one real religion, which we need only open our eyes to see, and 5vhich requires neither creeds nor catechisms to discern; only live it, in love to God and man, and we are blessed by Him who liveth for ever, in spite of all that priests and their dupes may say to the contrary, for thank God they are not to be our judges, other wise few would escape. � 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. 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. <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" /> 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 Religion. To the editor of the "Hackney and Kingsland Gazette." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conner, W.E. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1865] Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [s.n.] Subject The topic of the resource Theology Religion Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a> This work (Religion. To the editor of the "Hackney and Kingsland Gazette."), identified by <a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a>, is free of known copyright restrictions. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G5257 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [s.l.] Collation: 2 p. ; 22 cm. Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A letter to the editor of the Hackney and Kingsland Gazette. Pencilled inscription on front page below the printed 'yours respectfully C.' : 'W.E. Conner, formerly of So. Pl. Chapel". An illegible word pencilled opposite the Conner signature. Reprinted from the Hackney and Kingsland Gazette, October 7, 1865. Ink stain on front page. Christianity Conway Tracts Rationalism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/d272e403cd0885fb3df9f1bd79eb35d9.pdf?Expires=1780531200&Signature=nW7U6TtdSn2NFZdVvhE-pwuYny2zZDym-RkV5TaXlep601dr-JEc61zxY2k5ymNxhhxlR2V4eDD-z%7EOoCGhgULaxOII3SEnUiy1efVYymuaiLXfvqFhWOu5hl4UJGTGYDdPhE46PNOUav7SpBRQMyWchw62T3WvzwmKY-fWs%7EJpIK0uSZrk3A8TyyRinbwvseeelkFK5GjXKXkHBeqdSNRB8Y%7ELJBG6JnlZ21wLNK6LHTf9YnFp7NK%7E5D-wkZs0W0cMU81XQjGX759K4EjpDFOdRqTjF%7E847V71QgSH4K3tVfIoQB91Mur53VgPCGfQ0Gn6e6oIzj9-hnafULrLxLA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 2798588ae7539cd91b13bf1d33b7dc5c PDF Text Text 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. �� 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. 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. <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" /> 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 A last word: spoken at the Athenaeum, on the closing of our services there, June 27th 1880 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [London] Collation: 21 p. ; 15 cm. Notes: Printed by Waterlow and Sons, London Wall. Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 2. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [Waterlow and Sons] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1880] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3345 Subject The topic of the resource Free thought Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /> This work (A last word: spoken at the Athenaeum, on the closing of our services there, June 27th 1880), identified by <a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a>, is free of known copyright restrictions. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Christian Doctrine Free Thought Moncure Conway Morris Tracts Rationalism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/e2ec4f0a0759119152d7e110e1ec2e77.pdf?Expires=1780531200&Signature=DETsn%7ERbAMJi1e4ImyvT6M%7EdiJIsS73CT-63JeEnWSoa9zWTJ1i5yTh2QNGlAVFtIo1etvjV1CA-xZ-CgH0YxRPR9zUPILc7ku94zfqIr1uzYLZII5pmKYfXkudNqmKrgKsrZLD3NBBDXAWHc-NdQjnYFRDy7PwnbAY9FlLnFP8pcKUxTgXldYWtGVg87QUgGaMJ2bxaMm1bkA07XrPiVKH-tLPs3T2psoErIz4P%7EGe7vRPLrV6G4O%7EWUkTvDddAmLHW6UXLGnZHUkgDMW0TTFsxgy25u-whRbZnI2sUgyrjl7Hkqio%7ES9QXsqv3VbKdmzsZy4J4-SH01dne4vWwCQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM f6b98b4c122eb9ccce20cd6647185407 PDF Text Text THE RISING GENERATION A DISCOURSE BEFORE THE SOUTH PLACE SOCIETY, JUNE 27TH, 1880, BY MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A. LONDON : SOUTH PLACE, FINSBURY. PRICE TWOPENCE. �LONDON : Wateblow & Sons Limited LONDON WALL. �THE RISING GENERATION. <^OME of us can remember the time when the heart of England was stirred by Elizabeth Barrett’s poem, “ The Cry of the Children.” A revela tion had come from the dark mines of the country telling how little children were held all their lives in gloomy imprisonment, knowing nothing but work. In the mines were subterranean villages gloomy as the chambers of Dante’s Hell; some children were born there, lived, laboured, and died there, and only when dead did they come into the upper world—for burial. Little children were found who did not know what a flowrer was—they had never seen a flower. Then the “ Cry of the Children ” was heard. They uttered none for themselves; down in the pit they silently worked through their miserable lives, while the children of the world danced and were gay; yet their voices were heard in the poet’s lamentation, in the stateman’s eloquence, in the people’s sympathy, and the wrong was swept away. It seems to us now almost incredible that such an �( 4 ) evil should have existed within our own memories. So clear to our eyes are the evils of other times than our own. But, alas, the need is always for eyes that can see the evils of their own time, and how few are they ! In Dante’s Inferno one of the saddest places was the abode of those who moved about in a spiritual fog which obscured everything that was near to them. They could clearly see events in the far past, they could see into the future, but they could not see the present. These, during life, had given no effect to the experience of the past, exerted no influence on the future, because they did not study to discern the facts at hand, the conditions around them. They could not see time’s flowing stream at the point where it passed them, where must be dropped what is to reach the future. It is but a too faithful picture of multitudes who do not seem to themselves to be in any Inferno at all. There are many who can hear the cry of the children in the last generation, but can hear no cry in the present. Yet there is a cry. It comes no longer from subterranean mines, but it comes from unhappy homes; from the gloomy realms of pauperism, ignorance, and disease; and it comes from the sunless dungeons of dogma, where millions of children live and die, never seeing any flower of life, of beauty, or of joy. In speaking to you this morning of the rising �( 5 ) generation I do not propose to enter upon ideal speculations about the future, nor to propose quixotic schemes for abolishing all the evils of the world. I wish rather to limit your attention to facts near at hand, and conditions more or less within our reach. And, first of all, to impress upon you, as practical people, the fact that the visible conditions of the world have invisible foundations. Things are founded on thoughts. The world that man has built up,—the world of society, politics, nationality, religion,—is a phenomenal world, supported by causes always causing it; having for its beams and rafters moral and mental sustainers; and every change of thought or belief in the human mind is followed by a change in the visible conditions of the world. For example, were the Sabbatarian superstition removed from the mind of this country, the bars and bolts which close the refining institutions of the country would also be removed. If the Christian superstition were to die out of the English mind, the wealth and power it freezes up in an iceberg would melt, and streams would flow through the deserts where hearts and brains are famishing. Beware therefore of undervaluing thought, knowledge, beliefs, principles, because they are in visible. There are many thousands of Christian people who industriously battle with visible sufferings and vices. They do a little good here and a little good �( 6 ) there, in particular cases ; but the evils invariably return. Like the fabled daughters of Danaus they fill their sieves with water, but it always runs out again, because they do not stop the holes in the sieve’s bottom : they do not stop them because they are invisible; they are the unconscious falsities of their creeds, diverting, human minds and efforts away from the work of practically saving themselves from actual evils, to the fruitless work of saving themselves from unreal evils. The only way'to help men permanently is to enable them to help themselves. To give them resources is to shield them from want and sorrow; to educate their mental and physical strength is to make them rich; to surround them with social interests is to make them good citizens; and all these, and other conditions of human welfare, depend upon the pre vailing doctrine of what is the chief end and aim of human life. He who lifts that aim even a little, lifts the lives of millions with it; and a man is never so charitable, never so practical, as when he is destroying an error and affirming a truth. If benevolence wishes to bestow or bequeathe real benefit, let it not give too largely to the institutions which deal with the annual crop of evils that ignorance sows, let it attack the ignorance ; let it not build temperance coffee-houses to be closed on the only day they are much needed, �( 7 ) but attack the superstition which locks the people out of the splendid art-houses already existing, and leaves them no resource but debauchery. I do not disparage the disposition to relieve suffering whenever met with ; but let it not be supposed that such is the highest or the most practical charity to mankind. A single pound given for human culture, for spiritual liberty, for advancement of a high cause or principle, is worth a thousand bestowed to salve over wounds which only knowledge and justice can heal. And 1 will add that as the pound given for the transient mitigation of an evil is but a drop of oil on an ocean of misery, that which is bestowed in freeing a mind from error is strictly economised, and has a fair prospect of being multiplied through generations. This high charity must not only be thus practical and economical in its object, but also in its method. The regeneration of the world must be through its successive generations. You cannot change the habits of an old man. What troubles grow from those habits you may assuage, but they can only be eradicated with the constitution around which they have formed. The best thing a matured generation can do is to run to seed—the seed of experience—to select from these -seeds those that are largest and soundest, and sow •them in the quick soil of youth and vigour. It is the principles so entrusted to the rising generation which �( 8 ) grow with its growth, transmute decays into life, failures into success, and transmit an ever-increasing volume of wisdom and happiness. What then is the present cry of the children ? their perhaps inarticulate, but all the profounder cry ? What are their needs ? How are they being taught ? It is not our business to boast that much has been done, that the children have been taken from the streets and put to school. That was the work of a generation now closed. What work the next is to add to that, is a question more inportant than what has been already done; we can rightly rejoice only if we feel that the best is now being done. It is to be feared we have little reason to felicitate ourselves upon our dealings with the rising generation. To a large extent the young are being taught over again what their elders have painfully unlearned ; they are solemnly and deliberately crammed with that which the best thought of our time has proved to be untrue. A young man recently emancipated from Roman Catholicism gave me an account of how he wasbrought up. When the poor little papist is born, his inborn demon is exorcised. Water is thrown on his head, also salt and oil; the cross signed on its fore head ; a candle is held beside it, a Latin formula muttered, and a half-crown demanded. The mother �( 9 ) is also subjected to an exorcism for having borne a demon into the world, and another half-crown is' demanded for the churching. Both of these cere monies remain in the Church of England. The water exorcism remains in all denominations. Even some Unitarians are not ashamed to practice a form which is either a mockery, or a proclamation of the diabolical nature of the child. Fortunately the little papist is unconscious of these proceedings ; but unfortunately, his training is on the belief that the exorcised demon is always trying to get back into the form from which he was expelled. He is taught to regard this as the chief danger of his life; he must continually make the sign of the cross, and pray to Jesus, Joseph, Mary, and other saints. He must bow to holy pictures and crucifixes, wear holy medals and charms, and is taught that these are the things which alone protect him from danger every moment. When he enters church or school he sprinkles himself with holy water, bends his knee before an altar, and understands that he inhales mysterious good things with incense. At school he utters “ Hail Mary ” every time the hour strikes. He is fed on miraculous stories of the marvels wrought by saints and holy objects. The Catechism is the . only thing taught him with any real industry : the ■ three principal ideas with which he is impressed are �( IO ) his utter depravity, his utter inability to help himself without the priest, and the diabolical iniquity of presuming to ask any question about the “sacred mysteries.’ At the age of seven or nine he is prepared for confession by what is called ‘ examining the conscience ’ which consists in making him read over a list of all the abominations ever committed by man. The purity of the child’s mind being thus poisoned, he is made to confess all the evil thoughts so awakened. He is then taught the sacredness of penance; worship of the Eucharist as God himself; and so he is given to society. But if all that should succeed in really moulding-him he would be hardly better off mentally than were those children of the mines who never saw a flower. This is the pit from which the Christian child of this country was dug by the Reformation, but was very soon plunged into others where much of its little life is still passed. Puritanism was even a darker pit than Catholicism, and most of the sects were mere variants of Puritanism. The English Church being the church of royalty and wealth, had to accommodate its dogmas to the indulgencies, tastes and sports of the upper classes. The aristocracy preserved many traditions from its barbaric origin, and has steadily refused to be captured by asceticism, or tamed by Puritanism. But unfortunately it did �( IX ) not refuse to submit to hypocrisy; and it goes on still with the supplications of terror on its lips and indifference in its heart. Its catechism indoctrinates in asceticism, its life in worldliness. It cries for mercy on Sunday, and hunts foxes on Monday. It calls itself a miserable sinner at church, and resents the slightest aspersion of its character elsewhere. It were hard to conceive a more continuous drill in hypocrisy than that child undergoes who is taught the church catechism in the intervals of a life practically absorbed in worldly schemes. It is to the credit of human nature that there are so many g&pdjent characters which survive the training of Catrmn8fta, and the repressions of Puritanism; but, still more to its credit that so many frank and earnest men survive the teachings of a church which so baldly separates theory from practice. But statistics show a vast population never going to any church at all. A large number of these are working men, who feel that the church is their enemy, and to whom the sects are unattractive. The labouring masses find in sleep, drink, and public-house gossip, the best compensation for six days’ toil. And there are many literary men, men of science, and gentlemen, who stay away from church and sect out of sheer disbelief and disgust. Yet the families of these generally go to �( 12 ) church, their children are baptised, catechised, and generally taught the dogmas which their parents despise. With the exception of the comparatively few Liberals who have formed Societies of their own, the rising generation is thus instructed in the same catechisms, creeds, confessions in which their prede cessors were instructed. Even the learning of the country abnegates its paramount duty to see that the women and children of the nation are taught truth, and consecrated in every way possible to the diffusion of truth. Thus the Catholic procedure, rejected in theory, characterises the actual treatment of the Protes tant child, too often of the disbeliever’s child. He is not dealt with as one possessed, but as a moral invalid who must go to the holy doctor every week, and be dosed with piety and texts. It is a terrible misdirection of that child’s mind, and many are mentally hunch-backed for life by it. It is by children being committed to the parsons as to dress-makers. Through this indifferentism, which may almost be called hardened, society goes on repeating the old routine from generation to genera tion. Every year rolls up its steady average- of abuses unreformed, evils unchanged, falsities laughed at and maintained. Some progress is made but it is 'mainly through the slow working of natural necessity, �the accompaniment of physical changes incident to the pursuit of wealth. It is as nothing compared with the progress that would be made if all the thinkers and educated people of the community were to seriously set themselves to the work of securing to their families, especially their children, the full benefits of their best knowledge and experience, treating every attempt to teach them fashionable falsities as they would attempts to indoct rinate them in sorcery. It is the abstract verdict of science that Christian dogmas are false. That is equally the verdict of moral and mental philosophy. But their verdict remains unexecuted. Until they feel also that these dogmas are so many poisons, the Creeds and Catechisms so many bottles of poison steadily infused into the springs that feed society; until they besiege those sects which so poison spiritual springs as they would water-companies sending corruption through the community, or adulterators of the public food; until then, we need not hope that the best knowledge of this age will enter upon its duty of bringing social institutions out of their barbarous constitution into conformity with reason and right. What is the Creed taught to the millions of children around us ? That they are born totally depraved; that they are in danger of eternal damnation; that they have incurred this danger by no act of their own, and can be saved by no act of their own; that they were �( *4 ) corrupted by a man and woman who lived six thousand years ago, and must be saved by the murder of a man who lived over eighteen hundred years ago. This is what is taught every child, with few exceptions. What does human culture believe? That such teaching is utterly preposterous. It believes every child is born innocent, liable to actual dangers, to be saved from them by others’ care in early life, ultimately by its own intelligence and activities, quite irrespective of any apple eaten in Paradise or murder committed in Palestine. The dogmas are just the reverse of the knowledge, and yet there is no serious combined effort among the intelligent people to substitute knowledge for proven falsities in the training of children. It is too obvious to be insisted on that such a phenomenon is immoral, not to say criminal. Yet many who see the evil are unable to see or suggest the remedy. The impediment that seems to lie in the way is the principle of patriarchal liberty under which the various sects have been able to combine in a political community. We cannot step in between parent and child and interfere with any teaching which professes to be religious. Were such a principle adopted it would be the Liberals who would suffer most. Liberalism cannot afford to advocate any in terference by law, not even to protect a child from �( i5 ) having its eyes put out—its intellectual eyes—or its moral back broken by the weight of false dogmas parentally imposed. We are not, indeed, responsible for not doing what we cannot do, but we are responsible for doing our very best with what ways and means are at our disposal. There is no call to quarrel with our tools until we have made the most of them. Have we done that ? Are we aiming to do that! Consider this, for instance : suppose it were no longer for the interest of any social institution, such as a Church, that these dogmas should be taught to any. Suppose, if your imagination is equal to it, that the endowments of the Church were all transferred to institutions which teach no creeds ; all national property going to endow that which all agree to be real knowledge; all sectarian property being taxed because it is private property. That would be the simplest political justice. Because that is not the state of the law, you and I are made to pay every year to support dogmas we abhor. Sadi said that if there were a tax upon reading the Koran in public many holy men would be dumb. Though I would not say that of the Bible, it may safely be said of the Athanasian Creed : if every time those anathemas are uttered from the pulpit the curser of his opponents were taxed instead of bribed, that solemn blasphemy would cease. And many other �( *6 ) things would cease if law, fashion, and respectability did not throw around them a glamour which hides their monstrosity. Without disestablishment of the Church, the dis establishment of dogmas generally,—removal of the immunities of the dissenting sects,—cannot take place ; and without disendowment, and the taxation of church property, a vast power would be given up to the unchecked control of superstition. It is, therefore, a plain, legitimate, and not intolerant aim for Liberalism to labour for the total disendowment of all creeds. Parents would then have no inducement, no bribe to submit their children to a catechetical tuition which they did not approve ; and it is very doubtful if many parents, were the matter thus thrown absolutely upon themselves, would summon the catechist to their families. If we could only compel common sense to act upon what is now left to sacerdotal self-interest, many a child would be shielded from inoculation in error. You may smile at the idea of our succeeding in disendowing all creeds. But we may succeed in dis endowing them in many minds. Every clear agitation for a rational cause is a process of education; it commands the attention, and if it be right and reasonable it must make its way with the process of of the suns. �( T7 ) Besides this political direction of our influence, we may turn our social advantages, whatever they may be, to the side of what we believe true. The great power of error lies in the social advantages it can bestow upon the young, who can feel such advantages long before they can realise the falsities gilded by them. The desire for polite and attractive society is not only natural but worthy, and liberal thinkers owe it as a duty both to truth and to society that they should contribute all they can to associate their views with the standards of good taste, refinement, beauty, and innocent gaieties. It must be remembered that in the world the decorations and enjoyments of life represent its unorthodoxy. The Church has come to patronise them through compulsion of long experience. It began with nunneries and convents, dust and ashes, cowls and hair-garments; ugly anti-social habits and habiliments were the natural insignia of creeds that taught man’s depravity and despair. Every earthly beauty and joy is a protest against orthodoxy, and they legitimately belong to the religion of Liberalism and Humanity. Social enjoyments, mirth and beauty, are heresies which appeal far more to the young generation than scientific statements. The liberal movement in this country was historically evolved out of the Puritan movement, and some of those sombre traditions still adhere to it; but these should be �( i8 ) outgrown. Carefulness in dress, observance of fashion ■so far as it is healthy, dancing, interchanges of hospi tality, should not be regarded as frivolous, but as related to the progressive civility of the world, the true accompaniments of its liberation from sacrificial ideas of religion. Liberalism will be largely benefitted by more generous outlays in this direction, and by ■each thinker taking care to do his and her part that the tastes shall not be starved while the intellect and moral nature are fed. It is of the utmost importance that in the steady effort of the young to improve the style and position of their families, they should less and less have to seek their society chiefly outside of liberal circles at cost of their religious and intellectual principles. It is equally incumbent upon all liberal thinkers to ¿o something towards raising the moral tone of society from its theological depravation into harmony with the standard of personal veracity and honour. It is not veracity and it is not honour that men should submit without an effort to having their children taught pious falsehoods and placed under the