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A FEW THOUGHTS
ON THE
^hilosopltg of ©toil anb (Suffering,
From the Stand-point of Reason and Intuition.
It is impossible for a reflective mind to
contemplate the wonders of creation with
out feelings of awe and admiration at the
manifestations of wisdom and power dis
played in its marvellous adaptations and
developments. The beauty, the grandeur,
the beneficence, that meet us at every
turn, speak of Intelligence and Design.
The Power that governs the varied pheno
mena of nature is apparently unlimited.
Our conceptions of this Almighty Power
will depend either upon the theo’ogical
education we have received, or upon the
deductions of our own reasoning faculties
from the phenomena of earth-life and expe
rience. Starting from premisses which of
necessity must be, to an extent, hypotheti
cal, we proceed to deduce certain principles
which appear to underlie the mysterious
phenomena of Evil and Suffering.
Almost all religious minds will admit the
following propositions: it is therefore not
intended in this paper to discuss them:—
1. That Deity is an Intelligent Principle,
Almighty in Power, and perfect in Good
ness.
2. That Man is an embodied Intelligence,
limited in Power, and imperfect in Goodness.
3. That Man is free to the extent of his
power.
4. That Man survives the change we call
death.
5. That by far the larger portion of
human experiences are pleasurable.
6. That a very large proportion of Evil
and Suffering may be traced to ignorance,
and to errors arising therefrom.
With the rejection of so-called infallible
revelations, the proofs we have of man’s
immortality are scientifically inconclusive.
The universality of the feeling in favour of
immortality may be regarded as a spiritual
instinct. The feeling, however, is not alto
gether one of intuition, but rests upon a
logical necessity, arising out of the utter
impossibility of reconciling the experiences
of life with the existence of a Ruling Power
of infinite Intelligence and Goodness, except
upon some such hypothesis.
A thoughtful mind can hardly rest satis
fied with a negation. When, from the force
of honest convictions, men are compelled
to reject any particular account of the
origin of Evil and Suffering, they are still
pressed with the necessity of forming some
theory to supply the void thereby occa
sioned. The facts are too painfully selfevident to be overlooked in any sytem of
philosophy men may consciously or uncon
sciously entertain. With a profound con
viction of the impossibility of any human
faculties being able to compass the mind of
Omnipotence, we would, with all reverence,
use the powers given to us in endeavouring
�2
A FEW THOUGHTS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVIL AND SUFFERING,
to discover some beneficent purposes which
Evil and Suffering may serve in the Divine
economy.
Our conceptions of Deity will ever be the
reflex of our ideas of Perfection. The em
bodiment of all that is Powerful, Holy,
Righteous, and Good, is man’s highest
conception of God ; and, wherever these
attributes culminate in a high degree in
any human being, that being becomes
man’s best representation or manifestation
of Deity. The immeasurable distance be
tween the finite representation and the
infinite reality must, however, never be
overlooked. Nature, in all its varied phe
nomena, is a manifestation of the Mind of
God. The laws that govern creation are
the expressions of the Divine Will. Motion,
life, sensation, and intelligence, are exhibi
tions of God’s Wisdom and Power. These
manifestations are probably all that man
can know of his Creator in the present
state of existence.
It is impossible to suppose that the
creation of the Universe and all that it
contains is purposeless, or that Creation
can fail to glorify its Creator. If the glory
of God be the object of Creation, it follows
that a Being of infinite Power and Wisdom
must, of necessity, adopt the best means
for the attainment of His purpose. May
we now, without irreverence or presump
tion, assume a necessity even to Deity ?
From the constitution of our nature, we are
justified, I think, iu saying that, according
to finite conceptions, even Deity could not
possibly be glorified by intelligences who
were not free to give or withhold their
homage and affections. We have no facul
ties for perceiving how Infinite Intelligence
could be satisfied with ought less than the
spontaneous love and worship of His own
intelligent creatures. Here, then, in the
free will of man, appears to be the key
which unlocks many of the mysteries at
tached to the presence of Evil and Suffering
in a world created and governed by supreme
Love and Intelligence.
We postulate, then, the Love of the
creature as the desire of the Creator ; and,
if this hypothesis be correct, it follows,
that the free will of the creature is an
indispensable condition to the spontaneity
and perfection of that Love. If this be
allowed, we may be said to have arrived at
the conception of an adequate purpose in
Creation, viz., the generation, development,
and education of intelligences capable of per
ceiving, appreciating, and enjoying, by the
spontaneous efforts of their own free will,
the Love of their Creator. In this way we
may regard the Creator as providing an out
let for the overflowing warmth of His
Love, in the creation of individualized in
telligences capable of glorifying their Divine
Author, in the appreciation and enjoyment
of the endless manifestations of His Perfec
tions. On our hypothesis, it is necessary
that the will of man, though under laws,
should be absolutely free to the extent
of his power; and experience proves the
truth of this position. Hence arises the
necessity for an education, and this brings
us to the consideration of the plan by which
the Creator, as we conceive, is accomplish
ing His divine purpose.
In considering the phenoifiena of earth
experiences we naturally turn our attention
first to the material Universe in which we
find ourselves, and which, from our point
of view, is regarded as the projection of
the Mind of God into the plane of action,
resulting (possibly, through the condensa
tion of spiritual principles, by a process
incomprehensible by us) in the atoms out
of which the Universe has been developed.
These atoms, under the influence of the
Divine Spirit, fulfil, by chemical changes,
involving concentrations, combinations, and
separations, the will of Him from whom
�FROM THE STAND POINT OF REASON AND INTUITION.
they emanated. It is the constant influx I
of the Eternal Spirit into these atomic con
densations, called matter, which appears to
give rise to the dualism of Life and Death,
Good and Evil, which we see throughout
nature.*
The action and reaction of this dualism
is the pulsation of the heart of Deity, pro- |
ducing and upholding at its every beat the
varied phenomena of mind and matter ;
and thus is evolved, in a perpetual series of
progressive and ascending degrees, the end
less variety of atomic combinations or
organisms of which the Universe, with its
varied productions, is composed ; each at
tracting that which it needs and is capable
of receiving from the fountain of Universal
Spirit ; the only limit being capacity, the
only condition receptivity. Thus, from the
most rudimentary atomic combinations to
the most refined human organism, all draw
from the same illimitable Source that which
they are capable of receiving and appropri
ating ; and this by laws which are immu
table, because infinitely wise.
Inanimate Nature thus derives the Motion
by which all its changes and developments
are effected : this is the character of its
receptivity, and this it attracts from the
energy of the Divine Spirit, which fills all
that is. The vegetable kingdom, by virtue
of its advanced organization, in addition to
Motion, is receptive of Life ; and, to the
extent of its capacity, is filled from the
same Divine source. The animal kingdom,
embracing the properties of the lower or
ganizations, advances a step higher in its
receptive capacity, and attracts to itself
Sensation, answering to the instinctive fa
culties, enabling it to fulfil its part in the
*“In the divine order,” says Emerson, '‘intellect
is primary ; nature secondary. It is the memory of
the mind. That which once existed in intellect as
pure law has now taken a body as nature. It existed
already in the mind in solution : now it has been pre
cipitated, and the bright sediment is the world.”
Divine drama of life; whilst, from the same
inexhaustible source in the progress of de
velopment (or order of creation), the human
organism, in all its endless varieties, attracts
to itself, in addition to the faculties pos
sessed by the lower organisms, all those
Spiritual powers of thought and ratiocina
tion which constitute Man a rational being
— an Embryo Spirit ; having, compared
with the animal world, increased perceptive
powers and a receptive capacity for higher
manifestations of the Divine intelligence.
From the reception of this intelligent
principle by the refined human organism,
arises that which constitutes the difference
between the human and animal kingdoms;
a difference not so much in kind as degree,
viz.: —of enlarged perceptive powers—more
refined susceptibilities, and a more acute
sensitiveness, enabling man, by the exer
cise of these improved faculties, to acquire
a knowledge of the constitution of his nature
and the laws that govern it. From an in
tuitive or emotional feeling, arising out of
the development of the intellectual faculties,
originated, most probably, man’s first con
ception of a Creator or God. As these
increased powers of perception and ratio
cination are evolved, the moral sense be
comes developed, and a knowledge of what
is not inaptly termed Good and Evil, with
its attendant responsibilities, is attained.
Thus, the first rays of Light from the
Divine Intelligence break through the dark
clouds of man’s animal nature (dark by
comparison only), producing within him a
consciousness, to an extent, of the dualism
of that nature, and a recognition, to an
extent, of the Will of the Divine Spirit
“in whom he lives, and moves, and has
his being.”
The Light of the Divine Spirit once re
cognised, Conscience may be said to be
formed; and, however dimly this light may
be discerned during the process of intel
�4
A FEW THOUGHTS ON T1IE PHILOSOPHY OF EVIL AND SUFFERING,
lectual development, to that extent, and law, and can no longer shield himself under
that extent only, is man responsible to God the plea of ignorance. Man may, from ignor
for the action of his Will. Thus arises the ance, err and suffer; but if his conscience
conflict between so-called Good and Evil— reproach him not, he cannot be said to sin.
the higher and the lower Good—the Flesh The silent monitor, once recognized, ever
and the Spirit. This conflict originates in remains a witness and an accuser. In the
the dualism of our nature, educating us by torments of this inward self-condemnation
its action and reaction, through and by and remorse may be traced the chastening
ourselves, in the wise order of Providence, of a Father’s love, educating in suffering the
into the perception of that which alone can will of His wayward and erring child.
The more we search into the phenomena
make us intelligent, wise, good and happy,
of nature, the more impressed do we become
viz.The knowledge and love of God.
The active recognition of the Spiritual with the fixity of the laws that govern its
character of this warfare between the lower every change, and the marvellous adap
and higher natures, of which man, as an tation of means to ends. This produces in
entity, is a compound, may be well defined the observant mind a conviction amounting
as being “born again of the Spirit.” It to absolute certainty that the wisdom and
brings man into conscious contact with the beneficence here displayed cannot be lack
Divine Spirit, and man perceives, as of ing in the higher phenomena of human life
himself, the Will of God in the eternal and destiny. That the Creator is absolutely
principles of Love and Righteousness, which impartial in His government of the world, is
are the points of universal agreement be to the reflective mind so obvious, that it is
tween men of every creed. And here, needless to dwell upon the fact. Were it
as ever in nature, for God is absolutely not so, all science w'ould be at fault, and
impartial, the conditions of receptivity wise men would lose hope if once it could
are dependent upon the capacity of the be proved that the acts of God are capri
Organism and the direction of the Will. cious. On the contrary, the sun shines and
Experience testifies to the fact that, if the the rain falls on the evil and the good alike.
Light of the Divine Spirit is actively lived If this be so, and if it be allowed that all
out, the capacity to receive further light which emanates from the hands of Infinite
(all irrational influences apart) is corres Wisdom must of necessity be perfectly ad
pondingly increased, and this quite inde apted to the purpose it is intended to fulfil,
pendent of creeds or views which, when we are justified in regarding the world in
not the result of personal thought and which we live, with all the varied expe
investigation, are dependent mainly upon riences of humanity, as the best school for
the development and education of free
educational influences.
When the will of man is in harmony with intelligences, who are to work out their
the will of God, there is Peace, no matter own endlessly diversified individualities
what the stage of intellectual development, (which in itself we conceive to be a great
or what theological views its possessor has source of happiness), and develop by and
imbibed. If, on the other hand, the voice through their individual and combined
of Conscience is disregarded, then the light efforts the inherent possibilities of their
of the Spirit becomes obscured, but not ex nature.
Broken laws fail to explain the whole of
tinguished. When once the spirit of man
has perceived the will of God, he is under the mystery of Evil and Suffering, as is evi
�TROM THE STAND-TOINT OF REASON AND INTUITION.
as necessary aids to man, in provoking
efforts which an atmosphere of ease and
security would most assuredly discourage.
Hence, while, on the one hand, the Love
of the Creator is displayed in providing a
series of ever advancing motives for man’s
progressive aspirations, so, on the other
hand, God’s Wisdom is equally displayed
in providing, by laws that may appear
harsh aud cruel, those necessary incentives
to action and effort by attention to which
man’s health, progress, and happiness, are
assuredly to be attained. Evil—that is,
lower good-and Suffering are the insepar
able conditions of sensitive organic life.
Without the aids of Evil and Suffering we
are unable to conceive any possible means
by which Man, as a free agent, could have
attained to the higher good, or appre
hended Truth and Goodness. Evil and
Suffering are the levers by which God
moves the world.
We are apt to overlook the compensatory
nature of the laws that prevail in connec
tion with Evil and Suffering. The unde
veloped mau has pleasures unappreciated
by the man of refinement. The hardships
ho is thought to endure are more apparent
than real, and his wants are comparatively
few. The anxieties attending material
prosperity, the nervous susceptibilities of
the cultured intellect, and the acute sen
sitiveness to pain of the refined organism,
are absent to a great extent in the ignorant
and undeveloped. The so called evil man,
whilst lacking the power of appreciating
and enjoying the higher pleasures attend
ant upon a perception and appreciation of
the higher good, is nevertheless compen
sated to a degree seldom duly estimated, in
the enjoyment he derives from the gratifica
tion of the appetites of his lower nature.
On the other hand, it must be allowed that
* “ The law of growth,” says a recent writer, “ is the finest, the noblest, and the holiest men
this, that all progress is preceded by calamity, that
this world has produced, have been mould
all improvement is based upon defect.”
dent in accidents by natural phenomena,
and the inevitable decay of the organism,
with its attendant weaknesses and ailments.
In some way, Evil and Suffering are neces
sary accompaniments to progress. Why it
is so we do not know ; but if we are able
to discover Love and Wisdom in the men
tal sufferings and remorse attending the
violation of those moral laws which are re
vealed to all in whom Conscience is formed,
we are justified in concluding that the lower
form of physical suffering is also the best
accomplishment of the Divine ends.
Where the intellect is undeveloped or
the conscience seared by the vacillation of
the human Will, producing a tendency to
physical disorganization or mental retro
gression, we can conceive how beneficent
may be, and probably is, human sensitive
ness to pain. The experience of pain leads
to the investigation of its cause, and this
tends to reflection, and ultimates in know
ledge of a physical and mental character,
the benefit of which, in the process of
human education, is incalculable. This
knowledge is cumulative; and, when men
are free enough to think and investigate
for themselves, and to live in harmony
with the Divine laws, progressively un
folded to the earnest searchers after Truth,
then may the first victory over evil and
suffering be said to be won
As, in the evolution of the world, physi
cal convulsions and disasters are the means
by which, in the inscrutable wisdom of
Providence, Progress, Order, and Beauty
are attained, so, in the development and
education of mind, does it seem a necessity
that human effort should be provoked by
convulsions and catastrophes, which com
pel observation, reflection, and effort.*
Thus considered, Evil and Suffering appear
�6
A PEW THOUGHTS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVIL AND SUFFERING,
ed and purified in the furnace of affliction
and suffering.
How could man know aught of sympathy
and love, were it not for sorrow and suffer
ing which draw them out ? How could man
appreciate the beautiful as beauty, if there
were nothing in the shape of contrast to
guide him to recognize it ? It appears im
possible that self-educated free intelligences
could ever have attained to a knowledge
of such circumstances as Virtue, Pleasure,
Peace, Knowledge, and Truth, without
coming into contact with their opposites,
Vice, Pain, Strife, Ignorance, and Error.
The one is learned by and through cont.ic'.
with the other. Thus, the so-called Evils
of life may truly be looked upon as lower
Goods. Again, the Good of one generation
has been the Evil of the next. The Good of
the ancient Hebrews was to destroy their
enemies. The Good of Jesus was to love
them. By far the larger portion of the hu
man race are still under the influence of
the Evil (lower Good), and desire to destroy
their enemies. The time will probably
come when the religion of Jesus and other
noble reformers will be understood, and the
higher Good they advocated be actively
displayed by the enlightened governments
of a civilized world.
The principle of selfishness, inherent in
sentient life, is an absolute necessity to its
progress, and affords an apt illustration of
the truth of the proposition that all socalled evil may be regarded as undeveloped
good. Selfishness, born of sensation, gene
rates desire, desire provokes action, action
stimulates thought, and the exercise of
thought (observation and reflection) deve
lops intelligence. Indigenous to the soil of
intelligence are those spiritual faculties or
perceptions which correspond to the moral
sense, in the exercise of which man inspires
eternal principles from the all-pervading
Spirit of Deity. The evolution and cultiva
tion of these spiritual faculties appear to
be at once the object and business of life.
Man thus learns by and through the selfish
ness of his animal nature, to perceive, by
comparison, the higher good of disinterested
unselfishness or love in its highest (spiritual)
sense.
Man, thus, is born in ignorance, and de
veloped gradually from the lower Good to
the higher, that he may learn for himself,
through the experiences of life, which are
alternately painful and pleasurable, of his
own free will to choose the higher and
forsake the lower Good. The evils and
sufferings of life from this point of view
may be truly and intelligently regarded as
beneficent necessities, through and by which
man is enabled to perceive God—first, in His
works, then, in the operation of His laws,
evidences of His will—and, finally, rise to
the power of appreciating and enjoying the
endless manifestations of the Divine love
and perfections. If we can thus trace, with
our present limited capacities and know
ledge, evidences of wisdom and goodness in
the so-called evils and sufferings of hu
manity, constituting a beneficent necessity |
in the development and education of free I
intelligences, we may reasonably infer that
the sufferings of the animal kingdom are I
neither vindictive nor purposeless. We are
here more in the dark, from the fact of our 1
being unable to enter into the experiences i
of the animal creation, or to gauge their
sensitiveness to pleasure or pain. Change h
and decay, life and death, good and evil, |,
certainly seem inseparable conditions to the |s
combination of spirit with matter, in its la
early stage of development. Thus, with |di
animals as with man, the individual amount Bn
of suffering can only be fairly reckoned in
i
the account; and again the term of suffering I: i
must not certainly be regarded without refer- »■■si
ence to the pleasure of existence. In the Ijj
case of slaughtered animals, or those who
�FROM THE STAND-POINT OF REASON AND INTUITION.
are the victims of beasts of prey, they pro
bably have none of those sufferings by sus
pense and anticipation which must be far
greater than the sudden, unexpected,
and, perhaps, unconscious separation of
life from the organism. In addition
to this, from the lack of sensitive
ness in the organisms themselves, the
sufferings of animals may possibly be re
duced to the minimum. The laws relating
to the conjunction of spirit with matter (if
God be impartial) are compensatory. The
capacity for enjoyment is coextensive with
the sensitiveness to pain ; hence, the more
refined and complex the organism the
greater the capacity for pleasure, the more
sensitive is it to pain. On the other hand,
the lower and simpler the organic combina
tion the less acutely it experiences either
pleasure or pain. Our ignorance as to the
experiences and destiny of the lower king
doms makes it more difficult for us to trace
a cause for their undoubted sufferings ; but
that there is no suffering without a reason,
a purpose, and a compensation, is shown to
us by those beneficent results of suffering
we are enabled to trace in the kingdom to
which we belong.
To sum up our thoughts. It appears
that all creation derives from the Divine
Spirit, who upholds and governs it, that
which it is adapted to receive and appro
priate in order to fulfil its destiny. Man,
an intelligent individuality, derives from
the Divine Energy which fills the Universe
that Life which the condition of his animal
organization enables him to receive and ap
propriate ; and, from the Divine Intelli
gence, that Light which from his condition
physically., mentally, and morally, he is ca
pable of receiving and appropriating. Phy
sical conditions are dependent upon the
bodily organism which, though capable of
considerable modification and improvement
by the action of man’s free will, neverthe
7
less, to an extent, retains its inherent in
dividuality. This involves an endless va
riety of receptive capacities, a wise and
beneficent arrangement, contributinggreatly
to human happiness. The condition of men
tal receptivity depends upon the degree of
intellectual development and mental culture,
the extent of a man’s knowledge, and the
perfect freedom he enjoys to observe, reflect,
and investigate. The condition of man’s
moral receptivity is dependent upon the ac
tion of his will. When a man is honestly
living out his conscientious convictions as to
what is Good and True, that man (with per
fect intellectual freedom) must of necessity
be progressing in the knowledge and love of
his Creator; and, where this is combined
with a healthy organism, we are justified
in regarding that man as possessing as much
of human happiness as humanity is capable
of enjoying. Thus, simply stated:—We
have what we are capable of receiving,
and are what we make ourselves. The in
comprehensible Intelligence, whom we call
God, governs His creation by laws that are
infinitely wise. The apparent contradic
tions and inexplicable expedients that
appear to be adopted in the evolution of a
world and the development of individualized
intelligences are the conditions by which the
immutable laws of God are transforming a
nebula of chaotic Atoms into a World of
beauty, grandeur, and intelligence, in
whose womb are generated, and on whose
bosom are developed, educated and puri
fied, immortal spirit-entities, who, in the
furnaces of affliction and suffering, and in
the warfare against the propensities and
passions of their lower nature, are made
thereby meet to glorify their Creator in an
active obedience to His will, in which is
involved their own everlasting happi
ness.
If this is clear to us, it follows that the
sufferings of the Animal Kingdom are also
�8
A FEW THOUGHTS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVIL AND SUFFERING/
the results of wise and beneficent laws, em
ploying apparently cruel agents in the ac
complishment of equally benevolent ends.
Under any circumstances, the difficulties are
enormously increased on the theory of Evil
and Suffering being the result of a single act
of disobedience committed in the infancy of
the race.* Earth-Life thus appears to be
the first chapter in a Book the pages of
which are endless, the theme of which is
the Wisdom, Power, and Goodness of God,
and its earliest teachings the rudimentary
principles of Spirit existence. To attain a
knowledge of these principles, appears to be
the work of every individual soul, and the
means best adapted to the purpose are, in
the wisdom of God, the experiences inci
dental to this stage of existence. In the
action and reaction of God’s immutable laws
(material and spiritual), men are ever learn
ing lessons, the full value of which, like
children at school, they will realize in after
life.
In a recent essay by Moncure D. Conway
on “ Theism, Atheism, and the Problem of
Evil,” he says, —“ Seeing so much, we re
member that we have come to it only very
gradually. We know that the human mind
once saw disorder in many regions where it
now sees order; that knowledge reveals
good in many things which ignorance held
altogether evil, consequently we are war
ranted in believing that more and more ex
perience, and increasing knowledge, will
make clear the surrounding realm of dark
ness.” .... “ If we could now by a
word remove from the world all that has
been done for it by pain and evil, we should
behold man relapsing from the height he
has won by struggle with unfriendly ele
ments and influences, falling back from
point to point, losing one after another the
energies gained by mastering evil, and sink
ing through all the stages of retrogression
to some miserable primal form too insigni
ficant to be attacked, too nerveless to suffer. ”
. . • . ‘ ‘ But even now this darkness
rests only upon the final cause of evil, that
is, upon the inquiry why the ends secured
by evil were not reached by a more merci
ful method. If, in reply to the question,
Why is not the universe painless ? we must
answer, We do not know. In reply to the
question, What good end does evil serve ?
we may answer, We know very well.”
I am here reminded of a question put to a
distressed parent by a little girl during a
prolonged and painful illness, ‘‘Why does
Maggie sutler so?” The parent was wise,
consequently silent. Religion may tranquilize, intuition whisper hope, and philo
sophyproduce resignation; but reason is here
out of its depth. We can but say,—we do not
know. Theories are propounded, and it is
impossible for thoughtfuT’taen, consciously
or unconsciously, to avoid entertaining some
views with regard to the presence of Evil
and Suffering in a World created by Infinite
Wisdom, governed by Infinite Love, and
upheld by Infinite Power; but so long as
we are under the influence of reason, and
alive to the dictates of conscience, we can
* The sincere evangelical Christian believes that not rest satisfied with any explanation of
the Evils and Sufferings of men and animals, and the
natural dissolution of living organisms, are all the re this mysterious phenomenon which involves
sults of “The Fall”; that death leads to an eternity
the contradiction of the highest and noblest
of misery for all who are unable intellectually to ap
impulses of our nature, or the absence of
prehend and consciously to lay hold of such doc
trines as “The Trinity” and “The Atonement.” It those principles of Righteousness and Jus
must be left to the reason and conscience of intelli
tice which are the intuitions of the civilized
gent men to judge on which side the balance of proba
conscience.
bility lies.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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A few thoughts on the philosophy of evil and suffering, from the stand-point of reason and intuition
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Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 8 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed in double columns.
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[s.n.]
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[187-?]
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G5358
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Rationalism
Evil
Ethics
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[Unknown]
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (A few thoughts on the philosophy of evil and suffering, from the stand-point of reason and intuition), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
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English
Conway Tracts
Evil
Reason
Suffering
-
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252,1
ATHEISM
A SPECTRE.
WITH READING FROM MAX MULLER'S SIXTH
HIBBERT LECTURE.
SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL, JUNE 23, 1878.
BY
MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A.
PRICE TWOPENCE,
�LONDON 5
PRINTED BY WATERLOW AND SONS LIMITED
LONDON WALL.
�READING.
(From Max Müller's Sixth Hibbert Lecture?)
In the bright sky they (the ancient Aryans) perceived an Illumi
nator ; in the all-encircling firmament an Embracer ; in the roar
of thunder and in the violence of the storm they felt the pre
sence of a Shouter and ®f furious Strikers, and out of rain they
created an Indra, or giver of rain. With this last step, however,
came also the first re-action, the first doubt So long as the
thoughts of the ancient Aryan worshippers had something mani
fest or tangible to rest on, they might, no doubt, in their religious
aspirations, far exceed the limits of actual observation ; still no
one could ever question the existence of what they chose to call
their Devas or their gods. The mountains and rivers were always
there to speak for themselves, and if the praises bestowed upon
them seemed to be excessive, they might be toned down, without
calling in question the existence of these gods. The same applied
to the sky, the sun, and'the dawn. They also were always there,
and though they might be called mere visions and appearances, yet
the human mind is so made that it admits of no appearance
without admitting at the same time something that appears, some
reality or substance. But when we come to the third class of
gods, not only intangible, but invisible, the case is different.
Indra, as the giver of rain, Rudra, as the thunderer, were com
pletely creations of the human mind. All that was given was
' the rain, and the thunder ; but there was nothing in nature that
�4
could be called an appearance of the god himself, who thundered
or who sent the rain. Man saw their work, but that was all: no
one could point to the sky or the sun or the dawn or anything
else visible, to attest the existence of Indra and Rudra. We saw
before that Indra, for the very reason that there was nothing in
nature to which he cluDg, nothing visible that could arrest his
growth, developed more than all the other gods into a personal,
dramatic, and mythological being. More battles are recorded,
more stories are told of Indra than of any other Vedic god, and
this helps us to understand how it was that he seemed even to the
ancient poets to have ousted Dyaus, the Indian Zeus, from his
supremacy. But a Nemesis was to come. The very god who
seemed for a time to have thrown all the others into the shade,
whom many would call, if not the supreme, at least the most
popular deity of the Veda, was the first god whose very exist
ence was called in question. . . Thus we read, “Offer praise
to Indra if you desire booty, true praise, if he truly exists.
Some one says : There is no Indra ! Who has seen him ? Whom
shall we praise ? ” In this hymn the poet turns round, and, intro
ducing Indra himself, makes him say : “ Here I am O worship
per ! Behold me here ! In might I overcome all creatures.” But
we read again in another hymn : ‘ ‘ The terrible one of whom
they ask where he is, and of whom they say that he is not: he
takes away the riches of his enemies like the stakes at a game ;
Believe in him, ye men, for he is indeed Indra.” When we thus
see the old god Dyaus antiquated by Indra, Indra himself denied,
and Prajapati falling to pieces, and when another poet declares
in so many words that all the gods are but names, we might imagine
that the stream of religious thought, which sprang from a trust in
mountains and rivers, then proceeded to an adoration of the sky
and the sun, then grew into a worship of invisible gods, such as
the sender of thunderstorms and the giver of rain had well nigh
�5
finished its course. We might expect in India the same catas
trophe which in Iceland the poets of the Edda always predicted,
the Twilight of the gods, preceding the destruction of the world.
We seem to have reached the stage when Henotheism, after try
ing in vain to grow into polytheism on the one side, or mono
theism on the other, would by necessity end in Atheism, or a
denial of all the gods or Devas.
So it did. Yet Atheism is not the last word of Indian reli
gion, though it seemed to be so for a time in the triumph of
Buddhism. The word itself—Atheism—is out of place as applied
to the religion of India. The ancient Hindus had neither the
0eos of the Homeric singers, nor the
of the Eclectic philo
sophers. Their Atheism, such as it was, would more correctly
be called Adevism, or a denial of the old Devas. Such a denial,
however, of what was once believed, but could be believed no
longer, so far from being the destruction, is in reality the vital
principle of all religion. The ancient Aryans felt from the
beginning—aye, it may be more in the beginning than afterwards
—the presence of a Beyond, of an Infinite, of a Divine, or what
ever else we may call it now ; and they tried to grasp and com
prehend it, as we all do, by giving it name after name. They
thought they had found it in the Mountains or Rivers, in the Dawn,
in the Sun, in the Sky, in the Heaven, and the Heaven-Father.
But after every name there came the No! What they looked for
was like the Mountains, like the Rivers, like the Dawn, like the
Sky, like theFather : but it was not the Mountains, «¿/the Rivers»
not the Dawn, not the Sky, it was not the Father. It was some
thing of all that, but it was also more, it was beyond all that.
Even such general names as Asura or Deva could no longer
satisfy them. There may be Devas and Asuras, they said, but
we want more, we want a higher word, a purer thought. They
denied the bright Devas, not because they believed or desired
�6
less, but because they believed and desired more than the bright
Devas. There was a conception working in their mind: and the
cries of despair were but the harbingers of a new birth. So it
has been, so it always will be. There is an Atheism which is
unto death, there is another Atheism which is the very life
blood of all true faith. It is the power of giving up what in
our best, our most honest moments, we know to be no longer
true; it is the readiness to replace the less perfect, however
dear it may have been to us, by the more perfect, however
much it may be detested, as yet, by others. It is the true self
surrender, the true self-sacrifice, the truest trust in truth, the
truest faith. Without that Atheism no new religion, no reform,
no reformation, no resuscitation, would ever have been possible;
without that Atheism no new life is possible for any one of us.
In the eyes of the Brahmans, Buddha was an Atheist; in the
eyes of the Athenian Judges, Socrates was an Atheist; in the
eyes of the Pharisees, St. Paul was an Atheist; in the eyes of
Swiss Judges, Servetus was an Atheist; and why? Because
every one of them was yearning for a higher and purer conception
of God than what he had learnt as a child.
Let no one touch religion, be he clergyman or layman, who is
afraid of being called an Infidel or an Atheist—aye, who is afraid
of asking himself, Do I believe in a God, or do I not ? Let me
quote the words of a great divine, lately deceased, whose honesty
and piety have never been questioned: “God,” he says,'“is a
great word. He who feels and understands that will judge more
mildly and more justly of those who confess that they dare not
say that they believe in God.” Now, I know perfectly well that
what I have said just now will be misunderstood, will possibly
be misinterpreted. I know I shall be accused of having defended
and glorified Atheism, and of having represented it as the last
and highest point which man can reach in an evolution of
�7
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9
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,
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religious thought. Let it be so. If there are but a few here present
who understand what I mean by honest Atheism, and who know
how it differs from vulgar Atheism, I shall feel satisfied, for I
know that to understand this distinction will often help us in the
hour of our sorest need. It will teach us that, while the old
leaves, the leaves of a bright and happy spring, are falling, and
all seems wintry, frozen and dead within and around us, there is
and there must be a new spring in store for every warm and
honest heart. It will teach us that honest doubt is the deepest
spring of honest faith; and that he only who has lost can find.
�I
�ATHEISM.
The boldness of Max Muller’s defence of a faith
ful Atheism which I have read you, does not consist
in its thought so much as in the word he adopts.
