Chapter IV. The Eighteenth Century

THE eighteenth century deserves that the penman who touches its records shall have some virility; for these records contain, not only the narrative of the rapid growth of the new philosophy in France, England, and Germany, where its roots had been firmly struck in the previous century, but they also give the history of a glorious endeavor on the part of a down-trodden and long-suffering people, weakened and degraded by generations of starvation and oppression, to break the yoke of tyranny and superstition. Eighteenth century historians can write how the men of France, after having been cursed by a long race of kings, who never dreamed of identifying their interests with those of the people; after enduring centuries of tyranny from priests, whose only gods were power, pleasure, and mammon, and at the hands of nobles, who denied civil rights to their serfs; at last, could endure no longer, but electrified into life by eighteenth-century heresy, "spurned under foot the idols of tyranny and superstition," and sought "by the influence of reason to erect on the ruins of arbitrary power the glorious edifice of civil and religious liberty." Why Frenchmen then failed in giving permanent success to their heroic endeavor, is not difficult to explain, when we consider that every tyranny in Europe united against that young republic to which the monarchy had bequeathed a legacy of a wretched pauper people, a people whose minds had been hitherto wholly in the hands of the priests, whose passions had revolted against wrong, but whose brains were yet too weak for the permanent enjoyment of the freedom temporarily resulting from physical effort. Eighteenth-century heresy is especially noticeable for its immediate connexion with political change. For the first time in European history, the great mass commenced to yearn for the assertion in government of democratic principles. The French Republican Revolution, which overthrew Louis XVI and the Bastille, was only possible because the heretical teachers who preceded it had weakened the divine right of kingcraft; and it was ultimately unsuccessful, only because an overwhelming majority of the people were as yet not sufficiently released from the thraldom of the church, and therefore fell before the allied despotisms of Europe, who were aided by the Catholic priests, who naturally plotted against the spirit which seemed likely to make men too independent to be pious.

In Germany the liberation of the masses from the dominion of the Church of Rome was effected with the, at first, active believing concurrence of the nation; in England this was not so. Protestantism here was the result rather of the influence and interests of the King and Court, and of the indifference of the great body of the people. The Reformed Church of England, sustained by the crown and aristocracy, has generally left the people to find their own way to heaven or hell, and has only required abstinence from avowed denial of, or active opposition to, its tenets. Its ministers have usually preached with the same force to a few worshippers scattered over their grand cathedrals and numerous churches as to a thronging crowd, but in each case there has been a lack of vitality in the sermon. It is only when the material interests of the church have been apparently threatened that vigor has been shown on the part of its teachers.

It is a curious fact, and one for comment hereafter, that while in the modern struggle for the progress of heresy its sixteenth-century pages present many most prominent Italian names, when we come to the eighteenth century there are but few such names worthy special notice; it is no longer from the extreme South, but from France, Germany, and England, that you have the great array of Freethinking warriors. Those whom Italy boasts, too, are now nearly all in the Idealistic ranks.

We commenced the list by a brief reference to Bernard Man-deville, a Dutch physician, born at Dordrecht in 1670, and who died in 1733; a writer with great power as a satirist, whose fable of the "Bees, or Private Vices made Public Benefits," not only served as source for much of Helvetius, but had the double honor of an indictment at the Middlesex session, and an answer from the pen of Bishop Berkeley.

One of the early, and perhaps one of the most important promoters of heresy in the United Kingdom, was George Berkeley, an Irishman by birth. He was born on the 12th of March, 1684, at Kilcrin, and died at Oxford in 1753. It was this writer to whom Pope assigned "every virtue under heaven," and of whom Byron wrote:

"When Bishop Berkeley said 'there was no matter,' And proved it--'twas no matter what he said: They say his system 'tis in vain to batter, Too subtle for the airiest human head; And yet who can believe it?"

A writer in the "Encyclopaedia Metropolitana" describes him as "the one, perhaps, whose heart was most free from scepticism, and whose understanding was most prone to it." Berkeley is here dealt with as one specially contributing to the growth of sceptical thought, and not as an Idealist only. Arthur Collier published, about the same time as Berkeley, several works in which absolute Idealism is advocated. Collier and Berkeley were mouthpieces for the expression of an effort at resistance against the growing Spinozistic school. They wrote against substance assumed as the "noumenon lying underneath all phenomena--the substratum supporting all qualities--the something in which all accidents inhere." Collier and his writings are almost unknown; Berkeley's name has become famous, and his arguments have served to excite far wider scepticism than have those of any other Englishman of his age. Most religious men who read him misunderstand him, and nearly all misrepresent his theory. Hume, speaking of Berkeley, says: "Most of the writings of that very ingenious philosopher form the best lessons of scepticism which are to be found, either among the ancient or modern philosophers, Bayle not excepted. He professes, however, in his title page (and undoubtedly with great truth) to have composed his book against the sceptics, as well as against the Atheists and Freethinkers. But that all his arguments, though otherwise intended, are in reality merely sceptical, appears from this, that they admit of no answer, and produce no conviction."

Berkeley wrote for those who "want a demonstration of the existence and immateriality of God, or the natural immortality of the soul," and his philosophy was intended to check materialism. The key-note of his works may be found in his declaration: "The only thing whose existence I deny, is that which philosophers call Matter or corporeal substance." The definition given by Berkeley of matter is one which no materialist will be ready to accept, i.e., "an inert, senseless substance in which extension, figure, and motion do actually exist." The "Principles of Human Knowledge" is the work in which Berkeley's Idealism is chiefly set forth, and many have been the volumes and pamphlets written in reply. Whatever might have been Berkeley's intention as to refuting scepticism, the result of his labors was to increase it in no ordinary degree. Dr. Pye Smith thus summarises Berkeley's views:--"He denied the existence of matter as a cause of our perceptions, but firmly maintained the existence of created and dependent spirits, of which every man is one; that to suppose the existence of sensible qualities and of a material world, is an erroneous deduction from the fact of our perceptions; that those perceptions are nothing but ideas and thoughts in our minds; that these are produced in perfect uniformity, order, and consistency in all minds, so that their occurrence is according to fixed rules, which may be called the laws of nature; that the Deity is either the immediate or the mediate cause of these perceptions, by his universal operation on created minds; and that the created mind has a power of managing these perceptions, so that volitions arise, and all the phenomena of moral action and responsibility. The great reply to this is, that it is a hypothesis which cannot be proved, which is highly improbable, and which seems to put upon the Deity the inflicting on man a perpetual delusion."

The weakness of Berkeley's system as a mere question of logic is, that while he requires the most rigorous demonstration of the existence of what he defines as matter, he assumes an eternal spirit with various attributes, and also creates spirits of various sorts. He creates the states of mind resulting from the sensation of surrounding phenomena into ideas, existing independent of the ego, when in truth, man's ideas are not in addition to man's mind; but the aggregate of sensative ability, and the result of its exercise is the mind, just as the aggregate of functional ability and activity is life. The foundation of Berkeley's faith in the invisible "eternal spirit," in angels as "created spirits," is difficult to discover, when you accept his argument for the rejection of visible phenomena. He in truth should have rejected everything save his own mind, for the mental processes are clearly not always reliable. In dreams, in delirium, in insanity, in temporary disease of particular nerves of sensation, in some phases of magnetic influence, the ideas which Berkeley sustains so forcibly are admittedly delusions.

As in George Berkeley, so we have in Bishop Butler, an illustration of the endeavor to check the rapidly enlarging scepticism of this century. Joseph Butler was born in 1692, died 1752, and will be long known by his famous work on the "Analogy of Religion to the course of Nature." In this place it is not our duty to do more than point out a few features of the argument, observing that this elaborate piece of special pleading for natural and revealed religion, is evidence that danger was apprehended by the clergy, from the spread of Freethought views amongst the masses. A popular reply was written to provide against the growing popular objection. Bishop Butler argues that "we know that we are endued with certain capacities of action, of happiness and misery; for we are conscious of acting, of enjoying pleasure, and of suffering pain. Now that we have these powers and capacities before death, is a presumption that we shall retain them through and after death; indeed, a probability of it abundantly sufficient to act upon, unless there be some positive reason to think that death is the destruction of those living powers." It may be fairly submitted, in reply, that here the argument from analogy is as utterly faulty, as if in the spring season a traveller should say of a wayside pool, it is here before the summer sun shines upon it, and will be here during and after the summer drought, when ordinary experience would teach him that as the pool is only gathered during the rainy season in the hollow ground, so in the dry hot summer days, it will be gradually evaporated under the blazing rays of the July sun. As to the human capacities, experience teaches us that they have changed with the condition of the body; emotional feelings and animal passions, the gratification of which ensured temporary pleasure or pain, have varied, have been newly felt, and have died out in different periods and conditions of our lives, and the presumption is against the complete endurance of all these "capacities for action," etc., even during the whole life, and much more strongly, therefore, against their endurance after death. Besides which--continuing the argument from analogy--my "capacities" having only been manifested since my body has existed, and in proportion to my physical ability, the presumption is rather that the manifestation which commenced with the body will finish as the body finishes. Further, it is fair to presume that "death is the destruction of those living powers," for death is the cessation of organic functional activity; a cessation consequent on some change or destruction of organisation. Of course, the word "destruction" is not here used in any sense of annihilation of substance, but as meaning such a change of condition that vital phenomena are no longer manifested. But, says Butler, "we know not at all what death is in itself, but only some of its effects, such as the dissolution of flesh, skin, and bones, and these effects do in nowise appear to imply the destruction of a living agent." Here, perhaps, there is an unjustifiable assumption in the words "living agent," for if by living agent is only meant the animal which dies, then the destruction of flesh, skin, and bones does fairly imply the destruction of the living agent, but if by living agent is intended more than this, then the argument is speciously and unfairly worded. But beyond this, if Bishop Butler's argument has any value, it proves too much. He says: "Nor can we find anything throughout the whole analogy of nature, to afford us even the slightest presumption that animals ever lose their living powers... by death." That is, Bishop Butler, applies his argument for a future state of existence, not only to man, but to the whole animal kingdom; and it may be fairly conceded that there is as much ground to presume that man will live again, as there is that the worm will live again, which, being impaled upon a hook, is eaten by the gudgeon, or that the gudgeon will live again which, threadled as a bait, is torn and mangled to death by a ravenous pike, or that the pike will live again after it has been kept out of water till rigid, then gutted, scaled, stuffed with savory condiments, broiled, and ultimately eaten by Piscator and his family. Bishop Butler's argument that because pleasure or pain is uniformly found to follow the acting or not acting in some particular manner, there is presumptive analogy in favor of future rewards and punishments by Deity, appears weak in the extreme. According to Butler, God is the author of nature. Nature's laws are such, that punishment, immediate or remote, follows nonobservance, and reward, more or less immediate, is the result of observance; and because God is, by Butler's argument, assumed as the author of nature, and has therefore already punished or rewarded once, we are following Butler, to presume that he will after death punish or reward again for an action upon which he has already adjudicated. In his chapter on the Moral Government of God, Butler says: "As the manifold appearances of design and of final causes in the constitution of the world prove it to be the work of an intelligent mind, so the particular final causes of pleasure and pain distributed amongst his creatures prove that they are under his government--what may be called his natural government of creatures endowed with sense and reason." But taking Bishop Butler's own position, what sort of government is demonstrated by this argument from analogy? God, according to Bishop Butler's reasoning, designed the whale to swallow the Clio Borealis, which latter he designed to be so swallowed, but which he nevertheless invested with some 360,000 suckers, to enable it in its turn to seize the minute animalculae on which it lives. God designed Brutus to kill Cesar, Orsini to be beheaded by Louis Napoleon. These, according to Butler, would be all under the special control of God's government. Bishop Butler's theory that our present life is a state of trial and probation is met by the difficulty, that while he assumes the justice and benevolence of God as moral governor, he has the fact that many exist with organisations and capacities so originally different, that it is manifestly most unfair to put one and the same reward, or one and the same punishment for all. The Esquimaux or Negro is not on a level at the outset of life with the Caucasian races. How from analogy can anyone argue in favor of the doctrine that an impartial judge who had started them in the race of life unfairly matched, would put the same prize before all, none of the starters being handicapped? Bishop Butler's argument on the doctrine of necessity, is that which one might expect to find from a hired _nisi prius_ advocate, but which is read with regret coming from the pen of a gentleman who ought to be striving to convince his erring brethren by the words of truth alone. He says, suppose a child to be educated from his earliest youth in the principles of "fatalism," what then? The reply is, that a necessitarian knowing that a certain education of the human mind was most conducive to human happiness, would strive to impart to his children education of that character. That a worse "fatalism" is inculcated in the doctrine of a foreordaining and ever-directing providence, planning and controlling every one of the child's actions, than ever was taught in necessitarian essays. That the child would be taught the laws of existence, and would be shown how certain conduct resulted in pleasure, and certain other conduct was during life attended with pain, and that the result of such teaching would be far more efficacious in its moral results, than the inculcation of a present responsibility, and an ultimate heaven and hell, in which latter doctrine, nearly all Christians profess to believe, but nearly all act as if it were not of the slightest consequence whether any such paradise or infernal region exists.

Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, born October 1, 1672, died November 15, 1751, may be taken as one of the school of polished deistical writers, who, though comparatively few, fairly enough represents the religious opinions of the large majority of the journalists of the present day. In the course of Bolingbroke's "Letters on the Study of History" a strong sceptical spirit is manifested, and he speaks in one of "the share which the divines of all religions have taken in the corruption of history." In another he thus deals with the question of the Bible:--"It has been said by Abbadie, and others, 'that the accidents which have happened to alter the texts of the Bible, and to disfigure, if I may say so, the scriptures in many respects, could not have been prevented without a perpetual standing miracle, and that a perpetual standing miracle is not in the order of providence.' Now I can by no means subscribe to this opinion. It seems evident to my reason that the very contrary must be true; if we suppose that God acts towards men according to the moral fitness of things; and if we suppose that he acts arbitrarily, we can form no opinion at all. I think these accidents would not have happened, or that the scriptures would have been preserved entirely in their genuine purity notwithstanding these accidents, if they had been entirely dictated by the Holy Ghost: and the proof of this probable proposition, according to our clearest and most distinct ideas of wisdom and moral fitness, is obvious and easy. But these scriptures are not so come down to us: they are come down broken and confused, full of additions, interpolations, and transpositions, made we neither know when, nor by whom; and such, in short, as never appeared on the face of any other book, on whose authority men have agreed to rely. This being so, my lord, what hypothesis shall we follow? Shall we adhere to some such distinction as I have mentioned? Shall we say, for instance, that the scriptures were originally written by the authors to whom they are vulgarly ascribed, but that these authors writ nothing by inspiration, except the legal, the doctrinal, and the prophetical parts, and that in every other respect their authority is purely human, and therefore fallible? Or shall we say that these histories are nothing more than compilations of old traditions, and abridgements of old records, made in later times, as they appear to every one who reads them without prepossession and with attention?"

It has been alleged that Pope's verse is but another rendering of Bolingbroke's views without his "aristocratic nonchalance," and that some passages of Pope regarded as hostile to revealed religion, were specially due to the influence of Bolingbroke; and more than one critic has professed to trace identities of thought and expression in order to show that Pope was largely indebted to the published works of St. John.

David Hume was born at Edinburgh, 26th April, 1711, and died 1776. He created a new school of Freethinkers, and is to-day one of the most esteemed amongst sceptical authors. He was a profound thinker, and an easy, elegant writer, who did much to give a force and solidity to extreme heretical reasonings, which they had hitherto been regarded as lacking. His heretical essays have had a far wider circulation since his death than they enjoyed during his life. Many volumes have been issued in the fruitless endeavor to refute him, and all these have contributed to widen the circle of his readers. He adopted and advocated the utilitarian and necessitarian theory of morals, and wrote of ordinary theism and religion as arising from personification of unknown causes for general or special phenomena. He held and advanced the idea, which Buckle so fully states, and endeavors to prove in his "History of Civilisation"--viz., that general laws operate amongst peoples, and influence and determine their so-called moral conduct, much as other laws do the orbits of planets, the occurrences of eclipses, etc. His arguments against miracles, as evidences for revealed religion, remain unrefuted, although they have been made the subject of many attacks. He contends, in effect, that in each account of a miraculous occurrence there is always more _prima facie_ probability of error, or bad faith on the part of the narrator, than of interference with those invariable sequences known as natural laws, and there was really no reply in the conclusion of Dr. Campbell, to the effect that we have equally to trust human testimony for an account of the laws of nature and for the narratives of miracles, for in truth you never have the same character of human testimony for the latter as for the former. And, further, while in the case of human testimony as to natural events, it is evidence which you may test and compare with your own experience. This is not so as to miracles, declared at once to be out of the range of all ordinary experience. "Men," he says, "are carried by a natural instinct or prepossession to repose faith in their senses. When they follow this blind and powerful instinct of nature, they always suppose the very images presented to the senses to be the external objects, and never entertain any suspicion that the one are nothing but representatives of the other. But this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception. So far, then, we are necessitated by reasoning to contradict the primary instincts of nature, and to embrace a new system with regard to the evidence of our senses. But here philosophy finds herself extremely embarrassed, when she would obviate the cavils and objections of the sceptics. She can no longer plead the infallible and irresistible instinct of nature, for that led us to quite a different system, which is acknowledged fallible, and even erroneous, and to justify this pretended philosophical system by a chain of clear and convincing argument, or even any appearance of argument, exceeds the power of all human capacity. Do you follow the instinct and propensities of nature in assenting to the veracity of the senses? But these lead you to believe that the very perception or sensible image is the external object--(Idealism.) Do you disclaim this principle in order to embrace a more rational opinion, that the perceptions are only representations of something external? You here depart from your natural propensities, and more obvious sentiments; and yet are not able to satisfy your reason, which can never find any convincing argument from experience to prove that the perceptions are connected with external objects--(Scepticism.)"

Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu, born in 1689 near Bordeaux, died at Paris 1755, who earned considerable fame by his "Lettres Persanes," is more famous for his oft-referred to work "L'Esprit des Lois." Victor Cousin describes him as "the man of our country who has best comprehended history, and who first gave an example of true historic method." In the publication of certain of his ideas on history, Montesquieu was the layer of the foundation-stone for an edifice which Buckle would probably have gloriously crowned had his life been longer. Voltaire, who sharply criticises Montesquieu, declares that he has earned the eternal gratitude of Europe by his grand views and his bold attacks on tyranny, superstition, and grinding taxation. Montesquieu urged that virtue is the true essence of republicanism, but misled by the mistaken notions of honor held by his predecessors and contemporaries, he declared honor to be the principle of monarchical institutions. Voltaire reminds him that "it is in courts that men, devoid of honor, often attain to the highest dignities; and it is in republics that a known dishonorable citizen is seldom trusted by the people with public concerns." Montesquieu wrote in favor of a constitutional monarchy such as then existed in England, and his work shadowed forth a future for the middle class in France.

Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire, born 20th February, 1694, at Chatenay, died 30th May, 1778, may be fairly written of as the man, to whose fertile brain and active pen, to whose great genius, fierce irony, and thorough humanity, we owe much more of the rapid change of popular thought in Europe during the last century, than to any other man. His wit, like the electric flash, spared nothing; his love for his kind would have made him the protector of everything weak, his desire to protect himself from the consequences of his truest utterances often dims the hero-halo with which his name is surrounded. Born and trained amongst a corrupt and selfish class, it is not wonderful that we find some of their pernicious habits clinging to parts of his career. On the contrary, it is more wonderful to find that he has shaken off so much of the consequences of his education. Neither in politics nor in theology was he so very extreme in his utterances as many deemed him, for while he occasionally severely handled individual monarchs, we do not find him the preacher of republicanism. On the contrary, he is often severe against some of the advanced political views of Jean Jacques Rousseau. He nevertheless suggests that it might have been "the art of working metals which originally made kings, and the art of casting cannons which now maintains them," and as a commentary on kingly conduct in the matter of taxation, declares that "a shepherd ought to shear his sheep and not to flay them." In theological controversy he wrote as a Theist, and declares "Atheism and Fanaticism" to be "two monsters which may tear Society in pieces, but the Atheist preserves his reason, which checks his propensity to mischief, while the fanatic is under the influence of a madness constantly urging him on." For the ancient Jews, and for the Hebrew records, Voltaire entertained so thorough a feeling of contemptuous detestation, that in his "Defense de mon Oncle," and his articles and letters on the Jews, we find utter disbelief in them as a chosen people, and the strongest abhorrence of their brutal habits, heightened in expression by the scathing satire of his phrases. To the more modern descendants of Abraham he said: "We have repeatedly driven you away through avarice; we have recalled you through avarice and stupidity; we still, in more towns than one, make you pay for liberty to breathe the air; we have, in more kingdoms than one, sacrificed you to God; we have burned you as holocausts--for I will not follow your example, and dissemble that we have offered up sacrifices of human blood; all the difference is, that our priests, content with applying your money to their own use, have had you burned by laymen; while your priests always immolated their human victims with their own sacred hands. You were monsters of cruelty and fanaticism in Palestine; we have been so in Europe."

Writing on miracles, Voltaire asks: "For what purpose would God perform a miracle? To accomplish some particular design upon living beings? He would then, in reality, be supposed to say--I have not been able to effect by my construction of the universe, by my divine decrees, by my eternal laws, a particular object; I am now going to change my eternal ideas and immutable laws, to endeavor to accomplish what I have not been able to do by means of them. This would be an avowal of his weakness, not of his power; it would appear in such a being an inconceivable contradiction. Accordingly, therefore, to dare to ascribe miracles to God is, if man can in reality insult God, actually offering him that insult. It is saying to him--You are a weak and inconsistent being. It is therefore absurd to believe in miracles; it is, in fact, dishonoring the divinity."

Those who are inclined to attack the character of Voltaire should read the account of his endeavors for the Calas family. How, when old Calas had been broken alive on the wheel at Toulouse, and his family were ruined, Voltaire took up their case, aided them with means, spared no effort of his pen or brain, and ultimately achieved the great victory of reversing the unjust sentence, and obtaining compensation for the family. If, then, these Voltaire-haters have not learned to love this great heretic, let them study the narrative of his even more successful endeavors on behalf of the Sirvens; more successful, because in this case he took up the fight before an unjust judgment could be delivered, and thus prevented the repetition of such an iniquitous execution as had taken place in the Calas case. The cowardly slanders as to his conduct when dying are not worth notice; those spit on the grave of the dead who would not have dared to look in the face of the living.

Claude Adrian Helvetius was born at Paris 1715, and died December, 1771. His best known works are "De l'Esprit," published 1758: "Essai sur l'Origine des Connaissances Humaines," 1746; "Traite des Systemes," 1749; "Traite des Sensations," 1758. Rousseau wrote in reply to Helvetius, but when the Parliament of Paris condemned the work "De l'Esprit," and it was in consequence burned by the common hangman, Rousseau withdrew his refutatory volume. Helvetius argues that any religion, of which the chiefs are intolerant, and the conduct of which is expensive to the state, "cannot long be the religion of an enlightened and well governed nation. The people that submit to it will labor only to maintain the ease and luxury of the priesthood; each of its inhabitants will be nothing more than a slave to the sacerdotal power. A religion to be good should be tolerant and little expensive. Its clergy should have no authority over the people. A dread of the priest debases the mind and the soul, makes the one brutish and the other slavish. Must the ministers of the altar always be armed with the sword of the State? Can the barbarities committed by their intolerance ever be forgotten? The earth is yet drenched with the blood they have spilled. Civil tolerance alone is not sufficient to secure the peace of nations. Every dogma is a seed of discord and injustice sown amongst mankind."

