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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
A RROWS OF
PREETHOUGHT.
BY
Gr -
W.
ZE O O T ZE 7
Editor of “ The Freethinker.”
LONDON :
H. Ä. KEMP, 28 STONECUTTER STREET,
FÁRRINGDON STREET, E.C.
1882.
�LONDON:
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY H. A. KEMP
�&-2-4-3O
CON T E N T S.
Preface ■ Religion and Progress
A Defence of Thomas Paine The Gospel of Freethought
Freethought in Current Literature
Dean Stanley's Latest
God and the Queen
Cardinal Newman on Infidelity
Sunday Tyranny
Who are the Blasphemers?
The Birth of Christ
----The Reign of Christ
The Primate on Modern Infidelity
Baiting a Bishop Professor Flint on Atheism
A Hidden God
General Joshua -----Going to Hell
Christmas Eve in Heaven
Professor Blackie on Atheism
Salvation ism’ A Pious Showman -
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�PREFACE.
I republish in. this little volume a few of my numerous
articles that have appeared in the Secularist, the Liberal, the
National Reformer, and the Freethinker, during the last five
or six years. I have included nothing (I hope) of merely
ephemeral interest. Every article in this collection was at
least written carefully, and with an eye to more than the
exigencies of the moment. In disentombing them from the
cemeteries of periodical literature, where so many of their
companions lie buried, I trust I have not allowed parental
love to outrun discretion.
I have not thought it necessary to indicate, in each
case, the journal in which the reprinted articles were first
published.
Should anyone object to the freedom of my style, or the
asperity of my criticism, I would ask him to remember that
Christianity still persecutes to the full extent of its power,
and that a Creed which answers argument with prosecution
cannot expect tender treatment in return; and I would also
ask him, in the words of Ruskin, “ to consider how much less
harm is done in the world by ungraceful boldness than by
untimely fear.”
London, November 15th, 1882.
�RELIGION AND PROGRESS.
(November, 1882.)
The Archbishop of York is peculiarly qualified to speak on
religion and progress. His form of thanksgiving to the
God of Battles for our “ victory ” in Egypt marks him as
a man of extraordinary intellect and character, such as
common people may admire without hoping to emulate;
while his position, in Archbishop Tait’s necessitated
absence from the scene, makes him the active head of the
English Church. Let us listen to the great man.
Archbishop Thomson recently addressed “ a working-men’s
meeting ” in the Drill Hall, Sheffield. It was densely
crowded by six or seven thousand people, and this fact was
cited by the Archbishop as a proof that the working classes
of England have not yet lost interest in the Christian faith.
But we should very much like to know how it was ascercertained that all, or even the major portion, of the vast
audience were working-men. It is easy enough to give any
meeting a name. We often hear of a Conservative Work
ing-men’s banquet, with tickets at something like a guinea
each, a duke at the top of the table and a row of lords down
each side. And our experience leads us to believe that
nearly all religious meetings of “working-men ” are attended
chiefly by the lower middle classes who go regularly to
church or chapel every Sunday of their lives.
Even, however, if the whole six or seven thousand were
working-men, the fact would prove little; for Sheffield con
tains a population of three hundred thousand, and it was
not difficult for the clergy who thronged the platform to get
up a big “ ticket ” meeting, at which a popular Archbishop
was the principal speaker, and the eloquence was all to be
had for nothing.
The Archbishop’s lecture, or sermon, or whatever it was,
contained nothing new, nor was any old idea presented in a
new light. It was simply a summary of the vulgar decla
mations against the “ carnal mind ” with which we are all
so familiar. Progress, said his Grace, was of two kinds,
intellectual and moral. Of the former sort we had plenty,
�6
RELIGION AND PROGRESS.
but of the latter not so much. He repudiated the notion
that moral progress would naturally keep pace with intel
lectual progress, and he denied that righteousuess could ever
prevail without “ some sanction from above.” This was
the sum and substance of his discourse, and we have no
doubt that our readers have heard the same thing, in various
forms of language, some hundreds of times.
Like the rest of his tribe, Archbishop Thomson went
abroad for all his frightful warnings, and especially to
France. He severely condemned the French “pride in
progress,” which led to the Revolution. His Grace has
certainly a most original conception of history. Ordinary
historians tell us that the Revolution was caused by hunger,
bad government, and the rigidity of old institutions that
could not accommodate themselves to new ideas. But
whatever were the causes, look at the results. Compare the
state of France before the Revolution with its condition
now. The despotic monarchy is gone ; the luxurious and
privileged aristocracy has disappeared ; and the incredibly
wealthy and tyrannous Church is reduced to humbleness
and poverty. But the starving masses have become the
most prosperous on the face of the earth ; the ignorant
multitudes are well educated; the platform and the press
are free ; a career is open to every citizen ; science, art, and
literature have made immense strides ; and although Paris,
like every great capital, may still, as Mr. Arnold says, lack
morality, there is no such flagrant vileness within her walls
as the corruptions of the ancien régime; no such impudent
affronting of the decencies of life as made the parc aux cerfs
for ever infamous, and his Christian Majesty, Louis the
Fifteenth, a worthy compeer of Tiberius ; no such shameless
wickedness as made the orgies of the Duke of Orleans and
the Abbé Dubois match the worst saturnalia of Nero.
His Grace felt obliged to advert also to the Paris Com
mune, about which his information seems to be equal to his
knowledge of the Revolution. He has the ignorance or
audacity to declare that the Commune “ destroyed a city and
ravaged the land ;” when, as a matter of fact, the struggle
was absolutely confined to Paris, and the few buildings
injured were in the line of fire. This worthy prelate thinks
destruction of buildings a crime on the part of Communalists,
but a virtue on the part of a Christian power; and while
�RELIGION. AND PROGRESS.
7
¿enouncing the partial wreck of Paris, he blesses the whole
sale ruin of Alexandria.
His Grace ventures also to call the leading men of the
Commune “ drunken dissolute villains.” The beaten party
is always wicked, and perhaps Dr. Thomson will remember
that Jesus Christ himself was accused of consorting with
publicans and sinners. Drunken dissolute villains do not
risk their lives for an idea. The men of the Commune may
have been mistaken, but their motives were lofty ; and
Millière, falling dead on the Church steps before the
Versailles bullets, with the cry of Vive VHumanité on his
lips, was as noble a hero as any crucified Galilean who
questioned why his God had forsaken him.
That intellectual and moral progress naturally go to
gether, the Archbishop calls “ an absurd and insane
doctrine,” and he couples with these epithets the honored
names of Buckle and Spencer. Now it will be well to have
a clear understanding on this point. Are intellectual causes
dominant or subordinate ? Even so intensely religious a
man as Lamennais unhesitatingly answers that they are
dominant. He affirms, in his Du Passé et de V Avenir du
Peuple., that “intellectual development has produced all other
developments,” and he adds :—
“It is represented that evil, as it appears in history, springs
entirely from the passions. This is quite false. The passions
disturb the existing order, whatever it may be, but they do not
constitute it. They have not that power. It is the necessary
result of the received ideas and beliefs. Thus the passions
show themselves the same in all epochs, and yet, in different
epochs, the established order changes, and sometimes funda
mentally.”
The truth is that the great moral conceptions are securely
•established, and the only possible improvement in them must
come from the increased fineness and subtlety of oui- mental
powers.
Civilisation and progress are, according to Archbishop
Thomson, nothing but “ cobwebs and terms.” He besought
the working men of Sheffield not to go for information to a
big book written in some garret in London. His Grace,
who lives in a palace at other people’s expense, has a very
natural dislike of any man of genius who may live in a
garret at his own. What has the place in which a book is
�RELIGION AND PROGRESS.
written to do with its value ? “ Don Quixote ” and the
“ Pilgrim’s Progress ” were written in gaol; and for all
Archbishop Thomson knows to the contrary every gospel
and epistle of the New Testament may have been written in
an attic or a cellar.
The Archbishop seems to hate the very idea of Progress.
What has it done, he asks, to abolish drunkenness and
gambling ? To which we reply by asking what Christianity
has done. Those vices are unmistakably here, and on the face
of it“any objection they may furnish against Progress must
equally apply to Christianity. Nay more; for Christianity
has had an unlimited opportunity to reform the world, while
Progress has been hindered at every turn by the insolent
usurpation of its rival.
Dr. Thomson admits that he cannot find a text in the
Bible against gambling, and assuredly he cannot find one in
favor of teetotalism. On the contrary he will find plenty of
texts which recommend the “wine that cheereth the heart of
God and man
and he knows that his master, Jesus
Christ, once played the part of an amateur publican at a
marriage feast, and turned a large quantity of water into
wine in order to keep the spree going when it had once
begun.
We repeat that all the Archbishop’s objections to Pro
gress, based on the moral defects of men, apply with tenfold
force against Religion, which has practically had the whole
field to itself. And we assert that he is grievously mistaken
if he imagines that supernatural beliefs can ennoble knaves
or give wisdom to fools. When he talks about “ Christ’s
blood shed to purchase our souls,” and specifies the first
message of his creed as “Come and be forgiven,” he is
appealing to our basest motives, and turning the temple into
a huckster’s shop. Let him and all his tribe listen to these
words of Ruskin’s :—
“Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy.
Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your
honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised,
as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day
and over the night. If you ask why you are to be honest—you
are, in the question itself, dishonored. “ Because you are a man,”
is the only answer; and therefore I said in a former letter that
to make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of
education. Make them men first and religious men afterwards,
�RELIGION AND PROGRESS.
9
and all will be sound; but a knave’s religion is always the
rottenest thing about him.—Time and Tide, p. 37.”
These are the words of a real spiritual teacher. Arch
bishop Thomson will never get within a million miles of
their meaning; nor will anybody be deceived by the
unctuous “ Oh that ” with which he concludes his discourse,
like a mental rolling of the whites of his eyes.
As we approach the end of his address, we begin to under
stand his Grace’s hatred of Progress. He complains that
“ intellectual progress never makes a man conceive eternal
hopes, never makes a man conceive that he has an eternal
friend in heaven, even the Son of God.” Quite true. In
tellectual progress tends to bound our desires within the
scope of their realisation, and to dissipate the fictions of
theology. It is therefore inimical to all professional soul
savers, who chatter about another world with no under
standing of this; and especially to the lofty teachers of
religion who luxuriate in palaces, and fling jibes and sneers
at the toiling soldiers of progress who face hunger, thirst
and death. These rich disciples of the poor Nazarene are
horrified when the scorn is retorted on them and their creed ;
and Archbishop Thomson expresses his “ disgust ” at our
ridiculing his Bible and endeavoring to bring his “ con
victions ” into “ contempt.” It is, he says, “ an offence
against the first principles of mutual sympathy and con
sideration.” Yet this angry complainant describes other
people’s convictions as “ absurd and insane.” All the
sympathy and consideration is to be on one side ! The less
said about either the better. There can be no treaty or truce
in a war of principles, and the soldiers of Progress will
neither take quarter nor give it. Christianity must defend
itself. It may try to kill us with the poisoned arrows of
persecution ; but what defence can it make against the rifle
shot of common-sense, or how stand against the shattering
artillery of science ? Every such battle is decided in its
commencement, for every religion begins to succumb the
very moment it is attacked.
�A DEFENCE OF THOMAS PAINE.
(February^ 1879.)
Fling mud enough and some of it will stick. This noble
maxim has been the favorite of traducers in all ages and
climes. They know that the object of their malignity can
not always be on the alert to cleanse himself from the filth
they fling, especially if cast behind his back; they know that
lies, and especially slanderous lies, are hard to overtake, and
when caught harder to strangle ; and therefore they feel
confident as to the ultimate fate of their victim if they can
only persevere long enough in their vile policy of defamation.
For human nature being more prone to believe evil than
good of others, it generally happens that the original traducers
are at length joined by a host of kindred spirits almost as
eager and venomous as themselves, “ the long-neck’d geese
of the world, who are ever hissing dispraise because their
natures are little;” while a multitude of others, not so much
malignant as foolish and given to scandal, lend their cowardly
assistance, and help to vilify characters far beyond the reach
of their emulation. And should such characters be those of
men -who champion unpopular causes, there is no lie too
black for belief concerning them, no accusation of secret
theft or hateful meanness or loathsome -lust, that will not
readily gain credence. Mr. Tennyson speaks of—
that fierce light which beats upon a throne,
And blackens every blot:
but ■what is that to the far fiercer and keener light which
beats upon the lives of the great heroes of progress ? With
all due deference to the Poet Laureate, we conceive that
kings and their kind have usually extended to them a charity
which covers a multitude of their sins. The late king of
Italy, for instance, was said to have had “the language of a
guardroom, the manners of a trooper, and the morals of a
lie-goat,” yet at his death how tenderly his faults were dealt
with by the loyal press, and how strongly were all his merits
brought into relief. Our own royal Sardanapalus, George
the Fourth, although Leigh Hunt had the courage to describe
him aright and went to the gaol for so doing, was styled by
(
�A DEFENCE OF THOMAS PAINE.
11
Society “ the first gentleman in Europe.” Yet Mazzini,
Vittor Emmanuel’s great contemporary, whose aims were
high and noble as his life was pure, got little else than abuse
from this same loyal press ; and the Society which adored
George the Fourth charged Shelley himself with unspeak
able vices equalled only by the native turpitude of his soul.
Perhaps no man has suffered more from calumny than
Thomas Paine. During his lifetime, indeed, his traducers
scarcely ever dared to vent their malice in public, doubtless
through fear of receiving a castigation from his vigorous and
trenchant pen. But after his death they rioted in safety,
and gave free play to the ingenuity of their malevolence.
Gradually their libels became current; thousands of people
who knew almost nothing of his life and less of his writings
were persuaded that Thomas Paine, “ the Infidel,” was a
monster of iniquity, in comparison with whom Judas appeared
a saint, and the Devil himself nearly white ; and this estimate
finally became a tradition, which the editors of illustrated
religious papers and the writers of fraudulent “ Death-Bed
Scenes ” did their best to perpetuate. In such hands the
labor of posthumous vilification might have remained with
out greatly troubling those who feel an interest in Thomas
Paine’s honor through gratitude for his work. The lowest
scavengers of literature, who purvey religious offal to the
dregs of orthodoxy, were better employed thus than in a
reverse way, since their praise is so very much more dis
honorable and appalling than their blame. But when other
literary workmen of loftier repute descend to the level of
these, and help them in their villainous task, it becomes
advisable that some one who honors the memory of the man
thus aspersed should interpose, and attempt that vindication
which he can no longer make for himself.
In reviewing Mr. Edward Smith’s “Life of Cobbett,” our
principal literary paper, the Athenceum, in its number for
January 11th, went out of its way to defame Paine’s
character. This is what it said:—
“A more despicable man than Tom Paine cannot easily be
found among the ready writers of the eighteenth century. He sold
himself to the highest bidder, and he could be bought at a ve ry
low price. He wrote well; sometimes he wrote as pointedly as
Junius or Cobbett. Neither excelled him in coining telling and
mischievous phrases ; neither surpassed him in popularity-hunting.
�12
A DEFENCE OF THOMAS PAINE.
He had the art, which was almost equal to genius, of giving
happy titles to his productions. When he denounced the
British Government in the name of ‘ Common Sense ’ he found
willing readers in the rebellious American colonists, and a rich
reward from their grateful representatives. When he ’wrote on
behalf of the ‘Rights of Man,’ and in furtherance of the ‘Age of
Reason,’ he convinced thousands by his title-pages who were
incapable of perceiving the inconclusiveness of his arguments.
His speculations have long since gone the way of all shams; and
his charlatanism as a writer was not redeemed by his character as
a man. Nothing could be worse than his private life ; he was
addicted to the most degrading of vices. He was no hypocrite,
however, and he cannot be charged with showing that regard for
appearances which constitutes the homage paid by vice to virtue.
Such a man was well qualified for earning notoriety by insulting
Washington. Only a thorough-paced rascal could have had the
assurance to charge Washington with being unprincipled and
unpatriotic. Certainly Mr. Smith has either much to learn, or
else he has forgotten much, otherwise he could not venture to
suggest the erection of a monument ‘ recording the wisdom and
political virtues of Thomas Paine.’ ”
Now we have in this tirade all the old charges, with a new
one which the critic has either furnished himself or derived
from an obscure source—namely, that Paine “ sold himself
to the highest bidder.” Let us examine the last charge first.
The critic curiously contradicts himself. Paine, he admits,
could “ sometimes write as pointedly as Junius or Cobbett,”
whose works sold enormously, and he had the art of
devising happy titles for his productions ; yet, although he
sold himself to the highest bidder, he could be bought at a
very low price ! The fact is, Paine was never bought at all.
His was not a hireling pen. Whatever he wrote he put his
name to, and he never parted with the copyright of any of
his works, lest the Government or some friend of despotism
should procure their suppression. He also published his
writings at a ridiculously low price, so low indeed that he
lost by them instead of gaining. Of his “ Common Sense,”
that fine pamphlet which stirred the American colonists to
battle against their oppressors, not less than a hundred
thousand copies were sold; yet he found himself finally
indebted to his printer £29 12s. Id. Fifteen years later the
English Government tried through the publisher to get the
copyright of the “ Rights of Man
but though a large
sum was offered, Paine refused on principle to let it pass
�A DEFENCE OF THOMAS PAINE.
13
out of his own hands. The first part of this work was pub
lished at a price which precluded any chance of profit ; the
publication of the second part caused him to be tried and
condemned for treason, the penalty of the law being escaped
onlv bv flight. All publication of his works, whether
political or religious, was afterwards illegal. Thousands of
copies were circulated surreptitiously, or openly by men like
Richard Carlile, who spent nine years in prison for his sale
of prohibited books. But clearly Paine could derive no
profit from this traffic in his works, for he never set foot in
England again. Thomas Paine wrote in order to spread his
political and religious views, and for no other purpose. He
was not a professional author, flor a professional critic, and
never needed payment for his literary work. And assuredly
he got none. Let the Athenceum critic inform the world to
whom Paine sold himself, or who ever paid him a penny for
his writings. Until he does so we shall believe that the
author of •• Common Sense,” the u Rights of Man,” a nd the
*
• Age of Reason,” was honest in saying: " In a great affair,
where the good of mankind is at stake, I love to work for
nothing ; and so fullv am I under the influence of this
principle, that I should lose the spirit, the pride, and the
pleasure of it. were I conscious that I looked for reward.”
Popularity-hunting, to use the critic's graceless phrase,
was Paine’s next fault; but as, according to the same
authority, he was guilty in this respect only in the same sense
as Junius was, the burden of his iniquity cannot be very
great.
Addiction to the most degrading of vices, is a charge
difficult to confute until we know specifically what vice is
meant. Paine has been accused of drunkenness; but by
whom ? Not by his intimate acquaintances, who would have
detected his guilt, but by his enemies ivho were never in his
society, and therefore could know nothing of his habits.
Cheetham, who first disseminated this accusation, was a
notorious libeller, and was more than once compelled to
make a public apology for his lies ; but he was a shameless
creature, and actually in his “ Life ” of Paine resuscitated
and amplified falsehoods for which he had tendered abject
apologies while his victim was alive. Even, however, if
Paine had yielded to the seductions of strong drink, he should
be judged by the custom of his own age, and not that of ours.
�14
A DEFENCE OF THOMAS PAINE.
Mr. Leslie Stephen does not rail against Boswell for liis
drinking powers ; Burns is not outlawed for his devotion to
John Barlycorn ; Byron and Sheridan are not beyond pardon
because they often went drunk to bed ; and some of the
greatest statesmen of last century and this, including Pitt
and Fox, are not considered the basest of men because they
exercised that right which Major O’Gorman claims for all
Irishmen—“ to drink as much as they can carry.” But no
such plea is necessary, for Paine was not addicted to drink, but
remarkably abstemious. Mr. Fellows, with whom he lived for
more than six months, said that he never saw him the worse
for drink. Dr. Manley said, “ while I attended him he never
was inebriated.” Colonel Burr said, “ he was decidedly
temperate.” And even Mr. Jarvis, whom Cheetham cited as
his authority for charging Paine with drunkenness, authorised
Mr. Vale, of New York, editor of the Beacon, to say that
Cheatham lied. Amongst the public men who knew Paine
personally were Burke, Horne Tooke, Priestley, Lord
Edward Fitzgerald, Dr. Moore, Jefferson, Washington,
Volney and Condorcet: but none of these ever hinted at his
love of drink. The charge of drunkeness is a posthumous
libel, circulated by a man who had publicly quarrelled with
Paine, who had been obliged to apologise for former
aspersions, and who after Paine’s death was prosecuted and
condemned for libelling a lady whom he had accused of undue
familiarity with the principal object of his malice.
Finding the charge of drunkenness unequivocally rebutted.
