MAN'S PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE.

 By Alfred Russel Wallace.

The following remarkable article, taken from the New York Independent, is by the joint discoverer with Darwin of the theory of natural selection. Dr. Wallace and Herbert Spencer are now the only survivors of that small band of English scientists, including Darwin, Huxley and Tyndall, who introduced and defended the theory of natural selection, which has so profoundly influenced all philosophy.

 It is a most remarkable thing to find a great scientist like Wallace arguing on scientific grounds for a reading of man's place in the physical universe, which so exactly echoes Bible teaching. Dr. Wallace says : —

 " To the early astronomers the earth was the centre of the visible universe, sun, moon, planets, and stars all alike revolving around it in more or less eccentric and complex orbits, and all were naturally thought to exist as appendages to our globe and for the sole use and enjoyment of man—' the sun to rule by day, the moon and the stars to rule by night.' But when the Copernican system became established, and it was found that our earth was not specially distinguished from the other planets by any superiority of size or position, it was seen that our pride of place must be given up. And, later, when the discoveries of Newton and of the many brilliant astronomers who succeeded him, together with the ever-widening knowledge derived from the growing power and perfection of the telescope and of improved astronomical instruments, showed us the utter insignificance even of our sun and solar system among the countless hosts of state and the myriads of clusters and nebulæ, we seemed to be driven to the other extreme and to be forced to recognise the fact that this vast, stupendous universe could have no special relation to ourselves any more than to any other of the million suns and systems, many of which were probably far grander and more important than ours, and perhaps fitted to be the abode of more highly organised beings.

 During the last half-century, and perhaps much longer, popular writers have often dealt with the problem of the habitability of the planets by intelligent beings, and the probability of other suns being attended by other trains of planets similarly inhabited, and the most diverse and even opposing views have been held as to the inferences to be drawn from these supposed facts. Sir David Brewster held them to be almost essential to an adequate conception of the power and wisdom of the Deity, and in some way bound up with the doctrines of Christianity, and this has been the view of many of the teachers of religion. On the other hand, the tendency of all recent astronomical research has been to give us wider views of the vastness, the variety, and the marvellous complexity of the stellar universe, and proportionally to reduce the importance of our little speck of earth almost to the vanishing point, and this has been made use of by the more aggressive among modern sceptics to hold up religious creeds and dogmas to scorn and contempt. They point out the irrationality and absurdity of supposing that the Creator of all this unimaginable vastness of suns and systems, filling, for all we know, endless space, should have any special interest in so pitiful a creature as man, the degraded or imperfectly developed inhabitant of one of the smaller planets attached to a second or third-rate sun ; while that He should have selected this little world for the scene of the tremendous and necessarily unique sacrifice of His Son in order to save a portion of these " miserable sinners" from the natural consequences of their sins, was, in their view, a crowning absurdity too incredible to be believed by any rational being. And it must be confessed that the theologians had no adequate reply to this rude attack, while many of them have felt their position to be untenable, and have renounced the idea of a special revelation and a supreme Saviour for the exclusive benefit of so minute and insignificant a speck in the universe.

 THE LATER SCIENCE.

 But during the last quarter of the past century the rapidly increasing body of facts and observations leading to a more detailed and accurate knowledge of stars and stellar systems have thrown a new and somewhat unexpected light on this very interesting problem of our relation to the universe of which we form a part; and although these discoveries have, of course, no bearing upon the special theological dogmas of the Christian, or of any other religion, they do tend to show that our position in the material universe is special and probably unique, and that it is such as to lend support to the view, held by many thinkers and writers to-day, that the supreme end and purpose of this vast universe was the production and development of the living soul in the perishable body of man.

 The Agnostics and Materialists will no doubt object that the want of all proportion between the means and the end condems this theory from its very foundation. But is there any such want of proportion ? Given infinite space and infinite time, and there can be no such thing as want of proportion if the end to be reached were a great and worthy one, and if the particular mode of attaining that end were the best, or perhaps even the only possible one ; and we may fairly presume that it was so by the fact that it has been used and has succeeded. 

The development of man as a spiritual being with all his intellectual powers and moral possibilities is certainly a great end in itself, so great and so noble that if a universe of matter and ether as large as that of which we have now obtained some definite knowledge were required for the work, why should it not be used ? Of course, I am taking the view of those who believe in some intelligent cause at the back of this universe, some creator or creators, designer or designers. For those who take the other view, that matter and ether, with all the laws and forces without which they could not exist for a moment, are in their essential nature eternal and self-existent, no such objection is tenable. For the production of life and of man then becomes merely a question of chance —of the right and exact combination of matter and its complex forces occurring after an almost infinite number of combinations that led to nothing. On this view the argument as to our unique position, derived from the discoveries of the new astronomy, is even more forcible though hardly so satisfactory, because it also teaches us that if man is a product of blind forces and unconscious laws acting upon non-living matter, then, as he has been produced by physical law, so he will die out by the continued operation of the same laws, against which there is no appeal. These laws of nature have been finely described in the late Grant Allen's striking philosophical poem, which he has entitled ' Magdalen Towers,' and which was written when he was an undergraduate at Oxford : —

 They care not any whit for pain or pleasure,

 That seems to us the sum and end of all, 

Dumb force and barren number are their measure,

 What shall be shall be, though the great earth fall.

 They take no heed of man or man's deserving,

 Reck not what happy lives they make or mar.

 Work out their fatal will unswerv'd, unswerving,

 And know not that they are !

 It is the object of the present paper to set forth the nature of the evidence bearing upon man's position in the universe and to summarise the various lines of research that converge to render it at least a thinkable and rational hypothesis. Although most of the facts and conclusions are well known separately, and have been set forth by both scientific and popular writers, I am not aware that they have been combined as I now attempt to combine them, or the conclusions drawn from them which seem to me to be the obvious ones.

 Are the Stars Infinite in Number ? 

— It has often been suggested that the stars are infinite in number and that the steller universe is therefore infinite in extent ; and if the preponderance of evidence pointed in this direction our inquiry would be useless, because as regards infinity there can be no difference of position. In whatever part of it we may be situated that part can be no nearer the centre than any other part. Infinite space has been well defined as a circle, or rather a sphere, whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere.

