MILL'S LAST ESSAYS.*

......
It is probably a consequence of the caution here referred to in reference to the publication of works on the subject of religion that the only writings of Mill in which this is the predominant theme have been withheld from the press until after his death. The reason for this scrupulousness, which by his detractors has been malignantly ascribed to considerations of timidity that the whole public and private life of Mill so abundantly negatives, is seen without difficulty by a perusal of this volume. It is that in dealing with the subject of religion he felt himself on ground where certainty was not to be looked for, and where, in place of the scientific certitude which is attainable in the region of logical or economic science, he had to be content with a precarious estimate of shadowy probabilities. And so it is mainly in his posthumous works, in these essays and in his autobiography, that a distinct and systematic statement of his religious opinions is to be found. It is easy to see why the position of Mill towards his friends and his foes has been somewhat changed by these later books, and especially by these essays. Theologians who had poured out upon him the vials of pious wrath as the head of a school of philosophic sceptics have found with surprise that his sympathies were not so opposed to their systems as were his principles. His positivist and nihilist admirers have been in some cases disgusted to find, as has been said by one critic, that "he was not a very strict atheist after all," and are enraged that he does not assume the faculty of omniscience so far as to deny even the possibility of a Supreme Being. To many who belong to neither of these classes, it will be a new light thrown on the character of Mill to discover how discontented he was with the narrow limits within which his intellectual philosophy confined him, how the same eager emotional temperament—almost feminine in its keen impulsiveness—which he displayed in his friendship and in his social and political sympathies, have also swayed his reason very materially in the sphere of religious thought, and at times is found dictating principles to his intellect, and leaving to that merely the task of inventing reasons to support them.

The first essay is a polemic against Nature. It is written to show that if the world is to be regarded as the work of an intelligent ruler then it is a work of miserable imperfection and injustice. The often-repeated precept to make Nature the rule of our actions, to live in accordance with Nature, is either unmeaning or monstrous. "Nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned every day for doing to one another are Nature's every-day performance. Killing, the most criminal act recognised by human laws, Nature does once to every being that lives; and in a large proportion of cases, after protracted tortures, such as only the greatest monsters whom we read of ever purposely inflicted on their living fellow creatures." Seeing all this, seeing the cruelty, the waste, the suffering which pervade the world of Nature, and the moral wrong, injustice, and imperfection, together with the sorrow and misery, which afflict human life, we can only conclude that the author of Nature was deficient either in power or in beneficence. Numerous sophistical replies are urged to this argument, but they carry no weight to the heart of humanity. Indeed, many who believe the most firmly in the existence of a ruler of the universe have not believed his power to be unlimited. In the words of Mill:ㄧ

"Those who have been strengthened in goodness by relying on the sympathising support of a powerful and good governor of the world have, I am satisfied, never really believed that governor to be, in the strict sense of the term, omnipotent. They have always saved his goodness at the expense of his power. They have believed, perhaps, that he could if be willed, remove all the thorns from their individual path, but not without causing greater harm to some one else, or frustrating some purpose of great importance to the general well-being. They have believed that he could do any thing, but not any combination of things; that his government, like human government, was a system of adjustments and compromises ; that the world is inevitably imperfect, contrary to his intention. And since the exertion of all his power to make it as little imperfect as possible leaves it no better than it is, they cannot but regard this power, though vastly beyond human estimate,yet as in itself not merely finite but extremely limited.

To most readers much of this essay will seem like an old tale. One of the earliest generalisations of the experience of mankind most have been—and the oldest records, the oldest utterances of poetry and of religion show us that it was—that the world is a place of suffering and sorrow, trouble and disappointment. Nature is red in tooth and claw with ravine and slaughter. The strong prey on the weak, only to be themselves the prey of a stronger, and inexorable death devours all. This state of things, which is again so painfully reflected in the miseries of human life, most have been as obvious to the earliest observers as now, and any attempts to explain away the facts of bitter and universal experience most have seemed to the miserable and unhappy nothing but wretched trifling. But these are considerations that healthy minds have never cared to dwell upon. Rather has the resigned acceptance of all evils that are seen to be inevitable been always a mark by which cheerful mental well-being has been discriminated from a state of mental morbidity. The fact that such evils exist is one that supplies no data for conclusions of any practical worth. It is rather one that humanity is content to glance at and pass on. There is something in Mill's reflections on the subject essentially weak and querulous, to which we are tempted to reply in the words of Carlyle, " What if thou wert born and predestined not to be happy, but to be unhappy! Art thou nothing other than a vulture, then, that fliest through the universe, seeking after something to eat; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given to thee ?"

The second essay, on the " Utility of Religion," is one that discusses a perfectly legitimate inquiry. It is readily seen to be a perfectly independent topic from the truth of religion, and it is one that may fairly be considered. As the author observes, the age is one "of weak beliefs, and in which such belief as men have is much more determined by their wish to believe than by any mental appreciation of evidence." At such a time the consideration of the usefulness of religion may form an important part of the argument for and against it. In attempting to estimate the subject, he contends that much of the benefit that is usually attributed to religious teaching is due to it merely as teaching, and that "religion receives the credit of all the influence in human affairs which belongs to any generally accepted system of rules for the guidance and government of human life." In support of this he cites the institutions of Lycurgus, and their effects as developed in the history of Sparta, as showing that the principle of patriotism, when enabled to wield, as religion has, the agencies of early and universal education, could produce many of the moral and civil effects that are usually considered to be only producible by religion. Expanding this consideration, he holds that if the love of country could, under favourable circumstances, produce such results, the "love of that larger country, the world, may be nursed into similar strength, both as a source of elevated emotion and as a principle of duty." In other words, he considers that the "religion of humanity," of which he has, in earlier works, spoken with much respect, is fitted to elicit much of the beneficial effect that is yielded by the supernatural religions in their best forms. In reply to the argument that such a religion would be wanting in the stimulus derivable from the doctrine of a life after death, he answers—" The Buddhist religion counts probably, at this day, a greater number of votaries than either the Christian or the Mahomedan. . . But the blessing from Heaven, which it proposes as a reward to be earned by perseverance in the highest order of virtuous life, is annihilation. . . It seems to me not only possible, but probable, that in a higher, and, above all, a happier condition of human life, not annihilation but immortality may be the burdensome idea, and that human nature, though pleased with the present, and by no means impatient to quit it, would find comfort and not sadness in the thought that it is not chained through eternity to a conscious existence which it cannot be assured that it will always wish to preserve."

The most important of the essays, and the one which contributes the most largely to the effect we spoke of, of somewhat changing Mill's position relatively to many of his followers and of his opponents, is the last, that on " Theism." In this he examines the various arguments a priori and a posteriori in favour of the existence of a deity, and in strict accordance with the empirical philosophy of which he is the greatest exponent, dismisses all of them except those which come under the latter head, and all of these save that founded on the marks of design in nature. This he speaks of as one of a really scientific character, which does not shrink from really scientific tests. On investigating this argument and determining on its validity, he considers that "in the present state of our knowledge the adaptations in nature afford a large balance of probability in favour of creation by intelligence." But he is careful to insist that "this is no more than a probability." With regard to the next question, that of the attributes of this intelligent author of the universe, he seeks for evidence in the exploration of his wiles. He considers that the net results of natural theology on the subject are, "A Being of great but limited power, how or by what limited we cannot even conjecture; of great and perhaps an limited intelligence, put perhaps, also, more narrowly limited than his power; who desires, and pays some regard to, the happiness of his creatures, but who seems to have other motives of action which he cares more for, and who can hardly he supposed to have created the universe for that purpose alone." Next he discusses the ground we have for believing in human immortality. The ordinary affirmative arguments on the subject are speedily despatched. He observes—
 "The common arguments are— the goodness of God ; the improbability that He would ordain the annihilation of His noblest and richest work after the greater part of its few years of life had been spent in the acquisition of faculties which time is not allowed him to turn to fruit; and the special improbability that He would have implanted in us an instinctive desire of eternal life, and doomed that desire to complete disappointments. These might be arguments in a world the constitution of which made it possible without contradiction to hold it for the work of a being at once omnipotent and benevolent. But they are not arguments in a world like that in which we live."

Replying to the argument from what is sometimes called the instinct of immortality, he says in words which recall the logical force of Mill's writings in his best days:— Granting that wherever there is an instinct there exists something such as that instinct demands, can it be affirmed that this something exists in boundless quantity, or sufficient to satisfy the infinite craving of human desires ? What is called the desire of eternal life is simply the desire of life; and does there not exist that which this desire calls for ? Is there not life ? And is not the instinct, if it be an instinct, gratified by the possession and preservation of life ?" And further on:—

"One thing is quite certain in respect to God's government of the world, that He either could not or would not grant to us everything we wish. We wish for life, and He has granted us some life. That we wish, or some of us wish, for a boundless extent of life, and that it is not granted is no exception to the ordinary modes of His government. Many a man would like to be a Crœsus or an Augustus Cæsar, but has his wishes gratified only to the moderate extent of £1 a week or the secretaryship of his trade union. There is, therefore, no assurance whatever of a life after death on grounds of natural religion."

But, still, though there is no such assurance " to any one who feels it conducive either to his satisfaction or to his usefulness to hope for a future state as a possibility, there is no hindrance to his indulging that hope."

After an inquiry into the evidences of revelation, which are examined and set aside as of no evidential validity, the author comes back to this point of the hope of immortality. He says, in words which his readers will find it difficult completely to reconcile with some that went before:—

" To me it seems that human life, small and confined as it is, and as, considered merely in the present, it is likely to remain, even when the progress of material and moral improvement may have freed it from the greater part of its present calamities, stands greatly in need of any wider range and greater height of aspiration for itself and its destination which the exercise of imagination can yield to it without running counter to the evidence of fact; and that it is a part of wisdom to make the most of any, even small, probabilities on this subject which furnish imagination with any footing to support itself upon. And I am satisfied that the cultivation of such a tendency in the imagination, provided it goes on pari passu with the cultivation of severe reason, has no necessary tendency to pervert the judgement; but that it is possible to form a perfectly sober estimate of the evidences on both sides of a question, and yet to let the imagination dwell by preference on those possibilities which are at once the most comforting and, the most improving, without in the least degree overrating the solidity of the grounds for expecting that these rather than any other will be the possibilities actually realised."