Paine's traducers advance that of licentiousness. But this is
equally unsuccessful. The authority relied on is still
Cheetham, who in turn borrowed from a no less disreput
able source. A man named Carver had quarrelled with
Paine over money matters; in fact, he had been obliged
with a loan which he forgot to pay, and like all base natures
he showed his gratitude to his benefactor, when no more
favors could be expected, by hating and maligning him. A
scurrilous letter written by this fellow fell into the hands of
Cheetham, who elaborated it in his “Life.” It broadly hinted
that Madame Bonneville, the by no means youthful wife of a
Paris bookseller who had sheltered Paine when he was
threatened with danger in that city, was his paramour; for
no other reason than that he had in turn sheltered her when
she repaired with her children to America, after her home
�A DEFENCE OF THOMAS PAINE.
15'
had been broken up by Buonaparte’s persecution of heihusband. This lady prosecuted Cheetham for libel, and a
jury of American citizens gave her a verdict and damages.
Here the matter might rest, but we are inclined to urge
another consideration. No one of his many enemies ever
accused Paine of licentiousness in his virile manhood; and can
we beli ve that he began a career of licentiousness in his old
age, when, besides the infirmities natural to his time of life, he
suffered dreadfid tortures from an internal abcess brought
on by his confinement in the reeking dungeons of the Luxem
bourg, which made life a terror and death a boon ? Only
lunatics or worse would credit such a preposterous story.
The Athenceum critic alleges that Paine insulted Washing
ton, and was therefore a “ thorough-paced rascal.” But he
did nothing of the kind. He very properly remonstrated
with Washington for coolly allowing him to rot in a French
dungeon for no crime except that he was a foreigner, when
a word from the President of the United States, of which he
was a citizen, would have effected his release. Washington
was aware of Paine’s miserable plight, yet he forgot the
obligations of friendship ; and notwithstanding frequent
letters from Munro, the American ambassador at Paris,
he supinely suffered the man he had once delighted to honor
to languish in wretchedness, filth, and disease. George
Washington did much for American Independence, but
Thomas Paine did perhaps more, for his writings animated
the oppressed Colonists with an enthusiasm for liberty
without which the respectable generalship of Washington
might have been exerted in vain. The first President of theUnited States was, as Carlyle grimly says, “no immeasur
able man,” and we conceive that Paine had earned the
right to criticise even him and his policy.
Every person is of course free to hold what opinion hepleases of Paine’s writings. The Atlienceum critic thinks
they have “ gone the way of all shams.” He is wrong in
fact, for they circulate very extensively still. And he may
also be wrong in his literary judgment. William Hazlitt,
wdiose opinion on any subject connected with literature is at
least as valuable as an Athenceum critic’s, ranked Paine very
high as a political writer, and affirmed of his “ Rights of
Man” that it was “ a powerful and explicit reply to Burke.”
But Hazlitt had read Paine, which we suspect many glib
�16
A DEFENCE OF THOMAS PAINE.
critics of to-day have not; for we well remember how
puzzled some of them were to explain whence Shelley took
the motto “We pity the Plumage, but Forget the Dying
Bird” prefixed to his Address to the People on the death of
the Princess Charlotte. It was taken, as they should
have known, from one of the finest passages of the “ Rights
of Man.” Critics, it is well known, sometimes write as
Artemus Ward proposed to lecture on science, “ with an
imagination untrammeled by the least knowledge of the
subject.”
Let us close this vindication of Paine by citing the esti
mate of him formed by Walt Whitman, an authority not to
be sneered at now even by Athenaeum critics. In 1877 the
Liberal League of Philadelphia celebrated the 140th birthday
of Thomas Paine, and a large audience was gathered by the
announcement that Whitman would speak. The great
poet, according to the Index report, after telling how he had
become intimate with some of Paine’s friends thirty-five
years before, went on to say :—
“ I dare not say how much of what our Union is owning and
enjoying to-day, its independence, its ardent belief in, and sub
stantial practice of, Radical human rights, and the severance of
its Government from all ecclesiastical and superstitious dominion
—I dare not say how much of all this is owing to Thomas Paine ;
but I am inclined to think a good portion of it decidedly is. Of
the foul and foolish fictions yet told about the circumstances of
his decease, the absolute fact is that, as he lived a good life after
its kind, he died calmly, philosophically, as became him. He
served the embryo Union with the most precious service, a ser
vice that every man, woman, and child in the thirty-eight States
is to some extent receiving the benefit of to-day, and I for one
here cheerfully and reverently throw one pebble on the cairn of
his memory.”
We are content to let the reader decide between Whitman
and the Athenaeum critic in their respective estimates of him
who wrote, and as we think acted up to it—“ All the world
is my country, and to do good my religion.”
�FREETHOUGHT IN CURRENT LITERATURE.
31
Almost all the young school of poets are Freethinkers.
Browning, our greatest, and Tennyson, our most popular,
belong to a generation that is past. Mr. Swinburne is at
the head of the new school, and he is a notorious heretic.
He never sings more loftily, or with stronger passion, or
with finer thought, than when he arraigns and denounces
priestcraft and its superstitions before the bar of humanity
and truth.
The reception of Mr. Thomson’s poems and essays affords
another sign of the progress of Freethought. This gentle
man for many years contributed to secular journals under
the initials of “B. V.” He is a pronounced Atheist, and
makes no concealment of it in his poems. Yet, while a few
critics have expressed horror at his heresy, the majority
have treated it as extremely natural in an educated thought
ful man, and confined themselves to the task of estimating
the genius he has put into his work.
I must now draw to a close. Freethought, I hold, is an
omnipresent active force in the English literature of to-day.
It appears alike in the greatest works of scholarship, in the
writings of men of science, in the songs of poets, in the
productions of novelists, in the most respectable magazines,
and in the multitudinous daily press. It is urgent and aggres
sive, and tolerates no restraint. It indicates the progress
we have made towards that time when the mind of man
shall play freely on every subject, when no question shall be
thought too sacred to be investigated, when reason shall be
the sovereign arbiter of all disputes, when priestly authority
shall havq perished, when every man’s thought shall decide
his own belief, and his conscience determine the way in
which he shall walk.
�DEAN
STANLEY’S
LATEST.
(August, 1880.)
At one of Charles Lamb’s delightful Wednesday evenings
Coleridge had, as usual, consumed more than his fair share
of time in talking of some “ regenerated” orthodoxy. Leigh
Hunt, who was one of the listeners, manifested his surprise
at the prodigality and intensity of the poet’s religious ex
pressions, and especially at his always speaking of Jesus as
'• our Savior.” Whereupon Lamb, slightly exhilarated by
a glass of gooseberry cordial, stammered out, “ Ne—ne—
never mind what Coleridge says ; he’s full of fun.” This
jocular and irreverent criticism is perhaps, after all, the
most pertinent that can be passed on the utterances of this
school of “ regenerated orthodoxy.” Coleridge, who had un
bounded genius, and was intellectually capable of transform
ing British philosophy, went on year after year maundering
about his “ sumject” and “ omject,” mysteriously alluding
to his great projected work on the Logos, and assuring
everybody that he knew a way of bringing all ascertained
truth within the dogmas of the Church of England. His
pupil, Maurice, wasted a noble intellect (as Mill says, few of
his contemporaries had so much intellect to waste) in the
endeavor to demonstrate that the Thirty-Nine Articles really
anticipated all the extremest conclusions of modern thought;
afflicting himself perpetually, as has been well said, with
those “ forty stripes save one.” And now we have Dean
Stanley, certainly a much smaller man than Maurice, and
infinitely smaller than Coleridge, continuing the traditions
of the school, of which let us hope he will be the last
teacher. What his theology precisely is no mortal can
determine. He subscribes the doctrines of the Church of
England, but then he interprets them in an esoteric sense;
that is, of course, in a Stanleyan sense ; for when the letter
of doctrine is left for its occult meaning every man “ runs”
a private interpretation of his own. The Nineteenth
Century for August contains a characteristic specimen of
his exegesis. It is entitled “ The Creed of the Early
Christians,” but is really a sermon on the Trinity, which
doubtless has been preached at Westminster. We shall
�dean Stanley’s latest.
qq
examine its peculiarities and try to reach, its meaning ; a
task by no means easy, and one which we could pardon
anyone for putting aside with Lamb’s remark, “ It’s only
his fun.”
Dean Stanley has a new theory of the Trinity, partly de
duced from other mystics, and partly constructed on the
plan of the negro who explained that his wooden doll was
made “ all by myself, out of my own head.” God the
Father, in this as in other theories, comes first: not that
he is older or greater than the other persons, for they are all
three coequal and coeternal; but because you must have a
first for the sake of enumeration, or else the most blessed
Trinity would be like the Irishman’s little pig who ran about
so that there was no counting him. There is also another
reason. God the Father corresponds to Natural Religion,
which of course has priority in the religious development of
mankind ; coming before Revealed Religion, to which God
the Son corresponds, and still more before Spiritual Religion
to which corresponds the Holy Ghost.
“ We look round the physical world; we see indications of
order, design, and good will towards the living creatures which
animate it. Often, it is true, we cannot trace any such design ; but,
whenever we can, the impression upon us is the sense of a Single,
Wise, Beneficent Mind, the same now that it was ages before the
appearance of man—the same in other parts of the Universe as
it is in our own. And in our own hearts and consciences we
feel an instinct corresponding to this—a voice, a faculty, that
seems to refer us to a higher power than ourselves, and to point
to some Invisible Sovereign Will, like to that which we see im
pressed on the natural world. And further, the more we think
of the Supreme, the more we try to imagine what his feelings
are towards us, the more our idea of him becomes fixed as in
the one simple, all-embracing word that he is Our Father."
The words we have italicised say that design cannot
always be traced in nature. We should like to know where
it can ever be. Evolution shows that the design argument
puts the cart before the horse. Natural Selection, as Dr.
Schmidt appositely remarks, accounts for adaptation as a
result, without requiring the supposition of design as a
cause. And if you cannot deduce God from the animate
world, you are not likely to deduce him from the inanimate.
Dean Stanley himself quotes some remarkable words from
Dr. Newman’s Apologia—“ The being of a god is as certain
c
�34
DEAN" STANLEY S LATEST.
to me as the certainty of my own existence. Yet when I
look ont of myself into the world of men, I see a sight
which fills me with unspeakable distress. The world of men
seems simply to give the lie to that great truth of which my
whole being is so full. If I looked into a mirror and did
not see my face, I should experience the same sort of diffi
culty that actually comes upon me when I look into this
living busy world and see no reflection of its Creator.” How,
asks the Dean, is this difficulty to be met p Oh, he replies,
we must turn to God the Son in the person of Jesus Christ,
and his utterances will supplement and correct the uncertain
sounds of nature; and then there is the Holy Ghost to
finally supply all omissions, and clear up all difficulties.
Now to our mind this is simply intellectual thimble-rigging.
Or rather does it not suggest the three-card trick ? One
card is useless, two cards are unsafe, but with three cards to
shuffle you are almost sure to win. Dr. Newman gets his
God through intuition; he maintains that the existence of
God is a primary fact of consciousness, and entirely declines
the impossible task of proving it from the phenomena of
nature. Dean Stanley should do the same. It is not
honest to employ an argument and then shirk all the diffi
culties it raises by resorting to the theological three-card
trick, which confounds instead of satisfying the spectator,
while emptying his mental pockets of the good cash of com
mon sense.
The Dean’s treatment of God the Son is amusing. He
writes of Jesus Christ as though he were a principle instead
of a person. “The Mahometan,” he says, “ rightly objects
to the introduction of the paternal and filial relations into
the idea of God, when they are interpreted in the gross and
literal sense. But in the moral spiritual sense it is true that
the kindness, tenderness and wisdom we find in Jesus Christ
is the reflection of the same kindness, tenderness and wisdom
which we recognise in the governance of the universe.”
This may be called mysticism, but we think it moonshine.
Gross and literal sense, forsooth ! Why, was not Jesus Christ
a man, a most literal fact, “ gross as a mountain, open,
palpable ?” Dean Stanley approves the Mahometan’s objec
tion, and yet he knows full well that it contravenes a funda
mental dogma of the Christian Church, and is accounted a
most damnable heresy. Why this paltering with us in a
�35
DEAN STANLEY S LATEST.
double sense ? To our mind downright blatant orthodoxy,
which is at least honest if not subtle, is preferable to this
hybrid theology which attempts to reconcile contradictions
in order to show respect to truth while sticking to the fleshpots of error, and evades all difficulties by a patent and
patently dishonest method of “interpretation.”
Quoting Goethe’s “ Wilhelm Meister, ” Dean Stanley tells
us that one great benefit traceable to God the Son is the re
cognition of “humility and poverty, mockery and despising,
wretchedness and suffering, as divine.” Well, if these things
are divine, the sooner we all become devilish the better.
Nobody thinks them divine when they happen to himself;
on the contrary, he cries out lustily against them. But it is
a different matter when they happen to others. Then the
good Christian considers them divine. How easily, says a
French wit, we bear other people’s troubles ! Undistracted
by personal care, pious souls contemplate with serene resigna
tion the suffering of their neighbors, and acknowledge in
them the chastening hand of a Divine Father.
God the Holy Ghost represents Spiritual religion: the
Father represents God in Nature, the Son represents God
in History, and “ the Holy Ghost represents to us God in
our own hearts and spirits and consciences.” Here be
truths ! An illustration is given. Theodore Parker, wheD
a boy, took up a stone to throw at a tortoise in a pond, but
felt himself restrained by something within him; and that
something, as his mother told him, was the voice of God, or
in other words the Holy Ghost. Now if the Holy Ghost
is required to account for every kind impulse of boys and
men, there is required also an Unholy Ghost to account for
all our unkind impulses. That is, a place in theology must
be found for the Devil. The equilateral triangle of theology
must be turned into a square, with Old Nick for the fourth
side. But Dean Stanley does not like the Devil; he deems
him not quite respectable enough for polite society. Let
him, then, give up the Holy Ghost too, for the one is the
correlative of the other.
“ It may be,” says the Dean, after interpreting the Trinity,
“that the Biblical words in some respects fall short of this
high signification.” What, God’s own language inferior to
that of the Dean of Westminster ? Surely this is strange
arrogance, unless after all “ it’s only his fun.” Perhaps
c 2
�36
bean
Stanley’s latest.
that is how we should take it. Referring to some sacred
pictures in the old churches of the East on Mount Athos,
intended to represent the doctrine of the Trinity, the Dean
says that standing on one side the spectator sees only Christ
on the Cross, standing on the other he sees only the Holy
Dove, while standing in front he sees only the Eternal
Father. Very admirable, no doubt. But there is a more
admirable picture described by Mr. Herbert Spencer in his
“ Study of Sociology,” which graphically represents the
doctrine of the Trinity in the guise of three persons trying
to stand in one pair of boots !
Goethe is cited as a Christian, a believer in the Trinity.
Doubtless the Dean forgets his bitter epigram to the effect
that he found four things too hard to put up with, and as
hateful as poison and serpents; namely, tobacco, garlic,
bugs, and the Cross. Heine also is pressed into service,
and an excellent prose translation of one of his poems is
given, wherein he celebrates the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of
God. But Dean Stanley has read his Heine to little purpose
if he imagines that this radiant and splendid soldier of pro
gress meant by the Spirit of God the third person of the
Christian Trinity. Heine was no Christian, and the very
opposite of a theologian. We might translate passages of
scathing irony on the ascetic creed of the Cross from the
De L’Allemagne, but space does not admit. A few of
Heine’s last words must do instead. To Adolph Stahr he
said : “ For the man in good health Christianity is an un
serviceable religion, with its resignation and one-sided pre
cepts. For the sick man, however, I assure you it is a very
good religion.” To Alfred Meissner: “ When health is
used up, money used up, and sound human sense used up,
Christianity begins.” Once, while lying on his mattress
grave, he said with a sigh : “ If I could even get out on
crutches, do you know whither I would go ? Straight to
church.” And when his hearer looked incredulous, he
added : “ Most decidedly to church. Where else should one
go with crutches ?” Such exquisite and mordant irony is
strange indeed in a defender of the holy and blessed
Trinity.
Dean Stanley’s peroration runs thus :—“ Wherever we
are taught to know and understand the real nature of the
world in which our lot is cast, there is a testimony, however
�dean
Stanley’s
latest.
37
humble, to the name of the Father ; wherever we are taught
to know and admire the highest and best of human excel
lence, there is a testimony to the name of the Son:
wherever there is implanted in us a presence of freedom,
purity and love, there is a testimony to the name of the
Holy Ghost.” Very fine, no doubt; also very soporific.
One is inclined to mutter a sleepy Amen. If this passage
means anything at all it implies that all who know truth,
admire excellence, and have any share in freedom and
virtue, are testators to the names of Father, Son and
Holy Ghost; so that many Atheists are Trinitarians with
out knowing it. “ In Christianity,” says the Dean, “ no
thing is of real concern except that which makes us wiser
and better.” That is precisely what the sceptic says, yet
for that coroners reject his service on juries, and rowdy
Christians try to keep him out of Parliament when he has
•a legal right to enter. But the Dean adds : “ Everything
which does make us wiser and better is the very thing which
Christianity intends.” That is, Christianity means just
what you like to find in it. How can a man of Dean
Stanley’s eminence and ability write such dishonest trash ?
Must we charitably, though with a touch of sarcasm, repeat
Lamb’s words of Coleridge—“ Never mind; it’s only his
fun ?”
�GOD AND THE QUEEN.
(March, 1882.)
The Queen is now safely lodged at Mentone. Althoughthe political outlook is not very bright, there is pretty sure
to be a good solid majority to vote a dowry for Prince
Leopold’s bride ; and so long as royalty is safe it does not
ranch matter what becomes of the people. That dreadful
Bradlaugh is gagged; he cannot open his mouth in the
House of Commons against perpetual pensions or royal
grants. The interests of monarchy are in no immediate
peril, and so the Queen is off to Mentone.
Now she is gone, and the loyal hubbub has subsided, it
is just the time to consider her late “ providential escape ”
from the bullet which was never fired at her.
What is the meaning of providential ? God does all or
nothing. There is a special providence in the fall of a
sparrow, as well as in the fall of empires. In that case
everything is providential. But this is not the ordinary view.
When a railway accident occurs those who do not come to
grief ascribe their preservation to Providence. Who then
is responsible for the fate of those who perish ? Centuries
ago Christians would have answered, “ the Devil.” Now
they give no answer at all, but treat the question as frivo
lous or profane.
. Thomas Cooper, in his Autobiography, says that the per
fecting touch was given to his conversion by an interposition
of God. During a collision, the carriage in which he sat
was lifted clean on to another line of rails, and thus escaped
the fate of the other carriages, which were broken to
pieces. Pious Thomas recognised at once the finger of God,
and he there and then fell on his knees and offered up a
thanksgiving. He was too vain to carry his argument out
to its logical end. Why did the Lord protect him, and not
his fellow-travellers ? Was he of more importance than
any of the others ? And why, if it was right to thank God
for saving Thomas Cooper, would it be wrong to curse him
for smashing all the rest ?
This superstition of Providence is dying out. Common
�GOD AND THE QUEEN.
39
people are gradually being left to the laws of Nature. If a
workhouse were to catch on fire, no one would speak of
those who escaped the flames as providentially saved. God
does not look after the welfare of paupers; nor is it likely
that he would pluck a charwoman’s brat out of the fire if
it tumbled in during her absence. Such interpositions are
■ absurd. But with kings, queens, princes, princesses, and big
nobs in general, the case is different. God looks after the
quality. He stretches forth his hand to save them from
danger, from the pestilence that walketh by day and the
terror that walketh by night. And his worshippers take
just the same view of the “ swells.” When the Queen came
to London, a few weeks ago, one of her mounted attend
ants was thrown and badly hurt; and the next day one of
the loyal Tory papers reported that her Majesty had com
pletely recovered from the accident to her outrider !
But if the Lord overlooks the great ones of the earth, why
is he not impartial ? He did not turn aside Guiteau’s
bullet, nor did he answer the prayers of a whole nation on
its knees. President Garfield was allowed to die after a
long agony. Poor Mrs. Garfield believed up to the very
last minute that God would interpose and save her husband.
But he never did. Why was he so indifferent in this case ?
Was it because Garfield was a President instead of a King,
the elected leader of free men instead of the hereditary
ruler of political slaves ? Informer Newdegate would say
so. In his opinion God Almighty hates Republicans. Yet
the Bible clearly shows that the Lord is opposed to monarchy.
He gave his chosen people a king as a punishment, after •
plainly telling them what an evil they had sought; and
there is perhaps a covert irony in the story of Saul, the son
*' of Kish, who went to seek his father’s asses and found in
stead a nation of subjects—two-legged asses, who begged
him to mount them and ride.
Take another case. ' Why did God permit the Nihilists
to assassinate the late Czar of Russia ? All their previous
plots had failed. Why was the last plot allowed to succeed ?
There is only one answer. God had nothing to do with
any of them, and the last succeeded because it was better
devised and more carefully executed. If God protected
the Czar against their former attempts, they were too
many for him in the end; that is, they defeated Omni
�40
GOD AND THE QUEEN.
potence—an absurdity too flagrant for any sane naan to
believe.