 As the telescope increased in efficiency through the labors of Dollond and Herschel it was found that every increase of power and of light due to increased diameter and of object-glass or mirror greatly increased the number of visible stars, and this increase went on with approximate equality of rate till the largest modern telescopes were nearly reached. But latterly increased size and power has revealed new stars in a smaller and smaller proportion, indicating that we are approaching the outer limits of the starry system. This conclusion is further enforced by the fact that the numerous dark patches in the heavens where hardly any stars are visible, and those seen are projected on intensely dark background, as in the ' coalsacks' of the southern hemisphere and rifts and channels in the Milky Way itself, continue to present the same features in telescopes of the very highest powers as they do in those of very moderate size. This could not possibly happen if stars were infinite in number, or even if they extended in similar profusion into spaces very much greater than those to which our telescopes can reach, because in that case these dark backgrounds could be illuminated by the light of millions of stars so distant as to be separately invisable, as in the case of the Milky Way itself. The only other explanation would be that the star-system is penetrated in several directions, by perfectly straight tunnels of enormous length compared with their diameter in which no stars exist, and this is considered to be so improbable as to be unworthy of consideration.

 The same conclusion is reached by means of that powerful engine of research, the photographic plate. When this is exposed in the focus of a telescope for three hours, a much greater number of stars are revealed than any telescope can detect, but longer exposures add less and less to the number, again indicating that the limit of stars in that direction is nearly reached. 

Yet again, the method of continuing the stars of the various astronomical magnitudes gives a similar result. At each lesser magnitude the number of stars is about three times greater than that of the next higher magnitude, and this rule applies with tolerable accuracy down to those of the ninth magnitude. The total number of visible stars from the first to the ninth magnitude is about 200,000. Now, if this rate of increase continued, the number down to the seventeenth magnitude, the faintest visible in the best modern telescopes, would be about 1,400 millions. But both telescopic observation and photographic charts show that there is nothing approaching this number, it being estimated that the total number thus visible does not exceed 100 millions — again proving that as our instruments reach farther and farther into space they find a continuous diminution in the number of stars, thus indicating an approach to the outer limits of the stellar universe. 

AN ISLAND IN SPACE !

 But perhaps the most striking proof of the limited extent of the universe of luminous stars is that dependent on the laws of light. This has been long known to astronomers, and it has been very clearly and briefly stated by Professor Simon Newcomb, one of the profoundest of mathematical astronomers. He tells us to imagine a series of concentric spheres, each the same distance apart from the first, which includes only the stars visible to the naked eye. The space between each pair of these spheres will be in extent proportional to the squares of the diameters of the sphere that limit it ; and has the light we receive from each star is inversely proportional to its distance from us, it follows that if each region were equally strewn with stars of the same amount of light from each region, the diminution of light from each star being exactly compensated by the vastly greater numbers in each successively larger sphere. Hence it follows that if these concentric spheres were infinite we should receive an infinite amount of light from them, and even if we make an example allowance for stoppage of light by intervening dark bodies, or by cosmic dust, or by imperfect transparency, of the ether, we should at least, receive quite as much light from them as the sun gives us at noonday. But the amount we actually receive is so immensely less than this as to prove that the concentric spheres of stars beyond those visible to the naked eye cannot be very numerous. For the total light of all the stars is estimated to be not more than about one-fortieth of moon-light, which is itself only about one five hundred thousandth of sunlight. This proof of the limited extent of the stellar universe is therefore a very forcible one, and taken in connection with that afforded by telescopic research, as already described, is altogether conclusive.

(To be Continued)

Kerang New Times (Vic.), Tuesday 5 May 1903

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/221080798

TOLSTOY'S PLACE IN EUROPEAN LITERATURE.

 —————

EDWARD GARNETT, in " The Bookman." 

———

Tolstoy's significance as the great writer of modern Russia can scarcely be augmented in Russian eyes by his exceeding significance to Europe as symbolising the spiritual unrest of the modern world. Yet so inevitably must the main stream of each Age's tendency and the main movement of the world's thought be discovered for us by the great writers, whenever they appear, that Russia can no more keep Tolstoy's significance to herself than could Germany keep Goethe's to herself. True it is that Tolstoy, as great novelist, has been absorbed in mirroring the peculiar world of half-feudal modern Russia, a world strange to Western Europe, but the spirit of analysis with which the creator of " Anna Karenina" and " War and Peace" has confronted the modern world is more truly representative of our Age's outlook than is the spirit of any other of his great contemporaries. Between the days of " Wilhelm Meister" and of " Resurrection" what an extraordinary volume of the rushing tide of modern life has swept by ! A century of that "liberation of modern Europe from the old routine" has passed since Goethe stood forth for " the awakening of the modern spirit." A century of emancipation, of " Science," of unbelief, of incessant shock, change, and " Progress" all over the face of Europe, and even as Goethe 100 years ago typified the triumph of the new intelligence of Europe over the shackles of its old institutions, routine, and dogma (as Matthew Arnold affirms), so Tolstoy to-day stands for the triumph of the European soul against civilisation's routine and dogma. The peculiar modernness of Tolstoy's attitude, however, as we shall presently show, is that he is inspired largely by the modern scientific spirit in his searching analysis of modern life. Apparently at war with Science and " Progress," his extraordinary fascination for the mind of Europe lies in the fact that he of all great contemporary writers has come nearest to demonstrating, to realising what the life of the modern man is.

MODERN LIFE.

He of all the analysts of the civilised man's thoughts, emotions, and actions has least idealised, least beautified, and least distorted the complex dally life of the European world. With a marked moral bias, driven onward in his search for truth by his passionate religious temperament, Tolstoy, in his pictures of life, has constructed a truer whole, a human world less bounded by the artist's individual limitations, more mysteriously living in its vast flux and flow than is the world of any writer of the century. "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina," those great worlds where the physical environment, mental outlook, emotional aspiration and moral code of the whole community of Russia are reproduced by his art, as some mighty cunning phantasmagoria of changing life, are superior in the sense of containing a whole nation's life, to the worlds of either Goethe, Byron, Victor Hugo, Dickens, Thackeray, Maupassant, or any contemporary creator we can name. And not only so, but Tolstoy's analysis of life throws more light on the main currents of thought in our Age, raises deeper problems, and explores more untouched territories of the mind than does any corresponding analysis by his European contemporaries.

