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Flowers of Freethought (Second Series)

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Title: Flowers of Freethought (Second Series)

Author: G. W. Foote


        
Release date: October 6, 2009 [eBook #30203]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLOWERS OF FREETHOUGHT (SECOND SERIES) ***

FLOWERS OF FREETHOUGHT

(SECOND SERIES)


By G. W. Foote


London: B. Forder,

28 Stonecutter Street, B.O.

1884




CONTENTS:

     PREFACE.
     LUSCIOUS PIETY.
     THE JEWISH SABBATH.
     PROFESSOR STOKES ON IMMORTALITY.
     PAUL BERT *
     BRADLAUGH'S GHOST.
     CHRIST AND BROTHERHOOD.
     THE SONS OF GOD.
     MELCHIZEDEK.
     S'W'ELP ME GOD.
     INFIDEL HOMES. *
     ARE ATHEISTS CRUEL? *
     ARE ATHEISTS WICKED?
     RAIN DOCTORS.
     PIOUS PUERILITIES.
     "THUS SAITH THE LORD."
     BELIEVE OR BE DAMNED.
     CHRISTIAN CHARITY.
     RELIGION AND MONEY.
     CLOTTED BOSH.
     LORD BACON ON ATHEISM.
     CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY. *
     CHRIST UP TO DATE.
     SECULARISM AND CHRISTIANITY.
     ALTAR AND THRONE. *
     MARTIN LUTHER.
     THE PRAISE OF FOLLY.
     HAPPY IN HELL.
     THE ACT OF GOD.
     KEIR HARDIE ON CHRIST.
     BLESSED BE YE POOR.
     CONVERTED INFIDELS.
     MRS. BOOTH'S GHOST.
     TALMAGE ON THE BIBLE.
     MRS. BESANT ON DEATH AND AFTER.
     THE POETS AND LIBERAL THEOLOGY. *
     CHRISTIANITY AND LABOR. *
     AN EASTER EGG FOR CHRISTIANS. *
     DUELLING. *
     DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN. *
     SMIRCHING A HERO.
     KIT MARLOWE AND JESUS CHRIST. *
     JEHOVAH THE RIPPER. *
     THE PARSONS' LIVING WAGE. *
     DID BRADLAUGH BACKSLIDE? *
     FREDERIC HARRISON ON ATHEISM. *
     SAVE THE BIBLE! *
     FORGIVE AND FORGET. *
     THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM.
     THE GREAT GHOSTS *
     ATHEISM AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. *
     PIGOTTISM. *
     JESUS AT THE DERBY. *
     ATHEIST MURDERERS. *
     A RELIGION FOR EUNUCHS. *
     ROSE-WATER RELIGION. *




PREFACE.

A little more than a year ago I put forth a collection of articles under
the title of _Flowers of Freethought_. The little volume met with a
favorable reception, and I now issue a Second Series. By a "favorable
reception" I only mean that the volume found purchasers, and, it is to
be presumed, readers; which is, after all, the one thing a writer
needs to regard as of any real importance. Certainly the volume was not
praised, nor recommended, nor even noticed, in the public journals. The
time is not yet ripe for the ordinary reviewers to so much as mention a
book of that character. Not that I charge the said reviewers with
being concerned in a deliberate conspiracy of silence against such
productions. They have to earn their livings, and often very humbly,
despite the autocratic airs they give themselves; they serve under
editors, who serve under proprietors, who in turn consult the tastes,
the intelligence, and the prejudices of their respective customers. And
thus it is, I conceive, that thorough-going Freethought--at least
if written in a popular style and published at a popular price--is
generally treated with a silence, which, in some cases, is far from a
symptom of contempt.

I am aware that my writing is sometimes objected to on grounds of
"taste." But it is a curious thing that this objection has invariably
been raised by one of two classes of persons:--either those who are
hostile to my opinions, and therefore unlikely to be impartial judges
in this respect; or those who, while sharing my opinions, are fond of
temporising, and rather anxious to obtain the smiles---not to say the
rewards--of Orthodoxy. The advice of the one class is suspicious; that
of the other is contemptible.

As I said in the former Preface, I refrain from personalities, which
is all that can be demanded of a fair controversialist. There are
sentences, and perhaps passages, in this volume, that some people will
not like; but they are about things that _I_ do not like. A propagandist
should use his pen as a weapon rather than a fencing foil. At any
rate, my style is my own; it is copied from no model, or set of models;
although I confess to a predilection for the old forthright literature
of England, before "fine writing" was invented, or "parliamentary"
eloquence came into vogue, or writers were anxious to propitiate an
imaginary critic at their elbows--the composite ghost, as it were, of
all the ignoramuses, prigs, bigots, fools, and cowards on this planet.

It only remains to say that the articles in this volume are of the same
general character as those in its predecessor. They were written at
different intervals during the past ten or twelve years. I have not
attempted to classify them. In several instances I have appended
the date of first publication, as it seemed necessary, or at least
convenient.

G. W. FOOTE

June, 1894.




LUSCIOUS PIETY.

Lord Tennyson's poem, _Locksley Hall: Sixty Years After_, is severe on
what he evidently regards as the pornographic tendency of our age.

     "Feed the budding rose of boyhood with the drainage of your sewer;
     Send the drain into the fountain, lest the stream should issue pure.
     Set the maiden fancies wallowing in the troughs of Zolaism,--
     Forward, forward, ay and backward, downward too into the abysm."

There is some truth in this, but far more exaggeration. English novels,
however they may trifle and sentimentalise with the passion of love,
are as a rule exceedingly "proper." For the most part, in fact, they
deliberately ignore all the unconventional aspects of that passion, and
you might read a thousand of their productions without suspecting, if
you did not already know the fact, that it had any connexion with our
physical nature. The men and women, youths and maidens, of Thackeray,
Dickens, and George Eliot, to say nothing of minor writers, are true
enough to nature in other respects, but in all sexual relations they
are mere simulacri. George Meredith is our only novelist who triumphs
in this region. As Mr. Lowell has noticed, there is a fine natural
atmosphere of sex in his books. Without the obtrusion of physiology,
which is out of place in art, his human beings are clearly divided
into males and females, thinking, feeling and acting according to their
sexual characteristics. Other novelists simply shirk the whole problem
of sex, and are satisfied with calling their personages John or Mary as
the one safe method of indicating to what gender they belong. This is
how the English public is pleased to have it; in this manner it feeds
the gross hypocrisy which is its constant bane. Hence the shock of
surprise, and even of disgust, felt by the ordinary Englishman when he
takes up a novel by a great French master of fiction, who thinks that
Art, as well as Science, should deal frankly and courageously with every
great problem of life. "Shocking!" cry the English when the veil of
mystery is lifted. Yet the purism is only on the lips. We are not a whit
more virtuous than those plain-spoken foreigners; for, after all, facts
exist, however we blink them, and ignorance and innocence are entirely
different things.

The great French masters of fiction do not write merely for boys and
girls. They believe that other literature is required besides that which
is fit for bread-and-butter misses. Yet they are not therefore vicious.
They paint nature as it is, idealising without distorting, leaving the
moral to convey itself, as it inevitably will. As James Thomson said,
"Do you dread that the Satyr will be preferred to Hyperion, when both
stand imaged in clear light before us?"

Zolaism, or rather what Lord Tennyson means by the word--for _Nana_ is
a great and terrible book with all its vice--is not the chief danger to
the morals of English youth. Long before the majority of them learn to
read French with ease, there is a book put into the hands of all for
indiscriminate reading. It is the Bible. In the pages of that book they
find the lowest animal functions called by their vulgar names; frequent
references, and sometimes very brutal ones, to the generative organs;
and stories of lust, adultery, sodomy and incest, that might raise
blushes in a brothel; while in the Song of Solomon they will find the
most passionate eroticism, decked out with the most voluptuous imagery.
The "Zolaism" of the Bible is far more pernicious than the "Zolaism"
of French fiction. The one comes seductively, with an air of piety, and
authoritatively, with an air of divinity; while the other shows that
selfishness and excess lead to demoralisation and death.

There is in fact, and all history attests it, a close connexion between
religion and sensuality. No student of human nature need be surprised at
Louis XV. falling on his knees in prayer after debauching a young virgin
in the _Parc aux Cerfs_. Nor is there anything abnormal in Count Cenci,
in Shelley's play, soliciting God's aid in the pollution of his own
daughter. It is said that American camp-meetings often wound up in a
saturnalia. The Hallelujah lasses sing with especial fervor "Safe in the
arms of Jesus." How many Christian maidens are moved by the promptings
of their sexual nature when they adore the figure of their nearly naked
Savior on a cross! The very nuns, who take vows of perpetual chastity,
become spouses of Christ; and the hysterical fervor with which they
frequently worship their divine bridegroom, shows that when Nature is
thrust out of the door she comes in at the window.

Catholic books of devotion for the use of women and young people are
also full of thinly-veiled sensuality, and there are indications that
this abomination is spreading in the "higher" religious circles in
Protestant England, where the loathsome confessional is being introduced
in other than Catholic churches. Paul Bert, in his _Morale des
Jesuites_, gave a choice specimen of this class of literature, or rather
such extracts as he dared publish in a volume bearing his honored name.
It is a prayer in rhyme extending to eleven pages, and occurs in a book
by Father Huguet, designed for "the dear daughters of Holy Mary." As
Paul Bert says, "every mother would fling it away with horror if Arthur
were substituted for Jesus." _Vive Jesus_ is the constant refrain
of this pious song. We give a sample or two in French with a literal
English translation.

     Vive Jesus, de qui l'amour Me va consumant unit et jour.
     Vive Jesus, vive sa force, Vive son agreable amore.
     Vive Jesus, quand il m'enivre D'un douceur qui me fait vivre.
     Vive Jesus, lorsque sa bouche D'un baiser amoureux me touche.
     Vive Jesus, grand il m'appelle Ma soeur, ma colombe, ma belle.
     Vive Jesus, quand sa bonte, Me reduit dans la nudite;
     Vive Jesns, quand ses blandices Me comblent de chastes delices.

"Live Jesus, whose love consumes me night and night.--Live Jesus,
live his force, live his agreeable attraction.--Live Jesus, when he
intoxicates me with a sweetness that gives me life.--Live Jesus, when
his mouth touches me with an amorous kiss.--Live Jesus, when he calls
me, my sister, my dove, my lovely one.--Live Jesus, when his good
pleasure reduces me to nudity; live Jesus, when his blandishments fill
me with chaste delight."--And this erotic stuff is for the use of
girls!!




THE JEWISH SABBATH.

Dr. Edersheim's _Life of Jesus_ contains some interesting appendices on
Jewish beliefs and ceremonies. One of these deals with the Sabbath
laws of the chosen people, and we propose to cull from it a few curious
illustrations of Jewish superstitions.

The Mishnic tractate _Sabbath_ stands at the head of twelve tractates on
festivals. Another tractate treats of "commixtures," which are intended
to make the Sabbath laws more bearable. The Jerusalem Talmud devotes
64 folio columns, and the Babylon Talmud 156 double folio pages, to
the serious discussion of the most minute and senseless regulations. It
would be difficult to understand how any persons but maniacs or idiots
could have concocted such elaborate imbecilities, if we did not remember
that the priests of every religion have always bestowed their ability
and leisure on matters of no earthly interest to anyone but themselves.

Travelling on the Sabbath was strictly forbidden, except for a distance
of two thousand cubits (1,000 yards) from one's residence. Yet if a
man deposited food for two meals on the Friday at the boundary of that
"journey," the spot became his dwelling-place, and he might do another
two thousand cubits, without incurring 'God's wrath. If a Jewish
traveller arrived at a place just as the Sabbath commenced, he could
only remove from his beasts of burden such objects as it was lawful to
handle on the Lord's Day. He might also loosen their gear and let them
tumble down of themselves, but stabling them was out of all question.

The Rabbis exercised their ingenuity on what was the smallest weight
that constituted "a burden." This was fixed at "a dried fig," but it was
a moot point whether the law was violated if half a fig were carried
at two different times on the same Sabbath. The standard measure for
forbidden food was the size of an olive. If a man swallowed forbidden
food of the size of half an olive, and vomited it, and then ate another
piece of the same size, he would be guilty because his palate had tasted
food to the prohibited degree.

Throwing up an object, and catching it with the same hand was an
undoubted sin; but it was a nice question whether he was guilty if he
caught it with, the other hand. Rain water might be caught and carried
away, but if the rain had run down from a wall the act was sinful.
Overtaken by the Sabbath with fruit in his hand, stretched out from
one "place" to another, the orthodox Jew would have to drop it, since
shifting his full hand from one locality to another was carrying a
burden.

Nothing could be killed on the Sabbath, not even insects. Speaking
of the Christian monks, Jortin says that "Some of them, out of
mortification, would not catch or kill the vermin which devoured them;
in which they far surpassed the Jews, who only spared them upon the
Sabbath day." This interesting fact is supported by the authority of
a Kabbi, who is quoted in Latin to the effect that cracking a flea and
killing a camel are equally guilty. Dr. Edersheim evidently refers to
the same authority in a footnote. On the whole this regulation against
the killing of vermin must have been very irksome, and if the fleas
were aware of it, they and the Jews must have had a lively time on
the Sabbath. We cannot ascertain whether the prohibition extended to
_scratching_. If it did, curses not loud but deep must have ascended
to the throne of the Eternal; and if, as Jesus says, every idle word is
written down in the great book of heaven, the recording angel must have
had anything but a holiday on the day of rest.

No work was allowed on the Sabbath. Even roasting and baking had to
be stopped directly the holy period began, unless a crust was already
formed, in which case the cooking might be finished. Nothing was to be
sent, even by a heathen, unless it would reach its destination before
the Sabbath. Kabbi Gamaliel was careful to send his linen to the wash
three days before the Sabbath, so as to avoid anything that might lead
to Sabbath labor.

The Sabbath lamp was supposed to have been ordained on Mount Sinai. To
extinguish it was a breach of the Sabbath law, but it might be put out
from fear of Gentiles, robbers, or evil spirits, or in order that
a person dangerously ill might go to sleep. Such concessions were
obviously made by the Rabbis, as a means of accommodating their
religious laws to the absolute necessities of secular life. They
compensated themselves, however, by hinting that twofold guilt was
incurred if, in blowing out one candle, its flame lit another.

According to the Mosaic law, there was to be no fire on the Sabbath.
Food might be kept warm, however, said the Rabbis, by wrapping it in
non-conductors. The sin to be avoided was _increasing_ the heat. Eggs
might not be cooked, even in sand heated by the sun, nor might hot water
be poured on cold. It was unlawful to put a vessel to catch the drops of
oil that might fall from the lamp, but one might be put there to catch
the sparks. Another concession to secular necessity! A father might also
take his child in his arms, even if the child held a stone, although it
was carrying things on the Sabbath; but this privilege was not yielded
without a great deal of discussion.

Care should be taken that no article of apparel was taken off and
carried. Fortunately Palestine is not a land of showers and sudden
changes of temperature, or the Rabbis would have had to discuss the
umbrella and overcoat question. Women were forbidden to wear necklaces,
rings, or pins, on the Sabbath. Nose-rings are mentioned in the
regulations, and the fact throws light on the social condition of the
times. Women were also forbidden to look in the glass on the Sabbath,
lest they should spy a white hair, and perform the sinful labor of
pulling it out. Shoes might not be scraped with a knife, except perhaps
with the back, but they might be touched up with oil or water. If a
sandal tie broke on the Sabbath, the question of what should be done was
so serious and profound that the Rabbis were never able to settle it.
A plaster might be worn to keep a wound from getting worse, but not to
make it better. False teeth were absolutely prohibited, for they might
fall out, and replacing them involved labor. Elderly persons with a full
artificial set must have cut a sorry figure on the Sabbath, plump-faced
Mrs. Isaacs resolving herself periodically into a toothless hag.

Plucking a blade of grass was sinful. Spitting in a handkerchief was
allowed by one Rabbi, but the whole tribe were at loggerheads about
spitting on the ground. Cutting one's hair or nails was a mortal sin.
In case of fire on the Sabbath, the utensils needed on that day might
be saved, and as much clothes as was absolutely necessary. This severe
regulation was modified by a fiction. A man might put on a dress, save
it, go back and put on another, and so on _ad infinitum_. Watering the
cattle might be done by the Gentile, like lighting a lamp, the fiction
being that he did it for himself and not for the Jew.

Assistance might be given to an animal about to have young, or to a
woman in childbirth--which are further concessions to property
and humanity. All might be done on the Sabbath, too, needful for
circumcision. On the other hand, bones might not be set, nor emetics
given, nor any medical or surgical operation performed. Wine, oil, and
bread might be borrowed, however, and one's upper garment left in pledge
for it. No doubt it was found impossible to keep the Jews absolutely
from pawnbroking even on the Sabbath, Another concession was made for
the dead. Their bodies might be laid out, washed, and anointed. Priests
of every creed are obliged to give way on such points, or life would
become intolerable, and their victims would revolt in sheer despair.

Nature knew nothing of the Jewish laws, and hens had the perversity to
lay eggs on the Sabbath. Such eggs were unlawful eating; yet if the hen
had been kept, not for laying but for fattening, the egg might be eaten
as a part of her economy that had accidentally fallen off!

Such were the puerilities of the Sabbath Law among the Jews. The Old
Testament is directly responsible for all of them. It laid down the
basic principle, and the Rabbis simply developed it, with as much
natural logic as a tree grows up from its roots. Our Sabbatarians of
to-day are slaves to the ignorance and follies of the semi-barbarous
inhabitants of ancient Palestine; men who believed that God had
posteriors, and exhibited them; men who kept slaves and harems; men
who were notorious for their superstition, their bigotry, and their
fanaticism; men who believed that the infinite God rested after six
days' work, and ordered all his creatures to regard the day on which he
recruited his strength as holy. Surely it is time to fling aside their
antiquated rubbish, and arrange our periods of rest and recreation
according to the dictates of science and common sense.

The origin of a periodical day of rest from labor is simple and natural.
It has everywhere been placed under the sanction of religion, but it
arose from secular necessity. In the nomadic state, when men had little
to do at ordinary times except watching their flocks and herds, the days
passed in monotonous succession. Life was never laborious, and as human
energies were not taxed there was no need for a period of recuperation,
We may therefore rest assured that no Sabbatarian law was ever given
by Moses to the Jews in the wilderness. Such a law first appears in
a higher stage of civilisation. When nomadic tribes settle down to
agriculture and are welded into nations, chiefly by defensive war
against predatory barbarians; above all, when slavery is introduced and
masses of men are compelled to build and manufacture; the ruling and
propertied classes soon perceive that a day of rest is absolutely
requisite. Without it the laborer wears out too rapidly--like the
horse, the ox, or any other beast of burden. The day is therefore
decreed for economic reasons. It is only placed under the sanction of
religion because, in a certain stage of human development, there is no
other sanction available. Every change in social organisation has then
to be enforced as an edict of the gods. This is carried out by the
priests, who have unquestioned authority over the multitude, and who,
so long as their own privileges and emoluments are secured, are always
ready to guard the interest of the temporal powers.

Such was the origin of the day of rest in Egypt, Assyria, and elsewhere.
But it was lost sight of in the course of time, even by the ruling
classes themselves; and the theological fiction of a divine ordinance
became the universally accepted explanation. This fiction is still
current in Christendom. We are gravely asked to believe that men would
work themselves to death, and civilised nations commit economical
suicide, if they were not taught that a day of rest was commanded by
Jehovah amidst the lightnings and thunders of Sinai. In the same way,
we are asked to believe that theft and murder would be popular pastimes
without the restraints of the supernatural decalogue fabled to have
been received by Moses. As a matter of fact, the law against theft arose
because men object to be robbed, and the law against murder because they
object to be assassinated. Superstition does not invent social laws; it
merely throws around them the glamor of a supernatural authority.

Priests have a manifest interest in maintaining this glamor. Accordingly
we find that Nonconformists as well as Churchmen claim the day of rest
as the Lord's Day--although its very name of Sunday betrays its Pagan
origin. It is not merely a day of rest, they tell us; it is also a day
of devotion. Labor is to be laid aside in order that the people may
worship God. The physical benefit of the institution is not denied; on
the contrary, now that Democracy is decisively triumphing, the people
are assured that Sunday can only be maintained under a religious
sanction. In other words, religion and priests are as indispensable as
ever to the welfare of mankind.

This theological fiction should be peremptorily dismissed. Whatever
service it once rendered has been counterbalanced by its mischiefs. The
rude laborer of former times--the slave or the serf--only wanted rest
from toil. He had no conception of anything higher. But circumstances
have changed. The laborer of to-day aspires to share in the highest
blessings of civilisation. His hours of daily work are shortened. The
rest he requires he can obtain in bed. What he needs on Sunday is not
_rest_, but _change_; true re-creation of his nature; and this is denied
him by the laws that are based upon the very theological fiction which
is pretended to be his most faithful friend.

