SOUTH PLACE MAGAZINE. No. II. Vol. Ill. AUGUST, 18g8. 2d. Monthly.

28. Bd. per annum, posL Irao.

(The writers of Al'ticles appearillg ill this M agazinc arc'alonc rcsponsiblc for the opiniolls thereill expressed.)

RETROSPECTS' AND PROSPECTS. By DR. MONCURE D. CON WAY.

(Read at SOlllh Place by rv. J. ReYllolds OIL Sunday 1II0millg, 27th March.)

AFTER battling against the advance of science for centuries, superstition was finally compelled to surrender. But this was done in a patronising way, and it became a favourite clerical phrase to say that Science is the handmaid of Religion. As a matter of fact, in the last fifty years, what is called Religion has been, in a sense, the hand maid of Science. It has ueen the industrious diffusion of creeds among the common people that forced on their attention the scientific discoveries which challenged their superstitions and dogmas; it has been the heated anathemas and antagonisms of the pulpit against scientific conclusions that have diffused acquaintance with those conclusions, which, had they not been resisted by theological notions, might have remained the possession of the few. Religion-so miscalled-has thus been indirectly of service to the spread of science by making science of vital interest to all Christians, and every man a juryman on its evidences.

In the course of this long issue between theology and science, it has been abundantly revealed that the consecrated dogmas are themselves survivals of antiquated sciences: they have mortgaged every field of investigation, and labelled every fact of nature with a fable or a superstition; so that it has been impossible for any truth to be discovered or published without conflict with some tenet of authorised faith. Galileo could not say the earth moved round the Sun without attacking Joshua, and LyeU could not declare the geologic age of the earth without indicting Moses. Theology imprudently offered battle at every step; controversy brought out all the facts before the popular jury; and the antiquated science of creeds has so steadily fallen before real science, that theologians, whose pro­fession it is to preserve traditional dogmas by adapting them to the exigencies of progress, have now for a generation been driven to the method of adapting the discoveries, then adopting the discoverers, and claiming them as secondary apostles of religion-of course their OWlt religion.

I can myself remember the storm of pulpit animadversion against the geologists who discovered that the world was not

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made in six days, and that its age must be reckoned by millions of years instead of the 6,000 of Christian chronology. The storm increased when it was proved that instead of death being introduced into the world by Adam's eating the apple, the earth had long been paved with animal bones before man's appearance -on it. I remember the next clerical storm, which was raised by Professor Agassiz, who declared that mankind could not have all descended from one pair-Adam and Eve-but that every different race had its Adam and Eve. The missionary societies were particularly aggrieved by this, inasmuch as the many­coloured tribes could not be shown to have inherited Adam's sin if they never descended from him, and therefore could not need a redemption from hereditary sin. It was just about fifty years ago that Agassiz brought out that heresy, but it was quite eclipsed by the heresy of Darwin, twelve years later; and in the struggle against natural development, Agassiz, the only important scientist who opposed Darwinism, was raised into a sort of saint by the very preachers who had denounced him as an infidel a few years before. The heretical geology of Lyell was adopted by theology, also the heretical ethnology of Agassiz, and next we saw Darwin enshrined in Westminster Abbey, and evolution adopted by the leaders of orthodoxy as quite con­sistent with Genesis.

But the troubles of theology have not ended. Astronomy, geology, chemistry, zoology, have passed their reigns of terror, and subsided into a humdrum kind of existence which theology cares nothing about.

But meanwhile the youngest of the sciences, Anthropology, has grown into strength. Some of us can remember its infancy. I myself was among the earliest members of the Anthropological Society of London, and at that time it was not recognised as a science at all by the British Association. It was a good many years before we were allowed a department in the annual meetings. This was not because of any prejudice; the leading anthropologists were allowed to read papers in other depart­ments, but ultimately these became so numerous that a separate section had to be provided. Anthropology seemed then very harmless, insomuch that even the missionaries were un­suspicious, and carried about our lists of questions concerning the customs and beliefs of the distant tribes they visited, and sent back useful replies. But within recent years this accumu­lation of facts has been profoundly studied by competent men -by Tylor, Lubbock, and Herbert Spencer; more recently by Frazer, in "The Golden Bough"; Hartland, in "The Legend of Perseus"; Simpson, in "The Worship of Death"; Robert­son Smith, in "The Religion of the Semites" - and other writers, such as Lawrence Gomme and Edward Clodd; and finally the facts and evidences of these works have been summed up in a work that has just appeared, by Grant Allen, entitled " The Evolution of the Idea of God". Grant Allen shows that

the facts gathered by travellers, officials, mlsslOnaries, from every part of the earth, and all the races of mankind, prove a common and universal basis of religious ideas. As Emerson long ago said, "Their temples grew as grew the grass". Primitive man did not, and does not, believe in death; he offers food to his dead parents and relatives,; to his chieftains or kings he offers food, and on their tombs sacrifices his wives and slaves that the departed one may be duly attended. The great warrior or king is developed into a mighty shade, a powerful ghost, ultimately a god: his tombstone is the first altar, the building over it is the primitive temple. The human victim is dressed up, and temporarily enthroned to represent him, and is then slain and eaten, his blood drunk by the priests, his body dis­tributed among humbler communicants-the tribe-in order that they may all receive the strength and the virtues of the ascended monarch. The primitive communion is thus cannibalism-basis of the eucharist, with its broken body and shed blood. These ideas and these practices are going on now in various parts of the world, and every stage of ceremonial development, the gradual substitution of animal for human sacrifices, the substi­tution of symbols for animals-every stage is represented by one or another tribe or race.

