Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924102144965 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 924 102 144 965 
 
TOPICS OF THE TIMES 
 
Xovell's literature Series, mo. 175. 
 
 TOPICS OF THE TIMES 
 
 BY 
 
 Rkv. HOWARD MACQUEARY 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 "the evolution of man and CHRISTIANITY" 
 
 NEW YORK 
 UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY 
 
 SUCCESSORS TO 
 
 JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 
 
 150 WORTH ST., COR. MISSION PLACE 
 
'^T^'Sr-a^^ 
 
 Copyright, 1891, 
 
 BY 
 
 UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY 
 
TO 
 PROFESSOR ANDREW D. WHITE, LL.D. 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK. 
 
 My Dear Sir : — Permit me to express my sincere appreciation o£ the 
 sympathy and interest you have shown in my humble efforts to liberalize 
 and rationalize the thought and life of the Church by dedicating to you 
 this little volume, in v^hich you will doubtless find much that you will 
 disapprove, but 1 flatter myself that you will also find something in it 
 which you can cordially indorse. I have the honor to be. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 Howard MacQueary. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 LECTURES. 
 
 PAQB. 
 
 I. The Conflict Between Labor and Capital, . . . 13 
 
 II. An Exposition of Nationalism 31 
 
 ni. Truths and Errors of Henry George's Views, • . . . 44 
 IV. The Savages of Civilization, 68 
 
 V. Popular Ideas of Poverty, ...... 83 
 
 VI. Reduction of the Hours of Labor, 94 
 
 VII. The Negro in America, ....... loi 
 
 Vm. The Bible in the Public Schools, 112 
 
 PART II. 
 SERMONS. 
 
 I. Our Country : Its Character and Destiny (A Thanksgiving 
 
 Day Discourse) 120 
 
 II. The Sabbath Question, 129 
 
 III. Criticism of the Bible 139 
 
 IV. Did the Fish Swallow Jonah? 150 
 
 V. What's the Use of Praying ? 162 
 
 VI. What is the Evidence of Life After Death ? . . -173 
 
 VII. The God-FiUed Man, 185 
 
 Vin. Unshaken Religious Beliefs, 196 
 
 IX. Should We Have Creeds? 207 
 
 The Real Rights of Woman, 218 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 There are two radically different ideas of the Church and 
 the Pulpit. By many the Church is considered a sort of 
 "fire escape," an institution established for the purpose 
 of savings men from a distant burning prison. The clergy- 
 man is regarded as a sort of religious policeman, whose 
 duty it is to hold up before sinners pictures of hell to scare 
 them into doing their duty. He must scourge them into 
 the straight and narrow way with the thong of fear. In 
 other words the Church and the Pulpit are supposed to deal 
 with the future world, not with this, at least not primarily 
 with this. 
 
 Religion is separated, or at any rate distinguished from 
 Morality, and it is taught that "a man maybe a moral 
 man, a very moral man, and yet go to hell." 
 
 On the other hand, many think that Jesus came to save 
 His people from their sins (Matthew i. ii); to intellectu- 
 ally, socially, morally and religiously regenerate and ele- 
 vate men in this world ; to save them from the hell of a 
 depraved soul, and from the consequences of such depravity 
 here and hereafter ; to convert earth into paradise. They, 
 therefore, hold that the Church and the Pulpit have some- 
 thing to do with the moral aspect of every question, politi- 
 cal, social or scientific ; that the best way to prepare men 
 for the neixt life is to make them better in this. They hold 
 that Religion and Morarlity are twin-sisters. Religion is 
 Morality heightened by emotion ; morality based on belief 
 in and love of God and love of man. Pure religion and 
 undefiled before God and the Father is this : To visit the 
 fatherless and the widows, and all sufferers in their afflic- 
 tion and relieve them if possible, and keep oneself unspottfed 
 from sin. The clergyman, therefore, should denounce 
 
lO TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 political corruption and industrial slavery, and social deg- 
 radation, and scientific disbelief, as well as " preach Jesus 
 Christ and Him Crucified. " Indeed, the man who preaches 
 "orthodox theories " of the Atonement, the Incarnation, 
 etc., etc., and leaves unpreached the great moral truths of 
 the Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount, will find 
 himself at the last day in that large company who will cry 
 " Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name and in 
 thy name done many wonderful things ? " But He will 
 answer: "I never knew you." And when I speak of 
 preaching the doctrines of the Sermon on the Mount, I don't 
 mean preaching them in general, apologetic terms, but I 
 mean applying them to thesolution of particular problems, 
 regardless of whom they offend, regardless of the loss of 
 popularity, position and salary. We hear any amount of 
 talk in the Pulpit about "oppression of the poor^nd the 
 elevation of the lower classes," but the man who has rail- 
 road magnates or coal kings in his congregation is decid- 
 edly weary about denouncing the evils of monopolistic 
 corporations, trusts and combines ; but this is precisely 
 what he ought to do, and the more of such men he can get 
 in his congregation, the more strongly should he preach 
 against such evils. Of course, he need not and should not 
 descend to personal abuse, and he should not be indis- 
 criminating in his censure, but he should be bold and 
 honest and faithful, as a minister of Christ. Such a preacher 
 may expect to incur odium, as Christ did, but what of that ? 
 He will be accused of desiring to create " a sensation. " 
 It is impossible to preach on living issues without being 
 accused of sensationalism. On the other hand, if a 
 preacher confines himself to a reiteration of platitudes, 
 commonplaces, he will be called a "fogy." Choose, then, 
 between sensationalism and fogyism, and for the sake of 
 Truth, do not choose the latter. Of course the old men 
 and women will call your sermons "lectures," and will 
 probably stay away from church, but thinking men and 
 women will come to hear you, and after all it is thinkers 
 who move the world. 
 
 Therefore, let none of the popular objections to the' 
 modern idea of the Church and Pulpit deter you from acting 
 upon it. " Modern idea," did I say ? Why, it is as old as 
 th# prophets of Israel. Old Samuel, and Isaiah, and Jere- 
 miah, and Ezekiel, and all their noble band, boldly de- 
 
PREFACE. II 
 
 nbuneed the' political and social evils of their time, and the 
 great " court preachers " of the Christian Church did the 
 same. What we must do is to revive their idea of the func- 
 tion of the Church and Pulpit, and follow their example, 
 and this is being done to a great extent. The clergyman is 
 paying less attention^ to the women and more attention to 
 the men ; he is doing less' "pastoral visiting" and more 
 "pastoral work ; " he is putting aside theological dogmas, 
 and considering the problems of life ; he is ceasing~to deal 
 in pious platitudes and preaching " a muscular Christian- 
 ity ; " he is trying to get men to come to church and pray 
 on Sunday ; but he is trying more earnestly to make them 
 do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before their God 
 and fellowmen during the week ; and it is because I wish to 
 help forward this good work, in my humble way, that I 
 have published this little volume of lectures and sermons. 
 They are examples of the sort of preaching which I think 
 our age needs, but in offering them to the public, I beg 
 leave to say : 
 
 They are intended to be popular discussions of the great 
 problems considered. ' They are by no means intended to 
 be exhaustive or original. I have not aimed to say any- 
 thing new or startling, but while I do not claim origi- 
 nality for this book, I may say that I have made the ideas of 
 others used herein my own : they have not been swallowed 
 without being digested. 'While, therefore, the materials of 
 the book are derived, they bear my image and superscrip- 
 tion, which my friends will recognize ; they are cast in my 
 own mental mold. Originality after all is a relative term. 
 A man is original to some people and decidedly unoriginal 
 to others. I am original to many ■''eople ("chiefly fools ! "), 
 but to Solomons I am an archaic echo. This book is not 
 written for Solomons, and should one by mistake happen 
 to take it up, I beg him to read no farther than this pas- 
 sage. My aim has been, chiefly, to find the truth in other' 
 people's ideas, and to present it in a popular manner to those 
 who have had less leisure for reading and studying than I 
 have, and if I have done this, I have done all I desired. 
 
 Furthermore : The book is not "a learned work." I say 
 this because my short experience as a writer convinces me 
 that "origmality" and "learning" are considered indis- 
 pensable prerequisites to authorship by many critics, even 
 if (especially if) the critics themselves are not original and 
 
12 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 learned. I nevet knew what an ignoramus I was until I 
 wrote a boolc, and therefore I humbly admit that I am not 
 learned, and no production of mine can bear the desirable 
 stamp of erudition ; but as learning no less than originality 
 is relative, as a man may be very "deep" to shallow 
 minds and very learned to the uneducated, perhaps I may 
 get a hearing and a reading, since the Solomons are de- 
 cidedly in the minority in these degenerate days. At any 
 rate, some of my friends who heard these lectures and ser- 
 mons were good enough to assure me that they were wor- 
 thy of publication, and therefore I venture to offer fhem to 
 the public. They have, of course, been thoroughly re- 
 vised, much of the original matter being omitted and some 
 new matter added. 
 
 Howard MacQueary. 
 
TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN LABOR AND CAPITAL. 
 
 The conflict between labor and capital is at least three 
 thousand years old. In an ancient document we have an 
 acc'ount of such a conflict which reads like a socialistic 
 novel of the present day. The parties concerned were a 
 wealthy country gentleman who owned large tracts of land 
 and large flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, and a noble 
 outlaw, who, at the head of a body of bandits, lived in the 
 caves of the mountains on which the rich man's flocks 
 browsed. The scene of this story lay in the East, in a 
 country bordering the Mediterranean Sea, where the shep- 
 herd's life is peculiarly delightful and peculiarly danger- 
 ous — delightful because of the rich pastures and sunny 
 skies — dangerous because robber bands prowl through the 
 country and are apt to make severe inroads on the flocks. 
 Now, on the occasion referred to, the herdsmen of our 
 wealthy lord drove his flocks far away from his residence 
 into the mountains, where the band of outlaws were hid- 
 ing ; but the leader of the band, being more noble than 
 men of this class usually are, not only restrained his men 
 from committing depredations upon the flocks, but he act- 
 ually protected them from the attacks of other robbers 
 lurking in those parts. Soon the time for shearing the 
 sheep came round, and our bandit chief then sent several 
 of his followers to the wealthy sheep-owner asking that he 
 requite their services with a few pieces of mutton. But 
 
14 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 my lord the 'sheep-owner replied, " Who is this fellow that 
 he should make such a demand of me ? There be many- 
 servants nowadays that break away from their masters ! 
 Shall I then take my bread and my water and my flesh 
 that I killed for my shearers, and give it unto men whom 
 I know not whence they be ? No ! get you gone ! " So the 
 young man returned to the chief and told him the result of 
 his request. "Well," he exclaimed, "come, boys, gird 
 ye on every man his sword," and we will show this fool 
 who are masters and who are servants." 
 
 So they sallied forth, four hundred strong, armed to the 
 teeth, to take by force what they had failed to get by 
 peaceable means. But lo, on the way they met the wife 
 of my lord the sheep-owner, coming with a body of servants 
 and ladened asses, bringing a large supply of bread and 
 wine and mutton and raisins and figs. And she fell on her 
 face before the outraged chieftain, beseeching him to accept 
 her peace-offering and do no violence to her fool of a hus- 
 band. Her beauty and her generosity melted the heart of 
 the noble outlaw and he gladly accepted her bounty and in- 
 voked a blessing upon her for preventing him from shedding 
 of blood. Meanwhile, her husband, who knew nothing of 
 his wife's conduct, was feasting and drinking with his 
 friends ; as a result of his carousal he was taken ill the next 
 morning and died in ten days ; and then his beautiful wife 
 married the bandit chief, of course. 
 
 You recognize in this story the history of David and 
 Nabal. It is written in the twenty-fifth chapter of the First 
 Book of Samuel, and I submit it not only reads like a novel 
 but it is most suggestive on the subject in hand. Indeed 
 it reveals both the causes and the cures of all labor trouble, 
 (i.) We remark that the first cause of this conflict between 
 labor and capital was the contrast between the condition of 
 David and that of Nabal. It was the contrast between the 
 rich man and Lazarus. Nabal had abundance and to spare : 
 David had nothing — not even a shelter for his head save a 
 hole in the ground, and he had six hundred men follow- 
 ing him and depending upon him for support. Moreover, 
 his straitened circumstances were not due to any fault of 
 his, but rather to the jealousy and injustice and cruelty of 
 his king — Saul. It is no wonder, then, that he should seek 
 food from his wealthy neighbor, whose flocks he had not 
 only not injured but had actually protected. Now, this 
 
CONFLICT BETWEEN LABOR AND CAPITAL. 15 
 
 state of things has ever preceded a social revolution. When 
 Rome was tottering to her fall, we are told, "a whole 
 population might be trembling lest they should be starved 
 by the delay of an Egyptian corn ship from Alexandria, 
 while the upper classes were squandering a fortune on a 
 single banquet, drinking out of myrrhine and jewelled vases 
 worth thousands of dollars ; and feasting on the brains of 
 peacocks and the tongues of nightingales. Over a large 
 part of Italy most of the free-born population had to con- 
 tent themselves, even in winter with a tunic ; and the 
 luxury of a toga was reserved only, by way of honor, to the 
 corpse. Yet at this very time the dress of Roman ladies 
 displayed an unheard of splendor. One, it is said, was 
 seen dressed for a betrothal feast in a robe entirely covered 
 with pearls and emeralds, which had cost the amazing sum 
 of over two million dollars ; and this was known to be less 
 expensive than some others. 
 
 In the history of the French Revolution of the last cen- 
 tury we have the same contrast in the conditions of the 
 rich and the poor. An eminent abb6 of the time and a 
 leader in the revolution, exclaimed in the National Assem- 
 bly : "What is the Third Estate ? Everything. What has 
 it hitherto been in the body politic ? Nothing. What does 
 it demand.? To be something." Whatever exaggeration 
 there may be in this statement, due to the passion of the 
 orator, it certainly points to the fact that the great mass of 
 the French people were slaves to the upper-classes and 
 had no recognized political rights worthy of mention. 
 
 In our country to-day we have a similar state of things : 
 — on the one hand immense fortunes — the greatest ever 
 known — on the other, the most abject poverty. "There 
 are worlds and worlds," says Mr. George, "even within 
 the bounds of the same city. The man who comes into 
 New York with plenty of money, who puts up at the Wind- 
 sor or Brunswick, and is received by hospitable hosts in 
 Fifth Avenue mansions, sees one New York. The man 
 who comes with a dollar and a half, and goes to the fifteen 
 or twenty-five cent lodging house sees another. On the 
 one hand are those to whom life, with its round of balls, 
 parties, theatres, flirtations and excursions, is a holiday, 
 in which, but for invention of new pleasures, satiety would 
 make time drag. But this bright world is very different 
 from that of the old woman who, in the dingy lower street. 
 
1 6 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 sits from morning to night beside her little stock of apples 
 and candy : and from that of girls who stand all day behind 
 counters and before looms, who bend over sewing machines 
 for weary, weary hours, or who come out at night to prowl 
 the streets. Never since great estates were eating out the 
 heart of Rome has the world seen such enormous fortunes 
 as are now rising : and nevermore utter proletarians." 
 
 What is true of New York is true of all our large towns 
 and cities. Dives and Lazarus lie down together, the one 
 at the gate with the dogs, the other in the mansion with his 
 sweet wife and dear children and congenial friends. But 
 shall we, therefore, conclude that a great revolution is brew- 
 ing like that which destroyed Rome and rent the French 
 Monarchy asunder? We cannot say positively, but we 
 may say that it is not at all necessary — that it is not yet too 
 late to prevent such a catastrophe. We remember that 
 Abigail stepped in between David and Nabal and averted 
 the threatened destruction of the fool, and we may hope 
 that the spirit of Abigail is broad in our land to-day and is 
 sufficiently strong to settle our industrial troubles. 
 
 2. The second cause of the conflict between David and 
 Nabal was the social superiority which the wealthy deb- 
 auchee asserted over the noble-chieftain. He assumed 
 that because he was rich he was made of better clay than 
 David was. He therefore exclaimed in much haughtiness, 
 ' ' Who is this David, and who is the son of Jesse 1 There be 
 many servants now-a-days that break away every man from 
 his master." The fact was, David had been anointed king 
 over Israel, and his reduction to a bandit's life was due to 
 the injustice and cruelty of Saul, not to his inherent inferior- 
 ity. All his pride, all "The old Adam " in him therefore, 
 was aroused by this insulting reply of Nabal and he very 
 naturally proposed to show him who was who. Now we 
 hear a great deal of talk about "the dignity of labor" and 
 " the brotherhood of man " in our day. The politician is 
 very suave in his address and very cordial in his grasp of 
 the working man's hand— just before the election ; the 
 clergyman paints beautiful pictures of the Nazarene Car- 
 penter and "love in a cottage," and very fervently calls 
 the working men "dear brethren" on Sunday, but unlike 
 his Master he is not so ready on Monday to go and 
 dine with the publicans and sinners. He enjoys much 
 more a chat over the wine glass with the refined, wealthy. 
 
CONFLICT BE TWEEN LABOR AND CAPITAL. ly 
 
 educated employer than he does "hard tack" and a glass 
 of milk in the humble lodging of his employee. Of course 
 it is not so in every case. There are noble exceptions 
 arnong both the clergy and laymen. There are men who 
 will lift their hat to the working man and his wife at other 
 times than election days, and there are clergymen who not 
 only preach but practice the fraternity of Jesus. But un- 
 questionably, these are exceptions ; else working men would 
 love the parson and the politician more than they do. The 
 opinion is widespread and is based on facts, that whatever 
 may be the "dignity of labor " theoretically, yet money 
 gives one power, position, and even character. Hence the 
 young woman looks out for a "good catch " and the broken 
 down aristocracy of England and France come to America 
 in search of heiresses. The parson and the politician, the 
 employer and the employee, all seek wealth, and when they 
 get it they generally speak of others as theit "servants," 
 even though they may have royal blood flowing through 
 their veins. And this is as true of working men who become 
 rich as those who inherit their wealth. Indeed, we have 
 all doubtless known of men, who have "risen in life" and 
 who make the very worse kind of employers and the most 
 unbearable snobs. But this sort of thing arouses the very 
 devil in men who know that whatever may be their mis- 
 fortunes, their blood is as pure, their clay is as good, as 
 that which sits in cushioned chairs, sleeps on golden bed- 
 steads, drives in a coach and four and swills wine from 
 silver decanters. Working men and women are getting 
 tired of being called "servants" and "hands" — mere ma- 
 chines to enrich others — and so they are beginning to cease 
 to respect those who treat them as Nabal treated David, and 
 we need not wonder if they feel tempted to bring fools to 
 their senses by hard knocks. Don't misunderstand me. 
 I am not advocating such a method of procedure. I am 
 only stating facts, and maintaining that as long as money 
 instead of character is made the basis of social superiority 
 — as long as the relation of "master" and "servant "is 
 emphasized — as long as the wealthy employer passes his 
 "hands" on the street as he would a crowd of dogs — so 
 long must there be a feeling of spite and ill-will. Only 
 by a recognition of the dignity of man as man, only by the 
 acknowledgment of the fact that his employees are co- 
 workers, partners with him, can any pleasant relation be- 
 
 2 
 
1 8 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 tween empioyer and employed exist. Don't infer from this 
 that I am a Socialist, for I am not. Socialism is too much 
 of a machine system to suit men, but it rests on a grand 
 truth — a truth proclaimed nineteen centuries ago by the 
 Nazarene Carpenter — the truth of man's unity and brother- 
 hood. 
 
 3. A third and indeed the most important cause of the 
 conflict between David and . Nabal was a failure on the 
 part of both to recognize certain rights. David was right 
 in believing that he should be rewarded for his services, 
 but he was wrong in employing force to get such remu- 
 neration. On the other hand, Nabal cannot be utterly con- 
 demned for not seeing at once the reasonableness of 
 David's demands. He argued thus : "I pay my laborers 
 what I promise them. I never asked this David to guard 
 my flocks : he did it of his own accord. Why, then, 
 should I pay for services I never engaged.? Shall I take 
 my bread and my water and my flesh that I have killed 
 for my regularly employed laborers and give it unto men, 
 whom I know not whence they be.?" David's demand, 
 therefore, appeared to him an extravagant and insolent 
 One, provoking unfeigned astonishment and indignation. 
 He considered it an invasion of his rights — a dictation 
 with respect to the employment of that which was his own. 
 Recollect, too, that this view of the irresponsible right of 
 property was not NdbaTs invention. It was the view 
 probably entertained by all his class. It had descended 
 to him from his parents, and hence he could not be ex- 
 pected to see things just as David saw them. David un- 
 doubtedly had a »Jora/ right although he had no legal x\g\iX 
 (to use a modern distinction), to a portion of the stuff he 
 had protected, and Abigail, with the keen conscience of 
 the woman, saw this at once, and hastened to satisfy the 
 just demands of David. But Nabal could not see this, and 
 his modern representatives are quite as thick-headed. 
 They "do business, don't you know 1 " They don't carry 
 a Bible around in their pockets, or paste up a copy of the 
 Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount in 
 their shops and offices. They don't object to hearing the 
 preacher expound these great truths in the pulpit on Sunday, 
 but he must not come into their offices Monday morning 
 and urge them to apply the principles he had advocated 
 the day before. The " business-man " thinks that the Ten 
 
CONFLICT BETWEEN LABOR AND CAPITAL. 19 
 
 Commandments have as little' to do with business as the 
 United States Senator said they had to do with politics. 
 They do very well to preach about, but the minister who 
 steps into the office of a wealthy parishioner of his and 
 urges him to adopt those principles in his business, will 
 be politely reminded of the fact that "he knows nothing 
 about business." He would better go up to the house and 
 »talk to the ladies, or go home and say his prayers, and 
 prepare his sermon and let " business men " run the shops ! 
 And these modern Nabals must be partially excused on the 
 ground oi false education. They have been taught that 
 " competition is the life of trade" — that "wages are gov- 
 erned by the law of supply and demand " — that they must, 
 therefore, buy their labor in the cheapest market, and that 
 they are not responsible for the cheapness of labor. This 
 miserable political economy — this false and immoral 
 teaching, — has been pounded into their minds from the 
 cradle up, and has furnished the governing principles of 
 business for generations, and we cannot therefore be sur- 
 prised if they treat David's demand as an invasion of their 
 rights — a dictation to which they must not submit. Shallow 
 people often say it matters little what one believes I It 
 makes a tremendous difference what one believes ! A 
 man who believes the theories just alluded to will never 
 be convinced of the justice of the laborers' demand, but, 
 like Nabal, will spurn it from him with astonishment and 
 indignation. 
 
 Such, then, are three of the prime causes of the conflict 
 between labor and capital. The existence of great wealth 
 side by side with abject poverty, which begets the con- 
 viction in the mind of the masses that there is a screw 
 loose somewhere in the social machinery. How often do 
 we hear a poor man say, as he looks at his wealthy neigh- 
 bor's fine residence, etc., " It doesn't seem right that a few 
 men should be so rich and the many so poor ! " This is 
 not simply an expression of envy, but it is a condemnation 
 of the social and industrial system. Then the pride and 
 arrogance of the wealthy toward the poor, and the appli- 
 cation of false economic or " business principles " so-called 
 instead of great moral maxims in industrial affairs, con- 
 tribute still more largely to the production of a conflict 
 
 What are the remedies P 
 
 (i.) Shall it he force, such as David employed? God 
 
20 TOPICS OP THE TIMES. 
 
 forbid ! As Professor Richard T. Ely, of the Johns Hop- 
 kins University, Baltimore — a friend of the working men — 
 says : " It is high time for those men to keep quiet, who, 
 little in heart and mind, have no better remedy for social 
 ills than physical force. They fail absolutely to understand 
 the age in which they live, and will involve us all^ in ruin 
 if allowed to execute their savage plans." 
 
 (2.) Shall we, then, adopt the Socialist's program — the 
 joint control of land and capital, worked by associated 
 labor ? That is, shall we make land and the means of 
 production common (public) property and the State the 
 one and only employer, and distribute the products either 
 according to the needs or the deeds of the individual 
 workers ? 
 
 Judging from the enormous sale of Mr. Bellamy's book 
 ("Looking Backward"), we must conclude that thou- 
 sands of the best minds of our day think that this is 
 the panacea for our social ills. But as already stated, I 
 consider Socialism too much of a machine system. It 
 would not allow the freedom to the individual that it prom- 
 ises, and I for one don't want to be a mere pin or screw 
 fixed in one place in the great social machine. Mr. Bella- 
 my's picture is very attractive, in some respects, especially 
 in the dignity assigned to labor and the universal plenty 
 it offers, but it is much easier to draw such a sketch on 
 paper than it is to make it work in practice ; and I dare say 
 that the people of the twentieth or the twenty-fifth century 
 will find the machine offered quite as unmanageable as 
 we do. 
 
 (3) Shall we, then, adopt the Anarchist's proposition : — 
 abolish all laws and make every man a law unto himself? 
 Yes, we may do that — when the millennium comes! But if 
 we were to do it now I for one should beg to be transported 
 at once to Mars or some other planet ! The Anarchists are 
 too good for this world, and should all be sent immediately 
 to Heaven ! In all seriousness; the Anarchist believes that 
 we can get along without law, and that it should there- 
 fore be altogether abolished ; but much as I love the 
 Gospel, I fear that, human nature continuing as it is, the 
 Gospel must be spiced with law for some centurieb to 
 come — perhaps less law than we now have, or, at least 
 with better law, but still we must have some law — the 
 only question is. What and Where P 
 
CONFLICT Between labor and capital. 2 1 
 
 (4.) Shall we, then adopt Henry George's theory — abol- 
 ish private ownership in land by the appropriation of its 
 economic rent as taxes ? This would be a comparatively 
 simple solution of the social problem, and much may be 
 said in its favor. But many of us cannot agree with Mr. 
 George that the ownership of land is in itself criminal, nor 
 can we see that the adoption of the Single Tax would re- 
 move all our social ills. We hold that labor spent upon 
 land gives the same title to it that labor spent upon the 
 materials of a house gives to it, and Mr. George admits that 
 labor spent upon a house makes it ours. We also admit 
 that our present methods of taxation are about as unjust 
 and iniquitous as they could be, but we fail to see how any 
 method of taxation could cure all of our industrial evils. 
 Now it must not be inferred from this glance at Socialism, 
 Anarchism and Georgeism that I don't appreciate the high 
 intellectual and moral character of such men as Mr. Bellamy, 
 Ml. Hugh Penticost and Mr. George, or that I consider 
 their theories altogether irrational and impracticable : far 
 from it ! I have the utmost respect and admiration for these 
 men, for their motives and aims, and I doubt not that 
 many of the reforms they advocate would be practicable and 
 beneficial — only I think that none of these systems taken 
 as a whole, contains remedies for all our social ills. We want 
 a system larger than any of these, which will comprehend 
 all their truths and exclude their errors, but that system is 
 yet unborn. 
 
 While, then, we await its birth, what shall we do to be 
 saved.? "There are four agencies," says Professor Ely, 
 " through which we must work for the amelioration of the 
 laboring classes as well as of all classes of society. These 
 are the labor organization, the school, the State, and the 
 Church. " 
 
 I. The Labor Organization — what is its function and 
 duty ? It seems to me that labor organizations have made 
 a grand mistake though perhaps a natural and pardonable 
 mistake. They have imagined that their great object was 
 strikes, — the raising of wages, the obtainment of their de- 
 sires by means of force. Of course, I know that this is 
 not avowed in their platforms as their prime object, and 
 many labor leaders have always been strongly opposed to 
 strikes, except as the last resort, and some may have op- 
 posed them -altogether on principle. But, assuredly, the 
 
22 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 majority of working men have felt that they must obtain 
 their rights by force, and to that end they have joined 
 organizations. They made the mistake of David, and it is 
 to be hoped that the recent deplorable strike on the New 
 York Central R. R. (1890) will be the last one. Strikes are 
 not only expensive, they not only disturb business and de- 
 stroy thousands of dollars worth of property, but experience 
 shows that they are for the most part useless — or at least 
 that more harm than good generally results from them. A 
 spirit of bitterness and strife on both sides is engendered 
 which does harm to everybody, and must be deprecated. 
 What, then, is the function of labor organizations .? It is 
 threefold ; to impart information on economic subjects, to 
 arbitrate matters in dispute, and to influence legislatures by 
 petitions and otherwise. I have the word of working men 
 who have long been members of labor organizations that 
 their chief benefit was the education the members received 
 in them. By means of lectures, the papers published and 
 taken, the discussions in their various meetings, etc., they 
 stir up thought on economic subjects, and surely any 
 one who has even a superficial knowledge of facts must 
 know that the ignorance of the simplest principles of pol- 
 itical economy and social conditions is simply prodigious, 
 not only — not mainly among the working men, — but also 
 among the employing classes. Go to any employer and 
 ask him, What is the source and law of wages ? and he 
 will immediately answer that wages are drawn from capi- 
 tal and governed by the law of supply and demand ; and 
 if you contradict him he will at once flare up and declare 
 you to be " a labor agitator, " a "Socialist, "an "Anarchist," 
 a Henry George man, or perhaps the devil ! Yet it is well 
 known to most intelligent working men and to all students 
 of economics that, not only have the Socialists and Anar- 
 chists, Henry George, Gunton and other so-called "labor 
 agitators," shown that the popular theory of wages is false, 
 but Gen. Francis A. Walker, Professor Ely, and other emi- 
 nent political economists who are not "labor agitators," 
 have proved the same. It has been shown that wages are 
 not drawn from capital, but from the products of labor — 
 that capital is, in fact, itself a product of labor — and that 
 wages are not governed by the "law of supply and de- 
 mand," but by the laborer's standard of living — that is, the 
 least that will satisfy his needs, and by the utility of his 
 
CONFLICT BETWEEN LABOR AND CAPITAL. 23 
 
 labor to the employer. Now, the erroneous idea of wages 
 which most employers hold, and which is due not to their 
 depravity of heart but to false education, produces immense 
 practical difficulties ; and yet it will probably never be 
 eradicated from their minds except by the influence of 
 labor organizations and their friends. By a wide diffusion 
 of economic knowledge through the labor journals, lec- 
 tures, etc., these organizations will indirectly and slowly 
 influence the general press of the country, and sow good 
 seed which will ultimately bear fruit. At any rate the 
 main function of labor organizations is educational, and 
 its importance cannot be over-estimated. Another func- 
 tion is arbitration, and as the organizations generally "rec- 
 ognize this in their platforms it is unnecessary to dwell long 
 upon it — only they should not let this principle remain a 
 dead letter. The working men should restr aintheir Davids 
 when the Nabals arouse them, and should send out their Abi- 
 gails. Unfortunately, the beautiful wives of the employers 
 will not be easily persuaded to follow the example of the an- 
 cient heroine and mediate between the antagonists and so 
 the working men must send out their Abigails. I mean, 
 of course, that they themselves must make the advance in 
 the spirit of Abigail and be governed solely by reason and 
 conscience, even when the employers are not. That was 
 the spirit of the Nazarene Carpenter, and is becoming more 
 and more the spirit of the times. Experience shows that 
 arbitration works better than force, even though its opera- 
 tion be slower, and the laboring men have to suffer consider- 
 able loss and oppression before they reap its rewards. Arbi- 
 tration is destined to supersede force in the industrial and 
 political world, in the individual and international relations, 
 and so the labor organizations, by adopting this method of 
 adjusting disturbed industrial relations place themselves in 
 the very vanguard of human progress. 
 
 Finally, the labor organizations can exert an influence 
 upon the national and state legislatures. " What ! " I hear 
 some indignant working man exclaim, " talk about the 
 laboring men influencing a Senate of Millionaires and a 
 House of boodled Representatives ! Nonsense ! " Yes, 
 but I don't mean quite that. I know full well that the chief 
 business of Congress, as it is now constituted, seems to be 
 to unseat congressmen that have really been elected, to 
 kick down doors and to pass partizan legislative acts, and 
 
24 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 of course it is absurd to think that such a Congress will do 
 anything for working men. But when I say that labor 
 organizations may influence the legislature, I mean they 
 may create it. Working men, vote for those that will vote for 
 you I By that I don't mean that you should necessarily 
 form a working man's party, though that may be the ulti- 
 mate result of your action, but I mean that you should for 
 the present create no new party lines, and ignore those 
 already existing, and vote for men who, you have good 
 reason to believe, will consider and stand by your interests 
 in the National and State Legislatures. The majority of 
 the voters of this country are working men, and if they are 
 oppressed by corrupt "boss governed" politicians it is 
 their own fault. They have the remedy in their own hands 
 and whenever they choose they may cleanse the political 
 Augean stables ; and then, but not till then, can they hope 
 for help from the Government such as they need. All this 
 is more or less fully recognized in the platforms of the 
 various labor organizations, but too often their principles 
 remain dead letters. Hence it cannot be too earnestly urged 
 upon such organizations, that they have among their mem- 
 bers men of sufficient brains, and through their medium 
 they may get sufficient education to fit them for Congress, 
 and they should be sent to Congress by working men. 
 
 2. A second agency in the solution of the labor prob- 
 lem mentioned by Dr. Ely is the School. "Chief atten- 
 tion (he says) should be directed to the young, and with a 
 good will and energetic action they can be so influenced 
 as to change the character of the population materially in 
 one generation. They should, when necessary, be re- 
 moved from vicious surroundings and universal and com- 
 pulsory education ought to reach every child in the land. 
 Schools may be improved by the introduction of instruction 
 in manners and morals. Manual training for boys, sewing 
 and cooking for girls, gymnastic exercises and suitable 
 structures for both are all desirable, and would yield a 
 large return for every dollar invested." One of the great 
 political parties to-day professes to be very much interested 
 in "the protection of labor." If, now, instead of taxing 
 the commodities the poor man uses, it would provide the 
 means of making his labor more efficient, and therefore 
 more valuable, we should be more inclined to believe in 
 its cry of "protection to labor ; " and when we think of the 
 
CONFLICT BETWEEN LABOR AND CAPITAL. 
 
 25 
 
 millions the Nation spends in educating men at Annapolis 
 and West Point for the purpose of killfng their fellow men 
 (which purpose fortunately is not often fulfilled), we think 
 that a crumb flung to the working man in the shape of in- 
 dustrial training would be not simply a boon to him but a 
 blessing to society as a whole. But again it is necessary 
 that working men should be represented in the National 
 and State Legislatures before they can expect the State aid 
 they need in education. Until then they must be content 
 to see "the surplus" of their hard earnings, that accumu- 
 lates from time to time in the Treasury, spent on public 
 buildings in the various congressional districts, and for 
 other purposes which, however commendable they may 
 be, are far less important than the intellectual and social 
 elevation of the people. 
 
 Of course, there are various objections urged against 
 State aid to education. Some object to it on religious 
 grounds others on economic grounds, but "proof of the 
 pudding is eating it," and whatever may be the defects of 
 our public school system — and they are neither few nor 
 trifling — it produces much more good than evil'; it is a 
 national blessing ; and may be greatly improved, especially 
 by the addition of a system of manual training. 
 
 3. The third agency in industrial regeneration which 
 Dr. Ely suggests is the State. "The individual," he s^ys, 
 "has his province, the State has its functions, which the 
 individual cannot accomplish at all or cannot accomplish 
 so well. But an obstacle to the proper economic activity of 
 the State has been found in the low view men have too often 
 taken of its nature. Calling it an atomistic collection of 
 units, some have even gone so far as to speak of taxation 
 for the support of Public Schools as robbery of the prop- 
 ertied classes. Now it may be rationally maintained that 
 if there is anything divine on this earth, it is the State, the 
 product of the same God-given instincts which led to the 
 establishment of the Church and the Family." Of course, 
 the Professor does not mean that any particular State as it 
 actually exists to-day, much less does he mean that the 
 Government (which the popular mind generally identifies 
 with the State) is divine, but he means the State as ii should 
 be, — a real Government "of the people, by the people, and 
 for the people " would be divine. In other words, the idea of 
 the State is of Divine origin, as is the idea of the Church and 
 
26 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 Family, while its actual realization among human beings 
 necessarily partakes more or less of all human attempts to 
 attain to the Divine. But supposing the people — the great 
 masses — are fairly represented in the Government, arid this 
 may be accomplished by an intelligent use of the ballot by 
 the people, then the State may perform the following func- 
 tions to great advantage: It can shorten the hours of 
 labor ; it can equalize taxation and abolish all restrictions 
 upon commerce : it can cease from discriminative legisla- 
 tion, by which the few are enriched at the expense of the 
 many : it can prohibit child labor, and provide educational 
 facilities for the masses : it can regulate immigration — pro- 
 tect American virorkingmen, not from ih.& products of "the 
 pauper labor of Europe," but from " the pauper labor" it- 
 self: it can give women their rights — enact that women 
 who do the work of men shall receive the wages of men : 
 it can provide for the careful inspection and due ventilation 
 of factories, mines, etc., it can establish Postal Savings 
 Banks, and. Dr. Ely would add, it can and should control 
 municipal gas-works, electric lighting, waterworks, street 
 railways, telephones, telegraphs, and steam railways. 
 Whether it should go so far as that or not, the State may 
 certainly do the most of these things without running into 
 Socialism and to great and endless comfort of millions. I 
 do not forget the Anarchists' objections to all this, but I 
 cannot consider them now. 
 
 Dr. Ely maintains that there are certain businesses, such 
 as the telegraph and railroad, that are monopolies by their 
 very nature — "natural monopolies," as distinguished from 
 these monopolies created by legislation : and he holds that 
 State control of these natural monopolies would redound to 
 the welfare of the whole community, and would be much 
 better than their private management. If so let us have 
 State control of such businesses. But let the superiority of 
 public control over private enterprise be fully proved by 
 facts and reasons before it be adopted. The great ques- 
 tion of the day is. How to adjust the relation of monopolis- 
 tic and individualistic enterprises .■" and Professor Ely's 
 suggestions on this point are very important But without 
 discussing this question at length it is all important to em- 
 phasize the fact that the State has an industrial or econo- 
 mic function, as well as a civil and military function — that 
 the economic function is, in fact, the most important ; and 
 
CONFLICT BETWEEN LABOR AND CAPITAL, 27 
 
 this is fully recognized by tariff legislators — only they put 
 the shoe on the wrong foot. 
 
 4. Finally, the Church must claim her full place as a 
 social power existing independently of the State. And now, 
 lest it be thought that I have a clergyman's interest in this 
 matter, I shall quote Prof Ely's words on this subject also. 
 "A wider diffusion of sound ethics (hesays)is an economic 
 requirement of the times. Christian ethics — by all acknowl- 
 edged to be the most perfect system of ethics, regardless 
 of any divine origin — contain the principles which should 
 animate the entire labor movement. But how are men to 
 learn these i" The masses can acquire such an acquaint- 
 ance with the data of ethics as to render them a living 
 reality only through some one who is a personal embodi- 
 ment of them. Abstract ethics have not and never will be- 
 come a mighty vital power in this world. It is the con- 
 crete that moves pien. Now I know only one perfect con- 
 crete embodiment of Christian ethics and that is their Foun- 
 der I He it is who must become the personal Saviour of the 
 labor movement, if it is ever to accomplish its legitimate 
 end. American working men will sooner or later perceive 
 that the Christian Church is not hostile to their just aspira- 
 tions, but rather their best friend." It must not be inferred 
 from this that Dr. Ely is blind to the faults of the Church, 
 or that he commends it as a whole. On the contrary, no 
 one has denounced more severely than he the sins of Chris- 
 tians and the failure of the clergy to do their part in this 
 great work. But he recognizes the fact that all human so- 
 cieties must be more or less imperfect — that the tares and 
 the wheat must grow together : still he urges, rightly, that 
 the wheat is there. "Enumerate (he says) the men outside 
 of the laboring classes prominent for their advocacy of the 
 cause of labor, write all the names on a slip of paper and 
 cross out the names of clergymen, and you will find three 
 fourths of them gone. No other large or influential class in 
 the United States is so devoted to the working men's w^elfare, 
 and I know how to give them no better advice than to urge 
 them to seek counsel and friendly aid in all their endeavors 
 from Christian ministers." Now, if this did not come from 
 a layman and one who is known to be a friend of the 
 working man, I should hesitate to quote it, lest it be thought 
 that I was pleading my own cause. But I must confess 
 that I agree with Prof. Ely. Through the Nazarene Car- 
 
28 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 penter, his Church and his Ministers, will great blessings 
 be obtained for the laboring classes. I have already 
 frankly admitted that the majority of the Clergy are not as 
 wide awake on social and industrial subjects as they ought 
 to be, although, as Dn Ely says, there may be more of the 
 Clergy than other professional men interested in the labor- 
 er's welfare. I have received no special favor from my 
 clerical brethren that I should defend them, but I do 
 believe that most of them are kindly disposed to the work- 
 ing men and would fain render them a good service. The 
 reason why more of them do not do this is found, not in 
 their depravity of heart but in their false education. There 
 is not {fls there should be) a chair in social science in every 
 one of our theological seminaries to teach candidates for the 
 ministry how to apply Christian principles to the solution of 
 the complicated industrial problems. They are not taught 
 that the Church has an important part to perform in the po- 
 litical and social sphere. On the contrary, they are taught 
 that "Christ's Kingdom is not of this world" — that "the 
 Church has nothing to do with politics " — that this subject 
 must not be mentioned in the pulpit Their minds are 
 crammed full of Latin, Greek and Hebrew; they are taught 
 how to prove that miracles happened nineteen centuries 
 ago — or rather they are taught to attempt to prove this, 
 but the teaching for the most part is a failure : they are 
 taught Church history in order to show that their Church 
 is the Church — the only Church : they are in short, taught 
 sectarian theology — theories of Inspiration, theories of the 
 God-head, theories of the Atonement, theories of future 
 retribution, theories on this and theories on that subject, 
 but they are not taught the grand truths contained in the 
 Sermon on the Mount, the command , "Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself, " or in such parables as that of the Good 
 Samaritan. I mean they are not taught to apply these great 
 principles in detail to particular, cases of political corrup- 
 tion and social oppression regardless of whom they offend. 
 But we have reason to hope that the day is not distant 
 when these things will be done while those things will not 
 be left undone. No one believes more firmly than I do in 
 a thorough education of the clergy in the Languages, Apol- 
 ogetics, Theology, Church History, etc. ; if these subjects 
 were taught philosophically and not from a narrow sec- 
 tarian point of view, no one would object to such teaching : 
 
CONFLICT BETWEEN LABOR AND CAPITAL. 29 
 
 but neither Christ nor Saint Paul devoted himself to theologi- 
 cal instruction. They rather emphasized practical religion, 
 and this is what we must have. Meanwhile, I plead for 
 the clergy on the same ground as that on which I have 
 based a plea for the Nabals — that is, on the ground of false 
 education. Both are educated after a fashion, but it is not 
 such an education as will lead them to do the work we are 
 now talking about. Working men, therefore, must not 
 make unreasonable demands of the clergy. Let them re- 
 member that they are mere human beings : let them con- 
 sider the amazing influence of environment or surround- 
 ings, the force of heredity and early education : above all, 
 let them remember that sonie, indeed many, clergymen are 
 already aroused and are doing what they can, and their ex- 
 ample and influence will tell in due time. What the work- 
 ing men should do is not to stand aloof from the Clergy 
 and the Church, for they certainly can never win their help 
 by such means : nor should they denounce them either in 
 a bunch or individually, but they should get possession of 
 the Clergy and the Church. We want a Working-man's 
 Church, if not a Working-man's Political Party, and the 
 working men can give us this. They can put their men 
 into the ministry and build them churches, and tell them 
 to preach not theology but the " ology" of Jesus Christ — 
 the Gospel of Good Deeds — and then they should go to 
 hear that Gospel. I have found that working men will 
 sometimes go to church when the minister proposes to 
 preach on their favorite topic — say the Eight Hour Move- 
 ment, Socialism, Georgeism, and such like — but they will 
 not go at other times. Of course, I know that we natu- 
 rally like to hearthe subjects we are specially interested in 
 discussed better than we like to hear other topics preached 
 about ; but we should remember that other people are in- 
 terested in different subjects, and so we should be as will- 
 ing to listen to discussions on those subjects as they are to 
 hear sermons on our favorite topics, and when we refuse 
 to do this it looks like the child's "I won't play if you don't 
 do to suit me." 
 
 The minister preaches to all classes : he is the friend 
 of all — the rich and the poor alike — and must not take sides 
 just to gain the favor of either party. It will be remembered 
 that a young man came to Jesus on one occasion, and 
 asked him to speak to his brother that he divide his living 
 
30 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 with him, but the Master refused to do so sayhig, "Who 
 made me a judge and divider over you ?" (Luke xii. 13- 
 15). He was the friend of both and would not therefore 
 take sides ; but he immediately laid down the great princi- 
 ple which should govern both parties, viz. : "Beware of 
 coveiousness I " That is the position the Clergy must take 
 on the labor question : they must denounce spiritual wick- 
 edness in high as well as in low places without fear or 
 favor, but they must not become partizans, and the work- 
 ing men must not ask them to do just as they would have 
 them do and swear at them and desert them if they don't 
 do this. Let them stand by the parsons and the parsons 
 will stand by them — at least some of them will — and they 
 can easily separate the sheep from the goata 
 
AN EXPOSITION OF NA TIONALISM. 3 1 
 
 AN EXPOSITION OF NATIONALISM. 
 
 In our day the world is deluged with books, and the 
 flood is so great that it sweeps many thousands of volumes 
 into the whirlpool of oblivion almost as soon as they are 
 produced. Among the comparatively few books that are 
 destined to escape this fate and exert a lasting influence 
 upon the thought and life of the nation is Edward Bellamy's 
 "Looking Backward." It is not only interesting as a 
 novel, it has not only had a larger sale than perhaps any 
 book of the age, but it deals with facts and conditions that 
 will claim the attention of the best minds for many genera- 
 tions to come, and as long as "the social problem " remains 
 unsolved, so long will the views advocated by Mr. Bel- 
 lamy prove interesting, and to many persons attractive, if 
 for no other reason simply because Socialism, which is 
 merely another name for Nationalism, offers one of the 
 noblest ideals to man and society. It promises a fulfill- 
 ment of the great prophecy^ that men would one day "beat 
 their swords into plowshares, and their spears into prun- 
 ing hooks," and allow every one to live peaceably and 
 happily under his own vine and fig tree. It proclaims the 
 possible realization of the Nazarene's doctrine of a Univer- 
 sal Brotherhood, and hence, it will always stir the souls 
 of philanthropists. For such reasons it is here pro- 
 posed to give another exposition of Nationalism, in order 
 that its power and principles and objects may be more 
 widely known. I shall not attempt much criticism, but 
 simply explain the Nationalist programme, and perhaps, 
 point- out its good features, leaving to others the indication 
 of its weakness and shortcomings. The first point to be 
 made clear is the exact nature of Nationalism, for there is 
 profound ignorance, even among otherwise well informed 
 people as to what Socialism is, and especially as to what 
 it aims to do. They know that the Socialists attack the 
 industrial system, and would overturn the social order, 
 
32 
 
 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 and they immediately conclude that a bloody revolution, 
 Hke that which occurred in France at the close of the last 
 century, is proposed. Nothing of the kind ! There are 
 peaceful revolutions, and these peaceful revolutions are as 
 necessary to the life and progress of humanity, as are the 
 revolutions of the Earth around the Sun. Jesus Christ was 
 the greatest revolutionist that ever lived, but we are not 
 afraid of Him ; On the contrary, we Want t6 fight under his 
 banner. So the Socialists, for the most part, are, in spirit, 
 followers of Jesus — certainly Mr. Bellamy is — and hence 
 theit characters should be a sufficient refutation of this 
 popular error. 
 
 Socialism, then, means the joint control of land and cap- 
 ital worked by associated labor. In other words, land and 
 the means of production are to be made common public 
 property, the State the one and only employer, and the 
 products are to be divided according to the needs or the 
 deeds of the laborers. Hence, we read in " Looking 
 Backward " that, by the close of the twentieth century, in- 
 dustry and commerce had ceased to be conducted by a set 
 of irresponsible corporations and syndicates of private per- 
 sons at their caprice and for their profit, and were intrusted 
 to a single syndicate representing the people to be con- 
 ducted in the common interest for the common profit The 
 Nation, that is to say, was organized as the one great 
 business corporation in which all other corporations were 
 absorbed : it became the one capitalist in the place of all 
 other capitalists, the sole employer, the final monopoly in 
 which all previous and lesser monopolies were swallowed 
 up, a monopoly in the profits and economies of which all 
 citizens shared. Socialism, thus proclaims all men to be 
 brothers : it condemns the principle of "competition" as 
 is rational and brutal, and would substitute "co-operation" 
 or " association " in its place ; it aims at a substantial 
 equality of wealth among the citizens of a society, which 
 equality will be the result not of an arbitrary division from 
 time to time, of the products of the country ^as many fool- 
 ishly suppose), but it will be the result of service rendered 
 — the natural result of the industrial system. Among the 
 measures proposed by the Nationalists are : ist — Nation- 
 alization of railroads, whether by constituting the United 
 States perpetual receiver of all lines, to manage the same 
 for the public interest, paying over to the present security 
 
AN EXPOSITION OF NATIONALISM. 
 
 33 
 
 holders, pending the complete establishment of Nation- 
 alism, such reasonable dividends on a just valuation of the 
 property as may be earned, or by some other practicable 
 method not involving hardship to individuals ; 2d — Nation- 
 alization of telegraphs and telephones, and their addition to 
 the post-office, to which, as departments of transmission of 
 intelligence, they are said to properly belong ; 3d — The ex- 
 press business of the country will be connected with the post- 
 office, as it is now in some countries ; 4th — Coal mining, 
 which at present is most rapaciously conducted as respects 
 the pubhc, and most oppressively as regards a great body 
 of laborers, will be nationalized, to the end that the mines 
 may be continuously worked to their full capacity, coal 
 furnished the consumers at cost, and the miners humanely 
 dealt with ; 5th — Municipalities generally shall undertake 
 lighting, heating, street car service, and such other public 
 services as are now performed by corporations, to the end 
 that such services may be more cheaply and effectually 
 rendered. A fruitful source of political corruption will be 
 by this means cut off, and a large body of laborers will be 
 brought under the humane conditions of toil. Of course, 
 all nationalized and municipalized industries will be con- 
 ducted at cost for use and not for profit. Moreover, this 
 nationalization of industry is to be a gradual process. "We 
 advocate," say the Nationalists, "no sudden or ill-con- 
 sidered changes ; we make no war_on individuals ; we do 
 not censure those who have accumulated immense fortunes 
 simply by carrying to a logical end the false principles 
 upon which they are now based." 
 
 The operation of these industries by the State, according 
 to Mr. Bellamy, will be somewhat as follows : The industrial 
 force will be organized on the principles of the standing 
 army. First ; the worker (man or woman) will be put 
 through a course of mental, physical and manual training, 
 until, at the age of twenty-one, he or she will be mustered 
 into service. The worker will, of course, be allowed to 
 select whatever profession or business, he may desire, and 
 after the thorough course of training to which he would be 
 subjected, it would be comparatively easy to make a choice. 
 All work would bring exactly the same remuneration, that 
 is to say, each one would receive all the necessaries and 
 comforts of life, and in return would be required to render 
 only such service as he was able to perform. To the obvi- 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 ous objection that such an argument would allow idleness 
 and be unjust to some, it is answered ; ist — The man who 
 is intellectually and physically able to do more work than 
 others is more morally hound to do it, and a correct public 
 opinion would see this at once ; 2d — In order to get every 
 one to do his best certain powerful inducements would be 
 offered, not in the way of money, for under the Socialistic 
 regime there would be no money, but in the shape of more 
 powerful incentives. " Does it really seem," asks Mr. Bel- 
 lamy, "that human nature is insensible to any motives 
 save fear of want and love of luxury .? No ! When it is a 
 question of the grandest class of efforts, the most absolute 
 self-devotion they depend on quite other incentives. Not 
 higher wages, but honor and hope of men's gratitude, pat- 
 riotism and the inspiration of duty are the motives we set 
 before soldiers when it is a question of dying for the nation, 
 and never was there an age of the world when these motives 
 did not call out what is best and noblest in men. " It should 
 be remembered that, under the socialistic system, these 
 motives would be greatly strengthened by the early educa- 
 tion of the young and the lofty public opinion, and money 
 being abolished, the powerful incentives consisting of desire 
 of influence, of social elevation (i.e., prominent position), a 
 reputation for ability and success, would be the only motives 
 which could operate, and considering the might of these 
 motives in a large minority of cases, even now, it is not 
 irrational to believe that the whole nation might, under 
 proper conditions, be moved by them ; so that laziness 
 would by no means characterize the socialistic order. But if 
 all these motives should fail to influence some hard, obsti- 
 nate, brutish ones, there is the workhouse or prison which 
 may be used as the last resort. " A man able to do his duty, " 
 says Mr. Bellamy, " and persistently refusing, is sentenced 
 to solitary imprisonment on bread and water till he con- 
 sents." 
 
 Supposing then, that these motives are sufficient to make 
 each one do his duty, at the age of twenty-one he would 
 be mustered into service, in which he would remain until 
 he was forty-five. At first, he would be classed among un- 
 skilled laborers, and would remain in this category for 
 three years. From this common stock would be drawn 
 workmen for the different pursuits and professions, and 
 after a man had chosen his trade or profession, he would, 
 
AN EXPOSITION OF NA TIONALISM. 
 
 35 
 
 of course, as in our day, generally stick to it on account of 
 his knowledge in this special line, and the associations he 
 would form, but he might if he chose abandon one trade 
 or profession and adopt another. At the age of forty-five, 
 as just stated, each one would be retired and then life would 
 really begin. Under this regime, a man would look for- 
 ward to his forty-fifth year, as the schoolboy now looks 
 forward to his graduation, and by reason of his early train- 
 ing, his first class mental and physical development, he 
 would be younger at forty-five than men now are at twenty- 
 one. Besides, he would be sure of an abundance of the 
 comforts of life, not only for himself but for his children, 
 and hence the afternoon and evening of life would be the 
 most delightful part of it, instead of the most gloomy part 
 as it now is. 
 
 The most important function of the Presidency of the 
 Socialistic State would be the headship of the industrial 
 army. This, according to Mr. Bellamy, might be divided 
 into ten or more great departments each representing a 
 group of allied industries, each particular industry being in 
 turn represented by a subordinate bureau, which would 
 keep a complete record of the plant and force under its con- 
 trol, of the present product and the means of increasing it, 
 etc. Statistics would of course be annually furnished, and 
 on these estimates of the probable demand for the various 
 articles of consumption would be based, and production 
 would be governed accordingly. In each town, or city, 
 there would be a great central warehouse to which all 
 articles would be sent and stored. Scattered through the 
 town would be "sample-stores, "one in each ward in which 
 would be deposited samples of all goods manufactured by 
 the nation, and to which the customer would go to make a 
 selection. Of course, the goods would be sent by electrical 
 cars or otherwise to the home of the purchaser. In these 
 stores there would be no such clerks as those in our stores — 
 none to urge people to buy what they do not want, and to 
 swindle them when they do buy. What a prodigious 
 amount of lying and thievery would thus be prevented ! 
 One of the most striking propositions of Mr. Bellamy, is 
 the abolition of banks. As there would be no such thing as 
 money under the Nationalistic regime, banks would, of 
 course, be useless, and so the mighty host whose business 
 is simply the handling of paper and metal would be turned 
 
36 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 into producers of wealth. Instead of money a "credit- 
 card " would be issued to each citizen, which would give 
 him the privilege of drawing so much goods from the com- 
 mon fund. The dollar, which is now well nigh almighty, 
 would thus become an abstract algebraical sign, like X, to 
 indicate how many articles of consumption each one should 
 be entitled to, and all would get the same amount, whether 
 he were the president or a hotel waiter. There is said to 
 exist a tribe in Africa which has a species of "abstract 
 money," i.e., no money at all but an imaginary coinage. 
 They estimate the value of things by what is called a 
 ' ' macute. " If, for instance, two persons want to exchange 
 a cow and a horse, they estimate each at so many "ma- 
 cutes" and exchange, and if they be of unequal value, the 
 party who gets the more valuable article stands debtor to 
 the other so many "macutes" which he pays, of course, 
 with some other articles his creditor may need. It is well 
 known that in colonial times tobacco was used as a circu- 
 lating, medium, which took the place of money. So that 
 the god Mammon turns out to be an idol resting on feet 
 of clay which may be easily, and perhaps advantageously 
 overthrown. 
 
 Another business that would be suppressed by being 
 rendered unnecessary under the Nationalistic scheme 
 would be life insurance. Each one would be provided for 
 as he came into existence, and during his sojourn on earth, ' 
 and, therefore, no husband need fear that his wife and 
 children would suffer after his death. 
 
 State-Government, too — that darling of the Democrat 
 and bugbear of the Republican — would be abolished, 
 •although municipal or city and town bureaus and councils 
 would be necessary. The schools and colleges, of course, 
 would all be nationalized, and every dining-room would 
 be made public, and would be served by persons 
 taken from the class of unskilled laborers. These ser- 
 vants would not be looked down upon, as they often 
 are now, as persons belonging to the "lower classes," 
 because every one, even the president himself, would 
 have to pass through this or a similar grade of service. 
 What a blessing to housekeepers some such arrangement 
 would be I The bane of housekeeping is "domestic 
 service," and "girls" are becoming more and more 
 averse to doing such service, partly no doubt because it is 
 
AN EXPOSITION OF NA TIONALISM. 
 
 n 
 
 considered rather degrading. The only possible solution 
 of this important phase of the social problem lies in the 
 adoption of some method which will elevate the status of 
 the domestic. In certain cases even now a number of 
 families club together and employ a caterer, and have 
 their meals prepared in a common kitchen. Perhaps 
 we must have a bureau of some sort which will furnish 
 other domestic services, house-cleaning, etc., whose em- 
 ployes will be no more looked down upon than a sales- 
 man in a store or a clerk in an. office. At any rate, unless 
 something be done to elevate the social status of the 
 domestic, a "home" may become impossible, unless, 
 indeed, the madam and the daughters (if there be any) 
 determine to do the work themselves. 
 
 Another great blessing which the Socialistic programme 
 promises is the abolition of the legal profession. Lawyers 
 w^ould become useless, because there would be no crirpinals 
 to try and imprison ; but, of course, clergymen and 
 physicians would remain indispensable ! The one would 
 still be needed to expound mental, moral and spiritual 
 truths, the other to heal disease ; and perhaps an occasional 
 trial of some recalcitrant fellow might be necessary, and so 
 a./ew lawyers might be allowed to exist ! In this sketch 
 of some of the details of the Nationalists' programme, I 
 have followed Mr. Bellamy not because his outline is con- 
 sidered final by his disciples, but simply for the sake of 
 illustrating the alleged workings of the scheme. It must 
 not be thought for a moment that the details above given, 
 or laid down in "Looking Backward," are of the essence 
 of Socialism — are necessary parts of it. On the contrary, 
 they may never be realized, and yet Socialism may be- 
 come a fact. The essential features of this social philos- 
 ophy are indicated in the five points stated, and details 
 must be left to be worked out by time and circumstances. 
 Now, it is commonly believed by those who get a general 
 idea of Socialism that it is an altogether visionary scheme ; 
 it is a pretty theory, but can never be made to work in 
 practice. On the contrary, say the Socialists, Socialism is 
 not only practicable but is absolutely necessary. Society 
 has passed through many stages, and is now about to 
 enter upon the highest of all — the SocialistSc stage. The 
 evolution has been as follows : ist — ^There was the Hunt- 
 ing Period, when men lived chiefly on products qf the 
 
38 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 chase ; 2d — this was followed by and gradually merged 
 into the Pastoral Period, when the herding of flocks as 
 Abraham and Lot did, and as the modern Arabs do, was 
 the chief employment and means of living. Then came 
 the agricultural age, when the tiUing of the soil began, 
 and civilization become possible. "In Ancient Greece 
 and Rome the village communities grew and were con- 
 solidated into the cities so famous in history, the economic 
 basis of which on the whole was slavery. 
 
 "The Roman empire, which had absorbed the entire 
 ancient world, was overthrown in western Europe by 
 Teutonic tribes, with whom the agricultural stage passed 
 into the feudal system. The land was held by a feudal 
 tenure, that is, was associated with great public burdens 
 and .functions, such as military service. The labor was 
 generally that of serfs, bound to the lords. 
 
 "The feudal system, which to people looking back 
 appears a scene of confusion and internal strife, was as 
 compared with the condition of things preceding it among 
 the Teutonic nations, really a process of consolidation and 
 building up. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, the 
 feudal states underwent a further process of consolidation 
 into a centralized state. The centralized state was represent- 
 ed in England by the personal monarchy of the Tudor 
 Period, but it attained to its completest development in 
 the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV. of France. 
 
 "The transformation of the medieval society resting on 
 Feudalism and Catholicism into the modern system was in 
 most countries along and painful process. The downfall of 
 the feudal system began in England so early as the middle 
 of the fourteenth century ; and even yet we are burdened 
 with survivals of it, in such institutions as the House of 
 Lords. As regards Europe generally, it is chiefly since the 
 French Revolution of 1789 that the absolute monarchy has 
 been more or less effectively displaced by constitutional 
 government with parliaments consisting of representatives 
 chosen by the people. In economics the period is marked 
 by private property in land superseding the feudal tenure, 
 by competitive industry and free labor, free, competitive 
 individualism. 
 
 "Now it is the contention of Socialism that, in the 
 evolution of society, a period has come requiring the 
 transition into a higher and wider form of organization. 
 
AN EXPOSITION OF NA TIONALISM. 3 9 
 
 * 
 
 economic, social, and political ; a society embodying a 
 nobler ethical ideal, and free democracy with a fit and 
 suitable industrial system ; a form of society which will 
 better adapt the mechanical achievements of the industrial 
 revolution to the services of man, for the wider extension 
 of freedom, happiness, and culture. Such a form of in- 
 dustrial organization, suited to a higher ethical and political 
 stage of human advancement, Socialism claims to be."* 
 
 The Socialists claim that there are causes now at work in 
 the industrial world that will necessarily produce a Social- 
 istic system : First of all, says Prof. Kirkup, of Edinburgh, 
 Scotland : "The organization and concentration of produc- 
 tion in large factories, with an improved mechanical power 
 and a large number of wage workers, is one sign of the 
 Socialistic tendency of things. Let such organizations as 
 the Standard Oil Company and the Western Union Tele- 
 graph Company, for instance, continue, as they probably 
 will continue, to grow and increase in number, and it will 
 not be very long before they will come under public con- 
 trol, and the whole nation may be organized as the one 
 great business corporation in which all other corporations 
 will have been absorbed. At any rate," says Prof. Kirkup, 
 "Socialists regard these colossal corporations, and the 
 wealthy bosses that direct them, as the greatest pioneers 
 of their cause. By concentrating the economic functions 
 of the country into large masses, they are simply helping 
 forward the Socialistic movement. Their mission is to 
 displace the smaller capitalists, but they will thereby 
 eventually undermine capitalism altogether." 
 
 Second : In proportion as these companies grow, the 
 active and effective management must be entrusted to paid 
 officials, and the capitalist ceases to be the real controller 
 of industry : he tends to become a receiver of interest and 
 dividends, while managers, clerks and secretaries do the 
 work. It is obvious how the development of such a ten- 
 dency will facilitate the transference of the great industries 
 to social control. For instance, with regard to the rail- 
 way systemj if it should appear expedient to place it un- 
 der collective management the State would find a staff of 
 officials, and employes ready to its hand. The present 
 organization, modified chiefly in the direction of further 
 
 *Prof. Thos. Kirkup, "Inquiry into Socialism," pp. 90-93, 
 
40 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 centralization and greater economy, would be sufficient. 
 
 Thus, it is believed, the capitalist rulers of the great in- 
 dustrial companies will be displaced, and the people will 
 get control. 
 
 Third : The rapid growth of democracy, say the Social- 
 ists, is perhaps the most conclusive proof that society is 
 tending towards the Socialistic order. This beginning 
 with the American and French Revolutions of the last cen- 
 tury has gone forward so swiftly, especially in this 
 country, that it seems not unreasonable to believe that, 
 ere the close of the next century, we will have a govern- 
 ment "of the people, by the people, and for the people," 
 in a deeper and truer sense than most of us imagine. 
 
 Fourth : State and Municipal Socialism is being rapidly 
 developed in Germany, France, and England, and is des- 
 tined to send its waves over this country. The reform 
 bills beginning in 1802, such as factory acts, mining acts, 
 municipal corporation acts, public health acts, shop-hours 
 regulation acts, etc., indicate the progress of the Social- 
 istic sentiment in England. 
 
 "Experience has proved that such local rule may with 
 advantage be extended in many directions. Gas, water, 
 parks and means of recreation, better housing for the 
 poor, the interest of public health, and to a lai^e degree 
 education, are all now regarded as belonging to the legit- 
 imate sphere of local government By and by we may 
 see local control effectively extended to building sites and 
 the drink question, and this state and municipal Socialism, 
 it is said, is liable to extend more and more as the people 
 attain to a clearer consciousness of their rights and a 
 more effective organization."* 
 
 "The combinations, trusts and syndicates of which the 
 people at present complain," says the Nationalists' declara- 
 tion of principles, "demonstrate the practicability of our 
 basic principle of association. We merely wish to push 
 this principle a little further, and have all industries 
 operated in the interest of all by the Nation, the people 
 organized." 
 
 This would, of course, abolish all the evils of private 
 corporations, which are managed in the interest of a few 
 persons at the expense of the many, and at the same time 
 
 ♦See "Kirkup's Inquiry, " /(W«»». 
 
AN- EXPOSITION OF NA TIONALISM. 4 1 
 
 it would preserve its great (and commendable) principle of 
 association and co-operation. 
 
 Now this statement of Socialism is open to fewer objec- 
 tions than might at first sight seem. First, it is not an ideal, 
 visionary scheme, for it proposes to recognize existing facts 
 and conditions and follow the natural developm ent of things. 
 No sudden or violent revolution of the industrial is pro- 
 posed. (2. ) It would not be an unwieldy machine, for other 
 governments manage, most effectively, their railroads, tele- 
 graphs, telephones, etc., and the management of such enor- 
 mous corporations as the Western Union Telegraph Com- 
 pany would have seemed fifty years ago quite as impossible 
 as the national control of industries, such as Socialism pro- 
 poses. (3.) The objection that the governmental manage- 
 ment of railroads, etc., would produce political corruption 
 is not so formidable as many fancy, since such a result 
 has not been realized in Europe, and the elevation of 
 public sentiment and public morals which Socialism pro- 
 poses would effectually destroy political corruption. This, 
 of course, sounds quite Utopian to any one familiar with 
 practical politics. But a hundred years ago in England it 
 weuld have been impossible to have deposed the leader of 
 a great parliamentary party for private immorality, as hap- 
 pened in the celebrated Parnell-O'Shea case. May we not 
 rationally believe that a half century hence as great an 
 improvement in public morals will have been brought 
 about in our country ? 
 
 At any rate, three of the principles of Socialism may be 
 and are accepted — viz. : its principle of human brotherhood, 
 of association instead of competition in business, and of the 
 economic function of the State. Whether we are Socialists 
 or not we believe in these great principles, at least profess- 
 edly and to a great extent. We acknowledge our fraternal 
 relation to the so-called "lower classes" by the estab- 
 lishment and support of great, organized charities. It 
 would be much more rational and beneficial to all con- 
 cerned if instead of doling out "alms," and thus keeping 
 the poor always with us, we would spend the money and 
 energies thus coiisumed in securing work for the unem- 
 ployed and developing in them a spirit of self-dependence. 
 Our great trusts, syndicates, labor organizations, and vari- 
 ous co-opesative movements attest our belief in the efficacy 
 of the principle of association, while the cries of starving 
 
42 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 millions and the wails of the " small employers" that are 
 crushed in the great struggle for life condemn as brutal 
 and diabolical the principle of " competition," show that 
 ' ' competition is not the life of trade." 
 
 Finally, all who believe in any sort of " tariff legislation " 
 admit that the State has an economic function. Indeed, 
 as wars become less and less frequent, as the intellectual, 
 moral, and religious life of the country advances, as the 
 enormous resources of the land are developed, in short, as 
 men become more human and less brutal, the industrial 
 pursuits of the country must claim more and more the 
 attention of the peopfe, and become the chief concern of 
 the government. While I would not be set down as a 
 Socialist, for many of the features of Socialism may prove 
 'mpracticable, perhaps unjust, — yet I recognize its truths 
 as against Anarchism. It seems to me that it will ulti- 
 mately solve the great question as to the relation between 
 monopolistic and individualistic enterprises, and this is 
 one of the most perplexing problems before us. Professor 
 Richard T. Ely of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 
 has made suggestions on the subject that are full of wisdom. 
 He makes a distinction between "natural monopolies" 
 and " artificial monopolies " — monopolies that are made by 
 law and businesses that are monopolies by their very nature. 
 Rajlroads, telegraphs, telephones, gas and waterworks, etc., 
 are said to be "natural monopolies," and their public 
 management is therefore advocated by the professor, who 
 has accordingly been called a Socialist. He denies the 
 accusation, however, and claims that he simply believes 
 that some sorts of business should be controlled by the 
 State, while others should be left to individual enterprise. 
 Apart from his own economic classification, the proposition 
 that certain businesses, being "natural, monopolies," can 
 be managed better by the State than by private corporations 
 deserves most careful consideration, regardless of the ques- 
 tion whether it is of a Socialistic nature or not. 
 
 While I thus recognize the great truths in Socialism, I 
 can also see that the enormous increase of governmental 
 interference in business that it proposes may endanger 
 and curtail the rightful liberty of the individual, and there- 
 fore we should not be hasty in the adoption of its proposed 
 measures. The ideal society is, of course, that in which 
 every mdividual will have an equal opportunity with every 
 
AN EXPOSITION OF NATIONALISM. 
 
