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DARWINISM IN MORALS, 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
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 ESSAY PAGE 
 
 1. Darwinism in Morals. {Theological Review, April, 1S71.) 1 
 
 2. Hereditary Piety. {Theological Review, April, 1870.) ... 35 
 
 3. The Religion op Childhood. {Theological Review, July, 
 
 1866.) 65 
 
 4. An English Broad Churchman. {Theological Review, 
 
 January, 1866.) 95 
 
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 1868.) 203 
 
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 1868.) 235 
 
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 11. Unconscious Cerebration. {Macmillan^s Magazine, 'Sovera- 
 
 ber, 1870.) 305 
 
 12. Dreams, as Illustrations op Involuntary Cerebration. 
 
 {Macmillan's Magazine, April, 1871.) ... ... ... 335 
 
 13. Auricular Confession in the Church op England. 
 
 {Theological Review, January, 1872.) 363 
 
 14. The Evolution of Morals and Religion. {Manchester 
 
 Friend, January 15, 1872.) 391 
 
DARWINISM IlSr MORALS, 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 JESS AY I. 
 DARWINISM IN MORALS. ^ 
 
 It is a singular fact that whenever we find out how any- 
 thing is done, our first conclusion seems to be that God did 
 not do it. No matter how wonderful, how beautiful, how 
 infinitely complex and delicate, has been the machinery 
 which has worked, perhaps for centviries, perhaps for millions 
 of ages, to bring about some beneficent result — if we can 
 but catch a glimpse of the wheels, its divine character dis- 
 appears. The machinery did it all. It would be altogether 
 superfluous to look further. 
 
 The olive has been commonly called the Phoenix of trees, 
 because when it is cut down it springs to life again. The 
 notion that God is only discernible in the miraculous and 
 the inexplicable, may likewise be called the Phoenix of 
 ideas ; for again and again it has been exploded, and yet 
 it re-appears with the utmost regularity whenever a new 
 step is made in the march of Science. The explanation 
 of each phenomenon is still first angrily disputed and then 
 mournfully accepted by the majority of pious people, just 
 
 1 The Descent of Ma». By Charles Darwin, M.A., F.R.S. Two vols. 8vo. 
 London: Murray. 1871. 
 
2 DARWINISM IN MORALS. 
 
 as if finding out the waj^s of God were not necessarily 
 bringing ourselves nearer to the knowledge of Him, and the 
 highest bound of the human intellect were not to be able 
 to say, like Kepler, "0 God, I think Thy thoughts after 
 Thee." 
 
 That the doctrine of the descent of man from the lower 
 animals, of which Mr. Darwin has been the great teacher, 
 should be looked on as well nigh impious by men not men- 
 tally chained to the Hebrew cosmogony, has always appeared 
 to me surprising. Of course, in so far as it disturbs the 
 roots of the old theology and dispels the golden haze 
 which hung in poetic fancy over the morning garden of 
 the world, it may prove a rude and painful innovation. 
 A Calvin, a Milton, and a Fra Angelico, may be excused 
 if they recalcitrate against it. Doubtless, also, the special 
 Semitic contempt for the brutes which has unhappily 
 passed with our religion into so many of our graver views, 
 adds its quota to the common sentiment of repugnance ; 
 and we stupidly imagine that to trace Man to the Ape 
 is to degrade the progeny, and not (as a Chinese would 
 justly hold) to ennoble the ancestry. But that, beyond 
 all these prejudices, there should lurk in any free mind 
 a dislike to Darwinism on religious grounds, is wholly 
 beyond comprehension. Surely, were any one to come 
 to us now in these days for the first time with the story 
 that the eternal God produced all His greatest works by 
 fits and starts ; that just 6000 years ago He suddenly 
 brought out of nothing the sun, moon, and stars ; and finally 
 as the climax of six days of such labour, " made man of 
 the dust of the ground," we should be inclined to say that 
 this was the derogatory and insufferable doctrine of creation ; 
 and that when we compared it with that of the slow evolu- 
 tion of order, beauty, life, joy, and intelligence, from the 
 immeasurable past of the primal nebula's " fiery cloud," we 
 
DARWIA'ISJI IN MORALS. 
 
 had no language to express how infinitely more religious is 
 the story of modern science than that of ancient tradition ? 
 
 IsTor are we alarmed or disturbed because the same hand 
 which has opened for us these grand vistas of physical 
 development has now touched the phenomena of the moral 
 world, and sought to apply the same method of investigation 
 to its most sacred mysteries. The only question we can ask 
 is, whether the method has been as successful in the one case 
 as (we learn from competent judges) it may be accounted in 
 the other, and whether the proffered explanation of moral 
 facts really suffices to explain them. Should it prove so 
 successful and sufficient, we can but accept it, even as we 
 welcomed the discovery of the physical laws of evolution as 
 a step towards a more just conception than we had hitherto 
 possessed of the order of things ; and therefore — if God be 
 their Orderer — a step towards a better knowledge of Him. 
 
 The book before us is doubtless one whose issue will 
 make an era in the history of modern thought. Of its 
 wealth of classified anecdotes of animal peculiarities and 
 instincts, and its wide sweep of cumulative argument in 
 favour of the author's various deductions, it would be almost 
 useless to speak, seeing that before these pages are printed 
 the reading public of England will have spent many happy 
 hours over these " fairy tales of science." Of the inexpres- 
 sible charm of the author's manner, the straightforwardness 
 of every argument he employs, and the simplicity of every 
 sketch and recital, it is still less needful to write, when 
 years have elapsed since Mr. Darwin took his place in the 
 literature of England and the philosojjhy of the world- 
 Very soon that delightful pen will have made famihar to 
 thousands the pictures of which the book is a gallery. 
 Every one will know that our first human parents, far from 
 resembling Milton's glorious couple, were hideous beings 
 covered with hair, with pointed and movable ears, beards, 
 
DARWINISM IN MORALS. 
 
 tusks, and tails, — the very Devils of mediaeval fancy. And 
 behind these we shall dimly behold yet earlier and lower 
 ancestors, receding through the ages till we reach a period 
 before even the vertebrate rank was attained, and when 
 the creature whose descendants were to be heroes and 
 sages swam about in the waters in likeness between an eel 
 and a worm. At every dinner-table will be told the story 
 of the brave ape which came down amid its dreaded human 
 foes to redeem a young one of its species ; and of the saga- 
 cious baboon which, Bismarck-like, finding itself scratched 
 by a cat, deliberately bit ofi" its enemy's claws. Satirists 
 will note the description of the seals which, in wooing, 
 bow to the females and coax them gently till they get them 
 fairly landed ; then, " with a changed manner and a harsh 
 growl," drive the poor wedded creatures home to their 
 holes. The suggestion that animals love beauty of colour 
 and of song, and even (in the case of the bower-bird) build 
 halls of pleasure distinct from their nests for purposes of 
 amusement only, will be commented on, and aiford suggestive 
 talk wherever books of such a class are read in England. 
 Few students, we think, will pass over without respectful 
 pause the passage ^ where Mr. Darwin with so much candour 
 explains that he " now admits that in the earlier editions of 
 his Origin of Species he probably attributed too much to 
 the action of natural selection," nor that ^ where he calls 
 attention to Sir J. Lubbock's "most just remark," that 
 " Mr. Wallace, with characteristic unselfishness, ascribes 
 the idea of natural selection unreservedly to Mr. Darwin, 
 although, as is well known, he struck out the idea inde- 
 pendently, and published it, though not with the same 
 elaboration, at the same time." Whatever doubt any reader 
 may entertain of the philosophy of Evolution, it is quite 
 
 1 Vol. i., page 152. 2 page 137, note. 
 
DARWINISM IiY MOEALS. 
 
 impossible that, after perusing such pages, he can have any 
 hesitation about the philosophic spirit of its author. 
 
 But we must turn from these topics, which properly con- 
 cern the journals of physical science, to the one whose treat- 
 ment by Mr. Darwin gives to a Theological Review the right 
 to criticize the present volume. Mr. Darwin's theories have 
 hitherto chiefly invaded the precincts of traditional Theology. 
 We have now to regard him as crowning the edifice of 
 Utilitarian ethics by certain doctrines respecting the nature 
 and origin of the Moral Sense, which, if permanently allowed 
 to rest upon it, will, we fear, go far to crush the idea of Duty 
 level with the least hallowed of natural instincts. It is 
 needless to say that Mr. Darwin puts forth his views on this, 
 as on all other topics, with perfect moderation and simplicity, 
 and that the reader of his book has no diificulty whatever in 
 comprehending the full bearing of the facts he cites and the 
 conclusions he di'aws from them. 
 
 In the present volume he has followed out to their results 
 certain hints given in his "Origin of Species" and "Animals 
 under Domestication," and has, as it seems, given Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer's abstract view of the origin of the moral 
 sense its concrete application. Mr. Spencer broached the 
 doctrine that our moral sense is nothing but the " expe- 
 riences of utility organized and consolidated through all 
 past generations." Mr. Darwin has afforded a sketch of 
 how such experiences of utility, beginning in the ape, might 
 (as he thinks) consolidate into the virtue of a saint ; and 
 adds some important and quite harmonious remarks, tending 
 to show that the Virtue so learned is somewhat accidental, 
 and might perhaps have been what we now call Vice. To 
 mark his position fairly, it will be necessary to glance at the 
 recent history of ethical philosophy. 
 
 Independent or Intuitive Morality has of course always 
 taught that there is a supreme and necessary moral law 
 
6 DARWINISM IN MORALS. 
 
 common to all free agents in the universe, and known to 
 man by means of a transcendental reason or divine voice 
 of conscience. Dependent or Utilitarian Morality has equally 
 steadily rejected the idea of a law other than the law of 
 utility ; but its teachers have differed exceedingly amongst 
 themselves as to the existence or non-existence of a specific 
 sense in man, requiring him to perform actions whose 
 utility constitutes them duties ; and among those who have 
 admitted that such a sense exists, there still appear wide 
 variations in the explanations they offer of the nature and 
 origin of such a sense. The older English Utilitarians, such 
 as Mandeville, Hobbes, Pale}'- and Waterland, denied vigor- 
 ously that man had any spring of action but self-interest. 
 Hume, Hartley, and Bentham advanced a step further; 
 Hartley thinking it just possible to love virtue "as a form 
 of happiness," and Bentham being kind enough elaborately 
 to explain that we may truly sympathize with the woes of our 
 friends. Finally, when the coldest of philosophies passed 
 into one of the loftiest of minds and warmest of hearts, 
 Utilitarianism in the school of Mr. Mill underwent a sort 
 of divine travesty. Starting from the principle that "actions 
 are only virtuous because they promote another end than 
 virtue," he attained the conclusion, that sooner than flatter 
 a cruel Almighty Being he would go to hell. As Mr. Mill 
 thinks such a decision morally right, he would of course 
 desire that all men should follow his example ; and thus 
 we should behold the apostle of Utility conducting the 
 whole human race to eternal perdition for the sake of — 
 shall we say — " the Greatest Happiness of the Greatest 
 Number " ? 
 
 At this stage, the motive-power on which Utilitarianism 
 must rely for the support of virtue is obviously complex, if 
 not rather unstable. So long as the old teachers appealed 
 simply to the interest of the individual, here or hereafter, 
 
DARWINISM IN MORALS. 
 
 the argument was clear enougli, however absurd a misuse 
 of language it seems to make Virtue and Vice the names 
 respectively of a systematized and an unsystematized rule of 
 selfishness. But when we begin to speak of the happiness 
 of others as our aim, we necessarily shift our ground, and 
 appeal to sympathy, to social instincts, or to the disinterested 
 pleasures of benevolence, till finally, when we are bid to 
 relinquish self altogether in behalf of the Greatest Happiness 
 of the Greatest Number, we have left the Utilitarian ground 
 ■ so far away, that we find ourselves on the proper territories 
 of the Intuitionist, and he turns round with the question, 
 " AVhy should I sacrifice myself for the happiness of man- 
 kind, if I have no intuitions of duty compelling me to do so ? " 
 The result has practically been, that the Social Instincts 
 to which Utilitai'ians in such straits were forced to appeal, 
 as the springs of action in lieu of the Intuitions of duty, 
 have been gradually raised by them to the rank of a distinct 
 element of our nature, to be treated now (as self-interest 
 was treated by their predecessors) as the admitted motives 
 of virtue. They agree with Intuitionists that man has* a 
 Conscience ; they only differ from them on the two points of 
 how he comes by it ; and whether its office be supreme and 
 legislative, or merely subsidiary and supplemental. 
 
 It is the problem of. How we come by a conscience, 
 which Mr. Darwin applies himself to solve, and with which 
 we shall be now concerned. Needless to say that the Kantian 
 doctrine of a Pure Reason, giving us transcendental know- 
 ledge of necessary truths, is not entertained by the school 
 of thinkers to which he belongs ; and that as for the notion 
 of all the old teachers of the world, that the voice of 
 Conscience is the voice of God, — the doctrine of Job and 
 Zoroaster, Menu and Pythagoras, Plato and Antoninus, 
 Chrysostom and Gregory, Fenelon and Jeremy Taylor, — it 
 can have no place in their science. As Comte would say, 
 
8 DARWINISM IN MORALS. 
 
 we have passed the theologic stage, and must not think 
 of running to a First Cause to explain phenomena. After 
 all (they seem to say), cannot we easily suggest how man 
 might acquire a conscience from causes obviously at work 
 around him ? Education, fear of penalties, sympathy, desire 
 of approval, with imaginary religious sanctions, would alto- 
 gether, well mixed and supporting one another, afford suffi- 
 cient explanation of feelings, acquired, as Mr. Bain thinks, 
 by each individual in his lifetime, and, as Mr. Mill justly 
 says, not the less natural for being acquired and not innate. 
 
 At this point of the history, the gradual extension of 
 the Darwinian theory of Evolution brought it into contact 
 with the s23eculations of moralists, and the result was a 
 new hypothesis, which has greatly altered the character 
 of the whole controversy. The doctrine of the transmission 
 by hereditary descent of all mental and moral qualities, of 
 which Mr. Gralton's book is the chief exponent,^ received, 
 in 1868, from Mr. Herbert Spencer the following definition, 
 as applied to the moral sentiments : ^ " I believe that the 
 experiences of utility, organized and consolidated through 
 all past generations of the human race, have been producing 
 corresponding modifications, which by continued transmis- 
 sion and accumulation have become in us certain faculties 
 
 ' Reviewed in the next essay. 
 
 * Letter to Mr. Mill, in Bain's " Mental and Moral Science," p. 722 ; quoted 
 in "Descent of Man," p. 101. On the day of the original publication of this 
 essay there appeared in the Fort nightly Review an article by Mr. Spencer, 
 designed to rectify the misapprehension of his doctrine into which Mr. Hutton, 
 Sir John Lubbock, Mr. Mivart, Sir Alexander Grant, and, as it proved, my 
 humble self, had all fallen regarding the point in question. "If," says Mr. 
 Spencer very pertinently, " a general doctrine concerning a highly involved 
 class of phenomena could be adequately presented in a single paragraph of a 
 letter, the writing of books would be superfluous." I may add that as it would be 
 equally impossible for me adequately to present Mr. Spencer's rectifications and 
 modifications in a single paragraph of an essay, I must, while apologizing to him 
 for my involuntary errors, refer the reader to his own article {Fortnightly Review, 
 April 1, 1871) for better comprehension of the subject. 
 
DARWINISM IN MORALS. 
 
 of moral intuition, certain emotions responding to right 
 and wrong conduct, which, have no apparent basis in the 
 individual experiences of utility." This doctrine (which 
 received a very remarkable answer in an article by Mr. 
 R. H. Hutton, Macmillan's Magazine, July, 1869) may be 
 considered as the basis on which Mr. Darwin proceeds, 
 approaching the subject, as he modestly says, "exclusively 
 from the side of natural history," and " attempting to see 
 how far the study of the lower animals can throw light on 
 one of the highest psychical faculties of man," His results, 
 as fairly as I can state them, are as follows : 
 
 If we assume an animal to possess social instincts (such, I 
 suppose, as those of rooks, for example), and also to acquire 
 some degree of intelligence corresponding to that of man, it 
 would inevitably acquire contemporaneously a moral sense 
 of a certain kind. In the first place, its social instincts 
 would cause it to take pleasure in the societ}^ of its fellows, 
 to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to per- 
 form various services for them. After this, the next step 
 in mental advance would cause certain phenomena of re- 
 gretful sentiments (hereafter to be more fully analyzed) to 
 ensue on the commission of anti- social acts, which obey a 
 transient impulse at the cost of a permanent social instinct. 
 Thirdly, the approval expressed by the members of the 
 community for acts tending to the general welfare, and 
 disapproval for those of a contrary nature, would greatly 
 strengthen and guide the original instincts as Language 
 came into full play. Lastly, habit in each individual 
 would gradually perform an important part in the regulation 
 of conduct. If these positions be all granted, the problem 
 of the origin of the moral sense seems to be solved. It is 
 found to be an instinct in favour of the social virtues 
 which has grown up in mankind, and would have grown 
 up in any animal similarly endowed and situated ; and it 
 
10 DARWINISM IN I/ORALS. 
 
 does not involve any higher, agency for its production than 
 that of the play of common human life, nor indicate any 
 higher nature for its seat than the further developed in- 
 telligence of any gregarious brute. So far, Mr. Darwin's 
 view seems only to give to those he has quoted from Mr. 
 Spencer their full expansion. The points on which he 
 appears to break fresh ground from this starting-place are 
 these two : 1st, his theory of the nature of conscientious 
 Repentance, which represents it as solely the triumph of a 
 permanent over a transient impulse ; 2nd, his frank ad- 
 mission, that though another animal, if it became intelligent, 
 would acquire a moral sense, yet that he sees no reason why 
 its moral sense should be the same as ours, or lead it to 
 attach the idea of right or wrong to the same actions. In 
 extreme cases (such as that of bees), the moral sense, de- 
 veloped under the conditions of the hive, would, he thinks, 
 impress it as a duty on sisters to murder their brothers. 
 
 It must be admitted that these two doctrines between them 
 effectively revolutionize Morals, as they have been hitherto 
 commonly understood. The first dethrones the moral sense 
 from that place of mysterious supremacy w^hich Butler 
 considered its grand characteristic. Mr. Darwin's Moral 
 Sense is simply an instinct originated, like a dozen others, 
 by the conditions under which we live, but which happens, 
 in the struggle for existence among all our instincts, to 
 resume the upper hand when no other chances to be in the 
 ascendant. And the second theory aims a still more deadly 
 blow at ethics, by affirming that, not only has our moral 
 sense come to us from a source commanding no special 
 respect, but that it answers to nO external or durable, not 
 to say universal or eternal, reality, and is merely tentative 
 and provisional, the provincial prejudice, as we may de- 
 scribe it, of this little world and its temporary inhabitants, 
 which would be looked on with a smile of derision by 
 
DARWINISM IN MORALS. U 
 
 better-informed people now residing in Mars, or hereafter 
 to be developed on earth, and who in their turn may be 
 considered as walking in a vain shadow by other races. 
 Instead of Montesquieu's grand aphorism, "La justice est 
 un rapport de convenance qui se trouve reelleraent entre 
 deux choses ; ce rapport est toujours le memo quelque etre 
 qui le considere, soit que ce soit Dieu, soit que ce soit 
 un homme," Mr. Darwin will leave us only the sad assu- 
 rance that our idea of Justice is all our own, and may 
 mean nothing to any other intelligent being in the uni- 
 verse. It is not even, as Dean Mansel has told us, given 
 us by our Creator as a representative truth, intended at 
 least to indicate some actual transcendent verity behind 
 it. We have now neither Yeil nor Revelation, but only 
 an earth-born instinct, carrying with it no authority what- 
 ever beyond the limits of our race and special social state, 
 nor within them further than we choose to permit it to 
 weigh on our minds. 
 
 Let me say it at once. These doctrines appear to me 
 simply the most dangerous which have ever been set forth 
 since the days of Mandeville. Of course, if science can 
 really show good cause for accepting them, their conse- 
 quences must be frankly faced. But it is at least fitting to 
 come to the examination of them, conscious that it is no 
 ordinary problems we are criticizing, but theories whose 
 validity must involve the invalidity of all the sanctions 
 which morality has hitherto received from powers beyond 
 those of the penal laws. As a matter of practice, no doubt 
 men act in nine cases out of ten with very small regard to 
 their theories of ethics, even when they are thoughtful enough 
 to have grasped any theory at all ; and generations might 
 elapse after the universal acceptance of these new views by 
 philosophers, before they would sensibly influence the con- 
 duct of the masses of mankind. But however slowly they 
 
12 DARWINISM IN MORALS. 
 
 might work, I cannot but believe that in the hour of their 
 triumph would be sounded the knell of the virtue of man- 
 kind. It has been hard enough for tempted men and women 
 heretofore to be honest, true, unselfish, chaste, or sober, 
 while passion was clamouring for gratification, or want 
 pining for relief. The strength of the fulcrum on which 
 has rested the virtue of many a martyr and saint, must 
 have been vast as the Law of the Universe could make it. 
 But where will that fulcrum be found hereafter, if men con- 
 sciously recognize that what they have dreamed to be 
 
 " The unwritten law divine, 
 Immutable, eternal, not like those of yesterday, 
 But made ere Time began," ' — 
 
 the law by which " the most ancient heavens are fresh and 
 strong," — is, in truth, after all, neither durable nor even 
 general among intelligent beings, but simply consists of 
 those rules of conduct which, among many that might 
 have been adopted, have proved themsebes on experiment 
 to be most convenient ; and which, in the lapse of ages, 
 through hereditary transmission, legislation, education, and 
 such methods, have got woven into the texture of our 
 brains ? What will be the power of such a law as this to 
 enable it to contend for mastery in the soul with any 
 passion capable of rousing the most languid impulse ? 
 Hitherto good men have looked on Eepentance as the most 
 sacred of all sentiments, and have measured the nearness of 
 the soul to God by the depth of its sense of the shame .and 
 heinousness of sin. The boldest of criminals have betrayed 
 at intervals their terror of the Erinnyes of Remorse, against 
 whose scourges all religions have presented themselves as 
 protectors, with their devices of expiations, sacrifices, pen- 
 ances, and atonements. From Orestes at the foot of the 
 
 ' Sophoc. Antig. 454. 
 
DARWINISM IN MORALS. 13 
 
 altar of Phoebus, to the Anglican in his new confessional 
 to-day; from the Aztec eating the heart of the victim 
 slain in propitiation for sin, to the Hindoo obeying the 
 law of Menu, and voluntarily starving himself to death as 
 an exjaiation of his offences, history bears testimony again 
 and again to the power of this tremendous sentiment ; and 
 if it have driven mankind into numberless superstitions, 
 it has, beyond a doubt, also served as a threat more effec- 
 tive against crime than all the penalties ever enacted by 
 legislators. But where is Repentance to find place here- 
 aftef , if Mr. Darwin's view of its nature be received ? Will 
 any man allow himself to attend to the reproaches of 
 Conscience, and bow his head to her rebukes, when he 
 clearly understands that it is only his more durable Social 
 Instinct which is re-asserting itself, because the more variable 
 instinct which has caused him to disregard it is temporarily 
 asleep ? Such a Physiology of Repentance reduces its claims 
 on our attention to the level of those of our bodily wants ; 
 and our grief for a past crime assumes the same aspect as 
 our regret that we yesterday unadvisedly preferred the 
 temporary enjoyment of conversation to the permanent 
 benefit of a long night's rest, or the flavour of an indiges- 
 tible dish to the wholesomeness of our habitual food. "We 
 may regret our imprudence ; but it is quite impossible we 
 should ever again feel penitence for a sin. 
 
 But is this all true ? Can such a view of the moral 
 nature of man be sustained? Mr. Darwin says that he 
 has arrived at it by approaching the subject from the side 
 of natural history ; and we may therefore, without dis- 
 respect, accept it as the best which the study of man simply 
 as a highly developed animal can afford. That glimmering 
 of something resembling our moral sense often observable 
 in brutes, which Mr. Darwin has admirably described, may 
 (we will assume) be so accounted for. But viewing human 
 
14 DARWINISM IN MORALS. 
 
 nature from other sides besides that of its animal origin, 
 studying the mind from within rather than from without, 
 and taking into consideration the whole phenomenon pre- 
 sented by such a department of creation as the Human 
 Hace, must we not hold that this Siraious Theory of Morals 
 is wholly inadequate and unsatisfactory? Probably Mr. 
 Darwin himself would say that he does not pretend to 
 claim for it the power to explain exhaustively all the mys- 
 teries of our moral nature, but only to afford such a clue 
 to them as ought to -satisfy us that, if pursued further, they 
 might be so revealed ; and to render, by its obvious sim- 
 plicity, other and more transcendent theories superfluous. 
 The matter to be decided (and it is almost impossible, I 
 think, to overrate its importance) is : Does it give such an 
 explanation of the facts as to justify us in accepting it, pro- 
 visionally, as an hypothesis of the origin of Morals ? 
 
 It is hard to know how to approach properly the later 
 developments of a doctrine like that of Utilitarian Morality, 
 which we conceive to be founded on a radically false basis. 
 If we begin at the beginning, and dispute its primary 
 positions, we shift the controversy in hand to the intermina- 
 ble wastes of metaphysical discussion, where few readers 
 will follow, and where the wanderer may truly say that 
 
 doubts, 
 
 " immeasurably spread, 
 Seem lengthening as I go." 
 
 All the time which is wanted to argue the last link of 
 the system, is lost in seeking some common ground to 
 stand upon with our opponent, who probably will end by 
 disputing the firmness of whatever islet of granite we have 
 chosen in the bog ; and will tell us that the greatest modern 
 thinkers are doubtful whether twice two will make four 
 in all worlds, or whether Space may not have more than 
 three dimensions. Yet to grant the premisses of Utilitarian 
 
DARWINISM IN MORALS. 15 
 
 ethics, and then attempt to dispute one by one the chain 
 of doctrines which has been unrolling from them during 
 the last century, and which has now reached, as it would 
 seem, its ultimate, and perhaps logical, development, is 
 to place our arguments at an unfair disadvantage. To 
 treat scientificall}^ the theories of Mr. Darwin, we ought to 
 commence by an inquiry into the validity of the human 
 consciousness ; into the respective value of our various 
 faculties, the senses, the intellect, the moral, religious and 
 aesthetic sentiments, as witnesses of external truths ; and, 
 finally, into the justice or fallacy of attaching belief exclu- 
 sively to facts of which we have cognizance through one 
 faculty — let us say the intellect ; and denying those which 
 we observe by another — say the gesthetic taste or the reli- 
 gious or moral sentiments. He who will concede that the 
 intellect is not the organ through which we appreciate a 
 song or a picture, and that it would be absurd to test songs 
 and pictures by inductive reasoning and not by the specific 
 sense of the beautiful, is obviously bound to show cause 
 Vfh.j, if — after making such admission in the case of our 
 cesthetic faculties — he refuse to concede to the religious 
 and moral faculties the same right to have their testimony 
 admitted in their own domain. 
 
 Proceeding to our next step, if we are to do justice to 
 our cause, we must dispute the Utilitarian's first assump- 
 tion on his proper ground. AV^e must question whether the 
 Right and the Useful are really synonymous, and whether 
 Self-interest and Virtue can be made convertible terms 
 even by such stringent methods as those of extending the 
 meaning of " Self-interest " to signify a devotion to the 
 " Grreatest Happiness of the Greatest Number " (always 
 inclusive of Number One), and of curtailing that of Virtue 
 to signify the fulfilment of Social, irrespective of Personal 
 and E/eliffious oblio:ations. That the common sentiment 
 
16 DARWINISM IN MORALS. 
 
 of mankind looks to something diJSerent from Utility in 
 the actions to which it pays the tribute of its highest 
 reverence, and to something different from noxiousness 
 in those which it most profoundly abhors, is a fact so 
 obvious, that modern Utilitarians have recognized the im- 
 possibility of ignoring it after the manner of their pre- 
 decessors ; and Mr. Herbert Spencer has fully admitted 
 that the ideas of the Right and the Useful are now 
 entirely different, although they had once, he thinks, the 
 same origin. But that the idea of the Right was ever 
 potentially enwrapped or latent in the idea of the Useful, 
 we entirely deny, seeing that it not only overlaps it alto- 
 gether, and goes far bej^ond it in the direction of the Noble 
 and the Holy, but that it is continually in direct antithesis 
 to it ; and acts of generosity and courage (such as Mr. Mill's 
 resolution to go to hell rather than say an untruth) com- 
 mand from us admiration, not only apart from their utility, 
 but because they set at defiance every principle of utility, 
 and make us feel that to such men there are things dearer 
 than eternal joy. As Mr. Mivart says well, the sentiment 
 of all ages which has found expression in the cry, " Fiat 
 Justitia ruat coslum," could never have sprung from the 
 same root as our sense of Utility. 
 
 Proceeding a step farther downwards to the point where- 
 with alone Mr. Darwin concerns himself — the origin of such 
 moral sense as recent Utilitarians grant that we possess — 
 we come again on a huge field of controversy. Are our 
 intuitions of all kinds, those, for instance, regarding space, 
 numbers and moral distinctions, ultimate data of our men- 
 tal constitution, ideas obtained by the d-^jriori action of 
 the normally developed mind ; or are they merely, as Mr. 
 Hutton has paraphrased Mr. Spencer's theor}^, " a special 
 susceptibility in our nerves produced by a vast number 
 of homogeneous ancestral experiences agglutinated into a 
 
DARWINISM m MORALS. 17 
 
 single intellectual tendency " ? Is our sense of the necessity 
 and universality of a truth {e.g., that the three sides of all 
 triangles in the universe are equal to two right angles), and 
 the unhesitating certainty with which we affirm such univer- 
 sality, over and above any possible experience of generality, 
 — is this sense we say, the expression of pure Reason, 
 or is it nothing but a blind incapacity for imagining as 
 altered that which we have never seen or heard of as 
 changed ? Volumes deep and long as Kant's Kritik or Mr. 
 Spencer's " Principles " are needed, if this question is to 
 receive any justice at our hands. All that it is possible to 
 do in passing onward to our remarks on Mr. Darwin's views, 
 is to enter our protest against the admission of any such 
 parentage either for mathematical or moral intuitions. No 
 event in a man's mental development is, I think, more 
 startling than his first clear apprehension of the nature of 
 a geometrical demonstration, and of the immutable nature 
 of the truth he has acquired, against which a thousand 
 miracles would not avail to shake his faith. The hypothesis 
 of the inheritance of space-intuitions through numberless 
 ancestral experiments, leaves this marvellous sense of cer- 
 tainty absolutely inexplicable. And when we ajpply the 
 same hypothesis of inheritance to moral intuitions, it appears 
 to me to break down still more completely ; supplying us 
 at the utmost with a plausible theory for the explanation 
 of our preference for some acts as more useful than others, 
 but utterly failing to suggest a reason for that which is the 
 real phenomenon to be accounted for, namely, our sense of 
 the sacred obligation of Rightfulness, over and above or 
 apart from Utility. Nay, what Mr. Mill calls the " mystical 
 extension " of the idea of Utility into the idea of Right is 
 not only left wholly unexplained, but the explanation offered 
 points, not to any such mystical extension, but quite the 
 other way. The waters of our moral life cannot possibly 
 
 2 
 
18 DARWINISM IN MOEALS. 
 
 rise above their source ; and if Utility be that source, they 
 ought by this time to have settled into a dead pond of plain 
 and acknowledged self-interestedness. As Mr. Hutton ob- 
 serves : " Mr. Spencer's theory appears to find the feeling of 
 moral obligation at its maximum, when the perception of 
 the quality which ultimately produces that feeling is at its 
 minimum." 
 
 But we must now do Mr. Darwin the justice to let him 
 speak for himself, and for the only part of the Utilitarian 
 theory for which he has made himself directly responsible ; 
 though his whole argument is so obviously founded solely 
 on an Utilitarian basis, that we are tempted to doubt 
 whether a mind so large, so just and so candid, can have 
 ever added to its treasures of physical science the thorough 
 mastery of any of the great works in which the opposite 
 system of ethics have been set forth. 
 
 Animals display affection, fidelity and sympathy. Man 
 when he first rose above the Ape was probably of a social 
 disposition, and lived in herds. Mr. Darwin adds that he 
 would probably inherit a tendenc}' to be faithful to his com- 
 rades, and have also some capacity for self-command, and a 
 readiness to aid and defend his fellow-men.^ These latter 
 qualities, we must observe, do not agree very well M'ith 
 what Mr. Gralton recently' told us'^ of the result of his in- 
 teresting studies of the cattle of South Africa, and at all 
 events need that we should suppose the forefathers of our 
 race to have united all the best moral as well as physical 
 qualities of other animals. But assuming that so it may 
 have been, Mr. Darwin says, Man's next motive, acquired by 
 sympathy, would be the love of praise and horror of infamy. 
 After this, as such feelings became clearer and reason ad- 
 vanced, he would " feel himself impelled, independently of 
 any pleasure or pain felt at the moment, to certain lines of 
 1 Page 85. - Macniilluii' s Magazine, February, 1871. 
 
DARWINISM IN 2WRALS. 19 
 
 conduct. He may then say : I am the supreme judge of my 
 own conduct ; and in the words of Kant, I will not in my 
 own person violate the dignity of humanity."^ That any 
 savage or half-civilized man ever felt anything like this, or 
 that the •' dignity of humanity " could come in sight for 
 endless generations of progress, conducted only in such ways 
 as Mr. Darwin has suggested, nay, that it could ever occur 
 at all to a creature who had not some higher conception of 
 the nature of that Virtue in which man's only " dignity " 
 consists, than Mr. Darwin has hinted, — is a matter, I venture 
 to think, of gravest doubt. 
 
 But again passing onward, we reach the first of our 
 author's special theories ; his doctrine of the nature of E,e- 
 pentance. Earnestly I wish to do it justice ; for upon it 
 hinges our theory of the nature of the moral sense. As our 
 bodily sense of feeling can best be studied when we touch 
 hard objects or shrink from a burn or a blow, so our spiritual 
 sense of feeling becomes most evident when it comes in con- 
 tact with wrong, or recoils in the agony of remorse from 
 a crime. 
 
 " Why " — it is Mr. Darwin who asks the question — " why 
 should a man feel that he ought to obey one instinctive 
 feeling rather than another ? Why does he bitterly regret 
 if he has yielded to the strong sense of self-preservation, 
 and has not risked his life to save that of a fellow-creature ? " 
 The answer is, that in some cases the social or maternal 
 instincts will always spur generous natures to unselfish 
 deeds. But where such social instincts are less strong than 
 the instincts of self-preservation, hunger, vengeance, etc., 
 then these last are naturally paramount, and the question 
 is pressed, " Why does man regret, even though he may 
 endeavour to banish any such regret, that he has followed 
 the one natural impulse rather than the other? and why 
 
 1 Pacre S6. 
 
20 DARWINISM IN 3I0RALS. 
 
 does lie further feel that he ouo^ht to reg-ret his conduct?" 
 Man in this respect differs, Mr. Darwin admits, profoundly 
 from the lower animals, but he thinks he sees the reason of 
 the difference. It is this : Man has reflection. From the 
 activity of his mental qualities, he cannot help past impres- 
 sions incessantly passing through his mind. The animals 
 have no need to reflect ; for those who have social instincts 
 never quit the herd, and never fail to obey their kindly 
 impulses. But man, though he has the same or stronger 
 social impulses, has other, though more, temporary passions, 
 such as hunger, vengeance, and the like, which obtain tran- 
 sient indulgence often at the expense of his kind. These, 
 however, are all temjsorar}^ in their nature. When hunger, 
 vengeance, covetousness, or the desire for preservation, has 
 been satisfied, such feelings not only fade, but it is impos- 
 sible to recall their full vividness by an act of memory. 
 
 " Thus as man cannot prevent old impressions from passing througli 
 his mind, he will be compelled to compare the weaker impression of, 
 for instance, jDast hunger, or of vengeance satisfied, with the instinct 
 of sympathy and goodwill to his fellows which is still present, and 
 ever in some degree active in his mind. He will then feel in his 
 imagination that a stronger instinct has yielded to one which now 
 seems comparatively weak, and then that sense of dissatisfaction will 
 inevitably be felt with which man is endowed, like every other animal, 
 in order that his instincts may be obeyed." ' 
 
 Leaving out for the present the last singular clause' of 
 this paragraph, which appears to point to a Cause altogether 
 outside of the range of phenomena we are considering, — a 
 Cause which, if it (or He ?) exist at all, may well " endow " 
 human hearts more directly than through such dim animal 
 instincts as are in question, — leaving out of view this hint 
 of a Creator, we ask : Is this physiology of Repentance true 
 to fact ? It would be hard, I venture to think, to describe 
 one more at variance with it. The reader might be excused 
 
 1 Page 90. 
 
DARWINISM IN MORALS. 21 
 
 who should figure to himself the author as a man who has 
 never in his lifetime had cause seriously to regret a single 
 unkindly or ignoble deed, and who has unconsciously attri- 
 buted his own abnormally generous and placable nature to 
 the rest of his species, and then theorized as if the world 
 were made of Darwins. Where (we ask in bewilderment), 
 where are the people to be found in whom " sympathy and 
 goodwill" to all their neighbours exist in the state of perma- 
 nent instincts, and whose resentful feelings, as a matter of 
 course, die out after every little temporary exhibition, and 
 leave them in charity with their enemies, not as the result 
 of repentance, but as its preliminary ? Where, where 
 may we find the population for whom the precept, "Love 
 your enemies," is altogether superfluous, and who always 
 revert to afiection as soon as they have gratified any tran- 
 sient sentiment of an opposite tendency ? Hitherto we 
 have been accustomed to believe that (as Buddhists are 
 wont to insist) a kind action done to a foe is the surest way 
 to enable ourselves to return to charitable feelings, and 
 that, in like manner, doing him an ill- turn is calculated to 
 exasperate our own rancour. We have held it as axiomatic 
 that "revenge and wrong bring forth their kind j" and that 
 we hate those whom we have injured with an ever-growing 
 spite and cruelty as we continue to give our malice head- 
 way. But instead of agreeing with Tacitus that " Humani 
 generis proprium est odisse quern Iceseris," Mr. Darwin ac- 
 tually supposes that as soon as ever we have delivered our 
 blow it is customary for us immediately to wish to wipe it 
 ofi" with a kiss ! In what Island of the Blessed do people 
 love all the way round their social circles, the mean and 
 the vulgar, the disgusting, and the tiresome, not excepted ? 
 If such beings are entirely exceptional now, when the care- 
 ful husbandry of Christianity has been employed for eighteen 
 centuries in cultivating that virtue of mansuetude, of which 
 
22 BARWimSII IN MORALS. 
 
 the ancient world produced so limited a crop, how is it to 
 be supposed that our hirsute and tusky progenitors of the 
 Palgeolithic or yet remoter age, were thoroughly imbued 
 with such gentle sentiments ? Let it be borne in mind 
 that, unless the great majority of men, after injuring their 
 neighbours, spontaneousl}^ turned to sympathize with them, 
 there could not possibly be a chance for the foundation of a 
 general sentiment such as Mr, Darwin supposes to grow up 
 in the community. 
 
 The natural historj^ (so to speak) of Repentance seems to 
 indicate almost a converse process to that assumed b}^ Mr. 
 Darwin. Having done a wrong in word or deed to our 
 neighbour, the first sentiment we distinguish afterwards is 
 usually, I conceive, an accession of dislike towards him. 
 Then after a time we become conscious of uneasiness, but 
 rather in the way of feeling that we have broken the law in 
 our own breasts and are ashamed of it, than that we pity 
 the person we have injured or are sorry for him. On the 
 contrary, if I am not mistaken, we are ver}^ apt to comfort 
 ourselves at this stage of the proceedings hj reflecting that 
 he is a ver}^ odious person, who well deserves all he has got 
 and worse ; and we are even tempted to add to our offence 
 a little further evil speaking. Then comes the sense that we 
 have really done wrong in the sight of God ; and last of all 
 (as it seems to me), as the final climax, not the first step 
 of repentance, we first undo or apologize for our wrong act, 
 and then, and only then, return to the feeling of love and 
 charity. 
 
 This whole theory, then, of the origin of Repentance, 
 namely, that it is the "innings" of our permanent social 
 instincts M'hen the transient selfish ones have played out 
 their game, seems to be without basis on any known con- 
 dition of human nature. Ostensibly raised on induction, 
 it lacks the primary facts from which its inductions profess 
 
DARWINISM IN MORALS. 23 
 
 to be drawn ; and Mr. Darwin, in offering it to us as the 
 result of his studies in Natural History, seems to have 
 betrayed that he has observed other species of animals more 
 accurately than his own ; and that he has overlooked the 
 vast class of intelligences which lie between baboons and 
 philoso23hers. 
 
 The theory of the 'nature of Repentance which we have 
 been considering, is a characteristic improvement on the 
 current Utilitarian doctrine, in so far that it suggests a 
 cause for the human tenderness, if I may so describe it, 
 which forms one element in true repentance. If it were 
 true of mankind in general (as it may be true of the most 
 gentle individuals) that a return to sympathy and goodwill 
 spontaneously follows, sooner or later, every unkind act, 
 then Mr. Darwin's account of the case would supply us with 
 an explanation of that side of the sentiment of repentance 
 which is turned towards the person injured. It would still, 
 I think, fail altogether to render an account of the mys- 
 terious awe and horror which the greater crimes have in all 
 ages left on the minds of their perpetrators, far beyond any 
 feelings of pity for the sufferers, and quite irrespective of 
 fear of human justice or retaliation. This tremendous senti- 
 ment of Remorse, though it allies itself with religious fears, 
 seems to me not so much to be derived from religious con- 
 siderations as to be in itself one of the roots of religion. 
 The typical Orestes does not feel horror because he fears 
 the Erinnyes, but he has called up the phantoms of the 
 Erinnyes in the nightmare of his horror. Nothing which 
 Mr. Darwin, or any other writer on his side, so far as I am 
 aware, has ever suggested as the origin of the moral sense, 
 has supplied us with a plausible explanation of either such 
 Remorse or of ordinary Repentance. In the former case, 
 we have soul-shaking terrors to be accounted for, either 
 (according to Mr. Darwin) by mere pity and sympathy, or 
 
24 DARWINISM IN MORALS. 
 
 (according to the old Utilitarians) by fear of retaliation or 
 disgrace, such as the sufferer often notoriously defies or even 
 courts. In the case of ordinary Repentance, we have a feel- 
 ing infinitely sacred and tender, capable of transforming our 
 whole nature as by an enchanter's wand, softening and re- 
 freshing our hearts as the dry and dusty earth is quickened 
 by an April shower, but yet (we are asked to believe) caused 
 by no higher sorcery, fallen from no loftier sky, than our 
 own every-day instincts, one hour selfish and the next social, 
 asserting themselves in wearisome alternation ! What is the 
 right of one of these instincts as against the other, that its 
 resumption of its temporary supremacy should be accom- 
 panied by such portents of solemn augury ? Why, when we 
 return to love our neighbour, do we at the same time hate 
 ourselves, and tvish to do so still more ? Why, instead of 
 shrinking from punishment, do men, under such impres- 
 sions, always desire to expiate their offences so fervently, 
 that with the smallest sanction from their religious teachers 
 they rush to the cloister or seize the scourge ? Why, above 
 all, do we look inevitably beyond the fellow-creature whom 
 we have injured up to God, and repeat the cry which has 
 burst from every penitent heart for millenniums back, 
 "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned ! " 
 
 Putting aside the obvious fact that the alleged cause of 
 repentance could, at the utmost, onl}'' explain repentance 
 for social wrong-doing, and leave inexplicable the equally 
 bitter grief for personal ofiences, we find, then, that it fails 
 even on its own ground. To make it meet approximately 
 the facts of the case, we want something altogether different. 
 We want to be told, not only why we feel sorry for our 
 neighbour when we have wronged him, but how we come 
 by the profound sense of a Justice which our wrong has 
 infringed, and Avhich we yet revere so humbly, that we often 
 prefer to suffer that it may be vindicated. Of all this, the 
 
DARWimS2f IN MORALS. 25 
 
 Utilitarian scheme, with. Mr. Darwin's additions, aflPords not 
 the vaguest indication. 
 
 I cannot but think that, had any professed psychologist 
 dealt thus with the mental phenomena which it was his 
 business to explain, had he first assumed that we returned 
 spontaneously to benevolent feelings after injuring our 
 neighbours, and then presented such relenting as the essence 
 of repentance, few readers would have failed to notice the 
 disproportion between the unquestionable facts and their 
 alleged cause. But when a great natural philosopher weaves 
 mental phenomena into his general theory of physical de- 
 velopment, it is to be feared that many a student will 
 hastily accept a doctrine which seems to fit neatly enough 
 into the system which he adopts as a whole ; even though it 
 could find on its own merits no admission into a scheme of 
 psychology. The theory of Morals which alone ought to com- 
 mand our adhesion must surely be one, not like this harmo- 
 nizing only with one side of our philosophy, but equally 
 true to all the facts of the case, whether we regard them 
 from without or from within, whether we study Man, ab 
 extra, as one animal amongst all the tribes of zoology, or 
 from within by the experience of our own hearts. From 
 the outside, it is obvious that the two human sentiments 
 of Regret and Repentance may very easily be confounded. 
 A theory which should account for Regret might be sup- 
 posed to cover the facts of Repentance, did no inward 
 experience of the difierence forbid us to accept it. But 
 since Coleridge pointed out this loose link in the chain of 
 Utilitarian argument, no disciple of the school has been 
 able to mend it ; and even Mr. Darwin's theory only sup- 
 plies an hypothesis for the origin of relenting Pity, not 
 one for Penitence. Let us suppose two simple cases : 
 first, that in an accident at sea, while striving eagerly 
 to help a friend, we had unfortunately caused his death ; 
 
26 DARWINISM ly MORALS. 
 
 second, that in the same contingency, an impulse of jealousy 
 or anger had induced us purposely to withhold from him 
 the means of safety. What would be our feelings in the 
 two cases ? In the first, we should feel Regret which, how- 
 ever deep and poignant, would never be anything else than 
 simple E-egret, and which, if it assumed the slightest tinge 
 of self-reproach, would be instantly rebuked by every sound- 
 minded spectator as morbid and unhealthy. In the second 
 case (assvxming that we had perfect security against dis- 
 covery of our crime), we should feel, perhaps, very little 
 Regret, but we should endure Remorse to the end of our 
 days ; we should carry about in our inner hearts a shadow 
 of fear and misery and self-reproach which would make us 
 evermore alone amid our fellows. Now, will Mr. Darwin, 
 or any other thinker who traces the origin of the Moral 
 Sense to the " agglutinated " experience of utility of a 
 hundred generations, point out to us how that experience 
 can possibly have bequeathed to us the latter sentiment 
 of Remorse for a crime, as contra-distinguished from 
 that of Regret for having unintentionally caused a mis- 
 fortune ? 
 
 But if the origin of repentance, in the case of obvious 
 capital injuries to our neighbour, cannot be accounted for 
 merely as the result of ancestral experience, it appears 
 still more impossible to account in the same way for the 
 moral shame which attaches to many lesser offences, whose 
 noxiousness is by no means self-evident, which no legis- 
 lation has ever made penal, and which few religions have 
 condemned. Mr. Wallace, in his Contributions to the 
 Theory of Natural Selection, appears to me to sum up 
 this argument admirably. ^ After explaining how very 
 inadequate are the Utilitarian sanctions for Truthfulness, 
 and observing how many savages 3^et make veracity a point 
 
 ^ Page 355. 
 
DARWINISM IN MORALS. 27 
 
 of honour, he says, " It is difficult to conceive that such 
 an intense and mystical feeling of right and wrong (so 
 intense as to overcome all ideas of personal advantage or 
 utility) could have been developed out of accumulated 
 ancestral experiences of utilit}^ ; but still more difficult to 
 understand how feelings developed by one set of utilities 
 could be transferred to acts of which the utility was partial, 
 imaginary or absent," — or (as he might justly have added) so 
 remote as to be quite beyond the ken of uncivilized or semi- 
 civilized man. It is no doubt a fact that, in the long run, 
 Truthfulness contributes more than Lying to the Greatest 
 Happiness of the Greatest Number. But to discover that 
 fact needs a philosopher, not a savage. Other virtues, such 
 as that of care for the weak and aged, seem still less 
 capable, as Mr. Mivart has admirably shown, ^ of being 
 evolved out of a sense of utility, seeing that savages and 
 animals find it much the most useful practice to kill and 
 devour such sufferers, and by the law of the Survival 
 of the Fittest, all nature below civilized man is arranged 
 on the plan of so doing. Mr. W. R. Greg's very clever 
 paper in Fraser's Magazine, pointing out how Natural 
 Selection fails in the case of Man in consequence of our 
 feelings of pity for the weak, afibrds incidentally the best 
 possible proof that human society is based on an element 
 which has no counterpart in the utilit}'' which rules the 
 animal world. 
 
 It would be doing Mr. Darwin injustice if we were to 
 quit the consideration of his observations on the nature 
 of Repentance, leaving on the reader's mind the impression 
 that he has put them forward formally as delineating an ex- 
 haustive theory of the matter, or that he has denied, other- 
 wise than by implication, the doctrine that higher and more 
 spiritual influences enter into the phenomena of the moral 
 1 Genesis of Species, page 192. 
 
28 DARWINISM IN MORALS. 
 
 life. The absence of the slightest allusion to any such higher 
 sources of moral sentiment leaves, however, on the reader's 
 mind a very strong impression that here we are supposed 
 to rest. The developed Ape has acquired a moral sense by 
 adaptive changes of mental structure precisely analogous 
 to those adaptive changes of bodily structure which have 
 altered his foot and rolled up his ear. To seek for a more 
 recondite source for the one class of changes than for the 
 other would be arbitrary and imjohilosophical. 
 
 But now we come to the last, and, as it seems to me, the 
 saddest doctrine of all. Our moral sense, however acquired, 
 does not, it is asserted, correspond to anything real outside 
 of itself, to any law which must be the same for all Intelli- 
 gences, mundane or supernal. It merely affords us a sort 
 of Ready Reckoner for our particular wages, a Rule of 
 Thumb for our special work, in the position in which we 
 find ourselves just at present. That I may do Mr. Darwin 
 no injustice, I shall quote his observations on this point in 
 his own words : 
 
 " It may be well first to iM'emise that I do not wish to maintain that 
 any strictly social animal, if its intellectual faculties were to become as 
 active and as highly developed as in man, would acquire exactly the 
 same moral sense as ours. ... If, for instance, to take an extreme 
 case, men were reared precisely under the same conditions as hive-bees, 
 there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the 
 worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers 
 would strive to kill their fertile daughters, and no one would think 
 of intei'fering. Nevertheless, the bee, or any other social animal, 
 would in our sup2>osed case gain, as it appears to me, some feeling 
 of right and wrong, or a conscience. For each individual would have an 
 inward sense of possessing certain stronger or more enduring instincts, 
 and others less strong or enduring ; so that there would often be a 
 struggle which impulse should be followed, and satisfaction or dissatis- 
 faction would be felt as past impressions were compared during their 
 incessant passage through the mind. In this case, an inward monitor 
 would tell the animal that it would have been better to have followed 
 
DARWINISMS IN MORALS. 29 
 
 the one impulse rather than the other. The one course ought to have 
 been followed. The one would have been right and the other wrong." ^ 
 
 Now it is a little difficult to clear our minds on this subject 
 of the mutable or immutable in morals. No believer in 
 the immutability of morality holds that it is any i:)hymal 
 act itself which is immutably right, but only the principles 
 of Benevolence, Truth, and so on, by which such acts must 
 be judged. The parallel between Ethics and Geometry here 
 holds strictly true. The axioms of both sciences are neces- 
 sary truths known to us as facts of consciousness. The 
 subordinate propositions are deduced from such axioms by 
 reflection. The application of the propositions to the actual 
 circumstances of life is effected by a process (sometimes 
 called " traduction ") by which all applied sciences become 
 practically available. For example. Geometry teaches us that 
 a triangle is equal to half a rectangle upon the same base and 
 with the same altitude, but no geometry can teach us whether 
 a certain field be a triangle with equal base and altitude 
 to the adjoining rectangle. To know this we must measure 
 both, and then we shall know that if such be their propor- 
 tions, the one will contain half as much space as the other. 
 Similarly in morals. Intuition teaches us to " Love our 
 Neighbour," and reflection will thence deduce that we ought 
 to relieve the wants of the suffering. But no ethics can 
 teach A what are the special wants of B, or how they can 
 best be supplied. According, then, to the doctrines of In- 
 tuitive Morality, considerations of Utility have a most 
 important, though altogether subordinate, place in ethics. 
 It is the office of experience to show us Jiow to put the 
 mandates of intuition into execution, though not to originate 
 our moral code, — hoic to fulfil the duty of conferring Happi- 
 ness, though not to set up Happiness as the sole end and 
 aim of Morality. 
 
 1 Descent of Man, pp. 33, 3i. 
 
30 DARWINISM IN MORALS. 
 
 Now if Mr. Darwin had simply said tliat under totally 
 diflPereut conditions of life many of the existing human 
 duties would have been altered, we could have no possible 
 fault to find with his remarks. In a world where nobody, 
 needed food there could be no duty of feeding the hungry ; 
 in a world of immortals there could be no such crime as 
 murder. Every alteration in circumstance produces a cer- 
 tain variation in moral obligation, for the plain reason (as 
 above stated) that Morals only supply abstract principles, 
 and, according to the circumstances of each case, their 
 application must necessarily vary. If the triangular field 
 have a rood cut ofi" it, or a rood added on, it will no longer 
 be the half of the rectangle beside it. It would not be 
 difficult to imagine a state of existence in which the im- 
 mutable principles of Benevolence would require quite a 
 different set of actions from those which they now demand ; 
 in fact, no one supposes that among the Blessed, where 
 they will rule all hearts, they will inspire the same manifes- 
 tations which they call for on earth. 
 
 But Mr. Darwin's doctrine seems to imply something 
 very different indeed from this. He thinks (if I do not 
 mistake linn) that, under altered circumstances, human 
 beings would have acquired consciences in which not only 
 the acts of social duty would have been different, but its 
 princijjies would have been transformed or reversed. It is 
 obviously impossible to stretch our conception of the prin- 
 ciple of Benevolence far enough to enable us to include 
 under its possible manifestations the conduct of the worker 
 bees to the drones ; and I suppose few of us have hitherto 
 reflected on this and similar strange phenomena of natural 
 history, without falling back with relief on the reflection 
 , that the animal, devoid of moral sense, does its destructive 
 work as guiltlessly as the storm or the flood. 
 
 On Mr, Darwin's system, the developed bee would have 
 
DARWINISM IN MORALS. 31 
 
 an " inward monitor " actually prompting the murderous 
 sting, and telling her that such a course ''ought to have 
 been followed." The Danai'des of the hive, instead of the 
 eternal nightmare to which Greek imagination consigned 
 them, would thus receive the reward of their assassinations 
 in the delights of the mens conscia recti ; or, as Mr. Darwin 
 expresses it, by the satisfaction of " the stronger and more 
 enduring instinct." Hitherto we have believed that the 
 human moral sense, though of slow and gradual development 
 and liable to sad oscillations under the influence of false reli- 
 gion and education, yet points normally to one true Pole. 
 Now we are called on to think there is no pole at all, and 
 that it may swing all round the circle of crimes and virtues, 
 and be equall}^ trustworthy whether it point north, south, 
 east or west. In brief, there are no such things really as 
 Right and Wrong ; and our idea that they have existence 
 outside of our own poor little minds is pure delusion. 
 
 The bearings of this doctrine on Morality and on Religion 
 seem to be equally fatal. The all-embracing Law which 
 alone could command our reverence has disappeared from 
 the universe ; and God, if He exist, may, for aught we can 
 surmise, have for Himself a code of Right in which every 
 cruelty and every injustice may form a part, quite as pro- 
 bably as the opposite principles. 
 
 Does such an hypothesis actually fit any of the known 
 facts of human consciousness ? Is there anywhere to be 
 found an indication of the supposed possibility of acquir- 
 ing a conscience in Avhich the principles of R,ight and 
 Wrong should be transformed, as well as their application 
 altered ? It would seem (as already mentioned) that, as a 
 matter of fact, the utility of destroying old people and 
 female infants has actually appeared so great to many 
 savage and semi-civilized people, as to have caused them to 
 practise such murders in a systematic way for thousands of 
 
32 DARWINISM IN MORALS. 
 
 years. But we have never been told that the Fuegians 
 made it more than a matter of good sense to eat their grand- 
 fathers, or that the Chinese, when they deposited their 
 drowned babies in the public receptacles labelled "For 
 Toothless Infants," did so with the proud consciousness of 
 fulfilling one of those time-hallowed Rites of which they are 
 so fond. The transition from a sense of Utility to a sense 
 of Moral Obligation seems to be one which has never 
 yet been observed in human history. Mr. Darwin himself, 
 with his unvarying candour, remarks that no instance is 
 known of an arbitrary or superstitious practice, though 
 pursued for ages, leaving hereditary tendencies of the nature 
 of a moral sense. Of course where a religious sanction 
 is believed to elevate any special act (such as Sabbath- 
 keeping) into an express tribute of homage to God, it 
 justly assumes in the conscience precisely the place such 
 homage should occupy. But even here the world-old dis- 
 tinction between offences against such arbitrary laws, mala 
 prohihita, and those against the eternal laws of morals, 
 mala in se, has never been wholly overlooked. 
 
 I think, then, we are justified in concluding that the 
 moral history of mankind, so far as we know it, gives no 
 countenance to the hypothesis that Conscience is the result 
 of certain contingencies in our development, and that it 
 might at an earlier stage have been moulded into qviite 
 another form, causing Good to appear to us Evil, and Evil 
 Good. I think we have a right to say that the suggestions 
 offered by the highest scientific intellects of our time, to 
 account for its existence on principles which shall leave it 
 on the level of other instincts, have failed to approve them- 
 selves as true to the facts of the case. And I think, there- 
 fore, that we are called on to believe still in the validity 
 of our own moral consciousness, even as we believe in the 
 validity of our other faculties, and to rest in the faith 
 
DARWINISM IX MORALS. 33 
 
 (well-nigli universal) of the liuraan race, in a fixed and 
 supreme Law of which the will of God is the embodiment, 
 and Conscience the Divine transcript. I think that we may 
 still repeat the hymn of Cleanthes : 
 
 " That our wills blended into Thine, 
 Concurrent in the Law divine, 
 Eternal, universal, just and good. 
 Honouring and honoured in our servitude, 
 Creation's Ptean march may swell, 
 The march of Law immutable. 
 Wherein, as to its noblest end. 
 All being doth for ever tend." 
 
JSS8AT IL 
 
 HEREDITARY PIETY.* 
 
 The history of Public Opinion, during the last half century 
 may be not inaptly compared to that of a well-fed, steady- 
 going old roadster, long cherished by a respectable elderly 
 squire, but imluckily transferred at his demise to his wild 
 young heir. Accustomed to all the neighbouring highways, 
 and trained to jog along them at five miles an hour, the poor 
 beast suddenly found itself lashed by "the discipline of 
 facts" and sundry new and cruel spurs, to get over the 
 ground at double its wonted pace, and at last to leave the 
 beaten tracks altogether and cut across country, over walls 
 and hedges which it never so much as peeped over before. 
 Under this altered regime it would appear that Public 
 Opinion at first behaved with the restiveness which was to 
 be expected. On some occasions he stood stock-still like a 
 donkey, with his feet stretched out, refusing to budge an 
 inch ; and anon he bolted and shied and took buck leaps into 
 the air, rather than go the way which stern destiny ordained. 
 But as time went on, such resistance naturally grew less 
 violent. The plungings and roarings subsided by degrees,, 
 and anybody who now pays attention to the animal will 
 probably be only led to observe that he is a little hard in the 
 mouth and apt to refuse his fences till he has been brought 
 
 1 Hereditary Genius. An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences. By 
 Francis Galton, F.R.S. 1 vol. 8vo. pp. 390. Macmillan. 1869. 
 
 Psychologie Naturelle. Etude sur les Facultes Intellectuelles at Morales. Par 
 Prosper Despine, 3 vols. Svo. Paris: F. Savy. 1868. 
 
36 HEREDITARY PIETY. 
 
 up to them two or three times. In his equine way he finds 
 each new discovery first "false" and then "against reli- 
 gion;" but at last he always makes a spring over it and 
 knocks off the top stone with his hind feet : " Everybody 
 knew it before ! " 
 
 Had not this process of accustoming Public Opinion to a 
 sharp pace and difiicult leaps been going on for some time, it 
 is to be believed that Mr. Gralton's book would have produced 
 considerably more dismay and called forth more virtuous 
 indignation than under present training has actually greeted 
 it. We have had to modify our ideas of all things in heaven 
 and earth so fast, that another shock even to our conceptions 
 of the nature of our own individual minds and faculties, is 
 not so terrible as it would once have been. We used first to 
 think (or our fathers and grandfathers thought for us) that 
 each of us, so far as our mental and moral parts were con- 
 cerned, were wholly fresh, isolated specimens of creative 
 Power, " trailing clouds of glory," straight out of heaven. 
 Then came the generation which believed in the omnipotence 
 of education. Its creed was, that you had only to " catch 
 your hare " or your child, and were he or she born bright or 
 dull-witted, the offspring of two drunken tramps, or of a 
 philosopher married to a poetess, it was all the same. It 
 depended only on the care with which you trained it and 
 crammed it with " useful knowledge" to make it a Cato and 
 a Plato rolled into one. Grrapes were to be had off thorns 
 and figs off thistles with the utmost facility in the forcing- 
 houses of Edgeworthian schools. It had, of course, been a 
 hard matter to bring Public Opinion up to this point. The 
 worthy old beast recalcitrated long, and when London 
 University reared its head, the trophy of the First Educa- 
 tional Crusade, all the waggery left in England was thought 
 to be displayed by dubbing it " Stinkomalee." But univer- 
 sity in town, and schools all over the country were over- 
 
HEREDITARY PIETY. 37 
 
 leaped at last, and nobody for years afterwards so much as 
 whis^Dered a doubt that the Three Learned R's were sign- 
 posts on the high road to Utopia. 
 
 Then arose the brothers Combe to put in some wise words 
 about physical, over and above mental, education. xlnd 
 somehow talking of physical education led to discussing 
 hereditarj^ physical qualities, and the " Constitution of Man" 
 was admitted to be influenced in a certain measure by the 
 heritage of his bodily organization. Children born of 
 diseased and vicious parents, the philosopher insisted, ran a 
 double chance of being themselves diseased and vicious, or 
 even idiotic ; and sound conditions in father, mother, and 
 nurse, had much to do, he thought, with similar good condi- 
 tions in their offspring and nursling. Strange to remember ! 
 Ideas obvious and undeniable, as these appear to us, seemed 
 nothing short of revolutionary when they first were pub- 
 lished ; and Public Opinion put back its ears and plunged 
 and snorted at a terrible rate, ere, as usual, it went over them 
 and " knew it all before." Nevertheless the inalienable 
 right of diseased, deformed, and semi-idiotic married people 
 to bring as many miserable children into the world as they 
 please, is yet an article of national faith, which to question 
 is the most direful of all heresies. 
 
 But these three jioctrines of mental and moral develop- 
 ment, — the doctrines, namely, 1st, that we came straight 
 down from heaven ; 2nd, that we could be educated into 
 anything ; 3rd, that some of our physical peculiarities might 
 be traced to inheritance, — were all three kept pretty clear of 
 meddlings with the Religious part of man. Experience, no 
 doubt, showed sufficiently decisively that Piety was not a 
 thing to be made to order, and that (at all events under the 
 existing dispensation) there was no bespeaking little Samuels. 
 The mysterious proclivity of children intended for such a 
 vocation to turn out pickles, luckily coincided with — or 
 
38 HEREDITARY PIETY. 
 
 possibly had a share in originating — the Calvinistic views of 
 Arbitrary Election ; while even the Arminians of those days 
 would have vehemently repudiated either the notion that 
 a man might inherit a pious disposition just as well as a 
 tendency to the gout, or that he would be likely to find the 
 true route to Paradise among other items of Useful Know- 
 ledge in the Penny Magazine. 
 
 I^ow it seems we are trotting up to another fence, vide- 
 licet, the doctrine that all man's faculties and qualities, 
 physical, mental, moral and religious, have a certain given 
 relation to the conditions of his birth. The hereditary 
 element in him, — that element of which we have hitherto 
 entertained the vaguest ideas, admitting it in his features 
 and diseases, and ignoring it in his genius and his passions ; 
 recognizing it in noble races as a source of pride, and for- 
 getting it as the extenuation of the faults of degraded ones, 
 — this mysterious element must, we are told, henceforth 
 challenge a place in all our calculations. AYe must learn to 
 trace it equally in every department of our nature ; and no 
 analysis of character can be held valid which has not 
 weighed it with such accuracy as may be attainable. Our 
 gauge of moral responsibility must make large allowance for 
 the good or evil tendencies inherited by saint or sinner, and 
 our whole theory of the meaning and scope of Education 
 must rise from the crude delusion that it is in our power 
 wholly to transform any individual child, to embrace the 
 vaster but remoter possibilities of gradually training suc- 
 cessive generations into higher intelligence and more com- 
 plete self-control, till the tendencies towards brute vice grow 
 weaker and expire, and " the heir of all the ages " shall 
 be born with only healthful instincts and lofty aspirations. 
 
 As always happens when a new truth is to be discovered, 
 there have been foreshadowings of this doctrine for some 
 years back. The hereditary qualities of Eaces of men have 
 
HEREDITARY PIETY. 39 
 
 occupied large room in our discussions. The awful phe- 
 nomena of inherited criminal propensities have interested 
 not only physicians (like the writer of the second book at 
 the head of our paper), but philosophic novelists like the 
 author of " Elsie Venner." Under the enormous impetus 
 given to all speculations concerning descent by Mr. Darwin, 
 some aj)plications of the doctrine of development to the 
 mind as well as body of man became inevitable, and a most 
 remarkable article in Fraser's Magazine, Oct. 1868, brought 
 to light a variety of unobserved facts regarding the " Failure 
 of Natural Selection in the case of Man," due to the special 
 tendencies of our civilization. Mr. Galton himself, five or 
 six years ago, published in Macmillan'' s Magazine the results 
 of his preliminary inquiries as to inherited ability in the 
 legal profession ; and Professor Tyndall perhaps gave the 
 most remarkable hint of all, by ascribing the " baby-love " 
 of women to the " set of the molecules of the brain " through 
 a thousand generations of mothers exercised in the same 
 functions. 
 
 But the work which has finally afforded fixed ground to 
 these floating speculations, and, in the humble judgment of 
 the present writer, inaugurated a new science with a great 
 future before it, is Mr. Galton's " Essay on Hereditary 
 Genius." The few errors of detail into which the author 
 has fallen in the wide and untrodden field he has attempted 
 to map out, and his easily explicable tendency to give undue 
 weight to disputable indications, and to treat a man's attain- 
 ment of high ofiice as equivalent to proof of his fitness for 
 it, — these weak points, on which the reviewers have fastened 
 with their usual bull-dog tenacity, cannot eventually influence 
 the acceptance of the immense mass of evidence adduced 
 to prove the main theses of the work, or bar our admira- 
 tion of its great originality. I do not propose in the ensuing 
 pages to give a general notice of the work, or to mark 
 
40 HEREDITARY PIETY. 
 
 either all the principles which I conceive Mr. Galton has 
 established, nor those others on which I should venture to 
 diiFer from him. His main doctrine he has, I believe, 
 demonstrated with mathematical certainty, viz., that all 
 mental faculties, from the most ordinary to the highest and 
 apparently most erratic forms of genius, the various gifts 
 of the statesman, soldier, artist and man of letters, are 
 distributed according to conditions among which inheritance 
 by descent of blood occupies the foremost place ; and that 
 there is no such thing in the order of nature as a mighty 
 genius who should be an intellectual Melchisedek. 
 
 The further deductions which Mr. Galton draws appear 
 to me curious and suggestive in the extreme ; as, for ex- 
 ample, the calculation of the proportion now obtaining 
 in Europe of Eminent Men to the general population ; 
 and, again, of the far rarer Illustrious Men to those of 
 ordinary eminence. Based on this calculation, the number 
 of both illustrious and eminent men who flourished among 
 the 135,000 free citizens of Attica during the age of 
 Pericles, is so nearly miraculous, that we find it hard 
 to picture such an intellectual feast as life must then 
 have offered. Society at Athens in those days must have 
 surpassed that of the choicest circles of Paris and London 
 now, as these are superior to the ale-house gossipings of 
 George Eliot's rustics. That populace for whose eye Phidias 
 chiselled, iliose play-goers for whose taste Sophocles and 
 Aristophanes provided entertainment, that "jeunesse doree" 
 Avhose daily lounge involved an argument with Socrates — 
 what were they all ? What rain of heaven had watered the 
 human tree when it bore such fruit in such profusion ? 
 And what hope may remain that it will ever bring them 
 forth in such clusters once more ? 
 
 Again, a flood of light is poured on the degeneracy of 
 mediaeval Europe by Mr. Galton's observations concerning 
 
HEREDITARY PIETY. 41 
 
 the celibacy of the clergy and the monastic orders. The 
 moment when, as Mr. Lecky shows, chastity (understood to 
 mean celibacy) was elevated into the sublimest of Chris- 
 tian virtues, that moment the chance that any man should 
 perpetuate his race became calculable in the mverse ratio 
 of his piety and goodness. Archbishop "Whately long ago 
 exposed the absurdity of the common boast of Catholics 
 concerning the learnins: and virtue hidden in the monasteries 
 during the Dark Ages. It would be equally reasonable to 
 take the lamps and candles out of every room in a house 
 and deposit them in the coal-cellar, and then call the 
 passers-by to remark how gloomy were the library and 
 drawing-room, how beautifully illuminated the coal-hole ! 
 But Mr. Galton points out that the evil of the ascetic 
 system was immeasurably wider and more enduring in its 
 results even than the subtraction for generation after 
 generation of the brightest minds and gentlest hearts 
 from the world which so grievously needed them. Ac- 
 cording to the laws of hereditary descent, it was the whole 
 future human race which was being cruelly spoiled of its 
 fairest hopes, its best chances of enjoying the services of 
 genius and of true saintship. Some of those who read 
 these pages may remember in the first Great Exhibition a 
 set of samples of what was called " Pedigree Wheat." The 
 gigantic ears, loaded with double-sized seeds, were simply 
 the result of ten years' successive selection of the finest ears, 
 and again the finest in each crop. The process which 
 Romanism efiected for the human race was precisely and 
 accurately the converse of that by which this Pedigree 
 Wheat was obtained. It simply cut off each stem which 
 rose above the average in mental or moral gifts. The 
 moment a man or a woman showed signs of being some- 
 thing better than a clod, a little more disposed for learning, 
 a little more gentle -natured, more pious or more charitable, 
 
42 HEREDITARY PIETY. 
 
 instantly he or she was induced to take the vow never to 
 become a parent ; and only by the infraction of such vows was 
 there a chance for the world of an heir to his or her virtues. 
 The best-born man among us now living, if he could trace 
 out the million or so of his ancestors contemporary twenty 
 generations ago, would hardly find among them a single 
 person mentally distinguished in any way. ^Ye are all 
 the de scendants of the caterans and hunters, the serfs and 
 boors of a thousand years. The better and greater men born 
 in the same ages hid their light under a bushel while they 
 lived, and took care that it should not be rekindled after 
 their death. When the Heformation came, the case was 
 even worse ; for then the ablest, the bravest and the truest- 
 hearted, were picked out for slaughter. The human tares 
 were left to flourish and reproduce their kind abundantly, 
 but the wheat was gathered in bundles to be burnt. To 
 this hour France feels the loss of Huguenot blood (so 
 strangely vigorous wherever it has been scattered !), and 
 Spain halts for ever under the paralysis of half her motor 
 nerves, cut off by the Inquisition. 
 
 Besides these discussions, Mr. Galton's book is full of 
 suggestive and original ideas concerning the results of mar- 
 riages with heiresses, — concerning the influence of able 
 mothers on their sons, — concerning the choice of «<wives by 
 gifted men, — and, finall}^, concerning the application of Mr. 
 Darwin's hypothesis of Pangenesis to human inheritance 
 of special qualities. Of these topics nothing can here be 
 said, though against some of them I would fain enter my 
 expression of dissent. There remains not more than space 
 enough to discuss the branch of Mr. Galton's subject which 
 properly falls under the notice of a Theological Heview, viz., 
 the statistics he has collected concerning Divines. 
 
 It was not a little mischievous of Mr. Galton to preface 
 his investigations about the families of pious men, by 
 
HEREDITARY PIETY. 43 
 
 quoting Psalms cxxviii. 3, cxiii. 9, xxv. 13, and then inno- 
 cently asking whether the wives of Christian divines have 
 any special resemblance to " fruitful vines," or their children 
 to " olive-branches ; " and whether, on the whole, their 
 seed does " inherit the land " in any noticeable manner. 
 Certainly, on the one hand, almost every one of us would 
 be ready to assure the inquirer that, to the best of our 
 persuasion, curates with small salaries have larger fami- 
 lies than men of any other profession ; and that " Mrs. 
 Quiverfull " was, and could only be, according to the natural 
 fitness of things, a poor clergyman's wife. But then, per 
 contra, our author is evidently unprepared to admit that 
 the unbeneficed clergy of the National Church have a 
 monopoly of piety, or that we ought to look among them 
 especially for the fruits of the first part of the patriarchal 
 benediction ; while it is manifest that the second blessing, 
 namely, the "inheriting of the land," falls much more 
 richly on the profane generation of the squirearchy. 
 
 Mr. Galton says he finds two conflicting theories afloat 
 on this matter. The first is, that there is a special good 
 providence for the children of the godly. The second is, 
 that the sons of religious persons mostly turn out excep- 
 tionally ill. He proceeds to inquire carefully what light 
 statistics can throw on these views, and whether both of 
 them must not yield to the ordinary law of heredity as 
 ruling in other spheres of human activity. 
 
 It was not an easy matter to settle at starting what 
 qualification should entitle a man to be reckoned among 
 the eminently pious. Obviously Roman Catholic saints 
 were out of the running, owing to the fatal law of celibacy, 
 whereby fruitful vines and numerous olive-branches are 
 allowed only to decorate the houses of persons who followed 
 not " counsels of perfection." Protestants, on the other 
 hand, have rarely been able to see all the merits of men of 
 
44 HEREDITARY PIETY. 
 
 different opinions from their own. The name of Laud has 
 not a sweet savour in Evangelical nostrils ; while the 
 Ritualist Dr. Littledale talks unconcernedly of those "scoun- 
 drels," the martyrs Hooper and Latimer. Nevertheless, 
 Mr. Galton has happily got over his difficulty through an 
 excellent collection — " Middleton's Biographia Evangelica," 
 published in 4 vols, in 1786, and containing 196 picked lives 
 of Protestant saints, from the Hefonnation downwards. Our 
 author subjects these biographies to sharp analysis, and the 
 following are the conclusions which he deduces from them. 
 
 These 196 Protestant saints were no cantino: humbuo-s. 
 They were for the greater part men of exceedingly noble 
 characters. Twenty-two of them were martyrs. They had 
 considerable intellectual gifts. None of them are reported 
 to have had sinful parents ; and out of the last 100 (whose 
 relations alone are traceable), 41 had pious fathers or mothers. 
 Their social condition was of every rank, from the highest 
 to the lowest. Only one-half were married men, and of these 
 the wives were mostly very pious. The number of their 
 children was a trifle below the average. No families of 
 importance in England are traceable to divines as founders, 
 except those of Lord Sandys and of the Hookers, the 
 famous botanists, who are the lineal descendants of the 
 author of the Ecclesiastical Polity. As regards health, the 
 constitution of most of the divines was remarkably bad. 
 Sickly lads are apt to be more studious than robust ones, 
 and the weakly students who arrived at manhood chiefly 
 recruited the band of divines. Among these semi-invalids 
 were Calvin, Melancthon, George Herbert, Baxter, and 
 Philip Henry. Reading the lives of eminent lawyers and 
 statesmen, one is struck by the number of them who have 
 had constitutions of iron ; but out of all Middleton's 196 
 divines, he only speaks of 12 or 13 as vigorous. Out of 
 these, 5 or 6 were wild in their youth and reformed in 
 
HEREDITARY PIETY. 45 
 
 later years; while only 3 or 4 of the other divines M^ere 
 ever addicted to dissipated habits. Seventeen out of the 
 196 were inter-related, and 8 more had other pious con- 
 nexions. The influence of inheritance of character through 
 the female line is much greater in the case of divines than 
 in that of any other eminent men ; an influence Mr. Galton 
 attributes to the utility, in their case, of a " blind conviction 
 which can best be obtained through maternal teaching in 
 childhood." 
 
 These results, as Mr. Galton would no doubt readily 
 admit, might be liable to considerable modification, could 
 we extend our field of operations over double or treble the 
 number of instances of piety, and especially if we could in- 
 clude types of piety from other creeds and a greater variety 
 of nations. Taken as it is, however, as the outcome of an 
 inquiry based on freely gathered specimens of Protestant 
 religious eminence, it appears to convey one of the most 
 curious morals ever presented by an historical investigation. 
 A true Christian has been often defined as "the highest 
 kind of man," and Mr. Galton himself avows that these 
 subjects of his anatomy were " exceedingly noble characters." 
 And yet he is forced to pronounce with equal decision from 
 the evidence before him, that they were mostly a tribe of 
 valetudinarians; that there must exist "a correlation between 
 an unusually devout disposition and a weak constitution;" 
 that " a gently complaining and fatigued spirit is that in 
 which Evangelical divines are apt to pass their days ;" and, 
 finally, that " we are compelled to conclude that robustness 
 of constitution is antagonistic in a very marked degree to 
 an extremely pious disposition " ! 
 
 There are no doubt still surviving in the world a good 
 many people who will find in these conclusions of Mr. 
 Galton's nothing to shock their conceptions of what ought 
 to be the causes, tenor and temper of a religious life. There 
 
46 HEREDITARY PIETY. 
 
 are those who still repeat, with Cowper, that this world is, 
 and ought to be, a Vale of Tears, and that a very proper 
 way to view our position therein is to liken ourselves to 
 " crowded forest trees, marked to fall." To such persons, 
 no doubt, it is natural to pass through the varied joys and 
 interests of youth, manhood and old age, plaintively ob- 
 serving to all whom it may concern, that they 
 
 Drag the dull remains of life 
 Along the tiresome road. 
 
 But these worthy people have certainly been in a minority 
 for the last twenty years, since the Psalm of Life took de- 
 finitively the place of the lugubrious " Stanzas subjoined to 
 the Bills of Mortality." And to us in our day it is un- 
 doubtedly somewhat of a blow to be told that Religion, 
 instead of being (as the old Hebrews believed) the correlative 
 of health and cheerfulness and length of years, is, on the 
 contrary, near akin to disease ; and that he among men whom 
 the Creator has blessed with the soundest body and coolest 
 brain, is, by some fiendish fatality, the least likely of all to 
 give his heart to God or devote his manly strength to His 
 cause. The Glorious Company of the Apostles is reduced to 
 a band of invalids, and the Noble Army of Martyrs is all on 
 the sick list ! 
 
 Is this true ? Shall we sit down quietly under this dic- 
 tum of Mr. Galton's, and agree for the future to consider 
 health and piety as mutually antagonistic ? For my own 
 part, I must confess that if facts really drove me to such a 
 conclusion, I should be inclined to say, with the French 
 philosopher contradicted in his theories, " Eh bien, mes- 
 sieurs ! tant pis pour les faits ! " No statistics should lash 
 mv (private) opinion over that six-barred gate. But are we 
 really driven to such straits at all ? It seems to me that 
 Mr. Galton's own words give us the key to the whole mys- 
 tery, and to a very important truth beside. He tells us at 
 
HEREDITARY PIETY. 47 
 
 starting that though Middleton assures the reader that no 
 bigoted partiality rules his selection of divines, yet that " it 
 is easy to see his leaning is strongly towards the Calvin- 
 ists." His 196 picked men are chosen (honestly enough, 
 no doubt) from the churches in which more or less closely 
 the Evangelical type of piety was adhered to as the stan- 
 dard of holiness. No Unitarian or Latitudinarian, no Deist 
 or Freethinker, had a chance of admission into his lists. 
 We have thus 196 specimens of the plants reared in the 
 peculiar hot-beds of the dominant Protestantism of the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Let us take them, 
 then, by all means, and reason on them as excellent exam- 
 ples, 1st, of the persons on whom that creed was calculated 
 to fasten ; and, 2ndly, of what really fine characters it was 
 able to form. But do not let us be misled for a moment 
 into the use of generalizations implying that it is " piety " 
 pur et simple, piety as it must always be, or always ought 
 to be, which is intrinsically " unsuited to a robust consti- 
 tution," and specially calculated to take root in a sickly 
 one. Do not let us rest content with the picture of "the 
 gently complaining and fatigued spirit," as if it were the 
 normal spirit of any other pious folk than those of the 
 orthodox persuasion. 
 
 And, again, does not this remarkable fact discovered by 
 Mr. Galton, namely, the physical sickliness attendant on 
 the prevalent forms of Christian piety, let in some light on 
 the fact whicb has been so often noticed, but so little 
 explained, namely, the lack of manliness among clergymen, 
 bishops and " professors " at large ? If the phenomenon 
 were not so familiar, it would surely be the most astonish- 
 ing in the world, that the preachers of religion and morality 
 should be as a body less straightforward, less simple, less 
 brave, than other men. When a clergyman twaddles and 
 cants and equivocates ; or when one Bishop " chalks up Free 
 
48 HEREDITARY PIETY. 
 
 Thought and runs away;" or another talks blasphemously 
 of " The Voice " guiding him to exchange a poor and pro- 
 vincial See for a rich one with a good town-house ; or, 
 finally, when " eminent saints " prove dishonest bankers, — 
 how is it that we do not all wring our hands and cry that 
 the heavens are falling ? Why do we only nod our heads 
 lugubriously and observe, " What a different sort of man is 
 the Ptev. A. B.'s brother. Captain C. D., of the Navy, or 
 Colonel E. F., of the — th Dragoons ! " or, " How the episco- 
 pal apron transforms a man into an old woman ! " or, " How 
 very dangerous it is to have dealings with the saints ! " ^ 
 
 Things like these ought to strike us dumb with amaze- 
 ment and horror, had not experience hardened us to a vague 
 anticipation of a correlation between an extraordinary dis- 
 play of Christian sentiment and a proportionate lack of the 
 element of manly honesty and courage. Without formu- 
 larizing our ideas on the matter, there are few of us who, 
 if we were attacked by robbers in a house with a saintly 
 clergyman upstairs and a profane man of the world below, 
 would nf t rush first to seek our defender in the lower story. 
 Again, in matters of veracity, to whose recommendation of a 
 servant or a teacher do we attach most value — that of the 
 pious vicar of the parish, or that of the fox-hunting squire ? 
 Not to pursue these illustrations further, I think ray position 
 will be hardly gainsaid if I assert that, while the theo- 
 logical virtues, fiiith, hope, charity, purity, and resignation, 
 flourish abundantly in the vineyard of the Church, the 
 merely moral virtues, courage, fortitude, honesty, generosity 
 and veracity, are found to grow more vigorously elsewhere. 
 It is not of course maintained that either side of the Avail 
 
 1 We have heard an authentic story of a clergyman Avho, heing present at a 
 prayer-meeting at which Sir John Dean Paul engaged in devotion, immediately 
 afterwards ruslied up to town and drew all his money out of the too pious 
 hanker' s hands ! 
 
HEREDITARY PIETY. 49 
 
 has a monopoly of either class of virtues ; but that the 
 priestly or evangelical character has a tendency to form 
 a distinct type of its own ; and that in that type there is 
 a preponderance of the more fragile and feeble virtues, 
 and a corresponding deficiency in those which are healthy, 
 robust and masculine. "Muscular Christianity" is a modern 
 innovation, a hazardous and not over-successful attempt 
 to combine physical vigour and spiritual devotion ; and the 
 very convulsiveness of the efforts of its apostles to achieve 
 such a harmony affords the best possible proof of how 
 widely apart to all our apprehensions had previously been 
 " Muscularity " and " Christianity." 
 
 But all these remarks apply to what has hitherto passed 
 muster as the received type of piety, and not by any means 
 to Piety in the abstract apart from its orthodox colouring. 
 The unmanliness belongs Avholly to the mould, and not to 
 the thing moulded. No man has ever yet felt himself, or 
 been felt by others to be, less manly because in public or in 
 private he has professed his faith in God and his allegiance 
 towards Him. The noblest line perhaps in all French 
 poetry is that which Racine puts into the mouth of the 
 Jewish High-priest, 
 
 " Je crains Dieu, clier Abner, et u'ai jJoiut d' autre craiute." 
 
 It must be admitted that the same cannot be said of the 
 profession of belief in sundry doctrines of orthodoxy. The 
 urgency of a man's dread of hell-fire, his anxiety to obtain 
 the benefits of the Atonement, and his undisguised rejoicing 
 that " Christ his Passover is slain for him," are none of 
 them sentiments to which we attach the character of man- 
 liness or generosity. 
 
 Perhaps there is no point on which the religion of the 
 future is so certain to differ from that of the past, as in its 
 comparative healthfulness of spirit. And just as a sickly 
 
 4 
 
50 HEREDITARY PIETY. 
 
 creed, full of dreadful threats and mystic ways of expiation, 
 appealed to minds more or less morbidly constituted, so it 
 is to be believed that a thoroughly healthy and manly 
 creed will harmonize no less distinctly with natures happy, 
 healthful and normally developed. 
 
 From this branch of the subject we pass to a most 
 curious and original analysis which Mr. Galton has made 
 of what he considers the typical religious character. It 
 must be premised that in another part of his book he has 
 broached the doctrine, that the sense of incompleteness and 
 imperfection which theologians define to be the sense of 
 Original Sin, is probably only our vague sense that we are 
 as yet not thoroughly trained to the conditions of civilized 
 life in which we find ourselves, and that there yet remains 
 in us too much of the wild beast, or at least of the hunter 
 and the nomad, to accommodate ourselves perfectly with the 
 polished forms of life in our age and country. " The sense 
 of original sin," he says,'^ "would show, according to my 
 theory, not that man was fallen from a high estate, but 
 that he was rising in moral culture with more rapidity than 
 the nature of his race could follow." Generations hence, 
 when civilization has thoroughly done its work, and the 
 instincts of sudden passion and unreasoning selfishness and 
 impatience of law and rule have died out of the whole 
 human family, then we may expect the vague sense of 
 imperfection and guilt to die out too. We are, if I may 
 venture to suggest the simile to Mr. Galton, at the present 
 day much in the condition of that unhappy bird, the Apteryx. 
 Through long ages of gradual disuse of flying, our wings 
 have grown smaller and weaker, so that if we desired to 
 return to the habits of our remote progenitors, we should 
 infallibly come to the ground. But the vestiges of the 
 pinions are still there, more or less hidden under our 
 
 1 Page 350. 
 
HEREDITARY PIETY. 51 
 
 plumage, and so long as they are to be felt, we cannot help 
 flapping them sometimes and pining for a flight. The dis- 
 covery that we can neither be happy flying or walking, 
 barbarous or civilized, constitutes the grand discontent of 
 life. The sense that we are always inclined to make flaps 
 and flights and fall on our beaks in the dust, is the natural 
 element in Original Sin. 
 