influence of priests whose creeds they despise. We need a severer standard of veracity and honesty than that. It is a poor subterfuge to say that the rising generation should be left free to form its own opinions. As well say a garden should be left free to produce what it pleases. �( i9 ) It will produce weeds, and so will the mind not carefully cultured. We owe to all we can influence our very best thought, our maturest experience, and we cannot escape that responsibility. We must tell our children just what we believe true, and let them know that it is a basis for them to build on. They are to think for themselves. Occasions are not wanting to realise for ourselves, and to impress upon the young, the steadily corrupt ing influence of proven errors established by law. We have just witnessed in the legislative assembly of this great nation how easily, when a constitutional super stition is touched, men, who in worldly affairs are gentlemen, relapse into coarseness, calumny, and lawlessness. In the name of what they call God, but which is no more a God than Mumbo-Jumbo,—a fetish made up of the aggregate ignorance of church men who find it a paying stock, recreant Jews courting Christian favour, Catholics sniffing again the burning flesh of Smithfield once mingled with their incense,—in the name of that God who cursed nature, kindled Tophet for man, and founded in the world as under it a government of fire and faggot, they have not hesitated at any meanness, falsehood, or injustice to inflict a blow upon intellectual liberty, and even national liberty which dares disregard dogma. We have seen one bearing the title of Knight, �( 20 ) which used to mean defender of woman, dragging up the name of a lady of spotless character amid brutal laughter, trying to rob of reputation one whom an unjust judge had already robbed of her child. All this we have seen done in the name of an established phantasm called God. The outbreak of fanaticism in some deputies from wild districts is far less base than the partizan fury, which, in its eagerness to strike their conqueror, led a party to vote like one herd upon a question of fact and law. By a remarkable coincidence the law is just what will most annoy their opponentsand most delay public business, so punishing the country for taking its business out of their hands. There’s truth and honour for you! These are the followers of Jesus and protectors of Omnipotence ! These be thy gods, O people of England, who demand that woman should be insulted, law defied, and the sanctuary of law turned into a bear-garden, rather than that a man holding the opinions of the majority of scientific men in Europe shall be admitted to sit beside sanctified sporting squires, priest-ridden papists, and capacious city-men, making gold out of his blood who had not where to lay his head ! The Member for Northampton no doubt has his faults; but now when he suffers not for his faults but for his virtues, and when in his person are assailed the rights of every independent thinker in this nation, I will undertake to affirm that he is nearer to that man whom the Sanhedrim scourged than the best �( 21 ) of his assailants, and that the spirit which pursues him because of his testimony against priestcraft and his fidelity to the people, is the self-same spirit that crowned Christ with thorns and pressed poison to the lips of Socrates. We need not much regret this revolutionary out break of superstition allied with the class-interests pre served by superstition. A more salient illustration of the wolfish hunger for power underlying the unholy alliance of pious and political tyranny was never given to a people. If the Member for Northampton had lived to Methuselah’s age, and made a daily speech in Parliament, he could not have done so much as his enemies have done in a few days to advance the cause of atheism, so far as that means disbelief in the God of his oppressors. The Bishop of Peter borough says the French Revolutionary Assembly decreed the suppression of God; but the revolutionary House of Commons has decreed his disgrace. Their deity is unmasked and turns out to be only a party whip. If John Milton were living he might see in this disgrace of the political deity the hand of the real God overthrowing the usurper of his place. In his time also imperialism made God into a prop of its despotism, and Milton then wrote, “ Sure it was the hand of God to let them fall, and be taken in such a foolish trap as hath exposed them to all derision ; �( 22 ) ........................ thereby testifying how little he accepted (prayers) from those who thought no better of the living God than of a blind buzzard idol, fit to be so served and worshipped.” This nation is more hopelessly sunk in superstition than I believe it to be, if it be not now awakened to the politically destructive tendencies of dogmas imported from barbarous tribes. It is, however, of importance that we should see to it that the lesson is not lost upon the rising generation. We have in this country a great literature in which the highest principles of morality and honour are reflected. On the other hand, we have a so-called religion in which all the massacres of Judaism and Christianity, their treasons to humanity, are sanctified. We have simply to let every unsophisticated mind look on this picture and on that. We have only to point to theological morality in Parliament putting a premium on hypocrisy, by declaring that it is ready to receive an atheist if he conceals his opinions; to theological morality trampling law for party ends; to theological morality foul-mouthed, insolent, treating honesty of mind and honesty of speech as crimes. We have only to ask the con science of the mother, whether she would be glad to have her child grow up to so encourage conceal ment of thought, so brow-beat honesty, so over-ride �law, slander man and insult woman, all for the sake of God ? We have only to ask the heart of youth whether it is prepared to worship a God so upheld, or for any success or ambition to pretend to believe in a religion so built on baseness ? I believe that these questions are stirring millions of hearts this day, and that the rising generation will show it when fully risen. I believe that it is largely because lessons like this have been impressed upon past generations that the present struggle of freedom against sacerdotalism has come. It is also because our wise fathers taught those now grown gray that their trusty weapons were to be free and honest thought, fact, argument, lawful, that we now see Oppression taking to violence, to revolution, and Progress standing by the law. Let us better their instruction. Let us impress upon the rising generation that in calmness and justice is their strength. Let us teach them the gentle, irresistible force that goes with intellectual power, with study, mastery of their cause, and above all the might that ever gathers to the higher standard of morality and humanity. �SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL* WORKS TO BE OBTAINED IN THE LIBRARY. BY M. D. CONWAY, M.A. Prices. The Sacred Anthology: a Book of Ethnical s. d. Scriptures......................................................... 10 0 The Earthward Pilgrimage................................. 5 0 Do. do.......................................... 2 6 Republican Superstitions ................................. 2 6 Christianity ..................................................... 1 6 Human Sacrifices in England ....................... 1 0 Sterling and Maurice........................................... 0 2 Intellectual Suicide........................................... 0 2 The First Love again........................................... 0 2 Our Cause and its Accusers...................... ... 0 1 Alcestis in England........................................... 0 2 Unbelief : its nature, cause, and cure ............. 0 2 Entering Society ........................................... 0 2 The Religion of Children ... ... ... ... 0 2 What is Religion ?—Max Muller's First Hibbert Lecture ...................................................... 0 2 Atheism: a Spectre........................................... 0 2 The Criminal’s Ascension................................. 0 2 The Religion of Humanity................................. 0 2 A Last Word..................................................... 0 2 NEW WORK BYM.D. CONWAY, M.A. Idols and Ideals (including the Essay on Chris tianity ), 350 pages ............. ... ••• 6 0 Jiembers of the Congregation can obtain this Work in the Library at 5s. BY MR. J. ALLANSON PICTON. The Transfiguration of Religion....................... BY A. J. ELLIS, B.A., F.R.S., &c., &c. Salvation ..................................................... Truth Speculation ..................................................... Duty ............................................................... The Dyer’s Hand ........................................... BY REV. P. H. WTCKSTEED, M.A. Going Through and Getting Over ............. BY REV. T. W. FRECKELTON. The Modern Analogue of the Ancient Prophet BY W. C. COUPLAND, M.A, The Conduct of Life........................................... 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 2 2 2 0 2 0 2 0 2 Hymns and Anthems... ... ... 1/-, 2/-, %/■ Report of the Conference of Liberal Thinkers, 1878, 1/- � 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. 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. <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" /> 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 rising generation: a discourse before the South Place Society, June 27th 1880 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 23, [1] p. ; 15 cm. Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 2. Printed by Waterlow and Sons, London Wall. With list of works to be obtained in the Library of South Place Chapel at end of pamphlet. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [South Place Chapel] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1880] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3348 Subject The topic of the resource Child rearing Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a> This work (The rising generation: a discourse before the South Place Society, June 27th 1880), identified by <a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a>, is free of known copyright restrictions. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Child Rearing-Moral and Ethical Aspects Children Dogma Education Free Thought Moral Education Morris Tracts Rationalism Youth-Great Britain-Religious Life https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/9a1225f4facca4d00538e927cd46596b.pdf?Expires=1780531200&Signature=GnqvYlaz45ajyvzEon2B0R1Z-Tlcl0Ugj1OJ1-e0Jb1bJaNViImOSoSSOxbRoJ1Cq31wSaxluwd5%7EV0YFtjWvlZHBOmmHo-7ESBVU5fGMahR1dT4CqeyHDLNTLWhdesnILwSPZvt%7E6TPBF8ZHyjk7SUDZloEIK4tjqREj%7Es2EH3dHJOZA6xl-QjEzRGqGgr-AwMdOYrWcNMTap0et8Eam9kdOwk5Z-0ahEnP7q6tVRZwfZD1YbYbiZTMe7vrrZ0Wd1bNXiqcrCOx60WagRmwKobCkrKld2hs5HOx-HT7pdBp78HEwlyhxwg7Tt3e4zIHuwrd2MQyPwHDciU9SZ3xTA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM ab17a06045aa223e32710066db8f961e PDF Text Text fl ^ertrn DELIVERED BEFORE THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY, ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE, ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 6th APRIL, 1879, By H. MAUDSLEY, M.D., Professor of Medical Jurisprudence, University Colleye, London. [Reprinted from the “ Fortnightly Review,” by kind permission of the Editor.] Honbon: PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY. 1879.' PRICE THEEPENCE. �SYLLABUS. The doctrines of Materialism and Spiritualism. Why Materialism is looked upon as inferior and degrading. Every function of mind dependent upon organization. Milton an avowed Materialist. Materialism not inconsistent with the belief of a future life, but incon sistent with the doctrine of a contempt of the body. The human body the last and greatest product of organic development. Differences of size and development between the brain of the lowest savage and that of an ordinary European. Corresponding differences of intellectual and moral capacities. The reign of law in human evolution. The reign of law in human degeneracy. Morality the essential condition of complex social development. Intellectual and moral lessons of Materialism. �LESSONS OF MATERIALISM. is well known that from an early period of speculative thought two doctrines have been held with regard to the sort of connection which exists between a man’s mind and his body. On the one hand, there are those who maintain that mind is an outcome and function of matter in a certain state of organization, coming with it, growing with it, decaying with it, inseparable from it: they are the so-called materialists. On the other hand, there are those who hold that mind is an independent spiritual essence which has entered into the body as its dwelling-place for a time, which makes use of it as its mortal instrument, and which will take on its independent life when the body, worn out by the operation of natural decay, returns to the earth of which it is made: they are the spiritualists. Without entering into a discussion as to which is the true doctrfrie, it will be sufficient in this lecture to accept, and proceed from the basis of, the generally admitted fact that all the manifestations of mind which we have to do with in this wprld are connected with organization, dependent upon it, whether as cause or instrument; that they are never met with apart from it any more than electricity or any other natural force is met with apart from matter ; that higher organization must go along with higher mental function. What is the state of things in another world—whether the disembodied or celestially embodied spirits of the countless myriads of the human race that have come and gone through countless ages are now living higher lives—I do not venture to inquire. One hope and one certitude in the matter every one may be allowed to have and to express—the hope that if they are living now, it is a higher life than they lived upon earth ; the certitude that if they are living the higher life, most of them must have had a vast deal to unlearn. Many persons who readily admit in general terms the depend ence of mental function on cerebral structure are inclined, when brought to the particular test, to make an exception in favour of the moral feeling or conscience. They are content to rest in the uncertain position which satisfied Dr. Abercrombie, the dis tinguished author of the well-known Inquiry concerning the In tellectual Powers, who, having pointed out plainly the dependence of mental function on organization, and, as a matter of fact which t I �4 Lessons of Materialism. cannot be denied, that there are individuals in whom every correct feeling in regard to moral relations is obliterated, while the judgment is unimpaired in all other relations, stops there, without attempting to prosecute inquiry into the cause of‘ the remarkable fact which he justly emphasises. “ That this power,” he says, “ should so completely lose its sway, while reason remains un impaired, is a point in the moral constitution of man which it does not belong to the physician to investigate. The fact is unquestion able ; the solution is to be sought in the records of eternal truth.” And with this lame and somewhat melancholy conclusion he leaves his readers impotent before a problem, which is not only of deep scientific interest, but of momentous practical importance. The observation which makes plain the fact does not, however, leave us entirely without information concerning the cause of it, when we pursue it faithfully, since it reveals as distinct a depen dence of moral faculty upon organization as of any other faculty. Many instructive examples of the pervading mental effects of physical injury of the brain might be quoted, but two or three, recently recorded, will suffice. An American medical man was called one day to see a youth, aged eighteen, who had been struck down insensible by the kick of a horse. There was a depressed fracture of the skull a little above the left temple. The skull was trephined, and the loose fragments of bone that pressed upon the brain were removed, whereupon the patient came to his senses. The doctor thought it a good opportunity to make an experiment, as there was a hole in the skull through which he could easily make pressure upon the brain. He asked the boy a question, and before there was time to answer it he pressed firmly with his finger upon the exposed brain. As long as the pressure was kept up the boy was mute, but the instant it was removed he made a reply, never suspecting that he had not answered at once. The experi ment was repeated several times with precisely the same result, the boy’s thoughts being stopped and started again on each occasion as easily and certainly as the engineer stops and starts his locomotive. On another occasion the same doctor was called to see a groom who had been kicked on the head by a mare called Dolly, and whom he found quite insensible. There was a fracture of the skull, with depression of bone at the upper part of the forehead. As soon as the portion of bone which was pressing upon the brain was removed the patient called out with great energy, “Whoa, Dolly 1 ” and then stared about him in blank amazement, asking, I I �Lessons of Materialism. 5 “Where am I?” Three hours had “Where is the mare?” hw-8<-£fi passed since the accident, during which the words which he was just going to utter when it happened had remained locked up, as they might have been locked up in the phonograph, to be let go it mi' eiw the moment the obstructing pressure was removed. The patient pa'bin did not remember, when he came to himself, that the mare had kicked him ; the last thing before he was insensible which he did ijjeirr^i remember was, that she wheeled her heels round and laid back her :v OTBe ears viciously. Cases of this kind show how entirely dependent every function of mind is upon a sound state of the mechanism of the brain. r/tewl Just as we can, by pressing firmly upon the sensory nerve of the [ .nna arm, prevent an impression made upon the finger being carried to the brain and felt there, so by pressing upon the brain we can as rrirhe’i certainly stop a thought or a volition. In both cases a good tyri&w recovery presently followed the removal of the pressure upon the rwfi<d brain; but it would be of no little medical interest to have the after-histories of the persons, since it happens sometimes after a >W0W<W serious injury to the head that, despite an immediate recovery, h -v/ofc slow degenerative changes are set up in the brain months or years jrwJtf: afterwards, which go on to cause a gradual weakening, and perhaps LJtiIOV«| eventual destruction, of mind. Now the instructive matter in this case is that the moral character is usually impaired first, and some ■-asinrJ times is completely perverted, without a corresponding deterior jtuoiM ation of the understanding; the person is a thoroughly changed affl-Sflf) character for the worse. The injury has produced disorder in the jKom most delicate part of the mental organization, that which is iiusti-a® separated from actual contact with the skull only by the thin ifewni investing membranes of the brain: and, once damaged, it is miuied seldom that it is ever restored completely to its former state of folium soundness. However, happy recoveries are now and then made : .jGihoai from mental derangement caused by physical injury of the brain. eiacb Some years ago a miner was sent to the Ayrshire District Asylum F. ,ofi/w who, four years before, had been struck to the ground insensible i 'li' vd by a mass of falling coal, which fractured his skull. He lay miqqcw unconscious for four days after the accident, then came gradually niiiloi to himself, and was able in four weeks to resume his work in the F“ .fiq pit. But his wife noticed a steadily increasing change for the fo&TOW worse in his character and habits ; whereas he had formerly been idresiid cheerful, sociable, and good-natured, always kind and affectionate •serf oJ to her and his children, he now became irritable, moody, surly, mq&jja suspicious, shunning the company of his fellow-workmen, and �6 Lessons of Materialism. impatient with her and the children. This bad state increased; he was often excited, used threats of violence to his wife and others, finally became quite maniacal, attempted to kill them, had a succession of epileptic fits, and was sent to the asylum as a dangerous lunatic. There he showed himself extremely suspicious and surly, entertained a fixed delusion that he was the victim of a conspiracy on the part of his wife and others, and displayed bitter and resentful feelings. At the place where the skull had been fractured there was a well-marked depression of bone, and the depressed portion was eventually removed by the trephine. From that time an improvement took place in his disposition, his old self coming gradually back; he became cheerful again, active and obliging, regained and displayed all his former affection for his wife and children, and was at last discharged recovered. No plainer example could be wished to show the direct connection of cause and effect—the great deterioration of moral character produced by the physical injury of the supreme nerve-centres of the brain: when the cause was taken away the effect went also. Going a step further, let me point out that disease will some times do as plain and positive damage to moral character as any which direct injury of the brain will do. A fever has sometimes deranged it as deeply as a blow on the head; a child’s conscience has been clean effaced by a succession of epileptic convulsions, just as the memory is sometimes effaced; and those who see much of epilepsy know well the extreme but passing moral transformations, which occur in connection with its seizures. The person may be as unlike himself as possible when he is threatened with a fit; although naturally cheerful, good-tempered, sociable and obliging, he becomes irritable, surly, and morose, very suspicious, takes offence at the most innocent remark or act, and is apt to resent imaginary offences with great violence. The change might be compared well with that which happens when a clear and cloudless sky is overcast suddenly with dark and threatening thunder-clouds; and just as the darkly clouded sky is cleared by the thunderstorm which it portends, so the gloomy moral perturbation is discharged and the mental atmosphere cleared by an epileptic fit or a succes sion of such fits. In a few remarkable cases, however, the patient does not come to himself immediately after the fit, but is left by it in a peculiar state of quasi-somnambulism, during which he acts like an automaton, doing strange, absurd, and sometimes even criminal things, without knowing apparently at the time what he is doing, and certainly without remembering in the least what he �Lessons of Materialism. ^f’rxA ■ .WlCffl eiIT? *’*r< .hcnyto ^drwf >TTT ®f Yrrfep ftjfe Of! W at | FWtyftslI ‘v-vl’idl u -'skia | «msql liXHBffl I awesrii IMdNaft| Muatjuti uaute s00->Jl£® 4^4w XjdufeM OUM/l'i i£J,h,X;>..t? 