THE RELIGIOUS CHARLATAN.

 When Dickens died there were some hard things said of him as a caricaturist of religion. Yet the Bishop of Manchester did not find that fault with him, and Dean Stanley, who stood by his grave in Westminster Abbey when he was laid in it, spoke of him as a faithful and good man. It is undeniable that he liked to show up Stiggins and Chadband and Pecksniff, and the moral pocket-handkerchiefs and the Borrioboola-Gha mission ; and in his unfinished story of Edwin Drood there is some of his sharpest and most subtle satire in the conversations between Mr. Crisparkle and the Dean of the Cloisterham Cathedral, and all the old life-long contempt of moral pretence in his broad and absurd sketch of Mr. Honeythunder, the professional philanthropist. Thackeray, too, in the Reverend Lemuel Whey, exposes himself to the same charge of caricaturing religion. There are good people who gravely make this charge. There are those who wish that at least the two great novelists had not seemed to be ridiculing serious things. Indeed, and is Mr. Dombey a serious thing ? Is Chadband, as king, in a spirit of love, "What is terewth ? " a serious thing ? Is Stiggins a serious thing ? And because these impostors are pilloried, are Fénelon, or Charles Wesley, or Dr. Channing brought into contempt ? Would not Wilberforce and Clarkson and Garrison laugh as heartily as any of us at the fine eyes of Mrs. Jellyby so firmly fixed upon the woes of Borrioboola-Gha that she cannot see the holes in her children's stockings ? Dickens and Thackeray, and sound, healthy creative genius everywhere and always, laugh to scorn the unctuous religious charlatan, and the world of honest people cries Amen. The story-tellers and the dramatists, whose business is to describe life, paint him because they see him on all sides. The huge smiling Captain Gullivers take the ludicrous Lilliputian upon their finger, and show him to the amusement of mankind, and the little creature has no resource but to insist that the great truth-teller is a blasphemer. No, no ; the religious charlatan, the man whose shallow vanity, ignorance, rhetoric, histrionic extravagance, and unbounded impudence are displayed upon the platform or in the pulpit, is the real caricaturist of religion, and the blasphemer of all high and holy things. And he is sure vehemently to denounce Dickens for making fun of serious subjects. The business of the religious charlatan, to which he assiduously devotes his time and efforts, is to advertise himself. His life is passed in feeding his own vanity. He seizes every occasion to present himself to public attention; and metaphorically to stand on his head and dance the tight rope for public applause. He is a harlequin, a clown, appearing in the most unexpected places. The moment you see his face you smell sawdust. When he opens his mouth you expect the familiar salutation, " Here we are again ! " There is a circus atmosphere all around you. The throng is as eager for the expected excitement as an old Park pit when the curtain was about to rise upon Finn in Paul Pry, or Fanny Ellsler in the Cracovienne. Human genius would be unjust to itself and to the world if it did not expose this masker to the sober censure of mankind. For it is to prick such bubbles and scourge such charlatans with scorn that Providence vouchsafes the penetrating eye and the faithful hand to the poet and the story-teller. Their scorching touch avenges the wrong done by the religious charlatan both to Heaven and to human nature. And that no comedy may be wanting, as he writhes and withers under the consciousness of general contempt, he exclaims that to unmask him is to lay guilty hands upon the Lord's anointed. This religious charlatan, of course, speaks with the authoritative air of one who has been admitted to the Divine secrets. He affects a familiarity with Providence, and, as if he had private celestial information, gravely announces that this or that is "God's purpose," and that " God means " so and so. A shallow coxcomb, whose sole object is to make some kind of impression upon the crowd before him, and who has evidently no fine spiritual sympathies or interests — who knows neither human life nor the wants of men and women, and to whom the ecstatic heights and awful depths of human experience are as unknown as the sublime secrets of science or the noblest aspirations of the soul — flippantly sets forth the Divine intentions to hearts smitten by unspeakable sorrow, or hungering and thirsting for the truth. And while he does this, while, panoplied in ignorance and conceit, he calls himself the Lord's interpreter, the religious charlatan is furious with the Pope, for instance, for doing the same thing. Who is this impostor ? Against whom is all this levelled ? Against nobody but the religious charlatan. Does the gentle reader not know him ? As he peruses his newspaper, which has now become the history of every day, Sundays not excepted, does he never recognise in the detailed report of speech, or sermon,or prayer, the religious acrobat, thimble-rigger, charlatan ? Is there no name — say, Mawworm, Pecksniff, Joseph Surface — which he often sees in his paper, and which suggests to him one thing only, and that thing humbug ? Does he never find himself in a public meeting at which he hears a speech full of ignorance and denunciation atoning for its folly by its fury, and giving the quasi-sanction of religion to the absurdest crudities and to suggestions equally sanguinary and silly ? Does he not know that the orator really means nothing evil, means, indeed, nothing whatever except to make himself a little conspicuous, to produce momentary applause, to be mentioned in the morning papers— in a word, to advertise himself! And when the scientific satirist, Dickens or Thackeray, puts a pin through the flimsy babbler, and labels him religious charlatan, is the satirist blaspheming and sneering at religion! Or if the gentle reader strays into a church and finds a man in the pulpit evidently straining to say something either in prayer or sermon which will be odd enough, or grotesque enough, or startling enough to be seized by a sensational reporter to be printed in a newspaper, something which is plainly meant to give the speaker a little notoriety, does it never occur to him that he is listening to a religious charlatan ! The charlatan is not wholly responsible for himself. When religious societies seek first for a preacher who will "draw," they promote charlatanism. The ground-and-lofty tumbler presents himself, and the crowd comes in to gape and stare. The whole affair is no longer religious. Having built a costly church, the society must pay for it, and as the payment depends upon the crowd, and the crowd upon the attraction, there must be an attraction suitable to the tastes of the crowd. Knowing that his "attractiveness " or power to "draw " is the real tenure of his position, why should the attraction be blamed if he tries constantly to leap higher and jump further? There, is no prosperous religious charlatan at this moment who does not know that if he should stop his tricks to-morrow he would be thought to have become tame and commonplace, and he would feel that his position was in danger. Poor fellow ! there is nothing for it but leaping higher and jumping further. The moral effect of the religious charlatan is most depressing. The simple seeker who hears his stage thunder, his flippant familiarities with the Divine counsels, his unsparing denunciations of sinners, his delight in depicting a theatrical hell with all the approved " properties," and the eagerness with which he plunges others into it, while he assumes his own high favour with Heaven, inevitably asks, "What kind of Heaven can it be of which this sanctimonious popinjay is an ambassador, and what Divine truth can be properly interpreted by such a harlequin ?" The simple seeker measures the charlatan by the standard of the Master, and contrasts him with the lovely portrait of the true disciple in the Deserted Village. He thinks of John Wesley in the Foundry, of George Fox under the tree, of Roger Williams in his boat, of Dr. Channing in his pulpit, of George Whitefield upon the common ; of the sublime heroism and self-sacrifice and suffering of the saints, young and old ; of the simple fidelity and purity and earnestness and modesty of the Christian character and life in the new days as in the old, in the familiar circumstances of this time as in the stranger setting of the past — and his contempt for the charlatan deepens into indignation as he thinks of the Christian. The clown in the circus is amusing, but the charlatan in the pulpit is repulsive. You can not dislike the clown, but the charlatan is a moral nuisance.—Harpers Magazine.

Yass Courier (NSW : 1857 - 1929), Tuesday 16 June 1874, page 4

CHARLES DICKENS AND CHRISTIANITY.

 CHARLES DICKENS.— Injudicious friends may do a man as much harm as his most bitter foes, and we feel that this is likely to be the case with Charles Dickens, whose indiscriminating eulogists, in claiming for him merits which he did not possess, are drawing attention to defects which otherwise might have been suffered to remain in obscurity. In the praises of his genius we fully agree, albeit we think that even here there is a tendency to great extravagance. Such excess, however, is so natural in the state of feeling which the suddenness of his removal from us awakened, and in the desire to do ample justice to one of so genial and kindly a nature, that we certainly should not have taken notice of it but for the attempt on the part of some to hold up Charles Dickens as a great Christian teacher. Foremost among the offenders is Dean Stanley, whose sermon in Westminster Abbey, in which he surpassed himself in the extreme breadth of his views, was singularly feeble and injudicious. Of all the needless tasks such a man could have undertaken about the most needless was that of putting into the mouths of the young a defence for novel reading, and though Dickens towers far above the novelists, about the last claim we should set up for him is that of having set forth "profoundly Christian and evangelical truth." A teacher of the virtues of benevolence, of the evils of asceticism, of the blessedness of a jovial happy spirit of the duty of judging kindly the foibles and even the occasional sins of our neighbours, he was ; but a man may be all this without being the preacher of any profound Christian truth. We are glad to have it on the testimony of his friends that his reverence of our Lord was deep and sincere, but we fail to find evidence of this in his writings. That he had no sympathy with any of our Christian organisations, and that his charity was hardly so catholic as to include within its range men who appeared to him to be over-righteous, is, on the contrary, made abundantly clear. We would fain have forgotten that he has left behind him the portraits of Stiggins and Chadband, two of the most disgraceful caricatures in our language ; but these unwise praises force the recollection upon us, and prevent us from swelling the chorus. It is impossible at present to form a just estimate as to his permanent place in English literature ; but when the excitement of the time is past it will be a matter of surprise that even in that idolatry of genius to which we are so prone there should have been any to hold him up as one who has set before the Church some profound views of Christian truth or roused it to the discharge of neglected Christian duties.— English Independent.

Sydney Mail (NSW : 1860 - 1871), Saturday 15 October 1870, page 15

" THE MORALITY OF 'PICKWICK.' "

 A paragraph with the above heading, copied into a recent number of the " Northern Whig," from a publication styled " Agatha," provokes me to lift my pen in protest against one of the most monstrously unjust accusations that has ever been brought against a public writer. I can most easily understand that the Pecksniffs, the Chadbands, and the Stigginses of society should hate Mr. Dickens with that intensity of hatred which only " vessels " which have boiled over in their wrath can conceive, and only the conspicuously "pious" can efficiently express; but for others than these to say and to write that, by holding up to scorn and contempt the men of whom Stiggins is the type, Mr. Dickens has done an injury to the cause of true religion and morality, in either a gross falsehood, or a not less gross self-deception. I, for one, maintain that the iconoclast who drags down and smashes into atoms the false gods who lead captive silly women, and still sillier men, under the outraged names of religion and of Heaven, does a good service alike to God and man. I say Mr. Dickens has done that service; and I say more, that no writer of fiction in modern times has done so much for the advancement of a healthy, moral, and truly Christian feeling in society, or for the destruction and the utter demolition of that Baal of selfish hypocrisy and cunning cant which has corrupted the ranks of our teachers of the Gospel, and, I fear, brought direct contempt on Christianity itself—leading only too many to estimate the importance of the religion by the moral standard of some of its functionaries.

