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LAUREATE DESPAIR
A DISCOURSE GIVEN AT
SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL
DECEMBER nth 1SS1.
BY
Moncure D. Conway, M.A.
LONDON
II, SOUTH PLACE FINSBURY.
PRICE
TWOPENCE.
�FREDERICK G. HICKSON & Co.
257,
High Holborn,
London, W.c.
�LAUREATE DESPAIR.
T ET me say at once that I am glad the Poet Laureate
J—4 has written the poem called “ Despair/’ which I
propose to criticise. It is a cry out of the heart of an
earnest man; it utters the sorrow with which many
people in our time see their old dreams fading, and no
new ones rising in their place; and it reminds free
thinkers that theirs is a heavy responsibility and duty.
They have to meet and respond to that need and pain
■which thousands feel where one can give it expression.
Men of science and philosophers do not always under
stand this. The most eminent of them are pursuing
ndeals far more beautiful to them than those that have set.
They have special knowledge, or special aims, which
Kindle into pillars of fire before their enthusiasm, and can
Inot see how to those of other studies and pursuits their
guiding splendour is a pillar of smoke rising from a fair
world slowly consumed. The 'man of science, hourly
joccupied with discoveries which blaze upon him, star by
fetar, till his reason is as a vault sown with eternal lights,
feels that he is in the presence of conceptions beside
Which the visions of Dante and Milton are frescoes of a
�( 4 )
in his eye a latter-day glory of which history is the pro
phecy and developed man the fulfilment. Such enthu
siasms imply continual studies, occupations, duties, which,
leave little room for attention to the shadows these lights
cast upon the old world of dreams—each shadow a dogma
or its phantom. Nevertheless, that world of dreams,,
shades, phantoms, is still real to many. It is real not
only to the ignorant, whom it terrifies, and to the selfish,
whose power rests on it, but to spiritual invalids, whoneed sympathy. And, beyond this reality, the phantasmson which religion and society were'lfounded possess a
quasi-reality even for robust minds. You may recall the
saying of Madame de Stael, that “ she did not believe in
ghosts, but was afraid of them.” After dogmas are dead
their ghosts walk the earth; and even some who no
longer believe in the ghosts are still afraid of them.
When their intellects are no longer haunted their nerves
are.
There are others, again, for whose vision’or nerves the
pleasant dogmas alone survive in this attenuated, ghostly
form. They no longer believe in the ghosts, but still love
them. Of this class is the literary artist. To the pictorial
artist a ruin is more picturesque than the most comfort
able dwelling. ’Tis said of an eminent art-critic that,
being invited to visit America, he replied that he could
not think of visiting a country where'there were no ruins.
Alfred Tennyson is the consummate artist in poetry. We
all know with what tender sentiment Tennyson has
�( 5
)
■' painted the scenery of Arthur’s time, with what felicity
described many other reliques of human antiquity.
“ His eye will not look upon a bad colour.” He sees
■'® the mouldering ruins in their picturesque aspects, leaving
lout of sight the noxious weeds and vermin that infest
Anthem. Where these loathsome things appear no man
more recoils from them. If the White Ladies of Superstition haunt them, these he admires ; but he impales the
gnomes and vampyres.
j In this, his latest poem, “ Despair,” he shows a childlike
lil simplicity of desire to retain all the pleasant and reject all
-f| the unpleasant consequences of the same principles. His
Jl attitude is indeed kindlier to the agnostic than to the
-J orthodox ; for the first he has lamentation, for the other
His denunciation of orthodoxy is bitter. The
Tf anathema.
r poem is the supposed utterance of a man to his former
ffi ■ minister. “ A man and his wife, having lost faith in God
u and hope of a life to come, and being utterly miserable in
this, resolve to end themselves by drowning. The woman
is drowned, but the man is saved by the minister of the
sect he had attended.” He has no gratitude for the
rf! minister who rescued him, only a curse, attributing to him
[fi the first cause of the hopeless horrors amid which the two
01 found themselves.
He tells the minister they broke away
111 from Christ because Christ seemed to speak of hell, and
331 so they passed from a cheerless night to a drearier day—
rt from horrible belief to total unbelief.
