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AN ANSWER
TO THE
ARGUMENTS OF HUME, LECKY,
AND OTHERS,
AGAINST MIRACLES,
BY
ALFRED R. WALLACE,
Author of “ TJie Malay Archipelago" and “ Contributions to the
Theory of Natural Selection."
PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION, BY JAMES BEVERIDGE,
FULL WOOD’S RENTS, HIGH HOLBOBN.
1871.
��AN ANSWER
TO THE
ARGUMENTS OF HUME, LECKY, AND OTHERS,
AGAINST MIRACLES
It is now generally admitted, that those opinions and
beliefs in which men have been educated generation
after generation, and which have thus come to form
part of their mental nature, are especially liable to be
erroneous, because they keep alive and perpetuate the
ideas and prejudices of a bygone and less enlightened
age. It is therefore in the interest of truth, that every
doctrine or belief, however well established or sacred
they may appear to be, should at certain intervals be
challenged, to arm themselves with such facts and
reasonings as they possess, to meet their opponents in
the open field of controversy, and do battle for their
right to live. Nor can any exemption be claimed in
favour of those beliefs which are the product of modern
civilisation, and which have, for several generations,
been held unquestioned by the great mass of the edu
cated community ; for the prejudice in their favour will
be proportionately great, and, as was the case with the
doctrines of Aristotle and the dogmas of the schoolman,
they may live on by mere weight of authority and force
of habit, long after they have been shown to be opposed
alike to fact and to reason. There have been times when
popular beliefs were defended by the terrors of the law,
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and when the sceptic could only attack them at the
peril of his life. Now we all admit that truth can take
care of itself, and that only error needs protection. But
there is another mode of defence which equally implies
a claim to certain and absolute truth, and which is
therefore equally unworthy and unphilosophical—that
of ridicule, misrepresentation, or a contemptuous
refusal to discuss the question at all. This method is
used among us even now; for there is one belief, or
rather disbelief, whose advocates claim more than papal
infallibility, by refusing to examine the evidence brought
against it, and by alleging general arguments which
have been in use for two centuries to prove that it
cannot be erroneous. The belief to which I allude is,
that all alleged miracles are false,—that what is com
monly understood by the term supernatural does not
exist, or if it does is incapable of proof by any amount
of human testimony,—that all the phenomena we can
have cognisance of depend on ascertainable physical
laws, and that no other intelligent beings than man
and the inferior animals can or do act upon our material
world. These views have been now held almost un
questioned for many generations; they are inculcated
as an essential part of a liberal education ; they are
popular, and are held to be one of the indications of
our intellectual advancement; and they have become so
much a part of our mental nature that all facts and
arguments brought against them are either ignored as
unworthy of serious consideration, or listened to with
undisguised contempt. Now this frame of mind is
certainly not one favourable to the discovery of truth,
and strikingly resembles that by which, in former ages,
systems of error have been fostered and maintained.
The time has, therefore, come when it must be called
upon to justify itself.
This is the more necessary because the doctrine,
whether true or false, actually rests upon a most unsafe
and rotten foundation. I propose to show that the
best arguments hitherto relied upon to prove it are, one
and all, fallacious, and prove nothing of the kind. But
a theory or belief may be supported by very bad argu
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ments, and yet be true ; while it may be supported by
some good arguments, and yet • be false. But there
never was a true theory which had no good arguments
to support it. If therefore all the arguments hitherto
used against miracles in general can be shown to be
bad, it will behove sceptics to discover good ones ; and
if they cannot do so, the evidence in favour of miracles
must be fairly met and judged on its own merits, not
ruled out of court as it is now.
It will be perceived, therefore, that my present pur
pose is to clear the ground for the discussion of the
great question of the so-called supernatural. I shall
not attempt to bring arguments either for or against the
main proposition, but shall confine myself to an examina
tion of the allegations and the reasonings which have been
supposed to settle the whole question on general grounds.
One of the most remarkable works of the great
Scotch philosopher, David Hume is, An Inquiry con
cerning Human Understanding, and the tenth chapter
of this work is On Miracles, in which occur the argu
ments which are so often quoted to show that no evi
dence can prove a miracle. Hume himself had a very
high opinion of this part of his work, for he says at the
beginning of the chapter, “ I flatter myself that I have
discovered an argument which, if just, will with the
wise and learned be an everlasting check to all kinds of
superstitious delusion, and consequently will be useful
as long as the world endures; for so long, I presume,
will the accounts of miracles and prodigies be found in
all history, sacred and profane.”
DEFINITION OF THE TEEM “ MIRACLE.”
After a few general observations on the nature of
evidence and the value of human testimony in different
cases, he proceeds to define what he means by a miracle.
And here at the very beginning of the subject we find
that we have to take objection to Hume’s definition of a
miracle, which exhibits unfounded assumptions and
false premises. He gives two definitions in different
parts of his essay. The first is, “ A miracle is a viola
tion of the laws of nature.” The second is, “ A miracle
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is a transgression of a law of nature by a particular
volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some
invisible agent.” Now both these definitions are bad
or imperfect. The first assumes, that we know all the
laws of nature, that the particular effect could not be
produced by some unknown law of nature overcoming
the law we do know ; it assumes, also, that if any in
visible intelligent being held an apple suspended in the
air, that act would violate the law of gravity. The
second is not precise; it should be “ some invisible
intelligent agent,” otherwise the action of galvanism or
electricity, when these agents were first discovered, and
before they were ascertained to form part of the order
of nature, would answer accurately to this definition of
a miracle. The words. “ violation ” and “ transgression ”
are both improperly used, and really beg the question
by the definition. How does Hume know that any
particular miracle is a violation of a law of nature ?
He assumes this without a shadow of proof, and on
these words, as we shall see, rests his whole argument.
Before proceeding further, it is necessary for us to
consider what is the true definition of a miracle, or
what is most commonly meant by that word. A miracle,
as distinguished from a new and unheard of natural
phenomenon, supposes an intelligent superhuman agent
either visible or invisible. It is not necessary that what
is done should be beyond the power of man to do : the
simplest action, if performed independently of human
or visible agency, such as a teacup lifted in the air at
request, as by an invisible hand and without assignable
cause, would be universally admitted to be a miracle;
as much so as the lifting of a house into the air, the
instantaneous healing of a wound, or the instantaneous
production of an elaborate drawing. My definition of
a miracle therefore is as follows :—“ Any act or event
implying the existence and agency of superhuman in
telligences,” considering the human soul or spirit, if
manifested out of the body, as one of these superhuman
intelligencies. This definition is more complete than
that of Hume, and defines more accurately the essence
of that which is commonly termed a miracle.
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THE EVIDENCE OF THE REALITY OF MIRACLES.
We now have to consider Hume’s arguments.
first is as follows :—
The
“ A miracle is a violation of the Ians of nature; and as a
firm and unalterable experience has established these laws,
the proof against a miracle, from the very nature, of the fact,
is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be
imagined. Why is it more than probable that all men must die;
that lead cannot of itself remain suspended in the air; that
fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water ; unless it
be, that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature,
and there is required a violation of these Ians, or, in other
words a miracle, to prevent them ? Nothing is esteemed a
miracle, if it ever happened in the common course of nature.
It is no miracle that a man seemingly in good health should
die on a sudden ; because such a kind of death, though more
unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to
happen. But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to
life ; because that has never been observed in any age or coun
try. There must, therefore, be an uniform experience against
every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit
that appellation. And as an uniform experience amounts to a
proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of
the fact, against the existence of any miracle ; nor can such a
proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by
an opposite proof, which is superior.”
This argument is radically fallacious, because if it
were sound, no perfectly new fact could ever be proved,
since the first and each succeeding witness would be
assumed to have universal experience against him.
Such a simple fact as the existence of flying fish could
never be proved, if Hume’s argument is a good one;
for the first man who saw and described one, would
have the universal experience against him that fish do
not fly, or make any approach to flying, and his evi
dence being rejected, the same argument would apply to
the second, and to every subsequent witness, and thus
no man at the present day who has not seen a flying
fish ought to believe that such things exist.
Again, painless operations in a state produced by
mere passes of the hand, were, twenty-five years ago,
maintained to be contrary to the laws of nature, con
trary to all human experience, and therefore incredible.
On Hume’s principles they were miracles, and no
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amount of testimony could ever prove them to be real.
But miracles do not stand alone, single facts opposed to
uniform experience. Reputed miracles abound in all
periods of history; every one has a host of others
leading up to it; and every one has strictly analogous
facts testified to at the present day. The uniform op
posing experience, therefore, on which Hume lays so
much stress does not exist. What, for instance, can
be a more striking miracle than the levitation 01
raising of the human body into' the air without visible
cause, yet this fact has been testified to during a long
series of centuries.
A few well known examples are those of St. Francis
d’Assisi, who was often seen by many persons to rise
in the air, and the fact is testified to by his secretary,
who could only reach his feet. Saint Theresa, a nun in
a convent in Spain, was often raised into the air in the
sight of all the sisterhood. Lord Orrery and Mr.
Valentine Greatorex both informed Dr. Henry More
and Mr. Glanvil, that at Lord Conway’s house at
Ragley in Ireland, a gentleman’s butler, in their pre
sence and in broad daylight, rose into the air and floated
about the room above their heads. This is related by
Glanvil in his Sadducismus Triumphatus. A similai
fact is narrated by eyewitnesses of Ignatius de Loyola :
and Mr. Madden, in his life of Savonarola, after narrat
ing a similar circumstance of that saint, remarks, that
similar phenomena are related in numerous instances,
and that the evidence upon which some of the narra
tives rest, is as reliable as any human testimony can be.
Butler, in his Lives of the Saints, says that many such
facts are related by persons of undoubted veracity, who
testify that they themselves were eyewitnesses of them.
So, we all know that at least fifty persons of high
character may be found in London, who will testify
that they have seen the same thing happen to Mr.
Home. I do not adduce this testimony as proving that
the circumstances related really took place; I merely
bring it forward now to show how utterly unfounded is
Hume’s argument, which rests upon universal testi
mony on the one side, and no testimony on the other.
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THE CONTBADICTOBY NATUBE OF HUME’S ESSAY.
I now have to show that in Hume’s efforts to prove
his point, he contradicts himself in a manner so gross
and complete, as is perhaps not to be found in the
works of any other eminent author. The first passage
I will quote is as follows :—
“ For, first, there is not to be found, in all history, any mira
cle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unques
tioned good sense, education, and learning, as to secure us
against all delusion in themselves ; of such undoubted integrity,
as to place them beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive
others ; of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind,
as to have a great deal to lose in case of their being detected
in any falsehood ; and at the same time attesting facts per
formed in such a public manner, and in so celebrated apa/rt of
the world, as to render the detection unavoidable : all which
circumstances are requisite to give us a full assurance in the
testimony of men.”
A few pages further on, we find this passage :—
“ There surely never was a greater number of miracles as
cribed to one person, than those which were lately said to
have been wrought in France upon the tomb of Abbe Paris,
the famous Jansenist, with whose sanctity the people were so
long deluded. The curing of the sick, giving hearing to the
deaf, and sight to the blind, were everywhere talked of as the
usual effects of that holy sepulchre. But what is more extra
ordinary, many of the miracles were immediately proved upon
the spot, before judges of unquestioned integrity, attested by
witnesses of credit and distinction, in a learned age, and on
the most eminent theatre that is non in the norld. Nor is this
all. A relation of them was published and dispersed every
where ; nor were the Jesuits, though a learned body, supported
by the civil magistrate, and determined enemies to those
opinions, in whose favour the miracles were said to have been
wrought, ever able distinctly to refute or detect them. Where
shall we find such a number of circumstances, agreeing to the
corroboration of one fact ? And what have we to oppose to
such a cloud of witnesses, but the absolute impossibility, or
miraculous nature of the events which they relate ? And this,
surely, in the eyes of all reasonable people, will alone be re
garded as a sufficient refutation.”
In the second passage he affirms the existence of
every single fact and quality which in the first passage
he declared never existed, and he entirely changes his
ground of argument by appealing to the inherent impos
�10
sibility of the fact, andnot at all to the insufficiency of the
evidence. He even makes this contradiction still more
remarkable by a note which he has himself given to
this passage, a portion of which is as follows : —
“ This book was writ by Mons. Montgeron, councillor or
judge of the parliament of Paris, a man of figure and charac-i
ter, who was also a martyr to the cause, and is now said to be
somewhere in a dungeon on account of his book. . . .
“Many of the miracles of Abbe Paris were proved immedi
ately by witnesses before the officiality or bishop’s court at
Paris, under the eye of Cardinal Ncailles ; whose character for
integrity and capacity was never contested, even by his ene
mies.
“ His successor in the archbishopric was an enemy to the Jan
senists, and for that reason promoted to the see by the court.
Yet twenty-two rectors or cures of Paris, with infinite earnest
ness, press him to examine those miracles, which they assert to
be known to the whole world, and indisputably certain; but
he wisely forbore. . . .
“ All who have been in France about that time have heard of
the reputation of Mons. Herault, the lieutenant of Police,
whose vigilance, penetration, activity, and extensive intelli-l
gence, have been much talked of. This magistrate who, by
the nature of his office, is almost absolute, was invested with
full powers, on purpose to suppress or discredit these miracles;
and he frequently seized immediately, and examined the wit
nesses and subjects to them : but never could reach anything
satisfactory against them.
“ In the case of Mademoiselle Thibaut he sent the famous De
Sylva to examine her ; whose evidence is very curious. The
physician declares, that it was impossible that she could have
been so ill as was proved by witnesses ; because it was impos
sible she could in so short a time have recovered so perfectly
as he found her. He reasoned like a man of sense, from
natural causes; but the opposite party told him, that the whole
was a miracle, and that his evidence was the very best proof
of it. , . .
“ No less a man than the Due de Chatillon, a duke and peer
of France, of the highest rank and family, gives evidence of a
miraculous cure performed upon a servant of his, who had
lived several years in his house with a visible and palpable in
firmity.
“ I shall conclude with observing, that no clergy are more
celebrated for strictness of life and manners than the regular
clergy of France, particularly the rectors or cuiAs of Paris, who
bear testimony to these impostures.
“ The learning, genius, and probity of the gentlemen, and
the austerity of the nuns of Port-Royal, have been much cele
brated all over Europe. Yet they all give evidence for a
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miracle, wrought on the niece of the famous Pascal, whose
sanctity of life, as well as extraordinary capacity, is well
known. The famous Racine gives an account of this miracle
in his famous history of Port-Royal, and fortifies it with all
the proofs, which a multitude of nuns, priests, physicians, and
men of the world, all of them of undoubted credit, could be
stow upon it. Several men of letters, particularly the Bishop
of Tournay, thought this miracle so certain, as to employ it in
the refutation of Atheists and Freethinkers. The queen-regent
of France, who was extremely prejudiced, against the PortRoyal, sent her own physician to examine the miracle, who
returned an absolute convert. In short the supernatural cure
was so incontestible, that it saved, for a time, that famous
monastery from the ruin with which it was threatened by the
Jesuits. Had it been a cheat, it had certainly been detected
by such sagacious and powerful antagonists, and must have
hastened the ruin of the contrivers."
It seems almost incredible that this can have been
written by the great sceptic David Hume, and written
in the same work in which he has already affirmed that
in all history no such evidence is to be found. In order
to show how very remarkable the evidence is to which
he alludes, I think it well to give you one of the cases
in greater detail, as recorded in the original work of
Montgeron, and quoted in Mr. William Howitt’s History
of the Supernatural:—
“ Mademoiselle Coirin was afflicted, amongst other ailments,
with a cancer in the left breast, for twelve years. The breast
was destroyed by it, and came away in a mass ; the effluvia
from the cancer was horrible, and the whole blood of the
system was pronounced infected by it. Every physician pro
nounced the case utterly incurable, yet, by a visit to the tomb,
she was perfectly cured ; and, what was more astonishing, the
breast and nipple were wholly restored, with the skin pure
and fresh, and free from any trace of scar. This case was
known to the highest people in the realm. When the miracle
was denied, Mademoiselle Coirin went to Paris, was examined
by the royal physician, and made a formal deposition of her
cure before a public notary. Mademoiselle Coirin was daughter
of an officer of the royal household, and had two brothers in
attendance on the person of the king. The testimonies of the
doctors are of the most decisive kind. M. Gaulard, physician
to the king, deposed officially, that, ‘ to restore a nipple abso
lutely destroyed, and separated from the breast, was an actual
creation, because a nipple is not merely a continuity of the
vessels of the breast, but a particular body, which is of a distinct
and peculiar organisation.’ M. Souchay, surgeon to the Prince
of Conti, not only pronounced the cancer incurable, but, having
�12
examined the breast after the cure, went of himself to the public
notary, and made a formal deposition ‘ that the cure was per
fect that each breast had its nipple in its natural form and
condition, with the colours and attributes proper to those
parts.’ Such also are the testimonies of Seguier, the surgeon
of the hospital at Nanterre ; of M. Deshieres, surgeon to the
Duchess of Berry • of M. Hequet, one of the most celebrated
surgeons in France; and numbers of others, as well as of
public officers and parties of the greatest reputation, univer
sally known ; all of whose depositions are officially and fully
given by Montgeron.”
This is only one out of a great number of cases
equally marvellous, and equally well attested, and we
therefore cannot be surprised at Hume’s being obliged
to give up the argument of the insufficiency of the evi
dence for miracles and of the uniform experience against
them, the wonder being that he ever put forth an argu
ment which he was himself able to refute so completely.
We now have another argument which Hume brings
forward, but which is, if possible, still weaker than the
last. He says :—
“I may add, as a fourth reason, which diminishes the au
thority of prodigies, that there is no testimony for any, even
those which have not been expressly detected, that is not op
posed by any infinite number of witnesses ; so that not only
the miracle destroys the credit of testimony, but the testimony
destroys itself. To make this the better understood, let us
consider that, in matters of religion, whatever is different is
contrary; and that it is impossible the religions of ancient
Borne, of Turkey, and Siam, and of China, should, all of them,
be established on any solid foundation. Everymiracle, therefore,
pretended to have been wrought in any of these religions (and
all of them abound in miracles), as its direct scope is to estab
lish the particular system to which it is attributed ; so has it
the same force, though more indirectly, to overthrow every
other system. In destroying a rival system, it likewise des
troys the credit of those miracles on which that system was
established ; so that all the prodigies of different religions are
to be regarded as contrary facts ; and the evidences of these
prodigies, whether weak or strong, as opposite to each other.
According to this method of reasoning, when we believe any
miracle of Mahomet or his successors, we have for our war
rant the testimony of a few barbarous Arabians. And, on the
other hand, we are to regard the authority of Titus Livius,
Plutarch, Tacitus, and, in short, of all the authors and wit
nesses, Grecian, Chinese, and Roman Catholic, who have
related any miracle in their particular religion ; I say, we are
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to regard their testimony in the same light as if they had
mentioned that Mahometan miracle, and had in express terms
contradicted it, with the sam e certainty as they have for the
miracle they relate.”
Now this argument, if argument it can be called,
rests upon the extraordinary assumption that a miracle,
if real, can only come from God, and must therefore
support only a true religion. It assumes also that
religions cannot be true unless given by God. Mr.
Hume assumes, therefore, to know that nothing which
we term a miracle can possibly be performed by any of
the probably infinite number of intelligent beings who
may exist in the universe between ourselves and the
Deity. He confounds the evidence for the fact with the
theories to account for the fact, and most illogically and
unphilosophically argues, that if the theories lead to con
tradictions, the facts themselves do not exist.
I think, therefore, that I have now shown that—1.
Hume gives a false definition of miracles, which begs
the question of their possibility. 2. He states the fal
lacy that miracles are isolated facts, to which the entire
course of human testimony is opposed. 3. He delibe
rately and absolutely contradicts himself as to the
amount and quality of the testimony in favour of
miracles. 4. He propounds the palpable fallacy as to
miracles connected with opposing religions destroying
each other.
MODERN OBJECTIONS TO MIRACLES.
We will now proceed to some of the more modern
arguments against miracles. One of the most popular
modern objections consists of making a supposition and
drawing an inference, which looks like a dilemma, but
which is really none at all.
This argument has been put in several forms. One
is, “ If a man tells me he came from York by the tele
graph-wire, I do not believe him. If fifty men tell me
they came from York by telegraph wires, I do not
believe them. If any number of men tell me the same,
I do not believe them. Therefore, Mr. Home did not
float in the air, notwithstanding any amount of testimony you may bring to prove it.”
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Another is, “ If a man tells me that he saw the lion
on Northumberland-house descend into Trafalgar-square
and drink water from the fountains, I should not believe
him. If fifty men, or any number of men, informed
me of the same thing, I should still not believe them.”
Hence it is inferred that there are certain things so
absurd and so incredible, that no amount of testimony
could possibly make a sane man believe them.
Now, these illustrations look like arguments, and at
first sight it is not easy to see the proper way to answer
them ; but the fact is that they are utter fallacies, be
cause their whole force depends upon an assumed pro
position which has never been proved, and which I
challenge anyone to prove. The proposition is, that
a large number of independent, honest, sane, and sen
sible witnesses, can testify to a plain matter of fact
which never occurred at all.
Now, no evidence has ever been adduced to show,
that this ever has happened or ever could happen. But
the assumption is rendered still more monstrous when
we consider the circumstances attending such cases as
those of the cures at the tomb of the Abbe Paris, and
the cases of modern scientific men being converted to
a belief in the reality of the phenomena of modern
Spiritualism; for we must assume that, being fully
warned that the alleged facts are impossible and are
therefore delusions, and having the source of the sup
posed delusion pointed out, and all the prejudices of the
age and the whole tone of educated thought being
against the reality of such facts, yet numbers of edu
cated men, including physicians and men of science, are
convinced of the reality of the facts after the most
searching investigation. Yet the assumption that such
an amount and quality of independent converging
evidence can be all false, must be proved to be a fact if
the argument is to have the slightest value, otherwise
it is merely begging the question. It must be remem-l
bered that we have to consider, not absurd beliefs or false
inferences, but plain matters of fact; and it cannot be
proved, and never has been proved, that any large
amount of cumulative evidence of disinterested and
�15
sensible men, was ever obtained for an absolute and
entire delusion. To put the matter in a simple form,
the asserted fact is either possible, or not possible. If
possible, such evidence as we have been considering
would prove it; if not possible, such evidence could not
exist. The argument is, therefore, an absolute fallacy,
since its fundamental assumption cannot be proved. If
it is intended merely to enunciate the proposition, that
the more strange and unusual a thing is the more and
the better evidence we require for it, that we all admit;
but I maintain, that human testimony increases in value
in such an enormous ratio with each additional inde
pendent and honest witness, that no fact ought to be
rejected when attested by such a body of evidence as
exists for many of the events termed miraculous or
supernatural, and which occur now daily among us.
The burden of proof lies on those who maintain that
such evidence can possibly be fallacious ; let them point
out one case in which such cumulative evidence existed,
and which yet proved to be false; let them give not
supposition, but proof.
THE UNCEBTAINTY OF THE ASSEBTED PHENOMENA OF
MODEBN SPITITUALISM.
Another modern argument is used more especially
against the reality of the so-called Spiritual phenomena.
It is said, “ These phenomena are so uncertain, you
have no control over them, they follow no law; prove
to us that they follow definite laws like all other groups
of natural phenomena, and we will believe them.”
This argument appears to have weight with some per
sons, and yet it is really an absurdity. The essence
of the alleged phenomena (whether they be true or not,
is of no importance) is, that they seem to be the result
of the action of independent intelligences, and are
therefore deemed to be Spiritual or superhuman. If
they had been found to follow strict law and not inde
pendent will, no one would have ever supposed them to
be Spiritual. The argument, therefore, is merely the
statement of a foregone conclusion, namely, “ As long
as your facts go to prove the existence of distinct intel
�16
ligences, we will not believe > them; demonstrate that
they follow fixed law, and not.,intelligence, and then
we will believe them,” This argument appears to me
to be childish, and yet it is used by some persons who
claim to be philosophical.
THE NECESSITY OE SCIENTIFIC TESTIMONY.
Another objection which I have heard stated in publicJ
and received with applause is, that it requires immense
scientific knowledge to decide on the reality of any un
common or incredible facts, and that till scientific men
investigate and prove them they are not worthy of
credit. Now I venture to say, that a greater fallacy
than this was never put forth. The subject is a very
important one, and the error is a very common one, but
the fact is the exact opposite of what is stated ; for I
assert that, whenever the scientific men of any age have
denied the facts of investigators on a priori grounds,
they have always been wrong.
It is not necessary to do more than refer to the worldknown names of Galileo, Harvey, and Jenner; the great
discoveries they made were, as we all know, violently
opposed by their scientific contemporaries, to whom
they appeared absurd and incredible; but we have
equally striking examples much nearer to our own day.
When Benjamin Franklin brought the subject of light
ning conductors before the Boyal Society, he was
laughed at as a dreamer, and his paper was not admitted
to the Philosophical Transactions. When Young put
forth his wonderful proofs of the undulatory theory of
light, he was equally hooted at as absurd by the popular
scientific writers of the day. The Edinburgh Review
called upon the public to put Thomas Gray into a
straight jacket for maintaining the practicability of
railroads. Sir Humphry Davy laughed at the idea of
London ever being lighted with gas. When Stephenson
proposed to use locomotives on the Liverpool and Man
chester Bailway, learned men gave evidence that it was
impossible that they could go even twelve miles an
hour. Another great scientific authority declared it to
be equally impossible for ocean steamers ever to cross
�17
the Atlantic. The French Academy of Sciences ridi
culed the great astronomer Arago, when he wanted even
to discuss the subject of the electric telegraph. Medical
men ridiculed the stethoscope 'when it was first dis
covered. Painless operations during the mesmeric coma
were pronounced impossible, and therefore impostures.
But one of the most striking, because one of the most
recent cases of this opposition to, or rather disbelief in
facts opposed to the current belief of the day, among
men who are generally charged with going too far in
the other direction, is that of the doctrine of the “Anti
quity of Man.” Boue, an experienced French geologist,
in 1823, discovered a human skeleton eighty feet deep
in the loess or hardened mud of the Rhine. It was
sent to the great anatomist Cuvier, who so utterly dis
credited the fact that he threw aside this invaluable
fossil as worthless, and it was lost. Sir C. Lyell, from
personal investigation on the spot, now believes that
the statements of the original observer were quite accu
rate. So early as 1715 flint weapons were found with
the skeleton of an elephant in an excavation in Gray’sinn-lane, in the presence of Mr. Conyers, who placed
them in the British Museum, where they remained,
utterly unnoticed till quite recently. In 1800, Mfr.
Frere found flint weapons along with the remains of
extinct animals at Hoxne, in Suffolk. From 1841 to
1846, the celebrated French geologist, Boucher de
Perthes, discovered great quantities of flint weapons in
the drift gravels of the North of France, but for many
years he could convince none of his fellow scientific
men that they were works of art, or worthy of the
slightest attention. At length, however, in 1853, he
began to make converts. In 1859-60, some of our own
most eminent geologists visited the spot, and fully
affirmed the truth of his observations and deductions.