This is the pale colourless residuum to which religion is reduced in the crucible of Mill's philosophy, and yet even this he considers a thing of value, not to be lightly cast aside. Even to acquire this very poor, doubtful product we are to " make the most of any, even small, probabilities which furnish imagination with any footing to support itself upon." He proceeds to enumerate some of the benefits which such exercise of the imagination would tend to produce, but it is easy to see that this could only result if the imagination were associated with belief of a rather high degree, and yet this Mill is strenuous and distinct in denouncing as contrary to reason and evidence. We see by this passage how far Mill was from being the passionless, purely intellectual philosopher he has been imagined from his earlier works. It is evident that—

" The burden of the mystery,
The heavy and the weary weight,
Of all this Unintelligible world,"

lay as a heavy load upon him. With all of the clear intellectuality of his philosophy, the adamantine chain of his logic, this relentless problem of life was ever preying secretly upon him as the fox beneath the robe of the Spartan boy. The greatest achievement of intellect, says Goethe, is to prevent what we know from being embarrassed by what we do not know. But these revelations of Mill's inner nature show us that he was unable to reach this serene altitude. With a wonderfully clear, lucid intellect, and the most determined resolve to allow it unlimited liberty and to follow out its utmost conclusions, he felt that something else was wanting. It is not alone that he recognised the inadequacy of mere intellect to the solution of the manifold and complex problem of human life, or that he was pressed by the feeling of the narrow bounds of our knowledge, a mere spark of light in an infinite atmosphere of darkness and mystery. Others have been equally ready to acknowledge this without permitting themselves to be ever haunted by the constantly present consciousness of the unexplained and unexplainable. They have seen that in the world of reality open before us there is space enough for human work, human science, and human life, and have been enabled to leave the rest to the attainments of the future, or, perhaps even to the unfoldings of a time when all problems will become manifest or the mind will no more be puzzled or confounded by them. This is not the course of Mill.

He, as we see, was not enabled to accept this condition, or to consent contentedly to regard these problems as wholly insoluble and, therefore, of no practical concern. Instead of once for all recognising that outside these limits of human knowledge there is infinity with all of its possibilities, that the known is everywhere bounded by, springs from, and at the last issues in the unknown, he considers that if we were to cultivate the faculty of imagination and the feeling of hope by painting the curtains of mystery by which we are surrounded with beautiful anticipations of what is beyond them, at the same time always paying heed to the warnings of severe reason that these are but the dreams of fancy and have no farther validity, this would he doing something to cheer the aspect of our prison-house and to brighten the prospects of human life. A strange teaching to be presented to us as the final thought of the greatest, strongest, profoundest intellect of our generation.
But, after all, it is given but to few men, and not always to the greatest, to rise superior to, or wholly to emancipate themselves from, the conditions of the time in which they live. Our age is one of intellectual restlessness and spiritual turmoil and anarchy. The mind of Mill was torn as the mind of his epoch is torn, by opposite demands and conflicting tendencies. On the one side he was drawn by the claims of his scientific reason, which he regarded as supreme, and on the other by links of attachment, or sympathy, with faith, or at least with one central faith, which he felt himself unable fully either to accept or to relinquish. His hold on this faith was faint and hesitating. It seemed to his reason the weakest of probabilities. Yet he has allowed the feelings it awakened to exert an influence over his speculations far in excess of what he estimated as its logical value, and to lead him into the inconsistencies and strange doctrine visible in these his final essays.

*Nature, Utility of Religion and Theism by John Stuart Mill. London ; Longmans. 1874
Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946), Saturday 30 January 1875, page 8

 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION.

. . . But in truth, these essays show a balance of his mind towards Christianity, for which the readers of his "Autobiography," and the more ardent students of his philosophy were not prepared. It is no part of my duty to follow him here into his various arguments; but I may refer to one passage which has attracted much attention, in which he approaches the central figure of Christ, and like Rousseau and other independent thinkers, renders his meed of homage to the ideal excellence of his character. The words, are best given as he penned them, for they will long have historic interest in connexion with the name of John Stuart Mill :—

" Whatever may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left—a unique figure,not more unlike all his precursors than all his followers, even those who had the direct benefit of his personal teaching. It is no use to say that Christ, as exhibited in the gospels, is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable has been superadded by the tradition of his followers. The tradition of followers suffices to insert any number of marvels, and may have inserted all, the miracles which he is reputed to have wrought. But who among his disciples or among their proselytes was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee ; as certainly not St. Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasies were of a totally different sort; still less the early Christian writers, in whom nothing is more evident than that the good which was in them was all derived, as they always professed that it was derived, from the higher source. . . . But about the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality, combined with profundity of insight, which, if we abandon the idle expectation of finding scientific precision where something very different was aimed at, must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the estimation of those who have no belief in his inspiration, in the very first rank of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. When this pre-eminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr to that mission who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity; nor even now would it be easy even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the the concrete than to endeavour so to live that Christ would approve our life. When to this we add that, to the conception of the rational sceptic, it remains a possibility that Christ actually was what he supposed, himself to be—not God, for he never made the smallest pretension to that character, and would probably have thought such a pretension as blasphemous as it seemed to the men who condemned him, but a man charged with a special, express, and unique commission from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue, we may well conclude that the influences of religion on the character which will remain after rational criticism has done its utmost against the evidences of religion are well worth preserving, and that what they lack in direct strength as compared with those of a firmer belief, is more than compensated by the greater truth and rectitude of the morality they sanction."

The publication of these essays has created the livelier interest at the present moment from the fact of their coming like another bombshell into the midst of the controversies raised by Professor Tyndall's address at Belfast The criticism evoked by that remarkable address seems to have startled the redoubtable professor. In a preface to the authorised edition he gives some pithy specimens of the different opinions which he has had to encounter, and briefly repudiates the charge of atheism. But this week, at Manchester, where he has been lecturing in the Free-trade-hall, on "Crystalline and Molecular Forces," he has returned to the subject with more emphatic words. "We are surrounded," he said, towards the close of his lecture, "by wonders and mysteries everywhere. I have sometimes—not some times, but often—in the spring-time watched the advance of the sprouting leaves, and of the grass, and of the flowers, and observed the general joy of opening life in nature, and I have asked myself this question, 'Can it be that there is no being or thing in nature that knows more about these things than I do ? Do I in my ignorance represent the highest knowledge of these things existing in this universe ?' Ladies and gentlemen, the man who puts that question fairly to himself, if he he not a shallow man, if be be a man capable of being penetrated by profound thought, will never answer the question by professing that creed of atheism which has been so lightly attributed to me." Loud cheers, which were again and again renewed, followed the utterance of this sentiment, and the Professor went on to express his belief that many of the fears that are now entertained on these subjects really have their roots in a kind of scepticism. " It is not always those who are charged with scepticism that are the real sceptics—(hear, hear, and cheers)—and I confess it is a matter of some grief to me to see able, useful, and courageous men running to and fro upon the earth wringing their hands over the threatened destruction of their ideals. I would exhort them to cast out scepticism, for this fear has its root in scepticism."

Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946), Saturday 19 December 1874, page 1

DR. FLINT ON AGNOSTICISM.

Professor Flint recently delivered in Edinburgh, the sixth and last of the present series of Croall lectures on Agnosticism. He said that the whole agnosticism of the present day flowed from Hume and Kant as its two great fountain heads. Of the two, Kant was the greater philosopher, but the lesser agnostic. He surpassed Hume in constructiveness, inventiveness, and other qualities ; but he did not equal him in critical acuteness and clearness ; and, one single feature excepted, his whole agnosticism might be found more sharply and finely delineated in the writings of his predecessor. Hume was undoubtedly one of those " dead but sceptred sovereigns who still ruled our spirits from their urns." Probably, of all the eminent Scotsmen of the 18th century he was the one who had most affected the general course and character of British and European thought. And his influence viewed as a whole had been, it seemed to him (the lecturer), decidedly for good. It was not merely the scepticism of an individual thinker; it was a scepticism which had been present and operative in the speculations of some generations of thinkers, although it had not previously shown itself in its full force and in the light of open day. Hume concluded his treatise on the Natural History of Religion with words which faithfully described his whole speculative attitude toward religion :

" The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspense of judgment, appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld ; did we not enlarge our views, and, opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a-quarreling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy."

He (the lecturer) knew no words which seemed to him to paint more truthfully the final issue of a thorough and consistent agnosticism. But what a dismal, a dreadful issue ! For the vast majority of mankind, who certainly could not escape into the regions of philosophy, no hope, no refuge ; but the doom of living and dying in the darkness of delusion, in the belief of a lie. For the few who, like Hume himself, could escape into them, no prospect beyond that of finding them as empty, as unreal, as unsatisfying, as he had repeatedly and pathetically confessed himself to have found them, and as obscure, as enigmatic, as uncertain as religion was declared to be. Such an agnosticism might, under the government of a wise and omnipotent God, serve important and beneficial purposes in the world ; but the final end to which it logically led showed that it could never be the last word as to the interpretation of the universe or the significance of human life. Its doom to ultimate failure was written on its whole nature. Truth must conquer an enemy which avowed that it had a firm hold of no truth. The real response to the universal cry of the human heart, " Who will show us any truth, any good ? " could not be its response. It must be the one which had come down to them through many ages, and already proved itself a joy and strength to countless souls—"Lord, lift Thou upon us the light of Thy countenance."

Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1870 - 1907), Saturday 19 May 1888, page 9

SECULARISED SUNDAYS

PINS.

Cum grano salis.

To prove that the first day of the week should be devoted entirely to spiritual affairs is a difficult task for any one to undertake ; and so the Rev. Mr. Austin found it on Sunday last, when he preached on the "Christian Sabbath."  Mr. Austin was not altogether "at home" on this subject—as compared with his many other efforts—and this may be put down rather to his training than to a lack of intelligence. That the reverend gentleman laboured, was evident by the numerous quotations made (some of them even opposed to his pet idea) from Scripture, to strengthen his position ; whereas, generally, he quotes very sparingly, but trusts to his own clear brains to help him out. Of course, Mr. Austin, like many of his co-religionists, runs away with the idea that the attempt of liberal-minded men to secularise the seventh day in the week (or as he puts it, "the Christian Sabbath," or first day in the week, is simply a desire on their part to crush Christianity out of existence. Now, this is nonsense : those who prefer seeing seventh day—the day which most men, in common with Mr. Austin, admit is essential for man's physical welfare, secularised, are not particularly inimical to the teachings of Christ —much as they may be opposed to humbug, cant, phariseeism, and bigotry. Mr. Austin believes that one day in the week shall be set apart as a day of rest, but, pray, what is rest ? It certainly cannot be the same to all men ; what may be rest to the coal-heaver cannot be rest to the student, and so in regard to other opposite pursuits. There can be no absolute day of rest; necessity will not allow it—neither will sentiment. For instance, Mr. Austin and millions like him, believe that the first day of the week shall be observed for the purpose of prayer and spiritual communion with God ; a still greater number of persons believe that Friday should be so set apart, while that very ancient race, who, in their fond conceit, call themselves "God's chosen people," contend that the seventh (Saturday), is the actual day which the Divine will ordered to be observed. And besides these, there are millions of other civilised and semi-civilised people who believe that other days should be observed either as a day of rest, of prayer, or of fasting. Now, which are right, and does it really matter which day of the week is kept so long as it is one of the seven ? I think not ; but for the matter of public convenience it is necessary, in civilised communities, that a specified day be set apart—not for prayers in particular, but for rest from toil.
 The Sabbath, no doubt, is a grand institution, no matter whether of divine origin or otherwise ; the body requires rest and so also does the mind. To be strictly correct in this matter, one may fairly ask which day do the clergy keep—seeing that Sunday —the generally accepted day of rest among Christians—is their chief working day ? If they work for profit—which they do, on this day, why may not other men do so? But I am not desirous of seeing the seventh day, or any other day set apart for rest, smuggled in among the working days by greedy, soulless, men : not by any means! and there is not the slightest danger of any such calamity happening, seeing the temper of the working classes now-a-days. Messieurs the clergy may rest assured that the masses will no more be led by capitalists and money grubbers into working on the Sunday than they will listen with reverential awe to the State paid parson that they must work from sunrise to sunset for six days in the week, go to church twice on a Sunday, touch their hat to the Squire and his lady, and the parson and his wife, read nothing but the Bible and religious tracts, get drunk but once a year (on Fair days), bring into the world a fair number of human beings to follow in the same old ruck, and finally be laid up in the work-house with "rheumatiz" and then go to heaven—that is to say, that part of it where the seats are free, and where the upper crust do not congregate. Not a bit of it ! the day is past when such a convenient (to the aristocrat) creed has a hold upon the understandings of even clodhoppers.
 One of the most absurd—and I may say untruthful—statements made with regard to a secularized Sabbath, is that by the masses seeking a little rational enjoyment and recreation on that day, working men will be compelled to labour against their will, I don't believe anything of the kind in fact, I know different ; and without fear of contradiction, can safely say that men who work on Sunday—either in private firms or in the Government service, do so voluntarily, for the simple reason that they are paid for it. Those who transgress most in this way are those who engage servants by the year, and make them work twice as much on Sunday as on any other day—and among these transgressors may be mentioned ministers of religion as well as other people. Anyhow, ministers work on Sunday, and they expect their servants to work—calling such labour, no doubt, "a work of necessity." The running of trains on Sunday (that is past certain points where whole colonies of city clergymen reside) excites much wrath in the clerical mind—quite unnecessarily so, for many persons who travel by rail on Sunday do so to attend church— just as their pastors do. Then the idea of a lecture hall or concert room being open on Sunday is another sore point—which clearly shows that the clerical mind cannot rise above the commonest of mundane jealousies. Unfortunately in this colony we have no good lectures delivered on Sunday—bigotry has done its level best towards stamping out that sort of thing ; but in London and other large centres in England the people may listen every Sunday evening to a Proctor on the glories of the stars, to the incisive and eloquent oratory of a Bradlaugh ; to the learned discourses of a Tyndall or a Spencer—and how much worse do our clerical friends suppose are these Londoners to we who have nothing else to do but sit out an uninteresting sermon, or sneak round to the back door of a pub, in order to get a wet at the publican's risk.
 The idea of an universal Sabbath is chimerical —it is impossible ; and it would puzzle a Philadelphia lawyer, a brace of cardinals or bishops, and a whole army of tub-thumpers to prove that God Almighty intended Sunday to be kept in any other than a rational way—suitable to the climate and conditions of the several races of men inhibiting this small circle he has set apart for us. With regard to the difference between the seventh and first days of the week, there is really no foundation whatever for the change from the seventh to the first—and the Jews have, by long odds, the best of it. I once knew a man—a member of the Plymouth Brethren—but who preferred calling himself a Christian, par excellence, who had a very, comical idea of Sunday observance. He worked on Saturday the same as other mortals, and on Sunday harnessed up his moke and drove to a conventicle of his own persuasion some four miles away. When appealed to on the matter of breaking the Fourth Commandment, he argued that Sunday did not come under the ban, as it was the first day in the week. Why then did he work on the seventh ? "Oh, that was quite a different matter ; the Christian dispensation had superseded the Mosaic law in respect of Sabbath observances!" So that this man, by making use of these two arguments, availed himself of the opportunity of using these two days as he pleased—the one for profit the other for pleasure. Let things rip, then, as they are ; and our Sabbatarian friends will find that the Anglo-Saxon men are too fond of their day of rest ever to surrender it to monopoly of any kind ; and that the fact of our people going in for pleasure gardens, museums, picture galleries, open air concerts, and perhaps a little boat sailing, will in no wise detract from their stamina—as men, or their self-respect as citizens.
 As for such exploded stuff as England owing her superior position among nations to her people's general observance of the Sabbath, it is as great a fallacy as the Queen's childish remark about the Bible and England's greatness. England owes her power; 1st, to her insular position ; 2nd, to her vast coal supplies ; and 3rd, to the physical vigour of her people. A dead-and-alive Sunday—closed shops, public houses, and concert rooms, and open churches, does not mean immunity from vice ; and facts may be produced to show that a puritan English or Scotch Sabbath is more productive of downright evil than the free and easy Sundays one finds in Antwerp, Brussells, Paris, Hamburg, and, in fact, throughout Protestant Germany. What says the fatuous Dr. Guthrie ? "During the six months we lived in Paris (himself and wife) with its open theatres ; its gardens filled with living multitudes ; streets full of gaily dressed excitable people ; open wine shops, casinos and stalls, whereat one could purchase as well as on Saturday or Monday, we saw less real vice, less drunkenness, less rioting, than we would have seen in London, Edinburgh, or Glasgow in a month. These are not the Doctor's exact words, but are near enough to show what a big brained man, trained in Puritan Scotland, thought of the matter ; and yours truly has found in the several cities mentioned like experiences. I do not expect a very great many of your readers to agree with me ; but as one of a probable minority I claim a right to be heard on a matter that affects the comfort and happiness of thousands of my fellows. We don't want to prejudice anyone against a place of worship ; but we do ask that we may be left alone in quiet enjoyment of the one and only day in the week we can spare from labour—to spend it as we please in a rational, healthful, and intelligent manner, without being denounced as Godless, and enemies to religion, law, and order.

. . . .

ASMODEUS.

Hawkesbury Chronicle and Farmers Advocate (Windsor, NSW : 1881 - 1888), Saturday 10 July 1886, page 2

CHURCH OF ENGLAND PROBLEMS

 Trend Towards Secularism. 

Motor Cars and Sabbath Observance.

In an address delivered at St. Peter's Cathedral on Tuesday, the Bishop of Adelaide roundly condemned motor cars as one of the principal factors in the secularisation of the Sabbath. He considered it probable that a Teaching Order would soon be established in connection with the Church Primary Schools. The hope of the Anglican Church was in the youth of the country.

A stirring pastoral address was delivered by the Bishop of Adelaide (Right Rev Dr. Thomas) at the opening session of the Synod on Tuesday afternoon, at St. Peter's Cathedral Dr. Thomas, in presenting his address and report of the diocese for a year, said the attitude towards religion had changed during the past century, and was changing now. At the end of the eighteen century the French Revolution caused a horrified recoil in England from considerable freedom of thought in religious matters to a hard and narrow timidity. Family prayers spread from the middle to the upper class, and Sunday observance was revived and rigidly enforced, but no one wanted to see any enforcement of religion to-day. It had only been harmful at the time. The evangelical revival and the Oxford movement in the first half of the nineteenth century had stirred the country to its foundations, yet in spite of these, and of subsequent religious efforts Trevelyan, the historian, recorded that "the part played by religion in the life of the upper and middle classes, and of the better-to-do working class, was less remarkable at the end of the century than it had been when Queen Victoria came to the throne. Every-day thought was decidedly more secular in tone. This was partly due to intellectual movements, to the Darwinian theory, and Biblical criticism at work in an age when everyone was being taught to read. But it was also due to the number of other interests in life which now competed with religion. Where the Bible had been almost the only book for many households, there were now the daily paper, the cheap magazine and novelette, and, for the minority who cared for such things, the best literature and science in the world in cheap editions. Formerly entertainments and organised excitements had been rare; but now there were the football match with its democratic gate, the music halls, and a thousand appeals of every kind to the popular attention." 

