Morality and Mugwumps.

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WOWSERS AND THEIR WAYS.

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Kinks of our Ancestors — Resemblance of the
Savage and the Wowser—Biblical Heroes
and their Capers — Moses, David,
Lot and Abraham—Poverty and Prostitution.
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No thoughtful persons doubts nowadays that the various superstitions which man is forsaking slowly are merely hereditary mental kinks transmitted to him by his savage ancestors. In parts of the Pacific the islander of to-day believes that his shadow is one of his souls, and in Africa there are places where the natives, when approaching a river, are extremely careful not to let their shadow fall on the water lest a crocodile should seize it and pull them in with it. . . . The mind of primitive man, it is fairly certain, was incapable of inventing a belief in a hereafter had the phenomenon of dreams been unknown. The medicine-men and witchdoctors who pretended to explain the strange adventures of souls in the spirit world exercised a great influence over their fellows.

*   *   *

The power of the spell-binders and experts in bedevilment gradually waned as the savage advanced along the path of knowledge and finally their incantations and mumbo-jumbo were looked upon as a solemn sort of amusement. But man was ever a conservative animal, and even in primitive times was averse to disturbing ancient beliefs, and the witch-doctor was allowed to exist as a sort of heirloom. Possibly because he amused the men and kept the women and children out of mischief he occupied a privileged position. But he was no longer admitted to the councils of the tribe save on rare occasions when it was deemed advisable to relieve the monotony of a lengthy session with a little solemn foolery.

*   *   *

It is a remarkable fact that while civilised man has shed most of the physical peculiarities of his primitive forbears, the mental attributes of his primal ancestors still survive. The prognathous jaw and sloping forehead of a certain type of degenerate warn all who come in contact with him that at times a cog slips in the wheels of evolution. Yet the peculiar mental outfit of the wowser is so common that it excites little remark. Every thoughtful observer must confess to a feeling of astonishment at this indifference when the beliefs of the present day wowser and the primitive savage are compared and analysed. Both believe that instead of man inventing gods, that a god, or gods, created man. Both believe that a good spirit rewards and an evil spirit punishes man according to certain rules. Both believe that all who do not see eye to eye with them are possessed with an evil spirit and have no chance of entering a variously described happy hunting ground in the hereafter. Both believe that by making noises with bells, tom-toms, and other contrivances, and by singing, supplicating and corroboreeing they can induce some unknown power to monkey with the laws of Nature. Both believe that his own particular wielder of this mysterious power regards him as the centre of the universe, and will regulate affairs according to his wish if offered sufficient inducement, such as sacrifices. burnt offerings, or smoodging.

*   *   *

But while the resemblance between the beliefs of the wowser and the savage affords convincing proof that both owe their origin to the fear of the unknown that dominated the mind of primitive man, the modem wowser lacks one redeeming feature possessed by his savage co-religionist. When he has made what he considers sufficient noise to attract the attention of the power he kow-tows to, beyond expressing a wish for his enemy's discomfiture, the savage attends strictly to his own personal affairs. The morals, pleasures, or pursuits of other people, if they do not interfere with his comfort or inconvenience him, he leaves severely alone. But the heathen's wants are few and simple, and, moreover, he judges others from his own standpoint. He knows that the resentment he would feel at any interference with his affairs he must expect others to show should he meddle with their concerns. The most objectionable characteristics of the modern wowser may be set down to the utter lack of this happy knack of minding his own business. The reverend ragers and clamorous clerics of present-day civilisation are afflicted with an incurable itch for interfering in the affairs of other people. Although he holds as infallible, beliefs which were shown to be both absurd and impossible generations ago, the wowser claims to be intelligent enough to regulate the conduct of his fellow citizen

*   *   *

Scientific research has always been regarded by him as a blasphemous questioning of the will of whatever particular god he happens to worship. Any departure from the established order of things is an accursed thing, and to be opposed as an attempt to flout divinely ordained laws. Such benefits to civilised humanity as education, printing, vaccination, tobacco, theatres and mixed bathing all aroused his hostility when first introduced. While professing belief in a faith the scriptures condone—by not condemning murder, slavery, incest, polygamy, and cattle-duffing, he clamors for hand guns, gaols, and gallows, to suppress these pleasant pastimes and to punish anyone who hankers for the simple life as practised by the free-and-easy patriarchs of the old testament.

*   *   *

By what peculiar process of mental inversion the wowser reconciles his present-day professions of faith with the sayings and doings of Biblical heroes it is hard to imagine. Moses was a murderous and immoral savage compared with whose exploits the atrocities attributed to the Kaiser are merely the mischievous monkeyings of a boy bandit. Moses slew five kings and all their male subjects, took their women and children captive, commandeered all their cattle and other movables, and destroyed every city in the five kingdoms by fire. When he calmed down a little he killed every male child and every woman who had ever known a man by lying with him. The virgins he distributed amongst his troops.

*   *   *

David, one of the greatest kings of Biblical history, was a ferocious and licentious savage who lived by bushranging. He robbed even those who gave him shelter, and when he tried to Blackmail Nabal was diverted from his purpose by that gentleman's wife. Less than a fortnight later Nabal died and David married the newly-made widow. When one of David's soldiers was away "winning the war" his wife was seduced by David, who stayed at home "sooling." To avoid his baseness becoming known the seducer arranged affairs with his Minister of Defence, and had the cuckholded husband placed in a position where he stood a good chance of being killed. The soldier duly lost his life, and David led the widow to the altar. During one of his numerous "fights for the preservation of civilisation," David captured a city named Rahbah. He then "brought forth all the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through a brick kiln, and thus he did unto all the cities of the children of Ammon."

*   *   *

Jacob was a trickster and liar who robbed his brother, and lied to his father while doing so. He married two of his cousins, robbed his uncle, and persuaded one of his wives to rob her father. Abraham used one of his servant girls to satisfy his lust, and when she bore a child to him he threw both mother and child out to starve. He twice passed his wife off as his sister that he might reap profit by allowing other men to have sexual intercourse with her. Of the amazing capers cut by the concupiscent children of the Lord it is impossible to enumerate more than a few. Reuben committed incest by sleeping with one of his father's wives. Judah was guilty of a similar sin with his son's wife, and rewarded her for her complaisance by presents of jewellery. Lot offered his two daughters to a rowdy mob who threatened him. While the crowd was rampaging outside his house and demanding that they should be allowed to commit an unnatural offence upon two men who were camping there for the night, Lot offered to allow the bestial brawlers to sate their lust with the bodies of his girls, saying, "Behold, now; I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them to you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes." It is small wonder that these two virgins shortly afterwards should be smitten by the incestuous itch which seemed to be as common in those days as ratting is among Labor politicians at the present time. After considering ways and means these fascinating flappers filled their old man up with the ancient equivalent for beer, and while he was on the spree took turn about at sleeping with him. To remove all doubts concerning the outcome of their nocturnal naughtiness the Bible baldly states, "Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father. And the elder one bore a son and called his name Moab, and the younger she also bore a son and called his name Benammi."

*   *   *

That a belief in such "divinely-inspired" records of lust, brutality, and bloodshed gives any section of the community any right to determine, say, when people shall, or rather shall not, be allowed to drink beer before or after certain hours is almost incredible. Yet by bleating and braying about a beneficent Being they banish legitimate amusements and recreation from the lives of the people. It was in the seedling brain of a weeping and wailing wowser that the idea of bowdlerising the works of Shakespeare originated—the holy hypocrites of today claim the right to censor plays, picture shows and literature. Less than a century ago the wowser conscience was responsible for the burning of women and mutilation of children—to-day it is less merciful and fills brothels and orphanages.

*   *   *

While cackling complacently of the goodness of God, and rejoicing in the sense of holy communion with him, the modern wowser amiably condones shocking scenes of poverty and filth, and excuses preventable diseases, moral and physical, by pleading "the will of God." While whooping about salvation he entirely ignores moral development and "goes nap" on crosses, tombs, and resurrections. Nineteen hundred years of wowser influence has given the world the greatest war known in history with the wowser as the most enthusiastic recruiting agent —for both contending armies. Poverty racks and degrades the greater part of the population of all Christian countries. Unnatural vice and prostitution flourish within the sound of the bells of every church in Christendom. The idle rich arrogantly fatten on the labor of the poor, and receive the sanctimonious plaudits of the men of God for doing so. Is it not time that the Canon Moores, the Rev. Wheatleys, the Coxs, Corly Butlers, Ross's and all the brawling band of blood-drunken bigots were asked to justify their existence? They and their baneful breed have had a long opportunity to ameliorate some of the evils of the social system. And if they cannot organise any better scheme to relieve the pangs of poverty and lighten the burden of industrial slavery than reliance on the goodness of God, what is wrong with telling them to "get work" and endeavoring to cultivate the virtue of self-reliance.

*   *   *

It may give pleasure to imaginative people to dream and sing of a better land beyond the tomb, yet if the opportunity for speedy translation comes, even to an elderly wowser, he doesn't leap joyfully at the chance. He sends at once for a doctor. Although all his life he has asserted that man is the offspring of God he is in no-wise anxious to interview his tender-hearted Father. Can the creed responsible for this illogical attitude be accepted as a belief for rational beings, or should it be regarded as the blind prejudice and ignorant superstition of a primitive mind?

Truth (Perth, WA : 1903 - 1931), Saturday 12 May 1917, page 8

LOWER RACES OF MEN.

