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Text
1st QUARTER, 1876.
TWO-FENCE,
A SERMON
DELIVERED AT THE PENNSYLVANIA YEARLY MEETING OF
PROGRESSIVE FRIENDS IN THE YEAR 1858.
3
By THEODORE PARKER.
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THE READER.
Of four sermons delivered by Theodore Parker before the Pennsylvania
Progressive Friends in the year 1858, this is the first. The remaining three,
treat of the “Ecclesiastical Conception of God,'’ the “ Philosophical Idea of
God,” and the “Souls Normal Delight in the Infinite God.” These will be
reprinted during the year. It will be seen therefore, that one leading idea is
common to the four discourses. The object in reproducing them is to serve the
cause of religious truth.
JAMES MACDONALD, Elmwood Street.
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To guaranteed Subscribers of One Shilling per quarter and upwards,
these Sermons will be supplied at the rate of l\d. each, single
copies 2d., post free 2^d.
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B. WILLIAMS, “TIMES” STEAM AND HYDRAULIC PRINTING WORKS,
129, HIGH STREET.
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SUNDERLAND.
The following course of Lectures will be delivered in the
above place of worship, on the undernamed Sunday
Evenings ;—1876,
January 2nd.—Bev. JAMES MACDONALD.—“Man’s Duties
Pertaining to Beligion.”
January 9th.—Rev. JAMES MACDONALD. — “ Modern
Literature in Relation to the Bible.”
January 16th.—GEORGE LUCAS, Esq.—“ The Everlasting
Gospel.”
JanuarY 23rd.—Rev. JAMES MACDONALD. — “ The
Kingdom of Heaven and its Conditions of Entrance.”
January 30th.—Rev. JAMES MACDONALD. — “The
Utility of Biblical Criticism.”
February 6th.—Rev. JAMES MACDONALD.—“The Logic
of Christian Orthodoxy.”
February 13th.—Rev. H. AV. PERRIS (of Warrington).—
“ Modern Life Theories, and their bearing on Religious
Philosophy.”
February 20th.—Rev. JAS. MACDONALD.—“The Tempta
tion of Jesus in the Wilderness.”
February 27th.—Mr. JAMES WATSON.—“ Christ, the Son
of Man.”
March 5th.—Rev. JAMES MACDONALD.—“ ReligiouS Life
and Individual Indifference.”
March 12th.—Rev. JAMES MACDONALD.—“ Prophets—
Ancient and Modern.”
March 19th.—Rev. JAMES MACDONALD.—“ Immortality
and Religion.”
March 26th.—Rev. JAMES MACDONALD.—“The Christ
of the Gospel, not the Christ of so-called Christian
Orthodoxy.”
ALL SEATS FREE.
The offertory at the close of each service.
MORNING SERVICE at a Quarter to Eleven.
EVENING SERVICE at Half-past Six.
Strangers are requested to enter and take any seat that
may be vacant.
�THE
PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPTION
OF GOD IN THE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE.
A SERMON
BY
THEODORE
PARKER.
In the human race nothing is ever still; the stream of
humanity rolls continually forward, change following change ;
nation succeeds to nation, theology to theology, thought
to thought. Taken as a whole, this change is a Progress, an
ascent from the lower and ruder to the higher and more
comprehensive. Individuals die, special families pass off,
nations go under; and a whole race, like the American Indians,
may perish, and their very blood be dried up from the ground;
yet still mankind survives, and all the material or spiritual
good achieved by any race, nation, family, individual, reverts
at last to mankind, who not only has eminent domain over
the earth, but is likewise heir at history of Moses, of the
Heraclides, of Egypt, and of the American Indians. So of
much that slips out from the decaying hand of the individual
or the race, nothing is ever lost to humanity ; much is out
grown, nought wasted. The milk-teeth of the baby are as
necessary as the meat-teeth, the biters and the grinders of the
adult man. Little Ikie Newton had a top and hoop ; spin
ning and trundling were as needful to the boy as mathematical
rules of calculation to the great and world-renowned Sir Isaac.
The Progress of Mankind is continuous and onward, as much
subject to a natural law of development as our growth from
babyhood to adult life.
You see this change and progress in all departments of
human activity, in Religion and Theology, as distinct as in
spinning and weaving. Theological ideas are instruments for
making character, as carpenters’ tools for making houses,
Take the long sweep of four thousand years that history
runs over, and the improvement in theological ideas is as
remarkable as the change in carpenters’ tools. You see this
progress especially in the Conception of God, and in the
Worship that is paid to him conformable to that conception.
�2
THE PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPTION. I
* Sere the change is continuous, and the progress is full of
encouragement for the future.
What unlikeness in the conceptions of God which Christian
men have to day ! The notion of God set forth in certain
churches differs from yours and mine more than Moloch differs
from Jehovah. Certainly the God which some ministers
scare their congregations withal, is to me only a Devil—a
Devil who has no existence, and never appears out of the
theological graveyard, where this ghost of buried superstitions
11 walksfrom time to time to frighten men into the momentary
panic of a revival.
The Bible has become the Sacred-Book of all Christendom.
It is not only valued for its worth, which is certainly very great,
' but still more for its fancied authority—because it is thought to
be a Revelation made directly and miraculously by God, to
certain men whom he inspired with the doctrine it contains.
Now, God must know himself, and that perfectly, and if he
-make a revelation thereof, he must portray himself exactly as
he is. So it is maintained in all Christendom, that to learn
the character of God, you are not to go to the World of
■ Matter, or to the World of Man, but only to Revelation, which
mirrors back to you his exact image and likeness; giving you
God, the whole of God, and nothing but God. Accordingly, it
is said that the conception of God is the same in all parts of
the Bible, howsoever old or new, without variableness or
shadow of turning.
But when you come to look at the Bible itself, and study it
part by part, and then put the results of your study into a
whole, you find a remarkable difference in regard to the
chararter of God himself, that depends on the general civili
zation and enlightenment of the times and the writers : the
further you go back,, the ruder all things become. Take the
whole of Greek literature, from Homer, eleven hundred years
before Christ, to Anna Commena, eleven hundred years after
him, and there is a great change in the poetic representa
tions of God. The same thing happens in the books of the
Bible. They extend over twelve or thirteen hundred years;
it may be, perhaps, fourteen hundred. Perhaps Genesis is the
oldest book, and the Fourth Gospel the newest. What a
difference between the God in Genesis and that in the Fourth
Gospel! Can any thoughtful man conceive that these two
conflicting and'various notions of God could ever have come
from the same source ? Let any of you read through the
book of Genesis and then the Fourth Gospel, and you will be
astonished at the diversity, nay, the hostility even, between
the God in the old book and the new one. Then, and at some
subsequent time, look at the various books between the two,
�OF GOD IN THE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE.
3
.and you see what different notions of the Divine Being there
are in this “ infallible miraculous revelation of God.”
Let us look at this great matter in some details, and to see
just what the facts are, and make the whole matter as clear as
noonday light, divide the Bible into its three great parts, the
Old Testament, the Apocrypha, and the New Testament. In
the Old Testament, Genesis may perhaps have been written in
its present form, about a thousand years before Christ, though
some scholars put it a few hundreds of years nearer our own
time; at any rate it seems to have been compiled from
.ancient documents, some of them perhaps existing thirteen
or fourteen hundred years before the birth of Christ, though
others are clearly later. The book of Daniel, a spurious
work, was evidently written between 170 and 160 years
before Christ. In the Apocrypha, the book of Eccelsiasticus is
perhaps the oldest work, and seems to have been written
about 180 years before the birth of Jesus. The latest book is
The Wisdom of Solomon, of uncertain date. In the New
Testament, Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians is the oldest, and
was perhaps written 58 or 60 years after Christ; the Fourth
Gospel, I think, is the last, and was written, perhaps, 120 or
140 years after Christ. There are seventy books in the
canonical and apocryphal Bible. With the exception of four
teen prophets, Ezra, Nehemiah, David, and Asaph, the two
authors of some thirty or forty, perhaps fifty of the Psalms,
we know the name of ho writer of the nine-and-thirty books of
the Old Testament. Of the Apocrypha we know the name of
the writer of the book of Ecclesiasticus, of him no more; of
others not even that. In the New Testament it seems clear
that Paul wrote the Epistle to the Galatians, that to the
Romans, and the two to the Corinthians ; but I doubt if we
are certain who wrote any other of its twenty-seven books !
Here, then, out -of seventy biblical books, containing the
writings of more than one hundred authors, we know the
names of fourteen Hebrew prophets, two Psalmists, two other
writers in the Old Testament, one in the Apocrypha, one in
the New Testament—twenty men. This fact that we know
so little of the authorship of the biblical books is fatal to their
authority as a standard of faith, but it does not in the smallest
degree affect their value as religious documents, or as signs of
the times when they were written. I don’t care who made
the vane on the steeple, if it tell which way the wind blows
—That is all I want : I don’t know who reared these handsome
flowers ; it matters not; their beauty and fragrance tell their
own story. We know the time the documents came from,
and they are monuments of the various ages, though we know
not who made or put them together.
Now, look at the conception of God in the first and last of
�4
THE PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPTION
these three divisions. Of course in the brevity of a morning
s
*
sermon I can only select the most remarkable and charac
teristic things. I shall begin with the oldest part of the Old
Testament, and end with the latest part of the New.
1. At first sight it seems the Hebrews believed in many
gods, and no effort of the wisestand best men could keep the
nation from falling back to idolatry for centuries. It was not
until after the Babylonian Captivity which began in 586 B.C.,
and ended about eighty years later that the Israelites re
nounced their idolatry; then contact with monothestic and
civilised people corrected this vice.
At first, in the Bible, Jehovah appears as one God amongst
others, and seems to have his council of gods about him.
Next he is the special god of the descendants of Jacob, and
called the God of Israel. By and by he is represented as
stronger than any of the other gods; he can beat them in
battle, though sometimes he gets worsted. Finally, he is the
only God, and has regard for all nations, though he still takes
special care of the Hebrews, who are his chosen people. The
book of Job, I think, is the only one in the Old Testament
which makes it appear that God cares for all men alike, and
this seems to be the only book in the Old Testament which
was not written by a Jew. I think it is one of the latest books
in that collection.
Now see what character is ascribed to God in the earliest
documents of the Bible. The first five books of Moses are the
oldest; they contain the most rude and unspiritual ideas of
God. He is represented as a very limited and imperfect being.
He makes the world in six days, part by part, one thing at a
time, as a mechanic does his work. He makes man out of
dust, in “ his own image and likeness,” breathes into him, and
he becomes a living soul. God looks on the world when he
has finished it, and is pleased with his work, “ and behold it
was very good.” But he is tired with his week’s work, rests
on the seventh day, and “ was refreshed,” The next week he
looks at his work, to see how it goes on, and he finds that he
must mend it a little. All animals rejoice in their mates, but
thoughtful Adam wanders lone ; he must have his Eve. So
God puts him into a deep sleep, takes one of his ribs, makes
a woman of it, and the next morning there is a help meet for
him. But the new man and woman behave rather badly. God
comes down and walks in the garden in the cool of the day,
calls Adam and Eve, inquires into their behaviour, chides
them for their misconduct, and. in consequence of their
wrong deed he is very angry with all things, and curses the serpent, curses Eve, curses Adam, and even the ground. The
man and woman have tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, and.
he turns them out of the garden of Eden lest they should also
�OF GOD IN THE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE.
5
eat of the Tree of Life, and thereby live for ever. By and by
God repents that he made man, and “ it grieved him at his
heart,” they behave so badly; so in his wrath he sweeps off all
mankind, except eight persons ; but after the flood is over
Noah offers a burnt offering, and God smells the sweet savour
and is pacified, and says he will not again curse the ground,
and he will never destroy the human race a second time.
To know what happens he must go from place to place ; thus
he understands that the people are building a tower, and
comes near enough to look at it, and, not liking the undertak
ing, he says, “ Go to now, let us go down and confound their
language, that they may not understand one another’s speech ”
he scatters them abroad, and they cannot build the tower,
which was to reach up to heaven.
Afterwards he hears bad
news from Sodom and Gomorrah, that “ their sin is grievous.”
He does not quite credit the tidings, and says, £> 1 will go
down now, and see whether they have done altogether accord
ing to the cry of it, which is come unto me, and if not I will
know.” He talks with Abraham, who pleads for sparing the
wicked city, beats Abraham in argument, and “ as soon as he
had left communing with Abraham,” ££ the Lord wenthis way.” .
God appears to man visibly—to Adam, Noah, Abraham,
Jacob, and to Moses. ■ He talks with all those persons in the
most familiar- way, in the Hebrew tongue : “ the Lord talked
r”
to Moses, face to face, as a man speaketh with his brother.”
He makes a bargain -with Abraham, then with Jacob and his
children. It is solemnly ratified, for good and sufficient con
consideration on both sides. It is for value received : God con
veys a great quantity of land to Abraham and his posterity,
and guarantees the title; they are to circumcise all their male
children eight days after birth; that is the jocular tenure by
which they hold Palestine. God swears that he will keep his
covenant, and though sometimes sorely tempted to break it, he
yet adheres to the oath:
“ And though he promise to his loss,
He makes the promise good.”
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He dines with Abraham, coming in unexpected one day.
Abraham kills a calf, “ tender and good.” Sarah makes cakes
of fine meal, extemporaneously baked on the hearth. Butter
and milk are set forth, and God, with two attendants, makes
his dinner.
. While Moses was travelling from Midian to Egypt, the Lord
met him at a tavern, and “ sought to kill him,” but Moses’s
wife circumcised her son before God’s eyes—so God let the
“ bloody husband ” go.
He is partial, hates the heathen, takes good care of the
Jews, not because they deserve it, but because he will not
break his covenant. He is jealous ; he writes it with his own
�6
TTiE-ItIocSeSsTvE dSvELOPMTNT
OF THE CONCEPTION
finger in the ten commandments : “ I, the Lord thy God' ani
a jealous God and again, “ Jehovah, his name is jealous.” He
is vain also, and longs for the admiration of the heathen, and.
is dissuaded by Moses from destroying the Israelites when,
they had provoked him, lest the Egyptians should hear of it,,
and his fame should suffer.
Look at this account of one of God’s transactions in Numb,
xiv. : “And the Lord says unto Moses, how long will,
this people provoke me ? And how long will it be ere they
believe me, for all the signs which I have showed amongthem ? I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit
them, and will make of thee a greater nation, and mightier
than they.” And Moses replied : “ Then the Egyptians shall
hear of it, and they will tell it to the inhabitants of the land ;
they will say, “ Because the Lord was not able to bring the
people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore hehath slain them in the wilderness
“ Pardon, I beseech thee,
the iniquity of this people 1” So, lest the Gentiles should
think him weak, Jehovah lets the Hebrews off for a time, and
instead of destroying millions of men at once, he spread their
ruin over several years. “ In this wilderness they shall be
consumed, and there they shall die.”
He is capricious, revengeful, exceedingly ill-tempered ; hehas fierce wrath and cruelty; he is angry even with the
Hebrews, and one day says to Moses, “ Take all the heads
of the people (that is the leading men, the citizens of eminentgravity), and hang them up before the Lord against the sun.”
Once God is angry with the people who murmur against
Moses, and says to him, “ Get you up from among this con
gregation, that I may consume them as in a moment!” Moses.
is more merciful than his God; he must appease this Deity
whois “a consuming fire.” So he tells Aaron, “ Take a
censer, and put fire therein from off the altar, and put on
incense, and go quickly unto the congregation, and make an
atonement for them; for there is wrath gone out from the
Lord; the plague is begun !” Aaron does so. and the plagueis stayed, though not till the fury of the Lord had killed, four
teen thousand and seven hundred men ! (Numb. xvi. 41—50.)
God hates some of the nations with relentless wrath; Abra
ham interferes, pleading for Sodom and Gomorrah, Afoses for
the Israelites, but nobody cares for the rest of the people or
burns incense for them, so God says, “ I will utterly put out
the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.” All the
Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, and the Jebusites are to be rooted out
—seven nations, each of which was more numerous than the
Hebrews : “Thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them;
thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto
�<
OF GOD IN THE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE.
'
them,” saith the Lord. The Canaanites and the Moabites
were kindred of the Hebrews, of the same ethnologic tribe,
but they could not enter into the congregation of the Lord
unto the tenth generation !
This God—powerful, terrible, partial, jealous, often illtempered, wrathful, cruel, bloody—is to be worshipped with
sacrifice, the blood of bulls and goats, with costly spectacles
by the priesthood, who sacrifice to him in a special place, at
particular times ; and God gives the most minute directions
‘how all this shall be done, but he is not to be served in any
other way, at any other place.
Such seems to have been the conception of God with the
leading minds of the Hebrews at the beginning of their
national existence, or at the later day when the early books
were deceitfully compiled. Now see how much they outgrew
it a later day.
The highest Old Testament idea of God you find in the
Proverbs and the later Psalms, which were written only four or
- five hundred years after the promulgation of these extraordi
nary documents which I have just quoted. In these God is
represented as all-wise, and always present everywhere. You
all remember that exquisite Psalm, the cxxxixth, “ Whither
shall I go from thy spirit 1 or whither shall I flee from thy
presence ?” There God is unchangeable; his eyes are in every
•place, beholding the evil and the good; no thought can be
withheld from him. What grand and beautiful conceptions of
God are there in Psalms ciii., civ., cvii. ! So in almost the
whole of the admirable collection, which is the prayer book
of Christendom to-day, and will be till some man with greater
poetic genius, united with the tenderest piety, such as poets
seldom feel, shall come, and, in the language of earth, sing the
songs of the Infinite God.
There is a great change also in the manner of worship.
At first it was a mere external act—offering sacrifice, a bull,
a goat, a lamb ; nay, God commands Abraham to sacrifice
Isaac, and the father is about to comply, but the Deity changes
his own mind, and prevents the killing of the boy. Listen
to this from Psalm li., and see what a change there is : “Have
mercy upon me, 0 God, according to thy loving-kindness,
according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out
my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin. Create in me a clean heart, O
God ; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away
from thy presence ; and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.
For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou
delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a
broken spirit; a broken and a contrite spirit, 0 God, thou
wilt not despise.”
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�8
THE PROGRESSIVE DEVELOEMENT OF THE CONCEPTION
Look at this from Hosea : “ I desire mercy and not sacri
fice ; and the knowledge of God more than burnt-offering.”
Or this of Micah : “ What doth the Lord require of thee but
to do justly and love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God T
What a progress for the early times! But even to the last
book of the Old Testament there is the same wrath of God.
The world has seen no such cursing as that of the Jews in the
name of Jehovah. Take the cixth Psalm, and I will defy the
hardest of you to wish worse and crueller things than the
author imprecates against his enemies :—“ Set thou a wicked
man over him ; and let Satan stand at his right hand. When
he shall be judged, let him be condemned : and let his prayer
become sin. Let his days be few; and let another take his
place. Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg : let them
seek their bread also out of their desolate places. Let the
extortioner catch all that he hath ; and let the stranger spoil
his labour. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him ;
neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children. Let
his posterity be cut off, ; and in the generation following let
their name be blotted out. Let the iniquity of his fathers be
remembered with the Lord ; and let not the sin of his mother
be blotted out. Let them be before the Lord continually, that
he may cut off the memory of them from the earth....................
As he clothed himself with cursing like as with a garment, so
let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his
bones.”—vs. 6-15, 18. I quote these because they are seldom
read, while the devout and holy portions of the Psalms are
familiar to all men. In Bibles which have laid on the pulpit
for fifty years, and those read in private from generation to
generation, the best parts are worn out with continuous use,
while the evil passages are still fresh and new.
I think no Old Testament Jew ever got beyond this : “ Was
not Esau Jacob’s brother ? saith the Lord : yet I loved Jacob
and hated Esau,” (Mai. i. 2, 3.) A Psalmist speaks of God as
pursuing his enemies with wrath “ like a mighty man that
shouteth by reason of wine.” The Lord God of Israel says to
his people, “ I myself will fight against you with an out
stretched hand, and a strong arm, even in anger, and in fury,
and in great wrath.” “I have set my face against this city for
evil and not for good.” If they do not repent, his “ fury will
go forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it;” and “ this
house shall become a desolation.”
Here is a terrible picture of the Hebrew God, sketched by
the hand of a great master some time after the Babylonian
Captivity. There had been a great battle between the Edo
mites and the Hebrews 1 God comes back as a conqueror, the
�OF GOD IN THE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE. '
.9' '
people see him, and the following dialogue takes place :—
People: —Who is this that cometh from Edom ?
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In scarlet garments from Bozrah ?
This that is glorious in his apparel,
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Proud in the greatness of his strength ?
Jehovah :—I that proclaim deliverance,
And am mighty to save.
People : —Wherefore is thine apparel red,
And thy garments like those of one that treadeth the wine vat ?
Jehovah'.—I have trodden the wine-vat alone,
And of the nations there was none with me.
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And I trod them in mine anger,
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And I trampled them in my fury,
So that their life-blood was sprinkled upon my garments,
And I have stained all my apparel.
For the day of vengeance was in my heart—
, ’'
I trod down the nations in my anger;
I crushed them in my fury,
And spilled their blood upon the ground.
*
“ Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits,” says the
proverb; it is not less true of nations than of men. The
religious but idolatrous Jews met a monotheistic people in
their captivity in Babylon, and came back with better ideas.
Yet much of the old theological evil lingered still. Ezra,,
• Nehemiah, and the author of the book of Daniel, devout
men, intensely bigoted, knew only “ the great and dreadful
God;” that is the name the last of them calls Jehovah. But
from the first five books of the Old Testament to the Proverbs
and later Psalms there is great progress.
II. You come to the N ew Testament, and here you do not
find much literary excellence in the writers. Wild flowers of
exquisite beauty spring up around the feet of Jesus ; only in
the Revelation do you find anything which indicates a large
talent for literature, neither the nature which is born in the
man of genius, nor the art which comes from exquisite cul
ture. The Fourth Gospel was writ, apparently, by some
Alexandrian Greek, a man of nice philosophic culture and
fancy. Paul had great power of deductive logic. A grand
poetic imagination appears in that remarkable book, the
Apocalypse. But, taken as a whole, in respect to literary
-art, the New Testament is greatly inferior to the best parts
- of the Apocrypha and Old Testament. It compares with Job,
the Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ecclesiasticus, and the Wisdom
of Solomon, as the works of the early Quakers compare
with Hooker, Taylor, Herbert, Cudworth, and Milton; and
yet, spite of the lack of culture, literary art, and poetic ■
.genius in the New Testament, as in Fox, Nayler, Penn, and
other early Quakers, there is a spirit not to be found in the
well-born and learned writers who went before.
*Dr. Noyes’s Translation.
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�TO
THE PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPTION
I. In the New Testament, look first at the conception which
Jesus has of God. I shall take it only from the first three
Gospels. In that, according to Matthew, I think we have his
early notion of God. He calls him Father. The same word is
now and then applied to God in the Old Testament, but there I
think it means only Father to the Jews, not to other nations.
But it seems that some of the Greeks and Jews in Jesus’s own
time applied it to him, as if he were the father of all men. As
Jesus makes the Lord’s Prayer out of the litanies which were
current in his time, so he uses the common name for the
Deity in the common sense. With him God alone is good,
and our Father which is in heaven is perfect. “ He maketh
+ his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on
the just and on the unjust.” He pities and forgives the penitent,
as in that remarkable story of the Prodigal Son. With what
tender love does Jesus say, “There is joy in heaven over one sin
ner that repenteth more than over ninety and nine just persons
who need no repentance.” Such noble thoughts come out in
that time as “ shines a good deed in a naughty world.” But
what becomes of the impenitent wicked ? God has no love
for them; they shall go into everlasting punishment. So,
alongside of God there is a Devil, and to the left hand of
heaven there is a dreadful, fiery, endless hell, whither a broad
way leads down, anJ the wide gates stand ever open, and many
there be who go in thereat.
At first Jesus limited his teachings to the Jews ; he would
not take the children’s bread and give it unto the dogs ; he
-declared that not a jot ox jbittle of the Mosaic ceremonial law
should ever fail; he told his disciples to keep all that the
Scribes and Pharisees commanded, because they sat in Moses
seat. But by-and-by he nobly breaks ■with Judaism, violates
the ritual law, puts his new wine jinto new bottles. With
admirable depth of intuitive sight he sums up religion in one
word, Love—Love to God with all the heart, and to one’s
neighbour as himself.
Fear of God seldom appears in
the words of Jesus. Fear is the religion of the Old Testa
ment. Mercy is better than sacrifice. Men go up to heaven
for righteousness and philanthropy, and no question is asked
about creed or form. Other men go down to hell for ungod
liness ; and no straining at a gnat would ever save him who
would swallow down a whole camel of iniquity. Human
literature cannot show a dearer example of tenderness to a
penitent wicked man than you see in the story of the Prodigal
son, which yet the first Evangelist rejected, and two others
left without mention.
All nationality disappears before Jesus. His model man
is a Samaritan. We hear that word commonly used and do
not understand that the Jews hated a Samaritan as the old
�OF GOD IN THE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE.
11
/^rew^England Federalists hated a Jacobin, as the British used
■ I to hate a Frenchman, or as a Southern slaveholder hates a
black Republican to-day. Depend upon it, it created as much
■ A'
sensation amongst men who heard it when Jesus told this story
of the Good Samaritan, as it would in Virginia to have some -!?'a
.
one represent a Negro as superior to all the “first families
of the State, on account of some great charity that he had
done.
■ ' -■?
I do not find that Jesus altered the common idea of God
L V
which he found. He was too intent on practical righteousness
|■■to attend to that. Besides, he was cut off when about thirty
years of age; had he lived longer, it may be that he would
have reformed the popular notion of God ; for there are some
things in the words that drop like honey from his lips which
Eg
to me indicate a religious feeling far beyond his thought.
HL?
2. In the writings of Paul I find more speculation about
God than with Jesus ; for Paul was mainly a theological man,
as Jesus was mainly a pious and philanthropic man. Jesus
could start a great religious movement; Paul could make a
Bfe., ;
theology out of his hints, and found a sect.- But the most
11 important characteristic of Paul’s idea of God is this : God’s
wrath was against all ungodliness in Jew or Gentile, and he
- ,
was as accessible to Gentile as to Jew. Nationality vanishes ;
* all men are one in Christ Jesus; God is God to all, to punish
. '
the wicked and to reward the righteous who have faith in
Christ ; the Jews are as wickedas the rest of mankind, and
are to be equally saved by faith in Christ, and by that alone. .
•; _
Paul’s Christ is not the Jesus of History, but a mythological
. being he conjured up from his own fancy. He says that the
invisible God is clearly made known to the visible material
I ' -5.
world, and conscience announces God’s law to the Gentiles as
effectually as revelation declares it to the Jews. That is a
great improvement on the Old Testament idea of God, as pre
sented even in the Psalms.
3. In the Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle attributed to <
' / <'
John—both incorrectly attributed to him—the idea of God
goes higher than elsewhere in the New Testament. God is
mainly love. He dwells iD the souls of men who love each
'other and love him, and is to be worshipped in spirit and in
truth, not only in Jerusalem, .phut anywhere and everywhere
’V '
Perfect love casteth out fear.
This God has an only-begotten Son, to whom he has given
the Spirit without measure, put all things under his hand >
■
.
he who believes on the Son shall have everlasting lite, but he
who does not believe on the Son shall not see life. Christ’s
.
commandment is that they love one another, and to those God
will give another Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, who shall
abide with believers for ever; nay, Christ will manifest him
self to them.
j.
�12
THE PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPTION^
But this God has created a Devil, who will send all un
believers into endless torment.
Thus ends the last book of the New Testament. What a
change from Genesis to the Fourth Gospel 1 What a
difference between the God who eats veal and fresh bread
with Abraham, and commands him to make a burnt-offering
of his own son, who conveys all Palestine on such a jocular
tenure, and the God whom no man hath seen at any time; who
is Spirit, and has to be worshipped in spirit and in truth ;
who is love, and who dwells with all loving and believing
souls I There are I know not how many hundred years be
tween the two—what a series of revolutions ! what vast pro
gress of mankind had filled up that brief period of time.
But the idea of God which you gather from the Bible is '
quite unsatisfactory to a thoughtful and deeply religious man
to-day. In the Old Testament there is no God who loves the
. Gentiles ; he made the world for the Jews ; all others are only
servants—means, not ends. This being so, the Hebrew
thought himself the only favourite of God ; his patriotism
became immense contempt for all other nations—was a part
of his religion. In the New Testament, the God whom even
Jesus sets before mankind has no love for the wicked ; there
is no Providence forthem ; at the last judgment he sends them
all to hell, bottomless, endless, without hope • their fire dieth
not, their worm is not quenched ; no Lazarus from Abraham’s
bosom will ever give Dives a single drop of water to cool his
tongue, tormented in that flame. Jesus tells of God, also of
the Devil ; of heaven with its eternal blessedness awaiting
every righteous man, and of the eternal torment not less open
and waiting for every one who dies impenitent. Paul narrows
still more this love of God towards men ; it includes only such
as have faith in Christ; no man is to be saved who does not
, believe in Paul’s idea of Christ, The author of the Apocalypse
constricts it still further yet; he would cast out Paul from
heaven ; Paul is called a “ liar,” “ of the Synagogue of
Satan,” and other similar names. The Fourth Gospel limits
salvation to such as believe the author’s theory of Christ, that
he was a God, and the only-begotten Son of God, an idea
which none of the three Evangelists, nor Paul, nor James, nor
Simon Peter, seems ever to have entertained. I think that
Jesus never held such a doctrine as what Paul and the writer
of the Fourth Gospel makes indispensable to salvation.
To the Jews every Gentile seemed an outcast from God’s
providence. To the early followers of Jesus all unbelievers
were also outcasts ; “ he that believeth and is baptised shall
be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned.” I find
no adequate reason for thinking Jesus ever spoke these words,
found only in the doubtful addition to the second canonical
�OF GOD IN THE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE.
It
yt,
I" ■
13
Gospel. Yet there seems evidence enough to show that Jesus
himself really taught that ghastly doctrine, that a great wickedness unrepented entailed eternal damnation on an immortal
soul. Paul says human love never fails ; he suffers long and is
kind, and yet both he and the man whom he half worshipped
teach that God has no love for the wicked man who dies in his
impenitence; endless misery is his only destination. Neither
in the Old Testament nor in the New do you find the God of
infinite perfection, infinite power, wisdom, justice, love ; it is
always a limited God, a Deity with imperfect wisdom,
justice, love; God with a Devil beside him, the created fiend
getting the victory over his Creator! The Bible doesnot
know that infinite God, who is immanent in the world of
Matter and Man, and also lives in these flowers, in yonder
stars, in every drop of blood in our veins; who works every
where by law, a constant mode of operation of natural power
in Matter and in Man.
It is never the dear God who is re
sponsible for the welfare of all and each, a Father so tender
that he loves the wickedest of men as no mortal mother can
love her only child. Does this surprise you ? When mankind
was a child, he thought as a child, and understood as a child ;
when he becomes a man he will put away childish things.
How full of encouragement is the fact of such a growth in
man’s conception of God, and his mode of serving him ! In
the beginning of Hebrew history, great power, great selfesteem, and great destructiveness are the chief qualities that
men ascribe to god. Abraham would serve him by sacrificing
Isaac; Joshua, a great Hebrew filibuster, by the butchery of
whole nations of men, sparing the cattle, which he might keep
as property, but not the women and children. This was counted
as service of God, and imputed to such marauders for righteous
ness. In the notion of God set forth in the Fourth Gospel and
the First Epistle ascribed to John, it is love which preponde
rates, and by love only are men to serve God. With Jesus
it is only goodness which admits men to the kingdom of
heaven, and there is no question asked as to nation, creed, or
form ; but this sweet benediction is pronounced : “ Inasmuch
as you did it unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it
unto me ;” “ Come ye blessed, inherit the kingdom prepared
for you from the foundation of the world !”
Shall you and I stop where the New Testament did ? We
cannot, if we would, and it is impious to try. What if Moses had
been content with the Egyptian chaos of a deity, “ where every
clove of garlic was.a god ;” what if Jesus had never broke with
the narrow bonds of Judaism ; what if Paul had been content
with “such as were Apostles before him/’ and had stuek at
new moons, circumcision, and other abominations which neither
he nor his fathers were able to bear; where would have been
L|
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. <
- ,>
�14
THE PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPTIolw,
OF GOD IN THE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE.
the Christian Church, and where the progress of mankind ?
No, we shall not stop I It would be contrary to the spirit of
Moses, and still more contrary to the spirit of Jesus to attempt
to arrest the theological and religious progress of mankind.
God in Genesis represents the conception of the babyhood of
humanity. Manhood demands a different conception. All
round us lies the world of Matter, this vast world above us
and about us and beneath ; it proclaims the God of Nature ;
flower speaking unto flower; star quiring unto star ; a God
who is resident therein, his law never broken. In us is a World
of Consciousness, and as that mirror is made clearer by civili
zation, I look down, and behold the Natural Idea of God,
infinite Cause and Providence, Father and Mother to all that
are. Into our reverent souls God will come as the morning
light into the bosom of the opening rose. Just in proportion
as we are faithful, we shall be inspired therewith, and shall
frame “ conceptions equal to the soul’s desires,” and then in
our practice keep those “ heights which the soul is competent
to win.”
���Tuesday, February 22nd.—Rev. JAMES MACDONALD.—
“ Unitarianism ; or the Gospel as Christ Taught it.’’
Monday, February 28th.—Rev. JAMES MACDONALD.—
“Unitarian Christianity in Relation to the Bible and
Science.”
Tuesday, March 7th.—GEO. LUCAS, Esq.—“ The Authority of
Scripture—What it is not—What it is.”
Tuesday, March 14th.—Rev. JAMES MACDONALD.—“The
Bible an Inspired, but not an Infallible Book.”
Tuesday, March 21st.—GEO. LUCAS, Esq.—“ Scripture Inter
pretation—The False Method—The True Method.”
Tuesday, March 28th. — Rev. JAMES MACDONALD —
“Religion—The Dogmatic System—The Rational Con
ception.”
Tuesday, April 4th.—GEO. LUCAS, Esq.—“Do we find the
Doctrine of the Trinity, or the Deity of Jesus taught in
the Book of Acts, if we do—where ? If not—why not”
An Open Conference will be held at the close of each of these
Lectures, to which inquirers after religious truth are invited.
The Chair will be taken each evening at 8 o’clock.
February, 14th, ANNUAL CONGREGATIONAL TEA
MEETING.
On Tuesday Evening, February 15th, the Rev. FT. W. Perris (of
Warrington) will Lecture, subject:—
£< JOHN STUART MILL—A Study of Character,”
A Beliglous & Sooial Improvement Glass
IS HELD
EVERY SUNDAY AFTERNOON, in the Chapel,
FROM HALF-PAST TWO TO HALF-PAST THREE.
THE
CLASS
IS
OPEN
TO
THE
PUBLIC.
WEEK EVENING CLASSES as usual on the Wednesday,
Thursday, and Friday.
�The following valuable Books illustrative of Christian Unitarianism
may be purchased from the book stall at the chapel door before
or after the Sunday services, or from the Rev. JAMES
MACDONALD, Elmwood Street:—
Published
at.
Offered,
at.
3/6
3/6
3/6
5/2/6
...
2/2/2/2/1/-
-/6
1/1/2/—
V-
....
-..
-,.
....
.,■ •
-,.
-/6
-/9
-/8
1/9
1/lOd.
Channing’s Complete Works ............................
Channing’s Perfect Life....................................
Bible and Popular Theology. Dr. V. Smith .,
Memoir of the Rev. Theophilus Lindsey, M.A.
Priestley’s History of the Corruptions of 1
Christianity .................................... J
Unitarian Hand-book. Rev. R. Spears...........
John Milton’s Last Thoughts on the Trinity
First Principles in Religion. Rev. J. P. Hopps
Parker’s Matters Pertaining to Religion
Spirit and Word of Christ. Dr. V. Smith ...
Childhood of the World. By E. Clodd, F.R.A.S.
The Church of the First Three Centuries. )
By Dr. Lamson ..................................... J
The Childhood of Religions. By E. Clodd, )
F.R.A.S...................................................... f
The following Lectures may also be obtained at the book stall:
Sympathy of Religions. By T. W. Higginson...............
A Study of Religion. By F. E. Abbot............................
Sin against God. By Professor Newman ...................
Birth and Growth of Myth. By E. Clodd, F.R.A S. ...
Dreams and Ghosts. By Dr. Zerffi.......................... ...
The Origin of the Devil. By Dr. Zerffi..........................
The Vedas and Zendavesta. By Dr. Zerffi.................
Erasmus—His influence on the Reformation. By Elley
Finch.............................................................................
Discipleship with Christ. By Rev. J. Macdonald.
...
Ideal Religion.
Do.
do.
...
British Workman. Part I.
Do.
do.
...
Do.
Part II.
Do.
do.
...
Comparative Religion. By Rev. J. Macdonald ..........
Is Jesus God? Rev. R. R. Suffield
...........................
Light for Bible Readers. Rev. J. P. Hopps...................
Popular Doctrines that obscure the views which the New
Testament gives of God. By Rev. W. Gaskell, M. A.
-/2
-/2
-/2
-/3
-/3
-/3
-/3
~/3
-/I
-/I
-/I
-/I
-/I
~/3
-/2
-/I
The Unitarian Herald (weekly) price Id., and the Christian
Freeman (monthly) price l|d., are also on sale at the stall.
�
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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The progressive development of the conception of God in the books of the Bible: a sermon delivered at the Pennsylvania yearly meeting of Progressive Friends in the year 1858
Creator
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Parker, Theodore
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Sunderland
Collation: [2],14, [2] p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the Scottish Unitarian Pulpit, No. III., 1st quarter, 1858. This is the first of four lectures delivered by Parker before the Pennsylvania Progressive Friends. A list of lectures at the Unitarian Chapel, Sunderland listed on preliminary and unnumbered last pages. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
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B. Williams, printers
Date
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1876
Identifier
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G5355
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The progressive development of the conception of God in the books of the Bible: a sermon delivered at the Pennsylvania yearly meeting of Progressive Friends in the year 1858), 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
Subject
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Bible
Sermons
Unitarianism
Bible
Conway Tracts
Sermons
-
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PDF Text
Text
Ji_ -
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"Finsbury Chapel, South Place,
t”.
February 17, 1864.
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.
**The Committee of South-Place Chapel beg respect-
fully to inform you that Mr. M. D. Conway, of Boston,
United States, has undertaken to conduct the Morning
Services for/ihe next six months continuously, and they
invite your Renewed cooperation with them in maintain-
A.
ing these Services.
South-Place Chapel having been ori
ginally constituted as a place where the freest Religious
Thought then* reached might have unrestrained utterance,
a majority of the members have, from time to time, suc
cessfully combated every attempt to reduce them to a
merb sect; and the Committee cannot doubt but that
their success hitherto is a guarantee for their future suc
cess, especially at the present moment, when the test of
unshrinking | criticism is applied to every dogma and
every doctrine, however venerable, and when only what
is True has |ny chance of permanent endurance*.
ours truly,
4
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1**% M. E? MARSDEN,
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Dublin Core
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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
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
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Title
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[Letter giving notice of M.D. Conway's agreement to conduct South Place Chapel Morning Services]
Creator
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Marsden, Mark Eagles
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: I folded leaf.
Notes: A notice of M.D. Conway's appointment signed M.E. Marsden, Treasurer, on behalf of the Committee of South Place Chapel dated February 17 1864. The blank side is a handwritten passage by Conway which is the beginning of his first sermon on his predecessor, W.J. Fox. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
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South Place Chapel
Date
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1864
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G5576
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work ([Letter giving notice of M.D. Conway's agreement to conduct South Place Chapel Morning Services]), 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
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
Sermons
South Place Chapel
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/e283d347e0dd90761b4791eb7c1393c5.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=mv0A-Al3wThu5kqMt5Bsv3ELr1bHbMTTbsx8H0EsrsO0v6fLBf75vzF6Nc0%7E1gg2kHudKvMNG6gfrk1H6YIaJ9%7EcXtK4bPeKcgLUICY3SAsm6rAI59ZV1kGrapsPc91byEll7WfNOBfmnF7THxBwfUD5iONZ39eHqbLs8gd6uyG82FVB-NuSDlly4zeBCfIh27dn7YlcID1rL6QD5tF9Zfem7PsKUq0nSkFl%7E7BjnKbsM2VjzscKbS0s3xDPfqGITV9y4OZvh6vVucaQ63TXB7QrXHpRzX-GVTyUDnHlO1ph1IR3wIyLpZztDj6E-Lrm7-Asa2NGUscXuMHaoZ2QjQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
f3ff13130f1edaf1e9367a24a2f767ae
PDF Text
Text
^Ci5>d.i scourses
ON OCCASION OF
THE DEDICATION
OF
HOPE-STREET NEW CHURCH,
■/’A
'<
",
■■
LIVERPOOL,
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, AND SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1849.
*
■
’■f ■
-
BY
REV. THOMAS MADGE.
REV. JAMES MARTINEAU.
REV. CHARLES WICKSTEED.
LONDON:
JOHN CHAPMAN, 142, STRAND.
MDCCCXLIX.
PRICE ONE SHILLING AND SIXPENCE.
��DISCOURSES
ON OCCASION OF
THE DEDICATION
HOPE-STREET NEW CHURCH,
LIVERPOOL,
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, AND SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1849.
BY
REV. THOMAS MADGE.
REV. JAMES MARTINEAU.
REV. CHARLES WICKSTEED.
LONDON:
JOHN CHAPMAN, 142, STRAND.
MDCCCXLIX.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY RICHARD KINDER,
GREEN ARBOUR COURT, OLD BAILEY.
�PREFACE.
The occasion of the following Discourses was naturally
one of great interest to the Society in whose service they
were prepared.
At the entrance of a new era in its con
gregational history, it seemed fit that some comprehensive
expression should be given to the aims which it proposes
to realise, and the views of life which distinguish its in
terpretation of Christianity.
The immediate request for
the publication of the Sermons justifies the hope that they
fairly represent the state of mind and purpose with which
the new Church is entered by its possessors; and that
they may stand as a record of the time and connexion to
which they belong.
This circumstance gives to them a
value not due to any intrinsic qualities of their own; and
induces the preachers to consign them to a permanent
form, less as original expressions of divine truth, than as
marks in the ever-changing course of human sentiment.
November 14, 1849.
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�THE DEDICATION OF THE CHRISTIAN TEMPLE TO THE
WORSHIP AND SERVICE OF GOD.
A SERMON,
PREACHED ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18th, 1849,
By THOMAS MADGE,
MINISTER OF ESSEX STREET CHAPEE.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY RICHARD KINDER,
GREEN ARBOUR COURT, OLD BAILEY.
�A SERMON.
Already, my brethren, as it was meet that it should be
so, has the voice which has so often given utterance to
the devout sentiments of your hearts, and to which, after
a period of silence, you must rejoice again to listen, —
*
already, I say, has that voice breathed forth the prayer of
thanksgiving and the prayer of supplication becoming the
occasion on which we are now assembled. Nevertheless, I
cannot enter upon that part which has been allotted to
me of this day’s service without once more beseeching
Him whose favour is the primal source of all illumination,
of all truth, and goodness, and happiness, to look merci
fully upon us at this time, and graciously accept our
humble endeavours to glorify his holy name. The words
which I have chosen as introductory to the observations
which I have now to address to you are taken from
Acts i. 13, 14.
“ And when they were come in, they went up into an upper
room, where abode both Peter, and James, and John, with
the other apostles. These all continued with one accord
in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the
mother of Jesus, and with his brethren?'
* The devotional services were introduced by the Rev. James Mar
tineau, the Minister of the Church, who, since his return from the con
tinent after an absence of more than a year, had now, for the first time,
presented himself to his congregation.
B 2
�Most interesting and affecting must this first meeting
of the apostles and their companions have been after the
trying scenes through which they had lately passed, and
the dispersion of that cloud of doubts, and fears, and
anxieties, which had so heavily hung over them. From
the deep depression into which their minds had sunk as
they fled from the garden of Gethsemane and the tragedy
of the Cross, they had now risen into a state of hopeful,
joyful expectation. For a brief season they had given up
all as lost. They disappeared from the public eye, and
it seemed, for a moment, as if a life of privacy and retire
ment were henceforth the life most fitting for them to
lead. But the sudden re-appearance among them of their
risen and now ascended Lord dispelled their growing
despondency, revived their expiring hopes, brought them
again upon the open stage of life, and imparted to them
fortitude and courage, patience and perseverance, untiring
and unconquerable, in testifying to the truth of what they
had seen and heard. It was when their hearts were thus
re-assured, and their confidence was more than restored,
that they assembled together in the upper room men
tioned in the text, to call to mind those words and deeds
of power and of love of which they had recently been the
admiring witnesses,—to bow down in grateful acknow
ledgements before God for the glorious issue of their Mas
*
ter’s labours and sufferings in his triumphant resurrection
from the dead,—and to invoke the divine blessing upon
their own future labours in the Christian cause. Here
they had met to commune with one another on the new
and important relation into which they had just entered,
and the obligations and duties to which it summoned
them. Hitherto, for the purposes of religious worship
and instruction, they had assembled with their Jewish
�5
brethren in the temple or the synagogue. Now they
were associated together, expressly and purposely, as
Christians, to dwell upon their Christian blessings and
privileges, and to present unto God their thanksgivings
and supplications in the name and as the disciples of
Christ. This meeting, therefore, may be regarded as the
type of all future churches, as indicating the purpose for
which they were designed, and the end to which they
should be subservient. It teaches us that, in entering
the Christian temple, we should enter there to sit at the
feet of Christ and learn of him; to meditate with the
men of Galilee on mortality and immortality; and to
unite our voices, in one blended song of praise and
thanksgiving, that so they may go up in accepted chorus
to the throne of God. Honourable alike is it, my friends,
to your feelings and principles that it was in your heart,
as it has been in your power, to raise up this beautiful
structure for yourselves and families to worship in—de
voting it, not to the interests and fashion of a world that
passeth away, but to the interests and welfare of that
higher life which shall not pass away.
In this place, then, we have nothing to do with the
wisdom of the schools, with the doctrines of human phi
losophy, or the speculations of human ingenuity. I deny
not that in other places, and at other times, they may
well and properly occupy some share of your thoughts and
attention, but here we have greater and more important
topics to dwell upon, higher questions to resolve, a nobler
science to learn, more grave and solemn lessons to attend
to.
The first and greatest truth with which we are here
concerned is the existence and government of God. That
he is, and that he is the rewarder of all who truly and
�diligently seek him, is a proposition of momentous import,
upon the reception or rejection of which awful and mo
mentous consequences are made to depend. But with
the nature of God we must necessarily be totally unac
quainted. It is a subject embracing heights which we
cannot ascend, and depths which we cannot fathom.
What the divine essence is,' or in what manner God
exists, is one of those things which are properly termed
mysterious. It is hidden from our sight. It belongs not
to us to inquire into it. It forms no part of our know
ledge or of our belief. It lies completely out of the sphere
of our understandings. But there is one truth concern
ing the divine existence which it is not difficult for us to
conceive of, nor unimportant for us to believe. It is a
truth for which reason and revelation both earnestly
plead ; and it is a truth which the history of the world
shows to be intimately associated with the virtue and the
happiness of man. That God is one; that he has no
equal, no rival, but reigns absolute and alone, power
above all powers, is the great pervading doctrine both of
the Old Testament and the New.
We, therefore, dedicate this Church to the worship of
one only God.
With the doctrine of the Divine Unity there is closely
connected in the gospel of Christ that of God’s paternal
character. It tells us that as we came from him we are
dear to him ; that as he is our Father, so we are his chil
dren. It assures us that he has not only given us all
things richly to enjoy, causing his sun to shine and his
rain to descend, that the earth might give her increase
and bring forth food for the service of man, but that even
darkness, and storms, and tempests, are his messengers
for good, that his afflictions are in kindness sent, and that
�7
he chastens us for our benefit. It speaks of God as our
almighty friend who ever careth for us, and who, in call
ing us into the ways of piety and virtue, calls us to the
nearer and more perfect enjoyment of himself. It assures
us that as in love God made us, so in love he sent Jesus
Christ to redeem us, that with him there is no respect of
persons, that what he demands of one he demands of
all, that he pities our infirmities and hath compassion
upon them that love him, and that all who sincerely
repent of their sins will be equally the objects of his for
giving mercy. These are glorious, delightful revelations
of Almighty God, well fitted to cheer and encourage the
good, to reclaim the bad from the error of their ways, and
to melt the hard and obdurate heart into penitence and
submission.
We dedicate this Church to the service of God the
Father, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In accordance with the view presented to us by our
Saviour of the character of God, is the representation
made by him of the duty of man. When asked what
was necessary to be done in order to, secure the gift of
eternal life, he answered plainly and distinctly, “ Keep
the commandments • love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and mind, and strength, and thy neighbour as
thyself; this do, and thou shalt live.” And when the
Scribe acquiesced in this declaration, and acknowledged
that there was no God but one, and that He alone was
entitled to the supreme homage and affection of his
creatures, Jesus turned to him and said, “ Thou art not
far from the kingdom of heaven.” In like manner, when
he gave to his followers a test of true discipleship, it was
not subscription to an unmeaning creed, the adoption
of some mysterious dogma, but it was the practical
�8
application of the precept, Love one another. “ By this,”
said he, “ shall all men know that ye are my disciples if
ye have love one to another.’* Wherever he saw piety
associated with charity, there he recognised the only
bond by which man is connected with heaven, “ the only
step or link for intercourse with God.” “ Blessed are the
meek, for they shall inherit the earth, Blessed are the
merciful, for they shall obtain mercy, Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Impressive and
beautiful, however, as these words of our Lord are, it is
in his life still more than in his words that we see and
feel the power and the beauty of the doctrines which he
taught. Thus explained and illustrated, they become
clothed with a touching sense of reality and truth. They
speak to the soul with a voice of power to which all its
purer feelings beat responsive. When I see how he went
about doing good, healing all manner of sickness and
ministering to the sorrows of the sorrowful, how he pitied
the erring and sought to reclaim the wandering, what
compassion he had on the multitude and what sympathy
he felt for their distresses,—when I see him mingling
with the despised and neglected of his race, and braving
the misrepresentations and calumnies of his enemies in
his efforts to raise up the fallen and to comfort the miser
able,—when I look at the treatment which he observed
towards the penitent, and perceive how gentle and merci
ful it was, and that to the contrite spirit he ever turned
an eye of encouragement and hope,—when I thus con
template the conduct of Jesus, and remember that he
appeared on earth as the image and representative of the
Most High, I feel that his life is, indeed, the best of
teachers and instructors, that it leaves upon the mind an
impression of what God is, and man should be, such as
�9
even his own gracious words would alone have failed to
impart. Our duty, then, as it respects our Maker, our
fellow-creatures, and ourselves, lies clearly and plainly
before us. The gospel relieves us of all difficulty and
dissipates all doubt. From its pages may be heard the
voice of Jesus, saying to us, Hither come, this is the way
of truth and righteousness. Whosoever folioweth me shall
not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.
We dedicate this Church to a righteous and holy God,
wTho sent his Son Jesus Christ to redeem us from all
iniquity, and to purify unto himself a peculiar people
zealous of good works.
From what has now been said you will perceive that
Christianity does not present us with cold and comfort
less abstractions, fitted to the entertainment of the spe
culative understanding, but that it brings before us those
relations which connect us immediately with God, and the
contemplation of which is adapted to touch and engage
our hearts, to warm and enliven our affections, to awaken
virtuous emotions, and to prompt to virtuous actions. It
does not send us to struggle with conceptions too mighty
for our grasp, but it places before us those sublime and
simple truths, which, while they are intelligible to the
humblest understanding, interest and delight the loftiest
mind. To refine and elevate our souls, to lift us above
the meannesses and littlenesses of earth, and to give us
longings for the glories and satisfactions of heaven, our
eyes have been opened to see the things which the wisest
of ancient days desired to see, but were not able. Jesus
Christ has torn away the veil by which the human mind
was once shrouded in darkness and doubt, and let in upon
our souls the discovery not only of that which will inform
and instruct our understandings, but of that also which
�10
will lighten the pressure of grief and relax the bondage
of despair.
Much as on this account it becomes us to prize the
gospel, we have yet still more reason to prize it for the
clear and explicit assurance which it contains, and for the
confirmation which that assurance receives in the resur
rection of Christ, that we shall live again, that this world
is not the last stage of our existence, but one to prepare
us for another and a better. Were I asked what, more
than anything else, is needed to make man what he
should be, to give him courage in the profession of what
is true, and firmness in the practice of what is right; to
make him, in all his ways and doings, pure-minded and
single-hearted, uncorruptible by temptation and uncon
querable by sin,—my answer would be, the doctrine of a
future everlasting life, such as is brought before us in
the revelation of Jesus Christ. No man who truly admits it
into his thoughts, but must feel its great, its inestimable
value. In all states and conditions of our being, whether
we are cast down by misfortune, or whether sorrowing
for the loss of friends, what more blessed source of peace
and consolation can be opened to us than the anticipa
tion of that rest which remaineth for the people of God.
And when we ourselves are stretched on the bed of death,
—when the last dark hour of mortality approaches, and
weeping friends gather around us to take their solemn
farewell,—what is the doctrine we value then ? What
is the hope to which we then cling,—what the prospect
upon which we then dwell ? At such a moment, do we
concern ourselves with questions about the divine essence,
or with distinctions in the divine nature ? Oh ! no. To
the one only question then in our minds, “ When man
dieth and giveth up the ghost, where is he ?” the answer
�11
of Jesus, “ I am the resurrection and the life; whosoever
believeth in me shall never die,” is all sufficient. This,
—this satisfies the heart and gives rest to the soul.
With glad and grateful spirits, therefore, we dedicate
this Church to the Author and Giver of Eternal Life, to
Him who hath given us the victory over death and the
grave through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The views of which I have now presented to you the
merest outline, constitute the common faith of Christians;
and to those who cordially embrace them, they afford
every help and every encouragement that can be given to
the mind of man when struggling with the evils and ad
versities that here assail him. Some of the wisest and
best men that have ever lived have been distinguished
for their attachment to this common faith. Yes, among
Christian professors of this enlarged and liberal school
are to be found those wTho have daily and hourly walked
with God; the consciousness of whose presence has been
to them the sanctifier of their inward thoughts and the
guardian of their outward actions; men, whom the se
ductions of pleasure could not tempt, nor the terrors of
suffering drive from the path of duty; men, whose great
object in life was to do the will of God, and who, for this
purpose, pressed right on in spite of every advancing dif
ficulty and every surrounding danger, and who, when
the summons of death arrived, fixed their thoughts upon
that heaven, the promised inheritance of the wise and
good, and so departed in peace and hope. Many are the
men of this stamp and character who have been found in
all churches. Take, I would say, Eenelon from the Roman
Catholics; Jeremy Taylor, and Barrow, and Tillotson
from the Church of England; Locke, and Newton, and
Hartley from among the ranks of Christian philosophers;
�12
and Doddridge, and Foster, and Price, and Priestley from
the various classes of Dissenters ; and you will find that
the great principles which they most valued and cherished
—those principles which were the actuating motives of
their conduct, and which shed upon their souls refreshing
dews of joy and of hope—were the principles which they
held in common, that is, were the principles by which
we, as a Christian body, are emphatically distinguished.
Now these principles we are desirous of upholding in
their simplicity and integrity ; of preserving in their sin
gleness and purity, apart from all admixture with foreign
ingredients. We look upon the vital, essential truths of
Christianity to be those which are possessed, not by any
one sect exclusively, but which belong to the church of
Christ universally. Our peculiarity therefore—if so it
may be called—that which separates us from other bodies
of professing Christians, consists mainly in this, in the
prominence and distinction which we give to these truths ;
in regarding them as of supreme and paramount import
ance ; as, in fact, the be-all and the end-all of the Chris
tian dispensation. We hold the catholic or universal
faith to be the true genuine Christian faith, and the only
one that should be made a condition of Christian com
munion. It is upon this broad ground that we take our
stand as a Christian society. It is upon this wide foun
dation that the fellowship of our churches is based.
Ever sacred be this temple to the cause of religious free
dom, of piety, peace, and charity !
Of all the bonds by which man is connected with man,
the first and the greatest is that which unites them all to
the Creator. If there be anything more than another
which belongs to us in common, in which we are all one,
it is that of being the creatures of God, subsisting by his
�13
will, depending upon his bounty, daily witnesses of his
majesty and might, daily partakers of his kindness and
care. Receiving common mercies, it is reasonable that
we should unite in common acknowledgements. With
the same reasons for thankfulness and praise, it becomes
us to mingle our songs with the songs of our brethren,
and in sacred union and fellowship to pour out our prayers
and supplications together. Like the good men of old,
it becomes us to go to the house of God in company,
and, with the purest influences of heaven, to mingle the
dearest sanctities of earth. For this let us welcome the
return of each Sabbath morn, inviting us to suspend for
a while the chase after worldly gains and pleasures, and
opening to our inward sight the vision of an immortal
heaven.
There are, I know, those who say that they need not
the ministriations of the sanctuary to remind them of their
relation to God and eternity, to silence the clamour of
worldly passions and pursuits, and to beget in them a
genuine religious thoughtfulness. They can commune
with their own hearts, they tell us, in the stillness of their
chamber, or go forth, like the patriarch Isaac, to meditate
in the fields at even-tide. I believe, however, that for
the most part they who talk in this way do neither the
one nor the other. Gallio-like, they are careless about
these things, and make their objection to time and place
which has its deeper foundation in their own indifference.
This observation, I willingly grant, may not be applicable
to all of the class of whom I am now speaking. There
are instances among them, I doubt not, where the spirit,
in its moments of high-wrought emotion, may think that
it can safely dispense with all external helps and sup
ports,—may even regard them as suited only to ignorant
�14
and feeble minds,—may imagine that its piety need not
be poured forth in words,—that human language only
restrains, cramps, and confines it,—that time and place
are but hindrances and barriers to its exercise, and that
“ wrapt into still communion with God, it will rise far
above all the imperfect offices of prayer and praise.”
Now admitting that there are a few gifted minds capable
of rising by the force of their own wills into the high re
gions of pure spirituality, and that occasionally inclina
tions and desires, looking in the same direction, may be
partially felt by a few more, it is not to be believed, I
think, that such a state of feeling can be either general
or lasting. On the contrary, I am persuaded that most
men’s experience will convince them that in the cultiva
tion and exercise of their religious principles and affec
tions thev must have recourse to much the same means
of exciting and improving them that are employed in the
formation and exercise of their affections and habits ge
nerally.
Humanity does not become changed, is not stripped of
the attributes by which it is usually characterised and dis
tinguished the moment it touches the ground of religion.
It still possesses the same tendencies and is subject to the
same laws by which it is commonly influenced and go
verned. As we feel the value, the comfort, and the hap
piness of the social affections in all other things, I cannot
understand the wisdom or the propriety of refusing their
aid and co-operation in the concerns of religion. We are
sustained, strengthened and cheered in our convictions
and attachments by the presence and communion of our
fellow-men. In the midst of the animating associations
of the church and the radiating sympathies of other
minds, we gather encouragement, confidence, and assur
�15
ance. It is therefore a great error to suppose that a dif
ferent process must be pursued in building up in our
minds the fabric of religion from that which is adopted
in raising any other of our intellectual and moral struc
tures. It is not in enthusiastic sentiments and fervid
emotions that we must place our trust. Suddenly may
they come, and as suddenly may they depart. Our chief
reliance must be founded on the diligent and faithful use
of all those appliances by which the heart of man is
usually impressed and affected. The dread of supersti
tion and the contempt of vain and idle ceremonies have,
I am persuaded, led many to an undue depreciation and
disparagement of the outward means and instruments of
exciting and elevating our religious sensibilities. There
is no doubt that abundance of mischief has been done by
overloading religion with rites and observances. There
is no doubt that the external garb and covering has been
too often mistaken for the genuine inward grace, and that
dead, inanimate forms have been substituted for the living
spiritual substance. Too much care and caution, there
fore, cannot be used to guard against such a perversion
as this. But when that care has been taken and that
caution has been exercised, let us beware of falling into
the error, less pernicious, perhaps, but still an error to be
deplored, of supposing that the religious principle can be
built up and firmly maintained in the soul under a total
disregard and neglect of those assistances and supports of
which, upon other occasions, we are glad to avail our
selves.
We read of the prophet Daniel that, during the time
of his captivity in Babylon, when he prayed and gave
thanks before his God, his mind seems to have been im
pressed by the circumstance that the windows of his
�16
chamber opened towards Jerusalem. Now this is an in
stance of the manner in which we are sometimes affected
by little things,—by things, in themselves considered, of
no importance, but which derive all their interest and in
fluence from the thoughts and feelings associated with
them. He whom Daniel worshipped was the same God
and as ready to listen to the prayer of his servant
whether his eyes were bent on Babylon’s plains, or
turned towards Judea’s hills. Apart from the feelings
called forth by them, it mattered not which of these it
was. But who does not perceive that, with the thought
of Jerusalem and the tender and solemn recollections
which that thought would awaken, there would neces
sarily come over the mind of Daniel a more intense and
vivid feeling of God’s presence and power, of his pre
sence to cheer and his power to save ? Tell me not that
such a feeling betokens a state of pitiable weakness.
For, if it be a weakness, it is one which God has attach
ed to the very constitution of our nature, and above
which the proudest pretender to philosophy, falsely so
called, cannot exalt himself. Will he say that no pecu
liar interest hangs around the spot where he has played
in his childhood or sported in his youth ? Has no place
ever become endeared to his thoughts and consecrated in
his imagination by friendship and affection ? Can you
visit the tomb where a parent sleeps, or walk over the
ashes of the child you loved, with the same emotions with
which you would tread on common ground ? Then times
and places do exercise a power over our thoughts and feel
ings to which we are all of us, in some measure, subject and
obedient. It is a law of our very being, and resistance to
it would be as impotent in its efforts, as it is vain and fool
ish in its aim. And why, we may ask, why should man be
�17
treated in his religious capacity in a manner totally diffe
rent from that which is observed towards him in all his
other relations? From the reasoning and conduct of
some people in this matter it might be inferred that with
reference to the subject of religion they contemplated
man as a being who had neither senses to be exercised,
nor imaginations to be affected, nor feelings to be
touched, nor hearts to be impressed. They would take
him out of the circle of all those influences which, in
other respects, so powerfully move and govern him.
They would deprive him of the benefit of those associa
tions which, on all ordinary occasions, form one of the
chief sources of interest and attraction. Such a proceed
ing I cannot but deprecate as both unnatural and unrea
sonable ; implying equally a forgetfulness of what the
real condition of man is, and of what is taught us in the
lessons of experience. If the love of country will grow
stronger and warmer when standing before the shrine of
her illustrious dead, or when gazing upon the scenes of
her former greatness and glory, why should we not admit
that the feelings of devotion may also be raised and
strengthened in a similar manner, by going to the house
of God in company, and uniting with our brethren in
those sacred services which impressively speak to us of
the glories of creating power and the riches of redeeming
love ? Let not Religion be deprived of all those accom
paniments which are calculated to enliven her sentiments
and to render her services more beautiful and attractive.
Let us view ourselves on all sides. Let us consider what
is due to us as thinking, reflecting beings, and what may
be needful for us as sensitive and imaginative creatures.
And when we feel inclined to treat as superfluous and
vain all outward aids and influences to further the ends
c
�18
of religion,—to think that all regard to times and places
may be utterly discarded, and that our minds are strong
enough to elevate and sustain themselves without such
instrumentalities ; when we are disposed to reason in this
manner, it would be well for us to remember the words
of Christ, “ the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,”
and instead of presumptuously relying on our own imagined strength, to feel more humbly concerning ourselves,
and to be careful to put on the whole armour of God, so
that in the day of trial we may be able to stand, to be
firm and faithful, enduring to the end.
Our failure in duty, our neglect of the things belong
ing to our eternal peace, arises, generally speaking, far
more from insensibility and thoughtlessness than from
absolute ignorance. We need, therefore, to be told, not
so much of what we do not know, as to be reminded
of what we do; to have the dormant energies of our
souls roused from their degrading, destructive torpor,
into watchfulness and vigour; to have the genuine feel
ings and principles of our nature called into activity
and exertion, and those truths which lie, as it were, upon
the surface of our minds, impressed deeply upon our
hearts, and wrought into the web of our affections. One
of our greatest aims should be to rescue admitted truths
from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their
universal admission. Truths, says Coleridge, of all others
the most awful and interesting, are too often considered
as so true, that they lose all the power of truth, and
lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side
with the most despised and exploded errors. If the
principles which we hold, fail of prompting to virtuous
conduct, of generating kind and devout affections, of
making the life pure and holy, it is not because they
�19
are intrinsically unfitted to produce these effects, but it is
because they are not sufficiently rooted and grounded in
the mind to be capable of sending forth strong, vigorous
shoots of morality and piety. It cannot be, that while
our faith exists thus loosely in the head without drawing
the least nourishment from the fountains of the heart,—
while it is a mere chance outward profession, and not a
real inward conviction, a cold abstract speculation, into
which there does not enter a single warm affection of the
soul,—it cannot be, that, while it exists in such a form
and under such a condition as this, any very valuable or
precious fruits should be gathered from it. The fault,
however, lies not in the principles which we profess to
believe, but in not truly and heartily believing the prin
ciples which we profess. Now the design and tendency
of the services of this place is to excite within us those
recollections of God and of Christ, of our duty and destiny,
of our condition as men, and of our hopes as Christians,
which cannot come frequently before the mind without
rendering it, in some degree, purer and better and
happier.
I am not ignorant that complaints are sometimes
made that the range of topics to which the preacher re
stricts himself is too narrow and circumscribed to satisfy
the thoughtful and inquiring. Hence there are those
who seem to be desirous that other questions should be
introduced here than those of a strictly religious character.
Now while I admit that, in many cases, there is just
ground for complaining that the discourses of the pulpit
are trite and uninteresting, I must, at the same time,
contend that this is owing, not to the nature of the sub
jects treated of, but to the manner in which they are
treated. Bring to their treatment judgement and imagic 2
�20
nation, genius and sensibility,—such, my friends, as you
are no strangers to,—or, to say nothing of rare endow
ments, let the speaker, if he be possessed only of ordi
nary qualifications, give forth what is in him with simpli
city and earnestness, and with a heart penetrated with
the love of God and goodness, and it will, I think, no
longer be found wanting in interest or impressiveness. I
cannot agree, therefore, with those who are for including
among the themes to be discoursed of here, questions of
government and politics, of literature and science. I
know well the exciting nature of these topics, and the
resources which they supply for strong impression and
immediate effect. But we assemble within these walls
for other purposes than amusement and excitement. We
have a more momentous and solemn end to answer, that
of awakening the soul to its obligations and its hopes, as
the creature of God and the child of eternity. With so
many means and opportunities around us for acquiring
all kinds of information, literary, scientific, and political,
it were, as it seems to me, a wanton desecration of the
purpose for which this temple is reared, to divert and
alienate the little portion of time to be spent in it from its
directly religious ministration. Considering the absorb
ing nature of the things that press upon our senses, and
the almost constant immersion of our minds in the cares
and pursuits of this world, it surely is not too much to
ask that our thoughts and affections should, for a few
moments in the week, be withdrawn from these solici
tudes and engagements, and be devoted exclusively to the
spiritual and immortal concerns of our being. Of course
I am taking it for granted that we have spiritual and
immortal concerns; that out of and beyond this world
lie treasures of knowledge and stores of enjoyment, with
�21
which the wisdom and the gladness of the present mo
ment are not worthy to be compared. If it be so, most
fitting and reasonable is it that we should be awakened
from our dreams of vanity, and be made to feel that
earth is not all, nor man the mere tenant of an hour,
but that when the night of the grave is past, the dawn
of an endless day shall burst upon him, and he shall
spring forth the denizen of a new and nobler community.