Where you bawl'd the dark side of your faith, and a God of
eternal rage
�( 6
)
Till you flung us back on ourselves, and the human heart, and
the Age.
But pity that Pagan held it a vice—was in her and in me,
Helpless, taking the place of the pitying God that should be I
Pity for all that aches in the grasp of an idiot power,
And pity for our own selves on an earth that bore not a
flower.
Again he says :
Were there a God, as you say,
His Love would have power over hell till it utterly vanish’d
away.
Ah, yet—I have had some glimmer at times, in my gloomiest
woe,
Of a God behind all—after all—the Great God, for aught that
I know :
But the God of Love and of Hell together-they cannot;be™ Jhou?ht: ,
It there be such a God, may the Great God curse him and
bring him to nought!
This is what the Poet Laureate thinks of the God of every
creed in Christendom, for every creed maintains an
eternal hell.
But the agnostic, the know-nothing sceptic, is summoned
to bear his share in this tragedy of hopelessness and
suicide, fl he poet does not suggest that disbelief in a
future life or in a Deity would alone lead to suicide. In
his imaginary case unbelief is only a factor. The man
and wife were in terrible trouble. One of their two sons
had died ; the eldest had fled after committing forgery on
his own father, bringing him to ruin. It is under such
fearful circumstances that, without faith or hope, they sink
into despair. The man says :
Why should we bear with an hour of torture, a moment of
pain,
If every man die for ever, if all his griefs are in vain,
�( 7 )
And the homeless planet at length will be wheeled thro’ the
silence of space,
Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race ?
*
*
*
*
*
*
For these are the new dark ages, you see, of the popular press,
When the bat comes out of his cave, and the owls are
whooping at noon,
And Doubt is the lord of this dunghill, and crows to the sun
and moon,
Till the Sun and Moon of our science are both of them turned
to blood,
And Hope will have broken her heart, running after a shadow
of good.
It is a striking fact, in our sceptical age, that such
lamentations as these are not heard from among the poor
and the drudges of society. They who are asking whether
life be worth living without the old faith in immortality,
and they who say it is not, are persons of position and
wealth. Any one who has taken the pains to observe the
crowds of working people who attend the lectures of
secularists, or to read their journals, will know they are
cheery enough. We never hear any of them bemoaning
the vanished faith. In truth the more important fact is
not that the belief in immortality is gone, or the belief in
Deity, but that belief in a desirable immortality and a
desirable Deity has gone out of the hearts of many. In
one of his humourous pieces Lucian, describing his ima
ginary journey through Hades, says he could recognise
those who had been kings or rich people on earth by theii
loud lamentations. They had parted with so much.
Those who on earth had been poor and wretched were
quiet enough. "We may observe similai phenomena in
�( 8 )
this psychological Hades, or realm of the Unseen and
Unknown, into which modern thought has entered. Those
to whom God has allotted palaces, plenty, culture, beauty,
can eas ly believe Him a God of Love ,• and it were to
them heaven enough to wake from the grave to a continu
ance of the same. But they who have known hunger,
cold, drudgery, ignorance, have no such reason to say
God is Love. Such may naturally say, “ If we have
waked up in this world in dens of misery, why, under the
same providence, may we not wake up to a future of
misery ?” The old creeds met that difficulty. They
showed a miraculous revelation on the subject, by which
God had established an insurance against future misery,
an assurance of future luxury. It was all to be super
natural. By miraculous might poverty was to be changed
to wealth, the hovel to a palace, rags to fine raiment,
ignorance to knowledge, folly to wisdom, and scarlet sin
to snow-pure virtue. Without such tremendous trans
formations the masses of the miserable could have no
interest in immortality. But gradually the comfortable
scholarship and theology of our time, in trying to prove a
God of nature, have done away with the God of super
nature. Their deity of design is loaded with all the bad
designs under which men suffer. Fifty years ago Carlyle
groaned because he could not believe in a Devil any more.