Another branch of the subject was, if possible, still
worse treated. In 1825, Mr. McEnery, of Torquay,
discovered worked flints along with the remains of
extinct amimals in the celebrated Kent’s Hole Cavern,
but his account of his discoveries was simply laughed at.
tin 1840, one of our first geologists, Mr. Godwin Austen,
�18
brought this matter before the Geological Society, and
Mr. Vivian, of Torquay, sent in a paper fully confirming
Mr. McEnery’s discoveries, but it was thought too im
probable to be pubhshed. Fourteen years later, the
Torquay Natural History Society made further observa
tions, entirely confirming the previous ones, and sent
an account of them to the Geological Society of London,
but the paper was rejected as too improbable for publi
cation. Now, however, for five years past, the cave
has been systematically explored under the superinten
dence of a Committee of the British Association, and all
the previous reports for forty years have been confirmed,
and have been shown to be even less wonderful than
the reality. It may be said that “ this was proper
scientific caution.” Perhaps it was; but at all events
it proves this important fact, that in this, as in every
other case, the observers have been right, those who
rejected their observations have been wrong.
Now, are the modern observers of some phenomena
usually termed supernatural and incredible, less worthy
of attention than these already quoted ? Let us take,
first, the reality of what is called clairvoyance. The
men who have observed this phenomenon, who have
carefully tested it through long years or through their
whole lives, will rank in scientific knowledge, and in
intellectual ability, as quite equal to any observers in
any other branch of discovery. We have no less than
seven eminent medical men, Drs. Elliotson, Gregory,
AshburneK, Lee, Herbert Mayo, Esdaile, and Haddock,
besides persons of such high ability as Miss Martineau,
Mr. H. G. Atkinson, Mr. Charles Bray, and Baron
Richenbach. With the history of previous discoverers
before us, is it more likely that these eleven educated
persons, knowing all the arguments against the facts,
and investigating them carefully, should be all wrong,
and those who say a priori that the thing is impossible
should be all right, or the contrary? If we are to
learn anything by history and experience, then we may
safely prognosticate that, in this case as in so many
others, the disbelievers in other men’s observations will
be found to be in the wrong.
�19
REVIEW OF MB. LECKY’S STATEMENTS ABOUT MIRACLES.
We now come to the modern philosophical objectors,
most eminent among whom is Mr. Lecky, author of the
History of Rationalism and the History of Morals. In
the latter work he has devoted some space to this ques
tion, and his clear and well expressed views may be
taken to represent the general opinions and feelings of
the educated portion of modern society.
He says:—
“The attitude of ordinary educated people towards miracles
is not that of doubt, of hesitation, of discontent with the
existing evidence, but rather of absolute, derisive, and even
unexamining incredulity.”
He then goes on to explain why this is so :—
“ In certain stages of society, and under the action of cer
tain influences, an accretion of miracles is invariably formed
around every prominent person or institution. We can
analyse the general causes that have impelled men towards the
miraculous; we can show that these causes have never failed
to produce the effect; and we can trace the gradual alteration
of mental conditions invariably accompanying the decline of
the belief.
“When men are destitute of the critical spirit, when the
notion of uniform law is yet unborn, and when their imagina
tions are still incapable of rising to abstract ideas, histories
of miracles are always formed and always believed ; and they
continue to flourish and to multiply until these conditions are
altered. Miracles cease when men cease to believe and ex
pect them. . . .”
Again:—
“We do not say they are impossible, or even that they are
not authenticated by as much evidence as many facts we
believe. We only say that, in certain states of society, illu
sions of this kind inevitably appear. ...”
“ Sometimes we can discover the precise natural fact which
the superstition has misread, but more frequently we can give
only a general explanation, enabling us to assign these legends
to their place, as the normal expression of a certain stage of
knowledge or intellectual power; and this explanation is their
refutation.”
Now, in these statements and arguments of Mr.
Lecky, we find some fallacies hardly less striking than
�20
those of Hume. His assertion that in certain stages of
society an accretion of miracles is invariably formed
round every prominent person or institution, appears to
me to be absolutely contradicted by certain wellknown historical facts.
The Church of Home has ever been the great theatre
of miracles, whether ancient or modern. The most
prominent person in the Church of Rome is the Pope;
the most prominent institution is the Papacy. We
should expect, therefore, if Mr. Lecky’s statement be
correct, that the Popes would be pre-eminently miracle
workers. But the fact is, that with the exception of
one or two very early ones, no miracles whatever are
recorded of the great majority of the Popes. On the
contrary, it has been generally among the very humblest
members of the Romish Church, whether clergy or
laity, that the power of working miracles has ap
peared, and which has led to their being canonized
as saints.
Again, to take another instance, the most prominent
person connected with the reformed churches is Luther.
He himself believed in .miracles. The whole world in
his day believed in miracles, and miracles, though gene
rally of a demoniac character, continued rife in all Pro
testant churches for many generations after his death ;
yet there has been no accretion of miracles round this
remarkable man.
Nearer to our own day we have Irving, at the head
of a church of miracle-workers; and J oe Smith, the
founder of the miracle-working Mormons • yet there
is. not the slightest sign of any tendency to impute any
miracles to either of these men, other than those which
the latter individual claimed for himself before his
sect was established. These very striking facts seem
to me to prove that there must be some basis of fact
in nearly every alleged miracle, and that the theory of
any growth or accretion round prominent individuals
is utterly without evidence to support it. It is one of
those convenient general statements which sound very
plausible and very philosophical, but for which no proof
whatever is offered.
�21
THE DECLINE OF BELIEF IN MIRACLES.
Another of Mr. Lecky’s statements is, that there is
an alteration of mental conditions invariably accom
panying the decline of belief. But this “invariable
accompaniment” certainly cannot be proved, because
the decline of the belief has only occurred once in the
history of the world ; and, what is still more remark
able, while the mental conditions which accompanied
that one decline have continued in force or have even
increased in energy and are much more widely diffused,
belief has now for twenty years been growing up again.
In the highest states of ancient civilisation, both among
the Greeks and Romans, the belief existed in full force,
and has been testified to by the highest and most intel
lectual men of every age. The decline which in the
present century has certainly taken place, cannot,
therefore, be imputed to any general law, since it is but
an exceptional instance.
Again, Mr. Lecky says that the belief in the super
natural only exists “ when men are destitute of the
critical spirit, and when the notion of uniform law is
yet unborn.” Mr. Lecky in this matter contradicts
himself almost as much as Hume did. One of the
greatest advocates for the belief in the supernatural was
Glanvil, and this is what Mr. Lecky says of Glanvil.
He says that Glanvil “ has been surpassed in genius
by few of his successors.”
‘‘ The predominating characteristic of Glanvil’s mind was
an intense scepticism. He has even been termed by a modern
critic the first English writer who has thrown scepticism into
a definite form ; and if we regard this expression as simply
implying a profound distrust of human faculties, the judgment
can hardly be denied. And certainly it would be difficult to
fmd a work displaying less of credulity and superstition than
the treatise on ‘The Vanity of Dogmatising,’ afterwards pub
lished as Scepsis Scientifica, in which. Glanvil expounded his
philosophical views......... The Sadducismus Triumphatus is
probably the ablest book ever published in defence of the
reality of witchcraft. Dr. Henry Moore, the illustrious Boyle,
and the scarcely less eminent Cudworth, warmly supported
Glanvil; and no writer comparable to these in ability or in
fluence appeared on the other side ; yet the scepticism steadily
ingreased.”
�22
Again Mr. Lecky thus speaks of Glanvil:—
-‘It was between the writings of Bacon and Locke that that
latitudinarian school was formed which was irradiated by the
genius of Taylor, Glanvil, and Hales, and which became th*
very centre and seedplot of religious liberty.”
M__‘
jail
ipg
These are the men and these the mental conditions vtwi
which are favourable to superstition and delusion !
The critical spirit and the notion of uniform law are
certainly powerful enough in the present day, yet ir
every country in the civilised world there are now hun
dreds and thousands of intelligent men who believe, on
the testimony of their own senses, in phenomena which
Mr. Lecky and others would term miraculous, anc
therefore incredible. Instead of being, as Mr. Lecky
says, an indication of “ certain states of society”—“ tht
normal expression of a certain stage of knowledge or in wtt
tellectual power”—this belief has existed in all states oi Ml-*
society, and has accompanied every stage of intellectual
power. Socrates, Plutarch, and St. Augustine alike, givr
personal testimony to supernatural facts ; this testimony
never ceased through the middle ages; the early reformers, Luther and Calvin, throng the ranks of wit- ~
nesses ; all the philosophers, and all the judges oi
England down to Sir Matthew Hale, admitted that the ara
evidence for such facts was irrefutable. Many cases tji
have been rigidly investigated by the police authorities
of various countries, and, as we have already seen, th-1
miracles at the tomb of the Abbe Paris, which occurred :.i_
in the most sceptical period of Trench history, in the ofv
age of Voltaire and the encyclopaedists, were proved by wk
such an array of evidence, and were so open to investi- mw
gation, that one of the noblemen of that court—con---- *
vinced of their reality after the closest scrutiny— /'.bi
suffered the martyrdom of imprisonment in the Bastite
A
for insisting upon making them public. And in our
_
own day we have, at the lowest estimate, many millions—afcr
of believers in modern Spiritualism in all classes oi
society; so that the belief which Mr. Lecky imputes '/rat'
to a certain stage of intellectual culture only, apau
pears on the contrary to have all the attributes of uni
versality.
�23
7/
IS THE BELIEF IN MIRACLES A SURVIVAL OF SAVAGE
THOUGHT ?
The philosophical argument has been put in another
form by Mr. E. B. Tylor, in a lecture at the Royal
Institution, and in several passages in his other works.
He main tains-that all Spiritualistic and other beliefs in
the supernatural are examples of the survival of savage
thought among civilised people; but he ignores the facts
which compel the beliefs. The thoughts of those edu
cated men who know, from the evidence of their own
senses, that things called supernatural are true and real
facts, are as totally distinct from those of savages, as
are their thoughts respecting the sun, or thunder, or
disease, or any other natural phenomenon. As well
might he maintain that the modern belief that the sun
is a fiery mass, is a survival of savage thought, because
some savages believe so too ; or that our belief that cer
tain diseases are contagious, is a similar survival of the
savage idea that a man can convey a disease to his
enemy. The question is a question of facts, not of
theories or thoughts, and I entirely deny the value or
relevance of any general arguments, theories, or analo
gies, when we have to decide on matters of fact.
Thousands of intelligent men now living know,
from personal observation, that some of the strange
phenomena which have been pronounced absurd and
i impossible by scientific men, are nevertheless true. It
is no answer to these and no explanation of the facts,
to tell them that such beliefs, only occur when men are
destitute of the critical spirit, and when the notion of
uniform law is yet unborn; that in certain states of
society illusions of this kind inevitably appear, that
they are only the normal expression of certain stages of
knowledge and of intellectual power, and that they
clearly prove the survival of savage modes of thought in
the midst of modern civilisation.
I believe that I have now shown—1. That Hume’s
arguments against miracles are full of unwarranted
assumptions, fallacies, and contradictions; 2. That the
modern argument of the telegraph-wire conveyance and
�24
drinking stone-lion, are positively no arguments at all,
since they rest on false or unproved premises ; 3. That
the argument, that dependence is to be placed upon
men of science and upon them only, is opposed to uni
versal experience and the whole history of science ; 4.
That the philosophical argument' so well put by Mr.
Lecky and Mr. Tylor, rests on false or unproved assump
tions, and is therefore valueless.
In conclusion, I must again emphatically declare that
the question I have been discussing is—in no way
whether miracles are true or false, or whether modern
Spiritualism rests upon a basis of fact or of delusion,—
but solely, whether the arguments that have hitherto
been supposed conclusive against them have any weight
or value. If I have shown, as I flatter myself I have
done, that the arguments which have been supposed to
settle the general question so completely as to render it
quite unnecessary to go into particular cases, are all
utterly fallacious, then I shall have cleared the ground
for the production of evidence, and no honest man
desirous of arriving at truth will be able to evade an
enquiry into the nature and amount of .that evidence, by
moving the previous question—that miracles are unprovable by any amount of human testimony. It is
time that the “ derisive and unexamining incredulity ”
which has hitherto existed should give way to a less
dogmatic and more philosophical spirit, or history will
again have to record the melancholy spectacle of men, who
should have known better, assuming to limit the dis
covery of new powers and agencies in the universe, and
deciding, without investigation, whether other men’s
observations are true or false.
�
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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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An answer to the arguments of Hume, Lecky and others, against miracles
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Wallace, Alfred Russel [1823-1913]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 24 p. ; 18 cm.
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1871
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Conway Tracts
Miracles
Superstition
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THE OATH AND ITS ETHICS
A DISCOURSE GIVEN BEFORE THE
SOUTH PLACE SOCIETY
MAY i, 1881
(with some additions),
BY
MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A.
LONDON :
II,
SOUTH PLACE, FINSBURY.
PRICE TWOPENCE.
�F. G. HICKSON & Co.
257, High Holbobn,
London, W.C.
�THE OATH AND ITS ETHICS
’HEN Christian Pharisaism was resisting the
' *
equal rights of Jews in Parliament, the Con
servative leader just laid in his grave answered one who
afterwards sat in his cabinet, and those with him—■
“ You are influenced by the darkest superstitions of
the darkest ages that ever existed in this country.”
The day of his burial was celebrated by an outbreak,
led by his late followers, of the same dark super
stitions. By its vote on the oath question Parliament
has plunged back into the cesspool of medieval
absurdities, and made the oath into a mill-stone heavy
enough to sink in that pool every man who shall
deliberately take it.
Hitherto, for a very long time, a man taking the
path has meant only to proclaim formally his purpose
to fulfil an engagement. It was a foolish formula,
but had been conventionalised to mean that, and it
meant no more. The words “ sunrise ’ and “ sunset
are inaccurate, but even an astronomer may say
“ sunset ” without falsehood, since it is a conventional
word for the thing he means. The oath had as little
pretension to exactness. But now it has been made
into a creed. When a member of Parliament says
�(
4
)
“ So help me God ” it is now declared he must mean
just what he says.
I propose to day to prove to you what that meaning
is. But let me first remark that the present situation
of the legislature in this matter is an illustration of
the practical importance of studies often supposed
antiquarian and unpractical. The archeologist, the
philologist, the mythologist, often meet with persons
who regard their researches as useless for the present
time, and their results merely curious. But if either
the member denied his right to take the oath, or his
opponents had possessed full archaeological knowledge
of the subject, it might have been shown that the
whole question is really as simple as it seemed compli
cated. If Mr. Tyler, the author of Primitive Culttire,
had been called before the Committee which decided
some time since that an atheist could not take the
oath, he could have proved to every member present
that not one of them had any more right to take it,
If one step be taken beyond the mere formality, the
affirmation of a purpose, that step is into the original
sense of the formula; and the original sense of it is
what no educated man, however orthodox, believes or
can believe.
There is nothing doubtful whatever about the oath.
There is no room for theories: the facts are established;
every letter and accent in the formula has been traced
�through the history of law to the germ from which
it came. The English oath is in form both Roman
and Jewish; in essence it belongs to the realm of
barbarian superstition. Writers on the subject are
unanimous in the opinion that the oath is of the
nature of an ordeal. The natural development of an
ordeal is illustrated in that used for witchcraft. In
the early panic about witches it used to be the ordeal
of those suspected to be thrown into the water: if
they floated they were evidently witches; if they sank
they were human,—and if they could not be rescued
the crowd held it sufficient compensation that they
had gone to heaven. But some merciful man or men
proposed the ordeal of weighing witches against the
Bible. It was said that if one wrere a witch he or she
could not outweigh God’s -word : so the Bible was
placed in one scale, the suspected witch in the other;
and after that the poor creatures were saved, except
in remote districts where the old fashion was preferred
or the new- not heard of. But in this new form of the
ordeal there was the same soul of superstition as in
the old.
The primitive ordeals bore unfairly against those
subjected to them. They might be, as in some
regions they still are, compelled to drink poison, in
the faith that, if innocent, poison will not harm them.
There was then a transition in which the accused had
to invoke a judgment from the power of the sorcerers
�(
6
)
or priests; these would go through incantations and
solemn ceremonies, which sometimes so wrought
upon the nerves of the guilty that they would confess,
fall sick, or die. Then when or where the priests and
their incantations ceased to be dreaded, the authorities
arranged means by which anyone, whose evidence
they believed false or did not like, might be covertly
punished. An old church at Rome is called Bocca
della Verity or, “ Mouth of truth,” from the legend
that a large round stone-face, preserved in it, was used
for swearing persons. The mouth at the centre is an
aperture, through which it is said the oath-taker had
to put his hand, and hold it there while giving
evidence, in full faith that if he uttered a falsehood
his hand would be smitten off by the Angel of
Justice. The stone being large enough to conceal a
man behind it, legend says the hand was cut off with
a sword whenever the evidence did not please the
authorities. This may be no more than a legend, but
the tradition points to the path by which human
sanctions of the oath superseded the divine. In the
present day, the German, in swearing before a couit,
holds up two fingers, in accordance with the old
belief that they will be smitten off if he perjures
himself,—struck by lightning. But, as he takes care
to hold his fingers up where he can see them, they
are not often struck by lightning.
“In Samoa,” says Farrer, “as at Westminster,
�(
7
)
physical còntact with a thing adds vast weight to the
value of a man’s evidence. Turner relates how, in
turn, each person suspected of a theft, was obliged
before the chiefs to touch a sacred drinking-cup made
of cocoa-nut, and to invoke destruction upon himself
if he were the thief: the formula ran—‘With my
hand on this cup, may the god look upon me and
send swift destruction if I took the thing which has
been stolen,’—it being firmly believed that death
would ensue were the cup touched and a lie told.
The physical act of touching the thing invoked has
reference to feelings of casual connection between
things, as in Samoa, where a man, to attest his
veracity, would touch his eyes, to indicate his wish
that blindness might strike him if he lied, or would
dig a hole in the ground to indicate a wish that he
might be buried in the event of falsehood.”
“North Asiatic tribes have in use three kinds of
oaths. The first and least solemn one being for the
accused to face the sun with a knife, pretending to
fight against it, and to cry aloud—If I am guilty,
may the sun cause sickness to rage in my body like
this knife.’ The second form of oath is to cry aloud
from the tops of certain mountains, invoking death,
loss of children and cattle, or bad luck in hunting,
in the case of guilt being real. But the most solemn
oath of all is to exclaim, in drinking some of the
�(
8
)
blood of a dog, killed expressly by the elders, and
burnt or thrown away,—‘ If I die, may I perish, decay,
or burn away like this dog.’ On the Guinea Coast
recourse was had to a common expedient of priestly
absolution, so that when a man took a draught-oath,
imprecating death on himself if he failed in his
promise, the priests were sometimes compelled to
take an oath too, to the effect that they would not
employ their absolving powers to release him. In
Abyssinia a simpler process seems to be in vogue; for
the king, on one occasion having sworn by a cross, thus
addressed his servants — ‘You see the oath I have
taken; I scrape it clean away from my tongue that made
it. Thereupon he scraped his tongue and spat away his
oath, thus validly releasing himself from it.’ ” *
Such is the original sense of the oath, constant
through all its forms, traceable in all its refinements
and abbreviations. In Greek fable Orkos, god of
oaths, is son of Eris, goddess of Discord, daughter
of Night. The ancient Greek gave his oath by
raising his hand towards heaven, and touching the
altar, which stood in court, and saying, “If what I
swear be true may I enjoy much happiness: if not
may I utterly perish.” Perjurers were believed to be
haunted by the Furies, who visited them every fifth
* Farrer’s Primitive Manners and Customs, p. l8osq. (Chatto
& Windus, 1879). See also Lea’s Siiperstition and Force.
�day in the month. The ancient Roman held a flint
stone in his hand and said, “ If I knowingly deceive,
while he saves the city and citadel, may Jupiter cast
me away from all that is good, as I do this stone.”
The flint was symbol of the thunderbolt with which
Jove stood ready to strike the perjurer. At a later
period the Roman oath was by kissing the altar and
and touching the symbols of several gods upon it, and
then saying, at the end of a declaration of veracity—
“ So help me Jupiter, and these sacred thingsI ”
This was the accepted equivalent of being cast away
by Jupiter like the stone, and added to it a belief that
every deity whose symbol had been touched or kissed
■would administer a special blow to the perjurer.
Divine punishments, however, were anticipated, in
the case of detected perjurers, by throwing them from
the Tarpeian rock.
When the shrine of St. Peter was substituted for that
of Jupiter, the relics of saints were placed on the altar
to be touched, or kissed, and the formula now became
“ So help me God and these relics! ” The form
prescribed in Justinian is an oath by the chief sacred
personages who are named, and by the four Gospels,
closing with an imprecation of the curse of Cain, of
Judas, and the leper of Gehazi. In the middle ages
oaths were various : they swore by Sinai, by St. James’
lance, by the brightness of God, by Christ’s foot, by
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nails and blood, by God’s two arms;—-as a verse runs
they swore—
“ By the saintly bones and relics
Scattered through the wide arena ;
Yea, the holy coat of Jesus,
And the foot of Magdalena.”
The Jewish idea of an oath is suggested in
phrases often met with in the Bible : “ The God of
Abraham judge !” “ God do so to you and more also,”
—and the like. The formal judicial oath gave the
full meaning of these phrases—that the curses
written in the law should come upon the perjurer.
The oath-taker held the scroll of the law, and said—
“Behold, I am accursed of Jahve, if what I say be
not true.”
In the oath we have substituted the Bible for the
ancient altar and its relics. We have substituted
kissing the Gospels for invoking the judgment of the
gods or saints. Instead of—“ So help me Jupiter
and these relics,” it was in Catholic times—“ So help
me God and these holy Gospels;” and now the
Gospels are kissed instead of being named.
Every judicial oath consists of two elements : (1) a
covenant or promise; (2) an appeal to the Deity as
able to see whether the promise is fulfilled, and a
summons to Him as one who may be ceremonially
bound to become a party to the covenant made, and as
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a power pledged to guarantee oaths by special punish
ments.
In the words 11 So help me God ” is also preserved
the invocation of the ordeal by combat.
*
The deity
was summoned by a formula of adjustment on both
sides he is bound, as by a spell, to take part; he will
not hold that party guiltless which has invoked his
name in defence of a falsehood. Each side affirms his
case, and risks upon it the unsheathed weapon of the
oath-guaranteeing God “ So {liac lege) help me ! •” says
one; “ so help me! ” cries the other, God defend the
right! says the tribunal. So, in the language of Sir
William Staundford, a learned judge (1557), they
“ leave it to God, to whom all things are open, to give
verdict in each case, scilicet, by attributing the victory
or vanquishment to the one party or the other, as it
pleaseth him.”
Professor Worman (of Michigan State University),
in his learned treatise on oathsf says :—“ All nations,
barbarous or just emerging from barbarism, have
* “The general principle on which the combat was conducted
was the absolute assertion by each party of the justice of his
cause, confirmed by a solemn oath on the Gospels, or on a
relict of approved sanctity, before the conflict commenced”
(Lea, Superstition and Force, p. 142).
■j- Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical.
Literature, New York. (Harper and Brothers).
�(
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resorted to the divinity for the decision of disputed
questions with somewhat similar ceremonies, and un
doubtedly with like success. Part and parcel with
ordeals, whether of bread or of water, of poisons or
of ploughshares, whether of Grecian, Jewish, Hindu
or Scandinavian form and origin, based upon the same
principle, involving the same leading idea, is the oath
by which divine vengeance is imprecated upon false
hood, and by the use of which ceremony, if it be
effective, the deity specially, and for that cause, bound
to inflict the requisite and appropriate punishment in
case of its violation.”
Michaelis says :—11 An oath is an appeal to God as
a surety and a punisher of perjury; which appeal, as
he has accepted, he of course becomes bound to
vindicate upon a perjured person irremissibly. Were
not God to take upon himself to guarantee oaths, an
appeal to him in swearing would be foolish and
sinful.”
We now perceive the implicit sanction of an oath.
It has set in motion a power which must act. It is
not a moral force, but one pledged to punish the
profanation of a ceremony, however the infraction of
it may be demanded by changed circumstances or
considerations even of justice. Mohammed said, when
you swear to do a thing, and afterwards find it better
to do otherwise, do that which is better and make void
�your oath.
He provided certain ceremonies to
commute the oath. But that modification of Semitic
religion never came into Christianity. Jephthah takes
an oath that he will sacrifice to Jahve the first who
shall come from his house to meet him, as a burnt
offering; and when it proves to be his daughter, she
must be the burnt offering. Jephthah says—“ I have
opened my mouth to the Lord and cannot go back.”
Herod is very sorry Herodias has asked the head of
John, but because of his oath to give her what she
would, he beheaded John. These ideas, from the
regions whence all our sanctities have come, imply a
deity who, however much he might be sorry for
Jephthah’s daughter, or for John the Baptist, would be
bound fast as by the law of gravitation to punish the
violation of every oath in which his name had been
appealed to.
What then does our honourable member of
Parliament mean by his oath, if he means anything
more than an atheist means ? He is not at liberty to
put what construction he pleases on the oath. An
oath exists for the purpose of binding the man, not
to be bound by the man.’ The words “ so help me
God,” few as they are, carry with them the belief in
a Deity who has written out in a certain Volume
certain definite penalties against perjury; an example
of these being in the instant death alleged to have
�fallen upon Ananias and Sapphira. The kissed
volume engages his God to send upon him, if the
oath be violated, the curses written in it. It is of the
essence of the oath that God is bound to send such
judgments. He cannot help it.
If our honourable member does not believe in
that particular God it is all the same as if he believed
in none. So far as the oath is concerned he is an
atheist. It is the oath-guaranteeing God he must
believe in ; the God who makes the perjurer’s “ belly
to swell and thigh to rot” (Num. v.), sends “plagues
and sicknesses ” on covenant-breakers, and “ all the
curses written in this book ” (Deut. xxix.), and who
will strike down the perjurer as Ananias was struck :
if that be not his God he might as well worship a
stock or a stone, or have no God at all, so far as the
oath is concerned. To say he believes he will be
punished by God after death does not fulfil the con
ditions of the oath at all. The oath * involves a
a present judgment, and a special one,—a heavier
punishment for the smallest falsehood after uttering
the words and touching the book, than for the basest,
most harmful lie not uttered under oath. The oath,
therefore, can not be regarded as a mere expression
of theism. That were as much bending the oath as if
one were to attack the throne unlawfully after swearing
to support it, and then say that the best way to help
�(
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)
the throne was to destroy it. The meaning of the oath
must either be discarded altogether—its use be that
of a meaningless form by which an understood
purpose is affirmed—or else the real historic sense of
it must be accepted—the oath, the whole oath, and
nothing but the oath. If a man say that when he
says “sunset” he really means what he says' he is
bound to accept the cosmogony from which the
word was coined; and if the phrase “So help me
God ” bear any religious sense at all, it must bear that
of the faith and usages to which it is traceable.