The working classes at present are simply humbugged by the Churches. The
day of rest is secure enough without lies or fictions. What the masses
want is an opportunity to make use of it. Now this cannot be done if
all rest on the same day. A minority must work on Sunday, and take their
rest on some other day of the week. And really, when the nonsensical
solemnity of Sunday is gone, any other day would be equally eligible.

Parsons work on Sunday; so do their servants, and all who are engaged
about their gospel-shops. Why should it be so hard then for a railway
servant, a museum attendant, an art-gallery curator, or a librarian to
work on Sunday? Let them rest some other day of the week as the parson
does. They would be happy if they could have his "off days" even at the
price of "Sunday labor."

Churches and chapels do not attract so many people as they did. There is
every reason why priestly Protective laws should be broken down. It is a
poor alternative to offer a working man--the church or the public-house;
and they are now trying to shut the public-house and make it church or
nothing. Other people should be consulted as well as mystery-men and
their followers. Let us have freedom. Let the dwellers in crowded city
streets, who work all day in close factories, be taken at cheap rates to
the country or the seaside. Let them see the grand sweep of the sky.
Let them feel the spring of the turf under their feet. Let them look out
over the sea--the highway between continents---and take something of its
power and poetry into their blood and brain. During the winter, or
in summer if they feel inclined, let them visit the institutions of
culture, behold the beautiful works of dead artists, study the relics of
dead generations, feel the links that bind the past to the present, and
imagine the links that will bind the present to the future. Let their
pulses be stirred with noble music. Let the Sunday be their great day
of freedom, culture, and humanity. As "God's Day" it is wasted. We must
rescue it from the priests and make it "Man's Day."




PROFESSOR STOKES ON IMMORTALITY.

The orthodox world makes much of Sir G. G. Stokes, baronet, M.P., and
President of the Royal Society. It is so grateful to find a scientific
man who is naively a Christian. Many of the species are avowed, or,
at any rate, strongly suspected unbelievers; while others, who make a
profession of Christianity, are careful to explain that they hold
it with certain reservations, being Christians in general, but not
Christians in particular. Sir G. G. Stokes, however, is as orthodox as
any conventicle could desire. Perhaps it was for this reason that he was
selected to deliver one of the courses of Gilford Lectures. He would
be a sort of set-off against the rationalism of Max Muller and the
scepticism of Tylor. What other reason, indeed, could have inspired
his selection? He has not the slightest reputation as a theologian or
philosopher, and one of the leading reviews, in noticing his Clifford
Lectures, expresses a mild but decided wonder at his appearing in such a
character.

Let the Gifford Lectures, however, pass--for the present. We propose to
deal with an earlier effort of Sir G. G. Stokes. Nearly two years ago
he delivered a lecture at the Finsbury Polytechnic on the Immortality of
the Soul. It was reported in the _Family Churchman_, and reprinted after
revision as a twopenny pamphlet, with the first title of "I." This is
the only pointed thing about it. The lecture is about "I," or, as Sir G.
G. Stokes, might say, "All my I."

Sir G. G. Stokes begins by promising to confine himself to the question,
"What is it that personal identity depends upon and consists in?" But
he does not fulfil the promise. After some jejune remarks upon this
question he drops into theology and winds up with a little sermon.

"I cannot pretend that I am able to answer that question myself," says
Sir G. G. Stokes. Why, then, did he not leave it alone? "But I will
endeavor," he says, "to place before you some thoughts bearing in that
direction which I have found helpful to myself, and which possibly may
be of some help to some of you."

Sir G. G. Stokes does not mention David Hume, but that great thinker
pointed out, with his habitual force and clearness, that personal
identity depends upon memory. Our scientific lecturer, with the
theological twist, says it "involves memory," which implies a certain
reservation. Yet he abstains from elucidating the point; and as it is
the most important one in the discussion, he must be held guilty of
short-sightedness or timidity.

Memory involves thought, says Sir G. G. Stokes. This is true; in fact,
it is a truism. And what, he asks, does thought depend on? "To a certain
extent" he allows that it "depends upon the condition of the brain." But
during the present life, at any rate, it depends _absolutely_ on the
condition of the brain Look at the head of an idiot, and then at the
head of Shakespeare; is not the brain difference the obvious cause of
the mental difference? Are there not diseases of the brain that affect
thought in a definite manner? Is not thought excited by stimulants, and
deadened or even annihilated by narcotics? Is it not entirely suspended
in healthy sleep? Will not a man of genius become an imbecile if his
brain softens? Will not a philosopher rave like a drunken fishfag if he
suffers from brain inflammation? Is not thought most vigorous when
the brain is mature? And is it not weakest in the first and second
childishness of youth and old age?

The dependence of thought on the brain is so obvious, it is so
demonstrable by the logical methods of difference and concomitant
variations, that whoever disputes it, or only allows it "to a certain
extent," is bound to assign another definite cause. A _definite_
cause, we say; not a fanciful or speculative one, which is perfectly
hypothetical.

Sir G. G. Stokes does not do this. He tries to make good his reservation
by a negative criticism of "the materialistic hypothesis." He takes the
case of a man who, while going up a ladder and speaking, was knocked
on the head by a falling brickbat. For two days he was unconscious, and
"when he came to, he completed the sentence that he had been speaking
when he was struck." Now, at first sight, this seems a strong
confirmation of "the materialistic hypothesis." A shock to the brain
stopped its action and suspended consciousness. Automatic animal
functions went on, but there was no perception, thought, or feeling.

When the effects of the shock wore off the brain resumed its action, and
began at the very point where it left off. But this last circumstance
is seized by Sir G. G. Stokes as "a difficulty." _Some_ change must have
gone on, he says, during the two days the man lay unconscious; there
must have been _some_ waste of tissues, _some_ change in the brain; yet
"there is no trace of this change in the joining together of the thought
after the interval of unconsciousness with the thought before."

Our reply is a simple one. In the first place, Sir G. G. Stokes is
making much of a single fact, which he has not weighed, in despite of a
host of other facts, not in the least questionable, and all pointing in
one direction. In the second place, he does not tell us _what_ change
went on in the man's brain. May it not have been, at least with respect
to the cerebrum, quite infinitesimal? In the third place, Sir G.
G. Stokes should be aware that all brain changes do not affect
consciousness, even in the normal state. Lastly, consciousness depends
upon perception; and if all the avenues of sensation were closed, and
the alteration of brain tissues were exceedingly slight (as it would be
if the brain were not working), it is nothing very extraordinary that
the man should resume thought and volition at the point where they
ceased.

The second "difficulty" raised, rather than discovered, by Sir G. G.
Stokes is this. "I am conscious of a power which I call will," he says,
"and when I hold up my hand I can choose whether I shall move it to the
right or to the left."

"Now, according to the materialistic hypothesis, everything about me is
determined simply by the ponderable molecules which constitute my body
acting simply and solely according to the very same laws according to
which matter destitute of life might act. Well then, if we follow up
this supposition to its full extent, we are obliged to suppose that,
whether I move at this particular moment of time--4.25, on the 30th of
March--my hand to the right or to the left, was determined by something
inevitable, something which could not have been otherwise, and must have
come down, in fact, from my ancestors."

Now Sir G. G. Stokes "confesses" that this seems to him to "fly
completely in the face of common sense." And so it does, if by
"determined" he means that _somebody_ settled the whole business, down
to the minutest details, a thousand, a million, or a thousand million
years ago. But if "determined" simply means that every phenomenon
is _caused_, in the philosophical--not the theological or
metaphysical--meaning of the word, it does not fly in the face of common
sense at all. Little as Sir G. G. Stokes may like it, he _does_--body
and brain, thought and feeling, volition and taste--come down from his
ancestors. That is the reason why he is an Englishman, a Whig, a bit of
a Philistine, an orthodox Christian, and a very indifferent reasoner.

After all, does not this objection come with an ill grace from a
Christian Theist? Has Sir G. G. Stokes never read St. Paul? Has he
never heard of John Calvin and Martin Luther? Has he never read the
Thirty-nine Articles of his own Church? All those authorities teach
predestination; which, indeed, logically follows the doctrine of an
all-wise and all-powerful God. Yet here is Sir G. G. Stokes, a Church of
England man, objecting to the "materialistic hypothesis" on the ground
that it makes things "determined."

Professor Stokes next refers to "something about us" which we call
"will." This he proceeds to treat as an independent force like magnetism
or electricity. What he says about it shows him to be a perfect tyro
in psychology. At the end of the section he exclaims, "So much for that
theory"--the materialistic hypothesis; and we are tempted to exclaim,
"So much for Sir G. G. Stokes."

Next comes the "psychic theory," according to which "man consists of
body and soul." Here the Professor shows a lucid interval. He points out
that if the soul is really hampered by the body, it is strange that a
blow on a man's head should "retard the action of his thoughts." He also
remarks that, according to this theory, the "blow has only got to be
somewhat harder till the head is smashed altogether, and the man is
killed, and then the thoughts are rendered more active than ever."
Which, as our old friend Euclid observes, is absurd.

Professor Stokes dismisses the "body and soul" theory as "open to very
grave objections." He admits that it is held by "many persons belonging
to the religious world," nevertheless he does not think it can be
"deduced from Scripture," to which he goes on to appeal.

Now we beg our Christian friends to notice this. Here is the great Sir
G. Gr. Stokes they make so much of actually throwing up the sponge.
Instead of showing _scientifically_ that man has a soul, and thus
cheering their drooping spirits, he leaves the platform, mounts the
pulpit, and plays the part of a theologian. In fact he can tell them no
more than the ordinary parson who sticks his nose between the pages of
his Bible.

With regard to the Scripture, it will afford very little comfort to
the Christians to know that Professor Stokes does not believe that it
teaches the immortality of the soul. He supports this view by citing
the authority of the present Bishop of Durham and "another bishop," who
regard the doctrine of an immortal soul as no part of a Christian faith.
Had Sir G. G. Stokes been better read in the literature of his own
Church, he might have adduced a number of other divines, including
Bishop Courtenay and Archbishop Whately, who took the same position.

"Well, what do we learn from Scripture?" inquires Professor Stokes.
And this is his answer. "In scripture," he says, "man is spoken of
as consisting of body, soul, and spirit." And in Sir G. G. Stokes's
opinion it is the third article which "lies at the very basis of life."
It is _spirit_, "the interaction of which with the material organism
produced a living being" in the Garden of Eden.

Here we pause to interject a reflection. Ordinary Christians believe in
body and soul; Professor Stokes believes in body, soul, and spirit.
That is, he says man is made up of three instead of two. But in step
our Theosophic friends, who pile on four more, and tell us that man is
sevenfold. Now who is right! According to their own account they
are _all_ right. But this is impossible. In our opinion they are all
_wrong_. Their theories are imaginary. All they _know_ anything of is
the human body.

But to return to Professor Stokes's excursion in the region of Biblical
exegesis. Never have we met with anything more puerile and absurd. He
finds "soul" and "spirit" in the English Bible, and he supposes them
to be different things. He even builds up a fanciful theory on the fact
that the expression "living soul" occurs in the New Testament, but he
does not remember the expression "living spirit." Hence he concludes
that _spirit_ is not "living" but "life-making."

Surely a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and Professor Stokes is
a capital illustration of this truth. We get "soul" and "spirit" in the
New Testament, as well as in the Old, simply because both words are used
indifferently by the English translators. This is owing to the composite
character of the English language. One word comes from the Greek, the
other from the Latin, and both mean exactly the same thing. The Hebrew
_ruach_, the (Greek _pneuma_), and the Latin _spiritus_, all originally
meant _the breath_; and as breathing was the most obvious function of
life, persisting even in the deepest sleep, it came to signify _life_,
when that general conception was reached; and when the idea of soul or
spirit was reached, the same word was used to denote it. All this is
shown clearly enough by Tylor, and is corroborated by the more orthodox
Max Muller; so that Professor Stokes has fallen into a quagmire, made
of the dirt of ignorance and a little water of knowledge, and has made
himself a laughing-stock to everyone who possesses a decent acquaintance
with the subject.

Whatever it is that Professor Stokes thinks a man has apart from his
body, he does not believe it to be immortal. The immortality of the soul
and a future life, he says, are "two totally different things." The one
he thinks "incorrect," the other he regards as guaranteed by Scripture;
in other words, by Paul, who begins his exposition by exclaiming "Thou
fool!" and ends it by showing his own folly. The apostle's nonsense
about the seed that cannot quicken unless it die, was laughed at by the
African chief in Sir Samuel Baker's narrative. The unsophisticated negro
said that if the seed did die it would never come to anything. And he
was right, and Paul was wrong.

There _is_ a resurrection, however, for Paul says so, and his teaching
is inspired, though his logic is faulty. Men will rise from the dead
_somehow_, and with "a body of some kind." Not the body we have now.
Oh dear no! Great men have thought so, but it is an "incredible
supposition." Being a chemist, Sir G. G. Stokes sees the ineffable
absurdity, the physical and logical impossibility, of this orthodox
conception, which was taught by Mr. Spurgeon without the slightest
misgiving, and upheld by the teaching of the Church of England.

But what is it that _will_ rise from the dead, and get joined with
some sort of inconceivable body? We have shown that Professor Stokes's
distinction between "soul" and "spirit" is fanciful. It will not do for
him, then, to say it is the "spirit" that will rise, for he denies,
or does not believe, the renewed life of the "soul." Here he leaves us
totally in the dark. Perhaps what will rise is "a sort of a something"
that will get joined to "a sort of a body" and live in "a sort of a
somewhere."

"What," asks Professor Stokes, "is man's condition between death and the
resurrection?" He admits that the teaching of Scripture on this point is
"exceedingly meagre." He inclines to think that "the intermediate state
is one of unconsciousness," something like when we faint, and thus, as
there will be no perceptions in the interval, though it be millions of
years, we shall, "when we breathe our last," be brought "immediately
face to face with our final account to receive our final destiny."
And if our final destiny depends in any way on how we have used our
reasoning powers, Professor Stokes will be consigned to a warm corner in
an excessively high-temperatured establishment.

After all, Professor Stokes admits that all he has said, or can say,
gives no "evidence" of a future life. What _is_ the evidence then?
"Well," he says, "the great evidence which we as Christians accept is,
that there is One Who has passed already before us from the one state of
being to the other." The resurrection of Jesus Christ, he tells us, is
"an historical event," and is supported by an enormous amount of most
weighty evidence. But he does not give us a single ounce of it. The only
argument he has for a future state is advanced on the last page, and he
retires at the moment he has an opportunity of proving his case.

Professor Stokes says: "I fear I have occupied your time too long. We
fear so too." "These are dark subjects," he adds. True, and he has not
illuminated them. There is positively no evidence of a future life. The
belief is a conjecture, and we must die to prove or disprove it.




PAUL BERT *

Victor Hugo and Gambetta have their places in the Pantheon of history,
and Death is beginning his harvest among the second rank of the founders
of the present French Republic, Every one of these men was an earnest
Freethinker as well as a staunch Republican. Paul Bert, who has just
died at Tonquin at the post of duty, was one of the band of patriots
who gathered round Gambetta in his Titanic organisation of the National
Defence; a band from which has come most of those who have since been
distinguished in the public life of France. After the close of the war,
Paul Bert became a member of the National Assembly, in which he has
held his seat through all political changes. As a man of science he was
eminent and far-shining, being not a mere _doctrinaire_ but a practical
experimentalist whose researches were of the highest interest and
importance. His _Manual of Elementary Science_, which has been recently
translated into English, is in use in nearly every French school, and
there is no other volume of the kind that can be compared with it for
a moment. As a friend and promoter of general education, Paul Bert was
without a rival. He strove in season and out of season to raise the
standard of instruction, to elevate the status of teachers, and to free
them from the galling tyranny of priests. It is not too much to say
that Paul Bert was the idol of nine-tenths of the schoolmasters and
schoolmistresses in the French rural districts, where the evils he
helped to remove had been most rampant.

     * November 21, 1886.

This distinguished Frenchman is now dead at the comparatively early age
of fifty-three. Although his illness was so serious, the French premier
telegraphed that it would be impolitic for the Resident General to leave
Tonquin suddenly. Thereupon Paul Bert replied, "You are right; it is
better to die at my post than for me to quit Tonquin at the present
moment." That dispatch was the last he was able to send himself.
Subsequent dispatches came, from other hands, and at last the news
arrived that Paul Bert was dead. The French premier announced the fact
from the Tribune in a broken voice and amid profound silence. "The
Chamber loses in him," said M. de Freycinet, "one of its eminent
members, science an illustrious representative, France one of her
most devoted children." The next day the Chamber, by an overwhelming
majority, voted a State funeral and a pension of £400 a year to Mdme.
Bert, with reversion to her children. The first vote was strenuously
opposed by Monseigneur Freppel, Bishop of Angers, on the ground that
the deceased was an inveterate enemy of religion, but the bishop was
ignominiously defeated by 379 votes against 45. That is probably a fair
test of the relative strength of Freethought and Christianity among
educated men in France.

Monseigneur Freppel was right Paul Bert was an inveterate enemy of
religion. He was a militant Atheist, who believed that the highest
service you can render to mankind is to free them from superstition. No
wonder the Church hated him. At a famous banquet he proposed the toast,
"The eradication of the two phylloxeras--the phylloxera of the vine
and the phylloxera of the Church." His handbook on the Morality of
the Jesuits was a frightful exposure of the duplicity and rascality of
priestcraft. About twelve months before Grambetta's death, that great
statesman took the chair at one of Paul Bert's atheistical lectures. It
was a bold thing to do, but Gambetta was a bold man. The great statesman
did a bolder thing still when he took office. He scandalised the
Christian world by appointing his atheistic friend Paul Bert as Minister
of Public Instruction and Public Worship. Surely this was a piece
of irony worthy the assiduous student of Rabelais and Voltaire.
"Clericalism is the enemy," said Gambetta. Paul Bert accepted the
battle-cry, but he did not content himself with shouting. He labored to
place education on a basis which would make it a citadel of Freethought.
The Tory _Standard_ allows that he "laid the bases of military education
in the schools and _lycees_" that he "first dispensed the pupils in
State educational establishments from the obligation of attending
any religious service, or belonging to any class in which religious
instruction was given," and that he first organised the higher education
of girls.

Paul Bert was a typical Frenchman and an illustrious Atheist. What do
the clergy make of this phenomenon? Here is a man, trained by his
father to hate priests, brought up from his cradle in an atmosphere of
Freethought, and owing nothing to the Church; yet he becomes an
eminent scientist, a fervid patriot, an educational reformer, a leading
statesman, a tender husband and father, and a warm friend of the best
men, of his time; and on his decease the State gives him a public
funeral and provides for his widow and children. The man, we repeat, was
an open, nay a militant Atheist; and again we ask, What do the clergy
make of this phenomenon?

During his lifetime Darwin was the _bete noir_ of the clergy. They hated
him with a perfect and very natural hatred, for his scientific doctrines
were revolutionary, and if he was right they and their Bible were
certainly wrong. The Black Army denounced his impious teachings from
thousands of pulpits. With some of them he was the Great Beast, with
others Antichrist himself. And they were all the madder because he never
took the slightest notice of them, but treated them with the silent
contempt which a master of the hounds bestows on the village curs
who bark at his horse's heels. Yet, strange to say, when Darwin died,
instead of being buried in some quiet Kentish cemetery or churchyard, he
was actually sepulchred in Westminster Abbey. Having fought the living
Darwin tooth and nail, the clergy quietly appropriated the dead Darwin.
The living, thinking and working man was a damnable heretic, hated of
God and his priests, but his corpse was a very good Christian, and it
was buried in a temple of the very faith he had undermined. Darwin, with
all his gravity, is said to have loved a joke, and really this was so
good a joke that he might almost have grinned at it in his coffin.

By and bye, the great naturalist may figure as an ardent devotee of the
creed he rejected. The clergy are hypocritical and base enough--as a
body we mean--to claim Darwin himself now they have secured his corpse.
Who knows that, in another twenty years, the verger or even the Dean of
Westminster Abbey, in showing visitors through the place, may not say
before a certain tomb, "Here is the last resting-place of that eminent
Christian, Charles Darwin. There was a little misunderstanding between
him and the clergy while he lived, but it has all passed away like a
mist, and he is now accounted one of the chief pillars of the Church"?