HUNGER FOR SPIRITUAL TRUTH.

It is by Tolstoy's passionate seeking of the life of the soul that the great Russian writer towers above the men of our day, and it is because his hunger for spiritual truth has led him to probe contemporary life, to examine all modern formulas, and appearances, to penetrate into the secret thought and emotion of men of all grades in our complex society, that his work is charged with the essence of nearly all that modernity thinks and feels, believes and suffers, hopes and fears as it evolves throughout the world in more and more complex forms of our terribly complex civilisation. The soul of humanity is, however, always the appeal of men from the life that environs, moulds, and burdens them, to instincts that go beyond and transcend their present life. Tolstoy is the appeal of the modern world, the cry of the modern conscience against the blind fate of its own progress. In the eye of science everything is possible in Humanity's life, the sacrifice of the innocent for the sake of the progress of the guilty, the crushing and deforming of the weak so that the strong may triumph over them, the evolution of new serf classes at the dictates of a ruling class. All this the nineteenth century has seen accomplished, and not seen alone in Russia. It is Tolstoy's distinction to have combined in his life-work more than any other great artist, two main conflicting points of view. He has fused by his art the science that divines the way Humanity is forced forward blindly and irresponsibly from century to century by the mere pressure of events, he has fused with this science of our modern world the soul's protest against the earthly fate of man which leads the generations into taking the ceaseless roads of evil which every Age records.

TOLSTOY AND WAR.

Let us cite Tolstoy's treatment of " War" as an instance of how this great artist symbolises the Age for us, and so marks the advance in self-consciousness of the modern mind and as a nearer approximation of the human spirit to a realisation of what life is. We have only got to compare Tolstoy's " Sebastopol" (1856) with any other document on war by the other European creators to perceive that Tolstoy alone among artists has realised war, his fellows have idealised it. To quote a passage from ourselves, let us say again that " ' Sebastopol ' gives us war under all aspects— war as a squalid, honourable, daily affair of mud and glory, of vanity, disease, hard work, stupidity, patriotism, and inhuman agony. Tolstoy gets the complex effects of ' Sebastopol ' by keenly analysing the effect of the sights and sounds, dangers and pleasures, of war on the brains of a variety of typical men, and by placing a special valuation of his own on these men's actions, thoughts, and emotions, on their courage, altruism, and show of indifference in the face of death. He lifts up, in fact, the veil of appearances conventionally drawn by society over the actualities of the glorious trade of killing men, and he does this chiefly by analysing keenly the insensitiveness and indifference of the average mind, which says of the worst of war's realities, ' I felt so and so, and did so and so ; but as to what those other thousands may have felt in their agony, that I did not enter into at all.' ' Sebastopol,' therefore, though an exceedingly short and exceedingly simple narrative, is a psychological document on modern war of extraordinary value, for it simply relegates to the lumber-room, as unlifelike and hopelessly limited, all those theatrical glorifications of war which men of letters, romantic poets, and grave historians alike have been busily piling up on humanity's shelves from generation to generation. And more : we feel that in ' Sebastopol ' we have at last the sceptical modern spirit, absorbed in actual life, demonstrating what war is, and expressing at length the confused sensations of countless men, who have heretofore never found a genius who can make humanity realise what it knows half-consciously and consciously evades. We cannot help, therefore, recognising this man Tolstoy as the most advanced product of our civilisation, and likening him to a great surgeon, who, not deceived by the world's presentation of its own life, penetrates into the essential joy and suffering, health and disease of multitudes of men ; a surgeon who, face to face with the strangest of Nature's laws in the constitution of human society, puzzled by all the illusions, fatuities, and conventions of the human mind, resolutely sets himself to lay bare the roots of all its passions, appetites, and incentives in the struggle for life, so that at least human reason may advance farther along the path of self-knowledge in advancing towards a general sociological study of man."

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

Tolstoy's place in nineteenth century literature is, therefore, in our view, no less fixed and certain than is Voltaire's place in the eighteenth century. Both of these writers focus for us in a marvellously complete manner the respective methods of analysing life by which the rationalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the science and humanitarianism of the nineteenth century have created the modern world. All the movements, all the problems, all the speculation, all the agitations of the world of to-day in contrast with the immense materialistic civilisation that science has hastily built up for us in three or four generations, all the spirit of modern life is condensed in the pages of Tolstoy's writings, because, as we have said, he typifies the soul of the modern man gazing, now undaunted, and now in alarm, at the frightful array of the newly-tabulated cause and effect of humanity's progress, at the frightful meaninglessness, at the appalling cheapness and waste of human life in Nature's hands. Tolstoy may thus be defined in part as the modern soul's alarm in contact with science. And just as science's work after its first destruction of the past ages' formalism, superstition, and dogma is directed more and more to the examination and amelioration of human life, so Tolstoy's work has been throughout inspired by a passionate love of humanity, and by his ceaseless struggle against conventional religion, dogmatic science, and society's mechanical influence on the minds of its members. To make man more conscious of his acts, to show society its real motives and what it is feeling, and not cry out in admiration at what it pretends to feel—this has been the great novelist's aim in his delineation of Russia's life. Ever seeking the one truth—to arrive at men's thoughts and sensations under the daily pressure of life—never flinching from his exploration of the dark world of man's animality and incessant self-deception, Tolstoy's realism in art is symbolical of our Age's study of, and absorption in the world of fact, of the modern study of Nature, a study ultimately without loss of spirituality, nay, resulting in immense gain to the spiritual life. The realism of the great Russian's novels is, therefore, more in line with the age's tendency and outlook than is the general tendency of other schools of Continental literature. And Tolstoy must be finally looked on not merely as the conscience of the Russian world revolting against the too heavy burden which the Russian people have now to bear in Holy Russia's onward march of " Progress," but also as the soul of the modern world seeking to replace in its love of humanity the life of those old religions which science is destroying day by day. In this sense Tolstoy will stand in European literature as the conscience of the modern world.

Brisbane Courier (Qld.), Saturday 8 March 1902

 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/19154767

HEAVEN AND HELL.

  ————

Is Christianity Going Cranky ? 

———

Old and New Versions of the Hereafter. 