"Why do you make the Supreme Being resemble an eastern tyrant? Why make him punish slight faults with eternal torment? Why thus put the name of the Divinity at the bottom of the portrait of the devil? Why oppress the soul with a load of fear, break its springs, and of a worshipper of Jesus make a vile, pusillanimous slave? It is the malignant who paint a malignant God. What is their devotion? A veil for their crimes."

"Let not the rewards of heaven be made the price of trifling religious operations, which convey a diminutive idea of the Eternal and a false conception of virtue; its rewards should never be assigned to fasting, haircloth, a blind submission, and self-castigation. The men who place these operations among the virtues, might as well place those of leaping, dancing, and tumbling on the rope." "Humility may be held in veneration by the dwellers in a monastery or a convent, it favors the meanness and idleness of a monastic life. But ought humility to be regarded as the virtue of the people? No." Speaking of the Pagan systems, Helvetius says: "All the fables of mythology were mere emblems of certain principles of nature."

Baron d'Holbach, a native of the Palatinate, born January 1723, died 21st January, 1789, deserves special notice, as being the man whose house was the gathering place of the knot of writers and thinkers who struck light and life into the dark and deadened brain of France. He is generally reputed to have been the author of that well-known work, the "System of Nature," which was issued as if by Mirabaud. This work, although it was fiercely assailed at the time by the pen of Voltaire, and by the _plaidorie_ of the prosecuting Avocat-General, and has since been attacked by hundreds who had never read it, yet remains a wonderfully popular exposition of the power-gathering heresy of the century, and, as far as we are aware, has never received efficient reply. Probably next to Paine's works, it had in England during the second quarter of this century the widest circulation of any anti-theological book, this circulation extending through the manufacturing ranks. In the eighteenth century Mirabaud could, in England, only be found in the hands of the few, but fifty years had wondrously multiplied the number of readers.

Joseph Priestley was born near Leeds, 13th March, 1733, and being towards the latter part of his life driven out of England, by the persecuting spirit evinced towards him, and which had been specially excited by his republican tendencies, he died at Northumberland, Pennsylvania, on the 6th February, 1804. Originally a Church of England clergyman, his first notable inclination towards heterodoxy manifested itself in hesitation as to the doctrine of the atonement. He ultimately rejected the immortality and immateriality of the soul, argued for necessitarianism, and earned considerable unpopularity by the boldness of some of his sentiments on political as well as theological matters. Priestley was one of the rapidly multiplying instances of heresy alike in religion and politics, but he provoked the most bitter antagonism. His works were burned by the common hangman, his house, library, and scientific instruments were destroyed by an infuriate and pious mob. Despite all this, his heresy, according to his own view of it, was not of a very outrageous character, for he believed in Deity, in revealed religion, and in Christianity, rather putting the blame on misconduct of alleged Christians. He said: "The wretched forms under which Christianity has long been generally exhibited, and its degrading alliance with, or rather its subjection to, a power wholly heterogeneous to it, and which has employed it for the most unworthy purposes, has made it contemptible and odious in the eyes of all sensible men, who are now everywhere casting off the very profession and every badge of it. Enlightened Christians must themselves, in some measure, join with unbelievers in exposing whatever will not bear examination in or about religion." His writings on scientific topics were most voluminous; his most heretical volumes are those on "Matter and Spirit."

Edward Gibbon was born at Putney, the 27th April, 1737, and died 16th January, 1794. He was a polished and painstaking writer, aristocratic in his tendencies and associations, who had educated himself into a disbelief in the principal dogmas of Christianity, but who loved the peace and quietude of an easy life too much to enter the lists as an active antagonist of the Church. His works, especially the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," have been regarded as infidel in their tendency, rather from what has been left unsaid than from the direct statements against Christianity. The sneer at the evidence of prophecy, or the doubt of the reality of miraculous evidences, is guardedly expressed. It is only when Gibbon can couch his lance against some reckless and impudent forger of Christian evidences, such as Eusebius, that you have anything like a bold condemnation. A prophecy or a miracle is treated tenderly, and if killed, it is rather with over-affectionate courtesy than by rough handling. In some parts of his vindications of the attacked passages, Gibbon's scepticism finds vent in the collection and quotation of unpleasantly heretical views of others, but he carefully avoids committing himself to very distinct personal declarations of disbelief; he claims to be the unbiased historian recording fact, and leaving others to form their own conclusions. It would perhaps be most appropriate to express his convictions as to the religions of the world, in nearly the same words as those which he used to characterise the various modes of worship at Rome: "All considered by the people as equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful."

Pierre John George Cabanis, born at Conac, near Breves 5th June, 1757, died 6th May, 1808, following Condillac in many respects, was one of those whose physiological investigations have opened out wide fields of knowledge in psychology, and who did much to promote the establishment in France, America, and England, of a new school of Freethinkers. "Subject to the action of external bodies," he says, "man finds in the impressions these bodies make on his organs, at once his knowledge and the causes of his continued existence, for to live is to feel; and in that admirable chain of phenomena which constitute his existence, every want depends on the development of some faculty; every faculty by its very development satisfies some want, and the faculties grow by exercise, as the wants extend with the facility of satisfying them. By the continual action of external bodies on the senses of man, results the most remarkable part of his existence. But is it true that the nervous centres only receive and combine the impressions which reach them from the bodies? Is it true that no image or idea is formed in the brain, and that no determination of the sensative organ takes place, other than by virtue of these same impressions on the senses strictly so-called? The faculty of feeling and of spontaneous movement forms the character of animal nature. The faculty of feeling consists in the property possessed by the nervous system of being warned by the impressions produced on its different parts, and notably on its extremities. These impressions are internal or external. External impressions, when perception is distinct, are called sensations. Internal impressions are very often vague and confused, and the animal is then only warned by their effects, and does not clearly distinguish their connexion with the causes. The former result from the application of external objects to the organs of sense, and on them ideas depend. The latter result from the development of the regular functions, or from the maladies to which each organ is subject; and from these issue those determinations which bear the name of instincts. Feeling and movement are linked together. Every movement is determined by an impression, and the nerves, as the organs of feeling, animate and direct the motor organs. In feeling, the nervous organ reacts on itself. In movement it reacts on other parts, to which it communicates the contractile faculty, the simple and fecund principle of all animal movement. Finally, the vital functions can exercise themselves by the influence of some nervous ramifications, isolated from the system--the instinctive faculties can develop themselves, even when the brain is almost wholly destroyed, and when it seems wholly inactive. But for the formation of thoughts, it is necessary that the brain should exist, and be in a healthy condition; it is the special organ of thought."

Thomas Paine, the most famous Deist of modern times, was born at Thetford, on the 29th January, 1737, and died 8th June, 1809. It will hardly be untrue to say that the famous "rebellious needleman" has been the most popular writer in Great Britain and America against revealed religion, and that his works, from their plain clear language, have in those countries had, and still have, a far wider circulation than those of any other modern sceptical author. His anti-theology was allied to his republicanism; he warred alike against church and throne, and his impeachment of each was couched in the plainest Anglo-Saxon. His name became at the same time a word of terror to the aristocracy and to the clergy. In England numerous prosecutions were commenced against the vendors of his political and theological works, and against persons suspected of giving currency to his views. The peace-officers searched poor men's houses to discover his dreaded works. Lancashire and Yorkshire artisans read him by stealth, and assembled in corners of fields that they might discuss the "Age of Reason," and yet be safe from surprise by the authorities. Heavy sentences were passed upon men convicted of promulgating his opinions; but all without effect, the forbidden fruit found eager gatherers. Paine appears to have been tinged with scepticism from his early boyhood, but it was as a democratic writer that he first achieved literary fame. His "Age of Reason" was the culminating blow which the dying eighteenth century aimed at the Hebrew and Christian records. Theretofore scholarly philosophers, metaphysicians, and critics had written for their fellows, and whether or not any of the mass read and understood, the authors cared but little. Now the people were addressed by one of themselves in language startling in its plainness. Paine was not a deep examiner of metaphysical problems, but he was terribly in earnest in his rejection of an impossible creed.

Charles Francois Dupuis was born near Chaumont, in France, the 16th Oct, 1742, died 29th Sept, 1809. He played a prominent part in the great revolutionary movement, and was Secretary to the National Convention. His famous work, "L'Origine de tous les Cultes," is one of the grand heresy marks of the eighteenth century. Himself a Pantheist, he searched through the mythic traditions of the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Hindus, and the Hebrews, and as a result, sought to demonstrate a common origin for all religions. Dr. John Pye Smith classes Dupuis as an Atheist, but this is most certainly an incorrect classification. He did not believe in creation, nor could he go outside the universe to search for its cause, but he regarded God as _"la force universelle et eternellement active,_ " which permeated and animated everything. Dupuis was an example of a new and rapidly increasing class of Freethinking writers--i.e., those who, not content with doubting the divine origin of the religions they attacked, sought to explain the source and progress of the various systems. He urges that all religions find their base in the attempts at personification of some one or other, or of the whole of the forces of the universe, and shows what an important part the sun and moon have been made to play in the Egyptian, Greek, and Hindu mythologies. He argues that the fabulous biographies of Hercules, Bacchus, Osiris, Mithra, and Jesus, find their common origin in the sun-worship, thus cloaked and hidden from the vulgar in each country. He does not attack the Hebrew Records as simply inaccurate, but endeavors to show clear Sabaistic foundation for many of the most important narratives. The works of Dupuis and Dulaure should be read together; they contain the most complete amongst the many attempts to trace out the common origins of the various mythologies of the world. In the ninth chapter of Dupuis' great work, he deals with the "fable made upon the sun adored under the name of Christ," "_un dieu qui ait mange autrefois sur la terre, et qu'on y mange aujourd'hui_" and unquestionably urges strange points of coincidence. It is only astrologically that the 25th of December can be fixed, he argues, as the birthday of Mithra and of Jesus, then born of the celestial Virgin. Our Easter festivities for the resurrection of Jesus are but another form of the more ancient rejoicing at that season for Adonis, the sun-God, restored to the world after his descent into the lower regions. He recalls that the ancient Druidic worship recognised the Virgin suckling the child, and gathers together many illustrations favorable to his theory. Here we do no more than point out that while reason was rapidly releasing itself from priestly thraldom, heretics were not content to deny the divine origin of Christianity, but sought to trace its mundane or celestial source, and strip it of its fabulous plumage.

Constantine Francis Chasseboeuf Count Volney, born at Craon in Anjou, February 3rd, 1757, died 1820. He was a Deist. In his two great works, "The Ruins of Empires," and "New Researches on Ancient History," he advances many of the views brought forward by Dupuis, from whom he quotes, but his volumes are much more readable than those of the author of the "Origin of all Religions." Volney appears to have been one of the first to popularise many of Spinoza's Biblical criticisms. He denied the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. He wrote most vigorously against kingcraft as well as priestcraft, regarding all systems of monarchy and religion as founded on the ignorance and servility, the superstition and weakness of the people. He puts the following into the mouth of Mahommedan priests replying to Christian preachers: "We maintain that your gospel morality is by no means characterised by the perfection you ascribe to it. It is not true that it has introduced into the world new and unknown virtues; for example, the equality of mankind in the eyes of God, and the fraternity and benevolence which are the consequence of this equality, were tenets formerly professed by the sect of Hermetics and Samaneans, from whom you have your descent. As to forgiveness of injuries, it had been taught by the Pagans themselves; but in the latitude you give to it, it ceases to be a virtue, and becomes an immorality and a crime. Your boasted precept, to him that strikes thee on thy right cheek turn the other also, is not only contrary to the feelings of man, but a flagrant violation of every principle of justice; it emboldens the wicked by impunity, degrades the virtuous by the servility to which it subjects them; delivers up the world to disorder and tyranny, and dissolves the bands of society--such is the true spirit of your doctrine. The precepts and parables of your Gospel also never represent God other than as a despot, acting by no rule of equity; than as a partial father treating a debauched and prodigal son with greater favor than his obedient and virtuous children; than as a capricious master giving the same wages to him who has wrought but one hour, as to those who have borne the burden and heat of the day, and preferring the last comers to the first. In short, your morality throughout is unfriendly to human intercourse; a code of misanthropy calculated to give men a disgust for life and society, and attach them to solitude and celibacy. With respect to the manner in which you have practised your boasted doctrine, we in our turn appeal to the testimony of fact, and ask, was it your evangelical meekness and forbearance which excited those endless wars among your sectaries, those atrocious persecutions of what you call heretics, those crusades against the Arians, the Manichaeans, and the Protestants, not to mention those which you have committed against us, nor the sacrilegious associations still subsisting among you, formed of men who have sworn to perpetuate them?[1] Was it the charity of your Gospel that led you to exterminate whole nations in America, and to destroy the empires of Mexico and Peru; that makes you still desolate Africa, the inhabitants of which you sell like cattle, notwithstanding the abolition of slavery that you pretend your religion has effected; that makes you ravage India whose domain you usurp; in short, is it charity that has prompted you for three centuries past to disturb the peaceful inhabitants of three continents, the most prudent of whom, those of Japan and China, have been constrained to banish you from their country, that they might escape your chains and recover their domestic tranquillity?"

[1] The oath taken by the Knights of the Order of Malta is to kill, or make the Mahometans prisoners, for the glory of God.

During the early part of the eighteenth century, magazines and other periodicals began to grow apace, and pamphlets multiplied exceedingly in this country. Addison, Steele, Defoe, and Dean Swift all helped in the work of popular education, and often in a manner probably unanticipated by themselves. Dean Swift's satire against scepticism was fiercely powerful; but his onslaughts against Roman Catholics and Presbyterians made far more sceptics than his other writings had made churchmen.

During the latter portion of the eighteenth century, a new phase of popular progress was exhibited in the comparatively lively interest taken in political questions by the great body of the people inhabiting large towns. In America, France, and England, this was strongly marked; it is, however, in this country that we find special evidences of the connexion between heresy and progress, as contradistinguished from orthodoxy and obstructiveness, manifested in the struggle for the liberty of the press and platform; a struggle in which some of the boldest efforts were made by poor and heretical self-taught men. The dying eighteenth century witnessed, in England, repeated instances of State prosecutions, in which the charge of entertaining or advocating the views of the Republican heretic, Paine, formed a prominent feature, and there is little doubt that the efforts of the London Corresponding Society (which the Government of the day made strenuous endeavors to repress) to give circulation to some of Paine's political opinions in Yorkshire, Lancashire, and the North, had for result the familiarising many men with views they would have otherwise feared to investigate. The step from the "Rights of Man" to the "Age of Reason" was but a short stride for an advancing inquirer. In France the end of the eighteenth century was marked by a frightful convulsion, but in the case of France, the revolution was too sudden to be immediately beneficial or enduring, the people were as a mass too poor, and therefore too ignorant, to wield the power so rapidly wrested from the class who had so long monopolised it. It is far better to grow out of a creed by the sure and gradual consciousness of the truths of existence, than to dash off a religious garb simply from abhorrence of the shameful practices of its professors, or sudden conviction of the falsity of many of the testimonies in its favor. So it is a more permanent and more complete revolution which is effectuated by educating men to a sense of the majesty and worth of true manhood, than is any mere sudden overturning a rotten or cruel usurpation. Monarchies are most thoroughly and entirely destroyed--not by pulling down the throne, or by decapitating the king, but by educating and building up with a knowledge of political duty, each individual citizen amongst the people.

It is here that heresy has its great advantage. Christianity says: "The powers that be are ordained of God, he that resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God." Heresy challenges the divine right of the governor, and declares that government should be the best contrivance of national wisdom to promote the national weal, to provide against national want, and alleviate national suffering--that government which is only a costly machinery for conserving class privileges, and preventing popular freedom, is a tyrannical usurpation of power, which it is the duty of true men to destroy.

I have briefly and imperfectly alluded to a few of the men who stand out as the sign-posts of heretical progress during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries; in some future publication of wider scope fairer tribute may be paid to the memories of some of these mighty warriors in the Freethought army. My object is to show that the civilisation of the masses is in proportion to the spread of heresy amongst them, that its effect is seen in an exhibition of manly dignity and self-reliant effort which is utterly unattainable amongst a superstitious people. Look at the lazzaroni of the Neapolitan States, or the peasant of the Campagna, and you have at once the fearful illustration of demoralisation by faith in the beggar, brigand, and believer.

It is sometimes pretended that such advantages of education and position as the people may boast in England, their civil rights and social advancement, are owing to their Christianity, but in point of fact the reverse is the case. For centuries Christianity had done little but fetter tightly the masses to Church and Crown, to Priest and Baron; the enfranchisement is comparatively modern. Even in this very day, in the districts where the people are entirely in the hands of the clergy of the Established Church, there they are as a mass the most depraved. Take the agricultural counties and the agricultural laborers: there are no heretical books or papers to be seen in their cottages, no heretical speakers come amongst them to disturb their contentment; the deputy-lieutenant, the squire, and the rector wield supreme authority--the parish church has no rival. But what are the people as a mass? They are not men, they are not women; they lack men's and women's thoughts and aspirations; they are diggers and weeders, hedgers and ditchers, ploughmen and carters; they are taught to be content with the state of life in which it has pleased God to place them.

My plea is, that modern heresy, from Spinoza to Mill, has given brain-strength and dignity to every one it has permeated--that the popular propagandists of this heresy, from Bruno to Carlile, have been the true redeemers and saviors, the true educators of the people. The redemption is yet only at its commencement, the education only lately begun, but the change is traceable already; as witness the power to speak and write, and the ability to listen and read, which have grown amongst the masses during the last hundred years. And if to-day we write with higher hope, it is because the right to speak and the right to print has been partly freed from the fetters forged through long generations of intellectual prostration, and almost entirely freed from the statutory limitations which, under pretence of checking blasphemy and sedition, have really gagged honest speech against Pope and Emperor, against Church and Throne.

HUMANITY'S GAIN FROM UNBELIEF

AS an unbeliever, I ask leave to plead that humanity has been real gainer from scepticism, and that the gradual and growing rejection of Christianity--like the rejection of the faiths which preceded it--has in fact added, and will add, to man's happiness and well being. I maintain that in physics science is the outcome of scepticism, and that general progress is impossible without scepticism on matters of religion. I mean by religion every form of belief which accepts or asserts the supernatural. I write as a Monist, and use the word "nature" as meaning all phenomena, every phenomenon, all that is necessary for the happening of any and every phenomenon. Every religion is constantly changing, and at any given time is the measure of the civilisation attained by what Guizot described as the _juste milieu_ of those who profess it. Each religion is slowly but certainly modified in its dogma and practice by the gradual development of the peoples amongst whom it is professed. Each discovery destroys in whole or part some theretofore cherished belief. No religion is suddenly rejected by any people; it is rather gradually out-grown. None see a religion die; dead religions are like dead languages and obsolete customs; the decay is long and--like the glacier march--is only perceptible to the careful watcher by comparisons extending over long periods. A superseded religion may often be traced in the festivals, ceremonies, and dogmas of the religion which has replaced it. Traces of obsolete religions may often be found in popular customs, in old wives' stories, and in children's tales.

It is necessary, in order that my plea should be understood, that I should explain what I mean by Christianity; and in the very attempt at this explanation there will, I think, be found strong illustration of the value of unbelief. Christianity in practice may be gathered from its more ancient forms, represented by the Roman Catholic and the Greek Churches, or from the various churches which have grown up in the last few centuries. Each of these churches calls itself Christian. Some of them deny the right of the others to use the word Christian. Some Christian churches treat, or have treated, other Christian churches as heretics or unbelievers. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants in Great Britain and Ireland have in turn been terribly cruel one to the other; and the ferocious laws of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, enacted by the English Protestants against English and Irish Papists, are a disgrace to civilisation. These penal laws, enduring longest in Ireland, still bear fruit in much of the political mischief and agrarian crime of to-day. It is only the tolerant indifference of scepticism that, one after the other, has repealed most of the laws directed by the Established Christian Church against Papists and Dissenters, and also against Jews and heretics. Church of England clergymen have in the past gone to great lengths in denouncing nonconformity; and even in the present day an effective sample of such denunciatory bigotry may be found in a sort of orthodox catechism written by the Rev. F.A. Gace, of Great Barling, Essex, the popularity of which is vouched by the fact that it has gone through ten editions. This catechism for little children teaches that "Dissent is a great sin," and that Dissenters "worship God according to their own evil and corrupt imaginations, and not according to his revealed will, and therefore their worship is idolatrous." Church of England Christians and Dissenting Christians, when fraternising amongst themselves, often publicly draw the line at Unitarians, and positively deny that these have any sort of right to call themselves Christians.

In the first half of the seventeenth century Quakers were flogged and imprisoned in England as blasphemers; and the early Christian settlers in New England, escaping from the persecution of Old World Christians, showed scant mercy to the followers of Fox and Penn. It is customary, in controversy, for those advocating the claims of Christianity, to include all good done by men in nominally Christian countries as if such good were the result of Christianity, while they contend that the evil which exists prevails in spite of Christianity. I shall try to make out that the ameliorating march of the last few centuries has been initiated by the heretics of each age, though I quite concede that the men and women denounced and persecuted as infidels by the pious of one century, are frequently claimed as saints by the pious of a later generation.

What then is Christianity? As a system or scheme of doctrine, Christianity may, I submit, not unfairly be gathered from the Old and New Testaments. It is true that some Christians to-day desire to escape from submission to portions, at any rate, of the Old Testament; but this very tendency seems to me to be part of the result of the beneficial heresy for which I am pleading. Man's humanity has revolted against Old Testament barbarism; and therefore he has attempted to disassociate the Old Testament from Christianity. Unless Old and New Testaments are accepted as God's revelation to man, Christianity has no higher claim than any other of the world's many religions, if no such claim can be made out for it apart from the Bible. And though it is quite true that some who deem themselves Christians put the Old Testament completely in the background, this is, I allege, because they are out-growing their Christianity. Without the doctrine of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, Christianity, as a religion, is naught; but unless the story of Adam's fall is accepted, the redemption from the consequences of that fall cannot be believed. Both in Great Britain and in the United States the Old and New Testaments are forced on the people as part of Christianity; for it is blasphemy at common law to deny the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be of divine authority; and such denial is punishable with fine and imprisonment, or even worse. The rejection of Christianity intended throughout this paper, is therefore the rejection of the Old and New Testaments as being of divine revelation. It is the rejection alike of the authorised teachings of the Church of Rome and of the Church of England, as these may be found in the Bible, the creeds, the encyclicals, the prayer book, the canons and homilies of either or both of these churches. It is the rejection of the Christianity of Luther, of Calvin, and of Wesley.

A ground frequently taken by Christian theologians is that the progress and civilisation of the world are due to Christianity; and the discussion is complicated by the fact that many eminent servants of humanity have been nominal Christians, of one or other of the sects. My allegation will be that the special services rendered to human progress by these exceptional men, have not been in consequence of their adhesion to Christianity, but in spite of it; and that the specific points of advantage to human kind have been in ratio of their direct opposition to precise Biblical enactments.