'oi_n<{ ydy/UH.I O' Xw*| 7 hag done when he comes to himself. Of excellent moral characterhabitually, he may turn thief in one of these states, or perpetrate some other criminal offence by which he gets himself into trouble with the police. There are other diseases which, in like manner, play havoc with moral feeling. Almost every sort of mental derangement begins with a moral alienation, slight, perhaps, at the outset, but soon so great that a prudent, temperate, chaste, and truthful person shall be changed to exactly the opposite of what he was. This alienation of character continues throughout the course of the disease, and is frequently found to last for a while after all disorder of intelli gence has gone. Indeed, the experienced physician never feels confident that the recovery is stable and sure, until the person is restored to his natural sentiments and affections. Thus it appears that when mind undergoes decadence, the moral feeling is the first to suffer ; the highest acquisition of mental evolution, it is the first to witness to mental degeneracy. One form of mental disease, known as general paralysis, is usually accompanied with a singu larly complete paralysis of the moral sense from the outset; and a not uncommon feature of it, very striking in some cases, is a persistent tendency to steal, the person stealing in a weak-minded manner what he has no particular need of, and makes no use of when he has stolen it. The victim of this fatal disease is frequently sent to prison and treated as a common criminal in the first instance, notwithstanding that a medical man who knows his business might be able to say with entire certitude that the supposed criminal was suffering from organic disease of the brain, which had destroyed moral sense at the outset, which would go on to destroy all the other faculties of his mind in succession, and which in the end would destroy life itself. There is no question in such case of moral guilt; it is not sin but disease that we are con fronted with: and after the victim’s death we find the plainest evidence of disease of brain which has gone along with the decay of mind. Had the holiest saint in the calendar been afflicted as he was, he could not have helped doing as he did. I need not dwell any longer upon the morality-sapping effects of particular diseases, but shall simply call to mind the profound deterioration of moral sense and will which is produced by the long-continued and excessive use of alcohol and opium. There is nowhere a more miserable specimen of degradation of moral feeling and of impotence of will, than the debauchee who has made himself the abject slave of either of these pernicious excesses. �8 Lessons of Materialism. Insensible to the interests of his family, to his personal responsi bilities, to the obligations of duty, he is utterly untruthful and untrustworthy, and in the worst end there is not a meanness of pretence or of conduct that he will not descend to, not a lie he will not tell, in order to gain the means to gratify his overruling craving. It is not merely that passion is strengthened and will weakened by indulgence as a moral effect, but the alcohol or opium which is absorbed into his blood is carried by it to the brain and acts injuriously upon its tissues : the chemist will, indeed, extract alcohol from the besotted brain of the worst drunkard, as he will detect morphia in the secretions of a person who is taking large doses of opium. Seldom, therefore, is it of the least use to preach reformation to these people, until they have been restrained forcibly from their besetting indulgence for a long enough period to allow the brain to get rid of the poison, and its tissues to regain a healthier tone. Too often it is of little use then ; the tissues have been damaged beyond the possibility of complete restoration. Moreover, observation has shown that the drink-craving is oftentihies hereditary, so that a taste for the poison is ingrained in the tissues, and is quickly kindled by gratification into uncontrollable desire. Thus far it appears, then, that moral feeling may be impaired or destroyed by direct injury of the brain, by the disorganizing action of disease, and by the chemical action of certain substances which, when taken in excess, are poisons to the nervous system. When we look sincerely at the facts, we cannot help perceiving that it is just as closely dependent upon organization as is the meanest function of mind; that there is not an argument to prove the so-called materialism of one part of mind which does not apply with equal force to the whole mind. Seeing that we know no more essentially what matter is than what mind is, being unable in either case to go beyond the phenomena of which we have experience, it is of interest to ask why the spiritualist considers his theory to be of so much higher and intellectual and moral order than materialism, and looks down with undisguised pity and contempt on the latter as inferior, degrading, and even dangerous ; why the materialist should be deemed guilty, not of intellectual error only, but of something like moral guilt. His philosophy has been lately denounced as a “ philosophy of dirt.” An eminent prelate of the English Church, in an outburst of moral indignation, once described him as possibly “ the most odious and ridiculous being in all the multiform creation; ” and a recent writer �. Lessons of Materialism. 9 in a French philosophical journal uses still stronger language of abhorrance—“ I abhor them,” he says, “ with all the force of my soul. ... I detest and abominate them from the bottom of my heart, and I feel an invincible repugnance and horror when they dare to reduce psychology and ethics to their bestial phy siology—that is, in short, to make of man a brute, of the brute a plant, of the plant a machine. . . . This school is a living and crying negation of humanity.” The question is, what there is in materialism to warrant the sincere feeling and earnest expression of so great a horror of it. Is the abhorrence well founded, or is it, perhaps, that the doctrine is hated, as the individual oftentimes is, because misunderstood ? This must certainly be allowed to be a fair inquiry by those who reflect that no less eminent a person and good a Christian than Milton was a decided materialist. Several scattered passages in Paradise Lost plainly betray his opinions ; but it is not necessary to lay any stress upon them, because in his Treatise on Christian Doctrine he sets them forth in the most plain and uncompromising way, and supports them "with an elaborate detail of argument. He is particularly earnest to prove that the common doctrine that the spirit of man should be separate from the body, so as to have a perfect and intelligent existence independently of it, is nowhere said in Scripture, and is at variance both with nature and reason ; and he declares that “ man is a living being, intrinsically and properly one and individual, not compound and separable, not, according to the common opinion, made up and framed of two distinct parts, as of soul and body.” Another illustrious instance of a good Christian who, for a great part of his life, avowed his belief that “ the nature of man is simple and uniform, and that the thinking power and faculties are the result of a certain organization of matter,” was the eloquent preacher and writer, Robert Hall. It is true that he abandoned this opinion at a later period of his life; indeed, his biographer tells us with much satisfaction that “ he buried materialism in his father’s grave ; ” and a theological professor in American college has in a recent article exultantly claimed this fact as triumphant proof that the materialist’s “ gloomy and unnatural creed ” cannot stand before such a sad feeling as grief at a father’s death. One may be excused, perhaps, for not seeing quite so clearly as these gentlemen the soundness of the logic of the connection. On the whole, logic is usually sounder and stronger when it is not under the pressure of great feeling. The truth is that a great many people have the deeply-rooted �10 Lessons of Materialism. feeling that materialism is destructive of the hope of immortality, and dread and detest it for that reason. When they watch the body decay and die, considering furthermore that after its death it is surely resolved into the simple elements from which all matter is formed, and know that these released elements go in turn to build up other bodies, so that the material is used over and over again, being compounded and decompounded incessantly in the long stream of life, they cannot realise the possibility of a resurrection of the individual body. They cannot conceive how matter which has thus been used over and over again can remake so many distinct bodies, and they think that to uphold a bodily resurrection is to give up practically the doctrine of a future life. It is a natural, but not a necessary conclusion, as the examples of Milton and Robert Hall prove, since they, though materialists, were devout believers in a resurrection of the dead. Moreover, there are many vehement antagonists of materialism who readily admit that it is not inconsistent with the belief in a life after death. Indeed, they could not well do otherwise, when they recollect what the Apostle Paul said in his very energetic way, addressing the objector to a bodily resurrection as “ Thou fool,” and what happened to the rich man who died and was buried; for it is told of him that “ in hell he lifted up his eyes, and cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.” Now if he had eyes to lift up and a tongue to be cooled, it is plain that he had a body of some kind in hell; and if Lazarus, who was in another place, had a finger to dip in water, he also must have had a body of some kind there. Leaving this matter, however, without attempting to explain the mystery of the body celestial, I go on to mention a second reason why materialism is considered to be bad doctrine. It is this : that with the rise and growth of Christianity there came in the fashion of looking down on the body with contempt as the vile and despicable part of man, the seat of those fleshly lusts which warred against the higher aspirations of the soul. It was held to be the favourite province of the devil, who, having intrenched himself there, lay in wait to entice or to betray to sin ; the wiles of Satan and the lusts of the flesh were spoken of in the same breath, as in the service of the English Church prayer is made for “ whatsoever has been decayed by the fraud and malice of the devil, or by his own carnal will and frailness ; ” and all men are taught to look forward to the time when “ he shall change this vile body and make �Lessons of Materialism. 11 it like unto his glorious body.” It was the extreme but logical outcome of this manner of despising the body to subject it to all the penances, and to treat it with all the rigour, of the most rigid asceticism—to neglect it, to starve it, to scourge it, to mortify it in every possible way. One holy ascetic would never wash himself, or cut his toe-nails, or wipe his nose; another suffered maggots to burrow unchecked into the neglected ulcers of his emaciated body; others, like St. Francis, stripped themselves naked and appeared in public without clothes. St. Macarius threw away his clothes and remained naked for six months in a marsh, exposed to the bite of every insect; St. Simeon Stylites spent thirty years on the top of a column which had been gradually raised to a height of sixty feet, passing a great part of his time in bending his meagre body successively with his head towards his feet, and so industriously that a curious spectator, after counting one thousand two hundred and forty-four repetitions, desisted counting from weariness. And for these things—these insanities of conduct may we not call them—they were accounted most holy, and received the honours of saintship.' Contrast this unworthy view of the body with that which the ancient Greeks took of it. They found no other object in nature which satisfied so well their sensejof proportion and manly strength, of attractive grace and beauty; and their reproductions of it in marble we preserve now as priceless treasures of art, albeit we still babble the despicable doctrine of contempt of it. The more strange, since it is a matter of sober scientific truth that the human body is the highest and most wonderful work in nature, the last and best achievement of her creative skill; it is a most complex and admirably constructed organism, “ fearfully and wonderfully made,” which contains, as it were in a microcosm, all the ingenuity and harmony and beauty of the macrocosm. And it is this supreme product of evolution that fanatics have gained the honour of saintship by disfiguring and torturing! These, then, are two great reasons of the repugnance which is felt to materialism, namely, the notion that it is destructive of the hope of a resurrection, and the contempt of the body which has been inculcated as a religious duty. And yet on these very points materialism seems fitted to teach the spiritualist lessons of humility and reverence, for it teaches him, in the first place, not to despise and call unclean the last and best work of his Creator’s hand; and,. secondly, not impiously to circumscribe supernatural power by the narrow limits of his understanding, but to bethink himself that it �12 Lessons of Materialism. were just as easy in the beginning, or now, or at any time, for the omnipotent Creator of matter and its properties to make it think as to make mind think. Passing from these incidental lessons of humility and reverence, I go now to show that materialism has it moral lessons, and that these, rightly apprehended, are not at all of a low intellectual and moral order, but, on the contrary, in some respects more elevating than the moral lessons of spiritualism. I shall content myself with two or three of these lessons, not because there are not more of them, but because they will be enough to occupy the time at my disposal. It is a pretty well accepted scientific doctrine that our fardistant prehistoric ancestors were a very much lower order of beings than we are, even if they did not inherit directly from the monkey; that they were very much like, in conformation, habits, intelligence, and moral feeling, the lowest existing savages ; and that we have risen to our present level of being by a slow process of evolution which has been going on gradually through untold generations. Whether or not “ through the ages one increasing purpose runs,” as the poet has it, it is certainly true that “ the .thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.” Now when we examine the brain of the lowest savage, whom we need not be too proud to look upon as our ancestor in the flesh—say a native Australian or a Bushman—we find it to be considerably smaller than an ordinary European brain ; its convolutions, which are the highest nerve-centres of mind, are decidedly fewer in number, more simple in character, and more symmetrical in arrangement. These are marks of inferiority, for in those things in which it differs from the ordinary European brain it gets nearer in structure to the still much inferior brain of the monkey; it represents, we may say, a stage of development in the long dis tance which has been traversed between the two. A comparison of the relative brain-weights will give a rude notion of the differences : the brain-weight of an average European male is 49 oz.; that of a Bushman is, I believe, about 33 oz.; and that of a Negro, who comes between them in brain-size, as in intelligence, is 44 oz. The small brain-weight of the Bushman is indeed equaled among civilised nations by that of a small-headed or socalled microcephalic idiot. There can be no doubt, then, of a great difference of development between the highest and the lowest existing human brain. There can be no doubt, furthermore, that the gross differences �Lessons of Materialism. 13 which there are between the size and development of the brain of a low savage and of an average European, go along with as great differences of intellectual and moral capacities—that lower mental function answers to lower cerebral structure. It is a well-known fact that many savages cannot count beyond five, and that they have no words in their vocabulary for the higher qualities of human nature, such as virtue, justice, humanity, and their opposites, vice, injustice, and cruelty, or for the more abstract ideas. The native Australian, for example, who is in this case, having no words for justice, love, mercy, and the like, would not in the least know what remorse meant; if any one showed it in his presence, he would think probably that he had got a bad bellyache. He has no words to express the higher sentiments and thoughts because he has never felt and thought them, and has never had, therefore, the need to express them ; he has not in his inferior brain the nervous substrata which should minister to such sentiments and thoughts, and cannot have them in his present state of social evolution, any more than he could make a particular movement of his body if the proper muscles were wanting. Nor could any amount of training in the world, we may be sure, ever make him equal in this respect to the average European, any more than it could add substance to the brain of a small-headed idiot and raise it to the ordinary level. Were any one, indeed, to make the experiment of taking the young child of an Australian savage and of bringing it up side by side with an average European child, taking great pains to give them exactly the same education in every respect, he would certainly have widely different results in the end: in the one case he would have to do with a well-organized instrument, ready to give out good intellectual notes and a fine harmony of moral feeling when properly handled; in the other case, an imperfectly organized instrument, from which it would be out of the power of the most patient and skilful touch to elicit more than a few feeble intellectual notes and a very rude and primitive sort of moral feeling. A little better feeling, certainly, than that of its fathers, but still most primitive ; for many savages regard as virtues most of the big vices and crimes, such as theft, rape, murder, at any rate when they are practised at the expense of neighbouring tribes. Their moral feeling, such as it is, is extremely circumscribed, being limited in application to the tribe. In Europe we have happily got further than that, since we are not, as savages are and our forefathers probably were, divided into a multitude of tribes eager to injure and even extirpate one another from motives �14 Lessons of Materialism. of tribal patriotism; but mankind seems to be far off the goal of its high calling so long as, divided into jealous and hostile nations, it suffers national divisions to limit the application of moral feeling, counts it a high virtue to violate it under the profaned name of patriotism, and uses the words “ humanitarianism ” and cosmo politanism ” as crushing names of reproach. There is plainly room yet for a wider expansion of moral feeling. Now what do the discoveries of science warrant us to conclude respecting the larger and more complex brain of the civilised man and its higher capacities of thought and feeling ? They teach us this : that it has reached its higher level not by any sudden and big creative act, nor by a succession of small creative acts, but by the slow and gradual operation of processes of natural evolution going on through countless ages. Each new insight into natural phenomena on the part of man, each act of wiser doing founded on truer insight, each bettered feeling which has been developed from wiser conduct, has tended to determine by degrees a corre sponding structual change of the brain, which has been transmitted as an innate endowment to succeeding generations, just as the acquired habit of a parent animal becomes sometimes the instinct of its offspring; and the accumulated results of these slow and minute gains, transmitted by hereditary action, have culminated in the higher cerebral organization, in which they are now, as it were, capitalised. Thus the added structure embodies in itself the superior intellectual and moral capacities of abstract reasoning and moral feeling which have been the slow acquisitions of the ages, and it gives them out again in its functions when it discharges its functions rightly. If we were to have a person born in this country with a brain of no higher development than that of the low savage—destitute, that is, of the higher nervous substrata of thought and feeling—if, in fact, our far remote prehistoric ancestor were to come to life among us now—we should have more or less of an imbecile, who could not compete on equal terms with other persons, but must perish, unless charitably cared for, just as the native Australian perishes when he comes into contact and competition with the white man. The only way in which the native Australian could be raised to the level of civilised feeling and thought would be by cultivation continued through many generations—by a process of evolution similar to that which lies back between our savage ancestors and us. That is one aspect of the operation of natural law in human events—the operation of the law of heredity in development, in �Lessons oj Materialism. 15 carrying mankind forward, that is, to a higher level of being. It teaches us plainly enough that the highest qualities of mind bear witness to the reign of law in nature as certainly as do the lowest properties of matter, and that if we are to go on progressing in time to come it must be by observation of, and obedience to, the laws of development. But there is another vastly important aspect of the law of heredity which it concerns us to bear sincerely in mind—its operation in working out human degeneracy, in carrying mankind downwards, that is, to a lower level of being. It is certain that man may degenerate as well as develop; that he has been doing so both as nation and individual ever since we have records of his doings on earth. There is a broad and easy way of dissolution, national, social, or individual, which is the opposite of the steep and narrow way of evolution. Now what it behoves us to realise distinctly is that there is not anything more miraculous about the degeneracy and extinction of a nation or of a family than there is about its rise and development; that both are the work of natural law. A nation does not sink into decadence, I presume, so long as it keeps fresh those virtues of character through which it became great among nations ; it is when it suffers them to be eaten away by luxury, corruption, and other enervating vices, that it undergoes that degeneration of character which prepares and makes easy its over-throw. In like manner a family, reckless of the laws of physical and moral hygiene, may go through a process of degeneracy until it becomes extinct. It was no mere dream of prophetic frenzy that when the fathers have eaten sour grapes, the children’s teeth are set on edge, nor was it a meaningless menace that the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations; it was an actual insight into the natural law by which degeneracy increases through generations—by which one generation reaps the wrong which its fathers have sown, as its children in turn will reap the wrong which it has sown. What we call insanity or mental derangement is truly, in most cases, a form of human degeneracy, a phase in the working out of it; and if we were to suffer this degeneracy to take it course unchecked through generations, the natural termination would be sterile idiocy and extinction of the family. A curious despot would find it impossible, were he to make the experiment, to breed and propagate a race of insane people; nature, unwilling to continue a morbid variety of the human kind, would bring his experiment to an end by the production of sterile idiocy. If man will but make himself the �16 Lessons of Materialism. subject of serious scientific study, he shall find that this working out of degeneracy through generations affords him a rational explanation of most of those evil impulses of the heart which he has been content to attribute to the wiles and instigations of the devil; that the evil spirit which has taken possession of the wicked man is often the legacy of parental or ancestral error, misfortune, or wrong-doing. It will be made plain to him that insanity, idiocy, and every other form of human degeneracy is not casualty, but defect which comes by cause ; that it is just as much the definite consequent of definite antecedents as any other event in nature; and that these antecedents many times are within human controul, being the palpable outcome of ignorance or of neglect of the laws of moral and physical hygiene. Let me illustrate by an example the nature and bearing of this scientific study. I will take for this purpose a case which every physician who has had much experience must have been asked some time or other to consider and advise about: a quite young child, which is causing its parents alarm and distress by the precocious display of vicious desires and tendencies of all sorts, that are quite out of keeping with its tender years, and by the utter failure of either precept, or example, or punishment to imbue it with good feeling and with the desire to do right. It may not be notably deficient in intelligence; on the contrary, it may be capable of learning quickly when it likes, and extremely cunning in lying, in stealing, in gratifying other perverse inclinations; and it cannot be said not to know right from wrong, since it invariably eschews the right and chooses the wrong, showing an amazing acuteness in escaping detection and the punishment which follows detection. It is, in truth, congenitally conscienceless, by nature destitute of moral sense and actively imbued with an immoral sense. Now this unfortunate creature is of so tender an age that the theory of Satanic agency is not thought to offer an adequate explanation of its evil impulses ; in the end everybody who has to do with it feels that it is not responsible for its vicious conduct, perceives that punishment does not and cannot in the least reform it, and is persuaded that there is some native defect of mind which renders it a proper case for medical advice. Where, then, is the fault that a human being is born into the world who will go wrong, nay, who must go wrong, in virtue of a bad organization ? The fault lies somewhere in its hereditary antecedents. We can seldom find the exact cause and trace definitely the mode of its operation—the study is much too complex and difficult for such exactness at �Lessons of Materialism. 