What the clergy have done in the concrete with Darwin they have done in
the abstract with his predecessors in the great struggle between light
and darkness. What are all the lying stories about Infidel Death-Beds
but conversions of corpses? Great heretics, whose scepticism was
unshaken in their lifetime by all the parson-power of the age, were
easily converted in their tombs. What the clergy said about them was
true, or why didn't they get up and contradict? All the world over
silence gives consent, and if the dead man did not enter a _caveat_, who
could complain if the men of God declared that he finished up in their
faith?

Recently the clergy have been converting another corpse, but this time
it has been able to protest by proxy, and the swindle has been exposed
all along the line. Paul Bert, the great French Freethinker, died at
Tonquin. The nation voted him a state funeral, and his body was
shipped to France. The voyage was a long one, and it gave the pious
an opportunity of leisurely converting the corpse, especially as Paul
Bert's family were all on board the steamer. Accordingly a report, which
we printed and commented on at the time, appeared in all the papers that
the atheistic Resident General had sent for a Catholic bishop on his
death-bed and taken the sacrament. Thousands of Christians believed the
story at once, the wish being father to the thought. They never stopped
to inquire whether the report was true. Why indeed should they? They
took the whole of their religion on trust, and of course they could
easily dispense with proof in so small a matter as an infidel's
conversion. Some of them were quite hilarious. "Ha," they exclaimed,
"what do you Freethinkers say now?" And with the childish simplicity of
their kind, when they were told that the story was in all probability
false, they replied, "Why, isn't it in print?"

Now that the fraud is exposed very few of the journals that printed it
will publish the contradiction. We may be sure that the story of Paul
Bert's conversion will be devoutly believed by thousands of Christians,
and will probably be worked up in pious tracts for the spiritual
edification of superstitious sheep. Give a lie a day's start, said
Cobbett, and it is half round the world before you can overtake it. Give
it a week's start, and if it happens to be a lie that suits the popular
taste, you may give up all hope of overtaking it at all. First in
the way of exposure was a telegram from the Papal Nuncio at Lisbon on
December 29, saying that his name had been improperly used. He was not
the author of the telegram that had been fathered on him, and he knew
nothing of Paul Bert's conversion. A day or two later the ship conveying
the heretic's corpse arrived at the Suez Canal. Madame Bert heard of
the preposterous story of her husband's conversion, and she immediately
telegraphed that it was absolutely and entirely false. Madame Bert, who
is a highly accomplished woman, is a Freethinker herself, and she is too
proud of her husband's reputation to lose a moment in contradicting a
miserable libel on his courage and sincerity.

Before dropping the pen, we take the opportunity of saying a few words
on Madame Adam's article on Paul Bert in the _Contemporary Review_. She
is an able woman, but not a philosopher, and she labors under the
craze of thinking that she is a great force in European politics. She
confesses that she hated Paul Bert, and she betrays that her aversion
originated in pique and jealousy. We do not wish to be ungallant, but
Gambetta had good reasons for preferring Paul Bert to Juliette Lambert,
although the lady is ludicrously wrong in saying that "it was to Paul
Bert that Gambetta owed all the formulae of his scientific politics."
She forgets that Gambetta's speeches before Paul Bert became his friend
are in print. She also ignores the fact that Gambetta was a stedfast
Freethinker from his college days, and was never infected with that
sentimental religiosity from which she assumes that Paul Bert perverted
him. Certainly he was incapable of being moved by the hackneyed
platitudes about science and religion that form the prelude of Madame
Adam's article, and seem borrowed from one of M. Oaro's lectures. Nor
did he need Paul Bert to tell him, after the terrible struggle of 1877,
that Clericalism was the enemy. Still less, if that were possible,
did he require Paul Bert or any other man to tell him that France
imperatively needed education free from priestcraft. Madame Adam is so
anxious to deal Paul Bert a stab in the dark that she confuses the most
obvious facts. Gambetta and he fought against clericalism, and labored
for secular education, because they were both Freethinkers as well as
Republicans. In venting her spite, and reciting her own witticisms, she
fails to see the force of her own admissions. This is what she writes of
a very momentous occasion:

"I saw Gambetta at Saint Cloud the Sunday after the mishap at
Obaronne. He had just been taking the chair at the Chateau d'Eau, at an
anti-clerical meeting of Paul Bert's.

"He came in a little late to dinner. Some dozen of us were already
assembled on a flight of steps at the bottom of the garden when he
appeared. He spied me at once [a woman speaks!] across the green lawn
and a vase of tall fuchsias, and called out in his sonorous voice:

"'Admirable! superb! extraordinary! Never since Voltaire has such an
irrefutable indictment been brought against the clergy! And what a
style! What consummate art!'

"'And what bad policy!' said a great banker who was with us, in a low
voice, to me [note the me].

"Gambetta went on as he approached us:

"'And such an immense success--beyond anything that could be imagined!
Ten thousand enthusiastic cheers!'

"'The ten thousand and first would not have come from me,' I said [said
I], as we greeted one another.

"'You yourself,' cried Gambetta, 'you yourself, I tell you, would
have been carried away; if not by the ideas, by the genius lavished in
propounding them.'"

Yes, and notwithstanding Madame Adam's "religion" and the great banker's
"policy," Gambetta and Paul Bert were in the right, and miles above
their heads.

Following Madame Adam's lively nonsense, the _Echo_ says that Paul Bert
tried to set up another Inquisition. "In France," says this organ of
Christian Radicalism, "they strive to prevent a parent from giving his
child a religious education." They do nothing of the kind. They simply
insist that the religious education shall not be given in the national
school. Every French parent is free to give religious instruction to his
children at home, and there are still thousands of State priests who can
supply his deficiencies in that respect. Meanwhile national education
progresses in good earnest. The Empire left nearly half the population
unable to write their names. Now the Republic educates every boy and
girl, and Mr. Matthew Arnold assures us that the French schools are
among the best in Europe, while the sale of good books is prodigious.
Gambetta and Paul Bert worked, fought, and sacrificed for this, and they
cannot be robbed of the glory.




BRADLAUGH'S GHOST.

Directly after Charles Bradlaugh's death we expressed a belief that the
Christians would concoct stories about him as soon as it was safe to do
so. It took some time to concoct and circulate the pious narratives of
the deathbeds of Voltaire and Thomas Paine, and a proper interval is
necessary in the case of the great Iconoclast. Already, however, the
more superstitious and fanatical Christians are shaking their heads and
muttering that "Bradlaugh must have said something when he was dying,
only they wouldn't allow believers in his sick room to hear it." By
and bye the more cunning and unscrupulous will come to the aid of
their weaker brethren, and a circumstantial story will be circulated in
Sunday-schools and Christian meetings.

We are well aware that his daughter took every precaution. She has
the signed testimony of the nurses, that her father never spoke on the
subject of religion during his last illness. But this may not avail,
for similar precautions are admitted to have been taken in the cases
of Voltaire and Paine, and, in despite of this, the Christian traducers
have forged the testimony of imaginary interlopers, whose word cannot
be disproved, as they never existed outside the creative fancy of these
liars for the glory of God.

It is quite a superstition that truth is always a match for falsehood.
George Eliot remarked that the human mind takes absurdity as asses chew
thistles. We add that it swallows falsehood as a cat laps milk. It was
humorously said the other day by Colonel Ingersoll that "The truth is
the weakest thing in the world. It always comes into the arena naked,
and there it meets a healthy young lie in complete armor, and the result
is that the truth gets licked. One good, solid lie will knock out a
hundred truths." It has done so with respect to the death of Voltaire
and Paine, and it will do so with respect to the death of Charles
Bradlaugh.

Meanwhile the Spiritualists are having an innings. Charles Bradlaugh was
buried by his friends at Woking, but his ghost is said to have turned
up at Birmingham. It appears from a report in the _Medium and
Daybreak_ that Mr. Charles Gray, of 139 Pershore-road, being "sadly
sorrow-stricken by the passing away of a son," was "constrained to
remain at home" on the evening of May 31. A seance was arranged "with
a few friends," and of course a message was received from the dear
departed boy. This was conveyed through Mr. Russell, junior, whose
age is not stated. Then Mr. Reedman "was controlled to write by C.
Bradlaugh." Mr. Reedman wrote "in a perfectly unconscious state, and on
the departure of the influence was much surprised on being told of the
nature of the communication."

Mr. Reedman's surprise may have been great, but it scarcely equals our
own. One would imagine that if Charles Bradlaugh still lived, and were
able to communicate with people in this world, he would speak to his
beloved daughter, and to the friends who loved him with a deathless
affection. Why should he go all the way to Birmingham instead of doing
his first business in London? Why should he turn up at the house of Mr.
Gray? Why should he control the obscure Mr. Reedman? This behavior is
absolutely foreign to the character of Charles Bradlaugh. It was not one
of his weaknesses to beat about the bush. He went straight to his mark,
and found a way or made one, Death seems to change a man, if we may
believe the Spiritualists; but if it has altered Charles Bradlaugh's
character, it has effected a still more startling change in his
intellect and expression.

Here is a "correct copy" of Charles Bradlaugh's message to mankind, and
most of our readers will regard it as a very Brummagen communication:--

"As I am not to speak (so says the 'Warrior Chief'), I am to say in
writing, I have found a life beyond the grave that I did not wish for
nor believe in; but it is even so. My voice shall yet declare it. I have
to undo all, or nearly all, I have done, but I will not complain. My
mind is subdued, but I will be a man. It is a most glorious truth that
has now more clearly dawned upon my mind, that there is a grand and
noble purpose before all men, worth living for! May this be the dawn
of a new and glorious era of the spiritual life of your humble friend
Charles Bradlaugh!

"There is a God! There is a Divine principle. There is more in life
than we wot of, but vastly more in death! Oh! for a thousand tongues to
declare the truths which are now fast dawning upon my bewildered mind!
Death, the great leveller, need have no more terrors for us, for it has
been conquered by the Great Spirit, in giving us a never-ending life in
the glorious spheres of immortal bliss. O my friends! may I be permitted
to declare, more fully and fervently, the joys which fill my mind.
Language fails, no tongue can describe."

Our own impression is that Professor Huxley was justified in saying
that Spiritualism adds a new terror to death. Fancy the awful depth of
flaccid imbecility into which Charles Bradlaugh must have fallen, to
indulge in "ohs," and gasp out "glorious," "glorious," and talk of his
"subdued" and "bewildered" mind, and bid himself be "a man." It was
not thus that he spoke in the flesh. His language was manly, firm, and
restrained; his attitude was bold and self-reliant. After four months
in the "spirit world" he is positively trembling and drivelling! It is
enough to make the rugged Iconoclast turn in his grave. Messrs. Gray and
Reedman may rely upon it that Charles Bradlaugh is _not_ able to enter
No. 139 Pershore-road, Birmingham; if he were, he would descend in swift
wrath upon his silly traducers, who have put their own inanity into
his mouth, making the great, virile Atheist talk like a little, flabby
Spiritualist after an orgie of ginger-beer.

Anyone may see at a glance that the style of this message, from
beginning to end, is not Charles Brad-laugh's. _Whose_ style it is we
cannot say. We do not pretend to fathom the arcana of Spiritualism. It
may be Mr. Reedmam's, it may be another's. If it be Mr. Reedman's,
he must have been guilty of fraud or the victim of deception. Three
distinct hypotheses are possible. Either someone else produced or
concocted the message while he was in a foolish trance, or he wrote it
himself consciously, or he had been thinking of Charles Bradlaugh before
falling into the foolish trance and the message was due to unconscious
cerebration.

We forbear to analyse this wretched stuff, though we might show its
intrinsic absurdity and self-contradiction. One monstrous piece of
folly bestrides the rest like a colossus--"Your humble friend Charles
Bradlaugh." Shade of Uriah Heep! Charles Bradlaugh the "_humble_ friend"
of the illustrious Gray and Reedman! Think of it, Lord Halsbury; think
of it, Lord Randolph Churchill. The giant who fought you, and beat you,
in the law courts and in Parliament; the man whose face was a challenge;
the man who had the pride, without the malignity, of Lucifer; this
very man crawls into a Birmingham house, uninvited and unexpected,
and announces himself as the "_humble_ friend" of some pudding-headed
people, engaged in a fatuous occupation that makes one blush for one's
species.

Surely if Charles Bradlaugh's ghost is knocking about this planet,
having a mission to undo the work of his lifetime in the flesh, it
should begin the task in London. It was at the Hall of Science that
Charles Bradlaugh achieved his greatest triumphs as a public teacher,
and it is there that he should first attempt to undo his work, to
unteach his teaching, to disabuse the minds of his dupes. Of course we
shall be told that he must communicate through "mediums," and that the
medium must be "controlled" by Charles Bradlaugh's spirit; but to this
we reply that Charles Bradlaugh controlled men easily while he was "in
the flesh," and it is inconceivable that he has lost that old power if
he still survives.

On the whole, we think the Spiritist trick is worse than the malignity
of orthodox Christians. A lie about a man's death-bed ends there, and
consigning him to hell for his infidelity is only a pious wish that
cannot affect his fate. But getting hold of a man's ghost ("spirit"
they call it) after his death; making it turn up at public and private
sittings of obscure fools; setting it jabbering all the flatulent
nonsense of its manipulators; and using it in this manner until it
has to be dismissed for a newer, more fashionable, and more profitable
shadow; all this is so hideous and revolting that the ordinary Christian
lies about infidels seem almost a compliment in comparison.

This Gray-Reedman story is probably the beginning of a long and wretched
business. The Philistines are upon thee, Charles Bradlaugh! They will
harness thee in their mill, and make thee grind their grist; and fools
that were not worth a moment of thy time while thou livedst will command
thee by the hour; and Sludge the Medium will use thy great name to puff
his obscene vanity and swell his obscener gains. This is the worst
of all thy trials, for thou canst not defend thyself; and, in thy
helplessness, fools and pigmies cut capers over thy grave.




CHRIST AND BROTHERHOOD.

Clergymen are supposed to be educated; that is, they go to college
before taking holy orders, and study what are called "the classics"--the
masterpieces of Greek and Roman literature. Theology is not enough to
fit them for the pulpit. They must also be steeped in "the humanities,"
It is felt that they would never find all they require in the Bible.
They find a great deal of it in Pagan writings, and as these are unknown
to the people, it is safe for the clergy to work the best "heathen"
ideas into their interpretation of the Christian Scriptures. There was a
time, indeed, when Christian preachers were fond of references to Pagan
poets and philosophers. The people were so ignorant, and such implicit
believers, that it could be done with security. But now the case is
altered. The people are beginning to "smell a rat." It dawns upon
them that if so many fine things were said by those old Pagans--not to
mention the still more ancient teaching of India and Egypt--Christianity
can hardly merit such epithets as "unique" and "wonderful." Accordingly
it is becoming the fashion in clerical circles to avoid those old
Pagans, or else to damn them all in a sweeping condemnation. Some indeed
go to the length of declaring--or at least of insinuating--that all the
real truth and goodness there is in the world began with the Christian
era. This extreme is affected by the Evangelical school, and is carried
to its highest pitch of exaggeration by such shallow and reckless
preachers as the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes. Soon after the _Daily
Chronicle_ correspondence on "Is Christianity Played Out?" this reverend
gentleman, and most accomplished "perverter of the truth," screamed from
the platform of St. James's Hall that women and children were regarded
as slaves and nuisances before the time of Christ; which is either a
deliberate falsehood, or a gross misreading both of history and of human
nature. Mr. Hughes has since been gathering his energies for a bolder
effort in the same direction. He now publishes in the _Methodist Times_
his latest piece of recklessness or fatuity. It is a sermon on "The
Solidarity of Mankind," and is really an exhibition of the solidity of
Mr. Hughes's impudence. It required nothing but "face," as Corbett used
to call it, to utter such monstrous nonsense in a sermon; it would need
a great deal more courage than Mr. Hughes possesses to utter it on any
platform where he could be answered and exposed.

Mr. Hughes believes in our "common humanity," and he traces it from "the
grand old gardener" (Tennyson). "We are all descended from Adam," he
says, "and related to one another." Now this is not true, even according
to the Bible; for when Cain fled into the land of Nod he took a wife
there, which clearly implies the existence of other people than the
descendants of Adam. But this is not the worst. Fancy a man at this time
of day--a burnin' an' a shinin' light to a' this place--gravely standing
up and solemnly telling three thousand people, most of whom we suppose
have been to school, that the legendary Adam of the book of Genesis was
really the father of the whole human race!

This common humanity is claimed by Mr. Hughes as "a purely Christian
conception." Yet he foolishly admits that "the Positivists in our
own day have strongly insisted on this great crowning truth which we
Christians have neglected." Nay, he states that when Kossuth appealed in
England on behalf of Hungary, he spoke in the name of the "solidarity"
of the human race. And why _solidarity_? Because the word had to be
taken from the French. And why from _the French_? "Because the French,"
Mr. Hughes says, "have risen to a loftier level of human brotherhood
than we." Indeed! Then what becomes of your "purely _Christian_
conception," when "infidel France" outshines "Christian England"? How is
it, too, you have to make the "shameful" confession that "we"--that is,
the Christians--took "nineteen centuries to find out the negro was a man
and therefore a brother"? You did not find it out, in fact, until
the eighteenth century--the century of Voltaire and Thomas Paine--the
century in which Freethought had spread so much, even in England, that
Bishop Butler in the Advertisement to his _Analogy_, dated May, 1736,
could say that "many persons" regarded Christianity as proved to be
"fictitious" to "all people of discernment," and thought that "nothing
remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule."
How is it your "Christian conceptions" took such a surprising time to be
understood? How is it they had to wait for realisation until the advent
of an age permeated with the spirit of scepticism and secular humanity?

Mr. Hughes is brave enough--in the absence of a critic--to start with
Jesus Christ as the first cosmopolitan. "He came of the Jewish stock,"
we are told, "and yet he had no trace of the Jew in him." Of course
not--in Christian sermons and Christian pictures, preached and painted
for non-Jewish, and indeed Jew-hating nations. But there is a very
decided "trace of the Jew in him" in the New Testament. To the Canaanite
woman he said, "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of
Israel." To the twelve he said, "Go not into the way of the Gentiles,
and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel." It was Paul who, finding he could
not make headway against the apostles who had known Jesus personally,
exclaimed, "Lo, we turn to the Gentiles." That exclamation was a turning
point. It was the first real step to such universalism as Christianity
has attained. No wonder, therefore, that Comte puts Paul instead of
Jesus into the Positivist calendar, as the real founder of Christianity.

Even in the case of St. Paul, it is perfectly idle to suppose that his
cosmopolitanism extended beyond the Roman empire. A little study and
reflection would show Mr. Hughes that the very fact of the Roman empire
was the secret of the cosmopolitanism. Moral conceptions follow in the
wake of political expansion. The morality of a tribe is tribal; that
of a nation is national; and national morality only developes into
international morality with the growth of international interests and
international communication. Now the Roman empire had broken up the
old nationalities, and with them their local religions. The human mind
broadened with its political and social horizon. And the result was
that a cosmopolitan sentiment in morals, and a universal conception in
religion, naturally spread throughout the territory which was dominated
by the Roman eagles. Christianity itself was at first a Jewish sect,
which developed into a cosmopolitan system precisely because the
national independence of the Jews had been broken up, and all the roads
of a great empire were open to the missionaries of a new faith.

But let us return to Mr. Hughes's statements. He tells us that the
solidarity of mankind was "revealed to the human race through St.
Paul"--which is a great slur upon Jesus Christ, and quite inconsistent
with what Mr. Hughes affirms of the Nazarene. It is also inconsistent
with the very language of St. Paul in that sermon of his to the
Athenians; for the great apostle, in enforcing his argument that all men
are God's children, actually reminds the Athenians that "certain also of
your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring."

Mr. Hughes goes on to say that "our common humanity" is "a perfectly new
idea." "Max Muller," he tells us, "says that there was no trace of it
until Christ came. It is a purely Christian conception." Professor Max
Muller, however, is not infallible. He sometimes panders to Christian
prejudices, and this is a case in point. What he says about "humanity"
is an etymological quibble. Certainly the Greeks knew nothing about it,
simply because they did not speak Latin. But they had an equivalent word
in _philanthropia_, which was in use in the time of Plato, four hundred
years before the birth of Christ.*

     * Mr. Hughes talks so much that he must have little time for
     reading. Every educated man, however, is supposed to be
     acquainted with Bacon's _Essays_, the thirteenth of which
     opens as follows:--"I take goodness in this sense, the
     affecting of the weal of men, which is that the Grecians
     called Philanthropia; and the word humanity (as it is used)
     is a little too light to express it." Bacon not only knew
     the antiquity of _Philanthropia_, but preferred it to the
     later and less weighty term so ignorantly celebrated by Mr.
     Hughes.