Does any member of the British Parliament believe
in a Deity such as is implied in the oath ? They who
are elected to a new Parliament are described as going
up to be sworn in batches, chatting in the merriest
way with each other. Would that be the case if they
knew and believed that they were entering into a
contract to which Almighty God is a party : that the
Deity is invisibly present as a guarantor of the
covenant, and that from the moment of that oath
there is suspended over him, and over his children to
the third and fourth generation, all those curses
written in the Bible against those who swear falsely ?
Such, for instance, as those directed against an oathbreaker in Ezekiel (xvii.):—“Seeing he despised the
oath by breaking thy covenant, when, lo! he had
given his hand, and hath done all these, he shall not
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escape. And I will spread my net upon him, and he
shall be taken in my snare.” The sentence on this
particular oath-breaker was “ he shall die.”
A
clergyman recently wrote to an evening paper
advocating the abolition of the oath, mainly on the
ground that the people generally looked for some
kind of special judgment to follow false swearing, and
as such judgments do not occur their faith is
weakened. These simple people are without casuistry.
But even conceding that the punishments for perjury
may be relegated by an orthodox believer to a future
world, does he believe that the punishment there will
be greater for the deviation from an oath than for an
unsworn lie and for injury inflicted by a lie ? If it is
the lying that is punished, the oath is a meaningless
form, in itself. If it be contended that God is more
concerned to vindicate his own dignity against a false
or inconsiderate appeal than to punish malicious lying,
we may safely affirm that such is not the belief of
educated Christians. We are not without evidence
that such a view of the sanctions of the oath no
longer exists except among the most ignorant and
superstitious, and only among very few of them.
The eminent writer already quoted, Professor
Worman, says
“ The oaths of Oxford University
have been taken by the most cultivated minds of
Europe; by those who in after life attained the
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highest dignities of the Church or the State; by those
who, from their station, their education and in
telligence, would be least likely to disregard their
obligation.
These oaths required obedience tostatutes framed centuries ago by and for a set of
monks, and are about as consonant with the present
state of society as the monkish costume would be toa general-in-chief at the head of his army. Con
sequently they are not merely not observed, but their
observance would be a matter of astonishment to allr
equally to those sworn to observe and those sworn
to require their observation.” An Oxford oath not to
wear boots has been taken by gentlemen still living.
Our judges and juries violate the oath, if the oath be
considered as having an intrinsic meaning. Every
time a juryman who holds out stubbornly against the
others is partially starved into agreement, or under
any pressure yields, he technically violates his oath j
which he would not do if he believed that all
the curses on violations of the oath written in
the book he kisses must fall upon him and his
children. In old times, when theft was a capital
crime, juries continually found that the article stolen
was of less value than it obviously was, in order that
the offender might not be hung. And now juries find
nearly every suicide to have been of unsound mind,
order to give the poor creature decent burial r
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which they could not do if they believed that, in case
such had been of sound mind, all the curses written
in the Bible against oath-breaking would be executed
upon them for their humane verdict.
*
* The Newcastle Chronicle describes, as follows a scene which
occurred in a court-room, on May 9th, 1881 :—“The oaths
taken by Chinamen in courts of law and in criminal proceedings
are administered after a saucer has been broken, and the
ceremony on Monday was witnessed in the Pilgrim Street
Police Court by a crowded attendance of the public. Foreigners
and Jews have often to be sworn, and a Hebrew Bible is pro
vided accordingly amongst the properties of the Newcastle
Bench ; but a Chinese witness appears to have been a rarity not
-even dreamt about in Pilgrim Street, and it was found that,
simple as the furnishing for the affirmation is, not a saucer was
to be discovered. A policeman was consequently sent to
purchase two china saucers, and on his return one of them was
placed in the hands of the young Chinese interpreter, who,
kneeling down in the witness box, attempted to smash it on the
■edge of the box. British china, however, appeared to be of a
much more endurable kind than Chinese, for the interpreter
tried again and again, with all his force, for at least seven or
eight times, without effecting a smash. When the saucer,
however, did give, it was with a sound that went like the loud
snapping of a pistol through the building. The pieces flew in a
dozen directions, causing clerks, reporters, and policemen to
bow their heads with a sudden and appreciable sense of self
preservation, and no little amusement for a time prevailed in
court. The interpreter then repeated after the Clerk (Mr.
Wilkinson) the following affirmation or Chinese oath :—‘ You
■shall tell the truth, and the whole truth ; the saucer is cracked,
•and if you do not tell the truth your soul will be cracked like
�There is no reason to believe that the members of
Parliament are more technically exact about their oath
than the Oxford professors, or than the juries of the
country. And, if not, they are no more believers in
the Lord of the Oath than Mr. Bradlaugh. So far as
that formula is concerned, the theist and the atheist
are on one level. One can take the oath as honestly
and honourably as the other.
An unjust measure has been used in dealing with
Mr. Bradlaugh, not alone by the House of Commons,,
but by the liberal press, and by some liberal thinkers.
It has been said even by those who defend his right
that he is inconsistent with his avowed opinions in
offering to take the oath. However unconsciously so,
this judgment is unfair. It is also unfair to contrast
his willingness to take the oath with the courageousrefusal of the Jews to take the old oath “ on the true
faith of a Christian.” The distinct creeds of the old
oath,__both political and Christian,—have been
the saucer.’ The second saucer was handed to the prosecutor,
who w’ent through the same form as his shipmate ; but, being.a
more powerful man, he succeeded at the second attempt in
demolishing the article, though at the expense of a finger
severely cut in the operation. The interpreter had also one of
his fingers cut in breaking the article apportioned to him.” But
did the Newcastle magistrate believe that the Chinaman’s soul
might be cracked like a saucer? or did he regard the oath as a
“ meaningless form?”
�(
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abolished. The present oath is not Christian; it is
not theistic in any ordinary sense. Let us hold the
balances of justice with an unprejudiced and un
wavering hand. If Mr. Bradlaugh happened to be
in Samoa, and were witness in a case where his testi
mony might save an innocent man from death, he
would be given a sacred cup to touch, and required
to invoke swift destruction from a god supposed to be
•connected with the cup. That would be his form of
■swearing. In so doing he would be falling in with
the Samoan superstition probably even more than if
he said “ So help me God ” he would be sanctioning
any English superstition. Suppose, being in Samoa
he should refuse so to testify, not believing the literal
meaning of the formality, and, as a consequence of
his refusal, the innocent man were beheaded. What
would be said by those who now censure him ? They
would call it pedantry almost amounting to murder.
They would say he should have accepted the formula
as a recognised means of proclaiming his veracity,
and not to have allowed the wrong to triumph.
When the Jew refused to swear he was a Christian
that would have been furthering the triumph of the
wrong. And if the abolition of oaths had been the
particular reform to which Mr. Bradlaugh had devoted
his life, he would be wrong in taking one. Such, it
seems, is not the fact. He has repeatedly taken oaths,
�when not allowed to affirm, to further what he believed
justice. His aim has been to secure other reforms
chiefly, and abolition of oaths but incidentally. He
has aimed to secure certain reforms by peaceful and
legal means, so far as I can learn, through the national
legislature; and though it was a duty that he should
claim what he believed his right, to affirm instead of
swear, it is difficult to see how it could have been his
duty to let an oath, in itself meaningless, though for its
purpose binding on his conscience as any other con
ventional form of promise, stand between himself and
his constituency and the opportunity of advancing the
practical cause they have at heart.
So, at least, to my mind, stood the ethics of the
case when he offered to take the oath. But now that
the House of Commons has voted that the oath is to be
taken only in its religious sense, I do not see how any
conscientious person can take it. Mr. Bradlaugh can,
indeed, still take it with as much honesty as the rest.
To single him out as the one member who ought not
to take the oath were to confess that an atheist is
expected to have a sense of honour and a sensitiveness
about truth not expected of Christians. It is certain
that the oath either means nothing in itself, but only
in its intent to pledge the word and honour, or else it
means what no man in Parliament really believes—
not even in part believes; for the oath-guaranteeing
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God it invokes is as distinct from the God of
educated England as Bacchus is different from the
Christ of liberal churchmen.
There is, indeed, an upper and a nether side of the
Christianity of our time,—and the nether side lies in
this region of oaths. The Bible in some parts
represents a deity who swears by himself, because he
can swear by none greater, and who is so bound by
his oath that he cannot release himself from it, even
though it binds him to a monstrous injustice.
Having pronounced a curse upon the whole human
race for the offence of their first parents, another
deity had to be evolved,—one not so bound,—who
could bless those his father had doomed to everlasting
tortures, and also satisfy the curse. There is a Christ
imagined in some dark corners of Christendom who
has succeeded to the office of the oath-bound and
oath-binding deity of Eastern tribes. A few English
people seem still to believe in such a Christ. There
was lately a strange account given in the Times of the
seizure at Isvor by Christian brigands of two English
Christians, Mr. and Mrs. Suter. When the brigands
demanded of the terrified inmates their money,
Mrs. Suter pointed to a box containing four lira,
saying that was all the money in the house. The
brigands declared this a lie, and threatened to cut
her throat if she did not give them more money. Mrs.
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)
Suter then said to the brigands—“ You and I believe
in the same Christ, and in his name I tell you I have
no more money.” This solemn adjuration of their
common Jesus seems to have impressed the brigands.
Had she invoked Christ to confirm a lie they no doubt
supposed she would fall dead. She was spared.
They led them to a certain point, and then they told
Mrs. Suter that she might depart; but they exacted of
her a solemn pledge that she would proceed at once
to Salonica, and not start the soldiers in pursuit. If
the soldiers were seen they declared they would
immediately kill her husband: if not they pledged
themselves that he should be safe up to the time
appointed for the ransom to be paid. The brigands
then bound themselves to this by an oath called the
Bessabees. I do not know what this formula may be,
but it would seem to be so solemn that no brigand
ever breaks it. There is something very droll in this
English lady saying to robbers and murderers—“ You
and I believe in the same Christ.” But there have
been many ages when there would be nothing droll in
it. Whenever a ferocious crusader struck down a
Saracen he said—“ In the name of Christ.” In the
name of Christ millions have been massacred and
despoiled of their property. The old creed survives
among us now in a bad temper. In the name of
Christ,—himself, in his time, a denounced freethinker,
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)
—men may to-day be loaded with curses and reproaches
and deprived of civil rights for speaking their honest
mind and following their sense of duty, smitten while
bearing their heavy cross, by Pharisees—baptised and
circumcised together. Yet the Christ of the brigands
is not normally the Christ of English ladies. The
Christ of the Inquisition is not the Christ of English
Christians. Their dogmas may be in that region
but not their minds. The cruel temper, too, is rather
official than individual. Clerical lips may utter the
curses of Athanasius, but clerical hearts could not
endure to see an infidel burnt for ten minutes much
less through all eternity.
The Parliamentary oath is a survival which really
links Christian England to the Bessabees Brigands.
And survivals may be very corrupting. In the case
of the brigands one may see the exact fruits of
the oath-superstition. God has nothing to do with
their lives, unless they invoke him by a formula.
Having done that they will never dare to incur his
vengeance. But not having done that they may rob
and murder as they like. In some parts of England
it is said that witnesses try to kiss their thumbs instead
of the book, in order that they may freely tell lies. It
is also declared, that in Scotland the sheriff is con
tinually interfering to make swearers in court hold up
their right hand. They often try to hold up their left,
�and if not caught will bravely tell any number of lies.
So Robert of France withdrew the relics and substi
tuted an egg that the souls of his subjects might not
be endangered by their falsehoods. It is impossible
to find room for realities in these Bessabees minds
thus preoccupied with unrealities. It is vain to sup-;
pose that mankind can be fully impressed with the
real sanctity of truth, and the intrinsic evil of false
hood, so long as a formula is preserved to teach them
that lying is not so bad unless they have accompanied
it with a certain motion of the hand and lips. “ Greek
faith” became a proverb for duplicity in the land
where the oath was deified. It is the way of supersti
tion to whiten the outside and rot the heart. The
Oath, chiefly, has taught man the black art of paltering
in a double sense, and how to “keep the word of
promise to our ear, and break it to our hope.”
The right rule of ethics is not to take an oath.
There may be extreme cases where good men might
deem it necessary in order to prevent some larger
evil. But though there are exceptions to rules, rules
are not to be framed upon exceptions. Happily, an
oath is nowhere compulsory in England, except in
Parliament,-—and probably it will go out of that body
also, though in great wrath. There is no real life in
these false formulas. At the first severe test they
crumble. It will one day be a show to see one or
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26
)
two ancient gentlemen still taking the old-fashioned
oath. And then it will be prohibited as wicked, even
as other “ ordeals ” which have gone before. It is
not so long (1818) since a defendant in an English
court demanded of the judge that he should be
allowed to settle the case with the plaintiff by single
combat. The judge was compelled to decide that he
had that right! A short bill was hurried through
Parliament to end that remnant of barbarism. The
judicial duel, where God theoretically defended the
right, but practically the more skilled swordsman won
the victory, was a method of obtaining justice akin to
the oath as a method of securing truth. That defeated
justice, as this defeats truth.
Oath-taking is a degradation of human nature. It is
also profoundly irreverent to any ideal that an enlight
ened mind may worship. I remember the last time I
took an oath : it was before a consul, when I was
sending some small parcel to a foreign country. I
afterwards found that there must have been about
seven oaths sworn on that parcel before it reached
its destination. Seven times the attention of God
had been called to that wretched little parcel, and he
had been summoned to act as an assistant agent of
Customs, to see that a few shillings was enough duty
on it and was fairly paid. I felt ashamed of that
transaction. The dignified legislator defending this.
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)
childish spell, might well go to the new opera and see
it ridiculed along with the revival of things called
“early English.” There are some early English
things which Puritanism shattered, and which may
well be recovered; but the incantation is not
among them : Puritanism kept that. One of the
opera heroes threatens to curse his rival: the
threatened man falls upon his knees in great alarm :
weeps; implores him to pause before resorting to this
last fearful expedient. But the other refuses; is
resolved; says he is adamant. Then the other says,
I yield. I will comply with your wishes. You swear
it! says the anathematiser. “I do!” That is a fair
caricature of the “early English” which is seriously
trying to defend itself in the Legislature while it is
laughed at in the theatre. The supposed potency of
the curse is identical with that of the oath. They
have no honest habitat in this age of reality and
reason. They take us back to the age of charms,
spells, dooms,—all the nightmares of the dark ages.
Beyond which, not only the reasoner, but the true
Christian, ought to see and hear the great and wise
teacher saying—“ Swear not at all. Let your yea
be yea, and your nay be nay !”
�
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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 Ethical Society
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The oath and its ethics: a discourse given before the South Place Society May 1, 1881 (with some additions)
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Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 27, [1] p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 2. Works available in the South Place Chapel Library listed on back page.
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The oath and its ethics: a discourse given before the South Place Society May 1, 1881 (with some additions)), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Free Thought
Morris Tracts
Oaths and Affirmations
Parliament
Religion and Ethics
Superstition
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Victorian Blogging
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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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Title
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Superstition in the nineteenth century
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 964-967 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Article signed 'A Friend to Christian Reform'. From Christian Reformer, or, Unitarian Magazine and Review 6 (no. 61, January 1839). Printed by C. Green, Hackney.
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[Sherwood, Gilbert & Piper; Smallfield & Son]
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Superstition
Cornwall
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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 (Superstition in the nineteenth century), 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
Cornwall
Superstition
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PRICE SIXPENCE.
15 MAR 1909
��H4~*°
SUPERSTITION.
She wears a robe of pictured legends, broidered with
woven lies.
A LECTURE
ROBERT G.
INGERSOLL.
London:
R. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER-STREET, E.C.
1899.
��SUPERSTITION,
I.
WHAT IS SUPERSTITION?
To believe in spite of evidence or without evidence ?
To account for one mystery by another.
To believe that the world is governed by chance or
caprice.
To disregard the true relation between cause and
effect.
To put thought, intention, and design back of nature.
To believe that mind created and controls matter.
To believe in force apart from substance, or in sub
stance apart from force.
To believe in miracles, spells, and charms, in dreams
and prophecies.
To believe in the supernatural.
The foundation of superstition is ignorance, the super
structure is faith, and the dome is a vain hope. Super
stition is the child of ignorance and the mother of
misery.
In nearly every brain is found some cloud of super
stition.
A woman drops a cloth with which she is washing
dishes, and she exclaims : “ That means company.”
Most people will admit that there is no possible
connection between dropping the cloth and the coming
�4
of visitors.
SUPERSTITION.
The falling cloth could not have put the
visit desire in the minds of people not present, and how
could the cloth produce the desire to visit the particular
person who dropped.it? There is no possible connec
tion between the dropping of the cloth and the anti
cipated effects.
A man catches a glimpse of the new moon over his
left shoulder, and he says : “ This is bad luck.”
To see the moon over the right or left shoulder, or
hot to see it, could not by any possibility affect the
moon, neither could it change the effect or influence of
the moon on any earthly thing. Certainly the left
shoulder glance could in no way affect the nature of
things. All the facts in nature would remain the same
as though the glance had been over the right shoulder.
We see no connection between the left-shoulder glance
and any possible evil effects upon the one who saw the
moon in this way.
A girl counts the leaves of a flower, and she says :
“ One, he comes ; two, he tarries ; three, he courts ;
four, he marries ; five, he goes away.”
Of course the flower did not grow, and the number of
its leaves was not determined with reference to the
courtship or marriage of this girl, neither could there
have been any intelligence that guided her hand when
she selected that particular flower.
So, counting
the seeds in an apple cannot in any way determine
whether the future of an individual is to be happy or
miserable.
Thousands of persons believe in lucky and unlucky
days, numbers, signs, and jewels.
Many people regard Friday as an unlucky day—as a
�SUPERSTITION.
5
bad day to commence a journey, to marry, to make any
investment. The only reason given is that Friday is an
unlucky day.
Starting across the sea on Friday could have no
possible effect upon the winds, or waves, or tides, any
more than starting on any other day, and the only
possible reason for thinking Friday unlucky is the asser
tion that it is so.
So it is thought by many that it is dangerous for
thirteen people to dine together. Now, if thirteen is a
dangerous number, twenty-six ought to be twice as
dangerous, and fifty-two four times as terrible.
It is said that one of the thirteen will die in a year.
Now, there is no possible relation between the number
and the digestion of each, between the number and the
individual diseases. If fourteen dine together there is
greater probability, if we take into account only the
number, of a death within the year than there would
be if only thirteen were at the table.
Overturning the salt is very unlucky, but spilling the
vinegar makes no difference.
Why salt should be revengeful and vinegar forgiving
has never been told.
If the first person who enters a theatre is cross-eyed,
the audience will be small and the “ run ” a failure.
How the peculiarity of the eyes of the first one who
enters changes the intention of a community, or how
the intentions of a community cause the cross-eyed man
to go early, has never been satisfactorily explained.
Between this so-called cause and the so-called effect
there is, so far as we can see, no possible relation.
To wear an opal is bad luck, but rubies bring health.
�6
SUPERSTITION.
How these stones affect the future, how they destroy
causes and defeat effects, no one pretends to know.
So there are thousands of lucky and unlucky things,
warnings, omens, and prophecies ; but all sensible, sane,
and reasoning human beings know that every one is an
absurd and idiotic superstition.
Let us take another step :—
For many centuries it was believed that eclipses of the
sun and moon were prophetic of pestilence or famine,
and that comets foretold the death of kings, or the
destruction of nations, the coming of war or plague.
All strange appearances in the heavens—the Northern
Lights, circles about the moon, sun dogs, falling stars
—filled our intelligent ancestors with terror. They fell
upon their knees—did their best with sacrifice and
prayer to avoid the threatened disaster. Their faces
were ashen with fear as they closed their eyes and cried
to the heavens for help. The clergy, who were as
familiar with God then as the orthodox preachers are
now, knew exactly the meaning of eclipses and sun
dogs and Northern Lights ; knew that God’s patience
was nearly exhausted ; that he was then whetting the
sword of his wrath, and that the people could save
themselves only by obeying the priests, by counting
their beads, and doubling their subscriptions.
Earthquakes and cyclones filled the coffers of the
Church.
In the midst of disasters the miser, with
trembling hands, opened his purse. In the g'loom of
eclipses thieves and robbers divided their booty with
God, and poor, honest, ignorant girls, remembering that
they had forgotten to say a prayer, gave their little
earnings to soften the heart of God.
�SUPERSTITION.
7
Now, we know that all these signs and wonders in
the heavens have nothing to do with the fate of kings,
nations, or individuals ; that they had no more reference
to human beings than to colonies of ants, hives of bees,
or the eggs of insects. We now know that the signs
and eclipses, the comets and the falling stars, would
have been just the same if not a human being had been
upon the earth. We know now that eclipses come at
certain times, and that their coming can be exactly fore
told.
A little while ago the belief was general that there
were certain healing virtues in inanimate things, in the
bones of holy men and women, in the rags that had been
torn from the foul clothing of still fouler saints, in hairs
from martyrs, in bits of wood and rusty nails from the
true cross, in the teeth and finger nails of pious men,
and in a thousand other sacred things.
The diseased were cured by kissing a box in which
was kept some bone, or rag, or bit of wood, some holy
hairs, provided the kiss was preceded or followed by a
gift—a something for the church.
In some mysterious way the virtue in the bone, or
rag, or piece of wood, crept or flowed from the box,
took possession of the sick who had the necessary faith,
and, in the name of God, drove out the devils who were
the real disease.
This belief in the efficacy of bones or rags and holy
hair was born of another belief—the belief that all
diseases were produced by evil spirits. The insane were
supposed to be possessed by devils.
Epilepsy and
hysteria were produced by the imps of Satan. In short,
every human affliction was the work of the malicious
�8
SUPERSTITION.
emissaries of the god of hell. This belief was almost
universal, and even in our time the sacred bones are
believed in by millions of people.
But, to-day, no intelligent man believes in the exist
ence of devils—no intelligent man believes that evil
spirits cause disease—consequently, no intelligent person
believes that holy bones or rags, sacred hairs or pieces
of wood, can drive disease out, or in any way bring back
to the pallid cheek the rose of health.
Intelligent people now know that the bone of a saint
has in it no greater virtue than the bone of any animal.
That a rag from a wandering beggar is just as good as
one from a saint, and that the hair of a horse will cure
disease just as quickly and surely as the hair of a martyr.
We now know that all the sacred relics are religious
rubbish ; that those who use them are, for the most
part, dishonest, and that those who rely on them are
almost idiotic.
This belief in amulets and charms, in ghosts and
devils, is superstition, pure and simple.
Our ancestors did not regard these relics as medicine,
having a curative power ; but the idea was that evil
spirits stood in dread of holy things—that they fled
from the bone of a saint, that they feared a piece of the
true cross, and that when holy water was sprinkled on
a man they immediately left the premises. So these
devils hated and dreaded the sound of holy bells, the
light of sacred tapers, and, above all, the ever-blessed
cross.
In those days the priests were fishers for money, and
they used these relics for bait.
�SUPERSTITION.
9
II.
Let us take another step.
This belief in the Devil and evil spirits laid the founda
tion for another belief: Witchcraft.
It was believed that the Devil had certain things to
give in exchange for a soul. The old man, bowed and
broken, could get back his youth—the rounded form,
the brown hair, the leaping heart of life’s morning—if
he would sign and seal away his soul. So it was thought
that the malicious could by charm and spell obtain
revenge, that the poor could be enriched, and that the
ambitious could rise to place and power. All the good
things of this lite were at the disposal of the Devil.
For those who resisted the temptations of the Evil One,
rewards were waiting in another world ; but the Devil
rewarded here in this life. No one has imagination
enough to paint the agonies that were endured by reason
of this belief in witchcraft. Think of the families
destroyed; of the fathers and mothers cast in prison,
tortured, and burned ; of the firesides darkened ; of the
children murdered ; of the old, the poor, and helpless
that were stretched on racks, mangled and flayed !
Think of the days when superstition and fear were
in every house, in every mind, when accusation was
conviction, when assertion of innocence was regarded
�IO
SUPERSTITION.
as a confession of guilt, and when Christendom was
insane 1
Now we know that all of these horrors were the result
of superstition. Now we know that ignorance was the
mother of all the agonies endured. Now we know that
witches never lived, that human beings never bargained
with any devil, and that our pious savage ancestors
were mistaken.
Let us take another step.
Our fathers believed in miracles, in signs and wonders,
eclipses and comets, in the virtues of bones, and in the
powers attributed to evil spirits. All these belonged tothe miraculous. The world was supposed to be full of
magic; the spirits were sleight-of-hand performers—
necromancers. There were no natural causes behind
events. A devil wished, and it happened. One who
had sold his soul to Satan made a few motions, uttered
sbme strange words, and the event was present. Natural
causes were not believed in. Delusion and illusion, the
monstrous and miraculous, ruled the world. The founda
tion was gone—reason had abdicated. Credulity gave
tongues and wings to lies, while the dumb and limping
facts were left behind—were disregarded and remained
untold.
WHAT IS A MIRACLE ?
An act performed by a master of nature without
reference to the facts in nature. This is the only honest
definition of a miracle.
If a man could make a perfect circle, the diameter of
which was exactly one-half the circumference, that
would be a miracle in geometry. If a man could make
�.S' UPERSTI TION.
11
twice four nine, that would be a miracle in mathe
matics. If a man could make a stone, falling in the
air, pass through a space of ten feet the first second,
twenty-five feet the second second, and five feet the
third second, that would be a miracle in physics. If a
man could put together hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen,
and produce pure gold, that would be a miracle in
chemistry. If a minister were to prove his creed, that
would be a theological miracle. If Congress by law
would make fifty cents worth of silver worth a dollar,
that would be a financial miracle. To make a square
triangle would be a most wonderful miracle. To cause
a mirror to reflect the faces of persons who stand
behind it, instead of those who stand in front, would
be a miracle. To make echo answer a question would
be a miracle. In other words, to do anything contrary
to or without regard to the facts in nature is to perform
a miracle.
Now we are convinced of what is called the “uniformity
of nature.” We believe that all things act and are
acted upon in accordance with their nature ; that under
like conditions the results will always be substantially
the same ; that like ever has and ever will produce like.
We now believe that events have natural parents, and
that none die childless.
Miracles are not simply impossible, but they are un
thinkable by any man capable of thinking.
Now, an intelligent man cannot believe that a miracle
ever was, or ever will be, performed.
Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.
�12
SUPERSTITION.
III.
Let us take another step.