 On this very singular idea Mr. Galton evidently proceeds, 
 in the part of his book under present consideration, to 
 define what be deems to be the typical Religious Character. 
 He holds that its chief feature is its conscious moral insta- 
 bility. It is the conjunction of warm affections and high 
 aspirations with frequent failures and downfalls, which 
 makes a man alike sensible of his own frailty and inclined 
 to rely on the serene Strength which he believes rules 
 above him. The religiovis man is " liable to extremes ; now 
 swinging forwards into regions of enthusiasm, now back- 
 wards into those of sensuality and selfishness." David, in 
 fact, the David who both slew Uriah and wrote the peni- 
 tential psalms, is the eternal type of the godly man ; and 
 it is much more easy to find Davids among semi-civilized 
 Judsean shepherds or Negroes or Celts than among long 
 civilized races such as the Chinese. 
 
 With this religious type Mr. Galton contrasts the ideal 
 Sceptic, and concludes that the differences of character 
 which in the one case make a man happy in the belief in 
 a Divine Guide and Father, and in the other, content in a 
 mental state tantamount to Atheism, must needs lie in 
 this, that while the Religious man is conscious of his in- 
 firmity of will and instability of resolution, insomuch that 
 he needs the thought of God for his support, the Sceptic, 
 on the contrary, is sufficiently sure of himself and confident 
 in his own self- guidance to feel comparatively no such need 
 for external aid, and to be able without pain to stifle any 
 
52 HEREDITARY PIETY. 
 
 instinctive longings for a Divine Protector which may arise 
 in his heart. In other words, as Religion had been pre- 
 viousl}^ found to be correlated with a feeble physical con- 
 stitution, so here it is identified with a moral constitution 
 feverish, vacillating and incapable of self-reliance. The 
 sceptic, on the contrary, is no longer to be looked on, as we 
 had pictured him, as a man in whom the moral nature never 
 rises to the spring-tide where its waves break at the feet of 
 Grod. He is the exalted being whose whole moral and 
 intellectual economy is in such perfect balance and harmony, 
 that he can say with Heine, " I am no longer a child. I do 
 not need any more a Heavenly Father." 
 
 These views, which Mr. Galton has by no means illus- 
 trated in the above manner, but which I think I do him no 
 injustice in so translating, are, in my humble judgment, 
 among the most original and striking of any of the theories 
 propounded on these subjects for many a day. That there 
 is a considerable element of truth in them, I must heartily 
 acknowledge, albeit I would read it in a somewhat different 
 sense from Mr. Galton. The impulsive temperament is 
 beyond question by far the most genuinely religious tem- 
 perament. The calm, cold, prudential nature, when it adopts 
 religion, does so as an additional precaution of prudence, 
 and is " other-worldly " neither more nor less than it is 
 worldly. Real, spontaneous, self-forgetful religion, springs 
 and flourishes in the heart which is swayed by feeling, not 
 by interest. Nay, more : the sense of Sin, which is the 
 deepest part of all true piety is (we cannot doubt) far more 
 vivid in natures wherein much of the wild, untamed human 
 being still survives, which are swayed alternately by oppo- 
 site motives, and are yet far from having been so disciplined 
 and moulded in the school of the world as to be mere 
 civilized machines. Probably it has happened to all of us 
 at some time or other to wish that we could see some self- 
 
HEREDITARY PIETY. 53 
 
 satisfied paragon of steadiness and respectability fall for 
 once into some disgraceful fault, get drunk, or swear, or do 
 something which should shake him out of his self-conceit, 
 and give him a chance to learn that Religion and Pharisaism 
 are not convertible terms. Many of us also must have 
 watched the deplorable delusion of some originally good and 
 always well-balanced character, in which, as there seems 
 no need for self-restraint, no self-restraint is ever tried, and 
 amiability lapses into self-indulgence, and self-indulgence 
 into selfishness, and selfishness into hypocrisy and hardness 
 of heart. 
 
 On the other hand, the permanent Sceptic is probably 
 equally fairly described as a man who has not only made 
 up his mind to the intellectual conclusion that there is 
 nothing to be known about Grod, but also has reconciled his 
 heart to the lack of religious supports and consolations 
 through the help of a sturdy self-reliance. Either he is a 
 sinner without any particular shame or hatred for his sin ; 
 or, as oftener happens, he is of so passionless a temperament, 
 so prudent and well-balanced a constitution, that he recog- 
 nizes few sins to repent of in the past, and knows that no 
 serious temptation is likely to overmaster him in the future. 
 In every case, the double sense of self-abasement and self- 
 mistrust are absent. He has no need to be reconciled with 
 himself, so he feels no need of being reconciled with God. 
 He walks firmly along a certain broad and beaten path of 
 ordinary honesty, justice, and sobriety, without toiling up 
 celestial heights in the pursuit of love and faith and purity ; 
 and for his own road, and so far as he means to travel, he 
 calls for no angels to bear him on their wings. 
 
 Lastly, it is easy to verify the fact, that these tempera- 
 ments correspond in their main outlines to the races and 
 sexes in which religion and scepticism are each most fre- 
 quently developed. The impulsive races of mankind, the 
 
54 HEREDITARY PIETY. 
 
 Southern nations of Europe, are more inclined to religion 
 and less to incredulity than those of the North. The un- 
 stable Celt is more pious, whether he be Catholic in Ireland 
 or Methodist in "Wales, than the steady-going, law-abiding 
 Saxon of any denomination. And, finally, women are more 
 religious than men, while displaying usually more vacilla- 
 tion of the will and (probably in most cases) higher as- 
 pirations after ideal holiness and purity. 
 
 What is now to be our conclusion respecting Mr, Galton's 
 theory of the Origin of Piety ? We have seen, in the first 
 instance, that he identifies it with a sickly physical consti- 
 tution, and I ventured so far to correct this result as to 
 substitute for Piety in general. Piety in the particular form 
 of Evangelical Christianity. I pointed out that it was 
 only from among Evangelical Divines that the premisses 
 of his argument had been taken, and that there was a very 
 strong presumption that Piety equally deep and true, but 
 of an opposite type, would, on experience, be found to show 
 a no less marked afiinity for those " robust constitutions " 
 wherein the orthodox seed finds an ungenial soil. 
 
 In the present case, we have to decide whether we can 
 admit Mr. Galton's second correlation of Piety with moral 
 instability of purpose. In my opinion, we may rightly 
 trace in this case a relation between all true types of piety 
 and such instability, provided that we interpret the insta- 
 bility to consist, not in an unusual degree of frailty in acting 
 up to a mediocre standard of virtue, not in having merely, 
 as he avers, a greater " amplitude of moral oscillations than 
 other men of equal average position," but in a necessarily 
 imperfect attempt to act up to a standard higher than that 
 commonly received, and for which the man (to apply Mr. 
 Galton's system) has not been sufficiently highly bred. 
 
 What, then, is the bearing of our admission as regards 
 this matter ? It is tantamount only to this : that the tern- 
 
HEREDITARY PIETY. 55 
 
 perament Avhich contains the noblest elements and aspires 
 highest, even if it fall lowest, is also the nature on which 
 the crowning glory of the love of God most often descends. 
 Just as Longinus decides that the greatest poem is not 
 the one which longest sustains an even flight, but the one 
 which ever and anon soars into the highest empyrean, even 
 so the man who in his highest moments rises highest is 
 truly the greatest man. It is he who, though his nature 
 be a very chaos of passions — a den of wild beasts, as many 
 of the saints have spoken of their own souls — yet has in 
 him longings and strivings and yearnings after the Holy 
 and the Perfect ; it is he who is not only naturally predis- 
 posed to piety, but worthy to know the joy of religion. Out 
 of such stuff demi-gods are made. Out of well-ordered, 
 prudent, self-reliant sceptics, men of the world are made, 
 and nothing more. 
 
 It is, I apprehend, a definite and very valuable acquisition 
 to psychology, to recognize that it is not by accident, but 
 natural law, that the characters wherein flesh and spirit do 
 hardest battle, and Apollyon not seldom gains temporary 
 advantage, are yet precisely those who are " bound for the 
 Celestial City." Mr. Worldly-Wiseman never descends into 
 the Valley of Humiliation; but neither does he ever climb the 
 Delectable Mountains nor push through the Golden Gates. 
 
 With regard to the hereditary descent of religious as well 
 as other qualities, Mr. Galton developes his theory in the 
 following manner. Starting on the assumption that the 
 typical religious man is one who combines high moral gifts 
 with instability of character, it is obvious that if one of the 
 two elements whose conihination makes the parent's piety 
 is separately inherited by the son, an opposite result will 
 appear. If the son's heritage " consist of the moral gifts 
 without the instability, he will not feel the need of extreme 
 
56 HEREDITARY PIETY. 
 
 piety," and may become ]\Ir. Galton's ideal sceptic. " If he 
 inlierit great instability without morality, he may very pro- 
 bably disgrace his name." Only in the thii^d contingency, 
 namely, that of the son inheriting both the father's qualities, 
 is there ony security for his following in the parental steps. 
 
 Thus we have an explanation more or less satisfactorj' 
 of the double phenomenon, that there is such a thing as 
 hereditary piet}^, and that there is also an occasional (though 
 I hardly think a very common) tendency for the sons of a 
 really religious man to turn out either sceptics or repro- 
 bates. So far as my judgment goes, I should say that the 
 common disposition of children is to share in a very marked 
 manner the emotional religious constitutions of their parents, 
 and that this is only counteracted when piety is presented to 
 them in so repulsive a shape, as to provoke the over-lectured 
 "little Samuels" into rebellion. There are two facts connected 
 with such heritage which must have forced themselves on 
 the attention of all my readers. One of them falls in with 
 Mr. Galton's theories of heredity, but the other must needs 
 be explained by reference to post-natal influences. The first 
 is the tendency of strong religious feeling to pervade whole 
 families. The second is the eqfually strong tendency of the 
 different members of such religious families to adopt different 
 creeds and types of piety from one another, insomuch that 
 the symjDathy which ought to have united them in closer 
 bonds than other households is too often converted into a 
 source of dissensions. 
 
 These two facts will, I think, be disputed by few observers. 
 All of us are acquainted with families in which no vehement 
 warmth of religion has ever shown itself, and in which, 
 according to Evangelical language, ''conversions" never take 
 place. Again, we all know, personally, a few, and by report 
 a great many families, where for successive generations there 
 are men and women of either saintly piety or fanatic zeal. 
 
HEREDITARY PIETY. 57 
 
 As Hindoos would say, there are Brahmin races in which 
 twice-born men are found, and Kshatriyas and Soodras in 
 which the phenomenon of regeneration never occurs. 
 
 This remarkable fact may, of course, be explained doubly. 
 There is the hereditary tendency to the religious constitution ; 
 and there are all the thousand circumstances of youthful im- 
 pression likely to bring that tendency into action. Family 
 traditions of deeds and words, family pictures, and of course 
 family habits of devotion, where these are maintained, are 
 incentives of incalculable weight. It would be hard for the 
 present writer to define how much of her own earlier feelings 
 on such matters were due to a handful of books of the 
 Fenelon school of devotion, left by chance in an old library, 
 the property of a long dead ancestress. 
 
 But if the fact of hereditary piety be easily explicable, 
 who is to explain to us the mystery of the radiation in 
 opposite directions of the theological compass, so frequently 
 witnessed in the sons and daughters of these particular 
 homes? Do we see in an Evangelical family one son become 
 a Eoman Catholic ? Then, ten to one, another will ere 
 long avow himself an Unitarian. Does sister A enter an 
 Anglican convent ? Then brother B will probably become 
 a Plymouth brother ; while C, having gone through a dozen 
 phases of faith, will settle finally in Theism. 
 
 It seems to be a law, that though the predisposition to piety 
 may be conveyed by our parents both by blood and education, 
 yet the awakening to strong spiritual life rarely or never 
 happens under their influence, or that of any one altogether 
 familiar with us. The spark must be kindled by a more dis- 
 tant torch, the pollen brought from a remoter flower. When 
 the mysterious process does not take place wholly spon- 
 taneously, it comes from some person who adds a fresh 
 impetus and keener sympathy to elements hitherto dormant 
 in our souls. Then happens the marvellous " palingenesia ; " 
 
58 HEREDITARY PIETY. 
 
 and whether he who has helped to work it be of one creed 
 or another, he colours the spiritual world for us at that deci- 
 sive hour and evermore. We do not " adopt his opinions ; " 
 we seize by sympathy on his faith, and make our own both 
 its strength and its limitations. 
 
 If we admit, on the whole, Mr. Gralton's views with these 
 modifications, the serious questions arise : "What must be 
 their general bearing on our theories of the Order of Pro- 
 vidence ; and on our anticipations respecting the probable 
 future of Eeligion ? Is it not, in the first place (as our fathers 
 would certainly have held), injurious to the Divine character 
 to suppose that men are in this new sense " elected " to 
 piety by the accident of birth, or, conversely, left so poorly 
 endowed with the religious sentiment, that their attainment 
 of a high grade of devotion is extremelj^ improbable ? And 
 in the second place, if the impulsive character be the most 
 genuinely religious, and the tendency of civilization be to 
 reduce all imj)ulse to a minimum, is there not reason to ap- 
 prehend that in the course of centuries Religion, no longer 
 finding its fitting soil in human characters, will dwindle 
 and continually lessen its influence ? I shall do my best to 
 answer both these questions honestly in succession. 
 
 The blasphemy of the Calvinistic doctrines of Predesti* 
 nation and Election does not lie in their representing God 
 as dealing differently with His creatures A and B, but in 
 representing Him as inflicting on B an infinite penalty for 
 no fault of his own, or, as we should say in common par- 
 lance, for his ill-luck in having been born B and not A. 
 Repudiating all ideas of such penalties, and of any final evil 
 for a creature of God, insisting, as the first article of our faith, 
 
 " that somehow good, 
 Shall be the final goal of ill. 
 To i^angs of nature, sins of will, 
 Defects of doubt and taints of blood,''' 
 
HEREDITARY PIETY. 59 
 
 the doctrine of Election is reduced to dimensions which it 
 would be hard for one who has cast an eye over history 
 or society altogether to deny. The inequalities of moral 
 advantages in education and the circumstances of life are 
 as obvious as the inequalities of height, weight, ability, for- 
 tune, or any other of the conditions allotted to us by Pro- 
 vidence. If we mortals would fain have constructed the 
 world on the plan of the Spartan commonwealth, and given 
 each man an equal share of the good things thereof, it is 
 quite certain that God entertains no such scheme, and that 
 the principle of infinite Variety which prevails over every leaf 
 and blade of grass, approves itself to His supreme judgment 
 no less perfectly, applied to the gifts and conditions of His 
 rational creatures. Is there anything in this to hurt our 
 sense of justice ? It is to be trusted that there is not, 
 seeing that, if it were so, religious reverence must be at an 
 end, since no argument can possibly overthrow the omni- 
 present fact before our eyes. The uneasiness we feel in 
 contemplating it arises, I believe, from causes all destined 
 to vanish with the progress of a nobler theology. Beside 
 the idea of the final perdition of the sinful which it is so 
 difficult ever thoroughly to root out of our minds, we are 
 hampered with a dozen false conceptions all allied thereto. 
 We think that all acts which we call sins, and which would 
 be sins for us who recognize them as such and have no 
 urgent temptations to commit them, are necessarily the 
 same sins to the ignorant, the helpless, and besotted ; and 
 we dream that Divine Justice must somehow vindicate 
 itself against them in the next life. We make no sufficient 
 allowance for the immeasurable difference of the standard 
 by which the Pharisee and the Publican must be weighed. 
 We forget how, when the poor bodily frames, so often 
 disgraced, fall away at last into the dust, the souls which 
 wore them, released from all their contaminations, may 
 
60 HEREDITARY PIETY. 
 
 arise, purer than we can tliink, cleaner than we can know, 
 to the higher worlds above. Least of all do we take 
 count of the comparative responsibility which must belong 
 to what must be called the comparative sanity of human 
 beings. In the very remarkable and exhaustive treatise 
 whose title I have placed second at the head of this 
 article, there is to be found a most elaborate analysis of 
 scores of cases of heinous crime committed of late years 
 in France. Making allowance for the author's zeal 
 leading him to push his conclusions somewhat beyond 
 what his premisses warrant, the multitude of these crimes, 
 which he gives us good reasons to believe were committed 
 either under temporary aberration of mind or congenital 
 moral idiotcy, are perfectly appalling. Little doubt can 
 remain on any reader's mind that multitudes of men and 
 women are so constituted as to have but an infinitesimal 
 share of moral responsibility. The most atrocious crimes 
 are often precisely those which, on learning the utter insen- 
 sibility displayed from first to last by the j^erpetrators, we 
 are obliged most distinctly to class with such maniacal 
 homicides as that of poor Lamb's sister, or with the ravages 
 of a man-eating tiger in an Indian village. 
 
 Again, the inequalities of moral endowment become salient 
 to our apprehension when we contemplate the difierent races 
 of mankind. Who can imagine for a moment that the same 
 measure will be meted to a Malay or a Kaffir assassin as to 
 an English Pritchard or a French La Pommerais ? 
 
 But (it may be said) we are not now concerned about the 
 righteous judgments of God on human transgressions. We 
 are content to believe they will be meted out with absolute 
 impartiality at last. What is painful in the theory of 
 Hereditary Piety is the idea that, through such material 
 instrumentality as natural birth, the most divine of all gifts 
 should be bestowed or denied, and that, in fact, a pious man 
 
HEREDITARY PIETY. 61 
 
 owes his piety not so much (as we had ever believed) to the 
 direct action of the Holy Ghost on his soul, blowing like the 
 wind where it listeth, but rather to his earthly father's physi- 
 cal bequest of a constitution adapted to the religious emotions. 
 
 It does not seem to me that the two views, that of the 
 need for the free inspiration of Grod's Spirit, and that of the 
 heritage of what we will call the religious constitution, are 
 in themselves incompatible. The one is the seed which 
 must needs be sown ; the other is the ground, more or less 
 rich and well prepared, into which it must be cast. That 
 among those natural laws which are simply the permanent 
 mode of Divine action, should be found the law that the 
 ground-work of piety may be laid through generations, and 
 that the godly man may bequeath to his child not only a 
 body free from the diseases entailed by vice, but also a mind 
 specially qualified for all high and pure emotions, — this, I 
 think, ought to be no great stumbling-block. That there is 
 something else necessary beside a constitutional receptivity 
 towards pious emotions, and that there remains as much as 
 ever for God to do for man's soul after we have supposed 
 he has inherited such receptivity, is, I think, sufl&ciently clear. 
 
 But how of those who inherit no such character, but 
 rather the opposite tendency towards absorption in purely 
 secular interests, towards incredulity, or towards that evenly- 
 balanced nature which Mr. Galton attributes to the typical 
 sceptic, and is alike without penitence and without " am- 
 bition sainte"? Surely we have only to admit that here 
 is one more of the thousand cases in which this world's 
 tuitions are extended only to the elementary parts of that 
 moral education which is to go on for eternity ? That God 
 teaches a few of us some lessons here, which others must 
 wait to learn hereafter, is as certain as that infants, idolators, 
 idiots and boors, are not on the intellectual level of Plato or 
 the moral level of Christ. That it is all the more (and not 
 
62 HEREDITARY PIETY. 
 
 the less) certain that an immortality of knowledge and love 
 awaits these disinherited ones of earth and " trims the 
 balance of eternity," appears to me the most direct of all 
 deductions from the justice and goodness of God. 
 
 The truth seems to be that every human soul has its 
 special task and its special help. Some of us have to toil 
 against merely gross sensual passion. Others are raised a 
 step higher, and fight with less ignoble irascible feelings 
 and selfish ambitions. Yet, again, others rise above all these. 
 But is their work therefore at an end ? Not so. Metaphy- 
 sical doubts, moral despondencies, spiritual vanities, meet 
 them and bufiet them in the higher air to which they have 
 ascended ; and who may say that their battle is not hardest 
 of all ? To help us to contend against these difficulties, 
 one of us is blessed with happy circumstances, another 
 has a sunny and loving disposition, a third is gifted with a 
 stern moral sense, and a fourth with a fervent love for Grod. 
 He who sees all these springs and wheels moving with or 
 against one another, can alone judge which is the noblest 
 victor among all the combatants. 
 
 Lastly, we have to touch the question, whether the ten- 
 dency of Civilization to check the impulsive temperament 
 and foster the more balanced prudential character, will in 
 future time re-act upon Religion by suppressing the develop- 
 ment of those natures in which it now takes easiest root. 
 
 At first sight, it would undoubtedly appear that such 
 might be the case. Yet, as it is certain that in our day, 
 while civilization increases more rapidly than ever and the 
 power of mere creeds is evaporating into thin air, the reli- 
 gious feelings of mankind ai-e by no means dying out, but 
 are perhaps higher pitched than ever before, so we may 
 fairly conclude that some other law comes into play to 
 compensate for the rude zeal of semi-barbarism. One thing 
 is obvious. The moral conception which men entertain of 
 
HEREDITARY PIETY. 63 
 
 God rises constantly with their own moral progress. When 
 the nations shall have reached a pinnacle of ethical excel- 
 lence far beyond our present standard, when the wild and 
 fierce instincts now rampant shall have died out of the 
 human race, and the ever-fostered social affections wreathe 
 the earth with garlands of grace and fragrance, — even when 
 that far-oif millennium comes, God will assuredly seem just 
 as far above man as He seems now. His holiness will 
 transcend human virtue, as the Chaldasan sky overarched 
 the Tower which was built to reach it. 
 
 Another point must not be forgotten in this connexion. 
 The conscious instability of a nature capable alike of great 
 good and great evil, is indeed often, as Mr. Galton teaches 
 us, the first motive which makes a man religious. But having 
 become religious, he does not normally remain in a con- 
 tinual tempest of contending principle and passion. That 
 Supreme Guidance which he looks for from on high, and 
 which he believes himself to obtain, leads him onward, as 
 the years go by, out of the wilderness with its fiery scorpions 
 of remorse, into a land of green pastures, beside still waters. 
 The calm of a really religious old age, is a peace compared 
 to which the equipoise of the sceptic is as the stillness of a 
 mill-pond to that of the ocean on whose breast all the host 
 of stars is reflected. 
 
 It must needs be the same as regards the race. Noiv it 
 is ever those, 
 
 " Who rowing hard against the stream, 
 See distant gates of Eden gleam, 
 And do not dream it is a dream." 
 
 But hereafter, in the far-off future, when the wilder im- 
 pulses are dead, mankind may not need to strive always so 
 violently to "take the kingdom of Heaven by force;" but 
 glide on softly and surely, borne by the ever-swelling cur- 
 rents of Faith and Love. 
 
ESSAY III. 
 
 THE RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 In his great work, " Les Apotres," M. Renan prophesies 
 that a hundred years to come the ostensible boundaries of 
 Judaism, Catholicism and Protestantism, will not have 
 undergone essential alteration. Each church, however, will 
 then consist of two distinct classes of adherents — those who 
 honestly believe in its doctrines, and those who disbelieve 
 them altogether, but continue to pay them outward homage, 
 and to conform to established rites, from motives of public 
 policy, tenderness for the weak, romantic sentiment, or, per- 
 chance, indifference. Dogma will, in those happy times, be 
 treated as a sacred ark, never to be opened, and therefore 
 harmless even if empty. 
 
 I must beg leave to doubt that this millennium is so 
 near as M. Renan supposes ; nay, that it will ever arrive. 
 The pure love of theoretic truth, which he justly lays down 
 as the one proper motive for those historical researches 
 which are undermining the popular creed, will hardly con- 
 duct men generally to lives of practical falsehood. To study 
 with the simple desire of obtaining facts, regardless of the 
 bearing such facts may have upon our most cherished pre- 
 judices, can scarcely be a good preparatory training for 
 acting ever afterwards as if there were no such things as 
 facts in the most solemn concerns of human existence. To 
 
 6 
 
66 RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 arrive at the conclusion that the Divine mercy is withheld 
 from no honest seeker, however many mental errors he may 
 have ignorantly imbibed, is not precisely the same con- 
 clusion (albeit M. Renan would have it so) as that religious 
 belief is of no consequence to the soul which entertains it, 
 and that it is just as possible to be noble with a base faith 
 as with the purest — to love God when He is represented as 
 a cruel and capricious Despot, as when He is revealed as 
 the holy and blessed Father of all. 
 
 Rather do I believe that a very different future is before 
 the world. The reaction has come from the belief of Chris- 
 tendom for eighteen centuries, that " everlasting fire " might 
 be the penalty of even unwitting error concerning Trinities 
 and Unities, Incarnations and Processions ; and the first 
 result of that reaction is very obviously and naturally to 
 lead men to depreciate for a time the real value which must 
 for ever belong to the possession of such religious truth as 
 each soul may be permitted to grasp. Because an artificial 
 extrinsic penalty upon error is no longer feared, the intrinsic 
 and unchangeable value of truth is for a moment forgotten. 
 But ere long a juster estimate will be made. That calm, 
 earnest, fearless spirit of search, which distinguishes so 
 strangely the great thinkers of pre-Christian times from the 
 feverish and terror-haunted anxiety of those who followed 
 them, will return to the world, and will become the habitual 
 temper of all the wise and good. Men will no longer seek 
 the waters of life, as in a tale of enchantment, because they 
 can save the drinker from some fiend's spell of torture or 
 transport him to a fairy paradise. But they will seek them 
 as when, after long, weary days of desert march, the traveller, 
 dust-soiled and parched with thirst, sees Jordan eddying be- 
 tween its willowy banks, and flings himself on the grass and 
 drinks its sweet waters and bends in its waves till they go 
 over, even over his soul. 
 
RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 Religious errors imbibed in youth are like those constitu- 
 tional maladies which may lie latent for years and perhaps 
 never produce acute evil of any kind, but which also may at 
 any time burst into painful and sharp disease. Human nature 
 possesses sometimes such a tendency to all things healthy, 
 bright and beautiful, that the most gloomy creeds fail to de- 
 press its natural buoyancy of hope and trustfulness, and the 
 most immoral ones to soil its purity. We all know, and rejoice 
 to know, many men, many more women, who are among the 
 excellent of the earth, but who if they did but succeed (as they 
 profess to aim to do) in likening themselves to the Deity they 
 have imagined, would needs be transformed from the most 
 gentle and pitiful to the most cruel and relentless. The 
 non-operative dogmas in such creeds as theirs would terrify 
 them, could they but recognize them. But because of these 
 blessed inconsistencies, numerous as they are, we must not 
 suppose that such seeds of unmeasured evil as religious false- 
 hoods, are always, or even oftenest, innoxious. Like the man 
 with hereditary disease, the mischief may long lie unper- 
 ceived, while the course of his life does not tend to bring 
 it into action. But an accident of most trivial kind, a blow 
 to body or mind, a change of climate or of habits, may 
 suddenly develope what has been hidden so long, and the man 
 may sink imder a calamity which with healthier constitution 
 he would have surmounted in safety. 
 
 On the other hand, no words can adequately describe the 
 value of a religious faith which supplies the soul, I will not 
 say with absolute and final truth, but with such measure of 
 truth as is its sufficient bread of life, its pure and healthful 
 sustenance. We may not always see that this is so. As 
 error may lie long innoxious, so truth may remain latent in 
 the mind, and, as it woiild seem, useless and unprofitable. 
 He who has been blessed with the priceless boon may go 
 his way, and the " cares of the world and deceitfulness of 
 
68 RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 riches," the thousand joys and sorrows, pursuits and interests, 
 faults and follies of life, may carry him on year after year 
 heeding but little the treasure he carries in his breast. Yet, 
 even in his worst hours, that truth is a talisman to ennoble 
 what might else be wholly base, to warm what might be all 
 selfish, to purify and to cheer by half-understood influence 
 over all thoughts and feelings. But it is in the supreme 
 moments of life, the hours of agony or danger or temptation 
 to mortal sin, the hours when it is given to us either to step 
 down into a gulf whose bottom we may not find before the 
 grave, or to spring back out of falsehood or bitterness or 
 self-indulgence upon the higher level of truth and love and 
 holiness — it is in tliese hours that true religious faith shows 
 itself as the power of God unto salvation. With it, there is 
 nothing man may not bear and do. Without it, he is in 
 danger immeasurable. With a false creed — a creed false to 
 the instincts of the soul, incapable of supplying its needs of 
 reverence and love, such as they have been constituted by 
 the Creator — a man's joys may cover the whole surface of his 
 life ; but underneath there is a cold, dark abyss of doubt and 
 fear. He passes hastily on in the bright sunshine, but under 
 his feet he knows the ice may at any time give way and crash 
 beneath him. Happiness is to him the exception in the 
 world of existence. The rule is sorrow and pain ; endless 
 sorrow, eternal pain. But he whose creed tells him of a God 
 whom he can wholly love, entirely trust, even though his 
 oiitward life may be full of gloom and toil, has for ever the 
 consciousness of a great deep joy underlying all care and 
 grief; a joy he pauses not always to contemplate, but which 
 he knows is there, waiting for him whenever he turns to it ; 
 and his sorrows and all the sorrows of the world are in his 
 sight but passing shadows which shall give place at last to 
 everlasting bliss. His plot of earth may be barren and 
 flowerless, and he may till it often in weariness and pain, 
 
RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 69 
 
 but he would not exchange it for a paradise, for within it 
 there is the well of water springing up into everlasting life. 
 The time will come, I am persuaded, when men will be 
 more than ever awake to these facts of the value of trxie 
 religious faith and the danger and misery of error. When this 
 happens, so far from becoming indifferentists and treating 
 all creeds as alike, they will necessarily seek more earnestly 
 than ever for truth, not under the scourge of the terrors of 
 hell, but with a calm, deep appreciation of the intrinsic im- 
 portance of such faith for its own sake. "Will they then be 
 content, as M. Renan supposes, to go on paying outward 
 adhesion to churches whose office it is to teach the very 
 errors from which they have escaped ? Will they endure to 
 perform solemn rites before God which have become to them 
 solemn mockeries ? Will they by their countenance and 
 example maintain for the young and uneducated the delu- 
 sions from which every hour they thank God they have been 
 themselves delivered ? Will they act lies such as the saints 
 of old went to the stake and the rack rather than be guilty 
 of, because they have found higher, nobler, more heart- 
 encouraging truths than it was given to those saints to know ? 
 I believe it not ! The day will yet come when the con- 
 sciences of mankind will recognize that it was for no delusion 
 those martyrs died, no fictitious virtue of honesty of lips 
 and brain, which our greater enlightenment has discovered 
 to be but a fanaticism and a prejudice. It will be recognized 
 that to live a lie is more base even than to speak a lie ; and 
 that a religious lie is the basest, because the cowardliest, of 
 lies. It will be recognized that to mislead others by our 
 example or teaching, is to do them a wrong and injury only 
 to be measured by the tremendous realities of the spiritual 
 and moral life into which we dare to interpose our falsehoods 
 to serve, or frustrate, God's designs. It will be recognized 
 that as religious truth is the greatest of treasures, so every 
 
70 RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 word and deed by which we tamper therewith involves a 
 dishonesty which, when all the cheats and thefts of this 
 world's goods are forgotten and pardoned, the oflFender may 
 need to weep over and repent. 
 
 If these views have in them any justice, the question so 
 often asked in our day, " "What religion shall we teach our 
 children?" assumes new significance. That all- precious re- 
 ligious truth which year by year men will learn better to 
 value and more simply to follow, how are the young to be 
 taught to seek and aided to find it ? How are we to guard 
 them against that fatal pseudo-liberal indifferentism which 
 would make of Christendom another China, with each man 
 lauding his neighbour's religion and depreciating with mock 
 humility his own ? These are large questions, which for the 
 general public correspond to the anxious private inquiry of 
 so many parents : AVhat shall we teach our children concern- 
 ing God and Christ and the Bible ? In what position ought 
 we to place them as regards the popular theology, and the 
 Churches wherein we were ourselves brought up, and whereto 
 we now hold more or less loosely ? In a word, what is the 
 Religion for Childhood in our age and phase of thought ? 
 
 With much distrust of my own power to deal with so great 
 a theme or ofier counsel to those who alone have practical 
 knowledge of the training of children, I shall venture to 
 attempt some answer to these questions in the following 
 pages. It must happen to all who have striven to ui^ge the 
 claims of a creed founded upon consciousness rather than 
 authority, to be frequently challenged by the inquiry, " How 
 would your faith suit children and ignorant persons ? It may 
 be all very well for educated men and women, but how would 
 it apply to the poor ? How could you bring up a child under 
 its simple doctrines?" The faith which shrinks from such a 
 challenge stands self-condemned. To prove that the most 
 liberal theology need not do so, but has its blessed work to 
 
RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 71 
 
 accomplish, for the child no less than for the man, will be 
 my present task. 
 
 It might be thought at first sight and prior to experience 
 of the fact, that in this latest Reformation, as in all pre- 
 ceding ones, it would be a matter of course for parents not 
 only freely to transmit their religious ideas to their sons 
 and daughters, but to take peculiar care to guard them 
 against the errors they have renounced, and to instruct 
 them in the truths they have gained. The children of the 
 early Christians, Moslems, Protestants, were no doubt im- 
 bued to the uttermost of their parents' skill Avith the doc- 
 trines of their religion. The idea of teaching a young 
 Huguenot to believe in the Real Presence or to worship the 
 Virgin, or even of sending him to a school where he might 
 learn to do so, would have been held scarcely less than a crime 
 in the eyes of his father and mother. Nay, to let him grow 
 up with the notion that the question was an open one, and 
 that his parents were as ready to see him choose a religion 
 as a secular profession, and become a Romanist or a Jew as he 
 might become a soldier or a physician, — this also would have 
 seemed to them monstrous, and even impious. 
 
 How far we are from suck a view of parental duty, it is 
 startling to reflect. Professed Unitarians, indeed, habitually 
 train their children in Unitarian principles, and lead them 
 to the public services of their church.^ But even they con- 
 tinually allow motives of convenience or economy to induce 
 them to send them to schools where they know that the 
 young minds and hearts will be subjected to the fullest 
 influences of orthodoxy. The whole tenor of their guidance 
 is calculated, hardly so much to sec are their children's 
 intelligent adherence to the creed they themselves profess, 
 as to afibrd them a fair option to accept it if they see fit. 
 Of course there are many exceptions, but I venture to 
 ^ This Essay was first published in the Theological (Unitarian) Review. 
 
72 RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 think this description may be taken as a true one as regards 
 the majority of Unitarian families, and that the result may 
 be traced in the innumerable lapses of the sons and daugh- 
 ters of Unitarians into the ranks of churches from whose 
 errors a very moderate share of parental care and warning 
 ought to have protected them. That worldly interest has 
 some part in all this must perhaps be conceded. The social 
 and (let it be added, shameful as it is) the matrimonial dis- 
 advantages of membership in a small sect, may make some 
 Unitarian parents less unwilling than they ought to be to sac- 
 rifice their sons' and daughters' spiritual for temporal benefit. 
 I am persuaded, however, that far more often the motives of 
 Unitarian pai'ents, even of those who act most unguardedly, 
 are higher than these. Many of them doubtless imagine 
 that what is so clear to their minds will needs be clear to 
 those of their children. Others suppose that even if their 
 son receive false instruction at school, they will be able in 
 a few weeks of holidays to supply an antidote of rational 
 argument which shall neutralize the poison which month 
 after month has been slowly infiltered and taken up into 
 the child's system of thought and feeling. Many more, 
 having been themselves educated in the older and stricter 
 Unitarian training, have never experienced and have formed 
 no adequate idea of the evil, and of the tenacity of the 
 dai'ker doctrines of the popular creed. They think them 
 silly rather than deadly. They have never known what it 
 is to believe in Eternal Hell. They have never knelt to 
 thank God when that horror of horrors was lifted from their 
 souls. Nay, even their own boasted doctrine of the Divine 
 Unity has been always to them a mere negation of Trini- 
 tarian error. They have never known the power of that 
 flood-tide of reverence and love when all the religious emo- 
 tions, long divided, confused, and scattered, are turned at last 
 into the one channel, and the same Lord is recognized as 
 
RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 73 
 
 Creating, Redeeming, and Sanctifying God. All these expe- 
 riences, which belong to those who have been brought up 
 in the old creed and through struggle and difficult}?^ have 
 reached to the new, are unknown to Unitarians born and 
 educated in the church of Channing or Priestley. They 
 almost marvel at the ardour of converts for truths valuable 
 indeed, they admit, in the highest degree, but still, so obvious ! 
 the very alphabet, to them, of religious knowledge. They 
 as little expect their children to renounce these elementary 
 truths and go back to the creeds which their grandfathers 
 renounced, as they expect them to give up modern geology 
 and astronomy for those of the dark ages ; and they take as 
 little precaution to guard them against one mistake as the 
 other. When the catastrophe arrives, and the entail of 
 TJnitarianism is broken, as usual, at the third generation, 
 they are grieved and wounded ; but perhaps even then they 
 hardly realize all their child has lost of an inheritance which 
 they were bound to transmit to him securely. 
 
 The case of those who are not members of the Unitarian 
 Church, but who entertain Unitarian or Theistic opinions 
 while nominally ranked with the orthodox, is of course still 
 worse than the others. For them to bring \vp their children 
 to believe as they do themselves is a real difficulty, and one 
 they very rarely even try to surmount. Those who have 
 not such definite views as to make them wish to break with 
 the Church in which they were born, or who, while having 
 them, lack courage to do it, are not very likely to train 
 their children in clearer light or greater sincerity. The 
 extreme latitude of opinion which the laity enjoy in the 
 National Church, makes it appear a needless and ungrateful 
 effort to release ourselves from the arms which received us 
 in baptism, and will (whatever be our offences) drop us 
 gently and tenderl}^ into the grave, but which, in all the 
 interval between, will never exercise over us any forceful 
 
74 RELIGION OF CEILDHOOD. 
 
 interference. How many thus remain in the Church, be- 
 cause they are never called on by any test, or even inquiry, 
 to renew or renounce their adherence to it ; how many 
 more remain with the idea of Colenso and Presbyter An- 
 glicanus, that they have a right as members of the nation 
 to be members of the ISTational Church, whatever their 
 views may be of its doctrine — how many of all these there 
 are now in England, it is not easy to tell. Such as they 
 are, while young men and women, their position perhaps 
 entails little difficulty of a moral sort. But when they 
 become parents the case is altered. Shall they have their 
 children baptized ? Shall they teach them to read the 
 Bible, and repeat the usual hymns and collects ? Above all, 
 shall they take them to church and make them learn prayers 
 and listen to sermons all and each saturated with doctrines 
 the parent disbelieves ? On the other hand, shall they 
 omit all these traditional processes and bring up the children, 
 as their friends will assuredly say, like little heathens ? 
 The question is making many a father anxious, and giving 
 many a mother the heart-ache, in England at this moment. 
 
 It must be owned that the case is beset with difficulties. 
 Putting aside special family difficulties — difference of opinion 
 between the two parents, interference of other relatives, and 
 last, not least, the forbidden effi^rts of orthodox servants 
 to impress children with their crude and cruel theology — 
 putting all these aside, there remain gravest difficulties com- 
 mon to all. I cannot presume to offer counsel as to these 
 difficulties in detail, but I venture to urge the considera- 
 tion of a few general principles which, if approved, may 
 serve as guides to decide the outline of conduct to be filled 
 by each parent according to special circumstances. 
 
 In the first place, a critical spirit can never be rightly 
 fostered in a child. It is not for one who has all the evi- 
 dence yet to learn, and even the process by which evidence 
 
RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 75 
 
 must be weighed, to mount any seat of judgment and pro- 
 nounce sentence. To lead a child to do so, even in matters 
 tenfold less solemn than those which pertain to religion, 
 must needs distort the natural order and development of 
 his faculties. Nay, more : the critical faculty, even when 
 exercised in the plenitude of the powers of middle life, is 
 always somewhat opposed to the instincts of reverence and 
 humility, and only becomes good and noble when used under 
 the spur of pure love of truth, and with all the caution 
 and self-distrust which facts may warrant. Often must it 
 have happened to all of us to feel how violent a revulsion 
 is created when a sermon appealing to criticism, and 
 demanding of us to revise arguments of history, philology, 
 metaphysics, has followed suddenly upon prayers which 
 for the time had restored us to a more humble, childlike 
 attitude of mind. To be brought to realize somewhat of 
 the distance between ourselves and the Divine Holiness, 
 to feel some of the deeper emotions of penitence and aspi- 
 ration, perhaps to pray in the true sense of prayer, and 
 then, a moment afterwards, instead of having fresh moral 
 life poured into us, with high thoughts of God and duty 
 and immortality, instead of being lifted by our stronger 
 brother into nearer gaze at the Supreme Goodness, to be 
 suddenly called on to revise our intellectual stores, recall 
 this detail of history and that fact of science, and then 
 balance the validity of the arguments by which the preacher 
 has appealed to us for a verdict of "Proven" or "Not proven," 
 — this is the weariness of preaching, this is the feast where 
 the rich Intellect may be fed, but the hungry Soid goes 
 empty away. There is no harm in it all. Perhaps it is 
 very necessary that congregations should have such facts 
 and arguments often placed before them ; and if they are 
 to be placed at all, they must needs be placed for critical 
 free judgment. Only the religious sentiment and the reli- 
 
76 RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 gious intellect are brought into painful and jarring proximity, 
 the attitude of the soul is altered too rudely. 
 
 But if this be so with us all in middle life, how much 
 more incongruous must be anything like such critical judg- 
 ment in a child ! The most fatal and hopeless lack in any 
 child's character is that of the feeling of reverence ; and it 
 would almost seem that when from any cause it is deficient, 
 it is well-nigh impossible to create it afresh. But if a mode 
 were to be devised expressly for the extinction of reverence, 
 it would manifestly be to set a child to pass its wretched little 
 judgments on the opinions of those who constitute for it 
 the world. Thus, whatever else a child ought to be taught 
 about the popular religion, it is quite clear it must not be 
 taught to set itself up to decide that such and such doctrines 
 are foolish or absurd. 
 
 Secondly : We have been all a good deal misled by the 
 vaunt of our ancestors, that a Christian child knows more 
 about God than Socrates or Plato. We have a latent idea 
 that it is our business to verify the boast, and stock a 
 baby's mind with formulae about that Ineffable Existence, 
 whose relations to us we may indeed learn, but whose 
 awful Nature not all the wisdom of the immortal life may 
 fully reveal to His creatures. Thus there is a constant 
 efibrt to give a child notions about what could only be 
 fitly treated as too solemn a mystery to pretend to have 
 notions of at all ; and the natural inquisitive questions of 
 the pupil are not met by the grave warning which best 
 would instil reverence and awe, but by efibrts to give or 
 correct ideas where no ideas may be. We have all been so 
 accustomed to " Bodies of Divinitj''," Catechisms and Creeds, 
 that we find it hard to imagine religion despoiled of such 
 paraphernalia, and mothers ask, with an alarm which would 
 be ludicrous were the subject less solemn : " What am I to 
 teach my child if I am not to make him learn the Church 
 
RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 Catechism, or the Shorter Catechism, or Watts' Catechism, 
 or tell him the story of Adam and Eve and the apple, and 
 Noah's ark, or the history of Elisha and the naughty boys, 
 or the fate of Ananias and Sapphira ? If all these things 
 are to be left out, and the child is not even to know what 
 each Person of the Trinity does for him, and what his god- 
 fathers and god-mothers have promised he shall believe, what 
 remains for me to teach him of religion ? " 
 
 It is a startling idea to such good mothers to reflect that 
 all these lessons are not religion at all, but instructions which 
 much oftener turn their children from religion than engage 
 them to love it, and that the utter cessation of such tasks 
 would leave them open to far more devout feelings. "iVo 
 religious teaching?" But can a mother, herself penetrated 
 with religious feeling, teach anything to her child which 
 shall not also teach him religion ? Can she direct his mind 
 to the objects around him, sun and star and bird and bee, 
 can she lead him to check his little selfishnesses and angry 
 passions, and be kind to his brothers and sisters and obedient 
 to herself, can she read with him a single story or poem or 
 book of infant science, in which the thought of God the 
 Maker, God the Observer, God the Lord of all things 
 beautiful and good, shall not shine over all her teachings ? 
 Religion entering in this its natviral way is full of interest 
 and delight to the child. Behind the dry facts, which 
 have for him perhaps little value, he finds that meaning 
 which elevates Fact into Truth. All things have a personal 
 sense and purpose, since he is made to see a Personal Will 
 directing them all ; and by degrees the vast unity of the 
 world, the unity of order, beauty and beneficence, dawns 
 upon his soul. 
 
 Again : There is need to bear in mind that a child's facul- 
 ties of love are given data in his nature. We have not got 
 to create them, and we can in very small degree warp and 
 
78 RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 alter them, from what they have been created. They are so 
 constituted as spontaneously to open to an object of one 
 kind, and to shrink from an object of another. The task of 
 him Avho believes children's hearts to be God's handiwork 
 and not that of a Devil, is to educate (draw out) what God has 
 put there, and to present to those faculties, as they grow, that 
 idea of God and duty which they are made to fasten upon 
 with honour and love. Divines talk of children being wholly 
 corrupt, and poets tell us they " trail clouds of glory " ; but 
 parents neither find the corruption nor see much of the 
 clouds of glory. It is a germ of a soul, rather than a soul 
 either burdened with sin or "trailing" any foreknown light, 
 which lies covered up in a little child's cradle. But assuredly 
 it is a germ in which God has folded potentially all the 
 blossoms of holy feelings man can know on earth. Surely 
 it is always proof that the teaching is wrong, when those 
 sentiments which God has intended should turn to Himself 
 do not turn to Him as spontaneously as the young plant to 
 the light ? It must always be because it is not God, the true 
 God, whom we have presented to the soul of the child, but 
 some grim idol whom it was never made to love, that it has 
 failed to lift itself to Him. 
 
 Again : The sense of sin is so deeply connected with the 
 religious sentiment, it is so profoundly true that the holiness 
 of God is first intimately revealed to us through the sense 
 of our own unholy deeds and thoughts, that it is of the first 
 importance in all religious teaching to place aright this matter 
 of " the exceeding sinfulness of sin." No human piety, even 
 the piety of a little innocent child, can live and bloom with- 
 out some tears of penitence to water it. Nay, the readiness 
 and fulness of repentance in early youth, the April flood of 
 pure and blessed sorrow which falls so abundantly and then 
 leaves the sky so clear and earth so tremulously bright, is 
 evidence enough that repentance has its inevitable work 
 
RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 79 
 
 even in the religious life of the infant. But there is no 
 part of religion which has been so cruelly perverted as this. 
 No theological dogmas impressed on a child's intellect 
 can be half so mischievous as the practical moral training 
 which distorts for it the natural processes of penitence and 
 restoration ; and no efforts of religious teachers have been 
 so persistent as those which have been directed to this fatal 
 aim. Starting with the wholly false conception of the 
 highest religious life as if it were one perpetual sickly 
 anxiety and " worrying about the soul," they are uneasy if 
 their child enjoys a healthier state, and weeps only for a 
 real fall, instead of puling continually from over-tenderness 
 of conscience. A child's moral life ought to go on, like its 
 physical life, all unconsciously to itself ; but j ust as the preco- 
 cious offspring of over-anxious parents think about cold or heat 
 or unwholesome food, the children of some religious people 
 are made to know all about their own spiritual condition, and 
 commence in the nursery a life of moral valetudinarianism. 
 Of course such mistakes lie chiefly with Evangelical parents, 
 and few others are likely to fall into them, but into 
 opposite errors of which we shall speak presently. But the 
 narrowness of a woman's life has undoubtedly a tendency 
 to make mothers vastly exaggerate the lilliputian sins and 
 miniature transgressions of their little kingdom, the nursery ; 
 and the result is too often an attempt to construct for its 
 inhabitants a baby-house morality, wherein the true propor- 
 tion of good and evil is lost, and the horrible mischief intro- 
 duced of perpetual forced and untrue repentance. A wise 
 mother once said to me — " I wish my children to know there 
 are such things as great crimes in the world. It will teach them 
 that their own little sins and bad feelings are not enormous 
 offences, but are the seeds which, if unchecked, may grow to 
 be enormous offences. I wish them to understand the soli- 
 darity of sin, and that all sins are allied and interactive." 
 
80 RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 The opposite error of moral laxity and indifferentism is 
 one into which parents who have themselves escaped from 
 the evils of Calvinistic training are naturally most prone to 
 fall. While one child's conscience is over-stimulated to the 
 verge of disease, another finds its own instinctive penitence 
 treated so lightly, its real faults passed over as if so trivial 
 and unimportant, that it is impossible but that, with a child's 
 susceptibility to the opinion of those above it, the penitence 
 soon dies away and the fault is repeated. 
 
 Now the parent who would hold the mean between these 
 two errors, and neither excite a child's conscience to disease 
 nor lull it to lethargy, has a most difficult task to perform 
 in face of the common preaching and common juvenile reli- 
 gious literature of the day. Clergymen addressing audiences 
 of grown men and women may well be excused if they con- 
 sider that there is small danger of their adult hearers making 
 too much of their sins, but much danger of their making too 
 little. The most spirit-stirring, and probably on the whole 
 the most useful, preachers in the orthodox churches are those 
 who are for ever proclaiming "the wrath of God against 
 sin," and urging their hearers to more earnest self-scrutiny 
 and deeper penitence. But these spiritual medicines, meted 
 out for the hard conscience of a man, are almost poison to 
 the tender heart of the child ; and the very solemnity of the 
 place where the lesson is heard increases the power of the 
 words to exaggerate and distort. Again : religious books 
 for children and religious novels for the young are half of 
 them written by women of sickly sentiment, full of that 
 trivial, baby-house morality of which I have spoken ; and 
 the child whose mind is fed with such petty thoughts cannot 
 possibly grow up to health and vigour of soul. The truth 
 cannot be too often recalled that human beings have not got 
 an infinite store of attention and reverence to bestow, insomuch 
 that they may harmlessly lavish a great deal of either upon 
 
RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 81 
 
 trifles, and then retain afterwards an equal amount ready 
 for really important and sacred things. "Waste of the 
 spiritual emotions is the most fatal waste of which we can 
 be guilt}". 
 
 If the reader concede the principles now stated, the 
 ground of debate regarding the religious education of a 
 child will be found at least considerably narrowed. If the 
 possession of religious truth be the most priceless of heri- 
 tages — if a critical spirit must never be fostered in a child — 
 if systems of theology and a store of cut-and-dried facts in 
 divinity be no needful or desirable part of a child's religion 
 — if a child's faculties of love and reverence be given data, 
 and our task in relation to them only to present worthily their 
 proper Object — if the due place to be assigned in moral train- 
 ing to sin and penitence be the most important and sacred 
 part of education, wherein to err either on the side of exag- 
 geration or underrating is well-nigh fatal — if all these things 
 be so, then some of the following consequences may be fairly 
 assumed to follow. 
 
 1st. The admission that religious truth is the most price- 
 less of heritages must surely decide the question for each 
 parent, what are the doctrines which he or she individually 
 is morally bound to teach to son or daughter. Catholic and 
 Calvinist parents, with their gloomy creeds, their gospels 
 of evil tidings, still without hesitation feel it their duty to 
 teach what is to them, subjectively, true. Common honesty, 
 common regard for the welfare of their children, require it 
 of them ; and no greater causes of public and even national 
 disturbance are found than the efibrts of rulers to interfere 
 with this duty, and teach the child of a Catholic, Calvinism, 
 or of a Jew, Catholicism. Shall, then, those whom I am 
 addressing in this paper, whose creed (as they are at least 
 persuaded) is truest of all, and ten thousand times a 
 happier, holier, nobler faith than that of Rome or Geneva, 
 
 6 
 
82 RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 — shall they alone hesitate whether they shall bring up their 
 children in their own creed or in that of their neighbours ? 
 How deplorable is it there should even be a question in 
 such a matter ! Yet question there is ; and the actual 
 practice of liberal-minded parents at this moment is so 
 A'ariable and devoid of fixed principle of action, that it would 
 be ridiculous, were it not lamentable, to describe it. Here 
 is a mother who does not believe a sjdlable of the popular 
 theology, but brings up her daughters carefully to believe 
 it all, and pretends to them that she believes it also, guard- 
 ing them from the chance of reading a book or conversing 
 with a person who could disturb their faith. Here is a 
 father who allows his boys to be taught the whole systems 
 which he himself believes to be as much a delusion as the 
 vortices of Descartes ; but he thinks to remedy some of the 
 evil by applying an antidote in the shape of a little levity. 
 Here is one who trains his child to criticize the opinions of 
 those around, and to set up its small judgment over the 
 mysteries of heaven and earth. Here is another who teaches 
 ''Elegant Extracts" of Christianity, and leaves the child 
 by and by to discover that the authority for what it was 
 told was true and what it was told was false, was precisely 
 one and the same. Here, again, is one who, from fear of 
 "prejudicing" the child's mind, teaches him no religion at 
 all, and thus loses for him for ever all the tender associa- 
 tions of youthful piety. Placed clearly before a parent's 
 mind, the idea of deliberately teaching a child falsehood, or 
 choosing for it secular advantage rather than spiritual benefit, 
 would seem shocking and monstrous to all save the most 
 worldly. But the falsehoods are popular falsehoods, filling 
 the very air of English thought ; the secular advantages 
 ofiered by orthodoxy are tangible, considerable, every day 
 present. The spiritual benefits of a pure creed (now we have 
 ceased to believe in eternal penalties for error) are purely 
 
RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 83 
 
 spiritual ; and in the violent reaction from the old over- 
 estimate of the importance of opinion, it is a natural error 
 of liberalism to overlook them. We see good men and 
 women — nay, noble and saintly men and women — whose 
 opinions are the furthest from our own ; and many a parent 
 may feel he would be content to see his son or daughter 
 like them, and at the same time making "the best of both 
 worlds" in the safe shelter of orthodox3^ But we forget 
 perhaps that another generation will not stand where the 
 last stood, and that the good fruit we admire did not indeed 
 grow off the thorns of the Five Points of Calvinism, but off 
 the true vine of Divine Love which wreathed itself around 
 them. The chance that, if we plant only the thorns, the vine 
 mil grow over them, is one assuredly not to be counted 
 upon. 
 
 2ndly. From the observation of the evil results of instil- 
 ling a critical spirit at an age when a child cannot possibly 
 possess either the materials or true method for forming a 
 critical judgment, it follows that liberal parents, like others, 
 must needs teach their religion to their children didactically. 
 There lies here a great practical difficulty. On the one 
 hand, we all know too well the evil and danger of bringing 
 up a young mind to believe a whole mass of doctrines as 
 certain and unquestionable, and then leaving it to find out 
 at its entrance into independent life and when temptation 
 is at its highest, that many of these doctrines, if not all of 
 them, are utterly uncertain and doubtful. On the other 
 hand, to teach a child to consider all the truths of the un- 
 seen world as matters of speculation, would be still more 
 absurd and mischievous. To impart knowledge of them, 
 and yet to impart at the same time that other knowledge, 
 that parents are not infallible ; that no human knowledge 
 is infallible ; that to love Truth and search for it as for hid 
 treasure, rather than to receive it unasked and undeserved. 
 
84 RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 like the rain, is the duty and the lot of man ; — to impart 
 this must needs be a task of great delicacy and difficulty 
 It is to be remembered, however, that a child is always 
 naturally disjDosed to look on his parents' opinion as final 
 truth so long as the parents' mind bounds its narrow horizon 
 of all wisdom. Thus to make a child understand that any 
 doctrine is or is not true in its parents^ opinion, is to give 
 it at once the prestige of truth, and yet not to incur any 
 risk of future break-down and discovery. By and by the 
 child will learn what is the value of its parents' oj)inions 
 on all matters, and if the parent be truly good and wise, 
 that yalue will be very great indeed, though of course far 
 short of absolute authority. In any case, the parent will^ 
 obtain for his religious teaching precisely the respect it de- 
 serves to obtain — that of his own personal weight in the 
 estimation of his son or daughter. How much this view of 
 the proper nature of instruction adds to the responsibility 
 of forming the opinions which are thus to be bequeathed 
 as the most precious heritage, there is no need to tell. In 
 this, as in all other things, a man or woman's responsibility 
 in thought, feeling and action, seems to become doubled and 
 quadrupled as they assume the holy rank of a father or a 
 mother. Doubtless, many of them must in their hearts 
 echo poor Margaret Fuller's exclamation : "I am the 
 parent of an immortal soul ! God be merciful to me — a 
 sinner ! " 
 
 3rdly. If we abandon the idea that children should be 
 crammed with facts connected somehow with religion, and 
 made capable of " telling more about God than Plato and 
 Socrates " (much more indeed than it is likely Plato and 
 Socrates can now tell after two thousand years of heaven), 
 there will be an end in a great measure of the difficulty 
 which now besets liberal parents in their inquiry, " What 
 shall we teach our children of a Sunday ? " With the ima. 
 
RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 85 
 
 j^inary necessity will disappear the imaginary duty of meet- 
 ing it, and small Platos of five years old and Socrates in 
 white frocks will no longer be made to pore over catechisms 
 or repeat the beautiful collects like so many little parrots 
 in a row. The abolition of those "burdens grievous to be 
 borne," the wearisome Sunday lessons of childhood, would, we 
 believe, accomplish no small step towards making children 
 love the religion which they heard of in other and happier 
 ways. Can anybody fancy the result of teaching " Affection 
 to Parents " by a regular educational battery of catechisms 
 and texts once a week ? Would it make a child love its 
 mother better ? "VYe rather imagine the reverse. ISTor can 
 we conceive why the analogous sentiment of love to the 
 Father in heaven should follow a different law. 
 
 The old Hebrew prophet believed that a special blessing 
 would come to those who " called the Sabbath a delirjhtr 
 It would seem to have been the peculiar pride of our Puritan 
 fathers to make this blessing as difficult of attainment as 
 possible, especially to children. Those to whom this paper 
 is addressed need not be adjured to abandon the Puritanical 
 Sabbath-keeping, whose memory returns to some of us as 
 the dreariest recollection of youth ; Sabbaths with the hard- 
 est lessons of the week, whose imperfect acquirement some- 
 how involved double offence ; Sabbaths with wearisome 
 litanies and incomprehensible sermons through long bright 
 summer mornings, when we sighed to run out and gather 
 cowslips in the sweet green grass ; Sabbaths with unwhole- 
 some cold meals crowded one on another, making j^oung 
 and old heavy and ill-tempered ; Sabbaths toyless and joy- 
 less, when all books permitted to be read had the same 
 indescribable flavour of unreal goodness, and whose perusal 
 was accompanied by the same sense of soreness of the 
 elbows and weariness of the poor little dangling legs ! 
 These are not Sabbaths which the children of liberal 
 
86 RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 thinkers are likely ever to recall. But there would surely 
 be a loss incurred the other way, were the Sunday oblite- 
 rated from their childish calendar or made a purely secular 
 holiday. There is no need it should be so. Calvinism and 
 all the forms of the old theology appeal to grown men and 
 women, that is, to persons conscious of actual sin, and they 
 either need to be modified to meet the requirements of inno- 
 cent childhood, or else they distort childish souls to meet 
 their darker lessons. But a true theology, whose basis shall 
 be the spontaneous religious consciousness of our nature, 
 is not thus unfitted for childhood, nor will its simple and 
 natural services be otherwise than delightful to the young 
 mind and heart to whom the sentiments of awe and love are 
 full of joy. Parents, we believe, will be obliged rather to 
 hold back and calm the fervent religious emotions of their 
 children, than fictitiously to nurse them as now, when they 
 teach them to think of God as indeed He is, and not 
 as the creeds have represented Him, We have known a 
 few such happy children, and in nearly every case their 
 mothers have said, ^' I hardly dare to speak much of religious 
 things, they feel too much." 
 
 Bible-reading, again, is a difficulty. An education which 
 should omit the study of the greatest of all books — a book 
 which, in a literary sense alone, is to other books as Shake- 
 speare is to the puny poets of the age of Queen Anne, and 
 which, in a religious sense, is the quarry whence men will 
 draw praise and prayer while the world remaineth — an 
 education which should omit the study of the Bible, would 
 be no education at all. Even as the chief historical docu- 
 ment of the past, and the Guide-book (we had almost said, 
 "idol") of half Christendom at present, the Bible is a fact 
 no more to be ignored in the instruction of a child, than 
 the existence of the sovereign or the capital city of its 
 native country. But how is a child to read the Bible and 
 
RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 87 
 
 not acquire the orthodox theology ? Let me rather ask, 
 Would any child construct for itself the orthodox theology 
 if it were to ponder over the Bible for years, provided it 
 had not been previously taught to find that theology therein ? 
 That the idea of the Trinity and the "Plan of Salvation'' 
 would even occur to a child on reading the Grospels, I 
 utterly disbelieve. What it would find there, beyond some 
 beautiful stories and words of prayer and precept grandly 
 sounding in its ears, it is hard to say. But a child's mind 
 does not construct systems. The simple system of God's 
 Unity and Fatherhood once presented to it, will more than 
 suffice for its wants in this respect. 
 
 The evil which comes of Bible-reading for children surel}^ 
 arises from the ineradicable habit of treating the book mysti- 
 call}^ and as difiering, not in degree only, but utterly in 
 kind, from other books. The child reads it long before any 
 other history, and quite as a different lesson, and therefore he 
 thinks of Adam and Eve and Noah and Balaam quite other- 
 wise than he thinks of the characters he reads of elsewhere. 
 The writer knew a case of a boy whose education was con- 
 ducted on the opposite principle. His parents (disciples of 
 Theodore Parker) first gave him to read some of Mr. Cox's 
 beautiful Grecian stories, and then afterwards, without any 
 special preparation, the book of Genesis. The little fellow, 
 a clever child of eight or nine, was immensely delighted 
 with it, but very manifestly had no other impression than 
 that the Israelites believed in the One God and the Greeks 
 in many false ones, and that the early legends of each might 
 fitly be compared. He even found out for himself the re- 
 semblance between the story of Noah and Deucalion, of 
 Jephtha's daughter and Iphigenia. To a child thus begin- 
 ning it, the Bible would have a thousand good lessons, but 
 no lesson of superstition. I may add that the same boy 
 was without exception the most religious I ever knew, 
 
88 RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 brave and true, and beautifully dutiful to his parents, and 
 his early manhood bears no less excellent promise. 
 
 Finally, there is the church-going difficulty. Unitarians 
 of course have a clear path before them ; they naturally take 
 their children to the chapels they themselves attend. The 
 assurance that the worship in such chapels is addressed to 
 the Supreme Father only, that the prayers are always of a 
 pure and spiritual cast, and that the morals inculcated in 
 the sermon are universally lofty and true, — all these are im- 
 mense advantages which may well solve the question for 
 any parent as to the desirability of bringing his child to 
 public worship. But even Unitarians must feel how little 
 of the service or sermon suited for intellectual men and 
 women, can, by any effort of the minister, be made also 
 suitable for little children. Some of the preaching, indeed, 
 suggests rather the impression of the utter unfitness that 
 childish ears should hear it and childish minds be called 
 to judge in such controversies. The Evangelical teaching, 
 over-stimulating to sickliness and burning out in brief flame 
 of excitement the fuel of sentiment which should have 
 warmed a life-time, — even this is hardly more injurious to 
 a child than to be introduced in infancy to the polemics of 
 the churches, and allowed to turn to the page of scepticism, 
 before it has learned the lesson of faith. As well might a 
 primrose grow in a dusty arena, as the tender piety of youth 
 flourish in the midst of theological controversy. 
 
 Liberal parents who take their children to the services 
 of the Church of England have perhaps not so much to fear 
 in the way of controversy from the puljDit, though they 
 may be compelled to sit by silent and helpless while their 
 children hear their own profoundest convictions treated as 
 criminal and abominable, and those who hold them com- 
 demned to everlasting fire. They may hear these things. 
 But what they are sure to hear are doctrines they believe 
 
RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 89 
 
 to be false, and prayers which, according to their views, 
 are mockeries as regards the things asked for, and 
 well-niffh idolatrous as regards the Person at intervals 
 addressed. 
 
 Is this, can this, be right ? It seems as if we must have 
 wandered far from simplicity and honesty before we can 
 say so deliberately. Of course there are all sorts of moral 
 expediencies in the case. The impression produced by a 
 dignified cnltus, by the sense of public opinion and sympathy^ 
 and by all the historical associations and aesthetic influences 
 belono-ing: to the o-reat National Church — all these are excel- 
 lent things to give a child. "When it is added, that giving 
 them cuts the knot of twenty petty difficulties which beset 
 the course of keeping him at home, and that it is so much 
 the natural order of the family that to diverge from it 
 would require an eflPort, there is of course a goodly show of 
 argument for the expediency of taking a child to church. 
 But is there not a higher expediency which points a different 
 way, even that expediency of simple truth and honesty 
 which must needs be the best guide to the ultimate good 
 of any human soul ? 
 
 Amono; the numerous immoral stories of the Jewish 
 Scriptures there is one which is always strangely slurred 
 over by friends and foes ; by friends because it is inde- 
 fensible, by foes because in condemning it they must con- 
 demn their own conduct. In the moment of his rapturous 
 gratitude for his miraculous cure, we are told that Naaman 
 bargained with the prophet, that his conversion to the 
 worship of the true God was not to prevent him from 
 attending his sovereign and bowing to his idol in courtier 
 fashion whenever it might be desirable. The inspired 
 prophet is recorded to have sanctioned this stipulation, 
 and bade the deliberate hypocrite " Go in peace." Can 
 this wretched story have had much influence ? I 
 
90 RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 hardly believe it, and yet it might pass for a parable of 
 what is done every day in England. So commonly is it 
 done, that to speak gravely of it as moral error sounds 
 crude and rough ; the residue of the harsh prejudices and 
 trenchant ideas of bygone times. We have been accus- 
 tomed to soften down everything of this kind ; to concede 
 gracefully that every opinion is true in some sense or other, 
 and that it is fanatical to make a stand against this phrase 
 in a creed or that expression in a prayer, or talk as if the 
 sin of idolatry could possibly be incurred in England in the 
 nineteenth century. But it does not clearly appear how truth 
 and sincerity have altered their characters, or why, because 
 we are enabled to do better justice to our neighbour's views, 
 we are to be less honest in following out our own. If, to the 
 individual concerned, it be as clear a conviction that Christ 
 is not the Infinite Deity as (according to the story) it was 
 to Naaman that Rimmon was not He, it remains to be 
 shown how bowing to the one differs essentially as a moral 
 act from bowing to the other. 
 
 These are matters of solemn import, rising to questions 
 beyond the subject of this paper. Let it be remarked, at 
 all events, that the free-thinking parent who means to make 
 his son a thoi-oughly upright man, hardly sets about it in 
 the best way, when he makes the most impressive action 
 of his childish life consist in praying for things which he 
 believes are never granted to prayer, and in paying divine 
 worship to a being whom he believes to have been a mortal 
 man. When the two fallacies are discovered (as the parent 
 who knows the current of modern thought must expect they 
 will be) in the boy's advancing youth — when the son shall 
 find out that the father taught him what he did not him.self 
 believe — how shall filial respect for the veracity of the parent 
 survive, or an example of uprightness be derived from his 
 conduct ? 
 
RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 91 
 
 To conclude. The last principle laid down was this : 
 That in teacliing religion to a child, our task is not to dis- 
 tort and forcibly wrench aside the child's spontaneous senti- 
 ments, but to present to them the Object they are made 
 expressly to love and reverence. 
 
 Let us for a moment revert to first principles to set before 
 ourselves clearly what is the aim of religious education. 
 
 Each human love has its peculiar character. Parental 
 love combines itself with tenderness and protection, filial 
 love with reverence, conjugal love with passion, friendly 
 love with esteem, brotherly and sisterly love with the sym- 
 pathies and confidence of consanguinity. Love directed, 
 not to child or parent, wife or friend, but to Goi), has also 
 its peculiar character. It is a love of Reverence, of Admira- 
 tion, of Gratitude; above all, of absolute Moral Allegiance, 
 as to a rightful Moral Lord. Such sentiments as may be 
 given to an unseen Creator, which are not of this character — 
 the sentiments to which history bears horrible testimonj^ 
 of raptures of devotion felt by wicked and cruel men who 
 believed Grod to be as cruel and unjust as themselves — these 
 sentiments do not constitute Love of God. They are hideous 
 aberrations of the soul, diseased emotions addressed to an 
 imaginary Being. 
 
 Again : The true love of God, of which we have spoken, 
 is not merely a part of religion, or the ultimate aim of 
 religion. ' It is religion. The dawn of it in the heart is the 
 aurora of the eternal day which is to shine more and more 
 perfectly through the ages without end. Till it begins, there 
 is no real religion, only at best the preparation for religion. 
 
 Thus it follows that to awaken in a child's heart the true 
 love of God, is the alpha and omega of religious education. 
 Make it feel this love, and the highest good a creature can 
 know has been secured for it. Fail to make it feel it, and 
 the most elaborate instructions, the largest store of theo- 
 
92 RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 logical knowledge and religious precepts, are useless and 
 absurd. In the battle of life, children taught everything 
 else except this love, go forth like those mockeries of steam- 
 ships the Chinese constructed to contend with ours, fitted 
 with all the appliances which would have been useful had 
 there been any engine within, but without that which should 
 have given power and motion. 
 
 These are principles to which all will agree. Even Roman- 
 ists say their colossal system of priestly mediation aims 
 at the end to help souls to the love of God ; and Calvinists, 
 whose dogmas make the Deity hateful, yet profess to instil 
 them with the view of inspiring a love which can only be 
 the reaction from fear. But the great difference between 
 the followers of such churches and those who hold a happier 
 faith must consist, not in the end all may contemplate as de- 
 sirable, but in the means each may pursue for its attainment. 
 
 There is something very deplorable, when we reflect upon 
 it, in the way in which mankind in all ages have sought 
 to take by violence that kingdom of heaven whose golden 
 gates are ever open to him who knocks thereat in filial 
 entreaty. From lands and times when they tortured the 
 body, to days like our own in England when they only strive 
 to wrench the affections and distort the judgment, the same 
 all-pervading error may be traced. Naturally, men who 
 have thus acted in the case of their own souls, have no 
 scruple to act so in their children's behalf; and to drill a 
 young mind to religion is conceived of from first to last as 
 a difiicult task, to be achieved by constant coercion of the 
 spontaneous sentiments, and the enforcement of a duty natu- 
 rally distasteful. It is an immense evidence of the readiness 
 of the human heart to love the Divine Father, that, with the 
 training usually given in this Christian land, so many are 
 still found to resist its natural consequences, and to love God 
 in sjjite of their education. 
 
RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 93 
 
 If a mother wished to make her boy grow up full of 
 affection and respect for a father in India or Australia, how 
 would she set about it ? "Would she first start with the 
 notion that it would be a very hard thing to do, and contrary 
 to the child's nature ? Would she insist on it, morning, 
 noon and night, as his severe duty ? Would she talk of the 
 absent parent in a conventional voice, and make addressing 
 him by letter, or doing anj^thing for him, a sterner task than 
 any other ? Lastly, would she perpetually tell the child 
 that when the father came home, if he had not been obedient 
 and was not affectionate to him, the father would turn him 
 out of the house and burn him alive ? Are these the methods 
 by which a wife and mother's instincts would lead her to 
 act ? Surely we have only to imagine the reverse of all 
 these — the popular processes of religious instruction — to find 
 the true method for guiding children's hearts to love their 
 Father in heaven ? A child must not think it a hard thing, 
 a task of fear and awe, a notion to be dragged into its 
 lessons and its play to make them more irksome and less 
 joyous, that it ought to be feeling what it does not feel. 
 Above all things, the idea that such a thing is possible as 
 an ultimate and final rejection by God ought never so much 
 as to be presented to the mind of a child. A child can very 
 well understand punishment ; nor does it at all love the less, 
 but rather the more, those who punish it justly and for 
 its good. But punishment extending into infinity beyond 
 justice, punishment whose aim and result is the evil, not the 
 good, of the sufferer, this is an idea utterly opposed to all 
 the instincts of childhood. Of course the poor little mind 
 takes in the shocking doctrine, presented to it like poison 
 from its mother's hand. But the results are fatal. In one, 
 it is indifference ; in another, dislike ; in another, an atrophy 
 of the religious nature ; in a fourth, a fever of terror, from 
 which the soul escapes only by casting off all belief. Even 
 
94 RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 when the most fortunate end is reached, and the man throws 
 away in adult life the doctrine taught him in childhood, 
 even then for long years the shadow remains over him, AVe 
 return to early fears, as well as loves, many a time before we 
 relinquish them for ever. The parent who would give his 
 child a truly religious education, must make it his care to 
 insure him (as he would insure him against listening to far 
 lesser blasphemies) from ever even hearing of an Eternal 
 Hell. This done, we firmly believe that, if he himself love 
 God, he will find it the easiest of lessons to teach his child 
 to love Him likewise. We must remember this : God's voice 
 speaks in the heart of a child as in the heart of a man ; nay, 
 far more clearly than in the heart of a disobedient and world- 
 encrusted man. To teach a child Whose voice that is, to 
 make him identify it with the Giver of all good, the Creator 
 of this world (so fresh and lovely in his young eyes!) — to do 
 this is to give him religion. And the religion thus given 
 will grow into fuller, maturer life, till it rises to the reality 
 of prayer, the full blessedness of Divine communion. 
 
 A wise mother once told me she had taught her child a 
 few simple prayers to repeat at morning and night, and then 
 had given the advice to ask of God, whenever the child 
 needed it, help to overcome her temptations, and to thank 
 Him when she felt very happy. After some months she 
 asked the little girl — " Tell me, my child, when you pray to 
 God do you feel as if it were a real thing, as if there were 
 some One who heard you ? " The child pondered a moment, 
 and then replied : " Not when I say my prayers morning 
 and evening, mama, I do not think I feel anything ; but 
 whenever I do as you told me, and just say to God what I 
 am wanting, or how happy I am, I am quite sure He knows 
 Avhat I say." 
 
 Do we need better instance of how real and holy a thing 
 may be the Religion of Childhood ? 
 
JESS AY IV. 
 
 AN ENGLISH BEOAD CHURCHMAN. ^ 
 
 There exist at all times in the world's history, but rather 
 pre-eminently in our own age, minds of an order with which 
 it is somewhat difficult to deal justly. They are those 
 which seem to be without logical cohesion, whose ideas and 
 opinions (often full of genius and of wisdom) seem disparate 
 one from another, and out of whose recorded words it is 
 impossible to construct a consistent or even intelligible 
 system. Like so many orchids, their luxuriant flowers 
 attract our eyes, while their sweetness touches our hearts ; 
 but when we try to find the root of faith from which such 
 beauty has sprung, — lo ! some old decaying tree, to which 
 the delicate stem lightl}^ adheres, is all we can discover. "We 
 always seem in the wrong as regards them. They attract 
 us, delight us, truly aid our spiritual life by their insight 
 and their tender piety. Then we think to make them our 
 guides ; but the magi of old might as well have followed a 
 fire-fly ! Again, we are provoked, indignant. "We condemn 
 them, and even in our impatience question their honesty : 
 Why does not the man who says this and this, say also 
 this and this ? "Why does he who avows ideas such as the 
 
 ' The Life and Letters of the Rev. Frederick W. Soierfson, M.A., Incumbent 
 of Triniti/ Chapel, Brighton. Edited by Stopford A. Brooke, M.A., late Chaplain 
 to tlie Embassy at Berlin. 2 vols. 8vo. London : Smith and Elder. 1865. 
 
96 AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 
 
 founders of his Church never dreamed of, or condemned 
 bitterly if they did, stop within their fold, and profess to 
 find green pastures where there are but swine's husks of 
 dead sj^mbols ? Hardly have we uttered the question, but 
 we are rebuked. " Men so good, so meek of heart, so pure of 
 life, so full of high and holy thoughts — what are we that 
 we should summon them before our tribunal, or judge them 
 by the laws of our individual conscience of sincerity ? Let 
 us return and hearken to their prophesyings." The books of 
 these men are like those districts of Wales and Ireland, 
 
 " Where sparkles of golden splendour 
 All over the surface shine." 
 
 Every page has its glittering thought, its grain of pure, true 
 gold. But the " Lagenian mine " can somehow never be 
 worked to profit. The ore is too mixed and scattered. We 
 explore it, and of our spoils make for us a ring of remem- 
 brance, a locket, perhaps a delicate chain of linked thoughts. 
 But we cannot mint it into coin to pass from hand to hand, 
 enriching ourselves and the world. 
 
 These reflections have occurred to me while reading the 
 Sermons of one of the greatest and purest of these cloudy 
 prophets, the lamented Frederick Robertson. They are not 
 those which his Biography (which it is now my task to 
 review) most prominently suggests. No man of ordinary 
 sympathies could read this book and think first of dissecting 
 the opinions of its subject, and testing whether, as in a 
 child's toy, one piece fitted accurately into another. Few, 
 on the contrary, will read it, I am persuaded, without 
 being moved to a sad and tender S3^mpath3% that sympathy 
 with the soul of our brother wherein his intellectual gifts 
 and failures alike become well-nigh indifferent. Eobertson's 
 name has for some years been one of power in the religious 
 life of England. Dating from the publication of this admir- 
 able Life and these Letters, I believe it will become hence- 
 
A]^ ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 97 
 
 forth a typical one, like those of Arnold and Blanco White. 
 The personal impression which he made on those who knew 
 him in life, and which always seems to have exceeded (in the 
 proj)ortion common to highly emotional characters) the im- 
 pression received through his Avritten words, will now be 
 shared by thousands. I envy not those who can receive 
 it without being thereby touched to the heart as by the 
 self-disclosure of a friend who should be worthy of all our 
 admiration, and at the same time claim from us such com- 
 passion as may yet be given to one who walked with God on 
 earth, and is surely gone home to Him now. 
 
 The tangible facts of the Life of Robertson may be sum- 
 med up in a few brief sentences. Never had a biographer 
 less practical material to work with, scarce even an anec- 
 dote worth narrating. If the result in this book be in a 
 literary sense somewhat monotonous, it is redeemed by 
 great simplicity on the part of the biographer, and much 
 discriminating analysis of character ; and perhaps I may 
 add, by an almost excessive reticence as to family and 
 social relations, which would have filled in the background 
 of the picture and given it more familiar reality, at the 
 expense, perchance, of delicacy wisely respected. Few even 
 of the letters have any names attached to them, and if 
 they ever contained expressions of individual attachment, 
 they have been expunged, leaving much of the true charac- 
 ter of the letters unexplained. I cannot but think the judg- 
 ment which dictated this last measure in any case, a mistake. 
 Letters are not tlie same things addressed to persons of dif- 
 ferent ages, sexes, and characters ; persons with whom the 
 writer holds totally different relationships. Many expres- 
 sions of weariness, annoyance, personal feelings of all kinds, 
 such as these letters contain, are natural or morbid, legiti- 
 mate or else unmanly and egotistical, according to the indi- 
 vidual addressed, and his or her relationship to the writer. 
 
 7 
 
98 AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 
 
 In matters like these, of course we are bound to give credit 
 to the biographer for having exercised his best judgment 
 under circumstances unknown to us. We can but regret 
 the fact, and do so the more unhesitatingly, since, whatever 
 inimical and slanderous tongues may have said, these letters, 
 to whomsoever addressed, bear with them the refutation of 
 all calumny, save such as first goads its victim to irritation, 
 and then points to the irritation with sanctimonious con- 
 demnation. 
 
 Again, Robertson's friendships are not only left anony- 
 mous, but his closest ties and relationships are mentioned 
 in the briefest way. His marriage is detailed in one sen- 
 tence ; and, after the beginning of the work, where one 
 beautiful letter to his brother, and a few others to his 
 parents are inserted, there is hardly half a page of the two 
 bulky volumes devoted to either his early or later home circle. 
 What Renan has striven to do for us in the case of Robert- 
 son's great Master, namely, to give us a clear mental picture 
 of the milieu in which his life and thoughts revolved, is 
 precisely what Robertson's biographer seems to have care- 
 fully avoided, till in his care to protect the susceptibilities 
 or respect the privacy of the living, he has left us rather 
 the startling apparition of " a priest after the order of Mel- 
 chisedek," than the portrait of an English clergyman who 
 within all our memories was the popular preacher of a fami- 
 liar Brighton chapel. We can resume the bare facts of his 
 career, such as Mr. Brooke gives them, in a single page. 
 
 Frederick William Robertson was the son and grandson 
 of soldiers, and from his boyhood was passionately desirous 
 of entering the military profession. After a year's futile 
 attempt to make him a solicitor, his father endeavoured to 
 obtain for him a commission in the army. A long delay 
 occurred before the request was granted ; and during the 
 interval, the influence of friends and his father's wishes 
 
A.y ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 99 
 
 induced Frederick Robertson to enter Oxford and prepare 
 for the Church. In 1840 he was ordained, and acted as 
 curate first at Winchester, subsequently at Cheltenham and 
 Oxford. Brief journeys to Germany and the Tyrol formed 
 his holiday recreation. On one of these occasions, as his 
 biographer succinctly states, ''he met (at Geneva), and after 
 a short acquaintance married, Helen, third daughter of Sir 
 G. W. Denys, Bart., of Easton Neston, Northamptonshire. 
 Almost immediately after his marriage he returned to 
 Cheltenham." The "only external events which marked 
 the subsequent five years of his life," during which he 
 was evirate to the Rev. Archibald Boyd, were " the birth of 
 three children and the death of one." In 1847 he accepted 
 the incumbency of Trinity Chapel, Brighton, and there he 
 laboured, becoming each year more beloved and honoured, 
 but each year more feeble in health and weary of spirit, till 
 in 1853 his condition became alarming, and his congrega- 
 tion subscribed to supply him with a curate, by whose aid 
 his work might be lightened. Robertson chose his friend 
 Mr. Tower for the ofiice. The appointment was subject to 
 the approval of Mr. Wagner, vicar of Brighton, who had 
 previously been engaged in controversy with Mr. Tower on 
 financial matters connected with a charitable institution. 
 Mr. Wagner refused to ratify the nomination of Mr. Tower, 
 and Robertson refused to appoint another curate. During 
 the angry contention which thereupon occupied the entire 
 population of Brighton, the last chances of recovery for 
 Robertson's health were irretrievably lost. A disease whose 
 seat seemed to be at the base of the brain, and which caused 
 him intense suffering, terminated his life on the 15th of 
 August, 1853, in his thirty- seventh year. His last words 
 were : " I cannot bear it. Let me rest. I must die. Let 
 God do His work." 
 
 Such is the outline of a life which was filled in by a 
 
100 A^'' ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 
 
 thousand touclies of piety, genius, and goodness. The study 
 of it is indeed purely the studj'' of the man Robertson, not 
 of the career of a more or less successful preacher or student 
 or reformer. Of the world at large, nothing is to be learned 
 from his Biography, save the old lesson, that a good man 
 must needs find friends, and a gifted one, admirers, and an 
 honest and bold one, enemies. The observations on books 
 and on social and religious problems contained in the letters 
 are interesting, but rather as affording glimpses into the 
 feelings of the writer, than as illuminating the subjects 
 themselves in the way a great mind generally effects by 
 each passing gleam of notice. Of politics, we only hear 
 that Robertson was by sentiment an aristocrat ; but by force 
 of his allegiance to the great Reformer of Galilee, who spake 
 the parable of Dives, a democrat and an inveigher against 
 the luxuries of the rich. Of those works of philanthropy 
 which men of his energy usually choose whereon to centre 
 their labours, we hear little. Neither the relief of poverty, 
 nor the reform of crime, nor the repression of vice, no en- 
 thusiastic alliance with abolition or temperance movements, 
 is to be traced as a thread connecting his efforts at any 
 period of his life. One only work did he seem to undertake 
 with peculiar zest. The Association of the AYorking Men 
 of Brighton found in him their warmest friend. His Ad- 
 dresses to them contain some of his very finest thoughts, 
 and he appears to have had their cause nearer to his heart 
 than any other. If this be so, we ma}^ perhaps adjudge to 
 Robertson the exalted praise of having been one of the 
 very first to turn philanthropy into a new and noble channel 
 wherein it has since run freely. Beyond his lectures and 
 assistance to the working men, it w^ould seem, however, as if 
 his great tenderness of heart poured itself out rather gene- 
 rally than with any special purpose or object. In a word, 
 the power of Robertson was almost unnaturally devoid of 
 
AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 101 
 
 external or tangible manifestation. Even tlie religious doc- 
 trines he taught have singularly little definiteness of shape 
 or substance, such as might enable us to account him the 
 prophet of this or that truth, or precept. We insensibly 
 describe him rather by negatives than affirmatives, and say he 
 did not do or teach what others have done or taught, rather 
 than that he accomplished such a work or gave to the world 
 such a doctrine. "\Ve close his Life with the sense (oftener 
 left on us by women than by men) that we have been, im- 
 pressed beyond the calculable power of the impressing spirit, 
 and attracted rather magnetically than by any gravitation of 
 mere mass of mind. He was the living evidence of the 
 truth that. Character is greater than Action ; and that to he 
 good is more effectual to benefit mankind than the doing of 
 any work whatsoever. 
 
 The first and most obvious interest to the reader of the 
 life of Robertson is the history of his religious opinions. 
 It may be told briefly, though less briefly than that of his 
 worldly career. 
 
 Whatever be the evils and errors of that form of Chris- 
 tianity which claims the name of " Evangelical," it must be 
 admitted to leave commonly on souls which have received 
 its influences in childhood, what we may describe as a high- 
 strung spiritual temperament. The early initiation into the 
 most solemn mysteries of the inner life ; the perpetual 
 strain after a repentance disproportionately meted to childish 
 offences ; the awful terrors of eternal woe made familiar 
 even before one human, sorrow has dimmed the brightness 
 of life's morning ; — all these features of Evangelical educa- 
 tion tend to the formation of a moral constitution delicate 
 to the verge of disease. Much that is best and holiest, 
 much deep sense of the realities of the unseen world, much 
 of that keener conscientiousness which never leaves a man 
 content with merely outward performance of duty unless 
 
102 AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 
 
 lie also feels the dutiful sentiment, mucli self-distrust and 
 self- depreciation judged by the standard of an almost super- 
 human purity and devotion, are the legacies of a youth spent 
 under the influences of Evangelical Christianity. But, like 
 a child who has been nurtured in heated rooms on too 
 stimulating food, and whose brain has been overtaxed by his 
 tutors, there are also inherited highly-strung feelings subject 
 to morbid excitement and no less morbid exhaustion and 
 deadness, for which largest allowance must be made when 
 we would estimate the later attainments of one subjected to 
 such discipline. Robertson received these influences with 
 the peculiar susceptibility of his character, and with the 
 additional force derived from his physical predisposition to 
 disease of the brain. It would seem as if there never were 
 a temperament of body or mind more needing the calming 
 influence of a perfectly healthy creed ; nor one which more 
 vividly manifested the results, both for good and evil, of the 
 faith in which he was trained, and of the different but far 
 from perfectly joyful one in which he lived and died. 
 
