ON THE PARSEES AND THEIR RELIGION.

 Of all the Oriental races inhabiting our Indian dominions, perhaps there is no one so fitted to excite interest and inspire respect as that of the Parsees. They are the lineal descendants of the people belonging to the celebrated nation of old, ruled over by kings bearing such names as Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes. They belong to the Indo-European family of mankind; in other words, they are more akin to ourselves than they are to the Jews, the Arabs, and other nations of Semitic descent. Though the Persians warred so long and so fiercely with the Greeks, yet were they ethnographically allied to them, as is proved from their language. If it be conceded that the Zend, the language of the Parsee sacred books, was once a genuine form of human speech ; and that, though perhaps originally Median, it did not essentially differ from that of the Persian tribes, who subsequently rose to be the dominant power in the Medo-Persian empire, then, was the affinity of the Persians to the Greeks more close than either party ever admitted. For example, where, in conjugating a well-known verb, the Greeks thus proceeded— didomi, didos, didoti, the people using the Zend tongue said dadhami, dadhahi, dadhaiti ; and for the word with which the Greeks finished off, didõnti, the Zend had didĕnti. The overthrow of the Persian army by Alexander the Great, for a time snatched from the Persians the sceptre they they so long had borne ; and when the Greek dominion was at length overthrown, it was not they, but the Parthians, who succeeded to power in the East. Though the Parthians were for a time so formidable that they struck terror into the heart of imperial Rome, and figure in the literature of the Augustan age, very much as the Turks did in our own, two or three centuries ago, yet were they too uncivilized long to continue in possession of sovereign power on so large a scale ; and, in the third century of the Christian era, the Persians revolted against the semi-barbarous domination, and succeeded in setting up a new empire, which proved an insurmountable barrier to Roman progress in the East. To give this revived Persian sovereignty cohesion, it was deemed politic that if possible there should be unity of faith, which was the reason for those fierce persecutions of Christians by the Persian Zoroastrians with which the students of ecclesiastical history are familiar. The weapon of religious intolerance which they had stooped to use, was ultimately wielded against themselves by the Mohammedans with murderous effect ; and, before the contest ended, the Persians of the national Zoroastrian faith were but few in number, and of those few, a very large proportion had been compelled to flee from their native country and seek an asylum in the West of India. There they are still to be found. In 1847, Dr. Wilson, of Bombay, to whose elaborate writings on the subject of the Parsees and their faith, we have been much indebted in the preparation of this article, estimated their numbers as follows:— "The Parsees," he says "in Western India, now amount to about 50,000 souls. Of these, according to a census made about five years ago, 20,183 are resident in Bombay. In the collectorate of the Northern Konkan, there are 1451. There are about 200 in the Portuguese settlement of Daman. About fifteen years ago, 10,507 dwelt in the town of Surat ; but the number of these is now understood to be very considerably reduced." There are a few in most other Indian cities ; we believe they are in the British settlements in China ; and we have met one in the City of London, clad in the ordinary costume of his race. Indeed, a good many are known to be in the English metropolis. In connection with the wide diffusion of this fragmentary remnant of an ancient dominant race, it is interesting to note a passage in the prophecies of Jeremiah. " And upon Elam [the province of Elymais, or Persia generally] will I bring the four winds from the four quarters of heaven, and will scatter them towards all those winds; and there shall be no nation whither the outcasts of Elam shall not come. . . . But it shall come to pass in the latter days that I will bring again the captivity of Elam, saith the Lord." (Jeremiah xlix. 36 and 39.) 

The religion of this ancient people is one of no slight historic interest. Amid all the idolatries of the East, there has always been a tendency in the more intellectual heathen minds, to admit a supreme Being ruling over the inferior gods. The Persians seem to have been less successful in groping their way to the conception of a supreme Being than some other heathen nations ; for the name given to their highest divinity is Time without bounds. There is here lamentable deficiency. One of the many attributes of God is, undoubtedly, time without bounds ; but the personification of that one quality of the divine nature gives a very inadequate conception of that nature as a whole. If a catechism of Parsee doctrine were to be drawn out, one question would naturally be, "What is God?" To which the answer would be returned, "Time without bounds." How inferior to the reply in a noted Christian catechism — that drawn up by the Westminster Assembly of Divines. " God is a spirit ; infinite, eternal, unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth." How different the emotion, excited by the answer, God is "time without bounds," from that inspired by the brief, but all-comprehensive Scriptural reply, " God is Love."

 In next addressing themselves, to penetrate, if possible, the inscrutable mystery of the " origin of evil," they adopted, if they did not even originate, the well-known doctrine, that the two opposite principles of good and evil proceeded from two divinities about equal in power, who emanated from the Being already described as Time without bounds, and are subordinate to Him, and to Him alone. The good god is called Hormazd, and the evil one Ahriman, From the former sprung all that is good in creation, and from the latter, all that is evil. From Hormazd came light and the celestial luminaries, while Ahriman was the author of darkness. As is well known to all who have inquired into this subject, this doctrine of there being two creators of opposite characters, engaged in the formation of the world, and in perpetual conflict about its government, is censured in those parts of Isaiah, which are specially addressed to the Persian conqueror, Cyrus, as if he held this erroneous belief. " Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden. . . . I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me. I girded thee, though thou hast not known me, that they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the Lord, and there is none else. I FORM THE LIGHT, AND CREATE DARKNESS ; I make peace, and create evil ; I, the Lord, do all these things." (Isaiah xlv. 1, 5, 6, 7.) The language of the prophet is unmistakeably directed against the Parsee faith. There are not, he states, two gods, about equal in power, and in perpetual conflict. Satan is not god, and does not even require to be mentioned in connexion with the subject of creation. There is but one God, Jehovah, and none else. It is not true that it needed an Ahriman — an evil being, to create darkness ; it was done by that same Jehovah. Under Hormazd were a multitude of Amshapands (arch angels), and Izads (angels) ; while Ahriman rules over a hierarchy of evil spirits. The angels and archangels preside over different departments of nature, and are to be worshipped. So are the sun, and fire, with other emblems of and emanations from Hormazd. The will of Hormazd was revealed to men through means of the prophet Zoroaster, who was inspired to produce the Zend-Avesta (the Parsee Bible), the most important portion of which, called the Vandidad, details a conversation, held in the Zend language, between Hormazd and Zoroaster. The pains of hell shall not be eternal, but there shall be a general restitution of all things after the resurrection, Ahriman himself being annihilated, or in the opinion of some purified by the purgatorial fire of hell, and established in holiness and happiness. When Zoroaster lived it is very difficult to ascertain, the opinions on the subject being very conflicting. The most favourite conjecture is that he lived in the reign of Darius Hystaspes. If so, then, like Mohammed, he may have come in contact with Judaism, and borrowed some of its tenets, while incorporating with them speculations of his own. In both systems we have angels and archangels— the ministers of God for good ; in both, too, is an infernal as well as a celestial hierarchy. Both look forward to a resurrection and a judgment ; but Judaism, divinely revealed, avoids the three fundamental errors of the Zoroastrian faith. It does not look on the Supreme Being as a mere abstraction, consisting simply of eternity personified, but it attributes to Him conscious existence with the possession of power, intelligence, and infinite virtue. It will not hear of creature worship, or tolerate the error of according divine honours to the sun, or fire, or light. Finally it looks on Satan as simply a lapsed angel, whom God could in a moment annihilate, and whose power is infinitely small compared with that of God. Surely Zoroaster, or whoever originated the doctrine of the two opposite divinities, must have been a man of melancholic temperament, or must have been in a desponding mood when he first took up the notion that the author of evil was equally potent with the Author of good. Might he not have reflected that in the human frame there is no part of the complex machinery designed to inflict pain ? When deranged, pain will call attention to the fact that a remedy may be supplied ; but, we repeat, no apparatus is provided for the sole purpose of inflicting pain. Had an evil as well as a good creator been at work on our physical frames, it would assuredly have been different. Again, why libel darkness as if it could not emanate from a beneficent being ? Did Zoroaster or the originator of the Parsee faith never feel it a relief to his wearied eyes to have light for a time extinguished? One would have fancied that, when, after becoming wearied by study, he flung himself on the couch of rest, he would have felt that the casting of the soft curtain of night around him, that his eyes might obtain repose, was the work of a God rather than of a demon. And did he never feel that darkness was favourable to reflection, and that his speculations regarding the universe generally made progress, not when he was invited to observation by the sight of a landscape, or of a city lighted up by the luminary of day, but, on the contrary, when observation was precluded, because every object was hidden from view by the thick veil of night ? The instinct of true philosophy was wanting in the man who could not see anything but the doings of a demon in the creation of night.

Protestant Standard (Sydney, NSW), Saturday 22 April 1876, page 7 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/207786575

THE NEW SOCIAL ATTITUDE.

