CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THIS BOOK IS ONE OF 
 A COLLECTION MADE BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 
 1854-1919 
 
 AND BEQUEATHED TO 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
 at 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 arV13914 
 
 Farewell discourses, 
 
 3 1924 031 273 299 
 olin.anx 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
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FAREWELL DISCOURSES 
 
 / 
 
 DELIVERED AT 
 
 SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL 
 
 FINSBURY, LONDON. 
 
 MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A. 
 
 E. W. ALLEN, AVE MARIA LANE, 
 . PATERNOSTiER ROW. 
 
 1884. 
 
DEDICATED 
 
 TO MY 
 
 SOUTH PLACE SOCIETY, 
 
 WHOSE MINISTER I HAVE BEEN FOR 2 1 YEARS ; 
 
 WHOSE UNWEARIED SYMPATHY AND SUPPORT, 
 
 NOW PASSING INTO MEMORIES, 
 
 SWEETEN THE SORROW OE PARTING. 
 
DISCOURSES: 
 
 1. A gnostic's apolqgy. , , 3 
 
 2. THE GIFT AND THE ALTAR. 'tj 
 
 3. OF ONE RISEN AND UNRECOGNISED. yj~^ 
 
 4. THE CRIMINAL , LAW. O / 
 
 5. SUBSTITUTES FOR HELL, JOS^ 
 
 6. THE PALACE' OF DELIGHT. /OO ' 
 
 7. APOLOGIA. /S7 
 
A GNOSTIC'S APOLOGY. 
 
 B 2 
 
FAREWELL DISCOURSES. 
 
 A GNOSTICS APOLOGY. 
 
 MONG the earliest recollections of my 
 childhood is the recurring scene of 
 baptism in the river that ran near 
 our home. Those baptised were 
 mainly African slaves, to whom an ancient slave, 
 by the sabbath he instituted, still brought a little 
 weekly exodus from their land of bondage. On 
 such a Sunday their dusky forms, arrayed in 
 robes of cotton (their Pharaoh's livery), moved 
 in procession to the bank of the Ra,ppahannock, 
 and there, in crystal waters beneath our blue 
 Virginian sky, were immersed. Time and fate 
 have not dimmed that scene. Still do I hear, in 
 memory, .'the singing of those lowly believers 
 coming up out of the water, ofttimes mingling 
 
4 , Farewell Discourses. 
 
 with notes of the dove, which no doubt brought 
 to their hearts a message from heaven. In later 
 years I have thought that to those babes in 
 knowledge suffering may have revealed some 
 sweet secret withheld from the master race aboye 
 them. It may be, their faith saw John at their 
 side, and Jesus in their company, and heard a 
 heavenly voice saying — "This is my beloved." 
 But for me it remained only a picturesque scene 
 through many years, and indeed I had to travel 
 far before its spiritual beauty became visible. I 
 wandered in the morning-land of our race as one 
 entering a new world, and once more a child, now 
 beside the Ganges, saw again that scene re- 
 membered from childhood's years in the West. 
 Here again were the white-robed processions and 
 the- immersions, the dusky forms, the plaintive 
 hymns. But now I saw more : here was John in 
 camel's hair and leathern , girdle, here were the 
 multitude? from all the region round about cover- 
 ing, the river banks for miles, coming to be bap- 
 tised, confessing their sins. In that crowd with 
 which the Ganges and Jumna at their junction were 
 alive I observed no children ; these remained on 
 the river banks. Only they need be baptised^ who 
 were stained with sins. I remembered that- in 
 
A Gnostic s Apology. 
 
 the Gospel of the Hebrews it is said, " Behold the 
 mother of the Lord, and his brethren said to him, 
 ' John the Baptist baptiseth for remission of sins : 
 let us go and be baptised by him.' But he said 
 to them, ' Wherein have I sinne,d that I should 
 go and be baptised by him ?' " 
 
 It is a long distance^ that the Church had 
 wandered from the sense of primitive baptism, 
 when its potency was supposed to be conveyed by 
 sprinkling an infant's head. That may seem to 
 us an unimportant thing now,; but baptism was 
 an expression of the reasonable belief of man 
 that each individual needed moral .cleansing, , that 
 his deinerits were his own, his merits his own ; 
 and the anabaptists took a brave step away from 
 the superstition that man can inherit the sins or 
 be saved by the virtues of another. 
 
 That Christendom has borrowed many things 
 from ancient India is well known — church bells, 
 rosaries, convents, and the like. But it is of 'great 
 interest to trace, by recent, discoveries, the 
 presence of an ancient Christianity in that land. I 
 visited an ancient church- in India, built on the 
 foundation of one still more ancient — so ancient that 
 in the early sixteenth century, when Portuguese 
 missionaries went there expecting to find only 
 
Faretiaell Discourses. 
 
 heathenism, they found a Christian church old 
 enough to be a ruin. The Portuguese were pointed 
 to a spot where Thomas the disciple of Jesus was 
 said to have died ; and there they dug up a stone 
 slab on which was carved in relief a cross, and 
 over it a dove with ' expanded wings. Beneath it 
 was an inscription in such mingled characters and 
 Words that it was not made out until quite 
 recently, when the late Mr. Burneli, an eminent 
 Positivist, translated it as follows : — 
 
 "IN PUNISHMENT BY THE CROSS WAS THE SUFFER- 
 ING OF THIS ONE : HE WHO IS' THE TRUE CHRIST AND 
 , GOD ABOVE, AND GUIDE EVER PURE." ' . 
 
 This brief inscription was in words of Various 
 ancient languages, among them Hebrew and 
 Persian. Pilate is said to have set oVer Christ an 
 inscriptioft in Greek, Hebrew and Latin, proclaim- 
 ing Christ's royalty. But this inscription in India has 
 a nobler significance, it proclaimed his humanity ; 
 for there is reason to beheve that this gospel of a 
 crucified God, when carried to the East, was 
 : received with reverence by those who spoke those 
 sever,al languages. There is. another Christian 
 church in India, proved to have been built over a 
 thousand years ago by one Isodataviral , The 
 original endowment of that church has been lately 
 
A Gnostic's Apology. 7 
 
 discovered ; in it a Jewish colony of the place was 
 associated in trusteeship with Christians and 
 Hindoos. While in Europe Jews were being 
 slg.ughtered in the name of Jesus, in India they 
 were uniting with Christians iri care for a temple 
 dedicated to the flower of- their race. In Europe, 
 Jesus was made to them no flower but a thorn — 
 a crown of thorns. This must have been a very 
 different Christ that was carried to India, whose 
 Cross is' found inscribed with the homage of 
 various tongues. 
 
 It was almost certainly the Christ of the 
 Gndstics. Christian historians and theologians 
 have impaled Gnosticism as a monstrous heresy ; 
 especially- they , have flayed that form of it called 
 Manichaeism, as its leader, Mani, was flayed in 
 the third century. But there is now reason to 
 believe that , this outlawed heretic travelled to 
 India and there preached a gospel which the 
 people welcomed. The missionaries of a later 
 gospel in India, to-day, work in vain amid monu- 
 ments which bear witness' to a period when the 
 Cross gathered around it Jew and Hindoo and 
 Persian in harmonious devotion. What, tl^en, 
 was this Gnpstic gospel ? The Church and the 
 Fathers so trampled that heresy, so tore up and 
 
8 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 burnt its books, that only in these latter days we 
 are discovering that Gnosticism repreisented ^n 
 array of literary and philosophical men as brilliant 
 as Agnosticism can count in our own time. The 
 Gnostics of the first and second centuries formed 
 no organization, but they> combined the latest 
 developments of Greek, Egyptian and Oriental 
 learning, just as the Orientalists, liberal thinkers 
 and philosophers are doing in our own. time. 
 They were the Emersons, Carlyles, Renans, 
 , Schopenhauers, Max Miillers of that age, and 
 Gnosticism was a cosmopolitan Transcendentalism 
 which invested an ideal Christ with symbols with- 
 drawn from worn-out creeds and crumbling altars. 
 Beneath its symbols and theosophic speculations 
 Gnosticism was fundamentally an appeal to reason 
 and humanity against deities upheld as figure- 
 heads of traditional systems.. Whether it were 
 Jupiter or Jahvd, Zeus or Brahma, Gnosticism 
 rebelled against him. It is told of a famous young 
 poet of our time that he said, " I believe in God 
 but am against him." That was about the 
 attitude of the early Gnostic. He could not love 
 and would not worship a deity whose only claim . 
 was to have created a world, mainly bad, and 
 given it up to the misgovernment of tyrants. 
 
A GnoisHc's Apology. 
 
 Gnosticism was mainly a moral protestantism. 
 Theology pointed to Jahvein the heavens, and 
 Jesus crucified on earth to pay man's debt to 
 Jahvd. Seeing that, Gnosticism said to, Jahvd, 
 ' Very well ; take your pound of .flesh ; but do 
 not expect us to love you or worship you. On 
 the contrary, you shall stand to us for a devil, and 
 that crucified man dying for man shall be our 
 God.' 
 
 Gnosticism could /not, of Course, be free from 
 the atmosphere of superstition in which it was 
 born. ■ It framed a theology on the principle of 
 the rationalistic religions of Greece, Egypt, and 
 Persia, that principle of Dualism which John 
 Stuart Mill wondered had not been revived. Mill 
 Vised the very language of the Gnostic, arid 
 declared that if any deity be revealed in nature it 
 is a Demiourgos, a deity doing his best amid hard 
 materials over which his power is limited. The 
 Zoroastrian religion personified good and evil as 
 equal powers. Gnosticism was somewhat more 
 scientific than that. It regarded the inorganic 
 world, mere chaotic matter, as impersonal and 
 unconscious ; and so it did not exactly believe in 
 a. devil. On the other hand, it first invented the 
 idea of an unknowable, of which we now hear so 
 
10 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 much.' It' called this unknowable, By ikos, or 
 depth, — some incomprehensible essence far away 
 in the depths of the universe, but by ■ no means 
 all-powerful over it. From this unknowable was 
 gradually evolved the virtues, — as planets might 
 be evolved from nebulae : slowly out of the depths 
 came Thought, then Wisdo'm,, then Truth, then 
 Life.. They said that Bythps, the depth, the 
 unknowable, does not exist, slave in these moral 
 and spiritual attributes. These they personified 
 as fair beings going forth to subdue, soften, and 
 spiritualise the chaotic world. They personified 
 the first existing being. Thought, as Ennoia ; she 
 was the supreme being ; the beautiful reason of 
 the universe. By the mysterious influence of 
 Bythos, Ennoia produced Sophia, Wisdom, the 
 Mother of all living things. A divine soul was 
 breathed into this intellectual Mother, — Wisdom,^ — 
 and from her proceeded two emanations. One of 
 these was Sophia Achamoth, the lower wisdorn ; 
 the other was Christos, the ideal of humanised 
 divinity. But Achamoth, this lower wisdom, lost 
 her way, became entangled in matter, and could 
 not extricate herself In this condition , she pro- 
 duced Ildabaoth. Ildabaoth created the world, 
 and became its tyrant. He was identified with 
 
A Gnostic's Apology, 1 1 
 
 Jahv6. His name means the "Son of Dark- 
 ness." Since the Reformation, and the printing 
 of the Old Testament, there has been a restoration 
 of Judaism, and Jahv^ as Jehovah has been another 
 name for God. But for a thousand years God 
 was as rarely called Jehovah as Jove. The Gnostic 
 revolution regarded Jahv6 as the being about 
 whom Jesus said "Ye are of your father the 
 .Devjl." Jahvd was dethroned . by Christos, as 
 Saturn was by Jupiter : and when the ancient god 
 of- titles, temples and trustdeeds, was restored, it 
 was under the name of Father, or First Person. 
 
 Thus then we ha:ve material nature, itself 
 inorganic, beginning to stir with an evil, brutal 
 kind of life. But even the Son of Darkness 
 has inherited a spark of good, and so, when 
 he begins to create /orms, all have in thetn 
 some leaven of good derived from the supreme 
 ' mother. Thought. The maternal principle is in 
 leaf and flbwer even in the tigress and the serpent. 
 So fast as the Demiourgus created living forms, the 
 divine Mother infused. still rriore love into them. 
 Ildabaoth having created man, was anxious to 
 keep him an ignorant brute, and kept him -inside 
 a walled garden. But Wisdom, in the form. of a 
 serpent, stole into the garden and confided to Eve 
 
12 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 the secret of how she might gain divine knowledge. 
 She ate the apple, and Ildabaqth's plan was 
 defeated, — all he could do was to curse. Therefore, 
 the Gnostics reverenced the serpent. He was a 
 primitive embodiment of the same wisdom which 
 was incarnate in Christ — the serpent that is lifted 
 up. For when Jahv^-Ildabaoth had produced 
 a miractil'ous man named Jesus, for the purpose of 
 extending his own power, the 'divine Mother, 
 Sophia, sent her son Christos as a dove to enter 
 him, and so Jesus became Christ, the lover and 
 Saviour of man from the Dark Power which pro- 
 duced him. The wisdom of the serpent was now 
 in alliance with the innocency of the, dove. 
 Ildabaoth took a terrible vengeance ; — as in his 
 other -defeat he cursed the serpent, he now stirred 
 up the Jews to put Christ to death. But they qfily 
 killed the body of the man, — the real Christ could 
 not perish. 
 
 There were various schools of Gnosticism as 
 there are now of Rationalism, but it was some- 
 thing like this which, in the beginning of the 
 third century, Mani organised into a 'Church, and 
 which he carried into Persia and then into India. 
 There he met with corresponding rebellions against 
 the ancient nature-gods — the eleniental deities who ■ 
 
A Gnostic's Apology. ' 13 
 
 demanded sacrifices from man but gave him no 
 help in return. India too had had its divine Man 
 in Buddha, the Lord who moved amid the horrid 
 idols before which men cowered, and brought thfe 
 glad tidings that the gods did not exist at all ! 
 The priests of these gods had managed to banish 
 Buddhism, but they could not, kill the Buddha in 
 every -breast ; and, when Mani came with his 
 tidings of a divine Man, — a Son of Man, a lover, 
 a saviour, who told men the only divine kingdom 
 was within themselves, — they received this human 
 God in all his weakness ; they set his lowly good- 
 ness above omnipotent selfishness, and there six- 
 teen centuries ago scattered Jews, Buddhists, 
 Hindus, Persians, gathered around the Gnostic 
 prophet, together raised that cross with its in- 
 scription : — 
 
 " in' PUNISriMENT BY THE CKOSS WAS THE SUFFER- 
 ING OF THIS ONE : HE WHO IS THE TRUE CHRIST AND 
 GOD ABOVE,' AND GUIDE EVER PURE," 
 
 A deluge of Catholic Christianity swept away 
 that early Gospel, and restored the empire of 
 discord; another deluge of Mohammedan Christ- 
 ianity . overwhelmed both ; and now that English 
 freedom rises on their common ruins, the free 
 scholar — the believer in the Religion of Hu- 
 
14 Farewell Discourses, 
 
 manity — goes there and deciphers the inscription 
 which testifies to the peace and beauty of that 
 Oriental Church of Christ. Had such a Christ as 
 that been brought into Europe there never would 
 have been any Antichrist. 
 
 The true history of the Gnostic movement has 
 not yet been written ; it is the next great task 
 awaiting the historian who has the scholarship 
 and the courage to write it ; but the study I have 
 given you of modern reseairches proves that the 
 Christ of the first believers was neither the Christ 
 of Christianity or of criticism. No wonder the 
 Church ascribes the early triumph of the Cross to 
 miracle. Their Christ would have required a 
 good many miracles to enthrone him in the 
 human heart. They cannot understand him 
 whom oppressed humanity clasped to its heart, 
 and modern scepticism in its denials does not 
 understand him. I heard of a little girl who 
 came home from school in a state of indignation 
 because one of her schoolmates said Christ was 
 a Jew. "He wasn't a Jew, Mother?" "Yes, I 
 suppose so," said the mother. " But wasn't he 
 God?" urged the child. "Yes, he was God." 
 "Then," said the child, "he cannot be a Jew, for 
 God is a presbyterian." . That ch,ild may some 
 
A Gnostic's Apology. 15 
 
 day be made a theological professor, if women 
 get their rights before they lose their creeds. 
 She did exactly what every sect has done — made 
 Christ its own sectarian figure-head. But the 
 other child was equally wrong in saying Christ 
 \vas a Jew. When . first that figure was lifted up 
 it drew all men unto it. It was neither Jew nor 
 Gentile, neither Greek nor Oriental, but it was the 
 embodiment of a world-movement, a great insurrec- 
 tion of the human heart against all the idle gods, 
 whether of Olympus or Mount Mer« or Mount 
 Sinai, -^against every god that had not a human 
 heart to feel, and,- a human hand to help. The 
 greatness of Zoroaster, the genius of Buddha, 
 the inspiration of Pythagoras, the intellect of 
 Plato, the martyred wisdom of Socrates, all were 
 embodied in that divine Christos, emanation of 
 the maternal wisdom and love, whose earthly 
 witness and martyr was Jesus the Son of Mary. 
 
 A London clergyman has just been inhibited 
 for heresy. On Ascension Day he preached a 
 sermon, saying that Christ did not ascend to 
 heaven. I do not wonder he was suppressed.' 
 On that ascension rests all the ecclesiasticism of 
 Christendom. Take away ' that ascension and 
 whatXhrist have you ? Another Buddha denying 
 
1 6 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 the priest and his deity. You have the religion of 
 humanity, the religion of this world, but no 
 authority to sacrifice the interests of this world. 
 The ascension of the Church's Christ was the 
 entombment of Man's Christ. Christ has so long 
 been laid in this garnished sepulchre of divinity 
 that movements most like his own now dare not 
 call, themselves by his name. So long as he is the 
 son of his crucifier how can he be the son of 
 Man ? Under his name the old systems against 
 which he protested were restored to power ; altar, 
 temple, priest, sacrifice, rite and ceremony, 
 originally raised to deified despots, were labelled 
 Christian because of the prestige of his name ; 
 and, now that they have become intolerable, the 
 liberal and humanitarian world is steadily raising 
 up another Gnostic revolution like that which his 
 name led in the first century. What Basilides, 
 Valentinus, Heraclon, Marcus and Mani were in 
 the early ages, that Priestley, Channing, Pafker, 
 Emerson, Fox, Martineau, Strauss, Renan have 
 been in our own time. Our Gnostic ancestors 
 expressed themselves in symbols, our later liberal 
 fathers have spoken through the facts of science 
 and experience ; but those same graces and 
 humanities which of old were called Ennoia, 
 
A Gnostic's Apology. ly 
 
 ^ — . / ■- ' ■ — 
 
 Sophia, Aletheia, Christos, have all reappeared in 
 these latter days as the consecration of Reasbn, 
 Wisdom, Truth and Love, against the ancient 
 consecration of Omnipotent Force, Vengeance, 
 Egotism. The Christ of Channing is the Christos 
 of Basilides, the ' Over^oul ' of Emerson is the 
 Ennoia of the Gnostic ; and the whole anti- 
 dogmatic movement of our time, though sometimes 
 called atheistical (it is atheistical only in the sense 
 that it was atheistical in Buddha to deny Brahma, 
 in Jesus to deny Jahvd, in' Lucian to deny 
 Jupiter) is really the spiritualis'ation of humanity, 
 the humanization of religion. - 
 
 We are, therefore, in the nlidst of a new 
 Gnosticism. It has fallen on a scientific instead 
 of a symbolical age, and its development has been, 
 and must continue to be, much more remorseless 
 than in the past.. It must entirely do away with 
 Theology. Theology is not moral, it is not 
 religious ; it is a professed science, as its name 
 indicates, the science of God, and it is a science 
 falsely so called. In obedience to the demands of 
 science Theology has gradually committed itself 
 to the doctrine of one omnipotent Creator of all! 
 things. It could- not help that, for the steadily 
 discovered unity of nature would -not permit it to 
 
 c 2 
 
1 8 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 maintain the old belief in^ various deities with 
 limited powers. Theology claiming to be a 
 science must follow with the other sciences. 
 There grew steadily a scientific demand for unity 
 in the first cause. The consequences of this were 
 not all seen at once. Theology was ab,le, for a 
 time, to maintain a Satan — a scapegoat on which 
 the faults and evils of nature could be laid. But 
 that is no longer possible. Satan is no longer 
 scientific. As an equal power he might be held 
 responsilile for all evils ; but when Theology was 
 compelled to make him a creature of God, his 
 existence continued by God, Satan could remain 
 qnly as a blot on the character of his creator and 
 preserver. So he has steadily vanished : Theology- 
 can nb longer utilise Satan. It has raised the 
 theory of the omnipotence and omniscience of the 
 Creator, and must stand or fall by it. It is falling 
 by it. Nature nowhere reveals a moral govern- 
 ment outside the influence of man. Dr. Carpenter 
 has lately revived the argument from design in 
 nature ; but it is too late to have any , effect on 
 religion. What matters design in nature if it be 
 not good, design ,? What matters an architect of 
 the universe if his edifice totters in earthquakes, 
 and the creatures of his workmanship can only 
 
A Gnostic's Apology: 19 
 
 live by devouring one another ? At last comes a 
 philosopher who has kindly taken hard pressed 
 Theology by the hand and carried it away to 
 " No man's land," the land of the Unknowable, 
 That is what is sometimes called Agnosticism. 
 There, apart ' from all the , real thoughts and 
 concerns > and interests of life and the world, 
 Theologians, like lotus-eaters, may dream out any 
 supreme fairy and 1 fairyland they please, and 
 nobody can contradict them. ' A man may assert 
 that there is a Phoenix in the moon, and no 
 human being can disprove it. It may be com- 
 passionate of the scientific men, in removing 
 •Theology away from the domain of actuality, to 
 humour it with soap-bubbles of this kind. 
 Bubbles are bright little .worlds till they burst. 
 This agnostic world is very thin ; and when, it 
 bursts Theology will return from its delusion to 
 find that Science has taken possession of the 
 objective universe. And it will find that religion 
 has taken possession of the moral and human 
 
 , world. 
 , Religion is not agnostic but gnostic. It is not 
 the worship of our ignorance, but of our knowledge. 
 Religion knows no doubt; Its province is that 
 which we are certain of There is a region of the 
 
20 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 unknown — riot, be it observed, of the unknowable — ■- 
 whqre science must ever press its frontiers, moving 
 from doubts to certainties, and on to doubts again, 
 in never-ending alternation. But for religion that- 
 region is represeated in those emanations which 
 the Gnostic sa\v evolved from the depth he could 
 not fathom, — Ennoia, Sophia, Aletheia, Christos, — 
 Thought, Wisdom, Truth, .Love. Had he any 
 doubts about them ? Have you ?~ Has it ever 
 Ocqurred to you to say, ' After all, why should I 
 honour Thought ? Is there any solid advantage 
 in Wisdom ? Why should I respect Truth more 
 than falsehood, or Love more than selfishness 
 and hatred ? ' 
 
 It may always be said that all we know is 
 but a small point compared with what we do not 
 know. But it may also be said that what -we 
 realise and possess is generally but little of What 
 we ought to realise, and ought to possess, and 
 would if our religion, our enthusiasm, could detach 
 itself from traditions, could stop pursuing phantoms, 
 and enter fully upon the life and opportunities 
 open to us. Some say that the practical sphere of 
 thought and feeling to which religion has been 
 relegated by the loss of ancient speculations is 
 small, prosaic, unpoetic. We have no more any 
 
A Gnostics Apology. 21 
 
 angels and archangels, no sublime abyss of infernal 
 spirits, none of the vast visions of hell and heaven 
 that entranced the gaze of Dante and Milton. 
 Well, the human religion is as yet in its infancy ; 
 perhaps there are visions to come later ; but even 
 now we are realising a new world around us, long 
 overshadowed by oiir star-gazing neglect, From 
 their hiding places new bibles are coming, scrip- 
 tures of every race and age, and the great oratorio 
 of humanity swells through them for the first time. 
 Our canon is , vastly enlarged and enriched. 
 Heroes and sages come from their graves ; we are 
 no longer bound to think of half the heroes and 
 sages of our race as pagans burning in hell : we 
 lovingly walk with Zoroaster besi4e the Euphrates, 
 we listen to Buddha beneath the Bo trees, we gather 
 with the youth of Athens to listen to Socrates and 
 Plato; and Jesus, who- for fifteen centuries was 
 taken from us by Theology, made into an unlovable 
 high priest and fierce judge, has come forth to our 
 fearless research, with all, the sweetness and love 
 that melted the heart of Mary, and all the eloquence 
 that, charmed men from their idols. For one, I do 
 not think that in all my orthodox years I ever got 
 so much joy from Gabriel and Michael, and other 
 angels, as in these last years I have got from 
 
22 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 communion with Buddha, whom I then knew not, 
 and Jesus, whom I only dreaded. If our old 
 heavens have grown dim, we have gained a fairer 
 earth. And if we no longer expect a millennium, > 
 we have gained, the secret of further creation, — 
 have learned the law of development, by which, the 
 best can. be selected, and the good furthered. We 
 have gained powers of healing, of soothing pain, 
 of increasing happiness, which the past fabled in 
 miracles. Our science and poetry read wonders in 
 insect and flower greater than superstition ever 
 found in planet or angel. It is true that our old 
 faith in immortality is challenged'. For ages it 
 was made to. rest upon the fable of a miraculous 
 resurrection in Palestine, and, now that such, 
 support is removed, that cherished hope is for a 
 time brought into doubt. It is already a fruitful 
 doubt, and not altogether of evil. The facts of 
 nature, the resources of man, the secrets of life 
 and of mind, are searched with an eagerness never 
 known, before : the truth will be known ; and, 
 whatever, it may be, the history of the world shows 
 that man will, adapt himself to it, and love it, and 
 wonder that he ever loved anything else. And 
 meanwhile, as we wa:it for the verdict of Psycho- 
 logy and Anthropblogy, we may reflect that 
 
A Gnostics Apology. 23 
 
 modern knowledge, combined with a growing 
 sympathy with the human nature once deemed 
 accurst, have vastly extended the lives, of all who 
 avail themselves of the revelations of their time. 
 The student can now live over the history of his 
 race ; he can journey through the stbne age, and 
 thfe bronze age, and the iron age, and the golden 
 age J he can be present at the formation of the first 
 home, can see the village community assembliftg, 
 can carry to the genesis of gods- and ^the grov^th of 
 myths a knowledge which turns them to poetry. 
 Researches into the sciences of man, of religion, of 
 the state, exhumation of buried worlds in the East, 
 recovery of dead languages, have added thousands 
 of years to our lives. Fretting ourselves about 
 immortality beyond the grave, let us be careful 
 that we do not lose the qver-expanding life open 
 to us this side of the grave ! It is a kind of 
 . immortality to live over, in scientific irnagination, 
 the history of our race, and to realise by hope and 
 thought the .future of our race. No doubt there 
 are certain troubles incidental to the transition 
 from an old to a new mental order, The classic 
 worshippers of Apollo and Venus had to undergo 
 it ; the devotees of Oldin and Balder had to endure 
 it; and we have to endure it. They cried as 
 
24 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 sorrowfully after their lost gods and goddesses as 
 any one now after lost beliefs.. We must make 
 the best of our time, and honourably serve our day 
 and generation. The age will drag us if we do 
 not move with it. Let us hasten to transfer our 
 religion to it, and all will be well. That will 
 illuminate the worl^ and restore more than was 
 lost, a hundredfold. 
 