 Motor Cars and Church-going.

 To-day the pace had increased. The Darwinian theory no longer presented difficulties to the Christian, but Modernism was an attack upon the Christian faith from within the citadel. The number of outside interests had enormously multiplied— literature of the more solid kind had little chance against the flood of novels; games were within the reach of all, and although all had more leisure than formerly, the day which used to be looked upon as the Lord's Day was now invaded, and its sacredness challenged. Not only was the Day itself invaded, but the hours especially reserved by custom for the worship of God were encroached upon, and many of their own Church of England people might be found playing golf on Sunday morning and bridge on Sunday evening. But there was probably no one agency that had done more to diminish attendance at Sunday services, or indeed to break up the Sunday than the motor car. Undoubtedly, it brought some people to church, but it took more away, took families away for the week-end, and broke in upon all continuity of teachings in church or Sunday-school. Not infrequently it prevented the family which had no motor car from going to church also. Farther, the Sunday afternoon tennis party made it very difficult for girl or boy to take up, or stick to, Sunday school work; they had ridicule from their fellows to meet, and a real sacrifice to make. The fact was religion was not fashionable to-day, and there were few houses in which family prayers or grace at meals were said. And so the attitude of the world to the Christian religion to-day might be described as one on the whole of indifferent and good-natured tolerance. The war made for a time a difference: but victory had brought reaction. Religion was up against real and great difficulties, and it was of no use to minimise the reasons for anxiety. The numbers of the church might appear large on paper, but membership of the Church of England was largely a nominal membership, and obligations of membership were ignored.
 

Signs of Decadence.

Let it be recognised, however, that indifference was not confined to religion. It was often as hard for politicians to obtain an audience as for a preacher to obtain a congregation. There not the same avidity as of yore either, for sermons or for speeches; college dinners and public lectures (unless well advertised) told the same story. The causes of the decline and fall of the great Roman Empire assigned by Gibbon, had been held up before them as a warning to the British Empire. The main causes were the prevalence of town over country life, and its disastrous effect upon health and faith; the growth of refinement and luxury; the decline of literary and dramatic taste; the decline of intellectual and religious life: excessive taxation and municipal extravagance. Undoubtedly the same tendencies, the same menaces, the same agencies were at work to-day.

Plea for Youth.

  When the call to effort and sacrifice for the Empire was made, however, they had found that the nation, thank God, was not effete. There was splendid material in their youth to-day, physique, heart and spirit. It was always difficult for age to keep pace with youth—difficult to move with the times. Older folk were by nature conservative, and fearful of change; would keep the young in their place; and with their superior knowledge and experience, would make all the decisions that had to be made. So they lost touch with the young, and they lost interest in the church. They needed the enthusiasm and the idealism and the experiences and the ideas of the young: they needed far more young people on their committees and in their inner counsels. In the material of their youth they had one great reason for hope. There was another hopeful sign in the ready and glad response made by all kinds of people, wherever they saw hard work and sincerity of purpose. There was less cant and less humbug in the present day, and the world was the better for it. People asked for sincerity and singleness of purpose in their parish priest, and when they saw that he was in earnest they would back him up.

Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1889 - 1931), Wednesday 3 September 1924, page 11

RATIONALISM. ITS AIMS AND HISTORY.

SOCIALIST PARTY LECTURE.

 Mr. G. Pearce (secretary of the R.P.A.), delivered an address on the subject of "Rationalism."

"Rationalist," he said, is the latest name assumes by those who question the supernatural authority of the Bible. The Rationalist is the lineal descendant of the infidel, heretic, atheist, free-thinker, and materialist; these changes of name seem to have been prompted largely by the success with which the theologian has grafted on to those names the imputation of vice and immorality. Rationalism, as a word expressing a definite mental attitude, is now becoming widely known through the agency of the Rationalist Press Association, commonly referred to as the R.P.A. This association was formed in London about 17 years ago, with the following objects (a) to stimulate freedom of thought and inquiry into ethics, theology, philosophy, and kindred subjects; (b) to promote a secular system of education, which shall cultivate in the young a moral and intellectual fitness for life; (c) to maintain and assert the same right of propaganda methods as that granted to traditional beliefs and creeds; (d) to publish and distribute books and periodicals designed to promote the above objects.

It had long been evident to workers in this cause that for wider propaganda the spoken word must be supplemented by a systematic issue of the written word, and a glance at the authors and their works, of which over, three million sixpenny reprints have been sold, makes one feel that the R.P.A. was not formed in vain. The list of sixpenny reprints contains the best writings of scientists like Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel, Tyndall, and Ray Lankester, of philosophers, such as Spencer, Hume, and Mill, of essayists, such as Matthew Arnold, Emerson, and Lewes, of historians, as Lecky, Bury, and Robertson, of critics as Voltaire, Renan, Andrew Lang, Ingersoll, Leslie Stephen, and Joseph M'Cabe. Many of these names stand high on the honor roll of benefactors of humanity, and if some suggest an aggressive attitude, their provocation has been great, and their books have revolutionised the whole attitude of man in his relation to nature and the Universe, and stand for a broad tolerant propaganda, which appeals to the thinking man.

The founders of the R.P.A., when formulating its objective, defined Rationalism as follows:—"The mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a system of philosophy and ethics, verifiable by experience and independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority." Reason shall be the sole judge; all evidence shall he capable of proof; and the authority due to tradition and ancient usage, or the feeling that it must be true, shall be ignored. This definition is practically an amplification of the motto of the Royal Society of London, formed some 250 years ago "for the improvement of natural knowledge by experiment." To-day fellowship of the Royal Society is an honor bestowed only upon the most eminent contributors to scientific knowledge, and the R.P.A. has addressed itself especially to the work of spreading the results of these researches at the lowest possible cost. Rationalism, being an attitude and not a religion, has no definite dogmas, no Thirty-nine Articles, does not set up any arbitrary system of scientific orthodoxy, but, in so far as "revealed" theological systems seeks to stifle freedom of thought, speech, and writing with the authority of tradition, it connects with them. Every religion sets aside every other religion, the Rationalist only sets aside one more: every believer in a God has denied the thousands of other Gods; the Rationalist only asks for evidence of the existence of that one.
Occasionally a common underlying motive caused the hatchet to be buried for a while, such as a general supplication to God to abrogate the laws of Nature and send rain; or to implore peace through the defeat of an enemy, from whom similar appeals are also issuing in all good faith—a position which must be a trifle disconcerting to the Almighty. Imagine at the present day any theologian willing to publicly pray for three or four hours' delay in the rising of the sun to enable an enemy trench to be occupied! Yet thousands prepared to join in a prayer for rain—the late Government went so far as to set aside a day for the purpose on one occasion—in spite of the fact that the science of meteorology is familiar with all the details that cause, rain, and the fundamental laws which control it are as unbreakable as those which keep the earth revolving. The explanation of this curious inconsistency appears to be that the man, in the street is not as yet as convinced of the operation of unbreakable law in the latter case as he is in the former. It is something more than a coincidence that simultaneously with the rise of the scientific attitude, nearly all the humane and ethical practices of modern civilisation have come into being and replaced such devilish methods of conversion as the tortures of the Inquisition and the burning of heretics and witches.

FREEDOM OF THOUGHT.

From the time of the adoption of Christianity by the Emperor Constantine, and its consequent rise to power, it crushed with an iron hand all speculation not conducive to its own advancement, and all freedom of thought in speech or writing, The following 33 centuries are truly called the Dark Ages, when the power and influence of Christianity, as interpreted by the Church, lay like a pall over Western civilisation, and it is only, as it were, through a rent here and there that we learn of the frightfulness it covered, and of the ignorance and debauchery of spiritual pastors.
And let it not he forgotten that it is due to the working of the spirit of rationalism that the Pankhursts and Thorps of to-day, and all who disturb the popular mind and say unpleasant things about those in authority, are more fortunate than their sisters of 300 years ago.

But if these were the sufferings inflicted on the poor and unfortunate, what of the fate of the intellectuals if the results of their thoughts and experiments tended in the slightest degree to discredit the teachings and dogmas of the Church? The more one ponders over this awful record of burnings and tortures, and the suppression of all speculative research in natural science features that especially mark out those Dark Ages from the time when Constantine made Christianity a State religion, until the seventeenth century, when a revulsion of feeling arose against the inhuman atrocities perpetrated in the name of a loving God and the scientific attitude and freedom of thought began to live again, the more one is convinced that there can be no God as portrayed by the Christian theologians. Only a Devil, and an inconceivably cruel one, could have permitted that long procession of human agony.

Common justice compels us to acknowledge that some of the great teachers within the fold, realising the hypocrisies they labored under, struggled for a more humane interpretation, and that ideal is still being nobly worked for in such movements as, for instance, the Modernist Association in Brisbane and Ethical Churches elsewhere; and if to-day freedom of opinion and the search for knowledge are among our most precious possessions, and indispensable to all progress, it behoves all of us to give our support to movements with that objective

It may be asked, when one contemplates the succession of men of science who have aggressively impeached or merely ignored the claim of theology to authority, why it is that the churches are still so influential and bulk so largely in our social and national life, rivalled only by the continuous picture palaces. Indeed, their power and in tolerance is still manifested in their successful opposition to other forms of entertainment on Sundays; the reading-room of the School Arts is closed on Sundays; the summer band concerts in the Gardens are delayed till church is over, and all efforts for any form of rational Sunday entertainment have been successfully opposed. The secret of this power—disregarding the obvious claim that the position of the Church is maintained by the providence of the Almighty—I believe rests firstly on the early training of the child, and secondly, and in a much less degree, to the appeal the ritual and service of the Church makes to women.