 Parallel reactions in the United States towards individualism in politics and evangelism in religion and tendencies of similar movements in Australia provoke enquiry whether they possess interest beyond the coincident. President Wilson, representing the rising tide of public opinion in the great Republic, insists on tariff reduction, not merely as a means of lowering the high cost of living but as essential to the full development of the virility of the people. To him State coddling implies privilege, monopoly, abuse, and consequent contraction of opportunity, freedom, and vigour. A paraphrase of a familiar injunction indicates his attitude:— "Seek first national character and all other things will be added." National character denotes a robust development of the individual by way of idealism and struggle, faith and works. President Wilson's political interpretation of the process consists of a larger patriotism and a wider liberty, a patriotism which is not content with the appearance of great men in this generation, but aims at the production of even greater successors, and a liberty which destroys such privilege and restriction as depress the life of the community. Caste or class privilege inflicts even greater wrong than extortion. The worst evil of tyranny, particularly the insidious kinds, is that it represses energy and forms a slavish mind. The contemporaneous religious movement in the United States contemplates the recovery of the virility of the churches, and these are presenting to men, who constitute the large outside majority, an attractive programme of evangelistic enthusiasm. Thus far the parallel reactions appear to be founded on the one principle that the true method of raising the public tone is by restoring faith and hope, for which purpose it is first necessary to free and develop the self-activity of the individual.

 One significance of the movements in question is that they point to an approaching change in the social temper and attitude of the age. The generation which experienced the full effects of Darwin's and Huxley's teachings is being succeeded by another which returns after a brief diversion upon the unfathomable intuitions of the human heart. A materialistic or negative outlook upon life cannot fail to rebound in politics in a narrow or provincial patriotism, and a doctrine of might which is the basis of privilege and enslavement. Flamboyant Imperialism is at root a selfish centralism, and classism a miserable game of "begger my neighbour." The gradual growth of the democratic spirit, to which Dickens largely contributed by displaying the humanness of the poor and despised, may be regarded as a protest of the ''hope which springs eternal in the human breast" against the pessimism and cynicism incident to a transition period, for the claims of democracy as well as its guarantees rest upon the universal perception of mystic values. Agnosticism has spent its shot; the Higher Criticism is no longer a spectre; the atom has been dissolved into electrical force, an expression of intelligence; chaos has again given place to form and beauty. With the return of idealism comes a new meaning of life, which will permeate both the political and religious expressions. The dethronement of the mechanical atom in favour of intelligence restores to man his faith, his hope, and his crowning glory. Just as he is indebted to the community for the supply of his material and social needs, he owes to it his best services, his highest sacrifice: and as he can only render these by a full development of his powers, it is to the interest as well as the duty of society to accord him a free course. Individualism and social service or efficiency are the two halves of modern democracy, whose goal is universal friendship and peace. That idealism must finally be based on a religious experience of which evangelism is the outward and visible token. The brotherhood of man will prove an empty sentiment to those who possess it except they act the big brother's part, do justice, welcome the prodigals, and help to restore the unity of the family circle. The ground of rational individualism is the truth that by the law of our being individual development can be alone perfected through the life of the community. The worth and measure of a man are denoted in his treatment of his neighbour. This new gospel is after all old, but its present value is in the special energy and method of application.

Mail (Adelaide, SA ),  1913, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article63803224

BENEVOLENCE PERVERTED.

 Poverty is well spoken of as the wolf— for nothing is more cruel and terrible, and nothing more destructive of morals. Of course the poverty meant is not that comfortable sort which has a warm coat, a good roof, and a substantial meal : but real hunger, rags and general destitution. Persons of real moral fibre, or those actuated by mighty religious faith, can bear up and still preserve a human-like spirit and character when thus dreadfully circumstanced. Ordinary people, under the pressure of such need, are ready to do or be anything, and lose all faith in virtue, all belief in immortality, and all hope in God, though they are ready to sham these faiths if anything can be got by so doing. How sad is it, that millions of persons among the most civilized and Christian nations are in a state of degraded pauperism. For thus they are a burden to the community and a misery to themselves. From the number of charitable institutions we are obliged to maintain, it is evident that even in these new countries destitution holds many in its chains.
It is commonly imagined that Christ teaches that poor persons will always be found on the earth right on to the end of the days. Certainly, He said " The poor ye have always with you." But this was said to the Apostles, and simply taught that they could at any time help the poor, as they were always with them; but He was about to leave them soon, and opportunities to serve Him would cease. It is most unwarrantable to make the words mean that pauperism is to be perpetual. It is of the greatest importance to disabuse Christians and Protestants of the false sense attached to this text ; for if pauperism is ever to be abolished, and all human beings to be provided with a fair sufficiency of food clothing, culture, and dwelling, it will be by their philanthropic and self-denying labours. All the unbelievers can do is to find fault with the works of the faithful. But Christians have been largely prevented from forming a fixed resolution to stamp out pauperism by a feeling of the hopelessness of the attempt— a feeling produced as much by a misunderstanding of Christ's words as by the magnitude of the evil with which they will have to contend.
The Bible is dead against pauperism. Let the humanitarian principles of the Gospel be carried out, and it will vanish. The righteousness of life, the loving regard for others, the self-denial, self-control, and self-sacrifice enjoined on all men, if practiced by all, would be profitable on the grandest scale for the life that how is, as well as for the life to come. The Bible sings of "the good time coming," — the time of peace, of plenty, of knowledge, and of righteousness. It tells the glories of the latter day ; what folly to imagine rags and filth and wretchedness during the millennial era.
Pauperism and Popery will go together; and so they should. For these have been wonderfully interlinked in the history of the European nations. Popery makes men paupers in body soul and spirit ; while pauperism makes men Papists, and keeps them so in many countries! Romanism makes men paupers by her false doctrines concerning marriage, concerning the human body, and concerning the value and use of material goods. It does the same by the misdirection of human energies to barren enterprises. In nothing is the injurious nature of Roman teaching and influence more apparent than in the Romish ideas and practice of relieving the poor. Their relief is made a religious exercise, and so far the Romanists are right. But, by means of the false doctrine of works, benevolence is transformed into pious selfishness, and so assumes a wrong aspect, both to donor and recipient. "The poor man is made a treasure to the rich, a key to heaven, and a path to Paradise." Hence he becomes a very important person, and prizes his privileges. Rich penitents atone for sins, and secure weighty crowns of glory by supplying his necessities, and so the poverty of the pauper makes him important, powerful, and self-indulgent. Rome, by means of her indiscriminate charity, brought into being a lazy good for nothing class, which depend on the gifts of the wealthy, or on the enforced contributions of the community. Hitherto Protestantism has not been able to cope with the evil Rome has produced among the nations, by encouraging large classes to prefer beggary to honest work. How ingrained beggary is in the Roman system, is seen from, a fact recently brought out at the Manchester School Board, that at St. Joseph's Reformatory School the priests actually sent the boys out begging, though their maintainance was paid for by the School Board. Moreover, the very priests of Rome have been by the thousand mere mendicants in the countries of southern Europe. The Papist charity works evil and not good. Because it never seeks to emancipate the poor from the need of alms, by teaching them to help themselves. Because it breaks down self-reliance, and teaches the needy to hang on the rich. The Neapolitan Lazzaroni, in their detestable laziness, foolish superstition, mental and industrial ignorance, friendship to political despotism and shameless immorality, are the living monuments and products of that evil alms-giving which is inculcated by the Latin Church.

Protestant Standard (Sydney, 1876,) http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article207783264

SOCIAL PROBLEMS.

 By HENRY GEORGE,

 Author of "Progress and Poverty."

No. VIII.—THAT WE ALL MIGHT BE RICH.

