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PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
1876.
Price Threepence.
SIGNS OF THE TIMES.
APRIL, 1876.
AST month we left the Devil in extremis; this
month we announce his decease, but a decease of
an uncomfortable and dubious description, in no way
satisfactory to the survivors. Mr. Jenkins has come
out a victor:—a man who disbelieves in the devil is
not henceforth necessarily an open and notorious evil
liver—and without a clear and definite belief in the
personality of Satan a man may henceforth eat and
drink the body and blood of Christ. So far every
thing is clear and comfortable, but the devil, thus
roughly pushed out of sight, does not appear to be
finally disposed of, since there are already rumours in
the air ecclesiastical of an intention to prosecute Mr.
Haweis, the well-known Broad Church clergyman,
L
�2
because he stated in a sermon that the existence of
an arch-devil was not susceptible of proof. This suit
would be of a more crucial character, and might
enable our Courts to decide on the reality or un
reality of Satan, whether he be shadow or substance,
ideal or fact. As regards the late trial, as shown
last month, the judgment would have been neces
sarily equally favourable to Rationalists whether it
supported Mr. Jenkins or the Rev. Flavel Cook;
for if Mr. Cook’s action were endorsed the orthodox
would triumph and the liberal party be enraged,
while if Mr. Jenkins were vindicated the orthodox
would rebel. The judgment has been given, and
already the storm-clouds begin to gather; the
Brighton branch of the English Church Union has
passed a resolution unanimously “expressing indig
nation and alarm at the decision given by the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council, in the case of
Jenkins v. Cook, and respectfully asking the Lord
Bishop of the diocese to take any steps he may
think desirable against such a wrenching of the
custody of the sacrament from the hands of the
Church, by which the communion of our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ has been grossly slighted.”
Here are the elements of “ a very pretty quarrel
no dogma has been more fruitful in divisions than
that of the “ Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper the
seamless robe has been rent over and over again
about the fashion of the remembrance and the
character of the rite; the giving of the cup to the
laity, the true substance taken by the faithful, the
sacrificiatory nature of the service, the effect of con
secration, the necessity of an episcopally-ordained
minister to officiate in it, all these points recall the
memory of bitter words and cruel deeds, and remind
the rationalist that the feast of communion has ever
been transformed into the source of excommunication.
And now has arisen a new dilemma: all good ortho
�3
dox people believe in the good orthodox devil: it is
one of the cardinal points of the faith once delivered
to the saints ; without belief in the devil—and the
devils—belief in the inspiration of the Bible is im
possible ; without belief in the fall brought about by
“that old serpent” no belief in the redemption is
likely; without belief in an evil spirit to account for
the sin and misery in the world, how can belief in a
good spirit be defended ? From what do we need to
be delivered by the blood of Christ and the guiding
of the Holy Ghost, if there be no devil to lead us
astray ? And if no devil, surely no hell, and if no hell
no need for a dying Saviour, and if no dying Saviour
then no Christianity. Thus wide reaching, thus
fatal, are the issues dependent upon belief or non
belief in the devil. “ And can it be,” the orthodox
may fairly argue, “ that a man who denies the devil,
and thus implicitly denies hell, the redemption, and
Christianity itself, shall be accounted as a worthy
recipient of the symbol of the Christianity he is de
stroying ? If the non-believer in the devil may thus
be welcomed, why not also the non-believer in Jesus ?
The most sacred recesses of the Church are thus
thrown open to the infidel and perhaps to the atheist.”
The Low Church party, who joyfully welcomed the
State as its ally against the hated Ritualist, and were
unhurt by the handling of the sacred things of their
adversaries by a secular Court, now find out, to their
horror, that their own sacred things are subjected to
the same treatment, and that the State lays sacri
legious hands upon the very devil himself. One wail
arises from either side : if one cries that the sacra
ment is wrenched from the hands of the Church, the
other moans over the cardinal truths of Christianity,
and bewails the laxity of professors and the growing
power of a false philosophy ; Pilate and Herod make
friends to-day, to slay, if possible, the liberty which
might otherwise escape. TheAWc, strangely, favours
�4
the judgment, although reprobating Mr. Jenkins,
thus standing at variance with its party ; in a letter
to it we read that it is only the duty of a clergyman
to warn, not to repel, and that if any insist on coming
after being told that “ The receiving of the Holy
Communion doth nothing else but increase your
damnation. Therefore, if any of you be a blasphemer
of God, an hinderer and slanderer of His word . . . .
come not to that Holy Table, lest after the taking of
that Holy Sacrament the devil enter into you, as he
entered into Judas;” if, after this, any insist, then it
is their fault and not the clergyman’s, and apparently
they should charitably be left free to “ increase their
damnation,” though this being already endless it is
not easy to understand how it is to be increased.
At Clifton itself the commotion is great. Mr.
Cook having stated that the appearance of Mr.
Jenkins at the Communion Table would be the signal
for his resignation, a requisition was signed by some
600 Cliftonians, asking Mr. Jenkins not to press his
victory, but to take the Communion at one of the
many other churches of Clifton, so as to save Mr.
Cook from the necessity of giving up his charge, a
necessity imposed upon him by his conscience. Mr.
Jenkins dryly replied, through his solicitor, that he
should go to his parish church to take the Communion
when it suited him so to do ; he added that he re
gretted that Mr. Cook could not obey the law of the
land and of the Church. Hereupon Mr. Cook an
nounces that he resigns his living, and says, “ he
bows to the law of the land by resigning the living
he has held; and in reference to the allusion to the
law of the Church he remarks that there is a law of
much higher authority.” It is rumoured that the
admirers of Mr. Cook intend to build him a
church in Clifton, where he can obey the law of
higher authority, and be free from the interference of
Privy Councils. An address has been forwarded to
�5
Mr. Cook by Canon Conway from Convocation, a
“ memorial of sympathy. ” Mr. Cook, in acknowledging
it and thanking them for “ their kindness and moral
support,” says that the writers have “ manifested their
goodwill towards me in this my time of suffering
for the truth
the “ truth” in question is the devil;
would it then be fair to say that Mr. Cook is suffering
for the sake of the devil ? and if so, is it true to say
that he is suffering for the sake of God ? and if so,
are “God” and “devil” interchangeable terms, as
some have been led to infer from the fact that in 2 Sam.
xxiv. 1, Jehovah, and in 1 Chron. xxi., Satan is repre
sented as having incited David to commit the sin of
numbering Israel, and was punished for bis com
pliance by the inciter, whichever it might have been ?
Mr. Ridsdale is another martyr, the Privy Council
which disestablished the devil being rivalled in its
cruelty by the new Court under Lord Penzance. His
vestments are forbidden, his candles blown out, his
crucifix iconoclasted, his raised pictures smoothed
away, his bowings straightened. Poor Mr. Ridsdale !
and when he meekly asked that he might go on as
usual until the appeal was finally decided, Lord Pen
zance sharply refused to accede to the application,
and ordered that the monition should be complied
with. How terrible a sentence this is, and how fear
ful this deprivation of the coats of many colours,
may be judged by the following extract from the
Church Times:—“ Timid Catholics feel now exactly
as Christians felt when the outbreak of the Tenth
Persecution showed that three hundred years of
blameless conduct had done nothing to conciliate
Pagans, but that the same lies were circulated, and
the same cruelties inflicted as had marked the first
onslaught under Nero.” It must want a good deal
of imagination—or of faith—to see much likeness
between being forbidden to wear many-coloured
raiment and being torn to pieces by wild beasts.
�For the “ blameless conduct ” it would perhaps be
too cruel to quote as witness the Apostle Paul, in his
first Epistle to the Corinthians. Degraded impurity,
licence, drunkenness and fierce quarrelling are all
apparently consistent with “ blameless conduct.”
Some little excitement is going on in the town of
Newton Abbot, in Devon, in connection with the
following circumstances :—A woman, named Burnett,
lay sick in one of the wards of the Newton Abbot
Union, and the chaplain, the Rev. William Langley
Pope, D.D., was reading for her the “ Service for
the Visitation of the Sick.” What followed shall be
told in his own words :—“ I asked, in the course of the
‘ Service for the Visitation of the Sick ’ appointed by
the Church, ‘ Dost thou believe ?’ repeating the Creed,
in the form of a question, and perfectly unaware and
uninformed, by the woman Prowse, or any person, of
the person questioned being a disbeliever of the
■Creed. The woman Burnett then commenced an
answer to my question, stating, in a voice perfectly
audible, and intended to be heard by the ward, that
she disbelieved ‘ the end of the world,’ the existence
■of ‘hell’ in any other sense than the ‘grave,’ ‘the
Resurrection of the body,’ and ‘ the coming of Christ
to judgment.’ She also said, before making these
most infidel statements, that she believed that her
‘ sins were cancelled! ! I ’ On hearing these most
dreadful blasphemies I felt perfectly horrified; and,
raising my hands to heaven, I exclaimed, in utter
horror of soul, and yet with the desire to set the poor
wretched woman right if psssible, ‘ Oh ! what horrible
blasphemy I Oh ! what dreadful lies ! yes, damnable
lies 1 ’ These were my exact words, and I do not see
what else I could have said, for she uttered her dis
belief in a very sustained tone and most assured
manner. The very essentials of Christianity are surely
not to be allowed to be ruthlessly and ignorantly as
sailed and denied without indignant reprobation on the
�part of any honest and true Christian. I also spoke
from the strongest sense of duty to do what good, by
God’s blessing, I might be permitted to accomplish.”"
Is this kind of language supposed to be beneficial to
the sick ? It certainly does not lack vigour, but can
scarcely be regarded as exemplifying the “ meekness
and gentleness of Christ,” nor can it be thought to
obey the command : “ The servant of the Lord must
not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach,
patient, in meekness instructing those who oppose them
selves.” The woman appears simply to have honestly
answered the questions put to her, and must have
been somewhat startled at the torrent of abuse poured
out upon her. How could the remarks of this re
verend gentleman “ set the poor wretched woman
right ?” There is no instruction conveyed in shouting
out: “ Oh ! what dreadful lies ! yes, damnable lies ! ”
and, one would fancy, “ God’s blessing ” would
scarcely be appropriate on such expressions. Dr.
Pope says: “ I can say most sincerely, before Al
mighty God, that I have most fully performed my
duties under very painful circumstances, thrust upon
me, when at my right post.” Dr. Pope may, of
course, be sincere, but so excitable a person is not theone best suited to the delicate duties which fall to the
share of a workhouse chaplain; he resembles his
namesake—the Pope—too much in the freedom with
which ‘‘profane cursing and swearing ” flow from his;
lips. Is it just to pay such a man as this from the
taxes contributed by people of all creeds ? Few liberalminded Christians would think their faith best re
commended by a clergyman of this sort, Doctor of
Divinity though he be; if the horror he expressed
were genuine, and not affected, it shows a marvellous
ignorance of the movements going on in the world
around him, of the questionings on every side, of the
rapid and steady spread of “ infidelity” in every rank
of life. Doubtless, poor women lying sick in Union
�8
wards ought not to venture thus to answer the chap
lain’s questions, but should show to the “ good kind
gentleman” the proper pauper acceptance of what
ever he may please to say ; but still, even in dealing
with unbelieving paupers, one cannot but feel that
the language of this “ honest and true Christian ”
over a sick bed, is deserving of the strongest and
most “ indignant reprobation.” So near Ash Wednes
day, one cannot deny that clergymen have a vested
right to curse their neighbours, but then it must only
be done formally in church, and while cursing the man
who removes his neighbour’s landmark may be justi
fiable, there is no provision made by the Church for
cursing the pauper who denies the resurrection of
the body.
The Jewish World really deserves the support of
Rationalists for the able articles against popular and
traditional Christianity which it frequently inserts.
In its issue of March 3, dealing with “ The Christian
Logos,” it traces very clearly the gradual growth of
the idea embodied in Christ. It says :—“ The per
sonification of the word of God as a vehicle of power
and means of communication between God and man,
was a very early conception, and is first traceable
to those masters in all religious idealities, the Hindus.
In pre-historic Vedic times they had such an image
in the goddess Vach (vox), who is called in the Rigveda, the earliest extant scripture existing in any
language, ‘ the speech of the primeval spirit.’ At a
later time the Hindus had a male form of the like
import, whom they styled Menu (Mens), or the em
bodiment of the mind or wisdom of the Deity. The
Pythagoreans and Platonists, who derived their cul
ture from the East, adopted the like mythical represen
tation of the Divine action, terming it the Logos, or
Word of God. In the Hebrew Scriptures a similar
figure occurs.” Then “at length there is the fancy
of a Divine Sonship attached to this image,” and we
�9
see this divine personage in the fiery furnace, guard
ing Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. The book
of Enoch still further develops the idea. “ The Son
of God, the Elected One, the Prince of Righteous
ness.” Then Philo-Judaeus takes up the notion and
formulates it yet more precisely : “ He makes his
imaginary idol to be the Son of God, a second Di
vinity, the first begotten of God, superior to all beings
in heaven or earth, the instrument by whom the
world was made, the substitute for God, through
whom all operations are conducted, the light of the
world, the only one cognisant of God, the most an
cient of all His works, equal with God, a messenger
from God to man, the mediator, the advocate and in
tercessor for mortal man, the true High Priest, the
giver to man of everlasting life, the shepherd of God’s
flock, the physician who heals all evil, the seal of
God, the universal refuge, the heavenly nutriment of
the soul.” This notion is the exact counterpart of
the Christian Logos, the Word of the Father. “ Philo’s
time covers that alleged to have been occupied by the
life of Christ. . . . And he is seen to have provided, out
of the workings of his imagination, all that the writer
of the fourth gospel puts together and makes use of
in exhibition of the Christ depicted by him. Philo
has given the framework and the drapery, which the
other has adjusted to his alleged living subject. He
has described the powers and the attributes which the
evangelist has adopted as carried out in the person of
Jesus.” Thus do allies, from a different standing
point, attack the crumbling traditional creed, exposing
the rottenness of its foundations by the breaches
made therein by the cannon-balls of history and of
thought.
Why cannot the hysterical of the churches leave
the little children alone, to grow up bright and fear
less in healthy naturalness ? In the Clvristian is a
sermon for the young, in which we read “ So with
�10
you, dear little ones, if there is one sin against you
written down in God’s presence, you cannot see the
beautiful place and the lovely flowers in the heavenly
country, If the sin is not rubbed out you can never
enter that beautiful place.” And then we read of
“ sinful hearts ” and “ naughty hearts,” and “ wash
you in His precious blood,” and so on. Imagine the
dread and the anxiety inflicted on a sensitive child
by this notion of every wrong thought and word
being “ written down in God’s presence” against it.
It is bad enough to drive men and women into the
madhouses with these miserable revivals ; the children
at least might be left alone until the brain and heart
have somewhat hardened, and the pulses thrill less
keenly in fear of the unknown.
We append an anonymous letter, bearing the Liver
pool post-mark, recently sent to us; it is another
specimen of the hysterical style of the Moody and
Sankey school of preachers :—“ I beseech you, cease
from the awful blasphemies you are uttering by your
pen—you are but trying to spread darkness and
despair, and leaguing yourself with him who has
been ‘ a murderer and a liar from the beginning.’
Speaking as you do against the Most High God.
Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it,
‘ Why hast thou made me thus ? ’ Poor miserable
worm of the dust, how dare you! If you do not
know the joy of having made your peace with God
through' the one Name under Heaven through which
we may be saved, seek it at once through your
Crucified Saviour and repent of your blasphemies.
Do not go on and ‘ darken counsel with words without
knowledge.’ ‘Turn ye, turn ye, why will' ye C’3.’
‘ Look unto me and be ye saved all the ends of the
earth, for I am God, and there is ,none else.’ ” The
zeal of these anonymous letter-writers is always far
more conspicuous than their courage.
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PELTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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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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Signs of the times. April, 1876
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Thomas Scott
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Christianity-Controversial Literature
Conway Tracts
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495c1108718532b63961bbccf0901128
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Text
fe 2-5 'y 5
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
POVERTY:
ITS CAUSE AND CURE.
POINTING OUT A MEANS BY WHICH THE WORKING CLASSES MAY RAISE» •
THEMSELVES FROM THEIR PRESENT STATE OP LOW WAGES AND
CEASELESS TOIL TO ONE OF
COMFORT, DIGNITY, AND INDEPENDENCE;
AND WHICH IS ALSO CAPABLE OF ENTIRELY REMOVING, IN
COURSE OF TIME, THE OTHER PRINCIPAL SOCIAL EVILS
BY-
M. G. II.
“ The Diseases of Society can, no more than corporeal maladies, be prevented or
cuied, without being spoken about in plain language."— J ohn Sxuabt.Miu.
ILoniJon:
E. TRUELOVE, 256, HIGH H0L30RN;
REMOVED FROM TEMPLE BAR.
1885.
[PRICK ONE PENNY.]
�INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
This little tract—made as small as possible in order that, by its mode
rate price, it may be within the reach of even the very poorest—is
written for the purpose of pointing out to the working classes, and
indeed to all other classes, the only true means of bettering their
condition. Its object is thoroughly practical, since the means we
advocate is simple, and requires no self-denial; but, on the contrary,
must cause a speedy improvement in the circumstances of the parties
adopting it. And, moreover, if its practice were universally recog
nized as a great social duty (as there is every reason to believe it will
be in time), it leads us to hope that, besides Poverty, the two other
great evils of our country, Prostitution and Celibacy, may be entirely
extirpated. We doubt not that at first it will be overwhelmed with
contempt and abuse, more especially by the “moralist;” but we
firmly believe that after such a calm examination of the subject as
its immense importance deserves, it will be acknowledged to be the
only means of escaping from the manifold evils under which we all, rich
and poor, now suffer. We have thought it necessary to precede the
communication of this means by a short explanation of the principal
cause of the present state of Low Wages, in order that the reader
may the more deeply feel that any scheme, benevolent or otherwise,
for the abolition of poverty, hitherto tried, must either be totally
powerless to effect its object, or, if successful, can only be so at the
cost of inflicting fresh evils, hardly less grievous than Poverty itself.
�3
POVERTY:
ITS
AND
CAUSE
CURE.
L
“The life of our working classes is worse than that of most of the
beasts of burden. They toil unremittingly, at a laborious, monotonous,
and in many cases a deadly occupation; without hope of advance
ment, or personal interest in the work they are engaged in. At night
their jaded frames are too-tired to permit their enjoyment of the few
leisure hours; and the morn awakens them to the same dreary day of
ceaseless toil. Even the seventh day, their only holiday, brings them,
fa this country, little gaiety, little recreation.................... Thus have
the poor to toil on, as long as their strength permits. At last some
organ gives way, the stomach, the eyes, or the brain; and the un
fortunate sufferer is thrown out of work, and sent to the hospital,
whilst his wife and family are reduced to the brink of starvation.
Often, the man, rendered desperate by his hopeless position, plunges
into drink, and gives himself over to ruin. At other times, the
Working classes, in a frenzy of rage at their infernal circumstances,
determine that they will have higher wages or perish. Hence result
the disastrous strikes, and the terrible social revolutions, that have in
recent times so often convulsed society. But they are vain; they are
but the blind efforts of men to do something or die, the fruitless
heavings of a man in a night-mare. The mountain of misery in
variably falls back upon their breast, with only increased pressure ;
and forces them, worn out by impotent struggles, to bear it quietly
for another little season.”
The above extract presents a sad, but too true, picture of the
*
manner in which thousands, nay millions, of our fellow countrymen
are forced to pass their lives. That it is not overdrawn, all belonging
fo the class referred to must be able to testify. Those who earn good
wages, and therefore save themselves and families from a personal ex
perience of the bitter miseries of poverty, doubtless know many less
favored by fortune, who have sunk and been trodden upon, in the hard
struggle for the bare necessaries of life which is going on around us.,
• From “The Elements of Social Science; or, Physical, Sexual,
ind Natural Religion.” E. Truelove, 256, High Holborn.
�4
Were we to ask, “ What is the cause, and what trie cure (if any) ot
¡this sad state of things ? ” how various and how contradictory would
be the replies. Some, and these would be of the richer classes, would
attribute it principally to idleness, drunkenness, or improvidence ;
recommending as its remedy education, the establishment of penny
Banks, sick funds, hospitals, &c. A large portion of th® middle
classes, viewing it from religious grounds, would declare it to be a
visitation-from heaven, sent for our spiritual good; and offer no Other
hope than that all -will be set right in the next world. Other®, of a
more practical turn, lay it at the door of over-competition, and re
commend emigration to the colonies as a cure. From the above,
opinions would vary, in proportion as we descend the Social scale,
through all the gradations ot trades unions, associated industry, socialism, change of laws, down to the extreme of red republicanism, and
a forcible division of the property of the rich amongst the poor.
'Now, in a work of this limited kind, it would be quite impossible
to examine in detail all these various schemes for the bettering of th®
state of the working classes. We must therefore content ourselves
with remarking that those among them that are at all practical, and
that - have had a trial, partial or general, have either been totally
powerless, or, at best, have only had a-very passing effect, in raising
the poor from the mire in which they are sunk. The main question
is, “ How can we raise wages ? ” All else is comparatively unim
portant—for as long as the present miserable rate of wages prevails
(a rate hardly sufficient to keep starvation from a man’s door), edu
cation, savings’ banks, and the like, are but mockeries. Even reli
gion itself is but a poor substitute for food and other necessaries.
No; if we could but raise wages to a fair rate, all the rest would
follow in time, even to the reformation of our criminals and prosti
tutes, who are for the most part driven into those wretched paths of
life Tor very bread.
Inorder to solve the question, “How can we raise wages?” we
must first look to the cause of the present low rate. This, it must be
evident to all, arises from the fact that the number of hands able and
willing to work greatly exceeds the capital for their employment at
good wages; in short, that the supply of labor is too large in propor
tion to the demand. When this is the case, wages will always be
low; and all efforts to raise them by such means as trades-unions and
strikes can only result in misery to both employers and employed«
We do not wish here to discuss the vexed subject of the combinations
of workmen against employers for the purpose of forcing up wages;
we only state a fact which few will dispute, namely, that this means
of bettering their condition is scarcely ever successful, but on the
contrary, nearly always leaves those who have taken part in it in a
worse condition than ever. Equally powerless for good is the plan,
once very popular, of fixing wages by law, at a higher rate than
would be warranted by the demand. Such compulsory interference
with the labor market was -.easily evaded.; but where enforced, it
always had the effect of throwing a number of men out of work. A
�ô>
moment’s consideration wiH'convince us that such must be the result.
Capital is a certain sum which is divided, in the form of wages,
amongst a certain number of men. If, without altering the relative
proportion between capital and labor, we forcibly raise the current
rate of wages, a portion only of the hands may indeed obtain that
advance, but at the cost of depriving the rest of their shares alto
gether; that is, throwing them out of work, to starve, or rely on
charity.
Brom the above considérations, we believe it will be acknowledged
that the only means of raising wages, without at the same time
causing a number of hands to suffer by it, would be to increase the
capital, and therefore the demand for labor, as compared with the
supply.
Now, from various causes, amongst the principal of which we may
mention the application of steam to land and sea travelling (that is,
railway and steam navigation), the rotation of crops and other im
provements in agriculture, &c., this country has increased in wealth
within the last fifty years to an extent and with a rapidity hitherto
unknown. And yet the working classes have by no means benefited
by all this increase of capital. It is quite as difficult for them to gain
an honest livelihood now as it was formerly. The very small weekly
snnas (six or eight shillings, for instance) which we find to have been
the current wages two centuries or so back, may seem to give the lie
to this; but such sums were in reality equal to double or treble their
present value, since food and rent were then not one-half or one-third
as high as at present. To convey some idea of the cost of living at
that period, we give the following table of the price of some of the
necessaries of life about the middle of the 17th century :—
Oatmeal, per quart .......... 1 Ad.
Beef and Mutton, per lb. ... 34d.
Beer, per gallon.................. 3d.
Bacon
„ ... 3^-d.
Eggs, per dozen.................. 3d.
Dutch Cheese
„ ... 2|d.
Sack of Best Coals ...........6d.
Best Salt Butter
„ ... 4d.
Weekly rent of a laborer’s
Biscuit
„ ... l^d.
Cotton Candles
„ ... 4d.
cottage.......................... 2d.
We have not given the price of wheaten bread, because in the middle
of the 17th century it had hardly come into general use, its place
being supplied by .rye, oatmeal, or buck wheat, whose price bore about
the same relative proportion to wages as wheaten bread now does.
Few will be bold enough to assert that wages have advanced in
greater proportion than this. We here speak of factory and other
trade operatives. The agricultural laborer has fared far worse, for
his wages have never considerably varied, during two centuries, from
10s. per week, notwithstanding the increase in the cost of the prin
cipal necessaries. As we should expect, we find his condition to be
worse than any other class of honest laborers, and by far inferior to
that of the condemned criminals. From Mr. Mayhew’s work we
learn that, whilst prisoners on hard labor are supplied with a weekly
allowance of 254 ounces of solid food—that being’the smallest amount
which (according to eminent medical men) can be given consistently
�6
with health and vigor—the English laborer can procure for himself
alter feeding his family, no more than an average of 140 ounces’
that is to say, the honest working man gets hardly more than half
as. 7n}ch
the crlminal, whose allowance is the smallest consistent
with health and vigor. In plain terms, a large portion of the most
hard-working of our industrial classes are half-starved.
If the case of male laborers is bad, doubly so is that of the females
lhe miserable condition of the sempstresses and slop-workers for
large shops is well known. Indeed, so truly appalling is the life they
lead, that instead of wondering at our streets being over-run with
prostitutes, we ought rather to feel astonishment that so many young
women should be found willing to prefer a virtuous life with sixteen
hours daily toil, and barely enough food to keep life in them, to the
degraded course of living on the streets: in which way, however
■shameful, they can at least generally procure an abundance of food.
After such facts as these, and they might be multiplied indefinitely,
let us- no longer boast of our civilization, our respect for religion our
wondrous progress in arts and sciences. Such only tend to dazzle us
and to hide with a gilded cloak the vast mass of poverty, over-work’
and vice, beneath. If all our glorious achievements cannot lighten
the sufferings of our fellow beings, then have they nothing accom
plished worthy of being called glorious.
We are now led to inquire into the causes which have prevented
the poorer classes from sharing in the great increase of wealth which
has taken place during the present century. Such, all our best
modern authors declare to be ovek-pofulation. We shall now
examine and explain what is called the “Law of Population.”
n.
One of the chief propositions of this law is the following:_ “All
animated nature has a constant tendency to increase beyond the
means for its support; ” that is to say, that, however great may be
the increase in the produce of the soil, it will always in old countries
be far short of the increase of living beings, supposing nothing were
to prevent their following natural instinct, and multiplying their
species unchecked. This applies equally to the human race, not
withstanding the power they possess of immensely augmenting the
produce of the soil above the natural yield.
Now, although man’s greatest power of multiplication is not exactly
known, it can be approached nearly enough for our present purposes.
It has been variously stated by different writers at the power of
doubling the numbers in the course of every 25 years, to as rapidly
as every 10 years. We will choose the more moderate rate, and
suppose population capable of doubling itself every quarter of a
century. Representing the present population as I,' at the end of
25 years it would be 2; in fifty years it would have again doubled, 4;
in another 25 years, 8; and at the end of the century, 16; that is, it
would be sixteen times as numerous as at first.
�1
As to the rate of increase of the produce of the soil, it is even more
difficult to arrive at a true result, than in the case of population; but
one thing we may be certain of, that it is very far indeed behind the
latter. For the sake of argument, however, we will suppose that the
produce of this island might be increased every twenty-five years, by
a quantity equal to what it at present produces. No sane man could
suppose a greater increase than this. Indeed in a few centuries it
■would make every acre of land in the island like a garden.
In the table here given we see these two rates contrasted :—
At the end of
Present 25
50
75
100
Time. Years. Years. Years. Years.
Increase of Food .....
1
2
3
4
5 &c.
Increase of Population ...
1
2
4
8
16 &c.
By this we see, that, were it possible for min to follow his greatest
rate of multiplication, at the end of a century he would exceed, by
more than three times, the food for his sustenance. But we know
that this would be practically impossible. A larger number of in
dividuals than could procure food would not be able to exist a week
after food began to run short; which, in the above example, would
occur after the lapse of the first 25 years. We therefore see that the
Mte of increase of the human race must be limited to the very
moderate rate of increase of food; all efforts to exceed that rate being
met by a falling off in the necessary supply of food, that is, by
famine. But though this must operate to repress excess of multipli
cation, were there no other checks; still, in point of fact, it is rarely
that this is the actual one. It is replaced (especially in more civilize^ ■
Countries) by a large variety of other checks. In describing these,
we shall for convenience divide them into two great divisions, the
Positive and the Preventive checks. The former consists of wars,
vice, disease, misery, and all other causes whatsoever which tend to
shorten the duration of human life. The latter, having no direct
influence on the deaths, operates in checking the births, and consists
in Sexual Abstinence or Celibacy, whatever form it may assume.
The priesthood, convents and nunneries in Catholic countries, the
large standing armies and navies of most civilized states, to whose
members marriage is generally impossible; above all, the class who
remain single from motives of prudence, common to all countries, but
most numerous in Switzerland, Norway, a few German States, and
our own, all have the effect of reducing the number of births, and
thus effecting, by opposite means, precisely the same end as is brought
about by the positive check, namely, keeping down the population to
the level of the food.
From the action of one or other of these checks man has had no
means of escape. He cannot choose apart from them: he can only
choose between them. If he follows natural instincts without restraint,
and brings more beings into the world than can find support (making
every allowance for increased yield of the products of the soil con
�8
sequent on improving knowledge of agriculture, &c.), the Stirplus
twist be cut off by disease, vice, or war; unless, indeed, a part of
these evils are warded off, as amongst the working classes of England,
by fearful efforts of industry, which reduce them to the condition of
mere machines. . On the other hand, if he exercise that prudence
and foresight which is peculiar to civilized man, and restrain himself
from begetting offspring until late in life (say thirty), he will by this
prudence procure for himself exemption to a very great extent from
the evils of over-population: but at the cost, besides an immense
amount of unhappiness, of introducing vicious habits.
Had we space we should examine in detail the condition of every
modern state in the world, and show how population is repressed in
each, either by the positive or preventive check; and how in pro
portion to the rarity of the one, we shall be sure to find the opposite
check in force. However, as such would lead us beyond the limits of
á small tract of this nature, we must content ourselves with reviewing
two or three countries where their action is most plainly seen
Amongst the most remarkable is Hindostán or India. Here marriage
is greatly encouraged, by the religious code, which makes the pro
creation of male children one of the greatest merits In the
ordinances of Menu (their Bible,) it is said, “ By a son, man obtains
a victory over all people; by a son’s son, he enjoys immortality; and
afterwards by the son of that grandson, he reaches the solar abode.”
Thus, marriage in India is considered a religious duty; and therefore
the preventive check operating little, the positive one must of necessity
supply its place. The people are so crowded that the most excessive
poverty prevails, and periodical famines have been always very Se
quent. Wars and pestilences have also at times carried off large
numbers. So much for the positive check falling on a race but lialfcivilized ; let us see its effect on a people much more advanced_ the
Chinese.
In China the population is enormous, being upwards of 300 millions
or about one-third of the human race. These vast numbers are
owing to the goodness of the soil and climate, the very great attention
that has always been paid to agriculture, and also the extraordinary
encouragements to marriage, which here, as in India, is considered a
religious duty; to be childless being held a dishonor. The preventive
check having therefore operated but little, the positive has been the
chief one. The most grinding and abject poverty prevails among the
lower classes, together with an untiring industry and hard work, (&
combination which finds a parallel perhaps in England alone).
Famines are very frequent, which sweep off vast numbers, and
infanticide is very general. It is in these modes rather than by wars
(which, till lately, have not been so destructive in China), that the
positive check operates. The check to population from vicious sexual
intercourse does not appear to be very considerable in China. The
women are modest and reserved, and adultery is rare.
From the above two examples of the operation of the positive
check, let us turn to the opposite extreme, where the preventive check
�9
or sexual restraint, is in greatest force, namely, in Switzerland, Nor
way, ^nd several of the German States. We shall borrow the words
of a weekly periodical, which sets forth in glowing terms the pros
*
perous and happy condition of the people of those countries. “ They
are certainly in advance of us in England,” says the writer. “ They
have almost destroyed pauperism; they have no ragged children, nor
ragged schools; the very boys have such regard for the rights of pro
perty, that the orchards are not enclosed, and cherry trees hang loaded
over the paths and roads, without being robbed by the pilferer, or
watched by the owner; not even watch-dogs are kept; each defends
the property of his neighbour as well as his own. The houses are
large and comfortable, two stories, and sometimes three, with nu
merous apartments; and in all the country there are no such cots
hovels as there are in England. The people are all well but simply
dressed; and even the few laborers that live on day wages are as well
dressed, and as comfortably fed and lodged, as their masters; and
work and live in hope that by their savings, which are weekly accu
mulating, they shall be able to purchase a little farm for themselves,
and spend the evening of their days in comfort.” We should remark
that the writer of the article from which the above is taken, attri
butes all these beneficial results to the system of “ peasant pro
prietors” there in force; that is to say, the possession by every
laborer of a piece of land of from five to ten or more acres, which is
Cultivated by himself and his family. Now we do not deny that such
may be a very useful means of raising the condition of the working
classes, giving them, as it does, a personal interest in their work;
still w® assert that alone it would be quite powerless to raise one jot
the poor from their miserable condition. In proof of this, we point
to the description of the state of the Chinese above given, which
shows the results of the above system (for there it is in greatest force,
nearly every peasant being a land-holder) when unaided by sexual re
straint.
The true cause of this prosperity we find in the custom of late
marriages and celibacy, more general in those countries than in any
other in Europe. Indeed, so much is it felt to be a duty to refrain
from wedlock until the man is able to maintain a wife and children,
that in some of the states alluded to, a law is enforced which requires
every person intending to marry, to prove before a magistrate that he
possesses the means of supporting a family; otherwise he cannot
marry. However repulsive such a law may seem to us Englishmen,
born and bred in an atmosphere of liberty, there can be no doubt that
it has effected in those countries all the improvements so remarkable
of late years.
We shall now turn to our own country, and endeavour to solve the
question put in th,e first part of this work, “ What are the causes
* “Family Herald,” for the week ending Feb. 22, 1857, article,
“The World but little known.”
�10
which have operated in cutting off the working classes of England
from their due share of the vast increase of wealth, which has takes
place in this country during the present century ? ” To thia we
boldly answer, early marriages and undue procreation; and in this we
are supported by all the greatest modern writers on the state of the
poor, to wit, Messrs. John Stuart Mill, Malthus, McCulloch, Dr.
Whately, and others too numerous to mention. We are so impressed
with the idea (which has descended to us from the ancient Hebrews),
that to rear a large family is a very meritorious act, that it may seem
startling when we lay at its door all the poverty, misery, and even
crime, so rife amongst the poorer classes. And yet from the facts
before passed in review, namely, the existence of universal poverty in
all those countries whose inhabitants do not practise sexual restraint,
and, on the contrary, its rarity in proportion as sexual restraint is
exercised, we can no longer shut our eyes to the conclusion, however
harsh it may appear, that the large families common amongst the
working classes have not only the effect of dragging down and
crippling the parents who have to toil for their support, but are also
the great cause of the present state of low wages, ceaseless drudgery,
and early death, consequent on an over-crowded population, and too
great a supply of labor in proportion to the demand. As long as the
number of hands seeking work is greater than the capital for their
employment at fair wages, it is vain to expect a rise in wages ; just
in the same way as when the population of a country exceeds the
food for its comfortable support, it would be impossible for all to get
enough sustenance.
III.
From what we have said in the preceding chapters, it may be
thought that we would wish to impress upon the poor and working
classes the duty of exercising moral restraint; that is, sexual ab
stinence. This is the view of the question taken by Mr« Malthus,
Dr. Chalmers, and many other writers; and no doubt whatever can
exist as to the power of this means, if it could be adequately prac
tised, to remove poverty and want in England. But, with all due
deference to such eminent authorities, we cannot refrain from ex
pressing our firm conviction that such a remedy for poverty is almost,
if not quite, as bad as the disease it would cure. Our endeavours
should be not merely directed to the removal of poverty, which is but
one form of human misery, but to the much larger question of a re
moval of all the causes of unhappiness. If we remove one only to
replace it by another as bad, then have we done no real good.
This subject—the evils of moral restraint or sexual abstinence
will require a little careful examination; as, although we all feel by
instinct that it is an evil, yet (from its very nature causing its victims
to hide their sufferings) it is much less capable of being clearly de
fined and put down in black and white, than is that of over-popula
tion, and its natural result—poverty.
In order the better to explain this subject, we shall borrow a few
�.11
passages from the work already quoted from, which, being written
by a student of medicine, who has evidently carefully studied this
branch of physiology, is entitled to our serious attention.
“It is most unwise,” he says, “ to suppose that our chief duty with
regard to our appetites and passions, is to exercise self-denial. This
quality is far from being at all times a virtue ; it is quite as often a
vice; and it should by no means be unconditionally praised. Every
natural passion, like every organ of the body, was intended to have
moderate exercise and gratification. ... At the present, in this
country, abstinence or self-denial, in the matter of sexual love, is
much more frequently a natural vice than a virtue; and instead of
deserving praise, merits condemnation, as we may learn from the
mode in which all-just nature punishes it. Wherever we see disease
following any line of conduct, we may be certain that it has been
erroneous and sinful, for nature is unerring. Sexual abstinence is
frequently attended by consequences not one whit less serious than
sexual excess, and far more insidious and dangerous, as they are not
io generally recognised. While every moralist can paint in all its
horrors the evils of excess, how few are aware that the reverse of the
picture is just as deplorable to the impartial and instructed eye.”
Those who require a more detailed account should consult the work
itself, where also are shown in vivid colors the hundred times more
ruinous effects resulting from the abuse of this part of our frames,
whether in the form of self-pollution, or that of prostitution, with the
melancholy list of diseases in their train ; both of which vices are
sure to be rampant wherever great obstacles to marriage exist.
Let us now view moral restraint or sexual abstinence from a lower,
but, to the majority, more influential point of view; that is, its effect
On the every-day comfort of the working man. It is here that would
be found the greatest difficulty in its adoption; for to a young
operative a wife is a necessity, if he would obtain any of those in
numerable small comforts, without which, however trifling they may
be thought by some, this life is hardly worth the having. Unable to
hire a cook or housekeeper, as is done by the more wealthy bachelor,
he would find it impossible to procure comfortable meals, nor even
any degree of cleanliness in his home, engaged as he is from morning
to night at work, probably far away from home. If the life of the
unmarried working man is comfortless and dreary, ten times more so
must be that of the unmarried woman after a certain age. Indeed,
amongst the poorer classes, such a person is quite in the way; she is
felt to be a burden to her family if she remain at home; and it is
hardly possible to support herself independently in lodgings, except
in the most miserable way. Thus, apart from any other reason,
marriage is felt to be an absolute necessity to both sexes, soon after
their reaching full growth, for the sake of that dearest of all things
to an Englishman, no matter how miserable it may be, a home. The
last remaining objection to moral restraint and late marriage, namely,
the deprivation, during the flower of man’s life, of the two dearest
objects for which human nature yearns—to love and be beloved by a
�12
wife and children—is too evident from the unhappiness it is universally
acknowledged to produce, to nc-ed illustration. Suffice it to say that
by this, the lot of the greater part of the middle classes, especially
the female portion, is rendered so comfortless and dreary, that many
of them would joyfully exchange their comfort and wealth, enjoyed
in solitude, for the poverty of what are called their less fortunate
neighbours, who at least are not deprived of all outlet for the social
and domestic virtues with which we are all endowed. Indeed, so ut
terly cheerless and miserable are the lives of most of that much to
be pitied section of the middle classes, called in ridicule “old maids,”
that we could not have the heart to wish to see the like state amongst
the poor, who, God knows, have as it is but very few pleasures.
“Is there no escape, then,” we are tempted to cry in despair, “from
the miseries inflicted on man by want of food, love, or leisure.”
“There is none,” cries the orthodox political economist; “none,”
repeats the disciple of Malthus; “none,” echoes the religionist. “If
such be the case then, if ordinary political economy, Malthusianism
of the ascetic school, religion itself, can do nothing but tear from us
all hopes of improvement in this world, and content themselves with
croaking resignation and patience under our afflictions: then will we
have none of them.” But we truly believe that human affairs are not
so hopeless, else should we have refrained from opening afresh the
many wounds which torment us. No, there is a means, the only
means, by which the evils of want of love, equally with those of want
of food and leisure (those three great necessities of our nature), may
in course of time, be entirely cured. It may appear at first sight,
perhaps, ridiculously unequal to such gigantic results, perhaps im
moral, perhaps unnatural, but we are confident in being able to meet
and refute any objections which can be made to it, and prove it to be
the only solution to the question nearest to the interests and happiness
of mankind—“Is it possible to obtain for each individual a fair share
of food, love, and leisure ? ”
IV.
The means we speak of, the only means by which the virtue and
the progress of mankind are rendered possible, is preventive sexual
intercourse. By this is meant, sexual intercourse where means are
taken to prevent impregnation. In this way love would be obtained
without entailing upon us the want of food and leisure, by over
crowding the population.
Two questions here arise: First, “ Is it possible, and in what way?”
Second, “Can it be done without causing moral and physical evil?”
In answer to the first question, we reply that there are several
means which have been adopted in this country, and more especially on
the continent, for the purpose of checking the increase of an already
numerous family without the exercise of perfect continence; but we
shall.chiefly recommend the following, as most of the others are more or
less iniurious to the health or nervous system of the parties adopting
�13
them. The following, however, has none of these objections, being
perfectly harmless, easy of adoption, and at the same time not in the
least diminishing the enjoyment of the act of coition. It consists in the
introduction of a piece of fine sponge, slightly soaked in tepid water,
and of sufficient size, in such a way as to guard the womb from the
entrance of the male semen during sexual connection. This might
be followed by an injection of tepid water.
By this means a fruitful result would be rendered Impossible. The
other means of preventing conception which have 1 een employed or
proposed, are, firstly, withdrawal before ejaculation; secondly, the
use of the sheath, or “French Letter;” thirdly, the use of injections
immediately after intercourse; and fourthly, the avoidance of con
nection, from two days before, till eight days after, the monthly
courses—at which time impregnation is far most likely to occur. Of
these, the two first are the most certain preventives: but the two
last, as well as the sponge, are the least open to objection in other
respects.
The second question was, “ Can preventive sexual intercourse be
used without causing physical or moral evils?” We firmly believe
that it can, or at least, that if there be any evil results, such would
sink into insignificance beside the present ones, which, arising as they
do from over-population, are otherwise irremediable. We think a
ealm consideration of the principal objection which may be urged
against the adoption of this invaluable means, will enable us to con
vince the reader that it is founded on error. We allude to the idea
that many entertain, of preventive intercourse being a kind of murder
or infanticide. In order to do this, we must pause to explain the
nature of the act of generation, which, though one of the simplest,
and at the same time most beautiful operations of nature, has often
been considered as a deep mystery and a subject never to be
mentioned.
The fixture human being is formed by the union, in the womb, of
two very minute cells, of opposite sexes, invisible to the naked eye,
called the sperm (male) and germ (female) cells, which is effected by
the act of copulation. When once this union has taken place, the
embryo, as it is then called, possesses life, which is as sacred as that
of the adult’s, and the destruction of which would truly be murder.
But to prevent this union from taking place is a totally different
matter. Before coition the seminal fluid is no more than a secretion,
like the saliva, perspiration, &c.; and consequently it is a total con
fusion of ideas to associate its loss with infanticide, as it cannot be
murder to destroy that which has never existed as life. Moreover,
the curious discovery has recently been made, that every time a
woman menstruates (that is, has the monthly illness), one or more of
the germ cells or eggs is spontaneously discharged, and, if sexual
coition have not previously taken place, it is wasted. So that, if we
go on the principle that to prevent a birth is murder, we might with
equal justice accuse those persons who remain unmarried during the
time of potence (namely, more than 30 years) of the murder of all
�14
the children who might have been bot~n, had they married. Far from
being murder, preventive intercourse is the only possible means of
preventing murder; for that is hardly too strong a word to apply to
the bringing into the world of such a number of beings as we know
could never find support should they all reach manhood. Let us see
if facts do not bear us out in this assertion. In this country, amongst
the poor, 53 in every 100, or more than one-half of the children who
are born, die in infancy. Now in spite of this large amount of mor
tality, those who survive to manhood, perhaps not more than one-third
of those born, still find it next to impossible to gain a livelihood.