———

The spread of Rationalism, Materialism, Socialism, and "isms", of various kinds is nowadays playing sad havoc, not so much with Christianity itself as it is with those who live, or, as it is often, truly, said, "loaf," upon Christianity. So widespread are becoming the effects of the teachings of Evolutionists, whose theories of the world's foundation and formation upset and even uproot the basic teachings of Christianity, which teach an unregenerate world to laugh at and scorn the idea of the story of Eden, of Adam and Eve, that the clerics of to-day view with consternation the revolution of the human mind which portends for the cleric that his day is over. The average parson of to-day is in a sad and sorry pickle. Those who have fat and comfortable livings foresee a future where the parson will be regarded as a curiosity, while the general preacher already has a hard battle for his daily crust. He has, in order to fill his Bethel, to resort to all sorts of dodges. He uses the newspapers as a medium for keeping himself in the public eye. His advertisements of the "novelties" which he is offering at his Sabbath Conventicle show him to be a close student of the theatrical. He is ever prone to depart from true theology and the teachings of Christ to enter the arena of every day politics. There is not a social question arising with which to grapple we look to our politicians, but the parson pokes an inquisitive snout. He endeavors to take the lead in matters where the economic rights of the people are concerned. He drops the Gospel to preach politics. His cunningly-worded advertisements in the daily Press are traps for "traybits." Originality and novelty nowadays, seem to form the watchword of the sky-pilot. He will thunder against anything or anybody if it insures a full church, and so utterly degraded is the parson of to-day that it cannot be wondered at if his attempts to fill his church are considered by the ungodly to be nothing but "silver coin admission gaffs." The battle for bread and butter is a strenuous one. The "pilot" must live; if he fails to live by preaching the Gospel, is it any wonder that he sets out on the Sabbath day to vie with the theatrical management of the previous six days?

 * * *

 We are not disposed to enter into any heavy and serious controversy on theological matters. We live in a materialistic age, in which the Church, apart from Christianity, has lost caste with the masses. The Church, not Christianity, has alienated itself from the sympathies of the masses, because throughout history, excepting, perhaps, at the very inception of Christianity, the preachers of the Gospel have arrayed themselves on the side of wealth. The whole history of Christian preachers is one of avarice and greed, avarice of gold and greed of power, and no power, was ever more tyrannical, cruel and unjust than the power wielded by those who, preaching the forgiveness of sins, and the teachings of the Son of God, set at nought, by their own example, the gentleness, the holiness, and the true spirit of loving thy neighbor as thyself, as taught by Jesus Christ. It is no wonder, with the spread of education and the inculcation of Rational belief, that the toiling and moiling masses have revolted, not against the Christianity as preached by Christ, but against the Christianity of those who set up themselves as His representatives on earth. Education is the most virile enemy of superstition. An ignorant and credulous community could easily be imposed upon. It was the Church which ever set its face against the education of the masses, and now that the whole world is being enlightened, the cleric shrinks in terror from the oncoming host, and little by little the Church retrogrades, conceding first one principle, then another, until in this twentieth century the parson, baffled and beaten, unable to exercise that terrorism which has darkened the world's history, is forced to admit that it is all more or less superstition, and, cutting his cloth accordingly, is offering to the world "reformed" religion, utterly denuded of the terroristic spirit. To the idea of the evolution of man the parson offers no opposition. He cannot reconcile with science the story of the Creation. To-day parsons everywhere are beginning to preach doubt concerning the existing of heaven and hell itself. This, of course, is no new doctrine, because Lecky, in his great work, "The History of Morals in Europe," says :

 It is, indeed, probable that religious terrorism played a more important part in the monastic phase of Christianity than it had done even in the great work of the conversion of the pagans. Although two or three amiable theologians had made faint and altogether abortive attempts to question the eternity of punishment ; although there had been some slight differences of opinion concerning the future of some pagan philosophers who had lived before the introduction of Christianity, and also upon the question whether infants who died unbaptised were only deprived of all joy, or were actually subjected to never-ending agony, there was no question as to the main features of the Catholic doctrine. According to Patristic theologians, it was part of the gospel revelation that the misery and suffering the human race endured upon earth is but a feeble imagine of that which awaits it in the future world; that all its members beyond the Church, as well as a very large proportion of those who are within its pale, are doomed to an eternity of agony in a literal and undying fire.

 Rob the Christian Church of the terrors of the fire of hell, and the Church immediately loses its hold on those whom, by the preaching of terror, it keeps in its grasp. Already, one cleric in Wellington has openly disavowed the existence of hell and heaven, and the latest in the field is Dr. Crossley, the Anglican Bishop of Auckland, whose sermon at St. Mary's Cathedral, Auckland, one Sunday evening lately, threw further doubt on the existence of the torments of hell which await the sinner on earth. The Bishop does not deny the existence of Hades and Paradise, modern terms for Hell and Heaven, but, in effect, he tells us that just now, and presumably for thousands of years, heaven and hell are empty, that there is not a soul there, that the dead are simply sleeping to be awakened by Gabriel's horn on the last day, when we shall be judged by the Almighty. Christianity certainly seems to be going cranky.