THE GIFT AND THE ALTAR. 
 
THE GIFT AND THE ALTAR. 
 
 N ancient times negotiations between 
 man and man were generally attended 
 with gifts. The custom still exists in 
 many parts of the world, and : is not 
 When an important 
 
 unknown in our own. 
 bargain or contract is completed the parties sorne- 
 times exchange small civilities. It may be only a 
 glass of wine given, or some present for a wife, 
 , though it tends to become ah abuse in the shape 
 of bribes to servants or agents. ' In the East such 
 gifts are often costly. An English ambassador 
 would tnot think of approaching an Oriental 
 prince without presents, and the prince welcomes 
 him with the like. In ancient times the, people 
 approached the monarch whose favour they desired 
 with offerings, and naturally they niade^ offerings 
 to their invisible monarchs— the gods. There 
 
28 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 were gifts to propitiate, gifts to express gratitude 
 for favours attributed to deities, gifts of love and 
 of fear. Immemorial custom becomes law. Gifts 
 once freely given became the basis of institutions, 
 and ultimately were enforced. "Presents offered 
 gladly to a popular monarch could not be with- 
 held from an unpopular one. So began taxation. 
 So was it also in governments deemed divine. 
 Gifts for the altar became taxation for the altar. 
 Presents became compulsory, wheth,er given in 
 kind or commuted to money. So arose tithes and 
 other ecclesiastical exactions. It is easy to see 
 that a gift ex;acted is a gift only in name. When 
 the offerings of primitive piety were made com- 
 pulsory it was a sign that the human heart had 
 lost its deity. The sanctuary was there td be 
 supported but the honoured shrine was gone. 
 The altar might stand but it was to a god no- 
 longer known. 
 
 Altars to unknown gods were hot confined to 
 ancient Athens. They are found in contemporary 
 temples. In the stone floor of Canterbury 
 Cathedral there is a spot worn deep by the 
 knees pf many pilgrims. There must have stood 
 some shrine more revered than all the rest. 
 Whose was it ? Nobody knows, The shrines of 
 
The Gift and the Altar. 29 
 
 other saints are known. The holy shrine of 
 St. Thomas a Beckett is known. Yet before no 
 other shrine are seen such marks of popular 
 reverence as those left on the stone floor before a 
 figure now unknown. No doubt the gifts carried 
 to that beloved saint were free offerings ; they 
 passed into tithes and taxes to the cathedral, 
 which sustgiined some ecclesiastical saints for 
 whom" the multitude c^red little. Possibly the 
 shrine so beloved was that of some half-pagan 
 ideal, set up by concession to heathen tradition — 
 a bait to attract the masses — and when these were 
 secured, cast out, broken, so that the very memory 
 of their saLint was lost. 
 
 ^When Jesus came there was taxation for the 
 Sanctuary, but under Roman power it could not 
 be completely enforced. Tradition was in favour 
 of it, but it largely depended on usage. Those 
 who wished to keep in the good graces of Jahvd, 
 those who desired favours of the priesthood, those 
 who wished ' to preserve the national observances 
 in face of the Gentile, brought their gifts to the 
 altar. JesUs did not wish to break with, the altar 
 altogether. He did not desire to arrest and stop 
 the habit of giving gifts for a pious or ideal object, 
 even though many might give superstitiously or 
 
30 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 conventionally. He would , not stop- the widow 
 with her mite and say, 'put that coin back in 
 your purse and buy something useful with " it.' 
 He who considered the precious ointment poured 
 on his feet for a sentiment not wasted, but well 
 laid out, could not rebuke a sincere offering even 
 to at vacant altar, around which hovered thoughts, 
 memories, associations which might imply aspira- 
 tions after what was noble and beautiful. He 
 reverenced Moses' seat, if not those who sat upon 
 it. He wished to seat Truth on it. And on the 
 altar he hoped td see a new deity standing, no 
 longer the mere image of a dead god, not the, 
 the wrathful and jealous Jahve, but the loving 
 Father who cares not for himself, and sends his 
 blessings alike upon the thankful and thankless. 
 
 Teachers have been called Atheists for identify- 
 ing God with humajiity ; it has been so from 
 Buddha to Comte : but how, was it with Christ ? 
 He distinctly raised humanity above God. The 
 altar stood for God ; on it were laid the popular 
 offerings to Gqd. Jesus said^ let service to man 
 come first. "If thou bring thy gift to the altar, 
 and there rememberest that thy brother hath 
 aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the 
 altar, and. go thy way; first be reconciled to thy 
 
The Gift and the Altar. 31 
 
 brother, and then come and offer thy gift." The 
 altar can wait. God can wait. But man cannot 
 wait. Hearts estranged cannot wait. The eV^ils 
 of hatred and injustice will not wait. 
 
 This was the religion of Christ. So much is 
 implied in it that it is worth while inquiring 
 whether it be true or not. We know very well 
 that it is not necessarily true because Jesus said it, 
 and I have.no doubt that he did say it, because I 
 cannot find any writer in the Bible, or any down 
 to our own time, who ever thought that way. 
 That is the one scripture that gives man precedence 
 over God. Is it true? Is it right? Is it har- 
 monibus with the purest sentiment of religion ? 
 Still more, is it harmonious with the highest 
 interests of man, not merely his so-called secular 
 interests, but his spiritual interests? You must 
 not suppose the inquiry one of mere antiquarian 
 -interest, though no doubt it is interesting to find 
 in the far past a thinker here and there uttering a 
 word of permanent import. To-day we will con- 
 - - sider not so much the thinker as his thought, and 
 that is of immense practical bearing on the ,time 
 and place in which we live. 
 
 Innumerable altars , surround us. On them are 
 this day laid innumerablie gifts. Enormous wealth, 
 
 D ■■ 
 
32 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 vast talent, learning, energy, are employed through' 
 out Christendom in the service of God. All these 
 represent the costly gift brought to the altar. The 
 world has. just waked up to that fact and to estimate 
 the resources which are consecrated to the altar. 
 And simultaneously the. Christian world has begun 
 to recognise the fact that, its brother man has 
 something against it. It has been decorating these 
 altars for fifteen centuries, has loaded them with 
 treasures, and yet around them have grown rank 
 ignorance, poverty, injustice.. Nothing can be more 
 certain than the fact that if half the wealth and 
 enthusiasm devoted to God in those centuries had 
 been devoted to man there would now be seen few 
 of the evils that afflict and- degrade mankind. It 
 is not to be wondered that there should be a large _ 
 and increasing number who desire to destroy the 
 altar altogether, and to devote all those gifts to 
 man. They would not leave any altar nor any 
 gift before it. That is one solution -of the question, 
 and it has to be faced. It was not Christ's solution, • 
 but we have lived a long time since Christ, and are 
 much older in experiences than he was. What is 
 called, infelicitously, the secularization of society 
 has a strong case. The deity to whom all these 
 costly cathedrals, churches, ceremonies were dedi- 
 
The Gift and the Altar. 33 
 
 cated is a deity dead to the heart, discredited in 
 the brain of this nation. The Trinity has receded 
 after the Trinities of Egypt and India ; Jahvd has 
 become a mythological figure like Jove ; and the 
 terrible Judge of quick and dead, whose huttianity 
 was lost, in his divinity for a thousand years, is- 
 returning again £0 his human life, and maintains 
 , his hold on the people as a good and wise teacher 
 who went about doing gbodi There is not one 
 iltar in the country, bequeathed and endowed by 
 the Past, which now represents either the deity or 
 the Christ for which' it was raised. On each might 
 be written the words Paul read on the altar at 
 Athens, "To an unknown god." Why then, asks 
 the secularist, shall we preserve these altars ? Why 
 should we bring gifts to them or leave gifts before 
 them ? Why, for instance, should the millions of 
 money locked in the English Church be laid on 
 the. altar of a deity no longer beloved or believed in ? 
 Practically, this comes very near the audacity of 
 Christ's own language, and still nearer his example. 
 For though we read of his doing much for rtlen and 
 women and children, we never find him brin'ging a 
 gift to any altar. No doubt like other youths he 
 carried his gift, but he must have remembered 
 that his brother had sopie unfulfilled claim on 
 
 P 3 
 
34 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 him, and left it there never to be offered. It toqk 
 him his whole life to square his debt to man, and 
 if there were any deity who desired hirii to leave 
 his gift for man ungiven for the altar's sake, Jesus 
 ' evidently did not believe in any such deity. That 
 divine egotist, that selfish . sultan of the sky, pre- 
 ferring incense and flattery to himself above man's 
 need, had no place in the faith or love of Christ, 
 and he would nofhave seen one mite given to such 
 a god without sorrow. He who loved man more 
 than himself could never wbrship a Gbd who pre- 
 ferred . himself to man. If he differed from our so- 
 called secularist, if he still reverenced the seat of 
 Moses and the perverted altar, it must have been 
 because he believed that hurtian reason would 
 inherit the seat of Moses, and universal Love 
 inherit the akar of Jahv6. Thi^ might be Utopian, ■ 
 it might be a dream ; it certainly was the faith of 
 a poet ; but many past poems are present realities ; 
 and we need not lightly dismiss the hope of poetic 
 minds in our own time that religion has still a 
 great future before it. 
 
 Let us picture some ancient worshipper of the 
 jealoys and vindictive Jahvd on his way to lay his 
 offering on the altar of his. god. On his way he 
 pauses to listen to a street-preacher. What is he 
 
The Gift and the Altar. 35 
 
 talking about ? The wealth of the priesthood, 
 the idle splendours of the temple, contrasted with 
 the wretchedness of the people. "Is that well," 
 asks the preacher, " is God so n^edy ? " He 
 .counsels them to attend first to the poor, the 
 oppressed, then see about the altar. Now, our 
 our casual Jew as he passes on thinks over this 
 matter. He reaches, the temple, and by that time 
 has I'emembered everybody he has wronged, ' all 
 the sufferers he has neglected., He leaves his 
 offering just inside the temple doon He goes. off . 
 to tell son;ie poor debtor his debt is forgiven ; pays 
 some labourer wages he had withheld ; carries a 
 meal to some half-starved neighbour. After a 
 time he begins to like it. Faces that were pallid 
 begin to sniile on him ; grateful eyes beam on 
 him ; hearts open to him, tell him their lowly 
 history; new feelings swell in his breast. How 
 sweet is forgiveness ! How warm is the sunshine 
 of sympathy ! What a happiness there is in 
 charity ! Why, a god might enjoy these emotions 
 of compassion, sympathy, generosity ! Ah, a God ! 
 That reminds hirn that he has left his gift ungiven 
 before the altar. He has. left Jahv6 waiting. 
 Jahv6 must be in a passion by this time, so he 
 runs,, with some trepidation, towards 'the temple. 
 
36 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 But when he gets there he pauses again. ' Is it 
 true that God is in a passion because I left him to 
 attend to those poor people ? Is it certain that he" 
 is an angry, vindictive, selfish being ? ' Is he -less 
 merciful than myself? The holy books say so, 
 but somehow I can't believe in such a god any 
 more. That street-preacher has turned my head, 
 and these poor people I have visited have turned . 
 -my heart,, and — Heavens, what is that!' Our 
 old Jew as he is about to lay his offering on the 
 altar sees standing over it the great form of a 
 man transfigured in beauty, haloed with light, who 
 bends down to kiss his brow. 
 
 Well, what became of that old" Jew .■* Did he 
 ever carry any more offerings to the altar ? That 
 is not so easy to answer. But perhaps we may 
 discover it if we leave ancient Judea for modern 
 England. George Stephenson, of whom every 
 railway is a .monument, was a Methodist in his 
 youth. But one Sunday, when he was getting, 
 ready to go to church he heard of a coal-pit that ~ 
 was flooded. Men could not work, women and 
 children were starving. Instead of going to 
 church Stephenson began to examine the pit and 
 the pumps and discovered how the mine could be 
 cleared of water. He worked then all day Sunday, 
 
The Gift and the Altar. 37 
 
 and all the week, and next Sunday. He cleared 
 the coal-pit. The men had work, their families 
 had bread. Two Sundays had Jahvd to go 
 without his sabbath being kept holy by George 
 Stephenson. His offering of prayer and praise 
 was left before the altar. And, what is more, 
 Stephenson never went to meeting again. One 
 taste of the blessedness of helping man had given 
 •him a new heart, and in it was folded a new God, 
 a God he could love ; for loving such a God was 
 precisely the same as loving man. No longer 
 could he love a deity who desired sacrifice rather 
 than- mercy, who. would turn to himself a 
 moment or an energy which could be given to 
 human need. 
 
 ' 'But,' says my secularist friend, 'where is 
 there any place for an altar in such a life as that ? 
 and why call that an offering which is simply a 
 gift of man to man } Simply this : the altar I 
 mean is not that of any church or of all churches 
 together, but it is religion itself. Conceptions of 
 a deity come and go ; , altars and temples ci'umble ; 
 but religion itself, as I believe, only grows by 
 such decays of its idols and altars, and is a,bsolutely 
 essential to humah helpfulness and happiness. 
 For it means the consecration of human effort. 
 
38 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 the exaltation of man's service above the mere 
 contracts and regulations of the world. Political 
 economy is a good thing, supply and demand 
 important, laws arid competitions useful ; but there 
 • is work to be done in the world which these cannot 
 do. There is work to be done which evolution 
 cannot do, and mere intellectual education cannot 
 do, but which only love can do. There are 
 regions where the struggle for existence is brutal-, 
 ising millions, and the selfishness of success 
 debasing millions more. It is a regipn where 
 Gopd Shepherds are needed — men and women 
 who shall feel it the highest joy earth c^n give to 
 rescue the wandering, carry the weak in their 
 arms, and gently lead them that are with young'. 
 With that spirit political economy, competition 
 and all the rest may be made to work for good ; 
 without it they will all gravitate downward, until 
 the sentiment of humanity, and even love itseilf, 
 shall be evolved out of a world gi^en up to 
 predatory instincts./ It may be that such must be 
 the outcome of a society which has lost its old 
 restraints of hope and fear — its ancient heaven 
 and hell. But so long, as I see the altar of 
 religious sentiment standing I will not believe it. 
 I will still believe that that altar will yet flame 
 
The Gift and the Altar. 39 
 
 with the religion of humanity ; that a liberated 1 
 heart and brain will arise to direct the tremendous 
 forces of religion towards a real human salvation ; 
 that the altar now vacant — for which a hundred 
 new gods, are competing — will at last be inherited 
 by a religion which shall- receive the glad offerings 
 of every great heart and brain, shall be heaped 
 with science and wealth, because' its one aim will 
 b.e to send these forth for the culture, health, and 
 happiness of mankind. 
 
 Is this too a dream ? Is it incredible that men 
 can find a joy in loving others ? Was Swedenborg 
 merely mad when he said "My reward for loving' 
 my. neighbour as myself will be that I shall come 
 to love him more than myself ? " There are some 
 who tell us that mankind can have no motives but 
 hell and heaven — whether selfish hope and fear on 
 ' earth or hereafter. Let every mother and ' father 
 make the experiment. Let them take care that 
 their children shall have all the happiness they can 
 give them, and then teach them that the only thing 
 worth living for is to give happiness to others. , 
 Let them teach the babe from its cradle that to 
 diffuse health, to bestow gladness, to relieve want, 
 to encourage, to loVe and be beloved, is the object 
 of all wisdom, all religion, — the divine art of 
 
40 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 living, — and if the child cannot learn to find its 
 happiness in that way, as. it now learns to find 
 happiness in the selfish way, then we must give 
 up, and admit that virtue is a shadow. But the 
 world cannot be taught that, while it is being 
 taught that gospel of selfishness that "the chief end 
 of man is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever. 
 This last would indeed be a great and true gospel 
 if men had, a God ; but they have not, they have 
 only the ghost of a god,— a being no man worships 
 as he worships gold, which no woman loves as she 
 loves her babe. The altar of that god stands, but 
 it is abandoned by the prudent While the service 
 on it is the immolation of man. 
 
 I implore you, every honest and faithful man 
 and woman of you, not to deceive yourselves about 
 the signs of your time. Do not shut your eyes 
 and imagine you have shut the stern eyes of 
 to-day which look upon you with hunger in them. 
 There were forty-four deaths by starvation in 
 London last year, but who can number the living 
 deaths by spiritual starvation } The miracle of 
 Jesus feeding the multitude has been explained as 
 his having so charmed them by his discourse as to 
 make them forget their hunger, and feel as if they 
 had been fed. But the days when men could hear 
 
The Gift and the Altar. 41 
 
 _ '. ! . 
 
 in the so-called gospel any such entrancing tidings 
 of joy have passed, and hunger resumes its sway, — 
 hunger physical, mental, spiritual, which are not 
 very ' different. Socialism says ' We have no 
 future world, shall we lose this also ? ' As society, 
 bowing with offerings before altars already rich, 
 did not remember that its poor brother had aught 
 against it, the poor brother begins to remind 
 society of his existience, sometimes in rather for- 
 midable ways. The Christian world has felicita;ted 
 itself too soon that it has entered with the Bride- 
 groom, and has now only to be festal. 
 
 And here let me give a variant of an old 
 parable. Ten virgins watched and waited for the 
 Bridegroom ; five of whom were wise, five 
 foolish. The wise took along plenty of 
 oil for their lamps, the foolish did not take 
 enough. As the night waxed on these said to, 
 the others, " Sisters lend us some oil for our 
 ■ lamps are going out." But the wise said, 
 "No, we may want it all \ you will have to go 
 away and buy it where we did." The foolish 
 virgins lamented their want of foresight and went 
 away to buy oil : at that hour of the night it was 
 difficult, and when they returned they found that 
 in their absence the Bridegroom had come and, 
 
42 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 with the five wise virgins, had gone unto the 
 feast. The fooHsh virgins hastened to the door 
 and knocked, pleading for admittance, but from 
 within there came, in a sharp voice, "Depiart!" 
 The excluded virgins cried "-Lord, open to us!" 
 hut in vain, there came ' only the stern word, 
 " Depart !" With the laughter of their more 
 prudent sisters ringing in their ears, the sorrow- 
 ing virgins went their way, but at length came 
 where an aged man lay prostrate on the ground, 
 fainting from a journey, perishing with hunger and 
 thirst. The virgins hastened to bring wine and 
 food, they, supported him to the nearest' of their 
 homes : in their anxiety to preserve this aged 
 man's life they forgot their cruel disappointment 
 in not welcoming the Bridegroom. B tit when, by 
 their kindness and devotion, the traveller had; 
 been restored, lo, suddenly, he threw off a dis- 
 guise, • and before the astonished maidens stood 
 revealed^the Bridegroon; ! At the same moment 
 were heard voices at the door, with knocking, and 
 the so prudent virgins cried, "Sisters, open to us ! 
 The oil we selfishly withheld from you only 
 brought an impostor to us," Against these the 
 door was not shut ; but nature may not be equally 
 tender-hearted and forgiving for those selfish 
 
The Gift and the Altar. 43 
 
 saints who can enjoy themselves with' the Bride- 
 groom while the door is shut against the less 
 prudent, the I'ess fortunate but cruelly disap- 
 pointed soul's who find between themselves and 
 that Bridegroom only a wooden door — the despair 
 outside answered by the laughter within.. 
 
 In youth, \ pondered over these words of a 
 Christian seer, " I saw a new heaven and a new 
 earth," and they revealed to me that a new 
 heaven of ideals must always be followed by a 
 reformed earth. But, now, td my farther age, 
 they reveal that equally a new earth leads on a new 
 heaven. The old heaven having faded — its rosy 
 bowers, and harps, and thrones, broken into drift- 
 ing clouds — leaving immortality a cold Perhaps, 
 a possibility not altogether pleasing to the weary 
 toilers of earth, I am convinced that if faith m 
 paradise is recovered it will be from the stand- 
 point of a happier earth. The ancient heaven 
 shone ■ by. contrast with earthly despair ; the new 
 heaven will reflect, the glories' of a renovated 
 world. As the desolation of earth is the eclipse 
 of immortality, the wrongs of the world are the 
 pall upon providence. ' Of what use is an idle 
 deity who does not bare his arm to save ? When 
 mankind recover their, faith in providence, rest 
 
44 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 assured it will be through the development of a 
 more. perfect humanity. The deities of the past 
 have successively perished because they were 
 mere ' embodiments of speculative theories of the 
 universe. They were reasoned about as we now 
 reason about electricity and dynamics. Causal 
 power, creative forte, omnipotence, ubiquity — they 
 were the phrases about God, as they now are 
 about physics. The ancient sky is full of such 
 cobwebs. They are steadily swept away. Why 
 should I worship omnipotence, or a first cause, or 
 a second, or creative power, unless it creates well 
 and wisely ? So long as men looked that way for 
 their deity the era of atheism was only a question 
 of time. And every time men turned from such 
 crude scientific notions to worship a good man, 
 like Buddha, or Zoroaster, or Christ, it was^ a 
 victory of atheisrn — clearing away the outgrown 
 god, but preserving his altar as the pedestal of a 
 better. The theological deity of our own time 
 was a vast improvement, but his fate also is 
 inevitable ; for he wears the ambitious crown of 
 the old nature-gods ; he claims their omnipotence, 
 but never uses it to save one heart from despair, 
 or wipe away one human tear, much less to heal 
 the wounds of the world, and make earth a 
 
The Gift and the Altar. 45 
 
 paradisei This idle omnipotence cannot survive 
 in human faith. Man cannot worship heartless- 
 ness however majestic- All the theological ex- 
 planations — how he can , but doesn't — rail the 
 metaphysics and casuistry in the world- cannot 
 save the theological deity so long as the facts 
 remain unchanged, the world in discord and pain. 
 ■But when mankind turn their eyes to the 
 worship of pure goodness, perfect love, seeing 
 that to be the true God, however weak^even as 
 men once worshipped their God hanging on a 
 sca.ffold, helpless ^ to save himself or them ; 
 ah ! when the true religion is cultivated in the 
 earth, a pure passion for goodness, for love, the 
 great enthusiasm for what is excellent in humanity, 
 , then shall all these clotids of doubt and denial 
 part, a.nd through their rift we shall see the Son 
 of Man once more, every ideal made flesh and 
 dwelling among us. 
 
 If men are ever to believe in sublime realities 
 in the universe they must first feel sublime realities 
 in themselves. Hitherto religion has cultivated 
 what is mean and abject in our nature. .The 
 gift that man carried to the altar was a sign of 
 his abjectness^ his cowardice, his ignorance. He 
 was bribing a thunder-god not to strike him. 
 
46 parewell Discourses. 
 
 His litanies were the supplications of a slave, 
 whose master was known only as the , smiter. 
 Until a, man feels himself superior to thunder and 
 ' lightning, he cannot see God. Until he knows 
 that all the stars are not equal in dignity to his 
 ideas, that the, Sun in its glory is a poor thing 
 beside a look of love, he is searching in a mere 
 inorganic region and will find only an inorganic 
 god. Why say there is no god when we have 
 never looked after one except amid blind and 
 heartless elements.? Why say there is no 
 immortality when we have explored only an 
 ancient grave in Palestine, from which'a man was 
 said to have risen, and never the possibilities of 
 our own being? Our denials are premature.' 
 We are down in the valley of tradition, and 
 cornplain that nothing can be seen from a Pisgah 
 we have never climbed. 
 
