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Extracted from the Introduction to Theodore Parker's Sermons on Theism, Atheism, and the Popular Theology.ª

FIFTY-THREE YEARS after the birth of Christ, according to the most ancient chronological canon which has come down to us, there came to Rome an obscure man, by name Saul, which he had altered to Paul; a sailmaker, as it seems, from the little city of Tarsus in Cilicia. Nobody took much notice of it.

He came from a hated nation,—the Jews were thought the enemies of man-
kind; he was a poor plebeian, a mechanic, and lived in an age when military
power and riches had such an influence as never before, or since. He was
apparently an unlettered man, or had only the rough, narrow culture which a
Hebrew scholar got at Tarsus and Jerusalem. He had little eloquence; ‘his
bodily presence was weak, and his speech contemptible.’ He came to the
most populous city in the world, the richest and the wickedest.

The city was full of soldiers; men from Parthia and Britain, who had fought
terrible battles, bared their scars in the Forum and the Palace of the Caesars.
Learned men were there. Political Greece had died; but Grecian genius long
outlived the shock which overturned the State. Of science Greece was full,
and her learned men, and men well born with genius, fled to Rome. The
noble minds from that classic land went there, full of thought, full of eloquence
and song, running over with beauty. Rough, mountainous streams of young
talent from Spain and Africa flowed thither, finding their home in that great
oceanic city. The Syrian Orontes had emptied itself into the Tiber. There
were temples of wondrous splendour and richness, priests celebrated for their
culture and famed for their long descent.

But the popular theology was only mythology. It was separate from science,
alienated from the life of the people.

The temple did not represent philosophy, nor morality, nor piety. The
priests of the popular religion had no belief in the truth of its doctrines, no
faith in the efficacy of its forms. Religion was tradition with the priest; it
was police with the magistrate. The Roman augurs did not dare look each
other in the face on solemn days, lest they should laugh outright, and betray
to the people what was the open secret of the priest.

Everywhere, as a man turned his eye in Rome, there was riches, everywhere
power, everywhere vice. Did I say everywhere? No; the shadow of riches

ª Published by John Chapman, 142, Strand.

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is poverty, and there was such poverty as only St Giles's Parish in London can now equal. The shadow of power is slavery; and there was such slavery in Rome as American New Orleans and Charleston can not boast. Did I say there was vice everywhere? No: in the shadow of vice there always burns the still, calm flame of piety, justice, philanthropy; that is the light which goeth not out by day, which is never wholly quenched. But slavery and poverty and sin were at home in that city: such slavery, such poverty, and such sin as savage lands know nothing of. If we put together the crime, the gluttony, the licentiousness of New Orleans, New York, Paris, London, Vienna, and add the military power of St Petersburg, we have an approximate idea of the condition of ancient Rome in the year fifty-three after Christ. Let none deny the manly virtue, the womanly nobleness, which also found a home therein; still it was a city that was going to destruction, and the causes of its ruin were swiftly at work.

Christianity came to Rome with Paul of Tarsus. The tidings thereof went before him. Nobody knows who brought them first. It was a new 'superstition,' not much known as yet. It was the religion of a 'blasphemer,' who had got crucified between 'two others, malefactors.' Christianity was then 'the latest form of infidelity.' Paul himself came there a prisoner, but so obscure that nobody knows what year he came, how long he remained, or what his fate was. 'He lived two years in his own hired house,'—that is the last historic word which comes down to us of the great Apostle. Catholic traditions tell us of missions to various places, and then round it off with martyrdom. The martyrdom only is probable, the missions obviously fictitious. Probably he was in jail to the end of his days, when the headsman ferried that great soul into Heaven;—and very seldom was it, so it seems, that he took over so weighty a freight as Paul made for that bark. The sailmaker brought the new religion. It was an idea, and action also; belief in men and life out of them. It had nothing to recommend it, only itself and himself. Paul offered no worldly riches, no honour, no respectability. A man who 'joined the church' then did not have his name trumpeted in the newspapers; did not get introduced to reputable society; did not find his honour and respectability everywhere enhanced by that fact.

Christianity had these things to offer:—scorn, loathing, contempt, hatred from father and mother, from the husband of the wife's bosom,—for probably it was the wife that went first, it is commonly so,—and at last it offered a cruel death. But it told of a to-morrow after to-day; of a law higher than the statute of Nero; of one God, the Father of all men; of a kingdom of Heaven, where all is sunlight and peace and beauty and triumph. Paul himself had got turned out of the whole Eastern world, and the founder of this scheme of religion had just been hanged as a blasphemer. Christianity was treason to the Hebrew State; to the Roman Church the latest form of infidelity.

Doubtless there were great errors connected with the Christian doctrine. One need only read the epistles of Paul to know that. But there were great truths. The oneness of God, the brotherhood of men, the soul's immortality,

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the need of a virtuous, blameless, brave life on earth,—these were the great truths of Christianity; and they were set off by a life as great as the truths, a life of brave work and manly self-denial and self-sacrifice.

The early, nay, the earliest, Christians had many an error. How does wheat grow? With manifold straw; and there are whole cart-loads of straw for a single sack of wheat-corn. The straw is needful; not a grain of corn could grow without it; by and by it litters the horses, and presently rots and fertilizes the ground whence it came. But the grain lives on; and is seed-corn for future generations, or bread-corn to feed the living.

Christianity as an idea was far in advance of Judaism and Hebraism. As a life it transcended everything which the highest men had dreamed of in days before. Men tried to put it down, crucified Jesus, stoned his disciples, put them in jail, scourged them, slew them with all manner of torture. But the more they blew the fire the more swiftly it burned. Water the ground with valiant blood, the young blade of heroism springs up and blossoms red: the maiden blooms white out of the martyr blood which her mother had shed on the ground; and there is a great crop of hairy men full of valour. Christians smiled when they looked the rack in the face; laughed at martyrdom, and said to the tormentors—'Do you want necks for your block? Here are ours. Betwixt us and Heaven there is only a red sea, and the axe makes a bridge wide enough for a soul to go over. Exodus out of Egypt is entrance to the promised land. Fire is a good chariot for a Christian Elias.'

In a few hundred years that sailmaker had swept Rome of Heathenism: not a temple remained Heathen. Even the statues got converted to Christianity: and Minerva became the Virgin Mary; Venus took the vow, and was a Magdalene; Olympian Jove was christened Simon Peter: everybody sees at Rome a bronze statue of Jupiter, older than Paul's time, which is now put in the great cathedral, and baptized Simon Peter; and thousands of Catholics kiss the foot of what was once 'Heathen Jove.' The gods of Rome gave way to the carpenter of Nazareth; he was called God. The Christian ideas and great Christian life of Paul of Tarsus put all Olympus to rout.

Then in thirteen or fourteen hundred years more there slowly got built up the most remarkable scheme of theology that the world ever saw. Hebraism went slowly down; Heathenism went slowly down. Barbarism, a great storm from the North, beat on the roof of the Christian House, and it fell not;—No, barbarism ran off from the eaves of the Christian Church, to water the garden of Italy, Spain, France, Germany, England; they were blessed by that river of God which fell from the eaves.

But Hebraism, Heathenism, Barbarism—as forms of religion—did not die all at once; they are not yet wholly dead. No one of them was altogether a mistake. Each of them had some truth, some beauty, which mankind needed, and there they must stand face to face with Christianity till it has absorbed all of their excellence to itself: then they will perish. Individual freedom was the contribution which German Barbarism brought, and we have got much of that enshrined in our trial by jury, representative democracy, and a hundred other forms. Deep faith in God and fidelity to one's own conscience,—these

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are the great things which Moses and Samuel and David and Esaias and Ezra taught; and accordingly the Old Testament lies on every pulpit-lid in all Christendom to this day, and will not sink, because it has got those excellences. Heathenism had science, beauty, law, power of organization; they also must be added to the Christian civilization before Heathenism goes to its rest. We have not got all the good from Heathenism yet; and accordingly the superior culture of Christendom is based on Greek and Roman classics: Fathers send their boys to the schools of Christendom that they may learn from the Heathen; that they may acquire strength of reasoning from Aristotle and Plato, the bravery of eloquence from Cicero and Demosthenes, and the beauty of literary art from Homer and Horace and Sophocles and Æschylus, and that mighty army of genius whose trumpets stir the world. From many a clime, for many an age, do 'pilgrims pensive, but unwearied, throng' to Athens and Rome, to study the remains of ancient art; remnants of temples are brought over the sea to every Christian land, to bless the Christian heart with Pagan beauty. Patient mankind never loses an useful truth.

It is curious to look and see how little notice was taken of Christianity coming to Rome. The men of pleasure knew nothing of the strife betwixt the old and new in Paul's time; the political economists of that day, as it seems, foresaw no productive power in Christianity; the politicians took little notice thereof, till Nero sought to cut off the neck of Christendom at one blow. An historian—Roman all through, in his hard powerful nature, with masterly Greek culture—spoke of Christianity as 'that detestable superstition,' which, with other mischiefs, had flowed down into Rome, the common sink of all abominations. Sour Juvenal gave the new religion a wipe with his swift lash, dipping it first in bitter ink. Pliny the younger wrote a line to the Emperor, asking how he should treat these pestilent fellows, the Christians, who are not afraid to die. This is all the notice literary Rome took of Christianity for a century or so. Men knew not the force which was going to baptize Pagan Rome with the Christian name. Yet in their time, while the voluptuous were seeking for a new pleasure, while the Stoics and Epicureans were doubting which was the chief good, while politicians were busy with troops and battles, —there came silently into Rome a power which shook Heathenism down to the dust; and the great battle betwixt new and old took place, and they knew it not. So an old story tells that, when Rome and Africa crossed swords in great battle on Italian soil, they fought with such violence and ardour, that while an earthquake came and shook down a neighbouring city they kept fighting on, and knew only their own convulsion. So in the fray of pain and pleasure, the great earthquake which threw down the Hebrew and Pagan theology 'reeled unheededly away.'

Now old Rome is buried twenty feet thick with modern Rome; the civilization of Europe is Christian. Not a great city all Europe through but has a great church dedicated to that sailmaker of Tarsus, whose journey to Rome was so significant and so unchronicled.

What power there must have been in the ideas and the life of those men to effect such a conquest in such a time! It is no wonder that many ordinary

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men, who know Christianity by rote, and heroism by hearsay, and who think that to join a fashionable church is 'to renounce the world,'—it is no wonder that they think Christianity spread miraculously, that God wrote a truth and sowed Christianity broadcast, and, if men would not take it without, He harrowed it into them by miracle. Judging from their consciousness, what is there that they know which could explain the spread of Christianity, and the heroism of a man laying his head, and his wife's and children's heads, on the block for a conscientious conviction? Doubtless they are just and true to what is actual in themselves in believing that Christianity spread by miracle; and, if a man has not soul enough to trust that soul, it is easy to see how he may think that every great truth came by miracle. An Esquimaux would suppose that a railroad car went miraculously.

Eighteen hundred years, with threescore generations of men, have passed by since Paul first went to Rome. What a change since then! It is worth while to look at the ecclesiastical condition of Christendom at this day. The Christian Church has very great truths, which will last for ever. But as a whole it seems to me that at this day the Christian Church is in a state of decay. I do not mean to say that Religion decays,—piety and morality: the sun will fade out of the heavens before they perish out of man's heart. But the power of that institution which is called the Christian Church, the power of the priesthood of the Christian Church,—that is assuredly in a state of decay. It has separated itself from new science, the fresh thought of mankind; from new morality, the fresh practical life of mankind; from new justice; from new philanthropy; from new piety. It looks back for its inspiration. Its God is a dead God; its Christ is a crucified Christ; all its saints are dead men: its theology is a dead science, its vaunted miracles only of old time, not new. *Paul asked for these three things—LIBERTY, EQUALITY, BROTHERHOOD. Does the Christian Church ask for any one of the three?* It does not trust human nature in its normal action; does not look to the human mind for truth, nor the human conscience for justice, nor the human heart and soul for love and faith. It does not trust the living God, new revealing himself in the fresh flowers of to-day and the fresh consciousness of man. It looks back to some alleged action in the history of mankind, counting the history of man better than man's nature. It looks back to some alleged facts in the history of God, counting those fictitious miracles as greater than the nature of God; He has done his best, spoken for the last time!

In all this the whole Christian Church agrees, and is unitary, and there is no discord betwixt Catholic and Protestant. But they differ in respect to the things to which they pay supreme and sovereign homage. The Catholic worships the Church: that is infallible, with its biblical and extra-biblical tradition, and its inspiration. The Roman Church is the religion of the Catholic. He must necessarily be intolerant. Two writers prominent in the Catholic Church of America within the last few months have declared that the Catholic Church is just as intolerant as she always was, and, as soon as she gets power, there shall be no more freedom of thought and speech in the new

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continent; she only waits for a hand to clutch the sword and put Protestantism to death. This comes unavoidably from her position. She must be sure that everybody else is wrong.

The Protestants worship the Bible, with its Old Testament and New; that is infallible. The Bible is the religion of the Protestants, as the Church is the religion of the Catholics, and the Koran of the Mahometans. This is the ultimate source of religious doctrine, the ultimate standard of religious practice. Here the Protestant sects are unitary; even the Universalists and Unitarians agree in this same thing,—or profess to do so.

Then the Protestants differ about the doctrines of that infallible word; and so, while one hand of Protestantism is clenched on the Bible, the other is divided into a great many fingers, each pointing to its own creed as the infallible interpretation of the infallible word; the one pencil of white Protestant sunshine, drawn from the Bible, is broken by the historic prism into manifold rays of antithetic colour.

It is a great mistake for the Christians as a whole to maintain that they have nothing to learn from the Hebrews, the Heathen, the Buddhists, and the Mahometans;—though the Christians are in many respects superior to these other sects of the world, yet they have much to teach us. It is a mistake for the Protestant to say he has nothing to learn from the Catholic: the Catholic—though far behind the Protestant—has many things to impart to us. And it is a mistake for the Unitarian, or Universalist, to declare that he has nothing to learn from the Trinitarian and Partialist. As yet, no one of these great world sects, Christian, Heathen, Hebrew, Buddhist, Mahometan, has the whole truth; and in Christianity no one sect has the whole of Christian truth.

But the Christian churches have broken with science, and are afraid of new thought. This is somewhat less true of the Protestant than of the Catholic priesthood. They have broken also with fresh morality, and are afraid of that. And so the Christian Church to-day is very much in the same condition that Heathenism and Judaism were at the time when Paul first went to Rome.

In the Christian Church there are many churches. But there is not one that bears the same relation to the civilization of the world which Paul bore eighteen hundred years ago. He looked forward; they look back. He asked liberty of thought and speech; they are afraid of both. There is not a Christian Government which has not some statute forbidding freedom of thought and speech.

All over Europe religion is supported by the State, by the arm of the law. The clergy wish it to be so, and they say Christianity would fail if it were not. Hence come the costly national churches of Europe, wherein the priest sits on the cartridge-box, supported by bayonets, a drum for his sounding-board, and preaches in the name of the Prince of Peace, having cannon balls to enforce his argument. What a contrast between the national churches of Russia, Austria, Prussia, England, and the first church which Paul gathered in his prison-house, where he preached with his left hand chained to a soldier's right hand, 'his bodily presence weak, and his speech contemptible.'

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But there has been a great and rapid development of humanity since Paul first came to Italy. What a change in agriculture, mechanic art, commerce, war, in education, politics! What new science, new art, new literature has sprung up! How the world's geography has changed from Eratosthenes to Ritter! But the interior geography of man has altered yet more. The ancient poles are now in the modern equator. Compare the Governments then and now; the wars of that period; the condition of the people. The peasant was everywhere a slave at that time. Now slavery has fled to America,—she alone of all Christendom fosters in her bosom that odious snake which has stung and poisoned so many a departed State. Compare the condition of woman. The change has been immense. The compass gave mankind America; gunpowder made a Republic possible,—it could not have been without that; —the printing press made education possible to everybody. Steam makes it easy for a nation to secure the material riches which are indispensable to civilization, and yet leave time for culture in the great mass of men. How have the humanities gone forward,—freedom, education, temperance, chastity; concern for the poor, the weak, the abandoned, the blind, the deaf, the dumb! Once the Christian Church fostered the actual humanities of the times. There was not a temperance society in the world; the Church was the temperance society. There was not a peace society; the Church was the peace society. Not an education society; the Church opened her motherly arms to many a poor man's son who had talent, and gave him education, and he walked through the cathedral door into the college, thence to the great mountain of the world, and climbed as high as he could get. Now as the Church is in the process of decay, we need special missionary societies, societies for preventing drunkenness and every vice. The function of the ancient Church has passed to other hands. She teaches only from memory of times long past. The national churches apologize for the national sins and defend them. In Europe the established clergy are seldom friendly to any movement for the benefit of mankind. In America it is they who are eminent supporters of every public enormity which the nation loves, willing to send their mother into slavery, pressing the Bible into the ranks of American sin.

The Christian Church early departed from the piety and morality of Jesus of Nazareth. Taken as a whole it has made some great errors and is now suffering the penalty thereof. It has taught that God was finite and not infinite; that man's nature was a mistake, a nature which could not be trusted; it has put fictitious miracles before real law, and brought the heretic philosopher to confess that the Church was right, though the earth did still move; it has taught that religion was chiefly to save mankind from the wrath of God in the next world, not to bless us here on earth.

The Christian churches neglect the evils of their own time. To judge from the publications that have been sent forth by the American churches in the last twenty years,—the tracts of the Orthodox, Baptists, Methodists, Unitarians,—what would a stranger suppose was the great sin of America at this day? He might read them all through and scarcely conjecture that there was a drunkard in the land; he would never think there was any political cor-

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ruption in the country; he would suppose we had most of all to fear from
doubt of theological doctrines; he would not suppose that there were as many
slaves in America to-day as there are church members. Why is this?
Because the churches have concluded that it is the function of religion to
save the soul from the wrath of God; not to put down great sins here on
earth, and make mankind better and men better off. These mistakes are
the reason why the Christian Church is in this process of decay.

It does not appear that Jesus of Nazareth separated his thought from the
new science of the age, and said, 'Do not think'; or that he separated his
religion from the new morality of the age, and said, 'Never reform a vice, oh!
ye children of the Kingdom!' He laid his axe at the root of the sinful tree,
and sought to hew it down. With him the problem was to separate religious
ideas and life from organizations that would not admit of a new growth; to
put his new wine into new bottles. With Luther there was the same problem.
He endeavoured to make ecclesiastical raiment for mankind, tired of attempts
to mend and wear the old and ill-fitting clothes of the Church, which became
only worse for the botching. In the present time there is the same problem:
to gather from the past, from the Bible, from the Catholic and Protestant
Churches, from Jew and Gentile, Buddhist, Brahmin, and Mahometan, every
old truth which they have got embalmed in their precious treasuries; and then
to reach out and upwards towards God, and get every new truth that we can,
and join all these together in a whole of theological truth,—then to deepen the
consciousness of God in our own soul, and make the Absolute Religion the
daily life of men.

Let the word Philosophy stand for the whole sum of human knowledge, and
be divided into five great departments, or sciences: namely, Mathematics,
treating of quantity and the relations thereof; Physics, including a knowledge
of the statical, dynamical, and vital forces of matter,—mechanics, chemistry,
and physiology in its various departments, as it relates to the structure and
action of the material world as a whole, or to any of its several parts, mineral,
vegetable, or animal; History, embracing the actions of man in all his internal
complexity of nature and in all his external complications of movement,
individual or collective; Psychology, which includes all that belongs to human
consciousness, instinctive, reflective, and volitive—intellectual, moral, affec-
tional, and religious; and Theology, which treats of God and his relations to
matter and man.

The progressive welfare of man demands a free development in all these five
departments of activity. All these sciences are equally the productions of the
human spirit and equally amenable to the mind of man, which collects, classi-
fies, and studies facts both of observation and of consciousness.

To make a special application of this doctrine:—the religious welfare of man
requires, as its condition, freedom to study the facts of observation and con-
sciousness, and to form such a scheme of History, Psychology, and Theology,
as will correspond to his general spiritual development and its special religious
development. If a man, a nation, or mankind, lacks this freedom and accepts

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such a scheme of these sciences as does not fit his spiritual, or religious con-
dition, then there is a contradiction in his consciousness; and there is no
peace until he has cast out the discordant element and so established unity.