The earliest experience of most of us relates to the comforting prayers of childhood, followed later on by similar religious stories of the "Golden Thread," and the "Throne of Grace," and so on. Our first experience of the mystery and pleasure of music is in most cases the hymns learned at Sun day School, "Here we Suffer Grief and Pain" and "There's a Land of Pure Delight." Kindergarten teachers are well acquainted with the controlling power of music over the infant mind.
These impressions are made on clean, new intelligences straight from nature's laboratory, and thus, with the almost entire absence of any definite instruction in elementary science in our primary schools, color the child's whole attitude to nature and maintain their influence and reality until the battle of life invites a revaluation, from which too many of us shrink and which is rarely completed.

It is false assumption that if our school readers included such subjects, as the origin of man, the evolution of animal and plant life, the age of the earth as told by the rocks, stories of dead and gone civilisations, whose historical remains antedate the biblical creation by thousands of years, and also with the life story of Jesus, the life stories of those earlier pagan Christs, such as Buddha, such knowledge would involuntarily became part of our mental furniture and form the basis of our judgments of all things natural or supernatural. I am of the opinion that, if the spiritual attitude of the two metropolitan papers, the "Standard" and the "Worker," is typical of the spiritual attitude of the Government they have called into power, representation on these lines would not be unsympathetically received. Richard Cobden said he regarded his years of labor in securing the repeal of the corn laws as a light amusement compared with the task of getting priests of all denominations to agree to suffer the people to be educated.

WOMAN.

The second reason I advanced for theological influence to-day is the emotional nature of woman. The Church always adopts the attitude, as the Bishop of London once put it in a sermon, that " Christianity is woman's best friend." Other dignitaries have declared that the Gospels have given woman the position she holds to-day. The majority of women appear content to accept these statements, and to-day quite 75 per cent of the ordinary congregation is composed of women. And if the women follow their emotions in attending church, I feel sure that the younger portion of the other 25 per cent also attend for emotional reasons, though not always of the spiritual type. I can only say that the claim that "Christianity is woman's best friend" is a deliberate perversion of the truth, and in direct opposition to the findings of history.

Nothing impressed the Romans more, in their wars with the northern barbarians than their recognition of the equality of the sexes, the man's reverence for woman, and the woman's sympathy for man, and the high code of morality that was the natural outcome of this well-balanced state of society. In old Japan, before the arrival of Buddhism, men and women were practically equal in their social position; woman's political power was great, nine women had ascended the throne; their women were not inferior to men mentally, morally, or physically; and they distinguished themselves by their bravery on the field of battle. In ancient Egypt the legal status and property rights enjoyed by women gave them a position more free and more honored than in any country to-day. The security of those rights made her the legal head of the household. She inherited equally with her brothers, and had full control of her own property; before the law she enjoyed the same rights and freedom as man, and was honored in the same way.

Now let us compare these positions with that of the English woman of 60 years ago, after 18 centuries of shepherding by "her best friend." In Boston, in 1850, woman could not hold property, or any public office of trust or power. The status of a married woman was little better than that of a domestic servant, her husband was her lord and master. She even had no legal redress against punishment. Let all women bear in mind that the change between then and now is almost entirely due to the advocacy of "abandoned atheists," such as Owen, Holyoake, Mill, Harriet Martineau, George Eliot, and other freethinkers. The clergy, when not actively opposing this change, kept silence; they never detected any injustice to woman, and only a few could see it when it was pointed out. There were a few honorable exceptions, such as Kingsley and Farrar, who protested against the social injustice to woman.

Further, this attitude of women and children to revealed religion is largely promoted by the peculiar position of many men who have themselves become convinced that "there's nothing in it," but are still obsessed by the idea that it would be very unsafe for women and children to hold this conviction; in other words, that our mothers, wives, and daughters, are only kept honest, chaste, sober, and industrious by the restraint of religion.

We must all realise that a useful and decent life is quite possible without a slavish adoration of the God of the Bible, and quite apart from a hope of His heaven or a fear of His hell. Considerations of space prevent the inclusion of two long paragraphs, one dealing with the destructive nature of modern Biblical criticism, and the other with the attitude of the Church to industrialism.

In conclusion, I wish to emphasise the difference between a knowledge of the findings of science and the spirit of scientific inquiry, the mental attitude that is of so much more importance than a mass of information. Facts may be, and often are, harmonised with our preconceived ideas, and the importance of the more unpleasant ones belittled, but the true scientific spirit is a disinterested search for facts verifiable by experience, without regard to their bearing upon our wishes, hopes, or fears.

Daily Standard (Brisbane, Qld. ), 1916, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article179864011

JOHN NORTON'S REPLY.