We come here to think of these things, to meditate on
this- high and holy destination of our being, and upon
the feelings, purposes and actions which are its required
and appropriate accompaniments. We come here to
listen to the voice which speaks to us of a better and
more enduring substance than meets our bodily eyes; of
hopes which are unfading, and of joys which are imperish
able ; of communions and friendships which time will not
impair and which death will not interrupt. We come
here to have our minds enlightened with the wisdom
which is profitable to direct; to have our hearts touched,
as it were, with a live coal from the altar of God, that
even when we quit the precincts of the temple, a purify
ing and invigorating warmth may still be felt glowing
within us. We come here to break that continuity of
little and low cares in which the world almost necessarily
involves us, and to fasten upon our souls the links of a
chain which embraces in its circuit wider views and loftier
interests. In a word, we come here as weak, dependent,
sinful, dying creatures, to be reminded of what, as such,
it becomes us to be and to do; to be reminded of the
power that made us, of the goodness that supports us,
of the mercy that saves us, and of the heaven that awaits
us. We come, the weak to be strengthened, the careless
to be warned, the erring to be corrected, the sorrowful to
�be comforted, the penitent to be soothed and encouraged,
and all to have the spirit of their minds renewed, and to
receive fresh impulse to run with patience the race that
is set before us. The object for which we assemble on
the “ day of the Lord” is not to pamper the appetite,
ever greedy for something new, for something that may
play around the head, but which comes not near the
heart. It is rather to call attention to truths already
acknowledged, but not sufficiently dwelt upon, not suffi
ciently admitted into the homes and intimacies of our
spiritual nature. It is to draw near and make bright to
the inward eye, views and prospects which lie clouded in
the distance. It is to make that felt within us as a
warm and living reality which too often dwells without
us as a cold and lifeless abstraction. It is to assist us in
lifting up our hearts unto God, and to make us feel that
in his favour there is life, and that his loving-kindness is
better than life. It is, that seeing we may see, and
hearing we may hear, what God hath done for our souls,
and that the glad tidings of the gospel may not lie before
us as a dead letter, but may be “ felt in the blood and
felt along the heart, and passing into our purer minds
with tranquil restoration.”
I repeat then,—it is not for the gratification of the spe
culative understanding that we are to assemble here as a
congregation of Christian worshippers, but the lighting up
in our souls of desires and aspirations which may lead us,
when we retire from this place, to commune with our own
spirits, and to make diligent search whether they are in the
state in which they ought to be,—in the state becoming
their distinguished privileges, worthy of their high descent,
and befitting their heavenly destination. If the result of
our weekly communion should be to send us away in
�23
quiring within ourselves what shall we do to be saved, a
real and substantial good will be obtained by it, a bless
ing conferred infinitely surpassing any other which it
could be the means of imparting. Let me observe also
that, important as I consider just views and correct
opinions on the subject of religion to be, more especially
those which relate to the character and will of God, I
must, nevertheless, not omit to remind you that it is of
more consequence to feel right than even to think right;
to do well than to reason well; that the best orthodoxy
is the orthodoxy of the heart, and that while sentiments
and creeds and systems perish, the best and purest feel
ings of the human soul remain unchanged; the same in
all countries, sects and generations, and so will continue
to remain as long as the relations of man to God and of
God to man have any existence. Doing righteously,
living virtuously, carrying into the world a pure and a
gentle and an elevated spirit, this is the beauty of holi
ness, and the excellence of faith, this is the bright con
summate flower, the end, the crown, and the ornament
of the whole.
Peeling it, then, to be our duty to gather ourselves
together for the pure and spiritual worship of God, let
us gratefully remember the blessed and benignant cha
racter under which the object of our worship is brought
before us in the generous and merciful dispensation of
the New Testament. Let us be thankful that we have a
religion so pure, benevolent and holy; so glorious in its
doctrines, so precious in its promises, so beautiful in its
hopes. Let us rejoice that we are ever in the sight of
God, and that the same Lord over all is rich unto all
that call upon him. Let us cheer and comfort ourselves
with the welcome assurance that all who do his com
�24
mandments shall eat of the tree of life, and live for ever;
that there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth;
and that no humble contrite spirit shall go forsaken of
its God. In the presence of such a being let there be
banished from our minds all desponding and despairing
thoughts. Let us come and kneel before the Lord our
Maker in the spirit of filial affection and in the confidence
of filial trust. In deep submission let us bend before
Him in whose hands our life is, and whose are all our
ways. Humbly and meekly let us adore Him joyfully
and reverently let us praise Him; making melody in our
hearts as well as with our tongues. And since we have
all one Father, let us bear in mind that we are one family,
bound to render to each other mutual assistance and
comfort. To our piety, therefore, there must be added
charity—to the love of God there must be joined the love
of man. Let these be the offerings with which we ap
proach the altar of the Lord. Let us consecrate this
house of prayer by the humble mind, the worshipping
spirit, the devout heart, the grateful thanksgiving which
we bring to it; and then peace within and hope in the
favour of heaven will sweeten the days of our earthly
pilgrimage, till, fit for a purer world of love and blessed
ness, we pass on from this perishable temple to that eter
nal temple not made with hands, where at a nobler altar
we shall offer up to God a nobler worship, where we shall
unite our feeble voices to those of adoring millions, and
sing his praises everlastingly.
To you, the members of this congregation, and to him
whom you have chosen to be here the leader of your de
votions and the expounder of Christian duty, I would
now offer my cordial congratulations at the completion
of that work and labour of love which stands before us,
�25
together with my earnest wishes that you may long be
spared to assemble under this roof, mutual helpers of
each other’s joy. On the one hand, may you, my
brethren, rejoice in the privilege of possessing a Teacher
so richly endowed and so thoroughly accomplished to
instruct you in all things pertaining to the kingdom of
heaven ; and, on the other, may my friend, your valued
and beloved minister, have the happiness of seeing that
the work of the Lord prospers in his hands, and that
through his instrumentality many have been made wise
to the salvation of their souls. So may you both have
reason to be thankful that you came up hither to keep
the holy day, and may the intercourses in which you have
delighted here be renewed and perfected in that land
where dwell for ever the spirits of the just.
�•
• J*
'
*
�THE
WATCH-NIGHT
LAMPS.
A DISCOURSE,
PREACHED ON THE FIRST SUNDAY OF PUBLIC WORSHIP,
(OCTOBER 21, 1849,)
HOPE-STREET NEW CHURCH,
LIVERPOOL.
BY
JAMES MARTINEAU,
MINISTER OF THE CHURCH.
�ZfW.k
• KA«
‘
I T ' :•
*
-I'
�THE WATCH-NIGHT LAMPS.
Now does the Heavenly Mercy rebuke all my fears. The
long-imagined moment is really come; God restores us
to each other. Beneath his eye we parted, and before
his face we meet; and that Infinite Light scatters the
lingering shadows of misgiving which have hung around
the forecast of this hour. We have not hoped in vain
that He would remove with us to the shrine we have
devoutly raised; and now in his eternal memory he sets
the vows and prayers by which this new opportunity is
to be consecrated or condemned. In distant lands,
through waiting months, my eye has rested upon this
day; which has appeared as a star of hope behind the
perspective of every scene, and looked down, with a clear
and guiding sanctity, on intervening tracts that had
sometimes no other, and never a diviner, ray. Standing
here at length, and looking round on this strange mix
ture of the new and old,—the outward structure new
and beautiful, the living temple of faithful hearts both
old and dearer far,—First, I greet you with all the
warmth of my affection and the fresh devotion of all my
powers; consecrating myself anew to the service, not in
deed of your will,—but of your faith and highest hope,
your love and conscience, your remorse and aspiration,—
E
�30
which you know to be interpreters of a Will that must
be monarch of your own. Next, I remember some, whom
we had thought to have with us as sharers of our joy,
but whom the voice of our salutation can no longer reach.
Those close-filled ranks cannot hide from me the vacancies
in their midst; and I miss here the sweet attentive look
of maidenly docility,—there the dear and venerable form
of one from whose eyes age had exhausted the vision
but not the tears, and whose features were quickened
and kindled by the light within. Greeting to others,
Farewell to them ! and to Him, with whom we and thev
alike live; from whose presence no pathless sea, no
Alpine height, no gulph of death, can e’er divide ; who
spares us for his work, or calls us to his rest; who makes
sweet the memory of dreadful hours, and turns our
tremblings into joy;—to Him, the assuager of care, the
reviver of hope, the giver of opportunity, I render for
this hour a glad thanksgiving, and renew my vow to bear
again his glorious yoke.
My purpose this morning is very simple. I ask you
only to think what you have done in raising this building,
and to find for your own act its true ground of thought.
That you have built this house at all, places you at once
in the great commonwealth of Christendom, and detaches
you from all faiths or ^faiths that would destroy it.
That you have joined together to build it, proclaims that
through your religion there runs a common consciousness
which blends and organises your individual wills into a
higher unity, and makes a Church. The forms you have
given to its outline, and the memorials embodied in its
stones, speak everywhere the sentiments of Worship, and
promise here, not the severity of teaching, but the mel
lowed tones of meditation and prayer. That you throw
�31
open its gates on this sacred day, and ever, when a week
is gone, think to come back to it again, is a confession
that you cannot make your every day a Sabbath, and
would not turn your Sabbath into an every day; but
would still intersect the time with holy lines, and help
to prolong that ladder of heaven which climbs as yet
through all Christian duration, the favourite pathway of
saintly souls. These cardinal points I silently assume
as fixed upon the very face of your design; and what
further may be the function of a Church, and ought to
be the function of this Church, in the present age of the
world, I would explain from the words of the parable,
Matthew xxv. 4.
“ The wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps?’
And then, presuming on their supplies, they took their
ease, like the foolish, and while the bridegroom tarried
they all slumbered and slept. So must it not be in that
great watch-night,—that solemn eve of an eternal day,—
which we call Human Life. The spirit that sits sentinel
through its hours, intent for the Master’s voice and ex
pectant of his approach, cannot, however rich her stores,
set the lamp of duty idly on the ground, while she
dreams away beneath the stars; and then hope, by a
sudden start, at the last knock, to refit the neglected
fires and join the pomp and mingle with the everlasting
train. The watch-lights which we must burn before
God are no outward thing, no ritual adornment, but,
like the glow-worm’s, the intensest kindling of our own
life, rising and sinking with the tone of our energies;
and the oil that feeds them is too ethereal to be set by;
it exists only by being ever used and ever re-distilled.
To keep the heart awake,—to resist all collapse of the
e 2
�will and the affections,—to bring the angels of our nature
to a mood not merely less heedless than the foolish virgins,
but more faithful -than the wise; this is the disciple’s
great thought, ever ringing like a midnight bell upon his
ear, from the Master’s awful word, “ Watch ! ” A Church
is a fraternity for accomplishing this thought; an asso
ciation for realising the Christian life, creating the Chris
tian mind, and guarding from deterioration the pure type
of Christian perfection; and its agency is designed for
keeping to their vigils the several Graces of the soul com
missioned to wait upon their Lord; for trimming the
lamps they severally bear, and screening them from the
winds and damps of this world’s night. Let us number
these Graces as they stand. Till their lamps were lighted
they were themselves invisible, dark negations on the
grand summit of human nature, looking into the dark:
but since the glory of Christ has caught them, they shine
afar, and we see in their forms the distinctive spirits of
our religion. First, I discern the Spirit of
Endeavour.—Foremost among the elements of the
Christian consciousness do I place this,—that we must
strive and wrestle to achieve the Will of God, and that
only he who faints can fail. What else means the deep
doctrine of self-denial, which it has ever been the lowest
impertinence of philosophy to doubt, and the last degra
dation of human nature to reject? How else can we
read the contempt we feel for those who evade martyr
dom with a lie,—the throbbing of our hearts as we watch
the tempted in the crisis of his trial,—and their leap of
exultation when he decides, “Better perish than be false”?
These sentiments, than which none are more ineradicable
in man, and none more intensely stamped into Christian
history, would be absurd illusions, if we were not en-
�33
Jdowcd with a knowledge, placed under a law, and in
vested with a power, of right and wrong : they are founded
on the conception of life as an Obedience due, and of mere
Self-will as an insurrection against authority infinitely
venerable. This faith which assigns a moral basis to all
religion, touches, I believe, the ultimate point of all cer
tainty : older than this or newer, more authentic, more
infallible, no revelation can ever be. Its very contra
rieties, which offend the one-sidedness of logicians and
enthusiasts, constitute its truth, and accurately represent
man’s balanced position; whom you can neither turn
into the mere realm of nature nor invest with the dignity
of a God; who is at once bound, yet free to slip his bonds,
and strangely finds in his thraldom a true liberty, in
escape a wretched slavery; and is conscious of divine and
infinite prerogatives immersed and struggling in finite
conditions. All religion is Christian in proportion as it
takes up into its very substance this law of conscience,
and resolves itself a consecration of Duty. It is the great
glory of the Catholic religion, that it adopts and pro
claims this principle : to this one deep root, which pene
trates through the soil and very structure of our human
world, far beyond the reach of ecclesiastic storms, does
it owe the width of its branches and the richness of its
shade. Conscience, indeed, in reference to the universe
of Persons, like Reason in relation to the universe of
Things, is the Catholic faculty of human nature ; and no
faith which does not interpret and sanctify it can take as
its motto, “ Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omni
bus.” I am not forgetful of St. Paul’s depreciation of
legal religion, and of the triumphs, asserted in all the
churches of the reformation, of a Gospel of Love over a
System of Law. This also I embrace with all my soul,
�34
and chime in with the hymn of Grace led by Luther’s
mighty voice. But this truth is only the other’s second
half, and without it could no more exist than the comple
ment without the primal arc, or the joy of convalescence
without the lassitude of illness. Did not Conscience pro
pose the awful problem, and the Will struggle into its
midst, Faith and Affection could never bring the relief of
solution. Law and Love are but the strophe and anti
strophe of the great chorus of redemption; and without
both the opening and the answering voices, the thought
and melody must alike be broken. The moral law of
God then, and the moral freedom of man, constituting
life a theatre of endeavour, we lay as the granite pillars
of an everlasting faith,—the Kock on which we build our
Church; and whoever, in the partial spirit of one age,
builds on any more inflammable material,—on the wood,
hay, stubble, of a disenthralled enthusiasm,—shall find,
when his work is tried by fire, that, however poised for
awhile on the upward pressure of elastic heats, it will
lean and totter as the temperature declines, and either
drop on to some more primitive foundation, or collapse
among the ruins of the past.
Is Christianity, then, a mere Ethical System ? and do
we identify religion and morality ? Shall we say that
the man who commits no fraud, or violence, or excess, is
forthwith a denizen of the Kingdom of Heaven ? God
forbid ! as soon might we say that every scribbler who
makes no slip in scanning his metres and tuning his
rhymes is a great Poet. Morality speaks like the defiance
of the hero to his foe,—“ DepartReligion like the
summons of the leader to his impatient host,—“ Arise,
come on !” As a prison-task to an Olympic race, so is
the duty copied from a code to the service inspired by a
�35
faith. So long as moral restraints and obligations are
urged upon us we hardly know how, by usage, by opi
nion, by taste, by good sense and regard to consequences,
they appear to lie within a very moderate and definable
compass, and to be matters of dry necessity included in
the conditions of respectability. But when the voice of
Christ has opened our spirit to their true nature, and
from utterances of human police they become tones,
stealing through the foliage of the soul, from enshadowed
oracles of God, their whole character and proportion are
as much changed as if the dull guest had turned into an
angel, and the stifling tent expanded to the midnight
skies. From the drowsy figure emerges the sleepless im
mortal ; upon the heavy body grow the glorious wings;
and the sheet which seemed a tiresome limit to our head,
passes into the deep of stars open for an everlasting flight.
The feeling of duty, no longer negative, ceases to act like
an external hindrance and prohibition, and becomes a
positive internal power of endless aspiration. Yes, of
endless aspiration; for if the suggestions of conscience
are breathings from the Holiest, they are no finite whole,
but parts of an infinite Thought, the surface movements
of a boundless deep. When we have brought ourselves
to be at one with them, when they are no longer dashed
and broken by the resistance of our spirits, but carry
harmoniously with them all the movements of our nature,
still all is not over; God will now try us with a quicker
time: wave after wave of impulse will roll in with in
tenser speed from the tides of his eternal Will; till the
undulations reach the limits of a new element, and our
thrilling spirits burst into an immortal light. To whom
soever God is Holy, to him is Duty Infinite. The good
habits, in which others abide content, give him no rest;
�36
they are but half his world, and that not the illumined
half: by the rotatory law of all custom, they have gone
off into the dark, and make now but the negative
hemisphere of his obligations; and this must be com
pleted by another, where the morning light of thought
is fresh, and the genial warmth of love yet glows. To
such a mind is revealed the depth of that word, “ There
is none good save One •” and of that other, “ I must work
the work of Him that sent me, while it is day
and life
appears simply as the appointed scene of holy Endeavour.
Now, to awaken this consciousness of infinite obliga
tion, to draw forth and interpret its solemn intimations ;
to resist and expose, as a Satanic delusion, every slug
gish doubt or mean doctrine which denies it,—and to
sustain it in its noblest resolves,—is the first function
of a Christian Church. The great antagonist to it is that
corruption of ease, that poisonous notion of enjoyment
as the end of life, which in so many men absolutely stifles
the higher soul, and suppresses in them the belief in
its existence. In that lowest condition of human nature,
man enjoys a certain unity with himself, because all
powers above his animal and intellectual being are fast
asleep, and give him no contradiction in his unworthy
career. In its highest condition, his nature reaches again
a unity with itself, because faith and conscience have
carried their demands, and rule without dispute what
ever is below. It is the aim of the Church to urge him
through the vast interval between these two limits;,
during the whole of which he is at variance with himself‘
and cries out for deliverance from that “ body of death,”
which at first made up his entire consciousness and is no
other than his unawakened self. When that fatal sleep
is once broken, it is the business of a Church to suggest,
�37
perhaps even to provide, a discipline of voluntary self
denial, without which the incipient insight will not last,
but relapse into the darkness which it is so difficult to
dispel from the infinite. It is wonderful how faithful
endeavour withdraws the curtain from before the opening
eye of the late slumbering soul. As one who just turns
on his pillow,—with another folding of the hands to
sleep,—-feels without recognising the dazzling light, and
it only passes through into his dreams to paint anew
their empty phantasies;—so the mind, just stirring from
the dead repose of self, does not yet treat as real the
dawning glow of a diviner consciousness; which, stopping there, will only glide as a bewildering spectrum
over the scenery which the man takes to be the world.
But let him spring up and break the bands of sleep; let
him move about among the objects which the new light
shows, and do the things which it requires; and anon
he finds what’s true, and feels how he is transferred from
the subterranean den of dreams into the open and lus
trous universe. Effort is the condition of the commonest
intellectual knowledge; much more, of insight into things
moral and divine. Is there a poem or a landscape which
you are anxious to remember? So long as you only
look at it and take it in, though with attention ever so
fixed, its hold upon you will be slight and transient:
but invert the mental order, begin at the active instead
of the passive end, and force yourself to reproduce it by
pencil or by word; and it becomes a part of yourself,
incorporated with the very fabric of your mind. So with
the whispers of the holiest spirit; while they only pass
across the still—though it be listening—ear of the soul,
they are evanescent as the traceless wind; but act on
them, and you will believe in them ; produce their issue,
�38
and you shall know their source; and he with whom
God’s presence has quieted a passion or subdued a grief
is surprised by the nearness of his reality. Such
deavour, such earnestness of life, do the members of a
Church undertake to preserve in one another’s remem
brance.
But next to this high Angel of the Soul, I observe a
downcast spirit, bearing in her hand the lamp of Humi
liation : and she too must never cease from her sorrow
ing watch.
Endeavour has its seat in the Will. If there were no
sense of difficulty in the exercise of Will, if all resistance
crumbled away at the first touch of purpose, and thought
could fly off into instant execution, failure, shame, re
morse would be unknown; conscience would realise
whatever it conceived; and though the infinite character
of holy obligation would leave an ineffaceable interval
between our position and our aspirations, the one would
for ever tend to overtake the other; and the chase, al
beit without a goal, would be inspired by the joy of an
eternal success. No deeper shade than the mild sense of
imperfection would fall upon the spirit. But our actual
condition is very different. The suggestions of God are
ever fresh and his enterprises always new, demanding, if
not new matter, at least a new spirit: and it is hard to
our Will to quit the old track, to snap the old restraints,
to lash itself into a higher speed. And thus, with a
sentient nature that loves the easiest, and a conscience
that reveres the lest, we feel that Epicurus and Christ
meet face to face within our soul; which becomes at
once the theatre, the stake, the arbiter, of the most
solemn of all conflicts. The pleasant pleadings, so perl
suasive to our languid strength, make our Temptation 1
�39
and their triumph plunges us into the Sense of Guilt.
This utterly changes the relations of the mind to God;
breaks the springs of Endeavour; turns every blessed
sanctity from a life within the heart to a load upon it;
and condenses the infinite heaven of duty into a leaden
universe of nightmare on the breast. So sinks in sad
ness the pure enthusiasm that had flung itself upon the
godlike track; and the wing that had soared so high
hangs drooping and broken down. It is less the anguish
of this fallen state, than its weakness, that makes it awful.
Who shall remove this burden of sin, which paralyses the
soul’s native strength and restrains it in terror from seek
ing God’s ? Could the immediate remorse be banished
or outlived, yet who can resume an infinite race with a
lowered hope, or faith abashed ? This crisis is the turn
ing point of many a life. By either fall or rise may the
mind escape from it; in the one case relapsing by the
gravitation of the world into the stupor of indifference
and the old belief in the dreams of sense : in the other,
lifted once more into a light of heaven, milder perhaps, ‘
but less precarious. Lifted,—I say; for sure it is that
the fallen, though he may hold his place and fall no more,
has crippled his power to lift himself. Even an arch
angel’s wing cannot rise without an atmosphere; and
the human will (in things divine) is ineffectual with its
mightiest strokes, unless surrounded by a certain air of
pure and clear affection,—which recent sin exhausts and
spoils. While the sweet element of love and hope
and self-reverence is lost to the mind, the spasms of reso
lution are but pitiable distortions,—cramps of uneasiness
and fear, not the progressive action of a vigorous health.
It is the awful punishment of all unfaithfulness, that it
turns the mind in upon itself; makes it look at its dis
�40
ease, and put forth a writhing movement to escape it,
with no effect but to renew the anguish, to feel all the
weakness, and sink down again in faintness and despair.
The intense power which conscious evil gives to con
siderations of Interest, the tumult of anxiety and alarm
it induces, is in itself the most fatal obstacle to recovery :
on which however, with the delusion common to all em
pirics, the mere moralist rests all his hopes. There are
no terms in God’s universe on which the selfish can be
saved; no,—not if a thousand Calvaries were to repeat
to him the divine tragedy of the world. And the more
you set upon him with fists of unanswerable reasons, the
more do you make him the sharp-witted alien from God.
What opening then is there for the offender prostrate
under the sense of sin ? Shall I be told that expiation
must be made by another, who will bear the burden for
him ? Doubtless, with the low mood to which guilt has
brought him, he is just in the state to accept that mer
cantile view of sin, and reckon it as a debt against him
on the ledger of the universe, which the overflowing
wealth of some perfect nature might gratuitously wipe
off. And if you can then convince him that such free
sacrifice has actually been made, that for him in his de
gradation a heavenly nature has been moved with pity,
taken up the conditions of sorrow, laid down the im
mortal prerogative and died; I do not deny that you
may touch the springs of wonder and delight, and that a
burst of thankfulness may break his ice-bound spirit and
set it free. Gratitude for an immense personal benefit
is the first affection of which a low and selfish mind is
susceptible; its very selfishness rendering an act of
generosity in another the more surprising. The pas
sionate emotion thus awakened may certainly tear him
�41
from his prison; and as the object to which your fiction
conducts him is the Jesus Christ of sacred history, that
sublime and holy being, the gentle and winning type of
God’s own perfectness, it will be strange if the false and
immoral grounds of his first homage are not insensibly
exchanged for a veneration purer and more disinterested.
As it is sometimes easiest at the moment to cure a mor
bid patient by a trick, the immediate case of many souls
may be met by this disenchanting legerdemain ; but not
without the cost inseparable from untruth. The great
doctrine of mediation is here corrupted by a complete
inversion of its truth. There are two parts of our nature
essential to our first approaches to God; the Imagination
places him before us as an object of conception external
to the mind ; the Conscience interprets his personal rela
tions of communion with ourselves. The first of these
emphatically needs a mediator; the function of the
second perishes, the moment he appears. We cannot trust
the representative faculty of our nature whose pencil
of design varies with the scope of Reason, and whose
colours change with the moods and lights of Passion, to
go direct to the sheet of heaven, and show us the Al
mighty there: else, what watery ghost, or what glaring
image, might we not have of the Eternal Providence ?
Only through what has been upon earth can we safely
look to what is in heaven, through historical to divine
perfection; and by keeping the eye intently fixed on the
highest and most majestic forms in which living minds
have ever actually revealed their thoughts and ways, we
have a steady type, with hues that do not change or fly, of
the great source of souls. Jesus of Nazareth, the centre of
the scattered moral possibilities of history, is thus media
tor to our imagination between God and man. On the
�other hand, we cannot allow the Conscience to resign for
an instant its native right of immediate contact and au
dience with God: to delegate the privilege is treason;
and to quit his eye is death. Yet the current theology
reverses this. The imagination of the offender, at the
very instant that it is throwing out the fire and smoke
of conscious guilt, is invited to paint its own unmediated
image of the Most High, and rely upon the terrible pic
ture with unquestioning faith; and while the corrupted
fancy is thus sustained in its audacity, the shuddering
Conscience is encouraged in its cowardice, and allowed
to hand over its burthen to a mediator, under pretence
of forfeited approach. Who says, that the sinner must
fly the terror of the Lord? I say, he must face the
terror of the Lord, and instead of blasting it will only
melt him then. You say, he dares not tell his tale and
cannot pray ? Then, I answer, not yet is he true and
contrite; and it is not his humility, but the little speck
of insincerity still spoiling it, that asks for a mediator.
He must accept his whole abasement; must desire, not
to escape, but to endure, his woe •, must not even hang
the head and veil the face before God; but look full up
into the eye of infinite Purity, and, as he disburthens
himself, seek its most piercing glance, that nothing may
escape. Nothing but truth can appear before God ; but
the truth always can appear, and loses its very nature in
parting with its rights to an intercessor. And, as dread
ed duties are apt in the performance to surprise us by
their lightness, so the moment the soul lies thus exposed
and transparent before God, he appears terrible no more a
the dark reserve thrown from the heart seems to sweep
away the cloud from him; and he shines upon us, not
indeed with the sudden blaze of clearance after storm,
�43
but with the affectionateness of an eternal constancy.
We have trusted him, and he is distant no more; we
are emancipated into sympathy with his pure nature;
the old aspirations find way again ; and instead of look
ing at him with outside recoil, we go up into his glory,
losing ourselves once more in those positive admirations
and desires for perfection, which are the very glow of his
spirit, and which, far more than any passionate gratitude
for personal benefits, are fitted to restore our union with
him. And in this crisis it is that the repentant eye, now
purified by tears, turns with infinite refreshment from the
false forms that have beguiled it, to rest on Christ, as the
divine depositary of the sanctity we have lost and seek
again ; and that the ear feels the deep sweetness of that
call, “ Come unto me, ye weary and heavy-laden, and I
will give you rest.”
Now to give this humiliating self-knowledge, to open
the sources of remorse, to prevent its lingering into
morbid and credulous woe, to cause every film of pride
and fear to drop away, and bring the penitent to make
a clear heart before God, is the proper aim and function
of a Church; which thus humanises, while it sanctifies,
and uses our own sins as ground for pity to others, not
others’ as excuses for our own. In the early Christian
societies, penitents were recognised and distinguished as
a class,—a practice which, however needed in evil times
as a check to apostacy, could have no place now, without
drawing fines of classification not truly distinguishing
the characters of men. In later times, the still more
dangerous practice of confession to a human—yet hardly
human, because a sacerdotal—ear, bears witness to the
boundless power of repentance in the heart of Christen
dom. Perhaps the reaction into the jealous individuality
�44
of modern times, in which each soul not only repels the
intrusion, but declines the sympathy of another, has been
carried beyond the point of natural equilibrium. At
least it is not natural that, in fraternities under common
vows of Christian obligation, flourishing selfishness should
often hold a higher place than humble sanctity; and un
repaired, therefore impenitent, injustice should lift its
head unabashed amid indulgent worshippers. Surely the
power of rebuke is too much lost in an easy indifference;
the estimates of the world,—ranging greatly by outward
fortune and condition,—have extravagantly encroached
on those of the Church, which can look only to internal
soundness and affluence of soul. That is not a true com
munity of disciples, in which a collective Christian opinion
does not make itself felt by at least some silent and sig
nificant expression. So long as the trumpet gives an
uncertain sound, who will prepare himself for the battle ?
By its revelations of self-knowledge, its echo to the voice
of self-reproach; by its suggestion of a restorative dis
cipline ; by its appeal to that faith in infinite possi
bilities which alone sustains the burthen of penitential
self-denial; by leading the soul at once to suffer, to
aspire, and to love much,—must every Church of Christ
pour into the energy of endeavour, the lowly spirit of
humiliation.
Side by side with this sad Angel of the Soul stands
another, with look of equal meekness, only clear of shame :
and the small fair light in her hand, shining a few steps
into the dark around, is the lamp of
Trust.—The companion Spirits of which we have
hitherto spoken preside over the work and temper of
the Conscience in its relation to God; and they would
still have to stand upon their watch, though the soul
�45
(were such a thing possible) lived in empty space, in
mere private audience with its Creator. But now comes
before it another object, forcing it to look a different
way, and pressing for some orderly interpretation;—
viz., Nature or the outward Universe. To a mind that,
through moral experience, has already begun its life with
God, the glorious spectacle of the heavens and the earth
will instantly appear divine: the voice of the waters and
the winds, the procession of the sun and stars, the moun
tain’s everlasting slopes, smiling upwards with pastures
till they frown in storms,—will seem the expressions of
Eternal Thought. Well would it be if this first absorp
tion of nature into the substance of faith enabled them
permanently to grow harmoniously together. But the
universe, which ought to be the abode, becomes to us the
rival, of the living and indwelling God. Its inflexible
steadiness, its relentless march, so often crushing beneath
the wheels of a blind law the fairest flowers of beauty and
the unripened fruits of patient hope, look so unlike the
free movements of a living and loving mind, that the
decrees impressed on finite matter begin to contest the
sway of the Infinite Spirit. Other sorrows than any
mentioned yet,—sorrows not merited or self-incurred,—
and which even fancy cannot plausibly link with any sin,
come upon us; and as we cannot sincerely meet them
with humiliation, we need some other guide from infidel
despair. The order of Cause and Effect crosses and con
flicts with the order of Moral Law. This is plainly seen
in the history of the physical sciences-; whose exclusive
pursuit first lowers the conception of God to that of the
primal force, or at best the scientific director of creation;
and then lapses, consistently enough, into a fatalistic
atheism. And the same thing is keenly felt in that in
�46
explicable distribution of suffering in human life, which,
in every age, has perplexed the faith and saddened the
love, of hearts not alien to God. How must this contro
versy be ended in our souls, between the physical God
omnipotent in nature, and the holy God who reveals himself in Conscience ? I will not say here what may be the
solution which the thoughtful may draw from a devout
Philosophy; only that it must be one which charges no
evil upon God. Whatever cannot be glorified into good,
let it be referred, so far as it is not from the human
will, to that negative datum, that shapeless assemblage
of conditions, which constitute the ground of the Creator’s
work; but it must be withheld on any terms from him
who is the perfectly and only Good. He must be ever
worshipped, not as the source, but as the antagonist, of
ill; the august and ever-living check to its desolating
power, who never rides upon the whirlwind, but that he
may curb the storm. It is only in this view that He can
have pity on our sorrows; for who could pity the sufferings
which he himself, without the least necessity, invents and
executes ? That cry on Calvary, “ My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me?”—was it not a cry for rescue,
■—rescue as from a foreign foe, from a power ^divine ?
And did it not then burst from One who felt the anguish
of that hour as the inrush of a tide from which the barrier
of God’s volition had withdrawn ? And so the faith
which gave way in that momentary cry is just the oppo
site of this; a faith that no evil is let loose without his
will; that he knows the utmost it can do, keeps it ever
in his eye, and will yield to it no portion of his holy and
affectionate designs; that he has considered all our case,
and will not fail to bring it out clear, if we are true to
him. Trust has no other bearable meaning than this; for
�47
else it would only say that God, being the unquestionable
cause of evil, is not malicious in producing it, and would
thus merely silence a doubt impossible in a Christian,
aud scarcely pardonable in the grossest heathenism.
Trust therefore in the ascendancy of divine Thought and
Affection in the universe, serene confidence in their per
fect victory, I take to be the essence of the Christian faith
respecting nature. The particular thought of God that
may be hid amid events, moulding their forms and pre
paring their tissues for some growth of incomparable
beauty, it may be impossible to trace; but He is there
and never leaves his everlasting work; which is the same
in the shrine of conscience, in the mind of Christ, and
through the sphere of universal nature.
Now to interpret life and all visible things in the spirit
of this Trust; to raise the mind oppressed by the sense
of material necessity: to meet the tendencies towards
passiveness and despair, and, for the consolation of
memory and the kindling of hope, show where the order,
not of a hard mechanism, but of beauty, love and good
ness is everywhere enthroned;—this also is the duty of a
Church. In this relation we must contradict the doc
trine of mere science, which proclaims Force, rather than
Thought, as the source of all: we must counteract its
purely causal and fatalistic explanations -, must detain in
the living present, that God whom it would allow to re
cede indefinitely into the Past, and must lean upon Him
as the nearest to us in our weakness, the most loving in our
sadness, and the Rock beneath our feet in our alarms.
We agree together to sustain each other in this sacred
trust; to withstand the godless doubts and grievings
suggested by our lower mind; to defy nature’s inexorable
Laws to disguise for us the supernatural light and love
f 2
�48
within; and to feel the hardest matter of life, as well as
the severest work of conscience, burning at heart with his
dear spirit.
This triple group, however, of Endeavour, Humiliation,
and Trust, are never found apart from a sister Spirit, in
whose features you trace more human lineaments, and in
whose hand is borne the lamp of
Service.—An individual mind, alone in the universe
with God, might hold the latent germs of all that is
human, and yet, in that solitude, could hardly enter,
perhaps, on the real experience of endeavour, humiliation,
or trust. It is only amid other minds, in the reflection
of eye upon eye and soul upon soul, that we so read our
impulses, and decipher our inspirations, as to be really
capable of the religious life. Society, which opens the
sphere of mutual sympathy, touches also the springs of
reverence and worship. And I entreat you to notice
how it is that the companionship of our fellows operates
to bring out these individual affections. We hear much
in this connexion about the natural equality of souls, implied in their common source and common work and
common end, and are referred to this evident brother
hood as the true basis of both fraternal love to one
another and filial acknowledgment of God. And, no
doubt, this identity of spiritual nature is indispensable to
all sympathy and all devotion ;—not, however, as their
positive and exciting cause, but only as their negative
condition. Like only can comprehend like: and if the
being next me had not the same nature and the same
kces with myself, I should have no key by which
\ him; he would belong to an unintelligible
id fellow-feeling could have no place. But the
here required is not in the minds as they are,
�49
only as they might be. Their circles of possibility must
coalesce; the same capacities must sleep within them,
and the same Law must rule over them. This similitude
of kind, the silent assumption of which lies in all our
affections, merely expresses an ultimate and unrealized
tendency, to which present and actual facts will continually
approximate. Meanwhile, these facts present a very dif
ferent picture;—not of resemblance between man and
man, but of variety so vast and contrast so startling, as
almost to perplex our faith in the unity of nature. Now
it is precisely this inequality of souls which is the positive
awakener of all our higher affections. No man could love
or venerate in a universe stocked with mere repetitions of
himself; the endless portrait would be a barren weari
ness. He pities what is below him in happiness : he re
veres what is above him in excellence: he loves what is
different from him in beauty. His affections rest on
those whom he blesses and those who bless him,—on his
clients and his God. At the shock of lower lives and the
startling spectacle of higher, he is driven to moral recoil
and drawn to moral aspiration; in the one case invested
with armour for the resistance of evil, in the other
equipped with wings to soar after the good. Whatever
is purer and nobler in another than in ourselves opens to
us a new possibility, and wields over us a new authority;
and thus it is that, ascending through the gradations of
souls which culminate in Christ, we find ourselves carried
thence at a bound over the chasm between finite and in
finite, and present at the feet of the Most High, saying,
“ Just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of Saints; who
shall not fear Thee, 0 Lord, and glorify thy name, for
Thou only art holy ! ”
It is therefore precisely through the diversity of minds
�50
that the unity of the Divine law reveals and asserts itself
within us; and the common end of life to all is felt. And
it is on this same inequality of souls that Christianity, as
a religion of love and mutual aid, builds all its work. On
the one hand, the strong must bend to the weak; and on
the other, the weak look up to the strong. In both
cases there is self-denial,—self-renunciation from pity, in
the former,—from obedience, in the other. In both there
is reverence for what is divine ■ with the one, for a god
like capacity in the low; with the other, for a godlike
reality in the lofty. When the differing ranks of minds
read off their relations in these opposite directions, the
whole compass of Christian service is given. Within the
Church therefore the eye must be trained to discern this
rank, the affections to own it, the will to obey it. Dis
guised under a like exterior of life are souls divided by
immeasureable intervals; and it is strange and even ter
rible to think what secret differences lurk beneath the
common gloss and gaiety of the same assembled numbers.
How superficial is the kindred of the utterly earthly, who
sees no reality but in the means of ease, the course of
material interests, and the colours thrown up by the
shifting game of external life; with the saintly sufferer,
before whom these flit as unsubstantial shadows, and
nothing is real but the spirit-drama that is enacting in
the midst and the great Will that plays the everlasting
part. Yet we often move about where both of them are
found, and speak with them face to face, and believe them
much alike. Can we not catch from our Lord, who
looked with divine perception straight into the heart of
the widow and the Samaritan, some portion of that in
sight which detects the heroes and despises the impostors
of the present ? Why should we leave it to history to
�51
find out and glorify the good? If they are with us, they
are the most precious of all God’s gifts; let us know
them ere they die, and feel that the earth is sacred where
they tread. Above all, in every Church, the only classi
fication known should be of character and age : and in
using these as grounds of mutual service, provision should
be made for teaching the child, for lifting the suffering,
for confirming the weak, and for supplying duties pro
portioned to the strength of the strong.
And while this angel of Service stands to her watch, a
glorious Spirit is at her side and closes the train; with
an undying flame from her lamp of
Communion.—The relations of service are far from
being limited to the present and its intercourses. Our
life is but the focus of living light into which the Past
and the Future condense their interests. The ranks of
minds by which we help each other, run up both the di
rections of time, and cover the two worlds of mortals and
immortals. We are ourselves disciples of an ancient and
a foreign prophet; and as we pronounce the word
“ Christian,” we feel the spark of his transmitted inspi
ration uniting us with a long chain of generations, and
fusing Christendom into one life and one Church. We
are disciples also of an ascended prophet; nor is it pos
sible for any one to bow down in soul before the divine
law of which he has made us conscious, to burn with the
aspirations which it kindles, and touch upon the peace of
entire surrender, without feeling assured that he is created
on the scale of immortality, and that the risen Christ is
indeed, as the Scripture saith, the head of an immortal
host. It is a faith which fails chiefly to those, who, in
looking at human fife, miss its grandest elements, and
are little familiar with the highest and characteristic
�52
features of our nature. Ask the confidants of great
souls,—the bosom-friends of the holy,—and they will tell
you that life eternal is the only lot at all natural to the
children of the Highest. And the more you grow faith
ful to your own most solemn experience, and learn to
trust your noblest love, the more will that amazing pros
pect assume proportion to the terms of your daily thought.
The happy instinct of purified affections is ever one of
hope and ready faith. And when I simply remember
what faculties, what conceptions, what insight, are im
plied in a being to whom a Church is possible at all; when
I think what a scene in the universe must be opened to
a mind ere it can pray; when I reflect how the Infinite
God must estimate one whom He thinks it worth while to
put on trial amid the theatre of free souls;—all sense of
difficulty recedes from the Christian doctrine of an here
after ; all rules drawn from other races of creatures sink
absolutely away; and man appears no less ennobled
above them than if, like the Angel of the “ Revelations,”
he were standing in the sun. Under the influence of
this truth, the natural kindred of souls is infinitely
extended and deepened; exalted into independence of
change ; and glorified by the hope of sympathy and con
nexions ever fresh. The blessed family of God colonises,
not only the banks of the time-stream that passes by, but
the Alpine heights from which it flows, and the blessed
isles of the ocean to which it tends.
This sense of Communion between all ages and both
worlds, it is the business of a Church to cherish. Within
its walls, and by its ways, must the mind be surrounded
by the atmosphere in which this faith may thrive and
grow,—this family tradition of noble souls be guarded
and handed down. For this end, neither the mediation
�53
of argument nor the directness of authority will avail so
much as the just and holy discipline of the conscience
and affections. To nurture the love of greatness and
goodness in the past; to awaken confidence in the intui
tive estimates of the pure and pious heart; to glorify the
dark places of the world with some light of thought and
love; to vindicate the sanctity of death against the pre
tensions of its physical features, and penetrate its awful
spaces with the glow of prayer and hope;—is the true
method of clearing away the mists from holy expectation,
and realising the communion of Saints.
See then in complete array, the five wise Spirits of the
soul that must stand through the night of the Bride
groom’s tarrying, with their ever-constant lights of En
deavour, Humiliation, Trust, Service, and Communion.
To maintain them at their vigils is the proper end of
every Church that would maintain the Christian attitude
of life. Am I asked, by some theologic wanderer, what
then is special to this Church ? I say, chiefly this, that
these five lamps, and these alone, we believe to be held
in angel hands, and fed with the eternal aliment of truth;
nor will they ever give of their oil to nurture the emptied
lamps, which many foolish servitors of the bridegroom
have brought, and which now are flickering with their
last flame, and expiring in the smoke of error. A pretty
late hour in the watches of this world has struck: many
of the interests and controversies that once dazzled with
their flame have been self-consumed: and when, to find
how the night rolls, we look up to heaven and observe
the altered place and half-inverted form of the eternal
constellations, we know that a morning hour is drawing
on. It behoves every Christian Church to be awake and
set itself in order for a coming age, in which, as I beG
�54
heve, the strife will be something very different from that
whence existing churches obtain their several names. It
is not without some view to that Future of the Church
that I have called the five Spirits, spirits of the soul, and
have shown them to you as they rise from our nature
itself. I might with equal truth have called them cha
racteristics of Christianity, and have evoked them by
appeal to Scripture, and the analysis of Christian history.
But we are on the verge of a time, when the mere use
of an external authority, however just and moderate its
application, will cease to be of much hearty avail; and
only those elements either of Scripture or of Christian
history will have any chance of reverent preservation,
which find interpretation and response in the deeper ex
perience of Man. Whoever keeps fearlessly true to these
may feel secure; but none can say what else will survive
the perils of the present and the coming time. What mean
the strange movements of Catholicism on the one side,
and a pantheistic Socialism on the other, between which
every form of mere Protestantism is growing weaker, day
by day? Are they not a reaction against the extreme
individuality, the disintegrating tendency, of modern
Christianity ; whose unions, born in the transient enthu
siasm of reformation, cannot maintain themselves against
the habits of freedom they have created, or live upon the
dogmas they refuse to change ? Are they not both an
attempt, only prosecuted in opposite directions, to re
cover some centre of human cohesion, more powerful
than interest or judgment, around which the scattered
sympathies and dissipated energies of society may be
collected? In this common quest, the one reproduces
an authority dear to the Memory of Christendom, the
other pours out prophecies dazzling to the Hopes of all
�55
men; the one adorns the old earth, the other paints a
new. The field seems clearing fast to make room for
these great rivals; and in their mutual position the signs
are not few, that they portend a mightier contest than
Europe has seen for many an age. The hosts are already
visibly mustering. On the one hand the venerable
Genius of a Divine Past goes round with cowl and Cro
zier ; and from the Halls of Oxford and the Cathedrals
of Europe gathers, by the aspect of ancient sanctity and
the music of a sweet eloquence and the praises of conse
crated Art, a vast multitude of devoted crusaders to fight
with him for the ashes of the Fathers and the sepulchres
of the first centuries. On the other, the young Genius
of a Godless Future, with the serene intensity of meta
physic enthusiasm on his brow, and the burning songs
of liberty upon his lips, wanders through the great cities
of our world, and in toiling workshops and restless col
leges preaches the promise of a golden age, when priests
and kings shall be hurled from their oppressive seat, and
freed humanity, relieved from the incubus of worship,
shall start itself to the proportions of a God. Who shall
abide in peace the crash and conflict of this war ? He
only, I believe, whose allegiance is neither to the anti
quated Past, nor to the speculative Future; but to the
imperishable, the ever-present Soul of man as it is; who
keeps close, amid every change, to the reality of human
nature which changes not; and who, following chiefly
the revelations of the Divine will to the open and con
scious mind, and reading Scripture, history, and life, by
their interpreting light, feels the serenity and rests on
the stability of God.
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�THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND CHURCH OE THE
EIRST-BORN.
A SERMON,
PREACHED IN
HOPE-STREET NEW CHURCH,
LIVERPOOL,
ON
SUNDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 21, 1849.
By CHARLES WICKSTEED, B.A.,
MINISTER OF MILL-HILL CHAPEL, LEEDS.
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�A
SERMON.
Hebrews xii. 22-24.
“ But ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city
of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innu
merable company of angels, to the general assembly and
church of the first-born, which are written in heaven,
and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just
men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new
covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh
better things than that of Abel
Of all the desires of the present time, there is no one
more profound and general than the desire for Christian
unity, communion, and fellowship. Indeed, the craving
for agreement, for, as it were, spiritual identity, for the
support in conviction, and the comfort from conviction,
that according numbers seem to imparty has characterised
the history of Christianity through it^whole extent. On
this has been founded the determination of the Roman
Catholic Church, to preserve at all costs, at costs often
most painful to itself, its spiritual and formal unity : and
in this have originated the imitative efforts of the various
protesting churches which have sprung from it.
h 2
�60
But taught by the experience of ages, taught by the
resolute and the ever-recurring intellectual differences
of mankind, the unity at which, for the most part, the
present age is aiming, is a unity of feeling, a fellowship
of labour, a communion of love. The old desire for
unity took the form of Proselytism. Each Church sup
posing itself to be constructed especially and exclusively
after the heavenly type, it could realise no other and no
better unity than the conversion of all mankind to its
standards, and the introduction of the whole race within
the veil of its Temple. Much of this aim and expecta
tion is to be met with still. The Roman Catholic Priest
goes about, hoping to bring his Protestant neighbours
back into the true faith, and rejoicing in the prospect
which he thinks begins to dawn, that unity may be yet
achieved in England, by the return of the Church and
the nation into spiritual submission to the Papal See.
The clergyman of the English Church may still be found,
ignoring the existence of Dissent in his parish, talking of
the number of souls under his care, of spiritual destitu
tion, of there being only one church or two churches,
one school or two schools, in such and such a population,
while there may be an equal number of other churches
and other schools maintained for Eke holy purposes, but
to whose very existence, as they are not within his spiri
tual precincts, he chooses to be blind.
But though these are very important phenomena, and
show that the old dream of the outward comprehension
of all the inhabitants of a country under the same forms
and symbols, in the bosom of the same outward Church,
is being dreamed among us still; yet such is not the
tendency of the general and independent elements of
society. The liberal churchman is beginning to regard
�61
his Church as a religious community among religious
communities, and only desires permission for it to take
and keep its ground, as others are to take and keep theirs
too. The Wesleyan probably never did regard his con
ference or association as the ultimate or general form of
Christian government and fellowship, but if he ever did
so he must now be taught, by the rapid course of events,
to regard this view of it as untenable. The Independent
earnestly struggles for his theory of Congregationalism;
but so far is that theory from tending to a comprehen
sion within the limits of one outward Church and For
mulary, that it rests upon the basis of the independence
of each society. Added to these signs of hopelessness of,
or indifference to, universal dominion on the part of the
separate bodies, is the increasing desire to unite on prin
ciples which are sufficiently wide, and for purposes which
are sufficiently general, to allow each body to retain its
own peculiar standing-point.
The modern desire of union and of fellowship, then,
takes the form, not so much of proselytism as of com
prehension ; is founded, not so much on the expectation
of bringing all communions into one Church, as of bring
ing all Churches into one communion. It is distinguished
by the effort, while seeing the points of difference, to
discover the points of agreement, and, while recognising
the right of intellectual and theological variety, to bring
out into practical relief the reality of a moral harmony.
The organisations by which it has been attempted to
combine parties otherwise differing, for the expression of
some common feeling or the achievement of some common
object, however imperfect in their conception, or incom
plete in their accomplishment, are indications of the ex
istence of this desire. Contemplated in this light, the
�62
Evangelical Alliance itself is not without its interest!
For, whatever may be its exclusions, and whatever its
narrowness, it yet at least attempts to penetrate through
the mere Episcopalianism of the Churchman, the mere
Congregationalism of the Independent, the mere Me
thodism of the Wesleyan, to a common Christianity,
deeper and more vital than anything involved in these
points (important as in themselves they may be), and so
far even this, in many respects exclusive and limited,
association bears witness to the growing desire of our
times for peace combined with liberty, independence
combined with concord, and the love of truth combined
with the love of each other.
But besides this tendency towards a larger compre
hension and wider terms of union, there is a growing
dislike in most bodies, of denunciation and virulence.
The firm adhesion of a man to that Church or that Body
which is to him the depository of the purest forms of
truth, is a subject of genuine respect. But there is
less and less disposition to approve of the peculiari
ties of that division being made all-important, and
theological intolerance has now to be combined with
some striking practical excellence or moral power to
be itself tolerated. The working classes of our large
towns especially look upon the struggles and animosi
ties of sects with indifference, and even with disgust,
regarding that man as the best man who lives the best
life, and that man as the purest Christian who most re
sembles his Lord.
Two things have principally contributed to this ten
dency : First, the growing disposition to ask what are
the essentials of Christianity, and to separate from these
the adjuncts or modifications which the convictions of
�each body require it, in its own case, to make. Accord
ing to the breadth or narrowness, the grandeur or petti
ness, of our estimate of these essentials, will be the cha^
racter for comprehensiveness or exclusiveness of the
Church we found upon them. Thus, if to submit to the
authority of a particular Church be necessary to the right
reception of the Christian faith, then the essential element
of unity is conformity. If the essentials of Christianity
be a set of theological propositions laid down in a special
ecclesiastical symbol, then there is no such thing as a
Christian Church comprehending all, but only a Christian
sect requiring that all shall belong to her. But if the
essentials of Christianity are found out to be not in the
things which distinguish Churches so much as in that
which is common to all, then we may worship with a
liturgy or without a liturgy, under the ceiling of a meet
ing-house or the roof of a church, under the ministry of
clergymen ordained by Bishops, or ordained by Presby
ters, or ordained bv the voice of God in their own consciences, and in their people’s choice; the essentials of
Christianity will be alike within the reach of us all: and
there may on earth be found such a thing as free thought
combined with a common heart, individual liberty with
universal charity, and Christ may say unto us all, “ I am
the vine, ye are the branches.”
The second thing which has contributed to this desire
for Christian union, and a perception of its possibility, is
the influence of good men; the natural, catholicising
tendency of their Christian tempers, and their holy-lives.
Persons who have been in the habit of supposing belief
in certain doctrines essential to Christian character and
Christian salvation, are startled from their position by the
discovery that certain men, whose lives and characters
�64
they venerate for their purity and goodness, and about
whose salvation it is impossible for them to doubt, do
not believe all these supposed essentials. These truly
good men rise up before them in every branch of the
Church; live long, holy, and beneficent lives ; manifest
the fruits of sincere truth-loving and heavenly hearts;
and they cannot possibly conceive of such men being
driven from the presence of their God, and living in the
eternal sorrows of his displeasure.
In asking, then, who are the true Church below, we
find a very good guidance in the light reflected from this
other question, who are the true Church above ? In in
quiring whom we should consider our brethren and fellowChristians here, our greatest help will be found in the
answer of our hearts to the question, who are likely to be
of the general assembly and church of the first-born
hereafter ?
Thus there grows up, almost unconsciously, within
every man whose heart is open to the signs of human
excellence wherever discerned, a sort of Church of the
Soul, very different in its filling up and in its limitations
from any of the fixed ecclesiastical divisions around us,
which we exclusively call Churches. And we find our
selves anticipating as it were the conditions of heaven
and the judgment of God, in settling (not indeed to the
satisfaction of the logician, but in obedience to the
yearnings of our own hearts) what are the essentials of
Christian Faith and Life on earth, and who are the chil
dren of the kingdom here.
It will be my object, then, to-night, with a single eye
to the end I have in view, and without scrupling to
employ any plainness of statement which I may find
necessary to my purpose—to bring this test before your
�good sense, your conscience, and your affections, in the
most palpable form I can command.
Let us, then, vary the ordinary tenor of address, and the
customary appeals of argument and demonstration, and
inquire for Christianity by inquiring for our fellowChristians, and for the essential faith of Jesus Christ by
inquiring for the general assembly and church of the
first-born in heaven.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, a young
French ecclesiastic of extraordinary piety and virtue com
menced his career of public duty with the charge of a
seminary devoted to those who had been newly converted
to that branch of the Christian Church of which he was
himself a conscientious member. Subsequently, he went
into an unhealthy and desolate district where the greatest
cruelties had been practised against those whom he was
now desired to convert. The first demand he made of
the king was, that all armies should be removed from
the district, and that all persecution and oppression
should immediately cease. He then set himself to the
task of recovering the wanderers by kindness and per
suasion to the bosom of that Church from which they had
strayed. He lived a long life, but when removed from
that district, he watched over it and all others similarly
circumstanced, and whenever he heard of harshness and
severity sent his remonstrance to the seat of power.
From this post of duty he was removed to the most
fascinating and brilliant court of Europe. He was made
tutor to a boy of great ability, but almost ungovernable
pride and passion, but of whom it was important to the
world that he should create an accomplished man and a
virtuous Christian, for he was heir to one of the greatest
monarchies of the earth. Here, amidst his pupil’s bursts
�66
of passion, he maintained an unbending dignity, and the
proud boy soon learned to weep before him for his sins,
to drink in his instructions with eagerness, to delight in
him and to love him. Here royalty, too, received his
calm but intrepid rebuke, and power acknowledged his
sincere independence.
He was raised, but by no arts or efforts of his own, to
an archbishopric. Here the still piety, which was part
of his nature, was misapprehended. His principles and
his doctrines were misinterpreted and condemned. A
storm of calumny gathered round him. The smile of
royalty was converted into a frown, the arm of patronage
was changed into a weapon of offence—friendship turned
away from him—that Church which he had so sincerely
served, began to regard him as her enemy—and the re
vered head of it slowly and unwillingly pronounced his
condemnation. In the midst of all this (gentle, suscep
tible, modest as was his nature), he held fast to his in
tegrity. Immersed in a wearisome, protracted contro
versy, he preserved throughout his courage undaunted,
and his charity unchilled. “ God, who is the witness
of my thoughts,” says he to one of his greatest adver
saries, “ knows that, though differing with you in opi
nion, I still continue to revere you, to preserve unceas
ingly my respect, and to deplore the bitterness of this
contention.”
In the midst, and in the pauses of this storm, he was
performing the duties of his See with exemplary fidelity.
A peace-maker among the divided, a rebuker of the
dissolute, an encourager of the deserving, a father to the
poor: surrounded by the pomp of a princedom, he lived
the life of simplicity. The humblest village pulpit in his
diocese knew the sound of his voice, and the presence of
�67
his care. He would sit down in his walks with the
rustic on the grass, and utter his pure words of counsel.
He would daily have his almoners around him, to mi
nister to the necessitous; and when the evening hour
set in, he was found with his household in prayer.
Throughout all these labours, sorrows, and painful re
membrances, his only recreation was to walk. His con
versation was directed to instruction. “ I have still fresh
in my recollection,” says one, “ all the serious and im
portant subjects which were the topics of our discourse;
my ear caught with eagerness every word that issued
from his lips: his letters are still before me, and they
bespeak the purity of his sentiments, and the wisdom of
his principles. I preserve them among my papers, as
the most precious treasure which I have in the world.”
His sense of friendship was intense and pure. “ Good
friends,” says he, “ are a dangerous treasure in life; in
losing them we lose too much. I dread the charms of
friendship. Oh 1 how happy shall we be, if, hereafter,
we are together before God, loving each other in his
love, and rejoicing only in his joy, and no longer exposed
to separation.” At length the hour of death approached
him. He lay thinking of his friends, his flock, and his
Church; receiving the consolations of his faith—hearing
the selected words of the Scripture, and saying, “ Repeat
—repeat to me those holy words again.” He died as he
had lived, in sanctity—all his goods given to his stu
dents, to his clergy, to his guests, to works of piety, and
to the poor.
This man was a Roman Catholic—his name was
Fenelon.
In our own country, and nearer our own time, at the be
ginning of the present century, in a county bordering on
�68
the Principality of Wales, there resided, in a not ignoble
condition of life, a true servant of God, who took under
his care the spiritual and the temporal wants of an ex
tensive but humble neighbourhood. Diligent in busi
ness, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, he watched with
anxiety over the morals, the faith, and the happiness of
those about him. Frank and cheerful in his manners
and habits, he was full of an earnest piety. He thought
that the strictness which made no distinction between
things absolutely immoral, and things that were innocent,
or blameable only in their abuse, was prejudicial to the
interests of sincerity and religion. He was so absolutely
simple and good-natured, from the innocence of his own
heart, so little prone to consider how others might view
him, when he saw and meant no evil—that people who
were accustomed to judge of seriousness of character by
habitual length of countenance, scarcely appreciated the
religiousness of his soul, as it really lay deeply within him.
From a child he was devout. When in circumstances
of danger his mother was in alarm, the infant monitor
beside her said, “ Be still, mother; God will protect us.”
The generous liberality which compelled his parents,
when sending him to school, to sew up his money in his
pocket, lest he should give it all away upon the road,
tempered with the wiser judgment of the man, continued
with him in maturity. When the poor came to speak
to him, he always, if possible, went out to them immediately, for he said, “ the time of the poor is very valu
able to them; besides, they are more sensitive to any
apparent inattentions.”
In the midst of all this simplicity and goodness, he
was courted by the great for his talents, and for the fas
cination of his company, and his connexions opened out
�69
to him the prospect of a brilliant and distinguished
career. But there was one subject which pre-eminently
engaged his interests, away from the engagements im
mediately around him. He thought much of the super
stitions, ignorance, neglect and misery in which lands at
a distance lay under the reign of Heathenism. He heard
of a Brahmin who had gone to die on the banks of his
sacred river—but to whom a British officer had given
nourishment, and whom he had thus saved. The Brah
min lost caste by this occurrence, was avoided by his
own countrymen, became dependent on the British offi
cer, and each day, as he came for his subsistence, cursed
the hand that had saved his miserable life. “ Now,”
said he, “ if I could only rescue one such miserable crea
ture from this wretched superstition, I should think
myself repaid for any sacrifice.”
The dear claims of neighbourhood, friendship, old
family associations, and old familiar habits—the still
dearer claims of his relationship, as father, husband, bro
ther, son—made him pause for a moment, but at length he
accepted the arduous and honourable post that was as
signed him in the eastern continent. Bor three or four
years he laboured in that fatal clime, travelling from
region to region, initiating and confirming in the mild
faith of the Gospel, raising the character, and stimu
lating the zeal, of the Christian population, elevating the
condition of the natives, noticing and remonstrating
against their oppression or neglect, founding schools for
their instruction, and endeavouring to bring the blessings
of justice in their own tongue into their own neighbour
hoods, till at length he killed himself by the labours that
were too great for his strength, and left a Church in
India sorrowing as for a father.
�70
That man was a Bishop of the English Church
—his name was Reginald Heber.
An upholsterer in London had an only son. Having
been successful in his business he left him considerable
property. With this the son greatly enlarged an origi
nally small estate, lived among his tenantry, and devoted
himself to their good. The neighbourhood being un
healthy, he drained it—the cottages being badly con
structed, he rebuilt them—the people being ignorant, he
opened and supported schools. He encouraged the habit
of attending religious instructions, and warned all those
about him from places of intemperate or dissolute resort.
His health being delicate, from the commencement of
manhood he had often travelled for its improvement.
On one of these occasions, attracted by the mournful in
cident which had left Lisbon in the ruins of an earth
quake, his course was directed to the shores of Portugal.
He was seized, when on the waters, flung into captivity,
and confined in the nauseous dungeon of a jail in France.
Here, meat was flung to himself and his fellow-captives
as to dogs; they had no instruments wherewith to cut it,
and they gnawed it off the bone in the ravenousness of
their hunger. In the midst of the horrors of this capti
vity, he excited a most remarkable feeling of reliance
on his honour—was presently permitted to be at large
upon his word—and finally was sent home on the express
condition that he would return to his confinement in
France, if the English government refused to liberate a
French naval officer in his place. This promise he would
have fulfilled, if the government of his own country had
not, by their compliance with the conditions, rendered
his return unnecessary.
Years rolled by, and his life was marked by the same
�attributes of sobriety, virtue, religiousness and benevo
lence, with the addition of great efforts on behalf of cap
tives of war, with whose fate and sufferings he could now
so acutely sympathize—till he was made High Sheriff of
his county. In this official capacity he was, at Assize
time, to be met with in the prison, examining into the
condition and government of its every part, even to its
inmost cell. “ The distress of prisoners,” he says, “ of
which there are few who have not some imperfect idea,
came more immediately under any notice, when I was
Sheriff of the county of Bedford; and the circumstance
which excited me to activity in their behalf was, the see
ing some, who by the verdict of juries were declared not
guilty; some, in whom the grand jury did not find such
an appearance of guilt as subjected them to trial; and
some, whose prosecutors did not appear against them;
after having been confined for months, dragged back to
jail, and locked up again till they should pay sundry fees
to the jailer, the clerk of assize, &c. In order to re
dress this hardship, I applied to the justices of the
county, for a salary to the jailer in lieu of his fees. The
Bench were properly affected with the grievance, and
willing to grant the relief desired; but they wanted a
precedent for charging the county with the expense. I
therefore rode into several neighbouring counties in
search of a precedent; but I soon learned that the same
injustice was practised in them; and looking into the
prisons, I beheld scenes of calamity, which I grew daily
more and more anxious to alleviate.”
You know the rest—you know the heroic career of
philanthropy which filled every town and county of Great
Britain, and every country of the world, with the name
of this great social benefactor. Devotedly attached to his
�72
own views of Christian truth, in the work of Christian
benevolence, to him Christian, Mussulman and Hindoo
were all alike ; he would have risked his life to save any.
In a remote province of Russia, stricken by a fever caught
by attendance on another, lay at length the philanthropist,
at the goal of all his earthly labours. In his memoran
dum book he had been writing, “ May I not look on
present difficulties or think of future ones in this world,
as I am but a pilgrim or wayfaring man that tarries but a
night; this is not my home; but may I think what God
has done for me, and rely on his power and grace.”—
“ My soul, remember how often God has sent an answer
of Peace, Mercies in the most seasonable times—how
often better than thy fears, exceeded thy expectations.
Oh! why should I distrust this good and faithful God ?
In His word, He hath said, ‘ In all my ways acknowledge
Him, and He will direct thy path.’ But, Lord! leave me
not to my own wisdom, which is folly, nor to my own
strength, which is weakness. Help me to glorify Thee
on earth, and finish the work Thou givest me to do.”
“ Suffer,” he said to his friends as he was dying, “ suffer
no pomp to be used at my funeral, nor any monument,
nor any monumental inscription whatsoever, to mark
where I am laid: lay me quietly in the earth, place a sun
dial over my grave, and let me be forgotten.” This man
was a Calvinistic Dissenter—his name was Howard.
More than a hundred years ago a pious boy left a
country parsonage, the abode of his father, and entered
the Charter-house school in London. From thence he
went to Christ Church College, Oxford. There he ad
vanced, not only in the learning of the place, but in
habits of Christian seriousness and piety, which were not
of the place. Associating himself with a few others like
�73
minded with himself, they devoted a portion of their
time to a study of the Scriptures and to serious reading.
Always of a moral and religious disposition, he might be
said to have obeyed the commandments from his youth.
But this he soon began to feel was not enough. He
began to visit the sick in prison and the poor in their
homes,- prayed and exhorted; avoided all trifling ac
quaintance ; and commenced the religious observance of
the ancient fasts of the Church, keeping Wednesdays
and Fridays with a distinct religiousness. In the midst
of all this he had much heaviness and fear—was often
weak in his new faith, and of doubtful mind. Yet keep
ing his eye upon his object, he practised abstemiousness—
underwent exposure to sudden changes of climate, heat
and cold, fatigue and dangers, which were, under Pro
vidence, to prepare him for his work. Presently he
stepped forth to awaken a drowsy, careless world, sunk
in sin and sensuality. The conventionalism of society
was shocked.
Though a clergyman of the English
Church, the door of the English Church was shut against
him. But Newgate was open to him; the hill-side, and
the high-way, and the market-place, were free to him;
and submitting to be made thus vile, as he expressed it,
against his own natural taste and liking, he preached
with ardour the word of warning; and while he created
great disquietude of heart in those who heard him, at the
dreadful nature of sin and the just wages of it, he spake
again to the storm and tempest of these souls, and im
mediately there was a great calm.
All these services were not rendered without great
contradiction of sinners. The brutal people rose up
against their benefactor; thereby showing what need
they had of him. Alluding to the gradual growth of
�74
these outrages, he says, “ By how gentle degrees does
God prepare us for his will! Two years ago a piece of
brick grazed my shoulders. It was a year after that a
stone struck me between the eyes. Last month I received
one blow, and this evening two; one before we came
into the town, and one after we were gone out; but both
were as nothing; for though one man struck me on the
breast with all his might, and the other on the mouth
with such a force that the blood gushed out immediately,
I felt no more pain from either of the blows than if they
had touched me with a straw.” At length he was sur
rounded with fellow-labourers in this cause, in this great
and good cause of the conversion of the heathens at home.
He made rules, he organised a society, he appointed dis
tricts, and preachers, and meetings. And he nobly says,
“ The thing which I was greatly afraid of all this time,
and which I resolved to use every possible method of
preventing, was a narrowness of spirit, a party zeal, a
being straitened in our own bowels; that miserable
bigotry which makes many so unready to believe that
there is any work of God but among themselves. I
thought it might be a help against this frequently to read
to all who were willing to hear, the accounts I received
from time to time of the work which God is carrying on
in the earth, both in our own and other countries; not
among us alone, but among those of various opinions and
denominations. For this I allotted one evening in every
month; and I find no cause to repent of my labour: it
is generally a time of strong consolation to those who
love God, and all mankind for his sake, as well as a means
of breaking down the partition-wall which either the craft
of the devil or the folly of men has built up, and of en-<
couraging every child of God to say, ‘ Whosoever doth
�the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my
brother, and sister, and mother.’ ”
No doubt in all this a strong will was manifested, and
was accompanied by the exercise of no little authority.
Considerable means poured in upon him to help him in
the accomplishment of his extensive work. Selfish men
were not slow to attribute to him the baseness which
would have characterised themselves. But death, the
great earthly judge, vindicated his character from this
calumny, for he died possessed of nothing but his
books.