Is religion to die out of the consciousness of man? Believe it not. There
was never a time when Christendom was so pious—in love of God; so philan-
thropic—in love of man; so moral—in obedience to the law of God; so intel-
lectual—knowing it so well; so rich—possessing such power over the material
world. Yet through lack of a true idea of God, from want of institutions to
teach and apply the Absolute Religion—there is not that consciousness and total
religious activity which is indispensable for the healthy and harmonious de-
velopment of mankind.

What need there is of a new religious life!

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SPECULATIVE ATHEISM.

ABRIDGED FROM THEODORE PARKER.

THE idea which a man forms of God is always the most important element in his speculative theory of the universe, and in his particular, practical plan of action for the Church, the State, the Community, the Family, and his own individual life. You see to-day the vast influence of the popular idea of God. All the great historical civilizations of the race have grown out of the national idea which was formed of God, or have been intimately connected with it. The popular theology, which at first is only an abstract idea in the heads of the philosophers, by-and-by shows itself in the laws, the navies, the forts, and the jails; in the churches, the ceremonies, and the sacraments; the weddings, the baptisms, and the funerals; in the hospitals, the colleges, the schools; in all the social charities; in the relation of husband and wife, parent and child; in the daily work and the daily prayer of each man. Thus, what at first is the abstractest of thoughts, by-and-by becomes the concretest of things. If a man concludes there is no God at all, that conclusion, negative though it is, will have an immense influence: subjectively, on his feelings and opinions; objectively, on his outward conduct: subjectively, as the theory of the universe; objectively, as the principle of practical life.

Speculative Theism is the belief in the existence of God, in one form or another; and I call him a theist who believes in any God. By Atheism I mean absolute denial of the existence of any God. The Hebrews formed a certain conception of a being with many good qualities, and some extraordinary bad qualities, and called it Jehovah, and said, 'That is God: it is the only God.' The majority of Christians form a certain conception of a being with more good qualities than are ascribed to Jehovah, but with some most atrociously evil qualities, and call it Trinity or Unity, and say, 'That is God: the only God.' Now a man may deny the actuality of either or both these ideas of God, and yet be no atheist. Of course, the worshipers of Baal called the Hebrew prophets atheists, for they denied all the Gods these Gentiles knew. If a man has outgrown the Hebrew or common Christian idea of God, he may say what Paul said of the idol: 'It is nothing.' He will not be an atheist, but a theist all the more. The superior conception of God always nullifies the inferior conception. Thus as the world grows in its development, it necessarily outgrows its ancient ideas of God, which were only temporary and provisional.

At this day, there are some philosophers, quite eminent men too, who call themselves atheists, and in set terms deny the actuality of any possible idea

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of God. They say the idea of God is a whimsey of men, and God is not a fact of the universe. Man has a notion of God, as of a ghost, or devil; but it is a pure whimsey,—something which he has spun out of his own brain, and there is nothing in the universe to correspond thereto. Man has an idea of God, but the universe has no fact of God. These men do not mean to scoff at others. They teach their doctrines with the calmness and precision of philosophy, and affirm Atheism as their theory of the universe. It is a conclusion they have deliberately arrived at. They are not ashamed of it; they do not conceal it, do not ostentatiously set it forth. Of these are men who have even made sacrifices to be faithful; and, without knowing it, they have a good deal of practical religiousness of character, both in its subjective form of piety and in its objective form of personal and social morality. I do not believe that such men are real atheists, though they think themselves so; and I only call them so to distinguish their doctrines, and because they themselves like the name. I think the philosophical atheist lacks actuality as much as the idea of the devil or a ghost. The Bible says, 'The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.' If the fool says so, I shall believe the fool thinks so; and, if the fool holds up his five fingers and says he has no hand, I shall believe the fool thinks so. But when a philosopher says there is no God, I do not believe he thinks so, only that he thinks he thinks so. A man may sometimes think he sees a thing when he does not see it; and so a man may think he thinks a thing when he does not think it. A philosophical and consistent atheist is as much an impossibility, I think, as a mathematician who can not count two, or as a round square, or a three-cornered circle. I shall never believe that a sane man who can understand the multiplication table is an atheist, though he may call himself so, and claim Atheism as his theory of the universe. But inasmuch as this is set up as a theory of the universe, let us look at it, and see what real Speculative Atheism is.

There is a mere formal Atheism, which is a denial of God in terms. A man says, There is no God—no God that is self-originated, who is the Cause of existence, who is the Mind and the Providence of the universe: and so the order, beauty, and harmony of the world of matter or mind does not indicate any plan or purpose of Deity. But, he says, Nature,—meaning by that the whole sum total of existence,—that is powerful, wise, and good; Nature is self-originated, the Cause of its own existence, the Mind of the universe, and the Providence thereof. There is obviously a plan and a purpose, says he, whereby order, beauty, and harmony are brought to pass; but all that is the plan and purpose of Nature. Very well. In such cases the absolute denial of God is only formal, but not real. The quality of God is still admitted and affirmed to be real, only the representative of that quality is called Nature and not called God. That is only a change of name. The question is this: 'Are there such qualities in existence as we call God?' It is not: 'How shall we name the qualities?' One man may call the sum total of these qualities Nature, another Heaven, a third Universe, a fourth Matter, a fifth Spirit, a sixth Geist, a seventh God, an eighth Theos, a ninth Allah, or what he pleases. Spinoza may call God Natura naturans, and the rest of the

universe Natura naturata; Berosus may call God El, and the rest of the universe Thebal. They all admit the existence of the thing so diversely named. The name is of the smallest consequence. All these men that I know, who call themselves atheists, really admit the actual existence of the qualities I speak of. Real Atheism is a denial of the existence of any God: a denial of the genus God, of the actuality of all possible ideas of God. It denies that there is any Mind or Being which is the cause and providence of the universe, and which intentionally produces the order, beauty, and harmony thereof, with the constant modes of operation therein. To be consistent it ought to go a step further, and deny that there is any law, order, or harmony in existence, or any constant modes of operation in the world. The real Speculative Atheist denies the existence of the qualities of God. To him there are only finite things,—each self-originated, self-sustained, self-directed, —and no more. The universe, comprising the world of matter and the world of mind, is a finite whole made up of finite parts; each part is imperfect, the whole incomplete; the finite has no Infinite to depend on as its ground and cause; there is no plan in the universe or any part thereof.

Now see the subjective effect of this theory. By subjective I mean the effect it produces on the sentiments and opinions within me.

Look at it first as a theory of the world of matter.

If the atheist says there is Mind in matter which arranges the planets, controls their distances, their revolutions, their constant modes of operation, that this mind in matter arranges the various elements,—then he is false to his Atheism and becomes a theist: for he no longer denies the qualities of God, but only calls them by a different name. With Atheism as the theory of the universe, the world ought to be a jumble of parts with no contexture: for the moment you admit the existence of order in the very least form, a constant mode of operation on the very smallest scale,—why, you must admit the existence of the Mind which devised the order and the mode of operation; and if you call the Mind Geist, or God, or Nature, or Jehovah, it makes small odds. The question is not about the name, but about the fact. Now the world is nowhere a jumble. Things are not 'huddled and lumped together' in the composition of the eyeball of the emmet or of the solar system. Every part of the universe is an argument against Atheism as a theory thereof.

Look next at Atheism as the theory of individual human life.

Nothing in the world, says our atheist, knows what a day may bring forth. The universe is drifting in the void inane, and knows nothing of its whence, its whither, or its whereabouts. Man is drifting in the universe, and knows little of his whereabouts, nothing of his whence or whither. There is no mind, no providence, no power which knows any better; nothing which guides and directs man in his drifting or the universe in the weltering waste of time. Nothing is laid up for to-morrow. My life tends to nothing.

I am joyful: joy is very well, but nothing comes of it. I am sorrowful and suffer: this is hard, but it is no part of a plan which is to lead to something further. And when my manhood falls away, and my body dissolves, all that is to lead to nothing better. My baby-teeth fall out, giving way to my man-

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teeth; but that is all chance, and indicates no forethought of a mind which provided for the man before the baby was born!

I serve men and get their hate and scorn. The Sadducee grumbles because I tell him of his soul and immortality—the Pharisee because I demand that he devour widows' houses no more, nor for a pretence make long prayers; and both of these hunkers, the hunker Sadducee and the hunker Pharisee, throw stones at me, and put me to death. It all comes to nothing for me; I am a dead body, and not a live man: that is all I get for my virtue.

I am a brave man, and my country needs me to repel the Spanish Armada, or to keep imperial Nicholas, or Francis, or papal Pius the Ninth, or the little President Napoleon, from kidnapping my liberty. I go out to do battle, and I come home scarred all over with heroism, half my limbs hewed off, aching at every pore, or I die on the spot. I carry no heroism, no manhood, with me; I am a heap of dust which other dust will soon cover: but the manhood which once enchanted this dust with valiant life is put out and quenched for ever,— it is all gone, it is nothing. My brother in that time of peril was a coward; and, when war blew the trumpet and his country called on him, he crept under the oven. When all is over and quiet is restored, he comes out with a whole skin, and over my unburied bones he marches into peace and carousing, and says, 'A pretty fool was this man to lay down his life for me, and get nothing for it!' And the atheist says he is right.

The patriot soldier gets his wounds and crutch, the martyr his faggot and flame, Jesus his cup of bitterness and cross of death,—and that is all. Dives has his purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day, more heedless than the dogs of the beggar at his gate. Lazarus has his sores and the medical attendance of the hounds in the street. But death ends all.

My life is a great disappointment, let me suppose;—and for no fault of mine, but for my excellence, my justice, my philanthropy, for the service I have rendered to mankind. I am poor, and hated, and persecuted. I flee to my atheist for consolation, and I ask, 'What does all this come to?' And he says, 'It comes to nothing. Your nobleness will do you no good. You will die, and your nobleness will do mankind no service, for there is no plan or or order in all these things; everything comes and goes by the fortuitous concourse of atoms. If you had been a hunker, you might have had money, ease, honour, respectability, and a long life, with the approbation of your minister. You had better have been so.'

‘I am a philosopher,’ says he. ‘I have been up to the sky, and there is no Heaven. Look through my telescope: that which you see afar off there is a little star in the nebula of Orion’s belt, so distant that it will take light a thousand millions of years to come from it to the earth, journeying at the rate of twelve millions of miles a minute. There is no Heaven this side of that; you see all the way through. And do you think there is any beyond it?’

‘Talk about your soul! I have been into man with my scalpel in my hand, and my microscope, and there is no soul. Man is bones, blood, bowels, and brain; mind is matter. Do you doubt this? Here is Arnoldi’s perfect map of the brain: there is no soul there; nothing but nerves.

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‘Talk of Providence! There is no such thing. I have been through the universe, and there is no God. God is a whim of men; Nature is a fortuitous concourse of atoms; man is a fortuitous concourse of atoms; thought is a fortuitous function of matter, a fortuitous result of a fortuitous result, a chance shot from the great wind-gun of the universe,—which itself is also a chance shot from a chance charge of a chance gun, accidentally loaded, pointed at random, and fired off by chance. Things happen; they are not arranged. There is luck and ill-luck; but there is no providence. Die into dust! True, you sigh for immortality; you long for the dear arms of father and mother that went to the ground before you, and for the rose-bud daughter prematurely nipped. True, you complain of tears that have left a deep and bitter furrow in your cheek; you complain of virtue not rewarded, of nobleness that felt for the Infinite, of a mighty hungering and thirst for everlasting life, a longing and a yearning after God. All that is nothing. Die, and be still!’ Does not that content you? Does this theory square with the facts of consciousness?

Now look at Atheism as a theory of the life of mankind.

Man came by chance; the family by chance; society by chance; nations by chance; the human race by chance. Man is his own sole guide and guardian. No Mind ever grouped the faculties together and made a cosmic man,—it was all chance. There is no Mind which groups the solitary into families, these into nations, and the nations to a world,—it is all chance. There is no Providence for man, except in human heads. Politicians are the only legislators, their statutes the only law. There is no Higher Law. Kings and presidents are the only rulers; there is no great Father and Mother of all the nations of mankind. There is no mind that thinks for man, no conscience to enact eternal laws, no heart to love me when father and mother forsake me and let me fall, no will of the universe to marshal the nations in the way of wisdom, justice, and love. History is the fortuitous concourse of events, as nature is of atoms; there is no plan nor purpose in it which is to guide our going out and coming in. True, there is a mighty going, but it goes nowhere. True, there has been a progressive development of man’s body and mind and the functions thereof; a growth of beauty, wisdom, justice, affection, piety: but it is an accident and may end to-morrow, and the next day there may be a decay of mankind, a decay of beauty, intellect, justice, affection; science, art, literature, civilization may be all forgot, and the naked savage come and burn up Boston, New York, London, and Paris, and drown the last baby of civilization in the blood of the last mother. You are not sure that any good will come of it; there is no reason to think that any good will come of it. Says Atheism, ‘Everywhere is instability and insecurity.’

Look on the aspect of human misery, the outrage, blood, and wrong which the earth groans under. Here is the wife of a drunkard, whose marriage life is a perpetual violation. She married for love a man who once loved her; but the Mayor and Aldermen of the city insisted that he should be made a beast. A beast did I say? Ye four-footed and creeping things of the earth, I beg your pardon! Even the swine is sober in his sty. The Mayor and Aldermen

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of the city made this man a drunkard; and the poor wife watches over him, cleanses his garments, wipes off the foulness of his debauch, and stitches her life into the garments which some wealthy tailor will sell, giving her for wages the tenth part of his own profit,—and which some dandy will wear, thanking the ‘Gods of dandies’ that he is not like that poor woman, so ill-clad and industrious. She will stitch her life into the garments, working at starvation wages, and yet will pay the fines to keep the street-drunkard out of the House of Correction, where the city government hides the bodies of the men it slays. She toils till at length the silver cord of life has got loosed and the golden bowl begins to break. She goes to my atheist, and asks, ‘What comes of all this? Am I to have any compensation for my suffering?’ And the atheist says, ‘Nothing comes of it; there is no compensation. You are a fool. You had better have got a license from the Mayor and Aldermen to prey on other men’s wives about you; and then you might have had wealth, and ease, and respectability. You ought to drink blood and not shed your own.’

‘All the Christian world over,’ continues our atheist, ‘oppression plies its bloody knout, its well-paid metropolitan priest blessing the scourge before it is laid on. The groan of the poor comes up from the bogs of Ireland, and from the rich farms of England and her crowded manufactories. Men make circumstances in London which degrade two hundred thousand people below the cannibals of New Zealand, and starve the Irish into exile, brutality, or death. The iron gripe of kings chokes the throat of the people. Every empire is girded at the loins with an iron belt of soldiers, which eats into the nation’s flesh. Siberia fattens with freedom’s noble dead; and in America three millions of men drag out a life in chains, bought as cattle, sold as cattle, counted as cattle, *only not prayed for in the Christian churches, as cattle are*; and the little commissioners who kidnap at Boston, and the great stealers of men who enact the statutes which make women into things, are honoured in all the Christian churches of the land. Most of “the great men,” all the “citizens of eminent gravity,” all the “unimpeachable divines,” are on the side of wrong. Cry out, blood of Abel! there is no ear to hear you. Victims of nobleness! rot in your blood: it will enrich the ground. Ye saints—Catherine, Andrew, Sebastian, Lawrence, Paul, Jesus!—bear your rack and gibbet as best your bodies may. Kossuth! stoop to Francis the Stupid. Ye patriots of France! kneel to Napoleon the Little, and be jolly in the Sodom which he makes. Ye that groan in the dungeons of the world, who starve in its fertile soils, who wear chains in free America! yield to the Jefferies, the Haynaus, the slave-hunters, and the priests! For there is a body without a soul, an earth without a heaven, a world without a God. Atheism is the theory of the universe; and there is no God, no Cause, no Mind, no Providence.’

The atheist looks on the lives of the noble men

‘Who in the public breach devoted stood,
And for their country’s cause were prodigal of blood,’

and he says, ‘These men were fools; every man of them might have been as sleek, as comfortable, and as fat as the oiliest priest that Mammon consecrates.

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They were fools, and only fools, and fools continually. To the individual hero there comes nothing but blood and wounds.’

The atheist sends out his intellect to seek for the controlling Mind, which is the cause of the created, the reason of the conceivable, the ground of the true, and the loveliness of things beautiful. His intellect comes back and has brought nothing, has found nothing but the reflection of its own littleness mirrored on the surface of things. He saw matter everywhere; he met no causal and providing Mind.

He sends out his moral sense to seek the legislating Conscience, which is justice in what is right, the ground of good, the altogether beautiful to the moral sense, the equitable will which rules the world. But his moral sense returns silent, alone, and empty: there is no equitable will, no altogether beautiful of moral excellence, no ground of good, no Conscience which enacts justice into the unchanging law of right; there is only the finite will of man, often erring and always feeble.

He sends out his affections on the same quest, seeking his heart’s desire. His affections fly forth with trembling wing, and seek the all-perfect ideal, the object of their love, to stay the hunger of the heart which craves the Infinite to feed upon and love. But the affections also come back to the sad man with no return. ‘There is nought to love,’ say they, ‘nothing save man and the ideals of his heart; they are beautiful, but only bubbles; his warm breath fills them for a moment; how fair they shine,—they cool, they perish, and are not! The breath was but a part of the windy cheat which blows along the world,—the bubble breaks and is nothing. There are only finite things for you to love, only finite things to love you in return.’

Last hope of all, as first not less of all, the atheist sends out his soul to seek its rest, and bring back tidings of great joy. Throughout the vast inane it flies, feeling the darkness with its wings, seeking the Soul of all, which at once is Reason, Conscience, and the Heart of all that is, will give satisfaction to the various needs of all. But the soul likewise comes back, empty and alone, to say, ‘There is no God, the universe is a disorder, man is a confusion; there is no Infinite, no Reason, no Conscience, no Heart, no Soul of things. There is nought to reverence, to esteem, to worship, to love, to trust in; nothing which in turn loves us with all its universal force. I am but a worm on the hot sand of the world, seeking to fly—but it is only the instinct of wings I feel; striving to walk, but handless and without a foot; essaying then to crawl, so it be only up. But there is not a blade of grass to hold on to and climb up by, not a weed to shelter me in the intolerable heat of life.’

‘Thus left alone I look at the ground, and it seems cruel—a mother that devours her young. No voice cries thence to comfort me; it is a force, but nothing more. Its history tells of tumult, confusion, and continual change; it prophesies no future peace, tells of no plan in the confusion. I look up to the sky; there looks not back again a kind Providence to smile upon me with a thousand starry eyes and bless me with the sun’s ambrosial light. In the storms a vengeful violence, with its lightning sword, stabs into darkness, seeking for murderous men.

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‘There is no Providence, only capricious senseless Fate.’

Atheism sits down on the shore of Time; the stream of human history rolls by, bearing successively, as bubbles on its bosom, the Egyptian civilization, and it passes slowly by, with its myriads of millions, and the bubble breaks; the Hebrew, Chaldean, Persian, Grecian, Roman, Christian civilization, and they pass by as other bubbles, with their many myriads of millions multiplied by myriads of millions. Their sorrows are all ended: they were sorrows for nothing. The tears which furrowed the cheek, the unrequited heroism, the virtue unrewarded,—they have perished, and there is no compensation, because it is a body without a soul, an earth without a heaven, and a world with a God. ‘Does not that content you?’ asks our atheist.

No man can ever be content with that. Few men ever come to it, ‘thanks to the human heart by which we live!’ Human nature stops a great way short of that.

Religion is natural to man. Instinctively we turn to God, reverence Him, and rely on Him. And when reason becomes powerful, when all the spiritual faculties get enlarged, and we know how to see the true, to will the just, to love the beautiful, and to live the holy,—then our idea of God rises higher and higher, as the child’s voice changes from its treble pipe to the dignity of manly speech. Then the feeble, provisional ideas of God which were formed at first pass by us; the true idea of God gets written in our soul, complete beauty drives out partial ugliness, and perfect love casts out all partial fear.

PRACTICAL ATHEISM.

If a man starts with the idea that there is a body and no soul, an earth without a heaven, and a world without a God, that idea needs must become a principle of practice; and as such it will have a quite powerful effect on the man's active character; it will come at length to be the controuling principle of his life. For as in human nature the religious element is the foundation-element of man, so any misarrangement in that quarter presently appears at the end of the hands, and affects the whole life of man.