 43 
 
 other to develop his manhood, and perhaps the conflict 
 between Socialism and Individualism may result in at least 
 an approximation to this ideal, but its realization cannot 
 be forced. The grand sine qua non of such a state of things 
 is the mental, moral and manual education of the people, 
 and this must be the result of ages of work. Meanwhile, 
 millions in our great city are starving and freezing and 
 demand our immediate attention and help, and no theory 
 must prevent us from doing all we can for the betterment 
 of our fellow beings. While Socialists, Anarchists, George- 
 men, and all other social reformers may advocate their 
 peculiar theories in their lectures, papers, books, etc., yet 
 it seems to me most unfortunate that they cannot find 
 some basis of co-operation for the relief of the poor from 
 present distress. Granted, for the sake of argument, that 
 the ideal of Socialism or Individualism is the Christian ideal, 
 granted that the adoption of the Single Tax on land might 
 produce immense benefits, yet while the people are being 
 educated up to the adoption of any of these schemes, mil- 
 lions are dying for want of bread and clothing, and it is to 
 be feared that many stand aloof from movements to afford 
 immediate rehef to these sufferers, because they do not 
 exactly fall in with their ideas of social reform. 
 
 I remember a tramp through the slums of New York 
 City with a friend of mine who had a scheme (perhaps a 
 wise one) of social regeneration, and he strongly denounced 
 the Church and private societies, and individuals, for at- 
 tempting to relieve the paupers inhabiting those dens ; but 
 when I asked whether he would endorse their action, if 
 they were to devote their energies and funds to the propa 
 gation of his views and plans, he admitted that he would. 
 As I then and there looked around upon the misery and 
 degradation of thousands, and listened to the words of my 
 good friend, I was more strongly impressed than ever with 
 the thought that some theories of social reform may really 
 impede the progress of the good work, and hence if some 
 plan, whether it be General Booth's or some other, could 
 be adopted for the immediate relief of the poor — a plan 
 which would gain the support of all, or nearly all social 
 reformers, while allowing them to ventilate their peculiar 
 opinions, it would be a great blessing to mankind, espe- 
 cially to the submerged portion. 
 
44 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 III. 
 
 TRUTHS AND ERRORS OF HENRY GEORGe's VIEWS. 
 
 Henry George and his views are so well known, and 
 their influence has been so great upon the popular mind, 
 in one way or another, that it is now time to ask. What 
 place in economic history and philosophy are they destined 
 to hcild ? What are the truths in Mr. George's philosophy 
 which will live, and what are the errors that must die? It 
 is commonly supposed that his Land Theory is his only 
 theory, but while certain opinions on this subject, more or 
 less peculiar to him, have made him famous, this is by no 
 means his only theory ; indeed his greatest service to 
 economics may be found rather in his lucid, forcible and 
 eloquent presentation and advocacy of opinions held by 
 other economists. His Land Theory may never be real- 
 ized, and yet he may always hold a prominent position 
 among social and economic reformers and philosophers. 
 
 Frederick Robertson says : "There are two sorts of men 
 who exercise influence. The first are those who perpetu- 
 ate their own opinions, bequeath their own names, form a 
 sect, gather a party round them who speak their words and 
 believe their beliefs. This is the influence most aimed at 
 and most loved. The second class is composed of those 
 who stir up faith, conscience, thought, to do their own 
 work. They are not anxious that those they teach should 
 think as they do, but that they should think ; nor that they 
 should take this or that rule of right and wrong, but that 
 they should be conscientious ; nor that they should adopt 
 their own views of God, but that faith in God should be 
 roused in earnest. Such men propagate not many views ,• 
 but they propagate life itself in inquiring minds and ear- 
 nest hearts." 
 
 Now, Mr. George enjoys the enviable distinction of be- 
 longing to both these classes of men. He has established 
 a "George Theory " and a " George School of Thought," 
 but I think that this school is destined to be absorbed by 
 other, and perhaps profounder, economic schools in the 
 future ; but, even so, it will be Mr. George's lasting honor 
 that, more than any other one man of his time, he has made 
 the great mass of men think on economic subjects ; nay, 
 
HENRY GEORGE'S VIEWS. 
 
 45 
 
 more, he,has called in question long established and deeply 
 rooted opinions, and has made men think deeply — ex- 
 amine the very foundations of society and civilization. 
 Hence I say, if his Land Theory should never be fully 
 realized his work may produce immense results. 
 
 First : — ^Among the truths he advocates is his view of 
 Trade. He is a radical Free Trader. Indeed, all sen- 
 sible men are Free Traders, or, rather, I should say, all 
 Free Traders are sensible men. Mr. George's book on 
 "Protection and Free Trade " is a thorough discussion of 
 this important subject, and to my mind is perfectly un- 
 answerable. It considers and refutes all the fallacies and 
 common arguments of protectionists. First, he answers 
 the popular, silly remark that ' ' free trade is right in theory 
 but wrong in practice," by saying "a theory that will not 
 agree with facts must be false. Its agreement with facts, its 
 practicability, is all that makes it right, and therefore it is a 
 contradiction in terms to say that an opinion is right in 
 theory but wrong in practice." The theory of free trade 
 may be carried to the point of ideal perfection, for to se- 
 cure free trade we have only to abolish restrictions, but to 
 carry the theory of protection into practice some articles 
 must be taxed and others left untaxed, and as to the arti- 
 cles taxed different rates of duty must be imposed, and 
 this leads to endless wrangling in Congress and great dis- 
 satisfaction with any tariff bill that may be enacted. But of 
 course those who say that free trade is right in theory but 
 wrong in practice mean that it is right from a moral stand- 
 point but wrong from a business point of view ; that is, it 
 will not bring the advantages to one class of traders that 
 protection will. To which it may be replied : (ist) — What 
 is morally right cannot be politically or industrially wrong, 
 however much it may seem to be ; (zd) — This is a beg- 
 ging of the whole question, for the very point to be proved 
 is whether free trade or protection will benefit all parties 
 more than protection. 
 
 Second : — Mr. George answers the contention, even 
 now made by some eminent protectionists, that " the 
 foreigner, not the consumer, pays the tax on imported 
 goods." When the McKinley Tariff Bill of 1890 was passed, 
 its framer, in a public speech at his home, made this fal- 
 lacious statement. Mr. George admits that there are two 
 cases where the foreigner may have to pay the tax : First, 
 
46 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 "an mport duty on a commodity of which the production 
 is a closely controlled foreign monopoly may in some cases 
 fall in part or in whole upon the foreign producer." He 
 may prefer to reduce the profit on what he sells to this coun try 
 rather than lose the market Second, " A Canadian farmer 
 so situated that the only market in which he can conve- 
 niently sell his wheat is on the American side " might prefer 
 to pay the duty to shipping it at a greater cost to some 
 Canadian market. But how rare, comparatively, are such 
 monopolies and situations ? These are mere exceptions 
 which prove the rule that the consumer, not the foreign 
 producer, pays the tax. A simple bit of experience proves 
 this contention. A book which would cost me fifteen 
 dollars in England has cost me twenty-five dollars in New 
 York, simply because of tariff duties, and so in every case. 
 The man who wears a ' ' protected " hat, made in Paris, 
 for instance, pays more for it than he would have to pay 
 for a New York hat made of the same material, because of 
 tariff duties ; or rather he has to pay more for either hat 
 because of the tariff, for the New York manufacturer adds 
 the duty to his hat, although he pays no duty on its 
 materials, and this is the very object of the tariff tax. 
 " The possibility that exceptional duties may in part or in 
 whole fall on foreign producers, instead of domestic con- 
 sumers, has in it evexi for those who would gladly tax 
 ' foreigners ' no shadow of recommendation for protection. 
 For the cases in which an import duty falls on foreign pro- 
 ducers, are cases in which it can afford no encouragement 
 to home producers. An import duty can only fall on foreign 
 producers when its payment does not add to price ; while 
 the only possible way an import duty can encourage home 
 producers is by adding to price," and thus increasing their 
 profits. To plain, moral, and common sense the idea of 
 taxing a " foreigner " just because he is a foreigner, in order 
 to increase our revenues, is repulsive. It is really a species 
 of selfishness ; it is robbing our neighbor, instead of doing 
 to him as we would be done by. There is no more reason 
 why nations should be governed by such a rule of action, 
 than there is why individuals of the same state should 
 adopt it. There is no reason why free trade between New 
 York State and Virginia should be allowed, and free trade 
 between England and the United States should be pro- 
 hibited ; for an exchange of products will take place be- 
 
HENRY GEORGE'S VIEWS. 
 
 47 
 
 tween nations as between individuals, only when it is 
 mutually advantageous, and why should such an exchange 
 be taxed or prohibited by the government? "To raise 
 revenue," say the advocates of a low tariff, but even this, 
 is not the best method of raising revenue, while a pro- 
 tective tariff, if it protects the home producer by excluding 
 foreign products, does not increase the revenue ; ho 
 revenue, is paid, because no goods are imported, but 
 the domestic producer's bank account is increased and the 
 poor consumer is consumed. 
 
 Third: — Mr. George explodes " the infant industry argu- 
 ment," as well as the chief contention of the protectionists 
 that a protective tariff is necessary to "build up home 
 manufactures." The " infant industry " argument, as Prof. 
 Taussig, in his admirable " Tariff History of the United 
 States," has shown, used to be more powerful and popular 
 than it now is, for "the infants" have long since grown 
 gray-headed and are still crying for "protection" and 
 "fostering." He also shows that "little if anything was 
 gained by the protection which the United States maintained 
 in the first part of this century." The great manufactures 
 that grew up with protection owed their growth mainly to 
 other causes — natural advantages, introduction of improved 
 machinery, good markets, etc. Mr. George admits that 
 "as an abstract proposition there may be industries to 
 which temporary encouragement might be profitably ex- 
 tended." But such encouragement, he thinks, can be better 
 given in the way of bounties than by protective tariffs. 
 Moreover, there are insuperable difficulties in the way of 
 discovering what industries would repay encouragement. 
 All experience shows that the policy of encouragement, 
 once begun, leads to a scramble in which the strong, not 
 the weak, the unscrupulous, not the deserving, succeed. 
 What are really infant industries have no more chance in 
 the. struggle for governmental encouragement than infant 
 pigs have with full-grown swine about a meal-tub. On the 
 whole, the ability of any industry to establish and sustain 
 itself in a free field is the measure of its public utility, and 
 that "struggle for existence" which drives out unprofitable 
 industries is the best means of determining what industries 
 are needed under existing conditions and what are not. 
 The only safe course is to give all a fair field and no favor. 
 In considering the protectionists' plea that their object is 
 
48 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 not the encOTirageitfent of infant industries but the en- 
 couragement of all home industry, he makes the following 
 points : (ist) — The vast majority of our industries need 
 no protection and can get none. "Duties upon com- 
 modities entirely produced at home can of course, have no 
 effect in encouraging home industries, " since no such com- 
 modities would be imported. "It is only when imposed 
 upon commodities, partly imported and partly produced 
 at home, or entirely imported, yet capable of being pro- 
 duced at home, that duties can in any way encourage an 
 industry. No tariff which the United States imposed could, 
 for instance, encourage the growth of grain or cotton, the 
 raising of cattle, the production of coal oil or the mining 
 of gold or silver ; for instead of importing these things 
 we not only supply ourselves but have a surplus which 
 we export." The industries that cannot be protected 
 are by far the larger part of our industries, and yet pro- 
 tectionists tell us that protection fosters industry. They 
 urge that the tariff encourages the protected industries, and 
 then the protected industries encourage unprotected indus- 
 tries ; protection builds up the factory and the iron furnace, 
 and the factory and iron furnace create a demand for the 
 farmer's products. Mr. George cleverly disposes of this 
 plausible argument by supposing that two citizens of 
 a town should propose to enrich all the other citizens 
 by collecting from each of them a tax of five cents, saying, 
 "This slight tax will make us wealthy: we will at once 
 enlarge our businesses, improve our houses and grounds, 
 set up carriages, hire servants, give parties, and buy 
 much more freely at the stores. This will make trade 
 brisk and cause a greater demand for labor and so on." 
 Who would listen to such nonsense .' Yet this is the 
 protectionist's argument. Protection enriches the protected 
 and impoverishes the unprotected; it enriches a few at 
 the expense of the many, and this is the great and fatal 
 objection to it 
 
 A commonplace idea is that the United States is or ought 
 to be a manufacturing country, but some of the ablest 
 thinkers I know among the protectionists do not believe 
 this. Manufacturing is certainly a small part of our in- 
 dustries now, and is destined to be for some time to come. 
 Moreover, if we have not power and resources enough to 
 hold our own against other countries we should let tliem do 
 
HENRY GEORGE'S VIEWS. 45 
 
 the manufacturing for us, just as individuals do what each 
 can best do. Why should we attempt to compete with 
 countries which have natural advantages over us in the 
 production of certain things ? Why not let them produce 
 those things, and devote ourselves to the production of 
 other things in which we excel and which we may ex- 
 change for those things ? The apphcation of this simple, 
 elementary principle in international trade would pro- 
 duce as -great and beneficial results to all parties con- 
 cerned as it does in the dealings of individuals' with one 
 another. One of the favorite objections to free trade urged 
 by protectionists is that our manufactures cannot compete 
 with European manufactures owing to the higher wages 
 which American workingmen deniand and receive. Mr. 
 George answers this objection in the 14th chapter of his 
 "Protection and Free Trade." That answer is twofold: 
 (ist) — We should attempt to compete with Europe only in 
 those things in the manufacture of which we have natural 
 advalntages over her. (2d) — -High wages do not neces- 
 sarily mean high cost of production. On the contrary, it is 
 a well-known fact that low wages mean and cause high 
 cost of production. Southerners know that slave labor 
 is the most expensive sort of labor, and the cheap, free 
 negro labor is even more expensive. The man who pays 
 his employes good wages gets more and better work 
 done. Well paid workmen as a rule are more intelligent 
 and diligent, and those who employ "the pauper labor" 
 of Europe know how inferior it is to our well paid labor. 
 It should be remembered, also, that such poorly paid labor 
 is quite as easily secured in this country as in Europe. 
 Besides, labor is only one factor in production, and it is 
 absurd for a manufacturer who can get materials superior 
 to those used in European manufactories, who can sell 
 his goods near horfie, while the foreign producer must ship 
 them across the sea, etc., it is absurd to attribute to one 
 cause effects that (if they should be realized) ought to be 
 attributed to many causes. It is absurd to consider the 
 American manufacturer's " high labor" without also tak- 
 ing into the account its superiority to "the pauper labor 
 of Europe " and the other advantages which he has over 
 his foreign brothers. 
 
 Fourth : — Mr. George demolishes the stronghold of pro- 
 tectionism, viz. ; the contention that " protection benefits 
 
 4 
 
5° 
 
 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 labor." How can protection benefit the laborer when it in- 
 creases the price of every article he uses ? It is answered, 
 "while it increases the price of the commodities the 
 working man consumes, it also increases his work and his 
 wages." How does it do this? Where does it do this? 
 We have just seen that all the tariff does is to enrich a 
 few at the expense of the many — to make a few dozen 
 millionaire manufacturers and millions of paupers who 
 are not manufacturers. Even if it be ' granted that these 
 few wealthy employers are enabled by the tariff to work 
 a larger force of men, yet they draw their profits from un- 
 protected farmers and others, and. so injure the great mass 
 of men while filling their own' pockets. Furthermore, 
 they do not pay better wages to their employes because 
 of the tariff. In some cases they actually pay less wages 
 than unprotected employers, and they frequently import 
 "the pauper labor" of Europe, or employ it when it 
 comes. If protectionists are friends of labor why don't 
 they protect workingmen from this evil ? Why don't they 
 prohilsit the importation of foreign labor instead of pro- 
 hibiting the importation of the products of foreign labor ? 
 They leave the working man to compete with this labor 
 and protect the rich employer from competition which 
 free trade with Europe would bring in the products which 
 the employe consumes, and yet they have the courage to 
 call themselves friends of the working man ! If they are 
 really anxious to help him, why don't they, in addition to 
 prohibiting or judiciously regulating the importation of 
 foreign labor, establish and encourage industrial schools 
 which will make his labor most effective and valuable ? But 
 no ! They protect themselves against competition with 
 Europe«nd leave the poor man to struggle against pauper- 
 ism and ignorance and oppression, and then howl "pro- 
 tection to American labor ! " How long will working men 
 be duped and hoodwinked? Forever? Or will they rise in 
 their might and destroy their enemy and oppressor? Pro- 
 tectionists tell us that wages in this country are higher than 
 they are in England, because of our protective tariff, and 
 England's free trade policy. They overlook two facts : 
 (ist) — Wages in England are higher than they are on the 
 Continent of Europe where protection prevails : (2d) — If 
 wages are higher in this country so are the prices of the 
 things the laborer consumes. His wages, therefore, are 
 
HENRY GEORGE'S VIEWS 
 
 51 
 
 only apparently, not actually higher than the English 
 laborer's. But even if they are a little higher here than 
 there, this is due not to our "robber tariff" but to our 
 natural advantages over England and Europe generally. 
 England has about half as many inhabitants as the United 
 States, and it is not larger than one of our great states. It 
 were a shame, indeed, if, vi^ith a country capable of sup- 
 porting a thousand millions of people and having only 
 sixty-five millions, with such magnificent lands as the 
 West has, and the enormous resources of our mines, 
 etc., we did not pay better wages, on the whole, than a 
 little island whose inhabitants have hardly elbow room. 
 "The very class," says Mr. George, "that profess anxiety 
 to" protect American labor by raising the price of what 
 they themselves have to sell, notoriously buy labor as cheap 
 as they can and fiercely oppose any combination of work- 
 men to raise wages. The cry of ' protection for Ameri- 
 can labor ' comes most vociferously from newspapers that 
 lie under the ban of the printers' unions ; from coal and 
 iron lords who, importing ' pauper labor ' by wholesale, 
 have bitterly fought every effort of their men to claim any- 
 thing like decent wages ; and from factory owners who 
 claim the right to dictate the votes of their men. The 
 whole spirit of protection is against the right of labor." 
 
 But Mr. George shows that while this is so — while it is 
 easy to explode the fallacies of protection and prove the 
 advantages of free trade — yet, as a matter of fact, men — 
 working men — will vote to tax themselves, and protection 
 hold its own in spite of all the denunciation of it by free 
 traders. Why is this? " Vitality inheres in truth, not in 
 error. If the protective theory is incongruous with the 
 nature of things, and so inconsistent with itself, how is it 
 that after so many years of discussion it still obtained such 
 wide and strong support? Free traders usually attribute 
 the persistence of the belief in protection to popular 
 ignorance, played upon by special interest." 
 
 But the people are not ignorant of this subject. Perhaps 
 there is no economic question which the ordinary man can 
 discuss with more force and intelligence than this. Mr. 
 George, therefore, rightly urged that tariff reform or aboli- 
 tion is only one step in the industrial revolution necessary 
 to the betterment of the working classes. It is, indeed, a 
 most important and necessary part of the general reform, 
 
52 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 but free trade by itself cannot and will not usher in the 
 social millennium. We must have something more, and 
 until we get that, even working men, especially those em- 
 ployed in protected industries, will continue to be duped 
 by the protectionists' appeal to ' ' facts " as against ' ' theo- 
 ries." They will continue to say : "Free trade may be a 
 good thing for the great mass of men, but protection will 
 keep this factory in which we work going, and, therefore, 
 give us bread and butter, and we cannot sacrifice that for 
 the sake of an unknown majority." It will be in vain to 
 urge that the welfare of the majority involves the welfare of 
 the said factory. The workingman " can't see it ; " and so 
 Mr. George rightly urges that along with the abolition of 
 the tariif must go other reforms even more radical, whieh 
 will give free trade room and power to run and be 
 glorified. Free trade may be given us, but if other industrial 
 conditions remain to destroy produce and business, what 
 shall we have to trade ? Our author thinks that in order 
 to make free trade in products of labor effective, we 
 must have free trade in land ; it must be owned by the 
 community and tax on all other sorts of property must 
 be abolished. We shall examine this contention directly, 
 but meanwhile remember that while we advocate free 
 trade, we do not consider it a panacea for all our social 
 and industrial ills. 
 
MS. GEORGE'S THEORY Of WAGES. 53 
 
 rv. 
 
 MR. George's theory of wages contains much truth and 
 
 SOME ERROR. 
 
 The negative part of. his theory is true : the positive part 
 is false. He rejects, along with General Francis A. Walker 
 and other eminent political economists, the '.'Wages-Fund 
 Theory," which teaches that wages are drawn from capital, 
 — from a fund which is laid aside for this purpose by the 
 capitalist, or employers. This theory was advocated by 
 all the older economists, Adam Smith, the " Father of Po- 
 litical Economy," Ricardo, McCulloch, Mill, etc., and in 
 the present day it has been supported by the English econo- 
 mist. Prof. Cairnes. Great confusion of thought on this 
 subject arises from the fact that the terms "capital," 
 " profits " and " wages " are not clearly defined and the defi- 
 nition strictly adhered to. Mr. George accepts Adam Smith's 
 simple and sensible definition of capital, viz. : "That part 
 of a man's stock which he expects to afford him a revenue 
 is his capital." The capital of a boot and shoe manufac- 
 turer, for instance, consists of the leather, thread, pegs, 
 tools used in making the boots and shoes and all that is 
 made in their manufacture upon which the manufactturer 
 will get a return. The labor spent in making them is 
 manifestly different from the stuff used in making them, 
 and the return for the labor is, therefore, different from 
 the return for the material. Suppose a pair of shoes sells 
 for $5.00 and that the leather, thread, etc., cost $2.00, that 
 the shoemaker gets $2.00 for his work and that an average 
 of 10 cents per pair is required to pay the rent of the build- 
 ing in which the work is done, the manufacturer or em- 
 ployer would make 90 cents on the pair of shoes. Here 
 we see the distinction between capital, rent, wages and 
 profits. Are wages drawn from capital ? Obviously 
 not; but labor added something to capital for which it 
 received a return, and capital charged more for the pair of 
 shoes than was spent upon them by capital, land and labor 
 combined, and, therefore, made a profit. We are, therefore, 
 forced to hold that wages are not drawn from capital, but 
 
54 
 
 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 from the products of labor. This is perfectly plain where 
 the laborer is paid in kind. If, for instance, the man- 
 ufacturer pays his shoemaker in shoes, he would have to 
 make two and a half pair of shoes in order to get one 
 $5.00 pair of shoes, and in this case none could deny that 
 labor was paid by itself from the products it had created. 
 If a farmer furnishes the land, horses and seed (or ' ' stock ") 
 and a tenant furnishes the labor and gets one third of the 
 produce, it is clear that he pays himself out of the pro- 
 ducts of his own labor. But generally the employer pays 
 the employe -in money before the products are sold, and 
 hence it seems that wages are drawn from capital because 
 they are paid out of a purse which was filled before the 
 products of the labor had been gathered in. Still, it must 
 be remembered that in every case the labor is given 
 before it is paid for. It is, therefore, stored up in the 
 things the employer owns, and a return for it will be real- 
 ized whenever he sells those things. His money is a mere 
 equivalent for that stored-up labor. He pays his work- 
 man $10 and gets five pairs of shoes ; those shoes may be 
 put away in his storehouse for some time but by-and-by 
 they will be sold and then he will not only get a return 
 for his capital and the labor he paid for, but he will make a 
 profit on both. Really capital is produced by, drawn from, 
 labor, instead of the reward of labor (wages) being drawn 
 from capital. The materials of which the shoes are made 
 were either accumulated by the efforts by the manufacturer 
 as a laborer, or by some laborer or laborers who gave him 
 this capital. This ought to be clear to a child, and yet 
 eminent doctors dispute most violently and continuously 
 over so evident a proposition. 
 
 It is attempted to prove the wages fund theory by show- 
 ing that an increase in wages decreases the profits of the 
 employer. Pay the shoemaker $2. 25 for his work on the 
 pair of shoes and the employer wculd only get 65 cents 
 instead of 90, and this is why employers, are so strongly 
 opposed to an increase in wages. But it must be re- 
 membered that the additional 25 cents is drawn from profits 
 not from capital, and some employers are willing to share 
 the profits with their employes in order to keep them and 
 do justice to them. Why should this not be done ? Sup- 
 pose the employer's contribution to the product is woith 
 |2.oo and the laborer's contribution is worth the same, but 
 
MR. GEORGE'S THEORY OF WAGES. 55 
 
 the sale of the shoes brings more than what the joint con- 
 tribution cost. Why should not both parties to the trans- 
 action receive an equal share of the profits ? However, 
 the point here insisted upon is that wages, or an increase 
 in wages is not drawn from capital, but either from the 
 product of labor or from a third something (profits) to 
 which capital has no more right than labor. 
 
 Mr. George, then is right in his idea of the source of 
 wages ; but an even more important question than this is. 
 What determines the rate of wages. What makes wages 
 rise or fall.' And Mr. George's answer to this is wholly er- 
 roneous. He says : "In their degree wages rise and fall 
 in obedience to a common law. What is this law ? The 
 fundamental principle of human action — the law that is to 
 political economy what the law of gravitation is to physics 
 —is that men seek to gratify their desires with the least 
 exertion. Now under this principle, what, in conditions 
 of freedom, will be the terms at which one man can hire 
 others to work for him .? Evidently they will be fixed by 
 what the men could make if laboring for themselves." 
 This is not true, Mr. Gunton well says : "Suppose the em- 
 ployer can and will pay the laborer more than he can get 
 working for himself, then this whole contention falls to 
 the ground ; for in that case what the laborer could earn 
 working for himself would have nothing whatever to do 
 with deciding what his wages would be in working for 
 another." 
 
 It is remarkable that so practical a man as Mr. George 
 is should put forward such contention, for it is well known 
 that everybody prefers to work for himself and only works 
 for another because he can make more than he can by 
 working for himself. 
 
 But the most serious defect in Mr. George's wages 
 theory is his claim that "wages depend upon the margin of 
 cultivation ; or upon the produce which labor can obtain at 
 the highest point of natural productiveness open to it with- 
 out the payment of rent. " In other words, the wages of 
 the country are governed by what the laborer could make 
 on land given him by the government or in a shop for 
 which he had to pay no rent. But suppose an employer 
 in Pittsburg would pay the western farmer more to drive 
 one of his wagons than he could make on his no-rent land, 
 what would its productiveness have to do with determining 
 
56 TOPICS Of THE TIMES. 
 
 wages ? Or if he would pay the village blacksmith more 
 than he could make in his no-rent shop what connection, 
 would his no rent shop have with his wages or the general 
 rate of wages in the factory ? If wages were determined 
 by the produce which labor could obtain from the most 
 productive no-rent land, then wages would be far below 
 their present level in many countries. In Switzerland the 
 peasants cultivate the' barren hillsides for which they pay 
 no rent, and in Holland they cultivate the no-rent sand 
 dunes and barely eke out enough to breathe on. If Mr. 
 George's contention that the general wages of a country 
 are determined by the produce of the best of such land, 
 wages in Switzerland and Holland ought to be much lower 
 than they are. Prof. J. B. Clark of Smith College well 
 says : "The theory that the general reward of labor is fixed 
 by the gains that men can realize by tilling no-rent land, 
 if this theory has any accurate meaning, must claim that 
 when land is not to be had in fee simple for the askmg but 
 when valueless land may be occupied rent free, the gains 
 realized by workmen in all departments are gauged by the 
 product realized on such land by actual hand tilling. It 
 means that workers in Belgian mills must take, with al- 
 lowance for minor variations, what Belgian peasants get 
 by cultivating the sandy wastes that border the sea. It 
 means that watchmakers of Switzerland must accept pay 
 that, with similar allowance, tends to conform to the 
 amount that their peasant countrymen can extort from 
 patches of green among the crags. It means that, when 
 the free lands of America shall have been allotted to 
 owners, wage-earners will generally get what any one of 
 them might produce, if he chose to build a shanty and 
 by the sufferance of a proprietor, till a piece of poor and 
 untenanted ground. This would be a peculiar kind of 
 ' squatter sovereignty ' — the man in the shanty, dominat- 
 ing labor, extending his power over workmen of every 
 class and fixing the amount of their wages and the con- 
 sequent level of their lives." As a matter of fact, we know 
 that nothing of the kind happens. The rate of wages is 
 determined by something entirely different from "the 
 margin of cultivation." From the laborer's side, it is 
 governed by his "standard of living," that is, the least 
 that will satisfy his actual wants. From the employer's 
 standpoint, it is governed by the utility of the labor to him. 
 
MR. GEOUGJS'S THEORY OF WAGES. 57 
 
 No man could work for less than would furnish food, and 
 clothes for himself and family, at lest for any length of 
 time, and so his wants fix the minimum wage he will re- 
 ceive. On the other hand, the utility of the labor to the 
 employer will fix the maximum wage he will receive. If 
 the employer is a carpenter, for instance, and is building 
 a number of houses and sorely in need of "hands," he 
 may pay them I3.00 a day each, and yet the working man 
 may not actually need more than one or two dollars for 
 the necessaries of life. In that case, of course, his wants 
 would have nothing to do with the fixing of the rate of 
 wages. It may be said just here that I have left out a 
 very important, indeed the most important factor in the 
 determination of the rate of wages, viz.: "The state of 
 the labor market." But I have not ; that is included in the 
 consideration of the utility of the labor to the employer. 
 If there are many carpenters out of work and anxious to 
 get it, their labor being superfluous is, of course, less use- 
 ful and hence the employer would offer less to any one he 
 might employ. The least, too, that the most needy work- 
 ingman in a given trade would take would fix the rate of 
 wages of all the rest. Of course, I donl mean that the 
 man who could live the cheapest would settle the rate of 
 wages, but just the opposite. The man with a large 
 family would need more than a single man, and he would 
 therefore set the rate of wages. The single man, being 
 as good a workman as the married man, would, of course, 
 demand the same wage, and as the married man could 
 not live on less (say) than $2.50 a day, the single man 
 would get this also, and this naturally happens. Hence 
 the rate of wages is determined by the cost of living of 
 him whose necessities are the greatest — whose expenses are 
 the heaviest. As the other workmen in the same trade 
 would not take less than he and as the employer would 
 not pay more, his needs would be the determining factor 
 in settling the rate of wages. Just here comes in the ad- 
 vantage of labor organizations. Working men by com- 
 bining and studying each other's needs can ascertain the 
 cost of living of the best workmen, and most expensive 
 families, and can, therefore, fix the rate of wages. We 
 conclude, then, that wages are drawn from the products 
 of labor and are governed by the wants of the laborer 
 whose family expenses are the greatest and by the utility 
 of his labor to the employer. 
 
58 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 MR. GEORGE S VIEWS ON THE OWNERSHIP OF LAND SEEM TO ME 
 WHOLLY ERRONEOUS. 
 
 He thinks that private property in land is morally wrong 
 — is unjust. " What constitutes the rightful basis of prop- 
 erty ?" he asks. "What is it that enables a man to justly 
 say of a thing, ' It is mine ' ? From what springs the senti- 
 ment which acknowledges his exclusive right as against 
 the world.? Is it not, primarily, the right of a man to him- 
 self to the use of his own powers, to the enjoyment of the 
 fruits of his own exertions .? As a man belongs to himself, 
 so labor when put in concrete form belongs to him, and 
 for this reason, that which a man makes or produces is his 
 own, as against all the world — to enjoy or destroy, to use, 
 to exchange, or. to give. The pen with which I am writ- 
 ing is mine. No other human being can rightfully lay claim 
 to it, for in me is the title of the producers that made it 
 It has become mine, because transferred to me by the 
 stationer, to whom it was transferred by the importer, who 
 obtained the exclusive right to it by transfer from the manu- 
 facturer, in whom by the same process of purchase, 
 vested in the rights of those who dug the material 
 from the ground and shaped it into a pen. A house and 
 the lot on which it stands are alike property, as being the 
 subject of ownership, and are alike classed hy lawyers as 
 real estate, yet in nature and relations they differ widely. 
 The one is produced by human labor and belongs to the 
 class in political economy styled wealth. The other is a 
 part of nature, and belongs to the class in political ecoj:iomy 
 styled land. The essential character of the one class of things 
 is that they embody labor, are brought into being by human 
 exertion, their existence or non-existence, their increase or 
 diminution, depending on man. The essential character 
 of the other class of things is that they do not embody 
 labor, and exist irrespective of man. The moment this 
 distinction is realized, that moment is it seen that the sanc- 
 tion which natural justice gives to one species of property 
 
MR. GEORGE ON LAND OWNERSHIP. 
 
 59 
 
 is denied to the other. Whatever may be said for the in- 
 stitution of private property in land, it is, therefore, plain 
 that it cannot be defended on the score of justice." * 
 
 This is Mr. George's argument against the private owner- 
 ship of land, fully stated in his own words and with his own 
 illustrations, and he says that he is willing to test his theory 
 by this high moral standard, and let it stand or fall accord- 
 ing as it shall or shall not stand the test. We accept the 
 position and undertake to refute the contention. 
 
 First, let us consider Mr. George's idea of our right to 
 ourselves. What gives us a right to the possession of our 
 bodies.? The fact, answers our author, that we have pro- 
 duced them by adding to them materials taken from the 
 great storehouse of Nature. Of course this leaves out of con- 
 sideration the origin, the primal derivation of our bodies ; but 
 we will let this pass, and admit that our parents had a 
 right to give us of their substance. The continuous pres- 
 ervation of our bodies, after a certain age, is due to the 
 fact that we have added to them by taking certain materials 
 from Nature's storehouse and weaving them into our frames. 
 What have we done ? We have simply moved certain 
 materials of nature from one point — say the field or the 
 garden — to another point in Nature, viz., our stomachs. 
 Yet this moving of matesials, says Mr. George, truly, this 
 mixing of our labor with natural products, makes them 
 ours — gives us a right to our bodies. 
 
 Secondly, the same is true of the pen we use or the 
 house we live in. Manifestly we do not create the ma- 
 terials out of which our bodies, pens or houses are made. 
 We simply affect their superficies, we merely move them 
 from one point in Nature to another, and create new com- 
 binations of these materials. We, therefore, produce no 
 thing, but only a combination of things, and our author 
 admits that such an action gives us a right to these 
 things. "The essential character of the one class of things 
 (houses, etc. ) is that they embody labor, are brought into 
 being by human exertion." They "embody labor," but 
 their materials are not created by man. " The essential 
 character of the other class of things (land) is that they do 
 not embody labor. " Why not .? If I go into the forest 
 and clear off the timber, drain its bogs, fence the land, 
 
 »" Progress and Poverty," Book VII., Chapter I. 
 
6o • TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 break it, plant it, etc., why does it not "embody my labor'' 
 as truly as the house which I build from the materials taken 
 perhaps from the same source ? I have created nothing in 
 either case, but I have affected very deeply the superficies 
 of both the land and the timber in the house ; my labor is 
 truly embodied in both, in one as well as in the other ; 
 and since Mr. George admits that such embodiment of 
 labor gives a right to ownership in the one case, he must 
 logically admit that it gives a right to ownership in the 
 other. Both houses and land may be rightfully, justly 
 held by the same tenure. The fact that makes one mine 
 may make the other mine also. I have discussed this sub- 
 ject with Mr. George, but his attempted answers to this 
 argument were as unsatisfactory to me as they were to 
 several others who argued the case with him. Tried by 
 his own test, therefore, his theory of land-ownership falls 
 to the ground because the distinction he draws between 
 the basis of landed property and other sorts of property is 
 gratuitous and fallacious. 
 
 If, now,- Mr. George had argued with Herbert Spencer, 
 that the mixing of labor with a thing cannot give a title to 
 it in any case ; that the catching and training of a wild 
 horse, or the building of a house, does not g^ve a right to 
 it, then indeed he might logically* hold, with Spencer, that 
 private ownership is and must be morally wrong.* But 
 when he admits that labor spent upon the materials of a 
 house makes it ours, he must logically admit that the labor 
 we put upon land makes it ours. I think he has done a 
 good service by clearly showing that neither conquest nor 
 priority of possession can give a valid title to land, but 
 only labor. If this test were rigidly applied, how many 
 land-monopolists and dishonest speculators in land would 
 lose their occupation ! 
 
 But there is another line of argument which may be more 
 forcibly urged against the private ownership of land, and 
 that is that by permitting it we may injure society as a 
 whole or some members of society. Let it be at once 
 observed that we have now passed from the moral to the 
 economic aspect of this subject. The question is no longer. 
 Is the private ownership of land right and just r but. Is it 
 
 * See Spencer's " Social Statics," Chapters IX. and X., which, however, 
 was somewhat modified by Spencer in the latter part of his life. 
 
MS. GEORGE ON LAND OWNERSHIP. 6 1 
 
 iest for society — is it expedient ? My owning a piece of 
 land may prove quite inconvenient to some people who 
 would like to use it, and yet by virtue of the labor I have 
 spent upon it I may justly exclude them from its use. But 
 even from the economic standpoint — the standpoint of 
 expediency — Mr. George's argument against the private 
 ownership of land cannot stand the test of logic. He is a 
 strong anti-Malthusian. He does not believe that pop- 
 lilationincreaseSjOr tends to increase, faster than the means 
 of subsistence. He believes that the Earth — even that part 
 of it called Ireland — is quite capable of supporting all its 
 inhabitants. There is, and always will be, he thinks, more 
 than enough standing-room for the people ; there will be 
 plenty of land to use. Why, then, object to their using it? 
 If there is enough and more than enough land for all men, 
 why object to some men owning, exclusively using, certain 
 portions of it .^ Why may they not say to others : We have 
 spent our labor upon this land or our fathers did and they 
 transferred it to us just as the manufacturer and seller of 
 pens transferred your pen to you and therefore you must 
 go elsewhere andget land ? Of course if they cannot truth- 
 fully claim ownership of the land by virtue of their spending 
 labor or the equivalent of labor upon it, then they have no 
 right to it ; and I freely admit that many land-monopolists 
 and speculators have no such good title to their lands. But 
 that is not the point here considered. The point is that 
 if there is, as Mr. George says there is, enough land in 
 existence for all men now on earth or that will be on earth 
 at any future time, then however crowded may be the pop- 
 ulation at any given point in Ireland or China for instance, 
 yet there are unoccupied tracts of land at other points of 
 the earth's surface to which the landless men should go 
 instead of disturbing those men who own land by virtue 
 of their own labor spent upon it or the labor of those who 
 gave it to them. Hence we conclude that the private owner- 
 ship of land is morally right provided the owner has either 
 spent his labor upon it or given the equivalent of a former 
 owner's labor for it. 
 
 4. Finally, Mr. George's theory of land taxation seems 
 to me utterly erroneous. His views on this subject are 
 often misunderstood and misstated and therefore I shall 
 state them in his own words. "I do not propose," he says, 
 "either to purchase or to confiscate private property in land. 
 
62 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 The first would be unjust ; the second, needless. Let the 
 individuals who now hold it still retain it, if they want to, 
 the possession of what they are pleased to call their land. 
 Let them continue to call it their land. Let them buy and 
 sell and bequeath and devise it! We may safely leave 
 them the shell if we take the kernel. // is not necessary to 
 confiscate land : it is only necessary to confiscate rent. We 
 already take some rent in taxation. We have only to make 
 some changes in our modes of taxation to take it all. What* 
 I, therefore, propose ... is ... to appropriate rent by 
 taxation. In this way the State may become the universal 
 landlord without calling herself so, and without assuming 
 a single new function. In form, the ownership of land 
 would remain just as now. No owner of land need be 
 dispossessed, and no restriction need be placed upon the 
 amount of land anyone could hold. For rent beingtaken 
 by the State in taxes, land, no matter in whose naine it 
 stood or in what parcels it was held, would be really com- 
 mon property, and every member of the community would 
 participate in the advantages of its ownership. " This result 
 may be accomplished simply by "abolishing all' taxation- 
 save thai upon land values. " 
 
 The word "rent" as here used has a technical meaning, 
 and must be explained. " The term rent," says our author, 
 "in its economic sense — that is, when used as I am using 
 it, to distinguish that part of the produce which accrues 
 to the owners of land or other natural capabilities by virtue 
 of their ownership — differs in meaning from the word rent 
 as commonly used. 
 
 " in common speech, we apply the word rent to pay- 
 ments for the use of buildings, machinery, fixtures, etc., 
 as well as payments for the use of land or other natural 
 capabilities : and in speaking of the rent of a house or the 
 rent of a farm, we do not separate the price for the use of 
 the improvements from the price for the use of the bare 
 land. But in the economic meaning of rent, payments 
 for the use of any of the products of human exertion are 
 excluded, and of the limited payments for the use of 
 houses, farms, etc., only that part is rent which constitutes 
 the consideration for the use of the land. " It is this econ- 
 omic rent that Mr. George proposes to appropriate as 
 taxes, while all other property is to go scot-free from 
 taxation. 
 
MR. GEORGE ON LAND OWNERSHIP. 63 
 
 The important question, therefore, arises : Why should 
 land be made to bear the whole burden of taxation ? For 
 many reasons, answers Mr. George. First, " rent or land 
 value does not arise from productiveness or utility of 
 land. No matter what are its capabilities, land can yield 
 no rent and have no value until some one is willing to 
 give labor or the results of labor for the privilege of using 
 it, and what one will thus give, depends not upon the 
 capacity of the land, but upon its capacity as compared 
 with that of land that can be had for nothing. I may have 
 very rich land, but it will yield no rent and have no value so 
 long as there is other land as good to be had without 
 cost. But when this other land is appropriated, and the 
 best land to be had for nothing is inferior, either in fertility, 
 situation or other quality, my land will begin to -have a 
 value and yield rent." In other words, our author means 
 that the value of land depends upon the growth of the 
 community, and since the community gives value to the 
 land it is right that the community should receive from the 
 land its value. 
 
 On the other hand, it is assumed that the growth of the 
 community does not add to the value of other property, 
 "labor products," and therefore it has no right to appropri- 
 ate any such values as taxes. We utterly deny the truth 
 of both propositions. First, the growth of the community 
 does not entirely create the value of land. It does increase 
 that value, as we constantly see happening in the case of 
 growing towns and settlements. But the land has an 
 inherent value. If not, why should Mr. George want it? 
 Why quarrel about a valueless thing? Suppose a man be 
 shipwrecked and cast on a fertile and fruitful but uninhab- 
 ited island. I fancy that he would consider it very valu- 
 able, first, as affording him standing room, an escape 
 from a watery grave, and, secondly, as furnishing him 
 food, etc. ; and if he were to cultivate the products found 
 there, drain the land, clear off the- forests, fence it, etc., 
 who will deny that his island home is valuable to him? 
 It is simply false, therefore to say, ■" It is only where two 
 (or more) men want the same land that it has value." Land 
 always has value to its owner, or he would not own it. 
 Take land near a city. Some of it, say, is uncultivated, 
 lindrained, unfenced, uncleared and infertile ; other some is 
 in "good order," well cleared, drained, fertilized, etc. 
 
64 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 Suppose now five or ten thousand people move into this 
 town. Land, of course, rises in value. But is its value only 
 now created ? Of course not. The fine farm was valuable 
 to its owner before the increase in population occurred, and 
 all that happens by the increase in population is an increase 
 in the value of land. But that land upon which labor has 
 been spent is worth more and brings a better price than 
 the unused land because of the labor that had been spent 
 upon it ; and this shows that land is inherently valuable; 
 that labor spent upon it adds to its value, and hence the 
 growth of the community is not the only cause of land- 
 values. The community, therefore, may not justly appro- 
 priate all the rent or value of land as taxes. AH that Mr. 
 George's argument proves is that land varies in value from 
 zero upward, owing partly to the differences in the 
 demand for it. But this is equally true of every other 
 species of property, and hence we deny that the growth 
 of the community does not increase the value of labor 
 products. How strange that a thoughtful mind should 
 deny this simple fact ! Every huckster knows that the 
 scarcity of his articles of sale or an increased demand for 
 them increases their value and price. Every tenant knows 
 that the scarcity of houses, even where the ground rent is 
 paid to the municipality, as in Savannah, Ga., increases 
 his house rent. The value oi every thirig- is. increased when 
 two or more men want it, and hence if the community has 
 a right to appropriate such value in one case it has a right 
 to do so in every case. Mr. George has never answered 
 these two fundamental objections to his theory of taxation. 
 In attempting to do so before the Social Science Associa- 
 tion at Saratoga, in 1890, he admitted that the increased 
 value of franchises due to the growth of a community, is 
 like the increased value of land from the same cause. 
 "As the village grows," he said, "into the city, the busi- 
 ness of the street railway becomes more profitable. So 
 with gas-works, water-works, etc. So with railways gener- 
 ally. But, if their increased profits are not ultimately 
 resolvable into increased economic rent, they are of the 
 same nature. Such franchises are special privileges, like 
 the privilege of holding valuable land, and the profits 
 due to the general growth ought, as we hold, to be taken 
 for public use, or diffused through the community by a 
 
MR. GEORGE ON LAND OWNERSHIP. 65 
 
 reduced price of services." To this Prof. E. R. A. Selig- 
 man, of Columbia College, New York, well replied : 
 
 " Now, this means one of two things, either the com- 
 munity must tax them (the franchises) or it must acquire 
 them by purchase or confiscation. If the State taxes 
 them, we no longer have the single tax on land values, but 
 also an additional tax on something else. What, then, 
 becomes of the great crusade for the single tax .? But if 
 the State acquires them — that is to say, nationalizes all 
 occupations, which enjoy a special franchise, how is Mr. 
 George to be distinguished from those Socialists whom he 
 professes so to abhor.? These are the horns of the di- 
 lemma." The professor also properly denied Mr. George's 
 contention that there is no "unearned increment" in any- 
 thing but land. Thus, he said, the value of railway 
 securities in the United States to-day is over $9,000,000,000, 
 and the securities of other corporations amount to many 
 millions more. It is safe to say that .the value of the bare 
 land, owned by individuals, is far less then these corporate 
 securities, which form a large part of the intangible per- 
 sonal property of individuals. Now, has anything that 
 Mr. George advances tended to disprove the existence of 
 unearned increments in these? I invest $100,000 in the 
 railway bonds of a young corporation ; I get 6 per cent, 
 interest, and pay perhaps $50 on the par value of them. 
 In tho course of twenty years, during which time the com- 
 munity has grown and given the railroad more traffic, this 
 bond is worth par or even $150, and my investment rep- 
 resents now $200,000 or even $300,000. Have I earned 
 this increment.? Have I individually done anything to 
 produce the added value ? It is as much the work of the 
 community as the increase in the value of any land. Why 
 take away the unearned increment of the land-holder and 
 leave intact the equally unearned increment of the bond- 
 holder.? Do you not see that this is the rankest in- 
 justice .? " 
 
 We conclude, therefore, that the growth of the commu- 
 nity is not the only factor in the production of land-values, 
 but labor is as much of a factor in producing such values as 
 it is in producing other values ; and secondly, the growth of 
 the community increases the value of other things, " labor 
 products," as truly as it does the value of land, and hence 
 it is unjust to appropriate all land-values as taxes. There 
 
 5 
 
66 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 are other objections to the single tax. It violates that 
 canon or rule of taxation, universally accepted, even by 
 Mr. George, that taxes should fall equally upon the subjects 
 of a commonwealth ; that each one should contribute to 
 its support according to his ability. In this case land-holders 
 alone would contribute to the support of the government 
 and others would go scot-free. This is one of the points 
 most strongly urged in favor of the single tax, and it means 
 that land-holders are the only persons who derive any 
 advantages from society for which they should pay — a 
 palpable absurdity. The very object of society is to protect 
 life and property (of all sorts), and hence all men derive 
 benefits from society and should pay something to its 
 support. 
 
 There is much said />ro and con about "compensation'' 
 of land-owners if the land should be nationlized. Of 
 course, if it be admitted that nothing can be done to land, 
 in the first place, to entitle one to it, then, indeed, Mr. 
 George is right in saying that land-holders should not 
 be " compensated" for the loss of what they have no right 
 to. 
 
 But as we hold that Ikbor spent upon land increases its 
 value, that the growth of the community also increases its 
 value, for both of which the present landholder has to pay, 
 if he is robbed of his property he must be compensated for 
 it, just as railroad corporations would have to be reim- 
 bursed if the railways were nationalized. 
 
 Such, then, are some of the truths and some of the errors 
 of Henry George's peculiar views. I have not, of course, 
 slated all of his opinions, for he holds many commonly 
 accepted opinions ; nor have I attempted to discuss and 
 refute them in every particular, but I have stated his dis- 
 tnictive views and the most simple and forcible objections 
 to them. From all this it should be clear that however 
 great may be the service Mr. George has rendered econ- 
 omic science, he has not discovered and formulated a 
 panacea for all our social ills. He has drawn glowing and 
 stirring pictures of the social millennium which would be 
 ushered in if the Single Tax were adopted, but while our 
 methods of taxation are most iniquitous, while certain 
 features of land speculation are most unjust, while the 
 popular ideas of wages are thoroughly erroneous, while 
 our " protective tariffs " are barbarous, yet a reform in no 
 
MR. GEOKG& ON LAND OWNERSHIP. 67 
 
 one of these great departments of social, industrial and 
 political life, perhaps not even reform in all of them will 
 restore the departed glories of Eden. Still, let us hear 
 from every one who has anything to say that is worth 
 hearing on these important issues, for "in the multitude of 
 counsellors there is safety," errors are exploded and truth 
 is established. 
 
68 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE SAVAGES OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 This chapter was caused by a visit through the slums of 
 New York City. Of course, no adequate idea of the hor- 
 rible depths of degradation that exist there could be formed 
 from observations made during one short trip through the 
 slums. But being familiar with poverty in other cities, 
 and having read such comprehensive and valuable works 
 as Mr. J. A. Riis's " How the Other Half Lives," General 
 Booth's "In Darkest England," etc., I feel fairly well quali- 
 fied to say a few words on this important subject 
 
 When Prof. Huxley lived as a medical officer in the east 
 of London he acquired a knowledge of the condition of the 
 life of its denizens, which led him to say subsequently that 
 the surroundings of the savages of New Guinea were much 
 more conducive to the leading of a decent human exist- 
 ence than those in which many of the East Londoners 
 live. The same is true of the New York slums and their 
 inhabitants ; nay, it is substantially true of all the slums of 
 all our large towns and cities. I have seen as abject pov- 
 erty in Washington City, under the very shadow of the 
 National Treasury, whose vaults were overflowing with a 
 great "surplus," taken from the pockets of the poor and 
 spent (squandered) on "public buildings" in various con- 
 gressional districts, which helped to re-elect boodled poli- 
 ticians to seats which they disgraced — in our national 
 capital I have seen as great poverty and suffering as there 
 is in New York City. In a wealthy, thriving western 
 town of twenty-five thousand inhabitants, a family con- 
 sisting of fifteen members have been found living in one 
 small room ! And so the savages of civilization are not 
 confined to New York City, and I shall speak of them 
 simply as the most notable examples of suffering humanity 
 in our midst. 
 
 The total number of tenements in New York on August 
 
THE SAVAGES OF CIVILIZATION. 69 
 
 1st, 1890, according to the reliable authority of Mr. 
 Riis, was 37,316 ; their population numbered 1,250,000, 
 and the number of rear tenements, amounted to 2,630. The 
 denizens of these places consist of the scum of Europe 
 and America — Italians, Russians, Poles, Germans, Jews, 
 Irish, English, Chinese, Negroes, etc. Mott Street gives 
 us Chinatown, with its pigtails, opium, and gambling. 
 Bayard Street holds the degenerated descendants of 
 Jacob who constitute " Jewtown," with its sweating hells. 
 Baxter Street furnishes the nauseating old-clothes' shops. 
 Fifth Street, Thirty-eighth Street, Fifty-fourth and Seventy- 
 third Street, harbor the Bohemian "rats." Mulberry Street 
 with its historic " Bend," " foul core of New York's slums," 
 its stale beer dives and unimaginable horrors, caps the 
 climax of slum degradation. The characteristics of the 
 population of these and such like sections are as follows 
 (beginning with the cradle) : the waifs that are cast by 
 their poverty-stricken parents on doorsteps, the street, 
 or into the Foundlings' Hospital; the "street arab," who 
 has not where to lay his head, except on the pavement, or 
 in some corner in an alley, with his feet stuffed into a 
 box; the "growler gangs," consisting of the "toughs" 
 from fifteen years upward, who infest the water-fronts, belt 
 the city and wage a real guerilla warfare upon its inhab- 
 itants even far inland ; one hundred and fifty thousand 
 girls and women who work for sixty cents a day on an 
 average; "the cornmon herd," numbering thousands 
 upon thousands who do not live but simply breathe ; myr- 
 iads upon whom the monster Rum has naturally if not nec- 
 essarily set his deadly grip ; the blind, the deaf, the dumb, 
 the insane, the maimed, the wrecks and wastes of humanity 
 are all found here or are supplied from this source. 
 Here is the great tenement swarming with one or two 
 hundred human brutes. Here are the horrible barracks 
 with the foul and reeking courts and alleys that form their 
 purlieus, and the swarming rumshops that lie in wait to 
 catch the victims their sights and stenches have prepared. 
 Here is the "cheap lodging-house," ghastly caricature 
 of the American "hotel." Here are hells which even a Dan- 
 tean imagination could not conceive and paint in all their 
 horrors, and before which the abode of the damned pictured 
 in traditional orthodoxy fades into a paradise. But why at- 
 tempt to describe what it would require volumes to portray 
 
70 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 in all its awful reality ? Mr. Riis, in the book just referred to, 
 has given us a full and accurate picture drawn from facts 
 observed by himself, and to it and such books as General 
 Booth's "Darkest England," Helen Campbell's "Prisoners 
 of Poverty," etc., the reader is referred for fuller infor- 
 mation as to the conditions of the poor in New York and 
 other great cities. I am here concerned with the causes 
 and possible remedies of this civilized (.') savagery. 
 
 1. The tirst cause assigned by most writers on the 
 subject is immigration. But I consider this an entire mis- 
 take. It has been estimated by Rev. Dr. Strong, in his 
 book " Our Country," and others, that the United States is 
 able to support a thousand millions of people, and as we 
 have only about sixty-five millions it is absurd to say that 
 immigration is the cause of the crowding and poverty of 
 the slums of our cities. It is true that immigration might, 
 at times, have the effect upon New York and other ports 
 that a rush of people to the city or town to see the circus 
 or attend a political " jollification " would have on the 
 hotels and lodging-houses : it might temporarily overcrowd 
 the cities. But if the immigrants heard of any attractions 
 outside of the cities they would soon disperse through 
 the country and find work and homes. Immigration 
 cannot account for the slums of London, for there is no 
 immigration into England, but, on the contrary, people 
 leave that country as fast as possible when sufficient in- 
 ducements are offered. Immigration cannot explain the 
 permanency of the slums in this country or any other. 
 
 2. Well, then, it is said it is due to the natural pressure 
 of population upon the means of subsistence. I don't 
 believe a word of it ! Whatever truth there may be in the 
 Malthusian theory of population, no one familiar with the 
 facts of the case will say that England or the United States 
 is unable to support all of its inhabitants. 
 
 There is plenty of land, there is or may be plenty of 
 work, there is or may be plenty of vi'ealth in both coun- 
 tries to afford a comfortable living to every man, woman 
 and child in them. Let us, therefore, not lay upon nature 
 the blame which belongs elsewhere. 
 
 The New York Tribune, in reviewing Mr. Riis's book, 
 said : " It is one of the conditions of existing civilization 
 all over the world that pressure of population accompanies 
 what is called progress, and from the pressure arises a 
 
THE SA VA GES OF CIVILIZA TION. 71 
 
 competition which, despite of all legislative remedies, 
 forces the poor into a more desperate and breathless strug- 
 gle for bread, and keeps down the wages of labor as nearly 
 as possible to the starvation point. But it must at once be 
 seen that in New York the natural pressure of population 
 upon the wage-fund is enormously increased " by immigra- 
 tion, etc. If this be so, we need not be surprised that Social- 
 ists and Anarchists should cry, " Away with existing 
 civilization ! " If progress increases poverty it is not pro- 
 gress but retrogression, and we would better abolish " ex- 
 isting civilization," and return to primitive savagery. But, 
 fortunately, both statements of this able paper are false. 
 Pressure of population, whether natural or artificial, as just 
 shown, has little or nothing to do with our civilized sava- 
 gery, and, as shown in the last chapter, there is no such 
 thing as a " wage-fund" — a fund set apart by capital out 
 of its proceeds from which to pay wages. Labor pays 
 itself and adds to capital, and what we want is no increase 
 in an imaginary "wages-fund," but more and greater op- 
 portunities for work, which being used will produce both 
 capital and wages in greater abundance. // is because men 
 are not allowed to work that poverty exists. Land and other 
 means of production are so monopolized and mismanaged 
 that labor cannot find employment. This is the real 
 cause of poverty, not progress, not a too great demand 
 upon an imaginary "wages-fund." The Tribune's state- 
 ment shows what evil a false political economy may pro- 
 duce. 
 
 It is said that the influx of the country people into the 
 cities is a cause of the slums, and it is simply a fact that 
 the cities are growing much more rapidly than the country 
 population. 
 
 "In 1790," says Dr. Strong, "one-thirtieth of the popu- 
 lation of the United States lived in cities of 8,000 inhabitants 
 and over; in 1800, one twenty-fifth; in 1810, and also in 
 1820, one-twentieth; in 1830, one-sixteenth; in 1840, one- 
 twelfth; in 1850, one-eighth; in i860, one-sixth; in 1870, 
 a little over one-fifth ; and in 1880, nearly one-fourth. From 
 1790 to 1880 the whole population increased twelvefold the 
 urban population eighty-six-fold. From 1830 to 1880 the 
 whole population increased a little less than fourfold, the 
 urban population thirteenfold. From 1870 to 1880 the whole 
 population increased thirty per cent the urban population 
 
72 
 
 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 forty per cent. During the half century preceding 1880, 
 population in the city increased more than four times as 
 rapidly as that of the village and country. In 1800 there 
 were only six cities in the United States which had a popu- 
 lation of 8,000 or more, in 1880 there were 286."* This 
 looks as if we are destined to be a nation of cities, and 
 the only way to reheve the cities that are overcrowded 
 from time to time seem to be to absorb the country 
 into the city aiid town as fast as possible. Our slums 
 are due to this gathering of the people into centres 
 instead of dispersing them through the country, say- 
 many writers on the subject. Why do they stay in or 
 come to the cities .'' they ask. Because, we answer, they 
 cannot make a living in the country. It is really amusing 
 to hear people saying that the poor of the cities should go 
 to the country. What could they get to do if they were to 
 go to the country } Who would employ them ? It is well 
 known that thousands upon thousands of farms are bur- 
 dened with mortgages, and the farmers, as a class, must be 
 numbered among the less favored ones of the land. Any 
 one who has ever been engaged in agricultural pursuits, 
 as the writer has, knows that farming does not "pay," 
 and year by year it pays less and less. Of course, there 
 are rich farniers as there are rich manufacturers, but 
 their wealth has been due to peculiar circumstances, 
 and these very men will tell you that their farms are not 
 paying them now ; while the vast majority of farmers can 
 barely support themselves and families. During harvest 
 time they need "hands," but not all the year round, and 
 if the cities were to dump the contents of their slums upon 
 the farms there would be an uprising of the farmers un- 
 paralleled in history. 
 
 Farming must be made more profitable, work must be 
 increased in the country and small towns, before the stream 
 of population will set in that direction, and as soon as 
 this is done all who can get there will go to the country, 
 and form new towns and cities more flourishing than the 
 old. But there are myriads who are financially unable to get 
 out of the cities even if they had a place in the country to 
 go to, and many more are unfit for farm-hands. Those 
 who talk about the slum-dwellers going to the country 
 little know what is necessary to a successful and comfort- 
 
 * Sti-ong's "Our Country," p, 128. 
 
THE SAVAGES OF CIVILIZATION. 73 
 
 able life in the country. "Misery loves company," and 
 many of those who have been sent to the country have 
 returned to the city simply because their solitary misery 
 was unendurable. But the important point is that the 
 country, for the most part, is, under present conditions, 
 quite as unable to support the starving millipns in the 
 cities as the cities are. What is imperatively demanded 
 is work and an increase in production. 
 
 In former years the cry, " Go West and take up land ! " 
 was more rational than it is now, for so much of our public 
 land has been given away and otherwise disposed of that 
 Dr. Strong tells us "the farming lands of the West will all 
 be taken before the close of this century." Even if we had 
 the land to give to the poor, how could they get to it, and 
 what could they do with it? We see, therefore, the folly 
 of the cry, ' ' Go to the country 1 " 
 
 Other causes are assigned to account for the slums and 
 poverty in general, but I shall reserve a consideration of 
 them for the next chapter, and turn to the proposed reme- 
 dies for the evil. 
 
 11. How shall we abolish the slums or improve the 
 condition of the tenement-house dweller .? Of course, there 
 are many nostrums propounded for the cure of this social 
 disease, but the following sensible words of General Booth 
 effectually dispose of them: " Of the schemes of those" 
 (he says) " who propose to bring in a new heaven and a 
 new earth by a more scientific distribution of the pieces of 
 gold and silver in the trousers pockets of mankind, I need 
 not say anything here. They may be good or they may not. 
 I say nothing against any short cut to the millennium that 
 is~ compatible with the Ten Commandments. I intensely 
 sympathize with the aspirations that lie behind all these 
 Socialist dreams. But whether it is Henry George's Single 
 Tax on Land Values, or Edward Bellamy's Nationalism, or 
 the more elaborate schemes of theCollectivists, my attitude 
 towards them all is the same. What these good people 
 want to do, I also want to do. But I am a practical man 
 dealing with the actualities of to-day. I have no precon- 
 ceived theories, and I flatter myself I am singularly free 
 from prejudices. I am ready to sit at the feet of any who 
 will show me any good. I keep my mind open on all 
 these subjects, and am quite prepared to hail with open 
 arms any Utopia that is offered me. But it must be within 
 
74 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 range o. my finger-tips. It is of no use to me if it is in the 
 clouds. Checks on the Bank of Futurity I accept gladly 
 • enough as a free gift, but I can hardly be expected to take 
 them as if they were current coin, or to try to cash them 
 at the Bank of England. 
 
 "It may be that nothing will be put permanently right 
 until everything has been turned upside down. There are 
 certainly so many things that need transforming, beginning 
 with the heart of each individual man and woman, that I 
 do not quarrel with any visionary when in his intense 
 longing for the amelioration of the condition of mankind 
 he lays down his theories as to the necessity for radical 
 change, however impracticable they may appear to me. 
 
 "But this is the question. Here at our shelters last night 
 were a thousand hungry, workless people. I want to 
 know what to do with them. Here is John Jones, a stout, 
 stalwart laborer in rags, who has not had one square meal 
 for a month, who has been hunting for work that will enable 
 him to keep body and soul together, and hunting in vain. 
 There he is in his hungry raggedness, asking for work that 
 he may live and not die of sheer starvation in the midst 
 of the wealthiest city in the world. What is to be done 
 with John Jones ? 
 
 " The individualist tells me that the free play of the 
 natural laws governing the struggle for existence will 
 result in the survival of the fittest, and that in the course 
 of a few ages, more or less, a much nobler type will be 
 evolved. But meanwhile what is to become of John 
 Jones ? The socialist tells me that the great social rev- 
 olution is looming large on the horizon. In the good 
 time coming, when wealth will be re-distributed and 
 private property abolished, all stomachs will be filled, and 
 there will be no more John Joneses impatiently clamor- 
 ing for opportunity to work that they may not die. It 
 may be so, but in the meantime here is John Jones grow- 
 ing more impatient than ever because hungrier, who 
 wonders if he is to wait for a dinner until the social rev- 
 olution has arrived. What are we to do with John Jones? 
 That is the question. And to the solution of that question 
 none of the Utopians give me much help." 
 
 Does anybody else ? The sentimental philanthropist 
 is ready to go down into his pocket, or rather into the 
 pockets of other people, and bestow an alms upon these 
 
THE SAVAGES OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 75 
 
 poor wretches. But any one who has had the slightest 
 experience in work among the poor knows that almsgiving 
 has the very worst possible effect upon most of its recipi- ■ 
 ents : it makes them lazy and wasteful, and is wrong in 
 principle. 
 
 He that is able to work and will not work, if he has the 
 opportunity, ought not to be allowed to eat other people's 
 substance, and so what the poor should be given is work. 
 If this cannot be given them, then give them nothing, and 
 starvation will soon produce such horrible results that the 
 community will thereby be more effectually aroused than 
 by all the appeals of philanthropists or the exhortations of 
 moralists. Of course, I do not mean that the wealthy 
 should not contribute to this work ; far from it. They 
 should give and that largely to the support of industrial 
 schools, orphan and foundling asylums, institutions 
 for the aged, the insane and the hopelessly maimed, 
 and so on, until the material conditions of the friends of 
 such unfortunates shall be so improved that they can and 
 will provide for their own. They should especially con- 
 tribute to all projects advocated and fostered by scienlifie 
 philanthopists, who are seeking to permanently elevate 
 the characters and improve the conditions of the poor. 
 
 The agencies employed in this great work confess their 
 inability to grapple successfully with it. Mr. Riis pays 
 high and deserved tributes to the Children's Aid Society of 
 New York, the Five Points Mission, the girl's "College 
 Settlement," the Neighborhood Guilds, the King's 
 Daughters, the Board of Health, and the various efforts of 
 tenement house reformers and charitable organizations. 
 
 Millions upon millions of dollars are spent annually in 
 New York city alone, and yet it not only has not removed 
 the evils in question, but those who are best qualified to 
 speak on the subject sorrowfully admit that the agencies at 
 present employed cannot remove them. Mr. Riis thinks 
 that "tenement-house re/brw holds the key to the problem 
 of pauperism in the city. " Yet he adds sadly, "Wecan never 
 get rid of either the tenement or the pauper. The two will 
 always exist together in New York. But by reforming 
 the one, we can do more toward exterminating the other 
 than can be done by all other means together that have 
 yet been invented, or ever will be." . 
 
 Miss Collins in New York and Mr. White in Brooklyn 
 
76 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 have shown not only what can be done in the way of tene- 
 ment-house reform, but they have shown that the tenements 
 may be ^ro/f/aft/v improved. The dwellers in these miser- 
 able dens pay, in proportion, as high rent as any resident of 
 the city. The owners of the tenements make from twenty- 
 five to forty per cent., on the money thus invested, and, 
 of course, they oppose and will continue to oppose tene- 
 ment-house reform. They can make more out of them 
 in their present condition, but they can make a fair profit 
 upon theirmoney if they improve their tenements, and they 
 should he/orced by public sentiment and the law to do it. 
 It is no charity to the poor to demand this, but simple 
 justice. They have to pay for their houses and they should 
 have decent residences. These words of the New York 
 Tribune are sensible and suggestive : "When private en- 
 terprise," it says, " has practically solved the question (as 
 in this case) how to do certain things, a great step in 
 advance has been taken. Thenceforth half the dependence 
 of the defenders of abuses is gone ; thenceforth the friends 
 of reform are furnished with concrete illustrations of their 
 subject. To provide decent housing for the poor at rea- 
 sonable rents is obviously the first consideration. When 
 this has been done for' some of the poor, the way to ac- 
 complish it for the rest lies open, and the question then 
 resolves itself into one of means." 
 
 Here lies the strength of the reform position at present ; 
 and while unquestionably the difficulties to be encountered 
 are still manifold and great, there is ample room for en- 
 couragement. While the tenement will probably remain a 
 necessity in New York, owing to its peculiar location on 
 an island, in Philadelphia and other cities it is not and 
 ought never to be allowed to become a necessity. On the 
 contrary, the good example of Philadelphia in furnishing 
 neat and commodious if modest houses for the work-people 
 ought to be followed everywhere. But after all has been 
 done that can be done towards providing houses for the 
 poor, there still remains that vast unnumbered host who 
 have no work, and cannot, therefore, rent a single room 
 even, but must go to the cheap lodging-house, the alley, 
 anywhere they are permitted to stretch their weary limbs. 
 What shall be done for or with these thousands? Only 
 one man to my knowledge has. made even an approxi- 
 mately practical attempt to answer that question, and, of 
 
THE SAVAGES OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 77 
 
 course, he has been overwhelmed with abuse and has met 
 with all sorts of opposition, so that one almost hesitates to 
 mention his name and discuss his proposition. I refer, of 
 course, to General Booth, of the Salvation Army, and his 
 remarkable colonization plan. This plan is so well known 
 that it is unnecessary to do more than glance at its chief 
 features. These are three, consisting-, first, of a colony 
 planted in the midst of the slums ; secondly, a colony in 
 the country ; and third, a colony in foreign parts. The 
 last named has less interest for us than the other two parts 
 of the plan have. General Booth recognizes two great 
 facts : that the personal character of the slum-dweller must 
 be reformed, and that in order to return the masses to the 
 country whence they came they must be enabled to go 
 there and to earn a living after they get there. His city 
 colony would serve the first purpose. He would put up 
 a number of buildings in the midst of the slums, some- 
 what like the shelters of the Salvation Army, where the 
 starving could get bread and the naked clothing and the 
 suffering relief, but they would have to work and pay for 
 what they got. A number would be employed in gather- 
 ing waste food and cast-off clothing from the kitchens and 
 closets of the rich who would give for this purpose. What 
 an enormous amount of stuff, now wasted, could be thus 
 gathered ! Then there would be factories where the old 
 clothes, etc., would be "made over, " and these, of course,' 
 would furnish much work for the beneficiaries. There 
 would be a labor bureau to secure work elsewhere, and, 
 in sfiort, there would be a scientific application of the most 
 approved methods of poor-relief. Then, as the rescued 
 were prepared for it, they w^ould be sent to a farm owned 
 by the managers of the scheme, where they would find 
 all the necessaries to successful farming, and where they 
 would be thickly enough settled to prevent the misery of 
 solitariness. He only asks five million dollars to put this 
 plan into practice, by which he would provide for three 
 million poor people. England spent two hundred million 
 dollars in freeing her slaves, and we spent as much in 
 proportion. Will England or the United States spend the 
 pittance necessary to free the miUions of white slaves at 
 our doors } Judging from the puerile objections raised to 
 General Booth's scheme, we may fear that the public mind 
 and conscience are too ignorant and prejudiced to endorse 
 
78 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 a plan that does not satisfy everybody. Nobody has ven- 
 tured to deny the facts stated by Gen. Booth, and the con- 
 sequent necessity of a gig-antic effort to remove the evils. 
 No one, so far as I know, has shown that this plan could 
 not be put into operation with the means General Booth 
 asks. All the objections refer to the methods oi administra- 
 tion of affairs. Some bigots objected to it simply because 
 the leader of the Salvation Army originated it. It is the 
 same old cry, "Can any good thing come out of Naz- 
 areth 1 " Had it come out of Canterbury or Parliament it 
 might have been more satisfactory to these people. But 
 considering that most of our good things come out of Naz- 
 areth, it is about time to have done with such silly objec- 
 tions. 
 
