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 LIBIIARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
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 I UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 

 
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THROUGH ROME ON: 
 
 A MEMOIR 
 
 OF 
 
 CHRISTIAN AND EXTRA- CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 
 
 BY 
 
 / 
 
 KATHAITIEL EAMSAT WATERS. 
 
 />S^&^^ 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 CHARLES P. SOMERBY, 
 
 ijg. Eighth Street. 
 
 1877. 
 
 
The Library 
 OF Congress 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 \1^ 
 
 € 
 
 ^^g^ 
 
 Copyrighted, 18T7, 
 By N. K. Waters. 
 
 C. P. Somerby, 
 
 Electrotyper and Printer, 
 
 139, Eighth-st., N. Y. 
 
THROUGH ROME ON. 
 
 It will be rightly inferred by some readers 
 that this book is indebted for the first part of its 
 title to the very interesting work by Mr. J. M. 
 Capes called '' To Rome and Back," which ap- 
 peared a few years ago in England/ Mr. 
 Capes's title has indeed suggested mine ; though 
 the important differences in our two cases have 
 rendered a change of the first word expedient, 
 and of the last indispensable. 
 
 This Memoir proceeds from two motives. 
 A false position is most painful to me ; and I am 
 especially unwilling to pass away and leave my- 
 self misunderstood on the grave and important 
 subject treated in the following pages. For the 
 other motive : I am impelled by a sense of duty 
 to bear my testimony to what I conceive to be 
 the truth, and thus to answer in my humble way 
 
 1 To Borne and Back. By the Rev. J. M. Capes^ M. A. 
 London : Smith, Elder & Co. 1873. 
 
4: Through Home On. 
 
 to the want wMch I believe many struggling 
 spirits are at this moment feeling for the sym- 
 pathy and help that a fullow-thinker may afford 
 them by such a communication of his own experi- 
 ence. Thus, while writing about myself, I am 
 writing about what concerns others not less than 
 myself: and though but few will read the re- 
 cord for the sake of the writer, many, I hope 
 and believe, will find their own thought devel- 
 oped here with sufficient clearness to lead them 
 to forget or forgive the egotistic form necessi- 
 tated by my task. To the two motives stated, 
 has been joined a feeling as of a duty of media- 
 tion upon me, which keeps me straitened until 
 it is performed, and which I have tried to per- 
 form in the following pages by speaking very 
 carefully and at length of Catholic doctrine and 
 practice as I have learned them by faithful ex- 
 amination and intimate personal experience. 
 
 For the conclusions reached by me and pub- 
 lished now to speak for themselves, I will only 
 add in this place, that they are the fruit of long, 
 diligent and conscientious study ; that they have 
 been entertained by me in private, though only 
 occasionally expressed to others, for the last 
 twenty-five years, in which time they have been 
 subjected to the most convincing tests which a 
 thoughtful experience of life and a solemn con- 
 templation of death have taught me to apply ; 
 
Through Rome On. 5 
 
 and in fine, that tliej satisfy my understanding, 
 cheer my heart, and deserve that I earnestly 
 commend them, as I do, to all who are prepared 
 for them. 
 
 More than thirty-five years ago I began to 
 seek for truth and peace in Religion. It was 
 not under the influence of excited feeling that I 
 came to this undertaking ; but from a deliberate 
 sense of the obligation of mankind to embrace 
 the word and system propounded by the Sover- 
 eign Creator. I had no doubt that there was 
 sucli a Revelation ; and it seemed the most natu- 
 ral thing in the world when I was summoned to 
 its full acceptance, and the most obvious of duties 
 that I should neither refuse nor delay attention 
 to the call. But not being " converted," . in the 
 emotional sense, I did not leap or tumble at once 
 into religious communion ; and not finding my- 
 self a ready-made or hereditary church-member 
 by the grace of circumstances, I w^as not conven- 
 tionally smoothed and ironed into it, as pleasant 
 children are, but had, as I have said, to seek it, 
 not sparing pains in the search, but striving dili- 
 gently to avoid taking a counterfeit for the real- 
 ity ; for, as in Samuel's day, while the word of 
 the Lord was precious, there was no ojpen vis- 
 ion. My search soon showed me that the dog- 
 
6 Through Rome On, 
 
 matic foundations of Protestant Christianitj rest 
 on sand, and brought me to acceptance of the 
 Homan Catholic religion as the embodiment of 
 Divine Hevelation. I embraced this religion 
 without reserve, strove to model myself by its 
 teaching and spirit, and submitted every point 
 of challenge in my mind to the decision of its 
 unquestionable standards. To be a half-way or 
 "liberal" Catholic was, I rejoice to remember, 
 impossible to me. From first to last, nothing 
 was clearer to me than that the liberal principle 
 and the ecclesiastical are in vital antagonism ; 
 and when the former was demonstrated my 
 necessary principle, I gave np the other fairly 
 and squarely forever. After eight years in the 
 belief and practice of Catholicism, I found myself 
 in early manhood arrived by the inevitable work- 
 ing of my intellectual and moral constitution at 
 the rejection of the premise of the Infallible 
 Oracle, on Vv^hich all dogmatic Christians build 
 their systems of faith. From this renunciation 
 of the underlying assumption of all the creeds, 
 my progress was rapid to the views and state 
 of mind set forth in the later pages of this 
 volume. There are points of thought which 
 draw some minds on with load-stone potency, so 
 that the intervening tracts are very quickly tra- 
 versed. "With me, Protestant churchism had no 
 holding power and could not detain me long ; 
 
Through Rome, On, 7 
 
 and in like manner. Deism, or, as our present-day- 
 deists prefer to call it, Theism, was impossible 
 as an abiding liaven for my mind. I could not 
 go on many months saying two-and-two without 
 seeing the obligation to conclude makes foiiVy 
 and being satisfied with it. 
 
 Though a wilful and spoiled child, I was 
 nevertheless from my very early years keenly, 
 even morbidly, conscientious. I had an intense 
 appreciation of the difference between eight and 
 WRONG, and of the obligation to be right and to 
 do right. Owing to the exceeding delicacy and 
 acuteness of my nervous sensibilities, I was pe- 
 culiarly sensitive to pain and to pleasure alike, 
 and sympathised readily with those emotions in 
 others. I had a tender compassion for the suf- 
 ferings of living creatures below man ; particu- 
 larly for the portion of those sufferings inflicted 
 by the cruelty of man, which I regarded wdth a 
 burning indignation and desire to redress the 
 WTong. I distinctly remember that I was imbued 
 with a strong sense of justice and an appreciation 
 of the Golden Kule. I may say that I received 
 no ecclesiastical training ; for though my parents 
 were Episcopalians, they were not of the stricter 
 sort, and I was only baptised in infancy, and 
 taught to believe in God, and to pray, when old 
 
8 Through Home On. 
 
 enough for that species of instruction ; and ac- 
 customed to go to church and to refrain from 
 games &c. on Sunday. Some occasional attempts 
 were indeed made to teach me the catechism at 
 home ; and I think I learned the Apostles' 
 Creed and the Decalogue. This was Christian 
 discipline in a way ; but it can only in a very 
 modified sense be called ecclesiastical. I never 
 went to Sunday-school, was not included in a 
 confirmation-class, was not even compelled to 
 read the Bible, nor to listen to the reading of it 
 except in the general church services. My first 
 acquaintance with the Golden Hule, as a formula, 
 must have been according to its presentment in 
 the first and third of the synoptical gospels ; but 
 my appreciation of it spoken of awhile ago 
 seems to have been instinctive, and independent 
 of any external enforcement. This beautiful rule 
 of conduct, which we find enunciated by moral 
 teachers in various climes long before the rise of 
 Christianity, and which, rightly interpreted (it 
 is susceptible of a very perverse and mischievous 
 interpretation, though its right sense is simple 
 and plain enough), is the dictate of a healthy 
 conscientiousness always and everywhere, must 
 surely have been coeval with the first blendings 
 of benevolence and imagination in the forming 
 of man's social instincts ; and in these foremost 
 files of time, he would be indeed a monster who 
 
Through Home On. 9 
 
 sliould be born witliout the root of it in him. 
 In my childhood's casuistry, wliich I think was 
 very true on this point, the application of the 
 Golden Rule was not restricted to mutual human 
 relations, but was extended to the lower animals, 
 that could not be expected to make a return in 
 kind ; nor were the comely ones among these 
 the favourites of my compassion. I pitied most 
 those that suffered most, or that were the most 
 persecuted and abandoned ; taking as true pains 
 to help a mangy cat, that was detestable to me 
 in every light but that of the Golden Rule, as a 
 sleek house-pet or a well-groomed pony. Theo- 
 dore Parker in his Autobiography records an in- 
 cident of his early life in which conscience spoke 
 to him with an imperative voice in behalf of a 
 helpless little turtle. In reading of this occur- 
 rence I have been reminded of a turtle adventure 
 of my own childhood, in which conscience as- 
 serted its power in a somewhat similar manner, 
 and with equally effective result. In a country 
 walk with an adult friend and a cousin near my 
 own age, I witnessed the capture by my compan- 
 ions of an unfortunate testudo that was unsus- 
 piciously resting itself by the roadside as we 
 came along. The creature was placed in a bas- 
 ket carried by one of the party, and sentenced 
 to be made a culinary victim on our return to 
 the house. Something called off the others and 
 
10 Through Borne On. 
 
 detained them for a short time, during which I 
 was required to take care of the turtle. I did 
 "take care" of it, but not according to my 
 friends' intention. Tlie capture had grieved me, 
 but I had had no hand in that. Now, however, 
 I was required to co-operate in distraining the 
 captive, and, horrible thought ! in holding it to 
 be cooked alive, as I had sometime been told 
 was the fate of turtles in the American kitchen; 
 a fate which, in my ignorance of comparative 
 physiology, I likened to that of a human victim 
 at the stake. What was to be done ? Con- 
 science told me that I was bound to release the 
 turtle, as I should desire and ought to be rescued 
 myself in such a case. There was but one thing 
 to prevent my obeying the inward voice, but 
 that one thing made obedience a matter of no 
 small difficulty. I stood in great awe and fear 
 of the elder of my two companions, and dreaded 
 to displease him by letting the turtle go. This 
 contravening sentiment caused a lengthened 
 struggle in my mind, in which conscience finally 
 prevailed through the force of the consideration 
 that what would befall the turtle if I did not quickly 
 free it was so much more terrible than anything 
 that could happen to me if I did. Acting under 
 the law of my being, I overturned the basket ; 
 and the turtle, acting under the law of its being, 
 lost no time in making its escape. The little 
 
Through Home On, 11 
 
 incident here related bears, I tliink, a dialectic 
 relation to the course my mind afterwards took 
 on the subject of religion, and may serve to show 
 how natural and inevitable that course was. In- 
 tellect and conscience always worked together 
 in me, helping each other and controlling the 
 will in spite of adverse circumstances. The 
 force of example was apparently less powerful 
 than it commonly is in childhood. My comrades 
 were neither more nor less cruel than boys in 
 general. My father, though a man of great and 
 tender humanity, was 3^et so imder the dominion 
 of habits characteristic of his class and constitu- 
 tion, as to take delight in fox-hunting, shooting, 
 and racing ; so that my early recollections are 
 full of whips, spurs, and fowling-pieces, along 
 with hounds, pointers, and blood horses. But 
 though I played sometimes with the slain fox's 
 brush, and handled with a mournful curiosity 
 the stiffened relics of a once innocent and light- 
 some life that were brought in at the close of 
 mahy a day's sport, I never learned to forget 
 the bond between man and the underlings with 
 sensibilities that are akin to his, and that appeal 
 to his justice, his kindness, and the dignity of 
 his higher nature, not to seek his pleasure in 
 what is agony to them. It increases the hold 
 which my father's memory has on my veneration 
 and affection, that he was always indulgent 
 
12 Through Home On. 
 
 towards tlie compassionate feelings I describe, 
 strange and troublesome as they were in a boy, 
 and so at variance "with the impulses springing 
 from his own robust organisation ; and that, so 
 far from treating them with rebuke or scorn, he 
 seemed even to sympathise with their manifesta- 
 tion. It was impossible to me then to overlook 
 the other side^ in this matter of sports, or to sat- 
 isfy my mind by following the example of peo- 
 ple around me ; and just so, when the question 
 of religion came up for my decision, it was im- 
 possible for me to pin my faith upon the sleeve 
 of any other person, or to be satisfied with any- 
 thing less than the intelligent approval of jnj 
 own judgment and conscience. 
 
 It was perhaps a prognostic of the future 
 free-thinker, that my mind was agitated at this 
 immature period with crude polemic thoughts 
 excited by what seemed to me the contradictory 
 preachings from the same pulpit of Faith with- 
 out "Works and the importance of such " works ^' 
 as keeping Sunday after a certain imperfect fol- 
 lowing of the Puritan model. The clergyman 
 I am thinking of condemned even the opening 
 of a letter on Sunday ; and the incongrnity be- 
 tween the morning and tlie evening preaching, 
 as I may describe it, vexed my soul. The dis- 
 
Through Hume On. 13 
 
 ingenuousness of the prevailing Sabbatarian 
 teacliing about Sunday, wliich pretends to a 
 Scriptural foundation for this church festival 
 such as all persons well acquainted with the 
 Eible know does not exist, and which is thought 
 to be doing God service when it abuses the ten- 
 der faith of childhood by sedulously moulding 
 it in the false impression, became known to me 
 some years afterwards, and awakened a lively 
 indignation at the shamelessness of the pious 
 fraud : but at the time I am describing, my eyes 
 had not been opened on this point, and it was 
 the discrepancy between the solifidian doctrine 
 of the rector in one breath, and his insistence 
 upon the necessity of works in another, that dis- 
 turbed my peace. It was as if those ancient 
 rivals James and Paul inspired the preacher by 
 turns ; only James, with all his zeal for works, 
 could hardly have strayed from the apostolic 
 track so far as to prompt the making of a new- 
 fangled Sabbath out of Sunday. This little 
 stumbling-block was but a trifle at the time ; 
 though w^ien I became acquainted with the 
 Catholic doctrine a few years later, it was no 
 small relief to recognise the comparative reason- 
 ableness of the estimation set by Mother Church 
 on good works; which she does not stigmatise, 
 as Ano-licanism in Eno^land and America ex- 
 pressly does in one of its Articles of Heligion ; 
 
1-J: Through Rome On. , 
 
 Lut wliicli slie allows to have human merit in 
 unsanctified cases, and when tliey are snpernatu- 
 ralised bj Divine grace, assigns them a share in 
 justification along with faith. Without being 
 Tinder compulsion in the matter, I obtained by 
 degrees a considerable acquaintance, for one so 
 young, with the text of the common English 
 Bible, and availed myself of it with singular in- 
 dependence as armour, as weapon, and as play- 
 thing, by turns. A brass figure which I had 
 pounced upon in a lumber-room at the top of 
 the house was set up, secretly and very timidly 
 at first, to represent Jehovah or Shaddai ;^ and 
 the Lion of the Tribe of Judah was personified, 
 if I may so speak, by a wooden image of grave 
 leonine aspect, which seemed competent for any 
 needful miracle of speech or transformation. 
 The Israelites performed in those days prodigies 
 of valour, under my auspices, against the people 
 in possession of the Promised Land, and spilt 
 much blood whicli required no wiping up after- 
 wards. I was bold enough to cap scripture with 
 my seniors in my own defence ; and an amusing 
 recollection comes over me at this moment of 
 the dismay depicted in the countenance of an 
 elderly kinswoman who upon an occasion of 
 frowardness had interposed with a reminder of 
 
 1 1 think Bunyan furnished me with the name Shaddai. 
 
Through Borne On. 16 
 
 the ravens and young eagles in Prov. xxx. IT, 
 when I turned upon her with Eph. vi. 4, w^hich 
 I doubted not was a wholesome admon'tion to 
 children's elders, and which was at any rate ef- 
 fectual to bring about a drawn battle on the 
 particular occasion. I was a great reader. A 
 vivid remembrance remains of one favourite book, 
 an illustrated copy of Bunyan's Holy War, with 
 its grand old hero Dlabolus, rearing himself, to 
 my infinite admiration, against the Tower of 
 Mansoul. I do not know how many times a 
 day I scanned this fearful picture, nor how many 
 crumbs of ginger bread I let fall upon it and the 
 adjoining page ; but there is a close association 
 of ginger-bread and Diabolus in my memory to 
 this moment. I had a curious fancy for tran- 
 scribing Siemens Sermons. Another crony was 
 Barclay's Apology, a noble book which I learneTi 
 to appreciate at a later period. I am disposed 
 to date my acquaintance with Fielding's Tom 
 (Tones and Amelia, and several of the Waverley 
 series, before my reading of either the Arabian 
 Wights or Rohinson Crusoe. It does not seem 
 to me that this early introduction to the novel 
 was attended with any bad effect. There is a 
 kernel of English heartiness in Fielding, which 
 my mind tasted, I think, without any of the 
 grossness of his age entering with it; and as to 
 Scott, — who at any time of life was ever hurt by 
 
16 Through Rome On, 
 
 him ? When in the ripeness of my years I vis- 
 ited the land wliich he was the one to redeem 
 from the reproach of savage wildness, and to 
 make beautiful in history, in fiction, and in song, 
 its scenes were already dear to me, and were 
 peopled with a host of old acquaintances whom 
 I might, " without all offence of necromancy," 
 as that appreciative reader Bishop Joseph Hall 
 phrases it, call up to give me a welcome in their 
 haunts and homes. Smollett's novels, which are 
 very gross, and, with all their merits, and what- 
 ever some critics may say, much inferior to 
 Fielding's, I did not read till some years later, 
 indeed, except Roderick Random^ not until I 
 was grown. I made acquaintance now, how- 
 ever, with Le Sage in Gil Bias and The Devil 
 ujpon Two Sticks. The Arabian Niglits I 
 read again and again. Surely the child is much 
 to be pitied who from any cause cannot enjoy 
 this book. My copy was a large one-volume 
 edition with many plates; and I have a sore re- 
 membrance yet of the borrowing of it by a 
 young neighbour who returned it after a long in- 
 terval with some of the leaves missing. The 
 difficulty of the roc's %^g^ mentioned by Mr. 
 Fiske in his Myths and Myth-makers^ was, I 
 remember, one of my perplexities. Robinson 
 Crusoe was soberly interesting, but never ex- 
 cited my enthusiasm. I had a Friday of my 
 
Through Home On. 17 
 
 own in a very black lad, mj special attendant ; 
 but we were sadly in want of additional savages, 
 and Friday liad no cannibal propensities for me 
 to correct, but displayed a most Christian appe- 
 tite for beef-steak, and, in common with his mas- 
 ter, was compelled by domestic tyranny to wear 
 civilised jacket and trousers. From eight to ten 
 I imbibed Peter Parley. Near eleven, perhaps, 
 a strong taste for ghosts was developed in me. 
 To this era belong Mrs. Ratcliffe's romances and 
 The Three Sjpaniards. There were no such 
 superlative ghosts then as we have now. How 
 I should have revelled in The Wanderer^ The 
 Haunters and the Haunted^ A Strange Story, 
 and the collections of Mrs. Crowe and Mr. 
 Robert Dale Owen ! Zanoni did come in while 
 my taste was yet fresh. I was strongly moved 
 by Walpole's Castle of Otranto^ and in a less 
 degree by some of the Ettrick Shepherd's stories. 
 At twelve, James's String of Pearls and Ir- 
 ving's Alhambra were meet successors to the 
 Arabian Nights. About the same time, I was 
 fascinated by Kennedy's fine American novel 
 Horse-shoe Rohinson. Mr. Kennedy was a 
 fj'iend of my father's, and was regarded by me 
 with a kind of fearful interest as the creator of 
 such wonderful beings as Horse-shoe and Arthur 
 Butler. I read and enjoyed Maria Edgeworth, 
 too ; a writer unhappily little known to young 
 
18 Through Rome On, 
 
 people of the present day, and whom I am glad 
 to see mentioned as she is in Dr. Hill's True 
 Order of Studies. At thirteen I received the 
 greatest impulse in my juvenile career of reading 
 and thinking ; of which I shall come to speak 
 presently. I have specified only a small part of 
 my childhood's reading ; but I will not pass from 
 this period without recurring to a circumstance 
 belonging to it which grew out of a certain dra- 
 matic cast in my imagination, and which has 
 been exemplified in connexion with my Bible 
 reading on a previous page. What I found in 
 books, or was particularly struck with in real 
 life, often so impressed me as to be acted out, 
 with very ample variations of my own, by means 
 of a large collection of broken toys which at 
 odd times and seasons I had gathered round me. 
 I was another Wilhelm Meister with my pup- 
 pets. There were men, women, children, and 
 lower animals, with their proper names; the 
 dogs being terrible fellows in a fight, and the 
 horses 'and cows having regular appraisements 
 in their character of personal property. One of 
 the horses, I remember, died of old age ; and 
 another, a notably fractious bay, that used to be 
 driven about by a pliysician of vast practice, 
 which he managed to attend to in spite of the 
 loss of his legs, arms, and head, ran off one day 
 with the empty gig, and committed suicide by 
 
Through Borne On. 19 
 
 breaking his neck against a lamp-post. It was a 
 very tolerable rendering of tlie scenes of life, 
 wlietlier as drawn by authors, or as acted on the 
 stage of the wide, wide world. Among other 
 fidelities, one man in his time played many parts. 
 Thus I can distinctly recall Dominie Sampson 
 in the shape of a long green man, one of the 
 crew of a l^oah's Ark wrecked on my table- 
 lands ; who also did duty on proper occasions as 
 a right reverend bishop. Harry-of-the-Wynd 
 entered into the body of a broken spool, which 
 after shuffling off its mortal coil had gone 
 through the Revolutionary War as General 
 Marion. A chess rook, forsaking his bed and 
 board, became first Sir William Wallace, after- 
 wards Hobert Bruce, and at last sunk into a 
 member of Congress, and kept house with his 
 wife at Washington. If " all the world '& a 
 stage," these walking gentlemen of mine, that 
 had their exits and their entrances, that loved, 
 and fought, and pranked themselves in wooden 
 imitation of their betters, were surely not the 
 most despicable players on the boards. I vow I 
 have more respect for them to this hour than for 
 many living people I have met. Through my 
 childhood I lived in the faith of a golden age. 
 Earth, as well as heaven, was transfigured to my 
 eyes ; and millennial blessedness was the dream 
 of my nights and days. 
 
20 Through Rome On. 
 
 Witli my miscellaneous reading after thir- 
 teen this book lias nothing to do. I will only 
 observe that I did not take up Shakspeare till I 
 was sevente2n ; when I made a regular winter 
 campaign on that field, with the time-honoured 
 text of Johnson and Steevens. The preceding 
 memorials of my early years have been written 
 as much in the way of a natural proem to the 
 main design of my work, indicating the type of 
 my mind, and showing how I proceeded along 
 the paths of reading and thinking without much 
 leading from the first ; as from an inclination to 
 conjure up the past, and to make out of its 
 materials a peace-offering for some of my 
 readers. 
 
 The Eev. G W ■ succeeded Dr. Mc- 
 
 I as rector of St. Anne's parish, Annapolis, Md., 
 
 in the summer or autumn of 1841, a short time 
 after the death of my father, when I was thirteen 
 
 3^oars of age. At our first interview Mr. W 
 
 invited me to visit him and look over his collec- 
 tion of shells. I did not fail to make the visit ; 
 and after showing me the shells the clergyman 
 proceeded to do wdiat he no doubt considered 
 his parochial duty, by admonishing me as to re- 
 ligion, and proposing that I should begin wdth 
 Lis assistance to prepare myself for confirmation. 
 
Through Home On. 21 
 
 That I liad not received this rite before was owing 
 to my father's unwillingness that I should come 
 to it while I was yet, as he thought, too young 
 to understand its character and obligation; and 
 perhaps tliere was something of my father's 
 thought in my mind when I said in reply to Mr. 
 "W 's suggestion, that I was not willing to pro- 
 fess Episcopalianism without an intelligent con- 
 viction of the superiority of its claims to those of 
 
 other communions. Mr. W observed, that 
 
 my being confirmed would not put it out of my 
 power to adopt a different form of religion after- 
 wards, if I should think it right to do so : but I 
 rejoined, that I would much rather take pains at 
 first in choosing my religion, than take this step 
 ignorantly, and risk having to change afterwards. 
 So the worthy rector, who w^as much too sensible 
 and fair to deny the justness of my position, had 
 to go to work to show me how Episcopalianism 
 stands in relation to other forms of Christianity, 
 as he could not induce me to profess it without 
 this instruction. Thus I was a tough young 
 Christian from the start : yet I was an inchoate 
 Christian ; that is, I had been baptised in my in- 
 fancy, I took it for granted that Christianity is 
 true, and in some one of its folds of doctrine and 
 worship of binding obligation ; and I only 
 sought to find which fold it was my duty to enter ; 
 for I held, as it were instinctively, that there is 
 
22 Through Borne On. 
 
 an essential and irreversible distinction between 
 tlie TKUE and the untrue ; that of contradictions 
 only one can be true, and hence, that among the 
 contradictory sects all but one must be wrong, 
 and that one I was bound, for God's sake and 
 for the sake of my own soul, to distinguish from 
 the rest and to embrace its system with all hearti- 
 ness when it was once proved to me. I did not 
 then, and I do not now, see how the theory of a 
 supernatural revelation of positive doctrine can 
 admit of an innocent diversity of opinion as to 
 what the doctrine is, among the people to whom 
 it is addressed. God is no trifler, surely ; and 
 the work of establishing a religious system on 
 earth for the instruction and salvation of men, 
 being His work, cannot be so bunglingly done 
 as that they for whom it is intended may honestly 
 be at fault as to where and w^hat it is. If there 
 is no positive doctrine in the case, if He has only 
 breathed a spirit of goodness into certain chosen 
 vessels, to be diffused through various channels 
 among mankind, that indeed is a different affair; 
 but that is not dogmatic Christianity. I had lived 
 my thirteen years among Orthodox people, and, 
 without having been strictly drilled to the tap 
 of the " drum ecclesiastick," had imbibed the pre- 
 vailing view that the Divine Teacher, Jesus, had 
 instituted a visible society, with outward ordi- 
 nances of discipline and worship, as well as a pure, 
 
Through Borne On. 23 
 
 sacrosanct doctrine of ineffable things, all derived 
 from him, and guaranteed to last till the end of 
 the world. ^ I deemed it now my sacred duty to 
 distinguish this rightly constituted society from 
 all the pretenders around it, not doubting that 
 its divine characteristics would soon present 
 themselves to my longing eyes. I made no ques- 
 tion of the alleged fact of the Christian revela- 
 tion. When I demurred to instant acceptance 
 
 of the church system offered me, Mi*. W asked, 
 
 I remember, if I wished to investigate the truth 
 of Christianity, and I made a rather frightened 
 reply in the negative. I knew nothing about 
 the " evidences "; but I was quite ready to jump 
 all that. All my training and associations made 
 it a terror to me to be for a moment suspected 
 of religious scepticism ; and I do not think that 
 I had a moment's doubt that the true church was 
 from God and might certainly be found. Be it 
 observed, that the horror of doubting, or being 
 suspected of doubting, Christianity in the abstract 
 did not prevent me from questioning the claims 
 of the actual form of concrete Christianity which 
 I knew best and for which I had a prepossession. 
 If I did not identify abstract Christianity with 
 goodness itself, as very likely I did, at least I 
 identified it with external propriety and the 
 
 1 Matt, xxviii. 20 ; Eph. iv. 13. 
 
"24: Through Rome On. 
 
 favour of all whose approbation was valuable to 
 me. It will be seen that the constitution of my 
 mind inclined to High-churchisni. I could not 
 look upon the visible organisation of Christianity 
 as a small matter, supposing that organisation to 
 have been ordained by God himself. As will 
 appear a little farther on, I soon had to abandon 
 this supposition of a Divine foundation and 
 Apostolical succession of outward Christianity; 
 and after this loss of its authoritative character, 
 it had less and less hold on my mind, till it re- 
 covered tlie full measure at least of its first pres- 
 tige under the form of that ancient corporation 
 which is the block from which the heresies that 
 supplied my first Christian materials are chips 
 given to the winds. But at the time now under 
 consideration, I was moved, by natural bias, and 
 by the kind of leading I was subjected to, in the 
 direction of High-church, which insists that there 
 really is such a visible body on earth as the 
 Epistle to the Ephesians speaks of; established 
 and made perpetual by the ascended Lord, to 
 endure " till we all come in the unity of the faith 
 unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of 
 Christ." I saw that something of the kind is 
 necessary on the hypothesis of a supernatural 
 revelation ; and I was inclined at the outset to 
 believe that I should find Episcopalianism the 
 pillar and ground of the truth and my proper 
 
Through Rome On. 25 
 
 nnrsing-motlier in holy things. The dignity and 
 beauty of its orders and ritual, its historic name, 
 the social respectability of its membership, all 
 commended it to me. In addition to these claims, 
 it was my childhood's church, the church of my 
 parents, the home church of my earliest recollec- 
 tions. I was ready to accept whatever its advo- 
 cates had to say for it. Mr. W supplied me 
 
 with books to read on the subject to which my 
 mind now turned with so ardent an interest. 
 The first of these, I think, was Jerram and 
 Wall on Baptism^ and the next. Chapman's 
 Sermons on the Ministry^ Doctrines^ and Wor- 
 ship of the Protestant Ejpiscopal Church, 
 After reading for some months, I was quite im- 
 bued with the argument for the Three Orders 
 and Apostolic Succession. Of coarse the Bible 
 made a part of my reading ; and one day I was 
 troubled to find Paul talking to Timothy about 
 the gift that was in him by virtue, as it seemed, 
 of " the laying on of the hands of the presby- 
 tery." It may be noted, that my head was so 
 full of the doctrine of episcopal ordination that 
 I attached no importance to the preceding clause, 
 " by prophecy "; which might otherwise have 
 proved still more perplexing. I hastened with 
 
 my difficulty to Mr. W , and w^as comforted 
 
 with the information that in the Episcopal Church 
 " the presbytery," as well as the bishop, lay their 
 
26 Through Rome On, 
 
 hands upon the candidate for orders. The fur- 
 ther exphination ^vill readilj occur to the reader 
 who is a httle better skilled than I was then in 
 church terms and hermeneutics. It was a great 
 comfort to throw mj bm-den upon the clergyman, 
 my faith in whom made up for any want of co- 
 gency in the argument he offered. This is com- 
 monly the case with immature reasoners who 
 have confidence in their guides. It may have been 
 weeks, or months, after the Pauline vexation 
 when I encountered a bundle of more stubborn 
 difficulties, while I was staying in the country, 
 and so could not have recourse at once to my 
 trusted counsellor. The Presbyterian argument 
 which I lighted on in the EncyclopcBdia Bri- 
 tannica troubled me greatly, because I could not 
 answer it, and it showed me that so much more 
 than I had supposed could be said on that side. 
 This effect was increased by a perusal of the 
 Methodist Bangs' Original Church of Christ ; 
 which very much impaired the force of the Epis- 
 copalian argument, and almost won me to an 
 agreement with the author that the constitution 
 of the church was not regarded as a matter of 
 much importance by the Bible writers and primi- 
 tive Christian authorities. Then the low view 
 taken by the Apostle Paul of marriage^ troubled 
 
 ' I. Cor. vii. 2, 9, 28, 32, &c. ; I. Tim. v. 11. 
 
Through Borne On, 27 
 
 me ; on ■wliich I took counsel with a relative 
 versed in tlie Scriptures ; who reminded me that 
 the Apostle, by his own avowal, did not always 
 write by Divine direction, but miugled his own 
 judgment with the Lord's in his teaching.^ This 
 advice met the occasion ; and I do not believe 
 that my adviser had any more thought than I 
 myself had at the time, of its bearing on the sub- 
 ject of inspiration. Now began a peculiar trial 
 to my feelings in the charge brought against me 
 by some of my friends, that I was fickle, did not 
 know what I believed, &c. They had been glad 
 enough to see me interested in religious inquiries 
 as long as it seemed likely that I should settle 
 beside thera in my conclusions. No doubt it 
 would have suited them better if I had not been 
 an inqvArer at all, but had taken my religion 
 blindly, as they had theirs, without any tu'esome 
 and dangerous inspection of the grounds on which 
 it rested : still, as boys generally do not take a 
 very lively interest in religion, they had been 
 glad to see my eyes sparkling in that direction, 
 and had been willing I should read a little one- 
 sided controversy and ask a few questions, ex- 
 pecting to see me presently lie down under the 
 horns of the altar in all Christian docility and 
 peace. That I did not do so, but persisted, like 
 
 ^ I Cor. vii. 6, 10, 13, 25, 36, 40; U Cor. viii. 8, 10. 
 
28 Through Rome On, 
 
 tlie troublesome fellow in Dickens's novel, 
 " wanting to know," sadly displeased them with 
 me, and changed their encouraging sympathy 
 into the reproach which I have said was a pecu- 
 liar trial and was very hard to bear. I do not 
 know that I was fickle ; but I do know that I 
 was very much in earnest, and that these people 
 who taunted me with not knowing what I be- 
 lieved never had clearly known what they be- 
 lieved themselves. Their steadfastness was will- 
 ing stagnation of mind ; and my changing was 
 the natural current of healthful activity in a 
 mind that could not prefer a still pool to the liv- 
 ing waters of truth beyond. "When I saw Mr. 
 W again, my dissatisfaction with Episcopalian- 
 ism was such as to disgust that gentleman with 
 so unmanageable a catechumen ; and though we 
 remained on amicable terms, he troubled me no 
 more about confirmation, nor I him to help me 
 in my search for the true Church; which thence- 
 forth showed itself more and more of an ignis 
 fatuus in the tenebrous atmosphere of Protest- 
 ant variations. If I did not follow the course 
 of Moore's " Irish Gentleman in search of a re- 
 ligion," it was because a simpler path lay before 
 me, which led, however, to the Irish Gentleman's 
 bourn all the same. Tlie Whittingham-Johns 
 imbroglio presented the Episcopal Church in the 
 light of a house divided against itself. Presby- 
 
Through Home On, 29 
 
 terianlsm, though strong enough to draw the bat- 
 tle at least with prelacy, and though very orderly 
 and respectable in its organisation and member- 
 ship, had not sufficient attraction to win me to 
 its side. Its hard commercial way of dealing 
 with the Almighty, its lack of warmth of colour- 
 ing to my imagination, and the meagreness of its 
 apostolic argument, turned me away. The Bap- 
 tists were in like manner repulsive to me, not- 
 withstanding the antiquity of their distinctive 
 rite. The Methodists, and all the Evangelical 
 tribe besides that I have not mentioned, seemed 
 but mongrel offshoots or imitations of the greater 
 bodies that I had already weighed in the balance 
 and found wanting. All life and consciousness 
 appeared to protest against Quakers and the like. 
 The Liberal sects were virtually imknown to me. 
 I am inclined to think that Unitarianism, that 
 least unreasonable form of Christianity, might 
 have given me pause and temporary rest if I had 
 been acquainted with it at this time, when I had 
 grown so weary and desponding in my quest of 
 the true Church, which was the proper sequel of 
 the supernatural ministry of Jesus, but against 
 which the gates of hell seemed to have prevailed 
 so effectually as to have trampled out all trace 
 of its foundations and authority. But I did not 
 know Unitarianism, save as a name, or as a mon- 
 strous heresy which it was something like sin to 
 
30 Through Rome On. 
 
 think of as a Christian claimant. The Roman 
 Catholic Church was another monster, too hor- 
 rible and too absurd to call for patient consider- 
 ation. There was no true Church, God's own, 
 made and sent bj Him, and having therefore a 
 divine claim to my allegiance. Then was Chris- 
 tianity not what I had believed : yet my early 
 education constrained me to cherish the thought 
 that it must have the soul of goodness in it some- 
 how, and that I ought to squeeze myself into it 
 somewhere, for my own sake, if not for the sake 
 of God, who really seemed to be very indifferent 
 to the result. So I went on, feeling the pangs 
 of famine while all were feeding around me. I 
 read Duncan's Lectures^ remarkable as the 
 wasteful endeavour of a powerful mind to deduce 
 a scheme of Moral Government from the first 
 chapters of Genesis. This book served to unset- 
 tle my faith in the doctrine of the Trinity, which 
 as a child I might be excused for having before 
 that time held undoubtingly. The discovery 
 which I made about the same time, that that an- 
 cient symbol known as the Apostles' Creed is 
 susceptible of a Unitarian interpretation, is also 
 to be noted, as having tended to smooth the 
 wrinkled front of heterodoxy to my young eyes. 
 I have not spoken of the prayers with which I 
 accompanied my unsuccessful search ; but have 
 only recorded the workings of my mind through 
 
Through Rome On. 31 
 
 its " phases of faith " up to this period. Of 
 course I prayed, as well as searched the Scrip- 
 tures, in mj travail ; the one to as little purpose 
 as the other, so far as the immediate pressing ob- 
 ject was concerned. Prayer, when it is the out- 
 cry of the labouring spii'it, always brings a meas- 
 ure of relief, and sometimes, under the laws of 
 nature, opens a way to the very thing prayed 
 for, though commonly the suppliant has to put 
 up with something else. Searching the Scriptures 
 is much less efficacious, without a strong fanatical 
 fervour in him that makes the search. Be thor- 
 oughly persuaded that such-and-such a doctrine 
 is contained in the Bible, and you will very likely 
 find it there, an din passages whose authors were 
 the farthest possible removed from the doctrine : 
 but go in a spirit of candid inquiry to this oracle 
 of contradictions, and the more you search the 
 more confused and hopeless you become. This 
 must needs be so, for the Bible is made up of the 
 ill-matched compositions of many disagreeing 
 writers, who wrote for times and places, as well 
 as for mental and moral habitudes, very remote 
 from these of ours ; and as to the question of the 
 Church in the nineteenth century, it is especially 
 at fault, from the notorious fact that the primi- 
 tive Christians expected the Last Judgment and 
 the consummation of all things to come in their 
 own mortal day and generation. 
 
32 Through Home On. 
 
 A year or more passed over my head. One day, 
 I was haviDg a controversial talk with a friend, in 
 which the point of Christian union came up. Pro- 
 voked by some now forgotten remark of the other 
 party, I said, — " Go to the Church of Rome, if 
 you want unity and consistency !" It was a hasty 
 and sarcastic speech ; but the moment it was ut- 
 tered, my heart burned within me, and my words, 
 lost upon my companion, sounded back to the 
 inner ear of my consciousness like the voice that 
 came to Peter as he slumbered on the house-top. 
 "What if I had been in blindness all this time 
 about the Church of Kome, and instead of a 
 monster of corruption, it was God's clean and 
 perfect tabernacle, the Church I had sought, and 
 sighed for, and despaired of at last ? Might it 
 not be so ? At least I was bound to inquire 
 further. I did inquire ; all by myself at first, 
 with only a few expository works on the Catho- 
 lic faith to help me ; later with the aid of some 
 personal friends who were Catholics. Before I 
 applied to the latter, however, I believe I had 
 pretty well satisfied myself from my own reading 
 and thinking that I was obliged to be a Catholic ; 
 and what I wanted was to feel fresh Christian 
 sympathy again, and to be introduced to some 
 one who could speak to me with an authority 
 that had indeed descended from Christ and the 
 Apostles. 'Eq more sham churches for me. I 
 
Through Home On, 33 
 
 liad done with them, thank Heaven it was so ! 
 forever. 
 
 Looking back now, I can see no flaw in the 
 argument that led me to the Cathohc Church, 
 assuming tlie premises, common to all super- 
 naturalist Cliristians, with which I started. No 
 doubt tliere was, as in all such cases, much be- 
 sides logic and pm-e love of truth that influenced 
 my conversion ; but the argument itself seems 
 
 to me irrefrao:able. An oracular reliojion de- 
 cs o 
 
 mands permanent infallibility, along with indis- 
 putable clearness and authority, in its oracle. 
 These attributes it is obvious do not belong to 
 Protestantism, taken as a whole or in any of its 
 parts ; but on the contrary, the denial of them is 
 fundamentally necessary to justify the Reforma- 
 tion, and is contained in tlie assertion of the 
 Right of Private Judgment, the ultimate mean- 
 ing of which is individuality, supremacy of the 
 individual mind and conscience. The history 
 of Protestantism does indeed show attempts to 
 qualify the assertion of the Bight, and to restrict 
 its exercise by one or another kind of external 
 authority; as in the supplanting of Papal by 
 Royal supremacy in England ; in the setting up 
 of the Church of the early ages as a substitute 
 for the Church of all ages; in the every-day 
 
34: Through Home On, 
 
 domination of sects and teachers; and most 
 strikingly, in investing the vohime called the 
 Bible with an idolatrous veneration and authority 
 over the human mind. These attempts, how- 
 ever, have all proved as illusory in their results 
 as in the inconsequent theories wdth which they 
 started. Unless the Church be divinely and in- 
 fallibly constituted, any claim by it to restrict 
 private judgment by determining doctrine and 
 ruling conscience is arrogant, and voidable on 
 every ground that will sustain the Keformation. 
 Thus High-church Protestantism fails through 
 the insufficiency of the human authority that it 
 would clothe with divine prerogatives ; and the 
 same argument, further applied, is not less con- 
 clusive against the Evangelical theory. The fu- 
 tility of claiming any kind of supernatural au- 
 thority for an obscure and voiceless Book, whose 
 contents are the stories and moralisings of an- 
 tiquity, and whose vouchers are the opinions, the 
 votes, and the passive consent, of confessedly 
 fallible men, is as clear as that which attached 
 to the system of the old heathen auguries, of 
 which it was said that the meeting of two augurs 
 was an occasion for laughter. Of course I do 
 not mean to say that the whole dialectical aspect 
 of the case was taken in by me at the age of 
 fourteen or fifteen. What I do mean to say is, 
 that the steadfast direction of my conscience and 
 
Through Borne On. 35 
 
 intellect at that period in quest of the divine 
 Oracle carried me inevitably out of Protestant- 
 ism, which was proved to be destitute of the 
 Oracle, having only a misleading name and 
 dumb fetich in its place ; and landed me as in- 
 evitably in Catholicism, where alone the order 
 and facts are in apparent fulfilment of the Chris- 
 tian premises. The argument, which I had a 
 pretty firm grasp of then, and which is as clear 
 as lightning to me since, is, I repeat, without a 
 flaw, once granted the premises from which it 
 proceeds. Those premises necessitate in logic 
 some such organisation as tlie Catholic Church. 
 On the other hand, the Protestant principle 
 issues in individual sovereignty; and in the 
 presence of individual sovereignty there can be 
 no supreme Teacher of an objective revelation. 
 Dogmatic Protestantism is, therefore, an egre- 
 gious failure. A living intelligible authority is 
 necessary in the Teacher's place. This is sup- 
 plied to Protestants, inconsistently with their 
 avowed principle, by their clergy and elders ; 
 who themselves derive the doctrine they teach 
 from tradition rather than from the Bible, though 
 they often exercise a marvellous industry and in- 
 genuity in torturing the sacred text to fit it to 
 their tradition. Each sect or congregation keeps 
 its bottled mixture of traditionalised-Bible-doc- 
 trine, which is given and taken in solemn doses 
 
36 Through Borne On, 
 
 as the medicine of everlasting life. So it hap- 
 pens that the children of Episcopalians are 
 usually Episcopalians, those of Presbyterians 
 Presbyterians, &c. The Bible is the Protestant 
 idol ; but as with other idolatries, the idol's hier- 
 ophants are the real teachers. In general, the 
 disciple finds himself placed by nature and cir- 
 cumstances in some particular division, say the 
 Episcopalian fold, or the Methodist fold ; and he 
 quietly takes for granted that the hieropliants of 
 that particular division are right, and swears by 
 them with all docility. I was not able to do 
 this, but by the constitution of my mind was 
 obliged to recognise the force of objections. 
 The conflict of equal authorities under the ne- 
 cessity of personal teaching, and this pressing 
 question of the one essential religion, forced me 
 to abandon the Protestant principle, as I did not 
 then suspect the unsoundness of the oracular 
 premises with wliich I found it in unnatural alli- 
 ance. I had constantly admitted the authority 
 of the Bible, but could get no clear light from 
 it on the constitution and doctrines of the one 
 true religion. Seeing the doctors in hopeless 
 disagreement, and the Bible made to support the 
 contradictory teachings of them all, I turned in 
 my starvation away from the Protestant board, 
 that was spread with stones instead of bread, 
 and found saving hospitality in the grand old 
 
Through Ito'tne On. 37 
 
 household of faith that had succoured millions 
 of wanderers before I came. 
 
 Let me here review the ground just gone 
 over, and amplify some of the points I have 
 stated. I started with Christian premises at 
 thirteen. Following the traditional element, 
 under the impulse of my religiosity, I was a 
 Roman Catholic at fifteen. Looking back now 
 that I have arrived at middle age, I see that I 
 was right. The Christian premises really lead 
 to the Koman Catholic conclusion. Such an in- 
 stitution as The Church, in the Roman Catholic 
 sense, is necessary to the fulfilment of the idea 
 of an Infallible Oracle on earth to instruct us in 
 religion, and to furnish and apply at all times a 
 supernatural rule to the conscience. With im- 
 mature but not unpractised reasoning powers 
 and with a devoted earnestness that bore me 
 over every impediment, I worked out the prob- 
 lem in about two years to a correct result from 
 my original data. To the rationale of the pro- 
 cess I invite the reader's attention in the follow- 
 ing pages. 
 
 "When I understood that a Revelation had 
 been made by Jesus Christ, and had been trans- 
 mitted through a succession of teachers from 
 his time to ours, and when I perceived that the 
 
38 Through liovie On, 
 
 Christian world was split up into many divisions 
 tliat disputed among themselves as to what 
 were the particulars of the Kevelation, it was 
 a natm-al and just inference of my mind that 
 some one body of Christians was in possession 
 of the truth on the subject, and, as a neces- 
 sary consequence, that all the bodies that op- 
 posed this one were in error. In the same way, 
 it was reasonable to expect to find the one true 
 religion plainly distinguished from all its would- 
 be rivals by the possession of certain indispens- 
 able characteristics which should be wanting to 
 them. I started, it will be remembered, with 
 Protestantism, with the common Christian pre- 
 mise of an Infallible Oracle, and with the re- 
 solve to find and embrace the one, true, attested 
 form of Christianity. The result was inevit- 
 able ; inevitable from the logic of the case, and 
 from the character of my mind, which could not 
 help seeing and obeying the logical necessity.' 
 Tliat other minds, many of them better endowed 
 and not less sincere than mine, have as earnestly 
 examined the subject of religion and have come 
 to conclusions very different from those which I 
 have to record in my own case, I am perfectly 
 weU aware. The fact is one which, while it 
 does not in any degree impair the proper force 
 of right reasoning, has a high psychological 
 value as testifying to the operation of other 
 
Through Home On. 39 
 
 elements of a very different order Vi]yo\\ the 
 course of ratiocination ; which has to be pursued 
 in every single case in connexion with all which 
 the idiosyncrasy of the case includes in the law 
 of its action.^ It is my part here to trace the 
 
 1 If we are to be deterred from asserting a well-con- 
 sidered conclusion of our own on this subject of reli- 
 gion by tlie circumstance that grave, learned, and good 
 men deliberately reject this conclusion of ours and abide 
 by the contrary of it, we shall indeed be the sport of the 
 winds, without the possibility of any stable ground for 
 our minds to rest on. The many upright and able men 
 who conclude against Christianity will then, by the very 
 fact of their so concluding, forbid us to be Christians ; 
 and if we confine the argument to the Christian world, 
 it will debar us from every sect and opinion in turn, be- 
 cause of the weight of wisdom and excellence arrayed 
 in opposition. A remembrance of the fallibility of the 
 human mind, and of the influence of other elements be- 
 sides pure truth and evidence in shaping and consolidat- 
 ing its conclusions, should reassure the most timid as to 
 the safety of dissent when their own minds have a rea- 
 son for it; and should teach the duty of independent 
 thinking, of self-enlightenment and self-reliance; and of 
 the essential mischief of surrendering either intellect or 
 conscience into alien keeping. I need hardly point out 
 how recreant to truth, and what a confusing of the 
 issue, it is to make the appeal to prudence or to fear ; 
 and how it would put us at the mercy of every intolerant 
 man or system, one after another, to be swayed by so 
 unworthy and untenable a plea. The impossibility, as 
 well as the absurdity, of believing to order, whether 
 one's own order or another's, is clearly demonstrated in 
 such a case as mine. 
 
4:0 Through Rome On, 
 
 effect of tlie argument in its gradual develop 
 ment on my own mind, which, though hampered 
 and misled for so long a time by the figment of 
 the Oracle, had in other respects less bias to be 
 overcome by the force of reasoning than there 
 has been in many other cases. It was simply 
 my variety of human nature. The dialectical 
 process must stand upon its own merits, apart 
 from all subjective entanglements ; and I do not 
 believe that any one will be able to point out a 
 really unsound link in the concatenation from 
 premises to conclusion. To resume : I could 
 find no firm basis for a Supernatural Revelation 
 on Protestant principles. Protestantism is in its 
 root and essence the uprising of the mind 
 against external authority. On its religious 
 side, it is the denial of the claim of any man or 
 body of men to impose a religion upon others. 
 Historical Protestantism takes its name from the 
 protest of the Reformers in 1529 against a de- 
 cree of the Diet of Spires. The same Reform- 
 ers, however, had already taken ground against 
 the teachings and authority of the Catholic 
 Church, to which they had previously yielded 
 obedience ; and the word Protestantism has al- 
 ways since the epoch of the Reformation borne 
 the current sense of opposition to Catholicism 
 on the ground of the Right of Private Judg- 
 ment as asserted by the sixteenth-century Re- 
 
Through Borne On, 41 
 
 formers. This definition is narrowed by its last 
 clause ; but even so qualified is broader than the 
 original signification of opposition to a decree of 
 the Diet. In a third and much more philosoph- 
 ical sense than either of the two senses just 
 noted, Protestantism is the exercise by the indi- 
 vidual mind of its natural right to refuse the 
 yoke of an external religious authority. Even 
 this is not an exhaustive definition ; for Protest- 
 antism, being the dynamic aspect of individual- 
 ism, extends of course to other spheres besides 
 the sphere of religion : but for the purposes of 
 the present argument we need not go beyond 
 the last definition. Protestantism, then, is the 
 exercise of a natural right, what the Heformers 
 three hundred and fifty years ago quite correctly 
 called the Eight of Private Judgment. They, 
 indeed, or the principal men among them, af- 
 firmed the right in a very limited degree ; re- 
 stricting it to interpretation of the Bible, which, 
 cm'iously enough, was one of the possessions 
 of the Church, deriving its sanction from her 
 authority, and so, of course, standing or fall- 
 ing with that authority in its character of a 
 divine compilation. But whoever affirms a prin- 
 ciple is logically committed to all the conse- 
 quences of that principle, those that he does not 
 see or declare as well as those that he does see 
 and declare. Accordingly, the Beformers are 
 
42 Through Borne On. 
 
 really responsible in logic for all that legitimately 
 follows from the Hight of Private Judgment. 
 Now this Kight, being a right, and especially a 
 natural right, must have a positive foundation to 
 rest on. Mere negation, such as denial of 
 E,oman Catholic authority, cannot be the found- 
 ation. Every negation implies a pre-existing 
 affirmative principle to authorise it. He who 
 rightly denies does so by virtue of some princi- 
 ple wliich justifies him in denying; and this 
 underlying principle, whatever it is, is the funda- 
 mental ultimate principle in the case. If the 
 Keformers had the right to seize and interpret 
 the Bible for themselves, it must have been 
 either an inherent rio-ht of their own or a rio;ht 
 conferred on them by an external authority. 
 !Now as to external authority, since that of the 
 Koman Catholic Church was against them and 
 was denied by them, it seems manifest that there 
 was none whatever which could and did confer 
 the right in question on them. To say that the 
 Eible considered as the word of God gave them 
 the right, does not meet the difficulty ; since it 
 is plain that they must have possessed and exer- 
 cised the right before they could avail themselves 
 of the Bible in the premises. Clearly, then, the 
 right was not conferred on them by an external 
 authority. It only remains, therefore, to con- 
 sider it as an inherent natural right ; a right, 
 
Through Rome On. 43 
 
 that is, pertaining to them as rational human 
 beings. As such it must rest on an affirmative 
 principle ; and since it is internal, and since the 
 natural rights of all men are equal, this affirma- 
 tive principle can be nothing else in substance 
 than that every man is hy nature the rightful 
 judge for himself of every subject presented to 
 his mind. This of course involves the denial 
 of 'the claim of any man or body of men to im- 
 pose a religion upon others. But it is precisely 
 this claim that we must admit if we accept the 
 theory of an infallible Oracle external to the in- 
 dividual man, to impart the particulars of a Su- 
 pernatural Revelation ; for it is not pretended 
 that there is any fresh oral communication be- 
 tween God and man at the present day. There 
 is no immediate Kevelation ; but certain men 
 claim to have one that is mediate ; that has come 
 through successive generations of other men. 
 These men, then, referring for their authority to 
 other antecedent men, are to supply us with the 
 external Infallible Oracle if we are to have it at 
 all. Catholics consistently plant themselves on 
 this tradition ; calling it infallible, and uninter- 
 rupted from Christ and his Apostles to the pres- 
 ent day. Protestants inconsistently stand on it; 
 admitting it to be fallible, except in the persons 
 and writings of some of the very early Chris- 
 tians, and to have been obscured and corrupted 
 
44: Through Rome On, 
 
 during many long ages by superstitious and de- 
 signing men. Protestantism contradicts itself 
 when it takes this ground ; as I have endeavour- 
 ed to show in the preceding argument. The 
 Protestant cannot consistently admit the claim 
 of any man or body of men to give a divine rev- 
 elation. If I seem to some of my readers to be 
 wrong in this assertion, they may at least credit 
 my statement that it was impossible to me as a 
 Protestant to admit the claim. I repeat, in con- 
 clusion, that I could find no firm basis for a Su- 
 pernatural Revelation on Protestant principles. 
 I had either, to give up Revelation or to cease to 
 be a Protestant. Protestantism had been put 
 on its trial, and had turned out an impostor from 
 the supernaturalist point of view. It was my 
 destiny to learn the fallacy of Supernaturalism 
 itself by following it now into its true develop- 
 ment of the Papal system ; which is its proper 
 stronghold, and at the same time its predestined 
 funeral pile.^ 
 
 1 The other historical revolts against the Papacy are, 
 it is clear, as devoid of apostolicity as Luther's Reforma- 
 tion. The Papacy serves to cut them all off from 
 Christ; for though it, as I of course admit, does not 
 reach to him, yet it certainly stands between him and 
 all later ecclesiastical pretenders. The Greek schism, for 
 instance, -which was not consummated till the eleventh 
 century, can be no more authoritative than Protest- 
 antism, the new birth of the sixteenth: while the latter 
 
Through Home On. 46 
 
 Some may say here, that I was too much 
 concerned about disputed doctrines ; that I 
 should have cared less for the outward form, and 
 have sought rather the essentials of spiritual re-^ 
 ligion, in which all true Christians are united. 
 But if any take this ground, they err in suppos- 
 ing it was possible for me to be indifferent to 
 doctrines while I believed that Jesus Christ had 
 given a doctrinal revelation, as I had always 
 been told he had. How should I dare to say 
 that Christ's doctrines were not among the " es- 
 sentials " of the Christian religion ? And what 
 kind of fidelity to Christ, or what kind of con- 
 scientiousness, would it have argued, if I had 
 sought ease for my mind in acceptance of the 
 cut-and-dried tenets offered me, without trying 
 with all my might to know if they were the doc- 
 trines of the Master, or departures from his 
 teaching ? How was I, a mortal in the flesh, to 
 discern and avail myself of a purely spiritual 
 Christianity ? and how could I venture to say 
 
 enjoys the advantage of being professed by the most 
 enlightened and progressive of the heretical adversaries 
 of regular Christianity, and sIiotts itself to contain in its 
 core the true, living, developing principle of Free 
 Thought and Science, the conquerors and saviours 
 of the 'world. 
 
