THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
-/
3
PUEITANISM IN POWEE
AN ARGUMENT IN THEEE BOOKS.
PURITANISM IN POWER.
AN ARGUMENT IN THREE BOOKS.
BY
CLEMENT WISE.
Ov yap ev \6yw rj fiacriXeia TOV Oeov, aXX' ev
Svvd/j,ei. 1 Cor. iv. 20.
LONDON :
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., .LTD.,
1890.
JOHN WEIGHT AND OO., PRINTERS, BRISTOL.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION - - - vii XI
BOOK I. UNIVERSALISM BY A CALVINIST.
CHAP.
I. THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD 3 16
II. GOD'S HIDDEN TREASURE 17 28
III. MODERN EVANGELICAL PRACTICE - 29 43
IV. THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE - 44 56
V. THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE, CONTINUED - 57 80
VI. ETERNAL COMPENSATION - 81 91
BOOK II. A NATIONAL CHURCH BY A DISSENTER.
I. A NATIONAL CHURCH - 95 128
II. THE SPURIOUS VOLUNTARYISM OF THE FREE
CHURCHES - 129 167
III. THE PROGRESS OF RITUALISM 158 173
iv. THE LORD'S SUPPER _ - 174 183
V. THE LORD'S SUPPER, CONTINUED - 184 191
VI. SACRAMENTS CONSIDERED - 192 203
VII. THE SACRAMENTAL PURGE 204 212
VIII. THE RITUALISM OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH - 213 --223
IX. THE RITUALISM OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH, CONTD. 224 228
X. INTERLUDE. FATHER ANGELUS - 229 234
XI. THE RITUALISM OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH, CONCLD. 235 243
XII. THE NATIONAL CHURCH OF THE FUTURE - 244 252
BOOK III. COMMUNISM BY A CONSERVATIVE.
I. INTRODUCTORY - 255 273
II. . EXPLANATIONS AND CAVEATS - - 274 280
629825
VI
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
PAGES
III.
PRELIMINARY OBJECTION'S TO ANY FUNDAMENTAL
CHANGES IN SOCIETY UPON SCRIPTURAL GROUNDS
CONSIDERED -
281285
IV.
PROPOSITIONS IN ARGUMENT -
286288
V.
POVERTY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM UNXK( KSSARY -
289805
VI.
POVERTY NOT NECESSARY, CONTINUED
306323
VII.
POVERTY NOT NECESSARY, CONCLUDED -
324334
VIII.
PROPOSITIONS (a) AND (b) DEFENDED
335350
IX.
PROPOSITION (c) DEFENDED -
351358
X.
THE MORALITY OF BUSINESS. PARENTHETICAL
359369
XI.
INTERLUDE. THE JUDGMENT OF THE DEMOCRACY
370331
XII.
PROPOSITIONS Cd), (e), (f) (ride CHAP, iv.) CON-
SIDERED
382390
XIII.
THE TRUE BABYLON. PARENTHETICAL -
391405
XIV.
INTERLUDE. ST. PETER SITS AT THE GATES -
406413
XV.
PROPOSITIONS (1), (2), (3), (4), (5) DEFENDED
414-418
XVI.
PROPOSITION (6) DEFENDED
419426
XVII.
PROPOSITION (7) DEFENDED -
427436
xvin.
PROPOSITION (8) DEFENDED
437441
XIX.
APPEAL TO YOUNG MEN. PARENTHETICAL
442453
XX.
METHODS BY WHICH THESE TWO COMPANIONSHIPS
MUST NOW SET TO WORK
454466
XXI.
SUMMARY
467478
APPENDIX.
(it) ON THE PURITAN USE OF THE STAGE - - 481 492
(It) ON WOMEN AND THEIR POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT 493 501
fc) TO THE ELECTORS, TOUCHING THE NEXT APPEAL TO
THE COUNTRY .... 502 512
INTRODUCTION.
EELIGTON, which to the ignorant means captivity, and
which priests have used to scare men into tendering
gifts and homage, is in reality the gladdest thing in
life gladder than the song of birds and freer than
their flight. Religion ever blows the trump of Jubilee ;
and Faith, Hope and Charity in choral unity start the
soul upon a song of which it never tires, though longing
for its practice to be perfected.