17 present—but we shall not fail to discover the broad fact of the frequency of insanity or other mental degeneracy in the direct line of the child’s inheritance. The experienced physician seldom feels any doubt of that when he meets with a case of the kind. It is indeed most certain that men are not bred well or ill by accident any more than the animals are; but while most persons are ready to acknowledge this fact in a general way, very few pursue the admission to its exact and 'rigorous consequences, and fewer still suffer it to influence their conduct. It may be set down, then, as a fact of observation that mental degeneracy in one generation is sometimes the evident cause of an innate deficiency or absence of moral sense in the next generation. The child bears the burden of its ancestral infirmities or wrong doings. Here then and in this relation may be noted the in structive fact, that just as moral feeling was the first function to be affected at the beginning of mental derangement in the individual, so now the defect or absence of it is seen to mark the way of degeneracy through generations. It was the latest acquisition of mental evolution; it is the first to go in mental dissolution. A second fact of observation may be set down as worthy of con sideration, if not of immediate acceptation, namely, that an absence of moral feeling in one generation, as shown by a mean, selfish, and persistent disregard of moral action in the conduct of life, may be the cause of mental derangement in the next generation. In fact, a person may succeed in manufacturing insanity in his progeny by a persistent disuse of moral feeling, and a persistent exercise, throughout his life, of those selfish, mean, and anti-social tendencies which are a negation of the highest moral relations of mankind. He does not ever exercise the nervous substrata which minister to moral functions, wherefore they undergo atrophy in him, and he runs the risk of transmitting them to his progeny in so imperfect a state, that they are incapable of full development of function in them ; just as the instinct of the animal which is not exercised for many generations on account of changed conditions of life, becomes less distinct by degrees and in the end, perhaps, extinct. People are apt to talk as if they believed that insanity might be got rid of were only sufficient care taken to prevent its direct propagation by the marriages of those who had suffered it or were like to do so. A vain imagination assuredly I Were all the insanity in the world at the present time clean sweptaway to-morrow, men would breed it afresh before to-morrow’s to-morrow by their �18 Lessons of Materialism, errors, their excesses, their wrong-doings of all sorts. Rightly, then, may the scientific inquirer echo the words of the preacher, that however prosperous a man may have seemed in his life, judge him not blessed before his death: for he shall be known in his children: they shall not have the confidence of their good descent. In sober truth, the lessons of morality which were proclaimed by the prophets of old, as indispensable to the stability and well-being of families and nations, were not mere visions of vague fancy; founded upon actual observation and intuition of the laws of nature working in human events, they were insights into the eternal truths of human evolution. Whether, then, man goes upwards or downwards, undergoes development or degeneration, we have equally to do with matters of stern law. Provision has been made for both ways ; it has been left to him to find out and determine which way he shall take. And it is plain that he must find the right path of evolution, and avoid the wrong path of degeneracy, by observation and experience, pursuing the same method of positive inquiry which has served him so well in the different sciences. Being pre-eminently and essentially a social being, each one the member of one body—the unit, that is, in a social organism—the laws which he has to observe and obey are not the physical laws of nature only, but also those higher laws which govern the relations of individuals in the social state. If he make his observations sincerely and adequately in this way, he cannot fail to perceive that the laws of morality were not really miraculous revelations from heaven any more than was the discovery of the law of gravitation, but that they were the essential conditions of social evolution, and were learned practically by the stern lessons of experience. He has learnt his duty to his neighbour as he has learnt his duty to nature; it is implicit in the constitution of a complex society of men dwelling together in peace and unity, and has been revealed explicitly by the intuition of a few extraordinary men of sublime moral genius. As it is not a true, it cannot be a useful, notion to foster, that morality was the special gift to man, or is the special property, of any theological system, and that its vitality is in the least bound up with the life of any such creed. Whether men believed in Heaven and Hell or not, in Jupiter or in Jehovah, in Buddha or in Jesus, they could not fail to find out that some obedience to moral law is essential to social evolution. The golden rule of morals itself—“ Do unto others as ye would have others do unto you”— was perceived and proclaimed long before it received its highest �Lessons of Materialism. 19 Christian expression.* We ought to be just and to confess the truth: there were good Christians in the world before Christ. It is not, indeed, religious creed which has invented and been the basis of morality, but morality which has been the bulwark of religions. And as a matter of fact it is too true that morality has suffered many times not a little from its connection with theological creeds ; I that its truths have been laid hands on and used to support demoralising super sitions which were no part of it; that doctrines essentially immoral have been even taught in the name of religion; and that religious systems in their struggles to establish their supremacy have oftentimes shown small respect to the claims of morality. Had religion been true to its nature and function, had it been as wide as morality and humanity, it should have been the bond of unity to hold mankind together in one brother hood, linking them in good feeling, good-will, and good work towards one another; but it has in reality been that which has most divided men, and the cause of more hatreds, more disorders, more persecutions, more bloodshed, more cruelties than most other causes put together. In order to maintain peace and order, there fore, the State in modern times has been compelled to hold itself practically aloof from religion, and to leave to each hostile sect liberty to do as it likes so long as it meddles not by its tenets and ceremonials with the interests of civil government. That is the present outcome of a religion of peace on earth and goodwill among men 1 On the whole it may be thought to be fortunate for the interests of morality that it is not bound up essentially with any form of religious creed, but that it survives when creeds die, having its more secure foundations in the hard-won experience of mankind. The inquiry which, taking a sincere survey of the facts, finds the basis and sanction of morality in experience, by no means * There appears to be no doubt that Confucius, among others, has the clearest apprehension of it and expressly taught it; and the Buddhist religion of perfectron is certainly founded upon self-conquest and self sacrifice. They are its very corner-stone: the purification of the mind from unholy desires and passions, and a devotion to the good of others, which rises to an enthusiasm for humanity, in order to escape from the miseries of this life and to attain to a perfect moral repose. “ Let all the sins that have been committed fall upon me, in order that the world may be delivered,” Buddha says. And of the son or disciple of Buddha it is said, “ When reviled he revileth not again; when smitten he bears the blow without resentment; when treated with anger and passion he returns love and good-will; when threatened with death he bears no malice.” �20 Lessons of Materialism. arrives in the end at easy lessons of self-indulgence for the individual and the race, but, on the contrary, at the hardest lessons of self-renunciation. Disclosing to man the stern and uniform reign of law in nature, even in the evolution and degeneracy of his own nature, it takes from him the comfortable but demoralising doctrine that he or others can escape the penalty of his ignorance, error, or wrong-doings either by penitence or prayer, and holds him to the strictest account for them. Dis carding the notion that the observed uniformity of nature is but a uniformity of sequence at will which may be interrupted whenever its interruption is earnestly enough asked for—a notion which, were it more than lip-doctrine, must necessarily deprive him of his most urgent motive to study patiently the laws of nature in order to conform to them—it enforces a stern feeling of responsibility to search out painfully the right path of obedience and to follow it, inexorably laying upon man the responsibility of the future of his race. If it be most certain, as it is, that all disobedience of natural law, whether physical or moral, is avenged inexorably in its conse quences on earth, either upon the individual himself, or more often, perhaps, upon others—that the violated law cannot be bribed to stay its arm by burnt-offerings nor placated by prayers—it is a harmful doctrine, as tending directly to undermine understanding and to weaken will, to teach that either prayer or sacrifice will obviate the consequences of want of foresight or want of self discipline, or that reliance on supernatural aid will make amends for lack of intelligent will. We still pray half-heartedly in our churches, as our forefathers prayed with their whole hearts, when we are afflicted with a plague or pestilence, that God will “ accept of an atonement and command the destroying angel to cease from punishing; ” and when we are suffering from too much rain we ask him to send fine weather “ although we for our iniquities have worthily deserved a plague of rain and water.” Is there a person of sincere understanding who, uttering that prayer, now believes it in his heart to be the successful way to stay a fever, plague, or pestilence ? He knows well that, if it is to be answered, he must clean away dirt, purify drains, disinfect houses, and put in force those other sanitary measures which experience has proved to be efficacious, and that the aid vouchsafed to the prayer will only be given when, these being by themselves successful, the prayer is superfluous. Had men gone on believing, as they once believed, that prayer would stay disease, they would never have learned and adopted sanitary measures, any more than the savage of Africa, �Lessons of Materialism. 21 ■who prays to his fetish to cure disease, does now. To get rid of the notion of supernatural interposition was the essential condition of true knowledge and self-help in that matter. . Looking at the matter in the light of scientific knowledge, it is •hard to see how any one can think otherwise. However, one may •easily overrate the depth to which such knowledge goes in the general mind: at best it is but a thin surface-dressing. Only a few days ago, on opening a book at random, I hit on the following extract from a sermon on the Miracles of Prayer, by a well-known clergyman :— “ But we have prayed, and not been heard, at least in the present visita tion. Have we deserved to be heard? In former visitations it was observed commonly how the cholera lessened from the day of public humiliation. When we dreaded famine from a long-continued drought, on the morning of our prayers the heaven over our head was of brass; the clear burning sky showed no. token of change. Men looked with awe on its unmitigated clearness. In the evening was a cloud like a man’s hand; the relief was come.” This is from a sermon preached by no mean citizen of no mean city; it was preached at Oxford, in 1866, and the preacher was Dr. Pusey, who goes on to say that it describes what he himself saw on the Sunday morning in Oxford, on returning from the early communion at St. Mary’s, at eight. The change occurred in the evening. A good instance, one would be apt to say, of a very common fallacy of observation and reasoning—the fallacy that an event which happens after another necessarily happens in conse quence of it! But what I would point out is, that if Dr. Pusey’s interpretation of the matter be true, all our scientific knowledge of the order of nature has no stable foundation; it is no better than a baseless fabric, which has come like wind and like wind may go. And most certain it is that if such views were universal, the result would be to carry us back straight to the ignorance and barbarism which prevailed in Europe before the Reformation and the dawn of modern science. Consider how much it means, that a man of Dr. Pusey’s culture and eminence should so little apprehend the fundamental principles of modern science, should be so blind to the conception of the reign of law in nature ; consider again how the great majority of the people are in his case, and that the torch of modern science is after all really carried by some hundred men or so in Europe and America, and would be pretty nigh extin guished by their simultaneous deaths ; and consider, lastly, that we have everywhere in our midst a most complete and powerful organisation which, holding that all truth has been given into �22 Lessons of Materialism. the keeping of the church from the beginning, and cannot be either added to or taken from, is truly a gigantic and unsleeping conspiracy against the human intellect;—consider these things fairly, I say, and then ask yourselves soberly whether modern pro gress is so stable and assured a thing as we are apt to take it for granted it is. For my part, I would not give much for it if the Homan Catholic Church had its way for fifty or a hundred years. In all ages of the world, I make no doubt, there have been a few persons with too much insight to accept the fables which have satisfied the vulgar, but who dared not utter their thoughts, or, uttering them, were quickly extinguished; the torch of knowledge has been again and again lit and again and again put out; and truth never will be made secure until it has been driven down into the hearts of the masses of the people by a right method of education from generation to generation. Many persons who could not confidently express their belief in the power of prayer to stop a plague or a deluge of rain, or who actually disbelieve it, still have a sincere hold of the belief of its miraculous power in the moral or spiritual world. Nevertheless, if the matter be made one simply of scientific observation, it must be confessed that all the evidence goes to prove that the events of the moral world are matters of law and order equally with those of the physical world, and that supernatural interpositions have no more place in the one than in the other; that he who prays for the creation of a clean heart and the renewal of a right spirit within him, if he gets at last what he prays for, gets it by the operation of the ordinary laws of moral growth and development, in consequence of painstaking watchfulness over himself and the continual exercise of good resolves. Only when he gets it in that way will he get the benefit of supernatural aid; and if it rests in the belief of supernatural aid, without taking pains to get it entirely in that way, he will do himself moral harm; for if he cannot rely upon special interpositions in the moral any more than in the physical world, if he has to do entirely with those secondary laws of nature through which alone the supernatural is made natural, the invisible visible, it needs no demonstration that the opposite belief cannot strengthen, but must weaken, the under standing and will. It is plain that true moral hygiene is as impossible to the person who reEes upon his fetish to change his heart in answer to prayer, as sanitary science is impossible to the savage who relies upon his fetish to stay a pestilence in answer to prayer. �Lessons of Materialism. Jf’’ KQ’ro- uajAfd oh ifdte" id gib'. tv* Ha. 'bHfz. ■bite. l5bn&: hoar fMiBih; F<»fct I Rtfcfi I tnemi I 'ited I stite I 'irra j tiiaui I uwirf I I tt-yfi I tibiae | tlvi ' io I ~S.oh on-ar ..*uxid I Ji- (in isoon 1 ?4"-oi I iiLuvit I iiwtii njJoj feudal) W'xiil 23 So far from materialism being a menace to morality, when it is properly understood, it not only sets before man a higher intellec tual aim than he is ever likely to reach by spiritual paths, but it even raises a more self-sacrificing moral standard. For when all has been said, it is not the most elevated or the most healthy business for a person to be occupied continually with anxieties and apprehensions and cares about the salvation of his own soul, and to be earnest to do well in this life in order that he may escape eternal suffering and gain eternal happiness in a life to come. The disbeliever might find room to argue that here was an instance showing how theology has taken possession of the moral instinct and vitiated it. Having set before man a selfish instead of an altruistic end as the prime motive of well-doing—his own good rather than the good of others—it is in no little danger of taking away his strongest motive to do uprightly, if so be the dead rise not. Indeed, it makes the question of the apostle a most natural one : “ If, after the manner of man, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me if the dead rise not ? ” Materialism cannot hesitate in the least to declare that it is best for a man’s self and best for his kind to have fought with the beasts of unrighteousness, at Ephesus or elsewhere, even if the dead rise not. Perceiving and teaching that he is essentially a social being, that all the mental faculties by which he so much excels the animals below him, and even the language in which he expresses his mental func tions, have been progressive developments of his social relations, it enforces the plain and inevitable conclusion that it is the true scientific function, and at the same time the highest development, of the individual, to promote the well-being of the social organiza tion—that is, to make his life subserve the good of his kind. It is no new morality, indeed, which it teaches ; it simply brings men back to that which has been the central lesson and the real stay of the great religions of the world, and which is implicit in the constitution of society; but it does this by a way which promises to bring the understanding into entire harmony with moral feeling, and so to promote by a close and consistent interaction their accordant growth and development; and it strips morality of the livery of superstition in which theological creeds have dressed and disfigured it, presenting it to the adoration of mankind in its natural purity and strength. �“ The Pathology of Mind.” By H. M AUDSLEY, M.D. Being the Third Edition of the Second Part of the “Physiology and Pathology of Mind,” recast, much enlarged and re-written. In 8vo, price 18s. liy the same Author. “ The Physiology of Mind.” Being the First Part of a Third Edition revised, enlarged, and re-written, of “ The Physiology and Pathology of Mind.” Crown 8vo, 10s. 6d. “Body and MindAn Inquiry into their Connection and Mutual Influ ence, specially with reference to Mental Disorders. Second Edition, enlarged and revised, with Psychological Essays added. Crown 8vo., 6s. 6d. Macmillan & Co., London. SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY. To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science, —physical,^intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement and social well-being of mankind. President.—W. B. Carpenter, C.B., LL.D., M.D., F.R.S., &c. Vice-Pre sidents. Professor Alexander Bain. Sir Arthur Hobhouse, K.C.S.I. James Booth, Esq., C.B. Thomas Henry Huxley, Esq., LL.D., Charles Darwin, Esq., F.R.S., F.L.S. F.R.S., F.L.S. Edward Frankland, Esq., D.C.L., Herbert Spencer, Esq. Ph. D., F.R.S. W. Spottiswoode, Esq., LL.D., P.R.S. James Heywood, Esq., F.R.S., F.S.A. John Tyndall, Esq., LL.D., F.R.S. THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES ARE DELIVERED AT ST. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLAGE,. On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o'clock precisely. (Annually—from November to May). Twenty-four Lectures (in three series), commencing Sunday, the 2nd of November, 1879, will be given. Members’ -£1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket, transferable (and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single reserved-seat tickets, available for any lecture. For tickets, and for the Lectures published by the Society, of which lists can be obtained on application, apply (by letter enclosing cheques, post office orders or postage stamps) to the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W. The Lectures can also be obtained of Mr. J. Bumpus, Bookseller, 158, Oxford Street, W. Payment at the door:—One Penny; — Sixpence;—and (Reserved Seats) One Shilling. Kenny & Co., Printers, 25, Camden Road, London, N.W. � 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. 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. <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" /> 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 first love again : a discourse delivered in the Church of the Redeemer, Cincinnati, Ohio, Nov. 28,1875, on the occasion of the re-union of the two Societies, which had divided fifteen years previously, chiefly on the issue of supernaturalism Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource CONWAY, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [s.l.] Collation: 21 p. ; 15 cm. Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 1. Reprinted from the Cincinnati Daily Commercial (revised by the author). With a preface about the doctrinal differences between the first Congregational Church and the Church of the Redeemer in Cincinnati. 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 [1875] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3342 Subject The topic of the resource Unitarianism Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a> This work (The first love again : a discourse delivered in the Church of the Redeemer, Cincinnati, Ohio, Nov. 28,1875, on the occasion of the re-union of the two Societies, which had divided fifteen years previously, chiefly on the issue of supernaturalism), identified by <a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a>, is free of known copyright restrictions. Doctrines Dogma Liberalism (Religion) Morris Tracts Rationalism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/331669cd5d7e7af9da76f68b2344feb3.pdf?Expires=1780531200&Signature=W44JbUYCaBYrmzRvAPkQ%7EVh8REW1A25sQw-AgEofYnWHvREIX32oRhdyv-6Tay2pWQyTLATOFXDSLlKIAkhrQrQd7u3svjajz2s0X0rTrZEnA45Iy0T%7E10pRxaoK-5CuWE6WxEkG1rd5tu1pcooWDuKMBGmosCsPSaz%7ECa33hvyhAtG9yt%7Efokpf54bE3pDo%7EFwZuM3I07%7E1cvhCX8xW7mY3d99jGauzusleLhjF1FHSzAqjFnbCFV3xG4D-T6ZoRddQMfV3CRHPds-5olZvPapAXP5pywCLvgY3BWyypON8hASZrdpOeHTwa9KYhSnHedUBjpB0CgdALkqWME-wpA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 07499ca6b904827b1b5807836164cbed PDF Text Text 2SZ-l> mag OUR CAUSE AND ACCUSERS. ITS A DISCOURSE GIVEN AT THE ATHEN/EUM, CAMDEN ROAD, UNE 1 1TH, 1876. BY MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A. ��OUR CAUSE AND ITS ACCUSERS, It is not because the believer in rational religion has not clear convictions that he will not shape them into a creed. It is because the experience of the world has proved that however well a creed may express the thought of one generation it is very certain to impede the thought of another. An oriental Prince once sent his servant some miles to get a bit of salt for his meal while out hunting; but when he found that his messenger had not paid for the salt he sent him all the way back with some money; for, he said, though the pinch of salt is a trifle, precedent is not a trifle, and if he should take even so little without payment the custom might grow until some prince of the future might desolate the country. As great despotisms have grown from small beginnings, so have oppressions �4 for the human mind and conscience grown out of the bad habit which our ancestors had of putting their opinions into dogmatic shape. For when a creed is so made they who believe it commit their pride of opinion to it; they get a party to build schools and churches to teach that creed ; then many people have pecuniary interests invested in such schools and churches, are furious with those who question the creed which props their power and wealth, and do them all the mischief they can. This is why the church never burned people for immorality, but only for doubting or denying their creed. All this amounts to systematic discouragement of thought; and, as the rationalist desires to encourage thought, he refuses to formulate his opinions as dogmas or creeds, or to build his organisation on any corner-stone which may crush intellectual liberty beneath it. I have no claim, therefore, to commit those who have for many years honoured me with their confidence to any belief except belief in this liberty of mind and conscience. We are aiming to build a science of religion and of morals, based upon the facts of consciousness, the history of man, the laws of nature,- and in science there can be no finality, no authority. In stating the views of rationalists, I speak only as one who has had long acquaintance with such, and has devoted his life to study of their principles. Occasionally, indeed, some few liberals—not exactly �5 rationalists—have wished for something like a set of articles; but I think we are justified in our repugnance to everything of that kind not only by the history of persecution for opinion’s sake, but by what is now occurring around us, even here in the most enlightened metropolis of the world. The transfer of our little Society to a larger hall than that in which we have gathered for near ten years in