The thought is that which sad experience has revealed
to many a reverential thinker in the past as well as
the present. William Penn, the Quaker, said that he
who speaks worthily of God is very like to be called
an Atheist. We owe high honour to the man who
has courage to proclaim in Westminster Abbey the
truth which hitherto has been uttered by the despised
and rejected. But it remains doubtful whether even
the independence and fidelity of the Hibbert lecturer,
and his learning, will be able to recover a word so
fraught with misunderstandings as the word “Atheism.”
If mankind used such words etymologically, “Atheism ”
might be restored ; but they do not; and it is to be
feared that as the name of Jesus could not save
“Jesuitism,” and the name of Christ cannot save
“Christian,” so in another direction the fact that
“ Atheist ” means one who denies the gods of common
�IO
belief, and is without any theory of God, cannot out
weigh the popular meaning of the word. To the
masses Atheist means a godless man, and a godless
man means a bad man. Because of that acquired
accent of immorality Theologians seem fond of using
the word. It is, therefore, a bit of debased currency,
and, as I think, will one day drop out of use. Yet
many excellent people, like Max Müller, see that
while theologically the word carries a vulgar mean
ing, morally it represents the right of man to grow. In
this sense it represents the freedom of man to deny
any and every god which others set up. If that right
had not been exercised we should still be worshipping
Siva or Odin, or the Virgin Mary. The same authority which w’ould to day silence the Atheist before
Jehovah, would have silenced Paul before Diana of
Ephesus. “ Atheism ” is a flag that means unlimited
right of denial, and that involves the right of progress
and the pursuit of truth.
Many liberal thinkers accept the epithet, not as
dogma—not as antitheism—but because they mean to
stand by their freedom, and will not cower before
popular clamour. Trelawney asked the poet Shelley
why, with his high pantheism, he called himself
“ Atheist.” Shelley replied that he did not choose it.
That name was the gauntlet they threw down, and he
picked it up. In that heroic spirit, some still call
�themselvesil Atheists,” even at risk of being misunder
stood. And it must be acknowledged that the epithet
will carry with it a certain accent of moral honesty and
courage, so long as intellectual liberty is met with
menace. When that lingering struggle is over and
past, and the victory of free thought is completely
won, as won it must be, it will no longer be any sur
render of their colours if such brave men and women
consult with their allies to find whether there may not
be a broader, a more universal, banner to represent
our common liberty than that marked “Atheism.” But,
before that time can arrive, earnest and thinking
people must give up their horror of “ Atheism.” That
name now means to most people what devil meant
to our ancestors, and it is equally mythical, unreal,
fantastic. Even many so-called liberal people have
not sufficiently thrown off their theological training to
be released from terror of this latest phantom.
Stat nominis umbra. It is the shadow of a name.
That I propose to prove to you. The laws of nature
have been sufficiently explored to turn the devil into
a grotesque superstition; the laws of mental and
moral nature are sufficiently known to lay this spectre
of “ Atheism ” which has followed him. The so-called
“Atheist” is no more outside psychological laws than
he is bodily outside physical laws. Moral and mental
facts hold him as much as gravitation holds him.
�12
Those facts he may name one way and you another,
but where the reality is the same shall we be tricked
by names ?
There are cases in which the reality is not the
same. A man may believe in a three-headed deity,
in a tri-personal deity, in Jove, Jupiter, Adonai, or
some other celestial thunderer; such belief is not of
thought but authority, it does not pretend to rest upon
fact and evidence, but on tradition or revelation. We
must at present leave all that out of the question.
What we are now concerned with is the difference
between those who, exercising the same reason, in the
same method, upon the same facts, in them and outside
them, state their conclusions differently. One calls
himself 11 Theist,” the other calls himself “ Atheist.”
These words are opposite. But are the realities under
them opposite ?
To find out that we must ask what is in the con
sciousness of each when he so names his conclusion—
assuming that conclusion to be divested of all tradition
in the one case, and of all mere pluck in the other in
each case a genuine product of reason resting on
evidence.
What then is in the mind of the intentionally
rational Theist when he says: “ I believe there is a
God ” ? There is in his consciousness a concept of
law and order in the universe; there is a recognition
�i3
of facts in himself, reason, love, the sense of right, the
ideal, the beautiful; he reasons that because these
things are in him they must be in nature, for he is in
nature, and of nature ; and combining these inward
realities with the law and order of the universe, and
with the tendency of the world to his ideals, the
Theist generalises them all in the word “ God.”
But here many a Theist would break in and say:
“Your statement is incomplete. I believe much
more than that. I believe that God is a personal
Being; I believe that He created the universe; I
believe that He hears and answers prayer.” To which
I reply: “ No doubt you believe these other things ;
but the question is not what you believe, but what you
think, what is purely the product of your reason acting
on evidence. A Catholic believes in his Madonna as
strongly as any Theist in the personality of God. But
what evidence does either give us for such belief?
None at all. What facts show that the world ever was
created? Nobody pretends any. What evidence that
God hears and answers prayer? Absolutely none.”
But then this believing Theist answers : “ It is true
I cannot actually prove the truth of my belief in these
particulars. It may be sentiment, but must sentiment
count for nothing ? What would life be if everything
depended on cold logic ? I feel that I have a Heavenly
Father with whom I can hold communion.”
�14
Very well; but now comes along our man who has
not that feeling at all. He says he feels sure that the
world was never created; that if there were a God
who answered prayer the world would know less
misery; and that he can imagine no personality of
God that would not make him a huge man.
“ Then you are an Atheist! ” cries our believing
Theist.
“ If to disbelieve your private god be Atheism, I
am.”
11 Then I will have nothing to do with you,” the
Theist may say.
“ I am much obliged to you,” the Atheist may
reply. “ In old times they used to have a good deal
to do with us ; it is something to be let alone.”
But now let us cross-examine this Atheist, in his
turn. li Do you believe in the laws of nature ? ” “I
do.” 11 Do you believe in reason? ” “ I do.” “ Do
you possess the sense of right, acknowledge the
sacredness of love, reverence your ideal of truth,
goodness, and beauty ? ” “ These make my moral
and intellectual nature; I can not help believing in
them.” “ Do you believe in the progress of mankind ? ”
“ My life is devoted to it.”
Now, another question—“ Taking all these things
together, what do they sum up in your mind ? ” “A
universe, or nature.”
�15
“Would you mind calling it God?” “Yes; I
object.” “ And why ? ” “ Because most persons when
they say ‘ God ’ mean something very different, and
they would understand me as believing what I do not
believe, and what cannot be proved true. In India
they would understand me as believing in Vishnu on
his Serpent; in Turkey they would think I meant
Allah of the Koran; here some would think I meant
Jehovah, others that I believed in the Trinity, and yet
others that I believed in an omnipotent sovereign
Man reigning over the world.”
“ Then what our Theist calls your ‘ Atheism ’ means
only that you disbelieve all those particular personifi
cations which men have imagined reigning over the
universe, while you do accept all the facts they can
show for their theories ? ”
“ That is what it amounts to. I travel harmoniously
with the Theist so long as he speaks of reason, love,
truth, law, conscience, for these things I know. I
still journey with him when he talks of the vast realm
of the unknown, and of truths and realities that may
be there beyond my grasp ; but when he sets up his
own theory about what is in that unknown, and de
mands that I shall believe that all the same as if it were
proved fact, I am compelled to say I am not convinced.
Then he calls me an Atheist and leaves me—probably
hates me.”
�i6
Now, it is perfectly certain that there is no actuality
in the mind of one of these men that is not in that of
the other. As their eyes see by the same sunshine,
and their lungs breathe the same air, their reason and
rectitude are the same. Yet are they widely sundered—
separated as by an abyss—so that we have the
anomaly of an army of former comrades winning their
common liberty only to use it in fighting each other.
Assuredly there is a serious fault here, perhaps more
faults than one. One is the slowness with which
liberal thinkers raise their hearts to the standard of
their intelligence. In asserting the liberty of reason
it would appear that many of them did not mean to
be taken at their word. That was much the way
with some of the Fathers of the Reformation. Luther
affirmed the right of private judgment, but was aghast
when he found people carrying it a line farther than
himself, and said human nature was like a drunken
man on a horse who, when set up straight on one side,
toppled over on the other. John Calvin too asserted
the right of private judgment. His idea seems to
have been that men -were perfectly free to think as
they pleased, and he was perfectly free to burn them
if their opinions did not please him.
After what happened to Servetus thinkers became
prudent; they followed Erasmus who compared himself
to Peter following his Lord afar oft. But at last the
cock crew. Thinkers took up their cross.
�i7
After many martyrdoms of the best men our laws
have largely, though not fully, proclaimed the freedom
of reason and conscience. But Orthodoxy has never
conceded it. Dogma has been reluctantly compelled
to transfer the faggot and stake by which free
opinion was punished from this world to the next;
and in this world still treats disbelievers as people who
ought to be burned, and will be burned.
But those who call themselves liberal—liberal Chris
tians and Theists—are persons who have avowed the
conditions of freedom in good faith, and if they now
recoil from the inevitable results of those conditions
it is but natural that freethinkers should say they have
not the courage of their principles.
I do not think that explains the whole case ; but it
is natural that it should be so said, and that the anta
gonism of freethinkers should be thereby intensified.
The reserve or hostility of Unitarians and Theists
towards Atheists, so called, is not altogether result of
timidity. They themselves have a severe conflict with
the orthodox, one largely involving their social rela
tions, and they do not wish to be compromised by being
supposed to hold views they do not hold. They
know that men are apt to be judged by the company
they keep, and so they keep aloof from those whose
opinions seem to them extreme and untrue.
Yet are they wrong in this. They are throwing
�i8
their weight in favour of the discredited method of
intolerance, and against the high principle they have
espoused—intellectual liberty. They cannot serve
two masters. They cannot claim freedom for them
selves against the orthodox, then turn and deny it as
against the Atheists. And it is a denial of freedom
when we concede it verbally but treat it when exercised
with aversion or contempt. The moderate liberal
should beware lest in his care not to compromise
himself he does compromise that great and wide prin
ciple of freedom on which he and the Atheist alike
depend. Let him know too that his god is debased
when set against mental independence ; and so long
as any Theism excommunicates any honest thinker it
not only renders Atheism necessary, but lowers itself
beneath that Atheism. For surely that god is only an
idol not yet mouldered, who is supposed to care more
for recognition of his personal existence than for
charity and the independence of the human mind.
Fundamentally, all alienations in the ranks of liberal
people result from the survival in half of them of the
ancient error, that some moral character inheres in
mere opinion. There is a sense in which a man is
responsible for his opinions; he is responsible for the
pains he takes to find the truth, and responsible for
honest utterance of the thing he holds true. But it is
a great and grievous error to suppose that a man can
�19
be morally bound to accept any belief whether he has
reason to believe it or not. For example, to tell a
man he ought to believe in God is like telling a
woman she ought to love her husband. If she has a
husband, and if that husband is worthy of love, and
wins her love, the exhortation to love him is superflu
ous; if otherwise, all the exhortation in the world
cannot enable here to love one who is unloveable. Or,
we may say, to tell a man it is his duty to believe in
God is like lecturing oxygen on its duty to combine
with hydrogen at the moment when galvanism has
decomposed the two.
The liberty of reason being introduced among the
old creeds its effects must be accepted. It can no
more be scolded than any other force in nature. The
thinker must follow his thought, the reasoner must
believe what he finds reason to believe, as the lover
must love what he or she is impelled to love. If the
thinking Theist would convince the thinking Atheist
of a personalised Deity, he must introduce a force
adapted to combine his proposition with the mind to
be convinced. It must be a rational force if it is to
affect the reason. Contempt is not a rational force
—rather it is a confession that there is no rational
force. It is falling back on the old dogmatic and
coercive principle which, if it prevailed, would suppress
all liberty and restore the faggot and the Inquisition.
�20
The unity which I believe possible among the sons
of freedom lies in the spirit of freedom and the spirit
of truth. The position of the simple Theist is not even
yet so popular as to require no sacrifices to maintain
it shall he not respect the still greater sacrifices made
by the man who is denounced as Atheist ? He may
not like the word Atheist; I do not; for I believe
that wherever there is such self-sacrifice, such fidelity
rising above selfishness, there is a spirit essentially
divine. But shall men be blinded by a name—a
word ? Can they not see beyond all phrases that the
spirit in which a man, even an Atheist, earnestly seeks
truth, and bravely stands by what he believes truth—
the spirit which for right, for freedom and justice, casts
away all interests and all ease, toiling, living, suffering
for his ideal right—O can they not see that such bear
in their bleeding hands the very stigmata of Truth’s
own martyrs ? Can we not all see how far above our
doctrines and definitions rises this fidelity of our time,
though it be called infidelity now as it was called im
morality in Socrates and Beelzebub in (Jhrist—while it
was then, is now, the spirit which in all history has been
leading mankind from thraldom to liberty, from dark
ness to light ? If our Theism does not see that spirit, if
our Theism cannot clasp to its heart all hearts animated
by that spirit, be sure it is a mere relic of the past—
some fragment not yet crumbled of ancient supersti
�tion; be sure that the only true God is the God of the
living—and they are the living whose lives are con
secrated to truth and right, however they may be
named, or be they nameless.
Theistic friend, your special theory will pass away.
The highest mind of the past was not able to frame
a god which you can worship unmodified, and you
cannot frame—none living can conceive—an image
which will not be fossil in a few centuries. Nay,
your Theos may be even fortunate if it can be quietly
dismissed before higher light without being degraded
by its efforts to resist that light, sounding war-cries
against earnest thinkers, and gradually taking on the
base insignia of the many Idols, once Ideals, that
kept not their first estate.
I was lately examining a devil carved on Notre
Dame—a hideous creature crushing human beings
beneath his feet. I thought, how hast thou fallen, O
Lucifer, son of the morning ! Thou too wert once a
light-bringer and a god ! But even so must fall all
personifications which try to crush and menace the
reason and nature of man. Just upon the head of
this horrid Notre Dame devil—exactly between his
horns—a little bird has built its nest, and laid its eggs,
with the sky’s soft blue upon them : and as I write it
is probably gathering its young under its wing, and
feeding them, and on the head of that personified
�22
wrath of a god, fearless and free goes on the work of
nature, the divine mystery of life and love.
The Theos of the Theist may wear a halo to-day,
but it depends on his worshippers what that halo shall
be when the personification passes away before another,
or before the eternal Love which vaults above all per
sonifications. That halo may become an immortal ideal
if it mean love to all • but such haloes have generally
turned to horns, and the god of the Theist to-day need
only denounce reason and hate freethinkers to become
quite as grotesque a figure as that Notre Dame
and take the place of that Atheism which now makes
a devil for so many. But above all such tyrannous
forms on their heads, between their finally powerless
horns—the ancient mystery and beauty of Life will
go on. Love will still gather its young under its
wings. Mothers will feed their babes with tenderer
thoughts and purer ideals. Reason will work on;
men and women will think and aspire, will save and be
saved from actual hells regardless of fictitious ones;
the unnamed, uncomprehended, eternal spirit of nature
and the heart will suffer no decay—but ascend for
evermore.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Atheism : a spectre : with a reading from Max Muller's sixth Hibbert Lecture, South Place Chapel, June 23, 1878
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Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 22 p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Printed by Waterlow and Sons, London Wall. Part of Morris Misc. Tracts 1. With a reading from F. Max Muller's sixth Hibbert Lecture 'On henotheism, polytheism, monotheism and atheism' given at Westminster Abbey in June 1878.
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Atheism
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Atheism : a spectre : with a reading from Max Muller's sixth Hibbert Lecture, South Place Chapel, June 23, 1878), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Atheism
Belief and Doubt
Free Thought
Morris Tracts
Reason
Theism
-
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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
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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.
��
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Human sacrifices in England : four discourses
Creator
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Conway, Moncure Daniel, 1832-1907 [1832-1907]
Description
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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.
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Trübner and Co.
Date
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1876
Identifier
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N178
G3343
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Religion
Rationalism
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Human sacrifices in England : four discourses), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
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
-
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Egotisms
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Goodman, D.
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Collation: [1]-8 p. ; 25 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Modern Thinker, July 1870.
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[s.n.]
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1870
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G5728
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Positivism
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English
Conway Tracts
Positivism
Reason
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NATIONALSECULARSOCIETY
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FAITH AND FACT
A LETTER TO
THE BEV. HENBY M. FIELD, D.D.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.
------- «-------
REPRINTED PROM
THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
(November 1887).
Price Twopence.
LONDON:
PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28 Stonecutter Street, E.C.
1890.
�LONDON:
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY G. W. FOOTE
28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
�FAITH AND FACT,
My Dear Mr. Field,—T answer your letter because it is manly
candid and generous. It is not often that a minister of the
gospel of universal benevolence speaks of an unbeliever except in
terms of reproach, contempt and hatred. The meek are often
malicious. The statement in your letter that some of your
brethren look upon me as a monster on account of my unbelief,
tends to show that those who love God are not always the
friends of their fellow men.
Is it not strange that people who admit that they ought to be
eternally damned, that they are by nature totally depraved, and
that there is no soundness or health in them, can be so arro
gantly egotistic as to look upon others as “ monsters ” ? And
yet “some of your brethren,” who regard unbelievers as infamous,
rely for salvation entirely on the goodness of another, and expect
to receive as alms an eternity of joy.
The first question that arises between us, is as to the inno
cence of honest error—as to the right to express an honest
thought.
You must know that perfectly honest men differ on many im
portant subjects. Some believe in free trade, others are the
advocates of protection, there are honest Democrats and sincere
Republicans. How do you account for these differences ? Edu
cated men, presidents of colleges, cannot agree upon questions
capable of solution—'questions that the mind can grasp, concern
ing which the evidence is open to all, and where the facts can be
with accuracy ascertained. How do you explain this ? If such
differences can exist consistently with the good faith of those
who differ, can you not conceive of honest people entertaining
different views on subjects about which nothing can be positively
known P
You do not regard me as a monster. “ Some of your brethren ”
do. How do you account for this difference ? Of course, your
brethren—their hearts having been softened by the Presbyterian
God—are governed by charity and love. They do not regard
me as. a monster because I have committed an infamous crime,
but simply for the reason that I have expressed my honest
thoughts.
What should I have done ? I have read the Bible with great
care, and the conclusion has forced itself upon my mind not only
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FAITH AND FACT.
that it is not inspired, but that it is not true. Was it my duty
to speak or act contrary to this conclusion ? W^as it my duty to
remain, silent ? If I had been untrue to myself, if I had joined
the majority—if I had declared the book to be the inspired word
of God—would your brethren still have regarded me as a
monster ? Has religion had control of the world so long that an
honest man seems monstrous?
According to your creed—according to your Bible—the same
being who made the mind of man, who fashioned every brain,
and sowed within those wondrous fields the seeds of every
thought and deed, inspired the Bible’s every word, and gave it
as a, guide to all the world. Surely the book should satisfy the
brain. And yet there are millions who do not believe in the
inspiration of the Scriptures. Some of the greatest and best
have held the claim of inspiration in contempt. No Presbyterian
ever stood higher in the realm of thought than Humboldt. He
was familiar with nature from the sands to stars, and gave his
thoughts, his discoveries and conclusions, “ more precious than
the tested gold,” to all mankind. Yet he not only rejected the
religion of your brethren, but denied the existence of their God.
Certainly Charles Darwin was one of the greatest and purest of
men—as free from prejudice as the mariner’s compass—desiring
only to find amid the mists and clouds of ignorance the star of
truth. No man ever exerted a greater influence on the intel
lectual world. His discoveries, carried to their legitimate con
clusion, destroy the creeds and sacred scriptures of mankind.
In the light of Natural Selection, The Survival of the Fittest and
The Origin of Species, even the Christian religion becomes a
gross and cruel superstition. Yet Darwin was an honest,
thoughtful, brave, and generous man.
Compare, I beg of you, these men, Humboldt and Darwin, and
the founders of the Presbyterian Church. Read the life of
Spinoza, the loving Pantheist, and then that of John Calvin, and
tell me, candidly, which in your opinion, was a “ monster.” Even
your brethren do not claim that men are to be eternally punished
for having been mistaken as to the truths of geology, astronomy,
or mathematics. A man may deny the rotundity and rotation of
the earth, laugh at the attraction of gravitation, scout the nebular
hypothesis, and hold the multiplication table in abhorrence, and
yet join at last the angelic choir. I insist upon the same free
dom of thought in all departments of human knowledge. Reason
is the supreme and final test.
If God has made a revelation to man it must have been
addressed to his reason. There is no other faculty that could
even decipher the address. I admit that reason is a small and
feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumbiers carried in the star
less night—blown and flared by passion’s storm—and yet it is
the only light. Extinguish that, and naught remains.
�FAITH AND FACT.
5
You. draw a distinction between what you are pleased to call
“ superstition ” and religion. You are shocked at the Hindoo
mother when she gives her child to death at the supposed com
mand of her god. What do you think of Abraham, of Jephthah ?
What is your opinion of Jehovah himself? Is not the sacrifice
of a child to a phantom as horrible in Palestine as in India ?
Why should a god demand a sacrifice from man ? Why should
the infinite ask anything from the finite ? Should the sun beg
of the glow-worm, and should the momentary spark excite the
envy of the source of light !
You must remember that the Hindoo mother believes that her
child will be for ever blest—that it will become the special care
of the god to whom it has been given. This is a sacrifice through
a false belief on the part of the mother. She breaks her heart
for love of her babe. But what do you think of the Christian
mother who expects to be happy in heaven, with her child a con
vict in the eternal prison—a prison in which none die and from
which none escape ? What do you say of those Christians who
believe that they, in heaven, will be so filled with ecstacy that
all the loved of earth will be forgotten—that all the sacred rela
tions of life and all the passions of the heart will fade and die, so
that they will look with stony, unreplying, happy eyes upon the
miseries of the lost ?
You have laid down a rule by which superstition can be dis
tinguished from religion. It is this : “ It makes that a crime
which is not a crime, and that a virtue which is not a virtue.”
Let us test your religion by this rule.
Is it a crime to investigate, to think, to reason, to observe ? Is
it a crime to be governed by that which to you is evidence, and
is it infamous to express your honest thought ? There is also
another question : Is credulity a virtue ? Is the open mouth of
ignorant wonder the only entrance to Paradise ?
According to your creed, those who believe are to be saved,
and those who do not believe are to be eternally lost. When you
condemn men to everlasting pain for unbelief—that is to say,
for acting in accordance with that which is evidence to them—
do you not make that a crime which is not a crime ? And when
you reward men with an eternity of joy for simply believing that
which happens to be in accord with their minds, do you not
make that a virtue which is not a virtue ? In other words, do
you not bring your own religion exactly within your own defini
tion of superstition ?
The truth is, that no one can justly be held responsible for his
thoughts. The brain thinks without asking our consent. We
believe, or we disbelieve, without an effort of the will. Belief is
a result. It is the effect of evidence upon the mind. The scales
turn in spite of him who watches. There is no opportunity of
being honest or dishonest in the formation of an opinion. The
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FAITH AND FACT.
conclusion is entirely independent of desire. We must believe,
or we must doubt, in spite of what we wish.
That which must be, has the right to be.
We think in spite of ourselves. The brain thinks as the heart
beats, as the eyes see, as the blood pursues its course in the old
accustomed ways.
The question then is not, have we the right to think,—that
being a necessity,—but have we the right to express our honest
thoughts ? You certainly have the right to express yours, and
you have exercised that right. Some of your brethren, who
regard me as a monster, have expressed theirs. The question
now is,, have I the right to express mine ? In other words, have
I the right to answer your letter ? To make that a crime in me
which is a. virtue in you, certainly comes within your definition
of superstition. To exercise a right yourself which you deny to
me is simply the act of a tyrant. Where did you get your right
to express your honest thoughts P When, and where, and how
did I lose mine ?
You would not burn, you would not even imprison me, because
I differ with you on a subject about which neither of us knows
anything. To you the savagery of the Inquisition is only a
proof of the depravity of man. You are far better than your
creed. You believe that even the Christian world is outgrowing
the frightful feeling that fagot, and dungeon, and thumb-screw
are legitimate arguments, calculated to convince those upon
whom they are used, that the religion of those who use them
was founded by a god of infinite compassion. You will admit
that he who now persecutes for opinion’s sake is in famous. And
yet, the God you worship will, according to your creed, torture
through all the endless years the man who entertains an honest
doubt. A belief in such a God is the foundation and cause of all
religious persecution. You may reply that only the belief in a
false God causes believers to be inhuman. But you must admit
that the Jews believed in a true God, and you are forced to say
that they were so malicious, so cruel, so savage, that they cruci
fied the only Sinless Being who ever lived. This crime was com
mitted, not in spite of their religion, but in accordance with it.
They simply obeyed the command of Jehovah. And the
followers of this Sinless Being, who, for all these centuries, have
denounced the cruelty of the Jews for crucifying a man on ac
count of his opinion, have destroyed millions and millions of their
fellow men for differing with them. And this same Sinless
Being threatens to torture in eternal fire countless myriads for
the same offence. Beyond this, inconsistency cannot go. At
this point absurdity becomes infinite.
Your creed transfers the Inquisition to another world, making
it eternal. Your God becomes, or rather is, an infinite Torque-
�FAITH AND FACT.
7
mada, who denies to his countless victims even the mercy of
death. And this you call a “ consolation.”
You insist that at the foundation of every religion is the idea
of God. According to your creed, all ideas of God, except those
entertained by those of your faith, are absolutely false. You are
not called upon to defend the gods of the nations dead, nor the
gods of heretics. It is your business to defend the God of the
Bible—the God of the Presbyterian Church. When in the ranks
doing battle for your creed, you must wear the uniform of your
Church. You dare not say that it is sufficient to insure the
salvation of a soul to believe in a god, or in some god. According
to your creed a man must believe in your god. All the nations
dead believed in gods, and all the worshippers of Zeus, and
Jupiter, and Isis, and Osiris and Brahma prayed and sacrificed
in vain. Their petitions were not answered, and their souls were
not saved. Surely you do not claim that it is sufficient to believe
in any one of the heathen gods.
What right have you to occupy the position of the Deists, and
to put forth arguments that even Christians have answered?
The Deist denounced the God of the Bible because of his cruelty,
and at the same time lauded the god of Nature. The Christian
replied that the god of Nature was as cruel as the God of the
Bible. This answer was complete.
I feel that you are entitled to the admission that none have
been, that none are, too ignorant, too degraded, to believe in the
supernatural ; and I freely give you the advantage of this admission. Only a few—and they among the wisest, noblest and
purest of the human race—have regarded all gods as monstrous
myths. Yet a belief of “ the true god ” does not seem to make
men charitable or just. For most people, Theism is the easiest
solution of the universe. They are satisfied with saying that
there must be a being who created and who governs the world.
But the universality of a belief does not tend to establish its
truth. The belief in the existence of a malignant devil has been
as universal as the belief in a beneficent god, yet few intelligent
men will say that the universality of this belief in an in finite
demon even tends to prove his existence. In the world of thought
majorities count for nothing. Truth has always dwelt with
the few.
Man has filled the world with impossible monsters, and he has
been the sport and prey of these phantoms born of ignorance
and hope and fear. To appease the wrath of these monsters man
has sacrificed his fellow man. He has shed the blood of wife and
child; he has fasted and prayed; he has suffered beyond the
power of language to express, and yet he has received nothing
from the gods—they have heard no supplication, they have
answered no prayer.
You may reply that your God “ sends his rain on the just and
�8
FAITH AND FACT.
on the unjust,” and that this fact proves that he is merciful to
all alike. I answer, that your God sends his pestilence on the
just and on the unjust—that his earthquakes devour and his
cyclones rend and wreck the loving and the vicious, the honest
and the criminal. Do not these facts prove that your God is
cruel to all alike? In other words, do they not demonstrate the
absolute impartiality of the divine negligence?
Do you not believe that any honest man of average intelli
gence, having absolute control of the rain, could do vastly better
than is being done ? Certainly there would be no droughts or
floods; the props would not be permitted to wither and die, while
rain was being wasted in the sea. Is it conceivable that a good
man with power to control the winds would not prevent cyclones?
Would you not rather trust a wise and honest man with the
lightning ?
Why should an infinitely wise and powerful God destroy the
good, and preserve the vile? Why should he treat all alike here,
and in another world make an infinite difference ? Why should
your God allow his worshippers, his adorers, to be destroyed by
his enemies ? Why should he allow the honest, the loving, the
noble, to perish at the stake ? Can you answer these questions ?
Does it not seem to you that your God must have felt a touch of
shame when the poor slave mother—one that had been robbed of
her babe—knelt and with clasped hands, in a voice broken with
sobs, commenced her prayer with the words “ Our Father ” ?
It gave me pleasure to find that, notwithstanding your creed,
you are philosophical enough to say that some men are incapaci
tated, by reason of temperament, for believing in the existence
of God. Now, if a belief in God is necessary to the salvation of
the soul, why should God create a soul without this capacity?
Why should he create souls that he knew would be lost ? You
seem to think that it is necessary to be poetical, or dreamy, in
order to be religious, and by inference, at least, you deny certain
qualities to me that you deem necessary. Do you account for
the Atheism of Shelley by saying that he was not poetic, and do
you quote his lines to prove the existence of the very God whose
being he so passionately denied ? Is it possible that Napoleon
—one of the most infamous of men—had a nature so finely
strung that he was sensitive to the divine influences ? Are you
driven to the necessity of proving the existence of one tyrant by
the words of another ? Personally, I have but little confidence in
a religion that satisfied the heart of a man who, to gratify his
ambition, filled half the world with widows and orphans. In
regard to Agassiz, it is just to say that he furnished a vast
amount of testimony in favor of the truth of the theories of
Charles Darwin, and then denied the correctness of these
theories—preferring the good opinion of Harvard for a few days
to the lasting applause of the intellectual world.
�FAITH AND FACT.
9
I agree with you that the world is a mystery, not only, but
that everything in Nature is equally mysterious, and that there
is no way of escape from the mystery of life and death. To me,
the crystallization of the snow is as mysterious as the constella
tions. But when you endeavor to explain the mystery of the
universe by the mystery of God, you do not even exchange
mysteries—you simply make one more.
Nothing can be mysterious enough to become an explanation.
The mystery of man cannot be explained by the mystery of
God.. That mystery still asks for explanation. The mind is so
that it cannot grasp the idea of an infinite personality. That is
beyond the circumference. This being so, it is impossible that
man can be convinced by any evidence of the existence of that
which he cannot in any measure comprehend. Such evidence
would be equally incomprehensible with the incomprehensible
fact sought to be established by it, and the intellect of man can
grasp neither the one nor the other.
You admit that the God of Nature—that is to say, your God,
is as inflexible as Nature itself. Why should man worship
the inflexible? Why should he kneel to the unchangeable ?
You say that your God “ does not bend to human thought any
more than to human will,” and that “ the more we study him,
the more we find that he is not what we imagined him to be.”
So that after all, the only thing you are really certain of in
relation to your God is, that he is not what you think he is. Is
it not almost absurd to insist that such a state of mind is
necessary to salvation, or that it is a moral restraint, or that it
is the foundation of a social order ?
The most religious nations have been the most immoral, the
cruellest, and the most unjust. Italy was far worse under the
Popes than under the Caesars. Was there ever a barbarian
nation more savage than the Spain of the sixteenth century ?