Speculative Atheism will not be fully reduced to practice all at once; but in the long run it will assuredly produce certain peculiar results, just as certainly as any seed you plant in the ground will bear fruit after its own kind,

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and not after another kind. You and I are not quite consistent, it may be, and we therefore allow something to come between our first principle and the conclusion which would follow from it; but the human race is very logical, and carries out every principle into practice, making its earnest thoughts into very serious things: only the idea is not carried out at once, but in long ages of time and by successive generations of men. Every theological idea, positive or negative, that is firmly believed in by mankind or by nations will ultimately be carried out by them to its legitimate practical effect, and will appear in their trade, politics, laws, manners—in all the active life of mankind. We think that the litany which we repeat in the church is our confession of faith. Often that reaches very little way in; but the real confession of the world's faith is writ in its trade and politics, in its wars and hospitals, in its armies and school-houses, better than in its 'pious literature.'

Real Practical Atheism is the living of Speculative Atheism as a practice: that is, the living as if there was no God, no God who is the Mind, Cause, and Providence of the world; and that is living as if a man had no natural obligation to think and speak truly, to do right, to feel kind, and to be holy or faithful to himself,—living as if there was no soul, no heaven, no God. That is real Practical Atheism.

This real Practical Atheism is divisible for the present purpose into two forms: First, the undisguised Practical Atheism. Here the practical atheist openly and undisguisedly denies the quality of God, denies that he owes any natural obligation to think truly, to do right, to feel kind, or to be self-faithful; and on the contrary affirms Speculative Atheism as his practical principle and motive of life, and then endeavours to live up to it, or live down to it. That is one form.

The other is disguised Practical Atheism. Here the practical atheist acts on the idea that he has no natural obligation to think truly, to do right, to feel kind, and to be holy; and thus really, and in act, denies the idea of God. But he suppresses the formal denial of God and the affirmation of Atheism, or he even goes so far as to affirm his belief in God and deny his assumption of Atheism as a principle of action.

Now in truth these two men, the undisguised professor of Atheism and the disguised practiser thereof, if they were consistent, would act pretty much alike in most cases, and would do the same thing: only the undisguised atheist would do it overtly, with no denial of the fact and motive, but with the affirmation of each; and the disguised atheist would do it covertly, denying both the fact and the motive, thus adding hypocrisy to Atheism. The undisguised atheist will be the more manly, because he is more thorough-going in his manhood; and such a person will always command a certain degree of admiration, because it is manly in the man to say right out what he thinks right in, and, if he is going to live after a certain principle, to declare that principle beforehand. There is a consistency of manhood in that, and the very assertion is therefore often a guarantee of the man's honesty. But the disguised atheist will be the more theistic, because he is really the more thorough-going in his Atheism. One is true to his natural character as man,

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the other to his conventional character as atheist: for as Atheism is the nega-
tion of Nature, so the negation of itself is a legitimate function of Atheism.

There never was any complete, real Speculative Atheism in the world; for
complete, real Speculative Atheism is so abhorrent to human nature that, if a
man had a realizing sense thereof, and of its speculative consequences, he
must needs die outright. I may say the same of complete, real Practical
Atheism. There is no complete and real Practical Atheism: for I think nobody
could ever be perfectly consistent with real Speculative Atheism, and live as
if he felt absolutely no obligation to speak truly, to do right, to feel kind, and
to be holy. That, therefore, is an extreme which man can not possibly reach.
Human nature would give up before it came to such a conclusion. It is con-
ceivable, but neither actual nor possible.

But yet there is a great deal of practical conduct which rests on this basis
and on no other; and, though no man was ever fully false to his Nature and
fully true to his Atheism, yet very many are partially false to their Nature
and partially true to Atheism. And so there is a good deal of Practical
Atheism in the world, much more than there appears of real Speculative
Atheism; and, though no man is a complete practical atheist, yet there are
many with whom Practical Atheism preponderates in their daily life, and
turns the balance. I mean to say that they live more theologically than the-
istically. The man does not clearly say to himself, 'There is no God'; he
only half says it, and little more than half acts on that supposition. He does
not say out, 'There is no God, and hence no obligation to speak truly, do
right, feel kind, and be faithful to myself'; because, first, there is some
Theism left in the man,—I think nobody can ever empty himself wholly of the
consciousness of God,—or, next, because the man is not fully self-conscious of
his consciousness, so to say, and does not really and distinctly bring to light
the principles which are yet the governing principles in his nature,—or,
finally, if he is thus conscious, he does not dare to say it, but yet acts mainly
on that supposition. Now there is a great deal of this in the world; very
much more than appears at first sight.

The practical atheist, starting from his speculative principle that there is
nothing which is the Mind, the Cause, and the Providence of the universe, or
of any part thereof, and, accordingly, that Nature and Man are, respectively,
the only mind, cause, and providence of themselves,—he must necessarily
believe that man is under no natural and absolute obligation to think truly, to
do right, to feel kind, and to be holy. He must deny that there is any such
obligation to God, because he denies the existence of God, or because he
denies the existence of the quality of God; and he must deny that he owes
this obligation to himself: for, as man is his own mind, cause, providence,
lawgiver, and director, so every propensity of the man is likewise and equally
its own cause, its own mind, its own providence, its own lawgiver and director.
Accordingly, passion is no more amenable to reason and conscience than
reason and conscience are amenable to passion. The parts are no more amen-
able to the whole than the whole to any one of the parts. Man is finite, and
there is no higher being above man: and so there is no higher law above the

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caprice of any passion or any calculation. The man may will anything that he
will, and it shall be his law. For reason there stands the arbitrary caprice of
man, the arbitrary caprice of each instinctive desire, or of any calculated act
of will, and no more.

If the atheist admits there is in human consciousness an idea of right, he
must declare it is not any more binding upon man than the idea of wrong.
We form an idea of absolute right: 'it is a mere whim,' says the atheist;
there exists no substance in which the absolute right can inhere. It is an
abstract quality which belongs to no substance. It is a nothing, only it differs
from an absolute transcendental nothing in this, that it is a thinkable nothing.
According to an atheist, God is a thinkable nothing, and the idea which men
have of God has no more objective actualness to support it than the idea of
light would have if all material light, all actual and all possible light, were
blotted out of being. Then all the necessary attributes of God fall into the
same class—thinkable nothings. So do all the transcendental attributes of
man. Truth is a thinkable nothing, justice a thinkable nothing, and any
excellence which surpasses the excellence of Thomas, and Richard, and Henry,
or all actual men, is also nothing—only it is a thinkable nothing, not a tran-
scendental nothing.

This being the case, there is nothing for me to aspire after. Ideal wisdom,
justice, love, holiness: each is but a thinkable nothing. I do not aspire after
that more than I should marshal ghosts into an army to go out and fight a
battle, or put in a battery a thinkable cannon, which is no cannon, and good for
nothing. And then all reverence must, of course, be weeded out from the
mind of the practical atheist. He can only reverence something that he sees
with his eye or feels with his hand, or reverence himself. This faculty of
reverence which is born in us, so delightful as a sentiment, as a principle so
strong, must take one of two forms: that of servility, crouching down before
a man, or of self-esteem, strutting proudly in its own conceit. There is no
other form possible for it.

The practical atheist denies God, and of course denies religion in all its
parts, absolutely denies all obligation. To him the idea of obligation and of
duty must lack actuality. He must deny my obligation to conform to my
reason, conscience, affections. There is no reason therefore why I should
think and speak truly, do right, feel kind, and be holy, if it is agreeable to me
to do otherwise. Therefore, if I am an atheist, and if Atheism be unpopular,
my Atheism will justify me in denying Atheism itself and in affirming Theism.
So Atheism, in this way, is self-destructive; its development is its dissolution.
So, to deny Atheism, under such circumstances, will be more theistic than to
affirm it. The atheist who denies it is false to his manhood; there is no
atheistic reason why he should be true to it, and the more he denies it the
more he is faithful to his theistic opinion. So the expedient must take the
place of the true and the right; the agreeable must take the place of the
beautiful; desire the place of duty; and *I will* must take the place of that
solemn word *I ought*. There can be no *ought* in the grammar of Atheism.

But, as the atheist in denying God denies the soul, and in doing that denies

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the immortality of man, his range of expediency must be limited to this life; and not only must it be limited to the earthly life of the human race, which may be eternal for aught we know, but it must be limited to the life of the particular atheist who thinks it, and even to the humbler faculties and lower wants of his nature. And so the highest thing he can desire must be his own present comfort. That is the highest real thing that he knows. So Speculative Atheism reduced to practice must lead to complete material selfishness, and can lead to nothing else.

All this is general in its application, is universal; it will apply to all forms of life. Now see how this Atheism will manifest itself in the practical conduct of men, in the various forms of individual, domestic, social, national, and general human life.

I will speak first of the individual life.

As by the theistic theory of the universe there is no such thing as moral obligation, no such thing as duty, no absolute right,—as man is the highest mind in the universe, his own cause, his own providence, his own originator, his own sustainer, and his own director,—so he is perfectly free to do exactly as he pleases. Duty will resolve itself into caprice of selfishness. The man is to concentrate himself particularly upon the desire that is uppermost at the time,—for, as I am my own end, and am to seek my own welfare at all hazards, so each particular propensity in me is its own end, and has to seek its own welfare,—that is, its own gratification,—at any or all hazards.

So there is nothing to prevent my life from being the mere selfishness of passion in youth, seeking pleasure as its object; or the selfishness of ambition in manhood, seeking profit as its goal: for nothing has any right to stand between me and the object of my ambition, more than between me and the object of my passion. Atheism must be universal anarchy!

Now each of these forms of Atheism may assume two modes. One is that of gross selfishness—that is, gross sensualism of pleasure in the period of passion, or gross calculation of profit in the period of ambition. It will terminate in the gross voluptuary or the gross hunker. That is one form. It is the rude, coarse, gross form. It is the form in which Atheism would manifest itself with the poor, with the uneducated, with the roughest of men. It is the Atheism of savagery, the Practical Atheism of St Giles' parish in London.

The other mode is that of refined selfishness—that is, refined sensualism of pleasure in the period of passion, or the refined calculation of profit in the period of ambition; and so here it will terminate in the delicate and subtle voluptuary or else in the delicate and subtle hunker. This is the Atheism of civilization, the Atheism of St James' parish in London. The mode will depend on the temperament and circumstances of the man. And yet you see these two are generically the same, with unity of idea and unity of purpose; both seek a selfish object and both come to the same end, only one in the delicate and the other in the gross form. In either case the aim of life is to be the rehabilitation of selfishness; I mean the enthroning of selfishness as the leading practical principle of life. The atheist is to look on every faculty as an instrument of pleasure or profit; to look on his life as a means of selfishness

and no more; to look on himself as a beast of pleasure or a beast of prey. Behold the man of Atheism!—his controuling principle, selfishness; his life, 'poor, and dirty, and short.'

Now man is not selfish by nature. We have self-love enough to hold us together. Self-love, the conservative principle of man, is the natural girdle put about our consciousness to keep us from falling loose and spreading and breaking asunder. In human nature, self-love is not too strong. When all the faculties act in harmony, there is no excess of this. But, if you deny that faculty which looks to the Infinite, which hungers for the ideal true, the ideal just, and lovely, and holy, then self-love, conservative of the individual, degenerates into selfishness, invades others, and man becomes merely selfish.

See next the effect of Practical Atheism on domestic life, in the family. The normal basis and bond of union in the family is mutuality of love in its various forms: connubial—between man and wife; parental, affiliative, or kindly—between kith and kin; and friendly love.

Connubial love in its normal state consists of two factors—passion, seeking the welfare of the lover, and affection, which seeks the welfare of the beloved. In normal connubial love, these two are coordinated together. Each aims to delight the other more than to enjoy himself, and finds his satisfaction less in enjoying than in delighting. Passion is then beautiful and affection is delightful. Self-love is subordinate to the love of another, the special to the universal. The love of the true, the just, the ever-beautifull, and the holy, comes in and prevents even the existence of selfishness. This condition affords an opportunity for developing and enjoying some of the highest qualities of man. Passion is instinctive, and affection also is instinctive at first; but, as man develops himself by culture, as the human race enlarges in its progressive unfolding, so the affections become larger and larger, more powerful in the individual and the race, and the joy of delighting becomes greater and more.

But in Practical Atheism the family must rest on mutuality of selfishness, not on mutuality of love. And this must appear in all its forms: in the relation between acquaintances or friends, between kith and kin, between parent and child, between man and wife. Marriage must be only for the selfishness of transient pleasure or the selfishness of permanent profit. The parental and filial relation must be only a relation of selfishness,—the parents wanting the child to serve them as a beast of burden or as a toy, and the children wanting the parent to serve them, and valuing father and mother only for what they get therefrom. The relations of kinship, of brother and sister, of uncle and aunt and nicee; the relation of friendship must also be of selfishness and no more. Passion must be all lust, and affection die out and give place to selfish calculation. The wife must be the husband's tool or his toy, and the husband the toy or the tool of the wife.

Marriage is then possible for the sake only of three things: first, for animal gratification; next, for pecuniary profit; last, for social respectability. It is a union of passions in the one case, of estates in the next, of respectabilities in the last; at any rate is the conjunction of bodies without a soul, of selfishness without self-denial, for a here with no hereafter, and in a world with no

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God. Behold the family of practical atheists! Atheism gone to housekeeping! the housekeeping of Atheism like the individual life thereof, 'poor, and dirty, and short'!

Now there is much partial Practical Atheism which appears in this domestic form. The present position of woman is only justified on the ground that there is no God: men do not understand it as yet; one day they surely will. Every marriage which is not based on mutuality of affection—where good is to be taken and good is to be given, and man and wife both are to take and both are to give—is bottomed at last on Practical Atheism: only on that. The other day I said it was impossible for a man to be a complete speculative atheist. It is impossible for him to be a complete practical atheist. But grant that there was a complete practical theistic man and a complete practical theistic woman: would marriage be possible between the two? By no means! Not at all! Juxtaposition of bodies is all that would take place. Selfishness is never a bond of real wedlock.

See how Practical Atheism will appear in a larger form of action—the social form, in the neighbourhood and community. The normal basis of society is first the gregarious instinct, which we have in common with sheep and kine; next, the social will which is peculiar to man, and has this effect on the gregarious instinct: it is to join men together in such a way that the individuality of each shall be preserved, while the sociality of all is made sure of.

Then there is a third thing—the religious aspiration, which desires the absolutely true, just, and lovely; and this desire can only be brought out in full action in the company or society of men.

Accordingly, in a normal society there will be—first, individual self-love, seeking to develop and enjoy itself; then the social affection seeking to delight and develop others about us; and these two may be so coördinated that the individual is kept in society and the mass also is developed and blessed by the concurrent desire to enjoy and to delight; then there will also be the religious love of God, the ideal true, just, loving, and holy, involving as it does the religious love of men. In short, that will be a society shaped by the golden rule.

But the society of Atheism must be a mutuality of selfishness.

All conjunctions of selfishness must needs be a warfare. The social aim will be to rule over others, and make them serve you; to give them the least and get the most from them: and then he will be thought the most fortunate man, and so the most 'respectable' in the community and 'honourable' in the State, who does the least service for mankind and gets the most pay and the most power from them. Society will be controuled by selfish propensities, not by moral ideas, affectional feelings, or religious aspirations for ideal perfection.

All the rulers must of necessity be tyrants, ruling with cruel and selfish aims. Oppression, which is a measure in the practice of men, must be a principle in the theory of the atheist. The accidental actual of history will then become the substantial ideal of nature. The most appropriate nomination in that case would be the nomination of the kidnappers. The capitalist wishes to operate by his money; that is his tool to increase his power of selfish enjoyment.

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ment. The operative wishes to act by his hand and head; these are his tools to increase his power of selfish enjoyment. But both must be thoroughly selfish in principle, and so they will be natural and irreconcileable enemies waging a war of extermination. Accordingly the capitalist will aim to get the operatives' work without giving them pay; and the operatives will aim to get the capitalist's money without giving him the work; and so there will be a perpetual 'strike' and warfare between the two, each continually laying at the other with all his might. The harmony of society will be the equilibrium of selfishness; and that will be brought about when the strong has crushed down the weak, has got him under his foot and has destroyed him. Harmony will take place when the last spider has eaten up all his coadjutors. The social peace of Atheism is solitude.

In trade the aim will be to accumulate money—no matter how it is got, by fraud, by lies, by rack-rent on houses, by ruinous usury on land, or less ruinous piracy on the sea. The man will allow nothing to stand between him and the dollar he covets, no intellectual idea, no moral principle, no affectional feeling, no religious emotion.

Mr Salem sends cargoes of rum to Africa, and when it gets there dilutes it with half its bulk of water, drugs it to its old intoxicating power, and then sells it to the black man, who is made just as drunk, and a little more poisoned than if he had the genuine article, the only thing to which New England has characteristically given its name. He sells this to the black man, and sells him also powder and balls to use in capturing his brother men; and when they are caught he 'prudently' leaves some other American to take and transport them to market at Rio, or Cuba, with the sanction of the American Government. You say to Mr Salem, This is all wicked. 'What do I care for that?' says he. 'It brings me very good money, very good honour, the first respectability. You don't think it's righteousness I am trading for, that I baptize Negroes with poisoned rum for the sake of their "salvation"! I leave that matter and the "justification of slavery" to the Christian clergy. It is quite enough for the merchant to make slaves. I leave it to the ministers to prove it is right. You think I am aiming at "Heaven," do you? You are very young, sir!'

But, say you, you are false to your natural obligations to do right, to speak truly, to feel kind, and to be holy. 'Obligations of that sort! I know no such obligations.' This is consciousness without a conscience. At least you must fear the judgement passed against wrong in the next life?—say you, almost driven to your last appeal. 'But I know no next life,' says he. 'Here is the present life; I am sure of that.' But at least you reverence God? 'Not at all,' says Mr Salem. 'It is a world without a God.'

If a man starts with such a theory of the universe, and such principles of practice, what can you say to him? Call on that man for heroism when the country is in danger, and he creeps under the oven. Call on him for charity when the country is starving, and he sells bread for a dollar a pound. You can get nothing from him but selfishness. An theistic community could not build a free school-house, or an alms-house, or a hospital,—only a jail.

Tell these men of some absolute right, of their immortal soul: it is all a dream.

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Sometimes Practical Atheism gets into the pulpit as well as the pews, and then it is tenfold more deadly: for it poisons the wells of society, and then diffuses the contents abroad as the waters of life. It cries out, 'Ho! every one that thirsteth, come up here and be comforted in your sins.' Ask such a man of that denomination to preach against any popular wickedness which shakes the steeple over his head, and which jars the great Bible on his pulpit's lid; ask him to preach against wickedness which turns one half his congregation into voluptuaries—victims of passion, and the other half into hunkers—victims of ambition, and he only cries, 'Save us, Good Lord!' Tell him of some noble excellence that is going abroad into society and is ready to be struck down by the wickedness of the world, and ask him to speak only a word in its favour over the cushions of his pulpit, and he mumbles, 'Miserable offenders! Save us, Good Lord!' That is all he can say.

All these practically deny the Higher Law. I am not speaking of moment ary errors. You all know I am far more charitable than most men to all errors of that sort. I know myself how easy it is to do wrong, how many depraved things may be done without any depravity in the human heart. But Atheism of this sort, disguised or undisguised,—I can not express the abhorrence and loathing that I feel for the thing. Offences are one thing, but the theory which makes offences,—that is the baser thing.

Look about you and see how much there is, however, of Practical Atheism not confessed to itself. The Sadducee comes forward and says, 'There is no angel, no resurrection!' and men cry out, 'Atheist! away with him!' The Pharisee devours widows' houses, and then struts into the temple, drops with brassy ring his shekel into the public chest, and stands before the seven golden candlesticks in the temple and prays, 'God! I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I possess.' Men cry out, 'This is a Saint! a great Christian!' and run over the poor widow who is dropping into the alms-box her two mites, all the living that she has, and tread her down. This Practical Social Atheism is the death of all heroism, all manliness, all beauty, all love.