 Prof. Huxley refused to assist in promoting the scheme, 
 first, because he did not consider the Salvation Army a fit 
 instrument for the accomplishment of the work ; and, 
 secondly, because it placed too much power in one man's 
 hands. The Archbishop of Canterbury expressed essen- 
 tially the same objections. "Few social evils," says 
 Huxley, " are of greater magnitude than uninstructed and 
 unchastened religious fanaticism ; lio personal habit more 
 surely degrades the conscience and the intellect than blind 
 and unhesitating obedience to unlimited authority. Un- 
 doubtedly harlotry and intemperance are sore evils, and 
 starvation is hard to bear or even to know of; but the 
 prostitution of the mind, the soddening of the conscience, 
 the dwarfing of manhood, are worse calamities." 4^ if. 
 forsooth, the minds of the poor wretches in the slums are 
 not already prostituted to the lowest purposes, their con- 
 sciences soddened to the very depths, and their manhood 
 entirely crushed ! Such objections are characteristic ofthe 
 agnostic philosopher, who objects to instructed and chast- 
 ened religious "fanaticism," as well as to the Salvation- 
 ist's kind. Prof. Huxley takes his stand by those who 
 say, " Because a thing does not fully satisfy me I will have 
 nothing to do with it." I disapprove of the Salvation 
 Army's methods of religious work as cordially as Prof. 
 Huxley does, and I know that religious feeling influences 
 Mr. Booth and his co-workers in this movement ; but Mr. 
 Booth himself over and over again shows that the social 
 and the religious parts of his work will be kept distinct 
 Certainly they can be, and the supporters of the scheme 
 
THE SAVAGES OF CIVILIZATION. 79 
 
 could see that they were. The question is not whether the 
 rehgious fanaticism of the Salvation Army is a good thing, 
 but whether the methods of rescuing the "submerged 
 tenth " from the ocean of misery they are now in, proposed 
 by General Booth, are rational and practicable? No one 
 will be compelled by the Army to adopt its religious 
 opinions, and if some do adopt them and become Salva- 
 tionists voluntarily, would their minds really be more 
 prostituted, their consciences more soddened, their man- 
 hood more dwarfed, than they are now ? Compare the 
 dwellers in Mr. Booth's barracks with those on the Em- 
 bankment of London, and answer. Prof. Huxley strains 
 at a gnat, and swallows a camel. He appeals to the worst 
 prejudices of the worst bigots in the Church in the passage 
 quoted. 
 
 His second objection, however, is more rational. "What 
 guarantee," he asks, " is there that, thirty years hence, the 
 'general,' who then autocratically controls the action, 
 say, of 100,000 officers, pledged to blind obedience, dis- 
 tributed through the whole length and breadth of the 
 poorer classes, and each with his finger on the trigger of 
 a mine charged with discontent and religious fanaticism ; 
 with the absolute control, say, of eight or ten million 
 pounds sterling of capital, and as many of income ; with 
 barracks in every town, with estates scattered over the 
 country, and with settlements in the colonies — will exer- 
 cise his enormous powers, not merely honestly, but wisely? 
 What shadow of security is there that the person who 
 wields this uncontrolled authority over many thousands of 
 men shall use it solely for those philanthropic and religious 
 objects, which, I do not doubt, are alone in the mind of 
 Mr. Booth ? " To the same effect writes the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury. "The centrality and universality of the 
 scheme, and the dominion to be exercised over it, appear 
 to me to amass difficulties for the future." These sugges- 
 tions, I think, make it plain that the Salvation Army should 
 not be the only agency employed in this work. But is this 
 a necessary part of Mr. Booth's scheme ? Surely, if he is, 
 as he says he is, "ready to sit at the feet of any who will 
 show him any good," he would gladly have other philan- 
 thropic agencies unite with the Salvation Army in this 
 work, and these agencies could and would limit its power. 
 It IS nothing more than just that those who contribute to 
 
So TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 such a purpose should have a voice in the management of 
 affairs, and I see no reason why the Church and philan- 
 thropic agencies now at work among the poor could not 
 effect a basis of union and co-operation with the Salvation 
 Army which would be satisfactory to all parties. One 
 danger should ever be guarded against, viz., the influence 
 of politics. Such a work should not be trusted to State 
 management, for if so there would soon be as great a 
 scramble for positions and power in it as there is now in 
 other governmental work. But let it be observed that here 
 again the question is not as to the inherent reasonableness 
 of Mr. Booth's scheme, but simply as to the best method 
 of putting it into effect; and surely when a great scheme 
 like this has been conceived, further thought and discus- 
 sion upon it will perfect it. 
 
 The New York dturchman for January 17, 1891, made 
 some sensible and suggestive remarks on the scheme. It 
 stated two serious obstacles in the way of its success. 
 "First," it said, "it is a fact, which it would be idle not to 
 recognize, that the followers of Jesus Christ our Lord are so 
 wretchedly divided from each other, and in spite of all their 
 boasted tolerance are so pettily jealous of each other, that it 
 is only the larger souls in the different denominations that 
 can sincerely rejoice at good done by men belonging to 
 other denominations. In the discussions of General Booth's 
 scheme that have come under our observation the most 
 humiliating thing we have had to observe is the small 
 spirit of sectarianism which has arra3'ed itself against the 
 man and his scheme, and the rancor with which both have 
 been held up to contempt." This is sadly true, and I 
 know of no severer arraignment of sectarianism than this. 
 To think that millions of our fellow-men must suffer and 
 die because the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ are di- 
 vided in opinions concerning unessential and often puerile 
 doctrines is enough to make angels weep and devils keep 
 jubilee. But not only do denominational differences pre- 
 vent Christians from uniting in philanthropic work : scien- 
 tific or philosophic prejudices frequently influence men like 
 Huxley in declining to endorse such work, although they 
 say they think that the one redeeming feature of the Church 
 is its social and moral power. But the Churchman admits 
 there are some " larger souls " in all churches who can 
 rise superior to denominational prejudices, and I think that 
 
THE SA VA GES OF CI VI LIZ A TION. % i 
 
 the number is large enough to constitute an effective work- 
 ing force. If, for instance, the work were committed to a 
 general board, the members of which would be elected, say, 
 triennially by the conventions of the Church and the Sal- 
 vation Army, I am sure that enough large-souled men could 
 be found to fill the positions. Surely those large souls 
 already engaged in charitable work are not all who are 
 willing to engage in it, and this combined force might ac- 
 complish wonders in spite of the evils of sectarianism. 
 By such a union of forces, too, the/>o/z'&a/importance of 
 such a; social power as any one organization of such mag- 
 nitude would become would be prevented. The different 
 churches concerned could effectively say to each other, 
 or to any power that would attempt to manipulate things 
 to a political advantage, "Hands off! " A second serious 
 objection to the Booth scheme cited by the Churchman is 
 that "it proposes to do a great police work without police 
 powers. After the Salvation Army had done all it pos- 
 sibly could do there would still remain a mighty multitude 
 of people who, in spite of poverty, and suffering, prefer 
 the crowded street, and the gin, palace, and the freedom 
 of vagrancy, to any mode of life that the Salvation Army 
 would offer them. The hand that shall successfully deal 
 with that multitude must be the strong hand of a Rum- 
 ford, arrrted with the entire police powers of society, and 
 able to compel submission until it can conciliate and secure 
 willing compliance. The evil to be removed is a social 
 evil of enormous magnitude." Yes, but by a union of the 
 mighty forces, social, moral and religious, such as is here 
 suggested, the necessary police force could be commanded, 
 and so again we see the necessity of union and co-oper- 
 ation between philanthropic societies and workers. 
 
 The Churchman also says that the Booth scheme fails to 
 provide decent houses for the poor in the cities where they 
 must live in order to be near their work, and to remove 
 certain economic difficulties. As to the first objection, it is 
 met by the proposition to continue and extend tenement- 
 house reform., arid this could be included in the Booth 
 scheme as well as not. The second objection of the Church- 
 man has no force in it, because it rests on false premises. 
 "The progress of modern civilization," it says, echoing 
 the Tribune's false political economy, "tends to submerge 
 the great mass, of the laboring classes in deeper and. deeper 
 
 6 
 
82 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 hopelessness." Not so ! The progress of rascality and 
 respectable robbery among landlords, monopolists, corrupt 
 politicians and the so-called upper classes, "tends to sub- 
 merge the laboring classes," and it is just this progress of 
 meanness that it is here proposed to stop. We want to 
 give the working people a chance by furnishing oppor- 
 tunities for work, and then production will be increased, 
 wages will rise and capital become more abundant and 
 widely and equally diffused. The introduction of machin- 
 ery and the invention of the steam engine have no doubt 
 changed the whole face of industrial society, but it should 
 have increased the prosperity of the toiling millions by 
 creating more wealth, and it would have done this had 
 not that wealth been grabbed by the " upper classes," those 
 on top who are submerging the laboring classes. We pro- 
 pose to put machinery, land, and the other means of pro- 
 duction into the hands of the work people, and see what 
 they will do with it all. We believe that they will soon 
 exterminate poverty among themselves, and also benefit the 
 wealthier classes by rendering their position more secure. 
 As it is, they now sit on a volcano which may burst under 
 them at any moment. 
 
 For such reasons I endorse the Booth scheme. I do not 
 think it a panacea for all our social and industrial ills. 
 Indeed, I am not sure that it would produce all the good 
 that even I might expect if it were adopted and applied 
 with the modifications here suggested. But it rests on the 
 right basis. It proposes a reformation of individual char- 
 acter, and it further aims to provide work for those who 
 vi'ant it. It proposes to send many of the city poor to the 
 country, but it would not send them unprepared to an 
 unprepared country, and it combines many if not all the 
 best features of "scientific charity." Suppose the scheme 
 is tried and fails, what of it? The experiment would, 
 doubtless, teach lessons which would be far more valuable 
 to social and economic reformers than the few millions 
 spent upon it. The Government wastes more money in 
 experimenting in building gunboats, etc. , etc. , than would 
 be necessary for this experiment in poor-relief. I there- 
 fore say, All hail, success and triumph to General Booth ! 
 Thou art the Good Samaritan ! And may the good Lord 
 enable you to teach the priests, Levites, Scribes, Pharisees, 
 and hypocrites a lesson which the ages shall confirm ! 
 
POPULAR IDEAS OF POVERTY. 83 
 
 VII. 
 
 POPULAR IDEAS OF POVERTY. 
 
 No text of Scripture has been more misunderstood and 
 perverted than that which says, " Ye have the poor always 
 with you." It is often interpreted as if Jesus meant not 
 only to state a/ac/.but that He meant to say it was aneces- 
 sary and unalterable fact. Such interpreters would have us 
 believe that the poor are not only here and here to stay, 
 but that we cannot even partially exterminate poverty. 
 Besides, they do not distinguish between absclute and 
 relative poverty ; between poverty and pauperism. I may 
 be poor as compared to Smith, who has millions, but I 
 may be rich as compared to Jones, who has only a few pen- 
 nies. And while we may not be able to exterminate rela- 
 tive poverty, we can certainly do much towards destroying- 
 pauperism and elevating the poor morally, intellectually, 
 and materially. Neither poverty nor pauperism is neces- 
 sary. But both popular political economy and philan- 
 thropy assume that it is, and therefore seek to discover and 
 assign the causes of this sad state of things. 
 
 First, the popular political economy, as stated in former 
 chapters, assigns preSsure of population upon the means of 
 subsistence as the great cause of poverty. This theory is 
 called the Malthusian Theory of Population, after its orig- 
 inator, the Rev. 'Thomas R. Malthus, of England, who 
 lived during the first part of this century. It really amounts 
 to the Darwinian " Struggle for Existence," which it sug- 
 gested, and which, in turn, has contributed to its support 
 and confirmation. 
 
 It is found in the writings of all political economists 
 since the time of Malthus, except Henry George's and a 
 few others. It is well and moderately stated by Prof. 
 Richard Ely, of the Johns Hopkins University, in his 
 "Political Economy" for the Chautauqua University. 
 "Let us suppose," he says, "that there are only two 
 people on the face of the earth, and that population doubles 
 
84 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 only once in fifty years. At the expiration of three 
 thousand years the whole surface of the earth, land, and 
 sea would be covered with people piled one on top of the 
 other eight hundred deep." 
 
 This is truly appalling ! It reminds one of the man who 
 paid the blacksmith one cent for the first nail he put in his 
 horse's shoe and doubled the amount for every other nail, 
 and thereby bankrupted himself ! Vanderbilt himself could 
 not have his carriage horses shod at this price ! The fact 
 is, no such man ever existed, and the assertion that popu- 
 lation tends to increase faster than the means of subsist- 
 ence by no means explains the existence of poverty. 
 
 First, it is one thing to say that population tends to 
 increase faster than subsistence, and quite another to say 
 it actually does so increase. As long as tendencies do not 
 become actualities we care very little about them. That 
 the tendency in question has not become an actuality is 
 conclusively proved by the fact that, although the human 
 race has been in existence many thousands of years — a hun- 
 dred thousand, say some anthropologists — yet there are 
 to-day many millions of acres of unoccupied and unused 
 land, and the earth is able to support many more millions 
 of inhabitants than are now on it. 
 
 In the second book of his "Progress and Poverty," Mr. 
 George shows that even India; China, and Ireland, with 
 their swarming millions, could support them all if land and 
 the means of production were properly managed. Cer- 
 tainly, if the unoccupied lands of Africa, America and other 
 countries were iiihabited and worked'to their full capacity, 
 and the products were fairly distributed, there is no reason 
 whatever for believing that the earth could not support its 
 occupants. 
 
 Even Malthusianism admits that the alleged tendency of 
 the human race to multiply more rapidly than the means 
 of subsistence never becomes an actual fact, but it mis- 
 states the checks to the growth of population, and this is 
 the second and radical defect in the theory. It makes 
 poverty both an effect and a cause. It says that popula- 
 tion increases more rapidly than the means of subsistence ; 
 this produces a scramble for bread, and in the struggle 
 many are killed by starvation, and thus the growth of popu- 
 lation is checked. Now I believe an effect is here assigned 
 to a wrong cause. I don't believe that poverty evergreatly 
 
POPULAR IDEAS OF POVERTY. 85 
 
 checks the increase of population, except in very rare, ex- 
 ceptional cases. When the potato crop in Ireland fails, 
 the poverty of its peasants doubtless destroys some of them. 
 When the famine occurred in Israel, those who were not so 
 fortunate as Jacob's sons were may have suffered. When 
 the great fire of London reduced thousands to beggary, 
 their poverty may have destroyed them, and thus checked 
 the increase of population somewhat. But these are excep- 
 tional cases, and cannot prove Malthusianism. The 
 growth of population is checked by entirely diiiferent causes 
 from that assigned by Malthusians — by wars, and pesti- 
 lences, and earthquakes, and disease, and death from old 
 age, etc. These are the checks to population, and they 
 are sufficient, I believe, to keep the number of the earth's 
 inhabitants so low that it can support them if they use its 
 resources. They will prevent population from so pressing 
 upon the means of subsistence that starvation must mow 
 men down in order to save others. If the Creator (or Na- 
 ture) sends men into this world. He gives them two hands 
 with which to fill each mouth, places them upon a planet 
 where they may find ample standing-room, plenty of meats, 
 vegetables, minerals, etc., for their use, and in due time 
 He removes them to make room for others. It is not neces- 
 sary that He should starve them out, for He can and does 
 remove them by less painful methods, and omitting starva- 
 tion as a factor in disposing of men, the deaths from other 
 causes pretty well balance the births. It is so easy to blame 
 God or Nature for man's iniquities, and the Malthusian 
 theory is well adapted to soothe the consciences of those 
 who, intentionally or unintentionally, rob the poor of their 
 just dues. 
 
 The following facts cited by Mr. George tend to dis- 
 prove this theory. ' ' At the period of her greatest population 
 (1840-45)," he says, "Ireland contained some eight mil- 
 lions of people. But a very large proportion of them 
 managed merely to exist — lodging in miserable cabins, 
 clothed with miserable rags, and with but potatoes for 
 their staple food. When the potato blight came, they died 
 by thousands. But was it the inability of the soil to sup- 
 port so large a population that compelled so many to live 
 in this miserable way, and exposed them to starvation on 
 the failure of a single root crop.? On the contrary, it was 
 the same remorseless rapacity that robbed the Indian ryot 
 
86 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 of the frujfs of his toil and left him to starve where nature 
 offered plenty. A merciless banditti of tax-gatherers did 
 not march through the land plundering and torturing, but 
 the laborer was just as effectually stripped by as mer- 
 ciless a horde of landlords, among whom the soil had 
 been divided as their absolute possession, regardless of 
 any rights of those who lived upon it." 
 
 Again, speaking of man's food-resources, he says : "It 
 is from the vegetable and animal kingdoms that man's 
 food is drawn, and hence the greater strength of the re- 
 productive force in the vegetable and animal kingdoms 
 than in man simply proves the power of subsistence to 
 increase faster than population. Does not the fact that 
 all of the things which furnish man's subsistence have 
 the power to multiply manifold — some of them many 
 thousand-fold, and some of them many million or even 
 billion-fold — while he is only doubling his numbers, show 
 that let human beings increase to the full extent of their 
 reproductive power, the increase of population can never 
 exceed subsistence ? " Whether this fact proves as much 
 as our author claims or not, yet it is quite worthy of con- 
 sideration. It is a remarkably wise provisfon of nature 
 that the sources from which man's subsistence is drawn 
 should be thus capable of multiplying themselves. More- 
 over, they utilize things that man could not use ; and if it 
 is said that plants and animals multiply more rapidly than 
 the means of their subsistence, we know as a matter of 
 fact that "no species reaches the ultimate limit of soil, 
 water, air, and sunshine : but the actual limit of each is in 
 the existence of other species, its rivals, its enemies," the 
 least of which is not man. 
 
 Further, unlike the increase of any other living thing, 
 the increase of man involves the increase of his food. He 
 is not merely a consumer, he is also a producer. Beast, 
 insect, bird, and fish take onl)' what they find, but their pro- 
 geny can be increased and improved by man's efforts, and 
 thus he may increase the amount of his food. Of course, 
 the "law of diminishing returns" from the cultivation of 
 the land is cited as a check to man's efforts to increase the 
 amount of his food. This " law " simply means that land 
 after a certain amount of labor has been spent upon it, and 
 a certain quantity of produce extracted from it, begins to 
 yield less and less until it reaches zero. Or, to put it dif- 
 
POPULAR IDEAS OP POVERTY. 87 
 
 ferently, land that produces twenty-five bushels of wheat 
 per acre cannot be made to produce fifty bushels by doub- 
 ling the amount of labor, but will yield, say, only thirty- 
 five bushels per acre. This, no doubt, is true, but as long 
 as the checks to the growth of population, just mentioned, 
 operate to keep population down to the point where plenty 
 of land may be had which does not require such extra 
 labor, there is no cause for alarm, and at present it seems 
 that as this planet is exhausted by old age and use, the 
 human race, from old age and such causes, will diminish 
 pari passu and so, however true "the law of diminishing 
 returns" may be in theory, there is no prospect of its being 
 realized in practice to the great and endless misery of 
 man. 
 
 The question, then, is this : Does the relative power of 
 producing wealth decrease with the increase of population ? 
 Consider the marvelous growth of population in the United 
 States during the last fifty or a hundred years, from natural 
 causes as well as from immigration and the hand in hand 
 increase of wealth, and answer. Remember, too, that 
 while the New World has thus been receiving and adding to 
 its population, certain parts of the Old World have been 
 gradually depopulated. The rich valley of the Nile once 
 held millions of people where it now has only thousands. 
 
 In what we know of the world's history decadence of 
 population is as common as increase, and, of course 
 those sections of the globe which are depopulated increase 
 in fertility while other sections are supporting earth's in- 
 habitants. For millenniums the stream of population has 
 been setting westward, but the time may come when it 
 will return to the point whence it started, and there find a 
 house, not swept and garnished, but replenished by a kind 
 Providence, and thus begin its majestic march over again. 
 
 At any rate, the Malthusian theory of population does 
 not explain poverty, because, whatever may be the ten- 
 dency of the human race to multiplication, this tendency 
 is held in check by death from causes other than starva- 
 tion ; the resources of nature, vegetables and animals. 
 naturally multiply faster than man's wants, and by his 
 efforts may be even more rapidly multiplied, and as man 
 becomes more and more civilized and elevated in tastes 
 and conditions, his reproductive power seems rather to 
 diminish than to increase. The old adage "A rich man 
 
88 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 for luck and a poor man for children," proves this. " The 
 proportion of births is notoriously greater in new settle- 
 ments, where the struggle with nature leaves little oppor- 
 tunity for intellectual life, and among the poverty-bound 
 classes of older countries, who in the midst of wealth are 
 deprived of all its advantages and reduced to all but an 
 animal existence, than it is among the classes to whom 
 the increase of wealth has brought independence, leisure, 
 comfort, and a fuller and more varied life." 
 
 It would seem, therefore, that the best method of check- 
 ing the growth of population is not starvation, but an ele- 
 vation of man's social, intellectual and material condition 
 so as to curb his mere animal, passionate nature and de- 
 velop' his spiriiual nature. Let it always be remembered 
 that whatever may be the possibility, of the human race 
 so increasing as to demand more food than can be got, the 
 actual fact is that 2X present, and for many millenniums to 
 come, poverty is attributable not to " the niggardliness of 
 nature, but to the injustice of society," not to necessary 
 but to removable causes, and any instance of the pressure 
 of population upon the means of subsistence that may be 
 cited among earth's inhabitants — in India, China, Eng- 
 land, Ireland or America — may be readily and correctly 
 explained as due to "man's inhumanity to man." 
 
 Turning now from the explanations of poverty, offered 
 by the Economists, we find popular writers and expositors, 
 especially among the employing class, assigning extrav- 
 agance, drunkenness and laziness as the chief causes of 
 poverty among the working classes. All such works as 
 Mr. Samuel Smiles's "Self Help," "Thrift," "Character," 
 "Dut5^" etc., assume that the fault lies with the laborer 
 and that a ref-^rmation of his character is all that is neces- 
 sary. Now, I certainly do not undervalue Mr. Smiles's 
 works, nor do I deny that extravagance, drunkenness, and 
 laziness have much to do with poverty, but I do think that 
 too much is attributed to them and certain important facts 
 are overlooked. 
 
 First, an examination of the reports on labor furnished 
 by the Government annually, or a perusal of such works 
 as Mr. Riis's, Mr. Booth's, or Helen Campbell's, will show 
 that there are thousands of men and women who are will- 
 ing to work, anxious to work, and cannot get work at any 
 price, and therefore they have absolutely nothing to ecbno- 
 
POPULAR IDEAS OF POVERTY. ' 89 
 
 mize. , It is absurd to ask men to save what they haven't 
 got. It is a mockery to say that men w^ho haven't a crust 
 of bread or a shirt should " lay by something for a rainy 
 day." Every day is a rainy day with them, andthe clouds 
 are so dense, the storms are so severe, that it is impossible 
 for them to survive, much more to save something. 
 
 Then think of the hundred and fifty thousand women in 
 New York who make on an average sixty cents a day, 
 many of whom may have children to support ; how on 
 earth can such persons '.'save" anything out of such a 
 pittance f But even among the better-paid workmen there 
 are excuses for their alleged extravagance. I remember 
 once hearing a clergyman and a professor of political 
 economy discussing this question. "Why, professor," 
 said the minister, "it is the extravagance of the poor that 
 makes them poor. I met my hired girl down the street 
 the other day and she was actually dressed so finely 
 that I did not recognize her, and when she came home she 
 reproached me for passing her without speaking to her." 
 "Well," answered the professor, "don't the well-to-do 
 classes set the example of extravagance to the poor people ? 
 Your servant has discovered that a fine dress is necessary 
 to an entrance into 'society,' and hence she will starve 
 her stomach to clothe her back." The clergyman yielded, 
 and well he might, for the lightning struck nea-r home, 
 since his own wife and wealthy parishioners set the evil 
 example. True, they were more able to wear fine clothes 
 than the hireling, but the latter did not consider this ; and 
 if facts are considered, it may be found that many are able 
 to live more luxuriously because others are deprived of their 
 just dues. The very question is, Why this discrepancy 
 between the classes .i" Why should not the faithful worker 
 be able to wear decent clothes and set a bountiful table ? 
 One fact is undeniable : extravagance is not confined to the 
 poor classes, and those who preach the Gospel of Economy 
 should address themselves, first to the rich, and then to the 
 poor. If this is done, I for one will heartily endorse the 
 preaching. I do not defend extravagance in any one or 
 any class, but it does not explain the existence of poverty, 
 or, if it does, it is rather the extravagance of the rich that 
 impoverishes others than their own wastefulness. 
 
 Then as to drunkenness, no one. can deny that it pro- 
 duces terrible evils and suffering among the poor, but 
 
90 
 
 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 neither can it be denied that poverty itself produces intem- 
 perance. Says Prof. Ely: "While intemperance is a 
 monstrous evil and cannot be too earnestly fought against, 
 we should not fail to see that it is at the same time 
 both an effect and a cause. ' Go to our crowded cities and 
 great industrial centers. Here we find industrial and social 
 conditions which force us to believe that, until they are 
 remedied, we can look for no lasting growth of temper- 
 ance or strengthening of character. On the one side, im- 
 mense wealth, with its temptations of pride and luxury ; 
 on the other, crow^ded tenements, hot and noxious in sum- 
 mer, always loathsome and repulsive, occupied by those 
 who do not know whether they will find work that day or 
 not. Their condition is often the effect of their former in- 
 temperate habits, and in turn it drives them and their chil- 
 dren into further depths of inebriety. An important reason 
 for the craving for. intoxicants, as is shown by one of the 
 foremost American physiologists, is the lack of sufficient 
 food or of a sufficient variety of wholesome food, and es- 
 pecially poorly cooked food. These and many other facts 
 with regard to the economic conditions of our day admon- 
 ish us that the thoughtful temperance advocate must 
 embrace in his efforts both temperance and industrial 
 reforms. " 
 
 Here,' again, the poor compare most favorably with the 
 rich. Dr. Ely shows that the social clubs of working men 
 never have a bar-room attached, and labor organizations 
 foster temperance, while rich men's clubs almost invariably 
 have bar-rooms attached, and the wealthy classes frequently 
 promote intemperance among the poor, especially on elec- 
 tion days, when they want their votes. It may be safely 
 said that the working classes are, on the whole, even more 
 temperate than the "upper classes," and there are thou- 
 sands of poor people who do not drink liquor who yet have 
 to struggle for dear life. I have little patience with those 
 who cite the drunkenness of 'the poor as the cause of their 
 poverty, for while I know as well as any one that drunk- 
 enness does prevail to a sad extent among all classes, I also 
 know that many are ground down by poverty who are 
 even "total abstainers," and it is for these that we plead. 
 We include temperance and economy in our programme 
 of social reform, as well as other things, but we do not 
 attribute all poverty and suffering to two or three causes, 
 
POPULAR IDEAS OF POVERTY. 
 
 91 
 
 nor would we apply one reform to only one section of 
 humanity, but we would preach economy, temperance, and 
 righteousness to all alike. 
 
 Finally, as to laziness among the poor. No one knows 
 better than I do how lazy many of them are. Both among 
 the blacks of the South and the whites of the North, I have 
 had ample opportunities to learn how careless of the in- 
 terest of their employers are many working people. I also 
 know how ready they are to botch their work and how 
 prone they are to attempt to lord it over their employers. 
 I do not in the least palliate any of their, numerous faults, 
 but urge as strongly as any that they must be remedied 
 before they can succeed. Still, it must be admitted that 
 there are thousands who are industrious and would be 
 faithful in their work if they could get it to do, and against 
 them the charge of laziness cannot be brought as an 
 explanation of their poverty. _ But the great question is. 
 How to get these idlers to wori. ? Denunciation will do no 
 good. Either we must be content with inefficient service 
 or we must adopt some plan which will call forth the 
 best efforts of employes. I know of but one such plan, and 
 in lieu of a better I shall advocate its more general adop- 
 tion, and that is profit-sharing. This simply means that 
 the employer will pay his employe the nominal market rate 
 of wages, and over and above this will give him a share 
 in the profits of the business. By this means the worker's 
 self-interest is enlisted on the side of the employer and the 
 result is more vigorous effort, greater economy in the use 
 of materials, and greater care of the machinery used. 
 
 Now, of course, the opponents of profit-sharing are ready 
 with their everlasting "objections." They will point to 
 the few attempts made in this country, under most unfavor- 
 able circumstances, which have failed, as proof positive of 
 its impractical and "visionary" character.' But two facts 
 are sufficient to my mind to meet any such objections. 
 First, I am sure from experience that the principle of profit- 
 sharing is right, and that it will, under favorable condi- 
 tions, work well. I have got lazy negroes in the South 
 (and of all lazy people the negroes are the laziest) to do 
 faithful work by giving them a share in the crops. The 
 very negroes who would idle as soon as the employer's 
 back was turned would work from daylight till dark, when 
 they were " working on shares." Moreover, wtiy should 
 
92 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 labor not share in the profits? If, for instance capital 
 contributes two dollars and labor gives the same to the 
 production of a pair of shoes, and they are sold for. five 
 dollars, why should one party to the contract or transaction 
 receive all the profits? Justice would share the profits 
 equally between the two. 
 
 Secondly, Prof. Sedley Taylor of England has made a 
 special study of profit-sharing, and in his admirable little 
 work on this subject he tells us how the system was 
 originated by a French house-decorator in 1842, and has 
 spread over Europe, producing most satisfactory results. 
 " Putting together the most recent data," he says, "I shall 
 be below the mark in saying that one hundred continental 
 (European) firms are now working on a participatory 
 basis. The principle has been introduced with good 
 results into agriculture; into the administration of railways, 
 banks and insurance offices ; into iron-smelting, type- 
 founding and cotton-spinning ; into the manufacture of 
 tools, paper, chemicals, lucifer-matches, soap, card-board 
 and cigarette-papers ; into printing, engraving, cabinet- 
 making, house-painting and plumbing ; into stock-brok- 
 ing, book-selling, the wine trade and haberdashery. The 
 movement," he adds, "is making still further headway, 
 a considerable number having given in their adherence 
 during the last four years." 
 
 The benefits accruing from participation successfully 
 practiced he sums up thus : "It furnishes to the workman 
 a supplementary income under circumstances which 
 directly encourage, or even actually enforce, saving; and, 
 by associating him»in a very real sense with his employer, 
 it arouses aspirations from which great moral improvement 
 may be confidently anticipated. The employer, besides 
 sharing in whatever surplus profits are realized by the 
 more efficient labor which participation calls forth, obtains 
 the boon of industrial stdbility and the support of a united 
 corporate feeling elsewhere unknown. Independently of 
 these advantages to the tvi'o parties directly concerned, 
 the customer of a participating house finds in its very 
 organization a guarantee for enhanced excellence of work- 
 manship and rapidity of execution. The fund, of course, 
 on which participation draws is the surplus profit realized 
 in consequence of the enhanced efficiency of the work 
 done under its stimulating influence. Such extra profit is, 
 
POPULAR IDEAS OF POVERTY. 
 
 93 
 
 therefore, obtainable wherever workmen have it in their 
 power to increase the quantity, improve the, quality, or 
 diminish the cost of price of their staple of production by 
 more effective exertion, by increased economy in the use 
 of tools and materials, or by a reduction in the cost of 
 superintendence. " 
 
 The justice and practicability of profit-sharing would be 
 apparent to all business men if they were not already 
 wedded to a different system ; if they did not worship 
 "competition " and think that "the supply and demand" 
 theory of wages was the only rule of action. 
 
 As to the failures of certain attempts at profit-sharing, 
 Prof. Taylor well says : "In order to infer from the aban- 
 donment of a system the unsoundness of its central prin- 
 ciple, evidence must be forthcoming to show that the 
 evils which led to failure were necessary consequences of 
 the principle. This certainly can never be proved with 
 respect to the unsuccessful experiments in profit-sharing." 
 Both reflection and experience prove that the principle is 
 all right, however often misapplication of it may fail to 
 produce good results. One thing is certain : neither false 
 theories of political economy nor denunciation of the poor 
 for their extravagance, drunkenness and laziness will ever 
 remedy our social and industrial ills. Only the Gospel of 
 Truth and Justice — only a frank recognition and confession 
 of sins on both sides and an earnest, energetic effort by 
 both parties to the controversy to set matters right, can 
 produce harmony and peace and happiness between cap- 
 italists and laborers. 
 
94 
 
 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 REDUCTION OF THE HOURS OF LABOR. 
 
 The conflict between capital and labor is artificial. 
 Their interests are naturally identical ; and so no nneasure 
 should be advocated or adopted which would really injure 
 either one of these two parties. No philosophic economist 
 will consciously and deliberately be a partisan in such 
 matters, and if he advocates a reduction of the hours of 
 labor, or any other industrial reform, it will be because 
 he sincerely believes that it will benefit everybody. At any 
 rate, that is my position, and yet I once alienated one of 
 my wealthiest parishioners by advocating the eight-hour 
 movement. He not only quit attending church, but he 
 antagonized me in other ways ; and yet I honestly aimed 
 to do that man as much of a service by urging a reduction 
 of the hours of labor as I did when I aimed to show that 
 the wicked might have another chance of salvation here- 
 after. He was thoroughly pleased with my advocacy of 
 a second probation for sinners, and well he might be ! 
 He was one of those " practical" men who think they 
 know it all, and that professors, clergymen and statesmen, 
 for the most part, are fools and visionaries. There is no 
 greater obstructionist than the so-called "practical man." 
 But I hope to show to unprejudiced minds in this book that 
 many if not all the reforms herein advocated would be 
 beneficial to all parties, among which is the reformation 
 of the working day. 
 
 The first reason assigned for the reduction of the hours 
 of labor is that it would give an opportunity for work to the 
 unemployed. Mr. Gunton, one of the most enthusiastic 
 advocates of the eight-hour system, says : "The immedi- 
 ate effect of the adoption of an eight-hour work day would 
 be to reduce the working time of over eight million adult 
 laborers about two hours a da^'. This would withdraw 
 
REDUCTION OF THE HOURS OF LABOR. gj 
 
 sixteen million hours' labor a day from the market without 
 discharging a single laborer. The industrial vacuum thus 
 created would be equal to increasing the present demand 
 for labor nearly twenty per cent. 
 
 "The fallacy of this argument," says General F. A. 
 Walker, "lies in its assumption that the reason why a cer- 
 tain portion of the population cannot get work is because 
 those who are employed work as long as they do, say ten 
 hours a day. But what are these persons doing during 
 the ninth and tenth hours.? Each of them is producing 
 goods which are to become the means of paying other 
 laborers for their ninth and tenth hours of work." This 
 is true. But would it not be better that these workers 
 should be given less work and more leisure for other 
 purposes, and allow the unwillin gidlers to do their share 
 of the work .? It is hardly just to make the majority 
 support the minority, and it would be better that all should 
 work eight hours a day than that some should work ten 
 and others none, and it cannot be denied that a reduction 
 of the term of labor would furnish work to the unemployed 
 even if there are (as there are)other reasons for enforced idle- 
 ness besides the length of the present work-day. The 
 reduction of the hours of labor really amounts to an in- 
 crease in wages, for it is not proposed to reduce the wages 
 of tTie workmen together with a shortening of the hours of 
 labor, and the employer therefore would have to employ 
 a larger number of men to do the same amount of work. 
 This is why the employing class object so strongly to the 
 shortening of the work-day. But the increase in wages 
 which would thus be produced would prove beneficial to 
 the employer as well as to the employe in this way : The 
 unemployed, which in 1886 amounted to about one million 
 in this country, would be furnished work, and would there- 
 fore become producers of wealth instead of parasites on the 
 industrial body, and also customers, directly or indirectly, 
 of their employers. It is because employers fail to recog- 
 nize the fact that their workmen are also their customers, 
 and that the general welfare of the country and of the 
 working people means their welfare, that they oppose 
 many industrial reforms. They think that every advan- 
 tage given labor is so much taken out of their pockets ; 
 and yet if they would reflect that the aforesaid million 
 of unemployed men must live either on charity or by 
 
g6 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 robbery, they would see how important it is to all 
 parties to furnish work to such men. What they would 
 lose by a reduction of the hours of labor they would gain 
 by an increase in the consumption of their products and a 
 reduction of charity and almsgiving. Hence their loss 
 would be only apparent. 
 
 Take a definite instance of the working of the eight-hour 
 system. Suppose a manufacturer of agricultural imple- 
 ments were to adopt it : he would have to employ a 
 larger number of workmen to do the same amount of work. 
 This would absorb some of the enforced idleness of the 
 community into producing power. Men who had gone 
 with empty stomachs and thinly clad backs would begin 
 to set a better table and to wear better clothes. This 
 would create a demand for more farm products, and this 
 in turn would necessitate the making of more argricul- 
 tural implements. Would not such an increase in wages 
 be beneficial to the employer as well as to the workman ? 
 At any rate, it rnay be laid down as an axiom that no 
 nation can afford to let one-tenth or one-twentieth of its 
 workmen remain idle, much less can the employing class 
 permit this, and one of the greatest benefits derivable from 
 a shortening of the work-day would be the employment 
 of the unwilling idlers who are now a burden to themselves 
 and the community. 
 
 It is sometimes said, in order to reconcile the employing 
 class to the reduction of the hours of labor, that by 
 virtue of their increased efficiency the men would do as 
 much work in eight hours as they now do in ten. But if 
 so, there would be no advantage to the workmen from 
 such a change. The demand for labor would not be at 
 all increased. If one hundred men would do in eight 
 hours what they had been doing in ten hours, manifestly 
 the employer would have no need of an additional twenty- 
 five men under the new system. I think the efficiency of 
 the workmen would be increased under the eight-hour 
 system, but not so much as the enthusiastic would have 
 us believe. Besides, although their efficiency would be 
 so increased that they might, if they chose, do more work 
 in eight hours than they now do in the same length of 
 time, it is questionable whether they actually would choose 
 to do it. The real advantage of the reduction of hours of 
 labor would be reaped by the novv unemployed men of the 
 
REDUCTION OF THE HOURS OF LABOR. 
 
 97 
 
 country, and the improvement of their social and material 
 condition would redound to the advantage of the employ- 
 ing classes particularly and to the welfare of society in 
 general. 
 
 A second, and perhaps, the strongest, argument in favor 
 of the reduction of the hours of labor is that il would give 
 working people time to improve their intellectual, social and 
 moral status. One man has as much right as another to 
 time for the cultivation of his mental and moral nature, 
 and in asking that the work-day be so determined as to 
 allow the laboring classes an opportunity for needed 
 recreation and intellectual improvement, we make no 
 request for charity, we base our claim on the ground of 
 justice. We build and furnish public libraries, art galleries, 
 museums, etc., partly, if not chiefly, for the benefit of the 
 laboring classes, and yet we deprive them of the enjoy- 
 ment of these things by requiring them to work so long 
 every day that they are too tired to walk a mile or two 
 and read a book or a paper in the evening. Here again 
 the adoption of a short work-day would redound to the 
 welfare of the employing class in particular and to the 
 State as a whole. For as the social, mental and moral 
 life of the masses was improved, they would naturally 
 desire to live in better style. One of the very best 
 means of promoting the material welfare of a class or a 
 community is to improve its mental and moral condition. 
 Hence as the masses advanced in education and refine- 
 ment, they would demand and consume more of the good 
 things of life, and thus.an enlarged market would be given 
 the producer for his goods. Again : ignorance and a low 
 moral tone, are always dangerous, but they are especially 
 so in a Republic, which rests on the people. It is, there- 
 fore, to the advantage of the State that better opportunities 
 for intellectual and moral improvement be given the 
 masses. 
 
 " But," it is answered, "the working people would not 
 spend their leisure in improving their minds and morals, 
 but in dissipation and loafing." As a matter of fact, we 
 have seen that the working classes do spend their leisure 
 quite as profitably as the wealthy classes do theirs, and so 
 there is nothing in this objection. The working people as 
 a class, especially those who lead in the eight-hour move- 
 ment, are really anxious for intellectual and moral improve- 
 
 7 
 
98 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 merit. On this point I quote General Francis A. Walker's 
 words. He is rather opposed to a reduction of the hours 
 of labor, but in the Atlantic Monthly for June, 1890, he 
 said: "I have small sympathy with the views so fre- 
 quently, and it seems to me brutally, expressed, that the 
 working classes have no need of leisure beyond the bare 
 necessities of physical rest and repose, to get ready for the 
 morrow's work ; that they do not know what to do with 
 vacant hours, and that a shortening of the term of labor 
 would simply mean idleness at the best, and would, in 
 the great majority of cases, lead to an increase of dissipa- 
 tion and drunkenness. Is it our fellow-beings, our own 
 countrymen, of whom we are speaking.? It seems to me 
 that this talk about the inability of the working classes to 
 make a good use of leisure, as a reason for not letting 
 them have any ; about the hours that might be gained 
 from toil being surely spent in dissipation and riot ; about 
 keeping the laborer at work all day in order to keep him 
 out of mischief, is the poorest sort of pessimistic nonsense. 
 It is closely akin to what we used to hear about slavery 
 being a humane and beneficent institution, of a highly 
 educational character. It is akin to the reason giyen by 
 despots to-day for not enlarging the liberties of the sub- 
 ject. 
 
 "Work, hard work, andagreatdealof it, isgoodfor man. 
 But while this is so, we may well desire that somewhat 
 more, and much, more of leisure and of recreation should 
 mingle with the daily life of our fellows than is now known 
 to most of them. It is a pity, it is a great pity, that work- 
 ingmen should not see more of their families by daylight ; 
 should not have more time for friendly converse or for 
 distinct amusements : should not have larger opportuni- 
 ties for social and public affairs." 
 
 Doubtless some men would misuse their leisure, espe- 
 cially at first, just as the newly-freed slave did, but the vast 
 majority would not, but would spend it in self-improve- 
 ment and the promotion of their families' welfare. It should 
 also be remembered that those who want to drink and riot 
 now find plenty of time during nights and Sundays and 
 their " periodical sprees " for it. It may be that dissipa- 
 tion is promoted by the long hour system, and hence the 
 reduction of the term of labor might and would tend to 
 promote temperance. At any rate, it is simply fair and 
 
REDUCTION OF THE HOURS OF LABOR. 
 
 99 
 
 just to working-men that they be allowed more time for 
 social, intellectual and moral improvement. 
 
 History proves that a shorter work-day may be profit- 
 ably adopted. In Europe at the beginning of this century 
 the average day of work was fifteen hours, but it has been 
 greatly reduced by the factory legislation, and it is admit- 
 ted by all now that this was a wise and beneficial action. 
 
 In Massachusetts the same thing has happened. In both 
 -cases, the employing class and short-sighted economists 
 and legislators opposed the reduction of the term of labor, 
 and raised the cry that it would ruin industry, but, as Gen. 
 Walker says, "a positive gain" to all parties has been the 
 result. 
 
 It is attempted to stay the movement by ridicule. "If 
 a short work-day is a good thing," it is said, " why stop 
 at eight hours ? why not reduce it to six, to four, to two, to 
 zero?" Well, to answer a fool according to his folly, "If a 
 long work-day is a good thing, wh.y not make it longer — in- 
 crease the term of labor to twelve, sixteen, eighteen or 
 even twenty-four hours .' " But this is not argument. Un- 
 doubtedly there is a natural limit to man's energy, and there 
 is an economic division of time. It may not be that 
 ' ' eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours 
 for leisure" is a perfectly scientific division of time, but it 
 is a rough draft of a natural and economic division, and 
 we are simply aiming to discover what is the best division 
 possible. 
 
 Moreover, I am not advocating a uniform, reduction of 
 the hours of labor in this chapter. On the contrary, the 
 work-day should vary in different kinds of work. Gen. 
 Walker well says : "The several trades and avocations 
 differ so widely among themselves in the conditions under 
 which they may be pursued, as to make any single rule the 
 height of injustice. . . ^ One industry must of necessity 
 subject its operators to intense heat or to intense cold ; 
 still others are pursued in an almost stifling atmosphere. 
 Others allow the access of dangerous particles or poison- 
 ous gases. On the other hand, there are industries pursued 
 by hundreds of millions of our kind which furnish the most 
 benignant influences, or at the least require their laborers 
 to submit to no condition injurious to health." Manifestly, 
 therefore, it would be the height of folly to adopt a uniform 
 work-day, and in advocating a reduction of the hours of 
 
lOO TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 labor I do not urge the adoption of the eight-hour system 
 in all kinds of work, but only in those where it is a neces- 
 sity and would prove beneficial. 
 
 How shall we find out what trades can advantageously 
 adopt a shorter work-day, what not? What means 
 shall be employed in bringing about the needed reform ? 
 I think it should be effected as far as possible by the 
 efforts of employers and laborers, and that an appeal 
 to the State for its help should be made only as a last 
 resort. I have no prejudices against State action where 
 it is absolutely necessary, but I believe that labor and capi- 
 tal should co-operate cordially with each other as much as 
 possible, and that the economic and industrial functions 
 of the State should not be unnecessarily enlarged. To 
 quote Walker again: "The term of daily work which 
 prevailed at the time when the greed of masters was 
 utterly unrestrained by law meant the degradation and de- 
 moralization of the workiaig classes, and produced a hideous 
 mass of disease, vice and crime. Out of such a slough it 
 is the right and duty of any government to raise its people 
 by main force, through the strong arm of the law. But 
 when laboring populations have once been placed upon 
 ground firm enough for them to gain a fair foothold and to 
 get a leverage for their own exertions, it is, according to 
 my political philosophy, much better that they should 
 thereafter be left to make progress to successively higher 
 planes through their own strength, skill and courage." Of 
 course, in those cases — and there are still many — where 
 the greed and oppression of employers are degrading and 
 demoralizing their workmen and women, producing vice, 
 crime and misery, and yet they will not heed the demands 
 either of their own employes or organized labor for shorter 
 hours and better conditions of work, the State should come 
 to the rescue. 
 
 We do not believe that the adoption of a shorter work- 
 day will usher in the social and industrial millennium, 
 but it will tend greatly to elevate the material, social, in- 
 tellectual, moral and religious conditions of the toiling 
 masses, and therefore redound to the welfare of the whole 
 community. 
 
2 HE NKORO IN AMERICA. loi 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE NEGRO IN AMERICA. 
 
 The Race Problem will probably have to settle itself. 
 Why discuss it, then ? it will be asked. For many rea- 
 sons — chiefly because discussion may induce us to rec- 
 ognize the course of natural development and follow it. 
 The following facts should be noted and admitted : First, 
 the negro race as a race is inferior to the white race. This 
 idea is not due to Southern prej udice against the negro (the 
 writer is a Virginian), but it is b.ased on most unquestion- 
 able facts — facts of history and facts of science. "When 
 we consider,"' says Prof. Alexander Winchell, " what man- 
 kind has achieved, these humble (black) races never enter 
 our thoughts. They have written no history : they have 
 achieved no results for history to record. Their thousands 
 of years outlived are silent and dark and blank. Not an 
 echo of a former generation comes down to our apprehen- 
 sion. If we learn aught of their past, it is through the 
 studies of the white race. If we unravel the mystery of 
 their migrations, their afiSnities or their origin, it is by 
 studying their zoological characters and their fossil remains, 
 as we investigate the natural history of the horse or the pig. 
 For all which they have achieved, this planet would have 
 remained in the w'ildness and ruggedness of Nature." 
 
 To the same effect wrote Theodore Parker — that great 
 abolitionist : ' ' The Caucasian " (he says) ' ' differs from all 
 others : he is humane, he is civilized and progresses. He 
 conquers with his head as well as with his hand. It is in- 
 tellect, after all, that conquers, not the strength of a man's 
 arm. The Caucasian has often been master of the other 
 races — never their slave. He has carried his religion to 
 other races, but never taken theirs. In history all relig- 
 ions are of Caucasian origin. All the great limited forms 
 of monarchies are Caucasian. Republics are Caucasian. 
 All the great sciences are of Caucasian origin. All inven- 
 
I02 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 tions are Caucasian — literature and romance come froni the 
 same stock : all great poets are of Caucasian origin — 
 Moses, Luther, Jesus Christ, Zoroaster, Buddha, Pythago- 
 ras were Caucasians. No other race can bring up to mem- 
 ory such celebrated names'as the Caucasian. The Chinese 
 philosopher Confucius is an exception. To the Caucasian 
 belong the Arabian, Persian, H'ebrew, Egyptian, and all 
 the European nations are descendants of the Caucasian 
 race." This is not the utterance of the white man's pride. 
 It is simply a statement of facts. In the light of the great 
 discoveries of Livingstone, Stanley and other African ex- 
 plorers, it is absurd to say that the assertion of negro inferi- 
 ority is due to Southern prejudice. It is equally foolish to 
 attribute this inferiority to lack of opportunity, or to the 
 enslavement of the negro. All Africa protests ! It is now 
 known to be one of the finest countries on the globe, and 
 there is no more reason, so far as his surroundings are con- 
 cerned, why the African should not have progressed than 
 there is why the people of India or Europe should not have 
 advanced. The latter have established great empires and 
 promulgated systems of philosophy and religion which are 
 the wonder of the human mind, and yet their dark-skinned 
 brethren across the Nile and around the great inland lakes 
 of Africa are sunk in such an abyss of degradation as to 
 win for their country the name of the "Dark Continent" 
 It is dark as regards the character and civilization of its 
 natives, yet the land is a "goodly land." Why not admit, 
 then, the natural inferiority of the negro, and not either try 
 to tickle his vanity by making him out to be what he is 
 not, or degrade the white man or denounce him because 
 he contends for his birthright } He is not the friend of 
 the negro who does this. Again, Science proves that the 
 negro is inferior to the white man. First of all his physi- 
 cal organism is seen to be more like the animal's than is 
 the white man's. Prof. Winchell and others show by com- 
 parisons and measurements that the shape of the head, the 
 brain-stuff, the length of the arms, the tissue of the skin, 
 etc., of the negro are decidedly inferior to the white man's. 
 In mental power, also, he is inferior. He possesses a 
 strong curiosity to gaze at new sights, but it is the curiosity 
 of the child. He is almost incapable of forming abstract 
 conceptions, and hence we never hear of his producing 
 any great original work in mathematics or philosophy. 
 
THE NEGRO JN AMERICA. 103 
 
 His imaginative and aesthetic powers are likewise feeble, 
 and poetry, sculpture and painting owe little or nothing to 
 negro genius. His moral and religious sentiments are even 
 weaker than his mental powers. Prof. Winchell says, 
 rather strongly, that " negro worship is, for the most part, 
 a brainless voluptuousness of religious emotion." An old 
 colored preacher once said to his congregation : "If 
 you'll jes' jine de Church — 
 
 " 'You may rip and t'yar, 
 You kin cuss and swar, 
 But you jess as shuah of heaven 
 As ef you done d'yar ! ' " 
 
 This shows that the negro's religion is more emotional 
 than rational, whereas the contrary is true of the white 
 man's worship. I suppose that few intelligent people will 
 have the hardihood to maintain that the negro race as 
 a race is either intellectually or religiously as far ad- 
 vanced as the white race, however highly developed 
 individual negroes may be, and however degraded cer- 
 tain whites may be. Even Senator Ingalls, in a speech 
 in the Senate in February, 1890, admitted parentheti- 
 cally, the superiority of the white man over the negro. 
 "Mr. Frederick Douglass " (he said), "the most illustrious 
 living representative of his race is greater, I think, by his 
 Caucasian re-enforcement than by his African blood." 
 Mr. Douglass himself seems to have thought the same, 
 since he marriad a white woman. Now, this contention 
 that the negro is naturally inferior to the white man 
 ought not to offend the former, since it is not prompted 
 by Caucasian conceit but proved by facts, and since we are 
 both derived from the lower animal. The white man has 
 merely got a little farther away from his ancestral home 
 than his black brother has, but they sprang from one stock. 
 The writer agrees with Huxley, Tylor and other physiolo- 
 gists that there is no reason to believe that mankind sprang 
 originally from more than one pair. Nevertheless, there 
 are remarkable varieties of man as there are varieties of 
 other animals. 
 
 There are many varieties of pigeons, for instance, yet 
 Darwin and others have shown that all these different sorts 
 of pigeons are derived from the Rock Pigeon. So God 
 hath undoubtedly made of one blood all nations of men 
 
I04 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 upon earth, but there are many branches of the genea- 
 logical tree. The negro is a lower branch. But what then? 
 Why, it is urged by a certain class of statesmen, ' ' No in- 
 ferior race should be allowed to rule a superior race ; and 
 therefore the negro should be excluded from political 
 office and power." The conclusion, I answer, does not 
 follow from the premise. The negro is inferior to the 
 white man, but he is not so inferior that he should 
 be made either his political or chattel slave. The 
 Southern negro has shown himself during the last 
 twenty-five years, capable of improvement, and many 
 negroes compare very favorably with the whites in intelli- 
 gence and education — witness Ex-Senator Bruce, Freder- 
 ick Douglass, etc. True, these may be exceptions, and their 
 superiority over their brethren may be largely due to the 
 Caucasian blood flowing through their veins ; still these 
 men are classed among the negroes, and they represent a 
 large number who are competent (or may easily be made 
 competent) to take part in political affairs. Moreover, there 
 are pure Africans who have shown themselves capable of 
 high intellectual, social, and moral development. The 
 Rev. Alexander Crummel, D. D. of Washington City, a 
 graduate of Oxford University, England, is a striking ex- 
 ample. He is a scholar and a gentleman ; and while he 
 may be an exception to the majority of his people, yet 
 such instances prove that a great deal of the talk about 
 negro inferiority being a sufficient reason for the negro's 
 exclusion from political power is simply de^nagogical clap- 
 trap. Let the inferiority of the negro race as a race be 
 admitted, or even insisted upon, as has been done above, 
 yet there are many, many individuals (black or mulatto) 
 among the American negroes who are competent to ex- 
 ercise political power, and there are myriads of them who 
 may be made competent. Hence the American Negro 
 should be represented by members of his own race in the 
 Government. Whether all negroes should be allowed to 
 vote will be considered further on. 
 
 A second fact which should be admitted is that by reason 
 of negro inferiority, the amalgamation of the blacks and the 
 whites must be condemned, because it would injure 
 both races. Two witnesses to the truth of this are all that 
 need be brought forward. Prof. Wiuchell gives the result 
 of the observation of a colored picnic party. "Here" (he 
 
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA. 105 
 
 says) " were both sexes — all ages, from the infant in arms 
 to 1he aged, and all hues, from the darkest black to a color 
 appToaching white. There was no old mulatto among them, 
 though there were several old negroes, and many fine 
 looking mulattoes, of both sexes, evidently they?rs/ offspring 
 from the pure races. Then came the youths and children 
 removed one generation farther from the original stocks ; 
 and here could be read the sad truth at a glance. While 
 the little blacks were agile and healthy-looking, the little 
 mulattoes, youths and young ladies, were sickly, feeble, 
 thin, with frightful scars and skin diseases and scrofula 
 stamped on every feature and every visible part of the 
 body. Here was hybridity of human races, under the 
 most favorable circumstances of worldly condition and 
 social position (for these were Northern negroes), and yet 
 it would be difficult, and even impossible, to have selected 
 from the abodes of crime and poverty more diseased and 
 debilitated individuals than were presented by this acci- 
 dental assemblage of the victims of a broken law of 
 nature." 
 
 This, and much more like it, was written in reply to a 
 remarkable article in the Princeton Review, Nov., 1878, by 
 the Rev. Canon Rawlinson, of England, who there advo- 
 cated the amalgamation of the white and the black races 
 in this country. 
 
 Senator Ingalls, in the speech already referred to, said : 
 "There is no natural affinity between the races, and this 
 solution of the problem (amalgamation) is impossible, and 
 in my opinion would be most deplorable. Events have 
 shown that the relations between the sexes in the time of 
 slavery were compulsory, and have disappeared with free- 
 dom. The hybrids were the product of white fathers and 
 black mothers, and seldom or never of black fathers and 
 white mothers, and the inference from this result ethno- 
 logically is conclusive of that question. Such a solution, in 
 my judgment, would perpetuate the vices of both races 
 and the virtues of neither. There is no blood-poison so 
 fatal as adulteration of race. " 
 
 This is written not because I believe that there is the 
 slightest possibility of solving the race problem by the 
 amalgamation of the two races, but because it may pos- 
 sibly tend to prevent some people from following the evil 
 example of others, and either marrying or illegitimately 
 
I06 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 cohabiting ivith negroes. It may be true — let us sincerely 
 hope that it is true — that ' ' the whites in the South are get- 
 ting whiter and the blacks blacker," yet even so there is 
 still a most deplorable amount of illegitimate intercourse 
 between the sexes among the whites and the negroes. Of 
 course, this is mainly due to lust and passion, but some 
 superficial thinkers may complacently look upon this breach 
 of natural law as the beginning of the solution of the race 
 problem. Let the aforementioned facts disabuse their mind 
 of this foolish and dangerous notion ! 
 
 A third fact which must be admitted is that the negro is 
 here to stay. It is absurd to talk about transferring, or in- 
 ducing him to emigrate, to Africa ; he will not go, and even 
 if he would it would be wrong to force him to do so. On 
 this point I quote the words of that eminent Southerner, 
 George W. Cable, from an able speech which he delivered 
 in Feb. 1890, before the Massachusetts Club of Boston. 
 "The most irrational scheme of all " (he said) " is that em- 
 bodied in the bill" (then before the Senate) "for the deporta- 
 tion of negroes to Africa. The graceful arguments of its ad- 
 vocates in the Senate have been fully, ably, brilliantly 
 answered in the Senate, and there is no excuse for more than 
 a word to the point here. The early admissions and confes- 
 sions of Abraham Lincoln have been much used in this de- 
 bate^by excellent men who still repudiate and antagonize 
 the conclusions of his latest wisdom as they once did his 
 earlier. Let us in that wonderful spirit of more than Wash- 
 ingtonian generosity which made him impregnable and 
 irresistible in debate make every supposition of the advo- 
 cates of deportation that can be made. Say the bill is found 
 to be not unconstitutional : that hundreds of thousands of 
 negroes want to go ; and that Southern white men generally 
 will let them go despite the palpable fact that the men 
 most likely to go will be, to use an old Southern word, the 
 most 'likely' men ; the men of health, strength, self-reli- 
 ance, enterprising ; and despite again the fact that no large 
 emigration can take place without carrying away millions 
 of ready money with it. Every 100,000 of European 
 immigrants to this country brings about $8,000,000 ready 
 money with it. The industrial value of every 100,000 
 unskilled laborers is $80,000,000. Is a white immigration 
 likely to make up such losses .' Let us suppose even this, 
 although no one ever yet heard of one set of emigrants 
 
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA. I07 
 
 pouring info a country from which a poorer set was pour- 
 ing out, and although if they will come at all there is abun- 
 dance of room for them now, without deporting a single 
 negro. What shall we say ? We say pass your bill ; get 
 your ships ready ; proclaim free passage to whosoever 
 will accept it ; only let there be no compulsion. We are 
 branded as a whole nation with our fathers' sin of bringing 
 these people here ; let us not now add to that our own 
 sin of driving them back. Therefore, no compulsions. 
 But the land is full of compulsions. The main argu- 
 ment for their going is that we are making their stay 
 here intolerable to them. Before we buy or hire one ship, 
 whether these compulsions are in South Carolina or 
 Mississippi, Illinois, Ohio or Massachusetts, let the com- 
 pulsions be removed. When State and Federal Govern- 
 ments have exhausted, as neither has yet done, all their 
 power of legislation and police to make the negro in 
 America as free as the white man, then, if the negro cannot 
 be content and the people choose to bear the expense 
 of his deportation, let the folly be charged to him, of 
 leaving a free land to which better men were glad to 
 come and fill his voided place. But let this nation never 
 again open the sacred Scriptures- on Independence day, 
 or on the birthday of Washington lift up its hands to God, 
 if as matters now stand, we provide money or ships for 
 the flight back to Africa of the victims of our own tyran- 
 nies. This is not the way to settle, but only to delqy 
 and hinder the settlement of the negro question." 
 
 This is refreshing. Some of us, thank Heaven, have a 
 little moral sense, a little conscience left, and we feel that 
 we owe certain duties to "the victims of our own tyran- 
 nies," which cannot be discharged by shipping them 
 back to the benighted land from which we stole them 
 away. 
 
 A fourth fact should be admitted, namely, not only is 
 the negro here to stay, but his chief place of residence must 
 he in the South. 
 
 In TTie Arena magazine for June, 1890 the Hon. Wm. 
 C. P. Brekenridge M.C. advocated in an interesting article 
 on the Race Question, the diffusion of the negroes through 
 the Western pnd Northern S* tes as "the best solution 
 of the problem." But with all due deference to this 
 
I08 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 honorable gentleman and able statesman, I venture to 
 say nature is against his proposition. At one time negroes 
 lived in New England, but "slavery" (says Senator 
 Ingalls ) " retired from the valleys of the Merrimac, the Con- 
 necticut, and the Hudson, to the Potomac and Southward 
 by the operation of social, economic and natural laws, 
 and not through the superior morality of those who de- 
 fended the Union" against the Southern confederates. 
 "The conscience of new England," adds the Senator (and 
 his words should be pondered by certain new Englanders) 
 " was never thoroughly aroused to the immorality of Afri- 
 can slavery until it ceased to be profitable ; and the North 
 did not finally determine to destroy the system until con- 
 vinced that its continuance threatened, not only their 
 industrial independence but their political supremacy." 
 These words might be used with good effect against cer- 
 tain schemes often advocated to secure the political su- 
 premacy of the negro in the South. But I quote them to 
 show that candid Northerners admit that other considera- 
 tions than moral and natural reasons influence many men 
 in advocating negro supremacy in the South. 
 
 The negro takes to warm latitudes as a duck does to 
 water, and while a good many of the blacks may be in- 
 duced to go West, especially Southwest, yet we cannot 
 count on such migration for a solution of the race problem. 
 The negro must be elevated and dealt with on Southern 
 soil — his natural and his ancestral home. 
 
 Another serious and perhaps alarming fact is that the 
 negro race multiplies more rapidly than the white race. 
 Making all due allowance for imperfection in statistics, 
 yet this fact cannot be gainsaid ; and hence it would 
 seem inevitable that the day must come, and that not 
 many generations hence, when the blacks will largely out- 
 number the whites in the sections of the country inhabited 
 by them. What, then, will be the result ? Shall the 
 majority, contrary to the fundamental principle of our 
 constitution, be ruled by the minority? Or will the minor- 
 ity migrate Westward or Northward and leave a hlack 
 South ? The second idea will, of course, be flouted by 
 Southerners ; while Northerners will see to it that the first 
 proposition is not carried into practice. Hence one of two 
 things must happen — either one race must be exterminated 
 by the other (which God forbid ! ) or the negroes must be 
 
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA. 
 
 109 
 
 industrially, mentally, and morally so educated and elevated 
 that they will cease to he objectionable to the whites. 
 
 I believe that the Southern antipathy to negro influence 
 in poHtics rests more on the fact of his ignorance, social 
 and moral degradation than upon the color of his skin. 
 Surely no thinking man would refuse to accept a wise pro- 
 position just because it was made by a man with a dark 
 skin ! If, for instance. Senator Bruce, while in the Senate, 
 had been so fortunate as to have devised a plan which 
 would have settled the race question, I am sure that the most 
 bitter opponent of " negro rule "in the South would not 
 have rejected it because a colored man originated it. 
 Hence it is evident that the reason why Southern states- 
 men are opposed to the political equality of the negro is, 
 not because he was once their slave, nor because he has a 
 black skin, but because he is ignorant and degraded. I 
 say "Southern statesmen " are opposed to the political 
 equality of the negro because of his ignorance and degrada- 
 tion, but of course foolish people, who are influenced 
 more by sentiment than sense, and by pride and prejudice 
 than by brains, object to his political equality because he 
 was once their slave. But fortunately we need not con- 
 cern ourselves with these people very much. It is the 
 men of brain that will settle this question. 
 
 From what has just been said it is evident that both the 
 Church and the State should push forward education, in- 
 dustrial, mental, and moral, among the blacks of the 
 South. State aid to education should by all means be 
 given. Schools should be multiplied and improved — 
 churches should be built and furnished with earnest, sober- 
 minded, judicious clergymen, who would check and guide 
 the exuberance of the negro's religious emotions. It is a 
 great misfortune to all parties that the ballot was put into 
 the hands of the negro before he was prepared to use it 
 intelligently, but now that he has it, it is impossible to 
 lawfully take it from him. No State will ever vote to dis- 
 franchise itself, and hence we cannot apply "the educa- 
 tional qualification " to voters, and therefore the only thing 
 to be done is to educate the ignorant voters, and this can- 
 not be done by means of gun and club but by precept 
 and persuasion. 
 
 The race problem, then, seems to be at bottom an 
 educational question. When the negroes are elevated in- 
 
no TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 dustrially, intellectually, and morally, we may hope that 
 the absurd race prejudices will have so died out that the 
 white man will no longer object to sitting beside and co- 
 operating with the black man in political matters. Mean- 
 while, of course, we must submit to misrule and all thai 
 means. Every consideration leads us to insist upon the 
 industrial, mental and moral education of the negro. Be- 
 cause he is our inferior brother ; because our forefathers 
 stole him from his native home and made him their slave 
 in this land ; because he is an American and a citizen ; 
 because ignorance and irreligion are dangerous — for all 
 these and many other reasons we should earnestly and 
 zealously seek the elevation of the negro. 
 
 It must have been thoughts like these that made Prof. 
 James Bryce, M.P., author of "The American Common- 
 wealth, " say, as the result of his visit through the South, 
 that "the race question would soon be determined satis- 
 factorily to whites and blacks if both the great political 
 parties would cease to make it a political question." " He 
 declares," said the Philadelphia Zet/^er for Nov. i8th, 1890, 
 " that in his extended travels through the South he per- 
 ceived few signs of a real antagonism, or of any irrecon- 
 cilable feeling of ill-will, or of prejudice, even, between 
 the two races, which was not the consequence of political 
 disagreement. " 
 
 Desirable as it might be to make the race question a 
 sociological rather than a political question, yet we fail to 
 see how this may be done now that we have the Fifteenth 
 Amendment to the National Constitution and two political 
 parties bidding for the negro's vote. But perhaps we may 
 emphasize the sociological rather than the political aspect 
 of this problem. 
 
 The Ledger well says: "The Southern whites and 
 blacks are not nearly so united now, the one as Democrats 
 and the other as Republicans, as they were fifteen or even 
 ten years ago ; and as they receive the advantages of educa- 
 tion, and become owners and renters of the land they till, 
 and skilled workmen or effective laborers, they will be in- 
 fluenced more by individual opinions or convictions or 
 material interests than by previous prejudices, with the 
 result of dividing their strength between the two parties. 
 It has been noticed by many intelligent authorities that in 
 the border States of the South the colored people are much 
 
Tim NEGRO IN AMERICA. 1 1 i 
 
 less of a single party than they were but a few years ago, 
 and that the entire relationship between them and the 
 whites is less antagonistic than it was, and that it is cer- 
 tainly, if slowly, growing more cordial. The race ques- 
 tion, therefore, is almost settled along the border States of 
 the South, and it will be settled in the other States in 
 course of time. Education and common interests will in 
 time do a great deal to bring the two races into closer and 
 friendlier relationship." 
 
 " Moreover," continues the Ledger, "it is not only the 
 .Southern blacks who need to learn something. The whites 
 still need a good deal of education. The whites have not 
 too commonly tried the policy of kindness, or of justice 
 even. They have not tried so much to induce the blacks 
 to be of the Democratic party as to prevent them from 
 voting with the Republican party. The means they have 
 too frequently used to do this have been so unjust as to 
 influence the blacks to continue in their united opposition." 
 I fancy that if the negroes were, as a body, Democrats, 
 Southern statesmen would not be quite so strongly opposed 
 to "negro rule" as they are. Let them, then, educate the 
 blacks in Democratic principles. Let them, if you please, 
 show that such principles are better suited to the develop- 
 ment of the South than Republican principles. Let them 
 show the negro that his inlerest lies in the South, and that 
 whatever promotes its welfare promotes his happiness, and 
 the problem will be solved. Of course, this will be slow 
 work, but the future is before us, and the elevation of a 
 race, industrially, mentally and morally, must be the work 
 of ages. Meanwhile, let both political parties abstain from 
 such legislation as the Lodge Elections Bill of 1890, which 
 is calculated to stir up strife and foment sectional discord. 
 Let things pursue the natural course of development.* 
 
 * Compare Henry W. Grady's "New South." 
 