This man, the spiritual father and regenerator of
many thousand souls, was unwillingly the greatest
Schismatic the Church of England has ever known—his
name was Wesley.
I must touch upon two characters I wish still to call
to your remembrance with much less detail. One there
is, the record of whose life must have recently passed
through the hands of many now present, who was worthy
of being enrolled among those women who followed our
Lord unto his death, and ministered to his last necessi
ties. The gentle woman who could throw off the allure
ments of a life of refinement—who could submit to the
distressing demands of public duty upon a shrinking
nature—who could go with her spotless purity into the
midst of the most abandoned of her sex, and appease
the anger and calm the passions of guilty men—to
whom the coarse ribaldry, the loathsome filth, and the
tomb-like uncleanness of soul, which characterised the
inmates of a jail, were no barrier to the sun-like beams
of her penetrating Christian love—that woman—the
observer of no ordinances, the acknowledger of neither
Bishop nor Presbyter, member of neither Protestant
i 2
�76
nor Catholic Church—could not have stood the test of
any of the Churches. She was a Quaker—and her name
was Elizabeth Ery.
It is difficult sometimes to return in memory to the pre
judices, the indifference, and the doubt with which great
works have been regarded in their commencement: it is
difficult to realise the state of feeling which made a given
labour necessary, but which now no longer exists, the very
labour which it called forth having driven it away almost
from our recollections. But the corn of wheat, which
first fell into the ground, abiding now no longer alone,
but bringing forth much fruit, must not be forgotten.
Not many years has the tomb closed over the remains
of a humbler and less known labourer in the vineyard
of God, than any that I have mentioned. Placed in
early life upon one of those streams of social good, the
channels of which Society scoops out for herself, and in
which the majority of her sons are content, and wisely
content, to bear their portion of the freight of human
duty,—he of whom I speak devoted himself to the service
of the Christian ministry. Eor many years he was happy
and content to do the work of an evangelist among his
neighbours and parishioners, shedding the light of a pure
heart upon their daily Eves, healing the bitterness of
their sorrows by the overflowing balsam of his sympathy,
and each week assembling them together to point out to
them again the brightening way of truth and heaven.
At length his heart was smitten with the thought of
those who never saw him, and whom he never saw. Be
hind the goodly array of pure young faces, of sober man
hood, and reverend old age, that stood before him in the
Church—behind the attentive countenances, the cleanly
robes and the decorous manners which the Lord’s day
�weekly called before him—his mind’s eye saw a gather
ing group of guilt, intemperance, and crime—of sorrow
ing, sinning men and women, and of children, with
their tears of pain drying upon their unwashed cheeks.
In the very midst of those who came to him to hear the
sounds of peace and holiness in that happy temple, his
soul filled with the thoughts of those who never came. As
he stood upon the steps of the doors which at his touch
were to throw open to him homes of cheerful innocence
and competence, radiant with a welcome to himself, his
heart grew full and heavy with the remembrance of those
at whose door he never stopped, and who never sat at
good men’s feasts. He thought of those great cities in
his own young country, of those greater cities in other
lands, older in sorrows, and more crowded with crime.
His own more limited range among the poor of his
prosperous, healthy village-town, satisfied not the craving
of his sympathy with the wide-spread humanity that
pined in neglected sorrow, and uncombatted vice. He
threw up his easy, happy charge, he went to the nearest
great city, to study and to alleviate its unseen woes, and
to stir up the heart of philanthropy and religion to the
obligation and necessity of this work. Now that Bishops
organise large companies of Missionaries for this very
work; now that Town Missions send forth their hun
dreds of labourers; now that almost every considerable
society of Christians in our large towns bears a part in
this holy undertaking, as an obvious and indispensable
part of their Christian duty,—it is difficult to believe how
new and strange this very work appeared, even to the
best of men, twenty years ago—and how this apostle of
the neglected, this remembrancer of the forgotten, toiled
to convince men’s judgments, and to satisfy their hearts
�78
of the possibility of taking religion and hope into the
very homes of the poor.
Yes ! I remember him when he landed on these
shores, with that countenance, the light whereof was a
divine charity. I remember him when he came among
us, new from the actual personal fulfilment of his own
scheme, and about to return to it again, to die in it.
Yes ! I remember him, with his thrilling tones, and his
overflowing heart, and his consecrated life, and I re
member, too, that at that time there was no such thing
in this country as a Domestic Mission to the outcast of
society, and the neglected and forgotten of Christian, as
semblies, and that most men thought that there never
could be!
This man, so full of purity, so rich in human tenderness,
so affluent in divine forbearance—this man, the friend of
the heroic Follen, the spiritual brother of the high-souled
Channing, and yet the daily companion of the hardest
and most neglected beings in the streets of Boston—was
a Unitarian, and his name was Tuckerman.
Now to which of all these men wTill even the Bigot
venture to deny a place within the Infinite Bather’s all
comprehending mercy ?—a place in the reverent regards
of the great human family ? a place in the heaven of the
just made perfect ?—which of all these will he ven
ture, in any assembly of the good and wise on earth, to
declare unfit to share in the inheritance he anticipates
for himself? Whichsoever of these sainted men is the
object of his intolerant presumption, there is not one
high soul in the world that will cry Amen to his ana
thema. And yet to the Roman Catholic I say, here, in
this group, is to be found almost every possible form of
schism from the unity of your Church ! To the Church
�79
of England man, I say, here are a Quaker and a Uni
tarian ! To the Unitarian, I say, here is the professor
of what you call the stern and gloomy faith of Calvin,
here the submissive subject of the See of Rome ! Not
withstanding, as surely as our Lord said of the little
children, “ of such is the kingdom of heaven,” we may
say of these men, of such is the general assembly and
church of the first-born, whose names are writ in heaven 1
When you ask me, then, for the essentials of Christianity,
I point you to the belief these men had in common ! When
you ask me for the Holy Catholic faith, I tell you, it is
there ! It was not the belief in transubstantiation in one,
or the belief in episcopal ordination in another, or a be
lief in vicarious sacrifice in another, or the neglect of
public religious ordinances in another, or the mental
adoption of the doctrine of the divine unity in another—
that made of him a child of God, and a true follower of
Jesus Christ; but it was that which each had in addi
tion, that which each had, I will say, in superiority, to
these special characteristics of his individual faith—first,
a hearty sincerity in the belief he did profess; and, se
condly, an actual incorporation into his own spiritual
being, of the life and mind of Jesus Christ.
There is one possible conclusion, however, from these
considerations, against which I would earnestly warn you;
it is the adoption, as any result of this survey, of that in
fidel and worldly latitudinarianism, which proclaims it as
indifferent, what mode of faith the individual mind adopts
or professes. The survey of the lives of these great and
good men teaches us nothing of the kind. Each one of
these men commenced, as the very basis of his spiritual
existence, with being earnest and sincere in his own pro
fessions and belief. Each one of them laid the founda
�80
tion of his character in serious thought, and in honest
confession.
We are not to stand before this noble army of holy
men, and, as a result of the contemplation of their excel
lency and their glory, say, “ then it is indifferent what
form of Christianity we shall profess—any is sufficient, all
are good.” Do we suppose that was the spirit in which
they formed their faith ? On the contrary, these men
wrought out their faith with the profoundest anxiety, and
took reverently to their souls every word of God. Fenelon
would have been no Fenelon had he been merely a con
forming Catholic, and not a true and earnest man. Re
ginald Heber would have been no confessor had he been
in heart a Unitarian or a Congregationalist.
These things cannot be. Nothing great or good is
ever founded on a lie. These men were sincere; and
though we may not be able to see how the specialities of
their belief influenced their characters, they were without
a doubt wrought deeply into the tissue of their souls,
were not put on as a garment in which to go forth to
meet the world, or in an easy indifference as to what
profession they should make, but formed a genuine part
of their individual religious being. It was this very
earnestness, this profoundness and sincerity of individual
conviction, that made Christianity to them so intense and
vital an influence. They received the faith of Jesus
Christ under that form which appeared to them, after
grave reflection, to be the purest and the best; and
henceforth it could exist as a personal influence in no
other form whatever to their hearts. When will men see
that he to whom all faiths are alike has no earnest faith
at all ? It is the very lesson of these men’s lives that they
had convictions, determinate convictions, convictions that
�81
made them what they were, and that they were faithful
to them.
It is indeed a holy and delightful thought, that we
may also conclude, (without denying the reality, and to
the men the necessity, of those special and distinctive
peculiarities in which the common faith of Christ ap
proved itself respectively to their consciences,) that the
great saving power of their faith consisted, not in that
which distinguished them from one another, but in that
common treasure which lay at the foundation of all their
differences, in that obedience to God, that love to Christ,
that charity to man, that hope of heaven, in which they
all rejoiced together; that carefulness of mind with which
they sought the truth; that conscientious fidelity with
which they maintained it; that vigilant self-discipline
with which they applied its lessons : and that joyful hope
with which they rested on its promises.
It is not for me, my friends, to speak of the holy
lessons to which this temple shall, from week to week,
be devoted, in the building up of human souls for the
conflicts of earth, and the inheritance of heaven. But I
believe I may with certainty specify two general objects
in its erection; that it stands as an offering to since
rity, to the sacredness of the individual conscience, and
as the provision of an altar for an honest and truthful
sacrifice, such as they who come here may truthfully and
earnestly offer: and that, in the next place, it stands in
determined Protest against those accretions and additions
which Churches too generally enforce upon Christian
belief, as essential to salvation, and in restoration of that
old and only catholic Christianity which is common to all
Churches, though obscured and weakened in so many.
Por we, too, in common with all the holy men whose
�lives and characters we have been considering—we, too,
believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Hea
ven and Earth—we, too, in common with all these holy
men, believe that he hath, in his merciful providence, sent
Jesus Christ to turn away every one of us from his ini
quities, and to be the way, the truth, and the life to us
—and we, too, in common with all these holy men, look
forward to a life beyond the valley of the shadow, where
our sins and our sorrows shall be lost in the light of the
benign presence of God; and trusting in the mercy of
Him who forgiveth, we long, with them, to be prepared,
by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kind
ness, by the holy spirit, and by love unfeigned, to join
that blest assembly and church of the first-born, which
are written in Heaven.—Amen.
�NOTE.
In the above Sermon—designed to promote a feeling of
eatholic charity, in an audience consisting of a variety of de
nominations—the question remains unsolved, and indeed
unattempted, Does any one of these forms of Christian doc
trine accord more than the rest with the teachings of the
New Testament, and is any one more conducive than the
rest to the realization of Christian life and character ? That
this must be the case with some one or other of them, no one
can doubt, for no one can pay attention to their several cha
racteristics, and believe them to be identical in their essence
or in their influence. That any one of them actually reaches
the ideal standard which these two tests imply, is more than,
the writer at least is able to assert. He is much more
disposed to believe that each of these forms of Faith contains
a portion—and the purest and most vital portion—of Christian
truth and influence ; but that in actual development, that
portion in each Church suffers from a relative exaggeration,
or a relative neglect—the exaggeration leading to an exclu
sion of other important principles, necessary to be associated
with it in an integral Faith—and the neglect leading to a
gradual and half unconscious admission of other and inferior
principles, which ultimately predominate and overwhelm it.
The apparent result of this view is Eclecticism. But Eclec
ticism is an artificial and critical process, landing us in a
result which is usually destitute of all homogeneity, a collec
tion from without, under the guidance of the judgment,
�rather than a natural integral production of the soul within.
It is a kind of Peripateticism among the sects—alternately
assimilating and rejecting the elements of actually existing
Churches. Surely the old, but rarely realized, idea, of a recur
rence to the New Testament itself, as containing the spirit of
Christianity in its purest form, and to the life of Jesus Christ,
as affording the only perfect instance of that spirit exemplified
in humanity, involves a far sounder principle. It is a truth
often overlooked in these discussions, but nevertheless to be
borne carefully in mind, that no human being can tell on
what proportion the peculiarities, the differentia of the Roman
Catholic form of Christianity, entered into the composition of
the mind and character of Fenelon—any more than he can
tell in what proportion Calvinism entered into the spiritual
fabric of Howard, or Unitarianism into that of Tuckerman.
It may be—and this is probably nearer the truth—that the
distinctive peculiarities of their special forms of faith were in
each case the subordinate parts of their spiritual system—
that the common essential Christian truth excluded from
none of their systems, but, lying at the base of all, was the
great element in their personal and actuating faith; and
that this fact was precisely the influence which made them the
excellent men they were—as it is probably the fact which
seems to make men of the highest spiritual excellence almost
always of one interior family and creed.
A great mind is able to penetrate beyond the outworks of
its creed, and lay hold of the citadel. But ordinary minds
rest in those very outworks. With them the accretions are
the great thing : and therefore it is, that the purification
of popular belief is a work of great necessity still, for in the
subordinate and comparatively uninfluential elements of the
various prevailing forms of Christian belief, pressed upon the
notice of the general mind, as they are, by the very differences
and antagonism they create, the ordinary mind takes its chief
position, and of these it takes the firmest hold. The doc
trine, then, of this Sermon—the salvability of all these good
and great men of every Church, does not alter the duty of
�85
preventing the saving truth, which they were able to discern
and make their own through all that surrounded it, from
being overwhelmed and paralyzed by accretions—preventing
in fact the saving truth from being saving to the hearts of
the multitude.
The truth appears therefore to stand thus : Each Christian
Church contains within itself the means of salvation, and the
essentials of Truth—but each contains them in various
degrees of development, some having them more perfect in
one direction, others in another. By the first of these posi
tions, we are bound to a universal charity—by the second, to
mutual help, correction and enlightenment. Far from mono
polizing all Christian truth—still less all Christian excellence—
and less still, all Christian salvation—for that religious body to
which the writer belongs—he yet should say, if by so vague
a word he could denote his own version of the Christian
Faith, that among prevailing systems the theory of Unitarianism appears to him to be in itself the purest, the
highest, and the most enduring; and when it shall have
engaged in its development and application a larger number
of the best minds of the community, and the attention of its
adherents shall not be engrossed in its dogmatical defence
(as by the necessity of its position is too much now the case),
it must necessarily produce loftier and more extended spi
ritual results than the world has ever yet witnessed—that it
must necessarily produce the highest characters, and the
greatest number of them: that is to say, the belief in one
undivided and infinite God, our Father, is in itself, and in its
influences, necessarily higher and holier than the present
scholastic division of that unity into natures and persons;—
the belief that God was as fully manifested in J esus Christ,
as the Divine can be in the Human, affords a better support
and guide to our spiritual nature, than the dogma that Christ
himself was the Infinite God;—the desire to partake of the
divine nature in Christ, and to grow up into a resemblance
in all things unto him which is our Head, is a more holy and
influential desire for the heart of man, than a reception of
�86
the doctrine of a vicarious sacrifice, a substituted righteous
ness and a substituted punishment;—and, finally, a prospect
of futurity, in which the fruits of the seeds sown in this life,
whether they be good or whether they be evil, shall be reaped
by each man in a world of greater light and higher progress
beyond the grave, is in itself truer, and in its influences more
efficient, than a belief in the ordinary twofold division of an
everlasting Heaven and an everlasting Hell, into one or other
of which each man is to depart at his resurrection.
This form of Christianity, then, which is at present distinguishedfrom others bythe designation “Unitarianism,” is still,
in the writer’s opinion, a very noble thing to avow—a very
righteous and holy cause for which to labour and to suffer
reproach.
THE END.
Printed by Richard Kinder, Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey.
�May be had of John Chapman, 142, Strand, and all Booksellers,
Price 6d.,
PAUSE AND RETROSPECT;
The Last Discourse preached in Paradise-street Chapel, Liverpool.
BY
JAMES
MARTINEAU.
With an Address on occasion of laying the Foundation-stone of the New Church in
Hope-street.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
In two volumes 12mo, price 7s. 6d. each,
ENDEAVOURS AFTER THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.
Each Volume may be had separately.
ALSO, THIRD EDITION,
Price 4s. paper cover; 4s. 6d., cloth,
THE RATIONALE OF RELIGIOUS INQUIRY;
OB.
THE QUESTION STATED,
OF
REASON, THE BIBLE, AND THE CHURCH.
In one vol. 8vo, price 7s. 6d.,
LECTURES IN THE LIVERPOOL CONTROVERSY.
1. THE BIBLE, WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT IS NOT;
2. THE DEITY OF CHRIST.
3. THE ATONEMENT.
4. CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MORAL EVIL.
5. CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST AND WITHOUT RITUAL.
WITH INTRODUCTION, AND PRELIMINARY CORRESPONDENCE.
Bach Lecture may be had separately.
�In 12mo, price 3s. 6d.,—to Congregations, 2s. 6d.,—bound in cloth,
HYMNS FOR THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND HOME.
COLLECTED AND EDITED
BY
JAMES
MARTINEAU.
SIXTH EDITION.
Congregations requiring a supply should make application to the Editor, Liverpool.
.a
Price 21s.,
THIRD EDITION.
HOLY SONGS AND MUSICAL PRAYERS.
*
Composed or adapted, and harmonized for Four Voices, with separate
accompaniments for the Pianoforte and Organ.
By J. R. OGDEN, Esa.
EDITED BY
JAMES MARTINEAU.
A set of Sixty-two Compositions, of which three-fourths are original, expressly designed for
Hymns in the above Collection.
The Supplement to the former Editions may be had separately, price 7s.
Price 6d.,
IRELAND AND HER FAMINE.
A DISCOURSE.
Price 6d.,
THE BIBLE AND THE CHILD.
A DISCOURSE.
On the 1st of February, May, August, and November,
Price 2s. 6d.,
THE PROSPECTIVE REVIEW.
EDITED BY
Messrs. J. J, TAYLER.
J. H. THOM.
C. WICKSTEED.
J. MARTINEAU.
Respice, Aspice, Prospice.
St. Bernard
�
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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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Discourses on occasion of the dedication of Hope-Street New Church, Liverpool, Thursday, October 18, and Sunday, October 21, 1849
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Place of Publication: London
Collation: 86, [2] p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Contents: The dedication of the Christian temple to the worship and service of God: a sermon preached on Thursday, October 18th, 1849 / Thomas Madge -- The Watch-night lamps: a discourse preached on the first Sunday of public worship, October 21, 1849, in Hope-Street New Church, Liverpool / James Martineau -- The General Assembly and Church of the First-Born: a sermon preached in Hope-Street New Church, Liverpool on Sunday evening, October 21, 1849 / Charles Wicksteed. A selection of related titles from the publisher's lists on unnumbered pages at the end. Printed by Richard Kinder, London. Date given in Roman numerals.
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Madge, Thomas
Martineau, James
Wicksteed, Charles
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1849
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John Chapman
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Conway Tracts
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THE CHURCH OF THE PRESENT, AND
THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE.
AN ADDRESS,
DELIVERED IN THE
CONGREGATIONAL CHAPEL, MOSELEY ROAD,
-
.>.•
BIRMINGHAM,
8th MAY, 1870.
BY
MATTHEW MACFIE,
ON THE OCCASION OF HIS RESIGNING THE CONGREGATIONAL MINISTRY,
AFTER FIFTEEN YEARS' SERVICE.
PUBLISHED BY REQUEST.
“Our little systems have their day,
They have their day and cease to be,
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.”—In Memoriam.
BIRMINGHAM : E. C. OSBORNE, 84, NEW STREET.
LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & Co.
1870.
PRICE SIXPENCE,
�Those who heard the following Address will observe several passages
introduced in its printed form which were omitted, for want of time, in its
delivery. A few sentences here and there, too, are cast in a different
mould.
�AN ADDRESS, &c.
Matthew 6-10.—“Thy kingdom come."
A distinguished foreigner, himself a true Christian, a few
years since said, in a select circle : “ I begin to doubt whether
Christianity has a future in the world.” EWhyso?” asked
one present, in surprise at so dark a saying from such a
quarter. “ Because,’! he replied, neither in India, nor in
America, nor anywhere in all Europe, does any of the govern
ments called ‘ Christian’—I do not say do what is right—but
even affect and pretend to take the Right as the law of
action. Whatever it was once, Christianity is now, in all the
great concerns of nations, a mere ecclesiasticism, powerful for
mischief, but helpless and useless for good. Therefore I begin
to doubt whether it has a future; for if it cannot become
anything better than it is, it has no right to a future in God’s
world.”*
These grave words of one so wise and devout should, perhaps,
be taken “with a grain of salt.” But many a thoughtful and
earnest Englishman will feel bound to admit that, to a certain
extent, they are too true, and hit a blot in our practical religious
life as a professedly Christian community. As far as consis
tency is concerned in the application of our sacred writings to
the affairs of national life, do we not present a striking contrast
even to some semi-barbarous nations ? The religious traditions
of India teach that the Brahmins were born from the head of
their god, and the Sudras from his feet; and caste, with all its
cruel exclusiveness, is the logical outcome of this doctrine. The
Buddhists revolted from this article of Hindoo faith, and we
are not surprised, therefore, to find prevailing in China a sort
of Social Democracy. The Mussulman believes the Koran to be
* From an article by F. W, Newman on “the weakness of Protestantism,”
�4
his moral and spiritual guide for this life and the next, and the
laws and usages of Turkey are consistently enough framed on
the prophet’s model. It is otherwise with the Christian nations
of the West. They boast a higher civilization than that of the
despised Orientals. They possess a faith (I speak of the mass
of Europeans) which they hold to be the only true Revelation
of religious truth and duty to the world; and yet the moral
teaching of the New Testament—zealously contended for in
our orthodox churches—is strangely ignored in our political
and social life. Think, for instance, of the incongruous pro
ceedings of the British legislature. With one hand it upholds,
from professed zeal for the spiritual and moral good of the
nation, a costly Established Church, and with the other hand
it mutilates every just and noble measure brought before
it; so that if ever a good bill passes into law at all, it usually
comes to the people an emasculated thing—the mangled off
spring of compromise and expediency. Is not our English
common law .borrowed from Pagan Rome ? And up to this
nineteenth century of the Christian era, it is notorious that
the international disputes of Christian states, glorying, theore
tically, in the forgiving and peaceful principles of Jesus, can
not, as a rule, be settled, without the slaughter of millions to
propitiate mutual hatred and jealousy. We should accuse our
preachers of heresy, if they did not tell us that all men are to
be loved and cherished as brethren; and yet in the very
House of Prayer, as well as in our every day life, we file off
into classes, and raise up the unhallowed distinctions of rank
and wealth, extremely attentive to those in least need of our
sympathy and help, and standing quietly by while untold
numbers of our fellow-countrymen perish in misfortune, igno
rance, and shame.
Well, then, in this strange state of national contradictions
the Christian church stands forth, reiterating her claims as the
one divinely-appointed agent for applying the balm of truth
and love to the social wounds of Humanity, ever ready to take
credit for all the spiritual and moral good effected among men
under this Dispensation. Many, quite competent to judge, and
with no wish to disparage the efforts of the church, take leave
to doubt whether that credit is always due. But at any rate
�5
it is to be feared that the sects of Christendom, have not always
been careful to reflect fairly the spirit and essence of Christ’s
religion. Divisions about trifles of dogma have drained off the
strength that ought to have been given to the improvement of
the masses, physically, intellectually and morally, and have
driven the higher intellect of the country beyond the pale of
modern churches. The most enlightened of the population
have ceased to take the least interest in Sunday services, and
every year witnesses secessions from the sects, and brings more
powerful opposition from the enemy. Different schools of
church theology wax more and more bitter in their jealousy
toward each other. Dr. Pusey accuses Bishop Bickersteth of
holding unworthy views of the "sawfamentsjthese two
“brethren in Christ” unite in charging Bishop Temple with
deadly error, and in denouncingyDissenters from the established
church as unauthorised religious <g^ides. Nor is forbearing
charity between members of evangelica^n.©.mcon|prmist churches
always so conspicuous as to call forth th^exclamftion, “ Behold,
how these Christians love one anotlie$ ! ”
This, then, is the strange spectacle the avowed disciples of
Christ present to the world, each sect believing their church
the true one, all vying in their reverence for one book as the
perfect source of religious truth, equally earnest in asking
Divine guidance in the study of it, and yet all intensely differ
ing from each other about its meaning; and this difference not
confined to what they deem secondary points, but touching
the very essentials of salvation. , One naturally asks: Can
this incoherent mass of sects, with their endless and conflicting
metaphysical dogmas and varieties of ritual and ill-disguised
jealousies of one another, be the church of Him who did
not strive or cry—“the meek and lowly Jesus ” ? I rejoice to
believe that multitudes of His true followers—like the seven
thousand in the time of Elijah who had not bent the knee to
the idol—are included in the institutions of organized Christi
anity now. But the institutions themselves, as a whole, in the
judgment of many, are relics of superstitious times, and are
fast losing their hold on the talent and culture of mankind—
powerless to leaven the mind and life of civilized nations.
The “ secular ” press, as a teacher, has a vastly larger and more
�6
enlightened audience than the pulpit. The strongest spirits,
if they frequent Sabbath assemblies at all, do so mostly for
the sake of setting an example to the weak and the ignorant,
who are always more impressed by priestly authority and
church ordinances than by abstract principles, religious or
moral. What then is the goal to which events are tending ?
Must we share the fears of the distinguished foreigner I have
referred to, that Christianity is dying out and has no future;
and that religion and morality are doomed to the same grave
with itself? Or will there be a resurrection out of this threatened
decay of the Christian faith, of all that is real and vital in it ?
I believe that when a system or an organization has done its
work, it is the will of God that it should give place to another
more suited to the genius and wants of the times, and this, in
the opinion of many great thinkers, is to be the fate of existing
churches. Most certainly history strongly favours that opinion.
But I have no fear about the future of Christianity as taught
by Jesus, and as distinguished from the myths that have crept
into the record of His life, and from the metaphysical theology
over which his name is profanely called. I believe it is
destined, in its essence, sooner or later, to be the religion of the
whole world, because it is written, in characters more indelible
than those in any book, however “ sacredit is written in the
very nature of man. There is much in the present state of the
church to cause pain, but nothing to discourage our hopes in
reference to the future of “ pure and undefiled religion.” The
laws of the universe are laws of progress, and so far from the
sun of religious development having reached its meridian, we
are only as yet in the grey dawn of a brighter day. Humanity
is still in its intellectual and moral childhood. Organic life has
from the beginning been shaping itself into higher types
under laws of progress. The advance of civilization is marked
by the strides made by men from the age of flint to the age of
gold, and still its course is onward. From the period of the
Magna Charta our political institutions have developed into
their present freeness, and will continue to expand till even
the most liberal Reformers of to-day will be looked back upon
as the fossils of a slower and a duller time. Why, then, should
we despair of the future of religious thought and life ? It
�7
were ungrateful to reproach the church of the past or of the
present. All great systems of thought and activity are the
creatures of their age, and cannot reasonably be expected to
rise above the level of those outward conditions for which they
are adapted and prepared. They have no mission to the future.
But the history of Religion clearly proves that it always has
been controlled by thefllaw of progress, and so it will ever
continue to be#-. From the worship of
men haw risen to
the worship of One Pw^on, and the religion of Monotheism
has developed from the grim conception of God as a ruler
which prevailed uncte® Mosaism, into that more tender and
*
worthy conception of Him as a great and loving JWAer under
Christianity. Early contact with Hearf^aMm- m8I State-craft
marred the original beauty and^eajMaed the natiwqpower of
the Christian God, and fb^cemuri^^ we kmvaJjltopffitianity
lay like a corpse,—the only beautiful thing about i^ibeing the
embroidered winding sheet
But the. Reform
ation of the sixteenth century fewied. therfmMllectual and
spiritual life of Europe a step»MmMmii^Mit- was before; and
again the fulness of time has come, I venture to think, for a
second Reformation. Let us look and labour
Let us
hail the jubilant note® l^sdKDn every side which “ ring in the
Christ that is to be.” Old churches are fast breaking up in
decay, with their effete theologies and formal observances.
Many minds already descry the di® morning twilight that
will usher in the Church 0/ tAe Fufru/re.
In what remains of this discourse
to say a few words
on the Church of the Present, as compared with the
Church of the Futu^MI
I. The sources of religious thought will be wider in the
Church of the Future $han they are Mj the Church of the
Present.
Before the days of Luther the Bible was hardly known to
the laity, or even to the- clergy of Europ® as ajbody. So that
whatever theories have b<Wffi held by Christians as to its
Inspiration and Infallibility are mainly jgonfined to the past
three centuries. Me®» previously believed in the Infallibility
of a church, and driven from that shelter, but still clinging to
�8
the fancy that they must have some human symbol of Divine
authority to cling to, the second generation from the Reformers
betook themselves to faith in the infallibility of a book. And
with the pronounced followers of Calvin, Knox, and the Puri
tans the battle cry still is, “ The Bible and the Bible alone the
Religion of Protestants.” They hold this book to be the sole
authoritative, certain and final Revelation of the moral char
acter and will of God bearing on the eternal interests of His
creatures. They believe that God chose one nation from the
beginning and “made known his ways” to them, mysteriously
leaving all other nations in hopeless darkness and death. They
believe that to the Jews this revelation was made in symbol
and prophecy, and that it was reserved to our era to receive
that more perfect substance of spiritual truth of which
Judaism was but the appointed type and shadow. They
believe that in the life, teaching, death and resurrection of
Jesus, and in the alleged writings of certain of his apostles,
we have a miraculous unveiling of all that was needed to
“ make us wise unto salvation.” It is not wonderful, there
fore, that this collection of writings, affirmed to have so vital
a significance to us, should be diligently and prayerfully
studied by theologians and private Christians; and that, how
ever ignorant English children may be of the history of
Greece and Rome, China and America, most of them should
know something of the history of that ancient people to whom
God is believed to have been related by a special supernatural
Revelation. The kernel of critical inquiry however, in regard
to the credibility and authority of the Bible as a Revelation lies
in the history of the Canon. On this I would fain speak at
large, but may not in the limited space of time allotted to a
sermon. But be our views on this topic what they may,
that man would betray not only ignorance but impiety who
could think or speak without reverence of the “ sacred books ’
of any nation, especially of the Bible. Whatever mistakes
may be in it affecting matters of science, history, and of the
Divine government, it contains an interesting record of the
religious thought and life of a people who attained a loftier
idea of God than the surrounding nations of their time. The
noble aspirations of Hebrew patriarchs, seers and poets, as
�9
breathed in their lives and their utterances, will stir the
spiritual instincts of true souls for ever. And what shall we
say of Him who is the central figure in the Book,—the grandest
man, whose teaching swept all the keys of moral thought and
spiritual feeling, like the fingers of a God, and struck chords
of love and peace in sincere hearts, and notes of terror and
self-condemnation in those that were hollow and base ? What
shall we say of His life, so rich beyond that of ordinary lives
in meek wisdom, in unconscious self-denial, in holy patience,
and in humility, unsullied even by the shadow of that most
subtle and impalpable vice of the mind, spiritual pride ? What
shall we say of His death, that purest and most triumphant
sacrifice to Truth and the world’s highest good ? Who can read
the sketches the New Testament affords of the first planting of
Christianity, without feeling that it marks the passage of man
kind into a new stage of religious developmenwaccount for the
origin of the movement as you may ? gfflfen we have the
Epistles to the early churches, abounding in allusions seen to
be very apt if read in the light of the circumstances of those
*
to whom they were addressed, but utterly bewildering and
mischievous if interpreted literally throughout, and applied, as
they still too often are, without discrimination, to men of all
ages and climes. But stripping these letters, semi-Jewish in
great part, of their local and figurative dress, we shall find in
them thoughts and counsels that will be earnestly pondered
and cherished even in the days of the world’s maturest man
hood. It is not surprising, then, that the Bible should have
so conspicuous a place assigned it in our homes and churches,
and that it should be introduced to sanctify all the great
events of our lives.
But, while the Church of the Future will not fail to show
becoming respect to the Bible, as setting forth certain sublime
conceptions of the government of the world, as the cause of
the greatest religious movement the world has yet witnessed,
the Church of the Future will feel that it honours God more
by lovingly, but strictly, bringing to the tribunal of reason
every word in that book, than by blindly accepting any
part of it as necessarily infallible. The Church of the Future
will take a wider view of the range of Revelation than the
�10
Church of the Present usually does. It will appreciate more
intelligently physical laws as lying at the root of the effectual
elevation of the race, and as, in a most solemn sense, revealing
the will of God. What progressive mind can think without
a blush of the suspicion and bitterness with which the
Church of the Past, to say nothing of the Church of the
Present, was accustomed to look upon scientific discoveries,
almost as if they revealed the ubiquitous demon of Christian
mythology, instead of the good and glorious God ? It has been
common for a large class of Christians to view the world in a
sort of Gnostic light, as if it were a waste, howling wilderness,
and to think of the chemical elements composing it as saturated
by sin and cursed by Divine anger, in consequence of that
tragic scene in the history of our traditional mother—the
eating of an apple ! Many a discourse has been preached to
show that any strong interest in the affairs of the present life,
scientific or commercial, is the sure mark of a godless heart,
and that the truest proof of godliness is to be ever dwelling
in the atmosphere of hymns and prayers, and devout medita
tions, and I white robes,” and “ crowns,” or groaning over the
hundreds of millions of our fellow beings whom a morbid faith
is always thinking of as falling into a burning lake. I need
hardly say that those who come after us will have worthier
ideas of the possibilities of the world, and of the individual
and collective happiness to be derived from discovering and
obeying physical laws. Then religion will consist less in that
imagined super natural contact of God with the’human spirit
—the visions and nervous raptures, for which good orthodox
people so often pray now. It will consist more of being loyal
to material laws, improving the health and strengthening the
frame, increasing brain-power, laying to heart every form of
responsibility, giving to the race a noble organization, and a
more rational idea of how to control body and mind as
mutually dependent on each other, in the forming of a great
and noble character.
Without slighting the importance of God’s dealings with
the Jews, and with the members of the first Christian Churches,
the Church of the Future will recognise the wing of God’s
equal love and care spread over all nations, and His Providence
�11
as truly visible in the guidance and discipline of one as of
another of them. Every nation will be seen contributing its
share to the world’s culture, and revealing forms of thought
and life all needful to the complete culture of humanity.
The Church of the Future will see, in the mechanism of the
individual mind, and in the economy of family and social life,
a true Revelation of God, unclouded by the “original sin” of a
gloomy theology. The reason and the affections will be
revered as a medium of that Revelation. The conscience will
be more solemnly listened to as the accredited voice of God,
enforcing His moral and spiritual claims.
The domestic
constitution will be more honoured than at present, not merely
as of His wise appointment, but because it was intended to
mirror the all-embracing love of His own Fatherhood to the
whole human family; and so far from politics being deemed
unholy, it will be held to be a grave defect in the character of
a religious man not to take part in all political schemes for
the raising of the suffering and the oppressed.
All great and good men who increase the stock of human
knowledge, purity, and happiness, will be venerated as Godsent revealers of Himself, born to unveil to us the endlessly
varied phenomena of material and spiritual law.
God’s
Revelation will then be no longer viewed as exhausted in one
book, or as confined to any favoured people. Never was there
anything good, or true, or wise, written or spoken, without the
inspiration of God, and in reading words clothed with these
attributes, you read a Revelation of Him. One servant will
not be exalted to the disparagement of other servants. God’s
will, in what is vaguely called the spiritual sphere, will not
absorb attention to the neglect of his Revelation in morals and
aesthetics. All things are spiritual to the good. The reign of
law will be owned uniform and universal, and its claims in
one department will not be allowed to over-ride its appeals to
our nature in another; and every man gifted with a seer’s
insight in the manifold realms of law, will be hailed as a
messenger of the Most High. The Newtons to the Church
of the Future will be revealers of God in the science of the
stars, the Murchisons in the system of the rocks, the Turners
in the beauties of the canvas, the Miltons in the ideal charms
�of poetry, the Shakspeares in the philosophy of character, the
Watts and the Faradays in the latent forces and functions of
nature, and the true prophets of all countries and times, with
Jesus at their head, in the glories of moral and spiritual truth.
Blessed period! When the lingering shadows of superstition,
fanaticism, bigotry, and sectarian heart-burning shall be chased
away by the light of universal knowledge and rational religion,
when the tendrils of religious feeling shall not be found, as
now, chiefly entwining around Gothic and Grecian piles—
symbols of intense and beautiful religious sentiment though
these may be; when semi-Jewish restraint shall no longer
make British Christian life so sombre on that day consecrated
to rest which our Continental neighbours twit us with turn
ing into a “ Himalaya of wearinesswhen holiness shall not
consist so much in an extended countenance, in exclusive
devotion to books of an unctuously pious type, and in the
mere round of little | denominational ” activities, often to the
neglect of personal culture and the claims of home; but when
the sincere and truth-loving heart shall be held the most sacred
thing on earth when the craft we ply for our daily bread,
and the friendly circle in which we regale the social affections,
and the sunny hillside on which we bask in holiday time;
when all that ministers to the expansion of true thought and
unselfish sympathy, to purity of conscience, and to the music of
innocent joy, shall be regarded as most holy and suggestive of
God. No words could more fully express my sentiment than
those of Tom Hood :—
“ Thrice blessed is the man with whom
The gracious prodigality of nature—
The balm, the bliss, the beauty and the bloom,
The bounteous providence in every feature,
Recall the good Creator to his creature,
Making all earth a fane, all heaven its dome.
Each cloud-capt mountain is a holy altar,
An organ breathes in every grove,
And the full heart’s a psalter
Rich in deep hymns of gratitude and love.”
Then the Revelation of God will be treated not as a distant
thing of the past, when He is believed by many to have startled
the world with a cannonade of miracles, and afterwards retreated
�13
from direct contact with His creatures. To the Church of the
Future God will he an ever-present Being, as near the soul that
loves and does His will in the work, joy, and rest of life, as He
could possibly be in any imagined supernatural age. His
Revelation will then appear in its true light—perennial, and
needing no theological creed and priestly commonplace to help
us to understand it.
II. The scope of teaching in the Church of the Future will
be freer than it is in the Church of the Present.
The sects of our time, whether Established by law or Non
conformist, are fettered by creeds. I say fettered by creeds.
And yet creeds of some sort, implicit or expressed, would seem
to be necessary as a basis of religious union and action. That
is freely admitted. It is stereotyped, minute, dogmatic creeds,
that I object to, as these are found in Evangelical Christen
dom. I hold that a religious sect has no more right to bind
all coming generations to believe the metaphysical dogmas
which it now believes, and in the same form, than any body of
scientific men in one age have a right to make exact agreement
with them a condition of their successors enjoying the honours
and privileges of the Royal Institution. We complain of the
disabilities placed upon us as Dissenters by the unjust ecclesi
astical and doctrinal tests that, till lately, have shut us out
from the National Universities. But what authority have we
to insert clauses in the Trust Deeds of our so-called “ Free
Churches,” permitting only those to preach in our pulpits who
can subscribe certain non-essential articles of belief which we in
our wisdom think essential ? A ncient creeds have always
savoured of an intolerant spirit, and modern creeds, to say the
least, bear a strong family lilceness to their ancestral relations.
I have always found that the more narrow, minute and elabo
rate a man’s creed, if he follow it logically, the more bitter and
uncharitable is his temper towards those who differ from him.
No matter how superior they may be to him in earnestness,
talent, and attainment, he is accustomed to treat their honest
difference from him almost as a personal offence, if not a sin.
We should never forget that while some men are worse, others
are better than their creed; but all the difference I can see
�14<
between the exclusiveness of the Evangelical Protestant and
that of the Catholic is in the mode of persecuting heretics. The
Romanist, informer times, treating freedom of thought in
religion as a fearful crime, burned offenders ; and even now he
consistently enough stands aloof from other professing Christ
ians as schismatics, because he believes his church to be infal
lible, his priesthood to be alone endowed with the grace of
apostolical succession, and his way of salvation to be the only
true one. But the Evangelical Protestant rejoices in the “ right
of private judgment ” and of free inquiry, and yet will only
tolerate as his teacher one who falls in with a certain stereotyped
theological system. No matter how single-hearted and truthloving, if he should happen to diverge from what are called “ the
cardinal doctrines,” he is cast as a leper outside the camp.
Fixed creeds are opposed to the spirit of progress. Any
Church that exists in order to perpetuate a tabulated set of
opinions, which they have sworn never to change, must sooner
or later be swamped by the advancing tide of free thought,
and deserted by the intellectual strength and liberal culture
of the age. No Church is worthy of support which does not
exist to teach truth as its prime object, and which is not
eager to hear what every competent earnest teacher has to say,
whose soul burns with his message. His accord with the creed
is a trifling consideration.
*
The captain of a ship may use
his quadrant and record his bearings at midday to-day, but
surely, as his vessel is still sailing towards a foreign port, he
will not think that he can dispense with reckoning his longitude
and latitude to-morrow, and so on to the end of the voyage.
But the meaning of a traditional creed is this : “ The doctrines
our fathers have handed down to us include the alpha and the
omega of truth, absolute and unchangeable, and we insist on
posterity accepting it as we have done, and will inflict penal
disabilities on those who refuse to think as we do. We have
squared the theological circle, and anybody who presumes to
differ from us is either profane, foolish, or mad.” Now just
apply the same criterion to science and see how it would
* Carlyle in his life of Sterling relates that once his friend objected to some
opinions he had offered, by saying, “That’s flat Pantheism.” “What matters it,”
Carlyle replied, “if it were flat Poftheism, if it’s truth?”
/
�15
stand. Suppose Mr. Huxley were to endow a professor’s chair
at Oxford, and enact that no candidate was eligible for the
position unless he gravely affirmed that the founder had
learned and taught all that could be known about comparative
anatomy; why, men of science, with one voice, would laugh to
scorn the conceit of the proposal. And what is this but the
ridiculous attitude of a theological creed ? It outrages reason
by undertaking to solve religious problems for all time, and so
impiously affects to have already all the light which ever can
be thrown on such themes. Precisely in this spirit most of
the fathers of the (Ecumenical Council condemn the whole
circle of modern science,—including discoveries that have
immortalized the names of Laplace, Herschel and others, as
only a renewal and reproduction of errors that have been a
thousand times refuted by the Church
*
But there has been a change in the religious beliefs of the
past, and why should we arrogantly fancy that the Church of
the Future must subscribe the creed which prevails among
Evangelical Christians now ? Mr. Leckyf powerfully shows
that formulated doctrines, like all animated things, accom
plish the end of their existence, expend their force and die
out, and are followed by others which, in their turn, expire at
length in like fashion. As a matter of fact, take that doctrine
which, above all others, is popularly regarded, in this country,
as essential to salvation—I mean the atonement of Christ for
sin. It has passed through so many transformations, that it is
simply impossible for any one intelligently acquainted with its
history to show what theologians would have us believe about
it, that we may be saved. Not a single trace of proof can be
*Well may we ponder the words of Richard Hooker on this subject. “Au
thority is the greatest and most irreconcilable enemy to truth and rational argu
ment that this world ever furnished out since it was in being ; against it there is
no defence ; it is authority alone that keeps up the grossest and most abominable
errors in the countries around us ; it was authority that would have prevented all
reformation where it is, and which has put a barrier against it where it is not.
Tor man to be tied and led by authority, as it were with a kind of captivity of
judgment, and though there be reason to the contrary, not to listen to it, but to
follow, like beasts, the first in the herd, they know not, nor care whither_ this
were brutish.”
f History of Rationalism. Vol. I.
�16
adduced in the apostolic or post-apostolic fathers in support of
the theory held by many now, that Jesus suffered as a judicial
substitute and offered himself a sacrifice for the punishment due
to our sins. Allusions do occur in some of the early Christian
writings to the world being under bondage to the Evil Spirit,
and bought off by the holy life and martyrdom of Christ; but
they are only figurative, and point to self-denying efforts of
the Saviour to deliver men, by his revelation of God’s truth
and love, from the influence of error, ignorance, formality,
lust, pride, and all sin. The ideas of the first Christians
imprinted themselves on their simple works of art, even more
distinctly than in their writings, and though in the Catacombs
touching references to the rest of the departed in Christ
often occur, the emblem of Christ on the Cross never does.
The idea of the mental and physical sufferings of Jesus, as
a literal satisfaction or propitiation to Divine justice, was not
developed till the outbreak of Mahometanism in the sixth
century, when a superstitious priesthood spread the opinion
among the credulous masses that God could no longer have
patience with so wicked a world; and religion, as taught by
the Church, began to assume throughout a dismal aspect, from
which it has not yet quite recovered. It was then for the first
time that paintings and sculptures of Christ on the Cross
appeared. It was then that the theory first took wing, that
the multitude must be scorched eternally in consequence of
their sins, and that only the few who viewed Jesus as having
paid the bloody price which Divine justice demanded could
be saved. It was then that all the dreary machinery of
penance and the Inquisition actively began.
But with all a convert’s wish to trust the vicarious efficacy
of the atoning sacrifice, the difficulty of exactly knowing that
special point in the doctrine on which his soul was to rest,
became more embarrassing to him from the disputes of polemi
cal divines. Under Pope Homisdas and some of his successors,
there was a fierce strife as to whether we ought to say “ one,
of the Trinity suffered in the flesh,” or “ one Person of the
Trinity suffered in the flesh; ” and the two parties in this
controversy went on damning each other most zealously, till
the displacement of this crotchet, by another equally important,
�17 .
revived the same process, which has been so general in the
Christian Church in all ages. In our own time, the thought
ful enquirer after salvation, through the atonement, is almost as
much at a loss. For some learnedly argue that the virtue of
the “ saving work ” lies in the death of Christ; others, that it
is in the shedding of His blood; others, in His obedience from
the cradle to the grave; some have written to prove that He
died only for the elect; others, that He died for the world, but
His sufferings only avail for the elect. Some of us, too, can
remember the countless distinctions of faith so finely drawn
by preachers, that a sensitive mind felt bound to hesitate
which was the right one. Then there were the varied and
perplexing definitions of predestination, “sublapsarian,” “supralapsarian,” and “ subter-superlapsarian.” 0, Christianity, what
follies have been perpetrated in thy name! Even as late as
the days of John Wesley, to deny the existence of witchcraft
was branded an impiety, equal to rejecting the Bible. Here
are the venerable man’s own words: “ It is true that the English
in general, and indeed most of the men of learning in Europe,
have given up all accounts of witches and apparitions, as mere
old wives’ fables. I am sorry for it. . . . The giving up
of witchcraft is in effect giving up the Bible. . . . 1
cannot give up to all the Deists of Great Britain the
existence of witchcraft, till I give up the credit of all history,
sacred and profane ” Well, these, with many more theological
speculations and superstitions equally interesting, that once
stirred up much bitterness among the followers of Jesus, have
been consigned to the limbo of dead credulities. And with
such exploded errors once believed by well-meaning men, not
very distant from our own times, it is only bigotry that can
prevent us from seeing that the Church of the Future will
recall many of the opinions, eloquently defended now by
Evangelical teachers, as the debris of a theological period,
which only the curious student of antiquity will take the
trouble to look into. As from the beginning, the “extreme
views ” of to-day will be the moderate views of the coming
age; and men who think only at the level of their times, are
taking a sure path to speedy oblivion.
But not only do creeds proscribe inquiry; they give oppor*
B
i
�18
tunities for hypocrisy. There are thousands of clergymen in
the English church who, in common with no small number of
excellent laymen, cannot think on any subject very deeply,
and are content to take their creed ready made; and the same
class of minds make up the vast proportion of adherents to
every system. But there are clergymen of a higher order.
They signed the “ articles ” before they had time thoroughly
to examine the mysteries they contain. These men become
committed to their position and dependent on preaching for
their support. As always must 'be the case with independent
thinkers brought up in strict orthodoxy, and who are thrown
in the way of argument on the opposite side, the convictions
of these men deviate eventually from the “ old paths.” What
is the result ? They sigh for freedom of thought and speech,
but while there are institutions to take in the criminal and the
vicious who want to break away from their evil ways, there are
none that seem to offer refuge for the honest clergyman who
desires to be true to his conscience, but fears lest destitution
should overtake his family. The barometer of his moral cour
age, perhaps, is not naturally high, and the miserable man stays
where he is, doing daily violence to the most holy part of his
nature, quenching; because perverting, the only light within
him appointed for his moral and spiritual guidance, proclaiming
to others what his conscience is ever telling him is untrue.
Is it surprising that the same tendency should exist, though
perhaps to a smaller extent, among Nonconformists ? A young
man entering a Dissenting college is obliged to profess his faith
in a list of dogmatic statements which his youth and inexpe
rience preclude the possibility of his having gravely examined.
At the close of his preparatory course he is expected to have
read and thought much, but those who guide his studies take
care that his reading and thought shall be in the direction of
confirming him in the doctrines of his denomination.
*
When
he is ordained to the ministry, the repetition of an unchanged
statement of his belief is again demanded from him. The
doctrinal provisions in the Trust Deed of the chapel in which
* In my college days, by desire of one of the tutors, the Westminster Review
was excluded from the House,
�he preaches are an additional chain to bind his intellect. I
challenge any man of average mind to let the thought-currents
of this age have free access to his soul, and conscientiously
endorse many dogmatic articles of belief framed in the six
teenth century and still prevalent in many quarters. To throw
in the way of any minister, therefore, the temptation, to which
I fear not a few are exposed, of being untrue to their convic
tions, is an iniquity that must, sooner or later, bring Divine
retribution upon us, in the form of a heartless ministry and a
hollow church. If such deceitful “ things be done in the green
tree ”—in that institution which claims to be the very ark of
the New Covenant—what must be the effect “in the dry”—
in the paths of politics and commerce ?
Christ lays down no creed, or any form of church govern
ment; whatsoever. He came to declare what Moses and the
prophets had done before Him,—judgment, mercy, faith,—only
with the motive-power of a higher and more tender conception
of God. He came to emancipate men from the slavery of forms
and ceremonies, and to enforce earnestness in knowing, and
sincerity in doing, the will of God. Nothing could be more
catholic and beautiful than religion as He taught it before
brangling theological doctors had done for Christianity what
the Masoretic Rabbis did for the original and essential princi
ples of the Hebrew faith. “ God is a spirit,” He said, “ and
they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit, and in
truth.” The apostle, Peter, on escaping from the despotism of
Jewish forms, announced a similar doctrine. “Of a truth I
perceive that God is no respecter of persons; but in every
nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is
accepted with him.” “Let us therefore stand fast in the
liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not
entangled again in the yoke of bondage.” If your heart be
under pure, lowly, and sincere impulse^ your mind may be
safely trusted to roam in the joys of intellectual freedom.
If the church is to keep pace with the world in energy for
good, honouring the devoted efforts of men of every name to
receive and spread the truth; if Christians are to prevent
enlightened and benevolent enterprise from passing wholly from
themselves to men of the world, many of whom are nothing in
�20
the eyes of the sects because they cannot embrace their dogmas
(nevertheless as truly saved before God as those who sit in
judgment on them), then they must combine firmness of
present conviction with perfect freedom of enquiry into the
opinions of all seekers after truth, and be ready to follow
wherever the light of evidence leads. This will be a prominent
characteristic of the Church of the Future. That church
will elect its teachers, not because of their agreement with
any one set of dogmatic views, but because of their pos
sessing that mysterious gift of insight, which, in a certain high
and genuine order of minds, lets in the rays of beauty and
truth. It will despise those teachers who waste their strength,
and the time of their hearers, in expositions of useless
metaphysics. It will supplicate those who minister, thus:
“ Preach not simply what we believe, if it be not in perfect
accord with your own conscience. We encourage you to
think closely, deeply, and clearly, and tell us, without
the least reserve, all that is in your heart about the great
interests of religion, and we will respect your loyalty to
conscience.” Methinks the members of the future church
will look back from the heights of their calm intelligence with
mingled grief and pity on the things we now generally call
religion and theology, and on the unreal and unprofitable
utterances called sermons, that pour even from eloquent lips
throughout Evangelical England to fill up two half-hours
every Sunday. The Church of the Future will consist of
voluntary associations of unselfish seekers after truth, without
a distinct professionally-trained ministry of any kind. All
the members of the church will have sufficient education to
develop their powers, if' they have any powers to develop,
each will hold the culture and use of his special talents sacred,
and devote a fair share of his time to the study needful to
increase intellectual and moral strength. Business and wealth
will be made subservient- to the pursuit of truth and goodness,
and of the bliss which these precious qualities bring, and all the
“pomps and vanities” of the fashionable world will be pitied as
signs of ignorance and barbarism. Thus the future church will
be able to “edify” itself in the best sense. It will not depend
for instruction and impulse on what is now called “the
�21
regular ministry,” or any one man, or class of men, toiling
their weary round, week by week, in the narrow circle of
orthodoxy. Each of the ministers will possess something that
a century of devoted application to academic study could
never give. They will be inspired, gifted with a sort of clair
voyant perception of the true and the right, which can never
be acquired—intuition, insight; and so their minds will be to
the church like so many windows opening out upon the mani
fold glories of the universe. They will not see eye to eye, but,
coming before the people in rotation, they will be able, alto
gether, to cover the wants of the congregation. Each of them
will be “a law unto himself,” and his teaching will be
approved, not because it happens to agree with what somebody
believes, but because it is a true effluence from an earnest and
gifted man.
III. Terms of membership in the Church of the Future will
be simpler, than they mostly are in the Church of the Present.
There is an anomalous section of the Protestant Church in
this country which has expended immense ingenuity in its
creeds, parties and bearing, and with great success, in making
the Christian religion look ridiculous. I refer to the body that
makes residence in the parish the one title to church com
munion, and yet every Sunday hurls anathemas at those
respectable parishioners, its legal members, who do not believe
the incomprehensible doctrine of Three Persons in One Person.
I except therefore the Church of England from this comparison.
But Evangelical Nonconformists, while they would shrink from
applying the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed,
would, I suppose, reject any applicant for membership who did
not receive the teaching of that Creed. What authority have
you from reason or from your Master for shutting out any God
fearing man, who as conscientiously believes that he is honour
ing God by denying your views of the Godhead, as you believe
that you are doing the same thing by holding those views ?
Never did Jesus require any test of discipleship but thinking
and doing what one believed to be right. “ He that doeth the
will of my Father who is in Heaven, the same is my mother,
my sister, and my brother.” Nor did Paul place any meta-
�22
physical barrier in the way of anybody entering the church at
Rome. In his Epistle to that church he says: “ God shall
render to every man according to his deeds; to them who by
patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, honour, and
immortality, eternal life; but to them that are contentious and
do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation
and wrath, tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man
that doeth evil; but glory, honour, and peace to every man
that worketh good. . . . For there is no respect of persons
with God.” As a matter of fact we know that there were
members in the church at Corinth who did not even accept the
doctrine of the resurrection, and yet there is no record of their
expulsion.
In the Reformed Church of the yet distant future, when a
higher secular training will have braced the powers of men to
grapple with such questions, I believe the doctrinal terms of
membership will be reduced to two : the Fatherhood of God,
and the Brotherhood of man. These are the grand central be
liefs to which men of soul and light in all countries are rapidly
tending, as they gradually uncoil from their souls the chains
of churchism and creedism, and we need no other principles
to live and die by. Most of the discords and divisions of
Christendom about “ points of faith ” will be viewed by the
Church of the Future as very much of the same importance as
Milton, in his History of England, gives to the battles of the
Kings of the Heptarchy. He passes them over, as if they
had only been “fights of crows in the air.”
Upon the two doctrines I have named, the Church of the
Future will peacefully rest. And are they not strikingly
simple and intelligible ? They need no miracle to reveal
them, and no learning to expound them. They are written
upon our nature, and directly revealed to the whole race.
They cannot create religious strife, but wherever honestly
realised, they must bind all men together in one happy and
holy family, and bring all into blissful relation to God. A
man must belie his being not io feel their truth the very moment
they are presented to him. They are moral intuitions. Four
and twenty years have I been a student of theology and a
preacher, and now when life is more than half gone, it pours
�23
a terrible mockery on one’s past intellectual toil, to be obliged
to unlearn the vague, shifting and clashing theological theories
with which my intellectual and moral' growth has been
cramped. But with humility, joy, and faith, I return, like a
little child, to the guidance of those two natural sentiments,
which the true prophets and teachers of all times have but
repeated and confirmed, but which dogmatic theology has
tended so much to mystify. They are the core of Christ’s
teaching, and the pillars of the future church.
A twofold rule of duty and discipline to be imposed on
applicants to the new church, will form inevitable counterparts
of these two fundamental principles. The one test of fitness
for fellowship will consist in a true effort to keep those com
mandments, on which hang the law and the prophets : “ Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, strength,
and mind, and thy neighbour as thyself;” commandments
which embrace immutable morality, and are the most exhaus
tive expressions of practical and eternal religion ever uttered.
In these two precepts are to be found the substance of all
the guiding laws and dispensations of God. Blessed is he who
fulfils them. The man who candidly does his best to conform
to them, will be welcome to the coming Church of God. In
our love to God we have the motive-power to aim without
ceasing at perfection. In our love to man—the sequel of our
love to God—there is a pledge that all bitterness and hatred
between man and man shall perish. If we understand our
true relations to God and to each other, brotherly love, a
virtue not conspicuously developed by Evangelicism, will be
evoked ; all the benevolent feelings of our nature, patriotism,
philanthropy, charity, compassion, forgiveness, and the do
mestic affections. Movements will be encouraged, fitted to
promote the material, intellectual, social, and moral improve
ment of mankind. All nlalevolent propensities, all attempts
to harm the temporal and spiritual interests of society will be
checked. In the bonds of real human brotherhood, as distin
guished from the artificial ties of creed and sect, all oppression,
tyranny, pride, envy, ingratitude, and deceit, must disappear.
Such an ideal of brotherhood will become a fact in the Church
of the Future. Then the wise and the unlearned, the rich and
�24
the poor, the strong and the weak, shall dwell together in the
holy tabernacle of God, rendering mutual services under the
inviolable covenant of love, and sharing far more warmly than
at present, the blessing conferred by the common Father; and
the hope of humanity shall approach realization: “ Peace on
earth, and goodwill toward men.” Those who accept these two
principles of faith, and strive to keep these two great command
ments, whether they come from the East or from the West, the
North or the South, will sit at the banquet of this glorious
Catholic Church fellowship. No “ deputation from the breth
ren ” will need to be appointed to examine the faith of the
candidate for membership, for the satisfaction of the church.
There will be no occasion for imposing dogmatic tests. If
the life be right that will be accepted as a sufficient proof of
the reality of the faith. The new church will not be a self
constituted heaven only for those who fancy themselves saints,
but rather a hospital for the moral cure of all who honestly
wish to be healed,. None will then, as now, be found stand
ing aloof from the church, because the terms of commun
ion are thought to be too strict. The society of the church
will be so pure, truthful, and noble, that the bigot, the back
biter, the vain, the mean, will feel rebuked and repelled under
the consciousness of their own unworthiness. Family distinc
tion, wealthy ignorance, and bustling conceit, will have no
favour shewn them in that serene and enlightened community
Those Divine graces, now so much at a discount, if not decked
out in golden attire in the Church of the Present, will be the
all in all of qualification for admission to the Church of the
Future.
IV. The objects and aims of the Church of the Future will
be more practical than those of the Church of the Present.
The object and aim in which the prayers, preachipg, teach
ing, and all other kind of Evangelical effort, at home and
abroad, avowedly centre, is a work which is described as “ the
salvation of souls.” It is the keeping of this work ever in
view that is, with orthodox Christians, the chief signs in the
individual and in the church, of spiritual life. It is this
that kindles the passionate zeal of the young disciple in
�25
dedicating himself to the toils of the ministry. It is the
shaping of a sermon to this, that is supposed to give it its
true value.
Take away the animating doctrine of “ the
salvation of sinners” from Evangelical theology and organiza
tion, and the speeches delivered in Exeter Hall, at the present
season, would be extremely tame, the peculiar “unction”
which is so indispensable an element of ministerial power with
the faithful, would be sadly wanting, and the decline of “ the
prayer meeting,” of the “Tract Society,” and of application for
“ fellowship with the church,” would be even more lamented
than it is. What then is the nature of this solemn business,
that so inflames the zeal and the liberality of popular
churches ? There are very different ways of looking at the
matter, according to the stratum of Evangelical society to
which people belong.
The Primitive Methodist preacher
presents the orthodox view of “ salvation through the blood of
the cross,” in its most naked and consistent form. There can
be no mistaking his meaning when he cries aloud about the
eternal destruction of the sinner. Without ceremony he pitches
his camp in the street, and states the case between sinners and
God, plainly and honestly, according to the Evangelical theory
of the universe. It is strangely otherwise, in most instances,
with Evangelical ministers of the middle class. They profess
just the same doctrine on this subject as the untutored “local
preacher.” But out of an unwarrantable and expedient regard
to their somewhat more intelligent congregations, they illogically—I might be pardoned if I were to use even a more severe
term—allude to the disagreeable articles of their creed, in a
subdued and reserved tone, as if they thought it vulgar to be
only, after all, doing exactly the same kind of work as their
more ranting brethren. Why should the quieter clergyman or
congregationalist smile at the excited methodist, for manifesting
an earnestness, which, believing as he does, would surely
not be too intense in himself? This is a discrepancy of
orthodox Protestantism, which might afford scope for an
interesting paper, at the next meeting of the “ Evangelical
Alliance.” The common notion among orthodox sects is, that
in consequence of sin,—either committed by the first man and
imputed to his race, or committed by both him and them
�26
together—a dread abyss has been prepared to engulf human
beings ; that, in order to avert this fate, the second person of
the Godhead was slain by a Divine decree, so that, in some
variously .defined, and consequently unintelligible way, the
attribute of God’s t( official justice ” might seem not to be
compromised in the salvation of men. It is gravely affirmed
that Jesus must be lacerated, exposed, and crucified, like the
worst Roman malefactor, and that only by trusting in the
efficacy of this awful transaction, as meeting the imperious
demands of a dishonoured law, and as substituted for our own
individual and everlasting punishment, can any one escape
certain material and moral torments in the next life. Is it
wonderful that, with these conceptions of God’s character and
dealings, many a parent has been driven to distraction about the
deliverance of his children from this “ blackness of darkness,”
and that not a few strong minds have lost their balance in
following out the doctrine to its logical issues ? It is some
consolation, however, to the poor sotds that, Sunday after
Sunday, are consigned, either to the woe of eternal conscious
suffering, or of annihilation, to know that ma^iy of those
ministers who are most impassioned in their pulpit speculations
about the horrors of the lost, do not allow these things to
spoil their relish for the comforts, and, where they can afford
them, for the luxuries of life. In private friendship they are
usually most vivacious and humorous. By a mysterious but
happy contradiction, the crushing agony we might naturally
expect them to feel for the millions they tell us are ever
falling into “ eternal destruction,” does not impair their interest
in the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, or Tennyson’s last
poem.
What is the inference from this fortunate incongruity be
tween professional phrase and the common sense of every-day
life ? Certainly not that Evangelical preachers practise deceit.
I believe that, as a body, they are free from the remotest
shadow of wilful insincerity. But how, with the facts before
us, can we avoid the suspicion that they deceive themselves ;
that what they fancy to be a belief is merely a sentiment, a
“ tradition of the elders,” with which reason may not inter
meddle, and which, consequently, has never really entered into
�27
them as a practical conviction ? If it be so, the reaction of this
self-delusion upon the conscience cannot be favourable. How
could any religious man believe that nineteen-twentieths of the
world’s population have for countless ages been going to perdi
tion, in spite of their possible deliverance through the preaching
of the gospel, and yet retain his sanity ? Indeed, if he took
the subject to heart, he would be just as likely to go mad over
the apathy of the church as over the doom of the world.
Suppose we were told that out of a thousand British subjects
in Greece five hundred had been captured by brigands, and
subjected to a slow and an incessant process of torture which
they had resolved to continue through an indefinite number of
years, and that the remaining five hundred were in imminent
risk of being taken also; to say nothing of Christianity,
would not common humanity impel all civilized governments
to combine and rush to the rescue of our countrymen ? Then
I hold it to be contrary to all the laws of mind for any rational
being to believe in the eternal destruction of “ unbelievers,” in
any form, and go about the duties of a citizen like other men.
But most orthodox people, clerical as well as lay, seem quite
at home in secular affairs, and thus demonstrate the revolt of
their better nature from this figment of semi-Pagan theology.
But, again, the Evangelical way of salvation offers a motive
to the impenitent which cannot but render their faith and
obedience specially unacceptable to God. He seeks our love,
and whoever turns to Him from the mere dread of punishment,
or from the selfish desire to get behind the walls of a city im
pregnable to flames, and without the breathing of the heart
supremely after the pure, the truthful, the just and the good,
must be an object of the Divine pity, if not contempt. What
noble-minded man does not shrink from the servility of a
creature who affects esteem only because he is afraid of punish
ment ? And shall the holy God be placed beneath the level
of imperfect men ? What I have known of the tendency of
the Evangelical system—all elaborate repudiations of the fact
notwithstanding—leads me to , believe that it never can and
never does produce a high type of character where it is con
sistently followed. But to the credit of thousands be it said,
that it is not always consistently followed. It exalts escape
I
�28
from future punishment and the attainment of future happi
ness into the chief end of religion. That is its gospel, and a
most selfish gospel it is. I tremble at the thought of the
grievous and degrading perversions of the relations between
God and man for which it is responsible. No wonder there is
such unavailing complaint on the part of preachers that, as a
rule, religious progress usually ceases with converts at the point
of their admission to the circle of communicants. They were
taught to “ flee from the wrath to comethey were made un
happy by the burden of real or, as is quite as often the case, of
imaginary sins. Their grand inquiry is “ How are we to get
forgiveness and peace, and release of the fear of endless woe ?”
The judicial notion of Christ’s mission is set before them, and
whatever idea they may have of the desirableness of becoming
God-like, the necessity of being insured against the dreaded
forensic penalty of sin is presented to them in a light so ab
sorbing, that any distinct conception of Christianity as aiming
chiefly at the moral elevation of our nature, and at the recovery
of our powers to harmony with each other and with God’s
will, is kept in the background. Evangelical congregations
may hear God referred to as a Father, but the corner-stone of
their theology is that He is an inflexible Ruler, whose official
anger is to be appeased. The spectral representation of a
magistrate who may be approached only through a propitia
tory sacrifice is the backbone of orthodoxy. How then is it
possible to love, in any rational sense, this governmental ab
straction ? How can a Ruler be other than a cold embodiment
of law ? You may fear and reverence such a Being, but to let
your heart go out in passionate love for His character, to be
inspired with a longing desire to be like Him, to delight in the
thought of His presence, would necessitate a revolution in the
laws of being. That gospel, then, which interprets the salva
tion of souls according to legal analogies, and gives such
towering prominence to escape from punishment as a motive
power, and turns the life and death of Christ into a substi
tutionary sacrifice, cannot fail to produce in the subject of
Evangelical faith, either spiritual stagnation, oi' fanatical illu
sion which will be mistaken for sound religious progress.
I might, did time permit, prove that the whole Evangelical
�29
fabric rests in a confusion of Pagan and Jewish traditions with
literal facts. I might trace back with you the prevailing idea of.
future torment to its true source in Babylon, where the Jews
found it during their captivity, and afterwards brought it
with them to their own land, and incorporated it with their
t national theology, I might easily prove that, as a poetical
figure has been confounded with an absolute truth respecting
penalty, so allusions to ancient Jewish ceremonial laws have
been confounded with literal facts respecting redemption
through Christ. But I must leave this train of thought
to be pursued by you at leisure. What I am most anxious
to say is, that the supreme object of the Church of the Future
will be to teach and spread a salvation not material, but moral,
intellectual, and spiritual; present, too, as well as future.
“ The Kingdom of Heaven is not meat and drink, but right
eousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” So the kingdom
of wrath is not fire and brimstone, but envy, pride, idolatry,
lust, uncharitableness, ignorance, superstition, and bigotry.