 

The terms rich and poor are of course frequently used in a relative sense. Among Irish peasants, kept on the verge of starvation by the tribute wrung from them to maintain the luxury of absentee landlords in London or Paris, "the woman of three cows" will be looked on as rich, while in the society of millionaires a man with only 500,000 dollars will be regarded as poor. Now, we cannot, of course, all be rich in the sense of having more than others ; but when people say, as they so often do, that we cannot all be rich, or when they say that we must always have the poor with us, they do not use the words in this comparative sense. They mean by the rich those who have enough, or more than enough, wealth to gratify all reasonable wants, and by the poor those who have not.
Now, using the words in this sense, I join issue with those who say that we cannot all be rich; with those who declare that in human society the poor must always exist. I do not, of course, mean that we all might have an array of servants; that we all might outshine each other in dress, in equipage, in the lavishness of our balls or dinners, in the magnificence of our houses. That would be a contradiction in terms. What I mean is, that we all might have leisure, comfort, and abundance, not merely of the necessaries, but even of what are now esteemed the elegancies and luxuries of life. I do not mean to say that absolute equality could be had, or would be desirable. I do not mean to say that we could all have, or would want, the same quantity of all the different forms of wealth. But I do mean to say that we might all have enough wealth to satisfy reasonable desires; that we might all have so much of the material things we now struggle for, that no one would want to rob or swindle his neighbor; that no one would worry all day, or lie awake at nights, fearing he might be brought to poverty, or thinking how he might acquire wealth.
Does this seem a Utopian dream? What would people of fifty years ago have thought of one who would have told them that it was possible to sew by steam-power; to cross the Atlantic in six days, or the continent in three; to have a message sent from London at noon delivered in Boston three hours before noon; to hear in New York the voice of a man talking in Chicago?
Did you ever see a pail of wash given to a pen of hungry hogs ? That is human society as it is.
Did you ever see a company of well-bred men and women sitting down to a good dinner, without scrambling, or jostling, or gluttony, each knowing that his own appetite will be satisfied, deferring to and helping the others? That is human society as it might be.
" The devil take the hindmost" is the motto of our so-called civilised society to-day. We learn early to "take care of No. 1," lest No. 1 should suffer; to grasp from others that we may not want ourselves. The fear of poverty makes us admire great wealth; and so habits of greed are formed, and we behold the pitiable spectacle of men who have already more than they can by any possibility use, toiling, striving, grasping, to add to their store up to the very verge of the grave—that grave which, whatever else it may mean, does certainly mean the parting with all earthly possessions however great they be.
In vain, in gorgeous churches, on the appointed Sunday, is the parable of Dives and Lazarus read. What can it mean in churches where Dives would be welcomed and Lazarus shown the door? In vain may the preacher preach of the vanity of riches, while poverty engulfs the hindermost. But the mad struggle would cease when the fear of poverty had vanished. Then, and not till then, will a truly Christian civilisation become possible.
And may not this be ?
We are so accustomed to poverty that even in the most advanced countries we regard it as the natural lot of the great masses of the people; that we take it as a matter of course that even in our highest civilisation large classes should want the necessaries of healthful life, and the vast majority should only get a poor and pinched living by the hardest toil. There are professors of political economy who teach that this condition of things is the result of social laws of which it is idle to complain! There are ministers of religion who preach that this is the condition which an all-wise, all powerful Creator intended for His children ! If an architect were to build a theatre so that not more than one tenth of the audience could see and hear, we should call him a bungler and a botcher. If a man were to give a feast and provide so little feed that nine-tenths of his guests must go away hungry, we should call him a fool, or worse. Yet so accustomed are we to poverty, that even the preachers of what passes for Christianity tell us that the great Architect of the Universe, to whose infinite skill all nature testifies, has made such a botch job of this world that the vast majority of the human creatures whom He has called into it are condemned by the conditions he has imposed to want, suffering, and brutalising toil that gives no opportunity for the development of mental powers—must pass their lives in a hard struggle to merely live !
Yet who can look about him without seeing that to whatever cause poverty may be due, it is not due to the niggardliness of nature; with out seeing that it is blindness or blasphemy to assume that the Creator has condemned the masses of men to hard toil for a bare living?
If some men have not enough to live decently, do not others have far more than they really need ? If there is not wealth sufficient to go around, giving every one abundance, is it because we have reached the limit of the production of wealth? Is our land all in use? is our labor all employed? is our capital all utilised? On the contrary, in whatever direction we look we see the most stupendous waste of productive forces—of productive forces so powerful that were they permitted to freely play the production of wealth would be so enormous that there would be more than a sufficiency for all. What branch of production is there in which the limit of production has been reached? What single article of wealth is there of which we might not produce enormously more ?
If the mass of the population of New York are jammed into the fever-breeding rooms of tenement-houses, it is not because there are not vacant lots enough in and around New York to give each family space for a separate home. If settlers are going into Montana and Dakota and Manitoba, it is not because there are not vast areas of untilled land much nearer the centres of population. If farmers are paying one fourth, one-third, or even one half their crops for the privilege of getting land to cultivate, it is not because there is not, even in our oldest states, great quantities of land which no one is cultivating.
So true is it that poverty does not come from the inability to produce more wealth that from every side we hear that the power to produce is in excess of the ability to find a market; that the constant fear seems to be not that too little, but that too much, will be produced! Do we not maintain a high tariff, and keep at every port a horde of custom-house officers for fear the people of other countries will overwhelm us with their goods? Is not a great part of our machinery constantly idle ? Are there not, even in what we call good times, an immense number of unemployed men who would gladly be at work producing wealth if they could only get the opportunity ? Do we not, even now, hear from every side of embarrassment from the very excess of productive power, and of combinations to reduce production? Coal owners band together to limit their output; ironworks have shut down, or are running on half time; distillers have agreed to limit their production to one-half their capacity, and sugar refiners to 60 per cent.; paper mills are suspending for one, two, or three days a week; the gunny cloth manufacturers at a recent meeting agreed to close their mills until the present overstock on the market is greatly reduced; many other manufacturers have done the same thing. The shoe making machinery of New England can, in six months full running, it is said, supply the whole demand of the United States for twelve months; the machinery for making rubber goods can turn out twice as much as the market will take. This seeming glut of production, this seeming excess of productive power, runs through all branches of industry, and is evident all over the civilised world. From blackberries, bananas, or apples, to ocean steamships or plate-glass mirrors, there is scarcely an article of human comfort or convenience that could not be produced in very much greater quantities than now without lessening the production of anything else.
So evident is this that many people think and talk and write as though the trouble is that there is not work enough to go around. We are in constant fear that other nations may do for us some of the work we might do for ourselves, and, to prevent them, guard ourselves with a tariff. We laud as public benefactors those who, as we say, "furnish employment." We are constantly talking as though this "famishing of employment," this "giving of work" were the greatest boon that could be conferred upon society. To listen to much that is talked and much that is written, one would think that the cause of poverty is that there is not work enough for so many people, and that if the Creator had made the rock harder, the soil less fertile, iron as scarce as gold, and gold as diamonds ; or if ships would sink and cities burn down oftener, there would be less poverty, because there would be more work to do.
The Lord Mayor of London tells a deputation of unemployed working men that there is no demand for their labor, and that the only resource for them is to go to the poor house or emigrate. The English Government is shipping from Ireland able-bodied men and women to avoid maintaining them as paupers. Even in our own land there are at all times large numbers, and in hard times vast numbers, earnestly seeking work—the opportunity to give labor for the things produced by labor.
Perhaps nothing shows more clearly the enormous forces of production constantly going to waste than the fact that the most prosperous times in all branches of business that this country has known was during the civil war, when we were maintaining great fleets and armies, and millions of our industrial population were engaged in supplying them with wealth for unproductive consumption or for the reckless destruction. It is idle to talk about the fictitious prosperity of these flush times. The masses of the people lived better, dressed better, found it easier to get a living, and had more of luxuries and amusements than in normal times. There was more real tangible wealth in the north at the close than at the beginning of the war. Nor was it the great issue of paper money, nor the creation of the debt which caused this prosperity. The Government presses struck off promises to pay; they could not print ships, cannon, arms, tools, food, and clothing. Nor did we borrow these things from other countries, or "from posterity." Our bonds did not begin to go to Europe until the close of the war, and the people of one generation can no more borrow from the people of a subsequent generation than we who live on this planet can borrow from the inhabitants of another planet or another solar system, the wealth consumed and destroyed by our fleets and armies came from the then existing stock of wealth. We could have carried on the war without the issue of a single bond, if, when we did not shrink from taking from wife and children their only bread-winner, we had not shrunk from taking the wealth of the rich.
Our armies and fleets were maintained, the enormous unproductive and destructive use of wealth was kept up, by the labor and capital then and there engaged in production. And it was that the demand caused by the war stimulated productive forces into activity that the enormous drain of the war was not only supplied, but that the North grew richer. The waste of labor in marching and counter marching, in digging trenches, throwing up earthworks, and fighting battles, the waste of wealth consumed or destroyed by our armies and fleets did not amount to as much as the waste constantly going on from unemployed labor and idle or partially used machinery.
It is evident that this enormous waste of productive power is due, not to defects in the laws of nature, but to social maladjustments which deny to labor access to the natural opportunities of labor and rob the laborer of his just reward. Evidently the glut of markets does not really come from over-production when there are so many who want the things which are said to be over-produced, and would gladly exchange their labor for them did they have opportunity. Every day passed in enforced idleness by a laborer who would gladly be at work could he find opportunity, means so much less in the fund which creates the effective demand for other labor; every time wages are screwed down means so much reduction in the purchasing power of the workmen whose incomes are thus reduced. The paralysis which at all times wastes productive power, and which in times of industrial depression causes more loss than a great war, springs from the difficulty which those who would gladly satisfy their wants by their labor find in doing so. It cannot come from any natural limitation so long as human desires remain unsatisfied, and nature yet offers to man the raw material of wealth. It must come from social maladjustments which permit the monopolisation of these natural opportunities, and which rob labor of its fair reward.
What these maladjustments are I shall in subsequent chapters endeavor to show. In this I wish simply to call attention to the fact that productive power in such a state of civilisation as ours is sufficient, did we give it play, to provide abundance for all—to point out that the cause of poverty is not in natural limitations, which we cannot alter, but in inequalities and injustices of distribution entirely within our control. The passenger who leaves New York on a transatlantic steamer does not fear that the provisions will give out. The men who run these steamers do not send them to sea with out provisions enough for all they carry. Did he who made this whirling planet for our sojourn lack the forethought of man ? Not so. In soil and sunshine, in vegetable and animal life, in veins of minerals, and in pulsing forces which we are only beginning to use, are capabilities which we cannot exhaust—materials and powers from which human effort, guided by intelligence, may gratify every material want of every human creature. There is in nature no reason for poverty—not even for the poverty of the crippled or the decrepit. For man is by nature a social animal, and the family affections and the social sympathies would, where chronic poverty did not distort and embrute, amply provide for those who could not provide for themselves.
But if we will not rise the intelligence with which we have been gifted, to adapt social organisation to natural laws—if we allow dogs-in-the-manager to monopolise what they cannot use; if we allow strength and cunning to rob honest labor, we must have chronic poverty, and all the social evils it inevitably brings. Under such conditions there would be poverty in paradise.
"The poor ye have always with you." If ever a scripture has been wrested to the devil's service, this is that scripture. How often have these words been distorted from their obvious meaning to soothe conscience into acquiescence in human misery and degradation—to bolster that blasphemy, the very negation and denial of Christ's teachings, that the All Wise and Most Merciful the Infinite Father, has decreed that so many of His creatures must be poor in order that others of His creatures to whom He wills the good things of life should enjoy the pleasure and virtue of doling out alms! "The poor ye have always with you," said Christ; but all His teachings supply the limitation, ''until the coming of the kingdom." In that kingdom of God on earth, that kingdom of justice and love for which He taught His followers to strive and pray, there will be no poor. But though the faith and the hope and the striving for this kingdom are of the very essence of Christ's teaching, the staunchest disbelievers and revilers of its possibility are found among those who call themselves Christians. Queer ideas of the Divinity have some of these Christians who hold themselves orthodox and contribute to the conversion of the heathen. A very rich orthodox Christian said to a newspaper reporter, a while ago, on the completion of a large work out of which he is said to have made millions: " We have been peculiarly favored by divine Providence; iron never was so cheap before, and labor has been a drug in the market."
That in spite of all our great advances we have yet with us the poor, those who, without fault of their own, cannot get healthful and wholesome conditions of life, is our fault and our shame. Who that looks about him can fail to see that it is only the injustice that denies natural opportunities to labor, and robs the producer of the fruits of his toil, that prevents us all from being rich. Consider the enormous powers of production now going to waste; consider the great number of unproductive consumers maintained at the expense of producers—the rich men and dudes, the worse than useless Government officials, the pickpockets, burglars, and confidence men; the highly respectable thieves who carry on their operations inside the law; the great army of lawyers; the beggars and paupers, and inmates of prisons; the monopolists and cornerers and gamblers of every kind and grade. Consider how much brains and energy and capital are devoted, not to the production of wealth, but to the grabbing of wealth. Consider the waste caused by competition which does not increase wealth; by laws which restrict production and exchange. Consider how human power is lessened by insufficient food, by unwholesome lodgings, by work done under conditions that produce disease and shorten life. Consider how intemperance and tin thrift follow poverty. Consider how the ignorance bred of poverty lessens production, and how the vice bred of poverty causes destruction, and who can doubt that under conditions of social justice all might be rich?
The wealth-producing powers that would be evoked in a social state based on justice, where wealth went to the producers of wealth, and the banishment of poverty had banished the fear and greed and lusts that spring from it, we now can only faintly imagine. Wonderful as have been the discoveries and inventions of this century, it is evident that we have only begun to grasp that dominion which it is given to mind to obtain over matter. Discovery and invention are born of leisure, of material comfort, of freedom. These secured to all, and who shall say to what command over nature man may not attain?
It is not necessary that any one should be condemned to monotonous toil; it is not necessary that any one should lack the wealth and the leisure which permit the development of the faculties that raise man above the animal. Mind, not muscle, is the motor of progress, the force which compels nature and produces wealth. In turning men into machines we are wasting the highest powers. Already in our society there is a favored class who need take no thought for the morrow—what they shall eat, or what they shall drink, or wherewithal they shall be clothed. And may it not be that Christ was more than a dreamer when he told his disciples that in that kingdom of justice for which he taught them to work and pray this might be the condition of all ?