46 Through Rome On. 
 
 that any were " true Christians " but such as 
 held the very doctrines of Christ himself? I 
 did not find any one content with spiritual re- 
 ligion without outward ordinances ; and every 
 system of outward ordinances I saw to be con- 
 nected with specific doctrine ; and unless one 
 professed something of the kind he was under 
 a reproach. This talk about spiritual religion, 
 in depreciation of doctrine, comes with a very 
 bad grace from Evangelical Christians, the peo- 
 ple we generally hear it from ; seeing how bitter 
 they are against Unitarians and other heterodox 
 persons, on the ground of doctrine ; how earn- 
 estly they uphold the inspiration of the E'ew- 
 Testament writers who anathematise the profess- 
 ors of wrong doctrine and forbid Christians to ren- 
 der the commonest hospitality or speak a word 
 of good-will to such ;^ and finally, how devout is 
 their faith in the declaration that he that he- 
 lieveth not (in connexion with a specific out- 
 ward rite) shall he damned.^ 
 
 If Christianity was in its origin a true and 
 divinely-given religion, it could not have been so 
 vague as to be without an outward system of 
 some kind. Either this system was divine and 
 
 » Gal. i. 8; II John 10, 11. 2 jyiark xvi. 16. 
 
Through Rome On, 47 
 
 perpetual, or it was not. I thought from some 
 evidences in the Scriptures, as well as from the 
 natural probability in the case, that it was of a 
 divine and perpetual constitution, and so, more- 
 over, I was instructed by my living counsellors 
 to regard it. Without the outward system, in- 
 deed, I could not have laid hold of historical 
 Christianity at all. Dr. John Henry Kewman 
 seems to state very well the relations of Scrip- 
 ture and history on this subject when he says, — • 
 " The Apostles refer to a large existing fact, 
 their system — ^ the whole counsel of God ': his- 
 tory informs us of a system, as far as we can tell, 
 contemporaneous with and claiming to be theirs : 
 what other claimant is there ?" That inquiry is 
 very forcible : What other claimant is there f 
 It was necessary that there should be one legiti- 
 mate claimant in the case, as I looked at it ; and 
 upon examination 1 could find actually no other 
 pretender to unbroken continuity of system from 
 the Apostles than the Koman Catholic Church. 
 The Church of England, with whose pretensions 
 my examination started, does indeed lay claim 
 to apostolical descent, in one sense or another ; 
 but hardly to unbroken continuity of system. 
 It is not denied, and it does not admit of denial, 
 en the part of this church, that at the time of 
 the Reformation the Church of England sepa- 
 rated from the Homan Catholic system, of which 
 
48 Through Home On. 
 
 it had for ages "been part and parcel, and which 
 claims unbroken continuity from the Apostles, 
 but which the Church of England declares to be 
 a departure from the apostolical system. Now 
 whether we admit the Roman Catholic claim, or 
 the denial of it by the Church of England, it is 
 clear that the latter is without the continuity in 
 question. If the Roman Catholic claim be true, 
 the Church of England lost the continuity by its 
 act of separation at the Reformation. If on the 
 other hand, the Church of England is right in 
 its denial of the claim, then it follows that that 
 Church had, along with the rest of Christian 
 Europe, broken the continuity long before the 
 Reformation, by partaking of the lapse from the 
 system of the Apostles. By no track of fair 
 reasoning can this conclusion be avoided. Even 
 if we were to grant that at the Reformation the 
 Church of England returned to the system of 
 the Apostles, it would still remain clear that its 
 continuity was broken. Unless it had once 
 broken off, a return would be impossible. And 
 then the break dispels the authoritative charac- 
 ter o^ the Church. If she ever fell away from 
 Christ and lost the spirit of truth, she is thence- 
 forth no trustworthy guide, no authoritative in- 
 terpreter such as I was looking for. My search 
 was not for a goodly fellowship of believers, but 
 for an authoritative Teacher, upheld by God's 
 
Through Rome On. 49 
 
 own arm, informed by God's own spirit, so that 
 she could never, from the apostles' time to ours, 
 teach wrongly and falsify the word of Christ. I 
 could not have enduring respect for a geograph- 
 ical and headless Catholicity, that was one thing 
 in England, another in E-ussia, a third at Home. 
 Besides, the Anglo-Catholics were only a hand- 
 ful of students, not presuming to claim, and very 
 •clearly outside of the possibility of possessing, 
 the attribute of present infallibility any more 
 than their Low-church opponents. If I were tc 
 accept traditional teaching as my rule of faith, 
 it ought surely to be by preference derived from 
 a body of higher pretensions, whose separation 
 from the Apostles was not so manifest, at any 
 rate. And these Anglicans (as Dr. Newman 
 has noted in one of his Essays) depended on 
 what may be flatteringly called their very dubi- 
 ous orders for their Church ; while apostolically, 
 the legitimacy of the orders springs naturally 
 from the constitution and authority of the 
 Church. The Church, I argued, cannot be a 
 national institution. Super hanc petrarri does 
 not refer to England, nor even to Rome. The 
 first centuries, if their teaching were perfectly 
 accessible and clear, as it assuredly is not, would 
 be no authority separated from succeeding Chris- 
 tianity " to the end of the world." (Matt, 
 xxviii. 20.) How arbitrary to assign the first 
 
50 Through Rome On, 
 
 three centuries as the period of God's flying 
 visit to the Church ! How fanciful the notion 
 that doctrine was divinely watched over for 
 three hundred years, and thenceforth abandoned 
 to the vagaries and corruptions of men. Fathers 
 and councils developed the doctrine in the first 
 three centuries ;^ fathers and councils continued 
 to develop it in the succeeding time : but the 
 Holy Spirit, it would seem, w^as with the fathers 
 and councils of tlie former period, and the spirit 
 of error with those that followed. This is very 
 different from the promise of Christ in the gos- 
 pel; and such a modification of it to suit a 
 modern case I could not accept or fail to see 
 through. It was a continuous, unbroken, infalli- 
 ble Church that I sought for. Certainly there 
 is no such institution on earth, as I found out 
 afterwards; but certainly the Christian theory 
 demands such an institution, and I was right to 
 turn a^'ay from an insular church, " by law es- 
 tablished," as not answering to the demand. I 
 took the whole Bible language on the subject as 
 divinely true ; and finding the Church declared 
 to be the pillar and ground of the truth (I 
 Tim. iii. 15), without s;pot or wrinkle^ &c. 
 (Eph. V. 27) ; and that Christ had established 
 
 1 The first General Council, so called, met in the 
 fourth century— 325; but this fact is not inconsistent 
 with the statement in the text. 
 
TJiTOugh Rome On. 61 
 
 the Churcli and promised that the gates of hell 
 should not prevail against it (Matt. xvi. 18), and 
 that He would be with it alway, to the end of 
 the world (Matt, xxviii. 20) ; I could not believe 
 in any society's being the true Church that had 
 at any time lapsed from the high conditions 
 predicated of the Spouse of Christ. Not only 
 was there a relative probability for the infalhble 
 constitution of the Church, but there were inti- 
 mations in the Scriptures besides of such a mode 
 of divine operation. The Old Testament showed 
 what we may call a possession of the prophets, 
 so that they were obliged, by a power super- 
 seding their own wills, as in the case of Balaam,^ 
 to speak what was put into their months ; and 
 something ot the kind was foretold of the Apos- 
 tles in the I^ew (Matt. x. 19, 20). The Jewish 
 establishment also seemed endowed with a cer- 
 tain official infallibility or inspiration, from what 
 was said of Caiaphas in John xi. 51 ; and the 
 promise of the Teacher and Remembrancer and 
 Spirit of Truth, to abide with the Church for- 
 
 1 The story of Balaam, which has perhaps been spoilt 
 on its way to us, is, it must be admitted, not perfectly 
 clear on this point; but the prophet, if we are so to call 
 him, would seem to have been at least as much under 
 compulsion as the beast he rode. The painfully bun- 
 gling beginning in ISTum. xxii. is followed by a smoother 
 continuation and ending in the next two chapters. 
 
62 Through Rome On, 
 
 ever (John xiv. 16, IT, 26), seemed to be under- 
 stood and acted on by tlie Apostles in the Cath- 
 olic sense when they spoke in that assured tone 
 of divine authority, For it seemed good to the 
 Holy Ghost and to us (Acts xv. 28), in the 
 Council of Jerusalem. !Now, indeed, applying 
 my profane reason to the matter, I can readily 
 admit the Protestant naturalising of those scrip- 
 tures which once seemed to me so instinct with 
 a supernatural character and meaning; but at 
 that time I was no naturaliser : I was young, un- 
 seasoned, and full of faith ; and the Catholic in- 
 terpretation, so confirmatory of the expectations 
 excited by the Christian theory, appeared to me 
 most convincingly true. With a strong disposi- 
 tion to believe in Christianity, the general evi- 
 dences of Christianity seem convincing ; and so 
 with a strong disposition to believe in the infal- 
 lible Church. The one true Church that I felt 
 the need of had to be infallible, in order that its 
 truth as a fact in the supernatural order should 
 be assured to me ; and so the " proofs from holy 
 writ " were very conclusive. The exclusiveness 
 of the Catholic claim suited my ideal conception 
 of God's Church ; and I was prepared to be de- 
 lighted with Milner's ingenious applicaticn of 
 Solomon's judgment to the subject. Here, too, 
 Scripture came in to fortify my prepossessions. 
 The one faith and fold, the true vine, the woeful 
 
Through Borne On, 53 
 
 fate of separated brandies, continually saluted 
 mj eyes, not only in the polemic fourth gospel 
 (which of course I supposed to be written by the 
 Apostle John), but on page after page of the 
 New Testament besides. I was never for a mo- 
 ment deceived into taking the Church for a lib- 
 eral institution. As such, indeed, I could not 
 have believed in it. It was because it was im- 
 perious, exclusive, uncompromising, anathema- 
 tising, that I recognised it as the body spoken of 
 in Scripture and demanded by the Christian pre- 
 mises. The loose thinking of Protestants about 
 the necessary marks of the Church, and the pos- 
 sibility of splints retaining their orthodoxy, was 
 intolerable to me. Not less intolerable was, as 
 soon as I became acquainted with it, the milk- 
 and-water spirit displayed by many Catholics in 
 humbling their rehgion before its enemies, by 
 timid apology that sacrificed the truth, and by 
 faint-heartedness and paltering with their duty 
 in its visible practice. The Catholic who bent 
 his knee in Protestant worship, or who equivo- 
 cated about Exclusive Salvation, or placed the 
 Papal prerogatives on the ground of human con- 
 sent, made me ashamed for him and for the re- 
 ligion he misrepresented ; and recalled the Lao- 
 dicean message in He v. iii. 15, 16. Without 
 this discerning of spirits and this thorough-going 
 method of dealing with pregnant principles, I 
 
54: Through Rorrie On. 
 
 slioiild either never have found mj way into the 
 Church, or never have found my way out of it 
 afterwards. 
 
 Before proceeding further, I will remark that 
 in my expository observations in previous and 
 succeeding pages, I draw freely upon my recol- 
 lection of both Protestant and Catholic authors 
 who were my instructors in the past; and it may 
 be that in some instances I have, though unin- 
 tentionally, borrowed the very language which, 
 impressed itself upon my memory at a more plas- 
 tic period than the present. 
 
 ♦ My first confessor was the Reverend Henry 
 "Benedict Coskery, Rector of the Baltimore 
 Cathedral ; at whose hands I received conditional 
 baptism on the first day of November (All Saints'), 
 1843 ; I being then in my sixteenth year. My 
 first communion soon followed ; and a few months 
 afterwards I was confirmed by Archbishop Ec- 
 cleston. So my Catholic life began ; a life in 
 which my religious tendencies were fed and nour- 
 ished, and allowed to expand in a congenial at- 
 mosphere of peace and devotion. I look back on 
 it, and on the persons who helped me to walk by 
 its means purely and faithfully along the strait 
 
Through Home On. 55 
 
 path tlirongli the critical period of my youth, 
 not only without reproach, but with a loving ten- 
 derness and a gratitude that will not fail. I can 
 never forget how, struggling with an orphan's 
 grief, I found consolation on the breast of the 
 undying Mother that remained to me in the 
 Church. The fresh, buoyant feelings which in- 
 spired us in the morning of life we remember 
 with an inexpressible yearning at a later period 
 when they can never return ; and I go back to 
 those feelings now, in recalling the Catholic as- 
 sociations of my boyhood, when earth was so fair 
 and full of promise, and heaven fairer still, as 
 pictured and reflected in the religion of my choice. 
 Others may have their hard tales to tell of this 
 religion, which shielded and cherished me when 
 I was very poor and weak and could find no 
 other such friend ; but my testimony shall and 
 must be to its honour, or I should be the basest 
 of ingrates and the most untruthful of witnesses 
 as well. In the proper place I shall have enough 
 to say against the logic of its doctrine ; but in 
 treating of the practical training it gave me at 
 this early time when I came to it in such sore 
 spiritual need, and of the intimate acquaintance 
 into which I soon grew with the character of its 
 ministry and offices, no language will do but that 
 of thankfulness and praise. I migh! say of it, as 
 a boy that I once knew said of his instructors : 
 
56 Through Rome On. 
 
 that it taught me " all goodness." It inculcated 
 an heroic virtue. I met with no gross scandals 
 anywhere in connexion with it. If there were 
 any disappointment about it, it was that so many 
 Catholics seemed insensible to the high demands 
 and daily inspirations of their religion. For me, 
 it was a perpetual feast of the spirit, where 
 " crude surfeit " was impossible, and though my 
 long hunger was appeased, the zest of appetite 
 never departed while faith remained to supply 
 the assimilative principle. The needs of both 
 heart and mind were supplied to me, for the time, 
 in this wondrous Catholicism ; which only they 
 who are ignorant of it can regard as being in its 
 worship and distinctive doctrines mere formalism 
 and superstition. I studied the service of the 
 altar, and imbibed Christian teaching under the 
 symbolic forms of its vestments and ceremonies. 
 Every robe of the sanctuary, each prescribed act 
 of celebrant or assistant there, is significant of 
 something in the Gospel, or of some ancient 
 Christian habit, which was cherished by men of 
 old, though it is repudiated by our modern sec- 
 taries, and stigmatised as " theatrical." The 
 public rites of the Catholic worship are continual 
 incentives to private devotion. So are distinctive 
 Catholic doctrines which to Protestants seem 
 worse than unmeaning. The doctrine of Purga- 
 tory quickened my charity, and was as a coal 
 
Through Borne On. 67 
 
 from tlie altar, moving my lips in prayer. The 
 Keal Presence made the sacrament a communion 
 indeed, and one of such love and fervour as I can 
 never forget. No wonder Luther, with that deep 
 craving heart of his, was unable to give up the 
 doctrine ; so that his spite against popery went 
 no farther in this direction than to substitute 
 con for tranSj and cling to the impanation of his 
 God. No wonder High-church Protestants 
 hanker after the doctrine to-day, and go out early 
 in the morning with sweet spices, seeking the 
 body of the Lord. I speak that I know, when I 
 testify to the vast power of the sacramental sys- 
 tem of the Catholic Church, and to the good ef- 
 fects which it so widely works among its disciples. 
 It no doubt has its grave mischiefs and abuses 
 also ; though on this score there has been a vast 
 deal of rash judgment, as well as of false state- 
 ment, on the part of an ti- Catholics, fomented, 
 unhappily, in many instances, by low-minded 
 Catholics, seeking in this scandalous way to 
 curry favour with the enemies of their religion. 
 No doubt, too, that goodness is the most health 
 ful and desirable which can stand alone and is 
 bravely and really independent of all such things 
 as ritual observances. When in the progress of 
 the race a high and robust morality, informed 
 by true scientific conceptions of nature in all its 
 departments, shall reign over the earth, and 
 
58 Through Rome On, 
 
 those subtle amalgams tlie religions of mankind 
 shall have shed their last "perfume and suppli- 
 ance " with their parting breath ; when the mys- 
 tic rite shall no longer sway the conscience, — 
 when the great Pan is indeed dead, — -then the 
 magic of the "outward and visible sign" may 
 have passed away also. But in the present order, 
 which will endure some time yet, the votaries of 
 dogmatic faith cannot dispense with Jacob's Lad- 
 der for their ascending and descending angels' 
 use; and the Catholic Church is mightier than 
 her rivals in proportion to the superior enginery 
 of her sacramental system. Protestants are not 
 thoroughly at home with the great ecclesiastical 
 developments of Original Sin, the Trinity, the 
 Incarnation and Atonement, the Eucharist ; any 
 more than they are with the old-world cathedrals 
 and abbey remains which they have wrested 
 from Catholic hands and turned from sanctuaries 
 into shows. The " fundamental " tenets have a 
 coherence and concurrence in the Catholic system 
 which they do not at all display in their trans- 
 planted condition. The Catholic Eucharist is in 
 close and effective relation to the central mystery 
 of the Atonement. It is the great act of worship, 
 the daily sacrifice on myriads of shining altars 
 over the whole world, as well as the special feast 
 and offering of the individual Christian, his in 
 spiring food through life, the viaticum that ac- 
 
Through Rome On, 59 
 
 companies and sustains him when he descends at 
 last into the darkness of the grave. The Real 
 Presence is the greatest qnickener of piety in the 
 refined and imaginative soul. The Incarnation 
 has made nothing thenceforth impossible or fool- 
 ish that faith can propose ; and here the twink- 
 ling taper before the shrine shows that the Lord 
 is really in his holy temple, waiting in bodily 
 presence to receive the adoration and listen to 
 the wants of high and low alike, through all the 
 hours of the day. Having submitted to the au- 
 thority of the Church, I made no more difficulty 
 about one of its dogmas than about another; 
 taking them all upon the same authority, with- 
 out which the natural reason and instincts must 
 condemn them all as foundationless conceits 
 together. It is true that some of them soon 
 grew to be peculiarly trying to my mind ; but I 
 perceived that the question was of accepting the 
 one common foundation which, with the primal 
 assumption that it involves, makes one dogma as 
 much above the criticism of private judgment as 
 another. "What I may call the painful dogmas 
 were not those which encounter the largest share 
 of Protestant denunciation ; and I will venture 
 here the opinion, that it is an essentially super- 
 ficial criticism which invokes the condemnation 
 of reason in a special manner for such corruptions 
 as all Protestants agree in rejecting. I shall re- 
 
60 Through Rome On, 
 
 turn to this point hereafter ; repeating now that 
 I accepted Catholic theology, not piecemeal, as 
 an agglomeration of separately tested fragments, 
 but in one body of doctrine, upon the one broad 
 foundation which if authoritative for any dogma, 
 is not less authoritative for every other in tlie 
 same order of Supernatural Kevelation. Tran- 
 substantiation, for instance, has precisely the 
 same foundation that the Trinity has, that Incar- 
 nation has, that the monstrous Devil-doctrine 
 has, which Evangelical Protestants deem so salu- 
 tary and holy. Reason rejects all these doc- 
 trines; and the supposed divine Authority w^hich 
 beards reason, and in the case of customary peo- 
 ple hushes it to sleep, sustains them all. This 
 Authority is for Catholics, avowedly the Church ; 
 for Protestants, ecclesiastical education welding 
 firm the fetters of traditional faith. When one 
 has so effectually hushed his reason as to believe 
 that a man like unto other men, v/alking, talking, 
 eating, sleeping, handled, suffering, failing, de- 
 spairing, giving up the ghost, — was the Supreme 
 Being, the absolutely Uncaused and Eternal 
 One,^ ther^ is thenceforth for that believer no 
 
 1 Whatever fanciful metaphysics may still be indulged 
 about two natures in Christ, probably none of my read- 
 ers will revive the exploded heresy of two persons, or 
 have any difficulty in seeing that the language I have 
 used in the text is properly descriptive of the Orthodox 
 
Through Rome On. 61 
 
 absurd or incredible doctrine whatever, provided 
 only it lie within the pale of his own education 
 and traditional sympathies. A believer in the 
 Incarnation and proper Deity of Christ is estop- 
 ped from pleading reason against Transubstan- 
 tiation. As the gist of the horror in the doctrine 
 of Exclusive Salvation lies in the conception of 
 the Deity as the voluntary eternal Tormentor of 
 His creatures, so the gist of the perversion in 
 Transubstantiation lies in the anthropomorphism 
 of dragging the Unknowable down to the sphere 
 of sense. A God-man is as monstrous and irrev- 
 erent a notion as God-bread. 
 
 Protestants, not feeling any tenderness for 
 the doctrine, of Transubstantiation, recognise the 
 full force of the philosophical argument against 
 it, and wonder that any can be blind to its mon- 
 strousness and impossibility; yet many of these 
 same Protestants continue to profess the certainly 
 not less monstrous and impossible tenet of the 
 Pesurrection of the Body, in which they have 
 been educated ; and seem quite unsuspicious that 
 their eyes as really need purging as those of the 
 Catholics. But it is not meet for a Christian to 
 appeal to philosophy in a question of revelation ; 
 and irnpossible is no term for him to apply to a 
 
 Christian view of Him in whom dweUeth all the fulness- of 
 tJie Godliead iodily. 
 
62 Through Rome On, 
 
 doctrine. Philosophy is man's wisdom, in which 
 Christian faith does not stand, but opposes to it 
 the power of God (I Cor. ii. 5); and there is no 
 impossibihty to him that believeth (Mark ix. 23). 
 Philosophy teaches that an interruption of the 
 order of nature is impossible ; but the Christian 
 does not mind this when he comes to talk about 
 his religion, but declares that the philosophical 
 impossibility has repeatedly happened ; and he 
 finds no difficulty in it, because the Gospel, 
 which is for him higher authority than philos- 
 ophy, says that all things are possible with God 
 (Matt. xix. 26 ; Mark x. 27, xiv. 36). The pos- 
 sibility of miracle once admitted, one miracle is 
 as possible and as much above the criticism of 
 philosophy as another; the only real question 
 about any doctrinal miracle being, is it vouched 
 for by the revealing authority in which we be- 
 lieve ? If miracle may override the objections 
 of philosophy in regard to the Kesurrection of 
 the Body, the Catholic is clearly at liberty to ap- 
 ply the same triumphant argument in support of 
 Transubstantiation. In either case the thing is 
 possible enough upon the condition predicated in 
 Mark ix. 23, — If thou canst believe ; and this 
 condition depends upon something else than 
 natural philosophy. On the basis of faith, strenu- 
 ously asserted by Protestants as well as Catho- 
 lics, — external authority conveying a superna- 
 
Through Rome On. 63 
 
 tural revelation, — Transubstantiation is no more 
 amenable to reason than anj other doctrine. 
 The only question is, is it revealed, vouched for 
 by the preaccepted authority ? It never was 
 hard to me v^hile I accepted the infallible Ora- 
 cle. It does not novp" seem to me so glaringly 
 absurd as the Kesurrection of the Body ;^ and it 
 is infinitely less repulsive than the heinous Or- 
 thodox blasphemy of Eternal Hell. 
 
 Not only was Transubstantiation inoffensive 
 to me from the first, but, ^vhile it found an easy 
 acceptance on the plane of faith, it was comfort- 
 ing in its influence, and also decidedly stimulat- 
 ing to both piety and conscientiousness. It made 
 
 ^ I speak of the common view of the Resurrection, in 
 which most of nshave been educated, which children are 
 still made to imbibe in the nursery and the Sunday- 
 school, and which the great body of Christians cherish 
 all their lives. The few who seek to pare away the most 
 offensive grossness of the view for themselves by adopt- 
 ing such amendments of the doctrine as may be found, 
 for instance, in Mr. Maurice's Theological Essays (leav- 
 ing no re-surrection, that is, rising again of what has been 
 dead and buried, to be believed in at all), are at no pains 
 to rebuke the popular superstition on this subject, though 
 they are so very indignant about Transubstantiation : 
 and no Orthodox Christian, at any rate, will question the 
 reanimation of the identical Body which hung upon the 
 Cross, and which was tlie first fruits of them thai slept. 
 
64: * Through Home On, 
 
 me love the cliurcli and the beautiful altar 
 wherever I chanced to be. It drew me in spirit 
 to such places when they were at a distance, and 
 quickened prayer and meditation almost to ec- 
 stasy at times. And then — the preparation for 
 communion ! Only to a person of lively sensi- 
 bilities, perhaps only to one who had at some 
 time lived the life of faith, could I hope to con- 
 vey an adequate conception of the spiritual con- 
 ditions with which I made my fortniglitly ap- 
 proach to the divine banquet. The Catholic is 
 required to receive his Lord fasting, and to have 
 cleansed his soul beforehand by searching self- 
 examination, hearty contrition for his sins, hum- 
 ble and particular confession of them at the foot- 
 stool of penance, together with a sincere resolve 
 to lead, with God's help, a pure and holy life in 
 the future ; without which, he is instructed by 
 his religion, the priestly absolution would avail 
 him nothing, and the receiving of the Body and 
 Blood would be an awful and a damning sacri- 
 lege. As a Catholic, I learned from the stand- 
 ards of my religion, from the harmonious voice 
 of the whole church, sounding the diapason of 
 many hundred years, that to approach the Eu- 
 charist demanded a sanctity which only the ut- 
 most devotion, crowned by divine grace, could 
 lift me to or preserve in me. I strove, with 
 many stumbles and falls, but with ever renewed 
 
Through Rome On. 65 
 
 hope and effort, which were surely not without 
 their fruits, to keep m j soul in this state of grace. 
 I frequented the sacraments, and made my pre- 
 paration for confession and communion as if the 
 moment for my dissolution had arrived, and the 
 uncovered soul were about to stand at the bar of 
 final judgment. At seventeen, this world had 
 so small a place in my esteem, and I was so ab- 
 sorbed in the teachings of faith, that I might 
 have been addressed in the language of the Epis- 
 tle to the Colossians : you are dead, and your 
 life is hid icith Christ in God, I felt willing 
 to die or to live, as it should please God ; and to 
 take no thought for the morrow, but to leave all 
 to Him. The natural effect of these dispositions 
 and of the devout ordinances with which I was 
 surrounded was to preserve me to a great extent 
 from the corruption which spreads its deadly pol- 
 luting slime over the pathway of sanguine youth. 
 The sacraments, the sign of the cross, the com- 
 munion of saints which was opened to me in de- 
 votional exercises, in ascetic writings, and in the 
 confessional, all contributed to build up my soul 
 in the resolve and practice of a virtuous life. I 
 was conciliated rather than repelled by particu- 
 lar doctrines that Protestants cry out against 
 most loudly. "Without feeling any special at- 
 tractiveness in the doctrine of Indulgences, I 
 readily perceived that according to the definition 
 
66 Through Borne On. 
 
 of the Church there is no license to sin in it, and 
 that the power of granting indulgences is a Christ- 
 like function, which the Church may naturally 
 claim and exercise so that it shall be very service- 
 able to Christian people. The sweeping denun- 
 ciation of Relics, by zealous Protestants, I saw 
 to be inconsistent with a genuine faith in such 
 narratives as those in II Kings xiii. 21, and Acts 
 xix. 12, as well as with the instinctive prompt- 
 ings of the heart in all ages and conditions of 
 men. The Invocation of Saints seemed in pro- 
 per accord with an earnest belief in their beati- 
 fied state and with the article of the Apostles' 
 Creed in which they are mentioned. How^ ex- 
 actly, they could hear our prayers, was of no 
 more importance than how they could know of 
 the " one sinner that repenteth," over whose 
 earthly act they rejoice so exceedingly.^ We say 
 " I pray you," every day, to our fellow-men here : 
 surely we may say the same without idolatry to 
 our friends in heaven. By such simple yet forci- 
 ble considerations as these was the practice de- 
 fended to my mind against the common objec- 
 tions. Indeed, the whole Catholic life was re- 
 commended to me from the beginning as being 
 a daily realisation of the Scriptures and early 
 Christian symbols, in relation to which I had 
 
 J Luke XV. 10. 
 
Through Rome On. 67 
 
 found Protestantism so sadly out of joint : and 
 in nothing was this fulfihiient more powerfully 
 felt than in the mystic tie which made a common 
 family of all the children of God and heirs of 
 salvation, in heaven, on earth, and in the patient 
 middle state that most of all called for tender 
 and continual remembrance. It was a tie that 
 death had no power to sunder, but could only 
 plat into a firmer fibre stretching across the gulf 
 of time. It made a fellowship and intercourse 
 of the redeemed ; so that those on earth not only 
 believed in the existence of their invisible breth- 
 ren, but communicated with them, felt their com- 
 panionship, and interchanged with them constant 
 o£Bces of service and affection. The superemi- 
 nent rank accorded to the Virgin Mother, and 
 the fervent trust and devotion with which she is 
 regarded by all faithful Catholics, I soon per- 
 ceived to flow naturally from the Nicene and 
 Ephesian doctrine of Christ's divinity, from the 
 seed sown by Paul's teaching of the unholiness 
 of natural generation, and from the need of a 
 ledge neither too high nor too low for the long- 
 ing soul's reach and rest from the pains and 
 perils of its body of death. The Divine Mater- 
 nity is no more shocking than the Divine Son- 
 ship. Call it idolatry if j^ou will : it is only as 
 idolatry is inherent in all human worship that 
 this deserves the name. F. W. Eobertson says 
 
68 Through Rome On. 
 
 well, that it is only a human God tliat man can 
 worship; and it may be added, that we should be 
 half orphans with only a Father in heaven. 
 The tender and great-souled Theodore Parker 
 used to pray to God as " Our Father and our 
 Mother "; and who that conceives of the invis- 
 ible Supreme as a loving Parent, but blends the 
 feminine with the masculine ideal in the object 
 of his adoration ? The God that is angry and 
 terrible is a man ; but the loving, forgiving, com- 
 passionate God, who would fain gather us as the 
 hen gathereth her chickens under her wing, this 
 God who is nearer to us than the other, and at 
 whose footstool we have learned to trust as well 
 as to pray, is woman rather than man. "We have 
 an instinctive feeling that only in a mother's 
 heart can love ineffable dwell; and until the love 
 of God so fills us with its perfection as utterly to 
 cast out fear, we labour with a sense of some- 
 thing wanting in the Divine Being. Readers 
 who have partaken of the rich spiritual treasures 
 in George Macdonald's novels cannot forget that 
 touching description in Bohert Falconer of the 
 Presbyterian widow writhing over the thought of 
 hell for her castaway son, and crying in the agony 
 of her prayer : — " O Lord ! I canna say thy will 
 be done. But dinna lay 't to mychairge; for 
 gin ye was a mither yersel\ ye wadna pit him 
 there." As the Son, the God of the Christian 
 
Through Rome On, 69 
 
 multitude, is a softening and reduction, so to 
 speak, of Deity, which thus becomes tangible 
 and familiar to man, so the Mother is a farther 
 humanisation of Divine existence, and a definite 
 realisation of the feminine principle already sug- 
 gested by the Son. If Jesus brings us nearer to 
 the Father, Mary brings us nearer to Jesus, from 
 whom all her dignity and glory are derived; 
 and I felt that my poor soul needed every link 
 in the spiritual connexion. Nor could I rate as 
 ^n ordinary human being her whom God had 
 saluted by his Angel and overshadowed with his 
 power, and whom, according to the very words 
 of her own prophecy, I found all generations 
 calling blessed (Luke i. 48). I had learned in 
 my Protestant education that the briefest contact 
 with the person of Jesus in a crowd had commu- 
 nicated virtue (Mark V. 29 ; Luke vi. 19, viii. 46); 
 and could I now find difficulty in believing that 
 she who had conceived and borne him, and pil- 
 lowed him on her heart, who had directed his 
 first footsteps, and who received his last sigh and 
 remembrance from the Cross, had partaken in 
 largest measure of that overflowing holiness 
 which distilled on soul and body together at a 
 touch ? I had not been taught to believe in the 
 efficacy of contact with a dead prophet's bones 
 (II Kings xiii. 21), or with the hem of a garment 
 (Luke viii. 44), or with miraculous handkerchiefs 
 
70 Through Rome On. 
 
 and aprons (Acts xix. 12), and to call others infi- 
 dels for not believing such things, to be staggered 
 now when the Church gave a wider scope to the 
 same teaching, and told me that all genuine 
 relics and holy beings were to be regarded with 
 faith and veneration, and that Mary in particular 
 was " full of grace " and worthy to be honoured 
 above every other creature. To discredit Mary 
 was, I saw, to discredit the Incarnation, in which 
 God had chosen her to play so exalted a part. 
 She from whom it had pleased Him that Hia 
 Son should be made (Gal. iv. 4) must have been 
 peerless and immaculate to furnish the incorrupt- 
 ible humanity that was to triumph over death 
 and the grave, and sit at the right hand of the 
 Father on his throne. If \hQ grayer of a right- 
 eous man availeth much (James v. 16), how ef- 
 fectual must not be the intercession of the Mother 
 of the Lord, whose voice on earth had moved 
 the yet unborn and been the signal of i\\Q Holy 
 Ghost (Luke i. 41). That she had great favour 
 and power in heaven was a probability corroborat- 
 ed by ages of devout faith and made certain by 
 the solemn assurance of the Church. There was 
 no repugnance to hold me back ; and I found 
 comfort in the dying Saviour's word, Behold 
 thy Mothers 
 
 1 John xix. 27. 
 
Through Borne On, 71 
 
 Mr. Capes, in dsscribing his Catholic experi- 
 ence, declares that to him *' the act of confession 
 was never anything but an unpleasant necessity." 
 It was an unpleasant necessity to me too ; but it 
 was something else besides. The forgiveness 
 of sins was as real to me as the communion of 
 saints, I heartily believed in the doctrine, and 
 recognised the tribunal of Penance as a well-fit- 
 ting part of the machinery of a supernatural re- 
 ligion. Resorting to it was to Mr. Capes " like 
 a small surgical operation"; and he avouches 
 that the only comfort he derived from it was the 
 sense of relief from a disagreeable duty each 
 time that the task came to an end. One is truly 
 to be pitied who has to go through such an ordeal 
 without the compensating return which the 
 hearty Catholic receives. In my case, the actual 
 confessing to the priest, though certainly very 
 trying, was less severe than the preparation for 
 it. I so dreaded falling short of my duty in this 
 preparation, and thus incurring tlie guilt of sacri- 
 lege in the sight of Heaven. To avoid this I 
 wrestled in agony with my conscience before 
 God. Deliberate blasphemy would have been as 
 possible to me as a perfunctory confession. 
 When the hours of prayer and self-searching 
 were ended, the rest was comparatively easy. I 
 
72 Through Rome On. 
 
 could almost forget that it was a man I told mj 
 sin to and made mj judge. That man was in 
 Christ's stead, and Christ was God. I believed 
 fervently that He whose word could not fail had 
 said, Whose sins you remit, they are remitted ; 
 and as I had not been able to put np with any 
 simulacrum of God's Church among the sects, 
 so no " general absolution '^ would do for me 
 here, nor answer to the strong terms of the divine 
 commission. I took true pains with my part of 
 the tranaction, and was repaid in feeling the sig- 
 nificance and lasting authority of the gospel 
 words brought home to me, as the precise un- 
 doubting ego te absolvo was murmured over my 
 head. I know that not all Catholics get the 
 same benefit from Confession. Mr. Capes is 
 perhaps a not unfavourable instance of a large 
 class who are imfitted by temperament to profit 
 by the institution. The enforcement of the ob- 
 ligation by superiors, too, though from the Cath- 
 olic point of view a seeming necessity, is often 
 attended with miserable scandals. I remember 
 hearing from one who had been educated at a 
 Jesuit college, of the painful scenes he had wit- 
 nessed there when boys, driven into the confes- 
 sional at regular periods, would sometimes enter 
 it with curses on their lips. After all, however, 
 there is, I am sure, to the numerous body of 
 willing and earnest penitents the world over, 
 
Through Borne On. 73 
 
 great good, as well as great consolation, in the 
 sacrament of Penance ; which pious souls that 
 tremble to think they have forfeited their baptis- 
 mal innocence prize and cling to as a " second 
 plank after shipwreck." I am bound to acknow- 
 ledge that the influence of the confessional was 
 in my case salutary. It tempered and restrained 
 the warmth of a youthful constitution ; it purged 
 motives of their selfishness ; it inculcated mod- 
 esty and self-denial ; it made sin daily more and 
 more hateful to me, and virtue more and more 
 amiable and attractive. It taught me to know 
 myself; it imparted a priceless lesson of self- 
 examination. I can never forget the searching 
 scrutiny with which I used to probe my heart 
 for confession, how entirely that heart was laid 
 bare before God and the priest, how quickened I 
 was in faith, hope and charity afterwards. Pro- 
 testants know little of the preparation which the 
 devout and instructed Catholic goes through as 
 the preliminary stage before kneeling at the tri- 
 bunal of penance to obtain pardon for his sins. 
 They — Protestants — commonly look upon the 
 priest as a professional pardon-broker, and upon 
 the seeker of absolution at his hands as one who 
 goes with a light conscience to bargain for for- 
 giveness. Now it is true that the whole doctrine 
 of atonement and pardon through Jesus Christ, 
 whether as held by Catholics or by Protestants, 
 
74: Through Rome On, 
 
 is essentially mercenary and repugnant to the in- 
 stinctive promptings of a healthy conscientious- 
 ness ; but it is also true, that the Catholic teach- 
 ing and practice which grow out of and find a 
 firm foundation in this doctrine are really very 
 different from what Protestants to a great extent 
 suppose and represent them to be. The Catholic 
 Church teaches, not only in her larger symbols 
 of faith, but in her minutest instructions to stu- 
 dents in seminaries, and to children learning the 
 catechism in her schools, as well as in her innu- 
 merable books of devotion in various languages, 
 that no words of absolution pronounced by 
 priest, bishop, or pope, can do away with the 
 guilt or penalty of njortal sin without hearty con- 
 trition on the sinner's own part; and that to make 
 confession without such contrition, would be sac- 
 rilege, and would fearfully add to the guilt of 
 the soul. This teaching has been so broadly and 
 unceasingly inculcated by authority among Cath- 
 olics that it must be accepted as the doctrine of 
 the Church on the forgiveness of- sin. I know 
 that there have been subtle speculations among 
 theologians as to the effect of a certain kind and 
 degree of attrition, joined to the sacramental 
 rite ; but all such things are " caviare to the gen_ 
 eral," and find no part in the communings of 
 priest and penitent in the confessional. A more 
 solid difficulty seems to me to lie in a consider- 
 
Through Rome On. 76 
 
 atlon of the possible perversions by iudividnal 
 priests in this secret tribunal. It is not to be 
 questioned that such abuses may occur, nay, 
 that they have occurred in many grievous in- 
 stances, and that they probably do occur some- 
 times everywhere, and will from time to time 
 occur as long as auricular confession is practised. 
 Even assuming a sacred obligation for the prac- 
 tice, the liability here spoken of must be admitted. 
 The Catholic will indeed argue, and plausibly 
 enough upon the assumption of the embodied 
 revelation of the Divine will, that the possible 
 abuse of a rightful ordinance should not be 
 pleaded against its use ; that the rightfulness of 
 Confession is determined by the indefeasible wit- 
 ness of the Church ; and that since God has com- 
 mitted the forgiveness of sins to His apostolic 
 ministry, we are not to pretend to be wiser than 
 He in regard to the safety, nor independent of 
 Him in regard to the obligation, of the institu- 
 tion. This argument cannot be invalidated while 
 we admit the authority of the Church as witness 
 and teacher ; but it is of course worth nothing 
 when that authority is overthrown. Looking at 
 Confession as a purely human institution, with- 
 out any divine obligation whatever, the argument 
 from its abuses becomes extremely formidable. 
 That the danger lessens with the increase of gen- 
 eral intelligence can hardly be questioned ; though 
 
76 Through Rome On, 
 
 it can never quite pass away until hierocracy it 
 self lias given up the ghost. As Dean Milman 
 remarks in one of his instructive and delightful 
 essays, — " the age of the Confessional, of spirit- 
 ual direction according to the sense which it bore 
 during the Jesuit dominion over the human mind, 
 is gone by." (Essay On the Relation of the 
 Clergy to the People?) But leaving the general 
 aspects of the subject, and giving my own per- 
 sonal experience of the Confessional, I am under 
 an obligation to testify that its effects were fa- 
 vourable to conscientiousness and virtue. Far- 
 ther on I shall have to remark on the decatholicis- 
 ing effect of certain elements of devotion which 
 came to me in this way ; but I have here to re- 
 peat mj acknowledgment of indebtedness to the 
 sacramental system of Catholicism, which is so 
 little understood among Protestants in general; 
 and the averment of my belief in the great mul- 
 titude of souls to which this system has been a 
 true nursing-mother in goodness not less than in 
 faith. Do I therefore propose to Protestants 
 that they become Catholics and frequent the sac- 
 raments ? Nay, I cannot prescribe for the needs 
 of their souls. I should be glad if any poor 
 words of mine might bring Catholics and Protest- 
 ants into better acquaintance and into gentler 
 and kindlier relations than before ; but I desire 
 to see no conversions from one to the other side. 
 
Through Home On, 77 
 
 An exchange of one dogmatic faith for another 
 is seldom happy. For the rest, that is the best 
 religion for one which fits one best. There is no 
 universal religion. The notion that there is, 
 has filled the earth with horrors and wailing 
 until now. All organised religions are alike 
 human growths from roots of error. * To esteem 
 one divine at the expense of the rest, is a poor 
 partisan superstition. The religions which Chris- 
 tians call false are as really true and good for 
 the people that hold them as Christianity is true 
 and good for its disciples. If the good side of 
 religion has. been nobly exhibited by Christians, 
 so has it been by heathen for even a longer pe- 
 riod of time ; and alas for the lofty and exclusive 
 pretensions of Christianity ! the earthliness of 
 its nature has been abundantly demonstrated 
 through the nineteen centuries of modern history 
 in which the evil side of religion has been so 
 painfully contrasted with the good. So of Cathol- 
 icism and Protestantism, that divide the Chris- 
 tian ground with which we are most familiar. 
 Each is hedged with such divinity in the eyes of 
 its followers as to make the other seem a mon- 
 ster by comparison ; but in reality, each is good 
 for some of the race and very ill adapted to other 
 some. The impatience of either side at the con- 
 tinued existence and pertinacious claims of the 
 other, belongs to the era of unripe thought, 
 
78 Through Home On. 
 
 which the mass of mankind have not got beyond 
 yet, and in which the unphilosophical notion of 
 a Supernatural Oracle still clogs the intellect and 
 confuses the moral sense. This era is passing 
 away, but it will not be unduly hurried; and 
 while it lasts, the sensibly decaying order of 
 supernaturalist faith must be recognised as hav- 
 ing a necessary, and therefore in a certain sense 
 a rightful, existence. In dealing with this order, 
 one who sees beyond it should be careful not to 
 undervalue its importance, not to brand it as an 
 idle cumberer of the ground; but to regard it 
 with strict justice and all fair allowance; giving 
 due credit to its merits, nor setting down aught 
 in malice against it. Especially should one who 
 undertakes to declare his own experience of this 
 order which he has been obliged to abandon, but 
 to which so large a portion of mankind are still 
 joined in conscience and affection, be candid and 
 painstaking in his account. It has been my en- 
 deavour here to discharge this duty. I have pre- 
 ferred to risk the reproach of prolixity by line 
 upon line of iteration, rather than incur the op- 
 posite danger of not saying enough to make my 
 work clear and to the purpose. It has been my 
 design from the first to make my subjective ac- 
 quaintance with Christianity shed light upon the 
 objective argument. I cannot as a sane man ad- 
 mit the claims of this religion now ; but in my 
 
Through Rome On. 79 
 
 boyhood and early youth it was, under the Cath- 
 oL'c forms, largely adapted to my needs, and, as 
 I see now, was a necessary stage in my mental 
 and spiritual progress. As such, it was good, 
 very good in its place; and I am trying to 
 bear faithful testimony to the service it ren- 
 dered me. 
 
 It was a high ideal that I had set before me, 
 the Kingdom of God on earth. I had faithfully 
 taken in the theory of a Divine Kevelation, its 
 corollary being the visible theocracy of the 
 Church, the highest court of appeal in doctrinal and 
 moral questions, the supreme spiritual Authority 
 on earth, to which all other authority here below, 
 including of course the public and the private 
 conscience, the individual and the state, is neces- 
 sarily subordinate and subject. It is easy, when 
 one does not heartily accept the theory, or does 
 not perfectly embrace the scope and logical 
 requirements of it, to object to this consistent 
 view of the Church that it is despotic. Cer- 
 tainly it is despotic ; and if the Divine Word had 
 been supernaturally uttered to man and embod- 
 ied in an infallible Oracle for our guidance 
 and rule through all generations, it would have 
 to be despotic, and could not be anything else. 
 The idea of our having any right to cavil at 
 
80 Through Home On, 
 
 what it pronounced, or to question its author- 
 ity in any way when it asserted it over us, 
 would be absurd. 
 
 Here, then, I had found the Church, appar-i 
 ently all, and more than all, I had expected to' 
 find it. I had hardly at first looked for so 
 complete and absolute a spiritual guide ; but as 
 I went on I saw the necessity for it, and here it 
 was. It was surely a sublime conception, this 
 of the heavenly kingdom established upon the 
 same soil with the kingdoms of this world, an 
 ever- accessible tribunal to decide all questions 
 brought before it according to the pure and im- 
 partial law of the Most High.' Here was the in- 
 former of consciences, the righter of wrongs, the 
 absolver from sins, the preparer of the way of the 
 Lord. The realisation of my early millennial 
 dreams seemed brought about in this anticipation 
 of Christ's visible reign on earth. In the person 
 of his representative, he seemed, from Peter to 
 Gregory XYI., to lead the procession of the' 
 Christian ages, giving a new light to history, a 
 new voice to poetry, a new beauty and significance 
 to the whole life of man. 
 
 1 "What could be more glorious than the idea of the 
 Successor of Christ ruling the rulers of the earth, and 
 swaying them all by the law of God?" '* The one sub- 
 linie theory, the only sublime theory that mankind ever 
 framed," &c. — CJiaiies Buxton. 
 
Through Rome On. 81 
 
 The Koman Catholic Church, viewed with the 
 eye of enthusiasm and early faith, seems indeed 
 the visible kingdom of God on earth. Her rule 
 of spiritual perfection, illustrated by the splendid 
 examples of the saints ; that irresistible though 
 armless might which the world's annals show 
 her to have exercised through so many ages ; the 
 regular ranks of her hierarchy, crowned with the 
 stupendous sovereignty of the Papal Yicegerent, 
 in whom the Almighty himself seems to speak 
 with one voice to all the faithful : these marks 
 to the ardent neophyte betoken an order not to 
 be confounded with that of this world, whose 
 afiairs are confused and passing, while the con- 
 cerns of the Heavenly kingdom are divine and 
 eternal. 
 
 I started with the consecration of my whole 
 being to this ideal. It was glorious to feel my- 
 self belonging to the City of God, with privi- 
 leges that dwarfed all citizenship besides. I had 
 been a mourner in Zion for the heritage that I 
 sought but could not find ; and now a door had 
 been opened to me of the Lord, and there had 
 been given unto me beauty for ashes, the oil of 
 joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the 
 spirit of heaviness. The only thank-offering in 
 my power was myself; my affections, my under- 
 standing, my will : could I hold back any part 
 of the pitiful return? I had the promise of 
 
82 Through Borne On, 
 
 treasure in heaven that faileth not ; and where 
 mj treasure was there should my heart betimes be 
 placed. Imagination, inflamed with pious ar- 
 dour, grew romantic in visions of the Middle 
 Ages, those Ages of Faith, so reviled of men, so 
 blessed in the sight of Heaven ; when Science 
 was humble and leaned on Religion ; when war, 
 and knighthood, and perilous love itself, were 
 sanctified with the cross and made instruments 
 of salvation; when men really believed in the 
 Devil ; when the sin of false doctrine was always 
 recognised and reprobated, as if the faithful 
 Apostle* were still alive : the glorious Ages that 
 were past, but that would come again when the 
 earth should be full of the knowledge of the 
 Lord as the waters cover the sea. I cherished 
 a contempt for the expedients of human living, 
 that so often grow dear to the heart and en- 
 danger salvation. I destroyed my books like 
 the early Christian converts :^ a number of vol- 
 umes did I mutilate because of the anticatholic 
 character of their contents. I formed myself 
 upon the models supplied by the saints and 
 ascetic writers. Rodriguez, A-Kempis, St. Fran- 
 cis of Sales, and like fervid counsellors, were my 
 constant reading ; and, with frequent confession 
 and communion, edifying intercourse with fellow- 
 
 1 Gal. i. 8, 9; II John 10, 11. 2 Acts xix. 19. 
 
Through Home On, 83 
 
 devotees, and daily resort to the ever-open shrines 
 forprayer and meditation, nourished unceasingly 
 the flame of faith and zeal in my breast. I 
 made a point of being thoroughly instructed in 
 my religion, and eagerly greeted everything, 
 spoken or written, that advanced this object. 
 Of course I read stout old Bishop Milner, whose 
 JEnd of Controversy and Letters to a Pre- 
 bendary are specimens of most ingenious plead- 
 ing in clear and nervous English. A volume 
 of very clever and scholarly Tracts, by Dr. 
 Lingard, the historian, I estimated highly. 
 Mohler's Syinbolism was exceedingly serviceable. 
 Audin's Luther^ Spalding's JRevieio of D^Au- 
 higne^ Kenrick on Baptism, and on Justification, 
 "Wiseman's Eight Lectures on the Real Presence, 
 and the well-known Amicable Discussion on 
 the Church of England and the Reformation, 
 were some of the works that assisted me to a 
 true understanding of the doctrines and claims of 
 the religion I had embraced. But the author to 
 whom above all others I was indebted for this kind 
 ofinstruction, and to whose logical ability and bold- 
 ness my lasting gratitude is due for light and devel- 
 opment in both politics and religion, was Doctor 
 Orestes A. Brownson ; whose name is an honour 
 to American letters, and whose vigorous and 
 thorough mind, with his bold, clear style, and 
 his fearless habit of turning a subject inside-out 
 
84 Through Borne On, 
 
 and sending the light completely through it, 
 made him a terror to friends and to enemies. 
 To Dr. Brownson more than to any other one 
 man, as the helper of my personal experience, it is 
 due that I know the Catholic religion to its inmost 
 core as I do. The materials of the argument had 
 now been completely worked up, and had brought 
 me to a definite, well understood, and fully ac- 
 cepted conclusion, the heads of which may be 
 briefly stated. Grod is absolute. God's specially 
 ordained supernatural order is the supreme order 
 on earth. The Church is the embodiment and 
 living representative of this order, and of God, 
 its source. The living representative alone can 
 define the limits of this order, in general and in 
 particular. All practical affairs fall within the 
 sphere of morals. The spiritual order is tlie mon- 
 itor and tribunal of conscience, and final judge 
 of all moral questions whatever on the face 
 of the earth. In this domain, neither private 
 man nor public authority may ever dispute its 
 decree ; since the human and subordinate can- 
 not sit in judgment on the divine and supreme. 
 Thus, not purely religious matters only, but 
 questions of state, international questions, civH 
 obligations, marriage relations, &g., are all sub- 
 jects for cognisance by the Church. The Pope 
 is the ever-present and ever-ready plenipotentiary 
 organ of the Church. His authority over tem- 
 
Through Home On, 85 
 
 poral rulers and tlie public and private conscience 
 of Christendom, indeed of the world, does not 
 rest on any human consensus, but is inherent 
 in the divine constitution of his office. The 
 bishops, deriving their functions from the Pope, 
 and being in full communion with him, govern 
 the several parts of the Church as his officers 
 and councillors. The priests are commissioned 
 bj the bishops : and all the faithful clergy are 
 entitled lo the reverence and obedience of the 
 people. This is God's order ; and man is bound 
 by the most sacred duty to accept it and yield 
 himself entirely to it, without regard to whether 
 it works well or ill in the temporal concerns of 
 this mortal life. The true destiny and only real 
 interest of man is in the life to come. " He that 
 loveth his life shall lose it ; and he that hateth 
 his life in this world shall keep it unto life 
 eternal." 
 
 There was open to me in that time of zealous 
 youthful study the excellent library of my first 
 director and now- lamented friend, the Yery 
 Heverend Henry Benedict Coskery, D.D. ; who, 
 having more than once, I believe, refused the 
 episcopal dignity, died Yicar General of the 
 archdiocese of Baltimore a few years ago. No 
 words of mine can add to the honours of this 
 
86 Through Home On, 
 
 worthy prelate ; but for my own sake, and for 
 that sweet charity against which there is no law, 
 I w^ill not pass from the mention of him here 
 without yielding the tribute to his memory which 
 is due from one who knew him so intimately 
 once and to whom he was so kind. Dr. Coskery 
 was a man of solid learning, as of unaffected 
 piety and goodness ; an upright and a judicious 
 administrator of his trusts ; and, though not dis- 
 playing the graces of oratory, a clear and an 
 impressive teacher, as his surviving catechumens 
 in and out of the church know. To me, he was 
 a patient and an efficient instructor, a winning 
 exemplar, a sympathising and never-to-be-forgot- 
 ten friend. I deem myself fortunate to have 
 had at that time so able and willing a guide. 
 
 I have stated that while I accepted without 
 hesitation all the doctrines of my religion on the 
 one common ground of faith in the testimony of 
 the Infallible Witness, and had no more difficulty 
 on this ground with one tenet than with another, 
 there w^as nevertheless in my mind a certain 
 painfulness about some points of faith which was 
 not felt in regard to others. It has been noted 
 also that Transubstantiation, Indulgences, Wor- 
 ship^ of Saints and Relics, Power of the Keys, — 
 
 ^ This word may be misunderstood by some readers, 
 
Through Rome On. 87 
 
 and I might have added other popular horrors of 
 popery, — were not among the painful tenets. 
 The Church's explanation on all these points 
 seemed to me as reasonable as her authority was 
 sufficient to accredit them apart from the expla- 
 nation. As long as I really believed in the 
 Catholic religion this was so. There were, how- 
 ever, other points which were painful to me from 
 the first; points held sacred among Orthodox 
 Protestants, but which there had not been time 
 and opportunity for me to consider during my 
 brief career as a Protestant inquirer; and which, 
 adopted with the rest of the Catholic teaching, 
 made themselves felt in a continual pricking of 
 the moral sense now that my anxious quest for 
 the true fold was ended and a period of tranquil 
 meditation had set in. These points were as to 
 the asserted relations between God and man, and 
 the momentous question of Human Destiny. 
 There was even then an involuntary resistance 
 of my mind to that Orientalism which gives its 
 complexion to all Christian theology ; and which 
 in enlightened Europe and free America, as well 
 as in its native Asia, has bowed cowering human- 
 ity to the dust in adoration of the King that can 
 
 as well as the word Indulgences wliich precedes it. I will 
 therefore explain that Worship of Saints and Relics does 
 not mean Divine adoration ; and that Indulgences are not 
 permissions to commit sin. 
 