quietness, has been the occasion of denunciations which could not have been more fierce had we during those years demoralised the whole neighbourhood. We have been vilified, accused, misrepresented, and for what offence ? For inability to subscribe to a creed framed in an age when science did not exist, by men who believed more childish superstitions than the Church of Rome, a creed which our assailants themselves could not and would not believe were their faculties unfettered. Here are two printed sermons directed against us, and all who tolerate us, by the Vicar of St. Luke’s, West Holloway. One is entitled “ The Lord’s Derision of Opposer’s Schemes;” and in it he describes his God as laughing, but with an awful angry laugh, at our opposi tion to the Vicar’s creed. The other is called “ The Lord’s Question to those who harbour his enemies,” the question being that which Jehovah is said to have asked Balaam, “ What men are these with thee ? ” The Vicar talks about his God in this way :—“ First, then, it is a question of Surprise. It is asked even by God �6 in a tone of surprise and of startled wonder. What! God seems to say ; is it possible ? ” And again “ the question is also one of anger and high indignation" He also represents Balaam as being killed in battle because he had joined Jehovah’s enemies. Now this so-called deity is familiar to all students of superstition. The God that laughs at the calamity of his own creatures and mocks when their fear cometh, and sends into the world opposers only to deride and then kill them,—even as he hardened Pharaoh s heart in order, as he said, that he might show his own glory upon him,—this fearful phantasm of a semi-barbarous Syrian tribe, is known to us. But how comes it that he is held up as a real god here in London, in an age of refinement and culture ? How comes it that the graduate of a University is prepared to bid men love their enemies in one breath, and in another bid them worship a God who derides, mocks, pursues, and slays his enemies, even though he made them himself voluntarily ? Why the reverend gentle man himself shows us how it has come about. He says, ii There is a false and mock liberality which says that we may allow people to think and do as they like I Now that might be true if God had given us no rule, no law to guide us ; but as He has, men have no such liberty.” I honour that clergyman’s candour. He confesses that what he preaches is not his own thought, not what he might like or believe if he should indulge �7 in the wickedness of reasoning without prejudice. He thinks only as authority has prescribed; and because for ages men like him have laboured not to discover what is true but to defend the incredible creeds of the world’s infancy, around which temporal interests and institutions have grown, we find this idol of the Stone Age artificially preserved to disgrace the Age of Reason. This clergyman says our God is “ a clot on the brain.” I can assure him that I do not believe his startled, angry, jealous, plotting god is a clot on the brain : it is the yet uncrumbled fragment of an ancient cosmogony occupying the place where a brain ought to be at work in the life that now is, and in the light shining for its direction. It is a formidable thing for a man to take such a conception of God into his mind, and set it up on the tomb of his freedom; for the day has passed by in which it can be maintained by fair and honourable means. As the angry, jealous, mocking god gives no sign or miracle to attest his existence at a moment when in all the ranks of literature and science no un professional defender of that existence is discoverable, they whose all is based upon that superstition are tempted to support it by intemperate language, by personal misrepresentations, and foul aspersions. I do not feel animosity towards the Vicar on account of the injustice he has done my friends and myself, because his sermons reveal the earnestness of his �8 feeling. His pain and alarm are at least more creditable than the hypocrisy of the hirelings who flee when they see the wolf approaching their fold. The only sorrow I have is that so candid and earnest a gentleman should mistake me for a wolf, for he cannot help fighting me as such, without being particular as to his weapons. Not being a wolf, and indeed trying to watch beside a flock of my own, I am compelled to remonstrate against his misrepresentations. He tells his people that I call their Lord and Saviour “ a dead Jew.” That is not true. This phrase, il a dead Jew/’ is taken from a book of mine, * and by detachment is made to seem like an epithet on Christ, instead of a rebuke to those who ignore his grand humanity. I remember once to have had a fear that some one might fancy that sentence was a slur upon the Jewish race, which I honour for its genius and its high record in art and philosophy ; but it did not occur to me that it would ever be so hopelessly wrested from its meaning as it has been by the Vicar of St. Luke’s. In the preceding sentence I speak of laying my “ palm before the heroic prophet of Jerusalem,” and immediately after on the same page of “the brave reformer” sacrificed to “the High Church of Palestine.” When, therefore, I asked in that connection, “ What shall we say of the cultivated * The Earthward Pilgrimage. Chatto and Windus, 74, Piccadilly, W. The reference is to p. 240. �9 Europeans whose god is a dead Jew ?” I was plainly not expressing my conception of Christ, but that of the Churches generally. I heartily wish it were otherwise. I wish that the sweet humanity of Christ, his heroic struggle with the Established Church of his time, his poetry and eloquence, were recognised by the orthodox; but unhappily it is untheological to dwell on the human characteristics of Christ. They insist that he was going through a prescribed routine in a perfunctory way; his temptations, difficulties, all unreal, as, being God, he could not sin, and was never in any danger of failing. So there is no man there at all. According to that view, so far as his humanity is concerned, he is merely a dead Jew, his death being the only seriously important thing about him. Again, my reverend critic writes as follows :•—“ Can you ‘ receive into your house’ men who speak thus of the sacred mystery of the Incarnation. . . ‘ His infant head, (said the poets)—alluding thus, it would appear, to that most reverent and devout hymn of good Bishop Heber—and where can Rationalism find among its disciples such a specimen of pure high morality, to say nothing of heavenly spirituality, as we can present it with in Heber ?— £ Low lies His head, mid the beasts of the stall ’:—‘ His infant head was laid down amid the beasts of the stall.’ And now listen to the way in which the Son of God, your Saviour, and His holy Gospel are �IO spoken of: ‘Its helpless infancy must be confided to donkeys, who shall mingle many a bray with this new Gospel.’ ” Such is the fate of my honest effort to save faith in the wisdom and the greatness of Christ from being hid and lost for rational people by reason of the stu pidity and bigotry which for ages have been taking him under their fatal protection, making him into their own image, until it is almost impossible to con vince able men that there was any grandeur in him at all. In charity I must suppose that some one must have handed the Vicar the extract, for if he had read it in its connection he must have known that he was conveying to his people an impression widely different, and, so far as related to Christ, exactly the reverse of what is said in my book. I must now ask you to listen to what I there wrote:—“ Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that can pierce through its glittering shows, and see this Nazarene peasant to be the Son of God? From that moment the old heavens begin to fade: on the soul’s eye shines already the new heaven to whose every tint the new earth must respond. ... A thousand revolutions ger minated when the people knelt before a right and true, and a poor man. He was born amid the wild winter, said the poets; his infant head was laid low amid the beasts of the stall; his cause must struggle with the hostile elements of an icy conservatism; its �II helpless infancy must be confided to donkeys, who shall mingle many a bray with this new gospel. All the old fables about Jahve, Zeus, and the rest, shall swathe this babe. Nevertheless, to us this child is bom; where he enters idols shall fall, oracles be struck dumb, and all the signs of the heavens hold themselves honoured in weaving an aureole about the brow of a Man. This babe shall consecrate every babe; this mechanic shall establish the dignity of labour; this pauper shall liberate slaves and strike off the burdens of the poor.” Such is the page in which the Vicar detects blas phemy. I have given it at length, because it is of very serious importance to me that I shall not be held up before this community as falling beneath any man living in my homage to Christ. In a ministry that has now lasted a quarter of a century no word concerning that great soul has yet fallen from my tongue or pen that was not inspired by reverence, love, and even enthusiasm. •So much in self-defence. The next point in the Vicar’s attack is a more serious one, and it involves the whole Rationalistic community. He virtually charges it with sensualism. He tells his hearers ■that if they even tolerate us God will withdraw his light from their mind and his grace from their heart. “ You will become,” he says, “ first a sceptic, and then an infidel, and then a scoffer, and then, at last �12 the openly immoral sensualist!” What is a sceptic? It is a Greek word, meaning a man who “ considers.” What is infidel? It means a man who disbelieves what the majority^believe. It was what Paul con fessed to when he said, “ This I confess, that after the way they call heresy so worship I the God of my Fathers.” According to the Vicar, to consider (o-KeTTTeiv), and to adopt an individual opinion, in religion, is the sure path to immorality. Well, Christ was called a blasphemer and a friend of sinners, and in league with Beelzebub ; and if priests spoke so of him we need not be disturbed when priests say hard things of us. But we have the right to ask the Vicar to prove his case. The Liberal religious body is of respectable age, and the Vicar should point out the examples of immorality in its record of eminent men. Will he select Channing, or Belsham, or Priestley— whose house a Christian mob tore down—in the past, or Martineau and John James Tayler, Dr. Carpenter and Miss Mary Carpenter of recent years ? Or, taking more pronounced rationalism, will he name as sensualists Professor Newman, or Miss Cobbe, or Sir Charles Lyell, or Mr. Justice Grove, or Lord Houghton, or the Duke of Somerset, or the poet Tennyson, or Matthew Arnold, or Herbert Spencer? These are men who have carried scepticism and rationalism to its fullest logical results. Are they known as sensualists, or even as men who bear false witness against their neighbours ? �r3 I think most persons will agree that Mr. Gladstone is about as good a judge of the religious world as the Vicar of St. Luke. In his article on “ Modern Reli gious Thought,” Mr. Gladstone speaks of those whom the Vicar calls Sensualists, in the following terms :— “ There are within it,” he says, speaking of the Unitarian, theistic, and rationalistic class generally, “ men not only irreproachable in life, but excellent; and many who have written both in this country and on the Continent with no less power than earnestness, in defence of the belief which they retain. Such are, for example, Professor Frohschammer in Germany, and M. Laveleye in Belgium ; while in this country, without pretending to exhaust the list, I would pay a. debt of honour to Mr. Martineau, Mr. Greg, Dr. Car penter and Mr. Jevons. . . . They are generally men. exempt from such temptations as distress entails, and fortified with such restraints as culture can supply. . . . We should not hastily be led by antagonism of opinion to estimate lightly the influence which a School, limited like this in numbers, may exercise on the future. For, if they are not rulers, they rule those who are. They belong to the class of thinkers and •teachers ; and it is from within this circle, always, and, even in the largest organisations, a narrow one, that go forth the influences which one by one form the minds of men, and in their aggregate determine the course of affairs, the fate of institutions, and the hap piness of the human race.” �14 Such is the judgment upon the men and the influ ences at work in the rationalistic movement uttered by one who has given as much attention to religious subjects as any man of our time. The Vicar challenges us to show in the ranks of rationalism any man so moral and spiritual as Bishop Heber. That kind of argument is more absurd than if I were to ask him to point out among rationalists one so coarse as the present Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, who advised the landlords, when Joseph Arch and other leaders of the Agricultural Unions came, “ to duck them in the nearest horsepond.” It is at least more pertinent to illustrate the character of an existing belief by living examples than by going back to one dead over fifty years. There was a time when the saintliest souls in Europe were Roman Catholics. The falsity of the system had not then been exposed: Since Bishop Heber died the religious mind of England has been revolutionised by the great discoveries of science, the generalisations of philo sophy, and the opening to us of the religions of the East. It is under such influences as these that the Hebers of the past have become the Thirlwalls, and Colensos, and Temples of the present. For the ra tionalist movement in England has been fed at a fountain which is now the most living in the English Church. Possibly the Vicar of St. Luke’s may have excommunicated the late Bishop of St. David’s, when �he refused to act as a reviser of the Bible translation, if a leading Unitarian were excluded from the Com mittee ; and perhaps he is ready to excommunicate, the rationalist Bishop Colenso, and the Bishop of Exeter, and Dean Stanley, and Stopford Brooke who extols the poet Shelley, and the Rev. Mr. Haweis whodeclares that prayer can have no possible effect on the unalterable course of Nature. Nevertheless, I will venture to suggest that it is not one of the thirty-nine articles that the neighbouring Vicar shall represent all the wisdom in the Church, of England. At any rate, it is plain that he can hardly expect to exterminate our humble society here until he has dealt with those who in his owrL Church are fraternising with heretics. We may return, upon him “the Lord’s question” to Balaam—“What men are these with thee ? ” Here, for instance, is the Rev. Dr. Mark Pattison of your own Church, who answers for us your threat of endless despair, telling us. that to act in any way “ because God is stronger than we and able to damn us if we don’t,” argues “a sleek and sordid epicurism.” Here is the late Professor Baden Powell who tells us that “ in nature and from nature, by science and by reason, we neither have, nor can possibly have, any evidence of a Deity working miracles.” Here is the present Bishop of Exeter who declares that men who do not use their reason in perfect freedom without restraint from any external authority,. �i6 are “under the law.” “Such men,” he says, “are sometimes tempted to prescribe for others what they need for themselves, and to require that no others should speculate because they dare not. They not •only refuse to think, and accept other men’s thoughts, which is often quite right, but they elevate those into •canons of faith for all men, which is not right.” And finally I will quote from a man who occupies the highest educational position in Great Britain,—a man •to whom this nation has entrusted a position of in fluence in the training of young men, second to none <on earth. I refer to the Rev. Professor Jowett, the Head Master of Balliol College, Oxford. In words that should have their weight for every mind that hears •me, he says:—“ The suspicion of Deism, or perhaps of , Atheism, awaits inquiry. By such fears a good man refuses to be influenced; a philosophical mind is apt to cast them aside with too much bitterness. It is better to close the book (the Bible), than to read it •under conditions of thought which are imposed from •without. Whether those conditions of thought are -the traditions of the Church, or the opinions of the religious world—Catholic or Protestant—makes no •difference : they are inconsistent with the freedom of ■the truth and the moral character of the Gospel.” Do not imagine that I have got these testimonies -from the Vicar’s clerical brethren by garbling their »thoughts as he garbled mine : you will find such �thoughts the main burden of the “ Essays and Re views,” from which I have taken them. I supposeour accuser does not wish his Church to monopolise rationalism, nor think that such thoughts become' sound if one only wears a surplice. Consequently I have a right to ask him, “ What men are these with thee ? ” Are you quietly submitting to them, frater nising with them, getting your living from a church that exalts them, and then denouncing as blasphemers and sensualists humbler people who are animated by the same spirit and honestly carrying out the same prin ciples? Is it the high Christian spirit to hush up the heresies of a Bishop or a Dean, and then turn with fury on the press that gives their views fair play ; to threaten with vengeance from Heaven English gentle men who refuse to aid in barring freedom of speech out of this Athenseum; or is it Christian to conspirefor the injury of an institution because it will not turn itself into a prison to restrain and punish thought and. inquiry ? It may be Christian, but it is not like Christ. It is. not the spirit of him who said, “ Of yourselves judge ye what is right,” and “ The truth shall make you free.” It is not that of his early followers, who said, “ Try the spirits; prove all things, hold fast that which is. good; where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Intolerance burned the books of Copernicus,, and the bodies of scholars, in the past, and it may �i8 •still trample on the book it cannot answer, and doom to hell-fire those whom it can no longer bum with earthly fire; but it is in sharp discord with the civili sation of our age, which protects the freedom which is essential to the elucidation of truth, and inhar monious with that spirit of inquiry which is the great need of our time, and the charity which is the need of every time. Of these tendencies of our age our Society is one result among many,—an inevitable result. We are not prepared to adopt any sectarian shibboleth what ever. We admit ourselves unable to comprehend the •divine existence, while we feel the reality of that supreme influence which is expressed by humanity in the word God. We find in the Bible a sacred reve lation of the human heart—able to stimulate into activity our own hearts, but we cannot call that book the Word of God in any sense that would localise or limit the spiritual sunshine which has illumined every race and period. While we love to think upon Christ, •and study his words, and recognise his unparalleled •grandeur, we decline to call ourselves “ Christian,” technically, because, in the first place, we do not wish to separate ourselves from those brought up in other religions—Israelites, Hindoos, Mahommedans—among whom Christianity has for ages carried fire and sword, unwilling to raise any name by them historically as sociated with their subjugation and suffering, as a bar �I9 to that common Religion of Humanity for which we long and hope. Nor do we wish to raise any sectarian name, like Christian, which would imply that the religious culmination of our race has already taken place in the distant past. We believe that in religion, as in knowledge and civilisation, the law is progress. That indeed is the essence of our faith in God. Jesus called himself by the name of no preceding religion or sect; neither did the disciples or apostles call themselves Christian; that word has no sanction in the New Testament. In the day when souls are breaking their ancient bonds they cannot live on memories of days that have set, but keep their faces ever to the sunrise. There shines the light that can alone transfigure the life of to-day, and. in its glory Moses and Elias will again ascend, in it Christ and all the Prophets and Saviours of the world shall be glorified. This is our cause. We have no fear for it. We love it, for it means to us reverence for all that is sweet in the past and pure in the present; we have faith in it, for it means to us pursuit of truth and fidelity to it; we rejoice in it, for in it we see germi nating the freedom and fraternity of man, and in it all the great hopes of Humanity climbing to fulfilment. �NOTE. Without undertaking to speak for the Committee of the Athenseum, who are able to speak for them selves, it may be well enough to say here that our Society regards the contract for the hall as purely a business arrangement, made in accord ance with the usage under which the building is let for orderly meetings of various characters, and not in the least as implying any sympathy with our opinions on the part of that Committee. � 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. 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. <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" /> 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 Our cause and its accusers: a discourse given at The Athenaeum, Camden Road, June 11th 1876 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway, Moncure Daniel, 1832-1907 [1832-1907] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: [London] Collation: 19, [1] p. ; 15 cm. Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 1. Includes a bibliographical reference. 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 [1876] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G3333 Subject The topic of the resource Rationalism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a> This work (Our cause and its accusers: a discourse given at The Athenaeum, Camden Road, June 11th 1876), identified by <a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a>, is free of known copyright restrictions. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Morris Tracts Rationalism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/dd9c7efb20b9eb000469c5dfecf84ed0.pdf?Expires=1780531200&Signature=tEsyQ%7EwF%7Et36hiT5N3TykeV9e1SbqdH-0DGl-sF2ePf%7EjN7A%7ET32%7EvXB6LD8Ea6ZlrPZkY9dRk-UfoBxepSbvfFQVIdqR-dYyaua3j4XiF-aEOaadqVmveLUYKUsprgqSU7Kpg%7EjWghKriQlxMl1UkYaV4ZvubeKTvrHEJK9cuEwr0QGmidBQULEDl9zrAzg67qSBbL-3j%7Exe44sjL7xThOc9EjlD%7EU5ZZoacQE86Huzg6kyIiNvu04TC648DgvCaTg5KPCa6NwZ96oYlP0eKZOHN%7ECCmWHIiRjtMxa3AtNW2FDLjSJzp-NR-USCxnxyoay2LNPfrlIYXGDnms1Ntw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 03fab77ec34ba2916405a1326a098b09 PDF Text Text HUMAN SACRIFICES IN ENGLAND. FOUR DISCOURSES BY MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A., Minister of South Place Chapel, and at the Athenaeum, Camden Road. LONDON: TRUBNER AND CO., LUDGATE HILL. 1876. �CONTENTS. PAGE 1. Human Sacrifices 2. The Daughters of ... ... ... $ Jephthah ... ... 7 3. Children, and their Moloch ... ... 