1 1 2 TOPICS OF THE TIMES, 
 
 THE BIBLE IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 
 
 Some time ago Cardinal Manning of England wrote an 
 article for The Forum, in which he not only opposed the 
 teaching or reading of the Bible in the public schools, but 
 he denounced the public school system itself, as an inva- 
 sion of the rights of parents and children, and an undue 
 assumption of power on the part of the State. This is 
 essentially the position of the Anarchists. The Cardinal 
 was very effectually answered in the following number 
 of The Forum, in which the writer showed conclusively 
 that our public school system does not violate the rights 
 of either parents or children, and is no undue assumption 
 of power on the part of the Government The State is 
 simply another name for the people acting in their cor- 
 porate capacity, and as such it has a perfect right (in other 
 words, the people have a perfect right) to do whatever is 
 necessary to its (their) highest welfare. All must and do 
 admit that national ignorance is the root of many national 
 evils, and so it follows that the State should provide such 
 education for its members as may enable them to intelli- 
 gently discharge the duties of citizens. This is the great 
 principle upon which our public school system is based, 
 and it is so transparently correct — the benefits of the com- 
 mon school, notwithstanfiing its imperfections, are so 
 great — that Americans will not surrender it at the bidding 
 of Cardinal or Pope or anybody else. Assuming, then, 
 that the public school has come to stay, the question to 
 be answered is. What shall we teach in it .? Remembering 
 that this is a State institution, the following quotation from 
 Lord Macaulay's Essay, on Gladstone's " State and 
 Church," completely answers this question: "Mr. Glad- 
 stone's whole theory," said the essayist, "rests on this 
 great fundamental proposition, that the propagation of 
 
THE BIBLE IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOL 
 
 113 
 
 religious truth is one of the principal ends of Government 
 as government. We are, therefore, desirous to point out 
 clearly a distinction which, though very obvious, seems 
 to be overlooked by many excellent people. In their 
 opinion to say that the ends of government are temporal 
 and not spiritual is tantamount to saying that the temporal 
 welfare of man is of rnore importance than his spiritual 
 welfare. But this is an entire mistake. The question is 
 not whether spiritual interests be or be not superior in im- 
 portance to temporal interests, but whether the machinery 
 which happens to be employed for the purpose of protect- 
 ing certain temporal interests of a society be necessarily 
 such a machinery as is fitjed to promote the spiritual inter- 
 ests of that society. Without a division of labor the world 
 could not go on. It is of very much more importance that 
 men should have food than that they should have piano- 
 fortes. Yet it by no means follows that every pianoforte 
 maker ought to add the business of a baker to his own ; for, 
 if he did so, we should have both much worse music and 
 much worse bread. It is of much more importance that the 
 knowledge of religious truth should be wisely diffused than 
 that the art of sculpture should flourish among us. Yet 
 •it by no means follows that the Royal Academy ought to 
 unite with its present functions those of the Society for 
 Promoting Christian Knowledge, to distribute theological 
 tracts, to send forth missionaries, to turn out ' one man 
 for being a Roman Cathoric, another for being a Metho- 
 dist, and a third for being a Swedenborgian.' For the 
 effects of such folly would be that we should have the 
 worst possible Academy of Arts and the worst possible 
 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 
 
 "As to some of the ends of civil government," adds this 
 great statesman, " all people are agreed that it is designed 
 to protect our persons and our property ; that it is designed 
 to compel us to satisfy our wants, not by rapine, but by in- 
 dustry ; that it is designed to compel us to decide our 
 differences, not by the strong hand, but by arbitral 
 tion ; that it is designed to direct our whole force, as that 
 of one man, against any other society that may offer us 
 injury. These are propositions which will hardly be dis- 
 puted," — except, we must add, by the Anarchists, with 
 whom we are not now concerned. 
 
 "Now." continues our author, "these are matters in 
 
 S 
 
114 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 which man, without any reference to any -higher Being, or 
 to any future state, is very deeply interested. Every human 
 being, be he idolater, Moh-ammedan, Jew, Papist, Socinian, 
 Deist, or Atheist, naturally loves life, shrinks from pain, 
 desires comforts which can be enjoyed only in communities 
 where property is secure. To be murdered, to be tortured, 
 to be robbed, to be sold into slavery — these are evils from 
 which men of every religion, and men of no religion, wish 
 to be protected ; and therefore it will hardly be disputed that 
 men of every religion, and of no religion, have thus far a 
 common interest in being well governed. " 
 
 It should be clear from these wise words that the propa- 
 gation of religious truth is not an object of government as 
 such, and therefore its propagation in the governmental 
 schools, by means of prayer, reading the Scriptures, etc., 
 cannot be advocated. The framers of the first amendment 
 to our constitution were evidently influenced by such con- 
 siderations as these. The object of the public school is 
 simply to teach the elements of an education which will 
 enable the recipient to intelligently discharge the duties 
 and responsibilities of a citizen of the Republic — a Peo- 
 ple's Government. It cannot therefore compass the whole 
 field of education and should not attempt to do so. It is a 
 violation of the principle of division of labor to include 
 religious instruction in the curriculum of the public school. 
 There is an organization — the church and Sunday-school — 
 whose business it is to impart religious instruction, and if 
 this be faithfully used, more especially if those who clamor 
 for the introduction of the Bible into the public schools will 
 be faithful in reading the Scriptures and in family prayers 
 at home before the children go to school, there will be ab- 
 solutely no necessity for the instructor's prayer or Bible 
 reading in the school. The home or the Sunday-school is 
 the proper place for instracting the young in the Scriptures. 
 "If," says another, "the secular branches of study, as they 
 are sometimes called, and the teaching of religion are 
 mingled together, it is not always to the advantage of either 
 the one or the other. The utmost care should be taken to 
 surround religious instruction with the proper atmosphere. 
 The subject should be approached through solemn prepar- 
 atory services such as the Church has established in its 
 ceremonial. The time and place should be made to assist 
 instead of distracting the religious impression." The pub- 
 
THE BIBLE IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 
 
 "5 
 
 lie schoolroom and 9 o'clock a.m. are certainly not espe- 
 cially conducive to celigious impressions. 
 
 It is almost universally believed that there is something 
 inherently irreligious in worldly occupations, and that in 
 order to sanctify them they must be accompanied by 
 a prayer and the reading of a passage from the Script- 
 ures. Hence vire have a chaplain for Congress to say 
 a prayer at the beginning of each session, vfhile the 
 members read, write, chew tobacco, and ponder unright- 
 eous decrees ; and the graduating* exercises of a college 
 or even a nominating political convention must be 
 opened with prayer, which is often a first-class stump- 
 speech." In 1888 when the Republican Convention was 
 in session in Chicago, a clergyman present made such 
 a patriotic prayer that it brought down the applause 
 of the Convention. Col. Robert G. Ingersoll was a member 
 of that Convention, and I daresay most heartily applauded 
 prayer for once. We therefore agree with a writer just 
 quoted when he says: "The vague notion that secuhir 
 occupations, whether of a higher or a lower grade, when 
 dissevered from the clergy or from the rights of worship, are 
 somehow tainted with evil, is a Jewish and medieval (and 
 false) notion, of which it behooves Christians to disabuse 
 themselves. A bank is not pagan or godless, provided 
 it is honestly managed, even if it is not opened and closed 
 with daily prayer. A shoemaker is not godless because 
 he refrains from pronouncing the benediction when he 
 delivers a pair of shoes to his customer. Enough that his 
 leather is good, his thread strong, his work thorough and 
 his promises are punctually kept. The same principles 
 apply to a schoolmaster. As long as he does his proper 
 work of teaching aright the branches of knowledge com- 
 mitted to him, and in his intercourse with his pupils con- 
 forms to the spirit of Christian morals, there is no taint of 
 profaneness attached totiim or his function." 
 
 The fact is all truth is sacred, and he who teaches it, 
 whether it be truth in science, mathematics, philosophy, 
 history or what not, performs a sacred service even if he 
 does not begin it with prayer or reading of the Scriptures. 
 The attempt to brand one department of study as inhe- 
 rently "secular" or "profane" and another as "sacred" 
 is of a piece with the effort to make one day of the week 
 essentially different from another and more holy. The 
 
Ii6 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 practical result is that many behave decently on Sunday 
 and most indecently the balance of the week ; and many 
 clamor for the reading of the Bible in the public schools, 
 when perhaps it is rarely read in their families. Let us, 
 then, have done with cant and be rational and real. 
 
 But it will be said, ' ' Ought not morality to be taught in 
 the public schools? Surely if the intellectual develop- 
 ment of the people is necessary to the welfare of the Siatey 
 the moral development is more so. " Certainly it is. • But 
 is the Bible a suitable text-book in morals for children, and 
 is the mere reading of a few verses from it at the opening 
 of the school the proper method of instructing the pupils 
 in morality .? No ! And those who urge this point make 
 a radical distinction between religion and morality, as radi- 
 cal as they do between secular and sacred studies. It is 
 "religion," whatever they may mean by that emasculated 
 word, as distinguished from "morality," that they want 
 taught. They frequently denounce a clergyman for preach- 
 ing " moral essays " and not " spiritual sermons," and if it 
 were only " morality " that they wanted taught in the pub- 
 lic schools they would not call so loudly for the Bible. 
 This book is too large and too varied in its contents and 
 too recondite in much of its teaching to be used as a text 
 book in morals in colleges even. How absurd, then, to 
 talk of using it in elementary schools for such a purpose! 
 Above all, the mere reading of a few verses from the Bible 
 at the opening of the school is not an effectual method of 
 teaching morality. What is needed is a small simple text 
 book which the children will be required to study and to 
 recite from, and this should consist of a collection of uni- 
 versally accepted moral maxims to which no one could take 
 exception. 
 
 What most people desire in demanding thp introduction 
 of the Bible in the public schools, in order (professedly) to 
 impart moral instruction, is to introduce sectarian theology 
 into the schools. The Episcopalian would probably con- 
 sider the Catechism a good text-book for this purpose. The 
 Methodist would want the "Discipline;" the Zwinglian 
 would ask for the Heidelberg Catechism ; the Presbyterian 
 would wish the Shorter Catechism, etc. No wonder, then, 
 that " freethinkers," on the one hand, who consider these 
 catechisms summaries of much that is false, and Roman 
 Catholics, on the other, who think them altogether dam- 
 
THE BIBLE IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 
 
 117 
 
 nable, should object to having their children taught sec- 
 tarian theology under the name of morality. But neither 
 of these parties could object to the teaching of the element- 
 ary and universal principles of goodness, as that word is 
 commonly used. Let the Bible, then, be abandoned in 
 the .public schools and let it, be taught in the proper 
 place, the Sunday-school and church, and by proper 
 persons, and on proper days. 
 
 But while I thus advocate the disuse of the Bible either to 
 propagate religion or morality in the public schools, yet 
 I do believe that Bible history should be taught therein, 
 and I have been much surprised that advocates of its use 
 in the school have not suggested (so far as I know) this 
 point. The history of Greece, Rome, Persia and other 
 nations is taught in the schools, why should not the history 
 of Israel be taught .? It was one of the greatest nations of 
 antiquity, and its history is quite as important as that of 
 any other people. No one could justly object to this. 
 There would be even less possibility of teaching its history 
 from a sectarian point of view than there is of teaching 
 the history of Medieval Europe from such a standpoint. 
 Of course, the Bible should not be used as the text-book 
 on the history of Israel any more than it should be used 
 as a text-book in morals. It is not suited to the purpose, 
 and there are many other more suitable books which 
 might be used. Thus Dr. Wm. Smith, editor of the "Bible 
 Dictionary," etc., has written a History of the Old and 
 New Testaments for the " Student's Series " (Harper Bros. ), 
 and these histories have been abridged and condensed in- 
 to smaller volumes, called "The Student's Smaller Series," 
 which would make admirable text-books for public school 
 purposes. They are absolutely non-sectarian, merely state 
 /acts, and could not therefore be objected toby any one. 
 The history of Israel, apart from all questions of religion, 
 is a most glorious history. Her lawgivers, her poets, 
 her orators, her warriors, her statesmen, compare most 
 favorably with those of Greece or Rome. There are 
 codes of law which rank with the laws of L3'-curgus, 
 Solon and Justinian. There are orations, such as those 
 of Isaiah, which equal any of the productiqjis of Demos- 
 thenes or Cicero. There are the poems of David which 
 Homer and Virgil do not eclipse. There are battles which 
 should be classed with those of Marathon, Thermopylae 
 
Il8 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 and the Milvian Bridge. And yet our boys and girls are 
 crammed full of Greek and Roman fables and history, 
 while this great storehouse of historical lore is closed to 
 them, owing to a superstitious reverence for the Bible 
 which refuses to study its characters as other peoples ' are 
 studied. Therefore I plead for the introduction of the 
 study of the history of Israel in the public school along 
 with that of Rome, Greece and (rther countries. In do- 
 ing this I do not take the Bible out of the public schools 
 with one hand and replace it with the other, nor am I 
 advocating the study of sectarian theology under cover of 
 the study of history. I am simply urging the irrefutable 
 proposition that there is no more reason why the history 
 of Israel should not be taught in our schools than there is 
 why the history of Greece or Rome should not be 
 taught, and since the latter is taught, the former may and 
 should be. If it be said that the teacher might impart 
 his peculiar theological views while teaching such history, 
 I reply, yes, and the teacher of morals or philosophy 
 might, //" he chose, teach that the principles of Socrates 
 were superior to Christ's : but school teachers are not all 
 religious cranks who would wring in their opinions in 
 season and out of season. At any rate, there is no more 
 danger of one's doing it in the historical department than 
 in any other, and there is no valid objection to the pro- 
 position now made. And it would be highly beneficial in 
 many respects, The ignorance of Israel's history, even 
 among otherwise well-informed people, is amazing and 
 painful, and one great reason why the Bible is no better 
 understood than it is, is the fact that it is not studied from 
 the historical standpoint While, therefore, the study of 
 Israel's history could not be justly objected to by Roman 
 Catholics, it would indirectly promote a more correct 
 knowledge of the Bible, and this should satisfy those who 
 desire its use in the public schools. 
 
 To sum up : I agree with those who object to the use 
 of the Bible in the public schools ; (i) because this is an in- 
 fringement of the fundamental principles of our civil 
 government ; (2) because it is useless, produces little orno 
 effect upon tiie hearers ; and (3) because morality can be 
 taught without the Bible. But the history of Israel may 
 be taught with great advantage, and to it no valid objec- 
 tion can be made. I may add that as some people fancy 
 
THE BIBLE I.V THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 
 
 119 
 
 that opposition to the use of the Bible in the public schools 
 is an indication of infidelity or of Romanistic proclivities, 
 I am not conscious of either influence, and merely ad- 
 vocate the views herein set forth because they seem to me 
 correct. 
 
I20 TOPICS OF THE TIMi.S. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 OUR COUNTRY : ITS CHARACTER AND DESTINY. 
 
 A THANKSGIVING DAY DISCOURSE. 
 
 Text : — For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land 
 of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and 
 hills. A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and 
 pomegranates ; a land of oil olive, and honey. A land wherein thou 
 shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it ; a 
 land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. 
 When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord 
 thy God for the good land which he hath given thee. . . . And it shall 
 be, if thou dg at all forget the Lord thy God, and walk after other gods, 
 and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye 
 shall surely perish. As the nations which the Lord destroyeth before 
 your face, so shall ye perish ; because ye would not be obedient imto the 
 voice of the Lord your God. — Deuteronomy, viii. 7-10, 19, ao. 
 
 The star of progress, which rose in the far East ages ago, 
 from behind the mountains of savagery and barbarism, has 
 been moving higher and higher in the political firmament 
 and farther westward, until it has nearly reached the zenith,- 
 and now sheds its blessed effulgence abroad over our fair 
 land, and it is the deep significance of this movement that 
 I wish to explain and emphasize in this sermon. 
 
 As we glance backward through the mists of the past, 
 we see man, in the beginning, a savage animal, wander- 
 ing over the plains and amid the jungles of Southern and 
 Eastern Asia. He lives on nuts and wild fruits, like other 
 animals ; he has no "home," and knows nothing of arts, 
 science, religion or civilization of any sort ; but slowly he 
 learns to wield his misshapen club at his fellow-creatures 
 and to sling his rude stone axe. By and by he discovers, 
 (perhaps by th& "glance" of his axe and its striking a 
 stone, making the fire fly out) the invaluable element— fire ; 
 and then it becomes possible for him to leave tropical 
 regions and wander into colder parts, and so with many a 
 
OUR COUNTRY: ITS CHARACTER AND DESTINY. 121 
 
 weary and halting step he painfully climbs one or two 
 rungs of the ladder of civilization. The primitive hunting 
 and fishing stage develops into the pastoral stage — that is, 
 some men take to herding catde and dwelling in tents ; 
 and this, in turn, passes into the agricultural stage, in 
 which the 'cultivation of the land begins, and settled life 
 becomes possible. The wheels of progress now com- 
 mence greater and swifter revolutions, and in due time the 
 great civilization of ancient Egypt, India, Chaldea, Baby- 
 lonia, Assyria, Persia and the far East arise. Immense 
 temples lift their ^acred spires into the skies ; pyramids look 
 down upon toiling millions ; the war-drum throbs through 
 the land ; the battle-flag is unfurled ; the earth trembles 
 beneath the tread of marching armies, and hieroglyphic 
 records commemorate on palace walls the triumph of 
 mighty kings and the fall of empires. The star of empire 
 has arisen. By and by it begins to move westward. Alex- 
 ander the Great coilquers and unites the world, but it 
 again dissolves into its constituent elements when the sod 
 covers the hero. Julius Csesar steps upon the scene, and 
 mighty Rome spreads abroad the pinions of her conquering 
 eagle. But hardly has it overshadowed the earth when a 
 low rumble, as of distant thunder, is heard in the North, 
 and the Huns and Goths and Vandals swoop down upon 
 the Eternal City and capture it — only, however, to be con- 
 quered in turn by a power they knew not of — the Christian 
 Church. About the same time "Saxon and Norman and 
 Dane" move from the plains of their native land across 
 the English Channel, and take possession of the British 
 Isles. They, too, in due time, adopt the ensign of the 
 cross. A great break-up and consolidation of states now 
 takes place, and feudalism arises. This is followed by 
 constitutional monarchies until the fifteenth century is 
 reached, andthen oneof those mighty men whom God sends 
 into the world at different times to drive the chariot of 
 progress forward many leagues at every revolution of its 
 wheels, steps upon the stage, and declares that nevi' worlds 
 or lands lie beyond the seas and he wants to discover 
 them. Of course, like every great and progressive mind, 
 he was hooted at ; ridicule and persecution assailed him, 
 but, nothing daunted, he wandered from court to court 
 begging for royal favor and funds to fit out an expedition 
 to the unknown country, and finally he got what he 
 
122 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 wanted, and on the third day of August, 1492, at eight 
 o'clock in the morning, three little vessels, with one hun- 
 dred and twenty brave hearts aboard, weighed anchor in 
 the harbor of Palos, on the southern coast of Spain, and 
 Columbus set sail for the Western World. As the Amer- 
 ican looks back to that morning and sees those little ships 
 nestling like swans on the blue waves of the Atlantic, and 
 thinks of all that it meant, surely his heart must swell with 
 emotion, and he must be tempted to fall down before the 
 great discoverer as one of God's chosen heroes. Look 
 over this fair land, with its noble rivers and lakes and 
 fountains and springs : "a land of wheat, and barley, and 
 vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates ; a land of olive oil 
 and honey ; a land wherein we may eat bread without 
 scarceness ; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose 
 hills we dig coal, silver, gold and precious stones ; " and 
 remember that but for the courage and energy of one man 
 we might never have enjoyed these blessings. 
 
 You know the story of the planting of the various col- 
 onies in this country. The star of empire rose higher and 
 higher in these western heavens, but just as it was near- 
 ing the zenith, on the night of the eighteenth of April, 
 1775, the flash of a lantern in the old North Church, of 
 Boston, proclaimed that the American Revolution had 
 begun. You know the result — the struggles and success 
 of the heroic Washington, and the final establishment of a 
 Government " of the people, by the people, and for the 
 people." 
 
 What is the meaning of this mighty movement, which, 
 beginning in the wilds of Southern Asia, has spread itself 
 through ages and countries until it has ended in this ' ' good 
 land.' " Let those who can believe it has no meaning do 
 so ; but, as for me, I believe, with the Rev. Dr. Strong, 
 that God is preparing in our civilization the die with which 
 to stamp all the peoples of the earth. Here in America 
 are to be solved the great problems which have puzzled 
 the ages, and hence every true American should ask him- 
 self : What part am I to take in the solution of these prob- 
 lems ? And this settled, he should set to work right 
 nobly. 
 
 "Every great historian," says Archdeacon Farrar, 
 "should be no dull registrar of events, but z. prophet, 
 standing, like Daniel of old, amid the careless riot and 
 
OUR COUNTRY: ITS CHARACTER AND DESTINY. 123 
 
 luxurious banqueting of life, and teaching men to decipher 
 that gleaming message of God, written as with the fingers 
 of a man's hand, on the parliament of nations and the 
 palaces of kings, that what is morally just must be polit- 
 ically expedient ; that what is morally wrong cannot be 
 politically right. " It is for this purpose that I come to you 
 this morning. I come not to puff up your national 
 conceit, but to proclaim, with all the energy of my soul, 
 that "righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a re- 
 proach and pitfall to any people." I believe, with you, 
 that our country is, in many respects, the greatest country 
 on the globe ; we are "the heirs of all the ages," as we 
 have just seen, and the text is an exact description of our 
 land; it is a "good land, aland of rivers and fountains 
 and springs, which surpass all others ; a land of wheat 
 and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates of 
 the rarest kind ; a land of olive oil and honey ; a land 
 wherein we may eat bread without scarceness ; a land 
 whose stones are iron, aitd out of whose hills we dig the 
 richest treasures." We are the wealthiest nation on earth. 
 We have room enough for a thousand millions instead of 
 sixty millions of people. We lead the world in inventions 
 and manufactures, and I believe the day is rapidly coming 
 when we shall lead the world in education and religion. I 
 agree, then, with the greatest enthusiast about America, 
 but I shall not shut my eyes to the dangers that threaten 
 our country. She may become the grandest nation that 
 has ever figured in history ; she may sink, as Rome and 
 many another nation have sunk, in ruin and disgrace. It 
 is because I love my country ; it is because I believe that 
 the greatest possibilities lie before her that ever offered 
 themselves to any nation, that I would warn her of her 
 danger. It is manifold. 
 
 There is, first of all, her wealth itself. This may be so 
 utilized as to prove her greatest blessing, but if it be 
 suffered to gather into a few hands, as it is rapidly doing, 
 it will undoubtedly prove her greatest curse. A clever and 
 judicious writer in The Forum for November, 1889, alleged 
 that "25,000 persons own just about one-half of all the 
 wealth of the United States," and he closed his remarkable 
 article with these startling words: "Within thirty years, 
 the present methods of taxation being maintained, the 
 United States of America will he substantially owned by 
 
1 24 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 less than 50,000 persons, constituting less than one in five 
 hundred of the adult male population." Whether this 
 writer's figures and speculations be absolutely correct or 
 not, no one can deny that there is a strong tendency 
 among us towards a moneyed aristocracy, which, if it come, 
 will lord it over the lower classes, the poor, more severely 
 than the lords of the middle ages did over their serfs. I 
 do not denounce the millionaires. Placed in their posi- 
 tion, probably all of us would act essentially as they do. 
 I do not propose to rob them of their wealth by violent and 
 unjust means, but I simply cite facts, and point to the 
 inevitable result of the aggregation of the wealth of the 
 country in a few centres, and I urge that a better industrial 
 system may and should be adopted whereby the products 
 of labor would be more evenly and equitably divided 
 among the people. 
 
 Secondly, immigration may be a great blessing or a great 
 curse to our country. If it be wisely guided and guarded 
 we should turn no shipload of iinjnigrants from our shores 
 until our thousand millions are here. But, for the sake of 
 America's future welfare — nay, for the sake of the immi- 
 grants themselves — let immigration be carefully watched 
 and most judiciously directed and encouraged. America 
 is not in duty bound to become the dumping-ground of 
 European and Asiatic slums. It is not only unjust to her, 
 it will not only embarrass her future progress, it is not only 
 unfair to the immigrants themselves to permit unregulated 
 and promiscuous immigration, but it encourages oppres- 
 sion on the part of the people who send them to us. 
 Europe and Asia are as much bound to take care of all 
 their poor that they can take care of as we are, and to 
 allow them to shove their sickly, dwarfed, ignorant, pau- 
 perized masses off upon Os when they could provide for 
 them themselves is relieving them of a duty to these 
 people that they ought to discharge. We are willing to 
 take their surplus humanity, but let us be sure that it is a 
 surplus for which they are utterly unable to provide. 
 
 Third, the Rum Power is one of our greatest dangers. 
 Prohibition seems impracticable, and High License breeds 
 more evils than it cures. The saloon not only kills thou- 
 ands of our fellow men annually, but it has so depraved 
 politics that nothing less than a grand crusade ot the 
 Church and all order-loving people against it, and a 
 
OUR COUNTRY: ITS CHARACTER AND DESTINY. 1 25 
 
 general elevation of public sentiment, can destroy or cur- 
 tail its power. 
 
 These are three of the greatest dangers that threaten our 
 country, and in order to avert the doom to which they are 
 driving us, three great reforms must take place : a reform 
 in politics, a reform in economics, and a reform in the 
 Church. 
 
 America will not be free, she will not accomplish the 
 glorious destiny her loyal sons would have her accomplish, 
 until the abominable and disgraceful "spoils system" in 
 politics be abolished. The very mention of this curse 
 makes us grow pale with fear and discouragement, for it 
 is the great upas tree which the devil has planted in our 
 political garden to poison everything with its shade, and 
 its extermination seems impossible. Mr. Bryce, in his able 
 work, " The American Commonwealth," truly says: "It 
 is the spoilsmen who have depraved and distorted the 
 mechanism of politics. It is they who pack the primaries 
 and run the conventions so as to destroy the freedom of 
 popular choice — they who contrive and execute the elec- 
 tion frauds which disgrace some states and cities — repeat- 
 ing and ballot-stuffing, obstruction of the polls, and fraudu- 
 lent countings in." These men care nothing for principle : 
 they have no principle. All under the sun they want is to 
 bleed the body politic. And against the rule of such men 
 — against the " spoils system "■ — every lover of his country 
 ■yvill lift up his voice in speech and prayer, until the curse 
 be destroyed by an elevated and purified public opinion, 
 for this alone can do it. 
 
 Secondly, an economic reform is necessary. It is cer- 
 tainly a most remarkable and deplorable fact that in this 
 land, with its unparalleled resources, capable of support- 
 ing a thousand millions, and possessing only sixty-five 
 millions of people, there should be thousands of unem- 
 ployed and starving men, who walk the earth, seeking 
 work and finding none, to whom Thanksgiving Day is a 
 mockery and a sham ; but so it is. The reports on labor, 
 furnished by the Government, prove it. Again, I de- 
 nounce no one. I have no swift and potent remedy for 
 the ills we are heir to ; but I must call most earnest atten- 
 tion to such facts, and I must insist that there is a screw 
 loose somewhere in the industrial machinery, and until it 
 be tightened America cannot accomplish her glorious 
 
126 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 destiny. As long as these thousands of unwilling idlers 
 are kept in their present miserable condition, so long will 
 theft, drunkenness, poverty, murder, and political corrup- 
 tion lift their hydra heads over the land and play havoc 
 with society. 
 
 Finally, a great theological and ecclesiastical reform 
 must take place if our nation would prosper. We want no 
 union of Church and State : nothing but evil has ever re- 
 sulted from such a union ; but the Church is a great power 
 in the land, and we want her to recognize the facts of the 
 case, and buckle on her armor and do battle for the right 
 She must put herself more in harmony with the thought of 
 the day. She should welcome gladly all the light that 
 science can throw upon theological problems, and should 
 relax her dogmatic bands, and receive all who desire to 
 follow the example and imitate the spirit of the Nazarene. 
 She should join hands with all economic reformers, and 
 strive to give to our country that deep moral and religious 
 foundation which is absolutely necessary to her highest 
 development 
 
 If all this be done, then our fondest dreams may be 
 realized ; but if not, then the fate awaits our country that 
 has befallen other nations, which the Lord has destroyed. 
 Consider their fate, as graphically and eloquently described 
 by Dr. Farrar : 
 
 "When Israel was a child," he says, "God loved him, 
 and out of Egypt He called his son. In the Old Testa- 
 ment we see that son grow up to life. Many were the 
 sins, the follies, the apostasies of his youth. Can you 
 point me to one folly which was not visited with its 
 natural consequences ? to one pleasant vice which did not 
 become its own punishment.? to one sin which was not 
 lashed with its own appropriate scourge? Then came the 
 ruinous and crushing humiliation of the Babylonish Cap- 
 tivity — about 600 or 700 years before Christ A remnant, 
 which they themselves compared to the chaff of wheat, 
 returned ; and of the old temptation, the temptation to a 
 sensual idolatry, they were cured forever. Bat they were 
 not saved from other sins. Keeping the form of their 
 religion they lost its spirit : from a living truth they suf- 
 fered it to degenerate into a meaningless ritual, into a dead 
 formula, into a hypocritical sham. They had for centuries 
 been hoping, dreaming, talking of a Messiah, and their 
 
OUR COUNTR Y: ITS CHARACTER AND DESTINY. 1 2 7 
 
 Messiah came, and how did they receive Him ? With yells 
 of ' Crucify Him ! Crucify Him ! ' And there, at the foot 
 of the cross, which consummated their iniquity, you may 
 read the story of their nation's death. But history, which 
 proves the responsibihty of nations as of individuals, adds 
 another chapter to the sacred narrative. It shows how 
 soon the wings of every vulture flapped heavily over the 
 corpse of a nation that had sunk into moral rottenness. 
 
 " Turn from Judaea to the short but splendid tragedy of 
 Athenian history : how short, how brilliant, how terrible, 
 we all know. Yes, we owe to Greece an infinite debt of 
 intellectual gratitude. The exquisite ideal of beauty of her 
 race, the grace, the subtlety, the activity of her intellect ; 
 the perfection and supremacy of her art ; the power and 
 splendor of her literature, conferred upon her a wreath of un- 
 fading admiration. Oh, had she but learned righteousness ; 
 had she but won the grace to obey, as she had received 
 the insight to read, that law written upon the fleshly tablets 
 of her hearts ! But she chose otherwise; and now- the 
 world may learn as memorable a lesson from the rapidity 
 of her fall and the utterness of her extinction, as from all 
 besides ; for the ever-needed moral of that little hour in 
 which she played her part upon the lighted stage is this — 
 that intellect without hoHness, beauty without purity, elo- 
 quence without conscience, art without religion, insight 
 without love, are but blossoms whose root and life are the 
 corruption of the grave. 
 
 "From the palsied hands of Greece Rome rudely 
 snatched the sceptre. And you know that so long as the 
 character of Rome was simple and self-respecting ; so 
 long as her family life was pure and sweet : so long as she 
 was the Rome of the Camilli, the Cincinnati, the Fabii, the 
 elder Scipios ; so long as her dictators came from the honest 
 labor of the ploughshare, and her consuls from the hardy 
 self-reliance of the farm, so long she prospered till none 
 could withstand her, and impressed the world with lessons 
 of law and order and discipline manlier and better than any 
 which Greece had taught. But when the dregs of every 
 foreign iniquity poured their noisome stream into the Tiber ; 
 when the old iron discipline yielded to an effeminate luxury 
 and a gilded pollution ; when her youth had grown debased 
 and enervated and false ; when all regard had been lost 
 for man's honor, and woman's purity; when her trade had 
 
128 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 become a flagrant imposture and her religion a dishonest 
 sham ; when, lastly, her literature became a seething 
 scum of cynicism and abomination such as degraded the 
 very conception of humanity — then you know how justly, 
 in long, slow agony, the eharnelhouse of her dominion 
 crumbled away under the assaults of her enemies, and 
 
 " ' Rome, whom mightiest kingdoms curtsied to, 
 Like a forlorn and desperate castaway, 
 Did shameful execution on herself-.' " 
 
 I need not apply all this in detail to our country, for any 
 one with an open eye and a reflecting mind, must see 
 some very striking resemblances between decaying Ro- 
 man civilization and our own Republic. In both we see 
 political corruption, depraved social, moral, and religious 
 life, and inordinate immigration. But let us hope that 
 our people will arouse themselves in time to prevent the 
 fate of Rome befalling us. Let us lay to heart these pro- 
 found words of James Anthony Froude : . " History," he 
 says, "is a voice forever sounding across the centuries 
 the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners 
 change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written 
 on the tablets of eternity. For every false word or un- 
 righteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust and 
 vanity, the price has to be paid at last : not always by the 
 chief offenders, but paid by some one. Justice and truth 
 alone endure and live. Injustice and falsehood may be 
 longlived, but doomsday comes at last to them in French 
 revolutions and other terrible ways. That is the lesson of 
 History 1 " 
 
THE SABBATH QUESTION. 129 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 THE SABBATH QUESTION. 
 
 Text : — And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made foi* man, and 
 not man for the Sabbath. — Mark ii. 27. 
 
 The Sabbath Question is one of the most important 
 questions of our day. The religious life of a people can 
 be correctly measure.d by their observance of the Lord's 
 Day. When France abolished the Sabbath, the bloody 
 flag of the Revolution was Vi^aving over the land. In 
 this country, especially in the West, the Sabbath is fear- 
 fully desecrated. Base ball is played, the saloons are 
 open, many kinds of business are done, the churches are 
 sparsely attended, and in some cases you could not tell 
 from the appearance of things whether it was Sunday or 
 Monday. Hence in this sermon I shall consider, I. — The 
 Origin of the Sabbath; and II. — The Necessity of the 
 Sabbath. 
 
 It is commonly supposed that the religious observance 
 of one day in seven rests upon and originated from the 
 first chapter of Genesis or the Mosaic Law ; but neither 
 idea is true. The late Hugh Miller, the eminent Scotch 
 geologist, in his celebrated attempt to reconcile the state- 
 ments of Genesis i. with the facts of geology, contended 
 that the Hebrew word for "day," ( yom) means simply a 
 period of time,* not necessarily of only twenty-four hours, 
 but an age of indefinite duration — ^just as we speak of 
 "our day," meaning our age; and hence, he argued, the 
 writer of Genesis meant that God created the world in six 
 ages and rested the seventh. Miller attempted, without 
 success, to identify the " ages'' of geology with the "days" 
 of Genesis, and urged that God's Sabbath is the period in- 
 tervening between creation and the final judgment, during 
 which He is performing through His Son the work of re- 
 
 9 
 
130 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 demption. In short, God, he said, worked six ages at crea- 
 tion and is devoting a seventh to the redemption or relig- 
 ious development of mankind, and commands us to fol- 
 low His example by devoting six-sevenths of our time to 
 secular or worldly matters and one-seventh to religious 
 duties. There is more poetry and ingenuity in this view 
 than truth, and few commentators will now accept it either 
 as a satisfactory reconciliation of Genesis _ and Geology, 
 or a correct account of the origin of the Sabbath. An 
 eminent English bishop. Dr. Goodwin, of Carlisle, has 
 shown that it is far more probable that the week of seven 
 days was in existence long before Genesis was written, 
 and that the form of its first chapter is due to this fact, than 
 it is that the institution of the week is due to the first chap- 
 ter of Genesis. We know that the seven-day period of 
 time was in use in Chaldea, the original home of Abra- 
 ham, at least 2,000 years before Christ, and the Sabbath 
 was also observed there. It is pretty certain that the au- 
 thor of the first chapter of Genesis lived in Chaldea, and that 
 this account of creation was written there possibly by 
 Abraham or some Chaldean priest or sage. The writer of 
 the account wanted to express the idea oi progressive crea- 
 tion, and so, the bishop argues, he fitted his conception into 
 the framework he found ready at hand in the existence of 
 the week of seven days. Just as St. John, in the Book of 
 Revelation, framed his vision of the heavenly Jerusalem 
 upon the pattern of the earthly Jerusalem, without intend- 
 ing that it should be taken as a literal description Of facts, 
 so the seer of Genesis fitted his vision of creation into the 
 framework of the week, thereby expressing the idea of pro- 
 gressive creation, but not intending that it should be in- 
 terpreted as a literal description of facts. This view seems 
 to me highly ration aland probable, for Genesis thus becomes 
 a witness to the existence of the Sabbath and the week of 
 seven days, and at the same time allthe difficulties in this 
 narrative which have hitherto perplexed scientists and 
 theologians vanish. 
 
 If the idea that the Sabbath and seven-day period orig- 
 inated from Genesis i., is false, the notion that it was estab- 
 lished by Moses at Mount Sinai is a greater mistake. The 
 very command itself, to "remember the Sabbath day 
 to keep it holy," shows that it existed prior to that time, 
 for otherwise it would be absurd to bid people to "re- 
 
TH£: SABBATH QUESTION. 131 
 
 member" it. It is- probable that the week of seven days 
 existed not only in Chaldea but also in Egypt, and even 
 among the Patriarchs. In Genesis xxix. 27, we read that 
 Laban commanded Jacob when he married Leah to " fulfil 
 her week," the seven days assigned for wedding festivities, 
 and in Genesis 1. 10, we read that Joseph made a mourn- 
 ing for his father's death "seven days." While these pas- 
 sages do not prove unanswerably that the week of seven 
 days existed among the Patriarchs, they do suggest that 
 such a division of time was common and familiar to them, 
 and succeeding events seem to justify the conclusion that 
 the week did exist then. "At any rate," says Rev. Dr. 
 Smith, in his " Old Testament History," "the whole tone 
 of the narrative (in Exodus xx.) is inconsistent with the idea 
 that the Sabbath was first instituted at Sinai." 
 
 It may be thought that the reason given in the Fourth 
 Commandment for the observance of the Sabbath, viz., 
 because " in six days the Lord created the heavens and 
 the earth and rested the seventh," proves that the Sabbath 
 did take its origin from the first chapter of Genesis. But Dr. 
 Ewald, of Germany, the eminent historian of Israel, Canon 
 Cook, the Bishop of Carlisle, and other high authorities 
 have shown that this was probably an addition to the origi- 
 nal commandment. As the Ten Commandments orig- 
 inally stood, say these commentators, the second and 
 fourth were as short as the first now is. They read 
 simply : "Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven 
 image;" "Thou shalt remember the Sabbath day to 
 keep it holy." But a later editor of the Mosaic Laws, 
 desiring some additional Scriptural authority for this com- 
 mand, assigned the narrative of Genesis as such au- 
 thority. 
 
 Hence we are justified in concluding that the week of 
 seven days and the Sabbath existed in Chaldea before the 
 time of Abraham and in Egypt before the time of Moses, 
 and that the form of Genesis i. and the Fourth Command- 
 ment are due to this fact. Moses did not establish for 
 the first time the Sabbath, but merely revived and con- 
 firmed it. 
 
 From his day to the time of Christ, it is well known, one 
 day in seven was more or less faithfully observed by the 
 Israelites as their Sabbath, and that day seems to have cor- 
 responded to our Saturday. But after the death of Christ 
 
132 
 
 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 the Sabbath was changed from the seveiith to the first day 
 of the week, not by any decree of the Church, but simply 
 by the usage of the Apostles. Our Lord rose from the dead 
 on the first day of the week and appeared to the Apostles 
 once or twice on the same day. Hence we find the dis- 
 ciples, without any formal decision, coming together to 
 "break bread," that is, celebrate the holy communion, gay 
 prayers and preach on the first day of the week, and this 
 was finally established as the Christian Sabbath. 
 
 The Sabbatarians make much of the fact that there is no 
 explicit command in the New Testament that the first in- 
 stead of the seventh day of the week should be observed 
 as the Sabbath. It is sufficient to answer: (i) While the 
 Apostles and New Testament writers did not by word 
 change the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the 
 week, they did so by deed — by actually observing this day 
 as their Sabbath ; and (2) St Paul positively denounces this 
 stickling about the Jewish Sabbath. " One man " (he says) 
 " esteemeth on e day above another ; another esteemeth every 
 day alike." Shall the latter, therefore, be condemned as 
 un-Christian .? No! he answers. "Let every man be 
 fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the 
 day regardeth it unto the Lord, and he that regardeth not 
 the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it" More plainly 
 still. " Let no man judge you " (he says) "in meat, or'in 
 drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or 
 of the Sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come " 
 (Col. ii. 16, 17). In other words, the Apostle meant to 
 say that there is really no inherent necessary difference 
 between days. The same sun shines on Monday that 
 shines on Sunday or Saturday. One day in God's sight 
 is just as holy as another; all time is sacred and should 
 be faithfully and sacredly used, and as the Jewish Church 
 had a right to establish its holydays, so the Christian had 
 a right to ordain its holy days. The seventh day of the 
 week was holy or "hallowed" in the Jewish Church, not 
 because it was intrinsically different from any other day of 
 the week, but simply because it was devoted to religious 
 exercises. 
 
 We "hallow" or "consecrate" a church building, not 
 by constructing it out of different and more sacred material 
 than that used in other buildings, for that is not done, but 
 merely by setting it apart for religious purposes. And so 
 
THE SABBATH QUESTION. 133 
 
 one day in seven seemed a fair proportion of time to de- 
 vote to religious services, and the Israelites chose the 
 seventh day as their Sabbath, but that was a mere 
 "shadow" of better things to come. The earthly Sab- 
 bath is an emblem of eternal rest ; and since there is no 
 difference in the nature of days — since the first day of 
 the week was made most sacred and hallowed by the 
 resurrection of the Lord from the dead on that day — the 
 early Christians were quite justified in changing the Sab- 
 bath from the seventh to the first day of the week. Moses 
 was not greater than Paul or any other of the Apostlea, and 
 as the Christians threw off the yoke of the Jewish cere- 
 monial law, it was quite right that this part of it should 
 be thrown off also. 
 
 II. But in our day not only the authority of Moses, 
 but even the authority of Christ and St. Paul is rejected. 
 Many care little what these great religious teachers taught 
 or what was the origin of the Sabbath ; they would abolish 
 it altogether as a religious festival, and hence we are called 
 upon to show the need of a Sabbath. Fortunately this can 
 easily be done. "The Sabbath was made for man," it 
 rests upon the physical, mental, moral, and religious nec- 
 cessilies of human nature, and hence its abolition is impos- 
 sible. As long as man exists there will be need of the 
 Sabbath. 
 
 First of all, man needs the Sabbath as a rest day. After 
 six days of continuous labor, w^hether with head or handj 
 every one feels the need of rest, and experience has shown 
 that one day in seven is the best proportion of time to de- 
 vote to rest. One day in ten has been established as a rest 
 day, but it proved to be insufficient for man's physical 
 needs, and so the seventh day was readopted. Very few, 
 if any, deny the need of the Sabbath as a rest day, but the 
 mode of otherwise observing it is the question, and this 
 must be settled by the conditions of the people. The man 
 who works ten hours a day in the shop, or twelve or four- 
 teen hours a day on the farm, during the week, will per- 
 haps need all of Sunday to rest his tired limbs, and we 
 need not be surprised if he does not attend church on Sun- 
 day. Indeed, lam not sure that a man, who has a family 
 depending upon him for food and clothing, will not be 
 doing God a better and more acceptable service by resting 
 at home on Sunday in order to be able to win bread for his 
 
134 
 
 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 wife ana children during the week, than he would be to 
 walk one, two or five miles to listen to, or rather dream 
 through, a dull service or sermon. The only way by which 
 we may secure the attendance of such people at religious 
 services is by giving them half of Saturday as a holiday 
 and bettering their condition generally. It is wholly un- 
 reasonable and un-Christian to work men and women ten, 
 twelve or fourteen hours a day up till dark, Saturday night, 
 and require them to rise early enough to get ready and 
 come to church Sunday morning. If the Christian em- 
 ployers of the country really wish to promote the religious 
 welfare of their employes, or indeed their own interests, 
 they will give them Saturday afternoon as a holiday. 
 
 Secondly, the Sabbath is needed for the mental develop- 
 ment of man. As just intimated, the great mass of men 
 are worked late and early from Monday morning till Satur- 
 day night, and hence they have neither inclination nor 
 time to cultivate their minds. Of what use to the work- 
 people are our public libraries, art galleries, museums and 
 parks ? They are, of course, too tired to use these to any 
 extent in the evenings during the week, and owing to an 
 absurd prejudice they are closed on Sundays. All these 
 places should be open at least part of Sunday, say from 
 I to 6 o'clock, and in summer the city bands should be 
 allowed to play in the parks for the benefit of the working 
 people. This should not only be sanctioned, but it should be 
 urged and superintended by the Church. One great reason 
 why the laboring classes stay away from church is just 
 this : she opposes raany things which they know they 
 need and should have. And those who are so fanatical about 
 the desecration of the Sabbath by such means should seri- 
 ously consider these two facts : (i) They do not get the 
 working people to come to church by shutting up the 
 libraries, art galleries and parks, but they rather embitter 
 these people against the Church by their opposition to the 
 use of such places on Sunday ; and (2) Would it not be 
 infinitely better, from every point of view, that the poor 
 people should spend a few hours on Sunday listening to 
 sweet music, looking at beautiful pictures or reading good 
 books and papers, than it is to shut them off from these 
 pleasures and advantages in their dreary homes, where 
 they nurse bitter feelings and hatch dangerous schemes of 
 vengeance ? There can be no question that the safety and 
 
THE SABBATH QUESTION. 135 
 
 welfare of both Church and State depend upon the mental 
 and social elevation of the masses, and one great means of 
 such elevation would be the use on Sundays of the public 
 libraries, art galleries, parks, etc. If it be said that after six 
 long days of work the laboring people would not feel any 
 more like using these places than they would like going to 
 church, it may be answered that after a Sunday morning's 
 rest they would enjoy these privileges, and, as a matter of 
 fact, in England and elsewhere they do avail themselves of 
 these advantages. Nor need this at all interfere with the 
 religious exercises of the day. Those who would come to 
 church with these places closed would come if they were 
 open. Indeed, if the Church were instrumental in furnish- 
 ing such advantages to the work people, many more of 
 them would in time come to church than do now come, for 
 the education and refinement they would receive from 
 this beneficent action of the Church would naturally tend 
 to draw them closer to it. However, in deference to the 
 religious prejudices of many and perhaps to prevent Sun- 
 day being wholly used for intellectual and aesthetic pur- 
 poses alone, it would probably be well to open such public 
 resorts- only from i to 6 o'clock on Sundays. 
 
 As many people consider Sunday intrinsically different 
 from, and more sacred than, other days of the week, so 
 they are puritanical in their idea of certain kinds of em- 
 ployment, such as the reading a novel or the writing a 
 letter on Sunday. But while some novels should not be 
 read on any day, and many letters should never be written, 
 yet there is really no sin in looking at beautiful pictures in 
 an art gallery on Sunday (we often see them in the win- 
 dows of churches) nor in listening to fine music (we have 
 it in the churches when we can get it, and it is often 
 decidedly operatic music), and most of the books and 
 papers in our public libraries are quite as edifying as the 
 general run of sermons. Hence the distinction between 
 "secular" reading, njusic, and so forth, and "sacred" 
 books, music and services is generally artificial, and the 
 choice is not between these, but rather between the so- 
 called "secular exercises" and something worse. The 
 working people wilt not come to hear hymns sung, the 
 Bible read and sermons, preached, and the question there- 
 fore is, Would it not be better to get them in the libraries 
 and galleries and parks than it is to leave them in their 
 
136 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 houses, the slums, the " commons " or the saloons ? There 
 can be but one answer to this question, and that is. It 
 would be far better for all of us. 
 
 But while I am disposed to grant all these privileges 
 and advantages to the working people on Sunday, I 
 am less disposed to grant them to those who have plenty 
 of time and opportunity for reading, riding, driving and 
 otherwise recreating themselves during the week. It is 
 true that there are many lawyers, physicians, teachers 
 and merchants who work as hard as any shop-hand, and 
 these should be allowed the Sunday privileges accorded 
 to him ; but there are many who could, and who do, freely 
 indulge in social and intellectual pleasures during the 
 week who would also devote Sunday to this purpose, and 
 upon them should descend the condemnation of the 
 Church. But the hard-working professional or business 
 man, who attends church at least once on Sunday, may 
 be excused for taking a drive in the afternoon, or making 
 a friendly visit to a neighbor's in the evening. The pro- 
 viso, however, in this case as in most cases, is very im- 
 portant : he should not neglect his church and religious 
 duties for social and intellectual pleasure, and this brings 
 us to our last point 
 
 The Sabbath is not only necessary to the physical and 
 mental welfare of man, but it is more especially necessary 
 to his religious development. There are not a few, alas ! 
 who think religion and the Church a curse to humanity, 
 and would therefore wipe them from the face of the earth ; 
 and when we remember what cruel forms religion has 
 sometimes assumed, and how often the Church has been 
 the foe of light and truth, we need not wonder that a few 
 despise them. But the vast majority of intelligent and 
 educated men believe in the Church — in some sort of 
 religion. 
 
 Man has a moral and religious nature, and its cultivation 
 and development are even more important than is his 
 mental training, since his passions and prejudices are 
 stronger than his reasoning faculties. If, therefore, this 
 desirable result — man's religious development — is to be ac- 
 complished some time and effort must be devoted to this 
 purpose, and surely we who believe in religion ask very 
 httle when we ask that one day in seven, or at least a 
 part of it, be set apart for religious work. Every think- 
 
THE SABBATH QUESTION. 137 
 
 ing man, every patriotic mind, every philanthropic soul, 
 must admit this, and should aid the good work by word 
 and deed — by contributinjc money to and attending the 
 services of the Church. The work of the Church should 
 not be thwarted by allowing any unnecessary business, 
 whether it be base ball or saloon keeping, to be done on 
 this day. The running of the mails, the printing of the 
 newspaper and such like work seems necessary to man's 
 intellectual, social, and even his religious development ; and 
 while it may be plausibly argued that a game of base ball 
 or the drinking of a glass of beer on Sunday is no more 
 harm than reading in a public library or sending the mail, 
 yet these latter are necessary to man's highest welfare, 
 the other not, and the line must be drawn somewhere, 
 and it should be drawn between what is necessary and 
 what is not necessary to man's greatest and best develop- 
 ment. The Sabbath was made specially for the spiritual 
 improvement of man, by which I mean his emotional and 
 his intellectual as well as his religious elevation. The 
 use of art galleries, libraries, parks and newspapers, and 
 the transmission of mail are, in our complicated society, 
 all necessary to our best welfare, but base ball, the sale 
 of beer and such like things are not necessary, and should 
 not, therefore, be permitted to monopohze the short time 
 allowed for the work of the Church. 
 
 Having thus freely admitted that there is much truth in 
 the modern notion of the Sabbath as a day of rest and rec- 
 reation — a day upon which those who cannot enjoy social 
 and intellectual pleasures during the week, should be ad- 
 mitted to the public libraries etc. — I must insist that these 
 things should be subordinated to the religious observance 
 of the Lord's Day. Frederick Robertson, who advocated 
 the view of the Sabbath here set forth, said : "Esthetics 
 are not religion. It is one thing to civilize and polish, 
 it is another thing to Christianize. The worship of the 
 beautifiil is not the worship of holiness ; nay, I know 
 not whether the one may not disincline from the other. 
 At least, such was the history of ancient Greece. Greece 
 was the home of the arts, the sacred ground on which 
 the worship of the beautiful was carried to its perfection. 
 Let those who have read the history of her decline and 
 fall, who have penned the debasing works of her later 
 years, tell us how music, painting, poetry, the arts, soft- 
 
138 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 ened an debilitated and sensualized the nation's heart 
 Let them tell how, when Greece's last and greatest man 
 was warring in vain against the foe at her gates, and de- 
 manding a manlier and more heroic disposition to sacri- 
 fice, that most polished and humanized people, sunk in 
 pleasure and sunk in trade, were squandering enormous 
 sums upon their buildings and their aesthetics, their pro- 
 cessions and people's palaces, till the flood came, and the 
 liberties of Greece were trampled down forever beneath 
 the feet of the Macedonian conqueror. 
 
 " No ! the change of a nation's heart is not to be effected 
 by the infusion of a taste for artistic grace. ' Other founda- 
 tion can no man lay than that is laid which is Jesus 
 Christ. Not art, but the cross of Christ Simpler man- 
 ners ; purer lives ; more self-denial ; more earnest sympathy 
 with the classes below us ; nothing short of that can lay 
 the foundation of the Christianity which is to be in the 
 future, broad and deep. ' " 
 
 While, therefore, we would not be puritanical in our 
 observance of the Sabbath, while we would willingly give 
 up part of it for the cultivation of the mental life and 
 aesthetic tastes of those who have no time for this during 
 the week, yet we must insist that the primary and main 
 object of the Sabbath is the religious development of man, 
 and it should not be used chiefly for other purposes. Let 
 the moral and the spiritual come first, the intellectual and 
 the aesthetic next Let the cultivation of the mind be 
 preliminary to the culture of the heart and the spirit For, 
 as Robertson again says, "Experience tells us that those 
 Sundays are the happiest the purest, the most rich in 
 blessing in which the spiritual part has been most at- 
 tended to — those in which the business letter was put aside 
 till evening and the profane literature was not opened, 
 and the ordinary occupations entirely suspended — those 
 in which, as in the temple of Solomon, the sound of the 
 earthly hammer was not heard in the temple of the soul — 
 those of which we could say, We were in the Spirit on 
 the Lord's day. " 
 
 "Blest day of God ! most calm, most bright, 
 The first, the best of days : 
 The laborer's rest, the saint's delight, 
 The day of prayer and praise." 
 
CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE. 139 
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 Text : — "Prove all things, hold fast that which is good." — I Thessalo- 
 nians v. 21. 
 
 Every age has its peculiar and distinctive questions or 
 problems to solve. In the time of Christ the great problem 
 before the Church was the establishment of the Messiah's 
 kingdom on earth. It was, how could the Gospel be 
 successfully preached and the middle wall of partition be- 
 tween Jews and Gentiles be broken down, so that both 
 might be brought into one fold, imder the one Shepherd. 
 To this end great missionary journeys were made, sermons 
 were preached and epistles were written. In the sub- 
 apostolic age, the question was, how to formulate doctrines 
 so as to exclude error and organize the Church into an 
 efficient corporation. 
 
 This was essentially an uncritical age so far as certain 
 facts were concerned. Belief in. miracles, or extraordinary 
 interference with the ordinary course of nature, was 
 universal. 
 
 It was quite common for obscure writers to attribute 
 their books to some great man in order to give them greater 
 authority and influence, and the authorship of writings was 
 not rigidly examined. It thus happened that many books 
 were ascribed to persons who did not write them, and 
 events were believed which are now incredible. From 
 the time of Constantine the Great (325 a. d.) to the sixteenth 
 century the Church was busy building itself up into a great 
 political and ecclesiastical power, and its officers were 
 often not only profoundly ignorant but grossly immoral. 
 When the Reformation of the sixteenth century broke out, 
 the great question with Luther and his co-workers was 
 how to tjirow off the ecclesiastical accretions that had 
 
I^O TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 accumulated around the apostolic faith and order, and of 
 course in doing this they naturally and necessarily ap- 
 pealed to the Scriptures as against the commandments and 
 traditions of the Church. But although Luther and a few 
 other Reformers (Erasmus, etc.,) manifested considerable 
 critical ability, and handled the Bible quite freely, yet the 
 inspiration and authority of the Bible were quite generally 
 assumed. No such searching examination of the author- 
 ship and contents of the Scriptures as this century has 
 seen was dreamt of by the Reformers. And in the im- 
 mediate post-Reformation period the necessity of offering 
 some infallible, ready-made authority in religious matters 
 in place of the dethroned "Infallible Pope and Church" 
 led naturally to the exaltation and acceptance of the Bible 
 as an infallible guide in religion. Thus it happened that 
 not until the beginning of this century was the Sacred 
 Book of Christendom subjected to a criticism such as 
 other books have to endure. The popular idea that be- 
 cause the Bible's inspiration and authority and authorship 
 have not been questioned for ages and have been 
 widely questioned to-day — because it has been believed 
 to have been written by the persons whose name its 
 title-pages bear — therefore it is presumption and folly to 
 question its authority, turns out, in the light of the facts 
 just stated, to be, as most popular notions are, not even a 
 half truth. During the last century the sciences of 
 geology, biology, and historical criticism have been born. 
 Never before was so much known of nature and her 
 operations, of history and its meaning. Physical science 
 has made the miracles recorded in the Bible much more 
 incredible than they were in former centuries. The com- 
 parative study of religions has played havoc with tradi- 
 tional ideas of inspiration and has shown how naturally 
 and universally the popular notions of God, natural re- 
 demption, miracles, etc., have been developed. • 
 
 But while many think that science — physical and his- 
 torical — has destroyed the Bible and religion, it can easily 
 be shown that it has simply stripped off the husk and left 
 the kernel of truth untouched. Those who think that 
 Criticism has destroyed the Bible should ask themselves 
 this question. If this is so, how could such large scholarly 
 works as Ewald's or Kuenen's History of Israel be pro- 
 duced ? Where could these writers get materials for their 
 
CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE. 141 
 
 books if they had destroyed the Bible? No! they have 
 not destroyed it. On the contrary, it is the object of this 
 sermon to show that they have really done a grand recon- 
 structive work ; they have merely separated the wheat from 
 the chaff, but they declare most earnestly that the wheat 
 is there. 
 
 First of all, criticism has cleared up the authorship of the 
 books of the Bible. Thus, to confine our attention to the 
 New Testament, it has shown that a study of the Christian 
 origins must begin with the Epistles of St. Paul, since these 
 are the oldest writings of the New Testament, and while 
 some radical critics reject all except four of these Epistles 
 as ungenuine, it is now pretty generally agreed that at 
 least eight or ten of the Epistles commonly attributed to 
 St. Paul were written by him, viz., those to the Romans, 
 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalo- 
 nians, Ephesians, and Philemon. Even those critics who 
 reject the Pauline authorship of some of these Epistles 
 admit that they were written by some disciple in or near 
 the Apostle's time, and for all practical purposes they are 
 quite as valuable as if they had been written by St. Paul 
 himself To make this clear, suppose it should be proved 
 that'Lord Bacon, not Shakespeare, wrote the plays bearing 
 the latter's name, would we be so foolish as to throw aside 
 our Shakespeare as worthless .■' On the contrary, would it 
 not be quite as valuable as ever.i* I think so ; and hence 
 when we are shown that St. Paul did not write the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, for instance, but that Apollos probably 
 did ; that the epistles to Timothy and Titus were not written 
 by St. Paul but by some disciple in or near his time ; that 
 the same is true of other epistles, it would be extremely 
 foolish to reject these writings as worthless. 
 
 All that criticism proves is that men have been mistaken 
 aio»/ the Bible, not that the Bible is false and unreliable ; 
 or, at most, it simply shows that certain details of the 
 narratives are false, not that the greater part of the Book 
 is a he, and no reflecting mind will be disturbed by such 
 a demonstration. 
 
 The same may be said of the Gospels. It has been 
 shown that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote certain 
 short notes on Christ's life and the establishment of the 
 Church by St. Paul, and that these notes were worked over 
 by other disciples, and finally our Gospels and Acts were 
 
142 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 produced in their present shape. What then ? Are these 
 writings unhistorical and valueless ? Not at all. 
 
 On the contrary, this view of the origin of the Gospels 
 enables us to account for certain slight discrepancies in 
 them which worry us no little on the old view. Thus, 
 when we read in one Gospel that Jesus healed one man 
 near Jericho, and in another that He healed two men (see 
 Luke xviii. 35, and Matt. xx. 30), we explain it by saying 
 that these conflicting reports got into circulation by being 
 passed from mouth to mouth among the disciples, — just 
 as difference in reports of events in our own time arise — 
 and were finally incorporated into our gospels. 
 
 "Oh ! well," answers the unreflecting individual, "if 
 that is so, then the Bible is not inspired, and I will have 
 none of it." 
 
 There it is again ! The Bible is inspired — only it is not 
 inspired just asyou think it is. The Bible is all right, but 
 your idea of it is all wrong. The Bible does not claim to 
 be inspired in every word and passage. That is a fiction 
 which theologians and preachers have, most unfortunately, 
 added to the Bible. What we must do, therefore, is not to 
 throw away our Bible, but simply the theories about the 
 Bible which have been taught us from our cradle up^=-the 
 theological cobwebs that have been woven across the ark 
 of God's covenant — and then we will be able to accept 
 and appreciate its real treasures. 
 
 The Bible comes to us just as other books do, and it 
 offers itself to us for what it is worth. It does not pretend 
 to be a perfect Book let down out of the skies, but it makes 
 statements about persons who lived and events that hap- 
 pened nineteen, twenty-five, thirty or forty centuries ago, 
 and it tells us to ponder these things ; prove, test all these 
 things, and hold fast that which is good ; and woe unto 
 that man or that woman who, through intellectual laziness 
 and spiritual timidity, refuses to obey this apostolic injunc- 
 tion ! He is the "heretic " ! He is the real traitor to God and 
 Christ and the Church and the Bible and his own con- 
 science and reason, and for all this God will bring him 
 into judgment. 
 
 Secondly, Biblical criticism has given us a rational 
 method of interpreting the Scriptures. 
 
 It has been universally customary to build whole pyra- 
 mids of theology on a few Scriptural texts, picked out at 
 
CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 143 
 
 haphazard, without regard to their date, authorship or 
 primary reference : until the popular caricature of this 
 method of "proving" things from the Bible seems almost 
 justifiable. "The Bible," it is said, "sanctions suicide; 
 for it says 'Judas went and hanged himself,' and it adds, 
 ' Go thou, and do likewise ! '" Of course, this is absurd non- 
 sense ; yet some of the interpretations or rather twistings 
 of the Scripture of which theologians have been guilty 
 are equally irrational and illogical. Hence comes the 
 popular notion that "you can prove anything from the 
 Bible. " No wonder that Archdeacon Farrar should exclaim 
 in eloquent indignation: "Tyranny has engraved texts 
 upon her sword. Oppression has carved texts upon her 
 fetters. Cruelty has tied texts around her faggot^.„ Igno- 
 rance has set knowledge at defiance with texts woven on 
 her flag. Gin-drinking has been defended out of Timothy, 
 and slavery has made a stronghold out of Philemon. 
 Texts were quoted by the devil and the Pharisees against 
 our Lord Himself, and when St. Paul fought the great bat-; 
 tie of Christian freedom against the curse of the Law, he 
 was anathematized with a whole Pentateuch of texts." 
 Yet the Bible does not sanction tyranny, oppression, cruelty, 
 ignorance, slavery and the suppression of free thought. 
 On the contrary, it is the foe of all these evils, but men — 
 men professing and calling themselves Christians, have 
 perverted the Bible — have snatched up texts here and there, 
 and hurled them at the heads of their opponents, until it is no. 
 wonder that men have come to think you can prove any- 
 thing by the Bible, and despise it accordingly. But criti- 
 cism has changed all this. It no longer satisfies a reflec- 
 ting mind to have a few texts of Scripture cited to prove a 
 doctrine or a fact. He wants to know the author of the 
 text and of what authority it is. He insists that the Bible 
 must be interpreted by facts of science, philosophy and 
 history, and that all these cannot be rejected because the 
 English translation — not the original of the New Testa- 
 ment^speaks of "science, falsely so called." 
 
 Criticism and investigation have shown that there are 
 other " Bibles of Humanity " besides ours — in Persia, India, 
 China and elsewhere — and that there are other religions 
 besides the religion of the Jews and Christians. But shall 
 we, therefore, give up our Bible and our religion ? No ! 
 On the contrary, these other bibles and these other xelig- 
 
144 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 ions throw light upon ours and help us to understand 
 ours and make us value ours all the more. To reject our 
 Bible and our religion because other people have books 
 which teach many of the doctrines our Bible teaches would 
 be as foolish as the action of a woman who would throw 
 away her diamonds because she found that some one else 
 had as pretty diamonds. I fancy that few women would 
 do this, however ready they may be to throw away their 
 Bible when told that the people in India have profound 
 Sacred Books very much like ours. All these discoveries 
 simply show that God has not left Himself without witness 
 among other people of the earth besides the Jews. 
 
 Alike in sunny Greece and stately Rome, in the groves of . 
 India and the gardens of China, in scorching Africa and 
 the far sweet islands of the sea, as well as over the hills 
 and valleys of Judah, the Sun of Righteousness has shed 
 His blessed beams, and while He shone most brightly over 
 the ark at Jerusalem, the rays He shot into "heathen dark- 
 ness " proclaim that God is the Universal Father, and "in 
 every nation he that loveth God and worketh righteous- 
 ness is accepted of Him." 
 
 When this great fact is fully recognized, when the Bible 
 is interpreted by facts of science, philosophy and history, 
 when Christ is acknowledged to be the King of men, the 
 Light that hath lightened the Gentiles as well as the glory 
 of His people Israel, the Inspirer of Buddha, Confucius, 
 and Socrates, as well as the Teacher of Paul, then, but not 
 till then, will the Bible regain the power it has lost by the 
 misinterpretations which have been put upon it, and then 
 will Christ's Church accomplish its mission to men. In 
 the study of the Bible no injunction is more important 
 than that of the text: "Prove all things; hold fast that 
 which is good." Search the Scriptures, and compare them 
 with the Scriptures of other nations, and interpret them by 
 facts and reasons, and thus the Bible will become a lamp 
 unto your feet and a light unto your path. 
 
 Third, Criticism has given us a correct idea of miracles. 
 
 The popular idea of miracles is this : Christ was God ; 
 all things are possible with God ; the Bible says Christ 
 wrought miracles ; the Bible is inspired ; therefore we must 
 accept the miracles, word for word, as they stand recorded 
 in the Bible, and the more incredible they seem the more 
 faith we exercise. 
 
CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 145 
 
 ' Criticism answers : With God all things are, indeed, pos- 
 sible ; it is possible that God should turn the world upside 
 down or stop the sun in its course, but He does not do it. 
 Christ was indeed God's Son, " God manifest in the 
 flesh," but He himself rebuked the Jews for seeking 
 "signs" instead of accepting His words for their own 
 sake ; and the question is not what God or Christ could 
 do ? but, what has He actually done ? And in answering 
 this question we must examine the authorship and author- 
 ity of the Book that records Christ's words and acts just as 
 we would the authorship and authority of any other book 
 relating similar stories. We cannot assume that the Bible 
 is inspired and infallible, for inspiration is itself of the 
 nature of a miracle and must be proved as other miracles 
 are. We know, too, that miracles are constantly attributed 
 to ancient heroes, and is it not, therefore, probable that 
 more miracles have been attributed to Jesus, the greatest 
 of men and religious teachers, than He actually wrought ? 
 May not His simple-minded followers have mistaken 
 purely natural events for miracles .? May not the cures 
 He worked be explained by causes fully recognized by 
 medical science ? May not His raisings from the dead 
 have been revivals of persons from a state of suspended 
 animation, which was so common in the East .' Jesus 
 himself said of Jairus's daughter : " The maid is not dead 
 but sleepeth" (Mark ix. 24); and although the bystanders 
 laughed Him to scorn, believing the girl was really dead, 
 may not the Master have known better than they .? And 
 may we not have in this story the key to an understanding 
 of the other stories of resurrections ? At any rate, the 
 critics urge, an extraordinary event must be proved by an 
 extraordinary amount of evidence, and the more wonderful 
 it is the more evidence is necessary. The very fact that 
 Jesus was God's Son and performed wonders would lead 
 to the attribution to Him of miracles He never wrought. 
 Hence we must know who wrote the stories of miracles, 
 when they were written and whether they cannot be ex- 
 plained by natural causes. 
 
 "Oh! well," answers the poor frightened soul, "then 
 the Bible is all a lie and Christ was an impostor, and so I 
 will none of them ! " Not so fast, my good friend. There 
 is no reason for such precipitancy. The critics have not 
 destroyed a single object of your faith or touched a hair 
 
 10 
 
146 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 of the Master's head. On the contrary, they have shown 
 us tliat the miracles He wrought were performed according 
 to the laws of nature, not in violation of them, and there- 
 fore we may rationally accept them all without doing 
 violence to our reason. The important facts of Christ's 
 life are not the wonders He performed, but the life He 
 lived and the words He spoke. The important fact of His 
 birth is not the number of human agents employed, but 
 the production of a perfect moral and spiritual nature — the 
 influx of the Divine Spirit into Humanity ; and even if the 
 miracles be myths (which they are not), they yet prove that 
 such an iaifusion of the Divine Spirit into human nature 
 occurred when our Lord was born. The important fact 
 in His resurrection is not the nature of the body in which 
 He appeared to his disciples, but the fact that He revealed 
 ' Himself to them as alive after death — He made His living 
 Presence_/e// by them — .and so brought life and immortality 
 to light 
 
 Thus, you see criticism does not destroy your Bible, the 
 miracles of our blessed Lord. It simply asks us to 
 interprel the Scripture-stories of miracles a little differently 
 from what we have been accustomed to interpret them; 
 and surely this ought not to disturb any one's faith, for dif- 
 ferent interpretations have always been put upon the Bible. 
 When it was believed that the earth was flat and station- 
 ary, the Bible was interpreted according to this belief; but 
 when it was discovered that the earth was a globe and 
 moves round the sun, the Bible was interpreted according 
 to this knowledge. It was believed, until recently, that 
 the world was created in six days of twenty-four hours 
 each, but since geology has shown that it required millions 
 of ages to create the world, the first chapter of Genesis 
 has been interpreted differently by all high authorities. 
 Now it is urged the stories of miracles should be differ- 
 ently interpreted. They should not be rejected ; we may 
 rationally accept all the accounts of healing in the New 
 Testament (and most of the miracles Christ wrought were 
 cures), for such cures were simply extraordinary instances 
 of what prophets and apostles, Moses, Elijah, Paul and 
 others, did — cures like those well known to medical 
 science. The raisings of the dead were revivals of per- 
 sons in a swoon. The feeding of the thousands with a few 
 loaves and fishes was a reminiscence of the ^Master's 
 
CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 147 
 
 benevolence and spiritual feeding. The turning- water 
 into wine was a reminiscence of His attendance on joyous 
 festive gatherings.* And so we are asked not to give up 
 our Bible, but merely to understand it a little differently 
 from what we have been accustomed to understand it, 
 and those who have adopted the new intei~pretations find 
 the Bible far more interesting and instructive because 
 more credible than ever. 
 
 Finally, criticism has destroyed Bibliolatry, the worship 
 of a book, and substituted in its place the worship of the 
 Spirit of Christ. It has taken the Bible out of the Pope's 
 chair, where the Reformers of the sixteenth century placed 
 it, and given to 'Jesus the throne of His kingdom. The 
 more we see that the Bible is not infallible, the more 
 closely we cling to Christ. While the miracles He wrought 
 are seen to be only extraordinary instances of wonders 
 performed by other religious teachers. His moral and 
 spiritual character and His divine wisdom stand out above 
 all others proclaiming Him to be, in an unique and tran- 
 scendent sense, the Son of God. And as Dr. Farrar elo- 
 quently says, " In the name of the Son of God is the secret 
 of our progress, of our security, of our freedom, of our 
 strength. If we build upon Him, we build on the one 
 Foundation. It is because they put themselves in place of 
 Him that hierarchies have fallen into corruption and ruin. 
 It is because they failed to comprehend His nature, that 
 philosophies have passed away. It is because they thrust 
 the dead letter in the place of His living Spirit, that religious 
 movements have ended in hatred and obstructiveness. 
 It is because they have mistaken the dawn for the conflagra- 
 tion that theologians have so often been the foes of light. 
 But no Church and no system and no man that has been 
 rooted and grounded in Him in love has ever failed to 
 increase with the increase of God." 
 