The universality of priesthood, vicarious atonement, prayer, worship, incarnation, sacrifice of the divine man for sins of the people-the universality of these things, ages before Christ, is as demonstrable as the strata of the earth; and amid all changes, all spiritualised interpretations, the original notions survive in old customs and sacred rites. For example, the boys beaten at the bounds in London, are Successors of children once sacrificed to boundary deities. Human sacrifices were universal. They prevailed in Britain as now in savage islands. They long lingered as occasional rites, even in regions where they were mostly commuted by offerings of animals-as when Abraham's offering of his son was commuted for a ram. The records of primitive religion are the records of sanctified slaughter, which to us appears frightful, but was not considered cruel by those who sacrificed their fellows, or by the victims themselves, who supposed they were passing from cross to crown. The reader of these terrible records is, however, struck by the absence from early religious practices of any admixture of ethics. All the sacrifices and prayers are to obtain good crops, help in slaying a hostile tribe, or some other advantage. The only sin to be atoned for is not having offered a deified ancestor enough food or enough victims, and so made him angry. That any super­natural being or ancestor cared about their morals, or their vices, or crimes, never seems to have occurred to these early people. And humanity seems never to have been thought of.

Grant Allen offers us an original and striking theory of agriculture. He calls attention to the immense step in knowledge that would have to be taken before aboriginal man

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could plant a garden. How could he know that if he planted a seed it would spring up again, and in many seeds? How could he know that weeds must be cleared, earth ploughed, seeds sown, to bring him enlarged grains and fruits? Grant Allen believes that men learned this at the graves of their dead. They turned up the earth in digging graves; they brought as offerings to those graves such wild growths and seeds as they had found edible; and these wild seeds, enriched by the blood of victims, sprung up more luxuriantly than in other places, taking deep root in the graves' furrows. The tiny seed swelled to grain. They would attribute these more luxuriant growths to the favour of the ghosts they were worshipping; they would enlarge the cleared space around the tomb, and enclose it to keep out destructive animals: and thus out of a low and cruel superstition arose the garden. The process would be generally imitated, and agriculture enter on its civilising career.

I am inclined to use this theory as a similitude. How many still higher grains and harvests and fruits, even those of our moral and spiritual nature, may have owed their first culture to some incidental suggestions accompanying the grossest superstitions? It is not my own belief that the emotions that seem to us religious, the ideal shining above us under which our nature is swayed, as tides beneath the moon, and our moral sentiment-it is not my belief that these supreme things grew out of, or were evolved out of, the horrible sacrifices of primitive man. I suppose that the germs of a higher, a more moral and humane nature were slumbering in those ignorant people-invisibly there just as there are millions of seeds slumbering in forgotten places.

The sympathetic and humane mind of our own time is scan-dalised by the dogma of the salvation of mankind by means of a human sacrifice, offered up on the cross. That is the contemporary view; and the sacrificial character of the crucifixion is hidden away by theologians under veils of Christian mysticism, while to the average communicant the symbols of hody and blood are but commemorations of a martyr.

But if we look through the lens of the dogma into the past out of which it grew, we may catch a glimpse of another vision. It is now known that the district of Galilee, where Jesus was born, was a region where human sacrifices lingered very long. It was a region where the very darkest and most horrible superstitions prevailed. Now there are evidences, suppressed in the New Testament, but contained in the records of the earliest followers of Jesus in Judea, that he-Jesus-especially set himself to do away with sacrifices. He denounced all sacrifices with a kind of rage. And when the Passover time came, and his friends wished him to eat it with them, he repudiated the flesh of it­the paschal lamb sacrificed-and they had a supper of bread and wine, and possibly of other viands that were not used in

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sacrifices. There is reason to believe that the human sacrifices still prevaiied in that region then and long after. The animal victims had been substituted in ordinary ceremonies, but on occasions of special solemnity and importance a human victim was offered, as St. Oran was sacrificed in founding the Church in Iona, and also on the corner-stone of HoislVorthy Church in Devon. From such horrors in his native region the heart of Jesus recoiled, and he grasped the idea of Divine Love. It was defined against the a'gonies of writhing victims. The germ of compassion in him was watered by that blood. His followers could not make headway fully against such strong tradition, but their representation of Jesus bimself as the all­sufficient human sacrifice, the only one needed, may have arisen from a humane desire to end forever the horrid custom. The idea was probably a mere benevolent device, and might have so remained had not vampire-like Paul turned it into a sacrament of blood.