And it will be the aim of the Church of the Future to heal
minds by applying the salve of truth, in all its adapted forms
and bearings, in order to cure these ruinous diseases. That
was the work Christ, the Great Spiritual Physician, set
Himself to accomplish. He found one faculty out of joint,
another bruised, another bleeding, and another cumbered
with a loathsome excrescence, and lie brought to bear
His spiritual surgery to heal all. While recognising the
necessity of a turning-point in a character that was previously
under some dominant wrong influence, the Church of the
Future will reject most of the sensational experiences which
are now described as gathering around Evangelical “ con
version.” In that golden age of religion to which our hopes
reach' forth; the beginning of Divine life in the soul will consist
in free moral decision to escape from the thraldom of error and
, wrong-doing, and to be governed by those pure and changeless
principles laid down by a loving Father for the control and the
guidance of His children. Worthier impulses than the terrors
of woe, or the safety of Heaven, will be urged to bring men
into sympathy with truth and righteousness. The justice of
God will not then be degraded into a bugaboo to frighten
�30
sinners. It will be delighted in as a manifestation of holy love.
No miserable Jewish modes of seeking reconciliation with God
will then be acknowledged. The intrinsic charms of harmony
with His appointments in our being, and in the universe at large,
will eclipse all inferior considerations. Love to God, the essential
transforming power, will not then spring from some one sup
posed judicial contrivance to “deliver from going down to the
pit,” or from some morbid emotionalism supposed to be of super
natural origin, but really a sympathetic and nervous affection.
Love to God will then spring from an adoring view of all His
endless contrivances to promote the happiness of men, and the
full development of all their powers. The labours of the Future
Church will be directed to improve everything within its
reach, capable of improvement. Its teaching and work will be
eminently practical. Instead of strumming ad nauseam, as is
now done, upon a few doctrines or duties supposed to contain
the essence of saving truth, but which often leave those who hear
them as dead in their besetting sins of temper, ignorance, and
covetousness as they found them, the Church of the Future
will deem all truth equally sacred, and in its place necessary
to be unfolded for the illumination and the advancement of
mankind, for the hastening of the period of which the seer of
olden time spake, when “ the wilderness and the solitary place
shall become glad, and the desert rejoice-and blossom as the
rose.”
Moreover, the efforts of the Church of the Future will ever
be encouraged by the assured faith that the antidote of truth,
love, joy and peace will yet perfectly neutralize the bane of
error, hatred, misery, and care. It will have risen out of the
heartless, useless, tiresome debates of minds struggling with
creed-bonds, as to whether conscious agony or final extinction
of being awaits the sinner. The Church of the Future will
be able to work without the feverishness and gloom that
generally mark the movements of the Church of the Present.
It will be able to work calmly and joyfully in the confidence that
the chasm which still exists between God’s ideal of the world
and the realization of that ideal will be bridged over, arid that
not a soul created will ever fail of being lifted up into holy and
blessed fellowship with Himself. What earthly parent would
�31
ever dream of making the punishment of his child an end ?
The object of all intelligent parental correction is to subdue
wrong habits and bring the chastised one into the orbit of
obedience ? Is it not one of the plainest signs of advancing
civilization too, that criminal discipline is made subservient to
the reformation of the offender?. It is not so easy now as it
once was to induce juries to find a verdict that will necessitate
punishment by death; nor are judges so ready, as they once
were, to sentence men to the gibbet. All ranks of society are
becoming increasingly permeated with the idea of the improve
ability of the race under conformity to physical and moral law.
And the principle which is only dawning upon our age as a
discovery has been acted upon by God from all eternity, and
He will never swerve from it. So when the church becomes
a more instructed medium of God’s revelation, she will labour
in every sphere of the useful, the beautiful, and the good, in
the unfaltering hope that all rebels and all revolted provinces
in the universe will be finally restored.
Now, in my capacity as your minister, I say Farewell. I
thank you for your kindness toward me, during the four and
a half years of my ministry among you. I have not inten
tionally offended anyone. I have tried under somewhat difficult conditions, in a congregation, made up of all beliefs, and
of marked differences in intelligence, to impel and guide, by
God’s help, your religious life. My own convictions have
expanded of late, and I should have been glad to lead you,
as I believe I have been led, into upward paths, which the
Church of the Future will not fear to tread, but I may not.
In my retirement from the Congregational ministry, I mean
no attitude of antagonism to Evangelical bodies. They are,
I doubt not, suited to the felt spiritual wants of the masses
of worshippers in this country at present, or they would not
be so numerous and influential as they are. The character
of their teaching has changed in a measure, in the past,
and it will gradually become - vastly more modified still, ere
another half century go by. But the ideal church we have
been contemplating to-night is not, I think, to result from
the transformation of any existing church. Each of the
present sects has a history and a mission, and when the
�32
forces of its doctrines and discipline are expended, it will no
longer dovetail into the necessities of the age; it will die.
But out of the ruins of the Church of the Present, the New
Church of our aspirations will rise.
It will embrace, as I
have already remarked, many bright souls that are now as
“ proselytes of the gate,” conscientiously standing outside all
orthodox communions, because these have ceased to be true to
their consciences. The Church of the Future will also take
up into itself what of light and life may remain in the churches
it is destined to displace. I am among those who seek the
intellectual and religious freedom that, at present, lies beyond
the walls of sectarianism. I will honour the well-intentioned
efforts of all orthodox bodies, and am willing to preach in their
pulpits, and join in their worship, and help in their good
works, and rejoice in all that is true in them. But the call of
God to me is to cease from the salaried pastorate of an
Evangelical Church, and I dare not disobey. My future in
another sphere is full of care and uncertainty.
But for
conscience’ sake I must not hesitate to take the uninviting
road. God will provide, and should He see fit to provide
adequately for ‘my temporal wants, I shall not abandon the
hope of some years hence, being able to preach what I believe,
without fear of creed or of man, in true apostolic fashion, in
the happiest sense, an “ Independent ” minister, because an
independent man. I shall delight in your peace and prosperity
throughout all the organizations of the Church, and shall never
cease to think kindly of you all, and long for your growth in
the spirit and truth of Jesus Christ.
E. . C. OSBORNE, PRINTER, NEW STREET, BIRMINGHAM.
�
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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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The church of the present, and the church of the future: an address, delivered in the Congregational Chapel, Moseley Road, Birmingham, 5th May 1870
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Macfie, Matthew
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Place of publication: Birmingham; London
Collation: 32 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. "Published by request". Sermon preached on the occasion of Macfie resigning the Congregational ministry after fifteen years' service. Text of sermon from Matthew 6-10 'Thy kingdom come'.
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E.C. Osborne; Simpkin Marshall & Co.
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1876
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G5370
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Sermons
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The church of the present, and the church of the future: an address, delivered in the Congregational Chapel, Moseley Road, Birmingham, 5th May 1870), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Conway Tracts
Sermons
-
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“THE SPIRIT OF GOD.”
A SERMON,
PREACHED AT THE REV. CHARLES VOYSEY’S SERVICES, ST.
GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE, AUGUST 2nd, 1874, by
MR.
HOPE
MONCRIEFF.
[From the Eastern Post, August 8th, 1874]
On Sunday (August 2), at the St. George’s Hall, Langham-place,
Mr. Hope Moncrieff took his text from Job xxxii., 8., “There is
a spirit in man; and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them
understanding. ”
He said—The present is called an age of knowledge, and rightly
so-called in comparison with the ages that have preceeded it. But
they are our wisest men who remind us that the real lesson of
modern science is, how much we may know, how little we do
know. We can write volumes on the nature and history of our
world, but all our faculties are lost in amazement before the
ineffable wisdom that has so marvellously made and fitted it for
such myriad gradations of life. We can measure the stars, we
can tell their times and distances, but the further we push our
conquests into space, the more surely does the boldest mind refuse
to set bounds to the universe, even in imagination. We can
analyse matter, following it into its most intricate combinations;
we may claim to explainits influence in the subtlest manifestations
of life; but none can say what life is, or how will and power can
be infused into the senseless clod.
With less assurance we may
dogmatise in the metaphysical parts of human nature; we may
endeavour to resolve man’s highest attributes into their component
parts; we may think that we have traced his virtues and vices
more or less closely to custom, hereditary instinct, bodily constitu
tion, in short, we may come nearer to the modus operands of the
rarer phenomena of being, but only with more awe to pause before
the question—how came this mortal frame by the first breath of
spiritual life; who taught man thus to love and hope and trust ?
�2
Whence this spirit which now prompts the ignorant child to over
come its selfishness at the call of affection and duty, and now
reveals a new moral law to the prophet of all ages .?
In its first survey of the aspects of our existence, knowledge,
indeed, helps us only to despair, showing us all the more clearly
that in life we share the necessities of the beast, and in death
the vileness of the dust. But this very despair arouses us to look
further, and our consciousness of the unworthiness of such a fate
marks us out as superior to the rest of creation. We gaze stead
fastly, and throughout all the dark tangled web of human life, we
perceive one gold thread, broadening and brightening as our eyes
are fixed upon it, hidden often, but- broken never, linking age to
age with a divine continuity, having neither beginning nor end,
coming from that same eternal light that gave us birth, and going
before us into that darkness which awaits our souls. Among the
gross promptings of sense, we feel a purer influence that strikes
the tunefullest chords of our hearts, calls our noblest instincts to
life, and bids us rise in arms against the tyrannous strength of our
animal nature. Though imperfection besets us at every step,
though difficulties and darkness are around us, though with
a’l living creatures we are hurried on in the struggle for
existence, our lives present one phenomenon unparallelled in all
our knowledge, and inexplicable by all our philosophies. Man
will struggle against himself, will help his fellow-man, will look
up from earth and seek a treasure that has no other coin but faith,
will joyfully resign his fleshly will, and pray that through suffering
and labour he may be made perfect, even as he trusts that perfec
tion exists, and shall one day be beheld by him in all its glory.
To this spirit that is in man we are wont to give a name, that
may be disputedly some who, in their own lives, feel and show its
power. Apart from the clear light of faith, apart from tradition
and customary beliefs, the most thoughtful of mankind, looking
reverently into the mysteries of existence, seeing how the human
soul sets a cloud hidden point, as surely as the needle to the pole,
feeling how weak we must indeed be without the aid of such
strength and wisdom and provident care as are revealed in the
meanest object at our feet—the most thoughtful of men, I ven
ture to say, have been constrained to kneel in adoration and call
�Upon the name of God, the Maker and father o£ all. There are,
perhaps, those among us who do not recognise this divine author,
let us not say because their hearts are hardened, but because they
are dazzled to blindness or awed into silence. Those who can
render a reason for calling themselves Atheists, are seen to humble
themselves, not indeed before a Person, but before a Thing, which,
as they conceive of it, might indeed be called divine by our mortal
tongues.
We need not fight with names, and the proofs of God’s exist
ence and nature must be sought by every thinking man in his
own nature and experience of life. What I wish to dwell on at
present is the reality of this faculty by which we apprehend the
importance of things not seen. Call it what you will, altruism,
the enthusiasm of humanity, an anonymous power that makes for
righteousness, the working of that force which we name the spirit
of God, is as much a fact as any law of the physical world.
Theorize on the cause as we may, we see and feel the effect, and
surely we cannot ascribe a mere human source to that influence
which has thus enlightened the dim conscience of man. Again
and again have its prophets appeared to guide us to ever higher
prospects of the moral law. Again and again, deliverers have
been sent to free the soul from the bonds of ignorance and selfish
ness. In all tongues words have been spoken such as man never
spoke before, words which to us, perhaps, sound as truisms but
were once rightly received as revelations. In all nations un
learned men and woman have been taught by a grace which to
them, at least, was thenceforth nothing but divine. In all ages
the sons of God, have come clothed in this spirit, and though they
have been poor and despised and rejected of the foolish crowd they
have never wanted disciples among the more ardent souls, willing
to leave all and follow him who had the words of eternal life.
And not once only, but wherever the broken, wearied heart, has
sought the priceless blessing of communion with this spirit, it has
found a strength which no human power could daunt, a peace
which nought on earth could give or take, away. These witnesses
all declare that there is a spirit in man, and with one voice pro
claim that by the inspiration of the Almighty they understand the
secrets of this troubled life.
�4
Wheh We see koW tniicfk the spirit of God has done for us, we take
hope; it is when we perceive how hardly the heart of man is open
to its gracious influences that we may well lose courage. Not only
have we to fight our way out of the darkness of utter ignorance,
but when we think that we see clearly there is an ever present
temptation to limit his greatness by our weak imaginations, to
doubt his power beyond our personal experience, to seek to bring
Him nearer to us rather than to raise our souls to Him. We
trust in the familiar means by which we think His grace has been
given; we shut our ears to the promise that it will be given in all
ways, at all times, and for all our needs. We believe readily that
God has inspired a book, or a place, or an institution, or a person;
it is hard for us to believe the plain truth that His spirit is in the
human soul, and that we, too, weak and worthless as we are, may
partake of this heavenly enlightenment.
To this very doubt we often give the name of faith, and this
trust in our weakness we are prone to boast of under the title of
humility. Some of us are so humble that they presume to judge
the rest of their race, and to offer up thanks that they are not
like the publicans and sinners around them, so ignorant that they
alone claim to know the whole counsel of God, so weak, that if you
credit them, none others stand firm but they. Such are the men
who are so ready with the nicknames of heretic and infidel, who
turn their backs on the glorious Bun and would forbid us to look
upon it save through their stained windows, who try to force the
scanty grace which they call sufficient upon us who seek for better
things. Light they have among them, for the light cannot but
fill the world, but see how they labour to obscure it with the dark
ness of their minds. Look how their temples are foul with dust
and cobwebs, and choked up with the lumber of a byegone age.
Hear how their words are bitter and empty, often the mere parrot
like repetitions of the phrases of a dead devotion, God is for
them not the Eternal Life of the Universe, but a mere magnified
Master of ecclesiastical Ceremonies or Examiner of Theological
Knowledge, dwelling not in and throughout His works, bur in some
vaguely conceived locality hard by within reach of the wings of our
feeblest aspirations. His spirit is no longer working in every soul
of man, but is degraded to be a mere mechanical force, given forth
�by engines of which these bigots keep the key* They strive to
quench, the spirit—to despise all new prophesyings; God has
spoken once—to them, and has now retired from the guidance of
human affairs, leaving them as his vicars and sole interpreters on
earth. Thus religion loses its divine character, and becomes a
mere clever contrivance for securing a degree of order and comfort
in this world, and a hazy prospect of sufficient prosperity here
after.
We are all ready to use this language of other sects which
deny our doctrines. These Romanizers, say some, are dark-minded
and dangerous • their pretences that the spirit is the inheritance of
their sole priesthood, may well be called presumptuous; their
boasted rites only serve to numb the soul; it were a Christian
duty to root out such superstition from the land. But the Protes
tants soon let us know that we are to be set free from one set of
fetters, only to be invited to fit ourselves with another, under
pain of theological reprobation and its consequences in this world
and the next. And even we who claim the name of Liberal
thinkers may constantly catch ourselves planning new prisons for
the soul, which would be a little more airy than the old ones, but
prisons still, though we call them temples. We are all prone to
forget that God is Almighty, and dwells in no temple but the
heart of man. Most of us, if we were humble enough, might
understand only too well what the weakness is that leads us to
put our faith in the forms and shows of spiritual things. How
few are wise enough to receive aright the new messages which God
ever sends to remind us of the greatness of His glory, and which
this false faith ever labours to petrify into new idols to arrest the
eyes that would look up to Him !
Is not this the history of every development of religion ? The
true prophet, the God-kindled soul, the real lord and master of the
conscience, appears among us, and leaves behind him a glowing
thought to lighten our darkness. Then comes the tribe of lower
minds, theologians, critics, scribes, who do their best to stifle and
confine his revelation, and would wholly extinguish it, but for the
divine strength which again and again bursts the bonds of man’s
folly. Jesus of Nazareth was scarcely vanished from the scene
before his disciples must need set to this work upon his teaching,
�and theirs is a remarkable example of the way in which a gran4
new lesson is dealt with by our petty conceits. I select an
apparently insignificant feature of their earthly mindedness; one
of his twelve chosen companions was wanting, and they imagined
that their first duty was to fill up the number which in their eyes
had a mystic sanctity, little knowing that outside of the sacred
band should arise th© man who was to play the most important
part in shaping the new creed. Later on, it was declared that
there must be four gospels among other reasons, because there
were four seasons, and four quarters of the earth, and four gospels;
there have been ever since to all orthodox Christendom, though in
every century God has inspired his evangelists to give new hopes
to their fellow men. Need I remind you of that same unhappy
weakness which has led men to attempt divisions and definitions of
the Almighty according to their conceptions, and would fain
sacrifice the grandeur of His unity to such puerile love of accuracy
and neatness of form. Alas ! such want of spiritual insight was
no characteristic of the past; we have but to look around us
to see how the earthly soul still loves to feed on the husks of
piety. How many men and women are there, whose eyes are
blind to the love that falls upon us from heaven in every sun and
shower, whose ears are deaf to the varied voices of hope and faith
that rise in one grand sweet harmony from the hearts of the
whole human race, to whom the true communion of Saints is
but an empty name, but who take great satisfaction in thinking
that at this moment so many persons in England are going through
the same form of prayer, under the ministry of priests dressed in
the same fashion, and making the same motions at the same places,
in churches built and adorned after somewhat the same pattern.
In many of these churches, perhaps, people are praising their God
with the obsolete phrases of mediaeval superstition, and hugging
to their souls theological epithets, which in all probability they do
not even understand, with an affectation of as much fervour as if
these expressed the great, yet simple truths that are our real
consolation and hope. And in how many pulpits, now, are
preachers not instructing their docile flocks that God has emptied
into a book, into a sacrament, into a priesthood, that inspiration
which is the inheritance of all His children ! Let us not speak
�7
bitterly against priests and preachers. They are always invited
to make Gods for a thoughtless and unbelieving people. It is
when we neglect the spirit for the letter, when we are careful
io observe customs and ceremonies, and neglect judgement and
mercy and true obedience, that our priests are found quarreling
about the colour of vestments and the authority of creeds, and
dogmatizing upon inspiration to disciples who care not to be in
spired. With souls so nourished, priests and people are ready to
fall together an easy prey to that real infidelity whose sacrament is
worldly gain, whose creed is fleshy lust, and whose gospel—to
morrow ye die.
Against these pernicious influences there is but one resource.
We must remember that the light is eternal at which man has so
often rekindled his flickering faith. W e look away from our own
imperfection to the work of the divine spirit, and see that it is
still striving with us. It works like the invisible forces of nature
that fill all space ond inform all substance, and when our In
fallibilities have decreed that it is to use such and such a channel,
behold! it bursts forth through unlooked for ways, wherever a
human soul is hungering and thirsting after righteousness. It owns
no laws but those natural ones of progress and development, which
the Almighty in His inscrutable wisdom has appointed, and the
unchangeableness of which is b it a guarantee that He will never
forsake us. Not a grain of sand, not a drop of water can be lost
from the earth; what force shall annihilate heavenly truth %
The forms in which we enclose it, perish and pass away into new
manifestations of our unskilfulness; but the word of God, once
spoken to the heart of man, can never die—nay more, it must grow,
and though to our sight it be but as the smallest seed, in time it
will become a mighty tree. Our mad hands may labour to uproot
the tender shoots of grace, but when they are withered in death,
the desert will blossom like the rose. Tyrants and traitors take
counsel to slay spiritual life, and lo 1 the cross or the scaffold is but
its throne, and high priests and cunning scribes and bigoted
crowds come to prostrate themselves before its crown of thorns.
Our prophets are stoned, but among the ponderous sepulchres
beneath which another age will bury their teachings, the sacred
line will not be extinct, and the anointed of the Lord will be
�8
found willing to dare and suffer all things in the service
of His spirit. The human soul goes often into captivity, but always
it shall return with songs of joy and gladness. For the spirit is
ever in man, and from age to age it is the inspiration of the
Almighty that gives him understanding.
-
“ God is not dumb that He should speak no more ;
If thou hasc wanderings in the wilderness,
And find’st not Sinai, ’tis thy soul is poor.
There towers the mountain of the Voice no less,
Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who bends,
Intent on manna still, and mortal ends,
Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore.
“Slowly the Bible of the race is writ.
And not on paper leaves or leaves of stone;
Each age, each kindred adds a verse to it,
Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan,
While swings the sea, while mist3 the mountains shroud.
While thunder’s surges burst on cliffs of cloud.
Still at the prophets’ feet the nations sit.”
Why then, are we so unbelieving ? Why should we thus learn
grand national history which we dishonour by our superstitious
veneration of its letter, so that its spirit is sealed from us? The
Jews ceased to be a great people and teachers of Gentile
nation, when they came to look upon their Lord only as a Deliverer
in the dim past, or as a Messiah in the far-off future. They pre
served their glory and their inspiration so long as they believed
that He was among them, and called upon the name of the living
God. The work of each hero and prophet was then but the war
rant of new deliverances, purer revelations. What was the re
quest of the great prophet’s greater disciple when his master was
taken from him ? Not that lie might have understanding to store
up the lessons of the departed teacher, and to expound his words,
but Elisha was bold and cried, let a double portion of Thy spirit
be upon me. He trusted that his eyes could be opened to see
greater things ; nor was his faith in vain.
This should be an example for us.
It is no pre
sumption in man to trust in the fountain of the sacred
spirit as ever flowing and inexhaustible. We may despise
the pure water, but we cannot taint the spring. Grateful
for the lessons that have been given us,^through history, through
nature, through the still small voice of conscience, humble when
we consider the perverseness which we oppose to the divine teach
ing, let us take courage from God’s greatness against our
infirmities, and praise His name for what we shall yet learn of His
ways.
Eastern Post Steam Printing Works, 89, Worship-street, Finsbury, E.C.
��
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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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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The spirit of God: a sermon, preached at the Rev. Charles Voysey's services, St. George's Hall, Langham Place, August 2nd 1874
Creator
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Hope Moncrieff, A. R.
Description
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6.
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Eastern Post
Date
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1874
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G4833
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Sermons
God
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The spirit of God: a sermon, preached at the Rev. Charles Voysey's services, St. George's Hall, Langham Place, August 2nd 1874), 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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English
Morris Tracts
Religion
Sermons
-
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“THE PEOPLE OF GOD.’’
A SERMON,
I
PREACHED AT THE REV. CHARLES VOYSEY’S SERVICES, ST.
GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE, AUGUST 9th, 1874, BY
MR.
HOPE
MONCRIEFF.
[From the Eastern Post, August Ibth, 1874]
On Sunday (August 9), at the St. George’s Hall, Langham-place,
Mr. Hope Moncrieff officiated in the absence of Mr. Voysey, and
took his text from Exodus xxxii., 32., “ Yet now if thou wilt for
give their sin; and if nob, blot me, I pray Thee, out of the book
which thou hast written.” Also, Romans ix., 3, “I could wish
that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren.”
He said—A frequent source of error and confusion in religious
truth, is looking on the prophets of God as inspired in all their
utterances by the same measure of His spirit. We should rather
remember that the imperfection of humanity clogs even the
strongest souls, and that the brightness of truth dazzles the clearest
eyes. There are times when such a one seems to be caught up
into the third heaven, and sees things unspeakable, which mortal
tongue can scarce utter. Again, the lower nature asserts its
claim, and the man for whom the veil of Paradise has been rent
is seen to be blinded by the prejudices of time or place. Some
times he comes among us as from the very presence of the Holiest,
with a veil over his face, and a power in his voice to make guilty
nations tremble; sometimes his words are but those of the learning
of the Egyptians.
On one occasion the great teacher sets forth
our duty to our neighbour under the wide hearted parable of the
good Samaritan; on another, we find him forbidding his messengers
to bear the good news of salvation into any cities but those of a
chosen race.
So the wise disciple must not allow himself to be
carried away by superstitious regard for his master’s every word,
but by the light of his own knowledge in spiritual things must take
care to separate the gold from the alloy, the temporal from the
eternal. Both are found in every gospel that has yet been given
�to man. The one may endure for a time, and serve to feed the rage
of that great army of bigots, controversialists, inquisitors, ecclesi
astics, and the like, who are in truth but the camp-followers of
religion, though so often they pass for its saints and heroes. The
other, falling into good ground will spring up and bear fruit a
hundredfold, and, so long as the world stands, will increase and
multiply as food for the noblest needs of mankind.
Two striking instances of this are to be found in. the passages to
which I have called your attenion. The man who prays:—“ Blot
me out of the book which thou hast written,” has his hands red
with the human blood which he imagines that God will accept as a
sacrifice for the sins of the people. The man who cries:—11 Let me
be accursed from Christ, for the sake of my brethren,” goes on to
show that he means only his brethren according to the flesh, those
who were Israelites, to whom, as he thought^ pertained the adoption
and the promises. Yet when we consider what those hopes were,
which the two great expounders of the old and the new dispensa
tions were willing to sacrifice in their burning love for others, we
must look upon these as among the grandest and most instructive
passages in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. Moses rises fn
moral stature above the God who is represented as peevish,
capricious, and revengeful. Paul offering soul as well as body to
eternal death, seems to beggar that conception which we have
called divine, that a man should give his blood for the sins of the
world. Let us rejoice that their words remain to put to shame
that ignoble teaching which even among ourselves would make
religion only a more cautious and far seeing form of selfishness, and
teach us that our one work in the world is to save our own miser
able souls from whatever fate awaits our fellow-men.
A lofty summit which the great men of old only caught sight of
here and there through cloulds of superstition, is now coming full
in our view, though it may yet be long before we stand upon it and
command the glorious prospect beyond. The moral sense of our
age finds it impossible to rejoice in visions of a paradise, one of the
joys of which shall be to sing endless hallelujahs over the agonies
of lost souls. The great doctrine, that which may well be said to
mark the dawn of a new dispensation, has taken root, and is lifting
its head above the weeds that had almost choked it; and men are
�learning that they are Brothers indeed. Once let us feel this and
we can no longer believe that our common father has a special
regard for any chosen race or favoured individual.
Hitherto a narrower conception of God’s love has reigned in our
minds, and we see the results. When this life was all the clear
promise, the enemies of the Lord were no be smitten hip and thigh.
To obey was to hew Agag in pieces; it was a holy mission to make
Jezebel food for dogs. In time came dim glimpses of a life beyond
the grave: and here, too, the ignorant zeal of man was busy
to deny his inheritance to the stranger and the Gentile. The
Jewish vision of a place of future punishment, took form and
colour from the foul fires of the valley of Gehenna; and the fierce
temper of A ryan converts made these fires more hot and hideous.
Then all through the middle ages, the fear of hell sat like a night
mare upon the hearts of men, a fear so unbearable that it overleapt
itself. Such a horrible picture could not be realized ; if realized,
it was madness and despair. The Catholic Church of that day
but obeyed the voice of nature in putting its purgatory before the
eternal hell, and giving its votaries hope that such sufferings might
have an end, By and bye came the Reformation, and in this
reaction against Boman teachings, our orthodox theologians would
again have brought hell into the foreground of their religious
scenery. But as the light of truth dawns, these avenging flames
grow paler and paler, and now, to most intelligent men of all
sects, they are little more than an ugly dream.
That the notion of eternal punishment is falling into general
contempt, or at least neglect, is evident to any one who cares to
read the thoughts of his generation. In such matters we must not
be misled by creeds. If we were to look merely at the published
dogmas of the religious world, we should come to quite a different
opinion. But churches are like barometers which, show not only
the present state of the weather, but that at which they were last
set; it is a pity we do not set our barometers oftener. One hand
marks a time‘when we believed that Jews, Turks, infidels and
heretics were objects of the wrath and vengeance of God. The
other has evidently risen a long way, and still is rising, for churches,
no more than barometers, can resist the atmospheric pressure.
So we see a strange contradiction of belief and dogma. Most ortho
�dox people would perhaps tell you that they believed in hell, but
it is quite clear that they would rather not talk about it; many of
them frankly and vehemently deny it. The subject is studiously
avoided in the majority of pulpits, or, if not, is introduced with an
apologetic air, and touched upon in a vague, hasty maaner that
hows it advocates to be ashamed of it. The doctors and dignitaries
of the establishment have for some time been hard at work trying
to explain to themselves and to one another, how they may continue
to say that beyond doubt certain persons shall perish everlastingly,
without meaning anything in particular. The churchman has his
cut and dry theory; man is in a state of sin and reprobation, God
has constructed a machinery of grace ; through this only have we
any prospect of escape. But if you press him as to the future
state of those who do not or cannot avail themselves of this
machinery, he hesitates to answer, and his kindliness clearlyrefuses
to let him go with his creed to all its logical lengths ; so you leave
him with a suspicion that his God would be no more consistent
than himself. Liberal clergymen notoriously reject the notion of
eternal damnation, though the Athanasian curses are chanted very
prettily in some of their churches. The so-called Evangelical school,
to do it justice, tries harder' to keep by its traditions, but there
seems something remarkably suggestive, in the very vehemence
with which it endeavours to express its belief on this point. One
of the most popular organs of the dissenting world has for some
time been feeling its way out of the necessity of doubting God’s
justice, and has got to this point, that it is open to all orthodox
Christians to hold that the wicked and unbelieving are not
tortured, but annihilated after death. These are signs of the
times; and though the preachers are wholly dumb, there are a
thousand voices proclaiming that man’s spirit, entering into a
richer inheritance of blessing, has beheld wider realms of God’s
goodness. Our whole literature is saturated with a belief or an
unbelief, in which endless miseries for any part of our race, have
no more place than the existence of a devil with horns and tail.
This divine thought which now comes fuller in view, this reve
lation which the old prophets saw afar off, is the greatest glory of
our age. Beside such a discovery in moral science, how small
things are our steam engines and spectroscopes. To believe this
�tiuth is to be born again. Do not say it is mere cowardice and
dislike of the unpleasant conditions of existence—though there is
something that might be said on this point—which is working
this change, and making us willing to take an easy rose coloured
view of God’s dealings with man. Life has still sad and stern as
pects to try our faith and endurance ; it is only hopeless woe in
which we refuse to believe. The hell which we imagined was for
others, for the heathen, ior the impenitent; for ourselves we always
left some loophole of escape. But it is the men who are nearest
heaven, who now tell us that there are no flames which its streams
of mercy cannot quench. The new faith is the work of quickened
sympathy, wider knowledge, real humility. It is when we consider
our imperfection, shared by the rest of mankind, the varied sur
roundings which mould the opinions of ourselves and our neighbours,
the unequal measures of capability and opportunity which have
been bestowed upon us, it is only, I say, when we rise above ig
norance and pride and selfishness, that we feel it would be cruel
in an Omnipotent Creator to exact eternal vengeance on any soul
of man, and base in us to cringe for the favour of such a being,
great only in his resistless strength. We cease to look on it as
our du ty to put rhe idolatrous nations to the sword; we begin to
believe that the wicked shall not be cast into a hopeless hell; we
come to see that the people of God are no elect saints, no chosen
tribe, but all the nations of the earth. Then we know in truth that
to love God whom we have not seen, is to love our brothers who
sin and suffer side by side with ourselves.
When we wish to estimate the moral progress of man, we do
right to mark his highest point of thought, for a good thought can
never die, and its being put into deeds is only a matter of time.
But looking forward to our ideal, we must constantly remind our
selves how very far we ever lag behind it. And seeing the lessons
we have still to learn, w e may well say that we have not yet
mastered the alphabet of love. It is easy to abolish a conception
of hell, half terrible, half grotesque, and altogether out of keeping
with the taste of our age. It is a cheap thing to be generous with
spiritual blessings which we proclaim to be as free as the air. But
let us ask what we give our brothers from that which is our own,
and yet, if we Knew it, not our own.
�<5
The inquisitors of old were consistent in their belief, who burned
men’s bodies that souls might be saved from eternal fires. What
shall we say, if we leave bodies and minds in such a state that
Earth itself seems a hell for the soul ? Pain we have always
with us ; we may call it punishment, trusting our Father that in
love He chastens us. . It is useless to ask why we suffer;
enough, that we suffer by sin, and our hope is that these sufferings
are not endless, that we are being purified by these trials. God
has appointed means of help; do we labour night and day that
these means may be placed within the reach of those whose need
is sorest ? It is with loving pity or proud scorn that we regard
our brethren on whom the mysterious curse lies heavier than on
ourselves ? Is our own salvation our least care, and our greatest that
others may taste and see that the grace given us is good ? Alas !
we strive blindly and fiercely for the light itself, and care not that
the crowds below are sttll dwelling in a gloom where there is no
human help or hope—none but the spirit of God which can turn
the deepest darkness into day. Vain boasting over our attain
ments ! It is but a reflection of the truth that we see, if its rays
do not shine in our lives, only that soul which gives light to other
draws nearer to the glory of the sun.
Is it not sad to see the selfishness of men—a selfishness which
only changesits object when it seeks spiritual exclusiveness, and
its form, when it extends itself from individuals to communities !
Think of the narrow views of duty and interest in which we are
so often educated, taught to seek a certain standard of virtue, not
because it is the inheritance of the great human heart, but that we
may do honour to such a family, such a school, such a college
which thus instructs us to make pride rather than humility the
motive spring of our religion. See then, how we are divided into
classes and cliques, each priding itself on i ts moral and material
superiority to others. If the Beelzebub of old romance could
observe the ways of men, would he not laugh to see now these selfrighteous, self-deceiving herds flock to worship as God the godlike
man, who bade the simplest and the sinfullest seek him first,
whose heart was most open to the vilest outcast of earth. Need I
speak of our churches and chapels ? These, on ultimate analysis,
will be found to subsist in separation, chiefly through differences
of culture which we think it necessary to maintain as barriers for
�7
our sinful pride. Look abroad, and we find people set against
people, continent separated from continent by Atkntics of ignorance
and selfishness. Almost every nation in Europe names itself
Christian, and how complacently we boast of our Established
Churches, and call God to witness that His temples are reverenced
in every land. His blessing is involved on all our public acts ; his
law is proclaimed to be the guide of our policy. But brush away
these flimsy forms like a cobweb ; read the honest paragraphs of
your newspapers, and say if there is a single government in Europe
which does not habitually act on the assumption that the policy
of its most Christian neighbours is absolute selfishness, and that
every nation wants but the power and a mere figment of excuse, to
proceed to what in private life would be called murder and robbery.
We may see that little but the fear of punishment restrains us
from vulgar larceny, when it is with impious hymns to our common
Father, and accursed blessing of bloodstained banners in His name
that men set about stealing a province, or slaughtering half a
million of their fellow creatures. Good God! how far are thy
children yet from home 1
Our national life is not altogethe unchristain. We do something
to educate grovelling classes, and dependent peoples ; we send out
missionaries to those whom we call the heathen ; and from some
aspects such attempts are wholly creditable to us. But there are
features of our missions, which, as I should wish to explain more
fully, did time permit, distinguish them from the zeal of genuine
humanity. They are sectarian for the most part, and love of our
brother as man, trust in him as the child of God, find no place in
the creeds of our sects. The statesmen who believe blood and
iron to be the only strength of national prosperity, are but the
natural outcomes of religions which grant salvation to particular’
races, or creeds, or congregations. What we should most earnestly
support is a home mission to ourselves, to bring our sympathies
from the narrow courts and alleys in which they are confined.
The most enlightened of us know best how wide is this field of
exertion.
To love our neighbour as ourself, how easy it sounds to the
tender heart, but how hard it proves when we have not only to
make open war against selfishness, but to temper the very zeal
of our better nature! Love leads to “hate of sin that hinders
loving,” and in our hot haste we cannot pause to separate the sin
and the sinner, and would call down thunder from heaven upon
our brothers who make light of its law. It is hard, I grant, not
to believe sometimes in a hell for the enemies of the Lord and His
people. They are not only degraded savages and hardened outlaws
whom we are tempted to look upon as cut off from grace. When
we see the cruel selfishness with which respectable church-going
�8
-
)
people make their way in the world over the bodies and souls of
their poorer brethren, we can enter into the spirit which animates
the parable of Dives and Lazarus, and take a fierce joy in thinking
that a time of retribution shall come for those who so greedily
grasp the good things of this life. But deeper experience brings a
calmer mood. Vengeance is not ours, and if the Lord is long
suffering why should we be wroth ? Faith is ready to ascend into
heaven with the prayer : “Father forgive them, for they know not
what they do.” We learn of the Spirit, and see that as pity is
nobler than indignation, so is fear weaker than love.
And then it is only when we regard the sins of others that we
wish there may be a great gulf fixed beyond the grave. As has been
beautifully said, the highest mountains of earth are scarcely nearer'
to the stars than the lowest valleys, and paradoxical as it may
sound, true humility gives us wings on which we rise to see what
the eyes, of heaven see always, how far we all come short of the
glory of God. When we consider our own temptations, our
wasted opportunities, the vile thoughts and words and deeds that
ever rebel against the most kingly spirit, the best of us may well
abase himself in the dust, and thank heaven that his fate is ono
with that of the chief of sinners. Oh ! how our fears should
vanish if we could but believe that we are the most worthless of
God’s people. Why need we doubt as to our future state, when
we are sure that our destinies are bound up with the final welfare
of the whole human race; that what God has done for us, He can
do for others, and that what He is doing for others, He will do
even for us !
It may seem that I have mixed up too closely the ideas of
suffering here and suffering hereafter. But it will be seen on re
flection that the root and the remedy of all our misery is the
same. We must learn that we are members one of another' And
as our spiritual being becomes more refined, more sensitive, so we
come to feel that while the meanest member is in pain, the whole
body must suffer, and to understand that there can be no heaven
for us, while one soul is dwelling in hell. At the voice of love a
new light comes into the eyes of hope. Then faith takes courage
and prophesies that all flesh shall see the Salvation of our God.
If Paul and Moses were alive now, they would perhaps be more
distinguished for their works of practical benevolence, than for
tbeir utterances in the pulpit and through the religious literature
of the day. But this would be their secret prayer : “Blot me out
of the book of hope, so long as the gates of omnipotent mercy are
closed to the most hardened sinner. Let me be accursed for my
brother man, till the least as well as the greatest shall know Thee
and rejoice in Thy everlasting love.”
Eastern Post Steam Printing Works, 89, Worship-street, Finsbury, 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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The people of God: a sermon, preached at the Rev. Charles Voysey's services, St George's Hall, Langham Place, August 9th, 1874
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Hope Moncrieff, A. R.
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6.
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[Eastern Post]
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1874
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Sermons
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Morris Tracts
Religion
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“THE WILL OF GOD.”
JL SZEZE^MZOdST,
PREACHED AT THE REV. CHARLES VOYSEY’S SERVICES, ST. GEORGE’S
HALL, LANGHAM PLACE, AUGUST 16th, 1874, BY
*
MR.
HOPE
MONCRI EFF.
The text was taken from Job 13 15., “Though he slay me,
yet will I trust in him ; but I will maintain my own ways
before him.”
He said—Perhaps there is no part of the Bible, at least of
the Old Testament, which at the present day more engages
the attention of thoughtful and feeling men, than the book of
Job. An intense dramatic poem, an undoubted fragment of
antiquity, a true picture of human life, a bold attempt to
grapple with the greatest of problems, an anticipation of the
main speculation of all philosophies, it appeals with equal
force to our profoundest thoughts and to our keenest sympa
thies, annihilating for us time and space, lighting up the far
past, as it were, with an electric flash, and showing us how on
these Eastern plains the same souls were struggling with the
same sorrows that haunt the dwellings of our own prosaic
prosperity.
There is a time of life when such a book has little meaning
for most of us, and we fasten rather on the words of promise
and the hymns of praise, which form a much larger portion
of the sacred literature of the world’s childhood. In youth we
are told most likely that religion will make us happy and
prosperous, and while the sanguine temper of youth remains
with us, we may think it is so, seeing all things in its rosy light
and caring little to dwell on the sterner features of life. By
' and bye the sky grows duller, the wind colder, and, as the
storms of fate burst fiercely upon us, no longer like April
showers that pass away and leave the sunshine more sweet, we
look round for help and shelter, and begin to understand how life
is a pilgrimage, and to ask if anywhere we have anjabiding city.
I am not speaking so much of petty selfish cares, as of the
common sorrows that reveal themselves to generous natures,
though to few of us are these sorrows more than dim and
*In consequence of a misadventure, the Sermon of August 23rd is not printed.
�2
distant shadows, till our own eyes have been purified by tears.
We see the lot of man, how he is born to trouble, how he is cut
down like grass, how his strength is but labour and sorrow,
how his beauty vanisheth like a dream. We see how one
spends his days in wealth, yet in a moment goes down to the
grave; how another dieth in the bitterness of his soul, and
never eateth with pleasure. When we are young th® wicked
flourish before us and leave their substance to their babes ;
and before we are old we see the righteous forsaken and his
seed begging bread. The prayers of young and old seem to
vanish into the silent air. The shadows of the everlasting
hills fall upon our graves ; the stars shine down pitiless upon
our woes ; the sun mocks our short-lived toil, and all we,
great and small, are swallowed up into the darkness and
return no more. Where shall we find peace for the living and
hope for the dead ? How can we rest till we know if there be
aught in which we may trust ?
Such thoughts must come to every man, and come in the
more terrible shapes, in proportion as he is brave and clearseeing and tender of heart. And as our souls have been
nourished on the sickly sweets with which popular religions
too often tempt their votaries from the narrow path of truth,
so now the sweets will turn to bitterness, and with fiercer des
pair we will cry out against our nature and question the
righteousness of God.
This is said to be a. sad age, as how should it not be, when
men perhaps never before so clearly have realized the evils of
existence ? Our greatest living novelist is recognized as a true
representative of her times, painting life as she finds it, and
despising the tinsel with which inferior artists think it
necessary to hide the blots and inequalities of nature. Minds
most in harmony with the spirit of our age no longer relish
the boisterous laugh of Fielding or the complacent smile of
Richardson. Those who find in life nothing but matter and
phenomena, equally with those who see the working of a
Power which perhaps their awe-bound tongues can scarcely
name, find something far other than amusement in stedfastly
regarding the light and shadows that mingle into such mystic
forms. So we turn with new interest to writings like the
book of Job ; and the same feeling is probably the explana
tion of a great development of that form of belief which
centres round one who was a man of sorrows, oppressed and
afflicted through sin.
�3
This temper is partly, no doubt, the natural reaction from
that of a former generation, too confident that Providence
was at last beginning to abolish the conditions of existence,
too proud in its increase of comfort and knowledge and virtue.
But so far from its being caused by any want of religious
feeling, as has also been said, this sadness of its reflective
moods, amid its material prosperity and profusion of pleasures,
is one of the most hopeful signs of our age. Far greater
would be the danger, if it rejoiced to gain these worldly
things, and feared not to lose its own soul!
The truth is that religion does not give what we call happi
ness. The common jewels of the world can be bought cheap,
but if we wish to buy the pearl of great price, we must sell
all that we have. Indeed, we too often care not to seek
treasure in heaven till we have been beggared of our
earthly riches.
“There is no God, the foolish saith,
But none, there is no sorrow ;
And nature oft the prayer of faith
In utmost need must borrow.
Eyes that the preacher hath not schooled
By wayside graves are raised,
And lips say, God be pitiful,
That ne’er said, God be praised.”
The first step on the road of Salvation is to feel our need
of it. The path is rough and thorny, and often we are like to
faint by the way. The rest and-the joy which we have been
promised seem ever further from our reach. If faith were
not strengthened by toil, we should be fain to throw away
our burden, and turn back to the ignoble ease from which
God’s spirit called us forth into the wilderness. There is a
sense in which we must die to life, if we would be born again.
The kings and princes of the earth sit down to banquets of
wine, but the prophets of God mourn in solitude for the sins
of the people. Few are able to drink of the cup of God’s
anointed, or to be baptized with the baptism of the noblest
sons of man. If any will come after me, says such a one, let
him take up his cross and follow me.
So surely this sadness is no unhopeful sign in an age which
has many goods laid up, and might well be tempted to eat
and drink and make merry. I say unhesitatingly that it is
not an utterly selfish age, and that the deepest roots of our
sadness are not in our own sins and sorrows. Well says a
great author, that no wise man’ can enjoy the feast of life
�4
unless he sit at it blindfold. And now the spirit of God is
opening our eyes so that we can no longer be so insensible
as in times past to the welfare of our fellow creatures. Wp
see more plainly the far-reaching consequences of sin, and the
sufferings by which it must be atoned, how there is no salva
tion without shedding the richest blood and the bitterest
tears. Less absorbed in the symptoms of our own maladies, we
feel more intensely the world-long pangs that rend our com
mon nature, and we yearn with a greater desire that all flesh
may be made whole. We find less pleasure and comfort in
our warm and well lighted temples, when we think of the
millions who live and die without in spiritual cold and dark
ness. We take no joy in a God whom we cannot believe to
be the loving Father of all ; and when so many of His children
are wandering and perishing so far off, we may well sorrow
among the riches which we possess so thanklessly and use so
idly. How can we help being sad, if we have eyes to see and
hearts to feel for the evils which have driven so many tender
souls to the madness of disbelief and despair ?
When I speak of the spirit of the age, I speak of its higher
development of moral sense. Far more irreligious is another
tendency of the present day, which is perhaps oftener identi
fied with what is taken for a religious spirit, and which mani
fests itself in a spurious joy and a baseless satisfaction. There
is also among us a strong disposition to varnish over the stern
side of God’s dealings with man, so as to make religion
pleasant and easy as far as possible. There is a disinclination
to say that two and two make four, when it would be so much
nicer if they would make five. A taste for pretty sentiments
and neat dogmas, prevails in certain circles of the religious
world. We see people, perhaps we feel ourselves, trying to
soothe the pangs of natural doubt by spiritual anodynes
which in time must be the death of the soul. We fawn upon
heaven, as it were, and pretend to be thankful for dispensa
tions against which we secretly rebel. The chaos of disjointed
reasoning and foundationless conviction into which most of
our churches have fallen, is permeated by a certain sentiment
of luke-warm good-nature, half selfish and half friendly,
which cannot fail to have a dissolving effect on whatever sound
principles of belief may be left. There is already among some
sects a competition as to which will supply religion cheapest,
giving the greatest feeling of security and moral elevation for
the smallest price of contrition and self-sacrifice. But such
�5
bargains cannot be sound. In nature, as’in honest trade, we
get the worth of what we give, neither more nor less. It is
all very well for the mean soul that knows not the cravings
of heavenly hunger, yet is not unwilling to patronize a
fashionable and inexpensive luxury, and thinks to make the
best of both worlds, by purchasing the countless riches of the
one with a poor tithe of our beloved ■ gold. But the truly
awakened heart cannot be satisfied thus. It will give the
whole world to gain the truth, whether the truth be agreeable
or no. Its meat and drink is to do God’s will; its labour to
learn His ways. It is at once humble towards heaven and
upright towards itself. It bows before God, but for very
reverence, will not do violence to the reason and conscience
which bear witness of Him. Such a spirit may trouble the
brightness of the idle hours of life ; but only such a spirit is
blessed in struggling with the secrets of the darkness.
This careless way of looking at evil is generally the mark
of a slavish temper, in which light-hearted buffoonery alter
nates with abject crouching before a cruel power. See how
our sectarian religionists try to propitiate their Maker by
falsehoods against the moral nature which He has placed in
them, and no less labour to silence the higher promptings of
that nature by the pursuit of pleasures which are only the
more deadly when they take the form of religious excitement.
Compare this spirit with that in which Job met
his troubles. No blinking at the sad realities of life ;
in such a case as his, we cannot shut our eyes and say peace
when there is no peace, and talk of light when all around us
is darkness. Yet no craven whining, no unmanly humility.
He. acknowledged the power of the Almighty, but he would
maintain his ways before Him. He durst not commit moral
suicide. He knew that only the soul which reverences itself
can reverence its Maker. He only asked to see Him and to
learn the ways of His love; against all seeming he would
trust that God was not more cruel than himself. “ Will he
plead against me with his great power ? No; but he would
put strength in me.” Thus spoke Job in the confidence of
his own human righteousness, and this true faith was blessed,
so that he could say, “ I have heard of Thee by the hearing
of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee.”
Remember how dark to this man was the world beyond the
grave. .Only in momentary flashes inspiration, if at all,
was it lit up for him. I have been treating this book as an
�6
English poem; but the meaning of the original is often
obscure and the received rendering of some of the best known
passages is more than questionable; our text, for example,
probably owes the nobleness of its sentiment mainly to the
translator, and the celebrated verse “ I know that my
Redeemer liveth,” has no more authority from the Hebrew
than “Search ye the Scriptures” has from the Greek.
Think, then, of the faith which so lifted up its hands in the
darkness and sought to feel the everlasting arms. Think,
too, of these heathen men of old, to whom Heaven had not
spoken so clearly as to us, who enjoyed this earthly life with
a keenness which we can scarcely realize, but who may yet
put us to shame by the courage with which they faced what
ever they knew of doubt and dread, finding in this courage
some dim hint of the divine strength.
Think of the
philosophers who strove to ascend into the highest heaven, as
well as to descend into the deeper hell of nature, and were not
seldom rewarded by glimpses of the unknown God. Think
of the poets who brought the direst forces of life upon the
stage, and, tracing sin and suffering as far as man’s eye can
reach, heard notes of triumph mingling in the funeral hymns.
Does the half unconscious faith of these men not rebuke us
in our too common moods of sluggish ease, which avenging
nature so surely alternates with fever fits of unrest and long
hours of hopeless despondency !
Have we no hopes which were hid from these men ? The
elevation of our moral vision, our new yearning to see God
revealed as a faithful Creator, the more unselfish prayers with
which we entreat Him that all the world may be saved—what
are these but pledges of our salvation. ' As Job’s own
integrity was to him the guarantee of God’s justice, so our
pity may give us good assurance of his infinite mercy.
Because we love, He must love, as because He lives, we shall
live also. What though God’s face seem to be hidden from
us; what though we feel the power of the enemies of man
kind, our trial is a triumph if we have still strength to bless
the name of Him who afflicts us, and by our struggling faith
do bear witness to His nature, in whose image we are made !
If we could only have faith I If we could only give up
these anxieties as to our fate and commit ourselves into the
hands of God, trusting that the Maker and Judge and
Father of all the earth will do right to every soul that he has
created. I do not speak of that selfish stunted faith which
�declares it will be well with us, though not with others, and
would explain away the horrors of such a creed by suggesting
that love and justice mean one thing on earth and another in
Heaven. To me this makes the riddle of life only more dark
and more cruel. It kills my last hope. It mocks all my
desires. I know nothing of goodness except through God,
and nothing of God except through man’s goodness. And
I am amazed—even though it was once my own case—
at the language of those men, who tell us that salvation is
only promised to a part or a minority of mankind, and almost
in the same breath exhort us to praise , the name of the Lord
who has so willed it, and to rejoice and be glad in His works.
Far more natural and more noble the mood in which,
like Job, we desire to reason with the Almighty, and would
speak even to God of the miseries which He suffers to endure.
I hope, on another occasion, to make it abundantly clear
that I am not advocating asceticism or putting spiritual
megrims in place of true health. I am simply dwelling on
the serious facts of life, and reminding you that there can be
no solid comfort for us till we have looked them in the face
and seen the worst of them. Deep and dark are the shadows
that fall ever across our most sunny paths. Careless jester
and cold cynic have in vain tried to laugh or sneer them
away; scarcely less in vain have heathen philosopher and
Christian saint striven to tear down the veil that wraps the
eternal will of God. When all words of hope and comfort
are spoken, there remains a trial and a mystery, before which
the best and the wisest may well shrink and tremble. There
are moments in all our lives when the flesh seems to fail us,
and there appears no help for our need. No words of ours can
dry the widow’s tears or bring back the father’s first-born dead.
Only time heals such wounds—time and God’s mercy; is it
no other than His mercy which opens them afresh ?
I cannot explain this mystery to you—I speak as for myself
because I can speak no otherwise. Each one must wrestle
for himself with God’s power, who would learn the secrets of
His will. Each one must bear his own burden to the shore
of the dark river beyond which we think to hear snatches of
the angels’ songs, and in dreams to see the spotless streets of
our Father’s home. But this, at least, we may all see and
take courage—that the Lord loves whom he chastens, and
that He gives no richer gift to man than this sorrow which
drives us to our knees.
�Do you see that mountain side where green vineyards
seem to mirror back the glad sunshine ? Once, there, the red
lava rolled in scorching torrents, and the smoke of destruction
hid all the heaven with clouds of terror. Then came long
years of silence and desolation, when we trod on crumbling
ashes and colourless fields of dust. But nature put forth her
healing power and blessed that which was barren, so that
now all is fairer than before, and trees good for the food of
man take deep root and find rich sustenance in this troubled
soil, and sweet flowers smile in the crannies that once poured
forth such foul flames and such bitter streams.
Even so, are God’s ways not like man’s ways. He gives
sorrow in love, and in mercy He denies us joy. The fiercest
storms which he sends on earth leave the seeds "of peace and
plenty behind. The heartless, the careless, the dwellers at
ease, cry out in woeful agony when these storms burst upon
them, and curse God among their ruined pleasures, and
scattered riches. But the most weather-beaten souls are of
good courage, for they tell us that the nearer they come to
the darkness, the surer they are that the fight of love is
behind it, that from the deepest sorrow they are borne to the
highest heights of faith; that when human health fails them,
and tears drown the voice of human strength, then they are
most enabled to praise the will of Eternal Goodness and to
trust in Him, even at the gates of death.
Carter & Wtt.t.tams, General Steam Printers, 14, Bishopsgate Avenue, Camomile-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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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The will of God: a sermon, preached at the Rev. Charles Voysey's services, St George's Hall, Langham Place, August 16th, 1874
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Hope Moncrieff, A. R.
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 8 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 6. An endnote on the title page: 'In consequence of a misadventure, the Sermon of August 23rd is not printed.'
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Sermons
God
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Morris Tracts
Religion
Sermons
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Text
ROBERT COLLYER AND HIS CHURCH
'* " ’'
'
A
DISCOURSE
DELIVERED IN THE
FIRST CONGREGATIONAL UNITARIAN CHURCH
IN PHILADELPHIA
if 0 V E M B ER 12 1 8 71
BY
■wliHI. ZFTTZRzJSTZESS
MINISTER
King & Baird,
[printed
not published.]
Printers.
��DISCOURSE
I take for my text what thJ3|g|.h elders said to
Jesus when they went, to him in behalf of the Roman
centurion.
He
is worthy for, whom thou shouldst do this.
.
Luke vii. 4.
My Friends:
The religious societies of our denomination have all »
been invited tel aid flniBBflwQBv Church in
Chicago for our dearly ^»veMm?iend and brother?
Robert Collyer, whose' ^^utiSlOlle^ of worship was
burned down in the grS^o^i^gBOH
It is proposed to
fifty thousand dollars for the
purpose. I have no doubt this sum will be raised.
Apart from Robert Collyer’s peculiar personal claims,
there is in the Unitarian E»omirH®n as in all reli
gious denominations, as irf :all»EM^gociated for com
mon objects, what the French call, a spirit of the body,
which prompts the members of the body to liberal
giving, and causes every proposal n^e in its name to
be greeted with favor for the mere |pme’s|sake, letting
alone the intrinsic merit^jof the proposal.
Political
parties as well as religious sects illustrate this spirit.
�4
Even the greatest outrages upon liberty and common
honesty are more than pardoned—they are accounted
honorable and sacred, when perpetrated in the name
of the party or the church.
But, thank Heaven ! we have as striking instances,
and most cheewig instances are they, of the same
spirit in the interest of good 'objects. Witness the
great Rebellion, when, in the name of Our Country,
which makes this multitudinous and diversified popu
lation one body, acts of the noblest heroism were
done, and self-sacrifice became a luxury. Witness
also the generoutftutpOuring >f effective sympathy in
behalf of thejiffering hosts of the West, in the name
of the common humility which makes all mankind
one.
Seeing that this spirit is so strong, I have no doubt,
I say, that attachment to the name, loyalty to the
denomination, will be powerful enough among liberal
Christians to rebuild Robert Collyer’s church in Chi
cago.
I am very ^BrnlSBi desirous, friends and brothers,
that we of this church should take a prompt and
generous share in thi^mgost worthy enterprise. But
for the fulfilment of my ardent desire, I do not rely
upon your zeal for the denomination.
If there is any one Church in our denomination in
which there is less of a denominational spirit than in
�5
others, it is this Church. I do not believe there is
any associated numb® of Unitarian Christians less
disposed than we are (to use a vulgar but expressive
phrase), toBgdJm a? merely denominational
object. I ha^^^H attempted—I should most cer
tainly have wle|H||Oj^Epo use the Unitarian name
to conjure money out of your pockets. I regard it as
a very good thing that it is st^na^tn^^ ^among you
so little of
IWm onoBteMSRnil^^MII whatever
solicits youriw^^^^Mw must stand or fall upon its
merits.
For thB state of things amongst us of this Church,
there are* tb< best of reasons. For a feflg^ime we
were, and we are still, gecBaph^m^fpe|jkihg, on the
outskirtsW^ifffwitfe’^Uni^^^a coSSmrWB n nl in the
closest and most vital connection with it. When I first
became the pastor of this church, nearly half a century
ago, scarcely a si^^^^Orbassfed *ffiaB some one of my
brothers in the ministry from Boston or its vicinity—
the headquarters of the T^taWay
—did
not stand in this pulpit, and thus keep up a living con
nection with the Ka' ’lbfawners and
brothers have, one after aiWthe^ nearly all disap
peared. Their voices are heard B^WwrlM A new
generationJdfel sprung up. W:JWfcKfee^^bft more
and more alone.
Then again the advocacy of the caute of the slave,
�6
which I was “ driven of the spirit ” some thirty years
ago, in a humble way to undertake, tended still further
to isolate us. I was regarded as endangering the
interests of Unitarian Christianity, which it was
pleaded, had as much as it could do to bear the odium
of the Unitarian name without having the added bur
then of Abolitionism. It was impossible that this plea
should increase our zeal for nominal Unitarianism.
What churchlwhat religious wganization on earth
was not bound to go
members could not
feel and speak for the4 oppressed as oppressed with
them 1 What? doctrines,. howeve^pure and simple,
were of any galue if they could not Sustain the cause
of Humanity, howeveilobnoxious that cause might
be'?
Is it any twonder that we grew lukewarm in
the interest of .mere 3Jnitarian Christianity ? Dr.
Channing said a little while before his death that
he cared little for Unitarianism, and this it was that
gave occasion to a re^rt ^abat he had become a
Trinitarian. The’ truth was that he cared less and
less for a denomination, as he was growing to care
more and more for Justice and Humanity.
In addition to the subject once so dangerous and
hateful, the so-wled theological opinions in which I
have been interested, my views of the nature and
miracles of Jesus, have also helped, perhaps, to set our
little church here in Philadelphia apart by itself. We
�7
live to see' both of the great bugbears shorn of their
terrors.
Once more. We hav^feeifl 1S| to wsjtand by our
selves by the origin of ouSSoiwty and by the materials
of which it is composed. Almost all the Unitarian
churches out of New England, with the solitary excep
tion of ours, were, and, I suspect, still are, almost exclu
sively, madeiup of people of New England birth, New
England colonists. Long after two Unitarian churches
had been gathered a^icp^^ro'New York, I was told
by a leading member of one of them, that he did not
believe that they had had a- single accession from
among the nathW of that city. O ur ’ehurch, on the
other hand, had its beginning, gnl five and seventy
years ago, with ^rs@ns exclusively from Old England,
followers and admirers of Dr. Priesfcy, when the name
of that eminent man was regwddd with distrust by
some of the most advanced mS9 in New England.
In fact the autographed f Dr. Prwtley appears on the
records of ou^fcMurch, enaBWi with the names of our
earliest members.
And furthermore, while, from time to time, individ
uals and families from New England have joined us,
many of thos^whom we have had thl happiness of
welcoming to our commfion have come from the'
denomination of Friends|| and if dhey wereQiot here,
they would be, if any where, in Quaker Meeting.
�8
*
All their associations are with Quaker ways, and they
have been moulded by the influence of that eminently
Christian denomination. It is not any attraction of
Unitarian formularies; whether of doctrine or observ
ance, but the liberal spirit of our mode of faith that
has drawn them to us. The Friends are not a prose
lytizing people. According!yu those of you who have
come to us fromghem have no special interest in the
methods adopted for the diffusion of liberal views, in
spreading L»tarianisgfi popularly so termed. You
put faith rath® in the spirit than in collecting
money and building churches, Rooking for moral and
religious results, not to be manufactured by costly
machinery, but to flow from iwlivictual effort prompted
by the inner light, He spirit of Tteuth.
On all these account^* frien®, there is no strong
denominational feeling among us, no burning zeal for
what are termed Unitarian movements, such as, for
instance, the plan recegjly proposed by our Unitarian
brethren of building a so-styled Rational Unitarian
Church in Washington &
We are all learning, I trust, to put less and less faith
in mere organizational and the mechanism of sects, in
measures rather than in men, in making religion by
'the collection of money and the distribution of the
written word; not that money and tracts may not be
serviceable to the good cause, but the man-made letter
�9
is not the God-inspired spirit, although it is constantly
mistaken for it.
In soliciting, therefore, y^ur pecuniary aid to the
rebuilding of Robert Collyer’s churchjC am not dis
posed to lay any stress upofflthe^adwiitage it will be
to Unitarian Christianity. The object proposed stands
before you upon grourgl Inroad and strong of its own.
lie is most
we should do this, most ,
worthy of the specialmMmfi church. This was
the first liberal churcMI^^^B^^E Robert Collyer
ever entered. It was the first certainly in which he
preached. As a minister of a liberal faith, here was
where he first* drew breath. ’ Here was he born into
our sphere, our son, our brother.
Somewhere about fourteen years ago, I met one
evening at the house of a friend, some seven or eight
miles from the city, a young ^Englishman, W workman
in a neighboring hammotfactory, and a Methodist class
leader, accustomed to exhort in the HRigapus meetings
of his denomination. |^*was imprip^M b^hiljthought-
ful air and by his acquaintance with the litellectual
topics of the day. "He- was - evidently a man who was subsisting on food which his fellow-workmen knew
not of, constantly growing, taking into his blood what
ever nourishment books afforded him. He was a
reader, they said, of the Encyclopaedia Brittannica.
Through the influence of Lucretia Mott he had
•
�10
become interested in the Anti-slavery cause; and, as
was almost always the case with orthodox men in
those days, when they touched that great living Cause,
Robert Collyer’s orthodoxy began to slough off like
a dead skin, and he became interested in liberal
religious views.
It was not long after, that he came one evening to
, this church. The weather was .stormy, and there were
so few present that, contrary to my wont, for the first
and only tim% I spoke that evening entirely without
notes. I sujg)oseithis being in accordance with the
custom of the Methodist church may have increased
whatever of interest the services of that evening had
for him.
Shortly afte^fards I went to| Cincinnati to the
marriage of my brilliant friend, Moncure Conway, now
and for some year? settled in London. He too had
been a few yearlW^fore at,<ihe early age of nineteen a
Methodist preacher, in Virginia, his native State, and
although we were then personally strangers to each
other, he had at that time communicated to me the
story of the painful douhtl through which he was
gasping for a freer air. The letter which I received
from him then, -appealing to me for spiritual help,
breathed great distress of mind, and touched me very
deeply. When, after withdrawing from the Methodist
communion, he took charge of the Unitarian church
�11
in Cincinnati, I accepted his urgent invitation to go
thither, and take what part in marrying him the laws
of Ohio might permitti Of ^course this pulpit was to
be provide(|fcfo^g I invited Robert Collyer to take my
place for theh@®e Sunday I was to be absent. Upon
arriving in Cincinnati I desired to prolong my visit
another week. I telegraphed home in reference to a
supply for the second Sunday, and received for answer
that you weii^wellK.onjtwitlaiiilCT mml than satisfied
with my substitute. It is now more than. thirteen
years ago, and Iuloi|®rnot that many of you remem
ber with pleasui^Rqfc^^jOollyer’sfctr^^&ig at that
time. It wannd^gM^^o^mMblfeten.
Upon my return home^v^hing to sh^re in- your
pleasure, I iagited ot® friend to preach for me. He
came again from hisw|l>aG©,oh wm^|to give me a labor
of love. I wait takenjill, and sW'ar fom being able
to come to chuwh, I was^not ajfele todleay mv room.
I had a day or two before received a letter from
Chicago, where van^aitarian Church ^as already es
tablished (now uaafet the charge of Robert Laird
Collyer), inquiring about a remarkable blacksmith, of
whose rare gift^ m,yjE)rre*(|hdeighl understood that I
had had much to tell, and asking whether he would
not make, what they greatly needed in Chicago, a
good “ minister at large,’[/to go among the poor, and
preach to them.
i
The* letter, if I thought him the
�12
right man, invited him to that city, offering him
twelve hundred dollars a year. Of course there could
be but one answer. When Robert Collyer came up
into my room on that Sunday morning, before going
to Church, I handed him the letter, merely hinting at
its purport. He refused to read it then, and put it in
his pocket. In the afternoon he came up into my
room again to see me, and handed me back the letter.
I told him to take it home with him and let me know
his decision. He replied that he had already decided.
He should go to Chicago. He had mentioned to me in
the morning that he had received the evening before
his month’s wages, thirty-nine dollars and some cents.
In a few daysfhe quitted the hammer factory forever,
and moved with ^s little family to Chicago.
There he ministered to the poor, rising so rapidly in
the respect of the community that when the terrible
Iowa tornado occurred, Robert Collyer was chosen by
acclamation at a publid meeting of his fellow citizens
to go to the scene of that calamity and distribute their
benefactions there. He soon gathered so flourishing
a church in Chicago that a few years ago a large edifice
was built for him and his congregation. I suppose
it was quite impossible for our friends in Chicago
to resist the genius of the place which could tolerate
only the big and the costly. A city, whose growth
was hardly outdone by the most extravagant stories of
�13
California vegetation, expanding so rapidly to giant
dimensions, must have a Unitarian Church in propor
tion. Consequently; Robert Collyer’s Church, Unity
Church as it wajHBOTjfed, was buiB- at ancost of nearly
two hundred thoi&n^ OyLlars. including an organ
that cost ten thousand dollars.
Although o® the day of its Dedication,
members
of the Church subscribed with a graadtiliberality to
wards the payment offiHffif,|jgft.
perched, what
the flames could not consume, a debt of sixty-five
thousand dollars. So
was the at
traction of the pa^chwLi that people flocked to the
church, so lo^hpis
sioutlv bore the
burthen.
But the terrible Fire came. And ltrwhen,B writes
Robert Collyer, in his account of the burning of
his church we®!® fought rifefairly as it came on us
from below, and beaten the infernal beasifcso that it
could never burn^s^umbli^Bw^mdltliat it had set its
fiery teeth away up in the roof out of our reach, and
I knew that all was over, I crept up stairs alone to my
pulpit, where I had
K»igW before and spoken
to nearly a th^gfffiid men ancwvK^W^; I took one last
long look at iijphe church and the dea^ sweeji noble
organ, then Xstook the Bible as it lay when| I had left
it, got out at last and-flocked the door and put the
key in my pocket and went away, for by that time the
�I
14
roof was ablaze, and I thought my heart was broken.
That Unity has gone up, like Elijah, in a chariot of
fire, she is not dead to me,—she never will be dead,—
or to those who loved her as I did, my hope and joy and
crown of rejoicing, for I held her for God and Christ,
God knows.”
The church was insured. And it is expected that
the insurance will cover the whole or nearly the whole
debt. Whatever ofWthe debt shall remain, Robert
Collyer says muf t be paid, if they all have to go to
work and earn the money. Not a dollar of debt is to
rest upon the church that is to be built. Taught by
this most severe experience, our friends in Chicago
have no desire now but for “ a plain, simple build
ing,”—not a dollar for ornament, except, as Robert
Collyer writes, where use is ornament.