 Mr. Dickens has satirised the clergy. Has he ? Does the clerical body at large accept and and champion the Reverend Mr. Stiggins— that worthy man whose burning and shining light manifested itself chiefly through his nose, and whose influences of the spirit were derived mainly through the medium of pineapple-rum? Do the ministers of the Gospel admit, as a clergyman and a brother, the Reverend Mr. Chadband ? Or will the elect and sanctified laity of any class recognise Mr. Pecksniff as one of themselves, whose character is so like their own that anything said against him is said equally against them ? If they do—if they take up the cause of Stiggins, Chadband, Pecksniff, and Company, and make it their own —they prove themselves to be just as bad, and they deserve the fullest measure of satire, sarcasm, and scorn that can be poured out upon them. If they do not—if they disapprove, condemn, and with holy hate and divine hatred those infamous vices which these characters personify—why blame Mr. Dickens for denouncing them ? Is he not doing with tenfold power what it is their duty to do themselves ? and is he to be blamed for saying openly and manfully what they in their hearts both know and feel to be true and to be merited ?

 Or, are there no Stigginses, no Chadbands ? Alas! I fear me there be many still. There is nothing in the clerical class to exempt it from the common lot of all other classes. Pray, what have we of perfect in this world of ours ? Are there not spots even upon the sun himself? I no more hold the Christian ministry accountable for the exceptions to its general rule of earnest morality and Christian zeal, than I would hold the Royal College of Surgeons responsible for the peculiarities of Mr. Bob Sawyer or Mr. Ben Allen. Are there no good, kindly nurses in the world because of Mrs. Gamp ? Do we find the whole race of schoolmasters up in wrath because of Mr. Squeers ? There is not a class in society which has not its exceptions of eccentricity or of immorality; there is not one of these exceptions that Mr. Dickens has not satirised with more or less power or prominence; yet it is only from the clergy and from the " saints" that we hear the anathema pronounced against Mr. Dickens, and Boz and all his works denounced as enemies to the Christian ministry and to religion.

 Now, take the other side. Let any man, or, better still, let any woman who has read the voluminous works of this great English novelist, look back over the thousands of passages of truth and tender beauty he has penned— passages that breathed the very soul of peace, good-will, and Christian charity. Read the "Carol,'' read the death of little Dombey—nay, read where you will, and you shall find ten thousand phrases pleading to the heart for love and sympathy. You shall find the highest lessons of immortal hope, and the deepest feelings of human love and tenderness, so woven through his works, that you shall read no book of his in which you shall not feel through all the kindly beating of a Christian heart. When I look back on those hours of happiness and high delight which the works of Charles Dickens have given me, and when I think of all that hundreds of thousands of readers of our English tongue owe to his heart, his hand, and his genius, I feel that to me and them he has been a teacher and a benefactor. And then I feel most acutely how unequal I am to the task of defending him from the monstrous injustice of the accusations that have been made against him.—Belfast Northern Whig.

Advertiser (Hobart, Tas. : 1861 - 1865), Thursday 27 March 1862, page 3

MINISTERS' CONFERENCE

The morning's proceedings were devoted to a paper on "The Relation of our Churches to the Social and Political Questions of the Day," by the Rev. F. E. HARRY, of Sydney, The following is an abstract: —


" 'The greatest of all questions for statesmen and Churchmen, wrote Dr, Chalmers in 1823, 'is the condition of those untaught and degraded thousands who swarm around the base of the social edifice, and whose brawny arms may yet grasp its pillars to shake or destroy.' The same problem, the same possible danger faces us, but with this difference. The multitudes around are no longer untaught, for Education Acts have been in operation, and public schools abound. But their spiritual destitution still remains the greatest of all problems. Shall we be candid with ourselves to-day and admit some of our short comings ? Shall we acknowledge the existing and manifest need for improvement in our Church life and organization? We cannot overlook the fact that there is a deep-rooted suspicion in the minds of many earnest men that the pulpit is gradually losing its power—that this is owing to a defective culture, to the repetition of stereotyped formulas, and to tho lack of interest in the affairs of this life manifested by those who stand up to plead for God. We have only ourselves to blame if the masses of men turn away from us because we are merely 'sky-pilots,' because we keep heaven far away instead of bringing it down to earth. Some of us have yet to learn how to interest men as veil as to instruct how to apply moral and spiritual principles to the details of daily life; how to present old truths concerning God, eternity, life, duty, with freshness, freedom, and power. Enthusiastic dreamers have drawn pictures for us of probable social life a century hence, and it is perhaps our own fault, the penalty of past neglect, that in these pictures no scope is given for the work of the pulpit. No consideration is permitted to the claims of a higher life and Christianity, which has really contributed so largely to all great social achievements. Christianity, which alone could make such a harmonious system possible, is left out in the cold. It will have had its day, for the millennium of luxury will have dawned. Individuality will have been repressed, and every man will be only a helpless fragment of a gigantic piece of mechanism. All true advances have come through the simple earnest preaching of the Gospel of Christ. Many run to and fro in these days with now legislative schemes and social inventions and political dreams. Doubtless God will use them to some purpose. But all social, political, and financial remedies not born out of the redemptive heart of God are but new Babel towers, from which men will flee in dispute and confusion to renew their sad and vain efforts towards a peaceful millennium. Shall we confess to having too spasmodic an interest in passing events? Of course we don't want to be 'down criers,' and it is not given to some of us to announce sermons upon great calamities; yet while we may not be able to discuss such themes as 'strikes' without giving offence or without falling between two stools, we can wisely teach principles which must influence those who are directly interested in such social questions. We are not to echo public opinion, but to lead it. If we are not keenly interested in the movements of the day how can we bring the spirit of Christ to bear upon the laws and customs of society? Ethical principles may be taught, but the application of them to the details of daily life and to the conduct of public affairs must be left to the individual judgment.
In some cities it is left to the pulpit and to that alone to counteract the insidious influence of a poisoned Press. You know what I mean. The new journalism, with its great interest for us all, with its piquant paragraphs, its personalities, its anonymous articles often with subtle insinuations approaching the very verge of libel, with its titbits of society news, its news concerning the turf and various sports, constitutes almost the sole reading of thousands of men and women to-day. And will any one dare say that such reading has no penetrating power for evil? It is for us to counteract this evil influence in every possible way by creating a healthier literary appetite, by fostering a pure taste, by training tho young to read only those books and periodicals which minister to their intellectual and spiritual welfare. Ministers are often advised to keep out of politics, but no reasons of any weight have been given for such a strange course. Ministers ought to take their share in public life like merchants, lawyers, tradesmen, and other citizens. Let us keep party politics out of the pulpit by all means, unless the questions in debate have a direct bearing on the religious life of the people. Then speak without fear of man. We must show how religious principles bear upon social and national life, for nothing is outside the scope of Christianity. When all men strive to be alike progress is impossible, for the world moves forward in proportion to the clear expression and impression of separate individualities. I know that this doctrine is not largely held in these days of levelling, in this 'millennium of Smiths.' Yet if the pulpit is decaying it is owing to cowardice and conventionality.
Let me briefly touch upon some of the chief of our social and political problems. I believe that our attitude towards the poor will be ever an index to our character, whether as individuals or Churches. Let us impress upon our Churches in these days of distress and destitution the need for considering the poor, not in foolish ways of indiscriminate giving, but with a wise charity. Let each family in comfortable circumstances take a destitute family in charge, not in a patronising way, but with wise love. What attitude should the Churches assume towards Socialism ? Who can look at the sufferings and struggles of men, the anxieties of the poor over food, the terrible social inequalities which prevail, without feeling that a change must come soon. Apart from all the frothy and foolish talk of Anarchists and political demagogues we must recognise the discontent that prevails among the masses of men. We must consider the schemes of social reform put forward by thoughtful and earnest men. Now, Christianity utterly disagrees with the methods of socialism. Christianity maintains that all cardinal changes must come from within; the mischief lies in the heart of man. Let us build soup kitchens for the starving; let us give as God has blessed us to every worthy object; but let us not imagine that passing an Act of Parliament, digging good drains, or creating a protective tariff will destroy human selfishness. Let us improve social conditions in every possible way, but at the same time remember that the permanent and powerful reform of society can only come from the leavening influence of the spirit of Christ. Christianity ever strikes at selfishness as the root of earth's evils; it cannot be silent before the greed and cruelty of men. At the same time we must beware of being hard upon the rich merely to please the poor. There is that in the gospel which can rectify all ills, and 'make the wilderness to blossom as the rose.' Christ, and Christ alone, can solve every social problem.
 In concluding let me briefly allude to the relation of our Churches to political questions. We ought to have more influence on legislation than we possess at present. Our indifference accounts largely for the fact that atheistic agitators secure seats in our legislative chambers. If we want good legislation we must send better men to Parliament. We used legislation against the terrible and unblushing vice of our streets. One can hardly move in this matter without feeling assailed by that large section of the Press which sneers at virtue and condemns as prudery every attempt to check vice. There are those in our community who try to overwhelm with slander and abuse the men and women, who make any sacrifice to save the young and the wretched from doing down to the pit, who endeavour to break down the present agreement with death and covenant with hell. Our Churches must speak out plainly in this matter. Dr. Parkhurst, of New York, has illustrated what can be done by a man of vigilance and courage to purify the horrible dens of a large city. We must have legislation against all places of questionable amusement, where the innocent are allured by those three allied curses—gambling, drink, and impurity. It is a matter of life and death to thousands that our places of public amusement should at all costs be kept pure and free, from all incentives to vice and crime. Those devil's dens for the promotion of loose living must be abolished. We ought not to tolerate so many places of temptation in our cities — hotels and private bars at every street corner, betting-rooms, and foul music halls. In spite of all the sneers of a worldly and cynical Press the ultimate analysis of all history is that which we find upon the sacred page, and upon it all the history, of the nations is but one continuous comment that 'Righteousness exalteth a nation, and sin is the reproach of any people.' "

Adelaide Observer (SA : 1843 - 1904), Saturday 28 October 1893, page 14

THE FREEDOM OF THOUGHT

A DARINGLY HERETICAL BOOK

 COMPLETE INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM DEFENDED.

WILL THE WORK BE PROSECUTED?