 * * *

 These notions on the hereafter, coming from Christian clerics, denote a complete revolution in thought, and show that those who preach, or pretend to preach the Gospel are keeping an eye on the steady advance of Rationalism, which, if it does not deny the existence of a Supreme Being, has smashed into smithereens, because it is scientifically true, all the old-fangled ideas which the early Fathers taught. The cleric of to-day, with his advanced views of heaven and hell, is at variance with the Saints of the Past. If the twentieth century view is right, the early Fathers were very wrong. If the early teachings were superstitious, how can the cleric of to-day reconcile his position, which amounts to the preaching of modified superstition? Let us go back to the early Fathers and take their views on hell. St. Macarius, we learn, while walking through a desert, struck a human skull with his staff, and it spoke to him. It was the skull of a pagan priest whose soul was then in hell. "As high as the heaven is above the earth, so high does the fire of hell mount in waves above the souls that are plunged into it," was the pagan's picture. The damned souls, the saint was told by the skull of the pagan sinner, were pressed together, back to back, and the poor old pagan requested the prayer of the saint that he might be turned face to face, as the sight of a brother's face might afford him some consolation. Then the story of St. Gregory, who successfully prayed for the partial freedom from the torments of hell of the damned soul of the Pagan Emperor Trajan, who had once relieved the distress of a widow. The saints professed to have seen damned souls carried down the craters of volcanoes, and the agitation of the volcanoes in Sicily were due to the great press of the damned in hells, which rendered it necessary to enlarge the portals of the Infernal Regions. Other saints represented the devil bound by red-hot chains on a burning grid-iron in the centre of hells, and his screams of never-ending agony echoed and reverberated throughout. His hands were free, and with these he seized lost souls and crushed them against his teeth, and swallowed them "down the fiery cavern of his throat." Demons were pictured as possessing hooks of red-hot iron, on which they impaled their victims, and alternately plunged them into ice and fire. The damned were hung up by their tongues, others were drawn asunder, others beaten together on an anvil, strained through a cloth, while others were embraced by demons whose limbs were of flame. In comparison with the fire of earth, we learn that the fire of hell was so intense that it alone could be called real. Sulphur was mixed with partly to increase the heat, and partly, too, in order that an abominable stench might be added to the other refined tortures. The fire emitted no light, in order that "the horror of darkness might be added to the horror of pain." There is, also, according to one of the Saints, a narrow bridge, spanning an abyss, from which the souls of sinners were plunged into the dark below. These are the descriptions of the ancients, but here is a picture of hell, written, not so many years ago, which — will it be believed?— was intended for children :

See! On the middle of that red-hot floor stands a girl; she looks about sixteen years old. Her feet are bare. She has neither shoes nor stockings. Listen! She speaks. She says: "I have been standing on this red-hot floor for years. Day and night my only standing-place has been this red-hot floor. Look at my burnt and bleeding feet. Let me go off this burning floor for one moment, only for one single short moment." The fourth dungeon is a boiling kettle. ... In the middle of it there is a boy. . . . His eyes are burning like two burning coals. . . . Two long flames come out of his ears. Some-times he opens his mouth, and blazing fire rolls out. But, listen! There is a sound like a kettle boiling. . .. . The blood is boiling and bubbling in his head. The marrow is boiling in his bones! The fifth dungeon is the red-hot oven. The little child is in this red-hot oven. Hear how it turns and twists about in the fire. It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor. God was very good to this child. Very likely God saw it would get worse and worse, and punished much, more in hell. So God, in his mercy, called it out of the world in its early childhood.

The blasphemy of it! No wonder the cleric of to-day thinks it time that the pains and torments of hell were modified or entirely abolished.

 * * * 

We could quote in extenso many pictures of hell which were seriously imagined by the early Fathers, and religiously exhibited by later fathers and parsons to maintain clerical terrorism over the world. The age in which we live is too advanced to be imposed upon by such fantastic pictures. There is greater hell on earth than the hell which our pastors and preachers picture for us, and the working classes have been made to suffer those torments. With the cleric who spreads his particular or peculiar brand of Christianity, a crisis has arrived. Hell has no terrors now, and the parson, who for centuries has hung on to this cruel doctrine of a Just and Good God being transformed into a Fiend Incarnate, finds that it is a game which will not work, and he is now obliged to reluctantly admit that he has been preaching superstition. The Bishop of Auckland has not yet gone the length of denying the existence of Paradise and Hades. He has done the next best thing—to declare that such places are empty. What liars the Old Fathers must have been if Bishop Crossley's view is worthy of credence.

Truth (Brisbane, Qld. ), Sunday 26 May 1912, page 1

 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/201748386

FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN.

 [BY S. G. MEE] 

"OH, Dogma ! Dogma! how dost thou trample underfoot, love, truth, conscience, justice ! Was ever a Moloch worse than thou ?" Such was the pathetic exclamation of one who, having seceded from their orthodoxy, found himself ostracised and denounced by those nearest and dearest to him—especially by his elder and once much-prized brother, Now I am alone in the world," he continues, "I can trust no one. The new acquaintances who barely tolerate me, and old friends, whom reports have not reached —if such there be—may turn against me with animosity tomorrow, as those have done from whom I could least have imagined it."  These were the words wrung from the brave but bleeding heart of the now long time ardent and illustrious apostle of Free thought, Francis William Newman, when suffering from the loss of the old fraternal affection of that notorious convert to, and champion of Ultramontanism (that ne plus ultra of fettered thought)—his once beloved and benignant brother, the English Cardinal Newman.

But, albeit, as poor Byron, when viewing the timidity and pusillanimity of this so creed shackled world says:—

" Men grow pale

Lest their own Judgments should become too

 bright.

And their Freethought be crime, and earth

 have too much light,"

so did not valiant Nonconformist Newman. Taking to heart Tennyson's exultant exclamation—"Truth against the world "—Our hero, in his earliest life, stood, and still stands forth as the pioneer and hastener onwards of a more intellectual, united, and compassionate era. For all this, as one of his ardent admirers. Mr. Charles Bright, tells, "he has been hugely misrepresented, abused, vilified by Christian antagonists." But (as Mr. Bright trenchantly adds) " to be thus abused, is but to say, in other words, that he is a faithful reformer and an outspoken worshipper of his highest ideal of 'Truth, Wisdom, and Love,"

For many years the works of Francis Wm. Newman have, to the present writer, been as a light shining in a great darkness. But not only the writings, but the life—the beautiful and unswerving " fidelity to conscience "—of this King of Thought inspires me with a love and veneration for him amounting to a positive passion. I view him as one who—perhaps more than any man living —tells of " what the world will he, when the years have died away "—when creeds shall be supplanted by deeds ; when our commerce shall be diverted of its present ubiquitous deadly and destructive banes; when, in a word, to deal in and manufacture those "brewed enchantments " (as Milton has it) which so degrade and deteriviate our race, will, everywhere, as in progressive America, be deemed the "gigantic crime of crimes." Professor Newman, as I will shortly show, endorses to the utmost the dictum of the late Richard Cobden—" Every day's experience goes to confirm me in my opinion that the Temperance Cause lies at the foundation of all social and political reform."

Many years ago I made copious extracts from the priceless " Phases of Faith " of Professor Newman ; and I now with delight transcribe for the MINER a few of these :—

" Nowhere, from any body of priests, clergy, or ministers is religious progress to be anticipated until intellectual creeds are destroyed."