88 Through Rome On, 
 
 do no wrong, whose blunders are inscrutable 
 perfection, whose cruelties are holj from their 
 source, whose will is superior to justice, whose 
 creature subjects have no rights in his presence, 
 but are made to be the playthings of his power 
 and the victims of his glory or his rage. Out of 
 this formative element of the old civilisation have 
 grown, by a gradual process to be traced in ec- 
 clesiastical history, the figments of the distinctive 
 characters and functions of the Father and the 
 Son, Original Sin, the Atonement, Hell. These 
 figments are not in accord with the genius of 
 modern thought. It is the remark of an astute 
 author of our day, that the age which has given 
 birth to societies for the Prevention of Cruelty 
 to Animals is essentially another era than that 
 in wliicli such horrible conceptions of the Deity 
 and his sentient creation could be accepted with 
 devout faith in every direction. "Where formerly 
 a few scattered thinkers grew into a perception 
 of the irrationality of believing such things, it is 
 now a characteristic of the general mind to break 
 the leading-strings of the past and rise rapidly to 
 that perception. This fact is very manifest in 
 the utterances of the press, and in the common 
 social intercourse of our day. It had begun to 
 show itself at the time I am speaking of; but it 
 is much more evident now than it was then. 
 There was, as I have said, an innate repugnance 
 
Through Home On. 89 
 
 in my mind to the fundamental principles of 
 Augustine's and Calvin's theology. It was the 
 bald unrighteousness of the " scheme of salva- 
 tion" that gave me pain. If I could have avoid- 
 ed seeing the injustice of the damnation imag- 
 ined, I might perhaps have been able to shut my 
 eyes to the defects and contradictions of the 
 " salvation " proposed as its partial remedy : as 
 it was, all this part of the church doctrine was 
 paiuful to me, though, because it was church 
 doctrine, I felt bound to receive it. The horrors 
 of theology are brought to a focal point in the 
 doctrine of Hell. This is generally among the 
 earliest of the tenets of faith, if not the very first 
 one, to be rejected when a mind once allows 
 itself to reason freely on the subject of religion. 
 I cannot say how long I had been a Catholic 
 when the doctrine began to trouble me ; but I 
 think not many months. Of course I tried to 
 smother my reluctation, and prayed against it as 
 coming from the Evil One. Meeting by some 
 accident with the published controversy between 
 Ezra Styles Ely, Presbyterian, and Abel C. 
 Thomas, Universalist, on the subject of Future 
 Punishment, I could not resist the temptation to 
 read the book, which was small and soon finished. 
 This was the first presentment of any* regular 
 argument against the Orthodox Hell that I met 
 with. TJniversalists, I will here remark, are very 
 
90 Through Rome On. 
 
 strong on tlie moral side of their argument, but 
 wer.k on the scriptural side, and fatally weak in 
 the admission with which they used commonly 
 to start, of the authority of the Bible to deter- 
 mine the question. 
 
 It was only by the most rigorous assertion of 
 my will, aided by the ascetic resources familiar 
 to devout Christians in such cases, that I suc- 
 ceeded in repressing for the time, and from time 
 to time as they arose, the struggles of my mind 
 on this troublesome subject. After a certain 
 period, I found some relief and made a kind of 
 compromise with my understanding, by avowing 
 in conversation that I accepted the Hell doctrine 
 implicitly on the authority of the Church ; but 
 was unable to see any other reason for believing 
 it.* !N"o better way than this, literal subterfuge 
 
 ^ A friend to whom I said this asked me if the doc- 
 trine were not taught in the Bible. I replied that I 
 thought there were no passages of Scripture which, sub- 
 jected to private judgment, necessarily taught it. The 
 error of Universalists seems to be in insisting that what 
 they call Universal Restoration is clearly deducible from 
 the Scriptures. In truth, while one's interpretation of 
 Bible texts is generally shaped by one's prepossessions in 
 each particular case, an impartial inquirer can hardly 
 fail to see that some parts of the Bible deny Immortality 
 altogether, and other parts really convey the popular no- 
 tion of Hell ; leaving a few texts in both Testaments 
 which are fairly susceptible of the XJniversalist construc- 
 tion. 
 
Through Home On. 91 
 
 as it was, seems to have been open to me then ; 
 but the relief was only partial, the compromise 
 bj no means satisfactory : the disgrace of holding 
 the foul libel on God and man burned in me like 
 a cancer all the time. The doctrine of Purga- 
 tory, making a break in the broad diabolism of 
 the "scheme," was some comfort; but as this 
 provides for only a small part of imperfect man- 
 kind, the fate of the remainder still left Chris- 
 tianity repugnant to my sense of justice, my rev- 
 erence and love for the Supreme Being, and my 
 human sympathies. The. Catholic distinction 
 between human merit, as entitling to a temporal 
 reward, and supernatural merit by divine grace, 
 entitling to an eternal recompense, was, like 
 Purgatory, in some degree consoling. While 
 availing myself to the utmost of all such modifi- 
 cations of the Catholic faith, I was never able to 
 follow the example of many of my fellow-chris- 
 tians in blinding myself to the legitimate conse- 
 quences of the doctrine I was obliged to receive. 
 I saw with a cruel clearness that Protestants 
 must be lost in the world to come, along with a 
 vast proportion of Catholics : the former, for 
 want of the true faith, wliich is before all things 
 necessary to salvation,^ as well as for those sins 
 which it is so extremely hard to avoid commit- 
 
 » Athanasian Creed. Creed of Pope Pius IV. 
 
92 Through Home On. 
 
 ting even in the Church, and with all the spirit- 
 ual helps which Catholics, and Catholics alone, 
 can resort to ;^ the latter, because of the narrow- 
 ness and difficulty of the way to heaven, and the 
 fewness of the chosen and the saved.^ I saw, 
 and could not help despising, the absurdity of 
 the plea of " invincible ignorance" for good men 
 out of the Church, and of claiming this class as 
 v-irtual Catholics. I saw that there can be no 
 effectual goodness out of the Church, with its 
 treasures of merits, its fountains of grace, its su- 
 pernatural life (our sole deliverance from the 
 curse and corruption that deprive us of heaven), 
 its one true faith, without which it is impossible 
 to please God,^ and which unless a man doth keep 
 entire and inviolate he shall without doubt perish 
 everlastingly.^ I saw that belief and definite 
 profession are Christ's own terms for escaping 
 damnation, faithfully repeated by the Church. I 
 perceived that the Apostle but followed his Lord 
 in classing heresies with the works of the flesh, 
 of wliich they that are guilty cannot inherit the 
 kingdom of God.^ Helped by the reasonings of 
 
 » 1 Pet iv. 17, 18. 
 
 2 Matt. vii. 14 ; xix. 25. Luke xiii. 24 ; xviii, 26. 
 St. Remigius, St. Alphonsus Liguori, &c., on this sub- 
 ject, passim, 
 
 3 Heb. xi. 6. ^ Atlianasian Creed. 
 5 Gal. V. 19, 20, 21. II Pet. ii. 1. 
 
Through Rome On, 93 
 
 stauncli Catholic theologians, I saw, as I could 
 hardly have failed to see without such help, that 
 if an apparently good man is a Protestant, it is 
 an indication that God knows him to be unfit for 
 the grace of the true faith, the muniment of sal- 
 vation. I saw, in short, that if the Catholic reli- 
 gion he true, heresy is mortal sin, whatever vir-* 
 tues may to human eyes invest the heretic. But 
 the gravamen of the difficulty was in the exist- 
 ence of Hell itself, as a place of endless torments 
 for a portion of Grod's creatures. I could not 
 help feeling, in spite of all the pious resistance 
 of my will, that this is opposed to the conception 
 of a perfectly holy Creator and Euler of the 
 Universe. Apart from the special sympathy we 
 feel for friends and acquaintances, there is noth- 
 ing more horrible in the damnation of one man 
 or class of men than of another. The blot upon 
 the character of the God of theology is not that 
 he damns men for rejecting his revelation, but 
 that he damns them at all. When we once take 
 in the unspeakably horrible sense of damnation 
 in the Christian teaching, the shock is, not that 
 Protestants, idolaters, and infidels are damned as 
 such; but that sentient creatures of God, living, 
 moving, and being in Him, and incapable of any 
 act or thought without Him, are by His fiat con- 
 signed to such a fate when their fleeting span is 
 ended here. While, then, the destiny of persons 
 
94: Through Rome On, 
 
 out of tlie Clmrch, including my own nearest 
 and dearest relations, was to me a source of per- 
 petual disquietude, the trouble lay deeper still, 
 and, impinging as it did upon the whole theory 
 of the Fall of man, the wrath of God, and the 
 purchased and limited salvation through Christ, 
 was beyond the reach of the conventional conso- 
 lations in vogue among my fellow-christians. I 
 think I should have been much comforted if I 
 had met then, instead of many years later, with 
 the view which so startled American Catholics 
 when it was put forth with the freshness and 
 sturdy eloquence which to the last distinguished 
 the veteran editor of BrownsorCs Heview^ that 
 the eternity of the sensible torments of hell is 
 not a part of the positive dogma of the Catholic 
 Church. I confess that I had no knowledge or 
 thought of such a view till it was broached by 
 the Reviewer ten years after my emancipation 
 and full deliverance from the gloom and horrors 
 of the miscalled Gospel. 
 
 I remember reading Mr. JMiles's tale The 
 Governess with lively interest. The death of 
 Jessie touched me; but I could not help making 
 the reflection, that it was the human qualities 
 and circumstances of the dear girl that made her 
 
 1 Dr. Brownson died in April, 1876; having closed the 
 Last Series of his matchless Review the preceding October. 
 
Through Rome On. 95 
 
 an object of tender pity. She might have been 
 a Protestant, and just as good and lovable. 
 Catholic story-writers have in their religion a 
 line field for the exercise of their aesthetic imag- 
 inations. They find in the Church the same 
 inspiration that the lover finds in his mistress; 
 and their Catholic scenes are as glowing as the 
 verse of Petrarch. But like the lover they dream 
 and exaggerate and overlook much. Thus they 
 draw touching pictures of life, make their heroes 
 and heroines Catholics, place them in situations 
 which enlist our sympathies in the highest de- 
 gree in their behalf, and then claim for them as 
 Catholics^ the admiration and love which are 
 due to them as human beings. Mr. Miles could 
 use his pen as deftly as any in this strain. Jes- 
 sie, a sweet young Catholic, dies ; and we weep 
 over the sharp trouble she had during her life, 
 and her childlike innocence in death. "We are 
 transported by our feelings into the invisible 
 world to which her spirit has flown, and seem to 
 see her among the blessed angels, freed from 
 pain forever. We remember Christ's words. Of 
 such is the kingdom of heaven ; and rejoice that 
 she has come unto him at last, and found in his 
 bosom a rest which the storms and troubles of 
 earth have no power to invade. And then we 
 think of the Church that prepared her for Christ 
 and the angels by baptism and the spiritual sus- 
 
96 ThroiigJi Rome On, 
 
 tenance of holy things ; that consoled her with 
 counsel and promise under the trials of her young 
 existence; that comforted her dying pillow with 
 words of absolution and hope ; and that did not 
 forsake her in death, but followed her to the 
 grave with blessing and to the bourn beyond 
 with prayer. The contemplation of this devoted 
 Mother washes our hearts with tenderness, and 
 in the moistened soil an ardent faith takes root : 
 we are Catholics, exulting in our religion, and 
 feeling that it is indeed the way of life and the 
 gate of heaven. Such is the intention of the 
 Catholic artist in drawing these affecting pictures; 
 but if he is logician as well as artist, he must 
 perceive that as an argument for the truth of the 
 Catholic religion, they will not bear the test of 
 cool examination. In this light they are obvi- 
 ously unsound, for the simple reason, that they 
 are as applicable to one form of faith and prac- 
 tice as another. Doubtless Catholicism excels 
 in the extent and versatility of its spiritual forces. 
 It unquestionably exceeds all other Christian 
 bodies, as well in the vastness of its machinery, 
 as in the skill and experience with which it 
 makes use of its varied appliances. But though 
 these advantages may give it a general superior- 
 ity over Protestantism in the accessories of a 
 moving tableau ; yet as to the main centre and 
 substance in a matter of this kind, the two stand 
 
Through Home On, 97 
 
 on common ground, and, the appeal to human 
 sympathy once successfully made, Protestantism, 
 bemg less exchisive than its rival, has less to 
 fear from a reaction. I could not help the re- 
 flection that the character of Jessie was but a 
 lively presentation of human innocence, grace 
 and suffering ; that these qualities are shared 
 by Protestants and heathen equally with Cath- 
 olics; that Grace Kennedy and other writers 
 had portrayed similar scenes from a Protestant 
 point of view, which had moved me not less than 
 these from the Catholic pen of Mr. Miles. And 
 then would follow the thought, absorbing all the 
 poetry of the tale, and bringing the reaction I 
 just now spoke of, that it was only for my fellow- 
 members of the household of faith that my lov- 
 ing sympathies might flow unrestrained. Jessie 
 the Catholic was pure and sweet in life and in 
 death. She had lived by faith and partaken of 
 the food of angels. "Her remains breathed the 
 odour of sanctity, and her Heavenly Father had 
 crowned her soul above with the unfading gar- 
 lands of eternity. But had Jessie not been a 
 Catholic, she would have been only an unfortu- 
 nate little girl, ill-fated alike for this world and 
 the next. Had she been the child of Quaker 
 parents and consequently unbaptised, she must 
 have been banished forever from the presence of 
 God and the society of the blessed above. Dy- 
 
98 Through Rome On, 
 
 ing nnregenerate, she could never have roamed 
 hand in hand with the elect children through 
 "the infinite meadows of heaven," but would 
 have been favoured indeed, according to Catholic 
 doctrine, if her doom had been no worse than 
 eternal banishment from Paradise without the 
 sensible torments of Hell. In the more fortu- 
 nate condition of the offspring of paedobaptists, 
 she might perhaps have been saved by water and 
 the spirit; but tliis chance of salvation would 
 have been very doubtful if she had died after ten 
 or twelve a Protestant. Out of the Church no 
 Salvation is positive Catholic doctrine ; and the 
 possibility of salvation in the case of a person 
 who dies at years of respousibility without the 
 Catholic faith is so extremely remote, and so 
 against the inflexible deductions of reason from 
 Catholic principles, that I can hardly conceive of 
 a person who is at once of lively faith and acute 
 vigorous intellect, as sincerely believing in it ; 
 though a multitude of Catholics, who would go 
 mad if compelled to follow out the inexorable 
 logic of the case, find comfort in the permission 
 accorded them by the Church to hope and pray 
 in private for their relations and friends who 
 have died externs, and to trust that the plea of 
 "invincible ignorance" is accepted by God in 
 excuse for their failure to receive his true reli- 
 gion ; and that notwithstanding the difiiculty of 
 
Through Rome On. 99 
 
 being saved in the Chiircli, and with all the ap- 
 pliances which she provides for her faithful chil- 
 dren, God will so far relax his law and order as 
 to admit these outside wanderers into a partici- 
 pation of the ineffable joys prepared for his elect 
 in heaven. This comfort, amounting often to 
 confidence, I could only envy my fellow-Catho- 
 lics. I could not avail myself of it like them. 
 To me the horrible conviction would continually 
 recur, that the souls of my dearest relations and 
 friends were for heresy and unbelief crushed 
 down under the curse of God and abandoned 
 eternally to torments and despair. I vainly tried 
 to exorcise and turn away from such dreadful 
 images: they had the persistency of Banquo's 
 ghost, and would not down. I could not bear 
 to speak of these thoughts. Hid Hke devouring 
 fires in my heart, they burned on. 
 
 There were two strong working sides to my 
 mind at this time : the side of reverence and de- 
 votion, which contended for the faith ; and the 
 side of moral soundness and intellectual activity, 
 which was undermining the faith all the time. 
 The former, with all its power, was never able 
 to command the latter — ^' Hitherto and no far- 
 ther." IsTaturally conservative, I clung to " the 
 fair humanities of old religion " as long as it was 
 
100 Through Rome On, 
 
 possible to persuade myself that I was still a be- 
 liever. Ah this believing you believe ! How 
 many mistake it for genuine faith, and go on all 
 their lives hugging the delusion. And how 
 many, too, even in this sceptical age, are totally 
 unable to form any adequate conception of such 
 a conflict as I am relating, and by their pecuhar 
 organisation and experience are compelled to 
 misjudge a case like mine, so impossible to them, 
 that they unconsciously apply to it the unjust 
 weights and false balance which in the language 
 of their own scripture are an abomination to the 
 Lord.^ 
 
 I had certainly taken up the cross in becoming 
 a Christian. Self-denial and penance in their 
 physical forms were not grievous to me. I could 
 have gone on forever with such things, and never 
 ceased to find the happiness of my first consecra- 
 tion to God and the faith in these modes of exer- 
 cising repentance, humility, and grateful devo- 
 tion. As long as my religion sanctified only 
 really high or else indifferent things, and de- 
 manded but the sacrifice of fieshly inclinations, 
 
 ^ This thought has been very justly expressed by Pro- 
 fessor Newman in the Preface to his Phases of Faith; 
 which probably conveyed the first suggestion of it to my 
 mind, many years ago. 
 
Through Borne On, 101 
 
 both flesh and spirit were willing and strong to 
 obey. I could give up tlie pride of life as well 
 as its pleasures, and not only endure with pa- 
 tient submission the unavoidable afflictions that 
 befell me, but embrace, in the spirit of penance, 
 mortifications which 1 might have spared myself 
 without sin. All this was easy to me for God's 
 sake and in view of eternal life. But there was 
 another requisition of religion with which it was 
 neither easy nor possible for me to comply, 
 though I struggled long, by means of my own 
 will and of all the resources which religion af- 
 forded, to do so. I could not accept wrong for 
 right at the dictate of another mind ; could not, 
 on any consideration, say that that was right 
 which my own interior conviction, in spite of 
 every opposing influence, persisted in pronoun 
 cing wrong. At first I did not perceive that re- 
 ligion demanded this of me. There was such 
 fulness of joy in the first fruits of my Catholic 
 conversion, that I saw nothing but the brightness 
 of the sanctuary in which I worshipped. Then 
 came the passing shadow, " a little cloud out of 
 the sea like a man's hand." But the brightness 
 swallowed up the cloud ; for I was young, and 
 how can youth think of what is in a cloud, with 
 the light of its ravishing vision all around ? My 
 dream was to last for years ; but with each fresh 
 year came more enlargement of a mind that 
 
102 Through Home On. 
 
 could continue its dreaming only until a certain 
 point in its growth was reached. (I do not say, 
 pious reader, that it was a hetter mind than 
 yours : I say only that it was a different mind ; 
 and you perhaps are as glad of the difference as 
 I am.) My study of history (by Catholic writers 
 as well as others) compelled certain involuntary 
 conclusions which were not consonant with the 
 theory of the Church, nor with any theory which 
 would save the Church or supernaturalism from 
 condemnation. The same result followed from 
 what I learned of both physical and moral sci- 
 ence. It was not in my power to repudiate 
 these conclusions at the bidding of any authority. 
 I did not in any special matter decide that the 
 Church was wrong ; at least I made no conscious 
 admission of it. The immediate working of the 
 conclusions w^as not so much against particular 
 doctrines of the Church as against the general 
 animus of supernaturalist conceptions. " Prov- 
 idential" views of history, " design" views of cre- 
 ation, demonism and miracle views concerning 
 man and nature, in short, the whole pseudo- 
 philosophy of theological teaching, I was irre- 
 sistibly coming to feel radically unsound, out of 
 date, and sickening. The process I am describ- 
 ing was a renewing of my mind, a gradual pro- 
 gress out of its childish habitudes which had al- 
 lowed of religious faith. It was an unpurposed 
 
Through Borne On, 103 
 
 and nncontrollable mental sloughing, ordained 
 by nature, and predestined to run its entire 
 course in spite of any resistance that wish or will 
 could offer. Will has indeed no more right of 
 dominion over intellect than over conscience; 
 and the profession of religion is maintained by a 
 continued tyranny of the first over the other two. 
 I tried the common way, but it was not in me to 
 go on with it : the principle of it was no princi- 
 ple for me. My reason and conscience were 
 never antagonistic, though reason and inclina- 
 tion, partiality, often were. Partiality might 
 mislead conscience for a while ; but it always 
 had to loose its hold when reason spoke clearly 
 against it. Beason's voice always commanded 
 the ear of conscience ; and what it uttered was 
 thenceforth a part of conscience itself. To vio- 
 late reason was to violate conscience : to slight 
 reason was to slight and offend conscience. 
 What was a difficulty to reason was a difficulty 
 to conscience too ; and conscience would not let 
 me shut my eyes to such things and go on, would 
 not let me run away from them to entrench my- 
 self in the citadel of faith, as religious counsellors 
 advise. This kind of immorality was indeed 
 scarcely open to me ; for even the citadel of 
 faith, as reason-proof as it is commonly found 
 to be, was helplessly pervious to the spirit that 
 wrestled with me night and day. Beason's light 
 
104 Through Rome On. 
 
 had brouglit me to the point I had attained. I 
 could not put out the light and relume it at 
 pleasure, as many seem to think they can. The 
 new habit of mind was surely fitting itself to me 
 in place of the old. Anticatholic and antichris- 
 tian facts and necessary deductions were con- 
 stantly forcing themselves upon me. I found 
 my thoughts taking shapes which have since 
 been set forth with very curious felicitousness by 
 Canon Pullen in a little book called Christian' 
 ity a Civilised heathenism, I began to feel 
 that society and human life not only were not, 
 but could not be, squared with the supernatural- 
 ist theory. It was hardly possible to avoid say- 
 ing, with a shiver, that they ought not to be. 
 The supernatural life was not led ; the supernat- 
 ural religion was not attested by its proper 
 supernatm*al effects. More than this: the nature 
 that we were endowed with led us away from 
 that life, and inspired us with a sense of the im- 
 practicableness of that religion. Drawing its 
 forces from another existence, and placing man's 
 true destiny in that invisible and untried sphere, 
 Keligion necessarily depreciates this poor world 
 where we are now in exile and probation ; and 
 enjoins the depreciation upon its disciples ; who 
 must, from the very beginning of their spiritual 
 life in baptism, renounce the world and their 
 own flesh, along with the Devil ; and vow them- 
 
Through Home On, 105 
 
 selves to life-long warfare with the three, as ene- 
 mies of God and their salvation. Salvation — in 
 the technical sense — is man's only affair; and 
 this is imperilled by caring for the things of 
 earth and time. This teaching, which is so im- 
 perative from the supernatm-alist point of view, 
 lowers and weakens the practical side of life, as 
 we plainly see in the examples of men and na- 
 tions that have embraced it most heartily. Such 
 examples, in which earth is sacrificed for the se- 
 cm-ing of heaven, are the triumph of religion and 
 the mark of divine calling and election. Men 
 who trample upon the interests and joys of time* 
 are the truly religious and predestinate ones. 
 The genuine Christian has a contempt for the 
 concerns of our mortal career. Science, art, the 
 industries and refinements, the enjoyments and 
 sweet affections of life lead away from the only 
 good. The temporal depression of CathoKc 
 countries beside Protestant ones is an indication 
 of the greater consistency of the Catholic reli- 
 gion. Protestantism stands for both worlds, and 
 tries to make the most of the one it is in while 
 it plans and prays for the other also. Cathol- 
 icism shows us a more excellent way. Protest- 
 ants have no holy virginity, nor vows, nor pen- 
 ance, nor miraculous altar ; but enjoy the worldly 
 advantages of power, prosperity, and ease, in a 
 large degree. The Catholic, seeing this, says, 
 
106 Through Home On. 
 
 Let them have those things, which are no mark 
 of the Divine favour. Thej are of the world, 
 therefore speak they of the world, and tlie world 
 heareth them. We are of God. Hereby know 
 we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. 
 This apostolic mode of judging' is consistent and 
 consoling. The Spanish sovereigns who so cru_ 
 elly and blindly drove out their Moorish and 
 Jewish subjects, were consistent Christians. So 
 was Louis XIY. a consistent Christian in banish- 
 ing the Huguenots from France. So have all 
 the crusading and dragooning of believing 
 -princes and people against useful and worthy 
 infidels, in different climes and ages, been con- 
 sistent with the principle that the true religion 
 and the world to come are the only things worth 
 caring for, or that we are at liberty to care for. 
 "Worldly prosperity is delusive and ensnaring. 
 The people or the individual caring for it is 
 turned away from God and salvation. "After 
 such things do the Gentiles seek." Welcome 
 maceration of flesh and spirit, welcome poverty 
 and shame, welcome national inferiority and de- 
 cay ; for these show the following of Him whose 
 kingdom and teaching are not of this world. I 
 had learned this lesson well. What business of 
 mine was it to labour for the food that perisheth? 
 What had I to do with gainful occupations, or 
 
 1 I John iv. 5, 6. 
 
Through Borne On. 107 
 
 ■with meny-makings, or natural affections, or anj 
 other " things of the world " which I was forbid- 
 den to love, and which I had solemDlj renounced 
 to follow Christ and obtain heaven ? I saw that 
 hermits and cenobites and servants of the altar 
 were in the likeliest way ; but I was instructed 
 that some Christians were called to live in the 
 world \ and that divine grace was sufficient for 
 them in that vocation. But no Christian was to 
 be ^the world. I understood my duty of being 
 in the world as if I were not (9/" it ; of being sev- 
 ered from worldly affinities, of practising intoler- 
 ance for God's sake toward whatsoever and who- 
 soever opposed the order of grace and the 
 revealed doctrine. So, when I saw men despis- 
 ing human wisdom in their devotion to the teach- 
 ings of faith, I perceived that they were super- 
 naturally wise and right. But alas 1 I discerned 
 not less clearly that they were naturally foolish 
 and wrong. I saw how such courses affected 
 society and the whole temporal order. I saw 
 the kind of history they made, the present fruits 
 they bore, and the philosophy of them. Well 
 was it that their final supernatural consequences 
 were to be so different ; for on earth they were 
 ruinous, and if the result were not to be reversed 
 in heaven, strict Christians were indeed, as St. 
 Paul said, of all men Tnost miserable,^ I saw 
 » I Cor. XV. 19. 
 
108 Through Rome On. 
 
 that science accounted for miracles, that the pro- 
 gress of man exploded scriptural and ecclesiasti- 
 cal legends, and put the stamp of superstition 
 upon the faith of earlier generations in such 
 things ; and that to believe them now was puer- 
 ile, while to reject them savoured of impiety 
 still. It grew plainer and plainer that goodness 
 was human and natural, and not bounded by 
 creed limits ; that my conscience could not be 
 safe and sound but in my own keeping. I saw 
 too much ever to repose in Christianity again. 
 Of course I ought to have put out the offending 
 eyes of my mind, and plunged on to heaven's 
 gate, eyeless, mindless, with nothing but my soul 
 left, if so be God would only take that in. This 
 was my Christian duty; but somehow, grace 
 failed me to perform it effectually. I only 
 prayed, and struggled, and staggered under the 
 weight of the cross. 
 
 My decatholicisation was a very gradual pro- 
 cess indeed. Bit by bit, and without my knowing 
 it, the supernatural fabric crumbled away. Point 
 after point was established against it, in spite of 
 vaj resistance and of my partiality for the failing 
 cause. I would gladly have seen it prevail, but 
 it had not virtue enough in itself to abide the 
 test, and it was not possible for me to avoid ap- 
 
Through Home On. 109 
 
 plying the test, nor to be unmoved by the results. 
 I was, as I may say, a reader and thinker by na- 
 ture. The practice of my religion itself continu- 
 ally supplied material for scepticism (in the true 
 and high sense of the word) to work on. The 
 name and writings of St. Alphonsus Liguori 
 stand very high in the Catholic Church, and the 
 faithful are constantly exhorted to resort to them 
 as a fountain of edification. Having gone to this 
 source in all devotion, I presently became pain- 
 fully aware that the great saint, however ex- 
 alted his spirituality may have been, was grossly 
 superstitious, and given to the peddling of pueril- 
 ities which it is mental degradation to teach or 
 to believe. I fairly broke down under the story 
 of the " demon with a stick in his hand," who 
 " appeared " to a young man that had neglected 
 to bend his knee at the words homo f actus est 
 in the Creed, " and wounded him severely"; and 
 that of the wicked man who was slain with *an 
 axe in the public square by a " frightful spectre" 
 from hell.' And I knew that it was unchristian 
 in me to turn away in disgust from these narra- 
 tives instead of becoming as a little child and 
 stultifying myself to believe them. Again : in 
 
 ^ St. Alphonsus Liguori On tlie Sacraments and Com- 
 mandments : 4th. ed. Boston : Thomas Sweeney, 1849. 
 Pages 38 and 61. 
 
110 Through Rome On. 
 
 the movements and changes which several years 
 brought about, I had more than one confessor ; 
 and a certain Jesuit father who presided over 
 my conscience for a time took occasion once to 
 recommend to my perusal a little book contain- 
 ing a minute description of the pains of hell; 
 which had an effect which must have been very 
 different from that intended by my reverend 
 director. This department of ascetic writing 
 had for some time been known to me ; but it 
 belonged to my Catholic obedience to give spe- 
 cial heed to the work commended to me by my 
 confessor ; and thus the dose had powerful effect, 
 though not according to the prognosis of the 
 spiritual physician. I had kept the faith hith- 
 erto by cherishing the gentler, better part of 
 religion, and passively allowing the rest. Com- 
 pelled now to dwell in detail upon the most hor- 
 rible of all the Christian conceptions, I could no 
 longer close my eyes to their monstrous unrea- 
 sonableness. I thought of many persons whom 
 I had known, and who, according to the doctrine 
 that I was now required to chew and taste and 
 swallow as daily bread, were undergoing un- 
 speakable torments, such as Eastern tyrants, 
 !N"orth- American Indians, and religious persecu- 
 tors in every clime have delighted to inflict, and 
 as humane and enlightened mankind turn away 
 from with loathing and indignation in every 
 
Through Roine On. Ill 
 
 form save that in which, theology has hallowed 
 and handed them down from the cruel times of 
 old. I knew that such a fate for my acquaint- 
 ances could not be just ; knew it as certainly as 
 I knew that justice is eternally opposed to injus- 
 tice, and that our moral instincts are not a mock 
 and a delusion. And as to my own case, instead 
 of being cast down by a sense of my sinfulness 
 and deadly peril, under this dreadful teaching, I 
 was moved by it to quite the opposite state of 
 mind. I felt that, whatever my shortcomings 
 and wrongdoing, I was not bad enough to be 
 the companion of devils for one moment even, 
 to say nothing of an incomputable eternity. I 
 had often acknowledged most sincerely that I 
 was not good enough for heaven : I should have 
 been less honest if in this crisis I had refused to 
 say that I was too good for hell. I never could 
 make myself fit for either place. It may have 
 been fanciful, but it was not revolting, to think 
 that God would in his great power and love 
 make me fit for heaven : could I, however, with- 
 out blasphemy, suppose that he would — that 
 anything could induce him to — exert his power 
 to fit me for hell ? The attempt to overpower 
 my soul with a cowardly selfishness and terror 
 was in itself — I do not speak now of the pious 
 blunderer who made it with me — base, and fool- 
 ish, as base, for such a bubble ai'gument cannot 
 
112 Through Rome On. 
 
 bear the touch of cool sense for an instant. To 
 bring forward distempered visions of the cloister 
 as authentic accounts of the imagined Healm of 
 Despair is of a piece with the whole character of 
 the doctrine. The book recommended by my 
 confessor did not promote piety, but it struck a 
 great blow at faith. ITor was this effect lessened 
 by St. Liguori's explanation of the precept of 
 charity ; in which he declares : " We cannot 
 love the damned : we on the contrary are obliged 
 to hate them as the eternal enemies of God." 
 This religion of terror and hate was not for me. 
 It is easy to understand how it nerved the arm 
 of fiery persecution in a believing age, as well as 
 what cruel perversions and mischiefs it may still 
 work in individual cases where something like 
 the faith of yore is yet able to flourish. 
 
 Eut are these silly fables and perverting coun- 
 sels really matters of faith, so that one cannot 
 reject them and be a good Catholic Christian 
 still ? That they have never been solemnly en- 
 joined upon all the faithful by a General Coun- 
 cil, or by the infallible Pontiff from his chair, 
 may be true ; though when one remembers that 
 they have been constantly propounded and pro- 
 mulgated the world over by the most approved 
 and honoured teachers, under sanction of the 
 guardians of the faith, that they have never been 
 censured by the central authority, and that they 
 
Through Rome On. 113 
 
 have been most devoutly believed and acted on 
 in those times and places in which the teachings 
 of faith have had widest scope and dominion, it 
 seems too much to affirm that they are not part 
 and parcel of the doctrine of the Church. But 
 let it be granted that they are not positive doc- 
 trine, that one may deny them without formal 
 heresy. On this assumption I have still no hes- 
 itation in saying that a person cannot be a thor- 
 oughly good Catholic Christian and reject them. 
 A thoroughly good Catholic must be imbued 
 with the spirit of the Catholic religion, and must 
 not sacrifice that spirit in any degree at any 
 worldly or natural prompting whatever. That 
 spirit is one of humility and submission, of self- 
 abnegation, of the chastening of the pride of 
 intellect and will by bending these faculties be- 
 fore superiors, especially before authorised teach- 
 ers of religion. The more the natural mind 
 relucts against such abjection, the greater the 
 obligation to overcome nature and yield. The 
 man who must go on watering the dry stick that 
 it may miraculously flower, the monk whose son 
 is scourged before his eyes to try his submission 
 and renunciation of natural affection, the Jesuit 
 who is trained to be jperinde ac cadaver^ "just 
 like a corpse," in the hands of his superiors, are 
 all true illustrations of the spirit of the Catholic 
 religion ; which would make each disciple war 
 
114 Through Hovie On. 
 
 against nature and self-will in himself by almost 
 deifying those qualities in other men. The 
 habit of mind which rejects such fables and con- 
 ceits as I have mentioned is contrary to this 
 spirit, and tends to heresy, though the rejection, 
 of any specific modern miracle or notion is not 
 an act of formal heresy. He who rejects such 
 things opposes himself in his pride of intellect 
 and will to the current of Catholic belief and 
 teaching from the earliest times. Of course a 
 thoroughly good Catholic will not do this. 
 
 Devotional piety will go a great way ; but 
 unless it so saturates and possesses one as to 
 render him a fanatic, he will have many cool 
 moments in which his judgment will work 
 according to its normal function. Woe to reli- 
 gion if in such moments the objects of faith and 
 devotion are scanned with the bold clear eyesight 
 used for other things. Viewed repeatedly in 
 this way, the objects lose the glamour with which 
 they at first beguiled tlie mind, and, not all 
 at once, but by degrees, are retired below the 
 surface, or else so positively rejected that their 
 former place and power are lost to them forever. 
 Quite commonly, people keep them apart, for a 
 distinct kind of contemplation by themselves; 
 but when they are looked at as other matters are, 
 
Through Rome On. 115 
 
 the result is what I have said. I could no more 
 help going on in an undercurr n of scepticism, 
 getting continuall}^ stronger as it ran, than I 
 could help drawing my breath. I did not under- 
 stand the process then, nor suspect how it would 
 end ; but from time to time I felt it to be uncanny 
 in a Christian, and yet could no more help it, 
 as I have said, than my breathing or the beating 
 of my heart. It was only through the force of 
 the enormous presumption raised in my mind 
 on the side of the Church that I could bear up 
 for years against the contradiction of its theory 
 which history supplies. Then came natural and 
 moral philosophy, and that spirit of the age 
 which is born with us now, and all through life is 
 entering to become part of us, with every breath 
 and through every pore. The unappeasable con- 
 tradiction of all these to the teaching and spirit 
 of the faith made the gradual and sure revolution 
 in my mind, without my knowing it till it was 
 so effectually done tliat I could no more return 
 to Christian belief than I could to the physio- 
 logical conditions of my infancy. It would be 
 impossible, I think, if it were desirable, to re- 
 count each step and stage of the course which 
 led to this goal, or to analyse my mental and 
 spiritual state when it was reached. The faith 
 was always one to me. Though, as I have re- 
 lated, some parts of it affected my instincts very 
 
116 Through Rome On, 
 
 differently from others, and tliouo^h it is not to 
 be doubted that the nature of those particular 
 tenets had an important bearing on the result, 
 and it may even be true to saj in regard to 
 them, that from the moment of their first clear 
 presentment to mj understanding, I did not really 
 believe, but only tried to believe, and thought 
 I was believing ; yet it is certain that I never 
 consciously rejected one of the doctrines to go 
 on holding the rest. The foundation had been 
 too well laid for such a paralogism as this 
 would have involved to be possible. I rejected 
 the faith as I had received it, in its totality, and 
 as false in its very foundations. When I arrived 
 at this consummation, the fabric that reason and 
 conscience had besieged so long was indeed in a 
 crumbling state and ready to fall ; but I did not 
 know it till the last, though each ringing blow 
 in its reduction had sounded against my very 
 heart. It toppled all at once, and I stepped 
 forth from its ruins wounded and sore indeed, 
 but rejoicing to be free. This deliverance came 
 either in 1851 or early in the succeeding year. 
 In the State Library, on a certain day, the con- 
 viction came to me that I was not, and never 
 could be again, a Christian believer. For me, 
 Christianity and Roman Catholicism are one 
 and the same. In Catholicism I find the proper 
 development and sole tolerable fulfilment of the 
 
Through Rome On. 117 
 
 Christian idea. I do not say a perfect fulfil- 
 ment ; but tlie only plausible approach to a ful- 
 filment that! can discern on earth. Protestant- 
 ism is a wider and wider departure ; and under 
 its more religious forms is a weak metaphysis of 
 Catholicism, utterly failing to satisfy after (as 
 also in my case before) that, meshed in the 
 prime fallacies and falsities proved against that, 
 and quite unable to stand if that must fall. It 
 is as the little sister spoken of in Solomon's 
 Song : *' Soror nostra parva^ et ubera non hahet : 
 quid faciemus sorori nostrae in die quando al- 
 loquenda est V^ 
 
 There often seem to be marvellous simplicity 
 and inevitableness in results which after all had 
 to be reached slowly, gradually, and by a round- 
 about process. I could not attain to the salva- 
 tion of Free Thought till the principle of the old 
 religions was for me completely exhausted. This 
 was done in Christianity, of which Roman Cath- 
 olicism is the regular development and culmi- 
 nation. Shallow Protestantism was quickly left 
 behind. Catholicism held me for some years ; 
 and then, when the resistless tendencies of my 
 mind, informed by increasing knowledge and 
 experience, turned that inside out and compelled 
 its abandonment, with it all Supernatm-ahsm fell 
 
118 Through Borne On. 
 
 off from me as a worn-out garment. Such is my 
 mental framework that I could never blink a real 
 argument, nor turn aside from any legitimate 
 conclusion. A principle once adopted, I had 
 to think it out to the last result, had to ac- 
 cept every jot and tittle of all that it involved; 
 — or give it up, if it would not stand that crucial 
 test of its soundness. In this way, Supernatural- 
 ism was demonstrated false by being worked out till 
 it stood revealed in contradiction to indubitable 
 truths in nature and experience. Then, going 
 back with purged eyesight to the starting-point 
 of my religious premises, I found that these had 
 been assumed, not proved, and that, touched 
 with Ithuriel's spear, they melted into thinnest 
 air. I had assumed, or had accepted the assump- 
 tion of others, that there is a Supernatural Reve- 
 lation on earth from the Supreme Being, impart- 
 ed through an infallible Oracle, for the instruc- 
 tion and salvation of mankind. Finding Protest- 
 antism unable to supply an adequate basis for 
 this assumption and palpably destitute of oracu- 
 lar authority, I had taken leave of it like ^neas 
 fleeing from Troy, not leaving my gods behind, 
 but setting my face Homeward with fresh devo- 
 tion and hope. Captivated by the more plaus- 
 ible pretensions of Catholicism, I had accepted 
 its grounds, not indeed without examination, as at 
 first with the Oracle, but after a very insufficient 
 
Through Rome On. 119 
 
 scrutiny, witli my mind already committed to the 
 favourable conclusion. I had not investigated 
 Catholicism in the independent light of reason. 
 It was not to be expected of me at that immature 
 period of life, and in the special circumstances. 
 Hampered by the theory of the Oracle, I had 
 compared Catholicism and Protestantism as rival 
 claimants of oracular authority, and had been so 
 carried away by the vast superiority of the former 
 in this point of view^ as virtually to forego further 
 inquiry; and, while I thought myself still an 
 investigator, had taken on faith what was at last 
 as proofless and as opposed to the facts of the 
 case as the claims of dogmatic Protestantism 
 even. It is indeed a simpler task to expose the 
 fallacy "svhich grounds Revelation in human tra- 
 dition, and claims supernatural authority for a 
 confessedly fallible body of men, or for a selec- 
 tion of old writings the origins of which are with 
 small exception unknown, and the exegesis of 
 which is a matter of endless dispute, than it is to 
 unravel the maze of moral and historical perver- 
 sions with which the papal system clothes and de- 
 fends itself to the sophistication of so many minds; 
 yet the Church can no more than the Bible main- 
 tain itself in the last result; and the mind needs 
 only to be completely unhooded to reach this 
 result, and to see what wretched stairs of sand it 
 
120 Through Rome On, 
 
 had mounted to get liold of a principle outside 
 of nature. 
 
 I had yielded a passive consent to the claim 
 that there is a supernatural Revelation, that 
 Christianity is that Eevelation, and that it was 
 supernaturally given eighteen hundred years ago. 
 Thus was Catholicism palmed upon me for the 
 infallible truth of God ; for I saw that the claim 
 involves certainty, permanency, and uninterrupt- 
 edness ; which no other religious body than the 
 Koman Catholic Church can supply. Of course, 
 in a broad and fair view of the question, the va- 
 lidity of the Catholic claim does not follow from 
 the failure of the claims of all the competing re- 
 ligions ; since there remains the alternative that 
 there is no true claimant in the field ; in other 
 words, that the supposed underlying fact of Rev- 
 elation is not a real fact. But, as I have said, 
 I had from the first assumed the Christian-Rev- 
 elation premises ; and so for me, as the case 
 stood, the failure of rival Christianity carried 
 with it the proof of Catholicism. Accordingly, 
 I accepted the papal system without requiring it 
 to demonstrate its claims except as against the 
 Christian claimants outside of it ; and not till I 
 was clothed with the name and habitudes of a 
 Catholic did I take up the argument for the di- 
 
Through Rome On. 121 
 
 vine establishment of Christianity as an historical 
 fact. Catholics and Protestants have a common 
 starting-point in the beginning of that argument. 
 Their starting-point is found in a cluster of as- 
 sumptions : that there is a supreme supernatural 
 Person ; that man needs a special supernatural 
 revelation from Him ; that it is at the outset 
 probable He has given such a revelation ; that 
 miracles are provable, and that they demonstrate 
 the divine character or commission of the mira- 
 cle-worker. Having given themselves this start, 
 they both undertake to show that Christ and his 
 apostles wrought miracles and thus proved the 
 divinity of their teaching, which we are conse- 
 quently bound to receive. From this point of 
 the argument, they diverge, and present conflict- 
 ing statements as to the constitution of the Chris- 
 tian society and the particulars of the alleged 
 divine teaching. Being in love with the Catho- 
 lic Christian theory, and imbued with the doc- 
 trines and devotional feeline^s of the relimon 
 elaborated from it, I did not come to the ^* evi- 
 dences " in any critical spirit, but went over them 
 with the usual smoothness and docility of the 
 Christian disciple whose mind is full of the al- 
 ready accepted conclusion. Only some time 
 afterwards, when the philosophy of history forced 
 itself upon me, and when by contact with real 
 evidences, which did not find acceptance through 
 
122 Through Rome On, 
 
 prejudice, but compelled mj belief in despite of 
 prejudice and bj their own power of truth, the 
 easy faith of the neophyte was staggered against 
 his will, did I begin to have an uncomfortable 
 sense of the naturalness (in opposition to super- 
 naturalness) of Christian facts and phenomena, 
 even the cardinal fact of the fondly conceived 
 miraculous foundation. I had been told, by way 
 of preliminary distinction, that the mind may 
 properly judge of the evidence for the Divine 
 establishment of the teaching authority, but not 
 of the doctrine propounded by the authority. I 
 learned by a slow-working but finally incontro- 
 vertible experience, which left no substance or 
 life in the specious distinction forevermore, that 
 the mind cannot help judging of all that is of- 
 fered, doctrine itself, as well as authority for doc- 
 trine ; and that no authority can authorise that 
 which contradicts what the authority depends on 
 for its own recognition. I learned further, upon 
 a fair challenge of proofs, that the supposed au- 
 ■ thority utterly fails to establish itself as a divinely 
 commissioned proposer of doctrine. 
 
 In regard to miracles, a subject hardly worth 
 arguing nowadays,^ but belonging to the course 
 
 1 *' Whether we attack them, or whether we defend 
 them, does not much matter : the human mind, as its ex- 
 
Through Rome On. 123 
 
 I am tracing : it was abundantlj clear to me, 
 that if a miracle were reported to-day as having 
 happened a short time ago, we should — the 
 wisest and most trustworthy among us certainly 
 would — disbelieve it from the first, whatever the 
 testimony ; and if upon further consideration we 
 saw reason to believe that the occurrence re- 
 ported had actually taken place, we should still, 
 and to the last, utterly disbelieve in the superna- 
 tm*alness attributed to it. There are many sen- 
 sible people who, for want of logical training, 
 believe readily in marvels related of the past 
 which they would at once see to be incredible if 
 related of the present. Others, who do not be- 
 lieve such things without difficulty, yet constrain 
 themselves to a kind of will-faith or profession 
 on the subject, as a matter of moral obligation. 
 A third class are endowed with such gift of men- 
 tal deglutition that possible and impossible, past, 
 present, and future, are all one to them, and they 
 can believe anything. These three classes, with 
 many subdivisions, furnish the believers in mira- 
 cles. Other thinking people now, without wait- 
 ing for a demonstration of the impossibility of 
 miracle in the abstract, find the cumulative ar- 
 gument against all alleged miracles, or superna- 
 
 perience widens, is turning away from them." Mat- 
 thew Arnold : Literature and Dogma^ p. 135. 
 
124 Through Home On. 
 
 tural occurrences, absolutely irresistible. Detach, 
 the New-Testament miracles from their relio-ious 
 connexion, and every person of average intelli- 
 gence and education sees that, as simple occur- 
 rences even, they are not at all worthy of belief ; 
 and, indeed, as depending solely upon the pro- 
 bably hearsay testimony of obscure witnesses of 
 credulous minds in a credulous age, outside of 
 the reach of cross-examination, and without any- 
 thing satisfactory in the way of common authen- 
 tication, they cannot for a moment sway the con- 
 viction of a rational mind that has not already 
 admitted them upon other grounds than their 
 proper evidence. Every system enjoys the pre- 
 possession of its own disciples in its favour ; and 
 thus the miracles of each religion are sufficiently 
 attested for the disciples of that religion, who, 
 however (at least among the enlightened races), 
 at the same time reject as fabulous the miracles 
 of other religions, though resting on evidence 
 similar to that which seems to them so good to 
 sustain their own. The kind of evidence which 
 commands the Christian's faith in the case of 
 Christian miracles will only excite his contempt 
 if pleaded in behalf of Hindoo miracles. The 
 Catholic can see no credibility in a Protestant 
 miracle, nor the Protestant any in a Catholic 
 miracle. The reason is not far to seek : the pre- 
 possession is absent, in the one case and in the 
 
Through Home On. 125 
 
 other ; that prepossession which is tlie real ground 
 on which the miracle finds acceptance ; that pre- 
 possession which makes up for any defect in the 
 evidence, which can dispense with evidence, and 
 is satisfied with any that is ofiered on its own 
 side ; — the side, and not the quality, determining 
 the weight that is to he allowed to the proffered 
 testimony. The spiritist, full of faith, and, as 
 often happens, of a high degree of intelligence, 
 is astonished and more than half indignant that 
 the overwhelming evidence for the " manifesta- 
 tions " does not convince his incredulous neigh- 
 bour ; while the latter is moved to disgust at the 
 spectacle of one who yields his faith to things so 
 intrinsically incredible. Take away the sacred- 
 ness of the Scripture miracles, and there is no 
 difficulty in seeing that the evidence adduced for 
 them is ridiculously below what modern criticism 
 demands to establish any extraordinary occur- 
 rence in the past. The evidence for some of 
 the Catholic miracles in later times is decidedly 
 superior to any that can be brought for the mira- 
 cles related in the Bible ; yet Protestants, being 
 in the most literal sense of the word prejudiced 
 in favour of the Bible miracles and against the 
 Catholic miracles, pronounce the former suffi- 
 ciently vouched for, and laugh the latter to scorn; 
 though if miracles were proof of a divine com- 
 missioUj as Protestants themselves say, they 
 
126 Through Home On. 
 
 would be bound to examine the evidence for the 
 Catholic miracles; and this they almost invari- 
 ably disdain to do. 
 
 I saw, in short, that the presumption is always 
 immensely against the truth of an asserted mira- 
 cle ; that this presumption can be overcome 
 only by very clear proof; and that such proof 
 does not exist, but is out of the question, in the 
 case of the New-Testament miracles. I saw fur- 
 ther, that there is an important difference be- 
 tween the reality of a fact and its nature ; i. e., 
 its reality is one thing, its natiiralness or super- 
 naturalness is another thing. Unless we have 
 either supernatural inspiration or a thorough ac- 
 quaintance with all the possibilities of nature, we 
 cannot know that an ascertained fact is superna- 
 tural.' If a man declared to me that he was in- 
 spired, I could not argue the matter with him : 
 I could only say, that his inspiration, whatever 
 it might be worth to him, was purely his, and 
 
 1 See BrownsoTi's Review^ July, 1875, Art. V. ; in which 
 a cure through the prayer of a Mormon elder is admitted, 
 but its miraculousness denied, with a remark confirma- 
 tory of what is said above about the possibilities of na- 
 ture ; and observe, that in the same article the Reviewer 
 accepts as genuine the miracles wrought at the shrine of 
 Our Lady of Lourdes : and then, reader, remember what 
 I have said about the side, and not the quality, of the 
 miracle-evidence determining its acceptance or rejec- 
 tion. 
 
Through Rome On. 127 
 
 availed me nothing. A thorough acquaintance 
 with all the possibilities of nature no man can 
 possess or pretend to. Not having this impos- 
 sible comprehension of nature, and not being 
 supernaturallj inspired, I could not, then, assert 
 of any proved fact (much less of something un- 
 proved) that it was supernatural. In regard to 
 the miracles related in the Bible, the alleged facts 
 in the first place are not proved ; and the super- 
 naturalness claimed for them would not follow 
 if they were proved. Then, continuing to pur- 
 sue the argument honestly and freely, I perceived 
 that a genuine miracle would be no proof of the 
 tnith or trustworthiness of the miracle-worker. 
 It would show him to be powerful, but it would 
 be no demonstration that he was good and truth- 
 ful. That God would not permit a miracle to 
 be wrought by a false teacher is sheer assumption. 
 We do not know what God would or would not 
 permit. The assumption is, moreover, forbidden 
 to Bupernaturalists by their doctrine of evil 
 spirits with powers not limited by the laws of 
 nature ; and by the express words of their Scrip- 
 tures in such passages as Ex. vii. 11, 12, 22. 
 Deut. xiii. 1, 2, 3, 5. Eev. xiii. 13, 14:, 15 ; xvi. 
 14; xix. 20. (See on this point, Arnold of 
 Kugby's Life and Correspondence, Letter to Dr. 
 Hankin. See also Trench on the Miracles, 
 Ch.iii.) 
 
128 Through Rome On. 
 
 The patent miracle of the establishment of 
 Christianity is as plain a natural fact as any- 
 other in history. "It may indeed be confidently 
 asserted," says Mr. Lecky in his History of 
 Morals, " that the conversion of the Horn an Em- 
 pire is so far from being of the nature of a mira- 
 cle or suspension of the ordinary principles of 
 human nature, that there is scarcely any other 
 great movement on record in which the causes 
 and effects so manifestly correspond." This is 
 true ; and Mr. Lecky but expresses the common 
 thought of students at the present day when he 
 declares it. The old polytheism was dying out 
 when Chl-istianity came. The people had out- 
 grown it in their minds and hearts to even a 
 greater extent than we have outgrown Christian- 
 ity to-day ; and the mixture of the various local 
 forms of paganism had, at least in the great cen- 
 tres of intelligence, worked their mutual destruc- 
 tion, and left the craving for a new theory of 
 life and religion, which Christianity by a natural 
 evolution came forward to supply, with its ap- 
 peal to the private conscience and its assertion 
 of the divine dominion of one God, correspond- 
 ing to the temporal dominion of one imperial 
 ruler. The correlation of God and Caesar was a 
 very strong point. The fatherhood of God and 
 the brotherhood of humanity, a revival of some 
 of the most impressive pagan teachings, made 
 
Through Rome On. 129 
 
 another strong point ; blurred though both these 
 elements were from the first by the narrowness 
 and strivings of the early Christians. Then 
 came Paul, with his hellenising manipulation of 
 Christianity, and his magnetic powers of energy 
 and persuasion. One may question if it be not 
 according too small distinction to Paul to call 
 him the second founder of Christianity. That 
 religion as it has descended to us is much more 
 strongly stamped by him than by any of the 
 other apostles, or even by Jesus himself; who, 
 in the higliest view that can reasonably be taken 
 of his character and work, was but an earnest 
 Jewish reformer, one of many unsuccessful claim- 
 ants of the messiahship ; who died complaining 
 that God had forsaken him, and left behind a 
 "little flock " of disciples to form another feeble 
 S(5ct among the Jews. Paul renewed and ener- 
 gised under a distinctive form the nascent reli- 
 gion, separated it forever from Judaism, leavened 
 it with Greek and Roman elements, informed it 
 with his own fiery zeal, and gave his life at last 
 to place it on the road to a royal destiny. Paul 
 stands out on' the canvas of history as a real per- 
 sonage. Jesus, if he was real, as may well be 
 doubted, does not come down to us in his real- 
 ity. The story of him is palpably mythological. 
 The progress of Christianity has nothing super- 
 natural about it, and is indeed a simpler and less 
 
130 Through Rome On, 
 
 striking plienoraenon than the wondrous triumph 
 and spread of Mohammedanism, which in a cen- 
 tury made its Arab disciples a united and resist- 
 less power : while the slenderness of the domain 
 of Christian conquests, and the great preponder- 
 ance of opposing beliefs, effectually negative the 
 claim for Christianity that it is the absolutely 
 true and universal religion. The plea sometimes 
 made on behalf of Christianity, that it must be 
 divine, because it could not otherwise have made 
 its way in the world with its austere and self- 
 denying doctrine and practice, is based upon un- 
 sound views as to both the laws of human nature 
 and the special matter of fact involved. Enthu- 
 siasm and other motives often cause that to be 
 accepted and practised which is in itself very 
 trying to human feelings. If the prevalence of 
 a religion of pain and mortification were neces- 
 sarily a divine attestation, the Hindoo religion, 
 so wide-spread and so full of cruel severities, 
 would be more markedly divine than Christian- 
 ity. But it is only the class of devotees that 
 consistently illustrate this trait of a religious sys- 
 tem. The first Christians were characteristically 
 devotees, in constant expectation of the Lord in 
 the clouds and the awful Judgment that was to 
 follow his appearance. The great doctrine of 
 original Christianity having been refuted by the 
 event, and succeeding generations having lost the 
 
Through Rome On. 131 
 
 daily stimulation it supplied, it has long been a 
 very clear fact that the great body of Christians 
 do not lead lives of self-denial and mortification, 
 but seek and enjoy the comforts of luxurious liv- 
 ing as naturally as any otlier people. Much 
 more to the point than the Christian argument I 
 have stated, is the sarcasm of Yoltaire, that 
 Christianity is undoubtedly divine, since so many 
 centuries of imposture and superstition have 
 failed to destroy it. 
 