Certainly you must know that what you call religion has pro
duced a thousand civil wars, and has severed with the sword all
the natural ties that produce “ the unity and married calm of
States.” Theology is the fruitful mother of discord; order is
the child of reason. If you will candidly consider this question,
if you .will for a few moments forget your preconceived opinions,
you will instantly see that the instinct of self-preservation holds
society together. People, being ignorant, believed that the gods
were jealous and revengeful. They peopled space with phantoms
that demanded worship and delighted in sacrifice and ceremony,
phantoms that , could be flattered by praise and changed by
prayer. These ignorant people wished to preserve themselves,
they supposed that they could in this way avoid pestilence and
famine, and postpone perhaps the day of death. Do you not see
that self-preservation lies atjthe foundation of worship ? Nations,
like individuals, defend and protect themselves. Nations, like
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FAITH AND FACT.
individuals, have fears, have ideals, and live for the accomplish
ment of certain ends.. Men defend their property because it i s
of value. Industry is the enemy of theft. Men as a rule desire
to live, and for that reason murdei’ is a crime. Fraud is hateful
to the victim. The majority of mankind work and produce the
necessities, the comforts, and the luxuries of life. They wish to
retain the fruits of their labor. Government is one of the
instrumentalities for the preservation of what man deems of
value. This is the foundation of social order, and this holds
society together.
Religion has been the enemy of social order because it directs
the attention of man to another world. Religion teaches its
votaries to sacrifice this world for the sake of that other. The
effect is to weaken the ties that hold families and states together.
Of what consequence is any thing in this world compared with
eternal joy P
You insist that man is not capable of self-government, and
that God made the mistake of filling a world with failures—in
other words, that man must be governed not by himself, but by
your God, and that your God produces order, and establishes
and preserves all the nations of the earth. This being so, your
God is responsible for the government of this world. Does he
preserve order in Russia ? Is he accountable for Siberia ? Did
he establish the institution of slavery ? Was he the founder of
the Inquisition.
You answer all these questions by calling my attention to
“ the retributions of history.” What are 'the retributions of
history ? The honest were burned at the stake; the patriotic,
the generous and the noble were allowed to die in dungeons;
whole races were enslaved ; millions of mothers were robbed of
their babes. What were the retributions of history ? They
who committed these crimes wore crowns, and they who justified
these infamies were adorned with the tiara.
You are mistaken when you say that Lincoln at Gettysburg
said : “ Just and true are thy judgments, Lord God Almighty.”
Something like this occurs in his last inaugural, in which he
says—speaking of his hope that the war might soon be ended—
“ If it shall continue until every drop of blood drawn by the
lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, still it must
be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous
altogether.’ ” But admitting that you are correct in the asser
tion, let me ask you one question : Could one standing over the
body of Lincoln, the blood slowly oozing from the madman’s
wound, have truthfully said: “ Just and true are thy judg
ments, Lord God Almighty ” P
Do you really believe that this world is governed by an
infinitely wise and good God ? Have you convinced even your
self of this ? Why should God permit the triumph of injustice ?
�FAITH AND FACT.
11
Why should the loving be tortured P Why should the noblest
be destroyed ? Why should the world be filled with misery,
with ignorance and with want ? What reason have you for
believing that your God will do better in another world than he
has done and is doing in this ? Will he be wiser ? Will he
have more power ? Will he be more merciful ?
When I say “ your God,” of course I mean the God described
in the Bible and Presbyterian confession of faith. But again, I
say, that, in the nature of things, there can be no evidence of
the existence of an Infinite Being.
An Infinite Being must be conditionless, and for that reason
there is nothing that a finite being can do that can by any
possibility affect the well-being of the conditionless. This being
so, man can neither owe nor discharge any debt or duty to an
Infinite Being. The infinite cannot want, and man can do
nothing for a Being who wants nothing. A conditioned being
can be made happy or miserable by changing conditions, but the
conditionless is absolutely independent of cause and effect.
I do not say that a God does not exist, neither do I say that a
God does exist; but I say that I do not know—that there can
be no evidence to my mind of the existence of such a Being, and
that my mind is so that it is incapable of even thinking of an
infinite personality. I know that in your creed you describe
God as “ without body, parts, or passions.” This, to my mind,
is simply a description of an infinite vacuum. I have had no
experience with gods. This world is the only one with which I
am acquainted, and I was surprised to find in your letter the
expression that “ perhaps others are better acquainted with that
of which I am so ignorant.” Did you, by this, intend to say
that you know anything of any other state of existence—that
you have inhabited some other planet—that you lived before
you were born, and that you recollect something of that other
world, or of that other state ?
Upon the question of immortality you have done me, unin
tentionally, a great injustice. With regard to that hope, I have
never uttered “ a flippant or a trivial ” word. I have said a
thousand times, and I say again, that the idea of immortality,
that, like a sea, has ebbed and flowed in the human heart, with
its countless waves of hope and fear beating against the shores
and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any
creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human affection, and
it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of
doubt and darkness as long as loves kisses the lips of death.
I have said a thousand times, and I say again, that we do not
know, we cannot say, whether death is a wall or a door—the
beginning or end of a day—the spreading of pinions to soar, or
the folding forever of wings—the rise or set of a sun, or an
endless life, that brings rapture and love to every one.
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FAITH AND FACT.
The belief in immortality is far older than Christianity. Thou
sands of years before Christ was born billions of people had
lived, and died in that hope. Upon countless graves had been
laid in love and tears the emblems of another life. The heaven
of the New Testament was to be in this world. The dead, after
they were raised, were to live here. Not one satisfactory word
was said to have been uttered by Christ—nothing philosophic,
nothing clear, nothing that adorns, like a bow of promise, the
cloud of doubt.
According to the account in the New Testament, Christ was
dead for a period of nearly three days. After his resurrection,
why did not some one of his disciples ask him where he had
been P Why did he not tell them what world he had visited ?
There was the opportunity to “ bring life and immortality to
light.” And yet he was silent as the grave that he had leftspeechless as the stone that angels had rolled away.
How do you account for this? Was it not infinitely cruel to
leave the world in darkness and in doubt when one word could
have filled time with hope and light ?
The hope of immortality is the great oak round which have
climbed the poisonous vines of superstition. The vines have not
supported the oak—the oak has supported the vines. As long
as men live, and love, and die, this hope will blossom in the
human heart.
All I have said upon this subject has been to express my hope
and confess my lack of knowledge. Neither by word nor look
have I expressed any other feeling than sympathy with those
who hope to live again—for those who bend above their dream
of life to come. But I have denounced the selfishness and heart
lessness of those who expect for themselves an eternity of joy,
and for the rest of mankind predict, without a tear, a world of
endless pain. Nothing can be more contemptible than such a
hope—a hope that can give satisfaction only to the hyenas of
the human race.
When I say that I do not know—when I deny the existence
of perdition, you reply that “ there is something very cruel in
this treatment of the belief of my fellow-creatures.”
You have had the goodness to invite me to a grave over which
a mother bends and weeps for her only son. I accept your
invitation. We will go together. Do not, I pray you, deal in
splendid generalities. Be explicit. Remember that the son for
whom the loving mother weeps was not a Christian, not a believer
in the inspiration of the Bible nor in the divinity of Jesus
Christ. The mother turns to you for consolation, for some star
of hope in the midnight of her grief. What must you say P Do
not desert the Presbyterian creed. Do not forget the threatenings of Jesus Christ. What must you say ? Will you read a
�FAITH AND FACT.
13
portion of the Presbyterian confession of faith ? Will you read
this?
“ Although, the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence,
do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God as to leave man
inexcusable, yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and of
his will which is necessary to salvation.”
Or, will you read this ?
“ By the decree of God, for the manifestation 'of his glory, some men and
angels are predestined unto everlasting life and others foreordained to ever
lasting death. These angels and men, thus predestined and foreordained, are
particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number is so certain and
definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished.”
Suppose the mother, lifting her tear-stained face, should say :
“ My son was good, generous, loving and kind. He gave his life
for me. Is there no hope for him ?” WouldJyou then put this
serpent in her breast ?—
“ Men not professing the Christian religion cannot be saved in any other
way whatsoever, be they never so diligent to conform their lives according
to the light of nature. We cannot by our best works merit pardon of sin.
There is no sin so small but that it deserves damnation. Works done by un
regenerate men, although for the matter of that they may be things which
God commands, and of good use both to themselves and others, are sinful
and cannot please God or make a man meet to receive Christ or God.”
And suppose the mother should then sobbingly ask : “ What
has become of my son ? Where is he now ?” Would you still
read from your Confession of Faith, or from your Catechism,
this P—
“ The souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torment
and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day. At the last
day the righteous shall come into everlasting life, but the wicked shall be
cast into hell, to be punished with unspeakable i torment, both of body and
soul, with the Devil and his angels for ever.”
If the poor mother still wept, still refused to be comforted,
would you thrust this dagger in her heart ?
“ At the Day of Judgment you, being caught up to Christ in the clouds,
shall be seated at his right hand and there openly acknowledged and
acquainted, and you shall join with him in the damnation of your son.”
If this failed to still the beatings of her aching heart, would
you repeat these words which you say came from the loving soul
of Christ ?—
“ They who believe and are baptised shall be saved, and they who believe
not shall be damned ; and these shall go away into everlasting fire prepared
for the Devil and his angels.”
Would you not be compelled, according to your belief, to tell
this mother that “ there is but one name given under heaven and
among men whereby ” the souls of men can enter the gates of
paradise ? Would you not be compelled to say : “ Your son lived
in a Christian land. The means of grace were within his reach.
He died not having experienced a change of heart, and your son
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FAITH AND FACT.
is for ever lost. You. can meet your son again only by dying in
your sins; but if you will give your heart to God you can never
clasp him to your breast again.”
What could I say ? Let me tell you.
“ My dear madam, this reverend gentleman knows nothing of
another world. He cannot see beyond the tomb. He has simply
Btated to you the superstitions of ignorance, of cruelty and fear.
If there be in this universe a God, he certainly is as good as you
are. Why should he have loved your son in life—loved him,
according to this reverend gentleman, to that degree that he
gave his life for him; and why should that love be changed to
hatred the moment your son was dead ?
“ My dear woman, there are no punishments, there are no
rewards—there are consequences; and of one thing you may
rest assured, and that is, that every soul, no matter what sphere
it may inhabit, will have the everlasting opportunity of doing
right.
“ If death ends all, and if this handful of dust over which you
weep is all there is, you have this consolation: Your son is not
within the power of this reverend gentleman’s God—that is
something. Your son does not suffer. Hext to a life of joy is
the dreamless sleep of death.”
Does it not seem to you infinitely absurd to call orthodox
Christianity “ a consolation ” ? Here in thiB world, where every
human being is enshrouded in cloud and mist —where all lives
are filled with mistakes—where no one claims to be perfect, is
it “ a consolation ” to say that “ the smallest sin deserves eternal
pain ” ? It is possible for the ingenuity of man to extract from
the doctrine of hell one drop, one ray, of “ consolation ” ? If
that doctrine be true, is not your God an infinite criminal ? Why
should he have created uncounted billions destined to suffer for
ever P Why did he not leave them unconscious dust ? Com
pared with this crime, any crime that any man can by any
possibility commit is a virtue.
Think for a moment of your God—the keeper of an infinite
penitentiary filled with immortal convicts—your God an eternal
turnkey, without the pardoning power. In the presence of this
infinite horror, you complacently speak of the atonement—a
scheme that has not yet gathered within its horizon a billionth
part of the human race—an atonement with one-half the world
remaining undiscovered for fifteen hundred years after it was
made.
If there could be no suffering, there could be no sin. To un
justly cause suffering is the only possible crime. How can a God
accept the suffering of the innocent in lieu of the punishment of
the guilty ?
According to your theory, this infinite being by his mere will,
makes right and wrong. This I do not admit. Right and wrong
�FAITH AND FACT.
15
exist in the nature of things—in the relation they bear to man,
and to sentient beings. You have already admitted that “ Nature
is inflexible, and that a violated law calls for its consequences.”
I insist that no God can step between an act and its natural
effects. If God exists, he has nothing to do with punishment,
nothing to do with reward. From certain acts flow certain con
sequences; these consequences increase or decrease the happiness
of man; and the consequences must be borne.
A man who has forfeited his life to the commonwealth may be
pardoned, but a man who has violated a condition of his own
well-being cannot be pardoned—there is no pardoning power.
The laws of the State are made, and being made, can be changed;
but the facts of the universe cannot be changed. The relation
of act to consequence cannot be altered. This is above all
power, and consequently there is no analogy between the laws of
the State and the facts in Nature. An infinite God could not
change the relation between the diameter and circumference of
the circle.
A man having committed a crime may be pardoned, but I deny
the right of the State to punish an innocent man in the place of
the pardoned—no matter how willing the innocent man may be
to suffer the punishment. There is no law in Nature, no fact in
Nature, by which the innocent can be justly punished to the end
that the guilty may go free. Let it be understood once for all:
Nature cannot pardon.
You have recognised this truth. You have asked me what is
to become of one who seduces and betrays, of the criminal with
the blood of his victim upon his hands. Without the slightest
hesitation I answer, whoever commits a crime against another
must, to the utmost of his power in this world and in another, if
there be one, make full and ample restitution, and in addition
must bear the natural consequences of his offence. No man can
be perfectly happy, either in this world or in any other, who has
by his perfidy broken a loving and confiding heart. No power
can step between acts and consequences—no forgiveness, no
atonement.
But, my dear friend, you have taught for many years, if
you are a Presbyterian, or an evangelical Christian, that a
man may seduce and betray, and that the poor victim, driven
to insanity, leaping from some wharf at night where ships
strain at their anchors in storm and darkness—you have taught
that this poor girl may be tormented for ever by a God of
infinite compassion. This is not all that you have taught. You
have said to the seducer, to the betrayer, to the one who would
not listen to her wailing cry—who would not even stretch
forth his hand to catch her fluttering garments—you have
said to him : “ Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall
be happy forever; you shall live in the realms of infinite delight,
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FAITH AND FACT.
from which' you can, without a shadow falling upon your face,
observe the poor girl, your victim, writhing in the agonies of
hell.” You have taught this. For my part, I do not see how
an angel in heaven meeting another angel whom he had robbed
on the earth, could feel entirely blissful. I go further. Any
decent angel, no matter if sitting at the right hand of God,
should he see in hell one of his victims, would leave heaven
itself for the purpose of wiping one tear from the cheek of the
damned.
You seem to have forgotten your statement in the commence
ment of your letter, that your God is as inflexible as Nature—
that he bends not to human thought nor to human will. You
seem to have forgotten the line which you emphasised with
italics : “ The, effect of everything which is of the nature of a cause
is eternal.” In the light of this sentence, where do you find a
place for your forgiveness—for your atonement ? Where is a
way to escape from the effect of a cause that is eternal ? Do you
not see that this sentence is a cord with which I easily tie your
hands ? The scientific part of your letter destroys the theo
logical. You have put “ new wine into old bottles,” and the
predicted result has followed. Will the angels in heaven, the
redeemed of earth, lose their memory? Will not all the
redeemed rascals remember their rascality ? Will not all the
redeemed assassins remember the faces of the dead ? Will not
the seducers and betrayers remember her sighs, her tears, and
the tones of her voice, and will not the conscience of the
redeemed be. as inexorable as the conscience of the damned ?
If memory is to be for ever “ the warder of the brain,” and if
the redeemed can never forget the sins they committed, the pain
and anguish they caused, then they can never be perfectly
happy; and if the lost can never forget the good they did, the
kind actions, the loving words, the heroic deeds ; and if the
memory of good deeds gives the slightest pleasure, then the lost
can never be perfectly miserable. Ought not the memory of a
good action to live as long as the memory of a bad one ? _ So
that the undying memory of the good, in heaven, brings undying
pain, and the undying memory of those in hell brings undying
pleasure. Do you not see that if men have done good and bad,
the future can have neither a perfect heaven nor a perfect hell ?
I believe in the manly doctrine that every human being must
bear the consequence of his acts, and that no man can be justly
saved or damned on account of the goodness or the wickedness
of another.
If by atonement you mean the natural effect of self-sacrifice,
the effects following a noble and disinterested action; if you
mean that the life and death of Christ are worth their effect
upon the human race—which your letter seems to show—then
there is no question between us. If you have thrown away the
�FAITH AND FACT.
17
old and barbarous idea that a law had been broken, that God
demanded a sacrifice, and that Christ, the innocent, was offered
up for us, and that he bore the wrath of God and suffered in our
place, then I congratulate you with all my heart.
It seems to me impossible that life should be exceedingly
joyous to anyone who is acquainted with its miseries, its burdens,
and its tears. I know that as darkness follows light around the
globe, so misery and misfortune follow the sons of men.. Accord
ing to your creed, the future state will be worse than this. Here,
the vicious may reform ; here, the wicked may repent; here,, a
few gleams of sunshine may fall upon the darkest life. But in
your future state, for countless millions of the human race, there
will be no reform, no opportunity of doing right, and no possible
gleam of sunshine can ever touch their souls. Do you not see
that your future state is infinitely worse than this ? You seem
to mistake the glare of hell for the light of morning.
Let us throw away the dogma of eternal retribution. Let us
“ cling to all that can bring a ray of hope into the darkness of
this life.”
You have been kind enough to say that I find a subject .for
caricature in the doctrine of regeneration. If, by regeneration,
you mean reformation—if you mean that there comes a time in
the life of a young man when he feels the touch of responsibility,
and that he leaves his foolish or vicious ways, and concludes to
act like an honest man—if this is what you mean by regenera
tion, I am a believer. But that is not the definition of regenera
tion in your creed—that is not Christian regeneration. There
is some mysterious, miraculous, supernatural, invisible agency,
called, I believe, the Holy Ghost, that enters and changes the
heart of man, and this mysterious agency is like the wind, under
the control, apparently, of no one, coming and going when and
whither it listeth. It is this illogical and absurd view of regene
ration that I have attacked.
You ask me how it came to pass that a Hebrew peasant, born
among the hills of Galilee, had a wisdom above that of Socrates
or Plato, of Confucius or Buddha, and you conclude by saying,
“ This is the greatest of miracles—that such a being should live
and die on the earth.”
I can hardly admit your conclusion, because I remember that
Christ said nothing in favor of the family relation. As a matter
of fact, his life tended to cast discredit upon marriage. He said
nothing against the institution of slavery ; nothing against the
tyranny of government; nothing of our treatment of animals;
nothing about education, about intellectual progress; nothing
of art, declared no scientific truth, and said nothing as to the
rightB and duties of nations.
You may reply that all this is included in “ Do unto others as
you would be done by,” and “ Resist not evil.” More than this
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FAITH AND FACT.
is necessary to educate the human race. Is it not enough to say
to your child or to your pupil, “ Do right.” The great question
still remains : What is right ? Neither is there any wisdom in
the idea of non-resistance. Force without mercy is tyranny.
Mercy without force is but a waste of tears. Take from virtue
the right of self-defence, and vice becomes the master of the
world.
Let me ask you how it came to pass that an ignorant driver of
camels, a man without family, without wealth, became master of
hundreds of millions of human beings P How is it that he con
quered and overran more than half of the Christian world?
How is it that on a thousand fields the banner of the cross went
down in blood while that of the crescent floated in triumph ?
How do you account for the fact that the flag of this impostor
floats to-day above the sepulchre of Christ ? Was this a miracle ?
Was Mohammed inspired ? How do you account for Confucius,
whose name is known wherever the sky bends ? Was he inspired
-—this man who for many centuries has stood first, and who has
been acknowledged the superior of all men by thousands of
millions of his fellow-men P How do you account for Buddha,
in many respects the greatest religious teacher this world has
ever known, the broadest, the most intellectual of them all; he
who was great enough, hundreds of years before Christ was
born, to declare the universal brotherhood of man, great enough
to say that intelligence is the only lever capable of raising
mankind ? How do you account for him, who has had more
followers than any other ? Are you willing to say that all success
is divine ? How do. you account for Shakespeare, born of
parents who could neither read nor write, held in the lap of
ignorance and love, nursed at the breast of poverty—how do
you account for him, by far the greatest of the human race, the
wings of whose imagination still fill the horizon of human
thought; Shakespeare, who was perfectly acquainted with the
human heart, knew all depths of sorrow, all heights of joy, and
in whose mind was the fruit of all thought, of all experience,
and a prophecy of all to be; Shakespeare, the wisdom and beauty
and depth of whose, words increase with the intelligence and
civilisation of mankind ? How do you account for this miracle P
Do. you believe that any founder of any religion could have
written Lear or Hamlet ? Did Greece produce a man who could
by any possibility have been the author of Troilus and Cressida ?
Was there among all the countless millions of almighty Borne
an intellect that could have written the tragedy of Julius Caesar ?
Is. not the play of Antony and Cleopatra as Egyptian as the
Nile ? How do you account for this man, within whose veins
there seemed to be the blood of every race, and in whose brain
there were the poetry and philosophy of a world p
You ask me to tell my opinion of Christ. Let me say here,
�FAITH AND FACT.
19
once for all, that for the man Christ—for the man who, in the
darkness, cried out, “ My God, why hast thou forsaken me P”—
for that man I have the greatest possible respect. And let me
say, once for all, that the place where man has died for man is
holy ground. To that great and serene peasant of Palestine I
gladly pay the tribute of my admiration and my tears. He was
a reformer in his day—an infidel in his time. Back of the theo
logical mask, and in spite of the interpolations of the New
Testament, I see a great and genuine man.
It is hard to see how you can consistently defend the course
pursued by Christ himself. He attacked with great bitterness
“ the religion of others.” It did not occur to him that “ there
was something very cruel in his treatment of the belief of his
fellow-creatures.” He denounced the chosen people of God as a
“ generation of vipers.” He compared them to “ whited sepul
chres.” How can you sustain the conduct of missionaries ?
They go to other lands and attack the sacred beliefs of others.
They tell the people of India and of all heathen lands, not only
that their religion is a lie, not only that their Gods are myths,
but that the ancestors of these people, their fathers and mothers,
who never heard of God, of the Bible, or of Christ, are all in
perdition. Is not this a cruel treatment of the belief of a fellow
creature ?
A religion that is not manly and robust enough to bear attack
with smiling fortitude is unworthy of a place in the heart or brain.
A religion that takes refuge in sentimentality, that cries out:
“ Do not, I pray you, tell me any truth calculated to hurt my
feelings,” is fit only for asylums.
You believe that Christ was God, that he was infinite in power.
While in Jerusalem he cured the sick, raised a few from the
dead, and opened the eyes of the blind. Did he do these things
because he loved mankind, or did he do these miracles simply to
establish the fact that he was the very Christ ? If he was
actuated by love, is he not as powerful now as he was then ?
Why does he not open the eyes of the blind now ? Why does he
not, with a touch, make the leper clean ? If you had the power
to give sight to the blind, to cleanse the leper, and would not
exercise it, what would be thought of you ? What is the differ
ence between one who can and will not cure, and one who causes
diseases.
Only the other day I saw a beautiful girl—a paralytic, and yet
her brave and cheerful spirit shone over the wreck and ruin of
her body like morning on the desert. What would I think
of myself had I the power by a word to send the blood
through all her withered limbs freighted again with life, should
I refuse ?
Most theologians seem to imagine that the virtues have been
produced by and are really the children of religion.
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FAITH AND FACT.
Religion has to do with the supernatural. It defines our duties
and obligations to God. It prescribes a certain course of conduct
by means of which happiness can be attained in another world.
The result here is only an incident. The virtues are secular.
They have nothing whatever to do with the supernatural, and
are of no kindred to any religion. A man may be honest,
courageous, charitable, industrious, hospitable, loving and pure
without being religious—that is to say, without any belief in the
supernatural; and a man may be the exact opposite and at the
same time a sincere believer in the creed of any church—that is
to say, in the existence of a personal God, the inspiration of the
scriptures and the divinity of Jesus Christ. A man who believes
in the Bible may or may not be kind to his family, and a man
who is kind and loving to his family may or may not believe in
the Bible.
In order that you may see the effect of belief in the formation
of character, it is only necessary to call your attention to the
fact that your Bible shows that the Devil himself is a believer in
the existence of your God, in the inspiration of the scriptures
and in the divinity of Jesus Christ. He not only believes these
things, but he knows them, and yet, in spite of it all, he remains
a devil still.
Few religions have been bad enough to destroy all the natural
goodness in the human heart. In the deepest midnight of super
stition some natural virtues, like stars, have been visible in the
heavens. Man has committed every crime in the name of Chris
tianity—or at least crimes that involved the commission of all
others. Those who paid for labor with the lash, and who made
blows a legal tender, were Christians. Those who engaged in
the slave trade were believers in a personal God. One slave ship
was called “ The Jehovah.” Those who pursued, with hounds,
the fugitive led by the northern star, prayed fervently to Christ
to crown their efforts with success, and the stealers of babes, just
before falling asleep, commended their souls to the keeping of
the Most High.
As you have mentioned the Apostles, let me call your attention
to an incident.
You remember the story of Ananias and Sapphira. The
Apostles, having nothing themselves, conceived the idea of
having all things in common. Their followers, who had some
thing, were to sell what little they had, and turn the proceeds
over to these theological financiers. It seems that Ananias and
Sapphira had a piece of land. They sold it, and after talking
the matter over, not being entirely satisfied with the collaterals,
concluded to keep a little—just enough to keep them from star
vation if the good and pious bankers should abscond.
When Ananias brought the money, he was asked whether he
had kept back a part of the price. He said that he had not;
�FAITH AND FACT.
21
whereupon God, the compassionate, struck him dead.. As soon
as the corpse was removed, the apostles sent for his wife. They
did not tell hei- that her husband had been killed. They deli
berately set a trap for her life. Not one of them was good enough
or noble enough to put her on her guard : they allowed her to
believe that hei’ husband had told his story, and that she was
free to corroborate what he had said. She probably felt that
they were giving more than they could afford, and, with the
instinct of a woman, wanted to keep a little. She denied that
any part of the price had been kept back. That moment the
arrow of divine vengeance entered her heart.
Will you be kind enough to tell me your opinion of the apostles
in the light of this story ? Certainly murder is a greater crime
than mendacity.
\ ou have been good enough, in a kind of fatherly way, to give
me some advice. You say that I ought to soften my colors, and
that my words would be more weighty if not so strong. Do you
really desire that I should add weight to my words ? Do you
really wish me to succeed ? If the commander of one army
should send word to the general of the other that his men were
firing too high, do you think the general would be misled ? Can
you conceive of his changing his orders by reason of the
message P
I deny that “ the Pilgrims crossed the sea to find freedom to
worship God in the forests of the new world.” They came not
in the interest of freedom. It never entered their minds that
other men had the same right to worship God according to the
dictates of their consciences, that the pilgrims had. The moment
they had power they were ready to whip and brand, to imprison
and burn. They did not believe in religious freedom. They had
no more idea of religious liberty of conscience than Jehovah.
I do not say that there is no place in the world for heroes and
martyrs. On the contrary, I declare that the liberty we now
have was won for us by heroes and by martyrs, and millions of
these martyrs were burned, or flayed alive, or torn in pieces, or
assassinated by the Church of God. The heroism was shown in
fighting the hordes of religious superstition.
Giordano Bruno was a martyr. He was a hero. He believed
in no God, in no heaven and in no hell, yet he perished by fire.
He was offered liberty on condition that he would recant. There
was no God to please, no heaven to preserve the unstained white
ness of his soul.
For hundreds of years every man who attacked the Church
was a hero. The sword of Christianity has been wet for many
centuries with the blood of the noblest. Christianity has been
ready with whip and chain and fire to banish freedom from the
earth.
Neither is it true that “ family life withers under the cold
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FAITH AND FACT.
sneer—half pity half sneer—with which I look down on house
hold worship.”
Those who believe in the existence of God, and believe that
they are indebted to this divine being for the few gleams of
sunshine in this life, and who thank God for the little they have
enjoyed, have my entire respect. Never have I said one word
against the spirit of thankfulness. I understand the feeling of
the man who gathers his family about him after the storm, or
after the scourge, or after long sickness, and pours out his heart
in thankfulness to the supposed God who has protected his fire
side. I understand the spirit of the savage who thanks his idol
of stone, or his fetish of wood. It is not the wisdom of the one
nor of the other that I respect, it is the goodness and thankful
ness that prompt the prayer.
I believe in the family. I believe in family life, and one of my
objections to Christianity is that it divides the family. Upon
this subject I have said hundreds of times, and I say again, that
the roof-tree is sacred, from the smallest fibre that feels the
soft, cool clasp of the earth, to the topmost flower that spreads
its bosom to the sun, and like a spendthrift gives its perfume to
the air. The home where virtue dwells with love is like a lily
with a heart of fire, the fairest flower in all this world.
What did Christianity in the early centuries do for the home p
What have nunneries and monasteries, and what has the glorifi
cation of celibacy done for the family ? Do you not know that
Christ himself offered rewards in this world and eternal happi
ness in another to those who would desert their wives and
children and follow him P What effect has that promise had
upon family life ?
As a matter of fact, the family is regarded as nothing. Chris
tianity teaches that there is but one family, the family of Christ,
and that all other relations are as nothing compared with that.
Christianity teaches the husband to desert the wife, the wife to
desert the husband, children to desert their parents for the
miserable and selfish purpose of saving their own little, shrivelled
souls.
It is far better for a man to love his fellow men than to love
God. It is better to love wife and children than to love Christ.
It is better io serve your neighbour than to serve your God—
even if God exists. The reason is palpable. You can do nothing
for God. You can do something for wife and children, you can
add to the sunshine of life. You can paint flowers in the path
way of another.
It is true that I am an enemy of the orthodox sabbath. It is
true that I do not believe in giving one-seventh of our time to
the service of superstition. The whole scheme of your religion
can be understood by any intelligent man in one day. Why
�FAITH AND FACT.
23
should he waste a seventh of his whole life in hearing the same
thoughts repeated again and again ?
Nothing is more gloomy than an orthodox Sabbath. The
mechanic who has worked during the week in heat and dust,
the laboring man who has barely succeeded in keeping his soul
in his body, the poor woman who has been sewing for the rich,
may go to the village church which you have described. They
answer the chimes of the bell, and what do they hear in this
village church ? Is it that God is the father of the human race;
is that all ? If that were all, you never would have heard an
objection from my lips. That is not all. If all ministers said:
Bear the evil of this life; your Bather in heaven counts your
tears; the time will come when pain and death and grief will
be forgotten words—I should have listened with the rest. What
else does the minister say to the poor people who have answered
the chimes of your bell ? He says “ The smallest sin deserves
eternal pain.” “ A vast majority of men are doomed to suffer
the wrath of God for ever.” He fills the present with fear and
the future with fire. He has heaven for the few, hell for the
many. He describes a little grass-grown path that leads to
heaven, where travellers are “ few and far between,” and a great
highway worn with countless feet that leads to everlasting
death.
Such Sabbaths are immoral. Such ministers are the real
savages.. Gladly would I abolish such a Sabbath. Gladly would
I turn it into a holiday, a day of rest and peace, a day to get
acquainted with your wife and children, a day to exchange
civilities with your neighbors; and gladly would I see the
church in which such sermons are preached changed to a place
of entertainment. Gladly would I have the echoes of orthodox
sermons—the owls and bats among the rafters, the snakes in
crevices and corners—driven out by the glorious music of
Wagner and Beethoven. Gladly would I see the Sunday-school,
where the doctrine of eternal fire is taught, changed to a happy
dance upon the village green.
Music refines. The doctrine of eternal punishment degrades.
Science civilises. Superstition looks longingly back to savagery.
You do not believe that general morality can be upheld with
out the sanctions of religions.
Christianity has sold, and continues to sell, crime on credit.
It has taught, and still teaches, that there is forgiveness for all.
Of course it teaches morality. It says : “ Do not steal, do not
murder;” but it adds : “ but if you do both, there is a way of
escape; believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,-and thou shalt be
saved.” I insist that such religion is no restraint. It is far
better to teach that there is no forgiveness, and that every
human being must bear the consequence of his acts.