And in the same way, after Jesus had demonstrated that ethical culture had nothing to do with sacrifices, he himself was turned into a sacrifice, to be perpetually offered, it being main­tained that no virtue could grow, no morality flourisb, unless watered by his blood. At this day I know some pious districts where a man is hated like Cain if he grows morality witbout believing in tbe blood of Cbrist .

The religion of Christendom is not real religion, but prolonged arrest and repression. Religious evolution has proceeded not from the Church, but from and by the Church's victims. The science, art, literature, of the living world are to-day found side by side with forms and symbols that consecrate the ignorance and barbarity of men who are now Egyptian mummies, or dust of skeletons in tumuli surrounded by the ashes of victims slain at their burial.

The priesthood change, the clergy, the ministers share in the progress of ideas; but their altars, rites, creeds, remain un­changed until crumbled by time and revolutions. The learning and wisdom of Christendom are in the same case with Solomon, when by aid of the highest skill of all the East he built and dedicated the temple at Jerusalem. The priests had an old idol, a stone, which they said had led Israel out of Egypt; they were ashamed of it, and kept it hid in a box called the Ark, and to prevent people from seeing it said that their God chose to dwell in thick darkness. Solomon, having built the temple, took the dedication out of tbe bands of the priests, and said (his first words, preserved by the Septuagint, are suppressed in our Bible) :-

.. The sun is known in the vault of heaven; But God hath chosen to dwell in thick darkness; And yet I have dared to build thee a house, A habitation and dwelling-place for ever."

That is, not a place to hide in. But the old stone in its box had

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to go in. Solomon covered it over and veiled it under the golden wings of cherubim; but there it was, in a nook called the Holy of Holies, and there it remained till some invader carried it off with other plunder.

How often have we heard learned men hiding their old stony idol of dogma or sacrament under golden wings of cherubim, moral interpretations, poetry; but to part with any old formula or rite is dreaded- as if removing a corner-stone of the temple. They reproach us for judging them by the letter, but they take care never to change the letter.

Last year was the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Westminster Confession . It was celebrated in New York by an assembly of eminent Presbyterian preachers from various States of America. These divines paid solemn homage to those ancestors of eight generations ago. Who were those ancestors? Men who had little or no knowledge even of the substance of the Bible, worshippers of the letter- especially of the spurious letter. Men who persecuted and imprisoned their fellow-men for any difference of opinion about a text or metaphysics. Among these preachers in New York who honoured those holy persecutors, there was probably not one who, had he lived among them, would not have been imprisoned as a heretic, and that under the sanction of the very Westminster Confession he was praising, for that Confession ordains magisterial punishment for publish­ing opinions contrary to " the known principles of Christianity". Among the principles of Christianity laid down by the Confession there is one especially horrible, entitled" Of God's Holy Decrees", and it is doubtful if any preacher in England or America would now maintain those dogmas and the legal punishment of opinion, and no congregation would tolerate them. But the old formula continues all the same; and so also in England the Athanasian Creed with its barbaric anathemas-each a blasphemy against every deity upheld in orthodox pulpits-they all continue. The ancient exorcism of Satan out of babies and converts, called baptism, goes on; the sacramental celebration of a human sacrifice goes on; adulations of the heavenly monarch go on, and abject petitions to his throne.

Some years ago the Presbyterians of New England held a synod at Concord, Massachusetts, a town renowned in early times for its Puritanism, in modern times as the residence of the great philosopher Emerson . Emerson had demonstrated the monstrosity of miracles, the faithlessness of faith in the Bible, in sacraments: he was the arch-heretic of America. Yet those Presbyterian ministers, during their synod at Concord, went in a body to pay their respects to the great man, in his old age, who · more than any other leavened all America with rationalism .

The Presbyterians, having paid their homage to Emerson, repaired to their towns and pulpits, prepared to fight to the bitter end any man who should try to change a word in con­fession or catechism, or modifty a sacrament. The only changes

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made by the New World in formularies are in the Episcopal Church, which omits the Athanasian Creed, and leaves it optional to read in the Apostles' Creed that Jesus "went into the place of departed spirits" instead of "He descended into hell ".

How slowly ideas modify religious institutions is exemplified in the history of South Place Chapel. Though our Society was founded to proclaim the boundless divine Love which would save all mankind at last, both good and evil, and abhorred the notion that the deity demanded the murder of his son before he could forgive sin, or that man is naturally depraved, yet the symbols of exorcism and of blood redemption continued for forty years after the Society was founded, in 1793; and Mr. Fox had for sixteen years been preaching the most advanced ideas then known-and welcoming Hindoos and Deists as brothers-before he waked up to the perception that baptism and the so-called Lord's Supper were inconsistent with his principles. The old pitcher that used to hold the wine of communion is somewhere about the chapel nolV, and ought to be preserved as a reminder of the strength of hereditary usage. It took thirty-six years more to rid us of the custom of seeking to influence the universe by prayer. But during all that time the successive preachers had been giving rationalistic interpretations of the old usages­the baptism was a symbol not of the babe's depravity but of its purity; the bread and wine were commemorations of a good man's martyrdom; the prayers were not meant to influence God but to influence ourselves. And so on.