While our ancestors filled the darkness with evil
spirits, enemies of mankind, they also believed in the
existence of good spirits. These good spirits sustained
the same relation to God that the evil ones did to the
Devil. These good spirits protected the faithful from
the temptations and snares of the Evil One. They
took care of those who carried amulets and charms, of
those who repeated prayers and counted beads, of those
who fasted and performed ceremonies. These good
spirits would turn aside the sword and arrow from the
breast of the faithful. They made poison harmless,
they protected the credulous, and in a thousand ways
defended and rescued the true believer. They drove
doubts from the minds of the pious, sowed the seeds of
credulity and faith, saved saints from the wiles ot
women, painted the glories of heaven for those who
fasted and prayed, made it possible for the really good
to dispense with the pleasures of sense and to hate the
Devil.
These angels watched over infants who had been
baptized, over persons who had made holy vows, over
priests and nuns and wandering beggars who believed.
These spirits were of various kinds : some had once
�SUPERSTITION.
i3
been men or women, some had never lived in this world,
and some had been angels from the commencement.
Nobody pretended to know exactly what they were, or
exactly how they looked, or in what way they went
from place to place, or how they affected or controlled
the minds of men.
It was believed that the king of all these evil spirits
was the Devil, and that the king of all the good spirits
was God. It was also believed that God was in fact
the king of all, and that the Devil himself was one of
the children of this God. This God and this Devil were
at war, each trying to secure the souls of men. God
offered the rewards of eternal joy and threatened eternal
pain. The Devil baited his traps with pleasant pleasure,
with the gratification of the senses, with the ecstasies
of love, and laughed at the joys of heaven and the
pangs of hell. With malicious hand he sowed the seeds
of doubt—induced men to investigate, to reason, to call
for evidence, to rely upon themselves ; planted in their
hearts the love of liberty, assisted them to break their
chains, to escape from their prisons, and besought
them to think. In this way he corrupted the children
of men.
Our fathers believed that they could, by prayer, by
sacrifice, by fasting, by performing certain ceremonies,
gain the assistance of this God and of these good
spirits. They were not quite logical. They did not
believe that the Devil was the author of all evil. They
thought that flood and famine, plague and cyclone,
earthquake and war, were sometimes sent by God as
punishment for unbelief. They fell upon their knees
and, with white lips, prayed the good God to stay his
�SUPERSTITION.
hand. They humbled themselves, confessed their sins,
and filled the heavens with their vows and cries. With
priests and prayers they tried to stay the plague. They
kissed the relics, fell at shrines, besought the Virgin
and the saints ; but the prayers all died in the heartless
air, and the plague swept on to its natural end. Our
poor fathers knew nothing of any science. Back of all
events they put spirits, good or bad, angels or demons,
gods or devils. To them nothing had what we call a
natural cause. Everything was the work of spirits.
All was done by the supernatural; and everything was
done by evil spirits that they could do to ruin, punish,
mislead, and damn the children of men. This world
was a field of battle, and here the hosts of heaven and
hell waged war.
�SUPERSTITION.
1.5
IV.
Now, no man in whose brain the torch of reason burns;
no man who investigates, who really thinks, who is
capable of weighing evidence, believes in signs, in
lucky or unlucky days, in lucky or unlucky numbers.
He knows that Fridays and Thursdays are alike ; that
thirteen is no more deadly than twelve. He knows that
opals affect the wearer the same as rubies, diamonds,
or common glass. He knows that the matrimonial
chances of a maiden are not increased or decreased by
the number of leaves of a flower or seeds in an apple.
He knows that a glance at the moon over the left
shoulder is as healthful and lucky as one over the right.
He does not care whether the first comer to a theatre is
cross-eyed or hump-backed, bow-legged, or as wellproportioned as Apollo. He knows that a strange cat
could be denied asylum without bringing any mis
fortune to the family. He knows that an owl does not.
hoot in the full of the moon because a distinguished
man is about to die.
He knows that comets and
eclipses would come if all the folks were dead. He is,
not frightened by sun dogs or the Morning of the
North, when the glittering lances pierce the shield of
night. He knows that all these things occur without
�i6
5 UPERSTITION.
the slightest reference to the human race. He feels
certain that floods would destroy and cyclones rend and
earthquakes devour ; that the stars would shine ; that
day and night would still pursue each other around the
world ; that flowers would give their perfume to the
air, and light would paint the seven-hued arch upon
the dusky bosom of the cloud if every human being was
unconscious dust.
A man of thought and sense does not believe in the
existence of the Devil. He feels certain that imps,
goblins, demons, and evil spirits exist only in the imagi
nation of the ignorant and frightened, He knows how
these malevolent myths were made, He knows the
part they have played in all religions. He knows that
for many centuries a belief in these devils, these evil
spirits, was substantially universal. He knows that the
priest believed as firmly as the peasant. In those days
the best educated and the most ignorant were equal
dupes. Kings and courtiers, ladies and clowns, soldiers
and artists, slaves and convicts, believed as firmly in
the Devil as they did in God.
Back of this belief there is no evidence, and there
never has been. This belief did not rest on any fact.
It was supported by mistakes, exaggerations, and lies.
The mistakes were natural, the exaggerations were
mostly unconscious, and the lies were generally honest.
Back of these mistakes, these exaggerations, these
lies, was the love of the marvellous. Wonder listened
with greedy ears, with wide eyes, and ignorance with
open mouth.
The man of sense knows the history of this belief,
and he knows, also, that for many centuries its truth
�SUPERSTITION.
was established by the Holy Bible. He knows that the
Old Testament is filled with allusions to the Devil, to
evil spirits ; and that the New Testament is the same.
He knows that Christ himself was a believer in the
Devil, in evil spirits ; and that his principal business
was casting out devils from the bodies of men and
women. He knows that Christ himself, according to
the New Testament, was not only tempted by the Devil,
but was carried by his Satanic Highness to the top of
the temple.
If the New Testament is the inspired
word of God, then I admit that these devils, these imps,
do actually exist, and that they do take possession of
human beings.
To deny the existence of these evil spirits, to deny
the existence of the Devil, is to deny the truth of the
New Testament. To deny the existence of these imps
of darkness is to contradict the words of Jesus Christ.
If these devils do not exist, if they do not cause disease,
if they do not tempt and mislead their victims, then
Christ was an ignorant, superstitious man, insane, an
impostor, or the New Testament is not a true record of
what he said and what he pretended to do. If we give
up the belief in devils, we must give up the inspiration
ot the Old and New Testament. We must give up the
divinity of Christ. To deny the existence of evil spirits
is to utterly destroy the foundation of Christianity.
There is no half-way ground. Compromise is impos
sible. If all the accounts in the New Testament of
casting out devils are false, what part of the Blessed
Book is true ?
As a matter of fact, the success of the Devil in the
Garden of Eden made the coming of Christ a necessity,
�i8
SUPERSTITION.
laid the foundation for the Atonement, crucified the
Savior, and gave us the Trinity.
. If the Devil does not exist, the Christian creeds all
crumble, and the superstructure known as “Christianity ”
built by the fathers, by popes, by priests, and theologians—built with mistakes and falsehoods, with
miracles and wonders, with blood and flame, with lies
and legends borrowed from the savage world—becomes
a shapeless ruin.
If we give up the belief in devils and evil spirits, we
are compelled to say that a witch never lived. No
sensible human being now believes in witchcraft. We
know that it was a delusion. We now know that
thousands and thousands of innocent men, women, and
children were tortured and burned for having been found
guilty of an impossible crime ; and we also know, if our
minds have not been deformed by faith, that all the
books in which the existence of witches is taught
were written by ignorant and superstitious men.
We also know that the Old Testament asserted the
existence of witches. According to that Holy Book,
Jehovah was a believer in witchcraft, and said to
his chosen people : “ Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
live.”
This one commandment, this simple line, demon
strates that Jehovah was not only not God, but that he
was a poor, ignorant, superstitious savage. This one
line proves beyond all possible doubt that the Old
Testament was written by men, by barbarians.
John Wesley was right when he said that to give up a
belief in witchcraft was to give up the Bible.
Give up the Devil, and what can you do with the book
�S UPERSTITION
*9
of Job ? How will you account for the lying spirits that
Jehovah sent to mislead Ahab ?
Ministers who admit that witchcraft is a superstition
will read the story of the Witch of Endor—will read it
in a solemn, reverential voice—with a theological
voice—and will have the impudence to say that they
believe it.
It would be delightful to know that angels hover in
the air ; that they guard the innocent, protect the good ;
that they bend over the cradles and give health and
happy dreams to pallid babes ; that they fill dungeons
with the light of their presence, and give hope to the
imprisoned ; that they follow the fallen, the erring, the
outcasts, the friendless, and win them back to virtue,
love, and joy. But we have no more evidence of the
existence of good spirits than of bad. The angels that
visited Abraham and the mother of Samson are as unreal
as the ghosts and goblins of the Middle Ages. The
angel that stopped the donkey of Balaam, the one who
walked in the furnace flames with Meshech, Shadrack,
and Abednego, the one who slew the Assyrians, and the
one who, in a dream, removed the suspicions of Joseph,
were all created by the imagination of the credulous, by
the lovers of the marvellous, and they have been handed
down from dotage to infancy, from ignorance to igno
rance, through all the years.
Except in Catholic
countries, no winged citizen of the celestial realm has
visited the world for hundreds of years. Only those
who are blind to facts can see these beautiful creatures,
and only those who reach conclusions without the
assistance of evidence can believe in their existence. It
is told that the great Angelo, in decorating a church,
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SUPERSTITION.
painted some angels wearing sandals. A cardinal,
looking at the picture, said to the artist : “ Whoever
saw angels with sandals ?” Angelo answered with
another question : “ Whoever saw an angel bare
footed ?”
The existence of angels has never been established.
Of course, we know that millions and millions have
believed in seraphim and cherubim ; have believed that
the angel Michael contended with the Devil for the body
of Moses ; that angels shut the mouths of the lions for
the protection of Daniel ; that angels ministered unto
Christ, and that countless angels will accompany the
Savior when he comes to take possession of the world.
And we know that all these millions believe through
blind, unreasoning faith, holding all evidence and all
facts in theological contempt.
But the angels come no more. They bring no balm
to any wounded heart.
Long ago they folded their
pinions and faded from the earth and air. These winged
guardians no longer protect the innocent ; no longer
cheer the suffering; no longer whisper words of com
fort to the helpless.
They have become dreams—
vanished visions.
�SUPERSTITION.
21
V.
In the dear old religious days the earth was flat—a
little dishing, if anything—and just above it was
Jehovah’s house, and just below it was where the Devil
lived. God and his angels inhabited the third storey,
the Devil and his imps the basement, and the human
race the second floor.
Then they knew where heaven was. They could
almost hear the harps and hallelujahs. They knew
where hell was, and they could almost hear the groans
and smell the sulphurous fumes. They regarded the
volcanoes as chimneys. They were perfectly acquainted
with the celestial, the terrestrial, and the infernal.
They were quite familiar with the New Jerusalem, with
its golden streets and gates of pearl. Then the trans
lation of Enoch seemed reasonable enough, and no one
doubted that before the Flood the sons of God came
down and made love to the daughters of men. The
theologians thought that the builders of Babel would
have succeeded if God had not come down and caused
them to forget the meaning of w’ords.
In those blessed days the priests knew all about
heaven and hell. They knew that God governed the
world by hope and fear, by promise and threat, by
reward and punishment. The reward was to be eternal,
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SUPERSTITION.
and so was the punishment. It was not God’s plan to
develop the human brain, so that man would perceive
and comprehend the right and avoid the wrong. He
taught ignorance nothing but obedience, and for obedi
ence he offered eternal joy. He loved the submissive—
the kneelers and crawlers. He hated the doubters, the
investigators, the thinkers, the philosophers.
For
them he created the eternal prison where he could feed
forever the hunger of his hate. He loved the credulous
—those who believed without evidence ; and for them
he prepared a home in the realm of fadeless light. He
delighted in the company of the questionless.
But where is this heaven, and where is this hell ?
We now know that heaven is not just above the clouds,
and that hell is not just below the earth. The telescope
has done away with the ancient heaven, and the re
volving world has quenched the flames of the ancient
hell.
These theological countries, these imagined
worlds, have disappeared. No one knows, and no one
pretends to know, where heaven is ; and no one knows,
and no one pretends to know, the locality of hell. Now
the theologians say that hell and heaven are not places,
but states of mind—conditions.
The belief in gods and devils has been substantially
universal. Back of the good, man placed a god ; back
of the evil, a devil; back of health, sunshine, and
harvest was a good deity ; back of disease, misfortune,
and death he placed a malicious fiend.
Is there any evidence that gods and devils exist ?
The evidence of the existence of a god and of a devil
is substantially the same.
Both of these deities are
inferences ; each one is a perhaps.
They have not
�SUPERSTITION.
23
been seen—they are invisible—and they have not
ventured within the horizon of the senses. The old
lady who said there must be a devil, else how could
they make pictures that looked exactly like him,
reasoned like a trained theologian—like a doctor of
divinity.
Now, no intelligent man believes in the existence
of a devil—no longer fears the leering fiend. Most
people who think have given up a personal God, a
creative deity. They now talk about the “ Unknown,”
the “Infinite Energy”; but they put Jehovah with
Jupiter. They regard them both as broken dolls from
the nursery of the past.
The men or women who ask for evidence—who
desire to know the truth—care nothing for signs ;
nothing for what are called wonders ; nothing for lucky
or unlucky jewels, days or numbers ; nothing for
charms or amulets ; nothing for comets or eclipses, and
have no belief in good or evil spirits, in gods or devils.
They place no reliance on general or special providence
—on any power that rescues, protects, and saves the
good, or punishes the vile and vicious. They do not
believe that in the whole history of mankind a prayer
has been answered. They think that all the sacrifices
have been wasted, and that all the incense has ascended
in vain.
They do not believe that the world was
created and prepared for man, any more than it was
created and prepared for insects. They do not think it
probable that whales were invented to supply the
Eskimo with blubber, or that flames were created to
attract and destroy moths. On every hand there seems
to be evidence of design—design for the accomplish-
�24
SUPERSTITION.
ment of good, design for the accomplishment of evil.
On every side are the benevolent and malicious—some
thing toiling to preserve, something laboring to destroy.
Everything surrounded by friends and enemies—by the
love that protects, by the hate that kills. Design is as
apparent in decay, as growth ; in failure, as success ;
in grief, as joy. Nature with one hand building, with
one hand tearing down, armed with sword and shield—slaying and protecting, and protecting but to slay. All
life journeying towards death, and all death hastening
back to life.
Everywhere waste and economy, care
and negligence.
We watch the flow and ebb of life and death—the
great drama that forever holds the stage, where players
act their parts and disappear; the great drama in
which all must act—ignorant and learned, idiotic and
insane—without rehearsal and without the slightest
knowledge of a part, or of any plot or purpose in the
play. The scene shifts ; some actors disappear and
others come, and again the scene shifts ; mystery
everywhere. We try to explain, and the explanation
of one fact contradicts another.
Behind each veil
removed, another. All things equal in wonder.
One
drop of water as wonderful as all the seas ; one grain
of sand as all the world ; one moth with painted
wings as all the things that live ; one egg from which
warmth, in darkness, woos to life an organised and
breathing form—a form with sinews, bones, and
nerves, with blood and brain, with instincts, passions,
thoughts, and wants—as all the stars that wheel in
space.
The smallest seed that, wrapped in soil, has dreams
�SUPERSTITION.
25
of April rains and days of June withholds its secret
from the wisest men.
The wisdom of the world
cannot explain one blade of grass, the faintest motion
of the smallest leaf. And yet theologians, popes,
priests, parsons, who speechless stand before the
wonder of the smallest thing that is, know all about
the origin of worlds, know when the beginning was,
when the end will be, know all about the God who
with a wish created all, know what his plan and
purpose was, the means he uses and the end he seeks.
To them all mysteries have been revealed, except the
mystery of things that touch the senses of a living
man.
But honest men do not pretend to know ; they are
candid and sincere ; they love the truth ; they admit
their ignorance, and they say, “ We do not know.”
After all, why should we worship our ignorance,
why should we kneel to the Unknown, why should
we prostrate ourselves before a guess ?
If God exists, how do we know that he is good,
that he cares for us? The Christians say that their
God has existed from eternity; that he forever has
been, and forever will be, infinite, wise, and good.
Could this God have avoided being God? Could he
have avoided being good ? Was he wise and good
without his wish or will ?
Being from eternity, he was not produced.
He
was back of all cause. What he is, he was, and will
be, unchanged, unchangeable.
He had nothing to
do with the making or developing of his character.
Nothing to do with the development of his mind.
What he was, he is.
He has made no progress.
�26
SUPERSTITION.
What he is, he will be; there can be no change.
Why then, I ask, should we praise him ? He could
not have been different from what he was and is.
Why should we pray to him, he cannot change ?
And yet Christians implore their God not to do
wrong.
The meanest thing charged against the Devil is
that he leads the children of men into temptation,
and yet, in the Lord’s Prayer, God is insultingly
asked not to imitate the king of fiends.
“ Lead us not into temptation.”
Why should God demand praise ? He is as he was.
He has never learned anything ; has never practised
any self-denial ; was never tempted, never touched by
fear or hope, and never had a want. Why should he
demand our praise ?
Does anyone know that this God exists; that he
ever heard or answered any prayer ?
Is it known
that he governs the world ; that he interferes in the
affairs of men ; that he protects the good or punishes
the wicked ? Can evidence of this be found in the
history of mankind ? If God governs the world, why
should we credit him for the good and not charge him
with the evil? To justify this God we must say that
good is good, and that evil is also good.
If all is
done by this God, we should make no distinction
between his actions—between the actions of the in
finitely wise, powerful, and good. If we thank him for
sunshine and harvest, we should also thank him for
plague and famine. If we thank him for liberty, the
slave should raise his chained hands in worship and
thank God that he toils unpaid with the lash upon his
�SUPERSTITION.
naked back.
If we thank him for victory, we should
thank him for defeat.
Only a few days ago our President, by proclamation,
thanked God for giving us the victory at Santiago. He
did not thank him for sending the yellow fever. To be
consistent, the President should have thanked him
equally for both.
The truth is that good and evil spirits—gods and
devils—are beyond the realm of experience ; beyond
the horizon of our senses ; beyond the limits of our
thoughts ; beyond imagination’s utmost flight.
Man should think ; he should use all his senses ; he
should examine ; he should reason. The man who
cannot think is less than man ; the man who will not
think is traitor to himself; the man who fears to think
is superstition’s slave.
�28
SUPERSTITION.
VI.
What harm does superstition do? What harm in
believing in fables, in legends ?
To believe in signs and wonders, in amulets,
charms, and miracles, in gods and devils, in heavens
and hells, makes the brain an insane ward, the world
a madhouse, takes all certainty from the mind, makes
experience a snare, destroys the kinship of effect and
cause the unity of nature—and makes man a trembling
serf and slave. With this belief a knowledge of nature
sheds no light upon the path to be pursued. Nature
becomes a puppet of the unseen powers. The fairy,
called the supernatural, touches with her wand a fact;
it disappears. Causes are barren of effects, and effects
are independent of all natural causes. Caprice is king.
The foundation is gone. The great dome rests on air.
There is no constancy, in qualities, relations, or results.
Reason abdicates, and superstition wears her crown.
The heart hardens, and the brain softens.
The energies of man are wasted in a vain effort to
secure the protection of the supernatural. Credulity,
ceremony, worship, sacrifice, and prayer take the place
of honest work, of investigation, of intellectual effort,
of observation, of experience.
Progress becomes im
possible.
�SUPERSTITION.
29
Superstition is, always has been, and forever will be,
the enemy of liberty.
Superstition created all the gods and angels, all the
devils and ghosts, all the witches, demons, and goblins,
gave us all the augurs, soothsayers, and prophets, filled
the heavens with signs and wonders, broke the chain of
cause and effect, and wrote the history of man in
miracles and lies. Superstition made all the popes,
cardinals, bishops, and priests, all the monks and nuns,
the begging friars and the filthy saints, all the preachers
and exhorters, all the “called” and “set apart.”
Superstition made men fall upon their knees before
beasts and stones, caused them to worship snakes and
trees and insane phantoms of the air, beguiled them or
their gold and toil, and made them shed their children’s
blood and give their babes to flames. Superstition
built the cathedrals and temples, all the altars, mosques,
and churches, filled the world with amulets and charms,
with images and idols, with sacred bones and holy
hairs, with martyrs’ blood and rags, with bits of wood
that frighten devils from the breasts of men.
Super
stition invented and used the instruments of torture,
flayed men and women alive, loaded millions with
chains, and destroyed hundreds of thousands with fire.
Superstition mistook insanity for inspiration, and the
ravings of maniacs for prophesy, for the wisdom of God.
Superstition imprisoned the virtuous, tortured the
thoughtful, killed the heroic, put chains on the body,
manacles on the brain, and utterly destroyed the liberty
of speech. Superstition gave us all the prayers and
ceremonies ; taught all the kneelings, genuflections, and
prostrations ; taught men to hate themselves, to despise
�30
SUPERSTITION.
pleasure, to scar their flesh, to grovel in the dust, to
desert their wives and children, to shun their fellow
men, and to spend their lives in useless pain and prayer.
Superstition taught that human love is degrading, low,
and vile ; taught that monks are purer than fathers,
that nuns are holier than mothers, that faith is superior
to fact, that credulity leads to heaven, that doubt is the
road to hell, that belief is better than knowledge, and
that to ask for evidence is to insult God. Superstition
is, always has been, and forever will be, the foe of
progress, the enemy of education, and the assassin of
freedom. It sacrifices the known to the unknown, the
present to the future, this actual world to the shadowy
next. It has given us a selfish heaven, and a hell of
infinite revenge ; it has filled the world with hatred,
war and crime, with the malice of meekness and the
arrogance of humility. Superstition is the only enemy
of science in all the world.
Nations, races, have been destroyed by this monster.
For nearly two thousand years the infallible agent of
God has lived in Italy. That country has been covered
with nunneries, monasteries, cathedrals, and temples—
filled with all varieties of priests and holy men. For
centuries Italy was enriched with the gold of the faithful.
All roads led to Rome, and these roads were filled with
pilgrims bearing gifts ; and yet Italy, in spite of all the
prayers, steadily pursued the downward path, died and
was buried, and would at this moment be in her grave
had it not been for Cavour, Mazzini, and Garibaldi.
For her poverty, her misery, she is indebted to the holy
Catholic Church, to the infallible agents of God. For
the life she has she is indebted to the enemies of super-
�SUPERSTITION.
3i
stition. A few years ago Italy was great enough to
build a monument to Giordano Bruno Bruno, the
victim of the “Triumphant Beast”;—Bruno, thesublimest
of her sons.
Spain was at one time owner of half the earth, and
held within her greedy hands the gold and silver of the
world. At that time all nations were in the darkness
of superstition. At that time the world was governed
by priests. Spain clung to her creed. Some nations
began to think, but Spain continued to believe. In
some countries priests lost power, but not in Spain.
The power behind her throne was the cowled monk.
In some countries men began to interest themselves in
science, but not in Spain. Spain told her beads, and
continued to pray to the Virgin.
Spain was busy
saving her soul. In her zeal she destroyed herself.
She relied on the supernatural ; not on knowledge, but
superstition. Her prayers were never answered. The
saints were dead.
They could not help, and the
Blessed Virgin did not hear. Some countries were in
the dawn of a 'new day, but Spain gladly remained in
the night. With fire and sword she exterminated the
men who thought.
Her greatest festival was the
aato da fe.
Other nations grew great, while Spain
grew small. Day by day her power waned, but her
faith increased. One by one her colonies were lost, but
she kept her creed. She gave her gold to superstition,
her brain to priests ; but she faithfully counted her
beads. Only a few days ago, relying on her God and
his priests, on charms and amulets, on holy water and
pieces of the true cross, she waged war against the
great Republic.
Bishops blessed her armies and
�32
SUPERSTITION.
sprinkled holy water on her ships, and yet her armies
were defeated and captured, her ships battered, beached,
and burned, and in her helplessness she sued for peace.
But she has her creed ; her superstition is not lost.
Poor Spain, wrecked by faith, the victim of religion !
Portugal, slowly dying, growing poorer every day,
still clings to the faith. Her prayers are never answered,
but she makes them still. Austria is nearly gone, a
victim of superstition. Germany is travelling towards
the night. God placed her Kaiser on the throne. The
people must obey. Philosophers and scientists fall upon
their knees and become the puppets of the divinely
crowned.
�SUPERSTITION.
33
VII.
The believers in the supernatural, in a power superior
to nature, in God, have what they call “ inspired books.”
These books contain the absolute truth. They must be
believed. He who denies them will be punished with
eternal pain. These books are not addressed to human
reason. They are above reason. They care nothing
for what a man calls “facts.” Facts that do not agree
with these books are mistakes. These books are inde
pendent of human experience, of human reason.
Our inspired books constitute what we call the
“ Bible.” The man who reads this inspired book, look
ing for contradictions, mistakes, and interpolations,
imperils the salvation of his soul. While he reads he
has no right to think, no right to reason. To believe
is his only duty.
Millions of men have wasted their lives in the study
of this book—in trying to harmonise contradictions
and to explain the obscure and seemingly absurd. In
doing this they have justified nearly every crime and
every cruelty. In its follies they have found the profoundest wisdom. Hundreds of creeds have been con
structed from its inspired passages. Probably no two
of its readers have agreed as to its meaning. Thou
sands have studied Hebrew and Greek that they might
read the Old and New Testament in the languages in
�34
SUPERSTITION.
which they were written. The more they studied, the
more they differed.
By the same book they proved
that nearly everybody is to be lost, and that all are to
be saved ; that slavery is a divine institution, and that
all men should be free ; that polygamy is right, and
that no man should have more than one wife ; that the
powers that be are ordained of God, and that the people
have a right to overturn and destroy the powers that
be ; that all the actions of men were predestined—pre
ordained from eternity, and yet that man is free ; that
all the heathen will be lost ; that all the heathen will be
saved ; that all men who live according to the light of
nature will be damned for their pains ; that you must be
baptised by sprinkling ; that you must be baptised by
immersion ; that there is no salvation without baptism ;
that baptism is useless ; that you must believe in the
Trinity ; that it is sufficient to believe in God; that
you must believe that a Hebrew peasant was God;
that at the same time he was half man, that he was of
the blood of David through his supposed father Joseph,
who was not his father, and that it is not necessary to
believe that Christ was God ; that you must believe that
the Holy Ghost proceeded ; that it makes no difference
whether you do or not; that you must keep the Sabbath
holy ; that Christ taught nothing of the kind ; that
Christ established a Church ; that he established no
Church ; that the dead are to be raised ; that there is to
be no resurrection ; that Christ is coming again ; that
he has made his last visit; that Christ went to hell and
preached to the spirits in prison ; that he did nothing of
the kind ; that all the Jews are going to perdition ;
that they are all going to heaven ; that all the miracles
�SUPERSTITION.