Why should God care for princes more than for peasants,
for queens more than for washerwomen ? There is no
difference in their compositions ; they are all made of the
same flesh and blood. The very book these loyal gushers
call the Word of God declares that he is no respecter of
persons. What are the distinctions of rank and wealth ?
Mere nothings. Look down from an altitude of a thousand
feet, and an emperor and his subjects shall appear equally
small; and what are even a thousand feet in the infinite
universe? Nay, strip them of all their fictions of dress;
reduce them to the same condition of featherless bipeds;
and you shall find the forms of strength or beauty, and the
power of brain, impartially distributed by Nature, who is
the truest democrat, who raises her Shakespeares from the
lowest strata of society, and laughs to scorn the pride of
palaces and thrones.
Providence is an absurdity, a superstitious relic of the
ignorant past. Sensible men disbelieve it, and scientists
laugh it to scorn. Our very moral sense revolts against it.
Why should God help a few of his children and neglect all
the others ? Explosions happen in mines, and scores of honest
industrious men, doing the rough work of the world and
winning bread for wife and child, are blown to atoms or
hurled into shapeless death. God does not help them, and
tears moisten the dry bread of half-starved widows and
orphans. Sailors on the mighty deep go down with uplifted
hands, or slowly gaze their life away on the merciless
heavens. The mother bends over her dying child, the first
flower of her wedded love, the sweetest hope of her life.
She is rigid with despair, and in her hot tearless eyes there
dwells a dumb misery that would touch a heart of stone.
But God does not help, the death-curtain falls, and dark
ness reigns where all was light.
Who has the audacity to say that the God who will not
aid a mother in the death-chamber shelters the Queen upon
her throne ? It is an insult to reason and a ghastly mockery
of justice. The impartiality of Nature is better than the
mercy of such a God.
�CARDINAL NEWMAN ON INFIDELITY.
(ApriZ, 1882.)
Cardinal Newman is perhaps the only Catholic in England
worth listening to. He has immured his intellect in the
catacombs of the Romish Church, but he has not been able
to quench it, and even there it radiates a splendor through
the gloom. His saintly character is as indubitable as the
subtlety of his mind, and no vicissitude has impaired the
charm of his style, which is pure and perfect as an exquisite
and flawless diamond; serene and chaste in its usual mood,
but scintillating gloriously in the light of his imagina
tion.
On Sunday last Cardinal Newman preached a sermon at
the Oratory in Birmingham on “ Modern Infidelity.” Un
fortunately we have not a full report, from which we might
be able to extract some notable passages, but only a news
paper summary. Even this, however, shows some points of
interest.
Cardinal Newman told his hearers that “ a great storm of
infidelity and irreligion was at hand,” and that “ some
dreadful spiritual catastrophe was coming upon them.” We
quite agree with the great preacher ; but every storm is not
an evil, and every catastrophe is not a disaster. The revo
lutionary storm in France cleared the air of much pestilence.
It dissipated as by enchantment the h rrible cloud of
tyranny, persecution and want, which had for centuries
hovered over the land. And certainly, to go back a stage
farther in history, the Reformation was not a misfortune,
although it looked like a “spiritual catastrophe” to a great
many amiable people. The truth is, Revolutions must occur
in this world, both in thought and in action. They may
happen slowly, so that we may accommodate ourselves to
them; or rapidly, and so disturb and injure whole genera’
tions. But come they must, and no power can hinder them ;
not even that once mighty Church which has always striven
to bind Humanity to the past with adamantine chains of
dogma. In Cardinal Newman’s own words, from perhaps
his greatest and most characteristic book,—“ here below
�42
CARDINAL NEWMAN ON INFIDELITY.
to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed
often.”
We cannot say that Cardinal Newman indicates how
humanity will suffer from the “ coming storm of infidelity
and irreligion.” He does, indeed, refer to the awful state
of a people forsaken by God, but in our humble opinion
this is somewhat ludicrous. We can hardly understand
how God can forsake his own creatures. Why all this
pother if he really exists ? In that case our scepticism eannot affect him, any more than a man’s blindness obscures the
sun. And surely, if Omnipotence desired us all to believe
the truth, the means are ready to hand. The God who
said, Let there be light, and there was light, could as easily
say, Let all men be Christians, and they would be Chris
tians. If God had spoken the universe would be convinced ;
and the fact that it is not convinced proves, either that he
does not exist, or that he purposely keeps silent, and desires
that we should mind our own business-.
The only tangible evil Cardinal Newman ventures to
indicate is the “ indignity which at this moment has come
over the Holy Father at R ime.” He declares, as to the
Pope, that “there hardly seems a place in the whole of
Europe where he could put his foot.” The Catholics are
carrying this pretence of a captive Pope a trifle too far.
His Holiness must have a tremendous foot if he cannot put
it fairly down on the floor of the Vatican. He and his
Cardinals really wail over their loss of temporal power. It
would be wiser and nobler to reconcile themselves to the
inevitable, and to end the nefarious diplomacy by which they
are continually striving to recover what is for ever lost.
The whole world is aware of the scandalous misrule and
the flagrant immorality which, under the government of the
Papacy, made the Eternal City a byword and a reproach.
Under the secular government, Rome has made wonderful
progress. It has better streets, cleaner inhabitants, less
fever and filth, and a much smaller army of priests, beggars,
and prostitutes. Catholics may rest assured that the bad
old times will never return. They may, of course, promise
a reformation of manners if the Holy Father’s dominion is
restored, but the world will not believe them. Reforming
the Papacy, as Carlyle grimly said, is like tinkering a rusty
old kettle. If you stop up the holes of it with temporary
�CARDINAL NEWMAN ON INFIDELITY.
43
putty, it may hang together for awhile ; but “ begin to
hammer at it, solder it, to what you call mend and rectify
it,—it will fall to shreds, as sure as rust is rust; go all into
nameless dissolution,—and the fat in the fire will be a thing
worth looking at, poor Pope !”
As a sincere Christian (a very rare thing, by the way, in
these days), Cardinal Newman is bound to lament the spread
of infidelity. He is a keen observer, and his word may be
taken for the fact. A stormy time is undoubtedly coming.
Old creeds and institutions will have to give an account of
themselves, and nothing that cannot stand the test will live.
But truth will not suffer. Criticise the multiplication table
as much as you please, and twice two will still be four. In
the storm and stress of controversy what is true and solid
will survive; only the hollow shams of authority and
superstition will collapse. Humanity has nothing to fear,
however the Churches may groan.
�SUNDAY
TYRANNY.
(May, 1882.)
Last Sunday the myriads of Paris turned out to the Chan
tilly races. The sun shone brilliantly, and all went merry
as a marriage hell. Yet there was no drunkenness or dis
order ; on the contrary, the multitude behaved with such
decorum, that one English correspondent said it would not
have appeared strange if a bishop had stepped forward in
full canonicals to give them his benediction.
Why cannot Englishmen enjoy their Sunday’s leisure
like the French ? Because we are still under the bondage
of Puritanism ; because our religious dress is nothing but
Hebrew Old Clothes ; because we follow Moses instead of
Jesus ; because we believe that man was made for the
Sabbath, instead of the Sabbath for man • because, in short,
there are in England a lot of sour Christians who play the
dog in the manger, and will neither enjoy themselves on
Sunday nor let anyone else. They often prate about liberty,
but they understand it as the Yankee did, who defined it as
the right to do as he pleased and the right to make every
*
body else do so too.
Let us all be unhappy on Sunday, is the burden of "thensong. Now, we have no objection to their teing miserable,
it they desire it, on that or any other day. This is supposed
to be a free country ; you decide to be wretched and you
select your own time for the treat. But you have no right
to interfere with your neighbors. This, however, is what
the Christians, with their customary “ cheek,” will insist on
doing. They like going to the church and the public-house
on Sunday, and those establishments are permitted to open ;
they have no wish to go elsewhere, and so they keep all
other establishments closed. This is mere impudence.
Let them go where they choose, and allow the same freedom
to other people. Those who advocate a free Sunday ask for
no favor ; they demand justice. They do not propose to
compel any Christian to enter a museum, a library, or an
art gallery ; they simply claim the right to go in themselves.
�SUNDAY TYBANNY.
45-
The denial of that right is a violation of liberty, which every
free man is bound to resent.
This country is said to be civilised. To a certain extent
it is, but all our civilisation has been won against Chris
tianity and its hrutal laws. Our toiling masses, in factory,
mine, shop, and counting-house, have one day of leisure in
the week. Rightly considered it is of infinite value. It is
a splendid breathing-time. We cast off the storm and stress
of life, fling aside the fierce passion of gain, and let the
spirit of humanity throb in our pulses and stream from our
eyes. Our fellow man is no longer a rival, but a brother.
His gain is not our loss. We enrich each other by the
noble give-and-take of fellowship, and feel what it really
is to live. Yet our Christian legislature tries its utmost to
spoil the boon. It cannot prevent us from visiting each
other, or walking as far as our legs will carry us ; but
almost everything else is tabooed. Go to church, it says.
Millions answer, We are sick of going ; we have heard the
same old story until it is unspeakably stale, and many of
the sermons have been so frequently repeated that we
suspect they were bought by the dozen. Then it says, Go
to the public-house. But a huge multitude answer, We
don’t want to go there either, except for a minute to quench
our thirst; we have no wish for spirituous any more than
spiritual intoxication ; we desire some other alternative than
gospel or gin. Then our Christian legislature answers, You
are discontented fools. It crushes down their better aspi
rations, and condemns them to a wearisome inactivity.
Go through London, the metropolis of the world, as we
call it, on a Sunday. How utterly dreary it is ! The
shutters are all up before the gay shop-windows. You
pace mile after mile of streets, with sombre houses on either
hand as though tenanted by the dead. You stand in front
of the British Museum, and it looks as if it had been closed
since the date of the mummies inside. You yearn to walk
through its galleries, to gaze on the relics of antiquity, to
inspect the memorials of the dead, to feel the subtle links
that bind together the past and the present and make one
great family of countless generations of men. But you must
wander away disappointed and dejected. You repair to the
Kational Gallery. You long to behold the masterpieces of
art, to have your imagination quickened and thrilled by the
�46
SUNDAY TYRANNY.
glories of form and color, to look once more on Romo
favorite picture which touches your nature to its fineRt
issues. But again you are foiled. You desire to visit a
library, full of books you cannot buy, and there commune
with the great minds who have left their thoughts to
posterity. But you are frustrated again. You are cheated
out of your natural right, and treated less like a man than
a dog.
This Christian legislature has much to answer for.
Drunkenness is our great national vice. And how is it to
be overcome ? Preaching will not do it. Give Englishmen
a chance, furnish them with counter attractions, and they
will abjure intoxication like their continental neighbors.
Elevate their tastes, and they will feel superior to the vulgar
temptation of drink. Every other method has been tried
and has failed; this is the only method that promises success.
Fortunately the Sunday question is growing. Christian
tyranny is evidently doomed. Mr. Howard’s motion for
the opening of public museums and art galleries, although
defeated, received the support of eighty-five members of Par
liament. That minority will increase again next year, and
in time it will become a majority. Mr. Broadhurst, for
some peculiar reason, voted against it, but we imagine he
will some day repent of his action. The working-classes
are fools if they listen to the idle talk about Sunday labor,
with which the Tories and bigots try to bamboozle them.
The opening of public institutions on Sunday would not
necessitate a hundredth part of the labor already employed
in keeping open places of worship, and driving rich people
to and fro. All the nonsense about the thin end of the
wedge is simply dust thrown into their eyes. The very
people who vote against Sunday freedom under a pretence
of opposing Sunday labor, keep their own servants at work
and visit the “ Zoo” in the afternoon, where they doubtless
chuckle over the credulity of the lower orders. Christian
tyranny unites with Tory oppression to debase and enslave
the people. It is time that both were imperiously stopped.
The upper classes wish to keep us ignorant, and parsons
naturally want everybody else’s shutters up when they open
shop. We ought to see through the swindle. Let us check
their impudence, laugh at their hypocrisy, and rescue our
Sunday from their hands.
�WHO ARE THE BLASPHEMERS?
(June, 1882.)
Atheists are often charged with blasphemy, but it is a
crime they cannot commit. God is to them merely a word,
expressing all sorts of ideas, and not a person. It is,
properly speaking, a general term, which includes all that
there is in common among the various deities of the world.
The idea of the supernatural embodies itself in a thousand
ways. Truth is always simple and the same, but error is
infinitely diverse. Jupiter, Jehovah and Mumbo-Jumbo
are alike creations of human fancy, the products of ignor
ance and wonder. Which is the God is not yet settled.
When the sects have decided this point, the question may
take a fresh turn ; but until then god must be considered
as a generic term, like tree or horse or man; with just this
difference, however, that while the words tree, horse and
man express the general qualities of visible objects, the
word god expresses only the imagined qualities of some
thing that nobody has ever seen.
When the Atheist examines, denounces, or satirises the
gods, he is not dealing with persons but with ideas. He
is incapable of insulting God, for he does not admit the
existence of any such being.
Ideas of god may be good or bad, beautiful or ugly; and
according as he finds them the Atheist treats them. If we
lived in Turkey we should deal with the god of the Koran,
but as we live in England we deal with the god of the
Bible. We speak of that god as a being, just for conveni
ence sake, and not from conviction. At bottom, we admit
nothing but the mass of contradictory notions between
Genesis and Revelation. We attack not a person but a
belief, not a being but an idea, not a fact but a fancy.
Lord Brougham long ago pointed out, in his “ Life of
Voltaire,” that the great French heretic was not guilty of
blasphemy, as his enemies alleged ; since he bad no belief
in the actual existence of the god he dissected, analysed and
laughed at. Mr. Ruskin very eloquently defends Byron
from the same charge. In “ Cain,” and elsewhere, the
�48
WHO ARE THE BLASPHEMERS ?
great poet does not impeach God ; he merely impeaches the
orthodox creed. We may sum up the whole matter briefly.
No man satirises the god he believes in, and no man
believes in the god he satirises.
We shall not, therefore, be deterred by the cry of “ blas
phemy,” which is exactly what the Jewish priests shouted
against Jesus Christ. If there is a God, he cannot be half
so stupid and malignant as the Bible declares. In de
stroying the counterfeit we do not harm the reality. And
as it is better, in the words of Plutarch, to have no notion
of the gods than to have notions which dishonor them we
are satisfied that the Lord (if he exist) will never burn us
in hell for denying a few lies told in his name.
S' The real blasphemers are those who believe in God and
*
blacken his character ; who credit him with less knowledge
than a child, and less intelligence than an idiot; who make
him quibble, deceive, and lie ; who represent him as in
decent, cruel, and revengeful; who give him the heart of a
savage and the brain of a fool. These are the blasphemers.
When the priest steps between husband and wife, with
the name of God on his lips, he blasphemes. When, in the
name of God, he resists education and science, he blas
phemes. When, in the name of God, he opposes freedom
of thought and liberty of conscience, he blasphemes.
When, in the name of God, he robs, tortures, and kills
those who differ from him, he blasphemes. When, in the
name of God, he opposes the equal rights of all, he blas
phemes. When, in the name of God, he preaches content
to the poor and oppressed, flatters the rich and powerful,
and makes religious tyranny the handmaiden of political
privilege, he blasphemes. And when he takes the Bible in
his hand, and says it was written by the inspiration of
God, he blasphemes almost beyond forgiveness.
Who are the blasphemers ? Not we who preach freedom
and progress for all men ; but those who try to bind the
world with chains of dogma, and to burden it, in God’s
name, with all the foul superstitions of its ignorant past.
�THE BIRTH OF CHRIST.
(December, 1880.)
“ The time draws near, the birth of Christ,” as Tennyson
sings in “ In Memoriam,” and the pious followers of the
Nazarene will celebrate it with wonted orgies of pleasure.
The Incarnation will be pondered to the accompaniment
of roast beef, and the Atonement will play lambently
around the solid richness of plum-pudding. And thus
will be illustrated the biological truth that the stomach
is the basis of everything, including religion.
But while Christians comport themselves thus in pre
sence of the subtlest mysteries of faith, the Sceptic
cannot be without his peculiar reflections.
He, of
course, knows that the festal observance of this season is
far more ancient than Christianity ; but he naturally wonders
how people, who imagine it to be a unique feature of their
sublimely spiritual creed, remain contented with its extremely
sensual character. They profess to believe that the fate of
the whole human race was decided by the advent of the
Man of Sorrows ; yet theyi£ommemorate that event by an
unhealthy consumption of tqa meat which perisheth, and a
wild indulgence in the frivolousqfleasures of that carnal mind
which is at enmity with God. Astonished at such conduct,
the Sceptic muses on the inconsistency of mankind. He may
also once more consider the circumstances of the birth of
Christ and its relation to the history of the modern world.
Jesus, called the Christ, is popularly supposed to have been
of the seed of David, from whi‘Bh it was promised that the
Messiah should come. It is, however, perfectly clear that
he was in no-wise related to the man after G-od’s own heart
His putative father, Joseph, admittedly had no share in
bringing him into the world ; for he disdained the assistance
of a father, although he was unable to dispense with that of
a mother. But Joseph, and not Mary, according to the
genealogies of Matthew and Luke, was the distant blood
relation of David; and therefore Jesus was not of the seed
of the royal house, but a bastard slip grafted on the ancient
family-tree by the Holy Ghost. It is a great pity that
D
�50
THE BIRTH OF CHRIST.
newspaper correspondents did not exist in those days. Had
Joseph been skilfully “interviewed,” it is highly probable
that the world would have been initiated into his domestic
secrets, and enlightened as to the paternity of Mary’s
eldest son. The Holy Ghost is rather too shadowy a
peisonage to be the father of a lusty boy, and no young lady
would be credited in this age if she ascribed to him the
authorship of a child born out of wedlock. Mbst assuredly
no . magistrate would make an order against him for its
. maintenance. Even a father of the Spiritualist persuasion,
who believed in what is grandly called “ the materialisation
of spirit forms,” would probably be more than dubious if his
daughter were to present him with a grandson whose father
lived on the other side of death and resided in a mansion not
made with hands. It is, we repeat, to be for ever regretted
that poor Joseph has not left his version of the affair. The
Immaculate Conception might perhaps have been cleared
up, and theology relieved of a half-obscene mystery, which
has unfortunately perverted not a few minds.
The birth of Jesus was announced to “wise men from the
East ” by the appearance of a singular star. Is not this a
relic of astrology ? Well does Byron sing—
“ Ye stars ! which are the poetry of heaven,
If in your bright beams we would read the fate
Of men and empires, ’tis to be forgiven,
That in our aspirations to be great
Our destinies o’erleap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred with you ; for ye are
A beauty and a mystery, and create
In us such love and reverence from afar
That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a
star.”
But this star was the most wonderful on record. It “ went
before ” the wise men, and “ stood over where the young
child was.” Such an absurdity could be related and credited
only by people who conceived of the sky as a solid vault, not
far distant, wherein all the heavenly bodies were stuck.
The present writer once asked an exceedingly ignorant and
simple man where he thought he would alight if he dropped
from the comet then in the sky. “ Oh,” said he, naming the
open space nearest his own residence, “ somewhere about
Finsbury Circus.” That man’s astronomical notions were
�THE BIRTH OE CHRIST.
51
very imperfect, but they were quite as good as those of the
person who seriously wrote, and of the persons who seriously
believe, this fairy tale of the star which heralded the birth of
Christ.
Luke’s version of the episode differs widely from Matthew’s.
He makes no reference to “ wise men from the East,” but
simply says that certain “ shepherds” of the same country,
who kept watch over their flock by night, were visited by
“ the angel of the Lord,” and told that they would find the
Savior, Christ the Lord, just born at Bethlehem, the City
of David, “ wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a
manger.” Luke does not, as is generally supposed, represent
Mary as confined in a stable because Joseph 'was too poor to
pay for decent accommodation, but because “ there was no
room for them in the inn.” It is perfectly consistent with
all the Gospel references to Joseph’s status to assume that
he carried on a flourishing business, and Jesus himself in
later years might doubtless have earned a good living in the
concern if he had not deliberately preferred to lead the life
of a mendicant preacher. This, however, is by the way.
Cur point is that Luke says nothing about the “ star ” or
the “wise men from the East,” who had an important inter
view with Herod himself; while Matthew says nothing
about the “ manger ” or the shepherds and their angelic
visitors. Surely these discrepancies on points so important,
and as to which there could be little mistake, are enough to
throw discredit on the whole story.
It is further noticeable that Luke is absolutely silent about
Herod’s massacre of the innocents. What can we think of
his reticence on such a subject ? Had the massacre occurred,
it would have been widely known, and the memory of so
horrible a deed would have been vivid for generations.
Matthew, or whoever wrote the Gospel which bears his name,
is open to suspicion. His mind was distorted by an intense
belief in prophecy, a subject which, as old Bishop South
said, either finds a man cracked or leaves him so. After
narrating the story of Herod’s massacre, he adds : “ Then
was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy, the prophet,
saying,” etc. Now, he makes similar reference to prophecy
no less than five times in the first two chapters, and in each
case we find that the “prohetical” utterance referred to
has not the faintest connexion with the incident related.
d 2
�52
THE BIRTH OF CHRIST.