See this Practical Atheism in the political form, in the nation. The normal motive of national union is the gregarious instinct and the social will, acting in their larger modes of operation, and joining men by mutuality of interest and mutuality of love. This is the foundation of all real patriotism. Then the union will be for the sake of the universal good of all, and the particular good of each. National institutions, constitutions, and statutes will be the result of a national desire for what is useful to-day, and for what is absolutely true, just, lovely, and holy. There will be a coordination of the particular desire of Thomas and Jane, each seeking his own special good, in the action of personal self-love; and of the general desire of the nation seeking the united good of all in the joint action of self-love and of benevolence. All of this let me represent by one word—Justice: a symbol alike of the transient and eternal interests of both all and each. All national statutes will come from the conscience of the nation, which aims to make them so as to conform with the

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conscience of God, as that is shown in the constitution of the universe, in the unchanging laws of human nature, which represent the justice and the love of God. Then every statute will be a part of the intrinsic law of human nature writ out in human speech, and laid down as a rule of conduct for men. Every such statute will be human and conventional in its form, but yet divine and absolute in its substance, as all true science is the divine and absolute fact of nature expressed in human speech. Then the reason for obeying the human statutes will be the natural obligation to speak truly, do right, feel kind, and be holy; for so far as the statutes of men represent the natural law of God, it is moral and obligatory on all to observe them; but beyond this point obedience to those statutes is obligatory on no man, but is immoral, unmanly, and wicked.

But the polities of Practical Atheism must be based on selfishness. As selfishness prevails in the individual, establishing a personal anarchy of desires; in the family, establishing a domestic anarchy of its members; in the community, establishing a social anarchy in the classes thereof: so it must prevail in the State, establishing a national anarchy in its various parts. Political morality is impossible in the theistic State; there is only political economy, which aims to provide merely for the selfishness of men. For by this hypothesis there is a body without a soul, a here but no hereafter, a world without a God. Men will be consciously held together by the mutual and universal repulsion of selfishness, not at all by the mutual and universal attraction of justice. All men will be natural enemies, joined by mutual hatred, huddled together by want and fear.

Political Atheism is the exploitation of the people by the selfishness of the king, the nobles, or the majority; all right must yield to might. There is no moral element in the laws—in making, administering, or obeying them: for Atheism itself knows no obligation, no duty, no right, only force and desire. All government is a reign of terror.

In the theistic State there must be another class. As the formal negation of Atheism and the affirmation of the opposite thereof is one form of its practical profession, so the priesthood of Atheism, an theistic clergy, is philosophically as possible and historically as real as the monarchy, the aristocracy, or the democracy of Atheism. The clergy will be the ally of the tyrant, the enemy of the oppressed, of the poor, the ignorant, the servant, the serf, the slave. In the name of the soul which it rejects, of the hereafter which it denies, of the God which it derides, the theistic Church will declare 'There is no law above the pleasure of King Monarch or King Many. Obey or be damned!' So in the theistic State the theistic Church will be supple to the master and hate the slave, will cringe to power and abhor all which appeals to the eternal right, will love empire and hate piety. Now it will praise royalty, now nobility, now riches, now numbers, claiming always that the actual power holds by divine right. This is the most odious form of Practical Political Atheism,—the negation of itself, the affirmation of its opposite, crushing man while it whines out its litany, 'Save us, Good Lord! miscrable offenders.'

Hobbes of Malmesbury was right when he said 'Atheism is the best ally of

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despotism': for it denies the reality of justice, takes conscience out of human
consciousness, the soul out of the body, hereafter away from here, and dis-
misses God from the universe: selfishness the only motive, force the last
appeal. That politician was a crafty man who said of religion 'in politics it
makes men mad,' for it bids them speak truly, do right, feel kind, and be
holy against the consent of Governments when they stand in its way. Alex-
ander at a feast slew Clitus, both drunk with Bacchic wine. One of the flat-
terers, not drunk, but sober, said—'It is all right: there is no law above the
king.' That was Practical Political Atheism: the sober flatterer exalting a
drunken murderer above the Eternal God. The exceptional measure of a
king, raging with wine and anger, was made an universal principle for all time.

Here in this nation is much partial Practical Atheism in the political form. Look at the corruption, the bribery of eminent men, sometimes detected, acknowledged, and vindicated; at the conduct of political parties, no one seeking to govern the nation for the joint good of all the citizens, only for the peculiar good of the party in power; at the tyranny of the majority, striking down the obvious right of the lesser number; at three million men made slaves by the people of America:—what is it all but partial Practical Atheism? I am glad political men boldly declare the speculative principle which lies at the basis of their practical measures and tell the people 'There is no natural law above the statutes which men enact'; no God above King Monarch, or King Many. I am glad they 'define their position,' all theistic as it is. Look at the political and clerical defences of the most enormous public wickedness, and you see how deep this Practical Atheism has gone down into the people, how widely it has spread. But the hope which I have for this nation is built on the character of God and on the consciousness of God in the people's heart.

You may see how Practical Atheism must work in the form of general human life, the life of the human race taken as a whole. Mankind is a family of nations, amenable to the constitution of the universe, and normally to be ruled by the laws of human nature, by justice, by the moral obligation to speak truly, to do right, feel kind, and be holy. As the members in the body form a harmonious person, as the individuals in a house form a harmonious family, as the families in society form a harmonious community, as the communities in a nation form a harmonious State, so the nations on the earth are to form a harmonious world, with human unity of action for all, with national variety of action for each State, social variety of action for each community, domestic for each family, and individual for each person. Justice is to be the rule of conduct for individual, domestic, social, national, and general human conduct. Thus the ideal of human life in these five forms will be attained and made actual.

But Practical Atheism makes selfishness, material selfishness the motive, and material desire the rule of conduct, for the nations which make up the world, as for communities which compose the State, or for persons who join in families.

So the world of Atheism, like its State, society, family, and man, must be

only an anarchy of conflicting elements, the strong plundering, enslaving, or
killing the weak. The proximate and ultimate appeal will be to force, now
force of body, then force of brain.

Speculative Atheism is a thing human nature revolts at. So of speculative
atheists, who have a full consciousness of complete Atheism, there are at most
but few; I think not one. Practical Atheism would be just as impossible, if
one could be thoroughly conscious thereof. But, without knowing it, there
are men who thus act, and move, and live, and have their being, as if there
was no God, as if man had no soul, as if there was no special obligation to
speak truly, to do right, to feel kind, and to be holy. There are many
depraved things done which indicate no depravity in the man—excesses of
instinct not yet understood, errors of passion untamed as yet, nay, of ambition,
not knowing itself. But there are depraved things which come out of con-
scious and deliberate wickedness—the deliberate frauds of theology and trade,
and the confessed wrong in domestic, social, national, and general human
life. These are the fruits of Practical Atheism, though the man knows not
what tree it is which bears them.

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USE the word Theism, first, as distinguished from Atheism—that is, from the absolute denial of all possible ideas of God; second, as distinguished from the Popular Theology, which indeed affirms God, but ascribes to him a finite character, and makes him a ferocious God; and, third, as distinguished from Deism, which affirms a God without the ferocious character of the popular theology, but still starts from the sensational philosophy, abuts on materialism, derives its idea of God solely by induction from the phenomena of material nature or of human history, leaving out of sight the intuition of human nature; and so gets its idea of God solely from observation, and not at all from consciousness, and thus, accordingly, represents God as finite and imperfect.

I start from human nature, from the facts of consciousness in your heart and in my heart, assuming only the fidelity of the human faculties, their power to ascertain truth in religious matters, as in philosophical and mathematical matters; and I think it can be shown that those faculties of human nature,—the intellectual, the moral, the affectional, and the simply religious,—in their joint and normal exercise, lead to the idea of God as a being infinitely powerful, infinitely wise, infinitely just, infinitely loving, and infinitely holy—that is, faithful to himself. I start with that conclusion as a fact. I shall not undertake to prove the actuality of this idea—the existence of the infinite God. I shall assume the existence, relying for proof on what is felt in your consciousness, without my saying anything. Only for clearness of conception, let me state some of the most important matters connected with the idea of God.

There must be many qualities of God not at all known to men, some of them not at all knowable by us, because we have not the faculties to know them by. Man's consciousness of God and God's consciousness of himself must differ immeasurably. In the self-consciousness of God subject and object are the same, and He must know all his own Infinite Nature; but in our consciousness of God the limitations of the finite subject make it impossible that we should comprehend God as he is conscious of himself. It is enough for us to know of the Infinite what is knowable to finite man. With qualities not knowable to us I have nothing to do. I shall not undertake to discuss the psychology and metaphysics of God. The metaphysics of man are quite hard enough for me to grapple with and understand.

Then, as a next thing, God must be different in kind from what I call the Universe—that is, from Nature, the world of matter, and from Spirit, the world of mind.

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of man. They are finite, he infinite; they dependent, he self-subsisting; they variable, he unchanging. God must include both, matter and spirit.

There are two classes of philosophers often called Atheists, but better, and perhaps justly, called Pantheists. One of these says, 'There are only material things in existence,' resolving all into matter; 'the sum total of these material things is God.' That is Material Pantheism. If I mistake not, M. Comte, of Paris, and the anonymous author of the *Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation*, with their numerous coadjutors, belong to that class. The other class admits the existence of spirit, sometimes resolving everything into spirit, and says, 'The sum total of finite spirit, that is God.' These are Spiritual Pantheists. Several of the German philosophers, if I understand them, are of that stamp. One difficulty with both of these classes is this: Their idea of God is only, the idea of the world of Nature and of Spirit as it is to-day; and, as the world of Nature and of Spirit will be fairer and wiser a thousand years hence than it is now, so, according to them, God will be fairer and wiser a thousand years hence than he is now. Thus they give you a variable God, who learns by experience, and who grows with the growth and strengthens with the strength of the universe itself. According to them, when there was no vegetation in the world of matter, God knew nothing of a plant, no more than the stones on the earth. When the animal came, when man came, God was wiser, and he advances with the advance of man. When Jesus came, God was a better God; he was a wiser God after Newton and La Place, and was a more philosophical being after those pantheistic philosophers had taught him the way to be so: for their God knows nothing until it is either a fact of observation in finite Nature—in the material world, or else a fact of consciousness in finite Spirit—in some man. He knows nothing till it is shown him. That is a fatal error with Hegel and his followers in England and America.

Mr Babbage, a most ingenious Englishman, invented a calculating engine. He builded wiser than he knew: for by-and-bye he found that his engine calculated conclusions which had never entered into the thought of Mr Babbage himself. The mathematical engine out-ciphered its inventor. And these men represent God as being in just that predicament. The world is constantly revealing things unknown before, and which God had not conceived of. As there is a progressive development of the powers of the universe as a whole, and of each man, so there is a progressive development of God. He is therefore not so much a Being as a Becoming. This idea of a progressive Deity is not wholly a new thing. The doctrine was obscurely held by some of the ancient philosophers in the time of Plato.

If God be infinite, then he must be immanent, perfectly and totally present, in Nature and in Spirit. Thus there is no point of space, no atom of matter, but God is there; no point of spirit, and no atom of soul, but God is there. And yet finite matter and finite spirit do not exhaust God. He transcends the world of matter and of spirit, and in virtue of that transcendence continually makes the world of matter fairer and the world of spirit wiser. So there is really a progress in the manifestation of God, not a progress in God the manifesting.

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As a third thing, the Infinite God must have all the qualities of a perfect and complete being, must be complete in the qualities of a perfect Being, perfect in the qualities of a complete one. To state that by analysis which I have just stated by synthesis, he must have the perfection of being, self-existence; the perfection of power, almightiness; the perfection of mind, all-knowingness; the perfection of conscience, all-righteousness; of affection, all-lovingness; of soul, all-holiness, perfect self-fidelity. Hence, as the result of all these, he must have the perfection of will, absolute freedom. I mean to say, according to this idea of God, there must be no limitation to his existence, his power, his wisdom, his justice, his love, his holiness, and his freedom; none from any outward cause or any inward cause whatsoever. The classic or Greek and Roman idea of God represented him as finite, limited subjectively by elements of his own character, objectively limited by the elements of the material world! The popular theological idea, in fact, represents him as finite, limited subjectively by selfishness, wrath, and various evil passions, objectively by elements in the world of man which continually prove refractory, and turn out as he did not intend. In this matter of the Infinity of God, I differ from the popular theology as well as from the common scheme of philosophy.

Now look at this philosophical Theism, with its Idea of the Infinite God, as a Theory of the Universe. Let me divide the universe into two great parts: one I will call the World of Matter and the other the World of Spirit. By the world of matter I mean everything, except the Deity, known to us that is not man; and by the world of spirit I mean what is man, man both in his material substance and in his spiritual substance. Let me say a word of each. For shortness' sake I will call the world of matter Nature. I begin with this, as it is the least difficult.

In nature God must be both a perfect Cause and a perfect Providence.

I. Of God as perfect Cause. God must have made Nature first, from a perfect motive; next, of perfect material; third, for a perfect purpose or end; fourth, as perfect means to achieve that purpose. That is, the motive for creation, the purpose of creation, must be in perfect harmony with the infinity of God, in harmony with his infinite power, wisdom, justice, love, and holiness; the material of nature, and the means therein, with the constant modes of operation thereof—the Laws of Nature—must be perfectly adequate to the perfect purpose, and so must be in complete harmony with the Infinite God, with his infinite power, infinite wisdom, justice, love, and holiness. That is very plain, following unavoidably from the idea of God as Infinite.

II. Of God as perfect Providence. Creation and Providence are but modifications of the same function. Creation is momentary providence—providence, perpetual creation. One is described by a point, the other by a line. Now, God is just as much present in a blade of grass or an atom of mahogany, this day and in every moment of its existence, as he was at the instant of its creation. Men say, 'When God created matter, he was present therein.' Very true! but he is just as present therein with all his powers, and just as active with all his perfections, at every moment while that matter exists, as he was when it was first created. Men tell us, when they read the Bible, how grand it

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must have been to have stood in the presence of God when Moses miraculously smote the rock which gushed with miraculous water; but every drop of water which falls from my roof in a shower, or from my finger, thus, has as much the presence of God in it as when, in biblical phrase, 'the morning stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted for joy' at the creation of water itself. It can not be created without God; it can not subsist without God. Here, too, in his providence, the motive, the end, the material and means, must be infinitely perfect.

The Infinite God must know every movement of every particle of matter. We generally assent to that in the gross, and reject it in the detail. For example, God must have known, at the moment of creation, the present position of this crescent moon which beautifies the early evening hour; and he must have known, too, the history of these molecules of carbon that make up the cotton thread which binds the sheets of this sermon together. To say it short, the statics and dynamics of the universe, and of each atom thereof, must have been eternally and thoroughly known to God. If there were any absolute evil or imperfection in the created, it could only have come from an absolute evil or imperfection in the Creator: that is, from a lack of infinite power, wisdom, justice, or love, because God had not love enough to wish all things well, or justice enough to will them well, or wisdom enough to contrive them well, or power enough to make them well. Each thing which God has made has a right to be created from perfect motives, for a perfect purpose, from perfect material, and as perfect means, and a right, also, to be perfectly provided for. I know to some men it will sound irrevlevant to speak of the right of the created in relation to the Creator, and of the consequent duty and obligation of the Creator in relation to the created. But the Infinite God is infinitely just, and it is with the highest reverence that I ask, Shall not the God of all the earth do right? Then, if I am sure of God and his infinity, I am sure beforehand of the ultimate welfare of everything which God has made: for the Infinite Father is the pledge and collateral security, the endorser therefor.

We can not comprehend the details of this providence more than of creating, nor fully understand the mode of attaining the end. The mode of terminating, originating, and sustaining are equally unintelligible to us; but the fact we know from the idea of God as Infinite. As we can not with a Gunter's-chain measure the distance between the sun and the earth,—but as by calculation, starting from facts of internal consciousness and external observation, we can measure it with greater proportionate exactness than a carpenter could measure the desk under my hand,—so we can not understand God's mode of operation as Cause or Providence more than an Indian baby, newly born in Shawnee-town, could understand the astronomer's mode of operation in calculating the distance between the earth and the sun. But as we have this idea of God, though we know not the mode of operation, the middle terms which intervene betwixt the purpose and the achievement, we are yet sure of the fact that the motive, purpose, material, and means are all proportionate to the nature of the Creator, and adequate for the welfare of the created.

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In Nature God is the only cause, the only providence, the only power; the law of Nature—that is, the constant mode of action of the forces of the material world—represent the modes of action of God himself, his thought made visible. His mode of action is constant and universal. Men have their precarious make-shifts; the Infinite has no tricks and subterfuges,—not a miracle in Nature, not a whim in God.

So much for this Theism as a theory of the World of Matter. Now a word for it as a theory of the World of Spirit, of the World of Man.

Look at this first in the most general way, in relation to Human Nature, to Mankind as a whole. Here the same thing is to be said as of Nature: namely, the Infinite God must be a perfect cause thereof, and have created the world of man from perfect motives, for a perfect purpose, of perfect material, as perfect means. God has no other motive, purpose, material, or means. The perfect motive must be Absolute Love, producing the desire to bless the world of man—that is, to desire to confer thereon a form and degree of welfare which is perfectly consistent with the entire nature of man. The perfect purpose must be the attainment of that bliss—the ultimate attainment not to-day, or when man wills, but when the Infinite God wills. Perfect material is that which is capable of this welfare; and perfect means are such as achieve it.

But God must be also perfect providence for the World of Man; he must be perpetually present therein, in each portion thereof. Men think that God was present in some moment of time, at the creation of mankind. Very true! but in each moment of mankind's existence since God is just as present: for evidence is a continuous line of creations, and God is as much present, and as much active, at any point of that line as at the beginning or end thereof. I know men speak of yielding up the spirit and going out of the body, going to God. Is not God about, within, and around us, while we are in the body, just as much as when we shake off the known and enter on that untried being?

God must have known at the creation all the action and history of the world of Man as well as of Nature. It is not to be supposed that ten thousand years ago God knew less of human history than he knows to-day. That would be to make God imperfect in his wisdom, growing wiser by experience. Napoleon's *coup d'état* was a surprise to mankind ten months ago. Do you think it was an astonishment to God ten months ago? Was it not infinitely known hundreds of millions of years ago—eternally known? It must have been so.

I know the question is here more complicated than in Nature: for in Nature there is only one force, the direct statical and dynamical action of matter,— and accordingly it is easy to calculate the action and result of mechanical, vegetable, electrical, and vital forces. But in the World of Man there is a certain amount of freedom, and that seems to make the question difficult. In that part of the world of Nature not endowed with animal life, there is no margin of oscillation; and you may know just where the moon will be to-night and where it will be a thousand years hence. The constant forces with their compensations may all be known; and so every nutation of the moon is calculable with entire certainty. The modes of action there are as little variable as the maxims of geometry. The moon's node is an invariable consequent of

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Russia, democratic oppression in America,—when I see the tyranny of the feudal baron in other times with his acres and his armies, of the feudal capitalist now-a-days, the commercial baron with notes at cent-per-cent,— when I see the hyæna of the desert stealing his prey in an Abyssinian town and the hyæna of the city kidnapping a man in Boston,—when I see all this, I say the thing is not hopeless. O no! it is hopeful. God knew it all at the beginning, as perfect Cause,—cared for it all, as perfect Providence, with perfect motive, purpose, material, means,—will achieve at last ultimate welfare for the oppressor and the oppressed. I see the individual suffering, from want, ignorance, and oppression, the public woe which blackens the countenance of men, the sorrow which with private tooth gnaws the heart of Ellen or William, the sin which puts out the eyes of Cain or George. Can I fear? O no! though the worm of sorrow bore into my own heart, I can not fear. In times past there is evil which I can not understand,—in times present evil which I can not solve,—suffering, for mankind, for each nation, for you and me,—sufferings, follies, sins. I know they were all foreseen by the infinite wisdom of God, all provided for by his infinite power and justice, and his infinite love shall bring us all to bliss, not a soul left behind, not a sparrow lost. The means I know not; the end I am sure of.