 THE following interesting lecture was delivered, in September last, by Sir John Lubbock, Bart, M. P., F.R.S., at Liverpool :—
The lecturer said his object was not to describe arms or implements, houses or boats, food or dress of savages, but rather to illustrate the mental condition and ideas of the lower races of men,—a subject of great interest to the philosopher, and also of immense practical importance to an empire like ours, extending to every quarter of the globe, and containing races of men in every stage of civilisation. As regarded their habits and the material conditions of life, savages differed greatly, but as regarded ideas and customs, we found very remarkable similarities even in the most distinct races and the most distant regions. He proposed to call more particular attention to the social or family relations and the religious ideas of the lower races. It would be a mistake to regard our ideas of relationship founded upon marriage as common to them. The position of woman among the lower savages was melancholy in the extreme, and precluded all those tender and sacred feelings to which so much of our happiness was due. Again, the religion of savages was, in some respects, the very opposite of ours. The whole mental condition of the savage was indeed so dissimilar from ours that it was often difficult for us to follow what was passing in his mind, or understand his motives. "What," said a negro once to Burton, "am I to starve while my sister has children whom she can sell?" Moreover the difficulty of understanding what was passing in their minds was much enhanced by the differences of language. When Labillaidiere inquired of the Friendly Islanders what was their word for 1,000,000, they thought the question absurd ; and when he asked them for 100,000,000 they gave him "laounoua," which meant nonsense ; while for higher numbers they gave in joke certain coarse expressions which he had gravely recorded in his annals. Dampier, too, once killed an Australian savage from misunderstanding the word "pooh," "pooh," (puff, puff) which is the name that savages, like children, apply to guns. Kissing was unknown to the Australians, New Zealanders, Papuans, West African negroes, and Esquimaux. The Polynesians and Malays always sat down when speaking to a superior, and in some parts of Central Africa it was respectful to turn the back. Captain Cook asserted that the inhabitants of Mallicole showed their admiration by hissing ; among the Esquimaux a person's nose was pulled as a compliment ; and a Chinaman put on his hat where we should take it off. But, notwithstanding the contradictory accounts of the character and mental condition of savages, by comparing the accounts of travellers, the sources of error could be eliminated, and a remarkable similarity was developed between very different races. Two instances were given. Every Englishman who had not studied other races would be surprised to hear that on the birth of a baby the father and not the mother was put to bed and nursed. Yet, though so ludicrous, this custom prevailed very widely. Father Dobritzhoffer mentions it as occurring amongst the Abipones of South America, and other travellers mention a similar custom in Greenland, Kamtschatka, parts of China and Borneo, the North of Spain, Corsica, and the South of France. A custom so ancient and widely distributed must have its origin in some idea which satisfied the savage mind. The idea that a person imbibed the characteristics of an animal of which he had eaten was very widely distributed. The Malays at Singapore used to give a large price for the flesh of the tiger, not because they liked it, but because they believed that the man who ate tigers would become as wise and powerful as that animal. The Dyabs of Borneo avoided deer for fear of being made timid ; the Caribs would not eat pig or tortoise, lest they should have small eyes ; the New Zealanders, after baptism, used to make an infant swallow pebbles, to give it a hard and unpitying heart, and after a battle they cooked and ate their bravest and wisest foes, expecting to secure a share of their wisdom and courage. Savages had a dread of portraits. The better the likeness the worse, they think, for the sitter, for so much life could not be put into the copy except at the expense of the original. But writing appeared to the savage even more mysterious than drawing, and the belief in its mystery had led to its being used in many parts of the world as a medicine. The Central Africans, for instance, who were a religious people according to their lights, when any one was ill wrote a text out of the Koran on a board, washed it off, and made the patient drink it. The lecturer having next touched the subject of ornaments, of which savages were passionately fond, came to the question of laws, observing that it was a great mistake to suppose that the savage enjoyed an amount of personal freedom greater than that of individuals belonging to civilised communities. The savage was nowhere free. All over the world his life was regulated by a complicated set of rules and customs as forcible as laws, of quaint prohibitions, and unjust privileges, the prohibitions generally applying to the women and the privileges to the men. Marriage and relationship was the next branch of the lecture. All our ideas of relationship were founded on marriage and on the family. Amongst savages the relationship to the clan almost superseded that to the family. Women were treated like slaves, or almost like domestic animals. Thus in Australia little real affection existed between husband and wife, and young men valued a wife principally for her services as a slave. Many instances were recorded amongst the lower races, where marriage might be said to be unknown, and where children must be regarded as related by tribal rather than family connections. Thus even in our own language, words which now indicate relationship had, originally, no such signification, the word daughter, for instance, meaning literally, "milk maid," and thus dating back to a time when our ancestors did not recognise the "family" as it now existed. In the Sandwich Islands, uncleship, auntship, consulship were ignored and we had only

Grandparents, Children and

Parents, Grandchildren.

Brothers and sisters

Here the child was related to the group, not specially related to its father or mother, so that every child was regarded as having several fathers and several mothers. The condition of the lowest races was that, not of individual marriage as existing amongst us, but of communal marriage. But, even under the latter system, where a man had captured a beautiful girl whom he wished to keep to himself, a form of individual marriage would rise up by the side of the communal marriage. This theory explained the extraordinary subjection of the woman in marriage ; it explained the widely-distributed custom of "exogamy," which forbade marriage within the tribe ; the necessity of expiation for the infringement of tribal rights by the appropriation to one man of what belonged to the whole tribe, and, lastly, the remarkable prevalence of the form of capture in marriage. Among the rudest races capture was far more than a form, and it was customary for men to steal women by force from other tribes. The lecturer then gave a number of instances to shew how widely the custom of marriage by capture prevailed among the lower races of men, and that traces of it lingered even amongst those higher in the scale of civilisation. In Australia the ardent lover stole on the object of his affections, knocked her down with a club, and dragged her off in triumph. Amongst the Kalmucks of Central Asia a girl was put on a horse and rode off at full speed. The lover started in pursuit, and, if he caught her, she became his wife—if not, the match was broken off. No Kalmuck girl, it was believed, was caught against her will. Amongst the Ahitas of the Philippine Islands a girl was sent into the woods, and had to be found and brought back by her lover before sunset, else he must abandon all claim to her. M. Bardel mentioned that amongst the Indians of Chili, after a man had agreed with the parents upon the price of a girl, he either really or in feint surprised her and carried her off to the woods for a few days. In Europe we find just the same thing ; the Romans had a similar custom and traces of it occurred in Greek history. As communities become larger and more civilised, the actual capture became inconvenient, and indeed impossible. Gradually, therefore it sunk more and more into a mere form. The second stage in the development of the idea of family consisted in the recognition of relationship to the mother, the to the father being still overlooked. The multiplicity of wives in countries where polygamy was frequent, and the appropriation of wives by the stronger chiefs or kings, would in either condition weaken the tie between father and child. Hence probably the curious fact that in many parts of the world a man's property descended in the female and not in the male line. As civilisation progressed, and as family life became more developed, the affection between father and child would become stronger, and, as property become more important, men would wish their goods to descend to their own children, who would themselves obviously desire to inherit their fathers property. And so, passing from one extreme to another, the relation on the paternal side was recognised, and that to the mother neglected. Thus it would be seen that at first the feeling of clanship prevailed rather than that of family, and that children were regarded as related to the tribe rather than to their parents ; that, secondly, they were considered to be related to the mother, but not to the father ; thirdly, to the father, but not to the mother ; lastly, and lastly only as among ourselves, to both father and mother. We saw, therefore, that the ideas of relationship, founded on marriage, have only gradually been acquired, and thus civilisation had raised the position of woman, making her a helpmate instead of a slave, had purified and softened all the conditions of social life. The higher position of woman was one of the points in which we saw most clearly the enormous advantage of civilisation over barbarism. With regard to religion it had been usual to class the lower religions into Fetichism, defined as the worship of material substances ; Sabaeism, that of the heavenly bodies, the sun, moon, and stars ; and Heroism, or the deification of men after death. But these were not really natural systems. There was no real difference between the worship of the sun and that of a rock or a lake. The true classification of religion should rest not on the mere object worshipped, but on the nature and character ascribed to the Deity. It was a much disputed question whether the lowest races had any religion or not. However this might be, it was clear that the religion of the lower savages was in many respects the very opposite of that of most advanced races. Their deities were evil, not good, they required bloody sacrifices ; they were mortal, not immortal, and were approached by dances rather than by prayers. The ideas of religion among the lower races were intimately associated with, if, indeed, they had not originated from the condition of man during sleep, and especially from dreams. Sleep and death had always been regarded as nearly related to one another. Thus, Somnus and Mors, the gods of sleep and death, were both fabled to have been the children of Nox, the goddess of night. So, also, the savage would naturally look on death as a kind of sleep, and would expect and hope to see his friend awake from the one as he had often done from the other. Hence, probably, one reason for the great importance ascribed to the treatment of the body after death. The savage considered the events in his dreams as real as those which happened when he was awake, and, hence, he naturally felt that he had a spirit which could quit the body, if not when it liked at least under certain circumstances. The lecturer cited examples from various countries in proof of his arguments, and also to show how low and degraded was the savage conception of the Divine nature. Gradually, however, as the human mind expanded, it became capable of higher and higher realisations. The lecturer then entered into a more detailed description of the religions of some savage races, beginning with the lowest, which might be called Animism, and which was exemplified in the native Australians, in the belief in ghosts or spirits, or at any rate of evil beings who were not men. The Fetichism of the negro was a step in advance, because the influence of religion was much raised in importance. Nevertheless, Fetichism might be regarded as an anti-religion, for the negro believed that by means of the Fetich he could coerce and control the Deity. Fetichism, indeed, was mere witchcraft. A Fetich differed essentially from an idol, for the one tended to raise man to the contemplation of the Deity, and the other to bring the Deity within the control of man. The next stage might be called Totemism. In this stage everything was deified—stones, rivers, lakes, mountains, the heavenly bodies, even plants and animals. Up to a certain stage the deities were mortal, not creators, no importance was attached to true prayers ; virtue was not rewarded, nor vice punished ; there were no temples, no priests, no idols. From this point differences of circumstances and government materially influenced the forms of religious belief. Natives of cold climates regarded the sun as beneficent, those of the tropics an evil ; hunting races worshipped the moon, agriculturalists the sun ; in free communities thought was free, while despots sought to strengthen themselves by the support of spiritual terrors, and hence favoured a religion of sacrifices and priests, rather than of prayer and meditation. Lastly, the character of the race impressed itself on the religion. Poetry exercised on immense influence, as was the case with the Greeks and Romans. Where the material elements of civilisation developed themselves without any corresponding increase of knowledge there was developed a religion of terror, which became a terrible scourge to humanity. Gradually an increased acquaintance with the laws of nature enlightened the mind of man. From a believer in ghosts he became gradually to recognise the existence of a soul, and at length uniting this belief with that of a beneficent and just Being, he connected morality with religion—a step the importance of which it was scarcely possible to estimate.