Besides, a man who writes history with one eye on his own
period, and the other on a period centuries anterior is not
likely to be veracious, however earnestly he may intend to.
There is an early tradition, which is as strong as any state
ment about the history of the Primitive Church, that
Matthew’s Gospel was originally written in Hebrew ; and it
has been supposed that the writer gratuitously threw in
these references to Jeremy and others, in order to please the
Jews, who were extremely fond of prophecy. But this supposition is equally fatal to his credibility as an historian.
In any case, the Evangelists differ so widely on matters of
such interest and importance that we are constrained to dis
credit their story. It is evidently, as scholarship reveals, a
fairy tale, which slowly gathered round the memory of
Jesus after his death. Some of its elements were creations
of his disciples’ fancy, but others were borrowed from the
mythology of more ancient creeds.
Yet this fairy tale is accepted by hundreds of millions of
men as veritable history. It is incorporated into the founda
tion of Christianity, and every year at this season its in
cidents are joyously commemorated. How slowly the world
of intelligence moves ! But let us not despair. Science and
scholarship have already done much to sap belief in this
supernatural religion, and we may trust them to do still
more. They will ultimately destroy its authority by refuting
its pretensions, and compel it to take its place among the
general multitude of historic faiths.
If Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, the Deliverer, why
is the world still so full of sin and misery ? The Redeemer
has come, say the Christians. Yes, we reply, but when
will come the redemption ? Apostrophising Jesus in his
lines “ Before a Crucifix,” Mr. Swinburne reminds him that
“ the nineteenth wave of the ages rolls now usward since thy
birth began,” and then inquires :—
“ Hast thou fed full men’s starved-out souls,
Or are there less oppressions done
In this wide world under the sun ?”
Only a negative answer can be given. Christ has in no
wise redeemed the world. He was no god of power, but a
weak fallible man like ourselves ; and his cry of despair on
the cross might now be repeated with tenfold force. The
�THE BIRTH OF CHRIST.
53
older myth, of Prometheus is truer and more inspiring than
the myth of Christ. If there be gods, they have never
yielded man aught of their grace. All his possessions have
been cunningly, patiently, and valorously extorted from the
powers that be, even as Prometheus filched the fire from
heaven. In that realm of mythology, whereto all religions
will eventually be consigned, Jesus will dwindle beneath
Prometheus. One is feminine, and typifies resigned sub
mission to a supernatural will ; the other is masculine, and
typifies that insurgent audacity of heart and head, which has
wrested a kingdom of science from the vast empire of
nescience, and strewed the world with the wrecks of theo
logical power.
�THE REIGN OF CHRIST.
(January
1880.J
Christmas and Easter are fruitful in panegyrics on Jesus
and the religion which fraudulently bears his name. On
these occasions, not only the religious but even the secular
newspapers give the rein to their rhetoric and imagination,
and indulge in much fervid eloquence on the birth or the
crucifixion of the Nazarene. Time-honored platitudes are
brought out from their resting-places and dexterously moved
to a well-known tune; and fallacies which have been
refuted ad nauseam are paraded afresh as though their
logical purity were still beyond suspicion. Papers that differ
on all other occasions and on all other subjects concur then,
and “ when they do agree their unanimity is wonderful.'’
While the more sober and orthodox discourse in tones
befitting their dignity and repute, the more profane riotously
join in the chorus ; and not to be behind the rest, the noto
riously misbelieving Greatest Circulator orders from the
profanest member of its staff “ a rousing article on the
Crucifixion,” or on the birth of Jesus, as the case may be.
All this, however, is of small account, except as an indica
tion of the slavery of our “ independent” journals to Bumble
and his prejudices, before whom they are obliged to masque
rade when he ordains a celebration of his social or religious
rites. But here and there a more serious voice is heard
through the din, with an accent of earnest veracity, and not
that of an actor playing a part. Such a voice may be worth
listening to, and certainly no other can be. Let us heai’ the
Rev. J. Baldwin Brown on “ The Reign of Christ.” He is.
I believe, honorably distinguished among Dissenters; his
sermons often bear marks of originality; and the goodness
of his heart, whatever may be thought of the strength of his.
head, is sufficiently attested by his emphatic revolt against
the doctrine of Eternal Torture in Hell.
Before criticising Mr. Brown’s sermon in detail I cannot
help remarking that it is far too rhetorical and far too
empty of argument. Sentimentality is the bane of religion
in our day; subservience to popularity degrades the pulpit
�THE REIGN OF CHRIST.
55
as it degrades the press. If we desire to find the language
of reason in theology, we must seek it in the writings of
such men as Newman, who contemplate the ignorant and
passionate multitude with mingled pity and disdain. The
“ advanced ” school of theologians, from Dean Stanley to
the humblest reconciler of reason and faith, are sentimen
talists almost to a man ; the reason being, I take it, that
although their emotional tendencies are very admirable, they
lack the intellectual consistency and rigor which impel
others to stand on definite first principles, as a sure basis of
operation and an impregnable citadel against attack. Mr.
Brown belongs to this “ advanced ” school, and has a
liberal share of its failings. He is full of eloquent passages
that lead to nothing, and he excites expectations which are
seldom if ever satisfied. He faces stupendous obstacles
raised by reason against his creed, and just as we look to
see him valiantly surmount them, we find that he veils them
from base to summit with a dense cloud of words, out of
which his voice is heard asking us to believe him on the
other side. Yet of all men professional students of the
Bible should be freest from such a fault, seeing what a
magnificent, masterpiece it is of terse and vigorous simplicity.
Mr. Brown and his “advanced” friends would do well to
ponder that quaint and pregnant aphorism of old Bishop
Andrewes—“ Waste words addle questions'’ When I first
read it I was thrown into convulsions of laughter, and even
now it tickles my risibility ; but despite its irresistible quaint
ness I cannot but regard it as one of the wisest and pithiest
sentences in our literature. Dr. Newman has splendidly
amplified it in a passage of his “University Sermons,”
which I gratuitously present to Mr. Brown and every reader
who can make use of it:—“ Half the controversies in the
world are verbal ones ; and could they be brought to a plain
issue, they would be brought to a prompt termination.
Parties engaged in them would then perceive, either that in
substance they agreed together, or that their difference was
one of first principles. This is the great object to be aimed
at in the present age, though confessedly a very arduous
one. We need not dispute, we need not prove,—we need
but define. At all events, let us, if we can, do this first of
all; and then see who are left for us to dispute with, and
what is left for us to prove.”
�56
THE REIGN OF CHRIST.
Mr. Brown’s sermon on “ The Reign of Christ ” is
preached from a verse of St. Paul’s first Epistle to Timothy,
wherein Jesus is styled “The blessed and only Potentate.”
From this “ inspired ” statement he derives infinite consola
tion. This, he admits, is far from being the best of all
possible worlds, for it is full of strife and cruelty, the wail
of anguish and the clamor of frenzy ; but as Christ is “ the
blessed and only Potentate,” moral order will finally be
evolved from the chaos and good be triumphant over evil.
Now the question arises: Who made the chaos and who is
responsible for the evil ? Not Christ, of course : Mr. Brown
will not allow that. Is it the Devil then ? Oh no! To
say that would be blasphemy against God. He admits,
however, that the notion has largely prevailed, and has even
been formulated into religious creeds, “ that a malignant
spirit, a spirit who loves cursing as God loves blessing, has
a large and independent share in the government of the
world.” But, he adds, “ in Christendom men dare not say
that they believe it, with the throne of the crucified and
risen Christ revealed in the Apocalypse to their gaze.”
Ordinary people will rub their eyes in sheer amazement at
this cool assertion. Is it not plain that Christians in all
ages have believed in the power and subtlety of the Devil
as God’s sleepless antagonist ? Have they not held, and do
they not still hold, that he caused the Fall of Adam and
Eve, and thus introduced original sin, which was certain to
infect the whole human race ever afterwards until the end
of time ? Was not John Milton a Christian, and did he not
in his “Paradise Lost” develope all the phases of that
portentous competition between the celestial and infernal
powers for the virtual possession of this world and lordship
over the destinies of our race ? If we accept Mr. Brown’s
statements we shall have to reverse history and belie the
evidence of our senses.
But who is responsible for the moral chaos and the exist
ence of evil ? That is the question. If to say Christ is
absurd, and to say the Devil blasphemy, what alternative is
left ? The usual answer is : Man’s freewill. Christ as “ the
blessed and only Potentate ” leaves us liberty of action, and
our own evil passions cause all the misery of our lives. But
who gave us our evil passions ? To this question no answer
s vouchsafed, and so we are left exactly at the point from
�THE REIGN OF CHRIST.
57
which we started. Yet Mr. Brown has a very decided opinion
as to the part these “ evil passions ” play in the history c f
mankind. He refers to them as “ the Devil’s brood of lust
and lies, and wrongs and hates, and murderous passion and
insolent power, which through all the ages of earth’s sad
history have made it liker hell than heaven.” No Atheist
could use stronger language. Mr. Brown even believes that
our “ insurgent lusts and passions ” are predetermining causes
of heresy, so that in respect both to faith and to works they
achieve our damnation. How then did we come by them ?
The Evolutionist frankly answers the question without fear
of blasphemy on the one hand or of moral despair on the
other. Mr. Brown is bound to give his answer after raising
the question so vividly. But he will not. He urges that it
“ presents points of tremendous difficulty,” although “ we
shall unravel the mystery, we shall solve the problems in
God’s good time.” Thus the solution of the problem is to
be postponed until we are dead, when it will no longer
interest us. However convenient this may be for the
teachers of mystery, it is most unsatisfactory to rationalists.
Mr. Brown must also be reminded that the “ tremendous
difficulties ” he alludes to are all of his own creation. There is
no difficulty about any fact except in relation to some theory.
It is Mr. Brown’s theory of the universe which creates the
difficulties. It does not account for all the facts of existence
—nay, it is logically contravened by the most conspicuous
and persistent of them. Instead of modifying or transform
ing his theory into accordance with the facts, he rushes off
with it into the cloud-land of faith. There let him remain
as he has a perfect right to. Our objection is neither to
reason nor to faith, but to a mischievous playing fast and
loose with both.
Mr. Brown opines that Christ will reign until all his
enemies are under his feet. And who are these enemies ?
Not the souls of men, says Mr. Brown, for Christ “ loves
them with an infinite tenderness.” This infinite tenderness
is clearly not allied to infinite power or the world’s anguish
would long since have been appeased and extinguished, or
never have been permitted to exist at all. The real enemies
of Christ are not the souls of men, but “ the hates and
passions which torment them.” Oh those hates and passions!
They are the dialectical balls with which Mr. Brown goes
�58
THE REIGN OF CHRIST.
through his performance in that circle of petitio principii so
hated by all logicians, the middle sphere of intellects too
light for the solid earth of fact and too gross for the aerial
heaven of imagination.
It will be a fitting conclusion to present to Mr. Brown a
very serious matter which he has overlooked. Christ,
“ the blessed and only Potentate,” came on earth and origi
nated the universal religion nearly two thousand years ago.
Up to the present time three-fourths of the world’s inhabitants
are outside its pale, and more than half of them have never
heard it preached. Amongst the quarter which nominally
professes Christianity disbelief is spreading more rapidly
than the missionaries succeed in converting the heathen; so
that the reign of Christ is being restricted instead of in
creased. To ask us, despite this, to believe that he is God,
and possessed of infinite power, is to ask us to believe a
marvel compared with which the wildest fables are credible,
and the most extravagant miracles but as dust in the
balance.
�THE PRIMATE ON MODERN INFIDELITY.
(^September, 1880.)
A bishop once twitted a curate with preaching indifferent
orthodoxy. “ Well,” answered the latter, “ I don’t see how
you can expect me to be as orthodox as yourself. I believe
at the rate of a hundred a year, and you at the rate of ten
thousand.” In the spirit of this anecdote we should expect
an archbishop to be as orthodox as the frailty of human
nature will allow. A man who faithfully believes at the
rate of fifteen thousand a year should be able to swallow
most things and stick at very little. And there can be no
doubt that the canny Scotchman who has climbed or wrig
gled up to the Archbishopric of Canterbury is prepared to
go any lengths his salary may require. We suspect that he
regards the doctrines of the Church very much as did that
irreverent youth mentioned by Sidney Smith, who, on being
asked to sign the Thirty-nine Articles, replied “ Oh yes,
forty if you like.” The clean linen of his theology is im
maculately pure. Never has he fallen under a suspicion of
entertaining dangerous or questionable opinions, and he has
in a remarkable degree that faculty praised by Saint Paul
of being all things to all men, or at least as many men as
make a lumping majority. What else could be expected
from a Scotchman who has mounted to the spiritual Primacy
of England ?
His Grace has recently been visiting the clergy and
churchwardens of his diocese and delivering what are called
Charges to them. The third of these was on the momentous
subject of Modern Infidelity, which seems to have greatly
exercised his mind. This horrid influence is found to be very
prevalent, much to the disconcertion of his Grace, who felt
constrained to begin his Charge with expressions of des
pondency, and only recovered his spirits towards the end,
where he confidently relies on the gracious promise of Christ
never to forsake his darling church. Some of the admissions
he makes are worth recording—
“I can,” he says, “have no doubt that the aspect of Christian
society in the present day is somewhat troubled, that the Church
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THE PRIMATE ON MODERN INFIDELITY.
of Christ and the faith of Christ are passing through a great
trial in all regions of the civilised world, and not least among our
selves. There are dark clouds on the horizon already breaking,
which may speedily burst into a violent storm .... It is
well to note in history how these two evils—superstition and
infidelity—act and react in strengthening each other. Still, I
cannot doubt that the most [? more] formidable of the two for us
at present is infidelity...................... It is indeed a frightful
thought that numbers of our intelligent mechanics seem to be
alienated from all religious ordinances, that our Secularist halls
are well filled, that there is an active propagandism at work for
shaking belief in all creeds.”
These facts are of course patent, but it is something to
get an Archbishop to acknowledge them, His Grace also
finds “from above, in the regions of literature and art,
efforts to degrade mankind by denying our high original
the high original being, we presume, a certain simple pair
called Adem and Eve, who damned themselves and nearly
the whole of their posterity by eating an apple six thousand
years ago. The degradation of a denial of this theory is
hardly perceptible to untheological eyes. Most candid minds
would prefer to believe in Darwin rather than in Moses even
if the latter had, which he has not, a single leg to stand on.
For the theory of our Simian origin at least involves pro
gression in the past and perhaps salvation in the future of
our race, while the “ high original ” theory involves our re
trogression and perdition. His grace wonders how these
persons can “ confine their hopes and aspirations to a life
which is so irresistibly hastening to its speedy conclusion.”
But surely he is aware that they do so for the very simple
reason that they know nothing of any other life to hope
about or aspire to. One bird in the hand is worth twenty
in the bush when the bush itself remains obstinately invisible,
and if properly cooked is worth all the dishes in the world
filled only with expectations. His grace likewise refers to
the unequal distribution of worldly goods, to the poverty and
misery which exist “ notwithstanding all attempts to regene
rate society by specious schemes of socialistic reorganisation.”
It is, of course, very natural that an archbishop in the en
joyment of a vast income should stigmatise these “specious
schemes ” for distributing more equitably the good things of
this world; but the words “ blessed be ye poor ” go ill to
the tune of fifteen thousand a year, and there is a grim irony
�THE PRIMATE ON MODERN INFIDELITY.
61
in the fact that palaces are tenanted by men who profess to
represent and preach the gospel of him who had not where to
lay his head. Modern Christainity has been called a civilised
heathenism; with no less justice it might be called an
organised hypocrisy.
After a dolorous complaint as to the magazines “lying
everywhere for the use of our sons and daughters,” in which
the doctrines both of natural and of revealed religion are
assailed, the Archbishop proceeds to deal with the first great
form of infidelity, namely Agnosticism. With a feeble
attempt at wit he remarks that the name itself implies a
confession of ignorance, which he marvels to find unaccom
panied by “ the logical result of a philosophical humility.”
A fair account of the Agnostic position is then given, after
which it is severely observed that “ the better feelings of man
contradict these sophisms.” In proof of this, his Grace
cites the fact that in Paris, the “stronghold of Atheistical
philosophy,” the number of burials that take place without
religious rites is “a scarcely appreciable percentage.” We
suspect the accuracy of this statement, but having no
statistics on the subject by us, we are not prepared to
dispute it. We will assume its truth ; but the important
question then arises—What kind of persons are those who
dispense with the rites of religion ? Notoriously they are
men of the highest intellect and character, whose quality far
outweighs the quantity of the other side. They are the
leaders of action and thought, and what they think and do
to-day will be thought and done by the masses to-morrow.
When a man like Gambetta, occupying such a high position
and wielding such immense influence, invariably declines to
enter a church, whether he attends the marriage or the
funeral of his friends, we are entitled to say that his ex
ample on our side is infinitely more important than the
practice of millions who are creatures of habit and for the
most part blind followers of tradition. The Archbishop’s
argument tells against his own position, and the fact he cites,
when closely examined, proves more for our side than he
thought it proved for his own.
Atheism is disrelished by his Grace even more than
Agnosticism. His favorite epithet for it is “ dogmatic.”
“ Surely,” he cries, “ the boasted enlightenment of this
century will never tolerate the gross ignorance and arrogant
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THE PRIMATE ON MODERN INFIDELITY.
self-conceit which presumes to dogmatise as to things con
fessedly beyond its ken.” Quite so; but that is what the
theologians are perpetually doing. To use Matthew Arnold’s
happy expression, they talk familiarly about God as though
he were a man living in the next street. The Atheist and
the Agnostic confess their inability to fathom the universe
and profess doubts as to the ability of others. Yet they are
called dogmatic, arrogant, and self-conceited. On the other
hand, the theologians claim the power of seeing ih/rough
nature up to nature’s God. Yet they, forsooth, must be ac
counted modest, humble, and retiring.
wad some pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see usI”
“O
These abominable Atheists are by no means scarce, for,
says his Grace, “ practical Atheists we have everywhere, if
Atheism be the denial of God.” Just so ; that is precisely
what we “ infidels ” have been saying for years. Chris
tianity is utterly alien to the life of modern society, and in
flagrant contradiction to the spirit of our secular progress.
It stands outside all the institutions of our material civilisa
tion. Its churches still echo the old strains of music and
the old dogmatic tones from the pulpit, but the worshippers
themselves feel the anomaly of its doctrines and rites when
they return to their secular avocations. The Sunday does
nothing but break the continuity of their lives, steeping
them in sentiments and ideas which have no relation to their
experience during the rest of the week. The profession of
Christendom is one thing, its practice is another. God is
simply acknowledged with the lips on Sunday, and on every
other day profoundly disregarded in all the pursuits of life
whether of business or of pleasure. Even in our national
legislature, although the practice of prayer is still retained,
any man would be sneered at as a fool who made the least
appeal to the sanctions of theology. An allusion to the
Sermon on the Mount would provoke a smile, and a citation
of one of the Thirty-nine Articles be instantly ruled as
irrelevant. Nothing from the top to the bottom of our
political and social life is done with any reference to those
theological doctrines which the nation professes to believe,
and to the maintenance of which it devotes annually so
many millions of its wealth.
�THE PRIMATE ON MODERN INFIDELITY.
63
In order to pose any member of the two great divisions of
“ infidelity,” the Archbishop advises his clergy to ask the
following rather comical questions :—
“Do you believe nothing which is not capable of being tested
by the ordinary rules which govern experience in things natural ?
How then do you know that you yourself exist ? How do you
know that the perceptions of your senses are not mere delusions,
and that there is anything outside you answering to what your
mind conceives? Have you a mind? and if you have not,
what is it that enables you to think and reason, and fear, and
hope ? Are these conditions of your being the mere results of
your material organism, like the headache which springs from
indigestion, or the high spirits engendered by too much wine ?
Are you something better than a vegetable highly cultivated, or
than your brothers of the lower animals ? and, if so, what is it
that differentiates your superiority ? Why do things outside you
obey your will ? Who gave you a will ? and, if so, what is it ?
I think you must allow that intellect is a thing almost divine, if
there be anything divine ; and I think also you must allow that
it is not a thing to be propagated as we propagate well-made and
high-bred cattle. Whence came Alexander the Great ? Whence
Charlemagne? And whence the First Napoleon? Was it
through a mere process of spontaneous generation that they
sprang up to alter by their genius and overwhelming will the
destinies of the world? Whence came Homer, Shakespeare,
Bacon ? Whence came all the great historians ? Whence came
Flato and all the bright lights of divine philosophy, of divinity,
■of poetry ? Their influence, after all, you must allow to be quite
as wide and enduring as any produced by the masters of those
positive material sciences which you worship. Do you think that
all these great minds—for they are minds, and their work was
not the product of a merely highly organised material frame—
were the outcome of some system of material generation, which
your so-called science can subject to rule, and teach men how to
produce by growth, as they grow vegetables?”