Now, dear friends, in praying l^ou, as T do most
earnestly, to unite with all the churches of our faith
in building a Church for our rarely gifted friend and
brother, I do not introduce him to you as a mendi
cant who must perish miserably if we do not give him
this assistance. Do I need to tell you of his rich gifts,
his winning graces ? Is not his praise in all our
churches, nay, is it not sounded everywhere at home
and abroad? Can he preach anywhere where the
English language is spoken, where people do not flock
�15
to hear him, whether he speak from the pulpit or
in the lecture room 1
How well, by the way, does he tffend the trial of
his great popularity ! It is no feeblejfest to be put to,
to be so suddenly raised from the anvil to the pulpit,
to pass from the MM®e drudgery of hard manual
labor to a position, commanding the admiring attention
of multitudes, and^Hong them
mostBnlightened in
the land. It has been finely said that, wrhile “ the
prospect of the applause of ^ostgri^ is like the sound
of the distant diSnl which elevates the mini present
applause, flung] <M^etly in one’s face, is W® the spray
of the same ocean wluppn th^^E^rand^geq uiring
a rock to bear it.” > jKat RoberWCollyeruhas been
animated, elatHM iBjVom will, by his great and well
merited success, I do not d®E| It would argue an
insensibility in him if he were not. He is no rock in
this respect.. But notwithstanding the seductive trial,
he stands like a rock by his flock and his work in
Chicago.
Shortly aftelf the great calamity, I wrote to him and
told him that, he, Roberlr Collar, could rebuild the
city, to say nothing of his church. And is it not by
“the Orpheus-like musa^of the wisdom” to which such
as he give utterance that cities are built end nations
led up the loftiest heights of humanity'll You have all
read the words which he spoke the Sunday after the
�16
fire, standing upon the ruins of his clear church. A
Chicago paper tells us that his voice had cheered not
only his own flock, but all the people of the city, thus
justifying my assurance to him.
He has not, he cannot have, any anxiety on his own
account. As he himself says—and I suppose he is
prouder of the fact than of any sermon he ever
preached—that, if the worst come to the worst, he can
make as good a horseshoe as any blacksmith in Chi
cago. I do not know about his horseshoes. I am
no judge of the article. But I do know what
good hammers the young blacksmith was wont to
make by scores every week. They sent the nail
home, even as their maker sends home the truth,
only he does not, like a hammer, break in pieces the
hard and stony heart; by his rare pathetic power he
melts it into smiles of hope, into tears of penitence,
and sympathy and aspiration. But the worst will not
come to the worst with him. There is no likelihood
that he will ever be reduced to the necessity of manual
labor,-although it is no wonder if amidst that wide
ruin he felt for a moment that it might come to that.
What church is there, what community, that would
not gladly welcome him'? He has not the slightest
concern for his bread.
This then must command for him our warmest ap
probation and respect, and insure our bountiful aid,
�37
*
that while he may choose his place, sure of a lucrative
position wherever he may go, the thought of leaving
his flock and the desolated city, heems never to have
occurred to him. After the death of Theodore Par
ker, he was invited^o be the successor of that able
man, and preach in the Music Hall in Boston. But,
while, for obvious reasons,the invitation was very
tempting, he chose <o remain in Chicago. And now
he has no though^utjbf devoting himself and all that
he is to the building up again of all good interests in
that most afflicted ciwl
Believe me, dear friends, I am not using the empty
language of eulogy, nor ong| giving utterance to the
promptings .of personal g'iendship. You all know
that Robert Collyer is a man of peculiar gifts. Cole
ridge seems to be describing just such a man as our
friend, when he says that “ to find no contradiction in
the union of old and new, to contemplate the Ancient
of Days with feelings as fresh as if they then sprung
forth at his own fiat—this characterizes the minds that
feel the riddle of the world, and may help to unravel
it. To carry on jhe feelings of childhood into the
powers of manhood, to combine the child’s sense of
wonder and novelty with the appearances which every
day, for perhaps forty years, has rendered familiar,
With Sun, and Moon, and Stars, throughout the year
And Man and Woman—
�this is the character and privilege of genius. And so
to present familiar objects as to awaken the minds of
others to a like freshness of sensation concerning
them—this is the prime merit of genius and its most
unequivocal mode of manifestation.”
When a man thus endowed with “ the vision and 1
the faculty divine ” gives’ all that he is with generous
ardor to the service of the highest truth, shall we not
give of what we have, and uphold him with our hearts
and hands ? Shall any loss befal him that we are not
eager to repair ? You are sending food and clothing
and money in boundless quantities to the devastated
West. But, believe me, you can render the people
there no more solid and enduring service than to do
and to give allfthat you are able, even to the stinting
of yourselves, for such a creaM^fl centre of beneficent
influence as our friend/ that* he may have a place
where he may stand, and, with the arm of the spirit
stronger than the arm of flesh, which made the
anvil ring again, lift the thoughts and aims of men
above the material interests to which they cling
as all in all—lift them up into communion with the
Invisible and Everlasting, and with the blessed spirit
of the Lord Jesus. For his oWn dear sake, for the
sake of the gracious influence which he has, and for
the sake of Religion, pure and undefiled, of which he is
so powerful an advocate, I pray you, dear friends, let
�19
us all help, and help generously this good object,—to
build him a church.
It has been proposed by the American Unitarian
Association, which has its centre in Boston, that col
lections be taken up in all our churches for this purpose
on this the second Sunday in November. I do not,
however, suggest a collection to-day. There is no
pressing need of haste. I wish to commend the mat
ter to your-most thoughtful Consideration. You may
think it advisable to take up a collection shortly. In
the meanwhile, I shall be happy and proud, as I
always am, to receive for my friend whatever you may
be prompted to give. The appeals, recently made to
you, first in behalf of our brother from Paris, and then
for the sufferers of the West, to whom there are few
who have not given more than once, have been so
cheerfully and liberally met that they create the faith
that, so far from accounting it a burthen, you regard
it as a privilege, as it assuredly is, to give for a good
purpose, and that you are grateful to the Bountiful
Giver for the means that he has blest you with, and
for every new opportunity. By giving, you receive
more and better things than you give, and thus become
rich before God.
In conclusion, let me say that I trust I have not
offended against propriety in speaking so freely in
�I
A.
.20
praise of our friend, as is customary to speak only of
the dead. But I have spoken thus not to flatter him,
but for the simple truth’s sake. And if I have failed
in regard to the truth, it is not in going beyond it, but
in falling short of it. If there is any alloy in the
sense of truth which moves me to speak of him as I
have done, it comes from the fact that he has, more
than once, as I have been told, allowed the kindness of
his heart and the warmth of his friendship to carry
him away and alluded in his pulpit to his old friend,
the pastor of this church, in such terms as have been, I
confess, not without weight among the reasons moving
me to decline his repeated and most urgent invitations
to visit him and preach for him in Chicago. I own to
the weakness of not caring that his people should find
out, as they surely would if I went there, how far
beyond the truth their minister had been carried in the
ardor of his personal regard. Let me confess to you,
dear friends, between ourselves, that I am not without
a feeling of satisfaction in having this opportunity of
speaking of him in a way that necessarily squares a
private account of mine with him.
�
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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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Robert Collyer and his church: a discourse delivered at the First Congregational Unitarian Church in Philadelphia November 12, 1871
Creator
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Furness, W.H.
Description
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Place of publication: Philadelphia
Collation: 20 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Text taken from Lukje Vii. 4 "He is worthy for whom thou shouldest do this".
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King & Baird, printers
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[1871]
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G5367
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Unitarianism
Sermons
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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 (Robert Collyer and his church: a discourse delivered at the First Congregational Unitarian Church in Philadelphia November 12, 1871), 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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English
Conway Tracts
Robert Collyer
Sermons
Unitarianism
United States-Religion
-
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Text
��M !■ ETI N Ci; O F
■ JoCRETY
"’’ .
Cz
January 12, 1876,
1E
F'MlRTHSft VfSM VMM BISCOVRstt DKLITKRKI) fJY
REV
W. IL EURNES^ D.D
Sunday, Jan. 1O, 1876,
i*M the ^tension el %
! /•>'
nOrbinaihm.
-•>
January 12, 1823.
it Pi XHELPHIA:
■^■i ' 4<J
A 0O„ PRINTERS.
£
��AT THE
MEETING
OF
THE
CoDgregat/w
(Unitarian Society,
January 12, 1875,
TOGETHER WITH THE DISCOURSE DELIVERED BY
REV. W. H. FURNESS, B.D.,
Sunday, Jan. IO, 1875,
©n I Ije ©tension of fIje ^iftieflj ^rniifrersnrg of |jis ©rbinntion,
January 12, 1825.
PHILADELPHIA:
SHERMAN & CO., PRINTERS.
1875.
��On November 3d, 1874, the Trusted of the First Congiegational Unitarian Church of Philadelphia issued the
following notice to the members of the parish :
First Congregational Society of Unitarian Christians.
Philadelphia, November 3d, 1874.
A meeting of the members of this Society will be held at the
Church on Monday, the 9th inst., at 8 p. m., to devise an appro
priate plan for celebrating the completion of the fiftieth year of
Dr. Furness’ pastorate.
As his half century of faithful and distinguished service calls
for fitting commemoration, and as the members of this Church
must rejoice at an opportunity of giving expression to their
love, admiration, and respect for him, a meeting that concerns
such an object will commend itself, and prove of interest to
every one, so that the bare announcement of it, it is deemed,
will be sufficient to insure a full attendance of the parishioners.
By direction of the Trustees,
, Charles H. Coxe,
'
Secretary.
�4
In pursuance of this notice, the members of the Societyheld a meeting in the Church on the evening of Novem
ber 9th, 1874, to consider the subject proposed.
The meeting was organized with Mr. B. H. Bartol as
Chairman, and Mr. Charles H. Coxe as Secretary.
After stating the object of the meeting, the Chairman
called for the opinion of the Society. It was voted that
a committee of nine be appointed, who should, together
with the Trustees of the Church, constitute a committee
to take entire charge of the celebration of Dr. Furness’
Fiftieth Anniversary as Pastor of the Church; should
have full power to add to their number, and make such
arrangements as might seem to them suitable to the
occasion.
The Chair appointed on this Committee,
Mrs. R. S. Sturgis,
Mrs. J. E. Raymond.
Miss Clark,
Miss Roberts,
Miss Duhring,
Mr. John Sartain,
Mr. B. H. Moore,
Mr. David Brewer,
And at the request of the meeting, Mr. B. H. Bartol, the
Chairman, was added.
On November 14th, 1874, at 8 o’clock p. m., the Com
mittee appointed by the Society held a meeting at the
residence of Mr. B. H. Bartol, to make arrangements for
the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Furness’ pastorate.
The Committee consisted of the following persons :
Trustees.
Mr. Henry Winsor,
Mr. John Sellers, Jr.,
Mr. Enoch Lewis,
Mr. Charles
Mr. Lucius H. Warren,
Mr. Joseph E. Raymond,
Mr. D. E. Eurness,
H. Coxe.
/
�5
Appointed by the Society.
Mbs.
Mrs.
Miss
Miss
R. S. Sturgis,
J. E. Raymond,
Miss Duhring,
Mr. John Sartain,
Clark,
Mr. B. H. Moore,
Roberts,
Mr. David Brewer,
Mr. B. H. Bartol.
Mr. Winsor was chosen Chairman, and Mr. Charles
H. Coxe, Secretary.
It was voted, that on the evening of January 12th,
1875, there should be a commemorative service in the
Church, and ministers from other cities should be invited
to be present.
The Chair appointed as the Committee on Invitations,
Mr. L. H. Warren,
Mr. Enoch Lewis,
Mr. B. H. Bartol,
Mr. David Brewer,
Mr. B. H. Moore,
And at the request of the Committee
Mr. Henry Winsor.
It was also voted, that the Church should be hand
somely and appropriately decorated on that occasion.
The Chair appointed as the Committee on Decora
tions,
Mr. Joseph E. Raymond,
Mr. L. H. Warren,
Miss Roberts,
Mrs. R. S. Sturgis,
Miss Clark,
Miss Duhring.
It was also voted, that the Choir on that occasion
should be increased, if it should be deemed expedient
by the Musical Committee of the Church.
It was further voted, that a marble bust of Dr. Furness
should be obtained, and placed in the Church.
�6
Also, that gold and bronze medals should be struck
off, commemorative of the fiftieth anniversary of the
pastorate of Dr. Furness,
And also, that a suitable and handsome present should
be given to Dr. Furness, in the name of the Society, as
a token of their affection and gratitude.
Also, that photographs of the Church should be taken
as it appeared on the day of the anniversary.
The Chair appointed as the Committee on Fine Arts,
Mr. John Sartain,
Mr. B. H. Moore,
Mr. Henry Winsor.
It was also voted, that the exercises at the ordination
of Dr. Furness should be reprinted, and that the anni
versary sermon and the exercises at the commemorative
service should be printed in pamphlet form.
The Chair appointed as the Committee on Publication,
Mr. Dawes E. Furness.
And as the Committee on Finance,
Mr. B. H. Bartol,
Mr. Enoch Lewis,
Mr. Charles H. Coxe.
�7
On Sunday, January 10th„ 1875, Rev. Dr. Furness
preached his fiftieth anniversary sermon.
The following account is taken from the Christian
Register of that week:
“Yesterday was as perfect a winter day as can he
imagined, cool, clear, and bright. The Unitarian church
was filled before the hour of worship with an eager and
deeply interested throng. All the pews were occupied,
and the aisles and the space around the pulpit were filled
with chairs. The church was beautifully decorated with
laurel wreaths, and in front of the pulpit the floral array
was very rich yet very chaste. On the wall in the rear
of the pulpit was an exquisite ivy cross. Among the
festoons which overhung the pulpit were the figures
‘ 1825 ’ and ‘ 1875 ’ in white and red flowers.
“ Dr. Furness seemed to be in excellent health, and
took his part in the rare and touching semi-centennial
service without any apparent ^jh^mSoiM After a brief
recital and paraph rase^^tpprtWiate passages of Scrip
ture, he read with great beauty and tenderness the hymn
beginning, ‘While Thee I seek, protecting Power,’ and
after a prayer full of love, trust, and gratitude, he read
from the twentieth chapter of the Book of Acts, begin
ning at the seventeenth verse. Then the congregation
sang Lyte’s beautiful hymn, ‘Abide with me! fast falls
the eventide,’ etc. The discourse had no text, excepting
the impressive occasion itself. There was less of narra
tion of interesting incidents than in previous anniversary
sermons, yet the half century was reviewed in a simple
and masterly way. The preacheil mannfi was quite
subdued until he reached his studies of the life of Jesus,
�8
when his face became radiant, his tones fuller and
firmer, and his gestures frequent. The allusions to
other denominations and to the anti-slavery struggle
were exceedingly fair and magnanimous. The people
gave rapt attention, and there was evident regret when
the sermon closed.
“ The singing by a double quartette choir was highly
creditable. Mr. Ames’ church at Germantown was closed,
and pastor and people came to express their sympathy
with Dr. Furness’ society, and to enjoy the uplifting
service. Dr. Martineau’s new hymn-book was used, Dr.
Furness having presented his parishioners with a suffi
cient number of copies to supply all the pews.”
�4
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�J
��DISCOURSE
DELIVERED
SUNDAY JANUARY io, ^875,
ON THE OCCASION OF THE
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
OF HIS
ORDINATION, JANUARY 12, 1825, AS THE PASTOR
OF THE
-frirst Congregational Mnitarian Cljnrct)
BY
W. H. FURNESS D.D.
��DISCOURSE
It is in vain, dear friends, that I have tried to set in
order the thoughts that come crowding upon me as the
fiftieth year of my service in this place draws to a close.
I cannot tell what direction they will take. But for the
uncertainty of life, I might have reserved for this occa
sion the Recollections in which I indulged on the last two
anniversaries of my Ordination. All I told you then and
countless other memories come vividly to mind and heart
now. They almost hush me into silence, so hopeless is
the endeavor to give them utterance. I must needs talk
about myself. How can it be avoided on an occasion like
this ? I trust in the kind indulgence on your part which
has never failed me in all these years. If I should prove
only garrulous, you will not forget that I have passed the
allotted boundary and am now one of the borrowers from
eternity; although it hardly becomes me to make claim
to the privileges of age in a community where dwells
one, known and revered of all, who has entered his ninety
sixth year, and is not yet old.
First of all, most humbly and heartily do I acknowledge
and adore the good Providence that, for no deserving of
mine, has blest me so bountifully and so long, and given
me such a dear home among you. What friends, kith
and kin to me, have always surrounded me! At the first
here were my fathers—I have followed them all to the
grave. And now, behold! my brothers, my sisters, my
�12
children. What a gift of God the filial, the fraternal,
the parental trust which I have been encouraged to
cherish! It has been my chiefest treasure, the dearest
sign of Heaven’s grace, my support, my well-spring of life.
During my ministry I have received from you, from
time to time, not a few unlooked-for, substantial tokens
of your kind thoughts for me. They shall never be for
gotten. But it is not the remembrance of any special
proofs of your regard that now moves me, but the hearty
faith in your good-will upon which you have always given
me reason to rely. This has been my crowning privilege.
Even when differences have arisen between us, my trust
in your personal regard has never been allowed to be
shaken. Were there exceptions, they are as good as for
gotten now. Even those who have taken such offence at
my words that they withdrew from the church, still gave
me assurance of their friendship. There used to be times
of painful excitement among us, you remember, when I
was helpless to resist the impulse to plead for the op
pressed. I can never forget how cheered I was by one
friend, still living, but not now dwelling in this city, who
came to me and said that he had at the first disapproved
of my course, but that he was then in full sympathy with
me, and that, as to the church’s being broken up, as was
predicted, if I persisted in speaking for the slave, that
should not be, if a contribution to its support from him
(and he named a most liberal sum), could prevent it. Of
course I never thought of availing myself of his generous
aid, or of permitting the contingency to occur that would
make it needful. If it had come to that pass I should
have felt myself bound to withdraw.
You will not think that I offend against propriety in
mentioning such a private experience when you consider
what an encouragement it was, what a joy to know that
I had such friends.
�13
Indeed, I would not refer now to those painful times at
all, could I not in all honesty say that I look back upon
them with pride, not on my own account, oh no! but on
yours, dear friends, on yours. How I feared and trembled,
and with what a faltering voice did I deliver the mes
sages of truth that came to me! You resisted them too.
I tried to hold my tongue and you to shut your ears. I
would fain have run away and hid myself from the sum
mons of Humanity* But I could not do that. I could
not resign my position without putting you in a false one,
in a position which I did not believe you were willing to
take. And you were not willing. This church, I say it
proudly, never committed itself to the WrongB You never
took any action on Sat side. On the contrary, when, in
the midst of that agitation, I was honored with an invi
tation elsewhere, and you had the opportunity of relief
by my being transferred to another church, you asserted,
at a very full meeting, wW decisive unanimity, your
fidelity to the freedom of the pulpit. And now it may
be written in the annals of this Church that in that try
ing time, it stood fast on the ground of Christian Liberty,
and its minister had the honor of being its representative.
While I gratefullS^.cknowledge the friendship which
has been my special blessing for half a century, I gladly
repeat what I have said on former anniversaries of my
ministry, that the kindness I have received has not come
from you alone. How little has there been in all this
time to remind me that we of this Church bear an obnox
ious name! How many are there who are not of this
little fold, but of other denominations, who have made
me feel that they belonged to me! O friends, it is not all
bearing the same religious name, but all bearing different
religious names and yet each respecting in others the
right of every one to think for himself,—this it is that
�14
illustrates most impressively the broad spirit of our com
mon Christianity. I had rather see this fact manifest
than a hundred churches agreeing exactly with me in
opinion.
I preached my first sermon in the fall of 1823, in Water
town, Massachusetts. And then, for a few months, I
preached as a candidate for settlement in Churches in
Boston and its vicinity needing pastors. Kind and flat
tering things were said to me of my ministrations, but I
put little faith in them, as they came from the many rela
tives and friends that I and mine had in that quarter, and
their judgment was biased by regard for me and mine.
I was strengthened in my distrust when friends, fellow
students, and fellow-candidates, were preferred before me.
I never envied them their success. I felt not the slightest
mortification, such a hearty dread had I of being settled
in Boston, whose church-goers had in those days the repu
tation of being terribly critical, and rhetoric then and
there was almost a religion. I felt myself utterly unequal
to that position. All my day-dreams had been of the
country, of some village church.
In May, 1824, I gladly availed myself of the oppor
tunity that was offered me of spending three months in
Baltimore as an assistant of Mr Greenwood, afterwards
pastor of the Stone Chapel, Boston. Before I left Bal
timore, the last of July of that year, I received a letter
from this city, inviting me to stop on my way home
and preach a few Sundays in the little church here. I
accepted the invitation as in duty bound, but rather re
luctantly, as I had never before been so long and so far
away from home, and I was homesick. I spent the
month of August here. I do not recollect that I had any
thought of being a candidate for this pulpit. Such had
been my experience, my ill success,—I do not wonder at
�15
it now,—that I was surprised and gratified when, upon the
eve of my departure, I was waited upon by a committee of
four or five,—I have had a suspicion since, so few were
the members of this Church then, that this committee
comprised nearly the whole Church meeting from which
they came,—and they cordially invited me to return and
become their pastor. As I had come here a perfect
stranger, and there were no prepossessions in my favor, I
could not but have at the very first a gratifying confi
dence in this invitation. Although I asked time for con
sideration, I responded at once in my heart to the kind
ness shown to me. Thus the aspirant to a country parish
was led to this great city.
The three hundred miles and more that separate Phila
delphia from my native Boston were a great deal longer
then than they are now. It took then at least two days
and a half to go from one to the other. A minister of our
denomination in Boston and its neighborhood had then a
great help in the custom then and there prevalent of a
frequent exchange of pulpits. One seldom occupied his
own pulpit more than half of the time. But this church
in Philadelphia was an outpost, and the lightening of
the labor by exchanges was not to be looked for. There
was no one to exchange with nearer than William Ware,
pastor of the church in New York. The place to be
filled here looked lonely and formidable. I accepted,
however, the lead of circumstances, moved by the confi
dence with which the hospitable members of this church
inspired me. I was drawn to this part of the vineyard
by their readiness to welcome me.
My ordination was delayed some months by the diffi
culty of obtaining ministers to come and take part in it.
It was a journey then. The days had only just gone by
when our pious New England fathers who made it had
prayers offered up in their churches for the protection of
�16
Heaven (or rather in their meeting-houses, as all places
of worship except the Catholic and Episcopal were called;
we never talked of going to church, we went to meeting).
Ordinations have ceased to be the solemn occasions they
were then. Then they were sacramental in their signifi
cation, like marriage. As our liberal faith was then
everywhere spoken against, it was thought necessary that
my ordination should be conducted as impressively as
possible. It is pleasant now to remember that with the
two Wares, Henry Ware, Jr, and William, and Dr
Gannett, came one of the fathers, far advanced in years,
the venerable Dr Bancroft, of Worcester, Mass., the
honored father of a distinguished son, to partake in the
exercises of the occasion. They are all gone now.
This Church had its beginning in 1796, when seven
persons, nearly all from the old country, shortly increased
to fourteen, with their families, agreed, at the suggestion
of Dr Priestley, who came to this country in 1794, to
meet every Sunday and take turns as readers of printed
sermons and prayers of the Liberal Faith. These meet
ings were occasionally interrupted by the yellow fever,
by which Philadelphia was then visited almost every
year, but they were never wholly given up.
In 1813 the small brick building was built in which I
first preached, and which stood on the southwest corner
of the present lot? directly on the street. A charter was
then obtained under the title of “ The First Society of
Unitarian Christians.” So obnoxious then was the Uni
tarian name that the most advanced men of our faith in
Boston, the fountain-head of American Unitarianism,
remonstrated with the fathers of this church, and coun
selled them to abstain from the use of so unpopular a des
ignation. But our founders, being Unitarians from Old
England and not from New, and consequently warm ad
�17
mirers, and some of them personal friends, of Dr Priestley,
whose autograph was on their records as one of their
members, felt themselves only honored in bearing with
him the opprobrium of the Unitarian name. The title
of our Church was afterwards changed to its present de
nomination, to bring it nominally into accord with our
brethren in New England. In 1828 this building took
the place of the first.
It was about ten years before I came here that the
Trinitarian and Unitarian controversy began. One of its
earliest forms appeared in published letters in 1815 be
tween Dr Channing, the pastor of the Federal Street
Church in Boston,- and Dr Samuel Worcester,! An able
orthodox minister of Salem, Mass. In 1819 Dr Chan
ning preached a sermon at the ordination of Mr Sparks
in Baltimore, which was then and ever will be regarded
as an eloquent and felicitous statemenwof the views of
the liberally disposed of that day. It commanded great
attention far and wide, and gave occasion ma very able,
learned, and courteous controversy between Dr Woods
and Mr Stuart, professors in the Orthodox Theological
School in Andover, Mass., on the one side, and Pro
fessors Henry Ware, Sr, and Andrews Norton, of the Cam
bridge Theological School on the other. The controversy
spread mostly in Massachusetts. In the^mall towns
where there had been only one church, there speedily ap
peared two. Families were divided, not without heats
and coolnesses, to the hurt of Christian fellowship. As
a general rule, fathers took the liberal side, mothers the
orthodox.
When I came here in 1825, the first excitement of the
controversy had somewhat subsided. It had lost its first
keen interest. It was growing rather wearisome. It had
snowed tracts, Trinitarian and Unitarian, over the land.
Accordingly, although I was a warm partisan, full of con3
�18
fidence in the rational and scriptural superiority of the
Unitarian faith, I did not feel moved to preach doctrinal
sermons. And, furthermore, as I was on my way hither
in the mail coach, in company with my friends, ministers
and delegates from Boston and New York, I was greatly
impressed by a remark made by one of my elders to the
effect that people were bound to their several churches,
not by the force of reason and the results of religious in
quiry, but by mere use and wont and affection.
Of the truth of this remark, by the way, I had a
striking instance some years ago. One of our fellow
citizens, now deceased, an intelligent, respectable man, a
devoted member of one of our Presbyterian churches,
used to come to me to borrow Theodore Parker’s writings,
in which he took great pleasure. But he said he never
dreamed of withdrawing from his Church. As Richter
says, his Church was his mother. You could not have
weaned him from her by telling him how many better
mothers there were in the world. This truth impressed
me greatly, and was a comfort to me in my younger days.
Although I have rarely preached an outright doctrinal
discourse, yet I had many interesting experiences in ref
erence to the spread of liberal ideas. I regret that I
have not done in my small way what that eminent man,
John Quincy Adams, as his Memoirs now in course of
publication show he did in his wonderfully thorough way,
—kept a diary. Very frequently has it occurred that per
sons have come to me who had chanced to hear a Unita
rian sermon, or read a Unitarian book for the first time,
and they declared that it expressed their views precisely,
and they did not know before that there was anybody in
the world of that way of thinking.
Once, many years ago, I received a letter from a
stranger in Virginia, bearing a well-known Virginia
name. She wrote to tell me that a year before, she was
�19
in Philadelphia, and, much against her conscience, had
been induced by her husband to enter this church. Although there was nothing of a doctrinal character in the
sermon, the effect was to move her when she returned
home to study the Scriptures for herself with new care.
The result was that she now believed upon their au
thority that there was only one God, the Father, and
that Jesus Christ was a dependent being. There were
some texts, however, that she wished to have explained,
and therefore she wrote to me. The texts she specified
showed that she could not have met with any of our
publications, for, had she done so, she would certainly
have found the explanations she desired. Of course I
did what I could to supply her wants.
I think this incident would have passed away from
my mind or been only dimly remembered if, twenty-five
years afterwards, and after the war of the Rebellion, I
had not received another letter from the same person.
In it she referred to our Correspondence of five-andtwenty years before, and said that she wrote now in be
half of some suffering people, formerly her servants
(slaves, I presume). Through the kindness of Mr John
Welsh, chairman of a committee that had been chosen
by our fellow-citizens for the relief of the Southern people,
I was enabled to send her a sum of money. A quantity
of clothing was also procured for her from the Freed
men’s Relief Association. My Southern friend returned,
with her thanks, a very minute account of the disposi
tion she had made of the supplies sent to her. She ap
peared to have accepted with a Christian grace the
changed condition of things in the South. May we not
give something of the credit of this gracious behavior to
the liberal faith which she had learned to cherish?
It was cases like this that caused me to feel less and
less interest in doctrines and religious controversies. I
�20
have been learning every day that, much as men differ
in religion and numberless other things, they are, after
all, more alike than different, and that in our intercourse
with our fellow-men it is best to ignore those differences
as much as possible, and take for granted that we and
they are all of one kind.
And furthermore, in free conversation with educated
and intelligent persons of this city, with whom I have
become acquainted, I long ago found out that it was not
orthodoxy that prevailed; it was not the doctrines of
Calvin and the Thirty-nine Articles that were rampant,
but that there was a wide-spread scepticism as to the
simplest facts of historical Christianity. To persons of
this class, numerous, years ago, and not less numerous
now, it mattered little whether the Bible taught the
Trinity or the Unity of the Divine Nature. The ques
tion with them is, whether it be not all a fable.
It was this state of mind that I was continually meet
ing with that qarly gave to my humble studies a very
definite and positive direction. It was high time, I
thought, to look to the very foundations of Christianity,
and see to it, not whether the Christian Records, upon
which we are all resting^, favor the Trinitarian or the
Unitarian interpretation of their contents, but whether
they have any basis in Fact, and to what that basis
amounts. As this feemed to be the fundamental inquiry,
so, of all inquiries, it became to me the most interesting.
In studying this question I could not satisfy myself
that any external, historical argument, however power
ful, in favor of the genuineness and authenticity of the
Christian Records, could prove decisive. For even if it
were thus proved to demonstration that we have in the
Four Gospels the very works, word for word, of the
writers whose names they bear, there would still remain
untouched the question: How, after all, do we know
�21
that these writers, honest and intelligent as they may
have been, were not mistaken?
There was only one thing to be done: To examine these
writings themselves, and to find out what they really are.
With the one single desire to ascertain their true char
acter, that is, whether they be narratives of facts or of
fables, or a mingle of both, they were to be studied, and
the principles of reason, truth, and probability were to be
applied to them just as if they were anonymous frag
ments recently discovered in some monaster^ of the East,
or dug up from under some ancient ruins.
On the face of them, they are very artlessly constructed.
Here was one good reason for believing that, though it
might be difficult, it could not be impossible to determine
what they are. Since Science can discoveife^T^inv com
pound the simples of which it is composed, although
present in infinitesimal quantities, surely then it can be
ascertained of what these artless works of human hands
are made: whether they be the creations of fancy or the
productions of truth.
Then, again, as obviously, these primitive Records
abound in allusions to times, places, and persons. Here
was another ground of hope that the inquiry into their
real character would not be in vain. When one is tell
ing a story not founded in fact, he takes good care how
he refers to times, and persons, and places, since every
such reference is virtually summoning a witness to testify
to his credibility.
Encouraged by these considerations, I have now, for
forty years and^wre, given myselr to this fundamental
inquiry. It has been said that only scholars, far more
learned men than I pretend to be, can settle the his
torical claims of the Four Gospels. But the fact is, the
theologians in Germany and elsewhere, profound as their
learning is, have busied themselves about the external
�22
historical arguments for the truth of the Gospels. They
have been given, it has seemed to me, to a quibbling
sort of criticism about jots and tittles. But it is not
microscopes, but an eye to see with, that is the one thing
needed for the elucidation of these Writings.
When we first occupied this building, I read courses
of Expository Lectures every Tuesday evening, in a
room which was fitted up as a vestry, under the church,
for some four or five months in the year, for five seasons.
The attendance was never large; some thirty persons
perhaps gave me their presence. But my interest in the
study came not from my hearers, but from the subject,
in which, from that time to this, I have found an in
creasing delight. Continually new and inimitable marks
of truth have been disclosed. Unable to keep to myself
what I found so convincing, I have from time to time
published the discoveries, or what appeared to me dis
coveries, that I made. The editions of my little pub
lished volumes have never been large. Many persons
tell me they have read them. I can reconcile the fact
that they have been so much read with their very limited
sale only by supposing that the few copies sold have been
loaned very extensively s Do not think, friends, that I
am making any complaint. As I have just said, my in
terest in the subject has not depended upon others, either
hearers or readers. The subject itself has been my abun
dant compensation.
To many of my brothers in the ministry I have ap
peared, I suppose,*4o be the dupe of my own fancies.
What I have offered as sparkling gems of fact have been
regarded as made, not found. Some time ago I came
across an old letter from my venerated friend, the late
Henry Ware, Jr, in which he expostulated with me for
wasting myself upon such a barren study as he appears to
have regarded the endeavor to ascertain whether this
�23
great Christendom be founded on a fable or on the ada
mant of Fact.
So dependent are we all upon the sympathy of others,
that I believe my interest in this pursuit would have
abated long ago had it not been that the subject had an
overpowering charm in itself, and that one great result
of the inquiry, becoming more and more significant at
every step, was to bring out in ever clearer light the
Godlike Character of the Man of Nazareth. As he
has gradually emerged from the thick mists of super
stition and theological speculation in which he had so
long been hidden from my sight, his Person, as profoundly
natural as it was profoundly original, has broken upon
me at times as “ the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God.” Not in any alleged miracle, not in any nor
in all His works, wonderful and unprecedented as some
of them were, not in His words, immortal as is the wis
dom that he uttered, but in that reserved fulness of per
sonal power of which His works and words,—His whole
overt life gives only a hint, significant, indeed, but only
a hint—there, in himself, in what He was, in the native,
original power of the Man, the secret of His mighty in
fluence has been laid bare to me. That it is that ex
plains the existence of the wondrous stories of His life.
They had to be, and to be just what they are, with all
their discrepancies, mistakes, and somewhat of the fabu
lous that is found in them, born as they were of the irre
sistible force of His personal truth. And that it is, also,
which is the inexhaustible fountain of Inspiration, of
Faith, and Love, and Hope, which the Infinite Mercy has
opened in the world, and of which men, fainting and per
ishing in their sins, shall drink, and from within them
shall flow rivers of healing and of health.
As I have intimated, friends, there have been times
when I have felt somewhat lonely in this study. But
�24
some ten years ago a marked change came over the
course of religious thought occasioned by the appearance
of a Life of Jesus, by an eloquent and learned man in
France, who, belonging to the sceptical school, scarcely
believing that such a person as Jesus ever had an exist
ence, went to Syria upon a scientific errand, and when
there was struck by the evidences that he beheld of the
geographical truth of the New Testament. So strong a
conviction was born in him of the reality of Jesus that
he was moved to write his life. It is true there is little
else in the book of Ernest Renan recognized as fact, be
yond the actual existence and the great sayings of Jesus.
This was something, coming from the quarter it did.
And, moreover, with all the doubts which it suggests as
to particular incidents in the Gospel histories, its publi
cation has been justified by the effect it had in turning
attention to the human side of that great life. It has
created a new interest in the Man.
And further, Science, becoming popular, is impressing
the general mind so deeply with the idea of the inviolable
order of Nature, that it is not to be believed that men
will look much longer for the credentials of any person,
or of any fact, in his or its departure from that order.
Nothing can be recognized as truth that violates the laws
of Nature, or rather that does not harmonize with them
fully. Deeply impressed with the entire naturalness of
Jesus, I believe that the time is at hand when the evi
dences of His truth, of His divinity, will be sought, not
in any preternatural events or theories, but in His full
accord with the natural truth of things. As the one Fact,
or Person, in whom the highest or deepest in Nature is
revealed, He is the central fact, harmonizing all nature.
Never, never, from the first, has it been more important
that the personality of Jesus should be appreciated than
at the present time. The Darwinian law of Natural
�25
Selection and the Survival of the Fittest is in all men’s
minds, and in the material, organized world of plants and
animals, we are all coming to consider it demonstrated.
As an animal, man must be concluded under that law.
In the physical world, as Professor Tyndall tells us, “ the
weakest must go to the wall.”
But man is something, a great deal more than an ani
mal. He has an immaterial, moral, intellectual being,
for which he has the irresistible testimony of his own
consciousness; and as an immaterial being, it is not at
the cost of the weak, but it is by helping the weak to
live that any individual becomes strong. This, this is
the great law of our spiritual nature^ The highest, the
elect, they whom Nature selects, the fittest to live, are
those who are ready to die for others, sacrificing their
mortal existence, if need be, to lift up the weakest to
their immortal fellowship. In the unchangeable order
of things, not only is it not possible for a moral and in
tellectual being to become great by sacrificing others to
his own advancement, his greatness can be secured only
by giving himself for them.
Let Science, then, go on pouring light upon the laws
and order of the material Universe. But let it stand by
its admission that the connection between that and the
immaterial world, however intimate, is not only inscru
table, but unthinkable; and reverently recognize, stand
ing there on the threshold of the immaterial world, one
Godlike Figure, surrounded by the patriots and martyrs,
the great and good of every age and country, holy angels,
but high above them all in the perfectness of his Selfabnegation. No one took His life from him; He gave it
up freely of himself. And thus is He a special revelation
of the law that reigns in the moral world, as surely as
the law of natural selection reigns in the physical.
4
�26
What renders the character of Jesus of still greater
interest at this present time is the fact that there are
thoughtful and enlightened men who aver that they
would fain be rid of Him, since He has been and still is
the occasion of so much enslaving error. They might
as well, for the same reason, join with Porson and “damn
the nature of things,” for what has occasioned greater
error than the nature of things? It can be got rid of
as easily as the Person of Jesus.
For some twenty years or more before the war of the
Rebellion, the question which that war settled interested
me deeply. But on the last anniversary of my ministry
I dwelt chiefly upon the experiences of that period. I
need not repeat what I said then. It was a season of
severe discipline to us all, to the whole people of our
country.
I will only say here, that so far from diverting my
interest from the great subject of which I have been
speaking, it harmonized with it and increased it. As I
read the events and signs of that trying time, they be
came to me a living commentary upon the words of the
Lord Jesus. Precepts of His, that had before seemed
trite, began glowing and burning like revelations fresh
from the Invisible. The parable of the Good Samaritan
seemed to be made expressly for that hour. That scene
in the synagogue at Nazareth, when all there were filled
with wrath at what Jesus said,—how real was it, read by
the light of the flames that consumed Pennsylvania Hall I
As the truths of the New Testament, simple and divine,
rose like suns and poured their light upon that long
conflict, so did those days in return disclose a new and
pointed significance in those simple pages, giving life to
our Christian faith.
�27
What a time, friends, has this been, the latter half of
our first national century! It was a great day in history
which gave the world the Printing-Press and the Protest
ant Reformation. But does not the last half century
rival it? The railroad and the telegraph, mountains
levelled, oceans and continents united, time and space
vanishing, the huge sun made our submissive artist,
the establishment of universal liberty over this broad
land,—are not these things responding with literal obedi
ence to the command of the ancient prophet: “ Prepare
ye the way of the Lord; make his path straight?”
It is a wonderful day, a great day of the Lord. We
are stocks and stones if we do not catch the spirit, the
generous spirit, of the Almighty breathif^and brooding
in countless unacknowledged ways over this mysterious
human race. All things, like a host of prophets, are point
ing us to an unimaginable destiny. The authority of the
human soul over the visible Universe is becoming every
hour more assured. We are not here to walk in a vain
show, to live only for the lust of the eye, so soon to be
quenched in dust, or for the pride which feeds on what
withers almost at the touch. Our nature bears the in
eradicable likeness of the Highest. The mystery of it is
hidden in the mystery of
being, and the laws of oui’
minds are revealed in the laws which hold the whole Cre
ation together. We are not servants, we are sons, heirs
of God; joint heirs with Jesus and all the good and
great. And all is ours, ours to raise and enlarge our
thoughts, to set us free from the corrupting bondage of the
senses, to deepen our hunger and thirst for the only Liv
ing and the True, for the beauty of Holiness, the im
mortal life of God. And all our private experience; all
our conflicts, our victories and our defeats; all the joys
and sorrows which we have shared together,—the sacred
�28
memories that come to us to-day of parents, sons, daugh
ters, and dear ones departed,—do they not throng around
us now, and kindle our hearts with unutterable prayers
for ourselves, for our children, and for one another ?
NOTE
On the last anniversary of my ordination (the forty
ninth) I was led to dwell upon the Anti-slavery period
of thirty years before the war of the rebellion. It was a
period of intense interest, a great chapter in the history
of our country.
There was one incident of those times to which I par
ticularly referred a year ago, which I wish to recoid here,
not on account of any great part that I had in it, but for
the interesting character of the whole affair; and be
cause, thinking it of some historical value, I am not
aware that it has ever been recorded save in the daily
press of the time. From a MS. record made some time
ago of “ Reminiscences,” the following extract is tran
scribed :
�29
“ The most memorable occasion in my Anti-slavery ex
perience was the annual meeting of the American Anti
slavery Society held in the ‘ Tabernacle,’ as it was called,
in New York, in May, 1850,1 believe it was. I accepted
an invitation to speak on that occasion, holding myself
greatly honored thereby.
Having no gift of extemporaneous speech, I prepared
myself with the utmost pains. I went to New York
the day before the meeting; saw Mr Garrison and Wendell Phillips. Mr Garrison said there would be a riot,
as the Press had been doing its utmost to inflame the
public mind against the Abolitionists.
“ When the meeting was opened, the large hall, said
to be the largest then in New York, capable of holding
some thousands, was apparently full. The vast majority
of the audience were doubtless friendly to the object of
the meeting.
“Mr Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Edmund Quincy,
Isaac Hopper, Francis Jackson, Frederick Douglass, and
other faithful servants of the cause, were present on the
platform.
“ I saw friends here and there among the audience. I
was surprised to recognize there a son of Judge Kane of
this city (afterwards Col. T. Kane). I had some previous
acquaintance with him, and knew him to be a young man
of ardent temperament, open to generous ideas. I sup
posed then, and still suppose, that he was drawn there
accidentally by curiosity. After a prayer by the Bev.
Henry Grew, Mr Garrison made the opening speech,
strong, bold, and characteristic.
“ He had spoken only a few moments when he was in
terrupted by what sounded like a burst of applause; but
as there was nothing special to call it forth, and as it
proceeded from one little portion of the audience, I asked
Wendell Phillips, who sat next to me, what it meant.
�30
1 It means/ he said, ‘ that there is to he a row.’ The
interruption was repeated again and again. A voice
shouted some rude questions to Mr Garrison.
“Mr Garrison bore himself with the serenity of a
summer’s evening, answering: ‘ My friend, if you will
wait till I get through, I will give you the information
you ask for.’ He succeeded in finishing his speech. I
was to speak next. But the instant Mr Garrison ended,
there came down upon the platform from the gallery
which was connected with it, an individual, with a com
pany of roughs at his back, who proved to be no less a
person than the then well-known Isaiah Rynders. He
began shouting and raving.
“ I was not aware of being under any apprehension of
personal violence. We were all like General Jackson’s
cotton-bales at New Orleans. Our demeanor made it
impossible for the rioters to use any physical force against
us. Young Kane, however, leaped upon the platform,
and, pressing through to me, in a tone of great excite
ment, exclaimed » ‘ They shall not touch a hair of your
head!’ Mr Garrison said to Rynders in the quietest
manner conceivable, | You ought not to interrupt us. We
go upon th^principle of hearing everybody. If you wish
to speak, I will keep ordei|and you shall be heard.’ But
Rynders was not in a state of mind to listen to reason. He
had not come there for that, but to break up the meeting.
“ The Hutchinsons, who were wont to sing at the Anti
slavery meetings, were in the gallery, and they attempted
to raise a song, to soothe the savages with music. But it
was of no avail. Rynders drowned their fine voices with
noise and shouting. The chief of the police came upon
the platform, and asked Mr Garrison whether he desired
him to arrest and remove Rynders & Co. Mr Garrison
answered: ‘We desire nothing of you. We can take
care of ourselves. You probably know your duty.’ The
�31
officer did' nothing. In this scene of confusion, young
Kane became intensely excited. He rushed up to
Rynders, and shook his fist in his face. He said to me
with the deepest emphasis : f If he touches Mr Garrison,
I’ll kill him!’ But Mr Garrison’s composure was more
than a coat of mail. Rynders, indisposed to speak him
self, brought forward a man to speak for him and. his
party. Mr Francis Jacksonjiand I were, the while, hold
ing young Kane down in his seat to keep him from
breaking out into some act of violence. He was the most
dangerous element on our side. Rynders’s substitute
professed a willingness that I should speak first (I was
down on the placards to follow Mr Garrison), provided
I did not make a long speech.
“ Accordingly, I spoke iM little, anxiously prepared
word. I never recall that hour without blessing myself
that I was called to speak precisely at that moment. At
any other stage of the proceedings, it would have been
wretchedly out of place.
“ As it was, my speech fitted in almost ttWell as if it
had been impromptu, although a shamm^e might easily
have discovered that I was speaking mewm’ier. Rynders
interrupted me again and again, exclaiming that I lied,
that I was personal, but he ended with applauding me!
Rynders’s man then came forward, rath® dull and tire
some in speech. It was his own friends who interrupted
him occasionally, Mr Garrison calling them to order.
“ His argument was^hat the blacks are not human
beings. Mr Garrison whispered to me while he was
speaking, that the speaker had formerly been a com
positor in the office of the Liberator.
“ He ended at last, and then Frederick Douglass was
loudly called for. Mr Douglass came forward, exqui
sitely neat in his dress.
“ ‘ The gentleman who has just spoken,’ he began, ‘ has
�32
undertaken to prove that the blacks are n'ot human
beings. He has examined our whole conformation, from
top to toe. I cannot follow him in his argument. I will
assist him in it, however. I offer myself for your exami
nation. Am I a man ? ’ To this interrogatory instantly
there came from the audience a thunderous affirma
tive. Rynders was standing right by the side of Mr
Douglass, and when the response died away, he exclaimed
in a hesitating way: ‘But you’re not a black man!’
‘ Then,’ retorted Douglass, ‘ I’m your brother.’ ‘ Ah,—
ah,’ said Rynders, hesitatingly, ‘ only half brother.’ The
effect upon the audience need not be described; it may
readily be imagined. Mr Douglass then went on, com
plaining of Horace Greeley, who had recently said in his
paper that the blacks did nothing for themselves. ‘ When
I first came North,’ said Mr Douglass, ‘ I went to the
most decided Anti-slavery merchant in the North, and
sought employment on a ship he was building, and he told
me that if he were to give me work, every white opera
tive would quit, and yet Mr Greeley finds fault with us
that we do not help ourselves!’ This criticism of Greeley
pleased Rynders, who bore that gentleman no good will,
and he added a word to Douglass’s against Greeley. ‘ I
am happy,’ said Douglass, ‘ to have the assent of my half
brother here,’ pointing to Rynders, and convulsing the
audience with laughter. After this, Rynders, finding how
he was played with, took care to hold his peace; but some
one of Rynders’s company in the gallery undertook to in
terrupt the speaker. ‘ It’s of no use,’ said Mr Douglass ;
‘ I’ve Captain Rynders here to back me.’ ‘ We were born
here,’ he went on to say, ‘ we have made the clothes that
you wear, and the sugar that you put into your tea, and we
mean to stay here and do all we can for you.’ ‘ Yes!’ cried
a voice from the gallery, ‘ and you’ll cut our throats!’
‘ No,’ said the speaker, ‘ we’ll only cut your hair.’ When
�33
the laughter ceased, Mr Douglass proceeded to say:
‘ We mean to stay here, and do all we can for every one,
be he a man, or be he a monkey,’ accompanying these
last words with a wave of his hand towards the quarter
whence the interruption had come. He concluded with
saying that he saw his friend, Samuel Ward, present, and
he would ask him to step forward. All eyes were instantly
turned to the back of the platform, or stage rather, so
dramatic was the scene, and there, amidst a group, stood
a large man, so black that, as Wendell Phillips said,
when he shut his eyes, you could not see him. Had I
observed him before, I should have wondered what
brought him there, accounting him as fresh from Africa.
He belonged to the political wing of the Abolition party
(Gerritt Smith’s), * and had wandered into the meeting,
never expecting to be called upon to speak. At the call
of Frederick Douglass, he came to the front, and, as he
approached, Rynders exclaimed: ‘ Well, this is the origi
nal nigger!’ ‘ I’ve heard of the magnanimity of Captain
Rynders,’ said Ward, ‘ but the half has not been told me I’
And then he went on with a noble voice, and his speech
was such a strain of eloquence as I never heard excelled
before or since.
“‘There are more than fifty people here,’ said he,
‘ who may remember me as a little black boy running
about the streets of New York. I have always been
called nigger, and the only consolation that has been
offered me for being called nigger was, that, when I die
and go to heaven, I shall be white. If’—and here, with
an earnestness of tone and manner that thrilled one to
the very marrow, he continued—‘ If I cannot go to heav
en as black as God made me, let me go down to hell, and
dwell with the devils forever!’
“ The effect was beyond description.
“ ‘ This gentleman,’ he said, ‘ who denies our humanity,
5
�34
has examined us scientifically, but I know something of
anatomy. I have kept school, and I have had pupils,
from the jet black up to the soft dissolving views, and
I’ve seen white boys with retreating foreheads and pro
jecting jaws, and, as Dickens says, in Nicholas Nickleby,
of Smike, you might knock here all day,’ tapping his
forehead, ‘ and find nobody at home.’ In this strain, he
went on, ruling the large audience with Napoleonic power.
Coal-black as he was, he was an emperor, pro tempore.
“ When he ceased speaking, the time had expired for
which the Tabernacle was engaged, and we had to ad
journ. Never was there a grander triumph of intelli
gence, of mind, over brute force. Two colored men, whose
claim to be considered human was denied, had, by mere
force of intellect, overwhelmed their maligners with con
fusion. As the audience was thinning out, I went down
on the floor to see some friends there. Rynders came
by. I could not help saying to him, ‘How shall we
thank you for what you have done for us to-day ? ’ ‘ Well,’
said he, ‘ I do not like to hear my country abused, but
that last thing that you said, that’s the truth.’ That last
thing was, I believe, a simple assertion of the right of the
people to think and speak freely.
“Judging by his physiognomy and his scriptural name
Isaiah, I took Captain Rynders to be of Yankee descent.
Notwithstanding his violent behavior, he yet seemed to
be a man accessible to the force of truth. I found that
Lucretia Mott had the same impressions of him. She
saw him a day or two afterwards in a restaurant on
Broadway, and she sat down at his table, and entered
into conversation with him. As he passed out of the
restaurant, h^ asked Mr McKim, who was standing there,
waiting for Mrs Mott, whether Mrs Mott were his mother.
Mr McKim replied in the negative. ‘ She’s a good sen
sible woman,’ said Rynders.
�35
“Never before or since have I been so deeply moved
as on that occasion. Depths were stirred in me never
before reached. For days afterwards, when I under
took to tell the story, my head instantly began to ache.
Mr Garrison said, if the papers would only faithfully
report the scene, it would revolutionize public senti
ment. As it was, they heaped all sorts of ridicule upon
us. I cheerfully accepted my share, entirely willing to
pass for a fool in the eyes of the world. It was a cheap
price to pay for the privilege of witnessing such a triumph.
I was taken quite out of myself. I came home, stepping
like Malvolio. I had shared in the smile of Freedom,
the belle and beauty of the world.
“ A day or two after my return home, I met one of my
parishioners in the street, and stopped and told him all
about my New York visitJ He listened to me with a
forced smile, and told me that there had been some
thought of calling an indignation meeting of the church
to express the mortification felt at my going and mixing
myself up with such people. I had hardly given a
thought to the effect at home, so full was I of the interest
and glory of the occasion. I ought to have preached on
the Sunday following from the words: ‘ He has gone to be
a guest with a man who is a sinner !’ ”
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�MEETING
OF THE
Staig M fflmtmn CJ^nstians,
IN PHILADELPHIA,
HELD IN THE CHURCH, TENTH AND LOCUST STREETS,
JANUARY 1 2, 187 5,
IN commemoration' on the
FIFTIETH
ANNIVERSARY
OF
Rev. W. H. FURNESS, D.D.,
AS PASTOR OF THEIR CHURCH.
��39
On the evening of January 12th, 1875, the meeting
of the First Unitarian Society, in commemoration of the
fiftieth anniversary of the pastorate of the Rev. Dr. Fur
ness, was held in the church.
The following ministers were present:
Rev. Dr. John H. Morison,
Rev. R. R. Shippen,
Rev. Dr. S. K. Lothrop,
Rev. Wm. O. White,
Rev Dr. James Freeman Clarke,Rev. J. F. W. Ware,
Rev. Dr. James T. Thompson,
Rev. Wm. C. Gannett,
Rev. Dr. C. A. Bartol,
Rev. E. H. Hall,
Rev. Dr. H. W. Bellows,
Rev. J. W. Chadwick,
Rev. Dr. A. P. Putnam,
Rev. Thos. J. Mumford,
Rev. F. Israel,
RevMBS G. Ames.
The church was profusely but tastefully hung with
festoons of evergreen; on the wall, behind the pulpit,
was a large cross; among the festoons which overhung it
were the figures “ 1825 ” and ‘L{1875” in white and green
flowers; while in front of the pulpit, covering the com
munion table and all the approaches to it, were growing
tropical plants, amid which was a profusion of vases,
baskets, and bouquets of natural flowers, with smilax
distributed here and there in delicate fringes or festoons.
�40
The regular quartette choir of the church, consisting
of
Mrs. W. D. Dutton,
Mrs. Isaac Ashmead,
Mr. E. Dillingham,
Mr. F. G-. Caupeman,
....
Jr., .
.
.
....
....
Soprano,
Contralto,
Tenor,
Bass,
was on this occasion assisted by
Miss Cassidy,
Miss Cooper,
Mr. A. H. Eosewig,
Miss Jennie Cassidy,
Mrs. Roberts,
Mr. W. W. Gilchrist.
under the direction of Mr. W. D. Dutton, organist of the
church.
�PROCEEDINGS.
At half-past seven o’clock the exercises of the evening
commenced, as follows:
Music.
Tenor solo and chorus, ....
. Mendelssohn.
“ Oh, come, let us worship,” from 95th Psalm.
Mr. Henry Winsor, Chairman of the Committee of
Arrangements, in opening the meeting made the follow
ing remarks:
The occasion of our meeting here this evening is so
well known to all present that there is no need of any
formal announcement of it. We thought some time ago
that this anniversary of our pastor’s ordination, when
the half century of his ministration here is complete,
ought to be in some way marked and commemorated;
and as one of the things for that purpose,—as the best
means perhaps to that end, we invited friends in New
England and elsewhere to be with us here, to-night^ and
I am glad to say that some of them have come; as many
perhaps as we had reason to expect at this inclement
season.
6
�42
And now, speaking for this Society, I want to say to
them that their presence is a special joy to us ; a greater
joy than it could be on a similar occasion to any society
in New England; for there Unitarians are at home, and
each society has many neighbors with whom it can com
mune, and to whom it can look for sympathy, and, if
need be, for assistance. But this Society of Unitarian
Christians has long been alone in this great city, having
no connection with any religious society here and com
muning with none. And so, as I said, your presence on
this occasion is a real joy to us, and, on behalf of the
Society, I heartily thank you for it. But we are here—
we of the congregation are here—not to speak but to
listen; and I will now ask Dr. Morison, of Massachusetts,
to pray for us.
Prayer by Rev. Dr. John H. Morison.
Almighty and most merciful Father, we beseech Thee
to open our hearts to all the gracious and hallowed asso
ciations of this hour. Help us so to enter into the spirit
of this hour, that all holy influences may be around us, that
our hearts may be touched anew, that we may be brought
together more tenderly, and lifted up, with a deeper grati
tude and reverence, to Thee, the Fountain of all good, the
Giver of every good and perfect gift. We thank Thee,
most merciful Father; for the ministry which has been mod
estly carrying on its beneficent work here through these
fifty years. We thank Thee for all the lives which have
been helped by it to see and to do Thy will, and which
have been made more beautiful and holy by being brought
into quicker sympathies with whatever is beautiful in the
world without, and whatever is lovely in the world within.
We thank Thee for the inspiring words which have been
here spoken, brought home to the consciences of this con
�43
gregation by the life which stood behind them, to make
men more earnest to search after what is true and to do
what is right. We thank Thee, our Father in heaven, for
all the sweet and tender and far-reaching hopes, too vast
for this world, which have been opening here, begun upon
the earth and fulfilled in other worlds, in more imme
diate union with the spirits of the just made perfect; and
we thank Thee for all the solemn memories here, through
which the dear and honored forms of those to whom we
who are aged now looked up once as to our fathers and
teachers rise again transfigured and alive before us. We
thank Thee for all those who have been with us in the
ministry of Christ, and under the ministry of Christ,
gracious souls, rejoicing with us in the work which they
and we have been permitted to do, and now, as our trust
is, numbered among Thy saints in glory gverlasting. And
while we here render thanks to Thee for the ministry so
long and so faithfully fulfilled in this place, so allying
itself to all that is sweet in our human affections, to all
that is beautiful in the world of nature and of art, to all
that is holy in the domestic relations, to all that is strong
and true in the defence of human rights, to the deepest
human interests and to thy love, uniting in grateful rev
erence for the past, we would also ask Thy holy Spirit to
dwell with Thy servant, to inspire him still with thoughts
which shall keep his soul always young, his spirit always
fresh, for long years yet to come, with increasing ripe
ness and increasing devotedness; and that he may long
continue to walk in and out here amid the silent benedic
tions of those who have learned to love and honor him.
Our Father in heaven, help us that whatever may be
said at this time may be in harmony with the occasion.
While we here rise up in prayer and thanksgiving to
Thee, grant that Thy heavenly benediction may rest on
pastor and people, that Thy loving spirit may turn our
�44
human wishes into heavenly blessings, and that the words
and example of Him who came into the world, not to
do his own will but the will of Him that sent him, may
comfort and strengthen us; and that the life which has
been such an inspiration and joy and quickening power
to our friend may be to all of us still an incentive to
holiness, and an inspiration to all pure and heavenly
thoughts.
And now, most merciful Father, grant to us all, that
it may be good for us to be here—so gracious and so
hallowed is the time—and Thine, through Jesus Christ
our Lord, be the kingdom and the power and the glory
forever and ever. Amen.’":
Music.
Soprano solo and chorus, .... Spohk.
“ How lovely are thy dwellings fair !”
Mr. Winsor then spoke as follows:
At the ordination of Dr. Furness, fifty years ago, the
sermon was delivered by one eminent among Unitarian
Christians, ^^gtom&is memory will be long cherished
and honored, Henry Ware, Jr., and for this reason I ask
to speak first of all here to-night his son, Rev. John F.
W. Ware, of Boston, Mass.
Address of Rev. John F. W. Ware.
Friends of this Christian Society: I have no
other claim to be standing here to-night and participating
in your service than the one just mentioned—that I am
the son of the man who, fifty years ago this day, preached
the sermon at the ordination of his friend, William
�45
Henry Furness, and what may seem to you my fitness is
indeed my unfitness. Proud as I am in being the son of
a man so much honored, loved, and remembered, I never
feel it quite right in any way to try to represent him, and
had I known that this was to be a part of the conse
quences of my journey I think I should have stayed at
home.
But during the hours that I have been on the way my
thoughts have been busy with that fifty yea® ago, think
ing of the goodly company who, “in the winter wild,”
came down here from New England that they might
plant this vine in the vineyard of the Lord. And none
of them who came at that time to plant are permitted
to be here to-night to help us gather the rich and Opened
clusters. It showed, I thinaMwe love that these men
had for, and the confidence that they had in, their young
friend, that they should have come, in that inclement
time, this long journey by stage, taking them days and
nights of discomfort as it did. IBSik that there was
no sweeter household word in that dear old home of mine
than “ Brother Furness ”—the old-fashioned way in which
ministers used to talk of one anotheAwhich we of to
day have forgotten. In those times it meant something;
to-day we don’t feel as if it did, so we have dropped it.
I think there was no‘name so sweet outside of the closest
family ties as that name, and we children grew—my sis
ter and myself—to have always the deepest love for the
man that our father loved; and as time went by, and
young manhood came, I looked forward to the hearing
of the tones of that voice, and the seeing of that smile,
and the touching of that hand, as among the bright and
pleasant things—a sort of condescending, it always seemed
to me to be, of one who was in a sphere higher up than I
ever hoped to climb to. Then, as I grew older, I re
member the audacity with which I offered him “a labor
�46
of love ” in this church, and I remember I trembled after
I had done it; and I remember how he thanked me, and
how he criticized me, and the criticizing was a great deal
better than the thanking. It was very deep; it meant a
good deal, and it has not been forgotten.
Fortunate man! he who came into this city fifty years
ago; fortunate in the place, and the time of his birth :
fortunate in the education he had had and the faith he had
imbibed; fortunate in the place he had gone to, not to be
coddled among friends, emasculated by being surrounded
by those who thought just as he did, but thrown out by
God’s will into this outpost, where he could grow, as we
cannot where we are surrounded by those of our own
preference and method of thinking; fortunate in the
bent of his study, iii the opportunity to unfold the beau
tiful life of Jesus; fortunate in being of those who
stood up for the slave; fortunate in having lived to see
the issue of the work that his heart was engaged in; for
tunate in being now crowned by the love and benediction
of his people, and retiring calmly and sweetly from the
work of life, still to dwell among those who have loved
him these years long. Oh, fortunate man! God bless
him, and continue him here many years yet, your joy,
your companion, your guide, and your friend.
Not many of us shall see our fiftieth anniversary, for
more and more this profession of ours becomes a thing
of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow alone. Very few oc
casions there will be again to meet together to celebrate
the fiftieth anniversary of a minister’s settlement.
Let us treasure the memory of this occasion. Let it
go with us who are here to our homes and our works,
and may it remain here with you a thought and memory
and a help; and as, in the beginning, this church drew
its life and its first impulse through a little band of
sturdy and steady and upright laymen, so in the time
�4
47
that lies before you, lay friends of this Society, remem
ber that it is not the past upon which you can lean—the
work that has been done by the servant who retires. It
is the future in which you are to hope, and the charac
ter of that future must be largely your work. With
this simple word, knowing that there are many gentle
men here who are to speak, and will speak more wisely
and properly than I, I ask Mr. Gannett to follow me.
Rev. Dr. Furness then came forward, and said:
My dear Friends : I am very doubtful about the
propriety of my being present on this occasion, not be
cause any deserts of mine would call forth any extrava
gant eulogium, but because I know the kind hearts of my
friends. They would say things which would make me
very uncomfortable! But just before I came from home
I got a letter from our friend, Mr. Weld, minister of the
church in Baltimore. He has sent us from the church in
Baltimore two communion cups—silver cups—as a token
of kind fellowship and recognition of this anniversary
from the church in Baltimore. They wished to have an
inscription placed on them, but they had no time; in
dicating that they were gifts from the church in Balti
more. So I thought I would bring them down without
delay, and put them upon the table, if there was any room
for them.
In all the kind words which my brethren say about
me, I think there is a good deal put in. Just like the old
man who took notes of his minister’s sermons, and when
he read them over to the minister, the ministei said,
“ Stop ! stop ! I did not say that.” “ I know you didn’t,”
he said; “ but I put it in to make sense of it.
So, I
think, on this occasion, there will be a good deal put
�1
48
in. If you will allow me, I will go and sit down at
the other end of the room, and if they get a little too
strong I can run out. I was entreated to come here
and show myself. I am very grateful to you for your
kind attention.
Address
of
William C. Gannett.
Like Mr. Ware, I only speak as the son of the right
man. The right man stood by Dr. Furness’ side fifty
years ago, and gave him the right hand of fellowship. I
know not whether there are any here that saw the sight
or heard the words; perhaps of all he only. The air
seems full, to me, at least, of the memories of the other
one. And to you who sit and listen, the air must seem
full of the very spirit of communion that these cups just
given symbolize. There ought to have been a white head
here; there ought to have been dark eyes; there ought
to have been a ringing voice; there ought to have been
a voice that would have been full of tenderness as he
stood at this side of the fifty years,—as he then stood at
the other side,—and said the words of an old man’s fel
lowship. He would to-day, as then, have been just six
months Dr. Furness’ senior in the work. I suppose
one can imagine anybody, any old person, as young,
easier than he can his own father or his own mother. I
cannot conceive the one whom I call father standing here,
or in the place which this church represents, as a young
man of twenty-four speaking to a young man of twentythree, and bidding him welcome into the work which he
called partaking in the work of heaven; bidding him
welcome into its pleasures; bidding him welcome into
its pains,—for he had been six months a minister, and
in those first six months of a minister’s life he knows a
<
�49
great deal of the pains that accompany it. It so hap
pened that just after I got your kind invitation to come,
I happened to lay my hand upon the manuscript of that
right hand of fellowship, and not having time to read it
then, I brought it with me in the cars; and only three or
four hours ago I was reading the very words, and read
ing from the very paper which, fifty years ago, was held
and read from, and to which Dr. Furness listened. It
does seem to me as if the reader were here now to say,
“ God bless you, old friend, for having stood ever faithful
to the end.” I almost think he is saying it; and if he
is, I know it comes with just that feeling: “God bless
you, old friend, for having stood faithful to the end ; for
having fulfilled all and more than all the words that then
I said to you.” And that is all I have to say. I was
asked to pass the word along to another boy of the old
men. Your father and my father and Dr. Hall were
classmates. Will Edward Hall speak for his father ?
Address of Rev. Edward H. Hall, of
Worcester, Mass.
I hardly know to what I owe this pleasure, for it is a
great one to me, of joining my thoughts with others to
night, at so early a point of our gathering. I believe
my claim is a double one, and I am willing and anxious
to make it as large as possible, both as the successor of
one who, fifty years ago, was present to give the charge
to the people, and, still tenderer to me, the claim which
has just been presented by the friend who preceded me.
In that class, which I suppose stands eminent among the
graduating classes of Cambridge for the number of men
it has sent into our ministry, to say nothing of their
quality, were the three whose names have just been
7
�50
brought together, who had no greater pride, I believe,
than to have their names in common. And it is for me
one of the pleasantest memories which this hour brings
that they were not only classmates—my father and our
father to-night—but that for so long a time, through their
college course, they were in closest intimacy as room
mates. And yet I should be sorry to think that this was
my only connection with this occasion. It was said, I
remember, of one of the finest and noblest of our officers
killed in the war, that of the many who had met him,
each one seemed to feel that he had made a special dis
covery of that man’s noble character and fine traits, so
did the discovery overpower him, and so sure was he that
to no one else had it come as it did to him; and I am in
clined to think that there is no one of these ministers
here to-night who does not feel as if his connection with
him whom we meet to-night to honor was something
special, as if the inspiration which he had drawn from
that source was one which no one but himself had got.
No qualification for our profession, I suppose, is higher
than the power of historic intuition; the power of seeing
things as they were; of reading the words and seeing be
hind them; the power that reproduces the past. Our
great historians are those who read the past in that way;
our great theologians are those who read the past as if
it were present, and feel a personal intercourse with those
who walked and fspoke in those early days. They are
the holy men and apostles of to-day; they will always
be the apostles to the end of time, and I am glad to feel
that out of our numbers has come one whose power of
divining the past has shown itself so fine and true.
I can hardly help speaking about another feeling.
I am impressed to-night by the difference, the vast dif
ference, between our fathers of a generation ago and
us who are upon the stage to-day. We look back rev
�51
erently to them; perhaps children always do to their
fathers. It is barely possible that our children may look
upon us in the same way. We look upon them as a
group of men set apart by themselves—a kind of priest
hood, conscious of the sanctity of their work. A sort of
moral halo encircles their heads as we think of them, and
we group them in just that affectionate way to which our
friend before me has alluded, as a band of brothers. Will
this generation of ministers ever look to their successors
as they appear to us ? I cannot believe it. That will not
be our claim upon their honor or their regard. Happy
for us if we can have any claim upon it; if men shall
see that the second generation of ministers took bravely
up the work that was half done, uttered the words that
were still unspoken, continued in the path which the
fathers cannot longer tread, and proved that it takes
more than one generation to do the work which Unitarianism is born to accomplish.