Philosophy had reasoned a Devil out of existence. The
result was to make the remaining power responsible for
all the evils in the world, and ultimately bling him into
�( 9
X
J loubt and disgrace too. Dismssing the Devil out of faith
alias not dismissed evil, the mad work of earthquake, hurriiAane and fire. As we think of the shores with their wrecks,
$.s we think of those people in Vienna gathered around the
^harre 1 remains of their families and friends, must we not
z.iisk if this is providential work what would be diabolical
oivork ? Reason says to Theology, “ At least you can be
QKilent, and not malign the spirit of good within us by
z'asking us to call that without good which we know to be
JIDad ! ”
. .
P| Similarly theologians in trying to rationalise the idea of
S
They have tacked it on
1®immortality have naturalised it.
;o evolution. But what the miserable suffer by is evolu
tion : unless they can be assured of a supernatural change,
pf a heaven, they do not want to be evolved any more.
. Only a miraculous revelation could promise them that
ijBniraculous heaven; and the. only alleged revelation is
. Rejected by the culture and the charity of our age. It is
n&enied by Culture, because it reveals some impossibilities ;
Xy Charity, because it reveals a God capable of torturing
Q|Deople more than they are tortured here. What are eight
.lihundred people burned swiftly in a theatre compared to
ijlnillions burning in hell for ages, if not for ever, as Revelaidkon declares ? Our ?oet Laureate is a man of both
iXulture and charity ; he cannot sing pf a revelation which
^Includes Hell, however he may cling to hopes that came
Xy the sanae revelation, or mourn at thought of pai ting
icKrom a world so fair.
�(
10 )
Candour compels us to admit that there is as yet no
certainty of a future life for the individual consciousness.
The surviving seed of the human organism if it exist has
not been discovered. There is nothing unnatural in the
theory. It would not be more miraculous to find our
selves in another world than to find ourselves in this. If
two atoms of the primeval nebula, thrown together, had
been for one instant capable of speculation, how little
could they have imagined a company of men and women
gathered to meditate on life and eternity 1 All this is
very marvellous if we conceive it contemplated from a
point of non-existence. For all we know there are more
marvels beyond.
But suppose there are none ; suppose death be the end
of us; is there any reason for despair ? Even for the
man and woman on whom life had brought dire
calamities, was there any reason for suicide ? Just the
reverse, I should say. Belief that this life was all were
reason for making the most of it. Belief that their ruin
would not be repaired hereafter were reason for trying torepair it here, as well as they could. Has Tennyson
evolved his man and woman out of his inner con
sciousness ? It is doubtful if in the annals of freethought
such a case can be pointed out; though many instances
may be shown where believers in a future world slew
themselves to get there. Suicide was a mania in some
old convents until the church fixed its ' canon 'gainst self
slaughter.’
�(
II
)
• However, it may be that instances ofthe kind Tennyson
■describes may occur. We are but on the threshold ofthe
age when men are to live and work without certainty
of future rewards and payments. The doubts now in the
head must presently reach the heart, then influence the
hand ; if people have built their houses on the sand of
mythology, and they fall, it may be that some will not
have the heart to begin new buildings on the rock.
What then ? It will be only the continuation of the old
law—survival of the fittest. Suicides at least do not live
to increase their race. Only those tend to prevail in
nature who can 'adapt themselves to the conditions ofnature. If nature has arrived at a period of culture when
•supernaturalism passes out of the human faith, then they
"who sink into despair or death, on that account, show
themselves no longer adapted to nature. There will be a
■survival of those more adapted to the new ideas ; who
prefer them ; who do not aspire to live for ever, but have
.a heart for any fate, and a religion whose forces and joys
are concentrated in the life that now is. If natuie and
humanity need such a race for their furtherance, such a
race will be produced ; and they will read poems like
this “ Despair,” with a curiosity mixed with compassion,
wondering how their ancestors could have been troubled,
about such a matter.
. Something like this has occurred in the past in several
instances.
While Christians find fullest expression of
their joyful emotions in the psalmody and prophecy ofthe
�(
I2
)
Hebrews they often forget that those glowing hymns say
no word about a future life. There is no clear affirmation
of immortality in the Old Testament, but much to the
contrary.