19 4. The Sabbath-Jugernath 33 5. The Martyrdom 51 of Reason �HUMAN SACRIFICES. I passed a morning of the last week in the St. Marylebone Police Court, having been summoned there as a witness. As I waited through the hours there passed by a dismal gaunt procession or chain gang of the captives of the ignorance, the brutality, the shame, sorrow, despair, of this vast metropolis. There were young men arrested in one drunken brawl, and women arrested in another. A shop-girl of twentyone, who had been sent by her humble parents from the country to earn her living, had stolen a little finery, perhaps for a babe that would soon be born. A young “ gentleman,” as he was described, who had run through an estate, was sentenced for assaulting a young woman, whose downcast eyes and deep blush of shame confessed to the judge what her lips could not utter. A woman of twenty-two, who might once have been comely, had been arrested for intoxication. During the night she had three times attempted �4 suicide, and was barely saved for a life of despair. It is terrible to look upon a face which tells only of a life in ruins, and to listen to sobs broken by no plead ing or word indicating any interest, however faint, in what the next moment may bring. A little boy five or six years old, wretched and ragged—with hardly rags enough to cover him—charged with being “ desti tute.” Every eye that saw him could testify to the truth of that charge. The poor boy had been found asleep on the pavement, and said he had slept there for three weeks. The magistrate set himself to ferret out the facts, and little by little was revealed his story. He was one of six children who had been living with their father and mother, in utter poverty, all in one room. At length the mother left that miserable room to wander and live as she could. But this little boy had followed her, clung to her; she carried him about with her for one day, in some strange place he slept with her the same night; but in the morning she sent him back home. The father drove him out because he had gone off with his mother, and so he had found a London pavement the only pillow extended to his little head. The magistrate was consideratej he did his best to do justice to all, but he must have known—it was plain—that in no case did he judge or sentence the real criminal. The visible offenders before him were �5 victims. Behind each stood the grim and awful shadow of some ghoul that had fastened upon him. As the wretched men, women, and children were led away in custody, free and unfettered beside them stalked their demons,—Ignorance, Strong Drink, Neglect, Injustice, Hereditary Taint, Malformation of Brain. These are the real criminals, and it is they that elude the grasp of the law which can only deal its penalties to the already punished, the utterly helpless creatures on whom the ghastly vampires of our time are battening. I am about to speak for a few Sundays of what seem to me the heaviest wrongs of the present time; but I do not wish to point out wrongs for which there are no remedies. Indeed, we can only very dimly dis cover evils, we can not feel deeply concerning them, until the light of its remedy falls upon each wrong. The remedies may be, as yet, ideal; but that is not their fault; they are necessarily ideal until they are applied : it is the fault of those great Interests, em bodying public Selfishness or Superstition, which reject the truth and the justice which threaten them. But I believe in the power of ideas. In the end they are stronger than armies. Waiting there at St. Marylebone—as it were in some weird whorl of Dante’s Hell __till, to my eyes, all present seemed impersonal, types and shadows of remorseless forces which once �6 St. Mary-the-Good tried to conjure down with her tender image, and then departed, leaving only her name, made way for the police,—there came upon me by some association, a memory of early days passed in a land where the Black-tongued Plague was raging. Hundreds were struck down daily with swift death; mourning was heard along the streets of every town and village ; cries were heard in many homes that had been happy. Every face was pallid ; the strong est men and women moved about in the silence of fear. One night the thermometer fell a degree, and the Plague was dead. Not swift and sudden, but just as certain is the in visible power of the air which works through ideas. “ God is a spirit.” There is an intellectual, a religious atmosphere, in which lurks the miasma of moral death, or through which breathes the spirit of life ; and any least change in that ideal region will tell upon the earth as surely as on it is recorded in frost or flower the viewless march of the seasons. �THE DAUGHTERS OF JEPHTHA. Jephtha, Judge of Israel, marching against the Ammonites, made a vow unto the Lord that, if victorious, he would offer up as a burnt-offering to Jehovah the first person that should come forth from his house to meet him. Wife or daughter it must have been : Jephtha had no other offspring but an only daughter, and who so naturally should hasten to welcome a father’s return from war and danger as an only daughter? So went forth the happy maiden with timbrels and dances to meet her father, the Prince. The father was in distress, but it never occurred either to him or his daughter that the Lord might sympathise with their love and their reluctance rather than with the vow, and so the fair maid was slain and burnt on the Lord’s altar. Some efforts have been made by casuists to show that Jephtha’s daughter was not sacrificed literally, but only consesecrated to the Lord by not marrying : but such attempts are unworthy of notice. Human sacrifices were a recognised part of the Jewish religion, and �8 careful provisions were made for the redemption of a man or woman vowed to the Lord by money,—except when devoted by anathema, in which case the man or woman the law declared (Lev. 27) “ shall surely be put to death.” I do not wonder that theologians would like to escape the effect of the story, for it is said “ the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephtha,” in the Old Testament, and in the New that king who sacrificed bis daughter is enumerated among saints of whom the world was not worthy. Well, the story drifted about the world and had its effect. Jephtha’s daughter was caught up by the Greek imagination, and reappeared as Iphegenia (probably Jephthagenia), the daughter of Agamemnon, who was nearly sacrificed in obedience to a similar vow made by her father to Artemis. Human sacrifices were unknown to the ancient Aryan race until it came in contact with this dark and horrible Shemitic belief that the deity required blood—and especially the blood of some spotless being, as the dove, or the lamb, and finally the most beautiful virgin. This wild and guilty superstition may be tracked in blood wherever the Jewish religion passed, and when Humanity had by reaction revolted from it, the spirit of it was caught up and preserved in the Christian idea that the world was to be saved only by the sacrifice of the one most vir ginal unblemished Soul, the Lamb offered up on Cal vary to soothe the wrath of God. �9 But even after that offering, though it was said to be a final satisfaction of Jehovah’s universal claim and thirst for blood, the old superstition survived to the extent of teaching women that it was a holy thing to vow their virginity to the Lord, to seclude themselves from the world, and to count themselves especially happy if they lost their lives by ascetic devotion to their invisible Spouse. All the nuns of Christendom were, and are, Jephtha’s daughters. But that has been by no means the worst result. The ancient Hebrew idea that woman is the natural sacrifice to God coloured the whole relation of that religion and its civil laws towards the female sex. Woman became the law’s normal victim. We never read of a Jewish Queen; we rarely read praises of a woman of that race, except as part of the estate of some man who was to her the representative of God. She is sold and bought with her dead lord’s assets. It is deemed no blot on Abraham when he drives Hagar from his door. There is no law in the decalogue, or elsewhere in the Bible, that mitigates the masculine decree—“ Thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee.” All this was reflected in Christianity. It taught women to submit to their husbands as to the Lord himself; never to speak in public, or to appear there unveiled; to stay at home and obey their husbands,— �IO “ as also saith the law,” adds Paul,—and understand that woman is made for man and not man for woman. I need not pause here to discuss the origin of this view of the position of woman. We may admit that, far away in some hard wilderness, or amid certain primitive exigencies of society, such a theory of woman was inevitable as a phase of social evolution. To keep at home and obey might have been the only way of continuing to exist, or to escape capture. But when a particular phase of human evolution gets asso ciated with divine sanction, it gains a permanence which fetters progress. Most gods have been the means of perpetuating the barbarism of the age which invented them. The Christian system brought this idea of woman into Europe. Whatever relation it may have had to Arabia or Syria, whatever justification it might have had in savage periods, surely it was out of place and out of time when imported into Europe. And there is not a more cruel chapter in history than that which records the arrest by Christianity of the natural growth of European civilisation as regards woman. In Germany it found woman participating in the legisla tive assembly, and sharing the interests and counsels of man, and drove her out and away, leaving her to day nothing of her ancient rights but a few honorary idle titles, titles that remain to mark her degradation �11 and ours, as they remind us that a peeress, a duchess, a baroness, a princess, a queen, are not the political equals of many an illiterate sot who calls himself a man. Even more fatal was the overthrow of woman’s position in Rome. Read the terrible facts as stated by Gibbon, by Milman, and Sir Henry Maine, read and ponder them, and you will see the tremendous wrong that Christianity did to woman. All the laws by which women were protected in their individual existence were overthrown. The sum of money which Roman law demanded should be settled by her father on every married woman, the new Christian code caused to be paid to the husband instead of her, as a dowery, or consolation for taking her off her father’s hands. The idea that the virgin belonged to God survived, and her espousal to a man could only be by payment of redemption-money, which is the marriage fee. Christianity struck the fatal blowat the independence of woman by allowing her but two alternatives,—im prisonment in a nunnery or servitude in a husband’s house; anything else was for generations accounted sin. But am I speaking of the far past ? Is it not true also this day that women are sacrificed to this old Jewish regime and its Lord? What woman needs to day is to have her rights and her wrongs decided in accordance with the conditions and the needs of �12 Europe, not those of Judea; what she requires is the unbiassed verdict of the sense and sentiment and science of the present day ; and yet her case is yielded up to the authority and law of an ignorant tribe, whose very Judge knew no better than to burn his daughter as an offering to his god. It is to that same Jehovah, to the laws he is supposed to have proclaimed, the Bible he is said to have written, and the religion in which his ferocity is still reflected through all later mitigations,—it is to him that womanhood is still sacrificed; and so long as the name of Jehovah, the god of Jephtha, is bowed to with awe and fear, so long will the victim-daughters of Jephtha surround us. But how are women sacrificed ? First of all in education. The intelligence and common sense of Europe declare that there can be nothing more important, both for themselves and for man, than the right and thorough education of women. As the physical mothers of the race they have the utmost need to know the laws of life, the nature of their own frame, the principles of health. As the intellectual and moral guides of all human beings during the years when they are most susceptible of impressions and influences, women have need of the very best knowledge. Their need of scientific drill is, if anything, greater than that of men. Yet in �education they are thrown the mere crumbs that fall from the table of our male youths. It has been shown that over ninety per cent, of the provision for education in this country is devoted to boys and young men. It has been shown that in our universities there are large sums of money inadequately used,—wealth accumu lated from ancient endowments, furnishing annual revenues to the extent of ^500,000,—and yet amid all the discussions as to what shall be done with that money, hardly one voice is heard demanding that it shall be devoted to redressing the heavy wrongs which woman has suffered through ages, and now suffers as she sits famishing in sight of such abun dance. And while the universities are thus barred against her, and the keys of knowledge denied her, she is compelled to hear the very weakness and ignorance so entailed quoted for her further disparage ment. We are told, woman cannot reason; she is not logical; she acts by mere impulse and sentiment; she is superstitious. Well, why is it so ? Who has so made her? The god of Jephtha, the deity who exacted the sacrifice of the fair virgins of Israel, and who by his Bible still demands that we hold English women mere appendages to man, against all the best light and conscience of our own time. Again, women are morally and physically sacrificed by the denial to them of the right of freedom to enter �i4 into all the avocations of life by which human beings may find support, livelihood and independence. In the laws made by the worshippers of Jephtha’s god it was enacted that every woman should be sold to some man as wife or concubine. It was strictly obligatory. Even that miserable means of obtaining a livelihood is impossible in this country, where women are in ex cess of men by nearly a million; but still we find male prejudice and law providing that marriage shall be regarded as the only recognised profession, trade, or vocation by which women may obtain an honour able livelihood. Compelled by the over-powering exigencies of modern life we are tolerating them in a few other simple occupations, but without according social equality to such; and we make no adequate provision for their apprenticeship or training for occu pations which would yield them that independence which our theology and conventionality most dread. The sacrificial results of such a state of things are so appalling that I can hardly name them. By shutting the usual lucrative professions and occupations to women, society is driving them by thousands to sell that which is alone left to them to sell, their own honourj that which not one woman in a hundred would part with, were not pauperism and starvation the dread alternative ; and thereby society sacrifices to ancient superstition the health and the purity of both manhood and womanhood. �i5 I have named but two out of the many forms in which women are bound hand and foot on the altar of Jephtha’s god. Why need I repeat the long catalogue of her wrongs as a wife and a mother ? Even after the battles and the appeals of generations have wrung from the reluctant hand of her master a link or two from the chain with which she was so long fettered, sheis still liable to alienation of her children, and other wise subject to the caprice and the cruelty of man. And yet we are told that her interest and necessities may safely be entrusted to the care of a legislature in which she has no voice or representation j and that personally she is not equal to the task of political deliberation and voting. The ballot is not my idol. My desire to see woman enfranchised is not because of any abstract theory of human rights. I admit that because of the long thraldom that sex has undergone, and because of the long denial of education and all re lation to the large affairs of the world, it would be better if men could be induced to relieve them of their oppressions—liberate them from the altar to which they are in large part bound by chains of their own superstition, and so prepare them for that share in political power which should be accorded only to intelligence and moral freedom. Women need the full advantages of education far more than they need votes. What they are perishing for is not a ballot, �i6 but the opening of all the work and culture which make the equality and secure the liberties of man. But, with them, I despair of such practical results until they are admitted among the constituencies of Par liament. They have amply proved their case. They have clearly defined their wrong and its remedy. They have appealed for redress in vain. They are met by frivolous sneers, by sentimental evasions, not by reason and argument. Their sufferings have edu cated them sufficiently to know at least their own needs, and the unwillingness of men to respond to them. Their cry for enfranchisement is the cry of victims bleeding on the altar of established error j it is the cry of despair ; and it can only increase in painful in tensity and grief until it shall be redressed. Indeed, the very sentiment, no doubt sincere with the great majority of men, which dreads the departure of woman from the sacred sphere of domestic life, must ere long be enlisted on the side of her enfranchisement. It will become more and more clear that there can be no peace with injustice ; that women in increasing num bers are, and will continue to be, excited to protest against the wrongs of their sex. They will appear on platforms; they will be public speakers; they will be stimulated to that very life of political agitation which so many fear, but are blindly engaged in promoting. For the sake of peace and quietness, if for no higher �motive, this justice must assuredly be done to woman, and my own apprehension is that it will not be done until society has suffered yet more serious disturbances through the obstinacy and folly of the opposition to a measure which, if adopted, could not cause anything more revolutionary than has been caused by the ad mission of woman to the municipal franchises they now possess. That which is to-day demanded in the name of justice, must to-morrow be conceded in the interest of social order. But this is a poor, mean way of securing any measure of justice. When wisdom pre vails the right will be conceded to reason, not wrested by agitation. But however men may throw away experience, it still remains true that trouble tracks wrong like a shadow, and justice alone is crowned with peace. 2 ��I9 CHILDREN AND THEIR MOLOCH. Five years ago I clipped from a newspaper the follow ing letter, addressed to the Editor from Shetland :— “Lerwick, July, 7, 1871. “ Sir,—It may interest some of your readers to know that last night (being St. John’s Eve, old style) I •observed within a mile or so of this town, seven bon fires blazing, in accordance with the immemorial custom ■of celebrating the Midsummer solstice. These fires were kindled on various heights around the ancient hamlet of Sound, and the children leaped over them, and ‘passed through the fire to Moloch,’ just as their ancestors would have done a thousand years ago on the same heights, and their still remoter progenitors in Eastern lands many thousand years ago. This per sistent adherence to mystic rites in this scientific epoch seems to me worth taking note of.—A. L.” In ancient times, however, the children had to leap into the bonfire—which is defined in Cooper’s “ The- �20 saurus ” as 11 Pyra, a bonefire, wherein men’s bodyes. were burned,”—and not over it. I have often leaped over a bonfire myself, with little thought that my sport was the far away relic of the tragedies of human sacri fice. Our bonfires of Virginia had been lighted from those of Scotland, whence the first settlers of the neigh bourhood had come; and there is some reason to believe that in some obscure nooks of Scotland the Midsummer fires are yet kindled, and some may still be found who believe that it is good for a child to passover them. The Reformers of Scotland made a tremendous effort to trample out these survivals of ancient super stition, and measurably succeeded in suppressing the outward manifestations of them. But they preserved, the very atmosphere of superstition amid which such practices were bred originally, and there is reason to fear they made matters worse. The sacrifice of chil dren to Moloch had become a pastime, but their subsequent sacrifice to Jehovah ofSabaoth was serious. The Scottish Reformers also exterminated with fierce piety the superstitions of the Church of Rome. They particularly punished pilgrimages to the so-called1 holy wells which abounded in that region. On the 28th November, 1630, Margaret Davidson, a married woman, residing in Aberdeen, was adjudged in an “unlaw” of £5 by the Kirk Session “ for directing �21 her nurse with her bairn to St. Fiack’s Well, and washing her bairn therein for recovery of her health - . . and for leaving an offering in the well.” The point of idolatry, as stated by the Kirk Session, was “in putting the well in God’s room.” After the fine Margaret, perhaps, put God in the well’s room; but we may doubt whether the change was of any advan tage to the bairn. Pure water has its sanative effects, and it is very likely that the wells became holy because they were healing. But St. Fiack—a Scottish saint— had to go, leaving only his name to a vehicle {fiacre), in which his French devotees travelled to his shrine, and instead of him was set up a Judaic deity whose providence was not associated with anything so rational as the use of pure water. Not one particle of super stition the less remained in Scotland when the fires of Moloch and the candles of Rome were put out. The only religious advantage one could have hoped from the revolution was not gained. It might have been hoped that when popular Superstition was divested of its picturesque features, its pilgrimages to holy wells and shrines, and bonfires and images, its grim and ugly visage would have been simply repulsive, and its further reign impossible. But, strange to say, the Scotch seemed to cling more to superstition the uglier it became. A Puritanism arose in which all the Molochs were summed up, and all human joys were �22 represented, in Shakspeare’s phrase, as 11 the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire,” the flowery path tohell. It is passing strange that this hideous system should have been able to desolate beyond recovery the “merrie England of the olden time,” and to over shadow America for more than a hundred years. There is a singular society which met last week, called the Anglo-Israel Society, whose object is to persuade this people that they are the lost tribes of Israel, and the eagerness with which the majority of this nation has always laid hold upon everything Semitic, gives some plausibility to their notion; but one thing is certain, if we are the tribes that Israel lost, we have never lost Israel. We have hebraised for ages, made long prayers, sung psalms, named children Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and otherwise pertinaciously adhered to the Semitic idolatry. When Jehovah was brought to Scotland, Moloch was nominally dethroned, his bonfires extinguished; but the change was only nominal; all that was dark and cruel in Moloch was superadded to all that was dark and cruel in Jehovah; and the result was a Scotch Jehovah more harsh and oppressive than the phantasm which haunted the Jews. For the ancient Jews do not seem to have generally entered into the spirit of Moloch,—that old brass deity, whose head was that of a calf, and whose stomach �23 was a furnace in which children were consumed. The Jews generally were careful of their children, and those of them that worshipped Moloch and sacrificed their children were sternly denounced. That old idol which, according to Amos (v. 26) the Israelites bore with them from Egypt through the wilderness, would per haps have faded away had it not been for Solomon. Solomon is odiously memorable for two things. He erected a temple for Moloch on the Mount of Olives, where children were burned to death, and he wrote the sentence—which might appropriately have been inscribed on that Temple—“ Spare the rod and spoil the child.” The man who wrote that sentence had, of course, no idea that any people would exist foolish enough to believe it the very word of God; but, nevertheless, in conjunction with human superstition, he has been the cause of more evil to the human race than any other one man that ever lived. The rod is a little thing, but it is full of deadly poison ; it has fostered in the world more deceit, meanness, cowardice, servility, stupidity, and brutality than our race will outgrow for many generations. Mr. Edward Tylor recently exhibited at the Royal Institution the poison ous Calabar bean used as an ordeal in Africa, whose consecration enables the savage kings to put out of the way every man who proposes any change in their government; and he (Mr. Taylor) expressed �24 his belief that the continued savagery of Africa was in large part an effect of that little bean. And I be lieve that it can be shown that the rod has been the means of preserving the savage rule of physical force in the greatest nations of the world. The parent or teacher who strikes a child does so because his parent or teacher struck him; and the child that is struck catches the idea, transmitted all the way from Solo mon, that the way to deal with people who don’t do what you like is to strike them. That is, if you are stronger than they. If they are little and you large, that is a sign that the Lord has delivered them into your hand. You must make the child yield his will to yours, not by love and persuasion, but by brute force and pain; break his spirit, though that harms him far more than breaking his back-bone; make the child another you : so will your child do the like by his children, and they by theirs, and independence and individuality be beaten down by violence, genius crushed, character made characterless, as “ To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,” and all our yesterdays light us on the highway of commonplace, though not, I hope, to the last syllable of recorded time. Does it not strike you that a child consists of an individuality, a will, a spirit, a mind, and that its real �25 existence depends upon these; and that if these are not trained, encouraged, cultivated, the child has no real existence at all? An animal existence it may have, but beyond that it were a mere appendix or sequel to somebody else, unless its peculiar powers are healthily carried forward to maturity. If these are sacrificed the child is sacrificed, and the man that is folded up in him. Will a gardener beat his rose-buds with a stick to make them grow ? The growing of thoughts and emotions is more tender work than the culture of roses. But children will be naughty; of course they will sometimes be naughty if they are healthy, and they will require restraint until they can restrain