The first great step toward national reformation is the uni-
�24
FAITH AND FACT.
versai acceptance of the idea that there is no escape from the
consequences of our acts. The young men who come from their
country homes into a city filled with temptations, may be
restrained by the thought of father and mother. This is a
natural restraint. They may be restrained by their knowledge
of the fact that a thing is evil on account of its consequences,
and that to do wrong is always a mistake. I cannot conceive of
such a man being more liable to temptation because he has
heard one of my lectures in which I have told him that the only
good is happiness—that the only way to attain that good is by
doing what he believes to be right. I cannot imagine that his
moral character will be weakened by the statement that there is
no escape from the consequences of his acts. You seem to think
that he will be instantly led astray—that he will go off under
the flaring lamps to the riot of passion. Do you think the
Bible calculated to restrain him ? To prevent this would you
recommend him to read the lives of Abraham, of Isaac, and of
Jacob, and the other holy polygamists of the Old Testament?
Should he read the life of David, and of Solomon ? Do you
think this would enable him to withstand temptation ? Would
it not be far better to fill the young man’s mind with facts, so
that he may know exactly thé physical consequences of such
acts ? Do you regard ignorance as the foundation of virtue ?
Is fear the arch that supports the moral nature of man ?
You seem to think that there is danger in knowledge, and
that the best chemists are the most likely to poison themselves.
You say that to sneer at religion is only a step from sneering
at morality, and then only another step to that which is vicious
and profligate.
The Jews entertained the same opinion of the teachings of
Christ. He sneered at their religion. The Christians have
entertained the same opinion of every philosopher. Let me say
to you again—and let me say it once for all—that morality has
nothing to do with religion. Moralily does not depend upon
the supernatural. Morality does not walk with the crutches of
miracles. Morality appeals to the experience of mankind. It
cares nothing about faith, nothing about sacred books. Morality
depends upon facts, something that can be seen, something
known, the product of which can be estimated. It needs no
priest, no ceremony, no mummery. It believes in the freedom
of the human mind. It asks for investigation. It is founded
upon truth. It is the enemy of all religion, because it has to do
with this world, and with this world alone.
My object is to drive fear out of the world. Fear is the
gaoler of the mind. Christianity, superstition—that is so say,
the supernatural—makes every brain a prison and every soul a
convict. Under the government of a personal deity, conse
quences partake of the nature of punishments and rewards.
�FAITH AND FACT.
25
Under the government of Nature, what you call punishments
and rewards are simply consequences. Nature does not punish.
Nature does not reward. Nature has no purpose. When the
storm comes, I do not think : “ This is being done by a tyrant.”
When the sun Bhines, I do not say: “This is being done by a
friend.” Liberty means freedom from personal dictation. It does
not mean escape from the relations we sustain to other facts in
Nature. I believe in the restraining influences of liberty. Tem
perance walks hand in hand with freedom. To remove a chain
from the body puts an additional responsibility upon the soul.
Liberty says to the man: You injure or benefit yourself; you
increase or decrease your own well-being. It is a question of
intelligence. You need not bow to a supposed tyrant, or to
infinite goodness. You are responsible to yourself and to those
you injure, and to none other.
I rid myself of fear, believing as I do that there is no power
above which can help me in any extremity, and believing as I do
that there is no power above or below that can injure me in any
extremity. I do not believe that I am the sport of accident, or
that I may be dashed in pieces by the blind agency of Nature.
There is no accident, and there is no agency. That which
happens must happen. The present is the child of all the past,
the mother of all the future.
Does it relieve mankind from fear to believe that there is
some God who will help them in extremity ? What evidence
have they on which to found this belief? When has any God
listened to the prayer of any man ? The water drowns, the cold
freezes, the flood destroys, the fire burns, the bolt of heaven
falls—when and where has the prayer of man been answered ?
Is the religious world to-day willing to test the efficacy of
prayer? Only a few years ago it was tested in the United
States. The Christians of Christendom, with one accord, fell
upon their knees and asked God to spare the life of one man.
You know the result. You know just as well as I that the
forces of Nature produce the good and bad alike. You know
that the forces of Nature destroy the good and bad alike. You
know that the lightning feels the same keen delight in striking
to death the honest man that it does or would in striking the
assassin with his knife lifted above the bosom of innocence.
Did God heai’ the prayers of the slaves ? Did he hear the
prayers of imprisoned philosophers and patriots ? Did he hear
the prayers of martyrs, or did he allow fiends, calling them
selves his followers, to pile the fagots round the forms of
glorious men ? Did he allow the flames to devour the flesh of
those whose hearts were his ? Why should any man depend on
the goodness of a God who created countless millions, knowing
that they would suffer eternal grief?
The faith that you call sacred—“ sacred as the most delicate
�26
FAITH AND FACT.
or manly or womanly sentiment of love and7honor”—is the
faith that nearly all of your fellow men are to be lost. Ought
an honest man to be restrained from denouncing that faith be
cause those who entertain it say that their feelings are hurt ?
You say to me: “There is a hell. A man advocating the
opinions you advocate will go there when he dies.” I answer :
“ There is no hell. The Bible that teaches that is not
true.” And you say: “ How can you hurt my feelings ?”
You seem to think that one who attacks the religion of Ids
parents is wanting in respect to his father and mother.
Were the early Christians lacking in respect for their fathers
and mothers? Were the Pagans who embraced Christianity
heartless sons and daughters ? What have you to say of the
Apostles ? Did they not heap contempt upon the religion of
their fathers and mothers ? Did they not join with him who
denounced their people as a “ generation of vipers ” ? Did they
not follow one who offered a reward to those who would desert
father and mother ? Of course you have only to go back a few
generations in your family to find a Field who was not a Pres
byterian. After that you find a Presbyterian. Was he base
enough and. infamous enough to heap contempt upon the
religion of his father and mother ? All the Protestants in the
time of Luther lacked in respect for the religion of their
fathers and mothers. According to your ideas, progress is a
prodigal son. If one is bound by the religion of his father and
mother, and his father happens to be a Presbyterian and his
mother a Catholic, what is he to do ? Do you not see that your
doctrine gives intellectual freedom only to foundlings ?
If by Christianity you mean the goodness, the spirit of for
giveness, the benevolence claimed by Christians to be a part, and
the principal part, of that peculiar religion, then I do not agree
with you when you say that “ Christ is Christianity and that it
stands or falls with him.” You have narrowed unnecessarily the
foundation of your religion. If it should be established beyond
doubt that Christ never existed all that is of value in Chris
tianity would remain, and remain unimpaired. Suppose that
we should find that Euclid was a myth, the science known as
mathematics would not suffer. It makes no difference who
painted or chiseled the greatest pictures and statues so long as
we have the pictures and statues. When he who has given the
world a truth passes from the earth the truth is left. A truth
dies only when forgotten by the human race. Justice, love,
mercy, forgiveness, honor, all the virtues that ever blossomed in
the human heart, were known and practised for uncounted ages
before the birth of Christ.
You insist that religion does not leave man in “ abj’ect terror ’*
—does not leave him “ in utter darkness as to his fate.”
Is it possible to know who will be saved ? Can you read the
�FAITH AND FACT.
27
names mentioned in the decrees of the infinite ? Is it possible
to tell who is to be eternally lost ? Can the imagination conceive
a worse fate than your religion predicts for a majority of the
race ? Why should not every human being be in “ abject terror ”
who believes your doctrine ? How many loving and sincere
women are in the asylums to-day fearing that they have com
mitted “ the unpardonable sin ”—a sin to which your God has
attached the penalty of eternal torment, and yet has failed to
describe the offence ? Can tyranny go beyond this—fixing the
penalty of eternal pain for the violation of a law not written,
not known, but kept in the secrecy of infinite darkness ? How
much happier it is to know nothing about it, and to believe
nothing about it! How much better to have no God.
You discover a “ great intelligence ordering our little lives, so
that even the trials that we bear, as they call out the finer
elements of character, conduce to our future happiness.’’ This
is an old explanation—probably as good as any. The idea is,
that this world is a school in which man becomes educated
through tribulation—the muscles of character being developed
by wrestling with misfortune. If it is necessary to live this
life in order to develop character, in order to become worthy of
a better world, how do you account for the fact that millions of
the human race die in infancy, and are thus deprived of this
necessary education and development ? What would you think
of a schoolmaster who should kill a large proportion of his
scholars during the first day, before they had even an oppornity to look at A ?
You insist that “ there is a power behind nature making for
righteousness.”
If nature is infinite, how can there be a power outside of
nature ? If you mean by a “ power making for righteousness ”
that man as he become civilised, as he become intelligent, not
only takes advantage of the forces of nature for his own benefit,
but perceives more and more clearly that if he be happy he must
live in harmony with the conditions of his being, in harmony
with the fact by which he is surrounded, in harmony with the
relations he sustains to others and to things; if this is what
you mean, then there is “ a power making for righteousness.”
But if you mean that there is something supernatural at the
back of nature directing events, then I insist that there can by
no possibility be any evidence of the existence of such a power.
The history of the human race shows that nations rise and fall.
There is a limit to the life of a race; so that it can be said of
every nation dead, that there was a period when it laid the
foundations of prosperity, when the combined intelligence and
virtue of the people constituted a power working for righteous
ness, and that there came a time when this nation became a
spendthrift, when it ceased to accumulate, when it lived on the
�28
FAITH AND FACT.
labors of its youth, and passed from strength and glory to the
weakness of old age, and finally fell palsied to its tomb.
The intelligence of man guided by a sense of duty is the only
power that makes for righteousness.
You tell me that I am waging “ a hopeless war,” and you give
as a reason that the Christian religion began to be nearly two
thousand years before I was born, and that it will live two
thousand years after I am dead.
Is this an argument ? Does it tend to convince even yourself?
Could not Caiaphas, the high priest, have said substantially this
to Christ? Could he not have said: “The religion of Jehovah
began to be four thousand years before you were born, and it
will live two thousand years after you are dead ? ” Could not a
follower of Buddha make the same illogical remark to a mission
ary from Andover with the glad tidings ? Could he not say:
“ You are waging a hopeless war. The religion of Buddha
began to be twenty-five hundred years before you were born, and
hundreds of millions of people still worship at Great Buddha’s
shrine ? ”
Do you insist that nothing except the right can live for two
thousand years ? Why is it that the Catholic Church “ lives on
and on, while nations and kingdoms perish ? ” Do you consider
that the survival of the fittest ?
Is it the same Christian religion now living that lived during
the Middle Ages ? Is it the same Christian religion that founded
the Inquisition and invented the thumb-screw ? Do you see no
difference between the religion of Calvin and Jonathan Edwards
and the Christianity of to-day ? Do you really think that it is
the same Christianity that has been living all these years ?
Have you noticed any change in the last generation ? Do you
remember when scientists endeavored to prove a theory by a
passage from the Bible, and do you now know that believers in
the Bible are exceeding anxious to prove its truth by some fact
that science has demonstrated ? Do you know that the standard
has changed ? Other things are not measured by Bible, but the
Bible has to submit to another test. It no longer owns the
scales. It has to be weighed—it is being weighed—it is growing
lighter and lighter every day. Do you know that only a few
years ago “ the glad tidings of great joy ” consisted mostly in a
descriptions of hell ? Do you know that nearly every intelligent
minister is now ashamed to preach about it, or to read about it,
or to talk about it ? Is there any change ? Do you know that
but few ministers now believe in “ the plenary inspiration ” of
the Bible, that from thousands of pulpits people are now told
that the creation according to Genesis is a mistake, that it never
was as wet as the flood, and that the miracles of the Old Testa
ment are considered simply as myths or mistakes ?
How long will what you call Christianity endure, if it changes
�FAITH AND FACT.
29
as rapidly during the next century as it has during the last ?
What will there be left of the supernatural ?
It does not seem possible that thoughtful people can, for many
years, believe that a being of infinite wisdom is the author of the
Old Testament, that a being of infinite purity and kindness
upheld polygamy and slavery, that he ordered his chosen people
to massacre their neighbors, and that he commanded husbands
and fathers to persecute wives and daughters unto death for
opinion’s sake.
It does not seem within the prospect of belief that Jehovah,
the cruel, the jealous, the ignorant, and the revengeful, is the
creator and preserver of the universe.
Does it seem possible that infinite goodness would create a
world in which life feeds on life, in which everything devours
and is devoured? Can there be a sadder fact than this : Inno
cence is not a certain shield ?
It is impossible for me to believe in the eternity of punishment.
If that doctrine be true, Jehovah is insane.
Day after day there are mournful processions of men and
women, patriots and mothers, girls whose only crime is that the
word Liberty burst into flower between their pure and loving
lips, driven like beasts across the melancholy wastes of Siberian
snow. These men, these women, these daughters go to exile
and slavery, to a land where hope is satisfied with death.
Does it seem possible to you that an “ Infinite Father ” Bees all
this and sits as silent as a god of stone ?
And yet, according to your Presbyterian creed, according to
your inspired book, according to your Christ, there is another
procession, in which are the noblest and the best, in which you
will find the wondrous spirits of this world, the lovers of the
human race, the teachers of their fellow men, the greatest
soldiers that ever battled for the right; and this procession of
countless millions in which you will find the most generous and
the most loving of the sons and daughters of men, is moving on
the Siberia of God, the land of eternal exile, where agony
becomes immortal.
How can you, how can any man with brain or heart, believe
this infinite lie P
Is there not room for a better, for a higher philosophy ? After
all, is it not possible that we may find that everything has been
necessarily produced, that all religions and superstitions, all
mistakes and all crimes were simply necessities? Is it not
possible that out of this perception may come not only love and
pity for others, but absolute justification for the individual ?
May we not find that every soul has, like Mazeppa, been lashed
to the wild horse of passion, or like Prometheus, to the rocks of
fate ?
You ask me to take the “ sober second thought.” I beg of you
�30
FAITH AND FACT.
to take the first, and if you do you will throw away the Presby
terian creed; you will instantly perceive that he who commits
the “ smallest sin ” no more deserves eternal pain than he who
does the smallest virtuous deed deserves eternal bliss; you will
become convinced that an infinite God who creates billions of
men knowing that they will suffer through all the countless years
is an infinite demon; you will be satisfied that the Bible, with
its philosophy and its folly, with its goodness and its cruelty, is
but the work of man, and that the supernatural does not and
cannot exist.
Bor you personally I have the highest regard and the sincerest
respect, and I beg of you not to pollute the soul of childhood, not
to furrow the cheeks of mothers, by preaching a creed that
should be shrieked in a mad-house. Do not make the cradle
as terrible as the coffin. Preach I pray you, the gospel of intel
lectual hospitality—the liberty of thought and speech. Take
from loving hearts the awful fear. Have mercy on your fellow
men. Do not drive to madness the mothers whose tears are
falling on the pallid faces of these who died in unbelief. Pity
the erring, wayward, suffering, weeping world. Do not proclaim
as “tidings of great joy” that an Infinite Spider is weaving
webs to catch the souls of men.
Printed and Published by G. W. Foote, at 28 Stonecutter Street, London, EC.
��WORKS BY COLONEL R. G. INGERSOLL
s. d.
MISTAKES OF MOSES
...
...
...10
Superior edition, in cloth ...
...
... 1f>
Only Complete Edition published in England.
DEFENCE OF FREETHOUGHT
...
... 0 0
Five Hours’ Speech at the Trial of 0. B.
Reynolds for Blasphemy.
REPLY TO GLADSTONE
...
...
... 0 4
With a Biography by J. M. Wheeler.
ROME OR REASON ? Reply to Cardinal Manning 0 4
CRIMES AGAINST CRIMINALS
...
... 0 0
AN ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN ................ 0 3
GOD AND MAN. Second Reply to Dr. Field
... 0 2
THE DYING CREED
...
...
... 0 2
THE HOUSEHOLD OF FAITH
0 2
LOVE THE REDEEMER. Reply to Count Tolstoi 0 2
THE LIMITS OF TOLERATION
0 2
A Discussion with Hon. F. D. Coudert and
Gov. S. L. Woodford
DO I BLASPHEME?
0 2
THE CLERGY AND COMMON SENSE
0 2
THE GREAT MISTAKE
0 1
LIVE TOPICS
0 1
MYTH AND MIRACLE
0 1
REAL BLASPHEMY
0 1
SOCIAL SALVATION
0 2
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE .
0 2
GOD AND THE STATE
0 2
0 2
WHY AM I AN AGNOSTIC ?
0 2
WHY AM I AN AGNOSTIC ? Part H
Progressive Publishing Co, 28 Stonecutter Street, E.C.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Faith and fact : a letter to the Rev. Henry M. Field
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 30 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Reprinted from the North American Review, Nov. 1887. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. "Works by Colonel R.G. Ingersoll" listed on back cover. No. 22e in Stein checklist. Printed and published by G.W. Foote.
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Progressive Publishing Company
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1890
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Religion
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Faith
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Reason
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR
NATURAL REASON
DIVINE REVELATION:
AN
APPEAL FOR FREETHOUGHT.
By JULIAN.
EDITED BY ROBERT LEWINS, M.D.
“ Yet let us ponder boldly—’tis a base
Abandonment of reason to resign
Our Right qoThought—our last and only place
Of refuge ;^this, at least, shall still be mine ;
Though from our birth the faculty divine
Is chained and tortured—cabined, cribbed, confined,
And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine
Too brightly on the unprepared mind,
The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind.”
*
Byron.
"Philosophy, Wisdom, and Liberty support each other; he who will
not reason is a bigot ; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a
slave. ”—Academical Questions.
“ Post mortem nihil est, ipsa que mors nihil.”
LONDON:
FREETHOUGHT PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28, Stonecutter Street, E.C.
�LONDON :
PRINTED BY ANNIE BESANT AND CHARLES BRADLAUGH,
28, STONECUTTER STREET, LONDON, E.C.
�Hl-?
M4-20
PREFACE.
K
The following tract embodies an argument for the reason
ableness and all-sufficiency of Naturism, and the nullity of
Supernaturalism, as recorded by pretended divine revela
tion, in the constitution of the organic and inorganic world.
It has been written at my request, and on data of my
suggestion, by the same profound scholar and divine with
whom I was associated some years ago, in “ Replies to the
•Lectures of the Christian Evidence Society,” which lectures
obtained a wide circulation under the title “ Modern
Scepticism,” and in a-series of pamphlets “Biology versus
Theology,” in which we laboured to controvert the dominant
theology of Christendom, nowhere so fatuously rampant,
in our day, as in this country.
The theses on which is based, on this occasion, the
refutation of all spiritual superstition are twofold—ist, the
identity of thought and cerebration, or function of the brain,
•and 2nd, the identity of all vital or physiological function
—including, of course, sensation and thought, with the
-ordinary cosmical operations of the entire external universe
•—a unity attributable to the identity of the physical force
active in sentient life and inorganic motion. These theses
have been adequately elaborated in two papers I published
in 1869 and 1873, entitled “ The Identity of the Vital and
Cosmical Principle,” and “ Life and Mind on the Basis
•of Materialism,” in which I endeavoured to place on exact
�4
PREFACE.
scientific data the sublime fact that sensation and thought
have, for their production, no special spiritual factor, but
depend entirely on the same physical agency we find operative
throughout the cosmos in light, heat, and motion. I need
not, therefore, at present refer further to the subject.
Nothing can possibly be simpler or more intelligible, even
to the least-instructed mind, than the rationale of the
following pages, resolving, as it does, all objective pheno
mena, all “ the choir of heaven and furniture of earth—in a
word, all those appearances which compose the mighty
frame of the world”—to quote Bishop Berkeley in his
“Principles of Human Knowledge,” into mere subjective
or personal perception. We thus can regard everything
outside ourselves as parts, of a mighty phantom, the
actuality of which may or may not be real, and get rid of ex
perimental physics and all specialism, striking out a short and
direct path—the path of common sense and healthy feeling,
from which all self or world analysis, the habitual and
persistent attitude of scientific research, widely diverges—to
the one essential science—viz., self-knowledge, on which
alone can be based the true theory and rational, practical
conduct of human existence. In this manner we reconcile
the apparent antitheses between object and subject, the ego
and non-ego, between the microcosm of the living body
and the universe of phenomena lying beyond, or outside
that mirror and re-duplication in parvo of the macrocosm.
To repeat, in other words, the above statement, it seems
surely a self-evident proposition, as formulated more or less
clearly by early Greek philosophers, and emphatically by
Protagoras, that “ man can think nothing except himself,
and which self and its anthropomorphism must be therefore
to humanity, the sole measure and standard of all existing
and non-existing or imaginary things.” This standpoint
makes thus everything virtually ideal or anthropological,
�PREFACE.
5
nothing being tangible, perceptible, cognisable by the five
senses or by thought, except ordinary exoteric sensations or
perceptions, and those more complex, occult, esoteric ones
which we term ideas or ideation, the latter clearly recog
nisable as the special or peculiar sensations or perceptions
of what is termed in modern physiology the hemispherical
ganglia of that very complex congeries of organs, within the
head, popularly comprehended’ as one viscus, under the
name cerebrum or brain.
As, therefore, we can be only sensible of our own percep
tions, exoteric and esoteric—the first the mere reflection of
the outer world, and the latter, or ideation, the specific
function of the brain (vulgarly speaking) itself, both of
which can be ultimately traced to the cellular grey substance
of the central nervous apparatus—it is perfectly manifest
that the source of all perception and ideation is located in
the material organism of the body, and that all divine
worship and religion is a mere form of mental and moral
confusion and transparent delusion, being necessarily solely
Self-idolatry—the prostration of one portion of our feelings
and faculties before another portion—-seeing that beyond
ourselves it is, in the nature of things, impossible for our
feelings and faculties to range. Were man a dual being,
compounded of matter and spirit, as stated in our Bible and
in other records of the supernatural genesis of our race, it
is perfectly patent that Pantheism must be the rational
solution of all vital and cosmical problems.
For on the
supposition that matter is supernaturally vivified, all things
must be an emanation or efflatus of the divine spirit or
breath—one and indivisible—a position entirely reversed, and
Materialism substituted for that ancient and sublime onto
logy, as soon as we become illuminated by the conviction
that all things and all nothings, alike abstract and concrete—
in one word, all consciousness of our own personality and
�6
PREFACE.
our surroundings, including transcendental idealism and theDivine Idea itself, can be traced to the direct natural
operation of a special portion of our anatomical structure—
a structure, the functions of which are amenable, just as.
much as those of all other corporeal organs, to ordinary
natural law.
From this vantage ground, therefore, natural reason is.
seen to be the supreme judge and arbiter of all conceivable
objects, relegating all Supernaturalism and Revelation into
the realm of the imaginary and irrational, thus realizing the:
truth of the Laureate’s verse :
“ I take possession of man’s mind and deed,
I care not what the sect may bawl;
I sit as God, holding no form of creed,
But neutralizing all.”
Robert Lewins.
London, March, 1879.
�CONTENTS.
PAGE
SECTION I.
.....
BELIEF AND INFIDELITY
9
SECTION II.
ALL RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS ARE MUCH ALIKE.
.
.
.
II
SECTION III.
EVERY RELIGIOUS SYSTEM CLAIMS TO BE DIVINE .
.
14
SECTION IV.
TRUTH DESIRABLE
..
.
.
•
. •
•
21
.
23
.
2$
SECTION-v.
WE BELIEVE MANY THINGS WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND
SECTION VI.
WHAT MAN CAN AND WHAT HE CANNOT KNOW
.
SECTION VII.
MAN
A
MATERIAL
OBJECTS
BEING
SURROUNDED
BY
MATERIAL
......
30
SECTION VIII’.
SENSIBILITY A PROPERTY OF ORGANISED MATTER .
.
31
�8
CONTENTS.
PAGE'
SECTION IX.
BRAIN
AND
BRAINWORK
ALSO
DUE
TO
MATERIAL
ORGANISM
33-
SECTION X.
MAN
CAN
THINK
OF ETERNITY,
AND
THEREFORE
IS
ETERNAL—THIS STATEMENT CONFUTED
36-
SECTION XI.
MAN IN NOWISE DIFFERENT FROM OTHER ANIMALS, EXCEPT
SO FAR AS THE ORGANIC STRUCTURE OF ONE ANIMAL
MAY DIFFER FROM ANOTHER .
38
SECTION XII.
IF MAN IS NOT A DUAL BEING, COMPOUNDED OF SOUL AND
BODY, THERE CAN HAVE BEEN NO REVELATION
40-
�NATURAL REASON DIVINE
REVELATION.
“ Deliver not the tasks of might
To weakness, neither hide the ray
From those, not blind who want for day,
Though sitting girt with doubtful light.”
Tennyson.
SECTION I.
BELIEF AND INFIDELITY.
Tees world is now, and ever has been, divided into two great
parties—-those who think for themselves, and those who credu
lously accept what they are told to believe. Reformers and
infidels are the thinkers ; the orthodox and laissez aIler party
are those who believe on the authority of others, and ask no
questions. The latter are too lazy, or too interested, or too
ignorant to wish for progress; the former is the salt of the
earth, and would go from bad to good, from good to better,'
and from better to best, regardless of all interests but those
of fact and truth. The orthodox never think for them
selves, they only “think” to understand what they are told
to believe. They are the mere exponents of a routine
system consecrated by custom, which they feel themselves,
bound to support. The infidel, on the other hand, takes,
nothing upon trust, nothing on the ipse- dixit of others, and
holds nothing to be sacred which his own conviction does,
not approve. The former deify tradition, the latter would
“ prove all things, and hold fast [only] that which is good.”
If any descrepancy between reason and dogma occurs tothe orthodox, he gives up reason, experience, nature, and
clings to dogma; but the infidel pays no reverence to any
thing which stultifies his reason, contradicts general experi
ence, and does violence to the laws of nature. The one
thinks it would be better to sink with the time-honoured
ship ; the other would save his life, and persuade others to
do so likewise.
St. Paul was an infidel in Judea, so was the “ man Christ
Jesus.” It was as much for their infidelity and exposure of
priestcraft as for sedition that Jesus and his disciples were
opposed by the orthodox hierarchy, scourged, imprisoned,.
�IO
NATURAL REASON versus
and in some cases put to death. The Mahometans call
all Christians giaours—that is, infidels—because unbelievers,
in Mahomet and the Koran. In a word, a believer is not
one who believes truth, but one who slavishly pins his faith
to a creed, whether true or false.
Take our own nation, for example. There was a time:
when the Druids were the great teachers, and if any private
or public individual disobeyed their decrees, or attempted,
to question their authority, he was excommunicated and ex
cluded from the right of sacrifice. The Romans came
next, displaced the oak-worshippers, put flamens and
augurs in their sees, and Polytheism became the orthodox
creed of the land. Again the scene shifted, and the Saxons,
lorded it over England. Neither Druidism nor the Roman
mythology suited the new-comers, so Odinism was set
up, and the down-trodden islanders were told to look
forward after death to a “ feast of skulls ”; and those who
doubted or disbelieved were threatened, not. with everlasting
fire, so terrible to the dwellers in the hot east, but with am
ever-living death in thick-ribbed ice. Truth is one, it
changes not, it is wholly regardless of what men like or
loathe, believe or disbelieve; but orthodoxy, like the
chameleon, is white or black, blue or green, according to>
circumstances. In one place it is Brahmanism, in another
Buddhism, in a third Polytheism, in a fourth MumboJumboism. In England it was once the worship of oaks,
then the worship of Jupiter, then of Odin, for falsehood
can have no stability. While still the Saxons were in.
power, a band of missionaries came from Rome with censer
and crucifix, chasuble and crosier, under whose teaching
the ignorant and unlettered islanders abandoned Teutonic,
for Roman Catholic orthodoxy ; so the trinity of Odin was.
changed for the trinity of Galilee, and the old orthodoxy
became the new heterodoxy. Kings were the nursing;
fathers and queens the nursing mothers of the new faith,,
till infidelity, in the form of “ Protestantism,” taught men tobe dissatisfied with the faith and legends of the prevailing
creed, and Anglicanism was established as “ the way, the
truth, and the life.” Since then education has been at
work, and now more than ever men are beginning to think
for themselves, and to ask their own judgments if the hour
for a new departure has not struck. The infidel is always,
the movement party, which, as St. Paul says, “ forgetting
those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto.
�DIVINE REVELATION.
II
those things which are before, press towards the mark of
the [only] prize” worth attaining—that is, truth. They are
the thinking minority—always a small party, because the
multitude, as a multitude, is a mere capui mortuum—always.
Unpopular, because they pay no more heed to legends, tra
dition, and creeds than to sounding brass and tinkling,
cymbals.
SECTION II.
ALL RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS ARE MUCH ALIKE.
There is a wonderful family likeness in all the religious
systems of the past and present. The general programmeir a self-existing Eternal Being and three working deities—a.
period of darkness and water—a creation—a golden age—
a degeneracy—and a general flood. It matters little to
what part of the world we turn, whether India or China,,
Scandinavia or Greece, America, Africa, or European.
Christendom.
It might be • difficult to account for this similarity in a
satisfactory manner,* but it would be preposterous to
suppose that all these traditions are more or less mutilated
versions of the Mosaic original, inasmuch as many of the
nations could not have known even the name of the Jewish
lawgiver, and others would know as much about him as.
Aristotle did of Britain, or Virgil of Thule, where, Ptolemy
tells us, “the days are twenty-four hours long at the
[spring] equinoxes” [w?].
What is the Hindu story ? Like the Jewish, it presupposes,
a self-existing Eternal Unit, invisible, all-potent, soul of all
created life, from whom all spring, to whom all will return,
the Altogether-all before creation, the All-in-all during
creation, and the All-of-all at the consummation.
No doubt there is great vagueness in both the Hindu
and Jewish notions of Deity, nor is the Jewish perplexity at
all relieved by the Christian dogma. All speak of the One
Eternal, but all employ in the business of creation a divinetri'ad. Thus, in the first chapter of Genesis we areintroduced to Elohim, the Logos or Word, and the spirit
* To me no difficulty whatever exists, the substantial unity of thehuman mind exhibiting itself everywhere independently in similar
forms.—R. L.
�12
NATURAL REASON versus
that moved on the face of the deep; and that there may be
no doubt on the matter, St. John tells us the Word or
Logos, which was “at the beginning,” was the Creator of all
things, and the very Deity which was “ made flesh and
dwelt among us.” So the Hindus are taught to believe in
One Only Everlasting Potentate, and yet in the trimurti, or
three operative deities, called Brahma, Vishnu, and Sheva.
The incarnations or avatars of the second person of the
Hindu triad cannot fail to bring forcibly to mind the
avatar or incarnation of the second person of the Christian
Trinity.
Going back to the cosmogony, according to Indian
mythology, we read that before creation the Eternal called
into being the sacred triad, that Brahma was the father of
spirit, that “all things were made by him, and without him
was not anything made which is made.
In him was
light, and the light was the life of man.” So Manu speaks
of Brahma, and so St. John has spoken of Jesus. Having
created the elements, Brahma next called into being the
whole animal world, together with angels and demons, the
seas, the clouds, and the host of heaven. When all was
finished, the Eternal gave Brahma the sacred volume called
the Rig-Veda, of which the Shasta is a targum. The
volume was God’s revelation to man, and contains not only
a history of creation, a code of duties, and a series of
prophecies, but also sets forth what feasts and fasts, what
rites and ceremonies, the faithful are expected to observe.
The Guebres, or ancient Persians, presupposed a One
Eternal, but they also had their working triad, Oromasdes
the principle of good, Arimanes the principle of evil, and
Mithras, the principle of beauty. Zoroaster tells us that
Oromasdes, in the character of creator, took six unequal
periods to complete his work of creation : In the ist period
he made the heavens; in the 2nd, the water; in the 3rd, dry
land; in the 4th, grass, the herb yielding seed, and the trees
after their kind whose seed is in itself; in the 5th, the fish
of the waters, the birds of the air, and the cattle of the field ;
and in the 6th, man.
The Aztecs, or ancient Mexicans, have a legend wonder
fully like that told by Moses. They say that God created a
man and a woman out of the dust of the earth, but their
offspring became so wicked that a flood destroyed the
whole race except a priest named Tezpi, with his wife and
family, who were preserved in a huge ark. In this ark
�DIVINE REVELATION.