"A History of Freedom of Thought," (by J. B. Bury, D.Litt., L.L.D. (Williams and Norgate), is one of the most remarkable books issued in recent years. The work is not merely a history of freedom of thought; it is an able and eloquent plea for freedom of thought. In fact, no rationalist could have written a more whole-hearted defence of rationalism. The fact that such a book can be published broadcast as one of a series of other books shows in a most striking way the remarkable growth of liberal sentiments in modern times.
 The first chapters of the book, "Reason Free," dealing with Greece and Rome; "Reason in Prison," dealing with the middle ages; and "Prospect of Deliverance," dealing with the Renaissance and the Reformation, are exceedingly well done, and set forth in a succinct and interesting way the position of free thought and free thinking from the days of the early Greek philosophers down to the days of Luther.
The author contends, not merely that the rise of Christianity in the early centuries of the Christian era was accompanied by the growth of ignorance, superstition, and bigotry; he holds that that growth was the direct and inevitable result of the very nature of Christian doctrines and the Christian Scriptures. He says: "The profound conviction that those who did not believe in its (the Christian Church's) doctrines would be damned eternally, and that God punishes theological error as if it were the most heinous of crimes, led naturally to persecution. It was a duty to impose on men the only true doctrine, seeing that their own eternal interests were at stake, and to hinder errors from spreading. Heretics were more than ordinary criminals, and the pains that man should inflict upon them were as nothing to the tortures awaiting them in hell." Really this was quite a logical position. If it was right of God to roast heretics hereafter, there could be nothing very wrong in anticipating Deity by doing a little preliminary roasting here. Besides, this course, granting that the doctrine of eternal torments for heresy is true, was the most merciful one. For surely it is better to roast a few heretics on earth than to permit them to live and preach their doctrines, with the final result of causing millions of heretics to be roasted in hell.
 It must be confessed that there is nothing sectarian about Mr. Bury's books. He assails Protestantism as much as he assails Catholicism. He says: —
 "But nothing was further from the minds of the leading Reformers than the toleration of doctrines differing from their own. They replaced one authority by another. They set up the authority of the Bible instead of that of the Church, but it was the Bible according to Luther or the Bible according to Calvin. So far as the spirit of intolerance went, there was nothing to choose between the new and the old Churches. The religious wars were not for the cause of freedom, but for particular sets of doctrines; and in France, if the Protestants had been victorious, it is certain that they would not have given more liberal terms to the Catholics than the Catholics gave to them.
 "Luther was quite opposed to liberty of conscience and worship, a doctrine which was inconsistent with Scripture as he read it. He might protest against coercion and condemn the burning of heretics, when he was in fear that he and his party might be victims, but when he was safe and in power, he asserted his real view that it was the duty of the State to impose the true doctrine and exterminate heresy, which was an abomination, that unlimited obedience to their prince in religious as in other matters was the duty of subjects, and that the end of the State was to defend the faith. He held that Anabaptists should be put to the sword. With Protestants and Catholics alike the dogma of exclusive salvation led to the same place."
 In the interesting chapter entitled "Progress of Rationalism," Mr. Bury shows that Freethought has penetrated the Anglican Church, many of whose ministers no longer accept Christian doctrines in the ordinary acceptation of the word. He says: — "Political circumstances thus invited and stimulated rationalists to come forward boldly, but we must not leave out of account the influence of the Broad Church movement and of Darwinism. The 'Descent of Man' appeared precisely in 1871. A new, undogmatic Christianity was being preached in pulpits. Mr. Leslie Stephen remarked (1873) that it may be said, with little exaggeration, that there is not only no article in the creeds which may not be contradicted with impunity, but that there is none which may not be contradicted in a sermon calculated to win  the reputation of orthodoxy and be regarded as a judicious bid for a bishopric. The popular state of mind seems to be typified in the well-known anecdote of the cautious churchwarden, who, whilst commending the general tendency of his incumbent's sermon, felt bound to hazard a protest upon one point. 'You see, sir, as he apologetically explained, I think there be a God.' He thought it an error of taste or perhaps of judgment, to hint a doubt as to the first article of the creed.' "
 Perhaps the hatred of Christian dogma was never more boldly, and unblushingly expressed than in the following lines from Swinburne's "Hymn of Man" written while the Vatican Council was sitting in Rome: —

"By thy name that in hellfire is written,
 and burned with the point of thy sword,
 Thou art smitten, thou God, thou art smitten;
 thy death is upon thee, O Lord.
 And the love song of earth as Thou diest
 resounds through the wind of her wings —
 Glory to Man in the highest!
 for Man is the master of things."

As the author says, the fact that a volume could appear with impunity vividly illustrates the English policy of enforcing the laws for blasphemy only in the case of publications addressed to the masses. It maybe pertinently added that the fact that Mr. Bury's own book — a book specially written for the million— can appear with impunity almost demonstrates that the cause of intellectual liberty has all but completely triumphed in England, and that after centuries of bitter struggle Christian and anti-Christian, believer and unbeliever, stand before the law in a position of substantial equality. But perhaps that is a mistake. May not the author be prosecuted for blasphemy after all? One never can tell. Certainly if he had written a hundred years ago he would have been imprisoned. And if he had written it two hundred years ago he would have been burned at the stake.

Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 - 1950), Saturday 20 September 1913, page 5

THE FREETHINKER.

 (BY " BALAAM.")
 I know of no other word in the English language so generally misunderstood and so frequently misapplied, as the word freethinker. By a certain section of orthodox churchgoers (moral or immoral as the case may be) it is regarded as synonymous with atheist. Another section of the same community, in a mysterious and altogether inexplicable manner, associate the word with free love, while the ignorantly pious contingent, although they have no conception of its meaning, yet, with one accord, proclaim it to be something very bad, just as—being told to do so—they proclaim many things which they do not understand to be very good. Now, this widespread misapprehension arises from the prevalence amongst us of that social plague spot, the spurious freethinker. This noxious and objectionable animal may be found in any part of the civilised world, but his favorite haunt, or burrow, is in large towns. Not only a foe to Christianity, but absolutely without any religion, he writhes under the idea of individual responsibility to a higher power; all moral restraint, as far an the law will allow, he throws to the winds; his passions and lusts (again, as far as the law will allow) remain unbridled ; religion of any sort is hateful to him, involving as it does a necessity upon the part of its votaries to rise superior to the animal ; and boldly proclaiming that there is no God, no hereafter, no such thing as sin, he pursues his brute boast existence. And then, my friends, is the animal that calls himself a freethinker and so casts discredit upon a most estimable class of men—a class that as far as morality, honesty, and charity are concerned, will compare favorably with any sect or denomination upon the face of the earth. The bona fide believer in free thought—or as it is now generally termed, modern thought—is an individual whose mind is liberated from dogmatism and superstition. He asserts his individuality, and values at its true worth the reasoning power with which he finds himself endowed. The power he cultivates, and makes use of, regarding it as the most precious of all the "talents" entrusted to his care. Believing in his ability to distinguish between the probable and the improbable he will not accept of anything without evidence of, at least, probability. He understands the meaning of the word faith ; he also understands that "credulity is the disease of feeble intellects, and ill-regulated winds; believing everything, and investigating nothing, the mind accumulates errors, till its overgrown faith overmasters its untutored reason." Fully aware of his many imperfections, he yet refrains from grovelling in the dust, and calling himself a miserable offender, knowing full well that he is a decided improvement upon his prehistoric ancestor. He meets with a difficulty as follows
 —Supposing that scientists are right, and that the human race, instead of having fallen from a perfect state, have been gradually developing from a very low original; and as century succeeded century, most certainly rising instead of falling. Supposing such to have been the case, the tradition of man's fall must be rejected, and rejecting it, what then becomes of the Atonement? Meeting with such a problem, he does not cry " Get thee behind me Satan" and shut his eyes, but boldly, and to the best of of his ability, faces it, considering that he is not only justified in facing it, but that it is his bounden duty to do so. Earnest of purpose, honest of thought, open to conviction he grapples with the difficulty, and at length arrives at a conclusion of his own (not of his ancestors), and thus asserts his individuality as a reasoning, responsible being. He pays but little heed to the conflicting doctrines and dogmas of diverse churches, and the various and antagonistic creeds of religious sects trouble him not, what is opposed to reason he refuses to accept. He accept however, the certainties revealed by scientists, and if those should clash, as they sometimes do, with the traditions of a bygone age, why then, the latter must go to the wall. There are two words in the English language that the freethinker utterly disbelieves in, and those are the words atheist and devil. He cannot realize the possibility of any one—not wholly insane— doubting the existence of a God ; nor can he understand a rational human being believing in the existence of a devil. Looking things squarely in the face, he sees that the religious belief of the majority is entirely the result of their education and training, and in fact, it is not THEIR belief, but the belief of their teachers.
 " By education, most have been misled.
 They so believe, because they so were bred;
 The priest continues what the nurse began,
 And thus the child imposes on the man."

And pondering over this, he sees plainly that the man who accepts and believes without enquiry, completely ignores his individual responsibility, and forfeits all claim to be considered a rational being. To religious traditionalism the freethinker gives exactly the same weight that he does to any other traditionalism. His object is to arrive as nearly as possible at "the truth"; and he believes that the only method of doing so is by fearless and conscientious investigation, adopting what seems to him just and true ; and this he considers to be the only means by which one can ever reach a faith worthy of a rational human being. Appeal to the freethinker if you are in distress; ask him to co-operate in any scheme calculated to lessen the sorrow and suffering by which we are surrounded, and then you will find out what he is. But do not talk to him of such things as Adam and Eve, or the setting back of the sun—that is unless you wish him to bid you a hasty good day. This is no imaginary character that I have drawn, my friends ; he belongs to a class that is increasing daily, and that will go on increasing ; for the old order of things is passing away, as it has passed away before, and as it must assuredly pass away again, and yet again. It is an age of doubt— of scepticism, if you will—and better that than blind unreasoning follow-my-leaderism. Men are daring to think for themselves, to decide for themselves—sure sign to the thinking mind that the childhood of our world is passed.

Alexandra and Yea Standard, Gobur, Thornton and Acheron Express (Vic. : 1877 - 1908), Friday 4 September 1885, page 3

FEDERAL UNION

What does "Federal Union" mean?

 Here is an explanation of it, taken from the "Saturday Evening Post," of February 10. 1940: "What 'Federal Union' proposes is a federation of fifteen democracies — namely, the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, France, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland — in the form of a supreme world government, with a constitution, a legislature, a judiciary, and a common citizenship; with the ultimate power to make war and peace, to make treaties, to issue money and to regulate trade. The military strength of this federation would be such that it could be reduced to one half and still stand as 2 to 1 against the rest of the world. Its economic strength would be even more formidable, since, to begin with, it would own half the earth, control two thirds of all trade, and possess a practical monopoly of all materials. What could survive against it? Other nations would be permitted to join only provided the people in them overthrew their dictators and embraced democracy."
 Such is the outline of the scheme as given by the "Saturday Evening Post" which goes on to say that "Federal Union doesn't make sense," and, after referring to the highly organised campaign behind the scheme, adds: "A little wonder is permitted."
 In a modified form, "Federal Union" appears as a Federation of the States of Europe.

Its Origins.