A.S. Farrar says[2] that Christianity "asserts authority over religious belief in virtue of being a supernatural communication from God, and claims the right to control human thought in virtue of possessing sacred books, which are at once the record and the instrument of the communication, written by men endowed with supernatural inspiration." Unbelievers refuse to submit to the asserted authority, and deny this claim of control over human thought: they allege that every effort at freethinking must provoke sturdier thought.

[2] Farrar's "Critical History of Freethought".

Take one clear gain to humanity consequent on unbelief, i.e., in the abolition of slavery in some countries, in the abolition of the slave trade in most civilised countries, and in the tendency to its total abolition. I am unaware of any religion in the world which in the past forbade slavery. The professors of Christianity for ages supported it; the Old Testament repeatedly sanctioned it by special laws; the New Testament has no repealing declaration. Though we are at the close of the nineteenth century of the Christian era, it is only during the past three-quarters of a century that the battle for freedom has been gradually won. It is scarcely a quarter of a century since the famous emancipation amendment was carried to the United States Constitution. And it is impossible for any well-informed Christian to deny that the abolition movement in North America was most steadily and bitterly opposed by the religious bodies in the various States. Henry Wilson, in his "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America;" Samuel J. May, in his "Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict;" and J. Greenleaf Whittier, in his poems, alike are witnesses that the Bible and pulpit, the Church and its great influence, were used against abolition and in favor of the slave-owner. I know that Christians in the present day often declare that Christianity had a large share in bringing about the abolition of slavery, and this because men professing Christianity were abolitionists. I plead that these so-called Christian abolitionists were men and women whose humanity, recognising freedom for all, was in this in direct conflict with Christianity. It is not yet fifty years since the European Christian powers jointly agreed to abolish the slave trade. What of the effect of Christianity on these powers in the centuries which had preceded? The heretic Condorcet pleaded powerfully for freedom whilst Christian France was still slave-holding. For many centuries Christian Spain and Christian Portugal held slaves. Porto Rico freedom is not of long date; and Cuban emancipation is even yet newer. It was a Christian King, Charles 5th, and a Christian friar, who founded in Spanish America the slave trade between the Old World and the New. For some 1800 years, almost, Christians kept slaves, bought slaves, sold slaves, bred slaves, stole slaves. Pious Bristol and godly Liverpool less than 100 years ago openly grew rich on the traffic. During the ninth century Greek Christians sold slaves to the Saracens. In the eleventh century prostitutes were publicly sold as slaves in Rome, and the profit went to the Church.

It is said that William Wilberforce, the abolitionist, was a Christian. But at any rate his Christianity was strongly diluted with unbelief. As an abolitionist he did not believe Leviticus xxv, 44-6; he must have rejected Exodus xxi, 2-6; he could not have accepted the many permissions and injunctions by the Bible deity to his chosen people to capture and hold slaves. In the House of Commons on 18th February, 1796, Wilberforce reminded that Christian assembly that infidel and anarchic France had given liberty to the Africans, whilst Christian and monarchic England was "obstinately continuing a system of cruelty and injustice."

Wilberforce, whilst advocating the abolition of slavery, found the whole influence of the English Court, and the great weight of the Episcopal Bench, against him. George III, a most Christian king, regarded abolition theories with abhorrence, and the Christian House of Lords was utterly opposed to granting freedom to the slave. When Christian missionaries some sixty-two years ago preached to Demerara negroes under the rule of Christian England, they were treated by Christian judges, holding commission from Christian England, as criminals for so preaching. A Christian commissioned officer, member of the Established Church of England, signed the auction notices for the sale of slaves as late as the year 1824. In the evidence before a Christian court-martial, a missionary is charged with having tended to make the negroes dissatisfied with their condition as slaves, and with having promoted discontent and dissatisfaction amongst the slaves against their lawful masters. For this the Christian judges sentenced the Demerara abolitionist missionary to be hanged by the neck till he was dead. The judges belonged to the Established Church; the missionary was a Methodist. In this the Church of England Christians in Demerara were no worse than Christians of other sects: their Roman Catholic Christian brethren in St. Domingo fiercely attacked the Jesuits as criminals because they treated negroes as though they were men and women, in encouraging "two slaves to separate their interest and safety from that of the gang," whilst orthodox Christians let them couple promiscuously and breed for the benefit of their owners like any other of their plantation cattle. In 1823 the _Royal Gazette_ (Christian) of Demerara said:

"We shall not suffer you to enlighten our slaves, who are by law our property, till you can demonstrate that when they are made religious and knowing they will continue to be our slaves."

When William Lloyd Garrison, the pure-minded and most earnest abolitionist, delivered his first anti-slavery address in Boston, Massachusetts, the only building he could obtain, in which to speak, was the infidel hall owned by Abner Kneeland, the "infidel" editor of the _Boston Investigator_, who had been sent to gaol for blasphemy. Every Christian sect had in turn refused Mr. Lloyd Garrison the use of the buildings they severally controlled. Lloyd Garrison told me himself how honored deacons of a Christian Church joined in an actual attempt to hang him.

When abolition was advocated in the United States in 1790, the representative from South Carolina was able to plead that the Southern clergy "did not condemn either slavery or the slave trade;" and Mr. Jackson, the representative from Georgia, pleaded that "from Genesis to Revelation" the current was favorable to slavery. Elias Hicks, the brave Abolitionist Quaker, was denounced as an Atheist, and less than twenty years ago a Hicksite Quaker was expelled from one of the Southern American Legislatures, because of the reputed irreligion of these abolitionist "Friends."

When the Fugitive Slave Law was under discussion in North America, large numbers of clergymen of nearly every denomination were found ready to defend this infamous law. Samuel James May, the famous abolitionist, was driven from the pulpit as irreligious, solely because of his attacks on slaveholding.[3] Northern clergymen tried to induce "silver tongued" Wendell Philips to abandon his advocacy of abolition. Southern pulpits rang with praises for the murderous attack on Charles Sumner. The slayers of Elijah Lovejoy were highly reputed Christian men.

[3] "Capital and Wages," p. 19.

Guizot, notwithstanding that he tries to claim that the Church exerted its influence to restrain slavery, says ("European Civilisation," vol. i, p. 110):

"It has often been repeated that the abolition of slavery among modern people is entirely due to Christians. That, I think, is saying too much. Slavery existed for a long period in the heart of Christian society, without its being particularly astonished or irritated. A multitude of causes, and a great development in other ideas and principles of civilisation, were necessary for the abolition of this iniquity of all iniquities."

And my contention is that this "development in other ideas and principles of civilisation" was long retarded by Governments in which the Christian Church was dominant. The men who advocated liberty were imprisoned, racked, and burned, so long as the Church was strong enough to be merciless.

The Rev. Francis Minton, Rector of Middlewich, in his recent earnest volume on the struggles of labor, admits that "a few centuries ago slavery was acknowledged throughout Christendom to have the divine sanction.... Neither the exact cause, nor the precise time of the decline of the belief in the righteousness of slavery can be defined. It was doubtless due to a combination of causes, one probably being as indirect as the recognition of the greater economy of free labor. With the decline of the belief the abolition of slavery took place."

The institution of slavery was actually existent in Christian Scotland in the 17th century, where the white coal workers and salt workers of East Lothian were chattels, as were their negro brethren in the Southern States thirty years since; they "went to those who succeeded to the property of the works, and they could be sold, bartered, or pawned."[4] "There is," says J.M. Robertson, "no trace that the Protestant clergy of Scotland ever raised a voice against the slavery which grew up before their eyes. And it was not until 1799, after republican and irreligious France had set the example, that it was legally abolished."

[4] "Perversion of Scotland," p. 197.

Take further the gain to humanity consequent on the unbelief, or rather disbelief, in witchcraft and wizardry. Apart from the brutality by Christians towards those suspected of witchcraft, the hindrance to scientific initiative or experiment was incalculably great so long as belief in magic obtained. The inventions of the past two centuries, and especially those of the 18th century, might have benefitted mankind much earlier and much more largely, but for the foolish belief in witchcraft and the shocking ferocity exhibited against those suspected of necromancy. After quoting a large number of cases of trial and punishment for witchcraft from official records in Scotland, J.M. Robertson says: "The people seem to have passed from cruelty to cruelty precisely as they became more and more fanatical, more and more devoted to their Church, till after many generations the slow spread of human science began to counteract the ravages of superstition, the clergy resisting reason and humanity to the last."

The Rev. Mr. Minton[5] concedes that it is "the advance of knowledge which has rendered the idea of Satanic agency through the medium of witchcraft grotesquely ridiculous." He admits that "for more than 1500 years the belief in witchcraft was universal in Christendom," and that "the public mind was saturated with the idea of Satanic agency in the economy of nature." He adds: "If we ask why the world now rejects what was once so unquestioningly believed, we can only reply that advancing knowledge has gradually undermined the belief."

[5] "Capital and Wages," pp. 15, 16.

In a letter recently sent to the _Pall Mall Gazette_ against modern Spiritualism, Professor Huxley declares, "that the older form of the same fundamental delusion--the belief in possession and in witchcraft--gave rise in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries to persecutions by Christians of innocent men, women, and children, more extensive, more cruel, and more murderous than any to which the Christians of the first three centuries were subjected by the authorities of pagan Rome."

And Professor Huxley adds: "No one deserves much blame for being deceived in these matters. We are all intellectually handicapped in youth by the incessant repetition of the stories about possession and witchcraft in both the Old and the New Testaments. The majority of us are taught nothing which will help us to observe accurately and to interpret observations with due caution."

The English Statute Book under Elizabeth and under James was disfigured by enactments against witchcraft passed under pressure from the Christian churches, which Acts have only been repealed in consequence of the disbelief in the Christian precept, "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." The statute 1 James I, c. 12, condemned to death "all persons invoking any evil spirits, or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding any evil spirit" or generally practising any "infernal arts." This was not repealed until the eighteenth century was far advanced. Edison's phonograph would 280 years ago have insured martyrdom for its inventor; the utilisation of electric force to transmit messages around the world would have been clearly the practice of an infernal art. At least we may plead that unbelief has healed the bleeding feet of science, and made the road free for her upward march.

Is it not also fair to urge the gain to humanity which has been apparent in the wiser treatment of the insane, consequent on the unbelief in the Christian doctrine that these unfortunates were examples either of demoniacal possession or of special visitation of deity? For centuries under Christianity mental disease was most ignorantly treated. Exorcism, shackles, and the whip were the penalties rather than the curatives for mental maladies. From the heretical departure of Pinel at the close of the last century to the position of Maudsley to-day, every step illustrates the march of unbelief. Take the gain to humanity in the unbelief not yet complete, but now largely preponderant, in the dogma that sickness, pestilence, and famine were manifestations of divine anger, the results of which could neither be avoided nor prevented. The Christian Churches have done little or nothing to dispel this superstition. The official and authorised prayers of the principal denominations, even to-day, reaffirm it. Modern study of the laws of health, experiments in sanitary improvements, more careful applications of medical knowledge, have proved more efficacious in preventing or diminishing plagues and pestilence than have the intervention of the priest or the practice of prayer. Those in England who hold the old faith that prayer will suffice to cure disease are to-day termed "peculiar people" and are occasionally indicted for manslaughter when their sick children die, because the parents have trusted to God instead of appealing to the resources of science.

It is certainly a clear gain to astronomical science that the Church which tried to compel Galileo to unsay the truth has been overborne by the growing unbelief of the age, even though our little children are yet taught that Joshua made the sun and moon stand still, and that for Hezekiah the sun-dial reversed its record. As Buckle, arguing for the morality of scepticism, says:[6]

[6] "History of Civilisation," vol. i, p. 345.

"As long as men refer the movements of the comets to the immediate finger of God, and as long as they believe that an eclipse is one of the modes by which the deity expresses his anger, they will never be guilty of the blasphemous presumption of attempting to predict such supernatural appearances. Before they could dare to investigate the causes of these mysterious phenomena, it is necessary that they should believe, or at all events that they should suspect, that the phenomena themselves were capable of being explained by the human mind."

As in astronomy so in geology, the gain of knowledge to humanity has been almost solely in measure of the rejection of the Christian theory. A century since it was almost universally held that the world was created 6,000 years ago, or at any rate, that by the sin of the first man, Adam, death commenced about that period. Ethnology and Anthropology have only been possible in so far as, adopting the regretful words of Sir W. Jones, "intelligent and virtuous persons are inclined to doubt the authenticity of the accounts delivered by Moses concerning the primitive world."

Surely it is clear gain to humanity that unbelief has sprung up against the divine right of kings, that men no longer believe that the monarch is "God's anointed" or that "the powers that be are ordained of God." In the struggles for political freedom the weight of the Church was mostly thrown on the side of the tyrant. The homilies of the Church of England declare that "even the wicked rulers have their power and authority from God," and that "such subjects as are disobedient or rebellious against their princes disobey God and procure their own damnation." It can scarcely be necessary to argue to the citizens of the United States of America that the origin of their liberties was in the rejection of faith in the divine right of George III.

Will any one, save the most bigoted, contend that it is not certain gain to humanity to spread unbelief in the terrible doctrine that eternal torment is the probable fate of the great majority of the human family? Is it not gain to have diminished the faith that it was the duty of the wretched and the miserable to be content with the lot in life which providence had awarded them?

If it stood alone it would be almost sufficient to plead as justification for heresy the approach towards equality and liberty for the utterance of all opinions achieved because of growing unbelief. At one period in Christendom each Government acted as though only one religious faith could be true, and as though the holding, or at any rate the making known, any other opinion was a criminal act deserving punishment. Under the one word "infidel," even as late as Lord Coke, were classed together all who were not Christians, even though they were Mahommedans, Brahmins, or Jews. All who did not accept the Christian faith were sweepingly denounced as infidels and therefore _hors de la loi_. One hundred and forty-five years since, the Attorney-General, pleading in our highest court, said:[7] "What is the definition of an infidel? Why, one who does not believe in the Christian religion. Then a Jew is an infidel." And English history for several centuries prior to the Commonwealth shows how habitually and most atrociously Christian kings, Christian courts, and Christian churches, persecuted and harassed these infidel Jews. There was a time in England when Jews were such infidels that they were not even allowed to be sworn as witnesses. In 1740 a legacy left for establishing an assembly for the reading of the Jewish scriptures was held to be void[8] because it was "for the propagation of the Jewish law in contradiction to the Christian religion." It is only in very modern times that municipal rights have been accorded in England to Jews. It is barely thirty years since they have been allowed to sit in Parliament. In 1851, the late Mr. Newdegate in debate[9] objected "that they should have sitting in that House an individual who regarded our Redeemer as an impostor." Lord Chief Justice Raymond has shown[10] how it was that Christian intolerance was gradually broken down. "A Jew may sue at this day, but heretofore he could not; for then they were looked upon as enemies, but now commerce has taught the world more humanity."

[7] Omychund v. Barker, 1 Atkyns 29.

[8] D'Costa v. D'Pays, Amb. 228.

[9] 3 Hansard cxvi, 381.

[10] Lord Raymond's reports 282, Wells v. Williams.

Lord Coke treated the infidel as one who in law had no right of any kind, with whom no contract need be kept, to whom no debt was payable. The plea of alien infidel as answer to a claim was actually pleaded in court as late as 1737.[11] In a solemn judgment, Lord Coke says:[12]

[11] Ramkissenseat v Barker, 1 Atkyns 51.

[12] Coke's reports, Calvin's case.

"All infidels are in law _perpetui inimici_; for between them, as with the devils whose subjects they be, and the Christian, there is perpetual hostility." Twenty years ago the law of England required the writer of any periodical publication or pamphlet under sixpence in price to give sureties for L800 against the publication of blasphemy. I was the last person prosecuted in 1868 for non-compliance with that law, which was repealed by Mr. Gladstone in 1869. Up till the 23rd December, 1888, an infidel in Scotland was only allowed to enforce any legal claim in court on condition that, if challenged, he denied his infidelity. If he lied and said he was a Christian, he was accepted, despite his lying. If he told the truth and said he was an unbeliever, then he was practically an outlaw, incompetent to give evidence for himself or for any other. Fortunately all this was changed by the Royal assent to the Oaths Act on 24th December. Has not humanity clearly gained a little in this struggle through unbelief?

For more than a century and a half the Roman Catholic had in practice harsher measure dealt out to him by the English Protestant Christian, than was even during that period the fate of the Jew or the unbeliever. If the Roman Catholic would not take the oath of abnegation, which to a sincere Romanist was impossible, he was in effect an outlaw, and the "jury packing" so much complained of to-day in Ireland is one of the habit survivals of the old bad time when Roman Catholics were thus by law excluded from the jury box.

_The Scotsman_ of January 5th, 1889, notes that in 1860 the Rev. Dr. Robert Lee, of Greyfriars, gave a course of Sunday evening lectures on Biblical Criticism, in which he showed the absurdity and untenableness of regarding every word in the Bible as inspired; and it adds:

"We well remember the awful indignation such opinions inspired, and it is refreshing to contrast them with the calmness with which they are now received. Not only from the pulpits of the city, but from the press (misnamed religious) were his doctrines denounced. And one eminent U.P. minister went the length of publicly praying for him, and for the students under his care. It speaks volumes for the progress made since then, when we think in all probability Dr. Charteris, Dr. Lee's successor in the chair, differs in his teaching from the Confession of Faith much more widely than Dr. Lee ever did, and yet he is considered supremely orthodox, whereas the stigma of heresy was attached to the other all his life."

And this change and gain to humanity is due to the gradual progress of unbelief, alike inside and outside the Churches. Take from differing Churches two recent illustrations: The late Principal Dr. Lindsay Alexander, a strict Calvinist, in his important work on "Biblical Theology" claims that "all the statements of Scripture are alike to be deferred to as presenting to us the mind of God."

Yet the Rev. Dr. of Divinity also says:

"We find in their writings [i.e., in the writings of the sacred authors] statements which no ingenuity can reconcile with what modern research has shown to be the scientific truth--i.e., we find in them statements which modern science proves to be erroneous."

At the last Southwell Diocesan Church of England Conference at Derby, the Bishop of the Diocese presiding, the Rev. J.G. Richardson said of the Old Testament that "it was no longer honest or even safe to deny that this noble literature, rich in all the elements of moral or spiritual grandeur, given--so the Church had always taught, and would always teach--under the inspiration of Almighty God, was sometimes mistaken in its science, was sometimes inaccurate in its history, and sometimes only relative and accommodatory in its morality. It assumed theories of the physical world which science had abandoned and could never resume; it contained passages of narrative which devout and temperate men pronounced discredited, both by external and internal evidence; it praised, or justified, or approved, or condoned, or tolerated, conduct which the teaching of Christ and the conscience of the Christian alike condemned."

Or, as I should urge, the gain to humanity by unbelief is that "the teaching of Christ" has been modified, enlarged, widened, and humanised, and that "the conscience of the Christian" is in quantity and quality made fitter for human progress by the ever increasing additions of knowledge of these later and more heretical days.

SUPERNATURAL AND RATIONAL MORALITY

THE essential of all religion is supernaturalism, and every religious system therefore involves at least dualism; as creator and created, ruler and ruled. This definition would, of course, exclude Pantheism from consideration as a religion. Supernaturalism is for a rationalist a word of self-contradiction. Nature to him means all phenomena, and all that is necessary to the happening of every phenomenon; that is, nature is the equivalent of everything. To the rationalist there can be nothing supernatural. He is a Monist. There is, he affirms, one existence; he knows only its phenomena. These phenomena he distinguishes in thought by their varying characteristics. To the rationalist the word "create" in the sense of absolute origin of substance is a word without meaning. He cannot think totality of existence increased or non-existent. "Substance," "existence," "matter," is to him the totality: known, and, as far as he can yet think, knowable only in its phenomena.

It has been assumed so generally by religious advocates that some theologic dogma is necessary to every system of morality that the assumption needs direct traverse. It is put to-day by many of those who are attacking secular education for the young that without religious teaching there is no morality possible. This inaccuracy of speech is the result of centuries of supernaturalistic bias. Buckle considers Charron's "Treatise on Wisdom" as the first "attempt made in a modern language to construct a system of morals without the aid of theology." Charron says (Book II, chap. 5, sec. 4) that moral duties "are purely the result of a reasonable and thinking mind."

It will be contended here that every system of "supernatural" morality is necessarily uncertain, arbitrary, and confusing. That moral progress is only made in the ratio in which supernaturalism is diminished.

THE RATIONALIST VIEW

To the rationalist that act is moral which tends to the greatest happiness of the greatest number of the human family with the least injury to any. That is, the test of the morality of any act is its utility. The experience of all ages, collated and classified by the most careful and accurate amongst investigators and profound thinkers, and checked and verified by each day's new discoveries and newer speculations, furnishes each individual with a sufficient but not infallible moral guide. Morality is social; that is, all acts are moral which tend to promote, build up, and ensure the permanent well being of society. Tendencies to moral conduct are transmitted partly by the training of the young by those already with recognised habit of life, and partly by the influence of heredity. In England Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill have been chiefly identified with the modern affirmation of this utilitarian theory, and R. Hildreth, the translator of Dumont's "Bentham," says: "Whatever may be thought of the principle of utility, when considered as the foundation of morals, no one now-a-days will undertake to deny that it is the only safe rule of legislation." Theologians object to the rationalist presentment of morality: (a) That, according to the rationalist, morality varies, or, (b) that at any rate the conceptions of morality vary. That with different persons, therefore, there may be different views of what is moral, and there being no reliable, unchangeable, and definite standard, the rationalist position is chaotic. (c) The theologian asks, who is to judge on each act, whether or not it is moral? and (d) the theologian alleges that the measure of rational morality is the equivalent of mere individual selfishness, i.e. that the rationalist only seeks his own happiness, that is, only seeks to gratify his own desires.

The rationalist answers (a) that the test of rational morality never varies; that the ability to apply the test does vary with the higher education of the masses. (b) That the standard, though not infallible, is sufficiently reliable for everyday life, and that rationalists seek each day to improve the efficiency of the standard by enforcing generally more accurate knowledge of life-conditions, thus developing a sound healthy public opinion. (c) Each individual must judge for herself or himself, and therefore should be well taught, or at least should have fair opportunity of being well taught, and should be encouraged to be well taught. It follows from this that morality develops with education. Immorality and ignorance are inseparable. (d) That if it be selfish to desire personal happiness, knowing that to permanently secure such happiness it is necessary to always promote the happiness of the majority, avoiding injury to any, then the rational moralist must be content to be called selfish. He suggests that if there is anything in the objection, it equally, if not with greater force, applies to the Christian supernaturalist who desires to be eternally happy though he knows that "few are chosen," and that "many shall strive to enter in and shall not be able."

THE SUPERNATURAL VIEW

That act is moral which is in obedience to or in accord with the commands of deity. That these commands are known (a) by direct revelation from God; or (b) through the human conscience, which it is alleged is implanted by God in each individual, and which infallibly decides for each person what acts are right and what are wrong.

"For those who believe in the God of Christian morality," says the Rev. J. Llewellyn Davies, in the preface to his discourses on social questions, "the ultimate sources and rule of morality can be no other than His will;" and Mr. Davies contends that rationalists "can find no scientific basis for duty, no adequate explanation of conscience."