Professor Huxley made some remarks suggested by the lecture.

From facts and circumstances within his own personal knowledge and observation he confirmed what had been said by Sir J. Lubbock respecting the intensity and eminently practical character of the beliefs of savage races. He said he had had the opportunity of seeing the lowest forms of life amongst the Australians, and no words could be too strong to express the degradation and brutality—not altogether unmixed with better qualities—in which those people lived. He thought perhaps one of the most comforting conclusions to be drawn from the subject was that a similar state of degradation and misery—whatever might have been the primitive condition of mankind —was one to which every nation could be historically traced. How was it that the human race, in so many diverse conditions, had escaped from this primitive misery, and raised itself to the degree of morality and religion in which we found it ? Assuredly, by a natural process of elevation ; by a process of learning the laws of nature, under whatever name those laws might be discussed, and learning to obey them. He was probably the only man there who had seen the savages of whom Sir John Lubbock spoke, but he was not the only man there who had seen savages and knew them well. Whilst walking through this great town of Liverpool he had seen many savages, and as degraded savages as the Australians—nay, worse In the primitive savage there remained a certain manliness derived from continual contact and struggle with nature, which was absent in these degraded specimens of humanity. He believed the great political question of the future was whether the misery which dogged the footsteps of modern civilisation should be allowed to exist—whether there should be in the heart of the most polished nations of the present day, and which plumed themselves most on being Christian, this savagery, of which such abundant examples could be seen in our streets ? It was because working men were brought into contact with that great fact, struggling with it, feeling that it must be put down somehow, that their minds were occupied with trades unionism, socialism, or what not, after which they were striving. He did not say whether they were right or wrong, but he profoundly sympathised with this endeavour to put down the savagery of the world, and if one could conceive the right way of doing it, he could think of no nobler work than uniting with them in that object. Let him urge upon them that in this matter history did not lie, and that if they were to succeed in this great aspiration of theirs, they could only have one course respecting it, and that was to learn the laws of nature and do their best to obey them. If to that end their efforts were directed wisely and well he could not doubt that they would eventually be crowned with success.

Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), Tuesday 27 December 1870, page 3

THE EASTERN QUESTION.

A Lecture by the Rev, J.S. White, M.A. LL.D.

(Concluded from our last issue.)

THE KORAN,

their rule of faith and practice, is allowed by competent judges to be, as a literary production, the most perfect specimen of merely human composition. The facts of the present war prove conclusively that the Turks have not degenerated either physically, mentally, or morally. They have proved themselves worthy sons of worthy sires. The Turks, numbering only 34,000,000, refused to submit to the Russians, numbering 74,000,000, or more than double. The Turks, under the undeserved frown of Europe, have fought, and actually defeated in battle after battle, the gigantic Russian, basking undeservedly in Europe's smile. They have illustrated in every instance, if not in success, at the least in conduct, courage, and heroic, patriotic daring, the noblest deeds of ancient Greece in her best days. Marathon and Leuctra have been reproduced in Batoum, Plevna, and Schipka. If the Turks are to die, it is evident that they will die "hard." Turkey's decease will be commemorated by many a soldier's winding sheet, and many a soldier's sepulchre. Her wake will be the most bloody ever held over an extinguished nationality. May England not be called to fill the office of chief mourner? But let the Turks be in reality the anti-human specimen of humanity, and the decaying race which Mr. Gladstone represents them, does the fact render their case hopeless? Does it absolve Christian Europe—especially does it absolve England —from obligation to attempt their improvement ? Has it been proved impossible to humanize and invigorate them ?

HAS ENGLAND EVER MADE

an attempt to humanize and invigorate them? Let as judge from what was once the condition of the present Christian nations of Europe — intellectually, morally, socially, and politically. Let us judge from what was once the condition of England herself. When the Romans landed in England, shortly after the Christian era, the inhabitants were savages with naked and painted bodies Their religion was Druidism a system of superstition the most degraded, and of cruelty the most revolting. Human beings were burnt in hecatombs in iron cages as sacrifices to the gods. They had no laws, no government worthy of note.

IN THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII,

2000 were executed every year. In Scotland 4000 were executed as witches ; and in England more than twice that number within two centuries. Even up till the days of William III., England vacillated in the balance between despotism and constitutional government. Not without difficulty has the equipoise been maintained ever since. Yet England is at the present, if not the most highly civilized, at the least one of the most enlightened, and certainly the most humane of European nations. She is the first among the constitutional governments of world, and her position as such is universally recognized ; and, notwithstanding imperfections, her policy, is characterized by philanthropy, and her action by the advancement of the world's interests. She is, and she is acknowledged to be, a universal benefactor. How has this mighty, this radical change been effected ? By the influence of Christianity. Has England attempted to Christianize the Turks ? No ! She has done nothing to this end nationally. Turkey has hitherto been regarded by England

MERELY AS A BARRIER

against the attack of her Eastern possessions, and treated accordingly. If England, as the great Christian and missionary power of the world, recognised her duty to Turkey, can it be doubted but that Christianity in the case of Turkey would prove, as it proved in her own case, the means of improving and elevating her? Is the case of Turkey too hard for Christianity ? Then Christianity is not the mighty power of God unto salvation ! But if Christianity is this power, then is the case of Turkey within the sphere of its operation, and susceptible of its influence. It seems to me as it God had constituted England his executor in respect of the weaker and less enlightened of the human race, and that she is bound to see to their interests, protect, educate, and improve them. Mr. Gladstone's "bag and baggage" policy certainty does not indicate either the wisdom of a statesman, much less of an English statesman, nor the great kind-hearted philanthropy of a Christian. Drive the Turks out of Europe ! Whither ? Into Asia? How would such a course of action, humanise and invigorate them? What circumstances in Asia would specially favor the process? Why, to drive them into Asia, would be to drive them away from civilization—to bring them into contact with barbarians—to ensure their deterioration and ruin.

THEIR GREAT CHANCE

of improvement is in Europe. They have already most nobly vindicated their right to remain there, and their hands have been made strong by the mighty God for the purpose of their remaining that they might be Christianized. As to government—why should England sympathise with Russia rather than with Turkey ? The government of England is what is styled a constitutional Government—that it, each estate of the realm is duly represented—has its due voice and influence in framing and administering the laws by which it is governed. The laws are proposed, discussed, and framed in the House of Commons, in which the great mass of the people are represented ; altered, amended, or approved in the House of Lords in which the aristocracy are represented ; and disallowed or ratified by the Sovereign, with the advice of the Cabinet representing the majority in Parliament and presumably the majority of the people. The execution is vested in the Sovereign, who is not above the law, but "on the whole and essentially beneath, not superior to it, theoretically in some respects above, but practically bound and directed by its ordinances." Hence the maxim— Rex non debet esse sub homine sed sub Deo et sub lege quia lex facit regem.

THE WONDROUS ARRANGEMENT

which Tacitus regarded as monstrous and impracticable, has been realized in the English Constitution. The instrument of the Government in England is a "rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power of the State"-—that is, Sovereign, Lords, and Commons. It is permanent, uniform, and universally applicable, and known and applicable to the future only. The Government of Russia is as widely different from the Government of England as possible. It is at its very antipodes. In a political sense, there are in Russia no Lords, no Commons. The Czar embodies in his own political person all power—legislative, judicial, and executive. He is an autocrat or absolute despot. His will is law. To the Czar, but in a sense far grosser and more absolute, may be applied the aphorism, of Louis. XIV., the most absolute monarch of Europe, Le loi, cette est moi. The instrument of the law of Russia is not a rule, but, it may be, it often is, a caprice or whim. It is not a rule prescribed, for it is in the breast of the Czar. The result of this is that the vast majority of the population of Russia are serfs or slaves, with no right but those necessary to fit and enable and dispose them to endure wrongs. The Slavs have ever shown themselves incapable of constitutional government. On all occasions, left to themselves, they have degenerated into master and slaves. The Turks, on the other hand, have a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power in the State. That rule is

THE KORAN, WHICH RESPECTS

all the relations and duties of life, which is universally read, studied, and known— which binds the ruler as well as the subject. The Sultan himself is not above the law, but on the whole and essentially beneath it, and practically bound and directed by its ordinances. It has not an ex post facto, but an in future reference. The provisions of the Koran are on the whole wise and salutary, and its spirit humane. Slavery, so far as the Turks among themselves are concerned, is unknown, and it professes to emanate from God, who is the Supreme Head of their state. It is questionable whether the Koran will not compare most favourably with any scheme of legislation, ancient or modern, of mere human composition. In this matter, then—this fundamental matter of government—the

TURKS ARE FAR SUPERIOR

to the Russians. Their system of government is of a much higher type, and of more advanced character. It is assimilated much more nearly to the Constitution of England than is that of Russia. In some important points there is a marked resemblance. Turkey is one of the Constitutional Governments of Europe. So far as England is concerned to preserve, and cherish and extend Constitutional Government, and as the leading and model Constitutional Government of the world, she is bound to do this—she is bound to sympathise, not with Russia, but with Turkey. England is bound to sympathise with Turkey in condemnation of the principle involved in Russia's action towards Turkey. Turkey is

A SOVEREIGN INDEPENDENT STATE.

Her sovereignty and independence have always been acknowledged. It was expressly and emphatically acknowledged by England, France, and Russia, in the treaty of 1856. As a sovereign independent state, Turkey is to the Turks their castle. In terms of our constitutional maxim, Domus sua cuique est tutisximum refugium. It is sacred and inviolable against all intrusion and all interference by other states in time of peace. But in time of peace, Russia sent emissaries into Turkey to stir up sedition and counsel massacre. At her command, and under her auspices, massacre was perpetrated. This Russia does not deny, but she attempts to palliate her offence by the plea that she so acted on behalf of Turkish subjects of her own race and religion. A large and influential section of the population of one of the three kingdoms is dissatisfied on political and religious grounds, with England's rule, and is agitating for a Constitution— the very thing demanded by Russia for the Turkish Slavs. Now the people of France are of the same race and religion as the dissatisfied subjects in question. Suppose France, in time of peace, should act towards them the part of Russia in the case of the Christian Slavs, and stir up rebellion, and abet massacre, what would be the opinion of England, of Europe, of such conduct? Would she not feel, would not all Europe feel, that a sacred principle of international law had been violated, and violated wantonly— a principle involving not only the sovereignty and independence, but the very existence, of nations? Ought England to stand passively by and permit such and outrage upon a well-established, a fundamental, a salutary, an essential principle? Ought not the sword of England's noble spirit to be whetted ? Ought not her every rifle and every cannon be made to find a tongue if necessary, to protest in a voice of thunder against this great, this flagrant, this most pernicious course of action? And, consistently and gracefully might England interfere in vindication of this principle, for she herself has always sacredly respected it. The Abyssinians and Ashantees—barbarous tribes— dared in time of peace to bind and imprison English citizens.