 Having learned, with a lively surprise at first, 
 that the living human organism occasionally de- 
 velops wondrous properties of prescience and 
 healing, yet to be fairly ranged in the categories 
 of science, I should have had no lingering diffi- 
 culty with the alleged cases of prophecy and 
 restoration which believers refer to as miraculous, 
 had the cases been better sustained by evidence 
 than I found them to be ; but in truth, the prime 
 Christian " miracles " are so poorly vouched 
 for that there is no need of any more serious ex- 
 planation for them than for other legends. 
 
 Catholicism and supernaturalist Protestantism 
 are disposed of together when the alleged mi- 
 raculous foundation of Christianity is exploded. 
 Catholics hold up the Christian scriptures as his- 
 torical documents, and argue from the statements 
 in those scriptures that Christianity was given 
 with miracles and the infallible Church estab- 
 
132 Through Borne On. 
 
 lished by Jesus Christ. Protestants agree with 
 Catholics in affirming the miraculoiisness of the 
 Christian foundation, on the strength of the New- 
 Testament writings; denying, however, the per- 
 manent infalHble constitution of the Church. 
 Unhappily for both these sanguine parties, the 
 documents on which they rely lack that fulness 
 of authentication which is necessary in any grave 
 matter claiming to be historical. It is trifling 
 with the intelligence of our age to claim author- 
 ity for them on the uncritical testimony of the 
 earliest Christian witnesses ; who, besides being 
 too late for the purpose for which they are cited, 
 are so obviously credulous and fanciful on the 
 subject, that one who consults them for himself 
 soon sees that as evidential guides they are ut- 
 terly untrustworthy. Christian-evidence writers 
 do not usually let their docile disciples know 
 what is the real character and value of the testi- 
 mony they invoke so freely. The fathers, it is 
 clear, were no literary critics, and the scriptures 
 were handled very capriciously by them. They 
 received what pleased them and rejected what 
 displeased them. They made grave arguments 
 for the four gospels from there being four winds, 
 &c. If they testify to our present canon, so also 
 do they to the Shepherd of Hermas, the Clemen- 
 tine Epistles, and other writings which Christians 
 are now agreed in pronouncing spm-ious. No 
 
Through Rome On. 133 
 
 one knows anything of the originals of the Bible: 
 the putative copies are very doubtful in them- 
 selves, and doubly doubtful from the hands they 
 have passed through; the translations in modern 
 languages, which necessarily furnish the only 
 Bible that Christians at large can turn to, are 
 various, conflicting, and so palpably erroneous 
 that new versions are continually called for. 
 There is the greatest variety of opinion among 
 students and learned critics as to the genuine- 
 ness, right reading, &c., of the accepted gospels; 
 and no satisfactory reason has ever yet been 
 given why we should accord to the marvels re- 
 lated in those scriptures a credit which, following 
 the rule of enlightened criticism, we constantly 
 refuse to the similar narratives in other writings 
 that have come down to us from the credulous 
 past. The want of contemporary evidence in 
 support of the gospels, as w^ell as the self-con- 
 victing contradictions they contain, is fatal to 
 their credit as historical narratives. To build so 
 vast and weighty a structure of authoritative re- 
 ligion upon so slender and frail a foundation, is 
 to doom the former to a crushing overthrow at 
 last ; and we see — when we dare, or are forced, 
 to use our eyes — the shaking and preparation for 
 the fall. Our church people of to-day, without 
 giving up miracles, yet hold their religion upon 
 very different grounds, and find it more and 
 
134: Through Rome On. 
 
 more embarrassing to resort to the old method 
 of proof. They silently feel the truth of Mon- 
 taigne's remark, that belief in miracles is a 
 measure of our ignorance. The very ignorant, 
 credulous by nature and habit, accept such things 
 without stint. Persons of cultivated intelligence 
 are found to believe in certain miracles which 
 partake of the credit of something else with which 
 they are connected in the minds of the believers; 
 who, however, continue to occupy the general 
 ground of incredulity in regard to other miracles. 
 The attempt to rest Revelation on sensible ex- 
 ternal prodigies indicates that there is no such 
 thing. A genuine Divine Revelation would in- 
 stantly ravish man's heart and understanding. 
 It would strike him as immediately and as irre- 
 sistibly as the lightning strikes. To talk of such 
 a revelation's being a matter of argument and 
 delay, of report and writing from one generation 
 to another, subject to the casualties of all human 
 tradition, is to forget the necessary order of 
 correspondences, and to cut the nexus between 
 the mind of man and its Creator. 
 
 It was clear to me in the end, that men never 
 receive an historical religion upon historical 
 grounds, and only in very rare instances take 
 any pains with the historical argument before 
 becoming believers. Mental habitudes, educa- 
 tion, and social circumstances, in the main de- 
 
Through Borne On. 135 
 
 termine one's religion. A person first gets 
 his religion, and then perhaps looks at the 
 "evidences"; his mind made up and turned 
 away from anything that contradicts them. I 
 may confidently appeal to the experience of my 
 readers, Catholic and Protestant, for confirma- 
 tion of this remark. That very earnest logician 
 Dr. Brownson does indeed declare that " the ques- 
 tion is one that meets the inquirer at the thresh- 
 old"; and implies that he could not have accepted 
 the Church "without meeting it, considering it at 
 length, and disposing of it." The Doctor's 
 stomach for evidence is much superior to any- 
 thing of the kind among Protestants ; for he 
 finds that " Pius IX., the pontilT now gloriously 
 reigning, is as easily and certainly proved to be 
 the successor of Peter, as Ulysses S. Grant is 
 proved to be the successor in the presidency of 
 the United States of George Washington, the 
 schism of Jefferson Davis to the contrary not- 
 withstanding." (^Catholic World.^oY. 18T1, Art. 
 I. Brownson' s Quarterly Review ^ Oct. 18T4:j 
 pp. 519, 525.) 
 
 The theory of Christianity is that of a super- 
 natural religion. But I saw — it was burnt into 
 me as I went along — that Christianity is' as na- 
 tural as any other religion or system whatever. 
 
136 Through Rome On. 
 
 I saw it, always and everywhere, like the other 
 systems, bearing fruits after its kind, the natural 
 order. I had accepted it as a sublime theocracy 
 upon earth, with a divinely constituted hierarchy, 
 a visible head and ruler, representing God him- 
 self, rightfully dictating to the minds and con- 
 sciences of men, and under the perpetual guid- 
 ance of the Holy Spirit, who alone could know 
 aud impart the things that are of God.^ This 
 was the theory, an elevated, an inspiring theory, 
 but, alas ! one that was fatally contradicted by 
 the facts of the case, as they were forced upon 
 my attention. I found the Church not restrained 
 by tlie Spirit of God from becoming a party, 
 a contestant, an intriguer even, in the arena of 
 earthly politics. I saw the Divine representative 
 contending for prizes and power with mundane 
 potentates. I saw the agencies of religion em- 
 ployed by the sacred order to gratify personal 
 and partisan vengeance, to secure the objects of 
 sensuality and godless ambition, and to put 
 down what is now known to be the truth. I saw 
 that the supposed divine powers were allowed to 
 be passionately and violently exercised by the 
 consecrated pontiffs, as human powers would na- 
 turally have been exercised by secular tyrants, at 
 their own will and pleasure. I saw crimes and 
 scandals of all sorts running riot in the Church, 
 
 1 I Cor. iL 11. 
 
Through Home On. 137 
 
 and reflected from the yery seat of the apostolate. 
 I saw that there was no Divine provision or in- 
 terposition to prevent such things, but, as with 
 other institutions, the course of nature always 
 went on. I saw the necessary visible headship 
 vacant or doubtful for years at a time. I could 
 not agree with Catholic pleaders that, from the 
 Catholic point of view, " it should be no matter 
 of surprise that thirty instances of schism on oc- 
 casions of papal elections are enumerated by 
 church liiGtorians." ^ To an earnest-minded be- 
 liever in the Catholic teachins; of the institution 
 of the papacy and the accompanying promise of 
 Christ, it should be very grave matter of surprise ; 
 and the surprise grew into something like con- 
 sternation as I contemplated the facts of the Great 
 Schism which began towards the close of the 
 fourteenth century and lasted nearly forty years ; 
 when faithful Christians, whether wise or simple, 
 could not know which of the rival popes was en- 
 titled to their allegiance. Milner indeed says, in 
 his End of Controversy^ that the true Pope was 
 always clearly discernible; but a study of the 
 history of those times convinces me that he is 
 wrong in the assertion. However settled the va- 
 lidity of the Urban line may be for Catholics now^ 
 
 ^ The Primacy of tJie Apostolic See Vindicated. By Fran- 
 cis Patrick Kenrick, Bishop of Philadelphia. Third ed., 
 p. 283. 
 
138 Through Rome On. 
 
 it was very different in that unhappy period of 
 Christendom's bewilderment, when, as Kenrick 
 admits {Primacy, p. 285), it was ^' difficult for 
 the most conscientious and enlightened men to 
 pronounce with certainty who was the lawful 
 occupant of the apostolic chair." The canonical 
 question remains a puzzle to me still ; and I never 
 could conceive, as a Christian, how such an im- 
 broglio in the Divine plan could have been pos- 
 sible. Selden profanely observes, that in the 
 councils of the Church the odd man is the Holy 
 Ghost ; but it was not the odd man's vote that 
 made Urban pope, but the more obviously unholy 
 clamours of a Roman mob ; and the violence 
 which swayed the conclave in that doubtful elec- 
 tion was itself the fruit of a complication appar- 
 ently unlooked for by the Lord, which for a long 
 time separated Peter's residence from Peter's 
 see. The authority of the Council of Constance 
 to do what it did was disputed at the time, and in 
 view of decisions of the Church in our day is per- 
 haps worse than questionable ; though the sub- 
 mission of John XXII. (or XXIII., as some 
 reckon) and the general acquiescence of the 
 Church made it practically effective in disposing 
 of the Great Schism ; which, however, stands a 
 monument in history of the folly of ascribing 
 supernatural divinity to any institution among 
 men. 
 
Through Borne On, 139 
 
 It became impossible to believe tbat so foul 
 a body as the Ecclcsia docens sometimes showed 
 itself to be could be inhabited by the Holy 
 Spirit ; impossible to think that God would not 
 hav^e secured it against such foulness if He had 
 really ordained that it should be so inhabited. 
 These impossibilities would have been rationally 
 destructive of faith if the Church had not been 
 convicted of error in her specific function of in- 
 terpreter and teacher besides, as I presently 
 found her to be : but this latter discovery, show- 
 ing by particular instances that she was a blun- 
 derer in esse, and so precluding the further 
 denial that she was a hhmderev in posse, over- 
 turned her infallibility and set me free. No 
 elaborate argument is needed on this point : the 
 instances are numerous : here are two that occur 
 to me. The Church has sanctioned bloody reli- 
 gious persecution. This involves a question of 
 morals, on which, according to Catholic doc- 
 trine, the Church is infallible. Thus her infalli- 
 bility is staked upon the rightness of religious 
 persecution. The almost universal conscience 
 of enlightened mankind pronounces against the 
 Church on this point. It is in vain to deny that 
 the Church has sanctioned persecution, even to 
 the death of the contumacious heretic. True it 
 is a maxim of the Church that she abhors blood- 
 shed ; and bloodshed is one of her canonical im- 
 
140 Through Rome On. 
 
 pediments to the exercise of the priestly office. 
 True the public execution of heretics is seen to 
 bo the immediate act of the civil authority and 
 in accordance with the law of the land. But 
 true also it is, that the Church is the mistress 
 and interpreter of her maxims, and, being the 
 supreme authority on earth, cannot be arraigned 
 before any other tribunal here to be tried by 
 any maxim; and»that she can remove canonical 
 impediments by her dispensing power and at her 
 good pleasure. True also is it, that the Church 
 inspires and approves the penal laws passed by 
 the civil authorities against heretics; that she 
 herself exercises the judicial office under those 
 laws, decides upon the guilt of the heretic, and 
 hands him over to the civil authority with as- 
 sured knowledge and approval of his impending 
 fate. It is a well-settled principle that what one 
 does by another is done by one's self. The civil 
 authority is in persecution only an instrument of 
 the Church. The Church is the monitor of the 
 State on all questions of morals. Undisputed 
 facts show that the Church has sanctioned 
 bloody religious persecution; and if this perse- 
 cution is not merely politically inexpedient, but 
 morally wrong, the sanction of it by the Church 
 proves that she is not infallible. 
 
 The Church has certainly decreed against 
 truth in science ; and is not her word to be taken 
 
Through Borne On, 141 
 
 "wlien slic says she is speaking in lier province ? 
 One who heartily beheves in her as a supernatu- 
 ral guide cannot refuse to take her word. If 
 she does not know when and how to interfere as 
 guardian of the faith, then is she not in truth the 
 heavenly directed S[)Ouse of Christ ; and so the 
 whole Catholic theory falls to the ground. Co- 
 pernicus's book " On the Kevolution of the 
 Heavenly Bodies " was condemned by the Con- 
 gregation of the Index as containing "false 
 Pythagorean doctrine, utterly contrary to the 
 Holy Scriptures "; and, the Pope approving, this 
 condemnation becomes clearly enough the act of 
 the Church, and as such ought to be accepted 
 and defended by all true and hearty Catholics. 
 Copernicus, it is well known, did not live to be 
 personally handled along with his book. Gali- 
 leo did. There has been much discussion about 
 Galileo's condemnation. This settles down into 
 clearness after it all : Galileo was condemned, 
 and his true views were improbated by the 
 Church. Let nobody be led away from the 
 point by any cavilling about the kind or degree 
 of the man's punishment. That is quite an in- 
 significant matter now. The mistake of the 
 infallible Church is the pregnant thing. The 
 astronomer was condemned, his science was con- 
 demned, that science which is now assured to us 
 as true. He and it were condemned by the 
 
142 Through Home On. 
 
 Cliiirch, and justly from the Christian point of 
 view. The teaching of the earth's motion is 
 contrary to the Scriptures; and if either the 
 Church or Orthodox Protestantism were true, 
 the condemnation of Copernicus and of Galileo 
 would be right. But the Church, says the Cath- 
 olic, — the Bible, says the Protestant, — was not 
 sent to teach astronomy. Nay, the Church, jny 
 dear Catholic, on your principle, is commissioned 
 to say what Revelation forbids to he taught, 
 in astronomy or anything else ; and so she has 
 at least a negative voice in astronomy. And the 
 Bible, my dear Protestant, if it be the Divine 
 communication you say it is, cannot trip or blun- 
 der even incidentally. The Holy Spirit could 
 not have made a mistake through, inadvertence, 
 in haste to get on to what was specially meant 
 to be taught ; could not have been betrayed into 
 a false statement of any hind in its record 
 through the ignorance of its human instrument. 
 The moment you say this happened, you give up 
 plenary inspiration, you give up the supernatural 
 authority of the whole Bible, and leave it thence- 
 forth a matter of conjecture when it is God's 
 word and when man's. But, to continue the 
 narrative of my own case, — the Protestant con- 
 ceit of infallibility ^vas never anything but ludi- 
 crous : my serious concern was with the Church's 
 pretensions, and my predicament as a child of 
 
Through Home On, 143 
 
 the Clmrcli. The Church had certainly raised 
 her voice against scientific truth ; and the private 
 Christian is bound to hear the Church (Matt, 
 xviii. 17), and to hearken to her voice as to the 
 voice of God himself (Luke x. 16). That her 
 voice in the particular case was now silenced by 
 the spirit of the age, did not relieve me from the 
 dilemma while I remained a Catholic. I knew 
 that she had spoken, and what her decisions 
 were. My explicit obligation was to her, not to 
 the spirit of the age, which I had renounced 
 with the world, the flesh, and the devil. I per- 
 ceived that I was bound to believe the Pope 
 when he pronounced upon the extent of his own 
 prerogative ; and that in. this way Christian faith 
 and humility apparently required the sacrifice of 
 civil obligations, tlie acceptance of contradictory 
 propositions, and the rejection of the teachings 
 of science. I saw that the Church, like other 
 human organisations, often went astray; that 
 the Bible, like other human compositions, con- 
 tained falsities and impurities as well as moral 
 excellence and truth ; and that Christians were 
 no more led by supernatural light than pagans 
 and unbelievers. All this tended to show the 
 Christian order natural, not supernatural; hu- 
 man, not divine. And I saw that there has 
 always been, undeniable goodness outside of the 
 supposed revealed religion. The supernatural 
 
144 Through Rome On. 
 
 religion indeed onglit to be illustrated bj super- 
 natural goodness, all-fair, all-convincing, divine. 
 I sought this in the Church, and for a time de- 
 luded myself with the fancy that I had found it 
 there. I clung to the heroism and consecration 
 of the saints, and fondly said to myself that here 
 were examples of more than human goodness, 
 examples not to be paralleled outside of the City 
 of God. But this fancy could live only in the 
 air of the closet, and while the fumes of enthusi- 
 asm lasted in the brain. When I closed the 
 Acta Sanctorum and rose from my knees, and 
 looked abroad and around in the cool daylight 
 of my sane senses, I saw that among the children 
 of this world there was goodness not below the 
 best that the saints had ever displayed ; good- 
 ness right at my side, in heretical, and infidel, 
 and atheistical shapes; goodness under all forms 
 of intellectual truth and error, everywhere and 
 always in the world : that goodness is an earthly 
 product, not a heavenly graft or infusion ; and 
 that in the matter of asceticism, which I had 
 mistaken for an expression of goodness, the 
 heathen were not behind tlie Christian saints. I 
 saw that goodness is essentially distinct from 
 religion, is manifestly independent of Christian- 
 ity, has been greatly injured, indeed, by Chris- 
 tianity, in some times and places, is hampered 
 now by that religion, and is not in favour with 
 
Through Rome On, 145 
 
 zealous Cliristians when it is not baptised with 
 the Christian name. I saw, in fine, that Chris- 
 tianity involved, for me, the torture and surren- 
 der of conscience. 
 
 The Ultramontane claims, in which we have 
 genuine developed Christianity, present an en- 
 gaging picture of a theoretical Divine establish- 
 ment ; but to assert them of the actual ecclesias- 
 tical order whose workings history exhibits to 
 us so plainly, is too audacious, too extravagant, 
 for patience and common sense to bear. The 
 Gallican theory, so much relied on by " liberal 
 Catholics " and their allies in this age and coun- 
 try of liberal politics, is mere shift and evasion. 
 It does not fit the conception of infallible or- 
 ganic Christianity, and has ever been a desperate 
 attempt to reconcile incompatibles. It answered 
 its special purpose in French politics in the fif- 
 teenth and seventeenth centuries ; and it has 
 served the turn of short-sighted or disingenuous 
 pleaders repeatedly since ; but it is in its logical 
 essence the denial and destruction of the ecclesi- 
 astical principle ; and its history shows how 
 false and impossible supernaturalism is in rela- 
 tion to the things of earth and time. 
 
 The compelled exclusiveness of the Christian 
 character, which, in view of the damning sin of 
 heresy and the general unholiness of secular life, 
 I had felt to be consistent and obligatory, and at 
 
146 Through Home On. 
 
 the same time unnatural and cruel and impracti- 
 cable, was one of the final solvents of the bonds 
 which held me to the faith. I could not be so 
 sure of an J existing evidence for Kevelation as I 
 was of the fact of honest intelligent doubt and 
 disbelief of Hevelation : and this fact was in 
 vital contradiction to the claims of Revelation in 
 the supernaturalist sense. The argument is in- 
 deed very simple, and it has had from the first 
 the force of conviction to my mind. Supernatu- 
 ralists are not logically wrong in proceeding 
 from their postulate of Hevelation to attach dis- 
 honesty and wickedness to unbelief; but the 
 postulate itself is demonstrated false by the pal- 
 pably false conclusion properly derived from it. 
 Looked at in itself, it is seen to be unverifiable 
 and weakly supported : looked at in its conclu- 
 sions, common sense and common charity spon- 
 taneously condemn it. The theorem is still 
 boldly upheld in the abstract ; but its applica- 
 tion in the concrete is now constantly evaded. 
 The goodness of unbelievers upsets all church 
 theories on the subject. When it is no longer 
 practicable to punish heresy as a crime, men 
 have practically abandoned the Orthodox theory 
 of Hevelation. Religious persecution belonged 
 to the spirit of past ages, and has been gradually 
 dying out as that spirit has been informed and 
 changed ; but it is the proper fruit and action of 
 
Through Rome On. 147 
 
 the principle of theology and belief in a fixed 
 infallible E-evelation. Believers are now tolerant 
 because the perfect, fervent, compelling faith 
 of the past is no longer possible. They ought, 
 logically, to persecute as fiercely as of yore; 
 but, unconsciously moulded by the spirit of the 
 age, it is no longer in them to do so. The lead- 
 ing races of mankind have now new intuitions 
 and a higher law of life, at whose silent bidding 
 they give up their theology in its spirit long be- 
 fore the fulness of time when they shall abandon 
 it in the letter also. 
 
 So far from finding a miraculous origin for 
 Christianity, I could not, confining myself to 
 genuine grounds of history, so separate it from 
 its Jewish connexions as to discern a precise be- 
 ginning for it at all. If it was " founded " by 
 Christ or anybody else, the act was done in a 
 very dark corner, to which no ray of authentic 
 history has ever penetrated. It is first seen 
 emerging from the shadow of the synagogue, a 
 reformed Judaism, gradually acquiring an inde- 
 pendent shape and recognition of its own, and 
 preparing, by an austere doctrine and practice 
 which refused all compromise with existing pa- 
 ganism, to sow in the fields of martyrdom the 
 seed of a splendid and perdurable destiny. Mar- 
 
148 Through Rome On. 
 
 tyrdom, indeed, first gives Christianity historic 
 definiteness ; for it is not until the Neronian per- 
 secution in the year 64:, that we find it growing 
 into clear outline as something quite distinct 
 from Judaism. The burning zeal of the Chris- 
 tian devotees, who expected a speedy coming of 
 the great Judge and swift destruction of unbe- 
 lievers, was a mighty instrument in the propaga- 
 tion of the new religion ; which was further com- 
 mended to the people of the Koman Empire by 
 the need of something fresh and instinct with 
 life to take the place of the eflfete and dying myth- 
 ology derived from Greece. Christianity was 
 an inevitable resultant, in due season, from mixed 
 elements of thought and spirituality fused to a 
 certain point. It was a timely evolution, and so 
 responded to Ho man religiosity as by sure degrees 
 to leaven the mass, and to win a final triumph to 
 which its ardent advocates of to-day yet point as 
 miraculous. A similar phenomenon is witnessed 
 in the wondrous success of a not unrelated reli- 
 gion, Mohammedanism, six centuries later; 
 which to the Mohammedan believer doubtless 
 seems as divine a miracle as the Chi'istian reckons 
 his. 
 
 How men behave in the straits to which the 
 doctrine of miracles brings them ! Mohammed, 
 being asked for a miracle, pointed to the Koran 
 as a standing miracle. Luther demanded mha- 
 
Through Rome On. 149 
 
 cles of tlie sectaries to justify their separation 
 from him ; forgetting that he had no miracles to 
 justify his separation from the Clmrch. Dr. 
 Bushneir admits the natural improbability of the 
 gospel miracles ; but insists that the portraiture 
 of Jesus is so divinely impressive as to make the 
 marvels related of him credible ! It is stated, 
 and I believe truly, that twenty years ago fifty 
 millions of copies of the books of Noah AVebster 
 had been sold to all parts of the world. This 
 would make a very pretty miracle, if Noah "Web- 
 ster instead of having invented a new language 
 had only invented a new religion. Not that it 
 would convince any but Websterites themselves ; 
 but to them it would be of so stupendous a char- 
 acter as to fill them with a flaming indignation 
 against the hardened infidels who refused to ac- 
 knowledge its miraculousness and continued to 
 regard Websterism as a hnman phenomenon. 
 
 Since I traced the argument for myself, I have 
 read Archbishop Trench on the Miracles. The 
 archbishop says, that " the purpose of the mira- 
 cle being to confirm that which is good, so, upon 
 the other hand, where the mind and conscience 
 witness against the doctrine not all the miracles 
 in the world have a right to demand submission 
 to the word which they seal," &c. : and " a 
 miracle does not prove the truth of a doctrine or 
 » Nature and the Supernatural^ Ch. x. p. 377. 
 
150 Through Rome On, 
 
 the divine mission of him that brings it to 
 pass." ^ 
 
 Columbus may never be canonised ; but he 
 seems to have appreciated the force of miraculous 
 attestation when he brought an eclipse to bear 
 upon the JS^orth- American Indians. 
 
 In reading over the preceding pages, I note 
 a statement which perhaps requires some quali- 
 fication. I have spoken of all supernaturalism's 
 going from me with Catholicism. In the sense 
 of a belief in supernatural revelation, the state- 
 ment as to super naturalism is correct. I had no 
 affinity to any other religion left. There is, 
 however, a remnant of supernaturalism outside 
 of the religions, which in some cases is never 
 put away by minds that have rejected the reli- 
 gions forever. 1 was not destined to retain even 
 this remnant among my settled conclusions ; but 
 it did survive Catholicism a few weeks, or per- 
 haps months ; during which time I held to the 
 mild theism set forth by the first Liberal writers 
 that I consulted. I was disposed to believe in 
 the religious sentiment asserted by Theodore 
 Parker, and in the intuitions relied on for so 
 much by Professor Newman. It required no 
 long time, however, to enable me to perceive 
 
 ^ Trench on the Miracles, Am. ed., pp. 27, 28. 
 
Through Home On. 151 
 
 that either these gifted and good men were mis- 
 led by the peculiar religiosity of their natures, or 
 I laboured under a dulness of spiritual instinct 
 which doomed me to fall short of the truth. I 
 am satisfied now, that among real thinkers theism 
 is a matter of temperament. The strong reasons 
 which exist for refusing to ascribe this universe 
 of good and evil to the plan and providence of a 
 Benevolent Personal Creator are overborne in 
 the minds of such men as I have mentioned by 
 the ardour of their religious sensibilities ; which 
 lead them to rehabilitate the hackney pleadings 
 of the churches, that have been refuted a thou- 
 sand times over, and that collapse indeed of their 
 own emptiness as soon as the air which faith 
 supplied is let out of them. Of course the minds 
 of these temperamental theists are not satisfied 
 with the pleadings themselves, with which tliey 
 labour on so unnaturally and painfully, in such 
 contrast to the vivacity and power of their argu- 
 ment against the churches : but their constitution 
 binds them to the ungrateful task, till, forced at 
 last to acknowledge the inadequacy of the objec- 
 tive materials for proof, they fall back upon a 
 supposed interior sense of God and the divine 
 relations of the soul, of Free Will, and of Immor 
 tality. Thus they ride down the resistance of 
 their understandings, and raise their cherished 
 doctrines to the rank of first principles, needing 
 
152 Through Borne On. 
 
 no proof. Their intuitions are as unanswerable 
 as the revelations privately vouchsafed to the 
 Arabian prophet, or as the Holy Spirit abiding 
 with the Church. With my different tempera- 
 ment the effect was different. My heart's desires 
 were in harmony with theirs ; but in my case 
 desire was humble and waited on the judgment. 
 My reverence, too, which made me a natural 
 worshipper, rendered the theological conception 
 of the universe intolerable to me. I was struck 
 with the doubt intimated by Parker in one part 
 of the Discourse of Matters pertaining to Re- 
 ligion^ as to the propriety of ascribing personal- 
 ity to God. The effect tlms produced on my 
 mind was increased by the plain straigiitforward 
 reflections of Miss Martineau and Mr. Atkinson 
 in their Letters on the Law of Ifan^s Ifature 
 and Development ; and I soon perceived the 
 inconsequence of rejecting Christianity on the 
 ground of its disagreement with the facts of na- 
 ture, and continuing to accept so palpable a con- 
 tradiction as the common notion of Deity remains 
 after all the reiinements of it by our modern 
 theists. These theists would preserve theology 
 divested of its salient horrors under the old teach- 
 ing. Their doctrine has not the repulsiveness 
 of Evangelicalism, but it is open to the same 
 three-fold radical objection : that it cannot main- 
 tain itself on the ground of common reason; 
 
Through Home On. 153 
 
 that it departs from the scientific method ; and 
 that it needlessly introduces a demoralising ele- 
 ment into man's conception of the universe. An 
 eviscerated theology is theology still ; and all 
 theology is babbling. Only by putting it all 
 aside could I find peace and tranquillity in a 
 reverent contemplation of existence. As long as 
 one is haunted by the spirit of theology — and a 
 great proportion of mankind are constitutionally 
 hopeless of complete deliverance from it — one is 
 driven to v^^orry over insoluble problems, and to 
 follow imaginations of deities and demons to 
 help the cheat of knowing what can never be 
 known. Somehow, I was not made to be a vic- 
 tim to this spirit. I was able to rest when I 
 could go no farther, and was not tormented with 
 any such necessity of searching into the unsearch- 
 able as is a standing attribute of the factitious 
 sceptic drawn by religious writers ; nor could I 
 discover in myself the " intuitions " insisted on 
 by the Liberal Theists. The theory of the latter 
 I saw to be at bottom that of the churches, from 
 which I had recoiled with an immitigable dis- 
 gust already. As soon as they set up a supreme 
 Will as the Cause of causes, they suggest cruelty 
 in the eternal constitution of things. Stop with 
 the Universe, acknowledge that to be the Incom- 
 prehensible, and though you have Evil, you have 
 not necessarily malignity or injustice on the part 
 
154 Through Home On, 
 
 of any greater being towards man ; who sees E"a- 
 ture to be without pity or remorse, but also with- 
 out malevolence. Refuse to stop witli the Uni- 
 verse, assert the intelligent design and power of 
 a personal or quasi personal \\^ill, making the 
 Universe to be what it is, and you complicate 
 and darken the problem in a fearful degree ; for 
 whatever you hope the future may be, you know 
 that the present has evil in it; and thus the su- 
 preme Will, like the subordinate human will, 
 works evil as well as good. If the existence of 
 good in the Universe implies a Benevolent {bene 
 volens) Creator, by the same rule, the existence 
 of evil implies a Malevolent {male volens) Crea- 
 tor. The evil is not less certain than the good. 
 No refining can do away with this fact. Your 
 hope that evil will cease and good continue to 
 exist seems without any foundation in reason. 
 "Why not good cease and unmixed evil remain ? 
 ^Tou wish that this should not be, and you think 
 that it ought not. But if your wish and opinion 
 could prevail, there would be no evil now, would 
 there ? Evidently your wish and opinion are 
 not accordinoj to the '' desio^n " of the Universe. 
 The existence of evil, which no sophistry can ex- 
 plain away, shows that evil is compatible with 
 the nature of things. We cannot understand 
 the nature of things, nor account for it in any 
 possible way. To suppose a Theos does not 
 
Through Home On. 155 
 
 help tlie matter in the smallest degree, but makes 
 it worse, and is besides utterly gratuitous. It 
 follows, that theology, or the confident talk about 
 Theos, is, as I have before said, babbling. The 
 fancy tliat we have reached the Absolute in the 
 notion of a bodiless Mind — as if our highest 
 reach, if mind be that, must be Highest Being ; 
 as if anything that we can possibly reach can be 
 the Highest ! — afforded no point of rest for me. 
 Church doctrine is only the extension and play 
 of this fancy ; which is to me untrue and shock- 
 ing in its very essence. So, with all my spiritual 
 sympathy with such men as Theodore Parker 
 and F. W. Newman, I could not anchor my mind 
 at last in their theistic doctrines, embracing an 
 asserted Divine Person,' to be invoked by us; 
 the sense of Individual Immortality ; and Free 
 Will as I understood them to hold it. 
 
 I will observe here of the doctrine of Indi- 
 
 ^ "Those who espouse this alternative position make 
 the erroneous assumption that the choice is between per- 
 sonality and something below personality; whereas the 
 choice is rather between personality and something 
 higher. Is it not just possible that there is a mode of 
 being as much transcending Intelligence and Will as 
 these transcend mechanical motion ?" — Herbert Spen- 
 cer : First Principles, Am. ed., p. 109. 
 
 To turn away from the stony temples and petrified 
 doctrines of supernaturalism, and read Bacon under- 
 standingly, and know Kant, and walk hand in hand with 
 
156 Through Rome On, 
 
 vidual Immortality in particular, that it had not 
 at any earlier stage of my inquiries been exam- 
 ined, nor, so far as I remember, called in ques- 
 tion by me. The horrible form which it wears 
 in the teachings of Evangelical theology had, 
 indeed, long ago revolted me ; and in that shape 
 it had been utterly rejected. I had, too, been 
 accustomed to speculate on the surprise which 
 the actual conditions of the " other world '^ would 
 probably be to departed souls, after the deranged 
 imaginations of it which had possessed them in 
 this. The future life depicted and believed in 
 among church people I had long viewed as an 
 empty phantasm. That there is a future life for 
 every member of the human family I had, how- 
 ever, continued to take for granted, my close at- 
 tention never having been given to the point till 
 the cognate tenet of a Supreme Personal Intelli- 
 gence corresponding to man came at last in its 
 turn to be scrutinised. Then I saw the almost 
 necessary dependence of Immortality on Theism ; 
 and that as man has out of the qualities of his 
 own nature created for himself a God, so has he, 
 out of the fears and desires of a yet unripe hu- 
 manity, given birth to a visionary land of souls 
 
 Spencer, is like coming out of some Druidical grove of 
 sacrifice into the pure air and lightsome day for which 
 we were made. 
 
Through Rome On. 15T 
 
 with a satisfying perfection of good or evil which 
 he sees to be impossible here. 
 
 I separated from the theists with regret, but 
 with determination, and on the very threshold. 
 I could not with them accept the foundations 
 only to quarrel with the height of the superstruc- 
 ture afterwards. Free Will is in their eclectic 
 faith what the Divine Glory is in Calvinism : 
 the factitious end which by Jesuitical^ casuistry 
 is to justify evil as the ineans of its attainment. 
 They know free will, as stout Doctor Johnson 
 knew it : they have a demonstrative conscious- 
 ness of it. I am acquainted with a man who 
 knows that the earth does not move. He has a 
 demonstrative consciousness that it does not. In 
 regard to free will, my consciousness points to a 
 different conclusion from the theists'. So far 
 from feeling myself an originating, creating, first- 
 causing will-being, I feel and know just the con- 
 trary. The ability of the human mind to take 
 
 1 I use this word in its current popular sense, without 
 any grain of the popular notion in my mind that the 
 maxim or practice it denotes is peculiar to the Jesuits. 
 The eminent early Christian Eusebius was more Jesuiti- 
 cal than Ignatius of Loyola. (For the approbation of 
 deceit among the early Christian advocates, see TliQ 
 Friend^ Essay Y.) 
 
158 Through Rome On. 
 
 cognisance of its own operations, though swelling 
 the complexity of the problem, in no way alters 
 its nature or removes it beyond the category of 
 sensible causes and effects. I can agree with 
 Dr. Carpenter in his Mental Physiology^ that 
 man ** really does possess a self -determining 
 power," " within certain limits," and is conscious 
 of it : but this is not in the absolute sense free 
 (that is, uncaused) will. 
 
 The Liberal Theists will not consent to be 
 called by the name which their predecessors 
 bore, but insist on a designation which shall in- 
 clude them with church Christians, in agree- 
 ment with whom they hang the universe, with 
 all its infinite complexity, upon a supernatural 
 personal Will ; an essentially theological concep- 
 tion, and one which, taking the plain facts of 
 nature in view, is appalling. They assume, with 
 the supernaturalists, a personal Deity, willing a 
 vast system with pain and wrong among its con- 
 stituent elements. They commonly assume, in 
 like manner, with only the example of the su- 
 pernaturalists to back them, an immortal destiny 
 for each individual man. Then they assume an 
 instinct of the truth of their assumptions : and 
 finally, they imitate the very whine of the church 
 people in speaking of the nobleness and impor- 
 tance of then- notions, and the " blank " which 
 nature and futurity must present to minds that 
 
Through Rome On. 159 
 
 are not nourished upon their precious Extract of 
 Christianity. I turned away from them, I say, 
 upon the very threshold ; and I have never felt 
 the least throb of inclination to rejoin them since. 
 The pet tenets which they are at such pains to 
 preserve when throwing the rest overboard con- 
 tain the very pith and marrow of theology. I 
 cannot see why they should strain at miracles 
 and devils while they continue so easily to swal- 
 low the deliberate acceptance of evil by the Su- 
 preme Being. If this dreadful doctrine be true, 
 the other doctrines in natural association with it 
 may be true also. I could not answer Butler's 
 Analogy on their premises. Evidently, all that 
 we know of nature goes against the theory of a 
 just, discriminating Providential Mind as its 
 source. And when the theist, having ventured 
 an argument upon the face of nature, and having 
 reached this point where nature so plainly testi- 
 fies against him, falls back upon conjectures of 
 another life where Justice shall rule as it mani- 
 festly does not here, he abandons the ground he 
 has taken, and sets up an unverifiable hypothesis 
 of a reformed Providence, which, however agree- 
 able it may be to the fancy, has no support in 
 sober reason. If the rule of Providence in the 
 present life be one of injustice, there is no reason 
 to believe that a future life under the same 
 Providence will be differently ordered, so as to 
 
160 Through Rome On. 
 
 be just and liappj : and if the order of the pres- 
 ent life be right, there can be no need of a fu- 
 ture life as a scene of reparation. Our wish to 
 be rid of what is bad and painful, and secured in 
 what is good and pleasant, of course does not 
 affect the argument. The existence of a wish 
 does not imply that it will ever be gratified. 
 
 The theological and common view, which 
 makes the reason for doing right the result of 
 striking a commercial balance ; and which is fol- 
 lowed by theists in their close calculation of 
 what the " sum of existence " may, despite of 
 present wrong, turn out to be, is grievously low 
 and immoral, it seems to me. Theists are essen- 
 tially theological in their treatment of mind. 
 "While in one view they make it an impossible 
 first cause of its own voHtions, in another they 
 insist, in contempt of the plainest facts, on re- 
 garding it as something outside of the apprehen- 
 sible laws of nature, and as a subject of miracle 
 rather than of science. This strikes me as intel- 
 lectual vagrancy, a straying from knowledge in 
 the opposite direction. I find it a violent trans- 
 position to consider matter as proceeding from 
 mind. On the contrary, mind would seem to be 
 the natural product of matter in some of its con- 
 ditions. T7e find mind, like motion, heat, &c., 
 the regular accompaniment of certain combina- 
 tions of matter. It is apparently a proper phe- 
 
Through Home On. 161 
 
 nomenon of those conditions. TVe know of 
 mindless matter ; but we do not know anywhere 
 of matterless mind. Nothing seems to me 
 clearer than the physical source of mental phe- 
 nomena; and I do not find mental phenomena 
 more truly wonderful or ultimately inexplicable 
 than heat, light, motion, odours ; nor, after what 
 is now known of the transmutation of forces (or 
 the varying phases of the one force) and of mo- 
 lecular oscillation in its bearing upon nervous 
 perception, am I startled at thought's develop- 
 ment from motion and sensation, more than 
 at motion's becoming heat and heat motion. 
 Everything that we learn on these subjects leads 
 us away from supernaturalism. Mind is not 
 more unaccountable, nor more suggestive of im- 
 perishableness, than the marvellous vitality of 
 plant and flower and the teeming animal world. 
 The relations of sun and earth furnish apparently 
 a fully sufficient cause for the generation of life 
 and intelligence in all their forms that are known 
 to us. Life and death I see to be successive 
 phases of incomprehensible substance ; of which 
 all special existences that we know of, celestial 
 systems and terrestrial products and organisms, 
 including man that fondly fancies himself the 
 one creature with a beginning but no end, ar6 
 dissoluble, passing forms. Intelligent as well as 
 unintelligent life is more and more plainly seen 
 
162 Through Rome On, 
 
 to be of a chemical nature, and subject in all its 
 forms to waning and dissolution. Every act of 
 mind is accompanied with nervous waste, with 
 consumption of tissue : mental manifestations 
 are seen to be dependent on brain and nervous 
 system, as contractility is upon the muscles. 
 "When all muscular action is ended, there can be 
 no manifestation of strength : when all nervous 
 action is ended, there can be no manifestation of 
 soul or mind. It may as well be said that a 
 man's bodily strength will live in its individual- 
 ity after his death, as that his mind will. Her- 
 cules is as immortal as the Muses. The elements 
 wliich in a particular arrangement make an indi- 
 vidual man are themselves indestructible by 
 death ; but it does not follow that the particular 
 arrangement of them which for a time has the 
 individuality of Alexander or Zeno is therefore 
 indestructible. The elements are indestructible 
 in their essence ; but the individual man, like 
 the indi\ddual flower, plant, insect, beast, being 
 but a temporary combination of the elements, — ■ 
 a form, — is in a different category. Substance 
 is eternal, but not the forms of substance. These 
 are perpetually changing, dissolving, passing 
 away, giving place to one another. The decay 
 and death of forms release the elements wliich 
 have composed those forms ; and the elements, 
 entering into new combinations, proceed afresh 
 
Through Home On. 163 
 
 in tlie career of birth, growth, brief ripeness, 
 decay, and dissolution, followed by new individ- 
 nalisation : and of these processes of nature we 
 can discover no hint of either beginning or end. 
 The forms of nature are of infinite variety, man 
 being the most complex known to us among 
 those that we call living creatures ; but there is 
 no good reason for believing that when nature 
 has produced this high form, man (possibly not 
 the highest of her developments), she changes 
 her law and eternises him, any more than that 
 she eternises any of her preceding forms. There 
 can be no elixir of eternity for a form, whatever 
 its robe of beauty or dignity of name. What is 
 called soul I see to be the phenomenal expres- 
 sion of known material conditions. To single it 
 out from other phenomena and think of it as 
 existing independently, I must regard as a su- 
 perstition. If we are obliged to rest other forms 
 of energy strictly upon matter and its functions, 
 and cannot erect them into spiritual entities su- 
 perior to the laws of matter, we are committed 
 by the logic of the case to the same course with 
 respect to soul or mind. We are bound, in 
 short, to consider it one particular form offeree; 
 a special function of matter resulting from a spe- 
 cial differentiation of it. 
 
164: Through Rome On, 
 
 I soon turned away from the Liberal roman- 
 ticism on the subject of Jesus; which picks, 
 chooses and refuses among the gospel materials 
 in gratification of its purpose, and which extends 
 this specious pleading to Christianity itself; 
 holding forth the good and paltering with the 
 evil in it ; speaking of " the spirit of Christian- 
 ity," &c., in this one-sided way. I find it quite 
 impossible to accept the prevailing view of Jesus 
 as a divine or supremely authoritative being, and 
 of Christianity as fundamentally superior to all 
 other moral and spiritual systems, and entitled 
 to the character of the ultimate and universal 
 religion, adapted to all conditions and individu- 
 als among mankind. I find all who put forward 
 Jesus in this light doing so on the ground of 
 prepossession and enthusiasm ; abandoning in 
 regard to the question all that keenness of criti- 
 cism and rigid following of the scientific method 
 which it is the glory of our age to apply to other 
 inquiries ; starting ever with the foregone con- 
 clusion, and relying for its support upon the 
 flimsiest possible data and arguments, just such 
 as all the so-called false religions appeal to in 
 confirmation of their claims. I have looked, not 
 deeply, I confess, but still with some interest 
 
Through Rome On. 165 
 
 and attention, into the arguments of Jews and 
 Mohammedans for their respective religions. I 
 can admire the ingenuity that I find in those 
 arguments, can recognise the sincerity that per- 
 vades them, and can easily understand how- 
 strong they appear in the eyes of the people that 
 employ them. They greatly resemble the argu- 
 ments of Christians for their religion; and I 
 cannot say that the Christian arguments seem to 
 me any more forcible than the others. The 
 ability displayed on the side of the unchristian 
 systems would surprise the many who have 
 never sought or consented to come in contact 
 with it. I find this one trait common to Chi'is- 
 tians and all others who plead for supernatural 
 revelations : they may invoke reason and learn- 
 ing at first, but they uniformly refuse to allow 
 their positions to be thoroughly canvassed and 
 finally determined by such means ; which are 
 indeed incompatible with their real ruling prin- 
 ciple, faith, that is dogmatic in the face of reason 
 and learning, and that unfailingly falls back on 
 the " woman's reason " which Shakspeare's Lu- 
 cetta so sweetly avows. Christians of talents 
 and attainments are seen to abandon those gifts 
 at last in regard to their religion, and to receive 
 it, and expect its acceptance, on the same grounds 
 on which the dullest and most ignorant of all 
 creeds believe. The reason for Christian belief 
 
166 Through Home' On. 
 
 in Jesus, as for Moslem belief in Mohammed, is 
 expressed in the words I have referred to : "I 
 think him so because — I think him so."* 
 
 I find the very existence of Jesus of Nazareth 
 full of uncertainty.^ There were many pretend- 
 ers to the Messiahship among the Jews, under 
 the Homan dominion, and the name Jesus, or 
 Joshua, was an exceedingly common name. The 
 marvellousness of the age, the disposition to 
 gather fragments of separate stories into a narra- 
 tive of one ideal character that had come to be 
 devoutly believed in, the impossibility of now 
 sifting the scant testimony of the earliest access- 
 ible Christian witnesses, the want of other than 
 Christian witnesses, and the absence of all clear 
 historical recognition of Jesus as the founder of 
 Cliristianity, are points which leave his identity 
 itself very uncertain. And if he really flourished, 
 he can hardly have been other than I have else- 
 where described him, a seeker after the lost 
 sheep of the house of Israel, a would-be restorer 
 of the higher spiritual significance of the Law 
 
 * Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act I. Sc. II. 
 
 2 " The observations of Tryplion are weighty. He de- 
 pies the divinity and messianic character of Jesus Christ; 
 and what is very remarkable, he even calls in question 
 his existence, and his appearance here below. ' Whether 
 he was born and where he dwelt,' says he, ' is entirely 
 unknown.' " — Cohen: The Deicides, p. 244, Baltimore ed. 
 of Eng. trans. 
 
Through Borne On. 167 
 
 and the Prophets. Then, as to what are called 
 the teachings of Jesus, on which such stress is 
 laid, as making him to be a supernaturallj di- 
 vine revealer : not being original with him, they 
 cannot, whatever their excellence, bear the 
 weight that is thus laid upon them. In truth, 
 they are not all excellent ; and those of them 
 which most challenge our admiration were well 
 known before the time of Jesus, and had long 
 been current among Jews and Gentiles. As to 
 the ground taken by Mr. Stopford Brooke and 
 others, that the best spirituality of the ^ew 
 Testament, though not born with or peculiar to 
 Christianity, has received a special unction and 
 power, whether supernatural or not, as delivered 
 by Christ ; it seems to me that this is rather a 
 devout fancy than a well-grounded opinion ; and 
 if correct, it cannot do more than entitle Jesus 
 to a liigh place among the most efficient instruct- 
 ors of mankind. To single him out as standing 
 alone, and as being the one who spake as never 
 man spake, certainly seems extravagant, and 
 without anything approaching to a foundation in 
 the facts when dispassionately examined. 
 
 I have extended my observations on the sub- 
 ject covering the last few pages to further illus- 
 trate my departure from the Liberal Theists as 
 well as from Christianity proper. 
 
168 Through Rome On, 
 
 The religion of civilised man, tliougli exhibit- 
 ing still tlie signs of those roots of fear and mar- 
 vellousness from which mainly its savage origi- 
 nal sprang, is found to develop itself most freely 
 and naturally through the union of desire with 
 the formative imagination. "We yearn for the 
 triumph of Hight over "Wrong ; and as in this 
 world's affairs we have been accustomed to bide 
 our time and move as patiently as we may, with 
 such means as we can command, to the correc- 
 tion of what is wrong, and to expect the meas- 
 urable accomplishment of our yearnings as a 
 future event ; so, strongly desiring the perfect 
 reign of Goodness, and seeing that it is out 
 of the question now, we first desire, and then 
 believe, that it will come to pass hereafter. We 
 feel that we would have it ^o if our personal will 
 could order the matter : we feel at the same 
 time that our will, though so well directed, is 
 powerless for the great result : desire for the 
 result remains ; and out of this desire is born a 
 conception of another personal will, not less 
 righteous than ours, lifted above the fretting 
 limitations which hedge us in, and pursuing 
 mysteriously but surely the purpose which in us 
 is a desire only, because we have not power to 
 make it an act of our will. As we create this 
 
Through Rome On. 169 
 
 conception, there is nothing to prevent us from 
 endowing it in imagination with any attribute 
 our wish demands ; and so we clothe it with the 
 power we lack ourselves ; with a power that is 
 absolutely resistless and cannot fail ; and thus, 
 the will of Almighty God is the thought-out de- 
 sire of the human heart. In the same way, 
 desire is the shaper of the particulars of Heve- 
 lation ; Revelation itself being the product of 
 our earnest wish for sympathy and divine com- 
 munication. We make God in our own image, 
 because only as a Person can we bring him into 
 relations of sympathy and communion with us. 
 ^or can \c^ be satisfied with a purely invisible 
 Person for our God. Still exercising our crea- 
 tive prerogative, we provide him a glorified body 
 for occasional uses. We think of him as a half- 
 natural man, walking in the garden, enjoying 
 the cool evening air; talking to Israel out of 
 clouds and flame ; showing his back to Moses. 
 When we have pondered the matter long, and 
 held councils and voted on it, we make him out 
 to be an incomprehensible Trinity of Persons in 
 himself, and thereby more available t© the ends 
 of our desire. He is Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost. As Father, he is absolute power and 
 holiness enthroned on high. As Son, he is a 
 man like unto ourselves, only sinless ; our advo- 
 cate and mediator, purchasing a possible salva- 
 
170 Through Borne On. 
 
 tion for us, who are in some sort liis fellow- 
 creatures, for lie is Son of Man as well as God, 
 and his mother is woman and the Mother of 
 God. As Holy Ghost, he is Comforter and 
 Teacher, and has been seen on earth as a dove 
 and as flame. There is a certain visibility at- 
 taching to him under all three of these divisions; 
 but it is especially as the Son that he is near to 
 us and convenient to our desire. The proper 
 deity of Christ is a monstrous anthropomoi-pliism 
 and essentially irreverent; yet is it a genuine 
 religious tenet, though reverence, which it vio- 
 lates, is one of the primary elements of religion. 
 Christianity soon developed out of its primitive 
 unitarian faith. Unitarianism is less -religious 
 than Evangelicalism, Evangelicalism less reli- 
 gious than Catholicism. All Protestantism, in- 
 deed, is a falling away from religion and from 
 the idea of God. It enthrones the human mind 
 instead of God ; makes the individual man supe- 
 rior to the supposed divine external authority. 
 Keligion, it is true, is self-assertion ; for in it 
 man asserts his own nature and worships it as 
 God : but this radical self-assertion of Kelio;ion 
 is of a subtle sort. Protestantism is self-assertion 
 in a grosser kind : it is open revolt and declara- 
 ration of independence. The Devil was the first 
 "Whig, said Dr. Johnson, He might as correctly 
 have said the Devil was the fii'st Protestant, 
 
Through Home On. 171 
 
 declares the trenchant and logical Dr. O. A. 
 Brownson. - 
 
 Catholics are of all Christians the most gen- 
 uine religionists and worshippers of God. Espe- 
 cially do they excel in the characteristically reli- 
 gious worship of the Son, with whom they come 
 into daily sensible contact, as the heretic hardly 
 can, in the sacrament of the altar. 
 
 Thus is desire fed by all the Christian dog- 
 mas, and thus is it the underlying inspiration of 
 them all. But desire is not a rational founda- 
 tion for belief; and it was impossible for my 
 belief to abide on such a corner-stone long. If 
 I were to have a religion, it had to be one com- 
 manding what Coleridge calls "the full acqui- 
 escence of my intellect and the deep consent of 
 my conscience." In reaching Catholicism I had 
 exhausted the other religions of the Christian 
 name in their principle and seed. With Cath- 
 olicism, then, my progress as a Christian pilgrim 
 ceased. When that was renounced, there was 
 no temptation, or possibility even, for me to go 
 back to the broken cisterns. I had attained to 
 the light of conclusions in agreement with the 
 facts of consciousness and the surrounding uni- 
 verse, and supported by reason, to which thence- 
 forth I have never been ashamed or afraid to 
 turn for their test. It is not sufficient for me to 
 desire a thing : if there be no better reason for 
 
172 Through Borne On, 
 
 it tlian that, I cannot believe it. Thus I reject 
 all religions, "while I love and reverence goodness 
 and truth, whether clothed in religious or in un- 
 religious forms. 
 
 Mr. Capes says {To Rome and Back, pp. 
 853-4), " Of course, as soon as I was satisfied 
 that my difficulties were unanswerable, I ceased 
 quietly to communicate in the Koman Church ; 
 but I said nothing to those many kind hearts 
 which would have been wrung with pain," &c. 
 I adopted a similar course upon finding that I 
 was no longer a Catholic. I quietly dropped the 
 practice of religion, and for a long time held my 
 peace upon the change. A strong motive to this 
 course was in the lively remembrance that re- 
 mained to me of the taunts I had been subjected 
 to for not standing still in my tracks as a Pro- 
 testant. I determined to keep my own counsel 
 now, and to be sure of myself and of my ground 
 all round to the horizon before I spoke again. 
 The desire to save others pain was also largely 
 influential in my case, as in that of Mr. Capes. 
 I continued my search for truth and peace, be- 
 sieging both earth and heaven in the quest. 
 There was indeed an interrupting period, begin- 
 ning soon after my relinquishment of religious 
 stimulation, in which a bad reaction was threat- 
 
Through Borne On. 173 
 
 ened, and when there was at least a langnisliing 
 of mj moral and spiritual affections, attended by 
 consequences to be regretted : of which I must 
 speak hereafter, in order that mj word shall be 
 faithful and full, and that it may do the service 
 I wish it to do to some of my fellow-men. Some 
 general observations which I have to make on 
 the moral aspects of Christianity and Freethink- 
 ing may fitly find a place here. 
 