What, then, would be the result, think you, were it possible, by im
provements of dwellings and other means of health, to save those
children from an early grave, and throw upon the already over
crowded labor market a triple number of hands? Famine.
Thus, if we know that, as at present, twice or thrice as many being#
are brought into the world as can by any possibility find food, instead
of a crime, would not preventive intercourse rather be the greatest
virtue we could possibly practise, since it would save nearly twothirds of our fellow-beings from the death by slow starvation, poverty, ■
or neglect, which is otherwise inevitable?
For the satisfaction of those who may feel timid in adopting any
thing which they suppose to be new, it will be as well to mention that
Messrs. Francis Place, Richard Carlile, Robert Dale Owen, Dr.
Knowlton, and the author of the Elements of Social Science, have,
in the journals or books edited or published by them, strongly re
commended the adoption of preventive intercourse. It is also openly
advocated by a number of the most eminent foreign writers, some of
them holding high positions in the universities of their respective
cities.
With regard to the extent to which it should be practised, that
must of course depend greatly on the present state of population of
the country, or of the class adopting it; but we believe we should be
near the mark in saying that, under existing circumstances, married
persons should in no ease allow themselves more than two children, at
least in this country. Indeed, considering the fearfully over-crowded
state of England, it would be a noble sacrifice on the part of married
persons to refrain from having any for the present, until the rate of
wages has somewhat risen.
*
The day will come, and soon too, we hope, when the having a large
family, far from being thought a virtue, as at present, will be looked
upon in its true light--that of a great social wrong; and although
this tract is more particularly addressed to the working classes, as
they are probably the greatest sufferers by the present state of things,
and the least aware of its true cause, we nevertheless believe limited
procreation ts be a duty equally binding on all classes, rich or poor.
Mr. Malthus, the discoverer of the great Law of Population, laid it
* Or until the price of the necessaries of life—as bread, house
rent, clothing, &c.—has fallen ; which, as we have before shown, is
practically the same as an increase of money-wages.
�15
down as a duty strictly binding on all, “ Not to bring beings into the
world for whom one cannot find means of support;” but what would
be the result of following that course? Why, to give the rich a
monopoly of those blessings, or rather those necessaries of life, love
and offspring, cutting off the poor from what is now often their only
solace. Instead of the above, we should rather say, “It is a sacred
duty for us all, by the use of preventive means, to limit the number
of our families, in order that we may not prevent our fellow beings
from obtaining their share of love, food, and leisure,” any one of
which is, in the present age of celibacy and large families, quite un
attainable without a proportionate sacrifice of the two others. .
Preventive intercourse, then, is the only means by which it i3 pos
sible for mankind to make any real or satisfactory advance in happi
ness; and were it to be universally practised, it could not fail to
cheapen food, raise wages, and remove the greater part of the vice
and disease for which, in spite of all our boasting, this country is
remarkable.
But although preventive intercourse is the main remedy for poverty
amongst the poor, and celibacy amongst the rich, there are some other
schemes which, tried with the above, would doubtless do much good.
Amongst the foremost is associated industry, that is, the system which
gives every working man in trade a direct interest in the success of his
labor, and a share of the profits, raising him from the condition of a.
mere machine to that of a kind of junior partner. In a similar
manner, there is no doubt that to raise the country laborer from his
present condition of a hired drudge, to that of an owner of land,
however small in quantity, would have a very beneficial effect in im
proving his state, moral and physical. This would require an altera
tion in the laws regarding freehold land, which now render its ac
quirement almost impossible for any but a rich man. However, as
such reforms are for the most part out of the reach of the class to
whom this work is addressed, and are, after all, of little consequence
compared with the duty of limiting procreation, we need not longer
pause to consider them.
In conclusion, we call upon all to throw away false prejudices, and
unite in the adoption of preventive sexual intercourse. By such
means the state of ideal happiness for which we all instinctively
yearn, may not be in time so unattainable; meanwhile, the working
classes can, by the practice of the above simple and harmless ex
pedient, very much better their condition with regard to wages: in
which it is vain to expect a rise as long as the supply of labor is so
great in proportion to the demand, as is the case in these days of
large families and over-crowded population. Working men! your
salvation is in your own hands. If you allow yourselves to turn
from it and lean solely upon socialism, red republicanism, and
trades’-unions, your condition is indeed hopeless; but we sincerely
believe that when once you learn the true remedy for your ills, you
will not be slow to adopt it: and by using every effort in your power
to Spread the knowledge of it amongst your fellow workmen, will
be the means of raising the class to which you belong, from the state
�16
of semi-slavery, ^ith ceaseless toil and scantv food, which is but too
commonly their lot, to one of comfort and Independence.
POSTSCRIPT.
The reader is earnestly requested to do all in his power towards
making widely known the contents of this tract. This he might do
with little or no trouble to himself, by lending it amongst his friends
or fellow workmen, or by leaving it on the tables of coffee-houses,
mechanics’ institutes, and other public places. It must be evident
that unless the duty of limited procreation be almost universally
recognized, any good effected by its practice in raising wages, will be
liable to be counteracted by the earlier marriages and increased pro
creation of those not adopting it.
The 22ndEdition, enlarged by the addition of a Fourth Part, of the
TpLEMENTS OF SOCIAL SCIENCE; or, Physical, Sexual,
and Natural Religion. With the Solution of the Social
Problem. Containing an Exposition of the true Cause and only Cure
of the three primary social evils—Poverty, .Prostitution, and
Celibacy. By a Graduate of Medicine. Price 2s. 6d.; or in cloth 3s.
Post-free.
Upwards of 600 pages.
%
u
Opinions of the Press.
. . si)me respects all books of this class are evils; but it would be weakness and
criminal prudery a prudery as criminal as vice itself—not to say that such a book as
the one in question is not only a far lesser, evil than the one that it combats, but in
\??nse a
which it is mercy to issue and courage to publish.”—Reasoner.
.
. av?xnever risen from the perusal of any work with a greater satisfaction
thrni this. i Ur ^reatest hope is that it may get into families where the principles
w
inculcated by a parent, who will use his authority in the advice to both sons
and daughters, which should always accompany the reading of works like this. And
we are certain that in every case where it is read with care, there will be another
soldier gained to that brave band who are ever encircling the ramparts of bigotry
and ignorance.
**This book is the BIBLE OF THE BODY. It is the founder of a great moral
reform. It is the pioneer of health, peace, ami virtue. It should be a household Lar
in every home. head it, study it, husbands and wives Had you, had your parents,
read a book like this, a diseased, dwarfed, deteriorated race would not now be
wasting away in our country. By reading this wonderful work every young man may
preserve his health and his virtue. Some will say the disclosures are exciting or
indelicate—not so; they are true, and the noblest guide to virtue and to honour.
That book must be read, that subject must be understood, before the population can
be raised from its present degraded, diseased, unnatural, and immoral state. We
really know not how to speak sufficiently highly of this extraordinary work; we can
only say, conscientiously and emphatically, it is a blessing to the human race.”—
Ptepte's Paper.
“ Though quite out of the province of our journal, we cannot refrain from stating that
this work is unquestionably the most remarkable one, in many respects, we have ever
met with. The anonymous author is a physician, who has brought his special know
ledge to bear on some of the most intricate problems of social life. He lays bare to the
public, and probes with a most unsparing hand, the sores of society, caused by anoma
lies in the relation of the sexes. Though we differ toto ccelo from the author in his
views of religion and morality, and hold some of his remedies to tend rather to a dis
solution than a reconstruction of society, yet we are bound to admit the benevolence
and philanthropy of his motives. The scope of the work is nothing less than the whole
field of political economy
.. .
—The British Journal of Homoeopathy. January, 1860. 1 (Pub
lished Quarterly, Price 5s.)
London: K Truetx>ve, 256, High Holborn, W.O.
�
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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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Poverty : its cause and cure [...], by M.G.H.
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 16 cm.
Notes: Published anonymously. Publisher's advertisement for Elements of social science, 22nd ed., on p.16. Full title: Poverty: its cause and cure pointing out a means by which the working classes may raise themselves from the present state of low wages and ceaseless toil to one of comfort, dignity and independence and which is also capable of entirely removing in course of time, the other principal social evils. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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E. Truelove
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1885
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N294
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Social problems
Birth control
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Birth Control
NSS
Poverty
Working Class-Great Britain
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Text
'flthe Jnidlectual
AND
NEW JERUSALEM MAGAZINE.
No. 254.]
'
FEBRUARY 1, 1875.
[Vol. XXII.
LIKE AND UNLIKE.
There are many things in this world that appear to he alike, and
some that are even supposed to be identical, which are yet very differ
ent from, and some of them even opposite to, each other. Charity and
benevolence are often confounded, but are by no means the same.
Although not in their nature antagonistic, they are not unfrequently
opposite in their results. Charity aims at the real and even the ever
lasting good of its objects, benevolence only consults their apparent
good, and not only leaves the eternal out of consideration, but often so
acts as to make the temporal hostile to it. Parental love and fondness
are not unfrequently mistaken for each other, or rather fondness is
sometimes mistaken for love. Yet they are far from being the same.
Love, like charity, constantly aims at the real good of the objects of
its affection and regard, and so treats them as to secure, as far as it can,
their true and lasting welfare. Fondness seeks its satisfaction in the
gratification of its own and of its objects’ feelings and desires, and
often sacrifices their true interests by ministering to their appetites and
passions.
Zeal and anger are not always distinguished, yet they are not only
different but opposite in their origin, in their nature, and in their
tendency. Zeal is the warmth of love, anger is the fire of hatred.
“ Externally zeal appears like anger, but inwardly they are different.
The differences are these. The zeal of a good love is like a heavenly
flame, which in no case bursts forth upon another, but only defends
itself against a wicked person. But the zeal of an evil love is like an
�54
Like and Unlike.
infernal flame, which of itself bursts forth and rushes on, and desires
to consume another. The zeal of a good love burns away, and is
allayed when the assailant ceases to assault; but the zeal of an evil
love continues, and is not extinguished. This is because the internal
of him who is in the love of goodness is in itself mild, soft, friendly and
benevolent; wherefore when his external, with a view of defending
itself, is fierce, harsh, and haughty, and thereby acts with rigour, still
it is tempered by the good in which he is internally. It is otherwise
with the evil. With them the internal is unfriendly, without pity,
harsh, breathing hatred and revenge, and feeding itself with their
delights ; and although it is reconciled, still these evils lie concealed as
fire in the wood under the embers; and these fires burst forth after
death, if not in this world.” (C. L. 365.) There are two lessons we
may learn from this outward similarity between the two essentially
different feelings of zeal and anger. We must not regard all warmth of
feeling which we meet with in debate, when a speaker is vindicating
his own opinions, or refuting or even declaiming against those of others,
as of necessity so much as allied to anger. Nor must we suppose that
a still more fiery denunciation of wrong and vindication of right has
any necessary relationship with wrath. There is a generous indigna
tion, which is sometimes called righteous anger; but such indignation
or anger is only zeal. It has in it no hatred except against evil. It
desires the welfare even of those who do the evil against which it is
directed. The angels, we are told, have indignation, but their indigna
tion “ is not of anger but of zeal, in which there is nothing of evil,
and which is as far removed from hatred or revenge, or from the spirit
of returning evil for evil, as heaven is from hell, for it originates in
good.” (A. C. 3839.) Another lesson we learn from the outward
similarity between zeal and anger has respect to God.
He is a zealous
God. And His Divine zeal, although it is the fire of infinite love, to a
certain class of His creatures has the appearance, and from that ap
pearance has in Scripture assumed the name, of anger and even of
wrath and vengeance. “ The zeal of the Lord, which in itself is love
and pity, appears to the evil as anger; for when the Lord out of love
and mercy protects His own in heaven, the wicked are indignant and
angry against the good, and rush into the sphere where Divine good
and Divine truth are, and attempt to destroy those who are there, and
■ in this case the Divine truth of the Divine good operates upon them,
and makes them feel such torments as exist in hell; hence they attri
bute to the Divine Being wrath and anger, whereas in Him there is
nothing at all of anger or of evil, but pure clemency and mercy.
Wrath and anger are attributed to the Lord, but they belong to those
who are in evil, or are angry against the Divine.” (A. C. 8875.) How
needful, then, the Lord’s exhortation—“ Judge not according to the
appearance, but judge righteous judgment.”
�55
SKETCH OF THE SCIENCE OF PSYCHOLOGY
BASED ON SCRIPTURE AND REASON.
BY THE LATE REV. W. WOODMAN.
Chap. V.—The Relation of the Soul and Body—continued.
We now come to the final question, which, though last, is not least
in importance : “ What is the use of the material body in relation to
the soul?” or, “What is the ground, in the divine economy, of the
necessity of man being born into the natural world 1 ” That such a
necessity exists must be inferred from the fact: for Divine Wisdom
does nothing in vain. No provision which exists is superfluous.
Hence there must be an adequate reason for the phenomenon.
In the preceding chapter it was explained that, without an inert or
reactive basis, creation itself would have been impossible, and that the
creative energies would have dissipated themselves without result. It
was also shown by reference to those phenomena of the other world, of
which the Scriptures supply intimations, that the substances of that
world have an inherent activity which results in continual change,
many of the scenes described in the prophets and the Apocalypse being
like the shifting scenes of a drama. That objects and scenery of a
permanent character exist there is unquestionable, but, as will be
shown in a future part of this work, their continuance is due to their
connection with states derived from the fixedness of this world. Such
Would be the character of the human soul, had it not been provided,
in order to its preserving a permanent identity, that the spirit should
be allied to the inert substances of the world of nature, thence to
derive a kind of limbus—a selvidge, or fringe-work of fixedness, which
forms a substratum or fulcrum to the spiritual activities, and serves,
like the cutaneous integument of the body, to hold all its parts in their
connection.
The rudiment of this is laid at conception, and becomes actual at birth,
so soon as the material organization has been animated from the outer
world, by the inhalation of the external atmosphere. Life thus brought
down to the extreme verge of our nature—in other words, the influx of
life from which the embryo lived thus uniting itself with the afflux of
life from without—-the connection of the soul with the body, which
previously had been potential, now becomes actual.
Still, the base thus formed in the child, though real, is rudimentary,
and receives its full development in after life, the body then serving as
�56
Sketch of the Science of Psychology.
a plane into which the mental activities are determined, and where, by
being embodied in corresponding acts, they become fixed in actual life.
This explains why in the Scriptures so great an emphasis is placed on
works, and why we are to be judged according to the deeds done in th®
body. It is for this reason that the Lord insists on the doing of His
precepts as the foundation on which alone our spiritual house can
stand.
The importance of this subject affords a sufficient apology for
adducing a few of the more prominent instances in which this doctrine
is enforced, such as the following : “ Blessed are the dead which die in
the Lord from henceforth'; yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest
from their labours, and their works do follow them ” (Rev. xiv. 13).
l( Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right
to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city ”
(Rev. xxii. 14). “ Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall
enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he who doeth the will of My
Father which is in heaven” (Matt. vii. 21). “ He that hath My com
mandments, and doeth them, he it is that loveth Me” (John xiv. 21).
“ Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit: so shall ye
be My disciples ” (John xv. 5). “ Say ye to the righteous, It shall
be well with him; for they shall eat the fruit of their doings ” (Isa. iii.
10). And these are but a small fraction of the texts which bear on
the point.
The ground of these strong injunctions is obviously because love
together with faith, unless embodied in act, evaporate in mere senti
mentality. “ If,” as the Apostle James truly observes, “ a brother or
sister be naked, or destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto
them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye
give them not those things which are needful to the body, what doth
it profit?” (chap. ii. 15, 16.) It is as profitless to him who contents
himself with the sentiment as to the object of it; it is equally desti
tute of fruit in the one case as in the other. In the act all purposes of
the will, with all the mental powers, both intellectual and affectional,
are concentrated. They are simultaneously present, and require a
consistency in the deed, whilst they leave their indelible impress on
the spirit.
It is not however to be inferred that there is any efficacy in mere
deeds. Actions, however pious or beneficent in their outward form,
when not the result of genuine religious principle, are destitute of
spiritual vitality. They are either formal or hypocritical—either like
�Sketch of the Science of Psychology.
57
a lk»dy without a soul, or a whited sepulchre, the receptacle of dead
Bien’s hones and all uncleanness. A mere act, considered abstractedly
from motive, is simply mechanical. It is qualified by the motive out of
which it springs; and the same act performed by different persons
may differ in all its essential characteristics, and indeed does so in
the degree in which the respective purposes and ends contemplated in
the performance of it respectively vary. In the mutual relation there
fore which the one bears to the other the inward motive impresses on
the deed its peculiar character, whilst this solidifies and renders
permanent the principles of thought and affection whence it springs.
It is also a fact, of which every one on reflection may convince him
self, that the principles of the mind, by derivation, become principles
of the body also. This is illustrated in the impress of the mental
characteristics on the countenance. I do not allude to those transitory
changes which are produced by the passing emotions; principles per
manently established within the soul imprint a lasting image of them
selves on the expression of the face.1
That there are instances where the secret workings of the soul are
sedulously concealed from observation is fully conceded; but this is
the result of long education of the features to conceal the real senti
ments of the mind, and simulate others which it does not feel.
It is an abnormal condition, and may be regarded as an exception,
which rather serves to prove the rule than furnish an argument against
it. Moreover, viewed in its essential character, the image of hypocrisy
will be found stamped on every one of its forms, although not so easily
detected by the external senses.2
The impress of the mental principles derived into the bodily
organization is not however confined to the face, although this is, par
1 The author witnessed a remarkable instance of this in comparing the portrait
of a gentleman taken at one period with the original some years afterwards, dur
ing which time a change had taken place in his religious sentiments. The like
ness was evidently an excellent one. Every feature was a perfect reproduction,
as far as to the general contour of the living face then preseent, but the expression
of the two was vastly different. That of the former, though not harsh, was cold
and rigid ; that of the latter beamed with benevolence and sympathy. A change
such as this could only be due to a correspondent change in the arrangement of
the interior fibres which underlie the surface, and which, as explained in the text,
primarily receive the impressions of the mental activities.
2 The author, and doubtless many who read these pages, has found how often
the impression spontaneously produced on first seeing an individual proves to be
the correct one. Even deceit, notwithstanding the consummate art resorted to for
the purpose of concealing the true sentiments, will thus frequently crop out.
/
�58
Sketch of the Science of Psychology.
excellence, the index of the mind. The manual dexterity acquired hy
practice in the more delicate operations of art or mechanics, rests on
the same ground. The soul not only thus educates its material
organism from the minutest fibres of which it is composed to its more
concrete organs, but a lasting impression is left upon them, a disposing
of the minute parts, whereby the operations are capable of almost
spontaneous reproduction ; many of the manual processes requiring no
ordinary skill being carried on without the effort of reflection. The
body has thus a species of automatic action, whence use becomes a
second nature. The retentive faculty of the organism of the im
pressions its activities may have received is most strikingly illustrated
by the circumstance, that what has been acquired in early youth, when
both mind and body are most plastic, is nevertheless so indelibly
fixed as never during life to be obliterated, but are capable of repro
duction at any subsequent period so long as our frame retains its
normal powers.
If this is the case with operations which lie relatively on the surface,
much more with the principles that stir the profounder depths of our
being. Manual dexterity, and even intellectual aptitude, may exist
independently of moral or spiritual character ; but that which springs
from the fountain of the life’s love, acting from a far deeper ground,
will exercise a proportionately more powerful influence; the inmost
motives, whatever their character, will inevitably transform the
whole organism inhabited by it into a perfect image of themselves,
and form a substratum, so to speak, on which the others rest.
It is then for this reason that the soul in its first stage is allied with
a material vesture; and that the natural universe has been created to
supply the elements necessary to form this external covering, and to
furnish a plane whereon these ultimate activities may be developed to
their utmost extent.
In the soul and body, then, are collated all the arcana of created
existence, and communication established with both worlds, so that
each may contribute its wealth to the human subject. The spiritual
supplies the active energies of his being, the material, the reactive base,
by means of which these become fixed and permanent. The lowest
being thus brought into the closest relationship with the highest, the
conditions are supplied for realizing the action of that law whereby
all true operation proceeds from first principles by ultimates into
intermediates. At birth there are only the two extremes, the soul and
a mere corporeity. The former, operating through the latter, rears the
�Shelch of the Science of Psychology.
59
mental superstructure lying between. The first plane rests on the
bodily senses; through these, by instruction, science is formed, and
the moral sentiments superadded; and if man becomes the subject of
& new birth, the centre of a new series is formed, a spiritual super
structure crowns the edifice. The soul is thus like a many-storied
house, rising from the lowest natural plane till it reaches the verge of
the spiritual, which, when formed and developed, brings it into com
munion and conjunction with the Supreme. In all these stages the
operation of the same law may be discovered. The principles and.
purposes formed within the mind acquire a mental consistency and
permanence only as they are determined to act. And whilst this im
parts a fixity to them, it also provides a solid mental basis for the
development and perfection of the religious life within.1
1 Three objections may possibly arise in some minds. It may appear that the
arguments employed in this chapter favour the conclusion that the existence of the
body is indispensable to the full exercise of the mental functions, and that at its
dissolution the soul is deprived of an essential element necessary to such exercise.
In the second place, it may seem as though those who died in infancy must lack
the full development of the natural base, and consequently remain imperfect.
The third difficulty which may probably suggest itself relates to the existence of
angels created such. On the first two points I must request the reader to suspend
his judgment till a future portion of this work, when they will more properly come
Under the full consideration they demand. As regards the third, I must beg
permission to remark that much misapprehension prevails on the subject. There
certainly is no direct intimation in the Scriptures of any existences being so
Created, and the doctrine rests entirely on inference, and this from passages con
fessedly obscure. The direct testimony of Holy Writ is fatal to the hypothesis.
A detailed account of the order of creation is given in the Book of Genesis from
th® “beginning :”—“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Th® process continued, in an ascending series, till it culminated in man, with
which, and the subordinating of all inferior beings to his dominion and control,
God, we are told, “ ended all His work which He had made.” It is unnecessary to
observe that not the slightest reference occurs to the creation of angels. As to
fallen angels the declaration that ‘ ‘ God saw everything that He had made, and,
behold, it was very good,” precludes the idea of such being then in existence.
Moreover, it is not possible rationally to conceive of a being higher than an
image and likeness of God save God Himself. There can be no relation closer
than that of an image and likeness to the original of which it is the copy save
identity, which it would be a misnomer to call relationship, and, in the case
under consideration, would involve the idea of a transfusion of the Deity—an idea
revolting to every Christian sentiment. In addition to this, where angels are
mentioned as having appeared to the patriarchs, and there is no record of such
an event prior to the time of Abraham, they are called “men.” The three who
visited Abraham, and the two who sojourned with Lot, are so called (Gen. xviii.
2 i xix. 10). So also the angel of the Lord that appeared to Manoah and his wife
(Judges xiii.). The angels that appeared at the Lord’s sepulchre, likewise, are so
�6o
EMERSON.
i.
The time was when our American consins were so completely our
imitators that it was only in the matter of Slaveholding and Con
stitution we could say they were distinct with a difference. Cooper
wrote novels after Scott; Washington Irving followed Goldsmith;
Bryant imitated the best things in Wordsworth and Byron; Prescott
walked upon the shadow of Robertson. In arts, science, and agricul
ture, it was the same : we made the Americans their tools, and
composed their manuals;—they were content to use them after our
fashion.
But this state of things had to cease. Territorial annexation
excited a spirit of innovation generally. Then first arose Emerson
with his Transcendentalism; a clock remarkable for its inexactitude
and its whirr in striking followed ; the Poughkeepsie Seer next dawned
upon the indefinable side of the Western horizon; finally, Walt Whit
man made his appearance. The clock has been replaced by a more
reliable chronometer; the Harmonial Philosopher has been overshot
by innumerable experts, mediumistic, thaumaturgic and clairvoyant;
Whitman’s song has been left to die away uncared for beneath the
overwhelming chorus of healthier and less inartistic singers; but
Emerson still remains unaffected by the Zeit-Geist.
In joyous
styled (Mark xvi. 5 ; Luke xxiv. 4 ; compare also John xx. 12), whilst the angel
attendant on John, whose glory was so transcendent that John would have fallen
before him in worship, declared that he was his fellow servant, of the apostles, and
of his brethren the prophets, and of them that kept the sayings of that book
(Rev. xxii. 9). As to the devil ever having been an angel of light, it is directly
contradicted by the declaration of our Lord, that “he was a murderer from the
beginning. ” From the direct testimony of Scripture, and from every rational con
sideration, the conclusion that both angels and internals are from the human
race appears inevitable. The portion of the Second Epistle of Peter, and of that
of Jude, where they speak of the angels who left their first estate, are often
quoted. But, surrounded as they admittedly are with the greatest obscurity, and
their meaning being a matter of conjecture, to urge them in opposition to the
clearly expressed statements on the other side, would be an inversion of all
legitimate reasoning. Similar remarks are applicable to the other texts usually
believed to favour the popular doctrine, as the poetical reference in Job to the
morning stars, and the sons of Gfod singing together at the laying of the corner
stone of the earth, the falling of Lucifer in Isaiah, etc. ; so far as their sense can be
intelligibly gathered, they are entirely irrelevant to the matter in point. On
this subject, however, the reader is referred to Noble’s Appeal.
�Emerson.
6i
severity, dreamy smartness, sagacious mother-wit, and subtle thought,
ha has steadily held his own amongst our Transatlantic brethren
during over forty years of literary activity, and still remains the most
American of Americans;—an incessant protestor against social stag
nation, servility, covetousness, heartlessness, and that conventional
superficiality which—in the domain of thought—brings us everywhere
face to face with mere s^m-dilettantes “peeping into microscopes
and turning rhymes, as a boy whistles to keep his courage up
“men who grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes
■out but what was put in.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born at Boston in the year 1803,
and in early manhood—after graduating at Harvard—was ordained
an Unitarian minister.
An objection to the Sacramental Rite sub
sequently arose in his mind, and gradually widened into difficulties
ending only with the resignation of his pastorate. He then betook
himself to farming at Concord, near the spot where the first soldier
fell at the beginning of the War of Independence. There he has
spent most of his time since—his winter lecturing in Boston excepted.
Erom 1836 until now public attention has been attracted to him at
intervals either by a new course of lectures or by a new book.
“Nature,” “Essays and Orations,” “Representative Men,” “Poems,”
“The Conduct of Life,” “Society and Solitude,” “English Traits,”—
such are his principal literary works. He has also written largely in
the North American Review. Of his works not literary, it may be
briefly stated that Moncure Conway credits him with having so
Completely unsettled the minds of numbers of American thinkers some
years ago, that the Brook Farm Community, and certain other forms
of Harmonism, sprang out of the agitation j1 while J. R. Lowell—
speaking of the late War of Emancipation—says that “to Emerson
more than to all other causes together, did the young martyrs of our
civil war owe the sustaining strength of thoughtful heroism that is so
touching in every record of their lives.”2 What have been the prin
cipal causes of this success ? Is this success overrated ?
When Emerson—speaking of Goethe’s extraordinary knowledge of
human nature—said that this man seemed to see through every pore
of his skin, he used a remark equally applicable to himself. In this
lies the chief secret of his popularity. Another reason of his success
fe, that finding his countrymen were sinking their individuality before
1 In introduction to Passages from Nath. Hawthorne’s Note-Books, p. ii.
2 Vide My Study Windows, p. 280.
�Ó2
Emerson.
the demands of business, creedism and fashion, he had the courage
and tact to shame them into the admission of the fact. He showed
them they were the slaves of an idea that could but degrade. There
was a smooth mediocrity, a squalid contentment, that unmanned men.
How mean—he would say—to go blazing a gaudy butterfly in fashion
able or political saloons, the fool of society, the fool of notoriety, a
topic for newspapers, a piece of the street, and forfeiting the real
prerogative of the russet coat, the privacy and the true warm heart of
the citizen!
11 The babe by its mother lies bathed in joy ;
Glides its hours uncounted, the sun is its toy—
Shines the peace of all being, without cloud, in its eyes,
And the sum of the world in soft miniature lies,
But man crouches and blushes ; absconds and conceals ;
He creepeth and peepeth, he palters and steals.
Infirm, melancholy, jealous, glancing around,
An oaf, an accomplice, he poisons the ground.”
«
The world is his who can see through its pretension, he would say;—
why be timid and apologetic and no longer upright? Why dwarf
thyself beneath some great decorum, some fetish of a government,
some ephemeral trade, or war, or man ?
Addressing the leaders of thought, he showed them how com
pletely they had failed to meet the reasonable expectations of man
kind.
“Men looked when all feudal straps and bandages were
snapped asunder, that nature-—too long the mother of dwarfs—
should reimburse itself by a brood of Titans, who should laugh and
leap in the continent, and run up the mountains of the West with
the errand of genius and love : instead of this you are at best but
timid, imitative, tame —in painting, sculpture, poetry, fiction,
eloquence, there is grace without grandeur, and even that is not new,
but derivative. The great man makes the great thing. They are the
kings of the world who give the colour of the present thought to all
nature and all art, and persuade men by the cheerful serenity of
their carrying the matter, that this thing which they do is the apple
which the ages have desired to pluck, now at last ripe, and inviting
nations to the harvest.”
Young America won inspiration from his words, and lent itself
willingly to his teaching. His method was a sort of galvanic one,
and produced a like result. Little new was introduced into the
system,—the individual was led to feel himself. Stay at home in
thy own soul, Emerson would say,—are not Greece, Palestine, Italy,
�Emerson.
63
and ttte islands there in as far as the genius and active principle of
each and all is concerned? In silence, in steadiness, in severe
abstraction, hold by thyself. Add observation to observation. Be
patient of neglect, patient of reproach, and bide the fitting time 5
thou shalt see truly at last. The day is always his who works in it
with, serenity and great aims. As the world was plastic fluid in the
hands of God, so it is ever to so much of His attributes as we bring to
it: to ignorance it is flint.
Place not thy faith upon externals. The
sources of nature are in thy own mind if the sentiment of duty he
there. All thy strength, courage, hope, comes from within. Man is
spirit, and not a mere fleshly appetency. “ Every spirit builds itself
,a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world a
heaven. What we are that only can we see. All that Adam had,
all that Caesar could, you have, 0 countrymen, and can do. Adam
called his house heaven and earth; Caesar called his house Rome ;
you perhaps call yours a cobbler’s trade, a hundred acres of ploughed
land, or a scholar’s garret. Yet line for line and point for point,
your dominion is as great as theirs, though without their fine names.
Build therefore your own world ! ” But build wisely. Trust your
intuitions rather than custom, conventionality and the rule of the
mart. They pass ; God is ; so is your personality and yours. Trust
God with this and knowledge is yours; for “ the heart which aban
dons itself to the Supreme Mind finds itself related to all its works,
and will travel a royal road to particular knowledges and powers. In
ascending to this primary and aboriginal sentiment we have come from
our remote station on the circumference instantaneously to the centre
of the world, where—as in the closet of God—-we see causes and
anticipate the universe which is but a slow effect.”
This was news for Young America, already made conscious that
“the ways of trade were grown selfish to the borders of theft, and
supple to the borders of fraud.” Not without a need came the
warning voice—
“What boots thy zeal,
0 glowing friend,
That would indignant rend
The northland from the south ?
Wherefore ! to what good end ?
Boston Bay and Bunker Hill
Would serve things still!
Things are of the snake.
The horseman serves the horse,
�64
Emerson.
' The neatherd serves the neat,
The merchant serves the purse,
The eater serves his meat.
’Tis the day of the chattel,
Web to weave and corn to grind ;
Things are in the saddle
And ride mankind.”
By Essays on Friendship, Prudence, Worship, Love, and other
subjects, Emerson sought to spiritualize man’s thoughts once more.
What a discovery these Essays must have proved to some only
half-enslaved traditionalist! There is that on “ Love,” for instance :
to learn that the “ foolish passion,” as one eminent divine called Love,
did really not only establish marriage, unite man to his race and
pledge him to domestic and civic relations, but did also carry him
with new sympathy into nature, did enhance the power of the senses,
did open the imagination, add to his character heroic and sacred attri
butes, and finally did secure to the true mind a personal conviction
that the purification of the intellect and heart from year to year is
the real marriage, foreseen and prepared from the first, and wholly
above their consciousness ! To think that all mankind love a lover ;
that love is a celestial rapture falling out of heaven to inheaven
humanity,—the remembrance of its visions outlasting all other
remembrances and remaining a wreath of flowers on the oldest brows!
“No man ever forgot the visitations of that power to his heart and
brain which created all things new; which was the dawn in him
of music, poetry and art; which made the face of nature radiant
with purple light, the morning and night varied enchantments; when
a single tone of one voice could make the heart bound, and the
most trivial circumstance associated with one form is put in the amber
of memory; when he became all eye when one was present, and all
memory when one was gone; when no place was too solitary and
none too silent for him who has richer company and sweeter conver
sation in his new thoughts than any old friends, though best and
purest, can give him;—for the figures, the motions, the words of
the beloved object are not like other images, written in water, but as
Plutarch says ‘ enamelled in fire.’ ”
And then the satisfaction some young Caleb would experience in
being told what he had previously learnt but could not shape into
words j—namely, that beauty is the flowering of virtue and that we
cannot approach it. “ Its nature is like opaline doves’-neck lustres,
hovering and evanescent. Herein it resembles the most excellent
�Emerson.
65
things, which all have this rainbow • character, defying all attempts
at appropriation and usethat like the statue it is then beautiful
when it begins to be incomprehensible,—when it is passing out of
criticism,—that it is not you, but your radiance one loves!
One will search far to find a more exquisite and manly piece of
thought than where Emerson in this Essay tells how, by conversa
tion with that which is in itself excellent, magnanimous, lovely and
just, the lover comes to a warmer love of these nobilities and a
Quicker apprehension of them. “ Then he passes from loving them
in one to loving them in all, and so is the one beautiful soul only the
door through which he enters to the society of all true and pure souls.
In the particular society of his mate he attains a clearer sight of
any spot, any taint, which her beauty has contracted from this
World, and is able to point it out, and this with mutual joy that
they are now able, without offence, to indicate blemishes and
hindrances in each other, and give to each all help and comfort in
curing the same. And, beholding in many souls the traits of the
divine beauty, and separating in each soul that which is divine
from the taint which it has contracted in the world, the lover ascends
to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, by
Steps in this ladder of created souls.” No wonder, if, after realisinosuch perceptions as these, Emerson persistently declaimed against that
“ subterranean prudence” which only too generally presides at
marriages “ with words that take hold of the upper world, whilst one
eye is prowling in the cellar, so that its gravest discourse has a
Savour of hams and powdering tubs.” Such thoughts as these are of
no mere ephemeral character.
But it is by his Transcendentalism, or Idealistic Philosophy, that
the character of this man’s mind is best discerned. Setting out
with the conviction that we must so far trust the perfection of the
creation as to believe that whatever curiosity the .'order of things
has awakened in our mind the order of things can satisfy, Emerson
shows that, philosophically considered, the universe is composed of
Nature and the Soul,—Nature being the Not-Me. Sensual objects
Conform to the premonitions of Reason and reflect the conscience;
thus every natural process is a version of a moral sentence. Nature
consequently exists for Uses ;—for Commodity, or the advantages of
sense ; Beauty, or eesthetical satisfactions ; Language, or the expres
sion of thought; and Discipline, or the education of the Understanding
and Reason. A proper appreciation of these excellences would
�66
Emerson.
lead us to see all things as continually hastening back to Unity. Our
globe as seen by God is a transparent law, not a mass of facts. We
may not implicitly believe our senses.
Nature conspires with spirit
to emancipate us.
The materialist respects sensible masses j the
idealist has another measure,—the Rank which things themselves take
in his consciousness. Mind is the only reality; of this men and all
other natures are better or worse reflectors. Matter does not exist :
Nature is an appendix of the Soul. Not that the sensuous fact is
denied, but that this is looked upon as a sequel or completion of a
spiritual fact. This manner of looking at things transfers every
object in nature from an independent and anomalous position
without into the consciousness.
All that you call the world__he
told his disciples—is the shadow of that substance which you are__
the perpetual creation of the powers of thought. The mould is
invisible, but the world betrays the shape of the mould. Seen in the
light of thought, the world always is phenomenal; and virtue
subordinates it to the mind. Idealism sees the world in God.
“If a man is at heart just, then in so far he is God ; the safety
of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God, do enter
into that man with justice,” from which words one understands how
possible it is that a man should raise his hat to—himself, <£ Transcen
dentalism,” says Emerson 11 is the Saturnalia or excess of faith.”
Such Idealism, we further learn, beholds the whole circle of persons
and things, of actions and events, of country and religion, not as
painfully accumulated, atom after atom, act after act, in an aged
creeping Past; hut as one vast picture which God paints on the
instant eternity, for the contemplation of the soul.
“ The great Pan
of old, who was clothed in a leopard skin to signify the beautiful
variety of things, and the firmament his coat of stars,—was but a
representative of thee, 0 rich and various man ! thou palace of sight
and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning and the night and the
unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain the geometry of the City of God ;
in thy heart the bower of love and the realms of right and wrong.”
From these facts Emerson would lead us to see that the universal
essence—which is not wisdom, or love, or beauty, 'or power, but all
in one and each entirely—is that for which all things exist, and that
by which they are.
Spirit creates.
Behind nature, throughout
nature, spirit is present. One and not compound; it does not act
upon us from without, that is, in space and time, but spiritually, or
through ourselves. In other words, the Supreme Being does not build
�Emerson.
67
tip nature around us, but puts it forth through us, as the life of
the tree puts forth new branches and leaves through the pores of the
oli As a plant upon the earth, so a man rests upon the bosom of
God; he is nourished by unfailing fountains, and draws at his need
inexhaustible power.
In all this Emerson refuses to recognize the doctrine of Discrete
Degrees, and, as a consequence, he is committed—like Professor
Tyndall—to that confusion of thought which accepts life in its activity
in nature, as Life Itself in God.
He interprets its law of action
there, as if this life in such action were the Primal Law-Maker.
He takes the stream, of influences for the source and calls it God.
K The world, ” he says, “ proceeds from the same spirit as the body of
man. It is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God,—a projection
of God into the unconscious.” The Transcendentalist thus has no
difficulty in believing in one kind of miracle,—the perpetual
Openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power.
He has his Millenarianism too.
“ As far as you conform your life
to the pure idea in your mind,” says Emerson, “ that will unfold its
great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend
the influx of the spirit. So fast will disagreeable appearances, swine,
spiders, snakes, pests, madhouses, prisons, enemies, vanish ; they are
temporary, and shall be no more seen. The sordor and filths of nature
tike sun shall dry up and the wind exhale. As, when the summer
comes from the south, the snow-banks melt and the face of the earth
becomes green before it, so shall the advancing spirit create its
ornaments along its path, and carry with it the beauty it visits and
the song which enchants it. It shall draw beautiful faces, warm
hearts, wise discourse and heroic acts around its way, until evil is
no more seen. The kingdom of man over nature, which cometh not
with observation—a dominion such as now is beyond his dream of
God—he shall enter without more wonder than the blind man feels
who is gradually restored to perfect sight.”
Erom thoughts like these numbers of young men won a sort of
rehabilitation for their intellect. They were without an ideal;
Emerson showed them one,—his own : a manhood scholarly, poetical,
individualistic, meditative, spontaneous. True, he was not always
understood, nor perhaps understandable : but this with youth is a
small matter if there be a truth-like shimmering splendour there. It
is said that certain of the auditory on one occasion were so stunned
with a flow of pretty incomprehensibilities from Emerson, that a
�68
Life Immediate and Mediate.
friend suggested that they should stand on their heads the remainder
of the lecture, and see if that course would lead to a better understand
ing of this new Franklin declaiming in Orphic phrase. Young
America listened, read, and believed it believed.
But Old America and the America of Middle Age ? These have not
remained with Emerson, for Emerson failed to satisfy their heart
wants ! That volume which begins with the command of the Eternal
Father, Let there be Light / and which closes with the proclamation
of an Everlasting Gospel and the revelation of an unending New
ITeaven and Earth, “ and there shall be no night there,” for “ the Lamb
is the Light thereof”—that volume was to Transcendentalism a sealed
book, for Emerson and his followers scorned to look to the Lord
Jesus, the only breaker of those seals. As the individual ripens away
from early manhood, and his experience of the depth of his inherent
corruptions becomes more vivid and intense, it is not Idealism will
assure him of a Divine Father who is “ a very present help in time
of trouble yet it is towards Him faith then looks for hearthold.
LIFE IMMEDIATE AND MEDIATE.
There is one only source of life, that is God. He is the sole vivifying,
animating, and sustaining cause of everything that lives. God in
Himself is substantial life, He being self-essent and self-existent.
Life from God, however, which is the life and support of every finite
existence, is not substantial, it is an active force. Were it substantial
it would be God from God, or God from Himself, which is an obvious
absurdity. If the proceeding life from God were substantial, then,
inasmuch as it exists only in what is finite, the Infinite would be
literally in the finite, which is an impossibility.
Of the Infinite
finite beings cannot by any means form an idea : after stretching the
thought to its utmost possible limit, nothing but what is finite is com
prehended, and all that can be said in respect to the Infinite is, that it
is not there, what is perceived is only finite, and therefore is no part
of the Infinite. The Infinite having no finite limit, it is not an object
of finite thought, it is consequently incomprehensible ; all we can know
respecting it is from revelation ; and it is there declared, that we may
believe and adore it as the origin of life, and the producer of all that
is good. It must ever be remembered that influx is a descent of life
from the spiritual to the natural world, or rather from God, through
the spiritual world to man; and also that there is no influx of sub
�Life Immediate and Mediate.
69
stance. This is of the utmost importance, and must never be forgotten.
Substance does not flow from God, nor from one plane to another ; all
the degrees of the created universe are retained in their places, and in
their relative positions, never being removed, nor any part of them,
which would not be the case if influx were substantial. By that
retention of the various degrees of substance, both spiritual and natural
order is preserved throughout the whole, and all confusion is thereby
prevented.
Pure heat and light from the spiritual sun is what is meant by im
mediate life. Immediate life pervades all things, and it is the operation
of the immediate life in the disposal and arrangement of things which
is called the Divine Providence. It is the cause of all order, and pre
serves it both in the spiritual and in the natural worlds ; and it is pre
sent in all things as their indispensable sustainer. ' It is consequently
by immediate life that the distinction between the heavens is main
tained, by which the angels are formed into societies, or by which
classifications are effected—which is one of the greatest blessings of
Providence, and without which heaven would not be a place of
happiness. It is also by immediate life that representatives exist in
one heaven from another, and by which they correspond to each. It
is also the cause of days and nights and the seasons in this world.
Immediate life is also the cause of all the involuntary motions in man
in both soul and body ; by it the heart propels the blood, the lungs
respire, and all the other viscera perform their functions. It is like
wise by immediate life that diseases are removed, and the body is
restored to health, and by which man is strengthened and refreshed
during sleep. Immediate life is the very life of mediate life ; therefore
where there is mediate life there is also immediate, mediate life being
the immediate clothed, and without which clothing the influx of life
would be altogether imperceptible. Indeed, what is done by mediate
life is but little in comparison with what is done by immediate life.
(A. C. 7004.)
Immediate life is life unaffected by human or angelic mediums. It
is not only life as it proceeds from the spiritual sun, in which state it
is too intense to be received even by the highest angels ; but it is also
that life as it is mercifully accommodated to angelic reception by
divinely appointed accommodated mediums ; by these its intensity is
diminished and its ardency tempered. These mediums are spiritual
atmospheres. But these do not render it mediate ; it is still immediate
life notwithstanding its having passed through and been tempered by
these media.
Life as it flows from the spiritual sun is absolute, having no
specific form, no moral or human quality ; it is also undefinable and
F
�70
Life Immediate and Mediate.
indeterminate. It creates a form, vivifies it, and assumes a nature
therein; it also receives a quality in such forms as possess voluntary
power, and as mankind, and the life is thereby rendered mediate.
Life as a proceeding from God being absolute and undefined, no idea
of it can be formed but as heat and light proceeding from the sun,
which can scarcely be called an idea, inasmuch as heat and light apart
from substantial existences arc never made manifest.