Max Muller or no Max Muller, we tell Mr. Hughes that he is either
reckless or ignorant in declaring that the idea of human brotherhood
owes its origin to Christ, Paul, or Christianity. To say nothing of
Buddha, whose ethics are wider than the ethics of Christ, and confining
ourselves to Greece and Rome, with the teaching of whose thinkers
Christianity comes into more direct comparison--it is easy enough to
prove that Mr. Hughes is in error, or worse. Four centuries before
Christ, when Socrates was asked on one occasion as to his country, he
replied, "I am a citizen of the world." Cicero, the great Roman
writer, in the century before Christ, uses the very word _caritas_,
which St. Paul borrowed in his fine and famous chapter in the first
of Corinthians. Cicero, and not St. Paul, was the first to pronounce
"charity" as the tie which unites the human race. And after picturing a
soul full of virtue, living in charity with its friends, and taking as
such all who are allied by nature, Cicero rose to a still loftier level.
"Moreover," he said, "let it not consider itself hedged in by the walls
of a single town, but acknowledge itself a citizen of the whole world,
as though one city." In another treatise he speaks of "fellowship with
the human race, charity, friendship, justice."

We defy Mr. Hughes to indicate a single cosmopolitan text in the New
Testament as strong, clear, and pointed as these sayings of Socrates and
Cicero--the one Greek, the other Roman, and both before Christ. Let him
ransack gospels, epistles, acts, and revelations, and produce the text
we call for.

From the time of Cicero--that is, from the time of Julius Caesar, and
the establishment of the Empire--the sentiment of brotherhood, the
idea of a common humanity, spread with certainty and rapidity, and is
reflected in the writings of the philosophers. The exclamation of the
Roman poet, "As a man, I regard nothing human as alien to me," which was
so heartily applauded by the auditory in the theatre, expressed a
growing and almost popular sentiment. The works of Seneca abound
in fine humanitarian passages, and it must be remembered that if the
Christians were tortured by Nero at Rome, it was by the same hand
that Seneca's life was cut short. "Wherever there is a man," said this
thinker, "there is an opportunity for a deed of kindness." He believed
in the natural equality of all men. Slaves were such through political
and social causes, and their masters were bidden to refrain from
ill-using them, not only because of the cruelty of such conduct, but
because of "the natural law common to all men," and because "he is of
the same nature as thyself." Seneca denounced the gladiatorial shows
as human butcheries. So mild, tolerant, humane, and equitable was his
teaching that the Christians of a later age were anxious to appropriate
him. Tertullian calls him "Our Seneca," and the facile scribes of the
new faith forged a correspondence between him and their own St. Paul.
One of Seneca's passages is a clear and beautiful statement of rational
altruism. "Nor can anyone live happily," he says, "who has regard to
himself alone, and uses everything for his own interests; thou must live
for thy neighbor, if thou wouldest live for thyself." Eighteen hundred
years afterwards Auguste Comte sublimated this principle into a motto
of his Religion of Humanity--_Vivre pour Autrui_, Live for Others. It is
also expressed more didactically by Ingersoll--"The way to be happy is
to make others so"--making duty and enjoyment go hand in hand.

Pliny, who corresponded with the emperor Trajan, and whose name is
familiar to the student of Christian Evidences, exhorted parents to take
a deep interest in the education of their children. He largely endowed
an institution in his native town of Como, for the assistance of the
children of the poor. His humanity was extended to slaves. He treated
his own with great kindness, allowing them to dispose of their own
earnings, and even to make wills. Of masters who had no regard for their
slaves, he said, "I do not know if they are great and wise; but one
thing I do know, they are not men." Dion Chrysostom, another Stoic,
plainly declared that slavery was an infringement of the natural
rights of men, who were all born for liberty; a dictum which cannot
be paralleled in any part of the New Testament. It must be admitted,
indeed, that Paul, in sending the slave Onesimus back to his master
Philemon, did bespeak humane and even brotherly treatment for the
runaway; but he bespoke it for him as a Christian, not simply as a man,
and uttered no single word in rebuke of the institution of slavery.

Plutarch's humanity was noble and tender. "The proper end of man," he
said, "is to love and to be loved." He regarded his slaves as inferior
members of his own family. How strong, yet how dignified, is his
condemnation of masters who sold their slaves when disabled by old age.
He protests that the fountain of goodness and humanity should never dry
up in a man. "For myself," he said, "I should never have the heart to
sell the ox which had long labored on my ground, and could no longer
work on account of old age, still less could I chase a slave from his
country, from the place where he has been nourished for so long,
and from the way of life to which he has been so long accustomed."
Sentiments like these were the natural precursors of the abolition of
slavery, as far as it could be abolished by moral considerations.

Epictetus, the great Stoic philosopher, who had himself been a slave,
taught the loftiest morality. Pascal admits that he was "one of the
philosophers of the world who have best understood the duty of man." He
disdained slavery from the point of view of the masters, as he abhorred
it from the point of view of the slaves. "As a healthy man," he said,
"does not wish to be waited upon by the infirm, or desire that those who
live with him should be invalids, the freeman should not allow himself
to be waited upon by slaves, or leave those who live with him in
servitude." It is idle to pretend, as Professor Schmidt of Strasburg
does, that the ideas of Epictetus are "colored with a reflection of
Christianity." The philosopher's one reference to the Galileans, by whom
he is thought to have meant the Christians, is somewhat contemptuous.
Professor Schmidt says he "misunderstood" the Galileans; but George
Long, the translator of Epictetus, is probably truer in saying that he
"knew little about the Christians, and only knew some examples of their
obstinate adherence to the new faith and the fanatical behavior of some
of the converts." It should be remembered that Epictetus was almost
a contemporary of St. Paul, and the accurate students of early
Christianity will be able to estimate how far it was likely, at that
time, to have influenced the philosophers of Rome.

Marcus Aurelius was one of the wisest and best of men. Emperor of the
civilised world, he lived a life of great simplicity, bearing all the
burdens of his high office, and drawing philosophy from the depths of
his own contemplation. His _Meditations_ were only written for his own
eyes; they were a kind of philosophical diary; and they have the charm
of perfect sincerity. He was born a.d. 121, he became Emperor a.d.
161, and died a.d. 180, after nineteen years of a government which
illustrated Plato's words about the good that would ensue when kings
were philosophers and philosophers were kings. Cardinal Barberini, who
translated the Emperor's _Meditations_ into Italian, in 1675, dedicated
the translation to his own soul, to make it "redder than his purple at
the sight of the virtues of this Gentile."

Marcus Aurelius combines reason with beautiful sentiment. His emotion is
always accompanied by thought. Here, for instance, is a noble passage on
the social commonwealth--"For we are made for co-operation, like feet,
like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth.
To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting
against one another to be vexed and to turn away." In a still loftier
passage he says--and let us remember he says it to himself, not to an
applauding audience, but quietly, and with absolute truth, and no taint
of theatricality--"My nature is rational and social; and my city and
country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome; but so far as I am a man,
it is the world." In his brief, pregnant way, he states the law of human
solidarity--"That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good
for the bee." And who could fail to appreciate this sentiment, coming
as it did from the ruler of a great empire?--"One thing here is worth
a great deal, to pass thy life in truth and justice, with a benevolent
disposition even to liars and unjust men."

Here again, it is the fashion in some circles, to pretend that Marcus
Aurelius was influenced by the spread of Christian ideas. George Long,
however, speaks the language of truth and sobriety in saying, "It
is quite certain that Antoninus did not derive any of his Ethical
principles from a religion of which he knew nothing." To say as Dr.
Schmidt does that "Christian ideas filled the air" is easy enough,
but where is the proof? No doubt the Christian writers made great
pretensions as to the spread of their religion, but they were
notoriously sanguine and inaccurate, and we know what value to attach to
such pretensions in the second century when we reflect that even in
the fourth century, up to the point of Constantine's conversion,
Christianity had only succeeded in drawing into its fold about a
twentieth of the inhabitants of the empire. Enough has been said in this
article to show that the idea of our common humanity is not "a purely
Christian conception," that it arose in the natural course of human
development, and that in this, as in other cases, the apologists of
Christianity have simply appropriated to their own creed the fruits of
the political, social, and moral growth of Western civilisation.




THE SONS OF GOD.

     "The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair."
     --Genesis vi. 8.

According to the first book of the Bible, the earth fell into a very
wicked condition in the days of the patriarchs. God made everything
good, but the Devil turned everything bad; and in the end the Lord
put the whole concern into liquidation. It was a case of universal
bankruptcy. All that was saved out of the catastrophe was a consignment
of eight human beings and an unknown number of elephants, crocodiles,
horses, pigs, dogs, cats, and fleas.

Among other enormities of the antediluvian world was the fondness shown
by the sons of God for the daughters of men. That fondness has continued
ever since. The deluge itself could not wash out the amatory feelings
with which the pious males regard those fair creatures who were once
supposed to be the Devil's chief agents on earth. Even to this day it
is a fact that courtship goes on with remarkable briskness in religious
circles. Churches and chapels are places of harmless assignation, and
how many matches are made in Sunday-schools, where Alfred and Angelina
meet to teach the scripture and flirt. As for the clergy, who are
peculiarly the sons of God, they are notorious for their partiality to
the sex. They purr about the ladies like black tom-cats. Some of them
are adepts in the art of rolling one eye heavenwards and letting the
other languish on the fair faces of the daughters of men. It is also
noticeable that the Protestant clericals marry early and often, and
generally beget a numerous progeny; while the Catholic priest who, being
strictly celibate, _never_ adds to the population, "mashes" the ladies
through the confessional, worming out all their secrets, and making them
as pliable as wax in his holy hands. Too often the professional son of
God is a chartered libertine, whose amors are carried on under a veil of
sanctity. What else, indeed, could be expected when a lot of lusty
young fellows, in the prime of life, foreswear marriage, take vows of
chastity, and undertake to stem the current of their natures by such
feeble dams as prayers and hymns?

Who the original "sons of God" were is a moot point. God only knows, and
he has not told us. But Jewish and Christian divines have advanced many
theories. According to some the sons of Gods were the offspring of Seth,
who was born holy in succession to righteous Abel, while the daughters
of men were the offspring of wicked Cain. Among the oriental Christians
it is said that the children of Seth tried to regain Paradise by
living in great austerity on Mount Hermon, but they soon tired of
their laborious days and cheerless nights, and cast sheep's-eyes on the
daughters of Cain, who beauty was equal to their father's wickedness.
Marriages followed, and the Devil triumphed again.

According to the Cabbalists, two angels, Aza and Azael, complained to
God at the creation of man. God answered, "You, O angels, if you were
in the lower world, you too would sin." They descended on earth, and
directly they saw the ladies they forgot heaven. They married and
exchanged the hallelujahs of the celestial chorus for the tender tones
of loving women and the sweet prattle of little children. Having sinned,
or, to use the vile language of religion, "polluted themselves with
women," they became clothed with flesh. On trying to regain Paradise
they failed, and were cast back on the mountains, where they continued
to beget giants and devils.

"There were giants in the earth in those days" says Scripture. Of
course there were. Every barbarous people has similar legends of
primitive ages. The translators of our Revised Version are ashamed
of these mythical personages as being too suggestive of Jack and the
Beanstalk, so they have substituted Anakim for giants. In other words,
they have shirked the duty of translators, and left the nonsense veiled
under the original word.

The Mohammedans say that not only giants, but also Jins, were born of
the sons of God, who married the daughters of men. The Jins soon had the
world in their power. They ruled everywhere, and built colossal works,
including the pyramids.

Of the giants, the most remarkable was Og. He was taller than the last
Yankee story, for at the Deluge he stopped the windows of heaven with
his hands, or the water would have risen over his head. The Talmud says
that he saved himself by swimming close to the ark in company with the
rhinoceros. The water there happened to be cold, while all the rest was
boiling hot; and thus Og was saved while all the other giants perished.
According to another story, Og climbed on the roof of the ark, and
when Noah tried to dislodge him, he swore that he would become the
patriarch's slave. Noah at once clinched the bargain, and food was
passed through a hole for the giant every day.

When we look into them we find the myths of the Bible wonderfully like
the myths of other systems. The Giants are similar to the Titans, and
the union of divine males with human females is similar to the amors of
Jupiter, Apollo, Neptune, and Mars with the women of old. In this
matter there is nothing new under the sun. Every fresh myth is only the
recasting of an ancient fable, born of ignorance and imagination.

Let it finally be noted that this old Genesaic story of the angelic
husbands of earthly women gives us a poor idea of the felicity of
heaven. In that unknown region, as Jesus Christ informed his disciples,
there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage; that is, no males, no
females, no courting, no loving, no children, and no homes. Men cease to
be men and women cease to be women. Everybody is of the neuter gender.

Or else all the angels are gentlemen, without a lady amongst them.
Perhaps the latter view is preferable, as it harmonises with the Bible,
in which the angels are always _he's_. In that case heaven would be, to
say the least, rather a dull place. No whispering in the moonlight,
no clasped hands under the throbbing stars. Not even a kiss under the
misletoe. Oh, what must it be to be there! No wonder the sons of God
wandered from their cheerless Paradise, visited this lower world, and
saw the daughters of men that they were fair.




MELCHIZEDEK.

Melchizedek is the most extraordinary person of whom we have any record.
Christ was born and Adam was made, but Melchizedek never began to be
and will never cease to exist. If the Bible were not such an intensely
serious book without a gleam of humor, except of the unconscious
Hibernian kind, we might conclude that Melchizedek was _nobody_, for the
description admirably suits that character. But the Bible does not
play and must not be played with. All its personages are _bona fide_
realities, from the Ancient of Days with white woolly hair on the throne
of heaven to the prophet Jonah who took three days' lodging in the belly
of a whale.

The name Melchizedek means _king_ of justice, being derived from
_melec_, a king, and _tzedec_, justice. When the gentleman bearing this
name is introduced to us in the fourteenth of Genesis, he is king of
Salem, which means peace. Salem was a city on the site of Zion.

Originally it was called Jebus, then Zadek, then Salem, and finally
Jerusalem. So says Rabbi Joseph Ben-Gorion. But other writers, no doubt
just as well informed, differ from him; and while the doctors disagree,
simple laymen may well hold their judgment in suspense; or, better
still, dismiss Jebus, Zadek, Salem, and Jerusalem, to the limbo of
learned trivialities. Counting the spots on a leopard, the quills on
a porcupine, or the hairs in a cat's whiskers, is just as amusing and
quite as edifying as most of the problems of divines and commentators.

When Abraham returned from a successful campaign, in which he defeated
five kings and their armies with three hundred and eighteen raw
recruits, Melchizedek came out to meet him with victuals and drink.
These two friends joined in the friendly office of _scratching_ each
other. They were, in fact, a small mutual admiration society. Abraham,
although at other times a rank coward, was on this occasion a bold
warrior laden with spoil; and Melchizedek besides being King of Salem,
was "the priest of the most high God." "Bully for you, Abraham," said
Melchizedek. "Bully for you, Melchizedek," said Abraham. As usual,
however, the priest got the best of it, for the patriarch paid him
tithes, which were a capital return for his compliments. Genesis is a
little confused, indeed; and what scripture is not? "And he gave him
tithes of all" is not very clear. It reminds one of the West of England
yokel, who gave his evidence on a case of homicide in this way:

"He had a stick, and he had a stick; and he hit he, and he hit he. And
if he'd only hit he as hard as he hit he, he'd a' killed he, and not he
he."

But we must not be too hard on Bibles and yokels. So long as we can get
a scintillation of their meaning we must be satisfied. Scripture, we may
take it, means that the _he_ who paid tithes was Abraham, and the _him_
who received them was Melchizedek.

Now the book of Genesis is not an early, but a very late portion of the
Jewish scriptures, dating only a few centuries before Christ. And we may
depend on it that this little sentence about _tithes_, and perhaps the
whole story that leads up to it, was got up by the priests, to give
the authority of Abraham's name and the sanction of antiquity to an
institution which kept them in luxury at the expense of their neighbors.

Our view of the case is supported by the fact that Melchizedek's name
does not appear again in the whole of the Old Testament, except in the
hundred and tenth Psalm, where somebody or other (the parsons of
course say Christ) is called "a priest for ever after the order of
Melchizedek." Paul, or whoever wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews,
works up this hint in fine style. It would puzzle a lunatic, or a
fortune-teller, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, or God Almighty
himself, to say what the Seventh of Hebrews means. We give it up as an
insoluble conundrum, and we observe that every commentator with a grain
of sense and honesty does the same. But there is one luminous flash
in the jumble of metaphysical darkness. Melchizedek is described
as "without father, without mother, without descent, having neither
beginning of days nor end of life." It will be easy to recognise a
gentleman of that description when you meet him. When we _do_ meet him
we shall readily acknowledge him as our king and priest, and pay him
an income tax of two shillings in the pound; but until then we warn all
kings and priests off our doorsteps.

Jewish traditions say that Melchizedek was the son of Shem, and set
apart for the purpose of watching and burying Adam's carcase when it
was unshipped from the Ark. Some, however, maintain that he was of a
celestial race; while other (Christian) speculators have held that he
was no less than Jesus Christ himself, who put in an early appearance
in Abraham's days to keep the Jewish pot boiling. St. Athanasius tells a
long-winded story of Melchizedek and Abraham, which shows what stuff the
early Christians believed. According to the Talmud, Melchizedek composed
the hundred and tenth Psalm himself; and although he is without end of
days, his tomb was shown at Jerusalem in the time of Gemelli Oarrere the
traveller.

There was an heretical sect called the _Melchizedekiana_ in the third
century. They held that Jesus Christ was, according to Hebrews, only of
the order of Melchizedek, and therefore that Melchizedek himself was
the more venerable. This heresy revived in Egypt after its suppression
elsewhere, and its adherents claimed that Melchizedek was the
Holy Ghost. The last time Melchizedek was heard of he was a London
coster-monger's donkey, but whether this was a real incarnation of the
original Melchizedek no one is able to decide, unless the Lord should
again, as in the case of Balaam's companion, "open the mouth of the ass"
and inform the world of the things that belong unto its peace.




S'W'ELP ME GOD.

Whoever has seen a Hebrew money-lender in a County Court take up a copy
of the Old Testament, present the greasy cover to his greasy lips, and,
like honest Moses in the _School for Scandal_, "take his oath on that,"
must have had a lively impression as to the value of swearing as a
religious ceremony. And this impression must have been heightened when
he has seen an ingenuous Christian, on the other side of the suit,
present a copy of the New Testament to _his_ pious lips, and quietly
swear to the very opposite of all that the God-fearing Jew had solemnly
declared to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
One's appreciation of the oath is still further increased by watching
the various litigants and witnesses as they caress the sacred volume:
Here a gentleman wears an expression of countenance which seems to imply
"I guess they'll get a good deal of truth out of me"; and there anothers
face seems to promise as great a regard for truth as is consistent
with his understanding with the solicitor who subpoenaed him as an
independent witness in the interest of justice and a sound client. Hard
swearing is the order of the day. So conflicting is the evidence on
simple matters of fact that it is perfectly obvious that the very
atmosphere is charged with duplicity. The thing is taken as a matter
of course. Judges are used to it, and act accordingly, deciding in most
cases by a keen observation of the witnesses and an extensive knowlege
of the seamy side of nature. But sometimes the very judges are
nonplussed, so brazen are the faces of the gentlemen who "have kissed
the book" Very often, no doubt, their honors feel inclined to say,
like the American judge in directing his jury, "Well, gentlemen, if
you believe what these witnesses swear, you will give a verdict for the
plaintiff; and if you believe what the other witnesses swear, you will
give a verdict for the defendant; but if, like me, you don't believe
what either side swears, I'm hanged if I know what you will do."

The fact is, the oath is absolutely useless if its object is to prevent
false witness. Should there be any likelihood of a persecution for
perjury, a two-faced Testament-kisser will be on his guard, and be very
careful to tell only such lies as cannot be clearly proved against him.
He dreads the prospect of daily exercise on the treadmill, he loathes
the idea of picking oakum, and his gorge rises at the thought of brown
bread and skilly. But so long as that danger is avoided, there are hosts
of witnesses, most of them very good Christians, who have been suckled
on the Gospel in Sunday Schools, and fed afterwards on the strong meat
of the Word in churches and chapels, who will swear fast and loose after
calling God to witness to their veracity. They ask the Almighty to
deal with them according as they tell the truth, yet for all that they
proceed to tell the most unblushing lies. What is the reason of this
strange inconsistency? Simply this. Hell is a long way off, and many
things may happen before the Day of Judgment. Besides, God is merciful;
he is always ready to forgive sins; a man has only to repent in time,
that is a few minutes before death, and all his sins will be washed
out in the cleansing blood of Christ. Notwithstanding all his lies in
earthly courts, the repentant sinner will not lose his right of walking
about for ever and ever in the court of heaven, although some poor devil
whose liberty or property he swore away may be frizzling for ever and
ever in hell.