13
Tezpi saved a vast number of animals and much seed.
When he fancied the waters were subsiding, he sent forth a
bird, called Aura, but the bird never returned; he then sent
forth others, but one only, the smallest of them all, came
back to the ark, bearing an olive-twig in its beak.
The old Virginian tribes had a mythology equally striking.
According to this legend, there is a great eternal and- two
lesser deities. Water was the first created element, and
woman was taken out of man.
• The Chipionyans, another large tribe of American
Indians, assert that at one time water covered the face of
the whole earth, but a bird (the spirit of Jewish mythology),
brooding over the water, caused dry land to appear from the
great brilliancy of its eyes, after which the same bird made
all the different parts of creation one after the other. In
the process of time the race of man became so rebellious,
that a great flood swept every living thing away. The
Hurons have a legend that there was once a time when
there was only a single man on the earth, and feeling
very desolate, he went to heaven to look for a companion.
The Eternal gave him Atahentsik as a helpmeet, and in
time the woman had two sons, who killed each other.
It would be easy to multiply these legends, but we shall
add only one more, that of the ancient Romans. Of this we
have the fullest detail in Ovid’s “ Metamorphoses,” so that
he who runs may read it. The poet tells us there was once
a time when heaven, and earth, and sea were all mixed to
gether in a.chaotic mass; there was no sun at that time, no
moon, no dry land. The Creator wished, and immediately
the heavens were lifted from the earth ; and the waters being
gathered into their bed, dry land appeared. Again the
Creator wished, and the earth was rolled into a globe, the
atmosphere separated the clouds from the earth, and the
starry host shone forth in the vault of heaven. Again the
■ Eternal wished, and the air, the sea, and the dry land were
stocked with living organisms. Last of all, man was made,
“of a larger understanding but, says the poet, “ whether
from an immediate divine germ, or whether the earth, being
fresh from the hands of God, retained a certain divine
quality, we • know not; all we know is, that Japetus
fashioned man in the image of deity, and gave him
dominion over all the earth. For a long period the newcreated race enjoyed a golden age, an Eden of innocence
and delight; but a change came over the earth, and the
�14
NATURAL REASON versus
golden age lapsed into the silver, the silver into the brazen,
■and the brazen into the age of iron. From time to time
-deity pleaded with man, but wickedness at length grew
rampant, a flood swept over the whole earth, and a new
race arose from the one pair which was alone saved.”
We are so accustomed from early childhood to regard
the Bible as an inspired book, wholly sui generis and
■entirely unique, so unlike every other book, that we are
overwhelmed with amazement when the truth first dawns
upon us that the legends and traditions there on record are
■common to every quarter of the globe, and it needed no
more inspiration for Moses to bring them together than for
the Hindus, the Guebres, the Aztecs, the North American
savages, and the hundreds of other nations or tribes which
have from time immemorial repeated them in their legendary
lore.
SECTION III.
EVERY RELIGIOUS SYSTEM CLAIMS TO BE DIVINE.
The Jews assert that their Scriptures were given by direct
inspiration, but it is by no means certain what they meant
by their Scriptures before the Babylonish captivity, pro
bably the Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses. It seems,
however, that no great reverence was paid to these Books,
or care taken of them, at least in the reigns of the latter
kings. It surely must strike every one as most strange that
the High Priest should not know where to find so precious
and sacred a volume, yet it is quite certain that the Book
was mislaid or lost when Josiah succeeded to the crown.
This young king began his reign with great activity and
zeal, which diffused itself into the priesthood, for Hilkiah,
•after diligent search or some lucky accident, stumbled on
the sacred volume, and said to Shaphan, the scribe, “ I
have found the Book, the Law. I found it in the Lord’s
house.” This intelligence was thought so surprising that
:Shaphan went forthwith to the King and told him, saying,
“Hilkiah, the priest, has found the Book of the Law.”
(2 Chr. xxxiv., 14-16). How marvellous does this sound!
Here was a Book said to be inspired, said to be sacred,
said to be guarded by the Jews as the most precious of
-relics, actually lost and found. Hilkiah, although the High
�DIVINE REVELATION.
15
Priest, did not even know of its existence. It was so
unexpectedly discovered that it was told to the King as a
matter of national congratulation. Moses is said to have
-commanded that it should be kept, with Aaron’s rod and a
pot of manna, in the ark of the covenant; and had this
injunction been obeyed, the High Priest would have known
in a moment where to look for it; but, like Aaron’s rod
and the pot of manna, so little care was taken of these
. relics that all three were lost. The rod and the manna
were never found, but Hilkiah did happen to discover the
lost volume of the law. When Nebuchadnezzar destroyed
the Temple, and took the Jews into captivity, the Book of the
Law was destroyed; and during the seventy years’ captivity
there seem to have been no Scripture writings at all. Some
fifty or sixty years afterwards Ezra and Nehemiah, with
three or four others, set about hunting up all fragments,
traditions, and MSS. which could be found, and these
detached pieces were collated and edited on the judgment
Of the compilers; but these compilers never thought it
worth, their while to preserve the originals, so that no one
can compare the new editions with the old. It seems
almost incredible that men like Nehemiah and Ezra should
have taken the pains to hunt up the MSS., and yet should
have taken none to preserve them. One would think they
would have guarded them with the utmost jealousy, and
taken every possible precaution to transmit them to pos
terity ; but no, Ezra’s version was thought enough, and
the originals, like the Ossian of Macpherson, the Book of
Mormon, and Rowley’s Poems, “ edited ” by Chatterton,
no one ever saw. It is now a general belief among exegists
that they never existed of an older date, or in any other
form than that in which we now possess them. All this,
however, is very different from what we are taught to believe,
that the Jews, before the captivity, always preserved their
Scriptures with such sacred and jealous care that not a letter
or point could be changed without instant detection. The
very contrary seems to have been the fact; they paid so
little heed to them, if indeed they were in existence at all,
that they were sometimes wholly lost, and that till Ezra
edited the stray MSS., and pieced them together, no authentic
copy of the whole volume anywhere existed—certainly neither
Ezra nor Nehemiah knew of one.
All that has been
said of the Old Testament applies with equal force to the
New. Assuming that our present compilation which passes
�i6
NATURAL REASON versus
under that name is the original volume, it must not be for
gotten that this canon was not established till the year 494,
which would be the same as if ten or twelve gentlemen of
the present day sat in judgment on certain writings issued
in the reign of Edward III., by authors of whom nothing is
known, and whose very names in many cases are doubtful—
these works, be it remembered, not being works of taste,
but professed records of miracles and “ historic facts,” said
to have taken place some 500 years ago.
Let us take an actual example from the reign of Edward I.
It is recorded in full in Rymer’s “Fcedera,” Vol. I., Part II.,
p. 771, Edward I. laid claim to Scotland, and preferred his
claim before a regular synod of bishops, abbots, legates,
and barons. His chief plea was that God had confirmed his
title by special miracle ; and this he made good from a book
entitled “The Life and Miracles of St. John of Beverley.”
The tenour of this extract is as follows: In the reign of
Adelstan the Scots invaded England, and committed great
devastation. Adelstan went to drive them back, and on.
reaching the Tyne, found that the foe had retreated. At
midnight St. John of Beverley appeared to the King, and
bade him cross the river at daybreak, for he “ would surely
discomfit the foe.” Adelstan obeyed the heavenly mes
senger, and reduced the whole kingdom to submission.
On reaching Dunbar on his return march, Adelstan prayed
that some sign might be vouchsafed to him to satisfy all
future ages that God, “ by the intercession of St. John of
Beverley, had given to England the kingdom of Scotland.”
Then struck he with his sword the basaltic rocks near the
■coast, and lo ! the blade sank into the solid flint (to use the
exact words) “ as if it had been butter,” cleaving it asunder
for “ an ell or more.” And the cleft remains to the present
hour, in testimony of the miracle. The wise men of the
two nations were convinced by this legend, and as the
fissure was there they could not disbelieve their eyes, so
judgment was given in favour of King Edward, and Scot
land was declared a fief of England. This miracle was
said to have been performed some 500 years before. The
wisest King of England so firmly believed it that he urges
it as an undoubted fact; and the wisest men of two realms
allowed the claim to be incontrovertible. What is the
obvious inference ? What can it be but this ? The convoca
tion called in 494 was not wiser nor more serious than the
convocation assembled by Edward I. in 1291 > both assem-
�DIVINE REVELATION.
17
blies saw no difficulty in the miraculous stories on which
they had to arbitrate, quite the reverse. The miracles
were proof with them, strong as any natural fact, and both
decided that “ no men can do such works, except God be
with them.” If a king or queen tried the same plea now,
if France laid claim to England, or England to France, on
the authority of some miracle performed 500 years ago,
and testified by a Devil’s Dyke or rock of Calpe, the
pleaders of such “ old wives’ fables ” would be thought fit
inmates for Earlswood or Colney Hatch. That a conclave
of acute lawyers, most learned prelates, calm-judging barons,
and the elite of two nations decided the miracle at Dunbar
was an undoubted fact, would not weigh a straw in any
court of justice in the present century; and that a number
of scholars, wise, honest, and discreet, accepted the
miraculous records which they thought proper to endorse
as worthy of credit, can really have no more weight with
men of unprejudiced judgment. Both synods were honest
after their lights, both judged righteous judgment according
to their conviction ; but if the cases were tried again in our
own days, no man can doubt that the sentences would be
reversed,
Allowing, however, for the sake of argument, that the
canon was wisely selected in 494, we have very little evi
dence that the compilation now called the New Testament
was the one approved of. Dr. Davidson, in his “Introduction
to the New Testament,” tells us that the fourth Gospel, like
the First Epistle of John, is notoriously doubtful. Indeed,
so doubtful is it that though the Christian Evidence Society,
in 1871, selected the then most learned Churchman toplead
for it in their course of lectures delivered in St. George’s Hall,
neither the Society nor its author, the present Bishop of Dur
ham, Dr. Lightfoot, would venture to print the lecture. In the
Convocation of the Province of Canterbury, held at West
minster, February 10th, 1870, the Bishop of Winchester
moved for a revision of the New Testament, “for everybody
knew there were in the present version parts which did not
really belong to the canonical Scriptures.” The Bishop of
Gloucester and Bristol seconded the proposal, and instanced
the truth of the remark by “ the early part of St. Matthew’s
Gospel, the Book of Revelation, the Epistle to the Hebrews,
and some of the Pastoral Epistles.” He next pointed out
the doxologies of Matthew and Mark in proof of the trinity
as doubtful. The Bishop of St. David’s spoke next, and
�18
NATURAL REASON versus
said that some of the prophecies pressed into the Christiancause were certainly no prophecies at all, as, for example,
the desire of all nations” applied to Christ, the “ Lord our
Righteousness,” and so on. The Bishop of Llandaff followed
m the same strain, and said the Second Epistle of Peter was
confessedly spurious, and the Epistle of James was marked
as supposititious by Eusebius and Jerome.
,we have Parts
the Gospels of Matthew
and Mark, all the Gospel of John, the Book of Revelation,
the Epistle to the Hebrews, the First Epistle of John, the
Second of Peter, and the Epistle of James, all pronounced
to be forgeries—-this, be it remembered, not by foes, but
friends—-not by infidels, but prelates—so late as the year1870. Must it not force itself upon the conviction of every
one that a compilation so confessedly dishonest is wholly
worthless as an authority ? Is it not palpable that the
Church which would knowingly palm off false documents,
as true might readily tamper with genuine and authentic
books if it served their purpose ? Must it not be evident
that these prelates and scholars, when they repeat that “ all
Scripture is given by -inspiration of God,” are saying
what m their hearts they know to be false, and are with
■
6^eS °Pen deluding the people ? Orthodoxy, indeed f'
Why the very prelates of the Church are infidels of their
own Scriptures 1
Having disposed of the inspired character of our own
Scriptures, it will be an easy task to show how other religious
institutions have laid claim to a similar divine origin. Re
ference has been made already to the Vedas of Brahmanism.
Probably the oldest book in the world, older even than the
Pentateuch supposing it to be coeval with the settlement
of the Hebrews in Palestine—is the Rig-veda, reduced into
writing by Vyasa, but existing in an oral or traditional
form from the foundation of the world,” if we may trust
the statement of the Brahmans. It is divided into two parts,,
the first being prayers and hymns to be used in sacrificial
o enngs, the second being of a more diffusive characters.
Three other Vedas are based on the Rig-veda, and the wholeresemble in character the Jewish Scriptures, inasmuch as
they contain psalms, prophecies, history, together with di
rections for religious rites and ceremonies. The last of the
Vedas has incantations also, charms, and exorcisms. They
-all claim a divine origin and immemorial antiquity.
Every one read in Roman history will remember that:
�DIVINE REVELATION.
19
Numa, when he wished to organise a religious system for
the new Roman State, used to retire to the sacred grove;
and as he promulgated a law, or instituted a religious rite,
he gave out publicly that he had received instruction from
the nymph Egeria, a prophetic divinity. He knew enough
of human weakness to feel assured that the name of Egeria
would outweigh in authority a whole multitude of mere
mortals like himself. The history of Romulus his. mira
culous origin from a vestal virgin and God, his translation to
heaven in a storm of thunder and lightning in presence of
the whole Roman people, and his subsequent appearance in
a glorified form as the god Quirinus—finds an exact parallel
in the case of Christ. Mahomet adopted a similar device.
He retired from the sight of man, and the people were
taught to believe that Gabriel, the archangel, had descended
in visible shape to make a revelation. Mahomet dictated
the revelation to a scribe, it was then read to the people,
and the MS. thrown into a box. For twenty-three years
revelation after revelation was brought from heaven, and
when any moot point was to be decided, the archangel went
to the “lowest heaven” to consult the original document,
which was “ written by the rays of the sun,” and kept in a
coffer studded with inestimable jewels. Occasionally, on a
great emergency, God himself or the Holy Ghost would
resolve a doubt ; but the main body of the Koran was
revealed from time to time by Gabriel, and taken from the
sacred book, “eternal as God himself.”
The book of the “ Latter-day Saints ” is no exception to
the general rule. Joseph Smith asserts it was revealed to
him by an angel, as the Koran was revealed to Mahomet by
Gabriel. Smith says on Sept. 21st, 1823, he was in secret
prayer, when the whole house seemed to be “ one vast
consuming fire ”while he gazed in consternation at the
fire, like that of the burning bush, there came out of the
midst thereof “a personage” with a face like lightning,
who announced himself an angel sent from God. “ Thy
prayers are heard,” said the heavenly apparition, “ and God
hath chosen thee to.be a vessel unto great honour, to carry
out his divine purposes, and bring in the millenium which is
at hand.” He then gave him a roll, containing a brief sketch
of the aborigines of America. Having so done, he told
Smith where certain sacred plates were deposited. It was
on the west side of a hill about four miles from Palmyra,
Ontario. Five years rolled on from this time before Smith
�20
NATURAL REASON versus
was allowed to have the plates in his own keeping although
he was permitted occasionally to look on them. InSeptembfr
1827 the angel told him he was then sufficiently holy to be’
tested with the sacred documents, and theTecord was
P aced in his hands. The plates were eight inches bv
ZXTnXTthii? “ Shee? ? tin; the "hole "madeI
pne six inches m thickness, and they were strung on three
nngs. running through the whole of them The wrHnn
th? ch^rac™redaEm?tIan’f”anCl “ SmithcouId notdeciphe?
“ Urim end L P
»of lnlerPretlng spectacles, ciled
“m ”utodJ»Ur?m,?’”,WaS g,''Cn him' The record thus
iraculously revealed contained a history of America
“"I 0:
Mmroon"”
d Ofh lt bbel’- rtl the command Pof pta
“ ”God
till the fi]lnec.eAlP;-42IlbhBtabuned hy“ bg
ill the fulness of time had come. Smith, by the aid of his
interpreting glasses, read the plates to Oliver Cowdery who
InTci Xted " Haa‘i0”’ a"d, “ 1830 the "^“tilted
7' HavinS no longer need of the original the
trelsufy of God7
and dePosited them in’ the
rboiu 7 ? • v ’ -Of course this marvellous tale was
allenged in these infidel days, when men will not always
Se ‘ 0Bo?kSrfMno m,rac“lous s,tories ’ and “
found that
the Book of Mormon was almost a verbal copy of a MS
romance wruten m l8l6 by Solomon Spaldingflut ne^
be wearisome t0 pursue this subject further nor
would it answer any good end. If these examples do’ not
suffice to prove our point, the mere addition of twenty oJ
thirty similar ones would not avail to do so. Jew and
Soth and
beT
the worshiPPer of the sacred
Ind Cuelc tn m er.rn th£ pr°phet Mormon’ Moslem
and 41 -bu’dl affirm.their sacred laws were revealed bv
the Almighty and their Scriptures were inspired records
eternal m God s purposes, infallible, and indispensable for
treasT
Wdfa7 of “ank“d> “>
"Meh is
treason to the majesty of heaven, and the greatest crime
possible of which apostate mortality can be guilty.
�DIVINE REVELATION.
21
SECTION IV.
TRUTH DESIRABLE.
truth is desirable may seem at first sight a self-evident
■statement, but if self-evident it is rarely accepted, and still
more rarely acted on. The rule is not truth, but fashion,
prestige, the stamp of society—not what is true, but what
popular opinion and the influential part of the community
choose to countenance. Few would blush to do or think
*cvil provided they followed the multitude in so doing, but
many would blush to think or do what society pronounces
to be unconventional and of bad ton.
Truth is for the infidel, the reformer, whose conscience
revolts at untruth; the “good, easy world” runs with the
■stream. Those who think for themselves are generally con
sidered dangerous members of the community, as Julius
Caesar held Cassius, and all. who think or act differently to
the accepted formula for the time being are looked on as
mischievous and wrong-headed.
Truth has always to fight its way, and to fight hard, be
cause It is the few against the many, conviction against pre
judice, the rebellion of novelty against established custom.
It is always unpopular, because it has no direct and imme
diate rewards in its gift; neither place nor ribbon, honour
nor emolument. These prizes belong to the dominant party,
and are bestowed not on those who are most faithful to
truth, but on those who best uphold the prestige of those in
power. Truth is slow of growth, and what is more, must
spring from sober self-knowledge, an honest heart and clear
thinking head. Kings cannot command it, priests cannot
claim it as a heritage; it must be searched for diligently,
and peer or peasant can find no favouritism there.
.
Yet is truth desirable, and must in time prevail. To it the
future belongs. It fears no curious, inquisitive eye, it courts
investigation. Try it as you may, it will bear the test; weigh
it, it will never be found wanting. It asks for no sacrifice of
fact, no compromise of reason ; it requires no blind assent,
it fearg no rival, it entrenches on no neighbour-truth. As the
walnut-tree is the more fertile for being beaten, and the aro
matic leaves of the warm south the more fragrant for being
bruised, SO truth is the more brilliant when being laid bare,
.and the most spotless when exposed to the most searching
light. It asks no patron to shore it up with the prestige of a
Twat
�22
NATURAL REASON 'versus
great name. It requires no inspiration to discover it ™
revelation to announce it as “past Andino-nm- ”
n°
superscription to give it value NothfooS
’ T° • amp Or
it; it is wholly indSependen it h t u hShT
U °r mar
nations, one and the same for ever
’
ChmatCS’ a11
Although it is not of the court and hierarchy nevertheless it
its SS captivity ?'e,Z t,.10U°hl to
ns aiscovenes. Every truth becomes an axiom and n
errn^T0? tO mOre trUth> Truth leads to truth, as surely as
and virtu? t0 Crr?r’ Nay’ m°re’ truth leads t0 sincerity
and ruin
“
7“
Ieads t0 deceP‘™> hypocrisy
Take an example; take the Polytheism of old Greece
Greeks and
“T’ Phenomenon ™> ascribed by the
the sea todwiTanS ? J°Ve,’ and CTeV Phenomenon of
the sea to Neptune. Instead, therefore, of investigating
recurrence of‘the
a"d lighnin«’ da>',i£,lt and dark, th!
recurrence of the seasons, the sources of the winds the
meteors,, the waves and tides, they were content to believe
that Jupiter or Neptune willed it so, and all further investiaa
tion was arrested. Even Socrate^ thought t profan?
investigate, the works of nature; it wls presumZous
mld^hv
dlV-n£ a-Cana' Hence the s™a11 Progress
.
? these nations in all the natural sciences Their
notions of nature were wholly erroneous, and all the r
interpretations of natural operations were iiere fable So
in modern times, so long as the Church waTthe prevailing
power and the overlord of kings, investigation and progresf
were rebellion and profanity. Every fresh truth developed
i? truth6’’foTTVn
reSJSted’ and instead of “rojoidng
I”
th? th 7 hai ed lt: Wlth suspicion and hatred. Thev
f^ted whatever did not coincide with their preconceptions^
they hated whatever threw doubt or discredit on their
supremacy, based on ignorance; they hated the cur ou
inquisitive eye which would not 'accept on the r unveXed
t
�DIVINE REVELATION.
23
■authority what they pronounced to be fact and truth.
Never was a darker age of gross ignorance, never a more
-vicious age of overbearing tyranny and social impurity,
never a more heartless age of cruelty and selfishness, than
the miserable Middle Age, when kings and kaisers lord
nnd People were alike enslaved to the infallibility of
■supernatural dogma and dogmatic orthodoxy. The. on y
freedom is the freedom of truth, the only civfl^eit is; the
power of truth. The true millemum is the diffusion . ot
■ truth that noble infidelity of creeds and systems which
-would lead reason captive to the mere^ctu^ XTafon^
and stagnant opinion and custom. That, and that alone,
■will be the millenium, when system is nothing, creeds are
nothing, dictatorial authority is nothing, the haut monde 3
nothing^ mere fashion ismothing, the prestige of name and
rank is nothing, but truth is the all and all, the only creed,
the only object of search, and reason is at last exalted above
^credulity and blind faith.
SECTION V.
WE BELIEVE MANY THINGS WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
can form no judgment of anything beyond reason,
and it is plainly unreasonable to ask me to believe anything
teyo'nJ thPe region of human intelligence* It may be true
but I am not in a position to know it. Faith is a reason
able service, and belief in anything else is mere- credulity
.and imagination. Thus, if I am asked whether fairies
can change their state, and become men and women, I can
onlv answer, I do not know. I have never seen a.fairy,
.and know of no one who ever did; I know not whether
they are palpable or impalpable, flesh and blood like ou .selves or airy nothings—in. short, I know nothing about
them and can give no opinion on the subject.
_
h If ’now you demand of me to believe that a good fairy
did once lay aside its fairy nature., and take a human form,
and go in and out among men doing many wonderful thing ,
•till at ill-disposed rabble hunted and hounded it to death
all I can say is this : It may be so, I cannot tell. It is
wholly out of the pale of my experience, wholly beyond the
Man
* That is, beyond himself.—R-L.
�24
NATURAL REASON versus
limit of my intelligence; and if I once give up reason to
illusiOT.qUlt the narroff path Of truth forgthe hroad road of
“e "hether sPWt can exist indepenaently of matter, I can only answer, I do not know I
know nothing of disembodied spirit. I do not even know
whether there is such a thing, and if there is, wheto it h™
orm and feature, sensibility and motion, growth and decay
With nOthinS- 1 have nogdau to go upon'
about ? but
neither believKe nor disbelieve anything
absurd 7?
? aPPearS t0 ni£ beyond dispute, that it is
2 h on th'?1P?
auCC6pt a d°Sma’ as an ^ticle of
’ on the truth or falsehood of which it is impossible for
to bluXdJU1fmen\ ASWeU ask a blind -ntobe ieve
th?
7
yellow make green, or a deaf man to believe
that the tones of a chromatic scale are not all equal.
m?vSth-t6n UrgJd ln rei°inder that we do actually believe
many things we do not understand. Thus, we believe in
life, but no one knows what life is. We believe in identity
b, 1 ™ °ne can explam what constitutes it, or how a bodv
should be ever changing and yet remain the same. Agam
we believe that grass in the body of a sheep or ox turns
from vegetable to animal substance, and to whkh was
fZ?gHinAe 71 yeSt6rday beC0mes to-day bone of tor
bone and flesh of their flesh, but cannot explain how*
it isZ^r
Cases,are by no means parallel, and
it is a total confusion of ideas to suppose there is any
food0???
7 7 Life’ gr°Wth’ and the inversion of
sunset TammaJ substances are familiar to us as sunrise and
sunset. It is what we see every hour of our lives, and to
exner ?Ve T°n? be t0 ignore the universal observation and
experience of all men ; but to disbelieve what no one ever
7” Caf? fK-6’ What is wholly and substantially difTh 1 r?gs7e are .conversant with, is quite another
T
.i
.b® bje of an animal I see daily, its growth I see
FsiXshT h feedS °n graSS’ and grOWS> 1 canfot d°ubt it.’
Fairies I have never seen, no one has ever seen them.
Disembodied spirit I have never seen, nor any one else with
a sound mind m a sound body; and therefore I have
uotbmg to go upon, there is no evidence except the worthless
estimony of delirium, dream, or disordered imagination.
causes
4
�DIVINE REVELATION.
25
Because I have no knowledge of the composition of
water, is no reason why I should not believe in its existence ;
but because I believe what I see and do not understand, is
no reason why I should believe what I do not see, and what
contradicts everything of which I have any knowledge. Be
cause I believe in life, growth, and nutrition, although my
present knowledge cannot completely fathom the rationale
of those mysteries, is no reason why I should believe in
mysteries of a wholly different character, and wholly con
tradictory to the recorded experience of all mankind.
SECTION VI.
WHAT MAH CAM AND WHAT HE CANNOT KNOW.
We often talk of knowledge, but rarely ask ourselves what
we exactly mean by it In a strict sense man knows nothing,
or next to nothing. He cannot comprehend and explain the
very simplest question in the mighty scheme of nature—
What is matter ? how came it into being ? is it self-existing ?
what are its ultimate parts ? is it simple or compound ? how
does it move and act, how multiply, how communicate and
receive ? We know nothing of matter in the abstract; the
veriest dunce could puzzle the wisest man in such a field of
inquiry. But there is a range, and a pretty wide one too,
in which by constant or careful observation we know many
things; we know, for example, that certain changes are in
variably preceded by certain conditions, or in other words
that certain facts and phenomena are always preceded by
certain antecedents. Some persons call this sequence
** cause and effect,” but it is no more necessary for an
antecedent to be the cause of what immediately follows
than for A to be the cause of B inasmuch as it invariably
precedes it in the English and many other alphabets. The
.antecedent may or may not be the producer of the change
which follows, but it can in no wise be accepted as a general
rule; and in every case it is very dangerous ground to stand
on, dangerous especially for this reason, that future know
ledge may wholly upset many of our present conclusions,
and what we now think we know may be proved by
posterity to be radically and fundamentally wrong.
Take a very plain example : Suppose we had been living
in the days of the old Romans, we should have said with
�2.6
;|
;
I
;
NATURAL REASON versus
confidence that the cause of day and night is the motion of
the sun above or beneath our earth. When he goes to
sleep in the lap of the sea-goddess, it is night; but when he
drives in his chariot through the vault of heaven, it is day.
Plausible as this might seem to the sages of Greece and the
senators and people of Rome, we now believe that day and
night are due simply to the revolution of the earth round its
own axis.
Take another example: The ancients believed matter to
be “ absolutely inert,” hence, when material things showed
a disposition of activity or manifestations of life, this activity
or . vitality was ascribed to a spirit independent of matter,
living and growing with the material body, and using its
several organs as its instruments and slaves. Every active
■and living body was supposed to be made active and living
by this indwelling spirit. It was the wood-nymph in the
tree which made it a living plant, the water-nymph in the
river which made it flow, the rain-nymph in the clouds
which made them pour forth showers. The lakes had their
lake-nymphs, the meadows their meadow-nymphs, the hills
their oreads, and the glens their valley-goddesses. The
ocean was filled with its sea-deities, the winds and the storms,
the heavens and all the hosts thereof. It was the god in
fire which made it glow with heat; it was the god in Etna
or Vesuvius which made them active volcanoes ; it was the
■god in malaria which filled it with pestilence; it was a
nymph in the air which gave back echo, and a god that
acted on the “ spirit,” when life was to be restored.
Man, of course, was no exception to this universal rule.
The body was lifeless and motionless till the Spirit of Deity
came into it, and the living man had a dual nature. All
that is active in the brain and other organs of the body was
supposed to be energised by the divine spirit, and hence
St. Paul speaks of being “in” and “out” of the body, which
he elsewhere calls the temple of the living—z.e., actively in
terfering—God. Of course, the writers of the several Books
of the Old-and New Testaments were no wiser than the rest
of men in geology, astronomy, and other branches of natural
science. No theologian would maintain they were; indeed,
it is one of the most common apologies for the notorious
blunders of the “ sacred penmen ” that they accepted these
things as they found them, and spoke of them as they were
generally understood. They spoke of the earth as a solid,
immovable mass, of the clouds as an ocean of water similar
J
�DIVINE REVELATION.
27
to our seas, of the sun as moving round the earth, and. of
the living body as inert matter vivified by the indwelling
Spirit of Deity. Granted. How cpuld they do otherwise ?
No one pretends that they knew the Newtonian system, of
light and gravitation; no one pretends that they antici
pated the discoveries of Priestley and James Watt in air and
water; no one pretends they were wiser than their contem
poraries in any true theory of nature. But what then ?
Admit this, and the axe is laid to the root of the tree. Man
as man-god and man as material man are so widely diffe
rent, so entirely unlike, that the whole fabric of revelation
designed for the one is unsuited to the other. If the body
man is already the residence of an independent spirit,
there is no reason why it may not be the temple of two, and
the Holy Ghost may share with the divine soul the broken
tenement; but if the body is a material body only, there
Can be no indwelling of the third person of the divine
triad. Again, if the body is the temple of a “ vital spark
of heavenly flame,” the vital spark at least must be immortal;
but if not, the body must resolve into its simple elements to
recombine into other bodies, but can never be built up
again into the same individual.
We now know that matter is not “ absolutely inactive.”
We know that nerves can feel, that brain can think, that a
material- body can perform all the functions of the body,
and there is no need of a ruling spirit to give it energy and
life. Here, again, is an example of what was once assumed
to be Undeniable knowledge proved to be no more worthy of
belief than the sun-car of Apollo, or the day-god sleeping
3D the lap of Thetis.
But to return. We started with the observation that it is
always hazardous to call the immediate antecedent of a
change the “ cause ” of the new condition, inasmuch as
further knowledge may wholly upset our present notions. Of
real Cause and effect we know nothing, but careful observation
gives us a wide range of the knowledge of sequences. There
are many changes which have been observed to be preceded by
certain antecedents, and that so invariably that any one may,
with absolute certainty, calculate on the change when
cognisant of the antecedent condition. This is called an
invariable law of nature, and no conceivable power can
alter it.
How fatal is all this to the notion of cause and effect,
Cause and effect pushed back in unbroken series till we
�28
NATURAL REASON versus
come to the end of the line, and are then driven to rest in
the cause causeless ? he maintain that ordinal succession
may be and often is quite independent of cause and effect;
and if, .instead of supposing each series to be a straight line,
beginning with the last phenomenon and pushed back into
the “ cause causeless,” we conceive it working in a circle,
the difficulty no longer exists. Let us explain our meaning.
The air carries vapour to the clouds, the clouds drop rain
upon the earth, the earth from its water sheds fills the
rivers,, and rivers run into the sea, when the series begins
again in never-ending succession. This is a series working
in a circle, and needs no cause causeless to start from.
Again, animals die, and revert to their original elements;
these elements recombine into the food of animals, so that
animals turn to food and food to animals, and that in
never-ending succession also. Once more, plants absorb
carbonic acid gas, retain the carbon, and restore the oxygen
to the air; man appropriates the oxygen of the air, and
exhales with his breath the carbonic acid gas of which the
body has no need, so men feed the vegetable world, and the
vegetable the animal world, in a circular series, ever
changing, ever mixing, ever taking and giving, and never
•continuing in one stay.