Our ancestors of centuries before were all present in the chapel when these new departures were made; they were present as ghosts. Mr. Fox made a bow to them by substituting a service of child-dedication for christening; and I made a sort of bow to them by substituting a meditation for prayer. But with none of these changes were the ghosts satisfied; they are very particular about forms, formulas, points of heavenly etiquette; they do not care much what you think or say, if you stick to the old phrase, as people are careful in letters, even to those they dislike, to begin with "My dear Sir", and end with "Your obedient humble servant" ,

I repeat, I cannot agree with that theory of moral and spiritual evolution which supposes that high and true ideals are developed out of low and base superstitions. I do not believe that mankind gather figs from thistles, or truths from falsities. When the little wild grain offered at the grave of a chieftain sprang up to a full head of larger grain it was not due to the­sacrificial superstition, but to the laws of nature which had been incidentally utilised in the process. If a man is led by his recoil from some cruelty to cultivate in himself the virtue of com­passion, this would not imply that compassion is developed out of cruelty; it is not the cruelty that is to be credited, but the good heart that is in the man: if the good heart were not there,.

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he would probably imitate the cruelty. For as Buddha said, hatred begets hatred, and love begets loves.

That false creed, framed five centuries after the apostles, and falsely called the Apostles' Creed, with which clericalism recently tried to adulterate School Board education, has suffered a defeat. But shall we credit the victory of truth to the defeated falsities? Vias Progressivism evolved out of Clericalism? It was evolved out of English justice and London culture, excited by the obstructions into an activity which educated the people in principles. The same principles should exclude the Bible from the schools altogether, but that further step will never be achieved if thinkers suppose that it will be done by evolution out of the Bible and bibliolatry. It will be evolved, if at all, out of the same principles, and the same progressivism, that prevented the relapse into Creedism and Clericalism.

It may seem, at first glance, that the distinction here drawn is without much difference. But really it is the difference between freedom and fatalism . Calvinism is the congenital disease of Protestantism, and its dogma of predestination was inherited even by Unitarianism. Nay, the Ethical Culture Movement, youthful as it is, already shows symptoms of this hereditary fallacy. Some ethical teachers are proclaiming that the laws of morality are eternal and immutable. In a certain sense that may perhaps be said of the moral sentiment; but the moral laws are very mutable. Morality requires duelling in one -country, punishment of duelling in another. And what is the meaning of ethical culture if morality is eternal and immutable? It is also declared by some teachers and reformers that the truths we declare are mighty and must prevail; that the reforms we espouse must triumph . There is, they cry, an irresistible power not ourselves that makes for righteousness.

Then why not fold our hands and let this outside power go -on and do our work for us? Let us eat ami drink for to-morrow will be ours anyway, and the day after to-morrow; and all the to-morrows will be summed up in due time by the consumma­tion of our hopes.

But, my friends, there is no such predestination for truth and justice in the nature of things . The world is as we make it. If we do not plough and till the field, a power not ourselves covers it with weeds; if we drain not the swamp the powers not .ourselves fill it with reptiles and malaria. That there is also a power not ourselves that the cultivator may lay hold on, is most true. From the poison that slew Socrates, and crushed his truth, medical art now distils a healing draught: the tree that yielded a stake for Jesus to die on will equally yield fruit to the husbandman, or plank for his cottage. Both the good and evil may employ these' powers not ourselves'.

It is not without significance, and not without some suggestion .of truth, that mankind have always ascribed their epochs of

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reform, the origins of new truth, to men sent or inspired from some sphere above external nature-some Zoroaster endowed by the god of light, or Buddha come from upper spheres, or ] esus baptised with celestial fire . Such men only represent more fully virtues potential in every man; but while men are swayed by animalism the man risen above animalism seems supernatural. But if we search deeply and rationally in ourselves, we shall find the whole supernatural world at work in our own heart and mind. And if, still steadily looking-within, we come, as it were, face to face with the moral sentiment itself-that is face to face with the sense of right and wrong-we are in the presence of that which is for each individual the highest thing he can appre­hend. I say apprehend, for to comprehend it is not so easy. Thus far it has defied analysis. The sense of right and wrong must in thought be detached from the particular actions we deem right or wrong, or the kind of conduct so labelled. All nations, and most individuals, vary in their practical applica­tions of the moral sense, and this is largely because morality has been long under the control of theology and priesthood, which have utilised this tremendous force, the moral sense, for ends not moral-to build up political and ecclesiastical power. A powerful work just published in London, "The Dynamics ot Religion ", by M. W . \Viseman, shows how low has been the moral standard of Protestant leaders from Luther downward, and of most theological leaders ; but to me it is plain that among the ignorant masses such perversions of their moral sense rendered our modern human sacrifices possible-such as the prosecution of deists and their imprisonment ninety years ago, instituted by Unitarians to prove their own Christianity-only because these illiterate masses were deceived into a belief that persecution could alone save mankind from the judgments of Jehovah. And hypocritical politicians and theologians are even yet able to persuade their silly sheep that their discredited dogmas are the only bases of morality, though they are thus really putting freethinkers under pressure to pursue the immoral course of suppressing what they believe true, and conniving with what they believe error.