God revealed Himself to the Jews as a blaze of glory,
bright but scorchless, and as a fire from heaven, which
descended to annihilate not life but death. For
among the precious significances of ordered sacrifice
let us not lose sight of this that with the sin the
trophies of mortality were put away, the spectacle of
suffering innocence being so abhorred that twice a day
altar fires removed it from the gaze of heaven. We
have indeed only to take one step behind appearances
in order to recognise that nature is unceasingly busy
upon a kindred task. She assaults not life but death.
No sooner has the former taken wing, than all the
energies of our foster-mother are employed to trans-
mute the mortal relics into instruments of living
growth. And when the Just One suffered for the
Vlll INTRODUCTION.
unjust, the loveliness of self- surrender was so involved
in the lovelessness of the curse endured, that the eye of
Heaven closed in pain and the earth shuddered at the
climacteric of its vanity and chronic cross. A fire
perpetually burns in the universe to put away death.
Our God is a consuming fire.
Never did angels appear to men as messengers from
God but they lifted fainting knees with the soothing
salutation, " Fear not." It is the echo of a perpetual
waterfall in heaven, the chime of the stream that makes
glad God's cities everywhere.
" Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of
great joy which shall be to all people." The angels'
salutation to the shepherds is the jubilee note which
this book shall sound at its commencement, and desires
to leave ringing in the reader's ears at its close.
Glad tidings is the character of all its thought. To
read more happily Nature's large enigmas, and some-
what to penetrate the darkness that is neighbour to the
light in the written Revelation are its object ; and con-
nected with this to show that Religion , by which is
meant that new and blessed life which the Spirit of the
Lord Jesus breathes upon us, is the largest boon of
God to man, and requires for its witness and symbolic
testimony a church which is national as well as indi-
vidually spiritual whose teaching may be a parable to
the masses, but one to which they may listen gladly,
INTRODUCTION. IX
owning its reign against their evil wills, while its inner
meaning and mystery and its absolute inperative are
disclosed alone to the elect, and open to them boundless
prospects for the multitude, in proportion as they realise
that they themselves are privileged first-fruits unto
God. To show that the distinction between the Church
and the World is in reality a distinction between two
ranks and orders of saved persons, and descriptive of
two paths and processes towards kindred but dissimilar
redemption blessings: that retribution is incident to
both, and may enter as largely into the salvation of the
Church as of the World. That evil exists not to
perplex or baulk the safe and blessed march of human
destiny, but to make salvation sure ; seeing that it is
salvation for the creature to know God, and without
the knowledge of evil God never can be known, either in
the saving awfulness of His retribution, or the redeem-
ing mercy of His forgiveness. To emphasize the truth
that Christ is Lord, and that all Satanic forces are
really working under His control for the secure establish-
ment of His kingdom. To vindicate for ecclesiastical
establishments the right to set forth, in the universality
of their scope and ministrations, the blessed truth that
hrist's kingdom will one day be co-extensive with
mankind, and will not even then abolish the distinction
between elect and multitude, but will constitute the
saints the guardian angels, teachers, and rulers of an
X INTRODUCTION.
immature but progressively happy world. That every
knee will one day bow in subjection to Christ, and
every tongue shall confess that Christ is Lord to the
glory of God the Father. That into the New Jerusalem,
in which the elect shall walk as citizens, the saved
nations of that brighter day shall delight to bring their
glory and their honour, and depart in peace to dwell
outside in blessing. That as then they shall be " saved
nations," so now proleptically are the outsiders saved
and every child of man, however much Satan may have
marked him for his own, is unable to escape the eager
quest of the Shepherd and Bishop of all souls, who
tasted death for each and every member of His flock,
and shall not be despoiled of aught for which He died.