ENGLAND DEMANDED THEIR LIBERATION,

and redress of the enormity. Only on being refused all remedy did she appeal to arms. The evil complained of having been remedied, England left Abyssinia to the Abyssinians, and Ashantee to the Ashantees. She left them to govern themselves within their own territory as they thought fit. But failing all other pretexts for alienating the mind of England from Turkey, and inflaming it against her, and for enlisting her sympathy with Russia, it is alleged that while Turkey represents Heathenism and Idolatry, Russia represents Christianity, —that the present war is in truth a war of religious principles, and that the subjugation of Turkey would involve the overthrow of

HEATHENISM AND IDOLATRY,

and the success of Russia would involve the triumph of Christianity. The Crescent, the symbol of Turkey, and the Cross, the symbol of Russia, are represented as the emblems of Heathenism and Idolatry on the one hand, and of Christianity on the other. On this ground it is argued that all Christians must necessarily sympathise with Russia, and bid her Godspeed. If the case were as it is represented, it is not for a moment to be denied that all our sympathies and all our desire should be for Russia's success. But the case is not really, as it is represented. The true issue is not placed before us, but an utterly false issue. Turkey does not represent Heathenism and Idolatry. The religion of the Turks is not Heathenism and Idolatry, but Islam, of which, the Koran is the exponent. Heathenism is the religion founded in ignorance of the true God, and in which, therefore, the true God is ignored, and Idolatry, its complement, is that form of worship which such ignorance induces and necessitates—for man must worship something. But the fundamental principal of Islam is the doctrine of one God, whom a spirit infinite, eternal, and, unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. Islam does not recognise a Trinity in Unity in the Godhead, but it assigns to Jesus Christ a position and high as that assigned him by Unitarians, and but little, if at all, lower than that assigned him practically by many professing Trinitarians. The Heathenism and Idolatry of Arabia, whether of so-called Jews or Christians of his day,

FIRST PROMPTED MOHAMMED

to propound Islam. His spirit was stirred within him when he saw Arabia wholly given to idolatry. The Moslems have been the uncompromising enemies of Heathenism and Idolatry. The Moslems do not make images of anything in Heaven above, or on the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth to fall down and worship them. The more scrupulous of them do not use even figures as chessmen. For the name of GOD they have the profoundest reverence —as profound a reverence as had the Hebrews during the time of their purest faith and worship. Islam teaches the doctrine of a resurrection, and of the immortality of the soul, and a future of reward and punishment. It inculcates the practice of truth, justice, chastity, and charity. It places woman on a level with man, so far as duty and responsibility, and liability to reward and punishment hereafter are concerned. It inculcates the duty of almsgiving; and of special kindness to the widow and orphan, and the helpless—nay, it forbids cruelty and harshness to the brutes that perish. As to Diu, or morality, the Turks keep themselves from drunkenness, from gambling, and what is styled the "social evil"—the three most fertile, most heinous, most destructive sins of Christendom.

ISLAM ALLOWS POLYGAMY,

it is true, in some cases, but the permission is by no means universally acted upon ; and whatever the provisions of the Koran in this respect the Turks are therewith content. They are represented by those who know them best as an honest, honorable, courteous, a virtuous and a noble race. While the Crescent of Turkey does not represent Heathenism and Idolatry, but the contrary, the Cross of Russia does not represent Christianity. The Cross of Russia represents the Church of Russia. That Church represents Christianity neither in doctrine, discipline, government, nor worship,—whether we take the judgment of the Protestants, Roman Catholics, or Rationalists on the Subject.

THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND

may be divided as to religion into Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Rationalists, among the last of which may be classed Unitarians. How Can Protestants sympathise with the Russian Church? All the errors, real or imaginary, against which they protest, and because of their protest against which they are styled Protestant, exist in that Church. Do they protest against the position and pretences of the head of the Western Church ? The Czar of Russia embodies in his own person all authority and power; not only in the State, but in the Church, He is styled by the members of the Russian Church, Our Lord God the Czar. In that Church he avowedly sits in the place of God, and shows himself that he is God, and it would be worth while perhaps to enquire whether his number is not 666. Do they protest against douleia respect paid to supernal creatures ? The Russian Church renders that to their representatives. Do they protest against Maryolty? The members of the Russian Church
" Turn from grisly saints and martyrs hairy
To the sweet portrait of the Virgin Mary."
Do they protest against infallibility in a created head of the Church?  The Czar is not only infallible head of the Russian Church, but he is regarded as the Lord its God. Do they protest against Transubstantion? The Russian Church holds it. Do they protest against the celibacy of the clergy, and auricular confession ? The Russian Church enjoins the former upon bishops, and the latter upon all. Would the Protestants of England sympathise with the head at the Western Church in a war waged by him for the extension of his empire?

HOW CAN THEY SYMPATHISE

with the Czar, the head of the Russian Church, in a war for the extension of his? In the name of consistency, in the name of decency, how can the Protestants of England or elsewhere sympathise with the Czar of Russia ? How can the Roman Catholics of England or elsewhere sympathise with Russia on religious grounds ? They hold the necessity of union with their head. This Russian Church is schismatic, and holds the doctrine of union with and subjection to the autocrat of all the Russias and is at issue with both sections on the fundamental doctrines of the Trinity The two are antagonistic. Neither can sympathise with the other. The Russian Church scarcely de serves the name Christian. The name of anything, especially of an institution, and above all of a church, should indicate its grand idea, its distinguishing characteristic. Nomenclature especially in this case should be indicative and didactic. But

THE GRAND IDEA

of the Russian Church is more properly designated Czarism than Christianity! Then Christianity is spiritual —a thing of principle, the religion of the heart. It is grace and truth. The religion of the Russian Church is sensuous— a thing of meats and drink —a thing of works as opposed to grace and symbols as opposed to truth. If Christianity is represented by the Russian Church, and the Russian Church is represented by the Russian Cross, I'd none of it. I'd rather be a dog, and bay the Crescent, than such a Christian. With what in such a church can Rationalists sympathise? With what in such a church can men of cultured intellect and refined sentiment of any denomination, or of no denomination, sympathise? It is neither impressive from its numbers, nor respectable from its position. It is neither glorified by the halo of intellect, nor hallowed by the aureole of martyrdom, nor venerable from the prestige of a hoary ecclesiastical antiquity.

RUSSIA TAUNTED ENGLAND

when she shewed a disposition to sympathise with Turkey, as assuming the position of head of the Moslems. Nothing of the kind was implied in England's action. If it had would the position intellectually or morally be really lower than that of head of the Russian Church ? As to alliance with Mohammedan powers, England has often been in alliance with them. She is at this moment in alliance with them, and with Buddhists and Fetichists. etc, and as a Christian power is perfectly warranted in being so. True the Turks style Christians "dog," and have often treated them accordingly. But this is not to be wondered at. They were first known to Mohammed as idolaters, in common with the Jews and heathens of his day in Arabia. Christianity has ever been, exhibited to them not in an attractive but in at repulsive light. In the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries the Christians of Europe, under the name of

CRUSADERS,

seven times invaded Palestine, then as now in possession of the Saracens. On one occasion the army of the crusaders numbered 275,000 men. These invasions were unprovoked by the Saracens, and wanton on the part of the Crusaders. Although finally vanquished, the Crusaders perpetrated from time to time wholesale and horrible, atrocities upon the Saracens. Richard I. of Eng land crucified 3000 of them upon the sands of Acre. At the present moment, under what character are the Christian nations of Europe exhibited to the Turks ? England, her ancient ally, alienated without even the allegation of a fault. Russia persecuting her in an unprovoked invasion, and most unequal and cruel war. France, Germany, Austria, and Italy standing by, cool spectators of a most flagrant wrong; and all of them, these great Christian powers, waiting and watching for the portion of spoil that may fall to their lot in case the success of Russia's arms should reward the treachery, cruelty, and ambition of Russia's heart. With such illustrations of Christianity, and such experience of it, can it be wondered at that the Turks should hate and despise it ? and hate and despise its professors.

CHRISTIANITY HAS BEEN

known in their experience chiefly, if not solely, as a religion which authorizes the exercise of the worst human passions, and Christians, chiefly or solely as the incarnation of them. Let Christian nations illustrate Christianity to the Turks, and they will change their opinion both of it, and its professors, and instead of designating Christians "dogs," they will regard them as the highest style of man, the excellent ones of the earth, and respect and honor them. Finally, from what has been said it will appear I think that the Turks have been misrepresented and maligned, and undeserved prejudice and hatred excited against them. Mr. Gladstone's utterances and action would peril the character for impartiality and integrity of any other man not, like Cesar's wife, above suspicion. He has shown a lack of philanthropy and of forethought, and exhibited a vacillation certainly not calculated to strengthen his claim to lead public opinion, or designate and guide the policy of England.

THE TURKS HAVE PROVED

themselves to be, if possible, a superhuman rather than an anti-human, specimen of humanity, and a most vigorous and flourishing nation. I feel assured that so wise, and so good, and so great a man as Mr. Glad stone undoubtedly is, has ere this seen reason to modify his opinion of the Turks, to abate much of his rancour towards them, and to regret much of the policy he dictated in respect of them. It has been shewn that the downfall of Turkey would not involve the extinction of heathenism and idolatry, and that the triumph of Russia would not involve the triumph of Christianity. It has been shewn that as maintainer of the right and avenger of wrong, as the upholder of a sacred and inviolable international principle involving the dignity, the very existence of nations which Russia in her invasion of Turkey has flagrantly and wantonly outraged—as the representative and highest expositor of constitutional government—as the guardian and educator of the less enlightened and inferior races, and as the grand national instrument for regenerating the world, and inaugurating the reign of benevolence, justice, and peace on earth, England is bound to sympathise not with Russia but with Turkey, her ancient and trusty ally.