Buddhism also, which has awakened the
enthusiasm of a third of a human race, arose as a protest
against theism and immortality. In such instances therewould appear to have been reactions against previous,
theologies, which had so absorbed mankind in metaphysics
and' speculations about the future as to belittle this life and
cause neglect of this world. Despised and degraded nature
avenged this wrong by making asceticism its own
destruction, and worldliness a source of strength and
*
survival.
Some such Nemesis seems to be following
the extreme other-worldliness which, for so many Christian
centuries, has bestowed the fruits of human toil upon
supposed supernatural interests. This earthward swing of
the slow pendulum of faith is not likely to be arrested
until religion has been thoroughly humanised. As a
brave clergyman (Rev. Harry Jones) warned the Church
Congress at York, the Church will never conquer
Secularism, except by doing more for mankind than
Secularism does.
We must almost remember that no oscillations of the
pendulum between theology and humanity, no reactions,
determine the question. As Old Testament Secularism
* As it is said in Ecclesiasticus : “ He has also, set worldli
ness in their heart, which man cannot understand the works
that God does, from beginning to end.”—Dr. Kalisch’s
Translation.
�s
i:
fi
r
'I
followed Egyptian Mysticism, Talmudic visions of heaven
succeeded. Every ebb alternates with a flow in the tides
of human feeling; and these tides are the generations which
nature successively creates to fufil successive conditions,
and to find their joy in such fufilment, whatever be the
despair of the ebbing at faith of the flowing tide.
| But, no doubt, these rising and falling ages of speculation
:j and religion will show calmer and happier phenomena in
h] the future than in the past. There are traces in the earth
'>j of tremendous operations in the past, which geology
was unable to account for by any forces now acting,
i| until Astronomy discovered that the Moon had been
steadily receding from the earth, its mother. The moon
is now 240,000 miles away, but is proved to have b^en
o once only 40,000 miles distant. At that period the tides
were to the tides of our time as 216 to 1. This country
r 4 and many others must then have been flooded with every
if tide, and the enormous geologic results are now understood. There would appear to be some correspondence in
id all this with mental and moral phenomena. In religious
‘31 geology also there are traces of convulsions and huge
511 formations which it has been difficult to account for,—
at mighty religious wars, massacres, whole races committing
I?) slow suicide for the sake of their Gods. Comparative.
studies now show that the lunar theology was much nearer
of to mankind then than now, and the tides more furious.
T1 The extraneous influence is withdrawing more and more.
Where theologians used to burn each other they now fight
o| combats with pens. Where heretics were massacred they
�(
U )
are now only visited with dislike. Instead of crusades,,
with Richard and Saladin, we have young poets singing
on the crest of a sparkling tide, and their elder, from
refluent waves, murmuring rhythmic Despair. There isa vast difference between the emotions awakened
by belief in a deity near at hand, pressing down upon the
life, and those awakened by a hypothetical deity of
philosophy or ethics. When men attributed their every
hourly hap, good or bad, to the personal favour or to the
anger of their deity, their feeling at any supposed affront
to their deity, mingled with selfishness and terror, rose to
a pitch very different from any now known when few
men refer any event to supernatural intervention. Yet
do the great movements of the universe go on, the cycles
and the periods fufil themselves, the planets roll on new
orbits with changed revolutions; and, whatever be the
corresponding changes in human opinion, they cannot alter
the eternal fact.
If immortality be the law of the universe, it will be
reached by believers and disbelievers alike. But, could
the world be made absolutely certain of it beforehand, by
the only means of certainty—scientific proof—what were
the advantage ? It would no longer be a miraculous thing
promising all a leap from earthly sorrow to heavenly
bliss, but merely a law of nature—mere continuance—the
millions rising from their graves to go on with existence,
just as they will rise from their beds to-morrow. There
would be no further note of despair from the Laureates ;
but how would it be with the general world ? One of the
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most powerful poems of our time has been written by a.
French lady, Louise Ackermann. It is entitled “LesMalheueux”—the Unhappy. The last day has come ; the
trumpet has sounded. A great angel descends ; uncovers
all the graves of the dead, and bids them come forth for
everlasting life. Some eagerly come forth, but a large
number refuse. To the divine command that they shall
emerge, their voice is heard in one utterance. They tell
him they have had enough of life in His creation ; they
have passed through thorns, and over flinty paths—from
agony to agony. To such an existence He called them—
they suffered it; and now they will forgive Him only if
He will let them rest, and forget that they have lived,
Such is the despair with which one half of the world
might answer the joy of the other should a mere natural
immortality be proved.