The moral sense must be detached from these external perversions and adulterations; it must be detached from our own perceptions of duty, which may be mingled with inherited prejudice, or warped by partisanship or by patriotic pride. Far beyond all these particulars, far in the depths of our human -consciousness, is the fundamental question, Why does my mind feel a difference between right and wrong? What makes this difference, essentially, apart from any and every particular right or wrong?

Is this moral sense a product of the evolution of organic life Dn our planet? The evolution of life is predatory, selfish, cruel, -one plant struggling with another, one zoophyte devouring another, until a stage is reached at which life could only proceed

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by parental instinct . Then the animals, while protecting their own young devour others, until a stage is reached where evolu­tion requires certain kinds to unite for defence or aggression, thus forming the herd or the flock. It is flock against flock, herd against herd, and human tribe against tribe, nation against nation. One can see how out of this evolutional process there could be developed family affections, national loyalty, and the communal solidarity. But none of these quite account for the moral sense. The moral sense, in what ethics considers its higher culture, points out obligations above family interests, above national policy, above the rules of society-obligations of truth, though one's family be injured by his heresy; obligations of justice, though one's nation espouses inj ustice; obligations of humanity, though one's community combines against persons not of its own colour or creed. It may be said that what the moral sense dictates, though it may be contrary to the immediate advantage of one's family or community, is for their higher or ultimate benefit; but the laws of natural evolution do not include such speculative motives of action . Tbe organism adapts itself to its immediate environment, and to necessities as they arise .

The humanisation of morality may be partly ascribed to the great religions-like Buddhism and Christianity-which were developed against the ties of family and nationality. But the hopes and fears, the heavens and hells, amid which were formed the scheme of a sacred nationality, over-riding the bounds of race, or family usages (as with monastic institutions) however they may have influenced historical morality, or moral regula­tions, do not help us to explain the existence in man of the original moral sense on which they all had to build their superstructures. This moral sense has often led men to · renounce the deities and institutions of religion, and could hardly have been evolved out of what it so renounced, at cost of martyrdom.

Here tben we have within us, in our moral sense, in its authentic distinction between rectitude and wrongness, the very essence of the human principle in nature. It does not consist in anything we think wrong, but in the fact that we see any­thing at all to be wrong, however erroneously. That feeling, as yet inscrutable by science, denotes the elevation in the world of a human standard, of which conscience is only a varying organ-now commanding one thing, now the opposite-the source of its authority remaining in veiled majesty behind all the gods and temples that rise and fall by its power.

My own belief is that man's sense of right and wrong corresponds with a duality in the universe- a duality of good and evil in the nature of things. By good I mean the humanly good-the degree of approximation to the human standard. By evil I mean the reverse-all the anti-human forces . I do not judge them good or evil by the pleasure or the pain they give. The surgeon's knife and the cancer it removes alike inflict pain ;..

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but the one is good, the other evil. Whatever raises or reinforces the health, happiness, character, of human beings is good, whatever lowers and degrades these is evil.

The gradual liberation of the moral sense from subjection to superstition, and its alliance with reason, appear to have developed in man a spiritual orgG\.Il which · is doubly repre­sentative. It represents not only the humanity of man, but also the genius of ideal man. So that when a man's moral sense carries him against that of others, and against what they consider their welfare, it is because of the revelation of pure reason. This combination of the pure moral sense, and the pure rational sense, whether evolved from all the good elements and forces in nature or not, is related to them by the power to organise them for an intelligent and purposed evolution of t.he human race, in place of the natural evolution which does not make the distinctive humanity of man its aim, but often furthers reversion to the inhuman.

The advance of science, the diffusion of intelligence, the quickening of human sympathies, the enlarged humanitarian enthusiasm, have given to the enlightened moral sense the characteristics of a human holy spirit. The Bible opens with a beautiful picture of a divine spirit, dove-like, brooding over the primal chaos till order begins to appear. Theology de\'eloped this spirit into a mysterious and awful agent of heaven over men, called the Holy Ghost. It was, indeed, but the ghost of that ancient poetic idea-a ghost which has haunted the world with dreams of unpardonable sin, while doing nothing to illumine the abysses of human wrong, or lead on the human order. This haunting ghost seems now vanishing out of a world become more real and the more educated popular mind, and in its place is hovering this human Holy Spirit, ever brooding over the waste places, the dark abysses of humanity.