The Archbishop is not a very skilful physician. His pre
scription shows that he has not diagnosed the disease.
These strange questions might strike the infidel “ all of a
heap/’ as the expressive vernacular has it, but although
they might dumbfounder him, they would assuredly not con
vince. If the Archbishop of Canterbury were not so exalted
a personage we should venture to remark that to ask a man
how he knows that he exists betrays a marvellous depth of
ignorance or folly. Ultimate facts of consciousness are not
subjects of proof or disproof ; they are their own warranty
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TUE PRIMATE ON MODERN INFIDELITY.
and cannot be transcended. There is, besides, something ex
traordinary in an archbishop of the church to which
Berkeley belonged supposing that extreme idealism follows
only the rejection of deity. Whether the senses are after all
delusory does not matter to the Atheist a straw ; they are
real enough to him, they make his world in which he lives
and moves, and it is of no practical consequence whether
they mirror an outer world or not. What differentiates you
from the lower animals ? asks his Grace. The answer is
simple—a higher development of nervous structure. Who
gave you a will ? is just as sensible a question as Who gave
you a nose ? We have every reason to believe that both
can be accounted for on natural grounds without introducing
a supernatural donor. The question whether Alexander,
Napoleon, Homer, Bacon and Shakespeare came through a
process of spontaneous generation is excruciatingly ludicrous.
That process could only produce the very lowest form of
organism, and not a wonderfully complex being like man
who is the product of an incalculable evolution. But the
Archbishop did not perhaps intend this ; it may be that in
his haste to silence the “ infidel ” he stumbled over his own
meaning. Lastly, there is a remarkable naïveté in the aside
of the final question—•“ for they are minds.” He should
have added “ you know,” and then the episode would have
been delightfully complete. The assumption of the whole
point at issue in an innocent parenthesis is perhaps to be ex
pected from a pulpiteer, but it is not likely that the “ infidel”
will be caught by such a simple stratagem. All these
questions are so irrelevant and absurb that we doubt whether
his Grace would have the courage to put one of them to any
sceptic across a table, or indeed from any place in the world
except the pulpit, which is beyond all risk of attack, and
whence a man may ask any number of questions without
the least fear of hearing one of them answered.
The invitation given by his grace, to “ descend to the
harder ground of strictest logical argumentation,” is very
appropriate.
Whether the movement be ascending or
descending, there is undoubtedly a vast distance be
tween logical argumentation and anything he has yet
advanced. But even on the “ harder ” ground the Arch
bishop treads no more firmly. He demands to know how
the original protoplasm became endowed with life, and if
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THE PRIMATE ON MODERN INFIDELITY.
that question cannot be answered he calls upon us to admit
his theory of divine agency, as though that made the subject
more intelligible. Supernatural hypotheses are but refuges
of ignorance. Earl Beaconsfield, in his impish way, once
remarked that where knowledge ended religion began, and
the Archbishop of Canterbury seems to share that opinion.
His Grace also avers that “ no one has ever yet been able
to refute the argument necessitating a great First Cause.”
It is very easy to assert this, but rather difficult to main
tain it. One assertion is as good as another, and we shall
therefore content ourselves with saying that in our opinion
the argument for a great First Cause was (to mention only
one name) completely demolished by John Stuart Mill, who
showed it to be based on a total misconception of the nature
of cause and effect, which apply only to phaenomenal changes
and not to the apparently unchangeable matter and force of
which the universe is composed.
But the overwhelming last argument is that “ man has
something in him which speaks of God, of something above
this fleeting world, and rules of right and wrong have their
foundation elsewhere than in man’s opinion .... that
there is an immutable, eternal distinction between right and
wrong—that there is a God who is on the side of right.”
Again we must complain of unbounded assertion. Every
point of this rhetorical flourish is disputed by “ infidels ”
who are not likely to yield to anything short of proof. If
God is on the side of right he is singularly incapable of
maintaining it; for, in this world at least, according to some
penetrating minds, the devil has hitherto had it pretty much
his own way, and good men have had to struggle very hard
to make things even as equitable as we find them. But
after all, says his Grace, the supreme defence of the Church
against the assaults of infidelity is Christ himself. Weak
in argument, the clergy must throw themselves behind his
shield and trust in him. Before his brightness “ the mists
which rise from a gross materialistic Atheism evaporate,
and are scattered like the clouds of night before the dawn.”
It is useless to oppose reason to such preaching cs this. We
shall therefore simply retort the Archbishop’s epithets.
Gross and materialistic are just the terms to describe a
religion which traffics in blood and declares that without the
shedding of it there is no remission of sin; whose ascetic
E
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TUB PRIMATE ON MODERN INFIDELITY.
doctrines malign our purest affections and defile the sweetest
fountains of our spiritual health ; whose heaven is nothing
but an exaggerated jeweller’s shop, and its hell a den of
torture in which God punishes his children for the conse
quences of his own ignorance, incapacity or crime.
�BAITING
A
BISHOP.
(^February, 1880.)
Bishops should speak as men having authority, and not as
the Scribes and Pharisees. Even the smallest of them should
be a great man. An archbishop, with fifteen thousand a
year, ought to possess a transcendent intellect, almost be
yond comprehension ; while the worst paid of all the reverend
fathers of the Church, with less than a fifth of that salary,
ought to possess no common powers of mind. The Bishop
of Carlisle is not rich as bishops go, but he enjoys a yearly
income of ¿£4,500, besides the patronage of forty-nine
livings. Now this quite equals the salary of the Prime
Minister of the greatest empire in the world, and the Bishop
of Carlisle should therefore be a truly great man. We regret
however, to say that he is very much the reverse, if we may
judge from a newspaper report which has reached us of his
lecture on “Man’s Place in Nature,” recently delivered
before the Keswick Scientific and Literary Society. News
paper reports, we know, are often misleading in consequence
of their summary character; nevertheless two columns of
small type must give some idea of a discourse, however ab
struse or profound; here and there, if such occured, a fine
thought or a shrewd observation would shine through the
densest veil. Yet, unless our vision be exceptionally obtuse,
nothing of the kind is apparent in this report of the Bishop’s
lecture. Being, as his lordship confessed, the development
of “ a sermon delivered to the men at the Royal Agricul
tural Society’s Show last summer,” the lecture was perhaps,
like the sermon, adapted to the bucolic mind, and thus does
meagre justice to the genius of its author. His lordship,
however, chose to read it before a society with some pre
tentions to culture, and therefore such a plea cannot avail.
As the case stands, we are constrained to accuse the bishop
of having delivered a lecture on a question of supreme im
portance, which would do little credit to the president of a
Young Men’s Christian Asssciation ; and when we reflect
that a parson occupied the chair at the meeting, and that
the vote of thanks to the episcopal lecturer was moved by
e 2
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BAITING A BISHOP.
a canon, who coupled with it some highly complimentary
remarks, we are obliged to think the Church more short of
brains than even we had previously believed, and that Mene,
Mene, Tekel, Upharsin has already been written on its
temple walls by the finger of doom.
Very early in his lecture the Bishop observed that “the
Scriptures are built on the hypothesis of the supreme and
unique position of man.” Well, there is nothing novel in
this statement. What we wrnnt is some proof of the hypo
thesis. His lordship’s way of supplying this need is, to say
the least, peculiar. After saying that “he would rather
trust the poet as an exponent of man than he would a student
of natural history,” he proceeds to quote from Shakespeare,
Pope and Plato, and ends that part of his argument with a
rhetorical flourish, as though he had thus really settled the
whole case of Darwin versus Moses. Our reverence of great
poets is probably as deep and sincere as the Bishop’s, but we'
never thought of treating them as scientific authorities, or
as witnesses to events that happened hundreds of thousands
of years before their birth. Poets deal with subjective facts
of consciousness, or with objective facts as related to these.
The dry light of the intellect, radiated from the cloudless
sun of truth, is not their proper element, but belongs ex
clusively to the man of science. They move in a softer
element suffused with emotion, whose varied clouds are by
the sun of imagination touched to all forms of beauty and
splendor. The scientific man’s description of a lion, for
instance, would be very different from a poet’s ; because the
one would describe the lion as it is in itself, and the other
as it affects us, a living whole, through our organs of sight
and sound. Both are true, because each is faithful to its
purpose and expresses a fact; yet neither can stand for the
other, because they express different facts and are faithful
to different purposes. Shakespeare poetically speaks of
“the ruddy drops that visit this sad heart,” but the scientific
truth of the circulation of the blood had to await its Harvey.
In like manner, it was not Milton but Newton who ex
pounded the Cosmos ; the great poet, like Dante before
him, wove pre-existent cosmical ideas into the texture of his
sublime epic, while the great scientist wove all the truth of
them into the texture of his sublime theory. Let each
receive his meed of reverent praise, but do not let us appeal
�BAITING A BISHOP.
69
to Newton on poetry or to Milton on physics. And when a
Bishop of Carlisle, or other diocese, complains that “ the
views advanced by scientific men tend painfully to degrade
the views of poets and philosophers,” let us reply that in
almost every case the great truths of science have been
found to transcend infinitely the marvels of theology, and
that the magnificence of song persists through all fluctua
tions of knowledge, because its real cause lies less in the
subject than in the native grandeur of the poet’s mind.
Man’s place in nature is, indeed, a great question, and it
can be settled only by a wide appeal to past and present
facts. And those facts, besides being objective realities,
must be treated in a purely scientific, and not in a poetic
or didactic spirit. Let the poet sing the beauty of a con
summate flower; and, if such things are required, let the
moralist preach its lessons. But neither should arrogate
the prerogative of the botanist, whose special function it is
to inform us of its genesis and development, and its true
relations to other forms of vegetable life. So with man.
The poet may celebrate his passions and aspirations, his joys
and sorrows, his laughter and tears, and ever body forth
anew the shapes of things unseen ; the moralist may employ
every fact of his life to illustrate its laws or to enforce its
duties ; but they must leave it to the biologist to explain his
position in the animal economy, and the stages by which it
has been reached. With regard to that, Darwin is authori
tative, while Moses is not even entitled to a hearing.
Although the Bishop is very ready to quote from the
poets, he is not always ready to use them fairly. For
instance, he cites the splendid and famous passage in
“ Hamlet“ What a piece of work is man I How noble
in reason ! How infinite in faculties ! in form and moving,
how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel!
in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world !
the paragon of animals !” There his lordship stops, and then
exclaims, “ Shakespeare knew nothing of the evolution of
man from inferior forms.” But why did he not continue
the quotation ? Hamlet goes on to say, “ And yet, what to
me is this quintessence of dust?” How now, your lordship ?
We have you on the hip! “Quintessence of dust” comes
perilously near to evolution. Does not your lordship re
member, too, Hamlet’s pursuing the dust of Caesar to the
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BAITING A BISHOP.
ignominious bunghole ? And have you never reflected how
the prescient mind of Shakespeare created an entirely new
and wonderful figure in literature, the half-human, halfbestial Caliban, with his god Setebos—a truly marvellous
resuscitation of primitive man, that in our day has inspired
Mr. Browning’s “ Caliban on Setebos,” which contains the
entire essence of all that Tylor and other investigators in
the same field have since written on the subject of Animism ?
It seems that the Lord Bishop of Carlisle reads even the
poets to small purpose.
Haughtily waving the biologists aside, his lordship proceeds
to remark that “ man’s superiority is not the same that a dog
would claim over a lobster, or an eagle over a wormthe
difference between man and other animals being “ not one of
degree, but of kind.” Such a statement, without the least
evidence being adduced to support it, places the Bishop
almost outside the pale of civil discussion. When will these
lordly ecclesiastics learn that the time for dogmatic assertion
is past, and that the intellectual temper of the present age
can be satisfied only by proof? We defy the Bishop of
Carlisle to indicate a single phase of man’s nature which
has no parallel in the lower animals. Man’s physical
structure is notoriously akin to theirs, and even his brain
does not imply a distinction of kind, for every convolution of
the brain of man is reproduced in the brain of the higher
apes. His lordship draws a distinction between instinct and
reason, which is purely fanciful and evinces great ignorance
of the subject. That, however, is a question we have at
present no room to discuss ; nor, indeed, is there any neces
sity to do so, since his lordship presently admits that the
lower animals share our “ reason ” to some extent, just as to
a much larger extent we share their “ instinct,” and thus
evacuates the logical fortress he took such pains to construct.
Quitting that ground, which proves too slippery for his
feet, the Bishop goes on to notice the moral and aesthetic
difference between man and the lower animals. No animal,
says his lordship, shows “ anything approaching to a love of
art.” Now we are quite aware that no animal except man
ever painted a picture or chiselled a statue, for these things
involve a very high development of the artistic faculty. But
the appreciation of form and color, which is the foundation
of all fine art, is certainly manifested by the lower animals,
�BAITING A BISHOP.
71
and by some ofathem to an extreme degree. If his lordship
doubts this, let him study the ways of animals for himself;
or, if' he cannot do that, let him read the chapters in Mr.
Darwin’s “ Descent of Man ” on sexual selection among
birds. If he retains any doubt after that, we must conclude
that his head is too hard or too soft to be influenced, in either
of which cases he is much to be pitied.
His lordship thinks that the moral sense is entirely absent
in the lower animals. This, however, is absurdly untrue;
so much so, indeed, that we shall not trouble to refute it.
Good and noble, he avers, are epithets inapplicable to animals,
even to the horse or dog. What vain creatures men are to
talk thus! Does his lordship remember Byron’s epitaph on
his Newfoundland dog, and the very uncomplimentary dis
tinction drawn therein between dogs and men ? Look at
that big pet with the lordly yet tender eye! How he
submits to the boisterous caresses of children, because he
knows their weakness and shares their spirit of play ! Let
their elders do the same, and he will at once show resent
ment. See him peril his life ungrudgingly for those he loves,
or even for comparative strangers ! And shall we deny him
the epithet of noble or good ? Whatever theologians may
say, the sound heart of common men and women will answer
No!
Lastly, we are told that “ the religious sentunent is cha
racteristically and supremely human.” But here again we
must complain of his lordship’s mental confusion. The re
ligious sentiment is not a simple but a highly complex
emotion. Resolve it into its elemental feelings, and it will
be found that all these are possessed in some degree by lower
animals. The feeling of a dog who bays the moon is pro
bably very similar to that of the savage who cowers and
moans beneath an eclipse; and if the savage has supersti
tious ideas as well as awesome feelings, it is only because
he possesses a higher development of thought and imagina
tion.
Canon Battersby, who moved the vote of thanks to the
Bishop, ridiculed the biologists, and likened them to Topsy
who accounted for her existence by saying “ Specs I growed.”
Just so. That is precisely how we all did come into
■existence. Growth and not making is the law for man as
well as for every othei’ form of life. Moses stands for
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BAITING A BISHOP.
manufacture and Darwin stands for growth. And if the
great biologist finds himself in the company of Topsy, he will
not mind. Perhaps, indeed, as he is said to enjoy a joke and
to be able to crack one, might he jocularly observe to
“ tremendous personages ” lihe the Bishop of Carlisle, that
this is not the first instance of truths being hidden from the
“ wise ” and revealed unto babes.
�PROFESSOR FLINT ON ATHEISM.
(January^ 1877.)
Professor Flint delivered last week the first of the present
year’s course of Baird lectures to a numerous audience in
Blythswood Church, Glasgow, taking for his subject ‘u The
Theories opposed to Theism.” Anti-Theism, he said, is more
general now than Atheism, and includes all systems opposed
to Theism. Atheism he defined as “ the system which teaches
that there is no God, and that it is impossible for man to
know that there is a God.” At least this is how Professor
Flint is reported in the newspapers, although we hope he was
not guilty of so idiotic a jumble.
Where are the Atheists who say there is no God ? What
are their names ? Having mingled much with thorough
going sceptics, and read many volumes of heretical literature,
we can confidently defy Professor Flint to produce the names
of half a dozen dogmatic Atheists, and we will give him the
whole world’s literature to select from. Does he think that
the brains of an Atheist are addled ? If not, why does he
make the Atheist first affirm that there is no God, and then
affirm the impossibility of man’s ever knowing whether thereis a God or not? How could a man who holds his judgment
in suspense, or who thinks the universal mystery insoluble to
us, dogmatise upon the question of God’s existence? If
Professor Flint will carefully and candidly study sceptical
literature, he will find that the dogmatic Atheist is as rare as
the phoenix, and that those who consider the extant evidences
of Theism inadequate, do not go on to affirm an universal
negative, but content themselves with expressing their
ignorance of Nature’s why. Foi’ the most part they endorse
Thomas Cooper’s words, “ I do not say there is no God, but
this I say, I know not.” Of course this modesty of affirma
tion may seem impiously immodest to one who has been
trained and steeped in Theism so long that the infinite
universe has become quite explicable to him; but to the
sceptic it seems more wise and modest to confess one’s igno
rance, than to make false pretensions of knowledge.
Professor Flint “ characterised the objections which
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PROFESSOR FLINT ON ATHEISM.
Atheism urges against the existence of God as extremely
feeble.” Against the existence of what God ? There be
Gods many and Lords many; which of the long theological
list is to be selected as the God ? A God, like everything
else from the heights to the depths, can be known only by
his attributes; and what the Atheist does is not to argue
against the existence of any God, which would be sheer
lunacy, but to take the attributes affirmed by Theism as
composing its Deity and inquire whether they are compatible
with each other and with the facts of life. Finding that
they are not, the Atheist simply sets Theism aside as not
proven, and goes on his way without further afflicting him
self with such abstruse questions.
The Atheist must be a very dreary creature, thinks Pro
fessor Flint. But why ? Does he know any Atheists, and has
hefound them one half as dreary as Scotch Calvinists ? It
may seem hard to the immoderately selfish that some Infinite
Spirit is not looking after their little interests, but it is
•assuredly a thousandfold harder to think that this Infinite
Spirit has a yawning hell ready to engulph the vast majority
•of the world’s miserable sinners. If the Atheist has no
heaven, he has also no hell, which is a most merciful relief.
Far better were universal annihilation than that even the
meanest life should writhe for ever in hell, gnawed by the
worm which never dieth, and burnt in the fire which is never
quenched.
Even Nature, thinks Professor Flint, cannot be contem
plated by the Atheist as the Theist contemplates it; for
while the latter views it as God’s vesture wherewith he hides
from us his intolerable glory, the latter views it as the mere
embodiment of force, senseless, aimless, pitiless, an enormous
mechanism grinding on of itself from age to age, but to
wards no God and for no good. Here we must observe
that the lecturer trespasses beyond the truth. The Atheist
•does not affirm that Nature drives on to no God and no
good; he simply says he knows not whither she is driving.
And how many Theists are there who think of God in the
presence of Nature, who see God’s smile in the sunshine, or
hear his wrath in the storm ? Very few, we opine, in this
practical sceptical age. To the Atheist as to the Theist, in
deed to all blessed with vision, Nature is an ever new
wonder of majesty and beauty. Sun, moon, and stars,
�PROFESSOR FLINT ON ATHEISM.
75
earth, air, and sky, endure while the generations of men pass
and perish; but every new generation is warmed, lighted,
nurtured and gladdened by them with most sovereign and
perfect impartiality. The loveliness and infinite majesty of
Nature speak to all men, of all ages, climes and creeds. Not
in her inanimate beauty do we find fatal objections to the
doctrine of a wise and bountiful power which overrules her,
but rather in the multiplied horrors, woes, and pangs of
sentient life. When all actual and recorded misery is effaced,
when no intolerable grief corrodes and no immedicable
despair poisons life, when the tears of anguish are assuaged,
when crime and vice are unknown and unremembered, and
evil lusts are consumed in the fire of holiness ; then, and
then only, could we admit that a wise and righteous omni
potence rules the universal destinies. Until then we cannot
recognise the fatherhood of God, but must find shelter and
comfort in the more efficacious doctrine of the brotherhood
of Man.
Professor Flint concluded his lecture, according to the
newspaper report, thus :—“ History bears witness that the
declension of religion has ever been the decline of nations,
because it has ever brought the decay of their moral life;
■and people have achieved noble things only when strongly
animated by religious faith.” All this is very poor stuff
indeed to come from a learned professor. What nation has
declined because of a relapse from religious belief ? Surely
not Assyria, Egypt, Greece, or Carthage ? In the case of
Rome, the decline of the empire was coincident with the
rise of Christianity and the decline of Paganism ; but the
Roman Empire fell abroad mainly from political, and not
from religious causes, as every student of history well knows.
Christianity, that is the religion of the Bible, has been
dying for nearly three centuries ; and during that period,
instead of witnessing a general degradation of mankind we
have witnessed a marvellous elevation. The civilisation of
to-day, compared with that which existed before Secular
Science began her great battle with a tyrannous and obscu
rantist Church, is as a summer morn to a star-lit winter
night.