We are strongly of opinion that if the oath were abolished altogether
there would be fewer falsehoods told in our public courts. No doubt
the law of perjury has some effect, but it is less than is generally
imagined, partly because the law is difficult to apply, and partly
because there is a wide disinclination to apply it, owing to a sort
of freemasonry in false witness, which is apt to be regarded as an
essential part of the game of litigation. Here and there, too, there
may be a person of sincere piety, who fears to tell a lie in what he
considers the direct presence of God. But for the most part the fear of
punishment, in this world or in the next, will not make men veracious.
The fact is proved by universal experience; nay, there are judges, as
well as philosophers, who openly declare that the oath has a direct
tendency to create perjury. Anyone, with a true sense of morality will
understand the reason of this. Fear is not a moral motive; and when the
threatened punishment is very remote or very uncertain, it has next to
no deterrent effect. Cupidity is matched against fear, and the odds of
the game being in its favor, it wins. But if a moral motive is appealed
to, the case is different. Many a man will tell a lie in the witness-box
who would scruple to do so "on his honor"; many a man will lie before
God who would scruple to deceive a friend. Let a man feel that he is
trusted, let his self-respect be appealed to, and he is more likely to
be veracious than he would be if he were threatened with imprisonment in
this life and hell-fire in the next.

Why Christians should cling to this relic of barbarity it is difficult
to conceive. Their Savior plainly commanded them to "Swear not at all,"
and the early Church obeyed this injunction until it rose to power under
Constantine. It is also a striking fact that the apostle Peter, when he
disobeyed his Master, and took an oath, used it to confirm a palpable
lie. When the damsel charged him in court with having been a follower
of Jesus, he "Denied it with an oath." "You were one of them," said the
damsel. "I wasn't," said Peter. "You _were_ with him," she rejoined.
Whereupon Peter exclaimed "S'w'elp me God, I never knew him." Surely if
self-interest made Peter commit flat perjury in the bodily presence
of his Savior, it is idle to assert that the oath in any way promotes
veracity.




INFIDEL HOMES. *

     * _The Influence of Scepticism on Character_. Being the
     sixteenth Fernley Lecture.   By the Rev. William L.
     Watkinson.   London: T. Woolmer.

John Wesley was a man of considerable force of mind and singular
strength of character. But he was very unfortunate, to say the least of
it, in his relations with women. His marriage was a deplorable misunion,
and his latest biographer, who aims at presenting a faithful picture of
the founder of Wesleyanism, has to dwell very largely on his domestic
miseries. Wesley held patriarchal views on household matters, the proper
subordination of the wife being a prime article of his faith. Mrs.
Wesley, however, entertained different views. She is therefore described
as a frightful shrew, and rated for her inordinate jealousy, although
her husband's attentions to other ladies certainly gave her many
provocations.

In face of these facts, it might naturally be thought that Wesleyans
would say as little as possible about the domestic infelicities of
Freethinkers. But Mr. Watkinson is not to be restrained by any such
consideration. Although a Wesleyan (as we understand) he challenges
comparisons on this point. He has read the biographies and
autobiographies of several "leading Freethinkers," and he invites the
world to witness how selfish and sensual they were in their domestic
relations. He is a pulpit rhetorician, so he goes boldly and recklessly
to work. Subtlety and discrimination he abhors as pedantic vices,
savoring too much of "culture." His judgments are of the robustious
order. Like Jesus Christ, he fancies that all men can be divided into
sheep and goats. The good are good, and the bad are bad. And naturally
the good are Christians and bad are Freethinkers.

The first half of Mr. Watkinson's book of 162 pages (it must have been
a pretty long lecture!) is a preface to the second half, which contains
his fling at Goethe, Mill, George Eliot, Harriet Martineau, Carlyle,
and other offenders against the Watkinsonian code. We think it
advisable, therefore, to follow him through his preface first, and
through his "charges" afterwards.

Embedded in a lot of obscure or questionable matter in Mr. Watkinson's
exordium is this sentence--"What we believe with our whole heart is of
the highest consequence to us." True, but whether it is of the highest
consequence to other people depends on what it is. Conviction is a good
thing, but it cannot dispense with the criterion of truth. On the other
hand, what passes for conviction may often be mere acquiescence. That
term, we believe, would accurately describe the creed of ninety-nine out
of every hundred, in every part of the world, whose particular faith is
merely the result of the geographical accident of their birth. Assuredly
we do not agree with Mr. Watkinson that "all reasonable people will
acknowledge that the faith of Christian believers is to a considerable
extent most real; nay, in tens of thousand of cases it is the most
real thing in their life." Mr. Cotter Morison laboriously refutes this
position in his fine volume on _The Service of Man_. Mill denied and
derided it in a famous passage of his great essay _On Liberty_. Mr.
Justice Stephen denies it in the _Nineteenth Century_. Carlyle also,
according to Mr. Fronde, said that "religion as it existed in England
had ceased to operate all over the conduct of men in their ordinary
business, it was a hollow appearance, a word without force in it." These
men may not be "reasonable" in Mr. Watkinson's judgment, but with most
people their word carries a greater weight than his.

Mr. Watkinson contends--and what will not a preacher contend?--that "the
denial of the great truths of the Evangelical faith can exert only
a baneful influence on character." We quite agree with him. But
evangelicalism, and the great truths of evangelicalism, are very
different things. It is dangerous to deny any "great truth," but how
many does evangelicalism possess? Mr. Watkinson would say "many." We
should say "none." Still less, if that were possible, should we assent
to his statement that "morals in all spheres and manifestations must
suffer deeply by the prevalence of scepticism." Mr. Morison, asserts and
proves that this sceptical age is the most moral the world has seen, and
that as we go back into the Ages of Faith, vice and crime grow denser
and darker.

If the appeal is to history, of which Mr. Watkinson's references do not
betray a profound knowledge, the verdict will be dead against him.

Mr. Justice Stephen thinks morality can look after itself, but he doubts
whether "Christian charity" will survive "Christian theology." This
furnishes Mr. Watkinson with a sufficient theme for an impressive
sermon. But his notion of "Christian charity" and Mr. Justice Stephen's
are very different. The hard-headed judge means the sentimentalism and
"pathetic exaggerations" of the Sermon on the Mount, which he has since
distinctly said would destroy society if they were fully practised.
"Morality," says Mr. Watkinson, "would suffer on the mystical side."
Perhaps so. It might be no longer possible for a Louis the Fifteenth to
ask God's blessing when he went to debauch a young girl in the _Parc
aux Cerfs_, or for a grave philosopher like Mr. Tylor to write in his
_Anthropology_ that "in Europe brigands are notoriously church-goers."
Yet morality might gain as much on the practical side as it lost on the
mystical, and we fancy mankind would profit by the change.

Now for Mr. Watkinson's history, which he prints in small capitals,
probably to show it is the real, unadulterated article. He tell us that
"the experiment of a nation living practically a purely secular life has
been tried more than once" with disastrous results. He is, however, very
careful not to mention these nations, and we defy him to do so. What he
does is this. He rushes off to Pompeii, whose inhabitants he thinks were
Secularists! He also reminds us in a casual way that "they had crucified
Christ a few years before," which again is news. Equally accurate is the
statement that Pompeii was an "infamous" city, "full" of drunkenness,
cruelty, etc. Probably Mr. Watkinson, like most good Christians who go
to Pompeii, visited an establishment, such as we have thousands of
in Christendom, devoted to the practical worship of Venus without
neglecting Priapus. He has forgotten the immortal letter of Pliny, and
the dead Roman sentinel at the post of duty. He acts like a foreigner
who should describe London from his experience at a brothel.

Philosophy comes next. Mr. Watkinson puts in a superior way the
clap-trap of Christian Evidence lecturers. If man is purely material,
and the law of causation is universal, where, he asks, "is the place for
virtue, for praise, for blame?" Has Mr. Watkinson never read the answer
to these questions? If he has not, he has much to learn; if he has, he
should refute them. Merely positing and repositing an old question is
a very stale trick in religious controversy. It imposes on some people,
but they belong to the "mostly fools."

"Morality is in as much peril as faith," cries Mr. Watkinson. Well,
the clergy have been crying that for two centuries, yet our criminal
statistics lessen, society improves, and literature grows cleaner. As
for the "nasty nude figures" that offend Mr. Watkinson's eyes in the
French Salon, we would remind him that God Almighty makes everybody
naked, clothes being a human invention. With respect to the Shelley
Society "representing the _Cenci_ and other monstrous themes," we
conclude that Mr. Watkinson does not know what he is talking about.
There is incest in the _Cenci_, but it is treated in a high dramatic
spirit as a frightful crime, ending in bloodshed and desolation. There
is also incest in the Bible, commonplace, vulgar, bestial incest,
recorded without a word of disapprobation. Surely when a Christian
minister, who says the Bible is God's Word, knowing it contains the
beastly story of Lot and his daughters, cries out against Shelley's
_Cenci_ as "monstrous," he invites inextinguishable Rabelaisian
laughter. No other reply is fitting for such a "monstrous" absurdity,
and we leave our readers to shake their sides at Mr. Watkinson's
expense.

Mr. Watkinson asks whether infidelity has "produced new and higher types
of character." Naturally he answers the question in the negative. "The
lives of infidel teachers," he exclaims, "are in saddest contrast to
their pretentious philosophies and bland assumptions." He then passes in
review a picked number of these upstarts, dealing with each of them in
a Watkinsonian manner. His rough-and-ready method is this. Carefully
leaving out of sight all the good they did, and the high example of
honest thought they set to the world, he dilates upon their failings
without the least regard to the general moral atmosphere of their age,
or the proportion of their defects to the entirety of their natures.
Mr. Smith, the greengrocer, whose horizon is limited to his shop and his
chapel, may lead a very exemplary life, according to orthodox standards;
but his virtues, as well as his vices, are rather of a negative
character, and the world at large is not much the better for his having
lived in it. On the other hand a man like Mirabeau may be shockingly
incontinent, but if in the crisis of a nation's history he places his
genius, his eloquence, and his heroic courage at the service of liberty,
and helps to mark a new epoch of progress, humanity can afford to pardon
his sexual looseness in consideration of his splendid service to the
race. Judgment, in short, must be pronounced on the sum-total of a man's
life, and not on a selected aspect. Further, the faults that might be
overwhelming in the character of Mr. Smith, the Methodist greengrocer,
may sink into comparative insignificance in the character of a great
man, whose intellect and emotions are on a mightier scale. This truth is
admirably expressed in Carlyle's _Essay on Burns_.

"Not the few inches of deflection from the mathematical orbit, which
are so easily measured, but the _ratio_ of these to the whole diameter,
constitutes the real aberration. This orbit may be a planet's,
its diameter the breadth of the solar system; or it may be a city
hippodrome; nay the circle of a ginhorse, its diameter a score of feet
or paces. But the inches of deflection only are measured: and it is
assumed that the diameter of the ginhorse, and that of the planet, will
yield the same ratio when compared with them! Here lies the root of
many a blind, cruel condemnation of Burnses, Swifts, Rousseaus, which
one never listens to with approval. Granted, the ship comes into harbor
with shrouds and tackle damaged; the pilot is blameworthy; he has not
been all-wise and all-powerful: but to know _how_ blameworthy, tell us
first whether his voyage has been round the Globe, or only to Ramsgate
and the Isle of Dogs."

We commend this fine passage to Mr. Watkinson's attention. It may make
him a little more modest when he next applies his orthodox tape and
callipers to the character of his betters.

Goethe is Mr. Watkinson's first infidel hero, and we are glad to see
that he makes this great poet a present to Freethought. Some Christians
claim Goethe as really one of themselves, but Mr. Watkinson will have
none of him. "The actual life of Goethe," he tells us, "was seriously
defective." Perhaps so, and the same might have been said of hundreds
of Christian teachers who lived when he did, had they been big enough
to have their lives written for posterity. Goethe's fault was a too
inflammable heart, and with the license of his age, which was on the
whole remarkably pious, he courted more than one pretty woman; or, if
the truth must be told, he did not repel the pretty women who threw
themselves at him. But there were thousands of orthodox men who acted in
the same way. The distinctive fact about Goethe is that he kept a high
artistic ideal always before him, and cultivated his poetic gifts
with tireless assiduity. His sensual indulgences were never allowed to
interfere with his great aim in life, and surely that is something. The
result is that the whole world is the richer for his labors, and only
the Watkinsons can find any delight in dwelling on the failings he
possessed in common with meaner mortals. To say that Goethe should be
"an object of horror to the whole self-respecting world" is simply to
indulge in the twang of the tabernacle.

Carlyle is the next sinner; but, curiously, the _Rock_, while praising
Mr. Watkinson's lecture, says that "Carlyle ought not to be classed with
the sceptics." We dissent from the _Rock_ however; and we venture to
think that Carlyle's greatest fault was a paltering with himself
on religious subjects. His intellect rejected more than his tongue
disowned. Mr. Watkinson passes a very different criticism. Taking
Carlyle as a complete sceptic, he proceeds to libel him by a process
which always commends itself to the preachers of the gospel of charity.
He picks from Mr. Froude's four volumes a number of tid-bits, setting
forth Carlyle's querulousness, arrogance, and domestic storms with Mrs.
Carlyle. Behold the man! exclaims Mr. Watkinson. Begging his pardon,
it is not the man at all. Carlyle was morbidly sensitive by nature,
he suffered horribly from dyspepsia, and intense literary labor, still
further deranging his nerves, made him terribly irritable. But he had a
fine side to his nature, and even a sunny side. Friends like Professor
Tyndall, Professor Norton, Sir James Stephen, and Mrs. Gilchrist, saw
Carlyle in a very different light from Mr. Froude's. Besides, Mrs.
Carlyle made her own choice. She deliberately married a man of genius,
whom she recognised as destined to make a heavy mark on his age. She had
her man of genius, and he put his life into his books. And what a life!
And what books! The sufficient answer to all the Watkinson tribe is to
point to Carlyle's thirty volumes. This is the man. Such work implies
a certain martyrdom, and those who stood beside him should not have
complained so lustily that they were scorched by the fire. Carlyle did a
giant's work, and he had a right to some failings. Freethinkers see them
as well as Mr. Watkinson, but they are aware that no man is perfect,
and they do not hold up Carlyle, or any other sceptic, as a model for
universal imitation.

Mr. Watkinson's remarks on George Eliot are simply brutal. She was a
"wanton." She "lived in free-love with George Henry Lewes." She had
no excuse for her "license." She was "full of insincerity, cant, and
hypocrisy." And so on _ad nauseam_. To call Mr. Watkinson a liar would
be to descend to his level. Let us simply look at the facts. George
Eliot lived with George Henry Lewes as his wife. She had no vagrant
attachments. Her connection with Lewes only terminated with his death.
Why then did they not marry? Because Lewes's wife was still living, and
the pious English law would not allow a divorce unless all the household
secrets were dragged before a gaping public. George Eliot consulted her
own heart instead of social conventions. She became a mother to
Lewes's children, and a true wife to him, though neither a priest nor a
registrar blessed their union. She chose between the law of custom
and the higher law, facing the world's frown, and relying on her own
strength to bear the consequences of her act. To call such a woman a
wanton and a kept mistress is to confess one's self devoid of sense and
sensibility. Nor does it show much insight to assert that "infidelity
betrayed and wrecked her life," and to speculate how glorious it might
have been if she had "found Jesus." It will be time enough to listen
to this strain when Mr. Watkinson can show us a more "glorious" female
writer in the Christian camp.

William Godwin is the next Freethinker whom Mr. Watkinson calls up for
judgment. All the brave efforts of the author of _Political Justice_
in behalf of freedom and progress are quietly ignored. Mr. Watkinson
comments, in a true vein of Christian charity, on the failings of his
old age, censures his theoretical disrespect for the marriage laws,
and inconsistently blames him for his inconsistency in marrying Mary
Woolstonecraft. Of that remarkable woman he observes that scepticism
"destroyed in her all that fine, pure feeling which is the glory of the
sex." But the only proof he vouchsafes of this startling statement is
a single sentence from one of her letters, which Mr. Watkinson
misunderstands, as he misunderstands so many passages in Carlyle's
letters, through sheer inability to comprehend the existence of such a
thing as humor. He takes every jocular expression as perfectly serious,
being one of those uncomfortable persons in whose society, as Charles
Lamb said, you must always speak on oath. Mr. Watkinson's readers might
almost exclaim with Hamlet, "How absolute the knave is! We must speak by
the card, or equivocation will undo us."

The next culprit is Shelley, who, we are told, "deserted his young wife
and children in the most shameful and heartless fashion." It does not
matter to Mr. Watkinson that Shelley's relations with Harriet are still
a perplexing problem, or that when they parted she and the children
were well provided for, Nor does he condescend to notice the universal
consensus of opinion among those who were in a position to be informed
on the subject, that Harriet's suicide, more than two years afterwards,
had nothing to do with Shelley's "desertion." Instead of referring to
proper authorities, Mr. Watkinson advises his readers to consult
"Mr. Jeafferson's painstaking volumes on the _Real Shelley_." Mr.
Jeafferson's work is truly painstaking, but it is the work of an
advocate who plays the part of counsel for the prosecution. Hunt,
Peacock, Hogg, Medwin, Lady Shelley, Rossetti, and Professor
Dowden--these are the writers who should be consulted. Shelley was but
a boy when Harriet Westbrook proposed to run away with him. Had he
acted like the golden youth of his age, and kept her for a while as
his mistress, there would have been no scandal. His father, in fact,
declared that he would hear nothing of marriage, but he would keep as
many illegitimate children as Shelley chose to get. It was the intense
chivalry of Shelley's nature that turned a very simple affair into a
pathetic tragedy. Mr. Watkinson's brutal methods of criticism are out
of place in such a problem. He lacks insight, subtlety, delicacy of
feeling, discrimination, charity, and even an ordinary sense of justice.

James Mill is another flagrant sinner. Mr. Watkinson goes to the length
of blaming him because "his temper was constitutionally irritable," as
though he constructed himself. Here, again, Mr. Watkinson's is a purely
debit account. He ignores James Mill's early sacrifices for principle,
his strenuous labor for what he considered the truth, and his intense
devotion to the education of his children. His temper was undoubtedly
austere, but it is more than possible that this characteristic was
derived from his forefathers, who had been steeped in the hardest
Calvinism.

John Stuart Mill was infatuated with Mrs. Taylor, whom he married when
she became a widow. But Mr. Watkinson conceals an important fact. He
talks of "selfish pleasure" and "indulgence," but he forgets to tell
his readers that Mrs. Taylor was _a confirmed invalid_. It is perfectly
obvious, therefore, that Mill was attracted by her mental qualities;
and it is easy to believe Mill when he disclaims any other relation
than that of affectionate friendship. No one but a Watkinson could be so
foolish as to imagine that men seek sensual gratification in the society
of invalid ladies.

Harriet Martineau is "one of the unloveliest female portraits ever
traced." Mr. Watkinson is the opposite of a ladies' man. Gallantry was
never his foible. He hates female Freethinkers with a perfect hatred. He
pours out on Harriet Martineau his whole vocabulary of abuse. But it is,
after all, difficult to see what he is in such a passion about. Harriet
Martineau had no sexual sins, no dubious relations, no skeleton in
the domestic cupboard. But, says Mr. Watkinson, she was arrogant and
censorious. Oh, Watkinson, Watkinson! have you not one man's share of
those qualities yourself? Is there not "a sort of a smack, a smell to"
of them in your godly constitution?

We need not follow Mr. Watkinson's nonsense about "the domestic shrine
of Schopenhauer," who was a gay and festive bachelor to the day of his
death. As for Mr. Watkinson's treatment of Comte, it is pure Christian;
in other words, it contains the quintessence of uncharitableness. Comte
had a taint of insanity, which at one time necessitated his confinement.
That he was troublesome to wife and friends is not surprising, but
surely a man grievously afflicted with a cerebral malady is not to be
judged by ordinary standards. Comte's genius has left its mark on the
nineteenth century; he was true to _that_ in adversity and poverty. This
is the fact posterity will care to remember when the troubles of his
life are buried in oblivion.

Mr. Watkinson turns his attention next to the French Revolution,
which he considers "as much a revolt against morals as it was against
despotism." If that is his honest opinion, he must be singularly
ignorant. The moral tone of the Revolutionists was purity itself
compared with the flagrant profligacy of the court, the aristocracy, and
the clergy, while Freethinkers were imprisoned, and heretics were broken
on the wheel. We have really no time to give Mr. Watkinson lessons in
French history, so we leave him to study it at his leisure.