Who started the idea?
 The idea is not new. The scheme of a World State was embodied in the oath of the notorious secret society, the 'Illuminati' of Bavaria, which was founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt. In a book entitled 'La Republique Universelle,' written in 1793 by Clootz, nearly all the ideas now regarded as 'progressive' by modern internationalists are formulated. After the permeation of French freemasonry by the 'Illuminati,' the idea of a universal republic became the slogan of the lodges, and the abolition of all frontiers, nationalities and differences of language and religion constituted the doctrine of the French Grand Orient.
 The communist scheme of a World Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, to be established by world revolution, is based on a similar plan of the same inspiration.
 It would seem, then, that Federal Union, the World Soviet Union, and the World Masonic Republic are merely distinctions of name, without much distinction of substance.

Who's Who?

Who is sponsoring the movement to-day?
 The scheme of Federal Union is supported by the usual clique of extreme, left-wing politicians, pseudo-scientists, men who are well known for their bitter anti-Christian bias, and by a few "pink" clergymen. Prominent amongst its supporters are Professors Bentwick, Joad, Haldane and Laski, and others who took part in the anti-God Congress held in London in September, 1938. We also find the names of H. G. Wells of "Home Sapiens" absurdity, Clarence Streit, an American journalist, and W. B. Curry, who is headmaster of the notorious co-educational school of Dartington Hall, Devon.
 Perhaps even more significant than this is the support given to the movement by the P.E.P. (Political and Economic Planning) Group, whose chairman is Mr. Israel Moses Sieff. This group is completely materialistic in character and outlook and stands —inter alia—for the complete elimination of the smaller trader (My. Israel Moses Sieff is at the head of a vast chain store organisation), and has been defined as "Bolshevism by stealth."
 It is supported also by the Engineers' Study Group, an offshoot of the P.E.P., and by the Royal Institute of international Affairs, better known as the Chatham House Group, which is a government-subsidised organisation, some of whose members have distinguished themselves for their left-wing bias.

 Not An Asset.

 A friends showed me a book on the subject.
 The title was: "The Case for Federal Union." The author of that book is the notorious W. B. Curry already mentioned. He is the headmaster of the ill famed co-educational school called Dartington Hall. In this school which caters for children of both sexes from two to eighteen years of age, nudity is the rule—insofar as there are any rules. He is also President of the high-sounding "Federation of Progressive Societies and Individuals." According to a pamphlet issued by the 'Liberty Restoration League":  "The objects of this organisation . . . include the usual communist aims in industrial matters and the establishment of a World State. It devotes a great deal of its attention, however, to its social aims. These include legislation to secure reform of the Divorce Laws; legalisation of abortion with proper safe guards; abolition of the laws penalising abnormality; provision of facilities for voluntary sterilisation; adequate provision of information on and facilities for birth control; abolition of literary, dramatic and film censorship; disestablishment and disendowment of all State Churches, and the abolition of the blasphemy laws."
 Finally, Mr. Curry and five other prominent supporters of the Federation of Progressive Societies and Individuals were members of the "Committee of Honour" of the anti-God Congress (Congress of the World Union of Freethinkers).
That Federal Union finds an ardent supporter in men like W. B. Curry is sufficient indication that it should be regarded with the greatest suspicion by decent men.
 Extreme left-wing politicians, Mr. Israel Moses Sieff's 'P.E.P.,' the Chatham House Group, the Federation of Progressive Societies and Individuals, the World Union of Freethinkers or the anti-God League, the Dartington Hall Co-educational School, continental freemasonry — such memberships, affiliations and contacts will enable thinking people to form a fairly accurate idea of the forces behind the present campaign for Federal Union.

Good or Bad?

   Is "Federal Union" a good thing, or is it just another racket ?
 In itself the idea of Federal Union is quite good and is, in fact, an eminently Christian concept, just as the ideal of the League of Nations was an eminently Christian concept. But in the hands of atheists, materialists, body-worshippers and other enemies of Christianity, it will simply become an instrument of tyranny and oppression as cruel and as irresponsible as any godless dictatorship.
 There are too many who forget that Leagues and Federations and forms of government do not guarantee our human decencies and liberties, but moral principles which have their meaning and their guarantee in religion and in religion alone. The acceptance of any scheme of Federal Union divorced from Christianity and Christian moral standards would be an appalling catastrophe for the free peoples of the world. And in the hands of its present sponsors. Federal Union has all the appearances of something anti-Christian and unclean.

Is it Fascism?

  The friend who opposed it in the argument said that It was just Fascism under another name.
 A world super-government, with supreme military and economic power at its disposal, and free from the sane restraints imposed by Christian moral standards, could easily become an irresponsible dictatorship of the Hitler or Stalin type on a world-wide instead of merely a national scale.
 Moreover, the national, political, economic and social differences of the various peoples cannot be eliminated simply by uniting them into a sort of political and economic federation. The way to unite peoples is not to abolish, natural differences, but to unite them in the love of something higher. This higher something is not likely to be the super-government of the federation which, without Christianity, would simply become a hotbed of intrigue and an instrument of oppression.
 It is only love of Christ and of Christian ideals which can effectively unite peoples, and lead them to subordinate selfish interests to the common welfare of the human race.

 I would be glad to have your views on the subject.
 They should be sufficiently clear from what has been already said, and I think they are the views of every Christian acquainted with the facts.
 Federal Union is an excellent idea in itself but divorced from Christianity it has not only no chance of success, but would, in logic and reality, lead to world slavery. In the hands of those at present so prominently associated with it, the scheme may well provide adequate training and preparation for the establishment of a world Bedlam, but not for the establishment of a thoroughly Christian democracy for which we are fighting. People like Messrs. Curry and Sieff should have no part in the planning of the new social order to come after the war which, we are told, is being fought for "Christian civilisation."
 Would you recommend some literature on the about it because I would like to know more about it.
 You will find the scheme explained in "Union Now" by Clarence Streit, and " The Case for Federal Union" by W. B Curry. You will find a history of the movement and a searching analysis of it in two books by Nesta Webster: "Secret Societies and Subversive Movements" and "The Surrender of an Empire." These may be obtained at the Southern Cross Library, Roma House, 543 George Street, Sydney.

Catholic Freeman's Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1932 - 1942), Thursday 1 August 1940, page 9

COUNCIL AND COMMUNISTS

To the Editor
 Sir,-Many thinking people in this city heartily approve of the council's decision not to allow Communists to hold their meetings in the streets or parks of Launceston. Why should a British community allow everything it holds dear to be abused by these propagandists of the most appalling doctrines the world has ever known? Thoughtful people should read Webster's "World Revolution," and remind themselves of the origin and aims of Communism and Bolshevism. We are told in this very exhaustive study of the subject that in 1776 Adam Weishaupt, a Bavarian, founded the order of the Illuminati. This man, "Weishaupt, is described by Louis Blanc as "the profoundest conspirator that ever lived." His theories were borrowed from Rousseau. The aims of his order are summarised by Webster in the following six points:— (1) Abolition of monarchy and all ordered government; (2) abolition of private property; (3) abolition of inheritance; (4) abolition of patriotism; (5) abolition of the family (i.e., of marriage and of all morality and the communal education of children); (6) abolition of all religion.
No "illuminatus" was ever allowed to be known as such. The very existence of the order was (and is) concealed as far as possible. "The order of the Illuminati" aims always at the essence, not the ostentation, of power. The training of the "adepts" was a work of profound subtlety. Nothing must alarm or revolt the mind of the convert at first. And so Jesus Christ was represented as the Grand Master of the order! It was not till his admission to the "higher" grades that the "adept" was made aware of the real intentions of Illuminism with regard to religion, morals, and philanthropy. The real aim of the society was (and is), "The systematic attempt to create grievances in order to exploit them." "Always the suffering people are deceived. They mistake friends for foes. The Communist leaders, while loudly proclaiming the need of reforms, wilfully defeat reforms, and turn the people's just demands for reforms into war on the community." "How lately have we seen this exemplified: and how long ago might we have read, learned, and inwardly digested a few of the lessons of history, not yet a century old. But a knowledge of history is not conspicuous among our statesmen."
 The doctrines of the German Jew Karl Marx, now known as Marxian Socialism, are identical with those of Weishaupt. They are—The abolition of inheritance, of marriage and the family, of patriotism, and all religion, the community of women, and the commercial education of children by the state. The "Communist manifesto" of Karl Marx is regarded by Communists as "the charter of freedom of the workers of the world," and his book, called "Capital." is proclaimed by them to be "The bible of the working classes." His extreme followers go further. In the Revolutionary Catechism (written by an "Illuminatus," Netchaieff), it is laid down that—"Every effort is to be made to heighten and increase the evil and sorrows which will at length wear out the patience of the people and encourage an insurrection en masse."
 Surely it is well that we careless British people should remind our selves of the truth about Communism. The representatives of these old "Illuminati," the inheritors of their ideas, are in Launceston to-day industriously carrying on their work. How foolish we are not to realise that "thoughts are things," and if we let the minds of our people, especially our youth, be poisoned by these Communist propagandists, we shall have no one to blame but ourselves for what will happen.
 More power to the City Council for its action. Let us take courage and remember what an astute enemy of our race said —"English is the rock on which the waves of revolution are broken.—Yours, etc., CAVE.

Examiner (Launceston, Tas. : 1900 - 1954), Friday 31 July 1931, page 12

ILLUMINATI NONSENSE

MORE DRUM-BANGING.

The "Loyalty League" of New Zealand has forwarded to us a pamphlet entitled "The Red Menace. An Exposure of the so-called 'Labor Party.' "

It goes back to the early Christian era and tells of bad boys' societies called the "Karmathites" and the "Assassins." Then later came the "Ismailites," the "Insinuating Brothers" "Weishaupt" and the "Illuminati" and the "Knight Templars." Out of the "Illuminati" arose the "Communists", and "Internationalism devised by Weishaupt, interpreted by Clootz, and, carried out by Marx and Lenin." The pamphlet concludes: "It is essential that the workers and members of unions should know the whole truth."

So, to divert their attention from wage-reductions and longer working hours, the workers must be told bed-time stories of the Karmathites, the Assassins, the Ismailites, the Illuminati, the Insinuating Brothers, the Goblins, and the Bogey Man.

The pamphlet was duly interred without honors, in the w.p.b.

Daily Standard (Brisbane, Qld. : 1912 - 1936), Saturday 24 October 1925, page 8

[Almost a hundred years of this paranoia keeps coming.]

THE SECRET OF FREEMASONRY.(Part 1)

A KEY OF MODERN HISTORY.

BY P. HUGH O'DONNEL, M.P.