South Australian Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1858 - 1889), Saturday 19 July 1884, page 1

A CHAMPION OF ORTHODOXY.

BY AN ECLECTIC.

Mr. W. H. Mallock is really a very redoubtable defender of orthodox thought as against what are considered the aggressions of science. He has given himself the trouble to inquire pretty deeply into the theories and systems that he attacks, and he has a very forcible way of putting his case. He has at his command the weapons of ridicule and sarcasm, and in his New Republic he has given to the controversial literature of the day by far its most brilliant satire. For my own part, I very much prefer to read Mr. Mallock as a satirist than as a controversialist, and his faults, as I consider them, of occasional unfairness and sarcastic exaggeration, do not seem by any means so conspicuous in the irregular skirmishing of satire as in the formal procedure of regular logical warfare. But in a book that he has recently published he has chosen to discard the comedian, and appear on the stage of literature in the serious drama. He puts his book forward as a weighty contribution, to an important discussion, and it is only fair to take it and deal with it in the spirit in which it is offered. In reading the dialectics of this gentleman I cannot shake off the impression made by his first and most successful book, and I constantly feel myself in doubt how far he is to be taken in earnest. But that my own infirmity in this respect shall not prevent me from giving a fair account of the argument, I will as far as possible quote Mr. Mallock's own words.

The title of the book Is Life Worth Living ? (London, Chatto and Windus, 1879) only imperfectly states the real question discussed. This is—Would life be worth living on the mere basis of the system of materialistic science ? Mr. Mallock's contention is that the development of physical science in our day is assailing the very existence of religion, and that in destroying religion it is destroying everything that gives value and dignity to human life.

Under the old religions, "judged of by itself, this life would indeed be vanity ; but it was not to be judged of by itself. All its ways seemed to break short aimlessly in precipices, or to be lost hopelessly in deserts. They led to no visible end. True; but they led to ends that were invisible—to spiritual and eternal destinies, to triumphs beyond all hope, and portentous failures beyond all fear." Scientific men, or as he calls them positivists, in taking away this final goal have declared that they leave the essential value of life undiminished: "They have taken everything away from life that to wise men hitherto has seemed to redeem it from vanity. They have to prove to as that they have not left it vain. They have to prove those things to be solid that have hitherto been thought hollow ; those things to be serious that have hitherto been thought contemptible. They must prove to us that we shall be contented, with what has never yet contented us, and that the wisest minds will thrive within limits that have hitherto been thought too narrow for the narrowest."

He maintains that religion has always added an element to the highest ideals and feelings of mankind, which leaves them worthless when it is abstracted, and of the elevation thus imparted by religion to the sentiment of love thus writes:—

" They [i.e., the positivists] have imagined that what religion adds to love is the hope of prolongation only, not of development ; and thus we find Professor Huxley curtly dismissing the question by saying that the quality of such a pleasure ' is obviously in no way affected by the abbreviation or prolongation of our conscious life.' How utterly this is beside the point may be shown instantly by a very simple example. A painter, we will say, inspired with some great conception, sets to work at a picture, and finds a week of the intensest happiness in preparing his canvas and laying his first colours. Now the happiness of that week is, of course, a fact for him. It would not have been greater had it lasted a whole fortnight, and it would not have been less had he died at the week's end. But though obviously, as Professor Huxley says, it in no way depends on its prolongation, what it does depend on is the belief that it will be prolonged, and that in being prolonged it will change its character. It depends on the belief on the painter's part that he will be able to continue his painting, and that as he continues it, his picture will advance to completion. The positivists have confused the true saying that the pleasure of painting one picture does not depend on the fact that we shall paint many, with the false saying that the pleasure of beginning that one does not depend on the belief that we shall finish it. On this last belief it is plain that the pleasure does depend, largely if not entirely; and it is precisely this last belief that positivism takes away."