It was natural that Voltaire should come in for his share of slander.
All Mr. Watkinson can see in him is that he wrote "an unseemly poem,"
by which we presume he means _La Pucelle_. But he ought to know that the
grosser parts of that poem were added by later hands, as may be seen at
a glance in any variorum edition. In any case, to estimate Voltaire's
_Pucelle_ by the moral standard of a century later is to show an
absolute want of judgment. Let it be compared with similar works of
_his_ age, and it will not appear very heinous. But Voltaire did a great
deal besides the composition of that poem. He fought despotism like a
hero, he stabbed superstition to the heart, he protected the victims
of ecclesiastical and political tyranny at the risk of his own life, he
sheltered with exquisite generosity a multitude of orphans and widows,
he assisted every genius who was trodden down by the age. These things,
and the great mass of his brilliant writings, will live in the memory of
mankind. Voltaire was not perfect; he shared some of the failings of his
generation. But he fought the battle of freedom and justice for sixty
years. Other men indulged in gallantry, other men wrote free verses. But
when Calas was murdered by the priests, and his family desolated, it was
Voltaire, and Voltaire alone, who faced the tyrants and denounced them
in the name of humanity. His superb attitude on that critical occasion
inspired the splendid eulogium of Carlyle, who was no friendly witness:
"The whole man kindled into one divine blaze of righteous indignation,
and resolution to bring help against the world."




ARE ATHEISTS CRUEL? *

     * April 26,1891.

There seems to be an ineradicable malignancy in the heart of
professional Christianity. St. Paul, indeed in a fine passage of his
first epistle to the Corinthians, speaks with glowing eloquence of
the "charity" which "thinketh no evil." But the hireling advocates and
champions of Christianity have ever treated the apostle's counsel with
contempt in their dealings with sceptics and heretics. Public discussion
is avoided by these professors of the gospel of love and practisers of
the gospel of hatred. They find it "unprofitable." Consequently they
neglect argument and resort to personalities. They frequently insinuate,
and when it is safe they openly allege, that all who do not share their
opinions are bad husbands, bad fathers, bad citizens, and bad men. Thus
they cast libellous dust in the eyes of their dupes, and incapacitate
them from seeing the real facts of the case for themselves. A notable
illustration of this evil principle may be found in a recent speech by
the Bishop of Chester. Dr. Jayne presided at a Town Hall meeting of the
local branch of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children, and took advantage of the occasion to slander a considerable
section of his fellow citizens. With a pious arrogance which is peculiar
to his boastful faith, he turned what should have been a humanitarian
assembly into a receptacle for his discharge of insolent fanaticism.
Parentage is a natural fact, and the love of offspring is a well-nigh
universal law of animal life. It would seem, therefore, that a Society
for preventing cruelty to children by parents of perverted instincts,
might live aloof from sectarian squabbles. But the Bishop of Chester
is of a different opinion. He is a professional advocate of one form of
faith, and his eye is strictly bent on business. He appears to be unable
to talk anything but "shop." Even while pressing the claims of poor,
neglected, ill-used children on the sympathy and assistance of a
generous public, he could not refrain from insulting all those who have
no love for his special line of business. And the insult was not only
gratuitous; it was groundless, brutal, and malignant; so much so,
indeed, that we cherish a hope that the Bishop has overreached himself,
and that his repulsive slander will excite a re-action in favor of the
objects of his malice.

Dr. Jayne told the meeting that "the persons who were most liable to be
guilty of cruelty to their children were those artisans who had taken up
Secularist opinions, and who looked upon their children as a nuisance,
and were glad to get them out of the way."

Now, on the face of it, the statement is positively grotesque in its
absurdity. If Secular principles tend to make parents hate their own
children, why should their evil influence be confined to artisans? And
if Secular principles do not produce parental hatred in the wealthier
classes, why does Dr. Jayne hurl this disgraceful accusation at the
poorer class of unbelievers? It cannot be simply because they are
poorer, for he was delighted to know that "poverty by no means
necessarily meant cruelty." What, then, is the explanation? It seems to
us very obvious. Dr. Jayne was bent on libelling sceptics, and, deeming
it _safer_ to libel the _poorer_ ones, he tempered his valor with a
convenient amount of discretion. He is not even a brave fanatic. His
bigotry is crawling, cowardly, abject, and contemptible.

Dr. Jayne relied upon the authority of Mr. Waugh, who happened to be
present at the meeting. This gentleman jumped up in the middle of the
Bishop's speech, and said "it was the case, that the class most guilty
of cruelty to children were those who took materialistic, atheistic,
selfish and wicked views of their own existence." Surely this is a "fine
derangement of epitaphs." It suggests that Mr. Waugh is less malignant
than foolish. What connection does he discover between Secularism and
selfishness? Is it in our principles, in our objects, or in our policy?
Does he really imagine that the true character of any body of men and
women is likely to be written out by a hostile partisan? Such a person
might be a judge of our _public_ actions, and we are far from denying
his right to criticise them; but when he speaks of our _private_ lives,
before men of his own faith, and without being under the necessity of
adducing a single scrap of evidence, it is plain to the most obtuse
intelligence that his utterances are perfectly worthless.

We have as much right as Mr. Waugh to ask the world to accept our view
of the private life of Secularists. That is, we have no right at all.
Nevertheless we have a right to state our experience and leave the
reader to form his own opinion. Having entered the homes of many
Secularists, we have been struck with their fondness for children The
danger lies, if it lies anywhere, in their tendency to "spoil" them. It
is a curious fact--and we commend it to the attention of Dr. Jayne and
Mr. Waugh--that the most sceptical country in Europe is the one where
children are the best treated, and where there is no need for a Society
to save them from the clutches of cruelty. There is positively a
child-cultus in the great French cities, and especially in Freethinking
Paris. In this Bible-and-beer-loving land the workman, like his social
"superior," stands or sits drinking in a public-house with male cronies;
but the French workman usually sits at the _cafe_ table with his wife,
and on Sundays with his children, and takes his drink, whatever it may
be, under the restraining eyes of those before whom a man is least ready
to debase himself.

One Secular home, at least, is known to us intimately. It is the home
of the present writer, who for the moment drops the editorial "we" and
speaks in the first person My children are the children of an Atheist,
yet if they do not love me as heartily as Dr. Jayne's or Mr. Waugh's
children love their father, "there's witchcraft in it." There is no rod,
and no punishment in my home. We work with the law of love. Striking
a child is to me a loathsome idea. I shrink from it as I would from a
physical pollution. Strike a child once, be brutal to it once, and there
is gone forever that look of perfect trust in the child's eyes, which is
a parent's dearest possession, and which I would not forfeit for all the
prizes in the world.

I know Christians who are less kind to their children than I am to mine.
They are not my natural inferiors. Humanity forbid that I should play
the Pharisee! But they are degraded below their natural level by the
ghastly notion of parental "authority" I do not say there are no rights
in a family. There _are_; and there are also duties. But all the rights
belong to the children, and all the duties belong to the parents.

Personally I am not fond of talking about myself. Still less am I
anxious to make a public exhibition of my home. But if the Dr. Jaynes
and the Mr. Waughs of the Christian world provoke comparisons, I have
no fear of standing with my little ones opposite them with theirs, and
letting the world judge between us.

Dropping again into the editorial style, we have a question to ask of
the Bishop of Chester, or rather of Mr. Waugh. It is this. Where are
the statistics to justify your assertion? Men who are sent to gaol, for
whatever reason, have their religions registered. Give us, then, the
total number of convictions your Society has obtained, and the precise
proportion of Secularists among the offenders. And be careful to give us
their names and the date and place of their conviction.

We have a further word to all sorts and conditions of libellous
Christians. Where are the evidences of Atheistic cruelty? The humanest
of the Roman emperors were those who were least under the sway of
religion. Julius Caesar himself, the "foremost man of all this world,"
who was a professed Atheist, was also the most magnanimous victor that
ever wore the purple. Akbar, the Freethinker, was the noblest ruler of
India. Frederick the Great was kind and just to his subjects. But, on
the other hand, who invented and who applied such instruments of cruelty
as racks, wheels, and thumbscrews? Who invented separate tortures
for every part of the sensitive frame of man? Who burnt heretics? Who
roasted or drowned millions of "witches"? Who built dungeons and filled
them? Who brought forth cries of agony from honest men and women that
rang to the tingling stars? Who burnt Bruno? Who spat filth over the
graves of Paine and Voltaire? The answer is one word--Christians.
Yet with all this blood on their hands, and all this crime on their
consciences, they turn round and fling the epithet of "cruel" at the
perennial victims of their malice.




ARE ATHEISTS WICKED?

One of the most effective arts of priestcraft has been the
misrepresentation and slander of heretics. To give the unbeliever a bad
name is to prejudice believers against all communication with him.
By this means a twofold object is achieved; first, the faithful are
protected from the contagion of scepticism; secondly, the notion is
propagated that there is something essentially immoral involved in, or
attendant upon, unorthodox opinions; and thus the prevalent religious
ideas of the age become associated with the very preservation and
stability of the moral order of human society.

This piece of trickery cannot, of course, be played upon the students
of civilisation, who, as Mill remarked, are aware that many of the most
valuable contributions to human improvement have been the work of men
who knew, and rejected, the Christian faith. But it easily imposes on
the multitude, and it will never be abandoned until it ceases to be
profitable.

Sometimes it takes the form of idle stories about the death-beds of
Freethinkers, who are represented as deploring their ill-spent life, and
bewailing the impossibility of recalling the wicked opinions they have
put into circulation. At other times it takes the form of exhibiting
their failings, without the slightest reference to their virtues, as
the sum and substance of their character. When these methods are not
sufficient, recourse is had to insinuation. Particular sceptics
are spared perhaps, but Freethinkers are depicted--like the poor in
Tennyson's "Northern Farmer"--as bad in the lump. It is broadly hinted
that it is a moral defect which prevents them from embracing the popular
creed; that they reject what they do not wish to believe; that they hate
the restraints of religion, and therefore reject its principles; that
their unbelief, in short, is only a cloak for sensual indulgence or an
excuse for evading irksome obligations.

We are so accustomed to this monstrous theory of scepticism in religious
circles, that it did not astonish us, or give us the least surprise, to
read the following paragraph in the _Christian Commonwealth_--

"Free Life, and No Compulsory Virtue, was the title of a placard borne
by a pamphlet seller of the public highway a few days ago. What the
contents of the pamphlets were we do not know, but the title is a
suggestive sign of the times, and a rather more than usually plain
statement of what a good deal of modern doubt amounts to. Lord Tennyson
was severely taken to task a few years ago for making the Atheist a
villain in his 'Promise of May,' but he was about right. Much of the
doubt of the day is only an outcome of the desire to discredit and throw
off the restraints of religion and moral law in the name of freedom,
wrongly used. Free love, free life, free divorce, free Sundays, in the
majority of cases, are but synonyms for license. Those who hold the
Darwinian doctrine of descent from a kind of ape may yet see it proved
by a reversion to the beast, if men succeed in getting all the false and
pernicious freedom they want."

Now, in reply to this paragraph, we have first to observe that our
contemporary takes Lord Tennyson's name in vain. The villain of the
"Promise of May" is certainly an Agnostic, but are not the villains of
many other plays Christians? Lord Tennyson does not make the rascal's
wickedness the logical result of his principles; indeed, although
our contemporary seems ignorant of the fact, he disclaimed any such
intention, A press announcement was circulated by his eldest son, on
his behalf, that the rascal was meant to be a sentimentalist and
ne'er-do-well, who, whatever his opinions, would have come to a bad end.
When the _Commonwealth_, therefore, talks of Lord Tennyson as "about
right," it shows, in a rather vulgar way, the danger of incomplete
information. Were we to copy its manners we might use a swifter phrase.

That Atheists, in the name of freedom, throw off the restraints of moral
law, is a statement which we defy the _Commonwealth_ to prove, or in
the slightest degree to support, and we will even go to the length of
suggesting how it might undertake the task.

Turpitude of character must betray itself. Moral corruption can no more
be hidden than physical corruption. Wickedness "will out," like murder
or smallpox. A man's wife discovers it; his children shun him instead of
clinging about his knees; his neighbors and acquaintances eye him with
suspicion or dislike; his evil nature pulsates through an ever-widening
circle of detection, and in time nis bad passions are written upon his
features in the infallible lines of mouth and eyes and face. How easy,
then, it should be to pick out these Atheists. The most evil-looking
men should belong to that persuasion. But do they? We invite our
contemporary to a trial. Let it inquire the religious opinions of a
dozen or two, and see if there is an Atheist among them.

Again, a certain amount of evil disposition _must_ produce a certain
percentage of criminal conduct. Accordingly the gaols should contain a
large proportion of Atheists. But _do_ they? Statistics prove they do
_not_. When the present writer was imprisoned for "blasphemy," and was
asked his religion, he answered "None," to the wide-eyed astonishment
of the official who put the question. Atheists were scarce in the
establishment. Catholics were there, and red tickets were on their
cell-doors; Protestants were there, and white tickets marked their
apartments; Jews were there, and provision was made for their special
observances; but the Atheist was the _rara avis_, the very phoenix of
Holloway Gaol.

Let us turn to another method of investigation. During the last ten
years four members have been expelled from the House of Commons. One of
them was not expelled in the full sense of the word; he was, however,
thrust by brute force from the precincts of the House. His name was
Charles Bradlaugh, and he was an Atheist. But what was his crime? Simply
this: he differed from his fellow members as to his competence to take
the parliamentary oath, and the ultimate event proved that he was
right and they were wrong. Now what were the crimes of the three other
members, who were completely and absolutely expelled? Captain Verney was
found guilty of procuration for seduction, Mr. Hastings was found guilty
of embezzlement, and Mr. De Cobain was pronounced guilty of evading
justice, while charged with unnatural offences. Mr. Jabez Spencer
Balfour might also have been expelled, if he had not accepted the
Chiltern Hundreds. Now all these _real_ delinquents were Christians, and
even ostentatious Christians. Compare them with Charles Bradlaugh,
the Atheist, and say which side has the greatest cause for shame and
humiliation.

Are Atheists conspicuous in the Divorce Court? Is it not Christian
reputations that are smirched in that Inquisition? Do Atheists, or any
species of unbelievers, appear frequently before the public as promoters
of bubble companies, and systematic robbers of orphans and widows? Is it
not generally found, in the case of great business collapses, that
the responsible persons are Christians? Is it not a fact that their
profession of Christianity is usually in proportion to the depth of
their rascality?

Not long since the Bishop of Chester, backed up by Mr. Waugh, of the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, publicly declared
that the worst ill-users of little ones were artisan Secularists. He
was challenged to give evidence of the assertion, but he preferred to
maintain what is called "a dignified silence." Mr. Waugh was challenged
to produce proofs from the Society's archives, and he also declined. It
is enough to affirm infamy against Freethinkers; proof is unnecessary;
or, rather, it is unobtainable. Singularly, there have been several
striking cases of brutal treatment of children since Mr. Waugh and
Bishop Jayne committed themselves to this indefensible assertion, and in
no instance was the culprit a Secularist, though some of them, including
Mrs. Montagu, were devout Christians.

There are other methods of inquiry into the wickedness of Atheists,
but we have indicated enough to set the _Commonwealth_ at work, and we
invite it to begin forthwith. And while it is getting ready we beg to
observe that theologians have always described "free-dem" as "license,"
whereas it is nothing of the kind. Freedom is the golden mean between
license and slavery. The breaking of arbitrary fetters, forged by
ignorance and intolerance, does not mean a fall into loose living.
The heretic in religion, while resenting outside control, by his very
perception of the vast and far-reaching consequences of human action, is
often chained to "the most timid sanctities of life."

With respect to "the Darwinian theory of descent from a kind of ape,"
we have a word for our contemporary. The annual meeting of the British
Association was held at Oxford in 1860. Darwin's _Descent of Man_ had
recently been published, and the air was full of controversy. Bishop
Wilberforce, in the course of a derisive speech, turned to Professor
Huxley and asked whether it was on the mother's or father's side that
his grandfather had been an ape. Huxley replied that man had no reason
to be ashamed of having an ape for a grandfather. "If there is an
ancestor," he continued, "whom I should feel shame in recalling it
would be a _man_"--one who meddled with scientific questions he did not
understand, only to obscure them by aimless rhetoric, and indulgence in
"eloquent digressions and appeals to religious prejudice." This
rebuke was administered thirty-three years ago, but it is still worth
remembering, and perhaps the _Commonwealth_ may find in it something
applicable to itself.




RAIN DOCTORS.

The prolonged drought has already inflicted serious injury on the
farmers. They are, as a rule, a loyal class of men, but their loyalty
will probably be shaken when they realise that the Lord has spoiled
their crops to provide Queen's weather for the Jubilee. An occasional
shower might wet the Queen's parasol or ruffle the plumage of the
princes and princelings in her train. Occasional showers, however, are
just what the farmers want. The Lord was therefore in a fix. Though the
Bible says that with him nothing is impossible, he was unable to please
both sides; so he favored the one he loved best, gave royalty unlimited
sunshine, and played the deuce with the agricultural interest.

Possibly the Lord knows better than we do, but we venture to suggest
that a slight exercise of intelligence, though we admit it may have
been a strain upon his slumbrous brain, would have surmounted the
difficulty. The windows of heaven might have been opened from two till
four in the morning. That would have been sufficient for a proper supply
of rain, and the whole of the day could have been devoted to "blazing"
without injuring anyone. Or, if the early morning rain would have
damaged the decorations, the celestial turnkey might have kept us a week
without water giving us an extra supply beforehand. On the whole, if
we may hazard so profane an observation, the powers above are singularly
behind the age. Their affairs are frightfully mixed, and the result is
that capital and labor are both in a state of uncertainty. The celestial
dynasty will have to improve, or its imperial power will be questioned,
and there will be a demand for Home Rule with regard to the weather. It
is a perfect nuisance, with respect to a matter which vitally affects
us, not to be able to know what a day will bring forth.

Meanwhile we turn to the clergy, and inquire why they do not perform
their professional duties in this emergency. There is a form of prayer
for such cases in the Prayer-book. Why has it not been used? Do the
clergy think the Lord is growing deaf with old age? Have they a secret
suspicion that praying for a change of weather is as useful as whistling
for the wind? Or has the spirit of this sceptical age invaded the
clerical ranks so thoroughly as to make them ashamed of their printed
doctrines? When a parish clerk was told by the parson one morning that
the prayer for rain would be read, he replied, "Why, sir, what's the
use of praying for rain with the wind in that quarter?" We fancy that
parish clerk must have a good many sympathisers in the pulpit.

Still the clergy should do what they are paid for, or resign the
business. They are our rain doctors, and they should procure us the
precious fluid. If they cannot, why should we pay them a heavenly
water-rate? The rain doctors of savages are kept to their contract. They
are expected to bring rain when it is required, and if they do not,
the consequences are unpleasant. They are sometimes disgraced, and
occasionally killed. But the rain doctors in civilised countries retain
all the advantages of their savage prototypes without any of their risks
and dangers. Modern Christians allow the clergy to play on the principle
of "heads I win, tails you lose." If the black regiments pray and there
is no answer, Christians resign themselves to the will of God. If there
_is_ an answer, they put it to the credit of the priests, or the priests
put it to their own credit, which is much the same thing.

We should be sorry to charge such a holy body of men with duplicity, but
is there not "a sort of a smack, a smell to?" They are reluctant to
pray for rain, on the alleged ground that Omnipotence should not be
interfered with rashly. But the sincerity of this plea is questionable
when we reflect that it obviously favors the clergy. Our climate is
variable, long spells of particular weather are infrequent, and if when
one occurs the clergy hold back till the very last, their supplication
for a change cannot long remain unanswered. But perhaps this is only an
illustration of the wisdom of the serpent which Jesus recommended to his
apostles.

If the clergy are anxious to exhibit their powers they should pray
for rain in the desert of Sahara. Missionaries might be sent out to
establish praying stations, and in the course of time the desert might
bloom as a garden, and the wilderness as a rose. We make the suggestion
in all sincerity. We are anxious to be convinced, if conviction is
possible. Praying for rain in a watery climate is one thing, praying for
rain where none ever falls is another. If the clergy can bring down a
fruitful shower on the African sands, we shall cry, "A miracle," and
send them a quarter's pew-rent.