themselves : they must learn morals as they learn letters. But one might as well flog a child for not knowing Greek as to flog it for a deception or for selfishness. Every blow is an appeal to selfishness, and a lesson in deception. We pardon our parents and predecessors in this, for they knew not what they did. But it is a scandal that the rod should linger in the homes and schools of England, after Herbert Spencer and others have proved the evil of it. For many months now I have been trying to find a school in Kensington for a boy in his eleventh year, and in that great parish I cannot find one in which they do not insist on two things,—Beating and the Bible. I must leave the parish to find a school which will give me a. conscience clause on these points. �26 Now, I may ask any person of intelligence, not hopelessly blinded by superstition, is the Bible a fit book to put into the hands of a child ? I do not believe that a child as it advances to boyhood and girlhood should, with prudish jealousy, be kept in ignorance as to the follies and vices of the world in which it lives. But our children do not live in ancient Judea. The Bible, moreover, is not limited to any years. It is believed by bibliolaters to be so holy that it can do no harm even to a child of tenderest years, who so soon as he or she can read is permitted to receive the unnatural stimulant of perusing narra tives obscene, shocking and cruel. What would be a glass of gin in the child’s throat, compared with its first familiarisation with the grossest vices of semibarbarous tribes; vices many of which are even unfit for more advanced youth to read about, for they are not those which they will now find in the world around them, or require to be guarded against. The very memory of some of the primitive brutalities of mankind is kept alive only by the Bible. With its pages are broadcast narratives which the law does not permit to be printed in any other book. And when these crimes and vices are laid before a child as the word of God ; when it reads in that book that many of the worst of them were instigated by Jehovah,— that he hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and ordered persons �27 to be stoned to death, and children to be put to thesword, and so on,—why it is enough to slay theirreverence on the spot, and strike them with moral idiocy. This is, indeed, the way in which, morallyspeaking, the sins of the father are visited on the children, to much more than the third and fourth generation. The Bible is an invaluable book, but it is not a book for children : there are many forms in which the incidents and chapters suitable for them can be separately procured; and for the rest, the volume may be safely left on the shelf to be searched out when it is wanted. The Rod, and the Bible which consecrates the Rod, along with many other barbarities, make up princi pally the Moloch of children in the present time. The sacrifice of the young among us is mainly moral and intellectual. Physically a great deal is done for the average of them. There are indeed terrible regions where children are caught up in the great engine of commerce and labour, and crushed. There are mines, and fens, and factories where the struggle for existence means a joyless existence—hunger and pain, and pre mature death to many a child ; and yet, because it isa struggle for existence we can only look upon it with sympathy and with resolution that no man shall add tothe anguish of it. But when we follow even such appa rently inevitable evils as these to their causes, we dis- �2S •cover that they could not continue but for the radical •error of English Christianity—the principle of sacrifi cing man to God. We can never hope thoroughly to master the evils of society while the great religious organisations of the country, and their vast endow ments, are directed to divine service instead of human service, and the poor are taught that their ■chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever. When the wealth and the religious earnestness of this nation are devoted to the benefit of humanity, instead •of to the childish notion of personally pleasing and ■.satisfying the deity, there cannot long remain an unhappy home in it. But until that Gospel of Pure Reason is heard round the world, bringing its glad tidings, the weak and ignorant must still bleed as victims on the altar of an imaginary being who may be called God, but is much nearer the ideal of a Demon. Dogma, too, has still its altar in England upon which the child is sacrificed. It is true that among the educated the old doctrine that every child is at birth a child of the devil, and human nature totally de praved, has ceased to exist; and even among the illiterate parental affection has been too strong to admit of its practical realisation. But still it is taught by vulgar sects to many millions, and avails to mis•»direct many fathers and mothers, and teachers, in their �29 dealing with the natural instincts and needs of child hood. The mirth, the love of beauty, the longing for amusement, in the young, so indispensable for a healthy and happy growth, are forbidden, the dance is held tobe sinful, the theatre immoral, and thus many thousands of children never have any real joy, and pass on to a youth of precocious anxiety, and a manhood or woman hood of hard, morose alienation from nature. The only relief to the gloom of this unnatural religion, which casts its shadow over so many young lives, is that dogmatic preaching has become so inhar monious with the enlightenment of civilised society, that it tends more and more to sink into the hands of pulpit mediocrities, who rehearse it in such a dull, perfunctory way that it loses all impressiveness, and can now hardly keep congregations awake. Sermon ising is almost another name for boreing. In an admirable story just published, called “ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain,” the author presents a picture of an average congrega tional assembly on Sunday, among whom his little hero was a sufferer. After the lugubrious hymn came the long, long prayer. “ The boy,” says the author, “ did not enjoy the prayer, he only endured it—if he even did that much. He was restive all through it; he kept tally of the details of the prayer, unconsciously -—for he was not listening, but he knew the ground of �3° old, and the clergyman’s regular route over it—and where a little trifle of new matter was introduced, his ■ear detected it, and his whole nature resented it; he considered additions unfair and scoundrelly. In the midst of the prayer a fly had lit on the pew in front of him ”—but I will pass over the fate of that fly. The sermon came on. “ The minister,” writes our author, il gave out his text and droned along monoto nously through an argument that was so prosy that by and by many a head began to nod, and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone, and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving. The boy counted the pages of the sermon; after church he always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew anything else about the discourse.” Once, indeed, he became interested for a moment. It was when the preacher, instead of his own dreary thoughts, drew from an ancient poet the picture of the hosts of the world gathering at the millennium, when the lion and the lamb should lie down together, and a little child should lead them. The boy said to him self that he would like to be that child, if it was a tame lion. I suppose there are many poor little sufferers like this lad, dragged this day into the chapels and churches of the world, but we may console ourselves partially �3r with the reflection that in their sufferings many a false hood is smothered. The deadly dogma is happily also dull, and sinks through the vacant mind into the gulf of oblivion. And yet that boy is passing through the years which should be sown with the seeds of truth, and the germs of thought and purpose. His faculties need encouragement : they say briars and thorns are non-encouraged buds. So long as those sweet, susceptible years are passed amid such errors that apathy to them all is the child’s best hope, we must still confess that in this age of light innumerable children are still passing through the fire to Moloch. �_______ _ __ �33 THE 8ABBATH-JUGERNATH. On the sands at Puri, in India, stands the famous temple of Jugernath. It is nearly seven centuries old, and the building of it cost as much as a half million sterling. It is six hundred and fifty feet square, and its sanctity consecrates the soil for twenty miles around it,—that land being held rent-free on condition of the tenants performing certain sacred rites in honour of Jugernath. There are twelve great festivals held every year at this shrine, and the alleged performances at these festivals have been the never-ending theme of mission meetings ever since we can remember. You must have been fortunate children if you have no memories of Sunday School days when your childish heart was harrowed by accounts of poor Hindoos crushed under the wheels of Jugernath, and a tithe of all you possessed annually sent away to convert that hard god into a Christian, and stop that terrible car. Some old missionary once estimated the immense amount of money and labour devoted to the care, the 3 �34 ablutions, and other affairs of this temple, and he said the same amount of wealth and toil usefully bestowed might make every barren spot of India into a garden ; and that missionary might have added that the amount of money which has been evoked from Christian pockets by that one idol might have made an equal number of gardens there, or here,—whereas it has all been spent, and the car rolls on just as grandly as ever. And not only this, but we have now learned on the best authority that all those pictures of Hindoos cast ing themselves beneath the Jugernath car to be crushed were purely imaginary. When the car is drawn, with the sacred image of Vishnu set up in it, the crowd of the curious and the devotees is enormous, and no doubt many accidents have happened. It may be, because some from a distance are ignorant of the danger, or that enthusiastic devotees put themselves unintentionally in danger by going too near the image they believe holiest on earth, or try to draw the car with hundreds of others when they are too weak or aged to do so. But there are no intentional sacrifices under the car of Jugernath, nor could there ever have been at any period. For Jugernath, or rather Jaganatb, means simply “ the Lord of Life •” it is a title of Vishnu, and the temple is purely sacred to Vishnu. Nothing is more rigidly forbidden than to slay anything that has life in �35 the neighbourhood of the Lord of Life. The Hindoos declare that the holy pages of the Vedas themselves sprang from drops of blood lost by their Saviour while protecting Agni in form of a dove from Indra in form of a hawk; and to Vishnu they offer only things that are fresh and beautiful, like flowers, and even the . flowers must not be in the least faded. So it is impossible that there could have been human sacrifices to Jugernath except by accident. The accidents were probably very frequent at one time,—at least it is •charitable to missionary reporters to think so,—the vast increase of popularity in the festivals having made the crowd unwieldy. But in recent years British authority has insisted upon carefulness—threatened to stop the car if men and women were injured—and there is now far less destruction of life by the car of Jugernath than by the London cab. Happy Hindoos ' who have at hand an enlightened authority willing to respect their religious customs so long as they are harmless, but ready to put Vishnu himself under arrest if he injures humanity. I would match an Englishman against any man living for good sound sense in dealing with such superstitions, pro vided they are not his own. But when that clear headed English authority which has put out the fires that burned widows in India comes to deal with laws that torture women here, it gets confused among �36 Scripture texts and precedents. When it is needed to curb a fanaticism here which deliberately sacrificeshuman life—that, for instance, of the Peculiar People, who, because of a text in the New Testament, refuse to call medical aid for their sick, letting them die in numbers every year, even helpless children—why then all that common sense seems to vanish. When it is called upon to regulate our Sabbath-Jugernath, beside which the car at Puri is an innocent toy, beneath whose wheels millions of hearts and brains are crushed in this kingdom, why then the intelligence of the nation grows timid, and its arm is paralysed. The celebrations of Jugernath, the Lord of Life, bring to the poor twelve festivals in the year, The celebrations of the Sabbath, Lord of Lifelessness, bringto our poor fifty-two funereal vacancies in their exist ence. They ought to be fifty-two festivals of Reason, of Beauty, of Happiness, but to the poor they are days of unreason, of ugliness, of torpor and drunkenness ; days hateful to children and hurtful to all. Now it is not merely fanciful to bring together the Jugernath and the Sabbath superstitions. Even in origin their consecra tion came from the same source. Our theology has arbitrarily transferred the sanctity of the Jewish Sab bath, the Seventh Day of the week, to the Sun-day, the day consecrated to sun-worship, our first day of the week. I say arbitrarily, for' there is not a word in the �New Testament consecrating Sunday, but there are •strong sentences declaring one day as holy as another. The early Christians when they went among so-called pagan ” races met for worship on the first day of ■the week because it was a holiday, and they could only then get at the people. For the same reason we meet to-day, because it is the day when people are liberated from business. But the Primitive Christians had as •little thought of consecrating the “pagan” Sun’s day as the Jewish Sabbath, just as most of us would abhor •the notion that any day is less sacred than another. But Vishnu also was to his provincial worshippers the -quickening sun, and his chariot is the car of Jugernath. So the two institutions are linked together archeeologi•cally. But in a more important sense they are related by the fact that they are both idolatries. lhe Sab bath is one of the only two visible idols which pro nounced Protestantism has left standing for a race of kindred origin to the Hindoos, and like them naturally loving outward symbols and images. We •all belong to the Great Aryan race, from which pro ceeded all the bright gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome, and Germany, and all their variegated symbolism. Through certain historic combina tions our Aryan race as it migrated westwaid, became invested with a Shemitic religion, one which had no arts and pictures itself, and regarded them as impious �38 in others. In obedience to this alien religion, our race now wrote on its temples, “Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images, or pictures of anything in heaven, earth or sea.” But it was one thing to say this, another to practise. The Eastern Church evaded the law by putting up certain holy pictures with frames in relief, which are something like sculpture. The Roman Church boldly disregarded the law in its lordly way of requiring the Bible to accommodate itself to the Pope. In this country all the sacred visible images were swept away by Puritanism from its own and . many other churches—leaving all the more graven images in the mind ; but that race-instinct, that love of outward symbols and objects of worship with which the Eastern Church compromised, and to which the Romish Church succumbed—that instinct and senti ment remained in our people, and in the empty niche of the Madonna, on the altar from which god and goddess and crucifix had been successively swept, there were now set up the only two visible images of determined Protestantism—the Bible and the Sabbath. There are some branches of the Church of England which approximate to the Catholic Church enough to preserve other symbols—exalting the sacrament, mag nifying the cross, or the liturgy—and such care less tomake overmuch of the Sabbath, and respect saintly tradition as much as the Bible. But when you find �an out-and-out Evangelical, or a Calvinist, or a member of a sect which has nothing symbolical about it, you find one who will fight for the literal Bible and the literal Sabbath, exactly as a barbarian fights for his idol. They are his idols. They are to him precisely what the Jugernath is to the devotee in India. The Bible and the Sabbath are all he has left; and if you were to really take from the average sectarian his idolatry of those two visible objects, he would feel as if he had nothing to lean upon at all. For this aver age religionist has not a vivid interior life, he has not the mystical sense cognisant of pure ideals, most visible when the outward eye is closed. He needs to have something he can see and handle, and feel physically, or realise by physical effects. There is not the least use in trying to argue with an idolator. Nothing can be influenced by reasoning which was not reached by any effort of reason. Real thinkers, even in the sects themselves, have tried their strength against this miserable Sabbath superstition, Luther and Calvin, and George Fox, as well as the most learned men of the English Church. But the Sabbath stands like the Hindoo Temple described in the curse of Kehdma :— “ And on the sandy shore, beside the verge Of ocean, here and there a rock-cut fane Resisted in its strength the surf and surge That on their deep foundation beat in vain.” �40 Even so, deep-cut in the plutonic rock of human ignorance, is this idol shrine, against which all our protests, appeals, facts, and arguments will beat in vain, until the ignorance itself shall be undermined and crumble away. There is no advantage, therefore, in pleading with Sabbatarians. The more we groan the better they feel, for it shows them that Jehovah is having his will by crushing ours. But there is great reason that we should appeal to the constituted rulers of England, in the name of our religious liberty, against the claim of Sabbatarians to oppress consciences that are not Sabbatarian. The right of any individual to be him self a simpleton seems inalienable. We do not deny, though we may deplore, the claim of Sabbatarians to pass their “ holy time ” in any depth of sanctimonious stupor they like. But they have no right to bind on the altar of their ugly idol the life of other people. That they are still able to do so is not due to any Sabbatarianism in those who make our laws. There is not one member of our Government or Parliament who does not violate the Judaic Sabbath law every week of his life. Nearly fifty years ago, William Lovett, and several thousand working men with him, drew up a petition to Parliament, declaring their conviction that much of the drunkenness and crime in London is due to the absence of proper resources for instruction and �amusement on Sunday. Honest Joseph Hume pre sented their petition and appealed to Parliament for the opening of such resources. Since then the appeal has been repeated by Sir Joshua Walmsley, Peter Taylor and others, but steadily refused, even while the principle has been conceded by the opening of museums in Ireland, where Puritanism is not strong. The last-named valiant member of Parliament has now for some years moved that body to admit the poor drudges of this metropolis to gain some know ledge, to catch some gleam of light and beauty, on the one day when they are released from toil, in our grand national collections which they help to support but never see—institutions which represent the secrets of nature and ideality of poets and artists, the history of man in his steady mastery of the earth by skill and genius, the sacred story of heroes, saints, saviours of humanity. But at last that member has declined to renew his appeal, because, as he has stated to me, he has ample evidence that while the majority of the House are quite convinced that his motion is right, and have no respect for Sabbatarianism, they yet vote for it. The Puritan Sabbath can always roll up a majority even in a House that applauds arguments against it. The member referred to is naturally not willing to go on convincing men already convinced. But why then do these politicians vote against the �42 relief of suffering non-Sabbatarians ? Why, because they do not wish to be also victims of the Sabbath. To the average Member of Parliament his seat there is the immediate jewel of his soul. He would, no doubt, like to have right on his side, but he must have his borough. He knows perfectly well that if he votes for opening museums and picture galleries to the people, on the very next Sunday his constituency will be listening to awful burdens against him from all the reverend Chadbands and Stigginses and Mawworms and Cantwells and Pecksniffs, whose com bined power can defeat any man in England, as their like defeated the great man in Jerusalem who broke the Sabbath, and declared it subject to man, not man to it. Nevertheless, we must not proceed upon the opinion that the average Member of Parliament is so much afraid of this power behind him, or so tenacious of his seat, that he will carry it to the extent of sup porting what he felt to be a very serious oppression. All the honour and courage have not entirely gone out of this nationality. Men will be found ready to risk their seats when they have fully apprehended the nature and extent of the wrong that is suffered. Parliament consists mainly of wealthy gentlemen, whose every earthly need is so com pletely answered that they can only with difficulty realise the wants of the poor. On Sunday they have �their carriages to drive in, their right to visit botanical and zoological gardens, their libraries, pictures, clubsand billiard-rooms. Their Sunday is free enough. They turn it to repose or recreation as they may need, In all their lives they have never had one day of serious want, not one day of confinement in a miserable lodging with no alternatives but the chill street or thegin-shop. In some way it must be brought before these gentlemen, and kept before them— like the widow’s plea in the parable before the judge, who waswearied out at last—that the lot of the masses whose labour makes so much of their comfort is a mean and miserable lot. They must be made to know that there are millions who from the cradle to the grave, toil—and toil—and toil, year in and year out, and whose life is one long want. It must be impressed upon them that a large part of the sorrow and heavi ness of the poor man’s and poor woman’s fate is the presence in them of mental and moral faculties and possibilities which are a perpetual hunger without any supply, which never rise to be real intellects and tastes because they are kept by drudgery as seeds under the sod, unquickened by any beam of light shining from all the knowledge around them, unsunned by any ray of beauty. Then they will comprehend that a fearful system of human sacrifice is going on around them, and they will not find their parliamentary seats easy �44 if retained by any connivance with those sacrifices. There is an Eastern fable of a throne luxuriously soft to any monarch who sat upon it, until a wrong had risen somewhere in his realm; then the throne became so hard that no sovereign could sit upon it, until the wrong was sought out and redressed; and there is •conscience enough among our commoners to change many a legislative seat to flint, when its holder shall know that he maintains it only as a coward, through the servility that dare not grapple with serious in justice because it is in the majority. Those are the men who must ultimately listen to our cause and decide it rightfully. And our cause is that the brain and heart, and even the work of the poor, is suffering grievously because of the restrictions placed by superstition upon that day of the week which represents their all of opportunity for any high enjoyment or improvement. The Sundays of life represent one-seventh of every man’s time; but for the drudges of the world it represents the whole of their time. All the rest of life is not their time; it belongs to their employer; it is mortgaged by physical toil. What life is at their own disposal is counted by .Sundays. If those free days are unimproved or unhappy the whole life goes sunless to the grave. What provision does this nation make, and wnat ■does it permit to be made, for the elevation, instruc �tion, and happiness of those whose other days, asGeorge Herbert said, “trail on the ground,” on the one day susceptible to nobler impressions ? First it provides sermons. Twenty thousand churches are open this day for the people, and in them are places for a limited number of the poor. Well, let us forget how many dull sermons are preached, how many gloomy, false, repulsive dogmas,, how many threadbare superstitions, and how few work ing people have any disposition to enter these assem blies, or such dress as would let them feel comfortable when there. Let us pass over all that. Admitting that one hour and a half or two hours of the poor man’s only leisure day may be so passed, what provision is made for the remainder ? Why, there are the parks in which he may walk. But that is a very