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Christianity and Reform.
fail seasonably to heed and to an
swer their appeals. What a benefi
cent work might we accomplish for
the elevation and welfare of human
ity were we but unanimous on this
one great principle—the recognition
of all human rights, and to all
classes. We need, above all else, to
have this radical element of human
ity and its claims so inherent in our
social ethics, so installed in our daily
intercourse that we shall recognize
in every laboring man and woman
73
an equal, and, as it were, a brother
and a sister, having constant claim on
our good-will. “He who loveth not
his brother, whom he hath seen, how
can he love God, whom he hath not
seen ?” Here, surely, is a direct re
cognition of a true philanthropy as
the only genuine indication and defi
nition of true piety and religion.
Let us see to it that we have such a
religion by the fulfillment of its con
ditions.
CHRISTIANITY AND REFORM.
BY MRS.
JULIA WARD HOWE.
ADDRESS IN APOLLO HALL, UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE NEW-YORK REFORM
LEAGUE.
I have gone to church in the
streets to-day, and whereas I came
here to New-York to preach, NewYork has preached to me. Not that
what I have seen has caused me to
dismiss a single conviction ; but that,
standing and looking at the multi
form current of life that rushes by,
I have been compelled to acknow
ledge the insufficiency of foregone
conclusions to deal with an element
so uncertain, so difficult of govern
ment. The material distance be
tween New-York and New-Eng
land is but about eight hours by
railroad, but the moral distance
has the whole breadth of the AtlanT
tic in it. Europe is visibly here.
The power with which your city
draws to itself this vast arterial
current of life illustrates to me the
two-fold character of human nature.
Rascality hovers here like the moth
about the candle. Villainy is no
where more desperate, more unscru
pulous. On the other hand, thought
ful souls also must come to you.
Hidden under your rank and florid
prosperity are elements so precious,
sympathies so sincere, that the house
hold of faith itself would be incom
plete without the New-York rela
tions. So we who hear accounts of
disorder and misrule, who read Mr.
Parton’s record of the City Hall,
and Mr. Adams’s account of Erie,
know that you have better things
than these with which to meet and
stem the tide of unrepublican ten
dency which ever threatens you. Woe
to you and to us if you had not 1
The time that each of us can oc
cupy this evening is necessarily so
short, and the subject given to us to
�74
Christianity and Reform.
deal with so momentous, that even
I, who come first, can afford to waste
no time in preliminaries. Religion
in its relation to reform is a theme
whose proper entertainment would
fill volumes. First let me say that,
to the human race in general, to re
form is as constantly necessary as to
form. Nature only half makes us;
she leaves us much to finish, and
something at every step to undo. So
reform is always a word of good so
ciety ; for if we do not constantly re
form and transform, the enemy de
forms. Religion is, I need not say,
the true, only reformatory power.
She sometimes .wears one garment,
sometimes another. The crown of
art, the vail of philosophy, the hard
and shining armor of the law—all of
these by turns disguise her; but when
these various forms effect any thing,
we find that religion was at the bot
tom of what was done. Our appli
cations of religion are often defec
tive, often at fault. Men build stone
cathedrals in place of living temples,
and invent stony creeds in place of
discovering vital doctrines. In view
of this, I would repeat one of the
prayers familiar to my youth. I was
taught long before I knew any thing
of spiritual or other anatomy, that
God would take away my heart of
stone and give me a heart of flesh.
So now I will pray that God would
take away our church of stone and
give us a church of flesh, with the
living blood of the body politic cir
culating through it. Religion has
necessarily a certain opposite to re
move that society naturally develops.
It is not the less occupied with ex
plaining and recognizing the right
of what exists. This two-fold task
results in conservatism and radical
ism, from whose opposition a certain
reconciling chord in time develops
itself, whose thoughtful experiment
shows that radicalism is true con
servatism. It is most blessed to
hold these two poles in our con
sciousness, and thus to see the jus
tification of God and man. True
Christianity eminently effects this
reconciliation, and its ascendency
in individuals may be measured by
their combined power of appreciat
ing what is, and of apprehending
what should be. Reform, how
ever, takes its stand on the former
of these, and reaches out toward the
latter. Let me try to feel a little
after the most pressing reforms de
manded by the time and the place
in which we find ourselves. It first
strikes me in looking at New-York,
that our real New-Yorkers do not
know how much work they have to
do. In their thoughtful moments
they despair of extending through
all grades of society the influences
which they have most reason to
prize. In this they are wrong.
“What a man sows that shall he
also reap,” is a true promise. He
who sows immorality shall reap im
morality with all the increase of
scriptural promise. I know there
are here enormous provisions for in
struction and beneficence ; but if you
knew how much divine work is yet
here for every man and woman to do,
there would be less dressing, danc
ing, and fashionable visiting, and also
less ignorance, misery, and crime.
Simplicity, my dear friends, is waiting
to be cultivated here, simplicity of
life, leaving time for study—human
life is so short, it is usual for the
world to waste it in consuming what
is costly instead of in producing
�Christianity and Reform.
what is valuable. I know the dis
tinctions of the market; but in morals, all should be producers. Sim
plicity of dress, in order that the
human being as such may not be
effectually disguised in the inhuman
Surrounding, in order that soul may
have1 a little loop-hole to look out
of, must recognize its sister soul.
