The Herald of Wales and Monmouthshire Recorder. — 1886-06-19 (Swansea, West Glamorgan, Wales)

RADICAL.  THE TYRANNY OF THE DEAD. TO TIEN SOITOI. Sir,—l am willing to believe on your authority that the Rev. F. Sidney Morris, of York "belongs to the most advances' school of Dialtarian thought," and that he is a magnificent speaker. lam further willing to concede after what yon publish of his sermon under the above heading that he ia "a thinker of marked originality. In fact what one has to complain of in Mr. Morris (if complaint be admissible in the case of so lofty a character) is his altogether too "marked originality." His thinking strikes one as being so uniquely original that It is false. Now, however flattering the epithet "original" may be to Mr. Morrie's vanity, this falsity is a serious defect. De Quincey has saidinspeaking of &certain fine art that 'if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little el robbing; and from robbing he cornea next to drinking and Sabbath breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his rum from some murder or other, that perhaps he thought little of at the time."  If such calamities may remit from aimply committing murder, what have we not to fear frlm thought which is so original that it is wholly false 1' I hope Mr. Morriswilltakewarning in time, and prone himself to the prosaic, but safe level of his fellow men. . . .  But seriously it is a question whether "Wise men look into the future hopefully, because they look into the past intelligently." At York such may doubtless be the case, but in the world at large my observation has led me to think that those who look into the past most intelligently are precisely those who look into the future with the greatest trembling. Nor is it true that in this epoch of the world the dead tyrannise over the living, as Mr. Morris would have us believe. If this age be remarkable for anything, I should say: it is remarkable for its aggressive blatant irreverence. Assuredly it has shown no symptom of a disposition "to bow down slavishly to the doctrines of the dead." If Mr. Morris be capable of "using the thought of the past as a stepping stone to grander flights," then by all means let him do so, and let us piously and reverently aid and emulate him. But let me whisper in his :ear that before we can give him our allegiance, he must give some better proof of worth than is contained in this diatribe against the dead. Let him also sweep those "fruitful sources of hypocrisy and insincerity—endowments and trust deeds"—out of existence, if he is so inclined, and has the permission of those concerned : the cause of truth will not suffer much, if anything. But as Charles Lamb said in reply to someone who derided the idea of future punishment, " No, no, I eon% give up my hell." So, in like spirit, vet 3 reply to the Rev. F. Sydney Morris, "no no we can't giv u our p o dead," and when he hints that the stream of thought is clearer in midcourse, after such as he have dabbled in it, than at its source, we may perhaps be pardoned for being sceptical since our Iscepticism is the result of exercising "the intellect which God has given us."—! am. &v., J. A.