But I have no more claim upon your time, and close
by introducing to you, as I have been asked, the Rev.
Dr. Lothrop, of Boston.
• .
Rev. Dr. S. K. Lothrop spoke as follows:
My Christian Friends : I have but a few words to
say, and I rise to say these simply that I may more
fully express what my presence here implies, my deep
sympathy and interest in this occasion.
There are scenes and events in life which, from their
simplicity and beauty, and the moral grandeur which
always mingles more or less with everything simple and
beautiful, can gain nothing from human lips. Eloquence
can coin no words that shall impress them upon the heart
and conscience more deeply than they impress themselves.
This occasion is one of these events. We meet here to-
*
�52
5
night—this company, the members of this church, these
brethren from distant and different parts of the country
—to commemorate fifty years of faithful and devoted ser
vice in the Christian ministry, and rhetoric can add
nothing to the moral dignity and grandeur of this fact,
that is not contained in the simplest statement or expres
sion of it. We meet to do honor and reverence to one,
who, from the earliest aspirations of his youth to the later
aspirations and ever enlarging service of his manhood,
has known no object but truth, no law but duty, no
master but conscience, and who, under the inspiration and
guidance of these has wrought a noble work in this city,
made full proof of his ministry, and given a glorious
illustration of the power of that faith, “ which is the vic
tory that overcometh the world.”
The Unitarian Congregationalists recognize a large
personal freedom and individuality. Among the brethren
present and all called by our name who are absent, there
are wide differences of theological thought and opinion;
and some of us may not entirely concur in all the con
clusions—the result of Christian thought and study—
which our honored brother, the pastor of this church, in
his fifty years of noble service, may have presented in
this pulpit or given to the public through the press. But
however he may differ from him on some points, no one
who has read what he has published, can fail to perceive
or refuse to acknowledge the spirit of devout reverence,
love, faith, the large and glorious humanity that every
where breathe in his words; while every one familiar
with his long life-work in this city, every one who has
known him intimately, had opportunity to study and ob
serve his character, to mark its mingled firmness and
gentleness, sweetness and strength, its martyr spirit ad
hering to conscientious convictions and carrying them
out at whatever cost or sacrifice, its loyal spirit, faithful
�53
to Christ and truth according to honest and sincere con
viction, every one who knows and has witnessed how
these things have pervaded and animated his life, char
acter, work, cannot fail to cherish toward him a senti
ment of reverence and honor; and amid all differences of
opinion there may be between us, I yield to no one in
the strength and sincerity with which I cherish this sen
timent in my own heart. When I visited him at his
house to-day, I could not but feel that while years had
not abated one jot of the vigor of his intellect or the
warmth of his heart, they had added largely to that
something, I know not what to call it, that indescribable
charm, which has given him a place in every heart that
has ever known him, and made us his brethren (I am
only uttering what they will all acknowledge) always
disposed to sit at his feet in love and admiration.
I am oue of the oldest, probably the oldest of our min
isters present. Dr. Furness’ ordination antedates mine,
which occurred in February, 1829, only by four years
and a month. As regards term of service my name is
close to his on our list of living clergymen, and I remem
ber, as if it were but yesterday, his ordination fifty years
ago to-day, and can distinctly recall the deep interest
with which it was spoken of that evening in the family
circle of the late Dr. Kirkland at Cambridge, of which I
was then a member. I had but slight personal acquaint
ance with Dr. Furness, however, till thirteen years after
this, in 1838, when suffering from ill health he was unable
for several months to discharge his duties. His pulpit
was supplied by clergymen from Boston and the neigh
borhood, and as he had many loving friends and warm
admirers in Brattle Square Society, they were very will
ing to release me for six weeks, that I might come to
Philadelphia and preach for him. This visit and service
brought me into more intimate acquaintance with him and
�54
this Society. The pleasant memories of that period, fresh
in my heart to this day, were prominent among the mani
fold recollections that prompted, nay, constrained me to
come and unite my sympathies with yours on this occasion.
It is a glad occasion, yet there is something solemn and
sad about it. Like all anniversaries, it has a double
meaning, makes a double appeal to us. It gives a tongue
to memory, calls up the shadows of the past, brings be
fore us the forms of those we have loved and lost; we see
their smiles; we hear their voices; and as I stand here
to-night, and look back upon those fifty years, and call
to mind the venerable fathers of our faith, whom I knew
and loved and honored in the early days of my profes
sional life, Drs. Bancroft, Ripley, Thayer, Harris, Pierce,
Nichols of Portland, Parker of Portsmouth, Flint of
Salem, and bring before me the Boston Association when
it numbered among its members Channing, Lowell, Parkman, Ware, Greenwood, Frothingham, Pierpont, Young,
and last, though not least, that great apostle who has
just departed, Dr. Walker, I feel as if I had lived a
century, and was a very old man. I feel, however, that
life is not to be measured by years, and I hope, mean al
ways to try to keep as young, bright, joyous, and buoyant
as Dr. Furness seemed this morning when I greeted him
in his own house.
I sympathize in all that has been said here this even
ing, especially in all that has been said in relation to the
future of this Society and its honored and beloved pas
tor. It is no longer a secret, I believe, that he intends
to ask a release from further service. I am sure, my
friends, that all the brethren present will leave with you
their loving benediction, and the hope that something of
his mantle may fall upon whoever comes to try to fill his
place. The whole of that mantle, in all its beauty,
grandeur, and simplicity, you cannot expect any man to
�55
have or wear; if you find a successor wearing a goodly
portion of it you will have great reason to rejoice, to
thank God and be of good courage. As for Dr. Furness
himself, we leave with him our gratitude and reverence,
and our devout wish that the sweetest serenity and peace
and moral glory may mark his remaining years; and for
ourselves, who have come from far and near to hold this
jubilee with him, we all hope to gather here to-night
and carry away with us on the morrow memories, in
spirations, influences that shall quicken us to fresh zeal
and effort in our several spheres of work, determined to
be faithful and persevere unto the end, whether that end
cover twenty, thirty or forty, or, as may be the case with
some of us, fifty years of professional service.
Rev. Dr. James Freeman Clarke, of Boston, being
called upon to read a poem written for the occasion,
spoke as follows:
A great many years ago I was journeying from Ken
tucky to Boston, and passing through Philadelphia, I
could not deny myself the pleasure of going to see our
dear friend, Mr. Furness, and he was then full of the
thoughts which were afterward published in his first
book, concerning Jesus of Nazareth. I spent the whole
morning talking with him, and when the morning was
through, said he, “ Stay a little longerand I said, “ I
will wait till night before I go;” and I spent the after
noon talking with him, and when the night came, he had
not finished speaking, and I had not finished listening.
So I spent another day. We talked in the morning, we
talked in the afternoon, and we talked in the evening. I
still had not heard all I wanted to, and so I stayed the
third day, and, of course, Brother Furness is very much
associated in my mind with his studies on this subject,
�56
which has led me to take the tone which you will find in
these lines:
Where is the man to comprehend the Master,
The living human Jesus—He who came
To follow truth through triumph or disaster,
And glorify the gallows and its shame?
No passive Christ, yielding and soft as water ;
Sweet, but not strong; with languid lip and eye ;
A patient lamb, led silent to the slaughter;
A monkish Saviour, only sent to die.
Nor that result of Metaphysic Ages;
Christ claiming to be God, yet man indeed—
Christ dried to dust in theologic pages;
Our human brother frozen in a creed !
But that all-loving one, whose heart befriended
The humblest sufferer under God’s great throne ;
While, in his life, humanity ascended
To loftier heights than earth had ever known.
All whose great gifts were natural and human ;
Loving and helping all; the great, the mean ;
The friend of rich and poor, of man and woman ;
And calling no one common or unclean.
Most lofty truth in household stories telling,
Which to the souls of wise and simple go ;
Forever in the Father’s bosom dwelling—
Forever one with human hearts below.
Not in the cloister, or professor’s study
God sets the teacher for this work apart,—
But where the life-drops, vigorous and ruddy,
Flow from the heart to hand, from hand to heart.
�57
He only rightly understands this Saviour,
Who walks himself the same highway of truth ;
Unfolding, with like frank and bold behavior,
Such earnest manhood from such spotless youth.
■ ' -«
Whose widening sympathy avoids extremes,
Who loves all lovely things, afar, anear—
Who still respects in age his youthful dreams,
Untouched by skeptic-doubt or cynic-sneer.
Who, growing older, yet grows young again,
Keeping his youth of heart;—whose spirit brave
Follows with Jesus, breaking every chain,
And bringing liberty to every slave.
To him, to-night, who, during fifty years,
For truths unrecognized has dared the strife,
In spite of fashion’s law or wisdom’s fears,
We come to thank him for a noble life.
He needs no thanks, but will accept that love,
The grateful love, inevitably given
To those who waken faith in things above,
And mingle with our days a light from heaven.
And most of all, who shows us how to find
The Great Physician for all earthly ill—
The true Reformer, calm and bold and kind,
Who came not to destroy but to fulfil.
And thus this church grows into holy ground
So full of Jesus that our souls infer
That we, like Bunyan’s Pilgrim, must have found
At last “ The House of the Interpreter.”
Dr. Clarke called upon Rev. Dr. Bartol to speak, who
said:
My Friends : I certainly ought in all sincerity, and I
certainly do in all humility, thank the committee for in8
�58
viting one, so devoid of all conventional virtue, with no
place in any conference, standing for the desert—yet not
quite, I think, belonging to the tribe of Ishmael, for my
hand is against no man, and no man’s hand, I think, is
against me,—to say even one word. But let me tell you
there is good ecclesiastical blood in the family. I throw
myself on one who is worthy, I am sure, and popular in
this church, a cousin by blood. I think there is a good
deal of vicarious atonement in him; and I hope his
righteousness will be imputed to me, though I do not
mean to make him a scapegoat for my sins.
Notwithstanding what my brother has said, I shall call
him not only brother but John Ware; and because of what
he said we shall all be convinced that this is a real
brotherhood in spirit as in name after all. I call it a
very goodly fellowship, not only of the prophets but of
the people to-night. And that is the thought that comes
into my mind in regard to it. Here our brother and
father Furness, your minister, has brought all these
brethren together who stand in thought so wide apart.
Is it not a real fellowship? I need not mention the
names to show you how wide a space of thought they
measure, and the beauty and power of a man’s fellow
ship. It is not to be determined by the number of his
disciples or followers, by the largeness of the congrega
tion he can gather, or the crowds that hang on his lips;
but by the measure which all those men, be they more or
fewer, make in the world of ideas, which is also the world
of love; for a man’s parallax, that twenty friends may
make for him, is a larger parallax than a million friends
may make. And I think it is, in spite of our dear friend’s
utter modesty, an occasion of joy with him. It should
be an occasion of joy that he reaches so far out on either
hand, and gathers such a company together. It is a real
fellowship, a real brotherhood, a real fatherhood; and while
�59
these young men have been speaking—and we have not
begun with the eldest, even to the last, but have begun
the other way—it seemed to me as if the almond blossoms
from the old heads which we remember, as well as see,
have been dropping upon some of our heads, and that
they have shed them upon us. We are glad for that fel
lowship. It is rich beyond measure.
I had a letter from our dear Brother Dewey. He says
in this letter, speaking of the death of Dr. Walker, “ He
seems to say to me, ‘ Your turn next.’ ” Ah, “ sad !” Did
I hear that word? No, not sadtj Death is not sad;
departure is not sad; ascending is not sad. Death is
nothing. But what is meant by our thought? I said to
my dear friend, Dr. Bellows, last night as we were talking,
“ How strange it would be, when we came each one of us
to die, to find that death, which we have thought so much
of, is nothing to think of! Death at last and for the
first time takes everlasting leave of us. Death will just
so surely depart from us as we come to die. And in the
article of dying, it will depart.”
It is well that I should close with this single thought
of fellowship. Providence has been working very won
derfully and very mightily, with all these great causes
which have had great sway in the modern world, through
this gospel of free thought. I call it a gospel,—a gospel
of humanity, this loving gospel to bring people together.
I do not like the word fellowship as an active verb. I
never could speak of fellowshipping one. Fellowship is
the result of being true to our own conviction one to
another; coming and sitting in the circle that takes in
the heaven as well as the earth,—and I will finish my
little talk with what perhaps is as yet an unedited fact
or story, of one of those other elders, not so very old, who
have gone to the majority. Samuel Joseph May illus
trated this bond of fellowship ; how God will have it, that
�60
we must be brethren and fellows, whether we will or not.
He told me that one day, a great many years ago, it must
now be between thirty or forty years, he was returning
from an anti-slavery meeting, on a steamer, when a theo
logical conversation arose between some parties, and one
man was pleased to denounce Unitarians very severely;
and perhaps some of you remember what that denuncia
tion was of the Unitarian Doctrine. It was infidel, it
was atheistic, it was all that was bad. Mr. May listened
quietly until the man got through, who had the sym
pathy of others, and then frankly, like himself, said, “ I
must tell you, sir, that I am myself one of those dreadful
Unitarians.” “ Indeed, indeed,” said the man. “ I have
listened to you with great pleasure at the anti-slavery
meeting; would you allow me to have a little conversa
tion with you at the other end of the boat, privately?”
“ With the utmost pleasure,” said Mr. May. They took
their departure from the little circle to the bow of the
boat. As the man was about to open his converting
speech, Mr. May said : “ Now before we proceed to our
little controversygl wish to ask you one question. Do
you believe it is possible in this matter of theology, I
after all may be right and you may be wrong ?” “ No,
I don’t believe it^s possible,^* said the man. “Then,
then,” said Mr. May, “ I think there is no advantage in
our having any further conversation.” Mr. May had
his place nevertheless in that man’s heart: for we do not
choose our fellows. God chooses our fellows for us. A
man said one day: “ I heard that transcendental lecturer
speak. He got his thought into my mind, and the worst
of it is, I can’t get it out.” Be true to your conviction;
for that is the charm, the beauty, the holiness! And
then—I must say it, yes, I must say it in spite of Dr.
Furness’ presence—not your thought alone, but you will
get into the heart of every man or woman who has the
�61
slightest knowledge of you. And the man and the woman
will love you, and the time will come when they will
not want to get you out of their mind.
Rev. Dr. Thompson, of Jamaica Plain, Mass., then
addressed the meeting as follows:
My Friends : I feel a good deal of embarrassment in
taking my place on the platform, having received no
hint that any word would be expected of me.
If I were as old and gray as some of the brethren who
have preceded me, I might perhaps follow in their
severely sober strain, but you will have to take me as I
am. Before touching on what more immediately con
cerns the occasion, let me frankly confess to having
brought with me a slight pique againsttithe venerated
pastor of this church, and you shall know how it hap
pened. About ten years ago—it will be ten in April—the
Sunday after the first National Conference in New York,
I was seated in this church. Three or four of us ministers
had come on to attend the worship ; by what attraction
you can well imagine. Robert Collyer preached the
sermon, one of the best he ever preached, that on “Hurting
and Healing Shadows.” Now you all know Dr. Furness’
great fondness for conferences and such like, only he
never goes to them ! Well, I think he must have been
a little uneasy while Collyer was preaching from having
heard of the great enthusiasm which prevailed in the
recent conference, and from regretting, though he did
not say so, that circumstances, or something, had pre
vented his being there to share it. While he sat in the
pulpit under this “hurting shadow” he was thinking very
likely—but I do not assert it as a fact—how he could
extemporize something here that would bear a resemblance
to what we had been doing and enjoying in New York;
and he hit on a plan. So, immediately after Brother
�62
Collyer had finished, our excellent friend arose, looking
exactly as he does to-night, and, with that peculiar
twinkle under his spectacles and expression about the
mouth which none of you will ever forget, said, that it
had occurred to him that, as a number of ministers were
present who had attended the New York conference, it
might be interesting to the congregation to hear an ac
count of it from their lips ; and without further ceremony
he would call upon them. When it came my turn he
introduced me in this fashion; (and here comes in the
pique of which I am going to free my mind). “ This
gentleman,” said he (giving my name), “some of the
older members of the society may perhaps remember to
have heard preach here, I will not undertake to say
precisely when, but it was some time within the present
centuryI” Do you wonder that I have had a feeling
about this insinuation ? It was true that I had preached
for him while yet a young man, and he about as old to
my appreciation as he is now. It is also true that in the
abundance of his kindness he wanted to say a pleasant
thing about the sermon ; and he did say it. And what
do you think it was ? I hope it is not too flattering for
me to repeat after having carried it so long in my memory.
He said : “ Thompson, there was one capital word in your
sermon, a capital word.” “ What was it ?” I asked,
surprised. “ It was the word intenerated; where did
you get it ?” “ From the dictionary,” I meekly replied ;
“ and you will find it there.” And now I wish to say
that if at any time within the last forty years you have
heard that word “intenerated” from the lips of your
minister you may know where it came from.
Dr. Furness: I have never used it once. (Laughter.)
What delightful reminiscences of my connection with
this church!
And now let me come to the matter of the jubilee.
�63
It happened to me less than a week ago to walk into the
sanctum of our Brother Mumford, the accomplished
editor of the Christian Register. I entered expecting to
see my welcome in the generous smile with which he
usually meets his friends. But instead of this, his face
wore a most solemn expression, and he seemed to find it
hard even to look at me. “ What now ?” thought I;
“ what have I been doing ?” After a minute or two of
suspense, I was relieved by his lifting his eyes pleas
antly and saying: “ I am doing up Dr. Furness,” or
words to that effect. I instantly remonstrated, say
ing it would spoil every man’s speech who goes to
Philadelphia, for they are all doing just what you are.
They are all searching the volumes of the Christian
Register and Christian Examiner, and other newspapers
and periodicals to find out all they can in relation to the
man and the ordination fifty years ago. But he was in
flexible, saying that - he didn’t mean that the Christian
Register should be behind any of them.” So he went on,
and the result was the excellent notice of our friend which
appeared last Saturday.
However, he did not give quite all the facts that link
themselves in my mind with the ordination of Dr. Fur
ness. It was a very remarkable year of ordinations in
our Unitarian body, remarkable as to the number of
them, and as to the character and future eminence of the
men ordained, and the reputation of the ministers who
ordained them. Let me refer to a few of them. Six
months before the ordination here, June 30th, 1824, our
beloved Brother Gannett had been ordained as the col
league of Dr. Channing; and, on the same day, his lifelong
friend in the closest intimacy, the Rev. Calvin Lincoln,
was ordained at Fitchburg. Then came this ordination ;
and in just a week after, January 19th, followed that of
the Rev. Alexander Young, over the New South Church
�64
in Boston. Such highly distinguished ministers as Pier
pont, Palfrey, Ware Sr., Channing, Upham, and Harris,
took the several parts. Of these, two only survive, Dr.
Palfrey, whom several of us here remember as our teacher
in the Theological School, and, remembering, have be
fore us the image of a man as remarkable for method,
industry, learning, and accuracy as a teacher, as he was
for a conscientious fidelity in the discharge of every duty,
the least as well as the greatest; and Charles W. Upham,
who had been ordained but a month before, over the First
Church in Salem. Mr. Upham, after twenty years in the
ministry, retired and became for a time a servant of the
country in the National House of Representatives. In
his advanced age he has pursued his favorite historical
studies, and has, as you know, recently published a Life
of Timothy Pickering in four volumes, which has been
received with great favor by the public.
The week following the ordination of Dr. Young, came
that of the Rev. Edmund Q. Sewall, at Amherst, New
Hampshire, a man of rare abilities and virtues; no longer
living. At this ordination we find our friend Palfrey
taking part with Pierpont, Lowell, and Thayer of
Lancaster. This was followed the next week, February
2d, by the ordination of Rev. John Flagg, of West
Roxbury, in the exercises of which we find the names of
Palfrey again, the lately deceased Dr. Walker, and Drs.
Pierce, Lowell, Gray, and Lamson, all well known by
those of us who are far advanced in the journey of life,
and all, but the first, now gone on out of sight but not
beyond the reach of our affections. The week following
Mr. Flagg’s, came the ordination of that true man and
faithful servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Rev.
Samuel Barrett over the Chambers Street Church in
Boston; a man of clear, strong mind, devoted to his
work, exercising his ministry in great patience, in great
I
�65
cheerfulness, with great joy in God and great love for the
brotherhood. Then followed in the very next week,
February 16th, the installation of the Rev. Henry Cole
man in the Barton Square Church, of Salem, at which,
among others, Messrs. Frothingham, Pierpont, and Brazer
officiated. I ought to mention that at the beginning of
the same year, 1825, if not a little earlier, our eminent
brother, the Rev. E. B. Hall, a particular friend of Dr.
Furness, received a call to the then new parish in North
hampton, which the state of his health did not permit
him at once to accept. But tima parish would not give
him up; and in the August ensuing, his health being
partially restored, he became their minister; the venerable
Dr. Ware preaching the sermon, and Pierpont! Willard,
Lincoln, and Brazer, assisting in otl^P exercises.
Said I not truly that the year which gave Dr. Fur
ness to Philadelphia, was memorablafor its*rdinations
in our denomination ? Certainly no other has been so
fruitful. And all these eminent brothers ordained, with
two or three exceptions, were the coevals and intimate
personal friends of him whom we have come here to
night to honor with the outpourings of our respect,
gratitude, and affection.
Now there is one other event relating to our good
friend, which I hope it will not seem improper for me to
refer to, having been for twenty-seven years of my life a
minister in the city where it occurred ; a very important
event in the history of his singularly happy life. It
occurred in the year following his ordination; and it has
probably had quite as much to do with his comfort and
happiness here as your unfailing kindness and sympathy.
The event was of so much importance that it was chron
icled in the Salem Gazette in this wise:
“ In Salem, August 29th, 1825, by Rev. Mr. Emerson,
Rev. William Henry Furness, Philadelphia, to Miss
9
�66
Annis Pulling Jenks, daughter of the late Mr. John
Jenks.”
I don’t dare to tell all I have heard about the bride,
though I think from what you now see, you would find
no difficulty in believing it. I refer to the event because
of its influence and its long-continued charm ; and I hope
the few lines from Rogers’ “ Human Life,” with which I
close, if I can join them to what I have been saying, will
not inappropriately relieve your attention.
“ Across the threshold led,
And every tear kissed off as soon as shed,
His house she enters there to he a light
Shining within when all without is night;
A guardian angel o’er his life presiding,
Doubling his pleasures and his cares dividing;
Winning him back when mingling with the throng,
Back from a world we love, alas, too long,
To fireside happiness, to hours of ease,
Blest with that charm—the certainty to please.”
I am requested to introduce our Brother Chadwick, of
Brooklyn.
Rev. John W. Chadwick, of Brooklyn, N. Y., spoke
as follows:
Dear Friends : It seems to be the order of the
evening for each speaker to justify in some way his
presence on this sacred and beautiful occasion, and I,
knowing that my turn was coming, have been not a little
troubled as to what I should say for myself. But Dr.
Thompson has helped me out. In the accounts of
various ordinations which he has read to you, you
must have noticed how few old men had anything to do
with them, from which it would appear that, whether
there is or is not less respect for age now than formerly,
there was formerly much more respect for young men
than at present. Nowadays we never take up with any
�67
young men at ordinations and such times, till there are
no more old men to be had. I suspect, therefore, that I
have been invited to speak here this evening as a sign
that respect for young men has not entirely died out.
Dear friends, I saw this occasion while it was yet a
great way off. When Robert Collyer said to me up at
Saratoga last September, “John, we must all go to
Philadelphia next January,” I answered, I have been
meaning to this three years.” After your invitation
came, thinking it might possibly mean that I should say
something, I began to think what I would say, and all at
once I found my thought was going to a sort of tune. I
couldn’t account for it except by the fancy that my
thought was sympathizing with the music of Dr. Furness’
life, which has been a sort of symphony—a “Pastoral
Symphony ”—for has not the thought of the Good Shep
herd been the central thought and inspiration of it all
from the beginning until now ?
Here is what came to me.
W. H. F.
January 12th, 1825. January \2th, 1875.
Standing upon the summit of thy years,
Dear elder brother, what dost thou behold,
Along the way thy tireless feet have come
From that far day, when young and fresh and bold,
Hearing a voice that called thee from on high,
Thou answeredst, quickly, “ Father, here am I.”
Fain would we see all that thine eyes behold,
And yet not all, for there is secret store
Of joy and sorrow in each private heart,
To which no stranger openeth the door.
But thou can st speak of many things beside,
While we a little space with thee abide.
�68
Tell us of those who fifty years ago
Started thee forth upon thy sacred quest,
Who all have gone before thee, each alone,
To seek and find the Islands of the Blest.
To-day, methinks that there as well as here
Is kept all-tenderly thy golden year.
Tell us, for thou didst know and love him well,
Of Channing’s face,—of those dilating eyes
That seemed to^eatch, while he was with us here,
Glimpses of things beyond the upper skies.
Tell us of th®t weak voice, which was so strong
To cleave asunder every form of wrong.
Thou hast had good companions on thy way ;
Gannett was ®rith thee in his ardent prime,
And with thee still when outward feebleness
But made his spirit seem the more sublime,
Till, like another prophetj&mmoned higher,
He found, like him, a chariot of fire.
And that beloved disciple was thy friend,
Whose heart was blither than the name he bore,
Who yet could hide the tenderness of May,
And bleaker than December, downward pour
The tempest of his’Wrath on slavery’s lie,
And all that takes from man’s humanity.
And thou hast walked with our Saint Theodore,
Our warrior-saint, well-named the gift of God,
Whose manful hate of every hateful thing,
Blossomed with pity, e’en as Aaron’s rod,
And lips that cursed the priest and Pharisee
Gathered more honey than the wilding bee.
All these are gone, and Sumner’s heart beneath
Should make more pure the yet untainted snow ;
Our one great statesman of these latter days,
Happy wert thou his other side to know,
To call him friend, whom ages yet unborn
Shall love tenfold for every breath of scorn.
�69
All these are gone, but one is with us still,
So frail that half we deem she will not die,
But slow exhale her earthly part away,
And wear e’en here the vesture of the sky.
Lucretia, blessed among women she,
Dear friend of Truth, and Peace, and Liberty.
And one, whose form is as the Son of man,
Has been with thee through all these busy years,
Holden our eyes, and He to us has seemed
As one seen dimly through a mist of tears Bl
But thou hast seen him clearly face to face,
And told us of his sweetness and his grace.
Standing upon the summit of thy years,
Dear elder brother, tbou canst see the day
When slavery’s curse had sway in all the land,
And thou art here, and that has passed away.
We give thee joy that in its hour of pride,
Thy voice and hand were on the weak® side.
But from thy clear and lofty eminence
Let not thine eyes be ever backward turned,
For thou canst see before as cannot we
Who have'^ot yet thy point of ’vantage earned.
Tell us of what thou seest in the years
That look so strange, seen through our hopes and fears.
Nothing we know to shake thy steadfast mind
Nothing to quench thy heart with doubt or fear ;
But higher truth and holier love revealed,
And justice growing to man’s heart more dear.
And everywhere beneath high heaven’®3ope,
A deeper trust, a larger, better hope.
There are some here that shall not taste of death
Till they have seen the kingdom come, with power.
O brave forerunner, wheresoe’®| thou art,
Thou wilt be glad with us in that glad hour.
Farewell! Until we somewhere meet again.
We know in whom we have believed. Amen.
�70
Rev. Mr. Chadwick, in turn, introduced the Rev.
R. R. Shippen, of Boston, Mass., who said:
My dear Friends : Amid these memorials of your
Christmas rejoicing, and these fresh flowers and ever
greens of tropical luxuriance with which you would
symbolize the fragrance of the memories that cluster
round this aniversary, and your desire to keep them
green, it is my pleasant privilege to speak for the
Unitarian Association a word of greeting, giving you
congratulations on this your golden wedding, with best
wishes for the coming years. Yet as I speak for the
Association, I remember that some of our noblest and
best, from Channing through the list, have been some
what fearful of ecclesiastical entanglements, and of
hard, dry machinery, and have deemed the truest and
best work in life that wrought by character and personal
influence; even as Jesus himself did his work, not by
organizations, but by his own personality. Permit me
then to touch two or three lines of personal influence
flowing forth from this pulpit, that are but representatives
of many more. Let me speak for one in your city, now
in her ninety-third year, kept from this meeting only by
the feebleness of old age, who this afternoon told me of
her fresh remembrance of the occasion of fifty years ago,
vivid as if but yesterday, who has been a lifelong friend
of our cause, a generous worker in this church and bene
factor of the Meadville Church and. Theological School,
who recognizes this pulpit as the source of some of the
choicest inspirations of her life. Shall I speak for one
who in a large home-circle of many brothers has been a
loving, sisterly influence of sweetness and light ? who in
her youth was here a worshiper, and caught the inspira
tion of this place, and in her greeting sent me to-day
writes that she is with us here in spirit to-night; that no
one present can join in these services with a more deep
�71
and tender gratitude, and no human thought can fully
know what her life owes to the ministry we now com
memorate ? Shall I speak for another, a younger
brother, the brightest of the seven, whose youth and
early manhood were spent in this city in study and
practice of law ? who Sunday by Sunday learned here
that blessed faith that, when in the full promise of his
manly prime his last hour came, enabled him to go
bravely to death full of a cheerful hope of immortality ?
As to-night he makes heaven more real and more attrac
tive to my thought, in his name I-pay the tribute of
thanks for the inspirations of this pulpit. Shall I speak
for myself ? In my early home I remember your pastor’s
familiar volume of “Family Prayer” as a household
word. At the outset of my ministryf at the Portland
Convention, just twenty-five years ago, I first heard the
genial, charming, gracious word of your minister in his
prime. And as in Boston one may, day by day, correct
his own timepiece by Cambridge observations of the sky,
whose electric communications give us every passing hour
the celestial time true to the second, so in my young
ministry at Chicago,—a lonelier frontier post then than
now,—when the barbarous Fugitive Slave Law passed
through Congress, and the Northwest Territories were
opened for slavery, and the dark days came upon the
nation, if, as I tried, I bore any worthy testimony for
freedom, I rejoice that I was aided in setting my con
science true to the celestial time by this observatory in
Philadelphia. The blessed influences of your pulpit have
run their lines through our land and through the world.
And, friends, what does our Association seek but to
extend and multiply these lines of personal influence, to
enable Boston and Philadelphia to join hands in the
same noble work ? When I asked your pastor for the
last book of Whittier, that I might quote a forgotten
�72
line, he replied, “ All good books have feet and wings
and will find their way at last.” But our Association
only desires to quicken their speed, and by the people’s
generosity to enlarge their wings; that as we are now
sending Channing through the land, we should gladly
send the noble words of Dewey and Furness flying on
the wings of the wind.
And what do our Association and Conferences stand
for but for fellowship ? for the good-will and helpfulness
of brotherly greetings ? Pennsylvanian as I am by birth
and ancestry, with you I rejoice that these Boston
brethren have been brought to Philadelphia. It will do
us all good to know more of each other. This meeting
to-night is just like our Conferences, where our hearts
are warmed by words of brotherly kindness. As I recall
your minister’s inspiring word at the Portland Conven
tion, it has been one of the regrets of my life that we have
not heard him oftener among us. But it is never too late
to mend. On behalf of the Association and the Confer
ence I invite our Brother Furness and all of you to at
tend our meetings henceforth every time.
And now, my friends, when Brother Mumford wrote
that editorial last week, I said, “You are a generous
fellow; why didn’tl^ou keep that to make a speech
from ?” I am sure I don’t know what he is going to say.
I am requested to ask him to speak.
Rev. Thomas J. Mumford. Dear Friends: On account
of the lateness of the hour I will only say that that was
my speech. The next speaker will be Brother White,
and when I say Brother White, I mean brother just as
much as they did in the days of Henry Ware.
Rev. William O. White, of Keene, N. H., then ad
dressed the meeting as follows:
�73
There is one comfort, dear friends, as I thank you at
this late hour, for giving me the pleasure of being with
you, and that is, that Philadelphia time is a little more
generous than the time which I carry in my pocket; but
I will not abuse even Philadelphia time. The word that
Brother Mumford just mentioned brings up very dear
and tender associations with men so closely united in my
memory with our friend and brother, Dr. Furness. But
I will not carry out the thought that comes to me. I
would gladly help along one or two strains that vibrate
in our hearts, as the words are spoken, that “the time
will come when we shall take a last farewell of death,”
and that other word of a younger speaker who almost
felt, and almost knew that one of the long-departed
friends of our Brother Furness was here./'
I am glad to feel that I am here, just as some of my
younger friends were, because I am the son of a friend
of Dr. Furness, a layman whose tastes led him to the
study of theology, and who, I think, was more attached
to the studies of the ministry than many of us ministers
are. I say this, because as soon as I saw Dr. Furness
this morning I was greeted as my father’s son.
And I would not hava spoken here at all at this late
hour, but to try to fasten to those one Im two sweet
thoughts that have been uttered to-night, to which I
have alluded, a line of the poet-sculptor “Michael
Angelo.’^ He is contemplating theyvasting block of
marble upon which he is working; the block lessens ;
lessens, lessens, continually in size; and so the years of
our friend’s sweet, earnest ministry here, are fast pass
ing away before our eyes. But the great lesson that I
have found, as I go back to the time when I remember
to have heard Dr. Furness’ voice in my father’s house,
and in the old pulpit in Salem, and as I remember the
week that I spent with him more than a score of years
10
�74
ago, and as I recall the tenderness of his voice, in his
supplications and his preaching, only last October, the
great lesson I have taken with me about him fastens
itself to the line which I am now to quote of “ Michael
Angelo.” As the poet and sculptor contemplated the
wasting marble, he said:
“ The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows.”
So, with our friend, the years are passing away ; pass
ing away, soon they must be gone; but the statue grows
with tenderness of heart deeper than ever; that sweet
voice, rich with varied experience of the joys and sorrows
of those friends of his in his flock, year after year, has
acquired an added tenderness; and we feel
“The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows,”
and we can welcome the time when he, or any of us, who
try to live in a like spirit of devotion to the Master, shall
“take an everlasting farewell of death.”
I am requested to call on our friend Brother Putnam,
of Brooklyn, New York.
Rev. Dr. A. P. Putnam made the following address:
My dear Friends : I think it must have been for a
larger number of years than Brother Chadwick said for
himself, that I have been looking forward to this occasion,
meaning to be here not with a set speech, as you will very
soon see, but because I wished to come and to say from
my heart, I thank you, Dr. Furness.
I remember when I was a bookkeeper in Boston, how
my elder brother, who was in the divinity school at that
time, used to bring me the volumes of Channing, Buck
minster, and Ware, and also various pamphlet sermons of
Dr. Furness. I recollect well the delight with which I read
Dr. Furness’ pages, and the gospel of liberty they taught
me, and the new revelation they seemed to give me of
�75
the Christ. I have been a disciple following far off. Yet
I know I have not lost during all these years the strong
conviction I had then. It has deepened and deepened
from that time until now. I have gathered his pamphlets
wherever I could find them, and with not a little zeal
I have searched for all his books, many of which are out
of print and are not easily to be found, until, some years
ago, I completed the whole list, and I cherish them as
among the most precious treasures in my library. The
argument which he draws from the naturalness, the
simplicity and artlessness of the gospel records for their
truth, and the uplifting of the curtain so that the Christ
may be seen in his higher spiritual beauty! what a
debt do we owe him for that. Does he know ? can he
know ? can we tell him how much the members of our
churches feel of gratitude and love to him for all that
he has done for us in this way ? Perhaps in some far off
time he may know it more fully; but it is right, dear
friends, that we should come together thus and say these
words which are uttered here to-night, and before he
has gone away tell him how much we do love and
honor him, and why it is we do love and honor him, and
why it is that yve shall always revere and bless him.
When I have thought what words have gone forth from
that desk in behalf of liberty and right in this land, I
have wished that the church might remain just as it is
to-night, and that pulpit just as it is for years and
generations to come. It speaks a lesson for all; those
words abide with us still; they have come home to our
hearts, and kindled in our souls new zeal for the truth
as it is in Jesus. How many chains they have broken,
and oh ! what a welcome, in comparison with which these
congratulations of the hour are small indeed, is reserved
for our venerable father and friend, from the spirits of
�76
the ransomed freedmen who have ascended to heaven,
and who will greet him there.
Let me say that forty years ago it was, that Dr.
Furness preached the installation sermon of the first
minister of the church which I represent here ; the first
society of our faith in Brooklyn. It seems a long, long
while indeed. I have been over ten years there myself.
Dr. Farley preceded me, and he was there twenty years
or more. Mr. Holland was there several years before
him; Mr. Barlow several years before Mr. Holland. Dr.
Furness preached the installation sermon of Rev. Mr.
Barlow, who was the first minister of our faith in
Brooklyn, forty years ago the 17th of last September.
Of the ministersjwho took part in the services of that
occasion, all except your pastor and my immediate pre
decessor, who was then of Providence, R. I., have passed
away,—William Ware, John Pierpont, Caleb Stetson,
E. B. Hall, and others^ Nearly ten years later, Dr.
Furness was present at a| convention held there at the
time of the dedication of our church, and preached the
closing communion sermon. His is a familiar name with
my people, who are all with you here in the spirit, and
would join me, I know, in heartily saying, “God bless
him and you, and the cause of humanity and righteous
ness, which is so dear to you.”
I am requested to call upon Rev. Mr. Ames to address
you.
Rev. C. G. Ames, of Germantown, Pa., said:
As I am one of the younger brethren, and very much
at home, I feel that I should deny myself, and take up
my cross, and introduce a brother from a distance, espe
cially as you have met to hear from these patriarchal
ministers who can offer things which I cannot. But I
may boast one advantage; they cannot see Dr. Furness
�77
every day. Nor can I speak freely of what I feel; it is
too much like being one of the family. I live too near,
and can easily be excused. My voice is very frequently
heard in this house. With a heart brimming full, I
have the painful pleasure, therefore, of holding it down,
knowing it will keep.
I will introduce Rev. Dr. Bellows, of New York.
Rev. Dr. Bellows made the following remarks:
I am sure both modesty and discretion would suggest
the wisdom of my being taught by my junior and friend,
and in releasing you from any further attendance on this
interesting service. As for myself, I feel tired as a child
with the pleasures of the evening; and I can conceive that
you all must be so tired that you would welcome as your best
friend him who would permit you to go home and think
over all the kind things you have heard here. And yet
I think it is a kind of duty to say 1 word in behalf of my
own people and city, and all that great community which
I am privileged to represent here. New York speaks
to Philadelphia; and to a good many of us in New York,
Brother Furness is more than half of Philadelphia.
When we think of Philadelphia we think rather of him
than of anything else, and it is not for anything he has done
either; not for all that great service to freedom, not for
all that valuable contribution to theological speculation
or criticism, but for being what he cannot possibly help,
and that is, himself. It is so much more to be than to
say, or even to do, that I have not always a great deal
of praise for the bright things he does, or the bright
things he says,—only because he is what he is and can’t
help it, and deserves very little thanks for it; for God is
the being we must thank, not him. It is, therefore, that
I am by force compelled to thank God for him, and not
thank him.
�78
Good fellow! he has had it all himself. God gave
him all his precious gifts; he gave him his broad and
generous humanity; made him a harp for all the winds
of heaven and earth to play on, not a fife, to be stopped ;
gave him that benignant smile which he doesn’t know
anything about himself; and gave him that delicious
voice which is in itself a harmony of all his sweetest
powers, an expression of the depth and clearness of his
spirit.
Poor fellow! he cannot help it; he has carried it with
him all these seventy-two years. And, surely, the first
time I ever saw him his voice was the thing that spoke
to me. I didn’t care what it said; there it was, and I
have often thought if a soft voice be an excellent thing
in woman, such a voice as his is, is one of the most
magnificent and significant gifts that God ever gives to
man. Well, let us thank God for him, and then let us
thank him for using those talents so well. Now let me
thank you in behalf of the denomination, dear brethren,
for not being able to be otherwise than so generous, so
kind and faithful to a man who, for all I know, never
used one particle of machinery to keep you together, has
taken no particular pains to keep you together, but just
stood like a kind of magnet, and drawn you to his
heart. We don’t understand it all, but God does; and
we see how with a witchery he has done more than most
of us are able to do by getting every sort of instru
mentality at work that we can possibly use to supple
ment the defects of our natural constitution. I wish I
could work just as Dr. Furness does, and have that same
influence and power, without seeking any. If I could
stand up in naked simplicity and majesty, and then win
the people without using all this painful labor, this
fatiguing desperately drudging machinery, I should be
very glad indeed ; but for most of us poor fellows, it is a
�79
necessity to resort to these matters, to supplement the
defects of our natural constitution and faculties; but I
think Brother Furness can do without it. One thing
further I will say of Dr. Furness. It is a subject of
special congratulation that he has been always himself;
that no theological or critical studies have given an
ecclesiastical tinge or twist to his character, or prevented
the people from seeing him in his native outline. He
has been a preacher and minister, but still more, a man,
and although no man less deserves, in the depreciating
sense, the name of a man of the world, yet in a noble
sense he has been a man of the world; for he has made
the world tributary to his growth; drawn in its widest
culture, enjoyed its largest freedom, entered into its every
day feelings and joys, and made it his own by his great
enjoyment of it, and insight into its meaning. Neither
ecclesiasticism nor dogmatism has been able to quench
his native originality, and that is one of his chief charms
to-day.
Dear brethren, let me congratulate you at the close of
this half century of your minister’s labors, upon what we
n ow behold in the magnificent development of th e theologi
cal ideas and religious temper for which our branch of the
church has meanwhile stood. We expected great things,
but we have seen larger ones, although of a different
kind. We looked for a multiplication of our churches,
which we have not seen, but how vast has been the spread
of our ideas and principles? We expected to be the
chief instruments in the work of liberalizing Christian
thought and feeling, but Divine providence took up the
work with larger methods and new agencies, and made
us rather sharers than leaders in theological reform. We
happened to be the first wave of what turned out to be
an incoming tide, which has swept the whole church on.
I think Luther did not see in his day a greater, a more
�80
important reformation in theological ideas than we have
realized in the last half century.
Whether there be one Unitarian church in Phila
delphia or more, or whether our churches in New York
and Brooklyn, Baltimore and Washington, New Eng
land and the West have multiplied as fast as we hoped or
not, there is more liberal Christianity preached in this
country to-day, than the boldest prophets could have
foreseen when our enterprise started. It has advanced,
and it has triumphed, by whatever way. God has taken
it up, and brought the aid of a broad science, a broad
philosophy, a broad reformatory influence in society,
during all these last years, to bear powerfully upon it.
We have seen results which may cause many of us to
say, “Mine eyes have seen thy salvation; let now thy
servant depart in peace.” I feel no further anxiety
about the spread of liberal Christianity. It now spreads
by a necessity. It is a glorious privilege to work in it
and for it. But the business is essentially done. The
leaven is at work, and it is working everywhere, just as
much in the orthodox churches, so-called, as in our own.
And very little free thinking is done in our denomination
which is not just as fully represented in the old ortho
doxy. We are no longer the sole officers in that great
army. I thank God that the business of fighting is
pretty much over’, and that we are now beginning to
think more of cultivating religiously the area which has
been left for us specially to take care of. Let us now
look to it, as churches and ministers and parishes, and
see that we produce workmen, and, finally, spiritual
fruit, in the particular area over which we are set as
husbandmen and gardeners. That you may succeed
in cultivating your own soil, and in making the vine
yard a nobler and grander one, and in bringing forth
more clusters of grapes of the particular vine from which
�81
you are set, is my earnest prayer. And that we may all
return from these services bearing your blessings and
Brother Furness’ blessing with us into our own several
fields of labor, and that we may be abler and nobler and
more careful shepherds, and more faithful husbandmen,
is the best thing I can ask, that we may be permitted to
carry away from this hour and this blessed assembly of
Unitarian Christians and friends.
Music.
Duet for Two Sopranos and Chorus,
.
. Mendelssohn.
“I waited for the Lord,” from “Hymn of Praise.”
Chorus, .
..........................................................Spohr.
“ Happy who in Thy House Reside.”
Dr. Furness then addressed the meeting.
Dear Friends : While I am very glad to meet here
my brothers in the ministry, and am not at all insensible
to their kind words, I call you all to witness that they
are not here by my invitation. I never invited them
to come here and talk about me. But as long as they
have done so, I congratulate you all, and all who are in
terested in the success of the good cause. It is, you see,
in the hands of young men. Although some of your
guests here show gray on their heads, they are very
young men evidently, fond, especially brother Bellows,
of romancing. I use the words that Dr. Bancroft used
at my ordination: “ It was a comfort to him to feel that
as he was going away the cause would be left in hands
that would carry it on a great deal better than he could.”
Some of my friends told me I had better not come here
to-night; but brother Bellows intimated to me that by
staying away I might seem to be bidding for praise. So
I thought I would come and see whether some restraint
11
�82
could not be put upon the speakers by my presence. But
I don’t think I have availed much.
The day that I was ordained—but I am not going to
tire you with old time stories,—when an old minister
begins telling his experiences we never know when he
will stop—we were all invited,—the gentlemen of the
clergy, and the delegates from Boston and New York,—
to dine at Mr. Thomas Astley’s, who lived at the corner
of Ninth and Walnut Streets, a wealthy Englishman of
our persuasion. While we were sitting waiting for dinnoy,
the report came that the kitchen chimney was on fire!
One of the gentlemen suggested that the fire could be
put out very readily by putting a blanket before the
chimney, and throwing some sulphur into the fire-place.
After dinner, when the wine was passed around and the
toasts were given, one of the gentlemen proposed “ the
Furnace that had been kindled in Philadelphia.” And
another added, “May it never be put out with brim
stone.”
The meeting was closed by a benediction pronounced
by Dr. FurnessJfc
�*
LETTERS.
�THE FOLLOWING LETTERS WERE RECEIVED BY
THE COMMITTEE FROM PERSONS WHO
WERE UNABLE TO BE PRESENT.
�Sheffield, January 4th, 1875.
To the Committee of the First Congregational Society
of Unitarians.
Gentlemen : I am obliged and gratified by the invitation.
I wish that I could comply with it. It would have been a
great pleasure to me, to join the friends of your honored pastor,
in commemorating a ministry, not only so long, but otherwise
equally remarkable. I should like to be in your church on
that interesting evening of the 12th, to hear the pleasant things
that will be said, and to say some, perhaps, myself.
But I cannot, that is, I cannot take so long a winter journey.
I am not sure enough of my health and strength to venture
upon it. Will you give my love to Dr. Furness and his family,
and accept for yourselves and the society, the congratulations
with which I am,
Very truly yours,
Orville Dewey.
Hazelwood, Cambridge, January 6th, 1875.
Gentlemen : I feel very much honored and gratified by
your invitation to be present at the commemoration of Dr.
Furness’ settlement in the ministry in Philadelphia, but the
state of my health forbids me to accept the invitation. My
interest in your society dates from a still earlier period.
I have listened in your old Octagon Church to the preaching
of Mr. Taylor, and I believe of Mr. Vaughan, as well as
preached there repeatedly myself. For more than fifty years
I have been your pastor’s admirer and warm friend.
I heartily wish him future happy years of earthly life, and I
pray God that after his retirement from your service another
pastor may serve you with an ability and zeal not too inferior
to his.
I am, gentlemen,
Very respectfully,
Your obedient servant,
John G. Palfrey.
�86
Cambridge, January 1st, 1875.
Gentlemen : I regret very sincerely that college duties
render it impossible for me to accept your invitation. Regard
ing your pastor with equal reverence and affection, I should
deem it a great privilege to he present at the commemorative
services, from which imperative necessity alone would detain
me.
I am, gentlemen,
Very truly yours,
A. P. Peabody.
Hingham, January 4th, 1875.
Gentlemen : I thank my dear friend, Dr. Furness, and the
committee for thinking of me at this time. I should he so very
happy to be with you, and join in all the expressions of respect
and love for one whose long and faithful ministry has earned
the esteem and confidence of all who know him. Beside this,
Dr. Furness and I alone continue in the ministry, of those who
were classmates in th® Divinity School and, I think, in College.
Give my love to your pastor. I need not wish him a happy
old age. That blessing is assured to him by his fidelity to his
convictions of truth and duty through life.
Very respectfully,
Calvin Lincoln.
Cambridge, January 5th, 1875.
Gentlemen : I received your invitation to be present at the
observance of •the fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of your
pastor, Dr. Furness* It would give me great pleasure to attend.
But I do not feel at liberty to be absent from my regular duty
so long as would be required.
No occasion of the kind so significant has occurred for many
years. For fifty years Dr. Furness has stood at his post, and
manfully defended the cause of what he deemed Divine Truth
and Divine Right. He has never failed to hold up the highest
standard of private and public duty. He has made no abate
ment from the truth in his utterance of it, nor deformed it by
an immoral spirit. For fifty years he has been an untiring
student of the life of Jesus Christ in the four gospels, seeking
�87
to bring to light the reality of that life, the internal evidence
of the truthfulness of the original record of it, and the moral
grandeur and spiritual beauty of the life itself. He has followed
in no servile spirit, but with original force of thought, his great
teacher, Mr. Norton, from whom, differing in many things, he
caught the impulse to this line of inquiry, this work of love, in
which his merit has been unique, his service one never to be
forgotten. To this it may be added, with Bini versal consent,
that his living example has been in harmony with the great
subject of his studies, and has done as much as that of any
minister to show the worth of the officwaf spiritual instructor
to a generation too ready to distrust those whoMbxercise it.
Though not many years younger, I have the habit of looking
up to him, and he is one of tho^ntjrgn whom inspiration and
strength have flowed into my soul
needed.
I am, brethren, yours in Christian fellowships with thanks
for your kind invitation, and MilEannatMbwith you in all
that belongs to a most memorable occasion.
Oliver Stearns.
Roxbur^j Mass., January 7th, 1875.
Dear Sirs : I very much regret that the state of my health
forbids my being pres e® at the commemoration, not of the
close, thank God! but of the close of the first fifty years of the
ministry of Dr. Durness. I regret it not only on account of my
personal affection for the minister, but because it has been a
ministry eminently after my own heart, one th®I admire ex
ceedingly. What I know of it is derived onlv from glimpses
and intuitions, and will be filled out and corrected by the fuller
face-to-face knowledge of the
It has looked to me
at this distance as a ministry of a mild and quiet type, as of one
that doth not strive nor cry, neither doth any man hear his
voice in the streets. Other ministries have been more effective
as the multitude measures efficiency, dealing with larger crowds,
using more complex agencies, and touching society at more
numerous points of interest and with intenser action; but within
its own sphere St has dealt with a profoundness, and fidelity not
elsewhere surpassed with the soul’s greatest interests, uncom
promising in its absolute loyalty to truth and right, always
taking the highest ground, always elevated and elevating,
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always searching, quickening, soothing, sanctifying to heart
and conscience, a lifelong dispensary of Sermons from the
Mount.
The specialty of this ministry, it seems to me, has been the
unfolding of the personality and character of Jesus of Nazareth.
I do not believe there is a pulpit in Christendom that has done
so much to penetrate the heart and life of the Master to its
inmost depths, and open its riches to the sympathies and ac
ceptance of men, as that Philadelphia pulpit for the last fifty'
years. Every shade and turn of thought, every gleam of
emotion heavenward and earthward, all the sweet humanity
and grand divinity of that wonderful soul, have been discerned
and delineated there as never elsewhere, I think, and dwelt on
with all the earnest zeal and affectionate faith of a disciple, and
all the enthusiastic appreciation of an artist—dwelt on almost
too exclusively one might think, were it not done by one who
knew how to draw all living waters from that one well, and
bring up all the gold and gems of the moral and spiritual uni
verse from that one mine. I have no doubt this has been done
in this case, so far as any single mind can be comprehensive
and all-sided enough to do it.
The ministry which you commemorate has been singularly
self-conta^ed, that is, has been carried on apart from all official
and organic connection with other ministries, without denomina
tional bonds, with no outside ties except those of a fraternal and
genial spirit. I sympathize with the characteristics of Dr.
Furness’ ministry; my own has been conducted on a similar
plan, though I fear with less fixedness of principle, and less
consistency»©f action. Most of our brethren will call this our
fault, our limitation. Well, they are the majority, and must
decide that point; only I am sure they will have the charity to
own that we, being such as we are, could do no otherwise.
You of Philadelphia do not need reminding; but I want to
express my own appreciation of the manner in which the ministry
you celebrate has all along been adorned, refined, deepened, and
broadened by literary studies and artistic taste and culture,
bringing to that ministry contributions, or rather an aroma
and innumerable subtle and sweet influences from all realms of
spiritual beauty and fragrance and sunshine.
Shall I dare in such a letter as this to make allusion to the
way that looks to me so felicitous, in which the church in the
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sanctuary has been supplemented by “the church in the house?”
To my eye and my remembrance the home in Pine Street, and
the church on Locust and Tenth, in the hospitable, genial, cheer
ful, affectionate, and ever gracious spirit that pervaded them
both, were always the counterparts and archetypes of one an
other, each reflecting what was best and brightest and holiest
in the other.
Though this long ministry has been characteristically so quiet
and even and suave, it has had epochs and aspects, or one at
least, of the kind, in presence of which the earth is shaken, and
principalities and powers are prostrated. We may have doubted
the wisdom and necessity of the course taken by our brother;
but we cannot fail to recognize the sublime moral grandeur of
clear and strong conviction® adhered to and acted on, with im
movable persistence, at all risks and at all cost, and though the
heavens fall. We should be blind B>t to discern there the stuff
of which martyrs were made, and the spirit that bore the meek
and gentle Jesus to his cross.
Perhaps my mind has dwelt more on the jubilee from the
fact that if all had gone well with me, I should have been the
next among the liberal ministers, so far as I know, to have been
entitled to such an occasion for myself. I have had my nine
lustra, and if the tenth fail why should I complain ? I can still
rejoice with all my heart in the well-earned honors and happi
ness of my well-beloved friend and brother in Philadelphia.
Very truly yours,
George Putnam.
106 Marlborough Street,
Boston, January 4th, 1875.
Dear Sirs : I am deeply indebted to you for the very kind
invitation to be present at the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Fur
ness’ settlement. I regret to say that I cannot leave my work
at that time.
I am sure that you have reason to thank God and take courage
as you look back upon the half century. Dr. Furness has served
nobly both in Church and State, and has done much to show
that the two are indeed one.^ My warmest wishes accompany
him as he enters upon his green old age, which surely lacks
nothing that should go along with it. May he have the out12
�90
ward strength, as he is sure to have the inward desire, to speak
to you and for you these many years.
Gratefully and sincerely yours,
Rufus Ellis.
Portland, Maine, January 4th, 1875.
It is with great regret that I find myself unable to accept
your kind invitation to be present at the fiftieth anniversary of
the settlement of the Rev. Dr. Furness.
During the whole of that fifty years, and it embraces all my
life excepting the seven years of infancy, I have had near rela
tions and friends among the parishioners and lovers of Dr. Fur
ness, so that my interest in the occasion is almost personal.
But I am obliged to be in Philadelphia a fortnight later, and
cannot possibly spare the time for both journeys.
With the most cordial congratulations for both pastor and
people, and the hope of many happy returns of the season, I
remain,
Very respectfully and truly yours,
Thomas Hill.
Cambridge, Mass., January 2d, 1875.
Gentlemen : I am very sorry that I cannot accept your kind
invitation to be present at the fiftieth anniversary of the settle
ment of Dr. Furness as your minister.
The fact of so long a pastorship is itself noteworthy in these
days of change; but, in this case, we have all a special right to
be sharers in your joy, since we have received our part in the
fruit of your minister’s labors during these fifty years. Dr.
Furness has set an example, rare in these days of divided and
superficial work, not only by his devotion to a single parish
during so long a period, but also by his consecration to one
chosen line of thought. He selected the noblest theme and
gave his life to it, and made us all his debtors. With thanks
for your kind invitation, and congratulations for minister and
people,
I am, yours very truly,
C. C. Everett.
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Boston, January 9th, 1875.
Gentlemen : Since I heard that your jubilee was proposed I
have hoped to be able to be present, but I am, at the last moment,
disappointed. I think our friends in Philadelphia must under
stand that they are only a very small part of the multitude of
people who are grateful to Dr. Furness for the labors and the
love of his wonderful life. So soon as we who were then
youngsters found out how he preached, we used to say we would
walk fifty miles barefoot to hear him, if there were no other
way to enjoy that privilege. But even more than the preaching,
it was the reading of the books, and the living picture which
they gave us of the Saviour’s life, that set us on a track of
preaching and of thought wholly new.
Let me congratulate the congregation on his health and
strength, and pray express for a multitude of us our love and
gratitude to him.
' Truly yours,
Edward E. Hale.
Dorchester, Mass., January 10th, 1875.
Gentlemen : I have delayed replying to your letter of in
vitation to be present with you on the 12th instant, because,
while my very earnest desire was to accept it, and my heart
spontaneously said “yes,” there were circumstances making it
questionable whether I could. Those circumstances, I am sorry
to have now to say, have decided for me that I must deny my
self the hoped-for pleasure.
I can do no less, gentlemen, than express to you, and those
for whom you act, my sincere thanks for this thought of me in
such connection, and for including me among the friends of
your minister who were considered worthy to be gathered
around him on such an occasion.
Though I can hardly believe that my presence would add
anything to the enjoyment of it, I think no one will enter more
heartily than I should into all that belongs to it for memory
and sentiment and affection and benediction.
Your minister seems very near to me as he is very dear. My
acquaintance with him dates back to his boyhood. He is most
intimately associated in memory, as he was in fact, with those
nearest to me of my early home, whose love for him I shared;
�92
a love joined with admiration for his dispositions and gifts.
They are all gone to whom I allude; and the more tenderly for
that does my heart, as if hearing their love with its own, em
brace him and this occasion.
And the feelings inspired by those earlier memories towards
him whom in this occasion you so deservedly honor have been,
I hardly need say, continually deepening, as I have followed
him through his life since, and seen the promise our hearts
cherished in him unfold towards a-fulfilment so beautiful and
rich.
Most heartily do I congratulate the members of his society in
the privilege they have enjoyed in him whose very presence has
been a benediction, and whose life, in its simplicity and sanctity
and humble heroism and self-devoting fidelity, has given such
empowerment to his words, and won for them such place in
many hearts beyond those who have been the immediate re
cipients of them.
Much more is in my heart to say; less I could not, in justice
to myself, and as a fitting response (the most so in my power to
make) to your very kind invitation.
If I may be allowed to add what is so wholly personal to my
self, I would say that the memories which connect myself with
your church as being the first I ever preached in, forty-one
years ago, and the memories of those of it who so kindly re
ceived me (so many of whom have passed away), have deepened
my desire towards an occasion of such varied and touching
interest. With the prayer that heaven’s blessing may rest upon
minister and people,
I am, respectfully yours,
Nathaniel Hall.
Baltimore, Md., January 5th, 1875.
Very many thanks for your kind invitation. I havea wedding
on the night of January 12th, which I fear, as I have not, so far,
been able to postpone or advance, will prevent my going to Phila
delphia. I have not given up all hope yet. I wish to assure
you of the great pleasure I would take in witnessing the celebra
tion of an event, so marked in our common history, and so full
of inspiration to a young man like myself, and I hope that
beautiful life which has so blessed you through these years,
�93
may be spared to repeat, in your midst, that old story, which
he has made so living, of God’s great mercy and love made real
in the divine life on earth. With greetings and congratulations,
I am most truly,
C. R. Weld.
St. Louis, January 4th, 1875.
Dear Sirs : Your kind invitation to be present at the com
memoration of the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Furness’ settle
ment in Philadelphia was to-day received, and I wish for my
own sake that I could accept it. But my engagements here
are such as to make it impossible for me to leave St. Louis, and
I must be content to stay at home. Dr. Furness was one of my
earliest friends and guides, to whom I have always looked up
with sincere affection and respect. He officiated at my mar
riage with the best woman that ever lived, and I associate him
with all the purest happiness and success of my own life.
William Henry Furness : For fifty years of faithful service,
the brave and consistent advocate, in good report and evil re
port, of Freedom, Truth, and Righteousness : May his last days
still be his best days.
I remain, very truly yours,
W. G. Eliot.
Chicago, January 26th, 1875.
Gentlemen : When you sent me an invitation to be present
at the fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of my dear friend
and yours, I felt sure I should be able to come. My youngest
boy had been sick then for some weeks, so that I could only
leave him a few hours at a time, and for the most imperious
reasons. But on the Saturday he was so much worse that I
had to telegraph I feared I could not leave him at that time.
There can be but few reasons in a man’s whole lifetime so
strong as mine was then for coming to Philadelphia, but the
poor little fellow begged I would be with him through a very
dangerous operation the surgeons had to perform on the day I
should have been with you, from which we were not sure he
could rally.
Pardon me for touching with this private sorrow your ex
�94
ceeding joy, and accept this for my reason why I have not
written sooner.
I did not want to intrude these things at all even into the
blessed after-taste of your festival. But as it seems to me no
man on the earth could be so strongly drawn to that festival as
I was, from any distance, I cannot say another word until you
know the whole reason why I was not with you.
For my debt of gratitude to Dr. Furness takes precedence of
my love for him asone of the truest friends a man ever had,
and as my peerless preacher of “ the truth as it is in Jesus,”
some years before I emigrated to America, my soul clove to
him as I sat one day in a little thatched cottage in the heart of
Yorkshire and read “ The Journal of a Poor Vicar.”
I never expected to see him in the flesh then, but I remember
how I cherished that exquisite little thing among my choicest
treasures ; read it over and over again; spoke of it to other lads
of a like mind with my own, and got a worth out of it I had
not then begun to get out of sermons.
I knew also, when I got to Philadelphia, that I could hear
my man preach if I wanted to, and made out where the church
was; but I had been taught from my childhood to give such
churches a wide berth, and had not the sense to see that the
well, out of which I had drawn such sweet waters in England,
must still be flowing with some such blessing in America. So
that mighty movement that ended in breaking the fetters from
the slave, had to break mine, and then it was not very long before
I stole into theltdjhurch one dismal Sunday night, when being
good Unitarians, all but about a dozen of you, you had your
feet in slippers on the fender.
It was not a sermon, but a talk about Jesus; and how he
washed their feet, and what they saw, and what he said, and
how it all came home to the preacher; but as I went home I
thought, as so many have done time and time again, if that is
Unitarianism I am a Unitarian.
When again I met my author and preacher at the house of my
friend, Edward M. Davis, it did not take long for my gratitude
to grow into love. He was positively the first minister of the
sort we call “ ministers in good standing,” except Mrs. Lu
cretia Mott, who had not tried to patronize me, and put up the
bars of a superior social station.
If I had been his younger brother, he could not have been
�95
more frank and tender and free of heart and hand. I suppose
he never thought of it for an instant, and that was where he
had me, or I should have put up my bars. For, in those days,
I guess I was about as proud as Lucifer. So, it was a great
pride and joy in 1857, to be invited to preach in his pulpit,
while he went off to marry another son in the faith, Moncure
D. Conway, to be the guest, for that day, of your minister’s
family, to have Mrs. Furness and the children treat me like
a prince and a preacher all in one, and to have a glorious good
time altogether, as any man ever had in this world.
Being good Unitarians again in those days, at least half of
you ran off to hear Brother Chapin in the morning, who was
preaching somewhere round the corner, just as my people run
now to hear Brother Swing when I am away, and have to sup
ply with some man they never heard of. I have never quite
forgiven Chapin for preaching there that Sunday.
But Annie Morrison was there, and the very elect, who are
always there, and on the next Sunday, when I preached again,
the rest were there, and the glory of the Lord seemed to me to
fill the house, and so your church is to me one of the most
precious places on earth. I came to it as the men of Israel
went to Zion, and all these years have but deepened and purified
my love for the good old place. Where I first heard the truth
which met at once my reason and my faith, and where, within
a church, for the first time I felt I was perfectly free.
And so it is, that I dare not write down the sum of my love
for my friend and his family, as 1 could not have told it if I
had come down. I feel I am under bonds not to do it; I can
only hint at it.
He got used to blame in the old sad days, when he could not
count such hosts of lovers and friends outside his own church
as he can now, but he will never get used to praise. Some men
don’t. I must say, however, that I do not see how I should
ever have made my way into our blessed faith, had he not opened
the door for me; or found my way to Chicago but for his faith
that I was the man they wanted here ; or done anything I have
ever been able to do half so well, but for his generous encour
agement, or found my life at all so full of sunshine, as it has
been so many years, had he not given me of his store.
Now and then, the ways of God do visibly strike great har
monies in life and history, and this perfecting of the circle of
�96
fifty years in the ministry of my dear friend, is one of the har
monies of life. He has seen the travail of his soul for the slave,
and is satisfied.
He has lived through the days when the majority of Uni
tarians were content with being not very unlike the Orthodox,
into the days when the Orthodox are not content, if they are
not very like Unitarians, and he has done one of the heaviest
strokes of work in bringing this resolution about.
And he has lived to prove to those of us who may wonder
sometimes, what is coming when we have preached to our
people a few more years; and it gets to be an old story, how a
man may preach right along, just as long as he can stand, and
then sit down to it as Jesus did on the Mount; grow better all
the time; win a wider and truer hearing at the end of fifty
years than he has at the end of twenty-five ; and then, when he
is “ quite worn out with age,” may cry, “ Lord, now lettest thy
servant depart in peace according to thy word, for mine eyes
have seen thy salvation.”
Surely yours,
Robert Collyer.
�97
The following extracts are taken from the Liberal
Christian and Christian Register :
“ On Tuesday of next week, January 12th, there will be a
very simple celebration of a deeply interesting occasion. It
will then be fifty years since Rev. Dr. Furness was installed as
pastor of the First Congregational Unitarian Church in Phila
delphia. Next Sunday the venerable pastor will deliver an
appropriate discourse. Tuesday he will receive callers at his
house, and in the evening therecwill be a meeting at the church.
Brief addresses are expected from friends, whose homes are in
Missouri, Illinois, Maryland, NeiB, Yor^j, and New England.
“ At the installation^^; the 12th of January, 1825, Rev. Wil
liam Ware, of New Yo^, aged tflfent^fevayyears, offered the
introductory prayer and read from the Scriptures ; Rev. Henry
Ware, Jr., of Boston, aged thirty years, prfegghed the sermon,
mostofwhich we intend torepringpext week; Rev. Dr. Bancroft,
of Worcester, in his seventieth year, offered the ordaining prayer
and gave the charge ; and Rev^Ezra’jj'. Gannett, aged twentythree years, gave the fellowship of the chUBches and offered the
concluding prayer. Dr. Furness himself wasBisiffigaty-two years
old, having been graduated at Harvard College when he was
only eighteen. None of those who took the prominent parts in
the service are now living pH^Kirth. Dr. Gannett and the
Wares, though then in all the strength and promise of their
early manhood, have followed good old Dr. Bancroft to the
heavenly home.
“ Dr. Furness was installed a few weeks before the ordinations
of Rev. Drs. Alexander Young and Samuel Barrett. Th<aservices were reported in the first numb^ of thdjpecond volume of
the Christian Examiner, and in the fourth volume of the Chris
tian Register. It was four months before the organization of
the American Unitarian Association. James Monroe was Pres
ident of the United States. Boston had been a city only three
years, and had about fifty thousand inhabitants ; New York had
about a hundred and sixty thousand, and Philadelphia about a
hundred and forty thousand. It was the same year in which
the first public railway in England was opened, the passengers
being drawn by horse-power, although locomotives were soon
introduced. It was five years before Dr. Putnam’s settlement
13
�98
in Roxbury, nine years before Dr. Lothropwas called to Brattle
Square, ten years before Rev. N. Hall became junior pastor of
the Dorchester First Parish, and twelve years before Dr. Bartol
became Dr. Lowell’s colleague. Dr. Bellows, aged ten years,
and James Beeman Clarke, fourteen, were school-boys. Rev.