In England spiritual religion rose in the sixteenth century. The first and second persons of the Trinity seemed in their distant heaven to have lost all concern about the earth; but the third person, the Holy Ghost, which Jesus was said to have sent to continue divine work in the world, was identified by George Fox the Quaker with the conscience in all mankind, and on this inner light he founded a new religion . But this connection of conscience, or the moral sense, with a supernatural being in­volved a supernatural ethic. The Quakers in dress and conduct separated from the world and lived in perpetual daily spiritual ecstasy. In the following century the Wesleyans attempted something of the same kind, but with some compromise with this world. But the nineteenth century has sternly decreed that in the moral world there shall be no more ecstasy. Those who want that kind of thing must shut themselves away in monasteries. The Quakers and Methodists have come to con­fine their spiritual excitement to Sunday, and during the week to dress and attend to business like other people.

The pious meaning of the word "spiritual" is lost. A spiritualist used to mean one who is not a materialist in philo­sophy, or else one who was absorbed in spiritual things-things of the Holy Spirit. Spiritualist now means one who sees ghosts. Thus does this scientific century turn ancient beliefs to ghosts.

It is supposed by many that the man thus thrown entirely on his own heart and reason has lost much that brought hope and comfort . He has no longer clear visions of divine providence and immortality. This is a condition of all culture. The preacher with his Bible is in the same case with the freethinker. The Bible does not give to educated people any certain testimony about God; in many places it makes God to be cruel and blood­thirsty, and in one chapter, Proverbs xxx, 1-4, the belief in any God at all is ridiculed. In one part of the Bible it is taught that man lives after death, in other parts it is declared that man lives not beyond the grave. Cardinal Newman, when he entered the Romish Church, warned his Protestant friends that they would find the Bible no authority for their faith unless interpreted by an infallible Church, and his prediction is fulfilled . But even were we to seek refuge from the doubts of our age in the old ecstasies of Methodism or in Catholicism we could not find real faith. On the other hand, those who enter with trust inlo the holy of holies within their own moral consciousness, their own reason, are penetrating to a region where new discovery is not foreclosed, and where each mind will at least find its conclusions genuine. After one has begun to think, he will never again be quite satisfied, never sustained, by mere traditions. The only intelligent people I know who have a belief in immortality which is real are those who dug it out for themselves, and out of themselves. And as for deity, unthinking people may wor­ship a conventionalised effigy, and call those atheists who deny its reality, but genuine belief can only be expressed in denials where sham beliefs are exalted as faith . Every soul has its own supreme being. It is the topmost flower of the individual heart and mind, and its fruits make our true con­tributions to those around us, to our religious and ethical societies, and to mankind. We can unite to study and further the ways and means of personal liberty and growth; we can unite for mutual support in mental and moral independence, and its preservation; we can unite for culture, communal progress, for reformation, for charity; but the broad river of collective life will bear its argosies, and turn the wheels and diffuse benefits, only if all the individual tributaries, however small, are unimperled in their respective courses, and all the fountains free to send their several rivulets to swell the advancing stream.

1898 Bazaar.-The generous offer of a member of the Society to give £200 to the Debenture Redemption F und p rovided £ 3 00 is raised by means of the Bazaar has given an additional

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impetus to the efforts of the Committee, and the preliminary stages of the organisation are now well advanced. So many offers of help have been received that it has been thought well to sub-divide the work as much as possible, and on the cover of this number of the Magazine will be found a list of members and friends who have already undertaken definite work, all of whom will be pleased to receive pror:pises of aid in their several Departments. Members and friends of the Society are asked to note that the acting executive Committee have decided to hold their meetings on the .first and third Wednesdays in September and October, and any offers of aid or practical suggestions in furtherance of the success of the Bazaar will be welcomed. Communications in writing should be addressed to the Secretaries, if possible, not later than the previous Tuesday, and will receive full consideration by the Committee. During August the working parties in the S. W. district will be held by Mrs. E. A. Carr, at 91 Thurlestone Road, West Norwood, S.E. (every Friday), 3-6. All members and friends who can attend will be welcomed. The meetings at the other centres will be resumed in September; particulars will be pub­lished in the next issue.

Debenture Redemption Fund.-The Committee have pleasure in stating that recent repayments of Debentures reduces the outstanding liability to £962. A preliminary list of publications in their possession, for disposal, appeared in the July list; a complete catalogue is in course of preparation and will be issued in the autumn, meanwhile enquiries may be addressed to the Hon. Sec.

Ramblers' Notes.-The following Excursions will take place on the undays in August :-

August 7th.-Sevenoaks. (Conducted by H. G. Morris.) Meet at Cannon Street Station, for 11.20 train. Fare IS. gd.

August 14th.-Westerham. (Conducted by William Varian.) Meet at Cannon Street Station, II.20 train. Fare IS. lad.

August 2Ist.-Clanclon, for Merrow and Albury Downs. (Con. ducted by E . J. Harrington.) Meet at Waterloo Station, for 9·55 a.m. train. Fare 25. 3d.

August 28th.-Burnham Beeches and Stoke Pages. (Conducted by N. Lidstone.) Meet at Paddington, for 10 a.m. train for Slough. Fare, including brake from Slough, 3S' The ramble on August 21st will be in conjunction with the Sunday Shakespere Society, when a reading of " The Tempest" will be given .