The rationalist objects (a) that the commands of deity must be expressed either (1) to individuals or (2) to the whole race. In the first case the rationalist asks, How is it to be determined when any individual is reliable who professes to be the recipient and interpreter of God's commands? In the second case he asks, Is it conceivable that any such command should have been given to the whole human race without its most complete recognition on the part of the recipients? When an individual claims to be the medium of transmission of divine communication, how is his claim to be tested? How is it clear that the communication was made? that the individual understood it? and that he has correctly interpreted it? If by the quality of the communication he makes, then by what standard is the quality to be judged? The Mahdi claimed to be God-sent; Joseph Smith declared himself charged with a special revelation; so did Mahomet; so did Jesus. How, in either case, is it to be determined whether the prophet is sane and truthful? Is it to be decided by the numbers who accepted or rejected the prophet? and if yes, at what date or within what limits does the numerical strength become material? There are more Mormons now than there were Christians within a like period. Mahomedanism in some countries would poll an overwhelming majority. Buddhism counts to-day far more heads than can be claimed for Christianity. And what is called Christianity is subdivisible into many sects as hostile to each other, though Christian, as the Christian is to the Mahomedan.

There is most certainly no one revelation to the whole race universally admitted to be the revealed command of God. It is asserted by some that the Bible is such a revelation, but the large majority of the world's inhabitants do not now accept it: the largest proportion of the human family have never accepted it. And even of the minority who nominally accept the Bible as God's revelation, there are many, calling themselves Christians, who declare that the Old Testament is now very imperfect as a moral guide, and that it was only given to the Jews on account of the hardness of their hearts; whilst the Jews on the other hand entirely reject the New Testament. Christians are divided into Roman Catholics and Protestants. The latter say, or at any rate in majority say, that the Bible is an infallible moral guide. Roman Catholics deny that the Bible is a rule of faith except under the interpretation of the Church. Protestants are divided as to the value of various versions and translations, and as to the extent to which the Old Testament is to be regarded as superseded by the New. Even in the Church of England there is an authorised version and a revised improvement as yet unauthorised.

(b) The rationalist further objects that what is described by the supernaturalist as the human conscience is not a special faculty, unvarying and identical in all, but that it is in each individual a variable result of heredity, organisation, education, and general life-surroundings, enabling judgment by the individual on the consequence of events; that it affords no reliable clue to what is moral, for the general judgments of public conscience as embodied in public opinion, or in statute law, have varied in the same country in different ages to the extent sometimes of absolute and irreconcileable contradiction. That the individual conscience, so-called, varies in the same individual at different periods of his life and under different conditions of health. That at the present moment the judgments of conscience are on most material points in direct conflict in different parts of the world. Two hundred and fifty years ago it was moral in England to believe in witches, and it was a moral act to kill a witch. To-day it is held immoral to believe in witchcraft; to kill a witch would now be at law a criminal act. Witchcraft is so admittedly false that palmistry, conjuring, and fortune-telling are treated as punishable frauds. Yet from the supernatural point of view the reality of witchcraft is unquestionable, and the praiseworthiness of witchkilling is indisputable (_vide_ Exodus xxii, 18; Leviticus xix, 26-31, xx, 27; Deut. xviii, 10, 11; 1 Sam. xxviii). And in some of the districts of England where school boards are yet without influence and where godless education has been prevented, the pious ignorant folk still believe in charms, wise women, and white and black magic.

One hundred years ago it was moral to trade in slaves, to own slaves, and to breed slaves. Even twenty-five years ago it was moral to own and breed slaves in the United States of America. Pious Bristol slave-traders in the 18th century endowed churches from the profits of their commerce. To-day slave-holding is not only punishable by law, but the theory of slavery is indignantly repudiated by all decent English folk. And yet supernaturalism maintained and legalised slavery (Leviticus xxv, 44-46). Wilberforce, the English abolitionist, himself a professing Christian, noting that infidel France had set its negroes free, asked in the House of Commons, on February 11th, 1796: "What would some future historian say in describing two great nations, the one accused of promoting anarchy and confusion and every human misery, yet giving liberty to the African; the other country contending for religion, morality, and justice, yet obstinately continuing a system of cruelty and injustice?" In the American Congress, in 1790, the representative of South Carolina affirmed that the clergy did not condemn either slavery or the slave-trade, and Mr. Jackson, of Georgia, maintained that religion was not against slavery. On the 4th September, 1835, the Courier, Charleston, South Carolina, reports that at the celebrated pro-slavery meeting held there, "the clergy of all denominations attended in a body, lending their sanction to the proceedings, and adding by their presence to the impressive character of the scene." The rationalist asks, What was it that the consciences of these Christian men said on the subject of slavery only fifty years ago? Even in Boston, Massachusetts, William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist, though an earnest Christian, was shut out of Christian society; and the only building in that city of many churches in which he was at first allowed to publicly plead for the abolition of slavery was a hall owned by Abner Kneeland, an infidel who had been convicted and sent to gaol as a blasphemer. Why for centuries did Christians trade in slaves, if supernatural morality is dependent on the immutable judgments of a God-ordained conscience? Why, if slavery was defensible by supernatural moralists only twenty-five years ago, has it now become utterly indefensible?

In England it is immoral to marry the sister of your deceased wife, and the immorality is so clear and flagrant that any children born of such a marriage are bastardized, and in the event of an intestacy are excluded from sharing the property of either of the parents. In Canada it is moral to marry your deceased wife's sister, and the children are respected as legitimate. A few years ago a great supernaturalist, a leader in the religious body to which he belonged, an eloquent preacher, an otherwise good man, desired to marry his deceased wife's sister. It being immoral in this country he went abroad to another country where the act was moral, and there he married. The rationalist asks, How is this explicable from the supernatural standpoint?

In any part of Great Britain or Ireland it is immoral to have more than one wife, and the law will punish the parties to the union and put disabilities on the issue. In India, under British law, it is moral to have more than one wife, and the Christian law-courts sitting in London will recognise the children of that union. Christian supernaturalists will admit: That good men like Abraham had more than one wife; that specially-rewarded men like David practised polygamy; but they say that this is an old practice, which, though once good, is no longer to be followed.

In England it is clearly immoral for one man to prepare and use dynamite or other explosives so as to destroy the life and property of Englishmen. But in England it is as clearly moral for men in the Woolwich government laboratory to prepare and use similar explosives to blow to pieces people in Egypt, the Soudan, or elsewhere. The morality is vouched by the fact that an archbishop issues a special prayer to be offered in all the churches for the success of the expedition carrying the explosives.

Belief is moral from the supernatural standpoint; unbelief immoral and punishable. The rationalist says that the varying beliefs of the world are the natural result of organisation of transmitted traditions and present life-surroundings; that beliefs are not criminal even when they are erroneous, and that wrong beliefs should be met by refutation, not by punishment.

The rationalist affirms that there are only two logical standpoints; one, that of submission of opinion to arbitrary authority. This, in Christianity, is the position of the church of Rome. The other, that of the assertion of the right and duty of private judgment.

The Christian supernaturalist has, in England, considerably modified, in recent times, his action on the immorality of unbelief. In the time of Lord Coke a Turk was an infidel with whom no agreement was binding. From the reign of William III, until late in the reign of George III, Unitarianism was a crime by act of Parliament.

Until late in the reign of George IV Roman Catholicism was a crime punishable by law. Until 1859 a Jew was considered sufficiently wicked to be deprived of many civil rights. Two hundred and thirty years ago Quakers were immoral men, and as such were publicly whipped.

The supernaturalist recommends right conduct that you may be rewarded when you are dead. The rationalist recommends right conduct because in increasing the present total of human happiness you increase your own happiness now, and render future happiness more easily attainable by others.

These are only a few of many like-charactered illustrations which entitle the rationalist to return on the supernaturalist the weight of the Rev. J. Llewellyn Davies' above-quoted contention.

HAS MAN A SOUL?

THE first step in this inquiry is to define what is meant; by the word "soul," and the initial difficulty is that it is much easier to agree with theologians upon what is not meant than upon what is meant. Sometimes orthodox talkers seem to confuse "soul" with "life" and "mind," and they use "soul" or "spirit" as if expressing contrast with "matter." To at least prevent, as much as possible, misapprehension of our own meaning, we shall try to define each word.

Limiting here the use of the word "life" to the animal kingdom, it is defined to mean the total organic functional activity of each animal. Accepting this definition, "life" will express a variable result not only in each individual, but in the same individual in childhood, prime, or old age. Life is not an entity, it is the state of an organised body in which the organs perform their individual and collective functions. When all the organs do this efficiently, we call this state health; when some of the organs fail, or do too much, we call this disease; when all the organs permanently cease to perform their functions, we call this death. Life, then, is a state of the body; health and disease are phases of life; death is the termination of life. Life is the word by which we describe the result of a certain collocation; but this does not imply that life can be predicated of any or all the components taken separately. By the life of an animal is meant the existence of that animal; when dead, the animal no longer exists; the substance of what was the animal thenceforth exists in other modes, but the organism has ceased. The life of each animal is as distinct from that of each other animal as is the weight or size of each animal distinct from the weight and size of any other animal; and the life of the animal no more exists after the animal has ceased than does the weight or the size of the animal exist, after its body is destroyed. The word "life" used of an oyster, a lobster, a sheep, a horse, or of a human being, expresses in each case a state distinguishable in significance. Life is the special activity of each organised being; the sum of the phenomena proper to organised bodies. George Henry Lewes says: "Life is the functional activity of an organism in relation to its medium. Every part of a living organism is vital as pertaining to life: but no part has this life when isolated; for life is the synthesis of all the parts." Theologians sometimes seek to make contrasts between living animals and what they are pleased to term dead matter. Life is not a contrast to non-living substance, but a different condition of it.

By the word "matter," or "substance," or "nature," is intended the sum of all phenomena, actual, past, possible, and of all that is necessary for the happening of any and every phenomenon.

The word "force" includes every phase of activity. Force does not express an entity, but is the word by which we account for, or rather the word by the use of which we avoid explaining, the activity of matter, or, as G.H. Lewes would write it, the activity of the felt. He says: "All we know is feeling and changes of feeling. We class the felt apart from the changes, the one as matter, the other as force. The qualities of matter are our feelings; the properties of matter are its qualities, viewed in reference to the effects of one body on another, rather than their effects on us. Both qualities and properties are forces, when considered as affecting changes." By the "mind" of any animal is meant the sum of the remembered perceptions of that animal, and its, his, or her, thinkings on such perceptions. Says Max Mueller: "All consciousness begins with sensuous perception, with what we feel, and hear, and see." "Out of this we construct what may be called conceptual knowledge." "Thinking consists simply in addition and subtraction of precepts and concepts."

Those who maintain the doctrine of what is called the immortality of the soul, contend for the existence of a living, thinking spirit, which, they say, is not the body, and which, they urge, will continue when the body has ceased. The burden of proving this "soul" rests on those who maintain and assert it. It is clear that there is no identity between life and "soul;" life commences, varies, and ceases, in accordance with the growth, decay, and dissolution of the body. The orthodox contention for soul must be that its existence is independent of the body, and this shows that soul is not life. Nor is there any identity between mind and soul. All perception is dependent on the (bodily) perceptive ability and its exercise. All thought has some action of the bodily organism for its immediate antecedent and accompaniment. As the soul is not life, is not mind, and cannot be body, what is it? To call it spirit, and to leave the word spirit undefined is to do nothing. Religionists talk to me of my "soul;" that is, an individual soul continuing to exist, they say, with a continuing consciousness of personal identity after "I" am dead. But if a baby two months old dies, what consciousness of personal identity continues in such a case? Or, if an idiot from birth dies at the age of eighteen: or if a person, sane until twenty, becomes insane, lives insane until forty, and then dies: in either of these two cases what is it that is supposed to be the personal identity which continues after death? And what is meant by my "soul" living after "I" am dead? The word "I" to me represents the bodily organism, its vital and mental activities. To tell me that my body dies and that yet my life continues is a contradiction in terms. To declare that my life has ended, but that I continue to think is to affirm a like contradiction. Religionists seem to think that they avoid the difficulty, or turn it upon us, by propounding riddles. They analyse the body, and, giving a list of what they call elementary substances, they say: Can oxygen think? can carbon think? can nitrogen think? and when they have triumphantly gone through the list, they add, that as none of these by itself can think, thought is not a result of matter, but is a quality of soul. This reasoning at best only amounts to declaring, "We know what body is, but we know nothing of soul; as we cannot understand how body, which we do know, can think, we therefore declare that it is soul, which we do not know, that does think." There is a still greater fault in this theological reasoning in favor of the soul, for it assumes, contrary to experience, that no quality or result can be found in a given combination which is not also discoverable in each or any of the modes, parts, atoms, or elements combined. Yet this is monstrously absurd. Sugar tastes sweet, but neither carbon, nor oxygen, nor hydrogen, separately tasted, exhibits sweetness; yet sugar is the word by which you describe a certain combination of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. I contend that the word "soul," in relation to human, vital, and mental phenomena, occupies an analagous position to that which used to be occupied by such words as "demon," "genii," "gnome," "fairy," "gods," in relation to general physical phenomena.

The ability to think is never found except as an ability of animal organisation, and the ability is always found higher or lower as the organisation is higher or lower: the exercise of this ability varies in childhood, youth, prime, and old age, and is promoted or hindered by climate, food, and mode of life; yet the orthodox maintainers of soul require us to believe that the ability to think might be found without animal organisation, and might, nay will, exist independent of all vital conditions. They contend that what they call the soul will live when the human being has ceased to live; but they do not explain whether it did live before the human being began to live. The orthodox contend that as what they call the elementary substances, taken separately, do not think, therefore man without a soul cannot think, and that as man does think he must have a soul. This argument, if valid at all, goes much too far; a trout thinks, a carp thinks, a rat thinks, a dog thinks, a horse thinks, and, by parity of reasoning, all these animals should have immortal souls.

It is sometimes urged that to deny the immortality of the soul is to reduce man to the level of the beast, but it is forgotten that mankind are not quite on a level. Take the savage, with lower jaw projecting far in advance, and compare him with Dante, Shakspere,

Milton, or Voltaire. Take the Papuan and Plato; the Esquimaux and Confucius; and then ask whether it is possible to contend that all human beings have equal souls?

The orthodox man declares that my soul is spirit, that my body is matter; that my soul has nothing in common with my body; that it exists entirely independently of my body; that my soul lives after my body has ceased to live; that, after my body has decayed, is disintegrated, and become absorbed in and commingled with the elements, my soul still continues uncorrupted and unaffected. But not a shadow of proof or even of reasonable explanation is offered in support of any clause in this declaration. The word "spirit" is left utterly undefined. No sort of explanation is given of the nexus between the two alleged distinct existences, "body" and "soul." Not a trace is suggested of "soul," otherwise than through what are admittedly material conditions.

Those who allege that there is a distinct "soul" which is to live for ever should also explain whether or not this soul has always existed--i.e. whether my soul existed prior to the commencement and clearly traceable growth of my body? And where? And for how long? If it did exist prior to my commencement in the womb, how was it then identifiable as my soul? If prior to my body it was not so identifiable, how will it be identifiable after my body has ceased? If the soul existed prior to my body, had it always existed? If yes, do you mean that each soul is eternal? That no soul has ever begun to be?

If you argue for the eternity of the soul, you deny God as universal creator; if you contend that soul commenced or was commenced, you should also admit that it may finish or be finished. If the soul existed prior to my body, had it been waiting inactive, but ready to occupy my body? And if yes, when did the occupation commence? And was the soul always existing perfect and unimprovable? If after vitalisation the unborn child dies, what becomes of the soul? and what is it in such a case that evidences that the particular soul had ever existed? If after birth the baby dies before it thinks, though after it has breathed, where in this case is the trace of the soul? If it should be conceded that my soul only began with my body, why is it to be maintained that it will not cease with my body? If, as is pretended, my "soul" is not identifiable with my body, how is it that all intellectual manifestations are affected by my bodily condition, growth, health, decay? If the soul is immortal and immaterial, how is it that temporary pressure on the brain may paralyse and prevent all mental manifestation, and that fracture by a poker or by a bullet may annihilate the possibility of any further mental activity? Henri Taine and Charles Darwin have very carefully noted for us the evidence of gradual growth of sensitive ability and of mind in children. Those who tell us of soul--which is, they say, not body, nor quality of body, nor result of body, nor influenced by body--should at least explain to us how it is that all manifestations which they say are peculiar to soul keep pace with, and are limited by, the development of body.

What the orthodox claim under the word soul is really the totality of mental ability--founded in perception--and its exercise; dependent, first, on the perceptive ability of the perceiver, and, secondly, on the range of the activity of such ability. Even two individuals of similar perceptive ability may have a varied store of perceptions, and later perceptions in each case, even of identical phenomena, may in consequence have different values. The memory of perception, comparison of and distinguishment between perceptions, thoughts upon and concepts as to perceptions, memory, comparison and distinguishment of all or any of these, the various mental processes included in doubting, believing, reasoning, willing, etc., all these--which I contend are the consequences of vital organisation, commence with it, are strengthened and weakened, and, which I maintain, cease with it--are included by the orthodox under the word "soul." None of the orthodox, and few of the spiritualists, contend that the "memory" of the rat, the cow, or the horse is to survive the decease of rat, cow, and horse. Scarcely anyone is hardy enough to maintain that the ghost of the thinking sheep persists with active thought after the slaughterhouse and dinner of roast mutton. Yet if one range of animal mental ability is to be classified as immortal, why not all? Why claim immortality for the "soul" of the idiot, and deny it to the thought, memory, reason, faith, doubt, and will of the retriever? None claim immortality for the brightness of the steel when oxidation has so disfigured the surface that rust has superseded all brilliance; none claim immortality for the sweet odor of the rose when the vegetable mass emits only unpleasant smells and exhibits unsightly rottenness; none claim immortality for the color of the beautiful lily decayed and withered away. Those who claim immortality for what they call the "soul" should first clearly define it, and then at least try to prove that the attributes they claim for soul are not the attributes of what we know as living body.

The word "mind" describes all the possible states of consciousness of each animal; but as after its death there is no longer in that case any continuing animal, so neither is there any possibly continuing mind. But it is only in connexion with the mental and vital processes that there is any shadow of attempt by theologians to in any fashion identify soul, and therefore when life has ceased and consciousness is consequently no longer, there is not even the faintest trace of aught remaining to which the word "soul" can with any reasonableness be applied from the theological standpoint. Dr. John Drysdale says: "The mind, looked at in its complete state, in its unity, personality, obedience to laws of its own, apparent spontaneity of action and controlling power over the body, and in the total dissimilarity of all its phenomena from all known bodily and material effects, has been almost universally ascribed to the working of an immaterial substance added to organised matter. But such a substance is quite as hypothetical as the potentiality of mind lying in matter, and hence it explains nothing; whereas, if we grant the possibility of consciousness as a concomitant of certain material changes, the peculiarities of mind as an action or function require no further explanation than the conditions of those changes;" and, he adds, "it may be held proved in physiology that for every feeling, every thought, and every volition, a correlative change takes place in the nerve-matter, and, given this special change in every respect identical, a similar state of circumstances will always arise; that this process occupies time, that it requires a due supply of oxygenated blood, that it is interrupted or destroyed by whatever impairs the integrity of the nerve-matter, and, lastly, it is exhausted by its own activity and requires rest."

"If," says the same writer, "the mind is merely a function of the material organism, it must necessarily perish with it. If mind and life are a compound of matter and some diffused ethereal spiritual substance, then at death a personal continuance is equally impossible. If mind is a spirit at all, it must be a definite, indivisible piece of spiritual substance; and if naturally indestructible and immortal as the personal human individual, it must be equally so in all individuals which display mind. Now, it is too late in the day to require a single sentence in proof of the existence of mind in animals; therefore, if the possession of mind naturally involves the immortality of the soul, the latter must be shared equally with the animals who certainly also possess the conscious Ego;" and Dr. J. Drysdale maintains that mind is essentially of the same nature in animals and in man, although of higher and wider scope in the latter, and that in all cases mind is a function of organised matter and necessarily perishes when that organisation ceases.

In all animals the living brain is essential to all phases of thought. The thought-ability of any animal is always in precise proportion to the perfection and activity of the brain. The power of developing thought grows, diminishes, and ceases, the cessation always being complete when the brain ceases to perform its vital functions. If the brain is injured the thought-ability is impaired, the thinking deranged. Yet who to-day would think it wise or necessary, with evidence of aberration of thought resulting from local injury, to treat it as a case of demoniacal possession?

One other difficulty in the discussion of this question is that new discoveries are not taken into account by our spiritual antagonists in estimating the value of old formulas. Two thousand three hundred years ago demonology had not yet passed into the region of fable. Socrates spoke of the soul as if it had been specially infused into the body by the Gods, and declared "that the soul which resides in thy body can govern it at pleasure;" but such discoveries have since been made in physiology and psychology that were Socrates alive to-day Aristodemus might now well make answers to the old Greek sage which were then impossible. Plato, too, contended for the immortality of the human soul, but under cover of this line of reasoning he also offered proof that the world was an animal and had a like soul. Plato's orthodox admirers today carefully avoid Plato's presentation of the earth as an animal with an immortal soul. David Masson attributes to Auguste Comte the first open and clear adoption of a position on the soul question which rendered evasion difficult. "Previous physiological psychologists, including phrenologists, had generally shrunk from the extreme to which their opponents had said they were committed. They had kept up the time-honored distinction between mind and body; they had used language implying a recognition of some unknown anima, or vital principle, concealed behind the animal organism; some of them had even been anxious to vindicate their belief in the immateriality or transcendental nature of this principle. But Comte ended all that shilly-shallying. Mind, he said, is the name for the functions of brain and nerve; mind is brain and nerve. This destroyed, that ceases."

In his "Enigmas of Life" William Rathbone Greg concedes that "visible and ascertainable phenomena give no countenance to the theory of a future or spiritual life." He urges that a sense of identity, a conscious continuity of the Ego, is an essential element of the doctrine, and Mr. Greg speaks of this as accounting for "the astonishing doctrine of the resurrection of the body which has so strangely and thoughtlessly found its way into the popular creed. The primitive parents or congealers of that creed--whoever they may have been--innocent of all science, and oddly muddled in their metaphysics, but resolute in their conviction that the same persons who died here should be, in very deed, the same who should rise hereafter--systematised their anticipations into the notion that the grave should give up its actual inmates for their ordained transformation and their allotted fate. The current notion of the approaching end of the world, no doubt helped to blind them to the vulnerability, and indeed the fatal self-contradictions, of the form in which they had embodied their faith. Of course, if they had taken time to think, or if the Fathers of the Church had been more given to thinking in the rigid meaning of the word, they would have discovered that this special form rendered that faith absurd, indefensible, and virtually impossible. They did not know, or they never considered, that the buried body soon dissolves into its elements, which, in the course of generations and centuries, pass into other combinations, form part of other living creatures, feed and constitute countless organisations one after another; so that when the graves are summoned 'to give up the dead that are in them,' and the sea 'the dead that are in it,' they will be called on to surrender what they no longer possess, and what no supernatural power can give back to them. It never occurred to those creed makers, who thus took upon themselves to carnalise an idea into a fact, that for every atom that once went to make up the body they committed to the earth, there would be scores of claimants before the Great Day of Account; and that even Omnipotence could scarcely be expected to make the same component part be in two or ten places at once. The original human frames, therefore, _could not be had when_, as supposed, they would be wanted." And in his "Creed of Christendom" he writes: "Appearances all testify to the reality and permanence of death; a fearful onus of proof lies upon those who contend that these appearances are deceptive. When we interrogate the vast universe of organisation, we see not simply life and death, but gradually growing life and gradually approaching death. After death, all that we have ever _known_ of man is gone; all we have ever seen of him is dissolved into its component elements; it does not _disappear_ so as to leave us at liberty to imagine that it may have gone to exist elsewhere, but is actually used up as materials for other purposes." There is one alleged "indication of immortality" which Mr. Greg twice repeats, and to which we will offer a word of reply. His statement is as follows:

"I refer to that _spontaneous_, irresistible, and, perhaps, nearly universal, feeling we all experience on watching, just after death, the body of someone we have intimately known; the conviction, I mean a sense, a consciousness, an impression _which you have to fight against if you wish to disbelieve or shake it off_ that the form lying there is not the Ego you have loved. It does not produce the effect of that person's personality. You miss the Ego though you have the frame. The visible Presence only makes more vivid the sense of actual Absence. Every feature, every substance, every phenomenon is there, and is unchanged. You have seen the eyes as firmly closed, the limbs as motionless, the breath almost as imperceptible, the face as fixed and expressionless before, in sleep or in trance, without the same peculiar sensation. The impression made is indefinable, and is not the result of any conscious process of thought--that that body, quite unchanged to the eye, is not, and never was your friend--the Ego you were conversant with; and that his or her individuality was not the garment before you _plus_ a galvanic current; that, in fact, the Ego you knew once and seek still, _was not that--is not there_. And if not there, it must be _elsewhere or nowhere_, and 'nowhere,' I believe, modern science will not suffer us to predicate of either force or substance that once has been."