35
described in the Bible were performed ; that some of
them were not, because they are foolish, childish, and
idiotic ; that all the Bible is inspired ; that some of
the books are not inspired; that there is to be a
general judgment, when the sheep and goats are to be
divided ; that there never will be any general judgment ;
that the sacramental bread and wine are changed into
the flesh and blood of God and the Trinity ; that they
are not changed ; that God has no flesh or blood ; that
there is a place called “purgatory”; that there is no
such place ; that unbaptised infants will be lost; that
they will be saved ; that we must believe the Apostles’
Creed; that the apostles made no creed ; that the
Holy Ghost was the father of Christ ; that Joseph was
his father ; that the Holy Ghost had the form of a dove ;
that there is no Holy Ghost; that heretics should be
killed ; that you must not resist evil; that you should
murder unbelievers ; that you must love your enemies ;
that you should take no thought for the morrow, but
should be diligent in business ; that you should lend to
all who ask, and that one who does not provide for his
own household is worse than an infidel.
In defence of all these creeds, all these contradictions,
thousands of volumes have been written, millions of
sermons have been preached, countless swords reddened
with blood, and thousands and thousands of nights
made lurid with the faggot’s flames.
Hundreds and hundreds of commentators have ob
scured and darkened the meaning of the plainest texts,
spiritualised dates, names, numbers, and even genealo
gies. They have degraded the poetic, changed parables
to history, and imagery to stupid and impossible facts.
�36
SUPERSTITION.
They have wrestled with rhapsody and prophecy, with
visions and dreams, with illusions and delusions, with
myths and miracles, with the blunders of ignorance,
the ravings of insanity, and the ecstasy of hysterics.
Millions of priests and preachers have added to the
mysteries of the inspired book by explanation, by show
ing the wisdom of foolishness, the foolishness of
wisdom, the mercy of cruelty, and the probability of the
impossible.
The theologians made the Bible a master, and the
people its slaves.
With this book they destroyed
intellectual veracity, the natural manliness of man.
With this book they banished pity from the heart,
subverted all ideas of justice and fairness, imprisoned
the soul in the dungeon of fear, and made honest doubt a
crime.
Think of what the world has suffered from fear.
Think of the millions who were driven to insanity.
Think of the fearful nights—nights filled with phantoms,
with flying, crawling monsters, with hissing serpents
that slowly uncoiled, with vague and formless horrors,
with burning and malicious eyes.
Think of the fear of death, of infinite wrath, of ever
lasting revenge in the prisons of fire, of an eternity of
thirst, of endless regret, of the sobs and sighs, the
shrieks and groans of eternal pain I
Think of the hearts hardened, of the hearts broken,
of the cruelties inflicted, of the agonies endured, of the
lives darkened.
The inspired Bible has been, and is, the greatest curse
of Christendom, and will so remain as long as it is held
to be inspired.
�SUPERSTITION.
37
VIII.
Our God was made by men, sculptured by savages who
did the best they could. They made our God somewhat
like themselves, and gave to him their passions, their
ideas of right and wrong.
As man advanced he slowly changed his God—took a little ferocity from his heart, and put the light
of kindness in his eyes.
As man progressed he
obtained a wider view, extended the intellectual horizon,
and again he changed his God, making him as nearly
perfect as he could, and yet this God was patterned
after those who made him. As man became civilized,
as he became merciful, he began to love justice, and
as his mind expanded his ideal became purer, nobler,
and so his God became more merciful, more loving.
In ,our day Jehovah has been outgrown. He is no
longer the perfect. Now theologians talk, not about
Jehovah, but about a God of love, call him the Eternal
Father and the perpetual friend and providence of man.
But, while they talk about this God of love, cyclones
wreck and rend, the earthquake devours, the flood
destroys, the red bolt leaping from the cloud still crashes
the life out of men, and plague and fever still are tireless
reapers in the harvest fields of death.
They tell us now that all is good ; that evil is but
�SUPERSTITION.
blessing in disguise, that pain makes strong and
virtuous men—makes character—while pleasure en
feebles and degrades. If this be so, the souls in hell
should grow to greatness, while those in heaven should
shrink and shrivel.
But we know that good is good. ’ We know that
good is not evil, and that evil is not good. We know
that light is not darkness, and that darkness is not
light. But we do not feel that good and evil were
planned and caused by a supernatural God. We
regard them both as necessities. We neither thank
nor curse. We know that some evil can be avoided,
and that the good can be increased. We know that
this can be done by increasing knowledge, by developing
the brain.
As Christians have changed their God, so they have
accordingly changed their Bible. The impossible and
absurd, the cruel and the infamous, have been mostly
thrown aside, and thousands are now engaged in trying
to save the inspired word. Of course, the orthodox
still cling to every word, and still insist that every line
is true. They are literalists. To them the Bible means
exactly what it says. They want no explanation.
They care nothing for commentators. Contradictions
cannot disturb their faith. They deny that any contra
dictions exist.
They loyally stand by the sacred text,
and they give it the narrowest possible interpretation.
They are like the janitor of an apartment house who
refused to rent a flat to a gentleman because he said
he had children.
“But,” said the gentleman,
“my children are both married and live in Iowa.”
“That makes no difference,” said the janitor; “I am
�SUPERSTITION.
39
not allowed to rent a flat to any man who has
children.”
All the orthodox churches are obstructions on the
highway or progress. Every orthodox creed is a chain,
a dungeon. Every believer in the “ inspired book ” is
a slave who drives reason from her throne, and in her
stead crowns fear.
Reason is the light, the sun, of the brain. It is
the compass of the mind, the ever-constant Northern
Star, the mountain peak that lifts itself above all
clouds.
�40
SUPERSTITION.
IX.
There were centuries of darkness when religion had
control of Christendom.
Superstition was almost
universal. Not one in twenty thousand could read or
write. During these centuries the people lived with
their back to the sunrise, and pursued their way towards
the dens of ignorance and faith.
There was no
progress, no invention, no discovery. On every hand,
cruelty and worship, persecution and prayer. The priests
were the enemies of thought, of investigation. They
were the shepherds, and the people were their sheep ;
and it was their business to guard the flock from the
wolves of thought and doubt. This world was of no
importance compared with the next. This life was to
be spent in preparing for the life to come. The gold
and labor of men were wasted in building cathedrals,
and in supporting the pious and the useless. During
these Dark Ages of Christianity, as I said before,
nothing was invented, nothing was discovered, calcu
lated to increase the well-being of men. The energies
of Christendom were wasted in the vain effort to obtain
assistance from the supernatural.
For centuries the business of Christians was to wrest
from the followers of Mohammed the empty sepulchre
of Christ.
Upon the altar of this folly millions of
�5 UPERSTITION.
4i
lives were sacrificed, and yet the soldiers of the impostor
were victorious, and the wretches who carried the banner
of Christ were scattered like leaves before the storm.
There was, I believe, one invention during these
ages.
It is said that in the Thirteenth Century
Roger Bacon, a Franciscan monk, invented gun
powder ; but this invention was without a fellow.
Yet we cannot give Christianity the credit, because
Bacon was an infidel, and was great enough to say that
in all things reason must be the standard. He was
persecuted and imprisoned, as most sensible men were
in those blessed days. The Church was triumphant.
The sceptre and mitre were in her hands, and yet her
success was the result of force and fraud, and it carried
within itself the seeds of its defeat.
The Church
attempted the impossible. It endeavored to make the
world of one belief ; to force all minds to a common form,
and utterly destroy the individuality of man.
To
accomplish this it employed every art and artifice that
cunning could suggest. It inflicted every cruelty by
every means that malice could invent.
But, in spite of all, a few men began to think. They
became interested in the affairs of this world—in the
great panorama of nature.
They began to seek for
causes, for the explanations of phenomena. They were
not satisfied with the assertions of the Church. These
thinkers withdrew their gaze from the skies and looked
at their own surroundings.
They were unspiritual
enough to desire comfort here. They became sensible
and secular, worldly and wise.
What was the result ? They began to invent, to
discover, to find the relation between facts, the
�42
SUPERSTITION.
conditions of happiness, and the means that would
increase the well-being of their fellow men.
Movable types were invented, paper was borrowed
from the Moors, books appeared, and it became possible
to save the intellectual wealth, so that each generation
could hand it to the next. History began to take the
place of legend and rumour. The telescope was invented.
The orbits of the stars were traced, and men became
citizens of the universe. The steam engine was con
structed, and now steam, the great slave, does the work
of hundreds of millions of men. The Black Art, the
impossible, was abandoned, and chemistry, the useful,
took its place. Astrology became astronomy. Kepler
discovered the three great laws, one of the greatest
triumphs of human genius, and our constellation became
a poem, a symphony. Newton gave us the mathe
matical expression of the attraction of gravitation.
Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood.
He
gave us the fact, and Draper gave us the reason.
Steamships conquered the seas, and railways covered
the land. Houses and streets were lighted with gas.
Through the invention of matches fire became the com
panion of man.
The art of photography became
known ; the sun became an artist. Telegraphs and
cables were invented. The lightning became a carrier
of thought, and the nations became neighbours. An es
thetics were discovered, and pain was lost in sleep.
Surgery became a science. The telephone was invented
-—the telephone that carries and deposits in listening
ears the waves of words.
The phonograph, that
catches and retains in marks and dots and gives again
the echoes of our speech.
�SUPERSTITION.
43
Then came electric light that fills the night with day,
and all the wonderful machines that use the subtle
force—-the same force that leaps from the summer cloud
to ravage and destroy.
The Spectrum Analysis that tells us of the substance
of the sun ; the Rontgen rays that change the opaque
to the transparent. The great thinkers demonstrated
the indestructibility of force and matter demon
strated that the indestructible could not have been
created. The geologist, in rocks and deposits and
mountains and continents, read a little of the story of
the world—of its changes, of the glacial epoch the
story of vegetable and animal life.
The biologists, through the fossil forms of life,
established the antiquity of man, and demonstrated the
worthlessness of Holy Writ. Then came evolution, the
survival of the fittest, and natural selection. Thousands
of mysteries were explained, and science wrested the
sceptre from superstition. The cell theory was advanced,
and embryology was studied ; the microscope discovered
germs of disease, and taught us how to stay the plague.
These great theories and discoveries, together with
countless inventions, are the children of intellectual
liberty.
�44
SUPERSTITION.
X.
After all we know but little. In the darkness of life
there are a few gleams of light. Possibly the dropping
of a dishcloth prophesies the coming of company ; but
we have no evidence. Possibly it is dangerous for
thirteen to dine together ; but we have no evidence.
Possibly a maiden’s matrimonial chances are determined
by the number of seeds in an apple, or by the number
of leaves on a flower ; but we have no evidence. Pos
sibly certain stones give good luck to the wearer, while
the wearing of others brings loss and death. Possibly a
glimpse of the new moon over the left shoulder brings
misfortune. Possibly there are curative virtues in old
bones, in sacred rags and holy hairs, in images and bits
of w’ood, in rusty nails and dried blood ; but the trouble
is, we have no evidence. Possibly comets, eclipses,
and shooting stars foretell the death of kings, the des
truction of nations, or the coming of plague. Possibly
devils take possession of the bodies and minds of men.
Possibly witches, with the Devil’s help, control the
winds, breed storms on sea and land, fill summer’s lap
with frosts and snow, and work with charm and spell
against the public weal ; but of this we have no evi
dence. It may be that all the miracles described in the
Old and New Testament were performed; that the
�SUPERSTITION.
45
pallid flesh of the dead felt once more the thrill of life ;
that the corpse arose and felt upon his smiling lips the
kiss of wife and child. Possibly water was turned into
wine, loaves and fishes increased, and possibly devils
were expelled from men and women ; possibly fishes
were found with money in their mouths ; possibly clay
and spittle brought back the light to sightless eyes, and
possibly words cured disease and made the leper clean ;
but of this we have no evidence.
Possibly iron floated, rivers divided, waters burst
from dry bones, birds carried food to prophets, and
angels flourished drawn swords ; but of this we have
no evidence.
Possibly Jehovah employed lying spirits to deceive a
king, and all the wonders of the savage world may have
.happened; but the trouble is there is no proof.
So there may be a Devil, almost infinite in cunning
and power, and he may have a countless number of
imps whose only business is to sow the seeds of evil and
to vex, mislead, capture, and imprison in eternal flames
the souls of men. All this, so far as we know, is pos
sible. All we know is that we have no evidence except
the assertions of ignorant priests.
Possibly there is a place called “ hell,” where all the
devils live—a hell whose flames are waiting for all the
men who think and have the courage to express their
thoughts, for all who fail to credit priests and sacred
books, for all who walk the path that reason lights,
for all the good and brave who lack credulity and
faith ; but of this, I am happy to say, there is no
' proof.
And so there may be a place called “ heaven,” the
�46
SUPERSTITION.
home of God, where angels float and fly and play on
harps, and hear with joy the groans and shrieks of the
lost in hell; but of this there is no evidence.
It all rests on dreams and visions of the insane.
There may be a power superior to nature, a power
that governs and directs all things ; but the existence of
this power has not been established.
In the presence of the mysteries of life and thought,
of force and substance, of growth and decay, of birth
and death, of joy and pain, of the sufferings of the good,
the triumphs of wrong, the intelligent, honest man is
compelled to say : “ I do not know.”
But we do know how gods and devils, heavens and
hells, have been made. We know the history of inspired
books—the origin of religions. We know how the seeds
of superstition were planted, and what made them grow.
We know that all superstitions, all creeds, all follies
and mistakes, all crimes and cruelties, all virtues,
vices, hopes, and fears, all discoveries and inventions,
have been naturally produced. By the light of reason
we divide the useful from the hurtful, the false from the
true.
We know the past—the paths that man has travelled
—-his mistakes, his triumphs. We know a few facts,
a few fragments ; and the imagination, the artist of
the mind, with these facts, these fragments, rebuilds
the past, and on the canvas of the future deftly paints
the things to be.
We believe in the natural, in the unbroken and un
breakable succession of causes and effects. We deny
the existence of the supernatural. We do not believe
in any God who can be pleased with incense, with
�SUPERSTITION.
47
kneeling, with bell-ringing, psalm-singing, bead-count
ing, fasting, or prayer—in any God who can be flattered
by words of faith or fear.
We believe in the natural. We have no fear of
devils, ghosts, or hells. We believe that Mahatmas,
astral bodies, materialisations of spirits, crystal gazing,
seeing the future, telepathy, mind-reading, and Christian
Science are only cunning frauds, the genuineness of
which is established by the testimony of incompetent,
honest witnesses. We believe that Cunning plates
fraud with the gold of honesty, and veneers vice with
virtue.
We know that millions are seeking the impossible
trying to secure the aid of the supernatural—to solve
the problem of life—to guess the riddle of destiny, and
to pluck from the future its secret. We know that all
their efforts are in vain.
We believe in the natural. We believe in home and
fireside—in wife and child and friend—in the realities
of this world. We have faith in facts—in knowledge—in the development of the brain. We throw away super
stition and welcome science. We banish the phantoms,
the mistakes, and lies, and cling to the truth. We do
not enthrone the unknown and crown our ignorance.
We do not stand with our backs to the sun and mistake
our shadow for God.
We do not create a master and thankfully wear his
chains. We do not enslave ourselves. We want no
leaders—no followers. Our desire is that every human
being shall be true to himself, to his ideal, unbribed by
promises, careless of threats. We want no tyrant on
the earth or in the air.
�48
SUPERSTITION.
We know that superstition has given us delusions
and illusions, dreams and visions, ceremonies and
cruelties, faith and fanaticism, beggars and bigots, per
secutions and prayers, theology and torture, piety and
poverty, saints and slaves, miracles and mummeries,
disease and death.
We know that science has given us all we have of
value. Science is the only civiliser. It has freed the
slave, clothed the naked, fed the hungry, lengthened
life, given us homes and hearths, pictures and books,
ships and railways, telegraphs and cables, engines
that tirelessly turn the countless wheels ; and it has
destroyed the monsters, the phantoms, the winged
horrors that filled the savage brain.
Science is the real redeemer.
It will put honesty
above hypocrisy ; mental veracity above all belief. It
will teach the religion of usefulness. It will destroy
bigotry in all its forms. It will put thoughtful doubt
above thoughtless faith. It will give us philosophers,
thinkers, and savants, instead of priests, theologians,
and saints. It will abolish poverty and crime, and,
greater, grander, nobler than all else, it will make the
whole world free.
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�
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Superstition : a lecture
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VICTORIES OF SCIENCE
IN ITS
WARFARE WITH SUPERSTITION.
•
’ *
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE
SOCIETY,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 20th FEBRUARY, 1881,
2U■
BY
A. ELLEY
FINCH.
j'lwdu* 1
i-niiHfirhi
-sawi)
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1881..
PRICE THREEPENCE.
�SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and to
encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science, —physical,
intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature, and Art; especially
in their bearing upon the improvement and social well-being of
mankind.
PRESIDENT.
W. B. Carpenter, Esq., C.B., LL.D., M.D., F.R.S., &c.
VICE-PRESIDENTS.
Professor Alexander
Bain.
Charles
Darwin, Esq.,
F.R.S., F.L.S.
Edward Frankland, Esq.,
D.C.L., Ph.D., F.R.S.
James Heywood, Esq., F.R.S.,
F.S.A.
Ser Arthur
Hobhouse,
K.C.S.I.
Thomas Henry Huxley,
Esq., LL.D., F.R.S., F.L.S.
Benjamin Ward Richard
son, Esq., M.D., F.R.S.
Herbert Spencer, Esq.
W. Spottiswoode,
Esq.,
LL.D., Pres.R.S.
John Tyndall, Esq., LL.D.,
F.R.S.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ABE DELIVERED AT
ST.. GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o’clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May.)
Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series) ending 25th April,
1881, will be given.
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket, trans
ferable (and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight single
resOrved-seat tickets, available for. any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,—
•
To the Shilling Reserved Seats —5s. 6d.
To the Sixpenny Seats—2s., being at the rate of Threepence
each lecture.
For tickets, and for list of the Lectures published by the Society,
apply (by letter) to the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville,
Esq., 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W.
Payment at the door:—One Shilling (Reserved Seats);—Six
pence
and One Penny. . .
�The Society’s Lectures by the same Author,
now printed, are—on
,
“ Erasmus ; his Life, Works, and Influence upon the Spirit of
the Reformation.” (Price 3d., or post free 3|d.)
“ Civilization : a Sketch of its Rise and Progress, its Modem
Safe-guards, and Future Prospects.” (Price 3d., or post
free 3jd.)
“The Influence of Astronomical Discovery in the
Development of the Human Mind.” (Price 3d., or post
free 3^d.)
“The Principles of Political Economy; their Scientific
Basis, and Practical application to Social Well-being.”
(Price 3d., or post free 3£d.)
“The English Free-thinkers of the Eighteenth Cen
tury.” (Price 3d., or post free 3jd.)
“The Science
. free 3 jd.)
of
Life worth Living.” (Price 3d., or post
“ The Inductive Philosophy : including a Parallel between
Lord Bacon and A. Comte as Philosophers.” With Notes
and Authorities, (pp. 100, cloth 8vo., price 5s., or post
free 5s. 3d.)
“ The Pursuit of Truth : as Exemplified in the Principles of
Evidence—Theological, Scientific, and Judicial.” With Notes
and Authorities, (pp. 106, cloth 8vo., price 5s., or post
free 5s. 3d.)
.
• .
’9 f
Can be obtained (on remittance by letter of postage stamps or
order) of the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry Domville, Esq., 15,
Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W., or at the Hall on the days
of Lecture; or of Mr. John Bumpus, 158, Oxford Street, W.
�SYLLABUS.
Vast number, variety, and vacillation of Religious Beliefs, pre
sented to us by the history of the Human Race.
Distribution amongst mankind of the eight great Theologies
(book-religions) of the present day, viz., Zoroastrianism—
Brahmanism—Buddhism—Confucianism —Tao-ism—Mosaism—
Christianism—Mahommedanism.
No generally acknowledged standard of Theological truth,
and why.
Theology explained as a human (logical) system, based upon
the blending of Religion with Superstition.
Religion as defined by Herbert Spencer, the late Lord Amberley,
and Dr. James Martineau.
Superstition defined as credulity concerning manifestations
of the Supernatural inconsistent with the experienced order and
veracity of Reason and Nature.
Science explained as generalized human knowledge of Natural
Phenomena.
The criticism of Science purifies Theology by purging it of
Superstitions, thereby compelling it to undergo transmutations
corresponding to the progress of human intelligence.
Illustrations from the conflict of Science with the following
Superstitions:—
1. The relative magnitude, flat form, and immobility of the
Earth. (Conflict with Astronomical Science.)
2. The six days creation of the world 6,000 years ago.
(Conflict with Geological Science.)
3. The government of human life by Special Providence.
(Conflict with Physical Science.)
4. The Theological theory of disease, involving miracle-cure,
relic-cure, prayer-cure, &c. (Cwflict with Sanitary
Science.)
5. Anthropomorphic conceptions of the Nature, Attributes,
and Will of Deity. (Conflict with Mental and Mol'd
Science.)
Probability that popular Theologies are still saturated with
Superstitions (e.g., belief in the objective efficacy of sacerdotal
supplications, humiliations, and asceticisms, supernatural revela
tions, and exclusive salvations) which the expansion of Science
must eventually explode.
Summary of evils of life inflicted by Superstition, and ameli
orations of human well-being achieved by Science, showing that
the increase of Health, Happiness, and the Moral Virtues is
coincident with the decline of Superstition and the advancement
of Science.
The debt Religion owes to Science.
�THE VICTORIES OF SCIENCE
IN ITS
WARFARE WITH SUPERSTITION.
HE modern student 'of Universal History, seeking
T to enlarge and generalize his conception of human
nature by the contemplation of the life of man in almost
every discovered clime, and throughout the ages of
recorded time, finds himself at the confluence of the
greatest number of streams of knowledge that have ever
been found flowing and converging together; greatly
embarrassed therefore, not to say overwhelmed, by the
multiplicity and diversity of his materials. .
Even limiting his research to that emotional and
imaginative yet transcendently interesting aspect of the
human mind presented by religious phenomena, he
quickly discovers that he is surrounded by a vast number,
variety, and almost incessant fluctuation of Beliefs con
cerning the supernatural, that have everywhere been
found more or less prevailing from the earliest dawn of
authentic history.
On the one hand, it is remarkable that no people, or
trace of a people, has hitherto been discovered absolutely
destitute of some of the ultimate elements or sentiments
of Beligion, Travellers and thinkers entertaining diverse
views on historical, political, and social questions, who
have made the early history of man, or his most savage
condition subjects of careful study, are really agreed on
this fundamental point.
On the other hand, the most civilized and polished
nations on the fa,ce of the globe have exhibited, and still
�6
The Victories of Science in its
exhibit almost endless differences, divisions, and distinc
tions in their theological creeds, rites, and ceremonies.
The time now at our disposal would not suffice for
the slightest allusion to the numerous Religions or
Mythologies of even the chief Nations of the ancient
world. Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Egyptians,
Arabians (before conversion), Greeks, Romans, various
Teuton, Celtic, and Sclavonic Nations, the Astecs of
Mexico, the Incas of Peru—all having their indigenous
and various ways of regarding and. worshipping the
supernatural—must now be passed by, in order that I
may concentrate some general observations, suggested by
so endless a variety of supernatural beliefs, upon those
great Theologies or book-religions which constitute the
religious faiths of the present inhabitants of our globe—
viz.—(taking them in the order of their antiquity)—
Zoroastrianism, with its sacred Zend-Avesta, the religion
of the Parsees, descendants of the ancient Persians—
Brahmanism and Buddhism, with their sacred Vedas and
Tripitaka, the chief religions of the inhabitants of the
great Indian Peninsula.— Confucianism and Tao-ism
with their sacred books of Kings and Tad-te-King, the
religions of the Chinese — Mosaism with the Hebrew
Scriptures, the religion of the Jews—Christianity with
the New Testament, the religion of modem Europeans
and Americans—and Mahommedanism, with its sacred
volume the Koran, the religion of the Turks and
Arabians, and other considerable peoples in Asia.
The numbers of the respective members of these
several faiths, as given in Johnston’s Physical Atlas,
may be summed up thus—assuming the entire population
of the earth at 1,000 millions, the Christians constitute
340 millions, the Buddhists 300 millions, the Brahmins
130 millions, the Mahommedans 124 millions, the Jews
6 millions, and all other religions 100 millions. A some
�Warfare' with Superstition.
7
what different proportion is cited by Professor Max
Muller from the geography of Berghaus; where the
Buddhists are stated to constitute 31 per cent, of the
entire population of the globe, the Christians 30 per
cent., the Mahommedans 15 per cent., the Brahmins
13 per cent, the Jews a fraction of 3, and all other
religions 8 per cent. These different estimates call of
course be only roughly approximate, but either is
sufficiently near for illustrating our present purpose.
If we looked somewhat closer we should find that
these several religious faiths are mostly subdivided in
ternally into numerous conflicting sects. Christianity,
the religion of the most intellectual and cultured peoples
in existence, is almost infinitely so divided. In Pro
fessor Schaff’s comprehensive and learned work upon
‘ The Creeds of Christendom ’ we are furnished with the
literal texts of nearly 100 distinct creeds, confessions,
articles and formularies of faith of the almost endless
denominations among which dogmatic Christianity has
now become dispersed.
i“
When the mind is thus brought into the simultaneous
presence of the irreconcilable dogmas of the numerous
and conflicting theological faiths, all devoutly believed
in by their respective worshippers, it is difficult to
conceive how any one of them can be considered as
constituting a supernatural universal scheme necessary
for the Salvation of Mankind, seeing th^it it has not,
after upwards of 1,800 years, been believed in, or even
sb much as heard of by more than about a third part
of the great human race.
In view of such manifold differences of theological
belief as a simple comparison of creeds discloses, it is
almost obvious to observe that there can be no generally
acknowledged standard or infallible test of theological
truth. To use the words of a late accomplished historian—-
�8
The Victories of Science in its
Henry Thomas Buckle—“ Theological systems are sub
jects upon which different persons and different nations,
equally honest, equally enlightened, and equally com
petent, have entertained and still entertain the most
different opinions, which they advocate with the greatest
confidence, and support by arguments perfectly satis
factory to themselves, but contemptuously rejected by
their opponents.”
It is so very difficult to place oneself at the point of
view of any religion save our own that we invariably
hear with amazement the arguments or evidence adduced
by the advocates of other religions. Dr. Sprenger, in
the course of a theological discussion, was seriously
asked by a Mussulman how he could possibly disbelieve
the religion of Islam, seeing that Mahomet’s name was
written on the gates of Paradise I and Dr. Morell, in his
thoughtful work on “ The Philosophy of Religion,” relates
the following authentic incident. A distinguished friend
of his in the East had been arguing for some time with
a Mahommedan upon the evidences of Christianity, and
apparently with some success. At length the Mahom
medan, who had been listening attentively, exclaimed—
“ I tell you what it is, Rajah. You Franks are very clever
people; God has given you the power to make ships and
houses and penknives, and to do a great many wonderful
things, but he has granted to us what he has denied to
you—the knowledge of the true Religion.”