THE Encyclical Letter of his Holiness Leo XIII on the Sect of Freemasons (Secta Masonica, Secta Massonum) has recalled the attention of contemporary society to the repeated censures which the Holy See has directed against the most numerous, widely-extended, and mysterious of secret societies, and has provoked on the part of the defenders (as well as the opponents of the condemned institution) many demands for an explanation of the Pontifical policy. It is true that the Encyclical "Humanum Genus" only repeats with the added experience of generations the warnings which have previously fallen from the Chair of the Supreme Pastor. It is also true that even writers habitually opposed to Catholicism and Catholics acknowledge that the action of Leo XIII is fully justified on the simplest grounds of ordinary precaution. A leading Republican journal of France, the Journal des Débats, went the full length of this admission, and as a remarkable confirmation of the truth of the judgment expressed by the Holy See its declaration is highly significant.
 " It is certain," says the Journal des Débats " that in denouncing and attacking Freemasonry, the Pope is only using a right and legitimate defence. Whatever may have been the object of this vast association in other times, whatever may still be its organisation and discipline in other countries, it is certain that in France at the present day Masonry tends more and more to break every connection with the Christian religion, and, indeed, with all spiritual doctrine."
 In the course of the following observations I shall treat both of what Freemasonry has been, and of what it has become. I write from ascertained and indisputable historical documents. A society may be secret, but if it has existed a long time, if it has exercised a great influence over men and events in many countries, if it has excited the notice and provoked the supervision of thousands of able and skilful critics, clerical and lay, it may, indeed, continue secret, but its object cannot be unknown.
 The elaborate mystery and multiplied formulas with which Masonry veils its portals and guards its thresholds, its passwords and its signs, its altar and its arch, its rites and its decrees, its tremendous oath of silence and fidelity, may awe while they fascinate the common herd of dupes and instruments. They may quicken the sense of enjoyment of what is most usually in these countries little more than a too convivial club. They may supply a useful screen for the baser intrigues of cunning and bigotry by which men plot against the commercial prosperity or professional advancement of their fellow citizens by utilising for private ends the obligations of a sworn membership. Such petty and contemptible objects may satisfy the personages who manipulate the appointments in the public offices and the Royal Irish Constabulary. But universal Masonry has been for upwards of three centuries a world-wide organisation, which has numbered its members— comparatively few of them indeed completely initiated—by tens of millions, and which has sought to present in every land of Christendom the alluring image of New Temple and to weave the bond of a New Brotherhood. It is absolutely impossible that such an organisation should not have made itself thoroughly known both to the powers which it has sought to serve and to the powers which it has laboured to destroy. Its braggarts and its traitors—and Masonry has had them both—its desperadoes and its cowards, its theoreticians and its politicians, have in the course of centuries supplied to men of the Church and men of the State—to the Council of Ten of the Venetian Republic, to the Bavarian Electors, to the Chancery of the Holy Roman Empire, to the Russian Cabinet—always suspicious of mysterious associations, to the Kings of Spain and the Indies; above all, to the Universal and all-observant Church—the most complete, the most abundant, and the most repulsive details of the inner direction and the external action of the great secret society of the modern world.

I.—THE MASONIC POLICY OF LORD PALMERSTON—MASONIC EPOCHS AND EPOCH-MAKERS.

 It is now many years ago since I heard from my lamented master and friend, the Rev. Sir Christopher Bellew, of the Society of Jesus, these impressive words. Speaking of the tireless machinations and ubiquitous influence of Lord Palmerston against the temporal independence of the Popes, Sir Christopher Bellew said:— " Lord Palmerston is much more than a hostile statesman. He would never have such influence on the Continent if he were only an English Cabinet Minister. But he is a Freemason, and one of the highest and greatest of Freemasons. It is he who sends what is called the Patriarchal Voice through the lodges of Europe. And to obtain that rank he must have given the most extreme proofs of his insatiable hatred to the Catholic Church."
 Another illustration of the manner in which European events are moved by hidden currents was given me by the late Major-General Burnaby, M.P., a quiet and amiable soldier, who, though to all appearance one of the most unobtrusive of men, was employed in some of the most delicate and important work of British policy in the East. General Burnaby was commissioned to obtain and preserve the names and addresses of all the Italian members of the foreign legion enlisted for the British service in the Crimean War. This was in 1855 and 1856. After the war these men, mostly reckless and unscrupulous characters— "fearful scoundrels" General Burnaby called them—dispersed to their native provinces, but the clue to find them again was in General Burnaby's hands, and when a couple of years later Cavour and Palmerston, in conjunction with the Masonic lodges, considered the moment opportune to let loose the Italian Revolution, the list of the Italian foreign legion was communicated to the Sardinian Government and was placed in the hands of the Garibaldian Directory, who at once sought out most of the men. In this way several hundreds of "fearful scoundrels," who had learned military skill and discipline under the British flag, were supplied to Garibaldi to form the corps of his celebrated "Army of Emancipation" in the two Sicilies and the Roman States. While the British diplomatists at Turin and Naples carried on, under the cover of their character as envoys, the dangerous portion of the Carbonarist conspiracy, the taxpayers of Great Britain contributed in this manner to raise and train an army destined to confiscate the possessions of the Religious Orders and the Church in Italy, and, in its remoter operation, to assail, and, if possible, destroy the world-wide mission of the Holy Propaganda itself.
 I will now ask my readers to fix in their minds the following Masonic events and Masonic leaders, forming, as it were, the framework and cardinal points of Masonic history since its commencement :—
 1. The Convention of Vicenza, in Italy, in the year 1547, which opens what may be called the incubatory stage of Freemasonry.
 2. The English period from about the year 1640.
 3. The inauguration of the Grand Lodge of London 1717, which forms the special point of departure of the immense number of Masonic associations which thenceforward penetrated the Continent from England.
 4. The Apostolic letter of Pope Clement XII., dated May, 1738, denouncing to the vigilance of all Christian pastors and powers " the contagion" of the society of liberi muratori or Freemasons "who bind themselves by a rigorous oath upon the bible, and under the most terrible penalties, to keep concealed the secret practices of their association," and inflicting the guilt of major ex-communication upon all Catholics who should enter the condemned society.
5. The Ascendancy of Voltaire and Destruction of the Joint Missions.
6. The Convention of Wilhelmsbad, near Hannau, in Germany, in the year 1781, and the adoption of Black Masonry by a great representative assembly of delegates from lodges throughout the world. The Convention of Wilhelmsbad opens the modern periods of Masonry.
 7. The Convention of Paris in September, 1877, when the assembled delegates of the lodges of the Grand Orient of France expunged from the statutes of French Freemasonry the last remnant of a less black or more hypocritical time— namely, the declaration that " the Masonic Order is based upon the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the love of humanity." The Atheistic decision of the Grand Orient has been generally embraced by the lodges of Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Hungary, and the Continent in general. Upon the Continent the Masonic Evolution is complete.
 Among the names of personages who have done most in the establishment and extension of Masonry should be remembered Paustus Socinus (1539-1604), the the true founder of the sect; Voltaire, the professional enemy of the Church; Pombal, Aranda, Choiseul and Tanucci, the Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Neapolitan politicians who carried out the Masonic policy of the destruction of the Jesuit missions; Adam Weishaupt, the organiser of the Black Convention of Wtthelmsbad; Mirabeau, who introduced Weishaupt's Masonry into the French lodge of the "Lovers of Truth;" Mazzini, Palmerstone, Proudhon, Gambetta.

II. FAUSTUS SOCINUS AND THE FOUNDATION OF MASONRY.

 The Masonic publications are full of pompous and ridiculous fables, which pretend to connect the institution with the Knights Templars, the builders of the Tower of Babel, and similar mythical founders and organisers. Sober research can only recognise as the first institution of an organisation that can be followed step by step down to the Masonry of the present day, the Association of Rationalists and Unitarians which assembled at Vicenza in the years 1546 and 1547 under the dominating influence of Laelius Socinus or Sozzino of Siena, uncle of the future founder of the secret society of the Polish Brethren, successively known as United Brethren, Brethern of the Congregation, and Freemasons. Along with Laelius Socinus were Gentilis, Ochino, Trevisano, De Rugo, and several others to the number of 40 who had adopted the tenets of the Reformation, just then spreading over Northern Europe, and had come to the conclusion that reformed Christianity, like modern Unitarianism, required the abolition of the Divinity of Christ, and together with the general rejection of the other dogmas of the Church. The decisions of a secret convention of the society of Vicenza, in l547, were not so secret, however, that they could escape the knowledge of the Venetian authorities. The spies of the Council of Ten discovered the principal members. Trevisano and De Rugo were arrested and executed as conspirators against Church and State. The rest fled abroad. Laelius Socinus passed into Hungary and Poland, where he prepared the way for the subsequent activity of his nephew Faustus.
 The Convention of Vicenza was far from being the regular assembly of an order or league. It remained to Faustus Socinus, a man of rare organising ability, at once to take up the doctrinal views of his uncle, and to mould his following into a secret association or league of associations, which quickly obtained the mastery among the Polish Protestants, directed them in a regular enterprise for the aquisition of civil supremacy that was nearly successful, and by its virulent and subtle hostility to the Catholic majority of the kingdom spread and envenomed the disunion that within a century broke up the dominions of Sobieski among the partitioning Powers. The ruin of Catholic Poland was a first fruit of the Socinian policy. When Faustus Socinus died on the 3rd of March, 1604, he had amply deserved throughout wide regions of Northern Europe the boasting epitaph over his grave at Luclavie, that— "Though Luther had destroyed the roofs of Babylon, and Calvin its walls, Socinus had uprooted its foundations." By Babylon was meant the Catholic Church. The principal writings of Faustus Socinus are published in the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum.
 Of course we are still far from the complex organisation, elaborate ceremonial, and multiplied grades of modern Masonry. But the substance of the thing was there, as may be easily seen in the description of the Socinian system given by an acute observer, the learned Abbe Lefrano, who with so many thousands of other innocent victims perished under the knives and hatchets of the revolutionary assassins in the massacre in the prisons of Paris in September, 1792.
 "None of the sectaries of that day conceived a plan so vast and so impious as that which Socinus formed against the Church. Not only did he seek to overthrow and destroy it; he undertook, besides, to erect a New Temple, into which he proposed to make every class of sectaries enter by uniting all parties, by admitting all errors, by forming a monstrous whole of contradictory principles. He sacrificed everything to the glory of founding a New Church in the place of the Church of Christ, and it is this grand project of building a New Temple which has led the Disciples of Socinus to equip themselves with the symbolic tools of the Mason's craft, the mallets, and squares, and compasses, and plumblines, and aprons, and trowels."
 How little the Catholic dupes who deck themselves in what they fancy to be merely the picturesque ornaments of their mystic brotherhood suspect that trowel, square, and compass are only significant and symbolical of the dread purpose to build an Anti-Temple against the true Temple, and to raise the foundations of an Anti-Church upon the ground where Socinus hoped he had uprooted the very foundations of Catholic Christianity. White Masonry also preserves the symbol of the All-seeing Eye, for Socinus vaguely maintained the idea of God; but the vast confederacies in union with the Grand Orient of France, have developed the Socinian mission and fully adopted the blind Atheism which always had plenty of adepts among the higher grades even of early Masonry. Before leaving Socinus and his period I would refer the curious reader to the masterly work of the great Italian historian Cesare Cantu, on " The Heretics of Italy," for farther appreciations of Socinus and his work.