This is very well and forcibly put, and it brings plainly to the front the narrowing of the and spiritual horizon which is caused by the relinquishment of religious faith. His criticism of the influence of "positivism" on morality is equally incisive, though it is marred by a singularly unfair attempt to represent the morality of George Eliot—the most self-sacrificing morality taught by any contemporary moralist—as all issuing in a desire to choose the pleasantest way of life. He contends, as many have contended, that the universal sanctions of morality are destroyed by the theory he discusses. "Suppose that, on positive grounds, I find pleasure in humility, and my friend finds pleasure in pride, and so far as we can form a judgment the happiness of us both is equal; what possible grounds can I have for calling my state better than his? . . . To say that his immoral state was worse than my moral state would be a phrase incapable of any practical meaning. It might mean that, could my friend be made to think as I do, he would be happier than he is at present; but we have here an impossible hypothesis and an an verifiable conclusion. It is true enough that I might present to my friend some image of my own inward state and of all the happiness it gave me; but if, having compared his happiness and mine as well as he could, he still liked his own best, exhortatation would have no power, and reproach no meaning."

The issue of the whole argument is that the scientific theories now in vogue are radically destructive of all that makes the happiness, the dignity, and the moral worth of human life, and that life on such terms is not worth living. This is the argumentative result, but the reader naturally asks does the author also educe any practical result, and if so what is it? Does he regard this as a proof that the theories are false, or, if they are true, does he offer his conclusion as one of absolute despair? What he does is this, he appeals to the moral will as against the merely scientific reason, and points to the haven of religion as a place of escape from all the destructive influences of positivism. Religion is to be our refuge, and not one of its dogmas is to be overlooked. We cannot even do without a hell if we really want to make life worth living. "The Christian conception of morality necessitates the affirmation of hell," and "the denial of hell is the denial of Christian morality." The issue, then, from all these difficulties and perplexities is to be religion. We must, as Mr. Mallock repeatedly urges upon us, "believe because it is impossible." If we ask him if any form of religion, if all religions, have this saving power, he at once distinguishes. For all our purposes he tells us the creeds of the Eastern world are utterly useless. Here, then, for about three-fourths of the great human family there is no salvation. Mr. Mallock, not judging as a bigot, but as a calm, rational philosopher, with one graceful wave of his hand consigns six or seven hundred millions of human beings to despair in the present life and perdition in the future. For them life is certainly not worth living. But their case is not worth the consideration of an advanced theological thinker and champion of orthodoxy. We must be Christian, then, but is this sufficient? Well, no; Mr. Mallock regrets to say that more than this is wanted. Protestantism is utterly useless for the purpose of making life worth living. We are beginning to find out what a sham Protestantism is. "We are at last beginning to see in it neither the purifier of a corrupted revelation, nor the corrupter of a pure revelation, but the practical denier of all revelation whatsoever." " It is religion from which not only the supernatural element is disappearing, but in which the natural element is fast becoming nebulous." "Protestantism, in fact, is at last becoming explicitly what it always was implicitly, not a supernatural religion which fulfils the natural, but a natural religion which denies the supernatural." The upshot of it all is that the only rock of refuge is the Catholic church. The Church of Rome, Mr. Mallock assures us, "is ideally, if not actually, the Parliament of the believing world." She "essentially is the spiritual sense of humanity." Having by this time left philosophy and mere reason far behind, he spreads his pinions wide, and soars high and far. He even ventures to declare that "there is no point, probably, connected with this question about which the general world is so misinformed and ignorant as the sober but boundless charity of what it calls the anathematising church. So little, indeed, is this charity understood generally, that to assert it seems," modestly says Mr. Mallock, "a startling paradox." Paradox seems a term utterly inadequate to such talk as this. We can only deal with facts as we find them, and one wishes to ask Mr. Mallock are, then, the Inquisition, the persecution in the Netherlands, the war of extermination against the Albigenses, but the mere fictions of bigoted and sectarian historians? We cannot obtain his answer to this. But it is sufficient to know that only so far as mankind can abjure science, philosophy, and reason, and positivism, and Protestantism, and surrender all its claims to liberty of thought to an infallible church, only so far will it find life worth living.

By this time the reader is strongly disposed to ask is Mr. Mallock really presenting us with a grave argument, or only, after the manner of the New Republic, with a satire on reasoning, the drift of which is not altogether clear. Our perplexities on the subject are rather intensified than lightened when we remember that when this work was appearing in parts in a review, Mr. Mallock, finding himself referred to as a Catholic, added a note to contradict the statement, and to describe himself as a philosophical doubter. It is not, then, for himself, but for the multitude that this refuge is indicated, and he begs you not to believe that he is converted by his own arguments. Really, this is bewildering. The position of the Catholic is easily understood. So is that of the scientific agnostic. But that of the man who, holding the views of the latter, passionately calls on the rest of the world to become converted to the faith of the former, is one which I for one, certainly do not think tends to make life any more worth living. As against such a position, I would quote the words of an author for whom Mr. Mallock entertains a very high degree of respect. He says :—" There is no example, so far as I know, to be found in all history of men having been stimulated or affected in any important way—none, at any rate, of their having been restrained or curbed—by a mere that was known to have no reality to correspond to it." These words express the belief of Mr. Mallock, and I extract them from Is Life Worth Living ?

Mr. Mallock's relation to the question does not require further discussion, but it might be that there was cogency in his argument, though he has not convinced himself by his own reasoning. It is worth looking at the matter on general grounds. The first objection that occurs to the reader is that this charge against science of destroying morality is not made for the first time. It has been made against every new doctrine that has been preached, and that has elevated the thoughts and broadened the views of mankind. The introduction of every new element into human thought, whether it came in the shape of the philosophy of Socrates or the religion of the Sermon on the Mount, has been opposed by just such arguments as these. These defenders of orthodoxy underrate the vitality and elasticity of morality. Morality is an essential element of human life, and if it can no longer subsist under the old conditions, it has always shown a great readiness to thrive under the new ones. Creeds come and go, in different parts of the world they differ as the soil or the climates differ, but morality is cosmopolitan, and lives as comfortably with one as with another.

But there is another answer that one wishes to make to such arguments as these, and it applies, also, to the demands that are being made on all sides for a resort to a state system of religious instruction. To believe these champions, we have only to establish religion in a position of supremacy, and the happiest consequences would arise to, human life and to society. They strangely forget that the state they desire is not a new one. It is a very old one. It has been tried for very many centuries. For hundreds of years the theological principle ruled human life, shaped or influenced mankind's governments, dictated his education, made of him all it was able to make. I do not now ask that kind of a life was that which it made or him. It is sufficient to bear in mind that the practical outcome of this supremacy of religious over civil life for many centuries is the decision in most civilised countries that it exist no longer. The more civilised the nation the more clearly does this resolve make itself apparent Civilisation and science and liberal thought won their way in the teeth of religious orthodoxy. Orthodoxy opposed astronomy, opposed geology, opposes now the doctrine of development, and has in politics always opposed the progress of liberalism. When we look round on human life as it exists on the present day, and estimate the elements by which it has been humanised, by which deeper, broader sympathy with sentient life has been developed, by which man has been lifted out of the narrow circle of self and made to understand his responsibilities to the race and to all living nature, by which his feelings and moral ideas have been refined, elevated chastened, and by which we have won the condition—imperfect as it is—which we have attained to-day as compared with that of five hundred years ago, how much of all those blessings is due to the growth of the scientific principle which is now denounced as hostile to and destructive of morality. And can we believe that an element which in its progress has brought such beneficial conditions in its train, and which has so powerfully tended to the elevation and development of morality, will as it attains greater influence and predominance extinguish morality altogether?

And now I willingly allow that the scientific theory of life is an utterly inadequate one. So is the artistic idea, so is the social idea, and so, I maintain, is the religious idea. Had the latter reigned supreme over all man's activity and achievements, some of the richest and noblest of these would have been relentlessly stifled. Humanity wants more than either of these ideals can supply. It wants them all, and all at once. Not all in full development in a single individual; this were too much to ask ; but all in the possession of the race. All in free activity, working independently and in harmony, and each contributing what it has to give to the life and progress of man. "Only mankind together," so says a great master spirit of modern times, " is the true man." In mankind, as a whole, there is ample room for all of these ideals and aspirations. It is in the perfect harmony and proportionate development of all of these phases of its nature that the perfection of humanity consists, not in the subordination of all to one, still less in the extermination of all but one, that that one may monopolise the whole of man's being and activity.

Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946), Saturday 11 October 1879, page 6

INTUITIVE RELIGION

Religion has appeared in various forms, but whether Pagan or Christian, Catholic or Protestant, orthodox or unorthodox, it has always been understood to consist in the main of certain beliefs. Sentiments or emotions— such as wonder, reverence, aspiration — were supposed to accompany the beliefs as a matter of course, but their place was subordinate; belief was the essential thing. That was what religion really meant till about half a century ago, when a change began to take place which aims at reversing the order of its contents and obliterating the old sense. What is called the religious sentiment is exalted to the premier place, and belief is relegated to the background, or, rather, dispensed with altogether. The late Dr. Mathew Arnold, for instance, defines religion as "morality touched with emotion," without the slightest reference to belief of any sort. Professor Tyndall says, " It is wise to recognise man's religious sentiments as the forms of a force, mischievous if permitted to intrude on the region of knowledge, but capable of being guided to noble issues in the region of emotion, which is its proper sphere." Professor Seeley, of Cambridge, who is understood to be the author of a recent work on Natural Religion, defines it as "habitual and permanent admiration," and endeavors to show that the sentiment may get reasonable satisfaction in devotion to science, in the cultivation of art, in worship of this great and mysterious universe, even though there may be no Divine reality either within or beyond. Others, such as Comte in France and Mr. Frederick Harrison, his follower in England, have undertaken to construct a new religion on this emotional basis, a religion provided with a church and a form of worship, but with no god. The religious sentiment being, they say, ineradicable, must be satisfied somehow, and if we cannot get a god to worship we must be content to adore the noblest samples of human excellence we can find in the lives of the great and good of bygone ages. This they call the Religion of Humanity. Strange that men should care aught for a religion that dispenses with everything Divine. As Dr. Martineau observes :— " It is a pathetic thing to see how hard it is for the human soul to let its religion go ; to watch how those who, from loss of the Infinite Father, find themselves in an orphaned universe would fain attempt compensation by worshipping either each other or even, while its sacred look yet lingers, the mere scene where He was, and persuade themselves that it is still the same piety, though they stand alone, and no one reads their hearts or hears their orisons." It is not to a religion of this sort that Dr. Martineau invites our attention in the work before us— not a religion of sentiment merely, but religion in the old sense which the word invariably bore half a century ago ; religion, that is to say, in its theistic sense, implying the belief and worship of Supreme Mind and Will, directing the universe and holding moral relations with human life.
 The greater part of Dr. Martineau's work is devoted to an inquiry as to the origin of this belief and its sources in the constitution of human nature. The inquiry involves us at once in controversy with those who deny that we have in our mental constitution any valid sources of religious knowledge at all, and who therefore deny that we have any right to believe in God or to hope for a life to come. The agnostics, for instance, as their name indicates, utterly deny the possibility of religious or Divine knowledge. They admit that we may have notions, conceptions, ideas and what we call beliefs in regard to Divine things, but these do not constitute valid and verifiable knowledge ; they may be, for aught we can tell, mere subjective fancies, pure illusions, such "stuff as dreams are made of." The Positivist takes the same ground as the agnostic, only defining, perhaps, a little more precisely the limits of our knowledge. "We can know only phenomena, he says, things which admit of verification, because they can be seen, measured or weighed ; in other words, he admits that we may know nature or the aggregate of phenomena, but can know nothing whatever of the supernatural or producing cause of nature. Scepticism with some goes further still, for they have their doubts whether we are entitled to our belief in an external world at all. "We may have impressions of it in our consciousness, they say, but that the world outside is really in accordance with the impressions presented in consciousness we cannot by any means be sure. All these varying shades of agnostic doctrine, and more especially the phase of it last referred to, may be summed up in the dictum of J. S. Mill, that "we have cognisance only of feelings and states of consciousness." A doctrine like this, which would imprison us in our self-consciousness, and that so effectually as to deprive us of all possibility of getting into cognitive relations with the essential objects of religious belief, cannot be allowed to go unchallenged by a writer who aims at the establishment of religious belief on a natural and scientific basis. It is examined accordingly, and at great length, in Dr. Martineau's work. The various forms which the doctrine has assumed, all its ramifications, and all its modifications, from the days of Hobbes to Mill and Spencer, and from Kant to Comte, are here passed in review, and subjected to the keenest scrutiny. The result is to show that agnosticism or the doctrine of nescience in regard to Divine things is defective in every way it can be looked at, and that when agnostics insist upon the impossibility of attaining religious knowledge they create an obstacle which is entirely artificial, having no reasonable grounds to rest on, and which may therefore be put aside as a chimera. Dr. Martineau's own theory of knowledge is that known as the intuitional, and certainly it gives us a more satisfactory account of the constitution and range of our cognitive faculties than the agnosticism he repudiates ; for while the one would keep us "cabined, cribbed, confined," within the limits of self-consciousness, as in a mental prison, the other provides for us a means of egress, for it recognises the fact that in the very contents of consciousness itself we have witnesses of the existence of realities beyond. " All your self-consciousness is relative," he says, "and postulates the otherness of the objective term of the relation ; if you arbitrarily deny that postulate, I have nothing to say for it except that it is natural, inherently involved in the very law of thought itself. We have to trust something before we can know anything, and to assume the unveracity instead of the veracity of the primary relations of thought is to proclaim universal agnosticism, and reduce all intellectual procedure to the analysis of personal phenomena. For reasons already assigned we take the opposite course, and accept what each faculty reports as to its corelative term. That report is what we call an intuition." By this intuitive principle or law of thought we find ourselves so mentally constituted that we cannot know one thing without at the same time knowing something else which is co-relative to it. It is according to this law, for instance, that our cognitive faculties in making known to us phenomena oblige us to acknowledge also the existence of things which make phenomena. So with regard to nature and the supernatural — our knowledge of the one impels us to take cognisance of the other. " For all the changes within us and around us which constitute what we call nature," observes Dr. Martineau, "we are obliged to supply in thought a permanent ground. Change has no meaning and no possibility but in relation to the permanent, which is its prior condition ; and pile up as you may your co-existent and successive mutabilities, that patient eternal abides behind and receives an everlasting witness from them, whether unheeded or unguessed. . . . Nature, therefore, can never swallow up the supernatural any more than time can swallow up eternity ; they subsist and are intelligible only together, and nothing can be more mistaken than to treat them as mutually exclusive."
 Having thus cleared the way for a direct treatment of the Theistic problem, Dr. Martineau proceeds to deal with our belief in God as Cause. As we get our belief in God as Cause from the intellectual intuition of causality, we have first of all to determine what we mean by causality. It implies, of course, a relation between cause and effect ; but what do we mean by that relation? Is it merely a relation of customary sequence ? In other words, do we mean that the cause is just that which is customarily antecedent, and that the effect is just that which is customarily consequent ? Causality, we are told by Hume, MM. Kant and Comte and all the psychologists who take more or less an agnostic view of things, means just that and nothing more. In opposition to them all, but in perfect consistency with his own views of metaphysical truth, Dr. Martineau asserts that causality is more than customary sequence in the order of phenomena, and that we only get at the full meaning of the relation when we emphasise it as consisting in action or energy. That is to say, causality implies force or power, it being the very essence of the antecedent that it must be dynamic or operative in order to produce the effect. In support of this view of the case, he points to the fact that the very writers who seek to deprive causality of any dynamic meaning cannot help using language which conveys the dynamic idea. Dr. Martineau goes even further, than this, for he identifies causal energy or force with will. He maintains that we get our first notions of causality by our own exercise of it in willing. "We rest," he says, "on the position that power is known to us exclusively by our own exercise of it— not in the mere muscular delivery of an act, but in the internal intuition or direction of it; that in our intuitive belief of causality we mean that all phenomena as such issue from power which is not phenomenal ; that each phenomenon is determined to be this and not that by an act of will, immediate or mediate ; and that in thinking of causation we are absolutely limited to the one type known to us ; and so, behind every event, wherever its seat and whatever its form, must exist, near or far, the same idea taken from our own voluntary activity. This, it is plain, is tantamount to saying that all which happens in nature has one kind of cause, and that cause a will like ours; and the universe of originated things is the product of a supreme mind, and precisely thus, by no less immediate steps, are we carried by the casual intimation to the first truth of religion."