The philosopher, though he is confident that all theo
logical systems cannot be wholly true, yet feels that in
the search after truth it must be possible, however
difficult, to arrive at some explanation that may seem
to reconcile the existence of so many divergent faiths;
and if we look a little carefully into the constituents
of theology we may I think discover a clue to the desired
solution. Now we find on examination of any theology
�Warfare with Superstition.
9
or book-religion that it essentially consists of a body of
connected propositions, logically deduced by the human
mind from certain assumed to be inspired writings.
So long then as to err is human, and man remains
short of being infallible, it is clear that such a system of
knowledge must contain some amount of error, and we
may therefore assert with tolerable accuracy, that every
theology the world has seen will be found on analysis to
be compounded of two elements—viz., a germ or sub
stratum of probable truth, and a superstructure or ad
mixture of positive error. The substratum of truth must
ultimately be the same in all theologies, but their several
superstructures of error will be found to vary; partly in
accordance with difference of climate and other geogra
phical circumstances ; partly on account of the differing
race or genius of the peoples, and their stage of civilization,
amongst whom the various theologies have respectively
arisen, or by whom they have since been adopted; and
partly from the dissimilar mental idiosyncracies of their
respective founders or principal expositors.
For the purpose of our argument this afternoon, we
may conveniently designate the substratum of truth as
Religion, and the superstructure of error as Superstition.
Now, keeping this simple distinction clearly in view, we
shall find that notwithstanding the abuse and vituperation
which the Religious World (as it is phrased), have so
incessantly heaped upon Science and its professors, men
of science, whose noble purpose ever is simply to arrive
at truth, and who, for that end, would impress on us the
duty of enquiry, and the folly of credulity, have in reality
never attacked Religion at all, but that in their discoveries
and contentions for the purpose of enabling truth to pre
vail, they have only been attacking or unmasking the
falsehood and error that are ever found lurking in the
guise of Superstition. Superstition—that incubus upon
�IO
The Victories of Science in its
the human mind, whose malediction was so eloquently
pronounced by Buckle, who declared that against the
vitality of that dark and ill-omened principle there was
only one weapon, and that weapon was Science.
I will now define more exactly what we should under
stand by the terms Religion and Superstition, in connection
with the present discourse.
Religion, whatever other quality we claim for it, must
certainly be regarded as true. Its intellectual meaning
then must be strictly limited to assertions that cannot be
contradicted by the discoveries of Science now or hereafter,
or by the truly religious assumption of any theology
whatever; for religious and scientific truth must ever be
one. In reference to this its fundamental requisite, we
find that Religion has been defined by many thoughtful
minds. Thus, our profound philosopher Herbert Spencer
has described it as “ our consciousness of an Inscrutable
Power or Cause manifested to us through all phenomena,
but whose nature transcends intuition, and is beyond
imagination.” The late lamented Lord Amberley, in his
exhaustive “ Analysis of Religious Belief,” describes Re
ligion as ‘ an abstract indefinable pervading sentiment
corresponding to the relation subsisting between the
hyperphysical (or supernatural) power in the Universe,
and the hyperphysical entity in Man.” Dr. James
Martineau, one of the most highly cultured and liberalminded of our theologians, has defined or distinguished
Religion and Science thus—“Science discloses the method
of the World, Religion its cause, and there is no conflict
between them, except when either forgets its ignorance of
what the other alone can know.”
Dr. Martineau however does not leave his definition
there. He boldly ventures into the region of assumptions,
and affirms “that the universe which includes us and folds
us round is the life-dwelling of an Eternal Mind ; that the
�Warfare with Superstition.
•
11
world of our abode is the scene of a moral government
incipient but not yet complete; and that the upper zones
of human affection above the clouds of self and passion
raise us into the sphere of a Divine Communion.” These
three assumptions he considers to be independent of any
possible result of the natural sciences.
Now let us turn to the consideration of what we are
to understand by the term Superstition. Here we have
to deal with something that should be regarded as the
opposite of Religion, for it is something, which taking its
rise from the faculty of fear or dread of the unknown,
imaginatively figures to itself the features of some super
natural or super-human power which is manifested in
ways that are inconsistent with our knowledge of the
established order of nature and the veracity of human
reason; based as such knowledge is on the verified dis
coveries of science and on the uniformity and analogy of
invariable human experience. Superstition then is that
which assumes thus to know and to describe the super
natural. But what, we may ask, is the supernatural ?
It was well argued by the sublime philosopher Spinoza
(whose noble moral life, and subtle thoughts have lately
been so powerfully portrayed by the pen of our good
friend and lecturer Frederick Pollock) that “ we cannot
pretend to determine the boundary between the natural
and the supernatural until the whole of nature shall be
open to our knowledge,” and the late Oxford professor,
Baden Powell, in his striking Essay on the Order of
Nature has remarked, and in approval of this acute
observation of Spinoza, that the supernatural can really
never be a matter of science or knowledge at all, for
the moment it is brought within the cognizance of
reason it ceases to be supernatural; and he affirms that
all assumed knowledge of the supernatural is the off-
�12
.
The Victones of Science in its
spring of ignorance, and the parent of superstition and
idolatry.
Now let us briefly consider what, in connection with
our subject, we should understand by the term Science.
Science you know does not pretend to deal with the
supernatural. Its views and its researches are limited
entirely to Nature. The natural phenomena, matter,
force, and energy are its sources of knowledge, whilst
its organon of induction, or methods of investigation
subordinate the suggestions of the imagination and the
emotions to the dictates of Beason and the evidence
of Nature — Science then simply signifies methodized
or reasoned knowledge of the experienced course of
Nature, i.e. those invariable co-existences and successions
of phenomena — which the human mind discovers by
accurate observation and reflection, and then generalizes
as laws of Nature or unalterable rules constituting the
actual or ultimate government of the course of our
lives. In an abstract sense these laws, being inferences
drawn by the human mind from the observed uniformity
of Nature, may be said to possess in themselves no
governing power ; and that the force we seem to observe
in natural law may in reality be a force behind Nature.
This criticism many of you may remember was most
ably and lucidly submitted to us by our respected Presi
dent Dr. Carpenter in the opening lecture of this year.
But the practical danger of pressing this metaphysical
assumption of some recondite force, of which Science
knows and can know nothing, appears to be this, that it
has a manifest tendency to cause us to retrogade from
Science back to Superstition, for the mystery it involves
inevitably allures the mind to disregard the clearly
observed Law, and to make its appeal to the force or
power assumed to exist behind the law.
�Warfare with Superstition.
13
Now, so far as scientific knowledge extends, the exis
tence of any such force has nowhere been proved.
Natural law is apparently universal and ultimate. “ The
growing belief” observes Herbert Spencer “in the uni
versality of law is so conspicuous to cultivated minds as
scarcely to need illustration, but,” (he shrewdly adds,)
“ Though the fact is sufficiently familiar, the philosophy
of the fact is not so.” “ A natural philosopher,” (says
Professor Jowett) “ capable of seeing creation with a real
scientific insight, would behold the reign of law every
where ; one and continuous in all the different spheres
of knowledge, in all the different realms of Nature,
throughout all time, and over all space.” “ And,” (says
Dr. Carpenter, referring for instance to the law of gravi
tation) “ we feel an assurance of its truth which nothing
save a complete revolution in the world of matter or in
the world of mind can ever shake.”
Although then the inference which the mind draws
from observing the uniformity of Nature is, at the out
set, simply a scientific assumption, similar to the meta
physical assumption of a force existing behind Nature,
yet the substantial difference between the two is really
this—that whilst the metaphysical assumption ever
remains an assumption, the scientific assumption becomes
verified as true through the evidence of universal
experience.
Such undoubtedly are the conclusions of science, and
if they cannot be disproved I submit to you, not specu
latively, but as an important practical matter, that we
should be counselled to regulate our lives in obedience to,
or conformity with the discovered and verified Law of
Nature, and not in reference to some unknown force
assumed to exist behind Nature.
If now we turn and limit our attention to the more
recent history of European Communities we find that
�14
The Victories of Science in its
their advance in civilization, that is in material and
social comfort, and in the conveniences and even neces
saries of civilized life, has progressed in a remarkable
manner parallel with the development of Science. There
is scarcely an improvement in real life that is not strictly
traceable to scientific discovery or invention, and all
such discovery and invention being the result of the
exercise of natural human sagacity is, by its very nature,
antagonistic to Superstition; and the process of continu
ally ascertaining and applying the natural law, by which
the events of life on earth are found to be really regu
lated, has the necessary gradual effect of purifying
theology, so far. as it superstitiously attributes such
events to the immediate action of supernatural causes,
and thereby of compelling theology to undergo interpre
tations and modifications corresponding more or less
closely, to the continual progress of human intelligence.
We shall I think meet with ample evidence of this
progressive change in theological beliefs if we examine,
by way of illustration, some few of the more con
spicuous examples of that ceaseless conflict which Science,
since the establishment of Christianity in Europe, has
ever had to wage with superstition, and where it has
come into collision with the prevailing theological dogmas
of the day.
The first of these memorable contests which I will
mention relates to the supposed magnitude, immobility,
and flat form of the Earth. At the time when this con
flict seriously arose (about the beginning of the 16th
century), the Bible was universally believed to be an
inspired supernatural authority for every matter asserted
or treated of within its various pages, and its true
interpretation in any ambiguous matter to have been
authoritatively declared in the dogmas decreed by suc
cessive Councils of the Church, or in the commentaries
�Warfare with Superstition.
15
of a succession of personages of extraordinary learning
and sanctity termed the Fathers, and it was not only
thought to be utterly fallacious but to be awfully wicked
for anyone to set up an opinion adverse to so revered a
weight of authority as the Bible, Councils, and Fathers
combined was held to be.
Amongst other matters of fact, believed to have been
thereby decided as infallibly true, were the size and
shape of the Earth. It was declared to be the largest
Or chief body in the Universe, and in form or shape to
be a flat plane—and relatively immoveable—and that the
sun, moon, and stars all moved round it; and every
attempt to show, from observation of Nature or calcula
tions of the reason based on such observation, that these
views were physically untrue was met for a long time
with simple scorn and derision : which only became con
verted into the actual persecution of Science and its
professors when so large an amount of evidence to the
contrary had been collected, and marshalled in such a
way as to produce a profound impression upon the lay
intelligence of the age, and when therefore the scientific
views could no longer be safely ignored by ecclesiastical
power.
This evidence I can only glance at, and indeed we are
all now of course more or less familiar with it. For
instance, the voyages of those adventurous navigators
Columbus and Vasco de Gama in the years 1492—97,
and of Magellan in the year 1519, who had amongst them
actually sailed round the earth, proving to demonstration
by this astonishing achievment that it was of definite and
comparatively small size, and not in form a flat plane, but
a circular or globular body. Then the startling astro
nomical researches of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and
Kepler, had resulted in demonstrating the Earth’s motion
round the Sun. That it was the Sun that was stationary
�16
The Victories of Science in its
and not the Earth: and then Galileo who, supplementing
previous discoveries by his own, and by the aid of the
telescope, then recently invented, verified, visually as well
as mathematically, the great outline of our Solar System
in a manner that utterly contradicted and indeed outraged
all that men had been taught to believe, and did then
verily believe, on the faith of scriptural and patristic
authority.
The discoveries resulting from the invention of the
telescope were indeed simply astounding, and they exer
cised such a withering influence upon the prevailing
orthodox theories that many of the theologians refused
even to look through the telescope, being afraid to behold
the heavenly phenomena then revealed for the first time
to mortal eyes. A most amusing letter on the subject
from Galileo to Kepler, written in the year 1609 has
been preserved: “Oh, my dear Kepler,” he writes, “how
I wish we could have one hearty laugh together. Here,
at Padua, is the professor of Philosophy, whom I have
repeatedly requested to look at the moon and planets
through my glass, pertinaciously refusing to do so.
Why are you not here ? What laughter we should have
at this glorious folly, and to hear the professor labouring
before the Grand Duke with logical arguments, as with
magical incantations, to charm the new planets out of the
sky! ”
Now Galileo, you remember, was accused of having
attacked Religion; he was prosecuted accordingly, and,
though the consummate audacity of the infallible Roman
Church has since been equal to the denial of its com
plicity in his condemnation—he was summoned before
the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition, the grand ecclesi
astical Court of the time, and he was made, as you know,
to recant all his scientific convictions. We have the
exact words of his recantation, and they sre still worthy
�Warfare with Superstition.
17
of being repeated. Galileo was compelled to declare—
first, bis proposition, “that the Sun is the Centre of the
World and immovable from its place,” is absurd, philo
sophically false, and formally heretical, because it is
expressly contrary to Holy Scripture. Secondly, his
proposition, “ that the Earth is not the Centre of the
World nor immovable, but that it moves, and also with a
diurnal motion,” is absurd, philosophically false, and
theologically considered, erroneous in faith.
Now it should be observed that the Cardinal Inquisi
tors who sentenced Galileo were amongst the most
enlightened ecclesiastics of their age; they were not bad
men, they acted conscientiously according to their light,
and their views were in harmony with the generally
accepted religious knowledge and sentiments of the
time.
The case therefore was one in which it was solemnly
adjudged by theologians that Science had attacked and
was in conflict with Religion. We, living now, know
perfectly well that it was nothing of the sort—that it
was Science in possession of the truth, sapping the
superstitions that formed the superstructure of the theo
logical system of the day; and now every Schoolboy is
taught that Galileo’s recanted propositions are matters of
verified astronomical science, and therefore cannot be
contradictory to, but must be in harmony with, real re
ligious truth. Thus the discoveries and reasoning of these
astronomers and their illustrious successors Newton,
Laplace, Herschel, and divers others, constitute the
first complete victory achieved by Science over Super
stition.
I need not stop to dilate upon the deep importance to
our thoughts and lives of the transcendent truths dis
covered by Astronomers, having given a summary of the
subject in a lecture delivered here four years ago, and
�18
The Victories of Science in its
still in print, “ On the Influence of Astronomical discovery
“ in the development of the human Mind.”
We will now turn to a second illustration of the main
argument of the present lecture. Until quite recently,
almost within the memory of living men, we were sup
posed to possess in the Bible a supernatural revelation of
the Creation of the World, and the time when and the
manner in which it took place. There are ecclesiastical
commentaries on the book of Genesis which undertake to
inform the reader by means of biblical interpretation the
exact month and day of the week when this stupendous
event occurred. Generally however, what is known as
Archbishop Ussher’s chronology was believed as a part of
religious faith, and that system of dates placed the Crea
tion as occurring precisely 4004 years before the birth of
Christ; and the authority of other books of the Penta
teuch is explicit and confirmatory of the Creation having
been accomplished in six days, and according to the
method described in the opening chapters of Genesis.
We read therein, amongst other amazing assertions,
that God rested on the seventh day, and we, or those to
whom these writings are assumed to have been addressed,
are commanded to keep the seventh day holy on that
account, and there can be no doubt of belief in these
narrative and injunction being considered as an essen
tial part of religious faith. Indeed the wearying gloom
and austerity in which the religious world still struggle
to retain our Sunday are strictly traceable to credulity
in the superstition in question.
Now, the science of Geology, which, as most of you
know, consists primarily of an actual examination of the
Earth’s crust or surface and strata beneath for the pur
pose of ascertaining what they may teach concerning the
Earth’s age and history, establishes the existence of a
multiplicity of facts which are utterly contradictory to
�Warfare with Superstition.
19
and subversive of^-first, the alleged creation of the Earth
only some 6,000 years ago, and secondly, of its present
order of inhabitants, vegetable, animal, and human,
having then been brought into existence in the course
of the six days mentioned in the Book of Genesis, and
in the order of succession therein particularised. How
thoroughly irreconcileable with the Biblical account of
the Creation are the scientific conclusions of Geology
will sufficiently appear from the consideration of, amongst
others, the two following well-established geological con
clusions :—Evidence has been obtained in Egypt of the
existence of inhabitants to some extent civilized in that
country 13,000 years ago, and geologists of eminence,
however differing on the details of their science are
agreed that the present condition of the rocks over and
near to which flow the Falls of Niagara evidencing the
recession of the falls from Queenstown to their present
site, has been occasioned by the continuous action of
water throughout a period of 30,000 years—and the
most trustworthy and recent geological authorities, such as
Lyell, Croll, Darwin, Haeckel, Boyd-Dawkins, and Geikie
concur in considering that the antiquity of man is to be
reckoned not by tens of thousands, but by hundreds of
thousands of years !
But I need not occupy your time by considerations
showing how utterly fallacious were the religious notions
on the subject derived simply from the study of the
Scriptures—their fallacy is now on all hands conceded.
I may quote as recent theological authority for our
present scientific views the statement of the Bev. Bobert
Main, Badcliffe observer in the University of Oxford:—
“ Some school books,” he remarks, “ still teach to the
ignorant that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, and that
all things were created in six days—No well educated
person of the present day shares in the delusion. What-
�20
The Victories of Science in its
ever the meaning of the six days, ending with the seventh
day’s mystical and symbolical rest, indisputably we
cannot accept them in their literal meaning, they as
plainly do not denote the order of succession of all the
individual creations.” And Dr. James Martineau has
declared emphatically “ that the whole history of the'
genesis of things Religion must now unconditionally
surrender to Science.”
Well, but there is hardly any class of scientific men
who have been more vehemently denounced for attacking
religion than the geologists. The great argument used
to discredit their researches was the old cry that their
conclusions contradicted Scripture, and accordingly
volumes upon volumes have been published all composed
on the same argumentative basis, viz., That what contra
dicts Scripture cannot be true—an argument as some
of you may have heard, as old at least as the time of
Galileo. “If nature contradicts Scripture” (said the
schoolmen to Galileo), “ Nature must be mistaken, for
we know that the Scriptures are true! ”
And now how does the case stand as regards our
illustration. Geological science being true could not
have been attacking religion, but only those parts of the
theological system which had been constructed from the
superstitions of the day, and thus it has come to pass
that, through the discoveries of the geologists, a second
great victory has been achieved by Science in its warfare
with Superstition.
A third illustration I will refer to relates to the super
stition which I have mentioned in the syllabus of the
Lecture as belief in the government of human life by
special Providence;—the question being whether the
affairs of life are carried on subject to incessant super
natural intervention, or Whether they take place through
the operation of constant invariable natural law.
�Warfare with Superstition.
21
Previously to the rise of the physical Sciences, especially
Astronomy and Geology, the almost universal belief of
Christian Europe was that every significant act #nd
occurrence of life was the direct result of the exercise of
the providence of God, or the power of the Devil. Not
only was this conclusion directly deducible from the
literal interpretation of the language of the Bible, but,
it being the manifest interest of a priesthood, (whose
aim is ever to stand between the prayer of the Votary
and the providential act,) to encourage this belief, books
of devotion are composed by them based upon this idea,
in which instructions are given to enable the worshipper
to beseech the Almighty in a becoming manner for
almost every conceivable thing the circumstances of his
life may for the time being seem to require.
The church of England book of Common Prayer com
piled more than three centuries ago, that is long before
the Physical Sciences had been popularly heard of in this
Country, need only to be opened at random to confirm
what I am now submitting to you. But the progress
of Science has proved beyond rational doubt, that those
circumstances of our lives which were theologically re
ferred to as direct Providential or Satanic interventions,
the inflictions, chastisement, temptations, judgments, or
whatever other sacerdotal phrases are employed to define
supposed manifestations of supernatural Will, are the
result of the operation of natural Law, that is, they are
the direct consequences of the disregard of SQme natural
law which might have been observed and obeyed by the
sagacious use of man’s natural and moral intelligence.
So now, in reference, for example, to the cause and cure
of sickness, our attention is being most usefully drawn
away by Science from miserably moping over manuals
of devotion to the exhilirating study of handy books on
the laws of health—and thus it is, in the words of
�22
The Victories of Science in its
Professor Huxley, that “ Science is teaching the World
that the ultimate Court of Appeal is observation and
experiment, and not theological authority, she is teaching
us to estimate the value of evidence, she is creating a
firm and living faith in the existence of immutable moral
and physical laws, perfect obedience to which is the
highest possible aim of an intelligent being.”
No one then who has impartially watched the course
and improvement of human life, since we have come
to study and to treat its healthy physical and moral exis
tence as immediately dependent upon the observance
of natural law, can doubt that the illustration we are
considering constitutes another most important triumph
of Science over Superstition.
Connected with the last illustration, or rather a con
tinuation of it, is what we may not inaptly term the
theological theory of disease—viz. the notion that diseases,
and epidemics especially, were punishments or judgments
inflicted by the hand of the Almighty for some individual
or national sins, and that they are to be cured sometimes
by a miracle, sometimes by devotion to the shrine or relics
of a Saint, and sometimes by simple prayer addressed to
the Supreme. All these various ways and practices of
appealing for relief to supernatural power were until
quite recent times devoutly believed in throughout almost
the whole of Europe, and were supposed to form essential
parts of religious faith.
Even now in visiting Boman Catholic Churches, espe
cially on the Continent, you cannot fail to observe the
number of Votive offerings that are fixed or suspended
round the shrine and image of a favorite Saint by those
who believe that they have recovered from diseases or
misfortunes through the intervention of the Saint in
answer to the invocations of the patient. This practice,
(like the Ritualistic lighting of candles on the Altars of
�Warfare with Superstition,
23
Churches in the day time,) has been copied from the ser
vice of the Temples of the Pagan religions which prevailed
in Ancient Rome at the time of the establishment of
Christianity in the reign of the Emperor Constantine.
Well therefore asks the astute Middleton, in his instruc
tive “Letter from Rome,”—“ what is all this but a revival
of the old impostures, with no other difference, than what
the Pagan priests ascribed to the imaginary help of their
Deities, the Romish priests as foolishly impute to the
favor of their Saints.” Of course it has been the policy
of the Church to discourage the physician and his science.
He interfered too much with the gifts to and profits of
the shrines.
At one time it was a constant practice on the breaking
out of an epidemic to carry the relics of the Patron Saint
of the locality round the infected districts to drive the
disease away. The superstitious belief we are considering
had become so extravagant, and the practice in connection
with it had obtained a height so ludicrous, that no longer
ago than the end of the last century, the clergy in Spain
induced the people to believe that a pestilence then raging
was caused by their allowing the performance of so un
godly an entertainment as the opera, and it is a fact
that the opera had actually on that account to be put a
stop to 1
Although sanitary science has now in this country com
pletely triumphed over the Superstition in question, yet
owing to our still continued narrow theological teaching
very lamentable occurrences are occasionally seen to
happen. For instance, it is still taught at those strong
holds of sacredotalism, our two great Universities, that
the Bible is in every part of it supernaturally inspired
truth. Mr. Burgon, recently one of the select preachers
at Oxford, in a work addressed to the junior members of
the University, thus expressed himself:—“ The Bible is
�24
The Victories of Science in its
none other than the Voice of Him that sitteth upon the
Throne. Every book of it, every chapter of it, every
verse of it, every word of it, every syllable of it, every
letter of it, is the direct utterance of the Most High.
The Bible is none other than the Word of God—not
some part of it more some part of it less, but all alike the
utterance of Him who sitteth upon the Throne—absolute,
faultlegs, unerring, supreme ! ” We cannot wonder then
that there should be persons who repose faith in its verbal
teaching as applicable at the present time, and who seek
to derive benefit from strictly and literally following its
plainly expressed precepts. One of the apparently plainest
of its injunctions is contained in the general Epistle of
St. James the 5th chap, and the 14th and 15th verses.
“ Is any sick among you ?, Let him call for the elders of
the Church, and let them pray over him anointing him
with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith
shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.”
A religious sect known as the Peculiar People rigidly
follow this injunction in cases of sickness, and it is not so
long since we were scandalized by the spectacle of a cri
minal prosecution, on account of the death of a child
whose parents had treated it biblically and not medically,
and the Magistrate, (Bible and University theological
teaching non obstante,) found the Parents to have been
guilty of culpable neglect for relying on the Bible, with
out calling in medical assistance, and punished them
accordingly.
This case strikingly illustrates the spirit of our age,
showing as it does that secular teaching is in point of
intelligence very far in advance of theological teaching ;
yet it is impossible not to feel commiseration for the
unfortunate people who are so drugged with dognfa that
their religious beliefs actually become conducive to the
deaths of their own offspring, and who are only roused
�Warfare with Superstition.
25
out of their superstitions by finding them thus rudely
shocked by the judgment and penal sentence of the law.
With this exception we in England may be said to
have entirely freed ourselves from the folly of this
branch of superstition, unless it may be thought still to
linger at Guy’s Hospital, where, as we have lately seen,
praying nurses are placed in authority over scientific
physicians !
The only further illustration I will now give you has
reference to those anthropomorphic conceptions of Deity
which have more or less disfigured all the theological
systems of the world,.and until recently characterised
our own conception of the God of Christianity, who is
of course the historical continuation of the Jehovah of
the Hebrew Scriptures ; for, though the Deity of the
New Testament has attributes somewhat different from
those of Jehovah (to which I shall presently refer), He is
evidently the same God throughout.
It might not be easy, it would indeed be impracticable
within the time now at our disposal, to exhibit the
successive steps which have resulted in generally endow
ing the foremost minds of our generation with that
correct and exalted standard of morality or moral sense
by which our social actions, opinions, and beliefs are
righteously judged in the last resort, and whereby the
practice of life has become so mild and humane and
unselfish compared with that of our ancestors, or other
semi-barbarous peoples.
One great effort to improve the morality of Princes
and Rulers stands out conspicuous—I mean the great
work of Hugo Grotius published at Paris in the year
1625 and entitled, “ Three books concerning the Rights
of War and Peacea work whose main objects were,
First—To induce nations to abstain as far as possible
from resorting to the dreadful ordeal of war. and to
�26
The Victories of Science in its
cultivate that noble ideal of the lovers of mankind—a
perpetual peace. To recognise the sovereignty of the
moral or social law, and to submit their quarrels and
conflicting claims to be judged at the bar of conscience.
To this end to establish Courts of Conciliation, and
agree to settle international disputes by arbitration.
Secondly—when that could not be done, or war avoided,
to conduct their warfare with as generous a humanity as
possible. And thirdly—To treat prisoners of war with the
clemency due to them as human beings and brothers, and
not with the relentless cruelties that were then habitu
ally practised towards those unfortunate persons.
The chief contents of Grotius’ grand work consist of
discussions historical and moral enlivened and embel
lished with abundant and interesting citations from the
most celebrated authors of classical and sacred antiquity
—poets, orators, historians, philosophers, and sages of
all times and nations are, with the very splendour of
learning, laid under contributions for the purpose of
supporting, by their conspiring sentiments and reason
ings, the benevolent objects of the good and great
Grotius ; showing in short the unanimity of the higher
order of minds of the whole human race on the great
rules of duty, and the fundamental principles of morals.