Undoubtedly the dead body is not the living human being you loved. It has ceased to live. Every phenomenon is not there unchanged, the whole of the vital phenomena are wanting; there is a complete change so far as organic functional activity is concerned. Even the body itself is not quite unchanged to the eye. There is in most cases, and especially to skilled vision, an easily detectible difference between a living man and a corpse. To say that the Ego is not there, and if not there must be elsewhere, is to use an absurd phrase. Take an ordinary drinking-glass and crush it into powder, or shatter it into fragments, the drinking-glass is not there, nor is it elsewhere; the combination which made up drinking-glass no longer exists. Ego does not denote body only, it denotes living body with personal characteristics. Take a bright steel blade, let the surface be oxidised, and the brightness is no longer there, nor is it elsewhere; it is only that the conditions which were resultant in brightness no longer exist.

It used to be the fashion to argue at one time as if the majority of, if not the whole of, the human race accepted, without doubt, the dogma of the immortality of the soul; but such a contention is to-day utterly impossible. Strauss, Buechner, Haeckel, Clifford, and a host of others, take ground as representatives of thousands of heterodox Europeans, and even in the pulpit itself orthodoxy is suspect. The Reverend Edward White declares the "natural eternity of souls as a positive dogma to be destitute of all evidence from nature or revelation;" and he refers to "scientific biologists of the first rank, who, after careful study of the phenomena of brain-production and mind-evolution throughout living nature, and of the phenomena of waste and destruction in unfinished organisms, declare it to be the height of absurdity to maintain" this immortality doctrine; and Mr. White reminds us that 480 millions of Buddhists on the continent of Asia all believe in the "extinction of individual being." It is only fair, however, to add here that scholars still dispute as to whether or not "nirvana" should be read as meaning annihilation.

A quotation from Dr. Henry Maudsley may fitly terminate this brief essay: "To those who cannot conceive that any organisation of matter, however complete, should be capable of such exalted functions as those which are called mental, is it really more conceivable that any organisation of matter can be the mechanical instrument of the complex manifestations of an immaterial mind? It is strangely overlooked by many who write on this matter that the brain is not a dead instrument, but a living organ, with functions of a higher kind than those of any other bodily organ, insomuch as its organic nature and structure far surpass those of any other organs. What, then, are those functions if they are not mental? No one thinks it necessary to assume an immaterial liver behind the hepatic structure, in order to account for its functions. But so far as the nature of nerve and the complex structure of the cerebral convolutions exceed in dignity the hepatic elements and structure, so far must the material functions of the brain exceed those of the liver. Men are not sufficiently careful to ponder the wonderful operations of which matter is capable, or to reflect on the changes effected by it which are continually before their eyes. Are the properties of a chemical compound less mysterious essentially because of the familiarity with which we handle them? Consider the seed dropped into the ground; it swells with germinating energy, bursts its integuments, sends upwards a delicate shoot, which grows into a stem, putting forth in due season its leaves and flowers. And yet all these processes are operations of matter, for it is not thought necessary to assume an immaterial or spiritual plant which effects its purposes through the agency of the material structure which we observe. Surely there are here exhibited properties of matter wonderful enough to satisfy anyone of the powers that may be inherent in it. Are we, then, to believe that the highest and most complex development of organic structure is not capable of even more wonderful operations? Would you have the human body, which is a microcosm containing all the forms and powers of matter, organised in the most delicate and complex manner, to possess lower powers than those forms of matter exhibit separately in nature? Trace the gradual development of the nervous system through the animal series, from its first germ to its most complex evolution, and let it be declared at what point it suddenly loses all its inherent properties as living structure, and becomes the mere mechanical instrument of a spiritual entity. In what animal, or in what class of animals, does the immaterial principle abruptly intervene, and supersede the agency of matter, becoming the entirely distinct cause of a similar, though more exalted, order of phenomena? The burden of proving that the _deus ex machina_ of a spiritual entity intervenes somewhere, and where it intervenes, clearly lies upon those who make the assertion, or who need the hypothesis. They are not justified in arbitrarily fabricating a hypothesis entirely inconsistent with experience of the orderly development of nature, which even postulates a domain of nature that human senses cannot take any cognisance of, and in then calling upon those who reject their assumption to disprove it."

IS THERE A GOD

THE initial difficulty is in defining the word "God." It is equally impossible to intelligently affirm or deny any proposition unless there is at least an understanding, on the part of the affirmer or denier, of the meaning of every word used in the proposition. To me the word "God" standing alone is a word without meaning. I find the word repeatedly used even by men of education and refinement, and who have won reputation in special directions of research, rather to illustrate their ignorance than to explain their knowledge. Various sects of Theists do affix arbitrary meanings to the word "God," but often these meanings are in their terms selfcontradictory, and usually the definition maintained by one sect of Theists more or less contradicts the definition put forward by some other sect. With the Unitarian Jew, the Trinitarian Christian, the old Polytheistic Greek, the modern Universalist, or the Calvinist, the word "God" will in each case be intended to express a proposition absolutely irreconcilable with those of the other sects. In this brief essay, which can by no means be taken as a complete answer to the question which forms its title, I will for the sake of argument take the explanation of the word "God" as given with great carefulness by Dr. Robert Flint, Professor of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh, in two works directed by him against Atheism. He defines God ("Antitheistic Theories," p. 1,) as "a supreme, self-existent, omnipotent, omniscient, righteous and benevolent being who is distinct from and independent of what he has created;" ("Theism," p. 1,) as "a self-existent, eternal being, infinite in power and wisdom, and perfect in holiness and goodness, the maker of heaven and earth;" and (p. 18,) "the creator and preserver of nature, the governor of nations, the heavenly father and judge of man;" (p. 18,) "one infinite personal;" (p. 42,) "the one infinite" being" who "is a person--is a free and loving intelligence;" (p. 59,) "the creator, preserver, and ruler of all finite beings;" (p. 65,) "not only the ultimate cause, but the supreme intelligence;" and (p. 74,) "the supreme moral intelligence is an unchangeable being." That is, in the above statements "God" is defined by Professor Flint to be: _A supreme, self-existent, the one infinite, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, unchangeable, righteous, and benevolent, personal being, creator and preserver of nature, maker of heaven and earth; who is distinct from and independent of what he has created, who is a free, loving, supreme, moral intelligence, the governor of nations, the heavenly father and judge of man._

The two volumes, published by William Blackwood and Son, from which this definition has been collected, form the Baird Lectures in favor of Theism for the years 1876 and 1877. Professor Flint has a well-deserved reputation as a clear thinker and writer of excellent ability as a Theistic advocate. I trust, therefore, I am not acting unfairly in criticising his definition. My first objection is, that to me the definition is on the face of it so self-contradictory that a negative answer must be given to the question, Is there such a God? The association of the word "supreme" with the word "infinite" as descriptive of a "personal being" is utterly confusing. "Supreme" can only be used as expressing comparison between the being to whom it is applied, and some other being with whom that "supreme" being is assumed to have possible points of comparison and is then compared. But "the one infinite being" cannot be compared with any other infinite being, for the wording of the definition excludes the possibility of any other infinite being, nor could the infinite being--for the word "one" may be dispensed with, as two infinite beings are unthinkable--be compared with any finite being. "Supreme" is an adjective of relation and is totally inapplicable to "the infinite." It can only be applied to one of two or more finites. "Supreme" with "omnipotent" is pleonastic. If it is said that the word "supreme" is now properly used to distinguish between the Creator and the created, the governor and that which is governed, then it is clear that the word "supreme" would have been an inapplicable word of description to "the one infinite being" prior to creation, and this would involve the declaration that the exact description of the unchangeable has been properly changed, which is an absurdity. The definition affirms "creation," that is, affirms "God" existing prior to such creation--i.e., then the sole existence; but the word "supreme" could not then apply. An existence cannot be described as "highest" when there is none other; therefore, none less high. The word "supreme" as a word of description is absolutely contradictory of Monism. Yet Professor Flint himself says ("Anti-Theistic Theories," p. 132), "that reason, when in quest of an ultimate explanation of things, imperatively demands unity, and that only a Monistic theory of the universe can deserve the name of a philosophy." Professor Flint has given no explanation of the meaning he attaches to the word "self-existent." Nor, indeed, has he given any explanation of any of his words of description. By self-existent I mean that to which you cannot conceive antecedent. By "infinite" I mean immeasurable, illimitable, indefinable; i.e., that of which I cannot predicate extension, or limitation of extension. By "eternal" I mean illimitable, indefinable, i.e., that of which I cannot predicate limitation of duration or progression of duration.

"Nature" is with me the same as "universe," the same as "existence;" i.e., I mean by it: The totality of all phenomena, and of all that has been, is, or may be necessary for the happening of each and every phenomenon. It is from the very terms of the definition, self-existent, eternal, infinite. I cannot think of nature commencement, discontinuity, or creation. I am unable to think backward to the possibility of existence not having been. I cannot think forward to the possibility of existence ceasing to be. I have no meaning for the word "create" except to denote change of condition. Origin of "universe" is to me absolutely unthinkable. Sir William Hamilton ("Lectures and Discussions," p. 610) affirms: that when aware of a new appearance we are utterly unable to conceive that there has originated any new existence; that we are utterly unable to think that the complement of existence has ever been either increased or diminished; that we can neither conceive nothing becoming something, or something becoming nothing. Professor Flint's definition affirms "God" as existing "distinct from, and independent of, what he has created." But what can such words mean when used of the "infinite?" Does "distinct from" mean separate from? Does the "universe" existing distinct from God mean in addition to? and in other place than? or, have the words no meaning?

Of all words in Professor Flint's definition, which would be appropriate if used of human beings, I mean the same as I should mean if I used the same words in the highest possible degree of any human being. Here I maintain the position taken by John Stuart Mill in his examination of Sir W. Hamilton (p. 122). Righteousness and benevolence are two of the words of description included in the definition of this creator and governor of nations. But is it righteous and benevolent to create men and govern nations so that the men act criminally and the nations seek to destroy one another in war? Professor Flint does not deny ("Theism," p. 256) "that God could have originated a sinless moral system," and he adds: "I have no doubt that God has actually made many moral beings who are certain never to oppose their own wills to his, or that he might, if he had so pleased, have created only such angels as were sure to keep their first estate." But it is inaccurate to describe a "God" as righteous or benevolent who, having the complete power to originate a sinless moral system, is admitted to have originated a system in which sinfulness and immorality were not only left possible, but have actually, in consequence of God's rule and government, become abundant. It cannot be righteous for the "omnipotent" to be making human beings contrived and designed by his omniscience so as to be fitted for the commission of sin. It cannot be benevolent in "God" to contrive and create a hell in which he is to torment the human beings who have sinned because made by him in sin. "God," if omnipotent and omniscient, could just as easily, and much more benevolently, have contrived that there should never be any sinners, and, therefore, never any need for hell or torment.

The Rev. R.A. Armstrong, with whom I debated this question, says:--

"'Either,' argues Mr. Bradlaugh, in effect, 'God could make a world without suffering, or he could not. If he could and did not, he is not all-good. If he could not, he is not all-powerful.' The reply is, What do you mean by all-powerful? If you mean having power to reconcile things in themselves contradictory, we do not hold that God is all-powerful. But a humanity, from the first enjoying immunity from suffering, and yet possessed of nobility of character, is a self-contradictory conception."

That is, Mr. Armstrong thinks that a "sinless moral system from the first is a self-contradictory conception."

It is difficult to think a loving governor of nations arranging one set of cannibals to eat, and another set of human beings to be eaten by their fellow-men. It is impossible to think a loving creator and governor contriving a human being to be born into the world the pre-natal victim of transmitted disease. It is repugnant to reason to affirm this "free loving supreme moral intelligence" planning and contriving the enduring through centuries of criminal classes, plague-spots on civilisation.

The word "unchangeable" contradicts the word "creator." Any theory of creation must imply some period when the being was not yet the creator, that is, when yet the creation was not performed, and the act of creation must in such case, at any rate, involve temporary or permanent change in the mode of existence of the being creating. So, too, the words of description "governor of nations" are irreconcileable with the description "unchangeable," applied to a being alleged to have existed prior to the creation of the "nations," and therefore, of course, long before any act of government could be exercised.

To speak of an infinite personal being seems to me pure contradiction of terms. All attempts to think "person" involve thoughts of the limited, finite, conditioned. To describe this infinite personal being as distinct from some thing which is postulated as "what he has created" is only to emphasise the contradiction, rendered perhaps still more marked when the infinite personal being is described as "intelligent."

The Rev. R.A. Armstrong, in a prefatory note to the report of his debate with myself on the question "Is it reasonable to worship God?" says: "I have ventured upon alleging an intelligent cause of the phenomena of the universe, in spite of the fact that in several of his writings Mr. Bradlaugh has described intelligence as implying limitations. But though intelligence, as known to us in man, is always hedged within limits, there is no difficulty in conceiving each and every limit as removed. In that case the essential conception of intelligence remains the same precisely, although the change of conditions revolutionises its mode of working." This, it seems to me, is not accurate. The word intelligence can only be accurately used of man, as in each case meaning the totality of mental ability, its activity and result. If you eliminate in each case all possibilities of mental ability there is no "conception of intelligence" left, either essential or otherwise. If you attempt to remove the limits, that is the organisation, the intelligence ceases to be thinkable. It is unjustifiable to talk of "change of conditions" when you remove the word intelligence as a word of application to man or other thinking animal, and seek to apply the word to the unconditional.

As an Atheist I affirm one existence, and deny the possibility of more than one existence; by existence meaning, as I have already stated, "the totality of all phenomena, and of all that has been, is, or may be necessary for the happening of any and every phenomenon." This existence I know in its modes, each mode being distinguished in thought by its qualities. By "mode" I mean each cognised condition; that is, each phenomenon or aggregation of phenomena. By "quality" I mean each characteristic by which in the act of thinking I distinguish.

The distinction between the Agnostic and the Atheist is that either the Agnostic postulates an unknowable, or makes a blank avowal of general ignorance. The Atheist does not do either; there is of course to him much that is yet unknown, every effort of inquiry brings some of this within reach of knowing. With "the unknowable" conceded, all scientific teaching would be illusive. Every real scientist teaches without reference to "God" or "the unknowable." If the words come in as part of the yesterday habit still clinging to-day, the scientist conducts his experiments as though the words were not. Every operation of life, of commerce, of war, of statesmanship, is dealt with as though God were nonexistent. The general who asks God to give him victory, and who thanks God for the conquest, would be regarded as a lunatic by his Theistic brethren, if he placed the smallest reliance on God's omnipotence as a factor in winning the fight. Cannon, gunpowder, shot, shell, dynamite, provision, men, horses, means of transport, the value of these all estimated, then the help of "God" is added to what is enough without God to secure the triumph. The surgeon who in performing some delicate operation relied on God instead of his instruments--the physician who counted on the unknowable in his prescription--these would have poor clientele even amongst the orthodox; save the peculiar people the most pious would avoid their surgical or medical aid. The "God" of the Theist, the "unknowable" of the Agnostic, are equally opposed to the Atheistic affirmation. The Atheist enquires as to the unknown, affirms the true, denies the untrue. The Agnostic knows not of any proposition whether it be true or false.

Pantheists affirm one existence, but Pantheists declare that at any rate some qualities are infinite, e.g. that existence is infinitely intelligent. I, as an Atheist, can only think qualities of phenomena. I know each phenomenon by its qualities. I know no qualities except as the qualities of some phenomenon.

So long as the word "God" is undefined I do not deny "God." To the question, Is there such a God as defined by Professor Flint, I am compelled to give a negative reply. If the word "God" is intended to affirm Dualism, then as a Monist I negate "God."

The attempts to prove the existence of God may be divided into three classes:--1. Those which attempt to prove the objective existence of God from the subjective notion of necessary existence in the human mind, or from the assumed objectivity of space and time, interpreted as the attributes of a necessary substance. 2. Those which "essay to prove the existence of a supreme self-existent cause, from the mere fact of the existence of the world by the application of the principle of causality, starting with the postulate of any single existence whatsoever, the world, or anything in the world, and proceeding to argue backwards or upwards, the existence of one supreme cause is held to be regressive inference from the existence of these effects." But it is enough to answer to these attempts, that if a supreme existence were so demonstrable, that bare entity would not be identifiable with "God." "A demonstration of a primitive source of existence is of no formal theological value. It is an absolute zero."

3. The argument from design, or adaptation, in nature, the fitness of means to an end, implying, it is said, an architect or designer. Or, from the order in the universe, indicating, it is said, an orderer or lawgiver, whose intelligence we thus discern.

But this argument is a failure, because from finite instances differing in character it assumes an infinite cause absolutely the same for all. Divine unity, divine personality, are here utterly unproved. "Why should we rest in our inductive inference of one designer from the alleged phenomena of design, when these are claimed to be so varied and so complex?"

If the inference from design is to avail at all, it must avail to show that all the phenomena leading to misery and mischief, must have been designed and intended by a being finding pleasure in the production and maintenance of this misery and mischief. If the alleged constructor of the universe is supposed to have designed one beneficent result, must he not equally be supposed to have designed all results? And if the inference of benevolence and goodness be valid for some instances, must not the inference of malevolence and wickedness be equally valid from others? If, too, any inference is to be drawn from the illustration of organs in animals supposed to be specially contrived for certain results, what is the inference to be drawn from the many abortive and incomplete organs, muscles, nerves, etc., now known to be traceable in man and other animals? What inference is to be drawn from each instance of deformity or malformation? But the argument from design, if it proved anything, would at the most only prove an arranger of pre-existing material; it in no sense leads to the conception of an originator of substance.

There is no sort of analogy between a finite artificer arranging a finite mechanism and an alleged divine creator originating all existence. From an alleged product you are only at liberty to infer a producer after having seen a similar product actually produced.

A PLEA FOR ATHEISM

THIS essay is issued in the hope that it may succeed in removing some of the many prejudices prevalent, not only against the actual holders of Atheistic opinions, but also against those wrongfully suspected of Atheism. Men who have been famous for depth of thought, for excellent wit, or great genius, have been recklessly assailed as Atheists by those who lack the high qualifications against which the malice of the calumniators was directed. Thus, not only have Voltaire and Paine been, without ground, accused of Atheism, but Bacon, Locke, and Bishop Berkeley himself, have, amongst others, been denounced by thoughtless or unscrupulous pietists as inclining to Atheism, the ground for the accusation being that they manifested an inclination to push human thought a little in advance of the age in which they lived.

It is too often the fashion with persons of pious reputation to speak in unmeasured language of Atheism as favoring immorality, and of Atheists as men whose conduct is necessarily vicious, and who have adopted Atheistic views as a desperate defiance against a Deity justly offended by the badness of their lives. Such persons urge that amongst the proximate causes of Atheism are vicious training, immoral and profligate companions, licentious living and the like. Dr. John Pye Smith, in his "Instructions on Christian Theology," goes so far as to declare that "nearly all the Atheists upon record have been men of extremely debauched and vile conduct." Such language from the Christian advocate is not surprising, but there are others who, while professing great desire for the spread of Freethought and having pretensions to rank amongst acute and liberal thinkers, declare Atheism impracticable, and its teachings cold, barren, and negative. Excepting to each of the above allegations, I maintain that thoughtful Atheism affords greater possibility for human happiness than any system yet based on, or possible to be founded on, Theism, and that the lives of true Atheists must be more virtuous--because more human--than those of the believers in Deity, the humanity of the devout believer often finding itself neutralised by a faith with which that humanity is necessarily in constant collision. The devotee piling the faggots at the _auto da fe_ of a heretic, and that heretic his son, might notwithstanding be a good father in every other respect (see Deuteronomy xiii, 6-10). Heresy, in the eyes of the believer, is highest criminality, and outweighs all claims of family or affection.

Atheism, properly understood, is no mere disbelief: is in no wise a cold, barren negative; it is, on the contrary, a hearty, fruitful affirmation of all truth, and involves the positive assertion of action of highest humanity.

Let Atheism be fairly examined, and neither condemned--its defence unheard--on the _ex parte_ slanders of some of the professional preachers of fashionable orthodoxy, whose courage is bold enough while the pulpit protects the sermon, but whose valor becomes tempered with discretion when a free platform is afforded and discussion claimed; nor misjudged because it has been the custom to regard Atheism as so unpopular as to render its advocacy impolitic. The best policy against all prejudice is to firmly advocate the truth. The Atheist does not say "There is no God" but he says: "I know not what you mean by God; I am without idea of God; the word 'God' is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. I do not deny God, because I cannot deny that of which I have no conception, and the conception of which, by its affirmer, is so imperfect that he is unable to define it to me. If, however, 'God' is defined to mean an existence other than the existence of which I am a mode, then I deny 'God,' and affirm that it is impossible such 'God' can be. That is, I affirm one existence, and deny that there can be more than one." The Pantheist also affirms one existence, and denies that there can be more than one; but the distinction between the Pantheist and the Atheist is, that the Pantheist affirms infinite attributes for existence, while the Atheist maintains that attributes are the characteristics of mode--i.e., the diversities enabling the conditioning in thought.

When the Theist affirms that his God is an existence other than, and separate from, the so-called material universe, and when he invests this separate, hypothetical existence with the several attributes of personality, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, eternity, infinity, immutability, and perfect goodness, then the Atheist in reply says: "I deny the existence of such a being;" and he is entitled to say this because this Theistic definition is selfcontradictory, as well as contradictory of every-day experience.