The following Cycle fixtures have been made for August: August 6th.-Shenley. Tea, 5.30. Meeting place, Finsbury Park

(illside Horllsey Gate) . Start, 3 p.m. sharp. August 20tb .-Waltham Abbey and Eppiog Forest. Meeting place

and time of starting, same as for 6th August. '-!2:i1H There will also be runs in connection with the Sunday Rambles on

August 7th to Sevenoaks, and August 28th to Stoke Poges.

Further particulars can be had from C. E . Fairhall, I07 Bunbill Row. E .C.; or Miss Carr, Melbourne Lodge, Melbourne Square, Brixton, S.W.

The Saturday Ramble to the Kingsfield Physical Training College was an all·round success-interesting, instructive, and enjoyable. The house stands on the top of a hill overlooking the Thames and the old town of Dartford, surrounded by a well· wooded park, extending over fourteen acres, beautifully adapted to the purpose of the College, which is the training of educated women as teachers of scientific physical education. In this is included the study of physiology, anatomy, hygiene, and elementary pathology; gymnastics, dancing, cycling, and outdoor games such as cricket, hockey, basket ball, and tennis, all of which are now being so successfully introduced into girls' schools. Side by side with these, the studies of medical gymnastics and massage are carefully carried on, so that at the end of the course of training a student may find employment either as a teacher in schools or as assistant under a medical man in treating cases of spinal weak­ness, anremia, etc, requiring special physical exercises or massage. The course of training extends over two years, and we are told tbat engagements are invariably waiting for students on the completion of their college course, and also that their remuneration ranges from £100 per annum and upwards.

The conditions under which this is so successfully carried by Madame Osterberg are absolutely perfect. The house might be called "the house beautiful"; the woods, glades, and flower gardens, " Paradise"; and the cycling track, cricket ground, tennis courts, "ideal ".

The students enter between the ages of eighteen and thirty. They all wear the rational dress-dark blue knickers with loose tunic to the knee, and look extremely elegant and graceful. We could not help being struck with their bright, happy, and healthy appearance.

After conducting us round the grounds, pointing out and explaining everything of interest, they entertained us with a gymnastic display. First the Swedish drill, exquisitely carried out, then they climbed the rope hand over hand, scaled ladders, and most gracefully walked the parallel bar-an object lesson in the poetry of motion . No apparent fatigue or over exertion. Bright eyes, clear brows, good and intelligent faces, in fact a .. harmonious development of the physical, mental, and moral sides of our nature".

Besides all I have described we were further entertained by Miss Franks's students, who gave us a clever demonstration of a kinder­garten lesson. The students were supposed to be little children of six years old, and it was interesting and instructive to see how each child was encouraged to think, pass opinions and ask questions, in fact, individuality recognised.

Correspondence.-Mr. JOHN M. ROBERTsON writes, under date the 18th July;-

"In my letter in your June number I pointed out that Mr. Washington Sullivan, in his closing speech in the discussion referred to, bad completely misrepresented me in certain respects. (1) He as good as said I had used the rude expression that he ' did not under­stand his own book'. (2) He virtually represented me as having said that Kant was' indifferent to utilitarian considerations ' . Both state­ments, I pointed out, were untrue. In his reply in your July number, Mr. Sullivan, though adding to the second, does not even pretend to

justify either assertion, any more than he attempts to defend his personalities. Yet the aforesaid were the main charges of misrepre­sentation with which he professes to deal.

" He now speaks of me as claiming to be a more competent inter­preter of Kant than he or Dr. Dawes Hicks. I never made any .such claim. Mr. Sullivan really seems unable to describe anything accurately. I criticised him as throwing-over Kant while professing to expound him. Concerning Dr. Hicks I did not even make that charge. It is possible for disputants to differ without denying each other's competence. But since Mr. Sullivan insist~ on raising this issue, I will now say that while I think Dr. Hicks a s;ompetent exponent of Kant, I cannot take any such view of Mr: Sullivan.

" Evading my charges of misrepresentation, he undertakes to show that I completely misunderstand Kant. I quoted a passage, he says, without the context which explains it and confutes me. Let us see. In his second paragraph, Mr. Sl1llivan repeats his own proposition that· our' conviction as to good results following on good conduct is , not falsified'; that such results 'Imif(}rmly ensue'; and that accord­ingly we are justified in inferring a Controlling Mind which so arranged matters. In his next paragraph, Mr. Sullivan claims to be establishing his position when he says that it is • this very NON-necessary c01lllectiOl~ between virtue and happiness, this very INABILITY on our part to secure the appropriate rewards of virtue, which determines the theistic philosophy of the Master' . In the face of such hopeless self-contra­diction, I have to point out to the bewildered reader that Mr. Sullivan understands Kant's position no more than he does his own. I had before me, on the same page, the passages he represents me as over­looking. Mr. Sullivan seems to suppose that Kant could first say a thing and then flatly contradict it, and still be all right. Kant is really not quite so elementary in his errors as all that. After asserting that the most scrupulous observance of morality cannot be expected to set up a ' necessary connection, amounting to the highest good' [llOthwell­dige Imd zum J;ochsten Gilt zureiclzellde Verkniipflmg] between happiness and virtue in the world, the Master goes on to say that as the conception of the highest good' contains this connection', the connection cannot be held impossible without stultifying the moral law. Then he goes on with his solution: 'That a virtltolts mind 1Iecessarily produces happiness is 1Iot absolutely false, but ouly in so far as virtue is considered as a form of causality in the sensible world' (Ab bott's trans., 3rd ed., p . 210). But this last cited notion, here so expressly excluded, is the very thing that Mr. Sullivan has affirmed-has affirmed, I should say, and then repudiated. First he tells us that right action IIllifol'lIlly produces happiness, or ' appropriate results'. In the next breath be in effect says it does not. But the former position, as he admits, is that of his 'lecture. There was nothing' subordinate' about it there. And in the third paragraph of his letter he once more affirms it, saying that , virtue is and MUST BE rewarded by happiness '-the flat denial of the