 There is a high obligation to prefer light to 
 darkness; but it is important to beware of the 
 perils which are incidental to coming out of dark- 
 ness into light. "We should not after the manner 
 and advice of some, hug darkness because of 
 perils in the change ; but we should be on our 
 guard against the perils, and watch ourselves 
 closely, that we fall not, to the injury of ourselves 
 and others and the scandal of a noble cause. 
 I am always grieved to the heart when I find a 
 Liberal inclined to use profane or unclean lan- 
 guage, or seeking his pleasure in. immoral acts 
 or companionship, or showing bigotry and unchar- 
 itableness in any of their shapes. I have known 
 many Christians given to such courses ; but in 
 them the outbreaks of bodily and mental cachexy, 
 though of course producing their natural mischiefs 
 in other respects, are not allowed, where Chris- 
 tians predominate, as with us, to redound to the 
 discredit of Christianity; for as the maxim of 
 
174: Through Home On, 
 
 monarcliists is, The King can do no wrong, so 
 the maxim of Cliristians is, Christianity can da 
 no wrong ; and all Christian badness is fathered 
 upon something distinct from Christianity itself. 
 But Freethinking is not yet orthodox; and so 
 the failings and vices of its professed followers 
 furnish a greatly-enjoyed triumph to its enemies, 
 who loudly proclaim such things as demonstrat- 
 ing the iniquity of Freethinking ; which cannot 
 in its turn fall back upon the sanctity of a close 
 corporation, and is unprotected by approved 
 maxims of indemnity, like those of the monarch- 
 ists and Christians. Clearly, this state of affairs 
 imposes an additional and a very special obli- 
 gation on Freethinkers to lead virtuous and ex- 
 emplary lives, as happily so many of them do. 
 Let conscientious Liberals lay this thought to 
 heart, and extend its influence among their fel- 
 lows as widely as possible. The best part of 
 Christianity is its continual appeal to conscience. 
 This it was that gave it so great an ultimate ad- 
 vantage in its early struggles with less effective 
 spiritual agencies ; and this it is which prolongs 
 its life and sway in spite of its obsolescent dogmas 
 and of its cramping and wounding of conscience 
 itself with the pressure of bonds which never 
 give way till they are broken. As long as an 
 age or a race that has received Christianity is not 
 above the level of that religion, that age or race 
 
Through Rome On. 175 
 
 will be the better for having it. The Middle 
 Ages were not the worse for the very corrupt 
 Christianity which then prevailed in Europe and 
 a part of the East. They were on the contrary 
 much the better for it, with all its corruption; 
 and if it had not been very corrupt, so as to be 
 brought into the necessary adaptedness to existing 
 Christian humanity, it could not have done half 
 the good it did. So, now, the improved Chris- 
 tianity of our day, which is as different a thing 
 from mediaeval as it is from primitive Christianity, 
 is in such agreement with the general mind of 
 Christian people as to be very serviceable and 
 necessary to those people, and even play the 
 part of a schoolmaster to lead them to Free- 
 thought. I need not point out here, that to re- 
 cognise it in this just light is very different from 
 bowhig down to it as a supernatural revela,tion, 
 or acknowledging it to be absolutely true and 
 destined to be the final regenerator and perfecter 
 of mankind. Christianity, though not " the civ- 
 iliser" that Christian writers call it, has been 
 one important agent in the civilisation of the 
 world, and still has a part, though a much less 
 distinguished part than formerly, to perform in 
 the advancing work. It may be that there will 
 never be a higher religion ; but about this word 
 religion there clusters such a haze of various 
 meanings and meaningless thoughts, that it might 
 
176 Through Home On, 
 
 almost seem to correspond to the Scotchman's 
 definition of metaphysics ; so we will not dwell 
 on that point now. That Christianity is to pass 
 away and to be superseded by the higher teach- 
 ings of science and regenerated natural morality, 
 and that this latter regime is to constitute the 
 Orthodoxy of the future, with all, and more than 
 all, the prestige and power for good which Keli- 
 gion has so long enjoyed, is an assurance vouched 
 for by the earnest that we hold in our hands. 
 In the meantime, it is good that the religion 
 should live and play the part that yet remains to it. 
 It should be the desire of freethinkers, not to 
 destroy Christianity, but to see it outgrown. 
 The outgrowing process must be gradual, that it 
 may be complete and beneficent. Freethought 
 is not iconoclasm, but regeneration. I have been 
 asked if I thought that people would be the bet- 
 ter for putting away Christianity and taking Free- 
 thought in place of it. I reply, if they were pre- 
 pared for it, undoubtedly they would be the bet- 
 ter for the exchange : if not prepared for it, they 
 would not be the better, but probably much the 
 worse. If they received the soul and habit of 
 Freethought along with the body and name, they 
 would be making a great advance in ceasing to 
 be Christians. But this could be only when 
 Christianity no longer harmonised with their na- 
 tures, and Freethought succeeded to the harmony 
 
Through Rome On, 17T 
 
 winch its predecessor had lost. They would not 
 be the better for being divorced from their reli- 
 gion without having the habit of genuine Free- 
 thought to take the religion's place. Genuine 
 Freethought is a product of the growth and train- 
 ing of moral and intellectual constitution togeth- 
 er. There are, in relation to this highest sense 
 of the term, comparatively few genuine Free- 
 thinkers yet in the world; though a vast and 
 continually increasing multitude are in the train- 
 ing-schools of Freethought. The rejection of 
 religion does not make a genuine freethinker. 
 He is not free in his thouo-hts who is in bondao-e 
 to the idea of opposing religion, or to the mis- 
 leading impulses of his own coarseness, his igno- 
 rance, bigotry, disposition to force his own will 
 and opinions down other people's throats, or to 
 be profane and licentious, in the abandon of his 
 fancied freedom, to show his contempt for religion 
 which condemns profaneness and licentiousness. 
 Truth leads to freedom, and effectually makes 
 free at last ; but the rejection of falsehood is not 
 the securing of truth. All falsehood rejected, 
 truth alone remains; but one may reject the 
 special falsehood and slavery of religion only to 
 give one's self up to a practically more hurtful 
 falsehood and slavery still. The Freethinker, 
 who has undertaken to be the keeper of his own 
 conscience, is of all men the most obliged to have 
 
178 Through Home On. 
 
 a true conscience, to follow its liglit, and to set 
 a good example. It is one of his special duties 
 to correct the wide-spread conceit that morality 
 is the property of religion, that an unreligious 
 man must be a bad man : and he fails in this 
 duty signally when he lends himself to immoral 
 courses. He, more than all men besides, should 
 abhor such things. In avoiding, and abhorring 
 them, he is not pandering to the false prejudices 
 of believers: to respect and practise morality 
 and decorum is not false prejudice ; and we are 
 not to go wrong in our conduct in order to be 
 different from people whose errors of opinion we 
 condemn. To do so is to indulge bad feeling, 
 not to follow truth. It is shameful for such 
 scandal to be brought by any one on the name 
 of Liberal. He who rejects religion on just 
 grounds does not reject morality along with it. 
 Morality is not bound to religion. It is what it 
 has been well called ; the sum of human experi- 
 ence. On the chief points of morality good men 
 are in general agreement. There may be specu- 
 lative differences as to the sanction of morality ; 
 some deriving it from a Divine personal will, while 
 others find it in the nature of things, or rest it 
 on the appreciable basis of utility. The essential 
 thing, the bond of humanity, the sense of right 
 and duty, the flower of civilisation, is one for all 
 men. There is no nobler quality in Freethought 
 
Through Home On. 179 
 
 than its constant appeal to the individual con- 
 science ; and this brings Freethinkers and Chris- 
 tians together on one side ; for, as I have said, 
 this is the best part of Christianity. The Free- 
 thinker has the same monitor in his breast that 
 the Christian has in his. Let Christians continue 
 to warn everyone that nameth the name of Christ 
 to depart J^rom. iniquity^ and let Extra-Chris- 
 tians show the world not only that Freethinkers 
 can be good men, but that Freethinking makes 
 men good.^ 
 
 " I was led," says Mr. Capes, " face to face 
 with the notorious fact that it has not pleased 
 God to grant us that clear knowledge of the doc- 
 trines or duties tauglit by Christ for which we 
 naturally so eagerly long,"^ Now, with all re- 
 spect for Mr. Capes, it does appear to me, that 
 when a man has the good sense and courage to 
 face this fact and understand what it means, it is 
 time for him to cease talking about Christ as the 
 
 » II Tim. ii. 19. 
 
 2 It is well said by Dr. Matthew Arnold (Preface to 
 St. Paul and Protestantism), tliat " the very sign and con- 
 dition of each new stage of spiritual progress is — increase 
 ofiask.^^ Brother Liberals, let us not shrink from the in- 
 crease of task that is upon us, but gird our loins man- 
 fully for its faithful performance. 
 
 3 To Pome and Back, p. 357. 
 
180 Through Rome On. 
 
 revealer and vaunting Christianity as the one 
 Divine Kevelation, and even to be diffident, at 
 least, of calling himself a Christian. These 
 terms all have their fixed and clear-enough 
 meanings, and the last of them, Christian, is an 
 historical term. If Mr. Capes and others whom 
 I could name, admitting the " notorious fact " 
 stated, may with propriety continue to call them- 
 selves Christians, as I do not presume to deny 
 they may, then surely the history that is making 
 now-a days has a fine revolutionary smack about 
 it — that is all. Some distinguished lights of the 
 Broad Church, whose writings please and edify 
 me greatly, have, I find, scarcely any more defi- 
 nite theism to stand on than I have. To call 
 one's self a Christian, in such a case, is, I suppose, 
 a matter of taste as well as of conscience. As a 
 matter of taste and conscience both, I refuse to 
 call myself a Christian. I feel no assurance that 
 Jesus ever existed. If there was such a person, 
 his history and his doctrine alike are extremely 
 uncertain. If anything about him is clear, it is 
 that he did not fulfil the conditions of the 
 Hebrew Messiah, or Christ ; and finally, that 
 Hebrew notion of the Christ is to my mind a 
 vain and superstition imagination. How, then, 
 can I call myself a Christian ? As to persons 
 who believe that Jesus really flourished eighteen 
 hundred years ago, and was the highest teacher 
 
Through Rome On. 181 
 
 and exemplar of spirituality the world has ever 
 had ; but who, like me, reject the messianic con- 
 ception, the Christ doctrine of the Jews : — per- 
 haps they may rightly claim the Christian name, 
 though I may not. In speaking of this class I 
 have had others in view rather than Mr. Capes. 
 I do not know what are his views about Jesus. 
 He tells us in bold print that he has gone " back " 
 to the Church of England ; which he perceives 
 to be different from primitive Christianity, but 
 approves as the onl}^ millennial order in which 
 the lion of freethought can lie down with the 
 lamb of Christian piety " without a shattering of 
 the existing formularies of our forefathers," and 
 with the " hope gradually to reconcile the past 
 with the future." I take leave of Mr. Capes 
 with cordial good-will and thanks for his hints 
 and companionship ; seeing plainly indeed from 
 his book that he never really entered into the 
 spirit of the Catholic religion, but more than half 
 disposed to join in his praise of the English 
 Church as the broadest of ecclesiastical bodies ; 
 and leaning to it myself, as I lean to so many 
 things English, though never, even in my dreams, 
 connecting it with the Apostles. 
 
 A word now as to the descriptive term 
 " Extra-Christian " in the title of this book. It 
 
1S2 Through Home On. 
 
 is not, like " Cliristian," an historic term. It is 
 not classical, nor precise, nor in general use with, 
 a clear conventioDal meaning to it. Perhaps it 
 would even be ambiguous without this explana- 
 tion. As I use it, it does not mean very Chris- 
 tian indeed^ but heyond Christianity ; and cor- 
 responds to the abverb On in the first part of 
 the title. I may be said to have been infra- 
 Christian while finding my way To Home / I 
 was Christian while I stayed there ; and from 
 the point at which Mr. Capes turned Back and 
 I went On^ I have been Extra- Christian, 
 
 When, after that memorable discovery in the 
 State Library, I found myself free to read and 
 think and to follow the pursuit of Truth whither- 
 soever it should lead me, my mind stretched 
 itself, as it were, with a cheeriug sense of capa- 
 city for fresh effort with a better result to follow. 
 Having perused without satisfaction some of the 
 works of the old-fashioned deists, and some 
 coarsely written and ill-printed American publica- 
 tions of the anti-christian type, I got hold of Mr. 
 Fronde's very differently conceived Ifemesis of 
 Faith^ and found it most interesting and helpful. 
 Seeing at the end of the book a list of John 
 Chapman's Liberal publications, I sent to London 
 for several of them, embracing Mr. Greg's Creed 
 
Through Hovie On. 183 
 
 of Christendom, Mr. Foxton's Popular Chris- 
 tianity, and tlie Martineau-Atkinson Letters 
 already mentioned ; none of which, I believe, 
 had then been reprinted in America. In the 
 last-named book I was delighted to strike upon a 
 vein of inquiry and observation which had for 
 some time warmly interested me. It had hap- 
 pened to me to learn something of the true mira- 
 cles of Animal Magnetism, which had greatly 
 helped me in dealing with the apocryphal ones 
 of the theologians ; and I had grieved over the 
 attitude of so large a proportion of cultivated 
 people, particularly among men of science, 
 towards a domain of philosophical inquiry not in- 
 ferior to any in interest and importance, nor in 
 materials for the scientific method to work out 
 to the grandest and most beneficent results. The 
 mischievous poaching on this domain by sciolists 
 and vulgar pretenders, a natural consequence of 
 its neglect by the class that ought to explore it, 
 and the general ignoring (to use Boyle's word in 
 its only legitimate sense) of the subject by wri- 
 ters congenial to my own mind, made the timely 
 acquaintance with the Letters most agreeable 
 and beneficial. Critics of the work seem to me 
 prone to overlook a point plainly enough stated 
 in its preface : that the design in publishing this 
 correspondence between two friends was to make 
 its suggestiveness available for certain minds 
 
184 Through Home On. 
 
 that were by previous study and direction fitted 
 for tlie communication. In tliis light I can tes- 
 tify to its usefulness. I will here add, that I was 
 assured by Miss Martineau herself, in 1858, that 
 the reports so industriously propagated, of the 
 loss of friends, &c., from the publication of the 
 Letters^ were utterly without foundation.^ 
 
 Among other books which I read at this time 
 with lasting advantage, were the Life of Blanco 
 White, and Conversations of Goethe with Ecker- 
 mann. The latter, recommended to me by one 
 eminent in wisdom and in literary fame, was, I 
 may observe, my introduction to the mind of the 
 great Goethe; who, following Sliakspeare and 
 Bacon, must here be homaged as crowning a 
 fresh epoch in my reading life. ISTot much later 
 I made acquaintance with the Positive Philoso- 
 phy of Auguste Comte, in the excellent com- 
 pendious translation by Harriet Martineau. 
 
 ^ These injurious reports, with other misstatements, 
 were published in the first, and I think also in the 
 second, edition of Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte. 
 Subsequently Mrs. Gaskell made what corrections she 
 could; but the mischief was done. I never was person- 
 ally acquainted with the gifted woman who wrote Jane 
 Eyre; but I have trustworthy information that while her 
 intentions were always just, she often mistook her fancies 
 for facts, and spoke of them accordingly. 
 
 N. B. — Since the remarks in the text and note on this 
 page were written, Miss Martineau has died; and her 
 
Through Rome On. 185 
 
 It is necessary to tlie completeness of this 
 record that it should include an episode which I 
 cannot recall without a degree of sorrow, though 
 I feel that to it I am beholden for increase of 
 self-knowledge and self-control, and for a stronger 
 sense of the connexion of those qualities with 
 an abiding virtue and happiness. Having been 
 bound so long by the spirit and practice of an 
 ascetic religion, I did not come into the freedom 
 of my own soul and body without the danger 
 common in such cases of a reaction in the oppo- 
 site direction of loose living. In giving up the 
 Catholic religion I had parted with a very lofty 
 theocratic conception. There is an unfailing 
 lowering of the moral tone, I think, upon the 
 loss of a high ideal. The depression may not 
 immediately succeed the loss ; it may be but 
 temporary, and in happy instances may be very 
 soon removed : but it is sure to occur. To a 
 young man, lacking the sober experience of ma- 
 turity, and accustomed hitherto to look to super- 
 natural perils on the one hand, and supernatural 
 helps on the other, the realities of life, its real 
 perils and safeguards and salvation, are for a 
 
 Autobiography is now published, to speak for her with a 
 better voice than mine. 
 
186 Through Home On. 
 
 time below tlie level of his strained mental eye- 
 sight ; and there is a sore, weary, feeling in him, 
 after the struggle and disappointment he has gone 
 through, as if the best and highest things, which 
 have been falsely embodied for him all this time, 
 had no real existence, or were vain objects of 
 human pursuit. It has been drilled into him as 
 the teaching of religion, that Right is to be fol- 
 lowed for fear of hell, and for the sake of an 
 " exceeding great reward " in heaven. This sel- 
 fish and mercenary principle, which by a common 
 Christian perversion is called noble and necessary 
 to good living, has blurred and weakened his 
 conscientiousness to a degree from which it can 
 not recover in a day, and has prepared him to 
 yield to the seductions of pleasure as the only 
 sufficiently stimulating substitute for the broken 
 promises of faith. Something of this experience 
 I had, not without scath and food for repentance; 
 but for a passing stage only, and mingled wdth 
 elements of moral growth which, unless for the 
 thought of possible injury to others by an un- 
 worthy example, would leave small occasion for 
 sadness in the retrospect. It became apparent 
 to me that Pleasure is a deceitful guide, and 
 that I was doing wrong to give so nmch heed to 
 her persuasions. Conscience asserted itself with 
 renewed power, now that it was no longer in 
 chains. I tried — from that time to this I have 
 
Through Rome On. 187 
 
 constantly tried — to know and to do my duty, 
 not for fear of Grod or Devil, not to be paid ex- 
 orbitantly for it hereafter ; but beca^use it is 
 
 EIGHT. 
 
 From tlie period now readied in this recen- 
 sion there are no further struggles of mind to be 
 recorded. For the last twenty-five years there 
 has been, I believe, no essential change in my 
 views on the subject of religion. The design has 
 been carried out of showing how these views 
 were attained by regular and sure stages, devel- 
 oping the argument and the workings of tem- 
 perament together. "When one has thought so 
 earnestly and so long upon this important sub- 
 ject, and is so penetrated with a conviction of 
 the mischiefs of the old teaching, and of the 
 value and beauty of the truth that is taking its 
 place, can his conscience let him be silent, so as 
 to leave it a matter of doubt or misconception 
 which side he is on ? Is he not bound, if a re- 
 spectable person possessed of any tolerable gift 
 of expression, to give his authenticated testimony 
 as a contribution, small though it be, to the ac- 
 cumulated records of mental experience ? The 
 number of minds uiat will recognise my position 
 as what they have themselves arrived at, or are 
 tending to, is becoming larger and larger every 
 
188 Through Rome On. 
 
 day ; and what I write now under a ban will at 
 no very distant future be commonplace and daily 
 bread of tlie popular intelligence. In the mean- 
 time the impulse must be supplied to such as 
 wait for it. Some who read these pages will 
 turn away frowning and shaking their heads. 
 They will turn away, but not from a sense of un- 
 reasonableness in what I have written : rather 
 the contrary. They will fear that it is reasonable, 
 and their established modes of thinking will 
 make the suspected truth unpleasant to them. 
 Some of these will find themselves recurring to 
 the subject at a future time, and looking at it in 
 a better light ; when they will understand me as 
 they cannot now, in the first shock and resent- 
 ment of collision. Seeing that I do not class 
 myself with the theists, some who are fond of 
 calling names will be swift to pronounce that I 
 am an atheist. I am too old and seasoned by 
 this time to be afraid of a name ; and if this 
 reprobated name atheist seem fitting, or if it 
 make up to any pious souls in ever so small a 
 degree for the impracticableness of burning me 
 at the stake, I ought not to begrudge its applica- 
 tion, and I am not likely to breathe less freely 
 nor to sleep less soundly on account of it. It is 
 right, however, that I siiould say that the name 
 does not seem to me suited to my case. "While 
 I cannot join theists, in or out of the churches, 
 
Through Rome On. 189 
 
 in affirming a specific Deity behind E'ature, 
 neither can I join atheists in denying the possi- 
 bility of such a Being ; still less do I deny what 
 Parker calls the quality of God. This I find and 
 reverence in Nature, without pretending to know 
 of any source for it beyond. There is to my ap- 
 prehension a very beautiful truth in that text 
 which has been so perversely interpreted : " He 
 that hath seen me liath seen the Father." Good- 
 ness as a force is reflected to us in the best of 
 our fellow-creatures. In the good man we see 
 the Father^ in the only possible or desirable 
 sense. Luther says somewhere — I cannot hunt 
 up the passage now — that that is God on which 
 the heart rests with trust, hope, and love. When 
 we are drawn and built up in the right by any 
 magnet of righteousness whatever, there is God 
 for us, and thenceforth we have seen and known 
 the Father. What avails it to quarrel about the 
 form or time of the incarnation ? It was Yishnu, 
 it was Christ, if you will. I care not for your 
 names and dates and metaphysics : the Word is 
 made flesh and dwells among us still. 
 
 I believe, then, in the quality of God ; and I 
 have tried to show how the theme of the Infinite 
 takes efi'ect upon my mind. I can no more 
 adore a magnified human image with the culti- 
 vated theist than I can a wooden or stone fetich 
 with the barbarous theist: but in rejecting the 
 
190 Through Rome On. 
 
 former object of worship I no more deny what is 
 inconceivable, nor what of Truth and Goodness 
 is connoted in the image, than I deny inscrutable 
 Power (not to speak here of Goodness and Truth) 
 in rejecting the fetich. I am conscientiously 
 obliged to put away the conventional verbiage 
 about " design" and " First Cause "; which shocks 
 me w^ith its horrible familiarity and pettiness on 
 the most awful of themes, and thus seems to me 
 as irreverent as unphilosophical. Definite indi- 
 vidualised forms of existence of which our lim- 
 ited faculties are fitted to take cognisance we 
 may indeed question and pursue in search of 
 causal conditions; for by their mutableness, and 
 by our ability, such as it is, to grapple with 
 them, they are pronounced effects ; but it is a 
 hasty and pernicious notion that existence of 
 itself necessarily implies a cause. Only change 
 involves such an implication. Events imply 
 causes: simple existence does not imply any 
 such thing. If it did, the imagined First Cause, 
 being an existence, would require a cause, i. e., 
 would be no real First Cause. The finite is the 
 content of the infinite : that is all we can say. 
 Earths, suns, systems, with all their animate and 
 inanimate productions, are finite forms, and we 
 may have our nebular theories and what not, to 
 account for them ; but these, vast and overpow- 
 ering as they are to our minds, are mere grains 
 
Through Hoine Or. 191 
 
 in the Universe ; whose boundlessness exhausts 
 our range of causes and our faculty of conception 
 itself; so that we reach at last, not an outside 
 Creator, but, as Strauss declares,^ a self-centred 
 Cosmos. The design argument puts the cart 
 before the horse, mistakes the impression for the 
 seal, and, in all the instances adduced, invites us 
 to contemplate the perfect image of imperfec- 
 tion. To ascribe the adaptations in nature to 
 intelligent design, which is a human attribute, 
 is to invite criticism of that in which all are in- 
 terested ; and it then appears that the " design,*' 
 or the execution of it, is of a low order, denying, 
 instead of betokening, Supreme Wisdom or Al- 
 mightiness. Indeed, the advocates of the Paley- 
 an doctrine find themselves driven into a sort of 
 remonstrance against present injustice by the 
 Deity, and claim damages from him on that 
 account. This is one of their standing argu- 
 ments for a future life. All such views are pain- 
 fully repulsive to me. The making of man and 
 his concerns the grand topic and puzzle of the 
 Divine counsels ; the portentous nature ascribed 
 to each individual member of the human family, 
 even to the extent of regarding the new-born 
 soul, in contradiction to philosophy, as an addi- 
 tional force in the universe; the supernatural 
 
 1 TU Old Faith and the New: Amer. ed. Vol. II. p. 133. 
 
192 Through Home On. 
 
 importance claimed for the little ball in the 
 heavens on which we live, the satellite of a sun 
 that is itself many times less than the known 
 star Sirius, and is lost in its insignificance amid 
 the galaxies of infinite space : — all this pitiful 
 clinging to the pseudo-philosophy and supersti- 
 tion of past ages, with all the festering conceits 
 and bigotries that it keeps alive, sickens my 
 heart, and compels the protest of my understand- 
 ing and will as I record it here. But I set up 
 no presumptuous dogma of my own in turn. If 
 I may on some accounts seem to belong to the 
 atheists, with more show of propriety still may I 
 on other accounts be reckoned among the theists. 
 I disown both names, theist and atheist, as inap- 
 propriate in such a case as mine. I declare that 
 I have not, and cannot have, any dogma what- 
 ever on Origin and Absolute Being. ^ I turn 
 away as decidedly from the dogma, or the dog- 
 matic spirit, of the atheist as from that of the 
 theist, on a subject which I feel a solemn assu- 
 
 1 " "When I attempt to give tlie power wliicli I see man- 
 ifested in the Universe an objective form, personal or 
 otherwise [other], it slips away from me, declining all 
 intellectual manipulation. I dare not, save poetically, 
 use the pronoun ' he ' regarding it ; I dare not call it a 
 *mind'; I refuse to call it a 'cause.' Its mystery over- 
 shadows me, but it remains a mystery ; while the object- 
 ive frames which my neighbours try to make it fit, simply 
 distort and desecrate it." — Tyndall. 
 
Through Rome On. 193 
 
 ranee is infinitely too high for knowledge, and 
 infinitely too sacred for levity and assumption, 
 on the part of man. TVTien men lay down what 
 seem to me absurd and contradictory theories, I 
 do not pretend to respect them as even possible 
 truth; and I may think it my duty to protest 
 against them, at least to the extent of declaring 
 that they are impossible and shocking to my 
 own mind ; but I do not oppose to them any 
 theories of my own about what can never be 
 known. No doubt the two terms theist and 
 atheist are in the sharpest antithesis, and one is 
 naturally suggestive of the other ; but it by no 
 means follows that they cover the whole ground. 
 There is most certainly a tertium quid; and 
 this tertium quid'diOQ?, really seem to me to fur- 
 nish the only position which a thinker can oc- 
 cupy on the subject without departing from phi- 
 losophy and reason. Theists that have broken 
 with the old religious traditions find it impossi- 
 ble to retain the God doctrine in its integrity, 
 or as it is still asserted by the Church and cher- 
 ished in the popular imagination. They modify 
 or rehnquish the personality of God, and, pressed 
 by the problem of Evil, give up omnipotence as 
 an attribute of the Divine Being, or, as in a re- 
 markable book of the day,' part with goodness, 
 
 » Liberty^ Equality, Fraternity : Amer. ed., pp. 310-11. 
 
194 Through Rome On. 
 
 or ruling benevolence, in tlie Supreme. John 
 Stuart Mill/ favouring theism, sketched a lim- 
 ited Deity as the possible Lord of the universe. 
 This is the tendency on one side of theism; 
 while on the other it tends to check free thought 
 and carry its disciples back into the mire and 
 confusion of the churches. I do not deny the 
 possibility or conceivableness of a limited Divine 
 Being as the Author of Nature ; but I declare 
 that the supposition seems to me uncalled for 
 and unsupported by any sound reasoning what- 
 ever ; and it has long been clear to my mind, 
 that every straining after a second Infinite — • 
 Nature being practically infinite for us — fails, as 
 all human striving must fail, to solve the Mys- 
 tery of Existence, and in its utmost reach carries 
 us no farther than to the footstool of a mighty 
 but still finite Demiurgus, behind whom the 
 awful curtain hangs impenetrable as ever. 
 
 I have religiosity enough. By my original 
 constitution I am of the sort that crave and cre- 
 ate gods and guardian angels for themselves. I 
 greatly enjoyed such beings of the imagination 
 before I found out that they are only imaginary; 
 and communion with the angelic spirits was per- 
 haps as congenial and helpful as communion 
 with God. No one would more highly value 
 
 i Three Essays on Beligion. 
 
Through Rome O71, 195 
 
 the supports of a true religion than I should ; 
 but I cannot accept the Christian mythology as 
 true any more than I can the Pagan ; nor am I 
 the kind of eclectic that can select from the 
 moral and spiritual side of Christianity what is 
 not even peculiar to that system, and call the 
 arbitrary selection a genuine, special, and divine 
 religion. E-eligion, as I conceive it, always has 
 relation to the gods, or to some invisible per- 
 sonal or ^t^<25^personal Power, distinct from and 
 superior to Nature and its laws. I have no 
 knowledge or instinct of such a Power. I do 
 not deny the existence of such, but I see no just 
 ground for asserting it. It is my deliberate and 
 solemn conviction, that the subject is above the 
 sphere of our human intelligence ; and that dog- 
 matism, at any rate, if not all speculation, con- 
 cerning it is irreverence, folly, and mischief. 
 This strong impression is confirmed in me when, 
 looking over all the world and through all the 
 periods of its history, I find that the God idea — 
 the personification of human attributes as Divine 
 and Absolute, that refined idolatry in various 
 degrees, from which, seeing it in this light, I am 
 obliged to turn away — has always and every- 
 wliere led men into extravagance of imagination 
 and grievous perversions of conduct. I do not 
 deny that it is associated with great good also, 
 and that it is a necessary part of human devel- 
 
196 Through Borne On, 
 
 opment : but I cannot perceive in it any ray of 
 supernatural divinity, nor acknowledge it in any 
 of its iorms, from fetichism to monotheism, to be 
 a veracious and satisfying corner-stone of reli- 
 gion. 
 
 In saying that I should value a true religion, 
 I must not be misunderstood to mean that 1 
 should be glad if Christianity according to its 
 time-honoured traditions vrere true. A thousand 
 thousand times no ! ]^o thing could be more 
 dreadful, more deplorable, than that. A millen- 
 nium of Neros and Caligulas over the human 
 race were a blessing above all estimation in 
 comparison with the God and the " scheme " of 
 regular Christian divinity still preached in Cath- 
 olic and Protestant churches the world over. 
 But if, instead of the God in imitation of whom 
 the Inquisition was founded and worked, and 
 the Calvinists burnt Servetus, and Cromwell 
 massacred the Irish at Drogheda and Wexford ; 
 and in farther and farther remove from whom, 
 and from his teachings to the " chosen people " 
 of old and to the Church in later times, we are 
 reforming our legal codes, admitting the " reign 
 of law" in nature, and giving up the "conflict 
 with science"; — if instead of the monstrous Deity 
 and the mythical religion that have had their 
 day and are in the eveniog of it now, there were 
 indeed a powerful and lioly Being, our Maker, 
 
Through Home On, 197 
 
 Providence, and loving Father, and a reasonable 
 worship of affection, gratitude, and well-founded 
 trust, — that were indeed a thing to be glad of 
 and a joy forever. I do not want " a God to 
 glorify " ; but one to love and thank, and to 
 derive both spiritual and material help from, 
 would be very precious. (The refined theista 
 who say that we may resort to God for spir- 
 itual but not for material help, contradict the 
 instinct on which they rely; and if I did not 
 feel sure that their real worship is different from 
 what they preach, I should have little sympathy 
 with their desire.) I do not turn away from 
 theism because I am thankless, or self-sufficing, 
 or less spiritually needy than other men. I turn 
 away from it because it seems to me untrue. 
 The balance of probability, to which its advo- 
 cates lay claim, is, I think, decidedly against it. 
 It explains nothing, but only raises fresh and 
 more terrible mysteries. A good God* and a 
 communication from him I have admitted to be 
 desirable ; but desire for a thing is no proof that 
 the thing is attainable, or even that it has any 
 other than an abstract existence in the mind. 
 Taking actual religion, I cannot believe. I can 
 not without lying to my own heart and under- 
 
 » Who, however, would necessarily be a finite being, 
 for us to bold the supposed relation to bim. 
 
198 Through Rome On, 
 
 standing call Christianity essentially different in 
 its origin and nature from the other religions. 
 I cannot believe in their divinity ; neither can I 
 believe in its. To me, all religions are alike 
 human evolutions. The unwisdom of ratinsj one 
 of them above the rest as divinely superior in its 
 origin and essence, is as clear as anything can 
 possibly be. This was the conclusion I arrived 
 at many years ago ; and every hour of reflection 
 since, with all the reading and conscience-search- 
 ing that I have kept up, has confirmed me in it. 
 It is my duty to say to all who will listen to me, 
 that the conclusions I have reached and here 
 faithfully recorded, are to me a source of peace 
 and satisfaction such as I was never able to feel 
 in the acceptance of religious doctrines after my 
 nineteenth or twentieth year. I can never while 
 I live cease to rejoice over my deliverance from 
 the murky, morbid, and unspeakably painful 
 atmosphere of religious teaching. The results 
 of my Christian and extra-Christian experience 
 will shock many good people, as well as a still 
 larger number perhaps who are not particularly 
 good. To the former class I can only repeat 
 that reason and conscience in my case have com- 
 jpelled the renunciation of those traditions which 
 hold possession of their minds as sacred and 
 fundamental ; and that, morally and spiritually, 
 they and I are not, or need not be, in a state of 
 
Through Borne On, 199 
 
 separation. Let me not be judged by sbibbo- 
 leths. If by " God" they mean not a magnified 
 Man, but the Goodness that cheers and hallows 
 life, or the inscrutable Power manifested in us 
 and in all things, then I believe in God as firmly 
 as they. If by "heaven" they mean not an Ori- 
 ental city, but the blessedness of the pure in 
 heart, I believe with them in that too. Moral 
 obligation is as indefeasible and sacred in my 
 eyes as in theirs. I no more require a super- 
 natural sanction for its validity than for the 
 truth of mathematics. "While I am not able by 
 any kind of searching to find out God, in the 
 sense of the religions, while I get no glimpse 
 whatever of any source of nature, and refuse to 
 beguile myself or others with any ingannation or 
 pretence on the subject, I have nevertheless as 
 deep and as constraining a faith as any theist 
 can possibly have, in the holiness and power 
 which are in nature as solar life is in the air. 
 The sense of duty and the moral habit of right- 
 eousness are dearer to me than words can tell ; 
 and I draw nigh in spirit to all who love and 
 cherish them and show them forth in their lives. 
 This principle and this habit make a precious 
 spiritual quality, which is distributed, though in 
 very unequal degrees, among mankind, and is 
 the true light that enlighteneth every man that 
 Cometh into the world. I know that many have 
 
200 Through Rome On, 
 
 a much larger measure of the quaHty than I 
 have, and I worship it in them, and would fain 
 live with such persons, that their shadow might 
 fall upon me every day. I find it in books 
 sometimes ; F. "W. Newman's work on The Soul 
 for instance, in which the attempt at dogma fails, 
 but author and reader " see God "^ together all 
 the time. "What religionists call the grace of 
 God I call the grace of humanity ; and I seek it 
 to purify and fortify my soul. It is one of the 
 priceless blessings of the position I have at- 
 tained, that I have no longer to draw my skirts 
 about me for fear of heterodox contact, but am 
 free to welcome and inhale this grace of human- 
 ity wherever I find it. Keligious faith separated 
 me from my kind : Free-Thought restores rae to 
 my proper connexion with it. There is a loose 
 understanding of the word religion, in many 
 minds, by which it is made synonymous with 
 goodness. In tliis sense of the word, I certainly 
 do not reject religion, but on the contrary hon- 
 our and love it, and desire wifh all my heart to 
 practise it. I do not indeed think this is the 
 proper meaning of religion ; but I note it here, 
 to guard against misconception and misrepre- 
 sentation. I have no more doubt of the untruth 
 of Christian dogmas than I have of the untruth 
 of Braminical dogmas ; nor is there any more of 
 
 » Matt. V. 8. 
 
Through Borne On, 201 
 
 terror or authority for me in tlie former than in 
 the latter. I utterly reject theology, especially 
 the patristic and Calvinistic theology which 
 claims the name of Orthodox among Christians, 
 and which in its distinctive tenets is to me not 
 merely false, but loathsome ; so that I cannot be 
 content to live or die with any taint of it upon 
 me. At the same time, I respect the sincere 
 faith of believers, and have no scorn or derision 
 for any of their devout practices not in conflict 
 with charity. How, indeed, could I, who know 
 by experience how nourishing to conscience rites 
 may be, and how tenderly sacred they are to the 
 souls of believers, — how could I be so forgetful 
 of the freshest and purest years of my life as to 
 join with the coarse and unfeeling who scoff at 
 such things % I am not willing to hurt or offend 
 any one by the language I use ; though I will not 
 leave my meaning in doubt for fear of doing 
 this thing that I do not intend. Reverence is 
 one of the strongest principles of my nature, and 
 is indeed an important part of the ground on 
 which I reject theology. "What is revered by 
 others has a claim on my tenderness and forbear- 
 ance, however far removed from my own belief. 
 For this reason I am not in sympathy with those 
 persons who ridicule or despise the faith and 
 practices of any religion. I know that in such 
 forms are embodied the highest conceptions and 
 
202 Throicgh Borne On, 
 
 purest aspirations of a vast proportion of man- 
 kind; and that tlie forms themselves are in the 
 present order indispensable to the souls that 
 cling to them. Justice, kindness^ and a regard 
 for the highest interests of us all, as well as of 
 the cause of truth itself, demand that such things 
 should be treated with respect, though never 
 that one should pretend to believe in them when 
 he does not, or refrain from resisting bj word 
 and deed, when occasion calls for it, their false 
 claims and encroachments. I am fretted with 
 no impatience for the overthrow of Christianity, 
 but am content to see men gradually passing 
 to a higher plane of thought and morals through 
 the sure advance of science. Angry polemics 
 are not to my taste. The exposition of princi- 
 ples and the sowing of good seed are what I be- 
 lieve in and would forward as besi: 1 may. Pub- 
 lic opposition to the cherished beliefs of the 
 community is a painful attitude to me ; the more 
 painful, because so small a part of the commu- 
 nity, especially of those minds that I should 
 most like to conciliate, will be able at present to 
 see my views in their true light and real moral 
 relations. I must, however, do my duty, what- 
 ever the pain and whatever the consequences. I 
 am profoundly convinced of the disabling effect 
 of error upon the mind ; that the evil goes be- 
 yond the particular error itself, and works dete- 
 
Through Borne On, 203 
 
 rioration of the whole mental action and moral 
 being of the errorist, besides standing constantly 
 in the way of the acceptance and diffusion of 
 progressively unfolding truth. My observation 
 shows me this every day, and keeps me alive to 
 the need men have of intercommunication on 
 subjects where there is the greatest entangle- 
 ment of thought, and, for so many, such a crying 
 need of enlightenment. To go on joined to our 
 idols when we are sufficiently awakened to sus- 
 pect at least that they are idols, is an immoral 
 condition that is wide-spread and replete with 
 baneful consequences. If many who are in this 
 condition are incorrigible Ephraims, others are 
 not, but deserve all that can be done for them 
 in the way of plain speaking and earnest endea- 
 vour. I am deeply impressed with belief that 
 the errors of Christian theology are very hurtful, 
 that they hinder moral as well as intellectual 
 advancement, and call for energetic protest and 
 opposition in the right channels for such action. 
 I know that there is in Christianity what Jona- 
 than Edwards calls " the love of divine things 
 for the beauty and sweetness of their moral ex- 
 cellence " ; and I admit the redeeming force of 
 this element which staves off the fate of destruc- 
 tion which would otherwise in our day of light 
 speedily overtake the system for its false doc- 
 trines and moral distortions ; but the false doc- 
 
204 Through Borne On. 
 
 trines and moral distortions are not therefore to 
 be allowed unquestioned sway. On fitting occa- 
 sions the protest of earnest minds is to be re- 
 corded against them. Such an occasion arises, 
 it seems to me, in the situation in which I find 
 myself. I feel that I ought to utter and leave 
 on record the thought that is so earnest and 
 abiding in me on these subjects. It is surely 
 wrong to distrust and be afraid of the conse- 
 quences of speaking the truth, and to shrink from 
 protesting in proper time and place and spirit 
 against the false and wrong, lest some evil 
 should ensue from the course. "When the occa- 
 sion arises, one should do one's duty by speaking 
 out boldly and clearly, leaving consequences to 
 take care of themselves. The true is too often 
 postponed in tenderness and timid consideration 
 towards the false ; and great harm has come of 
 such time-serving. The little-thinking part of 
 the community are to be prepared for the super- 
 seding views which they have hitherto been 
 ignorant or afraid of; and how can they be pre- 
 pared if the habitual thinkers hold back from 
 frank communication with them on the subject? 
 There is too little of this kind of communication 
 from earnest minded persons who are not profes- 
 sional teachers. Every one who has been im- 
 pelled by his nature to ponder and learn on 
 these matters of universal concernment, and who 
 
Through Borne On, 205 
 
 lias attained to a strong conviction of his own 
 on them, is under a kind of obligation, I think, 
 to open himself to others according to the gift 
 that is in him. Every one has some gift, every 
 one can find some opportunity, every one can do 
 something in this way ; and considering how 
 many in every community refuse to think for 
 themselves on anything that is not business or 
 immediate personal convenience, every one who 
 is an original thinker beyond these narrow 
 bounds is a real power for good if only he be 
 sure of himself and have the conscience to dis- 
 charge his responsibility aright. The common 
 torpidity which allows of the surrender of men's 
 minds, — reason and conscience together, — to the 
 keeping of others who stand guard over the 
 storehouse of religious tradition, is a heart sick- 
 ening phenomenon which forbids one to bo shut 
 up in himself when he understands what it is. 
 My neighbour, an educated and fairly intelligent 
 man, scorns the circumstantial account in Hero- 
 dotus of the sun's veering from its wonted 
 course ; understanding what an upturning of na- 
 ture it would have been, and how none could 
 have survived to testify to it, or have been born 
 to write about it afterwards : in short, how im- 
 possible any such thing Was, and how incredible 
 such a narrative is to be regarded in our day, 
 though carefully recorded by the historian, and 
 
206 Through Rome On. 
 
 vouched for bj the Egyptian priests. And this 
 same fairly intelligent neighbour reads in his 
 Eible of a similar event's having happened in 
 Palestine to give the Israelites more time to 
 slaughter their adversaries/ and again at the 
 choice of a Hebrev/ king for a sign that the 
 Lord had changed His mind concerning him f 
 and these latter accounts my neighbour receives 
 with as easy and childlike a faith as if he were 
 still in the nursery, or as if he had never learned 
 and pronounced upon the intrinsic incredible- 
 ness of such fantastic traditions. When these 
 stories were originally related, it argued no spe- 
 cial torpidity of mind to believe in them. Peo- 
 ple had not then the knowledge and quickened 
 intelligence to reject them spontaneously. The 
 philosophy and the religion of the time were in 
 natural agreement. The earth was the centre of 
 the universe, and was an extended plain, with 
 sun, moon, and stars dancing attendance on 
 it. There were no laws of nature. The gods 
 who made all things moved all things as they 
 pleased at the moment. The sun was but a 
 great astral lamp, easily shifted by a divine hand ; 
 and though extraordinary, it would not be im- 
 possible, for it to come up in the west some 
 morning. Supernatural prodigies were as credi- 
 
 1 Josh. X. 13. 2 II Kings xx. 10, 11. 
 
Through Borne On. 207 
 
 ble as occurrences in nature ; and what was at- 
 tested by tlie priests was sacredly unquestion- 
 able. All this has been changed for us by the 
 advance in general intelligence, except in the 
 last point, the sacred unquestionableness of 
 priestly attestation ; which survives in the sub- 
 missiveness which is still popularly yielded to 
 the most absurd and immoral extravagances of 
 the Jewish and Christian mythologies ; and it is 
 noteworthy that this submissiveness is not, in the 
 case of our people, from the old-time slavish fear 
 of the sacred order half so much as from the un- 
 conscientious torpidity of which I have spoken, 
 which locks their minds in willing stagnation on 
 the subject of religion, and makes them blind 
 obstructives in the pnth of ever-advancing science 
 and morals. The marvellousness of people who 
 are not much cultivated greatly outruns their 
 experience ; and such people easily believe and 
 cling to religious traditions. Cultivation is ex- 
 tending ; but the mass of men, even in what are 
 called enlightened countries, are comparatively 
 uncultivated in the higher regions of thought, 
 and with them the difficulties of religion are not 
 felt BO soon nor so strongly as with a certain 
 smaller class. Persons who neither read nor 
 think independently are not uncommonly irri- 
 tated at the suggestion of an objection to any 
 part of the received religious teaching, or any- 
 
208 Through Rome On. 
 
 thing else that appeals to what would be for 
 them so strange an exercise of the thinking pow- 
 ers. They are displeased with any appeal of the 
 kind ; but many of them are endowed with good 
 reasoninoj faculties and with true thousih sluf!:2:ish 
 consciences ; and if the appeal be made in the 
 right manner, and with the right perseverance, 
 those inborn qualities will be aroused from 
 their sloth into honourable activity, and the 
 shame and mischief of their present condi- 
 tion will be lessened day by day. This is a 
 consummation so devoutly to be wished, that 
 one who can help toward it by speaking out of 
 the inspiration of a yet warm personal experi- 
 ence should feel it a duty to " attempt the end 
 and never stand to doubt." He who according 
 to Zschokke's simile has been unable to endure 
 the suffocating furnished lodgings of tradition, 
 but has had to build his own house for himself, 
 ought to have sufficiently learned the lesson that 
 other souls need, and that so many are waiting 
 to learn. As no imprimatur has to be asked of 
 either church or state for free-thinking now, so 
 no apology (in the sense of excuse) is needed for 
 a book with an honest and earnest purpose in it, 
 which any part of the public may be the better 
 for at last. The people who will frown upon 
 such a publication are the ones who need it 
 most. I have been in no haste to speak, but 
 
Through Rome On. 209 
 
 have long and diligently pondered the subject, 
 giving heed to the ablest apologists, old and 
 new, on the religious side ; trying myself and 
 my views by every possible test ; restraining my 
 words till some are dead who would have been 
 grieved by their publication : and now, when the 
 line of middle life is passed, and I do not feel as 
 if I had time for longer waiting, this protest and 
 record, which I have desired more and more 
 every day for years to make and leave behind 
 me, avails itself of the " art preservative" at last. 
 If it meets with the condemnation of some whose 
 approbation I should highly value, they will not 
 be so many as would have condemned me even 
 a few years ago ; and I feel thoroughly assured 
 that it is only present condemnation I shall have 
 to suffer: the future will be with me, or will 
 censure only the tameness and incompleteness 
 with which I have discharged m^ task. 
 
 The papers which occupy the remaining 
 pages of this volume have for the most part been 
 selected from my notes and correspondence as 
 additional illustrations of the narrative and argu- 
 ment contained in the Memoir. ]!Tot more than 
 one or two of them, I think, have before appeared 
 in print. 
 
210 Through Rome On. 
 
 "Christianity is not a theory or speculation, 
 but a life ; not philosophy of life, but a life and 
 a living process. Try it. It has been eighteen 
 hundred years in existence ; and has one individ- 
 ual left a record like the following : * I tried it 
 and it did not answer. I made tho experiment 
 faithfully according to the direction; and the 
 result has been a conviction of my own credu- 
 lity ' ?" — Coleridge. I think that such a record 
 as Coleridge here asks about has repeatedly been 
 made. I can very sincerely say in my own case, 
 that I tried Christianity and it did not answer. 
 It does seem to me that I made the experiment 
 faithfully according to the direction ; and the re- 
 sult was a conviction of my own credulity. It 
 would have been moral ruin to persist in the at- 
 tempt to believe, or the profession of belief, 
 against the protest of my rational nature. Chris- 
 tianity is not a life alone, but a theory in connex- 
 ion with a life; and the living process is coloured 
 and moulded all through by the speculation. 
 Every religion is a life, if you will : the living 
 process is not peculiar to Christianity. Put 
 
Through Borne On. 211 
 
 "Islam" for "Christianity," and Coleridge's 
 words make as valid a plea for a Moslem as for 
 a Christian to utter. The faithful Mohammedan 
 may say of his religion not less sincerely and not 
 less forcibly than the Christian says of his, that 
 it is not a theory but a life ; and that all that is 
 necessary to make it answer to any one's needs is 
 to try it according to the direction. The reply 
 to both Christian and Mohammedan is, that their 
 experience is partial, and that they are not dis- 
 interested and clear-sighted enough to judge for 
 all of their fellow-creatures. 
 
 Says Montalembert {Letters to a Schoolfel- 
 low) : " Whenever philosophy gives rise in your 
 mind to the slightest doubt, to the most trifling 
 hesitation, fly back to your fortress, and rest 
 from the fatigues of earthly science among 
 the imperishable enjoyments of an humble and 
 silent faith." See Henry Rogers's Eclipse of 
 Faith for similar advice. Pascal's counsel in 
 the same direction is well known. A thoroughly 
 ingenuous mind cannot follow the course here 
 recommended. "We should still be believing the 
 earth to be a plain, and heresy to be the great- 
 est of sins, if it had been possible to make such 
 blinding counsels triumph up to this time. 
 Mental constitution is indeed very various. With 
 
212 Through Rome On. 
 
 many keenly conscientious souls, blinking an in- 
 tellectual difficulty and running away from it to 
 entrench themselves in the citadel of faith, as 
 Montalembert advises, is as impossible, and is 
 felt to be as immoral, as crime itself. The soul 
 that can follow Pascal's and Montalembert's and 
 Hogers's plan is of a different order, and may 
 find peace by quenching the spirit : and such a 
 soul, shrinking in terror from its own instincts, 
 lays it to the account of a wicked will when one 
 refuses to be crucified on a creed. 
 
 There can be no doubt that acting upon a 
 predetermined profession of faith, long kept up, 
 in connexion with fear and aversion in regard to 
 what contradicts the factitious creed, is in many 
 cases eventually productive of belief; and in 
 this way the will does really mould the under- 
 standing. Eeligious faith is a standing crusade 
 against reason. 
 
 On the assertion that it is our duty to be- 
 lieve in a certain way. This assertion is made 
 by persons who intend to deduce from it a moral 
 obligation on us to believe in their way. In 
 logical value it is equivalent to the assertion that 
 it is our duty to have seventy pulsations to the 
 
Through J2ome On. 213 
 
 minute. Belief is in itself essentially involuntaiy. 
 But there are antecedent states and motives out 
 of which belief grows and takes effect; and in 
 dealing with these the question of moral obliga- 
 tion may properly be considered. We are cer- 
 tainly bound to deal ingenuously with every 
 question which we undertake to consider, and 
 not to let any unworthy motive turn us away 
 from^ fair balancing of its opposing sides. We 
 are bound to enlighten our minds, and to the 
 best of our ability to decide justly and truly. 
 Some writer has said that " it is not our duty to 
 have a right belief — which from our circum- 
 stances and capacities may not be in our power 
 — but to take jpains in order that we may have 
 a right belief." This is true. The error of cer- 
 tain religious casuists is not in declaring a gen- 
 eral indirect obligation to believe the truth accord- 
 ing to the above explanation, but in assuming 
 that what seems to them in a particular case to 
 be true must necessarily so seem to other minds 
 unless those minds be blinded by their own sin- 
 fulness. This error, which is the basis of reli- 
 gious persecution, and which has borne such ac- 
 cursed fruits that one would think it should now 
 be universally known in its true nature, and be 
 repudiated by all enlightened mankind, remains 
 however yet to be extirpated. 
 
 What is one to do when the food provided 
 
214 Through Home On. 
 
 by the Churcli lias become first chaff and then 
 2:)oison to him ? Must he go on chewing and 
 sickening and sinking nnder it, for fear God will 
 be angr J with him if he leave off ? I could not 
 put out or seal up mj eyes so as to avoid seeing 
 that the Church was not supernaturally kept 
 from going wrong, but did just what one would 
 expect of a natm'al human organisation that it 
 would do :— blundered and misled its followers 
 in some cases, though it conducted them aright 
 in others. It requires immense faith to hold to 
 the Church in spite of everything ;— ^with natural 
 probability and accomplished facts both against 
 her. I had not, when it came to the last resort, 
 such faith in me. I could not retrace my steps 
 and return to the Protestant quagmire. I had 
 to go, and I went, out of the other door. 
 
 Religious conversion, involving acceptance or 
 change of creed, is never a purely logical process. 
 The Church, while not forgetting " motives of 
 credibility," holds to a special inclining grace, as 
 well as to the donum fidei itself ; and in the 
 !New Testament we read of the Father's drawing 
 whom he will, and find the sanctifying spirit 
 likened to the wind, which hlowtth where it 
 listeth^ that is, beyond compulsion or under- 
 
 1 TTie spirit Ireathetli^ runs the Catholic version : spiritus 
 ubi spiral vuU. 
 
Through Home On. 215 
 
 standing by us. In the spirit of faith, seeing all 
 sorts of people drawn into the Church, I ascribed 
 their conversions, which were often manifestly 
 independent of regular ratiocination, to inward 
 and inexplicable grace. Men as well as women 
 are swayed by their emotions, and are influenced 
 by various complex moral agencies besides, in 
 adopting a religion for themselves. As situation 
 and training, as a rule, determine one's religious 
 profession, so when a new or unexpected turn of 
 the kind occurs, it may generally be traced, and 
 undoubtedly is always due, to certain elements 
 of an emotional character, which combine to 
 produce a result that may seem to be brought 
 about by study and discussion. What a wide 
 field of learning and research is covered by po- 
 lemics, and how little is it considered what a 
 real perscrutation here would be and would in- 
 volve : history, its facts and lessons ; philosophy; 
 criticism ; language ; ethnology, &c. &c. And 
 how all must be moulded and determined by the 
 peculiar constitution of the searcher ! Even 
 before I durst reason quite freely concerning 
 these matters, I felt that I ought not to let the 
 condition of any other person's stomach or brain, 
 or his inherited tendencies, or outward circum- 
 stances, determine the complexion of my opinions. 
 In regarding Protestants from a Catholic point of 
 view, it was apparent to me that, apart from the 
 
216 Through Borne On. 
 
 instigation of the Devil, there were controlling 
 natural causes, not essentially evil, which attached 
 them with a certain sincerity to their false reli- 
 gion ; and which were of so insuperable a sort 
 that nothing short of a miracle, such as Divine 
 Providence did not in general choose to work, 
 could effect a conversion to the Catholic faith. 
 And in regard to Catholics, at the same time, I 
 could not help perceiving that the world and the 
 flesh, leaving the Devil out of the question, had 
 much to do with their status as members of the 
 true Church. They were Catholics in the matrix 
 before they were born ; they were born Catholics 
 before they received the donumfidei in baptism ; 
 and they remained Catholics through the con- 
 trolling influence of habit and natural connexions 
 as much as through grace. 
 
 Each one who believes finds it so easy and 
 natural, and even necessary, to believe in his 
 own religion, and so plainly right to disbelieve 
 in other people's religions, and to censure other 
 people for believing such stupid and monstrous 
 things. It is like two hostile sides solemnly 
 entoning Te Dewni by turns, for their Providen- 
 tial success in slaughtering each other. And 
 this thing goes on for ages without the majority 
 of mankind finding out the truth of the matter ! 
 
Through Rome On. 217 
 
 The solemn seriousness of religion has a 
 strong attraction for me ; but the levities of reli- 
 gion, so to speak, its fables and fancies and con- 
 ceits, which are insisted on as part and parcel of 
 it, are very repulsive. This weak and hurtful 
 side of Christianity was forcibly rebuked by 
 Celsus. 
 
 The Providence theory of Bossuet's Univer- 
 sal History, while natural from the author's 
 point of view, is utterly subversive of true his- 
 torical criticism. 
 
 " I must see God in history, or I must not 
 look at it at all," says Dr. Dewey. In another 
 place he uses " I will " in a similar strain. I 
 have very little patience with must and will in 
 such cases. They tell the tale of most people's 
 belief in religious matters, however. 
 
 The key which supernaturalism presents to 
 unlock the mystery of the universe does not lit. 
 Catholicism and the sturdier heresies recognise 
 Christianity as a concrete historical fact, and 
 offer a totally misreading explanation of it. The 
 
218 Through Home On. 
 
 heterodox or Liberal religionists resolve the tree 
 into the grain of mustard seed ; and Christianity 
 under their explanation is but a refined baptised 
 gentilism. 
 
 GilfiUan says of the Bible : " A Book intrin- 
 sically so divine, so simple, so far superior to all 
 others, and so adapted to the wants of human 
 nature, cannot be imagined to be deceived or to 
 deceive others in the relation of facts." A good 
 specimen of Christian paralogism is this. Mark 
 the latent idolatry which makes obeisance before 
 the Book, as a kind of divine being that " can 
 not be imagined to he deceived " / The Book, 
 whether taken in its entirety as pronounced upon 
 by councils of men, or considered in its several 
 parts as written, copied, and translated by indi- 
 vidual penmen and scholars, is seen to be a hu- 
 man production; and so it must at the start 
 share with other books the presumption of falli- 
 bility and imperfection, which are attributes of 
 all human productions. That it is endowed with 
 an intrinsic divinity which lifts it out of the 
 category of human productions, is a speculation^ 
 not a known fact like its naturalness ; and a 
 speculation, moreover, which is not only unveri- 
 fied and unverifiable, but actually overthrown 
 by the falsities and contradictions which the vol- 
 
Through Rome On, 219 
 
 Time contains. I will remark here as to the 
 adaptation of the Book, that though familiar 
 with it from my early years, I never discovered 
 this quality of it in my own case \ but the spirit- 
 ual treatises of later times have proved infinitely 
 better adapted to my human nature. 
 
