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INAUGURAL DISCOURSE
AT
ST. GEORGE’S HALL,
ON SUNDAY, 1st OCTOBER, 1871.
BY
REV. CHARLES VOYSEY, B.A.,
ST. EDMUND HALL, OXFORD, LATE VICAR OF HEALAUGH.
LONDON:
To be obtained of the Author at
ST. GEORGE’S HALL.
1871.
Price Fourpence.
��SERMON.
c< Let us not be weary in well-doing; for in due season
roe shall reap if we faint not.”
Q&LKTlkKS
vi. 9.
I have chosen this text as a motto on this very
interesting occasion of our assembling here to-day,
rather than as a special subject of our meditation.
It would be unnecessary, and even unprofitable, to
occupy our thoughts with an essay on the duty of
perseverance, or with a string of common-places
about success being the reward of patient and
well-sustained exertion. We are too much men of
the world not to know by experience that if we wish
to succeed in our present undertaking, we must
bring to bear upon it our best and wisest thought—
our undaunted courage under, apparent failure—and
our most patient and self-denying exertions.
It seems more fitting to the circumstances of the
hour that we should begin our work with a brief and
comprehensive review of what we have undertaken
�4
to do, so as to get, if possible, in plain words, a
definite statement of the objects which have drawn,
and are still drawing, together from all parts of the
world so important an organization as that which
we profess to represent.
Our first work—that indeed which has been the
key note of this organization — is to undermine,
assail, and, if possible, to destroy that part of the
prevailing religious belief which we deem to be false.
We make no secret of our antagonism. We
frankly state our denials, and are ready to give our
reasons for the denial of any doctrine which we de
nounce. We are in open warfare against much of
what goes by the name of Christianity. We repu
diate at the outset the tacit or avowed assumptions
which are almost universally accepted as the basis
of religious belief.
To be more explicit, we deny the doctrines of the
fall of man from original righteousness; of the curse
of God against our race, and of his supposed sen
tence of any of his creatures to everlasting woe;
therefore we deny not merely the doctrine of the
atonement, but the necessity for any method what
ever of appeasing the imaginary wrath of God. For
every one of these doctrines involves a flaw in the
moral perfection of God, and violates our instinctive
perception of His goodness. The fall of man, e.g.,
involves an admission that God was either unable or
unwilling to keep His creature as good as He had at
first made him ; and that, contrary to the conclusions
of science, God’s work is not progressive, that the
�5
first man was a paragon of perfection, instead of
being in the lowest rank of savages. The doctrine
of God’s curse against our race in consequence of
the first man’s sin involves a still greater blemish on
the moral perfection of God; it is contrary to all
sense of justice that one man should be an object of
wrath in consequence of another man’s sin, much
more that a whole world of countless millions should
be deemed accursed and sentenced to everlasting
perdition through the sole faults of their first parents.
This doctrine we discard, because it is morally de
grading to God. For the same reason, only with
immeasurably greater indignation, we reject the
doctrine that God withdrew the curse and sentence
from the heads of a few of our race in consequence
of the death of Jesus, by which, orthodoxy tells us,
the Father was reconciled to men. The remedy was
worse than the disease. The compromise more dis
honourable than the injustice which it was intended
to amend. These are only a few, but they are the
most prominent of the doctrines which nearly all socalled Christians deem to be essential; and our first
work, I say, is to hasten their coming downfall—to
rid the world of ideas which, though once were good
and useful in comparison with the ideas which they
supplanted, have now become both poisonous and
loathsome—full of injury to the human heart and
mind, and blasphemous in the ears of the most
High.
Gathering round these abjured doctrines are others
of only less noxious character, such as the belief in
�6
a Devil, the doctrine of the Trinity, the Godhead,
and even the superhuman Divinity of Jesus Christ—
the expectation of His return to earth as the Judge
and King of men—the doctrine of the Church as a
spiritual and authoritative power—the doctrines of
sacraments, of holy orders, of priestly interference
and control in every shape, and of the necessity for
priestly intervention at the burial of the dead. All
these topics are suggestive of many protests, which
it will be our duty to make.