 Therefore, my friends, let us rely, not upon the Church, 
 not upon a fallible Boot, not upon a system of Philosophy, 
 but upon the living Christ, whose still small voice speaks 
 to our souls, and whose history is recorded in that Book 
 which, despite alL slight imperfections, has been for ages, 
 and is destined to be through all time, the religious guide 
 of the most enlightened portion of humanity. It has 
 
 *SeeHaweis's "Picture of Jesus," pp. 57-60, for an ingenious "natural 
 explanation "^of this miracle. 
 
148 TOPICS OP THE TIM PS. 
 
 nothing to fear from criticism. It will simply shme, like 
 burnished gold, all the brighter for being rubbed. Defects 
 will be effaced; mysteries will be cleared up, blots which 
 the imhallowed pen of man has dropped upon its sacred 
 pages will be wiped out, and it will become unto us the 
 very oracle of God. Its great characters will come into 
 our lives as powers for good. We will walk by their side ; 
 we will hearken to their words of wisdom ; we will kneel 
 with them round the throne of the Eternal I Am. We 
 will sit with old Abraham in his tent door and help him 
 entertain the Three Strangers, or walk with him through 
 the land of Canaan, whither he had been driven by the 
 idolatry of his native place. We will feel with the dis- 
 inherited Esau as he cries, so pathetically, "Hast thou 
 but one blessing.? Bless me, even me, also, O my 
 father ! " We will lie down with the exiled Jacob on his 
 pillow of stone and see the angel ladder reaching to 
 heaven. We will follow the outcast Joseph as he is 
 taken down by slave traders into Egypt, we will see him 
 overcome temptation and rise to power, and we will join 
 in the happy reunion of the old Patriarch's family. We 
 will stand with unshod feet beside Moses at the burning 
 bush and listen to the awful thunders of Sinai. We will 
 march through the wilderness with God's children and eat 
 the heavenly manna, and listen to the prophetic cry of 
 Balaam from the top of Pisgah, "I shall see Him, but not 
 now : I shall heboid Him, but not nigh ! " We will 
 follow the flashing sword of Joshua as he leads the armies 
 of the Lord of Hosts to victory in the Promised Land. 
 We will listen with bated breath to the Song of Deborah 
 shouting the downfall of God's enemies. We will walk 
 beside David as he follows the ewes great with young 
 over the rich pastures of Palestine, or as he flees before the 
 face of the angry, jealous Saul. We will stand in the 
 magnificent courts of Solomon's Temple, listen to its soul- 
 stirring choruses and finally behold it trodden down by the 
 heathen conqueror. We will sit down in sorrow with the 
 exiles by the waters of Babylon, and weep as we see the 
 silent harp hung upon the willows in the midst thereot 
 We will hear with joy the decree of Cyrus that the Temple 
 should be rebuilt and the Jews restored to their fatherland. 
 We will listen with rapture to the prophetic declaration 
 that a child is to be born, a king is to be given, who 
 
CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE. 149 
 
 will restore the departed glories of Judah. We will fight 
 the chivalrous battles of the heroic Maccabees and 
 Asmoneans until overcome by Rome they sank under the 
 power of the Edomite-Herod. We will hearken to that 
 Voice ui the wilderness, " Prepare ye the way of the Lord, 
 make His paths straight." We will listen to the angel 
 song over the heights of Bethlehem ; we will follow the 
 star-guided Magi to the manger and offer our precious 
 gifts at that sacred shrine. We will watch this wonderful 
 Child grow to manhood, behold Him baptized in the Jordan 
 beneath the shining wings of the heavenly dove ; we will 
 fast and pray with Him in the wilderness ; we will follow 
 Him through life, struggling against sin, opposition 
 and persecution , until finally we see Him stretched on the 
 Cross of Calvary, andheai His dying words, " Father, for- 
 give them, for they know not what they do;" "Father, 
 into thy hands I commend my Spirit." And we exclaim, 
 "Surely this Man was the Son of God ! " 
 
150 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 
 DID THE FISH SWALLOW JONAH? 
 
 Text: — Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, 
 feaying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But He answered and said 
 •unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign ; and 
 there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas : for as 
 Jonas was three days arid three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the 
 Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The 
 men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall con- 
 demn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a 
 greater than Jonas is herei^MATTHEW xii. 38-^1. 
 
 The story of Jonah is a great stone of stumbling and 
 rock of offence to even professing Christians, and probably 
 few of them believe it, while the skeptics find in it an 
 eternal source of amusement. But rightly understood it 
 is one of the most interesting and instructive narratives in 
 the Bible, and therefore I wish in this sermon to give a 
 rational explanation of it 
 
 It is claimed by the traditional school of theology that 
 we must accept the story of Jonah m all its details be- 
 cause it was endorsed by the Lord Jesus. The first ques- 
 tion therefore is, Did Jesus endorse it in full .? Jonah is 
 referred to three or four times in the Gospels : once m the 
 text, again in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew ; once 
 more in Luke xi. 29-32 ; and finally in Mark viii. 11-13 
 — or rather Mark states the request of the Scnbes and 
 Pharisees for a sign but does not mention Jonah. The 
 Master, it is said, " sighed deeply in His spirit" when He 
 heard the request, and said, "Why doth this generation seek 
 after a sign .? Verily I say unto you. There shall no sign be 
 given unto this generation. And He left them." Luke re- 
 ports that He said : "This is an evil generation ; they seek 
 a sign ; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of 
 Jonas the prophet. For as Jonas was a sign to the Nine- 
 vites, so shall the Son of Man be to this generation. The 
 
DID THE FISH SWALLOW JONAHS 15I 
 
 men of Nineveh shall rise up in the judgment with this 
 generation and shall condemn it : for they repented at the 
 preaching of Jonas, and behold a greater than Jonas is 
 here." The sixteenth chapter of Matthew agrees with 
 Luke. It reports the Master's interview with the Pharisees 
 and His reference to Jonah's preaching in Nineveh, but 
 does not say that Jesus referred to the fish swallowing 
 the prophet. We have, therefore, three important differ- 
 ences in the reports of our Lord's words on the occasion 
 referred to : Mark says He simply rebuked the Pharisees 
 for seeking a sign, but does not report' any reference to 
 Jonah. Luke and Matthew (xvi.) say that He spoke of 
 Jonah's preaching to the Ninevites, but neither says that 
 He mentioned Jonah's voyage in the fish's belly ; so that 
 the allegation that our Lord endorsed this part of this re- 
 markable story rests on the words of the text alone. We 
 deny the truth of this allegation, and believe that the 
 words of the text upon which it rests were added to the 
 real statements of our Lord by the writer of the text, and 
 we assert this for the following reasons : (i) Such differ- 
 ences in the Gospels as those cited show, and external 
 testimony proves, that they were a gradual ^■^ov^'Ca.. The 
 disciples of Jesus did not immediately after His death sit 
 down and write His bio|;raphy. On the contrary, they 
 went forth preaching — telling what He had taught and 
 done — >and the Gospels vvere not written for fifty or seventy- 
 five years after His death. It was the most natural thing 
 imaginable, therefore, that such differences in the re'ports of 
 HisiSvords and actions as those mentioned should get into 
 oircuktion and finally be inserted in the written narratives. 
 We know how hard it is even now, when we have short- 
 hand writers, to get an exact account of even most im- 
 portant events or speeches, and nothing but a false idea 
 of inspiration can make us suppose that the ancient writers 
 were more exact than the modern. But inspiration or no 
 inspiration, the fact is, there are the differences in their 
 reports which none can deny, and they can be rationally 
 accounted for only by supposing that we have the gist of 
 what our Lord said and did with more or less aidded or 
 oriiitted by the reporters. (2) The report of His remarks 
 about Jonah itself throws doubt upon His endorsement of 
 the part referring to the prophet's journey in the fish's 
 belly, "An evil and adulterous generation," He said.,. 
 
152 
 
 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 " and there shall no sign be given it." But according to 
 the text He immediately proceeded to contradict Himself 
 by pointing to a most wonderful sign, namely, His own 
 resurrection from the dead ! "As Jonah" (He is reported 
 to have said) " was three days and three nights in the 
 whale's belly : so shall the Son of Man be three days and 
 three nights in the heart of the earth." A pretty way, 
 that, 9f refusing a sign to the wicked and carnally-minded 
 generation ! We don't believe our Lord ever stultified 
 Himself in such a manner. What, then, shall we believe 
 He said on the occasion referred to.? He probably said 
 that as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so He (Jesus) 
 was a sign to that generation. This is what Luke and 
 Matthew (xvi.) both say, and we may be sure that they 
 would not have omitted the important reference to Jonah's 
 fish-boat had it been made, and therefore we must con- 
 clude that this is an addition of a later redacteur of Mat- 
 thew's Gospel obtained from oral tradition. By this means 
 we save the gist of these narratives and explain their differ- 
 ences, and we can do so by no other explanation. It is 
 most remarkable that many learned commentators, after 
 all that Biblical Criticism has done to show the uncertain 
 authorship and gradual growth of the Gospels, should 
 yet insist upon pressing our Lord into the service of 
 dogmatic theology. 
 
 We, of course, have no objection whatever to hearing 
 His testimony, if He delivered any, on the subject of the 
 authorship of the Old Testament or its miracles, but we 
 submit that it must be shown that His words have been 
 correctly reported before it can be truly said that He en- 
 dorsed such stories as that of Jonah. Believing that He 
 did not endorse that part of the prophets history which 
 states that he was swallowed by a fish, we are free to 
 accept or reject it without regard to any supposed utter- 
 ance of His. 
 
 What, then, shall we think of this remarkable story ? You 
 remember the points of the narrative. Jonah was a prophet, 
 the son of one Amittai, who was also a prophet, that lived 
 in Gath-hepher in Galilee, not far north of Nazareth. He 
 flourished about 800 years before Christ in the reign of the 
 wicked king, Jeroboam, the second monarch in Israel who 
 bore that name, (see Josh. xix. 13, 2 Kings xiv.). Jonah 
 first prophesied in Israel and Jeroboam did certam things 
 
r>ID TUS FISH SWALLOW JONAH ? 153 
 
 which the prophet commanded, but finally, we are told, 
 Jonah was bidden by the Lord to go and preach in Nineveh. 
 He refused to do so, and took ship for Tarshish, a city in 
 Spain. On the voyage a great storm arose, and the super- 
 stitious sailors at once concluded that they had done some- 
 thing tooffend the God of the Sea, who was, therefore, de- 
 termined to destroy them. Upon questioning Jonah about 
 the matter, he confessed that he was to blame, and the 
 sailors immediately pitched him overboard as a sacrifice to 
 the God of the Sea. Fortunately for Jonah, a big fish, with 
 a big mouth and a still bigger belly, was near by and 
 kindly offered to take care of the unfortunate prophet. 
 Jonah naturally accepted his offer, and after a three days' 
 journey in this unique vessel, we are told, he was belched 
 forth by the monster, safe and sound, upon the Syrian coast 
 — much to the relief of the fish, no doubt. 
 
 After such an experience we are not surprised that the 
 refractory prophet should conclude that there was less 
 danger in preaching to the heathen Ninevites than there 
 was in trying to escape from Jehovah by flying across the 
 sea. And so Jonah went to the great capital of Assyria 
 — a city nearly as large as New York and there pro- 
 claimed that within forty days Nineveh would be destroyed 
 on account of its wickedness. Wonderful to relate, the pro- 
 phet had not preached one day before the king and all the 
 people and even the animals repented and put on sack- 
 cloth and sat down in the ashes ! Truly, Jonah must have 
 been a mighty preacher to convert even the beasts, for we 
 poor parsons are satisfied if we convert a few human sin- 
 ners. But, strange to say, this most successful preacher 
 got mad about his very success and complained to Jehovah 
 that he ought to have destroyed the Ninevites. And because 
 He did not, Jonah went outside the city and built himself 
 a tejit and sat down to pout — nay, he even prayed that 
 God would take away his life. Jonah was not as good 
 a carpenter as he was a preacher, and so he seems to 
 have botched his tent, and, therefore, the Lord made a great 
 gourd grow up in one night, whose leaves protected the 
 prophet, and then He sent a worm to gnaw at its root to 
 kill it. And then Jonah got so sorry for the gourd that 
 the Lord had to remind him that the lives of the Nine- 
 vites were more precious than many gourds. What shall 
 we think of this strange story? 
 
154 Topics of the times. 
 
 Suppose the Book of Jonah, like certain otherold manu- 
 scripts, had been lost until modern times, and we had just 
 found it, what would be the first question we would ask ? 
 Manifiestly, we should want to know who wrote it and when 
 was it written ? Now, we do not know who wrote the 
 Book of Jonah, nor when it was written. Previous to the 
 Babylonish exile of the Jews, which occurred some 600 
 years before Christ, the books of the Old Testament, such 
 as Genesis, the Laws of Moses and the rest, were left to 
 take care of themselves, so to speak. For many years the 
 Book of the Law was buried beneath a mass of rubbish in 
 the Temple at Jerusalem (2 King^s xxii. 8, et seq.), and 
 was found by a priest during the reparation and clean- 
 ing of the Temple somewhat as the Bible was discovered 
 by Luther in the library of the University of Erfurt This 
 discovery led the good king Josiah to attempt a reforma- 
 tion of the morals and manners of the people, which, how- 
 ever, was only temporarily successful, and thenceforth the 
 Sacred Books were tossed from pillar to post until after the 
 Babylonian exile. They were then gathered together, by 
 Ezra or some other scribe or scribes, and formed into a 
 catalogue or canon as we now have them. The earliest 
 evidence we have shows that the Book of Jonah was 
 included among the other prophetic writings embodied 
 in this canon of Sacred Books. But, be it remembered, 
 Jonah had lived at least 200 or 300 years before this collec- 
 tion of the Scriptures was made, and so we do not know at 
 what time during that period or by whom the Book of 
 Jonah was written. It is a mere assumption to say that 
 Jonah himself wrote it, and there are many reasons (two 
 of which will be presently stated) for doubting such an 
 authorship. But certain it is that the mere inclusion of 
 the book in the canon formed after the Exile — that is, two 
 or three hundred years after the death of the prophet — 
 is no proof whatever that he wrote it or that it is abso- 
 lutely true. 
 
 These two facts, among others, throw great suspicion 
 upon its authenticity : First, the miracles it relates are 
 so wonderful and grotesque that only the most over- 
 whelrining evidence could render them credible. Sup- 
 pose we were to read such stories in any other book — > 
 say the Sacred Books of India or Greece — and we really 
 do find similar stories in those books — would we not at 
 
DID THE FISH SWALLOW JONAH? 155 
 
 once either reject them as fables or demand the most con- 
 clusive evidence of their genuineness ? Of course we 
 would. 
 
 Why, then, should we draw the line at Jonah? We 
 cannot. The first miracle is less incredible than the 
 conversion of the heathen Ninevites. Imagine a mod- 
 ern missionary going to Shanghai in China or Tokio in 
 Japan, and proclaiming that unless its inhabitants repented 
 and accepted Christ within forty days, they would all be 
 destroyed ; and suppose that they should all at one time 
 in one day repent, would not that be a far greater moral 
 miracle than the preservation of a man in a fish's belly for 
 three days would be a physical miracle .' Certainly it 
 would ; and so we see that this book records the most 
 prodigious miracles, and we are asked to accept them 
 without an atom of evidence save the mere word of a 
 book whose authorship and date of composition are both 
 utterly unknown. Surely no thinking mind, however 
 devout, can be satisfied with such a proposition ! 
 
 Again, we find no reference to any such wonderful con- 
 version of the Ninevites on the Assyrian Monuments that 
 have been discovered and deciphered in modern times. 
 Dr. Layard of England and other eminent explorers and 
 scholars have worked for years among the mounds of 
 Nineveh and Babylon, and they have found many stories 
 which confirm certain narratives of the Old Testament, but 
 none that confirm Jonah. Suppose now that Shanghai or 
 Tokio were to be converted by the preaching of some 
 modern missionary, don't you think that so. great an event 
 would be fully and extensively recorded, and explorers 
 hundreds of years hence might find such records 
 among the ruins of the city } Of course, it may be said 
 that we may yet discover an account of this event in the 
 ruins of Nineveh ; but there is not much prospect of it, for 
 those mounds have been very carefully and thoroughly ex- 
 amined ; and, at any rate, we must wait until this discov- 
 ery be made before we can count on it. Meanwhile the 
 story of Jonah's converting all Nineveh remains uncon- 
 firmed. 
 
 Shall we, then, reject the whole Book of Jonah as 
 worthless .? By no means ! We might as well reject 
 gold because it is mingled with dross, or wheat because it 
 is surrounded with chaff, The rational thing to do is to 
 
156 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 strip off the husk and accept the kernel. Jonah, as just 
 stated, was a real person and prophet who lived about 
 eight hundred years before Christ. The Israelites «t that 
 time were constantly coming in contact with the Assyr- 
 ians, and so it is highly probable that Jonah, being disgust- 
 ed and discouraged in his work under the wicked Jeroboam, 
 should turn to the Gentiles. Being a Jew, possessed of a 
 most exclusive and self-righteous spirit, he would naturally 
 hesitate to preach to heathen dogs, and would be willing 
 to suffer exile in a strange land rather than do so. But 
 conscience, that mighty vicegerent of God within man, 
 which taught even the bigoted Peter that ' ' in every 
 nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is 
 accepted of Him," and must not be considered "unclean" 
 or "common" — conscience once thoroughly aroused 
 would compel the prophet to go to Nineveh, and proclaim 
 the message which God had given him. As a consequence 
 he would doubtless convert, not the whole city, but perhaps 
 many more than he had converted in Israel, and this 
 would amply justify our Lord's reference to his mission- 
 ary labors. Then, years afterwards, his biographer might 
 write his history ; meanwhile, all sorts of stories would 
 have arisen about the prophet. It would be natural to 
 say that he tried to avoid doing his duty, and in order to 
 escape this irksome task he attempted to flee over the sea — 
 perhaps he did — and was shipwrecked and stranded on the 
 Syrian coast. The fish might be drawn from the pop- 
 ular imagination, but would be accepted by the simple- 
 minded narrator as a providential means of deliverance for 
 the unfortunate prophet. Then, in contrast with the im- 
 penitence of the Israelites, it would be natural to magnify 
 Jonah's success in preaching to the Ninevites, and thus 
 we would get our wonderful story of Jonah. 
 
 Of course, many will b.e disposed to say, " If all this 
 be true, then the composer of this book was a most un- 
 trustworthy individual to say the least." Perhaps so, per- 
 haps not. It is a well-known fact that all sorts of fan- 
 tastical stories gather round great names and are often 
 woven into the history of heroes. The absurd stories 
 about General Washington's hatchet and so forth are 
 now known to be the products of popular imagination. 
 Religious heroes particularly suffer from this cause. The 
 most grotesque fables have been woven around the char- 
 
DID THE FISH SWALLOW JONAH? 157 
 
 acters of St. Francis Assi'ssi, Francis Xavier, Buddha, and 
 our Lord Himself, and we can only get at the truth by a 
 careful examination of facts. Nor should we accuse the 
 originators of such stories of lying or dishonesty. There is 
 a strangfe power in the human mind by which it will slightly 
 and unintentionally exaggerate the wonderful character of 
 events or persons, and these variations from fact increase 
 the more they pass from mouth to mouth. The most, 
 therefore, we can accuse the writers of such stories of is 
 credulity, and we not only accuse them of this but we 
 insist that it was the most natural thing imaginable that 
 in that early age when science and criticism were unborn, 
 people should be credulous. 
 
 "Oh! well," answers the traditionalist, "then these 
 people were not inspired, and I will none of them." Not 
 So fast, my friend ! These people may not have been 
 absolutely infallible, but God may have breathed (inspired) 
 into their souls a message which, despite the earthen ves- 
 sel through which it passed, is or may be a very real in- 
 spiration to us, may be of great importance to us. At any 
 rate, the Book of Jonah, interpreted as is here proposed, 
 has some most valuable lessons for us. 
 
 First, it is one of the earliest protests against that narrow 
 bigotry and religious exclusiveness which so disgraced the 
 Jewish Church, and now disfigures the Christian Church. 
 This book stands for Universal Religion. God taught 
 Jonah what He taught St. Peter at a later day, that he 
 was the God of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews, that 
 if the Jews were His "chosen people" they were simply 
 chosen for the purpose of teaching His religion to the 
 whole world ; they were not chosen out of mankind as a 
 peculiarly righteous and deserving people. Jonah was a 
 grand man — a prototype of St. Paul and a Greater than 
 he. Like them, he emphasized repentance, spirituality 
 more than ceremony, privileges, or nationahty. He con- 
 demns by his example all those who think themselves better 
 than others because they believe more than others or because 
 they belong to the oldest Church. And surely in this day 
 when Roman Catholics and Protestants abuse each other 
 most vehemently, when Presbyterians denounce Episcopa- 
 lians, and Episcopalians rail at Methodists and Methodists 
 abuse both ; when Lutherans andZwinglians fuss with each 
 other and the Baptists condemn us all because we do not 
 
158 - TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 accept immersion or submersion as necessary to valid 
 baptism ; when the whole of Christendom is torn into war- 
 ring factions that bite and tear each other, each claiming 
 to be the true Church of Christ and none manifesting the' 
 Spirit of Christ to such a Christendom, Jonah's prophetic cry 
 rings out across the ages, proclaiming, not every one that 
 saith"Lord! Lord," — not everyone that flatters himself 
 that he is the chosen of God — is accepted of Him, but he 
 that doeth the will of God, the heathen Chinaman as well 
 as the civilized American. " In every nation he that feareth 
 God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him." 
 
 • ' What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, 
 love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God ? " 
 
 Secondly, Jonah was the great missionary of the Jewish 
 Church, and so he again rebukes a faithless Church. But 
 for the Jonah-spirit we would to-day be bowing down to 
 stocks and stones instead of worshipping the one Living 
 and True God. It was the Jonah-spirit that seized Saul of 
 Tarsus and converted him into the greatest of missionaries, 
 driving him over land and sea, through perils of persecu- 
 tion, paganism, the prison, sickness and death, until the 
 Torch of Life had flashed from Damascus to Antioch, from 
 Antioch to Athens, from Athens to Corinth, from Corinth 
 to Rome, from Rome to Spain, frOm Spain to Britain. It 
 was the Jonah-spirit that sent St. Ulfilas, in the fourth cen- 
 tury, to labor among the barbarous Goths of northern Eu- 
 rope. It was the Jonah-spirit that took possession of St. 
 Patrick in the lonely forests and mountains of Ireland, in 
 the fifth century, as he followed the ewes great with young, 
 and converted him into " the apostle of Ireland." It was 
 the Jonah-spirit that drove St. Columba, in the sixth cen- 
 tury, from his Ireland home into the wilds of Scotland to 
 Christianize the heathen Picts and Scots. It was the Jonah- 
 spirit that moved St. Columban — another noble Irish mis- 
 sionary — to forsake his beloved Erin, and scale the Swiss 
 Alps to do the work of his Master. It was the Jonah-spirit 
 that made Pope Gregory, ni the sixth century, send Augus- 
 tine and forty other monks to Britain to convert the heathen 
 Saxons and Angles into "angels." But for these and such 
 like missionary labors we would probably be bowing down 
 before the gods whom our forefathers worshipped in northern 
 Europe. Yet professing Christians, who owe every spiritual 
 blessing and privilege to missions, are often opposed to 
 
DID THE FISH SWALLOW JONAH? 155 
 
 foreign missions ! Truly, the old Ninevites will rise in the 
 judgment and condemn this generation, for they repented 
 at the preaching of Jonah, and behold a greater than Jonah 
 "is here, and bids them "Go preach His Gospel to every 
 creature, and ye will not 1 " 
 
 It is often said by opponents of missionary enterprise ; 
 " If the heathen will be judged according to the light they 
 have — if they will be saved any way — why preach the Gos 
 pel to them ? " To deliver them, we answer, from earthly 
 hells ! I care not whether there is any hell in the spirit- 
 world or not (I believe there is), yet the Gospel should 
 be preached to every human creature on the earth. Jesus 
 Christ came to save men, not from a distant burning prison, 
 but from their sins — to deliver them from the hell of igno- 
 rance, passion, poverty and suffering in this world, as well 
 as from the consequences of these in the next. For this 
 reason, the late Charles Darwin, it is well known, contributed 
 liberally to the support of foreign missions. He, the so- 
 called " enemy of the Faith," was animated by the Jonah — 
 nay, by the Christ-spirit, while professing Christians, who 
 condemn him, refuse to support this great and good work ! 
 Verily, I say unto you, the publicans, harlots, and skeptics 
 go into the kingdom of God before Christians ! 
 
 Finally, the story of Jonah teaches us that a religion of 
 the heart, not a religion of signs and doctrines, will save 
 us. "An evil and adulterous generation," said the Divine 
 Teacher, " seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be 
 given to it." Most people are more anxious to see a mir- 
 acle than to do their duty. Such persons would much 
 rather hear the fish-story in the Book of Jonah defended, 
 than to be told that they should follow the example of 
 Jonah, and go and preach the Gospel — the Gospel of meat 
 and bread to the heathen in our great cities. The one re- 
 quires only a slight intellectual effort ; the other demands 
 money, time, and labor : and these "an evil and adulterous 
 and hypocritical generation " of easy-going Christians are 
 not disposed to give. There are Ninevehs all around us. 
 New York is one, Philadelphia is another, Chicago and 
 Cincinnati are others, and even in smaller cities and towns 
 we find as great wickedness as that which the old prophet 
 preached against in the Assyrian capital. The same voice 
 that bade him go and preach to the old Ninevites bids us 
 proclaim the Gospel of Good Deeds to our fellow-men. 
 
l6o TOI'ICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 But I fear that nothing less than a sea-voyage in a whale's 
 belly can arouse some Christians from their indifference 
 on this subject, and make them realize that conduct, not 
 belief, righteousness, not "signs," is what Christ demands. 
 
 Now, then, my friends, what think you of the history of 
 Jonah ? Do you say that because I interpret this remark- 
 able story differently from what some others do — that be- 
 cause I reject " the fish story " as "not proven" — I destroy 
 the value of the narrative ? On the contrary, its real value 
 and beauty are brought out and emphasized, and its truth 
 made credible, and this is what rational criticism is doing 
 for all the books of the Bible. 
 
 There are many good people who are dreadfully fright- 
 ened because some critics have cited mistakes of Moses 
 and of Paul ; have found scientific, historical, and moral 
 errors in the Bible. They cry, " Great Pan is dead ! Their 
 beloved idol — an infallible Bible — no longerremains and so 
 all is lost ! " The fact is, if they would only stop to con- 
 sider it, the so-called "destructive critics" are doing a 
 great work of reconstruction for which future generations 
 will rise up and call them blessed. They are simply strip- 
 ping off the shocking and incredible accretions that have 
 gathered round the real facts and truths and are presenting 
 us with a rational and credible Bible. Thus, what is lost 
 by treating the Book of Jonah as I have done 1 Abso- 
 lutely nothing of any real importance, but very much is 
 gained. We see that the fish story, while not literally true, 
 has a deeper meaning than we supposed. It expresses 
 the great fact that Jehovah had to ybrce the narrow-minded 
 Jew to become a missionary, just as He forced Saul of 
 Tarsus and others since his time to do the same work : 
 just as He forces many nowadays to perform disagreeable 
 duties. It tells of the mighty operation of the Divine 
 Spirit upon the storm-tossed soul of the prophet, by which 
 he was "born again," and led to see the truth as it is in 
 God. Surely such a criticism should be gratefully wel- 
 comed ! Under its influences ' ' the unreal Bible " vanishes, 
 and "the real Bible" — the true Word of God, takes its 
 place. The old saints and heroes are brought very near 
 to our hearts, and their examples come into our lives as a 
 powerful influence. We seem to see the great missionary, 
 clad in his rough prophet's garb, walking up and down the 
 crowded streets of Nineveh like a modern Whitfield or 
 
DID THE FISH SWALLOW JONAH 1 i6l 
 
 Moody, or a Salvationist, crying, "Yet forty days, and 
 Nineveh shall be overthrown ! " We can see the motley, 
 eager, curious crowrd thronging about him, as they did 
 about St. Paul in Athens, or as they do around a modern 
 missionary in Shanghai or Benares, v^ondering what " this 
 babbler will say." We can hear the diverse opinions that 
 his preaching called forth, some saying he was a good 
 man, other some, " He see'meth to be a setter forth of 
 strange gods." Above all, we can see poor old Jonah 
 sitting under the shade of the gourd-tree, discouraged, 
 dejected, torn by a sense of viAjes failure after the most 
 strenuous efforts. Ah ! who has not sat under Jonah's 
 gourd t As we see him sitting there, and hear his heart- 
 rending prayer for destruction, we think of a Greater than 
 he — the Man of Sorrows, who was despised and rejected 
 of those He came to save, and was pursued through life 
 by the demon of failure, against whom He struggled in the 
 awful shades of Gethsemane, and whom He overcame only 
 when He yielded up the ghost on the Cross of Calvary ! We 
 are saddened ; but our sorrow is turned into joy when we 
 remember that the work of Jesus and the work of Jonah was 
 not a failure after all ! Eight hundred years after his death 
 Jonah received an eulogy from the Saviour of the world — • 
 was held up as a prototype of Himself ! Twenty-eight 
 centuries later he teaches the Christian Church its duty ! 
 Ah ! may we be found worthy to sit down with Jonah and 
 his fellow-saints in the kingdom of God, when the tumult, 
 the turmoil, the battle din of life is over ! Amen. 
 
 II 
 
1 62 TOPICS OF THE, TIMES. 
 
 SERMON V. 
 what's the use of praying ? 
 
 "Text: — ^What is the Almighty, that we should serve Him ? And what 
 profit should we have, if we pray unto Him ? — ^JOB xxi. 15. 
 
 ' ' What's the use of praying ? " is a question often asked 
 by two classes of persons — professed skeptics and nominal 
 Christians. The one class ask it because they doubt the 
 existence of God ; the other because they think of God as 
 a power that works according to unchangeable law. It is, 
 therefore, necessary to answer the first question of the 
 text, namely, ^^ What is the Almighty.?" before we can 
 say "what, profit we shall have if we pray unto Him." 
 
 We Christians believe, then, that God is Spirit — that He 
 is the Power that works in and controls all Nature — that the 
 forces of Nature have their root in the Divine Will. We 
 believe, further, that this Power is Psychical or Intelligent 
 in its nature ; and holding this view of Deity we believe 
 that He has infinite resources upon which He may draw 
 at pleasure to satisfy the wants of His creatures, and that 
 this may be done without disturbing the order He has 
 established. We believe this because we cannot explain 
 even partially the facts of creation on any other supposi- 
 tion. We cannot imagine how the material particles, out 
 of which the world was formed, could have been moved 
 and combined in the wonderful order and shapes they now 
 have, without assuming an Almighty Power endowed with 
 infinite intelligence. "The invisible things of God," St. 
 Paul truly says, "since the creation of the world, are 
 clearly seen, being perceived by the things that are 
 made, even His eternal power and Godhead" (Rom. i. 
 20). Of course, if science did not show that there had 
 been a creation, then this argument would not hold ; but 
 although some scientific men assume that the atoms and 
 
WHAT'S THE USE OF PRAYINd 163 
 
 their forces are eternal, yet none claim that the universe 
 as it now exists is eternal. On the contrary, all believe 
 that it has been developed out of Chaos ; but we claim 
 that this wonderful development itself involved and neces- 
 sitated the operation of an Infinite Power and Intelligence. 
 Even if it be granted that the atoms and their forces are 
 eternal, yet we must believe that those forces were of an 
 intelligent or psychical nature — otherwise the various 
 and manifold and orderly combinations of the atoms into 
 globes and finally in the vital and mental orders of Being 
 cannot be explained. 
 
 Now, the rationality of this idea 01 God, and prayer to 
 such a God, has been frankly admitted by Prof Huxley. 
 "The supposition," he says, "that there is any inconsist- 
 ency between the acceptance of the constancy of natural 
 order and a belief in the efficacy of prayer, is the more 
 unaccountable as it is obviously contradicted by analogies 
 furnished by every-day experience. The belief in the 
 efficacy of prayer depends upon the assumption that there 
 is somebody, somewhere, who is strong enough to deal 
 with the earth and its contents as men deal with things 
 and events which they are strong enough to modify and 
 control, and who is capable of being moved by appeals 
 
 such as. men make to one another Certainly I 
 
 don't lack faith in the constancy of natural order. But I 
 -am convinced that if I were to ask a friend of mine — a 
 bishop, for instance — to do me a kindness which lay within 
 his power, he would do it, and I am unable to see that his 
 action or my request involves any violation of the order 
 of Nature. . . . How is the case altered if my request is 
 preferred to the Most High Being, who, by the supposition, 
 is able to arrest disease, or make the sun stand still in 
 the heavens, just as easily as I can stop my watch, or 
 make it indicate any hour that pleases me ? " The real 
 objection, therefore, to Prof. Huxley's mind, to prayer 
 for material blessings, is not the violation of natural order 
 that an answer to such a prayer is supposed to involve, but 
 "the inadequacy of the (historical) evidence to prove" 
 that any such prayers have been answered. * Prof Tyndall, 
 in his celebrated discussion of " Prayer and Natural Law " 
 in his "Fragments of Science," takes the same position, so 
 
 * "Popular Science Monthly " for Jan., 1888, pp. 355-56. 
 
1 64 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 that we are justified in holding that physical science has 
 no valid objection to urge against prayer for material bless- 
 ings. It admits that the philosophy which postulates an 
 Iniinite Power and Intelligence as God, holding that this 
 Power created and sustains and operates all Nature, may 
 be made to harmonize with the facts of science as truly 
 and easily as the materialistic or agnostic philosophy.* 
 Now the importance of this admission cannot be over- 
 estimated, because the moment that it is shown, as Huxley 
 shows, that prayer for material blessings may be answered 
 withoul violating natural laws, the most serious objection 
 to such prayer vanishes. If such prayer can be answered 
 according to law, then we may more easily believe in it 
 And why not believe in it.? Why not believe that prayer 
 for the recovery of a sick friend may be answered ? May 
 not Kingsley's statement that health is " the order of 
 Nature," and disease is a natural disorder, be profoundly 
 true, so that the cure of a sick person would be the restora- 
 tion not i\\s vio\?iWov\ of natural order? Just here we are 
 reminded of Prof. Tyndall's famous "prayer test." In order 
 to test the efiHcacy of prayer he proposed that two wards 
 in an hospital should be treated as follows : One patient 
 should receive medical attention and the other should 
 simply be prayed for, and the result should be accepted as 
 proof or disproof of the efficacy of prayer. Of cdurse, the 
 proposition raised a storm of controversy, and was de- 
 nounced as blasphemous. But it is really not blasphe- 
 mous, and only two valid objections can be urged against 
 it, viz. : (i) If the subject of prayer had recovered it might 
 have been said that " he would have got well any way 
 without prayer ;" if the patient who received medical atten- 
 tion had died, it might have been said that bad nursing or 
 some other cause killed him ; and so neitherprayer nor medi- 
 cine would really have been tested. Just here, it seems 
 to me, lies the great objection to such a testing of the 
 efficacy of prayer. When an instance of such efficient 
 prayers is cited it may at once be said either that some 
 other cause produced the result or it would have happened 
 any way. Thus, if we cite Elijah's prayer for rain (i Kings 
 xviii. 41-46) as an example of the efficacy of prayer for 
 material blessings, it is immediately said, "The r^in 
 
 * Huxley, "Science and Culture," pp. 268-270 and in "Popular 
 Science Monthly," for Feb., 1887, p. 503. 
 
WHA T'S THE USE OF PRA YING ? 165 
 
 would have come any way ; " and the proposition can 
 neither be denied nor proved. Hence, all that we can 
 hope to do is to show that prayer for material blessings 
 may be answered according to law, and this is sufficient 
 to afford a basis for such prayers. Take a storm at sea, 
 for instance. It is said that it is absurd to pray against 
 the storm, for the forces which have been gathered up 
 must spend themselves — ^just as steam in a boiler must 
 escape even if it burst it. Yes, but the question is, cannot 
 the Divine Will (which controls all natural forces) so 
 arrange it that the forces pent up in the storm may spend 
 themselves without injuring the passengers on board a ves- 
 sel } We may quiet troubled waters by pouring oil on them, 
 and this does not violate the laws of gaseous pressure ; and 
 why cannot the Divine Will perform an analogous opera- 
 tion by which the storm may go on its course without 
 harming any one who ma)' be on the ocean ? It is quite 
 rational to assert that "He who ruleth the raging of the 
 sea," He who has set His decree, saying, " Hitherto 
 shalt thou come, but no farther, and here shall thy proud 
 waves be staid," He who upholdeth all things by the word 
 of His power can do this, and though we may not be 
 able to prove that He has done it, yet this is not neces- 
 sary to show the rationahty of prayer for material bless- 
 ings. 
 
 The second objection to Prof. Tyndall's proposition to 
 test the efficacy of prayer as you would a hypothesis about 
 the origin of life is that, while it is not blasphemous, it cer- 
 tainly seems highly improper and irreverent. It is as if a 
 child were to say to his father, "I don't believe you can 
 do thus and so, but just to see if you can I dare you to do 
 it ! " And surely that would not be considered a very 
 respectful attitude to take towards one's father, and the 
 parent who had so audacious a child would be justified in 
 refusing his request on the ground of his audacity. While 
 prayer does come within the physical sphere — is (by the 
 hypothesis) an agent in producing material results — yet it 
 is something more. It is primarily a moral and spiritual 
 act, and appeals to the will and feelings of an Infinite Per- 
 sonality, and therefore moral and spiritual considerations 
 should be taken into account. The man who prays be- 
 lieves in a Being capable of answering prayer ; he believes 
 that the Almighty is an Infinite Intelligence ; if he does not 
 
1 66 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 — if he believes that the Almighty is a blind Fate or Force 
 that works according- to necessity — because it cannot work 
 otherwise, then he is simply a fool to pray to such a God 
 — or rather no-God. The prime and fundamental ques- 
 tion, therefore, is, ''What is the Almighty?" And once 
 answer that He is the Infinite and Eternal Power that oper- 
 ates Nature, that this power is essentially_/ree and intelli- 
 gent, and you have settled the question about prayer. And' 
 the proper way to ascertain the nature of God, or the 
 Power that controls Nature, is not to set up prayer tests 
 but to examine the facts of Creation, and if they cannot be 
 explained by the materialistic or agnostic hypothesis — or 
 rather if they can be better explained by postulating an 
 intelligent (or Personal, Spiritual) Deity than by either of 
 those hypotheses, then you may rationally pray to this 
 Deity for your " daily bread," or any other blessing. But, 
 of course, prayer cannot and should not take the place of 
 action on our part. On the contrary, the most prayerful 
 man will be most active and industrious in studying the 
 laws and utilizing the forces of Nature. There is plenty of 
 room for the operation of the Divine Will over and above 
 our own action. After we have done our utmost God may 
 have a most important part to perform. Thus we may 
 plant our corn, but between seed-time and harvest there 
 will be plenty of need of the influences of the Divine Will 
 in the development and maturing of the gram, and it is 
 highly proper that we should pray for a production of 
 " daily bread. " A physician may exhaust his skill in treat- 
 ing a patient, and then God may have to heal him-. And 
 so we see that the Divine Will may and must supplement 
 and complete the action of the human will. We must work 
 out our own temporal and eternal salvation, but God works 
 in and with us. Each one has his sphere of action. 
 
 II. We are now prepared to answer the second question 
 of the text, viz. : "What profit shall we have if we pray .' " 
 
 Many who deny the profitableness of prayer for material 
 blessings assert the rationality and profitableness of prayer 
 for spiritual blessings. But they forget that Law reigns in 
 the spiritual as well as in the physical world ; and hence, 
 if it be irrational to pray for material blessings, it is equally 
 so to pray for spiritual blessing.s. Indeed, I am not sure 
 that there are not more difficulties attaching to prayer for 
 spiritual benefits than there are to prayer for material 
 
WHAT'S THE USE OF PRAYING? 167 
 
 things. God knoweth that we have need of spiritual as 
 well as physical things, and it is therefore reasonably 
 asked, Will He not give them to us without our asking for 
 them ? Does it not seem presumptuous dictation on our 
 part to ask Him for anything? Is it not a reflection upon 
 His love and knowledge, as though He did not know or 
 would not give what we need ? We answer by asking : 
 Is it presumptuous dictation for a child to ask his father for 
 a present ? Is it a reflection upon His love or knowledge ? 
 On the contrary, is it not the proper attitude of the child 
 towards that Being who gave him life and all things? Is 
 it not simply an acknowledgment of the filial relation, of 
 the child's dependence upon his father? Yes, and the 
 proper attitude of the creature towards the Creator — the 
 Being in whom he lives and moves and from whom he 
 derives all things — is the prayerful attitude. By asking 
 God for material and spiritual blessings we admit our 
 dependence upon Him, and surely such an admission is 
 not only proper but profitable. Prayer is the highest act of 
 worship, and as such it is meet that we should render it 
 unto the Creator. Of course, in praying for material things, 
 we must include the condition, "if it be Thy will" — and 
 this not because we doubt God's power or goodness, but 
 because we are ignorant as to the possible effects which 
 the granting of our request may have upon the other mem- 
 bers of the human family. Manifestly, no true brother 
 would desire his father to give him a blessing, the giving 
 of which would injure another member of the household, 
 and yet through ignorance he might ask for it. So we 
 may pray for things the granting of which would injure 
 others — or even ourselves. A parent rightly refuses to give 
 a sharp knife to a young child lest he cut his finger ; and 
 so God may withhold things for which we pray because 
 they would either injure ourselves or others. Hence, when 
 we pray it must be as the great Petitioner did, "Never- 
 theless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt,'' and Tieep on 
 praying. 
 
 But the begging prayer of which I have just been speak- 
 ing is the lowest form of prayer, and perhaps the least 
 profitable. The prayer of thanksgiving is more important 
 than the petition. Surely no earnest-minded man will 
 object to giving thanks for the blessings of life. Even Col. 
 Ingersoll tells us that thankfulness is right and beautiful. 
 
1 68 TOPICS OP THE TIMES. 
 
 I kaow, of course, that we often feel that life is not worth 
 living ; that we have nothing to be thankful for ; that it 
 would have been better if we had not been born. But 
 these feelings are exceptional, and are due to peculiar cir- 
 cumstances. Few of us will really agree with Byron when 
 he says : 
 
 " Count o'er the joys thine hours have known. 
 Count o'er thy days from anguish free ; 
 And know, whatever thou hast been, 
 'Tis something better not to be." 
 
 If we were to cast up fully and carefully the balance- 
 sheet of pleasures and pains, most of us would find that, 
 despite the days of anguish through which we have passed, 
 our lives have had much, very much in them to be thank- 
 ful for. We have had, at least, a few true, loving, devoted 
 friends, who have stood by us when others deserted us. 
 We have had, at least, the necessaries of life supplied. We 
 may have enjoyed good health (the greatest of blessings) 
 the greater part of our lives. We may have had the ad- 
 vantages of some education, the pleasures of books, of 
 travel and of congenial society, and we may have got even 
 a considerable amount of worldly goods and have attained 
 to a position of influence in our respective communities ; 
 and it were sinful ingratitude in us not to be thankful for 
 all these things. 
 
 I know, of course, that there are many thousands in the 
 slums of our great cities to whom life is a heavy burden, 
 and it must be admitted that these persons have nothing 
 to be thankful for ; non-existence would be a blessing tc 
 them. But these are decidedly in the minority, and thank 
 God there is a spirit abroad in our land which is earnestly 
 seeking the betterment of the conditions of these people ; 
 and for this they and we may be thankful. Let us, then, 
 not brood over our miseries or the trials and troubles of 
 others, but look for the silvery lining behind the cloud, and 
 we shall, at least, in most cases, find it 
 
 Finally, there is the prayer of simple adoration, and this 
 I consider the highest form of prayer. We make a 
 great mistake by supposing that the chief end of prayer 
 is the attainment of certain material things. "All 
 prayer,'' says Robertson, " is to chang-e the will human 
 into submission to the will Divine. " Many men say that 
 
WHAT'S THE USE OF PRAYING? 169 
 
 prayer affects the pray-er more than it does God, and so 
 they conclude that prayer is useless ; whereas the proper 
 conclusion would be that this very fact makes prayer all 
 the more necessary. What effect does prayer, real prayer, 
 have upon the pray-er ? What profit is it to him ? 
 
 First, it develops in him a humble spirit. It makes him 
 realize his dependence upon a Higher Power. Some one 
 has facetiously said: "What a blessed thing it is that 
 Providence has implanted in each one of us the feeling, 
 ' /am the centre of the universe ' ! " But this feeling pro- 
 duces many evils. Self-esteem is all right, but self-con- 
 ceit is abominable ; and it is often hard to draw the line 
 between the twa We cannot, therefore, be too earnestly 
 on our guard against a self-confidence and self-reliance that 
 puts even God Himself on one side. This is practically 
 what men do who refuse to recognize Him in all their ways 
 and doings. They depend on self; they make self their 
 God ; and no earnest-minded man can approve such a 
 course. Who does not admire the meek and humble man, 
 and believe that he should rule the earth .' Who can read 
 the story of Moses pleading with the Lord that He should 
 send some one more worthy than himself to deliver the 
 Israelites from Egyptian bondage, and not feel the great- 
 ness of the man ? Who is not drawn to Him who came 
 not to be ministered unto but to minister to the lowest and 
 the poorest.' 
 
 How eager is every biographer to record the fact that 
 the man whose life he is writing was an humble-minded, 
 unassuming man. This is what made Sir Isaac Newton 
 and Charles Darwin so attractive and powerful. And 
 while neither of these men perhaps prayed in the conven- 
 tional manner, yet both possessed the prayerful spirit — the 
 humble spirit which said, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant 
 heareth. " Each cherished the receptive spirit ; felt his 
 littleness and the magnitude of the Creator and Creation. 
 It may be, too, that this humility was due to early reli- 
 gious training. At any rate prayer is a great producer of 
 humility. The very posture of prayer — the bending of 
 the knee or the bowing of the head is conducive to hunible- 
 ness. This is the significance of all the prostrations before 
 kings and nobles, and this is why the proud man refuses 
 to pray. 
 
 Again, prayer teaches reverence. The man who never 
 
170 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 prays is almost sure to be an irreverent man. There may 
 be exceptions to this statement — Mr. Darwin probably was 
 one, but as a rule it is perfectly true. Reverence is just as 
 necessary to the discovery of truth as humility is, and it 
 is commended in all who possess it. The scoffer will 
 scarcely find the truth. He considers life a farce or a joke. 
 He seeks to gratify self and his sensual desires. He does 
 not pierce beneath the surface ot things to the unseen, the 
 ■ spiritual and the eternal. But the man of prayer does. 
 The very fact that he prays shovifs that he believes in an 
 Unknown Power who holds his destiny in His hands. He 
 therefore watches the motions of this Power throughout 
 Nature with awe and reverence. When he stands beside 
 the casket or the tomb he recognizes that here is one of 
 the most mysterious manifestations of the Unknown Power. 
 It is impossible for such a man to be a scoffer. The prayer- 
 ful spirit and posture are exclusive of this proud and scoff- 
 ing spirit. 
 
 But the chief benefit of prayer is that it helps us to over- 
 come our sins. I do not mean that prayer has a magical 
 effect upon us — that it calls down some mysterious spirit 
 or influence from the skies, who works in us both to will 
 and to do of His good pleasure. It may do this ; we know 
 not the power of matter, much less the power of spirit, 
 and so we may not deny this idea of prayer any more 
 than we may deny that God may give us material bless- 
 ings for the asking. Whether "prayer may move the arm 
 that moves the world " or not, it is quite conceivable and not 
 at all irrational that God may condition the bestowment of 
 material and spiritual blessings upon the asking for them, 
 and this without disturbing the physical or the spiritual 
 order, and hence we may believe that the gift of strength 
 to overcome sin — the influx of the Divine Power into the 
 human soul — may depend upon the willingness and desire of 
 the soul to receive it ; indeed, granting that the soul is es- 
 sentially 2ifree power, it must consent to and desire the 
 influence of the Divine Spirit, else its freedom would be de- 
 stroyed. But while, I have no objection to this view of 
 prayer, yet I am now speaking of a simpler operation of 
 prayer, viz., its/>arj;^m^e^ec/upon the soul. Christ rightly 
 said, the man who looketh upon a woman to lust after her 
 hath committed adultery already with her in his heart, and 
 He urged that we should cleanse that which is within the 
 
WHAT'S THE USE OF PRAYING? 
 
 171 
 
 cup and platter, and the outside would cleanse itself. In 
 other words, pure thoughts must breed pure actions, as evil 
 thoughts must breed evil actions. 
 
 The covetous man suffers the thought of money to take 
 such possession of his soul that he finally cannot refrain 
 from stealing. The licentious man dwells on the pleasures 
 of sensual indulgence until he betrays the innocent, truth- 
 ful girl by his side. But prayer prevents all this. I 
 mean real prayer does — not the prayer of the hypocrite 
 and Pharisee. The man who yearns for purity and wres- 
 tles by his bedside for power to overcome temptation will 
 never rob a bank or debauch a fellow-creature. Just as the 
 confession of our sins to our fellow-men often helps us to 
 live more worthy lives, so their confession to the great God 
 helps. Just as the thought that the eye of man is upon us 
 — that public opinion would condemn our action — prevents 
 us from doing things we would otherwise do, so, in a 
 higher degree, the thought (expressed in prayer) that the 
 Creator's eye is upon us and that the Almighty disapproves 
 of certain acts, prevents us from committing them. None 
 but the atheist is excusable for not praying, for prayer is 
 the great purifier of the soul. 
 
 ' We thus see that the profit of prayer is very great. It 
 develops and strengthens our moral and spiritual natures. 
 It first of all expresses our belief in a Personal (or Spiritual) 
 God, who resides in and presides over nature, and not only 
 gives us our daily bread by His ordinary providence, but 
 may also give us special material blessings. It cultivates 
 a spirit of thankfulness, a spirit of humiUty, a spirit of 
 reverence and a spirit of purity, and surely no one will 
 deny that these are great benefits to human nature — to in- 
 dividuals and to society; without them earth would be hell. 
 Man has a moral and spiritual nature, as well as an intel- 
 lect ; and while I agree with the most earnest and enthusi- 
 astic advocate of intellectual development both in the in- 
 dividual and society, yet I urge just as earnestly that the 
 man who develops only his intellectual nature is only half 
 a man. Many of the mightiest and wisest men of earth 
 have been the most prayerful. Think of Jacob wrestling 
 all night with the Unknown One and refusing to let Him 
 go until He blessed him ! Think of Moses, the Solon of 
 Israel, pleading with Jehovah in the solitudes of Sinai ! 
 Think of David, the great poet-king crying, "Against Thee 
 
172 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight ! " 
 Think of Solomon, the wisest of monarchs, begging for 
 wisdom from the Divine Word and offering up that im- 
 mortal prayer at the dedication of his magnificent Temple 
 (i Kings viii.) Think of the glorious company of the 
 Apostles, the goodly fellowship of the prophets, the noble 
 army of martyrs whose burning words of prayer come float- 
 ing across the ages as incense from the altars of holy 
 hearts ! Above all, think of Him who gave us the " Lord's 
 Prayer,' and who during His whole life was wont to retire 
 regularly to mountain or desert to commune with the 
 Father ! Think of Him in the awful shades of Gethsem- 
 ane, and listen to His heartrending cry upon the Crqss, 
 Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do ! and 
 tell me whether you can believe that the only answer re- 
 ceived was a hollow echo through the vast void of nothing- 
 ness? No ! No ! Let him who can believe this do so ; 
 but as foi me, I believe that the instinct of prayer in man 
 came from God and is satisfied by God, and the treasures 
 of this world — the great discoveries of the intellect — are 
 as baubles compared with the spiritual blessings prayer 
 obtains. Give me wealth, but let it be sanctified wealth. 
 Give me intellect, but let it be sanctified intellect ! Give 
 me the intellectual and the material, but above all give me 
 the spiritual, for in death the material must vanish away, 
 but the spiritual must abide forever and ever ! 
 
EVIDENCE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH. 173 
 
 SERMON VI. 
 
 WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH ? 
 Text : — It a man die, shall he live again ? — Job xiv. 14. 
 
 This question of the old patriarch comes echoing across 
 the centuries with all the solemii importance that it had 
 when first asked. Indeed, in our day, the belief in immor- 
 tality has perhaps been more widely questioned and 
 doubted than ever before, and Job's question is therefore 
 more pertinent and important than ever. It is a question, 
 too, that should strike silence to the soul of even the most 
 frivolous and thoughtless. " Man that is born of a woman 
 hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He 
 Cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower : he fleeth as it 
 were a shadow, and continueth not. Man dieth and wast- 
 eth away : yea, man giveth up the ghost and where is 
 he? " It is not a mark ot'intellect or of character to speak 
 lightly of death. It is meet that we should enter the cham- 
 ber of death with muffled tread and silent tongue and 
 solemn mien, for we stand before the most awful and 
 mysterious fact of existence. "Talk as we will," says 
 Frederick Robertson, "of immortality, there is an obsti- 
 nate feeling that we cannot master, that we end in death. 
 .When we die we are surrendering all that with which we 
 have associated existence. All that we know of life is 
 connected with a shape, a form, a body of materialism ; 
 and now that that is palpably melting away into nothing- 
 ness, the coldest heart may be excused a shudder, when 
 there is forced upon it, in spite of itself, the idea of ceasing 
 forever to be." 
 
 Another fact even more terrible than this, is that death is 
 not confined to human beings, but sweeps through the 
 whole lower creation : and while some profound thinkers 
 have believed in the future existence of at least the noblest 
 
174 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 of the lower animals, yet the vast majority hold that man 
 alone will be immortal. But why should he prove an ex- 
 ception to the great law of death ? The grandeur of man, 
 it is said, excludes him from the fate of other animals. 
 He is "the lord of creation ; " myriads of ages and infinite 
 power and wisdom have been spent in his production, and 
 it is irrational to believe that all this will be wasted — that 
 God (or Nature, if you please) should build so noble a 
 structure, as a child builds a playhouse, just for the purpose 
 of knocking it down. There is much truth in this conten- 
 tion, yet this fact alone would not convince us of man's 
 immortality, for consider the grandeur of the lower 
 animals ! Millions of ages and infinite power and wisdom 
 have been spent in the production of the horse or the dog, 
 yet they die and return to the dust from which they were 
 originally taken. Or take even the insects. "Go," says 
 Robertson, ' ' and stand some summer evening by the river- 
 side ; you will see the May-fly sporting out its little hour, 
 in dense masses of insect life, darkening the air a few feet 
 above the gentle swell of the water. The heat of that very 
 afternoon brought them into existence. Every gauze wing 
 is traversed by ten thousand fibres which defy the micro- 
 scope to find a flaw in their perfection. The omniscience 
 and the care bestowed upon that exquisite anatomy, one 
 would think, cannot be destined to be wasted in a moment 
 
 Yet so it is : when the sun has sunk below the trees its 
 little life is done. Yesterday it was not ; to-morrow it 
 will not be. God has bidden it be happy for one evening. 
 It has no right or claim to a second, and in the universe 
 that marvelous life has appeared once and will appear no 
 more. May not the race of man sink like the generation 
 of the May-fly ? Why cannot the Creator, so lavish in 
 His resources, afford to annihilate souls as He annihilates 
 insects ! " This is a very awful and startling question, fof 
 man, after all, is a mere atom of an atom in this great 
 universe. Still, there are facts which at least cannot.be 
 lightly set aside, and which, to many minds, many of the 
 profoundest minds, minds that are absolutely free from 
 theological bias, seem sufficient to justify the belief that 
 man shall live after death. 
 
 First of all, science has established no fact more clearly 
 than it has the radical distinction between the soul and the 
 body. One witness out of many to this fact is all we need 
 
EVIDENCE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH. 175 
 
 cite, Prof. John Tyndall. In his well-known and oft-quoted 
 address or article on "Scientific Materialism " he says : 
 "Granted that a definite thought, anda definite molecular 
 action in the brain, occur simultaneously, we do not pos- 
 sess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment 
 of the organ, which would enable us to pass by a process 
 of reasoning from the one to the other. They appear together, 
 hut we do not know why. Were our minds and senses so 
 expanded, strengthened and illuminated as to enable us 
 to see and feel the very molecules of the brain ; were we 
 capable of following all their motions, all their groupings, 
 all their electric discharges, if such there be ; and were we 
 intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of 
 thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the 
 solution of the problem, ' How are these physical processes 
 connected with the facts of consciousness ?' The chasm 
 between the two classes of phenomena would still remain 
 intellectually impassable. Let the consciousness of love, 
 for example, be associated with a right-handed spiral motion 
 of the molecules of the brain, and the consciousness of hate 
 with a left-handed spiral motion. We should then know 
 when we love that the motion is in one direction, and 
 when we hate that the motion was in the other ; but Why.? 
 would remain as unanswerable as before." 
 
 In his Belfast address, he says : ' ' We can trace the de- 
 velopment of a nervous system, and correlate with it the 
 parallel phenomena of sensation and thought. We see 
 with undoubted certainty that they go hand in hand. But 
 we try to soar in a vacuum the moment we seek to com- 
 prehend the connection between the two."* The authority 
 and truth of these words will not be questioned by any 
 eminent scientist, and so we see that the idea of a few 
 rather superficial thinkers that the brain produces thought, 
 is the cause of thought — that the mind is a product or an 
 appendage of the body, is false. The brain does not secrete 
 thought as the liver secretes bile, as it used to be main- 
 tained, nor is thought a product of molecular motion, as 
 sound is. You might make all the particles in the universe 
 clash together, but they would not produce a thought ; 
 they would make a fearful clatter, but out of that crash of 
 matter no Hamlet or Macbeth would arise in all his majesty 
 and beauty. Ideas are not material things and cannot be 
 * " Fragments of Science," pp. 420, 528, 
 
176 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 created by a material process; they cannot be manufactured. 
 The brain is, at most, simply the organ of the mind, and 
 this organ would give forth no music without the soul. 
 But this radical distinction between mind and body is very 
 important and significant, for association is not the same as 
 dependence, and two things that are temporarily associated 
 together may finally be separated and lead an independent 
 existence. The piano and pianist are frequently associ- 
 ated together, but are easily separated, and the pianist may 
 get another instrument to play upon. So when it is shown 
 that, although the soul and body are now associated to- 
 gether in the most intimate manner, yet they are VioXiden- 
 tical and inseparable, one of the greatest objections to the 
 soul's survival after the death of the body is removed, for 
 it is precisely because all we know of life is connected 
 with a material body — it is because we feel that we are so 
 inextricably mixed up with our bodies that when they are 
 dissolved we must go with them — that we dread death as 
 the end of all. That dread is seen to be groundless. It 
 is only fair to Tyndall, Spencer, Huxley, and their school, 
 to say that, while they admit that the soul and body are 
 not identical — are, indeed, radically distinct — they never- 
 theless hold that the post-mortem, survival of the soul can- 
 not be proved. Their idea seems to be this : The body 
 consists of a series of states ; it changes its nature, or con- 
 stitution, every seven years or thereabouts, and so the 
 bodies we now have are not those we had in childhood. 
 The soul, likewise, is a series of thoughts and feelings ; it 
 changes with the body ; the thoughts' of the child are not 
 the thoughts of the man. We have, therefore, according 
 to these philosophers, two series of phenomena, intimately 
 associated together yet radically different, and we believe 
 that one of the series will by and by cease to exist ; why 
 not believe that both will.? Why should one continue 
 after the other ends.? These profound thinkers doubt 
 whether one will continue when the other ceases. But 
 Prof. Huxley frankly admits that one of the series may 
 continue without the other. "Leaving aside the problem 
 of the substance of the soul," he says: "and taking the 
 word 'soul ' simply as a name for the series of mental phe- 
 nomena (thoughts, etc. ) which make up an individual mind : 
 it remains open to us to ask whether that series commenced 
 with, or he/ore, the series of phenomena which constitute 
 
EVIDENCE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH. 177 
 
 the corresponding individual body ; and whether it ter- 
 minates with the end of the bodily series, or goes on after 
 the existence of the body has ended. "* It is thus seen and 
 admitted that even if the soul be only a series of thoughts 
 and feelings, not a distinct substance or thing, its immor- 
 tality is still possible. But this doctrine of the soul is re- 
 jected by the profoundest metaphysicians, who claim that 
 the soul is a thing, not a series of somethings. It is true 
 that my thoughts as a man are not the same as the thoughts 
 I had as a boy, but /am the same ; memory and conscious- 
 ness declare it. If my soul is not the same soul that said 
 and did so many naughty things twenty years ago, why 
 do I remember them with remorse 'i How could I remem- 
 ber them at all? How could the new pieces of soul-stuff 
 have got and retained the impressions of the old soul whose 
 place they had taken P No ! The soul is not a mere series 
 of thoughts and feelings. There must be some thing to 
 think and feel before there could be thoughts and feelings. 
 As well talk about sensation and motion without a body to 
 move as talk about thoughts without something to think. 
 Moreover, I know I am the same person that I was twenty 
 years ago, albeit a more highly developed person, and this 
 simple fact of consciousness smashes to atoms all analogies 
 between bodily changes and mental states. Hence we 
 conclude that neither materialism nor agnosticism can dis- 
 prove either the existence or immortality of the soul. 
 
 The second important fact which points to the immor- 
 tality of the soul is its derivation from a power or energy 
 which is itself eternal. Mr. Spencer tells us that "the 
 Power manifested throughout the universe distinguished as 
 material, is the same Povs'er which in ourselves wells up 
 under the form of consciousness, "f He means that the 
 energy which operates nature is two sided ; in one form it 
 appears as matter, in another as mind. He does not 
 mean that the soul is material, or a product of matter, for 
 he tells us that it would be more reasonable to translate 
 physical phenomena into mental phenomena, to call matter 
 spirit or a mode of spirit, than it would be to convert mind 
 into matter. J Since, then, Spencer no less than Tyndall 
 admits the radical distinction between the soul and body 
 
 * Huxley's " Life of Hume," Chapter IX, on "The Soul and Immor- 
 tality." 
 
 t " Ecclesiastical Institutions," p. 839. 
 J " Principles of Psychology, " I., pp. 162 and 159. 
 
 12 
 
178 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 and since he further tells us that the soul is an efflu- 
 ence from the Eternal Energy which created and sustains 
 all nature—since it is a spark flashed forth from the Divine 
 Light, we believe that the soul partakes of the nature of 
 its source, and may therefore exist with it forever. In 
 other words, Mr. Spencer really agrees with the writer of 
 Genesis i. that man is created in the image of God ; his 
 soul is a miniature of the great Soul of the universe, and 
 hence is capable of continued, everlasting existence. 
 
 But it would be urged just here, Mr. Spencer claims that 
 all things proceed from this one Power, the lower animals, 
 as well as man, and hence if such a derivation of the human 
 soul proves its immortality, we must conclude that the 
 lower animals, that come from the same source, are like- 
 wise immortal. This is one of the greatest diflScuIties in 
 the doctrine of man's immortality, but I think the theory ot 
 evolution itself removes it 
 
 According to this doctrine, there has been going on from 
 the beginning of the present order of things a twofold 
 development — viz., a development of material _/br/ras and 
 a development of immaterial yorces. 
 
 The physical evolution resulted in the human body, the 
 highest material form possible, and force evolution pro- 
 duced the human soul. By reason of this onward and up- 
 ward movement of forces they would finally become 
 so concentrated and highly developed as to form a power 
 capable of individual and continued existence. The soul of 
 man, therefore, may be believed to have been individualized, 
 that the return of the lower forces to the fund from which 
 they were taken does not involve its destruction. 
 
 The Creator has erected the Temple of Humanity by 
 means of the scaffolding of the lower creation, but the remo- 
 val of this scaffolding will not destroy the temple. While, 
 therefore, the lower forces, gravity, chemical affinity, and 
 even life and the anima (or mind) o' the lower animals 
 may be correlated and convertible one into the other, yet 
 the high development of the human spirit may be believed 
 to exclude it from their final fate. 
 
 The superiority of man to the lower creatures is aamitted 
 by all, and urgently insisted upon by the evolutionists. 
 
 Man can solve the great problems of mathematics ; he 
 can reason about the grand questions of Duty ; he can 
 turn his eye inward and reflect upon that mysterious some- 
 
EVIDENCE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH. 179 
 
 thing called Self; he can study its actions and laws ; he 
 can glance backward through the misty ages and picture 
 to his mmd's eye that mighty chaos that rolled through the 
 infinite darkness "in the Beginning"; he can trace the 
 gradual development of this magnificent universe out of 
 that chaotic clash of atoms ; he can rise superior to all this, 
 and think of the Supreme Being who gave birth to this 
 wonderful order, and before that Being he bows his head 
 and bends his knee in profoundest humility and awe ! 
 This cannot the lower creatures do. We cheerfully admit 
 theii wonderful powers of mind and body ; we do not deny 
 that we are closely related to them ; we gladly recognize 
 all the merits of brute creation ; yet we must still consider 
 it brutal and far inferior to man. The glimmerings of 
 mind in our humble kindred were but the streaks which 
 preceded the rising of the sun of humanity, and as he 
 ascends towards the zenith of eternity they disappear in 
 their primeval darkness. 
 
 A third fact which points to a life after death is the failure 
 involved in creation on any other supposition. It may be 
 hard to believe in the soul's immortality ; difficulties sur- 
 round this belief ; but the belief that death ends all is more 
 mcredible. If this be so, then, indeed, the great develop- 
 ment stretching back through the ages to the time when 
 the morning stars of creation sang together, has been a 
 movement without a meaning or a goal. God (or Nature, 
 if you please) has been guilty of the folly of constructing 
 a magnificent organism just for the purpose of destroying 
 it. But if death does not end all ; if the outward and mate- 
 rial be simply a sign of the inward and spiritual — if the 
 grand process of development is to continue — if, in short 
 the finite and temporal will develop into the infinite and eter- 
 nal — then there is some reason in the universe ; otherwise 
 it is " confusion worse confounded." Hence we may 
 hold, with Prof. John Fiske, that the more thoroughly we 
 compvrehend that process of evolution by which things 
 have come to be w^hat they are, the more we are likely to 
 feel that to deny the everlasting persistence of the spir- 
 itual element in man is to rob the whole process of its 
 meaning. Such a crowning wonder (as the soul's immor- 
 tality) seems no more than the fit climax to a creative 
 work that has been ineffably beautiful and marvelous in 
 all its myriad stages." 
 
i8o TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 It is one of Mr. Spencer's profoundest ideas that the 
 Deity may be something higher than Personality : He may 
 transcend Intelligence and Will as far as these transcend 
 mechanical motion.* 
 
 May not this be the germ of truth in the Trinitarian idea 
 of God ? Certainly the " personality " spoken of by Trini- 
 tarians is something quite different from personality such 
 as we know it in every-day life. 
 
 But if God be something higher than we can imagine 
 (and who doubts this ?), if there be modes of Being in 
 the unseen world and beyond the tomb which far transcend 
 any which we know on earth, does not a boundless vista 
 of existence open up before us adown which may march 
 the great procession of Humanity through the coming ages 
 of the future ? At any rate, it is more reasonable to believe 
 in such a continuous development of things, especially of 
 souls, than it is to believe in their disappearance in the 
 night of nothingness. 
 
 A fourth fact which suggests immortality is the universal 
 belief of man in this doctrine. There is no belief so uni- 
 versal. Tribes of savages have been found that had no 
 religion — or, at least, none that the discoverers considered 
 worthy of this sacred name — but no tribe has been found 
 that did not believe in ghosts, and, therefore, in the sur- 
 vival of the soul after death. 
 
 The ancient Egyptians embalmed the bodies of their 
 dead in order that the soul might reinhabit them ; the old 
 Greeks and Romans pictured the unseen world filled with 
 the ghostly shades of the departed wandering amid the 
 delights of Elysium or in the gloomy realms of Tartarus; 
 the Hindu and the Buddhist dream of eternal rest in the 
 bosom of Brahm ; the Chinese worship their ancestors ; 
 the American Indian looks forward to tlie " happy hunting- 
 ground " ; the lowest savage of Africa or the South Sea 
 Islands believes that the ghosts of his dead friends lurk in 
 the neighboring bush or roam about their old homes when 
 night flings her dark mantle over the earth. This uni- 
 versal belief in immortality declares it to be a natural in- 
 stinct of the soul, and we cannot believe that all men are 
 deceived — that the deepest and most universal beliefs of 
 the soul are false — that man's nature gives him the lie. 
 The soul believes in its own persistence, and feels itself 
 
 * '.' First Principles," p. 109. 
 