 There are heights yet to be won, beneath which 
 the highest of , past summits will shrink to hillocks. 
 The altars still standing are witnesses of heights 
 gained in the past and prophesies of others yet to 
 be reached by man. The secularist has his altar 
 also. It is his Cause. Why will the secularist , 
 not bestow his means, his energies and enthusiasm 
 on the practical benefits to man usually, associated 
 
The Gift and the Altar. 47 
 
 with his principles ? Why does he not bestow 
 them on hospitals and schools ? Because he has 
 an altar. He has a religious vision of a world 
 liberated from error and transfigured in wisdom 
 and joy. If the secularist defend his altar he will 
 make it a religion. Churches will come to the 
 brightness of its rising and restore to the divinity 
 of man all they received for propitiation of deified 
 inhumanity. That, indeed, the churches are doing 
 now. The Unitarians are petitioning the Queen 
 to forbid the reading in churches of the Athanasian 
 Creed, which declares that those who do. not 
 believe its incredibilities shall "without doubt 
 perish everlastingly." ' The Unitarians may save 
 themselves the trouble. It is people that believe 
 it who are perishing everlastingly ; , they have 
 almost perished now. Nine-tenths of those who' 
 repeat it are living by the creed of Common- 
 sense. If we could to-day formulate and endow 
 the present real thought and sentiment, even of the 
 clergy, we ipight be content. Their actual creed is 
 not only written in the affections of their homes, 
 in their charitifes, their studies, but it is shown 
 forth in the large degree to which they" are 
 ■preaching a new "Christianity. They are main- 
 taining the goodness of God, not , his ferocity ; 
 
 E 
 
48 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 they are port-raying the gentleness and humanities 
 of Christ, not his highrpriesthopd ; they are 
 turning , the ' unforgiving Holy Ghost into love, 
 and regeneration into morality. They are 
 borrowing the gospel of the secularist. The 
 shreds and patches of ancient dogma and super- 
 stition still investing this new Christianity cannot 
 conceal the fact that religion is now turning from a 
 
 ■ questionable mystery to an actual morality, from 
 an idle omnipotence to a spirit of active goodness. 
 , While this is the tendency we need -not despair, 
 but keep our face to the sunrise.' We must do 
 our duty to ojur individual brother, but not for 
 any special charity sacrifice oUr Cause. That is our 
 altar. Rather let us adorn it with beauty, make it 
 
 , larger and freer,, till genius and learning, art and 
 science, wealth and power, come to it, touch their 
 lips with live coals from Jt, and go forth to purify 
 society and renovate the earth. Beside that altar 
 shall presently stand a godlike form, the Human 
 God. In the flame of that altar he will burn up 
 the chaff of formalism and superstition with the 
 unquenchable fire of knowledge. He will turn 
 the wheat of his garner into breaid, and with it 
 feed the heart and soul of man. Every gift on 
 that altar will be not only a gift to m&.n', but more, 
 
The Gift and the Altar. 49 
 
 a trust from our lower nature to our higher. 
 The gifts of science, art, wealth, geniuSj con- 
 secrated On that altar, fired with moral enthusiasm, 
 shall return to man in a higher form- — shall return 
 as the grace and bounty of our divine humanity to 
 our lower, steadily uplifting , the world from folly 
 to wisdom, from misery ' to happiness, from 
 Selfishness to love, from discord to a peace that 
 shall have no end. 
 
 E 3 
 
OF ONE RISEN AND UNRECOGNISED. 
 
^^M 
 
 ^^P^^ 
 
 W^^M 
 
 ^^^^ 
 
 K&^ 
 
 ^^^^H 
 
 i^^S 
 
 S^^ffi^ 
 
 ^^QK 
 
 ^sj^P'%^M 
 
 ol^^fl 
 
 ^K^^^^^ 
 
 ^fii 
 
 M^BI^I 
 
 ^y^^ 
 
 ^^^^m 
 
 OF ONE RISEN AND UNRECOGNISED. 
 
 T is hard to recognise the greatness of a 
 great man while he- is ahve. It has 
 been sai|d that great men must be 
 rneasured, Hke mountains, , by the 
 shadows they cast, but these shadows of .the' great 
 must be cast across generations. Lately I was 
 present at a gathering , of persons from various 
 countries met for the purpose of advocating the 
 theory that Bacon wrote the - Plays ascribed to ■ 
 Shakspeare. They have wrought themselves into 
 a sort of religious enthusiasm about this paradox, ; 
 and suffer a mild martyrdom of ridicule for it. To 
 my mind one need only read a page of Bacon, and 
 then a page of Shakspeare, to perceive that while 
 Bacon is fleet-footed, Shakspeare is winged. 
 They are of different : species. For example, 
 Bacon often reveals his low opinion of wqnjen. 
 
54 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 .whilst Shakspeare shows an array of women fair 
 and noble as Greek goddesses beside his inferior) 
 men. Howevef, I do not propose to discuss the/ 
 matter, and allude to it in illustration of my themeJ 
 This man Shakspeare died only 268 years ago. 
 Of the many eminent men who lived beside himj 
 we have ample particulars ; of the greatest of 
 them all we know next to nothing; personally. Not 
 a scrap of his manuscript, not a note of his 
 writing has ever been discovered. The vacuum has 
 been filled up with mythology. The allusions to 
 him by his contemporaries during his life show no 
 recognition of his greatness. Only seven years 
 after his death does his greatness begin to dawn 
 on one of his friends^ — Ben Jonson. During his 
 life an Oxford Professor, writing on contempoi'ary 
 literature, ^does not mention ^Shakspeare or his 
 Plays, but after the poet's death this Professor, in 
 a niew edition of his book, declares him equal to 
 the great writers of Greece and Rome. So does 
 the shadow of the mountain begin to stretch and 
 ^swell, and so it has gone on until its grandeur is 
 overwhelming. Some people cannot see how a 
 man so great now could have been so little of 
 a personage in his own time, and fall into the 
 mistake of ascribing his works to the greatest 
 
Of One Risen and Unrecognised. 55- 
 
 rhan who, personally, occupied a grand place. 
 But study of the characters who have most 
 influenced the world shows that others of them 
 were similarly unrecognised by their contem- 
 poraries. Neither Buddha or Christ was men- 
 tioned at all by any contemporary writer. In the 
 absence of authentic personal details concerning 
 them we have abundance of fables, insomuch that 
 sceptics have arisen to deny that they ever existed. 
 As to Christ, no doubt a plausible argument 
 may be made against his having existed ; but I 
 have no doubt of the existence of a personality 
 behind the Christ-myth, and think it may be 
 detected in the strong contrast between certain df 
 the legends concerning the risen and unrisen 
 Christ. There are two Christs in the New Testa- 
 ment : both are more or less mythological, but 
 their myths are mutually incompatible. One of 
 these, Jesus, i.e. the Saviour, is a poor and humble 
 man, an artisan, yet divine, going about doing 
 good, hiealing the sick, eating with publicans and 
 •sinners, denouncing priests and dognias, drawing 
 around him lowly and loving men and women, 
 teaching them patience, forgiveness, love of 
 enemies, and when put to death feeling that he 
 had been forsaken by God. The other of thfesei 
 
56 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 two is properly called Christ, the anointed king ; 
 he is of royal lineage, a king in disguise, perform^ 
 ing miracles that show off his power — even to the 
 disregard of his neighbours' colts, swine or fig 
 trees^-declaring his death to be |)art of his plan, 
 promising to raise his friends to thrones, and send 
 his enemies to hell. 
 
 These two Christs are opposed at every point. 
 They are swords which cannot be put in one 
 sheath. The Gospels bear witness to the desire- 
 of 'their writers to biiild up the second Christ— 
 the royal, offipial, church-founding Christ, the, 
 terrible Judge of quick and dead. But could they 
 have invented the lowly, forgiving; enemy-loving 
 Jesus, if no such person had existed ? If they . 
 had invented a human life for him would they not 
 have njade it more characteristic of their royal 
 Christ ? Would they, for instance, have, made 
 him rebuke those who wished him to call down 
 fir0. from heaven on unbelievers by saying, "Ye 
 know not what spirit ye are of," instead, of 
 saying, "Wait a while, I'll send them all into h^ll- 
 fire before long ?" Occasionally there are efforts ' 
 to manipulate the meek, forgiving Jesus, to make 
 him fit in with the official Christ, as where, while 
 he is declaring Samaria quite as holy as Jerusalem, 
 
Of One Risen and Unrecognised. ■ 57 
 
 the reporter interpolates a hit at the Samaritans, 
 which riiakes the whole nonsense unless it is 
 omitted ; but these efforts only show that the 
 makers of the new official Christ had to reckon 
 with an existing one, y/hom all their skill could not 
 harmonise with, the Christ that was being made 
 to sacei;dotal order. 
 
 Now of this n^w, Christ we may b'e certain that 
 perspnally he neyer existed. The real mai^, Jesus, 
 and the wonderful stories about him, characteristic 
 of a popular herd, but much exaggerated, had 
 rendered his name a necessity of ■ Temple and 
 State ; he was forced on them by the people ; but 
 they could only adapt him to priestly, and imperial 
 purposes by making him over again. He had to 
 .be raised from the grave, carried' to heayen, 
 crowned, made ferocious, and the meek and lowly, 
 life associated with his earthly career explained as 
 a kind of masquerade, — something like that of the 
 Emperors who have gone 3,bout as working men 
 to spy out what is going on' among their subjects, 
 then resumed their crowns and come down upon 
 them. But .when this rpyal aind- magnificent 
 Christ rose sq triumphantly and ascended so 
 magnificently above his earthly disguises to his 
 ' heavenly throne, according to the ' upper ckss 
 
58 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 account, there was another Christ that rose too, 
 though he was hardly noticed — the human and 
 poor Jesiis. Strauss and other critics seem need- 
 lessly puzzled by. the incoherent accounts of the 
 resurrection : they become plain if it be observed 
 that there were two Christs that had to rise, — one 
 the imperial celestial Christ who had to found a 
 kingdom, give Peter its keys, and appoint a priest- 
 hood for all the earth ; the other, the Jesus of the 
 poor, the friend of, the lowly, the man who wept 
 with man, and loved and lived with the humble. 
 The royal Christ rises pompously : angels descend, 
 — an earthquake jrawris, — '■ Roman soldiers fall 
 senseless. It is necessary to be dramatic when 
 a disguised kihg resumes his authority. The 
 hurnble Jesus rises without any such display. . 
 He appears to some women who loved him, and 
 watch at his grave. No earthquake-r-no angels' 
 with lightning face assist in so lowly a performande.- 
 as the restoration of their friend to such people as 
 the Marys and their brother, who d,welt in the 
 little cottage at Bethany. 
 
 We need not, of course, believe either of these 
 resurrections to have been actual, in order to 
 recognise the human nature in them, and to 
 appreciate the history that has been made by 
 
Of One Risen and Unrecognised. 59 
 
 them. A special significance may be noted in the 
 legend of the royal Christ, that his old friends 
 could not recognise him! A great deal is made of 
 that in the legend. He walked a long way with 
 two of them and they told him all about his own 
 death, before he revealed himself. This signifies ' 
 his new glory. Those poor people could not 
 recognise in this risen god the poor man they used 
 to walk with. 
 
 On the other hand, and in a more prosaic sense, 
 the guardians of the royal iascerided Christ were 
 unable to recognise his lowly counterpart risen in 
 the faith of peasants. Yet there was this risen 
 Saviour ; and while the ascended all-conquering 
 Christ, crowned at the right hand of the First 
 .Person was formulated in creeds, , curved in 
 churches, flaunted on banners, and borne through 
 the world as the ensign of destroying armies, the 
 poor man's divine Friend, written in pretty- legends 
 of folklore, enshrined in humblest hearts, beloved of 
 women. and children, was believed to be still going 
 about doing good, Sometimes as the Christ-child 
 he gave gifts to children on Christmas Eve, some- 
 times he revealed himself to the sorrowful and the 
 oppressed, and now and then worked miracles to 
 help the miserable. The triumphant Christ of 
 
6o Farewell Discourses, 
 
 tlieology and of the priesthood was never realised 
 , and never dear to the cdmmon people fthey always 
 thought of the man of sorrows like themselves, of 
 the Good Shepherd carrying the weak in his arms. 
 During the ecclesiastical and papal ages this 
 lowly and loving Jesus, ignored by the powerful, 
 had his home with the poor. Gradually' he took 
 the form of their ignorance and superstition, and 
 was thought of as a kind of good' fairy. The 
 Christ of the Church, on the other hand, was 
 invested with the metaphysics, learning and power 
 of Courts, and made into a majestic successor of 
 the supreme deities of the leading nations. For 
 many centuries the Church never preached the 
 human' Jesus at all, but only the official and deified 
 Christ, by whose authority it reigned. But pre- 
 sently there began to rise men of learning and 
 genius who read the Bible carefully and began to 
 discover the human Jesus. They followed him 
 about the hills and by-ways of ■ J udea, listened 
 once more to the gracious words that proceeded 
 from his mouth, meditated on his gentleness and 
 Sympathy, and began to talk to the people about 
 him. Wyclif was one of the first to recover this 
 human Saviour so long ignored by the Church. 
 He rolled away the stone, and the peasants beheld 
 
of One Risen and Unrecognised. 6i 
 
 an Advocate of theirs in Heaven, who had been 
 poor like themselves, who took sides with the 
 people against prelates and oppressors. The 
 divine Carpenter, the friend of the Marys and of 
 the fishermen, rose from the grave in which priest- 
 craft had laid him and walked on English soil. 
 When that human Jesus so appeared in England; 
 five centuries ago, an all-revealing light shone 
 from him on the Church and its haughty repre- 
 sentatives. The contrast 'between that pure and 
 self-sacrificing Good Shepherd, who had not, where 
 to lay his head, and the magnificent bishops was ' 
 so great that it brought on a sort of judgment-day. 
 , The Saviour of men seemed to start out and part 
 the pope and bishops on his left hand, and say to 
 them, ' What have you done for these poor people 
 whom I loved and died to save ? They were, 
 hungry, and ye fed' them not ; naked, and ye 
 clothed them not ; and what ye did to the least ^ 
 of these ye did to me.' 
 
 A revolution followed. The ,masses felt that 
 they had been deceived ; that their loving Christ 
 had been made their enemy ; that the bishops and 
 priests were impostors, their lives and characters 
 just the opposite of Jesus as exhumed by Wyclif 's 
 New Testament, > which that great man sent forth 
 
62 Farewell Discourses, 
 
 to be read'^ and preached in every village and 
 cottage of the country. As the ■ Lollards and 
 other itinerants called " \yyclif 's men " or " Bible 
 men" preached .this long lost gospel, Jesus ap- 
 peared in the midst of the people as one again 
 crucified. It did not make them gentle like him- 
 self. It filled them with wrath.' 'The insurrection 
 under Wat Tyler was occasioned by a tax, but 
 it was really caused by popular revulsion against 
 , priestcraft. The odium of that insurrection 
 naturally fell upon Wyclif The great man re- 
 coiled from this kind of devotion to Jesus, but 
 such has always been the effect upon ignorant and 
 unhappy people of the discovery that they have 
 been deceived, especially when their deceivers 
 have worn the cloak of rfeligion. The same thing , 
 happened in Germany. Martin Luther also trans- 
 lated -the Bible, and he found there a Jesus of 
 whom he had never heard before, — a sweet, 
 gentle god, a friend of the poor, a helper, a lover, 
 who came not to be ministered unto but to 
 minister. Luther dwelt upon the human Jesus— 
 a startling novelty then — until he had a vision in 
 a dream. He dreamed that he stood at the door 
 of a cottage in Nazareth : a carpenter, his wife, 
 and two lads were about to sit down to their 
 
Of One Risen and Unrecognised. 63 
 
 evening meal, and one of the boys looked up at 
 him (Luther) and said to his mother, "shall he not 
 also eat with us?" Then Luther saw that the 
 lad was Jesus ; in his emotion he awoke, but he 
 had shared that lowly meal. He awoke t® the 
 humanity of Jesus. He awoke to a new sense of 
 the reality of that eastern story. He told his 
 vision to' the people ; he read to them the story 
 of the human Jesus, while all around them were 
 the splendour, the pride, the cruelty of the papal' 
 Christ. . The ■ lowly Jesus appeared among the 
 poor in .Germany, and • again as ,a revolutionist. > 
 Up rose Wilnzer and his peasants ; terrible wars 
 were fought ; and Luther, like Wyclif 'in England, 
 .recoiled from ithe wrath of the people against 
 those who had used the name of Christ to deceive 
 and oppress them. Luther took the. side of 
 authority against his fanatical friends, and con- 
 tributed to build up the new ojppression which calls 
 itself Lutheranism. For Protestantism also man- 
 aged to bury the human' Jesus, and raise the official 
 Christ to his throne in the North. But the hero of 
 the poor rose again ; he appeared in France a 
 hundred years ago. The people there discovered 
 that Jesus was a radical, an unbeliever in the estab-; 
 lished religion, a denier of its gods, a denouncer 
 
64 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 of priesthood, arid then flamed out that fury which 
 has made the revolution a political factor of 
 modern Society. 
 
 European Revolutions have always been at 
 once hungry and religious. In each the situation 
 might be described as a struggle between the 
 human and the deified Christ — between the poor 
 man's Friend and the High Priest of Church and 
 State. This Jesus of the popular imagination has 
 always been wandering about the world, befriending 
 the poor now and then, unrecognised, a traveller 
 unknown, but every time a great soul realised him, 
 every time a Wyclif, a Huss, a Luther, a Voltaire, 
 looked deep into his eyes, that traveller through 
 the ages was seen by the people confronting the 
 Christ of institutions as one who had usurped his 
 throne, and in his name outraged >his human 
 brothers. The established Christ and the carpen- 
 ter's son have struggled against each other many 
 a time .through history, and their conflict has not 
 ended yet. Even to our own age, which" cares 
 little for their respective legends, they have 
 bequeathed a very serious conflict, and one whose 
 issue none can predict. Even what is called 
 Atheism in our time gets its traditions and its 
 ideas of reform from the Christ of the people, the 
 
Of One Risen and Unrecognised. 65 
 
 Christ unrecognised by Christianity. That radical 
 Christ who denounced riches, that despiser of 
 dogmas who broke the sabbath, that scorner of 
 creeds who said that Love alone was religion, 
 that socialist who demanded of the wealthy that 
 they should sell their property and give it to the 
 poor, that believer in equality who said, " Call no 
 man master," whose disciples had all things in 
 common,— that risen god-man of a believing Past 
 has transmitted to an unbelieving Present his ideal 
 of society, his religion of Brotherhood, his contro- 
 versy against selfish wealth and aristocratic pride. 
 And, what is equally important, the social radi- 
 calism of to-day, however sceptical or atheistical, 
 has inherited from the early Christian radicalism 
 an attitude of expectancy of some transformation 
 to come suddenly. The old prayer of the believer, 
 " Thy kingdom, come," corresponds with a pre- 
 vailing notion that by some great event, or in- 
 
 i surrection, or reform, a sudden transformation is to 
 be secured. The old idea of a millennial dawn is 
 present in all revolution. The New Testament is 
 the birth of a revolution, and it is a revolutionary 
 book. Undoubtedly the reactionist, the aristocrat, 
 and the priest, may quote from it a great deal on 
 
 .. their side, but as, they read only what is on their 
 
 F 2 
 
66 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 side, and can see only the Christ that supports 
 their power, the rhasses can see only their Jesus, 
 ahd cannot rfecogniSe a Christ in purple and gold. 
 Now, however much we may sympathise with 
 the human ideal of Christ — tlae helpftil, reforming, 
 forgiving Christ — it cannot be denied that it has all 
 . along been intertwined with errors and supersti- 
 tions. The early socialism of Christ and his 
 adherents, ,their contempt for wealth, was largely 
 due to a mistaken belief that a supernatural Messiah 
 was about to transfoi;?n the world and enter on his 
 kingdom. There was no use in toiling, and 
 spinning, and accumulating, when all was about to 
 come to an end. The economy of the secular 
 world was omitted frorti just consideration' 
 by people who were looking for a New 
 Jerusalem to come out of Heaven. And to-day, 
 even where these ideas are not held, there is a 
 survival , from them in the Socialism which decries 
 wealth, and the Nihilisrn that believes in revolution 
 as a method. - Yet, whatever we may think of 
 them, these signs of our time remain ; and those 
 Christians seem to me very blind who do not see 
 them. There are theologians, and professors, and 
 controversialists, who talk of unbelief as an intel- 
 lectual thing, a matter of texts, . and historic.' 
 
Of One Risen and Unrecognised. 67 
 
 evidences, or of philosophical difficulties about 
 doctrines. ' They are wasting their time. No 
 religion was ever- put down because of its meta- 
 physics, or even of its absurdities. Very few 
 people' care about such things. A religion perishes 
 ohlybyits heartlessness, its uselessness, its selfish- 
 ness. The Christ of folklore is almost fes incredible, 
 -historically, as the Christ of the Pope ; the Jesus 
 of Wyclif and Luther was supei'natural, thoiigh 
 not unnatural like that of the priests. The 
 difference between the two, was moral : the one 
 was human the other inhuman. And it is the 
 huijian Christ who has steadily advanced, with ,- 
 steps of fife and revolution, and, however crucified 
 and buried, as he has often been, has ever risen 
 again. It is he who to-day stands at, the door 
 of Christendom and knocks. 
 
 He knocks at the door of Christian institutions 
 which embody a Christ diametrically opposed to 
 the human Christ who steadily gains on the heart 
 and faith of mankind. The salient feature of the 
 religious situation to-day is that we have one 
 Christ embodied in creeds, in ecclesiastical forms 
 and institutions, and' a different Christ embodied 
 in ' the leading thought and sentiment of every 
 community. The creeds and institutions tell us 
 
68 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 of a risen, ascended Christ, the -Second Person of 
 a Trinity, the Supreme Judge, the High Priest, 
 the Head of the Chufch. There is no Hne in any 
 creed or aspect of any Christian institution which 
 conveys any idea of the love,' the benevolence, the 
 sympathy, the , charity; the , human beauty of 
 Christ. According to these creeds and institutions 
 the word " Christian " would describe correct 
 belief in certain dogmas associated with that title 
 by ecclesiastical authority and loyalty to the 
 Church. But when we turn from the creeds, 
 formularies, and other institutions, to find whether 
 the Christ expressed in them is the real Christ of 
 the community we find that he is nothing of the 
 kind. The very clergy of the churches and sects 
 are indignant if we bring the Christ of their creeds 
 and , institutions and say 'This is your Christ.' 
 They warmly deny it. They dwell on the beauty 
 of Christ, the benevolence of Christ, his moral 
 perfeqtions, concerning which their creeds and 
 formularies are silent. When people speak of 
 "Christian character," "Christian condi^ct," they 
 mean nothing dogmatic— they do not thinkof ortho- 
 doxy or of creeds, they mean something human-, 
 and humane. But that is not Christian according 
 to any Christianity ever formulated or embodied in 
 
Of One Risen and Unrecognised. 69 
 
 any institution. Nay, it is logically fatal to the 
 
 Christ of every creed to admit that mere gpod 
 
 conduct is Christian conduct. A pagan, an atheist, 
 
 may be humane, charitable, virtuous ; and if such 
 
 a spirit Or such conduct is called Christian it is a 
 
 heresy — it is as much as to say that to be Christian 
 
 has nothing to do with belief or doctrine at all, but 
 
 is consistent with paganism. Yet this is -just what 
 
 the common use of Christian to describe conduct 
 
 or feeling does imply. Such use of the word 
 
 seems" to me inexact, and arrogant towards other 
 
 religions, but all the same it is heretical. - Christian 
 
 conduct used to be the killing of Jews. No 
 
 church, creed, or Christian institution supplies tlie 
 
 least warrant for applying the word Christian to 
 
 any character or conduct separable , from the . 
 
 interests of Christ as Head of the Church. Such 
 
 changes in language and the current use of the 
 
 moral and human characteristics of Christ ,to 
 
 support his divinity, are signs that the priestly 
 
 Christ is passing away — that the fierce Judge, the 
 
 .S,ecbnd Person, the official and imperial Christ can 
 
 no longer support the institutions built for him, but 
 
 that those institutions" must now borrow the 
 
 growing prestige of , the human Christ, the lover 
 
 of all men, who went about doing good. 
 
yo Farewell Discourses. 
 