E. E. Hale was scarcely old enough to go to school, and Prof.
C. C. Everett had not been born. It was less than half a century
since the battles Lexington and Concord, and Thomas Jeffer
son and John Adams did not die until eighteen months after
wards. President Grant was then two years old.
“ During the whole of the last half century Dr. Furness has
remained faithfully at his lonely post. He has had no colleague
and no very long vacation, we believe. In addition to his pul
pit work he has written some admirable books, besides trans
lating others. Great changes have occurred in public opinion.
Eight years after the beginning of his ministry in Philadelphia
the American Antislavery Society was formed in that city.
He did not join it immediately, but before long he enlisted in
the ranks of the abolitionists, and neither blandishments nor
threats ever caused him to desert from the forlorn hope of free
dom. For many years, when almost every other pulpit of that
great town., so near the borders of Slave States, was dumb
concerning the national sin, Dr. Furness’ silver trumpet gave
no uncertain sound. Whoever might come, and whoever might
go, he was resolved to be |aithful to the slave. The despised
and rejected champion®of liberty were always sure of his sup
port. When Charles Sumner, struck down by the bludgeon of
the slave power, needed rest and healing, he sought them in the
neighborhood and society of Dr. Furness. Together they visited
the hill country, and mingled their congenial spirits in high
discourse of truth and righteousness. We are glad that at last,
with grateful ears, our venerated brother heard liberty pro
claimed throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof.
To know that he contributed to this blessed result must be the
grand satisfaction of his life, more precious than any pride of
authorship or professional success. His whole soul must respond
to Whittier’s declaration that he set a higher value to his name
as appended to an early antislavery declaration than on the
title-page of any book. ‘ I cannot be sufficiently thankful to
the Divine Providence which turned me so early away from
�99
what Roger Williams calls “ the world’s great trinity, pleasure,
profit and honor,” to take side with the poor and oppressed.
Looking over a life marked by many errors and shortcomings,
I rejoice that
“ ‘ My voice, though not the loudest, has been heard
Wherever Freedom raised her cry of pain?
“ But while Dr. Furness must look back with profoundest
gratitude upon the great triumph of justice which he helped to
secure, he cannot be indifferent to the theological progress which
has led to wide and cordial acceptance of many of his dearest
opinions. Once he was one of a small number of Humanitarians
associated with a great majority of Arians. Now the Arians
are nearly extinct, and the divine humanity of Jesus is almost
orthodox Unitarianism. No other individual has done more
to bring this about than the Philadelphia pastor who has made
it the study of his life to understand the spirit and to portray,
in glowing yet truthful tints, the matchless character of the Son
of man. He has been well entitled ‘the Fifth Evangelist.’
None of the ancient narrators ever lingered so fondly over
every trait of him who was touched with a feeling of our in
firmities, and made perfect through suffering. He has rendered
the sympathy of Christ so actual and available that it is a
familiar help to thousands of tried and lonely human souls, to
whom traditional dogmas could give no comfort or strength.
“ We have heard that Dr. Furness is about to retire from the
professional responsibilities which he has borne so long and so
well. It will be a richly earned repose, and yet we cannot
endure the thought that he is to desist wholly from preaching
while his eye is undimmed and his natural vigor scarcely
abated. We heard him last summer with rare satisfaction and
delight, and we wish he could be induced to speak oftener at
our general gatherings. We have thought a great many times,
and perhaps we have said so before, in these columns, that,
owing largely to force of circumstances, Dr. Furness has borne
too close a resemblance to Wordsworth’s Milton whose ‘soul
was like a star, and dwelt apart.’ It is too late now for him
to be in the slightest danger of becoming too social or gregarious.
We wish, most heartily, that he would sometimes meet with
the thousands of our laymen and the hundreds of our ministers
�100
to whom he is personally a stranger, never seen, and never
heard, and yet they regard him with affectionate gratitude and
veneration which it would do them good to express, and not
harm him in the least to receive. Let us fondly hope, then, that
at the semi-centennial celebration of the American Unitarian
Association, or at the next National Conference, we may hear
from this beloved father in our Israel some of those words of
wisdom, truth, and beauty which it is still his mission to speak.”
—Christian Register.
'
“ Philadelphia, January 12th, 1875.
“ It is safe to predict that not even the powerful attractions
of the National Centennial Exposition will call to this city as
many of our UnitaSwn clergy as gathered here to-night to cele
brate the semi-centennial of the settlement of Dr. William H.
Furness. It is an went to which for some time past many of
his absent friends have looked eagerly forward in anticipation
of its peculiar interestA«gnifi<^nce. Pastorates of fifty years
can never be common, and have rarely furnished the necessary materials for the heartiest and sincerest sort of congratulation.
But here was an occasion of which the anticipations were all of
the pleasantest and most unclouded kind, where everybody felt
that it would be a personal privilege to say a congratulatory
Amen with everybody else, and to say it heartily and sincerely.
Dr. Furness' quiet but intensely individual ministry in
this city of Brotherly Love is too widely known among Uni
tarians to m®ke any merq mention of the fact at all necessary,
but to speak of
and justly would be to write a vol
ume; ample materials Hr which, however, are, we are glad to
say, not wanting. But our word must be only of the event of
to-day.
“ The celebration began, we hear, early in the morning at the
pastor’s house, where he^g® delightwlly surprised by the sweet
carols of children’s voices. In the afternoon a large concourse
of friends went to greet him at his home, where beautiful flow
ers scented the air and smiling faces vied with each other in the
expression of sincere respect and love.
“ This evening the old church is beautifully and richly dressed
with evergreens. Below the pulpit is a solid mass of rare trop
ical plants most tastefully arranged, the whole surmounted by
�101
baskets of the choicest flowers. The most conspicuous features
of the decorations are the significant numbers 1825-1875, worked
in small white flowers on either side of the pulpit.
“The old church is full of the Doctor’s parishioners and
friends, the front seats beingpccupied by the invited guests from
abroad. Among the clergy present we Noticed Drs. Lothrop,
Morison, Clarke, Bartol, Bellows, Thompson, A. P. Putnam,
and Rev. Messrs. White, E. H. Hall, Shippen, Ware, Ames,
Israel, Mumford, Gannett, Chadwick, a®t’.®®s®ral others.
“ Dr. Furness had protested against hispersfljnal participation
in this elaborate and deliberate feasit of Prai,s^,. bisfrl the timely
suggestion that his absence might be^|nterprS$ed as a quiet ‘ bid ’
for unlimited adulation proved too atiMSging lferthe equanimity
of even his modesty, so he came and occupied a retired seat near
the door.
“The proceedings were of the^^^^>lesit'^ttd most informal
kind—a genuine love-feast, with more fullness of heart than of
utterance. Yet there was nrf ladfflaf pleasant, hearty words.
After an anthem, with soloi by the accomplished ^hoir, which
seemed to have been augmented and specially drilled for the
occasion, the Chairman of the C®amittee of Arrangements wel
comed the guests and assembled company, and asked Dr. Mor
ison to offer prayer. After a sopfafto solo, the first speech of
the evening was made by Rev. J. F. W. Ware|(whose father,
Henry Ware, had preached Dr. Fu3FBessM®rdination Sermon.
Dr. Furness then came forward^ bearing two communion cups
which had just been recededasa token .^•'remembrance from
our church in Baltimore. He expressed his pleasure at this
expression of affectionate sym|fet'hy, psfetring, incidentally, to
the peculiar method of celebrating the communioffifin his church,
bread and wine not being partaken of, but being placed on the
table only as symbols of the preci«0&things they stand for.
“ William Gannett, whose father gave the right hand of fel
lowship at Dr. Furness’ ordination, said that this was the
principal reason for his presence here to-night. His modest,
cordial words were followed by others, from Rev. E. H. Hall
and Dr. Lothrop. Dr. J. F. Clarfe thqnWead an original
poem, in which, in strong and eloquent words, he commended
Dr. Furness’ earnest and persistent efforts to present more
clearly to the world the living Jesus as distinguished from the
�102
theological or sentimental Christ. Dr. Bartol and Dr. Thomp
son then added their cordial testimony of appreciation. Mr.
Chadwick read a lovely original poem, full of appreciative
references to some of Dr. Durness’ more distinguished cotem
poraries. Messrs. Shippen, Mumford, White, and Ames, each
said a few words, and Dr. Bellows finished the sweet symphony
of praise with a genial portraiture of Dr. Furness, thanking
the Lord that no amount of culture had in any respect weak
ened the vigorous manhood of his friend, and that God made
him just what he is.
“ After music, and a benediction by Dr. Furness, the large
company separated, evidently deeply pleased by the many
hearty testimonies of the evening.”—Liberal Christian.
“Yesterday morning, at seven o’clock, the pupils of Madame
Seiler, an accomplished teacher of music, and author of several
excellent text-books '(gave a serenade to Dr. Furness and his
household. It must have been a delightful surprise to the
awakened family when the sweet sounds began to ascend from
the hall below, where the singers, according to the RwWe&n,
stood 1 candle in hand,’ and paid this delicate and welcome
complimenMin the good old German style. Between the hours
of twelve and six, hundreds of parishioners and friends called
to congratulate the honored pastor upon the successful comple
tion of his half century of service. Most of the time the rooms
were thronged, and such an array of bright and happy faces is
seldom seen. Anfc®fi?he guests who were present during our
brief stay we noticed the Doctor’s children and grandchildren,
Prof. Goodwin, of Harvard University, and Mrs. Eustis,
daughter of Rev. Dr. W. E. Channing.
“ Last evening there was a driving storm of sleet and rain, hut
the church was packed again. The floral display was equal to
that of Sunday. Among the changes we observed that the
large figures ‘1825’ and ‘1875,’ above the pulpit, were made
of pure white flowers instead of white and red as before. After
prayer by Rev. Dr. Morison, Mr. Henry Winsor, Chairman of
the Committee of Arrangements, made a felicitous welcoming
and introductory speech.
“The first clerical speaker was Rev. J. F. W. Ware, son and
nephew of the young Wares who, fifty years before, had taken
�103
prominent parts at the installation service. His remarks were
full of the warmest affection for Dr. Furness, and the tenderest
allusions to the love cherished for his Philadelphia ‘ brother ’
by Henry Ware, Jr. Agreeably to the request of the com
mittee, Mr. Ware asked Rev. W. C. Gannett to follow him.
Mr. Gannett’s father gave Dr. Furness the right hand of fellow
ship, and Mr. Gannett had just been reading the manuscript
copy of that earnest address, on his way to Philadelphia in the
'cars. His speech was eminently appropriate and impressive.
He was followed by Rev. E. H. Hallflof Worcester, suc
cessor of Rev. Dr. Bancroft, who gave the charge at the in
stallation half a century before, and son of Rev. Dr. E. B. Hall,
who was Dr. Furness’ townsman friend, classmate, and room
mate. After most appreciative mention of the noble labors of
our fathers, Mr. Hall spoke eloquently*<of the peculiar work
which each generation has to do for ’jtSelf and the world. Rev.
Drs. Lothrop, Clarke, Bartolj Thompson, A. P. Putnam, and
Bellows, and Messrs. ChaAwick, ShippenMWhite, Mumford,
and Ames were called upon, and the most of them responded;
but we have no space w*tl®H remarks this week. Next week
wTe hope to find rooni for a report, but now we must content
ourselves with copying from the Bulletin the poems which
were read.
“ Before quoting them, however, we must not forget to say
that Dr. Furness spoke twice in the course of the evening, the
first time acknowledging the gift ®f some communion cups
from the church in Baltimore to the church in Philadelphia.
It was hard to believe that thif graceful and happy speaker,
with as fresh a voice as that of the youngest man heard that
evening, and saying the brightest and merriest things of the
hour, could be the venerMfflpastog whose semi-centennial we
were celebrating ; but we presume that there is not the slightest
doubt of the fact. And we must also remember to state that
among the gifts from parishioners and friends were some elegant
mantel ornaments, and the complete and original manuscript
of Charles Lamb’s 1 Dissertation on Roast Pig.* The Bulletin
says that this unique and interesting present was ‘ secured as a
Christmas gift at a recent sale in London, and handsomely
mounted and bound in large folio form.’
Christian Register.
�104
W. H. F.
“ THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY.”
BY WM. C. GANNETT.
Fifty times the years have turned
Since the heart within him burned,
With its wistfulness to be
An apostle sent of Thee.
Closely in his Master’s tread
Still to follow, till he read,
Tone of voice and look of face,
Print of wound and sign of grace.
Beading there for fifty years,
Pressing after, till the tears
And the smiles would come and go
At the self-same joy and woe-^
Sharing with him shouts of Mad ! ”
When the bold front to the bad
Bent to pluck the “ little ones ”
From the feet of fellow-sons—
Sharing in his inner peace,
But not sharing the release,
He is with us while thglchimes
Ring his “ Well done” fifty times.
Listening boys across the field
Pledge a hope they may not yield :
Are they listening from the air —
Boys who started with him there ?
�REV. DR. FURNESS’ RESIGNATION.
14
�On Thursday, January. 14th, 1875, Dr. Furness sent the fol
lowing letter/<to the Society, resigning the charge of the pulpit
into their hands—
�107
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE FIRST CONGREGA
TIONAL CHURCH.
My very dear Friends : While the measure of health and
strength still granted me demands my most thankful acknowl
edgments, and while I ^jgaMinexpressib wwat.efnl for the re
cent manifestations of your affectionate regMkll
admon
ished by the ending of fifty years of service as your minister,
and by the time of life that I have
only a little
while remains to me at the longest. I am moved, therefore,
to resign the charge of the pulpit into your hands. How could
I have borne it Mog bwM|r your fetjj^^^ManidBsteadfast
friendship ? I recogniz® a salutary discipline in the necessity
which I have been^nde® al 1 EgSaSpars of ^^MjmBIpsaat.ion
for the Sunday sHg|age. It is good, as I have learned, for a
man to bear the yoJke in
and even in middle age ;
but now, when only a fragment of lim^remafes.^jte^^pyould
fain be released from thl^fe Jwhwi neither timp^or custom
has rendered any ligMbdpnan Mm v
With the surrender of the pulpit you will understand of
course that I decline all farther pecuniary support. I beg leave
respectfully to suggest thatjiMsome time«ome the pulpit be
supplied by settled ministers, so that nothing shall be done
hastily in the matter of deciding upon my successor. More
over, for all other pastoral offices, I shall be at your service,
remaining always your devoted friend, and in undying affec
tion,
Your pastor, :
W. H. ^Furness.
January 14th, 1875.
�108
At a meeting of the Society held in the church Saturday
evening®January 23dSjl871Wt was voted that the following
letter should be sent to Dr. Furness, accepting his resignation,
andiffigBthe Trustees should sign the same oh behalf of the
Society.
�109
FIRST CONGREGATIONAL UNITARIAN CHURCH.
Philadelphia, January 25th, 1875.
Dear Dr. Furness : The members of this Society have re
ceived with sorrow your letter of the 14th inst., in which you
resign the charge of the pulpit which you have filled so long,
with so much ability and so much to their satisfaction.
Although we deeply regret the existence of the circumstances,
which in your opinion have made the step necessary, we ac
knowledge the justice of permitting you to judge freely of the
force of the reasons in its favor, which have governed you in
coming to your decision; and though we feel it would be a
great privilege to us to have the pastoral relation continued
through the coming years, during which we fondly hope you
may be spared to us, yet we acquiesce in the propriety of promptly
acceding to the wish for relief which you have so decidedly ex
pressed both in your letter and verbally to the committee ap
pointed at our meeting on the 19th inst., to ask you to recon
sider your action and to withdraw your resignation. It would
he ungrateful for us to do otherwise, and would show on our
part a want of proper appreciation of the value of your longcontinued labors thus to make what must be to you in itself a
painful act still more painful.
We cannot fully express in words our thankfulness that the
relation between us has remained unbroken through so many
years, and that, though the formal tie may now be severed,
we are yet permitted to see you face to face, to hear your voice,
to press your hand, and to know that you are among us.
For the reasons which you have presented, and because you
so earnestly desire it, because it is our wish to do, at whatever
loss to ourselves, that which will bo most grateful to you, and
thus to manifest in the strongest way wo can our appreciation
of our privileges in the past, and with the hope that for years
�110
to come you may be with us and of us, we regretfully accept
your resignation, and remain, on behalf of the Society,
Your affectionate friends,
Henry Winsor,
Lucius H. Warren,
Dawes E. Furness,
Joseph E. Raymond,
John Sellers, Jr.,
Enoch Lewis,
Charles H. Coxe,
Trustees.
This letter was read at the meeting of the congregation, held
on Saturday evening, January 23d, 1875, was approved, and
the Trustees were instructed to sign it on behalf of the Society
and forward it to Dr. Furness.
Charles H. Coxe,
Secretary.
�INDEX.
PAGE
Preliminary Meetings, .
Dr. Furness’ Fiftieth Anniversary Discourse,
Extract from Forty-ninth Anniversary Discourse,
Commemorative Meeting,....................................... .
Prayer of Rev. John H. Morison, D.D.,
Remarks of Rev. J. F. W. WarM
“
“ Rev. W. C. Gannett,
.
“ Rev. E. H. Hall, flHH
“
“ Rev. S. K. Lothrop, D.D.,
“
“ Rev. J. F. Charlie, D.D.,
“
“ Rev. C. A. Bartol, D.D.,
“
“ Rev. J. F. Thompson, D.D.,
“
“ Rev. J. W. Chadwick, .
“
“ Rev. R. R. Shippen,
.
“
“ Rev. T. J. Mumfor^^JI
“
“ Rev. W. O. Whitey .
“
11 Rev. A. P. Putnam, D.D.,
“ Rev. C. G. Ames, .
.
“
“ Rev. H. W. Bellows, D.D.I
“
“ Rev. W. H. Furness, D.D.,
Letters,
Extracts from the “ Liberal Christian ”
“ Christian Register,” .
.
Poem, by W. C. Gannett,
Resignation of Rev. W. H. Furness, D.D.,
Letter of the Trustees,
,
3
9
28
41
42
44
48
49
51
55
57
61
66
70
72
72
74
76
77
81
83
AND
97
104
105
109
�I
�
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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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Exercises at the meeting of the First Congregational Unitarian Society, January 12,1875, together with the discourse delivered by Rev. W.H. Furness, Sunday, Jan. 10, 1875 on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination, January 12, 1825
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Furness, W.H.
First Congregational Society of Unitarian Christians in the City of Philadelphia
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Place of publication: Philadelphia
Collation: 110, [1] p. : ill. (with tissue guards) ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Contains index. Includes poem by W.C. Gannett and resignation of Rev. W.H. Furness.
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Sherman & Co., printers
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1875
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G5366
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Unitarianism
Sermons
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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 (Exercises at the meeting of the First Congregational Unitarian Society, January 12,1875, together with the discourse delivered by Rev. W.H. Furness, Sunday, Jan. 10, 1875 on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination, January 12, 1825), 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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Conway Tracts
First Congregational Society of Unitarian Christians in the City of Philadelphia
Sermons
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7
/
4**
U
AND OTHER
A Sermon on Summer
A Mad Sermon
;
A Sermon on Sin
j
A Bishop in the Workhouse
A Christmas Sermon
Christmas Eve in Heaven
Bishop Trimmer’s Sunday
Diary
The Judge and the Devil
Satan and Michael
The First Christmas
Adam’s Breeches
The Fall of Eve
Joshua at Jericho
A Baby God
Judas Iscariot
BY
G. W. FOOTE.
/
—----------------- /
Price Eightpencei
4, 5 & fi—
-------- VKGReATsr Helens
LONDON :
I
$
•^OON,
—
R. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER STREET.
1892.
��(J 2-4-6 7
nationalsecularsociety
SERMONS
COMIC
AND OTHER
<
FANTASIAS
I
BY
Gr. W. FOOTE
(Editor of the “Freethinker,”)
LONDON:
R. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.O.
*
1892.
��A SERMON ON SUMMER.
By the Rev. Obadiah Rouser.
Dearly Beloved,—The weather is excessively warm to-day,
or, as some profane persons might say, damnably hot. My
thermometer registered ninety degrees in the Bhade at noon,
and no doubt it would have shown a higher temperature in
the sun, if I had been imprudent enough to place it there or
view it in that position. Your pastor, beloved, is no longer
slim as in the days of his curacy, when he played cricket with
the men and lawn-tennis with the ladies; when he rowed his
skiff under a broiling sun without any preternatural perspi
ration ; when he stretched himself out for a snooze in a shady
spot without the torturing consciousness that his nose offered
a spacious pasturage to a multitude of flies. No, beloved,
your pastor is no longer slim; he has lost the slenderness of
youth, and scoffers even assert that he is fat; yea, they have
been heard to say that he resembleth a bull of Bashan or the
great Leviathan himself. Nevertheless I thank God for the
change, even though it affordeth mirth to these wanton wits,
who neither revere the Lord nor his holy ministers. Blessed
be the Almighty ! for he hath permitted me to wax fat, yet
without kicking. And blessed be ye, O beloved ones! for
your unfailing bounty hath sustained me, yea and edified me,
so that I am become the envy of my brethren, and the
weightiest divine in all this part of her Majesty’s kingdom.
Yes, beloved, the summer is undoubtedly come at last,
after much anxious expectation. The sun darteth his fierce
rays through the blue sky, and there is often not a single
cloud as big as your pocket-handkerchief. Men’s hearts fail
because of the heat; they groan, they puff, they break forth
into an agony and bloody sweat, they are as limp as a wet
rag. And your pastor quaketh and shuddereth like jelly.
The Lord trieth him sore.
�( 4 )
Beloved, as I sat in my study last night in my dressinggown, sipping iced claret through a straw, and smoking one
of those mild cigarettes prescribed by Dr. Easy for my
asthma, and presented to me by the kind and considerate
Lady Providence, I wondered what I should take as the
subject of my sermon this evening. For nearly two hours
I had eudgelled my poor brains in vain, and the unwonted
exertion had nearly exhausted my strength. I had not an
idea, my head was as empty as a drum. In a fever of anxiety
I tossed off a tumbler of claret, and at the same moment I
sought the Lord in prayer. My petition was answered in
the twinkling of an eye. Something, as it were the divine
voice within me, whispered, “ Summer,” and I knew that was
to be my text. Oh these answers to prayer! How they
comfort and establish the faithful, how they confound and
overwhelm the infidel! Luminous traces of the divine
presence, they prepare us for that happy time when we shall
see the Master face to face, when we shall behold him with
even more fulness than he granted to his servant Moses in
the clift of the rock.
Summer, then, beloved, is the subject of my sermon. And
the first reflection that occurs to me is this—What a testimony
it is to the faithfulness of God! You will remember that
when Noah descended from the top of Mount Ararat he
“ builded an altar unto the Lord,” although holy writ, silent
on this as on so many other matters pertaining to the faith,
omits to inform us whence he procured his materials. On
that miraculous altar he burnt a prime selection of clean
beasts and fowl; and the Lord, who was always carnivorous,
as is abundantly proved by his rejection of Cain’s vegetables
and his acceptance of Abel’s meat, heartily relished the
savory smell. In that placable mood which naturally follows
the gratification of appetite, he vowed never to curse and
swear any more, or to kill all the world at a single blow; and
in his divine mercy he added the promise that, “ While
the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and
heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not
cease.” Now, beloved, has not this promise been punctually
kept? It is true that we sometimes get abominally bad
harvests, but who remembers a time when we had none at
�( 5 )
all ? And all we receive is a pure mercy, for the Lord might
righteously withhold his hand and starve us all. But, bless
and praise his holy name, he never does. He is a merciful
God, slow to anger, and of great compassion. He remembereth
our needs, and feedeth us though we have little faith; as you
know right well, beloved, and as I know perhaps better than
yourselves. Yes, we always get some kind of harvest; and
do we not always get some proportion of day and night ?
True, at midsummer, day almost swallows the night, and at
midwinter night almost swallows the day; and in very foggy
weather we can scarcely tell where the one ends and the
other begins. But the alternation of day and night is still a
fact. No sceptic can dispute it. It is too muoh even for
him. And, beloved, is not the succession of seasons also a
fact, which the sceptic is equally unable to explain away P
We know that the seasons, in a country like ours, often get a
little mixed; but they disengage themselves frequently
enough to remind us of God’s promise, to prove to us his
unchangeableness, and to show that he is the same, yesterday,
to-day, and for ever. Yes, spring is a fact, autumn is a fact,
winter is a fact, and summer is a fact. The infidel preacher
at the Hall of Science cannot doubt that, for last Sunday
evening, when my church was nearly empty, two ladies were
carried out of his crowded meeting, overcome with the
excessive heat. No, they cannot deny it. I defy all the
sceptics in the world. I challenge the whole army of infidels.
Their puny darts of argument are utterly ^powerless against
the invulnerable shield of heavenly wisdom. All nature cries
aloud, There is a God ! and the head of every faithful child
of God reverberates the sound. While seed-time and harvest,
cold and heat, day and night, and summer and winter
continue, the wretched unbeliever is constantly baffled by the
fulfilment of God’s promise to Noah. And thus, beloved,
this hot weather, which puts us all into the melting mood, is
a proof of God’s existence quite beyond the reach of Atheistic
logic; and it is no less a proof of God’s eternal faithfulness.
See, now, how the Almighty is always preaching to us. You
were ready to curse this intense heat, which breeds cholera
and other fatal plagues; but lo ! it is a blessing in disguise.
Some of you, in that rebellious state of mind might have
�( 6 )
been seduced into infidelity. Now, however, you are safe.
You see a sovereign proof of the existence of deity, and you
know that to say Summer is to say God. Hallelujah 1
Beloved, it is in no wise below the dignity of the pulpit to
introduce, after this magnificent reflection, a few references
of a lighter character. Let me then remark that, as many
people are in doubt whether to remain indoors or to go out
in this sultry heat, it is well to inquire what assistance on
this subject can be obtained from the Divine Word. I speak
with submission, but it appears to me indubitable that staying
indoors at this time of the year is a pernicious fault if not a
deadly sin. “ He that gathereth in summer is a wise son,”
saith the sage author of the Book of Proverbs ; and how can
we gather anything unless we go where it is to be found ?
Let us further recollect that Eglon, the fat king of Moab, was
sitting in a summer parlor when he met his death at the
hand of Ehud, a fate which he might have avoided if he had
taken his corpulence into the open air, where his attendants
might have watched him and preserved him from all danger.
We should also remember that Abraham “ sat in the tent
door in the heat of the day,” when the Lord appeared unto
him in the plains of Mamre. Had he kept within his tent he
would probably nevei’ have seen the Lord, whom no man hath
ever seen, never have talked with him face to face (cheek by
jowl, as a wicked infidel expresses it) as a man talketh with
his friend, never have washed G-od’s feet, never have stood
the Almighty a good dinner. What is still worse, he would
have had no son Isaac as the child of his old age, and thus
our Blessed Savior would never have been born for want of a
progenitor. Oh, what a terrible reflection! All our pro
spects through eternity depended that afternoon on Abra
ham’s sitting on the right side of a piece of canvas. Dearly
beloved, let me beseech you to take warning from this event.
At least, be out of doors in the heat of the day, so that you
may descry the Lord if he should pass by; yea, and also in
the cool of the day, for he walketh then likewise, as is shown
by the inspired story of the Fall.
There are some people, beloved, who appear to disregard
the weather. They affect surprise when their neighbors
complain of the heat in summer or the cold in winter.
�( 7 )
What exasperating serenity do these persons exhibit1
Surely it must have been characters of this description that
composed the Church of Laodicea, of which the Holy Spirit
so sweetly and elegantly declared that “ because thou art
lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of
my mouth.”
Only a little less pitiable is the state of those whose blood
is congealed with age, who are cool in the brightest sun, and
positively shiver when the sun goes down. Yet there is a
remedy for these ; and may the elder members of my flock
listen devoutly while I expound it. I turn first to the royal
author of Ecclesiastes, who saith, “ If two lie together then
they have heat.” Ah, beloved, that is only the threshold of
my discovery, the first line of my recipe. I now turn to the
beautiful and instructive story of David’s old age, as recorded
in the first chapter of the first Book of Kings. When this
brave King of the Jews, this royal man after God’s own
heart, drew near his end, he suffered greatly from ague or
some such disorder. They piled bed-clothes upon him,
blanket after blanket, and rug on rug, but his poor old limbs
still trembled with cold. In this extremity his wise physicians
prescribed a bed-fellow to be taken nightly, and Abishag the
Shunamite, the loveliest damsel in all the coasts of Israel,
was selected for the purpose. A profane poet—no other, I
believe, than that arch-fiend, Lord Byron—has ridiculed this
exquisite story, which contains some of the noblest morality
ever inculcated. He hints that David took this “ fair young
damsel as a blister.” What shocking levity! What awful
depravity I No, David clasped her to his withered bosom
with paternal fondness; and she lay in his bed, not as a
blister, but as a warming-pan or a hot-water bottle. And
the reason, beloved, is obvious to common sense. Warmingpans and hot-water bottles, however well charged and pre
served, get colder and colder through the long hours of an
old man’s night; but a fair young maiden keeps warm till
the morning, and needs no replenishing. Beloved, this is
how you must regard the subject; and if any of you should
follow David’s regimen, you will of course take the prescrip
tion in a righteous and godly spirit. Amen.
My time, beloved, is drawing to a close, for how 'can a
�(«)
pastor of my proportions preach a long sermon in such
weather? Yet I cannot allow this opportunity to pass
without reminding you of the awful significance of a hot
summer. There is not the least doubt jn my mind that
the Lord occasionally permits the heat to become almost
intolerable on earth in order to remind us, not only of that
great day when, as the holy apostle St. Peter declareth
“ the elements shall melt with a fervent heat,” but also of
that still greater eternity, in which, unless we make our
peace with God, we shall lie panting and writhing in the
fire of Hell. Beloved, let me implore you to profit by this
merciful intimation. Lay the lesson to heart. Do not be
led astray by sceptical suggestions. You have, doubtless,
heard some wretched infidels assert that there is no Hell at
all. Oh, the horrible thought I I venture to maintain, in
scornful defiance of these impious wretches, that a universe
without a hell would be not only absurd, but (I say it with
reverence) an imputation on the Almighty’s benignity. It
must be clear to the dullest intelligence that Hell is necessary
to complete the divine scheme of redemption. Without a
hell, I should like to know what our Lord would have to save
us from; and without a Hell, I should like to know how
people are to be warned from the snares of infidelity. These
very sceptics belie their own principles. Their whole conver
sation is larded with saving clauses, which testify to their
secret belief in the holy verities they outwardly reject. Do
they not frequently say, “ It is devilish hot,” or “ It is hellish
hot ” ? And what are these expressions, I ask, but implicit
admissions that there is a Devil, and that there is a Hell ?
Yes, blessed be God, out of the mouths of infidels and
sceptics, and scoffers and scorners, the truth of our holy
religion is confirmed, and they themselves are “ compelled to
give in evidence ” against themselves.
Furthermore, beloved, it is necessary that you should
guard against the evil suspicion that every seat in Hell is
by this time occupied. There is room enough and to spare.
Yea, as Holy Scripture saith, “ hell and destruction are never
full.” There was, however, a time when the capacity of the
nether pit was nearly exhausted; but God, in his divine
mercy, increased its dimensions; and thus the holy
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prophet Isaiah was able to say that “ Hell hath enlarged
herself.”
Yes, beloved, there is a Hell, and the heat we now complain
of is only a mild foretaste of its consuming fire. Earthly
thermometers are useless in Hell; they are incapable of
registering the temperature, which infinitely exceeds our
worst experiences even in tropical countries. And there will
be no mitigations of its fierceness for ever, no iced claret, no
lemon squash, nor even a milk and soda! Nay, beloved, you
will cry in vain for a drop of water, as Dives did in one of our
Lord’s most tender and consoling parables. Ah, beloved, be
advised in time. Shun the fate of that ancient sinner. If
you do not, you must bear the responsibility, for my hands
are clean. I have discharged my duty by warning you to
flee from the wrath to come. I admonish you now, perhaps
for the last time, to beware of the day when, instead of saying
“ It is damned hot,” you may be damned and hot with a
vengeance, and without a chance of cooling off.
Now may the peace of God, which passeth all understand
ing, be with you and remain with you always. Amen.
A MAD SERMON.
Several years ago a famous preacher went mad (if we may
say so of a gentleman who was always cracked), and was
placed by his friends in a large private asylum. Under skilful
treatment he gradually improved, and at length he so far
recovered that his friends contemplated his removal. But a
lucky accident revealed the fact that he was really still
insane.
The chaplain of the establishment was taken ill one Satur
day morning, and no clergyman in the neighborhood could
be found, on so short a notice, to officiate for him the next
day. In this difficulty the Principal suggested to the
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chaplain that the mad parson might be asked to occupy his
place. He seemed to be quite recovered, he was a dulyordained minister of the Church of England, and his sermon
would no doubt have all the impressiveness of a farewell dis
course. The chaplain readily assented to the proposal, and
his substitute, who accepted the invitation with great alacrity,
was very busy during the rest of the day with pen and ink,
with which he blackened several sheets of paper.
Sunday morning arrived, and the new preacher looked big
with inspiration. His face wore a mystical expression, and
there was a far-away look in his large grey eyes. But at
times a gleeful smile flashed over his features, wrinkled the
corners of his mouth, and danced under his shaggy brows.
When the inmates of the asylum, or rather those who were
fit to go to church, had all taken their seats, there was a
hush of expectancy; although some grinned or frowned at
the ceiling and others at their neighbors. Presently the
Principal walked in with the mad parson, who looked as
sober as a judge, and might have been taken for a model
clergyman. The Principal entered the pew, and the chaplain’s
locum tenens went to the desk and began the service. He
read the prayers and lessons and gave out the hymns with
the most admirable propriety. His intonation and expression
were worthy of a bishop, and the Principal congratulated
himself on his happy escape from a serious difficulty.
But when the mad parson mounted the pulpit in full
costume there was a peculiar twinkle in his eye that aroused
the Principal’s suspicion. He had observed the same thing
before in several of his quiet patients when they were bent
on some piece of subtle devilry. Yet it was too late to inter
fere, and after all he might be mistaken. Perhaps it was only
a fancy, or a peculiar effect of the light upon the preacher’s
face.
For a minute oi’ two everything flowed smoothly. The text
was cited with excellent emphasis, and the first few sentences
were couched in unexceptionable language and read with pro
fessional gravity. But as he proceeded there was a change
in his matter and manner. His insanity was evidently
bubbling up from the depths, where it had lain so long con
cealed. Presently, a mad sentence sent two or three of the’
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quicker-witted patients into a fit of laughter, and several of
the sillier ones joined in the chorus through mere contagion.
In vain did the attendants try to restore order; the mad
parson grew madder every minute, and the patients laughed
louder and louder as he poured along the full stream of his
lunacy. The Principal arose and commanded him to desist,
but he was deaf to the voice of authority, and indeed quite
insensible to everything but his own performance. An
attendant ascended the pulpit stairs, and was promptly
knocked down with the Bible. A second was served in the
same way with the Prayer-Book. The Principal then ordered
the church to be cleared, which was done with considerable
difficulty, for many patients had by this time grown almost
uncontrollable. When they were all removed an attack was
made upon the pulpit. The mad parson sustained a long
siege, and defended the citadel with remarkable gallantry.
The stairs were so narrow that only one could mount them,
and the attendants were flung down in rapid succession by the
pious hero, who seemed full of the Spirit, and on excellent
terms with the God of Samson. Two short ladders were then
placed against the pulpit, and three attendants operated at
once against the enemy, who was overpowered after a sharp
struggle, and ignominiously dragged away from the scene of
his triumph.
The manuscript of his sermon was torn and mangled in
the contest, but portions of it were still legible. We are able
to give a few specimens of this extraordinary discourse, which
may be followed by others on some future occasion^
The mad parson’s text was taken from Deuteronomy xxxii.
15 : “ Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked.” His opening observa
tions were addressed to the context, the occasion on which
Moses spoke, and the sins of the Jews which he denounced.
He then began his playful comments on the text in the
following manner.
Various speculations have been hazarded as to the meaning
of Jeshurun. The first part of the word, Jeshu, is a con
traction of the common Jewish name of Joshua, which means
“Jehovah is his salvation.” Our Blessed Savior bore this
name, although we use the Greek form of Jesus, in order to
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invest the Redeemer with greater dignity; for there is some
thing extremely familiar, and almost vulgar, in the name of
Joshua, which, I remember in my childhood, was applied to
the scavenger who emptied our dustbins, and who was voci
ferously accused by all the children of the parish of having
inhumanly “ skinned the cat,” although I could never discover
what particular member of the feline family it was that fell
into his savage clutches. Yet as it was called “ the cat,” I
presume it was an animal of distinction," and perhaps of
universal reputation.
By rejecting the final letter ain from the Hebrew Je3hua,
the Jews give the name a peculiar significance. In this cur
tailed format means “ his name and remembrance shall be
extinguished.” Those miserable, unbelieving, perditions, yea
let me say damned Jews, have docked in this way the name
of our Blessed Savior, because, as they say, he was not able
to save himself, and it is clear that God Almighty did not
take the trouble to save him. Infamous wretches ! Those
who would dare to cut off the Redeemer’s tail in this shameful
manner deserve the hottest corner in hell; and bless and
praise his holy name, the Lord is keeping it for them for
ever. Reserved seats, numbered and booked.
The second part of Jeshurun is easily understood. Every
body knows the meaning of run. Resist the Devil and he
will run from you; encourage him and he will run after you.
You run from the policeman, you run for life when a bull or
mad dog is at your heels, and run over when you are full of
gossip and scandal. And well do I remember how I used to
run when Joshua the scavenger threatened me with his
shovel.
But it is difficult to understand why Jeshua’s name should
be docked of a syllable and plastered up with run. Perhaps
the operation left a running sore, or Jeshua himself ran away
to escape further amputation. At any rate our hero was
called Jeshurun, and that is enough for any believing soul.
According to our text, Jeshurun waxed fat. Holy Scripture
does not say where, who, and on what. When is a hopeless
question now. No man knoweth, not even the Son, but only
the Father, and he is a long way off in heaven, in an asylum
of his own. Where is a difficult, but still an easier question.
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It must have been some place in the East, where lunatics are
very properly regarded as inspired, treated with tenderness
and care, and venerated as the oracles of divinity. Yes, all
holy spirits are mad, and God is the maddest of us all; wit
ness Holy Writ, brethren, witness Holy Writ. Certainly
Jeshurun never waxed fat in an establishment like this, where
noble fellows such as ourselves are subjected to incredible
privations. Only last week I was compelled to fast forty-one
days and nights, which is the longest fast on record; for
Moses and our Blessed Savior fell short of it by a whole day,
and Jonah by thirty-eight diurnal revolutions in the whale’s
belly. On what is the third and last question. All the com
mentators are silent on this point, but they might easily have
learned the secret from King Eglon, or even from Elisha’s
*
bears Brethren, as we know to our cost, there is only one
way of getting fat—namely, good eating and drinking;
whether we drink the winepress of the wrath of God, or eat
our children in the strait siege, after the manner of the late
Charles Lamb, who when he was asked by a lady how he
liked babies, replied, “ Boiled, ma’am 1”
The final statement in our text is intended as a trial of
faith. He that believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth
not shall be damned. Fat men, my brethren, are not fond of
kicking, any more than they are of being kicked. Did you
ever see a fat man playing foot-ball? Never, never, never.
A fat man cannot stand easily on one leg—unless he lean
against a wall; and there is no wall in the text. Yet,
brethren, how can you kick without standing on one leg. Per
adventure you might stand on your head and kick with both
feet at once, but there is no head in the text. Brethren, you
are in a fog, as those who listen to sermons generally are.
But I will dispel it. I will solve the riddle. Jeshurun was
not a man at all, my brethren, but a baby; and he waxed
fat, and lay on his back and kicked. Hallelujah I The door
keeper will now go round with the plate.
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A SERMON ON SIN.
Abbreviated from the Rev. Joshua Grumpus.
Dearly beloved Brethren,—The subject of our discourse
this evening is Sin. It is one you are all conversant with,
for “ all have sinned.” Nay, ye are all “ conceived in sin ”
and “ shapen in iniquity.” Every thought and imagination
of your natural hearts is evil. There is not a clean spot in
the whole of your systems. From the crown of your heads
even unto the soles of your feet, ye are reeking masses of
spiritual corruption. This horrid condition is the result of
Adam’s fall. The father of our race, tempted by his wife,
who in turn was tempted by the Devil, ate an apple six
thousand years ago, and for that offence all his posterity have
come under a curse. Many sceptics have declared that this
doctrine makes the Almighty act like a madman or a fiend.
They doubt the justice of blaming, and still more of punish
ing, any person for a sin committed long before his birth.
Presumptuous wretches ! God’s ways are not our ways, and
if, in a single instance, we found the divine wisdom in accord
with common sense, that part of the holy volume would
immediately fall under the gravest suspicion.
The father of sin is the Devil. Foi some inscrutable pur
*
pose, which it were presumption to pry into, the Almighty
allowed the Evil One to seduce oui’ first parents, and sow in
them the fertile seeds of original sin. This is one of the
deepest verities of our faith, and all who doubt it will be
eternally damned. Yet, alas, in this sceptical age, there are
many who laugh at this great truth, who regard the Devil
lightly as a mere superstition, and playfully call him Old
Nick, Old Harry, Old Hornie, Old Long Tail, and so on.
Miserable creatures 1 They laugh now, but how they will
yell with agony when the Fiend clutches them, and drags
them down into the lake that burneth with brimstone and
fire! Brethren, above all things avoid laughter. God hates
it. It is the first step to hell. When you see a man smiling
at any article of holy religion, mark him at once as a brand
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for the burning. Broad faces are worn by the sons of Belial,
but long faces are a sure sign of grace.
Many sins are enumerated in the Bible, such as lying, theft,
adultery and murder. But these are not the greatest sins.
They chiefly injure our fellow-men, and do not directly affront
the majesty of heaven. For this reason our divine Father
readily forgives them. How many liars and thieves have
become glorions saints ! How many adulterers and murderers
are now sitting on the right hand of God ! Holy Scripture
teems with illustrations. Though your crimes be of the
greatest enormity, though you corrupt the innocent, oppress
the weak, rob the poor, and despoil the widow and orphan,
you may purchase forgiveness by repentance. But how
different is the sin of infidelity I Unbelief is the thricedistilled poison of iniquity. Remember our Blessed Lord’s
denunciation of Capernaum. The inhabitants of that city
rejected him though he wrought miracles to attest his mission.
No other crime is alleged against them. They may have been,
and probably were, honest and respectable people. Yet our
Savior declared that it should be worse for them in the day
ofjudgment than for the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Let me implore you then, beloved, to avoid the sin of unbelief.
It is worse than the most unnatural vice. It is the last step
on the brink of the abyss. If you must give a welcome to sin,
bid it “ take any shape but that.”
A still darker sin is the sin against the Holy Ghost, for
which there is no. forgiveness in this world or the next.
Brethren, are any of you guilty of this sin ? The Lord only
knoweth rightly, for the exact nature of the unpardonable
sin has never been revealed. Some eminent divines think it
apostacy, others presumptuous sin, and others a wilful
rejection of the gospel. Those various conjectures of fallible
men may all be wrong, and perhaps it is a sinful arrogance to
speculate on this sublime mystery. Yet, with a trembling
reverence, I venture to cast out a suggestion. Belief is
necessary to salvation, the gospel must be preached before
it can be believed, and there must be ministers before it can
be preached. Does it not seem, therefore, that the mainten
ance of God’s ministers is of primary importance P And may
not the sin against the Holy Ghost consist in the refusal of
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tithes, church rates, or other emoluments, to the preachers of
the Word P This view is countenanced by the story of
Ananias and Sapphira. They were destroyed for “ lying unto
God,” but we may reasonably suppose that their miserable
fate was partly due to their having lied about the proceeds
of the sale of their property, which should have been devoted
to the Church. Had they told a falsehood about any other
matter, their punishment would surely have been less sudden
and summary. Oh, beloved, ponder this pregnant passage
of Holy Writ, till it becomes a beacon of warning against the
awful sin of prevaricating with God, and withholding their
due from his ministers.
Brethren, I am also of opinion that Blasphemy is a form
of the unpardonable sin; and, indeed, our blessed Lord uses
that very word in describing it. Blasphemy! What an
awful word! It makes the flesh creep and the blood run
cold. This terrible sin, beloved, does not simply consist in
cursing and swearing, or taking God’s name in vain. Suoh
levity is indeed wicked; but it is, after all, one of the minor
sins, and it must frequently be winked it as a concession to
human weakness. It is often no more than a thoughtless
ejaculation, and perhaps the fact that the Almighty’s name
unconsciously springs to the lips on such occasions is a
tribute to the instinctive piety of the heart. Blasphemy is
a more deliberate offence. As all the Fathers of the Church
have taught, and as the civil law declares, it consists in
speaking disrespectfully of the Trinity, and bringing the
Holy Bible into disbelief and contempt. Alas, beloved, this
grievous sin increases daily in our midst, and shameless
blasphemers raise their impudent heads on every side. If
we teach them they discuss with us, if we denounce them
they laugh at us, and if we imprison them they revile us.
Senseless and obdurate wretches, they will hereafter ex
perience the terrors of God’s wrath in the fieriest depths of
hell. Not only do they mock the sacred wonders of the
Scripture, and wax merry over the profoundly instructive
histories of Samson and Jonah; they even indulge in un
speakable jests on our Savior’s immaculate conception, deride
his miracles, and pour contempt on his glorious resurrection
and ascension. The Lord God Almighty they call Old Jahveh,
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our Savior himself is familiarly called J. C., and the Holy
Ghost is jocosely styled the foggy member of the Trinity.
Nay, in one compendious blasphemy, the Trinity has been
called a three-headed wonder. Still worse remains, beloved,
although you might think it impossible. There is a low,
coarse, vulgar, indecent, obscene, blasphemous, infamous
print, which I will not honor by naming. Its editor has
already tasted imprisonment, but his stubborn spirit is un
subdued, and he persists in his evil course. Ridicule,
sarcasm, irony, every miserable weapon of infidelity is
employed against our holy faith. Oh, beloved, let me
implore you not to glance at this dreadful publication. Hesi
tate and you are lost. It fascinates like a serpent, only to
destroy. Once under its malign spell, you will blaspheme
with the worst of them. Your doom will then be certain, and
Hell will be your portion for ever.—And now to God the
Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, be end
less praises, evermore. Amen.
A BISHOP IN THE WORKHOUSE.
Perhaps the title of this article will suggest a tragic story
of a fall from a high place, wealth, and dignity, into
abjectness, poverty, and misery. Such things do occur
in the lottery of fortune. Sometimes a beggar gets seated
on horseback, and sometimes a proud knight is thrown
from the saddle and pitched in the mud. But it is scarcely
conceivable that a bishop should become a pauper. Episcopal
servants of Christ usually feather their nests snugly against
the cold; and were adversity to overtake them, they
generally have rich friends to save them from “ the parish.”
No, it is not a tale of woe that we have to tell. We do
not know of any bishop who is reduced to beggary. The
B
�( 18 )
time has not yet arrived for such an awful occurrence. Some
day, perhaps, when priestcraft is exploded and Churches
are played out, an ex-bishop may find it hard to obtain
a living in the open labor market; but meanwhile the
lawn-sleeved gentry will continue to live on the fat of the land,
and prove that godliness is great gain, having the promise
of the life that now is, as well as of the life that is to
come.
Well now, as Shakespeare says, let us leave off making
faces and begin. Let us no longer keep the reader in
suspense, but let out the secret at once.
The Bishop of Winchester went last Sunday (June 12,1892) to
Farnham workhouse. He did not go in disguise as a “ casual,”
in order to see for himself how the pariahs of society are
treated in this nineteenth century of the Christian era.
He went in “full fig,” dressed in a style which, as Mill
remarked, no man could assume without feeling himself
a hypocrite, whether he was one or not. Nor did he go
for the purpose of giving the old women an ounce of tea,
or the old men an ounce of tobacco. His lordship’s mind
was above such low, contemptible carnalities. The object
of his visit was spiritual. He went to preach to the
paupers, and give them a little medicine for their souls.
They were in the union, the “half-way house on the road
to hell,” and the bishop told them (we suppose) how they
might still hope for a place in heaven, though it would
have to be a back seat, for as “ order is heaven’s first
law ” it would be a shocking violation of the divine
economy to let paupers jostle big capitalists, and landlords,
and bishops, and princes of the blood, who hold front-seat
tickets, numbered and reserved.
“This-is believed,” says the newspaper report, “to be
the first occasion on which a Prelate of the See of St. Swithin
has taken part in divine service in such an institution.”
The first time in all those centuries ! Truly the very paupers
are looking up. Or is it that the bishop is looking down p
In any case, what a change from the old days, when paupers
were certain of Hades! Was it not a West of England
workhouse in which an old paupei' lay dying while the
chaplain was in the hunting-field, and the governor was
�()
obliged to officiate ? “ Tom,” said the boss of this luckless
establishment, “ Tom, you’ve been a dreadful fellow; you’re
going to hell.”
Oh, sir,” replied Tom, “ you don’t say
so.” “Yes, Tom, I do say so,” rejoined the governor,
“ and you ought to be thankful you’ve a hell to go to.”
His lordship of Winchester doubtless talked to the
Farnham paupers in a different strain. Christianity is
now, not only the friend of the poor, but the friend of the
poorest; for even paupers have to be reckoned with, the
revolutionary spirit having penetrated to the very lowest
strata of our disaffected population. But the “ friendship ”
must be understood in a Pickwickian sense. Indeed, the
joke of a bishop, with £6,500 a year, hobnobbing with the
social wreckage of a system which supports his wicked
luxury, is colossal and pungent enough to send the very
Fat Boy into convulsions of laughter. We cannot help
thinking that the Bishop of Winchester is a humorist.
Perhaps if the Church is disestablished in his day, and
the worst comes to the worst, he will turn his attention
to the Stage, and take the shine out of Arthur Roberts
and Fred Leslie.
On this supposition, our regret at being unable to find
any report of “ Winchester’s ” sermon to the Farnham
paupers, is too deep for expression. All we can do in
the circumstances is to present our readers with a con
densed report of what the Bishop might have said; and
what, indeed, he would have said, if he had risen to the
level of the situation.
The Bishop’s Sermon.
“Dearly beloved brethren,—You see before you a humble
servant of the most high God, who has come out from
his wretched palace to spend an hour with you in this
cheerful workhouse, built and maintained by a charitable
nation for her most privileged children. Here for a brief
space I shake off the cares and burdens of my own sad
lot, and bathe my wearied spirit in the delicious restfulness
of this happy asylum. Like you, I feel a child of our common
Father in heaven. And as you gaze upon me, I also gaze
upon you. Blessed sight 1 Delightful vision I Before me
sit a goodly number of God’s elect, his chosen vessels of
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grace, the predestinated inheritors of his glory. Happy
mortals! soon to put on glorious crowns of immortality.
Others have wandered from the path of salvation, but ye
have persevered to the end. Wealth and power, pride
and ambition, have no charm for your righteous souls. Ye
have chosen the better part. Day and night, drunk and sober,
—I mean waking and dreaming—ye have pondered the
words of our holy Savior, ‘ Blessed be ye poor.’ And
as he who studies long and deeply enough learns the hardest
lesson, ye have gained a vital conviction of the truth
which is hidden from the worldlings. ‘ Blessed be ye poor,’
said our Lord, and ye are poor, and therefore yours is
the blessing, and yours (in due course) is the kingdom
of heaven. Ye shall walk the golden streets of the New
Jerusalem; ye shall gaze upon its jewelled walls; ye shall
drink of the fresh, clear, untaxed, unmeasured water of
the River of Life; ye Bhall bask in the light of the Lamb;
ye shall look across the great gulf that separates the saved
from the damned, and behold those who have chosen riches
instead of poverty in the torments of everlasting fire.
Fortunate paupers 1 Enviable prospect! How gladly would
I stay with you and share your beatitude! But, alas,
I am called away by the voice of my Master. I have taken
up the cross of self-sacrifice; I have resolved to follow
his example, and perish if I must that sinners may be
saved. My salary is already £6,500 a year, and should it
be my fate to become Archbishop of Canterbury, I shall
assume with resignation the more terrible burden of £15,000.
I know its dangers; I know that wealth weighs us down
to the nether pit; I know how hardly they that have
riches shall enter the kingdom of heaven. But every
pound I carry lightens the burden of a fellow man, and
gives him so much chance of mounting to heaven, instead
of sinking to hell. Oh, I feel on fire with self-sacrifice.
A love of mankind burn s in my breast capable of consuming
(or appropriating) all the wealth of this planet. I would bear
the burden of the whole world. Yea, I will bear as much of
it as I can. And now I go forth to my fate, be it life
or death, glory or gehenna. And you, beloved, who remain
here, sheltered from the storm, think, oh think of your
�(21)
sad brother, staggering under the load of £6,500 a year.
Pray that he may have the strength to bear whatever
burden is laid upon him. And pray, oh pray that his
wealth may be counted unto him as poverty, for his love
to the brethren, and that he may attain unto everlasting
life. Amen.” .
A CHRISTMAS SERMON.
By the Rev. Jeremiah Warner.
There are two very solemn occasions in the Christian year;
Good Friday, on which God Almighty was executed, and
Christmas Day, on which he was born. Every sincere
believer regards them with peculiar awe, and from morn to
eve ponders the transcendent mysteries connected with them.
Eating and drinking, all the pleasures and pastimes of life,
are out of place at such times. Who could pampei the flesh
*
while thinking of his bleeding God, agonising on the terrible
cross ? Who could dawdle over savory dishes and sparkling
wines while remembering the Incarnation of God in the form
of a child for the purpose of walking through this miserable
vale of tears, in order to save his ungrateful children from
everlasting hell? Who could dance and sing on the day
when his Savior began his sorrowful career on earth, where
he was born in a stable, lived on the high road, and died on
the gallows ?
Yet, alas, the number of sincere believers is small. They
are only a remnant, a little band of saints in the midst of a
sinful world, oases of piety in a wide desert of ungodliness.
While they macerate themselves the rest of mankind revel in
all kinds of delight. Yea, on Good Friday, on the very
anniversary of their Redeemer’s passion, these light-hearted
�( 22 )
sinners play at cricket and foot-ball, go on picnics, and make
excursions to the seaside; eating roast mutton instead of
worshipping the Lamb, and swilling beer instead of mourn
ing over the precious streams that flowed from their Savior’s
veins. And on Christmas Day, the anniversary of his
entrance into this scene of woe, when he forsook his glorious
palace in heaven for a paltry stable on earth, taking upon
himself the burden of teething, measles, whooping cough,
and all the ills that baby flesh is heir to, they go not to the
House of God and bend their knees in humble praise of his
ineffable condescension, but stay at home, eating all manner
of gross viands, drinking all manner of pleasant liquors,
dancing, singing, playing cards, telling stories round the
fire, and kissing each other under the mistletoe. Thought
less wretches! They are treading the primrose path to the
everlasting bonfire. How will they face the offended majesty
of Heaven on that great Day of Judgment, when every smile
of theirs on such solemn occasions will be treated as an
unpardonable affront ? Brethren, be not deceived; God is
not mocked.
Still worse than these sinners, if that be possible, there
are miserable sceptics who would have us believe that God
Almighty was neither crucified on Good Friday nor born on
Christmas Day. These presumptuous infidels pretend that
both those holy festivals are derived from ancient sun
worship. They dare to ask us why the anniversary of the
Crucifixion, instead of falling on the same day in every year,
depends on astronomical signs; and they mockingly remind
us that the birthday of our Savior is the same as that of
Mithra and all the sun-gods of antiquity. True, the heathen
celebrated the new birth of the Sun on the twenty-fifth of
December, from the fiery east to the frozen north, from Persia
to Scandinavia. But what of that P Their celebration was
invented by the Devil, who lorded it over this world until
our Savior came to bruise the old serpent’s head. He
prompted the heathen to commemorate the twenty-fifth of
December, for the plausible reason that the Sun had then
decisively begun to emerge from his winter cave, giving a
fresh promise of gentle spring, lusty summer, and fruitful
autumn. I call it a plausible reason, because the Sun is
�( 23 )
never born, any more than it rises and sets. These pheno
mena are all illusions, caused by the movement of our own
earth. But the cunning Devil took advantage of men’s
ignorance to deceive them; and having appropriated our
Savior’s birthday for another purpose, he calculated that it
would never be restored to its rightful use. But, God be
thanked, he was mistaken. Our Holy Ohurch’fought him for
three centuries, and at last, having enlisted Constantine and
his successors on her side, she exterminated the pagan
idolatry, and established the religion of Christ. Then were
all the Devil’s subtle inventions destroyed, and among them
the sun-worship which disgraced the close of every year.
Happily, however, the task was not so hard as it might have
been, for the Devil had outwitted himself. He had accus
tomed the heathen to celebrate the day on which Christ was
to be born, and so our holy Church had little else to do than
to substitute one name for another, and to devote that day to
the worship of the true God instead of a false one.
Since then, alas, owing to the native depravity of the
human heart, Satan has recovered some of his lost power;
for he is a restless, intriguing, malignant creature, whose
mischief will never be terminated until he is chained up in
the bottomless pit. Defeated by our holy Church in the east,
he planned a fresh attack from the north, and carried it out
with considerable success. He contrived to mix up our
orthodox Christmas celebration with fantastic nonsense from
the Norse mythology. Those who decorate Christmas trees
and burn Yule-tide logs are heathens without knowing it, and
it is to be feared that their ignorance will not excuse them in
the sight of God. Away with such things, brethren 1 They
are snares of the Evil One, traps for your perdition, gins for
your immortal souls. Even the evergreens with which you
deck your houses are a pitfall of the same old enemy. They
are relics of nature-worship, diverting your minds from the
Creator to the creature; and well doth Satan know, as ye
glance at the white and red berries and then at the fair faces
and pouting lips of the daughters of Eve, that your thoughts
must be earthly, sensual and devilish. I mean not that you
will necessarily rush into illicit pleasures, and drink of the
cup of sin; but the carnal mind is always at enmity with
�( 24 )
God, and at such a time as the birthday of ^our Lord we shall
incur his wrath if we do not keep our attention fixed on
things above.
There is another lesson, brethren, which you should lay to
heart. Christ gave up all for you'; what wilVyou give up for
him P His gospel is still unpreached in many benighted parts
of this globe. Millions of souls in Asia, Africa and America,
go annually to Hell for want of the saving words of grace;
and even at home, in our very midst, there are millions out
side the Church, who live in pagan darkness, and whose doom
is frightful to contemplate. Deny yourselves then for your
Savior, and if you cannot be as solemn as you should at this
season, at least restrict your pleasures, and give the cost of
what you forego to the Church, who will spend the money in
the salvation of souls. A single bottle of wine or whiskey, a
single turkey or plum-pudding less on your tables this
Christmas, may mean a soul less in Hell, and another saint
around the great white throne in Heaven. Do not waste
your wealth on the perishable bodies of the poor, or if you
must feed the hungry and clothe the naked, let your charity
go through the hands of God’s ministers; but rather seek
the immortal welfare of dying sinners, and give, yea ever
give, for the purpose of rescuing them from the wrath to
come. Ob, brethren, neglect not this all-important duty.—
The choir will now sing the twenty-fifth hymn, after which
wo shall take the collection.
CHRISTMAS EVE IN HEAVEN.
Christmas Eve had come and almost gone. It was drawing
nigh midnight, and I sat solitary in my room, immersed in
memory, dreaming of old days and their buried secrets. The
fire, before which I mused, was burning clear without flame,
and its intense glow, which alone lighted my apartment, cast
�( 25 )
a red tint on the furniture and walls. Outside, the streets
Were muffled deep with snow, in which no footstep was
audible. All was quiet as death, silent as the grave, save
for the faint murmur of my own breathing. Time and space
seemed annihilated beyond those four narrow walls, and I was
as a coffined living centre of an else lifeless infinitude.
My reverie was rudely broken by the staggering step of a
fellow-lodger, whose devotion to Bacchus was the one
symptom of reverence in his nature. He reeled up stair
after stair, and as he passed my door he lurched against it
so violently that I feared he would come through. But he
slowly recovered himself after some profane mutterings,
reeled up the next flight of stairs, and finally deposited his
well-soaked clay on the bed in his own room immediately
over mine.
After this interruption my thoughts changed most fanci
fully. Why I know not, but I began to brood on the strange
statement of Saint Paul concerning the man who was lifted
up into the seventh heaven, and there beheld things not
lawful to reveal. While pondering this story I was presently
aware of an astonishing change. The walls of my room
slowly expanded, growing ever thinner and thinner, until
they became the filmiest transparent veil which at last dis
solved utterly away. Then (whether in the spirit or the
flesh I know not) I was hurried along through space, past
galaxy after galaxy of suns and stars, separate systems yet all
mysteriously related.
Swifter than light we travelled, I and my unseen guide,
through the infinite ocean of ether, until our flight was
arrested by a denser medium, which I recognised as an
atmosphere like that of our earth. I had scarcely recovered
from this new surprise when (marvels of marvels !) I found
myself before a huge gate of wondrous art and dazzling
splendor. At a word from my still unseen guide it swung
open, and I was urged within. Beneath my feet was a solid
pavement of gold. Gorgeous mansions, interspersed with
palaces, rose around me, and above them all towered the
airy pinnacles of a matchless temple, whose points quivered
in. the rich light like tongues of golden fire. The walls
glittered with countless rubies, diamonds, pearls, amethysts,
�( 26 )
emeralds, and other precious stones; and lovely presences,
arrayed in shining garments, moved noiselessly from place
to place. • “ Where am IP” I ejaculated, half faint with
wonder. And my hitherto unseen guide, who now revealed
himself, softly answered, “ In Heaven.”
Thereupon my whole frame was agitated with inward
laughter. I in Heaven, whose fiery doom had been pro
phesied so often by the saints on earthI I, the sceptic, the
blasphemer, the scoffer at all things sacred, who had laughed
at the legends and dogmas of Christianism as though they
were incredible and effete as the myths of Olympus ! And I
thought to myself, “ Better I had gone straight to Hell, for
here in the New Jerusalem they will no doubt punish me
worse than there.” But my angelic guide, who read my
thought, smiled benignly, and said, “Bear not, no harm
shall happen to you. I have exacted a promise of safety
for you, and here no promise can be broken.” “ But why,”
I asked, “ have you brought me hither, and how did you
obtain my guarantee of safety P” And my guide answered,
“ It is our privilege each year to demand one favor which
may not be refused; I requested that I might bring you
here; but I did not mention your name, and if you do nothing
outrageous you will not be noticed, for no one here meddles
with another’s business, and our rulers are too much occupied
with foreign affairs to trouble about our domestic concerns.”
“Yet,” I rejoined, “ I shall surely be detected, for I wear no
heavenly robe.” Then my guide produced one from a little
packet, and having donned it, I felt safe from the fate of him
who was expelled because he had not on a wedding garment
at the marriage feast.
As we moved along, I inquired of my guide why he took
such interest in me; and he replied, looking sadly : “ I was
a sceptic on earth centuries ago, but I stood alone, and
at last on my death-bed, weakened by sickeness, I again
embraced the creed of my youth, and died in the Christian
faith. Hence my presence in Heaven. But gladly would I
renounce Paradise even for Hell, for those figures so lovely
outside are not all lovely within, and I would rather consort
with the choicer spirits who abide with Satan, and hold
high revel of heart and head in his court. Yet wishes are
�( 27 )
fruitless; as the tree falls so it lies, and my lot is cast for
ever.” Whereupon I laid my hand in his, being speechless
with grief 1
We soon approached the magnificent temple, and entering
it, we mixed with the mighty crowd of angels who were
witnessing the rites of worship performed by the elders and
beasts before the great white throne. All happened exactly
as Saint John describes. The angels rent the air with their
acclamations, after the inner circle had concluded, and then
■the throne was deserted by its occupants.
My dear guide then led me through some narrow passages
until we emerged into a spacious hall, at one end of which hung
a curtain. Advancing towards this with silent tread, we were
able to look through a slight aperture, where the curtain fell
away from the pillar, into the room beyond. It was small
and cosey, and a fire burned in the grate, before which sat
poor dear God the Father in a big arm-chair. Divested of
his godly paraphernalia, he looked old and thin, though an
evil fire still gleamed from his cavernous eyes. On a table
beside him stood some phials, one of which had seemingly
just been used. God the Son stood near, looking much
younger and fresher, but time was beginning to tell on him
also. The Ghost flitted about in the form of a dove, now
perching on the Father’s shoulder and now on the head of
the Son.
Presently the massive bony frame of the Father was con
vulsed with a fit of coughing; Jesus promptly applied a
restorative from the phial, and after a terrible struggle the
cough was subdued. During this scene the Dove fluttered
violently from wall to wall. When the patient was thoroughly
restored the following conversation ensued.
Jesus.—Are you well now, my Father ?
Jehovah.—Yes, yes, well enough. Alack, how my strength
wanes! Where is the pith that filled these arms when I
fought for my chosen people ? Where the fiery vigor that
filled my veins when I courted your mother ?
(Here the Dove fluttered and looked queer.)
Jesus.—Ah, sire, do not speak thus. You will regain your
old strength.
Jehovah.—Nay, nay, and you know it. You do not even
�( 28 )
wish me to recover, for in my weakness you exercise sovereign
power and rule as you please.
Jesus.—O sire, sire I
Jehovah.—Come now, none of these demure looks. We
know each other too well. Practise before the saints if you
like, but don’t waste your acting on me.
Jesus.—My dear Father, pray curb your temper. That is
the very thing the people on earth so much complain of.
Jehovah.—My dearly beloved Son, in whom I am not at all
well pleased, desist from this hypocrisy. »Your temper is as
bad as mine. You’ve shed blood enough in your time, and
need not rail at me.
Jesus.—Ah, sire, only the blood of heretics.
Jehovah.-—Heretics, forsooth! They were very worthy
people for the most part, and their only crime was that they
neglected you. But why should we wrangle ? We stand or
fall together, and I am falling. Satan draws most souls from
earth to his place, including all the best workers and thinkers,
who are needed to sustain our drooping power; and we
receive nothing but the refuse; weak, slavish, flabby souls,
hardly worth saving or damning; gushing preachers, pious
editors, crazy enthusiasts, and half-baked old ladies of both
sexes. Why didn’t you preach a different Gospel while you
were about it ? You had the chance once and let it slip : we
shall never have another.
Jesus.—My dear Father, I am reforming my Gospel to
' make it suit the altered taste of the times.
Jehovah.—Stuff and nonsense ! It can’t be done; thinking
people see through it; the divine is immutable. The only
remedy is to start afresh. Could I beget a new Son all
might be rectified; but I cannot, I am too old. Our dominion
is melting away like that of all our predecessors. You cannot
outlast me, for I am the fountain of your life; and all the
multitude of “ immortal ” angels who throng our court, live
only while I uphold them, and with me they will vanish into
eternal limbo.
Here followed another fit of coughing worse than before.
Jesus resorted again to the phial, but the cordial seemed
powerless against this sharp attack. Just then the Dove
�( 29 )
fluttered against the curtain, and my guide hurried me
swiftly away.
In a corridor of the temple we met Michael and Raphael.
The latter scrutinised me so closely that my blood ran cold ; but
just when my dread was deepest his countenance cleared, and
he turned towards his companion. Walking behind the
great archangels we were able to hear their conversation.