LET ENGLAND REMEMBER

what indeed she has never entirely forgotten in her policy, that there is a future to nations as well as to individuals, and that the future involves the action of a Nemesis, sleepless and impartially retributive, —the impersonation in fact of the fixed invariable laws of nature, which slumber at no time, in no place, and under no circumstances, and which measure to all men and to all nations the measure wherewith they meted to others. Let her remember that religious, as well as political complications, to which she may not be indifferent, are casting their shadows before. Let us all unite in the desire that in this the hour of her peculiar need she may be made wise to know her duty, and strong and very courageous to perform it. Meantime in contemplation of the glorious struggle of the heroic Turks, in some cases under the leadership of our own countrymen, can we withhold the sentiment of admiration ! Does not the prayer of the poet of patriotism uttered for Poland half-a-century ago, when she fell a victim to Russian ambition and cruelty, rise spontaneously in our hearts for Turkey :

Departed spirits of the mighty dead !
Ye that at Marathon and Leuctra bled—
Friends of the world ! Restore your swords
to man,
Fight in her sacred cause and lead the van ;
And yet for Turkey's tears of blood atone.
And make her arm puissant as your own—

puissant to defend their country, drive out the ruthless invader, to destroy that sin which is the reproach of any people, and to establish that righteousness which exalts any nation.

Singleton Argus and Upper Hunter General Advocate (NSW 1877)http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article77256263

THE MORALITY OF ROME.

[FROM ROME IN 1860. BY EDWARD DICEY.]

WE all know the story of " Boccaccio's " Jew, who went to Rome an unbeliever, and came back a Christian. There is no need for alarm ; it is not my intention to repeat the story. Indeed, the only reason for my alluding to it is to introduce the remark that, at the present day, the Jew would have returned from Rome hardened in heart and unconverted. The flagrant profligacy, the open immorality, which in the Hebrew's judgment supplied the strongest testimony to the truth of a religion that survived such scandals, exist no longer. Rome is, externally, the most moral and decorous of European cities. In reality, she may he only a whited sepulchre, but at any rate, the whitewash is laid on very thick, and the plaster looks uncommonly like stone. From various motives, this feature is, I think, but seldom brought prominently forward in descriptions of the Papal city. Protestant and liberal writers slur over the facts, because, however erroneously, they are deemed inconsistent with the assumed iniquity of the Government and the corruptions of the papacy. Catholic narrators know perhaps too much of what goes on behind the scenes to relish calling too close an attention to the apparent proprieties of Rome. Be the cause what it may, the moral aspect of the Papal city, seems to me to be but little dwelt upon, and yet on many accounts it is a very curious one. As far as Sabbatharianism is concerned, Rome is the Glasgow of Italy. All shops, except druggists', tobacconists', and places of refreshment are hermetically closed on Sundays. Even the barbers have to close at half-past ten in the morning, under a heavy fine, and during the Sundays in Lent cafes and eating-houses are shut up throughout the afternoon because the waiters are supposed to go to catechism. The English reading-rooms are locked up ; there is no delivery of letters, and no mails go out. A French band plays on the Pincian at sunset, and the Borghese Gardens are thrown open ; but these, till evening, are the only public amusements. At night, it is true, the theatres are open, but then in Roman Catholic countries, Sunday evening is universally accounted a feast. To make up for this, the theatres are closed every Friday in the year, as they are too throughout Lent and Advent ; and once a week or more there is sure to be a Saint's day as well, on which shops and all are closed, to the great trial of a traveller's patience. All the amusements of the Papal subjects are regulated with the strictest regard to their morals. Private or public gambling of any kind, excepting always the Papal Lottery, is strictly suppressed. There are no public dancing places of any kind, no casinos or cafes chantants.  No public masked balls are allowed, except one or two on the last night of the carnival. The theatres themselves are kept under the most rigid " surveillance." Everything, from the titles of the plays to  the petticoats of the ballet-girls, undergoes clerical inspection. The censorship is as unsparing of double entendres as of political allusions, and " Palais Royal" farces are "Bowdlerised" down till they emerge from the process innocuous and dull ; compared with one at the "Apollo," a ballet at the Princess's was a wild and voluptuous orgy. The same system of repression prevails in everything. In the print-shops one never sees a picture which even verges on impropriety. The few female portraits exhibited in their windows are robed with an amount of drapery which would satisfy the most prudish "sensibilities." All books, which have the slightest amorous tendency, are scrupulously interdicted without reference to their political views. The number of wine shops seems to me small in proportion to the size of the city, and in none of them, as far as I could learn, are spirits sold. There is another subject, which will suggest itself at once to any one acquainted with the life of towns, but on which it is obviously difficult to enter fully. It is enough to say that what the author of " Friends in Council" styles with more sentiment than truth, " the sin of great cities," does not " apparently" exist in Rome. Not only is public vice kept out of sight, as in some Italian cities, but its private haunts and resorts are absolutely and literally suppressed. In fact, if priest rule were deposed, and our own Sabbatharians and total abstinence men and societies for the suppression of vice reigned in its stead, I doubt if Rome could be made more outwardly decorous than it is at present.
 This then is the fair side of the picture. What is the aspect of the reverse ? In the first place, the system requires for its working an amount of constant clerical interference in all private affairs, which, to say the least, is a great positive evil. Confession is the great weapon by means of which morality is enforced. Servants are instructed to report about their employers, wives about their husbands, children about their parents, and girls about their lovers. Every act of your life is thus known to, and interfered with, by the priests. I might quote a hundred instances of petty interference : let me quote the first few that come to my memory. No bookseller can have a sale of books without submitting each volume to clerical supervision. An Italian gentleman, resident here, had to my own knowledge to obtain a special permission in order to retain a copy of Rousseau's works in his private library. The Roman nobles are not allowed to hunt, because the Pope considers the amusement dangerous. Profane swearing is a criminal offence. Every Lent all restaurateurs are warned by a solemn edict not to supply meat on fast days, and then told that "whenever on the forbidden days they are obliged to supply rich meats, they must do so in a separate room, in order that scandal may be avoided, and that all may know they are in the capital of the catholic world."  Forced marriages are matters of constant occurrence, and even strangers against whom a charge of affiliation is brought are obliged either to marry the accuser, or make provision for the illegitimate offspring. In the provinces the system of interference is naturally carried to yet greater lengths. Nine years ago certain Christians at Bologna, who had opened shops in the Jewish quarter of the town, were ordered to leave at once, because such a practice was in "open opposition to the Apostolic laws and institutions." Again, Cardinal Cagiano, Bishop of Senigaglia, published a decree in the year 1844, which has never been repealed, to promote morality in his diocese. In that decree the following articles occur:—" All young men and women are strictly forbidden, under any pretext whatever, to give or receive presents from each other before marriage. All persons who have received such presents before the publication of this decree, are required to make restitution of them within three months or to become betrothed to the donor within the said period. Any one who contravenes these regulations is to be punished by fifteen days' imprisonment, during which he is to support himself at his own expense, and the presents will be devoted to some pious purpose to be determined on hereafter." I could multiply instances of this sort indefinitely, but I know of none more striking than the last. So much for the mode in which the system is worked, and now as to its practical result.
 To judge fully, it is necessary to get behind the scenes, a thing not easy for a stranger anywhere, least of all here. There is too the further difficulty, that when you have got behind the scenes, it is not very easy to narrate your esoteric experiences to the public. Even if there were no other objection, it would be useless to quote individual stories and facts which have come privately to my knowledge, and which would show Rome, in spite of its external propriety, to be one of the most corrupt, debauched, and demoralised of cities. Each separate story can be disputed or explained away, but the weight of the general evidence is overpowering. In these matters it is best to keep the old Latin rule, " Experto crede." I have talked with many persons, Romans, Italians, and foreign residents, on the subject, and from one and all I have heard similar accounts. Every traveller I have met with, who has made like inquiries, has come to a like conviction. In a country where there is practically neither press nor public courts nor responsible Government, where even no classified census is allowed to be taken, statistics are hard to obtain, and of little value when obtained. Personal evidence, unsatisfactory as it is, is, after all, the best you can arrive at. With regard then to what, in its strictest sense, is termed the "morality" of Rome, I must dismiss the subject with the remarks, that the absence of recognised public resorts and agents of vice may be dearly purchased when parents make a traffic in their own houses of their children's shame, and that perhaps as far as the state is concerned, the debauchery of a few is a less evil than the dissoluteness of the whole population. More I cannot and need not say.
 With respect to other sins against the Decalogue, it is an easier task to speak. There is very little drunkenness in Rome I freely admit, but then the Italians, like most natives of warm countries, are naturally sober. Rome is certainly not superior in this respect to other Italian cities; since the introduction of the French soldiery probably the contrary. At the street corners you constantly see exhortations against profane swearing, headed "Bestemmiatore orrendo nome," but in spite of this, the amount of blasphemies that any common Roman will pour forth on the slightest provocation, is really appalling. Beggars too are universal. Everybody begs; if you ask a common person your way along the street, the chances are that he asks you for a "buono mano." Now, even if you doubt the truth of Sheridan's dictum, that no man could be honest without being rich, it is hard to believe in a virtuous beggar. The abundance, also, of lotteries shakes one's faith in Roman morality. A population amongst whom gambling and beggary are encouraged by their spiritual and temporal rulers is not likely in other respects to be virtuous or a moral one. The frequency of violent crimes is in itself a startling fact. To my eyes, indeed, the very look of the city and its inhabitants is a strong prima facie ground of suspicion. There is vice on those worn, wretched faces— vice in those dilapidated hovel-palaces—vice in those streets, teeming with priests and dirt and misery. In fact, if you only fancy to yourself a city where there are no manufactures, no commerce, no public life of any kind ; where the rich are condemned to involuntary idleness, and the poor to enforced misery ; where there is a population of some ten thousand ecclesiastics in the prime of life, without adequate occupation, for the most part, and all vowed to celibacy; where priests and priest-rule are omnipotent, and where every outlet for the natural desires and passions of men is carefully cut off—if you take in fully all these conditions and their inevitable consequences, you will net be surprised if, to me, as to any one who knows the truth, the outward morality of Rome seems but the saddest of its many mockeries.