If we, studying the lofty argument of Grotius at the
present day,’ can hardly fail to find our views of virtue
and humanity expanded and inspired by so impressive a
display of the principles it expounds, we can easily be
lieve what is related of it when first published—viz. that
it at once fascinated all the sovereigns and ministers and
great men of the time ; that the king of Sweden,
Gustavus Adolphus carried it about with him and kept
it under his pillow ; that a professorship was founded to
teach and diffuse its doctrines ; and that it was translated
(from its original latin) into most modern languages.
�Warfare with Superstition.
27
There has been of course, since the time of the illustri
ous Grrotius, a succession of similar though lesser lights,
whom I will not now stop to name, all exhibiting and
enforcing his humane and philanthropic views.
Another cause operating in the same direction has
been the gradual improvement in the nature and number
of criminal punishments. The penal codes of all Euro
pean nations during the times of theological ascendency
were painfully disfigured by the practice of judicial torture
and arbitrary imprisonments, and the cruel and vindictive
punishments inflicted upon criminals. Bearing in mind
too how large an extent the moral sense or conscience of
a community is a reflection of its legal system, the pre
sent mitigated severity and graduated scale of punish
ments, more or less proportioned to the nature and
gravity of the offence, and to the frailty of and tempta
tion besetting the offender, must have materially assisted
in maturing and refining the public moral sentiment.
A similar effect is also observable as proceeding from
the more civilized character of our popular amusements
—bear baiting, bull baiting, badger baiting, dog fighting,
cock fighting and shying, and other cruel and depraving
sports have now almost ceased amongst us, and if we
desire an example to show the connection between such
barbarous cruelties and the influence of Superstition, we
need only turn our gaze towards Spain, where we see the
most brutalizing of sports—bull-fighting—is still the
principle pastime of the most superstitious people on the
face of Europe.
Now that the cause of our advance in intelligence and
morality, and of our more earnest love of toleration and
truth, has' been scientific or secular, and not theological,
seems plain from the fact that it has resulted in causing
us to view with a sentiment akin to horror, some of the
anthropomorphic attributes and commands of Deity that
�28
The Victories of Science in its
we find recorded in the books of the Bible, and which
previously to the scientific culture and elevation of our
moral sense were generally acquiesced in quite as a matter
of course; were to be believed (suggested an eminent
theologian, the late Dean Mansel,) as God’s temporary
suspensions of the laws of moral obligation, or moral
miracles ! Thus, in the old Testament the Almighty is
represented as walking on the Earth, eating with Abra
ham, wrestling with Jacob, appearing in a visible form to
Moses, .tempting men, and speaking with human speech.
Then the shocking stories related, such as the Divine
sanction of the frightful massacres of the Canaanites and
Levites, with the ruthless slaughter of women and childred, the divine patronage of the odious Jacob—and
numerous instances of extraordinary cruelties ascribed
to Jehovah in the books of the Pentateuch, making him
out to be a man of war, cruel, capricious, revengeful,
and not to be trusted.
In the New Testament indeed we find an improved
character of the Deity, and one in many important aspects
widely different. There is however attributed to the God
of the New Testament what, if rigorously balanced against
the failings ascribed to Jehovah, must be considered to
outweigh them all; viz., the eternity of punishment which
he will inflict in a future life. No efforts of the disci
plined human reason, which is guided by the conscious
ness of right, can discover any justification for the creation
of beings whose lives are to terminate in endless torment.
The enlightened intellectual and moral capacity of civil
ized man rejects the idea of eternal punishment as utterly
revolting to its sense of justice, mercy, and charity,, and
any attempt to realise ‘ in the unpolluted temple of the
mind ’ an enormity so awful causes it to recoil from its
imputed author, who (as is alleged) could create the human
race with the infallible foreknowledge, and therefore
�Warfare with Superstition.
29
with the intention, that the majority, or even some were
eventually to be consigned to the horrible and everlasting
torture of Hell-fire I
From the slight review we have now taken of the influ
ence of Science upon Superstition, and the modifications
that religious creeds have thereby undergone, we may feel
assured that the process is not yet ended, and that popu
lar theologies are still disfigured by superstitions which
expanding science will explode. Such for instance prob
ably, as belief in the objective efficacy of the supplications,
humiliations, fastings, and other asceticisms prescribed by
preistcraft, and not improbably, I venture to think, our
beliefs in supernatural revelations and exclusive salva
tions.
We now know through the Science of Geology, whose
connected sequence of events was so admirably summar
ised by Professor Ramsay, in his Presidential address last
year to the British Association for the advancement of
Science, that in the physical government of the world,
throughout the long ages whose history is embraced by
this marvellous science, all progress has been continuous
and orderly, not varying in kind and intensity from that
of which we now have experience, is indeed the effect of
causes still in full operation, that is, without cataclysms
or catastrophes of any kind. Reasoning by analogy we
should say that if such has been the course of the mate
rial world the course of the spiritual world (the sphere
of religious development) has most probably been similar,
and that if there has been no physical cataclysm in the
one world, neither has there been a spiritual cataclysm
in the other, such as a sudden supernatural revelation
accompanied by miracles would undoubtedly be, but that
throughout the ages all spiritual enlightenment has pro
gressed by the same means and in the same manner as at
the present moment.
�30
The Victories of Science in its
Probably therefore it may come to be generally believed
that the only real revelation is in Science, which, as Herbert
Spencer observes, is a continuous disclosure, through the
intelligence with which we are endowed, of the established
order of the Universe.
If time permitted me now to enter upon a catalogue
of the evil effects wrought by Superstition, that is false
demoralising beliefs relating to the supernatural, we
should find that there is scarcely a single one of the great
miseries of life that is not distinctly traceable to this,
cause. I will only now recall to your mind the horrors
of the Crusades, the numerous religious wars, the Spanish
Inquisition, the persecutions, burnings, martyrdoms,
massacres, and other hideous atrocities that for ages
formed part of the very staple of European history, and
which directly arose out of the superstitious beliefs en
gendered by their dogmatic Theology, which, in its merci
less endeavours to crush freedom of thought and speech,
has impelled man to inflict upon his fellow-man every
species of cruelty and calamity that bigotted and intoler
ant fanaticism could devise.
Now one of the habits engendered by superstitious
belief is of course a tendency to assume that everything
happens through the interposition of providence, and.
must accordingly be right however unscrutable; and,,
however disastrous, yet sent for some good purpose and
to chasten or to benefit us somehow and eventually.
Of course such a tendency operates mischievously by its
withdrawing our minds and energies and precious time
from the search in this world for those natural causes of
misery which when discovered show that it is remediable
by scientific effort, in other words, that it is to be alleviated
by the application of our natural intelligence, and not by
our taking refuge in that sanctuary of Superstition (pro
fanely called) the Will of God.
�Warfare with Superstition*
31
To enumerate the ameliorations of human well-being
that have been achieved through the exercise of man’s
natural intelligence would be a theme almost exhaustless.
In reference to these I will now confine myself to
merely quoting to you the striking summing-up by
Macaulay in his brilliant Essay on Lord Bacon, of the
utilitarian result of the development of scientific method,
so luminously expounded to his contemporaries, and
impressed upon his posterity by the genius of the great
English Philosopher, who enunciated the fruitful axiom
that true philosophy, whatever its theory, is practically
the application of the discoveries and methods of the
sciences to the regulation of the affairs and conduct of
our lives
“ Ask a follower of Bacon what Science has effected for man->
kind and his answer is ready. It has lengthened life; it has
mitigated pain; it has extinguished diseases; it has increased
the fertility of the soil; it has given new securities to the
mariner; it has furnished new arms to the warrior; it has
spanned great rivers with bridges of form unknown to our
fathers; it has guided the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven
•to earth ; it has lighted up the night with the splendour of the
day; it has extended the range of the human vision; it has
multiplied the power of the human muscles; it has accelerated
motion; it has annihilated distance; it has facilitated inter
course, correspondence, all friendly offices, all dispatch of
business; it has enabled man to descend to the depths of the
sea, to soar into the air, to penetrate securely into the noxious
recesses of the earth; to traverse the land in carriages which
whirl along without horses, and the ocean in ships which run
ten knots an hour against the wind. These are but a part of its
fruits, and of its first fruits—for Science never rests, its law is
progress.”
But in truth every page of the history of civilization
shows us that improvement in the health, the happiness,
and the virtue of mankind has taken place entirely
through the intellectual and moral progress resulting
from the teaching of Science. You will find the un
answerable details of this history very clearly exhibited
in Dr. Draper’s remarkable work on “ The intellectual
development of Europe,” and also in its condensed and
�32 Victories of Science in its Warfare with Superstition.
lucid summary, published under the title of ‘ The Con
flict between Religion and Science.’ An unhappy
misnomer this title, however, if the argument of my
lecture be a sound one, viz., That it is not Religion that
Science has attacked or come into conflict with—but
only the superstitions of the hour, that were ignorantly
and erroneously supposed to form parts of Religion, and
that were 1 intent on offering to the Author of Truth
the unclean sacrifice of a lie.’ Now, in exposing and
stamping out Superstition and that old theological spirit
which has brought so much misery upon the world,
Science has actually rendered the most vital service to
Religion; for the true beliefs which Science has thus
compelled Theology to adopt are far more really reli
gious than the superstitious beliefs which Science has
from time to time forced Theology to surrender.
Let us rejoice, in the cause of Humanity, that such
has been the case, and moreover that this purifying
process is yet proceeding, and that Science, whose coura
geous career has hitherto been unstained by cruelty,
oppression, or crime, will, in her warfare with Supersti
tion, still continue marching on to Victories alike
beneficent and bloodless; for
Science is a child as yet,
And her power and scope shall grow,
And her triumphs in the future
Shall diminish toil and woe.
Kenny & Co., Printers, 25, Camden Road, N.W.
�
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The victories of science in its warfare with superstitions: a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, on Sunday afternoon, 20th February 1881
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Place of Publication: London
Collation: 32 p. ; 18 cm
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 5. The Society's lectures by the same author on p. [3].
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Superstition
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Morris Tracts
Science and Religion
Superstition
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Text
PORTRAITURE AND MISSION
OF JESUS.
BY
THOMAS LUMISDEN STRANGE.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
1 8 7 6.
Price Sixpence.
��THE PORTRAITURE AND MISSION
OF JESUS.
IIAVE been, drawn to this subject by the work of
Prebendary Row, entitled “ The Supernatural in
the New Testament.” This defence of Christianity has
been undertaken by Mr Row at the desire of the Chris
tian Evidence Society, of which he is an active member,
as a reply to “ Supernatural Religion,” the extensive
currency of which able work has aroused action in
Christian circles.
Mr Row strengthens himself with his previous effort,
“ The Jesus of the Evangelists,” and in endeavouring
to meet him I must refer inquiring readers for a fuller
exhibition of the subjects I now handle to my volume,
“The Sources and Development of Christianity”
(Trubner & Co.).
Mr Row, in his earlier work, acknowledges the in
sufficiency of the endeavours hitherto made to clear
Christianity of the difficulties raised against the creed
by objectors of the present day, but, unfortunately, in
his attempt to supply a remedy, he shows himself un
acquainted with the sentiments of the more advanced
opponents of his cherished beliefs, who remain thus,
so far as he is concerned, still unanswered.
Mr Row considers the idea of the Christ, as embodied
in the Christian scriptures, to be a representation so
pure, so exalted, so consistent, so unprecedented, and
so realistic, that man was incapable of figuring such a
being out of his imagination, and that, consequently,
in this description, we have before us a true personage,
drawn from the life, and that life superhuman and
I
�6
The Portraiture and Mission of Jesus.
divine. But he sees the need at the same time to
point to the offered proofs of the alleged reality, and
his great source of testimony is that Jesus rose from
the dead. Here human supports are requisite, and
that upon which he substantially builds is the evidence
derived from the epistles attributed to Paul, who, it is
assumed, at a very early period, preached the resurrec
tion to audiences already cognizant of the’fact.
The conclusion I have come to is that there is not a
reliable trace of the existence of Christianity, from any
quarter, Jewish, Pagan, or Christian, for a hundred
and fifty years from the time alleged for the death of
the asserted founder. The sphere of Christianity I judge
must have been Alexandria, and not Jerusalem, which
had ceased to be, whence we have the Grecian, Egyp
tian, and Eastern elements, mingled with what was
derivable from Judaism, so characterizing Christianity,
and of which Alexandria was the focus. The tale of
Christianity thus with me is not dependent upon
enacted facts. I can allow that there was a person
such as the alleged founder of Christianity. His being
a carpenter, occupying the field of barbaric Galilee, and
suffering death as a culprit, are not features which the
constructor of an imaginary tale would go out of his way
to introduce wherewith to associate his hero, and there
fore, probably, we have here real facts presented to us;
but all beyond these circumstances, in illustration of the
being, preaching, and actions of the founder, I take to
be purely pictorial.
Mr Row, in dealing with the author of “ Supernatural
Religion,” insists on the possibility of what are termed
miracles. He assumes his adversary to be a Theist, one
who acknowledges the existence of a divine Creator,
handling created objects, and moulding them according
to his will. Introducing new force, such a Being may
convert water into wine without the intervention of the
grape; he may satisfy multitudes with supplies suffi
cient for but two or three persons, the debris of the
�The Portraiture and Mission of Jesus.
7
feasts amounting to more than the quantity of food
originally begun upon; he may enable a heavy body to
move upon water without sinking into and displacing
it; he may cure all diseases with a word, eject by a
command demons invading mankind, and raise the
dead. These are exercises of power liberally appealed
to by the heathen, in common with Jews and Chris
tians, from the remotest to the latest times. But it has
to be considered whether the Creator ever thus indulges
in exhibitions in reversal of his fixed rules of procedure;
and whether, when so many tales of the kind are sum
marily dismissed as unfounded, these particular instances
appearing in the Christian record may not be equally
untrue. What we should not credit now, whoever
asserted the facts, why should we receive because men
of old have made the assertion of the occurrences ? The
very essence of such testimony is the conviction arising
from ocular demonstration. Would the Creator need
to resort to such a source of evidence as this which can
only be passed on, in a diluted form, in the way of hear
say, and may be left to expire, as at this day, without
other support than unestablished tradition ? The ar
gument for the possibility of a miracle is of little account
when weighed against its improbability. Things of
divine origin stamp themselves as such by their inherent
properties. If the Creator has a testimony to offer of
his hand in the production of an object, it is never of a
dubious character. Between what he has done, and
what man may have done, there is no room to raise a
question. A blade of grass or a leaf reveals itself as
truly of his origination as the most stupendous orbs
circling in space. But when we come to miracles, there
is always the doubt to solve, were these manifestations
real ? Might they not have been due to trickery 1
Have they been rightly reported ? May not the whole
representations be figments, resorted to for an end 1
Mr Row does not, as far as I have observed, clear his
matter of these defects.
•
�8
The Portraiture and Mission of Jesus.
Mr Row apparently is not himself sure of the ground
on which he would have us place our feet as being per
fectly stable. Some of the representations he seeks to
reduce within limits that may be reasonably accepted.
The being of Satan, as currently apprehended, staggers
him. Wicked men are capable of exerting evil in
fluences, and Satan’s power is merely a higher sample
of such influence. If so, the agency of good may be
placed on the same sort of sliding scale, and the Deity
be figured as only a more exalted example of a benefi
cent man. The scripture distinctions are, however, as
absolute between Satanic and human capacity and
power, as between what is divine and what is human.
Again the temptation of Jesus is more than Mr Row
can receive in the naked form of the narrative. He
does not accept the idea of a personal Satan holding
intercourse with Jesus, transferring him bodily to a
pinnacle of the temple, or to the top of an exceedinghigh mountain, whence he was able to see “ all the
kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.” Mr
Row is satisfied that there could be no such mountain,
or such exhibition, especially upon a spherical globe,
and would dispose of the whole representation as para
bolic. The sacred writer really did not mean what he
has apparently said. Drawing upon the infinite re
sources of the Creator, Mr Row observes of the multipli
cation of the few loaves and fishes upon which thous
ands were fed, that the materials were already existing
in the ground, the water, and the air, and had only to
be put together in the required forms by the additional
exercise of creative force he demands ; but he seems to
have overlooked that somehow, to produce bread, the
corn required to be ground and baked. The demons
transferred to the swine is an action he does not like to
contemplate as a reality. “The ‘going out from the
man ’ and 1 entering into the swine,’ may only denote the
cessation of the influence of the demons over the man,
and its exertion on the swine, without determining the
�The Portraiture and Mission of festis.
9
mode in which, that influence was exerted.” If we may
thus deal with the recounted miracles when they seem
to us too hard for belief pursuant to the terms in which
they have been narrated, these representations may one
and all be readily disposed of without offending reason
or warring against experience. The wine converted
water at the feast of Cana would be merely joy diffused
into the human heart; the diseases overcome would be
moral defects remedied; the restoring the blind, the
deaf, the dumb, and the lame, would be the imparting
moral and spiritual faculties where these were wanting
or dull and inactive; and the raising the dead would
be the introduction of spiritual life into a soul dead in
trespasses and sins. If the chosen advocate of a Society
constituted for the defence of Christianity may thus
lead the way in the path of rationalistic interpretation,
there will soon be nothing left of Christianity either to
object to or to defend.
Mr Row lowers the scripture representations in cer
tain other respects to have them reasonably received.
When Philip is said to have desired to see the Father,
and Jesus to have sought to satisfy him by pointing to
himself, this is held to imply no more than that in
Jesus was an exhibition of the Father’s character, his
person not being in question. Elsewhere we are told
that Jesus was “ the image of the invisible God,” “ the
express image of his person,” than which no stronger
phrases could be employed to denote a personal exhibi
tion. The choice being between rationalism and Chris
tianity, we cannot elect to have both.
Again, the allegation that miracles should be “signs”
which should “ follow them that believe,” affords a
test applicable to faith in miracles to the present day.
Mr Row, conscious that there is no such power among
believers, chooses to assert that it was a special tempo
rary endowment, “ designed for the building up of the
church into a distinct community, and when that
purpose was accomplished they (the miracles) were to
B
�io The Portraiture and Mission of Jesus.
cease.” The limitation in question is not in the text,
and is of Mr Row’s creation. And we may ask, when
has there ever been a “ distinct community” exhibiting
Christians in happy union in the faith ? The “ signs ”
effected nothing of the sort in the so-called apostolic
days, heresies and schisms having prevailed among the
body from the earliest age, and this condition has
accompanied Christianity through every period of its
existence to the present day. May we not then
reasonably doubt whether such “ signs ” were ever pro
vided for the effectuating that which never was accom
plished ?
Mr Row’s theory is, that miracles were provided in
order to vouch for a mission, and not for the purpose
of supporting lines of doctrine. “ Can miracles,” he
asks, “ prove moral truths 1 I answer emphatically in
the negative.” “ Moral truths cannot be proved by
the evidence of miracles, but must rest on their own
inherent evidence.” The existence of the Deity has,
he sees, been made known to man irrespective of any
written revelation. All the real elements of religion
are thus provided for the spiritual governance of the
human race without any appeal to miraculous agency,
which has been resorted to, it would seem, merely to
support certain wondrous tales. Judged of in this light,
of what value, it may be asked, is the scheme of Chris
tianity to the moral man, who stands so completely free
of and above its specialities ?
Restricted as is the use of miracles, as thus under
stood by Mr Row, we find them unessential even with
in this described, confined, sphere. Where was the
miraculous attestation to the mission of John the
Baptist ? He is described as the forerunner of the
Messiah, appointed to “ go before the face of the Lord
to prepare his ways,” “ to give light to them that sit in
darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide their
feet into the way of peace,” “ to make ready a people
prepared for the Lord.” So important were his func-
�The Portraiture and Mission of Jesus.
11
tions considered to be, that he stands proclaimed as a
prophet, “and more than a prophet,” “greater” in
effect than any who had yet been “ born of women,”
surpassing thus Elijah, Samuel, and even Moses him
self ; and yet his mission, so necessary to the introduc
tion of that of Jesus, is ushered in without a miracle.
On the other hand, the most stupendous miracle that
ever is alleged to have been exhibited, namely, the
resuscitation of a corpse by accidental contact with the
bones of Elisha, was a manifestation unassociated with
any mission. Thus we have the chiefest of all human
missions presented without the voucher of a miracle,
and the chiefest of all miracles enacted without alliance
to a mission, and Mr Row must find some other pur
pose for the miraculous than that assigned by him to
such action.
But supposing it the case that miracles were to attest
missions, does not the repetition of them involve the
weakness of the testimony they are to supply ? One
miracle apparently proves nothing unless followed up
by another, and another, and we have to ask whether
one or more insufficiencies will supply us with a suffi
ciency. And the whole collection of these wonders,
it would seem, required the corroboration of the
supreme miracle of the resurrection; and this again
required and received confirmation from the wonder
workings of the first Christians. Thus Mr Row weaves
his web to the entanglement of his own feet.
An essential to a miracle, according to Mr Row, is
that it should have been preannounced. Judged of by
this test, how will the miracle of the resurrection stand
its ground ? It is true there are passages attributing
to Jesus, when in life, that he said he was to rise again
on the third day from the dead; but there are circum
stances, taking them as stated, which completely defeat
the representation that he ever made such a declara
tion. The women who are said to have visited his
tomb on this third day, went there for the purpose of
�12 The Portraiture and Mission of fesus.
embalming the body. They could not have expected
that the body was just then to pass into restored life.
Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus are declared to
have actually embalmed it. According to the fourth
Gospel, Mary Magdalene first visited the tomb, and
finding the body gone, went in bewilderment to Peter
and John saying, “ They have taken away the Lord out
of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have
laid him.” The apostles are said to have ran and
.satisfied themselves of the fact, but as yet, it is re
marked, “ they knew not the scripture, that he must
rise again from the dead.” Any announcement of the
coming resurrection by Jesus himself is not referred to,
and as to the scripture testimony, it must be observed,
it is nowhere fairly discoverable. According to the
third Gospel, the women were told distinctly by two
angels, who were standing at the tomb, that the resurrec
tion had been effected; and when they went and made
their report to the apostles, so little was the event
looked for, that their words were accounted as “idle tales,
and they believed them not.” The two disciples, said
to have been met with at Emmaus, showed that their hopes
in Jesus had been extinguished by his death. Thomas
is described as stoutly refusing to credit any evidence to
his re-appearance in life but that of his own senses. And,
according to Matthew, when the eleven had the risen
Jesus before them, some of them even then “ doubted.”
The announcement that he should rise from the dead,
had it been made by Jesus, was a circumstance of too
simple a sort to be misapprehended, especially from the
lips of one said to have repeatedly shown his power
over death by restoring others to life ; had he, conse
quently, made this announcement, the disciples, on
the day specified, would have been expecting his reap
pearance, and certainly would not have refused evi
dence to the event when it was certified to them that it
had occurred. Mr Row’s desideratum of preannounce
ment of the coming marvel, as necessary to the accept-
�The Portraiture and Mission of fesus.
i3
ance of a miracle as such, is assuredly wanting in
respect of this chief instance on which he depends as a
fundamental testimony for Christianity.
Mr Row’s most important authority for the fact of
the resurrection is Paul, and of the occasions mentioned
by him when the risen Jesus manifested himself, he
selects, as entitled to most consideration, that when he
is said to have shown himself to “ above five hundred
brethren at once.” Mr Row supposes that this may
have happened when there was the apparition in
Galilee, recorded in Matthew, but here the text is
against his conclusion. It is said in Matthew, that
after his resurrection Jesus told the two Marys to
direct his “ brethren ” to “ go into Galilee,” where they
should see him. “ Then,” it is added, “ the eleven dis
ciples went into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus
had appointed them,” showing that the message was to
these only, and to them the exhibition. And this is
in accordance with the statement in the Acts, that he
manifested himself “ not to all the people, but unto
witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did
eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead.”
This excludes the idea that Jesus ever appeared after
death to an indiscriminate multitude exceeding five
hundred in number; nor can we see that he had so
many followers at this time, as the believers were num
bered, it is said, after Pentecost, and then found to be
but “ about an hundred and twenty.”
The evidence thus attributed to Paul, which was at
best only hearsay, is found to be wanting in every
characteristic of true evidence, as judged of by other
associated scripture. Still Mr Row is entitled to say
that Paul asserted the fact of the resurrection, and he
makes much of this assertion as coming from him within
twenty or thirty years of the alleged occurrence.
Here Mr Row builds upon the circumstance that
four of the Pauline epistles—namely, that to the
Romans, the 1st and 2d to the Corinthians, and that
�14 The Portraiture and Mission of fesus.
to the Galatians—are currently accepted by even ad
verse critics as genuine. I am aware that this is so,
but on the other hand know not on what grounds this
assurance is founded. Certainly there are no collateral
supports for Christianity, of a recognizable character,
from any quarter, during the so-called apostolic age, or,
it may be added, for a century later; and the mere
occurrence in these epistles of features to exhibit the
writer as a living personage, moving in the midst of
events and persons alluded to by him, may show him
to be a clever draftsman, but do not prove the realities
of any part of his descriptions, or that he was that Paul
of the apostolic period he professes to be. To me there
is abundant room for concluding that he was not that
Paul, and that these and the other epistles bearing the
name of Paul are from Gentile hands at indeterminate
periods.
It is apparent that the Paul of the Acts stood in a
very different position from the Paul of the epistles.
The Paul of the Acts is described as visiting Jerusalem
at an early stage in his Christian career, as associating
himself with the constituted apostles, as acting in
subordination to the churches of Jerusalem and Antioch, and as in every respect of the type of the first
Christians, who were merely a Jewish sect. He pro
claimed himself, it is said, a Pharisee, and had never
diverged from the law of Moses or the temple ordi
nances. But the Paul of the Galatians, we are told,
kept himself aloof from Jerusalem and the apostles,
held a particular line of doctrine of his own which he
traced to a revelation made specially to himself, asserted
for himself independent authority coming to him, like
his doctrine, by commission from above, thought lightly
of the apostles, and swept away every reliance on
Judaism as being a system powerless for good, and
absolutely superseded by the new dispensation. The
other associated epistles inculcate the same view of
Judaism. Here we have, assuredly, between the Acts
�The Portraiture and Mission of Jesus.
15
and these epistles, two or more several Pauls; and the
scene being laid in the extinguished Jerusalem, it be
comes evident, as in the instance of the gospel descrip
tions of Christ personally, that we have in the Paul of
the alleged apostolical age merely pictorial representa
tions of such a preacher.