.position of Kant. " Mr. Sullivan's further exposition of Kant's position is of a piece

with the foregoing. After his own' must be', he seeks to make out that Kant holds the virtuous man can secure happiness' through an intelligent author of nature'. This I can only call a ludicrous con­fusion of Kant's argument. Kant's position is finally stated in his concluding' solution of the antinomy of practical pure reason '-that 'we may at least cOllceive as possible a natural and necessary connection between the consciollsness of morality and the expectation of a pro­portionate happiness as its result, though it does /lot follow that we cal~

180

kl/ow or perceive this cOlll/ection'; and that [here Kant himself is tolerably confused] while morality is the sllp,'ellle (oberste) good' as the Imt condition of the highest (hvchs/en) good', happiness is its second condition, 'but ol/ly ill such a u'ay that it is the morally couditiolled but [still] necessary consequence of the former '-' dass diese NUR die

1II01'alisch bedillgte aber doch uoth'l£'el/dige Folge der ersteren sey'. That is, the happiness or reward is not at all a necessary or sure sequence in actual eVCIlts, as Mr. Sullivan alleges, but simply a possible and reason­able state oJ mind. The reader now doubtless sees what Mr. SuJlivan has failed to see. What he regards as the Kantian 'connection between happiness and virtue' is the mere hand-to-mouth pietistic optimism which Kant rejected, pointing oul that the alleged objective sequence of good conduct and good results could occur as a rule only from an adequate knowledge of physical nature.

" For the rest, Mr. Sullivan seems to suppose that I did not know or admit that Kant was a Theist. 1 will not waste anybody's time by discussing that view. In conclusion, he claims to have made out his theism as a' metaphysical implication in ethics '. I suppose that if Mr. Sullivan found the kitchen window broken and guessed it was done by the cat, he would call his inference a ' metaphysical implica­tion in physics '. It would certainly be as metaphysical as his mode of infereuce in ethics. Bul I will not here attempt to restate what Kant's ' metaphysical implication' was. I leave that for the dIScussion I am lo open at South Place in the autumn."

It is with much regret we announce the death of one of our mem­bers, Mr. Edgar S. Pardon. He passed away on Saturday, lhe 16th July, at the very early age of thirty-eight, leaving a widow and one daughter. Mr. Pardon was well known in connection with the London Newspaper Press, especially with that section concerned in chronicling the game of Cricket, of which he was an excellent judge. Three years ago he filled the office of president of the London Press Club, and at the time of his death was on the Council of the Newspaper Press Fund. The funeral took place at Highgate Cemetery on Wednesday, the 20th ult., Mr. T. W. Freckleton conducting the service.

In the September number of the Magazine will appear an article by Dr. Stanton Coit, on "Theism ", as also a paper by Mr. John M. Robertson, on "Mr. Grant Allen on the Historical Jesus ". The October Magazine will contain an article by Mr. J. H . Levy, on the same subject as Dr. Coit's.

The Chapel will be shut as usual during August, and will be re­opened on Sunday, September 4th, Mr. Robin Allen taking the service.

The 12 numbers of the 1St Series of the SOUTH PLACE MAGAZINE, forming Volume I, can be had in the Library, price IS. complete.

Tl1e SOUTH PLACE MAGAZINE is published for the Committee by A. and H . B. Bonner, I and 2 Took'S Court, Chancery Lane. It is for sale in the Library of South Place Chapel, and also on the bookstalls of the following Elhical Societies: The West London, at Kensington Town Hall; The South London, at the Masonic Hall, Camberwell New Road; and at the National Secular Society, 376 and 377 Straud, W .e. It can also be obtained from the following booksellers: Messrs. Jones and Evans, 77 Queen Street, Cheapside; Mr. Ferries, 53 Finsbury Pavement j Mrs. E. Born, IIs London WalJ, E .C. The Secretary will be glad to have the names of other societies or booksellers willing to scll the Magazine.

Printed by A. BONNER, I & ~ Took's Court, Chancery Lane, London, E.C.