Again, it is not true that men have achieved noble things
only when strongly animated by religious faith ; unless by
“ religious faith ” be meant some vital idea or fervent enthu-
�76
FliOFESSOll FLINT ON ATHEISM.
siasm. The three hundred Spartans who met certain death
at Thermopylae died for a religious idea, but not for a
theological idea, which is a very different thing. They
perished to preserve the integrity of the state to which they
belonged. The greatest Athenians were certainly not re
ligious in Professor Flint’s sense of the word, and the grand
old Roman patriots had scarcely a scintillation of such a
religious faith as he speaks of. Their religion was simply
patriotism, but it was quite as operant and effective as
Christian piety has ever been. Was it religious faith or
patriotism which banded Frenchmen together in defiance of
all Europe, and made them march to death as a bridegroom
hastens to his bride ? And in our own history have not our
greatest achievers of noble things been very indifferent to
theological dogmas? Nay, in all ages, have not the noblest
laborers for human welfare been impelled by an urgent
enthusiasm of humanity rather than by any supernatural
faith ? Professor Flint may rest assured that even though
all “ the old faiths ruin and rend,” the human heart will
still burn, and virtue and beauty still gladden the earth,
although divorced from the creeds which held them in the
thraldom of an enforced marriage.
�A
HI D D E N
GOD.
(Oo/o&er, 1879.)
The Christian World is distinguished among religious jour
nals by a certain breadth and vigor. On all social and
political subjects it is remarkably advanced and outspoken,
and its treatment of theological questions is far more liberal
and intelligent than sceptics would expect. Of late years it
has opened its columns to correspondence on many topics,
some of a watery character, like the reality of Noah’s flood,
and others of a burning kind, like the doctrine of eternal
punishment, on all of which great freedom of expression has
been allowed. The editor himself, who is, we suspect, far
more sceptical than most of his readers, has had his say on
the question of Hell, and it is to be inferred from his some
what guarded utterance that he has little belief in any such
place. This, however, we state with considerable hesitation,
for the majority of Christians still regard the doctrine of
everlasting torture as indubitable and sacred, and we have
no desire to lower him in the estimation of the Christian
world in which he labors, or to cast a doubt on the ortho
doxy of his creed. But the editor will not take it amiss
if we insist that his paper is liberal in its Christianity, and
unusually tolerant of unbelief.
Yet, while entitled to praise on his ground, the Christian
World deserves something else than praise on another. It
has recently published a series of articles for the purpose of
stimulating faith and allaying doubt. If undertaken by a
competent writer, able and willing to face the mighty differ
ence between Christianity and the scientific spirit of our age,
such a series of articles might be well worth reading. We
might then admire if we could not agree, and derive benefit
from friendly contact with an antagonist mind. But the
writer selected for the task appears to possess neither of
these qualifications. Instead of thinking he gushes ; instead
of reason he supplies us with unlimited sentiment. We
expect to tread solid ground, or at least to find it not
perilously soft; and lo ! the soil is moist, and now and then
we find ourselves up to the knees in unctuous mud. How
�78
A HIDDEN GOD.
difficult it is nowadays to discover a really argumentative
Christian! The eminent favorites of orthodoxy write
sentimental romances and call them “ Lives of Christ,” and
preach sermons with no conceivable relation to the human
intellect; while the apologists of faith imitate the tactics of
the cuttle-fish, and when pursued cast out their opaque fluid
of sentimentality to conceal their position. They mostly
dabble in the shallows of scepticism, never daring to venture
in the deeps ; and what they take pride in as flashes of
spiritual light resembles neither the royal gleaming of the sun
nor the milder radiance of the moon, but rather the phos
phorescence of corruption.
In the last article of the series referred to, entitled
“ Thou art a God that Hidest Thyself,” there is an abund
ance of fictitious emotion and spurious rhetoric. From
beginning to end there is a painful strain that never relaxes,
reminding us of singers who pitch their voices too high and
have to render all the upper notes in falsetto. An attempt
is made to employ poetical imagery, but it ludicrously fails.
The heaven of the Book of Revelation, with its gold and
silver and precious stones, is nothing but a magnified
jeweller’s shop, and a study of it has influenced the style of
later writers. At present Christian gushers have descended
still lower, dealing not even in gold and j'ewels, but in Brum
magem and paste. The word gem is greatly in vogue.
Talmage uses it about twenty times in every lecture, Parker
delights in it, and it often figures on the pages of serious
books. In the article before us it is made to do frequent
service. A promise of redemption is represented as shining
(¡rem-like on the brow of Revelation, Elims gem the dark
bosom of the universal desert, and the morning gleams on
the tew-gemmed earth. Perhaps a good recipe for this kind
of composition would be an hour’s gloat on the flaming
window of a jeweller’s shop in the West End.
But let us deal with the purport and purpose of the
article. It aims at showing that God hides himself, and
why he does so. The fact which it is attempted to explain
none will deny. Moses ascended Mount Sinai to see God and
converse with him, Abraham and God walked and talked
together, and according to St. Paul the Almighty is not far
from any one of us. But the modern mind is not prone to
believe these things. The empire of reason has been en-
�A HIDDEN GOD.
79
larged at the expense of faith, whose provinces have one after
another been annexed until only a small territory is left her,
and that she finds it dificult to keep. Coincidently, God
has become less and less a reality and more and more
a dream.
The reign of law is perceived everywhere,
and all classes of phsenomena may be explained without
recourse to supernatural power. When Napoleon objected
to Laplace that divine design was omitted from his
mechanical theory of the universe, the French philosopher
characteristically replied: “I had no need of that hypo
thesis.” And the same disposition prevails in other depart
ments of science. Darwin, for instance, undertakes to
explain the origin and development of man, physical, intel
lectual and moral, without assuming any cause other than
those which obtain wherever life exists. God is being slowly
but surely driven from the domain of intermediate causes,
and transformed into an ultimate cause, a mere figment of
the imagination. He is being banished from nature into that
poetical region inhabited by the gods of Polytheism, to keep
company there with Jupiter and Apollo and Neptune and
Juno and Venus, and all the rest of that glorious Pantheon.
He no longer rules the actual life and struggle of the world,
but lives at peace with his old rivals in—
“ The lucid interspace of world and world,
Where never creeps a cloud or moves a wind,
Nor ever falls the least white star of snow,
Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans;
Nor sound of human sorrow mounts, to mar
Their sacred everlasting calm.”*
The essence of all this is admitted by the writer in the
Christian World; he admits the facts, but denies the infer
ence. They show us one of God’s ways of hiding himself.
Order prevails, but it is the expression of God’s will, and not
a mere result of the working of material forces. He operates
by method, not by caprice, and hence the unchanging
stability of things. While doing nothing in particular, he
does everything in general. And this idea must be extended
to human history. God endows man with powers, and
allows him freedom to employ them as he will. But,
strangely enough, God has a way of “ruling our freedom,”
Tennyson: “ Lucretius.'
�.80
A HIDDEN GOD.
and always there is “a restraining and restoring hand.”
How man’s will can be free and yet overruled passes our
merely carnal understanding, although it may be intelligible
■ enough to minds steeped in the mysteries of theology.
According to this writer, God’s government of mankind is
a “ constitutional kingdom.” Quite so. It was once
arbitrary and despotic; now it is fai' milder and less ex
acting, having dwindled into the “constitutional” stage,
wherein the King reigns but does not govern. Will the law
of human growth and divine decay stop here ? We think
not. As the despotism has changed to a constitutional
monarchy, so that will change to a republic, and the
empty throne be preserved among other curious relics of
the past.
God also hides himself in history. Although unapparent
on the surface of events, his spirit is potent within them.
“ What,” the writer asks, “ is history—with all its dark
passages of horror, its stormy revolutions, its ceaseless
conflict, its tears, its groans, its blood—but the chronicle
of an ever-widening realm of light, of order, of intelligence,
wisdom, truth, and charity ?” But if we admit the progress,
we need not explain it as the work of God. Bunsen wrote
a book on “ God in History,” which a profane wag said
should have been called “ Bunsen in Historyyet his
attempt to justify the ways of God to men was not very
successful. It is simply a mockery to ask us to believe
that the slow progress of humanity must be attributed to
omniscient omnipotence. A God who can evolve virtue
and happiness only out of infinite evil and misery, and
elevate us only through the agency of perpetual blood and
tears, is scarcely a being to be loved and worshipped, unless
we assume that his power and wisdom are exceedingly
limited. Are we to suppose that God has woven himself
a garment of violence, evil, and deceit, in order that we
might not see too clearly his righteousness, goodness, and
truth ?
It must further be observed that Christian Theists cannot
be permitted to ascribe all the good in the world to God,
and all the evil to man, or else leave it absolutely un
explained. In the name of humanity we protest against
this indignity to our race. Let God be responsible for good
and evil both, or for neither; and if man is to considei’
�81
A HIDDEN GOD.
himself chargeable with all the world’s wrong, he should at
least be allowed credit for all the compensating good.
The theory of evolution is being patronised by Theists
rather too fulsomely. Not long ago they treated it with
obloquy and contempt, but now they endeavor to use it as
an argument for their faith, and in doing so they distort
language as only theological controversialists can. Changing
“ survival of the fittest ” into “survival of the bestfi they
transform a physical fact into a moral law ; and thus, as they
think, take a new north-west passage to the old harbor
zof “whatever is is right.” But while evolution may be
•construed as progress, which some would contest, it cannot,
be construed as the invariable survival of the best; nor, if
it were, could the process by which this result is achieved
be justified. For evolution works through a universal
struggle for existence, in which the life and well-being of
Some can be secured only through the suffering and final
extinction of others ; and even in its higher stages, cunning
and unscrupulous strength frequently overcomes humane
wisdom fettered by weakness. “Nature, red in tooth and
•claw, with ravin shrieks against the creed ” of the Theist.
If God is working through evolution, we must admit that
he has marvellously hidden himself, and agree with the
poet that he does “ move in a mysterious way his wonders
to perform.”
The writer in the Christian_ World borrows an image
from the puling scepticism of “In Memoriam,” which
describes man as
“ An infant crying in the night,
And with no language but a cry.”
This image of the infant is put to strange use. The writer
says that God is necessarily hidden from us because we can
grasp “ his inscrutable nature and methods ” only as “ an
infant can grasp the thought and purpose of a man.”
Similes are dangerous things. When it is demanded that they
shall run upon all fours, they often turn against their mas
ters. This one does so. The infant grows into a man in
due course, and then he can not only grasp the thought and
purpose of his father, but also, it may be, comprehend still
greater things. Will the infant mind of man, when it
reaches maturity, be thus related to God’s ? If not, the
F
�82
A HIDDEN GOD.
analogy is fallacious. Man is quite mature enough already,
and has been so for thousands of years, to understand
something of God’s thought and purpose if he had only
chosen to reveal them. This, however, if there be a God,
he has not condescended to do. An appeal to the various
pretended revelations of the world serves to convince us
that all are the words of fallible men. Their very dis
cord discredits them. As D’Holbach said, if God had
spoken, the universe would surely be convinced, and the
same conviction would fill every breast.
The reason given for God’s hiding himself is very curious.
“ If,” says the writer, “ the way of God were not in large
measure hidden, it would mean that we could survey all
things from the height and the depth of God.” Truly an
awful contemplation! May it not be that God is hidden
from us because there is none to be revealed, that “ all the
oracles are dumb or cheat because they have no secret to
express ” ?
But, says the writer in the Ghristian World, there is one
revelation of God that can never be gainsaid; “ while the
Cross stands as earth’s most sacred symbol, there can be no
utter hiding of his love.” This, however, we venture to
dispute. That Cross which was laid upon the back of Jesus
poor mankind has been compelled to carry ever since, with
no Simon to ease it of the load. Jesus was crucified on
Calvary, and in his name man has suffered centuries of
crucifixion. The immolation of Jesus can be no revelation
of God’s love. If the Nazarene was God, his crucifixion
involves a complicated arrangement for murder; the Jews
who demanded his death were divinely instigated, and Judas
Iscariot was pre-ordained to betray his master; in which
case his treachery was a necessary element of the drama,
entitling him not to vituperation but to gratitude, even
perhaps to the monument which Benjamin Disraeli sug
gested as his proper reward. Looking also at the history of
Christianity, and seeing how the Cross has sheltered op
pressors of mind and body, sanctioned immeasurable shed
ding of blood, and frightened peoples from freedom, while
even now it symbolises all that is reactionary and accursed
in Europe, we are constrained to say that the love it reveals
is as noxious as the vilest hate.
�GENERAL
JOSHUA.
(April, 1882.)
Mountebank Talmage has just preached a funeral sermon
on General Joshua. It is rather behind date, as the old
warrior has been dead above three thousand years. But
better late than never. Talmage tells us many things about
Joshua which are not in the Bible, and some sceptics will
say that his panegyric is a sheer invention. They may,
however, be mistaken. The oracle of the Brooklyn Jabbernacle is known to be inspired. God holds converse with
him, and he is thus enabled to supply us with fresh facts
about Jehovah’s fighting-cock from the lost books of Jasher
and the Wars of the Lord.
Joshua, says Talmage, was a magnificent fighter. We
say, he was a magnificent butcher. Jehovah did the fight
ing. He was the virtual commander of the Jewish hosts;
he won all their victories ; and Joshua only did the slaughter.
He excelled in that line of business. He delighted in the
dying groans of women and children, and loved to dabble
his feet and hands in the warm blood of the slain. No
“ Chamber of Horrors ” contains the effigy of any wretch
half so bloodthirsty and cruel.
According to Talmage, Joshua “always fought on the
right side.” Wars of conquest are never right. Thieving
other people’s lands is an abominable crime. The Jews had
absolutely no claim to the territory they took possession of,
and which they manured with the blood of its rightful
owners. We know they said that G-od told them to requisition
that fine little landed estate of Canaan. Half the thieves
in history have said the same thing. We don’t believe them.
God never told any man to rob his neighbor, and whoever
says so lies. The thief’s statement does not suffice. Let
him produce better evidence. A rascal who steals and
murders cannot be believed on his oath, and ’tis more likely
that he is a liar than that God is a scoundrel.
Talmage celebrates “five great victories ” of Joshua. He
omits two mighty achievements. General Joshua circum
cised a million and a half Jews in a single day. His greatest
F 2
�84
GENERAL JOSHUA.
battle never equalled that wonderful feat. The amputations
were done at the rate of over a thousand a minute. Samson’s
jaw-bone was nothing to Joshua’s knife. This surprising
old Jew was as great in oratory as in surgery. On one
occasion he addressed an audience of three millions, and
everyone heard him. His voice must have reached two or
three miles. No wonder the walls of Jericho fell down
when Joshua joined in the shout. We dare say the Jews
wore ear-preservers to guard their tympanums against the
dreadful artillery of his speech.
Joshua’s first victory, says Talmage, was conquering the
spring freshet of Jordan. As a matter of fact, Jehovah
transacted that little affair. See, says Talmage, “ one mile
ahead go two priests carrying a glittering box four feet long
and two feet wide. It is the Ark of the Covenant.” He
forgets to add that the Jew God was supposed to be inside
it. Jack in the box is nothing to God in a box. What
would have happened if the Ark had been buried with
Jehovah safely fastened in? Would his godship have
mouldered to dust? In that case he would never have
seduced a carpenter’s wife, and there would have been no
God the Son as the fruit of his adultery.
Talmage credits General Joshua with the capture of
Jericho. The Bible says that Jehovah overcame it. Seven
priests went blowing rams’ horns round the city for seven
days. On the seventh day they went round it seven times.
It must have been tiresome work, for Jericho was a large
city several miles in circumference. But priests are always
good “Walkers.” After the last blowing of horns all the
Jews shouted “ Down Jericho, down Jericho!” This is
Talmage’s inspired account. The Bible states nothing of
the kind. Just as the Islamites cry “ Allah, Il Allah,” it is
probable that the Jews cried “ Jahveh, Jahveh.” But Talmage
and the Bible both agree that when their shout rent the air
the walls of Jericho fell flat—as flat as the fools who be
lieve it.
Then, says Talmage, “ the huzza of the victorious
Israelites and the groan of the conquered Canaanites com
mingle !” Ah, that groan ! Its sound still curses the Bible
God. Men, women and children, were murdered. The
very cattle, sheep and asses, were killed with the sword.
Only one woman’s house was spared, and she was a harlot.
�GENERAL JOSHUA.
85
It is as if the German army took Paris, and killed every
inhabitant except Cora Pearl. This is inspired war, and
Talmage glories in it. He would consider it an honor to be
bottle-washer to such a pious hero as General Joshua.
When Ai was taken, all its people were slaughtered, with
out any regard to age or sex. Talmage grins with delight,
and cries “ Bravo, Joshua!” The King of Ai was reserved
for sport. They hung him on a tree and enjoyed the fun.
Talmage approves this too. Everything Joshua did was
right. Talmage is ready to stake his own poor little soul on
that.
Joshua’s victory over the five kings calls forth a burst of
supernatural eloquence. Talmage pictures the “ catapults
of the sky pouring a volley of hailstones ” on the flying
Amorites, and words almost fail him to describe the
glorious miracle of the lengthening of the day in order that
Jehovah’s prize-fighters might go on killing. One passage
is almost sublime. It is only one step off. “ What,” asks
Talmage, “ is the matter with Joshua? Has he fallen in an
apoplectic fit ? No. He is in prayer.” Our profanity would
not have gone to that length. But we take Talmage’s word
for it that prayer and apoplexy are very much alike.
The five kings were decapitated. “ Ah,” says Talmage,
i‘ I want five more kings beheaded to-day, King Alcohol,
King Fraud, King Lust, King Superstition, and King Infi
delity.” Soft, you priestly calumniator ! What right have
you to associate Infidelity with fraud and lust ? That
Freethought, which you call “ infidelity,” is more faithful
to truth and justice than your creed has ever been. And
it will not be disposed of so easily as you think. You will
never behead us, but we shall strangle you. We are crush
ing the life out of your wretched faith, and your spasmodic
sermons are only the groans of its despair.
Talmage’s boldest step on the line which separates the
ludicrous from the sublime occurs in his peroration. He
makes General Joshua conquer Death by lying down and
giving up the ghost, and then asks for a headstone and a foot
stone for the holy corpse. “ I imagine,” he says, “ that for
the head it shall be the sun that stood still upon Gibeon,
and for the foot the moon that stood still in the valley of
Ajalon.” This is about the finest piece of Yankee buncombe
extant. If the sun and moon keep watch over General
�86
GENERAL JOSHUA.
Joshua’s grave, what are we to do ? When we get to the
New Jerusalem we shall want neither of these luminaries,
for the glory of the Lord will shine upon us. But until
then we cannot dispense with them, and we decidedly object
to their being retained as perpetual mourners over Joshua’s
grave. If, however, one of them must do service, we
humbly beg that it may be the moon. Let the sun illumine
us by day, so that we may see to transact our affairs. And
if ever we should long to behold “ pale Dian’s beams ”
again, we might take Talmage as our guide to the unknown
grave of General Joshua, and while they played softly over
the miraculous two yards of turf we should see his fitting
epitaph—Moonshine.
�GOING
TO
HELL.
{June, 1882.)
Editing a Freethought paper is a dreadful business. It
brings one into contact with many half-baked people who
have little patent recipes for hastening the millennium ; with
ambitious versifiers who think it a disgrace to journalism
that their productions are not instantly inserted; with
discontented ladies and gentlemen who fancy that a heterodox
paper is the proper vehicle for every species of complaint;
and with a multitude of other bores too numerous to mention
and too various to classify. But the worst of all are the
anonymous bores, who send them insults, advice, or warnings,
through the post for the benefit of the Queen’s revenue.
We generally pitch their puerile missives into the waste-paper
basket; but occasionally we find one diverting enough to be
introduced to our readers. A few days ago we received the
following lugubrious epistle, ostensibly from a parson in
Worcestershire, as the envelope bore the postmark of
Tything.
The fool hath said in his heart there is no God”—I have seen
one of your blasphemous papers; and I say solemnly, as a clergy
man of the Church of England, that I believe you are doing the
work of the Devil, and are on the road to hell, and will spend
eternity with the Devil, unless God, in his mercy, lead you, by the
Holy Spirit, to repentance. Nothing is impossible, with him. A
Dean in the Church of England says, ‘ Be wise, and laugh not
through a speck of time, and then wail through an immeasurable
eternity.’ Except you change your views you will most certainly
hear Christ say, at the Judgment Day, ‘Depart ye cursed into
everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels.’
(Matt, xxv.)”
This is a tolerably warm, though not very elegant effusion,
and it is really a pity that so grave a counsellor should con
ceal his name ; for if it should lead to our conversion, we
should not know whom to thank for having turned us out of
the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire. Our mentor
assures us that with God nothing is impossible. We are
sorry to learn this; for we must conclude that he does not
�88
GOING TO HELL.
take sufficient trouble with parsons to endow them with the
courage of their convictions, or to make them observe the
common decencies of epistolary intercourse.
This anonymous parson, who acts like an Irish “ Moon
*
lighter,” and masks his identity while venting his spleen,,
presumes to anticipate the Day of Judgment, and tells
exactly what Jesus Christ will say to us on that occasion.