 The early Evangelical impressions of Robertson, derived 
 apparently from both parents, were full of childlike fervour. 
 He seems to have been " good " as a school-boy, in the same 
 degree as Channing, whose comrades said of him that it 
 was no merit in him to be obedient and studious ; he had no 
 temptation to be otherwise. His childhood and youth ap- 
 pear to have been exemplary and faultless. If they were in 
 any measure diversified by more natural traits, his biographer 
 has erred in suppressing them, for it is to be confessed that 
 the impression left on us by these early pages and by certain 
 over-wise school-boy letters is not altogether a pleasant 
 one. Robertson, indeed, seems to have been a manly boy, 
 steady, brave, active, fond of field sports, and enthusiastic 
 about military glory ; a " muscular Christian " even in 
 his Evangelical days. His ambition, therefore, curiousl}^ 
 
AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 103 
 
 compounded of the different elements of his character, 
 took the form of desiring to set " the example of a pure and 
 Christian life in his corps, and becoming the Cornelius of his 
 
 regiment To two great objects he devoted himself 
 
 wholly, the profession of arms and the service of Christ." 
 When he was persuaded to give up the military career 
 and adopt that of a clergyman, which he had often vehe- 
 mently repudiated, he seems to have done it under a sin- 
 gular sense of constraint and self-abnegation, and, as his 
 biographer exj)resses it, to have accepted " somewhat sternly 
 his destiny." He was, however, at that time, according to 
 his friend Mr. Davies, in the full flush of youthful spirits 
 and energy. " At the time to which I refer, I never knew 
 him otherwise than cheerful, and there were times when 
 his spirits were exuberant — times when he was in the mood 
 of thoroughly enjoying everything. He was a constant and 
 prayerful student of his Bible. At this time he held firmly 
 what are understood as Evangelical views. He advocated 
 strongly the pi'e-millennial advent of Christ." 
 
 Beginning his residence at Brasenose in October, 1837, 
 it was impossible that Robertson should not have been 
 drawn into the vortex of the great Tractarian movement 
 then in progress. The result seems to have been a speedy 
 recoil, and an effort to counteract the tendency among his 
 friends by the establishment of a society for prayer and reli- 
 gious discussion. "No change took place in his doctrinal 
 views, which were those of the Evangelical school, with a 
 decided leaning to moderate Calvinism." After a college 
 course of faultless moral excellence, he was ordained, in 
 1840, to a curacy in Winchester. " The prevailing tone of 
 his mind on entering the ministry was one of sadness. His 
 spirit consumed the body. He never was content, he never 
 thought that he had attained, rather that he was lagging 
 far behind, the Christian life. Everj^where this is reflected 
 
104 AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 
 
 in his letters. His feeling of it was so strong, that it seemed 
 rather to belong to a woman than to a man, and at certain 
 times the resulting depression was so great that he fell into 
 a morbid hopelessness." His work at "Winchester, however, 
 , was largely successful, his rector proved a kind and con- 
 genial friend, and his mode of life seemed the ideal of 
 devotion. " Study all the morning ; in the afternoon hard 
 fagging at visitation of the poor in the closest and dirtiest 
 streets of Winchester ; his evenings were spent sometimes 
 alone, but very often with his rector." His habits, indeed, 
 here took an ascetic shape, such as by some occult law of 
 nature it would appear every strong soul, at the outset of its 
 higher life, spontaneously adopts. The Quarantania fast 
 of Christ has had its unconscious copyists in every age and 
 under every creed. Elijah, and Buddha, and Zoroaster, 
 each earned through such means their prophet-mantles, 
 and since their day thousands of lesser men have felt that 
 " lusting of the spirit against the flesh," in which the spirit 
 is ever cruel in its first victory. Robertson, we are told, 
 "created a system of restraint in food and sleep. For nearly 
 a year he almost altogether refrained from meat. He com- 
 pelled himself to rise early. He refrained also much from 
 society." In some private meditations and resolutions writ- 
 ten at this time (1843-1845) there occur long strings of 
 reasons to fortify the determination to eat with stringent 
 self-denial and to rise early ; and the " Resolves " are full 
 of that still deeper asceticism which starts from holiest 
 ambitions, and, alas ! ends too often in the most morbid self- 
 anatomy and self-consciousness. 
 
 " To try to feel my own insignificance. To speak less of self, and 
 think less. To feel it degradation to speak of my own doings as 
 a poor braggart. To perform rigorously the examen of conscience," 
 etc.i 
 
 1 Pages 99, 100. 
 
AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 105 
 
 On all this portion of Eobertson's life, the biographer 
 makes wise and pertinent remarks ; how it was the natural 
 result of the school in which he had been trained, and how 
 he escaped from it into a manlier spirit, not without bearing 
 away some fruit of self-knowledge and of knowledge of other 
 men. His sermons, in later years, at Brighton, were full of 
 protests against these mistakes of his youth, when his very 
 genius seemed under a cloud, and the force and originality 
 he was soon to develope were kept under by the restraints 
 of his creed. 
 
 A threat of hereditary consumption in 1841, compelled 
 him to give up his work at Winchester and go abroad, 
 oppressed by a sense of despondency and failure. A 
 pedestrian tour, extending to Geneva, soon renewed his 
 health and spirits. He plunged into controversy with every 
 one who would discuss with him. Catholics, Rationalists, 
 Atheists, and " believed that there is at this time a deter- 
 mined attack made by Satan and his instruments to subvert 
 that cardinal doctrine of our best hopes — justification by 
 faith alone." A Geneva minister denying the " Deity of 
 Christ," is told that he cannot be a Christian, and that his 
 young monitor " trembles for him." Altogether we have a 
 picture of the earnest, narrow, devout Evangelical clergy- 
 man, familiar enough to all of us who have seen much of 
 the world, but who, we have rarely had reason to suppose, 
 could in this life assume the spiritual wings of a Robertson, 
 and fly like him into free fields of air. 
 
 In the summer of 1842, Robertson became the curate of 
 the Rev. Archibald Boyd, then of Cheltenham, a gentleman 
 for whom he entertained the greatest respect, and who was 
 certainly not likely to have guided him out of the very 
 straitest sect of the orthodox. I ca^ remember hearing 
 Mr. Boyd about this period preaching at Cheltenham, and 
 denouncing Unitarians with such singular vehemence, that 
 
106 AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 
 
 it induced me to institute careful inquiries concerning a body 
 of wliose tenets at that time I was in total ignorance. E,o- 
 bertson was at first in full barinon}^ with Mr. Boyd's opinions, 
 but the hour for a great revolution in his soul's history was 
 approaching. 
 
 Calvinism has had its Heroic Ao-e ; the age of the Pilgrim 
 Fathers, of Brainerd and of Hopkins. It has an Age of 
 Saints still, as many a bed of agonizing disease testifies in 
 home and hospital in England to-day. But there is a phase 
 of the religion not heroic nor yet saintly ; a phase to check 
 the ardour and alienate the allegiance of any man true of 
 heart like Robertson. Probably in such a place as a fashion- 
 able church at Cheltenham, that unlovely phase may be 
 met with in its most exaggerated development. 
 
 "At first (says his biographer) tie believed that all who spoke 
 of Christ were Christ-like. But he was rudely undeceived. His 
 truthful character, his earnestness, at first unconsciously and after- 
 wards consciously, recoiled from all the unreality around him. He 
 was so pained by the expressions of religious emotion which fell 
 from those who were living a merely fashionable life, that he states 
 himself in one of his letters that he gave up reading all books of a 
 devotional character, lest he should be lured into the same habit of 
 feeling without acting. His conceptions also of Christianity as the 
 religion of just and loving tolerance made him draw back with horror 
 from the violent and blind denunciations which the religious agitators 
 and the religious papers of the extreme portion of the Evangelical 
 party indulged in under the cloak of Christianity. ' They tell lies,' he 
 said, ' in the name of God. Others tell them in the name of the 
 Devil : that is the only difference.' It was this, and other things of 
 the same kind, which first shook his faith in Evangelicalism." i 
 
 In 1843 he wrote to a friend : " As to the state of the 
 Evangelical clergy, I think it lamentable. I see sentiment, 
 instead of principle, and a miserable mawkish religion super- 
 seding a state which once was healthy. I stand alone, a 
 theological Ishmael." In the following year other doubts 
 1 Vol. i. p. 108. 
 
AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 107 
 
 and difficulties arose. His preaching altered in tone, and 
 lie suddenly awoke to the conviction " that the system on 
 which he had founded his wdiole faith and work could never 
 be received by him again." An outward blow — the sudden 
 ruin of a friendship — accelerated the inward crisis ; and the 
 result was a period of spiritual agony so awful that it smote 
 his s]3irit down into a profound darkness, and of all his 
 early faiths but one remained, "It must be right to do 
 right ! " He travelled away to Germany, and there, amid 
 the beautiful hills and vales of the Tyrol, in long lonely 
 walks and solitary musings, he passed through the great 
 ordeal. 
 
 He fought his doubts and gathered strength, 
 He would not make his judgment blind, 
 He faced the spectres of the mind 
 
 And laid them : thus he came at length 
 
 To find a stronger faith his own ; 
 
 And power was with him in the night. 
 Which makes the darkness and the light, 
 
 And dwells not in the light alone. 
 
 Never has that dread battle been more faithfully fought ; 
 never has the victory been more nobly won. Long years 
 afterwards, speaking to those working men with whom 
 perhaps of all his hearers he had closest sympathies, men 
 from whom most of our preachers would shut out the 
 very name of religious doubt, or, if forced to treat of it, 
 sternly dismiss them " to the law and to the testimony " 
 — to these men E-obertson disclosed what we cannot doubt 
 was the history of his own spiritual struggle and the tri- 
 umphant peace which followed it. I must be pardoned for 
 copying the story at length. Few words, I believe, in any 
 book, bear in them seeds of greater usefulness for our day 
 of doubt and troubling of the waters. Like every true pro- 
 phet, Robertson was the forerunner of his brethren, and 
 
108 AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 
 
 passed before them tlirougli the dark river, telling them 
 where ground might yet be found for their feet, even in its 
 depths, till they should reach " the new firm land of faith 
 beyond." For all the thousands who are now passing, and 
 must presently pass, through those dread waters, and fear 
 lest they go over, even over their souls, and whelm them in 
 their deeps for ever, the history of Robertson's transition of 
 faith is a most blessed lesson. By that way he went, and 
 by that way only, I believe, in our day, shall the Nations 
 of the Saved pass over. 
 
 " It is an awfiil moment when the soul begins to find that the props 
 on which it bhndly rested so long are, many of them, rotten, and 
 begins to suspect them all ; when it begins to feel the nothingness 
 of many of the traditionary opinions which have been received with 
 implicit confidence, and in that horrible insecurity begins also to 
 doubt whether there be anything to believe at all. It is an awful hour, 
 let him who has passed through it say how awful, when this life has 
 lost its meaning, when the grave appears to be the end of all, human 
 goodness nothing but a name, and the sky above this universe a 
 dead expanse, black with the void from which God has disappeared. 
 In that fearful loneliness of spirit, when those who shoidd have been 
 his friends and counsellors only frown upon his misgivings, and 
 profanely bid him stifle doubts which, for aught he knows, may arise 
 from the Fountain of truth itself, I know but one way in which a 
 man may come forth from his agony scatheless ; it is by holding fast 
 to those things which are certain still, — the grand, simple landmarks 
 of morality. In the darkest hour through which a human soul 
 can pass, whatever else is doubtful, this at least is certain — If there 
 he no Ood and no future state, yet, even then, it is better to be generous 
 than selfish, better to he chaste than licentious, better to he true than false, 
 better to be brave than to he a coward. Blessed, beyond all earthly 
 blessedness, is the man who in the tempestuous darkness of the 
 soul has dared to hold fast to these venerable landmarks. Thrice 
 blessed is he who, when all is drear and cheerless within and without, 
 when his teachers terrify him and his friends shrink from him, has 
 obstinately clung to moral good. Thrice blessed, because his night 
 shall pass into clear bright day. I appeal to the recollection of any 
 man who has passed through that hour of agony, and stood upon the 
 
AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 109 
 
 rock at last, the surges stilled below him, and the last cloud drifted 
 from the sky above, with a faith and hope and trust no longer tra- 
 ditional, but of his own — a faith which neither earth nor hell shall 
 shake thenceforth for ever." 
 
 Here is the "Saints' Tragedy " ; nay, the Saints' triumph- 
 ant Drama of Victory ; the " Prometheus Unchained " of 
 the inner life for us moderns, with our perishing theologies, 
 our science and philosophy presenting to us a daily changing 
 phantasmagoria of the material and mental universe. Our 
 ApoUyons are not the A.pollyons of our fathers ; our Yalley 
 of the Shadow of Death is haunted by far direr sjDoctres, 
 and opens into far deeper and more fathomless abj'sses, 
 than ever they beheld. But for us, too, there is a weapon 
 to slay the dragon, a path through the realm of darkness 
 and despair. Not any close-linked chain-mail of Evidences, 
 any buckler of resolute Belief, shall defend us ; scarce may 
 we even find strength to send to Heaven one winged arrow 
 of Prayer. No guiding Star shall light our way through 
 the pitfalls of the Yalley. But, fighting blow for blow, 
 winning step for step, against every fiend-like passion, every 
 hell-born temptation, we shall gain at last the victory ; 
 pressing God's lamp close to our breasts, 
 
 " Its radiance soon or late shall pierce the gloom ; 
 We shall emerge some day." 
 
 One struggle to obey Conscience, when Conscience has been 
 for the time bereft of all her insignia of roj^alty, when she 
 no longer claims to be vicegerent of an Almighty Lord, nor 
 points with outstretched sceptre to a world where her faith- 
 ful servants shall be rewarded when their tasks are done ; 
 one free and \oydl act of obedience to her then, will roll back 
 the bars of heaven, as no giant intellectual labours can ever 
 help us to do. 
 
 Is this mysterious ? It is the most simple of all the laws 
 of Providence. Moral goodness is the character of God. 
 
110 AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 
 
 To love goodness is to love God, in a far deeper, truer sense, 
 than to love any intellectually- conceived idea of a Supreme 
 Being, whether revealed or unrevealed. Man meets God 
 when he feels godlike feelings and performs godlike acts. 
 He gets above and behind all the secondary, third and 
 thousandth arguments for believing in God, and finds Him 
 at the first and fountain-head of all religious knowledo^e. 
 Small marvel it is if his doubts thenceforth are banished 
 for ever. 
 
 Robertson wrote during the fever of his struggle, 
 
 " Moral goodness and moral beauty are realities lying at tlie base 
 and beneath all forms of religious expression. They are no dream, 
 and they are not mere utilitarian conveniences. That suspicion was 
 
 an agony once. It is passing away As to the ministry, I am 
 
 in infinite perplexity. To give it up seems throwing away the only 
 opportunity of doing good in this short life that is now available to me ; 
 yet to continue when my whole soul is struggling with meaning that I 
 cannot make intelligible, is very wretched." 
 
 Returning back to England after some weeks' work at 
 Heidelberg, Robertson accepted from Bishop Wilberforce 
 the charge of St. Ebb's Church, Oxford. How he came to 
 seek employment in such a quarter is hardly accounted for. 
 He was not a High Churchman. "While the Tractarians 
 seemed to say that forms could produce life, he said that 
 forms were necessary only to support life ; but for that they 
 were necessary. Bread cannot create life, but life cannot 
 be kept up without bread." Neither was he a Broad Church- 
 man of that first school which before the era of Essays and 
 Reviews was held to represent the widest views in the 
 Church of England. " Though holding Mr. Maurice in 
 veneration, he differed on many and important points both 
 from him and Professor Kingsley. He was the child of no 
 theological father." A few months, however, terminated his 
 labours under the great Tractarian Bishop, and in August, 
 
AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. HI 
 
 1847, Eobertson accepted the charge of Trinity Chapel, 
 Brighton, the field of his noblest work, the post at which 
 he died. 
 
 Trinity Chapel (I speak from the recollection of some 
 five-and-twenty years) is an ugly square building, devoid 
 of a chancel properly so called, and with green niches 
 on either side of the communion-table, the one of course 
 serving as desk, the other as pulpit. It was a drowsy, 
 dreary locality, much favoured by the schools wherewith 
 Brighton abounds. Robertson at once took his part, and 
 preached as he thought and as he felt, awakening many 
 echoes. " At Oxford he was like the swimmer who has 
 for the first time ventured into deep water ; at Brighton 
 he struck out boldly into the open sea." From this time 
 there does not appear to have occurred any essential modi- 
 fications of his opinions. He continued to speak out freely 
 and with surpassing energy and eloquence, till after six 
 brief years his life burnt itself out, and his place knew 
 him no more. I need not pursue chronologically the order 
 of the few events which diversified his career, but endeavour 
 to put together such materials as are given us for forming 
 a correct idea of the man — his creed and his character, his 
 strength and his weakness. 
 
 Mr. Brooke's view of the great work of Robertson is well 
 summed up in the following passage : 
 
 " He represented to men, not sharp, distinct outlines of doctrine, 
 but the fulness and depth of the Spirit of Christianity. . . . He 
 cannot be claimed especially by any one of our conflicting parties. 
 But all thoughtful men, however divided in opinion, find in his writings 
 a point of contact. He has been made one of God's instruments to 
 preserve the unity of the Christian Church in this country. . . . But 
 though his teaching was more suggestive than dogmatic, he did not 
 shrink from meeting in the pulpit the difl&culties involved in many 
 of the doctrines of the English Church. His explanation of the 
 Atonement, of the doctrine of the sacraments, of absolution, of 
 
112 AA^ ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 
 
 imputed righteousness, of the freedom of the gospel in contrast to 
 the bondage of the law, have solved the difficulties of many. He 
 believed himself that they were the true solutions. But he also 
 believed that the time might come when they would cease to be 
 adequate solutions. Yet notwithstanding all this, he had a fixed basis 
 for his teaching. It was the Divine-human Life of Christ. He felt 
 that an historical Christianity was absolutely necessary, that only 
 through a visible Life of the Divine in the flesh could God become 
 
 intelligible to man The Incarnation was to him the centre of 
 
 all history,"^ 
 
 The idea which evidently underlies this defence of Ro- 
 bertson's theology, or rather his Christianity without dog- 
 matic theology, seems to me partially true and partially 
 false. It is true that mere intellectual ideas, whether con- 
 nected or not with religious belief, have in them no power 
 to produce true unity between human souls. Sentiment 
 unites men ; opinion only serves, at the best, to make 
 partisans and fellow- sectaries. On the other hand, it is 
 false to assume that "sharp, distinct outlines of doctrines" 
 have in them any necessary antagonism to fervent sentiment, 
 or that (according to a belief which seems gaining ground 
 in our day) the more misty is a man's creed, the more warm 
 are likely to be his affections. Our reaction from Calvinistic 
 stiffness is carrjdng us too far if it persuade us that, to love 
 God much, it is needful to be extremely uncertain regarding 
 all His dealings and attributes. Robertson himself, we 
 suspect, was a proof that " sharp and distinct outlines of 
 doctrine" were no bar to the power of uniting men of various 
 denominations ; for he accomplished that end not by lacking 
 such distinct outlines, but (among other causes) by very 
 distinctly preaching a certain form of Christ- worship attrac- 
 tive to thousands. "What he really seems to have lacked, 
 was a logical and self-consistent system. He had sharply- 
 defined isolated doctrines in abundance. 
 1 Pp. 1G7, 168. 
 
AiY ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 113 
 
 The peculiar form of Christolatry to wliicli I have now 
 referred, formed so prominent a feature in Robertson's life 
 and religion, as well as in his scheme of theology, that it 
 is needful to give it a very important place in any estimate 
 of him, as well as being in itself a matter deserving the 
 gravest attention of all thinkers of the present age. 
 
 Nothing is more remarkable to one who looks over the 
 past and present of Christendom, than to observe how very 
 variously the sentiments of professed Christians towards 
 their common Lord have differed, apparently without the 
 slightest relation to the doctrines they entertained concerning 
 his person and office. The isothermal lines (if I may so 
 express it) of love to Christ intersect every altitude of intel- 
 lect, every latitude of opinion. Or rather we may say, that 
 as in geological maps all artificial political frontiers and divi- 
 sions disappear, and, instead of states and provinces, we 
 have districts of granite, of sandstone, chalk or clay, — so in 
 studying Christian Europe beneath the surface, instead of 
 meeting again the great divisions of chvirches and minor 
 subdivisions of sects, we find a wholly new chart, wherewith 
 the superficial lines have little or no concern. Let us take 
 any dozen great religious writers of past times, and any 
 dozen more of different existing sectarian denominations, 
 and let them all be accounted believers in the actual Deity 
 of Christ — how immeasurably different is the place which 
 He holds, not so much in their opinions as in their affections ! 
 One man's writings are, so to speak, saturated with the love 
 of the great Teacher. Another merely pays him a brief 
 passing homage when the exigencies of his theme seem to 
 demand it. Yet no reader may tell that it is either a 
 plenitude of religious life or a deficiency of it which makes 
 an a Kempis so full of Christ, or a Fenelon or Tauler so 
 wrapped in God as to seem well-nigh to forget him. Nay, 
 even among those who dogmatically deny Christ's claim to 
 
114 AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 
 
 worship, lie assumes a position in some minds so prominent, 
 in others so far in the background, that, to return to our 
 metaphor, the line marking the warmest devotion to him 
 must be made to run half throuffh the Unitarian church, 
 after threading the heights of Romanism and Tractarianism, 
 and descending to the lowest vales of Evangelical and 
 Methodistical opinion. Channing and hundreds of Channing's 
 disciples seem to make up in personal attachment many times 
 more than they deduct from official homage. Even Theists 
 who differ in little else, differ, widely as the poles, when they 
 come to express their sentiments towards him who, to them 
 all, is only the Man of Nazareth. 
 
 Among those who have felt vividly this supreme attraction 
 to Christ's character, Robertson stands eminent. From his 
 first desire to devote himself, like a knight of old, to "military 
 service and the service of Christ," Christ's name seems to 
 have been uppermost in his mind and on his lips ; and, as his 
 biographer affirms, he endeavoured to bring everything, even 
 the petty worries of Brighton scandal, in some occult way to 
 the test of the life passed in Galilee eighteen centuries ago. 
 He deliberately identifies his whole religion with the worsJdp 
 of Christ, rather than with the attempt to follow God accord- 
 ing to the doctrines of Christ. Christianity in his view is 
 not so much the religion which Christ taught to men (though 
 of course this he would also maintain it to be), as the religion 
 which teaches men about Christ. In one of his sermons 
 (quoted by Mr. Brooke) he says : " In personal love and 
 adoration of Christ the Christian religion consists, and not in 
 a correct morality or a correct doctrine, but in a homage to a 
 King." In another place he writes to a friend : ^ " Only a 
 human God and none other must be adored by man." Thus 
 it appears that his intellect ratified the tendency of his 
 feelings. He deliberately made " the Christian religion " 
 ' Vol. i., page 290. 
 
AN- ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 115 
 
 {i.e., his own religion) consist in "love and adoration," not 
 of God, but of Christ ; not in morality, not in true belief, 
 not in allegiance to the Lord of conscience, but in " homage 
 to a King," narael}^, to Jesus of Nazareth, How far this 
 creed harmonized with his other ideas, how it coincided 
 with that faith in the supremacy of moral good which he 
 must have brought away from that grandest passage of his 
 life, when fidelity to his own sense of Duty and Right alone 
 saved him amid the shipwreck of all his theology, how far 
 the "homasre to Christ" could be made the substance of 
 religion by one who had learned that lesson — I cannot 
 explain. It remains one of the thousand self-contradictions 
 of the human mind which we are called on only to notice 
 and not to reconcile. One remark, however, I must be per- 
 mitted to make ere we leave the subject. Those who, 
 like Eobertson, affirm that a " human Grod and none other 
 must be adored by man," seem strangely to forget those 
 loftier views of the origin of our knowledge of God which 
 at other moments they earnestly maintain. Has the 
 Divine Father, then, indeed so constituted His children, 
 and so ordered His relation to them, that they can never 
 love Him in His own essential Fatherhood, but only in 
 some " hypostasis " of Sonship or Incarnation ? I con- 
 fess to being somewhat wearied of this doctrine, which we 
 meet in our day from a dozen opposite quarters ; a doctrine 
 which out-herods Herod, and would have set the Fathers of 
 the Nicean Council aghast. Men who speak of " a human 
 God only being knowable or adorable by man," seem to 
 have formed for themselves a conception of our mortal 
 life as if it were spent in a dwelling close beside the sea, 
 yet so constructed as that by no door or window, no loop- 
 hole or crevice, should the inhabitants behold, or be enabled 
 so much as to guess at, the existence of that mighty Deep 
 beneath whose thunder the foundations of their dwellinor 
 
116 ^^V^ ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 
 
 tremble, and the voice of whose waters is ever sounding in 
 their ears. At length — so these teachers would have it — 
 at length a Mariner from the far-off blessed isles has landed 
 on that desolate shore, and said, " Behold the Ocean ! " 
 
 God did not so make for man his tenement of clay. He 
 made therein a window opening out to seaward, a window 
 where, ofttimes kneeling, he may gaze and wonder and 
 adore. The great Mariner indeed has come — many mariners 
 have come — and brought tidings of the boundless expanse, 
 the measureless brightness, of that Ocean of all good. But 
 their tales would be as idle words, could not each one of us 
 for himself look forth and with his own eyes behold the 
 Infinite Deep beside him and around. 
 
 To assert that man can only know God as a human God, 
 is tantamount to denying that man has any direct conscious- 
 ness of Deity. But, setting aside the terrible subtraction of 
 all the deepest part of our religious feelings which ought (if 
 men were but logical) to go with such denial, let us consider 
 how such a view can be reconciled with the most familiar 
 facts of human nature. There are in us all, various affections 
 and sentiments, having each their proper objects and, neces- 
 sarily, their proper means of knowing those objects. One 
 of these affections cannot be substituted or exchanged for 
 another ; for if given a different object, it thereupon becomes 
 a different affection. There is one affection for a parent, 
 another for a child, another for a wife, another for a friend. 
 A parent cannot give a filial affection to his son, nor a wife 
 a parental one to her husband, nor a man a friendly one to 
 an infant. In like manner, there are different affections for 
 human beings and for a Being superhuman. The human 
 affections (like those of which I have spoken) have for 
 their objects our human relatives and friends, all known 
 to us through our bodily senses ; the religious affections 
 have for their object a Divine Being, not known to us 
 
AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 117 
 
 through the senses, but through that special organ of con- 
 sciousness which I have called the Window of the soul 
 which opens on Deity. When Coratists talk of the " E,e- 
 ligion of Humanity," and attempt to attach the religious 
 sentiment to such an abstraction as this idea of Humanity, 
 or to such a concrete image thereof as a dead or living 
 woman, we answer confidently, " Not so — that is not ' reli- 
 gion.' Call the sentiment by what name you please, it 
 is not religion, any more than conjugal or parental love 
 is religion. It is another sentiment and must have another 
 name. Religion is a sentiment having for its object an 
 invisible Entity, not an abstraction or a symbol." Just the 
 same answer may be fitly given to Christians who tell us that 
 " a human God " is to be alone adored. A " human God " is 
 not an object of religion at all, but of esteem, honour, human 
 sympathy, or (if such sentiments be transgressed and real 
 adoration offered) then of Idolatry, of the sinful transference 
 of the sentiment due to God alone to an idol, or being 
 having a bodily image. In sober truth, all such wild phrases 
 are self-deceptive. Men feel such a profound love and vene- 
 ration for Christ, that they seek an infinite expression for 
 their lawful sentiment, and then call it by a name which 
 applies only to the love of God. When they really feel 
 religion to Christ, it is when they, like half the Christian 
 world, give his beloved name to "his Father and our Father." 
 For " Christ" read " God in His attributes of Love and 
 Redemption " — would be the first correction of an immense 
 portion of modern religious literature. 
 
 In the case of Robertson, some clue to the meaning of his 
 strange words about a " hijman God " may perhaps be found 
 where he says,^ " What is it to adore Christ ? To call him 
 God, and say. Lord, Lord ? No. Adoration is the mightiest 
 love the soul can give — call it by what name you will. 
 
 ' Vol. ii., page 171. 
 
118 AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 
 
 Many a Unitarian, as Channing, has adored, calling it only 
 admiration, and many an orthodox Christian, calling Christ 
 God, with most accurate theology, has given him only a 
 cool intellectual homage." All this is true in a sense, but 
 overlooks the fact on which I have been insisting, that the 
 affections are not interchangeable, and that the sentiments 
 duly given to a human ^being are not the sentiments duly 
 given to God, or vice versa, any more than conjugal and 
 filial and parental affections are interchangeable. Robertson 
 insists only on degree. He forgets there is also difference 
 in kind, and that to confound the kinds of love introduces 
 into the religious life a disorder similar to that brought into 
 social life by the misapplication of natural affections. 
 
 AA'hat Robertson's creed actually was during the later 
 years of his life, it is (strange to say) almost impossible to 
 discover. We meet such curious glimpses of it as these 
 
 " If you hate evil, you are on God's side, whether there be a personal 
 evil principle or not. / myself believe there is, but not so unquestion- 
 ingly as to be able to say, I think it a matter of clear revelation." ^ 
 
 Again : 
 
 " Mr. Eobertson was not a universalist in doctrine, however he may 
 have hojied that universalism was true. * My only difficulty,' he once 
 said to a friend, ' is how 7iot to believe in everlasting punishment.' " 2 
 
 Yet with this possible Devil and probable Hell, Robert- 
 son managed to attain views of God so high and devout, 
 that there has surely never been a reader of his Sermons 
 whose heart has not thereby been warmed to more fervent 
 piety, and, above all, to the effort to make pious feelings lead 
 to holy actions. His abhorrence of the indulgence of religious 
 emotions as a luxury was indeed one of the most marked 
 features of his character, and one which doubtless the popular 
 preacher of a Brighton chapel, no less than the Cheltenham 
 curate, had reason to feel pretty frequently. Undoubtedly, the 
 ^ Vol. ii., pnge 64. 2 YqI. ii.^ page 163. 
 
AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 119 
 
 great secret of his influence lay in the reality of his religion. 
 This seems a mere truism at first sight, but when we reflect 
 how much of self-deception, not to speak of the deception of 
 others, "lest we spoil our usefulness," mingles with the religion 
 of all save the highest and the holiest, it will be confessed that 
 for a man to be in his home what he is in his pulpit, in his 
 heart what he is in his books, in his life what he is in his prayer, 
 is to be real in a sense which few, alas ! may claim to be. 
 
 The great and peculiar glory of Robertson, in my estima- 
 tion, was his power to discern the living germ of truth in 
 dogmas long wrapped in such hard husks of forms as to 
 need genius like his to break them through and give the 
 seed within power to fructify once more. He deliberately 
 adopted this high task. " I always ask " (he says, in 
 a letter dated May 17, 1851) what does that dogma 
 mean, and how in my language can I put into form the 
 underlying truth, in corrector form if possible, but in only 
 approximative form after all. In this way, Purgatory, Ab- 
 solution, Mariolatry, become to me fossils, not lies." Every 
 reader of his Sermons must remember how well he fulfilled 
 this high purpose, and how under his hand these very 
 doctrines came forth out of the dust of ages beautiful and 
 full of fresh spiritual life. By this means also it happened 
 that Robertson became in so remarkable a degree the har- 
 monizer of men of the most opposite denominations. By 
 his profound insight he was enabled to get at the truth which 
 lies behind Dogma. Now as Truth is one and unchangeable, 
 and Dogma only a distorted image of Truth, refracted by the 
 atmospheres of those human minds through which it has 
 passed and wearing their colours — whether of one century or 
 another, one race, or people, or church, or philosophy — so the 
 setting forth of Truth, once more freed from the discolour- 
 ations of Dogma, is the most efiectual way to unite men who 
 have been kept apart by Dogma. Each now sees that Im 
 
120 AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 
 
 truth is also his neighbour's truth ; the same great fact 
 of the religious consciousness, the same idea of God and 
 duty, the same universal phenomenon of the inner life. 
 He perceives that it has only been the Dogma discolouring 
 it which made it appear different. Henceforth, now that 
 each knows the living truth to be the same for himself and 
 his neighbour, he not only feels reconciled to his neighbour, 
 but united with him. He learns perfect indulgence for his 
 neighbour's dogma, and much indifference for his own. The 
 root of bitterness is extirpated. 
 
 In another manner, also, this particular work confers an 
 immense benefit on mankind. He who can stand before 
 us as the Interpreter of the Past, does much to strengthen 
 all that is best in the Present. In the last century, Protes- 
 tants and Deists joined in holding up to contempt as utterly 
 valueless those elder dogmas, which, once living and beau- 
 tiful, had one by one become dead, and then had been 
 embalmed by the Church of Pome and placed like so many 
 saints in her shrines as things to be worshipped by believing 
 and adoring crowds, not rudely uncovered and gazed upon 
 by common mortals. Robertson was perhaps the first and 
 greatest of those who in our age have striven to undo the 
 mischief alike of the Pomish embalming, and the contumely 
 wherewith Protestants had torn these mummies from their 
 tombs and made them mere objects of curiosity or derision. 
 He has aided us to see that the men of the primitive ages 
 were men of like passions and like thoughts with ourselves, 
 and that it was much more the clothing of their thoughts, 
 the forms wherewith the mental fashion of that bygone 
 world naturally dressed them, than any real difference in 
 the thoughts themselves which distinguish them from our 
 own. To feel this thoroughly is to resume the heirlooms 
 of our race, to feel ourselves the " heirs of all the ages," the 
 lawful inheritors of wisdom doubly precious because tested 
 
AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 121 
 
 by the currency of millenniums. The philosophy of the 
 eighteenth century believed itself of mushroom birth, and 
 adopted all the rude airs of an upstart. The better philo- 
 sophy of the nineteenth seeks to attach itself to the noblest 
 names in the spiritual pedigree of the human race, and 
 speaks with somewhat of the calm dignity of one who 
 though far surpassing his fathers, yet deems himself to come 
 of goodly stock and worthy parentage. 
 
 On the other hand, there are not a few dangers connected 
 with this rehabilitating of discredited dogmas ; dangers, 
 above all to candour and simplicity. From these, however, 
 Robertson was nobly, I had almost written, splendidly, 
 exempt. No one could tax him with " putting new wine 
 into old bottles," in the spirit of that Janus-preaching we 
 hear so often ; one face for those who adhere to the Past, 
 and one for those who aspire to the Future. He was beyond 
 the suspicion of tampering with the purest simplicity of 
 the truth, as he understood it ; nay, he seemed to desire to 
 find always to express his thoughts, not old consecrated 
 words which remain for ever burdened with first associa- 
 tions, but the freshest phrases of English life of to-day 
 wherein his meaning might be absolutely transparent. And 
 one other great service llobertson did for us. He taught in 
 a thousand forms the truth, best expressed in one of his 
 Sermons, where he says, that the Vineyard is made indeed 
 for the culture of vines, but if vines be found healthy and 
 full of fruit outside the vineyard, they are none the less 
 therefore to be accounted true vines. Perhaps the relation 
 of the Church to the individual soul was never more happily 
 exemplified. Brought home, as by Robertson's eloquence, to 
 a thousand hearts, we all owe much, and shall year by year 
 owe more, to this lesson, gradually spreading among minds 
 whose orthodox creed would formerly have seemed to be a 
 wall of partition forbidding them to recognize any test of 
 
122 AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 
 
 Divine Sonship in those who "followed not us"; or any 
 fruit in the vines which grow outside the vineyard. 
 
 With pleasure we see from this Biography that practically 
 he felt no less than preached such liberalism. We read, 
 " He revered and spoke of Dr. Channing as one of the truest 
 and noblest Christians of America. He was deeply indebted 
 to his writings." And again : " He read James Martineau's 
 books with pleasure and profit. The influence of ' The 
 Endeavours after the Christian Life ' may be traced through 
 many of his sermons. Theodore Parker he admired for his 
 eloquence, earnestness, learning and indignation against evil, 
 and against forms without a spirit, which mark his writings. 
 But he deprecated the want of reverence and the rationaliz- 
 ing spirit of Parker." 2 
 
 I must pass briefly over the private character of this 
 noble man. The Biography we are reviewing, in spite 
 of all its warm eulogiums and discriminating criticisms, will 
 probably be felt by most readers to leave much to be desired 
 in the filling up of the picture of Robertson's character. 
 Those who personally and intimately knew Mr. Robertson 
 affirm that he was a most warm-hearted man, capable of 
 strong attachment, and I can hardly think his biographer 
 has done wisely in eliminating so completely the traces, or at 
 least all means of identifying the traces, of the friendships 
 of his manhood from these volumes. 
 
 In a most vigorous defence of Tennyson from the charge 
 of overstrained enthusiasm for Arthur Hallam, he saj'^s : 
 
 " The friendship of a school-boy is as full of tenderness and jealousy 
 and passionateuess as even love itself. I remember my own affection 
 for G. R. M. How my heart beat at seeing him ; how the conscious- 
 ness that he was listening while I was reading annihilated the presence 
 of the master ; how I fought for him ; how to rescue him at prisoner's 
 
 1 Vol. ii., page 171. 
 
 "^ I cannot pause to answer, for the thousandth time, the imputation conveyed 
 in the last paragraph. 
 
AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 123 
 
 base turned the efFect of mere play into a ferocious determination, as 
 if the captivity were real ; how my blood crept cold with delight when 
 he came to rescue me or when he praised me." ' 
 
 Yet, after his boyliood, we are hardly admitted to guess 
 even the names of those he loved best. He details continu- 
 ally to his anonymous correspondents little circumstances 
 of his life which read like the pictures drawn for a friend's 
 perusal of the life of an invalid woman, but the passages 
 which should account for such pages are withheld. Again, 
 we are assured, by those who knew him best, that he dis- 
 played great gentleness and magnanimity regarding the mis- 
 representations and slanders heaped on him. The printed 
 fragments of letters unfortunately recall what, in such case, 
 must have been almost his sole utterances of indignation, 
 weariness, and complaint. These are, doubtless, unfortunate 
 results of a system which yet it is probable the biographer 
 was. justified in following. At least his own testimony, and 
 that of many who knew Eobertson more intimately, should 
 be generally known, to absolve him from suspicions of weak- 
 ness which these severed fragments may suggest. 
 
 We are told that Robertson's eloquence became obvious 
 from the first sermon he ever preached. He was, as I may 
 venture to add, like his biographer, eloquent in the best sense, 
 that is, rich in thoughts, as well as in words to clothe his 
 thoughts. His voice was fine, his person (it is said) even 
 unfortunately handsome. The photograph and the bust 
 give the idea of a man too slender of make, with too narrow 
 chest and drooping shoulders, and a head too high and 
 defective in depth to make such storms of emotions as he 
 habitually underwent otherwise than perilous. To use Canon 
 Kingsley's phrase, there was a complete lack of " healthy 
 animalism" about his head and figure. To compensate for 
 this, however, he was soldier-like in bearing as in taste ; 
 
 1 Page 81. 
 
124 AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 
 
 "muscular" before the term became the cant name for his 
 school of theology. Nay, he was not only a soldier, but 
 also to the backbone a sportsman. We have all heard the 
 remark that a man rarely enjoys a walk in the country during 
 Avhich he has not had the chance of Idlling something. AYith- 
 out discussing this supposed evidence of manliness, I confess 
 to a little pain at finding Robertson writing, that " as he had 
 not a gun" he could not discover what some sea-gulls were 
 eating. Even these beautiful and harmless sea-birds, which 
 a Turk deems it sin and pity to destroy, would, it seems, 
 not have been safe from his slaughter. Robertson's love of 
 sport, indeed, led him far. With his sisters one after another 
 dying of consumption and his own constitution continually 
 threatened, we read that "he would walk for hours after a 
 single bird, and reluctantly leave off the pursuit of this coy 
 grouse when night began to fall. He would sit for hours in 
 a barrel sunk in the border of a marsh waiting for wild 
 ducks. These hours of delight (says his biographer) he 
 obtained once a year."^ All, doubtless, very manly and 
 " muscular," but a curious study withal ! A great religious 
 Teacher, cheered by the sublime hope of killing a fowl, sitting 
 "for hours in a barrel sunk in a marsh," and counting the time 
 spent in such durance as " hours of delight," is a spectacle 
 at which the feeble feminine mind stands by in amazement. 
 Robertson's feelings about women form a remarkable 
 feature in his character. In his early boyhood he seems to 
 have had a sort of worship for them, like that of an old 
 knight of romance. Later in life, a high and most pure 
 tenderness of feeling marks almost all his intercourse. In 
 one letter he remarks, " I rather agree with the view of St. 
 Paul having taken personally a low estimate of women. It 
 seems to me inseparable from his temperament. . . . That 
 respectful chivalry of feeling which characterizes some men 
 
 1 Pa^e 198. 
 
AN- ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 125 
 
 can only exist where that is found which St. Paul lacked." 
 In another letter soon afterwards, he says : " In the estimate 
 formed of women, I should think there cannot be a doubt 
 which is the truer and deeper, that which makes her a 
 plaything, or that which surrounds her with the sacredness 
 of a silent worship. A temperament like that of St. Paul's 
 is happier, and for the world more useful." It is rather 
 surprising to think that to such a man as Robertson there 
 was no medium between a "plaything" and a being "sur- 
 rovmded with the sacredness of a silent worship ; " and that 
 while considering the latter view " truer and deeper," he 
 attributed the "plaything" theory to the great apostle of 
 the Gentiles, and considered it (though less true and 
 deep) " happier, and for the world more useful ! " The 
 "usefulness" of making half the human race playthings 
 for the other half, is surely open to some discussion ! Again, 
 this man, with his " sacred and silent worship," did not 
 shrink from attributing to the objects of this " worship " 
 a corruption and baseness which I may venture to say few 
 women could hear of without indignation. He writes : " I 
 do believe that a secret leaning towards sin, and a secret 
 feeling of provocation and jealousy towards those who have 
 enjoyed what they dare not, lies at the bottom of half the 
 censorious zeal for morality which we hear. I am nearly 
 sure it is so with women in their virulence against their 
 own sex ; they feel malice because they envy them.''' ^ A 
 virtuous woman malicious to an unchaste one because she 
 envies her, seems to me rather an unworthy object of " the 
 sacredness of a silent worship " ; nay, even of being made 
 the " plaything " of an honest man. ^Vill men never have 
 done with this jargon of inflated and impossible reverence; 
 this under-current of vilest mistrust and contempt ? 
 
 "When Robertson was a boy, he is recorded to have been 
 ' Pas:e 283. 
 
126 AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 
 
 full of life and gaiety, but from the time he grew up he 
 appears to have been constantly subject to morbid depres- 
 sion. At first there were alternating fits of cheerfulness 
 and gloom ; but at last he seems to have deliberately justi- 
 fied himself in condemning mirth and adopting a fixed 
 melancholy. In one place, after a touching description of 
 the sufferings of a poor soul he had visited, he says, inci- 
 dentally, of his general habit, " My laugh is now a ghastly, 
 hollow, false lie of a thing." ^ In another place, detailing 
 a meeting of men assembled to thank him for his instruc- 
 tions, he says, "The applause was enthusiastic, yet all seemed 
 weary, flat, stale, and unprofitable. In the midst of the 
 homage of a crowd, I felt alone and as if friendless." ^ 
 Again, in 1852, he writes : " All was warm and effervescing 
 once, now all is cold and flat. If a mouse could change into 
 a frog, would the affections be as warm as before, albeit they 
 might remain unalterable ? I trow not ; so I only say you 
 have as much as a cold-blooded animal can give, whose pul- 
 sations are something like one per minute." Again we are 
 told : " He also felt deep sympathy with that want of the 
 sense of the ridiculous in Wordsworth, which made all the 
 world, even to its meanest things, a consecrated world. The 
 ludicrous now rarely troubles me, he says ; all is awful." ^ 
 It would be hard, I venture to think, to put more deplorable 
 and distorted ideas into one sentence. That the ivant of a 
 sense could be a subject of congratulation — a sense the source 
 of incalculable innocent gratification, the corrector of all taste, 
 the true correlative of the sense of the sublime, to which it 
 bears the relationship which tenderness does to strength — to 
 rejoice in the loss of this God- given aid to cheer us over the 
 stony places of life, and then to sit down and say that this 
 sense rarely troubles him, for "all is awful," is (in my humble 
 thinking) to fall into some of the worst errors of Calvinism. 
 1 Vol. ii. page 58. ^ Vol. ii. page 107. ^ Vol. ii. page 17o. 
 
AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN 127 
 
 Shall I be pardoned if I write of a contrast suggested 
 to me by these expressions, and by those of distaste for his 
 work, of morbid annoyance at the attacks of the Record 
 newspaper, and, lastly, of continual longing to end his task 
 and die ? There was another Reformer who died soon after 
 Hobertson, worn out like him in the prime of manhood by 
 his labours. He also was abused and vilified, and more 
 cruelly so than Robertson, since life and limb were often in 
 his case in peril. There was in his home-life a want 
 Robertson never felt, which the other felt keenly : the 
 absence of children. Taking all in all, in outward circum- 
 stances there was not much to choose as to happiness 
 between one lot and the other. But let any one take up 
 the Biography of Theodore Parker (not comparable as a 
 literary work to that of Robertson), and read page after 
 page telling of his delight in his task, his gratitude to God 
 when his labours were blessed by helping, perchance, some 
 poor backwoodsman, some stranger far away, his manly 
 scorn of danger and actual good-humour to those who reviled 
 and threatened him, his joyousness of spirit, revelling in 
 innocent jest and mirthfulness to the last, let him read his 
 letters, overflowing with friendliness and tendei*ness to 
 brother, wife, teacher, friend, disciple, as if his heart were 
 a very treasure-house of all the kindly emotions, let him 
 watch him at last when his health failed and he left his 
 place in sorrow, wishing yet to spend and be spent, desiring 
 to live, for " the world was so interesting and friends so 
 dear," and dying at last with the words on his lips, " I am 
 not afraid to die, but I would fain have lived to finish my 
 work ; I had great powers ; I have but half used them : " — 
 let him compare these lives and these feelings on the verge 
 of the grave, and then say whose was the healthier creed, the 
 sounder thought of God and human destiny ? We must not 
 press such parallels far. There is ever injustice in doing so; 
 
128 AN ENGLISH BROAD CHURCHMAN. 
 
 and the law by whicli the joyous nature chooses a joyful 
 creed and is thereby for ever confirmed in its joyousness? 
 and the depressed and morbid mind chooses a sad creed and 
 is thereby made more morbid, had probably never stronger 
 exemplification than in the case of the sturdy New- En gland 
 farmer's son and the over-sensitive English gentleman. 
 Parker had a hero's soul in a body which, till he thoroughly 
 wore it out, fairly bore its part in the " give and take " 
 of matter and spirit. Robertson had an angelic soul, ap- 
 parently never fitted to bear this world's jars and strug- 
 gles, lodged in a body where every nerve was strung to 
 torture, and brain disease seemed to be indigenous. To 
 ask of the two the same bearing, the same spirit, would be 
 unjust. Yet it must remain at least as the lesson of the 
 two Biographies, that the religious faith which animated 
 the life of Parker and upheld him in death was pre-emi- 
 nently the healthiest conceivable in all its results ; and that 
 the belief adopted by the devout and noble-hearted Robert- 
 son left him, on the other hand, to a condition of sentiment 
 and a view of human life which must almost be qualified as 
 morbid. It is not allowable to ask. Was not such difier- 
 ence, in a measure at least, the legitimate result of the 
 difierence of their creeds in that one supreme point whereon 
 they separated ? Were not the joyous trust, the love of his 
 work, the delight in success, the carelessness of rebuke, the 
 longing to live, which characterized the one — and the gloom 
 and depression which hung, deeper and heavier year by year, 
 over the other — both the natural results of their opinions? 
 The one saw, as the central Power of the universe, a radiant 
 Sun of Light and Love, " with whom was no darkness at 
 all " ; and the other beheld an awful vision of blackened 
 heavens and rending graves, and over all, upon the torturing 
 Cross, an Agonizing God. 
 
JSSSAY V. 
 
 A FRENCH THEIST.^ 
 
 It is a fact so familiar as to be proverbial, that there are 
 some things in which all human beings feel alike ; that 
 " one touch of nature makes the whole world kin." It is 
 also a fact, though a less recognized one, that there are 
 again other things in which individuals, classes, and nations 
 feel so diflPerently, that the display of their peculiar sensi- 
 bilities, far from making others feel akin, inspires them 
 with something very like aversion. To take our examples 
 only from the largest instances, the various passions and 
 sentiments of the Classic and of the Teutonic nations rather 
 jar on one another than call out any hidden harmony ; and 
 in our own day, English reserve and German gemuth/ichkeit, 
 the " sentimens delicats " of a Frenchman and the " fervido 
 cuore " of an Italian, have the least possible attraction the 
 one for the other. Till we have lived long in each country, 
 fed on its literature, and drank the wine of friendship with 
 its sons and daughters, we are rather offended than won by 
 its peculiar spirit ; rather tempted to laugh at than to be 
 softened by its tenderness. Perhaps we " insular Britons " 
 feel this anti-social repulsion more than others ; at all events, 
 
 ^ Ze Christ et la Conscience. Par Felix Pecaut. 12mo. Paris: Cherbuliez 
 et Cie. 
 
 I>e VAvenir du Theisme Chretien considers comme Eeligion. Par Felix Pecaut. 
 12mo. Paris : Cherbuliez et Cie. 
 
 9 
 
130 A FRENCH THEIST. 
 
 we show it more candidly. How cordially most of us 
 dislike " German sentiment," with its (wholly imaginary) 
 tendencj^ to lax morality, and the unlimited indulgence in 
 smoke, metaphorical and actual ! How we abhor American 
 " bunkum " and " tall talk." Above all, how we distrust 
 French ideas, French phrases, French turns of thought, 
 the pitiless logic, the unattackable dialectics, the senti- 
 mental hyperboles, of a true French writer ! To hear 
 a Frenchman talk of "la femme," with mingled gallantry, 
 fathomless pity, and acute curiosity, is enough to set John 
 Bull, who has known Mrs. Bull by heart these twenty 
 years, and finds her a good, comfortable wife, not in the 
 least mysterious or pitiable, stamping with rage. To find 
 him apostrophizing a mother, " Une mere, voyez vous c'est 
 une chose," etc., etc., and winding up every peroration with 
 the Divine Name as a grand rhetorical flourish, is cause 
 enougli to justify all the wars of history. We don't like to 
 hear that Napoleon lost Waterloo because, as M. Hugo says, 
 " il genait Dieu." First, we don't believe in such a philo- 
 sophy of history ; and, secondly, we are less shocked by a 
 man breaking the third commandment for the purpose of 
 devoting somebody's eyes to eternal perdition, than for that 
 of producing a rhetorical coiq) de theatre. 
 
 Very naturally, these national antipathetic feelings come 
 out most strongly in the case of the deepest and most 
 sacred sentiments, wherein a single jarring note is always 
 painfully discernible. The intensity of pleasure we derive 
 from complete religious sympathy, is only paralleled by the 
 soreness of the mental ear to which approximate, but im- 
 perfect, harmonies are presented. The nearer the approxi- 
 mation may be, if the harmony is not achieved, the worse is 
 the jar. Thus when we read the religious writings of Pagans 
 or Moslems, we feel no annoyance at the wide divergence 
 between their expressions of piety and our own. But the 
 
A FREXCH THEIST. 131 
 
 habitual variations from our tone of sentiment of another 
 and intimately known Christian nation, by whom the same 
 order of ideas is discussed with similar power, is a stone of 
 stumbling we cannot easily overpass. I believe I shall 
 not misrepresent our countrymen if I say, that to nineteen 
 out of twenty English readers of the most thoughtful classes, 
 the rich religious literature of France is almost unknown, 
 not from any inability to appreciate it, or, in the main, from 
 an}^ great difference of opinion with its authors, but because 
 of a certain latent objection to see sacred sentiments in 
 the dress in which French taste habitually clothes them, 
 and from a dislike even to the terminology of Gallic 
 religion. 
 
 Nor is this antipathy (doubtless just as reasonably reci- 
 procated by French readers towards English writers) con- 
 cerned specially wdth differences of opinion, such as those 
 which render the peculiar phrases of our own High-church 
 and Low-church, orthodox and liberal parties, mutually so 
 distasteful. English Catholics are not particularly fond of 
 Bossuet and Massillon, and I believe that few English 
 evangelical Protestants would read without disgust the 
 exhortations of M. Adolphe Monod to regard the awful 
 Creator as dehonnaire, and to address Him in prayer always 
 with confidence in this astounding attribute of the "debon- 
 nairete de Dieu." Nay, to English liberals of even the 
 least reverential section, by whom Strauss's opinions are fully 
 accepted, the Vie de Jesus of M. Henan, with all its poetry 
 and even tenderness of feeling towards Christ, is invariably 
 somewhat shocking ; and while they can coolly read a 
 grave German debate as to whether imposture mingled in 
 his performance of miracles, they turn with a sense of 
 indignation from hearing him styled " ce charmant doc- 
 teur," who was "jaloux pour la gloire de son Pere," in 
 the beauty of Magdalenes, and proffered "delicieuses para- 
 
132 A FRENCH THEIST. 
 
 boles" of the Prodigal Son to tlie jyetit societe oi fishermen 
 and douaniers} 
 
 It is a circumstance worthy of very joyful recognition 
 that there is a school of theological writers now arising in 
 France between whom and our English sensibilities no such 
 barrier as that I have described has any existence, and 
 with whom, whether we coincide with them or not in matters 
 of opinion, the most reverent of us are sure to sympathize 
 profoundly in sentiment. Perhaps here also may be found 
 one proof the more of the truth, that the nearer any mind 
 approaches to a strictly monotheistic faith, so much will it 
 gain in spontaneous reverence of spirit ; so much the further 
 will it be from the hateful familiarity of cant on one side, 
 and the rude defiance of atheism on the other. 
 
 I do not design in this article to give any general 
 account of French liberal Protestantism, of which M. Bost 
 has lately issued so able a defence,^ and which numbers 
 among its teachers such able and excellent men as M. Albert 
 Reville of Rotterdam, MM. Coquerel and Martin Paschoud 
 of Paris, M. Gaufres President of the Institution Duplessis- 
 Mornay, M. Fontanes of Havre, M. Zaalberg of the Hague, 
 and MM. Colani and Leblois of Strasbourg. My object is to 
 introduce to better acquaintance one writer of the school 
 whose works seem pre-eminently qualified to interest Eng- 
 
 1 So completely has this English repulsion to Kenan's tone been recognized 
 by the most clever of our ecclesiastical parties, that something very like an 
 instigation to read the Vie de Jesus may be traced in all allusions to the work 
 in the High-church organs. It is, of course, " fearfully blasphemous ; " still 
 it is so original, poetical, learned, attractive in all ways, that strong minds, 
 well rooted in the faith, may be tempted to read it, and (as the reviewers know 
 very well) induced to confound it and all books of liberal theology in common 
 disgust. On the other hand, such works as Jowett's, Colenso's, and Martiueau's, 
 have (if we may believe these critics) nothing in them in the slightest degree 
 novel or interesting. Theij are the dangerous books from which orthodoxy in 
 earnest strives to deter all readers. 
 
 2 "Le Protestantisme Liberal. Par M. le Pasteur Th. Bost." 1 vol. 12rao. 
 Paris : Germer Bailliere. 
 
A FRENCH THEIST. 133 
 
 lish readers. There are, I believe, few liberal thinkers 
 amongst us who will not rejoice to come into contact with a 
 mind at once so lofty, so wide and so profoundly devout, as 
 that of M. Felix Pecaut. 
 
 The first of M. Pecaut's books known to us is an essay of 
 considerable length, Christ and the Religious Consciousness. 
 The second is a shorter work, On the Future of Christian 
 Theism considered as a Religion^ (1864). 
 
 When Strauss and Penan and the other great critics of 
 our time afford us their lights to judge what was and was 
 not true of the recorded words and deeds of the historical 
 Christ, and construct for us images more or less vivid of 
 what they suppose him to have actually seemed as a living 
 person upon earth, they do but accomplish a portion of the 
 task which lies before the theologian who shall effectually 
 rectify the errors of the past and map out the creed of the 
 future. They show us what Christ (probably) was ; and this 
 step being (approximately) ascertained, they leave us to 
 estimate the place he ought to hold in the religion of man- 
 kind. But why he has occupied for eighteen centuries a very 
 different place from that to which their theories would thus 
 consign him, why he now holds such supi'eme dominion 
 over countless thousands of hearts, what is the value of 
 their alleged spiritual experience of his power, in a word, 
 what is the basis of fact in human consciousness which 
 underlies popular Christianity/ — this the mere historical 
 critic cannot help us to learn. We want the philosopher, 
 the religious man, nay, the man of double religious experi- 
 ence, who has felt all the great phenomena of the inner life 
 under the two dispensations of supernaturalism and natu- 
 
 ^ Both published by Cherbuliez et Cie., Paris, and lo be had of Messrs. "Williams 
 and Norgate, Henrietta-street. Beside these, M. Pecaut has since published 
 Four Conferences on liberal Christianity/ and Miracles, and several minor pieces. 
 
134 A FRENCH THE 1ST. 
 
 ralism, to tell us this. And it is the real crux of the 
 problem. Historical truth ought logically, no doubt, to 
 harmonize absolutely with consciousness, and must do so when 
 men have fully received and digested it. But as a matter of 
 common every-day life, it is our own consciousness of how 
 an historical fact affects us which inclines us to adjust its 
 records to our political or social bias ; and as a matter of 
 religious experience we may safely affirm that every 
 argument in Strauss's arsenal must inevitably fall dead on 
 the mind of a man who imao^ines he recoo^nizes in his own 
 soul the positive experience of Christian phenomena dis- 
 proving them all. If Christ's atonement has saved him, it 
 is quite clear that Christ was not what Strauss asserts him to 
 have been. It is the real, actual relation of Christ to the 
 consciousness of humanity, the question of " Le Christ et la 
 Conscience," which we must decide, if we want not only to 
 open the way to fresh light, but to shut the door on the 
 perpetual and eternal recurrence of error. 
 
 This task it is which M. Pecaut undertakes, namely, a 
 very careful examination of the actual facts of the inner 
 consciousness of devout persons as regards their supposed 
 relation to Christ, and an inquiry as to how far these facts 
 testify to the reality of such relation. In conducting this 
 most solemn investigation into the penetralia of the soul, 
 M. Pecaut proceeds by the simple process of discussion 
 between a Theist and a man of the very widest and most 
 enlightened type of what we in England should designate 
 as Broad Church views ; and I can only say that as regards 
 the fairness of the representation of these views, few books 
 Avritten by professed adherents have seemed to me to give 
 so noble and beautiful an exposition of them. Even were 
 the result of the discussion a matter of indifference, it would 
 be a great gain merely to read such a delineation of deep 
 spiritual experience. But the conclusion towards which 
 
A FRENCH T HEIST. 135 
 
 the long argument winds itself bears in truth, the highest 
 value. It is, that the supposed experience of any action 
 on the soul by Christ as an Incarnate Deity {i.e. as distinct 
 from the historical Teacher and Exemplar) cannot be main- 
 tained ; and that the One God and Father in His own person 
 fills the whole circle of the soul's heaven ; in Himself alone 
 Creating, Redeeming, and Sanctifying Grod. 
 
 Few things are more needed to amend our current phi- 
 losophy than the adoption of sounder ideas concerning the 
 proper scope and domain of what is called " consciousness." 
 It is small marvel that materialists should make light of 
 arguments founded on this basis, while those who nse them 
 indulge in the wildest licence in setting down to the credit 
 of consciousness notions which, from the constitution of the 
 human mind, cannot possibly be derived from such a source. 
 Every day we may behold historical events, ecclesiastical 
 dogmas and metaphysical theories, thus treated as "first prin- 
 ciples" and "facts of consciousness," till the jest of the Ger- 
 man Professor, "constructing the idea of the camel out of his 
 moral consciousness," appears a plain statement of the actual 
 method which our divines and philosophers are in the habit of 
 adopting when they "evolve" a scheme of theology or ethics. 
 Till we have corrected this absurd error, and confined the 
 use of the word "consciousness" to things of which it is 
 possible for a man to have moral or spiritual perception, 
 we shall but waste words in arguing, and at the same time 
 bring undeserved discredit on the source — fallible, indeed, 
 yet still the ultimate and highest source — of our knowledge. 
 
 Probably, as regards religious consciousness in particular, 
 a considerable amount of lucidity would be gained were 
 we to relinquish the vague term "sentiment," and adopt 
 the plain phrase the religious sense. To those who believe 
 in the sacred mysteries of Divine communion, in the reality 
 of those events of the inner life which constitute the history 
 
136 A FRENCH THEIST. 
 
 of every regenerated soul, the words " a religious sense " 
 scarcely can appear metaphorical. They express, perhaps, 
 as simply as may be, the fact acknowledged by all such 
 believers, that there is in man an Eye of the spirit which 
 truly beholds God, an Ear which hears His voice, a Feeling 
 which perceives His ineffable presence in the high hour of 
 visitation. Of course the phrase is unfit for the use of those 
 who deem these things uncertain or illusive, but all the 
 more is it suitable for those who steadfastly hold to their 
 reality. 
 
 Supposing such a term to be generally adopted, it is clear 
 that the result would follow, that a misapplication of the 
 organ in question woidd be more easily detected than while 
 the vaguer phrases of Sentiment or Consciousness were em- 
 ployed. To say, for instance, that a man's religious sense 
 assures him of an historicnl fact (such as the life of Christ), 
 would speedily be recognized as no less absurd than to say 
 that a man's moral sense supplied him with the zoological 
 fact of the camel's conformation. In either case, once we 
 are compelled to define the faculty we speak of, we in- 
 evitably perceive the absurdity of transferring to it the 
 ofiice of another and wholly difierent faculty — namely, the 
 intellect, as informed either by testimony or the bodily 
 senses. 
 
 Again, in the case of another error, favoured by some of the 
 leading minds of our day, the phrase "religious sense" serves 
 to dissipate the obscurity of the language usually employed 
 on the argument, and to reveal the untenability of their 
 position. It is alleged by some excellent men, attached by 
 istrong affection to Christianity, yet unable to find in either 
 Church or infallible Bible firm anchorage for their faith, 
 that they know hy direct consciousness that there is an Incar- 
 nate Deity, and that He acts immediately upon their souls. 
 Now that the religious sense may and does inform us of the 
 
A FRENCH THEIST. . 137 
 
 action (and consequently of the existence) of a divine, in- 
 visible Lord and Guide, is what we most heartily believe. 
 But that it can inform us further that the Being whose awful 
 monitions or blessed consolations or sanctifying influences 
 it receives, is not God the Father and is God the Son, is 
 what cannot in any way be proved in accordance with the 
 known laws and nature of the sense in question. Nothmg 
 but a special revelation to the individual soul that such was 
 the case (a revelation of which, so far as we are aware, no 
 claim has ever been made), could enable a man to assert 
 that he had made such a discovery. Nay, it is probable 
 that none of those who hold by this peculiar form of Chris- 
 tian evidence would actually lay claim to the power of 
 making such a distinction between the divine agents whose 
 influences they experience, on any other ground than that, 
 the common voice of Christendom having assured them that 
 the work of God on the soul was triformous, they have 
 always classified their experiences on such an hypothesis, 
 and referred them accordingly to the Creator, the Redeemer, 
 or the Sanctifier. Such a process would be most natural 
 and blameless under the circumstances ; and the consequent 
 conviction that there were really three Divine influences 
 perceived by the soul, would follow of course. Yet by no 
 means can the calm inquirer admit such testimony to 
 prove the existence of three Divine Persons, any more 
 than the similar testimony of Romanists can be admitted to 
 prove the invisible influence of Mary and the Saints. The 
 religious sense cannot be held competent to witness such 
 multiplicity of Divine Persons, for by no means conceivable 
 could it discern the difierence between one and another, 
 save under the contingency of a moral difference in their 
 monitions perceptible to the moral sense. If there were a 
 Devil, a man might perfectly distinguish his influence 
 from that of God. But every inward sanctifying influence 
 
13 A FRENCH T HEIST. 
 
 is the same as God's influence. How, then, can it be dis- 
 tinguished therefrom ? 
 
 Surely the truth which underlies all our difierences, all 
 the mystery of prayer, heard, and felt to be heard, even 
 by those who have ofiered it under the most cloudy con- 
 ceptions of God, is simply this. There is a voice which 
 calls to us all through the thick darkness of our mortal night. 
 We hear it, and give it many different names ; but it is the 
 same voice always. And we answer that voice, philosopher 
 or peasant, saint or sinner, all alike, 
 
 " Infants crying in the night, 
 Infants crying for the hght, 
 And with no language but a cry." 
 
 And the Great Parent who is "about our bed " hears us all ; 
 hears His poor helpless children none the less if some- 
 times they call in their ignorance on other than any of 
 His thousand names. Even an earthly mother leaves not 
 her babe untended because it cries to nurse or brother 
 rather than to herself, who loves it better than any beside 
 may love. 
 
 It is on the whole subject of these inner evidences of 
 what we may term Broad-church Christianity, as opposed to 
 strictly Unitarian Theism, that M. Pecaut writes ; and with 
 a depth of insight, a tenderness of feeling even towards the 
 opinions from which he most widely differs, which make 
 his book in itself a lesson of piety and charity. It would 
 seem as if he had laboured to represent the interlocutor who 
 takes the more orthodox side of the argument as the most 
 able and the most devout of the two. Certainly fairness 
 towards an antagonist can no further go; and if the argument 
 in favour of a real Christian consciousness as distinguished 
 from a simple consciousness of God be found to fail, the 
 conclusion can hardly be avoided, that no true handling of 
 the subject would have resulted differently. It is obviously 
 
A FRENCH T HEIST. 139 
 
 vain in the compass of a review to give any fair abstract of 
 such a work, whose value lies in the cumulation of details 
 of sentiment, all needing- tender and reverent treatment. 
 I shall, therefore, in the remaining pages of this article 
 attempt to give an account of M. Pecaut's second and 
 smaller, but by no means less interesting book, L^Avenir dii 
 Themne Chretien. The questions of which it treats are thus 
 stated in the Preface : 
 
 " Will France dispense with a religion and a cultus ? "Will she be 
 Catholic ? "Will she be Protestant ? Will she cease to be Christian ? 
 Is a national religion henceforth incompatible with the free exercise 
 of criticism and the principles of science ? Can a people found public 
 and private morals, support liberty, explore the highways of intellectual 
 activity, and keep alive in its breast those noble ambitions whose aim 
 is the True, the Good and the Beautiful — in a word, can it deserve to 
 live, without the aid of a_ religion conformed to its degree of civili- 
 zation ? " 
 
 To those who are interested in these questions the author 
 addresses himself. He begins by asserting that, for all so 
 much is said of the vniiversal decay and disruption of ancient 
 creeds and ecclesiastical institutions, — 
 
 " — these creeds and institutions have never been appreciated with 
 more impartiality and even symjsathy than at present. Never have 
 their doctrines, their martyrs, their merits of all kinds, obtained more 
 complete justice. Never have they on their part displayed a zeal 
 more pure and active, whether for the propagation of dogma or for the 
 foundation of works of charity. Yet public feeling recedes from them. 
 The religious reaction of the beginning of our century, which seemed 
 calculated to stop for ever the philosophic undertaking of the age 
 of "V^oltaire and Rousseau, was not long in changing to a serious 
 movement in a different direction. We still continue to condemn the 
 Encyclopaedists for their lack of comprehension of antiquity, their 
 profane levity in sacred studies, their want of moral depth ; but, on the 
 other hand, we have understood that their errors and excesses must 
 not make us close our ej^es to the justice of their intellectual insurrec- 
 tion Their criticism in its broad results is found as true in the 
 
 nineteenth as in the eighteenth century." 
 
140 A FRENCH THEIST. 
 
 M. Pecaut then sketches briefly, but with the hand of one 
 intimately acquainted with the various phases of social life 
 m France, the actual condition of religion in the country. 
 
 " The educated classes, when they do not follow the caprice of a 
 fiishiou, generally belong only by name to the churches from which 
 they have received baptism ; and from the upper ranks incredulity has 
 descended, passing through the artisans of the towns even to the 
 agricultural labourers, especially in the Departments of the North. 
 Young men who receive a liberal education detach themselves soon 
 from the creed of their mothers, simply in consequence of the discord 
 between such creeds and the whole method of their studies. A small 
 number among them, willing at any price to satisfy the iixiperative 
 need of a religion, return in later life to the same faith, while others as 
 they advance in years find themselves from a thousand causes — the 
 pressure of custom, the infliience of women, the necessity of educating 
 their children (for which they have no sufficient guidance or institutions 
 in harmony with their secret principles) — above all, the lack of definite 
 ideas and principles to resist the incessant ecclesiastical action armed 
 at all points for good and evil — from all these causes together, we say, 
 they find themselves all their lives long divided between an apparent 
 adhesion to the Church and a concealed hostility thereto. Further, 
 how many are there who in our time remain outside of all the sects 
 because they can find no church ready to receive them, such as they 
 really are, with their religious aspirations more or less ardent, but in 
 any case sincere, and with their intellectual uncertainty regarding all 
 doctrines ! The greater number of these accustom themselves to live 
 in a vague scepticism, or in a state of indiff^erence regarding their 
 highest interests, only falling into the forms of the dominant Church 
 on occasions of family or state ceremonies. Others, again, and they 
 are among the best, abstain on principle from participation in any 
 religious association. They refuse to carry into it a mutilated con- 
 science ; but they woiild enter it to-morrow, if they might do so, 
 with their heads raised and without denying their true position or 
 subscribing to degrading conditions. . . . It is for these last that I 
 write ; I who in many ways belong to the same class. I confess 
 I cannot resign myself without jjain to the condition of religious 
 isolation in which we find ourselves." 
 
 My space will not permit me to follow M. Pecaut at length 
 
A FRENCH T HEIST. 141 
 
 through the deeply philosophic discussion which follows re- 
 garding the prospects of obtaining what we may call a 
 new term of religious life for such men as he has described. 
 Perhaps the spirit of the constructive part of his book cannot 
 be better illustrated than in the passage (p. 211) where, after 
 tracing how the elder Deism and all merely moral systems 
 fail to attract or to retain the souls of men, he shows what 
 he trusts will be the faith of the future and whence it will 
 be derived. 
 
 " This it is which has been wanting in the experiments of which we 
 have sjjoken — the gift of prayer — the supremacy of the religious idea 
 — a deeper alliance between human nature and the drama of the moral 
 life. And this it is which we demand of Christian tradition, not as an 
 artificial loan which we should rejoice not to owe to it, but as the most 
 precious part of our patrimony which it transmits to us from God, 
 having preserved it through the ages." . . . " What (he elsewhere says ') 
 is Christian Theism ? Is it a system of philosophy or theology ? No. 
 Is it one particular tradition among all those which have ploughed 
 their furrow in the history of Christianity ? No. Is it a confused 
 eclecticism, an incoherent assemblage of divers traditions ] No. Is it 
 then perhaps a simple critical residuum, obtained by means of elimin- 
 ation ? Not so. What is it then ? It is the Christian spirit itself, the 
 spirit of the Church, the spirit of Jesus, which by its own proper 
 virtue and by the experience of ages has disengaged itself of the 
 mythological elements, the errors, and perishable forms with which 
 the disciples, and in some respects even the Master himself, had 
 clothed it." 
 
 And this religion, this Christian Theism, he believes will 
 eventually prevail.^ 
 
 " Traditional Protestantism and Catholicism, the refuges of so many 
 pious souls, the provisional shelter of so many uncertain ones, cannot 
 satisfy us ; for their dogmatic tradition and the principle of super- 
 natural authority contradict alike the testimony of history and the 
 religious needs of the human soul, once it has attained self-guidance. 
 But I see no reason to doubt that man being essentially religious, a 
 
 1 Chapter i. ^ Introduction, page xii. 
 
142 ^ FRENCH THEIST. 
 
 religious society is a natural fact, no less inevitable than civil society ; 
 and if this be so, it must be open to us to found it on the basis of ideas 
 whicli our reason recognizes as true." 
 
 M. Pecaut's volume, of whicli I have now given so brief 
 a sketch, has a peculiar interest, as affording to the English 
 reader both a view of the actual state of religion in France 
 and an insight into the aims of its most spiritual reformers. 
 Much that he says, however, is quite equally apposite to 
 the condition of things in our own country ; and to us, no 
 less than to him, the questions are paramount : As the old 
 creeds are losing their hold, which are the creeds acquiring 
 strength? Is it any one of the existing churches which 
 bears in its bosom the precious seed hereafter to make the 
 harvests of the world ? Or is it the yet scarcely sown 
 " Christian Theism " of such men as Felix Pecaut which is 
 to give to us all the bread of life ? Or, yet again, shall every 
 form, alike of Christianity and of Theism, dwindle away 
 and disappear, even as Comte foretells, and some vague 
 " Religion of Humanity " like his, some yet more material 
 belief in a Fluid or mere recognition of a Protean Force, 
 henceforward fill up in human existence that stupendous 
 vacuum to be left by the disappearance of God ? 
 
 It has been frequently remarked that each of our present 
 churches seems to have its raison d'etre, not so much in a 
 claim to intrinsic and eternal truth or the possession of 
 any complete and consistent scheme of theology, but in its 
 extrinsic and temporary antagonism to some other church. 
 Admitting this to be true, we are driven to conclude that 
 none of these churches can be the prototype of the Church 
 of the Future. A sect which exists mainly as a protest 
 against another sect can have nothing to support it when 
 the antagonism dies with its object. Protestant and Catholic, 
 Churchman and Dissenter, High Chvirchman and Evangelical, 
 Calviuist and Unitarian, can hardly live the one without the 
 
A FRENCH THEIST. 143 
 
 other, more than so many Hegelian contraries. At best, 
 like the old orders of soldier-monks, when the Crusades are 
 over, if they be not extinguished, like the Templars, they 
 must change their character, like the Knights of St. John. 
 A man beginning to study theology ah initio, without know- 
 ledge of any of the present churches which crowd the arena 
 of Christendom, would hardly, we conceive, deduce from 
 either the Bible or the Book of Nature the doctrines of any 
 one of them. And, sooner or later, according to the im- 
 mutable principles of things, as one after another of these 
 little systems "have their day and cease to be," its anta- 
 gonist sect or Protestantism must cease also, and only such 
 a creed survive as a spiritual worshipper might arrive at in 
 a world empty of sects. This last only can be an immortal 
 church ; this only can be the type of religion which will 
 perpetuate itself in perennial vigour. The rest are but a 
 crop of annuals doomed ere long to die ; nay, rather fungi 
 growing each on its decaying stem, and destined, with it, at 
 last to perish. 
 
 But to enable ourselves to discover the creed which has 
 its right of existence not in such mere antagonism to error, 
 but in the possession of positive truth, it is needful that 
 we ascend into a region of speculation very far above the 
 debates of sects and jostlings of religious parties. We need 
 to explore the secrets of human nature itself, and deduce 
 from the ever-repeated characteristics of past generations 
 the facts of our common wants and ineradicable propensi- 
 ties. We require to learn which are the things whose hold 
 on our hearts no time can loosen while those hearts remain 
 what they are ; and which again are those whose tenure may 
 be as transitory as the beliefs and dreams of infancy. Above 
 all, we need to assure ourselves whether Religion be indeed 
 an integral part of human nature, even as the love of kin- 
 dred, of justice, of truth, of beauty, are parts thereof; or if 
 
144 A FRENCH THEIST. 
 
 it be, on the contrary, an accident of the world's youth ; 
 a mist of the morning, dissipating even now in the glare 
 of the noontide sun. The analogies of the past, the 
 testimony of science respecting the existing religious senti- 
 ments of all the races of men upon earth, the deepest 
 consciousness of our individual souls — what evidence do 
 they bring to aid us to decide this question ? Let us face 
 the matter resolutely, 
 
 "Will the time ever arrive when the historian will write 
 words like these : 
 
 " In these remote ages, namely, from unrecorded antiquity till the 
 third millennium after Christ, there existed among all nations of whom 
 we possess any records an extraordinary affection, or sentiment, called 
 Religion. They experienced this singular feeling very variously, and 
 applied it sometimes to one sujDposed invisible Being, sometimes to 
 many ; but they generally agreed in displaying a mixture of fear, 
 reverence, allegiance and love to some unseen Master or Protector 
 whom they held to be present at all times and cognizant of their 
 invocations and thanksgivings, and who was also understood to be 
 the supreme Guardian of morality. This 'Religious Sentiment,' as 
 they called it, caused men to establish the largest institutions and 
 spiritual corporations, called churches and priesthoods, and to build 
 the greatest edifices in a profusion which amazes the archseologist, who 
 discovers their foundations, we had almost said, over every mile of 
 the habitable globe, — edifices whose sole purpose was the imaginary 
 service of an imaginary Being. More remarkable than all other facts, 
 however, connected with this long-passed-away 'Religion,' is the un- 
 questionable one that it raised those who experienced it strongly to 
 heights of self-devotion, ascending even to positive, painful martyrdoms 
 most difficult for us to picture under the present sounder views of 
 social duty. The books also which have descended to us from those 
 ages, filled as they are with idle fables, appear to reveal an intensity of 
 aspiration after goodness, and traces of laborious striving after inward 
 holiness and perfection, which, while we can only ascribe them to this 
 delusive idea of an invisible Spectator of the secrets of the heart, we 
 are forced to regard with somewhat of admiration as well as astonish- 
 ment." 
 
A FRENCH THEIST. 145 
 
 It is certain that either the time will come when some 
 such words as these will be used, or else that Religion will 
 never die out of humanity. If Gferman Materialists and 
 French Positivists be right, then that time, however remote, 
 is surely approaching. Let us not deceive ourselves. The 
 substitutes which the best of them, such as Comte, offer us 
 as Religion, is not what ive call Religion at all, nor therefore 
 by the laws of language properly to be called by the name. 
 It is a mere verbal trick, a shuffle of words, to call it " Reli- 
 gion," to worship, not (as all the religions of the past have 
 done) an Invisible Person, but instead thereof the Abstrac- 
 tion of our Race, or a Visible Woman conventionally elevated 
 to the representation of such an Abstraction of Humanity. 
 It is another thing, whether it be a better or a worse ; and he 
 who speaks of the religious sentiment being thus given the 
 change by the intellect as to the object of its emotions, talks 
 as idly as he who should say that filial, parental, conjugal and 
 fraternal love could be counterchanged at our option. When 
 Corate talks of the world passing through the consecutive 
 stages of Fetichism, Polytheism, Monotheism and Positivism, 
 he deceives himself and us. He speaks like one who should 
 describe the progress of an individual from Infant to Boy, 
 and from Boy to Man, and should add as the next stage, 
 " and then he became a Woman." Polytheism was indeed a 
 stage developed out of Fetichism, and Monotheism a stage 
 out of Polytheism. But Positivism is no stage beyond 
 Monotheism, for it is not on the same road at all. Instead 
 of a development, it is a solution of continuity ; instead of 
 a growth, it is the stroke of the axe at the very root of the 
 tree. What can be more monstrous than to call it the 
 development of belief in God, to arrive at belief in no Gfod ? 
 If Comte were right, it would prove that among all the 
 feelings and affections of our humanity, the religious senti- 
 ment alone, since the world began, has been false, diseased, 
 
 10 
 
146 A FRENCH THEIST. 
 
 distorted and misapplied. While every other feeling cor- 
 responded to some reality, the parental, the filial, the con- 
 jugal, the patriotic, each to their true and proper objects, 
 this alone, the highest of all, has from first to last been 
 thrown away on an imaginary entity ; this alone, the source 
 of holiest joy, truth, and virtue, has been a delusion and a lie. 
 Perhaps it is a true thought which books like those of M. 
 Pecaut bring before us. In the long pilgrimage of our race 
 we have reached a point where the way to the Celestial City 
 is no longer clear, and where no Angel or Interpreter stands 
 by to direct us. To the right lies the old road which our 
 fathers trod, and where we yet can recognize their venerable 
 footsteps. But that path is a quicksand now, hardly able to 
 bear the weight of a traveller who would plant his feet 
 firmly as he goes. To the left there is another path, but it 
 turns visibly before our eyes away from that City of God 
 which has been hitherto our goal, and passes down fathom- 
 less abysses of lonely darkness where our hearts quail to 
 follow. Straight before us lies a field hardly tracked as yet 
 by the few pilgrim feet which have passed over it, a vast 
 field full of flowers and open to the sun. May the " King 
 of that Country " guide us, so that walking thereon we may 
 find a new and straighter road to the Celestial City on high 
 beyond the dark River ; and to the " Beulah land" of peace- 
 ful faith here upon earth ! 
 
ESSAY VL 
 
 THE DEVIL. 1 
 
 An alarming rumour has recently gone forth that in the 
 new Revision of the Bible the Lord's Prayer will be altered, 
 and instead of praying to be delivered from "evil" we shall 
 be called on to pray to be delivered from the " Evil One," 
 i.e., the Devil. It would be hard to say whether such an 
 emendation of the text would be more startling or painful. 
 One thing there has been hitherto left about which Christians 
 of every church were agreed ; and wherein even men who 
 could follow no other Christian formula were wont to join. 
 And now that blessed note of harmony in a jarring world 
 threatens to become a discord too ! The prayer, merely to 
 pronounce whose exordium was an act of faith, hope, and 
 charity together, is doomed to become a test of orthodoxy, 
 a subject of debate in each congregation and household. 
 Assuredly thousands amongst us who have prayed all their 
 lives to be "delivered from evil" will deem it nothing short 
 of a blasphemy to pray to be delivered from a personal 
 " ghostly enemy " in whose existence they have not the 
 smallest belief. 
 
 1 Histoire die Biahle. Ses Origines, sa Grandeur, et sa Decadence. Par Albert 
 Eeville. Strasburg and Paris, 1870. An excellent translation of this little 
 book, very handsomely got up, and adorned with portraits of the Egj'ptian and 
 Assyrian Devils, has just been published. 12mo. pp. 72. London: Williams 
 and Norgate. 1871. The present Essay was originally written as now printed, 
 but was curtailed in the first publication by the exigencies of space in the 
 Fortnightly Revieiv, and for other reasons. 
 
148 THE DEVIL. 
 
 The mere suggestion of such, an unfortunate result of criti- 
 cism in the case of the Paternoster must, I presume, call forth 
 some debate on the half-obsolete "doctrine of devils," and 
 may ver}' probably aiford some startling revelations as to the 
 extent to which the belief in it now prevails in the minds of 
 Englishmen. In the present paper I propose to make some 
 inquiry into the subject ; and to follow the brilliant pages of 
 M. Reville in an important branch of the subject, namely, 
 the question. How Christendom came by its Devil ? The 
 lower races of mankind, as Sir John Lubbock tells us {Origin 
 of Civilization, p. 254), believe in no Satan, for the obvious 
 reason that their gods themselves have no moral character, 
 and where morality is wholly disconnected from religion, 
 a tempter can have no part to play. It is only in the higher 
 forms of human thought that we come to the idea of a devil ; 
 and — singular paradox ! — it is in the religion of Europe that 
 the hideous chimera has risen to its full height of mon- 
 strosity. The How and the Why of such an abnormal 
 growth, and the story of its decline and decay, seem every 
 way worthy of attention. 
 
 The Report of the Committee of the House of Commons for 
 inquiring into the Adulteration of Food and Drink must have 
 suggested to many readers the remark : What a wonderful 
 amount of abominable stuff is the human machine capable of 
 absorbing without being altogether clogged and brought to a 
 standstill ! But it is by no means only the food of the body 
 which, it appears, may be thus adulterated with at least par- 
 tial impunity. Mental food seemingly quite as well qualified 
 to poison the intellect, paralyze the will, and stop the action 
 of the heart, is yet every day gulped down by multitudes 
 in the sight of all men ; and when we look that they should 
 show signs of its morbific action, lo ! we find them going 
 cheerfully about their business as if they had supped full, 
 not of horrors, but of good bread and cheese. If we could 
 
THE DEVIL. 149 
 
 liave set ourselves, for example, to create a conception whicli 
 ought (so to speak) to disagree with the human mind, we 
 should unhesitatingly say that such a notion would be the 
 existence of a great Bad God ; a being of absolute malignity 
 who ceaselessly employs his stupendous supernatural powers, 
 by inward suggestion and outward temptation, in luring each 
 of us to his subterranean dungeon, where he will preside 
 over our combustion for infinite ages. Certainly such a 
 notion is far from being nourishing, refreshing, or, as we 
 should have supposed, in any way wholesome or digestible. 
 Yet, marvellous to relate ! this oil-of- vitriol kind of thing 
 slips down the throats of tens of thousands of honest Bi'itons 
 at least once every week, and they go home afterwards from 
 church and eat their luncheons with admirable appetite, and 
 never, by word or deed, betray that they have drained a 
 cup to which that of Hecate was a mild tisane. Sweet and 
 gentle elderly ladies, 
 
 whose eyes 
 Grow tender over drowning flies, 
 
 and who refuse to believe any harm of the worst scapegrace 
 among their nephews, allow this particular horror to enter 
 their minds unchallenged, and even seem to turn it over 
 under the tongue as if it were a bon-bon, and inquire, plain- 
 tively, in the same breath. Does their visitor believe in the 
 eternity of future punishment — and will he not take another 
 lump of sugar in his tea? Between these good folk and 
 their neighbours who refuse to believe in the horrid dogma 
 there is hardly a pin to choose so far as cheerfulness goes, 
 or general easiness of demeanour. One believes he walks 
 on a thin crust of lava over a bottomless crater, and the 
 other thinks he treads on rock ; but there is no perceptible 
 diflPerence in the way they put their feet to the ground. 
 One loses his son and believes he may possibly be in Hell ; 
 the other loses his daughter and is sure she is gone to a 
 
150 THE DEVIL. 
 
 better world. But tlie tears of the two fathers are much 
 alike ; the grief of the first is not more inconsolable than 
 that of the second. Truly the paradox would be inexplicable 
 were it quite clear that those who — so to speak — bite freely 
 at unhealthy ideas, actually masticate them and assimilate 
 them with their mental constitutions. The fact seems rather 
 to be that both clergy and laity are apt to take a great 
 many more such things into their mouths than ever go any 
 farther. Some divines and parents, indeed, obviously are 
 possessed of a natural pouch, similar to that of the pelican, 
 wherein they lodge an astonishing quantity of undigested 
 notions, and whence they distribute them liberally to the 
 young without any necessity for swallowing them on their 
 own account. 
 