The epistle to the Romans presents special difficulties
to its acceptance as a genuine address to the Church of
Rome in the era ascribed to it. The faith of this
church, at this early period, is said to be “ spoken of
throughout the whole world,” and yet when Paul,
according to the Acts, at a later time visited Rome, so
little had this alleged church influenced the neighbour
hood, that the inquiring Jews of Rome are shown to
be totally ignorant of what constituted Christianity,
and to have looked to Paul to enlighten them; and as
Josephus made Rome his place of abode from the year 7 0
to the end of the century, there inditing his history of
all that concerned the Jews, it is apparent that, had
there been a sect flourishing in the city who were pro
claiming the risen Jesus as the Messiah in his time,
the circumstance was one this careful and discerning
writer could not have failed to notice and to comment
on. Furthermore, the last two chapters of this epistle
contain matters inconsistent with other portions of
Paul’s accepted history, and attribute to him an ac
quaintance with residents of Rome which he could not
have had before visiting the place ; to save the epistle
from which defects it is usual to sever these chapters
from it as spurious additions. When, however, the in
tegrity of the whole epistle may be called in question,
the occurrence of these particular chapters, we may
suppose, very possibly, to be indiscretions on the part
of the hand that fabricated the earlier portion.
The scripture shows that there was a time when the
disciples Considered themselves precluded from offering
the gospel to the Gentiles, and the restriction is ac
counted for by the founder when in life having enjoined
�16 The Portraiture and Mission of Jesus.
it on them to confine their ministry to the lost sheep
of the house of Israel. The church was then in Jewisli
form, and accordingly in the Acts we find the first
teachers, and prominently the alleged Paul, described
as frequenting the temple and practising and upholding
Judaism. At some undiscernible period the door was
opened to the Gentiles, and the character of the dis
pensation became materially altered. Attempts are
made to place the change upon a warrantable footing,
but the statements here are so inconsistent, that all the
conclusion we can come to is that we have not true
history before us. The proclamation of the gospel to
the Gentiles could not have been owing, as alleged, to
a command issued by Jesus at his resurrection, else it
would not have been necessary to provide Peter with a
vision from heaven to encourage him to exercise this
liberty ; nor could there have been this vision to Peter,
or Paul and Barnabas would not have had to resort to
a questionable interpretation of the Jewish scripture to
justify their free ministry among the Gentiles ; and, it
may be added, were there this scriptural support, either
Jesus could not have been conscious of it, or he could
not have given the edict of exclusion against this scrip
ture. We arrive, therefore, at this result, that at some
unrevealed time, and under some circumstances not
properly disclosed, the Judaic form of Christianity
became altered and a dispensation for the Gentiles was
introduced, and in this unknown period, and certainly
not within twenty or thirty years of the alleged resur
rection, as assumed by Mr Row, the Pauline epistles
made their appearance, and probably from Gentile
hands.
Mr Row comforts himself with the idea that no one
looks upon the Christian narrative as a deliberate in
vention. It is time assuredly to remove from the
advocates of Christianity such a refuge. What is the
meaning of that host of criticism in which, in modern
times, Dr Strauss has led the way, founded upon the
�The Portraiture and Mission of fesus.
17
conflict of statement in the gospel narratives, one repre
sentation destroying or excluding another, if it be not
that these critics disallow the historical value of the
narratives ? They may admit some sort of foundation
for the proferred history, but in its essential parts,
figuring the hero in a desired form, they see that reali
ties have not been followed. Marks, in fact, indicating
what must be looked upon as deliberate fabrication on
the part of the gospel writers are not wanting, and I
will point out a few.
It is transparent that these writers have had the
desire to exhibit Jesus as fulfilling ancient prophecies,
and there must always have been a tendency on their
parts to find events to correspond with the predictions.
Some of the circumstances so brought together are of a
character to give evidence of designed adaptations, as
that of Jesus being taken to and brought from Egypt
merely to carry out the saying, “ Out of Egypt have I
called my son;” the “voice of him that crieth in the
wilderness,” said to have been realized literally in the
instance of John the Baptist; the being borne up by
angels lest his foot should he dashed against a stone, as
being met by Jesus when Satan tempted him to throw
himself down from a pinnacle of the temple; the people
of Zabulon and Napthalim being visited by a great
light, provided by Jesus in his ministrations in those
among other localities; the attempt to prove John to
be the precursor before “ the great and dreadful day of
the Lord” spoken of by Malachi, of which no more
could be said than, “ If ye will receive it, this is Elias,
which was for to come;” the purging the temple be
cause Jeremiah had complained of God’s house being
converted into a den of thieves; the casting lots for
the garments of Jesus to accomplish a saying of the
Psalmist; and Jesus calling out in his last moments
“I thirst” in order to fulfil another passage in the
Psalms. A history composed with materials thus
selected carries with it on its face the appearance of
�18 The Portraiture and Mission of Jesus.
having been so arranged for a purpose, and if there are
anywhere positive indications of statements introduced
of a nature warring with fact, the whole representation
becomes tainted as based upon fiction.
The gospels of Matthew and Luke contain genealogies
deriving Joseph in a direct line from David. Now, as
it is freely admitted in Jewish circles that the people
had no knowledge of their tribal distinctions from the
time of the Babylonish captivity, it is clear that the
family of Joseph, a carpenter of Galilee, could have
had no means of ascertaining their lineage as traceable
through David to the tribal patriarch Judah. It was
held desirable, to meet the requirements of assumed
prophecy, in presenting Jesus as the Messiah, to show
him lineally descended from David, and therefore it is
that we have these genealogies. They were framed by
the two writers independently of each other, and they
effectually disagree, as might be expected when put to
gether with imaginary data.
These same writers also give us a divine nativity for
Jesus, a circumstance to entirely defeat the aforesaid
genealogies; for if Jesus had no human father, he be
comes cleared of association with Joseph and David,
who had no part in his paternity. The event of this
divine procreation is never made use of again to the last
page of the sacred record, and the probability is that it
was a late introduction. The tale could not have been
current in the times depicted in the Acts, else it would
have been an offence charged against Paul, that he had
preached the new divinity, whereas he stood acquitted
of having transgressed in any way against accepted
Judaism as expressed by the law of Moses and em
bodied in the ordinances of the temple; nor would it
have been said at this time, as it has been said, that
Jesus obtained his divine sonship only at the day of
his resurrection, according to the saying applied to him
from the second Psalm.
With the account of the divine nativity in Matthew
�The Portraiture and Mission of fesus.
19
is linked Herod’s slaughter of the infants at Bethlehem,
a matter the want of historical support for which has
been commonly noticed. The conspiracy of Pheroras,
as recounted by Josephus, would seem to have sug
gested this portion of the tale. Certain Pharisees,
supposed to be gifted with the power of seeing into the
future, predicted that Herod’s line should be over
thrown in favour of that of Pheroras. On this Herod
put these prophets, and all of his own family who
favoured the pretensions of Pheroras, to death.
Pheroras he drove away to his own tetrarchy, and
he went swearing with many oaths that he would
not return till Herod was dead. Thus we have the
prophecy of the subversion of the line of Herod, the
consequent slaughter, the withdrawal of the rival, and
his remaining in retreat till the death of Herod, all
which circumstances the gospel writer has apparently
made use of, and converted them in altered form to
embellish his history of Jesus. As Josephus’ history
was not indited till the year 93, it follows that this
portion of the narrative respecting Jesus was not even
imagined until a later time.
Jesus is described as having been of Nazareth, and
the distinction is kept up even by a voice from heaven
alleged to have addressed Paul in effecting his conver
sion. Josephus mentions no such place, and we first
hear of it, outside the pages of the scripture, from
Eusebius, in the fourth century, when it is called
Nazara, and said to be a village not of Galilee but of
Judea. Matthew, ever striving to adapt fact to pro
phecy, asserts that it had been predicted that Jesus
should be “called a Nazarene,” but by which of the
prophets he did not venture to point out. Possibly
he was thinking of the term Nazarite, and there is the
appearance that the name Nazareth has been coined
under a play upon the Hebrew word nazar, consecra
tion.
The second Psalm has a saying which has been
�20 The Portraiture and Mission of Jesus.
frequently appealed to in the Christian scriptures as
applicable to Jesus. The phrase is, “ Thou art my son;
this day have I begotten thee.” The question is of
what day did the Psalmist speak ? He shows in the
verse next preceding that the time involved was when
it could also be said of the personage adverted to, “yet
have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion,” which
was to be effected when the confederacy of the kings and
rulers of the earth against him had been overthrown.
This is sufficiently definite, and shows the eventful
birth to be still in the womb of futurity. The Chris
tian writers, anxious for the support of so marked a
declaration, blind themselves to its surroundings, and
Say that it took effect in the instance of Jesus. The
earliest statement, namely, that in the Acts, was, that
it was by the means of his resurrection that this sonship was conferred upon him. The epistle to the
Romans supports this representation, and twice in the
epistle to the Hebrews the passage in question in its
integrity is made applicable to Jesus. At some later
time, seemingly, various other and conflicting allegations
were introduced to support the title of Jesus to this pro
phesied sonship. An angel informs Mary that he was
to acquire the divine sonship at his birth, his procreator
being the Holy Ghost; a voice from heaven proclaims
his sonship thirty years later at his baptism, as if then
conferred on him, using the words of the Psalm, but
(suspiciously) in a modified manner; and there is the
same declaration, with the same modified use of the
language of the Psalm, brought in at the transfigura
tion. On this one important point, therefore, how and
when Jesus was made to be the son of God, we have a
variety of conflicting statements, the leading statement,
namely, that of the Psalm, which is the foundation of
all the others, showing that it is an event that has yet
to be accomplished. It is a mockery of our senses if
the specific “ this day ” when the son in question was
to be “ begotten,” is applicable to five different occasions.
�The Portraiture and Mission of fesus.
21
One would think also if God could introduce among
us an individual thus begotten by himself, his divinity
would have been recognizable without the need of the
offices of any herald.
There are some minor matters in which the hand of
the constructor is also shown. To meet a prophecy,
Jesus has to enter Jerusalem as its king upon an ass.
The writer of Matthew, misapprehending the Hebrew
phrase, brings upon the scene two animals, and curi
ously enough places Jesus upon them both. Mark and
Luke, reading the Hebrew aright, have but one
animal. Matthew and Luke state that Jesus predicted
that before the cock crowed Peter should deny him
thrice, and accordingly it is said, after his denial of any
knowledge of Jesus three several times, 11 immediately
the cock crew.” Mark has it that the saying of Jesus
to Peter was, “before the cock crow twice, thou shalt
deny me thrice and accordingly he makes it out that
there was a crowing of the cock after the first denial,
and again after the third, shaping his events to suit
his sense of the prophetic utterance. At the crucifixion
of Jesus the soldiers are said to have cast lots for his
garments in fulfilment of a saying in the twenty-second
Psalm. Matthew, Mark, and Luke agree that the
whole of the garments were thus disposed of by lot.
John, misapprehending the force of the Hebrew, thinks
that it was meant that the “ vesture,” or upper “ coat,”
as he takes it to have been, had been referred to dis
tinctively, and was alone to be subjected to lot, and he
puts his facts accordingly, saying that the “ garments ”
were divided into four portions, for each soldier a por
tion, and that as the “ coat ” was without seam theycould not divide, it, but cast lots to decide which of
them should have it.
Mr Row furthermore supports himself with the
belief that the representation of Christ, as given in the
gospel accounts, is so drawn as to demonstrate that it
must have been taken from a real life, and that life of
�'ll Pbe Portraiture and Mission of Jesus.
such a character as to have been of divine mould.
Assuredly the picture of a god-man was one difficult
to portray. We may say indeed that there is an im
possibility to conceive the incidents proper to prove the
being to be described as at once truly man and truly
God, the conditions of the two natures and spheres
being so diverse, and that of one of the two standing
essentially beyond our cognizance. That the gospel
writers in their portraiture have had nothing to draw
from but human models, and that they have failed to
present their subject with the attribute of perfection, or
to maintain the composition of the divine with the
human in consistency, was to have been expected; and
we may readily see, in the imperfections of their work,
that in a dark and ignorant age, building upon imagina,tion and not upon fact, they have ventured upon a task
which could not have been even attempted in an
enlightened one.
The object placed before us is a carpenter, the re
puted son of a carpenter, living in remote and barbaric
Galilee, suddenly presenting himself, at the mature age
of thirty, as in being an incarnate god, and in office the
long-expected Messiah of the Jews. His credentials
are his mighty works, or a system of thaumaturgical
displays, his own assertions, and the character of his
teaching, all to be judged of in an age incompetent to
discern or weigh the facts, and to be sustained through
all time by the hearsay reports of we know not who.
The humanity of the mother is certain, but we are
perplexed to decide whether on the father’s side he
sprang from a human or a divine parent. It is as when
the renowned conqueror Alexander was traceable either
to Philip or to Jupiter Amon; or as when Hercules
was derivable from the same supreme god or from
Amphitr.yo; or, nearer still in parallelism, as when
the imprisoned virgin Danae was visited and “ over
shadowed” by this divinity and brought forth the
heroic Perseus. Both parentages are asserted and sup-
�The Portraiture and Mission of Jesus.
23
ported, the divine by angelic messengers, visiting, how
ever, only the ostensible parents, the human by elabo
rate details of the father’s pedigree. What Jesus said
of himself is equally doubtful. His pleasure appears
to have been to style himself “ son of man; ” when
devils, cognizant of his divine constitution, were about
to disclose who he was, he authoritatively shut their
mouths; when at a late period in his ministry Peter
asserted his divine sonship and position as the Christ
or Messiah, he attributed his knowledge of him to a
direct revelation from heaven, showing that hitherto he
had never thus proclaimed himself; and at the same
time he interdicted his disciples from declaring him to
others. Currently he was considered to be a prophet,
and if, as held in the Acts and the Epistle to the
Romans, his condition as the son of God dated only
from his resurrection, his career in the flesh must have
been devoid of the divine ingredient. His place in the
godhead has therefore, it is apparent, been imagined for
him under the ordinary stimulus of the desire of his
followers to magnify their master, as in the instance of
the Hindu reformer Buddha, or of the Roman em
perors, or of any other example of apotheosis or
canonization.
The appeal to miracles is a very questionable resort.
Now as Jesus is repeatedly represented to have
exhorted those on whose behalf they were wrought to
keep the matter secret to themselves, and as when such
signs, upon being asked for, were refused to be accorded
by him, and the desire to have them was repressed as
sinful, it is to be gathered, in spite of the sayings to the
contrary, that the writers were aware that there was no
such public sense of the occurrence of these marvels as
must have attached to them had they really been
enacted, and we are left to the conclusion that there
were in fact no such demonstrations. Not only there
fore was the divine Messiahship, it may be seen, not
asserted in the lifetime of Jesus, the testimony of the
�24 The Portraiture and Mission of Jesus.
miracles to fall back upon as evidences of his super
human being and mission, was also, it may be under
stood, equally wanting. Such displays of alleged power
are after all a very weak and hacknied device, common
among the Hebrew prophets, asserted as current among
the followers of Jesus, and traceable in every mythology
that has prevailed, Hindu, Chaldean, Egyptian, Grecian,
•and Roman, with which the Christian writers were
familiar when they drew up their narratives, and from
which sources, it may be judged, they derived their
models.
Nor were the acts ascribed to Jesus of a character
uniformly to sustain the pretensions asserted for him of
his divinity. It certainly was not ennobling that he
should by a miracle have supplied a vast quantity of
wine to promote the revelry of those who had already
“ well drunk; ” that he should make clay with his
spittle to anoint the eyes of a blind man and restore
him to sight; that he should drive swine to self-destruc
tion by infesting them with demons; that he should
look for his tribute money in a fish’s mouth ; that he
should curse and blight a senseless fig-tree for not pro
ducing fruit out of due season; that he should castigate
with a whip, made up by him of small cords, merchants
and money changers assembled in the temple courts, in
promotion of the ordinary temple services. These are
defective pictures betraying the pencils of inferior
artists.
We have Jesus represented as stretching out his arms
longingly to Jerusalem, exclaiming, “How often would
I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen
gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would
not;” but as his divine sonship and Messiahship were
both profound secrets, in what capacity, it must be
asked, could he have offered himself to Jerusalem and
been refused 1 In fact there is no such action towards
the city on his part described, and the attitude in ques
tion is a mere sensational protraiture.
�The Portraiture and Mission of Jesus.
25
We have him described as speaking as never man
spake before, but such a thing as a novel elevated senti
ment is not recorded as falling from his lips. He retails
what was current among Essenes and devout Jews of
his day, and preaches natural religion as prevailing
among the godly in all times. His famous sermon on
the mount, for example, contains nothing but what is
fairly traceable to the teachers of his people who had
preceded him, as transmitted to us in the Talmudic
traditions. But in these unequal delineations he is
also represented to us as designedly withholding from
the people instruction in godliness. He veils his dis
courses in parables with the professed intention that
they should not be intelligible to his hearers, to their
benefit, “lest at any time they should see with their
eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand
with their heart, and should be converted, and he should
heal them,” (the parables, however, nevertheless, being
simple in structure, and transparent as to their import) ;
and he solemnly thanks God that “these things,”
necessary for their salvation, are “ hid ” from the wise
and prudent, and revealed only to those who are without
discernment as “ babes.”
He is made, contrary to all sense of modesty, to an
nounce himself as “ meek and lowly,” ever ready “ to
seek and to save the lost ones.” We find him far from
accessible to those who looked to him for instruction,
rebuffing them with short and enigmatical answers; he
reviles Scribes and Pharisees as hypocrites, whitened
sepulchres, liars, and children of the devil; he is rude
to his own mother ; he holds earthly ties of relationship
in small account when measured by his personal mission,
and represents that he has “ come to set a man at vari
ance against his father, and the daughter against her
mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-inlaw,” adding that under his dispensation “ a man’s foes
shall be they of his own household.” “ There is nothing
more remarkable,” acknowledges Mr Bow himself, in
�26 The Portraiture and Mission of fesus.
his earlier work, “ The Jesus of the Evangelists,”—“in
the Evangelical portraiture of the Christ than the
manner in which the humblest of men is depicted as
habitually preaching himself.’’ “In no other man
would such an assumption wear anything but the
appearance of arrogance.” And yet we are to accept
the feature as consistent with a perfect specimen of
humanity fortified and exalted with a divine essence
ever permeating through it.
The being so composed is in truth a mass of bewilder
ing inconsistencies. God is said to have “ so loved the
world ” that he gave up his son “ that the world through
him might be saved,” and yet the son solemnly inti
mates to the Father, “ I pray not for the world ; ” he
is “ the light of the world,” “ the true light which
lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” and
nevertheless consigns multitudes to perdition, of whom
he will say, “ I never knew you; ” he expresses in him
self the type of poverty, as one who had not a hole
wherein to lay his head, but can pass forty days and
forty nights without food, create sustenance for thou
sands out of nothing, fabricate wine out of water, and
supply himself with cash from a fish’s mouth; he is
at once the bridegroom, the centre of joy, and spreading
joy around him, and the man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief; he is the source of life, and yet cannot pro
tect his own life from his enemies ; he is God, “ equal
with God,” and nevertheless, in an agony of distress,
“ with strong crying and tears,’’ entreats God for
deliverance, and his prayer is unheeded ; again he is
God, and yet feels himself abandoned by God ; he came
to lay down his life as a sacrifice for others, and when
he undergoes his destined fate, not recognizing his own
work, he upbraids God with forsaking him, and wonders
“ why” he has done so.
It is a relief to know that this is no true life, but a
mere portraiture of an ideal personage drawn by ignorant
men, for ignorant classes, in days of darkness. Josephus
�The Portraiture and Mission of°Jesus.
27
knew nothing of these wonderments, and he wrote up to
the year 93, being familiar with all the chief scenes of
the alleged Christianity. Nicolaus of Damascus, who
preceded him and lived to the time of Herod’s successor
Archelaus, and Justus of Tiberias, who was the con
temporary and rival of Josephus in Galilee, both Jewish
historians, equally knew nothing of the movement.
Philo-Judseus, who occupied the whole period ascribed
to Jesus, and engaged himself deeply in figuring out the
Logos, had heard nothing of the being who was realizing
at Jerusalem the image his fancy was creating ; and for
about a hundred and fifty years from the time given as
that of the death of Jesus, there is not a single reliable
name or record connected with Christianity which can
be safely associated with the period. After this lapse
of time, when Jerusalem had been destroyed and the
Jews exiled by Hadrian, the Christian representations
were conceived and gradually put together. The Jewish
scriptures and the traditionary teaching of their doctors,
the Essenes and Therapeuts, the Greek philosophies, the
neo-platonism of Alexandria, and the Buddhism of the
East, gave ample supplies for the composition of the
doctrinal portion of the new faith; the divinely pro
created personages of the Grecian and Roman pantheons,
the tales of the Egyptian Osiris, and of the Indian
Rama, Krishna, and Buddha, furnished the materials
for the image of the new saviour of mankind; and
every surrounding mythology poured forth samples of
the “ mighty works ” that were to be attributed to him
to attract and enslave his followers ; and thus, first
from Judaism, and finally from the bosom of heathen
dom, we have our matured expression of Christianity.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The portraiture and mission of Jesus
Creator
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Strange, Thomas Lumisden
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 27 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. The pamphlet, in part, challenges the work of Prebendary Row entitled 'The Supernatural in the New Testament'.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1876
Identifier
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CT179
Subject
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Jesus Christ
Rights
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The portraiture and mission of Jesus), 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
Jesus Christ
Superstition
-
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PDF Text
Text
The sketch, of the character and temperament of St. Paul in his
relation to the doctrine of the resurrection is as important as it is
interesting. The spirit of the volumes is 'summed up in the follow
ing words, with the quotation of which we for the present earnestly
commend the book to the attention of our readers—
“Although we lose a faith which has long been our guide in the past,
we need not now fear to walk boldly with Truth in the future, and turning
away from fancied benefits to be derived from the virtue of His death, we
may find real help and guidance from more earnest contemplation of the
life and teaching of Jesus.”
N
We presume that the chapters in Mr. Conway’s work10 have been de
livered as lectures in South Place. No one could listen to them, few could
read them, without stimulus to thought, without being obliged to say, Do
I or do I not believe in the things which are- here so fiercely assailed as
merely old wives’ fables ? It is well to break idols—it is well often
to be full of scornful irony in the breaking—it is well to show, as Mr.
Conway is never tired of doing, the comparative mythology of religions ;
but the idol-breaker and the comparative mythologist perhaps lose
necessarily a something of reverential spirit that we should like to
find in all teachers, and a power of sympathy with what is true among
the felicities of the past.
One of the most striking lectures in the book is concerned with the
Ammergau miracle-play, in which he draws a very skilful contrast)
between the ideal Christ of the Church and the Christ as represented
in the Gospels ; but we cannot help thinking that his picture is ex
tremely overcharged from a desire of being original, and of differing,
not only from most Christians, but from most free-thinkers.
We are sure that few will agree with Mr. Conway’s estimate of the
manner in which Christ shrank from death, as put out by him in the
following passage—
“ Again and again had Christ tried to escape this danger (death), even
with dexterity, and on his trial he fenced with every art of speech and
silence. When he saw the coils of priestly hatred closing around him,
his soul was exceeding sorrowful. Death haunted him. When a woman
anointed him tenderly, the odour reminded him of death. i She embalms
me for burial,’ he cries, and his very words shudder. He meets his
disciples at supper ; but when he sees and tastes the red wine, that too
suggests death ; he recoils and cries, ‘ It’s my blood ! Drink it yourselves
—I’ll never taste it again ! ’ ”
In a hasty survey of the good and evils of Christianity, the same or
greater want of real sympathy and interest is shown. “ Idols and
Ideals” is a striking but extremely irritating book, attracting by its
brilliancy, repelling by its cold, metallic hardness.
The Hon. Albert Canning has written an essay 11 which, as its seems
to us, would be far more in place in the pages of a magazine than pub10 “ Idols and Ideals.” By Moncure D. Conway, M.A. London: Trubner&
Co. 1877.
11 “ The Political Progress of Christianity.” By the Honourable Albert S. G.
Canning. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. 1877.
�220
®
Bish pH as a substantial book. For it is too hasty, and is too m"ch
occupied with temporary judgments and modern newspaper litera
ture, to have any real and permanent value. It is an examination into
the comparative civilisation attained by Christian nations and those
under the sway of Islam ; and he considers it evident that, in modern
times, at least, no country except under Christian political rule has
attained to real civilisation. Mr. Canning has drawn carefully on all
authorities which tend to prove his point, but it is a one-sided and
argumentative rather than an exhaustive examination into the ques
tion. It is, however, worth reading as a statement of one side of the
v question.
“No task,” says Miss Whately,12 “ can well be undertaken by a
Christian writer more painful than that of controversy with fellowt Christians.” If such be the case, we can only say that almost every
V theological work ever written must have brought to its author many
terrible pangs ; for, with the rarest possible exceptions, every statement
of faith and doctrine in every language consists in large measure in
running down the faith and doctrines of somebody else. Miss Whately
gives herself the terrible pain of assailing, on evangelical grounds, the
doctrine and practices of the sect known as the Plymouth Brethren.
The whole controversy seems to us so very puerile, that we need only
draw attention to it as another indication of the intestine convulsions
that are shaking religious Protestantism to its foundations.
“ Scepticism and Social Justice ” 13 is an enlarged reprint of a little
work formerly published in Mr. Scott’s well-known series of tracts. It
contains a sketch of the aspect in which the controversy about the authen
ticity and the credibility of the Bible presents itself to an intelligent
layman who has no time to study the subject profoundly at first hand.
He challenges the clergy either to refute the attacks which have been
brought on the received theology and Scripture history, or else to allow
the sceptic to hold his own without placing him under a social stigma.
It is not enough, Mr. Bastard thinks, to say that in the large centres
of civilisation no social stigma attaches to the upholders of sceptical
opinions. He is writing in behalf of those who live in country neigh
bourhoods, where thinkers are few, and where orthodoxy and ecclesiasticism are still rampant. It is a temperate, well-written, though not
profound pamphlet, kindly and considerate to those from whom it asks,
but perhaps asks in vain, equal kindness and consideration.
Mr. Bacon 14 is an American living in Switzerland, who has contri
buted papers to various American periodicals for some time past. His
collected volume, dealing on questions connected with the Church on
the Continent, the Catholic reformation in Switzerland, the Old Catholic
Congress, on the temperance reformation, &c., are better worth reading
than are most volumes of connected essays.
12 “ Plymouth Brethrenism.” By E. J. Whately. London : Hatchards. 1877,.s
13 “ Scepticism and Social Justice.” By Thomas Horlock Bastard. , London :
Williams & Norgate. 1877.
„ n
14 “ Church Papers.” By Leonard Woolsey Bacon. London : Trubner & Lo.
1877.
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
[Idols and Ideals]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: p. 219 ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. A review, by an unknown reviewer, of Moncure Conway's work 'Idols and Ideals' from 'Theology'. Date and issue number unknown.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[n.d.]
Identifier
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G5611
Subject
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Book reviews
Creator
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[Unknown]
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 ([Idols and Ideals]), 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
Christianity
Conway Tracts
Moncure Conway
Religion
Superstition