inadequate reply. Our English weather renders the park attractive for but a small part of the year. Much of the labour done is too wearisome to render mere walking on Sunday any delight to the workers. Nor is there anything in that merely physical exercise which answers the real demand, a demand not of the feet but of the head. Well, there is the great provision that comes next to the church, the public house. This great nation has been appealed to by some of its noblest scholars for permission to accompany the poor on Sunday �46 ■afternoons, when churches are closed, through the national collections of art and science, to explain to them the objects of interest, to interpret for them the wonders of nature and unfold the splendours of art. But thus far our rulers have replied, “ No, we will deliver you to the publican, but never to Dr. Carpenter; Ruskin shall not teach you the glory of Raphael’s •cartoons, but you may gaze at pleasure on the interior decorations of the gin-palace; you must not see the grandeurs of art, nor the fine traceries of skill, nor the antiquities of humanity, nor the wondrous forms and •crystals of Nature, but do not complain : do we not allow you limitless supplies of whiskey and beer?” And just here, by the way, I remark a little sign of hope. The Sabbatarians begin to perceive the scandal that the beer-house should be kept open while the museum is closed, and they begin to demand the closing of the public-house also. They have carried a. measure of that kind for Ireland, and I sincerely hope they will manage to carry one for England. For the day that sees the beer-house close will see the door •of the museum start. The great ally of the Sabbatarian has been the publican, and when that alliance is broken our success will draw near. The parson drugs the people’s brains with superstition, and the publican drugs with beer those whom the parson cannot reach; and the streams from church and tap-room blending �47 together reinforce the Lord’s-day people, so that they can always outnumber us. If the Sabbath were not an idol it would long ago have recoiled from all this part of its work. It would have said, “ Open a thousand museums rather than drive the poor to find their only Sunday amusement, and spend the means for which their wives and children suffer, in drink !” But an idol may always be recognised by just this fact: z? demands human sacrifices. It may not always demand the cutting-up or burning of its victims; but, if not that, it will demand the sacrifice of his intellect or his affections, his happinesss or his welfare; in some way a human body, or heart, or brain will be found bound wherever an idol stands. And though I cannot, in such brief space, enter into all the details of the holocaust of human benefits offered up to the Sabbath, I will affirm for myself that the more I have considered the needs of this people, and the lost opportunities of meeting them, the more have I felt that there is now no cause worthier of a good man’s zeal than the overthrew of this Sabbath oppression. It is a wrong for which I have no toleration at all. I can tolerate any man’s religious conviction about the Sabbath or anything else ; but I cannot tolerate him when he insists on binding his dogma upon others. I will not tolerate his intolerance. This is no issue of abstract opinion for theological fencing. It is no �48 sentimental grievance. The hunger of a million famished souls is in it. It is a great heart-breaking wrong, crushing lower and lower one class of society at a time when other classes are rising higher daily. And that the poor do not feel it to be so, are in boozy contentment with their beer or their prayers and demand nothing better, is only a proof of how fully the oppression has done its miserable work. Yet they use this as an argument against us ! They cry, “The workmen do not want it; behold our majority.” I answer, the majority is always wrong. The majority crucified' Christ and poisoned Socrates. Part of the masses you have deceived by the con temptible fiction that their day of release from toil will be endangered by that which would make it more attractive and therefore more precious; and a larger part you have so besotted with beer and ignorance that they are pauperised in soul as well as body, and hug their own chains. Theirs is not the real voice of the people. A true statesman will take the only suffrage they are competent to cast from their degraded foreheads and their brutalised forms and faces. The gardener will not follow the will of the weeds, though they report the soil he works in. At any rate a rational man’s duty is clear. The authority of the Sabbath rests upon what every intelligent mind knows to be fiction; upon a deity who is said to have created the �49 universe in six days and rested on the seventh, and then ordered that anyone working on the seventh should be stoned to death. That is a fiction. There is no deity who did anything of that kind. We are told this is the Lord’s day. We know that if that Lord be other than a phantom every day is his day. J esus said, 11 My Father works on the Sabbath and so will I.” Rest is not stupor. It is well to change our occupation occasionally, but never well to be idle. There is no ground whatever for this superstition. The day of rest originated no doubt in a human want, afterwards invested with sanctity: but the sanctity must be entirely removed if the day is to be changed from a curse to a human benefit. 4 ��51 THE MARTYRDOM OF REASON. Reason is that supreme faculty of man by which he is cognisant of principles apart from their applica tions, of laws as distinct from particulars, of ideas as separate from relations. It differs from the under standing, which is concerned with those special appli cations and relations, as a code of laws differs from the various decisions of courts and judgments made under that code. A man may reason rightly when his understanding is in error. A Hindoo walking out saw a large and dangerous cobra, as he supposed, across his path, preparing to dart upon him ; it so overcame his nerves that he fainted; the object proved to be a piece of rope. The man had reasoned correctly; he knew the nature of the cobra, and rightly inferred the danger, but his judgment was in error. Now judg ment is at the point of distinction between reason and understanding. By origin it is an organ of rea son, by result it is the agent of the understanding. �52 When we consider our human faculties in this abstract way, we find them perfectly harmonious. They move in their appointed orbits, in constant rela tion and interaction, but without collision or jar, their very differences completing the harmony. Abstractedly no mortal can conceive of a special judgment with no general principles to guide it, and none can think of ideas and laws as things inapplicable to the particulars of nature and life. And yet we find in all races and ages a wide-spread suspicion of reason. Even at this day, and in nations which are daily reaping and enjoying the fruits of reason, we find vast numbers of people who have an impression like that which Shakspere puts into the mouth of Caesar, “ He thinks too much ; such men are dangerous.” Still more general is the notion that the man of ideas must be unpractical. It is easy to perceive the origin of that notion; it is suggested in the common saying, “That is well enough in theory, but it won’t do in practice.” Of course the phrase is a mistake ; it should be, “ That is wrong in theory, for it won’t do in practicebut it discloses the fact that there has been so much false reasoning in the world that many have come to distrust reason itself. And just here arises a misunderstanding and a quarrel between the theorist and the practical man. One says the error is in the theory, the other that it is �53 in the application of it. Among educated people the matter would be tested by experiment. Science, for instance, has long affirmed that when salt water freezes it loses its saltness; but the Arctic explorers melting the sea-ice found it so briny that they could not drink it. The result is, of course, a revision of theory by experiments which will probably show that the salt does not remain strictly in the ice, but between its crystals, that the theory is not wrong but requires more careful statemeht to include the practical fact. In this way the old feud between theory and practice has entirely ceased from the domain of science. • But it is in religion that we find the distrust of rea son most intense and familiar. On that distrust Christianity is founded. Christ appealed to reason; but Christianity has very little to do with him ; it re lapses into barbaric ages and finds its corner-stone in a fable that the first effort of intellect led to the cor ruption of the whole human race. It said that when God made man and woman he put them into a para dise for enjoyments sensual and sensuous. The one thing he was opposed to was knowledge. So resolute was the Creator on that point, that he did not hesitate to accompany his prohibition of that one fruit with a deception. He told them that on the very day they should eat of the tree of Knowledge they would die. The serpent persuaded the woman that this was a �54 fiction, as it proved to be. The truthful serpent also said, “ Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,” and no sooner was the fruit eaten than Jehovah, making no mention of what he had said about their dying, acknowledged the veracity of the serpent. “ Behold,” he said, “ the man is become as one of us (gods) to know good and evil.” Then, lest the gods should have no advantage at all, and man should eat of another fruit and become immortal, the first pair were expelled from Paradise. This fable, which re presents the first priestly scream against education, shows us a deity cursing knowledge and a demon en couraging it; it shows a deity trying to delude man to remain in ignorance, while the demon speaks the truth, and secures the birth of intelligence for man and woman, where Jehovah meant them to live only the life of the senses. On that fable the whole Plan of Salvation is founded. The knowledge gained that day brought on mankind the curse of total depravity, and doom of eternal torture. To avert that the Son of God became incarnate on earth and suffered in a few years all the agonies which the whole human race would have suffered if every man, -woman and child that ever lived were damned to all eternity. All of this is meaningless, and the whole theology of Chris tendom mere chaff, except to avert the wrath and undo the curse which fell from a deity jealous of the attain �55 ments of his own creature, upon man, because of his first endeavour to gain knowledge. Fortunately, while that is the theology it is not the religion, and still less the morality of this country. It is a sublime example of the kind of theory which does not do in practice. Nevertheless we must not under rate the results of the long pressure of instructions like these upon every human being through a period of sixteen hundred years. Even now, in the most en lightened nations, the money devoted to teach that theology is counted by millions where the money devoted to pure knowledge is counted by tens. And we need not wonder that the spirit of that old curse on knowledge still survives to haunt every seeker of it for its own sake. It is still strong enough to cast a certain odium on the tasks of reason. To the popular mind there is something uncanny about the rationalist, which means a reasoner, and the sceptic—literally, he who considers a thing—has still an evil name. Thou sands who shout for every other kind of freedom will cry down freethought. They will mourn over an en slaved African thousands of miles away, but have no tears to shed for fettered minds at their own door. Nay, even among those liberated from the old theology, how much suspicion of reason do we en counter ! How often do we hear such speak of science as cold, and of the intellect as inferior to something �56 they call faith or intuition ! They who have no doubts about reason are still comparatively few. And yet our age is full of the grandest facts and illustrations, proving that it is among the devotees of reason and science that the divinest life and fire of our age is manifest. I have just been reading a history, written by the leading rationalist minister in America, of what is called “ the transcendental movement” in that country. * And it is well called a “movement ;” for the chief impres siveness of it lies in the fact that what had been mainly a speculative philosophy in Europe, there, among one of the most shrewd and practical nations of the world, blazed out into a movement, a noble enthusiasm for humanity, a passionate religion which kindled the hearts of young men and women, and made them Reformers, Apostles, Martyrs, who gave up all their goods for the poor, who brought glad tidings to woman and lifted the heaviest burthens of her life, and who broke off the bonds of the slave. There was not an orthodox man or woman among them. They were rationalists. The Bible they studied was Kant’s “ Critique of Pure Reason,” Goethe’s Works, Carlyle’s Essays, Cousin’s Philosophy: the ideas of Europe became ideals in America, rose up like pillars of flame; they became a * Transcendentalism in New England. A History. By Octavius Brooks Frothingham. New York : E. P. Putman & Sons, 1876. �57 gospel in the genius of Emerson, the mind of Parker, and the heart of Margaret Fuller, and under its charm humble people formed themselves in communities, ceasing to care for worldly wealth and honours. There is no type of character that is beautiful in the past which did not reappear. St. Francis d’ Assisi, Fenelon, Madame Guion, Berkeley, Sydney, they all had true counterparts in the piety, devotion, virtue, and genius, which characterised that movement. This is the hundredth birth-year of America as a nation; they who established its independence in the name of humanity were free-thinkers—Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Thomas Paine—and they broke for ever the power of a priesthood in the State. And now remark, in that country where conscience is free, a hundred years has witnessed but one great religious movement—but one which corresponds with the movements under George Fox, and Wesley and Whit field in this country—but one which exhibited power to command the passions, conquer selfishness, and trace itself in practical reforms and a new Church and that one was a movement born of pure reason. Such has ever been the work of reason where it has been set free. And yet there are eloquent men, like Pere Hyacinthe, who are going about imploring the priests and prelates of Europe to make a holy alliance of Anglican, Greek, and Gallican Churches against �58 this terrible monster—Rationalism. I rejoice to hear they think there is need of a new league. It is a valu able testimony to the stream of tendency that makes for truth. But we must not allow the good father’s confession, that many people are not only, like him self, denying that two and two make five, but even running into the excess of denying that two and two make three—a radicalism he so much deplores—we must not allow that to make us over-confident. We must still face the fact that Reason is a sacrifice and a martyr amid the great institutions around us. What is the history of nearly every child born in this country? The few who are brought up by rational methods, and taught to cultivate and obey reason as their highest guide, are hardly notice able as to numbers. A large proportion are neglected, so far as Christian fables are concerned, but they are victims of popular superstitions, believe in ghosts and goblins, fortune-telling and the evil eye, their minds overgrown with rank weeds. The ave rage Christian child is taught superstition above every thing else ! Other and true things may be taught, but they spring up only amid those briars which choke each other growth before it can bear its fruit. Car dinal, and bishop, and cabinet, alike agree that no seed of wheat shall be sown in any mind without a tare of fable or dogma beside it. Of what use is �59 geology if one believes that Jehovah created the universe in six days ? What is the use of any science to a mind which believes that the laws of nature are arbitrary, have often been suspended, and may be changed and altered by the breath of a mortal’s peti tion ? There can be no reason cultivated where the law of cause and effect is disregarded. To believe in the connection of things that have no connection—for instance, that a man’s word can raise the dead to life—is to strangle reason. To believe in an effect without adequate cause—for instance, that the world stopped revolving that a captain might have more daylight to fight by—vastates the mind. To believe in anything whatever for which there is no evidence, or insufficient evidence, is superstition; and the essence of superstition is that reason is dethroned and a mere compulsion of habit, fear, or self-interest set up in its place to direct the life. Well, the ordinary studies of the average Christian child having thus been prevented from developing his reasoning powers in the direction of religion, he is completely subjected to the powerful stimulants of those preternatural fears and hopes which make the ordinary sanctions of what is called religion, but really is selfishness. He is warned to avoid certain things, and do others, because he will go to hell if he doesn't comply, but will enjoy eternal bliss if he �6o does,—motives of calculating self-interest, which it is the very mission of Reason to restrain and to remand for the work of mere physical self-preservation. While we despise the man who loves and serves a wife or a friend from such base calculations of interest, children are taught to love God and serve him for fear of punishment and hope of reward. But let us follow the growth of the child thus in structed. The time comes when he must enter into life. Physical cares, business, the healthy work of the world claim him. Amid them he is pretty sure to discover that the theology he has been taught is not confirmed by experience. Then, haply, he may be able to assert the rights of his own reason. But, sup posing he does not, one of several other results will follow, i. He may believe that the doctrines he has been taught must have a formal homage as divine mysteries which he is not expected to understand, but only blindly to obey. 2. He may become a hypocrite. 3. He may become utterly indifferent to the whole thing, and utterly reckless. In either case his sacred reason has been sacrificed. But do we fully appreciate the tragedy which has thus happened ? Do we fully realise that even when men and women do not become either hypocrites or reckless, they are almost certain, as things now stand, to reach some day the appalling discovery that they �6i have wasted the best years of their life on a sham and a fraud ? In the twenty-five years during which I have been in a position to receive the confidences of those who were struggling amid doubts, and in the pangs of transition, the chief agonies I have witnessed have been those whose awakening came too late for oppor tunities to be recovered. Youth is gone, enthusiasm has gone, the time for study and devotion for ever passed away, and the collective force of all the light around them enters at last only to bring the bitter consciousness that the glory of life has been cast away upon the barren deserts of delusion. These are the martyrs whom every devotee of reason should see around him. There is no sorrow equal to theirs. No doubt rationalism may bring with it many trials so far as the world is concerned. There may be separations, friendships clouded, affec tions wounded ; for superstition can turn hearts to stone even against their own blood where its autho rity is denied. There may be intellectual doubts, too, not to be satisfied, some loved legends vanish ing, and some pretty dreams made dim along with the nightmares escaped. But amid all these there is nothing half so terrible as the fate of those who have no alternatives but either to slay their reason .altogether, or to admit its testimony only to find that the whole life has been a gigantic mistake. �62 Therefore it is the high duty of every human being to maintain openly and valiantly the verdict of his own faculties. Unfortunately the guardians of the young are so eager to teach them how to say prayers, and keep sanctimonious on Sunday, and to refrain from kneeling down to graven images, that few have ears to hear the great decalogue announced in their own time. The first of the new commandments is this,—Seek truth ! and the second is like unto it, Live the Truth in thought, word, and deed 1 So little has the virtue of self-truthfulness been taught, that we often meet people who actually make a merit of con cealing their convictions, especially if they think they are thereby saving somebody’s feelings. There is a great deal of selfishness, as well as sentiment, sheltered under Paul’s dangerous maxim about being all things to all men, and a great deal of Jesuitism hides itself under Christ’s admonition against casting pearls before swine, which is true only if read by the light of his own martyrdom for speaking the truth. As a rule the men and women you meet are not swine, and you need not fear to offer them—it is cruel to refuse them —your pearls of truth and sincerity. Many of them, indeed, are going about silently seeking those very pearls. No doubt there are times for reserve, no doubt there are rocks of prejudice and ignorance which have to be slowly pulverised into a soil before any seed can �63 y 11 jl 0] 'j’l d ill t'i g $ <i if w Eff Itl oi rfl itt be sown in them. But no one will ever lack wisdom for all occasions who is animated purely by that love which is not seeking his own, nor vaunting himself, but seeking only to advance Truth. Reason supplies an instinct adequate to all emergencies. Remember again what reason is, and the ground of its supremacy I Remember now and always, that its very soul is dis interestedness. It is the clear vision of the mind as it rises above all the considerations of self-interest, pre judice, conventionality, passion, which would lower and discolour its pure light. Reason is to see things as they are, and not as majorities or institutions say they are, or wish them to be. And it is just as much as a mind can do to keep that holy lamp burning steadily through life in a world where the most powerful threats and bribes are continually used to sway and pervert the judgment. In legal affairs no judge is allowed to decide a case involving his own interest; a heavy punishment follows any attempt to bribe judge or jury man. So we can get just verdicts. But how are we to get just verdicts on religious questions, when untold millions and all social advantages are set apart by Church and State to influence every mind in favour of creeds and dogmas, as against pure reason? We can hope for a true verdict only from those who have ascended above such considerations, and surrender themselves wholly to the guidance of reason and right. �64 When the poet Heine was in Paris, poor, sick, wretched, he renounced his rationalism. His friends in Germany heaped scorn upon him. Heine then wrote :—“ They say Heine has changed and become a reactionist. Ah, well, lately I went to the Louvre, and knelt before our lady of Milo. Many tears did I shed as I gazed upon her beautiful form and face, but I rose and left her, for she had no arms. She had no arms, and I was poor and needy.” So he turned to our lady of the Church, for she had arms and hands, all full of rich gifts to reward any poet for singing her praises. We cannot help feeling compassion for those who yield to rich and powerful superstition the homage which is due to reason alone: but the standard cannot be lowered, whoever may go away sorrowful. He alone is a true man who stands firm to the mandate of the Sinai within him, and sees that whatever may bend or break, it shall not be his fidelity to truth. �� 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. 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. <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" /> 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 Human sacrifices in England : four discourses Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway, Moncure Daniel, 1832-1907 [1832-1907] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 64 p. ; 16 cm. Notes: Contents: I. Human sacrifices -- 2. The daughters of Jephthah -- 3. Children and their Moloch -- 4. The Sabbath-Jugernath -- 5. The martyrdom of reason. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Trübner and Co. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1876 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N178 G3343 Subject The topic of the resource Religion Rationalism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a> This work (Human sacrifices in England : four discourses), identified by <a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a>, is free of known copyright restrictions. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Child Rearing-Moral and Ethical Aspects Children Children's Rights Education Morris Tracts NSS Rationalism Reason Religion and Civil Society Sabbath Social Justice Women-Religious Aspects-Christianity Women's Rights