I now proceed to reply specifically to the atrocious attack made upon me, and to repudiate and rebut in detail the calumnious charge of atheism, blasphemy, and infidelity therein contained. I do this apart from all questions of actual authorship. Here. and now, I publicly, in, print, proclaim this punk to be not only a benighted bigot, but a brazen-faced liar, as I'll now proceed to prove him to be by the stupid, shallow, and scurrilous scribbling of his own perfidious pen — the poisoned, poniard of a hireling helot.
The manipulator of the "limelight" of Catholic Truth, who poses as an oracle on matters of literature, and even of religion in a Melbourne print, a bigoted fellow, is so inaccurate in the use of words that he confounds journalism with literature, and speaks of some samples of the former as "Infidel Literature." This is the heading that he gives to his article in a certain Catholic print, published in Melbourne recently, and believed to be the organ of the priesthood.
* * *
Both words constituting this caption show what a muddle-headed misleader this captious critic is ; for neither word correctly describes that about which his article was written. His screed is an impudently abusive and arrogantly bigoted attack on an article written by me, and published in Melbourne "Truth" in which an attempt was made by me to summarise, rationalistically, the leading events in the life of Christ.
* * *
"What is an infidel?" Strictly, it is one who is unfaithful. The word is a term of reproach and contumely, applied by modern bigots to those persons who are unable to accept the superstitions that other persons profess to have swallowed eagerly after me reading of such pietistical productions. A man who honestly speaks his thought about matters of speculation (such as are matters of religion) is not unfaithful to anybody. Therefore, it is malignantly false to speak of him, or of what he writes, as "infidel." As to the word "literature," it is properly applied only to works of learning notable for literary form; it is not applied, properly, to writings in a newspaper. The pietistic penman's literary light does not so "shine before men" as to prevent him from stupidly using his native language.
* * *
Like all bigots, Protestant or Papist, this Melbourne writer does not scruple to resort to lying when he thinks it suits his purpose. In this, he is not alone; the mendacity of manipulators of manuscripts throughout the Christian "ages of Faith" was malodorously monstrous enough to pollute the pages of history, and to stink horridly through the corridors of time. The pious penman having referred to the articles written by me as "infidel" literature, then proceeds to refer to them as "Atheistic writing."
* * *
The man lies ; no matter who he may be, priest or layman, he's a liar. Nothing Atheistic has appeared in any of the articles to which he objects. An Atheist is one who is "without God," one who disbelieves in the existence of a Supreme Intelligent Being. One may reject the Bible as untrustworthy, and disbelieve that Jesus was ever more than a benign Visionary, without having the faintest doubt as to the existence of a Supreme Being. As a matter of historic fact, one of the finest defences of the existence of a Supreme Being that ever was written was the work of that disbeliever in the Bible and Christianity, Voltaire. Voltaire it was, moreover, who invented the brilliant epigram : "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him." Voltaire it was, who built, at Ferney, the place of his exile in, Switzerland, a church or chapel to the honor and glory of God, and dedicated it by the following inscription prominently placed on the facade of the sacred edifice, "Deo erexit Voltaire."
* * *
This pious punk penman says that the statements in the articles to which he objects were made on the strength of "rationalistic statements like those of Ingersoll, who was thoroughly refuted by Father Lambert." Here again the pious puke plainly lies again. Ingersoll was not mentioned and the statements that were made in the article were based on higher authority than that of Ingersoll. The "Limelight" faker is apparently "brutally ignorant" of the Catholic fact that, long after the Lambert attack, a controversy between Ingersoll and Cardinal Manning took place in the pages of the "North American Review," in which controversy each treated the other with perfect respect.
* * *
The snide scribbler makes the mendacious assertion that I declared Christ to be an impostor; and he goes on to state the fact (alleged by him), that "560,000,000 Christians in the world to-day proclaim Him as the very greatest character in all history, and most believe Him to be the Second Person of a Triune Godhead." This, according to him, proves that Christ was not a "mere impostor." Did the fact that many millions of persons prior to the birth of Christ believed that there existed the gods of Paganism prove that those Gods really existed? If not, why not, on that scribe's stupid argument?
 * * *
A far older religion than Christianity is Buddhism, the religion of Gautama, the Buddha. Gautama was born in the sixth century before Christ, and his religion is believed in by very many millions of men and women at the present day. Does the greater antiquity of this religion prove it to be a greater religion than Christianity? If it be believed in by a greater number of human beings than is Christianity, does the fact that more persons believe it, prove it more worthy of belief than Christianity? To contend that it does would be to push the principle of "majority rule" to the point of madness. The number of those who believe a religion to be true does not prove it to be right and other religions wrong. If it did, then the fact that the majority of  men and women reject Christianity would prove Christianity to be wrong.
 * * *
This silly scribe makes the remarkably ignorant statement that the followers of "Confucius, Buddha, Mahomet, or Taou, regard them as a Methodist regards Wesley, or a Lutheran Luther." The fool apparently does not know that nobody has ever alleged there was any such man as Taou ; the founder of the Taouist sect was Laou-tsze ; Taou is Laou-tsze's name for the mystical Origin, Cause, and Being ; Taou is, in fact, God; and the word means the Way and the Word, two titles which have also been bestowed upon Christ. As for "Mahomet," he was always called a prophet, and is held in greater reverence as a prophet by Mohammedans now than ever before. A war-cry of the Mohammedans was: "There is but one God, and Mohammed is His Prophet."
 * * *
The greatest amount of unblushing impudence and presumption upon the assumed ignorance of his hearers is shown by this puking pimp, however, when he says : —
Remember that in order to belittle this historical Christ, the blasphemer has to ignore the Gospel's, which have stood the test of the higher criticism. He has to make the Pauline testimony of no account, and treat it— one of the finest pieces of literature on earth — as if it were never written. Yet we know that the Gospels are the history of Jesus, and that they were written by eye-witnesses for the use of other eye-witnesses by men who died as martyrs for the truth of what they had written. Jesus is the hero of those Gospels, and even the infidel Rousseau said of their validity: "It is not thus that people invent. The inventor of such a book would be only more astonishing than its hero." The very highest criticism has admitted that the writers of the Gospel narratives were unquestionably honest in recording what they believed they saw. What they saw was Jesus.
 * * *
"We know" all this, do we? Who says that we know it? Professional religionists interested in the maintenance of existing beliefs? Yet "professors of ecclesiastical history" (and surely we do not expect the fishmonger to cry "stinking fish"?) assert that there is great doubt as to the authorship of the first three Gospels.
 * * *
So clerically conservative a "professor of ecclesiastical history" as the Rev. W. E. Collins thus speaks in an article in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica, of the first three Gospels: —
Scholars are now practically agreed that we have to do with three distinct sources; one document in Greek, containing the recollections of St Peter, which corresponds closely with our St Mark, and was used by the writers of the First and Third Gospels: a second, also in Greek, containing discourses and very little narrative, which was also used by these two writers; and a third special source, whether written or unwritten, which is to be found in the third Gospel alone. This in turn was probably written by the writer of the Acts, who was also the companion of St Paul. This is the clerical view, the view of those whose interest it is to conserve the interests of their profession. Now, however, let us look at what some other "higher critics" say about the authenticity of the Gospels. Dr. Frederick Schleimacher, whom the "Imperial Dictionary of Biography" declares to be one of the most influential of the theologians of Germany, says that the Gospel of Luke consists almost wholly of a compilation of manuscripts older than the time of the compiler.
 * * *
In the "History of the Christian Religion to the Year Two Hundred," Charles B. Waite, A.M., says that one of the manuscripts used by the compiler of the gospel "according" to Luke was "The Gospel" of Marcion. Dr. Davidson says that the Fourth Gospel was not written by John, and that its existence prior to A.D. 140 cannot be maintained. In the "Encyclopaedia Biblica," Professor Schmiedel says that the chronological framework of the Gospels is most untrustworthy, while "several of the reported sayings of Jesus bear the impress of a time which he did not live to see."
* * *
The great majority of the Higher Critics are of the same opinion as Davidson as to the Gospel attributed to John. Sunderland says, in "The Bible: Its Origin, Growth and Character": "The biblical scholarship of our century has settled it beyond a question that at least three of our Gospels — namely, the synoptics: Matthew, Mark, and Luke — are compilations, which reached their present form only after several redactions."
* * *
Sunderland also says that the compiler of Matthew probably used the "Logia" (an early Gospel rejected by a majority of the Church some centuries later). Conybeare says that the last twelve verses of Mark's Gospel were added by Aristion the Presbyter. Dr. J. A. Robinson ("Encyclopaedia Britannica," Eleventh Edition) says that the author of Mark's Gospel was "not an eyewitness of what he relates," and he says of Matthew's Gospel: "We cannot tell the exact date or the author's name."
* * *
The leading New Testament proof of the doctrine of the Trinity, which is in the "First Epistle General of John" (in the fifth chapter), has been omitted from the Revised Version, because it has long been known by scholars to be an interpolation. That is to say, something thrust in some time after the work had originally been written. Its insertion was probably what is called, by writers who have studied the history of such practices, "a pious fraud." Dr. Hedger says :
The age in which these books were received, and put in circulation was . . . an age when literary honesty was a virtue almost unknown, and when, consequently, literary forgeries were as common as genuine productions, and transcribers of sacred books did not scruple to alter the text in the interest of personal views and doctrinal prepossessions. The newly-discovered Sinaitic code, the earliest known manuscript of the New Testament, dates from the fourth century. Tischendorf, the discoverer, a very orthodox critic, speaks without reserve of the license in the treatment of the text apparent in this manuscript — a license, he says, especially characteristic of the first three centuries."
* * *
My cocksure critic says that "we know" that the alleged "eye-witnesses" who wrote the Gospels "died as martyrs for the truth of what they had written." Of course he means, if he can be said to mean anything distinct and definite, that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were martyred. This belief, like a good many more beliefs of men of his miserable mental type, rests upon no evidence. Many Christians asserted that none of the Evangelists were martyred. Heracleon stated that Matthew died a natural death, and this statement is apparently agreed with by Clement of Alexandria. The earliest traditions as to the death of Mark, as recorded by Eusebius, Jerome, and Isidore of Seville, appeared to imply that Mark died a natural death. Paulus Diaconus, Isidore of Seville, and other early writers "state or imply" that Luke died a natural death. There is no good reason to believe that John died a martyr. The traditions as to the deaths of the Evangelists are dealt with, as extensively as they deserve, in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica."
* * *
The fact is that very many of the stories of the early Christians having been martyred have to be viewed with suspicion. Men were "martyred" by the Pagans, no doubt, but so were Pagans by the Christians. There is abundance of evidence — much of it of a thoroughly Catholic character— of, for instance, the murder of the beautiful Pagan female philosopher Hypatia by Christian clerics, who scraped the flesh from her bones with oyster shells. Many stories of the martyrdom of Christians by Pagans rest upon not the slightest scrap of evidence.
* * *
This crackpot Catholic critic says that I represented Christ as an "ignorant Jewish pretender." He lies, if, as seems to be the case, he uses the word "pretender" in a bad sense. A pretender is merely one who makes a claim, which may be a rightful claim. However, this word was not used by me. What, too, if Christ was ignorant? What was that to the discredit of any man in those ancient days? Some of the greatest things that the world bears record of were done by men of no book-learning.
* * *
Quite commonly, in ancient times, especially in Asia, the only learned class was the priestly class, and men not in that caste had little or no knowledge of the wisdom that could be gained from the writings of the learned. This would be particularly the case in so obscure it corner of the world as that in which Jesus lived and taught. Yet the native genius of this great Teacher has caused has name to meet with (professedly) more respect among the most advanced nations of the world than that of any other religious Founder.
* * *
So, too, with regard to Mary, the mother of Jesus. To imply that the people who knew that Jesus was not the son of Joseph, probably regarded Him as illegitimate, may be a reflection upon the people of Nazareth, but is none upon either Mary or Joseph. Yet this assertive ass says that I made "an elaborate attack on Jesus Christ, on His Holy Mother, and on St Joseph." Joseph was represented by me as just an upright man, who was doing his duty as a good citizen to his wife and family ; and Mary was stated to be the mother of one of the most adorable characters of whom history has any record. This displeases this deluded donkey ! What an atrabilious ass is this muddle-headed "moke!"
* * *
For myself, I don't care a curse for the bigoted bellowings of this helot. I simply say to him, when he brands me as an atheist and blasphemer, "You're a liar, — an ignorant impudent liar !" He would seem to have dragged his anchors of verisimilitude and common-sense, and to have drifted downward on the outgoing tide of dogmatic dementia— "all at sea, without a rudder," a disgraceful, decrepit, discredited, delirious, derelict.
* * *
If I'm an infidel, that's my business. If I err, I err in the noble company of the Apostles of Humanity, I stand beside Voltaire, Diderot, the Encyclopedists, Paine, John Stuart Mill, Martineau, Darwin, Tyndall, and Huxley, and the whole list of intellectual giants whose work and words have waged war against ignorance and superstition, and "set the bounds of freedom wider yet." To stand in the shadow of such a splendid shield of talent and truth, is a privilege and an honor. The works of these great and good men do testify of them, and will continue to bless and benefit mankind ages after all pious punks, Clerical and lay, have passed away, and disappeared in the oblivion of their own degenerate dust. The splutterings of all the superstitious squibs of Creation avail not against truth, any more than a mundane fog avails against the light of the celestial sun.
* * *
This feeble fellow's denunciations are the emanations of a murky mind, and resemble nothing so much as the offensive eructations from a foul stomach. This scribbling squib is simply a sectarian stinkard, who should be either disinfected or dessicated; and the Church or cause that tolerates or stands in need of the stinkpot services of such a skunk must be in a bad way. It is not by sectarian savagery that the causes of Catholic Emancipation, Irish Land Reform, and Home Rule have been won.
* * *
Not all the helots in all the world will advance the twin Catholic causes of Catholic State, Subsidies for Catholic Schools, and State Aid to Catholic Charities. These causes have been won, and will be won, if ever won, by broad-minded Christians, Catholic and Protestant, with tho assistance of equally broad-minded Rationalists, Agnostics, Deists, Unitarians, who worship the Creator or Great First Cause by marvelling at and adoring His wondrous works. As Alfred Russell Wallace, in his latest illuminating work, "The World of Life," observes: the constitution of the Cosmos demonstrates design, and a design demands a divine designer. That's my faith, that's my creed, and all the sectarian screechings of whole crowd of sectarian scribblers won't and can't change it— any more than they can persuade modern society back into the black benighted bye-paths of persecution for matters of personal beliefs on religious doubts.

JOHN NORTON.

Sydney,
Tuesday,
January 28, 1913.

Truth (Sydney, NSW : 1894 - 1954), Sunday 2 February 1913, page 7

DECAY OF RELIGION IN EUROPE.