 Thougb surrounded by grand churches, bishops' 
 palaces, and other proud institutions, we can orily^ 
 hear the voice pf, the Christ t6 whom they were 
 raised dying faintly in the distance, raising a smile 
 as it quaintly says, ' Believe on my name and be 
 saved from hell ! Accept my merits and you need 
 none of your own ! AH who do not believe I am 
 god shall be burnt in eternal fires. Sell all you 
 have and buy, a sword!' Faintly dies away that 
 voice ; but fresh and strong is the Christ who 
 goes about saying, ' Stop your drunkenness. , Join 
 the Blue Ribbon, Army. Build a coffee house. 
 Educate' the masses. Help, the fallen to rise! 
 Provide some beauty and amusement for the poor. 
 Do away with unjust laws. Stand by freedom of 
 thought and speech !' This is -what the living CJirist 
 is saying, in whatever confused way, saying alike 
 through the lips of infidels and clergymen. It is 
 what he said in ancient Judea, in Rome, in the 
 England of Wyclif, in the Germany of Luther ; 
 for, however unrecognised, how;ever entombed, 
 the ideal of a perfect man overmasters every 
 superhuman god ; as in the year one it dethroned 
 Jove and Jahv6, as it dethroned the papal Peteri 
 even so now it abolishes the metaphysical Trinity 
 and the ecclesiastical Christ. 
 
Of One Risen and Unrecognised. 71 
 
 These are passing away under the pressure of 
 moral and practical realities. We are in the hands' 
 of remorseless necessities that burn up like a 
 conflagration whatever is not genuine', is not fire- 
 proof. And it is becoming a nice question whether 
 even our own age can escape the violent revolu- 
 tion which has generally followed , the collision 
 between institutions merely hereditary and the 
 living forces of a new time. . Of course thinkers 
 recoil from violence and revolution, but so did 
 Wyclif and Luther and Voltaire : the revolutions 
 came all the same. There are combustible 
 elements around us also, and a reaction against 
 religious institutions more serious in some respects 
 than any hitherto known in the history of |this, 
 country. The revolutionists of Wyclif 's time and 
 in the time of the later reformers had perfect faith 
 in providence artd in heaven ; but in our own time 
 the poor and ' miserable are daily losing their faith , 
 either in the divirie existence or in the divine 
 goodness; their future also grows • dim ; they are 
 hurled back upon a hopeless existence ; they 
 hunger and thirst and die daily, they and their 
 children, in the , presence of grand churches, 
 endowments, episcopal palaces, all labelled with 
 the name of a lover and saviour of men. To my 
 
72 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 mind it would be a miserable outcome if all the 
 resources of the Church — the accumulated bequest 
 of the past for religious and moral culture of the 
 nation — should be turned into bread and[ meat for 
 the millions multiplying around us. Man cannot 
 live on bread alone. And yet there seems no 
 help for it if these resources are obstinately with- 
 held 'from the real spiritual needs of the living 
 generation and devoted to idle forms and dead 
 deities. Unless they can be turned into something 
 better than bread, into bread they must be turned. 
 The clergy, in portraying the popular Christ of 
 Judea in order to win the popular heart, are more 
 revolutionary than they know. They are drawing 
 up a terrible indictment against their church. That 
 Christ who said of a temple that lifted no burthen 
 from the people "Not one stone of it shall be left 
 upon another," cannot be preached to-day without 
 rebuking every Christian power not actually and 
 actively applied to secure some appreciable benefit. 
 On the other hand revolution is no remedy.- 
 Destruction is very easy : a lucifer match ckn lay 
 the grandest fabric in ruins. The greatness of 
 man is to develop, direct, control, the institutions 
 that have grown out of tlie Past. If old. lamps 
 go out it is silly to shatter them when fresh oil is 
 
Of One Risen and Unrecognised. 73 
 
 , obtainable and new flame may touch them. As 
 to the Established Church, no , doubt more 
 advanced civilisation will have no such thing. 
 But nature is commanded by obedience, and his- 
 toric institutions resemble natural formations 
 sufficiently to require propitiation if they are to be 
 controlled. They may^ indeed become purely 
 obstructive and require total destruction; but is 
 the Church of England of just that character which 
 
 'calls for dynamite ? Were it well and wise to lay 
 in fragments the mighty machinery to which the 
 learning and devotion of many, centuries have 
 
 :. contributed ? What would the fragments be but 
 a multiplication and intensification of the dis- 
 cordant and bigoted sects around us. Is the vast 
 
 , endowment of the English Church to be distri- 
 buted among these sects ? No, say some, but: to 
 be devoted to secular charities and education. But 
 it is just as easy to turn the grand machinery of the 
 Church to human ends as to secularise ijs wealth. 
 Whep the nation grows up to the one measure it will 
 have grown up to the other. Art equal part of the 
 endowrhents _ of the Church are its apparatus, its 
 arrangements, its ijiethods, slowly formed so as 
 to reach every cottage and hall and by-way of the 
 nation. These were all made, arranged, perfected 
 
74 Farewell Discburses. 
 
 for God. Therefore, tlie best art,, the finest work, 
 went into them. All the more are they the 
 invaluable inheritance of man. They are as 
 easily turned to the work of man's poetic culture 
 as they ever iWefe for man's instruction in super- 
 stition. The right way to disestablish the Church 
 is to disestablish its creeds, to abolish its chains 
 on the' human mind, and that cannot be done by 
 liberati'bnist sects which have chains of their own 
 to, impose. Does that seem too vast a work — to* 
 disestablish the creeds and formularies of the 
 English Church ? It is as easy, I repeat, to make 
 the Church free as to disestablish and disendow it. 
 It only needs the substitution of the word "may" 
 for " shall " in the Prayer book before the creeds 
 and prayers, so that clergymen shall not be 
 compelled to repeat them, and the Church, would 
 open its door to the religious genius and thought of 
 the country. If all the nonconformist effort to dis- 
 establish J:he Church, had been devoted to making - 
 that litrie change in the direction of, freedom it 
 might have been accomplished. But then non- 
 conformity would have steadily died out ; and why 
 not? What is average Dissent but second-class 
 orthodoxy — a dogmatism more rigid than the 
 .Church and without its artistic reliefs } 
 
Of One Risen and Unrecognised. 75 
 
 ,^_ \ ' ' 
 
 The task of true religion is to destroy only by 
 fulfilment. The self-truthful and exact thinker 
 cannot identify himself with any Church that is not 
 free .as thought, but he can try and convert the 
 Church. He can try and propagate the Gospel of 
 Humanity among its teachers and bring them under 
 a conviction of' sin against the Holy Spirit of the 
 Age. The holiest spirit of this age is love of 
 man. There have been many Christs — a Gnostic 
 Christ, a- Roman Christ, d. Mediaeval Christ, a 
 Catholic Christ, a Protestant Christ. The Christ 
 of our own tirhe is the human Christ. He is not 
 yet recognised, but his presence is felt. It is 
 because he is among us that we find even Bishops, 
 voting for enfranchisement of the people.. They 
 used to call them depraved, but must now cry 
 " The People ! " It is because our new Christ 
 is human that our universities are reverently 
 publishing and studying the sacred Scriptures of 
 all races, and sitting at the feet of the, religiolis 
 sages — Buddha, Zoroaster, Confucius, Aurelius — 
 once declared heathen idolaters, destined with 
 their followers to hell. This human Christ, though 
 his influence- like a tropic breath is calling foi"th 
 strange blossoms, is not yet embodied in institu- 
 tions, but he is recognised by many inside and 
 
76 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 outside the institutions; and these can build for him 
 a shelter, and take him to their hearts, and gather 
 at his feet, and spread abroad the truths he 
 teaches, until the institutions shall .find that in 
 shutting out this irresistible wayfarer— this human 
 Christ^they are shutting out the Bridegroom and 
 the wise Virgijis, and retaining only the foolish 
 ones with darkened lamps. 
 
 But forget not, ye who sit outside the temple 
 gate with this new human Christ, and refuse to 
 enter until he is received, forget' not that his 
 recognition depends upon you. He will be 
 judged by his friends. He will never be. despised 
 or hated for himself ; but if they who profess to 
 represent him rage and rant, if they hate and 
 denounce, if they disregard the beauty of life, 
 its sweetness and refinement none the less 
 precious because associated with evils and errors, 
 be sure they will only disfigure this Christ. Even 
 so did the revolutionary reformers before us, when 
 Wyclif and Luther could not recognise their ideal 
 in the ferocity of Wat Tyler and Wunzer, and 
 were put ■ to shame by their followers. The 
 kingdom of Man is at hand, but it is not an 
 external splendour, it is inward ; and its prevalence 
 over the kingdom of wrong, throned in superstition, 
 
Of One Risen and Unrecognised. 'j'j 
 
 will depend upon the character it develops in those 
 who have received it, on its steady manifestation 
 of superiority to the conventional kingdoms it 
 supersedes. Wisdom is ever justified of her 
 children. Emancipation of intelligence from dog- 
 matic thraldom has already justified itself by vast 
 results in science and literature. But free thought 
 is to be followed by the freed heart ; these, 
 together, are to prove that the new religion, given 
 by inspiration of man, can preserve with usury all 
 that was useful and beautiful in the past, adapting 
 old forms to new functions, kindling old altars 
 with new fires, and can also organize the new 
 light, creating a! finer man, a lovelier woman, 
 a healthier child, a happier home than the 
 old order can produce. Then shall our human 
 Christ be recognised, he shall .inherit ' the 
 treasures so long laid up in idle hea.vens or in 
 napkins of ignorance ; man will conceive a God in 
 his own image, breathe love into him, aiid above 
 the old creation will rise the new — the creation 
 that shall show forth the wisdom and art and 
 providence of Man. 
 
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 E live in a time . of political and social 
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 vation. The eyes of the world are 
 fixed upon critical situations of nations and minis- 
 tries. We know not what startling event the 
 morrow may bring forth. But meanwhile there is 
 silently and quietly creeping on from phase to 
 phase of slow accomplishment a work whose 
 results will mould the world' through centuries 
 in which the fate of our Premiers and Ministries 
 shall be known to the antiquarian pnly, and but as 
 some teapot tempest of a prirnitive community. 
 
 The work is that of amending the Criminal 
 'Law of England. It is there that a kingdom is 
 •coming that shall be within every human being, 
 as Laws of the Past are within ourselves. Honest 
 people are apt to imagine that Criminal Laws do 
 
 C2 
 
82 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 not concern themselves ; the laws are made for 
 the criminal classes. So think some, but they are 
 mistaken. The moral sentiment within us is the 
 creation of ancient law. We are mainly what the 
 statutes of the centuries have made us. Our 
 sentiments follow the laws of the land slowly, but 
 they follow. The laws represent the force of 
 social evolution. As by selection the farmer can 
 breed the kind of herd he wishes, long horns or 
 short horns, the law can kill off any kind of 
 character it desires, and select that character it 
 finds fittest to survive. 
 
 A Trial which has been recently _ engaging 
 attention supplies an illustration* of this. A 
 Member of Parliament has been on trial for 
 violating one law in attempting to obey another. 
 The House of Commons having refused to ad- 
 minister the oath to him because of his atheistn, 
 he administered it to himself. The legal oath, the 
 law against perjury, were meant to secure veracity, 
 honesty, good faith. In the interest of' justice and 
 morality veracity is necessary. The law has 
 punished perjury for many ages, until it has made 
 truthfulness a characteristic virtue of this country. 
 With one exception. In regard to the interests of 
 God — that is, of the Church — the law has pre- 
 
The Criminal Law. 83 
 
 ferred unveracity to heresy. If a man opposes 
 the popular opinion on any subject it is a, proof of 
 honesty. If a man speaks against established 
 creeds it is a proof of veracity. He is setting 
 truth above his own interests. That is just what 
 the law, by its oath and its punishraent of perjury 
 is generally trying' to secure, — namely, that a rrian 
 shall speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
 but the truth, at whatever cost to himself. But 
 •where the creed is concerned all this is reveVsed. 
 The law says — 'If yqu happen to believe the 
 creed a lie we will make it for your interest to tell 
 that' lie. We will deprive you of civil and political 
 rights, we will worry you, we will fine you, until 
 at last we shall wring from you the lie, the whole 
 lie, and nothing but the lie — for Jesus' sake.' 
 Every trial for heresy puts a premium on 
 hypocrisy. Every punishment of free speech 
 offers a reward for false speech. Such trials will 
 one day be quoted to proye the religious barbarism 
 of an age tha:t thinks itself civilised, and is civilised 
 where its idols are not concerned. But why this 
 anomaly of utilising an oath meant to secure 
 veracity to punish a man for veracity? The 
 Crown of England comes forward before the 
 judges and tempts a man to tell a lie. It says to 
 
84 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 him, ' You have only got to take the stand as a 
 witness and swear you believe in a Supreme 
 Being, and you can save your fine and enter 
 Parliament.' If such a proposition had been 
 .made for anything but the glory of God the 
 Crown's Attorney would have been hissed by the 
 nation. But for God's sake the nation goes with 
 the Crown, and still keeps a man on the rack till 
 he shall bring to their Lord the peace-offering, of 
 a lie'. The anomaly is explained by the history of 
 the Christian Church. Read the story of the 
 rriassacres of pagan?, Jews, heretics ; read Foxe's 
 ' Book of Martyrs ' ; see through how many ages 
 independence of mind was killed off and servility 
 fostered ! For more than a thousand years 
 Europe was given up to the priesthood as sheep 
 to their shearers. For a thousand years the whole 
 aim of its culture was to prbduce the kind of wool 
 wanted by the' Church. For a thousand years the 
 heretical goats were burnt, the servile .sheep fed, 
 and there was a survival of the sheepish. We 
 are all descended from the sheepish. Only the 
 spiritually abject were allowed to pi'opagate their 
 species. That is what the law was able to do ; 
 and that is why this day we find a civilised and' 
 scientific community bowing down to a Syrian 
 
The Criminal Law. 85 
 
 desert-god, a courageous nation cowed by an oath- 
 avenging phantom, and joining in a solemn sacrifice 
 thereto of the honesty and veracity honoured in 
 every interest save that of the legalised idol. 
 
 But if popular sentiment follow the law, it is no 
 less true that the law -must follow popular senti- 
 ment before leading it. Indirectly the masses 
 make. the laws which in turn mould them. The 
 .moment supplies an illustration of this also. 
 Lately a mob at , Sevenoaks went to the ancient 
 park of Knole, tore up certain fences and railings, 
 piled them against the door of the mansion, and 
 went off singing " Britons never will be slaves." 
 For sixty years, it is said, the people had been 
 accustomed to go freely along, the road that had 
 been stopped. Lord Sackville seems to have 
 surrendered. A great many similar mobs passed 
 the laws that .:protect ' the right of way. It is 
 doubtful whether reason would justify any such 
 law as that the people should have a thing, now 
 because they have had it a long time. If a man's 
 grandfather subscribed to, a charity, and his father 
 continued the subscription, he could yet hardly be 
 denied the right, to discontinue it. Nevertheless, 
 mobs enough can determine the' law. The 
 interests of property ai^e bound , up with the' 
 
86 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 interests of order, and the law must propitiate 
 popular passion. 
 
 The law punishing homicide with death merely 
 -formulates the popular instinct of vehgeance. 
 When a man killed another the people killed him. 
 If he slew a popular man, or a helpless woman or 
 child, or if he slew any victim under circumstances 
 of brutality, the mob might torture, or burn him, 
 or tear him to pieces. But mobs may make 
 mistakes ; they may get hold of the wrong man ; 
 they may hang him first and try him afterwards, 
 and find too late that ' he had some excuse. Tl;ie 
 more thoughtful and judicious members of the 
 community consider that they themselves may be 
 some day falsely accused, but would stand little . 
 chance of justice in the heat Of popular wrath. 
 So some day, perhaps when a mob has killed the 
 wrong man and feel ashamed, these thoughtful 
 persons say, ' The next time anybody is killed let 
 us deliberate.' Then they agree that the alleged 
 offender shall be kept out of harm's way until the 
 facts have been sifted. Perhaps they will set a 
 mark on his forehead. When Cain said, " Every 
 one will slay me," Jahvd set a mark on him. 
 That protected him. That is the beginning of 
 Law. 
 
The Criminal Law. 87 
 
 There were other forces of primitive society 
 which powerfully co-operated to supersede the 
 mob, or to make it into a Court. Slavery, for 
 instance. In early days slaves were captives ; 
 their lives were spared for their labour's sake, but 
 there was no good feeling between them and the 
 poorer classes, with whose work they competed. 
 If the slave slew another, his owner was interested 
 to keep his human property, and often secured 
 the life of a valuable homicide. The last mail 
 from Brazil brought news of a terrible butchery of 
 three slaves by a mob. The slaves were in prison , 
 on a charge of murder. The slaveholders generally 
 had for some time been getting off their human 
 chattels from execution that the poorer classes 
 bec3.me' infuriated. Despite the niaster's mark on 
 each black brow they dragged the slaves from 
 prison, murdered and mutilated them in a savage 
 way, then marched through the streets shouting 
 for the " law." That mob was a fair reminder to 
 the ruling class of what brutal power lies beneath 
 every Law Court, prepared to show itself again 
 whenever the law is perverted to individual or 
 class interest. The powerful can defend them- 
 selves in their castles, but the poor must co-operate 
 and so make each humble home a castle. 
 
88 Farewell. Discourses. 
 
 These two elements are in every Court of Law. 
 The Judge represents one, the Jury the other., 
 The Judge represents the combined interests of 
 property and authority arid the idea of justice (as 
 -distinguished from vengeance), all of which are 
 endangered by blind or unregulated passion. The 
 Jury is the mob — made small for convenience, 
 carefully chosen, but still representative of the. 
 multitude, the great " mass, whose natural .law of 
 self-preservation and indignation against . wrong, 
 the powerful must propitiate. The Judge and 
 the Jury are now becoming one tribunal with a 
 common interest to preserve society. But there 
 has been many a period of English history whea 
 the Jury4— the representatives of the mob — had to 
 watch jealously the nobles who would protect their 
 serfs, the church whic^ would protect its clergy, 
 and every class claiming privilege, or immunity 
 from the Common Law. The Coroner's Inquest 
 is still represented in primitive regions by the 
 Inquest of a Vigilance Committee, which is also 
 Judge and Executioner. Such institutions as the 
 preliminary inquiries are survivals ' from rude 
 societies, and have little , raison d'etre in highly 
 organized societies. 
 
 It is obvious that there was great gain and 
 
The Criminal Law. 89 
 
 social advance when mob violence, with its haste 
 and blindness, was superseded by Law. Every 
 law was originally passed for the' protection of 
 right and justice. This is the case even with laws 
 now superstitious and brutal, such as those against 
 witchcraft and blasphemy. A recent fine painting 
 represents "An Arrest for Witchcraft." A poor 
 old woman, handcuffed between soldiers, is on her 
 way to prison. The armed officers and the irons 
 seem cruel till the eye turns to the surrounding 
 mob, frantic, furious, hungry to tear her limb from 
 limb. Then the officers and the irons seem gentle. 
 The poor creature will have a trial, a chance for 
 life, and, if death, one less horrible than the mad 
 crowd would inflict. Even so the heretic of olden 
 time had reason to be thankful that the law 
 claimed him. 
 
 But these advantages of the Law' have formid- 
 able drawbacks. The Law, though at first a 
 mitigation of popular fury, nevertheless formulates 
 it, sanctions it, stereotypes it, and long after the 
 people have largely outgrown, the notions and 
 superstitions that caused their fury,, the Law goes 
 on preserving those notions, affirming those super- 
 stitions, and by traditione^l punishments arresting 
 the development of freedom, truth, and justice. 
 
90 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 In early ages the law-maker who stood a|30ve 
 the popular passion, yet represented its moral 
 instincts, was reverenced as one inspired ; if rever- 
 ence diminished he was able to cultivate awe in its 
 place by force. From a law-maker superstition came 
 to regard him as a law-giver. If laws did not quite 
 represent the mob they were enforced by authority ; 
 authority came to mean divine sanction ; then 
 legends arose that they were handed down from 
 flaming mountains or brought from oradles. Thus 
 these laws became the basis of bibles ; and their 
 edicts — born , perhaps of temporary conditions, 
 transient needs, or savage superstitions — remain 
 to be enforced upon changed eras, simply because 
 throned in the superiiatural majesty of aflcient 
 Law. 
 
 Therefore, there is nothing in which a com- 
 munity can engage so important as the amend- 
 ment of its laws. It has often been said that the 
 court-room is the great s,chool fromi which a nation 
 learns truth and justice. But it is more than that. 
 It is a compulsory school, and is also -able to 
 teach the people error, to familiarise them with 
 injustice. In our own time we have witnessed 
 the power of Law to stigmatise religious liberty, 
 to browbeat mental and moral independence, and 
 
The Criminal Law. 91 
 
 cause a community to cast odium upon truth and 
 ' courage. 
 
 This nation worships to-day a marji legally 
 executed for blasphemy, and at the same time 
 punishes men for precisely the same offence. 
 There is not a man living who ever said worse 
 things of the established deity and his priesthood 
 than Jesus said of the established deity and his 
 priesthood. To the devout worshippers of the very 
 same deity, revealed in the same' Jewish scriptures, 
 as that for ridiculing whom we have seen men 
 dragged to prison, Jesus said, " Ye are of your 
 father, the devil." By placing a legal stigma on all 
 who express their honest opinion and feeling, the 
 Law intimidates , thought, terrifies parents into 
 dwarfing their children's rtiinds, encourages mean- 
 ness and hypocriay, and generates a race of moral 
 cowards. 
 
 There never was a new idea about religion that 
 was not blasphemy till it became truth. The word 
 Blasphemy is made up of two Greek words, and 
 simply means a damaging speech. A man cannot 
 speak truth without damaging error. If, Christ 
 had not damaged Judaism, and Wyclif had not 
 damaged Popery, and Luther Romanism, where 
 should we be now ? Our Protestant judges, them- 
 
92 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 selves, ijiight be in papal prisons for heresy.' 
 Nothing is more certain than that blasphemy is a 
 fictitious crime, just aS fictitious as witchcraft. 
 
 T^he, like may be said of other laws merely 
 imported, not risen out oj" the needs and condi- , 
 tions of our own age and country. Such are the 
 Sabbath Laws. If it can be proved, that one day 
 of rest from involuntary labour in the week is 
 needed for the health and happiness of the poor, 
 and that it can only be secured by statute, thea it 
 might be justly legalised, the same as a bank 
 holiday. But every edict about such a day arising 
 out of its supposed sanctity is not merely unjust, 
 as it were unjust to prescribe how people should 
 pass their bank holiday, but it is a solemn instruc- 
 tion in error and intolerance. The great judicial 
 wisdom of the nation goes about the country 
 telling pqople' what is false-^telling them that 
 Jehovah made the world in six days and rested on 
 the seventh ; that he egotistically declared nobody 
 should ever work that day because he once got 
 tired and rested on it ; and that people have a 
 right to force others to conduct themselves accord- 
 ing to such notions, whether they think them 
 true or false. That is a solemn instruction by the 
 chief moral school of the nation-^its Courts of 
 
The Criminal Law. 93 
 
 Law — in a false and mean idea of God, and in - 
 intolerance. There can be no spiritual progress 
 so long as that deity— ih^t tired, resting, egotis- 
 tical, intolerant deity, is upheld by the acknow- 
 ledged source of rectitude and truth. 
 
 The Law of England is, for the most part, 
 far more civilised than any creed it establishes. 
 Christianity presumes every human being de- 
 praved ; the Law assumes every man innocent. 
 It is necessary to specify "man," for the Law 
 treats wonian as a born criminal. This great 
 nation is drawing' near to the jubilee-year of" a 
 woman's reign, under which it ha-s enjoyed un- 
 exampled prosperity and progress in the arts, 
 sciences and literature: Yet, under Queen Vic- 
 toria, women are disfranchised along with felons. 
 Under Queen Victoria, a woman, if legally married, 
 has no right whatever in the child she bears except 
 such as may be conceded by her husband. She 
 has ho right to say how her child shall be educated, 
 or in what religion it shall be taught. When the 
 husband dies he may will away his widow's 
 children to the guardianship of strangers. This 
 is continually done 'in our own time. I heard a 
 jurist, who has since become - the Lord Chief 
 Justice of England, declare his conviction that 
 
94 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 the barbarisms of the English Laws concerning 
 women will never entirely disappear until members 
 of Parliament have female voters in their con- 
 stituencies. Well, that period seems far off now. 
 The wife-beating interest of the country has just 
 had a parliamentary victory ; the universal English 
 woman has received a black eye from her 
 universal lord ; the enfranchised hobnails may 
 trample on her more fearlessly than ever, Tha.t, 
 of course, is only my pessimistic view. I hope I 
 may be proved wrong. But in one thing I will 
 not be proved wrong. So long as the present 
 law concerning mothers and their children stand 
 on the statute-book, women will never be really 
 respefcted. That great School of Morals, the 
 Law Court, — that civic Bible, the Statute-book, — 
 by such laws instruct every child to despise its 
 mother ; it degrades the purest woman beneath 
 the basest man. The truest fable of it is that 
 woman fell from her paradise while trying to get 
 an education, the government of that period 
 having -compelled her to get knowledge from the 
 devil or not at all ; and the further fable, which 
 has become fact, that when woman falls, man falls 
 with her. Nor will man ever rise till woman rises. 
 In speaking of the Criminal Law, events have. 
 