There is one, however, which I have not yet men
tioned, reserving it for a paragraph by itself. We
shall be met at the onset of our attack by the
warning, that we have no right to form about any
of God’s dealings an opinion which may be con
trary to the revealed religion contained in the
Bible, or in the Church, or in both. This is
where the conflict will be hottest. We must bring
all our forces to bear against this insidious and
plausible plea. We shall have not merely to defend
our own right to use the Light of Nature within us,
but to show up the weak points in our enemies’
armour—to challenge them to a defence of those
glaring immoralities and absurdities in the Bible, or
in the £‘ revealed ” religion, which none of them as yet
have had the courage to defend—to exhibit also un
sparingly the numberless fallacies which abound in
their theories of a Church, and to make them show
cause why any claimant for our obedience should be
accepted more than his rivals. We must repeat and
repeat the fact, that so-called revelations abound in
�7
all the earth, each one being believed by its ad
herents to be the only true one; and that Chris
tendom itself is divided piecemeal into separate and
antagonistic Churches, each of which in turn is, of
course, the only true Church.
To the world outside, who may watch the struggle,
we may appeal with confidence, knowing that all the
Churches, all the priests, all the Bibles, and all the
Catechisms, have never yet been able to quench the
spark of Divine justice, and love of truth, which the
Almighty God has kindled in the human breast.
The time will come when, if our orthodox opponents
shall have succeeded in proving that the Bible or
the Church teach authoritatively doctrines against
which the mind and ■ heart and conscience of men
rebel, men will make answer—“ So much the worse
for the Church—so much the worse for the Bible;”
and what is bad in both will be cast away to the
moles and to the bats—to the dust and darkness
appointed for all falsehood.
To pave the way for even this preliminary work of
necessary destruction, we must first of all persuade
the timorous to enter upon the work of religious
enquiry without any dread of being punished for
honest conviction. The Churches hold all their
power at this moment through the superstitious fears
of men and women. From first to last the cry is,
“Flee from the wrath to come,” “Believe this, and
thou shalt be saved and as nothing is so catching
as fear, the multitude run hither and thither, to seek
shelter from impending doom.
�A great part of our work, then, must be to pro
claim the perfect safety of the path of enquiry. To
tell men and women that even if they go wrong in
opinion, even if they miss much precious truth and
embrace much mischievous error, the Lord of all will
not damn them for it for ever. The Father’s love
will not shrivel up or grow cold because, in our
blindness or twilight, we have missed the path of
truth, or made but slow progress therein. We must
teach them that, wrong or right, they are equally safe
from the absurd horrors which have hitherto scared
them; and that all the ill-consequences of error which
Divine goodness has ordained, are only ordained to
teach us to correct our mistakes, and to improve our
method of search after His truth. 1 sometimes fear
that—as regards this country at all events—most of
us will not live to see the false doctrines of Christianity
utterly rooted out, but we may well hope to have set
free our countrymen in a few short years from this
insane and ridiculous fear of damnation as the penalty
for error in opinion. We can do nothing with the
religious masses till we have set them free to think
without trembling at every step. Let us do this with
all our might, and let us not be weary in this piece
of well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we
faint not.
But our work does not rest here. I believe I am
only echoing the thoughts of every heart which has
sympathised with us, when I say we should be both
distressed and ashamed if all our work were only
destructive, if all our energies were to be exhausted
�9
in pulling down even false belief and only in under
mining erroneous doctrine. So far from that, we
only pull down that we may build up, we only de
sire to eradicate false beliefs that we may be able to
plant true beliefs in their place. Though I am only
an insignificant unit in the great brotherhood of free
thinkers and enemies of orthodoxy, I may point with
an honest pride to those published works for which
I have been expelled from my benefice, and ask, Are
not those writings full of positive beliefs ? Can you
find a sermon amongst them all which does not pro
claim as much my anxiety that we should believe and
teach what is true, as that we should give up and de
nounce what is false ? Had this not been so, I
should certainly not deserve to stand here to-day as
the mouthpiece of so many earnest and devout men.