Seriously--for we can be serious--we ask the clergy to do their level
best. The farmers are swearing wholesale, and by taking the name of the
Lord their God in vain they incur the peril of eternal damnation.
The fruit crop is injured, and children suffer unusually from the
stomach-ache. Worst of all, infidel France is flooding our markets with
cherries and other fruits, and we are supporting the accursed sceptical
brood because the Lord has not nourished our own growths. Surely then it
is time to act. If the parsons lose this fine opportunity they may
rely on it that the anti-tithe agitation will develop into alarming
proportions. Their livings are at stake, and we ask them to consider
the interests of their wives and families. If our generous warning is
unheeded the clergy may find the nation carrying out the principle of
free trade in religion, and importing some rain doctors from Africa.
Many of these magical blackmen would be glad to exchange their
present pickings for a vicarage and five hundred a year. If they
thought there was a chance of obtaining a bishopric, with a palace and
six or ten thousand a year, they would start for England at once. Many
of them are of excellent reputation, and would come to us with the best
of testimonials. Would it not be well to give them a trial? We should
find out who was best at the business. He might be constituted our
national rain doctor at a liberal salary, and the rest discharged; for
surely the Lord does not require thirty thousand praying to him at once,
unless on the principle that he must be surrounded to prevent the prayer
from going into one ear and out at the other.




PIOUS PUERILITIES.

Faith and credulity are the same thing with different names. When a man
has plenty of faith he is ready to believe anything. However fantastic
it may be, however childish, however infantile, he accepts it with
gaping wonder. His imagination is not necessarily strong, but it is
easily excited. Macaulay held that savages have stronger imaginations
than civilised men, and that as the reason developes the imagination
decays. But, in our opinion, he was mistaken. The imagination does not
wither under the growth of reason; on the contrary, it flourishes
more strongly. It is, however, disciplined by reason, and guided by
knowledge; and it only appears to be weaker because the relation between
it and other faculties has changed. The imagination of the savage
seems powerful because his other faculties are weak. In the absence of
knowledge it cuts the most astonishing capers, just as a bird would if
it were suddenly deprived of sight. Now the savage is a mental child,
and the ignorant and thoughtless are mental savages. They credit the
absurdest stories, and indulge in the most ridiculous speculations. When
religion ministers to their weakness, as it always does, they gravely
discuss the most astonishing puerilities. Indeed, the history of
religious thought--that is, of the infantile vagaries of the human
mind--is full of puerilites. There is hardly an absurdity which learned
divines have not debated as seriously as scientists discuss the nebular
hypothesis or the evolution theory. They have argued how many angels
could dance on the point of a needle; whether Adam had a navel; whether
ghosts and demons could cohabit with women; whether animals could
sin; and what was to be done with a rat that devoured a holy wafer. We
believe the decision of the last weighty problem, after long debate, was
that the rat, having the body of Christ in its body, was sanctified, and
that it had to be eaten by the priest, by which means the second person
of the Trinity was saved from desecration.

But of all the pious puerilities on record, probably the worst are
ascribed to the rabbis. The faith of those gentlemen was unbounded,
and they were so fond of trivialities, that where they found none they
manufactured them. The rabbis belonged to the most credulous race of
antiquity. "Tell that to the Jews," as we see from Juvenal, was as
common as our saying, "Tell that to the marines." The chosen people were
infinitely superstitious. They had no head for science, nor have they
to this day; but they were past-masters in every magical art, and
connoisseurs in amulets and charms. Their rabbis were the hierophants
of their fanatical folly. They devoted amazing industry, and sometimes
remarkable ingenuity, to its development; frequently glossing the very
scriptures of their religion with dexterious imbecilities that raise
a sinister admiration in the midst of our laughter. This propensity is
most noticeable in connection with Bible stories. When the chroniclers
and prophets record a good solemn wonder, which reads as though it ought
to be true if it is not, they allege or suggest little additions that
give it an air of ostentatious silliness. Hundreds of such instances
have come under my eyes in foraging for extra-Biblical matter for my
_Bible Heroes_, but I have only room for one or two specimens.

King Nimrod was jealous of young Abraham, as Herod was jealous of young
Jesus. He tried various methods to get rid of the boy, but all in
vain. At last he resolved to burn Abraham alive. This would have made a
striking scene, but the pious puerility of the sequel spoils it all. The
king issued a decree, ordering every man in his kingdom to bring wood
to heat the kiln. What a laughable picture! Behold every adult subject
wending his way to the crematorium with a bundle of sticks on his
back--"For Abraham." The The Mussulman tradition (Mohammedans and Jews
are much alike, and both their religions are Semitic) informs us that
Nimrod himself died in the most extraordinary manner. A paltry little
gnat, with a game leg and one eye, flew up his nostril, and lodged in
his brain, where it tormented him for five hundred years. During the
whole of that period, in which the gnat displayed a longevity that casts
Methuselah's into the shade, the agonising king could only obtain repose
by being struck on the head; and relays of men were kept at the palace
to pound his royal skull with a blacksmith's hammer. The absurdity of
the story is transcendent. One is charitably tempted to believe, for the
credit of human nature, that it was the work of a subtle, solemn wag,
who thought it a safe way of satirising the proverbial thick-headedness
of kings.

What reader of the Bible does not remember the pathetic picture of Esau
falling on Jacob's neck and weeping, in a paroxysm of brotherly love and
forgiveness? But the rabbis daub it over with their pious puerilities.
They solemnly inform us that Esau was a trickster, as though Jacob's
qualities were catching? and that he tried to bite his brother's neck,
but God turned it into marble, and he only broke his teeth. Esau wept
for the pain in his grinders. But why did Jacob weep? This looks like a
poser, yet later rabbis surmounted the difficulty. Jacob's neck was not
turned into marble, but toughened. It was hard enough to-hurt Esau's
teeth, and still tender enough to make Jacob suffer, so they cried in
concert, though for different reasons.

Satyrs are mentioned in the Bible, although they never existed outside
the superstitious imagination. The rabbis undertook to explain the
peculiar structure of these fabulous creatures, as well as of fauns, who
somewhat resemble them. The theory was started, therefore, that God was
overtaken by the Sabbath, while he was creating them, and was obliged to
postpone finishing them till the next day. Hence they are misshapen! The
rabbis also say that God cut off Adam's tail to make Eve of. The Bible
origin of woman is low, but this is lower still. However, if Adam
exchanged his tail for a wife he made a very good bargain, despite the
apple and the Devil.

Captain Noah, says the Talmud, could not take the rhinoceros into the
ark because it was too big. Rabbi Jannai solemnly asserts that he saw
a young rhinoceros, only a day old, as big as Mount Tabor. Its neck was
three miles long, its head half a mile, and the river Jordan was choked
by its excrement. Let us pause at this stretcher, which "stands well for
high."

Perhaps the Christian will join us in laughing at such pious
puerilities. But he should remember that the Bible is loaded with
absurdities that are little inferior. Ravens bring a prophet sandwiches,
another prophet besieges a tile, an axe swims on the water, a man slays
a thousand men in battle with the jawbone of a donkey, an ass speaks,
and a whale swallows and vomits a man. Had these pious puerilities
occurred in any other book, they would have been laughed to scorn; but
being in the Bible, they must be credited on pain of eternal damnation.




"THUS SAITH THE LORD."

Dogmatism, said Douglas Jerrold, is only puppyism grown to maturity.
This sarcastic wit never said a truer thing. We call a young fellow a
puppy when he is conceited and impudent, and we call a man dogmatic when
he betrays the same qualities in controversy. Yet every Church prides
itself on being dogmatic. Rome is dogmatic and Canterbury is dogmatic.
Without dogma there is no theology. And what is dogma? An opinion, or
a set of opinions, promulgated by somebody for the blind acceptance of
somebody else. Arrogance, therefore, is of its very essence. What right
has one man to say to another, "This is the truth; I have taken the
trouble to decide that point, and all you have to do is to accept what I
present you "? And if one man has no such right to impose his belief on
another, how can twenty thousand men have such a right to impose their
belief on twenty millions? This, however, is precisely what they do
without the least shame or compunction. Before we are able to judge for
ourselves, the priests thrust certain dogmas upon us, and compel us to
embrace them. Authority takes the place of judgment, dogmatism supplants
thought. The young mind is rendered slavish, and as it grows up it goes
through life cringeing to the instruments of its own abasement.

When a superior mind rises from this subjection and demands reasons
for believing, he is knocked down with the Bible. A text is quoted to
silence him. But who wrote the text? Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Matthew,
John, Peter, or Paul. Well, and who made them lords over us? Have we not
as much right to our own thoughts as they had to theirs? When they state
an opinion in the pompous language of revelation, are they less fallible
than the rest of us? Obviously not. Yet prophets and evangelists have a
trick of writing, which still clings to their modern representatives, as
though they could not be mistaken. "I am Sir Oracle," they seem to say,
"and when I ope my lips let no dog bark." No doubt this self-conceit is
very natural, but self-conceited people are not usually taken at their
own estimate. Nowadays we laugh at them and try to take the conceit out
of them. But what is absurd to-day is treated as venerable because it
happened thousands of years ago, and prophets are regarded as inspired
who, if they existed now, would be treated with ridicule and contempt.

The style of downright God-Almighty-men is very simple. They need not
argue, they have only to assert, and they preface every statement with
"Thus saith the Lord." Now suppose such a declaration were made today.
A man with no greater reputation for sense than his neighbors stands
up and shouts "Thus saith the Lord." Should we not look at him with
curiosity and amusement? Would he not strike us as a silly fanatic?
Might we not even reflect that he was graduating for a strait-waistcoat?
The fellow is simply an ignorant dogmatist. What he believes you must
believe. Reasons for his belief he has none, and he cannot conceive that
you want any either. Yet it would never do to exclaim, "I am your lord
and master," so the grown-up puppy shouts "Thus saith the Lord," in
order to assure you that in rejecting him you reject God.

Suppose we heckle this loud-mouthed preacher for a minute. "You tell us,
Thus saith the Lord. Did he say so to you, and where and when? And
are you quite sure you did not dream the whole business?" Probably
he answers, "No, the Lord did not say it to me, but he said it to the
blessed prophets and apostles, and I am only repeating their words."
"Very well then," a sensible man would reply, "you are in the
second-hand business, and I want new goods. You had better send on the
original traders--Moses, Isaiah, Paul and Co.--and I'll see what I can
do with them." If, however, the preacher says, "Yes, the Lord did say
it to me," a sensible man replies, "Well, now, I should have thought the
Lord would have told somebody with more reputation and influence. Still,
what you assert may be true. I don't deny it, but at the same time your
word is no proof. On the whole, I think I'll go my way and let you go
yours. The Lord has told you something, and you believe it; when he
tells me, I'll believe it too. I suppose the Lord told you because he
wanted you to know, and when he wants me to know I suppose he'll give
me a call. What you got from him is first-hand, what I get from you is
second-hand; and, with all due respect, I fancy your authority is hardly
equal to the Almighty's." "Thus saith the Lord" is no argument. It is
simply

     The dark lanthorn of the spirit
     Which none can see by but those who bear it.

Nay more, it dispenses with reason, and makes every man's faith depend
on somebody else's authority. Discussion becomes impertinence, criticism
is high treason. Hence it is but a step from "Thus saith the Lord."
Very impolite language, truly, yet it is the logical sequence of
dogmatism, Fortunately the time is nearly past for such impudent
nonsense. This is an age of debate. And although there are many windy
platitudes abroad, and much indulgence in empty mouthing, the very fact
of debate being considered necessary to the settlement of all questions
makes the public mind less hasty and more cautious. "Thus saith the
Lord" men can only succeed at present among the intellectual riff-raff
of the populace.

Looking over the past, we see what an immense part dogmatism has played
in history. "Thus saith the Lord" cried the Jewish prophets, and
they not only terrified their contemporaries, but overawed a hundred
generations. "Thus saith the Lord" cried the Christian apostles,
and they converted thousands of open-mouthed slaves to a "maleficent
superstition." "Thus saith the Lord" cried Mohammed, and the scimitars
of Islam flashed from India to Spain. "Thus saith the Lord" cried Joe
Smith, and Mormonism springs up in the practical West, with its buried
gold tablets of revelation and its retrogressive polygamy. "Thus saith
Reason" has been a still small voice, sometimes nearly inaudible, though
never quite drowned; but now it is swelling into a mighty volume of
sound, overwhelming the din of sects and the anathemas of priests.




BELIEVE OR BE DAMNED.

Christian ministers are showing a disposition to fight shy of the second
half of the last chapter of Mark, where Jesus is represented as saying
to his apostles, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to
every creature. He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he
that believeth not shall be damned." Some of them tell us to look at the
Revised Version, where we shall see in the margin that this portion
of the chapter does not exist in the earliest manuscripts; and they
innocently expect that Freethinkers will therefore quietly drop the
offensive passage. Oh dear no! Before they have any right to claim such
indulgence they must put forth a new edition of the whole Bible, showing
us what they desire excised, and what they wish to retain and are ready
to defend as the infallible word of God. We should then discuss whether
their selection is justifiable, and after that we should discuss whether
the amended Bible is any diviner than the original one. But we cannot
allow them to keep the Bible as it is, to call it God's Word, to revile
people who doubt it, and to persecute people who oppose it; and yet, at
the same time, to evade responsibility for every awkward text. This will
never do. The clergy cannot have the authority of inspiration in their
pulpits and the ease of eclecticism on the platform and in the press.

Besides, although the text in Mark is the most striking piece of
impudent bigotry, there are many passages of Holy Writ that display the
same spirit. The Jews were expressly ordered to kill heretics in this
world, and the victims only escaped eternal damnation because the chosen
people knew nothing at that time of future rewards and punishments. A
glance at the first few pages of _Crimes of Christianity_ will also show
that the earliest apostles of Christianity were thoroughly imbued with
the spirit of persecution. Paul smote Elymas with blindness for opposing
him, and even "the beloved disciple" said "If there come any unto you,
and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither
bid him God speed." Paul tells the Galatians, "If any man preach any
other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed."
These passages plainly imply that the unbeliever is to be shunned like
poison, and that the teacher of unbelief is a devil. What difference is
there between this and the passage in Mark? As a matter of fact, all the
Christian Churches, from the beginning till now, have taught that
faith is necessary to salvation; and this historic consensus of opinion
justifies the Freethinker in regarding bigotry as of the essence of the
Bible.

Now what is belief? It is an automatic act of the mind, over which the
will has absolutely no power. The will might, indeed, turn the eyes from
regarding evidence in a particular direction, or the entire mind from
attending to the subject at all. But given the evidence before you, and
your own powers of thought, and your judgment is a logical necessity.
You cannot help believing what your intellect certifies as true; you
cannot help disbelieving what your intellect certifies as false. If you
were threatened with everlasting torment for believing that twice two
are four, you could not, by the most tremendous effort of volition,
alter your conviction in the slightest degree. You might be induced to
_assert_ that twice two are five, but whatever your tongue might utter,
your belief would remain unchanged.

The effect of threats, therefore, is not to change belief, but to
produce hypocrisy. Yet this much must be allowed. The threats may
succeed _if they are carried out_. Fear will make multitudes _profess_
without _investigating,_ and as liars often come to believe their
own lies, habitual profession produces a state of mind that has a
superficial resemblance to real belief; and, on the other hand, if the
threats of future punishment are supplemented by penal laws against
heresy, there is a process of artificial selection by which independent
minds are eliminated, while the slavish survive. Even when penal laws
are relaxed, social ostracism will have a similar, though perhaps
a weaker effect. Prizes offered to one form of opinion, and losses
inflicted on others, will necessarily make a difference in their
relative success. How slowly Christianity advanced during the first
three centuries, when it was under a cloud! How swiftly it progressed
when Constantine gave it wealth and privileges, and used the temporal
sword to repress or extinguish its enemies!

Nothing is truer than that the religious belief of more than ninety-nine
hundredths of mankind is determined by the geographical accident of
birth. Born in Spain they are Catholics; born in England they are
Protestants; born in Turkey they are Mohammedans; born in India they are
Brahmanists; born in Ceylon they are Buddhists; born in the shadow of a
synagogue they are Jews. Their own minds have not the smallest share in
deciding their faith. They take it at secondhand, as they do their
language and their fashion of dressing. To call their "faith" belief is
absurd. It is simply a prejudice. Belief, in the proper sense of the
word, follows evidence and reflection. What evidence has the ordinary
Christian, and has he ever reflected on his creed for five minutes in
the whole course of his life?

Philosophically speaking, men think as they _can_, and believe as they
_must_; and as belief is independent of the will, and cannot be
affected by motives, it is not a subject for praise or blame, reward or
punishment. Religions, therefore, which promise heaven for belief and
hell for unbelief, are utterly unphilosophical. They are self-condemned.
Truth invites free study. Falsehood shuns investigation, and denounces
that liberty of thought which is fatal to its pretensions.

There is a not too refined, but a very true piece of verse, which was
first published more than a generation ago in a pungent Freethought
journal, and we venture to quote its conclusion. After relating the
chief "flams" of the Bible, it says:

     And when with this nonsense you're crammed,
     To make you believe it all true,
     They say if you don't you'll be damned;
     But you ought to be damned if you do.




CHRISTIAN CHARITY.

Jesus Christ told his disciples that, in bestowing alms, they were not
even to let their left hand know what their right hand did. But
this self-sacrificing method has not been generally approved, and
comparatively few Christians "do good by stealth and blush to find it
fame." They more often "do good for fame and publish it by stealth."
Nay more, their "charity" is actually their boast in their controversies
with "infidels." Look at our hospitals, they say; look at our
orphanages, look at our almshouses, look at our soup-kitchens. It is
a wonder they do not boast of their asylums, but perhaps they think it
would invite the retort that they not only build them but fill them.
Such boasting, however, is utterly absurd from every point of view.
Since the world was in any degree civilised it has never lacked some
kind of benevolent institutions. It is absolutely certain that hospitals
are not of Christian origin; and there is hardly a country in the world,
with any pretension to rank above barbarians, in which some species of
provision is not made by the rich for the necessities of the poor. Every
Mohammedan, for instance, is required by his religion to devote a tenth
of his income to charity; whereas the Christian system of tithes is
entirely for the profit and aggrandisement of the clergy.

Still more ridiculous, if possible, is the Christian cry, "Where are
your Freethought hospitals, almshouses, and orphanages?" Freethought
is a poor, struggling cause; its adherents are comparatively few and
scattered; it has no endowments to lessen the current cost of its
propaganda; and it is unable to exact subscriptions by the orthodox
method of boycotting, or to acquire them in return for a good
advertisement. Still, the Freethought party does manage to relieve its
necessitous members; and the Freethinkers' Benevolent Fund is not only
well supported, in excess of all demands, but is probably the _only_
Fund which is administered without a single farthing of expense. Besides
this, Freethinkers support ordinary local charities, when deserving,
just like other people; although frequently, as in the case of almost
every hospital, religion is forced on the recipients of such charity,
whether they wish it or not, and religious tests are maintained in the
administration.

As a rule, however, Freethinkers are not inclined to attach so much
importance as Christians to organised almsgiving. At the best it is but
a clumsy way of alleviating the worst effects of social disease. The
Freethinker attaches more importance to the study of causes. He is like
the true health reformer who believes a great deal more in exercise,
fresh air, and wholesome diet, than in physic. For this reason
Freethinkers are generally students of social and political questions.
They are Radicals in the philosophical sense of the word; that is, they
recognise that real, lasting improvement can only be achieved by dealing
with the causes of poverty and degradation. Many Christians, on the
other hand, thoroughly believe that the poor will never cease out of the
land; and they seem to regard these unfortunates as whetstones, provided
by a beneficent providence, on which the wealthy may sharpen their
benevolence.

Christian charity, even in its highest form, is infinitely less merciful
than science; a truth which Mr. Cotter Morison enforces in the seventh
chapter of his _Service of Man_. Sanitation, medical science, free
trade, popular education, co-operation, and such agencies, have done
tremendously more than religion to diminish evil and mitigate suffering.
On the other hand, it is indisputable that much of our boasted charity
is worse than wasted, as it tends to produce the very helplessness and
pauperism that furnish it with objects of compassion.

Charity is very good in its way, but what we really want is justice. Let
us go in for justice first, and when we have got that we shall see what
remains for charity to do. Probably it will be found that unjust laws
inflict a hundred times more misery than charity could ever alleviate.
If that be the case, the most charitable man, after all, is he who
devotes some of his time, thought, and energy to political and social
reform. Good health for the next generation is more valuable than
medicine for the diseases of the present generation.

Charity, also, in its largest sense, is far wider than almsgiving. It
is a questionable charity which gives you a shilling if you are hard-up,
and persecutes you if you think for yourself. Most of us do not require
soup-tickets, but we do require civil treatment, respect for our
independence, and smiling rather than frowning faces. The man who lifts
me up from the road when I stumble, deserves my thanks; but I doubt the
sincerity of his kindness if, when he learns that I honestly differ
from him on the Atonement, he knocks me down again. Assisting people who
agree with you, and wilfully injuring those who differ, savors less of
charity than of zeal. You may be a very good Christian, but I venture to
say you are a very bad man.