When considering the different kinds of life, we are not to confound
the life which man lives with the life
which he lives. The life by
which man lives is immediate; but the life which he lives, whilst it
implies both immediate and mediate, is itself neither, but voluntary life.
It is a remarkable fact, that the life of man, or of any other living
thing, can be seen only in the existence of that thing; for this obvious
reason, it is neither more nor less than the thing itself living. The
life of man is the life which he lives, and not the vivifying force by
which he is animated; this latter is the same in all things. Man’s
voluntary life is that particular mode which life assumes, or which is
given to it by his free determination, which is in all cases peculiar to
the man himself; hence there are as many lives, or modes of life, as
there are men. When we think of the life of man, we are necessitated
to associate therewith the idea of the man himself. For example—
when we think of him speaking, his speaking is not anything apart
from himself as a subject; the same with regard to the act of walking,
for whether he be talking or walking there is nothing but himself as a
substantial form, both these being actions of the man, they are only
the man acting; and whether acting or not, he is nothing more than
himself as substantial form. It is the same with any particular organ
or limb as it is with the aggregate; the foot when walking, or the
hand when manipulating, is simply a foot or a hand; walking being
the foot acting, and manipulating being the hand acting, and nothing'
more; action adding nothing to either, but, as said, the action of any
thing is only the thing acting. It is likewise the same with the
sentient organs of the body and their sensations; each sensation
being nothing more than the organ’s own consciousness of some varia
tion which has been produced in itself. For instance, sight is not
anything apart from the eye, but it is simply the eye seeing, and
whether seeing or not seeing, it is neither more nor less than an eye.
This affirmation will, no doubt, be a paradox to those who have been
accustomed to think of the life of man as something which flows into
him, and also to those who believe that influx is substantial. But the
life which flows into man is not substantial, nor is it his life; his life
does not enter into him at all, but comes out of him only; it originates
in his will, and proceeds thence to the extremities of his body, where
�Life Immediate and Mediate.
71
it terminates in action. This life is simply the exercise of man’s in
ternal aij^l external capabilities, or those of his mind and body, and it
must be obvious that such exercise is only those capabilities in action ;
and what are capabilities in action more than the capabilities them
selves ? A capability is the power which is peculiar to an organ, and
which is inherent therein; it is grounded in its form, and is made to
exist by the presence and action of immediate life. There are in man
two kinds of organs, and although each possesses its own peculiar
capability, yet the process of life in each is different, yea, opposite,
from the other; one being from without to within, and the other
from within to without; the former is sensitive, the latter motive
the former commences in the organs of sensation, and terminates in
the memory; the latter commences in the will, and terminates in the
actions of the body. The former is involuntary, the latter is voluntary.
This latter process is what is meant by wm’s K/e; it is so because it
is from man’s will, commencing with his determinations, and is con
tinued through his nerves and muscles into external action. For what
is done by this process he is responsible. Now, the will and its
capability to determine are a one; we may think of the will existing
as a substantial form without the capability, but we cannot think of
the capability of determining existing apart from the will; because it
is only the will’s power to determine. When the will’s capability of
acting is brought into action, it is by the will’s own effort, and the de
termination is nothing more than the will determining its own power
to the production of some effort. As it is with any one organ so it is
with their aggregate, or with the whole man; therefore, as the action
of an organ is only the organ acting, so the action of a man is only the
man acting, and as the man is substantial so is his action; not action
alone, there being no such thing, but action in the sense of its being
a subject acting. This view of the life of man, or of man living, will
account for certain remarks made by Swedenborg, which, without this
understanding of action or living, must appear extraordinary and
anomalous, and which have proved to some of the students of his
writings most perplexing, viz., that affections, perceptions, and
thoughts, “are actually and really the subjects themselves which undergo
changes according to the influences which affect them ” (D. L. W. 42).
Notwithstanding all this, the influx of life is not substantial, but
it is the result of a proceeding living force from the source of life.
Some have actually concluded that the influx of life is substantial,
and, as a consequence, have arrived at the notion, that the life of each
individual is a spark struck off from the Divinity; that each one
possesses in himself literally what is divine; and that God has no
personality, but is infinitesimally divided amongst all His creatures, and
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Life Immediate and Mediate.
therefore that He is universally diffused. These, however, are mere
hallucinations, altogether apart from the truth; and the more they
are indulged in, the further will they lead the mind from an under
standing of the true nature of life.
Mediate life is life together with the mode it has assumed in living
subjects in the spiritual world; it proceeds from those subjects, and
is continued to others who are recipients, and by which they are
affected. It is not influx by reason of its flowing to man ; as it flows
to him it is only afflux, and it becomes influx only when it flows
him. The influx of which we are now treating is that which takes
place with man. Besides this there is a general influx which flows
from a superior to an inferior heaven, and from the spiritual into the
natural world, into homogeneous substances, and arranges them into
an agreement with itself, producing such things and states as corre
spond, and which are called correspondences.
Life becomes mediate only by virtue of flowing through conscious
living beings who possess quality, good or evil. Those mediums are
good and evil spirits in the spiritual world. In consequence of life
passing through such mediums, it is brought under the denomination
of “mediate life.” Hence mediate life always possesses a quality,
being good or evil in agreement with the quality of the spirits through
which it has passed. Life is therefore properly called mediate only
when it is in such a condition. But still the flow of mediate life to
man is not, strictly speaking, influx ■ that alone being influx which
flows into him. Mediate life when it flows to man is only afflux.
When man is first made conscious of its presence, it is only objective,
and can be inspected, approved, or disapproved, at discretion, accord
ing to the free determination of his will, and it is only when it is
approved and accepted that it becomes influx. Although this distinc
tion between afflux and influx is not commonly pointed out, it must
be evident to every thinking mind that such a distinction exists.
That such is the case will be clear from the fact that evil influence
comes to the good as well as to the wicked, and that good influence
comes to the wicked as well as to the good; but still such influence
does not give to either a quality, which it would do if it flowed into
them; it simply flows to them, and is thereby a/flux, and if it sub
sequently flow’s into them, it is by their own approval and reception,
when, and not before, it is //¿flux. Respecting the difference between
afflux and influx Swedenborg is silent; still he makes use of phrases
which imply both. In A. C. he frequently uses the words “flow
in into,” which can mean only afflux and influx; by flowing in
he means flowing to, or afflux; and by flowing into, influx. He
also speaks of God flowing into man, and of His being received or
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73
ejected; His flowing into also in this case means afflux, and His being
received, influx. The Scriptures are in some parts very explicit on
the difference between afflux and influx, anc? without naming the
Words, clearly point out the two fluxes, and also the difference between
them ; as for instance—“ Behold I stand at the door and knock; if any
man hear My voice and open the door,” etc. (Rev. iii. 20). The stand
ing at the door and knocking is evidently afflux, and His going in,
when the door is opened, is influx. Afflux only gives man an
opportunity to accept or reject, but influx yields a blessing.
Mediate life as it comes to man may be more properly styled
influence than influx. It may be called influence for a most obvious
reason; thus, when it flows to man it operates upon the forms in his
memory, and excites them, and arranges them into an agreement with
the state of the spirit or spirits whence the influence came, and that
arrangement is perceived by man in himself as the presence of such
spirits, whatever may be their qualities.
When influence comes from spirits to man, so far is it from giving
him a quality, that it may be made the means of his receiving an
opposite quality; for by evil influence his own evils are excited and
made to appear, which might otherwise have remained quiescent and
latent; and, when seen, they may be opposed and subdued; and so
far as that is done, he is elevated out of them, and is at the same time
brought into an opposite state of goodness.
Inasmuch as life does not become mediate by reason of flowing
through spirits, but by reason of what is assumed in them, it has been
a question as to whether the idea of mediate life ought not to be con
fined to that which is derived from the medium; that is, its quality,
good or evil, for take away its quality, and all sense of mediate life is
gone, nor would man be conscious of its presence; yet life is the
active principle, without which there could be neither influx nor
afflux. This being so, it would appear, that the word mediate life
involves the idea of an active principle to operate and assume, and
also the state which is assumed; and although there is a clear distinc
tion between the two, yet neither alone, but both together, constitute
mediate life.
We may here, without digression, introduce a correlative idea.
Previously to the development of man’s interior degrees by regenera
tion, he has communication only with spirits in the world of spirits
(H. H. 600), but afterwards with angels. But, notwithstanding this,
he is not sensible of his communication with spirits in the world of
spirits, nor can he be unless his spiritual senses be opened; his
evidence of such communication is affectional and mental: this is so
because his consciousness is on one plane and they are on another, or
<
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Life Immediate and Mediate.
he is in the natural world whilst they are in the spiritual ; they are
consequently inhabitants of different worlds. This being the case,
were it not for influx existing between the two worlds, and between
spirits and men, they could not communicate at all. Spirits do not
communicate with man from their voluntary principles, nor are they,
when in their normal states, conscious of such communication any
more than man is conscious of his communication with them (H. H.
249, 292). Why, it may be asked, cannot spirits in their normal
states consciously communicate with man in this world ? It is because
the two worlds which they inhabit are so different from each other as
to have nothing in common ; those who are in one cannot see, hear,
taste, smell, or feel anything that is in the other. Of this, so far as
man in this world is concerned, we have continual evidence, and as it
is with the inhabitants of one world, so it is with those of the other.
The communication which exists between the two worlds cannot be
sensibly perceived, but must be effected by an internal way. The
only ordinary communication is effected by influx, and such communi
cation is not felt. That communication is effected by the spheres of
spirits, which flow from them spontaneously, therefore without their
power of direction. Those spheres act upon all who are near to them,
and they are the means of associating or dissociating the inhabitants
of that world ; with those who are like-minded they effect conjunction,
but with those who are dissimilar as to state, they cause disjunction
and separation ; they are also the cause of distances in that world.
Spheres originate and terminate on the same plane—they never leave
the plane on which they originate ; they extend, but neither ascend
nor descend : and inasmuch as spirits and men exist upon distinct and
altogether different planes, the spheres of spirits cannot be made
manifest to man in this world.
The spheres of spirits do not affect men as they affect the spirits who
are on the same plane; spirits are.affected as to their bodies as well as
to their minds, because there are spheres from both their minds and
their bodies, and being on the same plane, they are affected as to both ;
but it is not so with men. The spheres of spirits affect the degrees in
others which are similar to those in the spirits themselves in whom
they originate, and from whom they proceed. There is a sphere from
each degree, internal as well as external ; the sphere from the spirit’s body
affects the bodies of other spirits, and they are sensibly perceived ; the
sphere from their understandings affect the understandings of others,
and the sphere from their wills affect the wills of others—not the
will as a capability, or the power of determination, but the will as a
substantial subject, the subject of the power to determine. But men
existing in a discrete degree below that of the spirits, their spheres
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75
cannot affect them ; communication must therefore be effected in
another way. That way is as follows. Although man, whilst he is ii.
this world, is conscious only in the world, still he has in his constitu
tion degrees which are of the substances of the spiritual world, and
although whilst he is in this world he has no consciousness in them,
still they may be affected by what is on their plane, and are so affected
by the spirit’s spheres ; which affection is carried down by descendi-ng
life to man’s conscious degrees where it becomes inwardly manifested.
That descending life, together with its assumed state, is what is called
influx. The spheres of spirits which affect man’s spirit originate in
their vital parts—their wills and understandings, which contain
their qualities as to good or evil, and proceeding thence carry with
them these qualities ; and inasmuch as the sphere affects that degree
of man’s spirit which is on the same plane as that of the spirit whence
the sphere proceeded, it is manifested as an affection of the mind,
good or evil according to the quality of the spirit whence it emanated.
This is the ordinary communication which exists between spirits and
men in this world ; it therefore follows, that spirits are not conscious of
such communication, much less are they conscious of the particular
individuals with whom they are held in connection.
However,
whether they possess such consciousness or not, and whatever be their
qualities, their spheres proceed to and act upon man’s spirit ; nor can
they prevent it, neither can man avoid feeling the effects thereof, for
he feels them from the same necessity that the body feels whatever acts
upon- its skin. But, notwithstanding the mind being necessitated to
perceive the effects of spirits’ spheres, both good and evil, yet he is
not necessitated to yield to either, but receives or rejects them as a
matter of free choice. That to which he gives preference, and receives
into his will and thought, from afflux becomes influx, and he becomes
one with it in quality, and is conjoined with the spirits in which it
originated. Yet, we must observe that man’s quality is not from those
spheres, nor from the spirits whence they proceed, but it is from his
own free choice of good or evil. This is the way in which the first
human quality, whether good or evil, originated; it is the way in which
both angels and devils have acquired theirs, and in no other way could
human quality of any kind have been acquired. If man had originally
waited for evil influences from others, or from any extraneous source,
in order that he might procure for himself a quality, it is clear, that
he would never have procured one, because there then were no such
influences. Human quality originates only in man, each man origi
nating his own, just as the first evil was originated, whatever may be
the circumstances by which he is environed. We conclude that life
is a living force, and that it exists in two conditions ; firstly, as a pro-
�76
The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes.
ceeding of spiritual heat and light from the sun of heaven; that this
passes through spiritual atmospheres, as accommodating mediums, by
■which it is tempered and made receptive by the highest and most per
fect human beings, viz., the celestial angels. That proceeding, even
when accommodated by those divinely appointed mediums, is imme
diate life. .That same proceeding, by entering into angels and spirits,
and also devils, assumes their qualities, and thereby becomes mediate
life. The proceeding life does not become mediate life by passing
through the accommodating mediums, but by passing through living,
voluntary mediums, which contain angelic or infernal qualities, which
are spirits in the spiritual world ; it therefore comes to man as good
or evil influence. There is always this distinction between immediate
and mediate life, the former enters man without his consent or his
consciousness, and without his power of interference; but of the latter
he is conscious, and he can interfere with it, and does so interfere,
it not being able to enter into him without his consent and reception.
By immediate life man is endued with capabilities, and by mediate
life he is furnished with objects on which these capabilities can be
exercised, by which under the influence of his free-will he forms
in himself a state which, in the future life, becomes the ground of
his everlasting happiness or misery.
S. S.
THE MIRACLE OF MULTIPLYING THE LOAVES
AND FISHES.
Addressed
to the
Sick and Aged
Matt.
in a
Union Workhouse.
xv. 32-39.
Our attention was drawn on a previous occasion to our Lord’s cure of
the lame, the blind, the dumb and the maimed, of which the account is
given in the preceding verses. By such wonderful cures the Lord
Jesus Christ proved to those who were willing to be convinced that
He was God as wrell as man. But so condescending was He to our
fallen and unbelieving state, that though the miracle of performing
such cures was enough to convince any teachable spirit that the Lord
was God, He yet added another equally wonderful proof of the truth
of St. John’s declaration, that “without Him was not anything made
that was made,” by showing that He could multiply food also, so that
seven loaves and a few little fishes fed four thousand men, besides
women and children. When we think how few could get a meal off
the same quantity of food when distributed by human hands, we see
that it was only One who could create food that could have fed so great
a multitude. When we were talking about the cure of those who
were sick of various diseases, you may remember that I told you, that
one lesson which we had to learn from it was, that we were to go to
Jesus Christ for the cure not only of our bodily ailments, but of what
is far more to be dreaded, the sickness of our souls. And the miracle
of feeding so many has a lesson for us too. Jesus says, “ Man shall not
�Modem Science and Revelation.
77
live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of God.” He says also, “ If any man thirst, let him come unto
Me and drink.” When we are sick we do not feel much appetite, but
a« our health returns our desire for food comes back; and so it is with
out souls. So long as we do not wish to live according to our Lord’s
commandments, we do not desire to be taught what we ought to do,
we have no appetite for the bread which cometh down from Heaven,
and will not drink of the “ Water of Life.” But when we have truly
come to Him, asking Him to take away our sins, and to give us a
“new heart and a right spirit,” then we desire to be all that He would
have us to be, and are constantly thinking, when any difficulty arises,
“I wonder what I ought to do?” Under the influence of such
thoughts we go to God in prayer, to ask Him to teach us, and we read
God’s Holy Word that we may learn His will. Then He sends His
Holy Spirit, to show us what our duty is, and so we are fed by Him.
It may be only a few words, or a short verse, but it is enough to feed
the soul. It is like a grain of mustard seed, which springeth up into a
great tree, or ‘‘'like a little leaven, that leavens the whole lump.” For,
suppose we feel angry with any one who has done us harm and desire
to revenge ourselves, we open the Bible, and see, “ Forgive your
enemies,” “ do good to them that hate you.” “ Render not evil for
evil,” or “ railing for railing.” Then we begin to hesitate, and perhaps
another text comes to our help, “ For if ye forgive not men their
trespasses, neither shall your Father in Heaven forgive you your
trespasses.” What a dreadful thought that is ! If we are not forgiven
then we cannot go to Heaven, and if we do not go there, there is only
other place. Oh, awful thought! Shall we sacrifice the hope of
eternal happiness for the sake of saying a few angry words, or doing
an unkind thing, which will give neither us nor our fellow-creatures
any real pleasure ? Then perhaps we remember having heard at church,
or read for ourselves, “ Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain
mercy.” There is something in that word “Blessed” that seems so
attractive ! It is not only that we shall be forgiven, but we shall be
made happy into the bargain. Well, we think, it is only a little sacrifice
that I am required to make, and the gain is more than eternity can
tell, so I will pray to God to help me to forgive this time. Ah, now
we taste heavenly food, good affections flow into our hearts from the
Lord, and wTe not only feel the blessedness of “ the merciful,” but the
blessedness of “ the meek,” and of “ the poor in spirit; ” and so you see
how heavenly food is multiplied. Well may we pray, “ Lord, ever
more give us this Bread.”
M. S. B.
MODERN SCIENCE AND REVELATION.
The faculty of observation and the desire of knowing are the two im
portant principles which impart to the mind its progressive tendency.
Glancing back into the remote ages of the past, we can conceive
primaeval man calling these powers into exercise in recording his
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Modern Science and Revelation.
conceptions of the world and its phenomena. His notions of things
would be at first crude and wanting in accuracy. He would perceive
that the day was divided between light and darkness, and this he
would observe to be caused by the sun. Tracing that luminary from
its rising to its time of setting, and noting that the same phenomenon
was repeated from day to day, he would conclude that the sun moves
in an orbit around the earth. Also observing the position of the
fixed stars, he would infer from their apparent movement in the
direction of the sun that the whole sidereal heavens revolves around
the earth. Then following the bent of his inherent desire to know,
he would extend his investigation to the planets and their movements.
Successive observations of the phenomena of nature in her several de
partments would bring to his mind a considerable increment of facts.
The classification and arrangements of these facts under various heads
would form the first crude indications of the natural sciences. Suc
ceeding generations of thinkers, while making use of the records of
men who had gone before, and taking them as the basis of ex
tended observations, would, although perpetuating some of the errors
of previous observers, discern and correct many of their faults. Thus
the sciences are the recorded experiences of thinking minds in
dealing with nature. In their infancy the sciences are necessarily the
repositories of much that is erroneous and fallacious. The conceptions
of the Chaldeean astronomers cannot be compared with the discoveries
of a Herschel or a Newton. The anatomical deductions of Hippocrates
are extremely crude when placed side by side with the learned dis
quisitions of a Carpenter or a Huxley. Ideas which at one period
seemed to bear the impress of truth are shown to be more or less un
sound by thinkers of later times.
Subsequently to the investigations of Copernicus the world was
considered as a plane, and the stars were conceived to be fixed in the
revolving vault of the heavens. But that philosopher, about 1500 a.d.,
satisfied himself that the planets, including the earth, revolve around
the sun. In 1610 this hypothesis was confirmed by Galileo by the
aid of his newly invented telescope. This was the beginning of a new
era in the science of astronomy. But it was also the signal for the
commencement of a conflict between speculative minds and the digni
taries of the Romish Church. Galileo proved to a demonstration that
the earth revolves around the sun, and that the sun has no orbital
movement. Theologians, because of certain expressions in the Bible
implying the contrary, discredited this discovery, and maintained that
it had no foundation in fact. But the march of thought was irre
sistible, and the Church was powerless to arrest its onward progress.
Theologians could not then conceive, nor are they willing to accept the
conclusion to-day, that the Bible deals exclusively with man’s spiritual
nature, and does not lay down canons and laws of natural science. In
stead of receiving the Bible and the laws of nature as each pointing
upward to a Divine Author, instead of perceiving that there is no con
tradiction between the revealed Word and the truths of creation, because
each has a distinct mission to fulfil, they opposed the apparent truths of
�Modern Science and Revelation.
79
the Word to the rigid demonstrations of science. A similar conflict was
engendered in recent times when geology first threw light upon the
history of life upon the globe. That science made rapid strides. De
posited in the various strata which form the earth’s crust were dis
covered fossil remains of forms of life which have long since
become extinct. Numerous races of creatures it was seen had lived
and died. Low forms of life had been succeeded by higher and more
complicated organisms. Gigantic creatures had formed their homes on
the land and in the ocean, whose skeletons, preserved in the strata of
the earth’s crust, enable the geologist to read in the pages of the Stone
Book the history of periods long anterior to the existence of man;
while fossilized remains of vegetable life indicate that vast areas of
the earth’s surface were once covered by plants which attained to
enormous proportions, which, subsequently disappearing, formed our
coal-beds that lie far below the surface of the globe.
Thus investiga
tions and discoveries which geologists have made lead them to the
conclusion that the earth and its life-forms have arrived at their present
condition through countless ages. And the facts of astronomy also
prove that the vast cycles of time during which the universe has been in
existence surpass human powers of comprehension.
But how have these deductions been met by theologians ? Instead
of giving up the position of a literal interpretation of the early
chapters of Genesis as untenable, they have endeavoured to harmonize
the records of science with the higher truths of revelation by methods
that have excited derision and contempt. Before geology gained a
firm footing amongst thinking minds, it was generally believed that the
universe had existed only 6000 years, and that its creation had occupied
but six days. When it was rigidly shown that creation was an orderly
development embracing myriads of ages, some other mode of explain
ing the narrative in Genesis was looked for, and at length those who
professed to believe in a close literal conception of the word so far de
parted from their position as to call the days of creation not days, but
ages—unfortunately, however, the Sabbath is mentioned as the seventh
day, and therefore by that supposition the first Sabbath was not a period
of twenty-four hours, but an age. Again, a difficulty was found in the
Scripture narrative that light was created before the sun. It has been
suggested that the difficulty may be overcome by supposing a subtle
luminous vapour to have pervaded all space prior to the creation of the
greater luminary of heaven. Such an hypothesis is altogether un
tenable in the face of the fact that the sun is the sole source of light
to its planets.
But in thus endeavouring to reconcile the Bible
narrative with the facts of science, theologians have placed a con
struction upon the account in Genesis for which there is no justifica
tion ; for if it is to be taken literally, its letter ought not to be
departed from, nor must it be subjected to the gratuitous interpreta
tion of every capricious mind. The facts of science have suffered
nothing in this conflict of opinions; but the Bible, by the bigoted
zeal of its professed expositors, has been brought into contempt.
But the reasonable aspect of the question is one which should not
�8o
Modern Science and Revelation.
"be rejected without consideration. The facts of science are discover
able by man’s powers of observation and reason. The book of nature
is intimately connected with his mortal part; as such he may read and
study it, and discover in its pages unmistakeable indications of the
Divine author. But the Bible relates to his immortal part, and he
may, if he will, discover in it those spiritual laws and truths which
can reach us by revelation alone. Nature is the effect of God’s creative
power, the Bible is the expression of His infinite wisdom. The laws
of nature and the revelations of the Word having the same Divine
source, there can be no contradiction between them. When therefore
theologians are met by facts which invalidate a literal interpretation
of a certain portion of the Word, they should be prepared to look for
the deeper and purer sense of its spirit. Dr. Whewell says, “ The
meaning which any generation puts upon the phases of Scripture
depends more than is at first sight supposed upon the philosophy of
the time. Hence, when men imagine that they are contending for
revelation they are in fact contending for their own interpretation of
revelation, unconsciously adapted to what they believe to be rationally
probable. And the new interpretation which the new philosophy
requires, and which appears to the older school to be a fatal violence
done to the authority of religion, is accepted by their successors without
the dangerous results which were apprehended. At the present day
we can hardly conceive how reasonable men should have imagined
that religious reflections on the stability of the earth, and the beauty
and use of the luminaries which revolve around it, would be interfered
with by its being seen that this rest and motion are apparent only.
Those who adhere tenaciously to the traditionary or arbitrary mode
of understanding Scriptural expressions of physical events are always
strongly condemned by succeeding generations, and are looked upon
with pity by the more serious and considerate, who know how weak
and vain is the attempt to get rid of the difficulty by merely
denouncing the new tenets as inconsistent with religious belief.”1
Truly so. The Bible is the word of the Highest; and not in its
letter, but in its spirit must we seek for evidences of its divinity and
its power. And in the first chapter of Genesis, beneath the un
scientific form of the letter, we trace the development of the spiritual
side of our nature from the commencement of the re-creative work of
regeneration until we attain the beauty and perfection of the heavenly
state. The Bible is the Word of God, and He has told us that His
words “are spirit and life.” Let us then receive His revelation in
this sense, and while we search for its spirit, grow strong by its life
giving power.
In the learned disquisition recently given to the world by a pro
found philosopher this sentence appears :—“ Abandoning all disguise,
the confession that I feel bound to make before you is, that I pro
long the vision backward across the boundary of the experimental
evidence, and discern in that matter, which we in our ignorance, and
notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto
1 Indications of the Creator, p. 52, 2d ed.
�Modern Science and Revelation.
81
covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form and
quality of life.”1 Does this conception land us in materialism? We
think not. It is the statement of a belief which may be true or false.
It contains no direct denial of a Creator, and as an hypothesis is ex
ceedingly plausible. The transcendentalism of Kant annihilated matter
and established a universe of ideas in the place of creation. But if,
With Tyndall, we view matter as the repository of power, which gives
v the promise of every form and quality of life,” we have but “ to pro
long our vision backward ” beyond the region of matter to see in the
Divine the source of that power, by virtue of which matter is enabled
to give the “ promise of every form and quality of life.”
It is a generally received hypothesis that matter is formed of atoms.
On the assumption of the truth of this theory it has been said that
“ they are the manufactured articles which, formed by the skill
of the Highest, produce by subsequent interaction all the pheno
mena of the natural world.” Dalton first established the atomic
hypothesis in reference to chemical combinations. It is found that
in a given compound the elements combine in a certain definite
and invariable ratio. Take water as an example. It can be shown
by experiment that two volumes of hydrogen always combine with
one volume of oxygen. Assuming the existence of atoms, it is evident
that two atoms of the hydrogen element combine with one atom
of the oxygen element. That atoms by combining in various pro
portions form compounds differing from each other is plainly shown
in the well-known nitrogen series. Whatever we touch or see in the
three kingdoms of nature bears testimony to the fact that “ atoms by
their interaction produce all the phenomena of nature.” But now the
question arises : Do atoms contribute to these results by any inherent
power of their own, independently of the Creator? Every natural
phenomenon, we are told, rests on a cause, but atoms by their “ inter
action produce natural phenomena;” are atoms then the primary cause of
their own effects? Atoms, we say, form by their interaction the
endless variety of compounds and substances in nature under the rule
of certain laws, from which it should seem they have no power to
■deviate. And it may be urged that new variations from established
forms are continually being produced both in the animal, vegetable,
and mineral kingdoms. But evidently atoms produce these effects
in obedience to certain conditions, or else if by their own free choice,
why were not these results forthcoming earlier? When a plant
Strikes out into varieties it does so by the operation of agencies
external to itself—a change in the conditions of soil or climate, or
the forced impregnation of its ovaries by the pollen of another plant.
A seed is placed in the ground, it germinates, develops, and assumes
the exquisite symmetry and beauty of the lily. Atoms have here been
built up, and have by their interaction produced leaves and flowers.
But before this building operation could proceed, certain external
conditions were necessary. A force exterior to the special atoms which
formed the lily came into play. That force is heat. Heat produces
1 Professor Tyndall’s Address in Nature.
�Modern Science and Revelation.
motion, and motion causes interaction of atoms. Suppose the seed
hermetically sealed in a glass tube, and, in absence of the necessary
conditions of soil and moisture, and of the main condition heat, and
no life movement would be observed. Given then soil, moisture, and
light, still in the absence of heat a seed fails' to germinate. Again,
admitting for a moment that all life-forms originated in a monad,
throw back your gaze into the bygone ages, and note that protoplasmic
substance—that combination of atoms lying on the solitary shore of
the unpeopled world, where no sound arises but the surging of the
waves upon the bare and solid granite, and the sweep of the wind
across the desert of the world, yet lifeless as the tomb. This monad
develops into a symmetrical form—it moves—there is the first trace
of life—there is the first species—the progenitor of all future existences.
But why did not that monad remain motionless as the rock upon
which it lay? Undoubtedly its movement was produced by the
agency of heat and light, forces external to itself. Here heat was
evidently a necessary condition. Now the grand source of heat is the
sun ; if the heat of that body could be withheld—all other conditions
remaining the same—we are justified in supposing that all life would
cease, consequently that all “interaction of atoms” would be suspended.
But the sun is composed of atoms. And it is maintained that heat is
an effect of motion. If, as we have endeavoured to show, no inter
action of special atoms can take place but by the agency of forces
exterior to them, so cannot motion be maintained as a condition of
heat in the atoms of the sun apart from external power or force.
Here we reach the barrier which the physicist cannot pass. Are we
to hesitate here? We think not. We conceive that we must transfer
ourselves to a region of causes beyond the domain of experiment.
Here we are aware the philosopher will be unwilling to follow. Still
we cannot lose sight of the fact that the interaction of atoms—and the
whole universe is the result of that interaction—is an effect, the cause
of which cannot be sought in the atoms themselves. We therefore
affirm that this cause is the power of the Divine operating through the
medium of a world which we call spiritual. Truly the nature of this
world cannot be demonstrated by experiment, but the evidences of revela
tion are powerful upon the characteristics of this spiritual region. The
Bible is that revelation. The proof of its being a revealed book is found
in the soundness of the chain of spiritual meaning which runs through
its letter. This spiritual sense shows, to a demonstration that the
letter of the Word has been framed according to a law as rigid and
plausible as the law of multiple proportions or the “interaction of
atoms.” Where then science ends we maintain that revelation steps
in to fill up the void, to conduct us into the world of primary causes
and to usher us into the presence of the Creator.
Another question which has occupied the minds of scientific men in
recent times, is the origin and development of life upon the globe.
And in the pursuit of this subject some of the finest minds have been
engaged. Theologians conclude that the positions which have been
taken up by our great scientific thinkers upon this question, militate
�Modern Science and Revelation.
83
against the teaching of the Word and the immortality of the soul.
We have shown that the literal interpretation of the first chapter of
Genesis is an unwarrantable assumption. However, therefore, life may
have originated upon the world, or what was the nature of man’s
beginning, can in no way affect the Biblical account of the origin of life,
seeing that it is an allegory investing spiritual truth of the highest
character. Now life originated upon the world in some mode; if
there is life on the planets, and we believe there is, it must have
originated on them in a similar mode. There may have been a
“ primordial substance ” as the first life germ—we cannot say; and
wre may deduce the origin of life from many forms or one form, yet
still the “ question will be inevitably asked,” as a learned professor has
said, “ How came that form there ? ” Thus again we are carried past
the “interaction of atoms,” and either landed in impenetrable mystery
or placed at the feet of the Divine.
That there has been a successive development in animal and vege
table forms, from lower to higher, is clearly established by the facts of
geology. This development has mainly been the result of external
conditions. Whether, in the case of the animal kingdom, this develop
ment proceeded in an increasing ratio from lower to higher, until a form
fittingly organized to be the seat of reason and the soul was produced,
we perhaps shall never be able to ascertain. It seems plain almost to
demonstration that there is a discrete degree between man and animals.
There are certainly low types of the human race which seem to be
closely allied with the ape tribe. An ape, however, has never yet in
the memory .of man, by any species of progress, or by the most happy
combination of circumstances, assumed the form and capabilities of the
very lowest specimen of the human family. In the case of the human
race, civilization has caused a continuous upward movement. The vast
hordes of barbarians that at one period roamed through the forests of
Europe have been supplanted by races of a more refined type of mind.
The brain of the Papuan, we are told, is not nearly so large as the brain
of a European. Consequently the apparatus for recording his experi
ences, and hence for the development of his mind, is imperfect. Under
the refining influences of civilization that defect would undoubtedly
disappear from the race, and the Papuan would ultimately be
capable of achieving the same wonderful results as the European.
Man differs from an animal especially in the capability which he
possesses of developing his mind to an unlimited extent; no bonds
can be set to the knowledge which his mind is adapted to grasp
ahd retain. So far as we at present know, no process of develop
ment has yet brought about the same result in animals even of
the highest order. The doctrine of the “survival of the fittest”
is as true in the case of man as in that of animals. Many races
of men have disappeared, and beings of finer parts have survived.
But this “survival of the fittest” we cannot conceive to militate
against the doctrine of the soul’s immortality. The more perfect the
instrument, the more accurate the results.
Hence the higher the
development of the body, the more perfect the action of the soul, and
�«4
Modern Science and Revelation.
therefore the greater its achievements. But it is asked what is it that
survives when sensation ceases in the body? We can find but one
answer. And that is, that the soul, the seat of sensation, has quitted
its tenement. Still we apprehend that it ean be proved indirectly
that the soul continues to exist. Using an illustration which has
recently been cited. Suppose a telegraph clerk is surrounded by his
instruments, he can communicate with a hundred places, and thus prove
his existence. But a thunderstorm arises, his instruments are dis
arranged, he is still in his room, but he cannot inform any one that
survives. Supposing the wires of his instruments to correspond to
the organs of sensation in man, and suppose a break occurs—an
accident resulting in death—he can no longer directly communicate
the fact of his existence to those around him. He knows he exists
equally as the clerk. But the one is as incapable of proving the fact
as the other, when we restrict the one to his wires and the other to
his nerves. But the clerk can prove his existence in other ways, it
may be said. So also can the soul, if we seek for our proof beyond the
region of nerves and crude experiment.
There are powerful evidences of design in creation. And design argues
an intelligent cause. The flower has exquisite organs adapted for
reproducing its species, but the faculty of foreseeing ends and providing
for their attainment is not an attribute of atoms. The end is attained
by the interaction of atoms, but they have no power of deviating from
that end, and they submit to influences beyond them. The “ survival
of the fittest ” is a doctrine substantially true. But there is an end to
be gained by this “survival,” and that end seems to be the most com
plete happiness of the fittest. This seems so in man’s case. Civiliza
tion brings its blessings, and will bring them more abundantly as man,
in the development of his more sacred faculties, is fitted to receive
them. Divine blessings reach us through media; the more perfect
these media in all departments of nature the richer and more
abundant the blessings. We therefore conceive it no unimportant
feature in the design of creation that the “fittest” survive.
But if design points to intelligence, where may we look for the
origin of things ? All nature when devoutly studied points silently
upward to an infinitely wise God. This is the conclusion at which we
must inevitably arrive. Creation is an effect, it cannot be the cause
of its own effect. Creation is also finite and limited in time. It
must therefore have a cause neither finite nor limited in time. While
then we thus trace upward from the creature to the Creator, and stand
in the presence of Him whose “ ways are not our ways, and whose
thoughts are not our thoughts,” let us bow the head and reverently adore.
Reverting again to the “ survival of the fittest,” we remark that this
doctrine is as true in mental as in animal life. In some departments
of thought this goes on more rapidly than in others. Development in
scientific truth has been rapid, but growth in clearness and purity of
theological thought has been slow. Scarcely a step has been made in
a forward direction since the time of the Fathers. The Bible is
acknowledged to be in great part utterly incomprehensible. The
�Correspondence,
8$
march of thought continues, and still theologians are found far behind
Hence it arises that in many minds biblical truth fades and scientific
truth survives. But as the mind becomes fitted to receive spiritual
truth of a higher order than that previously accepted, it is supplied by
to orderly revelation. Modes of interpretation of the Word that once
found implicit and ready assent are no longer tenable. Old creeds fail
to satisfy reflecting and intelligent minds. But a clearer light is
breaking in upon the field of theological thought, and by this light
we perceive the Word to have unmistakeable indications of a divine
origin; we perceive that it is an inexhaustable fountain, adequate to
supply and enrich all minds with the life-giving streams of its
spirit. In the new theology there is a consistency and clearness
which former systems have wanted; while the spiritual world and
the soul are dealt with philosophically and rationally. In con
clusion, we believe that no danger to religion can arise from the
advance of scientific thought, but rather from attempted resistance to
that advance by theologians. As the human mind grows in strength
by the influence of civilization and education, it leaves the traditions
and errors of former generations, and searches by the light of reason
for purer truths. There is a deep longing amongst men for more light
upon the divine Word and the immortal life. Wherever this light
breaks forth let us fearlessly receive it. For be assured that as the
falling leaves of autumn are swept away by the gale, so will error in
our conceptions of nature and of God be borne by the coming ages
into the oblivion of the past, and truth alone will survive.
L T.
(tarrspimtaix
MAURITIUS.
(To the, Editor of the Intellectual Repository.}
Port Louis, Mauritius, "Elth, September 1874.
Reverend and Dear Sir,—At the last meeting of our Society (that of the
New Jerusalem Church here) one of our members brought under notice a
Review in the August number of the Repository. This review comments
upon three publications of our president, Mr. Edmond de Ghazal.
A short conversation arose on the subject, and the undersigned were de
puted to write to you respecting it.
We thank you sincerely for the friendly terms in which you allude to
Mr. de Chazal’s publications, and we feel much gratified that any efforts
here to spread the truth should be noticed in your periodical, but there are
two or three errors in the reviewer’s account of our Society that we feel
bound to bring under your notice, feeling assured that they are involuntary,
and result from the circumstance that we have not such frequent and full
communication with the Church in other lands as we ought to have.
The errors we allude to are the following : After speaking of the efforts
of our Society to procure a minister, and of the difficulties it experienced in
this attempt, the writer proceeds thus :—“ They succeeded at last in obtain
ing one, unknown however to the Church in this country and in America.
G
�86
Correspondence.
He had belonged successively to the Greek and Roman Catholic Church,
but he seems to have pursued an eccentric course. He did not remain long
with them ; and we have since found him in India, in America, and recently
in Australia.” This statement is incorrect. The person alluded to, that is
Mr. Bugnion, never was our minister, and never conducted a single one of
our services, as we did not consider him to be a thorough New Churchman,
though possibly he -wishes to be received as such. It is quite unnecessary
for us to enter at any length into his history, but a few words on the subject
are perhaps required. We understand that he came to Mauritius in 1858
in connection with the Independents. He did not however agree with them
for any length of time, and towards the end of 1859 a separation ensued,
into the merits of which it is needless for us to enter. After this, it is true,
that he and his family received hospitality from Mr. de Chazal, but he
never was treated in any way by that gentleman as a minister of the New
Church or of our Society, of which he was never a member, for Mr.
Bugnion’s religious ideas and the manner in which he proclaimed them
were on many points unacceptable to our president and to our Society.
Mr. Bugnion formed a congregation of his own, to which he preached for
some time, then left for Europe, returned here, made a short stay, and then
proceeded to India, where he remained for about four years. After this he
travelled in America and Europe, and came back to Mauritius towards the
end of 1871. Here he renewed his relations with his former congregation,
but he never had anything to do with our Society either as a minister or
member. Towards the end of last year he went to Australia, where he still
is. As to the supposed fact of his having belonged at one time to the
Roman Catholic Church, we never heard of it, and we do not think it is
correct. We think it quite unnecessary for us to enter into further details
as to Mr. Bugnion’s act. We may however mention one which has in
duced our president not only not to consider Mr. Bugnion as a New
Churchman, but also to decline any social intercourse with him ; we allude
to his unwarrantable assumption of the title of Bishop. The Rev. J.
Bayley, to whom Mr. de Chazal wrote at the time, can, we believe, give you
more precise information on this subject should you desire it.
Another error we wish to point out is one contained in these words :
« Since the Bishop left Mauritius the service we believe has been conducted
by Mr. de Chazal; and we hope that, in their peculiar circumstances, he
exercises all the functions of a minister.” The truth is, that ever since our
Society has been founded Mr. de Chazal has conducted our monthly
services, and when he is unavoidably absent Mr. Lesage or Mr. G. Mayer
replaces him, quite irrespective of Mr. Bugnion’s presence in or absence
from this island. We use the term “monthly,” because, owing to our being
scattered over different parts of the island, we cannot meet oftener. On
-other Sundays each head of a family leads the services for his own people.
We have thought it necessary to trouble you with these details, since we
do not wish to pass in the Church as a Society that has had for its minister
a person whose writings bear, as you say, “evident traces of Harrisism and
Spiritism.”
We cannot, Mr. Editor, conclude a letter addressed to the organ of the
New Church in England without expressing our satisfaction at the steady
progress of the New Church ideas which we find recorded in its pages, and
our admiration of the ability with which these views are therein pro
claimed. We are also glad to see from the reviews it contains that many
interesting and instructive New Church works are published from time to
time.—We beg to remain your faithful brothers in the New Church,
T. H. Ackroyd.
P. E. de Chazad, Secretary.
�Review.
87
[We have also received a long letter from Mr. Bugnion, vindicating him
self from some charges which some of his friends had informed him our
reviewer had made against him. The only “ charge ” made against him was,
that “ his liturgy bears evident traces of Harrisism and Spiritism.” As this
is a simple fact, which Mr. Bugnion does not deny, but only endeavours to
justify, his letter, which does not deserve insertion, needs no reply.]
Sancta Ccena : or, the Holy Supper, explained on the Principles
taught BY Emanuel Swedenborg. By the Rev. Augustus Clissold,
M.A. London : Longmans, Green & Co.
The need of clearer and more worthy views on the subject of the Holy
Supper than are held in Christendom at the present day is made very
evident by the author in his preface. According to one writer “ the ordi
nance (considered as a sacrifice) is an absolute mystery. It involves a
paradox or apparent contradiction ; a seeming incompatibility of terms ; in
short, a mystery, whatever the exact nature and limits of that mystery may
be supposed to be. It remains a divinely stated paradox, irreconcilable by
man ; a mystery utterly beyond his power to clear up, and such it must
ever be.” The Holy Supper being represented by the Passover, involves
the law that by death alone can death be undone. “How this should be, in
what sense one death can act upon another death, so as to do away with it,
or with any of its consequences, we are absolutely devoid of faculties for
comprehending.”
And thus the Feast of the Christian Passover, which was intended to feed
the souls of the faithful with the flesh and blood of a Living and Divine
Body, becomes at best a mysterious ceremonial.
In the work itself the author shows the true nature and use of the Sacra
ment. “ The two fundamental ideas in the Holy Supper are, first of all,
that of The Word, whether living or written ; and secondly, that which the
Word effects, namely, the conjunction of the church on earth with the
church in heaven.” He had first pointed out the Scripture doctrine re
specting the Word, that from the beginning, before He was made flesh,
our Lord was the Word, mediating between the Father and all creatures.
But there is a written Word as well as a Living Word, and the written Word
is also called the Word of God. As being the Word of God there is a sense
in it in which the Word of God written mediates between the Father and
all creatures. This being the case, the written Word of God is like the
Living Word of God, the medium of communication between the Father
and the Church. Not that there are two Mediators, but One only; inas
much as the written Word mediates between God and man, only in virtue
of the Living or Eternal Word being in it ; and as such the written Word
is itself the medium by which we have life from the Eternal Word.
As the Word is the medium of conjunction between God and man, and
the Holy Supper is also said to be such a medium, what is the nature of
the relation and connection between them ? By extracts from Swedenborg
enlarged and simplified by his own commentary, the author presents the
subject in great clearness and beauty. “ It is not by any figure of speech
that the Living Word and the written Word are both spoken of as one, and
are both called the Word of God ; but because the Word of God written is
�88
Review.
the same essentially as the Word of God spoken, and the Word of God
spoken is the same essentially with the Word made flesh, and speaking.
It is in consequence of this essential identity that the history of the Word
of God written corresponds to that of the Word made flesh.” The Word
as the Divine Wisdom descends from God through all the heavens to the
earth, and becomes accommodated to the apprehensions of angels and men.