EVIDENCE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH. i8i 
 
 capable of eternal life, and yearns for it. In the physical 
 world no organ exists without a sphere of action : every 
 part of the body performs a definite work. The eye is 
 made for seeing, and, accordingly, light is furnished that 
 it may see. The ear is made for hearing, and, accord- 
 ingly, the atmosphere exists as a medium of sound. The 
 hand is made to feel, and hence there are things to be felt. 
 Shall we, then, believe that the eye of the soul may per- 
 ceive the Eternal City as Moses saw the Promised Land 
 from Pisgah's lofty height only to die without entering into 
 its joys } Shall we believe that the spiritual ear may catch 
 the strains of celestial choirs only to have them drowned 
 by the roar and crash of perishing worlds ? Shall we 
 believe that the hand of faith may grasp the throne of the 
 Eternal only to be hurled into the abyss of Annihilation ? 
 Never ! All the voices of the past protest, and declare that 
 beyond the snows of this chill world "there is a land of 
 pure delight, where saints immortal reign." As I stand 
 beside the good king David, bending over the dead body 
 of his beloved child, and hear him cry, "I shall go to him, 
 though he shall not return to me ! " As I sit with Job in 
 his sackcloth and ashes, and listen to that ringing exclama- 
 tion, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and apart from my 
 flesh shall I see God ! " As I witness the stoning of saintly 
 Stephen, and hear his death-cry, "Lord Jesus, receive my 
 spirit ! " As I stand in Paul's prison cell, and hear him 
 exclaim, in full assurance of faith, " I have fought a good 
 fight, I have finished my course, and henceforth there is 
 laid up for me a crown of righteousness ! " As I stand 
 amid the flames of the martyrs, and witness them submit- 
 ting to the fires of hell in the hope of the joys of heaven, 
 I cannot believe that there is nothing immortal — nothing 
 Godlike in man ! Above all, when I hear that heart-rend- 
 ing cry of Christ upon the cross : "Father, into Thy hands 
 I commend My spirit ! " I cannotbelieve that only a hollow 
 echo through the vast void of nothingness was its only 
 answer. It would be giving the lie to the deepest convic- 
 tions of the soul ; it would be stamping the noblest work 
 of God with the mark of deception and sham, and this 
 would be irrational. 
 
 It is said that Death is the bourne whence no traveller 
 e'er returns, and this is generally true ; yet I think we have 
 sufficient evidence to show that there has been, at least, 
 
1 82 TOPICS OF THE TIMES, 
 
 one great exception to this rule, in the case of Jesus Christ. 
 The resurrection of Christ, along with all other miracles, 
 has been most violently attacked by the ruthless skepticism 
 of our day, and it has been shown that many details of the 
 stories relating this event are of unknown authorship and 
 are unreliable, and yet, despite all, it seems to me that the 
 kernel of the stories is untouched. Let it be granted that 
 the authorship of the Gospels, as they now stand, is un- 
 known — that the authorship of many of the Epistles is 
 equally unknown — yet all these writings confessedly date 
 back to the close of the first and beginning of the second 
 century of our era, while the Epistles to the Romans, Gala- 
 tians, Corinthians and some others are admitted to be 
 the works of St. Paul, written some twenty-five years 
 after the death of Christ. Strip off whatever accretions 
 seem to have gathered around the faith in the re-appear- 
 ance of Jesus after death to His disciples ; admit that His 
 bodily resurrection cannot be proved — yet even so we may 
 believe that He made Himself known to His disciples after 
 His death ; He sent them " a telegram from heaven " that 
 He was alive for evermore. It cannot be denied that all 
 the disciples believed that they saw the risen Jesus. Hun- 
 dreds of them believed they saw Him, at the same time, 
 and they succeeded in convincing others of this fact, and 
 upon it founded the Christian Church. The theory of vis- 
 ions — the claim that they only imagined that they saw Him 
 alive after He was dead — is incredible. One condition is 
 indispensably necessary to such visions or imaginings. 
 Those who have them are generally possessed by " a fixed 
 idea" that a certain event will happen.* But this neces- 
 sary condition was not supplied in the case of the disciples 
 of Christ. The crucifixion utterly shattered all their hopes 
 about His establishing the Messiah's kingdom, and the 
 story about Thomas's doubt, as well as the stories about the 
 disbelief of the other disciples in the resurrection, show that 
 they did not expect any such occurrence, t Something, 
 therefore, must have happened outside of the minds of the 
 disciples to create this belief, and, taking the New Testa- 
 ment as a whole, it seems to me not irrational to believe 
 that Jesus appeared as a spirit to His disciples after His 
 
 *See Carpenter's "Mental Physiology," pp. 619-623, 664-669, etc. 
 fSeeRow's " Bampton Lectures, " Lect. VII and Christlieb's " Modem 
 Doubt," Chap. VII., etc. 
 
EVIDENCE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH. 183 
 
 death. Of course, if science did not show that there is a 
 gpirit in man — if it disproved God's existence and the soul's 
 existence, then, indeed, no amount of historical evidence 
 could neutralize this demonstration. But we have just 
 seen that science does not disprove either the existence of 
 God or the soul. On the contrary, it furnishes many facts 
 in proof of these two important beliefs, and, believing in 
 God and the soul, believing that He sends men into the 
 world to teach religion, as well as science and philosophy 
 and poetry, we may believe that He sent Jesus for this 
 purpose, and that through Him life and immortality have 
 been brought to light ; the throbbing hopes which nature 
 inspires in the soul are confirmed by the more positive 
 assurance of the great Teacher. 
 
 But do you tell me, my friends, that I have not proved 
 the immortality of the soul, after all ? Well, no ; I have 
 not proved it as you would demonstrate a proposition in 
 mathematics on the black-board. I have not put my finger 
 on its abode beyond the grave, and said, "Behold, there it 
 is ! " But I have stated facts which you, as reasonable 
 men and women, cannot ignore ; and they are sufficient to 
 show that whether there is another life or not, it is well 
 worth our while to live as though there were. They are 
 sufficient to afford a basis for faith — to confirm the natural 
 convictions and instincts of the soul. No one accepting 
 them can be justly accused of undue credulity, for we 
 accept many opinions as true the proofs of which are 
 much weaker than the evidences of the soul's immor- 
 tality. Thus, we believe that light is produced by the 
 vibration of the particles of a substance called ether, but 
 we do not know that there is such a thing as this ether. We 
 are forced to assume its existence in order to account for 
 the phenomena of light. We believe that sound is pro- 
 duced by the vibration of the particles of the atmosphere, 
 but we cannot prove this, and some acute thinkers have 
 seriously doubted it. We believe that matter is composed 
 of infinitely small atoms, which are held together in a body 
 by forces resident in these atoms ; yet when we attempt to 
 think this proposition out in intelligible terms we are hope- 
 lessly puzzled. These and many other scientific beliefs 
 rest on pure assumptions, and yet the assumptions are 
 necessary to explain certain facts. So, we contend, there 
 are facts which point to the continuance of the human soul 
 
1 84 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 after death. This assumption isnecessary to the />er/"ecAb« 
 of the grand evolution of things that has been going on for 
 millions upon millions of ages ; necessary to the explana- 
 tion of the process ; necessary to prevent our being put to 
 intellectual confusion ; necessary to the satisfaction of the 
 deepest instincts of the soul ; necessary to the discharge of 
 duty in its highest sense ; necessary to make life endur- 
 able and happy. 
 
 Our entire life consists in balancing facts against facts 
 and probabilities against probabilities, and were vi^e to act 
 upon demonstrative evidence only, we would not act at 
 all. Let us, therefore, not demand it in the case before us. 
 In any event belief in immortality cannot hurt us. On the 
 contrary, it is an ennobling belief. It raises us above the 
 brute, and fills us with aspirations that stretch on into the 
 depths of eternity. It consoles us in our sorrows and robs 
 death of its terrors. It elevates life in every respect It 
 makes God appear as the Good Father and man as the 
 child of the Highest. 
 
 I would not dogmatize on this profound subject, but, 
 oh ! I cannot, cannot believe in the hard philosophy of 
 Materialism and Fate. If my faith be only a dream, let me 
 continue to dream. If it be only a vision, it is a glorious 
 vision, and I would not be robbed of it. I must raiher 
 exclaim with Whittier : 
 
 " I know not what the future hath 
 Of marvel or surprise ; 
 Assured alone that life and death 
 His mercy underlies. 
 
 " And so, beside the silent sea, 
 I wait the muffled oar ; 
 No harm from Him can come to me 
 On ocean or on shore. 
 
 " I know not where His islands lift 
 Their fronded palms in air ; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond His love and care." 
 
 "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" Amen. 
 
THE GOD-FILLED MAN. 185 
 
 SERMON VII. 
 
 THE GOD-FILLED MAN. 
 
 Text : — In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. — Colos- 
 si ans ii. 9, 
 
 In order to understand the doctrine of Christ's Incarna- 
 tion or Divinity, we must first get a correct idea of God. 
 The popular theological conception of God holds that 
 there axe /our Persons in the Godhead, viz., three Divine 
 Persons and one human person. The important question, 
 therefore, is. What does this word "Person" mean as 
 applied to God? We know, of course, what it means 
 as applied to man. Man is a twofold being, consisting 
 of a body and a soul. Imagine his body stripped off, and 
 you would have left only his ghost — his spirit, and this is 
 believed to be a power capable of thinking, acting and 
 discerning between good and evil. In other words, man's 
 spiritual nature consists of his intellect, his conscience 
 and his will. These are the three essential elements in 
 spirit. 
 
 Now, of course, God has no body. He is "without 
 body, parts or passions." He is pure Spirit — the Infinite 
 and Eternal Mind, Conscience and Will. Subtract all of 
 man's moral or spiritual imperfections and magnify in- 
 finitely his perfections, and you have the popular theory of 
 the Godhead — or rather you will have one-third of that 
 theory, for the popular doctrine of God is that He consists 
 of three such Infinite Persons or Spirits as that defined. 
 The Athanasian Creed, which is the authoritative expression 
 of this doctrine, say a : "The Father is eternal, the Son is 
 eternal and the Holy Spirit is eternal ; and yet there are not 
 three eternals, but one Eternal.- Likewise, the Father is 
 Omnipotent, the Son is Omnipotent and the Holy Spirit is 
 Omnipotent ; and yet there are not three Omnipotents, but 
 one Omnipotent, "and finally, "the Father is God, the Son 
 
1 86 TOPICS Of THE TIMES. 
 
 is God and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three 
 Gods, but one God." In other words, the creed means 
 that there are three Spirits united in one Spirit in the God- 
 head, but I am free to confess that this seems to me a flat 
 contradiction — not a mystery, but a contradiction in terms 
 and ideas. Of course, God is a mystery, everything is a 
 mystery, even a straw and certainly man are both great 
 mysteries, but this theory of God seems to be a verbal 
 contradiction, and I have never read or heard an exposi- 
 tion of the doctrine, which did not either explain away 
 two of the Persons in the Godhead, or leave the contradic- 
 tion baptized with the name of "mystery." Still, that is 
 the traditional and popular idea of God, and it is further 
 maintained that the Second Person of the Godhead took 
 man's nature upon Him, so that "in Him two whole and 
 perfect natures, that is, the Godhead and Manhood, were 
 joined together, never to be divided" hence there are four 
 Persons in the Godhead. 
 
 Another idea of God, held by many of the ablest minds 
 of our day, which is even older than the Athanasian doc- 
 trine, dating back to the third century, is this : God (it is 
 said) is the one Infinite and Eternal Spirit that created and 
 sustains all things. But He manifests Himself in three 
 different ways — in one as Creator, in another as Redeemer, 
 and in a third as Sanctifier. In other words, the one God 
 assumes three different forms, somewhat as an actor on a 
 stage appears in different costumes : in one He appears 
 as God the Father of all things : in another, He appears as 
 God the Son redeeming mankind from sin in and through 
 Jesus Christ ; and finally. He appears as God the Holy 
 Ghost completing the work which the Redeemer began ; 
 but in all forms He is one and the self-same Being. This 
 idea of God is more popular among scientific men than 
 the Athanasian doctrine, and certainly does seem to pre- 
 sent less difficulty than that theory. But for my own part, 
 I consider both views simply and mainly interesting as 
 ingenious speculations on a great subject, which the 
 human mind cannot fathom. They are "words flung out 
 at a great subject." While, therefore, I would prefer the 
 second to the first theory of the Godhead were I forced to 
 accept one of them, yet I am not compelled to accept either. 
 I am content to rest my faith in God upon the simple words 
 of Jesus in the Gospels. I believe He is Spirit (John iv. 
 
THE GOD-FILLED MAN. 1 87 
 
 24.) — the Infinite and Eternal Spirit everywhere manifested 
 in nature, who revealed Himself to the Prophets and 
 Apostles, and in Jesus Christ, under the name of Father 
 Son and Holy Ghost and as such I worship Him. But 
 what is His exact nature — what is exactly meant by the 
 names " Father," "Son " and " Holy Ghost " — what is the 
 relation of the three "Persons," or Divine Essences, to 
 each other, the Scriptures do not say, and man cannot 
 find out. He cannot, as old Job long ago told him, by 
 searching find out God ; he cannot find out the Almighty 
 to perfection. He is high as heaven ; what can we do ? 
 deeper than hell; what can we know? He is larger than 
 the earth or the universe (Job xi. 7-9) and comprehendeth 
 it, as it were, in the hollow of His hand, and since our 
 telescopes fail to penetrate the depths of space to the limits 
 of the universe ; since our microscopes cannot analyze 
 matter so that we may know what it is ; why should we 
 attempt to fathoni the nature of the Creator and sustainer 
 of all things.? Nothing but failure has ever resulted ; noth- 
 ing but failure can ever result from an attempt to "fly 
 up into the secrets of the Deity on the waxen wings ot 
 the human understanding." Let us, therefore, content 
 ourselves in the simple belief "that God is — that "in Him 
 we live, move, and have our being"— that "He is about 
 our paths and about our bed and spieth out all our ways" 
 — that if we were to ascend up into heaven, we would 
 find Him there ; if we were to make our bed in the grave, 
 behold. He would be there also. If we were to take the 
 wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost part of 
 the universe, even there His hand would lead us, and His 
 right hand hold us. (Psalm cxxxix. 8-12). He is the 
 great and good Spirit who is not far from every one of us. 
 but gives us rain and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts 
 with gladness, and it is this idea of God which I would 
 impress upon you — the God that works in nature and in 
 man and upholds all things by the word of His power — the 
 living God, not the dead idol of traditional and popular 
 theology ; and if you believe in this God, then you may 
 let such speculations about His nature as those mentioned 
 go to the winds. 
 
 Until recently God was thought of as a Being living 
 apart from and outside the universe He had created. It 
 was believed that He created the world, wound it up, set 
 
1 88 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 it a-going and then withdrew into the infinite solitude sur- 
 rounding the world from which He watched its progress 
 and occasionally stepped down to earth to instruct men as 
 to what they should do and punish them for the wrong 
 they had done by sending disease or floods or earthquakes 
 upon them. But this idea of God has been more and 
 more given up, on account of the difficulties it involves, 
 until now nearly all eminent theologians hold that God is 
 the Infinite and Eternal Spirit that resides in and presides 
 over all Nature ; the forces of Nature have their root in 
 His will ; the motions of Nature are motions of His power ; 
 the thoughts of men flow forth from the Infinite Thinker ; 
 the good deeds of men are prompted by the Good Spirit 
 In short, God is thought of as the Soul of the Universe, 
 from whom all things proceed, and in whom all things 
 consist. And holding such an idea of God we can more 
 easily understand His manifestation in Jesus Christ " In 
 Him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." In 
 other words, Jesus was the God-filled man ; He was filled 
 full of God ; His body was packed, so to speak, with Deity. 
 To make this clear let me quote the striking words of an 
 English clergyman. 
 
 "You ask me," he says, "" whether all God was in Jesus. 
 I say, No ; Jesus says, No. Sides of the Almighty, of the 
 Invisible, the Eternal — aspects inconceivable to man — 
 never could be revealed through man's nature. God over- 
 laps Jesus. ' My Father is greater than I,' he says. 
 
 "You ask me of Torbay or Barmouth creek whether it 
 is sea ? I say. Yes. You ask if it is the whole of the sea.? 
 I say. No. Yet a cupful, or a pailful and every part of 
 the bay or creek is true sea — the sea, having its own mighty 
 range and infinite potencies, has verily and indeed flowed 
 into that earth-bound creek. All that is in Torbay is sea, 
 but all the sea is not in Torbay ; so all that is in Jesus is 
 God, but all God is not in Jesus." In Him God dwelt bodily. 
 The human spirit of Jesus flowed forth from the infinite 
 ocean of Spirit, which surrounds and pervades the universe 
 and man, and the union of His human Spirit with the 
 Divine was essential and permanent, just as the earth- 
 bound bay is connected with the ocean — is composed of 
 the same substance. But how do we know that this was 
 so? How can we prove that Jesus was filled full of God.? 
 From these three great facts ; i. Every man's spirit 
 
THE GOD-FILLED MAN. 1 89 
 
 comes from God, for He is the I^'ather of all Spirits. The 
 spirit of Jesus, therefore, could not be derived from any 
 other source. Mr. Spencer himself tells us that that 
 " Power manifested throughout the universe, distinguished 
 as material, is the same Power which in ourselves wells 
 up under the form of consciousness." That is merely 
 another way of saying that man is created in the image of 
 God, His spirit is a miniature of the infinite and Eternal 
 Spirit, and Christ's spirit was a perfect finite transcript, so 
 to speak, of the Divine Spirit. The difference between 
 His human spirit and other spirits lay in its perfection. 
 He was perfect ; man is imperfect. 
 
 2. The general law or fact of spiritual development 
 proves that Jesus was the God-filled man. According to 
 the doctrine of development, there has been going on 
 from the beginning of the present order of things a twofold 
 development, viz., an evolution of material forms and an 
 evolution of immaterial forces. The physical development 
 resulted in the production of the human body, and the 
 spiritual development produced the human soul. But at 
 finst the soul was little more than an appendage to the body, 
 and through the long ages intervening between primitive 
 and modern times, the soul has been struggling to get the 
 mastery over the body — the animal nature of man. In 
 such spiritual giants as Abraham, Moses, Job, Isaiah, 
 Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, and Paul, the on- 
 going wave of spirit rose very high, but it rose highest in 
 Jesus of Nazareth. He stands supreme among the spiritual 
 Goliaths, as even the most radical skeptics admit. Those 
 other God-sent men were only partially filled with God, 
 but all that was in Jesus was God : " in Him dwelt the ful- 
 ness of God." Nor is this mere speculation. On the contrary, 
 it was as natural and as necessary that the spiritual evolu- 
 tion should reach completion and perfection in some in- 
 dividual as it was that physical evolution should end in the 
 production of the human body. "But," it will be said, 
 "after the production of the first human body, numbers 
 of other bodies were produced, and are still being produced. 
 Why, then, are there not more Christs produced? Ought 
 there not to be, according to this view .' " I answer : 
 He — Jesus — was the realization of God's idea of what man 
 ought to be. He is our exemplar : we are to become more 
 and more like Him until He is completely formed in us 
 
I go TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 (Gal. iv. 19) — not indeed by a miracle, or sudden leap in 
 spiritual development, such as occurred when He was born, 
 but by a more gradual process ; so that while there have 
 not been, and doubtless will not be, any more Christs, 
 there are and will be many Christlike persons, who will be 
 slowly but surely developed into perfect men, "unto the 
 measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Ephes.iv. 
 13). " He was the possibility of the human race made real ; " 
 and if this possibility is not fully realized in other cases 
 in this life, it will be in the next. That is the New Testa- 
 ment doctrine of regeneration or the "new birth." 
 
 3. The sinlessness of Jesus proves Him to have been 
 filled with God, and that He was sinless is amply proved 
 by historical evidence. It is pretty generally supposed, 
 among a certain class of thinkers, that, because the New 
 Testament has been vehemently attacked by skeptical 
 critics during the present century, its authority is utterly 
 exploded. But these people should remember that even 
 the most radical critics admit that St. Paul wrote at least 
 four, and many of them admit that he wrote eight or ten, of 
 the epistles usually attributed to him, and these epistles 
 date back to within twenty-five years of the death of Christ — 
 a period no longer than that intervening between the late 
 Civil War and the present day — so that we are by no 
 means confined to the Gospels for proofs of Christ's divine 
 character. On the contrary, St. Paul's unquestionably 
 genuine epistles are the earliest records of Christ's life and 
 teaching, and even if the Gospels had been lost we would 
 still have ample historical evidence to prove that all of 
 Christ's disciples believed Him to be sinless and wor- 
 shipped Him as God's Son. And let us consider what this 
 means. Suppose a man were to arise now, from some 
 obscure hamlet in our land, and were to proclaim himself 
 to be sinless, what sort of reception would he meet with ? 
 Why, he would be hooted and hissed at. We actually do 
 laugh at certain people who claim to be "sanctified"; 
 and we do so because a perfectly holy man would be a 
 moral miracle. Human nature is the same in all ages. The 
 old Jews, Greeks and Romans did not believe in human 
 perfection any more than we do. They knew that there 
 was none that doeth good; no, not one. They knew that all 
 had sinned and come short of the glorious ideal of God, 
 and hence the fact that a poor carpenter of Nazareth sue- 
 
THE GOD-FILLED MAN. 191 
 
 ceeded in convincing hundreds of men that He was sinless 
 is sufficient to satisfy an unbiased mind that it was a fact. 
 Indeed the very fact that He was crucified shows that He 
 was an extraordinarily good man. The world has generally 
 killed and persecuted its best men. The world loves 
 darkness rather than light, because its deeds are evil. 
 And because Jesus rebuked — unsparingly denounced — those 
 evil deeds, he was crucified. And if so brave a man as He 
 had had imperfections, if He vi'ho boldly proclaimed Him- 
 self the great reformer of His age had been like other men , 
 this fact would have been laid hold of as an excuse for 
 His death, but not the faintest whisper against His moral 
 character comes floating across the centuries. We know 
 of Abraham's sins and Paul's shortcomings, and Luther's 
 weaknesses, but the challenge of Jesus, ' ' Which of you con- 
 victeth me of sin.?" remains unanswered. Every tradi- 
 tion about Him and His life and death declares Him to have 
 been a sinless man. Moreover, we do not admit that, be- 
 cause the authorship of the Gospels is uncertain, and some 
 of their details unreliable, they are wholly untrustworthy. 
 On the contrary, even the most radical skeptics admit that 
 they contain the essential facts of our Lord's" teaching. 
 They reject a few of the stories about miracles, and inter- 
 pret other miracles as natural events; but they admit that 
 the teaching of the Lord's Prayer, the Sermon on the Mount, 
 the Parables, etc., is too profound and spiritual and true to 
 have come from the simple-minded Jewish and Galilean 
 peasants who wrote the Gospels, and hence the great 
 Teacher must have been the author of it. But we urge that 
 it was not only impossible for such writers to forge such 
 productions as the Lord's Prayer and the Sermon on the 
 Mount, but it was equally impossible for them to forge the 
 sketch of Christ's character given in the Gospels. Let us 
 grant, for the sake of argument, that the Gospels, as they 
 now stand, were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and 
 John; let us suppose that they are complete forgeries : then 
 what ? Why, we are forced to beUeve that the greatest 
 religious Character in history was conceived and drawn 
 by a number of Jewish and Galilean peasants who could 
 scarcely speak and write correctly 1 Such a supposition is 
 absurd, and was therefore rejected by the late John Stuart 
 Mill, who was considered an atheist by many, and was 
 certainly a radical skeptic. If each writer of the Gospels 
 
152 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 had been a Shakespeare, such a result could not have been 
 accomplished ; for Christ, as all admit, was a greater char- 
 acter than any Shakespeare ever imagined or produced. We 
 know that the writers of the Gospels were not Shakespeares, 
 and therefore we are compelled to believe that they have 
 given us a true sketch of the Master they loved. It is 
 easier to believe this than to believe that their sketch is a 
 forgery. Even if it be admitted, as some claim, that they 
 made use of the Old Testament ideas of the Messiah in 
 working out their picture of Jesus, yet there were so many 
 hands employed in painting this picture (and there w?.s 
 evidently no collusion between them) — the work was done 
 in so inartificial a manner — it is so plain from the narratives 
 themselves that the writers were not striving to paint a 
 picture — a fancy-sketch ; the story is so simple and childlike 
 that no one would ever dream of its being a forgery unless 
 this idea was suggested to him either by a skeptic or the 
 stories of miracles. But we may leave on one side the 
 stories of miracles, save only such as can be explained as 
 natural events, and enough unquestionably historical mat- 
 ter is left to prove our point For it must be remembered, 
 as already stated, that the genuine epistles of St Paul 
 confirm the Gospel sketch of Christ's character. They do 
 not, indeed, confirm all the stories in the Gospels,- but the 
 essential facts of Christ's life and character are confirmed 
 by the great Apostle, who had every means of learning the 
 truth. Finally, remember, that for nineteen centuries the 
 most enlightened portion of the human race has worshipped 
 this Character as Divine. Even those who to-day attack 
 most violently traditional opinions about the Bible, most 
 strongly assert the transcendent character of Christ. In- 
 deed, the most radical do not lay hands upon the Master, 
 but avow infinite respect for Him. 
 
 For such reasons, then, we believe that Jesus was filled 
 full of God. Every man's spirit comes ultimately from 
 God, flows forth from the infinite ocean of Spirit, and so 
 Christ's must have come from the same source. 
 
 Secondly, the onward and upward movement of Spirit- 
 ual development would naturally produce such a perfect 
 moral and spiritual nature. And finally. He not only con- 
 vinced the men of His own time that He was sinless, but 
 for nineteen centuries He has held supreme sway over the 
 hearts of the greatest men that have lived, and therefore 
 
THE GOD-FILLED MAN. 
 
 ^n 
 
 we aaore Him as the Sou of God. " In Him dwelt all the 
 fulness of the Godhead bodily." 
 
 We do not appeal to the miracles He wrought, for other 
 religious teachers have performed almost if not quite as 
 great miracles as He performed. We do not appeal to His 
 extraordinary birth, for the stories of His birth are of too 
 uncertain authorship to be accepted as literally correct, and 
 the mode of His birth has little or nothing to do with the 
 fact of His divine character. St. Paul and the author of the 
 Fourth Gospel believed in His divinity, but neither says a 
 word about His birth being different from that of other 
 men. He came to take man's nature upon Him, and, 
 therefore, it was proper that He should enter this life as 
 other men do. The Divine Spirit could flow into human- 
 ity — into Christ's body — without setting aside the laws of 
 generation. But while we lay no special stress on the 
 stories of our Lord's miracles, yet they do help to prove 
 that He was a great man, just as similar stories about 
 Moses, Elijah, and St. Paul show that they were great men. 
 These stones cannot be rejected as utterly worthless and 
 false, even if we understand the miracles to have been 
 natural events. The beautiful stories about the birth, in 
 particular — -the angel-song, the worship of the wise men, 
 the application of the prophecy of Isaiah about the Virgin- 
 born Immanuel to Jesus — all tell in poetical form the faith 
 of Christ's disciples in His spotless purity. He was, indeed, 
 "conceived by the Holy Ghost. " His perfect moral and 
 spiritual nature was the special product of "the Lord and 
 Giver of Life." When I said just now that "the natural" 
 result of spiritual development would be the production 
 of a perfect moral character, I did not for a moment intend 
 to exclude the agency of God from this process — on the 
 contrary, I consider that all natural forces have their root 
 in the Divine Will, and what many attribute to Nature, I 
 attribute to God. God is the great Developer as well as 
 the Creator of all things. In the development of the world 
 from primal chaos He has wrought many miracles, or pra- 
 duced extraordinary effects by an extraordinary operation 
 of His will. Thus, when life was introduced upon our 
 globe a special operation of His will occurred; a miracle 
 was wrought. Again, when Mind in its lowest form, and 
 especially in man, was introduced, another miracle was 
 wrought. And finallv, when .the Perfect Man was given to 
 
 13 
 
194 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 the wor.d another miracle was wrought : a perfect moral 
 and spiritual nature was produced by " the Lord and Giver 
 of Life," thiough the media of man to wornan ; and this 
 great fact is attested by the wonderful stories about His 
 birth, but especially by His sinless life. Jesus, then, to 
 quote the clergyman just quoted, "was God manifest in 
 the flesh. The significance — the lifting power — the salva- 
 tion of it lies here. Henceforth, doubt not : plant your 
 foot on the rock. Man's love is God's love, only not so 
 good : man's justice is God's justice, only not so impartial : 
 man's right and wrong is God's right and \yrong — it is in the 
 direction of it, although not so infallible : man's power is 
 God's power, only not so great His ways are not our 
 ways, not because they are different in kind, but because 
 they are all wise and good, whereas our best attempts are 
 mixed. But henceforth, we know Him — because He was 
 manifest in the flesh. Jesus Christ is a true presentation . 
 and explanation of God's moral ana spiritual nature, as far 
 as that can be grasped by man. We do not any longer 
 grope or wonder or puzzle about His will, His purpose 
 to usward, or His character. The lowliest Christian is at 
 last in a position to answer that ancient and bitter cry, " O 
 that I knew where I might find Him ! " with "I know in 
 whom I have believed." God was in Christ reconciling 
 the world into Himself ; teaching men the Way, the Truth 
 and the Life. That is one side of the incarnation — God in 
 Man ! The other side is Man in God ! Jesus the Divine 
 Representative of Human Nature ! Every one of us in Him. 
 That's the good news. A High Priest, indeed. He is, but 
 not separated from us, not ignorant of our infirmities. The 
 assurance of God's sympathy for us in Him is of the closest 
 and most personal kind. No state, no mood, no friend or 
 enemy, not ignorant crucifiers — not sinful women, nor 
 any aliens from the commonwealth of Israel — can escape 
 from the Lord of Humanity. The meshes of God's net are 
 woven too close for that. Saints are caught and sinners 
 aje not let through. This is why the Gospel hath such 
 subduing and universal fragrance. No position too low, 
 for he was laid in a manger; no sorrow too deep, for be- 
 hold and see whether there was any sorrow like unto His 
 sorrow ; no sin too dark, for was He not tempted in all points 
 like as we are, yet without sin ? No suffering too intense, 
 for did not He take the cup of agony brimful iii Geth- 
 
THE GOD-FILLED MAN. 195 
 
 semane, and drain it to the dregs on the Cross ? No pil- 
 grims of the night so weary and forlorn but His voice 
 reaches them in the darkness — "Come unto Me all ye that 
 are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest ! '' 
 
 O Christus Consolator ! O Salvator Mundi ! Inexhaus- 
 tible Humanity of God ! O great heart of Jesus ! "Rock 
 of Ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee ! " Amen. 
 
iy6 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 SERMON VIII. 
 
 UNSHAKEN RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 
 
 Text: — And this word, yet once more, signifieth the removing of those 
 things that are shaken', as of things that are made, that those things which 
 cannot be shaken may remain. — Hebrews xii. 27. 
 
 It is commonly believed among- Christians and non- 
 Christians that the pulpit has nothing of positive import- 
 ance to tell men ; that, in fact, skepticism has put it on 
 the defence, so that it has to fight for its very life, and has 
 no time or power to impart information on great subjects 
 vv^hich men need to live and die by. It is further believed 
 by many that religious beliefs have been substantially ex- 
 ploded, and that what remains is not worth considering. 
 In this sermon, therefore, I wish to show that there are 
 many most important truths which have not only not been 
 disturbed by the skepticism of our day, but have rather been 
 confirmed. Many things have been shaken and removed, 
 but only that those things which cannot be shaken might 
 remain more securely established, and these unshaken 
 truths furnish a deep and broad basis for the church and 
 pulpit. 
 
 The first truth that has not been seriously disturbed is 
 the existence of God. Ideas of God have been greatly al- 
 tered. It is no longer possible to think of God as a sort of 
 magnified man, seated on a golden throne outside of the 
 universe, who, with the recording angel by His side and 
 the Book of Remembrance before Him, is dotting down 
 the deeds of men for which He will bring them to judg- 
 ment at the last day. We must think of Him as the Power 
 in and back of nature, who is everywhere present uphold- 
 ing, gwiding, developing all things by the word of His 
 might. This much even Mr. Spencer and the most radical 
 skeptics grant But we go further and insist that God is 
 not simply the Power that operates nature ; this Power is 
 
UNSHAKEN RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 
 
 197 
 
 endowed with intelligence, infinitely superior to man's 
 mind, no doubt, yet the great prototype of the human 
 mind. We can no longer prove the intelligence of Deity 
 as the old theologians did by appealing to the eye, for 
 instance, and arguing that He who designed and produced 
 this wonderful organ must possess intelligence similar to 
 that of the optician who fashions an opera-glass. There is 
 this great difference between the eye and the opera-glass : 
 the one grew from a little germ, the other was manufac- 
 tured all of a piece. Man is known to be a development, 
 or the product of a long course of development, and so we 
 cannot argue that he was fashioned de novo out of clay and 
 inspired with life and mind. But we must go further back : 
 we must trace his genealogy back through the lower ani- 
 mals ; nay, we must connect the animal and the plant 
 kingdoms, yea, and the very organic and inorganic king- 
 doms of nature. We must begin with the primeval chaos, 
 and out of the original "Stardust" scattered throughout 
 space we must trace the gradual unfolding of this grand 
 and glorious universe, until at last man stands forth ' ' the 
 lord of creation." In short, we can no longer confine our 
 attention to a single piece of God's workmanship and 
 argue that He is a great carpenter who turns out eyes and 
 men and things as some mechanic would his articles of 
 manufacture, but we must let our vision sweep backward 
 to the time when chaos rolled through space, and darkness 
 was upon the face of the deep, and doing this we may 
 argue that the Power which organized that mi^y cloud 
 of atoms into magnificent globes — suns, stars and planets 
 — revolving around each other in heavenly harmony ; the 
 Power that clothed each with its appropriate dress ; that 
 originated life and mind, and endowed the original simple 
 forms of life and mind with the power of developing into 
 the wonderful being called man — such a Power cannot be 
 a mere force or fate, working according to a necessity of 
 its nature, but it must be endowed with some sort of intel- 
 ligence, albeit an intelligence infinitely superior to the 
 human mind. Even if it be admitted that the stuff out of 
 which the universe has been evolved is eternal, yet the 
 orderly process of evolution necessitates the assumption of 
 an evolving Power possessing and acting according to a 
 conscious purpose. We cannot believe that the beautiful 
 development of things has been due to a "fortuitous con- 
 
,g8 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 course of atoms. " It must be attributed to au Almighty 
 Will and Intelligence. But we do not stop here. The 
 same line of thought will force us to predicate another im- 
 portant attribute of God, viz., benevolence. While we 
 are often tempted, as we contemplate the enormous amount 
 of suffering in the world, to believe that the Creator is 
 cruel, yet when we remember that out of these very suffer- 
 ings — out of this awful struggle for existence — has emerged 
 this magnificent universe ! When we see that the suffer- 
 ings of past ages are not worthy to be compared with the 
 glory that is now revealed throughout nature ; when we 
 reflect further, that the present order of things will go on 
 developing into higher and higher forms of perfection and 
 grandeur — that the very destruction of this present world 
 will probably result in a better and a grander order of 
 things — that the death of man and of the univtrse will be 
 a birth into a higher life — we find it impossible to believe 
 that God is cruel. We must rather believe that God is 
 love — that whom He loveth He chasteneth, and though 
 His scourging for the present seems to be grievous, it will 
 yet redound to the welfare of the universe. But Prof. 
 Huxley reminds us just here that this argument in proof 
 of God's benevolence is radically defective. "There 
 would be something in this argument," he says, "if, in 
 Chinese fashion, the present generation could pay its debts 
 to its ancestors ; otherwise it is not clear what compensa- 
 tion the Eohippus (first horse) gets for his sorrows in the 
 fact, that, some millions of years afterward, one of his 
 descendants wins the Derby." The answer to this is very 
 simple : The first horse's pleasures overbalanced his pains, 
 and while he had to make some sacrifice for the sake of 
 his-descendants, it was a sacrifice for which he was amply 
 compensated by the joys of existence. His sacrifice was 
 more of a negative or prwative nature than of a positive 
 character. He was deprived of the high development of 
 his descendant and the consequent pleasure of winning 
 the Derby, but, like the infants in limbus infatitum, he was 
 happily unconscious of the joys of the Derby paradise, 
 ■while his actual sufferings from being a prey to bigger and 
 stronger animals, who finally devoured him, were not so 
 great as the pleasure he had in feeding in green pastures, by 
 still waters, on the many glorious spring days which he 
 
UNSHAKEN KELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 199 
 
 enjoyed. Hence we conclude that God is both wise and 
 good — intelligent and benevolent.* 
 
 Secondly. The fact of the souls existence and immor- 
 tality has not been disproved. On the contrary, science 
 has shown that there is something in man which cannot 
 be identified with what we call matter — with the material 
 particles of his brain or body. It has further shown that 
 this immaterial something has undergone such an enor- 
 mous development, since it 'began its progress away back 
 in the ages and away down the scale of being, that it has 
 risen superior to everything around it and has become 
 capable of eternal life, and we cannot believe that this 
 youngest but best child of Mother Nature will be devoured 
 by her as a ferocious animal sometimes devours its off- 
 spring. We may rather believe that those instinctive feel- 
 ings and yearnings of the soul are destined to be satisfied 
 with the joys of eternal existence. f 
 
 Third. The doctrine oirelribution is undisturbed — is fully 
 confirmed If there is one fact which science proves be- 
 yond question it is that " whatsoever a man soweth, that 
 shall he also reap ; " if he sows the wind, he will surely reap 
 the whirlwind. "Sow an act, reap a habit. Sow a habit, 
 reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny." This 
 awful fact is most awfully emphasized by science. In the 
 physical sphere, we trace the sufferings of individuals back 
 to the misdeeds or mistakes of themselves or their ancestors. 
 Are they consumptive ? Then they have either inherited 
 it from persons who exposed themselves to physical con- 
 ditions which produced this dread disease, or they have 
 exposed themselves to such conditions and have reaped 
 the necessary result. All disease is due. to a violation of 
 natural laws, and the only possible way to escape the pen- 
 alty of such transgression is to find out what the laws of 
 health are and conform to them. In the political and social 
 sphere it is the same. Are we oppressed by corrupt poli- 
 ticians .? It is because we have sacrificed at the polls prin- 
 ciple for policy, brains for boodle. We have sown the 
 wiiid of ignorance, greed, and selfishness, and have reaped 
 the whirlwind of folly, oppression, and corruption. Are 
 the slums of our great cities filled with human brutes ? It 
 
 * Cf. the author's " Evolution of Man and Christianity," Pt. II. Chap, 
 vii. 
 
 t See above sermon on ' ' Evidence of Life after Death. ' ' 
 
200 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 is because they have sold themselves, body and soul, to "the 
 upper classes," who crack the whip of the slave-owner 
 over them. Are we disturbed by anarchistic riots? It is 
 because the upper classes are grinding the poor and the 
 ignorant undei their heel so terribly that they are compelled 
 to wince. We have sown the firebrands of political and 
 social degradation, and it is natural that they should burst 
 forth as a volcano to consume us. So in the moral and 
 religious sphere. Is society shocked by abominable scan- 
 dals ? Is virginity dishonored and the marriage relation 
 abused ? It is because of the low moral tone of public 
 opinion. It is because money and lust are our gods, and 
 character and religion are despised. Is the Church power- 
 less before the attacks of skepticism .? It is because the 
 Church is unbelieving and worldly. And so science goes 
 on to trace every ill that flesh is heir to back to its cause, 
 and shows that if we would be happy we must seek the 
 truth and do the right. " Whatsoever a man soweth, that 
 ■shall he also reap," both in this world and in the next We 
 may hope that — 
 
 that— 
 
 " Good may fall, at last, fer ofiF 
 At last to all. 
 And every winter change to spring ; " 
 
 " Not one life shall be destroyed. 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void 
 When God hath made the pile complete ! " 
 
 But this we know : death does not destroy the soul, 
 and as long as it exists, so long the dispositions it cherishes 
 and the habits it forms must remain and produce their 
 natural effects. He that is filthy, let him be filthy still ; he 
 that is righteous, let him be righteous still! is the awful 
 sentence which science as well as Scripture has written 
 over the portal of death. 
 
 Fourth. The spiritual snpremacy of Jesus Christ is more 
 securely and firmly established than ever. Note ! I do not 
 say that the Divinity or Deityship of Jesus is more widely 
 accepted, for this, I fear, is not true. There is a strong, 
 a very strong disposition on the part of the ablest and 
 even some of the devoutest minds of our time to deny 
 that Jesus was God's Son in the old sense of the word. 
 I think that this is largely due to the disproportionate 
 
UNSHAKEN KELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 201 
 
 emphasis which has hitherto been laid upon this article 
 of the faith, and more especially to a misapprehension 
 on the part of the popular mind of the doctrine of the In- 
 carnation. Christ has been held up too much as God 
 and too little as man, and the union of His Humanity with 
 the Deity has been misconceived and misstated by many, 
 and therefore His Divinity has been and is extensively 
 doubted. I believe the day is not distant when the swing 
 of the pendulum of popular opinion away from this faith 
 will be reversed. Meanwhile, we must do all we can 
 to make the doctrine of the Incarnation rational and ac- 
 ceptable, and there is no better way of doing it than by 
 emphasizing the spiritual supremacy of Jesus. However 
 much men doubt the Deityship of our Lord, one and all 
 admit the transcendence of His character and teachi;ig, 
 over the characters and teachings of all other religious 
 sages. 
 
 The praises of Buddha have been most beautifully sung 
 by Mr. Arnold in "The Light of Asia." The wisdom of 
 the Vedas — the Hindu Bible — has been fully exhibited. 
 The merits of the Persian sage, Zoroaster, have been amply 
 attested. The characters of Confucius and of Socrates 
 have been vehemently eulogized. But ask any of the 
 scholars that are the most deeply versed in this mystical 
 lore, or that have most earnestly studied the lives of these 
 great and good men, whether they prefer any one of them 
 as a religious guide and teacher to Jesus of Nazareth, and 
 not one of them will answer "Yes." Ingersoll avows 
 "infinite respect" for Jesus. Renan declares that "He 
 will never be surpassed. " Lecky says : ' ' Christianity has 
 given the world an Ideal Character which through all the 
 changes of eighteen centuries has filled the hearts of men 
 with an impassioned love, and has shown itself capable 
 of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments and condi- 
 tions ; has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but 
 the highest incentive to its practice ; and has exerted so 
 deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple 
 record of three short years of active life has done more to 
 regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions 
 of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists. 
 Amid all the sins and failings, amid all the priestcraft, 
 the persecution and fanaticism which have defaced the 
 Church, it has preserved in the character and example of 
 its Founder an enduring principle of regeneration." 
 
202 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 No fear, then, that the spiritual supremacy of Jesus will 
 ever be overthrown, and those wrho listen to such tributes 
 to our Lord from such men as those just quoted need not 
 doubt that, whatever may be the spasmodic wanderings of 
 the human mind from this great Spiritual Magnet, it will, 
 in time, return to it, as surely as the needle will seek the 
 pole in spite of all deflections. 
 
 " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of 
 eternal life." 
 
 Jesus was nevermore loved, more revered, more ardently 
 worshipped; He never exerted a greater influence than He 
 does to-day; and if men would quit insisting upon their 
 own theories about this Divine Character, and merely hold 
 Him up in all His simplicity, grandeur and spiritual beauty 
 before men, all would be drawn unto Him as their King 
 and Saviour, their Guide through life and their Comforter 
 in death. 
 
 Let me, therefore, insist that you do not trouble your- 
 selves about the theological speculations which any one 
 sets forth concerning Christ's nature, but accept Him in 
 all His simplicity. If you cannot believe — or think you 
 cannot believe in His divinity — then believe in His spirit- 
 ual supremacy, and follow His example and obey His 
 precepts to love God and your fellow-men, and, believe 
 me, in time His real nature will burst upon you as it did 
 upon doubting Thomas, and you will fall down before 
 Him, exclaiming : " My Lord ! and my God ! " 
 
 Fifth. The superiority of the Bible as a moral and spirit- 
 ual text-book, so to speak, has been demonstrated. Ob- 
 serve, again, I do not say the Bible is "inspired," for I 
 don't want to confuse your mind or embarrass this discus- 
 sion by raising the question of inspiration. Let us sup- 
 pose, for the sake of argument, that the Bible is simply a 
 book, and compare it with other sacred books, such as 
 the Hindu Vedas, the Chinese Books of King^, the Persian 
 Zend-Avesta or the Mohammedan Koran. Will any one 
 familiar with all these writings dare say that they are equal 
 in spiritual power to the Old or New Testament ? Listen 
 to these remarkable words of Prof Huxley : " How is the 
 religious feeling, which is the essential basis of conduct 
 to be kept up in the present utterly chaotic state of 
 opinion, without the use of the Bible? By the study of 
 what other book could children be so much humanized. 
 
UNSHAKEN RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 
 
 203 
 
 and made to feel that each figure in the vast historical 
 procession fills, like themselves, but a momentary space 
 in the interval between two eternities, and earns the bless- 
 ings or the curses of all time according to its efforts to do 
 good and hate evil ? " 
 
 Again, he says : "Greatly to the surprise of many of 
 my friends, I have always advocated the reading of the 
 Bible, and the diffusion of the study of that most remark- 
 able collection of books among the people. Its teachings 
 are so infinitely superior to those of the sects, who are 
 just as busy now as the Pharisees vvere eighteen hundred 
 years ago, in smothering them under the precepts of men ; 
 it is so certain to my mind that the Bible contains within 
 itself the refutation of nine-tenths of the mixture of sophis- 
 tical metaphysics and old-world superstition which has 
 been piled around it by so-called Christians of later ages ; 
 it is so clear that the only ready and immediate antidote 
 to the poison which has been mixed with Christianity, to 
 the intoxication and delusion of mankind, lies in copious 
 draughts from the undefiled spring, that I exercise the right 
 and duty of free judgment on the part of every man, mainly 
 for the purpose of inducing other laymen to follow my 
 example." 
 
 "In the eighth century B.C." (he adds, in another place) 
 "in the heart of a world of idolatrous polytheists, the 
 Hebrew prophets put forth a conception of religion which 
 appears to me to be as wonderful an inspiration of genius 
 as the art of Phidias or the science of Aristotle, 'And what 
 doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love 
 mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.?' (Micah vi. 8). 
 If any so-called religion takes away from this great sa5-ing 
 of Micah, I think it wantonly mutilates ; while if it adds 
 thereto, I think it obscures the perfect ideal of religion." 
 
 " This collection of books, the Bible," said that great 
 freethinker, Theodore Parker, "has taken such hold on 
 the world as no other. The literature of Greece, which 
 goes up like incense from that land of temples and heroic 
 deeds, has not half the influence of this book. It goes 
 equally to the cottage of the plain man and the palace of 
 the king. It is woven into the literature of the scholar and 
 colors the talk of the streets." 
 
 Prof. Max Miiller, one of the greatest Sanskrit scholars, 
 and one of the freest of the freethinkers^ in all his enthu- 
 
204 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 siasm for Indian literature, never for a moment places it 
 above the Bible. On the contrary, he gives to the Bible 
 the tirst place among sacred books, and to Christ the 
 throne of the spiritual kingdom. Indeed, I know of no 
 really profound scholar who does not do this. The 
 hymns of the Veda may be beautiful, but the Psalms ■ of 
 David are more beautiful. The wisdom of Confucius 
 may have been great, but the wisdom of Solomon and Job 
 was greater. The conceptions of the Zend-Avesta may 
 have been lofty, but the conceptions of Isaiah and Paul 
 are loftier. Buddha may have been " The Light of Asia, " 
 that is, the Eastern part of Asia, but Jesus Christ is the 
 Light of the World ! And, therefore, while we cheerfully 
 accord to all these good men and their profound teachings 
 all honor due unto them, a Greater than they is here. The 
 Bible contains all the truths found in the sacred books of 
 Persia, India, and China combined. As Christ is the Uni- 
 versal Man, so it is the Universal Book. It speaks to our 
 souls ! It satisfies our deep spiritual yearnings as no other 
 book can. It inspired the soul-stirring "Confessions" of 
 St. Augustine, the immortal' '' Imitation," of Thomas ^ 
 Kempis, and the "Spiritual Letters" of Fenelon. It fired 
 the soul of Milton and Shakespeare. Its philosophy, 
 morality, and religion are the very warp and woof of 
 modern civilization, and, although it has been subjected, 
 during the last half century, to a criticism which would 
 have destroyed a book less divine, it has passed through 
 the fire essentially unscathed, and stands forth to-day the 
 Book of books. Care not, then, my friends, for the so-called 
 " mistakes of Moses" or of Paul ; trouble not yourselves 
 about Joshua's stopping the sun or the fish's swallowing 
 Jonah. Be not disturbed if the stories of some miracles be 
 shown to be false, or merely the record of natural events. 
 These stories do not constitute the real essence of the Bible, 
 and you may give them all up, if necessary, or accept 
 them merely as poetical yet instructive legends, and not 
 lose one atom of the real spiritual truth that runs, like a 
 gold mine, through the Scriptures from Genesis to Revela- 
 tion. Let Mr. Moody's words, " I know that the Bible 
 is mspired, because it inspires me," be your practical 
 theory of inspiration, and let all the theories of the schools 
 go to the winds, as you search the Scriptures to find in 
 them the words of eternal life, and the witness to Him 
 who is " the Way, the Truth and the Life." 
 
UNSHAKEN RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 
 
 205 
 
 Finally, at least one half of the Gospel has not been 
 disturbed, but rather emphasized by modern skepticism. 
 " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" is as true 
 to-day as when the command was first given, and this is 
 one half of the Law and the Prophets. And many who 
 are indisposed to love God with all their mind and heart 
 and strength — who refuse to fulfil the other half of the 
 Gospel-Law, are most ready to love their fellow-men, and 
 do unto them as they would be done by. Indeed, there 
 is what is called the "Religion of Humanity " whose God is 
 the human race. The idea of Humanity takes the place 
 of the_/ac/ of the Divine Christ. Of course, it is Humanity 
 stripped of all its many myriad imperfections and corrup- 
 tions^ — an ideal Humanity. But while we prefer the ideal 
 of Humanity as it is perfectly realized in Jesus Christ, yet 
 this fantastical form of religion so-called shows what a 
 deep hold the humanitarian principle has upon the modern 
 mind and heart. Heaven knows there is little enough 
 love in this world even now, and often we are tempted to 
 think that there is no love — that selfishtiess is our god. 
 But sober thought must convince us that, despite all ap- 
 pearances to the contrary, the Golden Rule is being slowly 
 but surely practiced more and more. Even where it is 
 not practiced, it is theoretically admitted to be the true 
 rule of conduct — the summary of all practical religion. 
 While many still think that religion consists in belief in a 
 set of doctrines about God and the Bible and Christ and 
 the future life, the world at large is beginning to learn that 
 pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is 
 this : to visit the fatherless and the widows and all suffer- 
 ers in their affliction, and relieve them, if possible, and to 
 keep oneself unspotted from sin — a violation of the moral 
 Law written on the fleshy tables of the heart as well 
 as in the Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount. The 
 Church is beginning to realize that Jesus came to save 
 His people from their sins in this world ; that the primary 
 object of the Church is the regeneration of society as a 
 whole ; that the very best way to prepare men for the 
 next life is to make them live better lives in this. In short, 
 it is beginning to deal less with dogma and more with 
 Hfe; less with ih.e future and more with the present ; less 
 in fear and more in love ; less with the devil and more with 
 man. And as this blessed change goes on increasing in 
 
2o6 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 depth and width it will be more and more seen that the 
 Church is established upon a permanent foundation — a 
 foundation against which even the gates of hell shall not 
 prevail, viz., the spiritual and moral necessities of human 
 nature. Even if it be admitted, therefore (but it is not ad- 
 mitted), that the doctrinal foundation of Christianity has 
 been sapped by skepticism, yet its practical basis is un- 
 touched. Nay, it may be considered to be the more 
 securely established the more it is seen to rest not on a 
 doctrinal basis but upon a personal life — the life of Jesus 
 as realized in His disciples. Prof Max Miiller truly says : 
 " If Christianity is to retain its hold on Europe and 
 America, if it is to conquer in the Holy War of the future, 
 it must throw off its heavy armor, its coat of mail, and 
 face the world like David, with his staff, his stones and 
 his sling. We want less of creeds, but more of trust ; less 
 of ceremony, but more of work ; less, of solemnity, but 
 more of genial honesty ; less of doctrine, but more of 
 love. There is a faith, as small as a grain of mustard seed, 
 but that grain alone can move mountains, and, more than 
 that, it can move hearts. Whatever the world may say of 
 us, of us of little faith, let us remember that there was One 
 who accepted the offering of the poor widow. She threw 
 in but two mites, but that was all she had, even all her 
 living." 
 
 Therefore, my friends, if you think that skepticism has 
 reduced the faith to a few mites, remember that those 
 miles are mighty. They are God, the Soul, Retribution, 
 Christ, the Bible, and Love : and armed with these the very 
 gates of hell shall not prevail against us. 
 
SHOULD WE HAVE CREEDS? 207 
 
 SERMON IX. 
 
 SHOULD WE HAVE C S ? 
 
 Text: — Then he brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be 
 saved ? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt 
 be saved, and thy house, — Acts xvi. 30-31. 
 
 There is a false liberalism, and there is a true liberalism. 
 There are many people who would say of the Church, as 
 the Irishman said of the Government, it matters not about 
 the truth of a belief, it is held by the Church, and "I'm 
 agin the Church." They glory in having no creed, in 
 calling themselves "infidels "or "liberals"; and yet these 
 same people are often the most illiberal dogmatists and 
 believe the greatest absurdities. They disbelieve in God, 
 but they believe that matter produces everything. They 
 reject the soul, but they accept the brain as the cause of 
 thought. They refuse to call Christ " Master," but eulogize 
 Buddha to the skies. They ridicule Christianity, but they 
 laud Mohammedanism. They are " agin the Church," but 
 they are for all sorts of vagaries and absurdities. Such 
 people are a weariness to the flesh, and I constantly meet 
 them, and because I try to be truly liberal and reasonable, 
 they fancy that I must accept all the trash that they accept 
 True liberalism searches freely and fearlessly for truth, and 
 acknowledges it wherever it exists. It bows before no 
 man-made God, but it worships the Creator of all things. 
 It pierces beneath the material shell of things, and finds 
 the inward, spiritual kernel. It.adores Christ, while reject- 
 ing the irrational theories that men have promulgated about 
 Him. It admits the defects of popular Christianity, but 
 attributes them to human nature, not to the Founder of 
 Christianity or His teachings. It recognizes scientific, 
 historical and even moral imperfections in the Bible, but 
 it also considers it the Book of books, the .most mag- 
 
2o8 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 nificent and wonderful piece of sacred literature ever 
 published. It sees the abuses of ecclesiasticism, but it has 
 no objection to creeds, just because they are creeds. 
 In short, it is not "agin the Church," simply because the 
 Church has made many mistakes and committed many 
 crimes, and hence you need not expect in this sermon any 
 unmeasured denunciation of creeds, although you may 
 hear a somewhat different view of them advocated from 
 that popularly held. 
 
 First of all, creeds are not only permissible ; they are a 
 necessity. Every man has a creed. It is utterly impos- 
 sible for him to live without a creed, for a creed is simply 
 another name for " belief," and every man believes some- 
 thing — unless he is a lunatic. The man who denies the 
 existence of God believes in natui'e — holds that matter 
 and its forces produce all things. If he is an educated 
 man, he knows that science reveals the fact that once this 
 world was not; it existed simply as a. vast cloud of atoms 
 scattered throughout space, and in accounting for the rise 
 of this magnificent universe out of that chaos, he must 
 either believe in an Intelligent Being, who started and 
 guided the development, or he must endow the material 
 particles with the power and intelligence sufficient for this 
 purpose, and so while he smashes with one hand the theo- 
 logical idol, he erects with the other, the scientific Deity. 
 He may reject the existence of the soul, but if he pro- 
 foundly studies the brain and its operations he will be 
 convinced that the brain is not all or the chief part of man; 
 that it does not produce thought; that there is an immaterial 
 and impalpable something, a mysterious unseen musician 
 back of the scenes manipulating this organ, and producing 
 the music of the soul. He may reject the popular theo- 
 logical doctrine about Christ's origin, nature and mission, 
 but if he will study fully and widely religious history, he 
 will find that no other person ever lived who is so worthy 
 of the high title, "Son of God "and "Saviour of Men." 
 He may fling his Bible on the floor and trample it under 
 foot, but, like many another silly fanatic, if he happens to 
 pick up a torn leaf of it and compares it with any other 
 sacred book, he will find more divine truth ni it than in all 
 the tomes beside. And so I say, a creed of some sort is 
 absolutely necessary, and every man has one; the only 
 
SHOULD WE HAVE CREEDS? 209 
 
 question is — What kind of creed shall it be ? That depends 
 entirely on what is the object of the creed. 
 
 Second, a creed is a means to an end — not an end in 
 itself, as so many suppose. It is because the object of 
 creeds is so generally misunderstood, that the Church is 
 split up into a hundred warring sects. The Church is not 
 like a protectionist club. It does not stand for one idea, 
 but for the whole truth. It is not intended to be exclusive, 
 but inclusive. Its great object is the production of moral and 
 religiouschdracterby the infusion, so to speak, of the Christ's 
 life into our lives — the production of Christ-like souls ; and 
 whatever tends to draw men unto Christ and produce 
 righteousness should be inserted in its creed ; and what- 
 ever does not tend to this result should be excluded from 
 its creed, however much it might be allowed as matter of 
 opinion. This is what Christ taught. He did not say to 
 men — Accept this or that dogma, but simply, "Follow 
 Me." This is what Paul and Barnabas told the Philippian 
 jailor — "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt 
 be saved." 
 
 The object of a creed is the salvation of the soul, by 
 which I do not mean salvation as it is taught by the pop- 
 ular theology. This teaches that salvation means escape 
 from a distant hell, but the New Testament says that Jesus 
 came to save His people from their sins. The object of a 
 creed, therefore, is salvation of the believer from sin here 
 and now. If he is a liar, he must quit lying. If he is a 
 thief, he must stop steahng. If he is an adulterer, he must 
 become chaste, for adulterers and whoremongers God will 
 judge and will visit them with swift vengeance in this 
 life as well as in the next. If he is profane, he must 
 become reverent. If he is cruel, he must become kind. If 
 he is selfish, he must become unselfish. If he is cov- 
 etous, he must become benevolent and beneficent. If 
 he is a glutton, he must become temperate. These are 
 the fruits of faith, and no creed is worthy of its name 
 unless it produce these results, and this is what the Apos- 
 tles meant when they told the jailor to believe on the 
 Lord Jesus Christ and he would be saved. He had been 
 cruel — had shut them in the inner prison — but if he would 
 believe on Jesus he could not do such a thing. The 
 Apostles did not mean as theology means, that the poor, 
 ignorant jailor must believe some subtle theory of Christ's 
 
 14 
 
2IO TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 nature or atonement. Such nonsense never entered their 
 minds. They meant by faith in Christ, just what we mean 
 when we say, " I believe in this or that person." If you 
 believe in a person you trust him, and when he tells you 
 to do anything you do it ; and so if we believe in Christ 
 we will obey Him. When He tells us not to commit 
 murder, or a theft, or adultery, if we believe in Him, we 
 will not do so. When He commands us to forgive our 
 enemies — to pray for those who despise us and spitefully 
 use us — to do good to our foes — to love out neighbors 
 instead of slandering and hating them, if we believe in 
 Him we will obey, and if we do not obey Him we do not 
 believe in Him, even though we pronounce, with a long 
 face and a loud voice and a sanctimonious air, all the 
 creeds in Christendom, and die at the stake rather than 
 give up one jot or tittle of them. Some of the most licen- 
 tious men and women that ever lived have been the most 
 zealous in religious profession, and if we could lift the veil 
 we would see them writhing in hell this moment, where 
 the worm of conscience dieth not and the flame of memory 
 is not quenched. So I say the object of a creed is to pro- 
 duce character, and no creed and no article of a creed should 
 be insisted upon by the Church which does not tend to pro- 
 duce righteousness. Oh, if men had only acted on this 
 principle, how many bloody pages of history would never 
 have been written ! Paul would not have been imprisoned 
 and killed. The early Christians, would not have been 
 thrown to the lions in the Roman amphitheatre. The fixes 
 of the Spanish Inquisition would never have been lit. 
 Bruno and Huss would not have been burned at the stake. 
 Luther and Zvvingli and Calvin and Knox would not have 
 been persecuted. The flames of Oxford and Smithfield 
 would not have been kindled around the bodies of God's 
 truest sons. John Wesley and John Whitefield would not 
 have been excluded from the Church. ThePHgrim fathers 
 would not have been driven from their native land into a 
 strange and inhospitable country. The burning and drown- 
 ing and torturing of good men and women for the expul- 
 sion from their bodies of imaginary witches and devils 
 would never have occurred. But instead of it all — instead of 
 the hateful spectacle of " religous war" and the propaga- 
 tion of the faith by the power of the sword and the fagot 
 • — we should have seen the armies of the Lord of Hosts 
 
SHOULD WE HAVE CREEDS? 211 
 
 quietly and peacefully marching forward conquering and 
 to conquer, with their eyes fixed on the blood-stained 
 cross, fit symbol of sacrificing Love, flaming out in the 
 heavens above, with the immortalinscription upon it : "I 
 am the Way, the Truth and the Life." "Come urrto me, 
 all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
 rest." 
 
 The real object of a creed, then, is to produce character, 
 and the object of a Christian creed is to produce Christ- 
 like character. Until this great fact is practically recog- 
 nized by the Church, she will never accomplish the glorious 
 work the Master came to do. He came to save people 
 from sin, to teach them to love God as their Father, Himself 
 as their Brother and their fellow-men as themselves. He 
 desired to draw all men unto Himself, to have them im- 
 bibe His spirit and follow in His footsteps. He did not 
 require them to believe any special theory about the God- 
 head or His own origin and nature. He asked Simon 
 Peter the thrilling question, " Lovesl thou me.?" And 
 when the Apostle answered, "Yea, Lord, "He said, "Feed 
 my sheep, feed my lambs." Love of Him, love of God, 
 love of man — that made one a disciple of His — and that 
 was the essence of the Gospel which St. Paul and the other 
 Apostles preached. There were persons in the Corinthian 
 Church who disbelieved in the resurrection, and St. Paul, 
 Pharisee though he was, did not excommunicate them, 
 but in his immortal epistle argued the case with them and 
 tried to persuade them of the truth of the doctrine — but he 
 did not insist upon it as an article of. faith which must 
 be accepted on pain of forfeiture of Church fellowship. 
 Neither St. Paul nor any of the Apostles had any other 
 creed than that mentioned in the text — a simple childlike 
 faith in Jesus — in his personal life. I know, of course, 
 that hearguesin his epistles to show that Christ was God's 
 Son, that in Him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead 
 bodily, but he was then speaking as a teacher ; he was not 
 insisting upon belief in a special view of Christ as neces- 
 sary to Church fellowship. When this question arose— 
 when men asked the great question — What must I do to 
 be saved.? he always answered, "Believe on the Lord 
 Jesus Christ — trust in Him — follow in His footsteps — do 
 His will, and thou shalt be saved. " 
 
 It is because the Churches have departed from this simple 
 
212 TOPICS OP THE TIMES. 
 
 creed — it is because they have built round the adorable 
 Person of Christ hedges of human inventions — that Chris- 
 tendom is to-day split up into a thousand and one sects 
 that bite and tear each other like ferocious wild beasts. 
 Not until Christians practically believe and admit that the 
 Church rests upon the life and personal character of Jesus 
 — that every one who wishes to follow in his steps — every 
 one who loves Him and would fain do Him service is a 
 real disciple of the Master— not until cowrfac/ is made the 
 basis of Church communion will the Gospel run and be 
 glorified and the kingdoms of this world become the king- 
 doms of our God and of His Christ And — blessed fact ! 
 — this truth is gradually becoming clearer and clearer to 
 men's minds and being more and more accepted. What- 
 ever bigotry and intolerance may remain among profes- 
 sional theologians, the great body of Christians are begin- 
 ning to realize that theories of the Godhead, the Incarnation, 
 atonement, inspiration and so on, are all the speculations 
 of fallible human reason, and as such are not worth quar- 
 reling over. They are learning more and more clearly 
 that charity or love is "the greatest thing in the world" — 
 that though we may speak with the tongues of angels, and 
 have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and 
 have all faith, and give all our goods to the poor, and even 
 submit our bodies to be burned, and have not charity, it 
 profiteth nothing. 
 
 Even the professional theologian when he talks to men 
 directly about their spiritual welfare — about following Christ 
 — lays aside his darling theories. If the man objects to 
 the dogma of the Trinity, he is told that "nobody under- 
 stands it." If he says he does not believe that a miracle 
 ever happened, nine times out of ten he is assured that 
 "nobody believes in miracles in the old sense of the 
 word "^which means that all miracles are explained as 
 wonderful but natural events. If he objects to the doctrine 
 of endless punishment, he is told that faith in it is not 
 necessary to salvation or Church fellowship. When, then, 
 he asks, What must I believe and do to be saved.' He 
 gets the true reply, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 love Him, serve Him, and thou shalt be saved." And so, 
 thank God, creed-worship is rapidly passing away, and 
 Clirist-worship is taking its place. It is not going quite 
 as fast as some of us would have it go, but it is going, and 
 
SHOULD WE HAVE CREEDS i 2t^ 
 
 ere the next generation comes and goes, Creed-worship 
 will be overthrown, and all Christendom will wonder at 
 our darkness and bigotry and folly. 
 
 But while I hold that the great object of a creed is to 
 produce character, I freely admit that a secondary object 
 is to teach those who have not time for special study of 
 the great problems of Being such truths as seem most 
 probable and rational. In a large sense, therefore, the 
 whole Bible is a creed, and is so regarded by the Church, 
 its supremacy over all formulated statements of doctrine 
 having always been asserted, especially since the great 
 Reformation of the sixteenth century. But we are here 
 concerned with those doctrinal formulas which are sup- 
 posed to be taken out of the Scriptures, such as the Apos- 
 tles' and Nicene Creeds ; the various decisions on doctrinal 
 subjects put forth by Church Councils, such as the decrees 
 of the Roman Church in the Council of Trent, the Vatican 
 and so on, and the Confessions of Faith formulated by the 
 reformed Churches. All these creeds or confessions are 
 more or less instructive, and there can be no possible 
 objection to such statements of doctrine, provided that it 
 always be remembered that they are mere human specula- 
 tions, man-made theories about God and Christ and human 
 nature and destiny which are open to free criticism and 
 subject to revision as new light breaks upon the great sub- 
 jects with which they deal. But just here lie.s the dif- 
 ficulty. Religious creeds more than any other documents 
 become sacred and venerable by age and use. It is really 
 marvelous how they entrench themselves in the affections 
 of believers until it becomes impossible to touch them 
 without hurting the feelings and rousing the wrath of the 
 faithful. The man who dares question what the fathers 
 have believed is at once accused of "presumption," "sac- 
 rilege," "blasphemy," "infidelity," and Heaven knows 
 what not. 
 
 It is easy, too, for a thoughtful mind to understand this. 
 Not only do creeds grow sacred by age and use, but other 
 things do also. Thus the old oak tree that stands in the an- 
 cestral yard, under whose spreading boughs our forefathers 
 played as children, is dear to our hearts, and when the 
 cruel lightning strikes it, and its bare and gnarled limbs 
 point heavenward, we feel a sorrow and pity for it akin to 
 that over the bones of a departed relative. The old home- 
 
214 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 stead, with its hedge-rows planted by our grandfathers, its 
 forests in which they hunted the squirrel and the deer, the 
 fields^ over which they chased the fox and the hare, the 
 farmhouse through whose halls their venerable feet trod, 
 and in whose rooms echoed their merry laughter, their 
 songs of joy or their sighs of grief — all these are sacred to 
 us. But, above all, the old church on tlie village green, 
 \yhose walls have trembled with the eloquence of silent 
 lips, or reverberated with the stentorian sounds of those 
 who lifted up their voices in psalm and hymn — the old 
 church, where the Spirit of God nestled down as a celestial 
 dove upon the penitent heads of the fathers as they gathered 
 around the Lord's Table, or knelt before the great White 
 Throne — the old church is too consecrated a building to 
 be torn down and replaced by a modern edifice. We all 
 know what energy and tact are necessary to overcome such 
 feelings when it is proposed to build a new church on the 
 site of an old one. Many people in the parish will often 
 refuse to contribute to the building of a new churcTi, but 
 will gladily give towards the repairing of the old one. 
 Some, however, want as little of the old material taken 
 out as possible, and no alteration made m the form of build- 
 ing or arrangement of furniture ; and the modem minister 
 with his modern ideas of architecture, and little or no 
 reverence for the antique, finds many obstacles in the way 
 of building up the parish as he desires. So it is, in a deeper 
 sense, with creeds. We like to feel that we are using the 
 very words and thinking the very thoughts the fathers 
 spoke and thought. It seems to unite the Past with the 
 Present by a real and living bond. We seem to be stand- 
 ing in the midst of that cloud of witnesses and saintly 
 souls who have gone before, and from the overhanging 
 dome of heaven look down with approving smiles. I shall 
 never forget the pleasure I experienced when I learnt to 
 read the Hebrew and Greek Bible. To think that I was 
 speaking the very words that Abraham, and Moses, and 
 David, and Isaiah, and Paul spoke. Nay, perhaps the very 
 words which the Lord himself uttered by the sick bed or 
 the bier ! It seemed to me that time was annihilated and the 
 spirits of patriarchs, prophets, and apostles were holding 
 converse with me. But all this is sentiment — poetry — 
 which cannot bear the test of reason. We must subordinate 
 feeling to fact, sentiment to sense. The world moves ; 
 
SHOULD WE HAVE CREEDS? 2 15 
 
 human nature grows ; the wants of the children are not the 
 same as the wants of the fathers. What a terrible state of 
 things it would be if this were not so. The world would 
 absolutely stagnate and dry rot. We may, therefore, love 
 the old oak, but when the snows and storms of many 
 winters have beaten off its boughs andiriade it unsightly — 
 a mere cumberer of the ground — it must be hewn down, 
 that a more beautiful shrub or tree may take its place. 
 We may love the old ancestral house, but its small windows 
 must be enlarged to let in more light, its big fireplaces 
 must be reduced in size, its creaky stairways must give 
 place to new ones that will bear us up, its halls must be 
 overhauled, the grandfather's clock must give place to a 
 modern chronometer, the antique melodeon, which charmed 
 the old folks at home on the long winter evenings, must be 
 put aside for the Steinway or the Knabe — in short, the Past 
 must surrender to the Present. The old church, with its 
 brick or stone or weather-boarded walls, and its conspic- 
 uous absence of ail architectural beauty, must be replaced 
 by a beautiful Gothic or other structure. The tuning- 
 fork of the musical director must be superseded by the 
 grand organ and the grander choir. The world moves. 
 The fathers did not speak the last word on Art, Poetry, 
 Literature, Sculpture, Science, Philosophy, Politics or Re^ 
 ligion. Magna Charta was a grand document, but a 
 People's Constitution is grander. The Declaration of In- 
 dependence was a noble instrument, but it did not say the 
 last word on Liberty. Moses was a great lawgiver, but 
 Christ was a greater. Isaiah was a gr^at preacher, but 
 Paul was a greater. Chrysostom and Augustine were 
 brilliant orators and profound theologians ; Luther, Calvin, 
 Zwingli and Cranmer were great Reformers, but they were 
 not omniscient. The Nicene Council was a glorious assem- 
 bly, but it was not infallible. The Fathers must be re- 
 spected but not idolized. We are unworth}'- children if we 
 know no more than they did. We should never have been 
 born, if we are not to add anything to their acquisitions, 
 and so we must not be fettered by sentiment, or chained 
 hand and foot by a false reverence for the dead and the 
 opinions of the dead. We honor them far more by striving 
 to develop their mighty thoughts and classify and solve 
 the mysteries that puzzled them, than we do by blindly 
 submitting to their ipse dixit. We want no iconoclasm 
 
2i6 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 merely for the sake of iconoclasm, but we want the old 
 spiritual tabernacle renovated and renewed. And, thank 
 Heaven ! the world is beginning to realize the truth of 
 this. Men are seeing more and more the absurdity of 
 supposing that Science, Philosophy, Politics, Art, and all 
 other departments of life and thought should be developed 
 and theology should stand still. The Protestant part of 
 Christendom, and even the Roman Church, to some extent, 
 recognize this absurdity. Our formulas contain within 
 themselves provisions for their restatement and recon- 
 struction, just as the Constitution of the United States con- 
 tains an article providing for amendments to it, or altera- 
 tions in it; but owing to the feelings just mentioned most 
 people are strongly averse to any alterations in theological 
 dogmas. And, after all, this conservatism, while very 
 annoying to many of us, is a good thing and serves a good 
 purpose, as it checks and sobers what might otherwise be 
 rash and dangerous progress. The law of antagonism, 
 of opposites, of attraction and repulsion, of statics and 
 dynamics, operates in the religious as well as in the social 
 and material sphere ; and out ot the conflict will arise a 
 new and better faith which, while it does not turn its back 
 on the Past, turns at least one eye to the rising sun — a faith 
 tha't faces both ways and sweeps the whole spiritual 
 horizon, taking in and absorbing every ray of truth. 
 