Empire (Sydney, NSW : 1861,) http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article60494261

CAN THE BIBLE BE MADE INTELLIGIBLE ?

(Rev A.A. Morris, Wallsend.)

 It is a Christian's duty to understand the Bible. It is the duty of preachers to make it intelligible, and not to shrink from that task for fear of consequences. Why is it, that the majority of professional teachers of the Bible speak as if nothing had happened to the ancient idea that all Scriptures are equally inspired, of equal authority, and infallible?
The Bible will no more be destroyed as a revelation of God's dealings with men, of Divine love and compassion, and of human duty, because we speak the truth about it any more than the stars will fall from heaven if scientists analyse their composition. The claims of infallibility and inerrancy are so absurd that they foster infidelity and invite derision and contempt. No one whose opinion counts in the least degree now holds that the Bible was verbally inspired by God. It is a closed book because it is looked upon as a hopeless enigma. If we do not speak the truth about it, our children, grown to manhood and womanhood, will learn it from other sources, and will look upon the teachers of other days as either ignorant or cowardly. And this is continually going on. Truth is something we are ordered to find. Coleridge says, "He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth will proceed by loving his own sect or church, better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all." Every scholar of the Bible must know that the story of Adam and Eve in the garden is not fact but fable. It is a beautiful and instructive parable. Who can ever think seriously of a literal rib being ripped from Adam's side as a foundation on which to build his wife, or a literal serpent, standing erect, beating a woman in an argument? The late Professor Denney, the most brilliant and influential of modern "orthodox" theologians, says "Studies in Theology" (p. 78), "No one who knows what science or history is can imagine that either science or history is to be found in the first three chapters of Genesis." The Garden story is only one of several similar stories to be found in records of ancient religions and mythology. The similarities are strong in all these legends. "It is an allegory of the birth of conscience, man's awakening to his secular conflict with evil. It includes answers to the old world wisdom to such questions as: Why is there such a thing as death? Why are men doomed to toil? Why the pains of motherhood? Why has mankind that shame of sex which the beasts have not? It teaches that man has freedom of will, that the world is to us a school of trial and temptation, that a single sin may lead to terrible results, that the sin of one brings suffering on many ....The whole story of creation in the Bible is a parable. We now know that evolution has been going on for countless ages, that geologists find relics of human bones and human handiwork which cause anthropologists to date man's life on the earth from 500,000 to 1,500,000 years, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Homer, and Socrates are but of yesterday.
 Many earnest people have tried in vain to reconcile the cruelties of the Old Testament done with God's authority and the God of Jesus Christ. The result too often is loss of faith in Christianity altogether. I believe the Old Testament contains a priceless revelation, but that means something very different to believing such fables as the sun and moon standing still for a whole day at Joshua's command, so that slaughter might be continued—the thing is so palpably ridiculous—or that an axe-head floated, or that an ass (four-legged) spoke, or that when a dead man's body touched the decaying bones of the prophet the dead man sat up and ran home, or that Elisha, when little children made fun of his bald head, cursed them in God's name (bad tempered old man), and immediately two she bears (note the sex) came out of the wood and tore 42 of the children. (2 Kings, chapter 2, verses 23, 24. In the face of this what do men—educated men—mean when they babble the old formulae "that all scriptures are equally inspired, of equal authority, and equally infallible?" Was David inspired when he called blessed those who would take the children of the enemy and dash their brains out against the stones? Is it not right to believe that David was blood thirsty, rather than that God was a party to such a horrid business? Did God inspire the heavy curses of the Psalmists upon their foes' (Psalms 180, verse 10; Psalms 100, verses 7-14, etc., etc.) Was the God of the Old Testament like the Greek god Jupiter, cruel and vindictive, a packet of crackers, or a bundle of thunderstorms, or did men impute to Him their own cruel passions because they did not know better. Someone has said that "In the beginning God made man in His image, and ever since man has returned the compliment by making God in his (man's) image." It would not be difficult to supply chapter and verse of the Bible of errors in history, of contradictory statements, of faulty science. But the value of the Bible is not impaired by this, for the Bible is not a book of science, but a spiritual guide—"not to tell us how the heavens go, but how to get to heaven." What a tragedy the literalist has made of the Book of Jonah. To take it as history is to awaken derision, as a story it Is one of the most beautiful ever penned. Beautiful as a parable, ridiculous as history. No one had more profound reverence for the Old Testament than Jesus, and yet, in the Sermon on the Mount, He points out its imperfect morality and criticises it freely. To be in company of Jesus is good company. By imperfect morality I mean such passages as (Exodus, chapter 21, verses 21-22; Deuteronomy, chapter 14, verse 21). and there are many.
 For cold calculated brutality the story of the extermination of the Midianites surpasses anything In the records of Attila the Hun. (Numbers, chap. 31). The story begins, "And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, avenge the Children of Israel on the Midianites." Twelve thousand Hebrews attacked Midian, who, for some reason, seems either unable to fight or fly. They slew all the men, destroyed the towns and hamlets; the women, children and cattle were driven off as spoils to the victor. When they returned to camp Moses was angry (despite his reputation for meekness) because the soldiers had not butchered the women and girls and boys. He (under apparent Divine inspiration) gave orders that all the women who were not virgins were to be slain, and all the boys and babies to be killed. To put the matter boldly, the fact is that, under Moses' directions, claiming God's authority, 12,000 soldiers had to deal with perhaps 50,000 women and girls, to sift out which were not virgins, and slaughter them. The great host of mothers and prospective mothers was slain, and 33,000 virgins spared. If they had been so many swine the work would have been revolting—but women, mothers, little children, with all the ineffaceable beauty, interest and hope of our common humanity upon them . . . The very soul sickens . . . Can we intelligently speak of this and other debauches as the Word of God without discrimnation? Will anyone attempt to justify this thing? They wrought these ghastly deeds because they were savages. They claimed God's authority because that was the custom of the times. The crude idea of God that men held in those dark days is shown in a passage such as (Judges, chapter 1, verse 9);: "The Lord drove out the inhabitants of the mountains, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had chariots of iron." That is, they could not drive them out, and therefore God could not drive them out. To them the two things were one and the same.
 There is no time to speak of the modern revival of prophecy. Illiterate people are often easily persuaded by cranks to believe that the prophets of Israel were men who wrote history before it came to pass. This kind of thing is merely a survival from the ages of superstition. The ancient prophets could not more forecast the future course of human affairs than man the modern preacher. The Bible is treated an if it were a Chinese puzzle, as if God hid in its pages a plan of world history for ages to come. What did Daniel know about Napoleon. And yet the writings of the prophets are searched for information about the future history of Austria, Turkey, or the Papacy. Can anything be more pitiful! These cranks produce a literature, which is a jumble of pathetic nonsense. The Bible writers know no more about their future than we know about ours. They were as much mistaken in their guesses as men to-day. For instance, in the Old Testament there are many predictions about the future of Jerusalem. The staggering truth is that not one ever received fulfilment, except that one that Jesus uttered in a voice choked with tears. That came to pass, and that only. Why not teach the Old Testament on the principle that it is a record of a people struggling up from the lowest form of savagery to decency? A record of blood and tears, history, fiction, parable, myth, folklore. Then the pathetic story is one of infinite fascination and of deep spiritual significance. It is a good working rule never to believe anything that is attributed to God in the Bible, especially the Old Testament, unless it comes up to the character of God as revealed by Jesus. It was enough for Jesus if men tried to love God and their fellows, and seek to live in the spirit of Christ. It would be no loss to the world, but gain, if all theological systems, Westminster Catechism, and 39 Articles were all thrown on the scrap heap (they had a use, but that day has gone), and replace them with a simple Christian religion based upon the teachings of Jesus alone. Some day it must come to that. Jesus said no word about creeds. The one passport into His kingdom is love; the one test of a Christian is Christlikeness.

Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate (NSW )  1922,http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article139346145

MAGIC AND SORCERY

THE difficulty of a writer on magic is to treat the subject so as to keep a just mean between that extreme scepticism which would annihilate all religion on the one hand, and that extravagant credulity which would give the most stupid of superstitions on the other.
 Magic includes beliefs and practices based on fact and fancy; religious doctrines and inextricable confusion. It is a world created by priests, poets, philosophers, and people working sometimes together, sometimes independently of, or even in opposition to, one another, to the same end; and is intimately bound up with the intellectual and moral life of every nation and race on the earth, whether savage or civilised.   
 Magic, inclusive of sorcery, is, generally speaking, the science and philosophy of men in a primitive state of culture and civilisation. No race of men exists, and we may go even so far as to say that no race of men ever existed, without some form of magic. Everywhere the purpose sought to be effected by magic may be summed up as health, wealth, and long life. The means used to bring about these ends have a corresponding similarity, and consist generally of methods supposed to be powerful for forcing good or evil spirits to carry out the intentions of the operators. The methods are made up partly of rites and ceremonies by which spirits of an inferior order are subjected to the control of other spirits of a superior order, and partly of the use of natural substances, whose properties (which depend upon supernatural beings) have been discovered by chance.
 In regard to the magic of Western Europe, since the establishment of Christianity, some singular evidence has been forthcoming from the discoveries made on the sites of ancient Nineveh and Babylon by Sir Henry Layard and other explorers, followed by the investigations of scholars of the present day based on those discoveries. A whole literature has been disentombed, and its contents have been partially deciphered. This literature consists of tablets of clay, written on in a cuneiform character, and is made up of treatises on theology, magic, astronomy, agriculture, and mathematics, most of it upwards of three thousand years old.
 The magical treatises consist of nothing but Litanies, indicating the rites used for the expulsion of evil demons, and for salvation from their operations. The descriptions given of these evil demons show clearly that they were what we nowadays term diseases, such as fever, plague, leprosy, and whatnot, as also poisons. Diseases were looked upon by the writers of these tablets, as they are to this day by uncivilised people, as evil spirits which took possession of their victims, and it was imagined that by the utterance of proper words, and by using suitable rites, they could be expelled, or prevented from causing mischief, or that good spirits could be brought to operate against them.