 We are told by ardent Christian advocates that 
 the Bible is just what a revelation from God 
 should be. The very contrary of this is the truth. 
 The Koran, which was prepared in the character 
 of a revelation, has much more verisimilitude in 
 that light than the Bible, which was not so pre- 
 pared by its authors, and which nowhere asserts 
 its own divinity, but in several places says just the 
 contrary. It is quite clear when the subject is 
 dispassionately looked at, that neither Church 
 nor Bible shows the light of the Divine Spirit. 
 Both are human, man-made, man-bespeaking 
 throughout. The Church is what we find other 
 human organisations to be : sliowing ignorance 
 in her utterances and corruption in her practice 
 under the influence of ignorant and corrupt men. 
 The Bible is just what w^e find other books to be. 
 There is no unfailing Divine accuracy in it, as 
 showing God's authorship : it is characterised 
 throughout by the defective human traits of the 
 hands that indited it. Why, and with what pre- 
 tence of assurance, do we select four out of the 
 numerous gospels that were current among the 
 
220 Through Rome On. 
 
 earlier Christians, and, while setting an idolatrous 
 veneration on those humanly chosenly four, leave 
 the rest to dishonor and oblivion ? 
 
 Izaak "Walton, speaking in a letter to a friend 
 of the prayers that he goes to church to bffer, 
 Bays, — " They be the litany and collects of the 
 Church, composed by those learned and devout 
 men whom you and I have trusted to tell us 
 which is and which is not the written word of 
 God ; and trusted also to translate those Scrip- 
 tures into English." That is it. Convenient, 
 trouble-saving trust in such local guides as are at 
 hand, " learned and devout men " who are sup- 
 posed to know the things of God as the Scrip- 
 ture declares only the Spirit of God can know 
 them,^ is the foundation of Christian faith and 
 the ground on which persons are stigmatised as 
 infidels and reprobates for a dissenting opinion. 
 
 Since Orthodoxy grew weak and timid, how 
 greatly its manners have improved ! But really 
 its heart has been touched ; and the improve- 
 ment is there as well as on the outside. 
 
 Do you ask me if the Orthodox teaching 
 may not possibly be true ? I reply, only on the 
 postulate that our primal instincts of justice, 
 
 1 I Cor. ii. 11. 
 
Through Home On. 221 
 
 trutli, &c., may be deceitfal. If truth may be 
 what we call untruth, reason unreason, love hate, 
 &c., then Orthodoxy may be true: but if the 
 intellectual and moral perceptions are trustwor- 
 thy, Orthodoxy is certainly false. 
 
 I have a friend who will speak of any esti- 
 mable person as " a good Christian." The same 
 confusion of thought lurks in the common ex^ 
 pression " pure religion." What is pure religion ? 
 Does it lie in 'piety and devotion ? Then Cath- 
 olicism has it, as I can testify after years of ex- 
 perience of that religion. Is it the Golden Kule 
 and elevated morality ? Then the heterodox and 
 unbelievers have it as well as the strictest Chris- 
 tians ; and Jews and Gentiles had it long before 
 either Catholic or Protestant existed. Does it 
 depend upon faith in the Atonement and the 
 other fundamental tenets of Orthodoxy ? Then 
 the woman who ministered to suffering Mungo 
 Park in the wilds of Africa had it not ; and the 
 author of the General Epistle of James made a 
 great mistake in his definition of it ages before her. 
 
 If my memory serves me rightly, it was in 
 the person of that precious piece of royal piety 
 and villany Louis the Eleventh, that the King of 
 France became " his Most Christian Majesty." 
 
222 Through Rome On. 
 
 I have said tliat the solemn seriousness of 
 religion has a strong attraction for me. I have 
 a keen sense of the ludicrous in common thinors; 
 but any attempt at a burlesque of religion is 
 most offensive to my feelings; and I respect 
 "Walter Savage Landor for saying that he did not 
 like any one who made free with God or the 
 ladies. The vulgar ribaldry which finds its way 
 into so much of the popular antichristian writing 
 of the day, and which appears also in the stock 
 joking of the newspapers without any express ir- 
 religious purpose, moves my strongest disgust. 
 So also the hackneyed wit with which many 
 Christians make jokes about grace at meals, say- 
 ing their prayers, &:c., excites my repugnance ir- 
 resistibly. The solemn seriousness that I love 
 sheds its balm upon me in the slow and sweet 
 strains of church organs, and in harmonious 
 congregational singing; but it is too great a price 
 to pay for this soothing enjoyment to commit 
 myself to the walls where decorum obliges one 
 to stay through the further service of an offensive 
 doctrinal liturgy, or of misnamed extemporaneous 
 praying in platitudes which have been put to- 
 gether with study and pains to tickle the ears of 
 the congregation. These things put the solemn 
 seriousness to flight ; and, despite an occasional 
 
Through Rome On. 223 
 
 excellent sermon, the general effect of going to 
 church is to make me feel that m j time has been 
 wasted. 
 
 There is a beautiful church in Paris, one of 
 the beautiful and sacred things which the late 
 atrocious Commune passed by in its rage ; where 
 I used to listen with closed eyes and restful soul 
 to what sounded like angel voices and seraph 
 harps, on a still Sunday morning. The nearest 
 approach to this effect at home is in the notes of 
 the processional hymn chaunted by the surpliced 
 boys of one of our high-church choirs. 
 
 Man, teach the religious philosophers, is so 
 made that he cannot be satisfied till he has aban- 
 doned his thorny position of nescience in regard 
 to subjects above nature, and settled in the belief 
 of a contriving Deity, who after many struggles 
 and failures, at last consummates a divine scheme 
 by which a portion of mankind are finally res- 
 cued from evil, while the rest are identified with 
 it forever and ever. When this comforting be- 
 lief is reached, the mind is at rest. No insol- 
 vable problem remains to trouble it further; 
 and the immeasurable superiority of faith over 
 nescience is established beyond all question. 
 
224 Throiigh Rome On, 
 
 To make morals depend on religion is to con- 
 tradict the testimony of all time. The growth 
 of morals is the growth of human experience; 
 and every advance in morals bears men aw^ay 
 from the antecedent religions type. A very pro- 
 minent illustration of this fact is afforded by the 
 changes in law which the improvement in public 
 sentiment has rendered imperative. The old 
 laws were framed in the spirit and in reference to 
 the teachings of religion, and were consequently 
 bad; and they are necessarily altered or abol- 
 ished as mankind advance in culture and free- 
 dom. In the time of our ancestors men were 
 hearty believers in religion ; and so it seemed to 
 them right that the law should hang a child for 
 stealing a pocket-handkerchief and burn old wo- 
 men for witchcraft. We find the spirit of such 
 laws in Paley's Moral Philosophy. The emi- 
 nent judge Sir Matthew Hale said that he made 
 no doubt at all that there were such creatures as 
 witches : " for, first, the Scriptures had affirmed 
 so much ; secondly, the wisdom of all nations 
 had provided laws against such persons, which 
 is an argument of their confidence of such a 
 crime." Sir Matthew was right in saying that 
 the laws were an argument of the confidence of 
 mankind in the existence of the crime ; but we 
 
Through Home On. 225 
 
 now perceive that it was not wisdom, but unwis- 
 dom, ignorance, and a fatal reliance on false stand- 
 ards, that led to their having such laws. The 
 letter of the laws is still respected among ns; 
 but such is the growth of public sentiment that 
 it is no longer possible to carry out their spirit 
 as in the earlier time. Our law-makers, while 
 still admitting, as private persons, that it was 
 divinely right under the old Jewish law to stone 
 a froward child to death, and to execute people 
 for witchcraft and for picking up sticks on the 
 Sabbath, would shrink with horror from preserv- 
 ing such godlike enactments in their codes ; and 
 they even presume to charge their Christian 
 forefathers with superstition for their lingering 
 attachment to the divine model of legislation con- 
 tained in the Bible. This happy change — for 
 surely the most devoted religionist must allow 
 one to call it happy — is an advance in morals, not 
 proceeding from religion, which enforced a very 
 different lesson when it was in power ; but coming 
 to pass in spite of religion, whose word remains 
 to contradict it, but whose power in this respect 
 is so greatly weakened, that it can only for a 
 short time to come hinder moral advances and 
 reforms which shall divorce theology and law 
 forever. In the meantime, good Christian people, 
 answer the question : Is this purging of the law 
 a real advance and a thing to rejoice in, or is it 
 
226 Through Rome On, 
 
 an impious and atheistical decline, to be lamented 
 and prayed against ? 
 
 Is it a true instinct that prompts us to prefer 
 decency and good repute and the enjoyment of 
 life to dirt and misjudgment and the wrecking 
 of earthly happiness ? Why do we call ourselves 
 Christians, and yet strive for a good name, and 
 keep ourselves clean and well-clothed, and take 
 care of our health, instead of courting disesteem, 
 and being ragged beggars, macerated hermits 
 and graveolent saints ? It was a mark of my 
 unfitness for the genuine Christian vocation, that 
 I could never get over my recoil from St. Hila- 
 rion, who went much farther than Dr. Johnson 
 in his aversion to clean linen. Such very dirty 
 patterns of saintsliip as Anthony and Hilarion 
 and Simon the Stylite I could not abide. It was 
 very bad in me ; but I constantly felt that no 
 supererogation of piety can make up for want of 
 soap and water. Physiology and decency con- 
 curred to disgust me with monks and hermits. 
 Could I reverence in a Christian ascetic what 
 repelled me in his Indian rival % 
 
 Tlie craving for sympathy, support, and lead- 
 ing, is very strong in some natures; and un- 
 
Through Rome On. 227 
 
 doubtedly the Cliurcli answers in a great degree 
 to this craving. It is nevertheless evident that 
 the truth of the Church's doctrine and the obli- 
 gation to belong to the Church do not follow 
 from the fact just stated ; though a certain rela- 
 tive fitness of the Church and its system is there- 
 by substantiated. The craving is supplied with- 
 out the Church also. It has been felt and 
 effectually answered where the Church is un- 
 known. It is felt continually where Christianity 
 is utterly inoperative ; and is supplied from other 
 sources. The comfort of the Real Presence (a 
 comfort which I can vouch for) does not prove 
 the Real Presence. So the comfort and the 
 value of reference to a supposed Divine Being 
 do not prove that there is such a being in reality. 
 The craving leads to the invocation of saints and 
 angels, as well as to prayer to God; and to be- 
 lief and trust in the help of angelic spirits as 
 well as to belief and trust in God. That Chris- 
 tians can do so well without the subordinate 
 spirits as Protestants are seen to do, shows how 
 largely this habit of religious faith and depend- 
 ence is the fruit of education and usage, and 
 points to the further emancipation of mankind 
 to the extent of discarding all appeals to and reli- 
 ance on supernatural assistance, and the substitu- 
 tion of known and appreciable natural influences 
 in place of the traditional objects of superstition. 
 
228 Through Borne On. 
 
 The god that a man talks to is his fetich, 
 great or small. 
 
 Christian fetichism, though it dies hard, will 
 be as glaringly absurd in time as heathen fetich- 
 ism is now. 
 
 The moral sentiment, the conscientious prin- 
 ciple in man, has gone through many stages of 
 development, wearing for a time religious and 
 theological and empirical shapes, as the principle 
 of science has also done. The former has with 
 the spread of intellectual freedom grown into 
 ripeness and independence, and gives token of 
 the place it is to hold in the new era, where also 
 the affections and reverence and geniality of tlie 
 mind will have their proper part to play. Al- 
 ready the true object of these emotions is felt 
 and followed in an increasing degree, and is day 
 by day receiving in practice more of its rightful 
 recognition. Though so much of the juices of 
 human strength and tenderness has been poured 
 out in vain and cruel asceticism, and though 
 such loads of the heart's most precious offerings 
 are still squandered in the service of superstition, 
 yet all the time it has been, and now it is more 
 and more widely seen to be, Humanity itself 
 that is the true refuge and fountain of supply 
 for man. When one of our race is without the 
 needed help from his kind on earth, it is Hu- 
 manity still that he turns to, and only Humanity 
 
Through Rome On. 229 
 
 that he can believe in or trust. Humanity is 
 then for him enthroned in the sky; and only by 
 reliance on the human attributes of sympathy, 
 compassion, loving-kindness, can he put up the 
 prayer of faith to his God. 
 
 According to natural politics (and morals), 
 the people are to judge for themselves of the 
 right of violent revolution. According to theo- 
 logical politics (as the proper result of Revela- 
 tion), the Divine order on earth is supreme over 
 governments and people alike, and is empowered 
 to depose the former and to free the latter 
 from the oblig-ation of alleo^iance. The divine 
 right of kings not subject to the Church, 
 has been the doctrine of some Protestants. It 
 was a favourite with James the First of England, 
 who had not been able to do much with it while 
 he was only James the Sixth of Scotland ; and 
 his son and grandson lost their kingdom, the 
 former his head also, through inherited attach- 
 ment to the doctrine. Protestants in general, 
 however, have taken the ground of natural poli- 
 tics as above stated; and so have many Catho- 
 lics ; and this is practically the principle of all 
 enlightened nations at the present day. It is 
 inconsistent nevertheless with the theological 
 
230 Through Borne On. 
 
 premises whicli are still admitted. Politics, as 
 a branch of ethics, pertains to the Divine order, 
 and to the tribunal of the spiritual judge : so 
 that the independence of the secular authority, 
 asserted by Galileans and other tepid Christians, 
 logically involves denial of the supernaturalist 
 principle and corner-stone. As a Catholic, I saw 
 that the theological premises justified the Ultra- 
 montane claims for the Papacy ; and I accord- 
 ingly held and asserted Ultramontanism as the 
 only genuine Christian ground. This position 
 became more and more painful as the impression 
 grew irresistibly and sunk into my mind of the 
 mischiefs and wrong that had been wrought, and 
 that were necessarily liable to be wrought, by 
 Papal interference. I perceived that there was 
 manifestly no Divine provision for the just work- 
 ing of the theological principle; and thus the 
 conclusion became forced that it was not a true 
 principle. I still saw that it was a necessary 
 part of theology ; and so the further conclusion 
 followed that theology itself was not true. I was 
 much vexed in my Catholic experience by the 
 disingenuous treatment by Catholic writers in the 
 English language of two points of the Catholic 
 teaching : Exclusive Salvation, and the full force 
 and effect of Papal Supremacy. These writers, 
 almost without exception, have been so daunted 
 by the ineradicable repugnance of the Anglo- 
 
Through Borne On, 231 
 
 Saxon mind to the genuine Catholic view on the 
 two points mentioned, as to gloss over and dis- 
 tort the truth in a pitiable manner. Almost, 
 but not quite, without exception. A few have 
 bravely stood by their religion, as if they be- 
 lieved in it above everything else, and gloried in 
 its opposition to the corrupt reason and con- 
 science of fallen human nature. Cardinal Man- 
 ning has spoken out clearly enough at times; 
 and our American hero of the faith. Dr. Brown- 
 son, was, first and last, a thorough-going uncom- 
 promising exponent of genuine Catholicism in 
 its most ofiensive aspects. Brownson did not 
 hesitate to declare {BrownsorC s Quarterly Re- 
 view^ July 1850, p. 328) that " the worst cardi- 
 nal that ever lived, while he retains the faith, is 
 superior to the best heretic or schismatic that 
 ever existed " : and in a letter " from an earnest 
 priest " to Dr. Brownson, published in the lat- 
 ter's Heviewfor October 1874, the priest writes: 
 "I studied in Carlo w, Ireland; where since my 
 childhood I heard always that 'no one except 
 Catholics would be saved.' So steadfastly do 
 the Irish Catholics cling to this opinion, that 
 they would not so much as pray God to have 
 mercy on a dead Protestant." The earnest 
 priest is right : where the great faith of Catho- 
 lics has stomach for it, the unadulterated doc- 
 trine is what they are fed on. But as I have 
 
232 Through Rome On. 
 
 dealt somewhat at length already with the topic 
 of Exclusive Salvation, that may be dismissed 
 here, where something remains to be said con- 
 cerning the Papal prerogative. The late Arch- 
 bishop Kenrick, generally so sound and luminous 
 with his Catholic pen, has not treated this sub- 
 ject satisfactorily in his otiierwise admirable 
 work on the Primacy. It is in vain for any one 
 to rest the Pope's dispensing power on a mere 
 consensus of the Catholic nations. The arch- 
 bishop does not say downright for himself that 
 this was all ; but he seems to invite the reader 
 to the conclusion. Doubtless there was such a 
 consensus ; but this consensus itself was only a 
 part of tlie unity of faith, which did not admit of 
 the denial of the Pope's supremacy over the 
 temporal as well as the spiritual order ; and in- 
 dubitably the Popes themselves claimed the de- 
 posing and dispensing powers on the higher 
 ground o^Jus divinum, by virtue of their office 
 of God's representative, and not on the ground 
 of jus humanum, or the political order of the 
 Middle Aoes. The sovereio:n Pontiffs did not 
 ask any human consent for their acts of this 
 kind; but claimed to exercise them by a right 
 inherent in their apostolic office, derived, not 
 from any king or subjects on earth, but from tlie 
 Almighty Sovereign of heaven and earth, who 
 had built the Church upon the Papacy, and sub- 
 
Through Rome On. 233 
 
 jected the whole order of earthly society to the 
 authority of the Church. The Church (accord- 
 ing to the genuine Christian theorj^) is the divine 
 order in this fallen world. It lifts the curse of 
 Adam, absolves from or fixes the guilt of actual 
 sin, dispenses the streams of supernatural grace, 
 defines the obligations of governments and pri- 
 vate men according to the law of God, of which 
 it is the keeper and interpreter, and enforces 
 those obligations, when it sees fit to do so, with 
 such means as are in its hands. In order to the 
 efficient performance of all its functions, it is 
 furnished, as an integral part of its constitution, 
 with a central, living, executive Head. This 
 Head, the Pope, is supreme over the Church, 
 with the bishops under him ; and over civil gov- 
 ernments, with the temporal rulers under him. 
 Temporal rulers hold their authority, whether 
 with their own acknowledgment or not, from 
 him. The bishops derive the episcopate from 
 him, and as Bishop of Rome he shares it with 
 them ; but as Pope he enjoys alone the aposto- 
 late, immediately from Christ. Thus the Pope 
 is invested with supremacy to rule, as well as 
 with infallibility to teach ex cathedra^ in the 
 place of Christ, who has the heathen for his 
 inheritance^ and the uttermost jp arts of the earth 
 for his possession (Ps. ii. 8). So the Pope, as 
 alter Christus^ may dispose of the territories of 
 
234: Through Rome On. 
 
 the earth, as he did when he gave England to 
 William the Conqueror, Ireland to Henry the 
 Second, the countries of America to the Spanish 
 sovereigns, &c. This jurisdiction, it should be 
 understood, pertains to his supremacy, and not 
 to his infallibility ; so tliat the civil obligations 
 of Catholics are not altered, as Mr. Gladstone 
 supposes, by the late definition by the Vatican 
 Council of what, by the way, is no new doctrine, 
 though until the late decree a Catholic might 
 speculatively question it without incurring the 
 Church's anathema. It is quite clear that the 
 Popes have regarded their supremacy over the 
 temporal order as having the same divine origin 
 as their supremacy over the spiritual order ; and 
 have explicitly declared so in repeated instances. 
 This fact should be decisive with all who under- 
 stand what the Catholic conception of the Papacy 
 is. I was not able to entertain any doubt on 
 the subject when I was a Catholic ; and I always 
 felt then that the Pope's authority over me as a 
 citizen was paramount, being superior to that of 
 the government of my country, as well as to that 
 of my own conscience. How I should have 
 acted in the impossible case of a conflict between 
 the two parties, the Pope and my civil govern- 
 ment, I cannot say. That Catholics in the mass 
 are trustworthy citizens and subjects, I am thor- 
 oughly satisfied. History shows them to have 
 
Through Rome On. 235 
 
 been such in past periods when the religious sen- 
 timent and spiritual tie were a thousand times 
 stronger than now ; and the logic of doctrine, which 
 was nearly always weaker than the instinct of 
 patriotism, is at its lowest ebb to-day. Men, as 
 Sir Thomas Browne says of states, " are not gov- 
 erned by ergotisms." The vast body of religion- 
 ists, moreover, do not see, and will not see, what 
 the logic of their doctrine commits them to. 
 And the governments of the United States and 
 Great Britain may confidently parody the French 
 lady's remark about perdition for the aristocracy, 
 and depend upon it that the Pope will think 
 twice before damning governments of their qual- 
 ity. 
 
 A far greater danger to civil obligations and 
 to the just powers and operations of governments 
 all over the world than Pope or priest can 
 threaten now, lies in the prevalence of secret 
 societies. 
 
 In the old times morality was fastened to 
 theology wath a padlock. Some bold bad men, 
 as they were called, picked the lock and found 
 that they could do without it. The Beformation 
 produced a key ; but the lock was rusty, and 
 hands fumbled with lock and key for a good 
 
236 Throiigh Rome On. 
 
 while. The unlockiDg is effected however ; and 
 not Catholics alone, but many Protestants like- 
 wise, declare that if the padlock be taken off 
 morality will be undone. Yes, say the Radicals : 
 it will be undone^ in the sense that it will be un- 
 fastened from theology ; and the sooner the bet- 
 ter. Of course the Radicals count for nothing. 
 They believe that morality is not derived from 
 the Decalogue ; that there was morality, right 
 and wrong and all that, before there was any 
 Moses. What can you expect from such in- 
 fidels ? They say the padlock is no more than 
 so much old iron. This is not to be endured. 
 We must turn over a new leaf, beginning with 
 our proposed amendment to the Constitution, 
 making Christianity the established religion, put- 
 ting Kadicals, Jews, <fec., upon a lower grade of 
 citizenship; tolerating them at first, and biding 
 our time to get them under severer law, when 
 we shall be strong enough to expand the amend- 
 ment so as to make the Christianity it establishes 
 properly definite, by expressly recognising be- 
 lief in the Trinity and the other fundamental 
 tenets of Orthodoxy as part of the law of the 
 land, and thus outlawing, or righteously subor- 
 dinating, latitudinarians who have the presump- 
 tion to call themselves Christians witliout hold- 
 ing, anymore than Jews and Radicals themselves, 
 those saving doctrines which alone shall be in 
 
Through Borne On. 237 
 
 harmony with the American Constitution. How 
 long after that it will be before one of tlie parties 
 of Orthodoxy shall prevail eg as to get itself 
 enthroned over the rest in the Constitution, is 
 not a pressing question at present. Let us begin 
 with the general Christian amendment. Our 
 right to that being allowed, our right to more in 
 the same direction will not admit of logical de- 
 nial. In the meantime, we must sternly confront 
 the Kadicals when they demand further seculari- 
 sation of existing law. It may not be possible 
 to bring about such a glorious recognition of the 
 supernatural authority of the Bible as would be 
 effected by a re-enactment of the laws against 
 witchcraft; but w^e can preserve the precious 
 mementoes of established religion in our test- 
 books, we can keep up the Sunday laws, we can 
 maintain our privileges as untaxed ecclesiastical- 
 property-holders. "When Radicals oppose us on 
 these points, we can charge them with wishing 
 to overthrow the moral law, and continue to refer 
 to the Decalogue as the ground of moral obliga- 
 tion; impressing upon the public mind that adul- 
 tery and murder are of the same character with 
 resistance to our dictation about Sunday; and 
 that Moses is to be accepted as the authority for 
 the natural morality he was born under, and for 
 the observance of a day which he never enjoined 
 or kept. And if any have the assurance to say 
 
238 Through Rome On. 
 
 that this is not straightforward honest pleading 
 on our side, let them be made to understand, by 
 every instrumentality in our power, that the end 
 justifies the means; and that what is dishonest 
 humanly looked at, may be the highest honesty 
 from a divine point of view. 
 
Through Borne On. 239 
 
 FROM AK EXTENDED CORRESPONDENCE WITH 
 AN EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN. 
 
 .... You have been urgent with me, and have 
 spoken in plain and severe language: you will 
 have no right to complain if I discard needless 
 ceremony in my reply. . . . I would assail no one; 
 but I will not speak equivocally to any one to 
 please him, or to procure favour for myself; nor 
 will I yield to unjust assault from any quarter. 
 .... If you suppose that I could believe in reli- 
 gion and not accept and practise it, you do not 
 know me. Not for one hour, not for one mo- 
 ment, could I withhold my heart and my open 
 allegiance from a system that I believed to be 
 divinely given and thereby made obligatory on 
 mankind. It w^ould not be a greater misconcep- 
 tion to associate me with Calvinism itself, — that 
 ** superfetation of blasphemy," as Coleridge calls 
 it, — against which the protest of my record is 
 especially directed, than to associate me with in- 
 differentism, with neglect of a high and recog- 
 nised duty. I could not believe in a religion and 
 
240 Through Borne On. 
 
 not practise it. As searclier, as Christian, as 
 Catholic, as Freethinker, I have always been 
 constitutionally thorough. This is a necessity 
 of my nature ; which if you do not know you do 
 not know me .... You call upon me to receive 
 your opinions with the respect due to a divine 
 revelation. I deny that your opinions, or those 
 of your school, are any more divine than other 
 men's. I deny that you have any more " reve- 
 lation " than I have. What you style the Oracle 
 of Truth is simply a body of ancient writings, 
 the works of human imaginations and human 
 hands; selected by men whom you have pre- 
 cluded yourself from calling infallible or inspired, 
 and, so selected, made sacred to you by associa- 
 tion and confidence in your early mentors and 
 guides. You take your Bible upon jnst such 
 grounds as the Mohammedan takes his Koran 
 on : the ground of early education, of long pre- 
 possession and association, of the deeply im- 
 printed notion that it is a sin to call its divinity 
 in question. This last ground effectually cuts 
 off any impartial examination and fair conclusion 
 in the premises. Inspiration belongs to the super- 
 natural order : how can human testimony — one 
 man's declaration to another — suffice for its 
 attestation ? Without a supernatural witness we 
 can know nothing of the supernatural divinity of 
 a writing or selection of writings out of the many. 
 
Through Home On. 241 
 
 You have no supernatural witness. When the 
 Beformers, whom you follow in this matter, re- 
 jected the infallible Church, they abandoned the 
 only plausible pretence of a supernatural witness. 
 Thenceforward there remained for them and 
 their adherents only human judgment to fall back 
 on ; and this, however good in its order, the 
 natural, can never transcend that order, so as to 
 judge supernaturally of the inspiration, any more 
 than of the meaning, of the Bible writings. For 
 the great mass of Protestants, there is absolutely 
 no authority for the Bible beyond the taken-for- 
 granted word of their fallible uncertain teachers ; 
 which they neither care nor are able to reinforce 
 by investigation for themselves ; and if in your 
 case there has been any kind of critical study 
 added, it has been with the predetermined issue 
 in your mind from first to last, colouring all the 
 data, and secured by the conviction that you 
 were morally hound to arrive at the fixed intel- 
 lectual conclusion that had been taught you. 
 And if your study had been thoroughly candid, 
 your conclusion could still be only a common 
 human conclusion, with no shadow of divinity 
 about it. You have no supernatural witness : 
 and if the human authority of the Protestant 
 elders suffices to prove the Bible, then the human 
 authority of the Persian elders, is as good for the 
 Zend-Avesta, of the Indian elders for the Yedas, 
 
242 Through Borne On, 
 
 of the Mohammedan elders for the Koran. You 
 have the same right and reason to make flesh 
 your arm as they have ; but you have not, any 
 more than they, justification for denouncing as 
 wicked any one's refusal to worship the arm of 
 flesh as Divine. Your synods and doctors and 
 Sunday-school teachers are no more divine than 
 the corresponding functionaries of the unchristian 
 religions ; and to reject the former's opinion 
 about the Bible is no more wicked, no more dis- 
 obedience to a divine authority, than to reject 
 the opinions of the latter about their sacred books. 
 .... Your miracles are like the others, only not 
 BO well attested as some of the latter. Besides, 
 miracles are neither provable themselves nor in 
 the nature of proofs of any side whatever. They 
 are only the argumentum ad ignorantiam ; and 
 on Christian grounds themselves, it is right to 
 say, as Archbishop Trench does say ( On the Mir- 
 acleSy Amer. ed., p. 33), tha,t " to believe on the 
 authority of miracles may commit us to Anti- 
 christ instead of Christ.". . . .The interpretation 
 of your supposed divine Book must needs be to a 
 great extent mere guessing at a hidden meaning; 
 and human guesswork cannot with any propriety 
 be dignified with the name of divine revelation. 
 You revive the fable of the Sphinx. It is truly 
 a piece of guesswork that you say the Deity has 
 propounded, with destruction waiting on a wrong 
 
Through Rome On. 243 
 
 Bolution. Would a revealing God have left the 
 meaning of his words in such doubt ? Can you 
 believe that your side alone is favoured with an 
 insight of the Divine intention ? Would a fun- 
 damental faith in the Atonement have been left 
 to debate, or to the ratiocination of fallible un- 
 derstandings ? And if such faith be a matter of 
 grace, what becomes of the earnest and good 
 men who have failed to seize the right view % 
 Can you believe (as the logic of your position 
 eeems to require) that they are abandoned to a 
 strong delusion^ that they may he damned? 
 (II Thess. ii. 11, 12. I heard a famous preacher in 
 your brother's church make this application of 
 the text, some years ago.) Excuse me for saying, 
 as I must, that this varnished Protestant ortho- 
 doxy of yours is very ridiculous. The lion's 
 skin has no terrors for one who knows the real 
 lion. When Protestantism was young, it was 
 heterodox : Protestants were then new religion- 
 ists, come-outers, like the men you call infidels 
 now. Timid souls must have looked from within 
 the Church upon the Protestant innovators as 
 being at least in great danger of losing their own 
 souls, and as threatening the goodness of others 
 by upsetting morality, which the Church declared 
 to be bound up with her faith, as you think it is 
 bound up w^th yours now. It is trying yet to a 
 sensitive soul to stand alone, or in a heterodox 
 
244: Through Home On. 
 
 minority, confronted by a confident claimant of 
 exclusive legitimacy and salvation. It was much 
 more trying in times that are past ; and the first 
 Reformers, especially in handfuls, must have felt 
 fearful and abashed. However clear their 
 spiritual safety may seem to us now, they must 
 have quaked for themselves sometimes, with the 
 great towering Christian Orthodoxy of the time 
 against them and frowning them down. But note 
 with me, that they were not really reprobate, and 
 that the spread of Protestantism has not been de- 
 structive of morality. Thinking on this, perhaps 
 you will by and by open your mind a little wider 
 still, and understand that the farther and farther 
 extension of Free Thought does not imperil salva- 
 tion nor threaten morality any more than the first 
 undeveloped Protestantism did, whatever the 
 words or fears of disciples of close corporations 
 may continue to forebode. You are sure that the 
 original Protestants were safe, though outside of 
 the Church and solemnly cursed in God's name 
 for denying the faith. And you are very sure 
 you are safe in your Evangelicahsm. The Uni- 
 tarian is as sure he is safe in rejecting your fun- 
 damental doctrines. The Turk is as sure in the 
 faith of Mohammed as tho Christian in the faith 
 of Christ. And I, my friend, am as sure I am 
 safe in my rejection of your religion as any one 
 can possibly be in his rejection, in life and in 
 
Through Rome On. 245 
 
 death, of what does not commend itself to hira 
 as true. . . .1 have searched my soul, looking for 
 possible latent motives influencing the change. 
 Tlie result is, I am firmly convinced that I am 
 morally as well as intellectually right in my re- 
 jection of Catholicism and of Christianity. . . . 
 Observe, I do not reject Christianity hastily, or 
 from a spirit of opposition. I reject it delibe- 
 rately, from my conscience, after long examina- 
 tion and experience of it, and with full know- 
 ledge of what it is and what it is not. This 
 may seem to you an impossible thing : for me it 
 is the only possible thing. . . .Would you have 
 me go back to Home ? lN"o : you would recom- 
 mend to me the half-way house of Evangelical- 
 ism. But I am not a half-way man. If the 
 road be the true one, I must journey the whole 
 way on it, must not leave it till it stops of itself, 
 and thereby tells me my destination is reached. 
 Besides, Evangelicalism is not safe if your theory 
 be true, which hangs salvation on the true faith 
 and supernatural oracle. You have no sound 
 excuse for being outside of Catholicism which 
 will not justify me in being outside of Christian- 
 ity. Many good people assure me that Catholi- 
 cism is the necessary way of salvation ; and in- 
 deed, if the abiding by one's carefully formed 
 and conscientious convictions on the subject of 
 religion can possibly be damnable, it is plain to 
 
246 Through Borne On. 
 
 me that your heresy puts you in the same danger 
 as is incurred by my unbelief. As you are assured 
 of the truth of Revelation and of the sinfulness 
 of unbelief, so the Catholic is assured of the 
 truth of Catholicism and the sinfulness of reject- 
 ing it or remaining outside of its pale. And if 
 you can believe in the reprobation of men for 
 rejecting Christianity, you should tremble for 
 yourself, and not blame nor wonder at the Cath- 
 olic when he asserts the reprobation of such as 
 reject what is in his view the only Christianity. 
 Do you not see, when you look at the case from 
 within and from without, that to make historical 
 and metaphysical opinions a test of salvation is 
 proper to bigots only, and, viewed in relation to 
 the law of human nature which renders it im- 
 possible for all to think alike in speculative mat- 
 ters, is in contradiction to the Right of Private 
 Judgment, w^hich you must maintain to justify 
 the Reformation ? . . . . But the case here is, I 
 cannot believe as you wish. It is as impossible 
 to me to accept your religious notions as to ac- 
 cept those of the Jew, the Mohammedan, or the 
 Buddhist. Thanks for your good wishes, but 
 don't sigh for impossibilities. You would think 
 it worse than loss of time, if the advocate of a 
 foreign religion were to apply himself to the 
 task of converting you to his faith. That faith, 
 however, is as dear and sacred to him as yours 
 
Through Borne On, 247 
 
 is to you ; and it seems to liim as natural to be- 
 lieve it, and as unjustifiable to reject it, as it 
 seems to you natural to believe Christianity, and 
 unjustifiable not to believe it. You are an infi- 
 del in relation to liis religion, as he is, and as I 
 am, in relation to yours. You are not afraid of 
 being damned for your infidelity ; and you may 
 rely on it, other people's infidelity is no more 
 damnable than yours. . . .1 am not alone in re- 
 jecting your "revelation." From its first pre- 
 sentment to the present hour, it has failed to 
 win the acceptance of the vast majority of man- 
 kind. . . .Your "revelation" to a small fraction 
 of the race, your " salvation " for a much smaller 
 fraction still, do not fulfil the conditions you 
 have yourself supposed. To infer from a sup- 
 posed universal need, a partial, largely-failing 
 remedy, is poor reasoning. If mankind were in 
 need of revelation, the giving of Christianit}^ to 
 a slender minority of mankind would not re- 
 spond to the need. But how vain to sujDpose 
 that man waits on supernatural intervention ! 
 History and experience show that his needs are 
 met and his improvement effected, not superna- 
 turally, but by natural development. A daily 
 increasing knowledge of the physical and moral 
 laws of his own and surrounding nature is the 
 true saving revelation that he requires and en- 
 joys. It is a revelation without mythology ; a 
 
248 Through Borne On, 
 
 revelation not fixed in stereotyped tradition from 
 the ignorant misjudging past ; but one that ex- 
 pands with the growing intelligence and higher 
 enlightenment of the race it is given to bless. 
 No revelation can account for the Universe, or 
 nullify the fact of the existence of Evil ; but the 
 lesson we are learning better and better as time 
 goes on is, that our real problems and duties are 
 to be studied and discharged by a faithful follow- 
 ing of nature's lights, and not by clinging to old 
 fables or relying on any kind of magic. . . .You 
 think your doctrine of another life so superior to 
 my no-doctrine on the subject ; but your reckon- 
 ing is very short-sighted. You should envy, not 
 pity, the man who does not share your faith on 
 this point. I speak from experience here ; for I 
 held your doctrine once, and I know that to hold 
 it in earnest, to ponder it, that is, in its applica- 
 tion to ourselves and to our fellow-creatures, is 
 to wear a crown of thorns on the heart. The 
 thought of the future life that was preached to 
 me was so full of pain that I could not help a 
 feeling of envy towards the people that did not 
 hold the doctrine. I never could so lose myself 
 for any long time in the vision of heaven as to 
 forget the black counterpart which puts out 
 heaven's light, and leaves the doctrine a hideous 
 nightmare to the soul; and I can scarcely re- 
 member a moment of my later Christian think- 
 
Through Rome On, 249 
 
 ing on tiie subject when it would not have been 
 a joyful exchange to me to accept the prospect 
 of man's annihilation in place of the woeful eter- 
 nity held out by the Christian teaching. And 
 are you, can you be, happy in such a belief? I 
 do not mean in intervals of ease, when buoyed 
 up with a hope of heaven for yourself. I know 
 what that is, and I have learned to be ashamed 
 of the frequent intervals of pleasure that I thus 
 enjoyed. But with me, the pleasure was soon 
 succeeded by pain : — how is it with you ? Can 
 you take the doctrine into your heart under- 
 Btandingly, and feel that it is one to rejoice in 
 and wish to be true ? Do not give a hasty an- 
 swer at the impulse of religious zeal ; but think 
 a little on my question. Dear friend, I know 
 that you are too true of heart to forget that the 
 " lost " are your brethren as well as the " saved." 
 The prospect for yourself, as for any other good 
 man, is extremely doubtful if your doctrine be 
 true '^ but suppose you are saved, you and some 
 
 1 Who that listens with a believing mind to the gos- 
 pel account of salvation but must share the amazement 
 of the primitive disciples when it was propounded to 
 them, and must join in their shuddering exclamation — 
 *' WTio then can be saved?" Remembering that Scripture 
 explicitly sets forth that salvation is a natural impossi- 
 bility (Matt. xix. 26 ; Mark x. 27), and that only in a 
 "few" instances does it come to pass supernaturally 
 (Matt. vii. 14; xx. 16); and remembering further what 
 
250 Through Borne On, 
 
 others ; while millions upon millions of your fel- 
 low-m.en are lost — in the peculiarly horrible 
 Christian sense of the word lost — would this be 
 liappiness ? To stony-hearted, light-minded, or 
 intensely selfish men it might ; — but to you f — I 
 need not speak of the multitude of the damned: 
 if one soul rolled in the hopeless hell you imag- 
 ine, there could not without moral mutilation be 
 happy saints in heaven. Thus your doctrine de- 
 nies Heaven when it asserts Hell; and instead 
 of being noble and comforting in its character, is 
 unworthy and horrifying beyond measure. I 
 cannot look upon you as happy in holding it. 
 If you tell me that you are, I reply that I will- 
 ingly make over to you all the happiness of such 
 a doctrine ; and that I am very, very happy in 
 not holding it. That good Christian Albert 
 Barnes declared (in his published correspondence 
 with Gerrit Smith) that the contemplation of 
 mankind and human destiny filled him with 
 gloom and discouragement: and truly from his, 
 the Orthodox-Christian, point of view, it is most 
 gloomy and heartsickening. I have thought on 
 this point over and over again. I have pon- 
 dered it by death-beds as well as in the light of 
 
 the failure of salvation is understood to imply, we are 
 surely justified in holding that Christianity unfolds the 
 darkest and most depressing prospect that has ever chilled 
 and blighted the heart of man. 
 
Through Home On, 251 
 
 life. I am sure that the comfort you speak of 
 is not to be depended on. Oh the wretched 
 coTYifort of believing that one is saved and an- 
 other damned ! Deliver me from that, and from 
 the absorbing, all-satisfjing contemplation of my 
 
 own salvation ! The case of is one in point, 
 
 but not to your purpose. The tender mercy he 
 believes in is very cruel. It saves him, perhaps, 
 and one brother. It damns two others of the 
 family, and leaves the fate of the rest fearfully 
 uncertain. Give me the comfort of not believ- 
 ing here. I can never forget that funeral ser- 
 mon two years ago. It can hardly have com- 
 forted you: me it heartily disgusted .... The 
 consolation you speak of in life and in death is 
 one of convention and human sympathy. I am 
 so far from disputing it, that I have a full con- 
 sciousness of it ; but I know that it is not pecu- 
 liar to Christianity, nor to the principle of reli- 
 gion. The other religions have it as well as 
 Christianity ; and it is enjoyed outside of all the 
 religions. It is as real in the case of the Jew or 
 the Mussulman as in the case of the Christian. 
 It no more depends on belief in the Son of God 
 than on belief in the Mother of God. It is no 
 more divine in one case than in another. A 
 clear conscience is more consoling to a healthy 
 mind than any religious belief; and calmness at 
 death, as during life, is a phenomenon of the 
 
252 Through Rome On, 
 
 nervous system rather than of either behef or 
 conscience. Doubtless it is consoling: and en- 
 couraging to be in communion with surrounding 
 minds ; and the consolation is greatest when we 
 are weakest, and must be inestimably precious 
 in the solemn parting hour. The Turk would 
 choose to die among Mohammedans, the Chris- 
 tian among Christians, the unbeliever among 
 sensible kindly people who did not look upon 
 him as ready salted for the fire. I have said 
 that the consolation is real, and that it is not 
 divine (sup ernatur ally divine). It is indeed very 
 sweetly human. I do not undervalue it when it 
 proceeds from acquiescence in the opinions of a 
 present majority, though there is a price which 
 I cannot afford to pay for this kind of consola- 
 tion. I will not put out the eyes of my under- 
 standing and blow selfishness to a white heat to 
 enjoy it. As to that poor miserable plea of 
 safety^ — I have already pointed out that you are 
 no safer than I in that point of view. There is 
 no safety for anybody if it be dangerous to re- 
 fuse to bow to one who claims that his fold or 
 belief is necessary to salvation. There are too 
 many contradictory claims of this sort, all equally 
 arrogant and equally foolish. But it is un- 
 worthy of rational and upright minds to argue 
 in a strain which rates truth and untruth to- 
 gether as commodities, and invites to the choice 
 
Through Rome On. 253 
 
 of one or the other as a matter of expediency or 
 personal advantage. Prove jour positions, and 
 I must believe in them, whether I like it or not. 
 To threaten me with Divine condemnation for 
 what is not within the control of mj will, and 
 what it were a base exercise of will to control in 
 that way if I could ; — to threaten Heaven's 
 wrath for not believing what seems to me false, 
 is an extravagance that you ought to open your 
 eyes to without further delay. 
 
 . . . .Man might, it is conceivable, be inspired 
 with a revelation above reason ; but nothing ia 
 the shape of human statements is above reason, 
 or too sacred for its tests. The creeds and com- 
 mentaries of the religious world are an open 
 book to be read and canvassed ; not a divinity 
 too high to be confronted, but before whose foot- 
 stool we must kneel and tremble and believe .... 
 
 .... I cannot submit to have a man-made 
 system imposed upon me as Divine. I see the 
 naturalness of the rise and progress of Chris- 
 tianity in the world. I can trace the gradual 
 development of this religion in hierarchy and 
 doctrine, as I can the tribal invasions, the fusion 
 of nations, the growth of feudalism, and succeed- 
 ing events in modern history. I see how the 
 doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation were 
 with repeated touchings fashioned and stamped 
 by theologians and councils in the first four cen- 
 
254: Through Home On. 
 
 turies ; how the Atonement was moulded by ac- 
 cepted notions of Boman law; and how the Pope 
 became head of the Church through the worldly 
 importance of his see, as the worldly importance 
 of New York gets the first American Cardinal. 
 I see how the Reformers of the sixteenth century 
 (under the laws of human nature still, as the 
 Apostles and their primitive Christianity were) 
 made a "new departure" for themselves, and 
 got out an improved gospel which later Protest- 
 antism has still further amended and modernised. 
 Seeing these things, and knowing Christianity 
 from within as well as from without, having an. 
 intimate personal experience of w^hat it is, as well 
 as of how it seems to the believer, I am under a 
 sacred obligation, while honouring its heroes and 
 acknowledging all the merits that attach to it, 
 to protest against the error of separating it from 
 all other human evolutions and calling it super- 
 natural, when it is as evidently natural as any- 
 thing else in history or life. I am under a sacred 
 obligation, I say, to protest against this error of 
 worshipping a man-made system as divine, and 
 to refuse to be a yoke-fellow with you in subor- 
 dinating my conscience to the rule of any of its 
 conflicting authorities. I satisfied myself on this 
 subject long ago, and gave up the church platform 
 then forever. And this theological creed, this 
 ecclesiastical faith which men are disputing over 
 
Through Rome On. 255 
 
 yet ; winch j^ou hold in one shape and others in 
 other shapes ; which is so manifestly the product 
 of men's varying judgments and fancies, instead 
 of being the unspotted heavenly revelation which 
 each one in his own sense proclaims it to he; — 
 this you would have me return to and call divine ! 
 No, my friend. . The truth which I have gained 
 is my most precious possession. I will hold it 
 fast, and will not let it go. I prize it because it 
 is truth, and so above all price ; and because I 
 feel the great excellence and comfort of it, now 
 that through much travail of heart and mind I 
 have made it my own. I have held it many 
 years, have faced life and death with it, and 
 never found it fail. To bid me give it up for a 
 church creed which is repulsive to me, which I 
 made trial of long ago, and proved to be false, 
 cruel, and impossible of belief, is as if you should 
 ask me to put out my eyes and become an opium- 
 eater, to avoid seeing things as they are, and to 
 be fed on the visions of a distempered imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 .... Your last letter is very gratifying. It is 
 more kindly and argumentative than anything I 
 have had from you before. Had you spoken in 
 that strain formerly, my replies could hardly 
 have been just what they were. But it is all 
 
256- Through Borne On. 
 
 the better, perhaps, that we have been moved to 
 utter ourselves with great plainness on both 
 sides. The " soft answer " is invaluable against 
 some kinds of wrath ; but it will not do on all 
 occasions. . . .1 have much sympathy with what 
 you say about the spirit of prayer, the aspirations 
 after holiness, the sentiment of dependence and 
 gratitude, and the necessity of going out of our- 
 selves to reach the great peace and content of 
 the soul. The feeliDgs which you express on these 
 topics, and which wake their proper response 
 in me, are above and beyond all polemics, and 
 draw men together everywhere when conscience 
 is stirred and pride of opinion is at rest. To as- 
 sociate the best that we know with what is above 
 all knowledge is natural to the mind as soon as 
 the first point of civilisation is attained ; and here- 
 in lies the most endurinoj element of the streno^th 
 of religion, as well as the excellence and beauty 
 that belong to it. I admit the partial correct- 
 ness of the sentiment quoted by jou from the 
 author of Ecce Homo. It struck me forcibly 
 upon my first reading of the admirable paper in 
 which it occurs. Undoubtedly the morality of 
 Christians is closely connected with their belief 
 in the Christian religion ; and this consideration 
 renders it a peculiarly delicate and ungracious 
 office here to animadvert on the falsities and 
 mischiefs of Christianity. It is nevertheless a 
 
Through Borne On. 257 
 
 duty to do this from time to time; and, due re- 
 gard being had to fitness of occasion and method, 
 the duty is as binding as any other on minds 
 penetrated with a sense of the evils mentioned. 
 .... I cannot think that in any fair and com- 
 plete view of the matter the True is to give way 
 to the False for fear of consequences. Perhaps 
 the difference in our impressions arises from a 
 difference in the scope of contemplation of the 
 subject from the two sides. You look only at 
 immediate results, and, as I think, make a mis- 
 take about them. I have accustomed myself to 
 look far, far beyond, and to study consequences 
 in their development. . . .Is it possible that you 
 do not discern the change in the relations of 
 theology and public sentiment ?. . . .Dr. Christ- 
 lieb writes, in his Modern Doubt and Christian 
 Belief, on " The Present Breach between Cul- 
 ture and Christianity." Yes the " breach " cer- 
 tainly exists, though you have called it in ques- 
 tion. Why, this " breach," this " confl.ict," is pre- 
 cisely the problem which earnest Cliristians who 
 think as well as believe are struggling, as such 
 men never struggled before, to solve so as to save 
 their cherished faith from destruction. You can 
 not put aside with a word of contempt the em- 
 blazoned characteristic of the age. It is not low 
 and corrupt men, it is not eccentric or superficial 
 men, it is not sco£fers, that you have to meet 
 
258 Through Borne On. 
 
 as the opponents of supernatural religion in our 
 day ; but men whom you will have to respect when 
 you know them, and whom meanwhile you must 
 not discredit yourself and your cause bj" misjudg- 
 ing, or by relying on slighting or opprobrious 
 words to put them down. . . . You cannot sup- 
 pose that I did not resort to the means and 
 canvass the considerations you now bring for- 
 ward. Of course I did so before settling in 
 and avowing my present position. In speaking 
 to the public, indeed, I have chiefly had re- 
 gard to the intellectual part of my struggle, and 
 have dwelt upon the aspects of the argument 
 as they were gradually unfolded to me in the 
 successive stages of the experience I record. 
 Tlie distinctively spiritual part of this same ex- 
 perience is both too delicate and too sacred to be 
 treated in description at any length. At any 
 rate, this is my feeling on the subject ; and as 
 the argument is full of importance, I have tried 
 to state that clearly and let the case rest there. 
 Even with you, hitherto, I have not been induced 
 to depart from this method ; and from your last 
 communication there are remaining points of in- 
 tellectual discussion between us which ought, it 
 seems to me, to be attended to before any attempt 
 at spiritual analysis can be in place. I will say 
 to you at once, that I have made trial of the plan 
 you esteem so highly. It is the plan of Pascal 
 
Through Rome On. 259 
 
 and Montalembert among Catholics and their 
 congeners, and, to take a modern instance that 
 will be familiar to yon, of Mr. Henry Rogers 
 among Evangelical Christians. It is genuinely 
 Christian, is acted on by multitudes, and is, I 
 am sure, effective in a great proportion of cases. 
 You would not recommend the masses and holy 
 water, as Pascal does ; but you would advise the 
 troubled soul to keep on saying it believed and 
 praying to the Lord to help its unbelief. This 
 is in principle Pascal's plan ; and the stupidity 
 and concomitant faith do often ensue from it. 
 Now I tried this plan of yours, with the advan- 
 tage of Pascal's ramification ( — and let me tell 
 you, the masses and holy water are real helps, 
 and strong ones too ; though, having no experi- 
 ence of them, you may not believe it); and in 
 my case it failed as completely as I doubt not it 
 has succeeded in many others. . . .1 have spoken 
 to you of the cause of the decline of religious 
 persecution. I must now remind you that you 
 ought to believe in witchcraft. I know that you 
 cannot ; but you are all the worse Christian, 
 though of course all the better man, for the im- 
 possibility. You ought to say that you believe, 
 and pray to the Lord to help your unbelief; for 
 as John Wesley earnestly declared, to give up 
 witchcraft is to give up the Bible. Blackstone 
 finds the laws for the punishment of witches de- 
 
260 Through Borne On, 
 
 rived from the Bible. You do not believe in 
 witchcraft. But the Bible- writers believed in it; 
 the Bible pages take its truth for granted, and 
 set forth what you have bound yourself to call 
 divine ordinances for its punishment. Our an- 
 cestors, who were thorough-going believers in 
 the plenary inspiration of the Bible, believed of 
 course in witchcraft, and made and executed 
 bloody laws for its suppression. We call those 
 laws relics of superstition and barbarism, and 
 pity the witches. But if our religiosity and faith 
 in the Bible were not much weakened, we could 
 not do this, but we should have to retain the 
 cruel laws and execute them as bloodily as ever; 
 for the superstition and barbarism of which they 
 were indeed relics were part and parcel of the 
 Jewish Law, which Christianity declares to have 
 been divine, and the precept of which was. Thou 
 shalt not suffer a witch to live. You say that 
 the word may be translated poisoner instead of 
 witch. Suppose it may : it will hardly do for 
 you to save the credit of the Bible by telling 
 people whom you hold bound to receive it as in- 
 fallible and divine that it contains wrong words 
 instead of right ones ; but let that pass. You 
 are fully aware that the question does not turn 
 upon the passage in Exodus ; but that both the 
 Old Testament and the New assume as a matter 
 of course the reality of such things as witchcraft, 
 
Through Rome On. 261 
 
 sorcery, and diabolical possession ; and you must 
 be supposed to agree with the Presbyterian doc- 
 tor of divinity here wlio said in his pulpit a few 
 days ago, as the newspaper informs me, tliat 
 " God established himself as a ruler over Israel, 
 and as such, furnished a model government for 
 all after times." You see that our " after times " 
 have departed from the " model " of the Scrip- 
 tural past. Our godless legislation has repealed 
 the laws against witchcraft. You ought to grieve 
 for this ; but, backslider that you are, you don't 
 grieve : you are as sure as I am that the repeal 
 and the change in public sentiment that deter- 
 mined it are not a departure in the wrong direc- 
 tion ; but are a growth, an advance, a thing to 
 be glad of without any shadow of doubt. I do 
 not see how you can turn your mind fairly on 
 the subject without further perceiving that the 
 education and elevation of the pubHc conscience 
 in this matter were retarded by the stringent be- 
 lief in Bible-inspiration ; and that it is in conse- 
 quence of a decline of the theological spirit and 
 a cooling of people's faith in the supernaturalness 
 of the old teachings, that we are able to make 
 the advance. Judged by this fruit, it is plain 
 that the giving up of the doctrine of inspiration 
 is a forward step and a blessing to the race. . . . 
 Look again at your position in regard to Sunday. 
 You have avowed as a settled principle, that no 
 
262 Through Borne On. 
 
 ordinance can be rightfully insisted on as of di- 
 vine obligation unless the obligation be proved 
 from the Bible. Now you know quite well that 
 there is no command in the Bible to keep Sun- 
 day ; and that the statement in vogue among 
 Protestants that the obligation of the Jewish 
 Sabbath relating to a different day was trans- 
 ferred to Sunday is unsupported by a single text 
 from beginning to end of the Scriptures. Yet 
 in the face of this significant fact, which brands 
 the practice itself with inconsistency, you loudly 
 insist upon its Scriptural obligation, and de- 
 nounce as wicked the non-observance of it by 
 persons who refuse to follow your sectarian 
 fashion. You speak of it as of the highest im- 
 portance. I do not ask how your Sunday-school 
 scholars can be made to believe, but I ask how 
 you yourself can possibly believe, tliat an institu- 
 tion so binding and so important as you say this 
 is, can have been left without a clear setting- 
 forth and inculcation in the Bible, taking that to 
 be the only Christian rule of faith. The Sab- 
 bath is expressly declared to be a sign between 
 the Lord and the children of Israel forever 
 (Ex. xxxi. 17). There is certainly no hint in the 
 Old Testament of a change in the Sabbath Day; 
 and any Jew who should have undertaken to 
 keep Sunday instead of Saturday for the Sabbath 
 would have incuj-red condemnation under the 
 
Through Rome On. 263 
 
 Old-Testament law, and in its palmj days would 
 have been put to death. In the New Testament 
 there is no more mention than in the Old of a 
 change from the seventh day to the first. We 
 read of the disciples assembling for worship on 
 the first day, as we know they did on other days. 
 (See Mosheim and other ecclesiastical historians.) 
 Christ declares that on the twin commandments 
 of love to God and to man " hang all the law 
 and the prophets "; and when he epitomises the 
 commandments for the young rich man (Matt, 
 xix. 18, 19), he says not a word of the Sabbath. 
 The Sermon on the Mount, generally appealed 
 to as the perfection of Christianity, makes no 
 reference to any holy day. The meeting of the 
 Apostles and elders at Jerusalem, recorded in the 
 fifteenth chapter of Acts, expressly convened to 
 settle the obligations of Christians and their re- 
 lations to the Jewish Law, the very occasion, it 
 must be admitted, when such an obligation as 
 that of the Sabbath would have been declared if 
 it had existed as a part of the Christian order, is 
 so far from recognising such a thing that it does 
 not mention either Sabbath or Sunday, but 
 plainly sets aside the earlier dispensation as no 
 longer authoritative, in the words : " For it 
 seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us, to lay 
 upon you no greater burden than these necessary 
 things ; that ye abstain from meats offered to 
 
264 Through Rome On. 
 
 idols," &c. ; the Sabbath, under any shape, not 
 being among the " necessary things", or things 
 inculcated at all by the Apostles, though later 
 puritanism has darkened their counsel with such 
 effect that you are now insisting on the church 
 holy day as divine. Nowhere do we find the 
 IN'ew-Testament writers teaching the holiness of 
 any particular day, or specifying Sabbath-break- 
 ing among the sins to be avoided by their dis- 
 ciples. This fact is clearly not reconcilable with 
 the scripturalness and binding character claimed 
 for the festival among Bible Christians. You 
 have read Keander, and you know the testimony 
 of this learned and careful Christian authority, 
 that "the celebration of Sunday, was always, 
 like that of every festival, a human institution : 
 far was it from the Apostles to treat it as a Di- 
 vine command; far from them, and from the first 
 apostolic church, to transfer the laws of the Sab- 
 bath to Sunday." Indeed, your reading must 
 supply testimonies of this kind in abundance ; 
 and you have to face the fact, that the Evangeli- 
 cal notion on this subject (which carried out 
 would, according to the warning in Gal. v. 3, 
 make you " a debtor to the whole law ") is not 
 only against Apostolic preaching and practice, 
 but is to this day not generally Christian, but 
 only of British and North- American prevalence 
 It is clear enough that Sunday was from the first 
 
Through Borne On. 265 
 
 an entirely distinct day from the Sabbath. 
 Many of the early Jewish Christians, unwilling 
 to break with their old habit, kept both days ; 
 showing that the obligation of one had not been 
 transferred to the other. Sunday was not asso- 
 ciated by the primitive disciples with Moses and 
 Sinai, but was reverenced by them as the day of 
 their Lord's resurrection; and only in much 
 later times did it come to be popularly miscalled 
 "the Sabbath," when sectaries had wrested a 
 scriptural name for the weekly holiday, to make 
 it a rallying point of opposition to the numerous 
 festivals of the Church. The first Christians 
 " rejoiced for the consolation " of their release 
 from the yoke of the ceremonial observances of 
 which the Sabbath was a part; but you Ameri- 
 can and British Protestants '' tempt God", in the 
 Apostle's language (Acts xv. 10), by renewing 
 the yoke which the fathers found too hard to be 
 borne. As if the tyrannical Sabbatarianism of 
 later times had been anticipated by the ]^ew- 
 Testament authorities, from whom you have 
 turned away to follow the Puritan innovation, 
 we 'find in Rom. xiv. 4, 5, and Col. ii. 16, 
 the most explicit condemnation and warning 
 of it. 
 