Dr. Bellows, an American minister, who has lately made the tour of Europe, speaks thus unfavourably of the condition of religion in the old world : —

In Paris, there is a great show of religious education, without insisting urgently on ecclesiastical dogmas. Modern Catholics say very little about doctrine, but seek to recommend their religion by good works. The Church has a prodigious hold on the common people ; the middle class are rather apathetic than hostile to it; while the fashion of the cultivated class is sceptical, materialistic, atheistic, especially with young men. Protestantism makes no impression. It has never been popular in France, and seems to find no soil for its modern growth. In Germany, there is a great decay in the faith and spirituality of the people. The Catholic Church has great influence in some regions as a political power and a mighty superstition; but where it has died out nothing vigorous has shot up in its place. The people have settled into a decorous, aesthetic materialism ; but are without aspiration, devoutness, or faith in the invisible. Protestantism enters very little into national, social, or domestic life. The instinct for God and immortality appears to be asleep, and the prospect is that Christian faith and worship will for same time to come undergo a farther natural decay on the Continent.

There is, of course, a religious body in Germany, and it is in the main soundly orthodox in its theology. In Berlin and other great cities you find Protestant churches well attended, especially by women, where the preaching, if a little sentimental and vague, is still earnest and evangelical, and where the prayers and hymns are very thorough in their orthodoxy. The general participation in the singing gives much warmth to the worship. This is true also of the German Catholic worship, where, unlike other Catholic churches, the people universally sing, and seem really interested in and to be helping in the worship. There, however, it is only the humbler class that attends. But three manifestations are exceptional. This kind of faith is against the grain and spirit of the time. Evangelicism is maintained in the Protestant Church by prodigious effort on the part of a few anxious and faithful souls, alarmed at the general tendencies of thought and life, and willing to shut their own eyes and the eyes of others if only so the old confidence and the old piety can be upheld or brought back. Meanwhile the intelligence, the political aspiration, the science and philosophy, the experience and courage of the community are all leaning the other way. The universities, as a rule, are favouring the secular and non-religious view and feeling. Tho savans and meta-physicians are mostly openly or covertly sceptics and positivists. A few months ago, at one of the universities, the birthday of one of the most venerable and popular of the professors was celebrated with literary and social festivities, and after dinner, it is said, in an address to the company, he openly boasted of his atheism. Hegelianism seems to be the prevailing philosophy, and while its right wing is cautiously respectful to Christian faith, its left is, less dangerously perhaps, denunciatory of it. The labours of Strauss have produced more effect than we are aware of among the educated minds of Germany. The authenticity and genuineness of the Gospels, it seems vary largely assumed, have been finally discredited. Miracles, few scholarly men, not tied to official necessities, have the courage to treat with the least respect. It seems settled, at least for the time, by the physicists of England and the savans and metaphysicians of France and Germany, that whatever else may be true about Christianity there is no need of considering any farther the possibility of events like the resurrection. Is is possible for Christianity, as an institution or a religion, to survive the prevalence of opinions so radically destructive as this ?

Empire (Sydney, NSW : 1850 - 1875), Monday 17 August 1868, page 4

COLONEL ROBERT G. INGERSOLL

[BY S.G. MEE]
No living man has been more grossly maligned and insulted—especially by the so-called religious Press—than Robert G. Ingersoll, the bosom friend and death-bed confidant of the late illustrious and world lamented American President.  It is, however, upon calm reflection, not surprising that the men who live and flourish upon the mental delusions of the people—upon the (as Carlyle styles them) "incredible incredited traditions, solemnly sordid hypocrisies, and beggarly deliriums old and new"—should dislike and calumniate those who endeavour by pen and voice to dispel those illusions and deliriums. In the preface to a volume of his admirable lectures, Colonel Ingersoll truly says :—"Nothing can exceed the mendacity of the religious Press. . . . the average religious editor is intolerant and insolent.  He knows nothing of affairs.  He has the envy of failure, the malice of impotence, and always accounts for the brave and generous action of unbelievers by low, base, and unworthy motives."  The above is intrinsically true ; and there is no question that the semporendom bigotry, intolerance, and implacability of the Roman Catholic Church is—however much they may deny it—inherent also in all the Protestant Churches.  The some spirit that put Socrates to death for denying the absurd gods of his day, is still extant and vital in the breasts of the priests and adherents of the quite as absurd orthodox Deity of the countless creeds of Christendom.
And yet, why should the spiritual guides of the people be so fierce and vindictive against one who simply tells them what the ex-Baptist minister, Mr. Greenwood, as a Freethought lecturer, now thunders into the ears of his former dupes? Only a Sunday or two since, he told his vast audience at the Theatre Royal, Sydney, that his former clerical colleagues no more believe in the orthodox dogmas of their so-called inspired Book than he himself does, and added—"Before many years I believe the dogmas now held by the Church will be repudiated by the civilised world." . . .
In his preface to "The Ghosts and other Lectures," Colonel Ingersoll says : "By this time even the clergy should know that the intellect of the Nineteenth Century needs no guardian. They should cease to regard themselves as shepherds defending flocks of weak, silly, and fearful sheep from the claws and teeth of ravening wolves. By this time they should know that the religion of the ignorant and brutal Past no longer satisfies the heart and brain—that miracles have become contemptible, that the "evidences" have ceased to convince, that the spirit of investigation cannot be stopped nor stayed, that the Church is losing her power, that the young are holding in a kind of tender contempt the sacred follies of the world, that the pulpits and pews no longer represent the culture and morality of the world, and that the brand of inferiority is upon the orthodox brain."

Then, in his most trenchant style, we have Ingersoll's reasons for impeaching and opposing the Church in the concrete :
"I oppose the Church," he says, "because her dogmas are infamous and cruel ; because she humiliates and degrades woman ; because she teaches the doctrines of eternal torment and the natural depravity of man ; because she insists upon the absurd, the impossible, and the senseless ; because she resorts to falsehood and slander ; because she is arrogant and revengeful ; because she allows men to sin on a credit ; because she discourages self-reliance and laughs at good works ; because she believes in vicarious virtue and vicarious vice—vicarious punishment and vicarious reward ; because she regards repentance of more importance than restitution; and because she sacrifices the world we have to one we know not of."
In his lecture on "The Gods," Colonel Ingersoll says :—"Every religion has for its foundation a miracle —that is to say, a violation of nature : that is to say, a falsehood. . . . Truth scorns the assistance of miracle. Nothing but falsehood ever attested itself by signs and wonders. No miracle was ever performed, and no sane man ever thought he had performed one. . . . Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two thousand years. Give us a new miracle, and substantiate it by witnesses who still have the cheerful habit of living in this world. Do not send us to Jericho to hear the winding horns, nor put us in the fire with Shadrach, Meschech, and Abednego.  Do not compel us to navigate the sea with Captain Jonah nor dine with Mr. Ezekiel.  There is no sort of use in sending us fox-hunting with Sampson.  We have positively lost all interest in that little speech so eloquently delivered by Balaam's inspired donkey.  It is worse than useless to show us fishes with money in their mouths, and call our attention to vast multitudes stuffing themselves with five crackers and two sardines.  We demand a new miracle—and we demand it now.  Let the Church furnish, at least, ONE—or for ever after hold her peace."
"Although many eminent men," he says, "have endeavoured to harmonise necessity and free will —the existence of evil and the infinite power and goodness of God—they have succeeded only in producing learned and ingenious failures. Immense efforts have been made to reconcile ideas utterly inconsistent with the facts by which we are surrounded ; and all persons who have failed to perceive the pretended reconciliation have been denounced as infidels, atheists, and scoffers." In another portion of the same eloquent lecture, in a few incisive sentences, it is pointed out how impossible it is for a reflective man to reconcile the ubiquity of infinite pain with the attributes of infinite mercy and benevolence, which latter all the creeds alike claim for their common Deity. "Who can appreciate the mercy," says the Colonel, "of so making the world that all animals devour animals? Is it possible to discover infinite intelligence and love in universal and eternal carnage ?  What should we think of a father who should give a farm to his children, and before giving them possession should plant upon it thousands of deadly shrubs and vines ; should stock it with ferocious beasts and poisonous reptiles ; should take pains to put a few swamps in the neighbourhood to breed malaria ; should so arrange matters that the ground would occasionally open and swallow a few of his darlings ; and, besides all this, should establish a few volcanoes in the immediate vicinity that might, at any moment, overwhelm his children with rivers of fire ? . . . And yet this is exactly what the orthodox God has done. Notwithstanding which we are told that the world is perfect— that it was created by a perfect Being, and is, therefore, necessarily perfect." "The truth is," says Ingersoll, "that it is impossible to harmonise all the ills and pains and agonies of this world with the idea that we were created by and are watched over and protected by and infinitely wise, powerful, and beneficent God who is superior to and independent of nature."
Now the above, albeit by the orthodox it might be deemed blasphemous, is the only rational conclusion that anyone who dares to think for himself can possibly come to. This universe of pain and evil, as John Stuart Mill tells us, was the great stumbling block too in the way of his father's acceptance of any of the creeds or religions of the day : "He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness." This universality of evil it was that caused the tender-hearted and benevolent Voltaire to exclaim—" Who can without horror consider the whole world as an empire of destruction? It abounds with wonders ; it also abounds with victims. It is a vast field of carnage and contagion. Every species is, without pity, pursued and torn to pieces through the earth and air and water. In man there is more wretchedness than in all the other animals put together."
...... Nor is Colonel Ingersoll (like most other Secularists of the age) at all hopeless of a better time coming for all human kind. Having discarded the creeds of Credulity, he, like noble John Stuart Mill, is an ardent advocate of the Religion of Humanity. In the concluding of his lecture on "the Gods" he, with enthusiastic hopefulness declares:— "We are laying the foundations of the grand temple of the future—not the temple of all the gods, but of all the people— wherein, with appropriate rites, will be celebrated the Religion of Humanity. We are doing what little we can do hasten the coming of the day when society shall cease producing millionaires and mendicants—gorged indolence and famished industry—truth in rags; and superstition robed and crowned. We are looking for the time when the useful shall be the beautiful ; when the true shall be the beautiful ; and when REASON, throned upon the world's brain, shall be the King of Kings, and God of Gods.