A great deal of the poetry of the world has invested
with glory man’s visions of heaven and heavenly beings.
The very greatest poets have invested nature and theearth with glory, and set the pulses of the human heart
to music. This has been the greatness of Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe. But the majority have given the world
visions of heaven, divine dramas, and hymns of immortality ; and it is these that have been taught to earth’s
millions in their infancy. These happy hymns have for
ages soothed sorrowing hearts, and helped the masses of
mankind to bear the burthens of life—this not only in
Christendom, but in so-called Pagan lands and ages..
These have been as the songs of Israfel in Eastern faith.
�They said a sweet singer among the angels left heaven to
go forth over the suffering world and soothe mortals with
his heavenly lyre and his hymns, until all were able to
Tear the griefs of life because of the joys beyond,
rehearsed by Israfel. But once—while this angel was
^singing with his celestial seven-stringed lyre—one string
of it snapped. No one could be found to mend the string
-or supply its place; and, every time Israfel tried to make
music, it was all jangling discords, through that broken
■string. So Israfel took his flight, and never returned to
the world. The tale sounds like a foreboding of what has
in these last days befallen the sacred poetry which so long
made the world forget its griefs. The lyre of Israfel is
the human heart, and the snapped string is its faith in a
supernatural heaven. It has been snapped by the
development of nature ; it therefore cannot be restored
unless by a further development: and so Sacred Poetry
has taken its flight from the world—its last great song
being of a Paradise Lost. In other words, the hope of
immortality has ceased to have power to soothe and
uplift those who most needed it, because the recognized
reign of law forbids belief that such life—should it come
—would be very different from the life that uow is.
■»
But there is another story of a broken string, with a
•different ending. It comes from Greece (Browning
has finely told it in The Two Poets of Croisic), the land
of Art and of the Beauty that adorns the earth. It is of
a bard who came with his lyre to sing for a prize. He
•came with other competitors before the solemn judges.
�The others had all sung their poems ; now came our youth,
with his. His theme rose high and higher, till at length
he came to the great theme of his song—Love. Just then,
he felt beneath his finger that one string of his lyre had
snapt, a string that presently must do its part, or else his
song be put to shame. On, on, his strain went, as if to
its death ; but just as he drew near his note’ of Despair,
lo, a cricket chirped loud, chimed in with just that needed
note ! Saved, he went on, and ever as he returned to this
broken string the cricket duly made good the snapt string,
and thus the judges missed no note of the music, which
won the crown. On the poet’s statue was carved the
cricket which contributed from the lowly hearth the
needed note in that hymn of Love, when the old string
had broken. That tale too, I doubt not, came out of that
truest of all poets, the human heart. For the heart of our
race is aged in such experiences as those which elicit
rhymes of Despair. It has seen beautiful symbols fade in
myriads ; symbols of heavens innumerable, every one
clung to by suffering Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, as
much as any Christian clings to their successors. It has
seen troops of bright gods and goddesses perish, nymphs
and fairies leaving wood and vale desolate ; and yet, just
as its gladdest heart-string has snapt, its faith in heaven
given way, some cheery note from the earth has come to
remind it of the love near at hand, of the divine joy van
ished from its ancient heavens only to be revealed at the
hearth.
A cricket-chirp ! That is all. While our great Laureate
�(
i8
)
is employing his art to sing of despair, and other poets
aspire to ambitious themes, the notes are as yet but few
and humble, which cheer man with a trust in the love that
is near him. But there are such notes making up for the
■creed’s snapt string. Nor are they near only the happy.