 With respect to the particular dogma of the existence of 
 a Devil, the attitude of the Christian world at this moment 
 is not a little singular. The idea is ostensibly accepted by 
 the whole mass of members of all the great churches, Greek, 
 Roman, and Protestant, national and dissenting. Only by 
 the small sects of Universalists and Unitarians, and for a 
 few years back has it been officially repudiated. Not one 
 clergyman in a thousand hints at a doubt of Satan's per- 
 sonality, while many insist upon it with as much urgency 
 as if (as Mr. Maurice suggests) the great message of the 
 Gospel had been, "The Kingdom of Hell is at hand." Mne- 
 tenths of the educated men and women in England have 
 duly learned in childhood to "renounce the Devil," as if 
 on the assumption (authorized, indeed, by the formularies of 
 the Church) that we were born his subjects or children. 
 In a word, Christendom at large professedly believes in 
 Satan with as much formality and emphasis as it believes, 
 let us say, in the Third Person of the Trinity. 
 
 On the other hand, and as an off-set to this official recog- 
 nition of the Devil, we have to place his actual status in 
 
THE DEVIL. 151 
 
 the minds of men of the present generation ; and it appears 
 that if we have in our creed a Devil de jure, we are far from 
 having one de facto. Theological legitimists, like the old 
 Jacobites, still continue on stated occasions to express their 
 conviction of the rights of the potentate "over the Avater" 
 — or over another element. But practically, and for all the 
 purposes of common every-day life, they live peaceably under 
 quite another dynasty. JSTothing is more notorious than that 
 of the once compact bundle of doctrines which Wycliffe and 
 Luther began to untie, and which each sect and individual 
 has been knotting up into little select fasces ever since, the 
 rotten stick, labelled "The Devil," is the one which the 
 fewest persons retain now-a-days in their private collections. 
 At all events, it is always the first thing to drop out when 
 the band of orthodoxy grows a little loose. Great thinkers 
 and small thinkers agree here, if nowhere else. Profane 
 folk lauffh whenever the Devil is mentioned, as if there were 
 a hidden joke in the very word; and pious people smile 
 when the parson alludes to him, and say, like La Mothe le 
 Yayer, "Mon ami, j'ai tant de religion que je ne suis point 
 de ta religion." 
 
 Of those who remain, and who think that they believe in 
 such a being, M. Albert Eeville, in the paper before us, says, 
 very aptly, that " if they only knew how people acted who 
 really believed in a Devil," their delusion would quickly be 
 dispelled. They would then perceive that their conventional 
 adhesion to the dogma is an extremely different thing from 
 the awful soul-prostrating faith in it, such as their fathers 
 entertained two or three centuries ago. 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that it would be a benefit to the 
 world if this outworn doctrine were confessedly abandoned. 
 Such decaying exuvice of faith, still clinging about us, are 
 unhealthful and embarrassing things at the best. The 
 proverbial " wisdom of the serpent " is displayed by rubbing 
 
152 TEE DEVIL. 
 
 off its old skin at tlie proper time, and allowing the new one, 
 however tender, to shine unincumbered ; and not by " stop- 
 ping its ears to the voice of the charmer," as the Fathers 
 ingeniously explained that difficult feat, by jamming one ear 
 against a stone, and cramming their tails into the other. 
 
 In matters however remotely connected with religion, the 
 principle that "lies should be served on one plate and truth 
 on another" is pre-eminently valuable. It would be hard to 
 say how much of the worst form of scepticism of our day is 
 due to nothing else than the pertinacity wherewith the clergy 
 insist on always embarking in one boat to sink or swim to- 
 gether the things of deepest import and simplest evidence, with 
 the things of pettiest consequence and most uncertain proof. 
 At best much inconvenience always comes from maintaining 
 a public creed which is not conterminous with the private 
 creed of its professed adherents ; leaving Faith like a Roman 
 noble shivering in one wing of his palace, while vast suites of 
 halls and chambers, once filled with life and animation, are 
 now silent and dark. Perhaps it may seem vain to hope 
 that persons who, in our day, still linger in the old world 
 of thought sufficiently fondly even to suppose that they 
 believe in 
 
 " The Chief of many throned Powers, 
 Who lead the embattled Seraphim to war," 
 
 will be in any way affected in their opinions by a mere 
 historical study of the great myth, or of the Rise and 
 Progress, Decline and Fall, of this singular Eidolon of Jewish 
 and Christian imagination. Nevertheless, as Isaiah thought 
 he did something to expose the folly of contemporary 
 paganism when he described how the image to be worshipped 
 was cut out of the trunk of a tree, one part of which was 
 applied to roasting meat and warming mankind, while the 
 other part was fashioned into a god ; so M. Peville may hope 
 to achieve a little in the way of discountenancing devil- 
 
THE DEVIL. 153 
 
 belief by showing how the ugly idea was manufactured out 
 of notions half of which at least we have long ago consigned 
 to contempt and oblivion. 
 
 Are Satan and Ahrimanes merely the Jewish and Persian 
 forms of the same myth ? It would seem that they are of 
 wholly different origin, and that the "root-idea" of each 
 is entirely distinct ; or, that if they sprang from the same 
 source, it was at the immeasurably remote epoch before the 
 Aryan and Semitic branches of the human family were 
 separated, and when the myth itself had scarcely begun to 
 be developed. The two separately evolved ideas were indeed 
 brought into juxtaposition at the time of the Jewish Cap- 
 tivity, and a singular exchange of costume took place between 
 them, causing the similarity of character thenceforth to appear 
 greater than it actually is. Satan, on his side, assumed a 
 grandeur almost bringing him up to the level of Ahrimanes ; 
 and the latter in the more modern portion of the Zend 
 Avesta (the Boundehesch) is made to leap to earth in the 
 shape of an adder, and to tempt Meschia and Meschiane, 
 the parents of mankind, apparently in imitation of the story 
 of Genesis, wherein an actual serpent (not yet identified 
 with any spiritual power) effects the same mischief. But 
 the earlier idea of Ahrimanes differs altogether from the 
 first idea of Satan. The story of the former is briefly this. 
 In the most ancient parts of the Zend Avesta, Evil is not 
 personified at all : it is spoken of as drucks, " destruction," 
 " falsehood," against which Ormuzd and good men contend. 
 Goodness is understood as a positive thing, and evil as its 
 negation. In each rational being there is said to exist 
 a good, holy will; and also its shadow or negative. The 
 famous passage supposed to be the inaugural address of 
 Zoroaster himself, at the beginning of his prophetic mission 
 (Gatha Ahunavaiti, Yasna 30), shows where the doctrine 
 had then advanced. "In the beginning there were twins, 
 
154 THE DEVIL. 
 
 the Grood and the Base in thought, word, and deed. Choose 
 one of those two spirits. Be good, not base. Ye cannot 
 belong to both of them. Ye must choose one, either the 
 originator of the worst actions, or the true Holy Spirit. 
 Some may choose the hardest lot. Others adore Ahura 
 Mazda (Ormuzd) by means of faithful actions." In 
 later ages Angro Mainyus (Ahrimanes) became a posi- 
 tively Evil Being of almost equal power with Ahura Mazda, 
 To him is attributed the creation of all noxious beasts and 
 insects, the addition of smoke to fire, of thorns to roses, and 
 generally of all evil, falsehood, and pain to the world. He 
 is the chief of the seven arch-demons, just as Ahura 
 Mazda is the chief of the seven Amschaspands or arch- 
 angels; and is lord also of an infinite train of devas, or fiends, 
 beings whom the Yasna says are "nourished by evil-doers," 
 and into whom evil-doers themselves are transformed after 
 death. But, great as Ahrimanes became in the developed 
 Zoroastrian belief, the blessed faith that "somehow, good 
 shall be the final goal of ill," never seems to have deserted 
 the worshippers of Ormuzd. They held that at the end 
 of all things, after the final resurrection, and the three days' 
 penance by the wicked in the rivers of molten metal, Ahri- 
 manes himself, with all his train of demons, would repent 
 and adore Ahura Mazda, and be received into Gorotman 
 (paradise). Nay, so important was felt to be this doctrine 
 of the final Restoration of all spirits, that the assertion of 
 it forms a part of the morning prayer which every Parsee 
 is bound to use. The charitable hope which Burns was 
 thought to commit a sort of blasphemy in breathing in 
 Christian Scotland, a few years ago, — that the arch-enemy 
 should 
 
 Tak' a thought and men', 
 
 has thus, it seems, been a part of the religious duty of 
 "heathens" to entertain for about three thousand years. To 
 
THE DEVIL. 155 
 
 the pious Parsee the conception of the final perdition of a 
 single spirit, not the restoration of the worst of thera, was 
 the blasphemous idea. He would have said, that it implied 
 the final defeat of the " Great Wise God " ; and perhaps would 
 not have greatly erred in that conclusion. 
 
 But when the notion of the personality of Ahrimanes had 
 become complete, and his power had been extended to the 
 whole measure of physical and moral evil in the world, it 
 began to be felt by the ancient Zoroastrians that their fun- 
 damental dogma of the Unity of God, and his supremacy 
 over all beings, was endangered. To correct this error, at 
 the time of the revival of the faith under the Sassanian 
 kings, there began to be heard of a Zeruane Akerene (Time 
 without Bounds), the First Cause of both Ormuzd and Ahri- 
 manes, But this conception (though still held by a few 
 Parsee teachers) has been shown by recent European students 
 of Zend MSS. to be wholly unsupported by the older sacred 
 writings, which only describe Ormuzd as existing in ''Bound- 
 less Time," by no means as derived /ro;;i it. 
 
 In nearly all respects it will be seen presently that the 
 biography of the Jewish Satan contrasts strangely with that 
 of the Persian Ahrimanes as above described. When the 
 former first makes his appearance on the stage of Hebrew 
 thought, it is under the aspect of a talking reptile ; or 
 rather the reptile first appears as a hona fide speaking animal, 
 such as those of which the folk-lore of all nations is full; 
 and not till long ages afterwards was this Serpent of Eden 
 identified with a supposed angel, having an ofiice somewhat 
 analogous to that performed by the malicious snake. There 
 is no trace of a belief in Satan in the patriarchal ages, nor 
 during the period immediately succeeding the Exodus and 
 the conquest of Canaan. Had the compilers of the Penta- 
 teuch and of the Books of Joshua and Judges known of the 
 existence of such a being, it is inexplicable why they should 
 
156 THE DEVIL. 
 
 have not alluded to him as often as do the Evangelists. 
 " Gods of the nations," evil and " lying spirits " they speak 
 of, and of those who consult them ; but of the Arch-Fiend 
 they seem not to have heard a rumour. On the contrary, 
 when we first come on definite traces of Satan in Scripture, 
 he has not yet assumed such a position at all. His "fall 
 like lightning from heaven" no prophet's reverted eye had 
 yet beheld. The great poet of the Book of Job saw Satan, 
 in his sublime vision, not as a rebel and outcast of paradise, 
 but as going In and out of the court of Jehovah with others 
 of the sons of Gfod, coming thither to do homage. Nay, 
 he imagines him to hold there a certain office as Public 
 Prosecutor; and that he is permitted to descend to earth 
 (If we may so speak without Irreverence for that glorious 
 book) in the character of an " agent provocatif." How 
 much of this conception, and of all the myths which have 
 been built on it ever since, we owe to the genius of 
 the poet himself — perhaps almost wholly creating the 
 character for his artistic purposes, or else defining and 
 Immortalizing a vague and temporary phase of Eastern 
 thought — can never be known. Long after the days of 
 Job, and when the Jews (as Maimonides confesses) had 
 acquired their knowledge of the angels from the Persians 
 In Babylon, Satan became a " Prince of the Powers of the 
 Air," with his train of subordinate archdemons ; and the 
 story of his rebellion and fall gradually took shape. 
 
 When the first Hebrew conception of the Elohlm had 
 settled Into the strict monotheism wherein Jehovah alone 
 was adored as the sole God of Israel, the theology of the 
 age attributed to Him the doing of every act and Inspiring 
 every thought, both good and bad. Under this theocratic 
 pragmatism, as the Germans call It, the Lord " hardens the 
 heart of Pharaoh;" and his "Spirit" comes on Samson, 
 and makes him rise and slay forty men, to pay a wager with 
 
THE DEVIL. 157 
 
 their spoil. There is obviously, as yet, no question in the 
 Hebrew mind whether the act so inspired be right or wrong, 
 worthy or unworthy of Divine guidance. Some of the pur- 
 poses of Jehovah are carried out b}^ angels, obedient, spiritual 
 messengers, who fly about and visit the patriarchs in visible 
 shapes, and drive Saul melancholy mad, and startle the ass 
 of Balaam. One of these fulfils the office of Accuser- General 
 or "adversary" [Satan). In the performance of his in- 
 vidious, but as yet apparently loyal and legitimate service, 
 this angel grows suspicious and malicious ; and we can 
 trace, as to him are attributed, a series of acts of enmity 
 to the human race in general, and to the house of Israel 
 in particular (Zechariah iii. 1), the dislike of the Jews to 
 him gradually rising, till he is at last made responsible 
 for all evil under the sun. The turning-point of the 
 national creed in this matter is most acutely fixed by M. 
 Reville between the dates of the Second Book of Samuel 
 and of the First Book of Chronicles. In the former (xxiv. 1) 
 the ill-omened census of David is attributed, according 
 to the old theory, to the inspiration of Jehovah. "The 
 anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and He moved 
 David against them to say. Go, number Israel and Judah ; " 
 after which He punishes the people by a pestilence for 
 David's action. But in the latter book (1 Chronicles 
 xxi. 1), recording the same stor}^, the evil inspiration is 
 laid at the door of the Devil, and we are told " Satan stood 
 up against Israel and provoked David to number the 
 people;" after which (verse 7) the sequel, "God was dis- 
 pleased with this thing," follows much more easily. 
 
 From the critical moment in which this strano^e exchansre 
 of functions took place between Jehovah and Satan, we can 
 easily understand how the consciences of the pious Jew8 
 of the great prophetic age constantly sought refuge from 
 the dread mysteries of the order of Providence, by laying 
 
158 THE DEVIL. 
 
 more and more the blame of evil on Satan, and thereby 
 relieving their faith in the goodness of Jehovah from too 
 severe a strain. Just as, in a previous still less reflective 
 epoch, their fathers had not been disturbed by the attri- 
 bution of evil inspirations to the holy Jehovah, so they, 
 only a little more advanced, were content (as are millions 
 to this hour in Christendom) to attribute such evil to God's 
 creature, Satan, without asking whence this incarnate Evil 
 derived his nature, or obtained his power of access to the 
 soul. 
 
 The age of the Apocrypha, with its intermixture of Persian 
 and Alexandrian ideas, saw Satan, or, as the Septuagint call 
 him, DIABOLOS, the Slanderer, already robed in some of 
 the borrowed glory of Ahrimanes, and no longer a servant 
 of Jehovah, but a rebel banished from those courts of heaven 
 wherein the poet of Job beheld him freely entering. He 
 now hates God, and labours to injure man, from rebellious 
 spite to the Creator. He is at the head of a grand hier- 
 archy of evil powers ; the Asmodeus of the Book of Tobit, 
 the demon of lust (identified by M. Breal with a similar 
 Persian fiend), being one of the chief. Death itself is dis- 
 covered to be Satan's work ; and every inexplicable disease 
 — blindness, dumbness, madness, epilepsy, and St. Yitus's 
 dance — is traced directly to his malignity. Sometimes one 
 of his minions, sometimes a legion of them, takes possession 
 of a man altogether, and makes him a " demoniac," whose 
 deplorable state only the exorcism of a divinely commissioned 
 apostle, or of Messiah himself, can relieve. At the name 
 of Jehovah, indeed, the devils tremble and retreat, never 
 presuming, like Ahrimanes, to contend face to face with 
 the Power of Good ; and their circle of action is always 
 strictly limited by the Divine Will. But the malignity of 
 the Jewish evil spirits is sharpened by despair, for they 
 know that for them await only the eternal fires. 
 
THE DEVIL, 159 
 
 Such was pretty nearly the state of the Hebrew belief 
 reo^ardino^ devils at the time when Christ was born in 
 Palestine. To his followers, who were anxious to identify 
 him with the Messiah, his relations with persons supposed to 
 bear in their diseased bodies or minds the special mark of 
 Satanic possession, was a matter of paramount importance. 
 The Messiah could in no way, as they imagined, prove his 
 mission so eflFectually as by constraining the devils to ac- 
 knowledge his superior power. Incidents which apparently 
 corroborated this supremacy became of more interest 
 as " evidences " than all the divine precepts and affecting 
 parables to which in our day Christians turn to justify their 
 faith ; and the road to orthodox belief was diligently paved 
 with histories which have long since become stumbling-blocks 
 in the way. Modern liberal Christians have exhausted 
 themselves in efforts to determine whether Christ did or did 
 not share the common belief of his countrymen in Satanic 
 agency ; the conclusion that he did so being only less painful 
 than the opposite horn of the dilemma, that he knowingly sanc- 
 tioned a superstition which he did not share. The reader who 
 desires to see the subject candidly discussed will do well to 
 consult the pages of M. Seville. In concluding his remarks 
 he urgently reminds us, that if Christ did believe in the 
 Devil, he never insists on the doctrine ; that he tells us that 
 our evil thoughts "proceed" out of our own hearts, and not 
 (as a Rabbin would have taught) from the suggestion of 
 Satan ; and that he even calls one of his disciples " Satan " 
 when he makes an immoral suggestion ; thus using the term in 
 a merely metaphorical sense as any disbeliever in the doctrine 
 might do now. The same observations apply to St. Paul, 
 who avowedly believes in Satan, but who, in his delineation 
 of the great struggles of the soul, always makes the Flesh, 
 not the Devil, the opponent of the spirit of righteousness. 
 During the whole New Testament period, though the devils 
 
160 THE DEVIL. 
 
 occupy quadruple the space they did in the older canon, they 
 are still lingering in the human mind in a half-shadowy 
 condition. They are neither visible nor palpable ; and the 
 more grotesque mediaeval ideas concerning them were yet 
 unimagined. It needed another atmosphere to develope such 
 monstrous growths out of the spawn as yet hidden. 
 
 The primitive Christians used Satan, chiefly it would seem, 
 as a ready-made and easy explanation of everything which 
 thwarted their progress or aided their enemies. The E-oman 
 Empire itself was shrewdly suspected of being the kingdom 
 of the Devil. All the oracles and miracles of the heathen 
 gods were believed to be accomplished directly by the help 
 of the evil spirits. In illustration of all this M. Reville 
 might have quoted a passage in TertuUian's " Apology," 
 which, long as it is, I am tempted to introduce, as affording 
 a general view of the part allotted to the devils in that same 
 patristic teaching to which some of our living divines revert 
 as the " pure milk of the "Word," which we in our day have 
 only to imbibe and be blessed : — 
 
 " But how from certain angels, corruj)ted of their own will, a more 
 corrupt race of demons proceeded is made known in the Holy Scrip- 
 tures. Their work is the overthrow of man. Wherefore they inflict 
 upon the body both sickness and many severe accidents, and on the 
 soul perforce sudden strange extravagances. Their own subtle and 
 slight nature furnisheth to them means of approaching either part of 
 man. Much is permitted to the power of spirits, as when some 
 working evil in the air blighteth the fruit or grain, and when the 
 atmosphere, tainted in some secret way, poureth over the earth its 
 pestilential vapours. They commend the gods to the captive under- 
 standings of men, that they may procure for themselves the food of 
 sweet savour and of blood offered to images. [This idea, that the 
 devils fed on the idol sacrifices, is uj^held by Athenagoras, Justin 
 Martyr, Chrysostom, Gregory Nazianzen, and many others of the 
 Fathers.] Every spirit is winged. Whatever is done anywhere they 
 know. The councils of God they both snatched at in the times when 
 the prophets were proclaiming them, and now also cull in the readings 
 
THE DEVIL. 161 
 
 which echo them. , And so, taking the allotted courses of the future, 
 they ape the power while they steal the oracles of God. But in the 
 (heathen) oracles, with what cunning do they shape their double mean- 
 ings to events ; witness the Croesi, witness the Pyrrhi ! It was in the 
 manner of which I have before spoken that the Pythian god sent back 
 the message that a tortoise was being stewed with the flesh of a sheep. 
 
 They had been in a moment to Lydia By dwelling in the air 
 
 and being near the stars, they are able to know the threatening of the 
 skies. They are sorcerers also as regards the cure of sickness. They 
 first inflict the disease, and then prescribe remedies." — Tertullian, 
 Apol. i. 23. 
 
 Such was the world to the primitive Christians ; a place 
 in which devils exercised ever^^ imaginable spiritual and 
 physical power, causing at once evil thoughts in the minds 
 of men, diseases in their bodies, and blights on their fields ! 
 Within and without, from the height of the stars to the 
 depths of hell, the universe was full of these agents of malig- 
 nity and deception. Truly the days of the Roman Empire 
 were bad enough, but this view of human existence in 
 them surpasses, for horror, anything that history has told 
 us. Nor was it exclusively among the Christians that a 
 belief in devils at that time prevailed. Polytheism itself, 
 as it became a more moral creed, tended towards a dualism 
 previously unknown, and the Magian religion, which found 
 a welcome in Rome amid the general Maelstrom of faith, 
 added, doubtless, its part to the popularity of the idea of 
 evil spirits. Apollonius of Tyana was as much the enemy 
 of demons as any Christian saint of them all ; and lam- 
 blichus, the lofty-minded pious Egyptian priest, raised — 
 
 Eros and Anteros at Gadara ; 
 like a Catholic exorcist. That strange hybrid between 
 the religions of Christ and Zoroaster, Manicheism, became, 
 at a very early period, a faith numbering thousands of ad- 
 herents, and has left to this day its dregs in the sect of 
 Yezidis in Persia, who offer distinct worship to Shaitan, 
 
 11 
 
162 THE DEVIL. 
 
 Finally, tlie Talmud, compiled at this time, affords ample 
 evidence that the Jewish mind received in full the fashion 
 of the age. How much the ascetic practices, which 
 now also came into vogue, and drove men by hundreds 
 crazy with fasting and austerities, abetted the growth of a 
 belief in tempting devils, Asmodeus, Belphegor, and Mam- 
 mon, inspirers of Lust, Gluttony, and Avarice, it is needless 
 to point out. St. Anthony's experience was enough to have 
 originated the nightmare of diabolic agency, had none such 
 ever been heard of before. 
 
 But the most important part played by Satan in the re- 
 ligion of the primitive Christians was unquestionably that 
 which they assigned to him in the awful drama of the 
 Atonement. The original conception of the nature of that 
 event, as held by the saints and Fathers of the first cen- 
 turies, has been too much overlooked by those who in our 
 day discuss its moral character. The "ransom of blood," 
 understood commonly in modern times to have been paid 
 on Calvary to the justice of Grod, was taken by the Fathers 
 in quite a different sense, namely, as paid in discharge of 
 the claims of the Devil. St. Irenseus distinctly taught that 
 mankind since the Fall had become the property of Satan 
 in the sense in which slaves belonged to their masters ; and 
 that it would have been unjust for Grod to rob him of souls 
 which belonged to him. Christ, as a perfect man, and 
 therefore indej)endent of the Devil's claims, had offered 
 himself as a ransom for the rest of mankind ; and the Devil 
 had accepted the bargain. By-and-by it was observed that 
 in this negotiation Satan had made an egregious blunder ; 
 and Origen candidly admitted that he had been outwitted, 
 and had been induced to accept the ransom of Christ's life, 
 which the Redeemer had given knowing that he could not 
 retain him in hell. This idea (to our minds so shocking), 
 of the Devil being the deceived party and Christ the deceiver, 
 
THE DEVIL. 163 
 
 was accepted almost universally througliout the Churcli till 
 the scholastic theology discarded it in favour of the scheme, 
 expounded in Anselm's " Cur Deus Homo," — namely, that 
 it was the Father's justice, and not the Devil's claims, which 
 were satisfied by the sacrifice of Christ. 
 
 But even while the Devil was supposed to have relin- 
 quished his infernal rights to human souls, in consideration 
 of Christ's blood, he was paradoxically believed to be still 
 tempting, and betraying thousands continually to his prisons 
 below. The time and care of the saints were principally 
 occupied in evading his toils ; and as to sinners, they were 
 altogether his servants. The whole ciiltus of Christianity 
 assumed a new aspect from this dread Shadow, always in 
 the background. Baptism became primarily an exorcism. 
 To become a Christian was to " renounce the Devil, his 
 pomps, and his works." To be turned out of the Church 
 was to be " delivered to Satan." 
 
 Of course the Natural History of Devils occupied in- 
 telligent minds not a little during this first Reign of Terror. 
 The mysterious allusion in Grenesis to the " Sons of God" 
 (the Beni Elohim), who " saw the daughters of men that 
 they were fair," furnished sufficient data for an entire 
 authoritative Demonogony, to which St. Augustine added 
 the touch that at their fall the devils (whose bodies had been 
 previously aerial) acquired gross animal forms, subject to all 
 carnal passions. This point once established, there followed, 
 in the simple order of development, the invention of Incuhi 
 and Succubi, or devils who haunted sleeping men and 
 women ; with other fiends of ill design, like the one who 
 seduced St. Victor under the semblance of a young girl 
 lost in a wood. Decrees of Councils from the fourth 
 century onward begin to notice these perils, and advise 
 bishops to look sharply after women who wander about 
 at night along with heathen goddesses. The Sabbath of 
 
164 THE DEVIL. 
 
 the Brocken was already brewing in tlie mind of terrified 
 Christendom. 
 
 As soon as the devils were known to assume visible forms' 
 it became naturally a matter of extreme curiosity to deter- 
 mine what was their proj^er shape and semblance. The 
 Father of Lies, of course, was understood to practise various 
 deceptions in this as in every other way ; and his audacity 
 in the case of St. Martin went so far as to present himself 
 disguised as Christ. But his ordinary working dress, if we 
 may so describe it, was at that time merely a domino noir. 
 He was the Angel of Darkness, and as a black figure was 
 often seen to escape when heathen temples were overthrown 
 and idols shattered. It was somewhat later in the course of 
 his career ere he adopted the horns and hoofs of the god 
 Pan ; and presented himself to Europe under the familiar 
 guise wherewith he is identified in our imaginations, and 
 wherein the characteristics of the harmless ruminant are 
 so unscientifically combined with the propensities of the 
 " E-oaring Lion going about seeking whom he may 
 devour." 
 
 The next step, taken in the sixth century, and made by 
 St. Theophilus, was the notable discovery that compacts 
 could be made with the Devil. Documents duly signed by 
 the high contracting parties conveyed on one side the 
 diabolic promise to give the man riches, power, revenge, or 
 whatever else he desired ; and on the other the human 
 engagement to submit to the demon's summons of the soul 
 to the regions below at a stipulated period. The interest 
 of the innumerable tales to which this brilliant idea 
 gave birth centred on the acuteness of the man in cheating 
 the Devil at the last moment by some flaw in the con- 
 tract, or by the interference, on behalf of the sinner, of 
 soine benevolent saint or of the Virgin descending to the 
 rescue. 
 
THE DEVIL. 165 
 
 Of course the man who, believing in a Power of Evil, 
 voluntarily accej)tecl such allegiance and bound himself to 
 do his will for the sake of some coveted reward, was guilty 
 of a moral offence tantamount (so far as his poor benighted 
 mind could go) to absolute renunciation of all duty and 
 religion. There was such a sin as Demonolatry, although 
 no demon existed to receive the worship. The enormous 
 mischief of the popular delusion lay in the fact that it con- 
 stantly presented this capital offence of spiritual treason as 
 a temptation to all men spurred by passion to seek any of 
 the prizes supposed to be attainable by its means. Love, 
 jealousy, hate, covetousness, ambition, were naturally ex- 
 cited to madness by the idea that their complete gratification 
 was always possible ; and the wretched being who once 
 imagined he had " sold his soul " of course from that hour 
 became desperate and irreclaimable. 
 
 In the Middle Ages we find the doctrine of devils as- 
 suming a shape altogether in accordance with the spirit of 
 the time. Feudalism, with its accurately ranged orders, was 
 matched by corresponding orders in the diabolic realm. Just 
 as the barons and knights assembled round the king and 
 swore fealty to him, so the sorcerers were believed to assem- 
 ble at their Sabbath on the Brocken and to swear allegiance 
 to Satan. Even the favourite sport of the time had its 
 parody in the nightly chase of the infernal Wild Huntsman. 
 The ceremonies of the Church were travestied and the Pater 
 Noster repeated backwards to worship the Devil. In a word, 
 day and night did not rule the natural world more com- 
 pletely than the Church and the Devil filled between them 
 the imagination of our fathers. From the thirteenth to the 
 fifteenth century the superstition seems to have been at 
 its height. Satan had reached the zenith of his grandeur. 
 As a specimen of the way in which his doings occupied the 
 minds of men, the reader should consult the Lihcr Recela- 
 
166 THE DEVIL. 
 
 tionum de Iiisidiis et Versutiis Dcemonum adversus Homines, 
 by the Abbot Riclialmus, who flourished in 1270. Every- 
 thing which happened of a disagreeable sort to this good 
 man, from the distractions of his mind at Mass to the nausea 
 he felt after eating unwholesome food, from the false notes of 
 his choir to the coughing fits which interrupted his sermons, 
 all was the work of a malicious fiend. " For example," says 
 he, " when I sit down to read a pious book, the devils 
 manage to make me immediately feel sleej)y. When I try to 
 rouse myself by drawing my hands out of my sleeves they 
 bite me like fleas, and so distract my attention." The busi- 
 ness of some devils, he observ^es, is solely to make men uglj^ 
 and he knows a case wherein a little devil-kin has been 
 hanging on a holy man's under lip for twenty years to make 
 it pendent in an unseemly manner. There are as many 
 devils, he assures us, round each of us, as there are drops 
 of water round a drowning man. "The uses of the sign of 
 the cross and of salt are indeed considerable in repelling 
 these enemies. When a devil has taken away a monk's 
 appetite, it is surprising how eating a little salt with his 
 meat will improve it again." Thus, for 130 chapters, con- 
 tinues this remarkable book of Eevelations, whose popularity, 
 like that of the Gohlett Legend of Voragine, on the same 
 topic, proves sufiiciently how far both works were in harmony 
 with the feeling's of their ag^e. 
 
 Now at last, then, the world was ripe for the terrible 
 cruelties to which the belief in Satan led up, and which were 
 its logical outcome. Angela de Labarete, a noble lady, was 
 in 1275 burnt at Toulouse as a sorceress — the first of the 
 long array of victims to the same superstition, who (accord- 
 ing to Gibbon's calculation) exceeded in number in one 
 country of Europe alone, and in a single century, all the 
 martyrs of the ten Roman persecutions. The dreadful story 
 of the witch trials needs not to be told again in these pages. 
 
THE DEVIL. 167 
 
 For three centuries they went on, growing more frequent, 
 and shifting their area from one part of Christendom to 
 another, till at last every nation. Catholic and Protestant, 
 had caught the hideous frenzy ; and, as we look back over 
 the horrible scene, it would seem as if France, Spain, Italy, 
 Germany, the JSTetherlands, England, and America were, like 
 the "Black Country" at night, blazing everywhere with 
 lurid fires, whose fuel was the living flesh of men and 
 women and innocent children. 
 
 It was when the witch persecutions had only just com- 
 menced in Southern France that Dante drew his portrait 
 (dignified in comparison to the demonology of the age) of 
 the great 
 
 Imperator del doloroso regno ; 
 
 and from his descriptions it is probable that the Devil of 
 Orcagna and of the few other Italian painters who con- 
 descended to touch him, was derived. But it was when the 
 witch mania was in its fury throughout Europe and America 
 that England's great republican poet took on himself the 
 astounding task of rehabilitating the celestial rebel. The 
 grotesque fiend of the popular imagination, transformed 
 into the magnificent Lucifer of Paradise Lost, was a stroke 
 of poetic fancy which perhaps even Milton would scarcely 
 have dared had not St. Avitus of Vienne preceded him on 
 the same track. ^ Be this as it may, his success was equal 
 to his boldness, and it may be fairly said that from his time 
 we have had at least two Devils in English imagination. 
 
 ^ The resemblance between this Saint's old Latin poem, De Initio Mundi and the 
 Paradise Lost of MUton, both as regards plot, characters, and even long parallel 
 passages, has been recently brought to light by an American critic. Todd, in his 
 Inquiry into the Origin of Paradise Lost, betrays that he had never read St. Avitus. 
 He says, "Mr. Bowie, in his catalogue of poets who have treated Milton's subject, 
 mentions Alcinus Avitus, Archbishop of Vienna (!), who wrote a poem in Latin 
 hexameters, Pe Initio Mundi, but offers little else respecting it. Possibly some 
 of the sentiments and expressions in this poem might arrest the attention of 
 Milton." — Todd's Milton, vol. i. p. 60. 
 
168 THE DEVIL. 
 
 One is the semi- ridiculous Mediaeval Devil, tlie " Old Nick," 
 or " Muckle-horned Clootie," with the aspect of Pan and 
 a disposition which, although malicious and cunning, is yet 
 easily liable to be cheated and outwitted by ordinary mortals. 
 The other is the superb Miltonic Lucifer, whose blasted form 
 of " archangel ruined " the pencil of Ary Schefier can 
 scarcely render grand enough for our ideal ; and who, 
 instead of contending with clowns in ignoble trial of wits, 
 is the very incarnation of giant Pride, the mighty rebellious 
 Will which prefers 
 
 " Kather to reign in hell than serve in heaven ! " 
 
 This latter and nobler Devil has indeed so impressed him- 
 self on the minds of all cultivated Englishmen that he is 
 almost universally accepted by us as the true Biblical Satan ; 
 and what we have learned from Milton is so jumbled with 
 what we have learned from the Bible, that nine out of ten 
 amongst us would probably, on sudden inqviiry, unhesitat- 
 ingly answer that there exists Scriptural authority for a 
 whole series of myths for which our English poet is alone 
 responsible. As we have now seen, the Old Testament 
 Satan really afforded only a hint of the Miltonic Lucifer; 
 while the JSTew Testament Beelzebub bore scarcely any 
 resemblance to him whatever. 
 
 Lastly, as the Devil took his place in the masterpieces 
 of Hebrew, Italian, and English literature, so, in the begin- 
 ning of our own age, he re-appeared once more in the great 
 poem of Germany. And what a true modern Devil is Mephis- 
 topheles ! His creator foresaw that, at least for the current 
 century, not Cruelty, not Malice, not Falsehood, not Pride, 
 would be the great evil of the world, but — the Incarnate 
 Sneer. 
 
 When the flames of the witch persecutions at length died 
 away (no longer ago than in 1781 in Spain, and in 1783 in 
 
THE DEVIL. 169 
 
 Switzerland), tand the world began to breathe again after 
 its dream of terror and cruelty, it became evident that the 
 Devil had lost much of his intimidating power. Rationalism 
 was advancing, not onl}^ in the realm of theology, but of 
 medicine, physiology, and psychology. The wild and base- 
 less notions which did duty for science before the age of 
 Bacon faded gradually away, and men began to see things 
 in the light of common day, and not of a hundred will-o'- 
 the-wisps of unreclaimed fancy. The Eeformation had 
 laid the train of thought which is even now exploding, 
 one after another, all the strongholds of superstition. The 
 inkstand which Luther threw at the Devil at AVartburg 
 proved to be a true prophetic symbol, for the black fluid 
 has done more to extinguish the powers of darkness than all 
 the holy water of the saints. Experience proves that as 
 religion becomes more spiritual, in the true sense of the 
 word, the belief in " spirits," good, bad, or indifferent, 
 invariably evaporates. Such beings are the creations, not 
 of Faith, not of reliance on the intuitions of conscience and 
 the religious sentiment, but, on the contrary, of a carnal 
 and materialistic mind, which seeks assurance of supernal 
 things through the evidence of the bodily senses, and uses 
 mechanical means for obtaining spiritual ends. In pro- 
 portion as the priesthood resigns its pretensions to work 
 sacramental miracles, so far prayer and exhortation take 
 the place of exorcisms and incantations. As the Divine 
 Power becomes recognized in the ordinary course of 
 nature, and is no longer sought exclusively in the realm 
 of miracle and prodigy, so the whole world of spirit- 
 marvels is pushed farther back out of the path of thought. 
 Of course the Devil and his doings are the very first to 
 undergo the influence of this silent rising of the intellectual 
 tide. Even for those who still believe in his existence he 
 has dwindled into an invisible and impalpable being, whose 
 
170 THE DEVIL. 
 
 suggestions are made only in the heart, and not through 
 external malific artifices ; and whose influence must be com- 
 bated, not by charms and exorcisms, but by moral efforts and 
 prayers. In a word, the Devil is dying out. 
 
 Does there remain no lesson to us from all this chain 
 of error after error which for so many centuries has fet- 
 tered our race ? What has been the principle in human 
 nature on which this belief has fastened, and by whose 
 energy it must have been supported so long ? Is it the 
 need laid on us to find some explanation of all the evil we 
 behold within and around us in creation? M. Reville thinks 
 this cannot be so, because the myth of Satan offers no logical 
 solution of the problem at all, but rather adds new difiiculties 
 thereto. But is he right in arguing that because the story 
 of the Devil oiigJit not to satisfy a troubled mind, it is 
 therefore a fact that it has not satisfied thousands for twenty 
 centuries ? It is a matter of hourly astonishment to any 
 one who earnestly contemplates the religion of his fellows to 
 observe how small a part logic plays in it, and how readily 
 men are put off with answers to inquiries which are no 
 answers at all. The "schemes of salvation," for example, 
 which are commonly announced as vindications of the Divine 
 justice, and are popularly accepted as such, — what are they 
 but vindications of their authors' incapacity to undei'stand 
 the rudiments even of human equity ? It would seem 
 nowise more improbable that our ancestors should have taken 
 the myth of Satan as a satisfactory account of the origin 
 of evil, than that millions in our day should take other 
 parts of the same theology as affording satisfactory views 
 of the goodness of God. 
 
 We have seen in this sketch a gradual rising of the moral 
 sense of mankind in reference to the source of evil. In the 
 earliest stage of all, and long before Hebrew thought had 
 reached the level whereon the Book of Genesis was written, 
 
THE DEVIL. 171 
 
 there was no connexion between religion and morality; for 
 the gods of savages have no moral attributes, and are merely- 
 unseen Powers imbued with all the passions of the savage 
 himself. By degrees, and as soon as the moral law begins 
 to make itself felt in the yet half-brutal human soul, the idea 
 that the higher powers approve such virtues as man yet 
 perceives, and punish his crimes, dawns on the understand- 
 ing. When he has reached the development of a Greek of 
 the days of Hesiod he has become well assured that — 
 
 " Jove's all-seeing and all-knowing eye 
 Beholds at pleasure things that hidden lie, 
 Pierces the walls which gird the city in, 
 And, on the seat of judgment, blasts the sin." 
 
 And this although, at the same moment, this justice- 
 vindicating Zeus is believed to be himself capable of what 
 at a further stage are recognized as atrocious crimes. At the 
 far higher moral stand-point of the author of the Elohistic 
 fragment of Gfenesis, the Elohim are recognized as holy ; but 
 there is no sense yet, or even in the later writers of the 
 Pentateuch, that God may not consistently tempt men to sin 
 or " harden the hearts " of kings, and prompt all manner 
 of injustice. As we have noticed above, this very imperfect 
 conception changes between the dates of the Book of Samuel 
 and of Chronicles. Evil inspirations could no longer be 
 suffered to be attributed directly to Jehovah. His servant 
 Satan must whisper them in the ear of David. Then, as 
 the next step, the Satan who effects such mischief can be no 
 longer recognized as the servant of God. He must be a 
 rebel against Jehovah, and his evil work must be done, not 
 by His behest, but in opposition to Him. At this point of 
 advance, it would seem, the human mind stopped for about 
 twenty-sis centuries. It was trapped, in fact, in a sort of 
 theologic cul de sac ; for, as God was recognized as Creator 
 of all things, He must needs, it was clear, have been Satan's 
 
172 THE DEVIL. 
 
 Creator also. No further separation could be made on the 
 Hebrew basis, between the powers of good and evil, than to 
 allege that the latter, though made originally by Grod, had 
 in remotest time rebelled against and opposed Him. The 
 questions how and why an All- foreseeing Being created this 
 foe to Himself and his creatures, and an Omnipotent One 
 granted him the necessary powers for carrying on his rebel- 
 lion, were either never thought of, or they were soon laid 
 aside as unanswerable. Evil existed, and the Devil caused 
 it. That was all that was known on the subject. It was 
 some satisfaction, at least, to be sure that the earth rested 
 on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, even 
 though nobod}^ could conjecture on what the tortoise might 
 stand. 
 
 iN^ow, in our day, we have come at last to be forced to 
 look into this tremendous problem a little more deeply. 
 With the disappearance of the Devil, the plain and hideous 
 fact of the existence of evil is left staring us in the face. 
 God help us to make the next great step safely ! Is it too 
 presumptuous to surmise that its direction will prove to be 
 that of a retrocession from the arrogant dogmatism which 
 has caused us, first, to give to the Divine Might the name 
 of " Omnipotence," because, forsooth, we know nothing of 
 its bounds or conditions ; and then, secondly, to argue back 
 from that purely arbitrary metaphysical term, that He 
 could do this or that, if it so pleased Him, since He is 
 " Omnipotent " ? Who has given us to know that God is 
 absolutely able to do everything ? The simple proposition 
 (which it might seem the blindest could not have overlooked) 
 that no conceivable power, of whatever magnitude, can pos- 
 sibly include contradictious, might have taught us more 
 modesty than we have hitherto shown in scanning the order 
 of j)rovidence. When we have thoroughly taken in the idea 
 that God could not make twice two five, nor the three 
 
THE DEVIL. 173 
 
 angles of a triang-le more than two right angles ; then we 
 may begin to ask ourselves, May not contradictions equally 
 great, for all we can know, lie in the way of every removal 
 of evil Avhich we would fain demand at the hands of the 
 Lord ? And may not the accomplishment of the highest 
 of all possible good, the training to virtue of finite spirits? 
 be as incompatible with a thornless and sinless world as 
 would be the making of a circle and a triangle having the 
 same mathematical properties ? 
 
 Philosophically considered, the error on vs^hich the doc- 
 trine of the existence of a Devil is founded is precisely 
 the same as that into which Aristotle fell when he treated 
 Lightness and Coldness as positives, instead of merely as 
 the negations of weight and heat. We are all prone to make 
 the same mistake, even as regards our own natures, and to 
 talk as if our lower, blind, and animal part were something 
 more than that Negative mind (Akomano) which Zoroaster 
 named it. To call our passions inspirations of devils, and 
 treat our lower nature as the Devil's realm, and our delin- 
 quencies as cases of his victory and possession, is, of course, 
 the next error, and the most natural one in the world ; just 
 as it is natural to speak of cold "causing" water to freeze, 
 and of night being the "dominion of Darkness." But as 
 physical science repudiates the latter phrases, so must our 
 theology henceforth renounce the former. And in the 
 highest region of our conceptions the same princij)le must 
 hold. We speak of God as a Person, because we are 
 compelled to believe that, between the only alternatives 
 conceivable to us — personality and impersonality — person- 
 ality is the highest, and, therefore, that God is personal. 
 But for the very same reason that we attribute to Him 
 positive and personal existence, we are bound to deny the 
 same to His antithesis. Whatever other explanation may 
 or may not be found for the existence of pain and sin, it 
 
174 THE DEVIL, 
 
 is impossible that it can be other than impersonal and 
 negative. The Black Sun imagined by the novelist, whose 
 rays were streams of darkness and frost, was not a more 
 imscientific conception than that of a mighty intelligent 
 Will, wholly evil, as God is wholly good.^ 
 
 ' While the preseut volume has been passing through the press, Lord Lyttelton 
 has published the second series of his Ephemera, in which he does me the honour 
 to devote an article to the refutation of the present Essay. Lord Lyttelton says 
 that the reason why the tlieory I advocate (that of the non-existence of a Devil) 
 ought to be resisted, is the general one that " forced and peculiar constructions 
 of Scripture are inexpedient." In the same week the Duke of Somerset has 
 published his essay on Christian Theology and Modern ScejHicism, and therein 
 describes the "first difficulty" in the way of accepting the authority of the Bible 
 to be, the presence therein of the doctrine of devils and diabolic possession. 
 "The educated Protestant," he observes, "no longer believes what the Evan- 
 gelists believed and affirmed" (p. 17). I can only reply to Lord I.yttelton's 
 co\irteous criticism by observing that, in writing my Essay, I had much more in 
 my thoughts such a view of the matter as that of the Duke of Somerset, than 
 the remotest intention to introduce " a forced and peculiar construction of Scrip- 
 ture." I rejoice to find that even so decided an adversary as Lord Lyttelton 
 will go with me so far as to treat the eternity of future punishment and the 
 tinal restoration of the Devil as open questions ; while he appears to agree with 
 Mr. Brookfield in denying the materiality, though not the personality, of the 
 being in question. May I venture to remark that there are controversies in 
 which, when our opponent is willing to go with us a mile, we may hope, ere 
 long, to find liim contented to go with us twain ? 
 
JESS AY VIL 
 
 A PRE-HISTOEIC RELIGION. ^ 
 
 Anciet^t History, it has been well said, tends continually 
 more to become the History, not of Facts, but of Opinions 
 and Sentiments. What actually occurred at any given time 
 and place, what deeds were done, what words were spoken, 
 what were the characters of the actors of each scene, grows 
 ever more doubtful as we are enabled to check one narrative 
 by another ; or to apply to the antique chronicle the rules 
 by which we determine the value of modern evidence. But 
 on the other hand, the common Belief of contemporary and 
 succeeding generations concerning those doubtful things said 
 and done, and the feelings, whether of admiration or of 
 contempt, wherewith they regarded the actors and speakers, 
 are matters very plainly revealed to us, and afford to the 
 student of human nature his best and safest materials. 
 
 In proportion as such a view of the proper scope of 
 ancient history becomes recognized, and books are written 
 more carefully collating and delicately weighing the indices 
 of opinion and feeling, and^ expending less time in disquisi- 
 tions over irrecoverable details of facts, it may be hoped 
 that there will arise for us quite a new aspect of the old 
 world. We shall live again — not with the few who acted 
 its great dramas of war and conquest, but with the many 
 
 ' Tree and Serpent Worship. By James Fergusson, F.R.S. London: India 
 Museum. 4to. pp. 247. 
 
176 A PRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 
 
 who looked on at Ihem at lesser or further distance, and 
 felt their hearts beat, like our own, with triumph and regret, 
 love and detestation. We shall learn, not what Theseus and 
 Regulus did, but what were the types of character which 
 the whole Greek and Roman nations set up as their ideals. 
 We shall acquire a true knowledge, not of the History of 
 the Six Days of Creation or of the Exodus, but of what the 
 Hebrews in the time of their kings believed about the origin 
 of the world and the early migrations of their race. We 
 shall be able to satisfy ourselves, not of the incidents of 
 that wondrous story over which Strauss and his critics may 
 wrangle for ever, but of what the writer of each Gospel 
 and each Epistle, the men of the apostolic age, and the m'en 
 of the patristic ages, successively thought and felt about its 
 great subject. 
 
 To this newer form of historical research, the contributions 
 which pour in on all sides, regarding the ancient creeds of 
 the world, are especially valuable. Already the difference 
 between our views and those which even well-informed and 
 liberal men entertained twenty years ago, on the whole 
 subject of comparative theology, is enormous ; and as the 
 various pieces of the puzzle are put together, the place for 
 each new acquisition appears easier to find, till by degrees 
 the hope of a not wholly incomplete " Philosophy of AH 
 Religions " comes into view. Nor are those grander and 
 more complete systems which may deserve properly to 
 be classed as Religions alone useful for such a purpose. 
 Between a great body, such as the Christian or the Brah- 
 minical, with its organized Hierarchy, and Canonical Books, 
 and those minor beliefs and superstitions which have pre- 
 vailed in less formal shape over the world, there are many 
 degrees of importance, down to the fairy tales and folk-lore 
 which our fathers banished to the nursery, but which the 
 scholars of our generation find nowise unworthy of notice ; 
 
A PRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 177 
 
 and which certainly formed during the Middle Ages a sort 
 of secondary popular religion in Europe. Few problems 
 are more curious than the rise and the distribution of these 
 invertebrate creeds (if we may so describe them) over the 
 globe. The short and easy , method of our fathers which 
 derived them all out of that very capacious receptacle, 
 Noah's Ark, will hardly serve our turn better now than in 
 the case of the beasts and plants of South America and 
 New Zealand. Perhaps, as our zoologists and botanists 
 have discovered that in geology lies the key to their secrets, 
 and that the distribution of the fauna and flora is every- 
 where the monument of the changes of land and sea in far 
 off epochs, so the myths and emblems which we likewise 
 find scattered apparently so unaccountably, may finally be 
 all afiiliated to the races of men among whom they originally 
 sprung, and who as aborigines or conquerors have dwelt in 
 the localities where they flourish. As Heraldry has been 
 often the clue to Genealogy, so may fables and forms of 
 worship, often of the lightest or the rudest kind, afibrd 
 hints of incalculable value in aiding the philologist and 
 the ethnologist to track out the various branches of the 
 human family in their wanderings over the globe. How 
 it is that during all their journeyings these heirlooms of 
 fancy never seem to drop ; how they endure through succes- 
 sive religious conversions and reformations, springing up 
 like wild flowers after the plough has turned again and 
 again the ground they live in, — is a marvel of psychology. 
 "We cannot explain it ; we can only note the fact that while 
 "marble may moulder, monuments decay," while some of 
 the noblest works of the human mind have been destroyed 
 in the conflagration of libraries, while poems, pictures, 
 statues, which gold could not purchase now, have dis- 
 appeared out of the treasure-house of humanity for ever, 
 these mere idle superstitions, these playful fairy legends, 
 
 12 
 
178 A PRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 
 
 these gossamer threads of thought, float on for ever in the 
 very air we breathe. The Jupiter of Phidias has long been 
 dust, but the story of Llewellyn's dog is still told from 
 the Himalayas to Snowdon, and will be told while the Aryan 
 race survives upon the globe. ^ 
 
 Obscure forms of religion and crude superstitious beliefs 
 and observances have in them both the general antiquarian 
 interests of this curious order of wild-flower myths, and 
 also the special theological value of disclosing to us the 
 first feeble stirrings of the religious sentiment, the half- 
 blind "feeling after God if haply they might find him," 
 of yet infant nations, conscious of want and dependence, 
 and dimly conscious also of an unseen Power on whom they 
 depend. The instinct which makes the tendril of the vine 
 creep up the stem of the oak, and its roots shoot through 
 the dark soil towards the water, — even so blind and uncon- 
 scious seem these first religious impulses of man. Among 
 them, therefore, the true principles of science call upon us 
 to look for the simj)le elements of those sentiments which 
 have long since become complex and conventional. And 
 they aflbrd us more than such a field for study ; they give us 
 by their mere existence the reassuring proof that Religion 
 is not a matter primarily of ideas, but of Sentiments ; and 
 that Sentiments are permanent in human nature, while the 
 Ideas in which they clothe themselves, the fashions of their 
 intellectual garments, for ever change. The first shape which 
 each sentiment assumes as it passes out of the world of feeling 
 into the world of thought — a shape gross in the lower race, the 
 Scythian, the Negro, the Australian ; finer and more delicate 
 in the higher, the Greek, the Persian, or the Jew, — that Idea 
 is by degrees worn out, to be replaced by another. But the 
 feeling which originated it, though constantly developed 
 
 1 See the wonderful collection of these tales in Baring-Gould's Curious Myths 
 of the Middle Ages. 
 
A FEE-HISTORIC RELIGIOK 179 
 
 and exalted, is never lost. The "conservation of force" 
 holds as true of human Sentiment as of any physical agent. 
 The sweeping away of old religious Ideas (which Comte would 
 have us think equivalent to the sweeping away of Religion), 
 is in fact quite an opposite process. It is the periodical 
 clearance of a mass of mental rubbish which has become a 
 burden and a stoppage, and the opening of free space for 
 new development, not of ideas absolutely true, yet of ideas 
 relatively nearer to truth than those which preceded them. 
 The cycles of religious revolution, the secular outbursts of 
 apparently the most desolating Doubt, are but the new 
 births of Religion. The serpent casts its outgrown scales, 
 and renews its immortal youth ; the phoenix rises fresh- 
 plumed from its pyre. 
 
 A large contribution to our knowledge of these cruder 
 religions of the world, these stirrings of the religious 
 sentiment among the inferior races of mankind, has been 
 made in the splendid book which I now purpose to review. 
 Mr. Fergusson is the Murchison of a new Siluria ; he 
 has traced out and described a buried world, underlying- 
 all the continents of the present globe. The subject 
 is almost new in his hands. The share which the wor- 
 ship of Serpents and Trees has had in universal prime- 
 val history has probably attracted the passing thoughts of 
 scarcely a dozen living scholars ; and certainly the vast 
 extension of it, which our author exhibits, is altogether 
 a fresh discovery. I think I shall hardly wrong my readers 
 if I assert that even such as have taken interest in compara- 
 tive mythology will find these reseai^ches open to them a 
 flood of new ideas. For the majority of us, were we to 
 follow Gibbon's advice, and before beginning to read, go 
 over in our minds during a country walk all that we have 
 already learned touching the theme of this book, it is to 
 
180 A P RE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 
 
 be feared that a very short excursion indeed would suflBce 
 for our purpose. " There were the serpents of Eden and of 
 Moses ; and ^sculapius' serpents ; and there was the sect 
 of Gnostics called Ophites, because they worshipped ser- 
 pents ; and the idols of Yishnu have generally got serpents 
 twisted about them ; and in the Norse m^'^thology there was 
 the great Midgard serpent. Then for Tree-worship there 
 was the Norse Yggdrasil ; and the Tree of Life and Know- 
 ledge in Eden ; and Apollo's Laurel, and Minerva's Olive ; 
 and the Oaks of Dodona, and the ' groves ' mentioned in 
 the Bible ; and it is said the Druids worshipped Hesus 
 under the form of an oak, and cut the mistletoe at Yule- 
 tide — a practice not yet exploded in England." That is, I 
 venture to think, not a very unfair summary of the amount 
 of knowledge possessed by nine out of ten " general readers " 
 about the matters on which Mr. Fergusson has given us 
 a magnificent quarto volume. Wishing that some hydraulic 
 press could be invented to enable weak reviewers to condense 
 into magazine articles such masses of facts, I shall do my 
 best to present the more salient conclusions of a work whose 
 costliness necessarily limits its circulation, and of which 
 therefore an analysis will be generally more desired than 
 a critique. 
 
 My first remark must be that the way in which the book 
 is compiled is itself unusual. Such works mostly seem to 
 have their origin in a theory of some sort which has oc- 
 curred to a philosopher in his study. Anxious to bring it 
 forth to the world, he makes a nest for it of a reasonable 
 quantity of sticks and straws, collected wherever he can 
 find any suitable to his purpose ; and then sits down and 
 broods over it till it comes out full fledged in a goodly 
 octavo. The present tome has apparently taken shape in 
 quite a difierent manner. Mr. Fergusson having found a 
 quantity of sculptures bearing traces of a curious extinct 
 
A PBE-IIISTORIC RELIGION. 181 
 
 religion, first set about studying them accurately, draw- 
 ing from them sundry inferences, and illustrating them by 
 parallels taken from history and archseology ; all very much 
 as a ffeolosrist who finds the track of a foot in the sandstone, 
 by degress obtains a pretty distinct idea of the long lost 
 beast which left it there uncounted ages ago. As Mr. 
 Fergusson has not had the pretension to start with the 
 statement of any large generalization, the reader — and more 
 especially the reviewer — misses that easy synthesis which 
 at once saves him the labour of careful perusal and enables 
 him to assert, with dogmatism equal to that of the author, 
 that he does, or does not, agree with his conclusions. There 
 is nothing for the student of Tree and Serpent Worshq) to 
 do but to read the book all through carefully ; and when 
 he has done so, and perceived all the stores of information 
 which are brought together in its construction, he will prob- 
 ably be more inclined to admire the author's modest way 
 of putting forth the few hypotheses he ventures upon, than 
 to presume hastily to contradict him. 
 
 The two idolatries of Trees and of Serpents, seem to have 
 been nearly always allied and co-existent. Sometimes the 
 worship of Trees was most prominent, sometimes that of 
 Serpents, but it is rare to find the one altogether dissevered 
 from the other. In many cases the religion was a well-defined 
 latria of living Serpents kept in temples erected for them ; 
 and of Trees held as objects of direct worship and laden 
 with gifts. In other cases, the serpents and trees were 
 merely honoured in subsidiary manner, with a sort of 
 duUa, while higher gods received more direct and formal 
 worship. 
 
 The origin of both Tree and Serpent Worship Mr. 
 Fergusson finds very simply in the natural qualities of both 
 objects. We are not called upon by him either to identify 
 
182 A PRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 
 
 the etymologies of Fire and Serpent ; or to look on tlie 
 latter as the types of the former ; nor yet does he ask us to 
 see that the Serpent means the "Sun," and a Tree the 
 "Moon," or vice versa; or "Heavens," or the "Dawn," or 
 any other astronomical phenomenon whatever. "With all 
 their poetry and all their usefulness," he says, " we can 
 hardly feel astonished that the primitive races of mankind 
 should have considered Trees as the choicest gift of the 
 gods, or believed that their spirits still delighted to dwell 
 amongst the branches or spoke oracles through the rustling 
 of their leaves. Nor is the worship of the Serpent so 
 strange as it might at first sight appear." As old Sanchon- 
 iathon remarked, " The serpent alone of all animals, without 
 legs or arms, or the usual appliances for locomotion, still 
 moves with singular celerity. He periodically casts his 
 skin, and by that process, as the ancients fabled, renews his 
 youth. Thus, too, a serpent can exist for an indefinite time 
 without food or hunger." 
 
 Strangely enough to our apprehension this honour of the 
 serpent was not one mainly of fear but of love : 
 
 Although fear might seem to account for the prevalence of the 
 worship, on looking closely at it, we are struck with phenomena of 
 a totally different character. When we first meet Serpent worship, 
 either in the wilderness of Sinai, the groves of Epidaurus, or in the 
 Sarmatian huts, the serpent is always the Agathodoemon, the bringer 
 of health and good fortune. He is the teacher of wisdom, the oracle 
 of future events. His worship may have originated in fear, but long 
 before we became acquainted with it, it had passed to the opposite 
 extreme among its votaries. Any evil that ever was spoken of the 
 serpent came from those who were outside the pale, and were trying to 
 depreciate what they considered as an accursed superstition. 
 
 May we not add that the idolatry of Trees and Serpents, 
 like other idolatries, must have always involved some vague 
 conception of a beneficent Spirit represented by, or, at most, 
 enshrined in, the idol ? The worship of reptiles and vege- 
 
A PRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 183 
 
 tables as suoh can never have really occurred among man- 
 kind; any more than the worship of a marble statue of 
 Apollo or a wooden one of the Madonna as a statue and 
 nothing more. 
 
 The races of men among whom Tree and Serpent worship 
 prevailed were not at any time either the Aryans or Semites. 
 The Touranians, undoubtedly, were its great supporters ; so 
 much so, that Mr. Fergusson thinks himself justified in 
 arguing backward from any distinct symptom of such 
 worship, to the existence, in the same age and country, of a 
 considerable Touranian or, at all events, inferior population 
 underlying the Aryan or Semitic conquerors. Thus the 
 Serpent duUa of the Jews he attributes to the Canaanites ; 
 and that of the Greeks to the Pelasgi, whom he considers as 
 Touranians, and imagines to have survived and carried down 
 their traditions after the return to Greece of the descendants 
 of Hercules (the Serpent-slayer, i.e., conqueror of Serpent- 
 worshippers), even to the latest ages of Greek civilization. 
 In any case it appears that new and valuable hints for the 
 historian and ethnologist will hereafter be found in following 
 out this " trail of the serpent " in the literature, the coins, 
 and the sculptures of the ancient world. 
 
 A curious circumstance connected with Serpent worship is 
 its apparently arbitrary alliance with the practice of Human 
 Sacrifices. Mr. Fergusson considers it to be established that 
 wherever human sacrifices existed there also was the Serpent 
 an object of worship ; and where they have been most fre- 
 quent and terrible, as in Mexico and Dahomey, there also 
 has serpent worship been the typical form of the popular 
 religion. Nevertheless, no direct connexion between the two 
 things is traceable. "No human sacrifice was anywhere 
 made to propitiate the serpent, nor was it ever pretended 
 that any human victim was ever devoured by the snake-god." 
 And, though the sacrifices are never found without the 
 
184 A PRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 
 
 serpent worship, tlie serpent worship has often largely pre- 
 vailed without the sacrifices. 
 
 Before commencing the description of Serpent Worship 
 and its monuments in India, which form the great substance 
 of his book, Mr. Fergusson takes a rapid survey of the traces 
 left by the same cultus all over the world. The amount of 
 information condensed into these fifty quarto pages is very 
 remarkable, and it would be vain to attempt to give any 
 fair resume of it in still smaller compass. Nevertheless, I 
 must endeavour to state the outlines of his conclusions. 
 
 Bahomeif is the present chief seat of Serpent worship, 
 where it is now pi-actised with more completeness than any- 
 where else, and where this most ancient of idolatries may 
 probably have remained from the earliest times almost un- 
 changed. And as the student of the new science of Pre- 
 historic Archaeology goes to the savages of Polynesia and 
 Greenland to understand the meaning and use of the stone 
 and bronze weapons he finds in the lacustrine dwellings of 
 Switzerland, so the student of the pre-historic religion 
 of Serpent worship will certainly do well to examine in 
 Dahomey its yet surviving barbarities. The chief God of 
 the national triad is the Serpent ; the second the Tree-God ; 
 and the third the Ocean. " The first, called Danh gbive, is 
 esteemed the Supreme Bliss and General Good." He has a 
 thousand female votaries and is worshipped with all the 
 splendour his savage people can afford. The "customs" of 
 Dahomey with their sacrifices of 500 or 600 victims at the 
 death of a king, or of 30 or 40 as an annual slaughter to 
 the honour of ancestors, are here seen in that unaccountable 
 connexion with a worship of which they form no part, of 
 which I have spoken above. 
 
 In America, there is a whole world of archaeological 
 interest waiting for investigation. The mounds of Ohio and 
 Iowa have been declared to be serpent images 1000 feet long. 
 
A PRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 185 
 
 The ruined temples of Mexico and the brief mention which 
 the Spanish historians deigned to give of the diabolic religion 
 of their enemies, open out a most curious problem. Was 
 Serpent worship indigenous in the western continent, and 
 did human nature here, as so often elsewhere, seem to re- 
 produce for ever the same ideas ? Or, does the legend of 
 Quetzal-coatl, — the Feathered Serpent born of a Virgin, the 
 Lycurgus and Bacchus of Central America, who came from 
 some unknown land like Manco Capac of Peru, and returned 
 thither, having civilized Anahuac — point to a connexion in 
 long past years between America and the further India 
 where, at the date assigned to Quetzal-coatl, Serpent worship 
 was in its glory ? Mr. Fergusson seems to incline to the 
 last suggestion, yet candidly admits that the fact that all 
 American Serpent worship was that of the native noxious 
 Rattlesnake, argues against the Indian hypothesis. 
 
 Returning to the old world, where Mr. Fergusson begins 
 his survey, we find Egypt with only a " fractional part " of 
 its great theology occupied by either trees or serpents.^ 
 
 In Greece, as already remarked, the frequent traces of 
 both worships, very loosely connected with the Olympian 
 mythology, forces us to suppose that we have here an 
 instance of the religions of two distinct races intermingled ; 
 the lower cropping up through the higher like weeds in a 
 cornfield. Not to dwell on the numerous earlier myths 
 regarding Serpents, the Pythons and Hydras, Echidna and 
 the Dragon of the Garden of the Hesperides (the Greek 
 counterpart of the Hebrew Serpent of the Tree of Life in 
 Eden), there appear actually in historic times the Serpent 
 kept in the Erechtheum, whose escape warned the Athenians 
 
 ^ A learned friend has favoured me with some notes tending to show that Mr. 
 Fergusson, in this short chapter, has not done justice to the extent of Serpent 
 worship and Serpent honour in Egypt. He seems, especially, to have overlooked 
 the importance of the myths relating to Apoph or Typhon, the Evil Serpent, 
 a personage whose history it is particularly desii-able to explore. 
 
186 A PRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 
 
 to fly from the Persians ; and the serpents of ^sculapius at 
 Epidaurus, which the Roman Senate sent an embassy to 
 obtain. The latter incident indeed will form one of the 
 most astonishing in that future History of Opinion of 
 which I have spoken. The facts are stated by Livy (x. 47), 
 Valerius Maximus (i. 8, 2), and Aurelius Victor (xxii. 1) ; 
 while Ovid devotes a long poem (Met. xv. 5) to their embel- 
 lishment. A plague, it seems, ravaged Rome, and in the year 
 of the city 462 — more than a century, be it remembered, after 
 Socrates, two generations after Plato — a living Serpent was 
 solemnly fetched from Greece to Italy, and received with divine 
 honours on the banks of the Tiber by the Senate and People 
 of Rome ! Of course, on the advent of the sacred reptile 
 " the plague was stayed " ; and ^sculapius received in Italy 
 the thanksgivings which, according to the Book of Numbers, 
 were ofiered on a strangely similar occasion in the Arabian 
 Desert to Jehovah. From this time a Serpent, portrayed 
 in a conventional attitude, was in the Roman world the 
 recognized type of a sacred place ; and the Epidaurian 
 serpents, as Pausanias tells, held their place among the gods 
 of Greece till long after the age of Christ. 
 
 Nor did the twin-idolatry of Trees fail to find its place 
 in the hospitable pantheon of Greece. When Minerva 
 contended with Neptune for the patronage of Athens (an 
 event which Phidias did not disdain to commemorate in the 
 magnificent western pediment of the Parthenon, now in 
 the British Museum) she created the Olive Tree to match 
 Neptune's gift of the Horse, and planted this her Tree of 
 Knowledge on the Acropolis, committing it to the care of the 
 Serpent-god, Erichthonius. The Erechtheum, whose ruins 
 still form the loveliest Ionic temple in the world, was built 
 over the spot, and the Olive stood, as Fergusson believes, 
 in the beautiful portion of the Pandroseum which is sup- 
 ported by Caryatids, — an hypothesis fairly accounting for 
 
A PRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 187 
 
 the hitherto inexplicable form of that gem of architecture. 
 Beneath, in a cell adjoining the well of Neptune, lived 
 the Serpent, whose actual reptilian existence seems proved 
 by the fact mentioned by Herodotus (viii. 41), that when 
 the Persians approached Athens, the Serpent was an- 
 nounced to have refused its food and fled ; whereupon the 
 people at length quitted their city in despair, as warned by 
 their tutelary deity. 
 
 The Oak, or rather grove of oaks, at Dodona, was always 
 attributed by tradition to the planting of Pelasgi, and 
 existed till the time of Constantino ; a period of at least 
 two thousand years. The oracle which spoke therein was 
 said to come from the sacred pigeons rustling among the 
 leaves, and from bells with which the branches were hung. 
 No temple existed there ; the grove itself was the sacred 
 place. Again, the laurel of Apollo at Delphi was as sacred 
 as the oak of Dodona. Under its shade the Python took 
 refuge ; one combination more of Tree and Serpent. 
 
 In ancient Italy the Etruscan relics preserve no memorial 
 of the kind we are seeking. But at Lanuvium, sixteen 
 miles from Rome, was a dark grove sacred to Juno ; and 
 near it the abode of a great serpent, the oracle of female 
 chastity. In later ages we find Persius speaking of the 
 custom above mentioned of painting certain conventional 
 figures of serpents on walls, to indicate the sanctity of the 
 spot ; a practice of which there are several examples at 
 Herculaneum and Pompeii. Most surprising of all, however, 
 are the legends of Romans and Greeks born of serpents. 
 Scipio Africanus is said to have believed himself the son 
 of a snake ; and Augustus allowed it to be understood 
 that his mother Atia had received him from a serpent. 
 Alexander the Great before he undertook to prove himself 
 the son of Jupiter Ammon was supposed (apparently by 
 Philip himself) to be the son of a serpent who actually 
 
188 A PRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 
 
 appeared to him in a dream in later years to save the life 
 of his general Ptolemy. To find such fables gravely told 
 by writers like Plutarch and Lucian, and even mentioned 
 by Cicero without any expression of contempt, is truly 
 astonishing. "We ask ourselves, Can there be any legends 
 current amongst us which will seem equally absurd to 
 posterity ? 
 
 Passing from Rome to her barbarian conquerors we find 
 among th6 Teutonic tribes no traces of Serpent worship, 
 but many of the worship of Trees. The last relic of this 
 old creed is probably the Stock^am-Eisen, the Apprentice's 
 tree, still standing in the heart of Vienna. In ancient 
 Sarmatia and modern Poland both Trees and Serpents were 
 worshipped by the peasantry even to the limits of the 
 present century. 
 
 Scandinavia offers the most complete puzzle to mytholo- 
 gists, and an excellent illustration of the folly of relying 
 on mere philological analogies in such researches. Were 
 Woden, or Boden, and Buddha the same person ? Woden 
 came from the East to Europe just when active missionaries 
 were spreading Buddhism on all sides ; and the fourth day 
 of the week is Wednesday in the West, and Biidhha)' in the 
 East. But can we leap to the conclusion that the religions 
 were therefore identical ? Fergusson says, " There are not, 
 perhaps, two other religions in the world so diametrically 
 opposed to one another, nor two persons so different as the 
 gentle Sakya Muni, who left a kingdom to alleviate the 
 sufferings of mankind, and Odin, * the terrible and severe 
 God, the Father of slaughter.' " If the two religions came 
 anywhere in contact, it was at their base, for underlying 
 both was a strange substratum of Tree and Serpent wor- 
 ship. The Yggdrasil Ash Tree, in the Norse mythology, 
 with one of its roots over the Well of Knowledge, and 
 with Nidhog gnawing its stem, suggests obvious analo- 
 
A PRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 189 
 
 gies, not only with the Tree of Knowledge and Serpent 
 of Eden, but with the Bo-Tree of Buddha. Olaus Magnus 
 in the sixteenth century speaks of serpents as still kept as 
 household gods in Sweden : a circumstance which, when we 
 remember the insignificant nature of the northern reptile, 
 seems to point to some Southern or Eastern tradition of its 
 importance. 
 
 In Gaul, as in Germany, Tree worship seems to have 
 prevailed ; but of Serpent worship there is no trace, save 
 one childish legend reported by Pliny as from the Druids. 
 
 As to Great Britain, Mr. Fergusson's views will probably 
 be more contested than those he has given of any other 
 country. Perhaps most readers, to whom the notion of a 
 connexion between the Druids and Stonehenge and Serpent 
 worship have been more or less vaguely familiar, will be 
 startled to learn that " there are only two very short para- 
 graphs in any classical authors which mention the Druids 
 in connexion with Britain ; not one that mentions Serpent 
 worship ; and not one English author prior to the thirteenth 
 century who names either the one or the other." Our 
 knowledge on the subject is almost wholly derived from the 
 Welsh Triads ; and, even in them, the word Druid occurs 
 but rarely. The relation of Stonehenge and Avebury to 
 either Druidisra or Serpent Worship, Mr. Fergusson treats 
 as wholly imaginary. The bare Wiltshire downs were, he 
 thinks, the very last places likely for the grove-loving Celts 
 to choose for their temples, though they might (especially 
 if battle-fields) choose them for the site of tombs. 
 
 On the east coast of Scotland are many megalithic monu- 
 ments, several of which bear sculptures of serpents, while 
 others, apparently of almost equal antiquity, bear the 
 Christian cross. To all appearance these serpent monuments 
 mark the furthest wave of the great Woden-movement 
 which spread from the Caucasus to Scandinavia. 
 
190 A PRE-mSTORIC RELIQION. 
 
 After this hasty sweep over Africa, America, and Europe, 
 which I have permitted myself to make in the reverse 
 order of that adopted by Mr. Fergusson ; after finding 
 Serpent and Tree Worship alive in Dahomey, and leaving 
 its broad and unmistakable traces in Central America, an- 
 cient Greece, Rome, Scandinavia, Germany, Gaul and Britain ; 
 we turn with a new comprehension of the universality of 
 these marvellous delusions to the brief hints which the 
 Jewish Scriptures have preserved of their existence, even 
 among the people who had Isaiah for their prophet, and 
 the author of the Book of Job for their great poet. 
 
 The Garden of Eden, bounded on one side by the Eu- 
 phrates, was doubtless conceived of as occupjdng a position 
 in Mesopotamia. Here, in the earliest record of Semitic 
 thought, we find the two inseparable relics, the Tree and 
 the Serpent; a Tree of Knowledge and a Serpent "more 
 subtle than any beast of the field," — doubtless the Hea or 
 Hoa, the Servient God, the third of the Bab^donish triad of 
 gods. Very ingenious is Mr. Fergussou's idea that this 
 story, and the curse of the serpent, was introduced by the 
 monotheistic author of the fragment of Genesis in which 
 it is found, for the purpose of teaching the hatred of the 
 early Serpent worship, which in his time and for ages after- 
 wards was doubtless still flourishing. Jehovah cursed the 
 serpent, and "put enmity between his seed {i.e. his wor- 
 shippers) and man of woman born." May I surmise that 
 here also we find the traces of that notion, so prevalent, 
 according to Sir J. Lubbock, in the border land of pre- 
 historic times; that the later race alone is human, the pro- 
 geny of a mortal woman, and the elder primeval race, with its 
 ruder creed and weapons, merely impish, dwarf, and bestial ? 
 
 Next to the Tree of Eden, a trace of the same wor- 
 ship may be found in Abraham's terebinth at Mamre; 
 ■worshipped, according to Eusebius, down to the time of 
 
A PEE- HISTORIC RELIGION. 191 
 
 Constantine, and still tlie same, if we may believe tradi- 
 tion, which spreads its leafy boughs laden with acorns 
 beside the vineyards of Eshkol. 
 
 Again, we find in Exodus, Jehovah speaking to Moses in 
 the Burning Bush (or Tree) — a Tree, according to Josephus, 
 hallowed before the event. At the same moment, Moses's 
 Eod was turned into a Serpent ; a wonder afterwards 
 repeated by both Moses and Aaron ; and imitated by the 
 Egyptian magicians then and ever since, by means of 
 pressure on the back of the serpent's neck productive of 
 temporary catalepsy. 
 
 But the most suggestive of all the stories of Serpent 
 duUa is that told in Numbers xxi. The Israelites having 
 murmured as usual, " the Lord sent fiery serpents, and they 
 bit the people." On their repentance Moses is directed to 
 ** make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole " (the caducous 
 of the Healing God), " and it shall come to pass that every 
 one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live." 
 The worship thus inaugurated is no more mentioned in the 
 Pentateuch ; but assuming the received chronology to be 
 anything near the truth, it actually survived for more than 
 seven centuries, and in the days of Hezekiah "the children 
 of Israel did burn incense " to the self-same brazen Serpent, 
 actually preserved in the very Temple (2 Kings xviii. 4). 
 The reformer king at the same time " cut down the Groves, 
 and brake in pieces the Serpent," thus combining in common 
 ruin the two ever-parallel idolatries. But no religion was 
 pure enough to destroy altogether the marvellous infatu- 
 ation. Even after the great Christian Reformation, the 
 Serpent worship cropped up like the hydra itself. The 
 Ophites or Serpentinian Gnostics preferred, as TertuUian 
 tells us, the Serpent to Christ, "inasmuch as the former 
 brought the knowledge of good and evil into the world!" 
 (TertuUian, De Frcescn'pt. Hereticoram, cxlvii.) 
 
192 A PRE-HISTORIG RELIGION. 
 
 We now pass to Serpent Worship in ancient Persia, and 
 here the theory of the author that the Aryan races were 
 never, and the Touranian races always, serpent worship- 
 pers, meets with strong confirmation. In the theology of 
 Zoroaster, Dahaka, or Zohak, was an evil being created 
 by Ahrimanes. In Persian mythology he is a king who 
 reigned at Babel for 1000 years, having two serpents 
 growing between his shoulders, and daily devouring men 
 until his own destruction by the "Brilliant Feridoun," the 
 servant of Ormuzd. Here again, the religion of the pre- 
 Aryan, as in Genesis that of the pre-Semitic race, is repre- 
 sented as detestable and accursed. 
 
 The Tree worship of ancient Persia and India is even 
 more curious than the passing spurn of Zoroastrianism at 
 Serpent worship. Both Zend Avesta and Vedas are full 
 of mysterious allusions to the Horn, or Soma tree, and its 
 sacramental juice. In modern times the Brahmins have 
 taken a creeping shrub, the Asclepias, to be the Soma ; 
 and its sacred juice that profane German Haug has 
 unhesitatingly styled " a nasty drink." But there is 
 reason to believe with Windischmann, that the original 
 Homa was a very different tree, and identical with the 
 Tree Goo-ard, the "Tree which enlightened the eyes." 
 Suspicions may also exist that it was the ^;;?pelus, the 
 Yine of Bacchus. May I add the suggestion (from the 
 audacity of which Mr. Fergusson must be exonerated), 
 that the Homa, the Soma, the Gogard, the Ampelus 
 of Bacchus, and the Tooba tree of Mahomet, were all one 
 with the Yine of Noah ; and that all the awful and solemn 
 mysteries connected therewith may be summed uj) in the 
 Anglo-Saxon tongue as—" getting drunk " ? 
 
 Cashmere was a very kingdom of Serpents and their wor- 
 shippers or Nagas, as the Indians call them ; namely, human 
 beings with serpents growing between their shoulders, or 
 
A PRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 193 
 
 at least so conventionally depicted. The connexion between 
 the early Buddhists and these Serpentinians of Cashmere, 
 helps our author's further theories considerably ; but space 
 fails me to detail particulars. 
 
 In Cambodia, in the further India, Serpent worship reached 
 its utmost splendour. The great temple of Nakhon-Vat, 
 wholly devoted to this strange cultus, is even in its ruins 
 one of the noblest buildings in the world. First discovered 
 in 1858 and 1860 by M. Mouhot, they have since been 
 photographed by Mr. J. Thomson, and exhibit architecture 
 of the utmost splendour, and of a style curiously resembling 
 the Roman form of Doric. Six hundred feet square at the 
 base, the building rises in the centre to the height of 180 
 feet, "while every part is covered with carvings in stone, 
 generally beautiful in design and always admirably adapted 
 to their situation." Every angle of the roof, every cornice, 
 every entablature, bears the seven-headed serpent ; and in- 
 stead of the Greek cella with the statue of the genius loci, 
 there are courts containing tanks, in which (we are com- 
 pelled to infer) the living Serpents dwelt and were adored. 
 The date of this marvellous structure must be somewhere 
 about the tenth century of our era ; at all events before 
 the fourteenth, when the Siamese conquered Cambodia, 
 the cities of the Serpent worshippers were deserted, and 
 Buddhism was established. 
 
 In China the traces of Serpent worship are obscure ; the 
 most notable being the popularity of the emblem of a mon- 
 strous heraldic dragon ; and a legend of two heaven-sent 
 serpents who attended the first ablutions of Confucius. 
 
 Scattered all over Oceanica and Australia are instances 
 enough to countenance the hypothesis that it was by way 
 of the islands the cultus penetrated to Central America. 
 
 All the Cingalese Buddhist histories describe Buddha as 
 himself converting the Nagas of Ceylon ; but in Mr. Fergus- 
 
 13 
 
194 A PRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 
 
 son's opinion, the conversion was far from complete. Tree 
 worship has been more openly adhered to in the island than 
 that of Serpents. King Asoka, the Constantino of Buddhism, 
 B.C. 250, sent a branch of the Bo-tree to the king of Anura- 
 dhapura, who received it with the utmost honours and planted 
 it in the centre of his capital. The city is now a desert and 
 its temples in ruins ; but the Bo-tree still flourishes, and 
 every year thousands of pilgrims repair to it to ofler up 
 prayers which are " more likely to be answered if uttered in 
 its presence." 
 
 Reaching Liclia at last, the sphere of his principal re- 
 searches, Mr. Fergusson attempts a preliminary sketch of the 
 very difficult ethnology and religious history of the penin- 
 sula. Into this maze I cannot spare space to follow him. 
 His leading idea here, as throughout the book, is that 
 Serpent worship is always the cropping-up of the super- 
 stition of an underlying Touranian race, and that to neither 
 of the great Aryan immigrations — called the Solar and the 
 Lunar races — was it due. The Aryan Buddha, however, by 
 falling back on other Touranian ideas, caused its great 
 revival ; and the Serpent- emblazoned Topes of Sanchi and 
 Amravati are the existing monuments of the fact. With 
 the disappearance of Buddhism from Hindostan and the rise 
 of modern Brahminism under the leadership of Sankara 
 Acharya about the beginning of the ninth century a.d., the 
 erection of such buildings ceased ; but not on that account 
 has the worship of either living or sculptured serpents died 
 out of India. To the description of these two great Topes, 
 and the magnificent collection of photographs and litho- 
 graphs of their sculptures, the remainder of Mr. Fergusson's 
 book is devoted.^ As the descriptions are, of course, not 
 
 1 A beautiful model of one of the gateways of the Sanchi Tope formed one 
 of the most interesting objects in the Fine Arts Department of the International 
 Exhibition of 1871, in South Kensington. 
 
A P RE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 195 
 
 intelligible without the plates, I can only oflPer a general 
 account of these very remarkable ruins. 
 
 Before doing so, however, I must allow myself to give 
 utterance to an expression of surprise at Mr. Fergusson's 
 doctrine, repeated here from his Architecture, that the Aryan 
 race were never builders, because "they always had too firm 
 a conviction of the immortality of the soul, and consequently 
 of the existence of a future state, ever to care much for a 
 brick or stone immortality in this world ; and no material art 
 satisfied the cravings of their intellectual powers." (p. 78.) 
 It may be a fact that the Aryan races were not architects. 
 I cannot presume to argue in the face of Mr. Fergusson's 
 vast erudition on the subject; albeit to admit the Aryan 
 origin of the peoples who built the temples of Athens and 
 the churches of Rome, and York, and Strasbourg, and yet 
 maintain that the genius of architecture is foreign to their 
 blood, is, to say the least, a startling paradox. But whatever 
 Mr. Fergusson's fact may be, the reason he assigns for it is, 
 of course, open to criticism, and against this reason I cannot 
 but vigorously protest. That a vivid belief in a future life 
 would nullify all ambition for a stone immortality, is surely 
 very improbable, in the first place ; and in the second, the 
 example of the Egyptians seems to prove precisely the 
 opposite conclusion. If ever there were a race which 
 intensely felt the consciousness of the great truth, "that 
 the soul of a man never dies," it was that same race which, so 
 vehemently desired a stone immortalit}^, that it loaded the 
 earth with Pyramids, which are hardly so much works of 
 architectural art, as mere dumb expressions of that longing. 
 It is impossible that Mr. Fergusson can have overlooked this 
 fact. I cannot conjecture how he disregards it. 
 
 The ruins of Sanchi in Central India between the towns of 
 Bhilsa and Bhopal, and those of Amravati on the Kistna, are 
 of an age immediately preceding and following the Christian 
 
196 A PRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 
 
 era. Those of Sanchi are the most ancient ; the principal 
 Tope, as there is good reason to believe, having been erected 
 by King Asoka, about b.c. 250. Stone building was then 
 evidently in its infancy in India, and only beginning to 
 replace wood, whose forms of construction it is made to 
 imitate. All the details, and especially the forms of the 
 very singular surrounding stone rails and their gateways, 
 are, as Mr. Fergusson says, " very good carpentry, but very 
 poor masonry." Three forms pervade all the monuments of 
 both Sanchi and Amravati: — 1. Topes or Stiipas, mound-like 
 buildings erected for the preservation of relics ; 2. Chaityas, 
 which, both in form and purpose, resembled early Christian 
 churches ; 3. Viharas, residences of priests and monks 
 attached to the Topes and Chaityas. The Topes at Sanchi 
 form part of a great group of such monuments, extending 
 over a district of seventeen miles, and numbering forty or 
 fifty tumuli. The great Tope consists of an enormous mound, 
 built in the following manner. First, a basement 121 feet 
 in diameter, and 14 feet high. On the top of this a terrace 
 or procession path 5 feet 6 inches wide. Within this rises 
 the dome, a truncated hemisphere 39 feet high, originally 
 coated with chunam. On the top of the dome, is a level 
 platform measuring 34 feet across. "Within this was a 
 square Tee or relic box, of sixteen square pillars with rails, 
 and, over all, a circular support for the umbrella which 
 always crowned these monuments. But the most remark-, 
 able feature of the building is the rail, which surrounds it at 
 the distance of 9 feet 6 inches from the base, and consists of 
 100 pillars 11 feet high, exclusive of the gigantic gateways. 
 These gateways are covered with the richest and most 
 fantastic sculptures, both in the round, and in bas-relief. 
 About one half of their sculptures represent the worship of 
 Trees or of Dagobas (relic shrines), others represent scenes 
 in the life of Buddha, and others again ordinary events, 
 
A FRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 197 
 
 feasting, concerts, and so on. The merit of these sculptures, 
 Mr. Fergusson considers as " suj)erior to that of Egypt, but 
 inferior to the art as practised in Greece." They are 
 " extremely diiferent to the usual sculptures brought home 
 from India. Neither at Sanchi nor at Amravati are there 
 any of those many-armed or many-headed divinities, who 
 form the staple of the modern Hindoo Pantheon. There are 
 none of those monstrous combinations of men with the heads 
 of elej)hants, or lions, or boars. All the men and women are 
 represented as acting as men and women have acted in all 
 time." The sculptures at Sanchi are the more rude and 
 vigorous. Those at Amravati are on a scale of excellence, 
 " perhaps nearer to the contemporary art of the Roman 
 Empire under Constantino, than any other that could be 
 named, or of the early Italian Renaissance." 
 
 Two races may be readil}^ distinguished as depicted in 
 the sculptures. First, the Hindoos, originally pure Aryans, 
 though of mixed blood at the age of the sculptures, evidently 
 the dominant race. The men wear the dhoti and turban ; 
 the women are covered with jewels, but strangely divested 
 of clothing. This last is a feature so remarkable that, 
 being also found elsewhere, Mr. Fergusson concludes that 
 before the Mahometan conquest nudity in India conveyed 
 no sense of indecency. The second race wore kilts and 
 cloaks, and (most marked peculiarity) are represented 
 with beards, which the Aryans never wear. The women 
 wear neat and decent dresses and no ornaments. It would 
 appear that these are the aborigines of the country.^ 
 
 1 A great Oriental scholar, between whose judgment and that of Mr. Fergusson 
 I cannot presume to hold the balance, maintains that our author is wrong in 
 treating any of the sculptures as historical records. They are, he conceives, mere 
 illustrations of the fairy tales popular in the age to which they belong. The 
 distinction between Fairy Tales, Mythology, and Eeligion, in early epochs, ap- 
 pears by no means easy to define. Whether the works in question may be taken 
 to belong to the same class as the frieze of the Parthenon portraying the actual 
 contemporary Panathenaic Processions ; or to that of the metopes of the same 
 
198 ^ PRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 
 
 Some obscurity exists as to the precise meaning of the 
 Serpents introduced into these sculptures. Are the Hindoos 
 intended to honour them ? Do the serpents (nagas) honour 
 the Hindoos ? But no doubt at all exists about the reverence 
 which men are everywhere rej)resented as paying to Trees. 
 Plate XXV. for example represents the Bo-tree of Buddha 
 growing out of a temple. Devas bear oflferings to it above 
 and four Hindoos stand before it, below, with closed hands 
 in the attitude of prayer. "Taken altogether," says Mr. 
 Fergusson, "the Tree is the most important object of wor- 
 ship " in the Sanchi Tope. " It is difficult to convey an 
 idea of the extreme frequency of the illustrations of it." 
 