 It may be a surprise for some of his readers to find that Dr. Martineau attaches great importance to the argument from design. There is an idea abroad that evolution has somehow undermined the grounds of the argument, Paley employed it with much skill and force in his Natural Theology ; but as the principle of natural selection is incompatible, say evolutionists, with the idea of design the argument is now deemed worthless. Dr. Martineau is not opposed to evolution, so far as we can see; he appears to be rather in favor of it. At all events, he is thoroughly master of Darwinian principles, and it is certain that he has not on that account lost faith in design. It may be frankly admitted that our fuller knowledge of nature's method necessitates some modification of the crude conceptions and mechanical contrivances on which Paley based his argument ; but such admission furnishes no reason to conclude that "any expressions of mind which were present to Paley are lost to us."
 In the first volume of his great work, Dr. Martineau, as we have seen, treats of God as Cause ; in the second volume he proceeds to inquire into the grounds of our belief in God as a being of moral perfection, holding moral relations with human life. In dealing with this part of the Theistic problem he takes the same course as he had taken previously, his aim throughout being to find the grounds of our belief in the constitution of our nature. Starting from self-consciousness or self-knowledge, all that is required of us if we would find a pathway open to divine knowledge is that we should trust the veracity of our faculties, and accept what each reports as to its co-relative term. In other words, as we have to trust something before we can know anything, we may as well accept the guidance of our intuitions. Speaking of the trustworthiness of an intuition, he says : — "We have seen what it gives us in the case of volitional experience, viz., an objective causality ; by parallel presentation in the case of moral experience, we shall find it gives us an objective authority ; both alike being objects of immediate knowledge, on the same footing of certainty as the apprehension of the external world. This statement, however surprising to those who are unaccustomed to look into the ultimate grounds of human cognition, is deliberately made. I know of no logical advantage which the belief in finite objects around us can boast over the belief in the infinite and righteous cause of all."
 Step by step as we advance new difficulties arise. Having attained from the inward sources of knowledge the idea of God as the Highest, and having learned from the same source to attribute to Him supreme benevolence and justice, and all the other constituents of Divine perfection, we have now to carry our idea into the sphere of outward things for verification. But as soon as we proceed to apply the test we encounter problems which have sorely perplexed men in all ages;for the scheme of things in which we find ourselves placed is hardly such as we should expect from the benevolence and righteousness of an Infinite Being. "Why is there so much suffering in the world ? To say the very least of it this evil indicates imperfections somewhere. But what business have imperfections in the work of an Infinite Being? Has He not power to bar them out? The general answer is that we have to deal, not with unconditioned infinitude, but with a definite system conditioned by the laws of development, and embraced within some larger project, in whose ultimate perfection all present imperfections vanish. If this be so we may regard the liability of both animals and men to suffer pain as subservient to ulterior purposes of paramount good, and meanwhile with regard to the liability of animals, we may take refuge in the fact that in their case pain is not by any means preponderant, nor without alleviations and palliatives which greatly relieve its aspect. Man suffers more than animals, partly because of his intellectual endowment, and partly because of his moral nature, which, in some of its essentials, would be unmeaning without it. Suffering is also the discipline through which our moral nature gains its true elevation.
 Another difficulty in the moral aspect of the world is the apparent abandonment of human history to the conflict of rude force. This is a feature of history that must be looked at squarely, since the pessimist tries to make the most of it. Selecting historical phenomena of the most perplexing character, such as the extermination of tribes and races, the blight thrown upon superior civilisations by the invasion of barbarian hordes, the long prevalence of slavery and persecution, the baffled struggles of patriotism, and the martyrdoms of crushed faiths, the pessimist wants to know if these and other triumphs of might over right are at all compatible with the belief that a righteous will presides over human affairs. In opposition to this pessimistic view of things, Dr. Martineau thinks it "possible to show that, in human affairs, each lower form of character is intrinsically weaker than its immediate superior, so that the tendency, in the strife of parties, of politics, of races, of religion, and consequently of all historical development, is towards higher conditions and a more complete equipment of right with strength." Under the light and guidance of this tendency, which, may be called a law of history, he is able to show that the facts adduced in evidence of the reign of force admit of a very different interpretation ; and that history, so far from being a record of lost causes and triumphs of rude unscrupulous strength, attests the ever advancing development of reason and right. The section of his work in which he makes good this position is brilliant and impressive. As a contribution to what is called "the Philosophy of History," it is truly invaluable.
 The greater part of the second volume is occupied with disquisitions on three important topics, viz., the relative validity of Theism and Pantheism, the Psychology and Ethics of Determinism and Free Will, and finally the question of a Life to come. Of these three topics the latter seems to us to have most claim on our attention. The question of a life to come is always a pressing and momentous one, and the treatment of it by a thoroughly competent thinker is of special interest at the present day, when eminent men of science are advancing opinions which tend to deprive humanity of its dearest hope. Dr. Martineau's treatment of this great problem is sound and satisfactory so far as it goes, for though he does not pretend to settle it by positive demonstration, the subject not admitting demonstration of that sort, he is able to meet the scientists on their own ground, and to show that they have no right to prejudge the question in the summary way they have attempted. They confidently assert that it is impossible for our conscious life to survive the organic life, and if we ask, why impossible? they tell us the one is inseparably connected with the other; that thought is a function of the brain, and must therefore cease when the organ is gone. Dr. Martineau denies the assumption, availing himself of their own admissions to confute it. Professor Tyndall, for instance, is forced to admit that "the passage from the physic of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable; " that "definite trains of thought, and definite molecular actions in the brain occur simultaneously, but we do not know why." The admission is of far-reaching significance, for if scientists of such eminence are thus forced to confess profound ignorance as to the nature of the connection between the physic of the brain and the facts of consciousness, what warrant have they for pronouncing so positively against the possibility of our surviving death ? In further support of his view of the case, Dr. Martineau applies, with great effect, the law of conservation of energy.
 "In its physical aspect," he says, "death presents simply a case of transformation of energy ; the organic compounds of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen losing their precarious equilibrium and resolving themselves into more stable inorganic combinations, themselves destined hereafter to be partially taken up into new living forms. In crossing the mortal line, the total energy which had manifested itself in the heat and whole 'work' of the body is not altered, though every organ is cold and every function at rest ; part of it has become potential, locked up in durable substances that may remain idle for ages, and part is busy in setting up new chemical arrangement on a vast scale. This latter part is the exact equivalent of the muscular contractions which have gone out, and the nervous tension which has subsided, and, were it tested by a dynanomoter, would give account of these alone. But we should miss in it any element answering to the thoughts, the affections, the volitions, which were the concomitants of these in the living man ; they are unrepresented in the transformations. Consider the significance of this absence. If these mental activities are included in the category of 'energy,' then, since they are not transformed, they still continue, for were they extinct the law of conservation would be broken. If they are not included, if the cycle of energy is perfect without them, then they lie outside the physical world and are foreign to its fates. To treat consciousness as at once a superfluous appendage, and yet a liable partner of the perishable organism, is pure self-contradiction."
 Having thus warded off unfavorable presumptions against the possibility of a future life, Dr. Martineau proceeds to consider the moral aspects of the problem. His argument amounts to this : that the features characteristic of our nature are above the measure of our present lot, and irresistibly suggest an ulterior term of existence. Our intellectual faculties, for instance, are adequate to indefinitely more than the present term of life allows them to accomplish. Our affections also, and our aspirations, reach a depth of intensity far beyond the exigencies of the present, and if they are to be extinguished at death it cannot be said that our nature is framed in harmony with our condition, since it is overcharged with intensities of feeling that run to waste. Turning to our moral nature, we find that its vaticinations are in accordance with those of the intellectual and spiritual, "distinctly reporting to us that we stand in divine relations which indefinitely transcend the limits of our earthly years." The argument, as put by Dr. Martineau, is most impressive.
 Dr. Martineau's work is beyond all question, one of supreme value. It is a great work in every respect, whether we regard the vast importance of the subjects investigated or the learning, eloquence and intellectual power with which the investigation is conducted or the solid and satisfactory reasoning by which the conclusions are sustained. All the most difficult problems which the greatest thinkers have attempted to solve, from the days of Plato down to Darwin and Spencer, are here grappled with once more ; the most imposing theories of the German, French and English schools, and the latest speculations of modern science are subjected to the keenest scrutiny ; the whole question as to what is possible for us to know of the origin and the end of things is thoroughly threshed out, and the chaff separated from the wheat. We have no hesitation in saying that the work establishes its author's reputation as a match for the agnostic philosophers of the day, and we should like to know what they have to say in reply to him.