In the world of matter there is the greatest economy of force. The raindrop is wood for a moment into bridal beauty by some enamoured ray of light, then feeds the gardener's violet, or moves the grindstone in the farmer's mill, serving alike the turn of beauty and of use. Nothing is in vain; all things are manifold in use. 'A rose, beside its beauty, is a cure.' The ocean is but the chemist's sink which holds the rinsings of the world, and everything washed off from earth was what the land needed to void, the sea to take. All things are twofold; matter is doubly winged, with beauty and with use. And do you then believe that the great God, whose motto, 'waste not, want not,' is pictured and practised on earth and sea and sky, is prodigal of human suffering, human woe? Every tear-drop which sorrow has wrung from some poor negro's eye, every sigh, every prayer of grief, each groan which the exile puts up in our own land, and the groan which the American exile puts up in Canada,—while his tears shed for his wife and child smarting in the tropics are turned to ice before they touch the wintry ground,—has its function in the great chemistry of our Father's world. These things were known by God; and he will bring every exile, every wanderer in his arms, the great men not forgot, the little not less blessed, and bear them rounding home from bale to bliss, to give to each the welfare his nature needs to give and ours to take.

The Atheist looks out on a here without a hereafter, a body without a soul, a world without a heaven, a universe with no God; and he must needs fold his arms in despair, and dwindle down into the material selfishness of a cold and sullen heart. The Popular Theologian looks out on the world, and sees a body blasted by a soul, a here undermined by a hereafter of hell, arched over with a little paltry sounding-board of heaven, whence the elect may look over the edge and rejoice in the writhings of the worms unpitied beneath their feet; he looks out and sees a grim and revengeful and evil God. Such is his sad whim.

But the man with pure Theism in his heart looks out on the world, and there is the Infinite God everywhere as perfect Cause, everywhere as perfect Providence, transcending all, yet immanent in each, with perfect power, wisdom, justice, holiness, and love, securing perfect welfare unto each and all.

On the shore of Time, where Atheism sat in despair, and where Theology howled with delight at its dream of hell all crowded with torment at the end, there sits Theism. Before it passes on the stream of Human History, rolling its volumed waters gathered from all lands,—Ethiopian, Malay, Tartar, Caucasian, American,—from each nation, tribe, and family of men; and it comes from the Infinite God, its perfect Cause; it rolls on its waters by the infinite Providence, its perfect Protector. God is on the shore of the stream of Human History, infinite power, wisdom, justice, love; in the waters, in every dimple, in each bubble, in each atom of every drop; and at the end the stream falls into the sea,—that Amazon of human history, under the line of Providence, on the Equator of the world, falls into the great ocean of eternity, and not a dimple that deepens and whirls away, not a bubble that breaks, not a single atom of a drop, is lost. All fall into the ocean of blessedness, which is the bosom of love, and then the rush of many waters sing out this psalm from human nature and human history,—'If God is for us, who can be against us?'

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You start with the Idea of God as Infinite in power, wisdom, justice, love, holiness; you consider Him in his relation to the universe, as perfect Cause and perfect Providence; you see that from his nature He must have made the world, and all things therein, from a perfect motive, for a perfect purpose, of perfect material, as perfect means thereto, and therefore that Human Nature must be adequate to the end which God designed, that it must be provided with means adequate to the development of man, that all the faculties in their normal activity must be the natural means for achieving the purposes of God. You see that, as He gave Nature, the material world, its present amount of necessitated forces, knowing exactly how to proportion the means to the end, the forces to the result which they were to produce, in like manner He gave to man his present amount of contingent forces, knowing perfectly well what use man would make thereof, what abuses would ensue, what results would come to pass, and ordering and balancing these things, compensating one constant by another, caprice by necessity,—so that our human forces should become the means of achieving his divine purpose, and the free-will of man should ultimately work in the same line with the infinite perfection of God, and so the result which God designed should be achieved by human freedom: therefore, that this perfect Cause and Providence has provided human freedom as part of the perfect means whereby human destination is to be wrought out, which destination is not fate, but providence.

Well, this idea of God, the consequent idea of the Universe and of the Relation between the two, can not remain merely a theory; it will affect human life in all its most important details. It will appear in the Form of Religion. Man must always work with such intellectual apparatus, faculties, and ideas, as he has. With the Idea of the Infinite God, he must progressively construct a form of religion corresponding to that idea. That form of religion will comprise the subjective worship and the objective service of God; and so it will become the Theoretic Ideal of human life. Then that form of religion will appear in the Actual Life of men, and in all the modes and modifications thereof: for no human force is so subtle as the religious; it extends, and multiplies, and goes into every department of human affairs.

Let us now look at the Theoretic Form of religion which belongs to this idea, and at the Realization thereof in human life.

I. First, then, of the Form of Religion. Of Religion there are always two parts; namely, the subjective portion, which is Piety, consisting of emotions

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that are purely internal; and next the objective portion, which is Morality, internal in part, and external also, rooted in our consciousness of God, and branched abroad into practical action in our houses and farms and shops, our warehouses, our libraries, and our banks.

First, of the subjective portion. When fully grown this subjective part must be pure Piety; I mean to say piety not mixed with any other emotion. There will be no Fear or Distrust of God, because it is known that there is nothing in God to fear. I fear what hurts, never what helps.

Distrust of God rests on the idea that He is something not perfect, imperfect in power, wisdom, justice, love, or holiness; and with that idea of Him God may seem good so far as he goes, but not going infinitely. He does not go far enough to warrant infinite trust; and so there is a partial distrust. Fear of God is worse yet. That rests on the supposition that there is not only in God something not perfect, but that there is in Him something not good.

But you can not fear infinite love, you can not fear infinite justice, nor infinite holiness; nor yet infinite wisdom and infinite power, when they are directed by infinite justice and animate with infinite love. With the idea of God as infinitely perfect I may indeed have doubts of to-morrow, doubts of my own or another's temporary welfare,—for I know not what result the contingent forces of human freedom will produce to-morrow: but I can have no doubts of eternity, no doubts of my own or another's ultimate welfare, because I do know that the absolute forces of God will so controul the conditional and contingent forces of men, which His plan arranged and provided for, that ultimately the perfect purpose of God shall be achieved for all and each.

Then there will be Absolute Love of God. To the mind, God will be the beauty of truth; to the conscience, the beauty of justice; to the affections, the beauty of love; to the soul, the beauty of holiness; and to the whole consciousness of man, He will appear as the total Infinite Beauty; the perfect and absolute object of every hungering faculty of man; the Cause that creates from perfect love as motive, for perfect love as purpose, and by perfect love as means; the perfect Providence that provides from the same motive for the same purpose and by the same means.

With this Idea of God, and this Love of Him, there comes a Perfect Trust in God as Cause and Providence:—not only a trust in the daylight of science, where we see, but in the twilight, even in the darkness of ignorance, where we see not:—an absolute trust in his motive, his purpose, and his means; so that we shall not desire any other motive but the motive of God, nor any other purpose but the purpose of God, nor any other means but the means He has provided thereto.

With that trust there must come a perpetual Hope, for yourself, for all mankind: for as dark as the world may be, dark as my own condition may be, my outward lot, my inward state, still I know assuredly that God foresaw it all, provided for it all, and that He can not fail in motive, in purpose, or means thereto, and thus light will spring out of darkness and bliss come forth of bale.

With this there will come Tranquillity and Rest for the soul—that Peace spoken of in the fourth Gospel, which the world can not give nor take away.

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Then there will come a real Joy in God. I mean the happiness which the Mystics call the 'sense of sweetness' that comes when the conditions of the soul are completely met, when the true idea of God and the appropriate feeling toward Him furnish the personal, human, inward condition of religious delight, and there is nothing between us and the infinite Father. That is the highest joy and the highest delight of human consciousness. The natural desires of the body may fail of satisfaction, their hunger shortening my days on earth, and I may be poor and cold and naked; I may be a prisoner in a dungeon of Austria, or a slave on a plantation of Carolina; I may be sick and feeble, and the conditions of domestic and of social welfare may not be met;—but if the soul's conditions are fairly met within on the side that is turned toward the Infinite, then through the clouds the beauty of God shines on me, and I am at peace.

So there will come a Beauty of Soul; I mean a harmonious spiritual whole of well-proportioned spiritual parts, and there will be a continual and constant growth in all the noble qualities of man. God will not be thought afar off, separated from Nature, separated from man, but dwelling therein, immanent in each though yet transcending all. Nature will be seen as a revelation of God; and the march of man will reveal also the same Providence as the world of matter, human consciousness disclosing higher characteristics of the infinite God. Communion with Him will be direct, my spirit meeting His, with nothing betwixt me and the Godhead of God. I shall not pray by attorney, but face to face. Inspiration will be a fact now, not merely a history of times gone by. Worship, the subjective service of God, will be not by conventional forms of belief, of speech, or of posture,—not by a sacramental addition of an exorcescence where Nature suffered no lack, nor by mutilation of the body or mutilation of the spirit, the sacramental cutting off where God made nothing redundant: but by conscious noble emotions shall I subjectively worship God; by gratitude for my right to the Father, and in His universe, the thanksgiving of an upright heart; by aspiration after a higher ideal of my own daily life; by the sense of duty to be done, which comes with the sense of right to be enjoyed; by penitence where I fall short; by resolutions that in my 'proper motion' I may ascend, and not by adverse fall come down; by the calm joy of the soul, its delight in Nature, in Man, and in God; by the hope, the faith, and the love, which the large soul sends out of itself in its religious life; and by the growing beauty of character, which constantly increases in love of wisdom, in love of justice, in love of benevolence—in love of Man, and in love of God. That will be the real worship, the internal service of the Father.

So much for the subjective part of this form of religion.

Of the Objective Part also a word. God, who is thus subjectively served in the natural forms of Piety, must be objectively served or worshipped in the natural forms of Morality; that is, by keeping all the laws of God. In Nature, the material world, the law of God is the actual constant mode of operation of the forces thereof,—the way it does act. There all is necessitated, and we know of the law by seeing the fact that it is always kept: for the ideal law of matter is the actual fact of matter, learned by observation, not by conscious-

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ness. So the material universe and God, in every point of space and time, are continually at one. If law is a constant of God, obedience thereto is a constant of matter. But in man the law of God for man is the ideal constant mode of operation of the human force,—the way it should act. This is not always a fact in any man; and we learn it not merely by observation of our history, but by consciousness of our nature. Morality is the making of the ideal of human nature into the actual of human history. Herein the ideal of God's purpose becomes the actual of man's achievement, and so far man and God are at one, as everywhere God and matter are at one. Then for every point of Right we seek to enjoy there is a point of Duty which we will to do.

Thus, in general, morality will be the objective service of God, as piety is the subjective worship of God. These two make up the whole of religion: they are the only divine service. Piety is the great inward sacrament and act of worship; Morality is the great outward sacrament and act of service. Piety will be free piety, such as the spirit of man demands; Morality will be free morality, such as the spirit of man demands; both perfectly conformable to the nature which God puts into man, to the body and the spirit,—the mind and conscience, heart and soul.

This morality will consist in keeping the Law of the Body, in giving it its due use, development, enjoyment, and discipline in the world of matter.

The popular theology, in its ascetic rules, goes to an extreme and does great injustice. It counts the body mean, calls it vile, says that therein dwells no good thing. It mortifies the flesh, crucifies the affections thereof. But the body is not vile. Did not the infinite Father make it,—not a limb too much, not a passion too many? God make any thing vile! and least of all this, which is the consummation of his outward workmanship,—the frame of man! Far from us be the thought!

The Atheistic philosophy goes to the other extreme, and clamours for the 'rehabilitation of the flesh,' and would have a paradise of the senses, as the sole and earthly heaven of man. Theology turns the flesh out of doors, and the soul has cold housekeeping, living alone. Atheism turns the soul out of doors, and the flesh has no better time of it,—no! has a worse time, with its scarlet women 'tinging the pavement with proud wine too good for the tables of pontiffs.' Absolute Religion demands the use of every limb of the body, every faculty of the soul, all after their own kind, each performing its proper function in the housekeeping of man. Then there will be freedom of the body, freedom for every limb to perform its function, and to perform no more. That is the morality of the body.

This morality will consist also in keeping the Law of the Spirit; that is, in giving the spirit its natural empire over the material part of us, and in giving each spiritual faculty its natural place in the housekeeping of the spirit,—so that each, the intellectual, the moral, the affectional, and the purely religious faculty, shall have its due development, use, enjoyment, and discipline in life. Then there will be spiritual freedom; that is, the liberty of every spiritual faculty to perform its own work, and no more. This is the morality of the spirit.

The popular theology restrains each spiritual faculty. It hedges you in with

the limitation of some great or little man; it calls a man's fence the limit to God's revelation: it does not give the mind room, nor conscience room, nor the affections room, nor yet the soul sufficient space to serve God, each by its natural function.

One of the good things of Atheism has been this: it offers freedom to the human spirit. That is its only good, and its only charm. In a church of Theology the great mind can not draw a long breath, lest it should wake up the 'wrath of God,' which, we are told, never sleeps very sound, nor long at a time. In the free air of Atheism the largest mind is told to breathe as deep as he can, and make as much noise as he will; there is no God to molest and make him afraid. That is the only charm which Atheism ever had to any man. It raises men from fear, and it bids them be true to that part of their nature which they know.

Well, such will be the form of Religion coming from Theism; such its Piety and Morality. You see it will be a form of religion which fits well upon man; fits well upon the finite side,—on man, for it is derived from his nature, and represents all parts thereof, doing justice to the body, to its every limb, to all its senses, functions, passions; doing justice to the spirit, every faculty thereof, intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious. It fits just as well on the infinite side—on God; for it is drawn from human nature on the supposition that God made human nature from perfect motives, of perfect material, for a perfect purpose, and as a perfect means thereto. This form of religion, then, is the application of God's means to the purpose of God.

As 'Christian' Theology professes to be derived from a verbal revelation of God,—represented by the Church, as the Catholics say, by the Scriptures, as the Protestants teach,—so the Absolute Religion is derived from the real revelation of God, which is contained in the universe; this outward universe of matter, this inward universe of man; and I take it we do not require the learned and conscientious labours of a Lardner, a Paley, or a Norton, to convince us that the universe is genuine and authentic, and is the work of God, without interpolation. We all know that. I call this the Absolute Religion, because it is drawn from the absolute and ultimate source; because it gives us the Absolute Idea of God,—God as Infinite; and because it guarantees to man his natural rights, and demands the performance of the absolute duties of human nature.

So much for this Form of Religion.

See it first in the form of Individual Human Life; in a person. He will be the most religious man who most conforms to his nature; who has most of this natural piety and of this natural morality. He will be the most completely religious man who most keeps the law of God, for his body and for his soul; and of course who coördinates the flesh and the spirit, and duly subordinates the low qualities of the spirit to the higher;—for a very little activity of the higher faculties of man is worth a great deal of activity of the lower; even as an ounce of gold can any day purchase some tons of sand.

What a difference there will be between the saint of absolute Religion and the saint of popular Theology. The real saint is a man who aims to have a

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whole body, and a whole mind, and a whole conscience, and a whole heart, and a whole soul; and to live a whole, brave, manly life, at work in the daily calling of grocer, or mason, or legislator, or cabinet-maker, or historian, or seamstress, or preacher, or farmer, or king, or whatsoever it may be: that will be the aim of the saint of natural religion. The real saint of absolute religion must be a free spiritual individual. His piety must represent him, and his morality must represent him, and he will carry them both into all his work. Knowing that God gave him faculties as God meant him to have them, each containing its law in itself; knowing that God provided them as a perfect means for a perfect purpose, and that that purpose is one which can not fail, he will use these faculties in the true service of God; and he will work as no other man,—with a strength, and a vigour, and a perseverance; ay, and a beauty of character too, which nothing but religion can ever give. So there will be the greatest strength to do, to be, and to suffer, sure to conquer at the last. He will sail the more carefully, for he knows that careful sailing is the service which God requires of him; he will sail the more confidently, because he knows that his voyage is laid out, and his craft is insured by the Power who holds the waters in the hollow of His hand; yes, that it is insured against ultimate shipwreck at the great office of the infinite God. Will he not work therefore with greater earnestness and zeal because he knows that God gave him these talents as a perfect means for a perfect end; with more confidence because he knows the end is made sure of; and with more caution, because he knows that the true use of the means is the only service God asks of him?

See this same thing in its Domestic Form,—that of human life in the family. The family must represent the free spiritual individuality of man and woman, regarded as equal, and equally joining by connubial love—passion and affection—for mutual self-denial and mutual delight;—for there is no marriage without mutual self-denial as means, for mutual delight as end. Marriage between a perfect man and a perfect woman would be mutual surrender and sacrifice.

In all forms of religion that I know, from the book of Moses to the book of Mormon, from Confucius to Calvin, woman is degraded before man; but the Absolute Religion will give woman her true place in the family as the equivalent of man; and when the family is of two free spiritual individualities, grouped together by mutual love, for mutual self-denial and mutual delight, then we shall have a family religion such as the world never saw before. And that will not be deemed the most religious family—which has the most of psalm-singing and of prayers,—excellent things, I deny not,—but that wherein every law of the body and every law of the spirit are most completely kept; where man is joined to woman, and woman joined to man in passional and affectional love, with mutual sacrifice and mutual surrender; the wedlock of equals, not the huddling together of a superior and an inferior.

See this in its Social Form,—that of human life in communities. All men will be regarded as equal in nature, equal in rights, equally entitled to take a just and natural delight in the world of matter, on the same just and natural conditions which God has laid down. The Absolute Religion of the individual must be 'professed' in the institutions of society, and be made life in the

world of men. Then Morality will take the form of Industry in all its million modes; of Natural Enjoyment of the products of industry; of Justice, regulating the intercourse of men by the golden rule, which is alike the standard-measure in the mind of man and in the mind of God; the form of Friendship with a few, from whom we ask delight in return for the joy we give; the form of Philanthropy to all, asking no return. Industry will be deemed a divine service; and a man's shop, library, bank, office, warehouse, farm, his station in Church or State,—all will be deemed the special temple wherein he is to work; the Father by natural morality,—service with every limb of his body, every faculty of his spirit, every power over matter or man which he has gained. Friendship, with its mutual triumph and reciprocal surrender, philanthropy, which comes as charity to palliate the effects of ill, or as justice to remove the cause of ill,—these will be deemed the noble factors in the religion of society, to work out 'a far more exceeding, even an eternal weight of glory.' Then the tools of a man's work, the farmer's plough, the mason's trowel, the griddle of the cook, the needle of the seamstress, and the scholar's pen, will be reckoned the consecrated vessels of our divine service, and of man's daily communion with man.

There will be a church, doubtless, for gathering the multitudes from the cold air, to warm their faces where one great man lights the fire with sentiments and ideas which he has caught from God. There will be a Sabbath for rest, for thought, for ideas, for sentiments; hours of self-communion, of penitence, of weeping, aspirations, hours of highest communion and life with God; but the whole world will be a temple, every spot holy ground, every bush burning with the Infinite, all the time the Lord's-day, and every moral act worship and a sacrament. Then men will see that voluntary idleness is a sin, that profligacy is a sin, that deceit is a sin, that fraud in work and in trade is a sin, that no orthodoxy of belief, no multitude of prayers, no bodily presence in a church, no acceptance of an artificial sacrament, can ever atone for neglect of the great natural sacrament which God demands of every man.

Will not that be a change in society? Now, the man of the popular theology sneaks into church on the first day of the week, and hopes thereby to atone for an abnegation of God on the other six; communes with God through bread and wine, and refuses to commune with Him in buying and selling; is a liar, a usurer, a kidnapper before men, while he professes to be a saint before God. What is taught to him as 'revealed religion' does not rebuke his pride nor correct his conduct.

Then with the teaching of the true absolute Religion it will be seen that the great man is only the great servant of mankind. He that is powerful by money, office, culture, genius, owes mankind an eminence of industry, justice, and love, as pay to God for the opportunities, the station, the strength, which he has received. God gave him greatness by nature; society gave him greatness of culture, of wealth, of station:—Why? That he might do the more service, not take the more ease. The man of genius is born to be eyes for the public. If he looks out only for himself, he has denied the faith, and is an Infidel.

Then men will see that that is the most religious community where, propor-

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tionately, the most pains is taken to secure the welfare of all, to speed Genius
on its triumphant way, to help the poor, the feeble, men of imperfect body and
imperfect brain, and those sad wrecks of circumstance we now pile up in jails
to moulder and to rot. A steeple and a gallows will not always be the signs
significant of a Christian land. Men will not measure the religion of society
by the number of the temples and priests, but by the colleges and school-houses,
the hospitals, the asylums for the old, the sick, the deaf, the blind, the foolish,
the crazy, and the criminal; nay, they will measure it by honest industry
in business, by truth in science, by beauty in literature, by justice in the State,
by the comfort, the health, the manhood of the man.