We are obliged to him for the information, but we wonderhow he obtained it. The twenty-fifth of Matthew, to which
he refers us, contains not a word about unbelievers. It
simply states that certain persons, who have treated the Son
of Man very shabbily in his distress, shall be sent to keep
company with Old Nick and his imps. Now, we have never
shown the Son of Man any incivility, much less any in
humanity, and we therefore repudiate this odious insinuation.
Whenever Jesus Christ sends us a message that he is sick,
we will pay him a visit; if he is hungry, we will find him a
dinner; if he is thirsty, we will stand whatever he likes to
drink; if he is naked, we will hunt him up a clean shirt and
an old suit; and if he is in prison, we will, according as he
is innocent or guilty, try to procure his release, or leave him
to serve out his term. We should be much surprised if
any parson in the three kingdoms would do any more.
Some of them, we believe, would see him condemned (new
version) before they would lift a finger or spend sixpence to
help him.
We are charged with doing the work of the Devil. This
is indeed news. We never knew the Devil required any
assistance. He was always very active and enterprising, and
quite able to manage his own business. And although his
rival, Jehovah, is so do tingly senile as to yield up everything
to his mistress and her son, no one has ever whispered the
least hint of the Devil’s decline into the same abject position.
But if his Satanic Majesty needed our aid we should not be
loth to give it, for after carefully reading the Bible many
times from beginning to end, we have come to the conclusion
that he is about the only gentleman in it.
We are “ on the road to hell.” Well, if we must go
somewhere, that is just the place we should choose. The
temperature is high, and it would no doubt at first be incom
modious. But, as old Sir Thomas Browne says, afflictions
induce callosities, and in time we should get used to anything.
�GOING- TO HELL.
89
When once we grew accustomed to the heat, how thankful
we should be at having escaped the dreary insipidity of
heaven, with its perpetual psalms, its dolorous trumpets, its
gruesome elders, and its eldarly beasts ! How thankful at
having missed an eternity with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
David, and all the many blackguards and scoundrels of the
Bible I How thankful at having joined for ever the society
of Rabelais, Bruno, Spinoza, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, John
Stuart Mill, and all the great poets, sages and wits, who
possess so much of that carnal wisdom which is at enmity
with the pious folly of babes and sucklings I
On the whole, we think it best to keep on our present
course. Let the bigots .rave and the parsons wail. They
are deeply interested in the doctrine of heaven and hell beyond
the grave. We believe in heaven and hell on this side of it;
a hell of ignorance, crime, and misery ; a heaven of wisdom,
virtue, and happiness. Our duty is to promote the one and
combat the other. If there be a just God, the fulfilment of
that duty will suffice ; if God be unjust, all honest men will
be in the same boat, and have the courage to despise and
defy him.
�CHRISTMAS EVE IN HEAVEN.
(December, 1881.)
Christmas Eve had come and almost gone. It was drawing
nigh midnight, and I sat solitary in my room, immersed in
memory, dreaming of old days and their buried secrets. The
fire, before which I mused, was burning clear without flame,
and its intense glow, which alone lighted my apartment, cast a
red tint on the furniture and walls. Outside the streets
were muffled deep with snow, in which no footstep was
audible. All was quiet as death, silent as the grave, save
for the faint murmur of my own breathing. Time and
space seemed annihilated beyond those four narrow walls,
and I was as a coffined living centre of an else lifeless
infinity.
My reverie was rudely broken by the staggering step of a
fellow-lodger, whose devotion to Bacchus was the one
symptom of reverence in his nature. He reeled up stair after
stair, and as he passed my door he lurched against it so
violently that I feared he would come through. But he
slowly recovered himself after some profane mutterings,
reeled up the next flight of stairs, and finally deposited his
well-soaked clay on the bed in his own room immediately
over mine.
After this interruption my thoughts changed most fanci
fully. Why I know not, but I began to brood on the strange
statement of Saint Paul concerning the man who was lifted
up into the seventh heaven, and there beheld things not
lawful to reveal. While pondering this story I was presently
aware of an astonishing change. The walls of my room
slowly expanded, growing ever thinner and thinner, until
they became the filmiest transparent veil which at last dis
solved utterly away. Then (whether in the spirit or the
flesh I know not) I was hurried along through space, past
galaxy aftei’ ■ galaxy of suns and stars, separate systems yet
all mysteriously related.
Swifter than light we travelled, I and my unseen guide,
through the infinite ocean of ether, until our flight was
arrested by a denser medium, which I recognised as an
�CHBISTJIAS EVE IN HEAVEN.
91
atmosphere like that of our earth. I had scarcely recovered
from this new surprise when (marvel of marvels!) I found
myself before a huge gate of wondrous art and dazzling
splendor. At a word from my still unseen guide it swung
open, and I was urged within. Beneath my feet was a solid
pavement of gold. Gorgeous mansions, interspersed with
palaces, rose around me, and above them all towered the
airy pinnacles of a matchless temple, whose points quivered
in the rich light like tongues of golden fire. The walls
glittered with countless rubies, diamonds, pearls, amethysts,
emeralds, and other precious stones; and lovely presences,
arrayed in shining garments, moved noiselessly from place
to place. “ Where am I ?” I ejaculated, half faint with
wonder. And my hitherto unseen guide, who now revealed
himself, softly answered, “ In Heaven.”
Thereupon my whole frame was agitated with inward
laughter. I in Heaven, whose fiery doom had been pro
phesied so often by the saints on earth ! I, the sceptic, the
blasphemer, the scoffer at all things sacred, who had laughed
at the legends and dogmas of Christianism as though they
were incredible and effete as the myths of Olympus ! And I
thought to myself, “ Better I had gone straight to Hell, for
here in the New Jerusalem they will no doubt punish me
worse than there.” But my angelic guide, who read my
thought, smiled benignly and said, “Fear not, no harm
shall happen to you. I have exacted a promise of safety
for you, and here no promise can be broken.” “ But why,”
I asked, “ have you brought me hither, and how did you obtain
my guarantee of safety?” And my guide answered, “It is
our privilege each year to demand one favor which may not
be refused; I requested that I might bring you here ; but I
did not mention your name, and if you do nothing outrageous
you will not be noticed, for no one here meddles with
another’s business, and our rulers are too much occupied
with foreign affairs to trouble about our domestic concerns.”
Yet,” I rejoined, “I shall surely be detected, for I wear
no heavenly robe.” Then my guide produced one from a
little packet, and having donned it, I felt safe from the fate
of him who was expelled because he had not on a wedding
garment at the marriage feast.
As we moved along, I inquired of my guide why he took
such interest in me; and he replied, looking sadly, w I was
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CHRISTMAS EVE IN HEAVEN.
a sceptic on earth centuries ago, but I stood alone, and at
last on my death-bed, weakened by sickness, I again
embraced the creed of my youth and died in the Christian
faith. Hence my presence in Heaven. But gladly would
I renounce Paradise even for Hell, for those figures so lovely
without are not all lovely within, and I would rather consort
with the choicer spirits who abide with Satan and hold
high revel of heart and head in his court. Yet wishes are
fruitless ; as the tree falls it lies, and my lot is cast for
ever.” . Whereupon I laid my hand in his, being speechless
with grief!
We soon approached the magnificent temple, and entering
it we mixed with the mighty crowd of angels who were
witnessing the rites of worship performed by the' elders and
beasts before the great white throne. All happened exactly
as Saint John describes. The angels rent the air with their
acclamations, after the inner circle had concluded, and then
the throne was deserted by its occupants.
My dear guide then led me through some narrow passages
until we emerged into a spacious hall, at one end of which
hung a curtain. Advancing towards this with silent tread,
we were able to look through a slight aperture, where the
curtain fell away from the pillar, into the room beyond. It
was small and cosy, and a fire burned in the grate, before
which sat poor dear God the Father in a big arm-chair.
Divested of his godly paraphernalia, he looked old and thin,
though an evil fire still gleamed from his cavernous eyes.
On a table beside him stood some phials, one of which had
seemingly just been used. God the Son stood near, looking
much younger and fresher, but time was beginning to tell
on him also. The Ghost flitted about in the form of a dove,
now perching on the Father’s shoulder and now on the head
of the Son.
Presently the massive bony frame of the Father was con
vulsed with a fit of coughing; Jesus promptly applied a
restorative from the phial, and after a terrible struggle the
cough was subdued. During this scene the Dove fluttered
violently from wall to wall. When the patient was
thoroughly restored the following conversation ensued :—
Jesus.—Are you well now, my Father?
Jehovah.—Yes, yes, well enough. Alack, how my
�CHRISTMAS EVE IN HEAVEN.
93
strength wanes! Where is the pith that filled these
arms when I fought for my chosen people ? Where
the fiery vigor that filled my veins when I courted your
mother ?
(Here the Dove fluttered and looked queer.)
Jesus.—Ah, sire, do not speak thus. You will regain
your old strengthJehovah.—Nay, nay, and you know it. You do not
even wish me to recover, for in my weakness you exercise
sovereign power and rule as you please.
Jissus.—0 sire, sire !
Jehovah.—Come now, none of these demure looks. We
know each other too well. Practise before the saints if you
like, but don’t waste your acting on me.
Jesus.—My dear Father, pray curb your temper. That
is the very thing the people on earth so much complain of.
Jehovah.—My dearly beloved Son, in whom I am not
at all well pleased, desist from this hypocrisy. Your temper
is as bad as mine. You’ve shed blood enough in your time,
and need not rail at me.
Jesus.—Ah, sire, only the blood of heretics.
Jehovah.—Heretics, forsooth! They were very worthy
people for the most part, and their only crime was that they
neglected you. But why should we wrangle ? We stand or
fall together, and I am falling. Satan draws most souls
from earth to his place, including all the best workers and
thinkers, who are needed to sustain our drooping power;
and we receive nothing but the refuse ; weak, slavish, flabby
souls, hardly worth saving or damning; gushing preachers,
pious editors, crazy enthusiasts, and half-baked old ladies of
both sexes. Why didn’t you preach a different Gospel while
you were about it ? You had the chance once and let it
slip : we shall never have another.
Jesus.—My dear Father, I am reforming my Gospel to
make it suit the altered taste of the times.
Jehovah.—Stuff and nonsense! It can’t be done ;
thinking people see through it; the divine is immutable.
The only remedy is to start afresh. Could I beget a new
son all might be rectified; but I cannot, I am too old. Our
dominion is melting away like that of all our predecessors.
You cannot outlast me, for I am the fountain of your life;
and all the multitude of “ immortal ” angels who throng our
�/
94
CHRISTMAS EVE IN HEAVEN.
court, live only while I uphold them, and with me they will
vanish into eternal limbo.
Here followed another fit of coughing worse than before.
Jesus resorted again to the phial, but the cordial seemed
powerless against this sharp attack. Just then the Dove
fluttered against the curtain, and my guide hurried me
swiftly away.
In a corridor of the temple we met Michael and Raphael.
The latter scrutinised me so closely that my blood ran cold;
but just when my dread was deepest his countenance cleared,
and he turned towards his companion. Walking behind the
great archangels we were able to hear their conversation.
Raphael had just returned from a visit to the earth, and he
was reporting to Michael a most alarming defection from
the Christian faith. People, he said, were leaving in shoals,
and unless fresh miracles were worked he trembled for the
prospects of the dynasty. But what most alarmed him was
the spread of profanity. While in England he had seen
copies of a blasphemous paper which horrified the elect by
ridiculing the Bible in what a bishop had justly called “ a
heartless and cruel way.” “ But, my dear Michael,” con
tinued Raphael, “ that is not all, nor even the worst. This
scurrilous paper, which would be quickly suppressed if we
retained our old influence, actually caricatures our supreme
Lord and his heavenly host in woodcuts, and thousands of
people enjoy this wicked profanity. I dare say our turn
will soon come, and we shall be held up to ridicule like
the rest.” “ Impossible ! ” cried Michael: “ Surely there
is some mistake. What is the name of this abominable
print?”
With a grave look, Raphael replied: “No,
Michael, there is no mistake. The name of this imp of
blasphemy is—I hesitate to. say it—the Free------” *
But at this moment my guide again hurried me along.
We reached the splendid gate once more, which slowly
opened and let us through. Again we flew through the
billowy ether, sweeping past system after system with in
toxicating speed, until at last, dazed and almost unconscious,
I regained this earthly shore. Then I sank into a stupor.
When I awoke the fire had burnt down to the last cinder,
all was dark and cold, and I shivered as I tried to stretch
* Was it the Freethinker?
�CHRISTMAS EVE IN HEAVEN.
95
my half-cramped limbs. Was it all a dream? Who can
say ? Whether in the spirit or the flesh I know not, said
Saint Paul, and I am compelled to echo his words. Sceptics
may shrug their shoulders, smile, or laugh ; but “ there are
more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in
their philosophy.”
�PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON ATHEISM.
(January, 1879.)
Professor Blackie is a man with whom we cannot be
angry, however greatly his utterances are calculated to
arouse that feeling. He is so impulsive, frank, and essen
tially good-natured, that even his most provoking words call
forth rather a smile of compassion than a frown of resent
ment. Those who know his character and position will
yield him the widest allowance. His fiery nature prompts
him to energetic speech on all occasions. But when his
temper has been fretted, as it frequently is, by the boisterous
whims of his Greek students in that most boisterous of
universities, it is not surprising if his expressions become
splenetic even to rashness. The ingenuous Professor is quite
impartial in his denunciations. He strikes out right and left
against various objects of his dislike. Everything he dis
sents from receives one and the same kind of treatment, so
that no opinion he assails has any special reason to com
plain ; and every blow he deals is accompained with such a
jolly smile, sometimes verging into a hearty laugh, that no
opponent can well refuse to shake hands with him when all
is over.
This temper, however, is somewhat inconsistent with the
scientific purpose indicated in the title of Professor Blackie’s
book. A zoologist who had such a particular and unconquer
able aversion to one species of animals that the bare mention
of its name made his gorge rise, would naturally give us a
very inadequate and unsatisfactory account of it. So, in this
■case, instead of getting a true natural history of Atheism,
which would be of immense service to every thinker, we get
only an emphatic statement of the authors’ hatred of it under
different aspects. Atheism is styled “ a hollow absurdity,”
“ that culmination of all speculative absurdities,” “ a disease
of the speculative faculty,” “a monstrous disease of the
reasoning faculty,” and so on.
The chapter on “ Its Specific Varieties and General
Root ” is significantly headed with that hackneyed declara
tion of the Psalmist, “ The fool hath said in his heart, There
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PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON ATHEISM.
is no God,” as though impertinence were better from a Jew
than from a Christian, or more respectable for being three
thousand years old. Perhaps Professor Blackie has never
heard of the sceptical critic who exonerated the Psalmist on
the ground that he was speaking jocosely, and really meant
that the man who said in his heart only “ There is no God,”
without saying so openly, was the fool. But this interpre
tation is as profane as the other is impertinent; and in fact
does a great injustice to the Atheist, who has never been
accustomed to say “ There is no God,” an assertion which
involves the arrogance of infinite knowledge, since nothing
less than that is requisite to prove an universal negative :
but simply “ I know not of such an existence,” which is a
modest statement intellectually and morally, and quite unlike
the presumption of certain theologians who, as Mr. Arnold
says, speak familiarly of God as though he were a man
living in the next street.
For his own sake Professor Blackie should a little curb
his proneness to the use of uncomplimentary epithets. He
does himself injustice when he condescends to describe David
Hume’s theory of causation as “ wretched cavil.” Carlyle
is more just to this great representative of an antagonistic
school of thought. He exempts him from the sweeping
condemnation of his contemporaries in Scottish prose
literature, and admits that he was “ too rich a man to
borrow ” from France or elsewhere. And surely Hume was
no less honest than rich in thought. Jest and captiousness
were entirely foreign to his mind. Wincing under his
inexorable logic, the ontologist may try to console himself
with the thought that the great sceptic was playing with
arguments like a mere dialectician of wondrous skill; but in
reality Hume was quite in earnest, and always meant what
he said. We may also observe that it is Professor Blackie
and not Darwin who suffers from the asking of such questions
as these :—“ What monkey ever wrote an epic poem, or com
posed a tragedy or a comedy, or even a sonnet ? What
monkey professed his belief in any thirty-nine articles, or
well-compacted Calvinistic confession, or gave in his ad
hesion to any Church, established or disestablished ?” If
Mr. Darwin heard these questions he might answer with a
good humored smile, “ My dear sir, you quite mistake my
theories, and your questions travesty them. I would further
G
�98
PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON ATHEISM.
observe that while the composition of poems would un
questionably be creditable to monkeys, I, who have some
regard for them as relatives, however distant, am heartily
glad they have never done any of the other things you
mention, which I deem a negative proof that their reason,
though limited, is fortunately sane.”
Professor Blackie’s opening chapter on “Presumptions”
fully justifies its title. The general consent of mankind in
favor of Theism is assumed to have established its validity,
and to have put Atheists altogether out of court; and a long
list of illustrious Theists, from Solomon to Hegel, is con
trasted with a meagre catalogue of Atheists, comprising only
the names of David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, and John
Stuart Mill.
*
Confucius and Buddha are classed apart, as
lying “ outside of our Western European Culture altogether,”
but with a promise that “ in so far as they seem to have
taught a morality without religion, or a religion without
God, we shall say a word or two about them by-and-by.”
So far as Buddha is concerned this promise is kept; but in
relation to Confucius it is broken. Probably the Chinese
sage was found too tough and embarrassing a subject, and
so it was thought expedient to ignore him for the more tract
able prophet of India, whose doctrine of Transmigration
might with a little sophistry be made to resemble the
Christian doctrine of Immortality, and his Nirvana the
Kingdom of Heaven.
What does the general consent of mankind prove in
regard to beliefs like Theism ? Simply nothing. Professor
Blackie himself sees that on some subjects it is worthless,
particularly when special knowledge or special faculty is re
quired. But there are questions, he contends, which public
opinion rightly decides, even though opposed to the con
clusions of subtle thinkers. “ Perhaps,” he says, “ we shall
hit the mark here if we say broadly that, as nature is always
right, the general and normal sentiment of the majority must
always be right, in so far as it is rooted in the universal and
* Professor Blackie is singularly silent as to James Mill, the
father of the celebrated Utilitarian philosopher, far more robust in
intellect and character than his son. He is the dominant figure of
Mill’s “ Autobiography,” and has about him a more august air
than his son ever wore.
�PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON ATHEISM.
99
■abiding instincts of humanity; and public opinion, as the
opinion of the majority, will be right also in all matters
which belong to the general conduct of life among all classes,
and with respect to which the mind of the majority has been
allowed a perfectly free, natural, and healthy exercise.”
Now, in the first place, we must reiterate our opinion that
the general consent of mankind on a subject like Theism
proves absolutely nothing. It is perfectly valid on questions
of ordinary taste and feeling, but loses all logical efficacy
in relation to questions which cannot be determined by - a
direct appeal to experience. And undeniably Theism is one
of those questions, unless we admit with the transcendentalist
what is contrary to evident fact, that men have an intuitive
perception of God. In the next place, the minor premise of
this argument is assumed. There is no general consent of
mankind in favor of Theism, but only a very extensive con
sent. Mr. Gladstone, not long since, in the Nineteenth
Century, went so far as to claim the general consent of man
kind in favor of Christianity, by simply excluding all heathen
nations from a right to be heard. Professor Blackie does
not go to this length, but his logical process is no different.
Lastly, our author’s concluding proviso vitiates his whole
case; for if there be one question on which “ the mind of
the majority ” has not been allowed a “ perfectly free, •
natural, and healthy exercise,” it is that of the existence of
God. We are all prepossessed in its favor by early training,
custom, and authority. Our minds have never been per
mitted to play freely upon it. A century ago Atheists stood
in danger of death ; only recently have penal and invidious
statutes against them been cancelled or mitigated; and even
now bigotry against honest disbelief in Theism is so strong
that a man often incurs greater odium in publicly avowing
it than in constantly violating all the decalogue save the
commandment against murder. Murderers and thieves,
though punished here, are either forgotten or compassionated
after death; but not even the grave effectually shields the
Atheist from the malignity of pious zeal. Fortunately, how
ever, a wise and humane tolerance is growing in the world,
and extending towards the most flagrant heresies. Perhaps
we shall ultimately admit with sage old Felltham, that “ we
fill the world with cruel brawls in the obstinate defence of
that whereof we might with more honor confess ourselves to
a 2
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PBOFESSOR BLACKIE ON ATHEISM.
be ignorant,” and that “ it is no shame for man not to know
that which is not in his possibility.”
The causes of Atheism are, according to Professor
Blackie, very numerous. He finds seven or eight distinct,
ones. The lowest class of Atheists are “ Atheists of im
becility,” persons of stunted intellect, incapable of compre
hending the idea of God. These, however, he will not
waste his time with, nor will we. He then passes to the
second class of reprobates, whose Atheism springs not from
defect of intellect, but from moral disorder, and who delight
to conceive the universe as resembling their own chaos.