The cricket sings from many an overshadowed hearth. It
tells the heart to be brave, and never count life lost so
long as courage remain. It bids man cease thinking so
much about himself—whether he be likely to die next year,
or die for ever—and go fall in love with something, an
out-self; to dispel morbid meditations. It warns us not to
worry over what may never happen, or, if it happen, may
be for the best, but turn to make what paradise we can on
•earth ; nor admit into it the destroyer of every paradise,
■care about the morrow, or about the far future. All these
spiritual despairs are diseases of the imagination. In a
sense, it is hereditary disease. For many generations our
ancestors employed their imaginations for little else than
to realise the charnal-house and picture happiness or
horrors beyond it. So their children have inherited a
morbid tendency of imagination, whereby they may turn
from the happiness they have and make themselves
miserable with dreams about its vanishing. Such work of
the imagination is illegitimate. Imagination is the
brightest angel of the head, as Love is of the heart; they
are twin angels and their office is to make life rich and
beautiful. And they can so enrich and adorn life, though
passed in a hovel, though amid pain, though destined to
end for ever, provided they be not dismissed from their
�(
W )
post of present duty and sent wandering through clouds
| to find love’s objects, or digging into graves to find life’s
i fountain. I love and admire our Laureate for his great
; heart and his beautiful art, but will not follow his muse,
I singing of Despaii, except with a hope that it is his way
I of writing its epitaph. I will follow the happy minstrel.
[ That poet who shows life to be environed with beauty,
I makes deserts blossom in his song, whose poem is a
! fountain of joy for all the living, bringing forgetfulness
[to pain, and a sweet lullaby for the dying—that shall be
I my poet. And if, among the minstrels of our time, such
[happy ones connot be found, because some string of faith
[or heart is snapped, then let us listen to the cheery
[ cricket, to the voices of children, to the gentle words of
affection, to the unbroken song of the merry hearts in
nature that remember only its loveliness. We will listen
Ito these until the new Poetry shall arise—as arise it will
|—with fresh songs, to bid all spirits rejoice in that which
to the old brought despair. That is the task of Poetry
and Art. Every new thing destroying the old brings
(despair; none brought more than Christianity—shatter
ing the fair gods, and Protestantism—over whose havoc of
prayers and pieties Luther’s poor wife wept; but Poetry
(and Art did their work, and none now long for restoration
|of Aphrodite or Madonna. So also shall our age of
iscience find its poets and artists, and our children shall no
snore long for a buried faith than we for the holy dolls of
jcrumbled altars, whose power to charm has fled.
�SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL
WORKS TO BE OBTAINED IN THE LIBRARY.
BY M. D. CONWAY, M.A.
Prices.
Demonology and Devil-lore................
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The Wandering Jew ...
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Thomas Carlyle
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The Sacred Anthology : A Book of Ethnical Scriptures ... IO
Idols and Ideals
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The Earthward Pilgrimage ...
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Republican Superstitions
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Christianity ....
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Human Sacrifices in England
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Sterling and Maurice...
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Intellectual Suicide ...
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The First Love Again
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Entering Society
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The Religion of Children
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The Criminal’s Ascension
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The Religion of Humanity ...
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The Rising Generation
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A Last Word
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Thomas Carlyle
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The Oath and its Ethics
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BY Mr. FREDERIC
“ Pantheism and Cosmic Emotion ”...
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2
2
HARRISON.
.............................
0 2
BY Dr. ANDREW WILSON.
The Religious Aspects of Health
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0 2
BY A J. ELLIS, B.A., F.R.S., &c., &c.
Salvation
.........................................
Truth......................................................
Speculation .........................................
Duty......................................................
The Dyer’s Hand
.............................
Comte’s Religion of Humanity
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............................
............................
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0
0
0
0
0
0
2
2
2
2
2
4
BY W. C. COUPLAND, M.A.
.............................
The Conduct of Life ...
Hymns and Anthems
................
................
0 2
Is., 2s., 3s-
REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE OF LIBERAL THINKERS,
1878
...............................................................................
1 0
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Laureate despair: a discourse given at South Place Chapel December 11th 1881
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 20, [1] p. ; 15 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Miscellaneous Tracts 2. A list of works available from the South Place Chapel Library on back page.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
South Place Chapel
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1881]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G3352
Subject
The topic of the resource
Poetry
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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 (Laureate despair: a discourse given at South Place Chapel December 11th 1881), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Alfred Tennyson
Belief and Doubt
Free Thought
Morris Tracts
Poetry