In its inmost it is Divine, in its intermediate it is celestial and spiritual, in
its ultimate it is natural. But the Eternal Word also descended through
all the heavens, and finally assumed a natural humanity on earth, when He
became incarnate for the redemption and salvation of the human race.
“The inmost sense of the Word,” says Swedenborg, “treats solely of the
Lord, describing all the states of the glorification of His Humanity, that is,
of its union with the essential Divinity ; and likewise all the states of the
subjugation of the hells, and the reducing to order all things therein as well
as in the heavens. Thus in the inmost sense is described the Lord’s whole
life upon earth, and thereby the Lord is continually present with angels.
Therefore the Lord alone is in the inmost part of the Word, and the
divinity and sanctity of the Word is thence derived.” This blending of the
Eternal Word with the written Word is the ground of their both being
described in Scripture by the same language, and of their both being the
mediums of the conjunction of man with God, and of God with man.
The author shows not only that there is a correspondence between the
written and the Eternal Word, but that they both suffer and are glorified
together. The Lord assumed a material humanity as the Word assumed
itself with a literal sense. But the Lord is believed to be still clothed with
such a body. For a Christian writer observes, “How it can be that a real
substantial Presence of Christ is possible on our altars while yet He abides
in the natural substance of His flesh and blood at the right hand of His
Father ; or how bread and wine, remaining in their natural substances,
become associated with a new and Divine substance, is not given us to
know.” The Lord’s humanity being thus supposed to be merely natural,
and the written Word being supposed to be also merely literal, how can the
Holy Supper be understood as other than a lifeless ceremonial ? “ In order
to a right understanding of the sacrament of the Holy Supper, the first
thing requisite is a right understanding of the doctrine of the Incarnation,
or of the Word made flesh.” This doctrine the author presents in a very
lucid aspect, bringing out in bold relief the New Church view of the Lord’s
glorification, w’hich shows that the Lord’s humanity became Divine, without,
however, ceasing to be human, so that His flesh and blood are necessarily
Divine, and therefore living and lifegiving. When the subject is viewed
in its true light, it will be seen that the Lord is actually and intimately
present in His Holy Supper; and that, as the most sacred solemnity of
worship, it is the means of bringing the Lord and the worshipper into the
closest connection, and the medium of conjunction between them.
This very meagre outline of the book will, wre trust, induce the members
of the Church to read it for themselves ; for although evidently designed
for the clergy of the Church of England, it will afford much to instruct and
delight those who already know in part. The author is too well known,
and his labours are too highly appreciated, to require or even to admit of
any approbation or recommendation from us.
�
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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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The Intellectual Repository and New Jerusalem Magazine. Vol. XXII, No. 254, February 1, 1875
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 88 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Rev. W. Woodman - - an unsigned article on Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Modern science and revelation. Earlier Title: Intellectual Repository for the New Church, later Title: New Church Magazine.
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Conway Tracts
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Text
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
II THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER
NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
Price Threepence.
SIGNS OF THE TIMES.
JULY,
1876.
EADERS of our “ Signs ” may not be aware
that we have a rival, entitled “ The Christian
Herald and Signs of our Times.” It is a curious
publication of the extreme Low Church and Dissent
ing type, and contains much deeply-interesting infor
mation about “things not seen as yet.” One of the
“ signs of our times ” is the Eastern question, and
“ the most tangible proximate sign for the Christian
to discern is the return of the Jews to Palestine,” It
appears that the Jews are to go to Palestine, and a
eovenant is to be made between these said Jews and
E
�2
“ Anti-ChristAnti-Christ is to be discovered By
his making the covenant: let us hope that it will not
be Disraeli; but is not his very name a terrible sign ?
Besides, the white horse of the Revelation must be
the white horse of Hanover, and its rider Death, the
destruction that Disraeli, as Anti-Christ, will bring
upon the land. When this covenant is made Christ
will come and take up the Church, his Bride, into
the air, “ but his coming then will be comparatively
invisible to the world. The marriage of the Lamb
with his Bride raised and translated to the heavens
will be celebrated, and the position and duties of the
component parts of this mystical body will all be duly
arranged before Christ’s further descent from the air
to the earth, when the prophecy will be fulfilled,
‘ Behold he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall
see him.’ The glorified Church will descend with
him. It may, and probably will, be several years
before Christ thus descends visibly in the sight of the
world, after the translation of the wise virgins.”
These years may be called the honeymoon of Christ
and his wise virgins. Then the Jews in Palestine are
to be attacked, and Jesus is to appear as their king
and deliverer; it is to be hoped that he will be more
successful than he was last time. Well may the
writer of all this marvellous nonsense begin by saying
that “ This shuts out all human wisdom Ghosts are
only visible when all light is excluded. We are next
taken to the resurrection, and told all about resurrec
tion bodies. “ The resurrection body of the saints
shall be invested with divine attributes. A radiance
shall encircle it brighter than the noon-day sun.”
“ The celestial body shall possess angelic power, and move
with the velocity of electricity. It will possess all the spright
liness and activity of the heavenly bodies. No violence can
either break or derange it. Its senses and organs will be inten
sified and enlarged. Its vision far-reaching as the telescope
which sweeps the heavens, and yet minute as the microscope.
There shall be no old age, offensive appearance, or incipient
�3
disease afflicting the resurrection body. Immortal youth,
requiring no relaxation or repose, shall adorn the heavenly
body.”
Imagine “ sprightly heavenly bodies cheerful suns
and joking moons. But if these new bodies rush
about with the velocity of electricity they'will be very
dangerous, both to their neighbours and to themselves ;
the destructive power of a flash of lightning will be
nothing in comparison to the effect of two clashing
resurrection bodies. It will, however, be pleasant for
ladies to learn that
“ The resurrection body shall appear in angelic costume.
The angel that appeared to the women at the sepulchre re
sembled ‘ a young man ’ clothed in a long white garment, his
countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow.
Thus shall the celestial body shine in all the beauty and fresh
ness of youth, clearer than crystal, fairer than the virgin
rose.”
They will be made “ beautiful for ever ” in fact; a
celestial Madame Rachel will enamel them once for
all. “ The sheeted dead bursting the cerements of
mortality, and assuming crystallised and ethereal
forms.” But the sheets of many will long since have
mouldered away, and the cerements will have turned
into dust, grass, sheep, and other forms of life, and
can scarcely be “ burst.” Nor is this all.
‘ ‘ The dying groans of creation will be heard, and the ele
ments melt with fervent heat. The whole fabric of nature
will be in a state of conflagration. The rumblings of earth
quakes and volcanic eruptions will make this stricken planet
quiver. Behold that vast procession descending from heaven.
The Judge descends, arrayed in judicial vesture. ”
It would be interesting to know where the heaven
is which “ the vast procession descends from.” We can
plumb the depths of space on every side this planet
for millions on millions of miles, but the strongest
telescope fails to bring us back news of any heaven
from which this procession can come “ down ” to
earth. Many talcs the telescope whispers to us, tales
�4
of marvellous wonder, tales of far-off fairy lands of
nebulae not yet stars, but no stories of a heaven above
them all whence Jesus and his legions can descend
to desolate this fair world. Of course, in all this
judgment and resurrection, readers of the wrong
“signs of the times” will find themselves in sore
trouble. “ What shall be the doom of the sensualist,
the sceptic, the sneering world, when the flaming
judge appears ? ” And then they call on the moun
tains in the proper and orthodox fashion. We fancy
that would be a poor resource. There are not moun
tains enough in the world to cover all the sceptics
that have existed. It is curious how Christians per
sist in bracketing “ sensualists and sceptics,” and
yet no two classes could be more utterly opposed to
each other. Scepticism implies thought and study,
close examination, and earnest research ; such qualities
can never be found in the sensualist, where the pas
sions master the brain. But it is the old story, “ if
you have no case abuse the other side,” and Christians
only follow the example of the Bible, which classes
together the ill-living and the unbeliever.
Does any one desire to know the most advantageous
position in heaven, according to Mr. Spurgeon ? You
are not to “lie like slaves beneath the throne nor
11far offfrom, the thronenor “behind the throne nor
“ upon the throne,” where “ the proud infidel wants to
getbut only “ before the throne,” where “ they can
always look at God, and God can always look at
them.” What a strange omnipresent God, who can
only see people in front of one special place.
Dr. Talmage is, however, the most notable contri
butor to the “ Signs,” and he begins his discourse as
follows:—
“ Seven is the favourite number in the Bible. Seven days
for the week. Seven fat kine for Pharaoh’s vision. Seven
years of service that Jacob may win Rachel. Seven rams’
horns to blow down the walls of Jericho. Seven golden vials.
Seven last plagues. Seven thunders. Seven candlesticks.
�5
Seven stars. Seven churches. Seven loaves to feed the thou
sands. The lamb with seven horns. The woman with seven
devils.”
Fortunately we do not get beyond the seven devils,
and seven Dr. Taimages would be far worse in the
way of spirits ; think what the infliction would be of
seven preachers of the following type:—
“ Leave the caravan of iniquity in the desert; throw away
your account books ; quit your reckoning. Hark ! from the
throne of God the proclamation, ‘ ‘ Thy sins and thine iniqui
ties will I remember no more. ” Release ! signed in tears,
sealed in blood, written on heavenly parchment, recorded in
eternal archives. The black ink of the indictment is written
all over with the red ink of the cross.”
Is it conceivable that sane people listen to this sort
of rant Sunday after Sunday, and enjoy it ? But Dr.
Talmage is wise in his generation, like unto one of
the children of this world :—
“ I specially recognise in this presence this morning, the
manner in which you came to the rescue when recently our
Lay College building was threatened by the foreclosure of a
mortgage of 15,000 dollars. You did magnificently. God will
give back to you every dollar: first in worldly prosperity, and then
in spiritual and eternal dividends. ”
That is the way to induce people to subscribe:
“You will get back here all you give, and eternal
life into the bargain.” It is the very argument of
Jesus: “ An hundredfold in this present world, and
in the world to come everlasting life.”
Among the many May meetings we notice one of
the Home and Colonial School Society, at which
Canon Hoare delivered his soul against the School
Board system of Education. The Canon has been
travelling in America, and he visited the “best
school” in New York, containing 600 children. He
seems to have been much delighted at first with the
order and regularity that prevailed, and on his asking
questions in history and geography he found them
well taught. Then the Canon explained that he was
�6
going to cross to England, and “ I suppose you have
all read of one who could walk across the roughest
sea, and who did not want steam. Who was that ?”
“ The mistress then came to my daughter, who sat
close by me, and said: ‘ If you please, he must not
speak on that subject. Pray stop your father.’ My
daughter then pulled me by the coat-tail, and stopped
me, telling me what had been said to her. I might
speak of the Queen of England, the Czar of Russia,
the Emperor of China, but not one word about the
Lord Jesus Christ might I utter in that room. This
broke us up entirely;” and Canon Hoare thinks that
“ the tendency of the present day, or at least the ten
dency of the whole education system, is to edge out
Christian truth.” Canon Hoare is perfectly right,
for in a country whose citizens are of all faith and of
no faith, no education can be made compulsory which
is not purely secular. The State has no right to com
pel the children of Free Thinkers or of Jews to learn
Christianity, nor to instruct the children of Christians
in Free Thought or Jewish principles. No parent has
a right to object that the State does not furnish re
ligious or anti-religious teaching to his children, for
the legitimate rights of conscience would thereby be
interfered with with regard to the other children in
the school. But very naturally do the clergy object
to any training which has not a distinctly religious
bias, for they complain dolorously that unless they
train the children they will never gain any influence
over them in later years. They are perfectly right.
No one trained without belief from childhood is likely
to join the Church when he grows up, for he will be
without the habit-thought which accepts a faith un
questionably and wears it half-unconsciously from
fashion, and not from conviction. A purely secular
education will make thinkers, and that is a consum
mation not to be desired by the priesthood.
The Society for the Conversion of the Jews seems
�7
to be more blessed by the Lord with the good things
of this world than with the conversion of souls. Money
flows in very plentifully, but the jewels eternal very
slowly. A Jew seems to cost between 5,000Z. and
10,000Z. to convert, and then he is apt to go back
again when business becomes flourishing. About two
Jews are said to have been converted abroad last year,
and the Jeunsh World sneers mercilessly at the small
success of the Christians. Just now, that very liberal
paper appears to act as a kind of friend in need to
distressed vicars and curates, and within its columns
a voice is heard, lamentation, weeping, and great
mourning, parsons weeping for the hindrances to free
speech, and refusing to be comforted because they are
not at liberty. These utterances are valuable and
most suggestive. A “ country vicar” writes :—
‘ ‘ The more antiquated and hoary, the more authoritative
and sacred is the symbolum. The whole truth was discovered,
think some pious folk, or was revealed, in the remote past;
and all modern light and inspirations are a delusion unless
they go to confirm old legends. Moreover, the old legends
must be taken, as my early tutor used to phrase it, literally,
and construed grammatically, and they are sure to read right.
So literally, indeed, are they often taken, that the teacher has
reason to feel that either he himself or some of his hearers
prefer darkness to light. ”
A “ country curate” says :—
“ Like him I have taken vows and feel responsibilities, and
I may add that, like him, I am dissatisfied. 1 have long borne
these difficulties, long groaned under the weight of the chains
which hang so heavily upon my internal convictions. But
what am I to do ? I have a wife and family, and they form in
themselves substantial reasons for me to appear weekly, and
act contrary to my own most cherished opinions. I cannot
dig, and to beg I am ashamed. Can you or your readers sug
gest any means by which I can escape a thraldom grievous to
bear ? My case is that of too many in the English Church,
and also, I doubt not, in the various communities existing out
side the Establishment.”
Another remarks :—
�8
“I could once, theologically, make two and two into five,
but I have been for years gradually losing the capacity in con
sequence of the study of the dangerous sciences of physics
metaphysics, and historical criticism. ”
r j
»
And. to these cries from the house of bondage is
added a manly letter from an “ex-parson,” wherein
he blames the Rationalistic Clergy for their outward
conformity to a creed which they have outgrown:—
“Many
^em’ from. mere fear of privation in case of
withdrawal from the pulpit, go on gagging themselves, searing
their consciences, and petrifying themselves into monuments
of self-deception by using phrases which are untrue to their
convictions. Why don’t they come out and prove the reality
of their zeal for truth and freedom by quitting their anoma
lous position, daring to be free and honest, regardless of con
sequences ? Why don’t they become throughout leaders,
instead of, as they are, in most cases, truculent followers of
their people ? Never did martyr of old, through suffering rack
or flame, win a crown more worthy than the prize of selfrespect, liberty, and honour, which is only to be won by vacat
ing a position, necessarily hollow and corrupting to him who
in his convictions has outlived it.”
Not only does the Jewish World thus offer an oppor
tunity of free speech to Christian clerics, but it also
boldly leads the way to free investigation of creeds ;
for it challenges all improbable things to the bar of
reason to show cause why they should be believed.
“ Admitting as we do the omnipotence of the Great
Creator, we honour him when we question that which
seems improbable. This will appear, we doubt not,
clear to all. With God, we feel and think all things
are possible. It does not follow, however, when cer
tain things are put forward for our acceptance by men
like ourselves, that we should admit the possibility
before having investigated the probability. This will
at all times be found a safe guide from the errors alike
arising from credulity and superstitious inferences.”
A spirit such as this is the true spirit of the rationalist,
whatever may be the conclusions to which it leads.
“We cannot accept things contrary to our common
�9
sense, no matter who utters them. ... In past ages
false deductions were more liable to be inade than at
present. The onward stride of science has enabled
us to comprehend more clearly than our forefathers,
hundreds of years since.” Free Thought among the
Jews seems to be advancing hand-in-hand with Free
Thought among the Christians, and is making the
efforts of conversion societies more hopeless than
ever.
A curious book has just been issued, entitled,
‘Discussion in General on Christianity, translated
from the Arabic language, by His Excellency Abdul
Hamed Bey.’ It consists of three chapters on “ The
Trinity,” on “ The inconsistency of the four writers
of the Gospel, and the character of Christ as a
Redeemerand on “ Testimony that Mahommed is
the apostle of God.” The discussion of the Trinity is
ably argued, and the special sonship of Jesus denied,
it being urged that the doctrine of the Trinity has only
been taught since the time of Christ, and that if Christ
had been in existence prior to his birth, such pre
existence would no doubt “ have been revealed to the
Children of Israel,” that if God called Christ his Son,
the title was not unique, for “ Thus saith the Lord,
Israel is my son, even my first-born.” (Ex. iv. 22).
“ It is needlees to say, if Christ was born without a
father, and God called him his son, naturally it
follows that Adam, Melchisedec, Israel and others
being in the same degree, eminence and position
relative to Christ, they must also be Gods as Jesus
is.” That the whole life of Jesus is against the
theory of his divinity, and his behaviour after the
resurrection is conclusive evidence that he was only
man. “Is it consistent with reason, and could it be
possible for the Supreme God, who is a most Holy
Spirit, to show his hands and his feet to prove that
he is formed of flesh and bone, and eat broiled fish and
honeycomb ? ” “ Divinity and humanity are too
�10
opposite in nature to blend and unite together.
Could fire and water, light and darkness, truth and
falsehood, ever be united ? if so, then indeed divinity
and humanity might unite.” “Who dares to say
that God, the most merciful, the most benign, retaineth his anger and is unforgiving, so that a Redeemer
is requisite ? . . . . Why should Christ feel more
compassion for mankind than the merciful and benign
Father of the universe ? ” “ Looking up at the
firmament and contemplating the boundless universe,
we find that this earth of ours is like a grain of sand
of the sea-shore, a drop in an ocean • then such being
the case, we wonder at the absurdity of the Christian
doctrine that the Supreme Being (to whom be glory
for ever and ever) not forgiving the human race out of
his own goodness and clemency, but sending his pre
tended son to this mite of dirty earth to go through
the absurd tragedy of the crucifixion and all belong
ing to it, for what ? to save us contemptible worms
from punishment.” Such is the doctrine of the
Redeemer and the Trinity seen from the standing
point of a believer in Mohammed, who believes in,
and who draws many arguments from the Old Testa
ment Scriptures. The inconsistencies of the Evan
gelists are somewhat sharply touched upon, and it is
urged that they calumniate Jesus, “ the holy
messenger of God,” by ascribing to him unworthy
actions, like the cursing of the fig-tree, “ an act quite
foreign to his blessed and holy nature.”
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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Signs of the times. July, 1876
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Text
VERS US
CHRISTIANITY.
BY
A CANTAB.
PUBLISHED
BY
THOMAS
SCOTT,
NO. 11 THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD,
LONDON, S.E.
1873.
Pi ice Sixpence.
�LONDON!
rr.INTED BY C. W. REYNELL, 16 LITTLE 1TLTENEY STREET
HAYMARKET, IV.
�JESUS versus CHRISTIANITY.
---------♦---------
HE most notable feature in the present condition
of theology is, indubitably, the rapid multipli
cation of writings designed to point the contrast
between the character, real or supposed, of Jesus,
and the religion which bears his name and of which
he is commonly regarded as the founder. The revolt,
which every day but serves to intensify, is not against
Jesus as par excellence il the genius of righteousness,”
but against the dogmatic system which theologians
have substituted for him. The church, it is alleged,
has outdone Iscariot, in that it has committed a
twofold treachery : it has accepted the murder of its
founder as a sacrifice well-pleasing to the Deity, and
it has repudiated his simple heart-religion for meta
physical subtleties of its own invention. Thus, not
content with making itself a participator in the
murder of his body, the church has dealt a fatal
outrage upon his spirit.
Among the writings to which we have referred as
advocating the displacement of the regime of dogma
and belief by the substitution of one involving
character and conduct, we propose to note especially
‘ The True History of Joshua Davidson,’ reputed to
be the work of a lady well known for the vigour of
her thought and style ; ‘ Literature and Dogma,’ by
Matthew Arnold; ‘ The Eair Haven,’ by W. B.
Owen ; ‘ By and By,’ by Edward Maitland ; ‘ A Note
of Interrogation,’ by Miss Nightingale ; and ‘ Modern
Christianity a Civilised Heathenism.’ All these writ
ings, with the exception of the last, agree in rejecting
A 2
T
�4
'Jesus versus Christianity.
as unproved, unprovable, mistaken, or pernicious, at
least much of what has always been insisted upon by
the church, and in accepting the general character
and teaching of Jesus as the most valuable moral
possession of humanity.
We except the last one for this reason, though
using it to point our argument : It gives up the
state of society which has grown up under the sway
of dogma as utterly un-Christian in character and
conduct, but it does not give up the dogma. The
work of the clergyman who gained an undesirable
notoriety during the Franco-German war by his mis
chievous brochure entitled ‘ Dame Europa’s School,’
it manifests all the confusion of thought which dis
tinguished that production. It was scarcely to be
expected that the writer who could represent England
as placed at the head of the school of Europe to keep
the other nations from quarrelling, and declare that
“ neutral is another name for coward,” would
escape committing absurd inconsistencies when he
took to writing about modern Christianity. In a
dialogue with a Hindoo resident in London, he makes
the heathen discourse in this fashion :
“ How can you soberly believe and eloquently
preach that an overwhelming majority of your fellow
creatures will be burnt alive throughout all eternity
in the flames of hell, and yet can find time or inclina
tion at any moment of your life for any other work
than the work of rescuing the souls around you from
their appalling doom ? How contemplate even so
much as the distant possibility of being yourself
tortured with agonies insupportable, for ages and.
ages and millions of ages more, and all the while
laugh and joke, and talk of politics and business and
pleasure, as if you were the happiest fellow on
earth ? You parsons do actually stand in imminent
peril of being burnt alive for ever, or else you do
not. The souls committed to your teaching, or a
�Jesus versus Christianity.
5
certain proportion of them, are destined to spend a
whole eternity in torment, or else they are destined to
nothing of the kind. If they are so destined, and if
you, unless by precept and example you have done
all in your power to save them, shall have your part
in their unutterable woe, what can you do from morn
ing to night but pray for them, and weep for them,
and implore them earnestly to escape at any cost
from the horrors of an unquenchable flame ? Yet, in
the face of your alleged persuasions that you yourself
and all your flock are standing, for all you know,
upon the very brink of an everlasting hell, you have
deliberately chosen and cheerfully maintain a course
of occupations and a position in society which no
man could possibly endure for half a day who really
believed himself and those dear to him to be placed
in any such peril. What I say is that, if you are not
leading a downright ascetic life—the life of Christ
and nothing less—you waste words upon the air when
you preach the punishment of eternal flames. Would
you believe that my dearest friend upon earth was on
trial for his life, and would very probably be hanged,
if you met me somewhere at five o’clock tea, talking
nonsense to some young lady ? Whereas the average
minister delivers his most awful message, tells his
people plainly that they will be damned, knows for a
certainty that they will go on sinning all the same, and,
under a strong impression that several of his cherished
acquaintances and kindly neighbours will be devoured
by flames unquenchable, walks home to his vicarage,
jokes with his wife, romps with his children, chaffs
his friend, sits down comfortably to his luncheon, and
thoroughly enjoys his slice of cold roast beef and his
glass of bitter beer. Will any man, in his senses,
believe that he means what he has just been saying in
his sermon ? Of course he will believe nothing of the
sort; and therefore it has come to pass that England
is full of intelligent laymen who doubt and disbelieve.
�6
Jesus versus Christianity.
No; lei me see Christians imitating, not a Christ
whom I could fashion for myself out of heathen
materials, not the pattern philosopher, not the ideal
man—but a Christ who at every point is making him
self an intolerable offence to the un-Christ-like, a
thorn and scourge to every man who does not lie
stretched at the foot of his cross ! I know for certain
how Christ would be treated if he were here; I can
see the press deriding him, the fine lady picking her
way past him in the street, the poor flocking round
him as a friend, the magistrate committing him to
prison. Let me see his witnesses treated thus, and
I shall believe that he has sent them. But while I
see them claiming the right to live as other men,
glorying in the fact that they have no peculiarities,
smiling politely on sin, and caressed by those who
would have spat upon their Lord—so long as I see
them thus, they shall teach me if they please the
principles of Christ’s philosophy, but they shall not
dare to tell me that they are priests of a crucified
Christ.”
The conclusion shows that the heathen, having
found such a witness as he requires, accepts the life
—though whether for the sake of the life or through
fear of the hell, does not appear—while the parson
retains the dogma described as above, impervious
to any sense of its hideous immorality, “ and walks
slowly and sadly home, feeling more and more dis
satisfied with his own position.”
In ‘ Joshua Davidson ’ we have an attempt to
transfer the Jesus of the gospels, poor and untaught,
but enthusiast of noble ideas, to our own day, for the
purpose of showing from the inevitable failure of his
life and work, either that modern society is not
Christian, or that Christianity as a system will not
work. The hero of the tale, a carpenter by trade,
early gives up Christianity as a dogma or collection
of dogmas, and falls back upon the character and
�Jesus versus Christianity.
7
social teaching of Jesus as the essence of the gospel,
and alone possessing any real value for us. What
would Jesus be and do were he to live now ? This is
the question essayed to be answered in ‘ Joshua David
son,’ by representing him as a plain working-man,
attacking alike banker and bishop, advocating indis
criminate almsgiving, fraternising with the poor and
discontented, unorthodox in faith, an ultra-radical in
politics, exciting the bitter hostility of the whole
respectable press, denouncing shams, clutching
eagerly at any Utopian extravagance that had a
heart of good in it, a red republican in Trance, an
itinerant lecturer on the rights of man in England,
and finally trampled to death by conservative roughs,
hounded on by dignitaries of the Established Church.
Confident that such would be the career of
Jesus among us, the author is justified in asking of
us, why, if we should thus regard him, do we persist
in calling ourselves by his name and pretending to
be his followers. Surely a question not to be left
unanswered. “We ought,” says the preface to the
third edition, “to be brave enough in this day to dare
ask ourselves how much is practicable and how much
is impracticable in the creed we profess; and to
renounce that which is even the most imperatively
enjoined if we find that it is not wise or possible.
If our religion leads us to political chimeras, let us
abjure it: if it teaches us truth, let us obey it, no
matter what social growths we tear up by the roots.
There is no mean way for men. To slaves only
should the symbols of a myth be sacred, and our very
children are forbidden the weakness of knowing the
right and doing the wrong. If such a man as Joshua
Davidson was a mistake, then acted Christianity is to
blame. In which case, what becomes of the dogma ?
and how can we worship a life as divine, the practical
imitation of which is a moral blunder and an economic
crime ? ”
�8
"Jesus versus Christianity.
It is thus that the author makes the very humanity
of Jesus the proof of his divinity. He is extrahuman, not in any metaphysico-theological sense,
but in the intensity of the sympathy which impels
him to attempt to benefit his fellows. His very
failures are more divine than the successes of other
men. It is thus, too, that having at the start repu
diated the dogmatic system attached to his name, we
are called on to re-examine his ethical and social
teaching, and to avow honestly our rejection of such
parts of it as do not coincide with our notions of the
practicable and right. In short, the appeal is to be
neither to authority nor tradition, but to our own
intelligence and moral sense.
This, too, is the import of Miss Nightingale's
recent utterance (in Fraser's Magazine for May).
Rebuking the tendency of modern reformers to ignore
the character of God, as necessarily underlying the
phenomena which form the subject of their investi
gations, this ‘ Note of Interrogation ’ calls upon us to
regard the moral laws which govern men’s motives as
the real exponents of the divine nature. While thus
adopting the inductive method of Positivism, she
blames the Positivists “ for leaving out of considera
tion all the inspiring part of life,” and stopping short
at phenomena, instead of seeking to learn that of
which phenomena are but the manifestation, and.
to which, therefore, they must be the index. In
this view, she rejects the main points of the creeds
of Roman, Protestant, and Greek alike, and utterly
ignores what is called “ revelation ” as a guide
to the nature of God, and points to the character and
teaching of Christ as among the best indications to
that which ought to be the prime object of search.
In all this it appears clearly that by the term GW
Miss Nightingale really means a human ideal of
perfection, and that she would have us perfect our
ideal for the sake of the reflex influence it would
�Jesus -versus Christianity.
9
exercise upon ourselves. It is by the adoption of the
Christ-ideal of character, and rejection of Christian
dogma, and those on the question of their intrinsic
merits as estimated by her own mind and con
science, apart from tradition or authority, that Miss
Nightingale justifies us in ranking her among the
supporters of Jesus in the great cause of Jesus versus
Christianity.
‘ The Fair Haven ’ is an ironical defence of ortho
doxy at the expense of the whole mass of church
tenet and dogma, the character of Christ only
excepted. Such, at least, is our reading of it, though
critics of the Rock, and Record order have accepted
the book as a serious defence of Christianity, and
proclaimed it as a most valuable contribution in aid
of the faith. Affecting an orthodox standpoint, it
bitterly reproaches all previous apologists for the
lack of candour with which they have ignored or
explained away insuperable difficulties, and attached
undue value to coincidences real or imagined. One
and all they have, the author declares, been at best
but zealous “liars for God,” or what to them
was more than God, their own religious system.
This must go on no longer. We, as Christians,
having a sound cause, need not feai’ to let the truth be
known. He proceeds accordingly to set forth that
truth as he finds it in the New Testament; and, in
a masterly analysis of the accounts of the resurrection,
which he selects as the principal and crucial miracle,
involving all Other miracles, he shows how slender
is the foundation on which the whole fabric of super
natural theology has been reared. Rejecting the
hypothesis of hallucination by which Strauss attempts
to account for the belief of the disciples in the
resurrection, he shows that they had no real evidence
that Jesus had died upon the cross at all. It is true
that the disciples believed him dead ; so that we
need not charge them with fraud. That charge he
�io
Jesus versus Christianity.
reserves for the Paleys and Alfords, whose disingenuousness he scathingly exposes, using the
arguments of the latter to show the absence of anv
proof that Jesus died either of the cross or of the
spear-wound. All that the evangelists knew was
that the body was deposited in the tomb apparently
dead, and that at the end of some thirty hours it had
disappeared. Rejecting the statement in Matthew
as palpably untenable, he makes that in John the
basis of the true story, this being the simplest and
manifest source of the rest.
As told by our author, the whole affords an exquisite
example of the natural growth of a legend. First,
we have Mary Magdalene, who, finding the stone
removed, investigates no further, but runs back and
declares that the body has been taken away (not that
it has come to life). Then we have John and Peter
ascertaining for themselves, by looking in, that Jesus
was no longer there, but only the linen clothes lying
in two separate parts of the tomb. Then, these
having taken their departure, we have the warm,
impulsive Magdalene remaining behind to weep. At
length, mustering courage to look into the sepul
chre for herself, she sees, as she thinks, sitting at
opposite ends, two angels in white, who merely
ask her why she weeps. She makes no answer,
but turns to the outside, where she sees Jesus
himself, but so changed that she does not at first
recognise him.
How from this simple and natural story of the
white grave clothes, in the dark sepulchre, looking
like angels to the tear-blinded eyes of a woman who
was so liable to hysteria or insanity as to have had
“ seven devils ” cast out of her, grew, step by step, the
myth so freely amplified in the gospels, the reader
must find in the book itself.
If he can once fully grasp the intention of the
style and its affectation of the tone of indignant
�Jesus versus Christianity.
11
orthodoxy, and perceive also how utterly destructive
are its “ candid admissions ” to the whole fabric of
supernaturalism, he will enjoy a rare treat. It is not,
however, for the purpose of recommending what we,
at least, regard as a piece of exquisite humour that
we call attention to ‘ The Fair Haven,’ but in order
to show how, while rejecting popular Christianity, we
may still accept the “ Christ-ideal,” to use our author’s
phrase, and this with an enhanced sense of its beauty
and use to the world.
One of the most characteristic parts of the book is
that in which he argues in favour of the providential
character of the gospel narratives, notwithstanding
their inaccuracies. After stating that no ill effects
need follow from a rejection of the immaculate con
ception, the miracles, the resurrection, or the
ascension, because “ the Christ-ideal, which, after all,
is the soul and spirit of Christianity, would remain
precisely where it is, while its recognition would be
far more general, owing to the departure on the part
of the Apologists from certain lines of defence which
are irreconcilable with the ideal itself,” he says :
“ The old theory that God desired to test our faith,
and that there would be no merit in believing if the
evidence were such as to commend itself at once to
our understanding, is one which need only be stated
to be set aside. It is blasphemy against the goodness
of God to suppose that he has thus laid, as it were, an
ambuscade for man, and will only let him escape on
condition of his consenting to violate one of the very
most precious of God’s own gifts. There is an inge
nious cruelty about such conduct which it is revolting
even to imagine. Indeed, the whole theory reduces
our heavenly Father to a level of wisdom and goodness
far below our own, and this is sufficient answer to it.”
There is, however, a reason why we should be
■required to believe in the divinity of the Christ-ideal,
and regard it as exalted beyond all human comparison;
�I2
"Jesus versus Christianity.
namely, in order to exalt our sense of the paramount
importance of following and obeying the life and
commands of Christ. And this being so, “ it is
natural, also, to suppose that whatever may have
happened to the records of that life should have been
ordained with a view to the enhancing the precious
ness of the ideal.” Thus the very obscurity and
fragmentariness of the gospel narratives have added
to the value of the ideas they present, just as the
mutilations of ancient sculptures serve to enhance
their beauty to the imagination. Or, as “the gloom
and gleam of Rembrandt, or the golden twilight of
the Venetians, the losing and finding, and the infinite
liberty of shadow,” produce an effect infinitely beyond
that which would be gained by any hardness of
definition and tightness of outline. The suggestion
of the beautiful lineaments to the imagination is far
more effective than would be any minutely detailed
portrait. “ Those who relish definition, and definition
only, are indeed kept away from Christianity by the
present condition of the records ; but even if the life
of our Lord had been so definitely rendered as to
find a place in their system, would it have greatly
served their souls ? And would it not repel hun
dreds and thousands of others, who find in the
suggestiveness of the sketch a completeness of satis
faction which no photographic reproduction could
have given ?”
The fact is “ people misunderstand the aim and
scope of religion. Religion is only intended to guide
men in those matters upon which science is silent:
God illumines us by science as by a mechanical
draughtsman’s plan; he illumines us in the gospels
as by the drawing of a great artist. We cannot build
a ‘ Great Eastern ’ from the drawings of the artist,
but what poetical feeling, what true spiritual emotion
was ever kindled by a mechanical drawing ? How
cold and dead were science, unless supplemented by
�"Jesus versus Christianity.
13
art and religion! Not joined with them, for the
merest touch of these things impairs scientific value,
which depends essentially upon accuracy, and not upon
any feeling for the beautiful and loveable. In like
manner the merest touch of science chills the warmth
of sentiment—the spiritual life. The mechanical
drawing is spoilt by being made artistic, and the work
of the artist by becoming mechanical. The aim of
the one is to teach men how to construct; of the other,
how to feel. We ought not, therefore, to have ex
pected scientific accuracy from the gospel records.
Much less should we be required to believe that such
accuracy exists.” The finest picture, approached close
enough, becomes but blotches and daubs of paint, each
one of which, taken by itself, is absolutely untrue,
yet, at proper distance, forms an impression which is
quite truthful. “No combination of minute truths
in a picture will give so faithful a representation
of nature as a wisely-arranged tissue of untruths.”
Again, “ all ideals gain by vagueness and lose by defi
nition, inasmuch as more scope is left for the imagi
nation of the beholder, who can thus fill in the missing
detail according to his own spiritual needs. This is
how it comes that nothing which is recent, whether
animate or inanimate, can serve as an ideal unless it
is adorned by more than common mystery and uncer
tainty. A new cathedral is necessarily very ugly.
There is too much found and too little lost. Much
less would an absolutely perfect Being be of the
highest value as an ideal as long as he could be clearly
seen, for it is impossible that he could be known as
perfect by imperfect men, and his very perfections
must perforce appear as blemishes to any but perfect
critics. To give, therefore, an impression of perfec
tion, to create an absolutely unsurpassable ideal, it
became essential that the actual image of the original
should become blurred and lost, whereon the beholder
now supplies from his own imagination that which is,
�14
"Jesus versus Christianity.
to him, more perfect than the original, though objec
tively it must be infinitely less so.
“ It is probably to this cause that the incredulity of
the Apostles during our Lord’s lifetime must be
assigned. The ideal was too near them, and too far
above their comprehension; for it must always be
remembered that the convincing power of miracles in
the days of the Apostles must have been greatly
weakened by the current belief in their being events
of no very unusual occurrence, and in the existence
both of good and evil spirits who could take
possession of men and compel them to do their
bidding.
“ A beneficent and truly marvellous provision for
the greater complexity of man’s spiritual needs was
thus provided by a gradual loss of detail and gain of
breadth. Enough evidence was given in the first
instance to secure authoritative sanction for the ideal.
During the first thirty or forty years after the death
of our Lord, no one could be in want of evidence,
and the guilt of unbelief is, therefore, brought promi
nently forward. Then came the loss of detail which
was necessary in order to secure the universal accept
ability of the ideal. . . But there would, of course,
be limits to the gain caused by decay. Time came
when there would be danger of too much vagueness
in the ideal, and too little distinctness in the evidences.
It became necessary, therefore, to provide against this
danger.
“ Precisely at that epoch the gospels made their appear
ance.” Not simultaneously, and not in perfect harmony
with each other, but with such divergence of aim and
difference of authorship as would secure the necessary
breadth of effect when the accounts were viewed
together. “ As the roundness of the stereoscopic
image can only be attained by the combination of two
distinct pictures, neither of them in perfect harmony
with the other, so the highest possible conception of
�Jesus versus Christianity.
15
Christ cannot otherwise be produced than through the
discrepancies of the gospels.”
Now, however, “when there is a numerous and
increasing class of persons whose habits of mind unfit
them for appreciating the value of vagueness, but
who have each of them a soul which may be lost or
saved, the evidences should be restored to something
like their former sharpness.” To do this it demands
only “the recognition of the fact that time has made
incrustations upon some parts of the evidences, and
has destroyed others.” Nevertheless, as “ it is not belief
in the facts which constitutes the essence of Clvristianity,
but rather the being so impregnated with love at the
contemplation of Christ that imitation becomes almost
instinctive,” we may probably suppose “that certain
kinds of unbelief have become less hateful in the
sight of God, inasmuch as they are less dangerous to
the universal acceptance of our Lord as the one model
for the imitation of all men.”
To advocate conduct instead of belief, experience
instead of tradition, and intuition instead of conven
tionality, and to exhibit a model for the imitation of
all men, married as well as single, is at least one pur
pose manifest in the series of novels of which ‘ By
and By ’ is announced to be the completion :—novels
differing from the ordinary kind in that, while others
treat of man only in relation to man, and are, there
fore, merely moral, these bear reference to man in
relation to the Infinite, and are, therefore, essentially
religious.
It does not come within our design to treat of the
surface aspect of Mr Edward Maitland’s ‘ Historical
Romance of the Future,’ which represents the world
as it may be when a few more centuries have passed
over it, and the problems, social, political, and
religious, which now trouble it, shall have found
their solution, and people may, without detriment or
reproach, regulate their lives in accordance with their
�16
"Jesus versus Christianity.
own preferences. It is with the deeper design of the
book that we have now to do, the design which
reveals itself in the entire series to which, with ‘ The
Pilgrim and the Shrine ’ and 1 Higher Law,’ it belongs.
This design is the rehabilitation of nature, by showing
its capacity for producing of itself, if only its best be
allowed fail* play, the highest results in religion and
morals. Seeing that to rehabilitate nature is in
effect to rehabilitate the author of nature, and replace
both worker and work in the high place from which
they have been deposed by theologians, such a design
can be no other than an eminently religious one.
In the first of the series, ‘ The Pilgrim and the
Shrine,’ the wanderer in search of a faith that will
stand the test and fulfil the requirements of a
developed mind and conscience emerges from the
wilderness of doubt, through which he has been pain
fully toiling, to find that the best that we can com
prehend must ever be the Divine for us, and this by
the very constitution of our nature, inasmuch as we
can only interpret that which is without by that
which is within. And he bears testimony to the
value of the Bible as an agent in the development of
the religious faculty by noting the subjective character
of all that really appertains to religion in both the
Old and New Testaments. “ Constantly,” he says,
“ is the inner ideal dwelt upon without any reference
to corresponding external objects. Think you it was
the law as written in the books of Moses that was a
delight to the mind and a guide to the feet of the
Psalmist ? No, it was something that appealed much
more nearly to his inmost soul, even ‘ the law of God
in his heart.’ And what else was meant by ‘ Christ
in you the hope of glory?’ The idea of a perfect
standard is all that can be in us. The question
wbethei’ it has any external personal existence in
history does not affect the efficacy of the idea in
raising us up towards itself. God, the Absolute, is
�Jesus versus Christianity.
17
altogether past finding out. Wherefore we elevate
the best we can imagine into the Divine, and worship
that:—the perfect man or perfect woman. Surely
it is no matter which, since it is the character and not
the person that is adored. . . Christianity is a
worship of the divinest character, as exemplified in a
human form. . . The very ascription to Jesus of
supernatural attributes shows the incapacity of his
disciples to appreciate the grandeur and simplicity of
his character. . . . Here, then, is my answer to
the question, 1 What was the exact work of Christ ? ’
It was to give men a law for their government, tran
scending any previously generally recognised. Ignor
ing the military ruler, the priest, and the civil
magistrate, he virtually denounced physical force,
spiritual terror, and legal penalties as the compelling
motive for virtue. The system whereby he would
make men perfect, even as their Father in heaven is
perfect, was by developing the higher moral lawimplanted in every man’s breast, and so cultivating
the idea of God in the soul. The ‘ law of God in
the heart ’ was no original conception of his. It had
been recognised by many long before, and had raised
them to the dignity of prophets, saints, and martyrs.
Its sway, though incapable of gaining in intensity, is
wider now than ever, till the poet of our day must be
one who is deeply imbued with it; no mere surface
painter like his predecessors, however renowned, but
having a spiritual insight which makes him at once
poet and prophet. The founding of an organised
society, having various grades of ecclesiastical rank,
and definite rules of faith, does not seem to me to
have formed any part of Christ’s idea. His plan was
rather to scatter broadcast the beauty of his thought,
and let it take root and spring up where it could.
Recognising intensely, as he did, the all-winning
loveliness of his idea, he felt that it would never lack
ardent disciples to propagate it, and he left it to each
B
�Jesus versus Christianity.
age to devise such means as the varying character of
the times might suggest. The ‘ Christian Church,*
therefore, for me, consists of all who follow a Christian
ideal of character, no matter whether, or in whom,
they believe that ideal to have been personified.”
Such is the teaching of a book that is, to the Pall
Mall Gazette, foolishness, and to Mudie’s a stumblingblock and an abomination; yet which, in spite of
clerical denunciation and the expurgatorial indexes
of Protestant Nonconformist circulating-librarians,
has in a short space travelled to all lands where the
English tongue is spoken, and perceptibly influenced
the course that religious thought must henceforth
take. We shall have a proof of this when we come
to the last book on our list. In the meantime it
seemed to us well to digress for a moment in order
to denounce the obstacles which still are thrown in
the way of genuine religious thought by ecclesiastic
and layman, Churchman and Dissenter, alike in this
“ Christian ” land of ours.
As the ‘ Pilgrim and the Shrine ’ exhibited the
process of thinking and feeling out a religion, so its
successor, ‘ Higher Law,’ represented the natural
growth of a morality. Repudiating all conventional
methods, as the other repudiated theological and
traditional ones, the design here is to represent the
action of persons under the sole guidance of their
own perceptions and feelings under circumstances of
supreme temptation and difficulty.
It is by the steadfast adherence to the simple rule
of unselfishness, which forbids the commission of
aught that can injure or pain those whom we are
bound to respect, that the sufficiency of the intuitions
to constitute the higher, or rather highest, law of
morality is demonstrated.
It is not necessary to the perfection of nature that
all germs should reach the highest stages of growth,
whether in the vegetable or in the spiritual kingdom.
�"Jesus versus Christianity.
T9
The capacity to produce a single perfect result is
sufficient to redeem nature from the old reproach
cast upon it by theologians, “just as one magnificent
blossom suffices to redeem the plant, that lives a
hundred years and flowers but once, from the charge
of having wasted its existence.” Nay, more. “Even
if the experience of all past ages of apparent aim
lessness and sterility affords no plea in justification of
existence, the one fact that there is room for hope in
the future may well suffice to avert the sentence men
are too apt to pronounce,—that all is vanity and
vexation, and that the tree of humanity is fit only to
be cut down, that it cumber the ground no longer.”