 Life and Teaching — that is the twofold object of creeds. 
 "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ; " worship His Spirit 
 and absorb His life ; and thou shalt be saved from sin here 
 and hell hereafter. ' ' Search the Scriptures " for yourself, 
 freely and thoroughly as Paul did. "Stand fast in the 
 liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free ! " Refuse not 
 truth come whence it may. Fix your eye on the coming 
 dawn and travel in the course of the rising sun. The 
 Christ that is to be is being rapidly rung in ! We hear the 
 chimes of the morning bells sounding across the hills and 
 valleys ! We hear the song of the angels that brbke o'er the 
 heights of Bethlehem on that primal Christmas day. We 
 behold the Star ot Wisdom moving towards the manger. 
 We see the wise men marching in goodly array to offer 
 their gold, frankincense, and myrrh at the holy shrine ! We, 
 therefore, exclaim in rapture, " Glory to God in the 
 Highest, and on earth, peace, good will to men !" For 
 unto us is born again in the spiritual city of David a Saviour, 
 
SHOULD WE HAVE CREEDS? 217 
 
 who is Christ the Lord, who is set for the rise and fall of 
 many among the sons of men, in whom whosoever shall 
 believe shall be saved and enter in through the gates into 
 the eternal city of God I Amen. 
 
2i8 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 THE REAL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 Text : — And Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged 
 Israel at that time. — Judges iv. 4. 
 
 Deboelah is one of the most remarkable characters in 
 history, and the age in which she lived was a peculiar age 
 — a transitional period for Israel — when the nation was 
 passing from a lawless condition into that of monarchy. 
 "Judges," military rulers, who were raised to power by 
 circumstances and deeds of prowess, governed the nation, 
 and it was constantly invaded by surrounding enemies. 
 At this particular time, "the power of the northern kings," 
 says Dean Stanley, " which Joshua had broken down at the 
 waters of Merom, revived under a second Jabin, king of 
 Hazor. The formidable chariots overran the territories of 
 the adjacent tribes. The whole country was disorganized 
 with terror. The obscure tortuous paths became the only 
 means of communication. As long afterwards, in the 
 time of Saul, regular weapons disappeared from the op=- 
 pressed population. "There was not a spear or shield 
 seen among forty thousand in Israel." Shamgar the son 
 of Anath, defended himself against the enemies of the 
 South with a long pole armed at the end with a spike still 
 used by the peasants of Palestine. In their general depres- 
 sion, the national spirit was revived by one whose appear- 
 ance is full of significance. On the heights of Ephraim, 
 on the central thoroughfare of Palestine, near the sanctuary 
 of Bethel, stood two famous trees (if we may be permitted 
 to distinguish them), both in aftertimes known by the 
 same name. One was "the oak-tree," or "Terebinth of 
 Deborah," underneath which was buried, with many tears, 
 the nurse of Jacob. The other was a solitary palm, which, 
 in all probability, had given its name to an adjacent 
 
THE REAL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 219 
 
 sanctuary Baal-Tamar, the " Sanctuary of the Palm," but 
 which was also known in aftertimes as the Palm-tree of 
 Deborah. Under this palm, as Saul afterwards under the 
 pomegranate of Migron, as St. Louis under the oak-tree of 
 Vincennes, dwelt Deborah the wife of Lapidoth, to whom 
 the sons of Israel came up to receive her wise answers. 
 She is the magnificent impersonation of the free spirit of 
 the Jewish people and of Jewish life. On the coins, of the 
 Roman Empire, Judaea is represented as a woman seated 
 under a palm-tree captive and weeping. It is a contrast 
 of that figure which will best place before us the character 
 of Deborah. It is the same Judsean palm, under whose 
 shadow she sits, but not with downcast eyes and folded 
 hands, and extinguished hopes, — with all the fire of faith 
 and energy, eager for the battle, confident of victory. Like 
 the German prophetess who roused her people against the 
 invaders from Rome, like the simple peasant girl (Joan of 
 Arc), who by communing with mysterious angels' voices, 
 roused the French nation against the English dominion, 
 when princes and statesmen had well-nigh given up the 
 cause — so the heads of Israel " ceased and ceased until that 
 she, Deborah, arose, that she arose, a mother in Israel." 
 Her appearance was like a new epoch. They chose new 
 chiefs that came as new gods among them. It was she 
 who turned her eyes and the eyes of the nation to the 
 fitting leader. That leader, was "Barak," whose name 
 means "Lightning." His fame must have been wide- 
 spread to have reached the prophetess in her remote 
 dwelling at Bethel. From his native place, " Kedesh- 
 Naphtali, far up among the mountains of the North," she 
 summoned him to her side, and delivered to him her pro- 
 phetic command. He, as if oppressed by the presence of 
 a loftier spirit than his own, refuses to act, unless she 
 were with him to guide his movements, and (according to 
 the Greek version of the narrative) to name the very day 
 which should be auspicious for his effort : " For I know 
 not" (he said) " the day on which the Lord will send his 
 good angel with me." She replies at once, with the Heb- 
 rew emphasis : " I will go, I will go ! " but adds : "not- 
 withstanding the journey that thou takest shall not be for 
 thine honor ; for the Lord shall sell Sisera into the hand of 
 a woman." And sure enough the greatest general and 
 the flower of the Canaanite soldiery were defeated by the 
 
2 20 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 woman commander. Here, then, wehaveawoman who 
 is a wife, a prophetess, a ruler and a successful military 
 leader, and as such her character and history are quite 
 suggestive on the question of the rights and powers of 
 woman. 
 
 I. The first right that a woman has is a right to a thorough 
 education. It used to be and still is, to some extent, 
 believed that woman is intellectually inferior to man. 
 The world has been wont to reply as did a gentleman to 
 Mrs. Sarah Bolton, a writer on this subject, who, when 
 asked if the University of Berlin would probably ever admit 
 women, said, " No, madam. If that should happen, 
 every student would leave immediately. Besides, how 
 can a woman need Greek or geometry in taking care 
 of a house and baby ? " 
 
 This is well branded as " the great button and slipper argu- 
 ment " against the higher education of women, in which it 
 is urged if a woman were once permitted to know Greek 
 plays or astronomy, or, in short, to nibble at any side of 
 the apple of knowledge, there would be an end to her sew- 
 ing on buttons or working slippers. The conclusion is, 
 indeed, terrific. Facts, however, disprove it The in- 
 tellectual equality, and even (in many cases) the superi- 
 ority of woman to man is proved by these representative 
 examples ; Maria Bassi so distinguished herself in mathe- 
 matics and classics as to become a professor in the Uni- 
 versity of Bologna. Elizabeth Carter, of England, was a 
 thorough Greek, Latin, and Hebrew scholar, besides under- 
 standing Italian, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, 
 and Arabic. The great Doctor Samuel Johnson, speaking 
 of a celebrated scholar, said that he "understood Greek bet- 
 ter than any one he had ever known, except Mrs. Carter. " 
 Her brother wrote to her that he had translated one of the 
 odes of Horace so well that it was supposed to be her work. 
 Her translation of Epictetus, the old Roman philosopher, 
 won her fame and fortune. Caroline Herschel announced 
 the discovery of eight comets, five of which unquestion- 
 ably were first seen by her. 
 
 Lady Jane Grey wrote and spoke, with facility and cor- 
 rectness, Latin; Greek, Italian, and French, and was also 
 versed in Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic. Queen Elizabeth 
 spoke Latin easily and was a fine Greek scholar, Dora 
 
THE REAL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 22 1 
 
 d'Istria, it is said, speaks sixteen languages, and is one of 
 the most learned women of the age. 
 
 These and such like facts, too numerous to cite in this 
 connection have at last forced men to the conclusion that 
 women are intellectually their equals, and all they need 
 in order to show this is a " chance. " In Cambridge and Ox- 
 ford Universities, England ; in the London University 
 and University College ; in the art schools and other edu- 
 cational institutions of England women have been admit- 
 ted, and have not only distinguished themselves, but have 
 often outstripped their male classmates or associates. In 
 America, besides Vassar, Wellesley and Smith Colleges, 
 where women are annually equipped to compete with the 
 intellectual giants of the day, women are received into 
 nearly two hundred of our three hundred colleges on an 
 equal footing with the men. The high education of women, 
 therefore, and their education with men in the same institu- 
 tion, are no longer matters of speculation but matters of 
 fact, and the results are better than many even among the 
 women expected. The physical constitution of " the 
 weaker sex," which was urged against their higher educa- 
 tion, has stood the strain quite as well as, if not better than, 
 the men's. The distinctions women have gained and do 
 gain in all departments of study are in every way equal to 
 those won by the men. And so it is no longer a question 
 whether women should be highly' educated or not. As 
 another says : "The true measure of a woman's right to 
 knowledge is her capacity for receiving it, and not any 
 theories of ours as to what she is fit for or what she is 
 likely to do with it." 
 
 But while it is quite generally admitted that women have 
 the same right to an education that men have, yet, as a 
 matter of fact, many parents who take it as a matter of 
 course that their sons should be thoroughly educated give 
 their daughters a comparatively meagre education — perhaps 
 because they secretly hold the old opinion that the girls . 
 will soon marry, and therefore not need Greek or geom- 
 etry in taking care of the house and baby. As if, for- 
 sooth, an intellectual man wants to talk to an ignora- 
 mus of a wife after the baby is put to sleep for the night ! 
 The woman as a wife can be and should be a great mental 
 stimulus and inspiration to her husband, and in order to 
 be this she must, of course, be well educated. No doubt 
 
22 2 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 girls are themselves often to blame for not getting a better 
 education, since they prefer frivolous employments to hard 
 study and do not insist on their parents giving them first- 
 class educational opportunities ; but the parents may more 
 frequently instil into their daughters' minds a sense of the 
 importance of a thorough education and a love of Study. 
 It is the only way to elevate the intellectual condition of 
 young women. 
 
 The mental development of woman being granted, it is 
 quite as important to insist that she should receive thorough 
 manual training. It is being more and more recognized 
 that industrial schools for men are absolutely necessary. 
 It is one of the best means of protecting and benefiting 
 labor, and the very same reasons that prove the necessity 
 of manual training for men prove the need of manual train- 
 ing for women. The women are taking their places by 
 the side of men in the factory, the office and even on the 
 farm, and hence they need special preparation for their 
 several kinds of work,' I believe that in New York City 
 a school has just been started for the purpose of educating 
 domestic servants. The object will be not only to make 
 them efficient in their work, but also to teach them that it 
 is noble and not degrading. There should be a training 
 school for mistresses as well as for servants to teach the need 
 of kindness and justice on the part of employers, as well 
 as to instruct them as to the nature of certain kinds of work. 
 In England, in connection with the South Kensington Mu- 
 seum there is a school of art needlework, which has done 
 excellent work for years, and near by is a large cookery 
 school, which is also doing admirable work both in plain 
 and high class cookery. What a blessing to bilious people 
 such a school must be ! In Edinburgh a cookery school 
 was established in 1875, of which Mrs. Gladstone is a 
 zealous patron, and it has done a most successful work. 
 
 House decoration, wood engraving and carving, paint- 
 ing, designing, and even agriculture have all been success- 
 fully engaged in by women in England and on the Con- 
 tinent of Europe, and special courses of preparation for 
 these several kinds of work have been provided from which 
 the best results have been realized. Let us earnestly hope 
 that the industrial training of women will go hand in hand 
 with their intellectual development, until science shall ex- 
 tend its benefieent sway over the kitchen, the laundry, the 
 
THE REAL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 223 
 
 nursery and the bed-chamber as well as over the hospital, 
 the factory, the office, the studio, and the college-hall — until 
 the dextrous hand of woman shall be deftly guided by her 
 finely, cultivated mind in her mission of mercy and love to 
 her fellow-sufferers, whose tears she can dry, whose wounds 
 she can heal, whose souls she can purify and ennoble as 
 no man can. 
 
 Secondly, woman has a right to an equal chance with man 
 as a wage-earner. Hundreds of thousands of women are 
 employed side by side with men in the industrial sphere ; 
 they do the same work, and often they do it better than 
 men do, but it is a notorious fact that they receive much 
 lower wages, simply because they are women. Of course, 
 sometimes they cannot and do not do as much work as the 
 men, and in such cases justice would give the men higher 
 wages. Again, the women frequently corasera/, nay, almost 
 habitually consent, to work for lower wages than are paid 
 the men ; they don't seem to expect the same wage ; why 
 not, we cannot tell, unless it is because they have been so 
 long oppressed that they are timid about demanding their 
 rights. But as long as they consent to work for less than 
 men they cannot blame their employers for paying them 
 less. They should organize as the men — both capitalists 
 and laboring men do — and agitate for a fair day's work, for 
 a fair day's wage, and their more fortiuiate sisters — those 
 who enjoy comparative freedom and a better education — 
 should help them in their struggle. If you doubt the need 
 of such an effort read such books as Helen Campbell's 
 " Prisoners of Poverty," which gives an account of the con- 
 dition of the working women of New York City, but is 
 really a description of the working women's general status. 
 In Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco and other large 
 cities, and even in smaller towns, the same state of things 
 exists. Woman is underpaid and overworked. In New 
 York, one hundred and fifty thousand women work for an 
 average wage of sixty cents a day, from daylight till ten 
 or eleven o'clock at night. The result, of course, is star- 
 vation, disease, prostitution, insanity, suicide, and untold 
 horrors. 
 
 Take a few examples of how prosperous firms, where 
 the women are better paid and better treated than in other 
 places, do work. "In a certain large factory," says Helen 
 Campbell, " piece-v?ork is done. French cutters and fitters, 
 
224 
 
 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 receiving from thirty to fifty dollars a week, give that guar- 
 antee of style and elegance which is inherent in everything 
 bearing the stamp of this firm. Experts run the machines 
 in the sewing-machine room, being paid by the day at the 
 rate of from six to eight dollars per week in the busy 
 season. The buttonholes are made by women who do 
 nothing else, and who are paid by the dozen, earning from 
 five to seven dollars weekly. All stitched seams are done 
 in the machine-room, and the dress passes from there to 
 the sewing-room into the hands of the sewing-girls, who 
 receive from three to four dollars and a half for each gar- 
 ment. The latter price is seldom reached ; four dollars 
 and a half or five dollars paying for a dress loaded with 
 trimming, puffs, flounces, etc. 
 
 "At this rate there would seem to be a chance for wages a 
 good deal beyond the average, but it is one of the unwritten- 
 laws thai no sewing-girl shall exceed five dollars per week. 
 Whether formulated by superintendent or by firm remains 
 yet to be discovered. The one unquestionable fact is that 
 if the superintendent of the work-room finds that any girl 
 is expert enough to make over this amount, the price per 
 garment is docked to bring her down to the level. They 
 are never driven. On the contrary, they must wait often 
 two or three hours at times for the arrival of "Madame" 
 who must inspect the work, drape a skirt, or give some 
 suggestion as to trimming. No entreaty can induce the 
 superintendent to give out another piece of work which 
 might fill this vacant time, and the girls dare not state their 
 case to the employer. No member of the firm enters the 
 work-room. Complaint would ensure discharge. 
 
 " In other large establishments the methods are much the 
 same, with merely slight variations as to comfort of quar- 
 ters, time for lunch, sanitary conditions, etc. But in all 
 alike, the indispensable, but always very helpless, sewing- 
 girl appears to be one of the chief sources of profit, and to 
 have small capacity and no opportunity for improvmgher 
 condition." 
 
 The "boss" in a certain store said to Mrs. Campbell : 
 "We don't want men. We wouldn't have them even if 
 they came at the same price. Of course, cheapness has 
 something to do with it, and will have, but for my part 
 give me a woman to deal with every time. Now there's 
 an illustration over at the hat-counter. We were short of 
 
THE REAL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 225 
 
 hands to-day and I had to send for three girls that had 
 applied for places, but were green — didn't know the busi- 
 ness. It didn't take them ten minutes to get the hang of 
 doing things, and there they are, and you'd never know 
 which was old and which was new hand. Of course, they 
 don't know all about qualities and so on, but the head of 
 the department looks out for that. No, give me women 
 every time. I've been a manager thirteen years, and we 
 never had but four dishonest girls, and we've had to dis- 
 charge over forty boys in the same time. Boys smoke and 
 lose at cards, and do a hundred things that women don't, 
 and they get worse instead of better. I go in for women." 
 
 "If they are really worth so much to you, why can't you 
 give better pay?" asked Mrs. Campbell. "We give as 
 high pay as anybody," answered the superintendent, 
 " and we don't give more because for every girl here there 
 are a dozen waiting to take her place. As to saving, she 
 doesn't want to save. There isn't a girl here that doesn't 
 expect to marry before long, and she puts what she makes 
 on her back, because a fellow naturally goes for the best 
 looking and best dressed girl. That's the woman question 
 as I've figured it out, and you'll find it the same every- 
 where." "Practically," our author adds, "he was right, 
 for the report, though varying slightly, summed up as sub- 
 stantially the same." 
 
 If this can be truly said — and it cannot be denied — of 
 prosperous firms, what do you suppose is the condition of 
 the working woman in the lower grades of employment ? 
 Read Mrs. Campbell's book and you will find the answer 
 in facts which will wring tears from your eyes and groans 
 for your suffering sisters. These words quoted and com- 
 mented upon by this noble woman should rouse even the 
 most thoughtless female to reflection upon her sister's 
 wrongs .and needs. 
 
 "The emancipation of woman," said a lecturer before 
 a woman's club, "is certainly well under way when all 
 underwear can be bought more cheaply than it is pos- 
 sible to make it up at home, and simple suits of very good 
 material make it hardly more difficult for a woman to 
 clothe herself without thought or worry than it has long 
 been for a man. " 
 
 "This is only one side of the story," says Mrs. Camp- 
 bell, "for emancipation on the one side has meant no cor- 
 
 15 
 
2 26 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 responding emancipation for the other ; and as one woman 
 selects, well pleased, garment after garment daintily tucked 
 and trimmed, and finished beyond any capacity of ordinary 
 home sewing, marvelling a little that a few dollars can 
 give such lavish return, there arises from narrow attic and 
 dark foul basement and crowded factory the cry of the 
 women whose life-blood is on these garments. Through 
 burning, scorching days of summer; through marrow- 
 piercing cold of winter, in hunger and rags, with white- 
 faced children at their knees crying for more bread, or 
 silent from long weakness, looking with blank eyes at the 
 flying needle, these women toil on, twelve, fourteen, six- 
 teen hours even, before the fixed task is done. The slice of 
 baker's bread and the bowl of rank black tea boiled to 
 extract every possibility of strength are taken, still at the 
 machine. It is easier to sit there than in rising and move- 
 ment to find what weariness is in every limb." This is 
 what cheap clothing means. The destruction of the lives 
 of thousands of mothers and children, the degradation of 
 women who are entitled to the same comforts and luxuries 
 that others enjoy — nay, who are more entitled to them than 
 these, fortheytoil night and day, while those who reap the 
 rewards of their labor spend it in ostentation, idleness and 
 sin. 
 
 For the working woman, then, I plead — for the woman 
 who stands behind the counter or bends over the sewing- 
 machine, or draws the needle, or handles the broom, the 
 pan, the machine, for weary, weary hours — for the woman 
 whose life-blood is crushed out before she reaches the 
 bloom of womanhood, I earnestly beg a fair chance and a 
 fair wage. 
 
 Of course, I know as well as any one the w^eakness and 
 inefficiency of the woman worker no less than that of the 
 man worker. I know, too that in many cases the em- 
 ployer is driven harder than the employe. Said a busi- 
 ness manager of a firm employing 1,462 hands to Mrs 
 Campbell; ""'You would have to go into business your- 
 self to understand just how we are driven. " " Suppose you 
 refuse to be driven ? " she asked. " Suppose ! " exclaimed 
 the man, throwing up his hands; "There is no room for 
 supposes in business, madam. We do what we must. 
 How are we to compete with a factory turning out suits 
 by steam power? Not that we would compete. There 
 
THE REAL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 227 
 
 is really no occasion," be added hastily. "But their 
 methods certainly have an unpleasant influence, and we 
 are obliged to take them into account slightly." 
 
 Yes, it is cut-throat competition that is driving both em- 
 ployer and employed to starvation and death, and yet 
 most business men think that this is the onl)' principle on 
 which a successful business can be done. It is strange, 
 indeed, that men of such fine common sense, strength 
 of will and purpose, should see and confess the wicked- 
 ness of the industrial system under which they work, and 
 yet insist that there is no deliverance. We don't believe 
 it ! We have no nostrums for the social and industrial 
 ills, but we don't believe they are necessary and irremov- 
 able. We believe that a sincere, manly, vigorous effort 
 on the part of both employer and employed would result 
 in devising some better method of doing work, whereby 
 capital and labor would get their just reward. At any 
 rate, we must not blink at the evils and injustices which all 
 parties endure, and especially the sufferings of the work- 
 ing-woman. Her labor should be made more effective and 
 remunerative and her lot should be generally improved — 
 should be made at least equally as agreeable and satis- 
 factory as the man's lot is. 
 
 Third. Woman has certain rights as a wife which are 
 but grudgingly recognized and conceded. I believe in 
 the absolute equality of husband and wife. There is a 
 growing inclination among the women to refuse to prom- 
 ise to "obey "their husbands when they marry. Many 
 a young woman will consent to uSe this word in the mar- 
 riage service only when assured by her lover or the min- 
 ister that while the woman promises to "obey " the man 
 will actually have to fulfil the promise. At first sight we 
 may be disposed to laugh at the women for such "cranky " 
 scruples, as we may consider them, but the intelligent 
 advocates of woman's intellectual, industrial, marital and 
 political emancipation will tell you that there are deeper 
 and better reasons for objecting to this feature of the mar- 
 riage union than the foolish independence of a school girl. 
 That word "obey" in the service is a relic of the past. 
 It indicates the subjection of the woman to the man ; and 
 while public opinion has greatly improved, while this law 
 has tended and is tending more and more to become a 
 dead letter, yet that promise either binds the woman to 
 
2 28 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 connubial slavery or it amounts to nothing. If it does the 
 former — and we know that many husbands do require 
 very strict obedience from their wives — it is unjust ; if it 
 amounts to nothing, why require it? 
 
 It is a relic of barbarism, indicating a matrimonial state 
 not congruous with a truly Christian society. Jesus Christ 
 nowhere taught the subjection of the wife to the husband. 
 St. Paul's teaching on this subject has been and is still 
 greatly misunderstood. In one place he does, indeed, say, 
 "Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands," but in 
 the same breath he adds, "Husbands, love your wives, and 
 be not bitter against them." If the husbands were to 
 fulfil this injunction, wifely subjection in any onerous 
 manner would be simply impossible, and I submit it is 
 unjust to tear apart the great Apostle's teaching — to quote 
 his injunction to wives and omit his even more earnest 
 injunction to husbands. But in another place (i Cor. xi. ) 
 he emphatically asserts the equality of man and woman, 
 in these words: "Nevertheless neither is the man without 
 the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the 
 Lord. For as the woman is of the man, even so is the 
 man also by the woman, but all things of God." If St 
 Paul were alive to-day I doubt not that he would affirm as 
 strongly as any one the equality of the sexes, and con- 
 demn wife slavery as earnestly as any advocate of woman's 
 rights. Such advocates are wont to depreciate the influ- 
 ence of Christianity in elevating woman, but despite the 
 perversions of St. Paul's and Christ's teaching on this sub- 
 ject, which have occurred during the history of the Church, 
 I think an unprejudiced study of that history will show 
 that, wherever the real principles of Christianity have been 
 applied, the effect upon the status of woman has been good. 
 However this may be, and 1 am not here to plead the cause 
 of the Church, the fact is that the status of woman has 
 steadily tended upward from the beginning of civilization, 
 and she has now reached a position where she should be 
 as independent as man. 
 
 There is nothing more interesting than the study of 
 the development of the Family. As in every other case, 
 there are two views on this subject. One holds that the 
 Family was established in Eden, but owing to the Fall of 
 Man it degenerated, until all the evils of savage unions were 
 the result. The more rational view holds that the Eden 
 
THE REAL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 229 
 
 story refers to a later period of human history, when the 
 Family was emerging from its degraded position among 
 savages to a higher and better condition. At first, men 
 and women lived together promiscuously, as the animals 
 do, and as the lowest tribes of men do now. Then, when 
 various causes thinned out the women, one woman would 
 be the wife o^ several men. On the other hand, when 
 different causes destroyed the men, one man would be- 
 come the husband of several wives. 
 
 These two forms of union are called respectively "poly- 
 andry " — one woman for several men — and "polygyny " — 
 one man for several women. Even in civilized America 
 we find a state of thidgs closely akin to these savage 
 customs existing, owing to the disgraceful frequency of 
 divorce. Finally, monogamy, the union of one man and 
 one woman, was evolved, and this is confessedly the highest, 
 the ideal form of marital relationship. Mr. Spencer, who 
 has elaborately and clearly worked out the view of mar- 
 riage here glanced at, says: "The monogamic form of 
 sexual relation is manifestly the ultimate form ; and any 
 changes to be anticipated must be in the direction of com- 
 pletion and extension of it." Again, he says : " Evi- 
 dently, as tested by the definiteness and strength of the 
 links among its members, the monogamic family is the 
 most evolved. In polyandry, the maternal connection is 
 alone distinct, and the children are but partially related to 
 one another. In polygyny both the maternal and paternal 
 connections are distinct ; but while some of the children 
 are fully related, others are related on the paternal side 
 only. In monogamy not only are the maternal and pater- 
 nal connections both distinct, but all the children are 
 related on both sides. The family cluster is thus held 
 together by more numerous ties ; and beyond the greater 
 cohesion so caused there is an al)sence of those repulsions 
 caused by the jealousies inevitable in the polygynic family." 
 He also points out that monogamy is superior to poly- 
 gyny and polyandry in productive power : its effect upon 
 fhe community, socially, politically and morally, is better 
 than in the more savage states ; it prevents great mortality 
 of offspring, by drawing parents and children closer to- 
 gether ; it has better effects' upon the physical constitution 
 of adults, and it conduces to happiness in the declining 
 years of husband and wife. 
 
330 
 
 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 In this day, when the Family is threatened with destruc- 
 tion by lax ideas of marriage and divorce, the great phil- 
 osopher's words cannot be too carefully pondered. The 
 famihar song tells us most beautifully that "there's no 
 place like home," and Frederick Robertson as truly says 
 " a happy home is the single spot of rest which a man has 
 upon this earth for the cultivation of his noblest sensibili- 
 ties. " Whatever, therefore, strikes at the home strikes at the 
 heart of man, and should be resisted unto death. There 
 never was a more beautiful picture than that of "The 
 Holy Family," and from the birth of Christianity to the 
 present J;ime the Family has tended to become more and 
 more sacred, and woman has been more and more eman- 
 cipated from domestic slavery, until now complete freedom 
 looms high on her horizon. 
 
 Under the old Roman law, the woman was in perpetual 
 tutelage to her husband, and he had power of life and death 
 over her and absolute control of her property. But in the 
 reign of the Emperor Justinian, who formulated a cele- 
 brated code of laws, much of which still remains in force, 
 tutelage was abolished and the absolute power of the 
 husband ceased. The tendency " towards the personal and 
 proprietary independence" of woman in modern times 
 received its first impulse from the Justinian Code. The 
 mother acquired, what she did not previously possess, 
 equal rights with the father over the succession of deceased 
 children. 
 
 Among the early German tribes woman held a different 
 position from that which she occupied in the Roman Empire. 
 She was peculiarly revered, and was the companion, 
 counsellor, prophetess, and comforter of her husband. 
 But his authority over her was absolute, and she could be 
 sold by him or bought or beaten or killed. She was in 
 the power of her husband in all acts of domestic life, and 
 in civil life she could only act through him. She entered 
 with all her property under his guardianship, but he could 
 not dispose alone of her estate. He was not her master, 
 and at his death she received a portion — sometimes a 
 third or even a half of their common acquisitions. But 
 while woman's position under the early German law was 
 somewhat better than it was under the early Roman law, 
 it was not enviable : a wife rated at so many pieces of 
 silver could not be an ideal companion. 
 
THE REAL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 
 
 231 
 
 England inherited the essential features of the old German 
 and Scandinavian law, and woman occupied a very de- 
 graded position for many centuries in that country. ' ' The 
 husband," says a writer on this subject, "became the 
 natural guardian of his wife, and both represented and 
 absorbed the person and property of his ward. Legal rights 
 were measured by physical force." Then the archaic idea 
 came in of retaining the property of the woman in her 
 new family, and preventing both her relatives or her- 
 self separating it from her husband's. Thus, perhaps, 
 arose the peculiar English idea of the married woman 
 which has come to us in the common law. Under it the 
 wife's legal existence was suspended or extinguished during 
 marriage; her property was sacrificed, and she was placed 
 almost absolutely in the hands of her husband, as regards 
 her civil rights. Her fortune passed to her husband for 
 his temporary or permanent enjoyment. She could not 
 earn anything for herself, nor in general make any legal 
 contract, sue or be sued, because she was not legally a 
 person. The great dramatist only pictures the common 
 law when he makes one of his characters declare : "I 
 will be master of what is mine own. She is my goods, 
 my chattels, she is my house, my household stuff, my field, 
 my barn, my horse, my ox, my ass, my anything." But 
 one great influence arose in the middle ages which tended 
 strongly to elevate woman's position and increase her power, 
 and that was chivalry. ' ' To chivalry, " says the writer just 
 quoted, " woman is indebted in the middle ages for a posi- 
 tion she had never before enjoyed in history, which gave 
 her a claim almost unknown till then, and which spread 
 over a society steeped in barbarism a grace and refinement 
 that have come down to our day." A reader of Sir Walter 
 Scott's great novels will appreciate the force of this state- 
 ment, and chivalry was a direct product of the Christian 
 spirit. 
 
 The legal oppression of woman in England began to be 
 lightened in the middle ages, but especially during the 
 last hundred years a doctrine of woman's rights more 
 consonant to humane and Christian ideas has been main- 
 tained in the Equity Courts of England. The great truth 
 everywhere urged by the Master, of the distinct personality 
 and responsibility of each human being, has been applied 
 to the woman as wife by these courts, and her equality 
 
232 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 more and more advanced. Recent legislation "seems to 
 give absolute liberty to the wife of acquiring, holding, and 
 disposing of any property as her separate property ; so 
 that even the wages of a married woman in Great Britain 
 the profits of her literary, artistic or scientific skill, her de- 
 posits in savings banks, and indeed all property which 
 may belong to her at marriage, is hers, to do as she pleases 
 with." 
 
 In America efforts towards the legal emancipation of 
 woman were begun early in this century, and have steadily 
 increased in strength and influence, until now, in many 
 states at least, she is placed on legal equality with man, 
 and thus you see why intelligent women object to promis- 
 ing to "obey" their husbands. They have been gradu- 
 ally freed from matrimonial slavery, and they naturally 
 dislike to hold on to its most hateful relic. Hence it is to 
 be hoped that all marriage ceremonies will soon be revised 
 according to the new light and law. 
 
 Herbert Spencer truly says : "Equity knows no diflfer- 
 ence of sex," and, therefore, justice demands the absolute 
 equality of man and wife. 
 
 Fourth. Has woman a right to the ballot.? If not, 
 why not ? Consider, first, that she has proved herself in- 
 tellectually the equal of man. Hence if her right of suf- 
 rage be denied it must be on some other ground than that 
 of mental inferiority. Secondly, she has become legally 
 man's equal, and still I'eraains a woman and a wife — per- 
 haps a better wife than before. Third, in numbers of 
 cases from Deborah to Queen Victoria, she has shown her- 
 self competent to guide the ship of state triumphantly 
 over the troubled social and political waters. Fourth, 
 this nation, fifteen years after it freed an inferior race from 
 the bonds of slavery which it had endured for centuries, 
 placed in its hands the ballot, and thousands of ignorant, 
 degraded white men enjoy the same privilege. The woman 
 is taxed as well as the man, and yet she has no voice or 
 power in making the laws under which she lives. Mani- 
 festly this is altogether unjust. For my own part, I be- 
 lieve in both an extension and a limitation of the suffrage. 
 I don't believe that my vote, which may be the result of 
 years of hard study of the principles of government, should 
 be nullified by the vote of an ignorant black or white man 
 which may have been bought for |3.oo or a glass of 
 
THE REAL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 233 
 
 whiskey. There is no sense or justice in this, and there- 
 fore I believe that the ballot ought to be withheld from 
 the negroes and ignorant whites until they become com- 
 petent to use it. But since they have it and there seems 
 no practicable method of withdrawing this power from 
 them, I am not in favor of trying to right a wrong by 
 doing another. I believe that woman has a better right 
 to the ballot than many men who now have it. I believe 
 she will get it in due time — that she should get it ; but I 
 do not believe that women as a class are yet prepared to 
 make the best possible use of the ballot, and hence it would 
 be unwise and unjust to give it to them now. Owing to 
 their long exclusion from political and legal affairs, and 
 even from educational advantages, owing to their position 
 as wives and mothers, the emotional and maternal side of 
 their natures has been more highly developed than the 
 rational and judicial side — sentiment instead of justice, 
 feeling instead of reason, would therefore influence them, 
 with few exceptions, too much in civil and political mat- 
 ters. The instinct for government must be more fully 
 developed and strengthened throughout the class, and even 
 the leaders of the movement must learn many things by 
 experience ; the whole movement must have time to purify 
 itself of excesses and to be thoroughly rationalized before 
 the power sought is given. In all this, there is no reflec- 
 tion whatever upon the female character. On the contrary, 
 there is a full recognition of its powers, possibilities and 
 rights, but it would be as unjust to the women as to the 
 men to give them power which would be used to their 
 own as well as to others' disadvantages. We do not give 
 educated men the ballot mitil age and experience have 
 taught them — or at least until they have had an opportunity 
 to learn how to use it. We, therefore, advocate agitation 
 of this question: we would push forward education among 
 the women on legal and political subjects, and when the 
 whole class, or at least a majority of them, are ready and 
 desirous to use the ballot, we would give it them. This 
 is essentially the view of Herbert Spencer on this subject, 
 and as he is always appealed to by the female suffragists, 
 I shall quote him. In his "Social Statics," which was 
 the first book he wrote and was written in early life, he 
 was far more radical and pronounced than he is to-day in 
 his advocacy of woman suffrage. In ' ' Social Statics," his 
 
234 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 advocacy of woman's rig-hts is unqualified, but in his 
 " Principles of Sociology, " written comparatively re- 
 cently, he says: "That in time to come the political 
 status of women may be raised to something like 
 equality with that of man, seems a natural deduction. 
 But such an approximate equalization, normally accom- 
 panying a social structure of the completely industrial 
 type, is not a normal accompaniment of social types still 
 partially militant. Just noting that giving to men and 
 women equal amounts of political power, while the polit- 
 ical responsibilities entailed by war fall on men only 
 would involve a serious inequality, and that the desired 
 equality is therefore impracticable while wars continue : 
 it may be contended that though the possession of polit- 
 ical power by women might improve a society in which 
 State-regulation has been brought within the limits proper 
 to pure industrialism, it would injure a society in which 
 State-regulation has the wider range characterizing a 
 more or less militant type. Several influences would con- 
 duce to retrogression. The greater respect for authority 
 and weaker sentiment of individual freedom characteriz- 
 ing the feminine nature would tend to the maintenance 
 and multiplication of restraints. Eagerness for special 
 and immediate results, joined with inability to appreciate 
 general and remote results, characterizing the majority 
 of men and still more characterizing women, would, if 
 women had power, entail increase of coercive measures 
 for achieving present good, at the cost of future evil 
 caused by excess of control. But there is a more direct 
 reason for anticipating mischief from the exercise of polit- 
 ical power by women, while the industrial form of polit- 
 ical regulation is incomplete. The welfare of society 
 requires that the ethics of the Family and the ethics of 
 the State shall be kept distinct. Under the one the great- 
 est benefits must be given where the merits are the small- 
 est : under the other the benefits must be proportioned 
 to the merits. For the infant unqualified generosity ; 
 lor the adult citizen absolute justice. Now the ethics of 
 the Family are upheld by the parental instincts and senti- 
 ments, which, in the female, are qualified in a smaller 
 degree by other feelings than in the male. Already these 
 emotions proper to parenthood, as they exist in men, lead 
 them to carry the ethics of the Family into the policy of 
 
THE REAL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 235 
 
 the State, and the mischief resulting would be increased 
 were these emotions as existing in women, directly to 
 influence that policy. The progress towards justice in 
 social arrangements would be retarded anddemerit would 
 be fostered at the expense of merit still more than now. 
 But in proportion as the conceptions of pure equity be- 
 come clearer — as fast as the regime of voluntary co-oper- 
 ation develops to the full sentiments of personal freedom 
 with a correlative regard for the like freedom of others 
 — as fast as there is approached a state under which 
 no restrictions on individual liberty will be tolerated, save 
 those which the equal liberties of fellow-citizens entail — 
 as fast as industrialism evolves its appropriate political 
 agency, which, while commissioned, to maintain equable 
 relations among citizens, is shorn of all those powers of 
 further regulation characterizing the militant type : so fast 
 may the extension of political power to women go on 
 without evil. The moral evolution which leads to con- 
 cession of it will be the same moral evolution which 
 renders it harmless and probably beneficial."* These 
 weighty words should be carefully pondered by all advo- 
 cates of woman's rights. They mean that their energies 
 should be directed to the destruction of war and the war- 
 like spirit and a development of the industrial form of 
 society, and to the abolition of parentalism in govern- 
 ment and the promotion of individual liberty and re- 
 sponsibility. In a military age and under a military re- 
 gime, woman, by reason of her physical frailty, could 
 not hold her place beside man ; but in an industrial so- 
 ciety she could. In a government where the rules of 
 the nursery were applied woman's influence would prove 
 detrimental owing to her maternal instincts and senti- 
 ments ; but when the judicial side of her nature — her 
 sense of justice — is developed so as to control her senti- 
 ments, and society as a whole has learned to mete out 
 justice to each individual, then her influence may prove 
 beneficial. Fortunately for the women, war is becom- 
 ing less and less frequent and more and more hateful, 
 and industrialism and justice are slowly but surely gain- 
 ing ground, and so it will not be many decades before the 
 aspirations of woman are realized. 
 
 * "Principles of Sociology," I., pp. 757-78. 
 
236 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 The Rev. Charles Loring Brace, the well-known phil- 
 anthropist and economist who died recently, and who was' 
 the founder of the Children's Aid Society of New York, 
 says, in his book " Gesta Christi " (p. 296): "Christianity 
 by itself no more teaches female saffrage than it does re- 
 publicanism or free trade. But it throws into human society 
 that sentiment of equality before God, that principle of 
 equal rights and equal responsibility, and of universal 
 brotherhood, which all lead logically to these results. The 
 thorough application and carrying out of Christian principles 
 in human society is a result only to be expected in distant 
 ages. In the meantime it is the part of wisdom to prepare 
 the world for these great changes, and to begin them by 
 slow and careful steps. In the United States and England, 
 a useful beginning has been made in regard to woman, by 
 admitting her vote in elections for school trustees and in 
 municipalities. The time is not far distant when in some 
 communities her vote, limited by property and education, 
 will be received on larger fields of suffrage. So great and 
 vital a change will thus be made slowly and with careful 
 preparation. Woman will be trained and educated for her 
 new duty." 
 
 These are the opinions of all earnest minded, intelligent 
 men and women, who are unbiased by prejudice and free 
 from fanaticisim. They cherish no preconceived notions 
 about ■" woman's sphere." They beheve that her "sphere" 
 is limited only by her rights, her strength and her qualifi- 
 cations for the positions sought They not only wish her 
 Godspeed in every good and perfect work, but they will 
 lend a hand to promote her intellectual, her industrial, her 
 legal and her political emancipation. 
 
 In conclusion, let me urge professing Christians, on the 
 one hand, not to oppose this movement, and woman's 
 advocates not to be unreasonable in their demands or car- 
 ried away by passion and opposition. It is a sad fact that 
 the Church, which professedly stands for truth and justice, 
 has, as an organization, often opposed the greatest and 
 best reforms. It condemned Astronomy ; it antagonized 
 Geology ; it denounces Biology ; it refuses to participate 
 fully in social and industrial reforms. It sanctioned and 
 upheld slavery and even trafficked in human flesh. It has 
 often oppressed woman. The canon law of the middle 
 ages was largely leveled against her ; and to-day there is 
 
THE REAL RIGHTS OF WOMAN. 237 
 
 little disposition on the part of the Church as an organi- 
 zation to recognize and advocate the real rights of woman. 
 So strong is its indisposition to do this, that some of 
 woman's friends are strongly inclined to cut the move- 
 ment entirely loose from Christianity and base it on a less 
 intolerant and more reasonable power. But, my friends, 
 female suffragists, I would earnestly ask you to remember 
 that the men in the Church who have opposed and do op- 
 pose reforms do so as men, not as Christians— Ao it not be- 
 cause of their religion, but in spite of it. This is proved by 
 the fact that in those countries and tribes where Christianity 
 has no foothold woman's position is degraded. In ancient 
 Rome and Greece, where secular culture reached its highest 
 point in the old world, woman was a slave. In Asia, 
 Europe, Africa, ancient America and the Islands of the Sea 
 she has been and still is treated as a beast. It is not re- 
 ligion, but the want of it ; it is the ignorance and brutality 
 of man that degrade woman, and her position in Christian 
 countries, compared with her position in barbaric com- 
 munities, is proof positive that if the influences of Chris- 
 tianity have not greatly promoted they have at least not se- 
 riously hindered her progress. Let us be reasonable, there- 
 fore, and render honor to whom honor is due — attribute 
 to human nature the sins it commits, and recognize the truth 
 and justice of Christ's teaching, however much it may have 
 been misunderstood, perverted, misapplied, or ignored. 
 
 Whittier's words, adapted, come to the strugglers for 
 woman's freedom. 
 
 " God bless ye, sisters— in the fight 
 Ye're waging now ; ye cannot fail, 
 For better is your sense of right 
 Than kingcraft's triple mail. 
 
 "Than tyrant's law or bigot's ban, 
 
 More mighty is your simplest word : 
 The free heart of an honest man 
 Than crosier or the sword. 
 
 " The truths ye urge are borne abroad 
 By every breeze and eVery tide ; 
 The voice of Nature and of God 
 Speaks out upon your side. 
 
 "The weapons which your hands have found 
 Are those which Heaven itself has wrought, 
 Light, Truth, and Love : — your battle ground 
 The free broad field of Tliought. 
 
238 TOPICS OF THE TIMES. 
 
 " O ye who, with undoubting eyes, 
 
 Through present cloud ajid gathering storm, 
 Behold the span of Freedom's sides. 
 And sunshine soft and warm. 
 
 " Press bravely onward ! — not in vain 
 Your generous trust in human kind ; 
 The good which bloodshed could not gain 
 Your peaceful zeal shall find. 
 
 "Press on ! — the triumph shall be won 
 Of common rights and equal laws. 
 The glorious dream of Harrington, 
 And Sidney's good old cause. 
 
 " Blessing the cotter and the crown, 
 
 Sweetening worn Labor's bitter cup ; 
 And plucking not the highest down, 
 Lifting the lowest up. 
 
 " Press on !- and we who may not share 
 The toil or glory of your fight 
 May ask, at least, in earnest prayer, 
 God's blessing on the right" 
 
Ecclesiastical Liberty 
 
 BEING THE 
 
 DEFENCE OF THE REV. HOWARD MacQUEARY 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL COURT 
 
 EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN NORTHERN OHIO 
 
 THE CHARGES OF HERESY 
 
 DELIVERED IN CLEVELAND, OHIO, JANUARY SEVENTH 
 
 1891 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY 
 
 SUCCESSORS TO 
 
 JOHN W. LOVELL company 
 
 150 WORTH STREET, COR. MISSIOJJ PLACE 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 
 Jan. I2th, 1891. 
 
 My Dear Mr. MacQueary : 
 
 I have read your speech carefully twice, and I congratulate 
 you upon it most heartily. Excellent as your book was, I 
 think that your speech shows still greater power. It stirred 
 me deeply. You are rendering a great service to religious 
 and thoughtful men throughout the country, but especially 
 to those in the Protestant Episcopal Church. 
 
 Your argument seems absolutely conclusive, but I have 
 little hope that it will clear you before a Church tribunal. 
 That it will clear you before the great mass of thinking men 
 in our own and other Churches, I am sure : that it will quicken 
 liberal thought in the Church, I am also sure. 
 
 Your opponents little know what they are doing and what 
 you have been endeavoring to do. They little know that the 
 great danger is, that the coming generation of thinking men 
 in the United States will separate themselves entirely from all 
 Christian organizations. If what thinking men in the light 
 of the dawn of the twentieth century can believe is to be tied 
 by Church authority to what such men absolutely cannot, 
 will not, and ought not to believe, then the Protestant Epis- 
 copal Church and other Protestant Churches in this country 
 will he left in very much the same attitude toward the thought 
 of this country, as the Roman Catholic Church in Italy and 
 France holds toward the thought of those countries. 
 
 I hope for something better, and look to you and men like 
 you to initiate movements which will bring about a proper 
 union between Christianity and modern thought. 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 I think so highly of your speech that I would like to circulate 
 copies of it. I will subscribe for a number of these, and cir- 
 culate them myself, to the amount of dollars, and will 
 
 exert myself to have others do the like. 
 With sincere congratulation and good wishes, I remain, 
 Most respectfully yours, 
 
 AN-DREW D. WHITE. 
 
 The Rev. Howard MacQueary, 
 Canton, Ohio. 
 
 The above letter, which is inserted in this preface by the 
 kind permission of the writer, is one of several requests 
 I have received to publish the following speech, delivered 
 before the Ecclesiastical Court of the Episcopal Church of 
 Northern Ohio, on the seventh and eighth of January, 1891, in 
 Cleveland, Ohio, defending myself against the charges of 
 " heresy," because I had questioned the Virgin birth and 
 physical resurrection of Jesus in a book entitled " The Evolu- 
 tion of Man and Christianity " (D. Appleton & Co., New 
 York, publishers). 
 
 It will be seen at once that the questions raised by this trial 
 were of fundamental and lasting importance, involving as 
 they did a consideration of the great principles of the Prot- 
 estant. Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, — the root ques- 
 tions between Romanism and Protestantism. It was at- 
 tempted to narrow the issues to a simple interpretation of 
 Creeds and Canon Law, but the Prosecutor was forced to 
 abandon this position, and in a speech in reply to this tried to 
 refute my argument from Scripture. That he was unsuc- 
 cessful may be inferred from the fact that two of the five 
 judges constituting the Court voted for acquittal, and men 
 like Dr. White, whose minds are free from theological bias, 
 consider the argument conclusive. I am satisfied that the 
 position here taken, namely, that the Bible is the supreme Rule 
 ofFaithfor all Protestant churches, and that individuals should 
 be allowed perfect liberty of thought and speech is absolutely 
 valid. Creeds in Protestant Churches should be open to the 
 freest criticism and subject to periodical alterations, and no 
 
PREFACE. _ 5 
 
 man should be expelled from the Church on account of 
 opinions held. Church history shows that ecclesiastical courts 
 and councils have again and again erred and condemned, 
 innocent men. Observation proves that the Bible is not in- 
 fallible either in its scientific, historical, or even its moral and 
 religious teaching. There is absolutely no infallible guide 
 available in religious faith and practice, and hence every one 
 who sincerely wishes to frame and fashion his life after the 
 pattern of Jesus Christ's — every one who loves Him and would 
 fain do Him service in the pulpit or the parish, should be 
 cordially welcomed into the Church and ministry. In short 
 conduct, not creed, should be made the basis of Church 
 fellowship, and not until this is done will the Church do the 
 work her Master intended her to do. Perhaps the day is not 
 distant when these truths will be practically recognized, and 
 the Church may be forced to reconstruct her dogmas on a 
 more rational and scriptural basis. If so, it will be well to 
 have it generally known, among the laity as well as among 
 the clergy, that the Church has merely to re-assert the fun- 
 damental principles of the Reformation and to return to the 
 simplicity of the Apostolic and Nicene Faith. 
 
 It is with the hope of promoting, in my humble way, this 
 desirable end that I consent to the publication ot the follow- 
 ing speech. 
 
 HOWARD MACQUEARY. 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Ecclesiastical 
 Court : 
 
 The Prosecutor's speech reminds me of the old story of the 
 French king, who, with his lords and gentlemen, was mak- 
 ing a tour through his dominions, and when he came to a 
 certain provincial town the deputy of the mayor came forth 
 to meet him and began his speech thus : " May it please 
 your majesty, there are just thirteen reasons why his honor 
 the mayor cannot come out to welcome you on this occasion. 
 The first is that he is dead." When the king heard this he 
 graciously excused the deputy from stating the other tweive 
 reasons. The Prosecutor's speech amounts to this : The 
 doctrines of the Protestant Episcopal Church are fixed and 
 unquestionable quantities, whose meaning is so.. clear that a 
 wayfaring man though a fool cannot err therein. On the 
 other hand, the opinions of the accused clergyman are so 
 explicitly stated in his book, and are so evidently contradic- 
 tory of the doctrines of this Church, that he is ecclesiastically 
 dead, and there is nothing for the Court to do but to bury him 
 out of sight, and perhaps erect over him a modest monument 
 bearing the immortal words of Dante : " All hope abandon 
 ye who enter here." 
 
 I shall, therefore, aim to show first, that the doctrines of this 
 Church are not fixed and unquestionable, and that their mean- 
 ing is by no means so clear as the Prosecutor would have us 
 believe. Secondly, I shall show that my opinions, rightly 
 understood, are not so contradictory of the doctrines of this 
 Church as to justify your condemnation of them. 
 
 " There are two sides to every question," says the popular 
 
8 £CCLES/ASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 proverb most truly, and at last the time has come when the 
 other side of the question now before you may be heard and 
 considered. For months my critics and self-constituted 
 judges have had things all their own way. They have not 
 only greatly misrepresented and vehemently denounced both 
 my theological and ecclesiastical position, but they have 
 attacked my moral character. They have accused me of 
 violating solemn ordination vows and they have, with few 
 exceptions, steadily refused to let me refute their slanderous 
 charges. They have done this, too, knowing that they were 
 on the popular side of the question, knowing that thousands 
 would applaud their defense of self-styled " orthodoxy " with- 
 out ever taking the trouble to examine the opinions of the 
 man they condemned. They have thus created a widespread 
 impression in the Church and out of it that I was simply a 
 young, presumptuous ignoramus, who wanted to create " a 
 sensation " and win " notoriety " by advocating erroneous 
 and strange doctrines. 
 
 Before beginning my defense, therefore, I wish to ask this 
 Court : Have you been influenced by these criticisms ? I 
 fear that you have, for you are not superhuman, and even 
 the most generous and sober-minded man must be more or 
 less influenced by the assertions of learned Christian gentle- 
 men, which are constantly and confidently reiterated. But if 
 you have lent a willing ear to these criticisms, then you have 
 prejudged this case against me, and there is no use in my 
 proceeding with my defense, for even the inspired eloquence 
 and arguments of St. Paul himself could not overcome prej- 
 udice. But if you have come here determined to ignore the 
 aforesaid criticisms ; if you are resolved to look facts and 
 reasons in the face, and accept the conclusions to which 
 they logically lead, regardless of consequences ; if you are 
 prepared to stem the tide of popular opinion and to set aside 
 the will of the majority rather than do injustice to a humble 
 fellow creature, who is as honestly seeking to learn ana 
 speak the truth as his condemners are, to say the least of it, 
 then, indeed, I may hope for a fair hearing and a just judg- 
 ment. Trusting that you will give me this, I proceed directly 
 to my defense. 
 
SCCLESiASTiCAL LIBERTY. g 
 
 First. The first charge which " the indictment " brings 
 against me is that I have violated my ordination vows by- 
 holding and teaching certain opinions specified. We must, 
 therefore, examine the said vows and ascertain their nature 
 and meaning. The first vow refers simply to the inward and 
 spiritual call to the ministerial office which every candidatt 
 for holy orders is supposed to experience. The second 
 
 vow reads as follows : " Are you persuaded that the Holy 
 Scriptures contain all doctrine required as necessary for 
 eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ ? And are 
 you determined out of the said Scriptures lO instruct the 
 people committed to your charge, and to teach nothing, as 
 necessary to eternal salvation, but that which you shall be 
 persuaded may be concluded and proved by the Scriptures ? " 
 
 The candidate answers : " I am so persuaded, and have 
 so determined, by God's grace." 
 
 Third vow : " Will you then give your faithful diligence 
 always so to minister the doctrine and sacraments and the 
 discipline of Christ as the Lord hath commanded and this 
 Church hath received the same, according to the command- 
 ments of God, so that you may teach the people committed to 
 your care and charge with all diligence to keep and observe 
 the same ? " Answer : " I will do so, by the help of the 
 Lord." 
 
 Now, this is the vow which is specified as that which I 
 have violated, We must, therefore, consider very carefully 
 its meaning. The vow is understood to mean that the candi- 
 date for the ministry promises to accept and teach the Creeds 
 and Thirty-nine Articles of this Church just as they stand in 
 the Prayer Book. On the contrary, I claim that the doctrine 
 of Christ as this Church hath received the same is that the 
 Holy Scriptures contain all doctrine required as necessary to 
 salvation, " so that whatsoever is not read therein (to quote 
 the sixth article of religion) nor may be proved thereby is not 
 to be required of any man that it should be believed as an 
 article of the Faith." In other words, the doctrine of this 
 Church is that the Bible is her Rule of Faith and Practice, 
 and that each individual must test and interpret the creeds 
 and articles by Holy Scripture, not Holy Scripture by the 
 
10 ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 creeds and articles. I claim that the third vow and all the 
 other ordination vows and the articles themselves prove this 
 opinion to be correct. Thus, note the little word "then" in 
 the third vow. The candidate is first asked, " Are you per- 
 suaded that the Holy Scriptures contain all doctrine required 
 as necessary to salvation ? " and having answered in the af- 
 firmative, he is next asked, "Will you then give your faithful 
 diligence always so to minister the doctrine of Christ as this 
 Church hath received the same?" This little word "then" 
 refers us back to the second vow and shows us that the doc- 
 trine there stated is the doctrine of this Church, and that 
 doctrine is that the Holy Scriptures rather than the creeds 
 and articles contain all doctrine required as necessary to sal- 
 vation. The sixth article, which I have just quoted, expresses 
 the same doctrine, and hence we must believe that the Bible 
 is our Rule of Faith, and that our formulas must be interpreted 
 by the Scriptures, not vice versa. This answers the point 
 made by the Prosecutor that the sixth article restricts the pri- 
 vate judgment of the individual. Of course it restricts it. 
 But to what does it restrict it ? Manifestly to the Scriptures. 
 The other vows teach the same doctrine. Thus, the candi- 
 date promises in the fourth vow to " banish and drive away 
 from the church all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary 
 to " — what ? The creeds and articles ? No, but " contrary to 
 God's word." In the fifth vow he promises to " be diligent in 
 prayer and in reading the Holy Scriptures and in such other 
 studies as help to a knowledge of the same." This vow not 
 only asserts the right of private judgment, but the duty ot 
 private judgment. The candidate binds himself to be diligent 
 in prayer and in such other studies as help to a knowledge, not 
 of the creeds and articles, but of the Holy Scriptures. Why 
 should this promise be required of him if the Church has for- 
 ever ascertained and settled the doctrines of Holy Scripture in 
 her creeds and articles ? Why should he be so diligent in his 
 efforts to find out the meaning of the Holy Scriptures, If after 
 all he dare not suggest that some article of the Faith is erro- 
 neous and needs restatement ? If my opponents be right in 
 their interpretation of the doctrine of this Church, this fifth 
 irow is not only useless but it is absurd. 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. u 
 
 (2) But it is said by tlie Prosecutor and others substantially 
 that there are many theories of the theological schools — theo- 
 ries of inspiration, the atonement, the sacraments, etc., upon 
 which the Church allows difference of opinion, and the minis- 
 ter must test all these by the Scriptures, but there is a limit 
 beyond which he cannot go, a point at which he must stop 
 and accept the judgment of the Church in place of his own, 
 andthat limit is found in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. A 
 man may interpret the Thirty-nine Articles, or at least those 
 which do not touch the doctrines of the creeds, according to 
 Scripture and reason, and accept or reject them as he chooses, 
 but he must not touch the creeds. I maintain, sir, that this 
 alleged limitation to the exercise of private judgment is not only 
 imaginary, but the contention is disapproved by the Church 
 herself. 
 
 Thus, turn to the eighth article of religion on the Creeds, 
 and read : " The Nicene Creed, and that which is commonly 
 called the Apostles's Creed, ought thoroughly to be received 
 and believed." Why? Why, because " they may be proved 
 by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture." But who is to 
 show that they may be so proved ? " The Church in 
 General Convention assembled," it is answered. But how will 
 such a question ever be brought before the General Conven- 
 tion for its consideration 'i Manifestly only by the efforts of 
 some individual, perhaps a young parson in a country or vil- 
 lage parish. It is clear that the Creeds must be tested by 
 Holy Scripture by some individual, and if he find reason to 
 believe that any one of their articles is either erroneous in 
 form or in substance, it is his duty imposed upon him by the 
 Church herself, to say so publicly, and let the question be 
 fully discussed, and then submit it to the General Convention 
 for its consideration. Suppose he were to act otherwise. 
 Suppose, for instance, that I had said nothing publicly about 
 another interpretation or a restatement of the articles of the 
 Creed on the birih and resurrection of Christ, but had waited 
 quietly until I had been elected a delegate to the General 
 Convention (or perhaps a Bishop — I might have waited along 
 time) and had then arisen in Convention and moved that the 
 words " Or born of Joseph and Mary" be inserted in the 
 
12 ECCLEStA$TlCAL LIBERTY. 
 
 margin of the Prayer Book as a substitute when preferred, for 
 the words " born of the Virgin Mary." This suggested al- 
 teration in, or addition to, the creed would be of a piece with 
 the alternate form of the article on the descent into hell. But 
 what sort of reception would such a proposition meet with 
 in the General Convention ? Why, unless there are many 
 more " heretics " in the Church than is generally supposed, such 
 a proposition would be greeted with groans, and the mover of 
 it would be considered either a fool or a " heretic " who should 
 be dealt with — in this manner. That, sir, would be the 
 result of any attempt to alter the formulas of this Church 
 without first discussing them among individuals and before 
 the Church at large. Is not this the method adopted by the 
 Presbyterians in their attempts to revise their Confession of 
 Faith ? Is it not the method we adopted in our recent revision 
 of the Prayer Book ? Is it not the method adopted in effect- 
 ing an alteration in, or an amendment to, the Constitution of 
 the United States ? Think of the tremendous agitation of the 
 negro question before the public mind before the fifteenth 
 amendment could be passed by Congress ! And suppose 
 that amendment had never been passed : Would the promo- 
 ters of it have been condemned and executed as anarchists ? 
 Would they have been deprived of any of the rights of citi- 
 zens ? I trow not. But they would have been allowed to 
 hold their opinions and exercise the functions of a public 
 office, if elected thereto, just as we permit men who now 
 believe in Womans Suffrage or the Single Tax or Socialism 
 to hold public office. 
 
 The twentieth article of religion, on the authority of the 
 Church, says : " The Church hath power to decree rights or 
 ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith ; and yet it 
 is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything that is contrary 
 to God's word written " . . . . and " as it ought not to decree 
 anything against the same, so besides the same ought it not 
 to enforce anything to be believed for necessity of salva- 
 tion.'' . . . Again, I ask : Who is to decide whether the 
 Church has or not ordained things contrary to the Scriptures ? 
 How will this question ever be brought before the Church for 
 its consideration if he who raises it is at once excommunicated ? 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 13 
 
 Bishop Harold Browne in his commentary on this article 
 distinctly says : " The authority of the Church is not absolute 
 and supreme. The decisions of the Church must always be 
 guided by and be dependent on the statements and injunctions 
 of the written word of God." 
 
 It is plain then, sir, that the doctrine of this Church is that 
 the Scriptures are our supreme guide, and that each one of 
 her children is bound to interpret both her creeds and arti- 
 cles by Holy Scripture, and suggest any alteration either in 
 their interpretation or their substance which may seem to him 
 necessary. 
 
 (3) The chief reason why the truth of this contention is not 
 universally admitted is that intimated by the Prosecutor, that 
 the creeds were established by the first General Councils and 
 have been believed by the vast majority of Christians from 
 that day to this. It is tacitly assumed and often explicitly 
 asserted that the first General Councils of the Church were 
 infallible and their decrees therefore unalterable. Yet this 
 idea is flatly contradicted by the articles of this Church. 
 Thus, the twenty-first article says : " Forasmuch as they 
 (General Councils) be an assembly of men whereof all be not 
 governed with the spirit and word of God, they may err, and 
 sometimes have erred, in things pertaining to God. Where- 
 fore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have 
 neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that 
 they be taken out of Holy Scripture.'' The American revisers 
 of 1789 omitted this article from the Prayer Book when they 
 adapted it to the changed condition of the Church after the 
 Revolution. But they state in a note that they did so " be- 
 cause it was partly of a local and civil nature, and is provided 
 for, as to the remaining parts of it, in other articles." They 
 refer, of course, to the nineteenth article, which says : " The 
 Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome (the 
 very Churches which formed the first General Councils) have 
 erred, not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but 
 also in matters of Faith." Hence it is plain that " this Church" 
 rejects the infallibility of the first General Councils, and con- 
 sequently the infalUbility of their decisions. We are just as 
 much bound by the doctrines of this Church to test her creeds 
 
14 ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 by Scripture and reason as we are to test any one of the Thirty- 
 nine Articles. I am here reminded of the Prosecutor's state- 
 ment that we have no right to appeal to one or two of the 
 Thirty-nine Articles unless we accept all of them. What, then, 
 is the use of having the sixth article among the thirty-nine 
 if we cannot appeal to that for the purpose of rejecting what 
 may seem to be unscriptural in another .' May we not appeal 
 to one article of the Constitution of the United States for the 
 purpose of interpreting the meaning of another article or 
 clause of the constitution ? May we not appeal to the article 
 on amendments for the purpose of altering the Constitution ? 
 It seems to me that that would be doing what the Constitution 
 requires of us. I confess I cannot see the force of the Prosecu- 
 tor's argument on that point. Perhaps he may be able to 
 malte the point more clear later on. 
 
 (4) It is quite as easy to refute the popular idea that because 
 the majority have believed and do believe certain things, they 
 are necessarily — or at least presumably — true ; indeed, the 
 fact that the majority believes a certain thing is sometimes 
 presumptive proof that it is false, for the majority of men do 
 not think and are easily influenced by demagogues. At any 
 rate, this notion is easily refuted in the present case, for if the 
 belief of the majority is true, then Christianity, Protestantism, 
 and the claims of the Episcopal Church are all false. The 
 followers of Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, and Mohammed 
 far outnumber the disciples of Christ ; and many of these 
 devotees of what we consider false religions are more than a 
 match for Christians in intellectual power. At one time, the 
 Incarnation or Divinity of Christ was all but universally denied 
 by Christians, and then it was Athanasius, a young archdeacon 
 of Alexandria, against the world. When Luther began the 
 Reformation it was Luther against Rome ; and the Pope 
 actually laughed at " Brother Martin," but his laughter was 
 soon turned into mourning, and we believe that " Brother 
 Martin" was right, the majority wrong. The Roman Cath- 
 olics to-day urge this very fact — the fact that their Church is 
 the oldest and largest church — against the claims of Protes- 
 tantism, but we reject their contention as false. The Epis- 
 copal Church is much — very much — smaller than the great 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 15 
 
 Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist and other Re- 
 formed Churches, yet it actually had the courage a short time 
 ago to ask these bigger sisters to accept its " Historic Epis- 
 copate ; and although this offer has not been, and is not likely 
 to be, accepted, yet we believe (none more firmly than I do) 
 that " from the Apostles' time there have been these orders of 
 ministers in Christ's Church — Bishops, Priests and Deacons." 
 And so you see that none of us really accept the opinion of 
 the majority as infallible, but often reject it as erroneous. 
 Every departure from accepted opinions is, of necessity, 
 inaugurated by one or a few individuals. Had Christ and 
 St. Paul bowed to the will of the majority, there would have 
 been no Christianity in the world to-day. Had Athanasius 
 bowed to the will of the majority, the Church would now be 
 Unitarian instead of Trinitarian. Had Luther and the other 
 Reformers bowed to the will of the majority, there would be • 
 no Protestantism. Had Galileo and Bruno and Kepler and 
 Copernicus and Newton and Lyell and Darwin bowed to the 
 opinion of the majority, we should still be believing that the 
 earth is flat and stationary, that the sun moves round the 
 earth, that the world was created in six days of twenty-four 
 hours each, and that the first man was made out of mud and 
 had life and mind blown into him through his nostrils. Had 
 Columbus bowed to the will of the majority, this glorious land 
 of plenty and freedom would not have been discovered when 
 it was. These are some of the most familiar and illustrious 
 examples of individuals who have had the courage to face the 
 world and reject the will of the majority. In citing them I, 
 of course, do not for one moment think of classing myself 
 with them, for I am not worthy to unloose their shoes' latchet ; 
 but I simply cite facts of history to show that the tyranny of 
 the majority, if it had not been rejected in the great crises of 
 the world's history, would have deprived us of the greatest 
 blessings we enjoy to-day. These examples show that the 
 world is frequently, and often most fortunately, ruled by a 
 small minority. 
 
 But, Mr. Chairman.while I thus reject the infallibility of the 
 first General Councils and of the majority — or rather while 
 the Church rejects it — ;I am willing to bow to the authority of 
 
1 6 ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 the Council of Nice— that great Council that formulated and 
 established A.D. 325 the great Catholic Creed of Christendom. 
 Will this Court bow to this august and venerable authority ? 
 Surely the Church of Ohio will not have the courage to reject 
 the decree of the greatest Ecclesiastical Council that ever 
 assembled ! But if not — if you are willing to accept the 
 authority of the Council of Nice, then you must acquit me at 
 once, for that Council — the Council whose very object was to 
 define the doctrine of the Incarnation — that Council which 
 was summoned and opened by one of the greatest Roman 
 Emperors after Caesar — that Council in which sat Athanasius, 
 " the Father of Orthodoxy,'' who formulated its Creed — ^that 
 Council actually omitted from the Creed it established the 
 article on the Virgin Birth of Jesus and did not define the 
 nature of His resurrection. If you will turn to the article on 
 • " Creeds " in the Encyclopedia Britannica, which was written 
 by that eminent scholar and theologian, the Very Rev. Prin- 
 cipal TuUoch, you will find the original form of the Nicene 
 Creed. It reads as follows : " We believe in one God, Father 
 Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible and in 
 one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, 
 only begotten, that is to say, of the substance of the Father, 
 God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begot- 
 ten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by 
 whom all things were made, both things in heaven and things 
 on earth, who for us men and for our salvation came down, 
 and was made flesh, made man, suffered and rose again on 
 the third day, went up into the heavens, and is to come again 
 to judge the quick and the dead, and in the Holy Ghost." Dr. 
 Schaff in his large works on "The Creeds of Christendom" 
 Vol. I. pp., 28 and 29 gives the same Creed, and you will 
 observe that not one word is said in it about the Virgin 
 Birth or the nature of the resurrection of Jesus. 
 
 These clauses were gradually added to this simple formula, 
 not by councils, but by individuals, in order to meet various 
 " heresies," until finally the Creed assumed its present form. 
 " Even in the Council of Chalcedon, the fourth General Coun- 
 cil," says Principal Tulloch, which met in A. D. 481, ''when 
 the Creed existed in its enlarged form, there was still a large 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 17 
 
 number of Bishops who greatly preferred the Creed in its 
 original and simpler form, and it appears long to have main- 
 tained its ground alongside of the others in the Eastern 
 Church." 
 