 The Amravati Topes are in a much more ruinous state 
 than those of Sanchi. Fortunately Sir "Walter Elliot pro- 
 cured a quantity of sculptures from them, and sent them 
 to England in 1856. These — discovered by Mr. Fergusson 
 in 1867 in the coach-house of Fife House — are a perfect 
 treasury of knowledge of ancient Indian religion and man- 
 ners, as the beautiful photographs of them in this volume 
 amply testify. The great Tope at Amravati was of enormous 
 size. Its dimensions as recorded by Colonel Mackenzie are 
 195 feet for the inside diameter of the outer circle and 165 
 feet for that of the inner. On the first of the measurements 
 Mr. Fergusson appends the following note : " By a curious 
 coincidence this is exactly twice the diameter of the outer 
 circle at Stonehenge. The outer rail in the Indian example 
 is 14 feet high ; that at Stonehenge is as nearly as can now 
 be measured 15ft. 6in." In Mr. Fergusson's opinion the 
 two buildings were erected much about the same time and 
 for the same purpose, viz., that of cenotaphs or relic-shrines. 
 Each of the four gateways at Amravati projected about 30 
 
 temple illustrating the fabulous legend of the wars of the Centaurs and Lapithae ; 
 or, lastly, to that of the colossal group of the pediment representing the great 
 mystery of Athenian religion, the birth of Pallas Athene, — I do not venture to 
 offer an opinion. 
 
A PRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 199 
 
 feet beyond the outer rail, but tbey are all so much ruined 
 that the dimensions cannot be exactly ascertained. The 
 sculptures brought away proved on examination to be of 
 three kinds : 1. Large and coarse, belonging to the cen- 
 tral building. 2. Carvings so delicate as to seem rather 
 to belong to ivory than to stone belonging to the inner rail. 
 3. A group belonging to the outer rail. The quantity of 
 these sculptures was amazing. The central discs of the 
 pillars alone contained from 6000 to 7000 figures : 
 
 " If we add to these the continuous frieze above, and the sculptures 
 above and below the discs on the pillars, there probably were not less 
 than from 120 to 140 figures for each intercolumniation, say 12,000 
 to 14,000 in all. The inner rail probably contains even a greater 
 number of figures than this, but they are so small as more to resemble 
 ivory carving, but except perhaps the great frieze at Nakhon Vat (in 
 Cambodia), there is not even in India, and certainly not in any other 
 part of the world, a storied page of sculpture equal in extent to what 
 this must have been when complete. If not quite, it must in all prob- 
 ability have been nearly perfect less than a century ago." 
 
 The subjects of these sculptures are of course very varioug 
 — animals, bulls, elephants, etc., very well depicted, feasts, 
 concerts of instruments, scenes from the life of Buddha, 
 and so on. Most prominent, as well as most interesting 
 as touching on our subject, are the groups of Tree and 
 Serpent worshippers everywhere to be observed. 
 
 At Sanchi, the Serpent worship had been in the back- 
 ground, and the Tree worship prominent. At Amravati, in 
 the oldest part, the Tree flourishes as usual, but in the later 
 portion the Serpent appears ten or twelve times as the 
 principal object of worship ; twice he shields the head of 
 Buddha, and forty or fifty times he appears spreading his 
 protecting hood of heads over Eajahs and persons of im- 
 portance. 
 
 This may be reckoned the culmination of Buddhistic Ser- 
 pent worship in India. Four centuries later Brahminism 
 
200 A PRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 
 
 revived, and Buddhism was banished to the Further India, 
 Ce3don, China, and Thibet. But vras there then an end 
 of this ever-reviving hydra of idolatry ? Not at all ! The 
 Serpent still plays an important part in that half of Hindu 
 worship which is addressed to Vishnu, and appears con- 
 stantly in his images, extending its hood of heads over 
 him, or twisted round his throne. In a letter which Mr. 
 Fergusson has published in his Appendix, dated January, 
 1869, Dr. Balfour says, " Snake worship is general through- 
 out peninsular India, both of the sculptured form and of 
 the living creature." The vitality of the idolatry is as 
 remarkable as the vitalitj^ of the idol. The Serpent and 
 his worship are always "scotched but not killed." ^ 
 
 Let me now attempt to sum up some of the results towards 
 which these marshalled facts of Mr. Fergusson most clearly 
 point. In the first place, we find that a certain form of 
 worship has once extended over nearly the whole known 
 world. We find that it lingered long, even amid Greek 
 and Eoman civilization ; and subsisted side by side with the 
 Monotheism of the Jews so late as the days of Hezekiah. 
 We find that it cropped up through Buddhism and 
 Brahminism as it had done through the Norse and Grecian 
 mythologies, and that it formed a large part of the religion 
 of ancient America. Finally, we find that it still exists 
 in all its horrid glory among the sanguinary savages of 
 Dahomey ; and dwells yet unconquered among our own 
 subjects of Hindostan. Here is assuredly food enough for 
 reflection. Let it be remembered that this is a religion 
 without a Book or an organized Church ; a religion which 
 never had a Prophet or an Apostle, and which ofiers, 
 consequently, absolutely no ground on which to exercise 
 
 ' See for both Tree and Serpent "Worship a very remarkable article, "The 
 Eeligion of an Indian Province." Fortnightly Review, February, 1872. 
 
A PRE-HISTORIC RELIGION. 201 
 
 historical criticism. It is (as we said at starting) a con- 
 tribution to the History of Opinion and Sentiment ; but 
 no contribution worth naming to the ordinary History 
 of facts and persons. The more we consider it the more 
 mysterious it appears. That a creature like the Serpent, 
 naturally dreadful, should come to be universally beloved, 
 that the owner of the poison-fang should be constantly 
 identified Avith the Restorer of Health ; this is of itself a 
 paradox. Again, the ever-recurring connexion between the 
 Tree and the Serpent, the beautiful and beneficent veget- 
 able and the noxious reptile, is well-nigh incomprehensible. 
 Future thinkers pondering these facts may see light through 
 them, and be enabled to gain new and valuable insight 
 thereby into human nature's strange recesses. For the 
 present, we can but perceive that a fresh demonstration 
 has been given of the Moral Unity of our race; and of 
 the progressive character of Religion from a lower to a 
 higher stage all over the world. Those old Aryans whose 
 sculptured forms we behold upon the ruined mound of 
 Sanchi with their clasped hands praying to the Tree of 
 Life, were but the fathers after the flesh and after the 
 spirit of us who have indeed gained many truths in advance 
 of them, but who still too often 
 
 Lift lame hands of faitli, and grope 
 
 And gather dust and chaff, and call 
 
 To what we feel is Lord of all, 
 And faintly trust the larger hope. 
 
ESSAY VIIL 
 
 THE EELIGIONS OF THE WOELD.^ 
 
 A FIRST glance at Bunsen's Biography and its illustrations 
 suggests the reflection that to the subject thereof, the lot of 
 humanity certainly "fell in pleasant places." A man who has 
 always looked at life out of the windows of such abodes as 
 Palazzo Cafiarelli and Yilla Piccolomini, Carlton Gardens and 
 Hurstmonceaux, the Hiibel at Berne and Charlottenberg 
 on the Neckar, must needs be hard to please if he find it not 
 apleasant prospect. Assuredly not among such exceptionally 
 dark-souled ones was Karl Christian Bunsen. Only to look 
 at his beaming countenance on the title-page with its broad 
 brow and smiling lips and large blue eyes a fleur de tete, 
 suffices to make us recognize him as a perfect type of the 
 sanguine temperament, a born disciple of that school of 
 philosophy which never fails to find 
 
 Sermons in stones and gdod in everything. 
 
 Bunsen was a gifted, energetic, successful man, healthy 
 in body, superabundantly healthy (were such a thing 
 possible) in mind and heart, and peculiarly fortunate in the 
 chief relations of life. He was happy ; and if piety, earnest- 
 
 ^ A Memoir of Baron Bunsen, by Baroness Bunsen. London : Longmans, 
 1868. 2 vols. Svo. 
 
 God in History, by C. C. J. Baron Bunsen. Translated from the German by 
 Susanna "Wiukworth. London : Longmans, 1868. 
 
204 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 ness, and warmth of human kindness merit happiness, he 
 deserved his pleasant lot. It is good to come close to 
 such a life now and then, to be frotte de bonte et de 
 honheui% and to warm ourselves for a few moments at such 
 a hearth of kindly aflPections and fervid enthusiasms. We 
 shall think none the less but rather the more of his last 
 great book, which it is the main purpose of this paper to 
 review, if we pause for a few moments over these tomes of 
 loving recollections. Not for us be the criticism which pre- 
 judges that because a man was unusually sound in heart and 
 head, unusually full of faith in God and in the Good which 
 is to be "the final goal of ill," therefore his judgments ought 
 to be suspected, and his conclusions set down to the score of 
 unreasoning optimism. If we find what we deem errors in 
 Bunsen's book, we shall not lay them at the door of his 
 happy temperament, but account for them (as we most justly 
 may) as the result of the hurried labour of a life rapidly 
 drawing to its term. Is there cause to marvel if the reaper 
 on whom the night is closing fast, eagerly panting to fulfil 
 his task, should fill his bosom, not only with much rijDe corn, 
 but also with a few idle flowers and weeds ? 
 
 Bunsen was born in 1791 at Corbach in Waldeck ; his 
 father a soldier, his grandfather an advocate. Having com- 
 pleted his studies at Gottingen, he travelled to Paris, and 
 thence migrated to Florence and Rome, where his early 
 friend Brandis was secretary to the Prussian Legation, then 
 headed by Niebiihr. Bunsen's talents were almost imme- 
 diately recognized by the great critic, and ere long, through 
 a series of well-merited promotions, he passed from the rank 
 of an attache to that of a secretary and finally himself 
 became Minister ; a position he held with honour for many 
 years. A visit of the King of Prussia, then Crown Prince, 
 to Pome originated a friendship almost romantic, which the 
 sovereign afterwards testified by the highest possible honours 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 205 
 
 offered to Bunsen on the occasion of a journey to Berlin in 
 1827. Meanwhile Bunsen had married an English lady of 
 birth and fortune (Miss Waddington), whose pen now records 
 in widowhood the unbroken happiness of their union. Their 
 residence in the beautiful Palazzo Caffarelli in Rome with its 
 splendid view over the Forum, the Coliseum, and the long 
 stretches of the Appian Way, was soon brightened by the 
 presence of a numerous family and by the frequent visits of 
 that choicest tribe of European Bedouins who find their 
 way each year to the City — Eternal, at all events, in its 
 attractiveness. 
 
 Difficulties, arising out of the question of civil marriages, 
 having occurred between Prussia and the Papal court, 
 Bunsen's mission terminated in 1838, and he visited Eno-- 
 land, to find all her doors open to him^ and soon to form for 
 the country of his wife an attachment only second to that 
 which he bore to that of his fathers. On the next chano-e 
 at the embassy, the wishes of the English court aided the 
 king's desire to pass over Bunsen's lack of the usual rank 
 for so high a mission. He represented Prussia thenceforth in 
 London for a long series of years, beloved and honoured as, 
 perhaps, no other foreigner has ever been amongst us. To the 
 social world, he was the amiable and courteous gentleman, 
 over-flowing with a kindliness all the more delightful, inas- 
 much as it surpassed by several degrees the warmth of manner 
 which would have been expected, or perhaps admired, in an 
 English statesman. To his diplomatic brethren, he was an 
 able and honourable confrere. To the orthodox Protestant 
 camp he was the champion who had withstood the Pope on 
 the question of the concordat with Prussia, and had nego- 
 tiated the establishment of the Anglo-Prussian Bishopric 
 of Jerusalem. Lastly, to the Liberal party in the Eno-lish 
 Church, the Broad Church of Arnold, Maurice, and Hare, 
 he was the beloved friend and associate who united the 
 
206 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 learning of a recluse scholar with the practical power of 
 a man of the world, and a freedom of critical judgment 
 equalled only by the enthusiasm of his Christian piety. 
 
 At last, his public career brought to an honourable close, 
 Bunsen retired to spend his last years in study at Heidelberg 
 and at Bonn, with occasional visits to the shores of the 
 Mediterranean. In the society of his wife, family, and 
 friends (among whom the gifted translatress of his chief 
 works. Miss Wink worth, was among the most welcome), 
 this good and happy man passed his elder life, neither 
 deeming that few nor evil had been the days of his pil- 
 grimage. Just ere completing his three score years and 
 ten, after a decline marked by little suffering, he died sur- 
 rounded by his children, and with his last strength reiterat- 
 ing the expression of his fervent faith in God, and Christ, 
 and immortality. 
 
 Of Bunsen's chief legacies to the world, his Description of 
 Rome, his Kippohjtm and his Times, his Egypt's Place in 
 Universal History, his Signs of the Times, his Church of the 
 Future, and his God in History, I can only here speak of 
 the last, which the affectionate labours of his friend Miss 
 Winkworth have now given to the English public in a very 
 perfect translation. To this work, then, I devote the re- 
 mainder of my space. 
 
 When Bunsen was a young man of twenty-six, he wrote 
 in his journal a prayer, of which the substance lies in these 
 words : 
 
 What in childhood I yearned after, what throughout the years of 
 youth grew clearer before my soul, I will now venture to examine. 
 The revelation of Thee in man's energies and efforts, Thy firm path 
 through the stream of ages, I long to trace as far as may be permitted 
 to me even in this body of earth. The song of praise to Thee from 
 the whole of humanity in times far and near, the jmins and lamenta- 
 tions of earth and their consolation in Thee, I wish to take in clear 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 207 
 
 and unhindered. Preserve me in strength and truth of spirit to the 
 end of my earthly existence if Thou seest good, and should I not finish 
 what I shall have begun, let me find peace in the conviction that 
 nothing shall perish which is done in Thee and with Thee ; and that 
 what I have imperfectly, however imperfectly conceived and indis- 
 tinctly expressed, I shall yet hereafter behold in completeness, while 
 here some other man shall perfect what I have endeavoured to do.^ 
 
 It would truly seem as if the lioly desire of his youth had 
 remained the aim of his life, and that before he left the 
 world he was permitted in great measure to fulfil it, and to 
 leave behind him the record of the "Song of Humanity," 
 such as his ear had caught it echoing across the wide plains 
 of history. Of the four last years of his life, three were spent 
 in the composition of this book. If in our examination of 
 it, along with much that is of great and durable value, we 
 find what seem in our eyes blemishes and shortcomings, at 
 least we may have faith that as the former part of his 
 youthful prayer has been accomplished, so has also the 
 latter ; and that " what on earth he imperfectly conceived 
 and indistinctly expressed, he now beholds in completeness," 
 looking over all from those higher ranges of thought, those 
 clearer heights of contemplation where the Immortals dwell. 
 
 Ood in History has a magnificent idea for its theme. It 
 aims to survey the whole field of human religious conscious- 
 ness for the purpose of proving the unity of the Divine plan 
 in the moral order of the world. In reading it we seem to see 
 the writer wearied with the cares of statecraft, quitting in his 
 honoured age the camp of contending parties, and climbing 
 up in solitary study to a Pisgah height, whence he could 
 look down, not indeed on the Promised Land of the Future, 
 but back over the long desert of the Past, through which 
 the cloudy Pillar of Providence has led our race by many a 
 devious road. Then, as if in haste lest his days on earth 
 should be too short for the work, with the eagerness of one 
 1 Life, vol. i. p. 120. 
 
208 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 who felt the importance of that which he had to tell, and 
 with somewhat also of the authority of one who had beheld 
 a vision and only announced what he had seen and heard, he 
 dictated this book, through long successive hours, like 
 another Milton, to his daughters. A book produced under 
 such circumstances has a peculiar and exceptional value. It 
 is 7iot the value of a Critical History of Religion : that 
 greatest of histories must wait yet many a day for a pen 
 able to trace even its outlines. But in a true and important 
 sense Bunsen's work has a merit beyond that of even a 
 perfect cyclopaedia of theologic history : it is in itself a 
 Lesson of Theology. Let me explain my meaning, as near 
 as may be, in his own phrases. 
 
 The question may be treated as an open one : is there, or 
 is there not, a moral unity in the history of humanity ? 
 Has there been a development of the higher elements of our 
 nature under any law of progress ? Bunsen maintains there 
 is such a moral unity, and that there has been such a de- 
 velopment ; and writes his book to demonstrate the thesis. 
 In doing this he assumes a position towards Christian 
 and heathen religions which in some respects is peculiar 
 to himself. On the one hand, he allots to Christ the place 
 of " the uniting bond of two worlds ; " " no product 
 of the ancient world, yet its consummation ; no mere 
 herald of the new world, but its abiding Archetype, the 
 perennial well-spring of life to humanity through the 
 Spirit." The Bible is, he thinks, the "Book of Humanity." 
 Christ is set "between the two halves" of history, and the 
 Hebrew religious consciousness as traced in the Bible is 
 made by him the keynote and standard of all that follows. 
 On the other hand, Bunsen is far indeed from denying 
 that it was the same divine inspiration which spake through 
 the poets and philosophers of Greece, and the prophets of 
 Eastern heathendom, as in the seers and apostles of Palestine. 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 209 
 
 The second, third, and fourth books of God in History are 
 devoted to a most candid and sympathizing study of the 
 religious development of the Gentile races of Asia and 
 Europe ; and had the work no other merit, it would deserve 
 our gratitude for the noble extracts which it contains from 
 the best literature of the ancient pagan world, and the 
 striking observations of the author upon them. Nor let it 
 be forgotten, that fifteen years ago, when Bunsen's task was 
 undertaken, such true liberalism was far less common than 
 now. Men still thought, then, that they went very far on 
 the road of toleration if they admitted that human reason, 
 "unassisted reason," (that singular invention of Protestant 
 piety), had taught to heathens the existence of God and the 
 ruder elements of morality. The idea that God inspired 
 heathens had as yet hardly been whispered in the churches, 
 nor the doctrine that in any sense He "led" Greeks and 
 Hindoos as well as " Israel " like sheep. The whole history 
 of opinion in this matter, in truth, is most curious, and 
 worthy of a moment's recall, if we would understand how 
 large was the heart of Bunsen, which, already brimming 
 over with Christian enthusiasm, had room also for warm 
 recognition of the Divine, wherever he found it outside 
 Christianity. 
 
 In old classic days the polytheistic nations were always 
 ready to admit that other races besides themselves were 
 Divine favourites. The Greeks looked with respect on the 
 Thracian Xamolxis, the Assyrian Bel, and the Egytian Isis 
 and Osiris. The Romans were only too enthusiastic in 
 welcoming to their Pantheon the gods of conquered nations ; 
 Mithras of Persia and Serapis of Egypt ; and when they 
 thought they had identified their own gods with the local 
 deities of other lands — Jupiter with the Druids' Hesus, or 
 Mercury with the Egyptian Thoth — no sort of jealousy 
 seems to have disturbed them. The Gods were good to all. 
 
 14 
 
210 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Higher minds among them reached to the faith in One equal 
 and omnipresent Benevolence. Lucan makes Cato ask while 
 passing by, unconsulted, the oracle of Ammon : 
 
 Canst thou conceive the vast Eternal Mind 
 To rock and cave and Libyan waste confined ? 
 Is there a place which God would call His own 
 Before a virtuous mind, His spirit's noblest throne ? 
 Why seek we further ? Lo ! above, around, 
 Where'er thou wanderest, there may God be found, 
 And prayer from every land is by His blessiug crowned.^ 
 
 But it has been the opinion of modern Christendom that 
 between the fortunate souls born on the hither side of the 
 pale, and the hapless spirits outside it, a great gulf is already 
 fixed. The Divine Light has been constantly described by 
 our divines as if it fell upon the earth, not through the open 
 blue expanse, with nothing hid from the heat thereof, but 
 through some chink or cranny of a subterranean cave, light- 
 ing up the small round spot of Europe and Palestine, and 
 leaving all the rest of the .planet in Egyptian night. God 
 has been habitually magnified from our pulpits, and infant 
 lips taught to praise Him, not because his mercies are over 
 all his works, but precisely on the contrary, because we 
 enjoy a monopoly of the best of them, and because each 
 babe among iis may boast : 
 
 I was not born, as thousands are. 
 
 Where God was never known, 
 And taught to pray a useless prayer. 
 
 To blocks of wood and stone. 
 
 But better thoughts of the Divine Father have come to 
 us at last. A century ago men misdoubted Pope's Christ- 
 ianity, because he prayed to the " Father of All, in every 
 age and every clime adored." But in our day, such an 
 invocation would merely imply that the speaker had es- 
 
 ^ Fharsalia, b. 9. 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 211 
 
 caped beyond the doors of the very narrowest conventicle 
 of obsolete orthodoxy. Thousands of Englishmen have dwelt 
 in heathen and Moslem lands ; England's empire includes 
 a hundred millions of Brahminists and Buddhists; and 
 English scholars, with their French and German allies, 
 have opened to us the marvellous tomes of Eastern litera- 
 ture, till we have been driven to feel, as never before, that 
 these "heathens" were indeed "men of like passions with 
 ourselves"; men who joyed and sorrowed, and struggled 
 and aspired, and prayed and wrestled with the dread mys- 
 teries of life and death and sin and suffering, even as we 
 have done. Then we have seemed to hear a voice from 
 those tens of millions of our brother-men ; a cry like that 
 of Esau of old, a remonstrance with God : Hast thou hut 
 one blessing, mi/ Father ? And our hearts have answered, 
 " jSTot so ! For them also the Father, from the depths of 
 forgotten time, ere yet the earliest Vedic hymn invoked 
 His light — for them also He has had a blessing." 
 
 And as the modern natural philosopher with his spectrum 
 proves to us that in sun and planet and star there exist 
 the same elementary substances we have known upon our 
 world, so does the new theologian, like Bunsen, from the 
 refracted lights of truth and love shining from the poetry 
 and the prayers of men of far-off lands and distant centuries, 
 demonstrate to us beyond all doubt or cavil, that in their 
 souls existed the self-same elements as in our own. We 
 recognize at last that wd have no more monopoly of God's 
 love than of the sunlight ; of His spirit than of the winds 
 of heaven. 
 
 The work which Bunsen undertook, I think, he has 
 in a great measure accomplished. He has shown that 
 there is a moral unity in history ; that there exists a 
 Continuity of Forces in the spiritual world ; that the same 
 
212 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Divine light lias been more or less shining, the same Divine 
 work more or less rapidly going forward, in all lands and 
 centuries. He has shown that " through the ages one 
 increasing purpose runs," and that history, fairly consulted, 
 justifies the oracle in our souls which bade us believe 
 
 One God who ever lives and loves, 
 
 One God, one Law, one Element, 
 
 And one far-off Divine event, 
 Towards which the whole creation moves. 
 
 This is the work Bunsen has done. His book is one long 
 cumulative argument to the reality of the human conscious- 
 ness of Divine things ; an argument so vast and multifarious 
 that even should many of its minor propositions provoke 
 criticism and fail to stand the test of candid examination, 
 there will yet remain overwhelming weight to enforce its 
 grand conclusion. 
 
 The book is this ; and it is also one of the most kindling 
 and living works in recent literature, illuminating with 
 gleams of poetical insight many an obscure valley in the 
 landscape of history, bridging across many a chasm, and 
 lighting up like a setting sun the flaming summits of human 
 glory and genius. It is a book to inspire the coldest nature 
 with somewhat of the "enthusiasm of humanity." 
 
 Such are (in my humble estimation) the merits of God 
 in History. Justice compels me to add what I deem its 
 chief defects. It fails where it was almost impossible it 
 should not fail. The scheme was too vast to be brought 
 within the limits of one book, or even of one author's life. 
 Probably the present age is that of all others in which 
 it is most completely impracticable for one man, however 
 gifted and laborious, to master all the materials for such 
 a work. Two hundred and fifty years ago, when Raleigh 
 wrote his Histonj of the World; or one hundred years 
 ago, when the seven folios of Universal History pretty well 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 213 
 
 exhausted the known, and (as it was thought) the know- 
 able concerning the ancient world, it was comparatively 
 practicable for an industrious student in a lifetime to gather 
 up the facts for his philosophy of history. But those old 
 materials are but as a single camel's load compared with 
 the mounds of long buried knowledge which must now 
 be ransacked-^the monumental records of Egypt ; Assyria 
 risen from the ashes which consumed Sardanapalus and 
 Belshazzar; the dim vestiges by lake and shore of the 
 childhood of the western world ascending back to the times 
 when the mammoth and the rhinoceros roamed the forests 
 of Europe ; chief above all the stupendous stores of Oriental 
 thought, the Yedas and their commentaries, the Zend Avesta, 
 the Chinese sacred books, and that measureless bulk of 
 Buddhist literature of which one section alone (the Tanjur) 
 fills 225 folios. To build all this into a complete system, first 
 exercising the rigorous criticism required to divide the trust- 
 worthy from the doubtful, and this again from the utterly 
 fallacious, would be the work, not of one scholar, but of a 
 generation of scholars. Our fire is darkened for the moment 
 by the very mass of new materials heaped upon it. It is no 
 disrespect to Bunsen to say that, while he has displayed 
 truly enormous learning in these volumes, I think the criti- 
 cal part of his work has been but imperfectly accomplished. 
 I do not suppose that he, or those who most loved him, 
 would claim for him the almost miraculous power attributed 
 to him by one of his reviewers : 
 
 " All languages, both dead and living, were as familiar to him as his 
 own ; and all history, from the mystic annals of the Shepherd Kings 
 of Egypt to the diplomatic transactions of his own day, lay spread out 
 like a map before him." ' 
 
 But without such powers his scheme was well-nigh imprac- 
 ticable. To that majority of readers who are neither so 
 1 Edinburgh Review, April, 1868, p. 469. 
 
214 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 ignorant as to be unaware of existing controversies nor 
 so learned as to be able to decide them for themselves, there 
 is much that is tantalizing in Bunsen's frequent practice 
 of making dogmatic assertions on doubtful matters without 
 giving us even a clue to his reasons for accepting one theory 
 and rejecting another. We inevitably ask ourselves, Does 
 not Lepsius, or Champollion, or Haug, or Burnouf (some 
 scholar who has devoted his entire life to this one depart- 
 ment of history), give us a different chronology or ethnology, 
 or a different exegesis of this passage, or a different value of 
 that manuscript ? As Bunsen rarely cites his authorities, 
 we are left too often with suspended judgment, till a sense 
 of distrust, perhaps greater than the occasion needs, creeps 
 on our minds. In a word, in these days of criticism we can 
 accept no history as satisfactory which does not lay bare its 
 critical basis. Before the pyramid can be built, the stone 
 causeway must be firmly laid. 
 
 In particular, I protest against Bunsen's neglect of 
 criticism, or at least of explaining his principles of criticism, 
 in his dealings with Jewish history. He approached this 
 part of his task in the most liberal spirit, and was the last of 
 all men to place himself in the attitude of those who cut the 
 knot of all difficulties by an appeal to authority. In as- 
 serting, then, one fact to be true and discarding another 
 recorded in the same book as false, he was surely bound to 
 give us his reasons for such a course. But this is what he 
 fails to do altogether. For- example, he quotes at great 
 length, and with some curious German subtleties of ex- 
 planation, the strange stor}-- (Exod. xxxiii.) of Moses being 
 permitted to see the " back parts " of Jehovah. To this he 
 prefixes the observation that the phrase of having " seen 
 God" is never used elsewhere in Scripture except with 
 reference to Elijah; and that the conception . of an actual 
 sight of the back of a god-man was "as foreign to the Bible 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 215 
 
 as repugnant to reason and good taste," the "purely spiritual 
 interpretation of the Divine name" proving it so (vol, i. 
 pp. 88-90). But on what authority, I ask, can Bunsen 
 reject the detailed account in the 34th chapter of the same 
 Book of Exodus, wherein it is described how the seventy 
 elders ''saw the God of Israel" ; and again, "saw Grod, and 
 did eat and drink " ; and yet again, how Ezekiel minutely 
 describes, as Sweienborg might have done, " the likeness of 
 the Man upon the throne" of the colour of amber, and with 
 the likeness of fire, from his loins upwards and downwards ? 
 (Ezek. i. 26, and viii.) Are we to take it for granted that 
 Exodus xxxiii. is history, and Exodus xxiv. and Ezekiel i. 
 and viii. fables ? In another place we are told, with a little 
 more display of criticism, that the story of Abram (Gen. xv.) 
 is no doubt mythical ; but that the story of Abraham is true ; 
 and that the document, Genesis xiv., " added by an editor of 
 the eighth century B.C., alone would suiEce to prove that 
 Abraham had a real historical existence, and was therefore (!) 
 the great-grandfather of Joseph " (i. p. 83). After this, 
 we are not surprised to hear that Moses is " an unquestion- 
 ably historical personage, both as regards the account of his 
 origin and the events of his life." Both the origin and 
 events of Moses' life have, I think, been "questioned" pretty 
 freely of late ! Again, as another example of dogmatism, I 
 must cite Bunsen's assertion (p. 101) that "nothing can be 
 more groundless" than the notion that the Jews derived their 
 ideas of Satan, etc., from the Chaldees ; and his unbounded 
 contempt for the supposition that the Jews would have 
 accepted such doctrines from the heathen. But Maimonides 
 himself avows they did so, and the Mischna says the same.^ 
 
 Finally, to give entire utterance to my feelings, I must 
 confess that although the style of writing in God in History 
 
 1 "Dixit Rabbi Simeon Ben Lakis, 'Nomina angelorum ascenderunt in domum 
 Israelis ex Babylone.' " — Rosch Haschanah (Tract of the Mischna). 
 
216 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 18 by no means specially bad among German histories, and 
 although Miss "Winkworth has shown herself as usual one 
 of the very few who really possess the art of translation, yet 
 I find the inevitable difficulties of dealing with such thoughts 
 as constitute the substance of the book not a little enhanced 
 by the mode of their expression. At the best, it must be 
 owned, every German Tree of Knowledge bristles with a 
 frightful array of thorns ! 
 
 I shall now proceed to attempt a very brief sketch of the 
 contents of these remarkable volumes. The two now trans- 
 lated^ bring the subject up to the birth of Christ, and are 
 divided into four books. The first book expounds the 
 purpose of the whole and discusses the theories of the moral 
 order of the world. The second book treats of the religious 
 Consciousness of the Hebrews, The third is devoted to that 
 of the Aryan race in Eastern Asia (the Zoroastrian, Vedic, 
 Brahmin and Buddhist faiths), but includes preliminary 
 chapters on the religion of the non-Arj'^an races, the 
 Egyptians, Turanians and Chinese, The fourth book dis- 
 cusses the Aryans of Europe, the Greeks, Romans, and 
 Teutons. 
 
 After a very remarkable and freely handled, but, in my 
 judgment, unsatisfactory sketch of the history of the re- 
 ligious consciousness of the Hebrews, Bunsen proceeds to 
 treat of that creed which the Jews consider as the second 
 great heretical ofishoot of their faith, — Islam. When the old 
 heathenisms of Arabia and Phoenicia had sunk under the 
 influence of tyranny and of the sensuality which always 
 follows tyranny, to the lowest corruption, and when Byzan- 
 tine Christendom, with its formalism and miserable hair- 
 
 ^ A third has been published since this Eeview was written. It is concerned 
 with the " Eeligious Consciousness of the Christian Aryans," and a Summary of 
 liesults. 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 21' 
 
 splitting theologic disputes, had failed utterly to convert the 
 races of the south, then, says Bunsen, Mahomet stepped 
 forth, " his whole soul glowing with the consciousness of 
 God's revelation of himself in the heart, and uttering the 
 prophetic words while he shattered the idols of Mecca : 
 The light of Truth is come ; 
 Vain Ues are quenched. 
 That sense of the Unity of God and of the bond existing 
 between him and the individual human mind which Mahomet 
 found in his own soul and recognized in Judaism and 
 Christianity, is the basis of that universal empire of Islam 
 which appeared to him to be the realization of God's king- 
 dom upon earth." But "he who takes the sword shall 
 perish by the sword." Islam stiffened and hardened into 
 formalism ; the wrathful spirit of vengeance and the degra- 
 dation of marriage destroyed its vigour. The " wings of 
 man's upward flight were paralyzed." 
 
 There is doubtless justice in this brief sketch of the story 
 of Mahomet's religion, yet like nearly all others that I have 
 seen (save a few of monstrous over-estimate), the justice seems 
 but scantily meted out. No one disputes the immeasurable 
 superiority of Christianity, such as we have it, to Islam. But 
 inasmuch as Christianity itself has failed to make the Greek, 
 the Levantine, the Neapolitan, other than the spiritually 
 barren people we find them, it may not unfairly be argued 
 that had Islam fallen on the richer ground of the North, it 
 would have borne better fruit than it has done, planted in 
 Egyptian sands. We can easily see the defect of Mahomet's 
 creed, and the indescribable spiritual poverty of the Koran 
 as compared with other Eastern sacred books, not to speak of 
 the Gospels. But had we lived in the ninth or tenth century 
 it may be doubted whether English Protestant sympathies, 
 such as they commonly exist amongst us, would not have 
 turned far more to the reverent and tender piety and manly 
 
218 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 morality of the Saracens and Sicilian Arabs, than to the 
 ascetic formalism, the idolatrous usages, and well-nigh poly- 
 theistic belief, of the monks and saints of Christendom. 
 
 A striking remark, however, is made by Bunsen, ere he 
 dismisses the subject of Mahometanism, to the purport that 
 on coming in contact with the Iranian race in Persia the 
 combination gave birth to Sufiism ; a philosophy deeply 
 tinged with a pantheism altogether foreign to the sharply- 
 cut monotheism of the Semites. 
 
 The third book of God in History is devoted to a sketch 
 of the religious consciousness of the Aryans of Eastern 
 Asia prior to Christianity. Educated readers are aware that 
 these Aryans of Eastern Asia are divided into the three great 
 religions of Brahminism, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism. 
 Brahminism is usually understood by modern scholars to be 
 the later development and corruption of the ancient Yedic 
 faith. Baron Bunsen, however, insists that the distinction 
 is rather a geographical than a chronological one, and that 
 the region of the Indus still retains the nature- worship of 
 Yedism, while Southern India and the banks of the Ganges 
 have long fallen into Brahminism, " the offspring partly 
 of the egotism of the priestly and regal castes, and partly 
 of the enervating influences of the sensuality encouraged 
 by the climate." Before engaging, however, in the 
 analysis of the great creeds of the Aryans, Bunsen un- 
 dertakes a sketch of what he calls, in German phrase, 
 " The vestibule of the Aryan religious consciousness ; " 
 in plain English the religions which bordered on the Aryan 
 countries, namely, those of Egypt, China, and the tribes 
 of Tartary. Here, again, we are met by that dogmatism 
 whose use by Bunsen I have already lamented. I cannot 
 think that any scholar has a right in the present stage of 
 critical and philological research to make the dogmatic asser- 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 219 
 
 tion, that " Zoroaster entered on his career about b.c, 3000 " 
 (p. 206) ; that " with the character of Abraham we step at 
 once into the full day-light of the more recent history of the 
 human mind" (p. 221), and that "in Egypt alone has a 
 branch of the West Asiatic stock, viz., the historical Semites, 
 taken root in very early times and put forth an immortal 
 
 growth of mixed Asiatic and African origin The 
 
 Egyptians are the Hamites of the Bible, and they alone." 
 (p. 223.) The tone of true scholarship regarding points so 
 disputed and so disputable, is surely very diiferent from this. 
 Fortunately, the observations which follow on Egyptian re- 
 ligion do not much depend for value on either chronology 
 or ethnology, but are drawn chiefly from the monuments 
 whose relative age is tolerably certain. 
 
 " The centre," says Bunsen, " of the consciousness which 
 the Egyptians possessed of Grod's agency in our history, is 
 the Osiris-worship, the oldest and most sacred portion of 
 their religion. Osiris is the Lord, the judge of men after 
 death." Bunsen does not add what strikes me as the most 
 interesting point, that Osiris was the essential personification 
 of Divine goodness. The familiar porcelain images of him 
 found in every tomb, and the amulets representing his all- 
 seeing beneficent eye, are, to my thinking, very touching 
 relics of human love and trust. 
 
 Next in importance to the belief in Osiris stands the 
 Egyptian doctrine of metempsychosis, of which Bunsen 
 beautifully says : 
 
 It involves the recognition that there is a solution of the enigma 
 of existence, which is not to be found in the term of a single life on 
 earth, and yet which we are impelled to seek after in order to explain 
 this life. All guilt must be expiated ; but the final issue, though 
 reached only after the lapse of unnumbered ages, will be the triumph 
 of the Good, the general reconciliation, and a life in God will be the 
 eternal heritage of the soul. 
 
 Grotesque as may seem to us the form such a faith has 
 
220 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 taken in the notion of tlie transmigration of souls into animal 
 forms, it may be questioned whether, on the whole, Christen- 
 dom has gained much by substituting the terrors of an 
 eternity of torture in a fiery cave, for a term of expiation in 
 the body of a beast. Who can even say that we are right in 
 reading the hieroglyph of the soul of a sensualist turned 
 into the shape of a swine (to be seen on the splendid Soane 
 sarcophagus, and on many other monuments), as anything 
 heside a hieroglyph or mere emblem of a retribution which 
 may have been understood in a purely spiritual sense ? 
 If we wished to express the truth that by indulging in 
 bestial vice man becomes bestial, how better could we ex- 
 press it in a picture than by drawing a man turned into a 
 disgusting brute ? 
 
 The religious history of Egypt is full both of encourage- 
 ment and of warning. The earnestness, nay, rather the vehe- 
 mence of the national faith in Immortality, several thousand 
 years before Christianity is supposed to have afforded the 
 first certainty thereof, is one of the most important facts 
 of history. The presence of such faith in three civilizations 
 divided so widely as those of the Egyptians, the Brahmins, 
 and the Druids, is the strongest testimony conceivable to the 
 universality of the intuition written on the heart of man by 
 that Hand which writes no falsehoods. Further, the ethical 
 form so clearly assumed by this belief among the Egyj)tians, 
 is also a testimony to the depth of the human consciousness 
 of moral good and ill-desert. But again, on the other hand, 
 while the religion of Egypt teaches us lessons so encouraging 
 (on which I observe with some surprise that our author has 
 not insisted), it also bears fearful testimony to the possibility 
 of petrifying a creed, till it becomes a stone closing the door 
 of a nation's sepulchre. "With such noble beliefs as those in 
 Osiris and in immortal life, with the enormous power which 
 must have been needed to build the temples and pyramids 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 221 
 
 of Egypt, the established religion of the land yet sanctioned 
 
 such miserable idolatries as the worship of animals ; and 
 
 while its "Prayer Book of the Dead" held up a noble code 
 
 of morals for long succeeding generations, it can hardly be 
 
 doubted that it supported and consolidated a tyranny, lay 
 
 and ecclesiastic, of unsurpassed severity. The pyramids are 
 
 said to have been erected by the despotic kings, for the 
 
 purpose of safely preserving their own corpses from the just 
 
 indignation of their subjects, by whom the sentence of the 
 
 official Judges of the Dead might be reversed, and the 
 
 mummies so far destroyed as (according to the Egyptian 
 
 creed) to prevent their sharing the resurrection. If this be 
 
 so, the greatest monuments of oppression which burden the 
 
 earth, have owed their existence to the double influence of a 
 
 religious dogma, and to the fear of the tyrant for the very 
 
 victims of his tyranny." ^ 
 
 It has been held by some Egyptologers, of whose theory 
 
 Bunsen makes no mention, that the numerous deities of the 
 
 Egyptian pantheon were only deified attributes of the One 
 
 God ; and that while the ignorant populace were left to 
 
 believe that they were separate beings, the priesthood and 
 
 educated classes perfectly well understood that Amun, the 
 
 King, and Neph, the Divine Spirit, and Phthah, the Creative 
 
 Power, and KJiem, the Reproductive Power, and TJioth, the 
 
 Divine Intellect, and Osiris, the Goodness of God, were all 
 
 one and the same Being ; the powers of nature, the Sun, 
 
 Day and Night, -Matter, the maternal principle, and also 
 
 Moral Ideas, like Truth and Justice, having also male and 
 
 female personifications. The tutelary triads of the various 
 
 Nomes of Egypt seem to lend some countenance to this theory, 
 
 in so far that we can explain them easily as selected attri- 
 
 • The care taken to make the approach to the sepulchral chambers as difficult 
 and obscure as possible of course couutenances this theory. Tet a secret known 
 to the thousands who built the pyramids must have been a very open secret 
 indeed. 
 
222 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 butes^ united at will as objects of special worship, and under- 
 stood to form in each case a Unity; whereas, on the hypothesis 
 of their being separate independent personalities such arbi- 
 trary conjunctions are inexplicable.^ If, in the opinion of com- 
 petent judges, the theory above mentioned should hereafter be 
 accepted, should we not obtain a singular glimpse into the 
 mj^stery of the connexion between Mosaism and the Egyptian 
 creed ? May it not be believed that Moses, " learned in 
 all the wisdom of the EgyiDtians," and fired at once with 
 loyalty to the God whose unity he had been taught, and 
 with indignation for the oppression of the masses of his 
 countrymen, resolved to break both the chains of priestly 
 and political tyranny, and by boldly preaching to the popu- 
 lace the secret of the hierarchy, to found a commonwealth 
 on the sublime lesson, " Hear, Israel, the Lord your 
 God is one Lord"? Might not this have been the "Thus 
 saith the Lord," which he heard in his heart in his desert 
 musings, and by whose brave announcement he became one 
 of the arch-prophets of the world? 
 
 Passing from Egypt, Bunsen bestows a short chapter on 
 the religious consciousness of the Turanian race ; that is, of 
 those vast tribes which occupy Central and Northern Asia, 
 and include, according to modern ethnology, the Tartars, 
 Finns, Turks, and Magyars. The prevailing characteristic 
 of this race, according to Bunsen, is the propensity to 
 magic or Shamanism. The meaning of this phrase needs 
 explanation. 
 
 Religion in its noblest form belongs to the noblest parts 
 of our nature. It is ethical, as the outcome and crown of 
 our moral nature. It is intellectual, as the highest result 
 
 ^ Sir G. Wilkiiisou {Egypt, 2nd series) describes and copies a stone on which 
 is inscribed, " One Bait, one Athor, and one Akori. Hail, Father of the World. 
 Hail, triforraous God." On the obverse are two seated Egyptian figures with 
 something like a dove above them. 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 223 
 
 of our reason. It is afFectional, as the last great aim and 
 perfecting of love. But beside these noble inlets of religion 
 to the soul, there are — as the Revivalists have taught us 
 even in our own land too well — hideous possibilities of at- 
 taching religious ideas and sentiments in most unhallowed 
 connexion with lower and more material parts of our com- 
 plex frame, with the mere nervous system and such brain 
 excitement as may be created by sounds, intoxicating 
 fumes or drinks, or, yet more effectually, by that concen- 
 tration of the mind on one idea which produces hypnotism 
 and hysteria. He who has seen the dancing dervishes 
 performing their frantic rites, rotating (as the writer has 
 beheld one of them) for twenty consecutive minutes without 
 pause, till he falls pale and giddy to the ground, while his 
 companions bow and shout in chorus, with wild eyes and 
 dishevelled hair, like hungry wild beasts in a cage ; — he only 
 who has seen this deplorable sight, or that of the Jumpers of 
 Wales, or Peculiar People of England, leaping and screaming 
 " Glory ! " can realize the degradation to which worship can 
 fall when the excitement, which ought to descend from above, 
 is obtained from stimulants from below. The Turanian race, 
 according to Bunsen, have for their peculiar character a pro- 
 pensity to the use of all such spiritual trickeries. Perhaps 
 the case might be more hopefully described by saying that 
 in the simple pastoral and secluded life common to most of 
 these tribes, the vividness of religious faith has the tendency, 
 common among mountaineers, to reverie and to visionary 
 absorption. In the ignorance of a Tai'tar tent, a resort to 
 magic arts to produce ecstatic raptures would seem easily 
 explicable. The main point of interest is the strength of 
 belief in an invisible world, and the yearning for more 
 intimate connexion with it, thus manifested in races whose 
 lives might have seemed a mere process of browsing and 
 ruminating, like those of their own flocks and herds. 
 
224 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Chinese religion has long been the despair of theologians. 
 A child begins by loving and obeying its human parents, 
 and proceeds in healthy growth of heart and soul to the 
 love of the Father of All. But the Chinese, like stunted 
 children, or human beings destined to eternal infancy, glued 
 in the bud in piteous failure of natural blossoming, have 
 stopped at the point of filial love and piety. Their morality 
 is summed up in obedience to their parents while living '} 
 their religion, in the worship of them when dead. 
 
 Yet- the Chinese have not been without a few great souls 
 who have seen a glimmering, through the gloom, of rays 
 of pure light. Last and greatest, but least familiarly known 
 to us in Europe, was Tshu-hi, whose works, written in the 
 thirteenth century of our era, have recently been translated. 
 From among them, Bunsen has quoted these marvellous pass- 
 ages : 
 
 There is an Essence indeterminate, which existed before heaven 
 and earth. Oh, how silent is it ! It alone subsists without changes ; it 
 is everywhere. Thou mayst call it the Mother of the Universe. I 
 know not how to name it. I call it Taoi (the Way). I call it the 
 Great, the Vanishing, the Distant, and yet again the Approaching. 
 Man copies the Earth, Earth Heaven, Heaven Tao, and Tao its own 
 nature. . . . Tao loves and nourishes all beings, and does not con- 
 sider himself as their Lord ; he is always without desire, wherefore he 
 may be called Little. All beings owe subjection to him, and he does 
 not consider himself as their Lord, wherefore he may be called Great. 
 
 Is not this last mysterious doctrine of the self- abnegation 
 of God akin to the noble thought that God's whole life of 
 ineffable beatitude is a Giving-forth, a bestowal of good, 
 without one personal desire ; an absolute Love in which 
 selfishness has no place ; and that all the god-like in man 
 is thus to live outside of himself in love, and all the devil- 
 
 1 Mencius (Jfeng-Zo), author of the 4th caiioiiical book of the Chinese, yery 
 neatly resolves all duty into tilial piety, by laying it down that children show 
 want of duty to their parents by the hve capital sins of Sloth, Gambling, Selfish- 
 ness, Sensuality, and Quarrelling. 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 225 
 
 like to live in himself in selfishness? Eternal life is the 
 life of love. Eternal death (were it possible for God's child) 
 would be the final extinction of love in absolute selfishness. 
 And again Tshu-hi says : 
 
 No one has lent to Tao his dignity, nor to Virtue its nobleness ; 
 these qualities they possess eternally in themselves. The Way pro- 
 duces beings, sustains and preserves them. He brings them forth and 
 does not make them his own ; he governs them and suflfers them to 
 be free. That is the depth of Virtue. 
 
 Bunsen's hopes expressed at the close of this chapter that 
 the rebellion of the Tae-pings was a real great Christian 
 reformation, have, alas, proved delusive, and only show the 
 warmth of enthusiasm with which he greeted all that bore 
 semblance of progress in the world. 
 
 After this brief survey of Egypt, Turan, and China, 
 Bunsen proceeds to consider the main stream of human 
 thought ; the religious consciousness of the great Aryan 
 race, of which Indians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Teutons, 
 and Celts are the branches. First among these, he con- 
 siders the Zoroastrian Bactrians, and gives to Zoroaster, 
 with absolute decision, an antiquity "certainly not later 
 than towards B.C. 2500 " — a date which no other scholar 
 would, I believe, be inclined to state equally dogmatically. 
 The great work of Zoroaster in giving to the Yedic nature- 
 worship a distinctly ethical character, Bunsen thoroughly 
 believes, and considers the famous Inaugural Speech of 
 Zoroaster {Gatlia Ahunavaiti, Yasna 30, already quoted, ante, 
 p. 153) as the record of it : 
 
 The remaining Gathas, whether they proceed from Zoroaster himself, 
 or only bear the mint mark of his mind, all exhibit similar character- 
 istics. We do not discover Zoroaster to be a man exercising magical 
 powers or exalting himself above humanity. On the contrary he is a 
 seer who announces the Divine will as unmistakably authenticated by 
 the voice within him. 
 
 15 
 
226 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Zoroastrianism, according- to Bunsen, spread from Bactria 
 to Media, and from Media to Persia, where its peculiar 
 insistance on the virtue of Truth (Ahriman being always 
 identified as the Lying Spirit) gave to the whole Persian 
 people the character for veracity, so much marvelled at by 
 the mendacious Greeks. The withering tyranny of the 
 successors of Cyrus and the admixture of the Chaldee philo- 
 sophy in Bab3don were the causes, as Bunsen supposes, 
 of such corruption as Zoroastrianism underwent. " Under 
 such a despotism," he says, " how is it possible for a nation 
 really to believe that the good, the wise, the true, does 
 ultimately triumph upon earth ? " This is a frequently 
 recurring idea throughout the pages of God in History, 
 that political freedom, or at the least, a government 
 free from gross injustice, is indispensable to the mainte- 
 nance of wide-spread faith in the eternal justice above, 
 Nevertheless, the creed of Zoroaster is to this hour a 
 nobly moral faith, and one by no means intellectually 
 despicable. 
 
 From the Iranian branch of the great Aryan family, by 
 whom the religion of Zoroaster was adopted, our author 
 turns to the emigrants who before Zoroaster's 'age had 
 wandered to the banks of the Indus, and there formed the 
 most ancient detachment (so to speak) of the race, the 
 Indian Aryans. Here was the land of the Yedas, the oldest 
 of human books, in whose Sanskrit words we still trace the 
 brotherhood which unites us Anglo-Saxons with that re- 
 motest household of our common Aryan race. AYell may 
 Bunsen say : 
 
 The sacred books of the Indian Aryans touch us much more nearly 
 in many respects than the records of the primeval epoch of the 
 Hebrews, for in the former we see and feel the brotherhood of race ; 
 but on the other hand they are incomparably more a sealed book to 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 227 
 
 \is than the sacred scriptures of the Jews. "We stand in i^resence of 
 a veiled hfe ; in a similar position to that which we should occupy 
 with regard to the unfolding of the Hebrew mind from the age of 
 Abraham to that of Jeremiah, if we possessed nothing but the Book 
 of Psalms.' 
 
 Having discussed the topic of Vedic literature elsewhere, 
 I shall here pass over the further observations of Bunsen 
 regarding it. 
 
 After a portion of the Aryan race had migrated from 
 the Indus to the Ganges, the Yedic religion, according to 
 Bunsen, transformed itself into Brahminism, "rather the 
 contrary than the continuation of the Vedic religious con- 
 sciousness." Here the old nature-gods Yaruna {Ouranos, 
 the sky), Agni [Ignis, fire), and the rest, sunk into insig- 
 nificance before metaphysical conceptions of a different order. 
 The Trimurti of Brahma, Yishnu, and Seeva (Creator, Re- 
 storer, and Destroyer) — about whom, as Bunsen says, " so 
 many fantastical, not to say nonsensical, systems have been 
 built vip " — now first appeared, and received in time the 
 highest rank among the deities. The poets and singers 
 who had celebrated the Yedic sacrifices became an heredi- 
 tary caste of priests ; the whole cruel and monstrous system 
 of Brahminism followed ; and, meanwhile, the keen Aryan 
 intellect occupied itself in the construction of such mental 
 air-castles as the Sankhya and Yedanta philosophies. Thus, 
 while the Iranian branch of the race, guided by the strong 
 spirit of Zoroaster, seized, once for all, on the ethical side 
 of religion, and developed a faith which, after three millen- 
 niums, is still the rational and moral creed of the Parsees, 
 the Indian branch, following the intellectual rather than the 
 ethical track, lost itself in a double ruin. On one side was 
 a sacerdotal tyranny and a miserable idolatry. On the other 
 were two systems of philosophy, the one trembling between 
 
 1 Page 298. 
 
228 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 pantheism and atheism, the other a nihilism, which left its 
 disciples for consolation such thoughts as these : 
 
 A drop that trembles on the lotus-leaf, 
 
 Such is this life, so soon dispelled, so brief; 
 
 The eight great mountains, and the seven seas. 
 
 The sun, the gods who sit and rule o'er these, 
 
 Thou, I, the universe, must pass away : 
 
 Time conquers all ; why care for what must pass away ? 
 
 Of course, it is not to be imagined that Brahminism, 
 during its long growth of three millenniums, has produced 
 no better fruit than these apples of Sodom. The great 
 Brahmin poems of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, 
 above all the code of Menu, which has been the Leviticus 
 and the Deuteronomy of the Hindoo nation for so many 
 ages, all testify to a religious and still more clearly to a 
 moral consciousness, never lost in the sands of polytheism, 
 nor absorbed in the formalism and asceticism of the priestly 
 s^'stem. 
 
 I cannot quit this portion of my subject without express- 
 ing my regret that Bunsen should have died before the 
 great reformation of the Brahmo Somaj assumed noticeable 
 proportions in India. With how much pleasure would he, 
 who was hopeful even of the results of the fanatical Tae-ping 
 insurrection, have heralded the rise of a truly pure Theism, 
 whose watchwords are the absolute unity and spirituality 
 of God, the abolition of caste, and the elevation and instruc- 
 tion of woman ! The religious consciousness of the Indian 
 Aryans has indeed vindicated itself at last ; and when 
 Ramraohun Roy published his book of extracts from the 
 Yedas as the text-book of his infant church, he reunited 
 the threads of three thousand years of spiritual history. 
 The Yedic hymn has passed naturally into the Brahmo's 
 praj'er, as the worship of the fathers into that of the 
 children. 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 229 
 
 What is Buddhism ? The researches of a dozen great 
 scholars have yet left us very little able to decide the 
 question. Bunsen says frankly : 
 
 Our own conception of Buddha is diametrically opposed to that of 
 Burnouf and all his successors (with the exception of Mohl, Obry, and 
 Dancker) in so far that according to them the founder of the most 
 widely diffused creed on the face of the earth, a creed which has intro- 
 duced or revived civilization amongst all these millions, was a teacher 
 of atheism and materialism. For so we must denominate a system 
 which should teach that there is absolutely nothing but non-existence, 
 therefore in no sense a God ; that annihilation is the highest happiness 
 the soul can strive after, and that it is the highest glory of the great 
 saint to have taught the way thereunto. If this were so, then Buddha 
 would at least lie beyond the scope of our present survey. For there is 
 no more utter denial of a Divine order of the world than the asssumption 
 that existence is nothing but a curse, (vol. i. p. 345). ^ 
 
 The fourth book of Ood in History is devoted to a study 
 of the religious consciousness of the Aryan race in Europe, 
 namely, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Teutons. The 
 elaborate sketches of Greek religious life, including the 
 earlier nature-worship, and that more ethical type which 
 ever succeeds it ; the Greek epos and drama ; Greek archi- 
 tecture 2 and sculpture ; fill some of the best chapters in the 
 work, and are among the finest in recent criticism. Drawing 
 to his conclusion, after setting forth how much of the truly 
 moral, the truly religious, abode ever in the Greek conscious- 
 ness, he says : 
 
 The Pantheon of the Greeks consisted exclusively of divinities of the 
 mind, of Ideals of Humanity, and had its unity in Zeus, a conception 
 which, through Homer and the other Hellenic poets, exerted a guiding 
 influence, of which even the masses were sensible. For Zeus was not 
 a national god, but was designated even so early as the age of Homer, 
 
 ' The correctness of this view of Buddhism is discussed in the next Essay. 
 
 2 Is it a slip of the pen by which, p. 262, vol. ix., he speaks of Phidias as 
 architect as well as sculptor of the Parthenon ? Is there any doubt of the work 
 of Ictinus ? 
 
230 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 tlie "Father of gods and men." It now no longer occurs to any one to 
 deny the mischief of that spHtting-up of the consciousness of God, 
 which was caused by a plurahty of gods, but we must not forget that 
 this polytheism had grown up out of the commingling of the tribes. 
 As little will any one who has a voice in the European commonwealth 
 of mind be disposed to deny the weakening of the ethical religious 
 consciousness that resulted from the overweening concentration of the 
 mind upon knowledge, or from the idolatry of beauty, involving as it 
 did, a severance of the beautiful and the true from the good. But those 
 alone have a right to cast their stone at the Greeks who know how to 
 appreciate the divinity residing in beauty, and who do not refuse to 
 see the godlike in knowledge. ... It is very customary to place the 
 distinguishing characteristic of Hellenism in an absence of aU earnest 
 worship of God and of religious life in general. We are prepared to 
 maintain, on the contrary, that the whole life of classical antiquity, 
 especially that of the Hellenes, shows itself far more inter-penetrated 
 with prayer and religious feeling than does that of the modern Christian 
 world. ^ 
 
 My readers will probably be a little startled at the last 
 challenge, bui the whole chapter deserves careful consider- 
 ation ere we fall back on our accustomed commonplaces about 
 Grreek irreligion. Among other remarks, and as an instance 
 of the curious side lights with which the book abounds, 
 I may quote the observation in the preceding volume, that 
 while with the Hebrews the " soul " was synonymous with 
 " self," with the Greeks the body was the " self," and the 
 soul a separate entity. The Hebrew patriarch could talk 
 even of savoury meat as a thing his "soul" loved. The 
 Greek poet (Iliad i.) spoke of the wrath of Achilles — 
 
 Which many thousand souls of the sons of the heroes 
 Sent down to hell ; but stretched themselves on the earth 
 A prey to the ravening dogs. 
 
 Bunsen might have added, that such an identification 
 of "soul" and "self" has never yet taken place amongst 
 ourselves. After so many centuries of Christianity we yet 
 
 1 Vol. ii. p. 347. 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 231 
 
 habitually say, when a ship has foundered with her crew, 
 that " every soul on board perished " ; albeit, according to 
 our professed belief, and even the belief of our Yiking fore- 
 fathers, the souls of the drowned were the only things 
 which did not " perish " in the wreck. 
 
 The Romans, in the opinion of Bunsen, as of other 
 scholars, had for the leading ideas of their national life the 
 notion of Law, and of their own rightful sway over all 
 nations. Sacrifices and prayer were to them the business of 
 the small order of priests ; forms highly to be respected and 
 in no wise to be trangressed by a worthy citizen, but yet 
 having nothing to do with a man's heart or inner life. 
 Virgil summed up the Roman ideal when he wrote : 
 
 Othera, belike with happier grace, 
 
 From bronze or stone shall call the face, 
 
 Plead doubtful causes, map the skies. 
 
 And tell when planets set or rise ; 
 
 But Roman ! thou, do thou control 
 
 The nations far and wide ; 
 
 Be this thy genius — to impose 
 
 The rule of peace on vanquished foes, 
 
 Show pity to the humblest soul. 
 
 And crush the sons of pride. — JEneid, vi. 
 
 The unity of civilized nations in one empire, the supremacy 
 of Justice and of that Jurisprudence which Bunsen calls the 
 Prose of Justice ; such was the great Roman Thought 
 bequeathed to the world. 
 
 Finally we reach the Teuton and Gothic race, the furthest 
 offshoot of the Aryan family, the very antitypes and yet the 
 brothers in blood and language of the Aryans who, on the 
 banks of the Granges, transformed into Brahminism the old 
 Vedic faith whose relics are imbedded in the wild mythology 
 of Scandinavia. Fidelity, conjugal love, loyalty, courage, 
 
232 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 reverence for the nobler attributes of women, belief in 
 eternal justice, in expiation and restoration ; these were the 
 characteristics which, following Tacitus, and wringing out 
 the spirit of Eddas and Sagas, may be attributed to the 
 great northern race even from heathen times. Have we here 
 the secret why the religious consciousness of the Teuton — 
 less intellectually subtle than the Brahmin, less beautiful in 
 its forms than the Greek — is yet the one which has carried 
 farthest in advance the torch of Divine light in the progress 
 of mankind ? Is not, after all, loyalty, the free Allegiance 
 of the soul to its rightful Lord, the very highest type of 
 religion ? Awe, reverence, intellectual contemplation, sym- 
 pathy with the beautiful, submission to irresistible decrees, 
 stern adherence to external law — all these sides of religious 
 consciousness, the inheritance of Egyptian, Persian, Hindoo, 
 Greek, Moslem, and Roman, are good and true in their 
 degree. But the highest Consciousness of all is not these, 
 but the inward moral Allegiance of Love. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius began his Meditations by thankfully 
 attributing his acquirements and advantages each to his 
 parents or his tutors ; his placid temper to his grandsire 
 Yerus, his piety to his mother Lucilla, his love of justice to 
 Severus. And thus, perhaps, may mankind hereafter trace 
 back each gift to one of its ancestry of nations, or to one of 
 its great teachers. To the cradle of the future Lord of the 
 world, the Kings both of the East and of the West will 
 bring their gold, their frankincense, and myrrh. From the 
 Sew he will inherit his Faith, from the Roman his Law, 
 from the Greek his Art. Nay, many another heirloom will 
 descend to him, its origin perchance forgotten in the night 
 of time ; many a thought and many a sentiment from far-oflF 
 ancestors in the old Aryan Home, and Semite brothers under 
 Chaldsean skies, and Norsemen from their icy seas storming 
 forth to conquer the world. In the great family of nations 
 
THE RELIOIONB OF THE WORLD. 233 
 
 perchance, when we come to know it better, we shall find 
 there has been no insignificant or ungifted one ; nay, that 
 as in the fairy lore of our Teuton fathers, it is often the 
 humblest, the dwarf, the disinherited, who has been chief of 
 all and the saviour of his brethren. When Cherillus, de- 
 scribing the muster-roll of the vast army of Xerxes, named 
 as last and meanest, " a people who dwelt in the Solymean 
 mountains, with sooty heads and faces like horse- heads smoke- 
 dried,"^ how little he could foresee that from that despicable 
 race and those barren Solymean hills should come a Conqueror 
 to whose Army of Martyrs the mighty host of Xerxes should 
 be an insignificant troop ! " What perishes," says Bunsen, 
 " in the great struggle which throbs through all history is 
 the limitation of the individual and the limitation of the 
 nation." The positive survives, the negation ceases. The 
 tide of religious consciousness perpetually rises, not indeed 
 by one continuous stream of equal advance, but in successive 
 waves, each of which having contributed to the flow, subsides 
 again and is lost. We need not despair, although again and 
 again we read of one faith after another — "As time went 
 on, it lost its early strength and became blended with 
 errors." The procession of the ages by which our race 
 approaches the altar of Divine wisdom is like no Phidian 
 dream of stately forms of light-bearers and flower-bearers 
 marching calmly in the long line of Time. Rather is it like 
 the passage of some royal summons in feudal days of old, 
 when each messenger bore it on as fast and far as life and 
 strength allowed, then gave it to another's hands, and him- 
 self laid down to die. Are not the days of a nation 
 numbered, is not its true life over, when it learns no new 
 truth and turns the truth it has once learned to error ? 
 
 1 Josephus, Contra Ajnoii. i. 22. 
 
ESSAY IX. 
 
 THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST.^ 
 
 In the preface to this book the author makes the following 
 observation : 
 
 There is to my mind no subject more absorbing than the tracing tlae 
 origin and first growth of human thought ; not theoretically or in 
 accordance with the Hegelian laws of thought, or the Comtian epochs, 
 but historically and like an Indian trapper, spying for every footprint, 
 every layer, every broken blade that might tell and testify of the former 
 presence of man in his early wanderings and searchings after light and 
 truth. 
 
 Few readers, I apprehend, possessed of the genuine his- 
 toric spirit, will hesitate to agree cordially with this senti- 
 ment, and to rank the religious development of nations in 
 which such " searchings after light and truth " result, as 
 the most noteworthy element of their civilization. Nor is 
 the interest of the subject exhausted when we have made it 
 a foremost branch of historical inquiry. The science of 
 Comparative Theology, to be built up at last of the materials 
 furnished by such researches will, we are assured, prove as 
 valuable in elucidating the dark problems of the human 
 mind as the science of Comparative Physiology has been in 
 throwing light on those of the body. And as out of the 
 study of the lower animals the physiologist ascends step by 
 step from simpler to more complex forms of life, and traces 
 
 1 Chips from a German Workshop. By Max Miiller. Two vols., 8vo. 1868. 
 
236 THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 
 
 his way from organs rudimentary in beast and insect up to , 
 the human hand and brain ; so the theologian may hereafter 
 trace through the humbler forms of fetichism and poly- 
 theism, and the imperfections of Yedic and Judaic religions, 
 the prophecy and embryo of that more perfect faith, in 
 whose symmetric development all the incomplete and rudi- 
 mentary types of the past will become explicable. Professor 
 Miiller's delightful volumes treat of many subjects beside 
 those immediately connected with theology, his own special 
 science of Language having of course a prominent place. 
 The interest of the work centres, however, so much in the 
 dissertations on the various sacred books and on mythology 
 in general, that I shall be doing it little injustice in confining 
 my review to the subjects so suggested. The philology of 
 the learned Professor is entirely beyond my criticism, and 
 the minor topics dealt with in his second volume would 
 occupy too much space if even very briefly noticed. 
 
 The value of comparative theology becomes constantly 
 more apparent as we descend from a mere superficial view 
 of the various religions of the world, to a deeper analysis 
 of the nature of human faith and worship. Religious ideas 
 (it is often forgotten) are not simple, but complex. Each 
 has two factors ; first, the feelings of dependence, allegiance, 
 love, to some dimly discerned Power above, which we sum 
 up under the name of the " Religious Sentiment " ; second, 
 the intellectual work which happens to have been done at 
 any given time or place, in transmuting these Sentiments 
 into Thoughts ; or, in other words, in constructing a theology. 
 No religious Ideas could exist were there no religious Senti- 
 ments behind them, and no religious ideas do practically 
 exist till a certain process of crystallization has been applied 
 to such sentiments. 
 
 The first factor is constant so far as that what ever has been 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 237 
 
 the sentiment of one age is not lost, but developed and en- 
 nobled in subsequent generations. As the Moral Sense first 
 dimly dawns in the mind of the savage, and then grows into 
 a definite, though imperfect, sense of Justice ; and later on 
 slowly extends, step by step, to the sense of Truth, Purity, 
 and Love ; so the Religious Sentiment, which is in a measure 
 the reflex of the Moral Sense, developes slowly also. 
 
 The second factor of religious ideas is, from the nature 
 of the case, variable and incessantly changing with every 
 advance of knowledge and every process of reflection. It is 
 itself compounded of two variable elements ; namely, first, 
 the original thought of the individual, which may be almost 
 nil, or may be vast enough to create a whole new creed ; 
 secondly, of the traditional thought which he has derived 
 from teachers and books, and this, again, of course may be 
 great or small — a mental ancestry stretching through a 
 princely line of saints and sages, or the low brief pedigree 
 of a barbarian's legends. Here the study of comparative 
 theology is of incalculable value, enabling the student to 
 inherit, not only the traditions of his direct line of teachers, 
 but of all past generations. The difierent Ideas into which 
 the same Sentiment has been translated in varied lands and 
 ages are to the last degree instructive, and corrective of our 
 haste and dogmatism ; nor can a man fairly estimate the 
 worth of any familiar notion till he has seen and weighed 
 its antagonist idea. Nay, not only in an intellectual, but 
 a moral sense, the knowledge of such various creeds is 
 valuable. Religion never comes to us in greater majesty 
 than when " a cloud of witnesses " proclaims its truth. 
 Never do moral lessons touch us more nearly, never do ex- 
 pressions of trust in God, or hope of immortality, carry with 
 them such fresh strength as when they are borne to us from 
 far-ofi' ages and distant lands, and we know they have come 
 from the lips of men who never spoke our speech nor learned 
 
238 THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 
 
 our lessons, and whose whole lives were passed under con- 
 ditions utterly foreign to all our traditions. To Hold by the 
 full cord of all the faith of all the ages, is assuredly far more 
 secure than to cling by a single thread, even if that thread 
 be the golden strand of Christianity. 
 
 Each man's religion, observes Professor Miiller, is to him 
 unique. It is his native language, the mother-tongue of his 
 soul ; none other may bear any comparison with it so far as 
 he is concerned. AVe might carry the simile further, and 
 say that, like the old pedants who held that the languages 
 of barbarians were not proper languages at all, but had only 
 the sense of the lowings and bleatings of kine and sheep, so 
 bigots even now talk as if the vast religions of the ancient 
 world and of the East were not worthy to be called religions, 
 and had in them no meaning and no sanctity. The thesis 
 of half the later apologists of Christianity (down to the 
 author of Christ and other Masters, well reviewed in these 
 volumes^) might be described somewhat in thiswise: "Given, 
 a multitude of creeds having innumerable parallels, in doc- 
 trine, myth, rite and precept, with our own. Prove that 
 everything in them is absurd and wicked, and everything in 
 our own faith credible and holy." 
 
 It was not so in earlier times. The Apostles and Fathers 
 were ready to acknowledge the "light which lighteth every 
 man that cometh into the world," wherever they beheld 
 a scintillation of it, whether in poems like that of Aratus, 
 or in that philosophy " by which," as Clemens Alexandrinus 
 said, " the Almighty is glorified among the Greeks." St. 
 Chrysostom's argument (Homil. 12) for the divine inspi- 
 ration of conscience as the source from whence heathen 
 legislators drew their laws, reads like a piece of modern 
 free-thinking : 
 
 For it cannot be said they held communication with Moses, or that 
 1 Vol. i. p. 50. 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST 239 
 
 they heard the prophets. How could they when they were Gentiles ? 
 It is evident it was from the very law which God placed in man when 
 he formed him. 
 
 But as the Churcli lost its primitive vigour of faith, which 
 sufficed to itself without requiring the denial of all divine 
 element in other creeds, the narrower, poorer faith of later 
 ages needed to put forth a diflferent claim : Christianity was 
 declared to be not only the best, but the only religion ; 
 all others were devil-worship and delusion. No modern 
 Paul would have preached from the text of the altar of the 
 Unknown God. He would have called it an altar of Satan. 
 One faith only could be admitted to be unmingled truth, 
 and for its sake, and expressly to distinguish it from all 
 others, it was affirmed that the long cycle of Biblical 
 miracles had been wrought. All other creeds were mere 
 jumbles of unredeemable error, and their pretended wonders 
 mere delusions and impostures. Penetrated with notions 
 like these, our missionaries went forth to attack the giant 
 religions of the East with the courage of David against 
 the Philistine. But their Bibles, flung fearlessly at those 
 massive fronts, have somehow hitherto failed to slay the 
 enemy, or even to stun him ; and we must wait for his 
 overthrow till a different order of attack be inaugurated. 
 
 In just the opposite spirit from this narrow and bigoted 
 one does Professor Miiller address himself to the task of 
 examining the religions of the heathen world. Had his 
 book no other merit, the preface alone, in which the true 
 method of such inquiry is vindicated, possesses a value we 
 shall not readily over-estimate. " Every religion," he saj^s, 
 "even the most imperfect and degraded, has something 
 that ought to be sacred to us, for there is in all religions 
 a secret yearning after the true though unknown God." 
 Truly this is the spirit, not only of a philosopher, but of 
 a pious man. Strange is it, as all who have travelled 
 
240 THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 
 
 beyond the precincts of Christendom can tell, to note with 
 what scorn, surpassing mere irreverence, Christians com- 
 monly enter the mosques and temples of other creeds, and 
 standing among crowds of prostrate worshippers move and 
 speak, as if purposely to display their contempt, Nay, in 
 Christendom itself to watch a Protestant in a Romish church, 
 or an Anglican in a Dissenting chapel, is often to see em- 
 bodied in looks and manner the feelings not of sympathy 
 or community in the eternal human sentiments of religious 
 love and hope, not even of pity for supposed fatal and soul- 
 destroying error ; but of inhuman ridicule and disgust. Not 
 one man in a thousand enters the temple of a creed in which 
 he does not believe, with any reverence or even any interest 
 beyond vulgar curiosity. But that man sees what others 
 wholly miss ; even the essential meaning of the cultus. Just 
 so will those few who, like Miiller, enter the vast fane of 
 Vedic or Zoroastrian faith, not rudely or contemptuously, 
 but with respectful sympathy, find therein a purpose which 
 for ever escapes the mere profane inquirer. 
 
 The sources of knowledge concerning existing heathen 
 religions are of very various value. The obvious results of 
 a creed on the character and manners of the nation which 
 adopts it have always afforded a favourite " short method 
 with the Pagans," whereby it was easy to demonstrate that 
 all such creeds could contain nothing good since so little 
 good came from them. But to argue back from the practice 
 to the theory of any religion would, I fear, prove an 
 unsatisfactory mode of procedure, even if applied to our 
 own. The "intelligent foreigner," after perusing our police 
 reports, examining the processes of our traffic, or merely 
 perambulating the streets of London or Paris, before or 
 after dark, would hardly construct the Sermon on the 
 Mount as the source to which all he beheld plainly pointed 
 as authority. Professor Miiller himself mentions the despair 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 241 
 
 of a poor Hindoo convert, who somehow managed to reach 
 England still possessed of the simple faith, that Evangelical 
 piety filled all our hearts and Evangelical morality guided 
 the greater part of our actions. To expect that far less pure 
 and noble creeds should exercise more perfect influence, and 
 that Confucian wisdom should reign in Pekin, Brahmin 
 devotion at Benares, and Zoroastrian morality among the 
 Parsees at Bombay, is paying, to say the least, a bad com- 
 pliment to Christianity. 
 
 A second source of knowledge of heathen creeds is derived 
 from the oral teaching of living priests ; the doctrines they 
 promulgate concerning God and other beings of the invisible 
 world ; their cosmogony, ethics and ceremonial laws, and 
 their lessons concerning a future state. This oral teaching is 
 of course a most important element in forming our estimate 
 of each creed, and has hitherto been almost our sole guide 
 to the great religions of the East. It is, however, obviously 
 liable to lead us into many mistakes. In the first place 
 we derive from it at best only an idea of the religion in 
 its present shape, which often (as in the case of Brahminism) 
 is one of great degeneracy. Secondly, such teachings as 
 Eastern priesthoods now afibrd shade off always into my- 
 thologies, more or less puerile, and bearing to religion no 
 more relation than the Legends of the Saints do to Christ- 
 ianity. To say what is the creed itself and what is mere 
 hagiology and fable is impossible, unless we go beyond the 
 living priests to some higher authority. Again, each great 
 creed has undergone enormous modifications. Even what 
 must be termed its theology has changed in the course of 
 ages, and differs, altogether, in different parts of the wide 
 empire over which it stretches. The Trimurti, for instance, 
 of Brahma, Yishnu, and Seeva, with all their myths of 
 avatars, and the pantheon of subordinate gods, is a com- 
 paratively modern phase of Brahminism. Among the ele- 
 
 16 
 
242 THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 
 
 mental deities of the Vedas these things are not to be found. 
 Buddhism is almost a different creed in China, in Thibet 
 and in Ceylon, and what the priesthood of one country- 
 teaches as its doctrines, that of the others denies or modifies. 
 Lastly, all mythologies vary, not only in different places 
 but at different times ; being in a constant state of flux 
 and change ; sometimes of alternate solidification into fable, 
 and rarefaction into metaphor. We continually think of 
 heathen religions as if each had its compact Body of divinity 
 or its Thirty- Nine Articles ; and, moreover, as if it possessed 
 (what our churches have never achieved) a priesthood teach- 
 ing precisely the same doctrines at all times and everywhere, 
 neither more spiritual nor more carnal, more philosophic 
 nor more stupid the one than the other. As things actually 
 are, we may fairly rate the judgment of an Eastern creed 
 derivable from its living priests at the value which would 
 pertain to a summary of Christianity obtained by going 
 about Europe asking questions of an Anglican bishop, an 
 Italian capuchin, a Scotch presbyter, and a Greek jpapas ; 
 and digesting their answers, as best we might, into a system 
 of theology, omitting whatever might seem merely sen- 
 sible and common-place, and carefully noting everything 
 grotesque and surprising which came in our way. 
 
 Take it as we may, the creation of the theology and 
 mythology of each religion is a process more remarkable 
 and more interesting the more we endeavour to get near 
 to it and realize how it can have been accomplished. I 
 know of few better attempts to deal with its mystery than 
 in the essay on Semitic Monotheism in these volumes : 
 
 The primitive intuition of God, and the ineradicable feehng of 
 dependence on God, could only have been the result of a primitive 
 revelation in the truest sense of the word. Man, who owed his ex- 
 istence to God and whose being centred and rested in God, saw and 
 felt God as the only sense of his own and of all other existence. By 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 243 
 
 the vejy act of creation God had revealed himself. This primitive 
 intuition of God, however, was in itself neither monotheistic nor poly- 
 theistic, though it might become either. It is too often forgotten by 
 those who believe that a polytheistic worship was the most natural 
 unfolding of religious life, that polytheism must everywhere have been 
 preceded by a more or less conscious theism. In no language does the 
 plural exist before the singular. No human mind could have conceived 
 the idea of Gods without having previously conceived the idea of a 
 God. The primitive intuition of Godhead is neither monotheistic nor 
 polytheistic, and it finds its expression in the simplest and yet the 
 most important article of faith — that God is God. This must have 
 been the faith of the ancestors of mankind before any division of race, 
 . . . but it was not yet secured against the illusions of a double vision. 
 Its expression would have been "there is a God," but not yet "there 
 is but one God." 
 
 In all heathen nations, and even partially among the 
 Jews, the various aspects of nature, and names given to 
 different attributes of God, led to the multiplication of 
 deities, and thence by rapid degrees to the formation of 
 myths and legends, and endless genealogies." How all 
 those arose, which we find were actually believed, it is hard 
 indeed to imagine. A certain large number may be set 
 down at once as not so much Myths as Metaphors ; the 
 inevitable shape into which expression of natural phenomena 
 fell when language was yet all alive with imagery, and 
 possessed no abstract nouns, no auxiliary verbs ; no terms, 
 in short, which did not draw a picture instead of narrating 
 a fact. " Words," says Miiller, " were then heavy and un- 
 wieldy. They said more than they ought to say." Thus, 
 what is poetry now was common prose then, or rather there 
 was no distinction between prose and poetry, and men said 
 that "Night was the mother of sleep and dreams," just as 
 simply as we say, " Sleep and dreams come at night time." 
 Innumerable other myths are traced by modern scholars (I 
 confess, as it seems to my ignorance, with tedious iteration 
 and much coercion of fancy) to descriptions of solar phe- 
 
244 THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 
 
 nomena. Every hero, according to these critics, is the Sun, 
 every heroine the Moon ; and every event is affirmed to 
 rej)resent the Sun rising or the Sun setting, the Sun among 
 clouds or the Sun at davs^n, the Sun at the solstice or the 
 Sun at the equinox, the Sun entering the Bull or the Sun 
 quitting the ram — till the unlearned mind marvels whether 
 the ancient heathens were born and died, married, reigned, 
 fought, or had any real existence other than as types of 
 the Sun ; or whether they attended at all to their own affairs 
 and not exclusively to those of the Solar System. But 
 when we have done our best to understand all these myths, 
 whether mere metaphors or elaborate allegories, we are still 
 perplexed to conceive the mental conditions of what Professor 
 Miiller calls the mytJiopceic age, in which they originated, 
 and of the next, when they passed into the minds of sub- 
 sequent generations as accredited facts. One thing alone 
 is clear, that the mass of such myths have little or nothing 
 in common with the religion of the race among whom they 
 were current ; and that we may as well study the Protes- 
 tantism of Elizabeth's reign in the Midsummer Night's Dream 
 as the real faith of a E-oman of the Augustan age in Ovid's 
 Metamorphoses, 
 
 The one satisfactory source of knowledge concerning all 
 religions, is neither the moi'al state of the people who hold 
 them, nor their current myths, but their Sacred Literature. 
 This alone supplies us at first hand with the fountain from 
 which all that is really characteristic and important in each 
 creed has been derived. Here we get at the thoughts about 
 God and duty and immortality of real men whose spiritual ex- 
 perience (to use Rowland Williams' great phrase) generated 
 the religious atmosphere in which their disciples ever since 
 have breathed. Here we are face to face with the prophets 
 of old, no longer transfigured and seen through a halo of 
 adoring fable, but as they were in the flesh, writing as best 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 245 
 
 they could, the burning thoughts of their souls. Here then, 
 if anywhere, lies the mine of wealth out of which we must 
 dig our knowledge of the great creeds of the world. 
 
 But in such literature there are always varied stages. 
 The earliest books (invariably accounted most sacred) indicate 
 the first vague shape which the creed assumed. The books 
 of the second period, and of lesser sanctity, present the 
 creed in more definite form, and are also, nearly always, of 
 a more distinctly ethical character. Lastly, after every 
 Bible there comes a Talmud, the commentaries and cere- 
 monial regulations by which the earlier prophetic utterances 
 and the secondary ethical precepts are in time overlaid. 
 Usually it happens that during the long interval between 
 the beginning and end of such a cycle of literature in any 
 country, the creed itself has undergone essential modifi- 
 cations, whether, as in Judaism, by rising into a higher 
 spirituality, and incorporating the doctrine of immortality; 
 or, as in Brahminism, by declension into the worship of 
 material idols. 
 
 Before endeavouring to recapitulate Professor Miiller's 
 conclusions regarding some of these great works, a few 
 reflections on the extraordinary nature of Sacred Books may 
 well be bestowed. 
 
 Looking back from the rich garden of literature which 
 human genius and industry (and we may add human vanity 
 and folly) have created for us, "the heirs of all the ages," 
 it is almost touching to learn how the first few books of the 
 world, the wild flowers which sprang up spontaneously in all 
 their glory and freshness in that yet unbroken soil, were 
 cherished and well-nigh adored. A book, strange is it to 
 remember, was once, per se, a sacred thing. And as a 
 young writer even now looks on his first printed work 
 with a curious sort of parental sense, beholding the child 
 of his mind standing before him, the mysterious logos em- 
 
246 THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 
 
 bodied in tangible shape, no longer a part of himself, but 
 having as it were independent life, so, in those far-off ages, 
 mankind looked on the first books with awe and wonder as 
 Incarnate Thoughts. Beneath a synagogue in Jerusalem 
 there is a vault where, even yet, old worn-out books and 
 manuscripts are piously buried, a memorial of the time 
 when every written law was believed to have had, not only 
 a human scribe, but an inspiring deity to direct the legis- 
 lator, and every poem was understood to have had a Muse, 
 by whose aid so wondrous an achievement was brought about. 
 By degrees the best of the old, and the oldest of the best 
 books, through all the pious Eastern lands, became hallowed 
 and set apart, to be confounded no more with merely 
 mortal works. They were canonized as saintly Christian 
 men were afterwards canonized, first by the common voice, 
 then perhaps, as in the case of the Buddhist scriptures, by 
 decrees of councils, and, at last, by universal consent and 
 tradition. Is this very marvellous ? Have we any difficulty 
 in conceiving how it happened ? Nay, but was it not rather 
 the most natural thing in the world ? Who can estimate 
 the mysterious enchantment which belongs to the words of 
 a great book, when generations have passed away uttering 
 them in every hour of joy and agony, and finding expres- 
 sion in them for all their hope and all their penitence ? 
 The cathedral roof, which has bent over the prayers of a 
 thousand years, seems redolent of their incense ; the altar 
 where our fathers have knelt becomes for us a shrine. So 
 it is with books also, with the very words and phrases which 
 have been as silver trumpets through which men's voices 
 have gone upward to heaven for millenniums. Does an}^ one 
 believe that the outbursts of faith and grief in the Psalms 
 or the old prayers of Basil and Chrysostom, are just the 
 same now, no richer or fuller of meaning than when they 
 were first written ? Had they been buried then in that 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 247 
 
 Syrian vault and exhumed for some antiquary to decipher 
 to-day, would they be for us what they now are when for 
 ages human hearts have embalmed them ? Not so. Words 
 whose sound has gone out into all lands, awakening, con- 
 soling, purifying the souls of men age after age, cannot be 
 for us like other words. They come to us breathing memories 
 of childhood and of our mother's prayers, and through them 
 we seem to hear a murmur as of the voices of all the holy 
 dead. Such sanctity as this depends little upon theories of 
 "inspiration," or arguments concerning the authority of a 
 canon or the authenticity of a codex ; but nothing is more 
 natural than that a devout mind should attribute directly 
 to God's dictation what seems at once so sacred and so 
 beautiful. 
 
 It is not hard to recognize these truths applied to our own 
 scriptures and liturgies. Can we not discern also that, in 
 a great measure, the same principle must hold good for 
 nations whose sacred books have far less beautj^ and meaning 
 for us, and far less absolutely, by any standard we can admit 
 for a moment ; but which may very possibly have a certain 
 habitual fitness and home sentiment, for the nations to whom 
 they belong, which even greater books maj^ lack ? Doubt- 
 less, Arab and Indian melodies are immeasurably inferior 
 to German and Italian airs, yet we should not marvel, but 
 take it as a trait of human nature, if an Arab or Indian 
 listened delighted to the monotonous jangle of his native 
 instruments, and shed tears over tunes which rather inclined 
 us to laughter. The fact that a Brahmin can find in the 
 Vedas, or an Arab in the Koran, much more than we can 
 find in either of beauty and sublimity, should cause us no sur- 
 prise. The wonder is rather, how we western Europeans, we 
 of Arj^an race, feel such intense sympathy with the literature 
 of a Semitic people, and are far more at home in Genesis 
 than in the Iliad, in the speculations of Job than in those of 
 
248 THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 
 
 Plato. The explanation is to be found, perhaps, first in the 
 marvellous greatness of the Hebrew literature ; and in its 
 intensely human character which ever recalls to each of us 
 the freshness of youth, and gives it a claim to be the liter- 
 ature not of one people but of humanity. Secondly, "we 
 English and Germans, who of European nations most prize 
 the Bible, have been for a thousand years fed upon it, till 
 Jewish and Syrian ideas come to us far more naturally than 
 those of our own Odin-worshipping ancestors. To them, in- 
 deed, it may well be doubted whether the Hebrew Scriptures 
 (could they have read them) would have seemed half so fine 
 as Beowulf or the elder Nibelungen-Lied. But on the strong 
 wild stems of Norse and Teuton races the graft of Judaic 
 thought has flourished vigorously, and we, the fruit thereof, 
 show more mental likeness, perchance, to the graft than to 
 our original stem. 
 