These we shall dismiss, with a passing remark that if moral
disorder naturally induces Atheism, some very eminent,
Christians have been marvellous hypocrites. Lack of rever
ence is the next cause of Atheism, and is indeed its “ natural
soil.” But as Professor Blackie thinks this may be “ con
genital, like a lack of taste for music, or an incapacity of
understanding a mathematical problem,” we are obliged to
consider this third class of Atheists as hopeless as the first.
Having admitted that their malady may be congenital, our
author inflicts upon these unfortunates a great deal of super
fluous abuse, apparently forgetting that they are less to
blame than their omnipotent maker. The fourth cause of
Atheism is pride or self-will. But this seems very erratic
in its operations, since the only two instances cited—namely,
Napoleon the Great and Napoleon the Little, were certainly
Theists. Next comes democracy, between which and irre
verence there is a natural connexion, and from which, “ as
from a hotbed, Atheism in its rankest stage naturally shoots
up.” Professor Blackie, as may be surmised, tilts madly
against this horrible foe. But it will not thus be subdued.
Democracy is here and daily extending itself, overwhelming
slowly but surely all impediments to its supremacy. If
Theism is incompatible with it, then the days of Theism are
numbered. Professor Blackie’s peculiar Natural History of
Atheism is more likely to please the opposite ranks than his
own, who may naturally cry out, with a sense of being sold,
“ call you that backing of your friends ?”
Pride of intellect is the next cause of Atheism. Don Juan
sells himself to perdition for a liberal share of pleasure, but
Faust hankers only after forbidden knowledge. This is of
various kinds ; but “ of all kinds, that which has long had
�PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON ATHEISM.
101
the most evil reputation of begetting Atheism is Physical
Science ” Again does the fervid Professor set lance in rest,
and dash against this new foe to Theism, much as Don
Quixote charged the famous windmill. But science, like the
windmill, is too big and strong to suffer from such assaults.
The “ father of this sort of nonsense,” in modern times was
David Hume, who, we are elegantly informed, was “ a
very clever fellow, a very agreeable, gentlemanly fellow too.”
His “ nonsense about causation ” is to be traced to a want
of reverence in his character. Indeed, it seems that all
persons who adhere to a philosophy alien to Professor
Blackie’s have something radically wrong with them. Let
this Edinburgh Professor rail as he may, David Hume’s
theory of causation will suffer no harm, and his contrast of
human architecture, which is mechanism, with natural
architecture, which is growth, will still form an insuperable
•obstacle to that “ natural theology ” which, as Garth
Wilkinson says with grim humor, seeks to elicit, or rather
construct,” “ a scientific abstraction answering to the
'concrete figure of the Vulcan of the Greeks—that is to say
a universal Smith ” !
Eventually Professor Blackie gets so sick of philosophers,
that he turns from them to poets, who may more safely be
trusted “ in matters of healthy human sentiment.” But here
fresh difficulties arise. Although “ a poet is naturally a
religious animal,” we find that the greatest of Roman poets
Lucretius, was an Atheist, while even “ some of our most
brilliant notorieties in the modern world of song are not the
most notable for piety.” But our versatile Professor easily
accounts for this by assuming that there “ may be an
idolatry of the imaginative, as well as of the knowing
faculty.” Never did natural historian so jauntily provide
for every fact contravening his theories. Professor Blackie
will never understand Atheism, or write profitably upon it,
while he pursues this course. Let him restrain his discursive
propensities, and deal scientifically with this one fact, which
explodes his whole theory of Atheism. The supreme glory
•of our modern poetry is Shelley, and if ever a man combined
splendor of imagination with keen intelligence and saintly
character it was he. Raphael incarnate he seems, yet he
stands outside all the creeds, and to his prophetic vision, in
the sunlight of the world’s great age begun anew, the—
�1 02
PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON ATHEISM.
Faiths and empires gleam
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.
In his treatment of Buddhism Professor Blackie is candid
and impartial, until he comes to consider its Atheistic cha
racter. Then his reason seems almost entirely to forsake
him. After saying that “ what Buddha preached was a
gospel of pure human ethics, divorced not only from Brahma
and the Brahminic Trinity, but even from the existence of
God;” and describing Buddha himself as “ a rare, exceptional,
and altogether transcendental incarnation of moral per
fection ;” he first tries to show that Nirvana is the same as
the Christian eternal life, and transmigration of souls a
faithful counterpart of the Christian doctrine of future
reward and punishment. Feeling, perhaps, how miserably
he has failed in this attempt, he turns with exasperation on
Buddhism, and affirms that it “ can in no wise be looked
upon as anything but an abnormal manifestation of the
religious life of man.” We believe that Professor Blackie
himself must have already perceived the futility and
absurdity of this.
The last chapter of Professor Blackie’s book is entitled
“ The Atheism of Reaction.” In it he strikes characteristi
cally at the five points of Calvinism, at Original Guilt,
Eternal Punishment, Creation out of Nothing, and Special
Providence ; which he charges with largely contributing to
the spread of Atheism. While welcoming these assaults on
superstition, we are constrained to observe that the Christian
dogmas which Professor Blackie impugns and denounces are
not specific causes of Atheism. Again he is on the wrong
scent. The revolt against Theism at the present time is
indeed mainly moral, but the preparation for it has been an
intellectual one. Modern Science has demonstrated, for all
practical purposes, the inexorable reign of law. The God
of miracles, answering prayer and intimately related to his
children of men, is an idea exploded and henceforth im
possible. The only idea of God at all possible, is that of a
supreme universal intelligence, governing nature by fixed
laws, and apparently quite heedless whether their operation
brings us joy or pain. This idea is intellectually permissible,
but it is beyond all proof, and can be entertained only as a
speculation. Now, the development of knowledge which
makes this the only permissible idea of God, also changes
�PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON ATHEISM.
103
Immortality from a religious certitude to an unverifiable
supposition. The rectification of the evils of this life cannot,
therefore, be reasonably expected in another; so that man
stands alone, fighting a terrible battle, with no aid save from
his own strength and skill. To believe that Omnipotence is
the passive spectator of this fearful strife, is for many minds
altogethei' too hard. They prefer to believe that the woes
and pangs of sentient life were not designed ; that madness,
anguish, and despair, result from the interplay of unconscious
forces. They thus set Theism aside, and unable to recognise
the fatherhood of God, they cling more closely to the
brotherhood of Man.
�SALVATIONISM.
(April, 1882.)
There is ho new thing under the sun, said the wise king
Many a surprising novelty is only an old thing in a new
dress. And this is especially true in respect to religion.
Ever since the feast of Pentecost, when the Apostles all
jabbered like madmen, Christianity has been marked by
periodical fits of insanity. It would occupy too much space
to enumerate these outbursts, which have occurred in every
part of Christendom, but we may mention a few that have
happened in our own country. During the Commonwealth,
some of the numerous sects went to the most ludicrous
extremes; preaching rousing sermons, praying through the
nose, assuming Biblical names, and prophesying the im
mediate reign of the saints. There was a reaction against
the excesses of Puritanism after the death of Cromwell;
and until the time of Whitfield and Wesley religion con
tinued to be a sobei- and respectable influence, chiefly useful
to the sovereign and the magistrate. But these two powerful
preachers rekindled the fire of religious enthusiasm in the
hearts of the common people, and Methodism was founded
among those whom the Church had scarcely touched. Not
many years ago the Hallelujah Band spread itself far and
wide, and then went out like a straw fire. And now we
have Salvationism, doing just the same kind of work, and
employing just the same kind of means. Will this new
movement die away like so many others ? It is difficult to
say. Salvationism may be only a flash in the pan ; but, on
the other hand, it may provide the only sort of Christianity
possible in an age of science and freethought. The educated
classes and the intelligent artisans will more and more desert
the Christian creed, and there will probably be left nothing
but the dregs and the scum, for whom Salvationism is
exactly suited. Christianity began among the poor, igno
rant, and depraved; and it may possibly end its existence
among the very same classes.
In all these movements we see a striking illustration of
what the biologists call the law of Atavism. There is a
�SALVATIONIST.
105
■constant tendency to return to the primitive type. We can
form some idea of what early Christianity was by reading
the Acts of the Apostles. The true believers went about
preaching in season and out of season; they cried and
prayed with a loud voice; they caused tumult in the streets,
and gave plenty of trouble to the civil authorities. All this
is true of Salvationism to-day; and we have no doubt that
the early Church, under the guidance of Peter, was just a
counterpart of the Salvation Army under “ General ”
Booth—to the Jews, or men of the world, a stumblingblock, and to the Greeks, or educated thinkers, a folly.
Early Christians were “ full of the Holy Ghost,” that is
of wild enthusiasm. Scoffers said they were drunk, and
they acted like madmen. Leap across seventeen centuries,
and we shall find Methodists acting in the same way. Wesley
states in his Journal (1739) of his hearers at Wapping, that
“ some were torn with a kind of convulsive motion in every
part of their bodies, and that so violently that often four or
five persons could not hold one of them.” And Lecky tells
us, in his “History of the Eighteenth Century,” that
“religious madness, which from the nature of its hallucina
tions, is usually the most miserable of all the forms of
insanity, was in this, as in many later revivals, of no unfre
quent occurrence.” Now Salvationism produces the very
same effects. It drives many people mad; and it is a
common thing for men and women at its meetings to shout,
dance, jump, and finally fall on the floor in a pious ecstacy.
While they are in this condition, the Holy Ghost is entering
them and the Devil is being driven out. Poor creatures!
They take us back in thought to the days of demoniacal pos
session, and the strange old world that saw the devil-plagued
swine of Gadara drowned in the sea.
The free and easy mingling of the sexes at these pious
assemblies, is another noticeable feature. Love-feasts were
a flagrant scandal in the early Church, and women who
returned from them virtuous must have been miracles of
chastity. Methodism was not quite so bad, but it tolerated
some very strange pranks. The Rev. Richard Polwhele, in
his “Anecdotes of Methodism” (a very rare book), says
that “ At St. Agnes, the Society stay up the whole night,
when girls of twelve and fourteen years of age, run about
the streets, calling out that they are possessed.” He goes on
�106
SALVATIONISM.
to relate that at Pro bus “ the preacher at a late hour of the
night, after all but the higher classes left the room, would
order the candles to be put out, and the saints fall down and
kneel on their naked knees ; when he would go round and
thrust his hand under every knee to feel if it were bare.”
Salvationism does not at present go to this length, but it has
still time enough to imitate all the freaks of its predecessor.
There was an All-Night meeting in Whitechapel a few
months ago, which threatened to develope into a thorough
going love-feast. The light was rather dim, voices grew
low, cheeks came perilously near, and hands met caressingly.
Of course it was nothing but the love of God that moved
them, yet it looked like something else ; and the uninitiated
spectator of “ the mystery of godliness ” found it easy to
understand how American camp-meetings tend to increase
the population, and why a Magistrate in the South-west of
England observed that one result of revivals in his district
was a number of fatherless weans.
In one respect Salvationism excels all previous revivals.
It is unparalleled in its vulgarity. The imbecile coarseness
of its language makes one ashamed of human nature. Had
it existed in Swift’s time, he'might have added a fresh clause
to his terrible indictment of mankind. Its metaphors are
borrowed from the slaughter-house, its songs are frequently
coarser than those of the lowest music-hall, and the general
style of its preaching is worthy of a congregation of drunken
pugilists. The very names assumed by its officers are enough
to turn one’s stomach. Christianity has fallen low indeed
when its champions boast such titles as the “ Hallelujah
Fishmonger,” the “ Blood-washed Miner,” the “ Devil
Dodger,” the “ Devil Walloper,” and “ Gipsy Sal.”
The constitution of the Salvation Army is a pure despot
ism. General Booth commands it absolutely. There is a
Council of War, consisting of his own family. All the
funds flow into his exchequer, and he spends them as he
likes. No questions are allowed, no accounts are rendered,
and everything is undei’ his unqualified control. The
“ General ” may be a perfectly honest man, but we are quite
sure that none but pious lunatics would trust him with such
irresponsible power.
We understand that the officials are all paid, and some of
them extremely well. They lead a very pleasant life, full of
�SALVATI0NI8M.
107
agreeable excitement; they wear uniform, and are dubbed
captain, major, or some other title. Add to all this, that
they suppose themselves (when honest) to be particular
favorites of God; and it will be easy to understand how so
many of them prefer a career of singing and praying to
earning an honest living by hard work, The Hallelujah
lads and lasses could not, for the most part, get decent
wages in any other occupation. All they require for this
work is a good stomach and good lungs; and if they can
only boast of having been the greatest drunkard in the
district, the worst thief, or the most brutal character, they
are on the high road to fortune, and may count on living in
clover for the rest of their sojourn in this vale of tears.
�A
PIOUS
SHOWMAN.
{October, 1882.)
We all remember how that clever showman, Barnum,
managed to fan the Jumbo fever. When the enterprising
Yankee writes his true autobiography we shall doubtless
find some extraordinary revelations. Yet Barnum, after
all, makes no pretence of morality or religion. He merely
goes in for making a handsome fortune out of the curiosity
and credulity of the public. If he were questioned as to
his principles, he would probably reply like Artemus Ward
■—“ Princerpuls ? I’ve nare a one. I’m in the show
bizniz.”
General Booth is quite as much a showman as Barnum,
but he is a pious showman. He is a perfect master of the
vulgar art of attracting fools. Every day brings a fresh
change in his “ Walk up, Walk up.” Tambourine girls,
hallelujah lasses, converted clowns and fiddlers, sham
Italian organ grinders, bands in which every man plays
his own tune, officers in uniform, Davidic dances, and
music-hall tunes, are all served up with a plentiful supply
of blood and fire. The “ General ” evidently means to
•stick at nothing that will draw; and we quite believe that
if a pair of Ezekiel’s cherubim were available, he would
worry God Almighty into sending them down for exhibition
at the City Road show.
Booth’s latest dodge is to say the least peculiar. Most
fathers would shrink from trafficking in a son’s marriage,
but Booth is above such nice scruples. The worst deeds
are sanctified by love of God, and religion condones every
indecency.
Mr. Bramwell Booth, whom the General has singled out as
his apostolic successor, and heir to all the Army’s property,
:got married last week; and the pious showman actually
exhibited the bridegroom and bride to the public at a
shilling a head. About three hundred pounds were taken at
the doors, and a big collection was made inside. Booth’s
anxiety for the cash was very strongly illustrated. Com
missioner Railton, who has had a very eccentric career,
�A PIOUS SHOWMAN.
10&
was enjoying his long deferred opportunity of making
a speech, when many of the crowd began to press towards
the door. “ Stop,” cried Booth, “ don’t go yet, there’s
going to be a collection.” But the audience melted faster
than ever. Whereupon Booth jumped up again, stopped
poor Railton unceremoniously, and shouted “ Hold on, we’ll
make the collection now.” This little manoeuvre was quite
in keeping with the showman’s instruction to his subal
terns, to have plenty of good strong collecting boxes and
pass them round often.
Booth’s facetious remarks during his son’s marriage
according to the Army forms were well adapted to tickle
the ears of his groundlings. The whole thing was a roar
ing farce, and well sustained the reputation of the show.
There was also the usual spice of blasphemy. Before
Bramwell Booth marched on to the platform a board was
held up bearing the inscription “ Behold the bridegroom
cometh.” These mountebanks have no reverence even for
what they call sacred. They make everything dance to
their tune. They prostitute “ God’s Word,” caricature
Jesus Christ, and burlesque all the watchwords and symbols
of their creed.
One of Booth’s remarks after the splicing was finished is
full of suggestion. He said that his enemies might cavil,
but he had found out a road to fortune in this world and
the next. Well, the Lord only knows how he will fare in
the next world, but in this world the pious showman has
certainly gained a big success. He can neither write nor
preach, and as for singing, a half a dozen notes from his
brazen throat would empty the place as easily as a cry of
“ Fire.” But he is a dexterous manager ; he knows how to
work the oracle ; he understands catering for the mob ; in
short, he is a very clever showman, who deals in religion
just as other showmen deal in wild animals, giants, dwarfs,
two-headed sheep, fat women, and Siamese twins.
Fortune has brought to our hands a copy of a private
circular issued by “ Commissioner ” Railton, soliciting
wedding presents for Mr. Bramwell Booth. With the
exception of Reuben May’s begging letters, it is the finest
cadging document we ever saw. Booth was evidently
ashamed to sign it himself, so it bears the name of Railton.
But the pious showman cannot disown the responsibility
�110
A PIOUS SHOWMAN.
for it. He will not allow the officers of the Army to marry
without his sanction ; he forbids them to accept any private
present; he keeps a sharp eye on every detail of the
organisation. Surely, then, he will not have the face to
say that he knew nothing of Railton’s circular. He has
face enough for almost anything, but hardly for this.
There is one damning fact which he cannot shirk. Railton
asks that all contributions shall be made “ pavable to
William Booth, as usual.”
Railton spreads the butter pretty freely on Booth and
his family. He says that their devotion to the Army has
“ loaded them with care, and often made them suffer weak
ness and pain.” As to Mr. Bramwell Booth, in particular,
we are informed that he has worked so hard behind the
scenes, as Chief of the Staff, that many of his hairs are
grey at twenty-seven. Poor Bramwell ! The Army should
present him with a dozen bottles of hair restorer. Perhaps
his young wife will renew his raven head by imitating the
lady in the fable, and pulling out all the grey hairs.
In order to compensate this noble family in some degree
for their marvellous devotion to the great cause, Railton
proposes that wedding presents in the shape of cash should
be made to Mr. Bramwell Booth on the day of his marriage.
Whatever money is received will go, not to the young
gentleman personally, but to reducing the Army debt of
¿£11,000. But as the Army property is all in Booth’s
hands, and Mr. Bramwell is his hair and successor, it is
obvious that any reduction of the debt will be so much clear
gain to the firm.
The General evidently saw that the case was a delicate
one; so Railton sends out a private circular, which he
excuses on the ground that “ any public appeal would not
be at all agreeable to Mr. Bramwell’s own feelings.” Of
course not. But we dare say the wedding presents will
be agreeable enough. As this is a strong point with the
firm, Railton repeats it later on. “ I do not wish ” he
says, “ to make any public announcement of this.” ’ The
reason of this secrecy is doubtless the same as that which
prompts the General to exclude reporters and interlopers
from his all-night meetings. Only the initiated are allowed
in, and they of course may be safely trusted.
With the circular Railton sent out envelopes in which
�A PIOUS SHOWMAN.
Ill
the pious dupes were to forward their contributions ; and
printed slips, headed “ Wedding Presents to Mr. Bramwell
Booth,” on which they were asked to specify the amount
of their gift and the sin from which the Salvation Army
had rescued them. This printed slip contains a list of sins,
which would do credit to a Jesuit confessor. Booth has
we think missed his vocation. He might have achieved
real distinction in the army of Ignatius Loyola.
The circular is a wonderful mixture of piety and business.
Nearly every sentence contains a little of both. The cash
will not only gladden the hearts of the Booths, but
“ make the devil tremble,” and “ give earth and hell
another shock.” This last bit of extravagance is rather
puzzling. That hell should receive another shock is very
proper, but why is there to be an earthquake at the same
time ?
We have said enough to show the true character of this
cadging trick. It throws a strong light on the business
methods of this pious showman. Booth is playing a very
astute game. By reducing the Army to military discipline,
a’ld constituting himself its General, he retains an absolute
confoand over its resources, and is able to crush out all
opposition and silence all criticism. He wields a more
man Papal despotism. All the higher posts are held by
members of his own family. His eldest son is appointed
as his successor. The property thus remains in the family,
and the Booth, dynasty is established on a solid foundation.
Such an impudent imposture would scarcely be credible if
it were not patent that there is still amongst us a vast mul
titude of two-legged sheep, who are ready to follow any
plausible shepherd, and to yield up their fleeces to his
shears.
�LONDON:
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY H. A. KEMP.
28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Arrows of freethought
Creator
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Foote, G. W. (George William) [1850-1915]
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 111 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Inscription in ink on title page: "To J.M. Wheeler, from his old friend, The Author, Nov. 18th 1882". Articles previously published in the Secularist, the Liberal, the National Reformer, and the Freethinker.
Contents: Religion And Progress; A Defence Of Thomas Paine; The Gospel Of Freethought; Freethought In Current Literature; Dean Stanley's Latest; God And The Queen; Cardinal Newman On Infidelity; Sunday Tyranny; Who Are The Blasphemers?; The Birth Of Christ; The Reign Of Christ; The Primate On Modern Infidelity; Baiting A Bishop; Professor Flint On Atheism; A Hidden God; General Joshua; Going To Hell; Christmas Eve In Heaven; Professor Blackie On Atheism; Salvationism; A Pious Showman.
Publisher
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H. A. Kemp
Date
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1882
Identifier
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N222
Subject
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Free thought
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Arrows of freethought), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Atheism
blasphemers
Free Thought
NSS