The Criminal Law. ' 95 
 
 reminded me of the criminality of the law. But 
 we will return from this episode. Now that Par- 
 liament is about to revise and amend, to some 
 extent, the Cbde of the country, we may well 
 remerpber that itself is a High Court. The de- 
 velopment of the High Court of Parliament has 
 some\((hat modified its fundamental structure. But 
 it preserves still the characteristics of every court. 
 The House of Lords is the judicial side ; even as a 
 legislature it 'represents, albeit in ari antiquarian 
 way, the interests of order, of forms, privilege,^ all 
 that would be most endangered by mob-law. The, 
 House of Commons represents the Jury-^that is 
 the mob. Commoners still wear their hats while 
 they, debate, for. once they were gentlemen of the 
 .pavement. They were a crowd of' deputations 
 at the door of king and lords, which gradually 
 chose a foreman or Speaker. This ancient 
 Parliament, that august Judge and Jury, throned 
 in the very centre of civilisation, is about to re- 
 establish and reaffirm laws which will represent 
 ' to the rnasses its maturest wisdom. , What it 
 looses will be loosed in legislatures and lawrrcourts 
 throughout the globe; what it'binds wifl be>bound' 
 in every part of the world. For England is the 
 lawgiver among nations. 
 
 H 
 
g6 Farewell Discourses. > 
 
 Each House of Parliament has its vulnerable 
 point, — is liable to a besetting sin. The Jury is , 
 .liable to be influenced by the prejudices of the 
 vulgar. We have seen how Commoners can go 
 from their Sunday billiards and other club amuse- 
 ments to vote on Monday that the poor shall not 
 visit the Museum on their only day of leisure. ', 
 We know well that they so vote for fear of denun- 
 ciation in the ignorant conventicles of their 
 boroughs. This is but one example— there are 
 others^of the timidity of those dependent for 
 their power on the popular breath. , 
 
 ■ On the other hand, the hereditary House is 
 closely bound up with the principle of authority. , 
 Its power rests not upon 'reason but privilege ; it 
 dates from a social classification now known to be 
 arbitrary. ' Authority loves authority. ' A House 
 resting, on tradition may naturally tremble at any- 
 thing weakening the . reverence for tradition. 
 Those ancient Jewish laws, long supposed to rest • 
 on the decree of the Lord of Lords, will hardly be 
 touched irreverently by the Lords who feel that 
 their own tenure is weakened by all that weakeus 
 the principle of, arbitrary authority. ' 
 
 Yet it may be that this High Court of Parlia- 
 ment will rise to the height of an occasion when 
 
The Criminal Law. 97 
 
 . ,j . . 
 
 our civilisation must make a new departure. If it 
 shall embody the principles of jurisprudence which 
 have been really established by that consensus of 
 the experience of many peoples, which (and not 
 any other vox populi) was declared by misrepre- 
 sented Hesiod to be the voice of God, then our 
 amended Code will show, among iothers, the 
 following improvements. ', 
 
 1. The judicial Oath will be abolished. .It can 
 secure veracity only among the superstitious, 
 therefore becomes daily a weaker sanction. As 
 its appeal is to superstition, it cannot secure a real 
 but only the verbal and tefchnical truth which 
 satisfies superstition, and this at" the cost of 
 lowering the standard of truth in everyday life. 
 The Oath instructs the people that the most 
 injurious He, unsworn, , is, a less wrong than a 
 benevolent deception under oath. The verdict 
 of ethical science has gone against the judicial 
 Oath, and the community, has a right to demand 
 that all falsehood shall be punished where injury, 
 or attempted injury, can be proved. 
 
 2. Every punishment instituted in the interests 
 of any deity or deities will be abolished. Injuria 
 deorum curcB-diisl This would include all penalties 
 attached to courses of conduct simply because 
 
 . ■- • ' H 2 
 
98 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 condemned in the Bible. A civilised Code can 
 know nothing of " sins." " , 
 
 3. All punishments' for self-injuries will be 
 abolished. Only evil has ever come of confusing 
 vices with crimes. The detection and prevention 
 of personal vices foster soriie of the worst vices,— 
 espionage, malice, revengej- jealousy, — and tempt 
 the base to the crime called "blackmaiL" 
 
 Consider the case ' of extreme self-injury — 
 Suicide. The punishment of it seems to have, 
 originated in .the belief that the deity had " fix'd 
 his canon 'gainst self-slaughter." There is an 
 element pf criminality in suicide, for the suicide 
 may injure his family or his .creditors ; but' it wis 
 not these injuries, consequently not the crime, that 
 the Law punished ; on the contrary, these injuries 
 it intensified by further degrading the dead, and 
 pauperising his family. The Law assumed the 
 place of the offended deity, and depriving the 
 suicide of burial rites, confiscated his property. 
 Humanly considered, this was unjust. In poetry • 
 and history there are heroic suicides. Every 
 juryman has^ looked, upon some suicide — sych as 
 that of Romeo and Juliet — with sympathy. The 
 merely ' papal law against suicide (for there is 
 nothing in the Bible against it) cannot be carried 
 
The Criminal Law. ' 99 
 
 out in a liberal age, and \Xs> provisions have long 
 been, evaded by what Sir James Stephen calls 
 " amiable perjury." The suicide's motives cannot 
 be judged. It is unjust to punish his already 
 over-punished family s the dead are unpunishable ; 
 and the verdict of "unsound mind" is returned. 
 The- Law has not even been, able to bring suicide 
 into merited disgrace, because the law could ndt 
 get itself executed. The law against suicide has . 
 itself committed suicide, and remains an example 
 of just the kind of offences , with which- society 
 . cannot deal. • 
 
 On the other hand Law has been able to bring 
 the once heroic practice of single combat into 
 disgrace. Although duelling may hold its place 
 on the stage in historic dramas, or those concern- 
 ing communities distant enough from our own to 
 •admit of Jiistoric perspective, no duel can be 
 successfully introduced into an English play of 
 contemporary life. -For duelling injures; others, 
 and it sets an ex'ample injurious to others, tending 
 -to foster the antisocial principle of private ven-, 
 ■geance. The ancient ordeal pf single combat 
 acquired its sanction at a time when the man most 
 needed by a tribe was the physically strongest man. 
 . It was believed the gods would protect the best 
 
lOO Farewell Discourses. 
 
 {i.e. strongest) man, and they did, being always on 
 the side of the best battalions. But 'gradually a 
 dififerent kind of man was needed by human society; 
 •virtue meant no longer mere strength ; and now it 
 was not the best man who gained in single combat. 
 The gods were on the side of the bully— the' 
 practised manslayer. The good did not prevail; 
 So experience makes a better morality. A pro- 
 fessional duellist is not held in honour even in 
 countries where duelling is legal. 
 
 " You . cannot make men moral by Act of 
 Parliament." It is proverbial, and it is true. But 
 there is a sense in which human morality is 
 powerfully affected by laws. Where the' laws 
 never excite the moral sense against them by their 
 injustice, nor the reason by their superstitiorj, 
 where they grapple with real wrongs, and inflexibly ' 
 punish actual crimes, then obedience to them can 
 be secured. Such laws will indirectly but potently 
 brand the. immoralities which, lead to crimes. 
 There is no actual crime Which is not the outbreak 
 of some immorality. Selfishness is potential^ 
 theft,' hatred is potential murder. Those who 
 have . the training of children are still suffering, 
 from a notion that Crime has some mysterious 
 connection with sin, with the devil, or the fall : 
 
The Criminal Law. loi 
 
 a code worthy of the name would publish from 
 the Sinai of Civilisation inviolable laws, with 
 real sanctions — ^laws related to the time and place 
 in which we live, and to. the temptations of otir 
 own condition ; laws simple as the passions that 
 need their restraint ; just laws carrying the con- 
 science and judgment of every wise, just, and 
 humane man and woman. 
 
SUBSTITUTES' FOR HELL. 
 
SUBSTITUTES FOR HELL. 
 
 mm 
 
 HE worst sermon I ever heard was at 
 sea, in the Bay of Bengal. The 
 preacher was a famous dissenting 
 minister from England. A large 
 company gathered to hear him, among them a 
 group of distinguished 'Hindus. The preacher's' 
 text was : " Blessed is he -whose transgression is 
 forgiven, whose sin is covered." The main 
 doctrine of the sermon was that if a soul has 
 accepted the merits of Jesus and his atoning, 
 blood, his sins are not imputed to him. His sins 
 are all there but they are covered. God doesn't 
 see them. He looks there and sees only the 
 merits of his son; he sees the covering which 
 hides the believer's sins. He may be the chief of 
 sinners ; God doesn't consider that at all, but only 
 the merits of Jesus beneath which those 'sins are 
 , hidden. 
 
rp6' . Farewell Discourses. 
 
 When the sermon was over I saw some Hindus, 
 who had bfeen Hstening, engaged in conversation 
 on deck and approached theiji. One and all of 
 them expressed their horror of the doctrines of 
 the sermon. They could 'not understa'hd how a 
 country like England can permit such irnmoral 
 teaching. One said — " According to that sermon 
 the worst vices and crimes a man may commit are , 
 of no importance at all in the sight of God^not 
 even noticed — if the criminal only shelters them 
 under the name of Christ. England may be- 
 thankful we Hindus do not accept such immoral 
 doctrines as that." 
 
 There was nothing peculiar in the sermon 
 except the baldness with which a universal Chris- 
 tian doctrine was put But the horror of these 
 Hindus made a deep impression on me. I men- 
 tioned it to an, English scholar and statesman 
 in India, and he told me he had. often. heard 
 Hindus express their wonder how England could 
 be so moral with, such a profoundly immoral ' , 
 religion. There is but one religion on the face of 
 the earth which declares that a man needs no 
 merits of his own in order to please God. , There' 
 is but , one religion which publishes to mankind 
 that their iniquities ' do not impair their pleas for 
 
Stibstitutes for Hell. , 107 
 
 salvation. That is the Christian religion. Every . 
 other religion teaches men that they: are saved by 
 their virtues and merits, and lost by their vices 
 and demerits. Every man, woman and child in 
 other religions is instructed every day to keep' 
 strict account of their own actions, and to try and 
 make the column .of moral gains exceed that of 
 losses. In Christendom that estimate of profit 
 and loss is confined to secular business. It. may 
 well excite wonder how . this pecularity of our 
 faith came about, and I think I, can tell you. It . 
 came of Paul's effort to include Gentiles with 
 Jfews in the brotherhood of Christ. For that 
 he had to get rid of the ceremonial law. The 
 objection of the Jews was that these Gentiles had 
 never performed any of the sacrifices and cere- 
 monies which Jahv^ had demanded and received 
 from themselves. • These observances were what 
 they called "good works." The non-observance 
 of them they called "sins:" These good works 
 : and sins had nothing whatever to do with, prac- 
 tical human affairs, nor with morality and immo- 
 rality; The Jews did not. suppose the Gentiles, 
 in their relations to men', were less virtuous than 
 themselves. That was not the question. The 
 point was that the Gentiles were not circumcised, 
 
io8 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 that they did not offer the right sacrifices to the 
 proper deity, that they did not rest on the 
 Sabbath, nor otherwise attend to Jahvd's cere- 
 monial orders, violation or neglect of which are 
 properly cdlled "sins," though these sins were 
 compatible with human virtues. Well, many Jews 
 themselves had not complied with all the nicetie;s 
 and exactions of levitical law ; to do so required 
 study, pains, money, and almost the whole of one's 
 time. Vast numbers of poor and ignorant Jews, 
 when Jesus appeared, were burthened with a sense 
 of their sins. However virtuous and moral as a 
 man, the. orthodox Jew felt on his shoulders a 
 huge pack of offences against the jealous etiquette 
 of Jahv^, such as Bunyan's pilgrim bore. Jesus 
 woujd appear to have tried to persuade the Jews 
 that no such deity existed, but only an all-forgiving 
 father who desired not sacrifice but mercy in their 
 hearts. His teaching was -little understood and 
 soon lost. And so we find the doctrine presently 
 developed that all those sins, — that is, omissions 
 pf sacrificial and ceremonial observances, — were 
 paid for by the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, 
 and all debts to Jahvd 'thereby cancelled. There 
 were some that supposed that this only squared 
 accounts with Jahv6 up to date. But Paul, with 
 
Substitutes for Hell. 1 09 
 
 benevolent. casuistry, pleaded that-- the sacri^ce of 
 the Son of God was so potent that it availed for 
 all time : people need never again be circumcised 
 or practise the Jewish observances. Also, after a 
 long struggle, he succeeded i in establishing the 
 doctrine that .the great sacrifice atoned for the 
 Gentiles', systematic omissions too. The welcome 
 of the Gentile was reflecteid in the welcome of 
 the Prodigal Son, and joy at the recovered Pearl. 
 You may see that here wa,s a brave effort of 
 the human mind to get rid of a huge mass of 
 idle observances, accumulated through ages,, 
 inability to perform which kept mankind in 
 deadly fear. They believed Jahv6 angry with 
 -them every day. Paul could easily- persuade 
 Greeks that God needed nothing at men's 
 hands ; but Jewish babes could ,not receive such 
 -Strong meat, and for a long time insisted on the 
 "deeds of the Law."' But. Paul and the 
 Gentile party urged that by these "deeds of 
 the Law" none could '< be 'justified. Man-' could 
 , only be j.ustified by faith,— the faith, open alike 
 to Jew and Gentile, that Jesus had paid all their 
 debts to Jahv6. 
 
 All that was a Jewish garb of the new move- 
 ment.-^ When Christianity . rises in Rome it is 
 
no Farewell Discourses. 
 
 with the Roman garb. The language of Paul, 
 to Jews could not be understood by the later 
 generations of Gentiles, who' received his epistles" 
 as scriptures. The "deeds of the Law" w,ere 
 taken to mean human law, morality — actual 
 virtue, good works in the practical. Roman sense. 
 The Pauline doctrine that man was not to be 
 saved by "the deeds of the Law" but by faith, 
 was ignorantly interpreted to mean that a 
 Christian was not saved; by his own merits but 
 by faith in the merits of Christ. That ignorant 
 notion got into the creeds, and so it has come 
 down to be the spiritual hunch of Christendom, 
 — a. deformity decorated by .ignorant Christians, 
 as their goitre is by certain peasants, but which 
 fills people of othei" religions with horror. 
 
 This wild superstition that salvation had' nothing 
 to do with social, civic, or personal virtues, dis- 
 solved Roman society.' There was a powerftal', 
 development of all the kind of conduct supposed 
 to keep people out of hell. Morality came to 
 mean supporting the priests, attending church, 
 making pilgrimages, observing Oaths, reciting 
 creeds, hating unbelievers, every thing done to 
 flatter and please the Trinity. Immorality meant 
 neglect of such things. Real morality, what the 
 
Sttlfsh'iwtes far Hell, 1 1 1 
 
 Romans had called virtue, what we are beginning 
 again to call such, was left to take care of itself. 
 For ages no man di-eamed that a Christian had 
 any sacred need to be really honest and upright, 
 and in fact for some centuries every eminent 
 criminal in Europe was a Christian. Many men 
 were burned and slain by the imperial church for 
 supposed want of punctilious deference to the 
 altar or creed related to another world, but none 
 was martyred for any wrong that concerned only 
 this world and man. 
 
 HUman morality and civil law had thus to 
 develop themselves without the aid of so-called 
 religion. They received no aid from the Trinity, 
 but the reverse. Amid the struggle for advantages, 
 and the temptations that beset men, the Trinity 
 said—' No matter what your crimes towards man, 
 only believfe and worship us, and obey our priests, 
 and these will give ypu an absolutiort that will 
 carry you straight to paradise.' 
 
 But human society itsfelf was also engaged in a 
 struggle for existence: it could not exist by 
 ecclesiastical virtues; it needed real ones, and it 
 could only save itself by fierce and tremendous 
 appeals to human terror. Civil Society had no 
 hell with which to terrify the evildQer. If a man 
 
 I 
 
112 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 inade a slip in his theology the State helped the 
 Church to burn him on earth, and so send him on 
 to be burnt in another world. But" if a man only 
 made a slip in his conduct, the Church did not 
 offer the State the use of their hell. They said, 
 ' Hell is reserved for sinners,- not for criminals, for 
 people who forget God's law, not those who forget " 
 the laws of man.' The State has even now no. 
 future hell from which a chaplain cannot save the 
 worst criminal, in the belief of the criminal class, — 
 a belief justified by the Christian doctrine of 
 vicarious righteousness. The- penitent murderer 
 may ascend from the scaffold to look down from 
 heaven on the unshriven or unprepared victim he 
 plunged into hell. The clergy are, indeed, 
 getting wiser than their creed, and ever since the 
 Reformation there has been a growing impression, 
 that God has an interest in human morals. By 
 the Reformation was restored the Jewish God, 
 and although he was a cruel and hard-featured 
 deity, very rude and, primitive, he at ,least aimed 
 to be a moral governor of the world, whereas the 
 Trinity was metaphysical, mysterious, and wrapped 
 up in its own glory. Of Jahve's ten Command- 
 ments, five were for the interests of morality ; but, 
 unless it be in a doubtful Athanasian clause, no 
 
Substitutes for Hell. 113 
 
 Christian creed even mentions morality. If either of 
 these deities, that is, their priests and theologians, 
 had brought the tremendous hopes and terrors of 
 their invisible world to bear on the practical life of 
 man with man, w^hould have had a very different 
 moral world by this .tinie. If every mediaeval man 
 had believed that hell was reserved for wrongs 
 against man, — that theft, murder, cruelty, were 
 unpardonable offences ; that God would only 
 pardon sins against himself, as Jesus did ; that 
 God was indifferent about denial of his existence, 
 but not about unkindhess ; would forgive blasphemy, 
 but not its persecutors, — had that been taught in 
 the ages we should to-day be a nation dreading 
 dishonesty more than atheism, and holding violence 
 to man or woman in such pious horror as that 
 which visits blasphemy. If immorality instead of 
 heresy had been threatened throughout Christen- 
 dom with an irremissible hell it would have been 
 . almost burnt out of human nature. 
 
 ■Human Law had no hell to back it but such as 
 it could make on earth. Because it had no super- 
 natural sanctions, it was compelled to make its 
 punishments all the more' ferocious. Religion 
 having declined to lend its full force to secular 
 order, Society had to secure its existence by double 
 
 12 
 
114 Fareiibell Discourses. 
 
 severity. This, as was pointed out ih the previous 
 discourse, was originally done by the mob. The 
 Law Court followed the lines of the mob, and is 
 a mob grown formal and deliberate. However 
 cruel some laws may appear to us, they only- 
 reflected the ferocity of the mob while they 
 mitigated it. ' Such merciful rules as that a man 
 must be held innocent till proved guilty, that a 
 prisoner must have the benefit of a doubt, that a 
 man cannot be again tried for an offence of which 
 he has once been acquitted, were legal restraints 
 imposed on popular passions. When an infuriated 
 mob got' hold of a man, whatever his offence, death 
 was the almost inevitable result ; consequently the 
 old laws inflicted death for almost every crime. 
 Even in the last' century there were still in England 
 1 60 different off(?nces of which the punishment 
 was death. The mob projected its vindictiveness 
 into divine as well as human law. Consequently 
 it was believed that whatever a man's sin, however 
 large or little, he was sent to hell. One big fiery 
 pit received all sinners, great or small. But when 
 artists and poets began to remodel hell, and 
 described it as made up of many mansions, with 
 varied degrees and modes of punishment, this was 
 reflected back again upon human laws,- and varieties 
 
Substitutes for Hell. 1 1 5 
 
 of legal' tortAire and punishment were invented. 
 In F; ranee I have seen a collection of ' mediseval 
 instruments of punishment, — wheel, rack, thumb- 
 screw, spiked helmet, guillotine, — a hundred horrid 
 instruments, and it was like moving; through 
 Dante's Inferno. They show how human in- 
 genuity tried to make for offenders a Hell, on earth, 
 after the pattern shown to pious dreamers in their 
 vision. Most of them were used chiefly on 
 supposed offenders against God, and one could 
 feel in them an expression of eternal hatred. Not 
 social self-preservation,, but hatred was paramount 
 in them. Hatred is an expression of terror. 
 . Long after Society was strong enough to be calm 
 towards an offender against itself, it was in deadly 
 fear lest offences against heaven might bring doVn 
 divine vengeance upon the community. Deities 
 , are supposed to be indiscriminate wheij they are 
 . mad, striking right and left with their thunderbolts 
 and pestilences. So a heretic or blasphemer was 
 seized and sacrificed to prevent the kindling of 
 divine wrath. And the rhan who so endangered 
 the.whole community was specially hated, far more 
 than one who had simply injured a particular 
 individual. 
 
 Civil Law, having to punish offences against 
 
I -1 6 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 God as well as man, learned that it was always 
 secure if it represented popular hatred, and as this 
 hatred especially attached to offenders against the 
 gods, the Law stigmatised all crimes as offences 
 against the gods. They told every criminal he 
 was instigated by the devil, so invoking popular 
 hatred. So long as fear of the devil and hell 
 prevailed that was a pretty strong force, and, in 
 superstitious minds, there is still a feeling of 
 hatred towards, offenders proportionate to their 
 appearance of irreligion. . No murderers in the 
 country, no adulterers, no thieves, are so much 
 hated as the leading atheists. Pious people do 
 their best to anticipate hell for them, and with a 
 certain success. Now, it is just that kind of 
 hatred that Civil Society is apt to covet. The 
 judges never liked to have the gods monopolise 
 such a force. Philosophic jurists did not Hke to see 
 that kind of pious animosity directed only againSt' 
 fictitious offences — like sabbath-breaking and 
 blasphemy — ^^and therefore anirnating only fanatics 
 and zealots,; they desired to see that holy hatred- 
 directed against the murderer and the thief Now 
 that Satan is no longer Chief . of Police nor hell 
 a Newgate, there is fear that Crime may be 
 considered a mild affair. It is natural that legal 
 
Substitutes for Hell. 1 1 7 
 
 severity should increase. It seems that Satan is to 
 be sumrnoned in a new form. The " History of the 
 Criminal Law of England," by Sir James Stephen, 
 ought to be studied as an English Bil51e — with 
 the most solemn sense of its importance, but also 
 with the extreme critical care ; for though Sir 
 James Stephen as a gentleman is apparently a 
 fi"eethinker, as a jurist he borrows .thunderbolts, 
 from the god of vengeance. In this book Law is 
 the image of Him who is angry with the wicked 
 every day. Its theory of punishment is that it 
 should express popular hatred of the wrong-doer—- 
 not merely of the crime but of the Criminal. " The 
 sentence of the law is to the moral sentiment of 
 the public in relation' to any offence what a seal is 
 to hot wax. It cohverts into a pernianent final 
 judgment \yhat might otherwise be a transient 
 sentiment." There are "bad men who are the 
 natural enemies of inoffensive _ men just as wild 
 beasts of prey are the enemies of all men." They 
 ought to be destroyed, thinks Mr, Justice Stephen, 
 and he adds :— " It is highly desirable that 
 criminals, Should be bated, that the punishments 
 inflicted upon them should be so contrived as to 
 give expression to that hatred, and to justify it so 
 far as the public provision; of means for expressing 
 
1 1 8 (Farewell Discourses. 
 
 and gratifying a healthy natural sentiment can 
 justify and encourage it." The able author aiid 
 Judge who wrote this has done great ser^v^ice , by 
 his effort to eliminate from the code all recc^gnition 
 of offences against God. He would not punjish any 
 offence that is not an ~ appreciable injury to man or 
 to society. In this spirit the n,ew Criminal Laws 
 Amendment Act has been framed, and if it can 
 only be passed it vjrill be an immense step in 
 civilisation. The danger will probably be from 
 the Bishops, always [the dead-weight on Parlia-' 
 , ment, for they can hardly fail to see in this new 
 code notice given to, the gods that superhuman 
 and supernatural interests 'can no longer be pro- 
 tected by the laws of England. If deities choose 
 to strike people dead for denying their existence, 
 to punish, people for sabbath-breaking, or other- 
 wise vindicate their niajesty; they can do so. But 
 the arm of England can no longer do it for. them. 
 A period has arrived when the law is only en- 
 feebled by- declaring things to be criminal which 
 are humanly spea.king harmless, or even worthy 
 of respect. Working on Sunday is condemned 
 along with theft, yet the ablest men in England 
 work on Sunday.. By the law a man who lends 
 another Emerson's works or Martineau's is more 
 
Substitutes for Hell. 119 
 
 criminal than a wife-beater. Such nonsense is 
 the degradation of all law. ' Its term has nearly- 
 come. Society is entering on serious emergencies. 
 Its thousands of population have multiplied to 
 millions ; the struggle for existence has made 
 society a camp of divided classes ; with new 
 temptations old restraints have been weakened^ 
 by the growing intelligence which has simul- 
 taneously increased the means and opportunities 
 of crime. If the gods gave society any help 
 in these emergencies their affairs might be helped 
 in turn. But they do not. On the contrary, 
 still from thotisands of pulpits are they compelled 
 to tell the people that their righteousness is but 
 filthy rags ; that their merits and good works are 
 worthless. The gods still proclaim a hell, but it is 
 only for sinners — ^that is for offenders against 
 themselves— and bind themselves to welcome 
 all orthodox criminals into heaven, and give 
 tihem the pleasure of seeing the unorthodox, 
 though benefactors of mankind, in' hell. Under 
 these circumstances it is necessary that society: 
 shall give ail its attention to taking care of 
 itself. These filthy rags of human righteousness 
 which the gods so despise are of considerable 
 importance to us poof mortals. Those rags are 
 
1 20 • Farewell Discourses. 
 
 the virtues which support our homes, the self- 
 restraints which render society possible, the 
 mental and moral conditions under which alone 
 we can make our planet habitable. As no creed 
 mentions man's duty to man, the qhurch cannot 
 complain if our code shall omit all mention of 
 man's duty to the deity. 
 