See this religion in the Political Form, that of National Life. Here the
aim will be to take the Constitution of the Universe for the foundation of all
political institutions, making absolute Justice the standard-measure in all
political affairs, and reënacting the Higher Law of God into all the statutes of
the people's code. Men of Genius, in all its many modes, will be the nation's
telescopic eye to discover the Eternal Right. The highest thought of the
most gifted and best cultured men will become the ideal which the nation
seeks to incorporate in its code, to administer in its courts, and to revive in its
daily life. That will be thought the most religious nation whose institutions,
constitutions, statutes, and decisions, conform the most to abstract right, ap-
plying this to its action abroad and at home; where the whole people are the
best and the best off; and the higher law of God is carried out in the action of
the nation with other States, of the government with the people, of class with
class, and of man with man. As proofs of the national religion, you will bring
forward the character of the people—their conduct, their institutions, their men.

Then law would be justice, loyalty righteoussness, and patriotism Humanity.
Men conscious of the same human nature, and consciously serving the Infinite
God, must needs find their religion transcending the bounds of their family,
community, church, and nation, and reaching out to every human soul.

Then what a force Religion will be! There will be a religion for the body,
to serve God with every limb thereof; a religion for the intellect, and we shall
hear no more of 'atheistic science,' but Lalande shall find God all the world
through, in every scintillation of the farthest star he looks at, and Ehrenberg
confront the Infinite in each animated dot or cell of life his glass brings out to
light; yea, the chemist meet the Omnipresent in every atom of every gas.
Then there shall be a religion for conscience, the great justice; a religion for
the affections, the great love; a religion for the soul, perfect, absolute trust in
God, joy in God, delight in this Father and Mother too.

Then what men shall we have! not dwarfed and crippled, but giant men,
Christlike as Christ. What families! woman emancipated and lifted up.
What communities! a society without a slave, without a pauper; society
without ignorance, wealth without crime. What churches! Think of the
eight and twenty thousand Protestant churches of America, with their eight
and twenty thousand Protestant ministers, with a free press and a free pulpit,
and think of their influence if every man of them believed in the Infinite God,
and taught that the service of God was by natural piety within and natural

morality without; that there was no such thing as imputed righteousness or
salvation by Christ; but that real righteousness was honoured before God, and
salvation by character, by effort, by prayer, and by toil, was the work. Then
what a nation should we have! ay, what a world!

We shall have it; it is in your heart and in my heart: for God, when He
put this idea into human nature, meant that it should only go before the fact,
—the John the Baptist that heralds the coming of the great Messiah.

Eternal Truth shines on o'er error's cloud,
Which from our darkness hides the living light;
Wherefore, when the true Bard hath sung aloud
His soul's song to the unrelcessive night,
His words, like fiery arrows, must alight,
Or soon, or late, and kindle through the earth,
Till Falsehood from his lair be frighted forth.
Work on, O fainting Heart! speak out thy Truth;
Somewhere thy winged heart-seeds will be blown,
And be a grove of pines; from mouth to mouth,
O'er oceans, into speech and lands unknown,
E'en till the long-foreseen result be grown
To ripeness, fill'd like fruit, with other seed,
Which Time shall plant anew and gather when men need.

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39

DANGERS TO THE RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA.

BY THEODORE PARKER.

Abridged from *A Sermon of the Dangers which threaten the Rights of Man in America*, preached at the Music Hall, Boston, on Sunday, July 2, 1854.

And he gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul.

Psalm vii, 15.

NATIONS may come to an end through old age—the decay of the family to which they belong, through outward violence, or through their own vices—moral or political. The dangers which threaten America are from the last of these causes.

Look at some of these dangers. I shall pass by all that are trifling. I find four great perils. Here they are :—

I. The Danger from our exclusive Devotion to Riches.

II. The Danger from the Roman Catholic Church, established in the midst of ns.

III. The Danger from the Idea that there is no Higher Law above the Statutes which men make.

IV. The Danger from the Institution of Slavery, which is based on that theistic idea last named.

I. OF THE DANGER FROM OUR EXCLUSIVE DEVOTION TO RICHES.

Power is never left without a possessor: when it fell from the theocratic and military classes, from the priest, the noble, and the king, it passed to the hands of the capitalist. In America, ecclesiastical office is not power; noble or royal birth is of small value. Money is power; the only permanent and transmissible power: it goes by device. Money 'can ennoble sots and slaves and cowards.'

It gives rank in the Church. The millionaire is always a saint. The priests of Commerce will think twice before damning a man who enhances their salary and gives them dinners. In one thing the American Heaven resembles the New Jerusalem: its pavement is 'of fine gold.' The capitalist has the chief seat in our Christian synagogue. It is a rare minister who dares assail a vice which has riches on its side. Is there a clergyman at the South who speaks against the profitable wickedness which chains three million American men? How few at the North!

In Society money is genteel; it is always respectable. The high places of society do not belong to ecclesiastical men, as in Rome; to military men, as in St Petersburg; to men of famous family, as in England and Spain; to men of science and literature, men of genius, as in Berlin; but to rich men.

Money gives distinction in Literature, so far as the literary class can controul the public judgement. The colleges respect a rich man's son; they name professorships after such as endow them with money, not mind. Critics respect a rich man's book; if he has not brains, he has brass, which is better. The capitalist is admitted a member of the Academies of Arts and Sciences, of col-legiate societies; if he can not write dissertations, he can give suppers, and there must be a material basis for Science. At anniversaries, he receives the honorary degree. "T is easier to weigh purses, sure, than brains." A dull scholar is expelled from college for idleness, and twenty years later returns to New England with half a million of money, and gets his degree. As he puzzles at the Latin diploma, he asks—'If I had come home poor, I wonder how long it would have taken the "Alma Mater" to find out that I was ever a "good scholar," and now "merited an honorary degree"—facts I never knew before.'

In Politics, money has more influence than in Turkey, Austria, Russia, England, or Spain. For in our politics the interest of property is preferred before all others. National legislation almost invariably favours capital, and not the labouring hand. The Federalists feared that riches would not be safe in America—the many would plunder the wealthy few. It was a groundless fear. In an Industrial Commonwealth, property is sure of popular protection. Where all own hay-ricks, no one scatters fire-brands. Nowhere in the world is property so secure or so much respected: for it rests on a more natural basis than elsewhere. Nowhere is wealth so powerful in Church, Society, and State. In Kentucky, and elsewhere, it can take the murderer's neck out of the halter. It can make the foolish wise; the dull man, 'eloquent'; the mean man, 'honourable, one of our most prominent citizens'; the heretic, 'sound orthodox'; the ugly, fair; the old man, a desirable young bridegroom. Nay! vice itself becomes virtue, and man-stealing is Christianity.

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Here, nothing but the voter's naked ballot holds money in check; there are no great families with their historic tradition, as in all Europe; no bodies of literary or scientific men to oppose their Genius to mere material Gold. The church is no barrier, only its servant: for when the minister depends on the wealth of his parish for support, you know the common consequence. Lying rides on Obligation's back. The minister respects the hand that feeds him: 'the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib.' Yet now and then a minister looks starvation in the face and continues his unpopular service of God. No political institutions check the authority of Wealth; it can bribe and buy the venal; the brave it sometimes can intimidate and starve. Money can often carry a Bill through the legislature—state or national. The majority is hardly strong enough to check this pecuniary sway.

In the 'most democratic' States gold is most powerful. Thus, in fifteen States of America, three hundred thousand men own thirteen hundred millions of money invested in men. In virtue thereof they controul the legislation of their own States, making their institutions despotic, and not republican; they keep the poor white man from political power, from comfort, from the material means of education and religion; they destroy his self-respect, and leave him nothing but his body; from the poorest of the poor they take away his body itself. Next they controul the legislation of America; they make the President, they appoint the Supreme Court, they controul the Senate, the Representatives, they determine the domestic and foreign policy of the Nation. Finally, they affect the laws of all the other sixteen States, the Southern hand colouring the local institutions of New Haven and Boston.

That is only one example—one of many. Russia is governed by a longdescended Tzar; England by a Queen, Nobles, and Gentry—men of ancient family, with culture and riches. America is ruled by a troop of men with nothing but money and what it brings:—three hundred thousand slave-holders and their servants, North and South. Boston is under their thumb; at their command the Mayor spits in the face of Massachusetts-law, and plants a thousand bayonets at the people's throat. They make cartridges under the eaves of Faneuil Hall.ᵇ

Accordingly, money is the great object of desire and pursuit. There are material reasons why this is so in many lands; in America there are also social, political, and ecclesiastical reasons for it. 'To be rich is to be blessed: Poverty is damnation': that is the popular creed.

The public looks superficially at the immediate effect of this opinion, at this exceeding and exclusive desire for riches. They see its effect on Israel and John Jacob, on Stephen, Peter, and Robert: it makes them rich, and their children respectable and famous. Few ask—What effect will this have on the nation? They foresee not the future evil it threatens. Nay! they do not consider how it debauches the institutions of America—ecclesiastical, academic, social, political; how it corrupts the hearts of the people, making them prize

ᵇ The great popular meeting-place, as was here in times long gone by the Crown-and-Anchor, and more lately White-Conduit-House.

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DANGERS TO THE RIGHTS OF MAN

money as the end of life, and manhood as only the means thereto, making money master, and human nature its tool or servant, but no more.

The political effect of this unnatural esteem for riches is not at all well understood. History but too plainly tells of the dangerous power of priests or nobles consolidated into a class, and their united forces directed by a single able head. The power of allied kings, concentrating whole realms of men and money on a single point, is all too boldly written in the ruin of many a State. We have often been warned of the peril from forts, and castles, and s'anding armies. But the power of consolidated riches, the peril which accumulated riches may bring upon the liberties of an industrial Commonwealth, though formidably near, as yet is all unknown, all unconsidered too. Already the consolidated property of one-eightieth part of the population controul了 the rest.

Two special causes, both exceptional and fleeting, just now stimulate the acquisitiveness of America almost to madness: one the rapid development of manufacturing power, which, combined with the almost universal education of the people, gives an immense stimulus to the pursuit of wealth; the other the discovery of gold in California and Australia.

Beside, the form of American industry is changed. Once, New England and all the North were chiefly agricultural; manufactures and commerce were conducted on a small scale; and therein each man wrought on his own account. There was a great deal of individual activity, individuality of character. Few men worked for wages. Now, New England is mainly manufacturing and commercial. Vermont is the only farming State. Mechanics, men and women, work for wages,—many in the employment of a single man, thousands in the pay of one company, organized by superior ability. The workman loses his independence, and is not only paid, but governed also, by his employer's money. His opinions and character are formed after the prescribed pattern by the mill he works in. The old military organizations for defence or aggression brought freedom of body distinctly in peril; the new industrial organizations jeopardize freedom of mind and conscience: all New England is a monumental proof.

Another change also follows: the military habits of the North are all gone. Once, New England had more firelocks than householders; every man was a soldier and marksman. Now, the people have lost their taste for military discipline, and neither keep nor bear arms. Of course a few holiday soldiers, called out by a doctor and commanded by an apothecary, can overawe the town.

The Northern, Eastern, and Middle States are the great centre of this industrial development. In consequence, especially in New England, the greatest intellects are engrossed by trade and manufactures; and politics are shunned and neglected in the same way as the mass of men avoid military discipline. Only the South sends its ablest men to Congress, and they rule the Union.

The national effect of this estimate and accumulation of riches is to produce a great and rapid development of the practical understanding, a great love of vulgar luxuries,—it may be also a certain refinement.

But there is no proportionate culture of the higher intellectual faculties—of the Reason and Imagination; still less of the yet nobler powers—moral, affectional, and religious. The chief things taught are Arithmetic and Elocution; not the

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art to reason and create, but the trade to calculate and express. Everything is measured by the money standard. 'The protection of property is the great object of government.' The politician must suit the pecuniary interest of his constituency, though at the cost of Justice; the writer, author, or editor, that of his readers, though at the sacrifice of Truth; the minister that of his audience, though Piety and Morality both come to the ground: Mammon is a profitable god to worship—he gives dinners.

## II. OF THE DANGER FROM THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.

The Catholic population is not great in numbers. In 1853, there were in America 1,712 churches, 1,574 priests, 396 theological students, 32 bishops, 7 archbishops, church property worth about 10,000,000 dollars, and 1,728,000 Catholics. But these are united into one compact body, not under the better religious orders—which do not visit America, but under the Jesuits; they again all under the direction of a single head. One shrewd Protestant minister may be equal to one Jesuit, but no ten or forty ministers are a match for a combination of ten Jesuits, bred to the business of deception, knowing no allegiance to Truth or Justice, consciously disregarding the Higher Law of God, with the notorious maxim that 'the end justifies the means,' bound to their order by the most stringent oath, and devoted to the worst purposes of the Catholic Church.

All these priests owe allegiance to a foreign head. It is not an American Church; it is Roman, not free, individual, but despotic; nay, in its designs not so much human as merely papal.

The Catholic Church opposes everything which favours Democracy and the natural rights of man. It hates our free churches, free press, and above all our free schools. No owl more shuns the light. It hates the rule of majorities, the voice of the people; it loves violence, force, and blood.

The Catholic clergy are on the side of Slavery. They find it is the dominant power, and pay court thereto that they may rise by its help. They like Slavery itself; it is an institution thoroughly congenial to them, consistent with the first principles of their church. Their Jesuit leaders think it is 'an ulcer which will eat up the Republic,' and so foster it for the ruin of Democracy, the deadliest foe of the Roman hierarchy.

Beside, most of the Catholics are the victims of oppression, poor, illiterate, oppressed, and often vicious. Their circumstances have ground the humanity out of them. No sect furnishes half so many criminals. I am told there is not in all America a single Catholic newspaper hostile to Slavery; not one opposed to tyranny in general; not one that takes sides with the oppressed in Europe. There is not in America a man born and bred in the Catholic Church who is eminent for Philosophy, Science, Literature, or Art; none distinguished for Philanthropy! The water tastes of the fountain.

Catholic votes are in the market; the bishops can dispose of them,—politicians will make their bid. Shall it be the sacrifice of the free schools? or of other noble institutions? In some States it seems not unlikely.

I do not think our leading men see all this danger. But the baneful in-

fluence of the Church of the Dark Ages begins to show itself in the press, in the schools, and still more in the politics, of America. Yet I am glad the Catholics come here. If, with Truth and Justice on our side, the few Catholics can overcome the many Protestants, we deserve defeat. We should be false to the first principles of our democratic theory, if we did not grant them their inalienable rights.

## III. OF THE DANGER FROM THE IDEA THAT THERE IS NO HIGHER LAW ABOVE THE STATUTES OF MEN.

Of late years it has been industriously taught in America that there is no Law of Nature superior to the Statutes which men enact; that Politics are not amenable to Conscience or to God. Accordingly, the American Congress knows no check in legislation but the Constitution of the United States and the will of the majority; none in the Constitution of the Universe and the Will of God. The theistic idea of the Jesuits, that the end justifies the means, is made the first principle in American politics. Hence it has been repeatedly declared by 'prominent clergymen' that politics should not be treated in the pulpit; they are not amenable to religion; Christianity has nothing to do with making or administering the laws. When the Pharisees and Sadducees have silenced the Prophet and the Apostle, it is not difficult to make men believe that Macchiavelli is a great saint and Jesuitism the revealed religion of politics! Let the legislators make what wicked laws they will against the Rights of Man; the priest of commerce is to say nothing. Nay, the legislators themselves are never to refer to Justice and the Eternal Right, only to the expediency of the hour.

Then, when the Statute is made, the magistrate is not to ask if it be just—he is only to execute it; the people are to obey and help enforce the wicked enactment, never asking if it be right. The highest virtue in the people is—unquestioning submission to the Constitution; or, when the Statute violates their conscience, to do 'a disagreeable duty'! Thus the political action of the people is exempted from the jurisdiction of God and his natural moral law. Christianity has nothing to do with politics!

Within a few years this doctrine has been taught in a great variety of forms. At first it came in with evil laws, simply as the occasional support of a measure; at length it is announced as a Principle. It has taken a deep hold on the educated classes of the community: for our 'superior education' is almost wholly of the intellect, and of only its humbler powers. It appears among the lawyers, the politicians, the editors, and the clergy. Some deny the natural distinction between right and wrong. 'Justice' is a matter of convention; things are not 'true,' but 'agreed upon'; not 'right,' only 'assented to.' There is no 'moral obligation.' Government rests on a compact, having its ultimate foundation on the caprice of men, not in their moral nature. What are called Natural Rights are only certain conveniences agreed upon among men; legal fictions—their recognition is their essence, they are the creatures of a compact. Property has no foundation in the nature of things; it may consist of whatever the legislature determines: of land, cattle, food, clothing, or

DANGERS TO THE RIGHTS OF MAN

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The idea must lead to a corresponding government; that will be unjust in its substance,—for it will depend, not on natural right, but on personal force; not on the Constitution of the Universe, but on the compact of men. It is the abnegation of God in the universe and of conscience in man. Its form will be despotism,—the government of all, by a part, for the sake of a part. It may be a single-headed despotism, or a despotism of many heads. But, whether a Cyclops or a Hydra, it is alike ‘the abomination which maketh desolate.’ Its ultimate consequence is plain to foresee—poverty to a nation, misery, ruin. At first, Slavery came as a Measure; nothing was said about it as a Principle. But, in a country full of schoolmasters, legislatures, talking men, a measure without a principle to bear it up is like a single twig of willow cast out on a wooden floor; there is nothing for it to grow by—it will die. So of late the principle has been boldly avowed. Mr Calhoun denied the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence; denied the natural, inalienable, and equal rights of man. Many since have done the same—political, literary, and mercantile men, and, of course, ecclesiastical men; there are enough of them always in the market. All parts of the Idea of Slavery have been affirmed by prominent men at the North and the South. It has been acted on in the formation of the Constitution of every Slave State, and in the passage of many of its laws. It lies at the basis of a great deal of national legislation.

Hear the opinions of some of our Southern Patriots :—'Slavery is coëval with Society'; 'it was commended by God's chosen Theocracy, and sanctioned by His Apostles in the Christian Church.' All ancient literature 'is the literature of Slaveholders'; 'Rome and Greece owed their literary and national greatness exclusively to the institution of Slavery'; 'Slavery is as necessary for the welfare of the Southern States as sunshine is for the flowers of the prairies'; 'a noble and necessary institution of God's creation.' 'Nature is the mother and protector of Slavery'; 'Domestic Slavery is not only *natural* and *necessary*, but a great blessing.' 'Free Society is a sad and signal failure'; it 'does well enough in a new country.' 'Free Society has become diseased by abolishing Slavery. It can only be restored to pristine health, happiness, and prosperity, by reinstituting Slavery.' 'Slavery may be administered under a new name.' 'Free Society is a monstrosity. Like all monsters, it will be short-lived. We dare and do vindicate Slavery in the abstract.' The negro 'needs a master to protect and govern him: so do the ignorant poor in old countries.'

These two ideas are now fairly on foot. So long as they exist in the nation as two political forces, there is no national unity of Idea, and of course no unity of action: for there is no centre of gravity common to Freedom and Slavery. They will not compose an equilibrious figure. You may cry 'Peace! Peace!' but so long as these two antagonistic Ideas remain, each seeking to organize itself and get exclusive power, there is no peace; there can be none.

The question before the nation to-day is—Which shall prevail: the Idea and Fact of Freedom, or the Idea and Fact of Slavery; Freedom exclusive and universal, or Slavery exclusive and universal? The question is not merely—Shall the African be bond or free? but—Shall America be a Democracy or a Despotism? For nothing is so remorseless as an idea, and no logic is so strong

as the historical development of a national idea by millions of men. A measure is nothing without its principle. The Idea which allows Slavery in South Carolina will establish it also in New England. The bondage of a black man in Alexandria imperils every white woman's daughter in Boston.

There are only three ways of settling this question. The Union may be rent asunder; the Idea of Freedom may destroy Slavery; or the Idea of Slavery may destroy Freedom. If the last, then the wicked will walk on every side, for the vilest of men will be exalted, and America become the mock and scorn and hissing of the nations will go down to worse shame than was ever heaped upon Sodom: for, with her lust for wealth, land, and power, she will have committed the crime against nature. Then America will be another Gomorrah—for the Dead Sea will have settled down upon us with nothing living in its breast, and the rulers will proclaim Peace where they have made solitude. Judging from present appearances, this would seem most likely.