But we must be prepared for every form of reproach
and every degree of misrepresentation. When
people can deliberately say of a man, “ He is only a
Theist,” assuming that, in their own minds, and in
that of their hearers, contempt need go no further,
it proves that they know nothing whatever of Theism
and that they have never taken the pains even to
ascertain what we really believe, or why we believe
it; still less why we should have willingly suffered
for it.
It will be our chief duty and our highest delight
to proclaim our real convictions — to contrast our
own faith with the faith we have so gladly aban
doned, and to try to teach those who may be halting
between two opinions, and others who may have
�10
no faith at all, to embrace the views which our own
hearts, as God made them, have taught us to ap
prove.
It will delight us to tell how we have learnt to
call God our Father—to trust Him unseen—to look
to Him for guidance in difficulty, and for strength in
duty—to feel that He is about our path and about
our bed, near to us at every moment of our lives,
ready to give all the light and knowledge which our
narrow souls can receive—to console us under every
disappointment and sorrow—and to give us hope
when everything else is gone. It will be our joy to
show that this faith in our Father is the natural
outcome of the possession and exercise of loving
virtues; that—if there be a God at all—He must
for ever be above, and never below, the moral beauty
of the best of His creatures; that as we grow in
friendliness, and brotherliness, and fatherliness to
our fellow-men, we learn more and more of the ex
ceeding and unspeakable love of God ; that we give
to Him the best name we know to-day, ready to ex
change it for a better and truer one on the morrow,
if human life and its relations rise higher still.
Contrasting this with the miserable narrow estimate
of God’s love as given us in Christianity, we gladly
proclaim that all that God is to ourselves, He is also
that to every one of our fellow-men. He has no
favourites, and the best and happiest one amongst us
all, in this world or in the world to come, is only the
type of what every other soul shall be when his turn
come. Meeting with the objection against His love,
�11
drawn from the sufferings and moral degradation of
many of our race, we can either explain it by
thoughtful reference to pains and sins we have our
selves once experienced, and found them to be preg
nant with eternal blessing, or we take refuge in the
thought that our goodness—small as it is—would
not allow us to inflict one grain of pain or shame
without a purpose of lasting good, nor to withhold
any amount of painful discipline that was necessary
to secure the ultimate happiness and virtue of the
individual exposed to it; and then we ask ourselves,
“ Shall mortal man be more just than God ? Shall
the creature be more loving than the Creator ?”
We shall have to confront those who believe too
little as well as those who believe too much. We
know that if an unspoken Atheism be rife in this
land, it must be laid at the door of those who painted
man worse than a worm, and God blacker than a
fiend.
The creed of Christendom is the cradle—nay, the
mother of Atheism ; and the Churches may thank
themselves for degrading not only the name and work
of Jesus—one of the world’s best men—but also the
principles of mankind and the honour of God. If
we would do any successful work amongst those who
are exiles from the regions of faith, we must come to
them to learn, not to teach—to learn every bit of
truth and duty which they have valued, while, per
haps, we have under-valued it. We must come to
them, honouring them for their protest against a foul
caricature of the Most High and His dealings, and
�12
only desiring to impart to them what is so precious
to ourselves by the legitimate process of argument,
and the still more efficient agency of a well-ordered
example. If they make their just boast that they
are all for mankind—to raise their kindred and their
race, to un-loose the heavy burdens, to let the op
pressed go free, and to break every yoke—let us
meet them, at all events, on their own ground as
brothers of humanity, and as setting the highest
possible value on services rendered to man as the
only true service acceptable to God.