 Civilisation of codes is prevented, by fear of 
 appearing to countenance impieties by repealing 
 old statutes against them ; and such fears have 
 retained laws against certain private vices, with 
 which, however vile. Law can only strive un- 
 lawfully. It is remote from the purposes of Law 
 to think for a moment of theology or abstractions. 
 Its business is to secure justice between men, and 
 preserve the order and peaceful conditions of 
 society. The Law can not safely punish immo- 
 ralities that injure only one's self. Not only 
 does that lead to espionage, malicious accusations, 
 and blackmail, but should fanaticism gain power, 
 it might find in such law authority for punishing 
 theatre-going or dancing, or other praiseworthy 
 conduct it might fancy vicious. On the other 
 hand society must necessarily punish even a man's 
 virtues if they threaten social or naitional existence. 
 A man may aim to overthrow the authorities of 
 
Substitutes for Hell. 121 
 
 , r-j i B — ^ 
 
 his country for the sake of better. The Law 
 must jiunish him. This necessity is a means of 
 reform. A distinguished lady has refused to pay 
 taxes because her sex is oppressed, degraded, and 
 cruelly wronged by the laws, in amending which she 
 has only such power as she has exercised. The Law 
 distrains on her property. It cannot do otherwise, 
 however honourable or just her action. For if all 
 were to do so government would cease. It is 
 because that supreme necessity of self-preservation 
 is the government's first law that its injustice in 
 any particular can be exposed by a passive revolt 
 on principle; For then the government is 
 compelled to punish justice as if it were a crime. 
 In that way the Quakers proved too strong for 
 oppressive laws, and no doubt the Ladies would 
 be equally successful should they refuse to support 
 a 'goverrimeht which treats them, politically, 
 as slaves. Unjust laws are really very weak ; 
 they cannot execute - themselves without a kind 
 of suicide. And this because of the principle 
 suggested by Mr. Justice Stephen, that LaW must 
 represent and give shape to popular hatred. Law 
 cannot go on punishing as crime what is.no longer 
 an object of popular odium. Much less can it 
 continue to punish what the majority admire, as 
 
122 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 they do genius, freedom of mind, learning, how- 
 ever associated with heresy. The law, therefore, : 
 is now steadily comjpelled to place itself on a; 
 human basis, to concentrate itself on the work of 
 Exterminating offences injurious to society, of 
 securing justice and order, and the public health. , 
 What then would' be the right sanctions of laws 
 thus purely human ? Mr. Justice Stephen says, 
 punishinents should give, expression to popular 
 hatred of the criminal. That is a survival of the 
 \yrath of God upon his. enemies. It is the substi- 
 tute for Hell in an agfe of reason. Hell being no 
 lohger believable by the educated — no longer a 
 restraint on the masses who hear it laughed at by 
 the learned — it is proposed, to carry its spirit more 
 "fully and avowedly into the new laws. For Hatred 
 will always make a hell wherever it moves. It is no 
 new thing among executors of the laws however 
 novel its appearance as a theory of punishment.* 
 In the past it has made several hells on earth. 
 One of these ,was in Tasmania, the famous 
 Norfolk Island. A young Australian, the late 
 Marcus Clarke, went to that region and studied 
 the facts concerning the treatment of convicts 
 there, and he has embodied them in a powerful 
 novel. He told a friend of mine that he found 
 
Substitutes for Hell. . 123 
 
 some features of Norfolk Island too horrible to 
 be described in his book, but there is enough in 
 the story entitled "His Natural Life," to show 
 how easily hatred develops a hell. The theory of 
 punishment at Norfolk Island was, apparently, that 
 whoever was sent there by the wisdom and justice 
 of England was an enemy of mankind jiist as if 
 he were a fierce beast. As such he was treated, 
 until death relieved him, and according to a 
 report to the House of ' Lords prisoners some- 
 times killed eaqh other without malice in order to 
 get hung. • ^ 
 
 But, as a matter of fact,' the wisdom of England 
 was sending out there many people who were by 
 no means wild beasts, and some who were even 
 good people. The Hell of orthodoxy scandalises 
 thoughtful people because so many varieties- are 
 put into one and the same fieiy Pit, on the ground 
 that if one is not elect it matters not how good, or 
 bad he may be, humanly considered. Norfolk 
 Island, for a time, nicely copied Calvin's Hell. 
 The murderer and the poacher, the burglar ahd 
 the resister of some aristocratic oppressor, the 
 brutal homicide and the patriotic rioter, were 
 alike plunged into that abyss of woe. Norfolk 
 Island had nothing' to do with that. It knew 
 
124 ' Farewell Discourses. 
 
 no differences of character. Whoever came was 
 to be treated as an enemy, with hatred. 
 
 Among those exiled to that far hell some were 
 innocent.' One such is the hero of Marcus 
 Clarke's story; he was found near a murdered, 
 gentleman in this country, appearances were 
 agai^nst him, and he was sentenced " for the term 
 of his natural' life." A refined and intelligent 
 youth is seen sinking down, and ever down, into 
 bitter and sullen despair , under his miserable 
 environment. A routine of hatred, ferocity, 
 brutality makes him over into its image. The 
 brightest feeling in him- has to take the shape of ' 
 reyenge. You may discover in that remarkable" 
 book some of the secrets of a hell. There is 
 a method, in the madness of superstition. Why 
 is hell preipared for the devil and his angels ? 
 Because when life is without hope man becomes a 
 demon. Why is hell eternal } Because amid all 
 that is vile and base no moral forces can work ; if 
 they remained it were-only to increase pain. The 
 only relief is to be rid -of them. As a race of fishes ' 
 dwelling in a ' dark cave can never develop- eyes, 
 so amid total moral darkness and hopeless despair 
 no upward development can take place. There- 
 ifore, if there were such a place as Calvin's Hell 
 
Substitutes for Hell. 125 
 
 it wpuld have to be eternal, and it Would naturally 
 evolve a population of devils. 
 
 But, meanwhile, what advantage was secured 
 for society by all the hatred which was visited on 
 those exiles at the Antipodes ? No doubt 
 rumours reached the roughs of England that 
 Norfolk Island was an earthly hell, and made 
 them anxious to avoid it. But they also reached 
 the humane and just in England, and they 
 abolished that hell. The amount of hatred put 
 into the punishments was suicidal. The 
 conscience of the country would not tolerate a hell 
 anywhere outside its theology. And the 
 conscience of the 'country was right. It may be 
 fairly supposed that if an all-knowing God keeps 
 a hell he knows what he is about. He can see 
 into hearts, weigh motives, estimate guilt, assort 
 punishments. But all-seeing power is not given 
 to judges, juries or gaolers. They cannot be 
 depended on always to' condemn only the guilty ; 
 they may be hating and maltreating men whose 
 crimes, like those of Christ and Socrates, may 
 some day prove virtues. Therefore, Society 
 cannot find any substitute for Hell. The theory ' 
 of punishment by hatred cannot be maintained. 
 Whether it would work well or ill, it has 
 
126 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 always brokefj down and must break down, 
 because where people dwell together in society 
 there grows up an instinct of humanity. , With- 
 out it society would dissolve ; but so long as 
 it exists it will always have pity on weakness, on 
 helplessness, even amid its faults or crimes. As 
 society grows too stron,g to be afraid of a criminal, 
 ' it grows a:shamed of using its immense power on 
 him. The unarmed man on the scaffold is an 
 object of compassion. Is it merely maudlin, 
 sentiment ? No ; though it bften seems so. It 
 is never excited by a rational punishment. It 
 arises when society pays brutality with brutality. 
 A great nation strangling an unarmed man is a 
 mean sight, and it now has to be done in a corner. 
 No ' punishment of which Society is ashamed 
 can be an eiffectiye one. Also, no punishment that 
 cannot be impartially dealt out can be an effective 
 one. The country has been lately disgraiced by 
 taking up the knout which Russia had laid aside. 
 The " cat " will be shortlived. Members of Parlia- 
 ment have taken care not to make flogging the 
 penalty for crimes of their own class ; fine 
 genriemen may seduce and ruin their victims 
 without being flogged. That is reserved for 
 crimes to which gentlemen are not ' tempted. 
 
Substitutes for Hell. 127 
 
 When the masses are presently in power the lash 
 may fall on a gentleman, or perhaps on a woman ; 
 then this silly excursion into barbarism will end. 
 The odium will fall, not on the crime, but oh the 
 , new law — which, if it has accomplished anything, 
 seems to have only changed robbery with violence 
 into robbery with murder. 
 
 Human progress leads on a new heaven and a" 
 new earth ; but not a new Hell. On the contrary; 
 the social progress, for which our time is pre- 
 eminent, involves further growth of the humane 
 sentiment which tends to think kindly of enemies, 
 and a culture of the intellect which . recoils from 
 the old theories of evil conduct. Hatred of the 
 criminal was the natural outcome, of belief in 
 human depravity-^in diabolic possession. Intelli- 
 gence now knows that crime is a rude and igriorant 
 outbreak of motives and. desires common to all. 
 The criminal wants mohey, satisfaction of his 
 senses ; that is what evef-ybody wants. He cannot 
 be condemned for that. He seeks his satisfactions 
 selfishly. He cannot be quite hated even, for that. 
 There is a worse and sly selfishness which takes care 
 to keep itself out of the clutches of the law. About 
 crime there is often a certain incautiousness, an im- 
 pulsiveness, which mitigate our feeling towards the 
 
 K ' 
 
128 Farewell Discourses, 
 
 average criminal. We must punish him for not con- , 
 sidering the equal rights and needs of others. No 
 doubt it was largely of his ignorance, bad training, 
 rudeness ; largely, perhaps, because in childhood , 
 he was taught that the great point was to flatter 
 God an^i despise good works. However that may 
 be, we can only by exact and urifailing punishment 
 'direct popular hatred against the crime itself, 
 and where it is base, deliberate, malicious crime— 
 suggesting the cunning and venom of the lower 
 creatures, we must provide means for. its ex- 
 terrhination. If the law of capital punishment 
 could be carried out, it would have the advantage 
 of preventing the propagation of the seed of 
 violence in the Earth. It is a failure, because, 
 for many reasons, two-thirds of the murderers 
 escape. There are many murderers, abroad whom 
 a revocable punishment would have brought 
 under the control of Society. Healthy work, 
 good food, kind treatment, amusement — all this, 
 they might well have ; and the satisfaction of 
 making wildernesses blossom by their toil ', but 
 offspring must be denied them. That alone is 
 needed to end murder. The race of the violent 
 and cruel must end. They must follow the 
 wolves, so that the peaceful herds may apjpear. 
 
Substitutes for Hell. 129 
 
 It is the peaceful who must inherit the earth. 
 It belongs to those who nourish, not those who 
 destroy it. So fast as the peaceful multiply their 
 species they will do away with the religion, the 
 methods, the temptations of the violent. The 
 free trade in alcohol will be no more allowed by 
 the Coming Man than free trade in poisons ; the 
 man who makes a pistol or dagger will be 
 regarded as an " accomplice of murder; and one 
 who teaches people to worship a vindictive god, 
 or terrifies them with a superstition abput. hell-fire, 
 or instructs the young that they need no virtues or 
 good works, for salvation — these will be regarded 
 as the discredited priests now called Fortune- 
 tellers are regarded. Not that they will be dealt 
 with as we now deal with Fortune-tellers, or with 
 the Peculiar People whom the Laws punish for obey- 
 ing the legally established Bible. The Law will 
 take care not. to proclaim as the command of Qod 
 on Sunday what it has to punish on Monday. Fine 
 as the instruments of science, will be the perfected 
 methods by which Law, liberated from rude 
 antiquity, will meet and deal with every shade and 
 variety of human tendency and error. , Detached 
 from tradition, concentrated on actual and human 
 interests, regenerated Law will instruct every 
 
 ~ K 2 , , 
 
130 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 thild born into the world in -the worship of LoX^e, 
 the hatred of injustice. The remorseless 
 necessities qf social self-preservation are writing 
 the laws of the future on tables that will not be 
 broken ; they will be allied with science as old 
 laws were with superstition ; and, knowing how 
 to conquer evil with good, ignorance with wisdom, 
 they will cultivate a society in which tares need 
 not be hated or burned, because tares cannot 
 grow in any world made by man. 
 
THE PALACE OF DELIGHT. 
 
THE PALACE OF DELIGHT. 
 
 "^S^sm 
 
 1 
 
 N the Heimskringla it is related that in 
 the r^igri of King Freyr and his Queen 
 Gerder, the Swedes enjoyed a Golden 
 Age. Freyr' and Gerder received, 
 taxes froni the people only to give all back 
 again . in benefits, and devoted their lands and 
 wealth to the welfare and happiness of their 
 subjects. The result was that generosity became 
 the custom of the great and powerful. There was 
 no war. Dishonesty was unknown : a gem left on 
 the highway would remain untouched. The time 
 was afterwards called the great Erode Peace. 
 Another characteristic of this great Erode Peace 
 was, that the gods were forgotten. All except 
 Freya, the goddess of Beauty, after whom the sixth 
 day of our week is named. Instead of celestial 
 deities, the people worshipped Ereyr and his Qiieen 
 
134 , Farewell Discourses. 
 
 who did so much for them. But Gerder died, and at 
 last Freyr died. His ministers, fearing the effect of 
 the event on the people, concealed the king's death 
 for a long time : they placed Freyr's body in a 
 mound, with apertures into which they shoved the 
 still regularly paid taxes. But at last it became 
 known that Freyr was dead. Then the Swedes 
 called him the god' of this world.. They would 
 not burn his remains, but preserved them, in belief 
 that the very body of Freyr would bring Sweden 
 good seasons, prosperity and happiness. But 
 Freyr's remains did not work the charm of Freyr's 
 self, arid of his dead Queen. The people offered 
 sacrifices to the remains, freely giving their cattle 
 and their means to him who had given them so 
 much. But they only made themselves poorer;- 
 they brought not back the happy time. They 
 built great temples, coined gold, plundered each 
 other and other countries to pay for the temples ; 
 but ever farther they passed away from the Frode 
 Peace. Freyr's descendants, reigning on the 
 prestige of his goodness, were selfish and drunken. 
 Thus the remains of the best of kings, being 
 worshipped, undid all the good he had done while 
 living. The worship of Freyr- became a curse to 
 his beloved people. 
 
The Palace of Delight. 135 
 
 With changed names, this Norse SSga might 
 be a chronicle of our own time. We too are 
 worshipping the remains of a good king. There 
 was one who went about doing good ; whose great- 
 ness, devotion, wisdom, made the people forget their 
 gods ; Jove was forgotten, and Jahv6, and Apollo ; 
 and men worshipped that man as the god of this 
 earth. When he died his ministers would not 
 admit it ; they pretended- he was, still alive. And 
 when it became known that he was dead, they 
 worshipped his remains — his crucified body. They 
 gave their all to the dead Christ, but there was no 
 return. Cathedrals rose, bishoprics, empires : each 
 claimed consecration from the dead king ; for them 
 the people parted with their means, their intelli- 
 gence, their health ; but they never brought back 
 the happy era of the, Prince of Peace. 
 
 However, in the course of time these humble 
 worshippers did get a certain happiness. There 
 was fostered a faith that their good king, though 
 dead as a man, was still alive as a god ; that he 
 was dwelling in a: re^lm where the Golden Age was 
 perpetual and would receive them there at death. 
 A beautiful picture of heaven was painted out of the 
 old Golden Age pigments. For ages the people 
 endured sorrow, poverty, pain, — still giving away, 
 
ig6 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 their means of earthly comfort, — sustained by the 
 faith that all these sacrifices and afflictions worked 
 for them a far more exceeding and eternal weight 
 of glory. So long as that faith was perfect, living, 
 real, the pauper had little reason to envy Dives. 
 
 But things, are to us what we believe them to 
 be. To his lowly loving subjects that heavenly 
 king has long ceased to appear. Alas, the good 
 king is dead. His mansions prepared for the poor 
 have faded. The death is perfectly well known 
 to the king's ministers, though they dare not 
 let the people generally know it. They keep 
 the Christian Freyr in a decorated dome ; they 
 receive the taxes for him just as when he was 
 alive. B,ut the fact, long whispered from 
 scholar to scholar, critic to critic, begins now 
 to reach the poor and ignorant. This day, in 
 every city, some assembly of toiling men is 
 gathered to say — ' That good Christ is dead. 
 These churches and chapels are only his funeral 
 mounds where taxes are paid to be enjoyed by 
 ministers who pretend he is alive. Were he alive 
 would he leave us in <5ur poverty and misery'? 
 Were he on the throne of the universe, would he 
 permit millions to suffer on earth? Or, if he 
 means to pay us for earthly loss with heavenly 
 
The Palace of Delight. 137 
 
 gain, would heTiot proclaim that fact, write that hope 
 on the sky, to reassure a faith resting on discredited 
 authority? The age of denial has come and he 
 gives no sign. Be stire he is dead. And, if so, what 
 is left us? If in this world only we have hope we 
 are of all men most miserable, because in this world 
 we have no hope. And if we revive after death in 
 a universe where there is no loving Christ to receive 
 us in heavenly mansions, our case is even more 
 hopeless. We will not even be allowed to rest from 
 our labours, but again be caught up on the crushing 
 wheel of an existence whose cruelty we have already 
 proved.' Deeper every day strike the roots of the 
 Revolutioij, and deep in the heart of it are these 
 misgivings of those whose earthly hope has long 
 gone out. For the most part those chiefly in- 
 volved have not reached their despair by any 
 process of reasoning, nor are they conscious of 
 the feeling that gathers force in them. 
 
 The great change that has come over Christen- 
 dom is due to the decay of faith in Heaven at a 
 moment when the, struggle for existence makes 
 ealrth a hell for millions. It is not a question of 
 immortality. Our. theologians seem to think they 
 are saving men from despair when they show 
 anthropological possibilities that individual con- 
 
138 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 sciousness survives death. They are grievously mis- 
 taken. Unless they can give mankind arguments to 
 prove that there will be a miraculous transformation 
 after death, that a supernatural Saviour exists who 
 will change poverty to wealth, ignorance to wisdom, ' 
 disease to health, vileness, to purity, mourning to joy, 
 their scientific immortality, only adds a, new terror 
 to death. The five millions of Buddhists, who be- 
 lieye in no good God, look upon immortality with 
 dread, and hope only for eternal repose. Theancient 
 Greeks shuddered at their future life, as likely to be 
 worse thanthis. Mere naturalistic views of immor- 
 tality are terribly portrayed by Shakspeare : — 
 
 , "Ay! but to die, and go we know not where ; 
 To lie in cold obstruction and to rot ; 
 This sensible warm motion to become 
 A kneaded clod; and the de4ighted spirit 
 To bathe in fiery floods or to reside 
 In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice ; 
 To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, 
 And blown with restless violence round about 
 The pendant world ; or to be worse than worst 
 Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts 
 Imagine howling J — 'tis too hoirible ! 
 The weariest and most fcathed worldly life, 
 That age, ache, penury and imprisonment 
 ' Can lay on nature, is a paradise 
 To what we fear of death." 
 
The Palace of Delight. 139 
 
 Were death a dreamless sleep, says Hamlet, it 
 were a consummation devoutly to be wished. It 
 was amid such horrors of apprehension that the 
 human heart heard the glad tidings of a divine 
 Saviour, a risen Saviour, who had prepared an 
 abode of bliss for those who gathered to his fold. 
 The deities of natural religion gave no such hope. 
 It was under them that the human ,woes took 
 place. They were not of men, nor concerned 
 about men, save for their offerings. Just as little 
 now can any abstract Theism bring comfort and 
 hope to mankind. Why should a man who under 
 God is born in the slums of London suppose that 
 under God, he might not be born again in the 
 slums of some other planet ? No, a divine man 
 was the only guarantee of any future happiness. 
 A miraculous and miracle-working Christ repre- 
 .sented human hope. That was Christianity when' 
 it was a real power. A mere rationalistic Christ, — 
 a good and wise man teaching moral truths, — that 
 is the mere ghost of the Christ who once com- 
 manded the enthusiasm of mankind. At sound of 
 a trunip he was to bring the dead to life,^ to catch 
 up his believers into glory, to clothe them with 
 light, to fill their once pallid lips with songs of 
 joy, to make their ashes blossom into splendour. 
 
140 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 to set them on thrones ! Take away that vision, 
 and the poor suffering believer relapses back into 
 a mere toiling serf, or drudgie in Jewish Ghettos,-^ 
 looking forward to an eternal serfdom and an 
 eternal Ghetto. 
 
 Now, it is just that vision which has faded. 
 The educated clergy do not uphold it any more. 
 The Catholic Church even shows hardly more 
 than its spectre. Theologians still believe in a 
 God, and in immortality : but the heavenly prince 
 watching over man, and his heavenly Palace of. 
 Deliglit, have faded away. Who is responsible.'' 
 The sceptic ? The heretic ? Nay, he is among 
 the sufferers. Everybody hplds on to a happy 
 faith as long as he can. The revolutions of the 
 p.la-net have not gone on more necessarily than 
 the revolutions of belief. When gods die it is by a 
 natural death. The progress of knowledge is the 
 inevitable attendant of man's adaptation to his 
 world. As Feudalism dies, and feudal castles 
 moulder away, so under the remorseless touches 
 of time has crumbled mart's heavenly Palace of 
 Delight. 
 
 I-t might have been expected that when man's 
 " cloud capp'd towers, and gorgeous palaces, and 
 solemn temples," had faded, his whole world would 
 
The Palace of Delight. 141 
 
 have dissolved and left not a rack behind. Such 
 is not the case. Mankind have not quite sunk 
 back into despair. That may come, but it has not 
 come yet. The social upheaval which has follovved 
 the decay of faith — called Nihilism in one place, 
 Communism in another. Socialism; in another, — 
 are phenomena reporting the decline of Christian 
 hopes, but they also show a tremendous effort on 
 the part of the people to try and make up for their 
 lost paradise with a real one on earth. Among 
 them no doubt is a good deal of despair. The 
 ;^ 1 3 7,000,000 annually spent in England for drink, 
 more than half of it by the poor, indicate how 
 many are victims of Giant Despair. But another 
 tale is told by the revolutionary and. socialistic 
 tendencies of the masses of Europe, which give 
 their rulers so much trouble. Such movements 
 ought, on the contrary, to inspire hope. They 
 show that mankind do not mean easily to let go 
 those visions of a happier life which Christianity 
 has so long raised before them. They may 
 .despair of their realisation beyond the, grave, but 
 that only shifts them back to this world and this 
 life. Nor will they be easily defeated. It may 
 cost social and political revolutions, but, we may, 
 rest assured that the agitations of the world will , 
 
142 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 not cease until there, shall shine fair in the sun 
 man's earthly Palace -of Delight. ' That I believe 
 to be a healthy and human hope, the desire of all 
 nations which shall come. Not that it is to come 
 as demagogues say, and their followers fancy. It 
 certainly will not come by giving power to ignor-- 
 ance and rudeness. It will not come by levelling 
 downward. It will come by the conversion of 
 intelligence, religion, and wealth from other- 
 worldly to humane and present purpose. 
 
 The people have great power — irresistible 
 power, ,but it is apt to be destructive if not directed 
 by yvisdom and knowledge. When , the rightful 
 leaders of thought, those who ought to be guides 
 and teachers, hold their peace, the stones cry out. 
 It is a stony voice, a hard, brutal voice, fierce and 
 revolutionary. Nevertheless, it is a voice that 
 makes itself heard ; it tells of a pain that must be 
 cured, a need that must be rn^et. See that crowd 
 in the wilderness, from all the region around 
 Jordan. They gather around a wild, half-clad 
 dervish, who baptises them in a river, and' preaches 
 in a ferocious way, declaring the established, 
 religion, the priests, the authorities, to be a 
 generation of vipers, announcing that he mean^ to 
 lay an axe at the root of the whole social tree and 
 
The Palace of Delight. 143 
 
 cut it down. But now a voice is heard — make 
 way! Lo, there steps forward a young scholar 
 from the College of Jerusalem, a youth of 
 ancient lineage, an orator able to speak as never 
 man spake! Does he come to scoff at this rude 
 Salvation Army of the desert dervish ? Nay, he 
 says, to the half-clad fanatic, ' Baptise me ! I 
 take your side. I too will declare war against 
 these hypocrisies, wrongs, falsities ! ' John is on 
 his knees in an instant, .declares he is unworthy to 
 tie his noble convert's shoes, cries but, 'Nay, 
 baptise me ! ' But the learned youth connives 
 with no superstition or fanaticism. He baptises 
 nobody. He teaches the people the wisdom of all 
 the Past ; he turns them to the true ideal ; he bids 
 them throw aside their Jewish prejudices, take the 
 Roman by the hand, accept the Greek, work for 
 to-day and for all humanity. 
 