Northern Miner (Charters Towers, Qld. : 1874 - 1954), Tuesday 14 February 1882, page 2

THE INFERNAL REGIONS,*

M. Cayla has undertaken a taste of some difficulty—nothing less, in fact, than the complete abolition of the infernal regions—in a spirit worthy of a Frenchman. He begins, as Frenchman are apt to begin, by a formal invocation of Liberty and in the Principles of 1789. These principles have subverted a good many terrestrial institutions, and are now about to revolutionise hell. M. Cayla confidently announces himself as the leader of the assault upon the unearthly Bastille. He is ready, he says, to besiege the palace of Satan till not one stone is left upon another ; he will demolish purgatory, which learned theologians hold to be a compartment of hell ; "demons, phantoms, unquenchable flames, the apparatus of torture, will disappear as by  enchantment ; day will replace night, and superstition will have lost its last stronghold." And M. Cayla apparently believes that he has carried out the programme announced in this characterise pæan of exultation, for at the end of his work he salutes the dawn of the new day which is beaming upon the ruins of " l'enfer demoli."  Notwithstanding this exultation, we may say that a few people will probably cling to a favourite article of belief in spite of Lord Chancellors and of M. Cayla. Its fortificatoin must be weak indeed if they fall down before M, Cayla's blast of trumpets. "For in truth his only argument is that as, according to all poetry, theology, and popular tradition, hell is a very unpleasant place, and purgatory not materially better, it would be more agreeable  not to believe in them.  It would be trespassing too far into the province of theologians to endeavour to estimate the logical value of this piece of reasoning. We need only remark that it is not always a destructive argument against any doctrine that, if true, it involves unpleasant consequences—especially if the consequences  are presumed to affect other people. The matter, however, which M. Cayla introduces in support of his argument is more interesting, and more suitable for notice in our pages, than  the argument itself. He has made a collection of the various forms taken by the assailed doctrine in different creeds from the time of  the Egyptians to our own, but chiefly amongst  the various Christian sects.  The assertions of the Bible as to a future state of rewards and punishments, however free from ambiguity, were not sufficiently precise and explicit to satisfy the imagination of the middle ages. Every hint was therefore seized with greediness, and the intentionally vague outlines filled up with elaborate detail. A whole system of infernal machinery was constructed partly  based upon Biblical statements, but chiefly in vented or imported from rabbinical or pagan sources. Every diseased monkish imagination took pleasure in the congenial task of adding new horrors to hell. A fantastic structure was thus raised, in which we may trace the ancient materials constantly reappearing under slightly modified forms. Theology has, of course, no interest in the permanence of this baseless edifice.  It must be considered as a mere work of art, to be criticised according to aesthetic principles, and as incidentally illustrating the theological principles of its architects. A great deal might be learnt as to the character of any man by ascertaining what were his habitual daydreams. The hideous nightmares which must have given rise to the popular images of hell would lead one to unpleasant conjectures as to the digestions of their inventors.

 There is perhaps less variety than might be expected in the tortures inflicted upon the damned in the commonly received legends. We are told, indeed, that the Esquimaux believe that hell is a place of fearful cold—a natural inversion of the creed which prevails in warmer regions of the earth. In all the temperate countries the punishment is inflicted by fire, the devils acting as the executioners at an ever-lasting auto-da-fe. As one of the authorities quoted by M. Cayla tells us with unhesitating confidence, "without any doubt hell is situated beneath the earth, where the reprobate are eternally tormented. The damned are burnt by a fire which does not consume; the degree of incandescence is proportioned to the crimes to be expiated." This appears to be the groundwork of all the theories about hell, although many other tortures bearing marks of the inventor's personal tastes are thrown in to increase the horror. Thus, for example, we hear of "bad smells, vermin, sulphur, melted lead, devouring hunger, cold, ulcers, and the most hideous and insupportable insects." This recurrence to vermin and "insupportable in sects" no doubt implies that the saint was just then abstaining, on religions motives, from the luxury of washing. St. Theresa, who was permitted to make an experimental voyage in to hell, describes the entrance as leading down at very narrow and very muddy lane, of an unbearable smell, and full of venomous reptiles—a thoroughly lady-like picture of the most unpleasant place conceivable. We have read somewhere of a hell invented by some of the South Sea Islanders. The blessed are supposed to eat on an eternal feast inside of an open wicker-work house. The damned crawl about on the outside, the pangs of hunger being aggravated by the glimpses of festivity within. This moderate allowance of torture speaks much for the natural mildness of the inventors. It is also remarkable, inasmuch as heaven is thus a more positive conception than its antithesis. This is the reverse of the civilised practice. Our ideas of heaven have necessarily been left far more indefinite than our ideas of torment. The heaven of the savages, or even the Elysium of more civilised pagans, is a mere continuation of the present life, with the most prominent evils omitted. But the early  Christian's conception of life made it necessary to purify heaven from everything worldly, even from intellectual amusements or pleasures. His notion of a future world was material enough, as was proved by the tortures to which he subjected the damned. Gregory of Tours, for example, reports a vision in which the soul of Chilperic I. was cast into a boiling pot, after having all its limbs broken, where the heat was so intense that in an instant there was " only a little bit of it left." But in heaven, as a place of religious ecstasy, there was no room for the material enjoyments which would be the natural antithesis to the material suffering. The description of it thus presented much greater difficulties to the imagination. The task was wisely left unattempted, or the description tended to become somewhat monotonous. There is a hymn which speaks of a place where "congregations ne'er break up, and Sabbaths have no end" ; and we doubt whether the statement can be very attractive to most minds. But there was no source from which the poet might not draw for his descriptions of hell. Every variety of physical torment, and every foul and loathsome image might be freely used. A great poet might ennoble the resulting legends, like Dante ; or they might form a raw material fit for Voltaire's ribaldry in the Pucelle d'Orleans ; or they might appeal to mere vulgar terror, like the coarse pictures of flames and devils scrawled upon the outside of Italian chapels.

M. Cayla often speaks as if he supposed these legends to be kept up from interested motives by the priesthood. Though this would, of course, be an absurd explanation of a belief so general, and fitting in so well with his sincere opinions of the age, some particular stories were doubtless started by design. The well known purgatory of St. Patrick, which does credit to Irish ingenuity, seems to have been one of these inventions. This saint established a kind of back-door to purgatory in an island in Lough Derg, where in twenty-four hours a penitent might be purged from his sins. A pilgrim was kept for nine days meditating, and praying in a small cell, with no food but a little bread and water. On the ninth day, he had no food at all. He was then conducted with due ceremonies into a cave. It seems to be doubtful whether an Irishman, after nine days of this treatment, might not be safely left to provide his own torments. If, however, his delirium did not supply him with devils enough the monks appear to have acted the character with great vigour. Other legends may be considered as having been invented either for selfish purposes or as mere exhibitions of spite They were the threatening letters of the age, intended to extort money from their victim, or merely as lampoons to cause him pain. A landgrave of Thuringia having died, his sons offered a good farm to any one who would bring certain news from the soul of the defunct. A priest who knew something of necromancy immediately summoned the devil, and rode off on his back to hell. There, after some dangers, the deceased landgrave appeared, and said that his position would be improved if his heirs would restore certain possessions to the Church. The heirs were so much struck by the accuracy of the priest's account that they offered him the farm, though they refused to restore the possessions. The various other travellers who reach ed the infernal regions daring the middle ages often, of course, brought back news of the sufferings of those who had defrauded the Church They sometimes showed a different spirit, by discovering apparently virtuous bishops and saints in a state of torment. A certain English monk, to his great surprise,observed a holy bishop in the claws of the devil, whose relics were at that very time working miracles. A canon of Notre Dame, in Paris, died, in the eleventh century, in the odour of sanctity. They attempted to bury him in one of the chapels, when the dead man cried out that he had been damned by the just judgment of God His body was accordingly thrown on to a dung-hill, and the chapel was long afterwards known as la chapelle du damne.

M. Cayla gives many instances of the grotesque and terrible effects of this great medieval instrument of religious terrorism. There is undoubtedly something revolting to modern ideas in their coarse materialism. Their gradual extenuation is a proof of intellectual improvement. Dante was a greater poet than Milton, and his hell is poetically superior ; but we prefer the vagueness of Milton's hell in an article of belief. Mr. Ruskin,  in one of his ingenious criticisms, has remarked that it is a proof of Dante's greater imaginative power that, whereas Milton only speaks of Satan as " floating many a rood;" Dante carefully gives us his exact dimensions. It may be doubted whether it requires more imagination to say that the devil is seventy yards in height than to say that he covers many a rood. The test of the imaginative power of a description is not the quantity of detail, but the extent to which it excites the desired emotions. Viewed in this way. Milton's vague outlines probably show less power than Dante's but not on account of their vagueness. They correspond to the picture which an educated mind would naturally form, rejecting the material images of an earlier period as too shocking for even poetical belief. In this way the distance between the conceptions of Milton and Dante measures a refinement in our opinions. We are no longer capable of accepting the gross concrete images which were once satisfactory, but it does not at all follow that our belief in some spiritual truth shadowed forth by them need be weaker. We cannot believe in the flames, and the boiling lead, and the devils with hooks and instruments of torture. But it is certainly possible to believe nevertheless in a future state of eternal punishment, and to enjoy the dear delight of worrying and abusing those who do not believe.—Saturday Review.

* L'Enfer Demoli. Par J. M. Cayla. Paris: 1865

Empire 13 Dec 1865