. These smaller circles form parts of the series of larger
circles, and these in turn of others, enlarging and widening
till the whole universe is brought in, all being parts of every
other part, all being items in the one grand universal series,
rolling in ceaseless circles through infinite space, filling its
immensity, leaving no void, circling in mutual circles, ever
■changing, but preserving one unbroken series, the same
yesterday, to-day, and for ever.
This, it will be perceived, is very different from the idea
of phenomena traced as it were in straight lines from effect
to cause, and each line ending in something wholly inde
pendent. The one is an infinite number of straight lines,
each having its special series, the other is a grand, sympa
thetic, universal, unbroken whole, including each minutest
item in the general scheme, and filling all space with its
eternal series. There is something unutterably sublime and
solemn in the idea that “all are but parts of one stupendous
whole,” the tiniest insect as well as the hugest mammoth,
The mole-hill no less than the planet, the daisy of the field
as well as the sun which warms it into bloom. All belong
to the great, the universal series, the dewdrop that hangs on
�DIVINE REVELATION.
29.
the leaf, as well as the thunder which shakes the mountain,
the Stars as they roll in their courses, man and his fellow
mite, the reed and the oak, the wren and the eagle, the
limpet and the whale—no matter what, no matter where, all
are essential and integral parts, all roll on in the eternal
series, each exists for each, all pass into each other,.'
circulate through the boundless universe, links in the same
endless chain as the blood in the animal body. None can.
' say, “ I have no need of thee.” Were one link broken, tenth
Or tenth thousand, no matter; not only all the system to.
which it specially belonged, “ but the whole, must fall.”
This is immortality ; this is life eternal.
Compare this with the gloomy isolation of man taught us
by the divine—man cut off from the rest of creation, sent
on the earth an exile and alien, in bondage under “ sin.” If'
he fails to fulfil certain arbitrary conditions, he is severed
for ever from the general universe by a deathless death; if'
not, he is taken from the world to which his nature is
adapted, and is placed in a sphere where he is an entire
stranger to his surroundings. Heaven is as much cut off
from the general universe as hell is. All is isolation.
Heaven is one isolation, hell another, earth another, every
Star and planet are others. Man on earth stands alone ; his
very nature is different to that of everything around. He
belongs as man neither to earth nor heaven; he is an exile,,
a bondman on his trial. Instead of all creation being linked
together in a chain of love and sympathy, each separate part
is isolated and stands alone; and when the end comes at the
great consummation, the earth is to be burnt up, and the
family of man, divided into the sheep and the goats, to be
severed by a blank, impassable gulf. All nature disorganised,,
all harmony destroyed, all systems thrown into confusion,,
nature herself assassinated, and her laws scattered to the
winds like the leaves of the ancient oracle of Dodona!
Look at this picture and at that, and tell me which is the.
more desolating and cheerless 1
�30
NATURAL REASON versus
SECTION VII.
MAN A' MATERIAL BEING SURROUNDED BY MATERIAL
OBJECTS.
Being material beings, living in' a material world, and
surrounded by material objects only, we are able to examine
only things that are material, and can know nothing else.
But it is asked, is it possible to explain a tithe of every
day phenomena without recourse to a supernatural Agent—
an Agent infinitely our superior in knowledge, power, and
forethought ? For example : Creation itself shows there
must have been a Creator, as plainly as a watch shows there
must have been a watchmaker. The preservation of nature
shows there must be a guiding and directing hand. The
mind of man, so capable of thinking above material objects,
so capable of soaring beyond the limits of time and space,
seems to demonstrate that there must be a Mind or Spirit
independent of matter.
Without doubt your knowledge and mine at present falls
short of many things. We cannot satisfy ourselves of the
why and how of a host of familiar objects. We have not
yet found the key to unlock many of the secrets of the
natural world. What then ? Is that a reason why we
should follow the example of clumsy playwrights, and bring
down a God to help us out of our difficulty ? Would it not
be wiser and more rational to wait ? Would it not be more
rational to say, probably a little patience and a little more
research may clear up these mysteries, as they have cleared
up many others ? Socrates was a wise man, pronounced by
the oracle to be the very wisest of his contemporaries; yet
Socrates believed the sun and moon to be gods, and accused
Anaxagoras of impiety, because he presumed to calculate
their motions and magnitudes. He thought it impious
madness to pry into the secrets of the material world, and
declared that the gods would be offended by such audacity.
Men, however, have dared to lift the veil which conceals the
secrets of the stars and the secrets of the earth, and have
discovered that the sun and moon are not gods, and that
light and heat are subject to fixed laws, as much so as the
impact of a Nasmyth’s hammer or the noise of a peal of
thunder. Should we not learn wisdom from all this, learn
�DIVINE REVELATION.
31
to wait with modesty and patience, to wait hopefully, that
many now occult phenomena may in time be explained, as
thou sands have already been which once were insoluble
mysteries? Surely it is only reasonable to say, I find, as far
as is known at present, laws in operation certain, constant,,
comprehensible to man; I find, since the days of Socrates,
the knowledge of these laws has very widely extended; I
find that phenomenon after phenomenon, at one timeattributed to the erratic will of some god, has been brought
into the general category of matter and motion, and there
fore it is only reasonable to suppose that all the other
secrets of nature will in time be cleared up also. Is it not
more rational, I say, to argue thus than to fly off into the
unknown, and suppose that because we cannot reduce
certain phenomena at present to known laws, they are
therefore inscrutable by reason, and must be the arbitrary
handiwork of some superhuman Agent who can make or
break his laws at pleasure, now conforming to a general
rule, and anon reversing it—now working in the unobtrusive
routine of every-day experience, and anon astounding the
world, and stultifying the patient observations of the careful
student of nature by miracles as purportless as they are
perplexing ? Such a pretended solution, I affirm, is babyish—
is more fit for a peevish schoolgirl than for men of mind,
and mature intellects.
SECTION VIII.
SENSIBILITY A PROPERTY OF ORGANISED MATTER.
Leaving the sun and moon, the tides and seasons, heat and.
light, and COming’tothe animal world, including man, we find
other energies in operation besides mechanical motion. We
find, for example, sensibility, we find moral feeling, we find,
motion directed by some ruling power within the body, or
under the control of that power, which is called the will.
Can these operations be performed by mere material
Organism also? In other words, can mere matter be so
organised that it not only moves mechanically, as a ball
struck by a bat, but can also choose to move or choose toremain at rest in obedience to a living will ? Surely choice?
must be the act of a ruling “spirit,” which controls the
material organs under its dominion, for it seems absurd to-
�32
NATURAL REASON versus
suppose that a pile of bricks should be able to choose for
themselves whether they will make a cottage or a palace, or
whether they will remain unemployed. If I stir the fire, I
make the poker obey my will; but if I use my hands or
feet, surely there must be a corresponding spiritual agent to
evoke the will, and exact obedience to its dictates. We can
conceive of a ball flying through the air either because it is
attracted towards some other object, or because it is im
pelled by blind external force; we can conceive of a flower
throwing off from itself those Subtle particles which we call
perfume, just as the ocean, under the power of the sun,
throws off vapour; but no power of choice is left to the
flower to smell sweet or withhold its odours, and none to
the wide sea either to evaporate or not, as it may think
proper.
To the unthinking mind all this may seem quite un
answerable, but to those who grasp adequately the elements
of the problem, it appears a perfect tangle of confusion.
No one credits a body constituted like a ball or brick, a
flower or. the ocean, with the power of choice. It is quite
impossible for such things to will, inasmuch as they have no
voluntary apparatus for the purpose. But tell me this : Is
it not folly to expect a common stone to smell like a rose ? Is
it not folly to expect an ordinary cricket-ball to skip like a
lamb or fly like an hawk ? And why ? Simply because
the stone has not the organs of the rose, nor the ball those
of the lamb or bird. Give them these organs, endow them
with the special apparatus, and it would be no more sur
prising for the flint to give forth a sweet odour than for the
flower, or the ball to skip or fly like the lamb and hawk.
Carry this idea one step further. No one pretends that
matter can think and will without a suitable apparatus, but
it is the veriest folly to assert that a thinking apparatus
cannot think, or a volitional apparatus perform the office
for which it was specially adapted. Given the apparatus,
and the work to be performed follows as a thing of course.
All, therefore, that remains is to show that animals which
possess the power of will have an apparatus suited to the
purpose. Rocks and seas, flowers and clay, cannot have a
will, because they have no voluntary apparatus, consequently
we ought to find in animals an apparatus which we do not
find in bodies that have no power of free choice. Just so,
and animals have this apparatus. They have what is called
a nerve-system, and this new organic machinery has of
•
�DIVINE REVELATION.
33
course its proper work. Inorganic bodies have no nerves
and inorganic bodies cannot perform the same duties. as
those which have. Surely this is reasonable. Bodies with
out nerves cannot do the work of bodies which have, and
bodies with a highly complicated nerve-system have func
tions to perform which are not expected from others that
have a less complex one, or no such apparatus at all.
Sensibility in every form, whether that called sight or that
called hearing, whether feeling or smell, is due wholly to
the nerves. Sensibility, in fact, is the mere impression of
external objects photographed on the organs of sense, or
communicated to them by actual contact. This can be proved
to demonstration. In nerveless bodies it does not exist, in
all bodies with a nerve-system it does. If a nerve is injured,
the corresponding function of that nerve is impaired also;
if all the system is sound and healthy, all the operations of
the system are carried on in a normal and healthy manner.
What further proof is required ? What further proof is even
possible ? We can see the nerves with our eyes, we can
handle them with our fingers, we can exalt or paralyse their
action by our drugs, we can repair them in many cases when
they are feeble or unsound. This is no hypothetical some
thing which is invisible and intangible, no mere shadowy
incorporeal indweller to help out a theory, no imaginary
spirit, but a visible and tangible reality. Nerve is as much
matter as wood or stone, and it is the possession of this
nerve apparatus which endows animal bodies with re
ceptive and operative powers wholly unknown to inorganic
substances.
He who sees not demonstration in all this is wholly
unable to form a correct judgment. He is not convinced
because he will not be so, not because the argument is
weak, but because he is inaccessible to argument of every
kind. With such no argument will prevail, and he must be
left to his own wilfulness. Like the deaf adder he cannot
or will not hear. He refuses to be charmed, not that the
charmer charms not well, but that he will not hearken
charm he never so wisely.
SECTION IX.
BRAIN AND BRAINWORK ALSO DUE TO MATERIAL ORGANISM.
Come we now to the brain.
This mass shut up in the
skull varies in different animals in size, shape, and texture.
�34
NATURAL REASON versus
Some of the inferior molluscs have only one ganglia, others
have two, while men may have from twenty to thirty. So
also in regard to the tubular convolutions, the brains of
fishes have none at all, those of birds only faint traces of
them, and in mammals there is a great difference in this
respect between the brain of a kangaroo and that of man.
It might, a priori, be supposed that this new organ would
have special duties to perform, and that as the brain varies so
greatly in different animals, we should discern a difference
in their brain-work. This is exactly what we find to be the
case. The brain of a common mollusc has only one
ganglia, and the intelligence of these animals corresponds;
the brain of marsupials has fewer ganglia than that of higher
animals, but the brain of man is familiarly known to be the
most powerful and complicated in structure of all the animal
creation. The intelligence of the animal is in every case en
rapport with the brain. Every slightest change in the com
position, the size, the convolutions, and the sensory ganglia of
the brain infers a corresponding difference in the work which
the brain is able to execute. It is not because Newton and
Shakespeare, Plato and Homer, had a separate genius or
Socratic demon in their heads that they were superior in
intelligence to the Hottentot, but that their brains had more
grey matter and more convolutions, and those convolutions
more distinctly pronounced.
We have already spoken of sensibility seated in the gan
glionic centres, and we now come to thought, emotion, and
consciousness, seated in the ganglia of the brain proper. We
have shown how sensibility is quickened and deadened,
destroyed and repaired, by agents applied to the nerve
tissues ; and we would now show how thought and memory,
emotion and consciousness, are perfect measures of the
state of the brain. In the first place, it is a familiar fact
that the wise man may be reduced to idiotcy, and the man
of most delicate feeling to moral insensibility, by simply
acting on the brain. By slicing away that grey matter,
stupidity and insensibility are induced, in exact proportion
to the quantity of grey matter removed. By slicing away
more or less of this brain-matter, the intelligence is more or
less impaired, the moral feelings more or less blunted, con
sciousness and judgment more or less destroyed. If we
find heat proceeding from burning fuel, and that heat
diminished or increased in exact proportion to the more or
less perfect state of the combustion, are we not justified in
�DIVINE REVELATION.
35
concluding that the heat proceeds from the burning fuel ?
If we find light issuing from a gas-jet, and find that light
more or less perfect according to the purity of the gas, are
we not justified in saying that the purity of the light dependson the purity of the burning gas ? If we find water reduced
to ice when the temperature is below 32 degrees (Fahren
heit), and gradually increasing in warmth as the temperature
is increased, till it ultimately expends itself in steam, are we
not justified in- believing that it is the increase or decrease
of temperature which is accountable for these phenomena ?
And so, by parity of argument, when we find intelligence and
judgment, consciousness and moral feeling, indicated exactly
by the state of the brain, are we not justified in concluding
that they are emanations from the brain, as much so as heat
from the glowing fuel, and light from the burning gas ? Are
we not justified in the conclusion that the grey matter of
the brain is the fount of thought and the palace of the
soul ?
...
So long as matter was thought to be passive and inert, it
was quite needful to suppose there must be some energising
agent to set it in motion and give it vitality; but now that
it has been demonstrated that matter, in the form of nerves
and brain, can feel and will, think and understand, judge
and feel conscious, remember and foresee, calculate and
analyse—do all, in fact, that was once attributed to soul—we
may eliminate the unknown power altogether, and pronounce,
with the certainty of a mathematical demonstration, that man
is not a dual animal of body and soul, but a material
animal only.
Need we go further? Need we show how cerebral disease
impairs the memory, impairs the intelligence, impairs the
judgment, impairs the just perception of things in general?
Need we show how cerebral disease may so far destroy the
mental and moral powers as to induce delirium or stupor,
madness or idiotcy? Need we show that in suspended
animation thought, conscience, judgment, memory,, will,
and every moral sense is suspended also, but by simply
acting on the tissues, by imparting increased circulation to
the blood, by restoring energy to the nerves and brain,
animation returns, and with it the intelligent and moral
faculties ? They come with returning energy, they go as the
activity of the bodily organs declines. They grow with our
growth, they strengthen with our strength. In the infant they
are infantine, in the child somewhat stronger, in the mature
�3^
NATURAL REASON versus
body in their greatest perfection; and though in declining
years the mental powers may outlast the physical, it only
confirms what has been proved by the results of death from
starvation, in which very little wasting of this structure is
found to take place, that the nerve-tissue is more indestruc
tible than other vital textures of the organism.
SECTION X.
OBJECTION : MAN CAN THINK OF ETERNITY, AND THERE
FORE IS ETERNAL.
“No man can think higher than himself,” or “higher than
himself can no man think.” Granted. As man can think
of eternity, eternity is not “ higher ” than man, and there
fore man is eternal. Nego majorem.
The “major” of this syllogism is false. It proves too
much in the first place, and is untrue in the second.
(*•) It proves too much. If because man can think of
eternity he is eternal, then is he omniscient, omnipresent,
and almighty, because he can think of these things in the
same way as he can think of eternity. And if thought is
the measure of man, then man is himself deity, because
there is no attribute ascribed to deity which man cannot
think.
(2.) But the statement is utterly false. Man can not think
either of eternity or of infinite space; that is, he can form
no clear conception of duration without beginning and
ending, or of space without limit. In fact, our ideas of
duration and space are extremely limited; and if they are
to be taken as the measure of man, nothing could better
prove that he is a finite mortal. Man, I say, can form no
definite idea either of eternity or of infinite space. This is
what he can do : Man has invented figures, and these
figures being employed to express the measure of time or
space, man can always add, or at least suppose, a higher
number than the one expressed. Thus, if 1,000 is deter
mined on as the limit, we can think of 1,001 ; if a million
we can think of numbers exceeding it; but that is a very
different thing indeed from forming a definite conception
of eternity or infinite space.
Let any one try to think of a straight line without begin-
�DIVINE REVELATION.
37
ning or end, and he will presently see how hopeless is the task.
His line, however far extended in his imagination, will
always be broken at both ends; and the more he tries to
lengthen it, the more he will feel convinced that his fancy
can extend it further. But so long as this can be done, his
line is neither without beginning nor without end.
This must be obvious to any thinking mind.. It.must be
obvious that eternity cannot be extended, that infinite space
is space beyond all limit j so long, therefore, as we can think
of extension to duration and space, we cannot form an idea
of duration or space which cannot be extended. It would
not be too bold to say that after a man has given the
fullest possible scope to his fancy, whether of duration or
space, when he has pushed them as far off as he is able, his
mind can always overleap the limit, and think of a beyond.
In truth, man’s idea of time and space, except when ex
pressed by figures, is extremely limited. He has the. most
vague conception of all high numbers, and when he .tries to
think of eternity or infinite space, his line of. duration and
his field of extent are wonderfully small. Think of William
the Conqueror ; he seems an immense way off, quite in
cloud-land. Think of the Flood; the distance between
William the Conqueror and the Flood is really pretty much
the same in our ideas. We know they are not; we know
that the spaces are nothing like equal; but our conception
is unable to measure the difference with any degree of
accuracy.
Take a series of unequal lengths—say the
Conquest, the Birth of Christ, the Flood, Creation, and
the several geological series. How they crowd one on the
other 1 How utterly is the mind unable to pace out with
accuracy their different lengths 1 It thinks of thern as a
series; but whether the distance between any two was
greater or less than between two others,, whether the
Devonian period was ten thousand or ten millions of years
in length, is pretty much the same.
So is it in regard to space. The moon, the sun, and
the fixed stars seem nearly equidistant to the eye, and even
to the imagination. We know they are not, but. the mind
cannot realise the different distances.
Practically, our
thought of duration is inseparable from our thought of
time. We cannot think of duration in the abstract. We
can think of sixty, seventy, or one hundred years; we can
think of years beyond any limit which figures can express;
but we cannot think of eternity. If therefore the thought
�38
NATURAL REASON verszts
of man is indeed his measure, he certainly is not for
eternity, for he cannot form the remotest idea of extent
which cannot be extended.
SECTION XI.
MAN
IN
NO
WISE
DIFFERENT
FROM
OTHER
EXCEPT SO FAR AS THE ORGANIC STRUCTURE
ANIMAL MAY DIFFER FROM ANOTHER.
ANIMALS,
OF
ONE
What, then, has been proved ? If anything, this, that
there is nothing supernatural in man—nothing but what is
attributable to organic structure. He is in perfect harmony
with his surroundings, and does not walk the earth as a
monster—part man, part god, but neither wholly of the
earth earthy, nor wholly of the heavens heavenly.
He
differs in no wise from the rest of the animal kingdom,
except so far as the organic structure of one animal or race
of animals may differ from another. If he has different
powers to inferior animals, it is only because his body is
more highly and elaborately organised. Trees are organised,
and they grow, flourish, and decay, each according to its
organic structure. ' Inferior animals have a more complex
arrangement, and being possessed of brain and nerve, they
have sensibility and volition, passion and desire. Man has
a still more complex brain, and his thoughts can be more
elaborate and complex; but from the primeval rock to man
there is a perfect unity, nothing to destroy the oneness,
nothing to remove one part from the rest. Special dif
ferences no doubt there are—such differences are the rule_
but the same general principle pervades the whole. It is
simply matter arranged in divers manners, each different
arrangement having its special character. There is no
new integer introduced from another sphere of being,
nothing from another world lent to man to supplement his
deficiency, nothing of the nature of soul, taken, like the fire
of Prometheus, from the high heavens to kindle life in the
clay image. The notion of a special loan of Deity to man,
alone and apart from the rest of creation, of a spark of the
divine essence shut up in man as a candle in a lantern, of
a breath breathed by the Eternal into the nostrils of a
mortal, is certainly the crowning delusion of visionary selfconceit. That Deity should lend man a piece of himself to
�DIVINE REVELATION.
39
help out his man-nature is a craze so absurd that it would
not be credible except we knew it to be believed.
If man really possessed this divine spirit shut up in his
body, is it likely that the anatomist would be able to cut it
away piecemeal when mutilating with his scalpel the cere
bral organ ? Is it likely it would be susceptible of inflam
mation and decay? Is it likely it could be affected by
drugs or aliment, and destroyed by poison ? Is it likely it
could be suspended by immersion in water, and restored by
friction ? Is it likely it would grow and change, strengthen
and decline, just as man’s health or age may affect his
material body ? How could a divine essence be subject to
the laws of matter ? If in the body it would not be of the
body, but would be wholly independent of matter however
organised.
Enthroned as spirit, no hand of man could
injure it; incorruptible as Deity, no vice could defile it;
unchangeable as perfection, it would shine with the same
brilliancy in sage and savage, the infant in its cradle, the
old man on his pallet, the king on his throne, and the
captive in his dungeon. What could education do to im
prove deity in man ? How could the vigilance of maternal
care guide and direct it ? How could the example of evil
companions vitiate and degrade it ? But so it is; we feel
it is so, whatever be our creed; we know it is so, however
we may strive to hide it from ourselves. We know that
every part of man is acted on alike, that every part of man
is amenable to the same laws. Man can exercise his power
on the brain as well as on the nerves. He can mutilate
and impair the thinking part as well as any other. He can
attack with his knife and with his drugs the reasoning part,
the moral part, the judging part, the conscience part, the
most subtle of the subtleties of human nature, .suspend
their operations or . restore them, play with them, or so
reduce them that the brain of a Newton shall be no more
capable than that of an idiot, and the finest conscience
shall be dulled as if it had been steeped in Lethe. But if
thought were really the product of a divine essence lent by
Deity to man, would this be possible ? Would man be
able mechanically to injure a divine essence ? Would he be
able to suspend its energies and restore them ? Would he
be able to impair and destroy the Deity in man ?
�40
SECTION xn.
IF MAN IS NOT A DUAL BEING, THERE CAN HAVE BEEN
NO REVELATION.
If body is all and all of man, as this body dies man dies,
and as it returns to its native elements, man ceases to be
man, and the notion of a resurrection or reconstruction of
the same body, after it has passed into other material forms,
is mere fable. This life is man’s be-all, and death is his
end-all, as far as his individuality is concerned. But if so,
the very notion of a revelation must be given up. There is
nothing to reveal, nothing that even Deity could tell which
would in the slightest degree affect the future of man. He
might tell him how the gases of the body would be dispersed,
how the vegetable world would banquet on the carbon and
nitrogen, how the phosphates would contribute to the bones
of other animals ; he might tell how the brain of the poet
may ultimately form a part of the nightingale, and the hand
of the painter help to arch the sky with a rainbow; he might
tell how the sulphur and hydrogen would be disposed of,
one gilding the coal with pyrites like gold, and the other
hanging as a dewdrop on the rose; this and much more
than this he might tell, and interest man intensely by re
vealing the changes of decay into the newness of fresh life,
but this is not revelation. Revelation presupposes a thou
sand absurdities, beginning in Eden and reaching into
eternity. It presupposes a man such as no man is, or ever
could be. It presupposes that God and man made a mutual
covenant together, and that each has a social interest of a
private and special nature with the other. It presupposes
that our bodies will be restored in their integrity, though
every part thereof has passed into other bodies—that they
will retain their identity, though the same identical body
contributes to the identity of a thousand others. It pre
supposes such a host of self-contradictory incoherences that
conjecture is lost in the hopeless maze, and poor bewildered
human nature is glad to seek rest in any falsehood as a refuge
from the hopeless confusion by which he is surrounded.
If this is revelation, give me the simplicity of right reason.
If this is orthodoxy, give me the logic of infidelity. If this
is the teaching of the Church, give me the teaching of
common sense. If this is the creed of the faithful, then
may the faithful few be ever few; such fidelity to dogma is
infidelity to truth, and infidelity to unreason is fidelity
to nature and to man.
-A
�
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Natural reason versus divine revelation : an appeal for freethought
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Julian
Lewins, Robert (ed)
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[pref. 1879]
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Free thought
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Free Thought
Materialism
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Reason
Revelation-Christianity
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Text
INTELLECTUAL LIBERTY
THE
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF CHRISTIANITY
AND OF PROTESTANTISM.
BY
JOHN ROBERTSON,
AUTHOR OF “THE FINDING OF THE BOOK.”
“ The Christianity of Christ is not one thing, and human nature another;—
it is human Virtue, human Religion, man in his highest moments; the effect
no less than the cause of human development, and can never fail till man
ceases to be man.”—Theodore Parker.
“ The simple believeth every word; but the prudent man looketh well to
his going.”—Solomon.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.
Price Sixpence.
�“Far, very far be it from any devout mind, out of an unwarranted,
unreasonable, and most unnecessary jealousy, to arrest or stay the progress
of inquiry, or look with a timid and suspicious eye on any honest efforts
made to extend and diffuse the knowledge of nature. The. upright search
after truth can never be dangerous to him who lovingly engages in it, or dis
honourable to Him who is the God of truth. All scope is given to inquiry
into all the wonders, whether of the material world without, or of the moral
world within. It is your dignity, and duty so to inquire. You are men,
and you are commanded to be men in understanding. As men, you may
assert your privilege of investigating all the works of your Creator; and in
doing so, you are to follow truth whithersoever it may lead. You are not
constituted the judges of consequences and results. Your business is with the
facts and principles of truth itself. You are not to determine what should
be, or what might be,—you are to discover what is. This is the course be
coming alike the power and the infirmity of reason. Within this limit you
tread surely and safely. Cast aside, then, all alarm as to what may follow
from, your inquiries. Only prosecute these inquiries with due caution, and
put them fairly and faithfully together, so as to ascertain real facts and
draw none but legitimate conclusions. And we may fearlessly ran the
hazard of any inferences which they may suggest, confident that they will
all tend to shed new light and lustre on the wisdom in which the Lord hath
made all his manifold works.”—Dr Candlish, in “Reason and Revelation,"
pp. 139, 140.
“ Every one declares against blindness, and yet who almost is not fond of
that which dims his sight, and keeps the clear light out of his mind, which
should lead him into truth and knowledge? False or doubtful positions,
relied upon as unquestionable maxims, keep those in the dark from truth
who build on them. Such are usually the prejudices imbibed from educa
tion, party, reverence, fashion, interest, &c. This is the mote which every
one sees in his brother’s eye, but never regards the beam in his own. For
who is there almost that is ever brought fairly to examine his own prin
ciples, and see whether they are such as will bear the trial? But yet this
should be one of the first things every one should set about, and be scrupul
ous in, who would rightly conduct his understanding in the search of truth
and knowledge.”—John Locke.
�INTELLECTUAL LIBERTY
THE
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF CHRISTIANITY
AND OF PROTESTANTISM.
--------- ♦---------
PROPOSE an experiment. Before reading my
next sentence, I invite those who favour me with
their attention to write down, or to think out, as I
have just now been trying to do, such a general defi
nition and explanation of the word Priest, as shall
*
fairly describe, and apply to, most or all of the dif
ferent varieties of men, to whom the word is appli
cable.
Those who have done so may now compare their
definition with mine, and see whether they at all
agree or totally differ, and whether they contradict
or supplement each other.
The definition which I propose is, that a priest is
an officer or minister of a traditional or authorita
tive, and national or corporate, religious institution;
and, as such, his distinctive mission is to be an
exponent or advocate of a religious system or creed,
I
* “ Our word Priest is corrupted of Presbyter. Our
ancestors, the Saxons, first used Preostre, whence by further
contraction came Preste and Priest. The high and low
Dutch have Priester; the French Prestre; the Italian
Prete; but the Spaniard only speaks full Presbytero.”—
Packardson's English Dictionary.
�4
Reason and the Bible.
inculcating the belief or observance of certain dogmas
or ceremonies, as the fundamental and indispensable
condition of merit, privilege, and welfare, here or
hereafter.
The language of the consistent priest is never—
‘ Come, up hither. Open your eyes, look around, and
behold and judge for yourselves, as I judge for
myself, the goodness, the truth, and the reality, or
the wickedness, the falsehood, and the delusion of
those things to which I shall direct your attention,
and which I shall endeavour to make you understand.’
But his language is, ‘ Stand down. If you wish to be
regarded as a brother, and as a worthy member of
the church or of the community, you must not place
any reliance on the guidance of your own reason in
those matters which I instruct you to regard as
settled by the supreme authority; nor must you take
the liberty to investigate for yourself the evidences
of correctness and reality; but you must be content
to receive, with faithful and entire submission of the
intellect, the doctrines, the ceremonies, or the book,
which I hold out to you authoritatively as the revealed
Will or Word of God; and you must, in like manner,
faithfully accept and adhere to that interpretation or
application of what God has revealed, which has
been sanctioned by the traditions of the institution,
or by the institution itself, whose officer I am, as the
only true interpretation or application thereof, and
therefore as the rule and guide of your belief, wor
ship, and life.’ *
Reason is never invited by the priest to criticize,
test, and candidly weigh the evidence for and against
the authority to which he appeals. That authority
* “ The whole order of the clergy are appointed by God to
pray for others, to be ministers of his priesthood, to be
followers of his advocation, to stand between God and the
people, and to present to God all their needs, and all their
desires. Bishop Taylor, Sermon 6.
�Reason and the Bible.
5
is assumed to be supreme, and therefore above reason,
and beyond the reach of argument, commanding
absolutely the believing assent, with or without the
rational verdict, of all men to whom it comes, and in
some cases not even hesitating to doom, for their
unbelief, those who never heard of it.
*
The one fundamental argument of the priest, on
which his entire system of belief is based, is—Thus
saith the Oracle, or, Thus it is written. The truthful
ness of the oracle or of the writing, as well as of the
priestly or traditional interpretation, is postulated,
not proved. The priest does not profess to have,
but professes not to require, for himself or for
others, such evidence and arguments in support of
what he inculcates, as to secure the ratifying and
approving verdict of the unprejudiced inquiring
mind. His appeal is not primarily to the reason
and conscience of men, but to their prejudices and
emotions, such as those which arise from the influ
ence of traditions and customs, or from habitual
veneration and attachment to some external symbol
or standard of authority, such as a Church, a Pope,
an oracle, an image, or a book. He may, indeed,
welcome with approval, and may even condescend to
employ, a selection of evidences and arguments in sup
port of the supreme authority to which he appeals j
but such support is only regarded at the most as
secondary and subsidiary, and is never represented
by the consistent priest as the primary and essential
basis, on which to found and establish the supremacy
What are they that imbrace the gospell but sonnes of
God ? AV hat are churches but his families ? Seeing there
fore wee receive the adoption and state of sonnes by their ministrie whom God hath chosen out for that purpose, seeing also
that when, we are the sonnes of God, our continuance is still
vnder their care which were our progenitors, what better
title could there bee given them than the reuerend name
of presbyters, or fatherly guidesZfooto- Eccl. Pol.,
b. v., s. 78.
�6
Reason and the Bible.
of his authoritative standard or oracle. To find or
exhibit any evidence or argument against the genuine
ness of this assumed supremacy, is by the priest ac
cordingly denounced as a moral delinquency, a sacri
lege or blasphemy, not to be met with rational
reply and confutation, but to be simply abhorred and
condemned as treason against the Supreme.