When Saladin died he ordered charities to be distributed to the poor,
without distinction of Jew, Christian, or Mohammedan. Yet this brilliant
ruler had to repel Christian attacks on his dominions, and to witness
the most abominable cruelty wrought by the soldiers of the Cross. Where,
in the annals of Christendom, shall we find such a noble example of true
charity; of charity which overflows the petty barriers of creeds, and
loses itself in the great ocean of humanity?




RELIGION AND MONEY.

"Every religion is a getting religion; for though I myself get nothing,
I am subordinate to those that do. So you may find a lawyer in the
Temple that gets little for the present; but he is fitting himself to be
in time one of those great ones that do get."--Selden's Table Talk.

"The Divine stands wrapt up in his cloud of mysteries, and the amused
Laity must pay Tithes and Veneration to be kept in obscurity, grounding
their hope of future knowledge on a competent stock of present
ignorance."--George Farquhar.

Religion and priestcraft may not be the same thing in _essence_. That
is a point on which we do not intend to dogmatise, and this is not the
opportunity to argue it. But _practically_ religion and priestcraft
_are_ the same thing. They are inextricably bound up together,. and
they will suffer a common fate. In saying this, however, we must
be understood to use the word "religion" in its ordinary sense, as
synonymous with _theology_. Religion as non-supernatural, as the
idealism of morality, the sovereign bond of collective society, is a
matter with which we are not at present concerned.

Priestcraft did not _invent_ religion. To believe that it did is
the error of an impulsive and uninformed scepticism. But priestcraft
developed it, systematised it, enforced it, and perpetuated it. This
could not be effected, however, except in alliance with the temporal
power; and accordingly, in every country--savage, barbaric, or
civilised--the priests and the privileged classes are found in harmony.
They have occasional differences, but these are ultimately adjusted.
Sometimes the priesthood overrules the temporal power, but more
frequently the former gives way to the latter; indeed, it is instructive
to watch how the course of religion has been so largely determined by
political influences. The development of Judaism was almost entirely
controlled by the political vicissitudes of the Hebrews. The political
power really decided the great controversy between Arianism and
Athanasianism. Politics again, twelve hundred years later, settled the
bounds of the Reformation, not only for the moment, but for subsequent
centuries. Where the prince's sword was thrown into the scale, it
determined the balance. England, for instance, was non-papal Catholic
under Henry VIII., Protestant under Edward VI., papal-Catholic under
Mary, and Protestant again under Elizabeth; although every one of these
changes, according to the clergy, was dictated by the Holy Ghost.

Priests and the privileged classes _must_ settle their differences
in some way, otherwise the people would become too knowing, and too
independent. The co-operation of impostor and robber is necessary to the
bamboozlement and exploitation of the masses. This co-operation, indeed,
is the great secret of the permanence of religion; and its policy is
twofold--education and the power of money.

The value of _education_ may be inferred from the frantic efforts of the
clergy to build and maintain schools of their own, and to force their
doctrines into the schools built and maintained by the State. In this
respect there is nothing to choose between Church and Dissent.
The reading of the Bible in Board schools is a compromise between
themselves, lest a worse thing should befall them both. If one section
were strong enough to upset the compromise it would do so; in fact,
the Church party is now attempting this stroke of policy on the London
School Board, with the avowed object of giving a Church color to-the
religious teaching of the children. The very same principle was at
work in former days, when none but Churchmen were admitted to the
universities or public positions. It was a splendid means of maintaining
the form of religion which was bound up with the monarchy and the
aristocracy. Learning and influence were, as far as possible, kept on
the side of the established faith, which thus became the master of
the masters of the people. This is perfectly obvious to the student of
history, and Freethinkers should lay its lesson to heart. It is only by
driving religion entirely out of education, from the humblest school to
the proudest college, that we shall ever succeed in breaking the power
of priestcraft and freeing the people from the bondage of superstition.

We could write a volume on this theme--the power of education in
maintaining religion; but we must be satisfied with the foregoing at
present, and turn our attention to the power of _money_. It is a wise
adage that money is the sinews of war. Fighting is very largely, often
wholly, a question of resources. Troops may be ever so brave, generals
ever so skilful, but they will be beaten unless they have good rifles
and artillery, plenty of ammunition, and an ample commissariat. Now the
same thing obtains in _all_ warfare. It would be foolish, no less than
base, to deny the inspiring efficacy of ideas, the electric force of
enthusiasm; but, however highly men may be energised, they cannot act
without instruments; and money buys them, whether the instruments
be rifles and artillery, or schools, or churches, or any kind of
organisation.

Given churches with great wealth, as well as control over public
education, and it is easy to see that they will be able to perpetuate
themselves. Endowments are specially valuable. They are rooted, so to
speak, in the past, and hold firm. They bear golden fruit to be plucked
by the skilful and adventurous. Besides, the very age of an endowed
institution gives it a venerable ora; and its freedom from the full
necessity of "cadging" lends it a certain "respectability"--like that of
a man who lives on his means, instead of earning his living.

It is not an extravagant calculation that, in England alone, twenty
millions a year are spent on religion. The figures fall glibly from the
tongue, but just try to realise them! Think first of a thousand, then of
a thousand thousand, then of twenty times that. Take a single million,
and think what its expenditure might do in the shaping of public
opinion. A practical friend of ours, a good Radical and Freethinker,
said that he would undertake to create a majority for Home Rule in
England with a million of money; and if he spent it judiciously, we
think he might succeed. Well then, just imagine, not one million, but
twenty millions, spent _every year_ in maintaining and propagating a
certain religion. Is it not enough, and more than enough, to perpetuate
a system which is firmly founded, to begin with, on the education of
little children?

Here lies the strength of Christianity. It is not true, it is not
useful. Its teachings and pretensions are both seen through by tens
of thousands, but the wealth supports it. "Without money and without
price," is the fraudulent language of the pious prospectus. It would
never last on those terms. The money keeps it up. Withdraw the money,
and the Black Army would disband, leaving the people free to work out
their secular salvation, without the fear and trembling of a foolish
faith.




CLOTTED BOSH.

     "A heterogeneous mass of clotted bosh."
     --Thomas Carlyle.

The death of Tennyson has called forth a vast deal of nonsense. Much
of it is even insincere. The pulpits have spouted cataracts of
sentimentality. Some of them have emitted quantities of sheer drivel. A
stranger would think we had lost our only poet, and well-nigh our only
teacher; whereas, if the truth must be told, we have lost one who was
occasionally a great poet, but for the most part a miraculous artist
in words. No man in his senses--certainly no man with a spark of
judgment--could call Tennyson a profound thinker. Mainly he gave
exquisite expression to ideas that floated around him. Nor did he
possess a high degree of the creative faculty, such as Shakespeare
possessed in inexhaustible abundance. Surely it is possible to admire
our dead poet's genius without telling lies over his grave.

Among the pulpit utterances on Tennyson we note the Rev. Hugh Price
Hughes's as perhaps the very perfection of slobbery incapacity. He
appears to be delivering a course of addresses on the poet. The first of
these escaped our attention; the second is before us in the supplement
to last week's _Methodist Times_. We have read it with great attention
and without the slightest profit. Not a sentence or a phrase in it rises
above commonplace. That a crowd of people should listen to such stuff
on a Sunday afternoon, when they might be taking a walk or enjoying a
snooze, is a striking evidence of the degeneration of the human mind, at
least in the circles of Methodism.

Mr. Hughes praises Tennyson for "conscientiousness in the use and
choice of words." He should have said "the choice and use of words," for
_choice_ must precede _use_ to be of any service. Mr. Hughes says it is
of great importance that we should all be as conscientious as Tennyson.
He might as well say it is of great importance that we should all be as
strong as Sandow.

Let us take a few examples of _Mr. Hughes's_ "conscientiousness."
He talks of "shining features" which "lie upon the very surface" of
Tennyson's poems. Now features seldom shine, they do not lie, and
they must be (not _upon_, but) _at_ the surface. Six lines further the
shining features change into "shining qualities," as though _features_
and _qualities_ were synonyms. Mr. Hughes speaks, in the style of
a penny-a-liner, of Tennyson's "amazing and unparalleled popular
influence." Will he tell us if anything could amaze us _without_ being
unparalleled? He remarks that Tennyson was "not merely and mainly a poet
of the educated classes." He should have said "merely _or_ mainly." He
enjoins upon us to "define our terms" and "know the exact meanings
of the terms we use"--which is absolute tautology. He says of
flirtation--on which he seems an authority--that "I greatly fear, and am
morally certain" it is as much perpetrated by men as by women. But if
he fears he cannot be certain, and if he is certain he cannot fear. He
calls duelling a form of "insanity and barbarism." But while it may be
one or the other, it cannot be both at once. The disjunctive, therefore,
not the copulative, is the proper conjunction. Mr. Hughes misspells the
name of Spenser, translates _mariage de convenance_ as a marriage
of convenience, and inserts one of his own inventions in a line of
_Locksley Hall_, which runs thus in the Hughes edition of Tennyson--

Puppet to a father's threat and servile to a mother's shrewish tongue.

"Mother's" spoils the line. It is not Tennyson's. Mr. Hughes may claim
it--"an ill-favored thing, sir, but mine own." It does equal credit to
his "conscientiousness" and his ears.

Mr. Hughes's style as a critic does not rise to the level of an active
contempt. Let us look at his matter and see if it shows any superiority.

"Yet although," Mr. Hughes says, with characteristic elegance--"yet
although he wrote so much, Tennyson never wrote a single line that would
bring a painful or anxious blush to the cheek of the most innocent or
sensitive maiden." What a curious antithesis! Why should a man write
impurely for writing much? And is _this_ the supreme virtue of a great
poet? It might be predicated of Martin Tupper. Milton, on the other
hand, must have made many a maiden rosy by his description of Eve's
naked loveliness--to say nothing of the scene after the Fall; while
Shakespeare must have turned many a maiden cheek scarlet, though we
do not believe he ever did the maiden any harm. Tennyson was not as
free-spoken as some poets--greater poets than himself. But what does Mr.
Hughes mean by his "Christ-like purity"? Is there a reference here to
the twelfth verse of the nineteenth chapter of Matthew?

Purity, if properly understood, is undoubtedly a virtue. Mr. Hughes
forgets, however, that his eulogy on Tennyson in this respect is a slur
upon the Bible. There are things in the Old Testament--not to mention
the New Testament--calculated to make "the most innocent or sensitive
maiden" vomit; things that might abash a prostitute and make a satyr
squeamish. We suggest, therefore, that Mr. Hughes should cease canting
about "purity" while he helps to thrust the Bible into the hands of
little children.

The reward of Tennyson's purity, according to Mr. Hughes, was that
"he was able to understand women." "The English race," exclaims the
eulogist, "has never contemplated a nobler or more inspiring womanhood
than that which glows on every page of Tennyson." This is the hectic
exaggeration in which Mr. Hughes habitually indulges. Tennyson never
drew a live woman. Maud is a lay figure, and the heroine of "The
Princess" is purely fantastic. George Meredith beats the late Laureate
hollow in this respect. He is second only to Shakespeare, who here, as
elsewhere, maintains his supremacy.

Mr. Hughes's remarks on _Locksley Hall_ are, to use his own expression,
amazing. "How terribly," he says, "does he [Tennyson] paint the swift
degeneration of the faithless Amy." Mr. Hughes forgets--or _does_ he
forget?--that in the sequel to this poem, entitled _Sixty Years After_,
Tennyson unsays all the high-pitched dispraise of Amy and her squire.
_Locksley Hall_ is a piece of splendid versification, but the hero is a
prig, which is a shade worse than a Philistine. Young fellows mouth the
poem rapturously; their elders smile at the disguises of egotism.

Loveless marriage was reprobated by Tennyson, and Mr. Hughes goes into
ecstacies over the tremendous fact. Like the Psalmist, he is in haste;
he cannot point to a poet who ever hinted the dethronement of love.

A choice Hughesean sentence occurs in this connexion. "I very much
regret," the preacher says, "that Maud's lover was such a conventional
idiot that he should have been guilty of the supreme folly of
challenging her brother to a duel." Shade of Lindley Murrey, what a
sentence! A boy who wrote thus would deserve whipping. And what right,
we ask, has a Christian minister to rail at duelling? It was unknown to
Greek or Roman society. Indeed, it is merely a form of the Ordeal, which
was upheld by Christianity. The duel was originally a direct and solemn
appeal to Providence. Only a sceptic has the right to call it a folly.

Enough of Mr. Hughes as a stylist, a critic, and teacher. What he really
shines in is invention.

His story of the converted Atheist shoemaker displays a faculty which
has no scope in a sermon on Tennyson.




LORD BACON ON ATHEISM.

The pedants will be down upon us for speaking of Lord Bacon. It is true
there never was such a personage. Francis Bacon was Baron of Verulam,
Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England. But this is a
case in which it is impossible to resist the popular usage. After all,
we write to be understood. The pedants, the heralds, and all the rest
of the tribe of technical fanatics, rejoice to mouth "Lord Verulam."
But the ordinary man of letters, like the common run of readers, will
continue to speak of Lord Bacon; for Bacon was his name, and the "Lord"
was but a pretty feather in his hat. And when his lordship took that
splendid pen of his, to jot down some of his profoundest thoughts for
posterity, did he not say in his grand style, "I, Francis Bacon, thought
on this wise"? You cannot get the "Bacon" out of it, and as the "Lord"
will slip in, we must let it stand as Lord Bacon.

Lord Bacon was was a very great man. Who does not remember Pope's
lines?--

     If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined,
     The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind.

But his hardship was fond of wielding the satiric lash, and that spirit
leads to exaggeration. Bacon was not the meanest of mankind, Pope
himself did things that Bacon would never have stooped to. Nor was Bacon
the wisest and brightest of mankind. A wiser and brighter spirit was
contemporary with him in the person of "a poor player." The dullards
who fancy that Lord Bacon wrote the plays of Shakespeare have no
discrimination. His lordship's mind might have been cut out of the
poet's without leaving an incurable wound. Some will dissent from this,
but be it as it may, the _styles_ of the two men are vastly different,
like their ways of thinking. Bacon's essay on Love is cynical. The man
of the world, the well-bred statesman, looked on Love as "the child of
folly," a necessary nuisance, a tragi-comical perturbation. Shakespeare
saw in Love the mainspring of life. Love speaks "in a perpetual
hyperbole," said Bacon. Shakespeare also said that the lover "sees
Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt," The poet knew all the philosopher
knew, and more. What Bacon laughed or sneered at, Shakespeare recognised
as the magic of the great enchanter, who touches our imaginations and
kindles in us the power of the ideal. Exaggeration there must be in
passion and imagination; it is the defect of their quality; but what are
we without them? Dead driftwood on the tide; dismantled hulls rotting in
harbor; anything that awaits destruction, to give its imprisoned forces
a chance of asserting themselves in new forms of being.

Bacon was not a Shakespeare; still, he was a very great man. His
writings are a text-book of worldly wisdom. His philosophical force
is almost proverbial. Nor was he wanting in a certain "dry" poetry.
No philosophical writer, not even Plato, equals him in the command of
illuminative metaphors; and the fine dignity of his style is beyond all
praise. The words drop from his pen with exquisite ease and felicity.
He is never in a hurry, never ruffled. He writes like a Lord Chancellor,
though with something in him above the office; and if he is now and then
familiar, it is only a slight condescension, like the joke of a judge,
which does not bring him down to the level of the litigants.

The opinions of such a man are worth studying; and as Lord Bacon is
often quoted in condemnation of Atheism, we propose to see what he
actually says about it, what his judgment on this particular theme
is really worth, and what allowance, if any, should be made for the
conditions in which he expressed himself. This last point, indeed,
is one of considerable importance. Lord Bacon lived at a time when
downright heresy, such as Raleigh and other great men of that age were
accused of, could only be ventilated in private conversation. In writing
it could only be hinted or suggested; and, in this respect, a writer's
_silence_ is to be taken into account; that is, we must judge by what he
does _not_ say, as well as by what he _does_ say.

Some writers, like Letourneau, the French ethnologist, have gone to
the length of arguing that Lord Bacon was a Materialist, and that his
Theistic utterances were all perfunctory: as it were, the pinch of
incense which the philosopher was obliged to burn on the altars of
the gods. This much at least is certain--Lord Bacon rarely speaks of
religion except as a philosopher or a statesman. He is apt to sneer at
the "high speculations" of "theologues." There is no piety, no unction,
in his allusions to theology. He looks upon religion as a social bond,
an agency of good government. It is impossible to say that he took
a Christian view of things when he wrote, "I have often thought upon
Death, and I find it the least of all evils"; or when he wrote, "Men
fear death as children fear to go into the dark; and as that natural
fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other."

Lord Bacon has an essay on Atheism, which is significantly followed by
another on Superstition. The latter is seldom referred to by religious
apologists, but we shall deal with it first.

"In all superstition," he says, "wise men follow fools." This is a bold,
significant utterance. Fools are always in the majority, wise men are
few, and they are obliged to bow to the power of the multitude. Kings
respect, and priests organise, the popular folly; and the wise men have
to sit aloft and nod to each other across the centuries. There is a
freemasonry amongst them, and they have their shibboleths and dark
sayings, to protect them against priests and mobs.

Perhaps the story of Balaam is a subtle anticipation of Lord Bacon's
dictum. It was the ass that first saw the angel. Baalam only saw it
afterwards, when his wits were disordered by the wonder of a talking
donkey. Thus the prophet followed the ass, as wise men follow fools.

Superstition is worse than Atheism, in Lord Bacon's judgment; the one
is unbelief, he says, but the other is contumely; and "it were better
to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion as is unworthy
of him." He approves the saying of Plutarch, that he "had rather a great
deal men should say there was no such man as Plutarch, than that they
should say there was one Plutarch that would eat his children as soon as
they were born"--which, on the part of Lord Bacon, looks like a thrust
at the doctrine of original sin and infant damnation.

With his keen eye for "the good of man's estate," Lord Bacon remarks
of superstition, that "as the contumely is greater towards God, so the
danger is greater towards men."

"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to
laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue,
though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and
erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men; therefore Atheism did
never perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking
no farther, and we see the times inclined to Atheism (as the time
of Augustus Caesar) were civil times; but superstition hath been the
confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new _primum mobile_ that
ravisheth all the spheres of government."

By "civil times" Lord Bacon means settled, quiet, orderly, progressive
times--times of civilisation. And it is rather singular that he should
pick out the age immediately preceding the advent of Christianity.
Whatever fault is in Atheism, it is no danger to human society. This
is Lord Bacon's judgment, and we commend it to the attention of the
fanatics of faith, who point to Atheism as a horrid monster, fraught
with cruelty, bloodshed, and social disruption.

Coming now to Lord Bacon's essay on Atheism itself, we find him opening
it with a very pointed utterance of Theism. "I had rather," he says,
"believe all the fables in the legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran,
than that this universal frame is without a mind." The expression is
admirable, but the philosophy is doubtful. When a man says he would
_rather_ believe one thing than another, he is merely exhibiting
a personal preference. Real belief is not a matter of taste; it is
determined by evidence--if not absolutely, at least as far as our power
of judgment carries us.

"A little philosophy," his lordship says, "inclineth man's mind
to Atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to
religion." The reason he assigns is, that when we no longer rest in
second causes, but behold "the chain of them confederate, and linked
together," we must needs "fly to providence and Deity." The necessity,
however, is far from obvious. All the laws, as we call them, of all the
sciences together, do not contain any new principle in their addition.
Universal order is as consistent with Materialism as with Theism. It
is easy to say that "God never wrought miracles to convince Atheism,
because his ordinary works convince it"; but, as a matter of fact, it
is the God of Miracles in whom the multitude have always believed. A
special providence, rather than a study of the universe, has been the
secret of their devotion to "the unseen."

Lord Bacon drops below the proper level of his genius in affirming that
"none deny there is a God, but those for whom it maketh that there
were no God." This is but a milder expression of the incivility of the
Psalmist. It is finely rebuked by the atheist Monk in the play of "Sir
William Crichton," the work of a man of great though little recognised
genius--William Smith.

For ye who deem that one who lacks of faith Is therefore
conscience-free, ye little know How doubt and sad denial may enthral him
To the most timid sanctity of life.

Lord Bacon, indeed, rather doubts the existence of the positive Atheist.

"It appeareth in nothing more, that Atheism is rather in the lip than
in the heart of man, than by this, that Atheists will ever be talking
of that their opinion, as if they fainted in it within themselves, and
would be glad to be strengthened by the opinion of others: nay more,
you shall have Atheists strive to get disciples, as it fareth with
other sects; and, which is most of all, you shall have of them that will
suffer for Atheism, and not recant; whereas, if they truly think that
there is no such thing as God, Why should they trouble themselves?"

Although Lord Bacon was not the "meanest of mankind,

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