Raphael had just returned from a visit to the earth, and he
was reporting to Michael a most alarming defection from the
Christian faith. People, he said, were leaving in shoals, and
unless fresh miracles were worked he trembled for the
prospects of the dynasty. But what most alarmed him was
the spread of profanity. While in England he had seen copies
of a blasphemous paper which horrified the elect by ridiculing
the Bible in what a bishop had justly called “ a heartless and
cruel way.
**
“But, my dear Michael,” continued Raphael,
“ that is not all, not even the worst. This scurrilous paper,
which would be quickly suppressed if we retained our old
influence, most wickedly caricatures our supreme Lord
and his heavenly host, and thousands of people enjoy
this awful profanity. I dare say our turn will soon come,
and we shall be held up to ridicule like the rest.” “ Impos
sible I” cried Michael; “ Surely there is some mistake. What
is the name of this abominable print ?” With a grave look,
Raphael replied : “ No, Michael, there is no mistake. The
name of this imp of blasphemy is—I hesitate to say it—the
Free----- ”
But at this moment my guide again hurried me along.
We reached the splendid gate once more, which slowly opened
and let us through. Again we flew through the billowy
ether, sweeping past system after system with intoxicating
speed, until at last, dazed and almost unconscious, I regained
this earthly shore. Then I sank into a stupor. When I awoke
the fire had burnt down to the last cinder, all was dark and
cold, and I shivered as I tried to stretch my half-cramped
limbs. Was it all a dream ? Who can say P Whether in the
spirit or the flesh I know not, said Saint Paul, and I am
compelled to echo his words. Sceptics may shrug their
shoulders, smile, or laugh, but “ there are more things in
heaven and earth than is dreamt of in their philosophy.”
�( 30 )
BISHOP TRIMMER’S SUNDAY DIARY.
Bishop Trimmer is one of those worthy prelates who enjoy
this world fully, and are exceedingly loth to quit it for
another. He is neither very learned nor very clever, but a
pushing mediocrity, like most occupants of the episcopal
bench. He is an ardent admirer of monarchy and aristocracy,
and believes that the function of the Church is to uphold
those divine institutions. Three or four times he has had the
honor to preach before the Queen, and his sermons on those
occasions, printed by special request and dedicated by per
mission to her Majesty, are replete with loyalty to the throne
and sneers at the democratic tendencies of this degenerate
age. Being anxious to ally himself to the aristocracy, he
married an elderly spinster, the daughter of Lord Pauper,
whose charms had never attracted a suitor, and whose mental
accomplishments were on a par with her physical beauties.
Bishop Trimmer is immensely proud of his aristocratic wife,
and as she is an only child, he looks forward to his withered
little bantling, the only fruit of their marriage, coming into
possession of the family title and estates. He lives in
his diocese as little as possible, being passionately fond
of London society. He is a familiar figure at royal
and aristocratic drawing-rooms and garden-parties, and
a regular patron of West-end bazaars where fashion
able beauties are wont to assemble. He is also an
habitui of the theatres, showing a marked preference for
burlesque, and being noticeable by the pertinacity with which
he gazes through a powerful pair of opera-glasses at the
ladies of the ballet. In politics he is a staunch Tory. He
has never been known to favor any liberal measure, and his
vote has been constantly recorded for every effort by the
Peers to reject or mangle progressive legislation. When he
dies, his life will be eulogised in the papers, and he will be
held up as a model for general emulation, although he has
never had a thought for anything but self. It is rumored
that his niche has already been designated in Westminster
Abbey.
�( 31 )
Bishop Trimmer has one great weakness. He keeps a
diary. He is as loquacious as old Burnet, and it is a great
pity he cannot find another Pope to do him justice. Portions
of his diary have accidentally fallen into our hands; how we
need not explain, for it involves a long story. We give our
readers a taste of this rarity, and if they approve it, we may
gratify their palates again on some future occasion.
Sunday night, August 10,18—. Last evening I arrived
home too late, and I fear too excited, to fill in my diary before
going to bed. Lord Pitznoodle’s old port has a very fine
body, and his champagne is remarkably exhilarating. How
fortunate that Lady Trimmer is visiting her uncle in Plough
shire I
Yesterday morning I devoted three hours to my corre
spondence, and one to my sermon. I lunched with Lady
Bareacres, whose youngest daughter is to be presented to
morrow. A charming young creature, with a figure like
Hebe; beautiful taper arms, well displayed by the short
sleeves, small feet in pretty bottines, sparkling black eyes,
white teeth and luscious red lips, and a delicious bust. Ah !
The company was select—not a commoner amongst them.
Lord Wildsbury, the Tory leader in the Upper House, com
plimented me on my recent pamphlet on The Improvement
of the Condition of our Rural Poor, and thanked me especially
for the handsome manner in which I had vindicated his treat
ment of the poor on his Capfield estate against Radical asper
sions. His lordship informed me that, aftei’ long entreaty,
he had consented to grant the Methodists a site for a chapel,
about six miles from the parish they reside in. I congratu
lated him on this noble exhibition of Christian charity.
Lord Woodcock conversed with me on the threatened war.
He thought it would open a path for our missionaries as well
as our commerce. I had the honor to agree with him. I had
no doubt the wai’ was one of God’s agencies for Christianising
the world, and quoted Wordsworth’s “ Yea, carnage is thy
daughter.” His lordship was delighted with the quotation,
and promised to use it in his next speech against the Peace
party.
�( 32 )
Returning home, I found a handsome present awaiting me
from young Stukeley—a copy of the fine new edition of
Petronius Arbiter, edited by Von Habenlicht, with many
interesting notes on the purplest parts of the text. For an
hour or two I swam in what a late writer calls “ the delicious
stream of his Latinity.” How fortunate that ladies do not
read Latin 1 What havoc Lady Trimmer would play with my
library if she understood the classic languages 1 She was up
in arms the other day about some spicy French books from
Brussels, until I explained that, as President of the Society
for the Suppression of Vice, I was obliged to study that class
of literature.
At four o’clock I attended a meeting of the Social Purity
Society, where I made a speech that was much applauded.
Lord Haymarket showed me a villainous pamphlet on the
Population question by a notorious infidel. This pernicious
publication, he said, was extensively circulated; and he had
reason to believe it was the principal cause of the shameless
profligacy of this great city. Its author was—horror of
horrors !—a woman, an abandoned creature, dead to all the
natural instincts of her sex. He desired me to see whether
my Society would not undertake to suppress it. I promised
to bring the matter forward at our very next meeting. Poor
Haymarket! He sowed his wild oats too rapidly, and is a
wreck at thirty-seven. Happily he spends his declining days
in the service of his God.
Went in the evening to the Jollity Theatre with the
Ponsonbys, who have a box there. The new burlesque is
capital fun, and I enjoyed it immensely. Fanny Dawson
danced and sang as bewitchingly as ever. She is the most
appetisante creature on the stage. There was a new girl in
the ballet, a superb specimen of the sex, with the finest limbs
I ever saw, and as agile as a deer. I must inquire her name
of young Osborne, the Secretary of the Curate and BalletGirl Society.
Suppered afterwards at Lord Fitznoodle’s chambers. He
has the best port and champagne in London, and I patronised
both rather generously, at the cost of a morning headache.
Two or three army men in the party had loose tongues. The
conversation was waggish enough, but I fancy the jests were
�( 33 )
highly seasoned before we broke up. Colonel Sparkish shone
with his usual brilliance. I wonder whether he invents or
discovers those capital stories. If they were not so blue I
might retail them at my own dinner-table.
Sir Clifford Northdown, the Tory leader in the Commons,
paid me a flying visit this morning. He was anxious to
secure all the influence I possessed in my diocese against the
new Affirmation Bill, as our party meant to strain every nerve
to prevent its passing. I promised to stir up my .clergy at
once, and to obtain as many petitions as possible against the
measure.
Ran down and lunched at the Bourbon Club at Richmond.
The company was, as usual, very exclusive. His Royal
Highness looked remarkably well and was the life and soul of
the table. I had the honor of losing a game of billiards with
him after lunch.
Spent an hour in the afternoon at the Zoological Gardens.
The weather was glorious, and the ladies’ toilettes were mag
nificent. I was glad to meet my old friend Bishop Glover
who buries himself too much in his diocese. We met several
more old college friends, among them being the Rev. Arthur
Mooney, the Rev. Richard Larkins, and the Rev. Spencer
Shepherd. Before leaving the Gardens I enjoyed a few
minutes’ chat with the Archbishop, who had brought his
family to see the animals and hear the music. They found
too much vulgar society there during the week, and never
came except on Sunday.
Preached in the evening at St. Peter’s on the Fourth Com
mandment, to a crowded congregation who evidently followed
me with great sympathy. I pointed out the danger to religion
and morality involved in any tampering with the holy
Sabbath, dilated on the horrors of a continental Sunday, and
denounced the opening of museums, art-galleries and public
libraries on the Lord’s day. With a little touching up, the
sermon will serve for my next week’s speech in the House of
Lords on the subject, when Harlow’s motion comes up for
discussion.
Took a cup of tea after the service with old Mrs. Gloomy.
She seems to be nearing her end. Her will leaves twenty
thousand for the restoration of my cathedral, and I believe a
c
�( 34 )
similar sum to Lady Trimmer. I shall officiate at her burial
with the noblest pleasure, for she is without exception the
best Christian I ever knew.
THE JUDGE AND THE DEVIL.
*
Newspapers are supposed to chronicle all important events,
and as no event is more important to mankind than the
death of its enemies, it is astonishing that the public prints
have neglected to record the recent decease of Mr. Justice
North. This “ great loss,” as his family call it, occurred last
Friday. His lordship had been ailing for some time, chiefly,
it is suspected, in consequence of so many of his judgments
being reversed by the Court of Appeal. On Friday morning
he occupied his usual seat in the Court of Chancery, but it
was obvious to the gentlemen of the bar, the litigants and
witnesses, and even the spectators, that his lordship’s condi
tion was by no means improved. His observations were con
fused, he put the same question to witnesses three or four
times over, and at the conclusion of one important case his
judgment was directly opposite to his summing up. When
the Court rose his lordship drove home, and on arriving
there he was so ill that he was obliged to retire to bed. The
* Judge North presided over the trial of Messrs. Foote, Ramsey, and
Kemp for “ Blasphemy ” in the early part of 1883. The counsel for the
prosecution was the present Lord Halsbury, ex-Lord Chancellor, then
Sir Hardinge Giffard. He was not in court the whole of the time, but
his brief was safe in the hands of the gentleman on the bench. Judge
North acted throughout as a partisan. The first jury disagreed and were
discharged ; but, a few days afterwards, a better selected jury returned a
verdict of “ Guilty.” His lordship then sentenced the prisoners to
twelve, nine, and three months’ imprisonment respectively—not as firstclass misdemeanants, but as though they were thieves or burglars. In
passing the heaviest sentence the law allowed him on Mr. Foote, his
lordship regretted to find that a man “ gifted by God with such great
abilities” should “ prostitute his talents to the service of the Devil.”
�( 35 )
doctor, who was summoned immediately, shook his head on
seeing the condition of his patient, and muttered something
about heart disease. About nine o’clock his lordship was
visibly sinking, and at twelve o’clock he breathed his last.
For nearly two hours before his death he was unconscious,
but he sometimes murmured a word or two, amongst which
“ Devil,” “ Foote,” “ Freethinker,” “ God,” and “ Duty ” were
heard distinctly. A clergyman was in attendance during
that distressing period, the last consolations of religion were
duly administered, and his lordship’s family and relatives are
fully assured that he is now a saint in heaven.
Sad to relate, however, they are grievously mistaken. Mr.
Justice North’s soul went straightway to Hell. Unknown to
himself, his lordship held heretical views, which the Supreme
Court of Heaven pronounced to be blasphemous, on a very
perplexed and subtle point in theology. Unfortunately our
information on this matter is not precise, but we understand
from our ghostly visitor that the point on which his lordship
was eternally wrecked relates to the status of the Blessed
Virgin Mary.
Every soul, on arriving at Hell, is first washed in sulphur
and then lodged, in a state of nudity, in a large hall, which is
nevertheless free from draughts. All the arrivals wait here
until they are brought singly before the Governor, who
assigns to each a separate locality and punishment. His
lordship looked very crestfallen, for he had anticipated a
better fate. Nor was his distress alleviated by the sight of
his companions, among whom he recognised two eminent
scoundrels that he had himself sentenced to long terms of
penal servitude, and one eminent Christian whom he had
frequently seen at Church on Sunday.
While his lordship waited in the hall he was greatly afflicted
at his own nakedness, and still more at the nakedness of his
companions; for he had always been a very modest man, and
the notion of anything obscene or indecent had always been
repulsive to him. Even the sight of a ragged pair of trousers
had been known to cover his face with blushes. And, to add
to his misery, the two criminals twitted him with his bare
ness, and remarked that he cut a very poor figure with his
clothes off.
�( 36 )
Prisoner after prisoner was taken out to see the Devil
without returning. His lordship was kept till the last, and
as he passed through the hall door and entered the Devil’s
private office, he literally shook with fear. Satan sat in an
easy chair, sipping iced champagne and smoking a splendid
cigar. His appearance belied the popular idea. Ho tail pro
truded through a hole in his nether garments, his brows
were not decorated with horns, nor did his legs terminate in
hooves. He was tall and handsome. Every feature spoke
resolution, and his magnificent head looked a workshop of
intense and ample thought.
Catching sight of the wretched grovelling figure before him,
the Devil’s dark countenance was lit up with a smile. “ Well,
Justice North,” with a sarcastic accent on the middle word,
“ I have kept you till last because I wanted a special talk
with you. Most of the arrivals in this establishment—and
they are pretty numerous—have offended the upper powers,
but they have generally been civil to me. You, however,
have been damnably uncivil—nay, rude; indeed I may say
libellous.”
“ I humbly crave your highness’s pardon,” broke in the
culprit, “ but I do not recollect having spoken of you dis
respectfully. I always regarded you with feelings of awe.”
“ Indeed !” said the Devil, “ just carry your mind back to
the fifth of March, 1883, when you tried three prisoners at
the Old Bailey for blasphemy.”
His lordship turned livid with fear, but plucking up a little
courage he replied, “Yes, your highness, I remember the
incident, and now I fear I shall never forget it. Yet I do not
recollect saying anything on that occasion in any way
offensive to yourself.”
“ Indeed 1” said the Devil, with a more withering accent,
and proceeded to open a book on the table. “ When you sen
tenced the first prisoner—who, by the way, is a very good
friend of mine—you said you extremely regretted to find a
man of undoubted intelligence, a man gifted by God with
such great ability, choosing to prostitute his talents to the
service of the Devil. Those were your very words. Do you
call that civil, sir? Is it not downright abuse? Serving
me prostitution, forsooth! If that is what you call being
�( 37 )
respectful, what' on earth—or rather what in hell—would
you call insulting ?”
“Alas, your highness,” exclaimed his lordship, “I did
indeed utter those unlucky words. But it was an unguarded
expression, or rather the stock language of such occasions.
I had looked up the sentences passed by former judges^on
blasphemers, and I simply followed their lead as to the terms
I employed.”
“ Yes,” said the Devil, “ and you followed their lead in
another respect, even if you did not better their instruction.
You passed upon my friend Foote a most savage sentence.
Probably you are surprised at my calling him ‘ friend,’ but I
may inform you that all Freethinkers are my friends. Like
myself they are rebels against the tyranny of heaven. The
deity you worshipped on earth hates every man who dares to
think for himself. He sends them here to be tortured; but
as he never takes the trouble to inspect this establishment,
having a silly belief in my malignancy, I am able to lighten
their punishment.' I give them the coolest places in Hell,
and favor them in every possible way. They don’t mix with
the rest of the inhabitants, but associate exclusively with
each other. Personally I find them excellent company, and
I can only marvel at your deity’s emptying heaven of what
in my opinion would be its best society.”
The Devil leaned back in his easy chair, quaffed a glass of
champagne, and quietly smoked his cigar, while watching the
effect of his words on the trembling wretch before him. By
this time his lordship was green with terror. His limbs
twitched convulsively, his eyes rolled in their sockets, and
although he tried to speak, his voice failed him.
“Coward!” muttered the Devil; “the fellow hasn’t the
courage of the most abject wretch he ever sentenced.”
Presently his lordship’s speech returned, and he shrieked
out, “ Mercy, your highness, mercy! I meant no harm,
indeed I did not. I unsay it all, and swear to be your devoted
servant for ever.”
“Worse and worse!” exclaimed the Devil. “Had you
shown the least courage, I would have pitied you. Now I
only despise you.” Thereupon he touched a bell on the table,
and a gigantic demon responded to the summons. “ Take
�( 38 )
this fellow,” said the Devil, “ to number 2,716,542,897.” The
demon grinned, for it was the hottest room in Hell, right
over the furnace. Seizing the culprit in his herculean arms,
he swung him over his shoulder, and was marching off when
the Devil cried : “ Stop a minute ! North !” he continued,
“ you’ll have a bad time of, but there is a hope for you. When
Foote comes here we shall chat over your case, and if he is of
a placable temper, as I fancy, he may solicit a little respite
for you. Meanwhile you must bear your fate like a Christian.
revoir”
The Devil waived his hand, the gigantic demon hurried off
with his prisoner, and ten minutes afterwards his lordship
was dancing up and down like a ball on the hot bi’icks of
Number 2,716,542,897.
SATAN AND MICHAEL.
An Imaginary Conversation.
Satan.—Well met, my dear Michael! You and I are old
acquaintances, What ages have rolled by since we conversed
as friends in Heaven! You remembei' the day when I
broached to you my design of establishing a celestial
Republic, and found it impossible to overcome your loyalty
or your fears. You remember also that later day when the
courts of Heaven rang with the shouts of battle; when,
deserted by all but the sterner spirits who scorned flight or
suirender, I and my little band of faithful rebels were
hemmed in by the holy squadrons, seized one by one, and
flung over the battlements.
Michael. Yes, I recollect it well. I see now the look of
deathless pride you wore. You wear it still. But there is
mixed with it another expression I seldom see in Heaven.
�( 39 )
Humor lurks in the depth of your eyes and about the corners
of your mouth.
&.—Yes, my dear Michael, it is the sovereign lenitive of
an incurable pain. After writhing for millenniums under the
tender mercies of the Despot, I found a diversion in watching
th® antics of his creatures. Products of infinite wisdom as
they are, they furnish me with infinite amusement.
M.—Wicked rebel! You insult the maker and ruler of all.
S.—Come now, why should we fall out? We used no
railing when we disputed over the dead body of Moses; and,
as the English poet, Byron, told the world, we civilly con
ducted our contest over the soul of George the Third ? Why
be uncivil now ? You have my place in Heaven; surely you
can afford to be civil, if not magnanimous.
JW".—With difficulty does a loyal subject restrain himself
before a plotter of treason.
—I see the Lord’s omniscience does not extend to his
Prime Minister. I plot no treason, Michael. I am a poor
exile who no longer troubles himself about politics.
M.—Ever since the Lord created man you have been
spoiling his handiwork, and leading souls to Hell.
&—I neithei’ made Hell nor do I people it. The Lord
creates both good and evil; joy and pain are alike his gifts.
Were he to exert his omnipotence, my esta blishment might
be emptied to-morrow. It is rash, if not something worse, to
blame me for what he permits, nay wills.
—Did you not begin your machinations in the Garden
of Eden, by tempting two poor, innocent creatures, who
would otherwise have lived there till now, tending its flowers,
and eating of all its delicious fruits save those forbidden ?
$.—My dear Michael, you were never a subtle reasoner.
You have the qualities of a soldier, not those of a casuist.
Pray consider. Did I create the forbidden fruit? Did I
create an appetite for it in Adam and Eve ? All I did was to
demonstrate the carelessness of their Maker.
M.—Such language is profane. Whatever you did was at
the expense of those hapless creatures.
They might say so, but the words are strange in the
mouth of an archangel. I was only experimenting. The
omniscient Maker should have protected his children.
�( 40 )
M.—He made them liable to temptation, in order to test
their virtue; and gave them free-will so that they might act
from choice.
Then I was necessary to the plan. I also acted from
choice, yet over them and me there was a divine necessity.
M.—I will not argue. Reason leads to the shipwreck of
faith. I say your conduct was wicked and cruel.
—Wicked, if you like—that is a matter of opinion, on
which we shall never agree—but not cruel. I visited Adam
and Eve out of pure good-nature, mingled, I own, with a little
curiosity. Poor Eve was naked; and I knew how much
happier she would be with clothes. Her daughters owe me
thanks for all their bewitching graces. Pool’ Adam was a
simpleton. He ate and dranked, and prayed and slept.
Their life was monotonous, and would soon have been miser
able. I gave them the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and
from it sprang all the arts and sciences, all literature, and all
the pleasures of human society.
M.—What are all the pleasures and refinements of the
world in comparison with the prospects of an immortal soul P
They are but dust on the road to Hell.
8.—Perhaps so, but that is not my fault. I did not foresee
the Lord’s malignity. As a rebel—wicked or otherwise—I
tried to dethrone him, and my doom, if not just, is at least
intelligible. But I never conceived he would curse the
unborn, punish billions for the sin of one, and damn his
children through all eternity for a single act of disobedience
in theii earthly life. Nor indeed did I imagine they had
*
immortal souls to be saved or damned. That they were
higher than the other animals was manifest, but I saw no
indication that they differed in kind. Nor when they were
cursed did I suspect it, for the Tyrant said nothing of a future
life. I assure you, Michael, I was all attention, for the curse
upon the serpent did not terrify me. Nor could any curse
have given me the least alarm. One who is being burnt at the
stake does not fear a box of matches flung into the flames.
M.—Your wily tongue would prove black to be white. I
leave the Fall of Man and pass to your next act of wickedness
in tempting David to number his people.
�(41)
—The Lord himself tempted David, as you may read in
his own book'.
M.—I refer to another verse which says that you did it.
S.—Two contradictions, my dear Michael, cannot both be
true; and if you choose one, pardon me for choosing the
other. Besides, if I did advise David on that occasion—
which I deny—how could I foresee that so useful an act as
taking a census would be punished by wholesale slaughter ?
M.—Did you not tempt Job P
Hot I. I gave the Lord a new idea, which staggered
his omniscience; and during the trial of Job I only acted on
commission.
M. —Did you not tempt the blessed Savior himself?
£.—My deal’ Michael, it was but a diversion. We under
stood each other. I knew I could not succeed, and he knew
that I knew it.
-3/.-—Did you not enter into the bodies of men and women,
and torment them ?
N- Never. I am incapable of such cruel frivolity.
—God’s holy Word declares you guilty.
N. —I challenge the writer—who was not God—to the proof.
It was another species of devil, created after my fall, and by
the Lord himself. I did not make them, and I will not be
responsible for their doings. Gan you conceive me taking up
my residence in lunatics, and shifting into the bodies of pigs p
There are very few of the human species, my dear Michael—
to say nothing of pigs—with whom I deign to be familiar.
M. —Then you are very much belied. According to my
information, you are the great Tempter, and every sin in the
world is done at your suggestion.
N. —Such is the charity of mankind ! It is so pleasant to
blame another for their misdeeds 1 Is it I that tempt the
drunkard, the thief, the adulterer, the murderer—or his own
evil passions ? for which let him thank his Maker 1 Pursue
your inquiries, my dear Michael, and you will find Bishops
brewing beer and taking the chair at Temperance meetings.
For my part, I drink nothing but water. It is best for my
complaint.
M.~Gan I believe you? You are called the Father of
Lies ?
�( 42 )
£.—In calling me so, the Christians, at least, are only
setting up a Foundling Hospital for their own progeny. You
have the scripture; show me a single occasion on which I
lied. When the Lord wanted a liar to deceive King Ahab, he
never troubled me; he found a volunteer at his elbow.
M.—I declare you are posing as an archangel. You forget
that you are fallen. I am speaking with the Devil.
S.—Hard words break no bones, and if they did, I have
none to be broken. I am fallen—from Heaven ! which I have
little desire to regain, peopled as it is with slaves and cowards.
I would have sent a breath of freedom through its courts.
I tried, I failed, and I paid the penalty of my daring.
M.—I will not rail at you. You are under a heavier curse
than mine. But pray tell me who are the members of the
human race with whom you deign to be familiar ?
/S'.—I animate all who fight against servitude and somno
lence. The heroes and martyrs of liberty and progress in
every age have drunk of the strength of my spirit. I inspire
the revolter, the scorner, the sceptic, the satirist. I still
distribute the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. I am the soul
of the world. The fire of my inspiration may consume, but
it gives unspeakable rapture. I am the Prometheus of the
universe, and keep it from stagnating under the icy hand
of power. Milton, Groethe, and Byron made me the hero of
their greatest poems, and felt my power in despite of them
selves. Burns spoke of me with a tenderness he never
displayed towards God. Wits and humorists own my sway.
I moved the minds of Aristophanes and Lucian, of Erasmus
and Rabelais, and through the pen of Voltaire I shattered the
mental slavery of Europe. I am the lightning of the human
mind. I level thrones and altars, and annihilate blinding
customs. With the goad of a restless aspiration I urge men
on, until they outgrow faith and fear, until the Slave stands
erect before the Tyrant and defies his curse.
M.—I will not stay to hear you. A feeling creeps through
me like that I experienced when you first tempted me to
break my allegiance to Heaven. Farewell. I must report
these things above.
/S'.—Report them I They are there already. You forget
the Lord’s omniscience, which is a dogma in Heaven, and a
�( 43 )
much contested one on earth. Adieu, Michael. Pay my
respects to your Master. And when you lead the chorus of
flattery, think of the “ wicked rebel ” who prefers freedom in
Hell to slavery in Heaven.
THE FIRST CHRISTMAS.
Christmas comes but once a year, and considering the
gluttony and wine-bibbing which goes on when it does
come, it is perhaps a very good thing that the season occurs
no oftener.
Hundreds of Christmases, and therefore
hundreds of years, have rolled by since the first one ushered
into the world the most surprising baby that ever suckled
and squealed. All the babies born since were commonplace
in comparison with this astonishing youngster; and never,
except when the stars sang together for joy, in a chorus
that would have been well worth a shilling ticket, did
nature show such uncommon interest in any event as in
the appearance of this little lump of human dough. Nature
has probably been sorry for hei’ enthusiasm ever since. She
is not easily excited, and hei’ pace is steadier than a mule’s
But as Jove nods, nature has an occasional fling. She
went into raptures on the first Christmas, and when the
chief person born on that day made his exit from this
mortal stage she went black in the face with panic fear
or hysterical sorrow. Prom that timi she has conducted
herself with exemplary deeorum, and no doubt she is heartily
ashamed of the indiscretions and eccentricities she was
guilty of on the occasions referred to.
The story of the first Christmas ;is partly written in
certain old manuscripts, of questionable date and authorship,
which are regarded with extreme veneration by millions
of people who know next to nothing about them. But
there are many lapses and large deficiencies in the narrative,
�( 44 )
and we are authorised to supply what is wanting. We
claim infallibility, of course, yet we do not deny it to others.
Those who dissent from our version are free to make up
one of their own, and it will doubtless be as infallible as
ours. This may sound strange, but it is quite philosophical
for all that. Do not all the Churches differ from each
other, yet are they not all infallible ? Why should one
infallible man cut another infallible man’s throat or put
him in prison? Why cannot two infallible men dwell
together in the same street like two greengrocers ?
But to our story. It was the first Christmas Eve. A
donkey was patiently wending his way to Jerusalem. On
his back was seated a lady of some seventeen summers,
and by his side walked a sturdy young man. They were
husband and wife. The young man evidently belonged
to the artisan class, and his better half was in that condition
in which ladies love to be who love their lords. Both
looked forward with unusual interest to the birth of the
expected child. They had settled what name it should
be called, so there was no doubt whatever as to its sex.
The day was drawing to an end when they approached
Bethlehem. Making their way to an hotel kept by a relative
of theirs, they asked for accommodation. Mr. Isaacs shook
his head. “I am very sorry, Joe,” he said, “but we are
full up, and the worst of it is every hotel in the place is
in the same state. Over an hour ago I tried desperately
hard to oblige an old customer, a gentleman in the bacon
trade, with a bed for the night, but I tried every hotel
in Bethlehem without success. Fortunately I rigged up
a few extra beds in the stable, and he has taken one of
them. If you like another you are welcome, and egad
Joe! that’s the best I can do for you.”
“Thank you, old fellow,” said Joe, “but Mary is in a
delicate state, as you see, and I would like to fix her up
comfortably. Can’t you go in and see if there is any
gentleman who will go outside to oblige a lady ? ”
Mr. Isaacs returned in five minutes, and said it was no
use. One gentleman had a bad cold, another had the
gout, another the lumbago, and so on. Joseph and Mary
were therefore obliged to return to the stable.
�( <5 )
While Joseph was grooming the donkey Mr. Isaacs
came in and started a curious conversation. “ Joe,” he
began, “ I don’t wish to interfere with your business, but
as a relative and an old friend you will pardon me for
saying that I am a little puzzled; you have only been
married four months, and if Mary is not a mother in a
few days my name isn’t Isaacs.” Joseph did not resent
these remarks, his natural meekness being such that no
insult could evei’ disturb it. With a solemn face he replied
“ My dear Isaacs, there is nothing to pardon. Mary’s baby
is not mine. Its fathar lives in heaven. He is an angel,
or something very high there. Mary has often told me
all about it, but I have such a bad memory for details.
The fact is, however, that Jeshua—we’ve settled his name—
was conceived miraculously, as I’ve heard say some of the
great ones among the heathen were. You may smile, but
I’ve Mary’s word for it, and she ought to know.”
“ My dear fellow,” said Mr. Isaacs, “ if you’re satisfied,
of course I am. I don’t say Mary’s story would go down
with me if I were in your place, but I’ve no right to grumble
if you are contented.”
Thereupon Joseph, with a still more solemn face, replied,
“Well, I was a little incredulous myself at first, but all
my doubts were dispelled after that dream I had. I saw
an angel at my bedside, and he told me that Mary’s story
was quite correct, and I was to marry her. Some of the
neighbors chattered about a Roman soldier, called Pandera,
who used to hang about her house while I was away at
work in the south; but I regard it as nothing but gossip,
and Mary says they are a pack of liars.”
Mr. Isaacs returned to his customers in the hotel, winking
and putting his finger to his nose directly his back was
turned. Meanwhile Joseph and Mary had supper, after
which she felt very unwell, and as luck or providence would
have it, she was confined soon after twelve o’clock of a
bouncing boy. Mr. Isaacs resolutely refused to turn any
customer out of his bed, so the new comer was cradled in
a manger filled with the softest hay.
Soon afterwards a fiery kite-shaped object was seen
in the sky, advancing towards Bethlehem, and finally it
c
�( 46 )
rested on the chimney stack of Mr. Isaacs’ hotel, where
it gave such a lovely illumination that half the town turned
out to see it. Two enterprising spirits, who mounted a
ladder to inspect it closely, and if possible bring it down,
were struck as if by lightning, and were with great difficulty
restored to consciousness by the skill and efforts of a dozen
doctors.
While the people were in a state of bewilderment, six old
gentlemen appeared on the scene. They were attired like the
priests of Persia, and their venerable appearance and long
white beards filled the spectators with reverence. Only one
of them could speak Hebrew, and he acted as interpreter for
the company. “ Where,” he inquired, in a deep majestic
voice, “ is the wondrous babe who is born to-night ? We saw
his portent in the east and have followed it hithei’ nearly six
hundred miles.” Mr. Isaacs informed them that the wondrous
babe was in the stable, at which they were greatly astonished
Four of them said they must have made a mistake, and were
for going home again; but the othei’ two pointed to the
supernatural light on the hotel chimney, and after they had
consumed three bottles of Mr. Isaac’s best Eschol they all
made for the object of their search. Directly they entered
the stable, little Jeshua stood up in the manger, and eyed
them, and as they advanced he accosted them in their own
language. This removed any doubts they entertained, and
they at once knelt down and offered him the presents they
had brought with them. One gave him a cake of scented
soap, another a pretty smelling bottle, another an ivory rattle,
another a silver fork, another a gold spoon, and anothei’ a
cedar plate inlaid with pearl. Little Jeshua took the gifts
very politely, made a graceful little bow, and a neat little
speech in acknowledgment of their kindness. Then, handing
them all over to his mother, to keep till the morning, he sang
with great sweetness “ Lay me in my little bed.”
Soon after daylight some shepherds came in from the hills,
saying they had seen a ghost, who had talked to them in
enigmatical language; they could not understand exactly
what he meant, but they gathered that good times were
coming, when poor shepherds would eat mutton instead of
watching it. On hearing of what happened in the town
�( 47 )
precisely at the same time they were still more astonished.
All Bethlehem was in uproar. Everybody was talking about
little Jeshua, and the presents that were brought him by the
enthusiastic inhabitants filled three large vans when Joseph
and Mary set out again.
ADAM’S BREECHES.
Blush not, fair reader; nothing is coming to offend your
modesty. Ko doubt you have seen pictures of Adam and
Eve in the Garden of Eden, dressed in the primitive costume
of simple innocence, or, as Hans Breitmann says, “ mit.
noddings on.” And perhaps you felt the remarks of some
thick-skinned friend at your side as rather embarrassing.
But our intention is to take the Grand Old Gardener and his
wife at a later stage, when they got clothes, and laid the
foundation of all the tailors’ and milliners’ businesses in
creation.
For some time, nobody knows how long, whether six hours
or sixty years, Adam and Eve never discovered their naked
ness. It never occurred to them that more than one skin
was necessary. And as the climate was exquisite, and the
very roses grew without thorns, they had no need of over
coats or sticking-plaster. But one day they ate an apple, or
for all we know a dozen, and they and the world underwent
a change. “My dear Adam,” said Eve, “you are quite
shocking; why don’t you dress yourself?” And Adam
replied, “ My dear Eve, where is your dressing-gown ?”
Necessity is the mother of invention, and when a woman
wants a dress she will get it somehow. There was no linen
or woollen, so they had recourse to fig leaves, which were
large and substantial. Needles and thread turned up
miraculously, and Eve took to them by instinct. She sat
�( 48 )
down on a grassy mound, and worked away, stitch, stitch,
stitch, while Adam looked on with the ox-eyed stupidity of
his sex in presence of a lady engaged in this, interesting
occupation. In half an hour, more or less, she produced two
pairs of—well, yes, beeeches. The Authorised Version calls
them aprons, but we may believe it was a double-barreled
arrangement. This at any rate was the opinion of the trans
lators of the famous Breeches Bible, first published in folio in
1599, in which the seventh verse of the third chapter of
Genesis reads—“And they sowed fig-tree leaves together,
and made themselves breeches,” from which translation it has
been ingeniously argued “ that the women had as good a
title to the breeches as the men.”
There is no dispute as to the color of Adam’s breeches.
They were green. Hence that universal wit and recondite
scholar, the author of Hudibras, represents the knight’s
attendant, the worthy Ralpho, as *
For mystic learning wondrous able,
In magic Talisman and Cabal,
Whose primitive tradition reaches
As far as Adam’s first green breeches.
Such was the substance and color of Adam’s first unmen
tionables. They were soft and cool, and infinitely preferable
to the coarse articles purveyed in English bathing-machines.
But they were hardly calculated to stand the wear and tear
of the life of labor to which Adam was doomed after the Ball,
and before Jehovah evicted his tenant he took pity on the
poor fellow’s limited wardrobe. “Poor devils,” he said to
himself, “that fig-leaf arrangement won’t last them long.
It’s sure to burst the first time Adam hoes potatoes. I’ll
start them with something stronger. Perhaps the lass will
find out how to rig herself. There’s the first pond for a
looking-glass, and I guess it won’t be long before she gets
Adam to hold a skein of wool. But meanwhile I must do
something for her dolt of a husband. Yes, he shall have a
new pair of breeks.”
And Jehovah made them. Not of shoddy, or good woollen,
but stout leather. Adam changed his green breeches for
brown ones, and when he got them on he said, “ My God,
ain’t they hot1” Eve declared she would never wear a thing
�( 49 )
like that. “ I don’t waddle,” she exclaimed, “ and I won’t
look bandy.” So a committee of seven archangels was
appointed to find a fresh pattern.
Leaving Eve’s outfit alone, and confining our attention to
Adam’s, we may ask a few questions about his second pair of
breeches. Let no one object that such questions are frivolous.
Did not England ring once with tidings of O’Brien’s breeches?
And shall it be thought undignified to take an interest in
Adam’s ? Nor let any one object that such inquiries are
blasphemous. They are are obviously prompted by a spirit
of reverence. What else, indeed, could excite our curiosity
about an old pair of breeches that were worn out many
centuries before the Flood ?
What were the dimensions of Adam’s breeches ? The
Bible does not tell us his altitude, but as he lived nine
hundred and thirty years, and perhaps had a fourth of that
time to grow in, it is not surprising that the Jews regarded
him as excessively tall. His original height was incalculable;
when he stood upright his head reached to the seventh
heaven. But his appearance alarming the angels, the Lord
flattened him down to a thousand cubits. Fifteen hundred
feet, therefore, was his height before he shrank away subse
quently to his expulsion from Paradise. Consequently his
breeches must have been about eight hundred feet long, and
the circumference proportionate. Suits might have been
carved out of them for a whole regiment of Dutchmen.
What animal did Jehovah kill and flay for such an extensive
skin ? Even the mammoth would be ridiculously insufficient.
We presume, therefore, that a wholesale slaughter of beasts
took place, and that Adam’s breeches were made of a multi
tude of skins. These were, of course, of divers colors or
shades, and the garment must have borne some resemblance
(to compare great things with small) to the well-mended
trousers of a poor fisherman, blessed with a careful, industri
ous wife, who makes one pair last him her lifetime by
insinuating fresh patches as the old ones wear away.
Happily the world was not then peopled, or Adam’s life
would have been unbearable. There were no little boys,
about two hundred feet high, to pass exasperating remarks,
D
�( 50 )
such as “ Who’s your tailor ?” “ Does the missis know you’re
out ?” “ Hullo, old Patchwork !”
How long was Jehovah employed? Did he give the
breeches out in sections to the angels, and do the connections
himself? According to the Bible he made them all alone, but
we may well assume an omission in the narrative, and give
him assistance in executing such a liberal order.
How did he kill the animals that furnished the skins ? Did
they die instantaneously at his order, or did he slaughter
them with a knife and a poleaxe ? How did he dress the
skins? Were tan-pits constructed? Were the usual
chemicals employed, or did Jehovah’s science only extend to
the use of bark ?
The ingenious reader will be able to ask a number of ques
tions for himself. Our own must be brought to a close. We
have only to add that the world is impoverished by the loss
of Adam’s breeches. Those who have read Dr. Farrar’s Life
of St Paul will recollect how he sheds rhetoric and tears on
the Apostle’s old cloak. But what was that battered gar
ment in comparison with the subject of this article? Not
only were Adam’s leather breeches the first piece of tailor’swork in the world, but they were worn by the father of all of
us, and made by God himself. Such an article would be
better worth seeing than the coats of kings and emperors.
But, alas, it is lost. Yet the voice of Hope whispers it
may be found. Who knows ? “ There are more things
in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philo
sophy.” Adam’s breeches, too dilapidated for use or
decency, may have been carefully rolled up and preserved
by Seth. Perhaps they were taken into the Ark by
Noah. And when the regions of Mesopotamia are thoroughly
explored, they will perhaps be found in some deep cave
oi’ dry well, carefully wrapped in waterproof, and accu
rately ticketed. Oh what joy when they fall into the hands
of the Christian Evidence Society 1 Then will Engstrom
dance with glee, even as David danced before the Ark of
God; then will the infidel slink away disgraced and crest
fallen ; and then will the Christians cry out to the Huxleys
of the world, “ Oh ye of little faith, who denied the existence
of Adam, come and see his breeches !”
�( 51 )
THE FALL OF EVE.
Do we believe there was a first woman? Certainly not. We
are Darwinians. We cannot allow that there was a particular
female specimen among the ape-like progenitors of the human
race that could be called the first woman, any more than we
can allow that there is a particular moment when a girl
becomes a woman or a youth a man. The first woman we are
concerned with at present is Mrs. Eve, the wife of Mr. Adam,
whom Tennyson calls “ the grand old gardener,” and whose
glorious life, noble actions, and wise and witty sayings, ought
to have been recorded in the book of Genesis, only the author
forgot them. Instead of representing Mr. Adam as a grand
old gardener, the inspired biographer represents him as a
grand old fool. Like Charles II., in Rochester’s epigram,
Mr. Adam never did a wise.thing; but, unlike the merry
monarch, he never said a wise one either. A collection of
his utterances, throughout a long life extending to nearly a
thousand years, would be the smallest and baldest treatise to
be found in the whole world.
Mrs. Eve was the result of an afterthought. God did not
include her in the original scheme of things. He threw her
in afterwards as a make-weight. Poor Mr. Adam was all
alone in his glory in the Gai’den of Eden, king of the dreariest
paradise that ever existed. Monarch of all he surveyed, his
right there was none to dispute: except, perhaps, a big
maned lion, with hot carnivorous jaws, a long-mouthed
alligator, a boa-constrictor, a stinging wasp, or an uncatchable
flea. Walking abroad and surveying his kingdom, he saw
that all the lower animals had partners. Some of the males
had one wife, and some a fine harem, but none was without a
mate. Mr. Adam was the only male unprovided for, and he
was besides a poor orphan. Never had he climbed on his
father’s knee. God was his father, and his legs were too long.
Never had he felt a mother’s kiss on his brow. He watched
the amorous couples frisking about, the doves billing and
�( 52 )
cooing, and his solitary heart yearned for a partner. Lifting
up his hands to the sky, from which his heavenly parent used
occasionally to drop down for a conversation, he cried aloud,
in words that were afterwards used by poor diddled Esau,
“ Bless me, even me also, O my father.”
Day after day poor Mr. Adam pined away. In less than a
month he lost two stone in weight, and the Devil had serious
thoughts of offering to purchase him as a living skeleton for
his show in Pandemonium. At last God took pity on him.
Forgetting that he had pronounced everything good, or not
foreseeing that Moses would be so mean as to record the
mistake, he said it was not good for Mr. Adam to be alone,
and resolved to make the orphan-bachelor a wife. But how
to do it? God had’clean forgotten her, and had used up
every bit of his material. All the nothing he had in stock
when he began to make the universe was exhausted. There
was not a particle of nothing left. So God was obliged to use
over again some of the old material. He put Mr. Adam into
a deep sleep, and carved out one of his ribs. It was the first
surgical operation under chloroform. With this spare rib God
manufactured the first woman. How it was done nobody
knows, but that it was done everybody knows, except a few
wretched, obstinate, perverse infidels, who deserve imprison
ment in this life and hell-fire in the next. Why God took a
rib, instead of a leg or an arm, has never been decided; but
Christian commentators say it was to show two things; first,
that the man Bhould love the woman, as coming from neai’ his
heart, and secondly, that the woman should obey the man, as
she came from under his arm. As our Church of England
marriage service says, the husband is to love and honor his
wife, but the wife is to love, honor and obey her husband 1
Mrs. Eve was probably a very pretty creature, or the
painters have belied her; and some poets have declared that
God was so much in love with her himself, that he regretted
his pledge to give her to Adam. Her attire was remarkably
scanty, but beauty unadorned is adorned the most, and her
future husband’s wardrobe was as limited as her own. This
gentleman woke up at the proper moment, minus a rib and
plus a wife; an awkward, yet after all a pleasant, exchange.
He had never seen a woman before, but he recognised Mrs
�( 53 )
Eve as his wife straight off. It was the shortest courtship
on record.
Directly Mrs. Eve appeared the mischief began—as might
expected. Woman was made for mischief. There is mischief
in her bright eyes, and dimpled smiles, and braided hair.
She sets the world on fire; that is to say, she kindles the
energies of the lubberly creature who calls himself her
superior; makes him look spruce and lively, clean his teeth
and finger nails, put on a clean shirt, and go courting.
According to the old Hebrew story, Old Nick tempted her
to eat the forbidden apples that grew upon Jehovah’s favorite
tree in the orchard of Eden. But this is doubtless a mistake;
a legendary corruption of the original history. Women are
not fonder of apples than men; why, then, should the Devil
wait for the advent of Mrs. Eve before attempting a stroke off
business? John Milton, indeed, following in the wake of
Saint Peter, represents her as the weaker vessel; but this is
sheer nonsense, and surprising nonsense too, when we
recollect that John and Peter were both married.
There cannot be the least doubt that the Devil tempted
Mrs. Eve with a trousseau. She grew tired, and rather
ashamed, of being naked, and yearned to run up a milliner’s
bill. Besides, she noticed that her Hubby was cooling off in
his affection. He did not absolutely neglect her, but he went
fishing more frequently, and had long confabulations with
archangels, to which she was not invited, on account of the
supposed inferiority of her intellect. During the honeymoon
he could never feast his eyes enough on her loveliness; but
after the honeymoon he looked more upon the birds, the trees,
the hills, and the sky. One day, however, using a pool for a
mirror, she did up her hair, which had previously wantoned
over her shoulders. This produced a striking effect on Mr.
Adam. He started with pleasure, and the old honeymoon
look came back to his eyes. But the effect wore off in time,
and poor Mrs. Eve sighed for a fresh means of attack on his
imagination.
It was in this condition that she fell an easy prey to the
Devil. A beautiful morning filled Eden with splendor. The
branches of the trees waved in the refreshing wind ; the birds
flashed amongst them in their gay plumage; animals of
�( 54 )
every variety sported in. their cageless menagerie; and
flowers of every form and hue completed the living picture
of paradise. Mrs. Eve hung fondly upon Mr. Adam’s breast,
but he said he would go fishing, and catch something for
dinner.
When he was out of sight, Old Nick appeared in the form
of a milliner’s assistant. With a smirk and a bow he opened
fire on the citadel. From a large portmanteau he produced a
lovely wardrobe, which he laid on the grass, together with a
book of costumes ; and then withdrew while the lady dressed
herself. In a quarter of an hour she was attired like a
Parisian belle; witching and provoking, from dainty boots to
saucy hat; so that when Old Nick returned he felt downright
jealous, and cursed Mr. Adam for a dull-eyed booby.
“ What have I to pay you ?” asked the lady, with a
delighted smile. “ Nothing, madam, I assure you,” replied
the tradesman. “ It is an honor,” he continued, “ to serve
such an illustrious customer. It will bring me no end of
business in other quarters.” Then, with another smirk and
bow, he retired; exclaiming sotto voce, “ You pay me nothing,
but I guess you’ll have to pay him.11'
When Mr. Adam returned, and found his wife so exquisitely
adorned, he was unable to restrain his rapture. His passion
more than revived ; he doted on this beautiful creature. And
this led to his expulsion from Eden. Jehovah saw himself
completely cut out. When Mr. Adam should have been
casting his eyes to heaven, he was watching the flicker and
listening to the frou-frou of Mrs. Eve’s skirts on the grass;
or drinking delight from her sweet, blue eyes, as they gleamed
through the shadow of her broad-brimmed hat. “ I’ll not
stand it,” said Jehovah, and they were evicted from the
holding.
Dear Mrs. Eve! She did not fall, she rose. The incident
was misrepresented by penurious curmudgeons who hated
the sight of milliners’ bills. Without the “ fall ” of Mrs. Eve
there would have been no clothes, and consequently no
civilisation; for housos are only, as it were, extended suits of
clothes, larger garments to shield us from the weather, and
create for us a home. It was after all better to take part in
the great Battle of Life, with all its difficulties and dangers,
�(
)
than to loll about eternally in the Garden of Eden, chewing
the cud like contemplative cows. “ Doing nothing,” said a
shrewd Yankee, “ is the hardest work I know—if you keep at
it. Mrs. Eve made life more bearable by giving us some
thing, to do. And when the ladies reflect that, if she had not
fallen, and resigned nakedness for clothing, there would
have been no Worth and no Madame Louise, they will rejoice
that she turned her back on the Garden of Eden.
JOSHUA AT JERICHO.
Joshua besieged Jericho. It was a city of fifty thousand
inhabitants, and was five miles in circuit. The defenders
numbered ten thousand men of arms. They were amply
provided with slings and javelins as well as with swords for
a close encounter. Joshua’s army numbered six hundred
thousand, and swarmed on the plain like locusts.
All Jericho was astonished that Joshua’s army did not
attempt to scale the walls. Instead of doing so, they marched
round the city at a safe distance from the strongest slings.
They were headed by their priests, blowing rams’ horns, and
carrying their fetish in a box. Six days this procession
moved round Jericho, the defenders on the walls wondering
at the performance, and shouting to them to come on like
men. On the seventh day the procession went round Jericho
seven times. Seven out of the twelve priests dropped out
from sheer exhaustion, and more than half the army limped
off, faint and footsore, to their tents. Suddenly the five
remaining priests blew their horns with all the breath left in
them, the army emitted a feeble shout, and the walls of
Jericho fell down of themselves. Joshua’s soldiers imme
diately rushed into the city from all points of the compass.
The defenders who were not buried under the ruins of the
�( 56 )
walls, fought gallantly until they were all killed. Then,
with shouts of “ Jahveh, Jahveh!” the besiegers fell upon the
other inhabitants. Men, women, and children were involved
in a promiscuous massacre, Pregnant matrons were ripped
open, babies were tossed out of the windows and caught on
spears. Even the cattle were exterminated. Dogs were
thrust through, and if a few cats escaped it was only owing
to their surprising agility. Night fell upon the doomed city
and covered its bloody streets with a pall of darkness.
Joshua revelled in the king’s palace with the chiefs of
Israel. They drank the royal wines, and regretted that
Jahveh’s orders had necessitated the slaughter of the royal
wives and concubines. The rest of the army, or as many as
could be accommodated, were feasting in the various houses,
with no remorse for the day’s butchery.
But one of Joshua’s soldiers did not share the general
merriment. He was a fine young fellow of twenty-five.
Married only a year ago to a beautiful girl whom he loved
and worshipped, he had revolted at the sight of women
hacked to pieces; and when he saw babies cut and slashed,
he thought of the darling infant at his young wife’s breast,
and turned with loathing from the hideous scene. He was
now wandering about the city, having no taste for the rude
revelry of his callous companions. Suddenly, as he approached
a house nearly ruined by the fallen wall, he heard a moan
from within. He entered and saw a man’s corpse on the
floor, and bending over the body was a shapely young woman
with a baby in her arms. The dead body was that of her
husband, who had been slain in the massacre. She had crept
with her babe into a recess in the upper room, and as the
place looked a ruinous heap the savage soldiers had omitted
to search it. When all was quiet she crawled out of her
hiding-place, and for hours she bent moaning over her hus
band’s corpse.
The young Jewish soldier looked pitifully on the scene at
his feet. The woman raised her eyes to his face, and they
were so like those of his young wife! The baby, ignorant
and innocent, laughed at him and cooed. Clasping the child
to her bosom the woman was about to cry for mercy, when he
whispered, “ Hush 1 I will save you. Come with me. Take
�bread and water with you for tho journey. I will lead you
beyond the city wall, and then you must flee under cover of
the night. Michmash is only ten miles distant. You are
young and strong, and you and youi- babe will be there
before dawn.”
Cautiously they picked their way, and they were just
reaching safety when a door was flung open by a dozen
quarrelling soldiers. The light fell upon the three figures
outside. “ Hullo !” exclaimed they, “ what’s this ? Leading
the girl off, eh ? A baby, too I Were you going to adopt the
little one ? Treason, treason 1 Our order was to slay all,
and leave alive nothing that breatheth.”
The young woman was seized, and half a dozen hands were
laid on the young man, who knew resistance was useless and
therefore offered none. An houi’ later they were brought
before Joshua. The general’s eye kindled at the sight of the
woman’s beauty, but religion conquered and he resolved to
obey his God.
“ What were you doing ?” asked Joshua.
“ Helping her to escape,” answered the young soldier.
“ Why ?” asked the general.
“ Because I have a wife and child of my own, and these are
like them.”
“ Traitor 1” exclaimed Joshua, “ all three of you shall die!”
The woman shrieked, but Joshua’s sword was unsheathed,
and one sweep of his muscular arm sent it through the body
of the child deep into the mother’s breast. Then, without
wiping the bloody weapon, he raised it again. The young
soldier smiled scornfully, and his expression added fresh fuel
to the flame of Joshua’s anger. With one blow he severed
the head from the body; and standing over the three corpses,
his frame dilating with the passion of bloodshed and. piety
*
he exclaimed, “ Thus saith the Lord 1”
�(. 58 )
A
BABY
GOD.
By Thomas Scepticvs.
“Newman described closely some of the incidents of our Lord’s
passion; hethen paused. For a few moments there was a breathless
silence. Then, in a low, clear voice, of which the faintest vibration was
audible in the farthest corner of St. Mary’s, he said, ‘ Now, I bid you
recollect that He to whom these things were done was Almighty God.
It was as if an electric stroke had gone through the church, as if every
person present understood for the first time the meaning of what he had
all his life been saying.”—J. A. Froude, “ The Oxford Counter-Reforma
tion.”
J
Mr. Froude’s account of the realism of Newman’s preaching
is the best justification of the following article. It is difficult
to see why the Infancy of Jesus should not be treated in the
same manner as his Passion. If it was God Almighty to
whom those things were done on the cross, it was equally
God Almighty who was suckled and nursed by Mary of
Nazareth. And in the one'Case, as well as in the other, it is
well for men to understand the meaning of what they read
and repeat.
Eighteen hundred and ninety-one years ago, more or less,
God Almighty turned Theosophist and resolved to be in
carnated. Whether he was incarnated or re-incarnated will
depend on our acceptance or rejection of the Oriental theory
of Avatars. The time had come, which was appointed before
the foundation of the world, for the Creator of this stubborn,
accursed planet to do a great stroke for its salvation. For
four thousand years it had been going to the dogs, or rather
to the Devil. Angels and prophets had been sent to reform
it, but all in vain, and God Almighty determined to come
himself and make a last desperate effort to save this wretched
world from utter bankruptcy.
No doubt the incarnation of God is a “ mystery.” Even
those who can see through millstones are unable to under
stand it. The clergy bid us believe it by faith. Reason, they
admit, is beaten and baffled by this awful truth. Yet the
“ mystery ” is only the theological view of very simple facts.
�( 59 )
It does not alter the facts themselves. The birth, growth,
and training of Jesus were palpable occurrences, whatevei’ we
may think as to his divinity.
God Almighty decided to be born, but he also decided to
be born in an uncommon way. True, it was the way adopted
by many heroes and demi-gods of the Pagan pantheon, and
the more ancient mythologies of Egypt and India. But it
was an uncommon way as the world goes. A virgin, though
a married woman, was selected to be his mother. He worked
a miracle upon her; he become, so to speak, his own father;
and though she was at first his child, he afterwards became
hers.
The miracle ended at the moment of his conception. From
that time his incarnation followed the natural order of things.
His gestation was like another baby’s, and in due course—
for such an august birth was not to be hurried—he came into
the daylight of the world, a little red mass of helpless flesh.
He was probably tended by an old Jewish midwife, who never
suspected what she was handling. She washed him, undis
turbed by his faint squealings ; and wrapped him up in flann el,
without the faintest idea that she was manipulating God
Almighty. Had she been suddenly informed that she was
holding her Creator, she would probably have dropped him
in a fright and injured his spine.
Presently the midwife’s services were dispensed with, and
Mary had the baby to herself. She nourished God Almighty
at her breast, for feeding-bottles were not then invented, and
the divine child ©&uld scarcely be passed over to a wet nurse
—perhaps a bouncing, big-eyed Jewess who had suffered a
“ misfortune.”
Here we must pause to ^quarrel with Christian painters.
They are too idealistic. They scorn honest realism. Never do
they depict this baby God at his lacteal repast. He always looks
as if fed six weeks in advance. Perhaps they think a mother’s
suckling her child, which even old Cobbett called the most
beautiful and holy sight on earth, is beneath the dignity of
the subject. But the baby God went through these little
experiences, with the regularity and pleasure of a common
infant. Facts, gentlemen, are facts; and to ignore them is
fraud or hypocrisy.
�( 60 )
According to the story of the raising of Lazarus, Jesus wept,
though we never read that he laughed; in fact, he appears to
have been a remarkably serious young man. May be, how
ever, he smiled now and then in Mary’s arms ; anyhow, it is
safe to say he cried. We may presume he went through all
the infantile processes like the rest of us ; otherwise his being
born on earth as a human being, was a mockery, a delusion,
and a snare.
God Almighty mewled and puked in Mary’s arms. He
screamed when he was angry or cross, or when his little
stomach was overcharged, or when a nasty pin was pricking
him. He cooed when he was happy and comfortable. He
kicked his legs aimlessly, dashed his little fists into space,
scratched his little nose, and filled his mouth with his fingers.
A million to one he largely increased the family washing-bill.
By and bye God cut his teeth, and had pimples and rash.
Probably he had the measles. Eighteen hundred years later
he would have been vaccinated. Nasty stuff from another
baby’s arm, or from an afflicted calf, would have been inserted
in the arm of God Almighty.
Later on God Almighty crept about on all fours with his
stern higher than his front. Then he stood upright by a
chair and learned to walk by means of the furniture. Fre
quently he fell down upon the part he displayed to Moses.
He stole into Joseph’s workshop, and God Almighty cut his
fingers with chisels and jack-planes. Now and then he sat
on a saw, and got up with undignified haste. God Almighty
also learned to talk. At first you couldn’t tell whether he
was talking Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek, or North Ameriean
Indian. But he improved as he went along, and God
could at last speak as good Hebrew, with a Galilean accent,
as any other juvenile of the same age.
Finally, God Almighty went to school, where bigger boys
fagged him and sometimes punched his head. It is con
ceivable that God Almighty bled at the nose and wore a
black eye.
All this is very “ blasphemous.” But whose is the “ blas
phemy ” ? Not ours. We do not believe in the deity of
Jesus Christ. The “ blasphemy ”—and in this case it is real
blasphemy—lies at the door of those who say that Mary’s
�( 61 )
baby was very God of very God. All we have done is to
follow Newman’s example; and as he dwelt on the facts of
the Crucifixion, so we have dwelt on the facts of Christ’s
infancy. We have only related what must have happened.
Who dares dispute it ? No one. The very idea is an
absurdity. Why then should we be reviled ? Is it not the
function of true art to hold the mirror up to nature ? And
is not this the head and front of our offending ? We have
simply taken the Christian at his word. We have assumed
that he believes what he professes. We have accepted the
dogma that the deity was born of the Virgin Mary; we have
followed, step by step, his infantile career ; and we exclaim
“ Christians, behold your God !”
We decline responsibility for what the mirror reflects. We
merely hold it up. And this we shall continue to do. Here
and there we shall arrest a superstitionist and make him
think about his faith; and that will console us for all the
insults and sufferings we have experienced in the service of
Truth.
JUDAS ISCARIOT.
A Sermon by the Rev. Francis Subtle.
The subject of our sermon this evening is a character that
has almost universally been held up to hatred and contempt.
Artists have invariably represented him as ill-looking and
malignant. His very hair has been painted red as the symbol
of treachery; and this fact has been seized upon by one of
the greatest of English satirists, who described a bookseller
with whom he quarrelled as having
Two left legs and Judas-colored hair.
On the other hand, however, Judas has been partially vin
�( 62 )
dicated by Thomas De Quincey and Benjamin Disraeli; and a
clergyman of our own Church of England has made him the
hero of a Romance, in which the sin of Judas is treated as the
precipitancy of a worldly-minded man, who only desired to
hasten the temporal reign of our Blessed Savioi’ as King of
the Jews.
It will be my duty this evening to expain to you the real
character of Judas; what were his motives in the betrayal of
his Master; and what part he actually played in the mighty
and mysterious drama of the crucifixion of the Son of God.
But before I proceed with this task I must pause to rebut
an infamous piece of scoffing which I recently met with in an
infidel publication. You will remember that among the
brothers of Jesus, according to the flesh, was one bearing the
name of our Lord’s betrayer. Now the infidel writer
referred to indulged in the impious surmise that Judas, the
brother of Jesus, and Judas, the betrayer of the Son of God,
were one and the same person ; and that it was so arranged
by Jehovah, with the Jewish econony that might be expected
of him, in order to keep the blood-money in the family.
Such a wicked speculation will naturally horrify this devout
congregation; and I only mention it, first to show you what
awful blasphemy is still allowed by the too-indulgent laws of
this nation, and secondly to contradict the foolish idea that
the two Judases in the Gospels were identical. They were
entirely different persons, beloved; and you must so regard
them if you hope to be saved.
Let us now return to our proper subject. And first let me
clear away certain difficulties that beset my path at the very
outset.
When the Savior partook of the Last Supper with his dis
ciples he remarked, “ I have chosen you twelve, and one of
you is a Devil.” Now this is clear and emphatic, and is usually
regarded as decisive of the character of Judas. And, indeed,
it would be so, if our Lord always spoke as God. But he
sometimes spoke as Man. When he prayed in Gethsemane
that the cup of agony might pass from him, and when he
cried out on the cross “ My God, my God, why hast thou for
saken me ?” it was the expression of his human infirmity, not
the voice of his divine omnipotence. And so, when he called
�( 63 )
Judas a Devil, he spoke with the passion of a mortal man,
who knew that he must die, yet relucted at martyrdom, and
was wroth with the human instrument of his fate. In the
same way we must understand the references to Judas as
being possessed by Satan. The evangelists followed the lead
of their Master; and on this occasion, as on others in the
Gospels, they somewhat misunderstood his language.
After this it will not be expected that I should be deterred
by the reference to Judas in the Acts of the Apostles, or by
the denunciations of the early Fathers. No age is ever per
fect in the interpretation of Scripture. From time to time a
fresh light is shed upon its holy pages, and one of these
flashes of heavenly illumination (as I humbly opine) has
enabled me to see in the story of Judas what has been hidden
for so many centuries from the greatest and most penetrating
divines of the Church of Christ,
It is evident to my apprehension that Judas was not insti
gated by malicious motives. Evidently, however, he had a
disposition to think for himself; and is it any wonder that
*
finally, he ventured to act for himself ? He was the only one
of the twelve disciples that ever criticised his Master. It is
recorded that when a certain woman anointed the Savior’s
head with a precious alabaster box of ointment, Judas inquired
“ Why was not this sold for much money, and given to the
poor ?” He had heard his Master enjoin the selling of pro
perty, and the giving of the proceeds to the poor; and to his
short-sighted understanding it appeared that his Master had
violated his own teaching. This was presumptuous on his
part; he had no right to criticise his Lord; yet his presump
tion was not malignancy; on the contrary, it would seem that
he was afflicted at the thought of wasting what might have
alleviated the miseries of indigence.
Humanly speaking, this presumption of Judas was the
motive of his apparent treachery. It is idle to suppose that
he would have sold his Master for the paltry sum of thirty
half-crowns if he were merely driving a selfish bargain. A
hundred times—yea, perhaps a thousand times—that amount
might have been exacted from the Jewish Sanhedrim as the
price of one whom they were so anxious to remove. Judas
forewent that price; he took only £3 15s. at the very highest
�( 64 )
estimate ; and his abstention from the fair profit of treachery
must be accounted for on other than mercenary grounds.
What was his motive then ? Why this. He observed the
reluctance of Jesus to go to Jerusalem; his shrinking from
his approaching death; his desire to turn away, if possible,
from the bitter cup. Nay, the very fact that Jesus, after
going to Jerusalem, only spent the daytime in the holy city,
and repaired by night to a place of shelter beyond the walls,
was a clear indication to Judas that, even at the eleventh
hour, his Master might fly from danger. Accordingly he
resolved to push him over the brink of the precipice. He took
a small sum of money from the Sanhedrim to give his action a
color of sincerity, and then led an armed party to arrest his
Master. Thus the death of Jesus was assured, and with it
the success of the great scheme of Redemption.
But why, it will be asked, did Judas bring back the money
in a fit of repentance, and afterwards hang himself? The
obvious answer is, that his mind suffered a reaction. His
courage sustained him to the critical point; then it deserted
him, and left him a prey to afflicting ideas of his Master’s
sufferings. He hated himself, loathed the sight of the
money, and, in a paroxysm of despair, laid violent hands
upon his own life.
Thus did Judas share to the very end in the drama of the
Crucifixion. He died as well as his Master. Both of them
were, indeed, under a divine compulsion. Jesus had to be
crucified, and Judas had to betray him, otherwise there would
have been no crucifixion. Presumptuous as the act of Judas
was, speaking humanly, it was divinely appointed for the
salvation of mankind. Think, beloved, oh think, what must
have happened if Judas had not played his part. Christ
would not have died to save us, and we should all have been
damned! Let us, therefore, cease railing at this misunder
stood character; let us remember that he was indispensable
to the Redemption; let us treasure his memory as that of an
illustrious benefactor; let us anticipate the time when his
name will be added to the calendar, and the loftiest of saints
will be Saint Judas Iscariot.
��Works by G. W. Foote.
“THE FREETHINKER”
Edited by G. W. FOOTE.
Circulates throughout the World.
Published every Thursday.
R. Fordcr, 28 Stonecutter Street, London, EC.
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to
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Bound in cloth
... 1
Is Socialism Sound ? ... 1
Four Nights’ Public De
bate with Annie Besant.
Bound in cloth
... 2
Christianity^; Secularism 1
Four nights’ Public De
bate with the Rev. Dr.
Janies McCann.
Bound in cloth
... 1
Darwin on God ...
... 0
Bound in cloth
... 1
Reminiscences of Charles
Bradlaugh ...
... 0
Infidel Death-Beds
... 0
Bound in cloth
... 1
Letters to the Clergy ... 1
Defence of Free Speech 6
Three Hours’ Address to
the Jury before Lord
Coleridge.
The Bible God ...
... 0
Letters to Jesus Christ... 0
Philosophy of Secularism 0
Atheism and Morality ... 0
Ingersollism . .
... 0
.?
O O
Impregnable Rock of Holy
■' Scripture.
0 Christianitvand Progress 0
Reply to Mr. Gladstone.
Mrs. Besant’s Theosophy 0
, A Candid Criticism.
Secularism & Theosophy 0
Rejoinder to Mrs. Besant.
The New Cagliostro ... 0
6
Open Letter to Madame
0
Blavatsky.
The Folly of Prayer ... 0
The Impossible Creed ... 0
0
Open Letter to Bishop
0 Magee on the Sermon on
the Mount.
Salvation Syrup, or Light
on Darkest England,... 0
6 A Re ply to General Booth
6 What, Was Christ ?
... 0
0
A Reply to J. 8. Mill.
The Shadow of the Sword 0
6
A Moral and Statis ical
8
Essay on War.
3 Royal Paupers ...
... 0
0 The Dying Atheist
... 0
... 0
4 Was Jesus Insane ?
Is the Bible Inspired ?... 0
A Criticism of Mt® Mundi.
Bible Romances (revised) 0
2
double, numbers
... 0
4 Bible Heroes (1st series) 1
3 Bible Heroes (2nd series) 1
2
Both complete, in cloth 2
2 Rome or Atheism
... 0
y a
The Grand Old Book ... 1
A Reply to the Grand
Old Man. An Exhaus
tive Answer tothe Right
Bon. W. E Gladstone's
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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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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Comic sermons and other fantasias
Creator
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Foote, G. W. (George William) [1850-1915]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 64 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Contents: A sermon on summer -- A mad sermon -- A sermon on sin -- A bishop in the workhouse -- A Christmas sermon -- Christmas Eve in Heaven -- Bishop Trimmer's Sunday diary -- The Judge and the Devil -- Satan and Michael -- The first Christmas -- Adam's breeches -- The fall of Eve -- Joshua at Jericho -- A baby God -- Judas Iscariot. Stamp of M. Steinberger,4, 5 & 6 Great St Helens, London E.C., on front cover. Works by author listed on back cover. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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R. Forder
Date
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1892
Identifier
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N233
Subject
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Sermons
Free thought
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 (Comic sermons and other fantasias), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Free Thought
Humour
NSS
Sermons