Erom this point of view it is evident that at least
one object of the creation of the leading character in
1 By and By ’ is to show how an ideally perfect dis
position may be produced from purely natural cir
cumstances, and if in the present or future, why not
in the past ? The “ Christmas Carol ” of ‘ By and
By’ thus becomes for us a parallel to the “Joshua
Davidson” of the book already noticed; for it is an
attempt to transfer the Jesus of the gospels from
Judaea to our own country, only a Jesus wealthy in
stead of poor, educated instead of untaught, married
instead of single, having all the advantages of a
civilisation more advanced than any yet attained,
and with his intense religious enthusiasm kept from
surpassing the limits of the practical, by science,
wedlock, and work. In his liability to personify the
products of his own vivid and spiritual imagination,
and out of his idealisations of things terrestrial to
people the skies with “angels,” we see but a repro
duction of one of the characteristics by which all
the enthusiasts of old, to which the world owes its
religions, have been distinguished. By placing such
a character in his picture of the future, we under. stand the author to indicate his conviction that man
will always, no matter how rigidly scientific his
b 2
�20
Jesus ’versus Christianity.
training, have a religious side to his nature, a side
whereby he can rise on the wings of emotion far
beyond the regions of mere Sense. Of course such
an one must at some moment of his life feel himself
impelled to use his wealth and freedom for his own
selfish gratification (he would not otherwise be
human), but resisting such promptings of his own
lower nature, will fix himself upon some great
and useful work. It is almost as much of course that
he will in his earliest love be attracted by the
character that most nearly resembles pure unso
phisticated nature. But the love that is of the sexes
will not contain half his nature. He will be the
friend and servant of all men, and so provoke to
jealousy the small, intense disposition of her to whom
he has allied himself. Striving to inoculate her with
a sense of the ideal, their relations will aptly typify
the world-old conflict of Soul and Sense. He may
suffer greatly, but if she be true and genuine, and
loves him her best, so far as is in her, he will _ be
tender and kind and endure to the end. Losing
her, and after long interval wedding again, more for
his child’s sake than his own, he will naturally be
tempted to make trial of one less unsophisticated and
untrained. But mere conventionality will disgust
him. Its hollow artifices and insincerity will be
odious, and the ideal man will find a moral jar y
fitting plea for repudiation. Should his child—his
daughter—err, he will be tender and forgiving, pro
vided her fault be prompted by love. It will ever
be in his conduct that we shall find his faith.
Recognising himself as an individualised portion of
the divine whole, his intuitions are to him as the
voice of God in his soul, and to fail to live up to his
best would be to fall short of the duty due to his
divine ancestry.
So confident is he of the divinity of his own
intuitions, and so inexorable in his requirements of
�Jesus versus Christianity.
21
perfection in conduct up to the highest point of
individual ability, that he fails to be at ease until he
has established the character of God himself for perfect
righteousness in his dealings, even with the meanest
thing in his creation. We do not know whether or
not the argument is new. It certainly has not been
Suggested by any of the theologians who have busied
themselves in seeking solutions for the problem of
tile origin of evil. It is that all things are the pro
duct of their conditions, and that all conditions have
a right to exist, so that the products have a right
to exist also; and the maker of the conditions can
not in justice refuse to be satisfied with the products
©f conditions which he has permitted. “ The poor
Soil and the arid sky are as much a part of the
universal order as the rich garden, soft rain, and
Warm sunshine. It is just that one should yield a
©rop which the other would despise. It would be
unjust were both to yield alike.” Man’s highest
ftmction is to amend the conditions of his own
■Existence. Finding himself launched into the uni
verse, he must till it and keep it and fit it to produce
better and better men and women. It is by labouring
an this direction that he works out his own salva
tion. They are poor teachers who inculcate but
the patience of resignation, or look to another life to
compensate the evils of this. The ideal man of the
future appeals to the intuitive perceptions as the
divine guides of conduct while here, and to the physical
laws of nature for the means of subduing the world
to man’s highest needs. To his intensely sympathetic
nature “ good ” is necessarily that which assimilates
and harmonises to the greatest extent its surrounding
Conditions—not the immediately surrounding merely
s-«4hat which works in truest sympathy with the
fest, While that is evil which by its very selfishness
arraigns the rest against it, good needs no power
working from without to make it triumphant. It
�22
Jesus versus Christianity.
triumphs by winning the sympathies of all to work
with it.
What Mr Maitland has done in the form of fiction
Mr Matthew Arnold has done in the form of a
treatise. We look upon his ‘Literature and Dogma ’
as clinching the blow struck at the whole fabric of
dogmatic theology, and crowning the effort to restore
the intuitions as the sole court of appeal, not only
between man and man, but between man and God.
In his view the glory of the Bible consists in its
exhibition of Israel as a people with a special
faculty for righteousness, at least in conception. As
other races have their special faculties, the Greek for
sculpture, the Italian for painting, the German for
abstract thought, the French for sensuous art, &c.,
so the genius of Israel was for the righteousness
which consists in morality touched by emotion towards
something that is not ourselves, but . which makes for
righteousness. And it was in Christ that the national
genius of his race culminated, as genius for painting
in Raphael, for science in Newton, for the drama in
Shakespeare.
It was to God, not as “ an intelligent First Cause
and Moral Governor of the Universe,” but as the
influence from whence proceed the intuitions which
constitute the basis of conscience, that the higher
writers of the Old Testament appealed. And it was
in Jesus, not as the “ Eternal Son” of a personal
father, but as the restorer of the intuitions that the
disciples believed. No doubt they had extra beliefs,
and what we should term not so much superstition as
the poetry of religion, and it is very difficult to
separate the husks of this from the grain of the
other; but it is always the appeal to the intuitive
perceptions of right that excites their enthusiasm,
and thus they preach as the sole efficient cause of
man’s regeneration.
Entitling his work ‘ An Essay towards a Better
�Jesus versus Christianity.
23
Apprehension of the Bible,’ Mr Arnold maintains
that it is through the lack of literary culture that the
Bible has been utterly misunderstood, and that it is
through such misunderstanding that difficulties and
dogmas have arisen, and that conduct has come to
be ranked below belief as the effective agent of all
good. Of the Bible itself he says that, while it can
not possibly die, and its religion is all-important,
nevertheless to restore religion as the clergy under
stand it, and re-in throne the Bible as explained by
our current theology, whether learned or popular, is
absolutely and for ever impossible. Whatever is to
stand must rest upon something which is verifiable,
not unverifiable ; and the assumption with which all
churches and sects set out, that there is “ a great
Personal First Cause, the moral and intelligent Gover
nor of the Universe, and that from him the Bible
derives its authority, can never be verified.”
There is, however, something that can be verified ;
something that, after the deposition of the magnified
and non-natural man ordinarily set up by people as
their God, will for ever remain as the basis and object
of religious thought. This something is to be found
in the Bible, not there alone, but there in a greater
degree than in any other literature. It is the influence
wholly divine which is not ourselves, and makes for
righteousness. The instant we get beyond this in our
definitions of Deity we fall into anthropomorphism
and its attendant train of dogmas, Apostolic, Nicene,
or Athanasian, all of which are but - human meta
physics, and the product of minds untrained to dis
tinguish between things and ideas. “ Learned reli
gion ” is the pseudo-science of dogmatic theology; a
separable accretion which never had any business to
be attached to Christianity, never did it any good, and
now does it great harm. In the Apostles’ Creed we
have the popular science of that day. In the Nicene
Creed, the learned science. In the Athanasian Creed,
�24
"Jesus versus Christianity.
the learned science, with a strong dash of violent and
vindictive temper. And these three creeds, and with
them the whole of our so-called orthodox theology,
are founded upon words which Jesus, in all proba
bility, never uttered, inasmuch as they are inconsis
tent with the essential spirit of his teaching, and are
ascribed to him as spoken after his death.
Of the capacity of people at that time to compose
a form of belief for us, we may judge by their ideas
on cosmogony, geography, history, and physiology.
We know what those ideas were, and their faculty for
Bible criticism was on a par with their pther faculties.
To be worth anything, literary and scientific criticism
require the finest heads and the most sure tact. They
require, besides, that the world and the world’s experi
ence shall have come some considerable way. There
must be great and wide acquaintance with the history
of the human mind, knowledge of the manner in
which men have thought, their way of using words
and what they mean by them, delicacy of perception
and quick tact, and besides all these, an appreciation
of the spirit of the time. What is called orthodox
theology is, then, no other than an immense misunder
standing of the Bible, due to the junction of a talent
for abstruse reasoning with much literary inexperi
ence. The Athanasian Creed is a notion-work based
on a chimaera. It is the application of forms of Greek
logic to a chimaera, its own notion of the Trinity, a
notion un-established, not resting on observation and
experience, but assumed to be given in Scripture, yet
not really given there. Indeed, the very expression,
the Trinity, jars with the whole idea and character of
Bible-religion, just as does the Socinian expression, a>
great personal first cause.
What, then, is Christian faith and religion, and how
are we to get at them ? Jesus was above the heads
of his reporters, and to distinguish what Jesus said
and meant, it is necessary to investigate the spirit
�Jesus versus Christianity.
25
which prompted and is involved in the words attri
buted to him. This spirit is identical with that which
made Israel (as expressing himself through his most
highly spiritual writers) the most religious of peoples.
The utterance of Malachi, Righteousness tendeth to life,
life being salvation from moral death, was identical
with the assertion of Jesus that he was the way, the
truth, and the life, inasmuch as the Messiah’s function
was to Srwiy in everlasting righteousness, by exhibiting
it in perfection in his own conduct. Thus, the religion
he taught was personal religion, which consists in
the inward feeling and disposition of the individual
himself, rather than in the performance of outward
acts towards religion or society. The great means
whereby he renewed righteousness and religion were
self-examination, self-renouncement, and mildness.
He succeeded in his mission by virtue of the sweet
reasonableness which every one could recognise, par
ticularly those unsophisticated by the metaphysics of
dogmatic theology. He was thus in advance of the
Old Testament, for while that and its Law said, attend
to conduct, he said, attend to the feelings and dispositions
whence conduct proceeds. It was thus that man came
under a new dispensation, and made a new covenant
with God, or the something not ourselves which makes
for righteousness.
Thus the idea of God, as it is given in the Bible,
rests, not on a metaphysical conception of the
necessity of certain deductions from our ideas of
cause, existence, identity, and the like ; but on a moral
perception of a rule of conduct, not of our own
making, into which we are born, and which exists,
whether we will or no ; of awe at its grandeur and
necessity, and of gratitude at its beneficence. This
is the great original revelation made to Israel, this is
his “ Eternal.” The whole mistake comes from
■ regarding the language of the Bible as scientific
instead of literary, that is, the language of poetry and
�26
Jesus versus Christianity.
emotion, approximative language thrown out at
certain great objects of consciousness which it does
not pretend to define fully.
As the Old Testament speaks about the Eternal
and bears an invaluable witness to him, without ever
yet adequately in w’ords defining and expressing him,
so, and even yet more, do the New Testament writers
speak about Jesus and give a priceless record of him,
without adequately and accurately comprehending
him. They are altogether on another plane, and
their mistakes are not his. It is not Jesus himself
who relates his own miracles to us; who tells us of
his own apparitions after death; who alleges his
crucifixion and sufferings as a fulfilment of prophecy.
It is that his reporters were intellectually men of
their nation and time, and of its current beliefs ; and
the more they were so, the more certain they were to
impute miracles to a wonderful and half-understood
person. As is remarked in ‘The Pilgrim and the
Shrine,’ the real miracle would have been if there
were no miracles in the New Testament. The book
contains all we know of a wonderful spirit, far above
the heads of his reporters, still farther above the
head of our popular theology, which has added its
own misunderstandings of the reporters to their
misunderstanding of Jesus.
The word spirit, made so mechanical by popular
religion that it has come to mean a person without a
hody, is used by Jesus to signify influence. “ Except
a man be born of a new influence he cannot see the
kingdom of God.” Instead of proclaiming what
ecclesiastics of a metaphysical turn call “ the blessed
truth that the God of the universe is a Person,”
Jesus uttered a warning for all time against this un
profitable jargon, by saying: “ God is an influence,
and those who would serve him must serve him not
by any form of words or rites, but by inward motive
and in reality.”
�J
‘ esus versus Christianity.
27
The whole centre of gravity of the Christian
religion, in the popular as well as in the so-callecl
orthodox notion of it, is placed in Christ’s having,
by his death in satisfaction for man’s sins, performed
the contract originally passed in the council of the
Trinity, and having thus enabled the magnified and
non-natural man in heaven, who is the God of
theology and of the multitude alike, to consider his
justice satisfied, and to allow his mercy to go forth on
all who heartily believe that Christ has paid their
debt for them. But the whole structure of material
ising theology, in which this conception of the Atone
ment holds the central place, drops away and dis
appears as the Bible comes to be better known. The
true centre of gravity of the Christian religion is in
the method, and secret of Jesus, approximating, in
their application, even closer to the “ sweet reason
ableness” and unerring sureness of Jesus himself.
And as the method of Jesus led up to his secret, and
his secret was dying to “ the life in this world,” and
living to “ the eternal life,” both his method and his
secret, therefore, culminated in his “ perfecting on
the cross.”
A century has passed since it was said by Lessing,
“ Christianity has failed. Let us try Christ; ” and
the interval has not proved the utterance a fallacy.
Though there never was so much so-called Christian
teaching and preaching in school and church as now,
the progress of civilisation has been little else than
another name for progress in immorality, whether in
the form of trade dishonesty, social selfishness, or
any other. The reason is plain. It is not God as
righteousness and Jesus as the way thereto that is
inculcated, but systems of impossible metaphysics and
rituals that profit nothing. The spread of intelligence
is leading the masses daily more and more to reject
what is good in religion, because their intelligence
does not go far enough, and because their teachers
�e8
Jesus versus Christianity.
insist on substituting human inventions for eternal
truth. Alike within the Established Church and
without, it is the teaching vain and foolish. Even
politics are degraded by its influence. For, as Mr
Arnold asks, “ What is to be said for men, aspiring to
deal with the cause of religion, who either cannot see
that what the people now require is a religion of the
Bible quite different from that which any of the
churches or sects supply; or who, seeing this, spend
their energies in fiercely battling as to whether the
church shall be connected with the nation in its collec
tive and corporate character, or no ? The thing is to
recast religion. If this is done, the new religion will
be the national one. If it is not done, separating the
nation in its collective and corporate character from
religion will not do it. It is as if men’s minds were
much unsettled about mineralogy, and the teachers
of it were at variance, and no teacher was convincing,
and many people, therefore, were disposed to throw
the study of mineralogy overboard altogether. What
would naturally be the first business for every friend
of the study ? Surely to establish on sure grounds
the value of the study, and to put its claims in a new
light, where they could no longer be denied. But if
he acted as our Dissenters act in religion, what would
he do ? Give himself heart and soul to a furious
crusade against keeping the Government School of
Mines ! ”
This brings us to another aspect of the allegorical
romance already referred to. Mr Maitland repre
sents the church of the ‘ By and By ’ as a church at
once national and undogmatic. That is, it is not
only the crowning division of the educational depart
ment of the State; but it is untrammelled by any
dog ma that can exclude any citizen from a share in
its conduct and advantages. For none can own him
self a dissenter in regard to a church whose teaching
is restricted to the inculcation of righteousness, and
�Jesus versus Christianity.
29
follows Christ in the work of restoring the intuitions
to their proper supremacy over convention and tra
dition, and maintaining them there.
Archdeacon Denison has already uttered a lament
over even the remote prospect of such a “creedless
and sacramentless church ” finding a footing in this
country. But what may not the man who can
reconcile the pursuit of righteousness with reason,
say of the prospect afforded now? We take the
answer from ‘ The Fair Haven.’
“ Let a man travel over England, north, south,
east, and west, and in his whole journey he will
hardly find a single spot from which he cannot see
one or several churches. There is hardly a hamlet
which is not also the centre for the celebration of our
Redemption by the death and resurrection of Christ.
Not one of these churches, not one of the clergy who
minister therein, not one single village school in all
England, but must be regarded as a fountain of error,
if not of deliberate falsehood. Look where they may,
they cannot escape from the signs of a vital belief in
the resurrection. All these signs are signs of super
stition only; it is superstition which they celebrate
and would confirm; they are founded upon sheer
fanaticism, or at the best upon sheer delusion ; they
poison the fountain-heads of moral and intellectual
well-being, by teaching men to set human experience
on the one side, and to refer their conduct to the sup
posed will of a personal anthropomorphic God who
was actually once a baby—who was born of one of his
own creatures—and who is now locally and corporeally
in heaven, “of reasonable soul and human flesh sub
sisting.” Such an one as we are supposing cannot
even see a clergyman without saying to himself,
“ There goes one whose whole trade is the promotion
of error ; whose whole life is devoted to the upholding
of the untrue.”
How different it will be when the teaching in church
�"Jesus versus Christianity.
and school alike are built upon the axiom ascribed to
them in ‘ By and By,’ that “ As in the region of
Morals, the Divine Will can never conflict with
the Moral law; so, in the region of Physics, the
Divine Will can never conflict with the Natural
law.”
It must be so some day. “ It is not for man to live
for ever in the nursery. As in the history of an indi
vidual, so in that of a people, there is a period when
larger views must prevail and greater freedom of
action be accorded; when life will have many sides,
and hold relations with a vast range of facts and
interests, of which none can be left out of the account
without detriment to all concerned. Formerly, it
may be, men were able, or content, to recognise their
relations with the infinite on but a single side of their
nature. When a strongly marked line divided the
object of their religious emotions from all other ob
jects, when that alone was deemed divine, and all
else constituted the profane or secular, there may
have been excuse for their accordance of supremacy
to the one class of emotions, and of inferior respect,
or even contempt, to the other. But we have passed
out of that stage; we know no such distinction in
kind between the various classes of our emotions.
They all are human, and therefore all divine. They
all serve to connect us with the universe of which
we are a portion, the whole of which universe must
be equally divine for us, though we may rank some
of its uses above others in reference to our own
nature. Thus, if there is nothing that is specially
sacred for us, it is because there is nothing that is
really profane; but all is sacred, from the least to
the greatest. And this is the lesson that the churches
have yet to learn. Let us complete the Reformation
by freeing our own church from its ancient limita
tions, which are of the nursery. Let us release our
teachers from the corner in which they have so long
�Jesus versus Christianity.
31
been cramped, and they will soon learn to take greater
delight in exploring the many mansions which com
pose the whole glorious house of the universe, and
unfolding in turn to their hearers whatever they can
best tell, whether of science, philosophy, religion, art,
or morality, not necessarily neglecting those spiritual
metaphysics to which they have in great measure
hitherto been restricted, and the consequence of
which restriction has been but to distort them and
all else from their due proportion. In the church
thus reformed, all subjects that tend to edification
will be fitting ones for the preacher. But whatever
the subject, the method will have to be but one,
always the scientific, never the dogmatic method.
The appeal will be to the intellects, the hearts, and
the consciences of the living, never to mere authority,
living or dead. There will be no heresy, because no
orthodoxy; or rather, the question of heresy as against
orthodoxy will be a question of method, not of con
clusions. From the pulpits of such a church no genu
ine student or thinker will be excluded, but will find
welcome everywhere from congregations composed,
not of the women only and the weaker brethren, but
of men, men with brains and culture ! Who knows
what edifices of knowledge may be reared, what
reaches of spiritual perception may be attained, upon
a basis from which all the rubbish of ages has been
cleared away, and where all that is useful and true
in the past is built into the foundations of the future !
Who can tell how nearly we may attain to the per
fections of the blessed when, no longer strait
ened in heart and mind and spirit by a narrow
sectarianism, but with the scientific and the verifiable
everywhere substituted for the dogmatic and the
incomprehensible, the veil which has so long shrouded
the universe as with a thick mist shall be altogether
withdrawn, when the All is revealed without stint to
our gaze in such degree as each is able to bear, and
�32
Jesus versus Christianity.
Theology no longer serves but to paint and darken
the windows through which man gazes out into the
infinite!
Thus reformed, amended, and enlarged, the esta
blished churches of Great Britain will be no exclu
sive corporations, watched with jealous eyes of less
favoured sects. Nonconformity will disappear, for
there will be nothing to nonconform to : Fanaticism,
for there will be no Dogma; Intolerance and Bigotry,
for there will be no Infallibility. Comprehensive, as
all that claims to be national and human ought to be,
no conditions of membership, will be imposed to
entitle any to a share of its benefits: but every
variety of opinion will find expression and a home
precisely in the degree to which it may commend
itself to the general intelligence.
The bitterness of sectarian animosity thus extin
guished, and no place found for dogmatic assertion
or theological hatred, it will seem as if the first heaven
and the first earth had passed away, and a new heaven
and new earth had come, in which there was no more
sea of troubles or aught to set men against each other
and keep them from uniting in aid of their common
welfare. Lit by the clear light of the cultivated
intellect, and watered by the pure river of the deve
loped moral sense, the State will be free to grow
into a veritable city of God, where there shall be no
more curse of poverty or crime, no night of intole
rant stupidity, but all shall know that which is good
for all, from the least to the greatest.”*
“ What, then, becomes of the Revelation ? ” asks
one of the hero in ‘ By and By.’ “ My friend,” is
the reply, “ so long as there exist God and a Soul,
there will be a revelation ; but the sold must be a free
one.”
* ‘How to Complete the Reformation.’ By Edward Mait
land. Thomas Scott.
�
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Jesus versus Christianity
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Notes: "By A Cantab," Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell, London.
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Thomas Scott
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Jesus Christ
Christianity
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CT zoo
THE
EFFICACY OF PRAYER.
A LETTER TO THOMAS SCOTT.
A
FOREIGN
PUBLISHED
BY
CHAPLAIN.
THOMAS
SCOTT,
No. 11 The Terrace, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood,
London, S.E.
1873.
Price Threepence.
��THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER.
DEAR FRIEND,
COMPLY with your request, by attempting
a letter on
“ Efficacy
Prayer,” without
Ihowever beingtheconscious ofofmuch originality or
even “heterodoxy,” to recommend what I may
find to say on so transcendent a topic.
As to
the heterodoxy, I am pretty well persuaded that
our Biblical and Liturgical doctrines on the subject
will, in their highest and broadest acceptation, admit
a very close approach to the conclusions of nearly
every earnest, sober, and unbiassed thinker, aspiring,
irrespective of time and circumstance, to worship God
in Understanding and in Spirit.
You remember of old that our divergence of
religious views generally arose from my demanding
ampler recognition of the aspirational or emotional
claims of our complex nature, than you, from your
more realistic entrenchments, were inclined to con
cede. It was in fact the time-honoured well-worn
controversy between Realism and Idealism, or, as
some would say, Prose and Poetry, in which I main
tained, as I still do, that within the realm of Religion,
the aspirations of our Spirit, with their vague yearn
ings, prophetic forecastings, silent ponderings, and
instinctive impulses, possess a deeper power of insight
into transcendental truths than can, in this murky
.earthly medium, be assigned to any mere scientific,
dexterity of demonstration.
No doubt the two
�6
The Efficacy of Prayer.
moieties of our mental constitution are destined to
control and regulate each other, avoiding the perilous
extreme of effervescent enthusiasm on the one side,
or that of hard material positivism on the other. We
may be sure that creating Providence would not have
equipped us with two such orders of endowment, had
not the development of both been essential to our
equilibrium. A man listening exclusively to his
ideal ponderings and imaginative promptings, will
soon, like the engine without its regulator, get out of
gear by undue violence of moving power ; but what
the engine is with lack of steam, that, I apprehend,
is our semi-divine nature withont some latent-heat of
mysticism within it. If our nature be not semi
divine,—be not, that is, animated and illumined by
smouldering light and fire of Godhead,—then, of
course, Religion, with its ancillary “Prayer,” is
mere morbid delusion : we are but a higher develop
ment of animal, as animal of vegetable, and vegetable
of mineral, mere circulating dust and curious chemical
digesters, liable to be disturbed in our real business
of “ assimilation” by morbid fancies of futurity and
divinity, which practical sense of duty should stu
diously suppress. This, however, was never your
position. We both acknowledged Religion as the
birth-right of Man, not to be sold or bartered for
cold and feckless philosophic pottage ; but you looked
for it more in the head, I in the “ heart, maintaining
with King David, that there is its true temple or
tabernacle. I believed then, as I do still, that the
ablest among us, taking counsel of his brain only, is
likely enough, to land in Atheism, finding infinite
Creation as easy to conceive as an infinite Creator.
But let him look into his “ heart,” and he is a “ fool
to refuse its evidence and say, “ there is no God !
The drift, then, of all that I have to say will be
towards conciliating the “ Realism ” that would, in
its extreme logical result, shut us out from every hope
�The Efficacy of Prayer.
y
of help but that of putting our own shoulder to the
wheel, whose only Litany is “ Orare Laborare ; ” and
the Idealism which, when fairly indignant at the
ignoring of what it holds to be the more sacred half of
our nature, may, by force of re-action, be led to over
look the co-ordinate and no less imperative demands
of reasonable sense and soberness. A recent visit to
England has shown me that this and kindred ques
tions are now mooted with a boldness and publicity
which by no means so characterised public opinion
when we used to compare theologic notes, as with bated
breath, years ago, under your genial roof on the
Foreland coast. Large print and leading articles are
now at the free and full service of speculations which,
a quarter of a century since, were under a Social, no
less than Ecclesiastical, Ban ; then even the most
reverential enquirer found his head against a stream
too strong for individual stemming. Now, if he be
timid as well as reverential, he may chance to be
frightened at the ebb-tide of National Orthodoxy
sweeping away more landmarks than he likes to lose,
and alarming his nervous senses as with a roar of
Niagara in the distance. Without figure of speech,
I was startled at the general exoteric currency of
controversies that used to seek esoteric conclave;
and this remark absolves me from any further scruple
as to the expression of opinions, no longer as
formerly, of a kind to shock stereotype conclusions
resting content on traditional authority, rather than
seeking to give an answer for the hope that
is in them. You, I know, have made yourself
the centre of a circle of active and fearless investi
gators with whom my conclusions are more likely to
sin by their halfness than their boldness ; but if
you can value them as standing wear and tear, and
being consistent, without having aimed at consist
ency, you are free to give them any “ imprimatur ’’
you think proper.
B
�8
The Efficacy of Prayer.
Among other signs of the times that struck in®
was an agitation as to the “ practical ” results of
prayer, embodied in printed proposals, from no mean
quarter, to the effect that such efficacy should be put
to positive test within the walls of a hospital, one
ward of which should be solemnly commended to
faithful and righteous prayer in addition to the usual
curative ways and means within reach of them all.
This, it was argued on the Realistic side, would be a
fair and searching trial of the true value of spiritual
supplication. Nothing, it was urged, being holier in
its purpose than prayer for recovery of the sick—
should no propitious reply be vouchsafed to such
petitions, as evinced by increased per-centage of
recovery, then should we have little or no right to
expect it for any other orisons we might offer. This
strange project, betraying views, as it seemed to me,
of a crude and coarse kind, I had opportunities of
hearing referred to, even in pulpits of the Estab
lished Church, where, as may be supposed, it would
meet with no great favour or respect. Yet I could
not help thinking that such a subject, once publicly
propounded, was worthy of more precision in the way
of dealing with it than it happened to be my lot to
listen to. There is at least a superficial look of fair
play and common sense about such an abrupt chal
lenge that naturally attracts the wistful attention of
“ practical ” people, whose minds might easily be
unsettled by uncertain sounds in the trumpet replying
to it. That such sounds, as far as I heard them, were
uncertain, or at least wanting in the force and fullness
to be wished, was, and still is, my impression; and
having risked an opinion that may smack of presump
tion, I will now make it my purpose herewith to
subject my own kindred lucubrations to the proba
bility of similar criticism. Such an exordium will
no doubt prepare you for something more like a
sermon than a letter, but having proposed such a
�The Efficacy of Prayer.
9
solemn theme, you must of course tolerate a solemn
tone. I promise you, however, as little of a homily,
or at any rate as plain a one, as I can put together,
knowing of old that the “ drum ecclesiastic ” is not
the music you best love to listen to.
What I have to substantiate is the assertion that
the TwyAesi interpretation of our Biblical and Liturgical
didactics would place the efficacy of prayer, not in its
influence on external circumstance, but in its inward
and reflexive working on the soul of the petitioner.
I will try to show that neither the Bible nor the
Book of Common Prayer, in the loftiest spirit of their
teaching, ever encourage us to suppose that our sup
plications can affect the ordinary course of outward
events, as regulated by that Will and Way of God,
which manifest themselves in what we call “ Laws of
Nature.” Many on religious grounds have, I know,
an objection to this term, 11 Laws of Nature,” and one
is only too happy in these times to bow low to any
scruple of a reverential kind. Yet is it an imperative
religious duty to refer the laws of Nature to Nature’s
God, and we have no higher revelation of the divine
characteristics than their immutability—11 Without
variableness or shadow of turning.” We none of us
could contemplate as possible any change in the
moral laws, as of Truth and Justice, for example. We
all know and feel that in moral as in physical laws,
“A false balance is, and must be, 1 an abomination to
the Lord.’ ” Truth is a reality, or entity, and is part
of the all-pervading Being that alone is, and compre
hends every extant modification of subordinate Being.
Untruth, or a “ false balance,” is negative or non
existent, and therefore Atheistic, and thus no truth
can ever change or become untruth, whether we
distinguish it as physical or moral. The Hebrew tetragrammaton
(an aoristic form of the substantive
verb) expresses this in the most picturesque way, by
giving to the “ Name ” of God the value of the three
�io
"
Ehe Efficacy of Prayer.
tenses, past, present, and future—“ The same yester
day, to-day, and for ever.” Considering in this light
the “ Laws of Nature ” as not external or extrinsic to
the Deity, but absolutely intrinsic, co-ordinate, and im
manent, they lose that hard aspect of materialism which
is apt to alienate feelings and sentiments entitled to
the tenderest and most respectful treatment. It would
certainly seem, then, that we were authorised to
consider physical laws as being no less changeless
than moral, seeing that they both alike are expres
sions of the Will and Way of the same changeless
originating Power. Who in fact can conceive as
possible any physical change in the law, that a straight
line is the shortest between two points, that three angles
of a triangle equal two right angles, or that a circle
cannot touch another in more points than one ? If it be
said that a fact be not a “ law,” it at any rate belongs
to a “ law,” and such a fact as that two contiguous
mountains must have an intervening valley, may
assume the dignity of law with equal right as that
claimed by an angle of incidence equalling its angle
of reflection. The religious demur to the invariability
of Physical Laws seems to arise, first, from assuming
that they are in existence as external incidents or
accidents in the Universe, and that as such it would
be derogating from Divine Omnipotence to deny that
they could be changed or suspended. Are not,
indeed, “ all things possible with God ?” But this
dictum, like most others of a transcendent sort, is an
example of “ extremes meeting,” as it would be
equally true, and equally reverential, to say, that
with God but one thing is possible, viz., the thing
which is. Can Almighty Power be exerted in any
way but the wisest way ? and can there be two ways
of doing the same thing in the wisest, or “most wise ”
way ? Does not, in fact, the same Scriptural Authority
that enounces all things as possible with God, else
where limit such possibility in terms equally express,
�The Efficacy of Prayer.
11
** Si possibile transeat Calix sed non quod ego volo,
sed quod Tu ”—“ If it be possible, let this cup pass.”
We must guard accordingly against narrow and dero
gatory views on this mysterious Chapter of Omni
potence, united with the maximum of Wisdom and
Knowledge, inevitably limiting Almighty Government
(rather pondered in the heart than formalised in the
head)—inevitably limiting Almighty Government by
self-existent statutes totally different from the puerile
notions we may attach to the “bon plaisir ” of an
earthly Monarch or imaginary Magician! Yet it
may be objected that this doctrine of the invariability
of material Laws would involve the negation of all
11 Miracles ” as popularly understood ! To which I
would venture to observe, with the utmost respect
in presence of so momentous a topic, that how
Miracles in general are popularly understood is very
difficult to say, but that it is not very rash or heterodox
to maintain that they are probably misunderstood.
We are now, however, not concerned with the per
plexing and,in these times, distressing subjectof “ Mira
cles ” in general, nor even with the absolute possibility
or impossibility of incidental change in “ Physical
Laws.” The Miracles on which the religious faith of so
many millions has hitherto rested are presented to us as
strictly exceptional, and limited to exceptional Per
sonages, as divine vouchers for missions involving the
welfare of the Human Race. We are not now
inquiring whether these be supposed to involve real
change or suspension of Laws, or only the inter
position of inferior agents, leaving the Laws intact,
or whether, lastly, the Miracles be “subjectively,”
rather than “ objectively,” to be interpreted. These
alternatives are not for the present under con
sideration. Quite enough that we may assume so
much as excessive rareness or improbability in such
miraculous phenomena, to authorise us to impugn
them as awaiting the wish and will of mere ordinary
�12
The Efficacy of Prayer.
mortals beseeching before the throne of Omnipotence,
that the infinite should adapt itself to the finite, the
omniscience of the Creator to the ignorance of the
creature. Were, indeed, such privilege of miraculous
control or interference within reach of our own
individual fervour, miracles would become too nume
rous and too normal to be “ miraculous” or wonderful
at all, thus perishing of their own plethora.
But to return : it is indisputable that the highest
Biblical doctrine of Prayer is that contained in the
answer of our Lord to the inquiry of his disciples
how to pray. Now in the formula of the “ Pater
Noster ” there is not a single clause but that referring
to “ daily bread,” which in any degree recognises
the control of external circumstance as coming within
the province of Christian supplication. As regards
giving us our daily bread, there can be no doubt that
it implies a thankful recognition on our part of the
law that we reap tenfold or a hundredfold, according
to circumstances, the grain that we sow. It is in fact
a commemorative and eucha/ristic acknowledgment of
our dependence on such Law for our daily main
tenance, and it is on such principle of commemorative
and eucharistic sacrifice that alone are founded, as I
believe, all the petitions that we offer in the name or
spirit of Christ, touching the outward or material
conditions of existence. Nothing can be more exclu
sively inward and spiritual than all the other clauses of
the divine model of Prayer. God’s “ Name,” or
Being, is to be held holy in our hearts. His Govern
ment and His Will are to be as unquestionable with
us on Earth as we conceive them to be with Beings of
higher powers of appreciation, inhabiting higher
spheres in the hierarchy of the Universe. His Will
to be done on Earth as in Heaven, but by no means
in Heaven as on Barth. The are to discipline our
selves to forgive our earthly Brother as sole condition
of being ourselves forgiven of our Heavenly Father,
�the Efficacy of Prayer.
T3
and we implore that we may be strengthened in hours
of temptation and delivered from spiritual evil (rov
Trovripov).
That our Liturgical Services recognise Christ’s
teaching on the doctrine of Prayer, as being of
authority beyond appeal, belongs of course to the
nature of the case; but if it needed any argument,
we have it at once in the frequent reference, or
“ harking back,” as it were, to the divine standard of
our one High Spiritual Priest. That we also pray
for protection against all the various physical, as
well as moral, evils by which we are beset, is, as
already said, to be set down to commemorative exer
cise of devotion, reminding us when gathered together
of all the manifold manifestations of Power and
Wisdom by which, whether collectively or indivi
dually, we live and have our Being. When we pray
against Plague and Pestilence, does any one suppose
that such Prayer militates with our bounden duty,
Godward and Manward, to “wash and be clean?”
Is it not rather to strengthen and stimulate our faith
in the fulfilment of God’s Laws of health that we put
up such petition ? When we pray for “ the kindly
fruits of the earth, that in due time we may enjoy
them,” do we risk the inculcation of sloth and
negligence in the business of Agriculture ? Is not
the whole tone and tenor of such orisons in the
direction of “ up and be doing,” strengthening our
faith, and cheering our hope in working out our own
welfare with the sufficiency, and according to the
means 'given us of God F Would any of us neglect
the electric conductor because he had prayed against
lightning and tempest? Would such Prayer be less
blessed in its working because of the conductor, or
that of the conductor because of the Prayer ? It
would be a dim and narrow view that did not per
ceive how they supplement each other. Does any
Subject or Citizen of our United Kingdom find it
�14
The Efficacy of Prayer.
derogate from his political rights and duties to pray
that our earthly Sovereign may have affiance in our
Heavenly King of Kings ? Are the bonds of our
Social fellowship in Church and State so strongly
knit, or in danger of being so relaxed by congregational
idealism, that we should refrain from praying that
our clergy may set forth God’s Word by their preach
ing and living—that our Magistrates (Judges) may
execute justice and maintain truth—that our Nobles
may be endued with grace, wisdom, and under
standing? Would Socrates or Plato, or any other
of the Human-Catholic Church, demur to join any
Nation under Heaven in thus reverencing God,
honouring the King, and loving the Brotherhood ?
In fact, when the Service winds up, as it always does,
with the Saving Clause of St. Chrysostom, that our
Prayers should be granted only in so far as “ expe
dient ” for us, we have Christian and highest Ethnic
Piety joining hands in common confession to that
“ Fountain of all Wisdom, who knows our necessities
before we ask, and our ignorance in asking.” If you
tolerate a scrap of Greek, let me quote Socrates in
epigram on “ Efficacy of Prayer,” and see whether he
did not hold much the same doctrine as taught by
our Liturgy :
ZsiT BacriAgiT,
t« pCtv eadXa Kai evxop.&ois Kai avevKrois
Appt SlSov 'rafie Xvypa, Kai
airepvKOis,
freely but faithfully translated
Put away from us, O Lord, such, things as he hurtful,
And grant us such things as be profitable,
Whatever our ignorance in asking them.
If any one would convince himself that the spirit of
our Liturgy is that of the “ Lord’s Prayer,” namely
of inward not outward tendency, let him only turn to
the “ Collects,” the oldest and most concentrated of
all our formularies, and he will note consecutive peti
tions that “ we may so pass through things temporal
�'The Efficacy of Prayer.
as not to lose the things that are eternal; ” that
Goodness and true Religion may increase within us ;
that hurtful things may be put away from us, and
things profitable given us ; that we may have the
spirit to think and do such things as be rightful;
that in order to obtain our petitions we may ask such
things as it may please God to give us ; and that we
may have grace to run the way of God’s Laws, in order
to gain His promises and partake His treasures ! I
have merely taken a word or two out of consecutive
Collects after Trinity, and could add to them indefi
nitely to the same effect. Could any tone of prayer
be desired or imagined of larger and loftier scope, of
more “ Socratic ” or transcendent import, or in which
greater stress were laid on our adapting our human
Will to the divine, rather than vainly attempting the
converse process ?
Could any language more expressly limit our
gaining what is good for us to the condition of
“ running the way of God’s commandments ” ? One
cannot imagine any point of view from which such
spirit of prayer could be otherwise than welcome and
edifying to every mind recognising a divine sentient
Godhead as pervading the Universe, and esteeming
aspirations towards that God as the characterising
and distinguishing prerogative of our human nature.
The quotations cited go far, moreover, towards estab
lishing the position from which I ventured to set out,
namely, that our Biblical and Liturgical doctrines on
prayer and its efficacy will admit, in their highest
interpretation, of conclusions identical with those of
nearly all earnest and sober thinkers, yearning to
worship God with their spirit in unison with their
understanding.
You will perhaps think I am now dwelling less on
the efficacy of prayer than of the “ Prayer Book,”
yet is our Anglican—Parliamentary—Liturgy so
�16
The Efficacy of Prayer.
saturated with the spirit and letter of the Bible, that
it might almost claim the recognition of Universal
Christendom as a fair exponent of Scriptural teaching
on the subject. Then again, independently of different
Communions within the limits of the United King
dom, it seems to possess quite a special interest to
every British Subject and Citizen as being hitherto,
at least, the most effective extant instrument of
“National Education” among us. One can scarcely
help thinking its value even under-rated in this
respect, and that, had it not been for this Parlia
mentary boon to the Empire, our English character
would hardly have stood so high among Nations as
it in general has done for the last three centuries.
If we value the language Shakspeare spake, the
morals Milton held, and hold that education is rather
the inculcation of good principles and good manners,
than of mere intellectual accomplishments, then you
will agree with me that our “ Morning and Evening
Services,” known by heart, as they have been by
successive millions of our Countrymen, almost from
the cradle to the coffin, are entitled to some pro
minence in the consideration of Prayer at the hands
of every dweller in these Islands. I for one, at any
rate, believe that the spirit to do our work and fight
our battles has been in no small measure imbibed
from the rhythmical beauty and deep earnestness of
the teaching so dear and familiar to most of us, from
the “ Lawful and Right” of the Prophet Ezekiel to the
triune benediction of the Apostle Paul. So if I say
too much about the “ Book ” for the efficacy of
Human Prayer in general, let it pass for something
to the purpose as to that of British Prayer in parti
cular.
You will have seen at once what I mean when
bargaining for the “highest and broadest” inter
pretation of our Christian Oracles, to the effect of
�The Efficacy of Prayer.
17
excluding low and narrow notions that might easily
be propped up with single “ texts,” giving no fairei’
idea of the general scope of Christianity than would
single stones of the architecture of the Temple. You
are not the man to meet me with the argument of
££ Elias holding back the rain for three years and six
months,” even though an Apostolic text can be
quoted in its favour. You will allow that if we would
know what horizon the Christian Temple commands
we must go to the top of it, and that top is the Cross
of the Spiritual Gospel, showing us that our God is a
Universal Spirit, seeking worship only in universal
spiritual truth. If St James himself believed in the
efficacy of Elias’s prayer to such coarse material
purpose, his belief can to us have only ££ subjective ”
worth, as the critics call it, that is, only establishing
his own individual persuasion, but by no meats
substantiating such notions as an “ objective ” or
palpable fact. He may indeed have only availed
himself of such “ subjectivity,” or popular persuasion,
on the part of his countrymen; it afforded him an
illustration and he employed it. They were not likely
to question traditional noble works heard with their
ears and declared by their Fathers, as done in their
days, and in old time before them. But we measure
God’s ££ noble works ” by another standard, and know
that mortal prayer, in its fitful waywardness, can
never avail to change the Law that sends sunshine
and rain alike upon the just and the unjust. The
same reply is ready to the hand of every Christian,
when ££ beggarly elements ” and ££ old wives’ fables ”
are rudely thrust upon him by devotees of the ££ letter”
that kills, rather than of the spirit that quickens.
Did a Jew of that time and place believe it ? then we
respect his belief then and there. “ Sed credat tunc
temporis Judaeus, non ego I”
One feels, however, that the real paramount diffi
�18
’The Efficacy of Prayer.
culty of the whole subject is the deeply-rooted reluct
ance of human nature to acknowledge its own
apparent insignificance in presence of changeless
and unchangeable physical or material laws. The
weight of evidence to such effect seems indeed
crushing, yet it has not sufficed, and will not easily
suffice, to crush human faith and hope in doctrine of
a less dreary and desolate aspect. We instinctively
cling to any principle, or any persuasion, that re-estab
lishes us in our own eyes, as of more importance than
to be made the sport of earthly elements—drowned
by water, burnt by fire, starved by cold, with as little
elemental remorse as were the existence but of mice,
rather than men, at stake on the issue !
The facts, it must be confessed, are fearfully
blunt in their testimony against our higher preten
sions. That Biscayan billow rolls into the Tagus,
and sweeps away 30,000 men, women, and children, as
if the inhabitants of a European capital were no more
than the denizens of an ant-hill! Yet how Priests
and People petition Heaven’s grace for dear life, as
they crowd down to that fatal quay to escape the
shock that has levelled their proud city. How would
it have been had some Priest of Nature warned them
with his Kiipte eXerjaov to flee up hill from the reac
tionary volcanic surge of that mass of pitiless brine !
Look again into yon grand Catholic Church far away
beyond the South'Atlantic, under the shadow of the
sunny Andes. See how the lights shine, the banners
wave, and clouds of incense rise with pealing organs
and anthems to the glory of God, according to the
worship of the forefathers of those two thousand
women and children that are praying for health and
wealth, after their knowledge! Yet a gentle fresher
zephyr from without blandly waves that long muslin
streamer into the tall torch lazily lambent on its silver
sconce, and, gracious Heaven! by La/w of fire and fuel,
�The Efficacy of Prayer.