 III. THE ENGLISH PERIOD AND CONTINENTAL REVOLUTION

 Between the death of Faustus Socinus, in 1604, and the appearance of regular Masonic Lodges in England, little more than a generation elapsed, and that generation was full of the efforts of the Socinians to propagate their association Many Socinian emissaries penetrated Holland from Germany, and reached England from from Holland. The increasing rigour of the Polish laws also drove many of the most notorious sectaries into banishment, and numbers of them took refuge in England, where they found a ready welcome among the endless swarm of Anabaptist Fifth Monarchy men, and other Puritan fanatics who were then preparing the advent of the Cromwellian Commonwealth, the motto of which was to be "toleration for everything except the Mass" It was a time of religious and intellectual aberration. Alchemy and astrology were pursued by the Society of the Rosicrucians, who possessed, or pretended to possess, secret traditions of mysterious knowledge and occult science. Among fanatics and charlatans the new seed fell on favourable soil. A century and a half later the famous charlatan Cagliostro, was a trusted instrument and leader of Freemasonry, and the so-called Egyptian Rite, or "Rite of Misraim," established by him, is still a high institution of the contemporary craft. Cagliostro, whose real name was Joseph Balsamo, of Palermo, but whose Masonic designation was "the Grand Copt of Egypt," was one of the most accomplished scoundrels of any country or century ; and were I to describe his combined success as arch-Mason and arch-swindler among the Freethinking Society of the eighteenth century, the story might astonish many even of those who know how Freethinkers, who disdain to believe the plainest truths of religion, are often quite ready to swallow any absurdity and to worship any impostor.
 I find that the learned antiquarian Ashmole, who, as a professed alchemist and Rosicrucian, was ripe for mystic proceedings, was chosen a member, along with a Colonel Mainwaring, of a fraternity of Masons at Warrington, in the year 1646, and that in the same year a Rosicrucian Society met in the hall of the Freemasons at London. At this time, and for seventy years later, the Secret Freemasons continued to employ the pretence of nominally including actual artisan-masons in their associations. The handicraftsmen were, however, left outside the veils of the secret organisation unless they qualified themselves by other arts than manual labour for initiation in the hidden designs of the unseen Brotherhood.
 All this English period, which may be said to stretch from the middle of the seventeenth to the commencement of the eighteenth century, is of vital importance in the development of modern Masonry. The secrecy of the new association commended itself to the partisans of both sides in the civil strife in England, and Cavaliers as well as Roundheads sought the shelter of its watchwords and its oaths. Ashmole himself used Freemasonry to serve the cause of the Stuart Restoration after the head of the first Charles fell on the Whitehall scaffold in 1649: and in Scotand the persecuted Cavaliers made the lodges strongholds of Stuart devotion. The devotion of a section of English Masonry to the Start cause later on powerfully contributed to prepare the way to Introduce the order into France on the flight of so many hundreds of Jacobites to that country after the fall of James the Second. (To be concluded next week.)[Part 2]

Advocate (Melbourne, Vic. : 1868 - 1954), Saturday 2 August 1884, page 4

THE ENEMIES OF SOCIAL ORDER.

To understand the true character of the enemies of society, it is necessary first to see the nature and form of the society which they are endeavouring to destroy. At the time of the fall of the Roman Empire the power of the sword and the influence of religion were the only means of protecting society and saving it from utter ruin. These two powers naturally as it were, united themselves for this common end ; and from this union resulted neither a theocracy nor a despotism, but a new form of government in which the spiritual power made and interpreted laws which were enforced by the secular or military. The spirit animating society was inspired by chivalry and religion. Religion regulated the morals of the people, enlightening their minds with the light of truth, and teaching respect and submission to the authority of their rulers. The rulers in their turn to keep up this obedience in their subjects, observed the rules and precepts of morality as taught by the Universal Church, swearing before the altars of religion to rule for the good of their subjects, the people also promising fidelity to him as long as he was faithful to them ; religion was constituted judge of both and was also the bond of union between them. This is the true nature and idea of society, that is Christian society, against which the enemies of order wage an unrelenting war. Hence in their attempts against society, they aim their attacks not only against religion and its ministers, but against any temporal power that protects and supports it. These constant enemies Christian society are the successors of those of sects which long ago combatted the Apostles themselves— such as the epicureans, manicheans, &c., carefully handing down from generation to generation their errors and hatred of Christianity. When obliged to carry on their nefarious work in secret, they do it by means of secret societies under various names practising and being united by the mysterious rites and signs of the Templars, Freemasons, Illuminati, &c.   These anti-Christian and antisocial bodies make use of every means and adapt themselves to all circumstances, they conform their expressions and actions to the various customs of each country, they pander to the passions and prejudices of any ruler over whom they have obtained an influence ; by their promises of liberty, which means absolute submission to their authority, they attract to their ranks the factitious and discontented of all parties ; attacking religious belief with principles of infidelity, scepticism, and materialism, at one time professing toleration, at another unbending despotism according to the various circumstances of time, place or people, having in view all the time their end — the destruction of the Christian religion and of Society as established and sustained by it. They delude themselves and others with the idea of obtaining the perfection of humanity by progress to perfect happiness in this world ; which is to be obtained by the universal fraternity of all men, and the more universal this brotherhood becomes the nearer is humanity to its perfection; humanity is every day attaining to this end so that what was good and necessary for society in an early stage of this progress— in a more advanced state becomes not only useless but hurtful and must be eliminated.
Thus, for example, with the different forms which have appeared in Society ; each in its time was good, but, as humanity made progress, each had to yield to a more perfect ; thus, Polytheism to Christianity, which now has run its time and must yield to another more perfect, such as Infidelity, Socialism, &c. This is not the place to enter into a detailed discussion of the vain imaginations and impracticable theories of those men. They seem to be ignorant of the great lessons taught by all history, and of the very nature of man, who is, as he always was, subject to passions and prejudices. They deceive themselves in hoping to perfect or reform society without religion, when experience clearly proves that Christianity alone possesses the cure for all social evils and that every moral and social doctrine opposed to her will be rendered powerless and barren. Trusting to the recorded promise of the Almighty, 'That the Gates of Hell' and the 'Powers of Darkness shall not prevail against her,' Christianity— in other words the Catholic religion — shows in the spirit of life which animates her, and in the instinct which makes her resist her greatest enemies, the most wonderful power which has ever appeared on earth. What more perfect religion or society than hers : Catholicity defies all societies, all sects, and all schools, to realise what she has realised, to triumph over what she has triumphed and to pass through, without perishing, the crises through which she has passed. — Saunders Gazette.

 Freeman's Journal 26 December 1868,

THOMAS PAINE.

I think it is Hegel who remarks that the history of the world is the judgment of the world. The meaning of that is that, in the course of its long process, Time sifts the chaff from the wheat, separates truth from evil, and passes judgment upon men and institutions on their own merits. The truth of this is signally evident in the case of Thomas Paine.

In the minds of our great grand fathers the name of Paine was associated with all that was anarchical, if not diabolical. In some respects his influence was considered to be more baneful even than Napoleon's. Napoleon was viewed as the enemy of this country, but Paine was looked upon as the enemy of the social, political, and religious order. Tories and Whigs, orthodox religionists, and Unitarians agreed in denouncing Thomas Paine as the arch-enemy of all that was stable and sacred in civilisation. Biographies were written of him by men whose minds were steeped in prejudice, and in some cases in malignity, with the result that up till recent times there was nothing to represent Paine but grotesque caricatures. Even a judicious writer like the late Sir Leslie Stephen, in this country, was imposed upon by these caricatures, and in modern times it was left to two men — J. M. Robertson, M.P., and the late Moncure Conway — to reveal Paine to the present generation in his true features. From correspondence I had with Sir Leslie Stephen, I know he felt keenly the attack of Robertson. He was a fair-minded man, and, no doubt, regretted his unhappy references to Paine in his "English Thought in the Eighteenth Century."
Moncure Conway's magnificent tribute to the memory of Paine, in the form of two able and painstaking volumes, published in 1802, revealed to the world the real Paine as a man of genius, of high ideals, of absolute sincerity, of indomitable courage, of boundless zeal, of untiring industry — a man, above all, animated by the enthusiasm of humanity. It is satisfactory to find that, in commemoration of the death of Paine in 1800, a cheap edition of Conway's book is being published, so that a true portrait of him will be within reach of the humblest reader in the land. In his satirical way, Carlyle remarks that Paine, having freed America with his famous pamphlet, "Common Sense," was resolved to free this whole world, and perhaps the other! Paine, in truth, was a pioneer of what is now termed humanitarism. The spirit of humanity is not so modern as we are apt to imagine. Readers of Lecky's "History of England" will remember the dark picture he paints of the inhumanity of the times in which Paine lived. Conway tells us that "when Paine was a lad, the grand gentleman who purloined parks and mansions from the Treasury were sending children to the gallows for small thefts instigated by hunger." In his thirteenth year he might have seen, under the shadow of Ely Minster, ten miles away, the execution of Amy Hutchinson, aged seventeen, for poisoning her husband. "Her face and hands were smeared with tar, and having a garment daubed with pitch. After a short prayer, she was denounced as a Quaker, and the executioner strangled her, and twenty minutes after the fire was kindled, and burnt half an hour."
Outside of the Quakers, to which sect Paine belonged, no protest against the savagery of the times was raised. We shall never understand Paine if we look upon him as a revolutionist filled with a passion for overturning thrones and churches. His career is only reduced to intelligible consistency when we recognise that the improving and driving force behind his social, political and religious activities was an overmastering passion for humanity. His pamphlet,"Common Sense," which is universally acknowledged to have been a potent factor in the American Revolution, had a wider aim than the substitution of Republicanism for Monarchy. He looked beyond conferring a boon on the American citizen. A strong opponent of slavery, he said to the framers of the American Constitution, "Forget not the hapless African." It is a significant fact that a paragraph in favor of the abolition of slavery in America, which is surmised to have been inserted through Paine's influence, in the "Declaration of Independence" was struck out. Why? Be cause Georgia and South Carolina wanted slaves, and the Northerners were interested in supplying them! Had Paine's humane suggestion been adopted the United State would have been saved the agony and bloody sweat of the Civil War."
Paine's career reads like a romance. No sooner does the French Revolution break out than he hastens to enter upon the great task of what Heine has called the liberation of humanity. And here, too, we find in Paine united two qualities which were rare in the eighteenth century — political sagacity and humanity. It is now admitted that the execution of Louis XVI. was not a crime, but a blunder. Paine was the spokesman of the few who pleaded for mercy. The result of his intervention on behalf of Louis was that he was thrown into prison, and was marked for the guillotine. He occupied what he believed to be his last hours in writing "The Age of Reason." The extraordinary manner in which he escaped his expected doom had better be given in his own words : —

"One hundred and sixty-eight persons were taken out of the Luxembourg in one night, and a hundred and sixty of them guillotined next day, of which I knew I was to be one ; and the manner I escaped that fate is curious, and has all the appearance of accident. The room in which I lodged was on the ground floor, and one of a long range of rooms under a gallery, and the door of it opened outward and flat against the wall, so that when it was opened the inside of the door appeared outward, and the contrary when it was shut. I had three companions, fellow-prisoners with me — Joseph Vanhuile, of Burges, since President of the municipality of that town ; Michael and Robbins Bastini, of Louvan. When persons by scores and by hundreds were to be taken out of the prison for the guillotine it was always done in the night, and those who performed that had a private mark or signal by which they knew what rooms to go to and what number to take. We, as I have said, were four, and the door of our room was marked, unobserved by us, with that number in chalk ; but it happened, if happening is the proper word, that the mark was not on when the inside door was open, and flat against the wall, and thereby came on the inside when we shut it at night, and the Destroying Angel passed by it."