* A Study of Religion : Its Sources and Contents. By James Martineau, D.D., LLD., late Principal of Manchester New College, London. 2 vols. Oxford : Clarendon Press

Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954), Saturday 11 August 1888, page 4

CONCORD SCHOOL

Dr. M'Cosh, President of Andover College, U.S., recently delivered a lecture at Concord to an audience composed largely of sceptics. The lecture was remarkable for the eclectic spirit pervading it, and especially for the acceptance in the main of the "grand ideas" associated with the name of Emerson. Coming from a Presbyterian divine, who has hitherto been regarded as the champion of orthodoxy, and one of the ablest defenders of it against rationalism, scepticism and even Emersonian transcendentalism, this address will excite a good deal of attention in religious circles.
 "For myself," he said, "I believe with Plato, and, I may add, with the Concord school, that there is a grand and, indeed, a divine idea in the mind, formed after the image of God and pervading all nature ; but I wish that idea in the mind carefully examined and its form or law exactly determined, and it is for inductive science, and not speculation, to tell us what are the laws and types which represent it in nature. I hold, with Aristotle, that there are formal and final, as well as material and efficient causes in nature, but it is for a careful induction to determine the relations of these, and to show how matter and force are made to work for order and ends. I am as sure as Descartes was that there is in the mind a germ of the idea of the infinite and the perfect, but I take my own way of showing what is the nature of these ideas, so as to keep us from drawing extravagant inferences from them. I see, as Leibnitz did, a pre-established harmony in nature, but it consists mainly not in things acting independently of each other, but in things being made to act on each other. I attach as much importance to experience as Locke did, but I maintain that observation shows us principles in the mind prior to all experience. I allow to Kant his forms and his categories and his ideas, but their nature is to be discovered by induction, when it will be found that they do not superinduce qualities or things, but simply enable us to perceive what is in things. I believe, with Schelling, in intuition, looking at realities. I am constrained to hold with Hegel that there is an Absolute, but I believe that our knowledge is finite, implying an infinite, and that this doctrine can be so enunciated as to issue in pantheism. I reject with the school of Concord a sensationalism which derives all our ideas from the senses, and a materialism which developes mind out of molecules; but I am anxious that the physiology of the nerves and brain should aid us in finding out the operation of the laws of the mind. I turn away in scorn from the pessimism of Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann, but I believe they have done good by calling attention to the existence of evil, to remove which is an end worthy of the labors and suffering of the Son of God. I believe with Herbert Spencer in a vast unknown, above, beneath and around us, but I rejoice in the light shining in the darkness. With all unsophisticated men, I see a power above nature in nature, but I reject the doctrine of 'gods many and lords many,' as held by the majority of nations. I am willing to accept the whole body of grand ideas which the Concord school has been holding before the eyes of the Americans for the past age ; but it is because I believe they have a place in the mind, and I am not always willing to take them in the form in which they have been put. I receive with gratitude the whole casket of gems which Emerson has left us as a rich inheritance, but before they can constitute a philosophy they must be cut and set, and they will require a skilful hand to adjust them, and, if they are cut, it must be as carefully as diamonds are, and then only to show forth more fully their true form and beauty."


Leader (Melbourne, Vic. : 1862 - 1918, 1935), Saturday 16 December 1882, page 35

HISTORIC FAITH.

REV. B. F. AUSTIN'S QUESTIONS.
 (To the Editor " Bathurst Times.")

Sir, — As stated in my letter published this morning, I purpose submitting some of the questions which the Rev. B F. Austin. M.A., D.D., of Rochester, New York (U.S.A.), lists in his " Open Letter, to the Orthodox Clergy." I do not take this action in mere idleness, but as interested in the question of the authority of tho biblical records. I offer no apology, however, as I feel convinced that Bishop Long, after his able discourse on Sunday last, will be able to satisfy my curiosity. Here are the conundrums (the term being Mr. Austin's):—

Does the history of religious dogmas warrant a conviction on your part that your present religious belief is a full and final statement of the religious question ?
 Does not history show an evolution of religious thought; and if so, is your present belief likely to be the one you will hold when you reach a higher plane of development — say, 100 years from now?
 Is there any other safe attitude of mind towards the Truth than a perfect willingness to discard error, however dear it may be from its associations, and to receive new conceptions of Truth, however much against our prejudices?
 Can Truth ever be dangerous to humanity? Can error ever profit either teacher or hearer?
 Is not all Truth equally sacred? Is the Truth written in a rock or in man's nature, not as sacred as anything written in the so-called sacred books?
 Must not all Truths harmonise? Can two Truths ever contradict each other? If the Bible and Nature are both divine revelations to man, can they disagree?
 Do you believe the Bible is "the Word of God"?; an infallible revelation of God's will to men ? ; given because necessary to show men the way of salvation" ?
 If so, why was it not given for 4000 years after Adam and Eve fell into sin? Why was the human race deprived of its light and comfort for 4000 years or more ?
 If the Bible is the infallible "Word of God," how do you account for 157 churches and creeds all teaching different and opposing dogmas, professedly from this one Bible?
 Why is there not a single passage in the Bible which claims for that volume the title,"Word of God" ?— or one which claims for the Bible as a whole, divine inspiration ?
 Who made the Canon of Scripture ? Where did the makers get their authority for rejecting some books and accepting others ? Was the selection infallibly inspired? What proof can you offer the world ?
 Was the Council of Nice, which settled the New Testament Canon, convened by Constantine and presided over by him? a man who murdered his father-in-law, cut the throat of his twelve-year-old nephew, and in the very year he convened the Council (325 A.D.) beheaded his eldest son, and put Fausta, his wife, to death !
 Is the inspiration that would come to a Council presided over by such a monster likely to be "plenary," and "divine," and "infallible"?
 Is it true, that to that Council 2048 bishops came, and that their meeting resulted in a general quarrel, and that Constantine, as moderator, dismissed 1730 of the bishops, and left but 318 to settle the question of the "Deity" of Jesus, and tho Canon of Scripture?
 Are you sure the decision of the Council on these two questions; the "Deity" of Jesus and the Canon of the New Testament, would have been the same had all the bishops taken part ?
 Is it true that there were 50 Gospels submitted and only four accepted, and that Luke had a majority of one vote only? What if the bishop representing that vote had been one of those dismissed by Constantine?
 Are you certain that it is the plan and purpose of any Deity to save man from errors and mistakes in his religious ideas and practices any more than in any other department of human thought and activity ?
 Is not Nature's plan (everywhere apparent) to teach us by Experience, and are not our errors and mistakes our best instructors ?
 Are you sure the truth of your dogma of man's depravity, and that it originated in Adam's transgression?
 How many scientific minds the world over, unbefogged by early Orthodox teaching, believe in the literal story of Adam and Eve, and the record of the "Fall"?
 How do you reconcile this doctrine with the "fore-knowledge of God," the "justice" of God, the "goodness" of God?
 Does not the preaching of depravity produce depravity? Does not the doctrine of hell make hell in human minds and hearts? In view of the power of suggestion, as levelled by psychology to-day, is it not criminal to teach the doctrine of human depravity to children?
 Do not the highest educational authorities to-day (and of past days, as Froebel) assert that human nature is inherently good in itself?
 Which of the churches and creeds represents to-day the teaching and practice of the Nazarene?
 If the Bible came from God and is a revelation of His will and love to men, how do you account for the evident mistakes, errors, contradictions, myths, fables, barbarities, obscenities, &c, which are found in its pages?
 Do you really believe that the Old Testament Jehovah, who was described as "a man of war," and whose record throughout Jewish history is that of a blood-thirsty tyrant, is really the same God that Jesus proclaimed as our "Father in heaven" — the same as Faber sings about :
 " There's a wideness in God's mercy
 Like the wideness of the sea."
 Is it true or false that this Old Testament Jehovah ordered the indiscriminate slaughter of the Canaanites: men, women, and innocent babes?
 Is it true that He required, through His accredited mouthpiece, the murder of the Midianites, for alleged wrong-doing of their ancestors 400 years before ?
 Is it true that his altars reeked with blood, and that unnumbered innocent victims were slaughtered and burnt as a "sweet-smelling savor" to Jehovah?
 Were not human sacrifices offered to him in the case of Jephthah's daughter, and Agag, and others, whom Samuel, his prophet, hewed to pieces "before the Lord"?
 Is it a sufficient reply on the part of Orthodoxy to these charges against the inhumanity and bloodthirstiness of Jehovah, to say the Israelites were at that time barbarous and uncivilised (remembering that this Old Testament economy is supposed to have come down from Jehovah's own lips)? Was Jehovah at that time a barbarian?
 Is there not a striking parallel between the histories of Jesus and Buddha; both having their births foretold, both being virgin born, both being heralded by stars, both suffering for men, and both reappearing after death?
 May not this parallel be extended to tho founders of other great religions? As Buddha preceded Christ, is it not evident that the story of Buddha could not be copied from that of Christ ?
 Is it not true that in the Assyrian and Babylonian records there are stories of Creation, the Fall, the Deluge, &c., similar to, and antedating, those of the Bible? Does not this account more rationally for the Bible narratives, than any supposed revelation to Moses ?
 Is it true that the Higher Criticism has shown most of the books of the Bible to be without known date and authorship, in many cases compilations from previous records, and in all cases such as can easily be accounted for as of purely human origin?
 Is it true that a publisher was actually convicted and fined for sending obscene matter through the United States mails, who had only circulated some selections from the "Holy Bible?"
 Did Jesus teach Presbyterian, Methodist, Anglican, Baptist, or Roman Catholic doctrine? How many articles were in His creed? What were they? Did He ever teach Adam's fall, human depravity, vicarious atonement or salvation by faith?
 There is little need to here refer to the many works on the same lines which have a wide circulation to-day. I shall anxiously await answers to the preceding queries before proceeding further with the subject. — Yours, &c,
TRUTH-SEEKER.
 Bathurst, March 28, 1913.

Bathurst Times (NSW : 1909 - 1925), Saturday 29 March 1913, page 6

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