19
it flashes from beam to beam, leaps from rafter to
rafter, and the frantic, shrieking crowd rush headlong
upon those great gates that open inwards on their
hinges ! Let who will read the newspapers of no
distant date for the how and how long lasted the
agony of that holocaust of charred bones, but even
now a multitude of mostly young, beautiful, festivelyadorned, and God-adoring humanity I But why cross
the Atlantic for illustrations; cannot even middleaged men recall the Irish famine, when the potatosick soil refused longer health and strength to the
single root to which millions of human beings, con
trary to the laws of God, looked for their sole
sustenance; and did not a million or more of the
subjects of the richest empire in the world pay with
their lives for the rotten scab of that poor vege
table bulb. Had we prayed with the plough for the
“ daily bread ” of Ireland, would that million of our
countrymen have been sacrificed to the leprosy of
“ lumpers ? ” Look again, if we like to dwell on
human humiliation in presence of the divine laws
of material creation, look to that proud “ iron-clad ”
Man-of-War, equipped with all that the ways and
means of the British Empire could devise, except one
poor requirement of the law of“ central gravita
tion.” Look and see, if we can through our tears,
that leviathan reversed, and five hundred of our best
and bravest dismally drowned on the dark night off
Corunna, by behest of the stern statute that sent
them to the bottom with as little compunction as it
would have capsized a child’s toy in a pond or
puddle. Think we prayers were wanting for that
ship’s company, or that more prayers would have
given her increased stability ? There seems no
possibility of reasonably or religiously resisting
such evidence as this, and we all know it can
be indefinitely extended.
Ask medical doctors
�20
The Efficacy of Prayer.
what “ efficacy ” they assign to prayer, and they
will at once, and of course, limit it to the sooth
ing effect that Faith and Hope, or cheerfulness
and elasticity of mind, may work on the body
through the nervous system. But that any amount
or any intensity of prayer, by or for the patient, will
work materially to set a broken, or renew a lost limb,
is a proposition to which they, will not listen, and
cannot reply. Could such interposition prevail, how
gladly would they call it in to temper that inexorable
statute that visits with consumption, insanity, and the
rest, the third and fourth generation of those, that
with guilt or innocence, have transgressed a Law.
Ask commercial calculators in companies of in
surance against fire and hail, securing, through accu
rate reckoning, profit to themselves, while saving
individuals from ruin, by spreading loss over larger
surface—do they recognise the existence of an un
known, impalpable, inappreciable, influence, that
would set their tables and tariffs at nought ? To
seek ampler illustration would be useless and tedious.
Established facts are sacred revelations, and there can
scarcely be a better established fact than the utter
disrespect to human persons displayed by the execu
tive powers that preside over the physical phenomena
of the world we live in. We have only honestly and
humbly to acknowledge the truth, and seek consola
tion for its seeming harshness in our reverential faith
that whatever is is ultimately right, and that, in the
language of devotion, we are in the hands of an
Almighty Power, declaring itself most chiefly in
mercy and pity.
What that sphere of “most chief” mercy is, we
need not go far to inquire. The most chief lesson of
our religion is not to fear the powers that may indeed
kill the body, but have no might or right to meddle
with the “soul,” that alone constitutes the divine
�Phe Efficacy of Prayer.
21
and abiding life of man. The physical laws that
govern fire and water, the laws of gravitation, of
chemistry, and of electricity, do indeed evince no
respect for the corporeal life that, designedly or undesignedly, trenches on their domain. Whether it be
the life of thonsands, or the life of nnits, the life of
saints, or the life of sinners, we have no shadow of
reason for believing that such laws manifest the
slightest respect or recognition of our persons. No
man in his senses will maintain that an eruption of
Etna will respect the city of Catania on its flanks,
and Catania is no mean'city. And, were it the city of
London and Westminster to boot, a stream of lava
miles wide and deep as the height of a church-tower,
would make short work of it. But let us take courage
and be of good cheer, when we remember that all the
lava of all the volcanos in the Planetary System
could not suffice to suffocate a single human
“ soul,” and that the soul’s life is the only life
whose Salvation Religion recognises as worth the
saving. Our bodies come and go, circulating through
mineral, animal, and vegetable—great Caesar’s dust, or
dust that stops a bung-hole. It is for the spirit alone,
which for a while dwells in such dust, that Religion
will condescend to pray, or that God, who is a Spirit,
(with reverence be it spoken), will condescend to hear.
We have eaten so much of the fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge, that we become terror-stricken at the
incomprehensible ineffable Deity we have discovered;
the higher our Godhead soars viewless into the Heaven
of Heavens, the deeper the relative “Fall of Man”
in his consciousness of his nakedness and his nothingness. We grope round on every side for mediating
connecting links between the finite and the infinite.
Guardian Angels—Patron Saints—and all the mytho
logical machinery of Greek and Goth have had their
day—but every Prospero in his turn, as we grow older
�22
The Efficacy of Prayer.
and wiser, abjures his “ rough magic,” buries his wand,
and plunges his book deeper than plummet’s sound; all
Prosperos but the divine Son, that still bridges the
gaping chasm that separates Man from his God,
teaching us to serve Him with a “ Reasonable Ser
vice ” of all the mind no less than of all the heart.
This is the only Service and the only Religion
we cannot outgrow, for it is of us and within us,
growing with our growth, strengthening with our
strength, endured with powers of expansion to adapt
itself, by higher and broader interpretation, to all the
changes and chances of life’s mystery. It is the only
true and “ Catholic ” Religion, because it is the only
one that sanctifies and ennobles Sorrow, and to sorrow
we are born as the sparks fly upward. We begin
with wailing and we end with groaning, and it were
no desirable privilege to be exempt from educational
wailing and groaning as we go along ; for sweet are
the uses of adversity, and at times better is the house
of mourning than that of gladness. Against bodily
rack and ruin we have no Guardian-Angel but our
own Prudence, learning the laws of health and
strength, and living them; for the Body’s fleeting
claims,“ Nullum Numen si sit Prudentia”—but for the
Soul’s eternal health and wealth Angels in Heaven
do continually regard the light of God’s Face in our
behalf (a Christian Article of Faith that might be made
more of than it is), and by them, ascending and de
scending the patriarchal ladder, are borne the availing
prayers of such as pray in righteous prayer and spirit.
People ask why and how Christ’s Religion has so spread
and struck root; surely because it is the religion that
best knows what we are, and what we need, that best
strengthens our faith in the midst of mystery, best
consoles us in sorrow and cheers us in resignation;
a religion preached and practised by the divine Man
whose religion teaches us that the only efficacious
�The Efficacy of Prayer.
23
prayer is “ Fiat Voluntas,” not our will but “ Our
Father’s in Heaven” be done.
To sum up ;—Prayer efficacious only mentally and
reflexively;—powerless circumstantially, till translated
into Action, and then valid only in direction of, and
conformity with, changeless Laws ;—though intense
Prayer must needs be silent individual concentration,
yet does the conventional language of Public-Service
greatly strengthen us, in the sense of commemorative
and eucharistic devotion, forming the best and
steadiest basis of “ National Education.”
If I have written you more of a sermon than a
letter, put it down, as far as you can, to the solemnity
of the subject proposed ; and if my “ idealism ” does
not always meet your sympathy, remember, at any
rate, that I am real when signing myself,
Yours faithfully,
Foreign Chaplain.
Thomas Scott, Esq.
�
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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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Title
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The efficacy of prayer
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 23, [1] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: "A letter to Thomas Scott by a foreign chaplain." From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. First page only of publisher's list (Abbot-Bastard) on unnumbered page at the end.
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Thomas Scott
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1873
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Prayer
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Conway Tracts
Prayer
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Text
N the present day, we look back with a degree of wonder
on the belief in witchcraft, which may be said to have
formed an article of religious faith in every European
country throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth cen__ _■■ turies. A notion was universally entertained, that the
devil and subordinate evil spirits, in pursuance of their malevolent
ends, went about, sometimes in visible shape, seducing poor human
nature. To gain their wicked designs, they were supposed to tempt
men, but more particularly aged women, by conferring on them
supernatural powers ; as, for example, that of riding through the
air, and operating vengefully and secretly on the health and happi
ness of those against whom they had any real or imaginary cause of
offence. Such ‘trafficking with the powers of darkness,’ as it was
technically called, was witchcraft, and, according both to the letter
of Scripture and of the civil law, was a crime punishable with death.
Like all popular manias, the witchcraft delusion had its paroxysms.
No. 141.
!
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
It rose, existed for a time with great energy, then declined into
insignificance. What was exceedingly remarkable, the frenzy never
lacked victims : it followed the well-known law of supply and demandAs soon as witches were in request, they made their appearance.
Any severe denunciation, followed by a rigorous scrutiny, brought
them prominently into notice. Nor, what was still more curious,
did the newly discovered witches in all cases deny the accusations
against them. Many acknowledged, with a species of pride, that
they had entered into a compact with the devil. They seem, on
occasions, to have gloried in being the objects of so much interest,
and hastened to confess, although death at the stake or on thegallows was the consequence. It must be considered as in somedegree explanatory of this self-condemnation, that torture was always
at hand to enforce confession ; and as there was little chance, there
fore, of escape after accusation, the wish to die on the speediest
terms had probably no small share in inducing the alleged witches
to boast of their mysterious crimes. In the majority of cases, how
ever, there was stout denial; but this generally served no good
purpose, and we are painfully assured, that many thousands of
individuals, in almost every country, were sacrificed as victims to
the petty spite and vengeance of accusers. At the height of the
successive paroxysms, no one, whatever his rank or character, was
safe from an accusation of trafficking with evil spirits. If he lived
a profligate life, he was of course chargeable with the offence; if
he lived quietly and unobtrusively, and was seemingly pious in
character, he was only hypocritically concealing his diabolical prac
tices ; if he had acquired wealth somewhat rapidly, that was a sure
sign of his guilt ; and if he was poor, there was the greater reason
for believing that he was in league with the devil to become rich.
There was only one means of escaping suspicion, and that was to
become an accuser. The choice was before every man and woman,
of acting the part of accusers, or of being themselves accused. The
result may be anticipated. Perceiving the tremendous danger of
affecting to disbelieve witchcraft, people readily assumed the proper
degree of credulity ; and to mark their detestation of the crime, as
well as secure themselves from attack, they hastened to denounce
acquaintances and neighbours. Nothing could be more easy than
to do so in a manner perfectly satisfactory. Pretending to fall sick,
or to go into convulsions, or to have a strange pain in some part of
the body or limbs, people were doubtless bewitched ! Any sudden
storm at sea, causing the wreck of vessels, was another evidence
that witches were concerned ; and so far did these allegations
descend, that even so small a matter as a failure in churning milk
for butter, was a sure sign of diabolical agency. On the occasion
of every unforeseen catastrophe, therefore, or the occurrence of any
unaccountable malady, the question was immediately agitated : Who
was the witch ? Then was the time for querulous old men or women
2
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
in the neighbourhood to tremble. Long suspected of carrying on a
correspondence with demons, they were seized and brought to trial.
The accusations, as is now clearly understood, were for the most part
spiteful, or wantonly mischievous. In making these charges and
testifying to them, children and young women appear to have in
many places excelled ; the probability being that, besides a mere
spirit of mischief, they enjoyed amusement from the consternation
they were able to produce.
Strange how all this prejudice, imposture, and cruelty should
have received the solemn sanction of the most learned and devout
men : clergymen of every degree, from popes to presbyters ; kings,
legislators, and judges ; and private citizens of every quality and
profession ! The folly, while it lasted, was complete.
It only excites the greater horror to know, that the belief in witch
craft—essentially mean and vulgar in all its details—has been a
reproach to religious profession ; and that, while seemingly founded
on scriptural authority, it really rested, in its main features, on the
visionary superstitions of the pagan world. Historians make it
clear to the understanding, that the popular fancy respecting the
bodily aspect of the great Spirit of Evil is drawn from the descrip
tion of satyrs in the heathen mythology—a malicious monster, with
the hide, horns, tail, and cloven feet of a beast of the field, which
roamed about in the dark or in retired places, performing idle and
wicked tricks, and undoing schemes of benevolence. Sometimes, as
was alleged, this great enemy of man assumed disguises that were
exceedingly difficult to penetrate. It is recorded by an author of
talent, that the devil once delivered a course of lectures on magic at
Salamanca, habited in a professor’s gown and wig. Even Luther
entertained similar notions about the fiend; and in fact thought so
meanly of him, as to believe that he could come by night and steal
nuts, and that he cracked them against the bedposts, for the solacement of his monkey-like appetite.
That the delusion originated, to a great degree, in a misconception
of the real purport of allusions to the so-called witchcraft in various
parts of the Old Testament, is now universally acknowledged. By
biblical critics, as we understand, the term translated witch, properly
signifies a person who by vile deceptions practised on popular
credulity, and by means of poisoning, accomplished certain wicked
designs. ‘Leaving,’ as Sir Walter Scott remarks, ‘the further
discussion of this dark and difficult question to those whose studies
have qualified them to give judgment on so obscure a subject, it so
far appears clear, that the Witch of Endor was not a being such as
those believed in by our ancestors, who could transform themselves
and others into the appearance of the lower animals, raise and allay
tempests, frequent the company and join the revels of evil spirits,
and, by their counsel and assistance, destroy human lives, and waste
the fruits of the earth, or perform feats of such magnitude as to
3
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
alter the face of nature. The Witch of Endor was a mere fortune
teller, to whom, in despair of all aid or answer from the Almighty,
the unfortunate king of Israel had recourse in his despair, and by
whom, in some way or other, he obtained the awful certainty of his
own defeat and death. She was liable, indeed deservedly, to the
punishment of death, for intruding herself upon the task of the real
prophets, by whom the will of God was in that time regularly made
known. But her existence and her crimes can go no length to prove
the possibility that another class of witches, no otherwise resembling
her than as called by the same name, either existed at a more recent
period, or were liable to the same capital punishment, for a very
different and much more doubtful class of offences, which, however
odious, are nevertheless to be proved possible before they can be
received as a criminal charge.’ *
Originating in ignorance, a love of the marvellous, along with
the religious misconceptions to which we have referred, a belief in
witchcraft may be traced through the early ages of Christianity ; but
the modern prevalence of the delusion may be said to date from the
promulgation of an edict of Pope Innocent VIII. in 1484, declaring
witchcraft to be a crime punishable with death. This fixed the
subject deeply in the public mind, and the effect was deepened by
the prosecution of witches which followed. It is a curious law of
human nature, of which we have seen many modern illustrations,
that even crimes, real or imputed, when they excite much public
attention, tend to produce repetitions of themselves. In this way,
offences sometimes assume a character approaching that of epi
demical diseases. It was found, as has been remarked, that the
more energy there was displayed in seeking out and prosecuting
watches, the more apparent occasion for such prosecutions was
presented. In 1515, during the space of three months, 500 witches
w'ere burned in Geneva ; in a single year, in the diocese of Como,
in the north of Italy, 1000 were executed ; and it is related that,
altogether, more than 100,000 individuals perished in Germany
before the general mania terminated. In France, the belief in
witchcraft led to a remarkable variety of superstition, known in
French law as lycantliropy, or the transformation of a witch into a
wolf. It was currently believed by all classes, that witches assumed
at pleasure the wolfish form in order to work mischief—by ravaging
flocks of sheep. Many unfortunate persons, the victims of petty
prejudice, were tried and executed for this imaginary crime. At
length, by an edict of Louis XIV., all future proceedings on the
score of witchcraft were prohibited ; and from that time no more
was heard of village dames assuming the forms and habits of
wolves.
In England, to which we now turn, a belief in witchcraft was of
Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft.
4
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
as respectable antiquity as on the continent of Europe, and, aselsewhere, drew particular attention in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, at which period the public mind was deeply affected with
religious distractions. Witchcraft, though always penal, now became
the subject of the express statutes of Henry VII., 1541, Elizabeth,
1562, and also of James I. This last monarch, who, we shall
afterwards see, was a great witch-fancier while in Scotland, brought
with him to England a keen sense of the duty of finding out and
punishing all sorts of diablcrv. The act passed in the first year of
his reign in England defines the crime with a degree of minuteness
worthy of the adept from whose pen it undoubtedly proceeded.
‘Any one that shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation of any
evil or wicked spirit, or consult or covenant with, entertain or
employ, feed or reward any evil or wicked spirit, to or for any pur
pose; or take up any dead man, &c. &c. &c. ; such offenders, duly
and lawfully convicted and attainted, shall suffer death.’ We havehere witchcraft first distinctly made, of itself, a capital crime. Many
years had not passed away after the passing of this statute, ere the
delusion, which had heretofore committed but occasional and local
mischief, became an epidemical frenzy, devastating every corner of
England. Leaving out of sight single executions, we find such
wholesale murders as the following in abundance on the record : In
1612, twelve persons were condemned at once at Lancaster, and
many more in 1613, when the whole kingdom rang with the fame of
the ‘ Lancashire witches in 1622, six at York ; in 1634, seventeen
in Lancashire; in 1644, sixteen at Yarmouth; in 1645, fifteen at
Chelmsford; and in 1645 and 1646, sixty persons perished in Suffolk,
and nearly an equal number at the same time in Huntingdon.
These are but a few selected cases. The poor creatures who usually
composed these ill-fated bands are thus described by an able
observer : ‘ An old woman with a wrinkled face, a furred brow, a
hairy lip, a gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking voice, or a
scolding tongue, having a ragged coat on her back, a spindle in her
hand, and a dog by her side—a wretched, infirm, and impotent
creature, pelted and persecuted by all the neighbourhood, because
the farmer’s cart had stuck in the gateway, or some idle boy had
pretended to spit needles and pins for the sake of a holiday from
school or work ’—such were the poor unfortunates selected to undergo
the last tests and tortures sanctioned by the laws, and which tests
were of a nature so severe, that no one would have dreamed of
inflictifig them on the vilest of murderers. They were administered
by a class of wretches, who, with one Matthew Hopkins at their
head, sprung up in England in the middle of the seventeenth
century, and took the professional name of witch-finders. The
practices of the monster Hopkins, who, with his assistants, moved
from place to place in the regular and authorised pursuit of his
trade, will give a full idea of the tests referred to, as well as of the
s
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
horrible fruits of the witchcraft frenzy in general. From each town
which he visited, Hopkins exacted the stated fee of twenty shillings,
and in consideration thereof, he cleared the locality of all suspected
persons, bringing them to confession and the stake in the following
manner: He stripped them naked, shaved them, and thrust pins
into their bodies, to discover the witch’s mark; he wrapped them
in sheets, with the great toes and thumbs tied together, and dragged
them through ponds or rivers, when, if they sunk, it was held as a
sign that the baptismal element did not reject them, and they were
cleared; but if they floated, as they usually would do for a time,
they were then set down as guilty, and doomed. He kept them
fasting and awake, and sometimes incessantly walking, for twentyfour or forty-eight hours, as an inducement to confession ; and, in
short, practised on the accused such abominable cruelties, that they
were glad to escape from life by confession. If a witch could not
shed tears at command, said the further items of this wretch’s creed,
or if she hesitated at a single word in repeating the Lord’s Prayer,
she was in league with the Evil One. The results of these and
such-like tests were actually and universally admitted as evidence
by the administrators of the law, who, acting upon them, condemned
all such as had the amazing constancy to hold out against the
tortures inflicted. Few gave the courts that trouble. Butler has
described Hopkins in his Hudibras as one
‘ Fully empowered to treat about
Finding revolted witches out.
And has he not, within this year,
Hanged threescore of them in one shire?
Some only for not being drowned,
And some for sitting above ground.’
After he had murdered hundreds, and pursued his trade for many
years (from 1644 downwards), the tide of popular opinion finally
turned against Hopkins, and he was subjected, by a party of indig
nant experimenters, to his own favourite test of swimming. It is
said that he escaped with life, but from that time forth, he was never
heard of again.
A belief in witchcraft, however, still continued virulent in England,
and was argumentatively supported by grave and pious men. The
grounds of credibility do not seem to have been earnestly investi
gated,. Richard Baxter, who wrote in 1651, founds his opinion of
the truth of witchcraft on the fact, that many persons had been
tried and put to death for the crime. It did not occur to him to
inquire whether the imputed crime were well or ill founded. Such
was the loose reasoning that prevailed in England and elsewhere
in the seventeenth century. Witchcraft was a truth, because
everybody had acted upon the conviction of its being a truth 1
How has the progress of society, with the reign of peace and
6
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
♦•
good-will on earth,’ been retarded by this accommodating method
of argument!
It is an undoubted fact, however to be accounted for or palliated,
that during the troublous seventeenth century, prosecutions for
witchcraft were prominent in some proportion to the ascendency
of the Puritanic cause. While, as during the time of the Civil War
-and Commonwealth, the ruling powers acted under strong religious
impulses, the scriptural maxim of ‘ Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
live,’ had the force of a commandment. In a time of indifference,
as in the reign of Charles II., rulers were disposed, so far as popular
prepossessions would permit, to let these poor old creatures cheaply
off. The era of the Long Parliament was that during which the
witch-mania attained its growth. Three thousand persons are said
to have perished during the continuance of the sittings of that body,
by legal executions, independently of summary deaths at the hands
of the mob. With the Restoration came a relaxation, but not a
cessation, of this severity. One noted case occurred in 1664, when
the enlightened and just Sir Matthew Hale tried and condemned
two women, Amy Dunny and Rose Callender, at Bury St Edmunds,
for bewitching children, and other similar offences. Some of the
items of the charge may be mentioned. Being capriciously refused
some herrings, which they desired to purchase, the two old women
expressed themselves in impatient language, and a child of the
herring-dealer soon afterwards fell ill—in consequence. A carter
•drove his wagon against the cottage of Amy Dunny, and drew from
her some not unnatural objurgations ; immediately after which, the
vehicle of the man stuck fast in a gate, without its wheels being
impeded by either of the posts, and the unfortunate Amy was
credited with the accident. Such accusations formed the burden
■of the ditty, in addition to the bewitching of the children. These
young accusers were produced in court, and, on being touched by
the old women, fell into fits. But on their eyes being covered, they
were thrown into the same convulsions by other persons, precisely
in the same way. In the face of this palpable proof of imposture,
and despite the general absurdity of the charges, Sir Matthew Hale
committed Amy Dunny and Rose Callender to the tender mercies
of the hangman. It is stated that the opinion of the learned Sir
Thomas Browne, who was accidentally present, had great weight
against the prisoners. He declared his belief that the children
were truly bewitched, and supported the possibility of such posses
sions by long and learned arguments, theological and metaphysical.
Yet Sir Matthew Hale was one of the wisest and best men of his
time, and Sir Thomas Browne had written an able work in exposition
of popular fallacies !
It was during the reign of Charles II. that many persons in high
station were found to express a doubt of the reality of witchcraft.
The first book treating the subject rationally, and trying to disprove
7
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
that the Scripture warranted either the crime or its punishment,
was that of Webster, published in 1677. It is amusing to observe
in this treatise the anxiety of the author to vindicate himself from
the charge of irreligion, which he foresaw would be brought against
him, for ‘ crossing the common stream of vulgar opinion.’ Chief
justices North and Holt, to their lasting credit, were the first
individuals occupying the high places of the law who had at once
the good sense and the courage to set their faces against the
continuance of this murderous delusion. In one case, by detecting’
a piece of gross imposture, Chief-justice North threw into disrepute,,
once for all, the trick ofpin-vomiting, one of the most striking and
convincing practices of the possessed. A male sorcerer stood at the
bar, and his supposed victim was in court, vomiting pins in profusion.
These pins were straight, a circumstance which made the greater
impression, as those commonly ejected in such cases were bent,
engendering frequently the suspicion of their having been previously
and purposely placed in the mouth. The chief-justice was led to
suspect something in this case by certain movements of the
bewitched woman ; and by closely cross-questioning one of her own
witnesses, he brought it fully out, that the woman placed pins in her
stomacher, and, by a dexterous dropping of her head in her simu
lated fits, picked up the articles for each successive ejection. The
man was found not guilty. The acquittal called forth such pointed
benedictions on the judge from a very old woman present, that he
was induced to ask the cause. ‘ O my lord,’ said she, ‘ twenty years
ago they would have hanged me for a witch if they could ; and now,
but for your lordship, they would have murdered my innocent son.’
The detected imposture in this case saved the accused. It was
under Holt’s justiceship, however, that the first acquittal is supposed
to have taken place, in despite of all evidence, and upon the fair
ground of the general absurdity of such a charge. In the case of
Mother Munnings, tried in 1694, the unfortunate prisoner would
assuredly have perished, had not Chief-justice Holt summed up in a
tone so decidedly adverse to the prosecution, that the verdict of Not
Guilty was called forth from the jury. In about ten other trials
before Holt, between the years 1694 and 1701, the result was the same,
through the same influences. It must be remembered, however, that
these were merely noted cases, in which the parties withstood all
preliminary inducements to confession, and came to the bar with the
plea of not guilty. About the same period—that is, during the latter
years of the seventeenth century—summary executions were still
common, in consequence of confessions extracted after the Hopkins
fashion, still too much in favour with the lower classes. The acquittals
mentioned only prove that the regular ministers of the law were
becoming too enlightened to countenance such barbarities. Cases
of possession, too, were latterly overlooked by the law, which would
have brought the parties concerned to a speedy end in earlier days,
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
even though they had done no injury to other people, and were
simply unfortunate enough to have made compacts with the demon
for the attainment of some purely personal advantages. For
example, in 1689, there occurred the famous case of a youth, named
Richard Dugdale, who sacrificed himself to the devil, on condition
of being made the best dancer in Lancashire. The dissenting clergy
took this youth under their charge, and a committee of them fasted
and prayed, publicly and almost incessantly, for a whole year, in
order to expel the dancing demon. The idea of this impostor leaping
for a twelvemonth, and playing fantastic tricks before these grave
divines, is extremely ludicrous. But the divines played tricks not
less fantastic. They became so contemptuously intimate with the
demon as to mock him on account of saltatory deficiencies. A
portion of their addresses to him on this score has been preserved,
but of too ridiculous a nature for quotation in these pages. If any
thing else than a mere impostor, it is probable that Dugdale was
affected with St Vitus's Dance ; and this is the more likely, as it
was after all a regular physician who brought his dancing to a close.
But the divines took care to claim the merit of the cure.
After the time of Holt, the ministers of the law went a step farther
in their course of improvement, and spared the accused in spite of
condemnatory verdicts. In 1711, Chief-justice Powell presided at a
trial where an old woman was pronounced guilty. The judge, who
had sneered openly at the whole proceedings, asked the jury if they
found the woman ‘guilty upon the indictment of conversing with the
devil in the shape of a cat.’ The reply was : ‘ We do find her guilty
of that but the question of the judge produced its intended effect
in casting ridicule on the whole charge, and the woman was
pardoned. An able writer in the Foreign Quarterly Review remarks,
after noticing this case: ‘Yet, frightful to think, after all this, in
1716, Mrs Hicks and her daughter, aged nine, were hanged at Hunt
ingdon for selling their souls to the devil, and raising a storm by
pulling off their stockings, and making a lather of soap ! With this
crowning atrocity, the catalogue of murders in England closes.’
And a long and a black catalogue it was. ‘ Barrington, in his obser
vations on the statute of Henry VI., docs not hesitate to estimate
the numbers of those put to death in England on this charge at
THIRTY THOUSAND !’
Notwithstanding that condemnations were no longer obtainable
after 1716, popular outrages on supposed witches continued to take
place in England for many years afterwards. On an occasion of
this kind, an aged female pauper was killed by a mob near Tring,
in Staffordshire ; and for the murder, one of the perpetrators was
tried and executed. The occurrence of such outrages having been
traced to the unrepealed statute of James I. against witchcraft, an
act was passed, in 1736 (10th George II. cap. 55), discharging all
legal proceedings on the ground of sorcery or witchcraft; and since
141
9
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
this period, prosecutions for following hidden arts have had no
higher aim than the punishing of a pretended skill in fortune
telling and other forms of practical knavery.
It has been said that James I. brought with him from Scotland
strong impressions on the subject of witchcraft, and, accordingly, we
now refer to the history of the delusion in that country. In the
reign of Queen Mary, the contemporary of Elizabeth, the public
mind in Scotland fell into the common frenzy, and an act was passed
by the Scottish parliament for the suppression and punishment of
witchcraft. In virtue of this law, great numbers were tried and exe
cuted. At this time, and subsequently, the Scottish witches were
nearly all aged women ; only a few men figured in the prosecutions.
On coming to exercise the functions of majesty, James made
numerous judicial investigations into alleged cases of witchcraft, and
derived a pleasure in questioning old women respecting their deal
ings with Satan. The depositions made at these formal inquests
are still preserved, and are among the most curious memorials of the
sixteenth century.
1 he witch mania in Scotland was, through these prosecutions,
brought to an extravagant height in the year 1591, when a large
number of unhappy beings were cruelly burned to death on the
Castle-hill of Edinburgh. About this period, some cases occurred
to shew that witchcraft was an art not confined to the vulgar. A
woman of high rank and family, Catherine Ross, Lady Fowlis, was
indicted at the instance of the king’s advocate for the practice of
witchcraft. On inquiry, it was clearly proved that this lady had
endeavoured, by the aid of witchcraft and poisons, to take away the
lives of three or more persons who stood between her and an object
she had at heart. She was desirous to make young Lady Fowlis
possessor of the property of Fowlis, and to marry her to the Laird
of Balnagown. Before this could be effected, Lady Fowlis had to
cut off her sons-in-law, Robert and Hector Munro, and the young
wife of Balnagown, besides several others. Having consulted with
witches, Lady Fowlis began her work by getting pictures of the
intended victims made in clay, which she hung up, and shot at with
arrows shod with flints of a particular kind, called elf arrow-heads.
No effect being thus produced, this really abandoned woman took
to poisoning ale and dishes, none of which cut off the proper per
sons, though others, who accidentally tasted them, lost their lives.
By the confession of some of the assistant hags, the purposes of
Lady Fowlis were discovered, and she was brought to trial; but a
local or provincial jury of dependants acquitted her. One of her
purposed victims, Hector Munro, was then tried in turn for con
spiring with witches against the life of his brother George. It was
proved that a curious ceremony had been practised to effect this
end. Hector, being sick, was carried abroad in blankets, and laid
in an open grave, on which his foster-mother ran the breadth o£
10
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
nine rigs, and, returning, was asked by the chief attendant witch
which she chose should live, Hector or George. She answered :
‘ Hector.’ George Munro did die soon afterwards, and Hector
recovered. The latter was also acquitted, by a provincial jury, on
his trial.
These disgraceful proceedings were not without their parallel in
other families of note of the day. Euphemia Macalzean, daughter
of an eminent judge, Lord Cliftonhall, was burned at the stake in
1591, having been convicted, if not of witchcraft, at least of a long
career of intercourse with pretenders to witchcraft, whom she
employed to remove obnoxious persons out of her way—tasks which
they accomplished by the very simple means of poisoning, where
they did accomplish them at all. The jury found this violent and
abandoned woman, for such she certainly was, guilty of participa
tion in the murder of her own godfather, of her husband’s nephew,
and another individual. They also found her guilty of having been
at the Wise Woman of Keith’s great witch-convention of North Ber
wick ; but every witch of the day was compelled to admit having
been there, out of compliment to the king, to whom it was a source
of agreeable terror to think himself of so much importance as to call
for a solemn convocation of the powers of evil to overthrow him.
Euphemia Macalzean was ‘ burnt in ashes, quick, to the death.’
This was a doom not assigned to the less guilty. Alluding to cases
of this latter class, a writer (already quoted) in the Foreign Quar
terly Review remarks : ‘ In the trials of Bessie Roy, of James Reid,
of Patrick Currie, of Isobel Grierson, and of Grizel Gardiner, the
charges are principally of taking off . and laying on diseases either
on men or cattle ; meetings with the devil in various shapes and
places ; raising and dismembering dead bodies for the purpose of
enchantments ; destroying crops ; scaring honest persons in the
shape of cats ; taking away women’s milk ; committing house
breaking and theft by means of enchantments ; and so on. South
running water, salt, rowan-tree, enchanted flints (probably elf arrow
heads), and doggerel verses, generally a translation of the Creed
or Lord’s Prayer, were the means employed for effecting a cure.’
Diseases, again, were laid on by forming pictures of clay or wax ;
by placing a dead hand, or some mutilated member, in the house of
the intended victim ; or by throwing enchanted articles at his door.
A good purpose did not save the witch ; intercourse with spirits in
any shape being the crime.
Of course, in the revelations of the various witches, inconsistencies
were abundant, and even plain and evident impossibilities were
frequently among the things averred. The sapient James, however,
in place of being led by these things to doubt the whole, was only
strengthened in his opinions, it being a maxim of his that the
witches were ‘ all extreme lyars.’ Other persons came to different
conclusions from the same premises; and before the close of James’s
II
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
reign, many men of sense began to weary of the torturings and
burnings that took place almost every day, in town or country, and
had done so for a period of thirty years (between 1590 and 1620).
Advocates now came forward to defend the accused, and in their
pleadings ventured even to arraign some of the received axioms of
4 Dzemonologie’ laid down by the king himself, in a book bearing
that name. The removal of James to England moderated, but did
not altogether stop, the witch prosecutions. After his death they
slackened more considerably. Only eight witchcraft cases are on
the record as having occurred between 1625 and 1640 in Scotland,
and in one of these cases, remarkable to tell, the accused escaped.
The mania, as it appears, was beginning to wear itself out.
As the spirit of puritanism gained strength, however, which it
■gradually did during the latter part of the reign of Charles I., the
partially cleared horizon became again overcast; and again was this
owing to ill-judged edicts, which, by indicating the belief of the
great and the educated in witchcraft, had the natural effect of
reviving the frenzy among the flexible populace. The General
Assembly was the body in fault on this occasion, and thenceforward
(the clergy were the great witch-hunters in Scotland. The Assembly
passed condemnatory acts in 1640, ’43, ’44, ’45, and ’49; and with
every successive act, the cases and convictions increased, with even
a deeper degree of attendant horrors than at any previous time.
‘ The old impossible and abominable fancies,’ says the Review
.formerly quoted, ‘ of the Malleus were revived. About thirty trials
appear on the record between 1649 and the Restoration, only one of
which seems to have terminated in an acquittal; while at a single
circuit, held at Glasgow, Stirling, and Ayr, in 1659, seventeen
persons were convicted and burnt for this crime.’ But it must be
remembered that the phrase, ‘ on the record,’ alludes only to justiciary
trials, which formed but a small proportion of the cases really tried.
The justiciary lists take no note of the commissions perpetually
given by the Privy-council to resident gentlemen and clergymen to
try and burn witches in their respective districts. These commissions
executed people over the whole country in multitudes. Wodrow,
Lamont, Mercer, and Whitelocke prove this but too satisfactorily.
The clergy continued, after the Restoration, to pursue these
imaginary criminals with a zeal altogether deplorable. The Jus
ticiary Court condemned twenty persons in the first year of Charles
II.’s reign (1661), and in one day of the same year the council issued
fourteen new provincial commissions, the aggregate doings of which
one shudders to guess at. To compute their condemnations would
be impossible, for victim after victim perished at the stake, unnamed
and unheard of. Morayshire became at this particular period the
■scene of a violent fit of the great moral frenzy, and some of the
most remarkable examinations, signalising the whole course of
•Scottish witchcraft, took place in that county. The details, though
12
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
occasionally ludicrous from their absurdity, are too horrible forr
narration in the present pages.
On the new government becoming thoroughly fixed in power,
this form of religious persecution—for in some degree such it was—
abated. From 1662, there is an interval of six years without a
single Justiciary trial for the crime of witchcraft, and one fellow was.
actually whipped for charging some person with it. After this
period, the dying embers of the delusion only burst out on occasions,
here and there, into a momentary flame. In 1678, several women
were condemned, ‘ on their own confession,’ says the Register; but
we suspect this only means, in reality, that one malicious beingmade voluntary admissions involving others, as must often havebeen the case, we fear, in these proceedings. Scattered cases took
place near the beginning of the eighteenth century—such as those
at Paisley in 1697, at Pittenweem in 1704, and at Spott about the
same time. It is curious, that as something like direct evidence
became necessary for condemnation, evidence did present itself, and
in the shape of possessed or enchanted young persons, who were
brought into court to play off their tricks. The most striking case
of this nature was that of Christian Shaw, a girl about eleven years,
old, and the daughter of Mr Shaw of Bargarran, in Renfrewshire.
This wretched girl, who seems to have been an accomplished
hypocrite, young as she was, quarrelled with a maid-servant, and, to.
be revenged, fell into convulsions, saw spirits, and, in short, feigned
herself bewitched. To sustain her story, she accused one person
after another, till not less than twenty were implicated, some of them
children of the ages of twelve and fourteen 1 They were tried on
the evidence of the girl, and five human beings perished through her
malicious impostures. It is remarkable that this very girl after
wards founded the thread manufacture in Renfrewshire. From a.
friend who had been in Holland, she learned some secrets in spin
ning, and, putting them skilfully in practice, she led the way to the
extensive operations carried on of late years in that department.
She became the wife of the minister of Kilmaurs, and, it is to be
hoped, had leisure and grace to repent of the wicked misapplication
in her youth of those talents which she undoubtedly possessed.
The last Justiciary trial for witchcraft in Scotland was in the case
of Elspeth Rule, who was convicted in 1708, and banished. A belief
in the crime was evidently expiring in the minds of the Scottish law
authorities; and the Lord Advocate, or public prosecutor, endea
voured to prevent the county courts from taking cognisance of the
subject. Notwithstanding his remonstrances, however, a case of
trial and execution for witchcraft was conducted by Captain David
Ross of Littledean, sheriff-depute of Sutherlandshire, in 1722. ‘The
victim,’ observes Sir Walter Scott, in his Letters on Demonology,
‘was an insane old woman belonging to the parish of Loth, who had
so little idea of her situation as to rejoice at the sight of the fire
13
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
which was destined to consume her. She had a daughter lame both
of hands and feet, a circumstance attributed to the witch’s having
been used to transform her into a pony, and get her shod by the
devil. It does not appear that any punishment was inflicted for this
cruel abuse of the law on the person of a creature so helpless.’ The
execution took place at Dornoch, and was the last that was inflicted
for witchcraft in Great Britain. Here may be said to end the
tragical annals of witchcraft in Scotland. The number of its
victims, from first to last, it would be difficult accurately to compute ;
but the black scroll would include, according to those who have
most attentively inquired into the subject, upwards of FOUR
thousand persons !
Having thus presented a historical sketch of witchcraft in England
and Scotland, we proceed to give an account of the mania as it
occurred in the North American colonies.
Carrying their religious opinions to an excess, and generally
ignorant of the economy of nature, the inhabitants of New England
yielded a remarkable credence to the popular superstition, and
carried it as far, in the way of judicial punishment, as it had gone
in any European nation. Their situation, perhaps, as colonists in
a pagan region helped to fan the flame of their fury against witches.
They regarded the Indians as worshippers of the devil, and practisers
of incantations ; they therefore felt it to be necessary to be doubly
on their guard, and to watch the first appearances of witchcraft
within the settlements. We learn from a respectable authority—
Chandler’s Criminal Trials—to which we are indebted for many
subsequent particulars, that the first suspicion of witchcraft among
the English in America was about the year 1645.
‘At Springfield, on the Connecticut river, several persons were
supposed to be under an evil hand ; but no one was convicted until
1650, when a poor wretch, Mary Oliver, after a long examination,
was brought to a confession of her guilt, but it does not appear
that she was executed. About the same time, three persons were
executed near Boston, all of whom at their death asserted their
innocence. In 1655, Anne Hibbins, the widow of a magistrate and
a man of note in Boston, was tried for this offence before the Court
of Assistants. The jury found her guilty, but the magistrates
refused to accept the verdict. The case was carried up to the
General Court, where the popular voice prevailed, and the prisoner
was executed. In 1662, at Hartford, Connecticut, a woman named
Greensmith confessed that she had been grossly familiar with a
demon, and she was executed. In 1669, Susanna Martin of Salis
bury was bound over to the court upon suspicion of witchcraft,
but escaped. She suffered death in 1692. In 1671, Elizabeth
Knap, who possessed ventriloquial powers, alarmed the people of
Groton ; but as her demon railed at the minister of the town, and
other persons of good character, the people would not believe him.
14
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"Her fraud and imposture were soon discovered. In 1694, Philip
■Smith, a judge of the court, a military officer, and a representative
■of the town of Hadley, fancied himself under an evil hand, and
suspected an old woman, one of his neighbours, as the cause of his
sickness. She was dragged from her house by some young men,
who hung her up until she was nearly dead, then rolled her in
the snow, and at last buried her in it; but it happened that she
survived, and the melancholy man died. Trials for witchcraft out
of New England were not common. In 1665, Ralph Hall and his
wife were tried for the offence in New York, and acquitted. In
1660, in Queen’s County, Long Island, Mary Wright was suspected
of corresponding with the Author of Evil. She was arraigned, and
it was finally concluded to transport her to the General Court of
Massachusetts, “where charges of this kind were more common,
and the proofs necessary to support them better understood.” She
was accordingly arraigned there, and acquitted of witchcraft, but
was convicted of being a Quaker, and banished out of the jurisdic
tion. In Pennsylvania, when William Penn officiated as judge in
his new colony, two women, accused of witchcraft, were presented
by the grand-jury. Without treating the charge with contempt,
which the public mind would not have borne, he charged the jury
to bring them in guilty of being suspected of witchcraft, which
was not a crime that exposed them to the penalty of the law.
Notwithstanding the frequent instances of supposed witchcraft in
Massachusetts, no person had suffered death there on that account
for nearly thirty years after the execution of Anne Hibbins. The
sentence of this woman was disapproved of by many influential
men, and her fate probably prevented further prosecutions. But in
1685, a very circumstantial account of most of the cases above
mentioned was published, and many arguments were brought to
convince the country that they were no delusions or impostures, but
the effects of a familiarity between the devil and such as he found
fit for his instruments.’
Before going further with our account of these strange doings, it
is necessary to introduce to the reader a person who made himself
exceedingly prominent in exciting and keeping up the witchcraft
mania. This individual was the Rev. Cotton Mather—a noted
character in American biography.
Cotton Mather was descended from a respectable English family.
His grandfather and father were ministers of the Congregational
body, in which he also was destined to perform a distinguished
part. He was born at Boston in 1662 ; and his mother being a
daughter of John Cotton, an eminent nonconformist divine, he
received from him the name of Cotton. In his youth, he was con
sidered a prodigy of piety and devotion to study, and at an early
age he was raised to the ministry as assistant to his father. Later
in life, he did good service to the colony, as a zealous advocate of
15
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
popular rights during the struggles with the Stuarts and the estab1lishment of the revolution of 1688. Cotton Mather, however, is
chiefly remembered for his indefatigable zeal in seeking out and
getting witches tried and executed. This great work he felt to be
his mission : his mind was full of it. He seems to have considered
that in nothing could he do the commonwealth such good service
as in ridding it of traffickers with every order of demons. In order
to make known his opinion on the subject, he wrote various treatises,
expounding the nature of the invisible world, and all breathing an
earnest belief in the constant personal interference of Satan with
his ministerial prelections. Among his manuscripts, which have
been collected by the Massachusetts Historical Society, there is
a paper on which is endorsed the following curious record in his
handwriting: ‘■November 29, 1692.—While I was preaching at a
private fast (kept for a possessed young woman), on Mark ix. 28,
29, the devil in the damsel flew upon me, and tore the leaf, as it
is now torn, over against the text.’ For a fac-simile of this strange
record, we refer to Jared Sparks’s Life of Mather, from which we
derive the present account of this credulous and meddlesome
personage.