If you speak to the Atheist of God as creator, he answers that the conception of creation is impossible. We are utterly unable to construe it in thought as possible that the complement of existence has been either increased or diminished, much less can we conceive an absolute origination of substance. We cannot conceive either, on the one hand, nothing becoming something, or on the other, something becoming nothing. The words "creation" and "destruction" have no value except as applied to phenomena. You may destroy a gold coin, but you have only destroyed the condition, you have not affected the substance. "Creation" and "destruction" denote change of phenomena, they do not denote origin or cessation of substance. The Theist who speaks of God creating the universe, must either suppose that Deity evolved it out of himself, or that he produced it from nothing. But the Theist cannot regard the universe as evolution of Deity, because this would identify Universe and Deity, and be Pantheism rather than Theism. There would be no distinction of substance--no creation. Nor can the Theist regard the universe as created out of nothing, because Deity is, according to him, necessarily eternal and infinite. God's existence being eternal and infinite, precludes the possibility of the conception of vacuum to be filled by the universe if created. No one can even think of any point in extent or duration and say: Here is the point of separation between the creator and the created. It is not possible for the Theist to imagine a beginning to the universe. It is not possible to conceive either an absolute commencement, or an absolute termination of existence; that is, it is impossible to conceive beginning, before which you have a period when the universe has yet to be; or to conceive an end, after which the universe, having been, no longer exists. The Atheist affirms that he cognises to-day effects; that these are, at the same time, causes and effects--causes to the effects they precede, effects to the causes they follow. Cause is simply everything without which the effect would not result, and with which it must result. Cause is the means to an end, consummating itself in that end. Cause is the word we use to include all that determines change. The Theist who argues for creation must assert a point of time--that is, of duration, when the created did not yet exist. At this point of time either something existed or nothing; but something must have existed, for out of nothing nothing can come. Something must have existed, because the point fixed upon is that of the duration of something. This something must have been either finite or infinite; if finite it could not have been God, and if the something were infinite, then creation was impossible: it is impossible to add to infinite existence.

If you leave the question of creation and deal with the government of the universe, the difficulties of Theism are by no means lessened. The existence of evil is then a terrible stumbling block to the Theist. Pain, misery, crime, poverty, confront the advocate of eternal goodness, and challenge with unanswerable potency his declaration of Deity as all-good, all-wise, and all-powerful. A recent writer in the _Spectator_ admits that there is what it regards "as the most painful, as it is often the most incurable, form of Atheism--the Atheism arising from a sort of horror of the idea of an Omnipotent Being permitting such a proportion of misery among the majority of his creatures." Evil is either caused by God, or exists independently; but it cannot be caused by God, as in that case he would not be all-good; nor can it exist hostilely, as in that case he would not be all-powerful. If all-good he would desire to annihilate evil, and continued evil contradicts either God's desire, or God's ability, to prevent it. Evil must either have had a beginning or it must have been eternal; but, according to the Theist, it cannot be eternal, because God alone is eternal. Nor can it have had a beginning, for if it had it must either have originated in God, or outside God; but, according to the Theist, it cannot have originated in God for he is all-good, and out of all-goodness evil cannot originate; nor can evil have originated outside God, for, according to the Theist, God is infinite, and it is impossible to go outside of or beyond infinity.

To the Atheist this question of evil assumes an entirely different aspect. He declares that each evil is a result, but not a result from God nor Devil. He affirms that conduct founded on knowledge of the laws of existence may ameliorate each present form of evil, and, as our knowledge increases, prevent its future recurrence.

Some declare that the belief in God is necessary as a check to crime. They allege that the Atheist may commit murder, lie, or steal without fear of any consequences. To try the actual value of this argument, it is not unfair to ask: Do Theists ever steal? If yes, then in each such theft the belief in God and his power to punish has been insufficient as a preventive of the crime. Do Theists ever lie or murder? If yes, the same remark has again force--Theism failing against the lesser as against the greater crime. Those who use such an argument overlook that all men seek happiness, though in very diverse fashions. Ignorant and miseducated men often mistake the true path to happiness, and commit crime in the endeavor to obtain it. Atheists hold that by teaching mankind the real road to human happiness it is possible to keep them from the bye-ways of criminality and error. Atheists would teach men to be moral now, not because God offers as an inducement reward by-and-bye, but because in the virtuous act itself immediate good is insured to the doer and the circle surrounding him. Atheism would preserve man from lying, stealing, murdering, not from fear of an eternal agony after death, but because these crimes make this life itself a course of misery.

While Theism, asserting God as the creator and governor of the universe, hinders and checks man's efforts by declaring God's will to be the sole directing and controlling power, Atheism, by declaring all events to be in accordance with natural laws--that is, happening in certain ascertainable sequences--stimulates man to discover the best conditions of life, and offers him the most powerful inducements to morality. While the Theist provides future happiness for a scoundrel repentant on his death-bed, Atheism affirms present and certain happiness for the man who does his best to live here so well as to have little cause for repenting hereafter.

Theism declares that God dispenses health and inflicts disease, and sickness and illness are regarded by the Theists as visitations from an angered Deity, to be borne with meekness and content. Atheism declares that physiological knowledge may preserve us from disease by preventing us from infringing the law of health, and that sickness results not as the ordinance of offended Deity, but from ill-ventilated dwellings and workshops, bad and insufficient food, excessive toil, mental suffering, exposure to inclement weather, and the like--all these finding root in poverty, the chief source of crime and disease; that prayers and piety afford no protection against fever, and that if the human being be kept without food he will starve as quickly whether he be Theist or Atheist, theology being no substitute for bread.

It is very important, in order that injustice may not be done to the Theistic argument, that we should have--in lieu of a clear definition, which it seems useless to ask for--the best possible clue to the meaning intended to be conveyed by the word "God." If it were not that the word is an arbitrary term, maintained for the purpose of influencing the ignorant, and the notions suggested by which are vague and entirely contingent upon individual fancies, such a clue could probably be most easily and satisfactorily obtained by tracing back the word "God," and ascertaining the sense in which it was used by the uneducated worshippers who have gone before us, and collating this with the more modern Theism, qualified as it is by the superior knowledge of to-day. Dupuis says: "Le mot _Dieu_ parait destine a exprimer l'idee de la force universelle et eternellement active qui imprime le mouvement a tout dans la Nature, suivant les lois d'une harmonie constante et admirable, qui se developpe dans les diverses formes que prend la matiere organisee, qui se mele a tout, anime tout, et qui semble etre une dans ses modifications infiniment variees, et n'appartenir qu'a elle-meme." "The word God appears intended to express the universal and eternally active force which endows all nature with motion according to the laws of a constant and admirable harmony; which develops itself in the diverse forms of organised matter, which mingles with all, gives life to all; which seems to be one through all its infinitely varied modifications, and inheres in itself alone."

In the "Bon Sens" of Cure Meslier, it is asked: "Qu'est-ce que Dieu?" and the answer is: "C'est un mot abstrait fait pour designer la force cachee de la nature; ou c'est un point mathematique qui n'a ni longueur, ni largeur, ni pro-fondeur." "It is an abstract word coined to designate the hidden force of nature; or is it a mathematical point having neither length, breadth, nor depth."

The orthodox fringe of the Theism of to-day is Hebraistic in its origin--that is, it finds its root in the superstition and ignorance of a petty and barbarous people nearly destitute of literature, poor in language, and almost entirely wanting in high conceptions of humanity. It might, as Judaism is the foundation of Christianity, be fairly expected that the ancient Jewish records would aid us in our search after the meaning to be attached to the word "God." The most prominent words in Hebrew rendered God or Lord in English, _Ieue_, and _Aleim_. The first word Ieue, called by our orthodox Jehovah, is equivalent to "that which exists," and indeed embodies in itself the only possible trinity in unity--i.e., past, present, and future. There is nothing in this Hebrew word to help us to any such definition as is required for the sustenance of modern Theism. The most we can make of it by any stretch of imagination is equivalent to the declaration "I am, I have been, I shall be." The word _Ieue_ is hardly ever spoken by the religious Jews, who actually in reading substitute for it, Adonai, an entirely different word. Dr. Wall notices the close resemblance in sound between the word _Iehowa_ or _Ieue_, or Jehovah and Jove. In fact Jupiter and Ieue-pater (God the father) present still closer resemblance in sound. Jove is also [--Greek--] whence the word Deus and our Deity. The Greek mythology, far more ancient than that of the Hebrews, has probably found for Christianity many other and more important features of coincidence than that of a similarly sounding name. The word [--Greek--] traced back, affords us no help beyond that it identifies Deity with the universe. Plato says that the early Greeks thought that the only Gods [--Greek--] were the sun, moon, earth, stars, and heaven. The word Aleim, assists us still less in defining the word God, for Parkhurst translates it as a plural noun signifying "the curser," deriving it from the verb _to curse_. Dr. Colenso has collected for us a store of traditional meanings for the IAO of the Greek, and the _Ieue_ of the Hebrew, but though these are interesting to the student of mythology, they give no help to the Theistic demonstrator. Finding that philology aids us but little, we must endeavor to arrive at the meaning of the word "God" by another rule. It is utterly impossible to fix the period of the rise of Theism amongst any particular people; but it is, notwithstanding, comparatively easy, if not to trace out the development of Theistic ideas, at any rate to point to their probable course of growth amongst all peoples.

Keightley, in his "Origin of Mythology," says: "Supposing, for the sake of hypothesis, a race of men in a state of total or partial ignorance of Deity, their belief in many Gods may have thus commenced: They saw around them various changes brought about by human agency, and hence they knew the power of intelligence to produce effects. When they beheld other and greater effects, they ascribed them to some unseen being, similar but superior to man." They associated particular events with special unknown beings (Gods), to each of whom they ascribed either a peculiarity of power, or a sphere of action not common to other Gods. Thus, one was God of the sea, another God of war, another God of love, another ruled the thunder and lightning; and thus through the various then known elements of the universe, and the passions of humankind.

This mythology became modified with the commencement of human knowledge. The ability to think has proved itself oppugnant to, and destructive of, the reckless desire to worship, characteristic of semi-barbarism. Science has razed altar after altar heretofore erected to the unknown Gods, and has pulled down Deity after Deity from the pedestals on which ignorance and superstition had erected them. The priest, who had formerly spoken as the oracle of God, lost his sway just in proportion as the scientific teacher succeeded in impressing mankind with a knowledge of the facts around them. The ignorant, who had hitherto listened unquestioning during centuries of abject submission to their spiritual preceptors, at last commenced to search and examine for themselves, and were guided by experience rather than by church doctrine. To-day advancing intellect challenges the reserve guard of the old armies of superstition, and compels a conflict in which humankind must in the end have great gain by the forced enunciation of the truth.

From the word "God" the Theist derives no argument in his favor; it teaches nothing, defines nothing, demonstrates nothing, explains nothing. The Theist answers that this is no sufficient objection; that there are many words which are in common use to which the same objection applies. Even if this were true, it does not answer the Atheist's objection. Alleging a difficulty on the one side is not a removal of the obstacle already pointed out on the other.

The Theist declares his God to be not only immutable, but also infinitely intelligent, and says: "Matter is either essentially intelligent or essentially non-intelligent; if matter were essentially intelligent, no matter could be without intelligence; but matter cannot be essentially intelligent, because some matter is not intelligent, therefore matter is essentially non-intelligent; but there is intelligence, therefore there must be a cause for the intelligence, independent of matter--this must be an intelligent being--i.e., God." The Atheist answers: I do not know what is meant, in the mouth of the Theist, by "matter." "Matter," "nature," "substance," "existence," are words having the same signification in the Atheist's vocabulary. Lewes used "matter" as the "symbol of all the known properties, statical and dynamical, passive and active; i.e., subjectively, as feeling and change of feeling, or objectively, as agent and action;" and Mill defined "nature" as "the sum of all phenomena, together with the causes which produce them, including not only all that happens, but all that is capable of happening." It is not certain that the Theist expresses any very clear idea to himself when he uses the words "matter" and "intelligence;" it is quite certain that he has not yet shown himself capable of communicating this idea, and that any effort he makes is couched in terms which are self-contradictory. Reason and understanding are sometimes treated as separate faculties, yet it is not unfair to presume that the Theist would include them both under the word intelligence. Perception is the foundation of the intellect. The perceptive ability differs in each animal; yet, in speaking of matter, the Theist uses the word "intelligence" as though the same meaning were to be understood in every case. The recollection of the perceptions is the exercise of a different ability from the perceptive ability, and occasionally varies disproportionately; thus, an individual may have great perceptive abilities, and very little memory, or the reverse; yet memory, as well as perception, is included in intelligence. So also the comparing between two or more perceptions; the judging and the reflecting; all these are subject to the same remarks, and all these and other phases of the mind are included in the word intelligence. We answer, then, that "God" (whatever that word may mean) cannot be intelligent. He can never perceive; the act of perception results in the obtaining a new idea, but if God be omniscient, his ideas have been eternally the same. He has either been always, and always will be, perceiving, or he has never perceived at all. But God cannot have been always perceiving, because, if he had, he would always have been obtaining fresh knowledge, in which case he must at some time have had less knowledge than now: that is, he would have been less perfect: that is, he would not have been God. He can never recollect nor forget; he can never compare, reflect, nor judge. There cannot be perfect intelligence without understanding; but following Coleridge, "understanding is the faculty of judging according to sense." The faculty of whom? Of some person, judging according to that person's senses. But has "God" senses? Is there anything beyond "God" for God to sensate? There cannot be perfect intelligence without reason. By reason we mean that phase of the mind which avails itself of past and present experience to predicate more or less accurately of possible experience in the future. To God there can be neither past nor future, therefore to him reason is impossible. There cannot be perfect intelligence without will; but has God will? If God wills, the will of the all-powerful must be irresistible; the will of the infinite must exclude all other wills.

God can never perceive. Perception and sensation are identical. Every sensation is pleasurable or painful. But God, if immutable, can neither be pleased nor pained. Every fresh sensation involves a change in mental and perhaps in physical condition. God, if immutable, cannot change. Sensation is the source of all ideas, but it is only objects external to the mind which can be sensated. If God be infinite there can be no objects external to him, and therefore sensation must be to him impossible. Yet without perception where is intelligence?

God cannot have memory nor reason--memory is of the past, reason for the future, but to God immutable there can be no past, no future. The words past, present, and future imply change: they assert progression of duration. If God be immutable, to him change is impossible. Can you have intelligence destitute of perception, memory, and reason? God cannot have the faculty of judgment--judgment implies in the act of judging a conjoining or disjoining of two or more thoughts, but this involves change of mental condition. To God the immutable, change is impossible. Can you have intelligence, yet no perception, no memory, no reason, no judgment? God cannot think. The law of the thinkable is, that the thing thought must be separated from the thing which is not thought. To think otherwise would be to think of nothing--to have an impression with no distinguishing mark, would be to have no impression. Yet this separation implies change, and to God, immutable, change is impossible. In memory, the thing remembered is distinguished from the thing temporarily or permanently forgotten. Can God forget? Can you have intelligence without thought? If the Theist replies to this, that he does not mean by infinite intelligence as an attribute of Deity, an infinity of the intelligence found in a finite degree in humankind, then he is bound to explain, clearly and distinctly, what other "intelligence" he means; and until this be done the foregoing statements require answer.

The Atheist does not regard "substance" as either essentially intelligent or the reverse. Intelligence is the result of certain conditions of existence. Burnished steel is bright--that is, brightness is the characteristic of a certain condition of existence. Alter the condition, and the characteristic of the condition no longer exists. The only essential of substance is existence. Alter the wording of the Theist's objection:--Matter is either essentially bright, or essentially non-bright. If matter were essentially bright, brightness should be the essence of all matter; but matter cannot be essentially bright, because some matter is not bright, therefore matter is essentially non-bright; but there is brightness; therefore there must be a cause for this brightness independent of matter--that is, there must be an essentially bright being--i.e. God.

Another Theistic proposition is thus stated: "Every effect must have a cause; the first cause universal must be eternal: ergo, the first cause universal must be God." This is equivalent to saying that "God" is "first cause." But what is to be understood by cause? Defined in the absolute, the word has no real value. "Cause," therefore, cannot be eternal. What can be understood by "first cause?" To us the two words convey no meaning greater than would be conveyed by the phrase "round triangle." Cause and effect are correlative terms--each cause is the effect of some precedent; each effect the cause of its consequent. It is impossible to conceive existence terminated by a primal or initial cause. The "beginning," as it is phrased, of the universe is not thought out by the Theist, but conceded without thought. To adopt the language of Montaigne; "Men make themselves believe that they believe." The so-called belief in Creation is nothing more than the prostration of the intellect on the threshold of the unknown. We can only cognise the ever-succeeding phenomena of existence as a line in continuous and eternal evolution. This line has to us no beginning; we trace it back into the misty regions of the past but a little way, and however far we may be able to journey there is still the great beyond. Then what is meant by "universal cause?" Spinoza gives the following definition of cause, as used in its absolute signification: "By cause of itself I understand that, the essence of which involves existence, or that, the nature of which can only be considered as existent." That is, Spinoza treats "cause" absolute and "existence" as two words having the same meaning. If this mode of defining the word be contested, then it has no meaning other than its relative signification of a means to an end. "Every effect must have a cause." Every effect implies the plurality of effects, and necessarily that each effect must be finite; but how is it possible from finite effect to logically deduce a universal--i.e., infinite cause?

There are two modes of argument presented by Theists, and by which, separately or combined, they seek to demonstrate the being of a God. These are familiarly known as the arguments _a priori and a posteriori._

The _a posteriori_ argument has been popularised in England by Paley, who has ably endeavored to hide the weakness of his demonstration under an abundance of irrelevant illustrations. The reasoning of Paley is very deficient in the essential points where it most needed strength. It is utterly impossible to prove by it the eternity or infinity of Deity. As an argument founded on analogy, the design argument, as the best, could only entitle its propounder to infer the existence of a finite cause, or rather of a multitude of finite causes. It ought not to be forgotten that the illustrations of the eye, the watch, and the man, even if admitted as instances of design, or rather of adaptation, are instances of eyes, watches, and men, designed or adapted out of pre-existing substance, by a being of the same kind of substance, and afford, therefore, no demonstration in favor of a designer alleged to have actually created substance out of nothing, and also alleged to have created a substance entirely different from himself.

The illustrations of alleged adaptation or design in animal life in its embryonic stages are thus dealt with by the late George Henry Lewes: "What rational interpretation can be given to the succession of phases each embryo is forced to pass through? None of these phases have any adaptation to the future state of the animal, but are in positive contradiction to it, or are simply purposeless; many of them have no adaptation, even in its embryonic state. What does the fact imply? There is not a single known organism which is not developed out of simpler forms. Before it can attain the complex structure which distinguishes it, there must be an evolution of forms which distinguish the structures of organisms lower in the series. On the hypothesis of a plan which pre-arranged the organic world, nothing could be more unworthy of a supreme intelligence than this inability to construct an organism at once, without making several tentative efforts, undoing to-day what was so carefully done yesterday, and repeating for centuries the same tentatives and the same corrections in the same succession. Do not let us blink this consideration. There is a traditional phrase which is in vogue amongst Anthropomorphists--a phrase which has become a sort of argument--the 'Great Architect.' But if we are to admit the human point of view, a glance at the facts of embryology must produce very uncomfortable reflexions. For what shall we say to an architect who was unable--or, being able, was obstinately unwilling--to erect a palace, except by first using his materials in the shape of a hut, then pulling them down and rebuilding them as a cottage, then adding storey to storey, and room to room, not with any reference to the ultimate purposes of a palace, but wholly with reference to the way in which houses were constructed in ancient times? Would there be a chorus of applause from the Institute of Architects, and favorable notices in newspapers of this profound wisdom? Yet this is the sort of succession on which organisms are constructed. The fact has long been familiar; how has it been reconciled with infinite wisdom?"

The _a posteriori_ argument can never demonstrate infinity for Deity. Arguing from an effect finite in extent, the most it could afford would be a cause sufficient for that effect, such cause being possibly finite in extent and duration. Professor Flint in his late work in advocacy of Theism concedes that "we cannot deduce the infinite from the finite." And as the argument does not demonstrate God's infinity, neither can it, for the same reason, make out his omniscience, as it is clearly impossible to logically claim infinite wisdom for a God possibly only finite. God's omnipotence remains unproved for the same reason, and because it is clearly absurd to argue that God exercises power where he may not be. Nor can the _a posteriori_ argument show God's absolute freedom, for as it does nothing more than seek to prove a finite God, it is quite consistent with the argument that God's existence is limited and controlled in a thousand ways. Nor does this argument show that God always existed; at the best, the proof is only that some cause, enough for the effect, existed before it, but there is no evidence that this cause differs from any other causes, which are often as transient as the effect itself. And as it does not demonstrate that God has always existed, neither does it demonstrate that he will always exist, or even that he now exists. It is perfectly in accordance with the argument, and with the analogy of cause and effect, that the effect may remain after the cause had ceased to exist. Nor does the argument from design demonstrate one God. It is quite consistent with this argument that a separate cause existed for each effect, or mark of design discovered, or that several causes contributed to some or one of such effects. So that if the argument be true, it might result in a multitude of petty Deities, limited in knowledge, extent, duration, and power; and still worse, each one of this multitude of Gods may have had a cause which would also be finite in extent and duration, and would require another, and so on, until the design argument loses the reasoner amongst an innumerable crowd of Deities, none of whom can have the attributes claimed for God.

The design argument is defective as an argument from analogy, because it seeks to prove a Creator God who designed, but does not explain whether this God has been eternally designing, which would be absurd; or, if he at some time commenced to design, what then induced him so to commence? It is illogical, for it seeks to prove an immutable Deity, by demonstrating a mutation on the part of Deity.

It is unnecessary to deal specially with each of the many writers who have used from different stand-points the _a posteriori_ form of argument in order to prove the existence of Deity. The objections already stated apply to the whole class; and, although probably each illustration used by the Theistic advocate is capable of an elucidation entirely at variance with his argument, the main features of objection are the same. The argument _a posteriori_ is a method of proof in which the premises are composed of some position of existing facts, and the conclusion asserts a position antecedent to those facts. The argument is from given effects to their causes. It is one form of this argument which asserts that a man has a moral nature, and from this seeks to deduce the existence of a moral governor. This form has the disadvantage that its premises are illusory. In alleging a moral nature for man, the Theist overlooks the fact that the moral nature of man differs somewhat in each individual, differs considerably in each nation, and differs entirely in some peoples. It is dependent on organisation and education; these are influenced by climate, food, and mode of life. If the argument from man's nature could demonstrate anything, it would prove a murdering God for the murderer, a lascivious God for the licentious man, a dishonest God for the thief, and so through the various phases of human inclination. The _a priori_ arguments are methods of proof in which the matter of the premises exists in the order of conception antecedently to that of the conclusion. The argument is from cause to effect. Amongst the prominent Theistic advocates relying upon the _a priori_ argument in England are Dr. Samuel Clarke, the Rev. Moses Lowman, and William Gillespie.

An important contribution to Theistic literature has been the publication of the Baird lectures on Theism. The lectures are by Professor Flint, who asks: "Have we sufficient evidence for thinking that there is a self-existent, eternal being, infinite in power and wisdom, and perfect in holiness and goodness, the Maker of heaven and earth?"