 It is easy to turn the Sacred Books of the heathens into 
 ridicule, by quoting from them monstrous myths, childish 
 precepts, and especially that almost universal perversion of 
 morals whereby ceremonies are exalted to the level of the 
 most imperative duties. As the Institutes of Menu speak of 
 " killins: the inhabitants of three worlds and eating with 
 unwashed hands" as of crimes of parallel magnitude, so 
 nearly every ancient law-book places things mala in se and 
 things mala prohibita (such as gathering sticks on the Sab- 
 bath) in most unfit equality. The error obviously arises 
 from the notion that ceremonial observances are duties 
 directly owed to God, and therefore of infinite obligation, 
 while other duties, it is imagined, are only indirectly divine, 
 and are owed to man, and therefore of minor sanctity. 
 Though if there be one point more clear than another in the 
 teaching of Christ, it is his denunciation of such pharisaism, 
 and of the giving of tithes of mint, anise, and cummin, to 
 the neglect of justice and truth, yet from his age to ours 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 249 
 
 Christendom lias never shaken itself wholly free thereof. 
 It is idle then to point to these puerile precepts, and the 
 endless commentaries upon them, as proving the worthless- 
 ness of heathen books. 
 
 Modern philology and ethnology have grouped the 
 languages and nations of Europe and Asia in wholly dif- 
 ferent classification from the purely geographical order 
 formerly used ; and this new classification Professor Miiller 
 conceives to be applicable no less to the religions than the 
 tongues of the various races. The order he adopts may be 
 brieflj'' thus described : 
 
 1. The Aryan or Indo-European race, branching into the 
 northern Indian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Sclavonic, Teuton, 
 and Celtic races, with all their languages : Sanscrit (the 
 elder sister), Zend, Persian, Greek, Latin, German, Celtic, 
 French, English, etc. 
 
 2. The Semitic race, branching into Assyrians, Jews, 
 Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Arabs, etc. ; with their languages, 
 of which Hebrew and Arabic are the most important. 
 
 3. The Turanian race, comprising Mongols, Turks, Malays, 
 Siamese, and many of the Indian nations, with their re- 
 spective languages. 
 
 4. The Chinese, with their unique monosyllabic language. 
 After these, between whom all history, all religion, all 
 
 literature, and all art are well-nigh divided, there are the 
 African, American, and Polynesian races (variously arranged 
 by ethnologists), with whose languages and religions we 
 have here no concern. The ethnology of the great Egyptian 
 race in the world's pedigree seems to be still a matter of 
 doubt. Their language is said by scholars to have some 
 singular afiinities with that of the Hottentots. 
 
 By the Aryan and Semitic races has the progress of the 
 world been carried on, and in them our interest, both here- 
 
250 THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 
 
 ditary and historical, necessarily centres. Now, a very sin- 
 gular parallel, which so far as I am aware has not been 
 hitherto remarked, may be traced between the religious 
 history of these two great tribes. I venture to suggest it 
 as one of the most curious parallels in history. 
 
 In both Aryan and Semitic races there have existed several 
 minor creeds which, in process of ages, have disappeared. In 
 the Aryan race, for example, there have been the religions 
 of Greece and Rome, Odin-worship and Druidism. In the 
 Semitic race there have been the Assj^rian, Phoenician and 
 sundry other idolatries. But in each race there has also been 
 one great religion which, beginning at the very dawn of 
 history, has lasted to the present hour, namely, Vedic-Brah- 
 minism among the Aryans, and Judaism in the Semitic race. 
 And each of these great religions has had two vast offshoots, 
 or schisms, which, also, still survive ; namel}', Zoroastrianism 
 and Buddhism from Brahminism; and Christianity' and Islam 
 from Judaism. Further. All six of these religions are 
 possessed of a Sacred Literature, to which divine authority 
 is attributed by their adherents; namely, among the Aryans: 
 
 The Yedas of the Brahmans ; 
 
 The Zend-Avesta of the Zoroastrians ; 
 
 The Tripitaka of tlie Buddhists ; 
 
 and among the Semitic race : 
 
 The Old Testament of the Jews ; 
 
 The New Testament of the Christians ; 
 
 The Koran of the Moslems. 
 
 Beside these Aryan and Semitic Scriptures, there only 
 exist in the world two other ancient sacred books of any 
 A'alue, namely the Kings of the Confucian Chinese, and the 
 Taote-king of the Taoists of China ; the Grunth of the 
 Sikhs being a comparatively modern work. 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 251 
 
 Lastly, as if to perfect the parallel, recent calculations 
 tend to shovY that at the present hour, after four thousand 
 years of development, the great religions of the Semitic and 
 Aryan races are almost on an equality in point of numbers ; 
 Brahminism and Buddhism, with the small remnant of 
 Zoroastrians, counting together (according to an authority 
 accepted by Professor Miiller) about 44 per cent, of the 
 human race ; and Judaism, Islam, and Christianity num- 
 bering nearly 45 per cent, on the same calculation. 
 
 It would be impossible to heighten the effect of so amazing 
 a coincidence by any reflections. One fact, howevei', must 
 not be forgotten. Among all these creeds, Christianity alone 
 is extending itself ; all the rest, without exception, are dying 
 out. Whether the extension of Christianity have any con- 
 siderable motive force beside the superior energies, the 
 conquests and colonizings of the Anglo-Saxon race, and 
 whether a collapse of the British Empire would leave the 
 progress of Christianity undisturbed, we need not inquire. 
 The prior question would need to be settled before any con- 
 clusion could be drawn from such premisses : What share 
 has Christianity, and especially free and moral Protestant 
 Christianity, had in making the Englishman what he is, 
 and giving to Queen Victoria those realms on which the sun 
 never sets ? 
 
 I propose briefly to follow Professor Miiller, not into all 
 the varied woods and groves of literature wherein he has 
 cut his " Chips," but through his more weighty discussions 
 on the Sacred Books of the East. Of these, those of the 
 Aryan race have chiefly occupied him, leaving room for one 
 essay only on the Confucian books, and one on Semitic 
 Monotheism. To begin, then, with the oldest and most 
 interesting of all. 
 
 " In the Aryan world," says Professor Miiller, " the Veda 
 is certainly the oldest book." And it is emphatically a hool<, 
 
252 THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 
 
 not a mere monument or record of conquests and successive 
 dynasties. Here lies its immense interest, for "poets are 
 better than kings, and guesses at truth are more valuable 
 than unmeaning titles of Egyptian or Babylonian despots." 
 The word Yeda means " knowledge," being, in fact, the 
 same word as " wit " or " wise." There are four books 
 known as Yedas, and commonly represented in the four 
 hands of Brahma the Creator, namely, the Rig Yeda, the 
 Yagur Yeda, the Sama Yeda, and Atharva Yeda. But the 
 three last, says Professor Miiller, no more deserve the name 
 of Yedas than the Talmud deserves the name of Bible. The 
 Yagur Yeda is, in fact, a prayer-book ; the Sama Yeda, a 
 hymn-book ; and the Atharva Yeda, a sort of rubric ; each 
 for the use of a diiferent order of priests at the sacrifices. 
 The Rig Yeda, containing the most ancient hymn of praise, 
 is the Yeda par excellence. It consists of two parts, 
 the oldest hymns or Mantras, called Sanhita, and a number 
 of prose comments called Brahmanas and Sutras. The Rig 
 Yeda Sanhita consists of ten books containing 1028 hymns ; 
 and 600 years before Christ the scholars of India had 
 counted these 1028 hymns, and found they contained 
 10,402 verses, and 432,000 syllables, a number approximately 
 verified in existing MSS. The date of these hymns must 
 be somewhere between 1200 and 1500 b.c, albeit no MS. 
 exists of much more than five centuries old. This high 
 antiquity, demonstrated by various arguments, is corrobo- 
 rated by a curious observation. In modern literature one 
 epoch, nay one single author, often uses the most varied 
 styles of composition, poetry, history, criticism, science. 
 But in ancient times, says Miiller, " the individual is much 
 less prominent, and the poet's character disappears in the 
 general character of the layer of literature to which he 
 belongs. It is the discovery of such large strata of liter- 
 ature following each other in regular succession, which 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 253 
 
 inspires the critical historian with confidence in the truly 
 historical character of the successive literary productions of 
 ancient India," where " an age of poets was followed by 
 an age of collectors and imitators ; then by an age of theo- 
 logical prose writers, and finally by an age of writers of 
 scientific manuals." 
 
 Of the sanctity of the E,ig Yeda, in the opinion of Brah- 
 mins, nothing too much can possibly be said. " The Yeda 
 is sruti, or Hearing ; all other books, even the great code 
 of Menu, is smriti, or E-ecollection." " The views enter- 
 tained of revelation, by the orthodox theologians of India," 
 says Miiller, " are far more minute and elaborate than 
 those of the most extreme advocates of verbal inspiration 
 in Europe." The whole Veda is the work of deity, and 
 even the men who received it were raised above common 
 fallible mortality. The human element is utterly denied 
 a place. "The Yeda existed before all time in the mind 
 of God." As the institutes of Menu say, " To deities and 
 to men, the Scripture is an eye of light; nor could the 
 Yeda Shastras have been made by human faculties, nor can 
 they be measured by human reason unassisted by revealed 
 glosses and commentaries. Such codes of laws as are not 
 founded on the Yeda produce no good fruit after death. 
 All systems which are repugnant to the Yeda must have 
 been composed by mortals and shall soon perish. Their 
 modern date proves them vain and false. "^ The real writers 
 of the Yeda however, like those of other books, for which 
 similar claims have been advanced, make no pretension to 
 write by divine dictation, but implore the Deity to inspire 
 them. One of them cries, " Indra ! Y^hatever I now 
 may utter, longing for thee, do thou accept it. Make me 
 possessed of God ! " (Rig Yeda, vi. 47, 10.) Another 
 "utters for the first time the Gayatri, which now for more 
 1 Institutes of Menu, c. 12, v. 94, 95. 
 
254 THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 
 
 than three thousand years has been the daily pra3'er of 
 every Brahman, and is still repeated every morning by 
 millions of pious worshippers." "Let us meditate on the 
 adorable light of the Divine Creator ! May He rouse our 
 minds ! " 
 
 Yery various degrees of merit are displayed by the 
 diflPerent poems of the Yedas. Some of them are tedious 
 and childish. The gods are invoked, with endless repeti- 
 tions, to protect their worshippers, and to grant them all sorts 
 of terrestrial blessings. Yet interesting in many ways are 
 even these more puerile hymns. They, re veal that mental 
 condition in the writers, of which we have already spoken 
 as a theism which is not yet properly either monotheism 
 or polytheism. Each god, when worshipped, is successively 
 thought of as the God, and invested with supreme attributes ; 
 and here and there may be traced a dim recognition that 
 the Many are but One; as it is said (Rig Yeda, i. 164, 46), 
 
 "They call Him Indra, Mitra, Yaruna, Agni That 
 
 which is One, the wise call in divers manners." Some of 
 these gods, like Agni (Fire), seem to be merely elementary ; 
 others, like Yaruna, are already defined personages ; but in 
 no case is there any trace of their worship having taken 
 the form of idolatry. The worship of idols in India is a 
 degradation of the Yedic worship of ideal gods. 
 
 The Trimurti of Brahma, Seeva, and Yishnu, as already 
 stated, is altogether the product of a later age. In the 
 Atharva Yeda occurs the first mention of " Brahman " (used 
 originally in the neuter, and eventually changed into a 
 masculine noun), translated by Professor Miiller to signify 
 "Force" or "Will," and said to be the "First-born, the 
 Self-existing, the best of the Gods, by whom heaven and 
 earth were established." Yery marvelloush', surely, does this 
 name for God, signifying ambiguously both Will and Force, 
 correspond to the latest theories which the modern doctrine 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 255 
 
 of correlated forces lias suggested to men of science, even 
 within the last few years, in England. If it become the 
 accepted belief amongst us that the forces of nature hold 
 to Q-od's will the direct relation which man's nervous force 
 does to his will, or in other words, that the dynamic power 
 of the universe is the vital force of God, we shall hardly 
 find in relation to such a doctrine a better name for the 
 great Mover of all things than " Brahman." 
 
 Here and there through the Yeda break out expressions 
 of wonder respecting the physical mysteries of the universe, 
 betraying already the deep tlioughtfulness and speculative 
 tendencies of that Aryan intellect of which Plato and 
 Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, were inheritors. Listen to 
 the following from the Rig Yeda (x. 81-4) : " What was 
 the forest, what was the tree, out of which they shaped 
 heaven and earth ? Wise men ask this : on what He stood 
 when He held the worlds ? " Or to the still more remark- 
 able 129th hymn of the 10th book, of which Professor 
 Miiller has given a full translation ending in the lines of 
 which he may well observe ; "At this period no poet in 
 any other nation could have conceived them." 
 
 Who knows from wlience tliis great creation sprung ? 
 He from whom all this great creation came, 
 Whether His will created or was mute ? 
 The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven, 
 He knows it — or perchance even He knows not ! 
 
 A matter of still greater interest is the moral life which may 
 be traced through these oldest of human compositions. The 
 Brahmin mind, from the first, was of a highly intellectual 
 cast, while in the Iranian race the moral element visibly 
 predominated. Yet it is evident that, in the age of the 
 Yedas, religion and morality were already linked with that 
 closeness which we discover in the Hebrew writings, and 
 so often miss in those of the Greeks. Many a Christian 
 
256 THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 
 
 reader might take unawares for one of tlie Psalms of Israel 
 some of the hymns quoted by Professor Miiller, merely 
 changing the name Yaruna {Ouranos, Heaven) for Jehovah. 
 Witness the following (Rig Veda, vii. 89) : 
 
 Let me not yet, Varuna, enter into the house of clay. Have mercy, 
 
 Almighty, have mercy ! 
 Through want of strength have I done wrong. Have mei'cy, Almighty, 
 
 have mercy ! 
 Whenever we men, Varuna, commit an offence before the heavenly 
 
 host, whenever we break the law through thoughtlessness, have 
 
 mercy. Almighty, have mercy ! 
 
 How wonderful is it here to find the Law — that great 
 
 Unwritten law divine. 
 Immutable, eternal, not like those of yesterday. 
 But made ere time began — 
 
 of which Sophocles wrote, here spoken of already in the 
 first dawn of the world, perchance ere yet Moses was born, 
 as " the LaiD " — the law of God, for whose neglect man prays 
 to be forgiven ! 
 
 And again (Rig Veda, vii. 86) : 
 
 "Wide and mighty are the works of Him who stemmed asunder the wide 
 firmaments and lifted on high the bright and glorious heaven. He 
 stretched out apart the starry sky and the earth. . . . 
 
 How can I approach unto Varuna ? Will he accept my oflfering without 
 displeasure ? . . . Absolve us from the sins of our fathers, and from 
 those which we have committed with our own bodies. . . . 
 
 It was not our own doing, Varuna ! It was temptation, an intoxi- 
 cating draught, jmssion and thoughtlessness, Even sleep brings 
 unrighteousness. 
 
 The Lord God enlighteueth the foolish. . . Lord Varuna, may this 
 song go to thine heart. 
 
 The likeness of the following (Atharva Veda, iv. 6) to 
 Psalm 139 is remarkable : 
 
 The great Lord of the worlds sees as if he were near. If a man 
 stands, or walks, or hides, if he lies down or rises up. King Varuna 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 257 
 
 knows it. He is there as the third. He who should flee far beyond 
 the sky, even he would not be rid of Varuna. . . King Varuna sees all 
 that is between heaven and eai-th. He has counted the twinklings 
 of the eyes of men. 
 
 In conclusion, Professor Miiller tells us there is no trace 
 of the doctrine of metempsychosis in the Veda, but, on the 
 contrary, many references to personal immortality as an 
 accepted fact. A few vague threats of a " pit," and of the 
 " dogs of Yama " (death), hint at punishment for the 
 wicked, and the good man expects a felicity thus conceived 
 of (Rig Veda, ix. 113, 7) : 
 
 Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is placed, in 
 
 that immortal imperishable world, . . . 
 Where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, where the worlds are 
 
 radiant, where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasure 
 
 reside, where the desires of our desire are attained, — there make me 
 
 immortal ! 
 
 Next in age and importance to the Yedas in the Aryan 
 world are the Zoroastrian sacred books ; the scriptures of the 
 Parsees, commonly comprised under the name of the Zend- 
 Avesta. Of these books an account was given by the present 
 writer (compiled from the translations of Haug, Spiegel, 
 Westergaard, etc.) in Fraser^s Magazine three years ago.^ 
 So far as he has traversed the same ground, Professor Miiller, 
 I am happy to find, seems to sanction all the statements of 
 that paper. To those who have not read the article in ques- 
 tion, it may be briefly told that the conclusions of recent 
 Zend scholarship are these : — In the beginning of history 
 the Arj'an race, a small tribe, perhaps only a family, having 
 one language and one faith, dwelt in a certain spot called 
 Aryana Vaeyo, (the old Aryan Home) believed to have been 
 on the banks of the Araxes, near where the city of Atropatene 
 afterwards stood. It was at all events a region far north of 
 
 1 Keprinted in Studies Ethical and Social. 1 vol., 8yo. "Williams & Norgate. 
 
 17 
 
258 THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 
 
 India, where winter reigned for ten months of the year.^ 
 After the lapse of years or centuries — who can tell how many ? 
 — the race parted into two great branches : the Iranians, who 
 were agriculturists, labouring in Bactria ; and the Brahmins, 
 penetrating into India, where their nomad habits ended. 
 This eventful severance was not effected without some bitter 
 strife and religious dissension. Nay, it was perhaps primarily 
 rather a religious schism than a national disruption. In the 
 rich fossil-beds of Language, where science is daily in- 
 structing us more and more to seek for relics of the earlier 
 world which no false dealings with history can have dis- 
 torted, there appears unmistakable evidence that the Zoro- 
 astrian and Yedic creeds bore to each other the inimical 
 attitude of reformed and unreformed churches, of a great 
 Catholicity and a great Protestantism. It was something 
 more than the rancour wherewith, in modern times, 
 
 Some have learned to curse the shrine 
 Where others kneel to heaven, 
 
 for gods and devils were actually made to exchange places. 
 The Deva in Brahminism are gods. In the Zend-Avesta 
 they are demons. The Asura are the evil spirits of the later 
 Brahminism ; and Ahura-Mazda is Zoroaster's name for the 
 Supreme Grod himself. Indra, god of the sky, chief god 
 of one Yedic period, is the second of the devils in the Zend- 
 Avesta, And so on through a bewildering dance of heaven's 
 and hell's inhabitants. The rites of the two creeds also show 
 intimate connexion, and are visibly only variations of the 
 same original cultus, but here again are ti^aces of the same 
 fierce strife. The sacred Soma, which in the Brahminical 
 religion holds a place analogous to the sacramental Host 
 cf Catholicism, is spoken of in one of the most ancient 
 fragments of the Zend-Avesta with extremest horror and 
 
 2 First Fargard of the Vendidad. 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 259 
 
 contempt. " Who will pollute," it asks, " that intoxicating 
 liquor which makes proud the priests of the idols ? " (Yasna 
 47.) Here then took place the earliest schism of the world ; 
 a schism unhealed after three thousand years. Asia at that 
 hour fell morally asunder. The Brahmin race went on, — to 
 pass through intellectual processes of amazing depth and 
 complexity, and to arrive at last at the miserable result of 
 modern Hindooism. The Iranian race, on the contrary, 
 made a vigorous and healthful Morality the heart of their 
 religion, and after having largely influenced western thought 
 through Jews and Greeks, have left to this hour in the rem- 
 nant of Parsees no unworthy rej)resentatives of Zoroaster's 
 disciples, uncorrupted by either polytheism or idolatry, the 
 impure rites or the cruel laws of the nation amid which 
 they dwell. " A Parsee," says Professor Miiller, " believes 
 in one God, to whom he addresses his prayers." According 
 to his catechism he is taught that : " This God has neither 
 face nor form, colour nor shape, nor fixed place. He is 
 Himself alone, and of such glory that we cannot praise or 
 describe Him, nor our minds comprehend Him." " Whoever 
 believes in any other god but this is an infidel." Believing 
 in the punishment of vice and the reward of virtue, the 
 Parsee trusts for pardon in the mercy of God. " If any 
 one commit sin," (says the Zarthosti Catechism), " under 
 the belief that he shall be saved by somebod}^ ; both the 
 deceiver as well as the deceived shall be damned to the day 
 of Ilasta Khez " (the final restoration- day of all men and all 
 spirits). " Your Saviour is your deeds and God Himself. 
 He is the Pardoner and the Giver." (Miiller, vol. i. p. 176. V 
 
 Midway through the millennium which separated the ages 
 of Zoroaster and Christ, there was born in India the second 
 great teacher who rent Brahminism in twain, and founded 
 the religion which even now counts 450,000,000 disciples. 
 
260 THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 
 
 Buddha (the Enlightened) was the Auguste Comte of the 
 East. He taught a noble morality, — without a God to com- 
 mand, or a heaven to reward it. He cut away the roots of 
 all authority ; — and immediately himself became a supreme 
 and unquestionable authority, so that a few years after his 
 death his followers held, "That which Buddha said, that 
 alone was well said." He proposed ^ the idea of Humanity 
 at large as the object of benevolence — and formed a scheme 
 of politics subversive of the whole order of society. He 
 taught his disciples to spend several hours a day in the 
 repetition of prayers — and forbade them to suppose that any 
 being in the universe paid them the slightest attention. 
 Finally, he instructed mankind that after this life there is 
 nothing to be hoped for — and that the highest virtue leads 
 soonest to the state wherein virtue is at an end for ever. 
 
 Such are the original and still orthodox doctrines of 
 Buddhism according to Professor Miiller, M. de Saint- 
 Hilaire, and Eugene Burnouf. Some doubt exists whether 
 the book containing the metaphysics of Buddhism be really 
 the record of his teachings or the original speculations of 
 his pupil Kasyapa ; but, however this point may be settled, 
 ancient and modern Buddhist literature bears too many 
 testimonies to the atheism of the system, and too often 
 defines the future Nirvana as empty nothingness, to permit 
 us to deny that philosophic Buddhism is a religion without 
 a God and without a heaven.^ 
 
 A religion like this is an amazing portent in the history 
 of human development. But does its appearance prove that 
 the Religious Sentiment in man is a weak and variable 
 impulse, the result of early impressions and to be swept 
 
 1 Professor Miiller says he originated this idea of Humanity. The abore 
 parallel between Buddha and Comte, however, is no way sanctioned by Professor 
 Miiller. 
 
 2 See a very interesting little work, The Modern Buddhid, by a Siamese Minis- 
 ter of State. Translated by Henry Alabaster. One vol. 12mo. 1870. 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 261 
 
 away by the first strong hand which touches it ? Has man 
 indeed no sense of immortality which makes him start and 
 shudder at the endless destruction of Nirvana ? 
 
 Nay, but it seems to me that the very opposite lesson is 
 taught by the story of Buddhism. The truth that was in 
 the teaching of Buddha, even a beautiful, unselfish morality, 
 the millions of the further East seized upon and spread 
 from land to land with a missionary zeal never displayed 
 before or since, save by the disciples of him who preached 
 the Sermon on the Mount. But the dead, cold, hopeless 
 theology linked with that living morality of Buddhism, 
 those nations never truly accepted ; and, ere long, he who 
 had taught atheism was himself worshipped as an incarnate 
 God (a god before he descended to earth, a god hearing 
 prayers since he has ascended to heaven), and his Nirvana 
 of nothingness and destruction has turned into a paradise 
 where the blessed "hunger no more, neither thirst any 
 more," for all holy desires have there their fruition. When 
 Buddhism became the creed of millions, the Religious 
 Sentiment of those millions remodelled their creed, and 
 transformed an atheistic philosophy into a devout and hope- 
 ful religion.^ 
 
 * On the subject of the above-assumed Atheism of Buddhism I am indebted to 
 a friend for the following observations : — " It is no wise my wish to deny that 
 large schools of the Buddhists in Ceylon, Thibet, China, and Siam, have in all 
 ages been, and now are, Athiests. Only let it be remembered that fi-om the first 
 have existed other schools of Buddhists who were, and are, Theists. Be it also 
 distinctly remembered that in each of these schools Worship has been inculcated, — 
 the worship of Pragna (Nature), of the Buddhas (the Great Company of Saints), 
 of Dharma (or the Law of Life), and, finally, the worship of Adi Buddha. . . . 
 Of this Adi Buddha, take the following account from the ' Aiswarika System,' — 
 the doctrine of ' Iswara,' or God, as opposed to the ' Swab ha va,' or Nature- 
 System : — ' Know that when in the beginning all was perfect void and the five 
 elements were not, then Adi Buddha, the Stainless, was revealed in the form of 
 fire or light. He who is the form of all things became manifest. He is the 
 Self-existent Great Buddha. He is the cause of all existences in the Three 
 Worlds, and the cause of their well being also. From his profound meditation 
 the universe was produced. He is the Iswara, the sum of perfections, the 
 Infinite, void of members and passions. All things are tj'pes of him, and yet he 
 
262 THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 
 
 A most instructive picture of a religious Buddhist, when 
 Buddhism was in its prime a thousand years ago, is given 
 in these volumes in the sketch of the life of Hiouen Thsang, 
 a Chinese whose warm devotion prompted him to travel 
 to India to obtain the sacred books and visit the shrine of 
 his faith. His journal, still existing, has been translated 
 by M, Stanislas Julien, and reveals a character brave, 
 pious, and humane, like a knight errant of chivalry. He 
 lived praying perpetually to Buddha, endeavouring, like a 
 Christian pilgrim, to behold visions and identify the scenes 
 of Buddha's life. Finally he died with the prayer on his 
 lips : " that in every future birth he might fulfil his duties 
 towards Buddha, and arrive at last at the highest and most 
 perfect intelligence."^ Miiller says : " Of selfishness we find 
 no trace in him. His whole life belonged to the faith in 
 which he was born, and the object of his labours was not 
 so much to perfect himself as to benefit others." Such then 
 is the religion of a good Buddhist. It does not much 
 militate assuredly against the belief that man's Religious 
 
 was no type. Adi Buddha is without beginning. He is the essence of wisdom 
 (or Absolute Truth). He knows all the past. He is without a second. He is 
 omnipresent. As in a mirror we mortals see our forms reflected, so Adi Buddha 
 is known in Creation. Adi Buddha has delight in making happy every sentient 
 being. He tenderly loves those who serve him. He is the assuager of pain and 
 grief. He is the giver of the ten virtues ; the Creator of all the Buddhas, the 
 Lord of the Universe.' How far do these passages, translated by B. H. Hodgson 
 (to whom Eugene Burnouf owns his obligations), from the original Sanskrit 
 works, disclose the primary form of Buddhism ? The reply is, that these works 
 are from Ncpaul, in the vicinity of the birthplace of Buddhism, where we might 
 expect to find the purest and oldest traditions. The original Sanskrit works must 
 surely be at least as trustworthy as the Cingalese, Thibetan, and Chinese transla- 
 tions ? . . . From these Nepaul works, then, it would appear that Sakya Muni 
 Gautama was a heroic reformer who sought to redeem his people from their 
 servitude to the Brahmanic hierarchy, metaphysics, and caste system, by teaching, 
 and in his life illustrating, the True ' Way of Deliverance ' from ' The Circle 
 of Change.' He was an Atheist and an annihilationist in much the same sense 
 as J. G. Fichte was when he taught that the AVay towards the Blessed Life was 
 by forsaking the transitory and perishable, and being one with the Eternal." 
 
 1 Chips, vol. i. p. 276. 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 263 
 
 Sentiment is essentially the same, whether in the breast 
 of an old Chinese, who probably never heard of Europe 
 or Europe's faith, or in that of an Englishman of to-day; 
 whether developed into the ecstatic piety of a Tauler, or 
 with infantile weakness beginning (as men are said to 
 have done in the American-Indian history quoted in these 
 volumes) "not yet to worship the gods, hut only to turn 
 their face up to heaven."^ 
 
 The sacred canon of Buddhism was settled at the first 
 synod, the Nicsean Council, of the new religion. The 
 whole collection is called the Tripitaka, a word signifying 
 Three Baskets. The first basket contains the Sutras or 
 discoveries of Buddha, compiled by his pupil Ananda. The 
 second, the Vinai/a, contains the code of morality, noted 
 down by another pupil, Upali. The third, the Ahhiclharma, 
 contains the Buddhist system of metaphysics, arranged by a 
 third pupil, Kasyapa. Again there is a sacred canon of 
 the Thibetan Buddhists, consisting of two immense collec- 
 tions called the Kanjur and Tanjur. The first consists of 108 
 folio volumes, comprising 1083 distinct works, and has been 
 bartered for 7000 oxen. The Tanjur consists of 225 folios. 
 Both have been printed by the Buddhists at Lhassa and 
 at Pekin. The whole sacred literature of the Buddhists, 
 including the Lotus de la bonne Loi, translated by M. Eugene 
 Burnouf, the Lalita Visiara, or biography of Buddha, and 
 the Dhamma Padam, or " Footsteps of the Law," is of such 
 magnitude that though of late years innumerable MSS. 
 have been discovered and many scholars engaged in their 
 examination, a complete view of the subject is yet unattain- 
 able. Professor Miiller has not (I regret to say) given 
 us in these volumes any extracts from the Buddhist canon 
 similar to those he has taken from the Yedas. A few pas- 
 
 ^ Popul Vuli — a supposed relic of the legendary history of Guatemala. Chips, 
 vol. i. p. 337. 
 
264 THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 
 
 sages from the Dhamma Padam may give the reader an idea 
 of the character of these books : 
 
 Conquer anger by mildness, evil by good, falsehood by truth. . . Be 
 not desirous of discovering the faults of others, but zealously guard 
 against your own. . . Abstain from foolish conversation and from 
 betraying the secrets of others. Abstain from coveting, from all evil 
 wishes to others, from all unjust suspicion. To be free from sin, be 
 contented, be grateful, subject to reproof, having a mind unshaken by 
 prosperity and adversity. He is a more noble warrior who subdues him- 
 self than he who in battle conquers thousands. . . As the mighty rock 
 Maha-meru-parvati remains unshaken by the storm, so is the wise 
 unmoved by praise or disapprobation. All the religion of Buddha is 
 contained in these three precepts : purify thy mind ; abstain from vice ; 
 practise virtue. To the virtuous all is pure. Therefore think not that 
 going unclothed, fasting or lying on the ground, can make the impure 
 pure, for the mind will still remain the same. 
 
 Another precept commands every Buddhist before he 
 sleeps to tcish xcell to all mankind. Should there be a per- 
 son towards whom he finds he cannot perform such an act 
 of mental benevolence, he is further counselled to resolve 
 on doing that person some kindness, when, it is added, he 
 will find no further difficulty in wishing him well. 
 
 All virtues, says Professor Miiller, in the Buddhist re- 
 ligion are said to spring from maitri, and this maitri can 
 only be translated (Eugene Burnouf affirms) by the word 
 "charity." " It does not express friendship," he says, " but 
 that universal feeling which inspires us with good-will to 
 all men, and constant willingness to help them." 
 
 Such are the precepts of Buddhism ; precepts which many 
 who have dwelt in Buddhist countries affirm to have a real 
 practical influence on the lives of the millions by whom they 
 are revered as divine revelation. Let us rejoice that so it 
 should be, and that almost the largest of existing creeds — 
 assuredly the largest of all, if we count the numbers of past 
 generations — is not a mere mass of idle fable and corrupt 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 265 
 
 rites, and that God has by no means " left himself without 
 a witness " among these thronging myriads of His children. 
 It is a strange reflection that among the departed whom 
 we look to meet hereafter in the Land of Souls, the followers 
 of Buddha must outnumber all the rest of that Company 
 of Heaven to which we shall be admitted by 
 
 The shadow cloaked from head to foot, 
 Who keeps the keys of all the creeds. 
 
 Before quitting these interesting volumes, I must beg to 
 question one remark of the author. His fact is no doubt 
 correct, but the inference he draws from it seems to me 
 seriously erroneous. The modern doctrine of the slow de- 
 velopment of humanity through tens of thousands of j^ears 
 from lower types of animal life, is affirmed by Professor 
 Miiller to be exploded by the discovery of philologists, that 
 language, so far as it can be traced back, is always human 
 and rational, and always in a state of development. " The 
 idea," he says (vol. ii. p. 8), "of a humanity emerging 
 slowly from the depths of an animal brutality can never be 
 maintained again." And why ? Because " the earliest work 
 of art wrought by the hnman mind, more ancient than any 
 literary document, and prior to the first whisperings of tra- 
 dition — the human language — forms an uninterrupted chain 
 from the first dawn of history down to our own times." 
 First, the Professor asserts, there was a period (to which he 
 gives the name of Rhematic) when a language was spoken 
 containing the germs of Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan 
 speech. Then, in successive periods, these three divided 
 and subdivided into all the languages of Europe and Asia : 
 a Confusion of Tongues occupying some five thousand years, 
 and going on at the present time. 
 
 But this slow evolution, and multiplication of species ot 
 language, is, if I mistake not, precisely analogous to that 
 
266 THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 
 
 very development of animal species which the geologist 
 traces in the successive strata of the earth's crust, and on 
 which he founds his theory of progressive life. He, also, 
 finds at the earlier periods, simj)ler forms ; but forms even 
 then beautiful and appropriate ; and as he advances, he finds 
 these forms of animal and vegetable life multiply in number 
 and increase in complexity of organization. The very ground 
 of his argument is, that such appears to have been the order 
 of succession, and not the reverse process. That the first 
 discovered relics of language are not senseless, but rational, 
 and grammatically organized, is no more against the theory 
 of human development than that the earliest known fossils 
 are not chaotic lumps, but remains of organisms obviously 
 well adapted to the conditions under which they once had 
 life. In neither case have we reached the bottom of the 
 strata. There may well have been a long succession of ages 
 (on Darwin's hypothesis there was an immensely extended 
 succession of ages) between the first existence of man and 
 Professor Miiller's Ehematic period of languages, or before 
 any period of which, from the nature of the case, we can 
 recover a trace. According to Professor Muller's own ac- 
 count, in another essay,^ the first development of monotheism 
 took place " when together with the awakening of ideas, the 
 first attempts only were being made at expressing the sim- 
 plest conceptions, by means of a language most simple, most 
 sensuous, and most univieldy " — a Saurian or Megatherium 
 sort of language, in short, compared to agile Greek and 
 stalwart English. "We cannot possibly get below this to 
 the very earliest formations or azoic rocks of language (if 
 such there ever were), for the period to which they should 
 belong could leave no relics behind, save such as we believe 
 we have actually found, namely, bones and stone weapons. 
 Surely the fair conclusion to be drawn from the facts is 
 ^ On Semitic Monotheism. 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF THE EAST. 267 
 
 precisely the converse of that which the Professor has stated, 
 namely, that in human Language, as in all other fields of 
 inquiry, the evidence in favour of a slow progress from 
 simple to complex, from the lower forms of life to the higher, 
 is altogether complete and overwhelming ? 
 
 Three modes of creation alone are imaginable : 
 
 A Retrograde Creation, ever falling back, like the works 
 of human hands, from cosmos to chaos — the Creation of a 
 Toy. 
 
 A Stagnant Creation, finished from the first and unchange- 
 able — the Creation of a Stone. 
 
 A Progressive Creation, ever unfolding in beauty and joy 
 — the Creation of a Flower. 
 
 Of these three, God has chosen that His world should be 
 of the third order. Who is it that will say, He has not 
 chosen well ? 
 
JESS AY X. 
 
 THE EELIGIOI^ AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. - 
 
 The peculiar pleasure taken by Americans, like Washington 
 Irving and Hawthorne, in exploring the nooks and corners of 
 England and re-attaching the threads of tradition which con- 
 nect their new country with the old home in Europe, might 
 not inaptly be paralleled for us Englishmen, by the interest 
 of researches concerning the progenitors of our whole Aryan 
 stock in Persia and India. "While antiquarians of the earlier 
 school have been disputing what proportions of our language, 
 laws, religion, and social customs are derived respectively from 
 Saxons, Normans, Danes, Romans, and Celts, the students of 
 Zend and Sanscrit literature have been occupied in revealing 
 to us an ancestry, behind all the ancestries of which we had 
 hitherto taken count ; a primeval Home whence have come 
 even the names of our closest relationships, and the fables and 
 fairy-tales of our nurseries. Who would have dreamed here- 
 tofore that when an English parent spoke of his " daughter," 
 he recalled, in that familiar word, the days, millenniums 
 past, when the young maiden of the old Bactrian dwelling 
 was "she-u-ho-miiks-fhe-coivs," even as our legal term "spinster" 
 reverts to the comparatively recent time when it was her task 
 to " sjJi'n " ? Who that told a child the heart-breaking tale 
 
 1 Ancient and Mediceval India. By Mrs. Mauning. Allen & Co., London, 
 1869. 2 vols. 8vo., pp. 435 and 380. 
 
270 THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 
 
 of Llewellyn's Bog, supposed that he was repeating a legend 
 familiar to men of our blood who dwelt under the shadow of 
 the Himalayas when busy England was a forest ? 
 
 As yet the bearings of the great discoveries of Orientalists 
 have been little apprehended. The innumerable points at 
 which they must eventually impinge on our opinions yet 
 wait to be marked. Even their most obvious theological 
 consequences have been but casually noticed in any work 
 of importance. But the time has nearly arrived when such 
 a mass of new truths cannot lie inactive in the minds of the 
 cultivated classes, but must begin to leaven all our views on 
 etymology, history, philology, art, literature, and comparative 
 theology. The share which the revived study of Grreek at 
 the Renaissance had in directing the movements of that great 
 age, must in a certain partial degree have its parallel in the 
 results of the modern acquisition of Sanskrit in our own. 
 As one realm of Heathendom was rehabilitated then, and 
 the devils with which mediaeval imagination had peopled 
 it vanished in the sunrise, so now another and yet wider 
 field is conquered back from the kingdom of darkness to 
 partake of our sympathies and widen our comprehension 
 of human nature itself. A new world is given to the 
 scholars of the day, and it will be hard if it does not in 
 many ways "redress the balance" of the old. 
 
 A singular contrast may be traced between the new science 
 of Indo- Persian antiquity and that which a little preceded 
 it, of Egyptology. In opening up Egypt to us, Belzoni, 
 Champollion, Wilkinson, and Lepsius gave us the material 
 portion of a nation's life. In expounding the Vedas and 
 the Zend-Avesta, Jones and Wilson and Max Miiller and 
 Haug and Burnouf have admitted us to the inner and 
 spiritual part. The buildings and sculptures, the dress, 
 utensils, toys, nay, the very bodies of the departed Egyptian 
 race, all these the sands of the Nile have given back. But 
 
THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 271 
 
 except the enigmatical, half-comprehensible " Book of the 
 Dead," and a few fragments from papyri, all the scholars 
 who have used ChampoUion's key to hieroglyphics have failed 
 to present us with anything to be called even a specimen 
 of Egyptian literature. Not merely is there no Iliad, no 
 Ramayana of Africa, but not a single counterpart to a Pin- 
 daric Ode, or Yedic Hymn. Thus we know the Egyptians, 
 even while their embalmed forms stand beside us in our 
 studies, only as it were at second hand. We see what 
 they did, and we infer what they were. But their hearts 
 have never spoken to ours save in the touching cry of 
 bereaved affection from a coffin-lid ; or in the awful symbols 
 on some grand sarcophagus, pointing like a dumb Job to 
 death and judgment, and the faith that, over them both, 
 Osiris the Redeemer liveth. 
 
 In India all this is reversed. "We have recovered the 
 inner life of the nation, but not the outward. Here, in 
 the real Juventus Mundi — that youth which had already 
 waned, ere Homer sang or David prayed — here dwelt the 
 poet-prophets of the Yedas, in whose hymns we may read 
 to-day of hopes and fears and doubts and speculations which 
 once filled the hearts and stirred the brains, whose dust has 
 been scattered for ages to the four winds. Here we have no 
 mummies with their parody of immortality ; no tombs stored 
 with food and furniture and trinkets ; no mural pictures 
 showing us every detail of the battles and the agriculture 
 and the trades of the dead nation. But though we have 
 not one tangible object belonging to them, we have learned 
 the very words of the men who wandered by the banks of 
 Indus three thousand years ago, and possessing those words 
 we are truly nearer to them as intelligent beings than we 
 can ever hope to be to Egyptian or Ninevite. 
 
 India then, that same India over which our flag is flying 
 from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, is the field for literary 
 
272 THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 
 
 research which offers the richest treasures yet to be explored. 
 The Morning Land still keeps its dew, and it may yet be 
 gathered fresh and sweet before the army of critics and 
 commentators have marched over it and left us but dust. 
 
 A better devised book than the one I now purpose to 
 notice it would not be easy to name. It aims to bring to- 
 gether within the compass of two goodly volumes a general 
 bird's-eye view of all that has been yet disinterred of Indian 
 literature, with the revelations thereby afforded of life in 
 the Peninsula from the earliest Vedic ages onwards. The 
 incomparable industry of the authoress in collecting and 
 sifting the materials for so great a work, is fully equalled 
 by the judgment shown in their selection. There is for the 
 reader no wading through tedious or half-comprehensible 
 passages, such as abound in the original Eastern books. 
 The interesting and remarkable points in each old poem or 
 story have been picked out, and the passages from remote 
 works bearing on the same point collated ; insomuch that 
 the reader can enjoy in a few hours the fruits which it 
 would have cost him a dozen years of study to gather for 
 himself. As to the original matter carrying on the thread 
 of the work, I can only regret that the writer did not give 
 us much more of it ; for the observations are always in- 
 structive, and often most suggestive and original. Great 
 taste has also been shown in the selection of translations 
 from various scholars, Wilson, Max Miiller, Goldstlicker, 
 Muir. and others ; sometimes affording us fragments of really 
 harmonious poetry, and again, when accuracy of interpre- 
 tation is more to the purpose, giving us quaint little bits 
 of obvious literalism. In a word the book affords for Indian 
 literature precisely the sort of museum which Dr. Gray 
 desires the public collections to supply for Natural History. 
 Instead of crowded ranges of objects good bad and in- 
 different over which the eye wanders idly and the mind 
 
THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 273 
 
 wearies, we have a reasonable quantity of specimens care- 
 fully selected as the most characteristic and remarkable, some 
 of them in the fullest glory which the taxidermist-translator 
 can preserve ; and others, perhaps still more instructively, 
 prepared as skeletons. The review of a book which is itself 
 a vast Review must of necessity be the briefest epitome. 
 My object will be to afford some general idea of the sort 
 of treasures to be found in this cabinet of " curiosities of 
 literature." 
 
 Twelve centuries before the Christian era is the latest 
 date to which competent scholars assign the final compilation 
 of the Rig-Yeda Hymns in the shape wherein they now 
 stand. During all the intervening ages the absolutely divine 
 honours paid to the book throughout India — honours even 
 exceeding those which Jews, Moslems or Puritan Christians 
 have paid to their scriptures — have probably secured for 
 us the well-nigh unchanged transmission of each venerable 
 verse. Of course the age of the Rishis, or sacred poets, who 
 were the authors of the hymns, must ascend considerably 
 higher in point of antiquity than the recension of their 
 poems. To draw from their fragmentary allusions a picture 
 of life as it then existed, is a task of great interest. 
 
 In the first place, it seems the Yedic Aryans had long 
 migrated from the northern cradle of their race, and were 
 settled in the part of India which lies between the Indus 
 and the Saraswati. M. de Saint- Martin has identified most 
 of the seven rivers mentioned in the Yedas as those of the 
 Punjaub. Their enemies the Dasyus (literally "Robbers," 
 a dark race, and probably the aborigines of the country^ 
 still infested their borders. They were given to agriculture, 
 and used ploughs and carts drawn by oxen. The}^ had roads, 
 and caravanserais at distances along the roads. Metals were 
 in common use, and gold coins called JN^ishkas were cir- 
 
 18 
 
274 THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 
 
 culated. Gambling was a prevailing vice ; several li3'mns 
 alluding to it and deploring its results with those of intoxi- 
 cation. Women were not shut up in Zenanas, but appeared 
 in public drawn in chariots, and are spoken of with tender 
 affection. There is no evidence of the existence of castes 
 at this earliest period, but they appear in the time of the 
 Yajur-Yeda. Trade was already flourishing. In the Rig- 
 Veda it is said that " Merchants desirous of gain crowd the 
 great waters with their ships." Kings, and wealthy men, 
 were splendid in their habits, and the natural treasures of 
 India were all discovered and used. Gold and gems were 
 plentiful. Swift horses were highly estimated ; the most 
 precious of all sacrifices to the gods being the Aswamedha, 
 or sacrifice of a horse. Elephants were tamed and greatly 
 cherished ; the God Indra being desci'ibed in the Rig- Veda 
 as invoked for their protection. 
 
 The religion of these Aryans of the Yedic times is a subject 
 far too large and complicated to be here properly treated. 
 Some of the passages of the sacred hymns throwing light 
 upon it have been quoted in this volume in the preceding 
 Essays. Our present author has drawn together a number 
 of extracts from various translations, enabling the reader 
 to form considerable acquaintance with the cvirious variety 
 of incipient theologies and nascent philosophies which are 
 bound up together even in the first and oldest Yeda. The 
 prevailing principle seems to be, that while the Nature- 
 gods, the Sky, Heaven, Fire, the Sun, the Dawn, etc., are 
 all separately adored, the particular god who is invoked 
 in any hymn is, for the time being, nearly always identi- 
 fied as supreme and universal. One god has many names, 
 and sometimes bears the name of another god ; metaphysical 
 ideas are deified ; and, in a very prominent manner, Agni 
 (or common domestic fire) is treated as the earthly re- 
 presentative of the Sun. Noble psalms of praise, and 
 
THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 275 
 
 touching entreaties for the forgiveness of sins, are made 
 to these beings when contemplated as supreme ; but the 
 whole system is evidently as yet inchoate and in a fluid 
 state. We cannot but surmise that, if at that period a 
 Zoroaster or Moses or Buddha had been born in the Pun- 
 jaub, he would have seized on the yet vague aspirations of 
 his countrymen, and moulded them into a defined creed. But 
 Brahminism was then, and has ever since been, a religion 
 (perhaps the only religion in the world), not tracing its 
 origin to one mediatorial prophet-soul. Everywhere else in 
 East and West we find faith clino'ino: to some one g-reat 
 name, some man or demi-god to whom weaker mortals look 
 and cry, " Thy God shall be our God : what thou hast seen, 
 that can we take on thy assurance ; " some Moses who has 
 seen Jehovah on the mount of vision, and the reflected glory 
 of whose face suffices to convince the herd. Brahminism 
 has had a host of major and minor prophets, during its five 
 and thirty centuries of sway, from the old Blshis who wrote 
 the Elg-Yeda to their followers who added the Upanishads 
 and Dharma Sastras, and the modern Brahmins who write 
 nothing at all. But it has had no Zoroaster, no Moses, no 
 Mahomet. 
 
 The modifications which the early Vedic faith underwent 
 in the course of ages offers a studj^ no less difficult than its 
 original form ; or rather formlessness. JN'ot a trace of the 
 Trimurti of Brahma, Seeva, and Ylshiiu, which now occupies 
 the summit of the Hindoo pantheon, can be found for ages 
 after the Vedic period, and the whole gross and hideous 
 mythology of later times was then unborn. 
 
 Taking these slight clues in hand the reader cannot fail to 
 be interested in the passages selected by Mrs. Manning, as 
 displaying the moral and philosophic feelings and thoughts 
 of the authors of the most ancient Yedas. These authors, 
 it appears, were seven, or (on better authoritj^, according to 
 
276 THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 
 
 Max Miiller) eight poets, called RisMs. The families of these 
 poets were in after-times all registered, and became the de- 
 positaries of the eight Mandalas or books, into which the 
 collection of hymns was divided. The most interesting of 
 these Rishis were two, to whose lives and doings constant 
 reference in after-times was made, namely Yasishta and 
 Yiswamitra. Strange to say, here almost in the earliest 
 glimpse of human religion we find the representatives of 
 the Priest and of the Prophet. Yasishta is the author of the 
 most touching hymns in the Yedas ; or as the Hindoos 
 would express it he is the Seer to whom they were divinely 
 communicated. " They are," says Mrs. Manning, " simple 
 genuine utterances, confessing sin, and yearning after an 
 unknown God." Yiswamitra, on the other hand, was a 
 powerful soldier, the originator of the great religious cere- 
 monies and the composer of psalms of the cursing order : 
 " May the vile wretch who hates us fall ! May his breath 
 of life depart ! As the tree suffers from the axe, as the 
 flower is cut off, as the cauldron, leaking, scatters foam, so 
 may mine enemy perish ! " ^ 
 
 So important were these two Pishis that their names 
 became typical in Hindoo story, and re-appear as living per- 
 sonages long ages after the date of the Yedas. In the Pama- 
 yana each of them plays an important and characteristic 
 part, much as the names of Isaiah and Daniel were revived 
 in writings supposed to carry on their ideas and sentiments. 
 
 In reviewing Mrs. Manning's quotations, the difficulty 
 must not be forgotten of obtaining an^^thing like a veritable 
 translation of a single sentence of an ancient book. Two 
 errors constantly beset all efforts to attain such an end. 
 One is the production of a mere cloud of words, each having 
 perhaps some pretension to be the best known rendering 
 of the original, but forming altogether in their syntax 
 
 1 Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, vol. i. p. 372. 
 
THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 277 
 
 something extremely like nonsense. Sucli translations the 
 English reader very properly declines to accept as the preg- 
 nant sentences which have held their place as inspired 
 oracles among civilized nations for thousands of years. The 
 other error is the rendering of the ancient book, not only into 
 the words, but into the thoughts of modern Europe, so that we 
 possess in the supposed translation, not what an Eastern poet 
 said thirty centuries ago, but what an Englishman would 
 say for him if set down with the heads of his subject 
 dictated. This last error was more common among the 
 older generation of scholars than the present, and few things 
 are more mortifying to the humble student who has built 
 up his theories of ancient religion and morality on the sup- 
 posed fidelity of their translations than to find the ground 
 taken from under him by a new translator who assures him 
 that the text in question is a mere Christian paraphrase of 
 the original, and that there is nothing in the Sanskrit or Zend 
 to warrant his deductions. For an example of this sort of 
 thing we have no need to go beyond the famous Gayatri, or 
 holiest text of the Vedas, in the third Mandala of the Eig- 
 Veda, a verse specially interesting, as it has been repeated 
 by millions of pious Hindoos every morning for at least 
 three thousand years. It was translated by Sir William 
 Jones thus : " Let us adore the supremacy of that Divine 
 Sun, the Godhead, who illuminates all, who recreates all, 
 from whom all proceed, to whom all must return ; whom we 
 invoke to direct our understandings aright in our progress 
 towards His holy seat." ^ Our present authoress, follow- 
 ing (doubtless correctly) the greater accuracy of Professor 
 Wilson,^ gives us this magnificent praj^er reduced to the 
 following distressing dimensions : "We meditate on that 
 desirable light of the divine Savitri (the Sun- God), who 
 influences our pious rites " ! 
 
 1 Works, vol. xiii. p. 367. * Works, vol. xiii. p. 367. 
 
278 THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 
 
 The secret of the rise and progress of the priesthood in 
 India, till it culminated in the monstrous usurpation of the 
 Brahmins of recent ages, is a problem full of interest, 
 and not devoid of instruction even for us in England 
 in the nineteenth century. Nothing can be more anti- 
 historical than the notion of Yoltaire and his compeers 
 that the various priesthoods of Heathendom, the bonzes, 
 talapoins, and Druids, whom he so delighted to ridicule and 
 abuse, were thoroughly wide-awake sceptics, wholly free 
 from the superstitions of their flocks and playing upon them 
 with conscious hypocrisy. Common sense shows us that 
 even the foremost men of each age and country have their 
 minds so imbued and dyed with the belief and sentiments 
 among whicb they have been brought up that it is at most 
 only a question of a few shades lighter or darker between 
 them and their contemporaries and compatriots. The exer- 
 cise of the pi'iestly office tends probably in a greater degree 
 than that of any other profession to impress the character, 
 and create a new type for itself. But the priestly mind so 
 moulded, is the reverse of a sceptical one. It was because 
 the French abbes were so little like priests, and so much 
 like men of the world, that they shrugged their shoulders 
 at the Mass. Human nature, ecclesiastical or otherwise, 
 leads men to magnify, not to disparage, their own func- 
 tions. " Nothing like leather," cries the shoemaker ; and 
 it would be marvellous indeed if the individual who is 
 recognized by others as exercising the highest of all pos- 
 sible offices, even that of an Ambassador of Heaven, should 
 make light of his mission. St. Paul thought it was 
 actually a logical argument to prove immortality, that 
 " if the dead rise not, then are we of all men the most 
 miserable." Every minister of religion must similarly feel 
 driven to believe that the faith to which his whole life 
 is devoted is true, or else he is of all men most silly; — 
 
TEE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 279 
 
 instead of (as lie constantly affirms) all men the only one 
 truly wise. 
 
 The Brahmins were then undoubtedly men who believed 
 in themselves, their gods, and their office. But such genuine 
 faith by no means excluded an equally clear confidence in 
 the utility of judicious appeals to the hopes and fears of their 
 disciples, entailing the usual amount of impudent assertion 
 of special Divine favour, and superstitious reliance on magi- 
 cal ceremonies. Here in the very dawn of the world we 
 find the two leading features of priestcraft fully marked 
 already. The priest places himself as the indispensable 
 mediator between the layman and the Deity ; and his power 
 to influence the gods is exercised through the medium 
 of sacramental rites, to which he affirms that he alone can 
 give efficacy. 
 
 Among the earliest functions of the Indian priestly tribe 
 was that of Purohita or house-priest attached to a princely 
 household. An old Aryan, like an old Israelite, thought 
 that good fortune would surely befall him if he could 
 but have " a Levite to be his priest " ; and the Hindoo 
 Levite was in no way slow to impress on him the truth 
 of such a conviction. Accordingly the Rishi Vamadeva 
 says (p. 70) : 
 
 The king before whom there walks a priest lives well established in 
 his own house ; to him the earth yields for ever, and before him the 
 people bow of their own accord. Unopposed he conquers treasures. 
 The gods protect him. 
 
 Threats against recalcitrants who would not pay priestly 
 dues were of corresponding strength. In the Rig-Yeda, x. 
 160, a wealthy man who offers no libation is " grasped in the 
 fist by Indra and slain.'' Complaints of " niggards " and 
 " men who give nothing " are as common as in the addresses 
 of Irish parish priests from their altars. If a wicked king 
 eat • a Brahmin's cow he is assured he will find the beef 
 
280 THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 
 
 poisonous. " The priest's tongue is a bow-string', his yoice 
 is a barb, and his wind-pipe is an arrow-point smeared with 
 fire." In the Atharva-Veda (v. 18), it is declared that, 
 " Whenever a king fancying himself mighty seeks to devour 
 a Brahmin, his kingdom is broken up. Ruin overflows it as 
 water swamps a leaky boat." Highly edifying tales of kings 
 who gave their priests fabulous bribes of thousands of girls 
 and tens of thousands of elephants, and were divinely re- 
 warded accordingly, are likewise plentiful. The last chapter 
 of the Aitareya Brahmana tells us that, " The gods do not 
 eat the food of a king who keeps no house-priest. Even 
 when not intending to make a sacrifice, a king should ap- 
 point a house-priest." Nor is it only in purse that the king 
 has to pay for the spiritual advantages, but also in person. 
 One part of the ceremony of appointing a house-priest re- 
 quires that the king wash the holy man's feet : doubtless 
 a wholesome exercise of humility wherewith to commence 
 future relations. 
 
 But the Brahmins evidently placed their grand reliance, 
 beyond what threats and promises could afibrd them, on the 
 influence to be obtained through the use of an elaborate 
 and splendid cultus. The principle in human nature which 
 leads us to feel attachment for whatever costs us much, 
 has been doubtless understood by the founders of all religions. 
 How much of the Jews' devotion to their faith has been due, 
 not only to its purity and gi-andeur, but also to the sharpness 
 of the impression ploughed into their minds during thirty 
 centuries by the perpetual repetition of the Mosaic feasts 
 and ceremonies, it would be impossible to say. As one 
 of the ablest living Jews, Philipssohn, has remarked, these 
 rites built up the nation into a citadel, wherein the truth 
 of the Divine Unity was lodged, to be preserved for ever 
 as in the fortress of the human race. 
 
 And to the natural influence of ceremonies on the minds 
 
THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 281 
 
 of tlie men who share in their performance, the Brahmins 
 added the wildest belief in their efficacy as celestial machinery 
 capable of compelling the Deity. Few weaknesses of human 
 nature afford a more curious study than this, the all but 
 ubiquitous belief in the efficacy of magic ceremonies, as 
 contradistinguished from spiritual prayer. That a man, 
 himself capable of being moved by the entreaty of his 
 children, should believe that his Creator may be touched 
 by his own imploring cry is natural and obvious. But 
 that the same man, who would only be vexed by the 
 performance before him of unmeaning and wearisome cere- 
 monial antics, should suppose that a higher being than 
 himself takes especial delight in them, and becomes through 
 their means favourable to the antic-maker's wishes, this is 
 truly paradoxical. Yet the belief seems almost ineradicable ! 
 In vain for three thousand years have the world's greatest 
 projohets denounced it. Isaiah and Micah might as well 
 have held their peace for all the attention which Europe 
 or Asia have paid to their arguments. At this very hour, 
 a not inconsiderable section of the national church of this 
 Protestant country labours with might and main to revive 
 the faith in the magical efficacy of one class of such ob- 
 servances ; and to send us back from beautiful symbols of 
 self-abnegation and self- consecration to the heathenism of 
 "feeding on a sacrifice," precisely as if no one had ever 
 asked, "Of what avail your sacrifices? Cease to do evil. 
 Learn to do well." 
 
 In no religion does the notion of formal sacrifice seem 
 to have reached a greater height of absurdity than in 
 Brahminism. Southey's " Curse of Kehama " has rendered 
 some notion of it familiar to us. "He who knows the proper 
 application of sacrifice," says Haug, " is in fact considered 
 as the real master of the world, for any desire he can enter- 
 tain may be thus gratified. The Yajna (sacrifice) taken as 
 
282 THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 
 
 a whole is looked on as a machine every piece of which 
 must tally with another ; or as a staircase by which one may 
 ascend to heaven. It exists from eternity. The creation 
 of the world is the fruit of sacrifice." This wonder-working 
 sacrifice is, alas ! all the time, not a grand act of devotion 
 or self-immolation, but simply the accurate performance of 
 a complicated ritual observance involving in one case the 
 slaughter of a horse, and in another the preparation and 
 drinking of the juice of a particular herb. In the fifth 
 chapter of her book, Mrs. Manning has given us very curious 
 details of the forms belonging to the most interesting of 
 these rites, the Soma-sacrifice, accompanied by a plan of 
 the hall or inclosure prepared for its celebration. Her in- 
 formation is derived from Dr. Haug, who actually induced 
 a Srotriya Brahmin, properly qualified by "Apostolic 
 succession," to rehearse the whole ceremony for his edifi- 
 cation in a secluded corner of his own premises — of course 
 not without a suitable " consideration," though we presume 
 a lesser one than in the good old time when, we are told, 
 the honoraire of the Hotri, or celebrant, was a fee of one 
 hundred and twelve cows. Nothing was ever devised more 
 intricate than these rites with their innumerable little 
 fires and seats and posts, and processions up and down and 
 round about. The shortest period expended in their per- 
 formance is five days, and we are informed that they may 
 last a thousand years. The most curious point about the 
 whole ceremony however is one which I wish that Mrs. 
 Manning had brought out with greater distinctness. It is 
 that it includes both a Baptism and a Eucharist ; a rite 
 intended to signify Regeneration, and a rite consisting in 
 " feeding on a sacrifice " ; and drinking a liquid which is 
 itself frequently described as a god, and which receives 
 adoration. 
 
 The baptismal part of the ceremony, Mrs. Manning says, 
 
THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 283 
 
 was apparently suggested by " a feeling nearly akin to belief 
 in original sin " : — 
 
 The gods, and especially Vislinu and Agni (fire), are invoked to come 
 to the offering with the Diksha. Diksh^, we are told, means "a new 
 birth." Agni as fire, and Vishnu as the sun, are invoked to cleanse 
 the sacrificer. The worshipper is then covered up in a cloth, on the 
 outside of which is placed the skin of a black antelope ; and after a 
 certain time has elaj^sed and specified prayers have been recited, the 
 New Birth is considered to have been accomplished, and the regener- 
 ated man descends to bathe. 
 
 As the proper nourishment of a new-born child is milk, 
 the regenerated sacrificer is, after baptism, made to drink 
 milk by the aid of a special spoon. After many more 
 tedious operations, he is prepared for the great ceremony 
 of the fifth day, when the Soma is consecrated by the seven 
 assistant priests, and drunk by them and the sacrificer at 
 morning, midday and evening. Our authoress has given 
 us a drawing of the plant from which the Soma juice is 
 crushed, and we are informed in a note, that it is the As- 
 clepias Acida of Roxburgh, now more commonly called the 
 Sarcostema Yiminalis, or Sarcostema Brevistigraa. It has 
 hardly perceptible leaves, small sweet white flowers, and 
 yields a pure milky juice of an acid flavour in great abundance. 
 It grows on the hills of the Punjaub and the Coromandel 
 coast ; but to make it sacrificially efiicacious, it must, like 
 the mandrake, be "plucked by night," by moonlight, and 
 torn up by the roots, not cut down. When so gathered 
 it must be carried on a cart drawn by two he- goats. The 
 Soma thus obtained is much more in the Brahmin theology 
 than a mere object of sacrifice or symbol. All other things 
 connected with sacrifice, the horn, the post, the kettle, 
 and even the ladle, are all praised in extravagant terms 
 as sacred ; but the Soma alone " becomes an independent 
 deity. The beverage is divine ; it purifies, it is a water of 
 
284 THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 
 
 life, it gives health and immortality." Muir has translated 
 a hymn concerning it from the Rig-Yeda, viii. 88 : — 
 
 We've quaffed the Soma bright, 
 
 And are immortal grown ; 
 We've entered into hght, 
 
 And all the gods have known. 
 What mortal now can harm, 
 
 Or foeman vex us more 1 
 Through thee beyond alarm, 
 
 Immortal God ! we soar. 
 
 I have discussed in a preceding essay the obscure question 
 of the nature of the original sacred plant for which the 
 Brahmins seem to have substituted the Asclepias. The juice 
 of the latter does not appear to be intoxicating, as the true 
 Soma must undoubtedly have been. 
 
 The third means by which the Brahmins assured their 
 power was also not without significance. They did not 
 approve of "secular education." Like M. Dupanloup, they 
 desired that the young should be brought up very literally 
 " aux genoux de I'eglise." " Godless Colleges " were un- 
 heard of in Ancient India. The laborious care with which 
 all students were aihliated to "spiritual fathers," and in- 
 structed by them in the duty of ordering themselves lowly 
 and reverently to pastors and masters, is extremely clear. 
 There never was, and never could be, a " Young India," till 
 English rule had left space for the growth of so portentous 
 a plant. Every youthful Brahmin was required to live 
 twelve years with his Brahmin tutor, called his Guroo, 
 and was jjermitted to spend forty-eight years, if he pleased, 
 as a student. The lessons consisted mainly in the ac- 
 quirement of the holy verses orally and by heart. There 
 were also " Parishads " or universities for older students ; 
 institutions whose fame still lingers in the north-west of 
 India. 
 
THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 285 
 
 I now proceed to offer, following our authoress's guidance, 
 a brief synopsis of Sanskrit literature. 
 
 At the head of all, and always assigned by far the highest 
 honours, are the Four Yedas. 
 
 1. The Rig -Veda, the most ancient and sacred of all 
 Sanskrit books. It consists of all the oldest hymns. 
 
 2. The Sama- Veda. This book consists of hymns, nearly 
 all of which are also to be found in the Rig- Veda, but are 
 here arranged in order to be chaunted by the priests. 
 
 3. The Yajur- Veda consists of various rituals and liturgies. 
 The whole of this Yeda is considerably more recent than the 
 two former. As already remai'ked, the institution of caste 
 first appears in it. The Yajur-Yeda is itself of two distinct 
 epochs — the older portion is called the Black, and the latter 
 the White Yajur-Yeda. As the sacrificial Yeda (as its name 
 imports), it obtains great respect, and is spoken of by some 
 of the commentators as superior to all the other Yedas ; just 
 as the Book of Leviticus might have been perhaps regarded 
 by a Babbin as more important than the Psalms. 
 
 4. The Atharva- Veda, consisting of both hymns and prose 
 pieces, belonging to a later age and marked by a peculiarly 
 servile and cringing spirit. 
 
 Added to the Sanhita or hymns which it contains, each 
 Yeda has a portion called its Bmhinana. 
 
 The Aitareya Brahmana, belonging to the Big- Yeda, con- 
 sists of eight books of prayers, pi'oper for the Soma saci'ifice ; 
 and narrations connected with it and other sacrifices. 
 
 The Sama- Yeda has eight Brahmanas attached to it ; but 
 their contents are not fully known. They appear to refer to 
 various incantations. 
 
 The Satapatha Brahmana belongs to the White or later 
 Yajur-Yeda. It describes sundry pastoral festivals and cere- 
 monies, especially those of the full moon. The most im- 
 portant portion, however, consists of strange speculations on 
 
286 THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 
 
 the origin of things. Some of these are wild in the extreme. 
 " Prajapati," for instance, the source of all created things, is 
 himself described as the seven Rishis in one person ; while 
 other notions about sin, death, and immortality, are to us 
 quite inexplicable. In this Brahmana we find many allusions 
 to Manu, the originator of all worship ; the ancestor of the 
 Aryan Hindoos ; the original Man, from whom the Sanskrit? 
 and our own word for a human being, is derived. The 
 German Mannus, the ancestor of the Teutons, can hardly fail 
 to be identified with this mythological patriarch of the whole 
 Aryan family. 
 
 Again, beyond the four Yedas and their Brahmanas, the 
 next order of compositions are mystic writings called Aran- 
 yakas and Ujxiiiishads, supposed to be supplementary to the 
 former scriptures. One of these, the Brihad Amnyalxa, con- 
 tains a passage so curious that I cannot pass it over. It is 
 in the form of a dialogue between a Brahmin and his wife. 
 The wife asks : — 
 
 " "What my lord knoweth of immortality may lie tell me ? " 
 Yajnavalkya replied : " Thou, who art truly dear to me, thou speakest 
 dear words. Sit down. I will explain it to thee. ... A husband is 
 loved, not because we love the husband, but because we love in him the 
 Divine Spirit. A wife is loved, not because we love her, but because 
 we love in her the Divine Spirit. ... It is with us when we enter the 
 Divine Spirit, as if a lump of salt was thrown into the sea. It cannot 
 be taken out again. The water becomes salt, but the salt disappears. 
 When we have passed away, there is no longer any name. This I tell 
 thee, my wife." 
 
 Maitriyi said : " My lord, thou hast bewildered me, saying that there 
 is no longer any name, when we have passed away." 
 
 The philosophic husband replies to this feminine " longing 
 after immortality" by observing that what he has told her is 
 "suflBcient to the highest knowledge," and that as the Divine 
 Self is all in all, there cannot be any other immortality for 
 man than that of the lump of salt. " Having said this, 
 
THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 287 
 
 Yajnavalkj'-a left his wife for ever and went into the solitude 
 of the forests." A very logical conclusion ! Other people 
 beside the poor puzzled wife (our authoress observes) were 
 dissatisfied as time went on with the salt theory of existence, 
 and the doctrine of transmigration was projected out of their 
 aspirations, till it became at last a portion of the national 
 creed, in whose earlier form it had no place. " A living 
 dog," said the Jew, " is better than a dead lion." " It is 
 better to live an individual existence," said the heart of 
 Hindoo humanity, " even as a snake or a rat, than to be 
 absorbed and lost in Deity like the lump of salt in the 
 sea." 
 
 Beside the Aranyakas, and of the same character with 
 them, are the Upnnishads, which are the portion of Sanskrit 
 literature chiefl}^ studied by modern Hindoos, and possessed 
 of the greatest philosophical interest. The word Upanishad 
 is supposed to mean " secret," and the books bearing that 
 name are treatises attempting to solve the great secrets of the 
 universe ; the nature of God, and of the soul, and the history 
 of creation. They are somewhat numerous, and were com- 
 posed by various independent thinkers at different times. 
 The writers' names are never mentioned. " They appear," 
 says Mrs. Manning, " to have been possessed by an ardent 
 spirit of aspiration of which Sanskrit religious literature is 
 the result and the exponent." 
 
 Many of the Upanishads have been translated into English, 
 and contain some of the best known expressions of Hindoo 
 piety. In one of them, the Talavalcara Upanishad, the fol- 
 lowing fine thoughts concerning the nature of God are to be 
 found : — 
 
 Know that tliat which does not see by the eye, but by which the eyes 
 see — is Brahma. 
 
 Know that that which does not hear by the ear, but by which the 
 ears hear — is Brahma. 
 
288 THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 
 
 Know that that which does not breathe by breath, but that by which 
 breath is breathed — is Brahma. 
 
 . ... By him who thinks that Brahma is not comprehended, by 
 him He is comprehended. 
 
 He who thinks that Brahma is comprehended, he does not know Him. 
 
 Another Upanishad has the acute observation : "He who 
 has reverence acquires faith. The reverent alone possesses 
 faith. He who can control his passions possesses reverence." 
 
 After giving us a sketch of the Vedas, the Aranyakas, and 
 Upanishads, of which the above is an epitome, Mrs. Manning 
 proceeds with great clearness and ability to draw the outlines 
 of the Hindoo systems of philosophy. Into the rarefied air of 
 these acute speculations we need not ascend very far. The 
 underlying conception of all was the existence of a Supreme 
 Soul (variously called Brahma, Brihaspati, Yiswakarman, 
 Atman, Parabrahm, and Iswara), and that He is the only 
 reality, all else being perishable and delusive. More or less 
 personality is attributed to this Supreme Soul in different 
 systems. The metempsychosis, which was unknown to the 
 Rishis of the Yedas, here occupies a prominent place in 
 all speculations, and the means of escape from perpetual 
 transformation by absorption in the Supreme Soul is the 
 practical aim of every pliilosophy. 
 
 There are six recognized systems, or Darsanas, of Hindoo 
 philosophy. The first is the Sankhija system, taught by 
 Kapila. Its principal doctrine is, that rest from transmi- 
 gration is to be obtained by true knowledge, and that 
 true knowledge consists in regarding man and the world 
 as altogether worthless and perishable. Kapila added little 
 or nothing about the eternal Reality behind these transitory 
 things, and this (not unimportant !) portion of the scheme 
 was completed by Patanjali, forming the second or Yoga 
 system of philosophy. Patanj all's four chaj)ters are ap- 
 pended in the best manuscripts to the Sutras (or leaves) of 
 
THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 289 
 
 Kapila ; and form together the work called Sankhyapra- 
 vachana. 
 
 The third philosophic system is the Nyayi of Gotama, which 
 again was supplemented by the Vaiseshika or fourth system 
 of Kanada. These two Darsanas both occupy themselves 
 with elaborate investigations into the mental constitution of 
 man and the laws of logic, as means for the attainment of 
 true knowledge. Lastly, the fifth and sixth systems are 
 called the Purva Minianm and the Uttara 3Iimansa\ the 
 first originated by Jaimini, and the second by the eminent 
 sage Yyasa, whose name we find Indian Brahmos of the 
 present day associating with the Western prophets and 
 teachers, for whom they desire to express the greatest re- 
 spect. It is this last system, the Uttara Mimansa of Yyasa, 
 to which the title of Vedanta, familiar to English ears, is 
 applied ; the word meaning " the ultimate aim of the Vedas." 
 All the other systems of philosophy recognize the Vedas as 
 sacred, but the two Mimansas treat them as absolute revel- 
 ation, and are in fact commentaries and interpretations of 
 their earlier and later portions. " The Yedanta," says our 
 authoress, " simply teaches that the universe emanates in 
 successive developments from Brahma or Paramatman, the 
 Supreme Soul ; that man's soul is identical in origin with 
 the Supreme Soul ; and that liberation from transmigration 
 will be obtained so soon as man knoivs his soul to be one with 
 the Supreme Soul." The Yedanta system represents the 
 religion of Hindoo philosophy, or rather the religion of 
 philosophers. " To suppose that men who accepted the 
 Sankhya or JSTyaya systems would therefore take no interest 
 in the Yedanta would be somewhat like supposing that if 
 a man studied Aristotle he would necessarily despise the 
 Psalms." The great Hindoo theologian Sankara Achar3^a, 
 of whose poem, the Atma-Bodha, Mrs, Manning proceeds 
 to give an account, was an enthusiastic Yedantist. As a 
 
 19 
 
290 THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 
 
 glimpse of the ocean of uncertain chronology on which we 
 are sailing, we may remark that the age of this teacher is 
 placed by tradition at about 200 B.C., and that H. H. Wilson 
 brings him down to the eighth or ninth century a.d. 
 
 Before quitting the subject of Hindoo religious philo- 
 sophy, our authoress is obliged to interpolate a notice of a 
 most remarkable work — the BJmgavad Gita — whose assigned 
 place is an episode of the great epic poem, the Maha- 
 hharata ; but whose purport ' is wholly religious and philo- 
 sophical. The effect of the interpolation of such a treatise 
 into the middle of the heroic tale is, to our western 
 feeling, not a little grotesque ; and much as if a chapter 
 of Thomas Aquinas had got itself wedged into the "Nibe- 
 lungen Lied," or the opening of Hooker's " Ecclesiastical 
 Polity" were to be found in the middle of the "Faerie 
 Queen." The story of the Mahabharata has conducted 
 us to the eve of a tremendous battle. Two armies are 
 drawn up in array, the trumpet sounds for the charge, 
 and the combatants rush half-way to meet each other. At 
 this appropriate moment Arjuna, the hero, bids Krishna, his 
 divine charioteer, stop and discuss with him the mysteries 
 of the universe, through eighteen chapters, terminating in 
 a grand solution of the — to us — all too familiar controversy 
 of Faith versus Works ! 
 
 Absurd as is this mise en scene, the poem in question 
 contains some of the noblest thoughts to be found in any 
 language. It has long been known by means of Wilkins' 
 translation to that rather small section of " general readers " 
 who peruse Eastern books. There are to be found in it such 
 passages as the following: 
 
 A man attains perfection by being satisfied with his own office, and 
 worshipping Him from whom all thhigs have their origin. Better 
 to perform one's own duty, though it be devoid of excellence, than 
 to do well the duty of another. Krishna says : " This is a kingly 
 
THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 291- 
 
 science and a kingly mystery. All this universe has been created by 
 me. All things exist in me. I am the father, mother, sustainer of 
 this universe. Even those who worship other gods worship me. . , . 
 I am the same to all beings. Even those who are born in sin, even 
 women and Sudras take the highest path if they come to me. 
 
 The eleventh chapter contains a very remarkable scene, 
 in which Krishna, at Arjuna's entreaty, shows himself in 
 his proper form : 
 
 Gifted with many mouths and eyes, with many wonderful appear- 
 ances, with many divine ornaments, holding many celestial weapons, 
 wearing celestial wreaths and robes, anointed with celestial perfumes, 
 the all-miraculous infinite Deity with his face turned in all directions ! 
 If the light of a thousand suns were to break forth in the sky at the 
 same time, it would be similar to the brilliance of that mighty One. 
 
 Those amongst us who feel disposed to despise such a 
 vision as evidence of heathenish conceptions of Deity may 
 perhaps do well to remember that the Hebrews, even while 
 they asserted that " no man could see God and live," yet 
 believed that the Seventy Elders on the Mount had " seen 
 the God of Israel," "as it were a jasper and a sardine 
 stone," and with " the appearance of fire." 
 
 The main drift of the whole Bhagavad Gita is to show 
 that the philosophy which taught that liberation comes 
 from knowledge, must yet be supplemented by obedience 
 and virtue. 
 
 Passing from both Yedas and philosophical Darsanas, we 
 arrive at the Puranas, which belong to a still later age — 
 probably about the ninth century a.d. They were eighteen 
 in number, and are, says AVilson, among the most popular 
 works in the Sanskrit language. Feasts are regulated by 
 them, and texts quoted from them have validity in civil as 
 well as religious law. Yishnu, often identified with Brahma, 
 is here the ruling god ; and the means of propitiating him, 
 or becoming united with him, occupy a large portion of the 
 contents of the Puranas. 
 
292 TEE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 
 
 Next below the Puranas come the Tanfras, which appear 
 to concern themselves with mystical and debasing rites. 
 VThile the Puranas are used by the educated classes, the 
 Tantras are " patronized by the less respectable members 
 of Hindoo society." 
 
 A very important class of books now comes into view, the 
 D/iarma Sastras or law-books of India. The first and chief 
 of these is the celebrated Institutes of Menu, translated by 
 Sir William Jones, and formerly assigned by Orientalists an 
 antiquity of B.C. 1200, but now brought down to a much 
 more recent date. The name of the book, says Mrs. Manning, 
 is itself a kind of pious fraud, for the " laws " are merely the 
 laws or customs of a school or association of Hindoos called 
 the Manavas, who lived on the banks of the Saraswati, and 
 were an energetic and prosperous people. Their system 
 seems to have worked so well that it was adopted by other 
 communities, and then the organizers announced it as a code 
 given to men by their divine progenitor Manu, or Menu. 
 They added also passages which assert the quasi divine claims 
 of Brahmins, but a great deal of this portion of the Code 
 seems to have existed only in theory, and never to have had 
 practical validity. In Sanskrit plays and poems, where the 
 real state of things is betrayed, weak and indigent Brahmins 
 are not infrequent ; and Sudras are found to have political 
 rights. The whole of the authoress's synopsis of this most 
 curious work amply deserves stud3^ Space can only be 
 spared here to remark on one of its topics ; the regulations 
 of domestic life. 
 
 The condition of women in India seems to have constantly 
 deteriorated since the Yedic ages. At the time of the 
 Institutes of Menu it had reached a stage of absolute subjec- 
 tion, but had yet something worse to fall to, the abjection of 
 the modern practice of incarceration for life, and death by 
 suttee. " Day and night," say the Institutes (chap. ix. 
 
THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 293 
 
 vv. 2, 3, etc.), " must women be held by tbeir protectors in 
 a state of dependence. Their fathers protect them in child- 
 hood, their husbands in youth, their sons in age. A woman 
 is never fit for independence. . . . Women have no business 
 with the texts of the Yedas. Having therefore no evidence 
 of law and no knowledge of expiating tests, sinful women 
 must be as foul as falsehood itself. . . . She who keeps in 
 subjection to her lord her heart, her speech and her body 
 shall attain his mansion in heaven. . . Even if a husband 
 be devoid of good qualities or enamoured of another woman, 
 yet must he be constantly revered as a god by a virtuous 
 wife." The Code does not hint at the practice of widow- 
 burning ; but by making the position of single women 
 and widows absolutely unbearable, the ground was laid 
 for the two great crimes of later ages against women, 
 viz., infanticide and suttee. The stupendous selfishness of 
 men, who were not content with reducing a woman, body 
 and soul, to the adoring and unreasoning dependence of 
 a dog during the life of her husband, but required her, 
 after his death, to " emaciate her body, live on flowers, 
 and perform harsh duties, till death," led to these not un- 
 natural results. They were the most mereifid mothers who 
 put their female children out of a woi'ld which offered them 
 no mercy ; and perhaps not the most unmerciful Brahmins 
 who urged the widows to terminate their miseries on the 
 funeral pile. The way in which, while all this was going 
 on, the great poets of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, and 
 the dramatists of later days, continued to idealize women, 
 and represent them as perfect angels of heroism and de- 
 votion, would be astonishing did we not remember that the 
 same thing happened in Greece ; and that Sophocles drew 
 Antigone, and Euripides, Alce&tis, when the real "woman 
 of the period " was either shut up in her (jyn(ehonifis, or 
 came out of it only as one of the Jietcerce. The man, as 
 
294 THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 
 
 a poet, liked to imagine woman free and noble. The 
 man, as a husband and citizen, was perfectly content to 
 keep her a prisoner for life and to leave her to be 
 burned to death with his corpse as her final reward and 
 glorification. 
 
 At the present day in India it is an ordinary thing for 
 a lady to be born in the upstairs zenana, and never once to 
 have trodden the earth, even of the most confined garden, 
 before she is borne to her grave. What misery existence 
 must be among a knot of women thus immured together 
 with nothing but their loves and hatreds and jealousies to 
 brood upon, is awful and piteous to think of. Every house 
 in India, belonging to the higher classes, must be a convent 
 peopled with Starrs and Saurins. That the whole population, 
 male and female, should be physically and morally weak 
 when their mothers have undergone for centuries such a 
 regime, is inevitable. The Hindoos have spoiled the lives 
 of their wives and daughters, and Nemesis has spoiled 
 theirs, and made them the easy prey of their Saxon con- 
 querors, whose ancestors were naked savages when they 
 were a splendid and cultured race, but whose women, even 
 in those old days of Tacitus, were " thought to have in them 
 somewhat of the Divinity." The marvel is not that Hindoos 
 are what we find them, but that any race can have survived 
 80 long such a monstrous infraction of natural laws. Most 
 marvellous of all is it, that Hindoo women with the "set 
 of their brains," as we should think, turned to idiotcy 
 through centuries of caged-up mothers, yet display, when 
 rare occasions ofier, no mean share of some of the higher 
 forms of human intelligence. At this moment the Brahmos 
 are congratulating themselves on the appearance of a Ben- 
 galee poetess who composes beautiful hymns suitable for 
 theistic worship ; and Mr. Mill has borne testimony to his 
 official experience in India of the extraordinary aptitude 
 
TEE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 295 
 
 for government of such Hindoo princesses as have ruled as 
 regents for their sons. " If," he says, " a Hindoo princi- 
 pality is strongly, vigilantly, and economically governed, 
 if order is preserved without oppression, if cultivation is 
 extending and the people prosperous, in three cases out of 
 four that principality is under a woman's rule. This fact — 
 to me," he adds, " an entirely unexpected one — I have 
 collected from a long official knowledge of Hindoo govern- 
 ments." 
 
 After the Institutes of Menu come the Codes of Yajna- 
 ralkya and Parasara. To all these are attributed the rank 
 of Smriti or Divine Revelation. But (as has happened else- 
 where) infallible books were found ere long to need infallible 
 interpretations ; and commentaries and digests of these in- 
 spired codes soon multiplied, and became almost as important 
 as the codes themselves. Mrs. Manning gives some account 
 of these, and then proceeds to write some singularly inter- 
 esting chapters on Hindoo Medicine, Astronomy, Grammar, 
 and Architecture. With regret I must leave this part 
 of her work aside as incapable of compression, and turn to 
 her second volume, which is devoted to what may be called 
 the secular literature of India, with a supplementary chapter 
 on Commerce and Manufacture. 
 
 The traveller who has familiarized himself with the streets 
 of beautiful Florence and proceeds from thence to Pisa, is 
 apt to feel somewhat confused as to identity of place. There 
 is the same Arno, and a very similar Lung-Arno with rows 
 of palaces. But the one city is lonely and strange and the 
 other bright and full of vigorous life ; and between the two 
 he feels as we do in a dream when we imagine we see a 
 place or person and yet find them altogether other than 
 we know them to be. Very similar sensations must surely 
 have been experienced by the European scholars who dis- 
 
296 THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 
 
 covered the great Hindoo poems, and, like the Ancient 
 Mariner, were the first 
 
 that ever burst 
 Into tliat silent sea. 
 
 Here were all the forms of art to which they had been 
 accustomed, and of which Greece was deemed the very 
 creatrix. Here were long grand Epics, and here were 
 noble dramas, and lyrics, and tales, and even fables, from 
 which those of ^sop seemed borrowed. It was another and 
 a complete cycle of literature ; yet, in each case, the resem- 
 blance was incomplete, the forms less perfect, the legends 
 more wild and seemingly often unmeaning; the unities 
 more neglected. That one great miracle-age of Grecian art 
 had not indeed repeated itself in India. Kalidasa could 
 not take rank beside Sophocles any more than the Rishis 
 of the Vedas could rank beside the Psalmists of Israel. But 
 yet there was power, beauty, originality in the Sanskrit 
 poems, such as almost constituted an equal wonder, falling, 
 as they did spontaneously, into such closely corresponding 
 forms. 
 
 The reader who will give the volume before us a perusal 
 cannot, we think, fail to be amazed at the richness of imagi- 
 nation and the delicacy of natural sentiment displayed in 
 the Hindoo poems. Unfortunately, the limited space of a 
 review necessarily forbids even an attempt to convey those 
 qualities, and the most which can be done here is to give 
 a bare resume of the character of the work whose choice 
 flowers Mrs, Manning has gathered into a splendid bouquet. 
 
 The two poems which bear to Hindoo literature the re- 
 lation which the Odyssey and the Iliad do to that of Greece, 
 and which have been almost equally prized by the nation 
 to which they belong, are the Ramayana and the Maha- 
 hharata. The age of both is presumed to be considerably 
 anterior to the Christian era ; and at aU events to be earlier 
 
THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 297 
 
 than that of the great Codes of Hindoo law. The Ramayana 
 is a complete poem, composed by the poet Yalmiki. The 
 Mahabharata is a vast piece composed at diflPerent times and 
 by different authors, some before and some after the age of 
 the Eamayana. The story narrated in the Ramayana, is 
 that of the hero Rama, now worshipped in India as a god, 
 and represented as one of the incarnations of Yishnu. He 
 is described as the son of the King of Ayodya (the modern 
 Oude), and is born, like most other heroes of fable, semi- 
 miraculously. The adventures of Rama and his faithful 
 wife Sita, are some of them touching, some absurd ; the chief 
 being the carrying off of Sita by Ravana, the demon-King 
 of Lanka, or Ceylon. To recover her, Rama enters into an 
 alliance with the king of the monkeys and invades Ceylon. 
 A bridge is formed of rocks (of course still in situ) over 
 which Rama and his quadrumanous friends make their way 
 and recover the dame, whose story has combined the mishaps 
 of Proserpine "with the destiny of Helen. Many parts of 
 this poem, even in translation, are full of grace ; and the 
 tenderness of parental and filial affection has hardly ever 
 been more beautifully described. 
 
 The Mahabharata is still larger than the Ramayana, con- 
 taining in its present form 100,000 stanzas. Its authorship 
 is attributed to Vj^asa, but, as mentioned above, it is un- 
 doubtedly the work of many hands. The quarrels of two 
 great allied families form the staple of the story ; its name 
 signifying "the great history of the descendants of Bharata." 
 The heroes are the five brothers, Pandavas ; and the heroine 
 is Drapaudi, a woman who is strangely represented as the 
 wife of all five. This trait of manners is the more re- 
 markable as modern Brahminical law is entirely opposed to 
 polyandry, and the Indian commentators are exceedingly 
 troubled at the incident in their great national epic. The 
 custom, however, still exists among the Buddhists of Thibet, 
 
298 THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 
 
 and the tribe of Nairs in Southern India ; and its appearance 
 in the Mahabharata proves the age of that great poem to 
 have been prior to that of the Institutes of Menu and the 
 other codes of Hindoo law. 
 