Several instances of alleged witchcraft, as has been seen, pre
pared the way for the great Salem tragedy, and these doubtless
stimulated the zeal of Cotton Mather. In 1688, a case occurred
which, being under his own eye, afforded materials for minute
investigation. The family of John Goodwin, a respectable and
devout man, living in the northern part of Boston, began to be
troubled with supernatural visitations. The children had all been
religiously educated, and were thought to be without guile. The
eldest was a girl of thirteen or fourteen years. She had a quarrel
with a laundress, whom she had charged with taking away some
of the family linen. The mother of the laundress was an Irish
woman, who, resenting the imputations on her daughter’s character,
gave the girl harsh language. Shortly afterwards, the girl, her
sister, and two brothers, complained of being tormented with
strange pains in different parts of their bodies, and these affections
were pronounced to be diabolical by the physicians who happened
to be consulted. ‘ One or two things were said to be very remark
able : all their complaints were in the daytime, and they slept
comfortably all night; they were struck dead at the sight of the
Assembly s Catechism, Cotton's Milk for Babes, and some other
good books ; but could read in Oxford jests, Popish and Quaker
books, and the Common Prayer, without any difficulty. Sometimes
they would be deaf, then dumb, then blind ; and sometimes all
these disorders together would come upon them. Their tongues
would be drawn down their throats, then pulled out upon their
chins. Their jaws, necks, shoulders, elbows, and all their joints,
would appear to be dislocated ; and they would make most piteous
16
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
Outcries of burnings, of being cut with knifes, beat, &c., and the
marks of wounds were afterwards to be seen. The ministers of
Boston and Charlestown kept a day of fasting and prayer at the
troubled house ; after which, the youngest child made no more
complaints. The others continuing to be afflicted, the magistrates
interposed, and the old woman was apprehended ; but upon exami
nation, would neither confess nor deny, and appeared to be dis
ordered in her senses.’ In order to satisfy themselves on this latter
point, the magistrates appointed several physicians ‘to examine her
very strictly, whether she was no way crazed in her intellectuals.’
These sage inquisitors do not appear to have been acquainted with
the fact, that a person may be deranged on one subject, and yet
sane on all others. They conversed with the woman a good deal,
and, finding that she gave connected replies, agreed that she was
in full possession of her mind. She was then found guilty of witch
craft, and sentenced to die. Cotton Mather eagerly seized on this
admirable opportunity of conversing with a legally condemned
witch. He paid many visits to the poor woman while she was in
prison, and was vastly edified with her communications. She
described her interviews with the Prince of Darkness, and her
attendance upon his meetings, with a clearness that seems to have
filled him with perfect delight. No sentiments of compassion
appear to have been excited in his mind towards this unfortunate
woman. He accompanied her to the scaffold, and rejoiced in
seeing what he considered justice done upon her. To the moment
of her death, she continued to declare that the children should not
be relieved—an unequivocal proof of disordered intellect.
Sure enough, the execution did not stay the disorder. The
children complained of suffering as much as before. Some of these
facts are amusing. Mather, in his simplicity, says : ‘ “ They were
often near drowning or burning themselves, and they often strangled
themselves with their neckcloths; but the providence of God still
ordered the seasonable succours of them that looked after them.”
On the least reproof of their parents, “ they would roar excessively.”
It usually took abundance of time to dress or undress them, through
the strange postures into which they would be twisted on purpose to
hinder it. “ If they were bidden to do a needless thing, such as to
rub a clean table, they were able to do it unmolested ; but if to do a
useful thing, as to rub a dirty table, they would presently, with many
torments, be made incapable.” Such a choice opportunity as this
family afforded for inquiry into the physiology of witchcraft, was not
to be lost. In order to inspect the specimen more at leisure, he had
the eldest daughter brought to his own house. He wished “to
confute the Sadducism of that debauched age,” and the girl took care
that the materials should not be wanting.’
A number of cunningly devised tricks were performed by this
artful young creature, all of which imposed on Cotton, who resolved
’7
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
to give an account of her case in a sermon. This publicity, how
ever, was by no means pleasing to the victim of witchcraft. She
made many attempts to prevent the preaching of the sermon,
threatening Mather with the vengeance of the spirits, till he was
almost out of patience, and exorcised them in Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew. All these were perfectly intelligible to them; ‘ but the
Indian languages they did not seem so well to understand.’
The whole particulars of this amusing case were published in a
regular form, and afterwards reprinted in London, by Richard
Baxter, who confidingly says in the preface : ‘ This great instance
comes with such convincing evidence, that he must be a very
obdurate Sadducee that will not believe it.’ We may here explain,
that, during the seventeenth century, ‘ Sadducee ’ was the term
usually employed to denote any one who did not come up to a
certain standard of belief, and was employed often towards persons
of high ecclesiastical position.
That it was feasible to doubt the validity of the pretended coniplaints of Goodwin’s children, and yet not be a Sadducee, was
afterwards manifest. These young persons had, from first to last,
carried on a system of imposture; and the idea of doing so had been
suggested by the relation of tales of English witchcraft. ‘ Glanvil,’
observes Mr Chandler, ‘ not many years before, published his witch
stories in England ; Perkins and other nonconformists were earlier;
but the great authority was that of Sir Matthew Hale, revered in
New England, not only for his knowledge in the law, but for his
gravity and piety. The trial of the witches in Suffolk was published
in 1684. All these books were in New England ; and the con
formity between the behaviour of Goodwin’s children, and most of
the supposed bewitched at Salem, and the behaviour of those in
England, is so exact, as to leave no room to doubt the stories had
been read by the New England persons themselves, or had been
told to them by others who had read them.’
We now come to the great witch-battue at Salem, *a village in
Massachusetts, which at present forms a part of the town of
Danvers. The commencement of the Salem witchcraft was in
February 1692, and broke out in the family of Samuel Parris, the
minister of the village. There had been a bitter strife between Mr
Parris and a portion of his people; and the ‘ very active part he took
in the prosecutions for witchcraft, has been justly attributed, not less
to motives of revenge, than to a blind zeal in the performance of
what he considered his duty. A daughter of Mr Parris, nine years
of age, his niece, a girl of less than twelve, and two other girls in
the neighbourhood, began to make the same sort of complaints that
Goodwin’s children had made two or three years before. The
physicians, having no other way of accounting for their disorder,
pronounced them bewitched. An Indian woman, who had been
brought into the country from New Spain, and then lived with Mr
18
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
Parris, tried some experiments, which she pretended to have been
used to in her own country, in order to find out the witch. This
coming to the children’s knowledge, they cried out upon the poor
Indian as appearing to them, pinching, pricking, and tormenting
them; and they fell into fits. Tituba, the Indian, acknowledged
that she had learned how to find out a witch, but denied that she
was one herself. Several private fasts were kept at the minister’s
house, and several, more public, by the w’hole village ; and then
a general fast through the colony, to implore God to rebuke Satan.
The great notice taken of the children, together with the pity and
compassion of the persons by whom they were visited, not only
tended to confirm them in their conduct, but to draw others into the
like. Accordingly, the number of the sufferers soon increased ; and
among them, there were two or three women, and some girls old
enough for witnesses. These, too, had their fits, and, when in them,
cried out, not only against Tituba, but against Sarah Osburn,
a melancholy, distracted old woman, and Sarah Good, another old
woman, who was bedrid. Tituba having, as it is alleged, been
scourged by her master, at length confessed herself a witch, and that
the two old women were her confederates. The three were then
committed to prison ; and Tituba, upon search, was found to have
scars upon her back, which were called the devil’s marks. This
took place on the 1st of March. About three weeks afterwards, two
other women, of good character, and church members, Corey and
Nurse, were complained of, and brought to an examination ; on
which these children fell into fits, and the mother of one of them,
the wife of Thomas Putman, joined with the children, and complained
of Nurse as tormenting her : she made most terrible shrieks, to the
amazement of all the neighbourhood. The women, notwithstanding
they denied everything, were sent to prison ; and such was the
infatuation, that a child of Sarah Good, about four or five years old,
was also committed, being charged with biting some of the afflicted,
who shewed the print.of small teeth on their arms. On April 3d, Mr
Parris took for his text : “ Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of
you is a devil.” Sarah Cloyse, supposing it to be occasioned by
Nurse’s case, who was her sister, went out of meeting, and she was
thereupon complained of for a witch, examined, and committed.
Elizabeth Proctor was charged about the same time ; her husband
accompanied her to her examination, but it cost him his life. Some
of the afflicted cried out upon him also, and they were both com
mitted to prison.
‘ The subject acquired new interest; and, to examine Sarah
Cloyse and Elizabeth Proctor, the deputy-governor and five other
magistrates came to Salem. It was a great day ; several ministers
were present. Parris officiated, and, by his own record, it is plain
that he himself elicited every accusation. His first witness, John,
the Indian servant, husband to Tituba, was rebuked by Sarah
19
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
Cloyse, as a grievous liar. Abigail Williams, the niece of Parris,
was also at hand with her tales : the prisoner had been at the
witches’ sacrament. Struck with horror, Sarah Cloyse asked for
water, and sank down “in a dying fainting-fit.” “Her spirit,”
shouted the band of the afflicted, “is gone to prison to her sister
Nurse.” Against Elizabeth Proctor, the niece of Parris told stories
yet more foolish than false : the prisoner had invited her to sign
the devil’s book. “ Dear child,” exclaimed the accused in her
agony, “it is not so. There is another judgment, dear child and
her accusers, turning towards her husband, declared that he too
was a wizard. All three were committed.
‘ No wonder that the whole country was in a consternation, when
persons of sober lives and unblemished characters were committed
to prison upon such evidence. Nobody was safe. The most
effectual way to prevent an accusation was to become an accuser ;
and, accordingly, the number of the afflicted increased every day,
and the number of the accused in proportion. As yet no one had
confessed ; but at length Deliverance Hobbs owned everything that
was asked of her, and was left unharmed. Then it was that the
monstrous doctrine seems to have been first thought of, that “ the
gallows was to be set up, not for those who professed themselves
witches, but for those who rebuked the delusion not for the guilty,
but for the unbelieving. As might be expected, confessions rose
in importance. They were the avenue of safety. Examinations
and commitments were of daily occurrence, and the whole com
munity was in a state of terror and alarm, which can more easily
be imagined than described. The purest life, the strictest integrity,
the most solemn asseverations of innocence, were of no avail.
Husband was torn from wife, parents from children, brother from
sister, and, in some cases, the unhappy victims saw in their accusers
their nearest and dearest friends : in one instance, a wife and a
daughter accused the husband and father to save themselves ; and,
in another, a daughter seven years old testified against her mother.
‘ The manner in which the examinations were conducted was
eminently calculated to increase the number of the accused and of
the accusers. Mr Parris was present at all of them, and was overofficious, putting leading questions, and artfully entrapping the
witnesses into contradictions, by which they became confused, and
were eagerly cried out upon as guilty of the offence. The appear
ance of the persons accused was also carefully noted by the magis
trates, and was used in evidence against them at their trials. “As
to the method which the Salem justices do take,” says a contem
porary writer, “it is truly this: A warrant being issued out to
apprehend the persons that are charged and complained of by the
afflicted children, as they are called; said persons are brought
before the justices, the afflicted being present. The justices ask
the apprehended why they afflict these poor children, to which the
20
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
apprehended answer, they do not afflict them. The justices order
the apprehended to look upon the said children, which accordingly
they do ; and at the time of that look (I dare not say by that look,
as the Salem gentlemen do), the afflicted are cast into a fit. The
apprehended are then blinded, and ordered to touch the afflicted ;
and at that touch, though not by that touch (as above), the afflicted
do ordinarily come out of their fits. The afflicted persons then
declare and affirm that the apprehended have afflicted them ; upon
which the apprehended persons, though of never so good repute,
are forthwith committed to prison, on suspicion of witchcraft.”’
Cotton Mather was in his element during these transactions. He
recommended the magistrates to study his works on Witchcraft, and
to use all the enginery in their power to purify the land from the
wicked practices of necromancy. The authorities scarcely needed
these incitements. They carried on their examinations with much
vigour, and the manner in which they did so affords one a melancholy
insight into the minutiae of the delusion.
While various preliminary examinations had been made by the
authorities, the jails were gradually filling with persons awaiting
the commencement of the trials, which could not take place for
several months, in consequence of there being a kind of suspension
of the chartered rights of the colony. In May, a new royal charter
arrived, along with Sir William Phipps as governor—a person, as
it would appear, unfitted for this important trust ; he was a protege
of the Mathers, inclined to walk by their counsel, and a firm believer
in witchcraft. Finding on his arrival that the prisons were full of
victims charged with this offence, and urged on by the seeming
urgency of the occasion, he took it upon him to issue a special
commission, constituting the persons named in it a court to act
in and for the counties of Suffolk, Essex, and Middlesex. This
court, beyond all question an illegal tribunal, because the governor
had no shadow of authority to constitute it, consisted of seven
judges. ‘At the opening of the court at Salem, on the 2d of June
1692, the commission of the governor was published, and the oath
of office was administered to Thomas Newton as attorney-general,
and to Stephen Sewall as clerk. The general course of proceedings
at these trials was entirely consistent with the character of the
court and the nature of their business. After pleading to the indict
ment, if the prisoner denied his guilt, the afflicted persons were
first brought into court and sworn as to who afflicted them. Then
the confessors, that is, those who had voluntarily acknowledged
themselves witches, were called upon to tell what they knew of the
accused. Proclamation was then made for all who could give any
testimony, however foreign to the charge, to come into court, and
whatever any one volunteered to tell, was admitted as evidence.
The next process was to search for “ witch-marks,” the doctrine
being, that the devil affixed his mark to those in alliance with him,
21
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
and that this point on the body became callous and dead. This
duty was performed by a jury of the same sex, who made a parti
cular return of the appearance of the body, and whether there was
any preternatural excrescence. A wart or a mole on the body of
a prisoner was often conclusive against him, when the evidence
was otherwise doubtful. These examinations in the case of women
were made by a jury of matrons, aided by a medical man as fore
man. They were very minute, and, in some respects, the most cruel
and disgusting part of the proceedings. The unhappy prisoners
were not only subjected to the mortification of a gross exposure
before the jury of examination, but when any witch-mark was found,
it was punctured with pins, to ascertain whether there was any
feeling. There were usually several examinations of the same
individual. In one instance, a woman was examined at ten o’clock
in the morning, and at four o’clock in the afternoon the jury certified
that they had again examined her, and that her breast, which “ in
the morning search appeared to us very full, the nibblis fresh and
starting, now at this search all lancke and pendent.” Of the nine
women who were on this jury, but one could write her name; the
remainder made their marks.
‘Evidence was also received respecting the appearance of the
accused at the preliminary examinations ; and the various signs of
witchcraft which then appeared were detailed with much particularity.
It was a great sign of witchcraft to make an error in the Lord’s
Prayer, which the accused on those occasions were required to
repeat, and if they made a single error, it was brought up at their
trial as evidence against them. Thus, one repeated the prayer
correctly in every particular, excepting that she said “ deliver us from
all evil,” “ which was looked upon as if she prayed against what she
was now justly under.” Upon making another attempt, she said
“hallowed be thy. name,” instead of “hallowed be thy name and
this “ was counted a depraving the words, as signifying to make
void, and so a curse, rather than a prayer.” The appearance of the
accused, and of those supposed to be bewitched, also had an effect
against the prisoner. Sometimes the witnesses were struck dumb
for a long time; at others, they would fall into terrible fits, and were
insensible to the touch of all but the accused, who, they declared,
tormented them. Sometimes the accused were ordered to look on
the afflicted, when the latter would be immediately thrown into fits.
It was thought that an invisible and impalpable fluid darted from
the eyes of the witch, and penetrated the brain of the bewitched.
A touch by the witch attracted back the malignant fluid, and the
sufferers recovered their senses. Another sign of witchcraft, of great
consideration, was an inability of the accused to shed tears.
‘ There was one species of evidence which was of great effect in
these prosecutions, and which it was impossible to rebut. Witnesses
were allowed to testify to certain acts of the accused, when the latter
22
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
were not present in the body ; that they were tormented by appari
tions or spectres of the accused, which pinched them, robbed them
of their goods, caused them to languish and pine away, pricked them ;
and they produced the identical pins which were used for this purpose?
The first session of the Special Court of Oyer and Terminer was
held in June 1692, and at this time one trial only took place. ‘The
victim selected for this occasion was Bridget Bishop or Oliver, a
poor and friendless old woman, who had been charged with witch
craft twenty years before. The indictment against her set forth,
that on the 19th day of April, and at divers other days and times,
as well before as after, she used, practised, and exercised certain
detestable arts, called witchcrafts and sorceries, at and within the
township of Salem, in, upon, and against one Mercy Lewis, of Salem
village; by which wicked arts, the said Mercy Lewis “ was hurt,
tortured, afflicted, pined, consumed, wasted, and tormented, against
the peace of our sovereign lord and lady, the king and queen, and
against the form of the statute in that case made and provided.”
There were four other indictments against the prisoner for the same
crime in afflicting other persons. On her arraignment, she pleaded
not guilty.
‘ The fact that the crime had been committed, or that certain
persons were bewitched by some one, was considered too notorious
to require much proof; and to fix the crime on the prisoner, the first
testimony adduced was that of the persons supposed to be bewitched.
Several of them testified, that the shape of the prisoner sometimes
very grievously pinched, choked, bit, and afflicted them, urging them
to write their names in a book, which the said spectre called “ ours.”
One of them further testified, that the shape of the prisoner, with
another, one day took her from her wheel, and, carrying her to the
river-side, threatened there to drown her, if she did not sign the
book. Others testified that the said shape did in her threats brag
to them that she had been the death of sundry persons, then by her
named. Another testified to the apparition of ghosts to the spectre
of the prisoner, crying out : “You murdered us.” “About the truth
whereof,” adds the reporter of this trial, “ there was, in the matter of
fact, but too much suspicion?”
The evidence given by John Louder on this ridiculous trial may
be taken as a fair sample of the nonsense which was uttered on the
occasion. ‘John Louder testified, that, upon some little controversy
with Bishop about her fowls, going well to bed, he awoke in the
night by moonlight, and saw clearly the likeness of this woman
grievously oppressing him ; in which miserable condition she held
him, unable to help himself, till near day. He told Bishop of this ;
but she utterly denied it, and threatened him very much. Quickly
after this, being at home on a Lord’s-day, with the doors shut about
him, he saw a black pig approach him, which endeavouring to kick,
it vanished away. Immediately after, sitting down, he saw a black
23
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
thing jump in at the window, and come and stand before him. The
body was like that of a monkey, the feet like a cock’s, but the face,
much like a man’s. Ide being so extremely affrighted that he could
not speak, this monster spoke to him, and said : “ I am a messenger
sent unto you, for I understand that you are in some trouble of
mind ; and if you will be ruled by me, you shall want for nothing in
this world.” Whereupon he endeavoured to clap his hands upon it,
but he could feel no substance, and it jumped out of the window
again, but immediately came in by the porch, though the doors were
shut, and said : “ You had better take my counsel.” He then struck
at it with a stick, but struck only the groundsel, and broke the stick.
The arm with which he struck was presently disabled, and it
vanished away. He presently went out at the back-door, and spied
this Bishop, in her orchard, going toward her house : but he had not
power to set one foot forward unto her. Whereupon, returning into
the house, he was immediately accosted by the monster he had seen
before, which goblin was going to fly at him ; whereat he cried out :
“ The whole armour of God be between me and you !” So it sprung
back, and flew over the apple-tree, shaking many apples off the tree
in its flying over. At its leap, it flung dirt with its feet against the
stomach of the man ; whereon he was then struck dumb, and so
continued for three days together. “ Upon the producing of this
testimony,” says Cotton Mather, “ Bishop denied that she knew this
deponent. Yet their two orchards joined, and they had often had
their little quarrels for some years together.’”
All this trash being gravely listened to and approved of by the
court, it was resolved, as a final step in the procedure, to have the
prisoner examined by a jury of women. This was accordingly
done ; the matrons reported that they found a preternatural ‘ tet ’
upon her body, and on making a second examination within three
or four hours, there was no such thing to be seen.
‘ The poor woman undertook to explain the circumstances which
had been related against her, but she was constantly harassed ; and
becoming confused, she apparently prevaricated somewhat, and all
she said made against her. She seems to have been a woman of
violent temper, who had lived on ill terms with her neighbours for
many years, and who had long had the reputation of being a witch.
Those of her neighbours who had suffered from her uncomfortable
disposition, were nothing loath to attribute all their misfortunes to
her ; and she thus stood little chance of a fair trial.
‘ She was convicted, and sentenced to be hanged, and was
remanded to prison to await her doom. “As she was under a
guard, passing by the great and spacious meeting-house of Salem”
—Cotton Mather relates this—“ she gave a look towards the house ;
and immediately a demon, invisibly entering the meeting-house,
tore down a part of it ; so that though there were no person to be
seen there, yet the people at the noise running in found a board,
34
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
which was strongly fastened with several nails, transported unto
another quarter of the house.” She was executed on the ioth of
June, solemnly protesting her innocence to the last.
‘After the trial and condemnation of Bridget Bishop, the court
adjourned to the 30th of June; and the governor and council
thought proper, in the meantime, to take the opinion of several
ministers upon the state of things as they then stood. Their return,
understood to have been drawn up by Cotton Mather, was as follows ;
“ 1. The afflicted state of our poor neighbours, that are now
suffering by molestations from the invisible world, we apprehend so
deplorable, that we think their condition calls for the utmost help
of all persons in their several capacities.
“2. We cannot but with all thankfulness acknowledge the success
which the merciful God has given to the sedulous and assiduous
endeavours of our honourable rulers, to defeat the abominable witch
crafts which have been committed in the country ; humbly praying,
that the discovery of those mysterious and mischievous wickednesses
may be perfected.
“3. We judge that in the prosecution of these and all such witch
crafts, there is need of a very critical and exquisite caution, lest
by too much credulity for things received only upon the devil’s
authority, there be a door opened for a long train of miserable con
sequences, and Satan get an advantage over us ; for we should not
be ignorant of his devices.
“4. As in complaints upon witchcrafts there may be matters of
inquiry which do not amount unto matters of presumption, and
there may be matters of presumption which yet may not be matters
of conviction, so it is necessary that all proceedings thereabout be
managed with an exceeding tenderness towards those that mav be
complained of, especially if they have been persons formerly of an
unblemished reputation.
“5. When the first inquiry is made into the circumstances of
such as may lie under the just suspicion of witchcrafts, we could
wish that there may be admitted as little as possible of such noise,
company, and openness, as may too hastily expose them that are
examined; and that there may be nothing used as a test for the
trial of the suspected, the lawfulness whereof may be doubted by
the people of God ; but that the directions given by such judicious
writers as Perkins and Bernard may be observed.
“6. Presumptions whereupon persons may be committed, and,
much more, convictions whereupon persons may be condemned as
guilty of witchcrafts, ought certainly to be more considerable than
barely the accused person’s being represented by a spectre unto the
afflicted ; inasmuch as it is an undoubted and a notorious thing,
that a demon may, by God’s permission, appear, even to ill purposes,
in the shape of an innocent, yea, and a virtuous man. Nor can we
esteem alterations made in the sufferers, by a look or touch of the
?5
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
accused, to be an infallible evidence of guilt, but frequently liable to
be abused by the devil’s legerdemain.
“ 7. We know not whether some remarkable affronts given the
devils, by our disbelieving those testimonies whose whole force and
strength is from them alone, may not put a period unto the progress
of the dreadful calamity begun upon us, in the accusation of so
many persons, whereof some, we hope, are yet clear from the great
transgression laid to their charge.
“8. Nevertheless, we cannot but humbly recommend unto the
government, the speedy and vigorous prosecutions of such as have
rendered themselves obnoxious, according to the directions given in
the laws of God, and the wholesome statutes of the English nation,
for the detection of witchcrafts.” ’
These suggestions met with due attention. Accordingly, when
the court again met on the 30th of June, five women were brought
to trial—namely, Sarah Good and Rebecca Nurse, of Salem village,
Susannah Martin of Amesbury’, Elizabeth How of Ipswich, and
Sarah Wildes of Topsfield. They were condemned, and executed
on the 19th of July. There was no difficulty with any but Rebecca
Nurse. She was a member of the Church, and of a good character ;
as to her, the jury brought in a verdict of not guilty. The accusers
made a great clamour, and the court expressed much dissatisfaction.
The jury again retired, and this time brought in a verdict of guilty.
On the next communion-day, the poor woman, declaring her
innocence, was taken in chains to the meeting-house, to be formally
excommunicated. She was hanged with the rest on the 19th of
July. In August, six persons were tried, and condemned to be
executed ; one of the unhappy prisoners on this occasion being a
person named Willard, who had formerly been employed to detect
witchcraft, but had latterly revolted at the office, and expressed a
disbelief of the crime.
The next trial was that of George.Burroughs, a person of educa
tion, who had formerly been a minister in Salem village. ‘ His trial
and condemnation form one of the darkest transactions which the
annals of crime in America present. There were at the time vague
hints, which became at length positive assertions, of difficulties
between him and Parris, which render his fate a terrible commentary
■on the power thrown into the hands of a few designing men, by the
excited state of public feeling. Moreover, he boldly denied that
there was or could be such a thing as witchcraft in the current sense
of the term. He was among the first who were accused, and, after
lying in jail several months, he was brought to trial on the 5th of
August. The indictment set forth that the prisoner, on the 9th day
of May, and divers other days, as well before as after, “certain
detestable arts, called witchcraft and sorceries, wickedly and
feloniously hath used, practised, and exercised, at and within the
township of Salem, in the county of Essex aforesaid, in, upon, and
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
against one Anne Putnam, single woman, by which said wicked arts,
the said Anne Putnam, the 9th day of May, and divers other days
and times, as well before as after, was and is tortured, afflicted,
pined, consumed, wasted, and tormented, against the peace of our
sovereign lord and lady, the king and queen, and against the form
■of the statute in that case made and provided.”'
There were three other indictments against the prisoner, to all of
which, on his arraignment, he pleaded not guilty. The evidence
against him was of a very loose and general nature, consisting, in a
great measure, of things said and done by his shape or apparition,
when he was not present as to the body. The following is a
condensation of the absurd evidence of two of the witnesses :
Anne Putnam said : ‘ On the 9th of May 1692, in the evening, I
saw the apparition of George Burroughs, who grievously tortured
me, and urged me to write in his book ; which I refused. He then
told me that his two first wives would appear to me presently, and
tell me a great many lies ; but I should not believe them. Immedi
ately there appeared to me the forms of two women in winding
sheets, and napkins about their heads, at which I was greatly
affrighted. They turned their faces towards Mr Burroughs, and
looked very red and angry at him, telling him that he had been a
cruel man to them, and that their blood cried for vengeance against
him. They also told him they should be clothed with white robes
in heaven, when he should be cast into hell. Immediately he
vanished away; and as soon as he was gone, the two women turned
their faces towards me, looking as pale as a white wall. They said
they were Mr Burroughs’ first wives, and that he had murdered them.
One of them said she was his first wife, and he stabbed her under
the left arm, and put a piece of sealing-wax on the wound ; and she
pulled aside the winding-sheet, and shewed me the place; and also
told me that she was in the house where Mr Parris now lives, when it
was done. The other told me that Mr Burroughs and his present
wife killed her in the vessel as she was coming to see her friends,
because they would have one another ; and they both charged me
that I should tell these things to the magistrates before Mr
Burroughs’ face, and, if he did not own them, they did not know
but they should appear there this morning. Mrs Lawson and her
daughter also appeared to me, and told me that Mr Burroughs
murdered them. This morning there also appeared to me another
woman in a winding-sheet, and told me that she was goodman
Fuller’s first wife, and that Mr Burroughs killed her, because of
some difference between her husband and himself. The prisoner, on
the 9th of May, also, at his first examination, most grievously tor
mented and afflicted Mary Walcott, Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard,
and Abigail Williams, by pinching, pricking, and choking them.’
Elizabeth Hubbard said : ‘ One night there appeared to me a little
black-bearded man, in dark apparel, who told me his name was
27
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
Burroughs. He took a book out of his pocket, and bade me set my
hand to it. I refused. The lines in the book were as red as blood.
He then pinched me, and went away. He has often appeared to me
since, and threatened to kill me if I would not sign the book. He
tortured me very much by biting, pinching, and squeezing my body,
and running pins into me. At his first examination on 9th May, he
did most grievously afflict and torment the bodies of Mary Walcott,
Mercy Lewis, Anne Putnam, and Abigail Williams. If he did tyit
look upon them, he would strike them down, or almost choke them
to death. I believe in my heart that Mr George Burroughs is a
dreadful wizard.’
Other witnesses told similar stories, all so ridiculous, that it is
amazing how they should have been listened to by a court of justice.
The unfortunate prisoner said but little at his trial. He made some
attempt to explain away the testimony against him, but became
confused, and made contradictory statements. He also handed in
a paper to the jury, in which he utterly denied that there was any
truth in the received notions of witchcraft. The jury returned a
verdict of guilty, and he was sentenced to die.
On the 19th of August, he was carried in a cart through the
streets of Salem with the others who were to die. Upon the ladder
he made a calm and powerful address to the multitude, in which he
asserted his innocence ‘ with such solemn and serious expressions as
were to the admiration of all present.’ He then made a prayer,
concluding with the Lord’s Prayer, which he repeated in a clear,
sonorous tone, with entire exactness, and with a fervency that
astonished. Many were affected to tears, and it seemed as if the
spectators would hinder the execution. But the accusers cried that
the devil assisted him. The execution proceeded, and the husband,
the father, and the minister of God was violently sent to his long
home. Cotton Mather, on horseback in the crowd, addressed the
people, declaring that Burroughs was no ordained minister, insisted
on his guilt, and asserted that the devil had often been transformed
into an angel of light. When the body was cut down, it was dragged
by the halter to a hole, and there interred with every mark of
indignity.
A few weeks afterwards, fourteen persons of both sexes were tried,
condemned, and executed. One of these, Samuel Wardwell, had
confessed, and was safe ; but he retracted his confession, and was
executed—not for witchcraft, but for denying witchcraft. Another
victim, Martha Cory, protested her innocence to the last, and con
cluded her life with a prayer on the ladder. Her husband, Giles
Cory, an octogenarian, seeing that no one escaped—knowing that a
trial was but the form of convicting him of a felony, by which his
estate would be forfeited, refused to plead, and was condemned to
be pressed to death ; the only instance in which the horrible death
by the common-law judgment, for standing mute on arraignment,
28
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
has been inflicted in America. As the aged frame of the dying man
yielded to the dreadful pressure, his tongue protruded from his mouth,
•and the sheriff thrust it back again with the point of his cane !
The parting scene between Mary Easty and her husband, children,
and friends, is described as having been as serious, religious, dis
tinct, and affectionate as could well be expressed, drawing tears from
the eyes of almost all present. She was hanged with the others.
‘There hang eight firebrands of hell,’ said Noyes, the minister of
Salem, pointing to the bodies hanging on the gallows.
Although satisfactory to the malignant bigoted, these executions
did not meet with universal approbation. The atrocities were too
great to be endured, and served to raise a reaction against the
witchcraft delusion. ‘ The common mind of Massachusetts,’ observes
Chandler, ‘ more wise than those in authority and influence, became
concentrated against such monstrous proceedings, and jurors refused
to convict while the judicial-power was yet unsatisfied with victims.
Already twenty persons had suffered death ; more than fifty had
been tortured or terrified into confession ; the jails were full, and
hundreds were under suspicion. Where was this to end? More
over, the frauds and imposture attending these scenes began to be
apparent. It was observed, that no one of the condemned con
fessing witchcraft had been hanged ; no one who confessed and
retracted a confession escaped either hanging or imprisonment for
trial. Favouritism had been shewn in refusing to listen to accusa
tions which were directed against friends or partisans. Corrupt
means had been used to tempt people to become accusers, and
accusations began to be made against the most respectable inhabit
ants of the province and some ministers. It was also observed
that the trials were not fairly conducted: they were but a form to
condemn the accused. No one brought to the bar escaped, and all
who were cried out upon expected death. The wife of the wealthiest
person in Salem, a merchant, and a man of the highest respect
ability, being accused, the warrant was read to her in the evening in
her bed-chamber, and guards were placed round the house. In the
morning, she attended the devotions of her family, gave instructions
for the education of her children, kissed them, commended them
to God, bade them farewell, and committed herself to the sheriff,
declaring her readiness to die. Such a state of things could not
continue long in any age, whilst the essential elements of human
nature remain the same. No wonder the miserable creatures who
endured these sufferings felt that New England was indeed deserted
by God.’
The court made several attempts to go on with its trials, but the
grand-juries dismissed the cases, and the executions were accord
ingly stopped. ‘ The causes of this change in public opinion,’
proceeds our authority, ‘ are variously stated. Some attribute it to
the fact, that the wife of the minister of Beverly being accused, he
29
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
immediately changed his mind in regard to the propriety of the pro
secutions, and thenceforward opposed, as zealously as he had previ
ously encouraged them. Others relate that the wife of a gentleman
in Boston being accused, he brought an action for slander, claiming
a thousand pounds damages ; and that this turned back the current
of accusations. But such causes were inadequate to the effect.
These incidental facts were rather the result of the change that was
taking place, than the cause of it. The force of public sentiment,
which had hanged one minister, could scarcely have been resisted
by the efforts of another. An action at law, sounding in damages,
would hardly stop the mouths of accusing witnesses, who professed
to have given themselves to the powers of darkness. The cause of
the change is rather to be sought in the principles of our nature,
and is to be found partly in that instinctive effort for self-preserva
tion, which, in communities of individuals, unites the weak against
oppression, and gives courage to the feeble and unprotected. A
belief in witchcraft was one of the superstitions of the age ; and the
change of public sentiment, which now took place, was not so much
a loss of faith in its reality, as a conviction of the uselessness and
danger of punishing it by human laws. Of the causes of the tran
sient delusion, which rose so high, and terminated so fatally, among
the sober and godly people of N ew England, no definite explanation
can, at this distance of time, be given ; but their descendants may
be allowed, in the same spirit of trust in Providence which distin
guished them, to cherish the belief, that it was permitted for pur
poses of wisdom and benevolence, which could not otherwise have
been accomplished. When its work was done, it properly ceased.
Such moral desolations often pass over the face of society : the
thunder-storm does its work—the atmosphere becomes clear—the
sun shines forth, and reveals to all the work of death.
‘The change in the public mind was complete and universal.
Bitter was the lamentation of the whole community for the sad con
sequences of their rashness and delusion; contrite the repentance
of all who had been actors in the tragedy. The indignation of the
people, not loud, but deep and strong, was directed with resistless
force against those who had been particularly active in these insane
enormities. Parris, the minister who had been the chief agent in
these acts of frenzy and folly, and who, beyond all question, made
use of the popular feeling to gratify his own malignant feelings of
revenge against obnoxious individuals, was compelled to leave his
people. No entreaties were of any avail; the humblest confession
could not save him ; it was not fitting that he should minister at the
altar of a merciful God, within sight of the graves of those whose
entreaties for mercy he had despised. Noyes, the minister of Salem,
consecrated his life to deeds of mercy; made a full confession;
loved and blessed the survivors whom he had injured • asked for
giveness of all, and was by all forgiven. Cotton Mather, by artful
30
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
appeals and publications, in which he wilfully suppressed the truth,
succeeded for a while in deceiving the public, and perhaps himself,
as to the encouragement he had given to the proceedings at Salem.
Still eager “to lift up a standard against the infernal enemy,” he got
up a case of witchcraft in his own parish; but the imposture was
promptly exposed to ridicule, and came to nothing. Mather died in
1727; his latter years being imbittered by the contempt of many
persons for his frenzied zeal in the witch prosecutions ; and it would
appear that, before his death, he had occasional doubtings and
qualms of conscience on the same grave subject.’
The belief in witchcraft gradually died out in America, as it has
done in this country, and only lingered a clandestine existence
among the most ignorant in the community. Whether in England,
Wales, and Scotland, the belief is yet utterly gone, may perhaps
be doubted ; for paragraphs occasionally appear in the newspapers
descriptive of outrages committed on old women, who are supposed
by the ignorant to practise diabolical incantations. Within our own
recollection, which extends to the first decade of the present century,
a belief in witchcraft was to a certain degree entertained in a small
country town in Scotland. It was whispered about among children,
that a certain old woman was a witch, and in passing the thatched
cottage of this poor creature, we were instructed by companions to
put our thumb across one of our fingers, as a preservative from harm
—a curious relic of the old usage of making the figure of the cross.
As a crime recognised and punishable by law, witchcraft was
protracted till comparatively recent times in certain continental
countries. So lately as 1780, a woman was condemned and executed
for witchcraft in the Swiss canton of Glarus. In January 1853, an
account appeared in a foreign journal, significant of the superstitious
belief which still maintains its hold among the less-instructed classes
in the north of Italy; and with this strange record of witchcraft in
the nineteenth century, we may appropriately dismiss the subject:
‘A very singular case was a short time ago submitted to the Court
1 of Justice of Rovigo, in the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom. Several
of the inhabitants of the island of Cherso had constructed a lime
kiln ; but the fire, after burning constantly for twelve days, and
thereby giving a promise that the operation would be a successful
. one, became suddenly extinguished, and all attempts to relight it
\ failed. An old woman, named Anna Gurlan, who was considered a
\sorceress, was immediately suspected of having, by her charms,
extinguished the fire, and it was stated that she.had been seen walking
ma mysterious way round the kiln, and had passed a night in an
aajacent house. On this the people to whom the kiln belonged
resolved that they would make the old woman undo her charm and
relight the fire. In compliance with the request of one of them,
Giuseppe Micich, she one morning went to the kiln, carrying with
her a bottle of holy water. She then began blessing the kiln and
31
�THE OLD WITCHCRAFTS.
reciting litanies. While so engaged, a priest went to her, and told
her that if she would remain until the fire should spring up again he
would pay her well. She asked if he thought she was a sorceress, or
possessed of heavenly powers ; and he answered, that she might
probably be more favoured by grace than he was. He then left her,
and she continued her incantations. But as the fire did not return,
Micich and his companions swore that they would kill and burn her
if she did not succeed ; and they assured her that they had an axe
and a furnace ready. At the same time, they heaped maledictions
on her for having, by her infernal arts, extinguished the fire. Greatly
terrified, she implored them to have pity on her, and, when a favour
able opportunity presented itself, she took to flight. The house to
which she went was closed against her, and Micich and his com
panions, having gone in pursuit, seized her with great brutality, and
threatened more violently than before to kill her if she would not put
an end to the charm. She then began reciting prayers, but as no
effect was produced, the men deliberated as to what they should do.
They at length resolved to consult a retired sea-captain, called the
“American,” from his having been to America, who possessed a
great reputation in the neighbourhood as an authority in matters of
witchcraft. He refused to go, lest, as he said, the sorceress should
bewitch his children, but he directed what should be done. In
execution of his instructions, the old woman was placed on a chair
close to the kiln ; Micich then cut off a piece of her garments and a
lock of her hair, and threw them both in the kiln, retaining, however,
a portion of the hair, which he placed in his pocket ; half an hour
was then allowed to elapse; Micich then took his knife and made
three cuts on her forehead, causing blood to flow abundantly ; then
another half-hour elapsed, and he made three cuts in the back part
of the head; then another half-hour was suffered to pass, and he
made three cuts in the cartilage of her left ear. While all this was
going on, she begged them, in the name of God, to kill her at once,
sooner than subject her to such torture. At length, when they had,
as she supposed, executed to the letter all the instructions of the
American, they ceased to hold her, and she fled to a wood, where she
wandered about all night. The next morning she went home ; but
the injuries she had sustained were such, that she was obliged to
keep her bed for twenty-six days. After the facts had been proved,
Micich, being called on by the court for his defence, gravely asserted
that the kiln had been burning well enough until the old woman had
been seen hanging about it; and he brought witnesses to prove that
she was fond of talking in a mysterious way, and of meddling in her
neighbours’ affairs ; that when she could not get what she wished
for, she was accustomed to make threats of death against adults and
children; and that more than once, chance apparently caused her
menaces to be fulfilled. The court condemned Micich to three
months’ imprisonment, and to pay an indemnity to the old woman.’
32
�
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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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The old witchcrafts
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 32 p. : ill. ; 18 cm.
Notes: "Probably extracted from The horror of New England witchcraft."--OCLC WorldCat. Date of publication from KVK (OCLC). Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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[s.n.]
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[1878?]
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N515
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[Unknown]
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Witchcraft
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application/pdf
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English
NSS
Witchcraft
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Text
ON ITS
A REPLY TO PROFESSOR FLINT.
PRICE ONE PENNY.
EDINBURGH :
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nnb Xabflxir jbRngue,
4 PARK STREET.
1 8 8 7.
�“Justice
is the freedom of those who are equal:
Injustice is the freedom of those mho are unequal.”
~Jacobi.
�SOCIALISM ON ITS DEFENCE
A REPLY TO PROFESSOR FLINT.
r-T^HE community is indebted to Professor Flint for
calling its attention to Socialism, and for this ser
vice Socialists must be specially grateful. We have
confidence in our position. The more our system is con
sidered, the wider will be its acceptation. The prelates
were recommended by a sagacious observer during the
Reformation to burn the martyrs in cellars, and the news
papers, in the exercise of a similar discretion, generally
exclude the utterances of Socialists from their columns.
We must, however, thank Professor Flint not only for
lecturing on the subject, but for the kind things he has
said with respect to us—-a fact we are apt to forget in the
midst of his misrepresentations. Socialism has hitherto
been received with ridicule and reviling by many ignorant
but important people among us, who will now, after the
assurance of an eminent theologian, believe there is some
thing in it. Dr Flint has at least confessed the importance
of the subject, and has therefore led many to its considera
tion. It does seem singular, however, that it should have
been left to the faculty of Divinity to undertake this work,
but the persistent indifference of the lecturer on Economics
is more than a sufficient excuse for entering on his pro
vince. He seems engrossed with the depreciation of silver,
�— 4 —
and only recognises the existence of Socialists to denounce
them, on the authority of imperfect statistics, for repeating
the conclusion of Fawcett and other orthodox economists,
that in relation to the increase of wealth the rich are grow
ing richer, and the poor, poorer. The statement may be
true or false, it matters little to Socialists, and has no
special bearing on their system. To the credit of Dr Flint,
economics is rather more to him than a question of the
currency. He does not seem to believe the condition of
the people is much aflectecl by the comparative value of
metals; and in this respect the disciple of the Master cer
tainly shows to better advantage than the nominee of the
merchants.
Even this, however, does not exhaust our reasons for
gratitude to the Professor. Socialism is a vague word
under which some shelter themselves with whose opinions
and methods few of us can sympathise. The system, like
every other, has its dangers, and it is well to face them : it
has also its false and foolish friends, and it is well to know
them. A good critic would at present be a true benefactor
to us, but, unfortunately, it is only in a very modified sense
we can apply this term to Dr Flint. We frankly admit a
real value in his lectures, but they are vitiated at the outset
from want of a proper definition, and rendered ineffective
throughout from want of sufficient discrimination. It may
seem daring to question the information of the learned
Professor, considering the reputation he deservedly enjoys
in all circles, but our imputation of ignorance is sufficiently
justified in his treatment of Socialism. With the origin
and history of the movement, up to within fifty years ago,
he shews a certain familiarity, but this sketch of it stands
in striking contrast to his superficial acquaintance with its
�— 5 —
modern revival. It would, however, be as reasonable for
one ignorant of the physiology of the last half-century to
undertake its instruction to the students of to-day, as it
is for one to speak of the Socialism of the present from a
study of its literature in the past. Mere reading indeed gives
one little insight in either case. Words half conceal as well as
half reveal the thoughts of men, and it is only after mixing
much with them you can be very confident about their
ideas. We not only suffer from misrepresentation, but, the
fact is, we hardly ever experience anything else. Much of
this is no doubt the result of ignorance more or less culp
able, but some of it is produced on purpose to discredit us.
Our sayings are perverted and our doings defamed. It is
difficult, therefore, for an outsider like Dr Flint to know
much about us with accuracy, but even he would have
known more if he had come to his subject with the sym
pathy of the critic instead of the partiality of the polemic.
There has in fact been rather much logic in his treatment
of Socialism, and this concession is not meant by way of
■compliment; for conclusions drawn rigorously from defec
tive premises are bound to be erroneous. We venture to
affirm, there is not a Socialist of any intelligence prepared
to accept the definition of it given by Dr. Flint, or willing
to admit any validity in the objections urged by him against
it. He may, of course, affect to despise the one, but he
cannot be indifferent to the other. No controversy can be
conducted to any satisfactory issue, unless the combatants
agree about the point in dispute. Argument otherwise is
a mere beating of the air. The Socialism of these lectures
however, is, in the opinion of Socialists, partly an anachron
ism and partly a figment; while the reasons of his opposi
tion to it resolve themselves into its interference with the
�— 6 —
liberty of the individual, and of its realisation by violence.
Now, we do not altogethei’ deny the applicability of this
criticism to certain forms of Socialism and its supporters,
but a definition must not confound a part with the whole.