"Theism," he affirms, "is the doctrine that the universe owes its existence, and continuance in existence, to the reason and will of a self-existent Being, who is infinitely powerful, wise, and good. It is the doctrine that nature has a Creator and Preserver, the nations a Governor, men a heavenly Father and Judge." But he concedes that "Theism is very far from co-extensive with religion. Religion is spread over the whole earth; Theism only over a comparatively small portion of it. There are but three Theistic religions--the Mosaic, the Christian, and the Muhammadan. They are connected historically in the closest manner--the idea of God having been transmitted to the two latter, and not independently originated by them. All other religions are Polytheistic or Pantheistic, or both together. Among those who have been educated in any of these heathen religions, only a few minds of rare penetration and power have been able to rise by their own exertions to a consistent Theistic belief. The God of all those among us who believe in God, even of those who reject Christianity, who reject all revelation, is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. From these ancient Jewish fathers the knowledge of him has historically descended through an unbroken succession of generations to us. We have inherited it from them. If it had not thus come down to us, if we had not been born into a society pervaded by it, there is no reason to suppose that we should have found it out for ourselves, and still less that we should merely have required to open our eyes in order to see it."

If "Theism is the doctrine that the universe owes its existence to the reason and will of a self-existing being who is infinitely powerful, wise, and good," then it is a doctrine which involves many difficulties and absurdities. It assumes that the universe has not always existed. The new existence added when the universe was originated was either an improvement or a deterioration on what had always existed; or it was in all respects precisely identical with what had therefore always existed. In the first, if the new universe was an improvement, then the previously self-existent being could not have been infinitely good. If the universe was a deterioration, then the creator could have scarcely been all-wise, or he could not have been all-powerful. If the universe was in all respects precisely identical with the self-existent being, then it must have been infinitely powerful, wise and good, and must have been self-existent.

Any of the alternatives is fatal to Theism. Again, if the universe owes its existence to God's reason and will, God must, prior to creation, have thought upon the matter until he ultimately determined to create; but, if the creation were wise and good, it would never have been delayed while the infinitely wise and good reasoned about it, and, if the creation were not wise and good, the infinitely wise and good would never have commenced it. Either God willed without motive, or he was influenced; if he reasoned, there was--prior to the definite willing--a period of doubt or suspended judgment, all of which is inconsistent with the attributes claimed for deity by Professor Flint. It is hard to understand how whole nations can have been left by their infinitely powerful, wise, and good governor--how many men can have been left by their infinitely powerful, wise, and good father--without any knowledge of himself. Yet this must be so if, as Professor Flint conceives, Theism is only spread over a comparatively small portion of the earth. The moral effect of Christian and Muhammadan Theism on the nations influenced, was well shown in the recent Russo-Turkish War.

Every Theist must admit that if a God exists, he could have so convinced all men of the fact of his existence that doubt, disagreement, or disbelief would be impossible. If he could not do this, he would not be omnipotent, or he would not be omniscient--that is, he would not be God. Every Theist must also agree that if a God exists, he would wish all men to have such a clear consciousness of his existence and attributes, that doubt, disagreement, or disbelief on this subject would be impossible. And this, if for no other reason, because that out of doubts and disagreements on religion have too often resulted centuries of persecution, strife, and misery, which a good God would desire to prevent. If God would not desire this, then he is not all-good, that is, he is not God. But as many men have doubts, as a large majority of mankind have disagreements, and as some men have disbeliefs as to God's existence and attributes, it must follow that God does not exist, or that he is not all-wise, or that he is not all-powerful, or that he is not all-good.

Many Theists rely on the intuitional argument. It is, perhaps, best to allow the Baird Lecturer to reply to these:--"Man, say some, knows God by immediate intuition, he needs no argument for his existence, because he perceives Him directly--face to face--without any medium. It is easy to assert this but obviously the assertion is the merest dogmatism. Not one man in a thousand who understands what he is affirming will dare to claim to have an immediate vision of God, and nothing can be more likely than that the man who makes such a claim is self-deluded." And Professor Flint urges that: "What seem intuitions are often really inferences, and not unfrequently erroneous inferences; what seem the immediate dictates of pure reason, or the direct and unclouded perceptions of a special spiritual faculty, may be the conceits of fancy, or the products of habits and association, or the reflexions of strong feeling. A man must prove to himself, and he must prove to others, that what he takes to be an intuition, is an intuition. Is that proof in this case likely to be easier or more conclusive than the proof of the Divine existence? The so-called immediate perception of God must be shown to be a perception and to be immediate; it must be vindicated and verified; and how this is to be done, especially if there be no other reasons for believing in God than itself, it is difficult to conceive. The history of religion, which is what ought to yield the clearest confirmation of the alleged intuition, appears to be from beginning to end a conspicuous contradiction of it. If all men have the spiritual power of directly beholding their Creator--have an immediate vision of God--how happens it that whole nations believe in the most absurd and monstrous Gods? That millions of men are ignorant whether there be one God or thousands?" And still more strongly he adds: "The opinion that man has an intuition or immediate perception of God is untenable; the opinion that he has an immediate feeling of God is absurd."

Every child is born into the world an Atheist, and if he grows into a Theist, his Deity differs with the country in which the believer may happen to be born, or the people amongst whom he may happen to be educated. The belief is the result of education or organisation. This is practically conceded by Professor Flint, where he speaks of the God-idea as transmitted from the Jews, and says: "We have inherited it from them. If it had not come down to us, if we had not been born into a society pervaded by it, there is no reason to suppose that we should have found it out for ourselves." And further, he maintains that a child is born "into blank ignorance, and, if left entirely to itself, would, probably, never find out as much religious truth as the most ignorant of parents can teach it." Religious belief is powerful in proportion to the want of scientific knowledge on the part of the believer. The more ignorant the more credulous. In the mind of the Theist "God" is equivalent to the sphere of the unknown; by the use of the word he answers, without thought, problems which might otherwise obtain scientific solution. The more ignorant the Theist, the more numerous his Gods. Belief in God is not a faith founded on reason. Theism is worse than illogical; its teachings are not only without utility, but of itself it has nothing to teach. Separated from Christianity with its almost innumerable sects, from Muhammadanism with its numerous divisions, and separated also from every other preached system, Theism is a will-o'-the-wisp, without reality. Apart from orthodoxy, Theism is the veriest dreamform, without substance or coherence.

What does Christian Theism teach? That the first man, made perfect by the all-powerful, all-wise, all-good God, was nevertheless imperfect, and by his imperfection brought misery into the world, where the all-good God must have intended misery should never come; that this God made men to share this misery--men whose fault was their being what he made them; that this God begets a son, who is nevertheless his unbegotten self, and that by belief in the birth of God's eternal son, and in the death of the undying who died as sacrifice to God's vengeance, men may escape the consequences of the first man's error. Christian Theism declares that belief alone can save man, and yet recognises the fact that man's belief results from teaching, by establishing missionary societies to spread the faith. Christian Theism teaches that God, though no respecter of persons, selected as his favorite one nation in preference to all others; that man can do no good of himself or without God's aid, but yet that each man has a free will; that God is all-powerful, but that few go to heaven, and the majority to hell; that all are to love God, who has predestined from eternity that by far the largest number of human beings are to be burning in hell for ever. Yet the advocates for Theism venture to upbraid those who argue against such a faith.

Either Theism is true or false. If true, discussion must help to spread its influence; if false, the sooner it ceases to influence human conduct the better for human kind. This Plea for Atheism is put forth as a challenge to Theists to do battle for their cause, and in the hope that, the strugglers being sincere, truth may give laurels to the victor and the vanquished: laurels to the victor, in that he has upheld the truth; laurels which should be even more welcome to the vanquished, whose defeat crowns him with a truth he knew not of before.

APPENDIX

A few years ago a Nonconformist minister invited me to debate the question, "Is Atheism the True Doctrine of the Universe?" and the following was in substance my opening statement of the argument, which for some reason, although many letters passed, was never replied to by my reverend opponent.

"By Atheism I mean the affirmation of one existence, of which existence I know only mode; each mode being distinguished in thought by its qualities. This affirmation is a positive, not a negative, affirmation, and is properly describable as Atheism because it does not include in it any possibility of _Theos_. It is, being without God, distinctly an Atheistic affirmation. This Atheism affirms that the Atheist only knows qualities, and only knows these qualities as the characteristics of modes. By 'existence' I mean the totality of phenomena and all that has been, is, or may be necessary for the happening of any and every phenomenon. By 'mode' I mean each cognised condition (phenomenon or aggregation of phenomena). By 'quality' I mean that characteristic, or each of those characteristics, by which in thought I distinguish that which I think. The word 'universe' is with me an equivalent for 'existence.'

"Either Atheism or Theism must be the true doctrine of the Universe. I assume here that no other theory is thinkable. Theism is either Pantheism, Polytheism, or Monotheism. There is, I submit, no other conceivable category. Pantheism affirms one existence, but declares that some qualities are infinite, e.g. that existence is intelligent. Atheism only affirms qualities for phenomena. We know each phenomenon by its qualities; we know no qualities except as qualities of some phenomenon. By infinite I mean illimitable. Phenomena are, of course, finite. By intelligent I mean able to think. Polytheism affirms several Theistic existences--this affirmation being nearly self-contradictory--and also usually affirms at least one non-theistic existence. Monotheism affirms at least two existences: that is, the Theos and that which the Theos has created and rules. Atheism denies alike the reasonableness of Polytheism, Pantheism, and Monotheism. Any affirmation of more than one existence is on the face of the affirmation an absolute self-contradiction, if infinity be pretended for either of the existences affirmed. The word 'Theos' or 'God' has for me no meaning. I am obliged, therefore, to try to collect its meaning as expressed by Theists, who, however, do not seem to me to be either clear or agreed as to the words by which their Theism may be best expressed. For the purpose of this argument I take Monotheism to be the doctrine 'that the universe owes its existence and continuance in existence to the wisdom and will of a supreme, self-existent, eternal, infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, righteous, and benevolent personal being, who is distinct from and independent of what he has created.' By wisdom and will I mean that which I should mean using the same words of any animal able to perceive, remember, reflect, judge, and determine, and active in that ability or those abilities. By supreme I mean highest in any relation of comparison. By self-existent I mean that the conception of which, if it be conceivable, does not involve the conception of antecedent or consequent. By eternal and infinite I mean illimitable in duration and extent. By 'omnipotent' I mean supreme in power over everything. By omniscient, knowing everything. By 'righteous and benevolent' I mean that which the best educated opinion would mean when applying those words to human beings. This doctrine of Monotheism appears to me to be flatly contradicted by the phenomena we know. It is inconsistent with that observed uniformity of happening usually described as law of nature. By law of nature I mean observed order of event. The word 'nature' is another equivalent for the word universe or existence. By uniformity of happening I mean that, given certain conditions, certain results always ensue--vary the conditions, the results vary. I do not attack specially either the Polytheistic, Pantheistic, or Monotheistic presentments of Theism. To me any pretence of Theism seems impossible if Monism be conceded, and, therefore, at present, I rest content in affirming one existence. If Monism be true, and Atheism be Monism, then Atheism is necessarily the true theory of the universe. I submit that 'there cannot be more than one ultimate explanation' of the universe. That any 'tracing back to two or more' existences is illogical, and that as it is only by 'reaching unity' that we can have a reasonable conclusion, it is necessary 'that every form of Dualism should be rejected as a theory of the universe.' If every form of Dualism be rejected, Monism, i.e. Atheism, alone remains, and is therefore the true and only doctrine of the universe."

Speaking of the prevalence of what he describes as "a form of agnosticism," the editor of the _Spectator_ writes: "We think we see signs of a disposition to declare that the great problem is insoluble, that whatever rules, be it a mind or only a force, he or it does not intend the truth to be known, if there is a truth, and to go on, both in action and speculation, as if the problem had no existence. That is the condition of mind, we know, of many of the cultivated who are not sceptics, nor doubters, nor inquirers, but who think they are as certain of their point as they are that the circle will not be squared. They are, they think, in presence of a recurring decimal, and they are not going to spend life in the effort to resolve it. If no God exists, they will save their time; and if he does exist, he must have set up the impenetrable wall. A distinct belief of that kind, not a vague, pulpy impression, but a formulated belief, exists, we know, in the most unsuspected places, its holders not unfrequently professing Christianity, as at all events the best of the illusions; and it has sunk very far down in the ladder of society. We find it catch classes which have suddenly become aware that there is a serious doubt afloat, and have caught something of its extent and force, till they fancy they have in the doubt a revelation as certainly true as they once thought the old certainty." Surely an active, honest Atheism is to be preferred to the state of mind described in the latter part of the passage we have just quoted.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE DEVIL

DEALING with the Devil has been a perilous experiment. In 1790, an unfortunate named Andre Dubuisson, was confined in the Bastille, charged with raising the Devil. In the reign of Charles I, Thomas Browne, yeoman, was indicted at Middlesex Sessions, for that he did "wickedly, diabolically, and feloniously make an agreement with an evil and impious spirit, that he, the same Thomas Browne, would within ten days after his death, give his soul to the same impious and evil spirit," for the purpose of having a clear income of L2,000 a year. Thomas was found not guilty. In 1682, three persons were hanged at Exeter, and in 1712, five others were hanged at Northampton, for witchcraft and trafficking with the Devil, who has been represented as a black-visaged, sulphurous-constitutioned individual, horned like an old goat, with satyr-like legs, a tail of unpleasant length, and a reckless disposition to buy people presumably his without purchase. I intend to treat the subject entirely from a Biblical point of view; the Christian Devil being a Bible institution. I say the Christian Devil, because other religions also have their Devils, and it is well to prevent confusion. I frankly admit that none of these religions have a Devil so devilish as that of the Christian.

I am unable to say certainly whether I am writing about a singular Devil or a plurality of Devils. In many texts "Devils" are mentioned (Leviticus xvii, 7; Mark i, 34, &c.) recognising a plurality; in others "the Devil" (Luke iv, 2), as if there was but one. Seven Devils went out of Mary called Magdalene (Luke viii, 2). The Rev. P. Hains, a Wigan church clergyman, tells me that where "Devils" are to be found in the Gospels it is mistranslated and should be "Demons"--these being apparently an inferior sort of Devils. Hershon (Talmudical Commentary on Genesis, p. 299), quotes from Rabbi Yochanan, "There were three hundred different species of male demons in Sichin, but what the female demon is like I know not;" and from Rava, "If anyone wishes to see the demons themselves let him burn and reduce to ashes the offspring of a first-born black cat; let him put a little of it in his eyes and he will see them." Assuming that either there is one Devil, more than one, or less than one, and having thus cleared away mere numerical difficulties, we will proceed to give the Devil his due. The word Satan occurs 1 Samuel xxix, 4, and is there translated "adversary," (Cahen) "obstacle," see also I Kings xi, 14. Satan appears either to have been a child of God or a most intimate acquaintance of the family, for, on "a day when the children of God came to present themselves before the Lord, Satan came also amongst them," (Job I, 6) and no surprise or disapprobation is manifested at his presence. Some trace in this the Persian demonology where the good spirits surround Ormuzd and where Ahriman is the spirit of evil. The conversation in the Book of Job between God and the Devil has a value proportioned to the rarity of the scene and to the high characters of the personages concerned, despite the infidel criticism of Martin Luther, who condemns the Book of Job as "a sheer _argumentum fabula_." A Christian ought to be surprised to find "God omniscient" putting to Satan the query: Whence comest thou? for he cannot suppose God, the all-wise, ignorant upon the subject. Satan's reply: "From going to and fro in the earth, and from going up and down it," increases our surprise and augments our astonishment. The true believer should be astonished to find from his Bible that Satan could have gone to and fro in the earth, and walked up and down it, and yet not have met God, if omnipresent, at least occasionally, during his journeying. It is not easy to conceive omnipresence absent, even temporarily, from every spot where the Devil promenaded. The Lord makes no comment on Satan's reply, but says: "Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil?" It seems extraordinary that God should wish to have the Devil's judgment on the only good man then living: the more extraordinary, as God, the all-wise, knew Satan's opinion without asking it, and God, the immutable, would not be influenced by the expression of the Devil's views. Satan's answer is: "Doth Job fear God for naught? Hast thou not made an hedge about him, and about all that he hath on every side? Thou hast blest the work of his hand, and his substance is increased in the land; but put forth thine hand now and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face." God's reply to this audacious declaration is: "Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand." And this was Job's reward for being a perfect and upright man, one that feared God and eschewed evil. He was not actually sent to the Devil, but to the Devil was given power over all that he had. Job lost all without repining, sons, daughters, oxen, asses, camels, and sheep, all destroyed, and yet "Job sinned not." Divines urge that this is a beautiful picture of patience and contentment under wrong and misfortune. But it is neither good to submit patiently to wrong, nor to rest contented under misfortune. It is better to resist wrong; wiser to carefully investigate the causes of wrong and misfortune, with a view to their removal. Contentment under wrong is a crime; voluntary submission under oppression is no virtue.

"Again, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord [as if God's children could ever be absent from him], and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord. And the Lord [again] said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answered the Lord and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth? a perfect and upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, ALTHOUGH THOU MOVEDST ME AGAINST HIM TO DESTROY HIM WITHOUT CAUSE." Can God be moved against a man to destroy him without a cause? If so, God is neither immutable nor all-wise. Yet the Bible puts into God's mouth the terrible admission that the Devil had moved God against Job to destroy him without cause. If true, it destroys alike God's goodness and his wisdom.

But Satan answered the Lord and said: "Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life; put forth thine hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face."

Does the Lord now drive the Devil from his presence? Is there any expression of wrath or indignation against this tempter? "The Lord said unto Satan: Behold, he is in thine hand, but save his life." And Job, being better than everybody else, finds himself smitten in consequence with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. The ways of the Lord are not as our ways, or this would seem the reverse of an encouragement to virtue.

In the account of the numbering by David, in one place "God," and in another "Satan," occurs (1 Chron. xxi,1; 2 Sam. xxiv, 1), and to each the same act of "moving" or "provoking" David to number his people is attributed. There may be in this more harmony than ordinary men recognise, for one erudite Bible commentator tells us, speaking of the Hebrew word Azazel: "This terrible and venerable name of God, through the pens of Biblical glossers, has been _a devil, a mountain, a wilderness, and a he-goat._"[13] Well may incomprehensibility be an attribute of deity when, even to holy and reverend fathers, God has been sometimes undistinguishable from a he-goat or a Devil. Moncure D. Conway writes: "There can be little question that the Hebrews, from whom the Calvinist inherited his deity, had no Devil in their mythology, because the jealous and vindictive Jehovah was quite equal to any work of that kind--as the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, bringing plagues upon the land, or deceiving a prophet and then destroying him for his false prophecies."[14]

[13] G.R. Gliddon's extract from Land's "Sacra Scritura," chap, iii, sec. 1. "Demonology and Devil-lore," vol. i, p. 11.

[14] "Christian Records," by the Rev. Dr. Giles, p. 144.

God is a spirit. Jesus is God. Jesus was led up of the Spirit to be tempted of the Devil. All these propositions are equally credible.

On the temptation of Jesus by the Devil, the Rev. Dr. Giles writes: "That the Devil should appear personally _to the Son of God is certainly not more wonderful_ than that he should, in a more remote age, have appeared _among_ the Sons of God, in the presence of God himself, to tempt and torment the righteous Job. But that Satan should carry Jesus, bodily and literally, through the air--first to the top of a high mountain, and then to the topmost pinnacle of the temple--is wholly inadmissible; it is an insult to our understanding."[15] It is pleasant to find clergymen zealously repudiating their own creeds.

[15] "Pilgrim's Progress from Methodism to Christianity."

I am not prepared to speak strongly as to the color of the Devil. White men paint him black; black men paint him white. He can scarcely be colorless, as otherwise the Evangelists would have labored under considerable difficulties in witnessing the casting out of the Devil from the man in the synagogue (Luke iv, 35, 36).This Devil is described as an unclean Devil. The Devils were subject to the 70 disciples whom Jesus appointed to preach (Luke x, 17), and they are not unbelievers: one text tells us that they believe and tremble (James ii, 19). It is a fact of some poor Devils that the more they believe the more they tremble. According to another text the Devil goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter v, 8), though the Devil's "doctrines" presumably include vegetarianism (1 Timothy iv, 1, 3). I am not sure what drinks devils incline to, though it is distinguished from the wine of the communion (1 Corinthians x, 21). Devils should be a sort of eternal salamanders, for there is everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels (Matt. xxv, 41); and there is a lake of brimstone and fire, into which the Devil was cast (Rev. xx, 10). The Devil has, at least upon one occasion, figured as a controversialist. For we learn that he disputed with the arch-angel Michael, contending about the body of Moses (Jude 9); in these degenerate days of personality in debate, it is pleasant to know that the religious champion was very civil towards his Satanic opponent. The Devil was imprisoned for 1,000 years in a bottomless pit (Rev. xx, 2). If a pit had no bottom, it seems but little confinement to shut the top. But, with faith and prayer even a good foundation may be obtained for a bottomless pit. The writer of Revelation, adopting the view of some Hebrew writers, speaks of "the dragon, that old serpent which is the devil and Satan" and following this, it is urged that the Devil was the serpent of Genesis--that is, that it was really Satan who, in this guise, tempted Eve. There is this difficulty in the matter--the Devil is a liar (John viii, 44); but in the interview with Eve the serpent seems to have confined himself to the strict truth (Gen. iii, 4, 5, 22). There is, in fact, no point of resemblance--no horns, no hoof, nothing except a tail.

Kalisch notes that "the Egyptians represented the eternal spirit Kneph, the author of all good, under the mythic form" of the serpent, but they employed the same symbol "for Typhon, the author of all moral and physical evil, and in the Egyptian symbolical alphabet, the serpent represents subtlety and cunning, lust, and sensual pleasure."

The Old Testament speaks a little of the Devils, sometimes of Satan, but never of "The Devil;" yet Matthew ushers him in, in the temptation scene, without introduction, and as if he were an old acquaintance. I do not remember reading in the Old Testament, anything about the lake of brimstone and fire. Although Malachi iv, 1, speaks of the day "that shall burn as an oven when the wicked shall be burned up." This feature of faith was reserved for the warmth of Christian love to develop from some of the Talmudical writers. The Rev. C. Boutell in his Bible dictionary says, that, "it is at the least unfortunate that the word 'hell' should have been used as if the translation of the Hebrew 'sheol.'" Zechariah, in a vision, saw "Joshua, the High Priest, standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him" (Zach-ariah iii, 1). Why the Devil wanted to resist Joshua is not clear; but, as Joshua's garments were in a very filthy state, it may be that he was preaching to the priest the virtues of cleanliness. Jesus said that one of the twelve disciples was a Devil (John vi, 70). You are told to resist the devil and he will flee from you (James iv, 7). If this be true, he is a cowardly Devil, and thus does not agree quite with Milton's picture of his grand defiance, almost heroism. But then Milton was a poet, and true religion has but little poetry in it.

Jeroboam, one of the Jewish monarchs, ordained priests for the devils (2 Chron. ix, 15). In the time of Jesus, Satan must, when not in the body of some mad, deaf, dumb, blind, or paralytic person, have been occasionally in heaven; for Jesus, on one occasion, told his disciples that he saw Satan, as lightning, fall from heaven (Luke x, 18). Jesus told Simon Peter that Satan desired to have him, that he might sift him as wheat (Luke xxii, 31); perhaps Jesus was chafing his disciple. Paul, the apostle, seems to have looked on the Devil much as some bigots look on the police, for Paul delivered Hymeneus and Alexander unto Satan, that they might learn not to blaspheme (1 Timothy i, 20).