 You know, my dear , that the Bible no 
 
 more commands the observance of Sunday than 
 of All Saints' or of Christmas. 
 
266 Through Rome On. 
 
 . . . .The descent of man is a question of sci- 
 ence ; and if you talk about the intrinsic excel- 
 lence of one or another view on the subject, it is 
 manifestly better to believe with the leaders of 
 scientific thought that man has risen, than to be- 
 lieve with the theologians, on their own poor and 
 oft-refuted word, that he has fallen. 
 
 .... Darwinism, you think, supposes an un- 
 worthy origin for man in deriving him through 
 an evolution of continually progressive forms; 
 but you do not hesitate to derive all post-adamite 
 humanity from a pattern of physical degeneracy 
 and spiritual foulness wrought by the Devil. By 
 how much is sinful generation nobler and better 
 than sinless development ? You are not shocked 
 at the thought of springing from the dust, but 
 are horrified to be the regular sequel of higher 
 and higher grades of animal progression. But 
 the contemplation of Nature's orderly unfoldings 
 in the ascending scale should surely have an ele- 
 vating rather than a depressing effect upon the 
 mind. I am for my part penetrated with pro- 
 foundest admiration and awe in view of the ma- 
 jestic law of Evolution, which in the ripeness of 
 knowledge and reflection supersedes the " school- 
 boy's tale " of artful contrivance by which theo- 
 logy pretends to explain the universe. Christian- 
 ity does not explain it any more than Free 
 Thought; and does not go so far as Free Thought 
 
Through Rome On. 267 
 
 . f 
 
 in increasing such rational conceptions of it as 
 
 our limited faculties are capable of attaining. 
 The Christian account " explains " the universe 
 in the same way as the old account of the earth's 
 resting on an elephant, or a tortoise, " explains" 
 that matter : by assuming, that is, a string of 
 arbitrary propositions, utterly unverifiable and 
 full of intrinsic difficulties. If freethinkers 
 would set up a scaffolding of theory, and speak 
 from it in the manner of Christian dogmatism, 
 they might in this way furnish an explanation of 
 the universe that would be at least as authorita- 
 tive and deserving the name as that which Chris- 
 tians boast of supplying. But it is better to be 
 honest, and not to attempt any deceit on our- 
 selves or others by pretending to offer an explan- 
 ation where by the nature of the case none is or 
 can be possible. To fret over the impossibility 
 is like a child's crying for the moon. You un- 
 derstand now, I hope, that I do not reject your 
 view because of the ultimate incomprehensibleness 
 of what it proposes. I have given other reasons 
 for my rejection, this one of them being quite 
 sufficient in itself: that the view is not sustained 
 by evidence, but grows weaker and weaker un- 
 der each succeeding test. As long as this is the 
 case, incomprehensibility is neither here nor 
 there. If I am not to reject a thing because it 
 is incomprehensible, neither am I to believe it 
 
.268 Through Rome On. 
 
 because it is incomprehensible. The want of 
 omniscience or infallibility is not a peculiar de- 
 fect of mine, but a universal human imperfection. 
 The " men of old " whose dictum you deem it 
 sin to question, were no more masters of the in- 
 comprehensible than you or I. You say in one 
 place : — " It is vain to try to answer such ques- 
 tions." Yery true. I do not complain of your 
 not answering such questions. I complain rather 
 that you will insist on answering them, and in 
 such a manner. Modestly put, it is as a proba- 
 bility that you recommend your doctrine. But 
 it is not a probability, greater or less. There is 
 no probability that I can see about the doctrine 
 you propose. It is altogether and in the highest 
 degree improbable. It is but a skin-deep refine- 
 ment of the older heathen mythology, whose 
 fantastic unreality is so clear to us both ; and 
 your kingdom of Satan is worse than anything 
 in the religion of the Greeks and Romans. The 
 "testimony of the rocks" is in unceasing contra- 
 diction to the most carefully revised edition of 
 the Church's tale of creation ; and still more em- 
 phatic is the contradiction of reason and con- 
 science in this day of light to the theosophic 
 metaphysics that accompany the tale. Such 
 things expose and doom the tradition of which 
 they form a part .... When you set up a 
 "scheme" of supernatural operations, and urge 
 
Through Borne On, 269 
 
 it upon grounds of analogy and with other argu- 
 ments addressed to the natural reason, you ac- 
 knowledge the competency of reason to deal 
 with the subject in this point of view, not as a 
 pupil, but as a judge. Looking at it so, I ask 
 you, would Absolute Goodness create with ac- 
 tive poison-working elements for any end ? . . . . 
 Was God under compulsion to create man so ? 
 No : he was free, you say, to create or not to 
 create ; but man could not have been made 
 otherwise compatibly with free will in the crea- 
 ture. Then it would seem creation should not 
 have taken place, or free will should have been 
 left out of the plan rather than evil accepted for 
 its sake. What necessary Moloch is this Free 
 "^ill, that is higher than goodness, better than 
 happiness, and so mysteriously precious that evil 
 must be adopted as a means to secure it, and 
 goodness and happiness offered a divine sacrifice 
 to it ? This known world of ours so abounds in 
 moral foulness, as well as in physical suffering 
 of manifestly impeccable beings, such as little 
 infants and irrational animals, that it negatives 
 from the first your anthropomorphic theory of 
 Creation and Providence ; which is an apotheo- 
 sis of human imperfection. Our reason cannot 
 fathom the infinite Order of which we are a part ; 
 but surely, we are not therefore to lend our im- 
 aginations CO monstrous hypotheses on the sub- 
 
270 Through Rome On. 
 
 ject .... Present wrong righted hereafter f 
 Righted by whom ? Heparation is the act of 
 an erring or imperfect being ; an erring being 
 who has done wrong, or an imperfect being who 
 could not prevent it. The^ providence of an 
 absolutely perfect Being w^ould admit nothing 
 that had to be atoned for or repaired at any 
 point, present or future. That wrong once was 
 must remain a fact for all eternity. E-eparation 
 may console the wronged ; but it cannot undo 
 the fact or change the nature of wrong itself, 
 and so can be no vindication of the ruling Will 
 you make the First Cause of all things. What 
 is time but man's measure of a span of eternity ? 
 If God's intelligent plan of His universe embraced 
 injustice for one moment of time, He would be 
 an unjust God as really as if He made injustice 
 the rule of eternity .... To consider God as sub- 
 jected to the exigencies of a purpose, is not to 
 glorify Him, but the contrary ; and you violate 
 your own conception of God when you say that 
 He was so needy that He had to take in evil 
 (no matter how partial) as a part of His plan. 
 You really do not rise above humanity in your 
 religious ideas. Your God is a magnified man, 
 with goodness for his attribute, yet doing equiv- 
 ocal acts, and struggling with evil, which, in the 
 shape of sin and suffering, he is never to destroy; 
 for your Hell is as everlasting as your Heaven. 
 
Through Borne On, 271 
 
 Your Devil likewise is a magnified man, with 
 malignity for his attribute, and enjoying an inde- 
 finite lease of power and preternatural means of 
 carrying out his wicked designs. Your melan- 
 choly compromise of " atonement " and " salva- 
 tion" is analogous to a bankruptcy act which 
 favours a pitiful per cent out of a race of impe- 
 cunious debtors. It is throughout a dream of 
 distorted human relations. You apply the terms 
 Perfect and Almighty to a conception of a mo- 
 bile Being, moved by, as well as operating on, 
 man ; the latter's will being free from origination 
 or control by his Maker ; the Creator waiting 
 on the yet- unborn volitions of His creature. 
 This Deity is further a great Schemer, wrapped 
 up in a plan which He pursues at all hazards 
 and cost to mankind; embracing the before- 
 described libertinage, with consequent difficult 
 salvation of a part of the race and ready damna- 
 tion of the rest. He is All-benevolent, All-wise, 
 All-powerful, you say; and He is the Author 
 and Providential Ruler of a present world 
 abounding in physical and moral evil, and the 
 Monarch of a future world where sin and misery 
 are to be as eternal as sanctity and happiness. 
 Forgive me if I am not able to believe these 
 things, nor to discover in them any approach to 
 a happy solution of the Mystery of the Universe. 
 Forgive me if I cannot call this gospel of yours 
 
272 Through Rome On, 
 
 a revelation of glad tidings; if I cannot admit 
 its right to defy reason and retreat from argu- 
 ment with the cry of " a divine mystery." He- 
 member all the time that I do not impugn the 
 actual order of the Universe, but only men's the- 
 ory concerning it ; which is a very different 
 thing. I can and do bow in the presence of the 
 Incomprehensible ; but it is another thing to pay 
 this homage to a definite conception of men's 
 minds on the subject, however hoary a tradition 
 it may be, however sanctioned by the faith of 
 multitudes and the authority of ecclesiastical 
 bodies. These claims the other religions have 
 as well as yours; and you do not allow them the 
 shelter of " divine mystery," but judge them by 
 reason and condemn them without appeal. Kea- 
 Bon properly deals with logical statements; and 
 you have invited it to do so in this case. The 
 result is, that I abide in the conviction reached 
 by me so far back, and prefer to keep with the 
 increasing company of the wise and prudent, 
 from whom you think the most precious pearls 
 of truth are hid. Let me have my choice. And 
 if it must continue to seem to you that this mat- 
 ter of Christianity is indeed so exceptional that 
 in it alone the swallow of babes and suckhngs is 
 to be preferred as a gauge of truth, have your 
 choice; but let us love each other still. Obedi- 
 ence to conscience begets peace and satisfaction. 
 
Through Rome On, 273 
 
 This is true of you, of me, and of all men be- 
 sides. You are bound to be a Christian, and I 
 am bound not to be one ; and neither of us can 
 violate his conscience and be blessed. 
 
274: Through Rome On, 
 
 FROM A LETTER TO A LIBERAL CHRISTIAN. 
 
 .... I am bound to testify to the excellence and 
 brightness of the " ITew Faith " ; which many 
 who are too clearsighted and just to call it wicked 
 still habitually describe as dark and unwhole- 
 some. They do not know it who call it so. 
 . . . .Happily, you agree with me as to the fal- 
 lacy of terrifying people into good lives by ap- 
 peals to their imaginations in relation to " the 
 other world." Whatever temporary effect may 
 be produced in particular cases by a demonstra- 
 tion of this kind upon the nerves, no real virtue 
 of character can proceed from it ; and apart from 
 the low morality of inculcating superstition for 
 any end, the practical mischiefs of the resort we 
 are looking at are too clear to both of us to need 
 any discussion. The backward natures you speak 
 of are matched with the backward morality of 
 the theological teaching. If the " scheme of sal- 
 vation " be in any of its elements a real help to 
 them, they lose nothing by the advance of others 
 
Through Rome On. 275 
 
 to a higlier ground. The 'New Faith is not for 
 them. They will not, cannot, have it ; and so 
 they cannot, in any point of view, suffer from its 
 not invoking their cupidity and fears in regard 
 to another life .... To give the name of revela- 
 tion to the cryptology which Christians have 
 been wrangling over these hundreds of years, is 
 to abuse language and mislead thought on the 
 subject. You should not blame me for judging 
 Christianity as I judge other things. My dear 
 friend, there can never be any fair reasoning or 
 just conclusions on the subject till this method 
 is accepted as the right way of dealing with it. 
 Christianity is not that vague, intangible, spirit- 
 ual essence which its advocates claim that it is 
 to save it from reproach. It is an historical fact, 
 embodied in visible institutions, performing re- 
 sponsible acts, having a record and annals which 
 cannot be evaded, and which it is not fair to re- 
 fuse to face. This is where I am obliged to make 
 a point against its pleaders. They accept and 
 proclaim all that is good in its history, and claim 
 credit for it on that account ; and they deny or 
 explain away the bad part, though that is just as 
 indubitable, and equally characteristic of the sys- 
 tem. Every other system than their own reli- 
 gion they take as a whole and judge as a whole; 
 but only a part of Christianity is allowed to be 
 Christian : the other part is shuffled off upon hu- 
 
276 Through Rome On. 
 
 man nature, and Christianity exonerated from its 
 proper responsibility for it. In this way, any 
 other system may as well as Christianity be 
 clothed with a snowy righteousness and made out 
 to be "without spot or wrinkle or any such 
 thing"; but Christians stoutly refuse to allow such 
 pleading in favour of any other system than their 
 own. They loudly reproach other religions with 
 the evils that history shows those religions to 
 have produced; but the evils — the crimes and 
 horrors — which the same immortal witness places 
 to the account of Christianity, they set aside as 
 of no effect to prove what they would prove in 
 any other case. I was not able to follow this 
 crooked course ; and so I could not be a Chris- 
 tian. . . .Your improved Christianity is not Chris- 
 tianity proper. It is no doubt a phase, and an 
 important phase, to be considered before the end 
 of the argument is reached ; and you will see 
 that I shall consider it : but Christianity is a great 
 historical fact, which cannot be summed up in 
 any of its modern dilutions. "What should you 
 think of one who chose for his theme Medicine, 
 and then went on to resolve it, in its "method," 
 and "secret," and "sweet reasonableness," into — 
 Homoeopathy ? Christianity must be weighed 
 in a fair balance, as other systems are. We 
 judge them by their fruits. We do not place 
 their bad fruits to the account of something 
 
Through Rome On. 277 
 
 else, while counting their good fruits as a testi- 
 mony in their favour : neither are we to do this 
 in regard to Christianity. The lubrication of it 
 by Liberal as well as by Orthodox Christian advo- 
 cates, with a view to its slipping out of the grasp of 
 fair examination, will not do. But you and I shall 
 hardly be far apart at last, in this aspect of the 
 case ; for under your triturating interpretations 
 Christianity is so surely melting out of its his- 
 torical integuments as to be liker and liker to 
 that pure naturalism on which I used to rally 
 our noble-hearted friend the late Gerrit Smith, 
 and tell him that his patent " Extract " would 
 suit me nearly as well as the strong German 
 " Essence " of Ludwig Feuerbach. 
 
 .... Of all the half-dozen lives of Jesus with 
 which I am acquainted, considered as biographies, 
 the one by Dr. Furness pleases me most. Cer- 
 tainly Strauss's work is unapproachably the great- 
 est of them all; but it is as a critique of the 
 gospels and of supernaturalism that it takes this 
 rank : it is no biography. Renan is acute, elo- 
 quent, entertaining ; but he is more of the dan- 
 cer than of the marcher or the explorer, and ex- 
 hausts himself, it seems to me, in breaking flies 
 upon the wheel, without bringing to light any 
 facts that we want to get hold of. There are 
 few of his class of rhetoricians that I can rise 
 from without an unpleasant sense of having been 
 
278 Through Borne On, 
 
 fed upon froth. E-enan's Yie will not, in my esti- 
 mation, bear comparison with either the Leben 
 by Strauss or the " English Life " furnished us by 
 Mr. Thomas Scott : and as I should send one 
 interested in English literature to Chambers' 
 Encyclopaedia in preference to the elaborate 
 work of M. Taine, so should I recommend Dr. 
 Eurness's little book as more helpful reading on 
 its subject than the volumes of the clever French- 
 man who has electrotyped primitive Christianity. 
 But none of the life-writers help us to know Jesus, 
 I think. There can be no real biography of a 
 being who has been worshipped as a god for 
 hundreds of years, and who, while his reality 
 continues to be insisted on, will retain his god- 
 ship still. You Liberal Christians can make as 
 liberal assumptions as the Orthodox themselves, 
 when your affectionate purpose requires it ; and 
 you with your hyper-dulia, as really worship as 
 a god him whom Scripture puts " a little lower 
 than the angels," as the Orthodox with their 
 latria, who denounce you for not going to their 
 length of worshipping him as the God. ^o 
 trustworthy biography can be written of a sup- 
 posed divine being, concerning whose mortal 
 career no sure data remain to us. There is 
 nothing but the gospels to go to for Jesus's life ; 
 and they, of unknown origin, teeming with in- 
 credible stories, and disclosing the plainest evi- 
 
Through Rome On, 279 
 
 dences of tlie ignorance, disagreement, and un- 
 certainty of their writers, are indeed a lucus a 
 non lucendo, the shadows of which only the par- 
 blind vision of a predetermined faith can mis- 
 take for light and clearness. A biography 
 culled from the canon is as historically valuable 
 as a miniature copied from Yeronica's handker- 
 chief. I have no doubt that the very first Chris- 
 tians were, as you say, unitarians ; but the grad- 
 ual deification of Christ began very early, though 
 it took more than three hundred years to elab- 
 orate the doctrine into its Nicene and post-Nicene 
 proportions. I think we may find the seed of 
 the modern tenet even in the genuine epistles of 
 Paul ; though the great Apostle was neither ho- 
 moousian nor homoiousian, and was in no danger 
 himself of confounding the one God and the one 
 Lord whom he so distinctively indicates. As the 
 Catholics used to say that Erasmus laid the egg 
 and Luther hatched it, so we may say that Paul 
 and his age broke ground for later and unapos- 
 tolic Christianity to build on. There is a genesis 
 of doctrines as well as of worlds. Greek thought, 
 impregnating the new offshoot of Judaism, pro- 
 duced the Trinity, as it had before produced the 
 gods of Olympus. Arius was a refiner and sub- 
 tiliser after the Greek fashion no less than Atlia- 
 nasius. The one God of Israel (also a growth, 
 to be traced in the Old Testament) could not 
 
280 Through Borne On. 
 
 satisfy the former any more than the latter ; and 
 three centm-ies of Christian speculation had so 
 wrought upon the primitive unitarianism that it 
 was no party at all when Constantine assembled 
 his theologians at E'ice. It was scarcely a hard 
 thing then, though it might bo an impossible 
 thing now, to bind men to the worship of one 
 special individual son of man as their God. At 
 Constantinople, at Ephesus, at Chalcedon, nail 
 after nail was driven home and the doctrine 
 firmly fastened on the Church. There was a 
 readiness then for such results that we can but 
 faintly conceive of now. When the Council of 
 Ephesus secured to Mary her title of Theotokos, 
 "Mother of God," the streets rang with popular 
 rejoicings. We can hardly enter into the tem- 
 per of those times and of that Ephesian multi- 
 tude, or we should wonder less at the develop- 
 ments of Christian dogma. The beginning was 
 easy and the progress sure. Original Christian- 
 ity grew into the religion of the Middle Ages, 
 when faith and miracle abounded still, and the 
 corporeal descent of Deity was a daily event. 
 That the Christian was maldno: an exchano-e of 
 worlds, giving up this world and the natural life 
 thereof as the price demanded for another world 
 and the supernatural life belonging to it, was the 
 accepted view. Poverty and pain were blessed 
 states ; and hence, to dread and avoid poverty 
 
Through Home On. 281 
 
 and pain was irreligious ; to labour against them, 
 except in temporary works of mercy done for 
 God's sake, not Tnan's, was to fly in the face of 
 Heaven. The existing order, with its inequali- 
 ties, its Bqualidity, oppression, and sorrowful 
 conditions of all kinds, was to be permanent, 
 was the abiding order for this world. Men, as 
 their Christian duty, were to be contented with 
 it for the dispensation of time, and to look for 
 improvement not to reforms here, but to deliver- 
 ance by death, which was the passage to a su- 
 pernatural existence. This was the old and gen- 
 uine Christian belief; and the festering ills of 
 the libelled world went on in sacred hopelessness 
 while it flourished. But the Dark Ages and the 
 genuine Christian belief that suited them had to 
 pass away. Original Christianity was ground 
 to powder long ago. We have a modern ratio- 
 nalised thing intended to combine the advantages 
 of both worlds ; and we call it Christianity ; but 
 the Christianity of Christ, or of the apostolic 
 Christians, it is not. I do not see how, taking 
 the only accounts we can turn to on the subject, 
 you are able to avoid the conclusion that Jesus 
 was an ascetic and the teacher of asceticism; 
 nor can I quite agree with you that " the par- 
 tialists vainly build upon his figures of speech." 
 Though the orientalisms of the gospels render all 
 such interpretations extremely uncertain, yet we 
 
282 Through Rome On, 
 
 know, as to this matter, that the monstrous doc- 
 trine from which yon would exonerate Jesus did 
 prevail among the Jews after the captivity; and 
 it is not probable that a popular exhorter Buch 
 as Jesus is described to have been, was superior 
 to the vulgar faith on this point, or neglected so 
 obvious a means of enforcing his appeals to the 
 common imagination. I believe, indeed, that 
 little can now be said in support of retaining as 
 genuine what follows verse 8 to make up the 
 last chapter of Mark in our Testament ; but if we 
 keep enough of the remaining accounts to fur- 
 nish forth any tolerable picture of their hero, the 
 difficulty remains in full force. But you and I 
 are really turned in different directions on this 
 topic. A being for me to venerate and love, 
 especially one for me to imitate, must stand be- 
 fore me in more definite outline than Jesus 
 stands. The Jesus of faith and fable I cannot 
 believe in, and of course can ground nothing on 
 him. The Jesus of history is much too dim and 
 uncertain a personage to fill the place of the 
 former, or to supersede better known exemplars 
 in my regard .... Shall you call me an Hegelian 
 if I say that it seems to me pure theism and pure 
 atheism run into one at last ? Think how bent 
 on not being pure theists or pure atheists men 
 almost universally are ! Everybody must have 
 his say about final causes ; and everybody's ex- 
 
Through Borne On. 283 
 
 planation is demonstrated to himself by the un- 
 satisfactoriness of his neighbour's. I was told 
 of God and Religion in my childhood ; I studied 
 men's thoughts and utterances on the subject, 
 and what a Library of Romance they turned out 
 to be ! God had long been in the hands of 
 chosen people, who had caged him like a sing- 
 ing-bird ; and I had to find him in the cage, or 
 woe was to me. One page out of the book of 
 the starry heavens put the whole Library of Ro- 
 mance to flight. When I learned of the infini- 
 tude of suns and systems, with all their attend- 
 ant phenomena, that blaze into and out of 
 existence through the incomputable eternit}^, 
 when I felt the chain of necessary uncalculating 
 sequence running through nature, and then 
 turned again to the religious explanation, I saw 
 that the Christian stories to account for it all 
 were as sheer mythology as any of the others. 
 And it has always seemed to me since, that the 
 great error is to pretend to any ability at all to 
 deal in the way of opinion with what my friend 
 Mr. Abbot, for instance (see The Radical^ June 
 1867, p. 596), calls " The Mystery of Mysteries" 
 even while he declares that he clothes it with 
 "the highest, not the lowest," that he knows. 
 "Why, the Mystery is as infinitely above " the 
 highest " as it is above " the lowest " that man 
 knows, or by possibility can know. The distinc- 
 
284 Through Rome On, 
 
 tion between higli and low is wasted here ; and 
 this is the mistake our speculative reasoners are 
 continually making — Mr. Herbert Spencer takes 
 note of it in his First Principles. They will 
 have you attribute something to the Absolutely 
 Inconceivable ; and if they do not find you at- 
 tributing your highest, they at once infer that 
 you are attributing your lowest ; while in reality, 
 there is no choice or alternative of high or low 
 whatever. What if the personal and the imper- 
 sonal, the conscious and the unconscious, exhaust 
 our categories? It does not follow that they ex- 
 haust Absolute Being. Conscious^ unconscious^ 
 &c., are terms which express states of existence 
 that are conceivable by us : they have no perti- 
 nent application to the Inconceivable. The re- 
 viewer that I have read over again at your re- 
 commendation flounders like the others on this 
 track. He considers " whether a creature of 
 such limited capacities as man can be correctly 
 said to possess anything in common with the 
 Author of Nature "; and says that " the doubt is 
 dispelled when we take up the antithesis of the 
 proposition, and try to suppose the Author of 
 Nature as possessing nothing in common with 
 man. It is obvious," he adds, " that in such a 
 case our idea of God would be that of an im- 
 perfect being." The cardinal vice of all such 
 pleading as this lies in the fancy that we may 
 
Through Rome On. 285. 
 
 -indulge any suppositions whatever about " the 
 Author of ^Nature." Nature incloses us, as the 
 infinite incloses the finite. We can never get 
 out of Nature, try how we may ; and so can 
 never reach any ground or being outside of Na- 
 ture, so as to have an extranatural subject for 
 discussion or speculation. We may indeed call 
 up a shrivelled abstract nature before the mind's 
 eye, and imagine a further external existence, 
 like or unlike ourselves, as the author of it : but 
 this abstraction is not Nature in reality. That 
 surpasses in its vastness the utmost range of our 
 faculties, is boundless to our conception, and lays 
 bare no central core or heart that we may dissect 
 in quest of origin or maker. The reviewer is 
 bhnded all the time with the dream-form of a 
 Person outside of Nature, about whose charac- 
 teristics we are to bandy suppositions, and deter- 
 mine his likeness or unlikeness to a microscopic 
 speck within Nature of which we are cognisant 
 and conscious. Any "idea of God" must "be 
 that of an imperfect being " : a perfect being can 
 be no subject of the formative imagination; and 
 an " idea of God " that tries him by man as a 
 model is no more just or reverent than one that 
 should fashion him in the likeness of the lion. 
 Attraction and repulsion are both in Nature ; but 
 a loving God would be as really an imperfect 
 being (though not in the same unamiable aspect) 
 
286 Through Rome On, 
 
 as a hating God : and while both love and hate 
 are predicated of the gods of all the religions, a 
 tranquil, candid observation of the universe, if it 
 discover any hint of primal causality, is pointed 
 to a perfection so high above all the qualitied en- 
 tanglements of the human imagination, and in 
 such ineffable remove from the divinity that 
 spider-like man spins out of his own bowels, as to 
 make law but a poor groping term which is good 
 only to save us from the impiety of conscious 
 fetidiism. A multitude of minds at this point 
 of time have come to see the folly and mischief 
 of talking about will and person here, and can 
 not with fidelity to conscience go on with it any 
 longer. Do you not perceive that any kind of 
 personality is limitation ? and do you not sec that 
 every attempt to rest the mind in a teleology 
 results in the same fatal animism which you call 
 superstition in the earlier and contemporary re- 
 ligions outside of Christianity ? It is clear to 
 me that all deifying of the inscrutable Power by 
 making man, or the qualities of human nature, 
 the standard for its characterisation is but child's- 
 play and delusion. The one Divine Person that 
 you rest with, easily becomes three, or thousands, 
 in the coiling or uncoiling of various metaphysics. 
 The Trinitarian is no more conscious of super- 
 stition in his god-making than you are in yours; 
 and the punctual saliens of the superstition is 
 
Through Rome On. 287 
 
 really not in making the Trinity out of the Per- 
 sonal God, as he does ; but in making the Per- 
 sonal God out of man to start with, as you do 
 equally with him. The pattern once allowed, 
 you cannot limit your neighbour in his cutting 
 out from it. You think with the reviewer that 
 the Universe must come from a Person or from 
 Chance. I have already intimated that we can 
 have no legitimate opinion about any coming of 
 the Universe. I will further remark, that we do 
 not infer the Universe from knowledge of a 
 universe-producing cause. The Universe is a 
 fact. We have it, we know it, and we do not 
 know it as an effect. ITor must an arbitrary de- 
 finition of Chance be allowed to hamper the ar- 
 gument. Chance is not the mere negation of 
 personal design, but essentially the conception 
 of lawlessness. There is undoubtedly a principle 
 of order in Nature ; and this excludes chance. 
 The persistive blunder of theists on this subject 
 proceeds partly from the convenience of setting 
 up Chance to be bowled over ; but more, perhaps, 
 from the rage for definition. The nearest that I 
 dare come to definition — and this is forced upon 
 me by the course of the other side — is to say that 
 I cannot think of the inscrutable Power as per- 
 sonal or designing, or as being Mind, or anything 
 else that we can conceive of. To regard it as 
 Mind, is to turn back in the direction of heathen 
 
288 Through Borne On. 
 
 mythology ; and to my thought, the Jewish fables 
 of Elohim and Jehovah, and the Christian fables 
 of God and Christ, are obviously akin to the fig- 
 ments which the Hindoos and Greeks and other 
 " uncovenanted " peoples have indulged about 
 their deities ; all wandering and groping together 
 in the vain attempt to dispose of the unsolvable 
 Problem of the Universe. As soon as you have 
 outhned God as a person, you begin to weave 
 personal incidents about him. The name, "Je- 
 hovah, Jove, or Lord," matters little : the same 
 course is run, more or less conspicuously, in all 
 the instances. The drama is made and played, 
 the scene-shifting goes on, the very stock-phrases 
 are repeated after hundreds of years ; — and the 
 mischievous lesson always follows. What falsi- 
 ties and horrors " the will of God " has sanctified 
 in even good men's eyes, and what wrongs and 
 abbminations are still covered and perpetuated by 
 the use of such handy shibboleths, you know as 
 well as I. I agree with the reviewer that praise 
 and blame, reward and punishment, are applicable 
 to man ; and for the very reason that he is, so to 
 speak, the creature of circumstances: and I 
 agree as heartily with Mr. Atkinson, that man is 
 not properly the subject of anything of the kind 
 in the theological sense. Thus I do not believe 
 in revenge, or in vindictive penalties. These be- 
 long to the theological spirit, and are kept up by 
 
Through Borne On, 289 
 
 its prevalence. Man is a moral agent, since he 
 lias a moral sense and moral impulses, which 
 play the part of factors in his conduct and des- 
 tiny. He is responsible to his fellows, to the 
 community in which he lives, to the world of 
 which he is a part : and out of this responsibil- 
 ity arises the rightfulness of laws, which affect 
 conduct by supplying motives for its regulation. 
 .... Orthodoxy involves a daily strain upon good 
 sense and good feeling. Your Liberalism lessens 
 the strain in its degree, but leaves too much for 
 my endurance. The faults of the " design " in 
 its physical aspect are as nothing in comparison 
 with its horrors from a moral point of view. On 
 this ground I could not continue to stand with 
 the Liberal theists after my enforced departure 
 from Orthodoxy. The latter tells of an elaborate 
 Divine preparation for a world of sinlessness and 
 happiness, which was not to be. The plan was 
 to be disconcerted, overturned in a moment ; 
 and yet it was the plan of a Being who knew, 
 and foreknew, all things ! Then it introduces 
 the fallen angel Lucifer, our Devil ; as if A e ex- 
 plained anything, or as if man were not a self- 
 working devil enough in himself, under the dis- 
 pensation of evil which God had given to the 
 world. The mere profession of such a belief in- 
 volves denial of all the sound maxims of our 
 daily life ; and if its professors acted it out in 
 
290 Through Rome On. 
 
 their practice, we should have pandemonium in- 
 deed. But they do not act it out, any more than 
 Liberal theists act out what they retain of the 
 tradition of the evil-willing, or evil-accepting, 
 God that they insist on as absolute external 
 Cause, in preference to admitting the wholesome 
 truth, that the subject is as infinitely out of the 
 reach of our minds as the stars are beyond the 
 touch of our stretched-out fingers. I could not 
 hold a doctrine that had to be suppressed and 
 contradicted in this way. The necessity of the 
 suppression and contradiction was fatal to it as 
 soon as I saw how the case stood. A doctrine 
 above reason would be no doctrine for us. Only 
 by the application of reason to a doctrine are 
 we able to receive it as a fact of science or of 
 revelation. A doctrine is a truth, or a supposed 
 truth, formularised ; that is, put into a shape to 
 be grasped by reason. Here is a doctrine not 
 above reason, but against reason. When Liberal 
 theists have swept away a few ecclesiastical ad- 
 * ditions from this dreadful corner-stone, they ac- 
 tually fancy they have prepared for mankind a 
 firm foundation for religious faith, a Being to 
 love and worship and trust in, a hope and expec- 
 tation of another life ! I tell you, even the best 
 elements of my religiosity turn me from this posi- 
 tion of Liberals as compulsorily as from Calvin- 
 ism itself. Indeed it would seem to involve the 
 
Through Rome On. 291 
 
 same negation of the trustworthiness of our 
 moral instincts as Calvinism involves. The ac- 
 ceptance of evil by Divine Will is the fatal blot. 
 "Whether you make it means or end, it is the 
 same. Channing's Moral Argument against 
 Calvinism reaches farther than its author (pro- 
 bably) ever intended. The primal conception of 
 theology is personification of the inscrutable 
 Force. The perception of the Inscrutable is 
 a distinct thing from this primal conception, 
 though often confounded with it. I know your 
 attempts at reforming the primal conception. 
 Time was when I eagerly caught at such plead- 
 ings as Mr. Newman and Miss Cobbe, who stand 
 high in my esteem, are still putting forth. They 
 are clever, and reflect the power as well as the 
 benevolence of their authors' minds ; but they 
 leave the vexed question just where they find it. 
 Men who yet believe that the solar system waited 
 on the military operations of Joshua and his 
 Jewish host may continue to confess a Perfectly 
 Good and Omnipotent Author of Evil; but 
 other theists come one by one to admit the limi- 
 tation of either goodness or power in the Deity. 
 The admission is compelled, and it is fatal. 
 They begin by seating a human semblance on a 
 throne infinitely above the universe : they end 
 by levelling the throne to finite dust. 
 
292 Through Borne On. 
 
 A KOYEL WITH A PURPOSE. 
 
 Beulah is a lumbering story of 510 pages, 
 ■which might as appropriately, and perhaps as 
 euphoniously, have been entitled "Adoption," 
 from the unnatural profusion of adopted children 
 out of one orphan asylum which it presents. 
 Beulah is a homeless girl, with colourless visage, 
 and " a pair of large grey eyes set beneath an 
 overhanging forehead," which is also " a boldly- 
 projecting forehead, broad and smooth." She 
 has intellectual tendencies, a proud, passionate 
 nature, tremendous obstinacy, and a blunt way 
 of speaking. With these characteristics she goes 
 out into the world and encounters an incredible 
 amount of brutality from people belonging to 
 the upper classes of society. In a moment of 
 insensibility from mental anguish and the begin- 
 ning of a brain fever, she is picked up by a 
 childless man, possessed of wealth, generosity 
 and a cultivated mind; who takes her to his 
 house to live there as his adopted daughter. 
 Upon her arrival, her benefactor's sister casts the 
 evil eye upon her, drinks her medicine that she 
 
Through Borne On, 293 
 
 may not be cured, and is moved to great bitter- 
 ness of feeling when she gets well in spite of all 
 that could be done to prevent it. The proud 
 and high-tempered Beulah will not stay comfort- 
 ably adopted, but after a flare-up with the sister 
 turns her back upon the house of her generous 
 protector, and without a word of explanation or 
 farewell quits him, as she believes forever, and 
 returns in her old clothes to the orphan asylum. 
 He goes after her, having found out the truth 
 from a servant, and prevails over her resolution 
 of independence so far, that she consents to live 
 in his house while she pursues her studies at the 
 common-school. She graduates with the highest 
 honours, takes a teacher's place to support herself, 
 goes to live at a cheap boarding-house, and 
 writes philosophical essays for the local maga- 
 zine. Working hard all day and reading all 
 night, with nursing fever patients for a holiday 
 relaxation, would infallibly bring a woman in 
 real life to the brink of the grave at least ; but 
 Beulah only has a fever without going to bed for 
 it, and lives on to be inconsolably wretched be- 
 cause her psychological writers fail to supply her 
 with a satisfactory answer to Pilate's question — ■ 
 "What is Truth ?" This is the burden of the 
 book: philosophy vain, Christianity true and 
 satisfying the needs of the human spirit. Beu- 
 lah's reading and reflection had brought her to 
 
294 Through Rome On. 
 
 the rejection of Christianity as a supernatural 
 revelation ; and finding that the philosophers are 
 unable to solve the problem of man's origin and 
 destiny, she grows heartsick and despairing. 
 Towards the end she is presented to us as having 
 become a devout Christian believer; not, it would 
 appear, through any confutation of the argu- 
 ments which had seemed to her to lie against the 
 system of dogmatic religion, but from disgust 
 with the metaphysicians and the craving of her 
 heart for repose beneath the shadow of an oracle. 
 It is no small comfort to the reader, in taking 
 leave of her on the five-hundred-and-tenth page, 
 to know that she is happily delivered from the 
 mazes of psychology and ontology in which she 
 has wandered so painfully and so long ; and that 
 her cravings are appeased not only with a reli- 
 gion, but with the destined husband also. Indeed, 
 one may well doubt from the story itself whether 
 her protracted anguish of mind proceeded more 
 from the unsatisfactoriness of pantheism or the 
 separation from her guardian. Dr. Heartwell 
 returns after his five years' roaming, finds Beu- 
 lah at the top of the house playing the melodeon, 
 pops the question in a somewhat arbitrary man- 
 ner, and is then and there straightway accepted, 
 much to his satisfaction, to hers, and, as has been 
 intimated, to the reader's also. The author is so 
 much wrapped up in her heroine that, notwith- 
 
Through Rome On, 295 
 
 standing her views of the indispensableness of 
 faith to happiness in this life and salvation in an- 
 other, she does not take time to convert the other 
 prominent characters who, according to her view, 
 have erred and strayed from the way like lost 
 sheep; but only holds out the hope that Dr. 
 Asbury may at length be brought into the fold 
 through Butler's Analogy and the still more 
 powerful pleadings of a good wife ; while Heart- 
 well himself, the hero, if the book have a hero, 
 is infidel still at the last accounts, though, we 
 are to understand, in a hopeful condition from 
 the constant presence of Beulah at his side. 
 
 Notwithstanding the time and pains which 
 have evidently been bestowed on this work, the 
 writer has completely failed to enter into the 
 mind of the sceptic, and to grasp and understand 
 the real difficulties, negative and positive, with 
 which that mind is beset from the start, and 
 through which it labours, well or ill, to the end 
 of its course. Beulah is a fancy sketch ; not 
 without verisimilitude certainly, but very, very 
 unreal. Poverty, thwarted love, and the work- 
 ing of these upon a morbid pride and sensitive- 
 ness, played an important part in the trials of 
 mind under which Beulah was so near sinking. 
 This is what happens in most actual cases : that 
 is, other and various elements unite with and in- 
 fluence the conditions and results of the most 
 
296 Through Rome On. 
 
 earnest speculative inquiry. Faith is a matter 
 of physiology and education. It has, of course, 
 its dialectical side also; and as to this, it was 
 wisdom in our writer to jump the attempt to 
 establish its pretensions by any regular argu- 
 ment. The changes of life, the climacterics, as 
 they are called, have an important relation to 
 this subject. Many minds have a special affinity 
 towards dogmatic systems early in life, and are 
 quite incapable of religious faith at a later pe- 
 riod ; while others are necessarily sceptical and 
 unbelieving till long years have rolled by and 
 the atoms of their bodies have been many times 
 renewed; when the opposite conversion is as 
 mysteriously wrought in them. The circum- 
 stances of each one's daily existence enter unfail- 
 ingly into character, conduct, and habits of 
 thought. In this light, some phases of Beulah 
 are natural enough. But that a strong intellect, 
 joined to a resolute will and an active working 
 benevolence, as in this case, should flounder so 
 miserably is, be it repeated, very unreal. " ' I 
 want to know whether I have ever lived before; 
 whether there is not an anterior life of my soul, 
 of which I get occasional glimpses, and the mem- 
 ory of which haunts and disquiets me.' " (F. 321.) 
 These are subtle, curious questions, which may 
 possess attraction and interest for a certain class 
 of thinkers; but what healthy mind would re- 
 
Through Borne On, 297 
 
 main permanently disquieted for want of the im- 
 possible solution ? It is certain that Christianity 
 no more answers such questions than does any 
 system of unbelief; and if one finds repose from 
 them through embracing the former, it must be by 
 dropping them at once, or reducing them to their 
 proper level of unprofitable puzzles; a course 
 which is not less open to the sceptic than to the 
 believer. " Life is real, life is earnest." This is 
 not matter of faith, but of positive knowledge. 
 The duties of life, each one's duties, are clear, 
 plain things enough, if there be no turning 
 away of the mind, no idle dreaming when work 
 is to be done ; and happiness, in the usual order 
 of nature, waits on the performance of duty. 
 Such a case as Beulah's would be one of disease. 
 Doubtless, the desire and pursuit of truth are 
 natural to the healthy mind; nor are they vain, 
 nor their legitimate results a mockery. Knowl- 
 edge may be acquired by man, though not all 
 knowledge. Beulah longed for " ' knowledge of 
 the deep things of philosophy, the hidden won- 
 ders of the universe, the awful mysteries of the 
 shadowy spirit realm.' " (P. 323.) She would 
 have been satisfied with nothing less than om- 
 niscience. One thing that Dr. Heartwell said to 
 her was very much to the point : — " ^ How can 
 the finite soul cope with Infinite Being V " — ^but 
 she only saw in it a fling at human philosophy. 
 
298 Through Rome On. 
 
 Another unreal character in the book is 
 Cornelia Graham. Cornelia, somewhat strong- 
 minded and therefore a sceptic, is dying of heart 
 disease. Concerning her, the pious Mrs. Wil- 
 liams speaks thus : " * She has lived only for this 
 world and its pleasures. Is she afraid of the 
 world to come ? Can she die peacefully % ' " 
 Beulah replies : " ' She will die calmly, but not 
 hopefully. She does not believe in Christian- 
 ity.' " From the account given of Cornelia it is 
 impossible to say whether she had deserved Mrs. 
 Williams's description of her or not. If she had 
 indeed lived only for pleasure, negligent of duty, 
 and turning away from goodness to the end of 
 her life, it was not to be expected that that end 
 would be peaceful and happy. Death is com- 
 monly the echo of life ; and, as conscience can 
 never be completely extinguished in any one, so 
 if life have been wasted and profaned, death 
 must needs be troubled and unholy. An un- 
 happy life, too, will in many cases close darkly 
 and gloomily ; though often, again, the sense of 
 the relief at hand, the welcome deliverance from 
 wrong and pain and growing burdens, will avail 
 to soothe and cheer the parting soul with a won- 
 drous consolation. We have known Cornelia as 
 the spoiled child and disappointed w^oman ; for it 
 may be gathered from the narrative that the 
 proud daughter of the Grahams had cherished 
 
Through Rome On. 299 
 
 for Eugene more than a sister's love. Beulah, 
 who knew how her life had been soured, could 
 not expect it to exhale in sweetness at the close. 
 She has confidence enough in her friend's nerves 
 to predict that the approaching death will be 
 calm ; but, to carry out the notions and aims of 
 the book, she is made to add very positively that 
 poor Cornelia will not die hopefully, on account 
 of not believing in Christianity. The other in- 
 fluences, it will be seen, are put out of sight : it 
 is the absence of Christian faith that is to make 
 the death-bed so sad and hopeless. Now it is 
 just here that I object to the character of Cor- 
 nelia as unreal. The writer has undertaken to 
 construct an argument for Christianity from the 
 picture of a death-bed without it. The character 
 of Cornelia is carefully shaped to suit the design. 
 It seems to be drawn for a vigorous intellect and 
 good heart pining for the spiritual sustenance 
 which Christianity alone can supply. Not to 
 speak of exceptional instances, but proceeding 
 under the general law of human nature, we may 
 take the ground that a real Cornelia would not 
 have pined thus, would not have lived unhappily 
 and died hopelessly, as here represented. The 
 very statement given at page 377 of the motives 
 influencing the supposititious Cornelia to reject 
 Christianity is not characteristic of a highly in- 
 telligent and conscientious woman. Doubtless, 
 
300 Through Borne On. 
 
 it is most soothing to natural sensibility, other 
 things being equal, to die in the faith of one's 
 fathers, to be in sympathy with loved ones and 
 with such as minister at the dying pillow. This 
 of course is independent of the truth or falsity of 
 particular creeds, and is as applicable to the 
 death-bed of a Mohammedan as of a Christian. 
 But as to this matter of hopefulness: — the most 
 beautiful hope of all is that which inspires the 
 unselfish soul for friends and brethren, for fellow- 
 creatures and the universe of God. The selfish 
 hope of heavenly enjoyments in another life may 
 be held too without Christianity. Surely, the 
 flaming Hell of Christian theology is not needed 
 to bring hope to the bedside of the dying. Much 
 more of terror than of hoj)e lies in the creeds of 
 the churches. " Evangelical " teachings are cer- 
 tainly not "glad tidings of great joy"; and 
 " salvation," in the technical sense, is a most im- 
 probable thing to be attained to by the best of 
 mankind. From two passages in the book un- 
 der consideration, it may be suspected that the 
 writer is not purely Evangelical, but leans to the 
 TJniversalist heresy. Clara says (page 351),^ 
 " * My faith teaches that the evil you so bitterly 
 deprecate is not eternal, shall finally be crushed, 
 and the harmony you crave pervade all realms.' " 
 This is hopeful, certainly; but it is not a fair 
 representative specimen of Christian faith. The 
 
Through Rome On. 301 
 
 other passage (pp. 393-4) concerns the fate of 
 Cornelia : " Cornelia had not believed : was she 
 utterly lost? Beulah asked herself this ques- 
 tion, and shrank from the answer." Unreality 
 again. Beulah, be it remembered, is a person of 
 strong understanding with good moral instincts. 
 Such a person could have scarcely a moment's 
 struggle with such a question; and if it were 
 oftener asked of themselves by clear-minded, 
 good-hearted men and women yet in the meshes 
 of Athanasian tradition, the monstrous supersti- 
 tion from which it springs would crumble even 
 faster than we see it crumbling now. As it is, 
 nobody believes in hell for his relations and 
 friends. It is a rod in soak for strangers, and 
 the incorrigible world whose room will be so 
 much better than their company when we are 
 snugly settled with our acquaintances in heaven. 
 The shrinking is when we first ask ourselves if 
 we really do believe any longer in the time- 
 honoured doctrine which we imbibed with our 
 mothers' milk, and which we have been so im- 
 pressively taught if any one reject he shall with- 
 out doubt perish everlastingly. We do not 
 shrink from an evasion of the doctrine's applica- 
 tion in any particular case that falls under our 
 observation. That BeulaKs author has dared 
 to put the query into shape, repeating it vehe- 
 mently on a succeeding page, indicates that she 
 
302 Through Rome On, 
 
 seriously doubts, if she has not already rejected, 
 the dogma of Endless Misery. 
 
 On the last page (as elsewhere) this view is 
 taken of the sceptic : " ' You turn from Revelation 
 because it contains some things you cannot com- 
 prehend ; yet you plunge into a deeper, darker 
 mystery when you embrace the theory of au 
 eternal, self-existing universe, having no intelli- 
 gent creator, yet constantly creating intelligent 
 beings. Sir, can you understand how matter 
 creates mind ? ' " This is a misconception. The 
 sceptic rejects what purports to be a Revelation 
 through Christ or Mohammed or any other 
 teacher, not because it contains some things 
 which he cannot comprehend, but because the 
 grounds on which it challenges his acceptance do 
 not seem to him to be solid grounds ; in other 
 words, because it does not seem to him to be a 
 genuine Revelation. In like manner, he does 
 not set up any counter dogmatic system of the 
 Universe as a parallel to the rejected Revelation. 
 He does not, like the Christian, lay down propo- 
 sitions in unsearchable things. That matter and 
 mind exist is not a theory of his, but a self- 
 evident, admitted fact. That the processes of 
 Nature follow a certain Order, or Law, is so 
 clear, simple, and inevitable a deduction of rea- 
 son, that it is equally a matter of positive science, 
 and removed from the category of speculative 
 
Through Rome On. 303 
 
 systems. These principia are common to be- 
 liever and unbeliever alike ; the former holding 
 them not by faith, as supernaturally revealed, 
 but by knowledge, as the unbeliever holds them. 
 The essential difference between the two is, that 
 the unbeliever stops here, with what is known, 
 admitting his ignorance of final causes, and re- 
 fusing to dogmatise, whatever he may conjecture, 
 concerning that of which he knows nothing; 
 while the believer refuses to be satisfied with the 
 facts of consciousness and experience, and what 
 may be tested by human reason ; and, going be- 
 yond these, propounds a formal teleology, and 
 lays claim to supernatural information in tran- 
 scendental things. This, the essential difference 
 between the two parties, is what such writers as 
 the author oiJBeulah are continually losing sight 
 of. Of course unbelievers have their own specu- 
 lative opinions as well as believers their religious 
 doctrines, concerning the unknown ; and it is 
 conceivable that errors and absurdities may find 
 a place in the one as well as in the other. This 
 however is always to be noted to the credit of 
 the infidel side : that its opinions are not laid 
 down as the utterances of an infallible oracle, 
 which it is a sin to controvert. To the ques- 
 tion, " ' Can you understand how matter creates 
 mind ? ' " the husband is not allowed to make 
 any answer. " He seemed pondering her words," 
 
304 Through Home On. 
 
 sajs the book. Yet the answer to them is ready 
 and fall. Let us suppose Dr. Heartwell to make 
 it as follows : I do not pretend to understand 
 how matter creates mind. I do not affirm that 
 matter does create mind ; and if it does, I freelj 
 confess that the how is beyond my comprehen- 
 sion. Of creation, in the sense of making some- 
 thing out of nothing, I have no conception what- 
 ever : it is to me inconceivable. That mind may 
 be the phenomenal product of certain material 
 conditions I find no difficulty in believing, re- 
 membering that the harmonies and discords of 
 sound are in this way evolved as the result of 
 particular mechanical acts and arrangements 
 which, in their order of sequences, I can trace 
 but a very little way. On my window-sill I 
 place tightened strings: the air, blowing "where 
 it listeth," touches presently these strings as if 
 with human finger : further perturbations ensue 
 in the mysterious ether, which quickly reach my 
 ear, and, tlirough that portal, my brain ; when I 
 enjoy the music of the eolian harp. " Can you 
 understand how matter creates " — music? The 
 perception of sound is equally a part of the mind 
 with thinking. Sound is as wonderful and as in- 
 comprehensible as thought. For aught I know, 
 thought may be " created " by matter as well as 
 sound. As to the theory you ascribe to me of 
 an eternal self-existing Universe, I am at least in 
 
Through Home On. 305 
 
 no worse dilemma with it than you are with yonr 
 theory of an eternal self-existing Deity ; and you 
 have no more right to require me to give up my 
 view of the Universe because I cannot explain 
 the Universe, than I have to require you to give 
 up your hypothesis of God because you cannot 
 explain God. The Universe is a fact ; God (in 
 your sense) is an inference. I am not able to 
 discover any origin for the Universe, and so I 
 stop here, seeing neither necessity nor probabil- 
 ity for any inference beyond. If I may not be- 
 lieve in an uncreated Universe, then neither may 
 you believe in an uncreated Personal Designer 
 of the Universe. I do not feel under any neces- 
 sity of accounting for the existence of the Uni- 
 verse. To attempt to account for it by suppos- 
 ing an external cause, would commit me to an 
 endless round of hypotheses ; since for the Cause 
 of the Universe would have to be supposed an- 
 other Cause, and so on, ad infinitum. You no 
 more solve the ontological problem than I solve 
 it : you only remove the question a step farther. 
 Besides that your hypothesis fails to solve the 
 problem, it is furthermore beset with grave in- 
 tellectual and moral difficulties. I am obliged 
 to reject it. I do not feel unhappy or in way 
 the worse in consequence of rejecting it. On 
 the contrary, I feel freer and better than when I 
 held it. The tendency to suppose supernatural 
 
306 Through Borne On. 
 
 causes for what we cannot understand becomes 
 weaker and weaker as we grow and learn. This 
 is true of individuals and of the race. The 
 remedy for fanaticism (from the Greek cpaivotiai) 
 is the cultivation of a healthy mind in a healthy 
 body. 
 
 Let us hope that if there shall be a Beulah- 
 Heartwell case in reality, the husband will give 
 this answer to his wife. It may open her eyes 
 and relieve her heart at the same time ; and in 
 the light of it she may find her true deliverance 
 from the "deeper, darker mystery" which she 
 jumped at Christianity to escape. Deep indeed 
 is the m^^stery of the Universe ; yet the darkness 
 which broods over those awful depths wears no 
 blackness of horror to the philosophic mind. 
 That mind sees no immortal Devil ambushed 
 there, clothed with superhuman power, animated 
 by eternal hate, fed upon lost human souls, and 
 winning countless victories over God and man. 
 This is the orthodox Christian view of the sub- 
 ject ; but it is one from which the disabused ra- 
 tional imderstanding turns away with honest 
 disgust. The true philosopher is reverent and 
 silent in the presence of the Incomprehensi- 
 ble. The green world of sense and knowledge 
 where he finds himself placed furnishes em- 
 ployment to all his faculties. He does not deny 
 supernal spheres : he only refuses to make or to 
 
Through Home On. 307 
 
 bow down to assertions for which he sees no suf- 
 ficient foundation. Here he finds the appropri- 
 ate sphere of his activity : of what is beyond he 
 confesses himself ignorant. The supernatnralist 
 of course knows no more of the beyond than he, 
 but is afflicted with what Socrates called the 
 worst kind of ignorance : the conceit of knowing 
 what one does not know. Prate as men may, 
 the Mystery is there : as deep as ever when the 
 Bible is opened; as dark as ever when the 
 Church has lighted her wax candles. 
 