 Painful fever, violent fever
 The fever which never leaves a man ;
 Unlimited fever,
 The lingering fever, the malignant fever,
 Spirit of the heaven conjure it !
 Spirit of the Earth conjure it !

 The above is a specimen from a magical treatise of twenty-eight formulæ, given by M. Lenormant in his book on Chaldean Magic. In another of these formulæ, some very well known witchcraft superstitions, as the charming away of a person's life by means of a waxen image, the evil eye, and the chance utterance of a phrase or word of ominous import, are alluded to.

 He who forges images, he who bewitches,
 The malevolent eye, the evil eye,
 The malevolent mouth, the malevolent tongue,
 The malevolent lip, the finest sorcery.
 Spirit of the Heaven conjure it !
 Spirit of the Earth conjure it !

 These superstitions turn up in the most unexpected places, even to-day, to those able to recognise them. Among these remains of ancient lore are found instructions for making amulets and talismans, as also some of the talisman themselves. The amulets and talismans were of various kinds. In general they were figures or images in what were supposed to be the likenesses of the spirits, and were either worn on the person or placed in certain positions to ward off the evil demons.
 The monster winged bulls and lions, found at Nineveh and Babylon, belong to this category. The gods, or good demons, were supposed to remain where their images were set up ; thus those monstrous forms were really, in the eyes of the ancient Assyrians, the spiritual guards.

 Bulls and lions carved in stone,
 Which with their majestic mein
 Deter wicked enemies from approaching
 The guardians of the footsteps, the saviours
 Of the path of the King who constructed them,
 Right and left I placed them at the gates.

Some of the talismans are grotesque figures made up of various animals. The odd reason for making such figures is that the chaldeans held the demons, which they represented, to have been the first of living things which came into existence when the world issued from chaos. The reason for making and rearing such ugly images was still more odd, it being that the demons had only to see them selves as they were to turn away in horror and disgust. A rather singular anticipation of Pope's adage :

Vice is a monster of such hideous mien,
That to be shunned needs only to be seen.

It may be incidentally remarked that the practice of wearing jewellery, especially as finger-rings or necklaces, is really a survival from the ancient practice of carrying about amulets and talismans to protect the persons from the assault of evil demons, and as a continual propitiation of the gods. The belief in the efficacy of talismans is not yet al together extinct, for the present writer, only a short time ago, had shown to him a recently written manuscript, for which the possessor had paid a guinea. This manuscript was a list of talismans, with figures and instructions for making them, selected and apparently from Agrippa's Occult Philosophy and Burrett's Magus. If the efficacy of the talismans depended on the recognition by the spirits of their names, it is to be presumed that they would not be found very effective, as the unwary scribe had made a sad mess by mistaking the Hebrew letters in which the names were written.
According to the best authorities, the old clay treatises on magic found at Nineveh and Babylon are not written in Assyrian, a language allied to Hebrew and Arabic, but in Akkad, a tongue belonging to the family of languages spoken by the Tartar races, such as Laplanders, Samoyedes, Chinese, etc. This fact is very significant, as the greater part of the tribes and nations who speak these languages are inveterate believers in magic and sorcery. Among the tribes which yet remain pagan, the shaman, or wizard, is the religious minister; and even when, like the Chinese, a higher form of thought has taken hold, the ancient Nature-worship, of which magic and sorcery are the expressions, still keeps its ground. Lapland witches, all through the Middle Ages, were reckoned the most powerful, and used to do a somewhat extensive business in selling fair winds to their neighbors and other Scandinavian seamen. Speaking of seamen and their superstitions, a child's caul is still accounted by many an efficacious magical preventive of shipwreck, and such things are still advertised for sale.
The Akkad magical doctrines were considerably modified by the astronomico theology of the Assyrians, who seem to have been the originators of the idea that the planets and signs of the zodiac were ruled by angels. This notion played a greater part in the angelology and demonology of later times. Those curious on this point will find a sufficiently elaborate account in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. The doctrines were transmitted to Europe— losing nothing on the way — through the Neo-Platonists and Gnostics of Christianity, they become most influential factors in moulding Christian thought.
Another point in the history of magic must not be overlooked. A large proportion of the religious offices of the Greeks and Romans consisted of augury and soothsaying, and many of the temples, as those of Apollo and Esculapius, were, in their way, hospitals for the cure of the sick. The priests and priestesses of these temples, being largely dependent on voluntary offerings for their support, would have to add to any natural sagacity they might possess as much practical knowledge as they could gather, if they meant to keep up the credit of their gods. So there is every reason for believing that a large amount of practical knowledge — such as weather-wisdom, the properties of drugs, the nature of diseases, and even of the less easily obtained knowledge of some of the principles of action of the physical forces — would be collected, and all this would be carried down through the ages in more or less clear tradition.
After the rise of Christianity some of the Fathers of the Church denounced the Gentile religion as a worship of demons, and, on the forcible suppression of paganism by the successors of Constantine, there happened in such cases. Some parts of the old religions were taken up into the popular theology, and the old worship of the gods was still carried on in secret by the country people, the only difference being that the old gods were degraded into devils, and that the priests were looked upon as wizards and witches.
After the confusion consequent on the breaking up of the Roman Empire, and the settlement of the barbarians within its territories, science emerged as a farrago of Chaldean magical and astrological superstitions, Platonic metaphysics, popular myths, and more or less clearly ascertained natural facts. It was therefore looked upon with extreme suspicion, and scientific enquiry was exceedingly risky to those who followed it. Even Popes like Sylvester the Second were not free from being suspected of unholy arts, in consequence of having scientific tastes. The lot of students of science was at that time not one to be envied. They were often banned by the Church, driven from one hiding-place to an other whilst alive, and after they were dead their characters were libelled. They entered on their studies with fear and trembling : perhaps, even they themselves thought to the eternal peril of their souls. Devotion to science during the Middle Ages was an act of sublime self-renunciation. It was the certain loss of happiness, so far as this world was concerned, and to the majority of contemporaries even of that in the world to come. The student of those days was lucky if some strong-armed magnate took him under protection, and gave him an asylum, as some times was the case. Luther, stowed away for safety in the Castle of Wartburg, by the Elector of Saxony, is not an uncommon type of student-life in the Middle Ages. Not all students of science were so lucky ; some, like Roger Bacon and Campanella, were imprisoned, others like Giordiano Bruno and Vanini, were caught by the Inquisition and burnt. In fact, the usual fate of these pioneers of science, if they were not lucky enough to get powerful patrons, was to be burnt, either as magicians or as atheists— that is, for having too much to do with supernatural beings, or for having too little to do with them. Even if they died a natural death, they were buried like dogs, unless they had made their peace with the Church. This is said to have happened to no less a personage than an Archbishop of York of the eleventh century, by name Girald. It is said of him that he was " a wytch, and evyl doer, as the fame tellyth, for under his pile when he deyde, in an erber was found a boke of curyous craftes, the boke hight Julius Frumous, in that boke be redde pryvely in the under tydes, therefor unnethe the clerkes of his church wold suffre him be buryed under heuene, without hovly church." Julius Frumous is supposed to mean Julius Firmicus, a Latin writer on astronomy. So the poor Archbishop, for trying to improve his mind, was refused Christian burial.
The popular imagination had peopled the woods, the fields, and rivers with a sometimes useful, sometimes mischievous, but always merry crew of elfs, fairies, dwarfs, pixies, brownies, undines, etc., which the lugubrious imaginations of monks and churchmen duly transformed into demon rabble. All nature thus became the seat of sorcery and witch craft. Then, on the introduction of the plague and other epidemic diseases by the Crusaders, the utter collapse of the Crusades, and the advancing conquests of the Saracens and Turks, all society was thrown into a state of panic. And from the twelfth century down wards, came the hideous witch persecutions, the story of which forms one of the most revolting and disgraceful chapters in the history of religion and of the human mind. Those persecutions struck at all classes of society — neither learning, rank, age, nor sex was spared ; but their full force fell on the female sex.
During the long period of time stretching from the twelfth century to the end of the eighteenth, thousands of women, rich and poor, young and old — especially the latter — were submitted to the most frightful tortures that can be imagined or described, and then burnt alive. A large number of these were merely insane, and some were actually put to death because, having picked up a little knowledge during a long and laborious life, they had applied it to alleviating the ailments of their neighbors. In those charges of witch craft nothing seems to have been too absurd —such as worshipping the devil, raising storms, blighting crops, and causing diseases and death to man and beast. These charges were made mostly against crazy old women.
England has the honour of having been less infected with the witch-mania than any other country. How far this is owing to the national obtuseness to religious terrors, or to the fact that the English were too busy fighting for the Red and White Roses, it is difficult to say. The worst periods were during the reign of James the First and during the Puritan fanaticism of the Commonwealth. The last trial for witchcraft took place the same year as the foundation of the Royal Society. The last execution for witchcraft in Germany was carried out at Munich, in 1710, on Maria Renata, a nun, seventy years old. A witch was burnt in Switzerland so late as 1785, and in Spain an execution of this sort occurred later still.
Modern research goes to show that the whole of the witch superstitions were founded on debased reminiscences of ancient paganism, garbled traditions of old scientific knowledge, and the phenomens of idiocy, epilepsy, hysteria, and mania— the latter, in a great degree produced by the unsettled and disturbed state of society at that time, and grievously misunderstood.
In the year 1303, a Bishop of Coventry was accused at Rome of a series of crimes, and amongst others that he had done homage to the Evil One. It was one of the chief charges against the Knights Templar that they had renounced God and Christ, and taken to worshipping a he-goat and a black tom-cat. This he-goat is evidently no other than the ancient country god Pan — whom the shepherds used to hear with his pipe, haunting the reedy banks of the river or the woodland thicket— but degraded to be the arch enemy of man-kind, and set out with all the qualities which a depraved imagination could conceive. The prominence which the cat takes in the witch trials is easily explainable. The cat was the emblem of Isis, or the Moon ; and she is identifiable as Diana, who, as Hecate, is goddess of the subterranean or infernal world, and queen of the dead. The witches, again, are said to have held great festivals when they did homage to Satan, feasting and dancing, to the notes of a fiddle made of a boree's head, or of a pipe consisting of a cat's tail. These high festivals occurred at such places as the Brocken, in Germany, which in olden times were chief seats of the old heathen worship. They were said to have been celebrated on Friday— the day dedicated to the Norse goddess Freya or Venus. It is singular how the moon and the planet Venus are mixed up in the old mythologies. It can only by accounted for from the influence of astrological theories. Cyprus, for instance, our most recent acquisition in the Mediterranean, was anciently a chief seat of the worship of Venus. Astrologers say that the island is "ruled " by Taurus. Now the sign Taurus is, according to them, the "house" of Venus and the "exaltation" of the Moon. Then, again, women were mostly guilty of sorcery and with dealings with unholy beings. This is merely a reminiscence of times when, among the northern nations, women were the chief soothsayers, physicians and prophetesses. The witch inquisitors laid down the reason in these way. They said it was because of women being given to squabbling and being stiff necked, for Eve was made from Adam's crooked rib, and because in Eve there was want of faith ; femina — woman — being derived from fe, faith, and minus, less.
 The composition of the witch potions and ointments of toxicant herbs, like hemlock, henbane, belladonna, and the poppy, points to the true nature of the delusions when artificially produced.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century a few enlightened men made bold to attack the superstition of the times, but with no small danger to themselves. Among them may be mentioned Reginald Scott, in England, whose book was replied to by James the First ; Wier, physician of the Duke of Cleves ; and two Jesuits, Adam Tanner and Frederick Spee. But the most efficient instrument in suppressing the old superstitions of magic and witchcraft has been the progress of experimental science, and the diffusion of knowledge through the medium of the press. The miracles ascribed to the old wizards and witches have been thrown into the shade by the common practical applications of science at the present day. In spite of the strange paths into which the search for knowledge has led, the aim has always been the same— namely, to give men power over the forces of Nature, with the aid of gods and demons if possible, in spite of them if need be. When we look upon the patient, untiring throb of the steam-engine, driving crowds of looms and spindles, at the snorting locomotive, or at the telegraph and telephone, almost annihilating space distinctions, we see the speculations of the old magicians as matter-of-fact reality.
The practical scientific man of the present day is the exact analogue of the ancient magician, just as our dynomitards and others who use knowledge for purposes of mischief are the modern analogues of the old sorcerers and witches. The very existence of two-thirds of our population is dependent of the fact that the elemental forces of Nature have been reduced by human knowledge to become the servants of human will.