" Religion and fanaticism are, in the embryo, but one and the same ; to purify and elevate them we want a cultivation of the understanding, without which our moral code may be infinitely depraved."

" The man who worships a friend for a God may be in some sense spiritual but his spirituality will be a devilish fanaticism, having nothing in it to admire or approve."

" Bibliolatry not only paralyses the moral sense ; it also corrupts the intellect and introduces a crooked logic, by setting men to the duty of extracting absolute harmony out of discordant materials."

Finally Professor Newman finds himself lodged in three inevitable conclusions :—

" I. That the moral and intellectual powers of man must be acknowledged as having a right and duty to criticise the contents of the Scriptures.'

" 2. When so exerted, they condemn portions of the Scriptures as erroneous and immoral.'

" 3. The assumed infallibility of the entire Scriptures is a proved falsity, not merely as to physiology and other scientific matters, but also as to morals. '

Referring to his unhappy brother having embraced Catholicism, Newman says :—" it is to me a painfully unsolved mystery how a mind can claim its freedom in order to establish its bondage. "

" For the peculiarities of Romanism," he says " I feel nothing, and I can pretend nothing, but contempt, hatred, disgust, or horror. But this system of falsehood, fraud, and unscrupulous and unrelenting ambition will never be destroyed while Protestants keep up their insane anathemas against opinion."

Professor Newman tells us that he renounced the Christian creed for the following reasons :—-(1 ) I found that my old belief narrowed my affections; (2) It taught me to bestow peculiar love on the people of God ; and it assigned an intellectual creed as one essential mark of his people. Its theory was one of selfishness—that is, it inculcated that my first business must be to save my soul from future punishment, and to attain future happiness."

So finding himself in exactly the same perplexing position as the world's authentic "guides, philosophers, and friends,"—the late Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson (both of whom were intended for the church,) that is to say, being conscientiously unable to (as Mr, Bright puts it) "subscribe to the bondage of the church for the sake of worldly advancement, " Newman "resigned his fellowship,' and once for all turned his back on the ' primrose path ' which for him would have led, almost indubitably, to the highest rates of the Episcopal Bench." And how much more noble and exemplary such conduct appears than that of many others (notably as pointed out in an admirable little "leader " in the Sydney Bulletin, that of the Rev. Charles Strong ) who still for mere pay and rations, remains amongst the " black dragoons." He contemptuously secedes from these; and, as a free lance in the ranks of literature, has for a long lifetime being doing deadly battle, not against " the old extinct Satans," but against the (as Carlyle tells us) "real soul-devouring world-devouring Devils that now are to wit, thoughtless, thriftless animalism, Distilled Gin, and Stupor, and Despair. Carlyle sincerely loved uncompromising Francis Newman ; and, in that noblest of all biographies, his " Life of John Sterling " speaks of him as one of " an ardently inquiring soul, of fine University and other attainments, of sharp-cutting restlessly advancing intellect, and the mildest pious enthusiasm ; whose worth, since better known to all the world, Sterling highly estimated ;-—and indeed practically testified the same ; having by will appointed him guardian to his eldest son."

We have glanced at Francis Newman as the stern iconoclast of current creeds; let us now list to what he has to say concerning the pet and ghostly commerce of the Capital of Christendom—London; and his remarks will, alas! apply likewise to all our colonial cities :—

" Walk upon the outmost area on any side and you will find London to be in constant and rapid growth. Roads are laid out ; drains and cellars are made; and before a single house besides has arisen, lo! a lofty gin palace stands already at every chief corner of a district at present unpeopled. And for what has it been licensed ? To drain of the wages of the laborers, who are about to build the other houses. It is feared lest they should save something for wives and children in the winter ! It is feared that they will not be enough starving workmen if from any cause trade become slack. What can such conduct in magistrates mean ? Are they such fanatics as to say, " Perish frugality, perish morality, perish female honour, perish the safety of the metropolis, but give us still our bright gin palaces "? I do not believe this; I interpret their conduct otherwise. A large part of it is explained by the fact that one of them has a kinsman or a close friend in the brewers' trade ; another has put money into some brewing association or distillery ; another is a wine merchant: another is interested in a religious society to which some rich brewer is very liberal. Now will any one tell me that it is no hardship to the community to have at every corner drinkshops, which are so easily made dens of fraud ? And can any one pretend that an aristocracy cares much for morality, for honour or for justice to the lower classes, which deliberately sustains such a system ?

. . The ruling classes of England have shown themselves utterly untrustworthy and immoral as to all that concerns the trade in intoxicants."

Such is the unequivocal language— such the drastic denunciations—of one of the noblest, and truest friends of the workers and wealth gatherers of the world.

Northern Miner (Charters Towers, Qld. : 1874 - 1954), Thursday 4 May 1882, page 2

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article77184791

MR. JOSEPH COOK.

 [BY S. G. MEE]

" IN this age of reason it is a singular some might think as I do, a painful— spectacle to see numbers rushing to a public hall to hear a man prove (or attempt to prove) fables to be facts. Yet in crowding to hear " the theological elephant," Joseph Cook (for that is the appellation given him by one of his clerical admirers), such a spectacle has lately been afforded to the inhabitants, of Brisbane. I myself, slightly caught the contagion, and went once with the eager crowd to listen to the lecturer, who, according to Spurgeon, was effectually " exploding the pretensions of modern science ; " and is, in the opinion of a professional theologian (James McCush) a heaven-ordained man, possessing as much power of eloquence as Parker, and vastly more acquaintance with philosophy than the mystic Emerson."

 After listening for a few minutes to this—according to theologians—intellectual phenomenon, I could not but think that a famous sentence of Carlyle would well apply to their much-belauded Boston lecturer. " If," says the sage of Chelsea, "a good speaker—an eloquent speaker—is not speaking the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation ? Of such speech I hear all manner and kind of people say it is excellent ; but I care very little about how he said, it, provided I understand it, and it be true. Excellent speaker ; but what if he is telling me things that are untrue, that are not the fact about it ; if he has formed a wrong judgment about it ; if he has no judgment in his mind to form a right conclusion in regard to the matter ? An excellent speaker of that kind is, as it were, saying : ' Ho, every one that wants to be persuaded of the thing that is not true, come hither."