 Whenever a happy and true change is effected 
 in the world, that scene is re-enacted. It does not 
 indeed require a descendant of kings, a descen- 
 dant of David and Solomon, but it requires the 
 man who brings the wisdom and the fervour of 
 every thinker and poet ; it requires the men of 
 genius, knowledge and refinement, who are able 
 to abandon the interests of self and class, sell all 
 
144 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 they have for the poor, and take their stand beside 
 the cause of humanity in its lowliness and weak- 
 ness. Such are called the Saviours of mankind. 
 
 Now let us turn to our own time and country. 
 I am not inclined to take a pessimistic view of our 
 condition. The primary need of a population is 
 food, and this country is fed. So far as bread and 
 meat are concerned this nation is communistic. 
 Any man, woman, or child who to-day has not 
 bread and meat to support life may go and demand 
 it as a right of the officer appointed ' to give it, 
 withput payment. When Louise Michel, the 
 French communist, lately visited this country, she 
 returned to Paris and said there was no use in 
 agitating socialism in England, because it is 
 already so socialistic. The English poor laws 
 and system of out^doo;- relief' are more socialistic 
 than those of any country in the world. They 
 were never demanded by the masses, they were 
 passed by the political economists. Again,, so far as, 
 regards sa:nitary matters, no nation has done more 
 for health. The daily food of the cities is tested, 
 the water is watched, the drainage is fairly attended 
 to ; the death-rate of London is so low as to be 
 the envy and wonder of all cities. That was 
 never demanded by the masses ; it is the work of 
 
The Palace of Delight. 145 
 
 our men of science. The great physical evil of 
 the country is the overcrowding of cities and of 
 houses. From that comes much disease and much 
 immorality. And itself comes chiefly from over- 
 population of the country, combined with anti- 
 quated land-laws which prevent free and full tillage 
 of the soil by the people. Dr. Martineau has bravely 
 warned the country that unless the increase of 
 pppulatioh were checked we coiild only look 
 forward to becoming another China, with a riot of 
 infanticide and. suicide. So long as the preserva- 
 tion of game and propagation of paupers are 
 regarded as sacred principles of Christianity there 
 is little prospect of dealing directly with that class 
 of evils. But indirectly they are * dealt with, 
 powerfully too, by all the agencies which tend to 
 educate the people. For we are educating the 
 pepple. They did not clamour for it ; a large . 
 portion, of the masses have even to be compelled 
 into education. It was the demand of the upper 
 classes that their coming master, the democracy, 
 should be educated. Educated people never 
 multiply like paupers. Culture subjects sensuality 
 to prudence. Therefore, notwithstanding all the 
 poverty and suffering arqund us, the merely 
 material' progress of the country, if not quite 
 
 • L'2 
 
146 Farewell Discpurses, 
 
 satisfactory, is fair. Those of us who remember- 
 the London of twenty years ago — the Seven 
 , Dials, the St. Giles, St. George's, and Field Lane 
 of that period, know very well that there has been 
 vast improvement in the material environment of 
 the masses. 
 
 Yet this external improvement fails of contri- 
 buting much to the great object of life— happitiess. 
 You cannot add to the happiness of a man merely 
 by adding education. If you could add a human 
 brain to a dog you would only increase his misery 
 at finding himself- in a kennel. If you cannot 
 relieve a spiritual hunger it is only cruel to make 
 it conscious of itself It is probable that, for the 
 time being, our public schools are intensifying the 
 unhappiness of the poor by making them realise 
 their poverty. Their, coarseness is exposed under 
 the eyes of their better-taught children, who in 
 turn chafe at their environment. The old happi- 
 ness of feeling near and dear to Christ, which 
 exalted the humble and made wise the simple — ' 
 that is largely gone. Nothing has come to replace 
 it. In his improved condition the working man, 
 the poor man, is unhappy. Let it be clearly under- 
 .stood that man can have no higher aim than 
 happiness. It is only mental confusion to suppose 
 
The Palace of Delight. 147 
 
 that man ought not to regard happiness as his 
 chief end. Man may seek happiness i,n high 
 things or low things, in heaven or earth, in unsel- 
 fishness or selfishness, in thought or in alcohol — 
 he is sure to seek it. No other motive of human 
 . conduct has ever been present even in self-mortifi- 
 cation and self-sacrifice. Whether in the service 
 of God or of Man we are all set by secret and 
 inviolable springs to the search for happiness. 
 The aim of morality is to induce man to seek his 
 happiness in high and pure and large ways, 
 harmonious with his own complete well-being, and 
 with the wellj-being of others. It used to consist 
 in seeing after the well-being of God, but it has 
 gradually tended earthward and manward. But 
 unhappily it finds so many millions fettered to the 
 ever-pressing necessity of preserving their bare 
 lives, from day to day, that ideas of happiness are 
 apt to be cast in that narrow and selfish mould. 
 Selfishness and unselfishness both seek happiness, 
 but selfishness seeks it in personal pleasure apart 
 from others ; unselfishness seeks it in promoting 
 the happiness of others. Selfishness is the survival 
 of the brute in man. The utterly selfish man 
 lives amid society as in a jungle. He seek§ his 
 prey. He leaps on his victim with blind ferocity 
 
148 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 if he be ignorant, with clever dexterity if he be. 
 educated. 
 
 What is to bind that animal passion ? What is 
 to draw that fierce creature out of himself ? The 
 fear of hell, the hope of heaven, used to do it. 
 But these niotives have become weak in all — in 
 the majority have vanished altogether. How 
 many men in this metropolis are prevented from 
 self-indulgence by fear of the devil, or by belief 
 that they will be paid a premium for every pleasure 
 given up ? Our average rough fears neither God 
 nor devil. The old, spell has lost its cha;rm. We 
 need a new spell. I am aware that this is not the 
 Mansion House theory.. Last winter a meeting 
 was held at the Mansion House to promote an 
 East End Recreation Scheme. Professor Huxley 
 and Mr. Goschen spoke with impressiveness on 
 the need of the masses for more amusement.,, 
 Professor Huxley declared it more important than, 
 improved lodgings or drainage. Mr. Goschein 
 expressed his fear that "intemperance and other 
 vices were in great part due' to the intolerable 
 dulness of the lives of those who had no means 
 of rational amusement." What the Lord Mayor 
 said I have not seen reported, beyond the inti- 
 mation that he expressed sympathy with the 
 
The Palace bf Delight. 149 
 
 scheme ; but 'the same evening his lordship 
 presided at a City Missionary Meeting, at whicli 
 he said that the only real remedy for London 
 wretchedness was the Gospel. In nine cases out 
 . of ten, he remarked, people ate wretched only 
 because they have done , wrong. The primary 
 thing, he urged, is to get men of God to carry the 
 word of God into the houses of the people. No 
 doubt the Lord 'Mayor spoke from his heart. He 
 is one of those who have found godliness profitable. 
 He dwells in a Palace of Delight, But there are 
 multitudes who hkve no house, much less a 
 Mansion House, to live in. A thousand years df 
 'Gospel preaching has left them paupers. in heart, 
 mind, body. Therefore they do not believe that 
 Gospel any more. Christianity was never meant 
 to save mankind from the sufferings of this world, 
 by which our masses are afflicted,' rather it taught 
 men to endure these earthly griefs and rejoice in 
 them. Christianity never promised temporal and 
 social culture and happiness to the human race. 
 Christians are indeed doing, great and charitable 
 work for the poor, but they have not yet nianaged 
 to utilise institutions dedicated to the jealous deity 
 oif Judea for the people of England, or to turn 
 the old God's-spell into a spell that' will charm 
 
150 , Farewell Discourses. 
 
 away the wolf at the door of Poverty, or the 
 more cruel Despair haunting the hearts on their 
 cross, which .find their God has forsaken them. 
 In a sense the Lord Mayor was right : a God's- 
 spell is needed, glad tidings are needed. Ther^ 
 is wanted to charm and enthrall the animal whose 
 creed-chains are broken some enchantment that ' 
 wiirput grief to sleep, bring oblivion of haunting 
 cares, rg,ise from their graves all gentle memories, 
 and make the passing moment pure and sweet. 
 Our gentle Shakspeare who used to work miracles - 
 in this ileighbourhood — ^the only rea.1 miracles, 
 those of art^ — showed us how ancient spells can be 
 renewed. 
 
 " Orpheus with his lute made trees, 
 And the mountain-tops that freeze, 
 
 Bow themselves when he did sing : 
 To his music, plants and flowers 
 Ever sprang ; as sun and showers 
 
 There had made a lasting spring. 
 
 Everything that heard him play. 
 Even the billows of the sea, 
 
 Hung their heads and then lay by. 
 In sweet music is such art, 
 ' Killing care and grief of heart 
 
 Fall asleep, or hearing, die." 
 
 Every evening such strains as those might be 
 
The Palace of Delight. 151 
 
 heard in Westminster Abbey, in St. Paul's, in 
 many churches ; and if they were we might pre- 
 sently have" to remember that other fable, of fair 
 Thebes whose hundred-gated walls rose to the 
 sound of music. Were even church edifices per- 
 fectly utilised for prorhoting purer pleasures and 
 refined tastes among the populace, a new London 
 would rise around us ; it would soon be all a Palace 
 of Delight. Already we have palaces of Art, in our 
 Galleries, Museums, Theatres, though these are 
 closed to those' who most need them by being 
 closed on Sunday. Also we have palaces of 
 Delight, such delight as it is. That is, we have gin 
 palaces. The gin palace has to be reckoned with. 
 It has undeniable advantages. In the first place it 
 is open on Sunday. Its splendours alone illumine 
 the Sunday glooms of the winter night, and invite 
 the poor wayfarer to partake a cheap draught of 
 Lethe. Let no man dare to close that palace on 
 Sunday until he has the humanity to throw open 
 on the same day the real Palace of Delight, that 
 which the ages have built in response to human 
 need-^the Theatre. The test of a high social 
 civilization is the Sunday Theatre. All other 
 efforts to give the people joy are but makeshifts. 
 By all means let us make the most of these. Our 
 
152 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 civilization can do nothing without propitiating the 
 Pentateuch, ahd for a long time yet we shall repair 
 to Moses to ask what we may do to be saved 
 from our troubles in England. But we must do 
 our best, and our true art will be to advance on the 
 lines of human evolution. Institutions represent^ 
 wants. They are to- be changed to suit new wants. 
 Of what use are London churches' during the 
 week "i Let them be , utilised for music, lectures, 
 discussions for the people. Theatres are multi- 
 plied, but there are not enough yet, and they are not 
 cheap enough. Taxes ought to be removed from 
 ^theatres and stage-plays. Let the tax on d,elight 
 follow the tax on light. No doubt much will 
 be done when rich men give their wealth 
 religiously, that is, for this world only. At present 
 the great need is to remove obstructions. Take, 
 away Sabbath Laws and the palace of Art becomes 
 a palace of Delight. Take away the tax on beauty 
 and beauty will diffuse itself. 
 The poet said — 
 
 " lie who feeds men serveth few, 
 But he serves all who dares be true." 
 
 It is a dismal thing to find liberal men giving 
 their imoney in conventional " Ways — to hospitals 
 and so forth. Let them give their money like 
 
The Palace of Delight. 153 
 
 water to take away the obstructions to human 
 development and happiness. A fortune given to 
 unlock the Museum on ' Sunday would be worth a 
 thousand given to hospitals. A novel like Walter 
 Besant's "All Sorts and Conditions of Men," is a 
 better gift to Condon than that of George ' 
 Peabody. It is a blow straight at the Philistine 
 and the Pharisee, who are wasting millions of 
 money in sending Jewish literature to distant 
 savages, while a savage race is growing ' at 
 their own doors. We hear of the Bitter Cry, 
 but the bitterest cries are unheard or unheeded. 
 The; Salvation Army is a cry — a cry for Sunday 
 Minstrels, for, some amusement not alcoholic, 
 consistent with piety. The Skeleton Army which 
 pursues it is a cry still ,more bitter, a cry against 
 the treason of those sanctified roughs fo the feud 
 of their order with Pietism. 'Tis the hungry but 
 free wolfs rage against the well*fed hound with 
 his collar. Cries ? There were enough in 
 Milton's day for his fine ear to hear them above 
 all the cant and noise of Puritanism, and it is he 
 that has left us the bravest plea for the Sunday 
 Theatre. They have grown more numerous and 
 bitter in our own time, but the fine^ ears are 
 wanting. The doves have found their protecting 
 
 * 
 
154 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 Princess, and the lambs a sympathetic Queen, 
 but apparently no royal heart has yet been 
 moved by the sorrows of a people starving for 
 Beauty. 
 
 Yet are there, gracious rainbows announcing 
 that the old deluge of Hebraism and Puritanism 
 is subsiding. Leaf after leaf the beautiful world 
 is returning : re^ligious services are becoming 
 musical, out-of-door festivals appear, and the 
 Church has united with the Stage to form a Guild, 
 Many signs declare that the kingdom of Man is 
 at hand. Stand for it, O my friends, and work 
 for it ; give all you can and' do all you can to wear 
 away the miserable superstitions which impede 
 the culture, happiness and refinement of the 
 masses. Whatever may be their destiny in some 
 pther world, in this their means of grace are 
 science and art, their only heaven the higher 
 world these reveal and , interpret. Let there, 
 remain one church in London, at any rate, where 
 to satisfy the soul of the hungiry with truth and 
 beauty is an object of religioiis concert and 
 enthusiasm. 
 
APOLOGIA. 
 
APOLOGIA. 
 
 (July 27, 1S84.) • 
 
 UST one- third of a century has passed 
 since I started out to save souls. I 
 had been studying Law, but what hid 
 I to do with. Blackstone and Coke 
 when all around me were souls blindly plunging 
 into hell ? I laid down my law-books, became a 
 Methodist itinerant at nineteen, mounted a horse, 
 and went fpiith into the high ways, and by-ways of 
 Maryland, warning people of the wrath to come, 
 and preaching the gospel of salvation by the 
 blood of Christ. Methodism has been rightly 
 called "Christianity in earnest." But a thing 
 heeds to be very true if one takes it terribly to 
 heart. The theological doctrines of Methodism 
 are substantially those of the Church of England. 
 The tendency in the Church was to: shelve them 
 for Sunday use, to gloze them over, to adapt them 
 
158 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 to worldliness, to explain them away. But 
 Meithodism took them seriously, accepted those 
 dogmas in all their awful import as the revelatioi^.; 
 of God. If they were true, they were tremendousf- 
 truths, they palled the universe with Jehovah's 
 wrath, they revealed niillions perishing in eternal/ 
 torments. For more than a year I' did my part 
 towards terrifying people ; and I can now see that 
 dead self of mine, dressed in mourning, going ; 
 about certain villages and homes in Maryland, 
 bearing a blight for all things glad and beaiitiful. 
 The smilei^ of children disappeared as I passed, 
 the dances of young hearts stopped at my 
 approach. Flowers must have bloomed there, 
 birds niust have sang there, but I never saw them, 
 never heard them— not for a long time. But my 
 way of pressing every doctrine, and everything in 
 the Bible, to a realistic extreme distressed my 
 hearers. I preached to ten different congrega- 
 tions — preached every day, and twice or thrice on 
 Sundays- — and some complained to the Presiding 
 Elder that I mystified and alarmed them by 
 bringing out everything in the Bible too plainly. 
 I was advised to be more discreet. It dawned 
 upon me that it was necessary to take God's word 
 under wise supervision,^ to correct its tendency 
 
Apologia. 1 59 
 
 towards plain-spokenness. The first chill fell on 
 my ardour. I was yet in my teens, and very 
 crude, but old enough to feel the inconsistency of 
 becoming a critic of God's revelation. 
 
 However, soon I had a revelation of my own. 
 There was a settlement of Hicksites— ^a variety of 
 Quakers not known in this countty— through 
 which I often had to pass. It was a beautiful 
 settlement ; mile after mile of pretty homes, each 
 in its smiling field, nowhere a weed or bramble, 
 and everywhere well-dressed negroes working 
 along with the farmers. It was in strong contrast 
 with any place I had seen in the South, almost to 
 be described as a oasis in that poorly cultivated 
 Region. When I admired, my Methodist people 
 shook their heads ajid said, " They are all infidels 
 over there. One of their preachers said the 
 blood of Christ could no more save men than the 
 blood of a bullock." I also found that those 
 Hicksites had a bad name among politicians for 
 ■something worse: they were 6pposed to slavery. 
 Those negroes I saw working in their fields were 
 free — they were paid for their labour. Because 
 the negro could smile there, the fields also smiled. 
 From that oasis of freedom I passed again and 
 again into the land of bondage, and repassed, 
 
 M 
 
i6o Farewell Discourses. 
 
 and my eyes were opened to the gf eait wrong of 
 my native country. As I rode my lonely circuit 
 I saw, fof the first time with human recognition, 
 slaves at their drudgery — men, women, children, 
 toiling in ignorance and hopelessness, never know-,; 
 ing in any hour but that husband, wife, or child, 
 might be sold at auction, to be no more seen. 
 
 I had started out from home to save souls from 
 damnation : now here were the danined' under my 
 eye6. They werfe fettered by some who helped to 
 support me, by those who laboured for the salvation 
 of souls from God's wrath, by people holding in 
 horror the unbelief of Hicksites who paid work- 
 men their wages, had good schoojs and happy 
 homes, but did not believe in "the Trinity. My 
 orthodoxy caught fire : it was consumed by a great 
 cause. The hope of seeing slavery lifted from 
 the land, and the beauty of that oasis of free 
 culture spread through my beloved South, rose 
 within me, filled my horizon, until the old heaven 
 of faith was forgotten, Jerusalem receded into 
 antiquity, the dogmas became dry bones. I had 
 not consciously rejected the old theology, but it 
 got outside me. 
 
 However, I was not to be rid of the, past so 
 easily. My new cause cast a black shadow. On 
 
Apologia. i6i 
 
 my long rounds a huge phantom was sure to meet 
 me with warning that if I parted, with my 
 orthodoxy it would cost me every , friend, every 
 relative, and if I added to it disloyalty to slavery, 
 the South would banish me, if not worse. This 
 phantom filled me with fear for some months, and 
 I went about preaching, with an effort to satisfy 
 my conscience by infusing a little rationalism or 
 philanthropy into my sermons. 
 
 Once after I had met my formidable phantom 
 an angel came. It was Emerson — a little book 
 of his which had found its way into my hands. It 
 came to me when I was low, enough — sick at 
 heart, fearful, without health or courage. As the 
 hart pants after the water-brooks, so had I longed 
 for this living water, this fountain from the pure 
 soul of a saviour sent to my own need. That 
 book I read on horseback : I read it along lanes, 
 amid forests once darkened with divine wrath, 
 and now for • the first time saw the ftewers 
 blooming, heard the birds sing — the black veil 
 was removed from the fair_ face of nature. I was 
 strong again. Wlien the phantom pame once 
 more I wrestled with him. I wrestled and 
 prevailed ; withdrew from the Methodist Church, 
 declared my heresy, affirmed my opposition to 
 
 M 2 
 
1 62 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 slavery, and theft found that the phantofti could 
 not crush me. He could only lame me. That 
 he did. I have never quite recovered from the 
 wrestle with' orthodoxy. The loss of early loves 
 and friendships, exile to a life of poverty among 
 strangers, the critical years of youth — each hour a 
 lost opportunity — wasted on dogmas, are serious 
 injuries, however they may be- mitigated or 
 whatever the compensations. My knowledge has 
 always lacked those years given to' struggle '■ 
 instead of study, and in various ways the excessive 
 pietism of my early life has been avenged too 
 sharply. For I was brought up half in college 
 and half in prayer-meeting. My usual Sunday 
 through boyhood was Sunday School, two or three 
 sermons, and a prayer-meeting to close with ; and i 
 this while during the week I was studying Greek 
 and Latin beyond measure. , Six days did I 
 labour, but on the seventh toiled on a treadmill 
 of seA^ices ; and to this day it gives me a keen 
 delight to see anybody breaking the Sabbath, 
 especially if it is with games and amusements.' 
 My secret hope concerning these early losses of 
 mine is, that they may have saved some young 
 people from the like — young people whose 
 parents may have listened to me. I have a 
 
Apologia. 1 63 
 
 brother who fought bravely through a four years' 
 war, and now he will not let his children kill a 
 ijiosquito. I suppose I am like him in my horror 
 of all that I know can kill the happiness of 
 youth, or that can chill the affections of life. 
 Others may dislike dogmas because they are 
 erroneous, I dislike only the dogmas that freeze 
 hearts against eadh other. My rejection of 
 Christianity is not the result of criticism, but 
 because I know that, as it has steeped the earth m 
 blood, so this day it can make loving hearts turn 
 to stone against, those to whom they owe love, if 
 these do not share their dogma. The soul of 
 theology i§ hatred, and there is no demon that 
 can produce so much anguish as hatred. This is 
 my experience. I have lost many sweet 
 intimacies, hive suffered years of solitude, all 
 because I could not agree with the metaphysics of 
 preachers who happened to have in their keeping 
 the consciences of my early companions. Happily 
 there .are ties too strong and sacred 'for even 
 Jahv6 to' break. In my Virginian home Love 
 remained, though for a time draped as for one 
 dead ; and one heart even believed in me, I , 
 suspect at the cost of her strict orthodoxy. But 
 .such inviplable ties are few. As a rule it is 
 
164 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 nearly impossible for a pious soul to love anybody 
 its God is believed to hate. . They can love the 
 supposed prodigal so long as they hope for his 
 conversion, and love him through immoralities, 
 but when they find that he wiH never believe their 
 doctrines they deliver him over to God's wrath 
 with cynical hardness. Of course, from their 
 point of view, all- that is logical and' natural. 
 This life seems to them - such a mere point com- 
 pared with the' ages of eternity that its happiness 
 is nothing, its human affections little, compared 
 with the vast future ; but already this earthly 
 happiness seemed to me vast,- the joys of youth 
 wondrous, the blooms of afifefction divine. The 
 little I had of healthy human pleasures and social . 
 gaieties in early youth has made me rate them so 
 highly that th^ pursuit and culture of the joy and 
 sweetness and humanities of life have become to 
 me as a religion. It may be that in my ministry 
 I have not made enough of the stern duties and; 
 sacrifices of life ; if so, it is because Love has 
 seemed to me the fulfilling of the Law. Love 
 carries all duties and sacrifices-^making its 
 labours so light that they cease to be sacrifices. 
 
 For a time I left behind me all the region' of 
 dogmatic discord. I joined the Unitarian body, 
 
Apologia. 1 6'5 
 
 and went to prepare myself for the new ministry 
 in their Divinity School, connected with Harvard 
 University. There all was congenial study and 
 liberality. There were struggles going on in 
 some cities between the old Unitarianism and the 
 new, but these were at a distajite, ; here in the 
 centre of Unitarian culture such disputes were 
 known only as agreeable interchanges of opinion. 
 In addition to that of our worthy and libe1"al pro-^ 
 fessors, I enjoyed the friendship of Emerson, of 
 Parker, of Longfellow, of Garrison and Phillips, 
 and other great men. Hiving declined proffered 
 ,paternal assistance in a course disapproved at' 
 home, I was very poor, yet my life at Harvard 
 University was happy. When I left it to take 
 charge of the Unitarian Church at Washington I 
 found that, despite the general liberalism of the 
 congregation. Slavery was still too potent at 
 the Capital to tolerate my antislavery discourses, 
 and after a few agitated years there I was com- ■ 
 pelled to leave. Then I was chosen Minister of 
 the Unitarian Church at Cincinnati, and there 
 ' had some happy years. But at length my disbelief 
 of miracles brbught on a struggle. The Unitarians 
 who believed in miracles seemed, to hate me 
 more than the orthodox did' when 1 left them. 
 
1 66 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 They also expected me to be more puritanical in 
 my ways than was possible just after I had risen 
 from the . grave of Methodism into a glad world 
 never seen before. Although the Cincinnati 
 -congregation stood by me against the opposition, 
 I foresaw that I would soon have to settle up my 
 accounts with Unitarianism. 
 
 Then the war broke out, and we threw our- 
 selves into the antislavery cause — for I now had a 
 helper at my side. There was a powerful interest 
 which aimed to secure slavery from the conflagra- 
 tion it had kindled. Every antislavery man and ' 
 woman had to enlist for that moral struggle. I 
 was then, as now, radically opposed to war, but 
 not to wresting a great compensation from it. , 
 The antislavery men did not care in the least 
 about my theological opinions. While I was 
 editing a paper in Boston, and writing books, and 
 lecturing, all against slavery, it seemed to some 
 friends that T might influence opinion in England 
 which was going wrong on the subject, Palmerston 
 and Gladstone being against us. It was thought 
 the English might listen to an • antislavery 
 Southerner. I came over, and spoke and wrpte a 
 good deal While so engaged I was glad to 
 preach again, especially as I was invite^i tg a 
 
Apologia. 167 
 
 chapel here far advanced beyond care for 
 Unitarian or other dogmas. 
 