Amongst the beliefs which it will be our duty to
proclaim, stands next in order our hope for the life to
come. We do not dogmatise on this or on any other
point, but it will devolve upon us to multiply and
strengthen all the evidences on which our hopes are
based. We all feel that our future life is bound up in
the very existence of God; the two must stand or fall
together; and while we are careful never to allow our
hopes and longings for immortal bliss to clog our foot
steps in the path of duty upon earth; while we are
most scrupulous to avoid turning it into a bribe for
the performance of duties which are their own reward,
we should do all in our power to deepen the roots of
our belief in the world to come, as the only solace
under the bitter pangs of bereavement, and as a
wholesome stimulus to our efforts after holiness,
which can never be adequately satisfied in the world
below.
To all this, which we may call our public work,
we must add the far more important business of
�131
cultivating in our lives the spirit of truth, integrity,
purity, and brotherly love. In our own homes, and
in the pursuit of our daily toil, we must find the
great field of self-culture and discipline, without
which all our public exertions in the service of truth
and liberty will be thrown away. If we find our
honour growing more sensitive, our thoughts more
elevated, our speech more refined and exact, our
tempers more placid and enduring, our consciences
more tender, and our affections more wide and deep,
we shall find, also, that our public and social influence for good will grow at the same time, and men
will learn to love us in spite of our creed, and will
pardon us for spurning their own. And above all,
if, in our desire to know more of God, and to be
convinced of His goodness, where we only doubted
before, we seem only to become more confused, more
bewildered by the strife of tongues, our only chance
of rest, and peace, and joy in believing, will be found
in our own efforts to be good and to do good. There
is no other avenue to the Throne of God’s majesty
on high; no other means of rending the veil which
hides the glory of His love, but what is to be found
in the goodness of each man’s own heart. “ Blessed
are the pure in heart for they only shall see God.”
Time would fail me were I to attempt to enume
rate the many collateral duties which will belong to
us as an association. We must only resolve to meet
them as they arise, in the same sincerity, and with
the same activity, as that in which we desire to
regulate our lives.
�141
Of the service in which we have all united to-day,
it becomes me not to speak but in terms of humility
and hope. It has been prepared in distressing haste.
At best it is only an experiment, and time alone will
enable us to test its value and to correct its faults.
I only ask you—and that with perfect confidence—
for your patient trial of it.
One word more upon my text and I have done.
“Let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due
season we shall reap if we faint not.”
For my own part, I have taken up my share in this
great work without any sanguine expectation of my
own success. But I mean to work at it body and
soul, day and night, if need be, in spite of any
amount of opposition and discouragement. I do not
mean to let it go till I am beaten off it, as it were,
lifeless. As long as I have a voice left me, it shall
be raised to magnify the loving kindness of the Lord,
and to speak good of His name. No terror shall
shut my lips—no bribes shall tamper with the utter
ance of my heart’s thoughts. So help me God ! But
in saying this for myself, I know I am speaking for
the thousands who have hitherto supported me, and
for those who are gathered here to-day. If we fight
shoulder to shoulder, turning neither to the right
hand nor to the left, we shall in time disarm all
opposition, win over to our ranks the wavering and
fashion-fearing multitude, and plant our banner of
truth, and liberty, and love, where no foe can reach
it. Thank God, the cause to which we have pledged
ourselves is not our cause only but His—does not
�15
depend on my life or fidelity, or feeble powers—no,
nor on all of us put together——it must prevail in the
end, conquering every obstacle, and rising over every
wave of seeming failure, because it is devoted, first
to God’s truth, then to God’s honour, and last, but
not least, to the true welfare of man. u Our help
standeth in the name of the Lord who hath made
heaven and earth I ”
��
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Inaugural discourse at St. George's Hall, on Sunday 1st October, 1871
Creator
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Voysey, Charles
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Text of sermon from Galatians vi. 9 "Let us not be weary in well-doing; for in due season we shall reap if we faint not".
Publisher
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[The author]
Date
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1871
Identifier
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G5371
Subject
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Sermons
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Inaugural discourse at St. George's Hall, on Sunday 1st October, 1871), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Conway Tracts
Sermons