 After a series of wars whose narrative is interrupted by 
 many episodes (in one of which is the legend of a deluge), 
 the Mahabharata closes in a peculiarly striking manner. 
 The brothers Pandavas remain masters of the iield, and 
 kings of their native country, all the rival race being slain. 
 But "leanness enters into their souls," and they set off, 
 accompanied by Drapaudi and their dog, to walk to Mount 
 Meru, where Indra's heaven rises among the summits of the 
 Himalayas. They walk on in single file, till after long years 
 Drapaudi sinks down and dies ; and then each brother in 
 succession falls, till the eldest remains alone ; the mysterious 
 dog still following him. Indra now appears and offers to 
 bear the hero in his chariot to heaven. He asks that his 
 brothers and his wife may be taken there also. Indra tells 
 him they have already reached heaven through the portals 
 of the grave, and that he alone has been privileged to enter 
 it wearing his fleshly form. Then Yudhishthira asks that his 
 dog may accompany him. But Indra scornfully observes, 
 "My heaven hath no place for dogs;" whereupon the hero 
 says that " to abandon the faithful and devoted is an endless 
 crime." 
 
 Yon poor creature, in fear and distress, hath trusted in my 
 
 power to save it ; 
 Not therefore for e'en life itself will I break my plighted word. 
 
 Fortunately the dog turns out to be Yam a, the god of 
 Death, who has ever followed his steps hitherto (an alle- 
 gory in the vein of Bunyan), and marvellously sets the 
 hero free to accept Indra's invitation. But not even here 
 do his trials end. He enters heaven, and seeks instantly 
 for his wife and his brothers; but he is told they are in 
 
THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 299 
 
 hell ! " Then to hell will I go also," cries the hero, — like 
 Mr. Mill, — and thither he actually descends. But hell to 
 the righteous is only Maya (delusion). He and his beloved 
 ones are in paradise for ever. 
 
 There is something to my thinking so perfectly Teutonic 
 in all this, that I can hardly express my surprise at finding 
 it in an Eastern book. The distinct ideas of heaven and 
 hell, the nature of the trials offered to the hero, and his 
 sense of duty to his dog, would all seem natural in a German 
 story; but how strange a testimony do they bring to the 
 essential unity of the Aryan mind, occurring, as they do, 
 in a Sanskrit poem, to which we can attribute no later age 
 than the Christian era ! 
 
 The story of Rama and Sita is again treated in a third 
 and minor poem of later date called the Raghiivansa, attri- 
 buted to Kalidasa, the great dramatic poet ; and besides this 
 there are many other Kavyas or epics of less and lesser im- 
 portance. The subjects of most of them appear constantly 
 to hover round one or other episode of the E-amayana or 
 Mahabharata. 
 
 The Hindoo Drama was opened to Europeans nearly a 
 century ago by Sir William Jones's translation of its master- 
 piece, " 8akuntala" of which Goethe expressed the highest 
 admiration. In 1827 Professor Wilson published "Select 
 Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindoos," whose first play, 
 the celebrated " Toy-Cart," afibrds some indications whereby 
 to estimate the date of the golden age of the Indian drama. 
 Buddhism still exists among the characters of the piece, but 
 has lost its ascendancy, and Siva is the chief object of wor- 
 ship. These and other signs are believed to point to the 
 fourth century of our era for the date of the dramas in ques- 
 tion ; while Kalidasa, the greatest of the succeeding Sanskrit 
 dramatic poets, is held to have flourished about a.d. 500. 
 
300 THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 
 
 Hindoo dramas are neither tragedies nor comedies. The 
 grave and gay mingle in turn, but none of them end in 
 death, either on the stage or behind the scenes ; and Eastern 
 decorum shows itself in the prohibition of eating, kissing, 
 or sleeping before the public. They are, in short, very much 
 what they call themselves, " poems which can be seen." 
 Stage scenery there seems to be none. The acts of the 
 drama might not be less than five nor more than ten. In- 
 tervals too long to be imagined in the acts were understood 
 to take place between them. Men and gods were made to 
 speak Sanskrit ; women and slaves spoke Prakrit, a lan- 
 guage bearing to Sanskrit the relation of Italian to Latin. 
 Married women having passed the age of beauty being in 
 Hindoo imagination mere cumberers of the ground, cul- 
 tivated hetcerm appeared in India as in Greece, and the 
 " Toy- Cart " presents us with its Aspasla. There are certain 
 conventional characters on the Hindoo as on the classic and 
 romantic stage ; among them the Vita or parasite and the 
 Vidushaka or buifoon. The number of existing Hindoo 
 dramas is now small; whether many have perished or few 
 were ever composed is unknown. The " Toy-Cart " is 
 by an unknown author. Three dramas are attributed to 
 Kalidasa, and three more to another admired poet, Bhava- 
 bhuti. " Sakuntala " appears to be recognized as the most 
 beautiful ; but in it, as in all the rest, the use of supernatural 
 machinery is so exorbitant that it is hard for the slow 
 British imagination to keep sufficient pace with its trans- 
 itions to permit of much interest in its plot. Southey 
 seems to have wonderfully realized this element of wild 
 Hindoo fancy when he composed the " Curse of Kehama." 
 Miracles, however, like the " Curse," or even the gigantic 
 conception of Kehama multiplying himself into eight 
 Kehamas and driving " self- multiplied " 
 
 At once down all the roads of Padalon, 
 
THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 301 
 
 may be conceived ; and the apparition in a fiery chariot which 
 carries off Sakuntala admitted as legitimate stage practice. 
 But when we are called on further to believe that the desper- 
 ately enamoured king Dushyanta, almost immediately after 
 his marriage, miraculously forgets Sakuntala altogether, 
 and snubs her when she presents herself at court, our sym- 
 pathy in the subsequent adventures of the heroine becomes 
 languid, if not extinct. 
 
 Several centuries later than the age of Kalidasa was 
 written another Indian drama of an entirely different de- 
 scription. Its author was a poet named Krishna Misra, 
 supposed to have lived in the twelfth century a.d., and 
 the object of this work was the establishment of Yedanta 
 doctrine. It is in fact a religious allegory, like the Holy 
 War or Pilgrim's Progress ; its name signifies " The 
 Rising of the Moon of Awakened Intellect," and the 
 dramatis persona? are Delusion, the king, with his subjects 
 Love, Anger, Avarice, etc., and his allies Hypocrisy, Self- 
 importance and Materialism, and on the opposite side Reason 
 with an army of Virtues. The struggle between the rival 
 forces is sharp, but finally Tranquility enables Reason to 
 harmonize with Revelation (consummation sought in other 
 places besides India !), and thereupon the Moon of Awakened 
 Intellect arises and shines. Our authoress has given a full 
 and most curious account of this very remarkable piece, to 
 which we recommend every admirer of glorious old Bunyan 
 to refer. There is real wit in the Hindoo poet as in the 
 Puritan tinker. Hypocrisy is represented as a Brahmin, 
 and receives a message from his king as follows : — 
 
 Beloved Hypocrisy ! King Reason and his advisers have determined 
 to revive Awakened Intellect, and are for this purpose sending Tran- 
 quihty into holy places. This threatens destruction to all our kind, and 
 it behoves you to be specially active and zealous. You are aware that 
 no holy place on earth is equal to the city of Benares. Go then to 
 
302 THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 
 
 Benares, and exert yourself to frustrate the devotions of the pious 
 people there assembled. 
 
 To this address Hypocrisy replies that he has done what is 
 wanted at Benares so effectively already, that those who by 
 day attend the holy rites are by night the greatest of sinners. 
 
 Besides its Epics and its Dramas, Sanskrit literature boasts 
 also of its Lyric poetry. One poem of this class called the 
 " Messenger Church," attributed to Kalidasa, is greatly 
 praised by Mrs. Manning. Another, also by Kalidasa, " The 
 Seasons," is spoken of in rapturous terms by Sir "William 
 Jones, and by its English and German translators. 
 
 A more remarkable class of books, however, than the last 
 is that of Hindoo Fables. India is indeed the proper home 
 of the Fable. Between a.d. 531 and 599, the great col- 
 lection called the Panchatantra was translated into Pehlevi 
 at the command of Nushirvan, King of Persia, under the 
 name of Fables of Bidpai or Pilpay ; and it is chiefly to 
 these that the common tales of our nurseries are traceable. 
 What may have been the real age of the Panchatantra (or 
 Five Sections) is uncertain ; it preceded at all events the 
 collection of the Hiiopadem (Good Advice). Both sets of 
 fables are much alike, and arranged in a similar framework ; 
 namely, the instruction of a Brahmin to the sons of a king, 
 who are entrusted to him for six months' education in niti 
 (politics). The lessons so bestowed, it must be owned, are 
 somewhat Macchiavellian, and may be summarized, Mrs. 
 Manning says, in the following simple doctrine : '* Pogues, 
 if cunning, succeed. Simpletons, though good and learned, 
 fail. Good morals are allowed, however, to be good in them- 
 selves, and are to be preferred where no failure is risked." 
 
 Lastly, there exists in India a mass of fictions of the class 
 of the Arabian Nights, the most popular being " The Ocean 
 of the Streams of Narrative," " Twenty-five Stories told by a 
 Vetala," "Thirty-two Tales told by Images," and "Seventy- 
 
THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 303 
 
 two Tales of a Parrot." So concludes the vast cycle of 
 Sanskrit literature, having contributed to the library of 
 mankind nearly every known form of composition, saving 
 only a History. Neither ancient nor mediaeval India, so far 
 as we know, ever had an Historian or even an Annalist ; and 
 in the enormous mass of their relics we are left to pick out 
 as best we may from internal evidence the chronology even 
 of their greatest works. We know almost everything about 
 their minds, their opinions, their laws, even their lightest 
 fancies. We can reconstruct their whole existence probably 
 with greater accuracy than we can picture the lives of our 
 own ancestors in our own land a thousand years ago. But 
 the sequence of events, the wars and conquests, the dynasties 
 and revolutions which ordinarily fill for us the pages of the 
 past are, in the case of India, almost a total blank. 
 
 It must be confessed that the story of the Hindoo mind 
 as revealed in Sanskrit literature, cannot be contemplated 
 even in such a hasty review as the present, without a sense 
 of sadness and regret. That early dawn of religion which 
 breaks in the Vedas, instead of shining to the perfect 
 day of rational faith, w^as followed only by fitful gleams 
 of sunshine and cloud, and sank at last, as the ages went 
 by, into the thick darkness of unredeemed idolatry. The 
 one great reformation which alone ever broke the continuity 
 of Brahmin ecclesiastical history, the rise and supremacy of 
 Buddhism for a thousand years, passed away from India 
 like a breeze over a field of corn ; and no record save a 
 few old ruined topes remain to tell thereof. If we could 
 conceive of Protestantism flourishing for j'et twenty gener- 
 ations in England, and then being utterly swept off and 
 forgotten, and Catholicism reinstated over the land, with 
 only the mouldering dome of St. Paul's left to recall to the 
 antiquary the schism of the past, then we should have an 
 
304 THE RELIGION AND LITERATURE OF INDIA. 
 
 analogue of the marvellous story of the two great rival 
 creeds of the East. 
 
 But is there no lesson for us — even if we cannot stretch 
 imagination to such a catastrophe — in the example of India's 
 religious history ? What were the causes which led to the 
 deterioration of that vast Established Church, which in the 
 days of the Bhagavad Gita had teachers with the spirit of 
 prophets and the piety of saints ? The answer seems unmis- 
 takable. Religion fell wholly out of secular hands into 
 that of a priesthood, of the most powerful priesthood in the 
 world ; and what did it do with it ? It accomplished pre- 
 cisely the end for which all priesthoods are for ever striving. 
 It turned religion into a matter of rites and sacraments. Then 
 symbols became idols, and formal observances were exalted 
 above moral virtues ; and the India of to-day, with its three 
 million gods, its hideous idols, and its gross and cruel rites, 
 displays the outcome of the three millenniums of priestly 
 rule. 
 
 It is indeed time that a new reformation should arise in 
 India, capable of taking deeper root in human nature than 
 Buddhism, with its sleeping deity and Nirvana paradise, 
 was ever qualified to do. I rejoice to believe that we 
 see the beginning of such a reformation in the noble work 
 of Keshub Chunder Sen and the Brahmos of India. 
 
ESSAY XL 
 
 UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 
 
 A PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY. 
 
 The old Hebrew necromancers were said to obtain oracles 
 by means of Teraphim. A Terapli was the decapitated head 
 of a child, placed on a pillar and compelled by magic to 
 reply to the questions of the sorcerer. Let us suppose, for 
 the sake of illustration, that the legends of such enchant- 
 ments rest on some groundwork of fact ; and that it might 
 be possible, by galvanism or similar agency, to make a 
 human corpse speak, as a dead sheep may be made to bleat. 
 Further, let us suppose that the Teraph only responded to 
 inquiries regarding facts known to the owner of the head 
 while living, and therefore (it may be imagined) impressed 
 in some manner upon the brain to be operated on. 
 
 In such a Teraph we should, I conceive, possess a fair 
 representation of the mental part of human nature, as it 
 is understood by a school of thinkers, considerable in all 
 ages, but especially so at present. "The brain itself," ac- 
 cording to this doctrine, " the white and grey matter, such 
 as we see and touch it, irrespective of any imaginary entity 
 beside, performs the functions of Thought and Memory. To 
 go beyond this all-sufficient brain, and assume that our con- 
 scious selves are distinct from it, and somewhat else beside 
 
 20 
 
306 UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 
 
 the sum-total of its action, is to indulge an hypothesis un- 
 supported by a tittle of scientific evidence. Needless to add, 
 the still further assumption, that the conscious self may 
 possibly survive the dissolution of the brain, is absolutely 
 unwarrantable . ' * 
 
 It is my very ambitious hope to show, in the following 
 pages, that, should physiology establish the fact that the 
 brain performs all the functions which we have been wont 
 to attribute to "Mind," that great discovery will stand 
 alone, and will not determine, as supposed, the further 
 steps of the argument ; namely, that our conscious selves 
 are nothing more than the sum of the action of our 
 brains during life, and that there is no room to hope that 
 they may survive their dissolution. 
 
 I hope to show, not only that these conclusions do not 
 necessarily flow from the premisses, but that, accepting the 
 premisses, we may logically arrive at opposite conclusions. I 
 hope to deduce, from the study of one class of cerebral phe- 
 nomena, a presumption of the sejjarahiUty of the conscious 
 Self from the thinking brain ; and thus, while admitting 
 that " Thought may be a function of Matter," demonstrate 
 that the Self in each of us is not identifiable with that 
 which, for want of a better word, we call " Matter." The 
 immeasurable difierence between such a remembering, lip- 
 moving Teraph as we have supposed and a conscious Man 
 indicates, as I conceive, the gulf leaped over b)'' those who 
 conclude that, {'/ the brain can be proved to think, the case 
 is closed against believers in the spirituality and immortality 
 of our race. 
 
 In brief, it is my aim to draw from such an easy and 
 every-day psychological study as may be verified by every 
 reader for himself, an argument for belief in the entire 
 separability of the conscious self from its thinking organ, 
 the physical brain. Whether we choose still to call the 
 
UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 307 
 
 one "Spirit" and the other "Matter," or to confess that 
 the definitions which our fathets gave to those terms have 
 ceased to be valid in the light of modern science — that 
 "Matter " means only "a form of Force," and that "Spirit" 
 is merely "an unmeaning term for an unknown thing" — 
 this verbal controversy will not in any way affect the drift 
 of our argument. What we need to know is this : Can we 
 face the real or supposed tendency of science to prove that 
 " Thought is a Function of Matter," and yet logically retain 
 faith in personal Immortality ? I maintain that we may 
 accept that doctrine and draw from it an indirect pre- 
 sumption of immortality, afforded by the proof that the 
 conscious self is not identifiable with that Matter which per- 
 forms the function of Thought, and of whose dissolution 
 alone we have cognizance. 
 
 My first task must be to describe the psychological facts 
 from which our conclusions are to be drawn, and which seem 
 in themselves sufficiently curious and interesting to deserve 
 more study on their own account than they have yet received. 
 Secondly, I shall simply quote Dr. Carpenter's physiological 
 explanation of these facts. Lastly, I shall, as shortly as 
 possible, endeavour to deduce from them that which appears 
 to me to be their logical inference. 
 
 The phenomena with which we are concerned have been 
 often referred to by metaphysicians, — Leibnitz and Sir W. 
 Hamilton amongst others, — under the names of "Latent 
 Thought," and " Preconscious Activity of the Soul." Dr. 
 Carpenter, who has discovered the physiological explanation 
 of them, and reduced them to harmony with other pheno- 
 mena of the nervous system, has given to them the title of 
 " Unconscious Cerebration " ; and to this name, as following 
 in his steps, I shall in these pages adhere. It will jDrobably 
 serve our purpose best, in a popular paper like the present, 
 to begin, not with any large generalizations of the subject, 
 
308 UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 
 
 but with a few familiar and unmistakable instances of men- 
 tal work performed unconsciously. 
 
 For example ; it is an every-day occurrence to most of 
 us to forget a particular word, or a line of poetry, and to 
 remember it some minutes or hours later, when we have 
 ceased consciously to seek for it. We try, perhaps anxiously, 
 at first to recover it, well aware that it lies somewhere hidden 
 in our memory, but unable to seize it. As the saying is, we 
 " ransack our brains for it," but failing to find it, we at last 
 turn our attention to other matters. By and by, when, so 
 far as consciousness goes, our whole minds are absorbed in 
 a different topic, we exclaim, " Eureka ! The word, or verse, 
 is — So and so." So familiar is this phenomenon that we 
 are accustomed in similar straits to say, " Never mind ; I 
 shall remember the missing word by and by, when I am 
 not thinking of it ; " and we deliberately turn away, not 
 intending finally to abandon the pursuit, but precisely as 
 if we were possessed of an obedient secretary or librarian, 
 whom we could order to hunt up a missing document, or 
 turn out a word in a dictionary, while we amused ourselves 
 with something else. The more this verj'- common pheno- 
 menon is studied, the more I think the observer of his own 
 mental processes will be obliged to concede, that, so far as 
 his own conscious Self is concerned, the research is made 
 absolutely without him. He has neither pain nor pleasure, 
 nor sense of labour in the task, any more than if it were 
 performed by another person ; and his conscious Self is all 
 the time sufiering, enjoying, or labouring on totally difierent 
 ground. 
 
 Another and more important phase of unconscious cere- 
 bration, is that wherein we find our mental work of any 
 kind, a calculation, an essa}^, a tale, a composition of music, 
 painting, or sculpture, arrange itself in order during an 
 interval either of sleep or wakefulness, during which we had 
 
UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 309 
 
 not consciously thought of it at all. Probably no one has ever 
 written on a subject a little complicated, or otherwise en- 
 deavoured to think out a matter any wa}^ obscure, without 
 perceiving next day that the thing has somehow taken a new 
 form in his mind since he laid down his pen or his pencil 
 after his first effort. It is as if a " Fairy Order " had come 
 in the night and unravelled the tangled skeins of thought 
 and laid them all neatly out on his table. I have said that 
 this work is done for us either asleep or awake, but it seems 
 to be accomplished most perfectly in the former state, when 
 our unconsciousness of it is most complete. I am not now 
 referring to the facts of somnambulism, of which I must 
 speak hereafter, but of the regular " setting to rights " 
 which happens normally to the healthiest brains, and with 
 as much regularity as, in a well-appointed household, the 
 chairs and tables are put in their places before the family 
 come down to breakfast. 
 
 Again there is the ordinary but most mysterious faculty 
 possessed by most persons, of setting over-night a mental 
 alarum-clock, and awaking, at will, at any unaccustomed 
 hour out of dreamless sleep. Were we up and about our 
 usual business all night without seeing or hearing a time- 
 piece, or looking out at the stars or the dawn, few of us 
 could guess within two or three hours of the time. Or 
 again, if we were asleep and dreaming with no intention 
 of rising at a particular time, the lapse of hours would be 
 unknown to us. The count of time in dreams is altogether 
 different from that of our waking life, and we dream in a few 
 seconds what seem to be the events of years. Nevertheless, 
 under the conditions mentioned, of a sleep prefaced by a 
 resolution to waken at a specified hour, we arrive at a know- 
 ledge of time unattainable to us either when awake or when 
 sleeping without such prior resolution. 
 
 Such are some of the more striking instances of uncon- 
 
310 UXCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 
 
 scious cerebration. But the same power is obviously at work 
 during at least half our lives in a way which attracts no 
 attention only because it is so common. If we divide our 
 actions into classes with reference to the Will, we discover 
 that they are of three kinds — the Involuntary (such as the 
 beating of the heart, digestion, etc.), the Voluntary, and 
 the Volitional. The difference between the two latter classes 
 of actions is, that Voluntary motions are made by permission 
 of the Will and can be immediately stopped by its exertion, 
 but do not require its conscious activity. Volitional motions, 
 on the contrary, require the direct exertion of Will. 
 
 jN'ow of these three classes of action it would appear that 
 all Voluntary acts, as we have defined them, are accom- 
 plished by Unconscious Cerebration, Let us analyze the act 
 of Walking, for example. We intend to go here or there ; 
 and in such matters " he who wills the end wills the means." 
 But we do not deliberately think, "Now I shall move my 
 right foot, now I shall put my left on such a spot." Some 
 unseen guardian of our muscles manages all such details, 
 and we go on our way, serenely unconscious (unless we 
 chance to have the gout, or an ill-fitting boot) that we have 
 any legs at all to be directed in the way they should go. 
 If we chance to be tolerably familiar with the road, we take 
 each turning instinctively, thinking all the time of some- 
 thing else, and carefully avoid puddles or collisions with 
 fellow-passengers, without bestowing a thought on the sub- 
 ject. Similarly, as soon as we have acquired other arts 
 beside walking, — reading, sewing, writing, plaj'ing on an 
 instrument, — we soon learn to carry on the mechanical part 
 of our tasks with no conscious exertion. We read aloud, 
 taking in the appearance and proper sound of each word 
 and the punctuation of each sentence, and all the time we 
 are not thinking of these matters, but of the argument of 
 the author; or picturing the scene he describes; or, possibly. 
 
UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 311 
 
 following a wholly different train of thought. Similarly in 
 writing with " the pen of a ready writer " it would almost 
 seem as if the pen itself took the business of forming the 
 letters and dipping itself in the ink at proper intervals, so 
 engrossed are we in the thoughts which we are trying to 
 express. "We unconsciously cerebrate that it will not answer 
 to begin two consecutive sentences in the same way ; that we 
 must introduce a query here or an ejaculation there, and close 
 our paragraphs with a sonorous word and not with a pre- 
 position. All this we do not do of malice 2}>'cp^nse, but 
 because the well-tutored sprite whose business it is to look 
 after our p's and q's, settles it for us as a clerk does the 
 formal part of a merchant's correspondence. 
 
 Music-playing, however, is of all others the most extra- 
 ordinary manifestation of the powers of unconscious cere- 
 bration. Here we seem not to have one slave but a dozen. 
 Two different lines of hieroglyphics have to be read at once, 
 and the right hand is to be guided to attend to one of them^ 
 the left to another. All the ten fingers have their work 
 assigned as quickly as they can move. The mind (or some- 
 thing which does duty as mind) interprets scores of A sharps 
 and B flats and C naturals, into black ivory keys and white 
 ones, crotchets and quavers and demi-semi- quavers, rests, 
 and all the other mysteries of music. The feet are not idle, 
 but have something to do with the pedals ; and, if the 
 instrument be a double-actioned harp, they have a task of 
 pushings and puUings more difficult than that of the hands. 
 And all this time the performer, the conscious performer, is 
 in a seventh heaven of artistic rapture at the results of all 
 this tremendous business ; or perchance lost in a flirtation 
 with the individual who turns the leaves of the music-book, 
 and is justly persuaded she is giving him the whole of her 
 soul. 
 
 Hitherto we have noticed the brain engaged in its more 
 
312 UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 
 
 servile tasks of hunting up lost words, waking us at the 
 proper hour, and carrying on the mechanical part of all our 
 acts. But our Familiar is a great deal more than a walking 
 dictionary, a housemaid, a valet de place, or a barrel-organ 
 man. He is a novelist who can spin more romances than 
 Dumas, a dramatist who composes more plays than ever did 
 Lope de Yega, a painter who excels equally well in figures, 
 landscapes, cattle, sea-pieces, smiling bits of genre and the 
 most terrific conceptions of horror and torture. Of course, 
 like other artists, he can only reproduce, develope, combine 
 what he has actually experienced, or read, or heard of. But 
 the enormous versatility and inexhaustible profusion with 
 which he furnishes us with fresh pictures for our galleries, 
 and new stories every night from his lending library, would 
 be deemed the greatest of miracles, were it not the com- 
 monest of facts. A dull clod of a man, without an ounce 
 of fancy in his conscious hours, lies down like a log at 
 night, and lo ! he has got before him the village green 
 where he played as a boy, and the apple-tree blossoms in 
 his father's orchard, and his long-dead and half-forgotten 
 mother smiles at him, and he hears her call him " her own 
 little lad," and then he has a vague sense that this is 
 strange, and a whole marvellous story is revealed to him of 
 how his mother has been only supposed to be dead, but has 
 been living in a distant country, and he feels happy and 
 comforted. And then he wakes and wonders how he came 
 to have such a dream ! Is he not right to wonder ? What 
 is it — ivho is it that wove the tapestry of such thoughts on 
 the walls of his dark soul ? Addison says, " There is not 
 a more painful act of the mind than that of invention. Yet 
 in dreams it works with that care and activity that we are 
 not sensible when the faculty is employed." ^ Such are the 
 nightly miracles of Unconscious Cerebration. 
 
 1 Spectator, 487- 
 
UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 313 
 
 The laws which govern dreams are more than half un- 
 explained, but the most obvious of them singularly illustrate 
 the nature of the processes of the unconscious brain-work 
 which causes them. Much of the labour of our minds, both 
 conscious and unconscious, consists in transmuting Senti- 
 ments into Ideas. Possessing a certain feeling, we ren- 
 der it into some intellectual shape more or less suitable. 
 Loving a person we endow him with all lovable qualities ; 
 hating him, we attribute to him all hateful ones. Out of 
 the Sentiment of the Justice of God men first created the 
 Ideas of a great Final Assize and a Day of Judgment. Out 
 of the Sentiments of His originating power they constructed 
 a Six Days Cosmogony. In the case of Insanity, when the 
 power of judgment is lost, the disordered Sentiment almost 
 invariably precedes the distracted Thought, and may be 
 traced back to it beyond mistake; as for example in the 
 common delusion of maniacs that they have been injured 
 or plotted against by those persons for whom they happen 
 to feel a morbid dislike. As our conscious brains are 
 for ever at work of the kind, "giving to airy nothing" 
 (or at least to what is merely subjective feeling) " a local 
 habitation and a name," so our unconscious brains, after their 
 wont, proceed on the same track during sleep. Our senti- 
 ments of love, hate, fear, anxiety, are each one of them the 
 fertile source of whole series of illustrative dreams. Our 
 bodily sensations of heat, cold, bunger, and suffocation, 
 supply another series often full of the quaintest sugges- 
 tions, — such as those of the poor gentleman who slept over 
 a cheesemonger's shop, and dreamt he was shut up in a 
 cheese to be eaten by rats ; and that of the lady whose hot 
 bottle scorched her feet, and who imagined she was walking 
 into Vesuvius. In all such dreams we find our brains with 
 infinite play of fancy merely adding illustrations, like those 
 of M. Dore, to the page of life which we have turned the 
 
314 UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 
 
 day before, or to that which lies upon our beds as we 
 sleep. 
 
 Again, the small share occupied by the Moral Law in 
 the dream world is a significant fact. So far as I have 
 been able to learn, it is the rarest thing possible for any 
 check of conscience to be felt in a dream, even by persons 
 whose waking hours are profoundly imbued with moral feel- 
 ing. We commit in dreams acts for which we should weep 
 tears of blood were they real, and yet never feel the slightest 
 remorse. On the most trifling provocation we cram an 
 offeiiding urchin into a lion's cage (if we happen to have 
 recently visited the Zoological Gardens), or we set fire to 
 a house merely to warm ourselves with the blaze, and all 
 the time feel no pang of compunction. The familiar check 
 of waking hours, "I must not do it, because it would be 
 unjust or unkind," never once seems to arrest us in the 
 satisfaction of any whim which may blow about our way- 
 ward fancies in sleep. Nay, I think that if ever we do 
 feel a sentiment like Repentance in dreams, it is not the 
 legitimate sequel to the crime we have previously imagined, 
 but a wave of feeling' rolled on from the real sentiment 
 experienced in former hours of consciousness. Our dream- 
 selves, like the Undines of German folk-lore, have no Souls, 
 no Responsibility and no Hereafter. Of course this obser- 
 vation does not touch the fact that a person who in his 
 conscious life has committed a great crime may be haunted 
 with its hideous shadow in his sleep, and that Lady Macbeth 
 may in vain try and wash the stain from her "little hand." 
 It is the imaginary acts of sleeping fancy which are devoid 
 of moral character. Now this immoral character of uncon- 
 scious cerebration precisely tallies with the Kantian doctrine, 
 that the moral will is the true Homo Noumenon, the Self of 
 man. The conscious Self being , dormant in dreams, it is 
 obvious that the true phenomena of Conscience cannot be 
 
UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 315 
 
 developed in them. Plutarch says that Zeno ordered his 
 followers to regard dreams as a test of virtue, and to note 
 it as a dangerous sign if they did not recoil, even in their 
 sleep, from vice ; and Sir Thomas Browne talks solemnly 
 of " Sinful Dreams," which, as their biographies abundantly 
 show, have proved terrible stumbling-blocks to the saints. 
 But the doctrine of Unconscious Cerebration explains clearly 
 enough how, in the absence of the controlling "Will, the 
 animal elements of our nature assert themselves — generally 
 in the ratio of their unnatural suppression at other times — 
 and abstinence is made up for by hungry Fancy spreading 
 a glutton's feast. The ^cant of sense of sin in such dreams 
 is, I think, the most natural and most healthful symptom 
 about them. 
 
 But if moral Repentance rarely or never follow the im- 
 aginaiy transgressions of dreams, another sense, the Saxon 
 sense of Dissatisfaction in unfinished work, is not only often 
 present, but sometimes exceedingly harassing. The late 
 eminent physician, Professor John Thompson, of Edinburgh, 
 quitted his father's cottage in early manhood, leaving half 
 woven a web of cloth oa which he had been engaged as a 
 weaver's apprentice. Half a century afterwards, the then 
 prosperous and celebrated gentleman still found his slum- 
 bers disturbed by the apparition of his old loom and the 
 sense of the imperative duty of finishing the never- completed 
 web. The tale is like a parable of what all this life's neg- 
 lected duties may be to us, perchance in an absolved and 
 glorified Hereafter, wherein, nevertheless, that web which 
 we have left undone will have passed from our hands for 
 ever. Of course, as it is the proper task of the unconscious 
 brain to direct voluntary labours started by the will, it is 
 easily explicable why it should be tormented by the sense 
 of their incompletion. 
 
 But leaving the vast half-studied subject of dreams, 
 
316 UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 
 
 which belongs rather to the class of involuntary than of 
 unconscious cerebration, we must turn to consider the 
 surprising phenomena of true Unconscious Cerebration, de- 
 veloiDcd under conditions of abnormal excitement. Among 
 these I class those mysterious Yoices, issuing we know not 
 whence, in which some strong fear, doubt, or hope finds 
 utterance. The part played by these Yoices in the history 
 both of religion and of fanaticism it is needless to describe. 
 So far as I can judge, they are of two kinds. One is a sort 
 of lightning-burst suddenly giving intensely vivid expression 
 to a whole set of feelings or ideas which have been lying 
 latent in the brain, and which are in opposition to the feel- 
 ings and ideas of our conscious selves at the moment. Thus 
 the man ready to commit a crime hears a voice appealing 
 to him to stop; while the man praying ardently for faith 
 hears another voice say, " There is no God." Of course 
 the good suggestion is credited to heaven, and the other 
 to the powers of the Pit, but the source of both is, I appre- 
 hend, the same, namely, Unconscious Cerebration. The 
 second class of Yoices are the result, not of unconscious 
 Reasoning but of unconscious Memory. Under some special 
 excitement, and perhaps inexplicably remote association of 
 ideas, some words which once made a violent impression on 
 us are remembered from the inner depths. Chance may 
 make these either awfully solemn, or as ludicrous as that 
 of a gentleman, shipwrecked off South America, who, as 
 he was sinking and almost drowning, distinctly heard his 
 mother's voice say, " Tom ! did you take Jane's cake ? " 
 The portentous inquiry had been addressed to him forty 
 years previously, and (as might have been expected) had 
 been wholly forgotten. In fever, in a similar way, ideas 
 and words long consigned to oblivion are constantly repro- 
 duced ; nay, what is most curious of all, long trains of 
 phrases which the individual has indeed heard, but which 
 
UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 317 
 
 could hardly liave become a possession of the memory in 
 its natural state, are then brought out in entire unconscious- 
 ness. My readers will recall the often-quoted and well- 
 authenticated story of the peasant girl in the Hotel Dieu 
 in Paris, who in her delirium frequently "spouted" Hebrew. 
 After much inquiry it was found she had been cook to a 
 learned priest who had been in the habit of reading aloud 
 his Hebrew books in the room adjoining her kitchen. A 
 similar anecdote is told of another servant girl who in ab- 
 normal sleep imitated some beautiful violin playing which 
 she had heard many years previously. 
 
 From Sounds to Sights the transition is obvious. An 
 Apparition is to the optical sense what such a Voice as 
 I have spoken of above is to the hearing. At a certain 
 point of intensity the latent idea in the unconscious brain 
 reveals itself and produces an impression on the sensory ; 
 sometimes affecting one sense, sometimes another, sometimes 
 perhaps two senses at a time. 
 
 Hibbert's well-known explanation of the philosophy of 
 apparitions is this. We are, he says, in our waking hours, 
 fully aware that what we really see and hear are actual 
 sights and sounds ; and what we only conjure up by fancy 
 are delusions. In our sleeping hours this sense is not only 
 lost, but the opposite conviction fully possesses us ; namely, 
 that what we conjure up by fancy in our dreams is true, 
 while the real sights and sounds around us are unperceived. 
 These two states are exchanged for each other at least twice 
 in every twenty-four hours of our lives, and generally much 
 oftener ; in fact every time we doze or take a nap. Very 
 often such slumbers begin and end before we have become 
 aware of them ; or have lost consciousness of the room and 
 its furniture surrounding us. If at such times a peculiarly 
 vivid dream takes the form of an apparition of a dead friend, 
 there is nothing to rectify the delusion that what we have 
 
318 UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 
 
 fancied is real, nay even a background of positive truth is 
 apparently supplied by tbe bedstead, curtains, etc., etc., of 
 whose presence we have not lost consciousness for more than 
 the fraction of time needful for a dream. 
 
 It would, I think, be easy to apply this reasoning with 
 great advantage, taking into view the phenomena of Uncon- 
 scious Cerebration. The intersection of the states wherein 
 consciousness yields to unconsciousness, and vice versa, is 
 obviously always difficult of sharp appreciation, and leaves 
 wide margin for self-deception; and a ghost is of all creations 
 of fancy the one which bears most unmistakable internal 
 evidence of being home-made. The poor unconscious brain 
 goes on upon the track of the lost friend, on which the 
 conscious soul, ere it fell asleej), had started it. But with 
 all its wealth of fancy it never succeeds in picturing a new 
 ghost, a fresh idea of the departed, whom yet by every 
 principle of reason we know is not (whatever else he or 
 she may have become) a white-faced figure in coat and 
 trowsers, or in a silk dress and gold ornaments. All the 
 familiar arguments proving the purely subjective nature 
 of apparitions of the dead, or of supernatural beings, point 
 exactly to Unconscious Cerebration as the teeming source 
 wherein they have been engendered. In some instances, 
 as in the famous ones quoted by Abercrombie, the brain 
 was sufficiently distempered to call up such phantoms even 
 while the conscious self was in full activity. "Mrs. A." 
 saw all her visions calmly, and knew that they were visions ; 
 thus bringing the conscious and unconscious workings of her 
 brain into an awful sort of face-to-face recognition ; like the 
 sight of a Doj)2)el-gd)iger. But such experience is the ex- 
 ceptional one. The ordinary case is, that the unconscious 
 cerebration supplies the apparition ; and the conscious self 
 accepts it de homte foi, having no means of distinguishing it 
 from the impressions derived from the real objects of sense. 
 
UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 319 
 
 The famous story in my own family, of the Beresford 
 ghost, is, I think, an excellent illustration of the re- 
 lation of unconscious cerebration to dreams of apparitions. 
 Lady Beresford, as I conjecture, in her sleep hit her wrist 
 violently against some part of her bedstead so as to hurt it 
 severely. According to the law of dreams, already referred 
 to, her unconscious brain set about accounting for the pain, 
 transmitting the Sensation into an Idea. An instant's sen- 
 sation (as Mr. Babbage, Sir Benjamin Brodie, and Lord 
 Brougham have all illustrated) is enough to call up a long 
 vision. Lady Beresford fancied accordingly that her dead 
 cousin, Lord Tyrone, had come to fulfil his promise of re- 
 visiting her from the tomb. He twisted her curtains and 
 left a mark on her wardrobe (probably an old stain she had 
 remarked on the wood), and then touched her wrist with 
 his terrible finger. The dreamer awoke with a black and 
 blue Avrist ; and the story took its place in the annals of 
 ghost- craft for ever. 
 
 Somnambulism is an unmistakable form of unconscious 
 cerebration. Here, while consciousness is wholly dormant, 
 the brain performs occasionally the most brilliant operations. 
 Coleridge's poem of Kubla Khan, composed in opiate sleep, 
 is an instance of its achievements in the realm of pure im- 
 agination. Many cases are recorded of students rising at 
 night, seeking their desks, and there writing down whole 
 columns of algebraic calculations ; solutions of geometric 
 problems, and opinions on difficult cases of law. Cabanis says 
 that Condillac brought continually to a conclusion at night 
 in his sleep the reasonings of the day. In all such cases the 
 work done asleep seems better than that done in waking 
 hours ; nay there is no lack of anecdotes which would point 
 to the possibility of persons in an unconscious state accom- 
 plishing things beyond their ordinary powers altogether. 
 The muscular strength of men in somnambulism and de- 
 
320 UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 
 
 lirium, their power of balancing themselves on roofs, and 
 of finding their way in the dark, are physical advantages 
 reserved for such conditions. Abnormal acuteness of hear- 
 ing is also a well-known accompaniment of them, and in 
 this relation we must, I conclude, understand the marvellous 
 story vouched for by the late Sir Edward Codrington. 
 The captain in command of a man-of-war was one night 
 sleeping in his cabin, with a sentinel as usual posted at 
 his door. In the middle of the night the captain rang 
 his bell, called suddenly to the sentinel, and sharply de- 
 sired him to tell the lieutenant of the watch to alter the 
 ship's course by so many points. Next morning the officer, 
 on greeting the captain, observed that it was most fortunate 
 he had been aware of their position and had given such an 
 order, as there had been a mistake in the reckoning, and the 
 ship was in shoal water, on the point of striking a reef. 
 "I ! " said the astonished captain, " I gave no order ; I ' 
 slept soundly all night." The sentinel was summoned, and 
 of course testified that the experienced commander had in 
 some unknown way learned the peril of his ship, and saved 
 it, even while in a state of absolute unconsciousness. 
 
 Whatever residue of truth may be found hereafter in the 
 crucible wherein spirit-rapping, i:)lancheUe, mesmerism, and 
 hypnotism shall have been tried ; whatever revelation of for- 
 gotten facts or successful hits at secrets, will, I believe, be 
 found to be unquestionably due to the action of Unconscious 
 Cerebration. The person reduced to a state of coma is liable 
 to receive suggestions from without, and these suggestions and 
 queries are answered by his unconscious brain out of whatever 
 stores of memory it may retain. AYhat a man never knew, 
 that no magic has ever yet enabled him to tell ; but what he 
 has once known, and in his conscious hours has forgotten, 
 that, on the contrary, is often recalled by the suggestive 
 queries of the operator when he is in a state of hypnotism. 
 
uncoj^scious cerebration. 321 
 
 A natural dream sometimes does as much, as witness all the 
 discoveries of hidden treasures, corpses, etc., made through 
 dreams; and generally with the aid of the obvious machinery 
 of a ghost. General Sleeman mentions that, being in pur- 
 suit of Thugs up the country, his wife one morning urgently 
 entreated him to move their tents from the spot— a lovely 
 opening in the jungle-where they had been pitched the pre- 
 vious evening. She said she had been haunted all night by 
 the sight of dead men. Information received during the day 
 induced the General to order an examination of the ground 
 whereon they had camped ; and beneath Mrs. Sleeman's tent 
 were found fourteen corpses, victims of the Thugs. It is 
 easily conceivable that the foul odour of death suggested to 
 the lady, in the unconscious cerebration of her dream, her 
 horrible vision. Had she been in a state of mesmeric tr'ance, 
 the same occurrence would have formed a splendid instance 
 of supernatural revelation. 
 
 Drunkenness is a condition in which the conscious self is 
 more or less completely obfuscated, but in which unconscious 
 cerebration goes on for a long time. The proverbial im- 
 punity with which drunken men fall without hurtinc, them- 
 selves can only be attributed to the fact that the conscious 
 will does not interfere with the unconscious instinct of fallino- 
 on the parts of the body least liable to injury. The same 
 impunity is enjoyed by persons not intoxicated, who at the 
 moment of an accident do not exert any volition in deter- 
 mining which way they shall strike the ground. All the 
 ludicrous stories of the absence of mind of tipsy men may 
 obviously be explained by supposing that their unconscious 
 cerebration is blindly fumbling to perform tasks needing 
 conscious direction. And be it remembered that the proverb 
 " m nno ceritas " is here in exact harmony with our theory. 
 The drunken man unconsciously blurts out the truth his 
 muddled brain being unequal to the task of inventino- a 
 
 21 
 
322 UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 
 
 plausible falsehood. The delicious fun of Sheridan, found 
 tipsy under a tree and telling the policeman that he was 
 " Wil-Wil-Wilberforce," reveals at once that the wag, if a 
 little exalted, was by no means really drunk. Such a joke 
 could hardly have occurred to an unconscious brain, even one 
 so well accustomed to the production of humour. Like 
 dreams, intoxication never brings new elements of nature into 
 play, but only abnormally excites latent ones. It is only a 
 Person who when drunk solemnly curses the " aggravating 
 properties of inanimate matter," or, when he cannot fit his 
 
 latch-key, is heard muttering, "D n the nature of things /" 
 
 A noble miser of the last century revealed his true character, 
 and also the state of his purse, whenever he was fuddled, by 
 murmuring softly to himself, " I'm very rich ! I'm very 
 rich ! " In sober moments he complained continually of his 
 limited means. In the same way it is the brutal labourer 
 who in his besotted state thrashes his horse and kicks his 
 wife. A drunken woman, on the contrary, unless an habitual 
 virago, rarely strikes anybody. The accustomed vehicle for 
 her emotions — her tongue — is the organ of whose services 
 her unconscious cerebration avails itself. 
 
 Finally, the condition of perfect ansesthesia appears to be 
 one in which unconscious cerebration is perfectly exemplified. 
 The conscious Self is then so absolutely dormant that it is 
 not only unaware of the most frightful laceration of the 
 nerves, but has no conception of the interval of time in 
 which an operation takes place ; usually awakening to in- 
 quire, "When do the surgeons intend to begin?" Mean- 
 while unconscious cerebration has been busy composing a 
 pretty little picture of green fields and skipping lambs, or 
 something equally remote from the terrible reality. 
 
 There are many other obscure mental phenomena which 
 I believe might be explained by the theory of unconscious 
 cerebration, even if the grand mystery of insanity does not 
 
UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 323 
 
 receive (as I apprehend it must do) some elucidation from 
 it. Presentiments and dreams of the individual's own death 
 may certainly be explicable as the dumb revelations of the 
 . diseased frame to its own nervous centre. The strange and 
 painful, but very common, sense of having seen and heard at 
 some previous time what is passing at the moment, appears to 
 arise from some abnormal irritation of the memory (if I may 
 so express it), evidently connected with the unconscious action 
 of the brain. Still more " uncanny " and mysterious is the 
 impression (to me almost amounting to torture) that we have 
 never for years quitted the spot to which in truth we have 
 only that instant returned after a long interval. Under this 
 hateful spell we say to ourselves that we have been weeks, 
 months, ages, studying the ornaments of the cornice opposite 
 our seat in church, or following the outline of the gnarled 
 old trees, black against the evening sky. This delusion, I 
 think, only arises when we have undergone strong mental 
 tension at the haunted spot. While our conscious selves 
 have been absorbed in speculative thought or strong emotion, 
 our unconscious cerebration has photographed the scene on 
 our optic nerves 2^0 ur jxtsser le iemj^s ! 
 
 The limitations of unconscious cerebration are as noticeable 
 as its marvellous powers and achievements. It is obvious at 
 first sight, that, though in the unconscious state mental work 
 is sometimes better done than in the conscious {e.g. the finding 
 missing names awake, or performing abstruse calculations in 
 somnambulism), yet that the unconscious work is never more 
 than the continuation of something which has been begun in 
 the conscious condition. We recall the name which we have 
 known and forgotten, but we do not discover what we never 
 knew. The man who does not understand algebra never 
 performs algebraic calculations in his sleep. No problem in 
 Euclid has been solved in dreams except by students who 
 
324 UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 
 
 have studied Euclid awake. The mere voluntary and uncon- 
 scious movements of our legs in walking, and our hands in 
 writing and playing music, were at first in infancy, or when 
 we began to learn each art, actions purely volitional, which 
 often required a strong efibrt of the conscious will for their 
 accomplishment. 
 
 Again, the failures of unconscious cerebration are as easily 
 traced as its limitations. The most familiar of them may be 
 observed in the phenomena which we call Absence of Mind, 
 and which seems to consist in a disturbance of the proper 
 balance between conscious and unconscious cerebration, 
 leaving the latter to perform tasks of which it is incapable. 
 An absent man walks, as we saj^, in a dream. All men 
 indeed, as before remarked, perform the mechanical act of 
 walking merely voluntarily and not volitionally, but their 
 consciousness is not so far off but that it can be recalled at a 
 moment's notice. The porter at the door of the senses can 
 summons the master of the house the instant he is wanted 
 about business. But the absent man does not answer such 
 calls. A friend addresses him, and his unconscious brain 
 instead of his conscious self answers the question a tort et a 
 travers. He boils his watch for breakfast and puts his eg^ 
 in his pocket ; his unconscious brain merely concerning 
 itself that something is to be boiled and something else put 
 in the pocket. He searches up and down for the spectacles 
 which are on his nose ; he forgets to eat his dinner and 
 wonders why he feels hungry. His social existence is 
 poisoned by his unconquerable propensity to say the wrong 
 thing to the wrong person. Meeting Mrs. Bombazine in 
 deep widow's weeds, he cheerfully inquires, " Well, and what 
 is Mr. Bombazine doing now ?" albeit he has received formal 
 notice that Mr. Bombazine departed a month ago to that 
 world of whose doings no information is received. He tells 
 Mr. Parvenu, whose father is strongly suspected of having 
 
UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 325 
 
 been a shoemaker, tliat " for his part he does not like new- 
 made men at the head of affairs, and holds to the good old 
 motto, ' Ne sutor ultra crepidam ; ' " and this brilliant ob- 
 servation he delivers with a pleasant laugh, giving it all 
 possible point and pungency. If he have an acquaintance 
 whose brother was hanged or drowned, or scraped to death 
 with oyster-shells, then to a moral certainty the subjects of 
 capital punishment, the perils of the deep, and the proper 
 season for eating oysters, will be the topics selected by him 
 for conversation during the awkward ten minutes before 
 dinner. Of course the injured friend believes he is inten- 
 tionally insulted ; but he is quite mistaken. The absent 
 man had merely a vague recollection of his trouble, which 
 unfortunately proved a stumbling-block against which his un- 
 conscious cerebration was certain to bring him into collision. 
 
 As a general rule, the unconscious brain, like an enfant 
 terrible, is extremely veracious. The "Palace of Truth" 
 is nothing but a house full of absent-minded people who 
 unconsciously say what they think of each other, when they 
 consciously intend to be extremely flattering. But it also 
 sometimes happens that falsehood has so far become second 
 nature that a man's very interjections, unconscious answers, 
 and soliloquies may all be lies. Nothing can be more remote 
 from nature than the dramas and novels wherein astute 
 scoundrels, in the privacy of an evening walk beside a 
 hedge, unveil their secret plots in an address to Fate or 
 the Moon ; or fall into a well-timed brain fever, and babble 
 out exactly the truth which the reader needs to be told. 
 Your real villain never tells truth even to himself, much 
 less to Fate or the Moon ; and it is to be doubted whether, 
 even in delirium, his unconscious cerebration would not run 
 in the accustomed ruts of fable rather than along the un- 
 wonted paths of veracity. 
 
 Another failure of unconscious cerebration is seen in the 
 
326 UNCO.YSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 
 
 continuance of habitual actions when the motive for them 
 has ceased. A change in attire, altering the position of 
 our pockets, never fails to cause us a dozen fruitless strug- 
 gles to find our handkerchief, or replace our purse. In 
 returning to an old abode we are sure, sooner or later, to 
 blunder into our former sleeping-room, and to be much 
 startled to find in it another occupant. It happened to me 
 once, after an interval of eight years, to find myself again 
 in the chamber, at the table, and seated on the chair where 
 my little studies had gone on for half a lifetime. I had 
 business to occupy my thoughts, and was soon (so far as 
 consciousness went) buried in my task of writing. But all 
 the time while I wrote my feet moved restlessly in a most 
 unaccustomed way under the table. "What is the matter 
 with me ? " I paused at last to ask myself, and then re- 
 membered that when I had written at this table in long 
 past days, I had had a stool under it. It was that particular 
 stool my unconscious cerebration was ^seeking. During all 
 the interval I had perhaps not once used a similar support, 
 but the moment I sat in the same spot, the trifling habit 
 vindicated itself afresh ; the brain acted on its old impression. 
 Of course it is as easy as it is common to dismiss all such 
 fantastic tricks with the single word "Habit." But the 
 word " Habit," like the word " Law," has no positive sense 
 as if it were itself an originating cause. It implies a per- 
 sistent mode of action, but affords no clue to the force which 
 initiates and maintains that action. All that we can say, 
 in the case of the phenomena of unconscious cerebration, is, 
 that when volitional actions have been often repeated, they 
 sink into the class of voluntary ones, and are performed uncon- 
 sciously. We may define the moment when a Habit is estab- 
 lished as that wherein the Volitional act becomes Voluntary. 
 
 It will be observed by the reader that all the phenomena 
 
UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 327 
 
 of Unconscious Cerebration now indicated belong to different 
 orders as related to the Conscious Self. In one order {e.g., 
 that of Delirium, Somnambulism, and Anaesthesia) the Con- 
 scious Self has no appreciable concern whatever. The action 
 of the brain has not been originated or controlled by the 
 will ; there is no sense of it either painful or pleasurable, 
 while it proceeds ; and no memory of it when it is over. 
 
 In the second order {e.g., that of rediscovered words, and 
 waking at a given hour), the Conscious Self has so far a 
 concern, that it originally set the task to the brain. This 
 done, it remains in entire ignorance of how the brain per- 
 forms it, nor does Memory afterwards retain the faintest 
 trace of the labours, however arduous, of word-seeking and 
 time-marking. 
 
 Lastly, in the third class, more strictly to be defined as 
 that of Involuntary Cerebration, {e.g., that of natural dreams), 
 the share taken by the Conscious Self is the reverse of that 
 which it assumes in the case of word-seeking and time- 
 marking. In dreams we do not, and cannot with our utmost 
 effort, direct our unconscious brains into the trains of thought 
 and fancy wherein we desire them to go. Obedient as they 
 are in the former case, where work was to be done, here, in 
 the land of fancy, they seem to mock our futile attempts to 
 guide them, Nevertheless, strange to say, the Conscious 
 Self — which knew nothing of what was going on while its 
 leg was being amputated under chloroform, and nothing of 
 what its brain was doing, while finding out what o'clock 
 it was with closed eyes in the dark — is here cognizant of all 
 the proceedings, and able in great measure to recall them 
 afterwards. We receive intense pain or pleasure from our 
 dreams, though we have actually less to do in concocting 
 them than in dozens of mental processes which go on wholly 
 unperceived in our brains.^ 
 
 ^ Keid boasted he had learned to control his dreams, and there is a story of a 
 
328 UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 
 
 Thus it would seem that neither Memory nor Volition 
 have any constant relation to unconscious cerebration. We 
 sometimes remember, and sometimes wholly forget its action ; 
 and sometimes it fulfils our wishes, and sometimes wholly 
 disregards them. The one constant fact is, that while the 
 actions are being performed, the Conscious Self is either wholly 
 uncognizant of them or unable to control them. It is either 
 in a state of high activity about other and irrelevant matters ; 
 or it is entirely passive. In every case the line between 
 the Conscious Self, and the unconsciously working brain is 
 clearly defined. 
 
 Having now faintly traced the outline of the psycho- 
 logical facts illustrative of unconscious cerebration, it is 
 time to turn to the brilliant physiological explanation 
 of them afibrded by Dr. Carpenter. "VVe have seen what 
 our brains can do without our consciousness. The way 
 they do it is on this wise (I quote, slightly abridged, 
 from Dr. Carpenter). 
 
 All parts of the Nervous system appear to possess certain 
 powers of automatic action. The Spinal cord has for primary 
 functions the performance of the motions of respiration and 
 swallowing. The automatic action of the Sensory ganglia 
 seems to be connected with movements of protection — 
 such as the closing the eyes to a flash of light — and their 
 secondary use enables a man to shrink from dangers of col- 
 lisions, etc., before he has time for conscious escape. Finally, 
 we arrive at the automatic action of the Cerebrum; and 
 here Dr. Carpenter reminds us that, instead of being 
 (as formerly supposed) the centre of the whole system, in 
 direct connexion with the organs of sense and the mus- 
 
 man who alwaj's guided his own fancy in sleep. Such dreams, however, would 
 hardly deserve the name. 
 
UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 329 
 
 cular apparatus, the Cerebrum is, according to modern 
 physiology,— 
 
 " A superadded organ, the development of which seems to bear a 
 prettj constant relation to the degree in which intelligence supersedes 
 instinct as a spring of action. The ganglionic matter which is spread 
 out upon the surface of the hemispheres, and in which their potentiality 
 resides, is connected with the Sensory Tract at their base (which is the 
 real centre of conveyance for the sensory nerves of the whole body) by 
 commissural fibres, long since termed by Reid, with sagacious foresight, 
 * nerves of the internal senses,' and its anatomical relation to the sen- 
 sorium is thus precisely the same as that of the Retina, which is a 
 ganglionic expansion connected with the Sensorium by the optic nerve.^ 
 Hence it may be fairly surmised — 1. That as we only become conscious 
 of visual impressions on the retina when their influence has been 
 transmitted to the centi'al sensorium, so we only become conscious of 
 ideational changes in the cerebral hemispheres when their influence has 
 been transmitted to the same centre ; 2. That as visual changes may 
 take place in the retina of which we are unconscious, either through 
 temporary inactivity of the Sensorium (as in sleep), or through the 
 entire occupation of the attention in some other direction, so may 
 ideational changes take place in the Cerebrum, of which we may be 
 unconscious for want of receptivity on the part of the Sensorium, but of 
 which the results may present themselves to the consciousness as ideas 
 elaborated by an automatic process of which we have no cognizance ." ^ 
 
 Lastly, we come to the conclusions to be deduced from the 
 above investigations. We have credited to the Unconscious 
 Brain the following powers and faculties : — 
 
 1. It not only remembers as much as the Conscious Self 
 can recall, but often much more. It is even doubtful whether 
 it may not be capable, under certain conditions, of repro- 
 ducing every impression ever made upon the senses during 
 life. 
 
 2. It can understand what words or things are sought to 
 be remembered, and hunt them up through some recondite 
 
 1 Report of Meeting of Royal Institution. Dr. Carpenter's Lecture, March 1, 
 1868, pp. 4, 5. 
 
330 UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 
 
 process known only to itself, till it discovers and pounces 
 on them. 
 
 3. It can fancy the most beautiful pictures and also the 
 most terrible ones, and weave ten thousand fables with in- 
 exhaustible invention. 
 
 4. It can perform the exceedingly difficult task of mental 
 arrangement and logical division of subjects. 
 
 5. It can transact all the mechanical business of walking, 
 reading, writing, sewing, playing, etc., etc. 
 
 6. It can tell the hour in the middle of the night without 
 a timepiece. 
 
 Let us be content with these ordinary and unmistakable 
 exercises of unconscious cerebration, and leave aside all 
 rare or questionable wonders of somnambulism and cognate 
 states. We have got Memory, Fancy, Understanding, at all 
 events, as faculties exercised by the Unconscious Brain. Now 
 it is obvious that it would be an unusual definition of the 
 word " Thought " which should debar us from applying it 
 to the above phenomena ; or compel us to say that we can 
 remember, fancy, and understand without " thinking " of the 
 things remembered, fancied, or understood. But Who, or 
 What, then, is it that accomplishes these confessedly mental 
 functions ? Two answers are given to the query, each of 
 them, as I venture to think, erroneous. Biichner and his 
 followers say, " It is our physical Brains, and these Brains 
 are ourselves." ^ And non-materialists say, " It is our con- 
 scious Selves, which merely use our brains as their instru- 
 ments." We must go into this matter somewhat carefully. 
 
 In a certain loose and popular way of speaking, our brains 
 
 are " ourselves." So also in the same way of speaking are 
 
 our hearts, our limbs, and the hairs of our head. But in 
 
 1 Biichner's precise doctrine is, " The brain is only the carrier and the source, 
 or rather the sole cause of the spirit or thought ; but not the organ which secretes 
 it. It produces something which is not materially permanent, but which con- 
 sumes itself in the moment of its production." — Kraft unci Stoff, chap. xiii. 
 
UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 331 
 
 more accurate language the use of the pronoun "I" applied 
 to any part of our bodies is obviously incorrect, and even 
 inadmissible. We say, indeed, commonly, " I struck with 
 my hand," when our hand has obeyed our volition. It is, 
 then, in fact, the will of the Self which we are describing. 
 But if our hand has been forcibly compelled to strike by 
 another man seizing it, or if it have shaken by palsy, we 
 only say, " My hand was forced," or '^ was shaken." The 
 limb's action is not ours, unless it has been done by our will. 
 In the case of the heart, the very centre of physical life, 
 we never dream of using such a phrase as " I am beating 
 slowly," or '*! am palpitating fast." And why do we not say 
 so ? Because, the action of our hearts being involuntary, 
 we are sensible that the conscious " I " is not the agent in 
 question, albeit the mortal life of that " I " is hanging on 
 every pulsation. Now the problem which concerns us is 
 this : Can we, or can we not, properly speak of our brains 
 as we do of our hearts ? Is it more proper to say, " I invent 
 my dreams," than it is to say, " I am beating slowly " ? I 
 venture to think the cases are precisely parallel. When 
 our brains perform acts of unconscious cerebration (such as 
 dreams), they act just as our hearts do, i.e. involuntarily; 
 and we ought to speak of them as we always do of our 
 hearts, as of organs of our frame, but not our Selves. When 
 our brains obey our wills, then they act as our hands do 
 when we voluntarily strike a blow ; and then we do right to 
 speak as if " we " performed the act accomplished by their 
 means. 
 
 Now to return to our point. Are the anti-Materialists 
 right to say that the agent in unconscious cerebration is, 
 "We, ourselves, who merely use our brains as their instru- 
 ments ; " or are the Materialists right who say, "It is our 
 physical brains alone, and these brains are ourselves " ? 
 With regard to the first reply, I think that all the foregoing 
 
332 UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 
 
 study has -gone to show that " we " are not remembering, oiot 
 fancying, not understanding, what is being at the moment 
 remembered, fancied, or understood. To say, then, that in 
 such acts " we " are " using our brains as our instruments," 
 appears nothing but a servile and unmeaning adherence to 
 the foregone conclusion that our brains are nothing else than 
 the organs of our will. It is absurd to call them so when 
 we are concerned with phenomena whose speciality is that 
 the will has nothing to do with them. So far, then, as this 
 part of the argument is concerned, I think the answer of the 
 anti-Materialists must be pronounced to be erroneous. The 
 balance of evidence inclines to the Materialists' doctrine that 
 the brain itself performs the mental processes in question, 
 and, to use Yogt's expression, " secretes Thought " automati- 
 cally and spontaneously. 
 
 But if this presumption be accepted provisionally, and the 
 possibility admitted of its future physiological demonstration, 
 have we, with it, accepted also the Materialist's ordinary 
 conclusion that tve and our automatically thinking brains 
 are one and indivisible ? If the brain can work by itself, 
 have we any reason to believe it ever works also under the 
 guidance of something external to itself, which we may 
 describe as the Conscious Self ? It seems to me that this 
 is precisely what the preceding facts have likewise gone to 
 prove — namely, that there are two kinds of action of the 
 brain, the one Automatic, and the other subject to the wiU 
 of the Conscious Self ; just as the actions of a horse are 
 some of them spontaneous and some done under the com- 
 pulsion of his rider. The first order of actions tend to 
 indicate that the brain "secretes thought;" the second order 
 (strongly contrasting with the first) show that, beside that 
 automatically working brain, there is another agency in the 
 field under whose control the brain performs a wholly differ- 
 ent class of labours. Everywhere in the preceding pages we 
 
VNCOFSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 333 
 
 have traced the extraordinary separation which continually 
 takes place between our Conscious Selves and the automatic 
 action of the organ, which serves as our medium of com- 
 munication with the outward world. We have seen, in a 
 word, that we are not Centaurs, steed and rider in one, 
 but horsemen, astride on roadsters which obey us when 
 we guide them, and when we drop the reins, trot a little 
 way of their own accord or canter off without our permis- 
 sion. 
 
 When we place the phenomena of Unconscious Thought 
 on one side, and over against them our Conscious Selves, 
 we obtain, I think, a new and vivid sense of the separation, 
 not to say the antithesis, which exists between the two ; 
 close as is their mutual interdependence. Not to talk about 
 the distinction between object and subject, or dwell on the 
 absurdity fas it seems to me) of the proposition that we our- 
 selves are only the sum-total of a series of cerebrations — 
 the recognition of the fact that our brains sometimes think 
 without us, seems to enable us to view our connexion with 
 them in quite a new light. So long as all our attention 
 was given to Conscious Thought, and philosophers eagerly 
 argued the question, whether the Soul did or did not ever 
 sleep or cease to think, it was easy to confound the organ 
 of thought with the Conscious Self who was supposed alone 
 to set it in action. But the moment we marshal together 
 for review the long array of the phenomena of Unconscious 
 Cerebration, the case is altered; the severance becomes not 
 only cogitable, but manifest. 
 
 Let us then accept cheerfully the possibility, perhaps the 
 probability, that science ere long will proclaim the dogma, 
 "Matter can think." Having humbly bowed to the decree, 
 we shall find ourselves none the worse. Admitting that our 
 brains accomplish much without our conscious guidance, will 
 help us to realize that our relation to them is of a variable — 
 
334 UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION. 
 
 an intermittent — and (we may therefore venture to hope) 
 of a terminahle kind. 
 
 That such a conclusion, if reached, will have afforded us 
 any direct argument for human immortality, cannot be pre- 
 tended. Though we may succeed in proving "that the 
 Brain can think without the Conscious Man," the great con- 
 verse theorem, " that the Conscious Man can think without 
 a Brain," has as yet received no jot of direct evidence ; nor 
 ever will do so, I hold, while we walk by faith and not by 
 sight, and Heaven remains " a part of our religion, and not 
 a branch of our geography." 
 
 But it is something, nay it is surely much, if, by groping 
 among the obscurer facts of consciousness, we may attain the 
 certainty that whatever be the final conclusions of science 
 regarding our mental nature, the one which we have most 
 dreaded, if reached at last, will militate not at all against 
 the hope, written on the heart of the nations, by that Hand 
 which writes no falsehoods ; that " when the dust returns 
 to the dust whence it was taken, the Spirit" — the Conscious 
 Self of Man — " shall return to God who gave it." 
 
JESSAY XII. 
 DEEAMS, 
 
 AS ILLUSTRATIONS OF INVOLUNTARY CEREBRATION. 
 
 In the preceding Essay I have endeavoured to range 
 together a considerable number of facts illustrative of the 
 automatic action of the brain. My purpose in the present 
 article is to treat more at length one class of such phe- 
 nomena to which I could not aflford space proportionate to 
 their interest, in the wide survey required by the design 
 of the former paper. I shall seek to obtain from some 
 familiar and some more rare examples of dreams, such light 
 as they may be calculated to throw on the nature of brain- 
 work, unregulated by the will. Perhaps I may be allowed 
 to add, as an apology for once more venturing into this 
 field of inquiry, that the large number of letters and friendly 
 criticisms which my first paper called forth have both en- 
 couraged me to pursue the subject by showing how much 
 interest is felt in its popular treatment, and have also 
 afforded me the advantage of the experience of many other 
 minds regarding some of the obscure mental phenomena in 
 question. In the present case I shall feel grateful to any 
 reader who will correct from personal knowledge any 
 statement I may make which he finds erroneous. 
 
336 DREAMS. 
 
 Dreams are to our waking thoughts much like echoes to 
 music ; but their reverberations are so partial, so varied, so 
 complex, that it is almost in vain we seek among the notes 
 of consciousness for the echoes of the dream. If we could 
 by any means ascertain on what principle our dreams for 
 a given night are arranged, and why one idea more than 
 another furnishes their cue, it would be comparatively easy 
 to follow out the chain of associations by which they unroll 
 themselves afterwards; and to note the singular ease and 
 delicacy whereby subordinate topics, recently wafted across 
 our minds, are seized and woven into the network of the 
 dream. But the reason why from among the five thousand 
 thoughts of the day, we revert at night especially to thoughts 
 number 2, and 4, instead of to thoughts number 3, and 6, or 
 any other in the list, is obviously impossible to conjecture. 
 We can but observe that the echo of the one note has been 
 caught, and of the others lost amid the obscure caverns of 
 the memory. Certain broad rules, however, may be remarked 
 as obtaining generallj'- regarding the topics of dreams. In 
 the first place, if we have any present considerable physical 
 sensation or pain, such as may be produced by a wound, or 
 a fit of indigestion, or hunger, or an unaccustomed sound, 
 we are pretty sure to dream of it in preference to any sub- 
 ject of mental interest only. Again, if we have merely a 
 slight sensation of uneasiness, insufiicient to cause a dream, 
 it will yet be enough to colour a dream, otherwise suggested, 
 with a disagreeable hue. Failing to have a dream suggested 
 to it by present physical sensation, the brain seems to revert 
 to the subjects of thought of the previous day, or of some 
 former period of life, and to take up one or other of them .as 
 a theme on which to play variations. As before remarked, 
 the grounds of choice among all such subjects cannot be 
 ascertained, but the predilection of Morpheus for those which 
 we have not in our waking hours thought most interesting. 
 
DREAMS. 337 
 
 is very noticeable. Very rarely indeed do our dreams take 
 up the matter which has most engrossed us for hours before 
 we sleep. A wholesome law of variety comes into play, and 
 the brain seems to decide, " I have had enough of politics, 
 or Greek, or fox-hunting, for this time. Now I will amuse 
 myself quite differently." Yery often, perhaps we may say 
 generally, it pounces on some transient thought which has 
 flown like a swallow across it by daylight, and insists on 
 holding it fast through the night. Only when our attention 
 has more or less transgressed the bounds of health, and 
 we have been morbidly excited about it, does the main 
 topic of the day's interest recur to us in dreaming at night ; 
 and that it should do so, ought, I imagine, always to serve 
 as a warning that we have strained our mental powers a 
 little too far.^ Lastly, there are dreams whose origin is 
 not in any past thought, but in some sentiment vivid 
 and pervading enough to make itself dumbly felt even in 
 sleep. Of the nature of the dreams so caused I shall 
 speak presently. 
 
 The subject of a dream being, as we must now suppose, 
 suggested to the brain on some such principles as the above, 
 the next thing to be noted is, How does the brain treat its 
 theme when it has got it ? Does it drily reflect upon it, 
 as we are wont to do awake ? Or does it pursue a course 
 wholly foreign to the laws of waking thoughts ? It does, 
 I conceive, neither one nor the other, but treats its theme, 
 whenever it is possible to do so, according to a certain very 
 important, though obscure, law of thought, whose action 
 we are too apt to ignore. We have been accustomed to con- 
 sider the myth-creating power of the human mind as one 
 specially belonging to the earlier stages of growth of society 
 
 1 A distinguished man of science has told me that he finds the dreams of the 
 first part of the night to be usually connected with the events of the past day, 
 ■while those of the morning revert to long past scenes and interests. 
 
 22 
 
338 DREAMS. 
 
 and of the individual. It will throw, I think, a rather 
 curious light on the subject if we discover that this instinct 
 exists in every one of us, and exerts itself with more or 
 less energy through the whole of our lives. In hours of 
 waking consciousness, indeed, it is suppressed, or has only 
 the narrowest range of exercise, as in the tendency, notice- 
 able in all persons not of the very strictest veracity, to 
 supplement an incomplete anecdote with explanatory inci- 
 dents, or to throw a slightly known story into the dramatic 
 form, with dialogues constructed out of their own conscious- 
 ness. But such small play of the myth- making faculty is 
 nothing compared to its achievements during sleep. The 
 instant that daylight and common sense are excluded, the 
 fairy-work begins. At the very least half our dreams (un- 
 less I greatly err) are nothing else than myths formed by 
 unconscious cerebration on the same approved principles, 
 whereby Greece and India and Scandinavia gave to us 
 the stories which we were once pleased to set apart as 
 " mythology " proper. Have we not here, then, evidence 
 that there is a real law of the human mind causing us 
 constantly to compose ingenious fables explanatory of the 
 phenomena around us, — a law which only sinks into abey- 
 ance in the waking hours of persons in whom the reason 
 has been highly cultivated, but which resumes its sway 
 even over their well-tutored brains when they sleep ? ^ 
 
 ^ A correspondent has kindly sent me tlie following interesting remarks on tlie 
 above: — "When dropping asleep some nights ago I suddenly started awake 
 with the thought on my mind, 'Why I was making a. dream!' I had detected 
 myself in the act of inventing a dream. Three or four impressions of scenes 
 and events which had passed across my mind during the day were present 
 together in my mind, and the effort was certainly being made, but not by my 
 fully conscious will, to arrange them so as to form a continuous story. . They had 
 actually not the slightest connexion, but a process was evidently going on in my 
 brain by which they were being united into one scheme or plot. Had I remained 
 asleep until the plot had been matured, I presume my waking sensation would 
 have been that I had had an ordinary dream. But perhaps through the partial 
 failure of the unconscious effort at a plan, I woke up just in time to catch a 
 
DREAMS. 339 
 
 Most dreams lend themselves easily to the myth-making 
 process ; but pre-eminently dreams originating in Sensation 
 or in Sentiment do so. Of those which arise from memory 
 of Ideas only, I shall speak by and by. 
 
 Nothing can better illustrate the Sensation myth than 
 the well-known story recorded of himself by E-eid. " The 
 only distinct dream I had ever since I was about sixteen, 
 as far as I remember, was two years ago. I had got my 
 head blistered for a fall. A plaster which was put on it 
 after the blister pained me excessively for the whole night. 
 In the morning I slept a little, and dreamed very distinctly 
 that I had fallen into the hands of a party of Indians and 
 was scalped." ^ 
 
 The number of mental operations needful for the transmu- 
 tation of the sensation of a blistered head into a dream of 
 Hed Indians, is very worthy of remark. First, Perception 
 of pain, and allotment of it to its true place in the body. 
 Secondly, Reason seeking the cause of the phenomenon. 
 Thirdly, Memory failing to supply the real cause, but offering 
 from its stores of acquired knowledge an hypothesis of one 
 suited to produce the phenomenon. Lastly, Imagination 
 stepping in precisely at this juncture, fastening on this sug- 
 gestion of memory, and instantly presenting it as a tableau 
 vivanf, with proper decorations and couleur locale. The only 
 intellectual faculty which remains dormant seems to be the 
 Judgment, which has allowed memory and imagination to 
 work regardless of those limits of probability which she 
 would have set to them awake. If, when awake, we feel 
 
 trace of the ' unconscious cerebration ' as it was vanishing before the full light 
 of conscious life. I accordingly propounded a tentative theory to my friends, 
 that the brain uniting upon one thread the fancies and memories present at the 
 same time in the mind, is really what takes place in di-eams — a sort of faint 
 shadow of the mind's natural craving for and effort after system and unity. Tour 
 explanation of dreams, by reference to the ' myth-making tendency,' seems to be 
 so nearly in accord with mine that I venture to write on the subject." 
 
 1 Works of Dugald Stewart. Edited by Sir W. ifamilton. Vol. x. p. 321. 
 
340 DREAMS. 
 
 a pain which we do not wholly understand, say a twinge 
 in the foot, we speculate upon its cause only within the 
 very narrow series of actual prohabilities. It may be a 
 nail in our boot, a chilblain, a wasp, or so on. It does not 
 even cross our minds that it may be a sworn tormentor 
 with red-hot pincers ; but the same sensation experienced 
 asleep will very probably be explained by a dream of the 
 sworn tormentor or some other cause which the relations 
 of time and space render equally inapplicable.^ Let it be 
 noted, however, that even in the waking brain a great deal 
 of myth-making goes on after the formation of the most 
 rational hypothesis. If we imagine that a pain is caused 
 by any serious disease, we almost inevitably fancy we ex- 
 perience all the other symptoms of the malady, of which 
 we happen to have heard — symptoms which disappear, 
 as if by magic, when the physician laughs at our fears, 
 and tells us our pain is caused by some trifling local 
 affection. 
 
 Each of my readers could doubtless supply illustrations 
 
 1 The analogy between insanity and a state of prolonged dream is too striking 
 to be overlooked by any student of the latter subject. The delusions of insanity 
 seem in fact little else but a series of such myths accounting for either sensations 
 or sentiments like those above ascribed to dreaming. The maniac sees and hears 
 more than a man asleep, and his sensations consequently give rise to numberless 
 delusions. He is also usually possessed by some morbid moral sentiment, such 
 as suspicion, hatred, avarice, or extravagant self-esteem (held by Dr. Carpenter 
 nearly always to precede any intellectual failure), and these sentiments similarly 
 give rise to their appropriate delusions. In the first case we have maniacs like 
 the poor lady who wrote her confessions to Dr. Forbes "Winslow (" Obscure 
 Diseases of the Brain," p. 79), and who describes how, on being taken to an 
 asylum, the pillars before the door, the ploughed field in front, and other details, 
 successively suggested to her the belief that she was in a Romish convent where 
 she would be "scourged and taken to purgatory," and in a medical college where 
 the inmates were undergoing a process preparatory to dissection ! In the second 
 case, that of morbid Sentiments, we have insane delusions like those which 
 prompted the suspicious Rousseau to accuse Hume of poisoning him, and all the 
 mournfully grotesque train of the victims of pride who fill our pauper hospitals 
 with kings, queens, and prophets. Merely suppose these poor maniacs are re- 
 counting dreams, and there would be little to remark about them except their 
 persistent character. 
 
DREA2IS. 341 
 
 of myth-making as good as that of Dr. Eeid. It happened 
 to me once to visit a friend delirious from fever, who lay- 
 in a bed facing a large old mirror, whose gilt wood-frame, 
 of Chinese design, presented a series of innumerable spikes, 
 pinnacles, and pagodas. On being asked how she was feel- 
 ing, my poor friend complained of much internal dolour, 
 but added with touching simplicity : " And it is no great 
 wonder, I am sure ! (whisper) I've swallowed that looking- 
 glass ! " Again. A young lady painted her thumb one night 
 with extract of aloes to cure herself of the habit of sucking. 
 In the morning she woke with her thumb in her mouth 
 and the aloes all sucked off. She had dreamed she was sailing 
 in a ship of wormwood ; that she drank extract of worm- 
 wood ; that a doctor ordered her to eat ox-gall, and then 
 advised her to consult the Pope, who sent her on pilgrim- 
 age to Zoar, where she ate the thumb of Lot's wife. 
 
 Affain, as reorards Sentiments. If we have seen a forbid- 
 ding-looking beggar in the streets in the morning, nothing 
 is more probable than that our vague and transient sense 
 of distrust will be justified by ingenious fancy taking up the 
 theme at night, and representing a burglar bursting into 
 our bedroom, presenting a pistol to our temples, and at the 
 supreme moment disclosing the features of the objectionable 
 mendicant. Hope, of course when vividly excited, represents 
 for us scores of sweet scenes in which our desire is fulfilled 
 with every pleasing variation ; and Care and Fear have, 
 alas ! even more powerful machinery for the realization of 
 their terrors. The longing of afiection for the return of the 
 dead has, perhaps more than any other sentiment, the power 
 of creating myths of reunion, whose dissipation on awakening 
 are amongst the keenest agonies of bereavement. By a sin- 
 gular semi-survival of memory through such dreams we 
 seem always to be dimly aware that the person whose return 
 we greet so rapturously has been dead ; and the obvious in- 
 
342 DREAMS. 
 
 congruity of our circumstances, our dress, and the very 
 sorrow we confide at once to their tenderness, with the sight 
 of them again in their familiar places, drives our imagination 
 to fresh shifts to explain it. Sometimes the beloved one has 
 been abroad, and is come home ; sometimes the death was a 
 mistake, and some one else was buried in that grave wherein 
 we saw the coffin lowered ; sometimes a friendly physician 
 has carried away the patient to his own home, and brought 
 us there after long months to find him recovered. 
 
 One of the most afiecting mythical dreams which have 
 come to my knowledge, remarkable also as an instance of 
 dream-poetry, is that of a lad}^ who confessed to have been 
 pondering on the day before her dream on the many duties 
 which " bound her to life." The phrase which I have used 
 as a familiar metaphor became to her a visible allegory. 
 She dreamed that Life — a strong, calm, cruel woman — was 
 binding her limbs with steel fetters, which she felt as well as 
 saw ; and Death, as an angel of mercy, hung hovering in the 
 distance, unable to approach or deliver her. In this most 
 singular dream her feelings found expression in the following 
 touching verses, which she remembered on waking, and which 
 she has permitted me to quote precisely in the fragmentary 
 state in which they remained on her memory. 
 
 " Theu I cried with weary breath, 
 Oh be merciful, great Death ! 
 Take me to thy kingdom deep. 
 Where grief is stilled in sleep, 
 Where the weary heai'ts find rest. 
 
 Ah, kind Death, it cannot be 
 That there is no room for me 
 In all thy chambers vast .... 
 See, strong Life has bound me fast ; 
 Break her chains, and set me free. 
 
BREAMS. 343 
 
 But cold Death makes no reply, » 
 
 Will not hear my bitter cry ; 
 Cruel Life still holds me fast ; 
 Yet true Death must come at last, 
 Conquer Life and set me free. 
 
 A dream once occurred to me wherein the mythical 
 character almost assumed the dimensions of the sublime, 
 insomuch that I can scarcely recall it without awe. I 
 dreamed that I was standing on a certain broad grassy 
 space in the park of my old home. It was totally dark, 
 but I Avas aware that I was in the midst of an immense 
 crowd. We were all gazing upward into the murky skj'', 
 and a sense of some fearful calamity was over us, so that no 
 one spoke aloud. Suddenly overhead appeared, through a 
 rift in the black heavens, a branch of stars which I recog- 
 nized as the belt and sword of Orion. Then went forth a 
 cry of despair from all our hearts ! We knew, though no 
 one said it, that these stars proved it was not a cloud or 
 mist, which, as we had somehow believed, was causing the 
 darkness. No ; the air was clear ; it was high noon, and 
 the sun had not risen ! That was the tremendous reason 
 why we beheld the stars. The sun would never rise again ! 
 
 In this dream, as it seems to me, a very complicated myth 
 was created by my unconscious brain, which having first by 
 some chance stumbled on the picture of a crowd in the dark, 
 and a bit of starry sky over them, elaborated, to account 
 for such facts, the bold theory of the sun not having risen 
 at noon ; or (if wejike to take it the other way) having hit 
 on the idea of the sun's disappearance, invented the appro- 
 priate scenery of the breathless expectant crowd, and the 
 apparition of the stars. 
 
 Next to the myth-creating faculty in dreams, perhaps the 
 most remarkable circumstance about them is that which has 
 given rise to the world-old notion that dreams are frequently 
 
344 DREAMS. 
 
 predictions. At the outset of an examination of this matter, 
 we are struck by the familiar fact that our most common 
 dreams are continually recalled to us within a few hours by 
 some insignificant circumstance bringing up again the name 
 of the person or place about which we had dreamed. On 
 such occasions, as the vulgar say, " My dream is out." 
 Nothing was actually predicted, and nothing has occurred 
 of the smallest consequence, or ever entailing any conse- 
 quence, but yet, by some concatenation of events, we dreamed 
 of the man from whom we received a letter in the morning ; 
 or we saw in our sleep a house on fire, and before the next 
 night we pass a street where there is a crowd, and behold ! 
 a dwelling in flames. Nay, much more special and out-of- 
 the-way dreams than these come " out " very often. If we 
 dream of Nebuchadnezzar on Saturday night, it is to be 
 expected that on Sunday (unless the new lectionary have 
 dispensed with his history) the lesson of the day will pre- 
 sent us with the ill-fated monarch and his golden image. 
 Dreams of some almost unheard-of spot, or beast, or dead- 
 and-gone old worthy, which by wild vagary have entered 
 our brain, are perpetually followed by a reference to the 
 same spot, or beast, or personage, in the first book or news- 
 paper we open afterwards. To account for such coincidences 
 on any rational principle is, of course, difficult. But it is 
 at least useful to attempt to do so, seeing that here, at all 
 events, the supernatural hypothesis is too obviously absurd 
 to be entertained by anybody ; and if we can substitute for 
 it a plausible theory in these cases, the same theory may 
 serve equally well for problems a little more dignified, and 
 therefore more liable to be treated superstitiously. 
 
 In the first place, a moment's reflection will show that the 
 same sort of odd coincidences take place continually among 
 the trivial events of waking life. " Sitting in my office," 
 writes a correspondent, " with the Post Office Directory open 
 
DREAMS. 345 
 
 before me, my eye happened to glance casually on the name 
 of a firm whose place of business was a considerable distance 
 away. At that identical moment the door opened and a lady 
 entered inquiring the address of the firm in question." It 
 has chanced to myself within the last few hours to remark 
 to a friend how the word " subtle," applied to the serpent in 
 Genesis, is always spelled "subtil," and within a few minutes 
 to take up The Index, of Toledo, Ohio, and read the following 
 anecdote : " A poor negro preacher was much troubled by the 
 cheating of the sutlers of the army which he followed. He 
 chose accordingly for the text of his sermon, 'Now the 
 serpent was more sutler than any beast of the field,' etc." 
 It will be owned that this is precisely the kind of chance 
 coincidence which occurs in dreams, and which, when it hap- 
 pens to concern any solemn theme, is apt to seem portentous. 
 But ascending beyond these trivial coincidences, we arrive 
 at a mass of dream-literature tending to show that reve- 
 lations of all sorts of secrets and predictions of future events 
 are made in dreams. Taking them in order, we have, first, 
 discoveries of where money, wills, and all sorts of lost 
 valuables are to be found, and such dreams have long been 
 rightly explained as having their origin in some nearly 
 effaced remembrance of information leading naturally to the 
 discovery. In sleep the lost clue is recovered by some 
 association of thought, and the revelation is made with 
 sufficient distinctness to insure attention. A story of the 
 sort is told by Macnish about a Scotch gentleman who re- 
 covered in a dream the address of a solicitor with whom 
 his father on one single occasion deposited an important 
 document on which the family fortunes ultimately de- 
 pended. A singular occurrence which took place some 
 years ago at the house of the late Earl of Minto in 
 Scotland can only be explained in a similar way. An 
 eminent lawyer went to pay a few days' visit at Minto 
 
346 DREAMS. 
 
 immediately before the hearing of an important case in 
 which he was engaged as counsel. Naturally he brought 
 with him the bundle of papers connected with the case, in- 
 tending to study them in the interval ; but on the morning 
 after his arrival the packet could nowhere be found. Careful 
 search of course was made for it, but quite in vain, and 
 eventually the lawyer was obliged to go into court without 
 his papers. Years passed without any tidings of the mys- 
 terious packet, till the same gentleman found himself again, 
 a guest at Minto, and, as it happened, occupying the same 
 bedroom. His surprise may be imagined when on waking 
 in the morning he found his long-lost bundle lying on his 
 dressing-table. The presumption of course is, that on the 
 first occasion he hid them in his sleep, and on the second 
 visit he found them in his sleep ; but where he hid and 
 found them has never been discovered. 
 
 An instance of the renewal in sleep of an impression of 
 memory calling up an apparition to enforce it (it is the 
 impression which causes the apparition, not the apparition 
 which conveys the impression) occurred near Bath half a 
 century ago. Sir John Miller, a very wealthy gentleman, 
 died leaving no children. His widow had always understood 
 that she was to have the use of his house for her life with 
 a very large jointure; but no will making such provision 
 could be found after his death. The heir-at-law, a distant 
 connexion, naturally claimed his rights, but kindly allowed 
 Lady Miller to remain for six months in the house to com- 
 plete her search for the missing papers. The six months 
 drew at last to a close, and the poor widow had spent 
 fruitless days and weeks in examining every possible place 
 of deposit for the lost document, till at last she came to 
 the conclusion that her memory must have deceived her, 
 and that her husband could have made no such promise as 
 she supposed, or have neglected to fulfil it had he made 
 
DREAMS. 347 
 
 one. The very last day of her tenure of the house had 
 just dawned, when in the grey of the morning Lady Miller 
 drove up to the door of her man of business in Bath, and 
 rushed excitedly to his bed-room door, calling out, " Come 
 to me ! I have seen Sir John ! There is a will ! " The 
 lawyer hastened to accompany her back to her house. All 
 she could tell him was that her deceased husband had ap- 
 peared to her in the night, standing by her bedside, and 
 had said solemnly, " There is a will ! " Where it was, 
 remained as uncertain as before. Once more the house was 
 searched in vain from cellar to loft, till finally wearied and 
 in despair the lady and her friend found themselves in a 
 garret at the top of the house. "It is all over," Lady 
 Miller said ; "I give it up ; my husband deceived me, and 
 I am ruined ! " At that moment she looked at the table 
 over which she was leaning weeping. " This table was in 
 his study once ! Let us examine it ! " They looked, and the 
 missing will, duly signed and sealed, was within it, and the 
 widow made rich to the end of her days. It needs no con- 
 juror to explain how her anxiety called up the myth of 
 Sir John Miller's apparition, and made him say precisely 
 what he had once before really said to her, but of which 
 the memory had waxed faint. 
 