Shoalhaven Telegraph (NSW : 1881 - 1937), Wednesday 7 July 1886, page 2

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.

[By S. G. Mee.]

A WELL KNOWN politician not long since declared his belief that "every man who seriously believed in such a creed as that of Rome labored under a grievous mental disability or defect. " Of truth of the foregoing I, for one, have long been convinced. But I believe further that every man who seriously believes in any creed based on the Supernatural is almost in as great a degree mentally defective or diseased. " As men's prayers are a disease of the will," says Emerson, "so are their creeds a disease of the intellect." And, in deploring the timidity of men in not daring, by casting off the leprosy of Superstition, to possess that superlative blessing— a mens sana in corpore sano— Emerson, with almost pathetic emphasis, exclaims :—" The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and majesty the soul !" Impressed with this knowledge, too, we find, that noblest advocate of mental freedom, J. S. Mill, declaring that many who could render giant service both to truth and to mankind if they believe that they could serve the one without loss to the other, are either totally paralysed, or led to confine their exertions to matters of minor detail, by the apprehension that any real freedom of speculation, or any considerable strengthening or enlargement of the thinking faculties of mankind at large, might, by making them unbelievers, be the surest way to render them vicious and miserable."

Colonel Ingersoll, in his lecture on "Individuality," has the following admirable remarks on this same persistent declaration and object of fear on the part of the orthodox of all creeds alike that, with the rejection of their ancient myths and fables, social anarchy would soon be in the ascendant. " Religion," he says, "does not, and cannot, contemplate man as free. She accepts only the homage of the prostrate, and scorns the offerings of those who stand erect. She cannot tolerate the liberty of thought. The wide and sunny fields belong not to her domain. The star-lit heights of genius and individuality are above and beyond her appreciation and her power. Her subjects cringe at her feet, covered with the dust of obedience. They are not athletes standing posed by rich life and brave endeavor like antique statues, but shrivelled deformities, studying with furtive glance the cruel face of power. No religionist seems capable of comprehending this plain truth. There is this difference between thought and action : for our actions we are responsibly to ourselves and to those injuriously affected; for thoughts, there can, in the nature of things, be no responsibility to gods or men here or here-after. And yet the Protestant has vied with the Catholic in denouncing freedom of thought; and while I was taught to hate Catholicism with every drop of my blood, it is only justice to say, that, in all essential particulars, it is precisely the same as any other religion. Luther denounced mental liberty, with all the coarse and brutal vigor of his nature ; Calvin despised, from the very bottom of his petrified heart, anything that even looked like religious toleration, and solemnly declared that to advocate it was to crucify Christ afresh. All the founders of all the orthodox churches have advocated the same infamous tenet. The truth is that what is called religion is necessarily inconsistent with free thought . . . .
Our fathers were slaves, and nearly all their children are mental serfs. The enfranchisement of the soul is a slow and painful process. Superstition, the mother of those hideous twins, Fear and Faith, from her throne of skulls, still rules the world, and will, until the mind of woman ceases to be the property of priests. . . . In religious ideas and conceptions there has been for ages a slow and steady development. At the bottom of the ladder is Catholicism, and at the top is Science. The intermediate rounds of this ladder are occupied by the various sects, whose name is legion."

In his lecture on " The Ghosts" Colonel Ingersoll truly says :—"Take from the orthodox church of to-day the threat and fear of hell, and it becomes an extinct volcano— Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossibly the unknowable, and the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains !" Never were truer words written or spoken than these !

The late Mr. W. R. Gregg in his "Enigmas of Life" says :—" Consider what might fairly be expected to he the present state of the civilised world, if the whole influence of the Church had been persistently and sagaciously directed towards the improvement of the moral and material condition of humanity on this earth, instead of towards the promulgation of an astounding scheme for securing it against eternal torments in future existence ; if, in a word, universal, not selfish, well-being here, instead of what is called salvation here-after, had been the aim and study of the great organisation called the Church, and of the hundreds of thousands of teachers both orthodox and unorthodox, who for centuries have ostensibly lived and worked for no other call."

Colonel Ingersoll would, doubtless, acquiesce entirely in the above; but he points us to the only authentic and practical Priests of Progress. Although discarding all other gospels, like Carlyle he is still a firm believer in the " Gospel of Labor." "Labor," he says, "is the foundation of all. Without labor, and without great labor, progress is impossible. The progress off the world depends upon the men who walks in the fresh furrows and through the rustling corn; upon those who sow and reap; upon those whose faces are radiant with the glare of furnace fires; upon the delvers in the mines, and the workers in the shops ; upon those who give to the winter air the ringing music of the axe ; upon those who battle with the boisterous billows of the sea ; upon the inventors and discoverers ; upon the world's brave thinkers,"

In his noble lecture on "Humboldt," a terrible, though undeniably true picture is drawn of what are strangely called " the good old times." " For ages," he writes, "science was utterly ignored ; thought was a poor slave; an ignorant priest was master of the world ; faith put out the eyes of the soul ; the reason was a trembling coward ; imagination was set on fire of hell ; every human feeling was sought to be suppressed, love was considered infinitely sinful; pleasure was the road to eternal fire; and God was supposed to be happy only when his children were miserable. The world was governed by an Almighty's whim, prayers could change the order of things, halt the grand procession of nature, could produce rain"—[this latter superstition is still extant— as witness the assertion put forth by the Evangelical Standard that prayers, and not Pepper, produced the late downfall. Surely we are not yet quite out of the Dark Ages—at least the empiricism of the priestcraft of those ages is still dominant. The immutable laws of Nature have—so these professional "rain-bringers" assert— been altered to suit our local needs ; utterly forgetful, as the truth-teller Tyndall asserts, "that without a disturbance of natural law quite as serious as the stoppage of an eclipse, or the St. Lawrence up the Falls of Niagara, no acts of humiliation, individual or national, could call one shower from heaven, or deflect towards us one single beam of the sun !"]—It was believed that prayers could avert pestilence, famine, and death in all its forms. There was no idea of the certain ; all depended upon divine pleasure—or displeasure rather; heaven was full of inconsistent malevolence, and earth of ignorance. Everything was done to appease the divine wrath. To the poor multitude the earth was a kind of enchanted forest, full of demons ready to devour, and theological serpents lurking with infinite power to fascinate and torture the unhappy and impotent soul ; the very heavens were full of death ; the lightning was regarded as the glittering vengeance of God, and the earth was thick with snares for the unwary feet of man ; the flood, the tornado, the volcano, were all evidences of the displeasure of heaven, and the sinfulness of man. The blight that withered, the frost that blackened, the earthquake that devoured, were the messengers of the Creator.  The world was governed by Fear. Man in his helplessness endeavored to soften the heart of God! The faces of the multitude were blanched with fear, and wet with tears ; they were the prey of hypocrites, kings and priests.

"Slowly, beautifully, like the coming of the dawn, came the grand truth, that the universe is governed by law. . . . . The moment the fact was established that other worlds are governed by law, it was only natural to conclude that our own little world was also under its dominion. The old theological method of accounting for physical phenomena by the pleasure and displeasure of the Deity, was by the intellectual, abandoned.
 "Humboldt adopted none of the soul-shrinking creeds of his day ; wasted none of his time in the stupidities, vanities, and contradictions of theological metaphysics ; he did not endeavour to harmonise the astronomy and geology of a barbarous people with the science of the nineteenth century . .. . . He was never found on his knees before the altar of superstition ; he stood erect by the grand tranquil column of Reason!

" The world is his monument ; upon the eternal granite of her hills he inscribed his name; and, there, upon the everlasting stone, his genius wrote thus— the sublimest of truths :—

" 'THE UNIVERSE IS GOVERNED BY LAW!' "

Northern Miner (Charters Towers, Qld.  1882,) http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article77184286