There is a sort of dress which ab
sorbs the woman utterly ; she is
nothing but her toilet. You see
this : looking into her face, you see
there that she is curious of looks,
silks, folds, ribbons, and false hair,
a hat which is the crowning treasure
of the whole, which, false to its ideal,
neither covers nor shelters. How
preachers aim through all this out
wardness and unreality at a vital
point, is more than I can imagine.
To find the head under its many
disguises is hard enough, but to find
the heart must be a very discourag
ing search. Europe imposes these
follies upon us; but we caricature
Europe in this regard. . Surely, in
the bringing up' of us women there
must have been a large element of
millinery. We had better let it go,
I think. Taste can only improve
by greater sobriety. Art will gain
by the devotion of human talent to
worthy objects. Do you not know
how people who lead thoughtful, va
luable lives please us with their
rare splendors, and who grace some
heart-festival, some world’s rejoic
ing ? As much does the perpetual
self-announcement of trivial and
overweening dress weary and dis
please us. Those notices which we
receive of milliners’ openings are
followed and seconded by perpetual
little notices to this effect: “ I shall
put on my spring suit to-morrow. I
75
have bought Mme. So-and-so’s best
hat. This Cashmere is from the es
tablishment of A. T. Stewart & Co.”
Really, a discount on purchases
ought to be allowed to people who
will give the articles such conspi
cuous display. No other advertise
ment is needed. Our friends the
Quakers did a good work when they
made their attire protest against the
overweening display of their time. I
feel great joy in certain symptoms
which point toward a revival of the
spirit of Quakerism without its ob
solete forms. I find that there is a
Friends’ college here, and I am glad
that that sect is not to leave itself
without a witness in the higher walks
of learning. I don’t know whether
President Grant counseled this in
cursion of the Friends of the Empire
City; but I think their ministration
here will be as salutary as among
the Indians. I shall always be glad
of their influence in the department
of education. For while I do hold
them to have been illiberal as to
aesthetics, I am sure that they have
received and handed down the true
germ and gospel of ethics as no
other religious body has done. This
leads me to another aspect of sim
plicity—simplicity of religion. It
seems to me that the simple Gospel,
as usually taught, very little deserves
the name. This term is oftenest ap
plied to a very complex system of
metaphysical statement, of which
the head points are transmitted by
authority, learned by rote, and be
lieved by habit. But this is not the
simplicity of the- Gospel. Try to
bring back Christianity to the true
doctrines of Christianity, and Chris
tendom howls at your impiety. The
process of education is a simplifying
�Our Indian Relations.
one. The world is all complex to
the child, to the savage. Science
simplifies by formulating laws and
grouping results. Religion needs
to be simplified in like manner.
The Gospel as an abstraction is as
perplexed as other abstractions. Ap
ply it in life, and you will find that it
simplifies itself more and more. Peo
ple may talk as much as they will of
the subtleties which it delights man
kind both to invent and to refute.
This may be a harmless, even a useful
mental gymnastic. But let us seek
more and more for this applied
Gospel, and for such purity of
prescription and stringency of ex
ample as may help us more and
more to its application. And one
word more about simplicity. There
are two opposite views of God, which,
like other oppositions, should illusstrate instead of excluding each
other. God may be considered in
his three-fold aspect, for every true
unity is capable of a three-fold in
terpretation. But the unity of God
remains for Christianity the cardinal
doctrine, the simplest, most scien
tific and practical. So pray let us
hold to this divine unity, which does
not exclude the study of trinity, but
which must preclude any such divi
sion. I think you ought to have
more Unitarian churches in NewYork—more, and other. The want
of centrality makes itself felt in this.
Much thought which orthodoxy
fails to crystallize does not enter
into the faithful combination which
forms a church; and this is the last
place in the world in which such a
concourse of consciences can be dis
pensed with. Here the faithful
should constantly meet, and uphold
each other in the constant, peaceable
warfare against the wrongs that un dermine society.
nz
OUR INDIAN RELATIONS.
BY
COLONEL
S.
F.
TAPPAN.
“ A sound of war is on the western wind;
The sun, with fiery flame, sweeps down the sky ;
Athwart his breast the crimson shadows fly
Of fearless forms no fetters e’er can bind.
*
“ The eagle plunges from his mountain nest,
And screaming, soars above the distant plain,
'
Plucking his plumes without a pang of pain,
Though stained with blood from his own beating breast.”
Again is the country startled by
reports of an impending conflict, the
hurrying of troops to the plains, and
active preparations for an armed
contest with the Sioux Indians. The
excitement is temporarily allayed by
an occasional telegram from Wash-
ington, that the general of the army
is confident that there is to be no
serious trouble after all. He is
alarmed, and foolishly imagines that,
having raised the storm, he can control it. He very well knew—for he is
not an idiot—that when he, with his
�
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>
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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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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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Christianity and reform
Creator
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Howe, Julia Ward [1819-1910]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [Chicago]
Collation: 73-76 p. 25 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Standard. Vol. 1, no. 2, June 1870. Address in Apollo Hall under the auspices of the New-York Reform League. Julia Ward Howe was an American poet and author, best known for writing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." She was also an advocate for abolitionism and was a social activist, particularly for women's suffrage. Printed in double columns.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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[1870]
Identifier
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G5441
Subject
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Christianity
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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 (Christianity and reform), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Christianity
Conway Tracts
Reform