It would really be much fairer to say that all Christians
believed in the Mass than to bring such objections against
Socialism ; for they not only do not belong to the essence of
the system, but, even as accidents, apply to a very limited
number of its advocates. As a matter of fact, there are
many Socialists averse to war in every shape and form, nor
could Dr. Flint find one disposed to prefer war to peace in
the realisation of his ideas. The worst one can say about
the most of them is, that they will not turn their cheek to the
smiter. Force will be met by force. The Socialists of Germany
for example were constitutional reformers till Bismarck
passed repressive measures against them; and Britain has
nothing to fear from violence on our part so long as her
military and police do not interfere with our rights of pub
lic meeting and political action. It is scarcely candid, more
over, to represent even the militant attitude of Socialism as
peculiar. History unfortunately shows the sword has been a
frequent and efficient instrument of enfranchisement. There
were circumstances when even Christ seemed to think it
would be the duty of His disciples to part with their gar
ments and buy one, and certainly much has been yielded to
violence that never was given to entreaty. It was the
battle-axe of the barons that compelled a craven king to
sign Magna Charta. The Commons of England could only
get its Petition of Rights by the Ironsides of Cromwell.
There were riots enough before even the middle classes
secured the Reform Bill of ’32. Nor are the powerful any
wiser to-day. Ireland has triumphed by dynamite as well
�7 —
as organisation, and the action of our politicians must be
held largely responsible for the spread among the people of
the deplorable conviction that petitions are mere paper
unless presented on pikes. The language of the most
sanguine Socialist indicates nothing worse than the belief
that history will in this respect repeat itself in connection
with his movement. Let us hope he may be mistaken, and
there is no reason in fact for the fulfilment of his prophecy.
The Government has only to treat Socialists with justice to
avert this calamity. Their scheme could be realised to
morrow with felicitation instead of fighting, if our mer
chants and manufacturers would simply resolve to use
their influence and power for the welfare of all instead
of for their own. The capital and intelligence so much
wasted at present in internecine competition would then be
concentrated for the benefit of the community, instead
of employed for the glorification of individuals. Let them
continue, on the contrary, to exploit the workers for their
own profit, as well as oppose the machinery of law to
the demands of justice, and violence will characterise the
triumph of Socialism, as it has done that of every great
and good movement. May God, however, avert the omen !
We shrink from the contemplation of such a conflict, but
must protest with all possible vehemence against Dr Flint
throwing on Socialism the responsibility of such a result.
If he is in earnest about the maintenance of peace, let him
preach to the originators of war, and this, if all stories are
true, will mean plain speaking directed to high quarters.
May we shed our blood for the restoration of a Battenberg
and not spare a drop for the emancipation of our brethren ?
The curse of Capitalism, however, is even worse -than the
influence of Courts. It sent out our soldiers to Egypt to
�— 8 —
slaughter the poor peasants for not paying exorbitant taxes
to meet the claims of avaricious bondholders. They gave
their money freely to minister to the sensuality of a vicious
Viceroy on condition of receiving a high rate of interest
wrung from the extreme poverty of his industrious subjects,
and would, for the same inducement, supply the sinews of
war to the greatest enemy of their own country. So much
for the morality of Capitalism, which at this very moment
is anxious to get up a Continental war for the sake of im
mediate gain. It must all, however, be done under the
name of patriotism. Patriotism ! It would burn the palladia of the country to cook its potatoes. It would be
worthier, therefore, of Dr Flint to attack, in our exchanges
and cabinets, the promoters of war, than to make sport for
the Philistines by throwing ridicule on the lovers of peace.
Even Goethe, with all his heathenism, saw in the conduct
of the rulers the real cause for all popular risings, and a
nation like Scotland, honouring the Covenanters for resist
ing with then- blood the imposition of a liturgy, is not
likely to censure their descendants in contending for a
living.
In connection, however, with violence, we may be par
doned a passing reference to the revolutionary character of
Socialism. Dr Flint said very truly it was not “ A system
merely of amendment, improvement, and reform.” It holds
the condition of society to be “ essentially one of anarchy and
injustice,” and for this reason it is impossible to tinker at
it, as if it were essentially sound. Industry must be carried
on for the good of all instead of the gain of one, and
nothing short of the realisation of this ideal will content
Socialists. We are certainly revolutionary in this sense
but in no other. Such a term neither of necessity implies
�— 9
the use of violence nor indifference to circumstances. We
know full well theories cannot be carried out unless in har
mony with the nature and surroundings of men. We are
in no danger, therefore, of degenerating into doctrinaires.
Our revolution is based on evolution, and is no more
“ momentous and unparalleled ” than other changes through
which industry has already passed. The movement from
competition to co-operation is really in no way greater than
that from communal to private property in land, and will
be accomplished from the same motive, and perhaps by the
same method. Socialism can only be realised by people
believing it to be for their interest. We are not likely to
imitate the conduct of the Emperor of Russia in construct
ing a railway between Moscow and St Petersburg. He
merely asked for a map and drew a strait line from the one
town to the other, utterly regardless of the condition of the
country lying between. It is not after this fashion we
desire or expect the institution of Socialism. There are
signs of decrepitude about the system of Competition. Grey
hairs are upon it. The crust is cracking, and multitudes
are going down to the abyss. Society is groaning under its
insecurity. Infinite mischief is produced by its periodical
crises and its limited companies. Capital is being con
centrated. Manufacturers and merchants are collapsing
around us, and falling into the ranks of the workers, while
the workers are, by the extension of machinery, being
driven to the streets. The drones are drawing dividends
and the industrious are eating dust.
This inequality,
however, has stimulated the sentiment of justice. The
better nature of rich and poor is rising in rebellion against
our oppressive circumstances.
Righteousness can alone
exalt a people, and the effect of iniquity in the land is to
�induce many to cast their idols of silver and gold to the
moles and to the bats, in order to lift the beggar from the
dunghill and set the poor among princes. The forces of
our revolution are thus busily at work, and cannot be
stopped by a mere arrangement of words. It is for us to
secure control over them and guide them to a speedy and
salutary issue. Destruction need not be known within our
borders. The stones of our temple are being fashioned in
the quarry, and if only the wealthy and powerful would see
it to be their interest, as it undoubtedly is, rather to further
than to frustrate our efforts, the stately edifice would forth
with be erected amid the jubilation of a harmonious people.
Industry has but to follow the advice given by the lec
turer, and organise itself to secure this consummation so
devoutly to be wished. It would then become conscious of
its power, to the dismay of the idlers ; and, gathering round
it the wisdom and integrity of the community, its victory
would neither be doubtful nor difficult. But, whatever
may betide, the Socialists will be true to themselves.
*■ We are they who will not falter,
Many swords or few,
Till we make this earth the altar
Of a worship new.
We are they who will not take
From palace, priest, or code,
A meaner law than * Brotherhood,’
A lower lord than ‘ God.’ ”
We come at last to consider the definition given by Dr
Flint. He played, with his usual logical ability, between
the terms Individualism and Socialism, and reached, as
every sensible person might have expected, the somewhat
barren conclusion that the one was the opposite of the
other. He was, of course, wise enough to see that if the
one pole meant slavery the other stood at savagery, and
�— 11
therefore, he argued, we must have a judicious mixture of
both. The commonplace philosopher always comes to the
same conclusion. There is a good deal to be said on both
■sides. No doubt, but there must be some order in dealing
with them if we are to arrive at any satisfactory result.
The social toddy will never be perfect without this treat
ment of the separate ingredients. Dr Flint set himself to
pour out the whisky of Individualism and the hot water of
Socialism, as well as to add a little sentiment by way of
sugar, but he got scalded in the operation, and dropped the
kettle. It is impossible on any other supposition to account
for the energetic but irrelevant remarks that escaped him
at this time. He insisted upon paying no attention to the
method of mixing the several ingredients together, forget
ting that hot water is the basis of all good toddy. Enter
prise can only be mischievous unless inspired by justice,
and this is really the essence of Socialism. Nothing could
well be more erroneous than the idea of the two poles sug
gested by the lecturer. The Socialism of to-day, unlike
that of yesterday, is in no way opposed to liberty. It
really differs in this respect little from politics ; for just as
in politics you have one party inclined to favour and another
to oppose the action of Government, so is it with Socialism.
There is, however, a difference between the two, and it is
•one telling still more strongly against the statements of Dr
Flint. There is no system so anxious as Socialism to
secure the liberty of the individual. One of the planks of the
■Governmental or Marxist party is the extension of freedom
to every member of the community, while the devotion of
the Anarchists to the same idea puts even Herbert Spencer
to shame. These, however, are all Socialists. They are all
agreed in their love of liberty, as well as in their opposition
�— 12
to the .tyranny of majorities, and differ only about the steps
necessary to its realisation. Not only so, they are at one
in thinking the present system of competition is altogether
inconsistent with any sufficient measure of freedom to the
great mass of the people. Hunger enslaves one to purpose,
and so long as we are dependent on the few for the means
of livelihood, so long will they remain our masters. Social
ism sets itself to the solution of this problem. It proclaims
liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to
those who are bound. Instead of having any desire to'
interfere with our freedom, it is inspired throughout by a
purpose to extend it. The principle, therefore, repudiated
by all Socialists is really, by a strange perversity, the one
constituting the definition of Dr Flint, while that on which
they are all agreed is the one he systematically ignores.
Socialism is simply neither more nor less than an at
tempt to transfer the means of production and distribu
tion from the possession of the individual to the control of
the community, in order that every one willing to work
may get it, and be paid the full value of his labour. In
proof of this let me quote from an article in the Nineteenth
Century for February, by our comrade, P. Kropotkin, on
“The Scientific Basis of Anarchy.” “ In common with all
Socialists,” he says, “ the Anarchists hold that the private
ownership of land, capital, and machinery has had its time.”
The watchword of Socialism is, “ Economical freedom as
the only secure basis for spiritual freedom.” In spite of
such explicit definition, however, we find Dr Flint assuring
his admiring audience of exploiters and exploited that the
central idea of Socialism is, that labour is the source of all
wealth, and that labour is often confounded by us with the
mere use of our hands. There are no doubt ignorant
�— 13 —
people among us, and one would not like to become respon
sible for all their statements, but would the learned Pro
fessor not object if we went for an exposition of his creed
to a street preacher ? Intelligence, we maintain, on the
contrary, is essential for every operation, except the draw
ing of dividends, and ought to be rewarded if applied to
public welfare. This is the doctrine of Socialism. It is
really too absurd to blame us at one time for indifference
to land and capital in the creation of wealth, and at another
to denounce us for desiring to get possession of them by
legal means if possible, but by all means since necessary.
We know the value of these things in the production of
wealth, and maintain not only the right of all to what has
been created by none, but that every modification of natural
agents for human welfare has been brought about by com
bined labour, and ought not therefore to be in the posses
sion of individuals, but under the control of the community.
Capital, for example, is wanted very badly at present to
provide the poor with nourishing food, warm clothing, and
decent houses, but cannot be had for such purposes, since
its owners find it more remunerative “to supply the
Khedive with harems, and the Russian Government with
strategic railways and Krupp guns.” It would seem, how
ever, we ought to acquiesce in such an arrangement, and
refuse to say to any member of society, “ I have no need of
thee.” It is impossible for us to do so, and we presume Dr
Flint himself is not prepared to fully carry out this prin
ciple. It is really a platitude, meaning anything or
nothing, and therefore worthy of the ignorant applause
with which it was greeted. Are we willing, for example,
to apply it to the criminals in our midst ? Do we actually
require thieves? Certainly not. But if not, why not?
�— 14 —
The answer is of course obvious. They are taking what
belongs to others, and either living in Idleness themselves
■or devoting their energy to the production of mischief.
Just so ! We can do very well without them, and they
constitute a very large category. Mr. Ruskin somewhere
•divides society into robbers, beggars, and workers. It
■seems to us the last class should set itself to get rid of
the other two, for in so doing it would not only perform
a duty to itself, but confer a benefit on them. Nor should
this be a difficult task to accomplish, for the workers really
number two-thirds of the community, and are sufficiently
generous to keep only one-third of the national income to
themselves.
The lynx eye of the lecturer, however, sees the cloven
hoof in such statements. He would turn in holy horror
from our figures and suggestions. We are, according to
him, indifferent to the intellectual, moral, and religious
mission of society. Such objections do certainly surprise
us. Are we not doing, with our miserable resources, much
to persuade the community to consider its own interest ?
Can Dr Flint really believe people have much intelligence who
submit to such a chaotic and iniquitous state of matters, or
would he find a greater proof of it in their familiarity with
metaphysical problems ? Moral ! Do we know any morality
that can dispense with justice in our relation to each other ?
It is at least the aim of Socialism to extend this principle,
and we utterly fail to understand how any society can be
conscious of a moral mission that does not set herself to
deliver the oppressed from the spoiler. Has not the in
equality of the classes much to do with the immorality of
both ? We must have neither the luxury of the rich nor
the privation of the poor, if we desire virtue to prevail in
�15
the community. Wise man was he who sought neither
poverty nor riches, for the one brings temptations to extra
vagance and the other to avarice. Religious ! May wepresume to differ on this point from a doctor of the Church ?
We will not venture to discuss with him questions of
dogma, ceremony, or institution. These, we submit, are
not of the essence of religion. We read somewhere in an
old book for which, along with himself, many of us profess,
the greatest respect, that what God really requires of one
is to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly beforeHim. This is the principle of Socialism. We are bold
enough, in fact, to number in our ranks the Son of Man
Himself, and certainly His immediate followers went very
much farther than our present proposals. The religion of
Christ did not consist of sermons and sacrifices, nor did it
ever become indifferent to our temporal condition. One
was not only taught by Him to love his neighbour as him
self, but commanded to leave his gift at the altar till he
had been reconciled to his brother. There are religions, of'
course, indifferent to all moral and social considerations,,
but we generally speak of them as superstitions, and con
trast them, to their disadvantage, with Christianity. The
elementary principles of it demand that we stand in a right
relation to each other. It is, however, the desire of Social
ism to promote this, and therefore the statement of Dr Elint
that “ At present the main body of the Socialist army ”
looks on “ religion with a jealous and hostile eye,” may be
met with a direct negative. He is too good a logician and
theologian not to know the ambiguous use he is here making
of the term “religion.” What is religion? Is it to be
identified with Popery or Presbyterianism? Must it be
connected with temples and tithes? Many Socialists of
�— 16 —
course, like other sensible people, have grave doubts about
the value of much connected with our ecclesiastical religions.
They are not enamoured of priestcraft and dogma. This
suspicion, however, of what has proved so mischievous,
makes them prize all the more the evangelical religion of
justice and mercy opposed to it. Dr. Flint had also a sneer
at the “ so-called Christian Socialists,” for looking on Christ
as “a mere Social Reformer,” but, so far as any relevancy
in it was concerned, he might as well, like a popular orator,
have applied it to “this so-called nineteenth century.” Our
Christianity is a reality, and this is more than, with all our
charity, we can confess to be the case with much of the re
ligion sheltering itself under the segis of the Professor. There
was more of cavil than candour in contrasting to their dis
advantage the Christian Socialists of the present with
Maurice and Kingsley. It is impossible to admire either
the spirit or the accuracy of such remarks, for there is really
no essential difference between the Christian Socialism of
to-day and that of a generation ago. Maurice was intensely
opposed to the principle of competition—to buying in the
cheapest and selling in the dearest market—to every one
for himself and none for his neighbour. It was to him an
inspiration of Antichrist—utterly inconsistent with the
command to “look not every one on his own things, but
every one also on the things of others.” Competition
appeared to Maurice diametrically opposed to Christian
precept as well as example, and had therefore to be corn,
pletely rejected. Attempts to correct the evil results of it
are simply efforts to make Satan respectable, and are there
fore doomed to failure. We certainly agree in this view of
competition, and desire with him to substitute for it the
principle of co-operation. This, however, is the aim of
�17 —
Socialism. It is true he was not in favour of confiscation
or violence in carrying it out, but no more are the Christian
Socialists of to-day. They cannot, however, altogether de
termine the course humanity will take, or be allowed to
take, in the realisation of its ideals, but in doing what they
can to persuade the rich to consider the condition of the
poor and act justly towards them, they deserve not only to
be complimented for their noble purpose, but also for their
excellent method. Nor is it by any means the case that
Christ is reduced by them to “a mere Social Reformer.”
There is not only liberty to hold every variety of opinion
about His person and work, but the variety exists. Trini
tarian and Unitarian meet on the same platform of evan
gelical morality, and believe it is better to carry out the
gospel precepts on which they all agree, than dispute about
the theological dogmas on which they differ.
Controversy with Dr. Flint is not a pleasure to us, but
Caesar must yield to Rome. We expected larger know
ledge and wiser counsels from him. The community ought
to know the meaning of Socialism, and these lectures,
with all their merits, will only make “confusion worse con
founded.” They have certainly done harm to the lecturer.
Many familiar with the subject, and not without respect for
himself, have been asking in perplexity an explanation of
his statements, reluctant to account for them either through
ignorance or intention. It is not for us to deal with the
causes, but with the errors themselves. We can, however,
easily account for them without the imputation of any
unworthy motives to the lecturer, for Dr. Flint is, unfor
tunately, not the only wise and good man in the community
capable of saying foolish things about Socialism, and we do
not despair of his conversion. There were times, indeed,
�— 18 —
when even he seemed to kick against the pricks of his
conscience in his condemnation of our system, and we can
only hope that by the exercise of his trained intellect, as
well as under the inspiration of his better nature, he will
be speedily led to embrace it. None would receive a
warmer welcome into our ranks, and few could do more for
our cause. It is in this spirit of conciliation we desire to
criticise his statements. He has far too much good sense
ever to be influenced by the applause of an ignorant multi
tude, most of them in broad-cloth and seal-skin, while we can
wish him no greater honour than to become a leader in our
beneficent movement, for its aim is not merely the elevation
of man to the stature of Christ, but the realisation of the
Kingdom of God upon earth.
“ Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a’ that,
That sense an’ worth o’er a’ the earth
May bear the gree an’ a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
It’s cornin’ yet for a’ that,
That man to man the warld o’er
Shall brithers be an’ a’ that.”
“be
just and FEAR NOT.”
A. Hossack, Printer, 71 Bristo Street, Edinburgh.
��
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Socialism on its defence: a reply to Professor Flint
Description
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Place of publication: Edinburgh
Collation: 18 p. ; 19 cm.
Publisher
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Scottish Land and Labour League
Date
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1887
Identifier
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T466
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[Unknown]
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Socialism
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Socialism on its defence: a reply to Professor Flint), 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
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Flint
Socialism
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/6b673e58be4a3e64026509a3a56ed3a2.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=IAtRFRUm-3VHvjdOTbTxHwXAOZdKZ8IeAXHziQPxRAn15F6muNejj3KRFLr2YGSTQSFZiYo5pb39yEMWsiHtDm0NEoreTU0PFCz-RBZyngy14MyPqR71lyWdLac0ExsBSdgEeRMAiHNeQk-Eboer81UHb8EXxI1-g1l8tILAtoiY7DM2mfRpEuR06XLNx2toqhv1LVc-EDGW9gC1boW75wmGa%7E-kL2KzlPsRfUU9VHu5Ns31uxyjbNPS1x0G0swb3M%7EAlkizosXl94LiwsHCdu13THvnR0ouFkHeFaw3QmYItnH6cF8pxTXidvWjKp6g56DLUmbheer9yx6A%7EEBAIg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
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Text
CATALOGUE AND CIRCULAR
OF
DR. DIO LEWIS’S
«
oiilg j^nrd for gaung ÿabieæ,
LEXINGTON, MASS.
1865.
BOSTON:
PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON,
15, Water Street.
1865.
��CALENDAR
FOS 1865-6.
4
First quarter commences ....
,,
.
Nov. 28, 1865.
.
.
Nov. 29, 1865.
closes...........................
,,
Second quarter commences
.
.
. , Sept. 27, 1865.
,,
,,
closes......................
.
Jan. 30, 1866.
Third
„
commences
.
.
Jan. 31, 1866.
„
,,
closes......................
.
April 3, 1866.
Fourth
,,
commences
.
April 4, 1866.
„
,,
closes......................
.
June 5, 1866.
.
.
.
.
*
t
�FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
4
principi
DIO LEWIS, A.M., M.D.
Amiate ^rinxigal.
ISAAC N. CARLETON, M.A.
feiljus. w
De. DIO LEWIS,
Physical Culture, Anatomy, and Physiology.
ISAAC N. CARLETON, A.M.,
Ancient Classics and Natural Science.
THEODORE D. WELD,
Mental Philosophy, Ethics, Composition, and Critical Beading of
English Classics.
&
Mbs. HELEN C. LEWIS,
Dress, and the Duties of School-mother.
•
Mrs. LAURA T. CARLETON,
French and Mathematics.
Miss MARTHA A. DUDLEY,
*
English Studies.
Miss VIRGINIA F. TOWNSEND,
Rhetoric.
Prof. THOMAS F. LEONARD,
Elocution.
Prof. B. J. LANG,
Piano.
•
�FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
Prof. E. ZERDAHELYI,
Piano and Vocal Music.
Miss ELIZABETH P. PEABODY,
History.
Prof. J. B. TORRICELLI,
Italian and Spanish.
Prof. A. W. SPRAGUE,
t
Natural Philosophy.
Prof. JAMES C. SHARP,
Chemistry.
♦
Prof. PHILIP WILNER,
German.
Miss CHARLOTTE L. HULL,
Piano.
Miss LUCY SOLGER,
Piano.
Prof. GUILLAUME H. TALBOT,
French.
Prof. HENRY L. FETTEE,
Drawing, Crayon Drawing, Linear Perspective.
Rev. B. G. NORTHROP, A.M.,
Lecturer on Methods of Study.
5
�6
FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
NAMES OF PUPILS
DURING FIRST YEAR.
Cora H. Bearse................................
Fannie E. Bearse...........................
Nellie F. Krown................................
Lillie B. Chace................................
Flora C. Clark................................
Anna W. Dana................................
Julia Delano . *................................
Edith Edwards................................
Carrie F. Fish................................
Julia A. Floyd................................
Carrie L. Gerrish............................
Gertrude M. Hazard.......................
Emily K. Hill....................................
Clara M. Holmes...........................
Elizabeth C. Howland.......................
Lucy B. Hunt....................................
Ellen A. Ingersoll...........................
Carrie A. Ingols................................
Kate B. Judd.....................................
Florence F. Lewis...........................
Annie E. Lockey...........................
Elizlfeeth E. Ly man.......................
Harriet C. Peirce...........................
Mary E. Pendleton...........................
Hyannis, Mass.
Hyannis, Mass.
Middletown, Ct.
Valley Falls, R.I.
New York City, N.Y.
Portland, Me.
New Bedford, Mass.
Newburgh, N.Y. *
Fall River, Mass.
Medford, Mass.
Chelsea, Mass.
Newport, R.I.
Northampton, Mass.
Davenport, Iowa.
Leominster, Mass.
Northampton, Mass.
Canton, Ill.
Boston, Mass.
Northampton, Mass.
Buffalo, N.Y.
Leominster, Mass.
New Haven, Ct.
New Bedford, Mass.
Westerly, R.I.
\
�FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
Flora C. Plummer .
Evelyn A. L. Purdie
Anna P. Redfield .
Isabel M. Rotch. .
Mary E. Sawyer . .
Lydia C. Smith . .
Elizabeth L. Steele .
Anna M. Stone . .
M. Florence Usher .
Minnie V. Westall .
Lizzie J. Williams .
.
.
•
•
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
7
...................... Addison, Me.
...................... West Newton, Mass.
...................... Lexington, Mass.
, , . New Bedford, Mass.
...................... Dover, N.H.
...................... Provincetown, Mass.
...................... Farmington, Ct.
...................... Boston, Mass.
...................... West Medford, Mass.
...................... Fall River, Mass.
...................... Leavenworth, Kansas.
Total, 35.
REFERENCES.
The above young ladies and their friends, and the
prominent educators in and about Boston.
/
�8
FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES,
PLAN OF THE SCHOOL.
The general design of this school is to secure a sym
metrical development of body, mind, and heart; to give
due attention to physical and social culture, while impart
ing thorough instruction in Literature, Art, Science, and
Morals. The plan of the School embraces the following
The English Language. Elementary Sounds;
Spelling and Defining ; Reading ; Analysis of Wprds ;
Writing; Orthoepy; Elocution; Recitations; Grammar ;
Rhetoric ; Composition ; Critical Reading of Shakspeare,
Milton, and other Standard Classics.
-’■I- Mathematics. Arithmetic, mental and written;
Bookkeeping ; Algebra ; Geometry ; Trigonometry; Men
suration ; Surveying, and Conic Sections.
HI.
Physical Sciences.
Geography; Physiol
ogy, Anatomy, and Hygiene ; Natural Philosophy ;
Astronomy ; Chemistry ; Geology ; Physical Geogra
phy ; Botany ; Zoology, and the Philosophy of Natural
History.
IV. — Ancient and Modern Languages. Latin,
Greek, French, German, Spanish, and Italian.
V. History. Ancient and Modern $ Mythology ;
History of Civilization.
VI. —Music, Drawing, Painting.
VII. —Mental Philosophy, Ethics, Logic, Politi
cal Economy, Evidences of Christianity, Butler’s
Analogy.
�FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
9
®e%f^aohs.
A complete list of the Text-books which will be used
cannot now be given. Those already adopted are Eaton’s
Arithmetics, Greenleaf’s Algebras, Greenleaf’s Geometry,
Bradbury’s Trigonometry and Surveying, Youman’s
Chemistry, Hitchcock’s Anatomy and Physiology, Lewis’s
“Weak Lungs, and How to make them Strong,” Hows’
Shakespearian Reader, Hows’ Historical Shakespeare,
Haven’s Mental Philosophy, Harkness’s Latin Grammar,
Harkness’s Latin Reader, Hanson’s Latin Prose Book,
Frieze’s Virgil’s Æneid, Arnold’s Latin Prose Compo
sition, and Pinney and Arnoult’s French Grammar.
It will be for the advantage of pupils to purchase all
Text-books at the School, as they will be furnished there
at much less than retail prices.
âkljool
mù taxations.
The School year begins on the last Wednesday of
September, and ends on the first Wednesday of June.
It is divided into four quarters.
The vacations are Thanksgiving Day, Christmas week,
New-Year’s Day, the Twenty-second of February, Fast
Day, and May Day.
No pupils are received, except by special arrange
ment, who do not intend to remain till the close of the
School year ; nor are any deductions made on account of
absence or premature withdrawal from the school.
2
�10
FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
The Terms are $100 per quarter, payable in advance.
This amount defrays the expense of tuition in all branches
not on the list of “ Extra Charges ; ” also of board,
room-rent, heat, lights, daily riding, bathing, and, in case
of sickness, medical attendance and nùrsing.
The
charge for washing will be 75 cents per dozen.
The terms for pupils boarding at home are $32.50
per quarter.
Latin, Greek, and French, each .
Latin, with Greek or French . .
Instruction on the Piano, from $25
Instruction in Vocal Music,
25
Use of Piano, one hour each day .
. $10.00 per quarter.
. 17.50 ,,
,,
to 70.00 for 24 Lessons.
to 70.00
,,
,,
. . 2.00 per quarter.
The charge for Drawing, Painting, German, Italian,
and Spanish, will be extra ; and will vary according to
the number of pupils in the classes.
w
—♦—
It is earnestly desired that all pupils, who cannot
board at home, should reside in the family of the Princi
pal. The absorbing purpose of Dr. Lewis in the
establishment of this school was to furnish thè best
possible conditions for acquiring a complete education,
in the true and broad sense of the term. These condi
tions can be secured only by the most watchful attention
to diet, sleep, dress, ventilation, bathing, and recreation,
as well as to qualifications of teachers, and methods of
�FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
H
instruction. Such attention the head of a family can
obviously best give. Moreover, a wise, cheerful, loving
home-nurture is indispensable to the most rapid and har
monious development of the entire being.
Each pupil is requested to come furnished with rubber
boots, umbrella, a napkin-ring, and suitable clothing for *
the changing seasons ; every article being distinctly
marked with the name of the. owner in full.
It is expected that each pupil will attend church at
least once every sabbath. Places of worship can be
selected by parents, or by the young ladies, according to
denominational preferences; but these should be made
known to the Principal, on entering the school, that
satisfactory arrangements may be made for conveyance
and seats. There will be a small charge for pew-rent.
Young ladies in the family will enjoy facilities for
taking regularly warm and cold baths, under the care of
efficient and skilful attendants.
Pupils from a distance can remain in the family of
the Principal during the Summer vacation ; or, if it be
desired, can travel under suitable escort.
^oration Hub ^uilbrags.
The location of the “Lexington House” is most
favorable for school purposes. It stands on historic
ground, and is the chief architectural ornament of a
quiet village’, two hundred feet above the level of the sea,
and remarkable for its healthfulness and good morals.
Around it, on all sides, lies an open country, picturesque
in beauty, and threaded by delightful rides and walks.
�12
FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
Though thus rural and retired, Lexington is yet
within easy reach of several cities ; Boston being but ten
miles distant, and connected directly by railroad. The
house itself, as is well known to many, is commodious
and elegant. It contains more than a hundred rooms,
beside a spacious hall for gymnastics and social gather
ings. The rooms are large and well-ventilated; and are,
most of them, so situated as to receive daily the direct
rays of the sun.
—♦—
Ipljgsxral Otat.
It is the special and earnest aim of this School to give
Physical Culture a just and honorable place in its
course of instruction. American girls, especially of the
higher classes, are very many of them pale, nervous, and
fragile, with stooping shoulders, weak spines, and narrow
chests. Such, in studying under the ordinary and fash
ionable systems of education, greatly imperil their physi
cal well-being, compromise their enjoyment of life, and
often break down altogether in the midst of their labors.
Keenly do fine and sensitive natures suffer when high
hopes of usefulness, and bright anticipations of happi
ness, are thus blighted in the springtime of life ; but
such premature decay and suffering are only penalties for
violating law. If the claims of the body be wholly
disregarded, or too entirely subordinated to intellectual
cultivation, failure and disappointment are inevitable.
But let the early training of our youth be broad and
symmetrical, physiological and philosophical, and even
delicate girls may endure hard study, and thrive upon it.
We are resolved, therefore, to insist upon such a style
of life in our School as shall give to the body strength,
�FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
13
endurance, and grace; and help each one of our gradu
ates to go forth with “ a sound mind in a sound body.”
To carry out this purpose, we shall rely upon the
following means: —
I. — Regular and thorough instruction in Anatomy and
Physiology, with frequent familiar lectures on practical
hygiene, and constant attention to the personal regimen
of pupils.
II. — The careful practice, from two to four half-hours
each day, of the New Gymnastics; and exercises of the
Swedish Movement Cure, in the case of any who may
need special treatment.
III. — Plain and nutritious food, such as shall best
conduce to the healthy growth of muscle and brain.
IV. —Fixed hours for rising and retiring, so arranged
as to secure for all, regular and abundant sleep.
V. — Baths, both warm and cold.
VI. — Regular morning and evening walks, with daily
rides in favorable weather; recreations in the open air;
together with a great variety of in-door sports and amuse
ments.
VII. — A physiological dress, such as shall properly
protect the body without hindering its growth, deforming
its beauty, or interfering with any of its vital functions.
—♦—
(Kkmtnfarg anb (Komnum §tebi?s.
These will be faithfully taught, by experienced and
conscientious teachers. Great care will be taken to fix
firmly in the minds of pupils the rudimental principles
of learning; to acquaint them with the best methods of
study, and to assist them in forming habits of observa
tion and studiousness.
�14
FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
The founder of this School is determined that it shall
be second to none of its class in facilities for acquiring a
liberal and polished culture, as well as a solid and whole
some education. Hence he has made ample provisions
for thorough instruction in the Ancient Classics, knowing
that, as a means of mental culture, they hold a high
position, and one which no other branches of study can
completely fill. At this day, no young lady can lay claim
to a finished, and hardly even to a fashionable, education,
who has not some knowledge, at least, of the Latin lan
guage and literature. In the classical course, earnest
effort will be made to ascertain and follow the best
method of instruction ; and to win pupils, if possible, to
an appreciative and loving study of those rich treasures
of thought, which, as they glow in their original casket of
burnished words, are like “apples of gold in pictures
of silver.” Mr. Carleton, who will direct this depart
ment, was for several years instructor of Latin and
Greek in Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass.
—0—
^lenfsl snb floral ^Ijilosoplrg.
Shakespeare, next to the Bible, is our best model of
idiomatic English, and staunchest bulwark of the grand
old Saxon. It furnishes the amplest and most varied
means for elocutionary culture, containing, as it does, the
highest incentives to natural and forcible expression. It
induces habits of critical analysis, a terse, graceful style,
a keen discrimination, separating the dross of strained
fancies, pragmatic conceits, and tinselled word-painting,
from the gold of a sterling literature. Though the diffi-
�FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
15
cullies of the study often tax to the uttermost the powers
of the pupil, yet such is the interest excited, that each
knotty point proves a magnet to draw out her best think
ing, and a premium to pay her for it. In a word,
believing Shakespeare without a peer, not only as a poet,
but as a thinker, a philosopher, a logician, though untram
melled by the mechanism of logic, and as the most
acute and profound mental analyst that has ever threaded
the mazes of human nature, we regard the critical study
and analysis of his works as indispensable to the com
pleteness of a liberal culture. We prize it not mainly
as a discipline to unfold the sesthetic elements alone, but
as a quickener of the whole mind; a general educational
force; a normal stimulant to all the faculties ; rousing
the inert, developing the latent, and giving symmetry and
equipoise to the whole. Theodore D. Weld, for many
years principal of the Eagleswood School in New Jersey,
will have charge of this department, and will also give
instruction in mental and moral science.
—♦—
fjhiarg.
This branch of study will be under the care of Miss
Elizabeth P. Peabody, a lady well known throughout
our country as an authoress and teacher.
The pupils of this school will enjoy rare facilities for
acquiring a practical and critical knowledge of the
French language. Prof. Talbot is a native of France,
and is the author'of several French instruction books.
�16 * FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
For this important department, it has been our aim to
secure the very best instructors in Boston ; and we
are happy to announce that our corps of music teachers
will include Prof. B. J. Lang, and E. Zerdahelyi.
Prof. Zerdahelyi, a Hungarian by birth, is one of
the most brilliant pianists in our country. He is a
friend and pupil of Liszt, and to him this great mastei’
has dedicated one of his celebrated compositions. We
feel confident that our School offers unsurpassed advan- •«
tages for the study of music to pupils of every degree
of advancement.
—♦—
Miss Virginia F. Townsend, editress of “Arthur’s
Magazine,” will give instruction in Rhetoric and BellesLettres.
—♦—
io parents.
Dress. — Neatness, good taste, and simplicity — the
natural expression of good sense, modesty, and refine
ment — eminently befit school days ; while ambition of
fashionable display, — the paroxysms of a mind weak,
ill-balanced, and essentially vulgar, — disturbs all educa
tional processes, and represses the higher aspirations.
Pocket-money. — Significant words ! rife with temp
tations to omniverous repletion between meals, and
painfully suggestive of its inevitable effects, — acidity,
sallowness, pimples, disturbed sleep, and bad breath.
Pandora’s box ! full of headaches and other aches,
�FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
17
nauseas and vertigoes; necessitating the excuse, “not
well,” when called for the-»morning walk; rife with
artificial wants, unscholarly ways, late rising, tardiness,
absence, discreditable recitations, and imperilled char
acter. Few attain honorable distinction at school who
have not been withheld by thoughtful parents from the
manifold temptations of much pocket-money.
Visiting. — Visits to friends, during term-time, unsettle
the mind, break in upon habits of study, the regularity of
lessons, and general school order ; multiply the burdens
of teachers ; excite the discontent of classes, whose
members are absent ; lower their tone, and impede their
progress. They generally disqualify for earnest study,
and often necessitate imperfect lessons for days after
resuming the school routine. For these reasons, leave of
absence should never be asked except in emergencies that
cannot be provided against ; and then not through the
pupils, but directly of the Principal. A little forecast
during vacation will obviate the necessity of calling pupils
away from school to replenish their wardrobes, or to visit
the family dentist.
Finally, we earnestly invoke the co-operation of
parents and guardians, both in these special regards, and
in our daily and earnest effort to do worthily the teacher’s
work.
3
�18
FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
I
OUR FIRST YEAR.
After many years’ anxious thought and preparation,
this School was opened on the first of October, 1864.
As an important innovation was to be made, it was
thought best to limit the number of pupils. Thirty was
announced as the maximum number. The School was
full. The young ladies ranged, from twelve to twentythree years of age. The average was seventeen. The
families represented in the School are among the most
intelligent in New England. Intellectually and morally,
our pupils were all we could ask; physically, they were
much below the average.
Accustomed to teach gymanstics among those who,
living at home, indulged the fashionable errors of dress,
diet, sleep, bathing, &c., Dr. Lewis had never compre
hended the possibilities in physical culture. Retiring at
an early hour ; sleeping in large, well-ventilated rooms ;
visiting a plain, nutritious table at proper intervals ; bath
ing frequently under the guidance of intelligent assistants;
wearing a physiological dress ; and spending several hours
a day in the open air, — these concomitants added far
more than had been anticipated to the results of the gym
nastic training. The general development may be infer
red, when it is stated, that, about the upper part of the
chest, the average enlargement was two and three-quarter
�FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
19
inches. In the physical training of this school, lean girls
increased in flesh, while the fleshy ones became thinner
and more active.
We are well satisfied that the common opinion con
cerning excessive brain-work in our schools is an error;
but that our girls, even, may double their intellectual
acquisitions, provided their exercise, bathing, diet, sleep,
and other*physiological conditions, be rightly managed.
�20
FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
NOTICES OF THE P11ESS.
From, the, “ Zion's Herald."
A New School. — Dr. Did Lewis, long identified with the
cause of physical education, and whose system of light gymnastics
has been adopted in nearly all the schools, seminaries, and colleges
of the United States, and to some extent in Great Britain, has
established a Seminary for young ladies at Lexington, Mass.
This School was opened last October, after many years of
careful preparation. The buildings purchased for this purpose are
truly admirable. They are very large, sunny, airy, and happily
arranged. The halls for gymnastic exercises, social gatherings,
and other purposes, are large. Lexington is more than two
hundred feet above the sea, free from fogs, and famous for its
healthfulness.
The first School year has just closed with a two days’ examina
tion, which was attended by many well known friends of education.
The gymnastic exercises were something wonderful. Many of the
young ladies came as invalids, but closed the year with a remark
able development of muscular activity and endurance. Some who
began as invalids, ended the year by frequently walking ten or
twelve miles. The muscular roundness, grace of movement, and
queenly bearing that pervaded the whole School excited general
attention.
The results of this training, as reflected in the intellectual
accomplishments, elicited the warmest praise from gentlemen who
attended the examination to determine, in the interests of educa
tion, the influence of thorough physical training upon intellectual
progress. A well known gentleman, a graduate of Harvard, de
clared that he had never heard such fine recitations in Latin, not
even in Harvard College. Another eminent teacher warmly
declared that he had never heard the intellectual exercises of this
school excelled. Indeed, the theory entertained by all thinkers in
regard to the intimate relation between a sound, vigorous body,
and a vigorous, healthy mind, has received, in the results of the
first year’s training of this School, a striking illustration.
�FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
21
We learn that not less than twenty-one teachers have been
engaged for next year; and we confidently believe that the School
will rise into a grand success, and contribute not a little to inaugu
rate a new era in female education.
--- ♦—
Hon. J. M. Usher, in the "Nation."
An Interesting Occasion. — It was our pleasure to attend
the first anniversary of Dr. Dio Lewis’s School for Young Ladies,
on the 30th and 31st ult. This School is situated in the pleasant
and quiet village of Lexington, one of the healthiest locations in
New England. The mathematical and classical departments were
conducted by I. N. Carleton, A.M. The young ladies exhibited
great thoroughness in the principles involved, almost unequalled
at any similar examination that it has been our privilege to attend
in public or private schools. After being questioned by tlieir’
teacher, until it would seem they had fully explained all the funda
mental truths, they were interrogated by several gentlemen of
high scholarly attainments. They answered in a prompt and
happy manner, which was pleasing to witness, giving great satis
faction to the individuals who questioned, and reflecting great
credit upon their estimable teacher.
The classes in Mental Philosophy and Shakespeare were di
rected by Theodore D. Weld. The recitation in Mental Philoso
phy was exceedingly interesting; they had evidently cultivated
habits of thought, and power to discriminate upon the philosophy
of mind as distinguished from that of matter. Mr. Weld’s intelli
gent manner of teaching Shakespeare, which originated with him
self, rendered it peculiarly attractive. The young ladies evidently
appreciated their teacher’s refined, critical taste, his perfect com
mand of language, and fine conversational powers.
If departed beings are permitted to revisit earth, may we not
hope that Horace Mann, and a host of other bright spirits, pioneers
in the cause of intellectual progress, were present, rejoicing with
us, that at last one has been raised up who has founded and per
fected that system of Physical Education which they deemed of
such vital .importance, but which has remained for Dr. Lewis to
accomplish, thus completing and rounding that idea of true educa
tion which combines both Mental and Physical Culture.
�22
FAMILY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
From, the, “ Massachusetts Teacher."
We had the pleasure of being present at a portion of the ex
ercises of the first commencement of Dr. Dio Lewis’s School at
Lexington. We found there some thirty or more energetic young
ladies, gathered from some of the most intelligent families of New
England, becomingly attired in a style which admitted of freedom
in the use of their limbs, and all showing such physical activity
and power of endurance as we had never before witnessed in a
young ladies’ school.
The gymnastic exercises were admirable.
The examinations of the classes in various departments of study
were full and fair. A large part of the questions were put by
gentlemen who happened to be present. The classes sustained
themselves well, some of them with rare ability. The examina
tions in Shakespeare, Intellectual Philosophy, and Latin, would
have done credit to any high school in the Commonwealth.
. We are glad to see that there is at least one ladies’ school in
this region, which really combines thorough physical, with thor
ough intellectual training.
Notices from the English Papers of M. Zerdahelyi, one of our
music teachers.
As M. Zerdahelyi is mostly unknown to the American people,
it is thought best to print some brief notices of his performances in
England. The “ Musical World,” London, says of his performan
ces at a concert in that city : —
“ The strength and firmness of his hand enabled him to produce
a great body of tone, full and mellow without harshness ; his finger
is uncommonly rapid; in the most florid passages and brilliant
flights, his articulation is always clear and distinct; and (what is a
great beauty in piano-forte playing) his unerring certainty gives an
air of facility even to the greatest difficulties of execution.”
The “ Staffordshire Sentinel ” says : —
“ The combined softness, and yet amazing power of tone, the
sweet melody alike of his louder and of his gentler notes, the
feather finish displayed in all, and the extraordinary and unerring
rapidity with which he ran his fingers over the keys of his instru-
�FA MTT.Y SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.
23
ment, were heard with wonder and delight; and showed that in Mr.
Zerdahelyi we have a gentleman amongst us who is second to
none as a pianist.”
The “Leicester Journal ” says of Zerdahelyi’s performances:
“And then there was the absolutely wonderful playing of M.
Zerdahelyi on the piano-forte; playing which converted an old
instrument into an absolutely vocal being, whose marvellous
execution made the listener forget that its best days had long
passed away, and long for another opportunity of hearing the
performer under more favorable circumstances.”
��
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
Catalogue and circular of Dr. Dio Lewis's Family School for Young Ladies, Lexington, Mass.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Boston, USA
Collation: 23 p. ; 20 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
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Press of John Wilson and Son
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1865
Identifier
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G5680
Creator
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[Unknown]
Subject
The topic of the resource
Women
Education
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Catalogue and circular of Dr. Dio Lewis's Family School for Young Ladies, Lexington, Mass.), 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>
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
Conway Tracts
Education of Girls
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PDF Text
Text
����������������
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
Leith Hill and Wotton House
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 9 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Extensively annotated in ink (dated April 1871) and includes a letter folded and tipped inside the front cover headed 'Leith Hill and Wotton'.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1871
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CT72
G5679
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
[Unknown]
Subject
The topic of the resource
Architecture
History
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 (Leith Hill and Wotton House), 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
Architecture
Conway Tracts
De Vere Wotton House
Leith Hill
Surrey