That Freedom may triumph over Slavery does not seem likely, since only two national steps have been taken against Slavery since the formation of the Constitution, the last abolition of the African trade in 1788 (really done then, formally twenty years later); and the Federal Government becomes more and more addicted to Slavery. On the other hand, nine great steps have been openly taken since '87 in favour of Slavery. First, America put Slavery into the Constitution. Second, out of old soil she made four new Slave States. Third, America, in 1793, adopted Slavery as a Federal institution, and guaranteed her protection for that kind of property as for no other. Fourth, America bought Louisiana in 1803, and put Slavery into it. Fifth, she made Missouri a Slave State, and then Arkansas. Sixth, she made Slavery perpetual in Florida. Seventh, she annexed Texas. Eighth, she fought the Mexican War, and plundered a feeble sister republic of California, Utah, and New Mexico, to get more slave soil. Ninth, America passed the Fugitive Slave Bill. In this very year, before it is half through, America has taken two more steps for the destruction of Freedom. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the enslavement of Nebraska: that is the tenth step. Here is the eleventh: the Mexican Treaty, giving away ten millions of dollars and buying a small strip of worthless land, solely that it may serve the cause of Slavery.

Worse things are behind. Slavery has corrupted the mercantile class. Almost all the leading merchants of the North are Pro-Slavery men. They hate freedom, hate your freedom and mine! This is the only Christian country in which commerce is hostile to freedom.⁴ It has also corrupted the political class; it has debased the Press; corrupted our Colleges, our Schools, our Churches, our Judges, our Federal Courts, and our State Governments. But even this is not the end. Here is the programme of the next attempt—a new political Tragedy in five acts.

I. The acquisition of Dominica, and then all Hayti, as new Slave Territory.

II. The acquisition of Cuba, by purchase, or else by private filibustering and public war, as new Slave Territory.

⁴ You will find that commerce is the same everywhere. The free-trading monopolist always hates freedom, which would spoil his monopoly of the labour-market. E. LR.

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ALGERNON SYDNEY

III. The reëstablishment of Slavery in all the Free States, by judicial 'decision' or legislative enactment. Then the Master of the North may 'sit down with his Slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill Monument'!

IV. The restoration of the African Slave Trade, which is already seriously proposed and defended in the Southern journals. Nay, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations recommended the first step toward it—the withdrawal of our fleet from the coast of Africa. You can not escape the consequence of your first principle: if Slavery is right, then the Slave-trade is right; the traffic between Guinea and New Orleans is no worse than between Virginia and New Orleans; it is no worse to kidnap in Timbuctoo than in Boston.

V. A yet further quarrel must be sought with Mexico, and more Slave Territory be stolen from her.

All this looks as if the third hypothesis would be fulfilled, and Slavery triumph over Freedom. Then the preamble to our Constitution might read—‘To establish injustice, ensure domestic strife, disturb the general welfare, and inflict the curse of bondage on ourselves and our posterity.’ Then we shall honour the Puritans no more, but their Prelatical tormentors; nor reverence the great Reformers, only the Inquisitors of Rome. Yes! we may tear the name of Jesus out of the American Bible; yea, God’s name; worship the Devil at our Lord’s table, Iscariot for Redeemer!

See the steady triumph of Despotism! Ten years more like the ten years past, and it will be all over with the liberties of America. Everything must go down, and the heel of the tyrant will be on our neck. It will be all over with the Rights of Man in America, and you and I must go to Austria, to Italy, or to Siberia, for our freedom, or perish with the liberty which our fathers fought for and secured to themselves, not to their faithless sons. Shall America thus miserably perish? Such is the aspect of things to-day!

So it was in the days of old: they ate, they drank, they planted, they builded, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the Ark, and the Flood came and devoured them all!

## THE PUBLIC FUNCTION OF WOMAN.

### PSALM CXLIV. 12.—'THAT OUR DAUGHTERS MAY BE AS CORNER-STONES.'

I ASK your attention to a sermon of the Ideal Public Function of Woman, and the Economy thereof, in the higher development of the Human Race.

The domestic function of woman, as a housekeeper, wife, and mother, does not exhaust her powers. Woman's function, like charity, begins at home; then, like charity, goes everywhere. To make one-half of the human race consume all their energies in the functions of housekeeper, wife, and mother, is a monstrous waste of the most precious material that God ever made.

I. In the present constitution of society, there are some unmarried women to whom the domestic function is little, or is nothing—women who are not mothers, not wives, not housekeepers. I mean those who are permanently unmarried. It is a great defect in the Christian civilization that so many women and men are never married. There may be three women in a thousand to whom marriage would be disagreeable, under any possible circumstances; perhaps thirty more to whom it would be disagreeable, under the actual circumstances, in the present condition of the family and the community. But there is a larger number of women who continue unmarried for no reason in their nature, from no conscious dislike of the present domestic and social condition of mankind, and from no disinclination to marriage under existing circumstances. This is a deplorable evil, alike a misfortune to man and to woman. The Catholic Church has elevated celebacy to the rank of a theological virtue, consecrating an unnatural evil: on a small scale the results thereof are writ in the obscene faces of many a priest, false to his human nature while faithful to his priestly vow, and on a large scale in the vice, the infamy and degradation, of woman in almost all Catholic lands.

The classic civilization of Greece and Rome had the same vice with the Christian civilization. Other forms of religion have sought to get rid of this evil by polygamy, and thereby they degraded woman still further. The Monuments are repeating the same experiment, based, not on philanthropy, but on tyranny, and are still further debasing woman under their feet. In Classic and in Christian civilization alone has there been a large class of women permanently unmarried—not united or even subordinated to man in the normal marriage of one to one, or in the abnormal conjunction of one to many. This class of unmarried women is increasing in all Christian countries, especially in those that are old and rich.

Practically speaking, to this class of women the domestic function is very little; to some of them it is nothing at all. I do not think that this condition

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is to last,—marriage is writ in the soul of man, as in his body,—but it indicates a transition, it is a step forward. Womaakind is advancing from that period when every woman was a slave, and marriage of some sort was guaranteed to every woman, because she was dependent on man; I say, woman is advancing from that to a state of independence, where woman shall not be subordinated to man, but the two coordinated together. The evil that I deplore is transient in its nature, and God grant it may soon pass away!

II. That is not all. For the housekeeper, the wife, and the mother, the domestic is not the only function; it is not function enough for the woman, for the human being, more than it would be function enough for the father, for the man. After women have done all which pertains to housekeeping as a trade, to housekeeping as one of the fine arts, in their relation as wife and mother,—after they have done all for the order of the house, for the order of the husband, and the order of the children, they have still energies to spare—a reserved power for yet other work.

There are three classes of women:

First, domestic Drudges, who are wholly taken up in the material details of their housekeeping, husband-keeping, child-keeping. Their housekeeping is a trade, and no more; and, after they have done that, there is no more which they can do. In New England it is a small class, getting less every year.

Next, there are domestic Dolls, wholly taken up with the vain show which delights the eye and the ear. They are ornaments of the estate. Similar toys, I suppose, will one day be more cheaply manufactured at Paris and Nürnberg, at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, and other toy-shops of Europe, out of wax and papier maché, and sold in Boston at the haberdasher's, by the dozen. These ask nothing beyond their function as dolls, and hate all attempts to elevate womankind.

But there are domestic Women, who order a house and are not mere drudges, adorn it and are not mere dolls, but Women. Some of these—a great many of them—conjoin the useful of the drudge and the beautiful of the doll into one Womanhood, and have a great deal left beside. They are not wholly taken up with their function as housekeeper, wife, and mother.

In the progress of mankind, and the application of masculine science to what was once only feminine work,—whereby so much time is saved from the wheel and the loom, the oven and the spit,—with the consequent increase of riches, the saving of time, and the intellectual education which comes in consequence thereof, this class of women is continually enlarging. With us in New England, in all the North, it is a very large class.

Well, what shall these domestic women do with their spare energies and superfluous power? Once a malicious proverb said—'The shoemaker must not go beyond his last.' Every shoemaker looks on that proverb with appropriate contempt. He is a shoemaker; but he was a man first, a shoemaker next. Shoemaking is an accident of his manhood, not manhood an accident of his shoemaking. You know what haughty scorn the writer of the apocryphal book of Ecclesiastious pours out on every farmer 'who gloriethe goad,' every carpenter and blacksmith, every jeweller and potter. They shall not be sought for, says this aristocrat, in the public councils; they shall not sit high in the congregation; they shall not sit in the judges' seat, nor understand the sentence of judgment; they can not declare justice. Aristotle and Cicero thought no better of the merchants; they were only busy in trading. Miserable people! quoth these great men, what have they to do with affairs of State —merchants, mechanics, farmers? It is only for kings, nobles, and famous rich men, who do no business, but keep slaves! Still, a great many men at

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this day have just the same esteem for women that these haughty persons of whom I have spoken had for mechanics and for merchants. A great many sour proverbs there are, which look the same way. But, just now, such is the intellectual education of women of the richer class in all our large towns, that these sour proverbs will not go down so well as of old. Even in Boston, spite of the attempts of the city government to prevent the higher public education of women—diligently persisted in for many years,—the young women of wealthy families get a better education than the young men of wealthy families do; and that fact is going to report itself presently. The best-educated young men are commonly poor men's sons; but the best-educated young women are quite uniformly rich men's daughters.

A well-educated young woman, fond of Göthe, and Dante, and Shakspere, and Cervantes, marrying an ill-educated young man, who cares for nothing but his horse, his cigar, and his bottle, who only knows how to sleep after dinner, a 'great heap of a husband,' curled up on the sofa, and in the evening can only laugh at a play, and not understand the Italian words of an opera, which his wife knows by heart: she, I say, marrying him, will not accept the idea that he is her natural lord and master; she cannot look up to him, but rather down. The domestic function does not consume all her time—or talent. She knows how to perform much of her household work as a manufacturer weaves cotton, or spins hemp, or forges iron, with other machinery, by other hands. She is the housekeeping head; and after she has kept house as wife and as mother, and has done all, she has still energies to spare.

That is a large class of women; it is a great deal larger than men commonly think it is. It is continually enlarging, and you see why. When all manufactures were domestic,—when every garment was made at home, every web wove at home, every thread spun at home, every fleece dyed at home,—when the husband provided the wool or the sheepskin, and the wife made it into a coat,—when the husband brought home a sack of corn on a mule's back, and the wife pounded it in a mortar, or ground it between two stones, as in the Old Testament,—then the domestic function might well consume all the time of a very able-headed woman. But now-a-days, when so much work is done abroad,—when the flour-mills of Rochester and Boston take the place of the pestle and mortar, and the hand-mill of the Old Testament—when Lowell and Lawrence are two enormous Old Testament women, spinning and weaving year out and year in, day and night both—when so much of woman's work is done by the butcher and the baker, by the tailor and the cook and the gas-maker, and she is no longer obliged to dip or mould with her own hands every candle that 'goeth not out by night,' as in the Old Testament woman's housekeeping,—you see how very much of woman's time is left for other functions. This will become yet more the case. Ere long, a great deal of lofty science will be applied to housekeeping and work be done by other than human hands, in the house as out of it. And accordingly, you see that the class of women not wholly taken up by the domestic function will get larger and larger.

III. Then there is a third class of women, who have no taste and no talent for the domestic function. Perhaps these are exceptional women; some of them exceptional by redundancy—they have talents not needed in this function; others are exceptional by defect—with only a common talent, they have none for housekeeping. It is as cruel a lot to set these persons to such work, as it would be to take a born sailor and make him a farmer, or to take a man who is born to drive oxen, delights to give the kine fodder, and has a genius for it, and shut him up in the forecastle of a ship. Who would think of making Jenny Lind nothing but a housekeeper? or of devoting Madame de Staël or Miss Dix wholly to that function? or a dozen other women that any man can name?

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IV. Then there is another class of women—those who are not married yet, but are to be married. They, likewise, have spare time on their hands, which they know not what to do with. Women of this latter class have sometimes asked me what there was for them to do. I could not tell.

All these four put together make up a large class of women who need some other function beside the domestic. What shall it be? In the middle ages, when the Catholic Church held its iron hand over the world, these women went into the Church. The permanently unmarried, getting dissatisfied, became nuns: often calling that a virtue which was only a necessity, making a religious principle out of an involuntary measure. Others voluntarily went thither. The attempt is making anew in England, by some of the most pious people, to revive the scheme. It failed a thousand years ago, and the experiment brought a curse on man. It will always fail; and it ought to fail. Human nature cries out against it.

Let us look, and see what women may do here.

First, there are Intellectual Pursuits—devotion to science, art, literature, and the like.

Well, in the first place, that is not popular. Learned women are met with ridicule; they are bid to mend their husbands' garments, or their own; they are treated with scorn. Foolish young man number one, in a liquor shop, of a morning, knocks off the ashes from the end of his cigar, and says to foolish young man number two, who is taking soda to wash off the effect of last night's debauch, or preparing for a similar necessity to-morrow morning—in the presence of foolish young man number three, four, five, six, and so on indefinitely—'I do not like learned young women: they puzzle me.' So they do—puzzle him very much. I once heard a foolish young man, full of self-conceit and his father's claret, say—'I had rather have a woman ask me to waltz than to explain an allusion in Dante.' Very likely; he had studied waltzing and not Dante. And his mother, full of conceit and her own hyson, said—'I perfectly agree with you. My father said that women had nothing to do with learning.' Accordingly, he gave her none, and that explained the counsel.

Then, too, foolish men, no longer young, say the same thing, and seek to bring down their wives and daughters to their own poor mediocrity of wit and inferiority of culture.

I say, this intellectual calling is not popular. I am sorry it is not; but even if it were, it is not wholly satisfactory—it suits but a few. In the present stage of human development there are not many men who are satisfied with a merely intellectual calling; they want something practical as well as speculative. There are a thousand practical shoemakers to every speculative botanist. It will be so for many years to come. There are ten thousand carpenters to a single poet or philosopher, who dignifies his nature with song or with science. See how dissatisfied our most eminent intellectual men become with science and literature. A Professor of Greek is sorry he was not a Surveyor or Engineer; the President of a College longs to be a Member of Congress; the most accomplished scholars, historians, romancers—they wish to be Collectors at Boston, Consuls at Liverpool, and the like,—longing for some practical calling, where they can make their thought a thing. Of the intellectual men whom I know I can count on the fingers of a single hand all that are satisfied with pure science, pure art, pure literature.

Woman, like man, wants to make her thought a thing—at least, wants things to work her pattern of thought upon. Still, as the world grows older, and wiser, and better, more persons will find an abiding satisfaction in these lofty pursuits. I am rejoiced to see women thus attracted thitherward. Some women there are who find an abiding satisfaction in literature; it fills up their leisure. I rejoice that it is so.

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Then there are, next, the various Philanthropies of the age. In these the spare energies of woman have always found a congenial sphere. It is amazing to see how woman's charity, which 'never faileth,' palliates the injustice of man, which never has failed yet. Men fight battles; women heal the wounds of the sick:

> Forgotten are hatred, wrongs, and fears,
> The plaintive voice alone she hears,
> Sees but the dying man,—

and does not ask if foe or friend. Messrs Pinchem and Peelem organize an establishment, wherein the sweat and tears and blood of the poor turn the wheels; every pivot and every shaft rolls on quivering human flesh. The wealthy capitalists,

> Half ignorant, they turn an easy wheel,
> Which sets sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.

The wives and daughters of the wealthy house go out to 'undo the heavy burdens, and let the oppressed go free,' to heal the sick and teach the ignorant, whom their fathers, their husbands, their lovers have made sick, oppressed, and ignorant. Ask Manchester, in Old England and in New, if this is not so; ask London, ask Boston.

The moral, affectational, and religious feelings of woman fit her for this work. Her patience, her gentleness, her power to conciliate, her sympathy with man, her trust in God, beautifully prepare her for this; and accordingly she comes in the face of what man calls justice as an angel of mercy—before his hate as an angel of love—between his victim and his selfishness with the self-denial of Paul and the self-sacrifice of Jesus. Look at any village in New England and in Old England, at the Sacs and Foxes, at the Hottentots and the Esquimaux—it is the same thing; it is so in all ages, in all climes, in all stages of civilization; in all ranks of society, the highest and the lowest; in all forms of religion, all sects of Christianity. It has been so, from Dorcas, in the Acts of the Apostles, who made coats and garments for the poor, down to Miss Dix, in our own day, who visits jails and houses of correction, and leads Mr Fillmore to let Capt. Drayton out of jail, where he was placed for the noblest act of his life.

But these philanthropies are not enough for the employment of women; and if all the spare energies of womanhood were set to this work—to palliate the consequences of man's injustice—it would not be exactly the work which woman wants. There are some women who take no special interest in this. For woman is not all philanthropy, though very much; she has other faculties which want to be developed beside the heart to feel. Still more, that is not the only thing which mankind wants. We need the justice which removes causes as well as the charity that palliates effects; and woman, standing continually between the victim and the sabre which would cleave him through, is not performing her only function, not her highest; high as that is, it is not her highest. If the feminine swallow drives away the flies from a poor fox struggling for life, another set of flies light upon him and suck every remaining drop of blood out of his veins, as in the old fable. Beside, if the 'fox finds that a womanly swallow comes to drive off the flies, he depends on her wing and not on his own brush, and becomes less of a fox. If a miser, or any base man, sees that a woman constantly picks up the man whom he knocks down with the left hand of Usury or the right hand of Rum, he will go on with his extortion or his grog, because, he says, 'I should have done the man harm, but a woman picked him up, and money comes into my pocket, and no harm to the man!' The evils of society would become worse and worse, just as they are increased by indiscriminate alms-giving. That is not enough.

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Then there are various Practical Works left by common consent to woman.

First, there is Domestic Service: woman working as an appendage to some household—a hired hand, or a hired head, to help the housekeeper.

Then there is Mechanical Labour in a factory or a shop: spinning, weaving, setting type, making shoes, colouring maps, and a hundred other things.

Next, there is Trade in a small way, from the basket-woman with her apples at every street-corner, up to the confectioner and haberdasher with their well-filled shops. In a few retail shops, which venture to brave popular opinion, woman is employed at the counter.

As a fourth thing, there is the business of Public and Private Teaching, in various departments. All these are well; they are unavoidable, they are absolutely necessary; they furnish employment to many, and are a blessed resource.

I rejoice that the Field-work of the farmer is not done by woman's hand in the free portions of America. It imbrutes women in Ireland, in France, and in Spain. I am glad that the complicated machinery of life furnishes so much more work for the light and delicate hand of woman. But I confess I mourn that where her work is as profitable as man's her pay is not half so much. A woman who should teach a public school well would be paid four or six dollars a week, while a man who should teach no better would be paid two, three, four, or six times that sum. It is so in all departments of woman's work that I am acquainted with.

These employments are very well, but still they are not enough.

Rich women do not engage in these callings. For rich women there is no profession left except marriage. After school-time, woman has nothing to do till she is married—I mean, almost nothing, nothing that is adequate. Accordingly, she must choose betwixt a husband and nothing, and sometimes that is choosing between two nothings. There are spare energies which seek employment before marriage, and after marriage.

These callings are not all that the race of woman needs, not all that her human nature requires. She has the same human nature which man has, and, of course, the same natural human rights. Woman's natural right for its rightfulness does not depend on the bodily or mental power to assert and to maintain it, on the great arm or on the great head; it depends only on human nature itself, which God made the same in the frailest woman as in the giant.

If woman is a human being, first, she has the Nature of a human being; next, she has the Right of a human being; third, she has the Duty of a human being. The Nature is the capacity to possess, to use, to develope, and to enjoy every human faculty; the Right is the right to enjoy, develope, and use every human faculty; and the Duty is to make use of the right, and make her human nature human history. She is here to develope her human nature, enjoy her human rights, perform her human duty. Womankind is to do this for herself, as much as mankind for himself. A woman has the same human nature that a man has,—the same human rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, —the same human duties, and they are as inalienable in a woman as in a man.