The assertion of some supreme external standard
or symbol of authority, being thus the distinc
tive and fundamental doctrine of every priest, it
follows unavoidably that he practically assumes infal
libility for himself, or for the institution whose views
he expresses ; because he requires his assertion to be
believed without being tested, by the submission, and
not by the free action and verdict of reason, and be
cause he ignores or denies the right of reason to
investigate and to weigh impartially the evidence
and arguments on all sides, and so to judge of the
truth or falsehood—the certainty or uncertainty of
the supreme authority asserted by him. It is mani
fest that the supreme authority, thus dogmatically
and authoritatively ascribed to a book or to anything
external and apart from individual reason, not being
based upon the free appreciation of its intrinsic and
demonstrable merits and evidences, is practically
and truly based upon some other assumed authority,
to which reason is required to bow. It is impos
sible to get out of the dilemma, however much
sophistry may be employed to disguise it. The
man who declares to other men that a book or other
external thing is a revelation, and that its autho
rity is above reason, practically claims for himself
infallibility and supreme authority on that point, and,
by necessary logical implication, on all points.
If the supreme authority of the book, or other ex
ternal thing, is based on the manifest or provable
truthfulness and harmony of all that it attests, or
upon the clearness and completeness of all the evi
�Reason and the Bible.
7
dence regarding it, then reason must be invited and
employed to scrutinize its purport and its claims, in
order that these qualities may be ascertained and re
cognised. But if all such rational tests be rejected,
there is only one other ground that can possibly be
taken, and that is an appeal to another external autho
rity for support to the first. The claims of the high
est authority must either rest upon the manifestation
to reason of its evidence and merits, or else upon an
other authority behind it; and, in either case, that
which is appealed to must be at least equal in dignity
to that which it has to sustain. Perfection cannot be
rationally inferred where imperfection is discerned;
neither can infallibility be sufficiently attested by
aught that is fallible, nor supreme authority by aught
that is not itself supreme.
I conceive that thus far these remarks and reflec
tions have been so framed as to be fairly applicable
to the priests of many and widely different religions,
ancient and modern, as well as to those of popular
Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant. But my
readers will, of course, have understood that I have
kept the priests of Protestantism especially in view.
The modern Protestant Christian Churches, though
in many speculative inferences and doctrines widely
differing from each other, are generally understood
and represented as, all alike, asserting, appealing to, and
resting on, the infallibility or supreme authority of
the Bible, while renouncing all pretensions to infalli
bility of their own, as Churches or as men. None of
them, so far as I can learn, has ever ventured formally
to declare that the authority of the Church or of tradi
tion, as embodied in the “ Articles of Religion,” the
“Confession of Faith,” or any other “Ecclesiastical
Standard,” is sufficient to establish, and to impose
upon the human conscience, the duty of believing the
infallibility or supreme authority of the Bible,
or indeed the duty of believing any doctrine
�8
Reason and the Bible.
whatever. On the contrary, it is expressly declared
by every Protestant Church, that no Church is
infallible,—that Synods and Councils have erred,
and are Hable to err, from which the inference is
direct and inevitable, that any doctrine, resting
merely on such authority, ought to be held subject to
the free investigation, reconsideration, and inde
pendent judgment, not only of all succeeding synods
and councils, but of every individual who has light
enough to discern the vast difference, which dis
tinguishes faith in God and in truth from faith in
the faith of other men. And yet, with gross inconsis
tency and self-contradiction, partly in the several
ecclesiastical “ Standards,” but much more glaringly
in the ministrations of very many priests, the idea is
constantly inculcated, and therefore of course it
is widely entertained, that the traditional dogmas
of the Churches are indisputable and infallible, at
least on those points which are considered funda
mental and essential, and especially on this point, viz.
the supreme authority of the Bible; and that it is
blasphemous presumption for any inquirer to subject
their assertion on this point to rational investigation,
and to the free judgment of his individual reason.
*
They who are fallible are continually asserting that
the Bible is the holy, authoritative, infallible, Word
of God; and that no man is at liberty to form a dif* “Orthodoxy, finding itself unsafe in the domains of
argument, flies towards those of moral sentiments ; and just
at the moment when it might be expected to surrender, it
turns sharply round, and boldly charges reason with sin.
This is an alarming charge. Before this moral discovery, we
exerted our reason to the utmost of our power, confident
that we had no spiritual danger to fear : now, most unfortu
nately, we are made to suspect that our sin may be great in
proportion to the power of our arguments. What indeed, in
common language, we call pride, is usually connected with
power, and the existence of the latter is for most people, a
pretty strong presumption of the presence of the former.
It must therefore happen, that, when reason is accused of
�Reason and the Bible.
9
ferent opinion, nor has a right to investigate, nor
freely to discuss the evidence for and against their
assertion-, but that every man is bound to submit his
reason to that supreme authority above reason, which
they assert that the Bible rightfully claims and pos
sesses. Those who do so are driven to employ any
amount of sophistry to conceal from others and per
haps even from themselves the plain logical fact, that
to assert in this absolute way the infallibility or
supremacy of the Bible, and the imperative duty of
human reason bowing to its teaching, is really and
practically to assert the infallibility or supreme au
thority of the Church, or of the man, by whom such
assertion is made.
This absurd and self-condemned position appears
to be at present held, in some degree, by every Pro
testant Church. But far beyond the comparatively
mild and half-concealed absurdity of any Protestant
Confession, very many of those clergymen and clerical
men, who delight to be called “ orthodox,” habitually
state and vindicate this “ Gospel of Unreason ” in all
its barefaced breadth of boldness and inconsistency.
The attempt has indeed been often made, by rea
soning against reason, to reconcile freedom of thought
with intellectual submission to the Bible; “to re
concile Reason and the Bible,” by so displaying and
enhancing all available internal and external evi
dence in support of the Bible, and by so ignoring
pride, the charge will appear .already more than half sub
stantiated, if reason has been too hard for the opponents.
Power of any kind, unless it can reward and punish to a cer
tain degree, is not an enviable possession. I have no doubt
that if a sin, to be called pride of sight, had been as neces
sary to some influential class, as the pride of reason is to
the orthodox parties all over the world; every long and
sharp-sighted man, who wished to live in peace, and avoid
the scandal of discovering things which his neighbours either
could or would not see, would now be obliged to wear
spectacles.”—Observations on Heresy and Orthodoxy, by the
Rev. Jos. Blanco White.
�IO
Reason and the Bible.
and disparaging, or endeavouring to explain away,
all internal and external evidence of an opposite
kind, as to make it appear to many superficial thinkers,
or too willing believers, that the whole is in harmony
with every part, that all its doctrines and statements
are in perfect accordance with the evidence and
with each other, and that all the relative evidence
will bear the strictest investigation, being such as,
when justly weighed, will carry complete conviction
to every honest candid mind, appealing to the serious,
upright exercise of unprejudiced human reason, and
thus meriting and commanding the approving and
ratifying verdict of all but those who are too stupid
or too wicked to give it proper attention.
So long as the belief in the Bible was an honest
and sincere belief, such was the reasoning, variously
illustrated, by which that belief was sustained and
propagated. Such is the language of the- “ Articles,”
and especially of the “ Confession of Faith” :—
Confession i. 5. “ We may be moved and induced by
the testimony of the Church to an high and reverend
esteem of the Holy Scripture, and the heavenliness of the
matter, the efficacy of the- doctrine, the majesty of the
style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole
(which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it
makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other
incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof,
are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence
itself to be the Word of God.”
Such was the language of the Reformers in the six
teenth century, and of the great Protestant divines
in the seventeenth. Listen to Richard Hooker, one
of the most learned and gifted theological writers of
the post-Reformation period :—
“ Judge you of that which I speak, saith the apostle.
In vain it were to speak anything of God, but that by
reason, men are able somewhat to judge of what they hear,
and by discourse to- discern how consonant it is to truth.
Scripture, indeed, teacheth things above nature, things
�Reason and the Bible.
11
which our reason, by itself, could not reach unto. Yet
those also we believe, knowing by reason that the Scrip
ture is the Word of God............. A number there are who
think they cannot admire as they ought the power and
authority of the Word of God, if in things divine they
should attribute any force to man’s reason ; for which
cause they never use reason so willingly as to disgrace
reason............... By these and the like disputes, an opinion
hath spread itself very far in the world, as if the way to
be ripe in faith were to be raw in wit and judgment; as
if reason were an enemy unto religion, childish simplicity
the mother of ghostly and divine wisdom.”
Or let us consult, upon this subject, William Chil
lingworth, author of the famous work entitled “ The
Beligion of the Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation,”
published in 1637, and of the still more famous say
ing which is so often quoted: “ The Bible, and the
Bible alone, is the religion of Protestants ” :—
“ But you that would not have men follow their reason,
what would you have them follow ? their passions, or
pluck out their eyes and go blindfold ? No, you say ; you
would have them follow authority. In God’s name, let
them : we also would have them follow authority; for it
is upon the authority of universal tradition that we would
have them believe Scripture. But then, as for the authority
which you would have them follow, you will let them see
reason why they should follow it. And is not this to go a
little about—to leave reason for a short turn, and then to
come to it again, and to do that which you condemn in
others ? It being, indeed, A plain impossibility for any
MAN TO ■ SUBMIT HIS REASON BUT TO REASON ; for he that
doth it to authority must of necessity think himself to
have greater reason to believe that authority.”
It is not likely to be denied that these specimens
fairly and fitly represent the distinctive views and
teachings of the Beformers and early Protestant
divines, on reason as the basis of all religious belief,
and on the complete harmony which they conceived
to exist between reason and the Bible. Assuming,
as we well may, that their language is honest and
�12
Reason and the Bible.
sincere, and that they meant exactly what they have
said, it is clear that, as held by them, theirs was a
reasonable faith, and that they did not feel called
upon to settle any visible conflict between the claims
of reason and those of the Bible, nor experience any
difficulty in harmonizing these with each other, and
putting faith in both. Their religious belief was by
them identified with their intellectual conclusion re
garding the authority of the Bible; so that their
utterances on the subject express both the conviction
of their hearts and the rational judgment of their
minds. The same kind of reasoning may even now
be heard from some believers, in whose experience
these two things still go together, and from some
others who wish to make it appear that they find it so.
But the conflict which then slumbered, being
apparently unsuspected by religious men in those
days, has been since then steadily growing in urgency
and importance, exactly in proportion to the increas
ing diffusion of knowledge and general progress of
intelligence, until it has now become difficult to
find an intelligent thinking man who believes, as
the Reformers did, in both Reason and the Bible,
as harmonizing together, and mutually supporting
each other. The conflict has, in recent times, and
especially of late, become so manifest and notorious,
that a profession of faith, in the old alliance or com
promise of the two rival claims, now suggests ignor
ance, imbecility, or wilful deception; and the ordinary
experience of an inquirer is accordingly very different
from what it formerly was, for he finds that the
question fronting him no longer admits of any but
an alternative and one-sided solution ; so that, if he
does not shirk it altogether, and remain indifferent
or in suspense, he must decide for himself whether
his reason shall be subjected to the Bible, or whether
the Bible shall be subjected to his reason.
The reconciliation of the two is a task very seldom
�Reason and the Bible.
13
now undertaken for the public, or accomplished by
individuals for themselves, except by the uninformed,
the shallow-minded/ or the unthinking. Easy-going,
peace-loving clergymen may sometimes still be heard
trying it in the pulpit; but it has almost ceased to
appear in print, the advocates on both sides appear
ing to be nearly unanimous on this one point, that
such an undertaking is now hopelessly difficult, and
that a genuine reconciliation is henceforth impossible,
on any conditions short of the subjection of one
claimant to the supremacy of the other.
It is, therefore, not my purpose to enter here upon
an examination of the various methods of reconcilia
tion which have been suggested. Some of them are
utterly absurd, and even ridiculous; and it is safe to
say that none of them can have any plausibility be
yond what may be purchased by the free employment
of sophistry and assumption, tricks which, until
recent times, were comparatively safe from detection
and exposure, though it is gradually becoming more
difficult and more hazardous to employ them.
One of the latest and ablest attempts of this kind,
that of the late Dean Alford, in his “New Testament
for English Readers,” which may fairly be regarded as
embodying the best and most plausible features of all
previous attempts to effect the desired reconciliation,
has been most skilfully and completely sifted and
exploded in previous pamphlets of this series, which
probably most of my readers have seen, and which
any of them may easily procure.
*
My intention is to deal here only with the plead
ings and pretensions of those more numerous (at
least in Scotland), and in their own way more con
sistent, advocates of the Bible, who apparently do
not believe, as the old Protestant divines and the
* “Commentators and Hierophants,” Parts I. and II.
price Sixpence each. See list on the last page of this
pamphlet.
�14
Reason and the Bible.
Westminster Assembly did, in the possibility and
duty of the reconciliation, and who do not even seem
to desire it, preferring to insist, .as honest true Pro
testants never did, upon the absolute surrender and
submission of Reason to the Bible.
Those who hold the views which these advocates
express have, apparently without knowing it, as
completely departed in one direction from the stand
point of the men of the Reformation, as those who
require the submission of the Bible to Reason have
departed from it in another and opposite direction.
Both parties alike have felt compelled to settle the
question one way or another. Neither party has
found it possible to harmonize the conflicting claims,
nor to find any satisfaction in compromising them.
The one party has decided one way, and the other
another way, that question which the Reformers did
not take up, and did not feel called upon to settle.
Let neither of these parties be deluded with the idea
that they are maintaining the standpoint of the Re
formers with regard to the Bible. That standpoint
was, as they clearly tell us, the then generally admitted
harmony and agreement of Reason and the Bible. If we
only try seriously to imagine such men as the old
Protestant Reformers compelled, as both of the parties
in question have been compelled, to abandon that
standpoint, to acknowledge the irreconcilable anta
gonism of the two, and to take the one side or the
other, by deciding for themselves whether their reason
should submit to be judged by the Bible, or the
Bible to be judged by their reason ; we can scarcely
fail to understand which side ought to be taken by
true Protestants now, and which side savours more of
the old Popish superstition.
It has of late been remarked by many, that, instead
of grappling with, and undertaking to refute, in the
pulpit or in the press, any or all of the really formid
�Reason and the Bible.
15
able and increasing arguments of objectors,—those
who maintain the traditional dogma, that the Bible
is the Word of God, have for some time past, almost
without exception, been timidly affecting to treat
the arguments with silent contempt, while at the
same time treating the persons, by whom these argu
ments are urged, with wrathful condemnation instead
of any reply.
It is usual for them to say that none of these
arguments or objections are new, which, nevertheless,
some of them are, though surely age alone is no dis
honour ; and that they have all been, long ago, hun
dreds of times, satisfactorily answered. The ex
planation of which appears to be, that when the
minds of men were more easily satisfied with such
answers as might still be given, there was no lack of
satisfactory answers. Whether this sufficiently ex
plains it or not, the phenomenon is notorious, that
the arguments of the objectors are from day to day
becoming more general, more formidable, and more
convincing than ever; while the arguments in reply,
as distinguished from the mere denunciations by the
maintainers, are becoming more and more obsolete,
impotent, and worthless; so much so, that they seem
to have very much escaped the notice or memory of
both parties alike. Unquestionably, however, there
have been, and must have been, plenty of “ sound
orthodox” arguments and replies, which may have
done good service to their employers in their own
day and generation, though these might now have an
effect quite opposed to that which they were formerly
understood to have; because the question now agi
tating men’s minds is comparatively A new question,
to which the old arguments and replies cannot be
easily adapted, having been originally addressed to
the reason; whereas men would now employ them
to reason against reason—a peculiarly delicate task !
There was a time when a very distinguished
�16
Reason and the Bible.
Father of the Church, the earliest distinct witness
for the authenticity of the fourth Gospel, could
argue with acceptance that there must be four Gos
pels, and only four, because—there were four winds,
and four elements, and four beasts in the vision of
Ezekiel! Such an argument is of no use now.
There was a time, not so long ago, when it was
generally considered satisfactory to argue that, as
God’s ancient people were commanded to extirpate
heretics, and to destroy them utterly, so it was
clearly the duty of God’s people still to do the same
thing; and the stake, or the dungeon, or some suffi
cient penalty, was deemed by Catholics and Protes
tants alike, as it had been deemed by the Jews of
old, the most appropriate answer to all sorts of ob
jections. Such arguments are now out of date, at
least in this part of the world.
There has been a time, not yet gone by, though
we may hope that it is now gradually passing away,
when, beyond “ the three mechanical P’s,” the whole
idea of ordinary education has been, to furnish the
mind of the pupil with a complete panoply of stereo
typed ideas and ready-made conclusions, handed
down by tradition, regarding every branch of know
ledge, as well as regarding religion and the Bible.
It is only now, or of late years, that the idea has
begun to prevail, and no doubt is very rapidly
spreading, that, instead of merely cramming the
mind with assertions and dogmas, the far nobler
aim of education ought to be, the instruction and
training of each individual in the separate personal
use of his own mental faculties, by calling these
faculties constantly into exercise upon his own ex
perience and observation, as well as upon all his
lessons and studies, which for children ought to be
selected and directed by teachers or guardians,
having the principle of intellectual liberty rooted
in their hearts, and keeping that principle steadily
in view.
�Reason and the Bible.
17
The foremost educationists are now striving to1
discover the most effectual methods of accustoming
the young mind to think, to reflect, to investigate,
to compare, and to test everything for itself, search
ing everywhere, and always, for truthfulness and
reality, so that it may learn to know and understand
the certainty, or the certain doubtfulness, of every
thing in which it is instructed; and, above all, that
it may, as it ripens, become acquainted with its own
natural inherent right to judge for itself of the good
or evil, the truth or falsehood, the certainty or un
certainty of everything to which its attention may
be directed; of which right, at least in several of its
most important applications, the vast majority of
minds have hitherto been trained in profound prac
tical ignorance, thinly veiled, if veiled at all, by a
few fine-sounding phrases about the reverence or
respect due to this or that authority.
There cannot be a doubt about it, that a great
change in this direction, is coming gradually over
the whole united nation. There is at present a very
distinct prospect and intention of improvement. We
really do seem to be making a fresh start onwards
towards liberty and light. It is indeed both a grand
and a true thing to say, in the prophetic words of
our greatest orator,. John Bright,—“ I think I see,,
as it were, above the hill-tops of time, the glimmer
ing of the dawn of a better day, for the people and
the country that I love so well! ” It may seem rather
sanguine, but no longer seems chimerical, to hope
that even a middle-aged man may live to see the'
children of the people trained, each in the knowledge
and use of his or her birthright as one of God’s chil
dren,—the birthright of liberty,—complete freedom
of reason tod of conscience,—the very liberty which
the “Sons of God ” and “ enlightened ones ” have in
all ages striven, and often sacrificed themselves in
the attempt, to make mankind understand and use
B
�18
Reason and the Bible.
as their own. This is at once the scientific and the
truly Protestant, because truly Christian idea of edu
cation,—the education of the future,—a religious,
moral, and intellectual education.
Surely it would be an evidence of blind delusion,
or else of gross presumption and falsehood, were any
man to say that this aspiration is evil, or to condemn
it with opprobrious epithets as scepticism and infi
delity. It is the result and expression of Faith,—
religious faith in God, in Goodness, and in Truth, as
revealed to the inquiring mind, chiefly through the
contrasts drawn and discerned, between these intel
lectual conceptions on the one hand, and atheism,
idolatry, falsehood, or evil, on the other, by the free
and serious exercise of Reason—God’s gift for man’s
guidance, the conscientious verdict of which may
well be called, figuratively, “the Word of God” to
each individual. As to the duty or advantage of
faith in the faith of other men, whether these men be
the ancient authors of the Bible, or their more un
reasonable modern expounders, call me sceptic, or
infidel if you will:—only let the distinction which is
here drawn be clearly understood.
We may read the 145th Psalm, for example, with
intense appreciation of the sublime religious thought
which its stanzas express, and our minds may well
be filled with admiration and delight, especially when
due emphasis is laid upon the word “ ALL,” which
frequently recurs and appears to be the key-note of
the piece. If there be anything in the Psalm, such as
the phrase at the close of the 19th verse,—“ All. the
wicked will he destroy,”—which may seem to jar against
or contradict the rest, surely we may freely try to
interpret for ourselves the mind of the poet, so as to
harmonize the apparent discord, as by reflecting that
he has just before expressed his faith in God, as good
to ALL, upholding ALL that fall, and raising up ALL those
that be bowed down, and that therefore the meaning
�Reason and the Bible.
19
of what is said about the wicked must be, that God
will destroy or bring to an end all their wicked
ness, and thus raise up all those whom even their
own wickedness has caused to fall or to be bowed
down, so that there shall be no more any wicked.
Such liberties are taken by all commentators on the
Bible, under the guise of interpretation; but in
reality it is putting one set of words in place of
another ; and we may just as consistently altogether
reject the jarring note, either because we may not be
able to harmonize it with the rest, or because we may
find that its acceptance would upset all our ideas of
intellectual and moral perfection of character, as at
tributed to the “ Father of the spirits of all flesh/’ and
that it is therefore incredible or unintelligible to us.
This Psalm in a high degree, like every other lesson
in its own degree, becomes a revelation to our minds,
just in proportion to the clearness and force of the
free judicial verdict, which our reason and conscience
may be thereby stimulated and assisted to arrive at
regarding those matters which, to our minds, it illus
trates, or brings before our view.
Let us never forget, what it is mere priestcraft to
deny, that it is every man’s inalienable right, and his
duty, so far as it may be opportunely in his power,
as a man, as a Christian, and as a Protestant, to in
vestigate, examine, and judge every portion of the
Bible, as well as every other item of his information
and experience, and to arrive at his own individual
conclusions, with entire fulness of mental freedom.
The serious, honest, and deliberate exercise of this
freedom, is at least one true and real meaning of the
figurative phrase,—“ Faith in the Word of God,”__
which is a quite intelligible way of expressing a re
ligious. man’s experience of it ■ as are also the less
figurative phrases,
true wisdom,” “good under
standing,
liberation of the intellect,” “ rational
belief.”
�20
Reason and the Bible.
It is not improbable that some may condemn these
views, or protest against them, as seeming “ to exalt
reason to the place of God;" but the position here
maintained is merely that Reason is the faculty or
instrument with which God has endowed us, by the
proper personal use of which, alone, it is possible for
any of us to convert information and experience into
sound knowledge about anything whatever.
Those who may say that it is “ spiritual pride” and
“presumption” thus to test everything by the verdict
of Reason, ought to be reminded that, in so far as
Reason may be set aside, the only other test which
can possibly be substituted for it is that of our own
sentiments or emotions, such as veneration, esteem,
attachment, or fear; and this ought to make them
pause and reflect, before venturing to affirm that such
things as these ought to control our Reason, instead
of being regulated and controlled thereby; because,
in the clear and strong words of Archbishop Whately,
the humiliation of Reason which they require “ is a
prostration, not of ourselves before God, but of one
part of ourselves before another part; and there is
surely at least as much presumption in measuring
everything by our own feelings, fancies, and preju
dices, as by our own reasonings.” *
It is beyond a question, that there has of late been
a vast increase of open and avowed opposition to the
dogma, that the Bible, in all its parts and in all its
words, is the Word of God; and, though it is of
course less manifest, it is nearly as certain, that doubt,
unbelief, and silent opposition have increased to an
immeasurably greater extent.
It is also perfectly well known, and quite indisput
able, that the argumentative strength of the opposition
has of late been displayed with very much greater
vigour, fulness, and effect than it ever was in this
* Whately’s Notes to Bacon’s Essay on Truth.
�Reason and the Bible.
21
country before ; partly by the production of new evi
dence, criticism, and arguments ; but chiefly by the
more frequent and more extended publication, read
ing, hearing, and especially understanding, of the old.
With regard to the extent of publication, reading,
and hearing, however, it must be admitted that the
advocates of the dogma have hitherto had, and still
have, an immense advantage over their opponents.
Indeed, they may be said to have had, until recent
years, almost the entire influence of the pulpit, the
press, and the school, on their side ; and the rule is
clearly still the same, although the exceptions are
becoming more numerous. It is only in the matter
of understanding that the strength of the opposition
will bear any comparison; and were it not for this,
the Bible party would have no cause for their present
uneasiness and alarm. The assailants of the dogma
are constantly producing evidence and arguments,
which men can understand and feel the force of;
whereas the very few so-called replies, and the very
many assertions and so-called reasonings, of the de
fenders, are either not understood, or else understood
to be powerless.
It would be cumbrous, and it is not my plan, to
introduce here any quotations or reproductions of
the abundant evidence and arguments, which go to
prove that the dogma is false. Most of my readers
are, probably, in some measure acquainted with them;
and I cannot, for the present, do better than refer the
inquirer on this head to Mr Thomas Scott’s series of
publications, a list of which will be found at the end
of this pamphlet, nearly all bearing directly on the
point.
I prefer here to invite attention to the startling
effect, which the recent attacks of the comparatively
few assailants have had upon the attitude of the
vastly more numerous defenders of the dogma, and
to a few brief illustrations of the mode in which these
�22
Reason and the Bible.
attacks are being met, by some of the most zealous
champions of what is called “ orthodoxy.”
I have already observed how remarkably rare has
become the inclination of these champions to deal
with rational argument, and how chary they generally
are about grappling with the arguments of their op
ponents. Among those who are altogether innocent
of reasoning about the matter, are to be found the
most unrestrained shouters of anathema against the
objectors, whose objections they studiously evade.
They bewail the manifest increase of free thought
among their people, attributing all sorts of evil
motives to those who openly profess it, and proclaim
ing that “ God will surely punish" those who deny the
supreme authority of the Scriptures, but neverattempt
ing a word of rational reply or refutation.
Does any one doubt it, or think this exaggeration 1
There is abundance of evidence at hand, from which
only a few selections can here be made. Doubtless,
many of my readers are familiar with it. There is
even a strong probability, though the experiment has
not yet been tried, that, in Scotland at least, and I
suppose not in Scotland alone, the specimens, which
I am to quote, would be pronounced “ sound” and
“ orthodox” by the majority of clergymen of all deno
minations. Not a few might perhaps say that they
exemplify “ a somewhat indiscreet advocacy of the truth,”
or that they are decidedly “rather too orthodox;” but
it is very doubtful, whether any considerable num
ber of those who are included under the name Priest,
as defined in the beginning of this tract, would choose
to characterize these things as they deserve, viz.,, as
arrogant Popish assertions and malignant unchristian
calumnies, irreconcilable with reason, truth, and
evidence.
A lecture, addressed to the Students of Divinity,
at the opening of the Free Church College, Glasgow,
�Reason and the Bible.
in November 1870, by the Rev. Dr Gibson, Professor
of Divinity and Church History, on “ Some Present
Aspects of Religious Opinion,” supplies the following
*
illustrations.
“ The more conscience is enlightened by the religion of
Christ as the Great Prophet of His Church—in other words,
by the Bible, the revelation of His Holy Spirit—the more
do the principles of Christianity find in it an approving
response. Hence Paul says, 2 Cor. iv. 2 : ‘ By manifesta
tion of the truth commending ourselves to every man's con
science in the sight of God;' not to every man’s conscience
or reason as the supreme authority to judge, or—as heralded
by a candidate for notoriety in our city—the absolute and
divine authority of reason, conscience, and love as ‘the only
ground of faith,’ but the absolute authority of God in what
He reveals and commands, and to which reason and con
science are bound to submit. ( If they do not, it is at the
peril of the poor mortal who refuses, and puts his poor
reason and conscience and love, small and variable as his
love is, on a level with the authority of the God of truth
and holiness and love. This manifestation of truth to
every man’s conscience as in the sight of God, so as to
leave him without excuse, can be shown of every one of
the doctrines and precepts of Scripture.”
It is not a little surprising that Dr Gibson should
quote these words of Paul, in support of the dogma
that “ reason and conscience are bound to submit ” to the
doctrines and precepts of Scripture, as to “ the abso
lute authority of God in what He reveals and com
mands.” Why ? Because it is that very dogma
against which Paul is there contending, having just
before called the law of Moses “ the ministration of
death,” which, he says, “ is done away.” In contrast
to the deadness of that law, he proposes, by manifes
tation of the truth, to commend his own doctrine to
every man’s conscience. This sounds wonderfully
like appealing to “the authority of reason, conscience,
and love, as the only ground of faith.” But does not
* Published in the “Watchword,” a Free Church Magazine,
for December 1870, and for January 1871.
�24
Reason and the Bible.
the Professor himself virtually make the same appeal,
when he affirms that the truth of every one of the
doctrines and precepts of Scripture can be manifested
to every man's conscience in the sight of God ? It
becomes merely a question of experimental fact, as to
whether or not the assertion will stand the test of
application. Let it be applied, for example, to the
following passages, selected almost at random:—
Exod. xxxii. 27—“ Thus saith the Lord God of
Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go
in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp,
and slay every man his brother, and every man his com
panion, and every man his neighbour.”
Exod. xx. 13—“ Thou shalt not kill.”
Mai. iii. 6—“ I am the Lord ; I CHANGE NOT."
Gen. vi. 6—“ And it repented the Lord that he had
made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his
heart.”
Exod. xxix. 36—“Thou shalt offer every day a
bullock for a sin-offering for atonement.”
Levit. i. 9—“ And the priest shall burn it all on
the altar to be a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by
fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord.”
Jer. vii. 21, 22—“Thus saith the Lord. - I
spake not unto your fathers nor commanded them in the
day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt,
concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices.”
Heb. x. 6—“ In burnt offerings and sacrifices for
sin thou hast had no pleasure.”
Acts x. 34—“ God is no respecter of persons.”
Mai. i. 2, 3—-“Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?
saith the Lord : yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau.”
(“ The children being not yet born.”—Rom. ix. 11-13.)
Gal. v. 22—“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,
peace, gentleness, goodness, faith.”
Jud. xv. 14, 15—“And the Spirit of the Lord
came upon him, and he slew a thousand men.”
Deut. vii. 16—“Thou shalt consume all the people
�Reason and the Bible.
^5
which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee; thine
eye shall have no pity upon them.
1 Sam. xv. 3—“Now go and smite Amalek, and
utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them
not; but slay both man and woman, infant and
suclclin/j.”
Isa. i. 18—“Come now and let us reason together,
saith the Lord.”
Rom. ix. 18-21—“ Nay but, 0 man, who art thou
that repliest against God 1” &c.
Mat. xxiii. 2, 3—■“ The Scribes and the Pharisees
sit in Moses’ seat: all therefore whatsoever they bid
you observe, that observe and do.”
If Dr Gibson really understands how “ the mani
festation of truth to every man’s conscience, as in the
sight of God, so as to leave him without excuse, CAN
BE shown ” of the many such doctrines, precepts,
and contradictions of Scripture as these, it is surely
most desirable, that he should verify his assertion by
showing the manifestation, because few men are
likely to discover it for themselves.
“ Conscience is a creature, therefore a subject, and not a
sovereign, and is under law. What law, and whence does
it proceed? It must rest in, and proceed from Him who is
its Lord. How, then, does He, or has He expressed it?
“Without entering into abstract discussion, I think I
may affirm that it cannot be in natural conscience as man
now exists in the earth. Why so? Because you cannot
survey it in the light of history, of facts, ancient or modern,
either in the most limited or in the widest range either of
time or place, without coming to the conclusion that its
decisions have been so contradictory as to put ‘ darkness for
light and light for darkness, evil for good and good for
evil, bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.’ What, then,
is the expression of His Lordship? and where is it to be
found ? All Christian men must at once say, in the Law of
the Lord revealed in the Bible. It is plain that conscience,
as a subj ect, cannot have a right to rule above its Creator
and Lord. Equally plain is it that this law, if it can be
found, it must obey; in other words, there must be an au
�q.6
Reason and the Bible.
thority. But that authority must be God himself. As
suming that there is a judgment-day, and that man is
responsible for his belief, one can hardly imagine each
mortal man daring to plead, at the great day, his conscience
to determine the judgment of the Most High. The autho
rity, then, must be the authority of God himself. It can
not be anything short of its Lord.
“ It is to this authority I refer when I affirm that a dread,
and consequently a hatred of authority is one present aspect
of religious opinion.”