 A more difficult class of stories to account for is that of 
 tales like the following : 
 
 A lady left her old country house in England and went 
 to Australia with her husband, Colonel H. In the house 
 she had quitted there was a room in which one of her 
 sisters had died, and which the bereaved mother kept con- 
 stantly shut up. Mrs. H., after some years' residence in 
 Australia, dreamed that she saw her mother lying dead on 
 the bed in this particular room, with certain members of the 
 family around her. Noting the dream with some anxiety, 
 she received in due time the news that her mother had 
 
348 DREAMS. 
 
 had a fit in which she died, and that the body 'had been 
 carried into the long-deserted room, and was at one time sur- 
 rounded by the relatives in question. Here of course the 
 coincidences were most remarkable and impressive, if the 
 story have come to us with any exactitude — a matter, I 
 must remark, of which the fallacies of memory, the in- 
 accuracy of oral transmission, and the unconquerable pro- 
 jDensity of all men to " make things fit " always leaves open 
 to doubt. Taking it, as it stands, however, we may notice 
 that the removal of her mother's corpse to the deserted 
 chamber was not a very singular circumstance in itself, 
 while the daughter's dream of her early home was entirely 
 in accordance with the common rules of dreams. As a 
 sad and mournful feeling suggested the dream (probably 
 some reasonable anxiety for her mother's health), it was 
 very natural that any analogous solemn or dismal circum- 
 stances connected with her mother should be woven into 
 it. If she dreamed of her mother's death, nothing was 
 more dream-like than that she should associate with it the 
 previous death of her sister, whom they had mourned to- 
 gether, and see her mother's corpse upon the bed where 
 she had once actually seen that of her sister. Naj^, ac- 
 cording to the laws of dreaming, I conceive that, given the 
 case of Mrs. H., it could hardly haj)pen that she should 
 have a sad or anxious dream, of which her old home afibrded 
 the stage, without making the deserted chamber, which 
 must have been the very centre of all solemn thoughts in 
 the house, its peculiar scene. 
 
 There appeared some months ago in CasselVs Magazine a 
 ghost story narrated by Miss Felicia Skene, which from 
 every point of view is probably one of the best instances 
 of the kind ever published. A husband, dubious of another 
 existence, promised, if possible, to appear to his wife after 
 death. His widow went on a visit to some friends, and 
 
DREAMS. ' 349 
 
 their little girl slept in lier bed. In the night the child 
 thought she saw the husband (of whose death she had no 
 knowledge) standing by the bedside and looking at his wife 
 sorrowfully. The child, who was much attached to him, 
 spoke to him, and asked him what present he had brought 
 to her, and tried, though unavailingly, to waken the widow 
 sleeping beside her. Presently the figure passed into an 
 adjoining dressing-room, and the child slept till morning, 
 when she instantly ran into the dressing-room, expecting 
 to find her old friend. Failing to do so, she followed the 
 
 widow, and asked her eagerly where Mr. had gone. 
 
 An explanation followed. The widow conceived that this 
 revelation through the mind of a child was much more 
 satisfactory than any which her own senses, excited by 
 anticipation, could have brought her, and unhesitatingly 
 accepted it as a fact that her husband had come to keep 
 his promise. Now, without denying the possibility of such 
 spirit visitations, it must, I think, be owned that the easier 
 solution even of this storj^ (wherein the circumstances are 
 unusually worthy and befitting) is to be found in the dream 
 of the child. The widow's presence beside her most naturally 
 suggested that of her husband whom she had always pre- 
 viously associated with her. That, thinking she saw him, 
 she should have asked him for his wonted gift, and then 
 have thought he went into the next room, were simple in- 
 cidents of the dream, which was just sufficiently vivid to 
 make so young a child confuse it with waking fact first at 
 the moment, and much more afterwards, when she found 
 great importance attached to it by her elders. 
 
 In these and hundreds of cases of supposed revelations and 
 predictions, both given in normal dreams and in various 
 states of trance, I conceive that a careful reference to the 
 laws of unconscious cerebration will rarely fail, if not to ex- 
 plain, at least to elucidate, in a manner, the modus operandi of 
 
850 DREAMS. 
 
 the mystery. Let it be remembered that we have got to do 
 with a power which (under conditions imperfectly known to ns) 
 obtains access to the entire treasury of memory, to the stores 
 of facts, words, and transient impressions accumulated during 
 our whole lives, and to which in our ordinary consciousness 
 we have no means of approach. Those states of abnormal 
 remembrance so often described as experienced by drowning 
 persons, would, if prolonged through our waking hours, very 
 obviously put us in possession of means of judging, balancing, 
 and even of foretelling events of which our normal dim and 
 disconnected vision of the past affords no parallel. A similar 
 faculty, not taking in so vast a sweep, but fastening on some 
 special point to which attention is directed, obviously comes 
 into play in many states, both of "clairvoyance " and (in a 
 lesser degree) in natural dreaming. The very least we can do 
 before deciding that any revelation, past, present, or future, 
 comes from any other sources than such hyper-(Bsthetic memory 
 and judgment founded on it, is to examine carefully whether 
 those faculties must be absolutely insufficient to account for 
 it. The notorious fact that such revelations are always con- 
 terminous with somebody/' s possible knowledge, gives us, of 
 course, the best warrant for doubting that they come from 
 any ultra-mundane sphere. 
 
 The .only class of dream, I imagine, which escapes the 
 myth-making faculty, is the purely intellectual dream, which 
 takes place when we have no sensation or sentiment suffi- 
 ciently vivid to make itself felt in sleep, and the brain merely 
 continues to work on at some one of the subjects suggested 
 by the calm studies of the previous hours. Such dreams, as 
 Dr. Carpenter remarks, have a more uniform and coherent 
 order than is common to others ; and it may even happen in 
 time that, in consequence of the freedom from distraction 
 resulting from the suspension of external influences, the 
 reasoning processes may be carried on with unusual vigour 
 
DREAMS. 351 
 
 and success, and the imagination may develope new and 
 harmonious forms of beauty. [Physiology, 5th edit. p. 643.) 
 Under this head, then, come all the remarkable cases of 
 dreams, of the problems solved by Condorcet, and many 
 others. Nearly every one who has been much interested in 
 mathematical studies has done something of the kind in his 
 sleep, and the stories are numerous of persons rising in sleep 
 and writing out lucid legal opinions. 
 
 On the other hand, the absurdities of which the mind is 
 capable when dealing with an idea in sleep are beyond 
 measure ludicrous. A correspondent, to whom I am indebted 
 for many valuable suggestions, sends me the following de- 
 licious story : " At a time when I was unmarried, I dreamed 
 that I returned home in expectation of meeting my wife. 
 To my consternation and grief she was transformed into 
 a small piece of bread. I was greatly distressed, thinking 
 that by some neglect of mine I had brought about the 
 sad result. However, I lost no time in endeavouring to 
 restore her if possible, and for this purpose I got a small 
 basin of water, and held the piece of bread, which I knew 
 to be my wife in a transformed state, therein. To my dis- 
 may I felt the bread gradually melting in my hand, and 
 then awoke, greatly distressed in mind at my approaching 
 bereavement." At a period of my own life, when my atten- 
 tion was divided between reading Leibnitz and providing 
 soup for the poor in a hard winter, I dreamed that my 
 dog had been cruelly boiled down in the soup. Happily 
 recollecting, however, that her soul was an " indestructible 
 monad," I pi'oceeded to search for it diligently with a ladle 
 in the kettle, and discovered it in the shape of a pasta. 
 
 But it is when the sleep is not wholly natural, but stimu- 
 lated by narcotics, that these mental feats assume their 
 most prodigious dimensions. The difference between normal 
 dreams and those produced by opiates, so far as I can learn, 
 
352 DREAMS. 
 
 is mainly this, that in the former we seem always more or 
 less active, and, in the latter, passive. Whatever strange 
 sights we behold in the natural dream, our own share in 
 what is going on is prominent. In the abnormal dream the 
 marvellous scenery is by far the most important part of the 
 vision. In a word, we are on the stage in the first case, and 
 in the stalls in the second. The cause of this singular dis- 
 tinction must needs be that the action of morphia, haschish, 
 etc., paralyzes more completely the voluntary and active 
 powers than in natural sleep, wherein, indeed, the true con- 
 scious will is dormant, but a certain echo of it still survives, 
 leaving us the semblance of choice and energy. On the 
 other hand, while the opiate obscures even such moonlight 
 of volition, it excites the fancy and myth-creating powers 
 of the brain to supernatural vigour, causing to pass before 
 the eyes of the dreamer whole panoramas of beauty or 
 horror. The descriptions of such miseries in the " Confessions 
 of an English Opium Eater," and many other books, afibrd 
 amazing evidence of what leaps the Pegasus of fancy is 
 capable of taking under the spur of such stimuli on the brain. 
 Here also the singular facility in adopting suggestions and 
 impressions which distinguishes hypnotism from natural 
 dreaming, seems similarly to prevail. All opium-eaters 
 speak of the fearful degree in which every painful idea 
 presented to them before sleeping becomes magnified into 
 portentous visions of terror. A scent suggesting blood, 
 caused one gentleman to dream of an army of skin- 
 less men and headless horses defiling for hours before his 
 eyes ; and the " Old Man of the Mountain " no doubt 
 contrived to suggest to his assassins, before they ate the 
 haschish, those ideas which resulted in their dreams of 
 houris and paradise. 
 
 Besides the picturing of marvellous scenes, passively be- 
 held, it seems that narcotics can stimulate the unconscious 
 
DREAMS. 353 
 
 brain to the production of poetic or musical descriptions of 
 them ; the two actions being simultaneous. Here we have 
 surely the most astonishing of all the feats of this mysterious 
 power within us ; and whether we choose to regard it as a 
 part of our true selves, or as the play of certain portions of 
 nerve-matter, in either case the contemplation of it is very 
 bewildering. What truth there may be in the well- 
 known stories of the composition of "Rousseau's Dream" 
 or of Tartini's " Devil Sonata," I cannot pretend to decide. 
 In any case it is admitted that several musical productions 
 have been composed in sleep. But take the poem of 
 "Kubla Khan." Remember that the man who wrote it 
 only rose, in a very few of his multitudinous waking pro- 
 ductions, into the same region of high poetical fancy 
 or inspiration of verse. Then see him merely reading, 
 half asleep, the tolerably prosaic sentence out of Purchas' 
 "Pilgrimage : " " Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace 
 to be built, and a stately garden thereunto, and thus ten 
 miles of fertile ground were inclosed in a wall." And, 
 dropping his book, from this mere bit of green sod of 
 thought he suddenly springs up like a lark into the very 
 heaven of fancy, with the vision of a paradise of woods and 
 waters before his eyes and such -sweet singing breaking from 
 his lips as, 
 
 " The shadow of the dome of pleasure 
 Floated midway o'er the waves," 
 
 interspersed with weird changes and outbursts such as only 
 music knows : — 
 
 " It was an Abyssinian maid, 
 And on her dulcimer she played, 
 Singing of Mount Abora ! " 
 
 Consider all this, and that the poem of which this is the 
 fragment reached at least the length of three hundred lines, 
 
 23 
 
354 DREAMS. 
 
 — and then say what limits shall be placed on the powers 
 which lie hidden within our mortal coil ! 
 
 This poem of " Kubla Khan " has long stood, though not 
 quite alone as a dream poem, yet as far the largest and most 
 singular piece so composed on record. A friend has per- 
 mitted me now to publish another dream poem, not, indeed, 
 of similar aesthetic merit, but in a psychological point of view 
 perhaps even more curious, seeing that the dreamer in her 
 waking hours is not a poet, and that the poem she dreamed 
 is in French, in which language she can speak fluently, but 
 in which she believes herself utterly unable to compose a 
 verse. It has been suggested that in this case the act of 
 unconscious cerebration may be one of memory rather than 
 of creative fancy, and that the lady may, at some time of 
 her life, have read the poem thus reproduced in sleep. Such 
 a feat would of itself be sufficiently curious, seeing that she 
 has not the smallest waking recollection of having ever seen 
 the lines; and they occurred to her (just as "Kubla Khan" 
 did to Coleridge) not as a piece of literature, but as the de- 
 scription of a scene she actually beheld simultaneously with 
 the occurrence to her mind of its poetical narrative. But I 
 conceive that the great inaccuracies of rhyme in the poem 
 render it more than doubtful whether it can ever have been 
 published as a French composition. " Espoir," made to 
 correspond with " effroi," and " vert " with " guerre," are the 
 sort of false rhymes which an English ear (especially in 
 sleep) might easily disregard, but which no French poet, 
 accustomed to the strict rules of his own language, could 
 overlook. If I err in this conclusion, and any reader of this 
 little paper can recall having already seen the lines elsewhere, 
 I shall be extremely obliged for the correction. 
 
 Let it be borne in mind that the dreamer saw all she 
 describes as in a vision, and that in the middle of the dream, 
 between the morning and evening visions, there intervened a 
 
DREAMS. 355 
 
 blank and pause, as if a cloud filled the scene. As in the 
 case of Coleridge, the lady had taken morphia in moderate 
 quantity before her dream. 
 
 Ce matin dii haut de I'ancienne tourelle 
 J'dcoutais la voix de la sentinelle, 
 Qui criait k ceux qui passent Ik-bas 
 A travers le pont — Dis ! Qui va Icb ? 
 
 Et toutes les reponses si pleines d'espoir 
 Eemplirent mon cceur d'un vague effroi ; 
 Car le chagrin est de I'espoir le fruit, 
 Et le suit, comme au jour suit la sombre nuit. 
 
 Qid va Id ? 
 Un beau jeune homme sur un coursier fier, 
 A I'epee luisante, au drapeau vert, 
 S'en va tout jojeux rejoindre la guerre ; 
 II chante, " Je reviens glorieux ! " 
 
 Qui va Icb ? 
 Une blonde jeune fille sur un palefroi gris. 
 En habit de page, vert et cramoisi ; 
 Elle murmure, " Je veille sur mon bieu cheri," 
 Et le suit en souriant doucement. 
 
 Qui va Id, ? 
 Un bon vieillard, ses cheveux sont blancs, 
 II porte un sac, comme I'or brille dedans ! 
 II le cache bien de ses doigts tremblauts 
 Et grommtile, " Je me ferai riche ! " 
 
 Qui va Id ? 
 Un joli enfant conduit sa scEur 
 A travera les champs cueillir des fleurs : 
 " Nous t'eu donnerons a notre retour," 
 lis disent en riant follemeut. 
 
 (Here occurred a long pause.) 
 
356 BREAMS. 
 
 La nuit s'abaisse sur I'ancienne tourelle, 
 Ecoute encore S, la sentinelle, 
 Qui crie k ceux qui passent 1^-bas 
 A travers le pont — Bis ! Qui va lei ? 
 
 II vient, tout sanglant, un coursier fier, 
 La selle est vide, mais il traine par terre 
 Un mourant, qui serre un drapeau vert : 
 Bientdt il ne gemira plus. 
 
 Qioi va Id, ? 
 Une blonde jeune fiUe sur vin palefroi gris, 
 En habit de page, vert et cranioisi. 
 Qui suit tout eperdue son bien cberi, 
 Et qui jarie d'une voix dechiraute. 
 
 Qui va Id, ? 
 Un triste vieillard, ses cheveux sont blancs, 
 II porte un sac, il n'y a rien dedans ! 
 Et dit, en tordant ses doigts tremblants, 
 "Ah c'est dur de jaerdre tout ! " 
 
 Qui va Id ? 
 Un joli enfant qui porte sa soeur : 
 " Un serpent glissant j^armi les fleurs 
 L'a pique. Mais vois ! EUe dort sans pleurs ? " 
 Cher petit ! Elle n'en versera plus ! 
 
 Another dream poem, which a correspondent has been so 
 good as to send to me, is interesting in a different way. It 
 was composed in a dream on the night of August 23, 1866, 
 by the Rev. W. H. Taylor, Principal of the Grammar School 
 of Houghton-le-Spring ; and the author died of fever about 
 a week afterwards. 
 
 HYMN. 
 
 Lord ! my weary soul is yearning, 
 
 Yearning for its home of rest ; 
 Anxious eyes for ever turning 
 
 Towards the mansions of the blest. 
 
BREAMS. 357 
 
 But the warfare is not over ; 
 
 Foes without, and foes within, 
 Fiercely o'er my path assail me, 
 
 Tempt me with the bait of sin. 
 
 Faint and stricken in the battle, 
 
 I raise my feeble hands and cry, 
 Save me, save me, Abba, Father ! 
 
 Save me, save me, or I die. 
 
 Then a voice comes softly, sweetly, 
 
 Bringing peace, expelling fear. 
 Cheers my drooping sj)irit, saying, 
 
 Courage, Christian ! God is near. 
 
 Then revived, encouraged, strengthened, 
 
 Onward I my steps pursue, 
 Looking upward, looking homeward, 
 
 Keep the golden gates in view. 
 
 Then, oh then, dear Lord, receive me. 
 
 Ope the gates, and let me in. 
 To thy loving bosom take me. 
 
 Ransomed, pardoned, freed from sin. 
 
 Lastly, we come to the point wherein I conceive that 
 dreams throw most light on the separability of the self from 
 the automatically-working brain. The absence of the Moral 
 Sense in dreams is a matter touched upon in my former 
 essay, on which I have received the most varied communi- 
 cations. On one hand two esteemed friends have assured me 
 that their consciences are occasionally awake in sleep ; on 
 the other, a great many more tell me that their experience 
 entirely corroborates my somewhat hazarded observations. 
 For example, an admirable and most kind-hearted lady 
 palmed off a bad sixpence on a beggar, and chuckled at the 
 notion of his disappointment when he should discover her 
 deception. A distinguished philanthropist, exercising for 
 
358 DREA3IS. 
 
 many years liigh judicial functions, continually commits for- 
 gery, and only regrets the act when lie learns that he is to be 
 hanged. A woman, whose life at the time of her dream was 
 devoted to the instruction of pauper children, seeing one of 
 them make a face at her, doubled him up into the smallest 
 compass, and poked him through the bars of a lion's cage. 
 One of the most benevolent of men, who shared not at all 
 in the military enthusiasm of his warlike brothers (the 
 late Mr. Richard Napier), ran his best friend through the 
 body, and ever after recalled the extreme gratification he 
 had experienced on seeing the point of his sword come out 
 through the shoulders of his beloved companion. Other 
 crimes committed in dreams need not be here recorded; 
 but I am persuaded that if we could but know all the 
 improper things done by the most proper people in their 
 sleep with the utmost sangfroid and completely unblushing 
 effrontery, the picture would present a diverting contrast to 
 our knowledge of them in their conscious hours. 
 
 If the moral sense be not wholly suppressed in sleep, 
 there is certainly enough evidence to conclude that it is 
 only exceptionally active, and chiefly, if not solely so, in 
 the case of dreams assuming the character of nightmares, 
 in which the consciousness is far less perfectly dormant than 
 in others. Let it be understood that I do not deny the 
 presence of the peculiar dread and horror of remorse in 
 sleep. As it is undoubtedly the worst torture of which 
 the mind is susceptible, so it is the form of mental suffering 
 which continually presents itself in the crisis and climax 
 of imaginary woe in a nightmare or in insanity. But this 
 has nothing to do with the normal consciousness of right and 
 wrong, the sense that what we are actually doing is morally 
 good or bad ; a sense which is never wholly absent in our 
 waking hours, and which (as I conceive) is never present 
 in a perfectly natural dream. If the experience of my 
 
DREAMS. 359 
 
 readers do not lead them to correct this opinion, then I 
 must be permitted to urge that the discovery of such a law 
 as that which excludes the moral sense from dreams must 
 needs point to some important conclusion concerning the 
 nature of unconscious cerebration. If such cerebration be 
 in any way to be described as our own work, how is it 
 possible that so intimate, so indissoluble a part of ourselves 
 as our sense of the moral character of actions should be 
 regularly absent ? To divide the idea of a cruel deed from 
 a sense of loathing, or a base one from a sense of contempt, 
 would be an impossible feat for us to accomplish awake. 
 Our perception of such acts is simultaneously a perception 
 of their moral hideousness; yet we do this in dreams, not 
 merely occasionally, but, as I conceive, as a rule of which 
 the exceptions, if any, are extremely rare. 
 
 Nay, further. A great proportion of the passions of 
 our dreams seem often not reflexes of those experienced in 
 former hours of consciousness, but altogether foreign to 
 our natures, past and present. Passions which never for 
 a moment sullied our consciousness, sentiments the very 
 antitheses of those belonging to our idiosyncrasies, present 
 themselves in sleep, and are followed out by their ap- 
 propriate actions, just as if we were not ourselves at all, 
 but, in one case, a Jack Shepherd, or in another a Caligula. 
 The man who would go to the stake rather than do a dis- 
 honourable act, imagines himself cheating at cards ; the 
 woman who never voluntarily hurt a fly, chops a baby into 
 mincemeat. 
 
 The theory of Dugald Stewart, that the Will is not dor- 
 mant in dreams, but has merely lost the power of controlling 
 the muscles,^ seems to me entirely inadequate to fit cases 
 like these. If the will were awake, it must inevitably rebel 
 against acts so repugnant to it, even if it were powerless 
 1 Dugald Stewart's "Works, vol. ii. p. 292. 
 
360 DREAMS. 
 
 to prevent the brain from inventing them. A sense of dis- 
 cord and trouble would reign in our dreams as of " a house 
 divided against itself." The fact that nothing of the kind 
 is experienced, and that we have, notoriously, not even 
 a sense of surprise in dreams when we find ourselves 
 committing the most atrocious outrages, is surely suffi- 
 cient to prove that the true self is not merely impotent but 
 dormant. 
 
 JFinally, not only the absence of the moral sense in dreams, 
 but also the absence of all sense of mental fatigue in them, 
 appears to point to the same conclusion. In dreams we 
 never experience that weariness which invariably in waking 
 hours follows all sustained volition. Wide and wild as may 
 be our flights of fancy, no feather of our wings seems to droop 
 after them. But exertion of will is the most laborious of 
 all things, whether it be employed to attend to a subject 
 of study, to create a fanciful story, or to direct our limbs in 
 unwonted actions. It has been truly remarked, that if the 
 laws of our constitution required us to perform a separate 
 act of volition for every muscular motion we make in the 
 course of twenty-four hours, — in other words, if there were 
 no such power as that of automatic action, — we should ex- 
 pire of the fatigue of a single day's exertion ; nay, of the 
 mere rising up and sitting down, and washing and brushing 
 and buttoning, and moving our legs down stairs, and cut- 
 ting and buttering and chewing and swallowing, and all the 
 numberless little proceedings which must be gone through 
 before even breakfast is accomplished. Nature has so ar- 
 ranged it that we learn the various arts of walking, eating, 
 dressing, etc., etc., one by one, and at an age when we have 
 nothing else to do ; so that when the further lessons of how 
 to read, to write, and so on, have to be learned, the rudiments 
 of life's business have long before passed into the class of 
 voluntary acts over which unconscious cerebration is quite 
 
DREAMS. 361 
 
 sufficiently sensible to preside. And this unconscious brain- 
 work never seems to tire us at all ; whether it consists in 
 setting our feet and eyes going in the proper direction for 
 walking or riding, or in painting for us the choicest galleries 
 of pictures in dreamland, or composing for us as many novels 
 as taxed the imagination of Alexandre Dumas. It is the 
 conscious Self alone whose exertions ever flag, and for whose 
 repose merciful Nature has deserved the blessing of Sancho 
 Panza on " the man who invented sleep." 
 
 Take it how we will, I think it remains evident that in 
 dreams (except those belonging to the class of nightmare 
 wherein the will is partially awakened) we are in a condition 
 of entire passivity ; receiving impressions indeed from the 
 work which is going on in our brains, but incurring no 
 fatigue thereby, and exempted from all sense of moral re- 
 sponsibility as regards it. The instrument on which we are 
 wont to play has slipped from our loosened grasp, and its 
 secondary and almost equally wondrous powers have become 
 manifest. It is not only a finger-organ, but a self-acting 
 one; which, while we lie still and listen, goes over, more 
 or less perfectly, and with many a quaint wrong note and 
 variation, the airs which we performed on it yesterday, or 
 long ago. 
 
 Is this instrument ourselves ? Are ice quite inseparable 
 from this manufactory of thoughts ? If it never worked 
 except by our volition and under our control, then, indeed, 
 it might be difficult to conceive of our" consciousness apart 
 from it. But every night a difierent lesson is taught us. 
 The brain, released from its bit and rein, plays like a colt 
 turned to pasture, or, like the horse of the miller, goes round 
 from left to right to relieve itself from having gone round 
 from right to left all the day before. "Watching these in- 
 stinctive sports and relaxations by which we benefit, but in 
 whose direction we have no part, do we not acquire the con- 
 
362 DREAMS. 
 
 viction that the dreaming brain-self is not the true self for 
 whose moral worthiness we strive, and for whose existence 
 after death alone we care? "We are of the stuff which 
 dreams are made of." Not wholly so, mighty poet- 
 philosopher ! In that "stuff" there enters not the noblest 
 element of our nature ; that Moral Will which allies us, 
 not to the world of passing shadows, but to the great 
 Eternal Will, in whose Life it is our hope that we shall 
 live for ever. 
 
ESSAY XIIL 
 
 AURICULAR CONFESSION 
 
 CHURCH OF ENGLAND.! 
 
 Certain well-known coarse attempts to "unmask" the 
 Confessional seem to have effected a purpose very remote 
 from that which their originators designed. By fixing the 
 public mind on gross abuses, which no one seriously appre- 
 hends to see revived in the hands of English clergymen, 
 attention has been diverted from the real point at issue, 
 namely, the moral or immoral, spiritual or unspiritual, ten- 
 dency of the practice of Auricular Confession under ordinary 
 and favourable circumstances. In the following pages, I 
 propose to leave aside altogether any consideration of the 
 evils accidental to the practice, and to pass no judgment on 
 
 1 Tracts for the Bay. 1 vol. 8vo, London : Longmans. 1868. 
 
 A Help to Eepentanee. By the Rev. Vernon Hutton. 4tli thousand. London : 
 Longmans. 
 
 Pardon through the Precious Blood, or the Benefit of Absolution. Edited by 
 a Committee of Clergy. 22nd thousand. London : Palmer. 1870. 
 
 The Ordinance of Confession. By William Gresley. 2nd edition. Masters. 
 1852, 
 
 The Church and the World. Edited by the Eev. Orby Shipley. Article, 
 "Thirty Tears in the English Church." 1st series. Longmans. 1866. 
 
 The Church and the World. Article, "Private Confession and Absolution." 
 2nd series. Longmans. 1867. 
 
364 AURICULAR CONFESSION IN 
 
 the narratives rife through Southern Europe, concerning 
 "Priests, Women and families." I shall attempt to study- 
 as candidly as possible the inherent moral character of such 
 an act as regular confession to a priest, and draw such con- 
 clusions as may seem warranted regarding the attitude to be 
 observed towards the present revival of the practice. That 
 the inquirj^ is not untimely may be judged by any one who 
 will take the trouble to inform himself of what the whole 
 High-Church party are now doing in this matter, and to 
 what extent all over the country they are raising a claim 
 to receive the confessions of their flocks as a regular portion 
 of their ofiice. 
 
 In a world in which Sin occupies the place it holds to-day 
 on our planet, it would seem almost superfluous to protest 
 against the use of any method which aims at its repression. 
 The evils within and around us may well be thought great 
 enough to occupy all our energies, without turning our hand 
 against those who are honestly contending against them also, 
 even if they employ tactics which we deem ill advised and 
 indiscreet. "Let us leave these High- Churchmen," we are in- 
 clined to say, "to make what efibrts they please to stem the 
 flood of vice in our great cities. If we do not augur much 
 success for their attempt, at least we honour their zeal, and 
 are fully persuaded that to do anything is better than to do 
 nothing." Such first impressions are even in a certain way 
 deepened if we chance to read the manuals of penitence 
 prepared by our English Father- Confessors, such as those 
 quoted at the head of this article. The serious tone 
 of these books, free from taint of cant, and the exalted 
 standard of morality in word and deed obviously accepted by 
 their authors, claim the highest respect ; nor can any reader 
 doubt that it is real sin, not mere ecclesiastical error, which 
 is attacked, and real goodness, not mere sheep-like obedience, 
 which is inculcated. 
 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.^ 365 
 
 But whatever be the good intentions, the honesty and 
 the zeal, of the modern revivers of the Confessional in our 
 churches, the question is not altered : Is the practice of 
 Auricular -Confession to a priest spiritually or morally ex- 
 pedient ? Are its natural results strengthening or weaken- 
 ing to the mind? Must it make a man feel more deeply 
 the burden of his sins, or teach him to cast them off on 
 the shoulders of another? Will it (for this is the crucial 
 question of all) — will it bring the sinful soul nearer, in the 
 deep solitudes of the spiritual world, to the One only Source 
 of purity and restoration, and help it to look straight up 
 into the face of God ; or will it, on the contrary, thrust a 
 priest always between man and his Maker to intercept 
 even the embrace of the returning Prodigal in his Father's 
 arms ? 
 
 In the endeavour to find the solution of these questions, 
 it will of course be necessary to leave considerable margin 
 for differences of moral condition such as exist at all times in 
 a given jDopulation — a margin which ought to be still further 
 enlarged when we include in our survey a long period of 
 history and the inhabitants of both barbarous and civilized 
 lands. The practice of which the benefits may outweigh its 
 disadvantages, or which may have few disadvantages at all, 
 when applied to a child or a savage, to lawless mediaeval 
 barons or brutish serfs, may do indefinitely more harm 
 than good when used by full-grown and educated people 
 in the nineteenth century. Our object in the j)i'esent 
 paper being a practical one, we shall limit our scope 
 to the class and nation which the revival of Auricular 
 Confession in England alone concerns, and ask : How is it 
 likely to afiect English men and women from the age of 
 confirmation to the end of life, and from the highest social 
 and intellectual rank down to that level of poverty and 
 stupidity against which the waves of clerical zeal break 
 
366 AURICULAR CONFESSION IN 
 
 for ever in vain ? We must assume average intelligence, 
 average religious feeling, and, especially, average moral 
 condition. The old Church of England principle, that men 
 burdened with any " grievous crime " should seek relief 
 from confession to "any discreet and learned minister of 
 God's word," is one whose wisdom we are not at all inclined 
 to dispute ; and it is only with the extension of this reason- 
 able rule from the exceptional to the general and universal, 
 that we are now concerned. An elaborate defence of such 
 extension may be seen in one of the books at the head of 
 this article ; ^ but, when it was published, twenty years ago, 
 English High-Churchmen had not gone by any means so 
 far in their inculcation of Confession as they do at present ; 
 and Mr. Gresley was ready to admit that " in foreign 
 churches where Confession is compulsory and periodical, 
 there is danger of formality" (p. 135); and that women 
 may be led to rely too much on their priests (p. 137), even 
 while he set forth the innumerable reasons why people 
 should renew their confessions and seek " ghostly counsel ' 
 again and again. More recent manuals (among which 
 Pardon through the Precious Blood, edited by a Commit- 
 tee of Clergymen, appears to be most authoritative) take 
 it seemingly for granted that every one needs Confession 
 as much as he needs the^ perpetual pardon of God ; and the 
 forms recommended for use always refer to the " last Confes- 
 sion," as if the Anglican, like the Romish penitent, made 
 it, as a matter of course, a regular practice. The religious 
 life seems understood by these teachers to commence nor- 
 mally only by a General Confession, just as an Evangelical 
 believes it to commence by " Conversion." The vivid sense 
 of sinfulness (which is the one natural fact of the case) must, 
 as they hold it, rigorously take the shape of Auricular 
 Confession to make it available. " Mere" private contrition 
 1 The Ordinance of Confession, by the Rev. "William Gresley. 
 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 367 
 
 of heart and amendment of life, they treat as wholly un- 
 satisfactory and incomplete, carrying with them no promise 
 of Divine pardon. Not to speak disrespectfully, they 
 practically affirm that a man must repent en regie — confess 
 to a priest, do penance, and be absolved — or his repentance 
 will still need to be repented of. Thus Confession has 
 ceased to be an exceptional action, and has become the 
 regular practice of a religious life. It is not to be applied 
 as a specific remedy in cases of acute disease. It is to be 
 used like a daily ablution, as the proper means of purifica- 
 tion and health. 
 
 Putting aside, then, cases of offenders who have com- 
 mitted heinous ofiences, we shall suppose the instance of a 
 person of ordinary character and circumstances in the con- 
 dition of mind desired by the preachers of Confession. 
 He is sensible of his sinfulness, and (a point to which 
 we shall hereafter refer) very much terrified by fear of 
 hell-fire. His pastors instruct him that his private peni- 
 tence, whatever may be its intensity, afibrds no sort of 
 security that the benefits of the " Precious Blood " shall 
 be applied to his particular soul, and that to obtain such 
 security he must confess to a priest who has received at 
 his ordination the commission, " Whose sins thou dost 
 forgive, they are forgiven ; and whose sins thou dost re- 
 tain, they are retained." Goaded by remorse and terror, 
 h,e is taught further to lash his feelings to excitement by 
 such representations as these : " Look at His sacred body 
 nailed to the cross ; see His flesh torn and mangled, 
 dripping with blood ; this is the work of thy sins. Thy 
 sins have opened His wounds and made them bleed 
 afresh ; they have torn wider the rents in His hands and 
 feet."^ Finally, he makes up his mind to come to confes- 
 sion and (as he is assured) become " clean " and safe. What 
 1 The Precious Blood, p. 20. 
 
368 AURICULAR CONFESSION IN 
 
 are the moral and spiritual 'results likely to follow such, 
 an act? 
 
 In the first place, the long and close self-examination 
 which is ordered as a preliminary, may, when first practised 
 by a hitherto thoughtless person, very probably open quite 
 a new view to a man of his own character. In some special 
 cases it may perhaps even do the invaluable service of 
 teaching a self-satisfied Pharisee that he ought to put him- 
 self in the place of the Publican. Some festering secrets 
 of souls may be healed simply by being brought to light, 
 and spectres dissolved into air by being fairly faced. Long 
 cherished hatred may be tracked to its root, and a selfish 
 life looked at for once as a whole in its proper colours. 
 All these good results, I freely admit, may follow from 
 the self-examination which is required before Confession, 
 and which (it may be added) has formed a recognized por- 
 tion of all metanoia, from the days of Pythagoras and 
 David to our own. But how of the Confession itself ? 
 What good or harm is to be done to such a mind as we 
 have supposed, by the process of kneeling down in a vestry 
 before a clergyman, making the sign of the cross, and then 
 for about a quarter of an hour (or, in some cases, for five 
 or six hours) going over the events of life seriatim : " I 
 accuse myself of" this falsehood, that unkindness, and so 
 on ? If the individual be so ignorant of morals as not 
 to know what is sinful and what is innocent, it must 
 be a great benefit to him to receive instruction from his 
 Confessor, provided always that he is — what priests un- 
 fortunately, by some twist of mental conformation, seem 
 very rarely to be — a sound and healthy moralist. In such 
 a case, the Confessional may obviously be a useful school of 
 ethics. But it is surely no small disgrace to our spiritual 
 guides if it should be needed as such, and if their flocks 
 have been so little instructed in the principles of upright- 
 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 369 
 
 ness and charity, as not to know beforehand what is right 
 and what is wrong, and to require to wait till they have 
 sinned, to know what is sinful. 
 
 That the fear of having hereafter to confess a sin may 
 sometimes possibly keep a man from committing it, is 
 another argument for the usefulness of the Confessional 
 as a moral agent, on which I need not enlarge. Such a 
 motive would, of course, have no ethical value, and as to 
 its deterrent force, may plausibly be balanced against the 
 encouragement (found undoubtedly by E-omlsh criminals, 
 bandits, etc., and possibly, therefore, also by Anglicans) 
 in the assurance of pardon, obtainable at any moment, by 
 priestly absolution. When we have descended to so low 
 a level of motive in the one case, we are called on to do 
 the like in the other. 
 
 Lastly, there is a very great and important result of 
 the practice of Confession, which to some of its upholders 
 doubtless appears among its chief advantages, but which 
 I must be excused for classing altogether in another cate- 
 gor}'', namely, the enormous influence given thereby to the 
 priesthood over the minds of their flocks. To treat fully 
 of this matter, and to trace the share of her confessors 
 in building up the vast edifice of the authority of the 
 Church of Rome, would need, not a few paragraphs in 
 an article, but several volumes. That the influence of 
 the clergy of the Church of England would ever be as 
 evil as that of their brethren of the Church of Rome, I 
 am far from believing ; but with the warning of all 
 history before our eyes, I think that he must be a bold 
 man, indeed, who should desire to place in the hands 
 of any priesthood on earth a power whose most partial 
 misuse means ecclesiastical despotism, and the mental 
 and moral slavery of all the weaker minds of the com- 
 munity. 
 
 24 
 
370 AURICULAR CONFESSION IN 
 
 Turning now to the disadvantages of the practice of Con- 
 fession, we may observe three points in particular : 
 
 1. The fostering of a materialistic and mechanical view 
 of religion. 
 
 2. The enervation of the moral constitution. 
 
 3. The desecration of the inner spiritual life by the 
 exposure to a priest of the most sacred recesses of the 
 penitent soul. 
 
 1. In nearly every essay and manual on the subject of Con- 
 fession, the practice is recommended as indispensable to give 
 reality to repentance. So long as a man's feelings of contri- 
 tion are hid in his own bosom, or only poured out in prayer 
 to Grod in his chamber, of what avail (it is asked) are they ? 
 " To look calmly," says the author of the essay on the 
 Seven Sacraments in the Tracts for the Bay (p. 59), " at the 
 cry, ' Go direct to Christ,' what does it mean ? . . . The Pro- 
 testant directs the penitent to rely wholly and entirely on 
 his own internal feelings ; he is not to go out of himself for 
 pardon and grace. From the beginning to the end of the 
 operation, it is something worked out in the mind and 
 
 heart of the sinner How different is the faith of the 
 
 Catholic Church and the practice of the Catholic penitent ! " 
 Very different indeed, we may truly echo, since this is as 
 good an illustration as could be chosen of the difference 
 between spiritual and sacerdotal religion. An operation, 
 even the blessed operation of penitence and restoration, is of 
 no value, it seems, in Catholic eyes, if it be merely " worked 
 out in the mind and heart of the sinner." A mere change of 
 mind and heart, from the love of sin to the love of God, — 
 the alpha and omega of religion, — the change for whose 
 accomplishment in the inner man some sanguine Protestants 
 imagine all Catholic machinery to be houestl}'', though 
 clumsily, designed, — this greatest of all spiritual events, 
 over which Christ thought that angels rejoice in heaven, is, 
 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAJS'D. 371 
 
 after all, we are told, most unsatisfactory and incomplete, 
 if it be not accompanied by spoken confession to a priest, 
 penance of outward act, and the receipt of duly autho- 
 rized priestly absolution. A man who only prays in the 
 chamber where Christ told him to pray, does not " go out 
 of himself." It is not "going out of" oneself to pray alone. 
 That, we presume, is a mere subjective phenomenon, liable, 
 as the author presentlj'- points out, to land us in grievous 
 error. To "go out of" oneself, it is necessary to do a great 
 deal more (at least in priestly view) than only to rise up from 
 the swine's husks in the " far country " and return to the 
 Father's feet. It is necessary to speak to a man — a real, 
 tangible, audible man — not merely to the unseen and silent 
 Spirit. Speaking to God is not properly a real act; and 
 as for listening to His whispers in the soul of reproof or 
 pardon, it is the most dangerous thing in the world. We 
 must speak to the priest, and hear from the priest that 
 we are absolved, and then we may knoiv we have repented 
 and are " safe." All other knowledge, whether of the sin- 
 cerity of our contrition or of the renewal of communion 
 which God has granted to us, is to be taken as mere illusion, 
 or at best as wholly untrustworthy. We have not " gone 
 out of ourselves" from first to last. 
 
 Is it too much to say that this is the true — if not the 
 only — infidelity, even the distrust of spiritual, and the 
 reliance on physical, facts, displayed in dealing with the 
 very crisis of the soul's history ? 
 
 The same observations apply to the subjects of Penance 
 and Absolution, in which the sense of Repentance is 
 assumed by the same teachers to be visionary till it has 
 done something else beside undoing as far as may be the 
 evil repented of ; and the sense of Restoration is disallowed 
 till a form of words has been pronounced over the penitent 
 by the priest. 
 
372 AURICULAR CONFESSION IN 
 
 Again, the usual practice of allotting for Penance tlie 
 repetition of certain prayers, in the Anglican as in the 
 Roman Catholic Church, goes a little further in the direc- 
 tion of the mechanical and the profane. Contemplating 
 such a portent as a clergyman ordering, and his penitent 
 performing, such an act as that of prayer to the Father in 
 heaven as a punishment, or (as one of our manuals describes 
 it, as an improvement on this notion) as a " token of obedi- 
 ence to the Church," we are tempted to ask. Do either con- 
 fessor or penitent know what Prayer means ? Do they, who 
 use it, as we know, with so much constancy and reverence in 
 their perpetual services, do they understand that it is some- 
 thing more than a funzione, as the Italians say — that it may 
 be life's greatest joy, humanity's highest glory ? It cannot 
 be but that such devoted men must know it. How, then, 
 can they endure to make of it a " penance " ? Are children 
 punished by sending them to their parent's arms, or made to 
 " show obedience " to the nurse by seeking their father's face ? 
 
 Again, the notion of Sin itself is by these Anglicans 
 strangely materialized. They manifestly hold very high 
 and pure conceptions of right and wrong acts and senti- 
 ments ; but the reasons why the sinner is to regret and 
 abhor his sins are set forth in a way to lead us to imagine 
 that the hatefulness of bad deeds and feelings, and the loss 
 by the sinful soul of that divine light below whose plane 
 it has fallen, are not by any means the sole or worst evils 
 involved. The two great evils, on the contrary, seem to be, 
 first, that if the soul leaves the body in a state of sin, ** it will 
 be driven away from God, and be plunged into a place of 
 darkness and misery for ever ;" and, secondly, that the sin- 
 ner's offences have had a part in causing the sufferings of 
 Christ. " By thine uncleanness," the penitent is advised 
 to say to his soul, "thou hast scourged his body with 
 the most painful stripes. Thou hast had no mercy on 
 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 373 
 
 his adorable body," etc.^ Thus, as usual in the orthodox 
 system, a man's mind is forcibly diverted from his own 
 moral guilt to vivid images of Christ's physical sufferings, 
 which (even supposing them to have had a mysterious ante- 
 dated connexion with his sins) were certainly not intended 
 by him to be aggravated, and therefore are not properly the 
 subjects of his genuine contrition. Having really maliciously 
 injured his neighbour A., or been too selfish to help B., he 
 is advised, not to think about his behaviour or feelings 
 towards A. or B., but to goad himself to toi^tures of remorse 
 for having hurt C, who died long before he was born, 
 and who he believes now reigns the King of Paradise. 
 Instead of writhing under the load of his present shame 
 and guilt, he is urged to ponder on the dangers of exposure 
 at the day of judgment and of the punishment of his sins 
 in eternity. Always, it is the material consequence to him- 
 self or to his Saviour, not his actual moral guilt, which is 
 insisted upon. 
 
 The conception of Sin as a series of definite wrong acts 
 which can be catalogued and rehearsed, rather than as an 
 evil state of the heart which God alone can fully know, 
 is another instance of materialism. Unless in the case of 
 heinous ofPences, it would seem as if the idea of a general 
 confession of misdoings and omissions were, to an enlight- 
 ened conscience, something almost absurd. The thing to 
 be confessed above all — the only thing, in fact, which very 
 much concerns us — is just what such a catalogue must omit. 
 Many a man presenting a long list of actual sins to his 
 confessor might obviously be immeasurably better than one 
 who could hardly tax himself with the omission of a single 
 tithe-giving of mint, anise or cummin, but whose heart and 
 will had swerved from God altogether. 
 
 ^ The Precious Blood, p. 20. N.B. — This little book is bound in crimson, and 
 is altogether as sensational as typography and literary dress can make it. 
 
374 AURICULAR CONFESSION IN 
 
 Finally, as regards this department of our subject, it 
 ought to be carefully weighed what meaning is attached 
 to the assurance, tendered to the penitent, that he is 
 "clean now." The desire that our sins should never 
 have been committed, is of course the very first sentiment 
 of natural repentance; but this being a matter whicb even 
 God cannot change, no man, it is to be presumed, thinks 
 of asking for it. Again, the desire that God should purify 
 all that is evil in us now, should " give us a clean heart and 
 renew a right spirit within us," is the supreme prayer of 
 every contrite soul ; but it is one whose response must 
 come, if it come at all, in a spiritual fact about which we 
 alone may have cognizance, and concerning which a priest's 
 assurance must necessarily go for nothing. If a man find 
 his spirit really " renewed," filled with hatred of the sin he 
 cherished, and of love to God and goodness, it is of the 
 smallest possible consequence to him whether anybody tell 
 him that such is, or is not, the case. On the other hand, if 
 he feel his heart still full of evil passions, it is a ghastly 
 mockery to tell him he is " clean," in any sense such as that 
 which we are now considering. There remains, then, only 
 for the word, as employed in the manuals of confessors, the 
 old sense in which it was used by Hebrews and Brahmins, 
 Romans and Aztecs, the sense of a magical removal of guilt, 
 attainable, as was supposed, by means of a scapegoat, a 
 Soma sacrifice, a Taurobolia, or a human victim. This is 
 not the place to criticize these crude notions of half- 
 civilized races, but it may be remarked that of all the 
 eight difierent ways in which, as the lamented McLeod 
 Campbell told us, the Christian doctrine of the Atonement 
 may be understood, the lowest possible is that which assimi- 
 lates it to these heathen rites ; first, by representing Christ's 
 sacrifice as a device to save men, not from the dominion 
 of sin, but from its punishment; and then by making the 
 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 375 
 
 application of the benefit depend, not on a spiritual identi- 
 fication of the sinful soul by faith and love with its supposed 
 sinless Redeemer, but on a practical transaction between 
 the man and a priest who acts as Christ's delegate, 
 and conveys to him a legal absolution. Throughout the 
 whole treatment of the subject by the Anglican advocates 
 of Confession, it will also be observed that the object pro- 
 fessedly sought is " Pardon," in the sense in which that word 
 is distinguished from "Forgiveness"; namely, as representing 
 the Remission of a Penalty, not the Reconciliation of an 
 ofiended Friend. No priest presumes to tell his penitent 
 that God, through his mouth, assures him of the restoration 
 of His Fatherly love and freedom of communion. That 
 fact, like the fact of a renewed spirit, must be felt to be 
 believed ; and the voices of all the priests in Christendom 
 could do nothing to make it either more or less certain. 
 But the magical expiation which secures the remission of 
 a remote penalty, is a matter on which sacerdotal authority 
 may successfully pronounce that it has been accurately ac- 
 complished. 
 
 Whether anxiety for escape from punishment be, or be 
 not, a proper feature of genuine penitence, is a question 
 which has been much obscured by the intrusion of the 
 monstrous doctrine of Eternal Perdition into the natural 
 view of the subject. No amount of religion or virtue could 
 enable a man willingly to renounce religion and virtue to 
 all eternity ; and therefore, so long as any one believes that 
 his sins may incur everlasting banishment from God, he is 
 compelled to crave eagerly for the remission of their pun- 
 ishment. But the moment this threat is removed, the case 
 is altered. Genuine contrition occupies itself very little 
 about the suffering which we may have entailed on ourselves 
 by sin ; nay, in cases of poignant self-reproach and remorse, 
 the prospect of such sufiering is undoubtedly far from 
 
376 AURICULAR CONFESSION IN 
 
 unwelcome, but rather a relief. That "justice should 
 be done," even though we lie prostrate beneath it, is the 
 noblest sentiment of the repentant soul ; the one by which 
 it most surely re-assumes its filial relationship to the Lord 
 of Justice. To encourage an opposite frame of mind, and 
 inspire urgent desire for escape from punishment, with re- 
 course to such a method as priestly absolution for avoiding 
 it, is assuredly ver}^ far from an elevating system of religious 
 training. The slave shrinks from the lash, and appeals 
 to the Overseer to intercede on his behalf. The son cries, 
 " Punish me, for I have deserved punishment, but only 
 receive me again. That is all I desire." 
 
 A very marked distinction has existed at all times be- 
 tween the two kinds of sacrifices ; those which were intended 
 for a j^ropitiation and vicarious satisfaction for sin, and those 
 which were meant as expressions of love and devotion, and 
 of the inner sense of the rightfulness that all which man is 
 and has should be given to God. The High-Church clergy, 
 like the extreme Evangelicals, insist on treating the death 
 of Christ in the former light, and outrun them in making 
 the Eucharist a magical appropriation of that event ; a 
 " feeding on a sacrifice." But the Anglicans alone of the 
 two parties in the National Church have attempted to re- 
 store, not only the vicarious, but the devotional tj'pe of 
 sacrifice, and by their whole scheme of an ornate cultus 
 and perpetual services and ceremonies, to renew in our 
 century the formalism of an earlier age. Not wholly with- 
 out tenderness can we view this movement, judging it to be 
 in a great measure the result of a fervent longing to retain 
 a grasp of religion amid the gathering clouds of doubt — a 
 grasp unhappily fastened, not on its realities, but on its 
 mere vesture and dress. But it is none the less a sad, a 
 deplorable spectacle. The original idea of such sacrifice of 
 formal devotion as we are speaking of, has been compared to 
 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 377 
 
 a child's delight in bringing home to his mother the weeds 
 and pebbles with which he has been himself delighted in 
 his daily walk. The mother accepts them lovingly as 
 tokens of her child's love ; and the child brings them again 
 and again and soon makes a habit, well nigh sacred, of 
 giving them to her continually. At last it dawns on his 
 mind that she cannot possibly really care for them ; that 
 they are of no value to her ; and that she has only accepted 
 them because she has understood that he meant them as 
 offerings of affection. What now is he to do ? Is he to go 
 on giving his mother the weeds and pebbles still ? He has 
 nothing else to give, and his heart yearns to give something, 
 and the habit has become so fixed that there seems a want 
 of filial affection in discontinuing it. Yery probably,, then, 
 he maintains the practice for a time ; but it is obvious that 
 the original purpose is lost, the beauty of the action gone. 
 If he persist long in keeping up the dry and now unmean- 
 ing custom, a mechanical spirit inevitably creeps over his 
 performance of it, and all his relations with his parent 
 become falsified and distorted. At last, one day she says 
 to him, " Bring no more vain oblations. My son, give me 
 thine heart. Show thy love to me, not in gifts which I heed 
 not, but in serving my other children, thy brothers." If he 
 hears this warning and still persists in presenting his paltry 
 childish offerings, what hope is there for him ? How is he 
 ever to enter into true relations with his mother ? 
 
 2. The second grave objection to the use of Confession, 
 except in cases of extraordinary guilt, is that it must inevi- 
 tably tend to enervate the moral constitution. To acquire the 
 habit of running to a priest whenever we feel penitent, or 
 desire to strengthen our good resolutions, or, in fact, are pass- 
 ing throvigh any of the deeper phases of the inner life when 
 God's spirit is striving with ours, can surely have no other 
 
378 AURICULAR CONFESSION IN 
 
 result than to make us weaker and less able to walk alone 
 with God every year of our lives. The conscience which 
 is itself brought to another bar, is no longer the supreme 
 Judge within us. The little seed of good which is fruc- 
 tifying in the depth of our hearts, may only too probably 
 be killed by exposure. The more able and powerful may 
 be our Confessor, the more certain is it that he must shortly 
 assume in our minds a place of authority which will leave us 
 small remnant of self-reliance in matters wherein our judg- 
 ment may diiFer from his as to the rectitude of an action ; 
 and if we reach the point of blindly accepting his ipse dixit 
 in cases of duty, against our own conscience, where are we, 
 but in the net of the Jesuit's " obedience " ? Of course, as 
 in every other history of the struggle between Authority 
 and Freedom, there are endless fine things to be said of 
 the invaluable use of authority in keeping foolish and igno- 
 rant people straight, and of the terrible consequences of 
 freedom to anybody short of a sage and a saint. Still, if 
 we have read aright the great purpose for which God has 
 made us, and are not mistaken in supposing that He sees 
 it best to permit all the evil and misery which arise from 
 moral freedom, sooner than leave us without it, we may 
 reasonably demur to the stride which priests would take 
 in curtailing that liberty, were we to allow them to be 
 once more the guardians of the consciences of the nations. 
 Even if the ethics taught by any " Catholic " priesthood 
 were uniformly pure and high, if vile casuistry were a 
 thing unknown in their books, if Catholic nations and 
 individuals trained by the Confessional obviously held the 
 clearest ideas of truth and uprightness, if ecclesiastical 
 behaviour never betrayed signs of shuffling or crooked- 
 mindedness, even if all these things were so, we should 
 still gravely object to permitting the Anglican clergy, or 
 any other order of clergy in the world, to assume the sway 
 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 379 
 
 over men's consciences obtained by the practice of Auricular 
 Confession. As things actually are, it would seem to us 
 one of the most grievous dangers to public morality to 
 entrust them with such power for a generation, even though 
 we fully appreciate the lofty morality of their present in- 
 structions. 
 
 In this, as in every other of the High-Church restorations 
 of Eomish practices, we find ourselves drawn into discuss- 
 ing as a novelty that which in truth has been an experi- 
 ment tried on an enormous scale for many centuries, and of 
 which there is no real need to speak save by rehearsing the 
 obvious results. Which are the people of Europe whose 
 characters are most straightforward and manly, who care 
 most for public justice, and whose word is most gene- 
 rally accepted by friends and foes as trustworthy? Is 
 it the nations who have enjoyed all the supposed moral 
 benefits of Auricular Confession from the Dark Ages till 
 to-day, — the Spaniards, the Greeks, the Neapolitans, the 
 Irish? Or does it chance that even in those Catholic 
 countries an English or American heretic, the descendant 
 of a dozen generations of unconfessing heretics, is believed 
 on his word and trusted more readily than a native ? How 
 is it that every foreigner points with envy and admiration 
 to the public spirit and love of justice which, as M. Taine 
 says, " support England on a million columns " ? How 
 is it that we are not learning public and private virtue 
 from the priest-led nations of Europe, if the Confessional 
 be the true school of goodness? How is it that the ages 
 when it reigned supreme and unquestioned, were worse 
 ases than anv the world has since beheld ? How is it 
 that we are growing a little more humane, a little more 
 truthful, a little more sober, as the generations bear us 
 further from the last days even of Protestant Confession; 
 while the comparison of English domestic morality with 
 
380 AURICULAR CONFESSION IN 
 
 that of Southern Europe, and of English charities with 
 those of any other land, show that even as regards the 
 virtues which the Confessional is supposed expressly to 
 guard and to inculcate, we are no whit the worse for its 
 disuse ? ^ 
 
 3. Lastly, we have to consider among the objections to 
 the revival of the practice of Confession, the desecrating 
 influence on the spiritual life involved in the exposure of 
 the recesses of the soul. The manual already quoted ^ says 
 that j)enitents have two objections to Confession. One is, 
 that they are afraid the clergyman will betray their secrets 
 — an idle fear. The other is, that they are ashamed — a 
 sentiment which ought to be conquered, because " sin not 
 forgiven now will be proclaimed to our endless shame here- 
 after, before men and devils, holy angels and God Himself." 
 Our inquiry is whether this latter sentiment be wholly a 
 bad one, which a man will be permanently the better for 
 disregarding and trampling on ? This is a very important 
 point in the whole subject we are considering; and to do 
 it justice we must pause an instant to define what is the 
 nature of the shame in question. 
 
 There is, first, the kind of shame which consists in the 
 pain of exposure, the sense that we are fallen in the esteem 
 of the person who learns our guilt, and perhaps have be- 
 come the object of his contempt. To those in whom the sen- 
 timent which phrenologists style Love of Approbation is 
 strongly developed, shame of this sort is torture ; and to 
 
 1 In connexion with this subject it may be remarked, that the Fathers of the 
 Reformation were all brought up on the Catholic system and never got beyond 
 Catholic ethics. If some of their actions lend a shade of colour to Dr. 
 Littledale's application to them of his term of " scoundrel martyrs," he may 
 look to " the hole of the pit whence they were digged," or rather whence they 
 partially lifted themselves heavenward, for their exculpation. 
 
 2 Pardon through the Precious Blood. 
 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 381 
 
 all, save the most hardened, it is probably one of the bitter- 
 est drops in the cup of life. Now it is clear that it is this 
 common kind of shame which the advocates of Confession 
 have in their mind as the chief obstacle to the practice, 
 because they constantly insist that the sinner had better 
 make up his mind to compound for the shame of telling his 
 sin to his priest, because "sin not forgiven now will be 
 proclaimed to our endless shame hereafter, before men and 
 devils, holy angels and God Himself."^ (How anything is 
 to be proclaimed before God hereafter, which, by implication, 
 must be concealed from Him now, we cannot stop to con- 
 sider.) Thus Confession is represented rather in the light 
 of a security for secresy, than, as some liberal writers 
 have more charitably supposed it, an outburst of honesty. 
 It is recommended as a wise plan for confining to the 
 ear of a single clergyman secrets which, if not so judi- 
 ciously guarded, will infallibly be published hereafter to 
 the sound of the Last Trumpet. So7ne shame and ex- 
 posure the sinner is assured he must needs endure. Who 
 would not seize the opportunity of limiting the disgrace to 
 a single auditor, rather than incur the terrible penalty of 
 being pilloried before the assembled universe — which of 
 course will have nothing better to do than to stand aghast 
 and listen to the lono' cataloo:ue of our misdemeanours ? 
 
 Now, putting aside this piece of ecclesiastical bribery, let 
 us hold to the point of the moral advantage or disadvan- 
 tage of braving the shame of exposure so far as to confess 
 our sins to a priest. Is the process likely to be ethically 
 beneficial or the reverse ? It would seem that the pain in 
 question is of very varied influence on the characters of 
 those who endure it. To estimate its results aright, we 
 must distinguish carefully between the eflects of being ex- 
 posed involuntarily and publicly, and to all our little world 
 1 Pardon through the Precious Blood, p. 15. 
 
382 AURICULAR CONFESSION IN 
 
 at once ; or of being exposed voluntarily only to one person, 
 and under peculiar conditions of penitence pleading on our 
 behalf for a restoration of esteem. And, again, we must 
 distinguish between the exposure of great sins, proving our 
 whole life to have been a hollow pretence, or that of such 
 ordinary weaknesses as do not entirely forfeit our claim to 
 respect. Public involuntary exposure of great sins com- 
 monly proves too overwhelming an agony to leave the soul 
 any sufficient balance of self-respect or hope enabling it 
 even to retain such virtues as were previously preserved. 
 The miserable swindler, or fallen woman, under such dis- 
 grace, sinks commonly in despair, if not in drunkenness, 
 into complete moral collapse. Only in exceptional cases 
 does public involuntary exposure of either vice or crime, 
 clearing away all fogs of self-deception, leave behind it 
 strength of character and religious or conscientious feeling 
 sufficient to enable the fallen person to start afresh from 
 new ground, and become virtuous in a truer sense than 
 ever. As all who have studied the characters of children, 
 or of persons convicted of crime, are well aware, this shame 
 of exposure is a punishment to be used with extremest cau- 
 tion ; very useful as a threat, but nearly always injurious 
 as an actual infliction. It is doubtless most unwholesome 
 for any one to go on bearing an entirely false character Avith 
 those around him, and to be placed upon a pedestal when 
 he deserves to be on a gibbet ; or to be allowed to weave 
 a romance of self- exculpation and glorification when he 
 actually merits nothing but blame and compassion. ^ Even 
 the sudden downfall of absolute disgrace may be less dan- 
 gerous than this. But, as a rule, public exposure of guilt 
 is a terrible and most perilous trial, to which they who best 
 
 1 This is said to be peculiarly the case with inmates of Penitentiaiics, who 
 invariably enter them with a rigmarole of a liistory taken out of a jienny 
 novelist, aud with whom no real reformation ever begins till they admit thia 
 pseudo -biography to be a lie, and tell the plain facts of their lives. 
 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 383 
 
 understand human nature are most reluctant to expose any 
 fellow-creature whose reclamation is possible by other means. 
 
 Does it follow that private voluntary exposure — a very 
 much milder process, no doubt — is a particularly healthful 
 one? The pang of shame once passed, is passed for ever. 
 No one can ever feel it again in its sharpness. Is it good 
 to have it behind us in our experience, as a thing we have 
 gone through and know the worst of ; or to have it always 
 before us as a formless horror of warning ? I may be 
 wrong in my conclusion, but it seems to me that the pain 
 we should feel the first time we practised Auricular Con- 
 fession would leave us harder and more shameless ever 
 after. It might seem to us right to endure it. I can readily 
 imagine a stern sense of self- revenge and thirst for expia- 
 tion making a man force his lips to utter his own condemna- 
 tion, as Cranmer held his guilty hand in the fire. But it 
 does not follow that the penance, even if undertaken in the 
 purest spirit of contrition, would leave us any the better for 
 practising it. 
 
 This matter, however, is one on which I do not wish to 
 insist. The important point seems to be that of which the 
 advocates of Confession take no notice, namely, that there 
 is another kind of shame beside the shame of exposure 
 There is a shame which is *' a glory and grace," and which 
 has nothing to do with the " What will he think of me ? " 
 which is all they ever seem to contemplate. It cannot 
 be a dream that there is a spiritual, no less than a physical, 
 modesty implanted in all natures save the very lowest ; 
 and if there be such a sentiment, the mode by which 
 it can most grossly be outraged is assuredly by the -reve- 
 lation to a human being of that which passes at the very 
 meeting-place between the repentant soul and God. The 
 shame of such violation of all the sanctities of the spiritual 
 temple as is included in the idea of a " Greneral Confession," 
 
384 AURICULAR CONFESSION IN 
 
 or "making a clean breast" to a priest, seems (to one to 
 whom the idea has not been familiarized) something actually 
 portentous ; something which must leave the soul which has 
 thus exposed itself no shelter evermore even in the deepest 
 recesses of the spiritual world. To have our whole past 
 laid bare, if only in the crude, imperfect way in which 
 words can describe it ; to talk to a man of all that is most 
 awful, most agonizing, and yet (if we have repented and 
 been restored) most inexpressibly tender and sacred in our 
 memories; to uncover every grave of dead sins in our "God's 
 Acre," and exhume the contents for the autopsy of an 
 ecclesiastical coroner, — all this is so purely shocking to 
 the unsophisticated sense, that we feel as if, before it could 
 be done, the soul must be drugged with false excitements. 
 Of course we shall be told that it is to no ordinary human 
 friend that auricular confession is made, but to a priest who 
 stands as the representative of Grod, and holds the keys of 
 remission from Him. Of the monstrous nature of the last 
 pretension I shall not now speak ; but of the fact that it is 
 our priest, and not our brother, mother, friend, to whom we 
 are called to make confession, is, I insist, an aggravation 
 of the evil complained of, not a mitigation of it. Love, 
 deep and perfect, the union of two souls filled with the 
 same love to Grod, and wont to approach Him together, may 
 indeed justify, because it sanctifies, confidences and self- 
 revelations which would be hateful if made to one less near 
 or dear. Though even in the tenderest friendship it is 
 certain that many reservations must be made, yet a great 
 deal which no one else may know, may, without any 
 violation of what I have named spiritual modesty, be con- 
 fided to the one who is " soul of our soul," the nearest to us 
 of created beings, though yet far less near than our God.^ 
 
 ^ It is remarkable that the Mosaic law of Confession says nothing about a 
 priest, but makes the penitent confess to his companion. 
 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 385 
 
 But the relation of penitent and confessor, as understood 
 by Christian churches, has nothing whatever to do with 
 this union of hearts. There is nothing reciprocal in it, nor 
 does the penitent suppose the priest has any interest in 
 him beyond one of pure benevolence. For obvious reasons, 
 it becomes especially dangerous and shocking for any such 
 natural human affections to subsist where the sexes of the 
 two are opposite. The confessor is not a friend, and has 
 none of a friend's sacred rights. But he claims, on the 
 other hand, to be just that very thing which it is most 
 mischievous to employ, namely, a human " go-between," 
 standing in the place of God to us, and therefore hindering 
 us from accomplishing that one act wherein lies salvation, 
 namely, looking straight up to God, and enduring as best 
 we may the awful Light of Light shining full on our dark- 
 ness. The intervention of a priest in such a moment must 
 be tantamount, I conceive, to the nullification of half the 
 purifying power of repentance. And, further, it must es- 
 tablish in our minds a tribunal which is not that of the 
 Holy Spirit within us, — a Pardoner who is not our God. 
 To get behind and beyond this priestly interloper, and once 
 more come directly to the Father, must ever after be ten- 
 fold more difficult. In fact, I seriously question whether 
 any man long accustomed to auricular confession can 
 really so break the law of association of ideas as to thrust 
 aside in hours of penitence the thought of his confessor, 
 and think only simply of God against whom he has sinned, 
 and to whom he desires once more to bring his sin-stained 
 heart. 
 
 We have now seen reason to doubt that the endurance 
 of the lower form of shame felt by a penitent in con- 
 fession would be of moral advantage ; and we have seen 
 (I apprehend) excellent reason for believing that the viola- 
 tion of sacred feelings which would form the higher shame, 
 
 25 
 
386 AURICULAR CONFESSION IN 
 
 would prove spiritually injurious in an almost indefinite 
 degree. 
 
 But it must not be forgotten that there are unhappily 
 many natures to whom these arguments do not apply, for 
 the simple reason that, by an odious inversion of healthy 
 sentiment, they find self-exposure not a pain but a pleasure. 
 Nobody who knows much of the world will be liable to fall 
 into the error of supposing that every one who attends the 
 Confessional does serious violence to himself, or herself, or 
 makes any genuine sacrifice, by such an act. On the con- 
 trary, just as fashionable physicians are wearied by the 
 needless pathological disclosures of egotistic patients, so, in 
 all Catholic countries, fashionable confessors have complained 
 of the fatal facility with which their penitents talk of the 
 state of their souls, and detail their spiritual symptoms 
 with as much obvious gratification as others find in de- 
 scribing those of their bodies. On aime mieux dire du mal 
 de soi-meme que de nen jwint parler, says La Rochefoucauld, 
 and the Confessional is often the best evidence of the truth 
 of the remark. Is it needful to observe that to such sickly 
 hysterical natures, whose souls possess no sanctuary which 
 they are not willing at any moment to violate, there cannot 
 be a worse peril than the presentation, in guise of a self- 
 denying duty, of a practice which is really to them one of 
 vicious self-indulgence ? 
 
 Does any reader ask : Are we, then, never to be 
 absolutely true to any one, never to stand wholly revealed 
 to one single fellow- creature ? Groethe says — most falsely 
 as I take it — that we all have that concealed in our 
 hearts which if revealed would make us an object of 
 abhorrence to those who love us. Is this nightmare to 
 haunt us for ever, and are we never to cast it ofi" and feel 
 we are free and honest, and may look the world in the 
 face ? 
 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 387 
 
 I believe that some feeKngs like these are at the bottom, 
 of a good deal of the favour which the suggestion of a 
 revival of Confession has met with in England, and they 
 have a right, undoubtedly, to be weighed in our estimate of 
 its benefits and ill results. If I am not mistaken, the sen- 
 timent in question is essentially one belonging to what may 
 be termed the second period of youth. "We are then still 
 in the age of fervent enthusiasms and of very partial self- 
 knowledge. We have violated our early vows of heroic 
 virtue, and are sore with the bruises of our falls. At such 
 an age we naturally feel an intense desire to come into 
 closest communion with the souls we love, and to be utterly 
 and truly known to them, never cheating them of afiection 
 which we feel we do not deserve. "We are tempted to pour 
 out all the accusations against ourselves which even exag- 
 gerated self-reproach can dictate. But in later life and with 
 calmer judgment, we recognize that such " auricular confes- 
 sions " of love and friendship are in no way needful to place 
 even the tenderest relationships on a footing of absolute can- 
 dour and veracity. Nay, we learn to know that it is so im- 
 possible to see ourselves altogether truthfully (our own breath 
 obscuring the mirror in which we attempt to gaze), and 
 still more impossible to convey to another mind by spoken 
 words what we truly are, that it is, in reality, little or no 
 gain to genuine mutual understanding to interchange such 
 confidences. If we do not add the history of our virtues 
 to those of our faults ; describe where we conquered as well 
 as where we fell ; how we struggled, no less than when we 
 yielded to temptation ; in a word, paint all the lights as 
 well as all the shadows of our lives, we are in fact giving 
 our friend a picture of ourselves as false in its own way 
 as mere self-laudation would be in another. What sin- 
 cerity really demands in friendship is, that there should 
 be nothina: in our outward conduct or inward desires or 
 
388 AURICULAR CONFESSION IN 
 
 intentions now, which, if our friend should see and under- 
 stand, would alter his opinion of us for the worse. He 
 has a right to unlock our hearts, and see all that is there. 
 God alone has right of entrance into the deep chambers 
 of memory. 
 
 Thus, then, I apprehend, the thirst for self- revelation, 
 which may lead some young or weak spirits to the Confes- 
 sional, is one always to be outgrown with advancing wisdom. 
 Still more certainly must it, I apprehend, be outgrown by 
 advancing spiritual life, till a point be reached wherein 
 Divine communion, ever enjoyed in the depths of the soul, 
 would render the suggestion of such an exposure hateful as 
 that of any other sacrilege. 
 
 To sum up the argument of the present paper. The ad- 
 vantages to be derived from the practice of Confession, — the 
 benefits of self-knowledge, moral instruction and priestly 
 guardianship, — cannot be weighed against the evils it in- 
 volves, — the materializing of penitence, the enervation of 
 the moral nature, and the desecration of the spiritual life. 
 A method of combating sin which involves evils of such 
 magnitude, becomes itself an evil. Even supposing that 
 every tale of grossness and misuse be nothing but malig- 
 nant falsehood, enough, and more than enough, remains in 
 the inherent mischief of the practice of Confession to urge 
 every friend of morality and religion to oppose it to the 
 utmost of his power. 
 
 "What is the true Confession ? The life which shall be 
 open and honest as the day, and yet whose inner springs 
 shall rise pure from hidden depths where no defilement 
 may reach them ? It is not very hard to picture what such 
 a life might be. Men go about to urge us to confess our sins 
 alone, and to confess them to a single priest, while they 
 are content that we keep closest silence to our nearest and 
 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 389 
 
 dearest concerning much that we are, and more that we think. 
 Let them extend their notions of honesty a little further.^ 
 Let them bid us speak out what we think, and live out what 
 we speak ; seem what we are, and be what we seem. Let 
 them exhort us to have no secrets, save of sins long since 
 repented and passed into God's keeping ; and of generous 
 deeds, in regard to which the left hand may not know what 
 the right has done. Let them bid us strive for that noble 
 state wherein we should feel assured that nothing could ever 
 be discovered concerning us, in word, deed or thought, 
 which would not make those who love us already, love 
 us still more. And then let them add one counsel more 
 concerning a part of life which in old times men heeded 
 most of all should be honest, but which in these days is 
 wrapped by thousands of us in a haze of obscurity, if not 
 of deception. Let them bid us confess before friends and 
 foes, everywhere, and at all times when the avowal may be 
 called for, what we in our inmost hearts believe concerning 
 God and duty and immortality; so that neither the fear 
 of forfeiting the worldly advantages of orthodoxy on one 
 side, or that of meeting the sneer of scepticism on the other, 
 shall drive us one step out of the straight path of absolute 
 sincerity. 
 
 In a recent sermon, Mr. Martineau spoke of keeping 
 secrets " not from God, but tvith Him ; " and advised his 
 hearers to make it a rule " not to speak of everything which 
 passes between the soul and God ; not to betray every burden 
 
 1 The self-told story of the lady (The World and the Church, p. 225) -who 
 went secretly from her father's house to Confession to Mr. Goodwin in a 
 London church, and kept all her doings a mystery till after some interviews, 
 is a very good sample of the way in which Auricular Confession makes a 
 man or woman more honest. To tell our past sins to a stranger who has no 
 natural right to know anything ahout us, while we hide our whole present 
 course of action and thinking from the parents, brotliers and sisters whose 
 love and confidence we continue to accept, — this forsooth is to be specially 
 pious and truthful ! 
 
390 AURICULAR CONFESSION. 
 
 lie lays upon us, but to reserve somewhat which shall be His 
 and ours alone." Between such a lesson as this and that of 
 the Anglican Manuals' of Confession which we have now re- 
 viewed, there seems to lie the whole width of the moral and 
 spiritual horizon. 
 
:essay XIV. 
 
 THE eyolutio:n^ of morals and eeligion. 
 
 [The following brief Essay, written while this book has been in the press, is 
 here reprinted as supplementing the expression of the writer's views on 
 the Development of Morals in Essay I.] 
 
 Histories of the progress of the Intellect and of Religious 
 Ideas have occupied the attention of scholars for a consider- 
 able time. It may be questioned whether we should not now 
 direct our studies rather to the history of the Religious 
 Sentiment, and to the development through the ages, not of 
 human thoughts about God, but of human feelings towards 
 Him. The furthest insight we are able to obtain into our 
 own nature, seems to show that the share which ideas exer- 
 cise in the production of feelings is superficial compared 
 to the profound influence of feelings in the formation of 
 opinions ; and that the transmission of ideas by means of 
 oral or written language, is, in moral and religious matters, 
 of the smallest possible value, unless, by some extraneous 
 means, the feelings may be brought up to the level whereto 
 the ideas belong. Only in our day have the materials for 
 anything like a sketch of the history of the Religious Senti- 
 ment been collected ; and much yet remains obscure ; but the 
 outline of such a progress begins to be apparent. The Moral 
 
 ^ Reprinted from The Manchester Friend, January 15th, 1872. 
 
392 THE EVOLUTION OF MORALS AND RELIGION. 
 
 Sense, out of which the higher part of religious feeling (all 
 which distinguishes human piety from a dog's loyalty) must 
 necessarily grow, is itself now recognized as a slowly de- 
 yeloped thing, hardly perceptible in the savage, and only 
 through long millenniums acquiring the shape in which we 
 find it within the historic era. The barbaric " ages before 
 morality," of which Mr. Jowett long ago spoke, have, as 
 Mr. Bagehot remarks,^ been rendered clear to us by the re- 
 searches of Sir John Lubbock and Mr. Tylor into the state 
 of savages at the present day ; and, starting from this 
 earliest period, we may now trace the gradual development 
 together of the Moral Sense and Social Affections ; and of 
 the Religious Sentiment which grows with their growth and 
 strengthens with their strength. Without in any way in- 
 dorsing Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, that the Moral Sense is 
 nothing more than the instincts of a social animal developed 
 under the conditions of human life, we may gladly admit 
 that, — even as the immortal part in us seems to be slowly 
 built up within the scaffolding of our animal part, from the 
 first germ of being, through infant and childish life up to 
 manhood, — so the Moral Sense, which is the sense of the soul, 
 is developed slowly likewise, not only in the individual, but 
 also in the race, during the millenniums through which it 
 has emerged from the brutal into the human. 
 
 1. At the earliest stage of religion, the savage had a 
 vague conception of invisible Powers lurking behind the 
 forces of nature, in sun and moon, star and thundercloud, 
 in the mysterious beasts and serpents, in trees and stones. 
 In other words, at this stage of Fetichism he possessed the 
 Sentiments of awe, fear, and wonder, — but nothing higher. 
 His gods could have no moral attributes, because his own 
 moral nature was as yet too immature and cloudy to project 
 any image of such qualities as Justice or Truth. He recog- 
 ' Fortnightly Review, December, 1871. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MORALS AND RELIGION. 393 
 
 nized neither an Ormuzd nor an Ahrimanes, but only unseen 
 Wills as wayward and passion-led as his own.^ To take a 
 savage at this stage and endeavour to convey to him a true 
 conception of the goodness of God, is labour thrown away. 
 " Good," as one such barbarian said to a French missionary, 
 "is when I take my enemy's wives. Evil is when he takes 
 mine." The man who has no higher sense of goodness than 
 this, is as incapable of feeling Divine goodness, as a table or 
 a door is incapable of feeling the benevolence of its owner. 
 According to the admirable simile used by a writer on Dar- 
 winism in Macmillaii's Magazine, he is as little conscious of 
 such character in God as a jelly-fish is of the presence of a 
 man, whom a bird or a mouse will perceive and fear ; and ' 
 whom a dog will so far understand as to be able to love. 
 Only through a long upward course, in which intellectual 
 instruction will by no means perform the chief part, can the 
 savage be brought to the level whereon he can have anj' 
 comprehension of goodness, properly so called. 
 
 2. In the second stage, the gods are recognized to be 
 Just, that is, to exercise a certain amount of judicial control 
 over human affairs, precisely corresponding to the point 
 which men's conception of justice has attained. This is the 
 period at which Hesiod warns rapacious kings to fear Zeus, 
 whose all-beholding eye witnesses their tyranny. But at 
 the same epoch this justice-executing Zeus is unhesitatingly 
 credited with horrible personal vices and base deceptions. 
 Even long ages afterwards, when Pindar exhorts his hearers — 
 
 Then, man with holy fear, 
 Touch the character of gods : 
 Of their sacred nature say 
 Nought irreverent, nought profane. 
 
 — he immediately proceeds to glorify in glowing verse one of 
 the worst of the immoralities of Olympos. It is quite obvious 
 
 ^ See ante, p. 171. 
 
394 THE EVOLUTION OF MORALS AND RELIGION. 
 
 that it never so much as crossed the poet's mind that it was 
 "profane" to attribute to Zeus the grossest licentiousness. 
 Such elevation as had taken place in the Moral Sense of the 
 nation was as yet unreflected in the character attributed to 
 the gods ; and indeed, in this matter of the virtue of chastity, 
 was probably hardly perceptible at all. It is this second 
 stage of human religion to which poets have always looked 
 back as the Golden Age — 
 
 Quando al piacer nemica 
 Non era la virtu ; 
 
 — when there was no antithesis between pleasure and virtue, 
 for the simple reason that all the virtue then apprehended 
 concerned the externals of justice between man and man, 
 and never touched the inner laws of personal purity, veracity, 
 and sobriety. It is the ideal age of youth which St. Paul 
 describes himself as having passed through : " For I was 
 alive without the law once ; but, when the commandment 
 came, sin revived, and I died." 
 
 3. The third stage of religion is attained when the Moral 
 Sense and the Affections have both received considerable de- 
 velopment. Beyond the earlier vague and imperfect sense of 
 Justice, the moral sense is now so far extended in the direc- 
 tions of Fidelity and Purity, that the conception of Divine 
 Holiness begins to loom on the mental horizon, and the at- 
 tribution to God of perfidy or licentiousness ceases to be en- 
 durable. The Affections, likewise, have grown in the direc- 
 tion of friendship, favouritism, and patriotism, so far, that 
 the notion of God entertaining friendship for particular men, 
 having favourites as a king might have, and loving the par- 
 ticular tribe, country, or town of the worshipper, begins to 
 be a familiar part of the ideal of His character. The limita- 
 tions in both cases are very obvious. The Holiness of God 
 is not felt to exclude the possibility of His tempting His 
 
THE EVOLUTION- OF MORALS AND RELIGION: 395 
 
 creatures to sin, or inspiring immoral actions, even thougli 
 His own nature is supposed to be pure. And, as the 
 Affections of men, at this stage, are but slightly influenced 
 by the moral qualities of the persons to whom they are 
 directed, so Jehovah may " love Jacob and hate Esau," 
 irrespective of the baseness of the one, and of the honest 
 simplicity of the other. Further, as favouritism has always 
 its counterpart in equally unreasonable dislikes, so the 
 peculiar favour of God shown to certain men or tribes, 
 always implies Divine hatred towards their neighbours and 
 enemies. 
 
 This, then, the stage of belief in a partially holy, and par- 
 tially loving God, is that at which we find nearly all the more 
 religious nations of antiquity when we are first introduced to 
 them ; and it is, alas ! the stage beyond which the civilized 
 world has hardly advanced a step to this day. The Hebrews 
 had manifestly attained to it in the age in which the Penta- 
 teuch was written, when God was in a measure recognized as 
 holy, and yet was supposed to have inspired or rewarded 
 many evil actions ; and when He was believed to love 
 " Abraham and his seed," and to hate the Egyptians and 
 Canaanites, Only the later Isaiah, of all the Old Testa- 
 ment writers, soared entirely above this level, and felt that 
 Jehovah loved Edom and Moab as well as Israel, and would 
 reconcile all nations at last. In India, the hymns of the 
 Rig-veda prove that in the very earliest epoch of recorded 
 religious history, the sense of Divine holiness was strong 
 enough to prompt confession of sin, and entreaties for 
 pardon ; while the belief in the partiality of the Deity for 
 the Aryans, and his hatred for the Dasyus (their dark-skinned 
 enemies), may be traced as clearly in the maledictory Psalms 
 attributed to the Rishi Yiswamitra as in those of the Bible 
 attributed to David. The Zoroastrians enjoyed, from the 
 first, exceedingly high conceptions of the sanctity and benefi- 
 
396 THE EVOLUTION OF MORALS AND RELIGION. 
 
 cence of Ahura-raazda ; but even He was invoked as the 
 enemy of their enemies, albeit, with the blessed underlying 
 faith that in the final day He would pardon Ahriman himself, 
 and restore to His love all the souls in the universe. Practi- 
 cally, as we have said, the civilized world remains at this 
 stage to the present hour. The Christian, Jewish, and 
 Moslem God, loves the Elect, the Chosen Eace, the Faithful, 
 and hates other men; condemning (according to the orthodox 
 Christian creed) a vast number of them to eternal banish- 
 ment from His presence, in darkness and torture. He is 
 adored as Holy, and, in a measure, men understand real holi- 
 ness when they apply the word to Him, but they by no 
 means feel the incongruity from which a thoroughly trained 
 moral sense would revolt, in the attribution to this holy God 
 of many acts recorded in their sacred writings ; or of such a 
 system of government as is unfolded in the plan of Atonement 
 as commonly understood. The reason why they do not feel 
 these monstrous derogations from the Divine perfections is 
 obvious. It is because their own Sentiments of love and 
 mercy, truth and justice, are as yet so imperfectly developed 
 that even when accustomed to apply the terms expressive of 
 goodness to God, they simply do not know what they involve. 
 "When their hearts are really full of love (as we see in the 
 case of many living saints), their creeds hardly hamper them 
 at all, and their intellectual errors hang so loosely as to be 
 practically harmless. On the other hand, the lessons of 
 Christ, repeated parrot- wise for sixty generations, have failed 
 to bring men, who are not loving, to understand anything of 
 the Divine goodness more than in that most imperfect and 
 partial way which we have marked as the third stage of the 
 religious sentiment. 
 
 4. Lastly, we may dimly foresee the fourth and final stage 
 of religion, when the sense of what constitutes Holiness will 
 be too lofty to permit of attribution to God of many of the 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MORALS AND RELIGION 397 
 
 acts and modes of government which at present are ascribed 
 to Him ; and when men will have gained so much of the 
 Divine power of loving and pitying the erring and the un- 
 lovely, that they will realize at last, the meaning of calling 
 Gfod the Father of All. No doubt Christ, when he uttered 
 those marvellous sayings about the beatitude of loving our 
 enemies, blessing those who curse us, and praying for those 
 who despitefully use us and persecute us, had attained this 
 exalted stage. He felt the Divine Fatherhood, as none before 
 him, that we know of, had felt it, because he had in his own 
 heart a power of pitying the sinful, and pardoning the offend- 
 ing, such as few, if any, had felt before. Even he, however, 
 if we may trust the records, did not see the hideous anomaly 
 involved in his own words, when he represented that same 
 Divine Father as not pardoning all those who " despitefully 
 used " Him, but casting them into '''outer darkness " for ever. 
 But it remains clear that in this direction must surely lie the 
 path of progress in moral feeling which is to lead us at last 
 to the joy of unbroken sympathy with God. Hitherto, 
 while individual Christians have repeatedly performed heroic 
 acts of forgiveness and kindness to their enemies, and while 
 thousands have devoted their lives to the restoration of the 
 vicious and the criminal, there has been yet hardly an 
 approach to a general sentiment of love for the unlovely ; or 
 even a working theory of what that love should be, beyond 
 the Schoolmen's barren distinction, between Love of Benevo- 
 lence and Love of Complacency. Too many of us, instead 
 of feeling the intense sense of the misery and hatefulness of 
 sin out of which true pity for the sinner can alone arise, are 
 disposed to make light of the evil with mere easy good 
 nature, and so to be really further from the higher charity 
 than those who harshly condemn and righteously abhor it. 
 And, for our personal enemies, the men and women in many 
 ways obnoxious to us, it yet remains almost an insoluble 
 
398 THE EVOLUTION OF MORALS AND RELIGION. 
 
 problem how we ought to act towards them. We lack the 
 unselfish, magnanimous, deep-sighted love, for the struggling 
 human spirit beneath its load of passion, meanness, vul- 
 garity, and stupidity, which would inspire us with the right 
 conduct. But only when we have attained this holy love, can 
 our own spiritual progress flow on calmly and surely, and our 
 communion with God cease to be fitful and often interrupted. 
 Only when we ourselves love the unlovely as well as the 
 lovely, shall we attain the goal of the religious life, and " be 
 perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect, who maketh his 
 sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on 
 the just and on the unjust." The first stage of religion, 
 when nothing but Power was felt ; the second, when men 
 believed God to be Just, but knew not that He was Holy ; the 
 third, when they felt Him to be Holy, but conceived of Him 
 still as Partial, will all have been left far behind. "We shall 
 then feel and know that He is more than all this — that He 
 is All-loving. 
 
 Well says Charles Yoysey : — " The greatest reward which 
 a generous, forgiving, loving life, can ever bring, must 
 be to enable us to feel the Goodness of God." There 
 is no use deceiving ourselves with the idea that we can 
 learn His goodness, like an answer in a catechism, by 
 the intellect alone. All that the intellect can help in 
 the matter is but little, and that little chiefly of the 
 negative sort. The sense must grow with our own moral 
 growth. We must scale height after height before we see 
 the heaven-high summit far ofi" in the cloudless blue. Of 
 course, at each step we are aided and cheered onward and 
 upward by the view already attained. Once a man has 
 begun to realize that God is all which his heart craves to love 
 and adore, he has gained a level from which he can hardly 
 altogether fall away again. All the disappointed affections 
 of life are calmed, all its terrors of loneliness subdued, all its 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MORALS AND RELIGION. 399 
 
 trials made endurable, by that deep rest of the soul. But 
 there are further and further visions attainable of what His 
 Goodness is, as we grow more good ; and of what God's 
 Love may be for us and for all men, as we ourselves love 
 more divinely. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 Stephen Austin and Sons, Printees, Heetforu. 
 
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