Revivalists are much indebted for their evanescent successes to hell and the Devil. Thomas English, a fair specimen of those very noisy and active preachers who do so much in promoting revivals, spoke of "dwelling with devouring fire, bearing everlasting burning, roasting on the Devil's spit, broiling on his gridiron, being pitched about with his fork, drinking the liquid fire, breathing the brimstone fumes, drowning in a red-hot sea, lying on fiery beds."[16] The vulgar tirades of Reginald Radcliffe, Richard Weaver, and C. H. Spurgeon, will serve to evidence that the above quotation is no exaggeration. In London, before crowded audiences, Mr. Weaver, without originality, and with only the merit of copied coarseness, has called upon the Lord to "shake the ungodly for five minutes over the mouth of hell." Mr. Spurgeon has drawn pictures of hell which, if true and revealed to him by God, would be most disgustingly frightful, and which being but the creation of his own morbid fancies, induce a feeling of contempt as well as disgust for the teacher, who uses such horrible descriptions to affright his weaker hearers.

[16] Sharpe's "History of Egypt," p. 196.

Calmet says that "By collecting all the passages where Satan (or the Devil) is mentioned, it may be observed, that he fell from Heaven, with all his company; that God cast him down from thence for the punishment of his pride; and by his envy and malice, death, and all other evils came into the world; that by the permission of God he exercises a sort of government in the world over his subordinates, over apostate angels like himself; that God makes use of him to prove good men, and to chastise bad ones; that he is a lying spirit in the mouth of false prophets, seducers, and heretics; that it is he, or some of his, that torment, obsess, or possess men, that inspire them with evil designs, as did _David_, when he suggested to him to number his people, and to _Judas_ to betray _Jesus Christ_, and to Ananias and Sapphira to conceal the price of their field. That he roves about full of rage, like a roaring lion, to tempt, to betray, to destroy, and to involve us in guilt and wickedness.

"That his power and malice are restricted within certain limits, and controlled by the will of God; that he sometimes appears to men to seduce them; that he can transform himself into an angel of light; that he sometimes assumes the form of a spectre, as he appeared to the Egyptians while they were involved in darkness in the days of Moses; that he creates several diseases to men; that he chiefly presides over death, and bears aways the souls of the wicked to hell; that at present he is confined to Hell, as in a prison, but that he will be unbound and set at liberty in the year of _Anti-Christ_; that hell-fire is prepared for him and his; that he is to be judged at the last day. But I cannot perceive very clearly from scripture, that he torments the souls of the wicked in hell, as we generally believe."

In his interesting volume on Elizabethan demonology Mr. Spalding urges that "the empire of the supernatural must obviously be most extended where civilization is the least advanced," and he gives three reasons for the belief in devils--1. "The apparent incapacity of the majority of mankind to accept a purely monotheistic creed." 2. "The division of spirits into hostile camps, good and evil." 3. "The tendency of all theological systems to absorb into themselves the deities extraneous to themselves, not as gods, but as inferior or even evil spirits."

Even if I were a theist I should refuse to see in God a being omniscient and omnipotent, who puts us into this world without our volition, leaves us to struggle through it unequally pitted against an almost omnipotent and super-subtle Devil; and who, if we fail, finally drops us out of this world into Hell-fire, where a legion of inferior devils finds constant and never-ending employment in inventing fresh tortures for us; our crime being, that we have not succeeded where success was rendered impossible. No high thinkings are developed by the doctrine of Devils and damnation. If a potent faith, it degrades to imbecility alike the teacher and the taught, by its abhorrent mercilessness; and if mere form instead of a faith, then is the Devil doctrine a misleading sham.

WERE ADAM AND EVE OUR FIRST PARENTS?

THIS question, Were Adam and Eve our first parents? is indeed one of vital importance. A negative answer is a denial of the whole Christian scheme. The Christian theory is that Adam, the common father of the whole human race, sinned, and by his sin dragged down all his posterity to a state from which redemption was needed, and that Jesus is, and was, the Redeemer, by whom all mankind are, and were, saved from the consequences of the fall of Adam. If Adam therefore be not the first man, if it is not to Adam the various races of mankind are indebted for their origin, then the whole hypothesis of fall and redemption fails.

It is impossible in the space of this pamphlet to give any statement and analysis of the various hypotheses as to the origin of the human race; that I have done at some length in my volume on "Genesis: its Authorship and Authenticity." Personally I incline to favor the doctrine of a plurality of sources for the various types of the human race. That wherever the conditions for life have been, there also has been the degree of life resultant on those conditions. My purpose here is not to demonstrate the correctness of my own thinking, but rather to illustrate the incorrectness of the Genesaical teaching. Were Adam and Eve our first parents? On the one hand, an affirmative answer can be obtained from the Bible, which, though in Genesis v, 2, using Adam as a race-name, specifically asserts (ii, 22) Adam and Eve to be the first man and woman made by God, and in the authorised version fixes the date of their making about 6,000 years, little more or less, from the present time. On the other hand, science emphatically declares man to have existed on the earth for a far more extended period, affirms that as far as we can trace man historically, we find him in isolated groups, diverse in type, till we lose him in the ante-historic period; and with nearly equal distinctness denies that the various existing races find their common parentage in one pair. It is only on the first point that I attack the Bible chronology of man's existence. I am aware that calculations based upon the authorised version of the Old Testament Scriptures are open to objection, and that while from the Hebrew 1,656 years represent the period from Adam to the Deluge generally acknowledged, the Samaritan Pentateuch only yields for the same period 1,307 years, while the Septuagint version furnishes 2,242 years; but a most erudite Egyptologist, states a fatal objection to the Septuagint chronology--i.e., that it makes Methuselah outlive the Flood.[17] The Deluge occurred, according to the Septuagint, in the year of the world 2,242, and by adding up the generations previous to his (Methuselah's) birth--Adam, 230; Seth, 205; Enos, 190; Cainan, 170; Mahaleel, 165; Jared, 162; Enoch, 165; = 1,287--Methuselah was born in the year of the world 1287. He lived 969 years, and therefore died in 2256. But this is fourteen years after the Deluge.

[17] "Harmony of the Four Evangelists, and Harmony of the Old Testament."

The Rev. Dr. Lightfoot, who wrote about 1644, fixes the month of creation at September, 5,572 years preceding the date of his book, and says that Adam was expelled from Eden on the day on which he was created.[18] In my volume on Genesis (pp. 29-36) the reader will find the chronology of Genesis carefully examined. For our immediate purpose we will take the ordinary English Bible, which gives the following result: From Adam to Abraham (Genesis v and xi), 2,008; Abraham to Isaac (Genesis xxi, 5), 100; Isaac to Jacob (Genesis xxv, 26), 60; Jacob going into Egypt (Genesis xlvii, 9), 130; Sojourn in Egypt (Exodus xii, 41), 430; Duration of Moses' leadership (Exodus vii, 7; xxxi, 2), 40; thence to David, about 400; from David to Captivity, 14 generations (27), about 22 reigns, 473; Captivity to Jesus, 14 generations, about 5,934 = 234; less disputed 230 years of sojourn in Egypt, 230 = 4,004.

[18] Munks' "Palestine," p.231

These dates follow the Bible statement, and there is no portion of the orthodox text, except the period of the Judges, which will admit any considerable extension of the ordinary Oxford chronology.

The Book of Judges is not a book of history. Everything in it is recounted without chronological order. It will suffice to say that the cyphers which we find in the Book of Judges and in the First Book of Samuel yield us, from the death of Joshua to the commencement of the reign of Saul, the sum-total of 500 years, which would make, since the exodus from Egypt, 565 years; whereas the First Book of Kings counts but 480 years, from the going out of Egypt down to the foundation of the temple under Solomon. According to this we must suppose that several of the judges governed simultaneously.(19)

Alfred Maury, in his profound essay on the classification of tongues, traces back some of the ancient Greek mythologies to a Sanscrit source. He has the following remark, worthy of earnest attention: "The God of heaven, or the sky, is called by the Greek _Zeus Pater_; and let us have notice that the pronunciation of Z resembles very much that of D, inasmuch as the word Zeus becomes in the genitive (Dios). The Latins termed the same God, _Dies-piter_, or Jupiter. Now in the Veda, the God of heaven is called Dyashpitai." What is this but the original of our own Christian God the father, the _Jeue_ pater of the Old Testament? The Hebrew Records, whether or not God-inspired, are certainly not the most antique. Neither is it true that the Hebrew mythology is the most ancient, nor the Hebrew language the most primitive; on the contrary, the mythology is clearly derived, and the language in a secondary or tertiary state.

The word Adam is first written as a proper name in Genesis ii, 19, but the word written Adam is and this is found in Genesis i, 26, and in several other verses. In i, 27, the word is used as if it meant not one man only, but "male and female;" indeed v. 2, says, "male and female created he them and blessed them and called their name Adam." Genesis ii, 18, treats the man as alone, and 19 his name as Adam.

What is the value of this Book of Genesis, the sole authority for the hypothesis that Adam and Eve, about 6,000 years ago, were the sole founders of the peoples now living on the face of the earth? Written we know not by whom, we know not when, and we know not in what language. Eusebius, Chrysostom, and Clemens Alexandrinus alike agree that the name of Moses should not stand at the head of Genesis as the author of the book. Origen did not hesitate to declare the contents of the first and second chapters of Genesis to be purely figurative. Our translation of it has been severely criticised by the learned and pious Bellamy, and by the more learned and less pious Sir William Drummond. It has been amended and revised in our own day. Errors almost innumerable have been pointed out, the correctness of the Hebrew text itself questioned, and yet this book is claimed as an unerring guide to the students of ethnology. They may do anything, everything, except stray out of the beaten track. We have, on the one hand, an anonymous book, which, for the development of the diversities of the human family, does not even take us back so much as 6,000 years. At least 1,600 years must be deducted for the alleged Noachian deluge, when the world's inhabitants were again reduced to one family, one race, one type. On the other hand, we have now existing Esquimaux men, of the Arctic realm--Chinamen, of the Asiatic realm--Englishmen, of the European realm--Sahara negroes, of the African realm--Fuegians, of the American realm--New Zealanders, of the Polynesian realm--the Malay, representative of the realm which bears his name--the Tasmanian, of the Australian realm--with other families of each realm, too numerous for mention here; dark and fair; black-skinned and 'white-skinned; woolly-haired and straight-haired; low forehead, high forehead; Hottentot limb, Negro limb, Caucasian limb. Do all these different and differing structures and colors trace their origin to one pair? To Adam and Eve, or rather to Noah and his family? Or are they (the various races) indigenous to their native soils, and climates? And are these various types naturally resultant, with all their differences, from the differing conditions for life persistent to and consistent with them?

The question is really this--Have the different races of man all found their common parent in Noah, about 4,300 years ago? Assuming the unity of the races or species of men now existing, there are but three suppositions on which the diversity now seen can be accounted for:--

"1st. A miracle or direct act of the Almighty, in changing one type into another.

"2nd. The gradual action of physical causes, such as climate, food, mode of life, etc.

"3rd. Congenital or accidental varieties."[20]

[20] "Types of Mankind," Dr. Nott, p. 57.

We may fairly dismiss entirely the question of miracle. Such a miracle is nowhere recorded in the Bible, and it lies upon anyone hardy enough to assert that the present diversity has a miraculous origin, to show some kind of reasons for his faith, some kind of evidence to warrant our conviction. Until this is done we need not dwell on the first hypothesis.

Of the durability of type under its own life conditions we have overwhelming proof in the statue of an ancient Egyptian scribe, taken from a tomb of the fifth dynasty, 5,000 years old, and precisely corresponding to the Fellah of the present day.[21] The sand had preserved the color of the statuette, which, from its portraitlike beauty, marks a long era of art-progress preceding its production. It antedates the orthodox era of the Flood, carries us back to a time when, if the Bible were true, Adam was yet alive, and still we find before it kings reigning and ruling in mighty Egypt. Can the reader wonder that these facts are held to impeach the orthodox faith?

[21] M. Pulzsky on Iconography--"Indigenous Races," p. 111.

On the second point Dr. Nott writes: "It is a commonly received error that the influence of a hot climate is gradually exerted on successive generations, until one species of mankind is completely changed into another This idea is proven to be false.... A sunburnt cheek is never handed down to succeeding generations. The exposed parts of the body are alone tanned by the sun, and the children of the white-skinned Europeans in New Orleans, Mobile, and the West Indies are born as fair as their ancestors, and would remain so if carried back to a colder climate.[22] Pure negroes and negresses, transported from Central Africa to England, and marrying among themselves, would never acquire the characteristics of the Caucasian races; nor would pure Englishmen and Englishwomen, emigrating to Central Africa, and in like manner intermarrying, ever become negroes or negresses. The fact is, that while you don't bleach the color out of the darkskinned African by placing him in London, you bleach the life out of him; and vice versa with the Englishman.[23] For a long time there has been ascribed to man the faculty of adapting himself to every climate. The following facts will show the ascription a most erroneous one, though human adaptability is very great: "In Egypt the austral negroes are, and the Caucasian Memlooks were, unable to raise up even a third generation; in Corsica French families vanish beneath Italian summers. Where are the descendants of the Romans, the Vandals, or the Greeks in Africa? In Modern Arabia, after Mahomed Ali had got clear of the Morea War, 18,000 Arnaots (Albanians) were soon reduced to some 400 men. At Gibraltar, in 1817, a negro regiment was almost annihilated by consumption. In 1814, during the three weeks on the Niger, 130 Europeans out of 145 caught African fever, and 40 died; out of 158 negro sailors only eleven were affected, and not one died. In 1809 the British expedition to Welchereen failed in the Netherlands through marsh fever. About the same time, in St. Domingo, about 15,000 French soldiers died from malaria. Of 30,000 Frenchmen, only 8,000 survived exposure to that Antillian island; while the Dominicanised African negro, Toussaint l'Overture, retransported to Europe, was perishing from the chill of his prison in France."

[22] "Types of Mankind," p. 58.

[23] "Indigenous Races of the Earth," p. 458. The alleged discovery of whiteskinned negroes in Western Africa does not affect this question; it is not only to the color of the skin but also to the general negro characteristics that the above remarks apply.

On the third point, again quoting Dr. Nott:--

"The only argument left, then, is that of congenital varieties or peculiarities, which are said to spring up and be transmitted from parent to child, so as to form new races. Let us pause for a moment to illustrate this fanciful idea. The negroes of Africa, for example, are admitted not to be offsets from some other race which have been gradually blackened and changed in a moral and physical type by the action of climate; but it is asserted that 'once, in the flight of ages' some genuine little negro, or rather many such, were born of Caucasian, Mongol, or other light-skinned parents, and then have turned about and changed the type of the inhabitants of a whole continent. So in America, the countless aborigines found on this continent, who we have reason to believe were building mounds before the time of Abraham, are the offspring of a race changed by accidental or congenital varieties. Thus, too, old China, India, Australia, Oceana, etc., all owe their types, physical and mental, to congenital and accidental varieties, and are descended from Adam and Eve! Can human credulity go farther, or human ingenuity invent any argument more absurd?"[24]

[24] Nott and Gliddon, "Indigenous Races," p. 587.

But even supposing these objections to the second and third suppositions set aside, there are two other propositions which, if affirmed, as I believe they may be, entirely overthrow the orthodox assertion: "That Adam and Eve, six thousand years ago, were the first pair; and that all diversities now existing must find their common source in Noah--less than four thousand three hundred years from the present time." These two are as follows:

1. That man may be traced back on the earth long prior to the alleged Adamic era.

2. That there are diversities traceable as existing amongst the human race four thousand five hundred years ago, as marked as in the present day.

To illustrate the position that man may be traced back to a period long prior to the Adamic era, we refer our readers to the chronology of the late Baron Bunsen, who, while allowing about

22,000 years for man's existence on earth, fixes the following dates after a patient examination of the Nilotic antiquities:

Egyptians under a republican form................. 10,000 B.C.

Ascension of Bytis, the Theban, 1st Priest King.... 9,085

Elective Kings in Egypt............................ 7,230

Hereditary Kings in Upper and Lower Egypt, a double empire form............................... 5,143

The assertion of such an antiquity for Egypt is no modern hypothesis. Plato puts language into the mouth of an Egyptian, first claiming in that day an antecedent of 10,000 years for painting and sculpture in Egypt. This has long been regarded as fabulous, because it was contrary to the Hebrew chronology.

There are few who now pretend that the whole _creation_ (?) took place 6,000 years ago, although, if it be true that God made all in six days, and man on the sixth, then the universe would only be more ancient than Adam by some five days. To state the age of the earth at 6,000 years is simply preposterous when it is estimated that it would require about 4,000,000 of years for the formation of the fossiliferous rocks alone, and 15,000,000 of years have been stated as a moderate estimate for the antiquity of our globe. The deltas of the great rivers of Hindustan afford corroboration as to man's antiquity. In Egypt the delta of the Nile, formed by immense quantities of sedimentary matter, which in like manner is still carried down and deposited, has not perceptibly increased during the last 3,000 years. "In the days of the earliest Pharaohs, the delta, as it now exists, was covered with ancient cities and filled with a dense population, whose civilisation must have required a period going back far beyond any date that has yet been assigned to the deluge of Noah, or even to the creation of the world."[25]

[25] Gliddon's "Types of Mankind," p. 335.

From borings which have been made at New Orleans to the depth of 600 feet, from excavations for public works, and from examinations in parts of Louisiana, where the range between high and low water is much greater than it is at New Orleans, no less than ten distinct cypress forests, divided from each other by eras of aquatic plants, etc., have been traced, arranged vertically above each other, and from these and other data it is estimated by Dr. Benet Dowler that the age of the delta is at least about 158,000 years, and in the excavations above referred to, human remains, have been found below the further forest level, making it appear that the human race existed in the delta of the Mississippi more than 57,000 years ago.[26]

[26] "Types," p. 336 to 369.

It is further urged by the same competent writer that human bones discovered on the coast of Brazil, near Santas, and on the borders of a lake called Lagoa Santa, by Captain Elliott and Dr. Lund, thoroughly incorporated with a very hard breccia, every one in a fossil state, demonstrate that aboriginal man in America antedates the Mississippi alluvia, and that he can even boast a geological antiquity, because numerous species of animals have become extinct since American humanity's first appearance.[27]

[27] "Types," pages 350 and 357.

With reference to the possibility of tracing back the diversities of the human race to an antediluvian date, it is amply sufficient to point on the one side to the remains of the American Indian disentombed from the Mississippi forests, and on the other to the Egyptian monuments, tombs, pyramids, and stuccoes, revealing to us Caucasian men and Negro men, their diversities as marked as in the present day. Sir William Jones in his day, claimed for Sanscrit literature a vast antiquity, and asserted the existence of the religions of Egypt, Greece, India, and Italy, prior to the Mosaic Era. So far as Egypt is concerned the researches of Lepsius, Bunsen, Champollion, Lenormant, Gliddon, and others have fully verified the position of the learned president of the Asiatic Society. In "Genesis: its Authorship and Authenticity," pp. 88-21, I have collected other testimony on this point.

We have Egyptian statues of the third dynasty, going back far beyond the 4,300 years which would give the orthodox era of the deluge, and taking us over the 4,500 years fixed by our second proposition. The fourth dynasty is rich in pyramids, tombs, and statues; and according to Lepsius, this dynasty commenced 3,426 B.C., or about 5,287 years from the present date.

Works on the orthodox side constantly assume that the long chronologists must be in error, because their views do not coincide with orthodox teachings. Orthodox authors treat their heterodox brethren as unworthy of credit, because of their heterodoxy. One writer asserts,[28] that the earliest reference to Negro tribes is in the era of the 12th dynasty. Supposing for a moment this to be correct, what even then will be the state of the argument? The 12th dynasty, according to Lepsius ends about 4,000 years ago. The orthodox chronology fixes the deluge about 300 years earlier. Will any sane man argue that there was sufficient lapse of time in three centuries for the development of Caucasian and Negro man from one family?

[28] "Archaia," p. 406.

We trace back the various types of man now known, not to one centre, not to one country, not to one family, not to one pair, but we trace them to different centres, to distinct countries, to separate families, probably to many pairs. Wherever the conditions for life are found, there are living beings also. The conditions of climate, soil, etc., of Central Africa differ from those of Europe. The indigenous races of Central Africa differ from those of Europe. Geology has helped us very little as to the prehistoric types of man, but its aid has nevertheless been sufficient to far outdate the one man Adam of 6,000 years ago.

I challenge the ordinary orthodox assertion of Adamic unity of origin accompanied as it is by threats of pains and penalties if rejected; I am yet ready to examine it, if it can be presented to me associated with facts, and divested of those future hell-fire torments and present societarian persecutions which now form its chief, if not sole, supports.

The rejection of the Bible account of the peopling of the world involves also the rejection of the entire scheme of Christianity. According to the orthodox rendering of both New and Old Testament teaching, all men are involved in the curse which followed Adam's sin. But if the account of the Fall be mythical, not historical; if Adam and Eve--supposing them to have ever existed--were preceded on the earth by many nations and empires, what becomes of the doctrine that Jesus came to redeem mankind from a sin committed by one who was not the common father of all humanity?

Reject Adam, and you cannot accept Jesus. Refuse to believe Genesis, and you cannot give credence to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul. The Old and New Testaments are so connected together, that to dissolve the union is to destroy the system. The account of the Creation and Fall of Man is the foundation-stone of the Christian Church--if this stone be rotten, the superstructure cannot be stable.

NEW LIFE OF ABRAHAM

MOST undoubtedly father Abraham is a personage whose history should command attention, if only because he figures as the founder of the Jewish race--a race which, having been promised protection and favor by Deity, appear in the large majority of cases to have experienced little else besides the sufferance of misfortune and misery themselves, or its infliction upon others. Men are taught to believe that God, following out a solemn covenant made with Abraham, suspended the course of nature to aggrandise the Jews; that he promised always to bless and favor them if they adhered to his worship and obeyed the priests. The promised blessings were usually: political authority, individual happiness and sexual power, long life, and great wealth; the threatened curses for idolatry or disobedience: disease, loss of property and children, mutilation, death. Amongst the blessings: the right to kill, plunder, and ravish their enemies, with protection, whilst pious, against any subjection to retaliatory measures. And all this because they were Abraham's children!

Abraham is especially an important personage to the orthodox Church-going Christian. Without Abraham, no Jesus, no Christianity, no Church of England, no bishops, no tithes, no church-rates. But for Abraham, England would have lost all these blessings. Abraham was the great-grandfather of Judah, the head of the tribe to which God's mother's husband, Joseph, belonged.

In gathering materials for a short biographical sketch, we are at once comforted and dismayed by the fact that the only reliable account of Abraham's career is that furnished by the book of Genesis, supplemented by a few brief references in other parts of the Bible, and that, outside "God's perfect and infallible revelation to man," there is no reliable account of Abraham's existence at all. We are comforted by the thought that, despite the new edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," Genesis is unquestioned by the faithful, and is at present protected by Church and State against heretic assaults; but we are dismayed when we think that, if Infidelity, encouraged by Colenso, Kalisch, Professor Robertson Smith, and Professor Wellhausen, upsets Genesis, Abraham will have little historical support. The Talmudical notices of Abraham are too wonderful for irreverent criticism. Some philologists have asserted that Brama and Abraham are alike corruptions of Abba Rama, or Abrama, and that Sarah is identical with Sarasvati. Abram, is a Chaldean compound, meaning father of the elevated, or exalted father. [--Hebrew--] is a compound of Chaldee and Arabic, signifying father of a multitude. In