The argument, here employed against “natural
conscience,” is perfectly good against those who assert
human infallibility or the supreme authority of any
man’s mind, or of any man’s writings, over the minds
of other men. It is, therefore, perfectly good against
the authority claimed for the Bible. Why so? Be
cause we cannot survey the Bible in the light of his
tory and facts, without coming to the conclusion that
its laws, doctrines, and statements are often so con
tradictory as to put darkness for light and light for
darkness, evil for good and good for evil; as witness
the numberless irreconcilable contradictions, which
abound in many parts of it, and even in the Gospels.
*
Natural conscience or reason, when reasonably exer
cised, enables us to discern errors and contradic
tions, and tn draw lessons of wisdom both from
those of other men and from our own, as well as
from those of the Bible.
That which is “affirmed’' about “ dread, and conse
* For countless contradictions, both, historical and doctrinal,
in the Old Testament, I may refer the inquiring reader to
Mr. F. W. Newman’s “History of the Hebrew Monarchy,”
(published by Triibner and Co., London); and I take this
opportunity of acknowledging that the train of argument,
pursued in my own essay on “ The Finding of the Book,” was
suggested and greatly aided by Mr Newman’s most admirable
and instructive work..
For similar criticism of the New Testament, I would refer
especially to “ The Evangelist and the Divine.”—See list on
last page.
�Reason and the Bible.
o.7
quently hatred of authority,” if not purely imaginary,
would require to be supported by evidence showing
to what class of men it applies; because, as regards
such men as Bishop Colenso, Mr Voysey, the authors
of “Essays and Reviews,” or the large class who
sympathise with them, it would be a quite unfounded
calumny to affirm, that they are influenced by “ dread,
and consequently hatred of authority.” It would surely be
both more charitable and more correct to say, that
discovery and rejection offalse authority, proceeding from
the love of truth and the hatred of falsehood, is one
present aspect of religious opinion.
“ Protestantism is not the right in the sight of God to
hold any opinion which each individual pleases, but the
right and duty of every human being to regulate his belief
by the unerring standard of the Holy Scriptures ; and that
God being Lord, and the alone Lord of the conscience, no
man, or set, or combination of men, may resist his authority.
. . . . God’s Word is a law, distinct, intelligible, and
immediate; whereas any other, under whatever guise or
form—the Church, the Pope, the Reason—is a usurpation
of the rights both of God and man.”
When Dr. Gibson says that, if Church, Pope, or
Reason be set up as a law over the individual conscience,
they usurp the rights both of God and man, he utters
a truth which every free man and noble nature
would die to maintain. But then, Reason in this
connection cannot mean a man’s own reason; for it
must be something external to him, as Church and
Pope are.
Not to dwell upon the commonplace absurdity of
imagining that it is in the power of any individual to
believe what he pleases! the question forcibly suggests
itself,—Shall any man, such as Dr Gibson, or shall
any combination of men, such as a Protestant Church,
presume to come between other men and God, by
holding up before them a book, with the assertion
that all are bound to accept it as the Word of God,
�28
Reason and the Bible.
without any evidence, or without any right on their
part to investigate and weigh all available evidence,
—and that if they allow their reason to decide for
themselves individually, whether such assertion is
truthful, credible, uncertain, or false, they are guilty
of “ a usurpation of the rights both of God and man ?”
It would be well for Dr Gibson to ponder over the
following apostolic words :■—“Hast thou faith? Have
IT Tq thyself before God. Happy is he that condemneth
not himself in that thing which he alloweth!” (Rom. xiv.
22.)
“Is it bigotry, fanaticism, ecclesiasticism ? Are these
what we wish to defend and establish, as is asserted by great
men and small men? If such things can be justly applied
to the authority of Holy Scripture, we at once say that they
are what we wish to defend and establish. But the asser
tion, by whomsoever made, is a calumny on us, and a blas
phemy against Holy Scripture.” (!) “ The antidote, we
have seen, is the revealed Word of God—the Holy Scrip
tures, to be received and believed, not on the authority of
any man or Church, but on the authority of God himself,
because it is the Word of God" (/) “speaking to us directly
and immediately as a man speaking to his friend. This is
the sure foundation of all belief. If God does speak in His
works, in the conscience, and, above all, in His written.
Word, which is invariable and ‘ endureth for ever,’—all
with His own mouth, or, which is the same thing, by His
own Spirit in His Word, man must listen and obey ; and it
is impious and at man’s peril if he disobey, reason or prate
about inner light or inner consciousness, or spirit of the age,
or public opinion, as he may. Of all the delusions into
which the weak and inexperienced are so apt to fall, none is
greater than that of imagining that running with the tide
is a proof of deep thought, of deep learning, or high courage
and independence. It is the very reverse—a proof of a
weak and slavish spirit that is afraid to stand by the truth
and abide the frown or sneer of men of no higher authority
than itself. Think for yourselves, gentlemen, as against
man ; but beware of thinking for yourselves as against
God.”
In reply to Dr Gibson’s questions, it is sufficient to
�Reason and the Bible.
29
observe that bigotry signifies stubborn adherence to an
unreasonable opinion, and that what he says about
“ blasphemy ” sounds wonderfully like fanaticism, or
excessive and indiscreet zeal.
It would be a grand good thing if all who heard,
and all who may read, the last quoted sentence, would
act upon the advice there given, by thinking for
themselves as against Dr Gibson, or as against any
man who may, like him, dictate dogma in their hear
ing. Scarcely even Dr Gibson will venture to say
that those who do so are therein guilty of thinking
forthemselves “as against God!” On the contrary
it will be, and has been, in many cases, found by in
quirers, that for them to acknowledge all the words
of the Bible to possess the authority of God, would in
volve on their part the quenching or resisting of that
“ Word of God,” which constantly addresses itself to
their reason and conscience in the Books of Creation
and Providence, as well as in the Books of Experience
and History, both past and present, including, of
course, the experience and history of which the Bible
is the vehicle. Just in so far as all these “ Books ”
are observed and studied, will the “Word of God”
which men are often compelled to hear and to obey
even when not listening for it, which can be heard
nowhere but in the reason and conscience of the indi
vidual, and which Dr Gibson also professes to recog
nise, be understood, and its authority be recognised
and acknowledged by Reason.
“ Running with the tide,” as the Professor phrases it,
is, in itself, neither a proof of deep thought and high
courage, nor of the reverse; but is a propensity of
our nature, so strong that good men, and even great
men, have often been led astray by it. In fact it is
much more than probable that this very propensity
restrains many at the present time from thinking
freely, and from saying what they think, about the
Bible. The frown, and sneer, and social intolerance
�3°
Reason and the Bible.
of orthodox people are still powerful enough to be
really dreaded by dependent or timid “ freethinkers;”
for there is no lack of evidence, to prove, that those
bolder ones who do venture to think and to speak
freely, against the unreasonable assertions of the
advocates for the supremacy of the Bible over Rea
son, are not yet “ running with the, tide." It cannot
be denied, however, that there are some signs of
the approaching turning time.
Throughout the whole lecture, there is not the
slightest allusion to evidence, either for or against
the dogma. It would, indeed, appear that, according
to Dr Gibson, all evidence is quite superfluous and
useless or worse; for there is not one single argument
employed by him in support of his dogma, which
does not openly and avowedly rest upon that dogma
itself, as in the passages quoted, and these are the
strongest and most argumentative which I have been
able to select.
It would be amazing, and almost incredible, if it
were not elsewhere so common, to find that an expe
rienced Professor of Church History, and a leading
minister of the Free Church of Scotland, should have,
on such an important occasion, nothing better to say
in support or defence of the dogma which he calls
“ the foundation of all belief," than a mere set of varia
tions upon the words—It is, and it is, and it is, and
you must believe and say that it is, and must never
allow yourself to think that it is not, because it is !
only because it is !
The fair inference from Dr Gibson’s language is,
that he identifies his own opinion with . Revelation.
To dictate dogma, without appealing to evidence, and
without condescending to rational argument upon the
evidence, is to assume infallibility. Dr Gibson mani
festly assumes either that he himself is infallible, or
that he is expressing the opinion of some other
(assumed) infallible man or men, when, regardless of
�Reason and the Bible,
31
evidence and in defiance of reason, he merely asserts
that the Bible is the Word of God. He seems to be
quite unconscious of the absurdity of a Protestant
Divine making his whole system of doctrine rest
upon an assumption of infallibility.
It appears too clearly that the faith professed and
taught by Dr Gibson, and by that very large class of
clerical men whom he may be taken as representing,
is of a radically different kind from that which Jesus
taught his disciples, when he opened, as it is written,
the eyes of their understandings by arousing, instruct
ing, and stimulating them to the consciousness, the
exercise, and the enjoyment of their own duty, right,
and power to judge and to decide by Reason what
they ought to believe, and what they ought not to
believe. Having learned of Jesus, they could no
longer submit their Reason, as they had for many
generations been taught to do, to the traditions and
superstitions of their forefathers and of their priests;
but burst away from the mental yoke of bondage to
these traditions, to these priests, and to the supreme
authority of their old written creed or law, with all
its sacrifices of blood and burnt flesh, to pacify the
wrath and propitiate the favour of a jealous and ter
rible God, whom the law represented as requiring
such sacrifices and delighting in them. We read
that the words of Jesus were quick and powerful,
and that men were astonished at his doctrine, for
that he taught as one having authority, appealing with
all the force of Truth to the hearts and to the minds
of those who understood what he said; and not as the
scribes, who appealed only to chapter, and verse, and
word of their sacred books. Let it be remembered
that the Scribes and Pharisees were not ignorant nor
wicked men, but were the educated, the respectable,
the orthodox, and the synagogue-attending class of
their day, who stood up for the authority of “ God’s
Word ” as opposed to Reason. But the spirit of Jesus
�^2
Reason and the Bible.
they could neither bind nor subdue, though they could
put himself to death; and accordingly we read
that those who became disciples of Jesus were made,
free by the power of the Truth—that they passed
from darkness to marvellous light—from bondage to
liberty—spiritual liberty—mental liberty—the glori
ous liberty of the children of God, whom they ad
dressed, after the example of their elder brother, as
“ Our Father,” worshipping Him only, not with the
signs and symbols of slavish fear and dread, such as
the shedding and sprinkling of blood; but in spirit
and in truth, in confidence and love, as became the
“ Sons of God." There is reason to fear the disciples
of men like Dr Gibson can have little of that exper
ience, which the disciples of Jesus appear so fully to
have enjoyed.
I have already shown that the unreasonable faith
of modern popular Christianity is essentially different
from the orthodox Christian faith of the true prophets
of Protestantism, which was based upon their convic
tion of the entire harmony and agreement of the
Word of God and reason, so that the one voice could
not contradict the other, and so that conflict between
the two, or subjection of the one to the other, was for
them entirely out of the question, liberation and not
submission being then, as always, the experience of
those who listened to the “ still small voice,” and
obeyed the Word of God.
Most of us can now understand that the Reformers
made a critical mistake, in assuming or fancying, as
they manifestly did, that the Bible quite harmonized
with Reason, and that there could be no real conflict
between them, any more than there could be a real
conflict between Reason and the “ Light of Nature,"
which they also recognised as another Word of God.
But we can also understand that they did not err cul
pably, as we judge their opponents to have erred.
They certainly cannot be charged with wilful blindness,
�Reason and the Bible.
33
nor did they ever proclaim the duty of believing the
Bible without investigation, which, on the contrary,
they thought it safe to challenge and invite, by for
mally stating the rational grounds on which their own
belief was based. That to which their reason sub
mitted was tried, judged, and approved by their reason.
Their reason submitted to itself, that is to its own in
terpretation of every Word of God; and all other
submission of Reason those noble men and true pro
phets cast behind them with scorn, as the genuine
disciples and followers of “ the Prophet of Nazareth ”
always have done; for, “ where the Spirit of the
Lord is, there is Liberty.”
The grand distinction, between them and the advo
cates of the Roman Catholic creed, was this very
point. The one party insisted upon the submission of
Reason to that which Reason was forbidden to test
and could not approve. The other party maintained
that:—
Confession of Faith, xx. 2—God alone is Lord of the
conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and
commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to
his word, or beside it, in matters of faith and worship.
So that to believe such doctrines, or to obey such com
mandments out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of
conscience; and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an
absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience,
and reason also.'"
Strange, indeed, it is to find, that the old Popish,
Jewish, and heathen error, the root of all errors and
superstitions,—that Reason is bound to submit to
authority not approved by Reason, has grown up
again, in a new shape, in the churches which call
themselves Protestant.
While such theology is taught and published by
doctors and professors, reputed highly orthodox, in
high places of the Church, it is perfectly notorious
that, from very many pulpits throughout the land,
C
�24
Reason and the Bible.
the same kind of doctrine is preached, which has
been well called, “ the, Gospel of Unreason." . My own
observation and experience of this preaching are of
course local and limited; but, judging from what I
read and hear, I infer that it is exceedingly common,
and by no means confined to one Church, nor to one
part of Great Britain.
It is probable, therefore, that many of my readers
may have often heard such specimens as the following,
which are supplied by pencil-jottings of sermons,
recently taken in the pews by myself and friends in
whom I have confidence. They are all genuine and
unadorned.
“ Every word of this blessed book, brethren, is
God’s message to us. It is to us individually that
Jehovah there speaks.” . . . “ If we would profit by
the Word of God, we must mix faith with the hearing
and the reading of it. We must believe that every
word of it is true, simply on God’s own authority.”
. . . “ God requires of us a child-like unquestion
ing submission to the divine authority of the Bible,
and a willingness to hear the voice of God in all
that the Bible says to us.” . . . “ A sense of God’s
authority in the Bible, and unquestioning submission
to that authority, is the best evidence of true. Chris
tianity.” . . . “ An atheist is one who denies the
existence of God; an infidel is one who does not
believe that the Bible is the Word of God; and
there is not much difference between the two, for he
who does not believe that the Bible is God’s Word,
does not believe in the God of the Bible.” . . .
11 Beware of hardening your hearts against the Word
of God, which speaks to us in every sentence of the
Bible.” . . “ Before a man can resist the authority
of God speaking to us in the Bible, there must be a
process of hardening the heart, quenching conviction,
and self-deception, by false expectations of safety in
some other way than that which the Bible reveals.”
�Reason and the Bible.
35
... “I believe that opposition and hatred to the
justice of God as revealed in the Bible, the desire to
quiet the accusations of a guilty conscience, and to
get rid of the fear of punishment which the Bible
tells them their sins deserve, are the true reasons
why men begin to question the authority of the
Bible.” . . . “ Those who deny this authority would
not be convinced, even although the most convincing
arguments were presented to them. All their objec
tions and outrageous views have been again and
again refuted. It is in the heart and not in the
head that their opposition has its seat.” ... “If
scenes such as the miraculous deaths of Ananias and
Sapphira were to occur in our own day, would they
not make some of us tremble ! Many an awful sight
would be seen at our communion tables, if those who
come there, and eat and drink damnation, were to be
struck down, as Ananias and Sapphira were. Theirs
was a miraculous death ; and it may appear to some
unreasonable, that Peter should thus have had the
power to deal so terribly with them. But, my
brethren, beware of limiting the power and the
sovereignty of the Most High. Though it may be
unreasonable, it is none the less true—none the less
a miracle. Woe unto the man that disputeth with
his Maker—Almighty God ! ”
I refrain from any particular criticism of these
rash assertions and uncharitable thoughts, to which
the thinking reader will easily apply most of my
remarks on Dr Gibson’s lecture • but that in
quirers may be enabled to judge of the true name
by which to designate the teaching of these too
zealous advocates of the Bible, I subjoin the follow
ing sentences from very high authorities in the
Roman Catholic Church.
*
* All quoted, with Latin originals and particular references,
in “ The Moral Theology of Liguori,” by Pascal the Younger,
London, 1856, pp. 43, 140, 196, 47.
�26
Reason and the Bible.
St Ignatius, the founder of the J esuits, says in his
“Epistle on the Virtue of Obedience,” A.D. 1553,
“ If you would immolate your whole self wholly unto
God, you must offer to Him not the bare will merely,
but the Understanding also.” . . . “The noble
simplicity of Blind Obedience is gone, if in our
secret breast we call in question whether that which
is commanded be right OR WRONG. This is what
makes it perfect and acceptable to the Lord, that the
most excellent and most precious part of man is
consecrated to Him, and nothing whatsoever of him
kept back for himself.”
To show how this principle is applied, Cardinal
Wiseman says, in his preface to “ The Exercises of
St Ignatius —“In the Catholic Church no one is
ever allowed to trust himself in spiritual matters.
The Sovereign Pontiff is obliged to submit himself
to the direction of another in whatever concerns his
own soul.”
To this may be added from the “Exercises —
“ That we may in all things attain the truth, that we
may not err in anything, we ought ever to hold it as
a fixed principle, that what I see white I believe to
be black, if the hierarchical Church so define it.”
It may be instructive, as I am quoting, to take a
specimen of what these outspoken priests have said
about liberty of conscience. Pope Gregory XVI., in an
encyclical letter, dated August 1832, says:—“It is
from that most fetid fountain, indifferentism, springs
the absurd and mistaken notion, or rather raving of
madness, that liberty of conscience is to be recog
nised and vindicated. What has prepared the way
for this most pestilential error is, that ample and
immoderate liberty of opinion which is spreading
far and wide, to the ruin of Church and State,
though there are some men who, out of most con
summate impudence, maintain it is an advantage to
religion. This is the aim of that worst of all liberties,
�Reason and the Bible.
37
that never-enough-to-be-execrated and detestable
liberty of the press (Awe spectat det&rrima ilia ac
nunguam satis execranda et detestabilis libertas artis
librarian ad scripta gucelibet edenda in vulgus), which
some dare so loudly to demand, and even promote.
We are most horribly affrighted {Perhorrescimus'),
venerable brethren, when we see with what monsters
of doctrine, with what portents of evil we are over
whelmed (pbruamur)."
Nearly everything that can be said or thought
against this truly horrible presumption, which ignores
and hushes up, and utterly disregards or sternly con
demns all but its own one-sided kind of evidence or
argument, will be found, on reflection, easily and
equally applicable to such lectures and sermons as
those of which I have given specimens.
Is it not clear that this very same old SPIRIT OF
Popery, with only a slight alteration of form and
expression, has again got possession of our Protestant
pulpits and schools, and that much of the Reforma
tion work will have to be done over again, before we
can expect to get rid of its present unwholesome
superstitious influence in many branches of the
Church 1
The root and essence of Popery, and of all false
religion, the foundation of all superstitious belief, is
the submission of man’s Reason to some external
standard or symbol of “ Authority above Reason.”
The root and essence of true Christianity, of true
Protestantism, and of all true religion, the founda
tion of all rational belief, is the free exercise of Rea
son, liberation of the intellect, liberty of conscience,
private judgment.
These two kinds of religion or belief are as dis
tinctly opposed to each other, as are the two prin
ciples or foundations on which they respectively rest;
and there is no possibility of reconciling them, nor of
finding any tenable middle way or halting place
�28
Reason and the Bible.
between the two ; for all things are full of progress,
and the increase, as a general rule, is according to
the kind. The distinction, moreover, is not merely
such as there is between two opposite positions, but
rather such as there is between two opposite direc
tions; and no man can be travelling simultaneously
towards both the rising and the setting of the equi
noctial sun.
“All worship is idolatry,” says the great thinker,
Thomas Carlyle, the meaning of which appears to be
that every man who worships the Infinite or the
Unseen, worships his own symbol or conception of
the Infinite or the Unseen, which can in no case be
what the Infinite and Unseen is, so that the likeness
or unlikeness of the symbol-—the truth or the false
hood of the conception—can only be relative and
comparative terms, no possible symbol or conception
being absolutely, perfectly appropriate or true. But
he adds,—“Blameable idolatry is insincere idolatry,”
the meaning of which evidently is that, when doubts
have to be stifled, because the only possible solution
of them is unbelief,—when the voice of Reason is
disregarded, that another voice may be obeyed, which
Reason may not test, and therefore cannot approve,
—then begins false worship or blameable idolatry.
So long as there is no conflict between Reason and
Authority,—between the conscience and the Idol, the
worship may be reasonable and sincere, the idolatry is
not blameable, for “ where there is no law there can be
no transgression of the law.” But, so soon as the
conflict arises,—so soon as the antagonism is known
and felt by any individual, all true worship of the old
symbol or conception is at an end for him. Carelesslessness, indifference, and mental sloth may, for a
time, swell the ranks of neutrality; but every serious,
thoughtful mind is, in such circumstances, unable to
rest until it has made the choice, by deciding between
the rival claims of Reason and Conscience on the one
�Reason and the Bible.
39
hand, and of Authority, Tradition, or the Idol, on
the other.
Such is the time in which it is our lot to live.
The conflict has arisen, and has come to such a height,
that it is, now and henceforth, difficult for any think
ing man not to know and feel the antagonism between
the rival claims for supremacy of Reason and the
Bible. Every serious mind is now again being chal
lenged and compelled to make a choice, by determ ining whether the supreme authority of the Bible shall
be maintained by the submission of Reason, or
whether the supreme authority of Reason shall this
time again triumph over the worship of an Idol, con
demned by Reason, over the asserted and assumed
divinity and authority of a book, said to be the Word
of God, but with which Reason does not and cannot
harmonise, as Reason can and does harmonise with
every true Word of God.
The startling fact, to which men are day by day
awakening, is, that this question between Reason and
the Bible, which is at present challenging the verdict
of every inquiring religious mind, is just the very
same old question in a new form, as that which men
were invited, and many constrained, to settle for
themselves individually, at the time when the first
clear light of Christianity shone upon the supersti
tious gloom of J ewish and heathen traditional beliefs,
and again at the time when the dawn of the Protes
tant Reformation broke forth amidst the darkness of
Popish unreasonableness and intellectual submission
to authority. The love of truth and of humanity is
now again constraining men here and there to stand
forth, as of old, against dogmatism and superstition,
and against the antiquated and obstructive idea, that
those who ought to be the leaders and guides of the
people in ascertaining whatever is truest and best,
should be bound by oaths and bribed by emoluments
to maintain the existing fabric of opinion and custom.
�40
Reason and the Bible.
Not from Christianity, nor from Protestantism, have
we received “ the spirit of bondage again to fear.’
Why should not our religious teachers be, as our
scientific teachers are, free to follow evidence, truth,
a,nd fact, wherever these may lead, no matter what
existing theory or practice may thus be imperilled or
overthrown ? Why should they not stir up the gift
of God which is in them, as the Apostle Paul says to
the young preacher, “ for God hath not given us the
spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a
sound mind ? ” Fear cannot enlighten the mind, nor
enlarge and strengthen the understanding—cannot
elevate the emotions, nor purify the affections—can
not subdue the will, even when it forces compliance
or assent—cannot convince the reason, although it
may stifle inquiry and discussion. There may be
much internal rebellion, even where there is so much
external submission and conformity as may be thought
necessary for safety or for comfort. Every one knows
that this is a common fact of daily observation, not
only in religion, but also in politics and in family
affairs. But surely it is the very height of folly to
imagine that we can propitiate or please the Father
of our spirits by being afraid to think. Surely it is
gross superstition to be deterred, by dread of .His
displeasure, from the freest, fullest, upright, serious
exercise of reason. “ If anything is clear,” says an
American writer, “ it is, that faith is large in pro
portion as it dares to put things to the proof. Fear
and laziness can accept beliefs ; only trust and cour
age will question them. To reject consecrated opi
nions demands a consecrated mind; at all events,
the moving impulse to such rejection is faith—faith in
reason ; faith in the mind’s ability to attain truth ;
faith in the power of thought—in the priceless worth
of knowledge. The great sceptic must be a great
believer. None have so magnificently affirmed as
those who have audaciously denied ; none so devoutly
trusted as they who have sturdily protested.”
�Reason and the Bible.
4i
It is not unusual for Bible advocates to declare
that they cannot reason at all with those who deny
the infallibility and supreme authority of the Bible,
because they cannot reason, say they, about that to
which reason is bound to submit, and on which all
reasoning must be based. To dispute or to deny the
supremacy of the Bible is, according to these men,
the same thing as to dispute or to deny the supremacy
of God. They apparently do not see the obvious
fact, that such a declaration is equivalent to a claim
of infallibility for themselves or for their own opinion
that the Bible is infallible : or else they would never
presume to say, that to contend against their opinion
about a book is to contend against God. Can they
not understand that, even though their assertion
about the Bible were clearly and unmistakably set
forth in the Bible itself, which, however, it assuredly
is fiot, it would still be inexcusably absurd to main
tain, that doubt or distrust of God is shown by those
who express their doubt or distrust of any of the
matter recorded in the Bible by the hands of men 1
It seems almost incredible that any intelligent mind
should fail to perceive the obvious, wide, and essential
distinction between these two kinds of doubt or
distrust; but yet it is too well known to need proof,
that many of our teachers think, or at least say, that
these two different things are the same, and both
alike criminal. Who has not heard or read thenstupid declarations, that to trace and exhibit the
various marks of human ignorance, error, and im
perfection, which abound in the Bible as in other
ancient books, is God-dishonouring blasphemy, which
He will surely punish ! No less weak and absurd
would it be for any free-thinking man to be cowed
into submission, or even into deference, by such un
reasonable and presumptuous assertions as these,
than it would be for an educated European to be
similarly influenced by the candid and common
�42
Reason and the Bible.
assertion of an orthodox Chinese, expressing his en
tire confidence in the certainty and truth of his
traditional belief, that the people, customs, and
opinions of the “ Celestial Empire ” are incomparably
superior to all others, and that all men of the Euro
pean persuasion are “ outside barbarians and devils.”
What, then, it is asked, is the use of the Bible 1
Why should it not be utterly abolished 1 If it is not
infallible, it is not to be trusted ; and if it is not to
be trusted, it can hardly fail to mislead ; therefore,
it ought to be destroyed. Freethinkers are often
told that, if they would be consistent, they should
argue thus, and should set the example by throwing
their own Bibles in the fire. I myself have been
thus addressed by “ orthodox ” clergymen, and have
been misrepresented by others as if I argued thus.
It might suffice to reply that the same argument,
if sound, would condemn all the treasures of litera
ture to the flames. The Bible is not infallible;
therefore, it ought to be destroyed. No other book
is infallible; therefore, all other books ought to be
burnt. From Homer to Tennyson, from Herodotus to
Froude, from Plato to Mill, from Aristotle to Hux
ley, from Zoroaster to Dr Cumming,—poets, histo
rians, philosophers, men of science, and divines have
all been fallible, and often in error, whatever pre
tensions to the contrary may have been set up by
themselves or by their admirers ; therefore, destroy
the works of them all, so that none may henceforth
be misled thereby ! Obliterate all the records of the
past, so that we and our children may .be free from
the dangerous influence of past delusions and mis
takes; because in none of these records can be found
perfection or infallibility.
The argument thus refutes itself, and the refutation
applies especially to the Bible. Books, old or new,
are valuable and useful just in proportion as they
�Reason and the Bible.
43
enable the student to profit by the varied experience,
culture, and progress, and even by the errors and
failures of other men. Modern thought and educa
tion, from the village school to the highest walks of
learning, are the still progressive fruits of accumu
lated ages •, and books have, ever since their first
employment, been the safest and most effectual vehicle
for the transmission and propagation thereof from one
age to another.
But let authority set the seal of assumed infallibi
lity upon any one book, and its usefulness will be at
once greatly impaired, if not entirely destroyed. In
stead of a help, it will soon become a hindrance, and
so it is now with the Bible. By the dogmatic ascrip
tion of infallibility and supreme authority, equally
and indiscriminately, to the whole of its contents, it
has come to be regarded through a mystic veil or
cloud of superstition. The intrinsic, direct, and selfevident inspiration of some portions has been de
graded and obscured, by placing these on the same
level with those of an entirely different and even
opposite character; the inspiration of the latter being
assumed and asserted to be no less an authoritative
fact, though neither self-evident, intrinsic, nor direct,
as judged by the free-thinking mind. The undeniable
majesty, truth, and beauty of very many passages are,
by this arbitrary interposition of traditional dogma,
confounded by reduction to equality with the weak
ness, meanness, or repulsiveness of others, which, but
for such interposition, reason would now universally
judge to be evil or incredible. The intellect and
moral conscience of men are stunted, distorted, and
hindered in their growth, by external authority train
ing and constraining one faculty of the mind to usurp
the province of another—by subjecting reason to the
religious sentiment—or, in other words, by cultivating
superstition.
The great value, interest, and use of the Bible, far
�44
Reason and the Bible.
from "being negatived or even impaired, are, in fact,
only discovered or vastly enlarged, when it is ap
proached as a venerable record of human thought,
experience, trial, and progress—the divinely appointed
education of mankind. The study of past errors,
faults, and failures is not less useful nor less instruc
tive than that of past wisdom, worth, and success.
Both alike are “ profitable for doctrine, for reproof,
for correction, and for instruction in righteousness
__ « for WHATSOEVER THINGS WERE WRITTEN AFORE
TIME were written for our learning, that we through
patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have
hope” of better times to come for us and for
humanity.
TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Intellectual liberty: the fundamental principle of Christianity and Protestantism
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Ramsgate
Collation: 44 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Turnbull and Spears, Edinburgh. Date of publication from KVK.
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
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G5516
Subject
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Christianity
Protestantism
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Intellectual liberty: the fundamental principle of Christianity and Protestantism), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Bible-Evidences
Christianity
Conway Tracts
Faith and Reason
Protestantism
Reason
-
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a6c4f2cbf072598defce31ecd754171d
PDF Text
Text
ST. PAUL’S ROAD CHAPEL,
ST. PAUL’S ROAD, CAMDEN TOWN.
The Ladies of the St. Paul’s Road-Chapel, Camden Town,
having formed themselves into a Committee, earnestly appeal
to all friends for aid in the promulgation of those great
principles so successfully advocated by their highly gifted
teacher, Mr. M. D. Conway : the aim of whokS teaching
is, the unrestricted freedom ’ of' thought and expression
in all religious matters, the duty of exercising the greatest
of God’s gifts—beason, and the building up in those who
come under his influence a pure,’ generous, intelligent, and
useful life.
The present Chapel is insufficient for accommodating an
increasing congregation, and owing to its proximity to the
Midland Railway, the services cannot be conducted there
with tranquillity and comfort.
The Ladies, therefore, seek to
raise a fund for the purpose of obtaining a larger and more
convenient building; and any contributions towards this
object may be forwarded to Mrs. Squibb, Lady President,
or to any member of the Committee of Ladies.
�COMMITTEE OF LADIES:
Mrs. SQUIRE, Lady President, 14, Camden Square.
Miss G. CROCKFORD, Hon. Sec., 190, Camden Road.
Mrs. AKROYD, 2, St. Alban’s Villas, Highgate.
Mrs. BARTLETT, Duke’s. Road, Euston Road.
Mrs. BROWNE, 22, Camden Square.
Mrs. DAVIDSON, 12, Arthur Road, Holloway.
Mrs. EDWARDS, Heywood House, Camden Road.
Mrs. GILCHRIST, 50, Marquess Road.
Mrs. HARVEY, 36, Camden Square.
Mrs. W. HICKSON, 36Q, Camden Road.
Mrs. A. MOIR, 7, Merton Road, Hampstead.
Mrs. MORTON, Burnard House, Tufnell Park.
Mrs. PRESTON, 26, Fellows Road, South Hampstead.
Mrs. TAYLER, 5, Stanley Gardens, Belsize Park.
Mrs. WARREN, 3, Stock Orchard Villas.
���
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
St. Paul's Road Chapel, St. Paul's Road, Camden Town [request for donations]
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
St. Paul's Road Chapel Committee of Ladies
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 3 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[n.d.]
Identifier
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G5706
Subject
The topic of the resource
Church
Rights
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (St. Paul's Road Chapel, St. Paul's Road, Camden Town [request for donations]), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Freedom of religion-Great Britain
Freethought
Moncure Conway
Reason
Religion