The publication of "The Age of Reason " intensified the hatred against Paine. In England he found himself the victim of State persecutions ; in America many of his old friends, not caring to incur religious, as well as political odium, separated from him ; while in France he found himself the victim of all kinds of suspicions. Meanwhile, in the cause of liberty and humanity, he toiled bravely. The great profits that came to him from his writings he devoted to the cause of humanity with a profusion that left him at times in severe financial straits. Believing that he was engaged in the sacred war of humanity, Paine refused to make money out of his pamphlets, or take what he considered to be the wages of a hireling. He actually donated the copyright of his pamphlet, "Common Sense," to America for the cause of Independence, likewise of his pamphlet, "The Crisis." In the words of Conway, "peace found Paine a penniless patriot, eating his crust contentedly, when he might easily have had fifty thousand pounds in his pockets."

Paine was not only a pioneer in humanity, but also in political and social reform. In the words of Conway, "he was the first to advocate international arbitration ; the first to expose the absurdity and criminality of duelling ; the first to plead for the animals ; the first to demand justice for woman " ; and, I may add, the first to advocate old-age pensions. It is a hundred years since Thomas Paine died. The dust which unfair controversy raised has long since been laid, and the din long silenced. The wheel of Time has come round full circle. Men of all sorts and conditions are now willing to do justice to the man who, in the midst of great obstacles and with unflinching and self-sacrificing purpose, held aloft the lighted torch of humanitarianism, and passed it on to succeeding generations. — Hector McPherson, in T.P.'s Weekly.

 People 14 August 1909,

THE SECRET OF FREEMASONRY.(part 2)

A KEY OF MODERN HISTORY.

(By F. Hugh O'Donnell, M.P., in the Dublin Freeman.)

III.— THE ENGLISH PERIOD AND THE CONTINENTAL REVOLUTION.

Between the death of Faustus Socinus, in 1604, and the appearance of regular Masonic Lodges in England, little more than a generation elapsed, and that generation was full of the efforts of the Socinians to propagate their association. Many Socinian emissaries penetrated Holland from Germany, and reached England from Holland. The increasing vigour of the Polish laws against the treasonable confederation which was sapping the strength of the kingdom also drove many of the most notorious sectaries into banishment, and numbers of them took refuge in England, where they found a ready welcome among the endless swarm of Anabaptists, Fifth Monarchy men, and other Puritan fanatics who were then preparing the advent of the Cromwellian Commonwealth, the motto of which was to be toleration for everything except the Mass." It was a time of religious and intellectual aberration. Alchemy and astrology were pursued by the Society of the Rosicrucians, who possessed, or pretended to possess, secret traditions of mysterious knowledge and occult science. Among fanatics and charlatans the new seed fell on favourable soil. A century and a half later the famous charlatan, Cagliostro, was a trusted instrument and leader of Freemasonry, and the so-called Egyptian Rite, or "Rite of Misraim," established by him, is still a high institution of the contemporary craft. Cagliostro, whose real name was Joseph Balsamo, of Palermo, but whose Masonic designation was "the Grand Copt of Egypt," was one of the most accomplished scoundrels of any country or century and were I to describe his combined success as arch-Mason and arch-swindler among the Freethinking Society of the eighteenth century, the story might astonish many even of those who know how Freethinkers, who disdain to believe the plainest truths of religion, are often quite ready to swallow any absurdity and to worship any impostor.
I find that the learned antiquarian Ashmole, who, as a professed Alchemist and Rosicrucian, was ripe for mystic proceedings, was chosen a member, along with a Colonel Mainwaring, of a fraternity of Masons at Warrington in the year 1646, and that in the same year a Rosicrucian Society met in the hall of the Freemasons at London. At this time, and for seventy years later, the Secret Freemasons continued to employ the pretence of nominally including actual artisan-masons in their associations. The handicraftsmen were, however, left outside the veils of the secret organisation unless they qualified themselves by other arts than manual labour for initiation in the hidden designs of the unseen Brotherhood.
All this English period, which may be said to stretch from the middle of the seventeenth to the commencement of the eighteenth century, is of vital importance in the development of modern Masonry. The secrecy of the new association commended itself to the partisans of both sides in the civil strife in England, and Cavaliers as well as Roundheads sought the shelter of its watchwords and its oaths. Ashmole himself, used Freemasonry to serve the cause of the Stuart restoration after the head of the first Charles fell on the Whitehall scaffold in 1649 and in Scotland the persecuted Cavaliers made the  lodges strongholds of Stuart devotion. The devotion of a section of English Masonry to the Stuart cause later on powerfully contributed to prepare the way to introduce the order into France on the flight of so many hundreds of Jacobites to that country after the fall of James the Second.
Fostered in this manner by the spirit and circumstances of the time, Masonry became more and more carefully organised, and though party politics probably occupied the brethren as much as any other objects, the improvement of its organisation and the elaboration of its ritual materially facilitated its subsequent propaganda of social and religious revolution on the continent. The contingent had exported to England the broad idea and loose framework of the Socinian scheme. The practical bent of England sent back to the continent, carefully compacted and skilfully fashioned, organisations calculated to force their way, and held their ground, and extend their operation among the careless and unsuspicious nations of continental Christendom. The author of the work, "Orthodox Masonry," Ragon, himself a Mason of high authority, gives the following list of continental lodges, each the parent of innumerable others, which were established under what he not unjustly calls the active and intelligent direction of the Grand Lodge of England.
In France, at Dunkirk in 1721; at Paris in 1725 ; at Valenciennes in 1733.
In Germany at Hamburg in 1737; and the Grand Lodge of Hamburg soon rose to enormous power and extension.
In Spain, at Gibraltar 1726, just a year subsequent to the first lodge in France and at Madrid in the year 1727, and for half a century down to 1779, the lodge or torre of Madrid regularly received its documents and powers from the Grand Lodge of England.
In Portugal about the year 1735 several lodges were founded at Lisbon and in the Portuguese provinces by the Grand Lodge England.
In Italy in the year 1739, Savoy, Piedmont, and Sardinia a provincial Grand Master, nominated by the English Grand Lodge. Little more than a century later the English Arch-Mason Palmerston was able to use the same Savoy, Piedmont, and Sardinia, for the accomplishment of the cherished designs of Masonry against the Rome of the Popes.
Such were the opening ramifications of the great secret society established to set up a New Temple against the edifice of Catholic faith and civilisation. The wreck of society with which the eighteenth century is filled was everywhere mainly the work of the affiliates of (life?) destroying conspiracy. There might be maladministration, there might be distress, there might be decadence, but there still might have been reform,and there never could have been revolution of the terrorist and satanic kind, if every worst element had not been more worsened and every better influence remorsely opposed and incapacitated, and every effort at genuine reform skilfully prevented and frustrated by the untiring plots and unscrupulous vigilance of the cosmopolitan conspiracy.
What caused the concessions of the gentle and generous Louis XVI. to end in despair and death? What hounded on the passions of the mob against prelate and priest and noble, who were anxious to make every sacrifice for reform? What rewarded the honest desire of the vast majority of the States-General themselves, with nothing but betrayal and the gory axe of the guillotine? I call a witness, an unimpeachable witness, the ultra-republican and freethinking historian of the French revolution, Louis Blanc. Here is what Louis Blanc in his "Histoire de la Revolution Francaise" confesses and boasts to have been the decisive and supreme preponderance of the Masonic organisation in the revolutionary catastrophe:—
"It is necessary to introduce the reader into the mine which was then being dug under thrones as well as altars by a band of revolutionists far more deep and active than the Encyclopedists themselves ; revolutionists organised in an association composed of men of all countries, of all religions, of all ranks, bound together by symbolical signs, engaged under the penalty of an oath to guard inviolably the secret of their inner existence, holding themselves to be equals though divided into three classes— Apprentices, Companions, and Masters, for that is what Freemasonry is. On the eve of the French Revolution, Freemasonry had acquired an enormous development. It was spread throughout the whole of Europe. It aided the meditative genius of Germany. It obscurely agitated France. It presented everywhere the image of a society founded upon principles contrary to those of the civil society."
What a terrible confession! What a tremendous revelation ! It was Masonry that dug the mine under altars and thrones." It was Masonry that presented for the imitation of dupes and instruments "the image of a society founded upon principles contrary to those of the civil society." And yet there are sapient Catholics who believe that the awful work of terrorism and destruction which ravaged the civilisation of Europe a hundred years ago had no suggestors, had no inciters, and no agitators, and that the efforts of honest reformers only failed through some accidental fatality or chance misfortune. The men who were "digging the mine under thrones and altars" throughout Europe kept their secret well enough, for their infernal purpose. But the secret is no longer undiscoverable and undiscovered; and we know that the successors of the oathbound miners of 1789 are still sapping and mining Christian altars in 1884.
On the eve of the French Revolution in 1782 the Masonic lodge of "Candour" at Paris claimed in its encyclical letter of the 31st of May of that year that there were a million of sworn Masons in France alone.

IV.— THE FINAL DEVELOPMENT. VOLTAIRE AND WEISHAUPT.

THE CONVENTION OF WILHELMSBAD, AND THE CONVENTION OF THE GAULS.