 It strikes me, Mr. Chairman, that I have pretty respectable 
 authority to sustain my position — the Council of Nice, whose 
 great object was to define what was necessary as a creed of 
 the Church, and a great number of Bishops at the Council ot 
 Chalcedon, and the usage of the early Eastern Church, and 
 last, but not least, Athanasius, the Father of Orthodoxy. 
 Again, I ask, therefore, will this Court bow to the authority 
 of the Council of Nice and the early Church ? I wish that 
 some representatives of the so-called " Catholic Party " in our 
 Church — i.e., the extreme High Church Party — were present, 
 for these good brethren are forever appealing to the early 
 Church for authority for the revival of Romanistic rights. 
 Will the " Catholics " bow to the authority of the early Church 
 and the Council of Nice ? If so, then let them stop abusing 
 me and condemning me as a " heretic." They want to have 
 prayers for the dead, and they appeal to the early Church for 
 sanction of this custom. For my own part, I will not quarrel 
 with them, if they want to pray for their dead, because it can 
 do no harm, and if the wicked will have a chance after death 
 for salvation, our "Catholic" brethren maybe able to pray 
 some of their " heretical " friends out of purgatory. But I 
 will quarrel with them if, after I accord them the right and 
 privilege they claim, they refuse to grant me the same liberty, 
 and I will quarrel with them till dooms-day. Will the 
 " Catholics " bow to the authority of Nice and the early 
 Church ? Then let them join us, the real orthodox brethren. 
 Not only did the Council of Nice not insert the article on the 
 Virgin Birth among the necessary Articles of Faith, but 
 Justin Martyr, in the 48th chapter of his well-known " Dia- 
 logue with Trypho," tells us that many Christians in his day 
 — about I4P A. D. — believed that Christ was " born man of 
 man ' — that is, that He had an earthly father — but did he there- 
 fore condemn them as " heretics " and propose their excom- 
 munication from the Church ? No ; but he told Trypho 
 exactly what I have been telling Trypho's modern represen- 
 
1 8 ECCLESIASTICAL LIB EN TV. 
 
 tatives, that, although he (Justin) did not agree with those 
 rejectors ot the Virgin Birth, yet it was not necessary to the 
 Incarnation, and so in addition to the Council of Nice and 
 St. Athanasius and many bishops in the Council ot Chalcedon 
 and the usage of the early Eastern Church, I have the sup- 
 port of the first great apologist of Christianity in advocating 
 the liberty of belief I claim. 
 
 It is true that the Creeds found in the writings of Irenjeus — 
 the latter part of the second century — and TertuUian and other 
 " fathers " have the article on the Virgin Birth, but Principal 
 TuUoch well says, " That these creeds were not of uni- 
 versal authority — they were the confessions of individual 
 Churches." " There was (he says) no rule of faith universally 
 accepted by the Church or authoritatively imposed by any 
 Catholic body up to the time of the Nfcene Council. Each 
 church seems to have had its own regula veritatis (rule of 
 Xx^'Cn) ox confessio fidei—c<ya.ie.^s\on of faith,'' and as I have just 
 shown, the Council of JJice did not even mention the points on 
 which I am arraigned for heresy. The Apostles' Creed, as is 
 well known, is of a much later date than the Nicene Creed. 
 " The Apostles' Creed,'' says TuUoch, " is not found in any- 
 thing like its present form till four centuries after the faith of 
 the Eastern Church was definitely settled in the Nicene sym- 
 bol " — that is, about the middle of the eighth century. 
 
 Will the Church in Ohio, then, follow the example of the 
 modern so-called " Catholics,'' and especially the example 
 of the Reformers of the sixteenth century, and decide the 
 question now before you by the authority of the Nicene Coun- 
 cil and the early Church ? If so, then you must fully acquit 
 me. 
 
 But it will be said ; " Although the original form of the 
 Nience Creed omitted the article on the Virgin Birth and all 
 definition of the nature of the resurrection of Jesus, yet its 
 present form contains these articles and the second and fourth 
 of the Thirty-nine Articles clearly define these dogmas." That 
 is true, and I will consider the force of that objection pres- 
 ently, but that has nothing to do with the fact now under 
 consideration. I am now considering simply the fact that this 
 Church rejects ecclesiastical infallibility in general and the 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 19 
 
 infallibility of the first General Councils in particular. But 
 I am urging that, even if she accepted the authority of the 
 early Church and Councils, she could not by such authority 
 condemn me as a heretic. In other words, I am saying that 
 if this Court condemns me as a heretic it will thereby condemn 
 the Council of Nice, St. Athanasius, a great number of Bishops 
 in the Council of Chalcedon, the early Eastern Church, a 
 number of Christians mentioned by Justin Martyr, and the 
 great apologist himself, as heretical. You will reject the 
 authority appealed to by the English Reformers and the 
 modern Catholics. That is the point I am urging. I am 
 claiming primitive and most respectable authority for my 
 position, and I submit that it is worthy of consideration. 
 
 Furthermore. Let it be distinctly understood that, while 
 I thus go back to the very foundation of Christianity, and to 
 the very root-questions between Romanism and Protestant- 
 ism, I am not now advocating any re-statement or re-con- 
 struction of the creeds and articles of this Church. I think — 
 indeed, I am quite sure from the past few months' experience — 
 that the Church is probably unprepared by several hundred 
 years for any such re-construction of her formulas ; but I am 
 simply showing that if she were ready and if such a re-con- 
 struction were deemed necessary, she would have the authority 
 of the early Church and Councils to support her action, as well 
 as the example of the Reformers. I am simply discussing the 
 nature of the great basic principles of "this Church" in 
 order to show that, in exercising the right of private judg- 
 ment, I am simply discharging the obligations I assumed at 
 ordination, and I am insisting that the articles of our Church 
 and the examples of the Reformers and the decisions of the 
 early Church and Councils all sustain me in claiming for 
 individuals such liberty of belief and speech as I claim for 
 myself. I am not therefore, advocating an ecclesiastical 
 revolution, but simply asking for liberty to interpret the for- 
 mulas of this Church somewhat differently from what some 
 others do. In short, I am doing exactly what a member of 
 Congress does when he proposes to construe some clause in 
 the Constitution differently from what it has been generally 
 construed. I am no ecclesiastical anarchist rebelling against 
 
20 ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 all authority and proposing a complete overthrow of the 
 constitution of this Church, but a loyal son, defending her 
 great principles and claiming simply the liberty that she her- 
 self grants. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, it is truly astonishing that a clergyman in 
 the " Protestant Episcopal Church," in the closing years of 
 the 19th century, should have to make such a plea ? This 
 Church, which is the mother of English Protestantism, and, 
 bears the evidence of the fact in her very name — this Church, 
 whose Articles were, many of them, taken from the Augs- 
 burg Confession of Faith, which was the summary of the 
 opinions of the man who dared burn the papal bull and alone 
 face the Lords Temporal and Spiritual in the Diet of Worms — 
 this Church, whose loyal sons died amid the flames of Oxford 
 and Smithfield for the sake of religious faith and freedom — 
 this Church, whose grand old Bishops, in the 6th century re- 
 jected with disdain the proposals of Pope Gregory, when he 
 sent Augustine and his Monks to England to preach the Rom- 
 ish faith, and rather than submit to this ecclesiastical power 
 retired with their flocks into the wilderness of Wales — this 
 Church, which claims, (and I believe rightly) to have been 
 founded by the great Apostle of the Gentiles, the first of Protes- 
 tants, after Christ, who in his immortal epistle to the Galatians 
 bade them " stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ had set 
 them free " as against the tyrannous yoke which a Judaising 
 hierarchy of the day would have imposed upon the necks of 
 the disciples — this is the Church which wijl ignore the teach- 
 ings of apostles and martyrs the example of the primitive 
 church and the doctrines of Reformers, and condemn a man 
 for heresy, because, forsooth, he dares exercise his God- 
 given conscience and reason and defend the principles of the 
 Church he loves? Depend upon it, sir, if this be done the 
 day is not distant when the memory of the action will bring 
 a flush of shame to the cheeks of all loyal Churchmen and 
 earnest Christians. 
 
 I have thus, I trust, shown that "the doctrine of Christ as 
 this Church hath received the same " is that Holy Scripture, 
 not Creed or article, is our Rule of Faith and Practice, and 
 that our formulas must be interpreted by the Scriptures, not 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 21 
 
 vice versa. Observe the contention : It is not that the 
 Creeds and articles must be set aside or ignored, but that 
 they must be interpreted by the Scriptures and surely this 
 court, whatever may be its respect for the Creeds and articles 
 will not place them above the inspired Scriptures. 
 
 (6). But it will be said — it has been said — that I reject 
 the Scriptures, and I must therefore refute this charge, which 
 is easily done. On page 187 of my " Evolution of Man and 
 Christianity " I say : " It may appear to some that this (my) 
 view (of the Gospels) completely destroys the historic value 
 of the books in question. To which I would reply : Not at 
 all ; it merely destroys a false theory of inspiration — the ver- 
 bal theory. It merely asserts that there may be some chaff 
 mingled with the wheat, which must be carefully separated 
 from the wheat, but it declares emphatically that the wheat 
 is there." That is my view of the authority of the Scriptures. 
 I take it that I need hardly tell this court that this Church 
 has no authorized theory of inspiration and that she allows 
 her clergy liberty to investigate the origin and authorship of 
 the books of Scripture. Witness every theological seminary 
 in our land, the papers read by theological professors in the 
 recent Church Congress in Philadelphia, Nov., 1890, and all 
 the writings of modern apologists. 
 
 I have high authority for rejecting the theory of verbal 
 inspiration. In the celebrated trial of the Rev. Dr. Rowland 
 Williams for rejecting the inspiration of Scripture, the Privy 
 Council of the Church of England decided (I quote the exact 
 words), " That it is not penal in a clergyman to deny the 
 proposition that every part of every book of Holy ScHpture 
 was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and is 
 the word of God, that proposition not being found in the 
 Articles or formularies of the Church." Accordingly Dr. 
 Williams was acquitted. This decision was a heavy and 
 authoritative blow to the verbal infallibility of the Scriptures 
 and has many important and far reaching implications. 
 
 Remembering, then, that I accept the authority of the 
 Scriptures and merely reject an unauthorized and false theory 
 of inspiration and interpretation let us pass to a consideration 
 
2 2 ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 of the specific charges of heresy which the " indictment ' 
 brings against me. 
 
 I. I am charged with a rejection of the Virgin Birth and 
 Bodily Resurrection of Jesus. In answering these charges I 
 wish, first of all, to clear up certain popular misrepresenta- 
 tions of my views, for I have been made out a greater heretic 
 than I am, and I cannot clearly answer the indictment with- 
 out explaining what I do believe, (i) First, it has been said 
 repeatedly that I reject the Incarnation or Divinity of Christ. 
 This is false. On page 286 of my book I say, " Defining the 
 Divinity of Jesus Christ to consist in a perfect union of His 
 human spirit with the Divine, we undertake to prove that this 
 union existed." That is simply another way of expressing 
 the doctrine of the Incarnation established by the Council of 
 Nice and embodied in our second Article of Religion which 
 says, " Two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the 
 Godhead and manhood, were joined together in one Person, 
 never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and 
 very man." This I believe. I think that the mode of Christ's 
 birth and the fact of His divine character are two entirely 
 different questions, and the Nicene Council, St. Paul and the 
 writer of the fourth Gospel held the same view, since they all 
 accepted the Incarnation, but said nothing of the Virgin Birth. 
 In modern times many earnest Christians and theologians 
 have done the same. Coleridge is an instance. He, though 
 not a clergyman, was a member of the Church of England, 
 an earnest Christian, a staunch defender of the doctrine of the 
 Trinity and a teacher of many eminent theologians, and he 
 thought that the doctrine of the Virgin Birth not only could 
 not be proved and was not necessary to the Incarnation, but 
 he said that it actually " doth weaken and bedim the evi- 
 dence " of this great fact. A few days ago I received a letter 
 from a clergyman in the Church in which he said : " I grad- 
 uated at Kenyon College. Professor L. W. Bancroft held a 
 professorship in the theological seminary at Gambler then. 
 He recommended students to read Coleridge's works. My 
 reading Coleridge was due to this. We were never informed 
 that Coleridge was a heretical person ; but it would appear 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBEKTY. 23 
 
 that Coleridge can no longer have any standing in the Ohio 
 Church, neither can those who adopt his views." 
 
 Theological professors should be careful what books they 
 recommend to theological students or the Church will soon 
 be filled with " heretics." The only way to prevent this 
 terrible calamity is to prohibit them from reading "the other 
 side " altogether. 
 
 Thus, it is clear, I trust, that one may accept the Incarna- 
 tion or Divinity of Christ, whether he accepts His Virgin 
 Birth or not. (2) But, secondly, it has been said that I reject 
 the miraculous conception of our Lord. This, also, is false. 
 On page 220 of my book I say : " I hold, with Keim and with 
 many of the evolutionists, that as great a miracle was wrought 
 at the birth of Jesus as was wrought when life or self-con- 
 scious mind, was introduced on our globe ; a distinct ' leap ' 
 was made in the process of spiritual evolution at His birth, 
 whereby the goal toward which humanity is moving was 
 reached in one case. Jesus was therefore ' the possibility of 
 the human race made real.' " In other words, I believe that 
 Jesus was a sinless being — that He had a perfect moral and 
 spiritual nature and that His perfect nature was produced by 
 a special operation of the Divine Spirit. The human spirit 
 of Jesus was infused into a human body by a special exertion 
 of the Divine will — that is. He was " Conceived by the Holy 
 Ghost " acting along the lines of natural generation, albeit 
 on a higher plane than that of His ordinary action. A per- 
 fect man would be a moral miracle, and believing, as I do, in 
 Christ's sinlessness, I must believe that it was due to the God 
 within Him. I therefore differ from many (not all) theo- 
 logians simply in interpreting this article of the Creed. I hold, 
 and will presently show that there are two views of Christ's 
 birth in the New Testament, one of which assigns Hi-n only 
 one earthly parent, another giving Him two parents, and 
 therefore we must make a choice, and exercising the liberty 
 which the Church gives me, I claim that I may adopt either 
 one of these views which seems to me the more reasonable, 
 probable and credible. I further hold that we have Scrip- 
 tural authority for the use oixhe-word " Virgin " in the sense 
 of " young woman " simply, married or unmarried. It is 
 
24 ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 well known to all scholars that the word as it 'is used in 
 Isaiah vii. 14, is held to mean this by many of the ablest 
 lexicographers, and Isaiah's prophecy forms the basis of the 
 Gospel account ol Christ's birth and the article in the Creeds. 
 It is evident from the isth and i6th verses of Isaiah vii. that 
 the Prophet was speaking of some woman of his own time. 
 Judah at that time had been invaded by Pekah and Rezin, 
 kings of Damascus and Samaria, and Jerusalem itself was 
 threatened with a siege. Isaiah predicted the overthrow of 
 these two kings, but Ahaz, king of Judah, doubted his word. 
 The Prophet, therefore, bade the skeptical king ask a 
 sign of the Lord, but Ahaz, out of mock humility, refused to 
 do so, and hence Isaiah said, " The Lord Himself shall give 
 you a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, 
 and shall call his name Immanuel . . . and before the child 
 shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land 
 that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings; " and 
 sure enough this happened in due time. The "sign," there- 
 fore, here spoken of, consisted not in the unnatural produc- 
 tion of a child, but in the measuring of the time of fudah's 
 oppression by the infancy of a young woman' s child named 
 Immanuel. It was as if some one during the late Civil War 
 had predicted the defeat of the Confederates, and his predic- 
 tion being doubted, he had said, " Well, before yon infant — 
 the firstborn of its mother, cuts its teeth, my words will be 
 fulfilled. If our enemies are not defeated by that time then 
 my prediction will be proved to have been false. That shall 
 be a sign unto you." Isaiah's use of the word " Virgin," then, 
 in the sense of " young woman " simply, justifies us in at- 
 taching this meaning to it in other cases — especially in the 
 case of the Creed. Of course, I know that Isaiah's prophecy 
 was written in Hebrew, and that the original form of the 
 creed was in Greek, and that the Greek word " parthenos," 
 was generally used in our sense of the word " Virgin." But 
 this does not alter the fact that we have Scriptural authority 
 for the use of the word Virgin, in a different sense. If 
 Isaiah had spoken Choctaw instead of " Hebrew " he would 
 have meant just the same, viz., that a young woman would 
 bear a son whose infancy would mark the limit of Judah "s 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 25 
 
 oppression by her enemies. In answer, therefore, to the 
 charge, that I reject the Virgin Birth of Jesus, I would say, 
 while I reject the traditional and popular interpretation of this 
 article of the Creed, I accept it in the sense defined by Isaiah, 
 whose prophecy is cited by the Gospel writer as authority 
 for his statement. I accept Christ's Virgin Birth, therefore, 
 in the Scriptural, though not in the traditional and theological 
 sense of the word, and I accept His divinity and miraculous 
 conception. My contention is that traditional and popular 
 theology has departed from Scripture, not only in the use of 
 this word in the sense spoken of, but also in its rejection of 
 the human fatherhood of our Blessed Lord. 
 
 To justify this contention I proceed to quote, first, some 
 passages from two eminent theologians of good standing in 
 this Church which express my own view, and secondly, the 
 passages of Scripture showing the truth of my claim. The 
 Rev. H. R. Haweis, M. A., incumbent of St. James's, Mary- 
 lebone, London, who, by the way, is not disturbed by the 
 ecclesiastical powers of the Church — says in this admirable 
 work on " Christ and Christianity," Vol. i, page 7 (Picture of 
 Jesus) — " I take up Mark (about A. D. 70), the earliest, and 
 Matthew (about A. D. 80), and Luke (about A. D. 90), and I 
 find two distinct streams of tradition about the birth of Christ. 
 Mark says nothing about the miraculous conception or the 
 angelic appearances. They were, it may be, not currently 
 reported in his day, for had he heard of them he could not 
 have passed them over. Matthew and Luke came later, and 
 embody the later tradition of the miraculous conception, 
 but they also embody the earlier view of Joseph' s paternity , 
 and accordingly give the genealogy of Joseph. Matthew 
 traces Joseph's lineage to David. Luke goes up to Adam, 
 and plainly says that the current opinion was that Jesus was the 
 son of Joseph — being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph. 
 From Matthew's and Luke's point of view Joseph's pedigree 
 would have been of no consequence at all. The miraculous 
 conception blots him out." And his genealogy should, there- 
 fore, have been altogether omitted ; indeed, no reference what- 
 ever to him was necessary ; but these accounts of his pedigree 
 are " merely the record of what was the early Christian belief, 
 
26 ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 possibly up to the death of Mary "—and our author should 
 have added, what continued to be the belief of many Christ- 
 ians even so late as Justin Martyr's time, and long after- 
 wards. Remnants of this belief crop out in Matthew xiii. 55, 
 and John vi. 42, where Jesus is called the son of Joseph, the 
 carpenter, by his acquaintances, who professed to have an 
 intimate knowledge of his family, and it is notable that our 
 Lord did not correct their false impression, if such it were, 
 which is certainly very strange if Joseph were not His father, 
 but is easily understood if he was. It should be noted that the 
 question raised on these occasions was concerning Christ's 
 divine origin and nature, and hence an assertion of his birth, 
 had it been a fact, was peculiarly appropriate, if not neces- 
 sary. The most remarkable passage, however, in the Gospels, 
 is Luke ii. 41-48, particularly the 48th verse, which gives an 
 account of Joseph and Mary's visit to Jerusalem, with Jesus 
 when he was twelve years old. It will be remembered that 
 he tarried at Jerusalem awhile after His parents started home, 
 and they did not discover this until they had gone a day's 
 journey from Jerusalem. When they did discover it they 
 immediately returned to the city and found the boy in the 
 Temple questioning the doctors. His mother said : Son, 
 why has thou thus dealt with us ? Behold, Hay father and I 
 have sought thee sorrowing." It has been well said that 
 " Mary was the only person who could know whether Jesus 
 had an earthly father, and she is not known to have opened 
 her mouth on the subject but once, and then she called 
 Joseph his father." Of course, the traditionalists, interpret- 
 ing this statement of the holy mother by the first chapters of 
 Matthew and Luke, have understood her to mean that Joseph 
 was simply His foster father, but may it not be that they 
 have, as usual put the cart before the horse, and that this pas- 
 sage gives, with others, the true account of Christ's paren- 
 tage ? At any rate. His mother's testimony is clear, and there 
 is nothing in the context of the passage to show that Mary 
 meant foster father when she called Joseph our Lord's father. 
 These passages in the Gospels are like the boulders which 
 we discover far inland, which though the sea has left them 
 high and dry, yet indicate that the sea once flowed over that 
 
 II 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 27 
 
 part of the land. At first sight, we may be disposed to attach 
 little importance to these texts. Owing to our miseducation 
 in Biblical knowledge, we may be disposed to ridicule him 
 who cites them as evidence of a human fatherhood of Jesus, 
 but when we duly consider the great fact that the Gospels 
 were a. gradual formation from oral tradition, we begin to 
 see the force of the claim here made. It is well known that 
 our Lord's disciples did not sit down immediately after his 
 death and write the Gospel accounts of His life. On the con- 
 trary, St. Paul, who was not converted for six or eight 
 years after the crucifixion, was the first to write anything 
 about Christ, and he did not write his epistles for twenty-five 
 or thirty years after Christ's death, and he says nothing about 
 the Virgin Birth. The Gospels were written much later, 
 and during this long interval all sorts of stories were started 
 about our Lord. When, therefore, the Gospels were written, 
 it is no wonder that their authors should embody some 
 unhistorical matter in them and make a few mistakes. In 
 the matter of the birth, in particular, they were peculiarly 
 liable to err, for many stories by that time had doubtless got 
 into circulation, and Mary being probably dead could not cor- 
 rect them, and as the disciples accepted the Messianic proph- 
 ecies as inspired it was natural that they should apply 
 Isaiah's words to our Lord, and thus originate the story of 
 the Virgin Birth. 
 
 Thus we see how two accounts of this great event got into 
 circulation, and we must be very careful to find out which is 
 the correct account. In view of the fact that this Church 
 teaches that her creeds and articles must be interpreted by 
 the Bible — in view of the fact that we have no Pope and 
 Vatican to assertain for us the meaning of the Bible — to 
 separate the chaff from the wheat — each one of us — even the 
 obscure country parson- — must struggle along the thorny path 
 of Scriptural interpretation by the light which God gives him 
 in his own conscience and reason. This I have done to the 
 best of my ability, and if perchance I have gone astray — this, 
 sir, is not the way to bring me back into the straight and 
 narrow path of traditional orthodoxy. 
 
 I beg leave to quote, also the Rev. Dr. Edwin Abbott's 
 
28 ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 interpretation of tiie article in the Creed on Christ's birth. 
 Dr. Abbott is an eminent clergyman in good standing in the 
 Church of England, headmaster of the City of London schools, 
 author of the article on the " Gospels " in the Encyclopedia 
 Britannica, and several fine theological treatises. On pages 
 278-9 of his admirable little work entitled " The Kernel and 
 the Husk," he says : " In the resurrection of Jesus I believe 
 that there was a unique vision of the buried Saviour, apparent 
 to several disciples at a time ; but in the conception of Jesus 
 I have no reason for thinking that there was anything 
 unnatural apparent to the senses. What can I mean then by 
 saying that Jesus was born of a Virgin ? All that I can mean 
 is this : — 
 
 Human generation does not by any means account for the 
 birth of a new human spirit. So far as we are righteous we 
 all owe our righteousness to a spiritual seed within us. " We 
 are not," as Philo would say, " the result of generation but the 
 work of the Unbegotten.'' So far as we are righteous we are 
 " born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will 
 ofman, butofGod." (John i. 13). But of the Lord Jesus Christ 
 we are in the habit of saying and believing that he was uniquely, 
 and entirely righteous ; and therefore we say that he was 
 uniquely and entirely born of God. In all human generations 
 there must be some congenital Divine act, if a righteous soul 
 is to be produced ; and in the generation of Christ there was 
 a unique and congenital act of the Holy Spirit. That Word 
 of God which in various degrees inspires -every righteous 
 human soul (none can say how soon in its existence) did not 
 inspire Jesus, but was (to speak in metaphor) totally present 
 in Jesus from the first so as to exclude all imperfection of 
 humanity. Human unrighteousness — such as we are in the 
 habit of attributing to human generation — there was in this 
 case, none. Therefore we say that the generation of Jesus 
 was not human but Divine. 
 
 Mr. Haweis is even clearer on this difficult question than 
 Dr. Abbott is. He says — " You ask me whether all God was 
 in Jesus. I say. No ; Jesus says, No. Sides of the Almighty, 
 of the invisible, the eternal — aspects inconceivable to man — 
 never could be revealed through man's nature. God overlaps 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 29 
 
 Jesus, 'My Father," he says, • is greater than I.' You ask me 
 of Torbay or Barmouth Creek whether it is the sea ? I say, 
 yes. You ask if it is the whole of the sea ? I say, no. Yet 
 a cupful or a pailful, and every part of the bay or creek, is 
 true sea — the sea having its own mighty range and infinite 
 potencies, has verily and mi^i^A. flowed into that earth-bound 
 creek. All that is in Torbay is sea, but all the sea is not in 
 Torbay ; so all that is in Jesus is God, but all God is not in 
 Jesus." An-d then lest he be understood to say that this in- 
 flux of Deity into humanity was merely a "natural " event, he 
 adds in another place : "To me all spiritual inhabitation, 
 however accomplished, is in the highest degree mystic and 
 miraculous." So that both Dr. Abbott and Mr. Haweis, while 
 not accepting the common view of Christ's birth, believe in His 
 divinity and miraculous conception — hold that His perfect 
 Spirit was infused into a human body by a special operation 
 of the Divine Will. In a chapter on " Ministerial Tests " Dr. 
 Abbott says , " The advice which I have given to myself, I 
 should also be inclined to give to others who are "already min- 
 isters in the Church of England, and who have scruples of 
 conscience in consequence of some divergence from orthodox 
 vie-ws. It is this : Stay where you are as long as you feel 
 that you' can sincerely worship Christ as the eternal Son of 
 God ; and as long as you can preach a Gospel of faith and 
 strength, not only from the pulpit but by the bedside of the 
 dying. If you can do this, you may stay, though you are ob- 
 liged to interpret metaphorically some expressions of the 
 Creed." 
 
 Such then, sir, is what I have to say in reply to the charge 
 that I reject the Virgin Birth of Jesus. 
 
30 ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 SECOND DAY'S PROCEEDINGS. 
 
 Morning Session. 
 The proceedings were opened by prayer by Rev. Putnam. 
 THE PRESIDENT : We will now proceed with the case. 
 
 Rev. Howard MacQueary : Mr. Chairman and Gen- 
 tlemen of the Ecclesiastical Court. Before resuming my ar- 
 gument where I left off yesterday it may be well to briefly 
 summarize the points made. First, I showed that the ordina- 
 tion vows and Articles of Religion teach that the Creed of 
 this Church must be interpreted by the Scriptures. Second, 
 that this must be done primarily by individuals who may 
 ultimately avail themselves of Conventions to bring their 
 interpretations into general use in the Church. 
 
 But an individual is no more debarred from exercising his 
 private judgment by the formulas of this Church and sug- 
 gesting alterations in their substance or interpretation than 
 is a member of Congress from offering amendments to, or 
 different constructions of, the Constitution of the United 
 States, unless indeed the clergyman can furnish no Scriptural 
 authority for his suggestions. 
 
 Third. This Church rejects the infallibility of the first 
 General Councils and the majority, but even if she accepted 
 them she could not condemn me, since the early Church, and 
 especially the Nicene Council, allowed the liberty of be- 
 lief I claim, and the majority have not always believed the 
 dogmas which I reject. The Reformers ot the i6th century 
 and the modern so-called Catholics in our Church appeal to 
 
ECCLESrASTTCAL LIBERTY. 31 
 
 the early Church, for authority for these proposed changes in 
 the Liturgy and Doctrines of the Church. 
 
 Fourth. I accept the authority of the Scriptures and 
 merely reject their verbal inspiratioti and infallibility, and 
 I am sustained in so doing by the decisions of the Privy Coun- 
 cil of England. 
 
 Fifth. I do not reject the Incarnation or Divinity of 
 Christ, but believe that "in Him dwelt all the fulness of the 
 Godhead bodily," although this influx of Deity into humanity 
 occurred without violating the law of life previously ordained 
 by God. 
 
 Sixth. I accept the miraculous conception of Christ ; that 
 is, I believe that His perfect spiritual nature was specially 
 begotten by the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life — that 
 His human spirit was infused into a finite form by special act 
 of the Divine Spirit. I, therefore, differ from the traditional 
 and popular theology merely in my interpretation of this 
 Article of the Creed and I justify my difference, first, by pas- 
 sages of Scripture which seem to me to indicate a human 
 fatherhood of Jesus, and, secondly, by Isaiah's use of the word 
 virgin in the sense of young woman simply. 
 
 We now come to the question of the resurrection. Here 
 again my position has been greatly misrepresented, and I 
 must therefore explain away such iriisrepresentation in an- 
 swering the charges of the presentment. On pages 225-27 
 of my book I explicitly accept the doctrine of the resurrec- 
 tion as stated by St. Paul in First Corinthians, xv., which is 
 the doctrine of this Church in her burial service. I do in- 
 deed claim, and I give facts and reasons to support the 
 claim, that St. Paul's account of the resurrection was written 
 before the Gospel account ; that it must be interpreted by 
 his vision on the way to Damascus, by his statement that 
 " there is a natural body and there is a spiritual body ; " 
 that " flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God," 
 and that "the body which is buried is not the body that shall 
 be " the organ of the soul in the spiritual world. I hold that 
 St. Paul treats Christ's resurrection as the prototype, " the first 
 fruits " of our own, and since he distinctly says that God will 
 give us different bodies in or after death from those which 
 
22 ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 are buried, it follows logically that Christ's resurrection 
 body was not that body which was crucified and laid in the 
 sepulchre. I hold further, not that the Gospel accounts are 
 false, but that they are substantially true ; only a few addi- 
 tions seem to have been made to the primitive Pauline account. 
 I hold that the theory of a spiritual appearance of Christ 
 after death explains the Gospel narratives themselves, with the 
 exception of a few passages, better than the old doctrine, and 
 that those excepted passages cannot be rationally and fairly ex- 
 plained by the old view. Nothing has been said to refute this 
 contention ; only I have been denounced and my opinions have 
 been ridiculed. But considering the eminent character of 
 many in our Church and others who hold the same view it 
 would have been a little more becoming in our opponents 
 had they restrained their ire and ridicule and manifested a 
 little more intellectual and spiritual power. The Rev. Mr. 
 Haweis in the 24th chapter of his book, " Christ and Chris- 
 tianity," teaches the same view of Christ's resurrection that 
 I do. Dr. Abbott in his " Kernel and Husk " accepts the 
 spiritual resurrection of Jesus and closes his masterly discus- 
 sion with these words : " You cannot have forgotten how 
 St. Paul assumes that the appearances of the Saviour to him- 
 self and to the original apostles were of the same kind and 
 on the same footing. And Christ," he says, ■• appeared unto 
 Cephas ; he appeared unto James ; he appeared unto 500 
 brethren and last of all he appeared unto me also. In the two 
 latest Gospels these appearances have been magnified into ac- 
 counts that represented Jesus as possessed of flesh and bones, 
 as capable of eating, as reclining at a meal, and as entering 
 into long and familiar discourses. Naturally we ask as to St. 
 Paul's the (indisputably) earliest account of a manifestation 
 of Christ, what traces it exhibits of similar distortions and 
 exaggerations ? You know the answer. There are no such 
 traces." 
 
 To the same effect writes the Rev. Dr. Fremantle, Canon 
 of Canterbury Cathedral, England, and Bampton lecturer for 
 1883, in an article which appeared in the Popular Science 
 Monthly for June, 1887. " As to miracles," he says, "the theo- 
 logian of the future will probably be but little concerned with 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 IZ 
 
 them. We have all learned to read in a natural sense the 
 account of the crossing of the Red Sea, which even Mr. 
 Arnold, some years ago took as meant to record a violation 
 of physical order. The strong east wind, the cloud which 
 beat in the face of the Egyptians, but by its lightning showed 
 the Israelites their way ; the waters kept back at low tide, 
 by the east wind, and walling in the course of the fugitives, 
 but returning upon their pursuers when the tide rose and the 
 eye of God looked forth upon tnem through the cloud in the 
 morning, lose nothing in majesty or in providential import- 
 ance when we read them without importing violations of 
 the laws of nature. And so it will be in many other cases. 
 While as to those which are notable only for their strange- 
 ness, the action of hyperbole and the growth of the wonderful 
 by tradition will be always present to the mind of the theo- 
 logian and will make him pass over them with a light foot. 
 We have no difficulty when we read of the miracles of St. 
 Barnard or the prophecies of Savonarola, nor do they inter- 
 fere with our estimate of those great men. The miracles of 
 healing in the Gospels will, we can hardly doubt, always 
 appear as evidence of a peculiar condition of human life in 
 the East in the first century and of the restorative power of 
 a great Personality." (In other words, our author means that 
 they will be explained as " faith cures " and " mind cures.") 
 " Little stress," he adds, " will be laid on the accounts of the 
 infancy of Christ, since they are mentioned nowhere in the 
 New Testament outside the first chapters of the first and 
 third Gospels. In the case of the resurrection, the theologian 
 who starts from the epistles of St. Paul as the solid central 
 ground of New Testament literature, will go upon the 
 apostle's teachings that not flesh and blood but the spiritual 
 personality, clothed in the new house which is from heaven, 
 inherits the kingdom of God, and will take the vision by 
 which the apostle was converted as the type of all the mani- 
 festations by which the companions of Christ were assured 
 that He was not lost but gone before. He will, with St. 
 Paul take the assurance that Christ was alive after His 
 passion, as the fulfilment of the general hope of immortality 
 \vhich Israel b?.d long entertained." 
 
 3 
 
24 ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 Here is an emiment Doctor of Divinity boldly and publicly 
 proclaiming as radical opinions as ever entered my mind, and 
 yet he is not only undisturbed in his office but he is is actually 
 given the Canon's stall in the venerable Cathedral of Canter- 
 bury, and is put forward as a Bampton lecturer, the very object 
 of which lectureship is the defense of the faith of this Church. 
 Surely the " heretics" are quite a respectable body after all. 
 
 Rev. Prof. Alfred Momerie, .who is Professor of Meta- 
 physics in King's College, London, and preaches regularly at 
 the Foundlings' Hospital and elsewhere, takes the same view 
 of the resurrection that I do in his book on " The Church 
 and the Creed." In a letter to me, which I am at liberty to 
 quote, he says : " The facts you insist upon " (in my book) 
 " must be recognized by the Church on pain of perishing ever- 
 lastingly. 
 
 "Prof Jo witt some years ago said, in a sermon at West- 
 minister Abbey : ' People would soon give up believing in 
 miracles as they had given up believing in witchcraft." I have 
 not," he adds, "said much about miracles except implicitly, 
 I, of course, do not believe in them except as the subjective 
 fancies of unscientific men." 
 
 Since writing this, I have got an interview with Rev. Dr. 
 Momerie, published in the Pall Mall Gazette, and although 
 papers are not infallible, I dare say this report is correct. 
 
 In this interview Prof. Momerie says : " The Bible does not 
 make the ghost of a vestige of claim to inspiration in the ortho- 
 dox sense I consider that ' In Memoriam' (by Tennyson) 
 
 is in advance of St. John's Gospel." 
 
 The interviewer then asked : " Don't you believe Christ 
 rose again ? " 
 
 Dr. Momerie replied : "Certainly not physically. Why, do 
 you ? Come, I shall have to interview you. All great reli- 
 gious teachers have had an immaculate conception, a physical 
 resurrection, Gautama as well as Christ. But Christ did not 
 rise in His body. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom. 
 It must be a spiritual resurrection." And yet this outspoken 
 radical clergyman is not only permitted to preach in London 
 pulpits, but is given a professorship in King's College and his 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 35 
 
 sermons are published and recommended to the faithful by 
 the Church Press. 
 
 These few clergfymen, the list might easily be enlarged, rep- 
 resent a large school of thought in the Church of England 
 which, beginning with Frederick Denison Maurice, Dean 
 Stanley, Robertson and others, has grown in strength and 
 numbers and influence until now its leading representatives fill 
 many of the most prominent positions in the mother Church. 
 Yet with these facts staring us in the face, and known to all 
 the intelligent world, I have been denounced and presented 
 to this court as a " heretic " and it has been said that I stand 
 absolutely alone in this Church. Nor let it be imagined that 
 the liberal theologians are confined to the English Church. 
 I speak deliberately and am prepared to prove the assertion 
 when I say that they are as thick as hops in the American 
 Episcopal Church, and if Churchmen generally do not know 
 them, it is due to what our Roman Catholic brethren would 
 call " invincible ignorance," but what we may generously 
 prefer to call charitable blindness and obtuseness. I ask per- 
 mission to refer to one or two such clergymen merely by way 
 of illustration. The Rev. Dr. Heber Newton is Rector of 
 All Souls' Church, New York City, in a diocese whose Bishop 
 showed himself such a champion of traditional orthodoxy last 
 summer, when a presbyter in Ohio, who, he had some reason 
 to believe, was treading in Dr. Newton's footsteps, was ap- 
 pointed to speak in the last Church Congress. Dr. Newton 
 in a sermon on " Robert Elsmere,'' which was published in his 
 parish paper and was widely circulated and even quoted with- 
 out disapproval by the orthodox Standard of the Cross and 
 the Church, accepts Dr. Keim's view of Christ's resurrec- 
 tion. " Keim," he says, " whose life of Jesus seems to be the 
 best expression of scientific criticism, concludes that the story 
 of the resurrection was not a mere spiritual process in the 
 mind of man, but was an actual experience on the part of the 
 disciples of an influence emanating from the still living Jesus, 
 whereby he made them realize that he was verily alive, a 
 veritable objective experience. He thinks that we may and 
 must believe as they did that, Jesus communicated with them 
 from the spirit sphere, that they received a telegram from 
 
36 ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 heaven." Strip the story of every possible accretion of le- 
 gend (adds Dr. Newton on his own responsibility), dig down 
 through the mass of conflicting details and you will touch the 
 core of the tradition, the appearance of Jesus from the spirit 
 sphere. It was the persuasion in the minds of the disciples 
 that He had thus appeared to them which took form in the 
 story of the resurrection." 
 
 I will give only one more instance. Sometime ago I re- 
 ceived a letter of sympathy from a clergyman in the West, 
 who graduated from Kenyon college and seminary, in which 
 he avowed himself an agnostic — which I certainly am not — 
 as he admitted. He said : " The disbelief in the old idea of 
 a general judgment and general resurrection has had too 
 many upholders to cause much criticism. But all so-called 
 miracles must share the same fate, and none is so marked as 
 the Virgin Birth or so necessarily devoid of proof. The 
 moment the dogma of an infallible revelation falls it carries 
 with it most of those things that are dependent on it alone." 
 
 This clergyman said in response to my query that I might 
 use his name if I saw fit, but it is not necessary. He is the 
 head master of a large school in the West and is evidently a 
 thinker, but I dare say he, like the other clergyman I quoted, 
 followed Prof. Bancroft's advice and read Coleridge and 
 other profound philosophers, such as Spencer, and at last finds 
 himselfa right good heretic. I might mention others. Indeed 
 I might a tale unfold about the good " heretics " in our Church 
 that would probably make you tremble for the fate of tra- 
 ditional orthodoxy, but I don't want to shock you and I have 
 cited enough instances to serve as representatives of the large 
 and growing school of liberal theology in this Church. Some 
 of us are, of course, more radical than others, but all, or none, 
 deserve condemnation as " heretics." 
 
 After what has been said it must be evident to you and 
 the court that the great questions before you now refer to 
 the inspiration and interpretation of the Bible and the 
 interpretation of the Creeds. I maintain, on the authority 
 of the Privy Council of England, that this Church has no 
 authorized theory of Scriptural iqspiration and no prescribed 
 method of interpretation. She says simply " Holy Scripture 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 37 
 
 containeth all things necessary to salvation." She does not 
 say that all that Holy Scripture contains is inspired and 
 necessary to salvation. She does not say that every word in 
 the Bible came from God. She does not even say that those 
 passages of Scripture which are cited in proof of the old 
 doctrines of the birth and resurrection of Christ are infallibly 
 and unequivocally true and must be accepted as such by her 
 clergy. The prosecutor has referred to the epistles and 
 gospels and lessons for Christmas Day and Eastertide as 
 Scriptures bearing the stamp of this Church's approval as in- 
 spired Scriptures. But I beg him to remember these sensible 
 words of the twentieth Article of Religion, viz.: The Church 
 may not "so expound one place of Scripture that it be repug- 
 nant to another." It will not do therefore to disconnect certain 
 texts or chapters of Scripture from other passages bearing 
 on the same subject ; but they must all be considered. I know 
 as well as anyone that certain passages of Scripture assert as 
 plainly as possible the literal Virgin Birth and bodily resur- 
 rection but there are other passages which, considered in the 
 light of what we know of the origin of these writings, 
 express another view of these events. St. Luke tries to prove 
 that Jesus had flesh and bones after he arose from the dead, 
 but St. Paul says that " the body that is sown (buried) is 
 not the body that shall be, but God giveth us bodies as 
 it shall please Him." And that Christ " has become the 
 first fruits of them that sleep." St. John says that the risen 
 Jesus passed through closed doors, but we know enoiigh of 
 matter and the laws of matter to say that a body of flesh 
 and bones capable of eating fish, honey, etc., could not 
 do this. St. Paul says : " There is a natural body and there 
 is a spiritual body," two different organisms ; that our resur- 
 rection body will be a spiritual organism. Mary called 
 Joseph Christ's father, and his intimate acquaintances did 
 the same, and many of the early Christians believed that 
 Joseph was His father. And so we are confronted with two 
 views of Christ's birth and resurrection, mutually contradic- 
 tory and irreconcilable. Instead of attempting to harmonize 
 them by far-fetched explanations of their discrepancies, we 
 shpuld accept the one offering the fewest difficulties and 
 
38 ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 explain the discrepant details as due to the gradual forma- 
 tion of the Gospels from oral tradition. At any rate, it won't 
 do to cite one passage of Scripture as conclusive of a ques- 
 tion when another passage contradicts it, for if so, we do " so 
 expound one passage of Scripture that it is repugnant to an- 
 other." Let not the Prosecutor attempt to turn this argument 
 against my own interpretation, for I have just said that when 
 two passages of Scripture conflict one must be given up, and 
 that should be given up which offers the most palpable marks 
 of error. In other words, since we cannot in such a case 
 accept both passages as true, and since it would be foolish to 
 reject both, it only remains for us to accept the most prob- 
 able and credible. I accord to the Prosecutor the right to 
 accept the passages of Scripture embodying the old views of 
 Christ's birth and resurrection, if he so desire, and I claim 
 under the authority of this Church, the right to prefer the pas- 
 sages of Scripture which support and suggest my views of 
 those events. It forbids me to give contradictory interpreta- 
 tions of Scripture, and since the said passages do contradict 
 one another, I am forced by the Church to make a choice, and 
 I therefore choose those passages which seem to me most 
 rational, probable, and credible. This has always been the 
 method of Scriptural interpretation, and interpretations have 
 always varied according to scientific and historical knowl- 
 edge and discoveries. 
 
 When it was believed that the earth was flat and stationary 
 and that the sun moved around it, our theological professors 
 interpreted the Bible by this knowledge — or tather ignor- 
 ance. When it was believed that the world was created in 
 six days of twenty-four hours each the Bible was interpreted 
 according to this belief. When it was believed — and where it 
 is now believed — that man was made out of mud and had 
 life and mind blown into him through his nostrils, the Bible 
 was and is intert)reted according to this science, falsely so 
 called. When it was believed that " the sun do move " the 
 story of Joshua stopping its mad career until he could 
 whip Israel's enemies was accepted as literally true, but it is 
 now interpreted differently. The cures which our Lord 
 wrought are quite generally explained from our pulpits and 
 
MCCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 39 
 
 in theological treatises to have been simply faith cures and 
 mind cures. Indeed the Bible says they were. The literal 
 resurrection of our bodies is nowhere believed by intelligent 
 people. All apologists make most energetic efforts to show 
 that the miracles recorded in the New Testament were not 
 violations of natural law and order, and in doing so they are 
 compelled to depart from the old method of interpretation, 
 and to reject a few of the details of the stories. And so I 
 claim that I not only do not violate my ordination vows in 
 proposing to interpret the story of Christ's birth and resurrec- 
 tion as I do, but I stand right in line with all modern apolo- 
 gists, some of whom have spoken out just as plainly as I have, 
 and have not been, and doubtless will not be, disturbed in 
 their office. 
 
 But, Mr. Chairman, let us turn from the interpretation of 
 Scripture to the interpretation put upon certain articles of the 
 Creed by even Bishops in the Church and we will see that my 
 proposed interpretation of the articles on the birth and resur- 
 rection of Jesus is not one whit more strained and unnatural 
 than their interpretation of other articles. The Creed says 
 that there will be " a resurrection of the body," and there can 
 be no question about the meaning of the word body as it 
 stands in the English Creed or in the original Greek form : 
 it means exactly what it seems to mean, and the framers of 
 the Creed and all of the old theologians interpreted this 
 article to mean that there would be at the last day a resurrec- 
 tion or a re-collection of the very particles of the body which 
 is laid in the grave and a re-formation of them into the exact 
 bodies that were buried. But, as already stated, no intelligent 
 theologian believes this doctrine now. I venture to think 
 that neither the prosecutor nor any member of this court, nor 
 our respected Bishop himself, believes this doctrine of the 
 resurrection, yet it is the doctrine of the Creeds if they are 
 literally construed. The ehiinent Bishop of Carlisle, Dr. 
 Goodwin, in his recent work on the " Foundation of the Creed " 
 says of this view of the resurrection : " This view of the 
 possibilities of the future resurrection is mentioned here be- 
 cause it is one which our present knowledge of matter and 
 its laws renders it imperative upon all wise men to discard. 
 
40 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 Matter which appertains to one body at one time appertains 
 to another body at another. The notion of particle being 
 joined to particle so as to reform a certain body, involves an 
 impossibility because the same particles may have belonged 
 to a thousand different bodies and may be claimed by one as 
 rightfully as by another. In fact,' it is only necessary to bring 
 the notion into contact with what we certainly know concern- 
 ing material particles to break down and annihilate it.'' 
 
 This is a thoroughly rational argument and the rationalistic 
 method of interpreting the Scriptures and the Creeds, and had 
 Dr. Goodwin lived a hundred years ago and expressed such 
 opinions he would have been condemned and excommunicated 
 as a " heretic." But he really expresses the opinion of the great 
 body of theologians and intelligent believers. Let us apply 
 this method of interpretation to other articles of the Creed — 
 the articles under consideration. We know enough of mat- 
 ter and the laws of matter to say that it is impossible, by the 
 very definition of matter, for two pieces of matter to occupy 
 the same space at the same time, and hence a bodily form 
 could not go through closed, wooden doors, as Christ's is said 
 to have done, without breaking them open. If His body did 
 this, then it was not a body but something else. In attempt- 
 ing to get over this difficulty traditionalists really convert the 
 physical body into a spiritual organism, and so come around 
 by a more circuitous route to our view. They would act 
 more rationally and scripturally to let the body go in the first 
 place. We know enough about embryology and natural order 
 to say that the virgin birth of a person is, if not impossible, at 
 least so improbable as to require overwhelming evidence to 
 prove it. We know enough of history and of the time of 
 Christ to say that no such evidence is forthcoming, and that 
 such stories as those in question grew up around great per- 
 sons, but were not true. I urge, then, that if we apply Dr. 
 Goodwin's method of interpreting the Creed in its full mean- 
 ing, you cannot condemn me. But the article on the resur- 
 rection of the body is not the only article of the Creed upon 
 which anon-literal interpretation is put by even Bishops in the 
 Church. The Creed expresses belief in " life everlasting,' 
 and perhaps no other article in the Creed has been so generally 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY, 41 
 
 interpreted literally. No re'ader of the Bible or the Creed 
 would, unless some outside influence suggested it, imagine 
 that the wicked are to be totally destroyed in hell and the 
 righteous alone to enjoy " life everlasting." Yet it is well 
 known that belief in the final destruction of the wicked is 
 spreading rapidly in the Church. A Bishop in an adjoining 
 diocese told me not long ago that he believed this doctrine. 
 Prebendary Row of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, strongly 
 advocates it in his able work on " Future Retribution." A 
 presbyter formerly of New York City, and now rector of the 
 largest Church in Washington City, believes this doctrine, 
 and because of it lost the Bishopric of Virginia, yet he was 
 undisturbed at the time by the orthodox Bishop of New York, 
 and is now undisturbed by the orthodox Bishop of Maryland. 
 These are mere samples of a large and increasing number of 
 clergymen who restrict most unwarrantably the article on 
 " life everlasting " to the righteous. This article is applied by 
 Pearson and all the old theologians to both the wicked and the 
 righteous. Indeed, the everlasting punishment of the wicked, 
 and therefore their eternal existence, is still considered by 
 many the orthodox opinion, and in former years — less so 
 nowadays — was preached as the great power of God for 
 saving sinners. In departing, therefore, from this doctrine, 
 and in interpreting this article of the Creed as referring only 
 to the i-ighteous, theologians, bishops and preachers have all 
 departed from the literal, prima facie meaning of the Creed. 
 How, then, can this court consistently condemn me for pre- 
 ferring to put a non-literal or metaphorical meaning on other 
 articles of the Creed ? Condemn us all, or condemn none, is 
 the dictate of common sense and common justice ! If it be 
 said that by such methods of interpretation the very essence 
 of the Creed may be sapped and emasculated, I answer : Not 
 so ; for the matters in dispute are not, and never have been 
 considered of the essence of faith. The Council of Nice 
 evidently did not so consider them. All it required was be- 
 lief in the Incarnation of the Divine Word and Yi\s post mor- 
 tem appearance to His disciples. It did not insert the article 
 on the Virgin Birth in the Creed, nor define the nature of the 
 Resurrection. Whoever, therefore, accepts the essence of 
 
42 ECCLESIASTICAL LIBEKTY. 
 
 these articles, namely, the Incarnation and Christ's /oj/ mor- 
 tem appearance to His disciples, should be accounted orthodox, 
 and be permitted to interpret ihe.mode of the Incarnation and 
 the nature of the resurrection as seems to him most rational 
 and Scriptural. If I were a Materialist or an Agnostic ; if 
 I attacked or rejected the Incarnation or miracles altogether, 
 then I could better understand why this court should condemn 
 me, fori could not justly claim that Scripture sanctioned my 
 views. But I do not reject miracles, I merely understand 
 them differently from what some others do. I believe in 
 prayer for material blessings, and this some of the clergy of 
 this diocese do not believe. I beg the court, therefore, to 
 seriously consider such facts. 
 
 It is said that my interpretation of the Creeds is not an honest 
 one. After all I have said, after having shown that this 
 Church requires her clergy to interpret the Creeds by the 
 Scriptures, and both by facts and reasons, this assertion ap- 
 pears false. But I will quote as a further answer to it the 
 forcible words of Rev. Mr. Haweis. He says truly: "Every 
 living party in the Church has been charged with dishonesty 
 just so long as it was a reforming party. The Low Church 
 were called dishonest because they leaned to Nonconformity 
 and its irregular ways ; but the Low Church got itself 
 accepted, and has long since been dubbed orthodox. Indeed, 
 Lord Palmerston, under Lord Shaftesbury's dictation, would 
 have none but Low Church Bishops. 
 
 The High Church was called dishonest because it leaned 
 towards Rome, but that, too, got itself accepted, and now it 
 is better to be rather High Church than otherwise (whether 
 Gladstone or Salisbury be in power) if you v^^ant to be a 
 bishop ; and so the Broad Church, who are the latest re- 
 formers, are naturally denounced as dishonest because they 
 want to remould the doctrine and the ritual of the Church 
 into accord with nineteenth-century thought and feeling. 
 
 When people attack the Broad Church with — " Do you 
 believe the doctrines of the Church ? Do you approve of the 
 formularies of the Church ? " it is sufficient answer to say : — 
 The Church of England doctrine is believed, and the Church 
 liturgy is used and preached in the High and Low Churches, 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 43 
 
 but it does not sound quite tlie same in both, and it certainly 
 does not look at all tiie same ; why expect more from the 
 Broad Church ? We believe and preacii the doctrines and 
 we use the forms in our way, they in theirs ; condemn us all, 
 or acquit us all, we are all guilty, or we are all innocent. 
 
 The Low Churches had at one time such a contempt for 
 ecclesiastical forms that they could hardly abide the bishops, or 
 bear the trammels of the liturgy at all. Wesley arrogated 
 to himself Episcopal functions ; and the Lady Huntingdon 
 connection fairly slept across the border ; yet Lady Hunting- 
 don's first chaplain and trustee, Dr. Thomas Haweis, lived 
 and died Rector of Aldwinkle in the Church of England. 
 
 The High Church openly detest the word Protestant, and 
 denounce the Reformation as a curse. Their doctrine of the 
 Real Presence in the Sacrament is closely akin to the gross 
 materialism of the Mass, but the High Church have stood 
 their ground as honest men for a' that. 
 
 The Broad Church call for Re-statement. They are for 
 dropping what is obsolete, but not all at once. They would 
 go on printing the Prayer Book with alternative forms and, 
 additions. They are for recovering and re-setting the essen- 
 tial truth which lies at the bottom of every dogiAa, correlating 
 the new knowledge with current religious thought, and re- 
 adapting the Church functions to the needs and the intellec- 
 tual, social, and sesthetic instincts of the age ; and the Broad 
 Church presume to call themselves honest men for a' that. 
 
 You don't call your M.P.'s, Mr. John Morley or Mr. 
 Btyce, dishonest, because they admire Republican opinions, 
 and yet take the oath of allegiance to Her Majesty. People 
 have almost left off calling Parnell dishonest because he, like 
 many others, continues to be an M. P. and a Home Ruler as 
 well. 
 
 Our judges are not thought dishonest because they take 
 the oaths, and are content to preside over a mass of laws, 
 some obsolete, some contradictory, some sorely in need of 
 re-statement, and not a few which call for interpretation in 
 strained and non-natural senses. But what are the difficulties 
 of the British Constitution, and what is the confused and 
 heterogeneous mass of the English law — what is the mixed 
 
44 ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 position of the M. P. or the judge compared to the confusion, 
 the jumble of things old and new in religion, with which the 
 clergyman of the Church of England has got to deal ? And 
 what should he do under the circumstances ? Why should 
 his principle be other than that which governs judge or 
 M. P. ? 
 
 To the same effect writes the New York Press for Dec. 
 14th, 1890, in reference to this trial ; " A man," it says, " who 
 belongs to a certain denomination, who loves it with that fer- 
 vor with which organized religion, like strong political par- 
 tisanship, often inspires its votaries, has a certain right to say 
 ' I will not go out. I will stay in, and you can't put me out 
 for anything short of treason to a vital principle. This is my 
 religious home and country, and you cannot evict me or 
 banish me. It is my right, under the conditions of human 
 fallibility, to appeal to reason, and to agitate for a change 
 for the better or for what I think is for the better.'' 
 
 " This is the position taken by the revisionists in the great 
 Presbyterian Church, about its Confession of Faith. It is 
 that taken by the Rev. Howard MacQueary in the Episcopal 
 Church. We believe that sooner or later all religious denom- 
 inations that 3o not claim that they are the only and eternal 
 repositories of infallible truth must recognize its honesty 
 and justice. Certainly the clergyman who takes it can no 
 longer be pushed aside with a wave of the hand and con- 
 demned as a violator of his ordination vows, because he re- 
 fuses to conform to teachings that the world's experience of 
 practical Christianity shows to be not indispensable to the 
 fruits by which alone we know the truth.'' 
 
 The most remarkable article, however, on this case, is one 
 which appeared in the New York Churchman for November 
 ijth, 1890. I wish to cite it as a witness to my essential ortho- 
 doxy, partly because this paper has been so severe in its criti- 
 cisms of my position, and partly because it suggests facts 
 which this court should seriously consider in forming its judg- 
 ment in this important case. Says the Churchman : " We 
 sincerely regret to learn that the presentment in the case of 
 the Rev. Howard MacQueary has been allowed, and that 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 45 
 
 within a few weeks that gentleman will be put on trial for 
 error in doctrine. 
 
 " The pity of the thing is that Mr. MacQueary, probably from 
 lack of knowledge, is much nearer the truth than his wild 
 words have made him seem to be. On the subject of 
 the resurrection he strenuously affirms his conviction of its 
 spiritual reality. But for one dreadful and intolerable phrase, 
 which Mr. MacQueary does not perceive to be contradictory 
 of his own theory, what he says of the resurrection in general 
 might be fairly reconciled with the doctrine of St. Paul in i 
 Cor. XV., and more than justified by the express language of 
 the catechism of the Council of Trent," (Think of it ; I'm a 
 pretty good Romanist according to the Churchman f) " In 
 this matter, therefore, Mr. MacQueary asserts essential truth ; 
 and the intolerable error which he asserts along with it is not 
 only contrary to his own theory and to the faith of universal 
 Christendom ; it relates to a matter of which Mr. MacQueary 
 knows absolutely nothing, and of which it was both needless 
 and presumptuous in him to speak. 
 
 " Much the same may be said of his doctrine of the birth of 
 Christ. He maintains the Incarnation to have been — as an 
 Incarnation must be — a miracle. The nature of that miracle 
 he does not attempt to tell ; but he presumptuously tells 
 what, in his judgment, it cannot possibly have been. (I say 
 nothing of the kind.) Here, as in the other matter, Mr. Mac- 
 Queary affirms essential truth, and with it an intolerable 
 error contradictory of the faith of universal Christendom, 
 " Poor Nice ! ") on a matter of which Mr. MacQueary can 
 have no special knowledge. 
 
 " Modesty alone ought to have kept Mr. MacQueary from his 
 gratuitously shocking assertion concerning the Crucified 
 Body of our Lord. Modesty alone ought to have kept him 
 from declaring that, because he could not understand a Virgin 
 Birth, therefore the miracle of the Incarnation cannot have 
 been that of a Virgin Birth. So has it been in every succes- 
 sive denial of the faith. The beginning is a presumptuous 
 love of singularity ; the end is heresy and schism." 
 
 1 he spirit of this article is unworthy of notice. It is charac- 
 teristic of a large class of writers who think that any one 
 
46 ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 who differs from them must be a fool or a lover of notoriety 
 and sensationalism. They cannot imagine such a one's 
 being influenced by earnest convictions and a deep sense of 
 duty. But passing over the contemptible slurs on my knowl- 
 edge and motives, I wish to call the earnest attention of the 
 court to these facts : 
 
 First. Even according to the strictly orthodox Chureh- 
 man there is much truth in my opinions, and hence in form- 
 ing your judgment you must carefully distinguish the truth 
 from the error, else this Church will place itself in the unenvi- 
 able position of condemning the truth as well as error. 
 
 Second. When you have sifted out the error from the 
 truth, you will find that it is so small a particle that the 
 Church ought to hesitate to condemn a man for holding this 
 atom of error. She cannot afford to condemn her clergy for 
 so small an offense, for while some hold this alleged error, 
 others, as has been shown, hold opinions which, strictly 
 measured by the letter of the formulas, are equally erroneous. 
 Even the Evangelicals themselves willbebrought under your 
 ban if you attempt to enforce the letter of the Prayer Book's 
 teaching. They constantly violate the rubrics and letter of 
 the formulas. But because they accept the essence of the 
 Church's faith you let them remain in the church, and you 
 act wisely and well, for otherwise you would do nothing but 
 hold heresy trials till Gabriel blow his trumpet. 
 
 Third. Remember that the article on the Virgin Birth is 
 pratically a dead letter in our Church. We repeat it during 
 service, but we never appeal to it even in a sermon on purity. 
 Now, we could understand why the Roman Church should 
 insist on a belief in a literal interpretation of this article, for 
 the doctrine has many practical bearings and consequences in 
 that Church, but in Protestant Churches it is absolutely a 
 dead letter. 
 
 I ask you, therefore, can this Church afford to condemn one 
 of its clergy for questioning an article of the Creed which 
 does not touch the essence of the Creed, which has no practical 
 importance, which was not insisted upon by the Nicene 
 Council, which is accepted by the accused clergymen in as 
 true a sense as the articles on life everlasting and the 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 47 
 
 resurrection of the body, are accepted by even Bishops, and 
 which laclcs the support of science and Scripture ? Surely 
 you cannot ignore all these facts, and in deference to popular 
 prejudice and clamor condemn a man who, whatever may be 
 his intellectual defects, is at least honest and is honestly 
 seelcing to learn the truth as it is in Jesus, and to lead his 
 fellow men into that truth, and. fashion his life and their lives 
 as nearly as possible after the Master's example. 
 
 But if all that I have said had little or no force in it there 
 is another fact which I wish to appeal to, in conclusion, and 
 which, it seems to me, cannot be too carefully considered by 
 this court, and that is the fact that we live in a transitional 
 period. Many old things and old beliefs are passing away 
 or being changed. Theology is in a tremendous state of flux 
 and ferment, and this Church should, therefore, be very care-- 
 ful about putting itself on record as bound by the letter of 
 any formula, or opposed to any opinion that does not touch 
 the very heart and core of Christianity. Whether the views 
 I advocate are true or not, they are rapidly spreading among 
 all thinking people, and ere the twentieth century dawns they 
 will be all but universally accepted. They are spreading 
 among both the clergy and the laity. Hear what the Church- 
 man said on Oct. 4, i8go, about the general acceptance of the 
 evolution theory by the clergy : "Whether we like it or not, 
 the world at large has come to think and habitually express 
 itself in the terms of evolution. It is a fact which cannot be 
 denied or ignored that that part of mankind which thinks for 
 itself and for all the rest has unequivocally accepted the 
 hypothesis of evolution as the only conceivable theory of the 
 becoming of the universe. It cannot be said that Christian 
 theologians of any church or of any school have been in haste 
 to accept the evolution theory. Indeed the caution, the 
 reluctance, the almost painful aversion with which they have 
 regarded it goes far to emphasize the fact that bit by bit it 
 has at length made its way into many mini_s of unfaltering 
 Christian faith. Instances and illustrations of this observa- 
 tion present themselves continually." But not only has this 
 theory of evolution been generally accepted by theologians, 
 the results of Biblical Criticism have also been accepted. I 
 
48 ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 need only cite two remarkable papers read before the recent 
 Church Congress in Philadelphia by two eminent theological 
 professors of this church. Those able and earnest minded 
 men told the Church that, whatever imperfections might 
 appear in the productions of particular critics, however much 
 they might differ on minor points, they had completely 
 exploded many of the old ideas of the inspiration, authority 
 and authorship of the Bible, and henceforth that Sacred Book 
 must be considered very differently from what it has been. 
 They told us that Biblical Criticism had come to stay and its 
 substantial results must be accepted. These ideas are in the 
 very air we breathe. It is impossible to resist them. You 
 may condemn me but you will not either silence me or stop 
 the spread of the opinions I advocate. Far abler men than I 
 am — perfect intellectual Goliaths — are waging the warfare of 
 spiritual enlightenment and ecclesiastical freedom. All the 
 leading educational institutions of the land are teaching 
 these views. Yale and Cornell Universities have recently 
 established claims in Comparative Religion and no other 
 branch of study has done so much to broaden men's ideas of 
 religion and to explode traditional opinions as this study has. 
 Other institutions will follow the example of Yale and Cornell, 
 and so the rising generation of young nien and women, who 
 will furnish intellectual and religious teachers to the next, 
 will be thoroughly imbued with scientific ideas, and the 
 inevitable result will be the rejection of many opinions which 
 we consider everlasting. The Episcopal Church claims to be 
 a leader of thought. Let her, then, prove herself to be this. 
 She claims to be liberal. She claims to follow the example 
 of the primitive Church. Let her fulfill this claim. She 
 claims to have been founded by Christ and his apostles. Let 
 her manifest the spirit of the Master and she will not con- 
 demn me, for you remember that He rebuked His disciples 
 because they forbade one to cast out devils because he did 
 not follow with t'lem, and doitas they thought heoughttodo 
 it. Let the Church which claims its origin from Jesus imitate 
 thatspirit, and she will not only not condemn a man for re- 
 jecting a dogma which He never authprized, but she will 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 49 
 
 greatly increase her influence over men and draw them to 
 the Master. 
 
 The spirit of the age is opposed to condemnation for opin- 
 ions, Said The Christian Union in a recent editorial on 
 this trial: "We regret very much that any such trial is to 
 take place. This is an antiquated method of arriving at the 
 truth, unfitted for our age. A far better method, and one 
 more in consonance with the method of the New Testament, 
 would be to leave Mr. MacQueary and his views to the test of 
 time in, a free field—" and yet this paper criticised my book 
 most unsparingly and rejected much of its teachings. 
 
 Said the New York Times last summer : " The ecclesias- 
 tical authorities of Ohio would cut a sorry figure before the 
 religious public in trying to convict Mr. MacQueary of hav- 
 ing denied in his book the faith to which he pledged himself 
 at his Ordination. It would be just as reasonable for the 
 English Church to accuse the Bishop of Ripon of heresy be- 
 cause he has granted, in his " Permanent Elements of Re- 
 ligion " that the strength of modern apologetics lies in the 
 ethical rather than in the historical conception of Christianity. 
 Mr. MacQueary's book is simply a pioneer volume in a field 
 where theologians are just beginning to make adventures. 
 The late Canon Aubrey S. Moore, has been strongly com- 
 mended in England for doing almost precisely what Mr. 
 MacQueary has done. To attempt to crush Mr. MacQueary 
 by throwing him under the wheels of the ecclesiastical Jugger- 
 naut would be to make a martyr of one (a very poor martyr, 
 Mr. Chairman,) who is not an exception among many of his 
 brethren in point of belief, but has simply said in his book 
 what others are saying and holding as practical beliefs. It is 
 to be hoped that Mr. MacQueary may be treated as one among 
 the many searchers after truth who,though questioning old 
 dogmas, are not opposing them with the desire to destroy the 
 faith but to make Christianity concordant with the dictates 
 of plain common sense. The Rev. Dr. Heber Newton barely 
 escaped an ecclesiastical trial for holding opinions similar to 
 those affirmed by Mr. MacQueary, and the wisdom of not 
 bringing him to tri^I anc| condemning him has been abun- 
 dantly justified," 
 
JO ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 The writer of this sensible article is an Episcopal clergy- 
 man in good standing, and he knows whereof he speaks, and 
 he expresses the opinion of scores and hundreds, yes, thou- 
 sands, in our Church and in this country. He rightly says 
 that I am not opposing old dogmas with a desire to destroy 
 the faith, but rather with a view to make Christianity accord- 
 ant with nineteenth century thought. The prime object of 
 my writing a book was not to create a sensation or to attack 
 the faith,but to show that the substance of the Gospels and 
 the Creed could be accepted in spite of the objections and 
 difficulties skepticism has raised. I urge and in this speech 
 I trust I have proved, that the physical concomitants of the 
 miracles of the birth and resurrection ot the Saviour, which so 
 offend scientific and critical minds, may be given up, and 
 yet the essence of the faith and the Gospels will be left un- 
 touched. But a heresy hunting " religious press," so-called, 
 has passed by this commendable aim and has seized on the 
 concessions I made to a reverent and conscientious skepti- 
 cism in order to save the substance of the faith it doubted, 
 and has magnified a mole-hill into a mountain of doubt and 
 heresy, and has thus forced upon the Church an issue which 
 ought not to have been raised and which may produce untold 
 difficulties — may check enlightened thought among Christians 
 and make hypocrites out of clergymen. I beseech you, there- 
 fore. Gentlemen of the Court, to act very cautiously and con- 
 siderately in this matter. You are, I know, placed in a seri- 
 ous dilemma. On the one hand, are the so-called orthodox 
 people in our Church and others who will denounce you if 
 you acquit me. On the other hand are the thinking, liberal 
 minded, charitable people who will applaud such an action as 
 both wise- and right, and they will condemn and denounce 
 severe measures, if they be taken. Choose you, therefore, 
 which horn of the dilemma you prefer. If you prefer to 
 incur the disapprobation of the so-called orthodox people, 
 your tolerance will be sustained by the early Church and 
 Councils, by the great principles of the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church, by the enlightened mind and conscience of the best 
 men and women of this age and by the Master Himself, and 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL LIBERTY. 
 
 5' 
 
 in a short time the wisdom of your aotion will be fully 
 proved. '"^ 
 
 This, then, Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Ecclesias- 
 tical Court, is what I have to say in reply to the charges 
 brought against me. 
 
 First, I do not violate my ordination vows, because those 
 vows not only give me the right but impose upon me the duty 
 to study the Scriptures by the light of facts and reasons and to 
 interpret the Creeds and Articles by the same. 
 
 Second, this Church has no authorized theory of Scriptural 
 inspiration or interpretation, but leaves every man to adopt 
 his own theory. 
 
 Third, I do not reject the Incarnation, Miraculous Concep- 
 tion or Resurrection of Jesus, but simply interpret these 
 articles of the Creed somewhat differently from what many 
 others do. 
 
 Fourth, my interpretations of the Creed are no more strained 
 and unnatural than those universally allowed to be put upon it, 
 particularly on the articles on the resurrection of the body 
 and life everlasting. 
 
 Fifth, my opinions have been tolerated in the church from 
 the days of Justin Martyr and the fathers of Nice and Chal- 
 cedon to modern times, and are now tolerated in the English 
 Church and American Episcopal Churches in many cases. 
 
 Finally, it is most unwise in the Church to put itself on 
 record in this transition period as opposed to any opinion 
 which does not touch the very core of Christianity, and I 
 have the authority of Nice for saying that my alleged errors 
 do not touch the essence of the faith. 
 
 I hope, therefore, for the sake of the Church, for the sake of 
 the truth, for the sake of honesty and freedom among the 
 clergy, as well as for my own sake, you will return a verdict 
 of not guilty.