308 Through Eome On, 
 
 ODD THEODICY. 
 
 Mr. James Fitzjames Stephen^, who is not 
 only a lawyer of standing, but a shrewd and lively 
 writer on themes outside of his profession, has 
 produced a book called " Liberty, Equality, Fra- 
 ternity"; which sets forth a variety of theism 
 that will hardly tend to soothe the troubled 
 minds of the church people. I think I correctly 
 characterised the theological part of the book 
 when I spoke of it the other day to Prof. New- 
 man as "odd theodicy." Odd though it be, Mr. 
 Stephen pleads for it with much apparent earnest- 
 ness, and does not seem to have any suspicion 
 that it presents to us a " religion of inhumanity," 
 as it has been called by one of his critics. Mr. 
 Stephen, while inferring his God from a con- 
 templation of the universe, is ingenuous enough 
 to admit that " the Author of such a world " 
 cannot be truly or probably asserted to be a 
 purely benevolent being. He does not believe 
 that God is good, in the ordinary acceptation of 
 the word in relation to mankind. " The general 
 constitution of things," including pain, and what 
 
Through Rome On. 309 
 
 we call wrong, he thinks " is neither just nor un- 
 just, right nor wrong. It simply is. It affects 
 the question of the benevolence, not the question 
 of the justice, of its author. The idea of justice 
 and right is subsequent to the idea of law'', &c. 
 Mr. Stephen here makes what is perhaps a good 
 defence of a non-intelligent impersonal God ; but 
 it does not seem to me to avail for the Being he 
 has described on page 311 (of the American edi- 
 tion) as possessing mind and will, and so person- 
 ality, and as having called sentient creatures into 
 existence. These creatures, Mr. Stephen thinks, 
 can have no rights before God, " not even the 
 right of existence"; and God cannot violate jus- 
 tice in regard to them. The expression "not 
 even the right of existence" seems to be em- 
 ployed by this writer to strengthen his assertion 
 that "as against God or fate, whichever you 
 please, men have no rights at all"; as implying 
 that the right of existence is the first and clearest 
 of rights if there be any at all; and that if crea- 
 tures have not this primal 'right, they can of 
 course have no other right. I remark on this, 
 I. That it makes an important difference in the 
 argument whether "you please" to suppose a 
 blind "fate" or an intelligent "God" as the 
 source of "the general constitution of things": 
 and II. That "the right of existence" would 
 seem to be precisely the one which the creature 
 
310 Through Rome On. 
 
 could not have against God ; but III. That, 
 given existence, as in the actual order, derived 
 from an intelligent God, there immediately arises 
 the distinct and indefeasible right to immunity 
 from pain ; for pain in the creature, inflicted or 
 allowed by the Creator, is cruelty, is injustice, is 
 wrong, according to the nature of things, of which 
 we find the perception within us, and which may 
 be called the common-law of the case, the^*w5 
 whose violation is injustice. 
 
Through Rome On. 311 
 
 THE SPECTATOR ON THE BELFAST LECTURE. 
 
 When the London Sjpectator pronounces that 
 "the * Unknown and the Unknowable' is dis- 
 covered, and is matter," it should, I take it, be 
 understood to be uttering a dictum of its own, 
 and not one delivered by Professor Tyndall. 
 That Matter (including Force) contains the limits 
 of man's faculty of knowledge, and that it is un- 
 philosophical to theorise about any existence, 
 knowable or unknowable, beyond Matter, are no 
 doubt just inferences from data supplied by the 
 Professor; but these inferences and these data 
 do not pretend to bring us to any discovery of 
 Absolute Existence, as the Spectator would fain 
 have its readers understand from its blazonry of 
 the definite article and capitals and quotation 
 marks, when it says — "^Ae 'Unknown and the 
 Unknowable' is discovered." It concludes, it 
 says, from the entire tone of the lecture, that 
 Professor Tyndall is of opinion that Matter is 
 self-existent. A fairer conclusion, I think, would 
 be, that the Professor has no opinion whatever 
 as to how Matter exists. " Any cause for matter 
 
312 Through Rome On. 
 
 is an inference, a guess, which no scientific man 
 is warranted [in] making." Certainly. A cause 
 is something which observation shows us to have 
 invariably preceded something else which we 
 call its effect. I^ow as observation does not and 
 can not show us anything preceding Matter, it is 
 unphilosophical to talk about a cause here, and 
 a misapplication of the term " which no scientific 
 man is warranted [in] making." The Professor 
 discerns in Matter " the promise and potency of 
 every form and quality of life." I think that 
 every intelligent and unshackled mind examining 
 the subject must discern the same thing. The 
 potentialities of Matter are to the human mind 
 certainly exhaustless. It is supererogation and 
 folly to limit those potentialities, and invent the 
 abstraction of an immaterial Force to supply the 
 deficiency. The Spectator thinks that Professor 
 Tyndall's kind of Matter does not " explain the 
 visible phenomena." It does not make us om- 
 niscient, certainly. It does, however, help us to 
 a partial explanation, and one that is satisfactory 
 as far as it goes. It does not explain " the con- 
 sciousness of free will," complains the Spectator. 
 I venture to think that the consciousness of free 
 will is as explicable by it as the consciousness 
 that the earth is stationary. We of to-day have 
 an advantage over the men of old in a knowledge 
 of astronomy and natural philosophy which cor- 
 
Through Borne On. 313 
 
 rects our seeming " consciousness " that the earth 
 does not move ; and we know that it is not a 
 consciousness of a fact which is no fact, but an 
 erroneous construction of the evidence yielded 
 by the senses, which misleads uninstructed minds 
 still on the subject of the earth's motion. In 
 like manner, we are blessed now with a biology, 
 a psychology, a phreno physiology, and a mental 
 philosophy, which, even while the S])ectator 
 writes, and the churches are rolling their thunder 
 against the profane inroads of science on their 
 sacred ground, are- helping us to a more and 
 more searching analysis of " the consciousness of 
 free will," and showing that whatever will is, 
 and in whatever qualified sense freedom may be 
 predicated of it, absolute free will, that is, un- 
 caused, self-determining will, has no more real 
 existence than uncaused brain or uncaused human 
 being. 
 
314 Through Borne On. 
 
 DR. DEWEY'S THEISM. 
 
 Dr. Dewey, in his remarks upon Mr. Mor- 
 ley's Voltaire, which I find in the Liberal Chris- 
 tian of Dec. 13, takes the ground now usually 
 occupied by those Liberals who are yet support- 
 ers of a definite theism. He says, — " The argu- 
 ment is, that suffering in this world disproves the 
 doctrine of the divine goodness ; and fairly car- 
 ried out it would be, that the least suffering dis- 
 proves it." This argument, stated somewhat 
 more amply than Dr. Dewey has here put it, 
 forms indeed one strong position taken by ad- 
 vanced Liberals against the doctrine of the 
 theists. The existence of Evil, comprehending 
 physical and moral suffering, and moral wrong 
 of all sorts besides, constitutes a strong presump- 
 tion against the view that there is an underived 
 Being, absolute in goodness and wisdom and 
 power, the creator and governor of the universe. 
 Of course, in strict logic, the least bit of Evil 
 taken separately sustains the presumption as 
 really as all Evil considered in its totality. I 
 confess, with due respect for Dr. Dewey and the 
 
Through Rome On, 315 
 
 many able and good men who hold with him, 
 the presmnption seems to me too strong to be 
 overthrown by anything they have hitherto been 
 able to bring ao-ainst it. Of course there can be 
 no demonstration on either side ; and if the ex- 
 istence and character of a First Cause were a 
 legitimate subject for discussion at all, — if we 
 did not perceive in the very naming of the sub- 
 ject that it absolutely precluded the possibility 
 of any sure step or rational conclusion of knowl- 
 edge, — it could only be at the best a feeble 
 attempt at balancing probabilities. But Dr. 
 Dewey and other advocates of definite theism, as 
 stated above, have a way of shutting their e^^es 
 to this fact and setting up their own assumption 
 and referring to it throughout the argument, as 
 if it were even something more, instead of less,, 
 than a probability; as if it were something 
 proved, or something in the nature of a moral 
 certainty. "I stand for pure logic", says the 
 Doctor in the paper before me: "I stand upon 
 the ground of naked truth ", &c. These be brave 
 words ; but the immediate sequel shows how far 
 they are from describing their writer's real posi- 
 tion, which is not at all the ground of " pure 
 logic" and "naked truth", but simply wish, 
 preference, predetermination. In the very next 
 sentence he goes on : " If there is no valid evi- 
 dence for a good First Cause and for immortal 
 
316 Through Rome On. 
 
 life, I will go down into darkness and despair, 
 and will die sincere and brave, if I must die in 
 misery." This is very plain. He declares that 
 if the argument goes against him, he will em- 
 brace desperation and death rather than admit 
 the conclusion that offends him. This is not the 
 language of a pure seeker of truth : rather is it 
 that of a man of prejudice, wedded to his own 
 darling opinion ; anxious indeed that that should 
 be made out to be true, but determined to cling 
 to it still if at last " no valid evidence " remain 
 to support it. It will be seen that Dr. Dewey 
 takes occasion to attach to his doctrine of deity 
 another favourite dogma, that of immortal life. 
 !No doubt he feels the futility of relying on logic 
 to establish these traditions, which have always 
 made their appeal to imagination and excited 
 feeling from the judgment of the understanding. 
 Grant certain premises of the theologian, and he 
 can then argue out some at least of his conclu- 
 fiions in a very logical manner ; but the logic is 
 always born of the concession; the premises 
 themselves disdain logic. Mr. Leconte, in his 
 recent lectures to prove the personality of the 
 First Cause, affirms for a starting-point, that the- 
 ism neither requires nor admits of proof. Dr. 
 Dewey himself has said something similar to 
 this, though I cannot now refer to his precise 
 words, nor to the work in which they occur. 
 
 I 
 
Through Rome On, 317 
 
 Tlie common reply of theists to the argument 
 from the existence of evil, that evil exists be- 
 cause the present order of the universe is impos- 
 sible without it, is no answer at all. It is a mere 
 begging of the question. Either God was obliged 
 to create the present order of the universe, or he 
 was not obliged to create it. If he was obliged, 
 then he is not the Absolute Being they affirm, 
 and, so far as they and their postulate are con- 
 cerned, the argument is at an end here. If, on 
 the other hand, he w^as not obliged (and nearly 
 all theists will say he was not), then it follows 
 that he has chosen to adopt a plan fraught with 
 evil ; and, as the free choice of evil is in contra- 
 diction to goodness, he is therefore not the per- 
 fectly Good Being they affirm. Dr. Dewey re- 
 peats the stock plea " that no conceivable world 
 of free, progressive, moral agency could be made 
 without exposure to difficulty, interference, col- 
 lision and pain. Suffering is a necessary element 
 in the problem of freely-wrought moral improve- 
 ment." The terms " difficulty ", " collision ", &c. 
 are here employed sophistically to avoid the 
 mention of moral wrong, commonly called wick- 
 edness^ which as well as suffering goes to make 
 np the Evil that constitutes so strong an argu- 
 ment against the assumption of the theists. 
 These bad elements are necessary, we are told, 
 to "the problem of freely-wrought moral im- 
 
818 Through Rome On. 
 
 provement." But why "the problem" at all? 
 What is this " freely- wrought moral improve- 
 ment " that Dr. Dewey talks about ? Why does 
 it take the monstrous shape of a problem— a 
 rolled-up ball, that is— in which the hand of 
 Deity itself has knotted Good and Bad together, 
 60 that both are equally divine ? A purely- good 
 world alone can be worthy of a jjurely-good God. 
 A mixed world, such as ours is, if it point to any 
 God at all, must point to a mixed God. This 
 consideration led men long ages ago to conceive 
 of two coexistent Gods, a good God and an evil 
 God ; and to attribute the existing order of 
 things to the two respectively. The theists of 
 to-day, represented by Dr. Dewey, reject this 
 dual conception, and, as it seems to me most 
 unreasonably, insist on inferring one Supreme 
 God of perfect benevolence, wisdom, and power, 
 from a view of the physical and moral universe. 
 The fundamental mistake, I think, is in attempt- 
 ing an inference where from the nature of the 
 case no inference can legitimately be drawn. The 
 universe indeed abounds in facts from which we 
 may properly draw inferences within its own 
 order ; but of anything outside of this order it 
 gives us no intimation whatever. There may be 
 a God external to the universe ; but that there 
 is such a God is no logical inference from the 
 universe. When I say that there may be this 
 
Through Borne On. 319 
 
 external God, I of course mean no more than 
 that I can show or know nothing to the contrary. 
 To my mind, there is a shocking irreverence in 
 the common babbling on this theme. And what 
 is all the talk about trinity and unity and person- 
 ality of God but babbling % What is all ecclesi- 
 astical tradition on the subject but raving and, 
 as Coleridge said of Calvinism, superfetation of 
 blasphemy ? Following up its cardinal error 
 of undertaking an inference without suitable 
 grounds. Theism is generally found involving 
 itself next in the entanglements of the Free-Will 
 notion ; setting up in man himself a second First- 
 Cause as a foil to the first. Out of this most un- 
 philosophical notion proceeds the theory of the 
 "world of free progressive moral agency" spoken 
 of by Dr. Dewey ; the theory of that impossible 
 free-will virtue which is so highly rated by the 
 Deity that to allow of its production he sanc- 
 tioned the maxim the end justifies the means, 
 by creating a mundane order to which wicked- 
 ness and undeserved suffering belong as neces- 
 sary incidents. Though Dr. Dewey is free from 
 one special difficulty under which Orthodox 
 Christian theists labour at this point, viz. : the 
 having to reconcile free-will virtue with effica- 
 cious Divine grace and justification by faith ; and 
 though his Deity is altogether a less repulsive 
 abstraction than theirs ; yet is he not less than 
 
320 Through Borne On. 
 
 they under the hoary delusion which degrades 
 by theologising the moral conception of the uni- 
 verse, makes God out of man, sees in man a 
 First Cause in the act of willing, and proclaims 
 for each human worm of the dust the astounding 
 fate of sempiternity. 
 
 Towards the close of his remarks in the Lib- 
 eral Christian^ Dr. Dewey admits that "the 
 ideas of personality, of intelligence, of goodness, 
 in the First Cause, are to be received with ex- 
 treme caution, and with the distinct concession 
 that we can know nothing of the mode of their 
 existence or of their working." These words in- 
 dicate that the difference between him and the 
 people he calls atheists is, that while he " with 
 extreme caution " rehabilitates the Personal God 
 of theology, and passionately exclaims against all 
 who hold back from the religious worship of ab- 
 stractions, they — the atheists — ^loving as much as 
 he the beauty of holiness, yearning as strongly as 
 he for divine sympathy and help, wishing as 
 heartily as he that the highest ideals might be 
 realised, the crooked ways made straight, and 
 justice and goodness bring about a Heaven for 
 all sentient beings, are obliged in honesty to 
 avow that the deus ex machina he proclaims so 
 loudly is not only unproved, but, if we jump #11 
 
Through Hume On. 321 
 
 the logic of the case and assume his existence, is 
 essentially a distinct being from the First Cause, 
 the Infinite ; as must be any being that man is 
 capable of imagining. I do not say there is no 
 imaginable God; but I say the Infinite is not 
 imaginable. When Dr. Dewey speaks of '' the 
 two parties on this question," and of one of them 
 ascribing this universe " to nothing," he must be 
 held to a strict account of terms. Does he mean 
 that the party he objects to holds that this uni- 
 verse came at some period out of nothing ? which 
 would be a positive doctrine of origin ; or does 
 he mean that the party refuses to assign any ori- 
 gin whatever for the universe ; declares that its 
 beginning is as inscrutable as its end ; that as to 
 any origin or outside to it, that is absolutely un- 
 searchable and even inconceivable ? [The word 
 " universe " is here of course used in its very 
 widest possible sense, including worlds, systems, 
 — in short, All Nature.] If he supposes himself 
 in conflict with persons who hold that there was 
 a point in time or eternity when there was noth- 
 ing, and that out of that nothing the universe 
 came into existence, he is probably fighting a 
 phantom of his own imagination : at least I know 
 of no one now-a-days who maintains that Some- 
 thing was made out of Nothing, except theists, 
 and Dr. Dewey is not contending against theists. 
 But when he speaks of ascribing the universe to 
 
322 Through Borne On. 
 
 nothing, lie probably means the refusal to assign 
 any specific origin to the universe. This he con- 
 siders not so good in logic as to suppose "a 
 principle which, in whatever respects unknown, 
 must be conceived of as embracing in it an in- 
 finite wisdom and goodness." But how can logic 
 carry us outside of the universe anyhow % Logic 
 is an exercise of the human mind within its own 
 order, which is the order of nature, the universe. 
 If the supposed ^Hmor6?zVm be outside of this 
 order, it is quite beyond the cognisance of the 
 human mind, and^so no subject of logic what- 
 ever. As a human idea, the prirriordium is 
 within the order of the universe, and so an ens 
 rationis : let logic deal with it in this light, and 
 v/hat do we find ? The supposed "principle", if 
 real, must be a principle in the universe. Dr. 
 Dewey does not give us any logical process 
 which fairly results in such a principle as its 
 conclusion. He w^ould infer an uncreated cre- 
 ative principle from the existence of the universe : 
 not a sound inference ; since we know no more 
 of uncreated creative principle than of uncreated 
 universe. Next, he would infer " infinite wis- 
 dom and goodness" in the originating principle 
 from the aspect of the universe, which he calls 
 "full of beneficence and intelligence": unsound 
 again, and in the very premiss. The aspect of 
 the universe is not what he says it is. It is not 
 
Through Borne On. . 323 
 
 ^'full of beneficence and intelligence " ; but has 
 wide room for and actually displays a vast extent 
 of tlie opposite qualities. Plague, pestilence and 
 famine, battle, murder, pain, cruel t}", triumphant 
 injustice, affliction of the innocent, ignorance, 
 folly, wrong of all sorts, abound in that little 
 spot of the nni verse with which we are acquainted. 
 If a principle of Goodness be necessary to ac- 
 count for goodness in the universe, then a prin- 
 ciple of Badness must be necessary to account 
 for badness in the universe. If the unknown 
 principle " must be conceived of as embracing 
 in it an infinite wisdom and goodness" when we 
 look on the fair side of the universe, must it not 
 in equal strictness of logic " be conceived of as 
 embracing in it an infinite " unwisdom and bad- 
 ness when we look on the foul side ? Dr. 
 Dewey's " little text " does not answer the argu- 
 ment at all. " The plan of suffering in the sys- 
 tem " is not vindicated, regarded as the intelli- 
 gent " plan *' of an All-powerful Personal Being; 
 but a calm view of man as he is, and of the uni- 
 verse in relation to all its sentient parts, is over- 
 whelmingly against the doctrine of theism in all 
 its Christian phases at least. It may be worth 
 while here to refer to the recently promulgated 
 opinion of Mr. James Fitzjames Stephen ; who 
 in his book entitled " Liberty, Equality, Frater- 
 Dity ", declares his belief in a Deity as the author 
 
324: ■ Through Rome On, 
 
 of tlie universe, but gives up tlie attribute of 
 goodness as commonly understood. 
 
 ^' But," sa3's Dr. Dewej, " most of those who 
 call in question all past reasonings concerning 
 God still admit that there is a God — admit, that 
 is to say, that there is a First Cause." Are there 
 any, I would ask Dr. Dewey, who do " call in 
 question all past reasonings concerning God"? 
 The Doctor seems quietly to assume that " all 
 past reasonings " have been on his side ; but in 
 truth, his theism has always been matter of dis- 
 pute among reasoners, and though the scientific 
 men of our day present the latest phase of the 
 argument, reinforced with fresh illustration, and 
 adapted to a more widely enlightened popular 
 intelligence, yet it is the old, old argument still. 
 Philosophy neither affirms nor denies a First 
 Cause. Cause is a term of succession. Priority 
 and invariableness of antecedence are the neces- 
 sary elements which combine in the notion of a 
 cause. Ignorance has dabbled in prosopopoeia 
 and invented gods many and lords many ; but 
 Philosophy has never yet been able to trace any- 
 thing t© a god, much less to a First God. The 
 pretence of doing so is grossly unphilosophical. 
 "Where we can no longer follow the order of se- 
 quences the term causes has no longer signifi- 
 cance. If when we have reached the bounds of 
 the universe our inclination lead us to guess at 
 
Through Rome On, 325 
 
 sometliing beyond, tliat is, properly speaking, no 
 cause of the universe : it is not something which 
 we have observed to be invariably followed by 
 the production of a universe : it is only an ab- 
 straction which we conceive of as next to the 
 universe. We may have an endless series of 
 such abstractions, but no one of them can be, 
 philosophically speaking, a cause : how, then, is 
 it possible to reach a First Cause in the Un- 
 knowable % " No one of the English scientists 
 denies it," says Dr. Dewey. Probably not ; for 
 the English scientists remember the limits of the 
 human mind, and refrain from dogmatising on 
 the subject. As to Comte and Strauss, whom 
 the Doctor also refers to : the former's fanciful 
 " Eeligion of Humanity" does not pretend to 
 transcend the universe ; and Strauss expressly 
 declares that logical thinking can never carry us 
 outside of this Cosmos. "If," says the great 
 German, " everything in the universe has been 
 caused by something else, and so on, ad infini- 
 tum^ what we finally reach is not the conception 
 of a Cause of which the Cosmos is an effect, but 
 of a Substance of which individual cosmical phe- 
 nomena are but the accidents. We reach not a 
 deity ^ but a self-centred Cosmos." 
 
326 Through Borne On, 
 
 EXCLUSIVE SALVATION. 
 
 I HAD a talk last nisrlit with "W"- 
 
 on Exclusive Salvation. Like many other Cath- 
 olics, he thinks it reconcilable with the faith of 
 the Church to believe in the salvation of Protest- 
 ants. Yet he seems to hold that atheists must 
 be damned. Now if he had any friends among 
 atheists, as he has among Protestants, his bene- 
 volence, and unconsciously his sense of justice, 
 would, I have no doubt, cause him to adulterate 
 his creed with a yet larger mingling of humanity, 
 BO as to admit atheists themselves within the pale 
 of a possible salvation. He knows many Protest- 
 ants who are obviously as upright and deserving 
 as the best of his Catholic acquaintances; his 
 instinct of right, as well as his benevolence, for- 
 bids him to believe that these good Protestants 
 will be lost forever because they have not the 
 Catholic faith ; and so he takes refuge in the 
 flimsy notion, only just short of formal heresy, 
 that there may be sincere Protestants who are 
 invincibly ignorant of the true faith, and who 
 would gladly embrace it if they could know it ; 
 
Through Borne, On, 327 
 
 and who consequently may be saved withoi 
 having actually held it in this world. It ma} 
 well be doubted that this notion, which is very 
 popular with American Catholics at the present 
 day, has ever been seriously entertained for 
 themselves by any considerable number of sound 
 Catholic divines. That multitudes of the laity 
 comfort their hearts with it, and fondly conceit 
 that they have by means of it purged their doc- 
 trine of imcharitableness, there can be no doubt 
 whatever. But in a philosophic view, when the 
 intellect is not overbalanced by the moral senti- 
 ments or the feelings, the fallacy of the notion, 
 from the stand-point of Catholic doctrine, is 
 the clearest thing possible. In the first place, it 
 is a great mistake to suppose, as many do, that 
 the Church teaches this notion. The Church 
 teaches no such thing. She declares explicitly 
 that out of her pale is no salvation. That she 
 permits such of her children as can avail them- 
 selves of the comfort of this specious notion of 
 exceptional salvation to do so ; that individuals 
 among her clergy may without public rebuke 
 preach and publish it as confidently as if it were 
 Catholic doctrine ; is very true. The Church is 
 wise in her day and generation. She is aware 
 that the speculation in question tends to soothe 
 anxious minds within the fold, and to conciliate 
 outsiders. So, never committing herself to it, 
 
328 Through Eome On. 
 
 she tolerates it and lets it be. This is very dif- 
 ferent from affirming it. If there were a similar 
 usefulness in believing that two and two make 
 live, or that of contraries both may be true, she 
 would display a like complaisance in permitting 
 it to her children ; for she is the guardian only 
 of the faith, and not of logic or mathematics. 
 He is a poor reason er who, accepting the Cath- 
 olic doctrine, holds the salvation of Protestants ; 
 but his error is not immediately an error against 
 faith, and so the Church is not called upon to 
 condemn it. This, liowever, is certain : it is not 
 lier teaching. In the second place, the notion 
 is, in itself considered, a very flimsy conceit, as 
 I have before intimated. I risk nothing in assert- 
 ing that a Protestant invincibly ignorant of the 
 Catholic religion is an impossible abstraction. 
 Such a being may be dreamed of, may be imag- 
 ined by a tender-hearted Catholic, but bas no ex- 
 istence in the world of realities. The most 
 ignorant know or may know this religion which 
 the Church declares to be "before all things 
 necessary to salvation." It is diffused through- 
 out the world, preached and known everywhere; . 
 and if at the present day any man or woman of 
 ordinary intelligence rejects it, the fact of such 
 rejection is, according to the most approved the- 
 ologians, evidence in the particular case that the 
 soul is not lit for the grace of faith, and so not 
 
Through Rome On. 329 
 
 fit for heaven. It is of inspiration, that they that 
 seek shall find ; and St. Liguori, a standard au- 
 thority, declares that if the heretic would seek it, 
 '' God would without doubt pour upon him His 
 light concerning the true religion {Deus^ absque 
 dubio, infunderet in ilium lumen suum de vera 
 religione\P Moreover: it has been constantly- 
 held in the Catholic Church, that salvation is 
 extremely difficult of attainment by Christians in 
 possession of all the helps and means of grace 
 afforded by the sacramental institutions and of- 
 fices of their religion. The infallible word itself 
 makes the fearful revelation that of the many 
 that are called, few are chosen. St. Kemigius 
 expressly says, that few adult Christians are 
 saved. Now if salvation is so doubtful and rare 
 in the church, and with all the precious helps 
 that God himself lias supernaturally provided, 
 what must it be out of the fold, and without 
 those inestimable advantages % Even if the want 
 of the true faith could be pardoned to a Protest- 
 ant, and his human qualities of honesty and sin- 
 cerity be generally accepted in place of the super- 
 natural life the Catholic is required to live, is it 
 conceivable that he should escape those mortal 
 sins which, without the want of the faitli, hinder 
 and preclude salvation among Catholics ? If the 
 Catholic can hardly by possibility escape damna- 
 tion, is it not in the nature of a moral certainty 
 
330 Through Rome On. 
 
 that the Protestant must be lost ? The Protest- 
 ant who should be saved would have been an an- 
 gelic being ; and that God should have withheld 
 from this willing and immaculate soul the grace 
 of the true faith, and suffered all its gooduess to 
 redound to the credit of heresy and human na- 
 ture, is surely not quite in accordance with what 
 the Church unequivocally teaches and Catholics 
 are bound to believe. And what force or mean- 
 ing is there in the unvarying declaration of the 
 Church that her faith is necessary to salvation, 
 if men may be saved through their sincerity and 
 honesty without it ? And wlierein lies the in- 
 comparable excellence of being a Catholic, if hu- 
 man virtue outside of the church is so efficacious ? 
 
 W S is obliged to hold the necessity of 
 
 baptism, and that the unbaptised Protestant is 
 hopelessly excluded from heaven : but if baptism 
 is essential, wh^^ not the faith % If it is not in- 
 consistent with the Divine attributes to exclude 
 a man from above for what would appear to us 
 the accident of his being unbaptised, why should 
 it bo inconsistent with those attributes to exclude 
 him for the want of the true faith ? Ah ! my 
 amiable friend is not aware of the real difficulty 
 in the case ; and I could do no more than hint it 
 to him in our conversation, for fear of bringing 
 a wasp's nest about my ears. No mind that has 
 a fair proportion of both intelligence and bene- 
 
Through Borne On. 331 
 
 volence can accept in all its monstrous fulness the 
 doctrine of Everlasting Damnation. If this doc- 
 trine as held among Protestants could be true, 
 there would be no incredibleness or absurdity in 
 any part of the Catholic system ; no more in Ex- 
 clusive Salvation than in any other article ; for 
 then our healthy instincts of right and wrong, 
 truth and falsehood, would not be trustworthy : 
 reason might be unreason, love hate, and " mys- 
 tery" a cover for the wildest moral perversions. 
 The way that men deal with it manifests what it 
 is. Other dogmas that are simply absurd are 
 swallowed without difficulty ; but to get this 
 down, we are obliged to modify it for ourselves, 
 accepting it generally in a technical sense, but 
 making it of no effect in familiar cases. The 
 Protestant believes in the damnation of strangers, 
 but not of his acquaintances : the Catholic bows 
 to the Church's dictum that there is no salvation 
 for heretics ; but makes an exception in favour 
 of his own comrades and friends, whom he sup- 
 poses to be "invincibly ignorant," never mind 
 how intelligent and thoughtful they are. Un- 
 fortunately for my peace of mind, at one time, I 
 could not help seeing that such a course is only 
 an evasion, a begging of the question, a blinking 
 of the true issue from beo^inninp; to end. It was 
 obvious to me as a Catholic, I. That the Church 
 does not assert the existence of any single case of 
 
332 Through Rome On. 
 
 "invincible ignorance" of the true faith, past, 
 present, or to come : 11. That she is very far 
 from saying that such "invincible ignorance", if 
 there were any such case, would enable a man 
 to get to heaven ; since she assures us that mul- 
 titudes in her bosom are every day losing their 
 souls through other causes than the rejection of 
 the faith ; and since, according to the uncensured 
 opinion of some of her ablest theologians, this 
 very ignorance might be imputed to men for sin 
 by God who sent Pharaoh's hardness of heart,^ 
 and whom the scripture speaks of as sending in 
 other cases "strong delusion" among men, "that 
 they might be damned."^ In fine, I perceived 
 and felt, that upon Catholic (I may add, and 
 Evangelical) principles, the prospect of a future 
 life is replete with a horrible uncertainty ; that 
 salvation is most truly a subject for fear and 
 trembling, as the Apostle describes it f and this, 
 whether we believe in the necessary condemna- 
 tion of heretics or not. It was in vain that I said 
 to myself that it was my sole concern to secure 
 my own salvation, and that I should leave all 
 such inscrutable matters alone. I was a man, I 
 must take my lot with my brethren ; and indeed, 
 if they were lost with all the goodness I knew 
 them to possess, why not I too — why not anything ? 
 
 1 Ex. xiv. 4, 8, 17. 2 II Tliess. ii. 11, 13. ^ p^i. n. 12. 
 
Through Borne On. 333 
 
 THE CHRISTIAK CONTROVERSY. 
 
 [TMs Essay appeared, witli many misprints, in The Radical of 
 October 18T1.] 
 
 XJndeklying every religion that has set up a 
 cultus or asserted an authority among men, may 
 be found the postulate of a great Will-Power 
 outside of and dominating nature; and, growing 
 out of this, the further assumption of an Infallible 
 Oracle on earth to teach men religious truth. 
 
 Until man obtains a true perception of the 
 limit of his own faculties, he naturally strains 
 after the impossible, in speculation as in action. 
 To the early man, with unchastened blood, slen- 
 der experience, and no science, such a perception 
 was clearly out of the question ; and with us who 
 live to-day, heirs of all the ages, the application 
 of it as a curb for the headstrong steed Imagina- 
 tion remains a most difficult and doubtful per- 
 formance. It is no wonder then if, not content 
 with learning the secrets of earth and stars, and 
 bringing the speech of day and the wisdom of 
 night to bear more and more on the natural phe- 
 nomena which are his only material of knowl- 
 
33^ Through Rome On. 
 
 edge, man still aims to overtop tlio universe, 
 whose " flaming wall " serves but to vex his spirit 
 with a sense of restraint. The cognoscible, 
 with all its breadth and grandeur, is too small a 
 realm to hold him in. Above and beyond, he 
 discerns an ineffable glory, wherein his own attri- 
 butes are enthroned in awful majesty. Then 
 man adores his God, the Creator of the universe ; 
 and as, for man, there could be no God without 
 man himself, so by a necessary process human 
 destiny becomes a prime concern of the Divine 
 activity. Though unconscious of the identity of 
 subject and object, man is not able to separate 
 them in such a way as to conceive of God as in- 
 different to humanity. God cares for what man 
 thinks and does and says; and man likewise is 
 interested in the thought and action of Deity, 
 and expects some word to come down to him 
 concerning them. And so, the w^ord of God 
 descends from the skies, and man has a super- 
 natural revelation. 
 
 Now to be good and to do good is the con- 
 scious duty of man by virtue of his original con- 
 stitution, which can dispense with any external 
 revelation so far as that is concerned. The busi- 
 ness of revelation is to enlighten man as to some- 
 thing over and above goodness, to add some 
 knowledge of supersensible facts and relations to 
 the teachings of his own nature. This something 
 
Through Home On. 335 
 
 which is more than goodness, this knowledge 
 which could not be reached by unassisted human 
 nature, is to be propounded by oracular authority 
 and received by faith supplanting reason. 
 
 These prolegomena furnish us with a begin- 
 ning for the Natural History of Religion,— a 
 work beyond the ambition of the pen which is 
 here directed to the much humbler task of setting 
 forth a few reflections on some of those unfold- 
 ings of the religious principle with which we are 
 most familiar, and of pointing out how the laws 
 of mind appear and reappear amid the varying 
 lights and shadows which a view of Christianity 
 presents. There has probably never been any 
 other religion presenting so admirable a com- 
 bination of spirituality and carnality as this 
 Christianity of ours. To this cause chiefly may 
 be attributed its great success in the world. 
 The most characteristic working of the Christian 
 idea is displayed in Roman Catholicism. It tol- 
 erates no idolatry besides its own. It hates gross 
 paganism and wars against it to the death. But 
 it loves not that lofty flight of the soul in which, 
 soaring away from all idols, she loses herself in 
 the supernal spheres. The unreligious spiritual- 
 ist,* with a reverence so profound that he cannot 
 
 ' The word spintualist is used here not in the present 
 popular sense of spiritist, or ghost-hunter, but in the legi- 
 timate sense in which it is the correlative of materialist. 
 
336 Through Rome On. 
 
 call God a person; the rationalist, who, not re- 
 jecting the personality, denies the alleged con- 
 versations of Deity with man ; the Unitarian, 
 who, admitting personal divine communications, 
 shrinks from incarnating the Supreme; the Evan- 
 gelical Protestant, who adores not only a person 
 but a man : these are all anathema to the Cath- 
 olic ; whose more religious faith sees the personal 
 Father in heaven, converses with the God-man 
 Christ on earth, and swallows the same being in 
 the sacrament of the altar. 
 
 Christians have not been behind other reli- 
 gionists in asserting an Oracle or teacher of reve- 
 lation among men. Their conflicting theories on 
 this subject are well worthy of an attentive ex- 
 amination from our present point of view. They 
 are, briefly, three in number ; for there is proba- 
 bly no Christian modification of the Rule of 
 Faith which may not be brought under one or 
 another of the following divisions : first. Private 
 s Inspiration ; second, the Bible interpreted by 
 the judgment of each man for himself; third, a 
 Seer or Corporation, supernaturally commis- 
 sioned and illuminated to be the living Teacher 
 of all. Had Heaven indeed made a "revela- 
 tion " to man, it would of course have been the 
 same as to the same matters to all for whom it 
 was intended. One part of it could not have 
 been in opposition to another part ; for of con- 
 
TJiroxigK Rome On. 337 
 
 tradlctions only one can possibly be true, and 
 truth is of the essence of a di\dne revelation. 
 Again : such a revelation must have been adapt- 
 ed, in itself and in the mode of its delivery, to 
 the capacity of all to whom it was addressed. 
 An inaudible or unintelligible " word," whether 
 of God or man, can be no " revelation " at all. 
 The divine message must have been spoken 
 within men individually, or else declared in the 
 plainest terms to the multitude by external com- 
 munication adapted to the apprehension, the 
 grasping power, of all alike. These premises 
 have an important bearing on the claims of the 
 several theories among Christians as to the Rule 
 of Faith. 
 
 The first of these theories, private inspiration, 
 gives us the sect of Friends or Quakers ; a body 
 whose rare honour among Christians it is to be 
 free from bloodshed ; who seem nearest of all to 
 "the simplicity that is in Christ;" and whose 
 virtues deserve that they should always be men- 
 tioned with respect. Their doctrine of personal 
 illumination will not however stand the test of 
 examination. The question is here about an in- 
 fallible oracle to teach supernatural doctrine; 
 and overwhelming human experience crushes the 
 notion that would separate the Spirit of Truth 
 into many such oracles in many minds ; which 
 notion, besides, must ever lack the argumenta- 
 
338 Through Rome On. 
 
 tive basis of common ground for an appeal. 
 Quakers and others who hold this theory divide 
 in their doctrines as well as those Christians who 
 proclaim an external authority. The second 
 theory is asserted for the great body of Protest- 
 ants who hold to the Infallible Oracle. The 
 Bible is given by inspiration of God, and is there- 
 fore infallibly true in all its teachings, whatever 
 they conflict with. The divine revelation is to 
 be got by searching its pages, the words of which 
 are to be interpreted by each mind for itself. 
 This is the theory of Episcopalians, Presbyteri- 
 ans, Baptists, Methodists, and all besides who 
 are called Evangelical Protestants. It is the 
 theory also of Universalists, and is accepted by 
 Unitarians of the right wing. We say it is the 
 theory of these Christians : in practice, however, 
 it breaks down from the very beginning. It is 
 not tenable for a moment even, save on the huge 
 assumption that a certain book now in our pos- 
 session, which we call the Bible, is a literal com- 
 munication from God ; and taking this assump- 
 tion for granted, it is impossible to avoid seeing 
 the pains which Protestants take to prevent the 
 private interpretation of the Bible from being 
 really the Rule of Faith as they say it is. Most 
 of us know something of the machinery of Sun- 
 day-schools, and of the sectarian drilling that is 
 in vogue in the families of Protestants who are 
 
Through Borne On. 339 
 
 in earnest about their religion. The child of 
 Evangelical parents learns the Catechism, not 
 the Bible. He is instructed, not by the word of 
 God, but by the word of man ; — the word of his 
 elders at home, of his Sunday-school teacher, of 
 the pastor of his church. He reads the Bible no 
 doubt ; but it is with the note and comment of 
 his teachers ; and he is not allowed to find in the 
 sacred text any doctrine different from what they 
 tell him it contains. They have their own opin- 
 ions on the subject ; they embody those opinions 
 in what they consider a digest of Bible doctrine ; 
 and in this digest, the Catechism, they press and 
 mould the child's pliant mind into a certain shape 
 of doctrine, trusting that when he is old he will 
 not depart from it. And very commonly he can- 
 not depart from it at mature age, any more than 
 Chinese ladies can recover the right shape and 
 power of their feet which have been distorted in 
 their infancy. How idle it is to talk of the Bible 
 as the Bule of Faith ! This book could not have 
 been put into the hands of the people before the 
 two inventions of paper and printing. For many 
 centuries, only a few could possibly read it, fewer 
 still possibly understand it. There had to be 
 spiritual teachers standing between the people 
 and the alleged revelation, to tell the former 
 what the latter is. And how much better off are 
 we in this matter to-day ? Are not our religions 
 
340 Through Rome On. 
 
 still made for us by our fallible fellow-men, and 
 put on us witli our other baby-clothes when we 
 have no choice in the matter ? Who would ever 
 conceive of an obligation to keep Sunday, the 
 first day of the week, as a religious holiday, if he 
 took his Christianity from the Bible ? And how 
 should we ever know which of the ancient writ- 
 ings we are to call sacred, and which profane, if 
 the infallible Catholic Church, or the fallible 
 Protestant Church, did not kindly save us the 
 trouble of deciding for ourselves by forestalling 
 the question with its ijpse dixit f 
 
 This brings us to the third theory of the Rule 
 of Faith, viz., a Seer or Corporation, supernatu- 
 rally illuminated and commissioned to be the Liv- 
 ing Teacher of all. Clearly, man's only monitor 
 within is conscience; and conscience, though 
 competent to pronounce against the divinity of a 
 given proposition falling within the sphere of 
 morals, is without any miraculous touchstone to 
 try doctrines in metaphysics. If there be an in- 
 fallible oracle on earth to teach supernatural 
 doctrine, it must be external to man who is to be 
 taught. We have seen that the Bible is not and 
 cannot be such a teacher. It cannot establish its 
 own claim to inspiration and authority; it has 
 no voice of its own, but another must speak for 
 it if it is to be heard ; and by the necessity of the 
 case, when it is set up as an oracle, the attempt 
 
Through Rome On. 341 
 
 results inevitably in the substitution of some liv- 
 ing authority instead of it, as the real teacher. 
 An immediate book revelation supposes a pasi- 
 graphy and universal enlightenment ; neither of 
 which has ever been enjoyed by our race. More 
 than this, the pasigraphy would have to be free 
 from ambiguity and change, and the enlighten- 
 ment preternatural to say the least; for other- 
 wise the qualities of clearness, adaptedness, and 
 certainty, which we have found to be necessary 
 characteristics of the divine revelation, would be 
 absent. The Oracle must be accessible to all, 
 and its dixvinity must be a fact clearly attested to 
 all. These conditions are obviously not fulfilled 
 in the Bible. The original writings of which the 
 several parts of our Bible purport to be copies 
 have long been out of existence. The first copies 
 are also lost. The languages of the primitive 
 documents are absolutely sealed to the vast pro- 
 portion of Christians, and in many of their idioms 
 and connexions are full of obscurity to our most 
 accomplished scholars. What remain to us are 
 imperfect transcripts by very questionable hands, 
 and translations of these copies of copies, in 
 which nothing short of infallibility can distin- 
 guish between the genuine text and the glosses 
 of rabbinical and monkish annotators which are 
 mingled with it. The Scriptures refer in dififer- 
 ent places to other writings as of similar value 
 
342 Through Rome On. 
 
 and authority : what has become of them ? Can 
 the Word of God pass away and be lost ? We 
 have them not ; and there are various gospels 
 and epistles which we might bind up with those 
 we have in the Bible, since they are of like char- 
 acter and pretensions, but which we slight as 
 spurious or doubtful, because certain divines have 
 called them so : and we receive our Bible, at 
 last, on the authority of these confessedly fallible 
 divines and their disciples; thus making them, 
 instead of God, the vouchers for the Oracle. It 
 is an indisputable fact, moreover, that these guar- 
 antors not only may err, but do err, in what 
 they give us under the name of The Bible. In 
 considering what writings they shall include un- 
 der this head, and what reject, they are evidently 
 only a body of debaters, whose decision, in the 
 highest view we can take of it, can give us no 
 more than a probability ; and in making their 
 rendering of the writings into the vernacular 
 tongue, we find them dividing on several con- 
 flicting versions ; the one most widely accepted 
 among Protestants in Great Britain and America, 
 King James's Bible, as it is called, being proved 
 to contain numerous and glaring errors. There 
 is, then, no infallible Bible in existence; though 
 there are many erring bibles, which are regarded 
 by Christians as having come from heaven some- 
 how, as the shields in the Koman temple were 
 
Through Borne On. 343 
 
 regarded by the people as having fallen from the 
 skies. It is considered very wicked to question 
 the divinity of these bibles before the pubhc; 
 and thus rendered inviolable, they lie like Grand 
 Lamas in households and churches, and form a 
 shibboleth for pious lips abroad. But logically 
 and justly, they are no Rule at all. 
 
 The third theory, that of the Seer or Corpo- 
 ration, is much superior, in jpriina facie plausi- 
 bleness at least, to the others. Any system that 
 is to-be more than inert material, any that is to 
 exert a didactic sanction of its own, must appeal 
 to the principle of personal authority ; and there 
 is, correspondent to this need, a general tendency 
 in men's minds to accept a personal standard, 
 to follow leaders, to believe in some one here or 
 there as possessing an unction which raises him 
 above the rest and calls for homage and for faith. 
 It is written of the earliest Christians, the imme- 
 diate followers of Jesus himself, that this senti- 
 ment of dependence on him, their chosen master, 
 was expressed by one of them, Peter, in the 
 question and affirmation, — " Lord, to whom shall 
 we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life !" 
 "Whatever the theory of an organised philosophy 
 or religion, its authority is always, for the great 
 body of its adherents, of the personal kind. This 
 is openly confessed when the crowd follows one 
 man as a prophet. It is unconsciously manifest- 
 
344 Through Rome On. 
 
 ed, as we have seen in considering the Bible 
 question, wlien men gravitate from an ideal 
 standard to a real dependence on their fellow- 
 men as the keepers, witnesses, and expounders 
 of a revelation. Whatever may be fancied or 
 asserted on the subject, therefore, the real rule of 
 faith for Christians, as for all other active reli- 
 gionists, is personal teaching, embodying some 
 modification or other of the hierarchal principle : 
 from which it follows, that the theory of the Seer 
 or Corporation is the most logical and consistent 
 of the three views of the Rule of Faith which 
 we have brought together for discussion in this 
 paper. 
 
 There are no individual claims in our day 
 that need detain us long from an examination of 
 the corporate form of the Oracle. The greatest 
 of seers in modern times— Swedenborg— has been 
 dead a hundred years. He has no successor 
 among us, though the age spawns miracle- 
 workers and " mediums " with a fecundity that 
 is truly startling. The Book of Mormon has 
 been " found," like the Book of the Law of the 
 Old Testament (II Chron. xxxiv. 14); and the 
 system to which it belongs has had its temple, 
 its prophets, and its fresh revelations, for years; 
 but our readers will, we are sure, excuse us from 
 dwelling on its pretensions here. Such person- 
 ages as A. J. Davis and T. L. Harris have their 
 
Through Home On. 345 
 
 following certainly ; but tliey do not correspond 
 to what we are looking into under the designa- 
 tion of the Hule of Faith ; and the lesser lights 
 of Spiritism can rise no nearer to the level of our 
 inquiry than the divining damsel whose trade 
 Paul spoilt in his visit to Philippi. The theory 
 of the Oracle is a supernaturalist theory; and 
 any view of it which, does not rise above nature, 
 or which fails to connect it with Jesus Christ, is 
 excluded from the category within which we are 
 to look for the Christian Rule of Faith. The 
 path which we have followed from the outset 
 brings us now at last to the conception of a di- 
 vine Corporation as a depositary and interpreter 
 of the divine revelation. This Corporation is 
 called in Christian language the Church : and if 
 the reader has carefully held to the thread of our 
 argument from the beginning, he is by this time 
 prepared to see that the Church is the logical 
 sequel of the assertion that there is on earth an 
 Infallible Oracle to teach men Christian truth. 
 (The expression " Christian truth" is here used, 
 as the catena from Christ was spoken of a little 
 way back, because we are in this essay confined 
 to the Christian phases of religious develop- 
 ment.) And now, w^hat is the Church, in the 
 sense of our inquiry ? Not a mere society of 
 believers, banded together for sympathy, con- 
 venience, and brotherly edification. Not a tri- 
 
34:6 Through Royne On. 
 
 bunal of elders, to watch over morals and strive 
 prayerfully for the preservation of what they take 
 to be sound doctrine. I^ot even a bench of 
 bishops in lawn sleeves, through whose consecra- 
 ted hands may be supposed to descend a mysteri- 
 ous power of succession. Any one of these 
 bodies may be a very respectable church; but 
 The Chuech is different from and transcends 
 them all. 
 
 Supernaturalist Christianity demands, in the 
 first place, a divine miraculousness in Jesus 
 Christ, as the author and finisher of the faith; 
 and then, as Jesus was not to survive his genera- 
 tion on earth, a perpetuation and assurance of 
 his teaching by means of an Oracle connected 
 with him by identity of doctrine at least, and 
 founded either by him or by God from whom he 
 came. We have found the Church to be the 
 necessary embodiment of the oracular principle 
 at the root of Christianity. That this Corpora- 
 tion, the Church, must possess the discriminating 
 function of infallibility in order to discern and 
 set forth the supernatural revelation, is one of 
 the necessities of the case. The Oracle, to teach 
 us what we are to believe, must have a voice or 
 organ ; and this voice or organ must be oracular, 
 that is, of the nature of the Oracle: in other 
 words, it must possess an inherent divinity to 
 secure it against any error in the doctrine it is 
 
Through Borne On, 347 
 
 appointed to communicate to us from the super- 
 natural source. To say that it has such divinity 
 is to say that, as a doctrinal teacher, it is infal- 
 lible. Now then for the Infallible Church. As 
 there are many bibles, so there are many churches 
 also ; but among the latter, one towers so high 
 above all the rest, and is so exclusively in pos- 
 session of certain attributes which are essential 
 to the constitution of the spiritual Teacher we 
 are in search of^ that we are compelled to the 
 conclusion that if this one is not the Infallible 
 Church, a fortiori no other is. This conspicu- 
 ous Church of churches, on the maintenance of 
 whose claims to be the divinely-sent Teacher of 
 the nations the whole fabric of the Infallible 
 Oracle depends, is the Latin communion with 
 the Pope at its head, whose last great Council 
 has just been held at Home. No other Christian 
 body occupies the necessary place in history. 
 What is called Modern History dates from Jesus 
 Christ. As far back as its annals are clear, this 
 great Corporation stands out in bold relief as the 
 one central spiritual authority of Christendom; 
 its visible head, the Pope, acting as the repre- 
 sentative of Jesus Christ and recognised as such 
 by potentates and peoples and the very heathen 
 themselves. It is impossible to turn away from 
 this city upon a mountain, with all nations flow- 
 ing unto it, and accept any one of the recalcitrat- 
 
34:8 Through Borne On. 
 
 ing bodies of Christians for the Infallible-teaching 
 Church ; and to speak of them as being in their 
 severalty " parts of the one Church," is an un- 
 worthy evasion of the argument ; for there can 
 be DO conflicting parts of the one doctrinal au- 
 thority that is here in question. History shows 
 clearly the beginning of each of the would-be 
 rival communions, unless of one or two Oriental 
 sects whose claims to be the Infallible Teacher 
 it would be a waste of time here to plead against; 
 and when we have dated each, we find the Ko- 
 man Catholic establishment existing before it, 
 and looming back on those dim ages wherein 
 "primitive Christianity" plays at hide-and-seek 
 with the puzzled learning and research of our 
 nineteenth century. This, cutting off as it does 
 both corporate and doctrinal succession from 
 Christ, is conclusive, from the point of view of 
 the Infallible Corporation, against all the churches 
 besides Roman Catholicism, which the editor of 
 the Index has with great propriety called " Chris- 
 tianity in its m-ost highly developed and perfect 
 form." It is here to be observed, however, that 
 only in Ultramontane Catholicism is this true 
 development of the root-principle of Christianity 
 to be found consistently carried out. Gallican- 
 ism is but a shilly-shally Protestantism ; and so- 
 called Liberal Catholics are half-heretics, whether 
 they know it or not. As well take the motley 
 
Through Borne On, 349 
 
 and truncated Catholicism imagined by Mr. 
 Baring-Gould for the embodied form of the 
 Oracle, as the free-and-easy plan of the unclois- 
 tered monk Hyacinthe, or the less noisy syncre- 
 tism of many amiable Catholics in our country, 
 whose theory of their Church gives us an evisce- 
 rated phantom stuffed with human sympathy and 
 republican principles. The creed of Pius lY., 
 the syllabus of the reigning pontiff, Pius IX., 
 and the decisions of the Yatican Council that has 
 been brought to an untimely adjom-nment by 
 Yictor Emanuel's invasion, present the genuine 
 character and claims of the Infallible Teacher. 
 The true Catholic and logical Christian lives by 
 faith ; and the life of faith is distinct from and 
 opposed to the life of sense and reason. Within 
 the sphere of faith, private judgment has no 
 privilege or place. Will and understanding are 
 subjected together to the yoke of spiritual obedi- 
 ence. Self-abnegation and submission to one's 
 superior, though not exacted so constantly and 
 severely in minute particulars, is as clearly the 
 duty of secular Christians as of monks and nuns 
 themselves. What if it be emasculating and be- 
 set with perils in a temporal point of view ? The 
 business of man enlightened by revelation is to 
 glorify God and save his own soul. Humility, 
 even to the point of stultification, is the appointed 
 way. We are to become little children, fools, 
 
350 Through Borne On, 
 
 emmchs, for the kiDgdom of heaven's sake. So 
 says Christ, so says the Church. If this way of 
 salvation be of God, it must come out right after 
 all. So there should be no fear, on Christian 
 premises, in adopting the Jesuit's maxim and 
 being jperinde ac cadaver in the hands of our 
 superiors, especially of our spiritual superiors, 
 the confessor, the bishop, above all the Pope, 
 Christ's viceroy, the necessary visible head of 
 the divine Corporation. Jealousy or suspicion 
 of the Pope is not consistent with a hearty faith 
 in the Infallible Oracle; because without the 
 Pope the effective realisation of the Oracle's pur- 
 pose is im])Ossible. If we believe that God has 
 instituted the Oracle, w^e must believe also that 
 he can take care of his own without let or hin- 
 drance from human infirmity. And so, on Chris- 
 tian principles, faith in the Church and the Pope 
 is at last faith in God himself. 
 
 Having thus resolved Christianity into the 
 Papal system, we have arrived at the Christian 
 result of the two-fold postulate from which all 
 religions spring. We have in the early part of 
 our remarks indicated the natural origin of the 
 postulate itself. Starting from the point which 
 it supplies, men have stocked the earth with or- 
 thodoxies and heresies, each a psychological 
 study in itself, if one might linger by the way ; 
 and all illustrating that important law of diver- 
 
Through Rome On, 351 
 
 eity which enters into the constitution of the 
 human mind as manifestly as it is contained in 
 all the unfoldings of nature besides. The here- 
 sies are detached shoots from the regular growth : 
 the one towering Orthodoxy is the accomplished 
 fact of Christianity. We are profoundly im- 
 pressed with the truth, that there is no tenable 
 middle ground between the acceptance of the 
 Homan Catholic religion in its fulness and the 
 rejection of Christianity as a supernatural dog- 
 matic system altogether. We wish to put on 
 record our unequivocal protest against the hier- 
 archal principle, and to help, as well as we may, 
 to direct attention to the real battle-ground where 
 Free Thought is to win its crowning victory at 
 last. A certain importance yet remains to Pro- 
 testant dogmatics from the relation they bear to 
 the moulding and environment of many minds ; 
 but dialectically considered, they are very flimsy 
 and worthless. The argument is between the 
 Papal Church and human reason ; and here the 
 progress of physical and moral science leaves no 
 room for doubt as to the issue of the controversy. 
 There is indeed a revelation, though it falls in 
 the natural order ; and this true gospel has long 
 been undermining the foundations of dogmatic 
 religion. The dogmas have been pruned, twisted, 
 recast ; and with every change have lost some- 
 thing of their grappling power. Augustine and 
 
352 Through Rome On. 
 
 Aquinas, Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, slumber 
 on the back shelves : their voices are no longer 
 heard in public. Men's faith in the Kingdom of 
 Satan is failing every day. " Salvation " is losing 
 its technical sense; and our generation is so 
 cooled dov^n from the fervour and vision of the 
 past as to question if a Roman execution could 
 open heaven any more than a Romish mass. 
 Protestants and Catholics alike have grown sick 
 of the smell of brimstone, and ashamed to carry 
 it away from home in their garments. In the 
 last ten years, a powerful thinker and writer in 
 the bosom of the Catholic Church has published, 
 without condemnation, the opinion that the doc- 
 trine of Eternal Torments is not a part of the 
 positive teaching of the Church.^ Happy change ! 
 when men dare no longer proclaim their God to 
 be a Devil. 
 
 1 See BrownsoTi's Beview^ July 1861, Art. m. 
 
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