In sketching the transitional period of Masonry in the last chapter I have been obliged to touch on matters which overlap, strictly speaking, the proper subjects of the chapter. Conversely, I am obliged to go back in dealing with Voltaire upon a time which falls within the last period. This difficulty arises from the essential nature of a time of transition. In the eighteenth century, especially, the practical work of founding lodges, to which the Grand Lodge of England devoted itself, went to a considerable extent side by side with the speculative advances of daring theorists and rationalists, who, each after his disposition, set himself to developing and cultivating what he had received from his English exemplars. The old Socinian slip which had been set in English soil had taken root and stretched out powerful branches and long tendrils to the continent back again, and continental cultivators in turn undertook to train and foster with added skill the increasing and vigorous growth.
Voltaire died in 1778. His career of satanic sarcasm had lasted for half a century. By his own repeated avowals, by the admission of his admirers, it was during his residence of three years in 1726, 1727, and 1728 in England, that he became a Past-Master in the anti-Christian Philosophy of which he was to be so mighty and unscrupulous an exponent. In the Society of Bolingbroke the Deist, and Toland the Atheist, Voltaire learned with avidity the precepts of showy scepticism and sneering infidelity, which he was afterwards to pour like a deluge over literary France. There scarcely ever was a society intellectually and morally more depraved than existed in some regions of English life in the days when Sir Robert Walpole kept a market for votes at Whitehall, and when the religious and social corruption kept the political corruption well in countenance. Hanoverian grossness had adapted to itself whatever was worst in the licence of the Restoration, and had debased and bestialised it. But let me quote what Godefroy in his great "Histoire de la Literature Francaise"— a work crowned by the French Academy— says of Voltaire's  connection with the English infidels. And here I would, in passing, recommend to every Irish student of the higher letters not to remain longer than can be helped without procuring the ten masterly volumes of Godefroy's "French Literary History":—
"The talent of Voltaire as a prose writer had hardly been suspected when be published, in 1731, 'The Letters on the English,' more commonly known as 'The Philosophical Letters.' It was after his return from England, where he had passed three years in the company of the Freethinkers. The 'Philosophical Letters' had the double object of popularising in France the opinions and the reputation of the English infidels. They were accordingly denounced by the clergy, and a decree of the Parliament of Paris of the 10th of June, 1734, condemned them to be burned by the common executioner as contrary to religion, morals, and the respect due to legitimate authority. All the letters insinuate an epicurian deism, and exalt the superiority of England, in religion, philosophy, law, war, art, and commerce."
It was the fitting prelude and opening of a career henceforth devoted to one prolonged attack, varied, with inexhaustible inventiveness, against the Catholic Church. Ecrason l'infame—Let Us Crush The Infamous Thing— was the perpetual exhortation of Voltaire to his correspondents and allies to destroy the Catholic Church. If the reader will look back to a preceding Chapter he will see that English Masonry had only been introduced into France ten years previous to Voltaire's importation of sceptical philosophy.
Under Voltaire and around Voltaire laboured with furious zeal the entire array of conspirators whose grand work in the century, forerunning the elevation of a prostitute Goddess of Reason on the altar of Notre Dame, was the destruction of the vast Jesuit missions not only in Europe but in America, in Asia, in Africa, in the pagan isles of ocean. The man who still wants to know why the Italian Masonic organs and leaders demand with such relentless hatred the spoliation of the Propaganda in our own day would be amply edified on the subject of his artless curiosity by simply turning back to the eighteenth century record of the mission churches left without a ministering priest, of the mission schools left without a teacher, of the native races thrown back upon the aboriginal heathenism, while thousands and thousands of servants of God loaded with chains, fainting with starvation, were cast to rot in the dungeons of Pombal and D'Aranda amid the frantic exultation of all the Voltairians and all the Brethren of the Mystic Tie.
While Voltairianism was soddening and sapping the society of France, and while the Masonic lodges— burrowing in the edifice of the State, like the teredo in the timbers of the stout ship, it will gradually bring to the bottom— were spreading in every direction, a great organising genius of evil had arisen in Germany. This was Adam Weishaupt, a Bavarian, who from meditating upon the spread of Masonry around him, conceived the daring project of making himself master of his organisation by indoctrinating it with his pantheist philosophy, and subjecting it to his vowed disciples. For years Weishaupt pursued this end. He first established the secret society of the Illuminists or Illuminati, signifying men who were enlightened by a higher knowledge than the vulgar herd, and gradually insinuated his influence among the lodges. He early divined that Masonry was ripe for its final development. A powerful section of the French Masons, in the so-called Convention of the Gauls, held at Lyons, encouraged him by the practical adoption of his views. Lutheranism had denied the authority of the Church. Socinianism, which is the offspring of Lutheranism, had denied the Divinity of Christ, and Socinian Masonry had carried the denial into practical politics, which, while maintaining a vague deism, implied the equal value of all creeds. Weishaupt drew the legitimate deduction that "as all creeds were equally true, they must he all equally false," and the secret, or the higher knowledge, which he communicated to his Illuminati, and which his adepts conveyed under the veil of fantastic rites, and under the penalty of horrid imprecations to selected organs in the regular lodges, was—
"Religion is superstition. There is no God, Nature is God, and reason is Nature's only priest. Men are the Divine and equal children of Nature. All means are good to destroy superstition."
Thousands had arrived at the same conclusion. All the disciples of all the Freethinkers had prepared the way. Mirabeau became its apostle in France. The idea spread like wildfire, now that an organising mind had arisen. The official convocation of the Duke of Brunswick, a high and venerable Mason, and the secret influence of the Illuminist Chief gathered together at Wilhelmsbad in 1781—three years after the death of Voltaire— a vast convention of Masonic delegates from all parts of the world, and the New Non-Credo received the enthusiastic sanction of all the worshippers of the goddess of Reason and the Infinite Potentiality of Matter. The men of theory crowned the work at Wilhelmsbad. It passed into the hands of the men of action, when the sickle of the guillotine reaped its red harvest on the Place of the Revolution and when the possessions of the Church were seized by the French Republic and again, when the lying Liberalism of Spain and Portugal confiscated the property of a thousand convents and again when the Mazzinians drove Pius the Ninth to Gaeta and when Palmerston and Cavour let loose the Garibaldians on the march to the Porta Pia and when the Gambettist Jacobins, all sworn Masons, expelled the religious orders and decreed a law of Atheistic Education for the Catholics of France.

V. —"GLORY TO SATAN."

To explain with any approach to completeness the part played by the great Freemasons during the past fifty years alone in executing the policy of the oath-bound order would be utterly beyond even the most generous limits of a newspaper's hospitality. The activity of any one of them, Mazzini or Proudhon for example, would be found to be inextricably involved with half the events of half of continental of Europe for generations. Who, without examination, would suspect preponderating influence of Proudhon, the Socialist philosopher, in directing the policy of the lodges? Yet the Monde Maςonique the journal which shares with the Chaine D'Union the official representation of French Masonry in the Press, in an article in December, 1881, declared that Proudhon's initiation in 1847 forms an epoch in the development of Masonry. "It was, above all, to his friends and disciples that Masonry owes the importance which marked its existence during the second half of the empire. Masonry has not forgotten Proudhon, for the life and work of Proudhon were in unison with the aspirations of Masonry." But it was Proudhon's mission he avows himself to deliver men from the ideas of the immortality of the soul and a Supreme Being, and to teach them that the idea of God was not only foreign to morality, but hurtful to morality." I could cite columns from the authorised publications of continental Masonry. I could show by innumerable extracts from the minutes of lodges and grand lodges how the Masonic temple models itself like a real anti-church and opposes anti-rites, anti-ministrations, even a blasphemous anti-sacrament to the rites, the orders, and the sacraments of the Catholic Church. I could quote the record of Masonic Baptisms where the ministering Grand Venerable proclaims over the innocent and helpless infant, "we do not baptise thee in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost." I could quote Masonic marriages where the nuptial pair make solemn promise to renounce "the confessional and the superstitions of Catholic religion" amid the applauding beat of Masonic mallets and the triumphant flourish of Masonic swords. I could quote the horrid preparation for the grave by which, the brethren vow neither themselves to seek the priest at the last hour "nor to permit "—utter and unspeakable infamy of Satanic intolerance— a dying and penitent brother to return to God on the brink of eternity.
The secret of Masonry ! Who cares for the trumpery pantomime of secrecy enacted in the lodges of inferior grades and useful dupes? Theirs is not the secret of the great arch-brethren who sap and mine the altars of Europe, and its thrones as well, when they do not find it expedient to skulk behind a show of temporal loyalty for the better prosecution of their anti-Christian designs. The secret of Masonry ! It is the secret of Faustus Socinus. It is the secret of Adam Weishaupt. It is the secret of Giuseppe Mazzini. It is the secret and the policy to have done with the Christian civilisation, and to erect the new temple on the ruins of the ancient church.
Here is an extract from the minute of the lecture of "Brother Gaston" at the meeting of the Grand Lodge of the so called Scottish Rite of Paris on the 21st of December, 1882:—
"Meeting of December 21st. Brother Gaston, member of the Lodge, delivered a most interesting lecture on the subject, 'God in the presence of Science.' . . . .  Space prevents us entering in to details. The applause of the meeting frequently emphasised the words of the lecturer. . . .  Brother Gaston intends in a few days to publish a work entitled 'God, he is the Enemy,' in which will be set forth the views he could only summarise in a lecture."
It is the worshipful Brother Dumonchel who thus reports the proceeding in the January number of the Bulletin Maconnique of the Grande Lodge Symbolique Ecossaise for the year 1882.
In the same year, 1882, a great assembly of Italian Freemasons in the theatre of Turin chanted together the fearful impiety of Josue Carducci's Infernal Hymn to the Spirit of Evil:—
Behold him as he passes, ye peoples.
Behold Satan the Great.
Beneficent he passes on his chariot of flame.
Hosannah, O Satan, hosannah, Great Rebel.
May our prayers, may our incense, mount consecrated to thee.
Thou hast conquered the Jehovah of the priests."
And this is the Secret of Freemasonry. And this is why Pope Leo XIII. renewing and amplifying the warnings and censures of his predecessors Clement XII. Benedict XIV. Pius VII. Leo XII. Pius VIII. Gregory XVI. and Pius IX. and citing and adopting Saint Augustin's celebrated Image of the City of Satan which opposes the City of God, has solemnly declared that modern Freemasonry is the City of Satan. In the words of the Pontiff—
"The ultimate purpose of the Masonic sect is the utter overthrow of that whole religious and political order of the world which the Christian teacher has produced, and the substitution of a new state of things in accordance with their ideas, of which the foundations and laws shall be drawn from mere Naturalism."
And this is "why, as Pope Leo adds"—
" There are many things like mysteries which it is the fixed rule to hide with extreme care, not only from strangers, but from very many members also; such as their secret and final designs, the names of the chief leaders, and certain secret and inner meetings, as well as their decisions, and the ways and means of carrying them out. This is, no doubt, the object of the manifold difference among the members as to right, office, and privilege— of the received distinction of orders and grades, and of that severe discipline which is maintained, candidates generally are commanded to promise— nay, with a special oath, to swear— that they will never, to any person, at any time or in any way make known the members, the passes, or the subject discussed.  Thus, with a fraudulent external appearance, and with a style of simulation which is always the same, the Freemasons, like the Manichees of old, strive, as far as possible, to conceal themselves, and to admit no witnesses but their own members."
What an authoritative commentary upon that saying of Benjamin Disraeli—who probably knew many things through the cosmopolitan fraternity of the Jews— "There are only two Powers in Europe to-day the Church and the Secret Societies."

1 August 1884, Issue 15, New Zealand Tablet, Volume 01,