Each man has the natural right to the normal development of his nature, so far as it is general-human, neither man nor woman, but human. Each woman has the natural right to the normal development of her nature, so far as it is general-human, neither woman nor man. But each man has also a natural and inalienable right to the normal development of his peculiar nature as man, where he differs from woman. Each woman has just the same natural and inalienable right to the normal development of her peculiar nature as woman, and not man. All that is undeniable.

Now see what follows. Woman has the same individual right to determine her aim in life, and to follow it, has the same individual rights of body and of

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spirit, of mind and conscience, and heart and soul, the same physical rights, the same intellectual, moral, affectional, and religious rights, that man has. That is true of womankind as a whole; it is true of Jane, Ellen, and Sally, and each special woman that can be named.

Every person, man or woman, is an integer, an individual, a whole person, and also a portion of the race, and so a fraction of humankind. Well, the rights of individualism are not to be possessed, developed, used, and enjoyed by a life in solitude, but by joint action. Accordingly, to complete and perfect the individual man or woman, and give each an opportunity to possess, use, develope, and enjoy these rights, there must be concerted and joint action: else individuality is only a possibility, not a reality. So the individual rights of woman carry with them the same domestic, social, ecclesiastical, and political rights as those of man.

The Family, Community, Church, and State, are four modes of action which have grown out of human nature in its historical development; they are all necessary for the development of mankind—machines which the human race has devised, in order to possess, use, develope, and enjoy their rights as human beings, their rights also as men.

These are just as necessary for the development of woman as of man, and as she has the same Nature, Right, and Duty as man, it follows that she has the same right to use, shape, and controul these four institutions, for her general human purpose and for her special feminine purpose, that man has to controul them for his general human purpose and his special masculine purpose. All that is as undeniable as anything in mataphysics or mathematics.

So, then, woman has the same natural rights as man. In Domestic Affairs, she is to determine her own sphere as much as man, and say where her function is to begin, when it shall begin, with whom it shall begin,—where it shall end, when it shall end, and what it shall comprise.

Then she has the same right to Freedom of Industry that man has. I do not believe that the hard callings of life will ever suit woman. It is not little boys who go out as laborers, but great men, with sinewy, brawny arms. I doubt that laborious callings, like navigation, engineering, lumbering, and the like, will ever be agreeable to woman. Her feminine body and feminine spirit naturally turn away from such occupations. I have seen women gathering the filth of the streets in Liverpool, sawing stone in a mason's yard in Paris, carrying earth in baskets on their heads for a railway embankment at Naples; but they were obviously out of place, and only consented to this drudgery when driven by Poverty's iron whip. But there are many employments in the departments of mechanical work, of trade, little and extended, where woman could go, and properly go. Some women have a good deal of talent for trade —this in a small way, that on the largest scale. Why should not they exercise their commercial talents in competition with man? Is it right for woman to be a domestic manufacturer in the family of Solomon or Priam, and of every thrifty husband, and wrong for her to be a public manufacturer on her own account? She might spin when the motive power was a wheel-pin of wood in her hand: may she not use the Merrimack and Connecticut for her wheel-pin; or must she be only the manufacturing servant of man, never her own master?

Much of the business of education already falls to the hands of woman. In the last twenty years, there has been a great progress in the education of women, in Massachusetts, in all New England. The High Schools for girls— and still better, those for girls and boys—have been of great service. Almost all the large towns of this Commonwealth have honoured themselves with these blessed institutions; in Boston, only the daughters of the rich can possess such an education as hundreds of noble girls long to acquire. With this enhance-

["10", "ment of culture, women have been continually rising higher and higher as teachers. The State Normal Schools have helped in this movement. It used to be thought that only an able-bodied man could manage the large boys of a country or a city school. Even he was sometimes thrust out of the door or the window of his 'noisy mansion' by his rough pupils. An able-headed woman has commonly succeeded better than men merely able-bodied. She has tried conciliation rather than violence, and appealed to something a little deeper than aught which force could ever touch. The women-teachers are now doing an important work for the elevation of their race and all human kind. But it is commonly thought woman must not engage in the higher departments thereof. I once knew a woman, wife, and mother, and housekeeper, who taught the severest disciplines of our highest college, and instructed young men while she rocked the cradle with her foot, and mended garments with her hands,—one of the most accomplished scholars of New England. Not long ago, the daughter of a poor widowed seamstress was seen reading the Koran in Arabic. There was but one man in the town could do the same, and he was a 'Learned Blacksmith.' Women not able to teach in these things! He must be rather a confident professor who thinks a woman can not do what he can. I rejoice at the introduction of women into common schools, academies, and high schools; and I thank God that the man who has done so much for public education in Massachusetts is presently to be the head of a college in Ohio, where women and men are to study together, and where a woman is to be Professor of Latin and Natural History. These are good signs.", "The business of public lecturing,' also, is quite important in New England, and I am glad to see that woman presses into that,—not without success.", "The work of conducting a journal, daily, weekly, or quarterly, woman proves that she can attend to quite as decently, and as strongly too, as most men.", "Then there are what are called the Professions,—Medicine, Law, Theology.", "The profession of Medicine seems to belong peculiarly to woman by nature; part of it, exclusively. She is a nurse, and half a doctor, by nature. It is quite encouraging that medical schools are beginning to instruct women, and special schools get founded for the use of women, that sagacious men are beginning to employ women as their physicians. Great good is to be expected from that.", "As yet, I believe, no woman acts as a Lawyer. But I see no reason why the profession of Law might not be followed by women as well as by men. He must be rather an uncommon lawyer who thinks no feminine head could compete with him. Most lawyers that I have known are rather mechanics at law, than attorneys or scholars at law; and in the mechanical part woman could do as well as man—could be as good a conveyancer, could follow precedents as carefully, and copy forms as nicely. And in the higher departments of legal work, they who have read the plea which Lady Alice Lille made in England, when she could not speak by attorney, must remember there is some eloquence in woman's tongue which courts find it rather hard to resist. I think her presence would mend the manners of the court—of the bench, not less than the bar.", "In the business of Theology, I could never see why a woman, if she wished, should not preach as well as men. It would be hard, in the present condition of the pulpit, to say she had not intellect enough for that. I am glad to find, now and then, women preachers, and rejoice at their success. A year ago, I introduced to you the Reverend Miss Brown, educated at an Orthodox Theological Seminary;—you smiled at the name of *Reverend Miss*. She has since been invited to settle by several congregations of unblemished orthodoxy, and has passed on, looking further.", "It seems to me that woman, by her peculiar constitution, is better qualified to teach religion than any merely intellectual discipline. The Quakers have", "11", "always recognised the natural right of woman to perform the same ecclesiastical function as man. At this day, the most distinguished preacher of that denomination is a woman, who adorns her domestic calling as housekeeper, wife, and mother, with the same womanly dignity and sweetness which mark her public deportment.", "If woman had been consulted, it seems to me Theology would have been in a vastly better state than it is now. I do not think that any woman would ever have preached the damnation of babies new-born; and 'hell, paved with the skulls of infants not a span long,' would be a region yet to be discovered in Theology. A celibate monk—with God's curse writ on his face, which knew no child, no wife, no sister, and blushed that he had a mother—might well dream of such a thing: he had been through the preliminary studies. Consider the ghastly attributes which are commonly put upon God in the popular Theology, the idea of infinite wrath, of infinite damnation, and total depravity, and all that,—why you could not get a woman that had intellect enough to open her mouth to preach these things anywhere. Women *think* that they believe them; but they do not. Celibate priests, who never knew marriage, or what paternity was, who thought woman was 'a pollution,' they invented those ghastly doctrines; and when I have heard the Athanasian Creed and the Dies Irae chanted by monks with the necks of bulls and the lips of donkeys,—why I have understood where the doctrine came from, and have felt the appropriateness of their braying out the damnation hymns: women could not do it. We shut her out of the choir, out of the priest's house, out of the pulpit, and then the priest, with unnatural vows, came in, and taught these 'doctrines of devils.' Could you find a woman who would read to a congregation, as words of truth, Jonathan Edwards' *Sermon on a Future State*—'Sinners in the hands of an angry God,' 'the Justice of God in the damnation of Sinners,' 'Wrath upon the Wicked to the uttermost,' 'the future punishment of the Wicked,' and other things of that sort? Nay, can you find a worthy woman, of any considerable culture, who will read the fourteenth chapter of Numbers, and declare that a true picture of the God she worships? Only a she-dragon could do it, in our day.", "The popular Theology leaves us nothing feminine in the character of God. How could it be otherwise, when so much of the popular Theology is the work of men who thought woman was 'a pollution,' and barred her out of all the high places of the church? If women had had their place in ecclesiastical teaching, I doubt that the Athanasian Creed would ever have been thought a 'Symbol' of Christianity. The pictures and hymns which describe the last Judgement are a protest against the exclusion of women from teaching in the church. 'I suffer not a woman to teach, but to be in silence,' said a writer in the New Testament. The sentence has brought manifold evil in its train.", "So much for the employments of women.", "By nature woman has the same Political Rights that man has—to vote, to hold office, to make and administer laws. These she has as a matter of right. The strong hand and the great head of man keep her down; nothing more. In America, in Christendom, woman has no political rights, is not a citizen in full; she has no voice in making or administering the laws, none in electing the rulers or administrators thereof. She can hold no office—can not be committee of a primary school, overseer of the poor, or guardian to a public lamp-post. But any man, with conscience enough to keep out of jail, mind enough to escape the poor-house, and body enough to drop his ballot into the box, he is a voter. He may have no character, even no money, that is no matter—he is a male. The noblest woman has no voice in the State. Men make laws is a male. The noblest woman has no voice in the State. Men

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Looking at it as a matter of pure Right and pure science, I know no reason why woman should not be a voter, or hold office, or make and administer laws. I do not see how I can shut myself into political privileges and shut woman out, and do both in the name of inalienable right. Certainly, every woman has a natural right to have her property represented in the general representation of property, and her person represented in the general representation of persons.

Looking at it as a matter of Expediency, see some facts. Suppose woman had a share in the municipal regulation of Boston, and there were as many Alderwomen as Aldermen, as many Common Council women as Common Council men,—do you believe that, in defiance of the law of Massachusetts, the City Government, in 1852, would have licensed every two hundred and forty-fourth person of the population of the city to sell intoxicating drink?— would have made every thirty-fifth voter a rum-seller? I do not.

Do you believe the women of Boston would spend ten thousand dollars in one year in a city frolic, or spend two or three thousand every year, on the Fourth of July, for sky-rockets and fire-crackers,—would spend four or five thousand dollars to get their Canadian guests drunk in Boston harbour, and then pretend that Boston had not money enough to establish a high school for girls, to teach the daughters of mechanics and grocers to read French and Latin, and to understand the higher things which rich men's sons are driven to at college? I do not.

Do you believe that the women of Boston, in 1851, would have spent three or four thousand dollars to kidnap a poor man, and have taken all the chains which belonged to the city and put them all round the Court-House, and have drilled three hundred men, armed with bludgeons and cutlasses, to steal a man and carry him back to slavery? I do not. Do you think, if the women had had the controul, 'fifteen hundred men of property and standing' would have volunteered to take a poor man, kidnapped in Boston, and conduct him out of the State, with fire and sword? I believe no such thing.

Do you think the women of Boston would take the poorest and most unfortunate children in the town, put them all together into one school, making that the most miserable in the city, where they had not and could not have half the advantages of the other children in different schools, and all that because the unfortunates were dark-coloured? Do you think the women of Boston would shut a bright boy out of the High School or Latin School, because he was black in the face?

Women are said to be cowardly. When Thomas Sims, out of his dungeon, sent to the churches his petition for their prayers, had women been 'the Christian clergy,' do you believe *they* would not have dared to pray?

If women had a voice in the affairs of Massachusetts, do you think they would ever have made laws so that a lazy husband could devour all the substance of his active wife—spite of her wish; so that a drunken husband could command her bodily presence in his loathsome house, and when an infamous man was divorced from his wife that he could keep all the children? I do not.

If the affairs of the Nation had been under woman's joint controul, I doubt that we should have butchered the Indians with such exterminating savagery that, in fifty years, we should have spent seven hundreds of millions of dollars for war, and now, in time of peace, sent twenty annual millions more to the same waste. I doubt that we should have spread slavery into nine new States, and made it national. I think the Fugitive Slave Bill would never have been an Act. Woman has some respect for the natural law of God.

I know men say woman can not manage the great affairs of a nation. Very well. Government is Political Economy—National Housekeeping. Does any respectable woman keep house so badly as the United States, with so much bribery, so much corruption, so much quarrelling in the domestic councils?

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But government is also Political Morality—it is National Ethics. Is there any worthy woman who rules her household as wickedly as the nations are ruled? who hires bullies to fight for her? Is there any woman who treats one-sixth part of her household as if they were cattle and not creatures of God, as if they were things and not persons? I know of none such. In government as housekeeping, or government as morality, I think man makes a very poor appearance, when he says woman could not do as well as he has done and is doing.

I doubt that women will ever, as a general thing, take the same interest as men in political affairs, or find therein an abiding satisfaction. But that is for women themselves to determine, not for men.

In order to attain the end—the development of man in body and spirit—human institutions must represent all parts of human nature, both the masculine and the feminine element. For the well-being of the human race we need the joint action of man and woman, in the family, the community, the Church, and the State. A family without the presence of woman—with no mother, no wife, no sister, no womankind—is a sad thing. I think a Community without woman's equal social action, a Church without her equal ecclesiastical action, and a State without her equal political action, is almost as bad—is very much what a house would be without a mother, wife, sister, or friend.

You see what prevails in the Christian civilization of the Nineteenth Century: it is Force—force of body, force of brain. There is little justice, little philanthropy, little piety. Selfishness preponderates everywhere in Christendom—individual, domestic, social, ecclesiastical, national selfishness. It is preached as gospel and enacted as law. It is thought good political economy for a strong people to devour the weak nations—for 'Christian' England and America to plunder the 'Heathen' and annex their land,—for a strong class to oppress and ruin the feeble class,—for the capitalists of England to pauperize the poor white labourer, for the capitalists of America to enslave the poorer black labourer,—for a strong man to oppress the weak man,—for the sharper to buy labour too cheap and sell its product too dear, and so grow rich by making many poor. Hence, nation is arrayed against nation, class against class, man against man. Nay, it is commonly taught that mankind is arrayed against God, and God against man; that the world is an universal discord; that there is no solidarity of man with man, of man with God. I fear we shall never get far beyond this theory and this practice until woman has her natural rights as the equal of man, and takes her natural place in regulating the affairs of the family, the community, the Church, and the State.

It seems to me God has treasured up a reserved power in the nature of woman to correct many of those evils which are Christendom's disgrace to-day.

Circumstances help or hinder our development, and are one of the two forces which determine the actual character of a nation, or of mankind, at any special period. Hitherto, among men, circumstances have favoured the development of only intellectual power, in all its forms—chiefly in its lower forms. At present, mankind, as a whole, has the superiority over womankind, as a whole, in all that pertains to intellect, the higher and the lower. Man has knowledge, has ideas, has administrative skill,—enacts the rules of conduct for the individual, the community, the Church, the State, and the world. He applies these rules of conduct to life, and so contrôls the great affairs of the human race. You see what a world he has made of it. There is male vigour in this civilization, miscalled 'Christian'; and in its leading nations there are industry and enterprise, which never fail. There is science, literature, legislation, agriculture, manufactures, mining, commerce, such as the world never saw. With the vigour of war, the Anglo-Saxon now works the works of peace. England abounds in wealth—richest of lands; but look at her poor, her vast army of

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paupers, two millions strong, the Irish whom she drives with the hand of famine across the sea. Martin Luther was right when he said, 'The richer the nation the poorer the poor. America is 'democratic'-'the freest and most enlightened people in the world.' Look at her slaves: every sixth woman in the country sold as a beast, with no more legal respect paid to her marriage than the farmer pays to the conjunctions of his swine. America is well-educated; there are four millions of children in the school-houses of the land: it is a State-prison offence to teach a slave to read the three letters which spell God. The more 'democratic' the country the tighter is bondage ironed on the slave. Look at the cities of England and America: what riches, what refinement, what culture of man and woman too! Ay; but what poverty, what ignorance, what beastliness of man and woman too! The Christian civilization of the nineteenth century is well summed up in London and New York—the two foci of the Anglo-Saxon tribe, which controul the shape of the world's commercial ellipse. Look at the riches—and the misery; at the 'religious enterprise'-and the heathen darkness; at the virtue, the decorum, and the beauty of woman well-born and well-bred—and at the wild sea of prostitution, which swells and breaks and dashes against the bulwarks of society—every ripple was a woman once!

O brother men! who make these things, is this a pleasant sight? Does your literature complain of it—of the waste of human life, the slaughter of human souls, the butchery of woman? British literature begins to wail, in Nicholas Nickleby, and Jane Eyre, and Mary Barton, and Allon Locke, in many a Song of the Shirt; but the respectable literature of America is deaf as a cent to the outcry of humanity expiring in agonies. It is busy with California, or the Presidency, or extolling iniquity in high places, or flattering the vulgar vanity which buys its dross for gold. It can not even imitate the philanthropy of English letters: it is 'up' for California and a market. Does not the Church speak?—the English Church, with its millions of money, the American, with its millions of men—both wont to bay the moon of foreign heathenism? The Church is a dumb dog that can not bark, sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. It is a Church without woman, believing in a male and jealous God, and rejoicing in a boundless, endless hell!

Hitherto, with woman, circumstances have hindered the development of intellectual power, in all its forms. She has not knowledge, has not ideas or practical skill to equal the force of man. But circumstances have favoured the development of pure and lofty emotion in advance of man. She has moral feeling, affective feeling, religious feeling, far in advance of man; her moral, affective, and religious intuitions are deeper and more trustworthy than his. Here she is eminent, as he is in knowledge, in ideas, in administrative skill.

I think man will always lead in affairs of intellect—of reason, imagination, understanding—he has the bigger brain; but that woman will always lead in affairs of emotion—moral, affective, religious—she has the better heart, the truer intuition of the right, the lovely, the holy. The literature of women in this century is juster, more philanthropic, more religious than that of men. Do you not hear the cry which, in New England, a woman is raising in the world's ears against the foul wrong which America is working in the world? Do you not hear the echo of that woman's voice come over the Atlantic—returned from European shores in many a tongue—French, German, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Russian, Dutch? How a woman touches the world's heart! because she speaks justice, speaks piety, speaks love. What voice is strongest raised in continental Europe, pleading for the oppressed and down-trodden? That also is a woman's voice!

Well, we want the excellence of man and woman both united; intellectual

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power, knowledge, great ideas—in literature, philosophy, theology, ethics—and practical skill; but we want something better—the moral, affective, religious intuition, to put justice into ethics, love into theology, piety into science and letters. Everywhere, in the family, the community, the Church, and the State, we want the masculine and feminine element cooperating and conjoined. Woman is to correct man's taste, mend his morals, excite his affections, inspire his religious faculties. Man is to quicken her intellect, to help her will, translate her sentiments to ideas, and enact them into righteous laws. Man's moral action, at best, is only a sort of general human providence, aiming at the welfare of a part, and satisfied with achieving 'the greatest good of the greatest number.' Woman's moral action is more like a special human providence, acting without general rules, but caring for each particular case. We need both these, the general and special, to make a total human providence.

If man and woman are counted equivalent,—equal in rights, though with diverse powers,—shall we not mend the literature of the world, its theology, its science, its laws, and its actions too? I can not believe that wealth and want are to stand ever side by side as desperate foes; that culture must ride only on the back of ignorance; and feminine virtue be guarded by the degradation of whole classes of ill-starred men, as in the East, or the degradation of whole classes of ill-starred women, as in the West; but while we neglect the means of help God puts in our power, why the present must be like the past—'property' must be theft, 'law' the strength of selfish will, and 'Christianity'—what we see it is—the apology for every powerful wrong.

To every woman let me say,—Respect your nature as a human being, your nature as a woman; then respect your rights, then remember your duty to possess, to use, to develope, and to enjoy every faculty which God has given you, each in its normal way.

And to men let me say,—Respect, with the profoundest reverence, the mother that bore you, the sisters who bless you, the woman that you love, the woman that you marry. As you seek to possess your own manly rights, seek also, by that great arm, by that powerful brain, to vindicate her rights as woman, as your own as man. Then we may see better things in the Church, better things in the State, in the community, in the home. Then the green shall show what buds it hid, the buds shall blossom, the flowers bear fruit, and the blessing of God be on us all.