Now (and here's the pity of it), the orthodox world everywhere persistently wants to be persuaded of the thing that is not true. Were it not so, they would certainly prefer the immortal and truthful writings of an Emerson or a Parker to the obstreperous dramatic performances called lectures (as one of his Indian critics has it) of a Joseph Cook.

Mr. Cook calls that (according to a great poet) Heaven-lighted lamp in man —Reason—a rushlight. Evidently with Mr. Cook, as with millions of others, orthodoxy is " the insane root that takes his Reason prisoner." But the late illustrious Theodore Parker firmly believed with Shakespeare that—

He that made us with such large discourse,

 Looking before, and after, gave us not 

That capability and reason,

To fust in us unused.

Well may the orthodox be fiercely inimical to Theodore Parker, when he has the audacity to declare that " the Popular Religion is unmanly and sneaking. It dares not look Reason in the face, but creeps behind Tradition, and only quotes.

To hear its talk one would think that God was dead—or at least asleep ;" and the foregoing brings to my mind what the mystic Emerson also says upon this point:—"The stationariness of religion the assumption that the age of inspiration is past, that the Bible is closed ; the fear of degrading the character of Jesus by representing him as a man ; indicate with sufficient clearness the falsehood of our theology. It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was ; that he speaketh, not spake." And such a teacher I for years have felt Ralph Waldo Emerson to be. He is one who, to quote his own beautiful words, has "converted life into truth." I feel him verily to be be, as he says, "part or particle of God." "Follow your Reason, wheresover it may lead you " he commands us. List, further, to his vital creed,—" Man is conscious of a universal soul, within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom, arise and shine. This universal soul he calls Reason ; the sky, with its eternal calm, and full of ever-lasting orbs, is the type of Reason."

The above are the words of the great American philosopher, whom Mr. Cook cooly bragged of having converted to orthodoxy ; but who, through his son, indignantly repudiated this astounding assertion—adding that he never read Mr. Cook's lectures."

The MINER has not, I know, space for a lengthened notice of each of Mr. Cook's lectures in Brisbane ; but his sole mission—strange as it may appear— seems to be, to undertake to prove the unprovable, and to defend the indefensible. Mr. Cook might well exclaim, "save me from my friends!'' He bragged of having been intimate with R. M. Emerson. We have just seen what the revered sage of Concord thought of Joseph and his very shallow books Mr. Cook, in his pamphlet " Method of Meeting Modern Unbelief," also speaks of his friend Mr. Fiske, as a brilliant man and an agnostic; but who to this hour, is plunging in the Serbonian bog of the Spencerian philosophy " This is what Mr. Fiske thinks of Mr. Joseph Cook and his literary performances : — " If we were to go through with Mr. Cook's volumes in detail we should find little else but misrepresentation of facts, misconceptions of principles. . . . . . . I have not treated him seriously, or with courtesy, because there is nothing in his matter, or in his manner, that would justify, or even excuse, a serious method of treatment. The only aspect of his career, which really affords matter for grave reflection, is the ease with which he succeeded for the moment in imposing on the credulity, and in appealing to the prejudices of his public."

Albert Huxley has emphatically declared that "Ecclesiasticism in science is unfaithfulness to truth." Mr. Cook (for £40 per night) is prepared to prove that Orthodoxy and Science are Siamese twins. As an "eclectic," the Australasian says of him,—"He has followed the monster Modern Science into the den, dragged it forth to the daylight, trounced it well with his logical club, drew its teeth and cut its claws, delicately inserted a ring into its nose, and led it as a tame and harmless monster upon numberless platforms to the edification of the orthodox in many parts of the world."

 To the edification of the orthodox ; but certainly not to that of the intellectual, who still regard science, not as a mole-eyed monster, but as a veritable star-eyed Deity !

In one of his lectures—to the uproarious delight of his Orthodox audience —Mr. Cook stoutly defended the Scripture six-day-creation theory ; but qualified that belief by giving it as his opinion that, in Genesis, a day signified an indefinite period of time. I, for one, fear that this definition, if practically acted upon by the orthodox, will tend to bring them into disrepute. One brings an advertisement (for instance) to the MINER, saying it should be paid for "to-day" ; but, when once inserted, and payment requested, the impecunious pietist tells Mr. O'Kane's collector that, according to the dictum of the infallible champion Cook, "day" means and "in-definite period !" How would that acte.

 Oh, how specious—how horribly sophistical—is the logic of orthodoxy! How its defenders twist and turn plainest words to suit their purpose ! Who, listening to this theological contortionist's defence of the Mosaic cosmogony, does not, more than ever, revere the character and the authentic preaching of the "priests of Science ?" Listen to what Professor Huxley says upon this point :—"In this nineteenth century, as at the dawn of modern physical science the cosmogony, of the semi-barbarous Hebrew is the incubus of the phîlosopher and the opprobrium of the orthodox. Who shall number the patient and earnest seekers after truth, from the days of Galileo until now, whose lives have been embittered, and their good name blasted, by the mistaken zeal of Bibliolaters ? Who shall count the host of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the effort to harmonise impossibilities ? Orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget ; and though at present bewildered, and afraid to move, it is as willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis contains the beginning and the end of science, and to visit, with such petty thunderbolts as its half-paralysed hands can hurl, those who refuse to degrade Nature to the level of primitive Judaism. Philosophers, on the other hand, have no such aggressive tendencies. The majesty of FACT is on on their side, and the elementary forces of Nature are working for them. Not a star comes to the meridian at its calculated time but testifies to the justice of their methods—their beliefs are one with the falling rain and the growing corn. By doubt they are established, and open enquiry is their bosom friend. Such men have no fear of traditions, however venerable, and no respect for them when they become mischievous and obstructive ; but they have better than mere antiquarian business on hand ; and if dogmas which ought to be fossil, but are not, are forced upon their notice, they are too happy to treat them as non-existant."

[To be continued]

Northern Miner (Charters Towers, Qld. ), Saturday 14 October 1882, page 2

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/77185871

The Bible Turned Inside Out

 The Polytechnic Hall was crowded to overflowing as usual, last night, when Mr. Tyerman delivered his eighth lecture on The Bible Turned Inside Out. He began by expressing his gratification at the continued and increasing interest manifested in the course of lectures on the Bible. The subject was most important to all present.