 That chapel is the one in which we meet to-day. 
 I began preaching here in September, 1863, so that 
 it is now just twenty-one years since I became 
 your Minister. The Unitarians of London never 
 liked us. During those years I have been treated 
 in a friendly way by some Unitarian Societies in 
 the provinces — Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, 
 Aberdeen, Newcastle, Preston, Bradford, Bath, 
 Godalming, Liverpool, Nottingham, Huddersfield, 
 Croydon — but have received the cold shoulder 
 from the Unitarian Association. London being 
 its denominational centre our penalties had to be 
 suffered here. I do not complain of the inhospit- 
 able treatment received from that quarter, for I 
 long ago recognised the compulsory cause of it. 
 I know that chill theological aura of old : the 
 breath of pious hatred is just the same, whether 
 it comes from orthodox or unorthodox people. 
 Unitarianism, despite the generous hearts it 
 includes, taught me, as it had taught my teachers 
 in America, Emerson and Parker, that wherever 
 even the ghost of a shibboleth is retained, the 
 old intolerance and unkindness will lurk in it. 
 If the Christian name be the only shred of a 
 
1 68 Farewell Discoiirses. 
 
 creed left, then men will say all manner of things 
 against you for Christ's sake, if you do not agree 
 to that shred. 
 
 - Freedom of thought had gradually taken the 
 place in my religion which freedom of the slave ■ 
 occupied before it was secured. Freedom of 
 thought does not. mean that a man can think aind 
 speak his honest thought without physical harm ; 
 it means that his thought atid speech can be free 
 without bringing upon him ill-will, unkindness, 
 alienation of what is necessary to his or her 
 happiness. It means that every honest thinker 
 shall be the reverse of discouraged — ^shall be 
 encouraged. The leading Unitarians shewed me 
 that, whatever might be the case' with individuals, 
 no organisation bearing the Christian name could 
 treat generously a man who did not accept that 
 name. They might do it, if he were very far off, 
 or after he was dead, but not while he was living 
 and preaching atnong them. A few years ago the 
 Unitarian body authorised the circulation of 
 Theodore Parker's works. But when I settled here 
 my views were not more heretical than Theodore 
 Parker's. If I have gone farther it may be partly 
 due to the instructive illiberality with which they 
 treated me for holding views they now circulate. 
 
Apologia. 169 
 
 Well, these are old scores, ,and I gladly 
 leave them. 1 was still hoping for a faith which 
 would work by love, and next looked to Theism , 
 for it. Francis William Newman, one of the best 
 men living, had shewn that Theism, naturally, 
 associated itself with high ideas of justice and 
 equality ; Miss Cobb§, that it harmonised with 
 profound religious sensibility. I saw Theism 
 grow into a promising movement, but I have seen 1 
 its decline, arid we now hear little of it, This, as 
 I think, is not because Atheism has superseded it, 
 but because Theism aspired to make itself a. 
 finality — because it could not takj by the hand 
 with cordiality any one who had doubts concerning 
 divine personality, however religious those doubts,- 
 however earnest his spirit. But no deity can stand 
 being made a fetter on minds that' have thrown off 
 every other fetter. A deity for whom belief is 
 exacted as the test of friendship is by that spirit 
 proved a fiction. A Theist who dislikes an Atheist 
 because he is an Atheist, shows that his Theism 
 doesn't bear .as fine fruit as Atheisrn— that is, if the 
 Atheism be humane and magnanimous. Doctrines 
 can easily be put into plausible words, but by their 
 fruits they are really known. Theism bore few 
 fruits of ^ny kind after it became a quasi-organised 
 
i^o Farewell Discourses. 
 
 movement, and those fraits were every year more 
 sour. 
 
 It became plainer to me by that movement that 
 the virus of theology lurked even in Theism. It 
 seemed to think that what people believe or say 
 about God- is of immense importance to God- 
 The important point was whether such belief could ' 
 enlarge the heart, ennoble the spirit, increase the , 
 happiness of man. That it did not prove, or 
 attempt to prove. Consequently it appeared that 
 Theism was. but a modified belief in the same old 
 deity that had been the source of superstition and 
 intolerance : the advaJice of knowledge had taken 
 away his thunderbolts, and then taken away the 
 keys of heaven which followed them ; but his 
 egotism survived, and his theolpgic spirit ; and if, 
 for not believing and worshipping him, he no 
 longer burnt men, or locked them out of heaven, 
 he was still prepared to lock them out of thejstic 
 hearts, and sit silent while they were deprived of 
 their freedom and their rights. 
 
 Fourteen years ago I had hope in Theism. 
 I then wrote in my book, The Earthward 
 Pilgrimage : — " Simple Theism has but few 
 churches . now ; it is a newly-discovered and as 
 yet unexplored continent, but so was Anierjca a 
 
Apologia. 171 
 
 little while ago. They who, like Plymouth 
 Pilgrims, have settled, in the winter time on its 
 rocky verge, know little as yet of its prairies, 
 savannahs, and eldorados ; but they already see 
 that it is to be the next great home of human 
 hearts and thoughts." But even then- I remem- 
 bered that other hopes as large had been 
 disappointed, and on the next page I wrote : — 
 " That which passes, passes because it is, no longer 
 necessary. The traditional creed passes with the 
 need which formed it. Every fossil in the earth 
 tells its story. It is not necessary. Men are 
 virtuous without it. It no longer implies, self- 
 denial or any divine passion to believe it. The 
 cross has become golden, and may be coined into 
 money. The virtues it once implied gather with 
 the freethinkers- and reformers who will not bow 
 to it. The impulse which separates them from 
 Christendom is the centre of .a new • creation. 
 What that new creation will be we , can, indeed, 
 only imagine; but we know that the spirit which 
 built Chistianity when Judaism fell, which built 
 Protestantism when Romanism crumbled, cannot 
 be crushed under the ruins of any temple." 
 
 Here rise together' from an old phase of faith 
 the hope that Theism is to be the next great home 
 
1 72 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 of the human spirit,, and a contemplation of the 
 possibility th^t it may not prove so, but that a 
 farther shore may appear. To-day I am bound, to 
 say that it is not .the hope but the misgiving 
 that has proved true.. For ;what has happened 
 since ? Theism hieans belief in God, — and since 
 then, the name of God has been legally and 
 politically defined. The nation has been authorita- 
 tively giveii to know what God means. It means 
 a proud monarch,,' for not believing in whom a 
 parent must be deprived, of a child, men must be 
 dra;gged from their fahiiUes and shut up in gaol. 
 Members of Parliament must be deprived of their' 
 seats and constituencies dishonoured, and ladies 
 
 refused admission into seats of learning. No, 
 
 Theism, cannot stand that. No religion can 
 inherit the future which does not bear in it the 
 highest and holiest spirit of our time — its freedom, 
 its justice, its science, its humanity. The name of 
 God has been of late so degraded, it has been so 
 adduced to label public meanness and wrong, that 
 'it can never be utilised for any organization that' 
 shall represent the supreme ideal and aim of a 
 free and civilised people. 
 
 This, you will observe, does not determine 
 anything with regard to the divine existence. ' It 
 
Apologia. 173 
 
 only determines that the conception of a deity 
 represented in our laws, creeds, eustortis, is 
 certainly false. The popular notion of a deity is 
 derived from the laws and theology of our time ; 
 were it higher, the people would not tolferate the 
 sanctioning of injustice with the name of God. 
 ■ Out of such prevailing notions Theism cannot 
 develop a noble idea of God, any mofe than one 
 can carve a fair statue ' out of mud. They who 
 individually have a pure and high conception of 
 divine existence can best promote it for the present 
 by clearing out of laws and institutions the current 
 false and mean ideas of a deity, as one jealous 
 of what, people believe about him, angry at being 
 ridiculed. A god who can be insulted is no god/ 
 at ' all. A god who can be blasphemed is no god 
 at all. People who believe their God ca:n be 
 blasphemed, people who suppose God cares whether 
 men believe in him or not, people who themselves 
 think a Theist morally better than an Atheist, are 
 one and all believing in an idol that .has no more 
 existence than Pluto. So long as this is the kind 
 of god established in the forms of church and 
 state an exact thinker, who wishes to be under- 
 stood, will not proclaim himself a Theist. No 
 doubt it was for this reason that the greatest 
 
174 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 thiiikefs of the country, even some who, in a 
 sense of their own, do believe in a God, would not 
 adopt Theism ; and no new Church could be worth 
 anything that did not draw ta itself the un- 
 churched thought and science of the country as 
 the Salvation Ar'my draws its ignorant enthusiasm. 
 The majority of people say there can be no 
 religion without definite belief in a personal God. 
 The majority, as usual, is wrong. The Confucian 
 religion has no God, Buddhism — the greatest 
 religion in the world^has no God. The notion 
 that a personal God is necessary to religion grows 
 from the same root as that other superstition, 
 that God needs something- at' men's hands— an 
 ignorant notion, as Paul said, at which a God of 
 the universe could only wink. Why does any 
 one demand a personal God .-" To influence him 
 by prayer ? He would be no God if he did not' 
 always do the very best without prompting. To 
 praise him ? He would be no God if he desired 
 praise. Or is a personal God needed that we 
 may believe in a purpose running through evil 
 and sorrow, and working to good ends .? He 
 would be no God who cannot secure good ends 
 without bad means. A man may have to afflict 
 in order to benefit, because' he is finite'; but not 
 
Apologia. 175 
 
 i_j 
 
 an infinite and good power. Religion cannot be 
 detached from moral perfection, and therefore it 
 must be detached from the idea of an omnipotent 
 Personality. Ijlatui'e does not declare a morally 
 perfect Creator. The very object of religion, is 
 to subdue the hardness and redress the evils of 
 nature, which it cannot do while praising the 
 creator of those evils. The believer in a God of 
 revelation does not improve the case, but makes it 
 worse. For the revealed God has all the faults of 
 nature, he is wrathful, vindictive, proud, and it is 
 absurd for religion to try and subdue pride and 
 revenge in a man while worshipping the same in 
 Jahv^. Our excellent friends, the Positivists, have 
 not got out of this vicious circle by deifying (as some 
 seem to do) Humanity ; their brave testimonies 
 against war and every wrong are inconsistent with 
 the worship of Humanity, whose ignorance and 
 brutality cause the wars and the wrongs. 
 
 Nevertheless, Positivism at least looks in the 
 right direction. Not the mass of humanity but 
 the excellence of humanity ; not the vast pre- 
 datory multitude but the best that is in each, the 
 supreme virtue and wisdom and beauty potential 
 in all, flowering in the Sages and Saviours of the 
 race, raise in man the sentiment of religion and 
 
 ■'\ ' ■ N 
 
176 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 direct its aim. For this reason the religions 
 devoted to invisible gods — theistic religions — - 
 have always passed away,j or else merged them- 
 selves in devotion to human personalities— such 
 as Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Wesley. Theism 
 is a phase of transition. It is a withdrawal of 
 confidence from the . .established divinity, the 
 purification of the human mind, as Emerson 
 called it ; but religion will develop a new practical 
 and actual incarnatipn of its spirit in movements 
 corresponding to those which in the far past bear 
 imposing individual names. BuddhsL, Zoroaster, 
 Christ were men, but much more were they the 
 figure-heads of great movements, movements of 
 human religion detaching itself from obsolete and 
 obstructive forms. The influence of Goethe, of 
 Comte, of Carlyle and of Emerson in their several 
 countries, shows that in our own democratic age 
 great men may be identified with vast movements 
 of thought, especially in cultured communities. 
 In New England, when Christianity surrendered 
 to Slavery, Christ hastened to deliver up his place 
 to Emerson — who took the lowly negro under the 
 wing of his genius — and for a generation no reli- 
 gious and emancipated youth in that region loved 
 Christ as he loved Emerson, Amid all this love 
 
Apologia. , 177 
 
 and enthusiasm Emerson felt that he was not 
 worthy to tie the shoes of the feet for whose 
 appearance on the mountains he was .looking. 
 At length to his lovers also he is becoming a 
 forerunner, a voice that cried in a wilderness "since 
 grown populous. There is fair reason to believe 
 that the next world-prophet will be born in 
 America, and the home of all races be the cradle 
 of a universal religion. 
 
 I once had the hope that the free and humani- 
 tarian Church might be organised in London — ; 
 great London, metropolis of culture, science, and 
 civilised . power ! You will remember the 
 Congress of Liberal Thinkers which sat in this 
 building some years ago, animated by that hope. 
 My experience then led to the conviction that 
 England is destined to achieve a different task 
 and fulfil another ideal altogether. The Past is so 
 strong in the Old World, its institutions are so 
 established, that freethought is largely absorbed in 
 mere rebellion, denial, criticism, and free religion 
 naturally runs to individualism. We of this South 
 Place Society have tried to be hospitable to all 
 liberal movements : leaders of Secularism, 
 Positivism, Theism, Christian Unitarianism, 
 Brahmoism, Hinduism, have preached and spoken 
 
 N 2 
 
178 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 here with perfect freedom. We have seen that 
 they cannot combine. They have as Httle 
 dealings ' with each other as the Jews and 
 Samaritans. Their respective organizations are 
 circles of individuafem' ;' they are held together in 
 their places as if caught in eddies, where they 
 must go round and round, and never mingle in 
 one great flood. And why ? The bed of the 
 flood is already opcupied. It is filled by a 
 national Church, whose learning, resources, and 
 social strength are such that it would overpower 
 and carry away any large rival organization. The 
 Church has a wing more liberal than Unitariani^m 
 more independent than the Independents, and 
 another wing more active than Wesleyanism. 
 It takes the wind out of their sails. They are 
 steadily reduced in social influence and intellectual 
 power. The Church has already a Secularist 
 Bishop arid a rationalist Bishop, and some 
 unitarian clergymen, and the liberal religious 
 teachers who hold out against its absorbing 
 power will always be the thinkers of strong 
 individuality, and the workers they can draw to 
 their side. 
 
 These groups representing religious individual- 
 ism appear to me of paramount importance. Each 
 
Apologia. 179 
 
 has grpwn where humanity needs an organ. I 
 would say this even of Hving sects farthest removed 
 from my own beliefs. There are enough of them. 
 England, as a geologist might figure, is a vast 
 formation of fossil sects and superstitions ; but 
 their successors survive. Amid the cemetery of 
 their dead ancestral sects move this day nearly 
 150 different denominations. Each is declaring 
 some necessary fact or truth, whether it be with 
 articulate voice, or as stones cry out where priests 
 hold their peace. These sects and societies are 
 in one sense scattered fragments, in another they 
 form a vast aggregate of human sentiment and 
 force. They form together a huge incongruous 
 Argus whose hundred and fifty sharp eyes watch 
 the church sleeplessly, and compel its steady 
 adaptation to the by-ways as well as the highways 
 of humanity. 
 
 As one of these societies of individual thinkers — 
 bound together by a common love of certain 
 principles but by no admitted identity of opinion — 
 we may naturally ask ourselves sometimes what 
 has been our degree of success. In the twenty-one 
 years in which we have worked together, we have 
 grown at a fair rate as to numbers, but not so 
 rapidly, because we have aimed at another kind of 
 
i8o Farewell Discourses. 
 
 growth. If we could only have stayed where we 
 began — rkept to our prayers and to some kind of 
 theology— we might have carried with us some 
 worthy people whom we have contributed to other 
 societies. We have not, in this sense, sjpent up 
 to our income, and so we have grown steadily ; 
 but I have had to make severe demands upon this 
 society in the interests of truth, as I conceived it, 
 aiid it has always. respoi;ded bravely at whatever 
 cost to ' popularity, or to size. " These demands 
 have always been painful to me : some of the ache 
 of the old wound of parting with Methodism 
 returned so often as^ I have had to affirm here 
 some fresh conviction that might bring into doubt 
 a hope or a sentiment of my trustful friends, or 
 even drive some from us in . our weaker days. 
 But now that we look back upon it all, it 
 appears to me tha.t we may claim the success 
 of having shewn the entire truthfulness of the 
 principle On which this society was founded. We 
 have proved that religious life and growth' and' 
 fruit are not dependent on any creed or any 
 theology. We have proved that a religious 
 society^ — an influential church — can exist, can. co- 
 operate, can flourish, in absolute freedom, without 
 insisting on doctrines deemed fundamental even 
 
Apologia. . 1 8 1 
 
 by many liberals, and without the prestige of the 
 Christian name. 
 
 That is our success, and it is an essentially 
 religious success. People may attribute it to one 
 thing :or another. One emir;ent preacher said 
 that you filled this place because I talked chiefly 
 of politics. I suspect the very little I have ever 
 said about politics was Just what you would rather 
 have spared. Another person once reported that 
 you came Jiere to listen to popular songs! The 
 explanations of our admitted vitality and pros- 
 perity have been various, but I have ministered 
 to many congregations in my life and do really 
 know something about this matter. We have 
 kept together and grown in harmony and 
 strength by the development of the religious' 
 life ; by which I mea^ the cultivation of a love 
 and reverence for what is morally good,, for 
 rectitude and justice, for the high ideal of life and 
 character, for unselfishness, for the service of 
 jnankind. These things are simple. They require 
 neither genius or learning for their discovery, but 
 by study, by sympathy', by meditation , on them, 
 day and night, these simple principles may become 
 our delight, they may open depths of feeling and 
 joy in ourselves, they may raise in us that most 
 
 ,*• 
 
1 82 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 pure passion which idealises life. Behold these 
 
 sisters of mine around me— these good women 
 
 who have gathered here from year to year, in 
 
 numbers equal to the men ! Be -sure they would 
 
 never come here for politics, or for sensational 
 
 speaking. Women are religious by instinct, and 
 
 they have to train the earliest and tenderest' 
 
 growths of morality and duty in children. When 
 
 men desert the old temples women will still repair 
 
 to them, unless they can find better, arid they are 
 
 right, for spiritual natures can bloom even amid 
 
 ruins where the memories of beautiful souls still 
 
 linger. We owe the presence of these women — 
 
 the earnestness with which they have furthered 
 
 this society, the grace with which they have 
 
 invested it, — to the religious heart that has been 
 
 beating here from the time of your fathers. For 
 
 I did but step in to carry on as well as I could the 
 
 work begun here sixty years ago by the orator 
 
 whom libllowed to the grave — William Johnstone 
 
 Fox. I never heard him preach, but knew him, 
 
 and believe his power lay even more in his 
 
 humanity than in his eloquence. Little 'as I 
 
 could hope to fill his place where others had 
 
 failed, or to revive the chapel which seemed 
 
 about to close, I felt that it was my natural home. 
 
Apologia. 183 
 
 I had travelled the same path as that man ; had 
 begun as an orthodox preacher setting out to save 
 men from hell, and had found the hell to be 
 Slavery as he had found it to tje cruel Corn Laws. 
 To the last his aim was human salvation, and a 
 chapel animated by that spirit was friendly shelter 
 for a Methodist itinerant who had parted with his 
 creed to keep his faith. In 1729 an Oxford 
 student humourously called the Brothers Wesley 
 " Methodists " because they made all their engage- 
 ments square with their religious duties. That is 
 now the name pf the largest Church in America. 
 Method means order adapted to an end. The 
 bones of a body set in a row would be in order, 
 combined in a skeleton they would show method. 
 Methodism was a system perfectly adapted to 
 save men from hell, only the particular hell it 
 dreaded was fictitious. None the less does the 
 longing to save constitute the vital breath of 
 religion, and a man is still a Methodist if he 
 abandon methods that cannot reach the evils of 
 his time for others that can reach them, 
 
 There is a legend that on the flight into Egypt; 
 Mary bore her holy babe on her arm so long that 
 at last her arm failed arid fell at her side ; where- 
 upon another arm, a third, started out from her 
 
184 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 : . 4 ~ 
 
 shoulder to sustain the child. In my own youth 
 parental piety placed in my arms also a holy child : 
 that charge was called the human soul, and I was 
 taught that the highest object of life was to save it 
 from the world, the flesh, the devil, all seeking to 
 destroy it. I bore.it on my Methodist arm until 
 that gave way. It gave way because I learned 
 that the human soul was not in any such danger : 
 the child entrusted to me was humanity, and its 
 destroyer in my region was not Satan but Slavery: 
 Methodism was helpless against Slavery, therefore 
 that arm failed, and another grew out. When the 
 W'eary antislavery struggle ended I saw that my 
 holy burden was still pursued and endangered by 
 superstition, by ignorance, and fear. I haye still 
 that babe in my arms, and shall try and bear it 
 and defend it wherever I go. 
 
 And you also, as a society, have the same high 
 cause, the same holy humanity, to bear, and though 
 to-day one of your arms is giving way, another 
 and a stronger will grow in its" place. So long as 
 the spirit that seeks to save men from every evil 
 remains here, you need not fear who goes : love 
 and truth will put forth new arms to meet new 
 needs ; your heart and your courage will not fail. 
 You can hardly expect a great popular success. 
 
Apologia. . 185 
 
 That kind of success would most likely mean 
 failure in your higher aim. In the political world, 
 in our own time, we have seen radicalism win a 
 suicidal triumph. The men that used to maintain 
 every high human cause, and hold an unsheathed 
 ,sword of justice over every government, have now 
 become the government ; but what have becpme 
 of the standards they once bore so bravely ? 
 The cause of womstn is trampled, and they 
 are silent ; unrighteous wars are waged against 
 the weak, and they are silent ; slavery is sanc- 
 tioned by English authority in Soudan, on this 
 jubilee year of emancipation, arid they are silent. ; 
 honest men are denied their/ rights, are thrown 
 into prison for their opinions, and they are silent. 
 That is a fatal kind of success, and I trust that 
 religious radicalism will never achieve it. It had 
 been a happier triumph for the political reformers 
 t;o preserve their independence and direct the 
 government from without. I cannot but regard a 
 free religious society as the salt of popular religion. 
 It can only preserve its savour by independence. ' 
 So long as you can preserve love of humanity, 
 of human virtues, and religious earnestness, and 
 remain independent of dogmas — so long as you 
 can show moral enthusiasm ,and religious culture 
 
1 86 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 increased by separation from creieds — ^you will 
 exert a powerfuL influence ori the sectarian and 
 ecclesiastical world. More and more will their 
 creeds melt away ; more and more will they buy 
 oil for their lamps where you got ypurs. They 
 will have to retain their hold on young hearts and 
 aspiring minds by larger measures of liberty and 
 charity, until at last the old system will break down. 
 I dp not suppose th^t the Church of England 
 will be disestablished, because I believe it vfill be 
 converted. There are angels hovering around it — - 
 Scieijce, Art, the angel of the World, they are 
 struggling with its dismal creeds, shaming its 
 superstitions, and they will, humanise it. The 
 religious freedom o'f this South Place Society is 
 one of good angels of the Church ; even some 
 clergymen have recognised that we are labouring 
 for their redemption from degrading bonds. And 
 so, in th,e ancient language, to this Angel' of the 
 Church of England, keeping watch and ward at 
 South Place, I w'ould write — LeaVe not your first 
 love! As you were born of spiritual freedom, 
 uphold that cause above every spiritual oppression. 
 Let your light be kept trimmed and burning, that 
 wanderers in the dark may find here shelter and 
 sympathy. Be of one mind Let Christians 
 
Apologia. 187 
 
 pause amid their disputes any_say — See how these 
 untheological people love one another. Let them 
 see also how you love them. If they do not love 
 you it is because they are afraid : they have never 
 been where you are, and tremble at going into 
 what to them is the dark. But we have been 
 where they are ; we have .been orthodox, or our 
 relatives and teachers have been, and we know 
 how much sweetness and charity may abide with 
 orthodoxy. So, speak your truth with the love 
 that never faileth. And let the Angel that has 
 to watch and teach the Church until it be saved 
 from error, be assured that he can never influence 
 where he does not understand, and where he does 
 not sympathise. It is easy to show the literal 
 absurdity of dogmas and superstitions ; not so 
 easy, but much more important, to study their 
 history, to understand them, to comprehend their 
 relation to human development and sentiment; 
 . Every superstition is also a poem. Every dogma 
 is a seed cast from some past flower of faith. The 
 only useful denial of a traditional error is to 
 explain it— to discover the truth it distorts, and 
 restore that truth in more than pristine beauty, 
 Men may meet denial with denial, but they, will 
 not readily smite the face of Truth if her beauty 
 
1 88 Farewell Discourses. 
 
 appear and her voice be low. In the course of my 
 ministry here, which began when I was still young, 
 I have not always observed these principles : 
 they have grown out of my experience ; they have 
 been taught me by my faults and failures and by 
 my little successes ; and I give them to you with 
 all good hope, with my grateful love, and with my 
 farewell. 
 
 WATERLOW AND SONS LIMITED, PRINTERS, LONDON WALL.— GWS-g-84. 
 
Mr. Moncure Conway's Works 
 
 may be obtained by addressing the "Librarian, 
 South Place Chapel, Finsbury," at the following 
 reduced prices : — 
 
 .., d. 
 Demonology and Devil-lore, 2 Vols. . . . . 20 o 
 
 The Sacred Anthology . . . . . . lo o 
 
 , Travels in South Kensington 90 
 
 Emerson at Home and Abroad 80 
 
 The Earthward Pilgrimage 60 
 
 The Wandering Jew 46 
 
 A Necklace of Stories 40 
 
 Idols and Ideals 40 
 
 Republican Superstitions 26 
 
 Lessons for the Day, 2 Vols 6 6 
 
■W.- j{. 
 
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