 If the Bible was what Christians claimed for it, let it be proved, and he would accept it. But if it was not, and the more he examined it the more he was convinced it was not, then let the popular delusion respecting its divine authority and obligation be dispelled. Some Protestant Christians regretted the Reformation, because they feared what they deemed evil had outweighed the good resulting from it. The right of private judgment so often boasted, was excused to a degree, and led to consequences never anticipated by the reformers. When the authority of Rome was repudiated, there was no ground logically tenable till the position of radical and independent freethought was reached. The people were exercising their right of private judgment, not merely to the extent of endorsing the Protestant, rather than the Catholic, faith, as was expected, but to the extent of questioning the grounds of all faith and all religion. The result was that in a rapidly increasing number of cases, the orthodox claims for the Bible were denied, and ecclesiastical Christianity was rejected. Hence many of the clergy of the Church of England openly denounced the Reformation as a mistake, and believed the only safety of the Church was in returning to the fold, and putting themselves under the authority of the Church of Rome.

 The Bible had been proved to be destitute of historic credibility in many parts ; was it scientifically correct and trustworthy ? Let its teachings on the subject of creation be impartially examined in the light of modern science, and their falsity would soon appear. Before the dawn of modern science the opponents of the Bible had to rely chiefly on argumentation ; now they could appeal to facts and figures to sustain their objections. The clergy generally had been bitterly opposed to science, especially the science of geology. Because it disproved the Biblical account of creation it was denounced "of the devil," and its fearless advocates were branded as Godless Infidels. Some Christian teachers said the Bible did not profess to teach science. But it gave oracular deliverances on subjects within the province of science, and if it had been inspired by God those would have been correct, whereas in most cases they were notoriously false. Others attempted to harmonise the Bible and science, and boasted they had succeeded. Yes ! but how ? By surrendering everything that science demanded. That was an easy way of reconciling differences. In every case, when a collision had occurred between science and the Bible, the latter had been forced to yield. Geology had triumphed over Genesis most completely. The Bible plainly taught that this world and the universe were created in six days, about six thousand years ago. No fair principles of interpretation could make the first chapter of Genesis mean anything else ; but to save the credit of the Book, it was assumed by Christians that a long interval might exist between the first and second verses, and that the days meant long, indefinite periods. Such an interpretation was utterly unwarranted ; it was a contemptible subterfuge that would not be resorted to by the members of any learned profession but the clerical. There had never been a creation. Matter was eternal ; and most religious writers now spoke of " formation " rather than creation. Then the Bible was false as to the date of that formation. The testimony of geologists was adduced by the lecturer to prove that the earth had existed for millions of years. Mantell, Lyell, Agassis, Bunson, and others were quoted to show that man had existed on earth thousands of years before the time allowed by the Bible— at least, fifty thousand years before. The questions of light existing before the sun was created, of the sun, moon, and stars being intended merely for this tiny earth, of the serpent and the earth being cursed, and the human race coming from one pair, were discussed ; and it was argued that the Bible was absolutely false on all these points.

Herald (Melbourne, Vic.), Tuesday 5 May 1874, page 3 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/244336220

FREETHOUGHT v. FETTERED THOUGHT.

 Mr. Charles Bright lectured on the above subject at the Theatre Royal, last evening, to a well-filled house.

Mr. Bright said that he meant by freethought, thought unfettered by fears of external authority — thought submitted to the guidance of reason and conscience. Few persons consciously abandoned their right of thought, yet the majority of mankind did not think freely because they dare not. Even those who claimed to enjoy freedom would look on heedlessly, and see their children taught to believe that the practice of freethought was to be shunned, not courted. People were afraid to doubt Buckle, the historian of civilization who declared that doubt, or scepticism, was the necessary precursor of all progress. But if freedom of thought were a good thing, every restriction placed upon it by legislation, public opinion, or education, must be an evil, and tho past history of the world abundantly proved this to be the case, for it was in reality but the record of one long struggle between those who had asserted their right to think and those who, possessed of power, had attempted to dictate thoughts to mankind. In this conflict the unseen but never unfelt spirit force, or mind, usually termed God, had played a remarkable part. In reality, it had been perpetually impelling men to think freely, to throw off the bondage of custom and superstition, leave the darkness of worn-out ideas, care less for learning how other men think or had thought, come forth into the air of heaven, interrogate nature face to face, and catch the inspiration of truth from the fountain-head. All systems of religion had originated with the open souls who had thus acted. But while the spirit force, the infinite mind, or by whatever name might be designated, that impulse towards advancement which even materialists recognised as operating in the race had been thus active in promoting freedom of thought, the images of God mankind had from time to time set up had been regarded as the fiercest denouncers of such freedom, the most powerful because least comprehensible combatants on behalf of dogmatism, fettered thought, and mental slavery. Having traced this conflict in the history of Christendom, and alluded to many social fetters on freethought, the lecturer proceeded to contend that among Protestants the main supporters of fettered thought or unalterable creeds, at this day, were those whom a modern writer designated as the weaker sexes — the women and clergy. There were, of course, grand exceptions, but as a rule both were trained to be servile worshippers of Fashion— fashion in dress, in thought, in creed, and in speech. Until women were emancipated from this thraldom, religion as a trade, a thing of form and dress, would be maintained to the detriment of true worship. There was some-thing, to his mind, sad and nauseous in men being trained from boyhood to do the praying for a lot of people, and direct them the way to Heaven, as though God lived in the centre of a maze— a sort of Fair Rosamond's bower, and needed a band of trained University men to act as ciceroni and Ushers of the Black Rod. If a man, be he trained or not, had anything to teach his fellows, in the name of truth let him speak out ; and if his voice were worth the listening to, people would come to hear without being beaten and driven thereto by the devil's bastinado. But to pick boys out of a family and set them apart as sucking priests, to cram into their brains a quantity of stuff called "theology," to examine them to see if they had enough of this stuff in them, to bind them over solemnly never to look further than they had been taught, and then to license them to pray, to mouth out praises and petitions to " Gawd,"— there was something in that repellent to reason, repulsive to taste, and utterly subversive of those finer feelings of natural worship which the true priest—the poet— indicated to all sincere souls and loving hearts.

Sydney Daily Telegraph (NSW ), Monday 10 November 1879, page 3 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/239283105