Further, that Christ's kingdom is near at hand, and
behind the thunders of war may be heard the heralds of
God's chariot of peace, and in the intervals of human
groans and cries the sweet chanting of bells that hail
the advent of a righteous rule. That it behoves men to
be joyful, on account of the things which are coming
upon the earth ; for the Day of the Lord is at hand, and
the Day of the Lord is the jubilee of the world the
charter of human rights, the pledge of human progress,
and the sanction of human felicity.
That the preparation for that Day is now, and that
immediately must be undertaken that deep and radical
reform of social conventions, which in these last days
INTRODUCTION. XI
have shown themselves capable of as much injustice,
oppression, misery and moral ruin as ever irresponsible
power at earlier periods produced among its helpless
subjects.
That the solution of all problems, political and social,
is to be found in the Bible that glorious Book defamed
in proportion as it is not read, and- comprehended only
as it is revered. And that to solve the problems which
philosophers continually declare to be insoluble, men
have simply to set the Bible in the judgment-seat, and
boldly determine that its principles and ethics, its com-
mands and examples shall overrule the traditions of
centuries, and set at nought the dicta of philosophers,
falsely so-called.
Finally, in rallying the Church to an expectant atti-
tude respecting the proximate Advent of Her Lord, on
which the successful completion of these fundamental
changes hangs, the remaining object of this treatise
is attained.
BOOK I.
DXIVERSALISM BY A CALVINIST.
PURITANISM IN POWER.
CHAPTER I.
THE CHUECH AND THE WOELD.
THAT wherever the Christian Eevelation is made
known the hearers of the new doctrine begin to be
separated into two classes, believers and unbelievers, the
Church and the World, is a fact which needs only to be
stated in order to be accepted.
What takes place when Christ is preached is only what
occurs in connection with the preaching of all faiths in
which there is a ray of the true light, men differentiate
themselves at once into those who walk in the light and
those who walk away from it.
But what is observable in relation to this fact is, that
in scripture it is everywhere recognised ; and that there,
notwithstanding explicit recognition of inevitable and
ordered alienation of the Church from the World, and the
instinctive hostility of the latter, there runs throughout
the history and the prophecies of Eedemption a consistent
declaration of participation by the World in certain bless-
ings, which if inferior in kind and late in occurrence as
compared with those which the Church is to enjoy, are yet
great gifts pledges doubtless of still greater to follow, and
all of them due to, and parts of, the purchased possession
of Christ.
Before commencing the support of this contention, I
pause to point out that such Protestant churches as
4 PURITANISM IN POWER.
have caught sight of the wide reach of gospel blessings
seek to exemplify their faith by rendering the require-
ments of church membership eas}- and easier to neophytes
and general worshippers. Those evangelical communions
which formerly required of candidates testimony, public
and private, of their having undergone a specific altera-
tion in the set attitude and experience of their souls
God ward, are now content to apply unmeaning and
nominal tests. They have determined that the gate
of admission to church fellowship shall no longer l>c
straight or the way narrow ; and as a consequence we
have churches among the Congregationalists and even
Baptists widely differing from either traditional prece-
dent or New Testament conformity often little better than
a mixed medley of persons, the majority of them sure
only of one thing, that they have done what was right
and proper in joining themselves to a numerous lot of
well-to-do people, who, if cold and stand-off, perhaps
have a right to be so on account of their money.
This arises from a wilful ignoring of the meaning and
reality of conversion, the name and thing alike being
apparently tabooed by the new school of theology which
the Nonconformist colleges are producing.
But to anyone who knows anything at all about it, the
conversion of a soul is as real and great a miracle as the
creation of a globe ; nay, greater, in the degree in which
to create spirit and to mould wills, is a higher work for
Divinity than to fling stones inscribed with law upon the
planetary plane. And yet it has become the custom to
depreciate and ignore distinctions which in very truth
eternally separate the children of men into two classes
and no more : the only caste which the Christian is per-
mitted to recognise among the brotherhood of mankind
being, the caste of " The Church of the First-born," and
the caste of the Later-born the caste of those who have
tasted of the powers of the world to come and been
THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD. 5
miraculously changed thereby, and the caste of those
who have been the subjects of no such change, and there-
fore never comprehend it.
In the way in which the masses are evangelized we see
the same infirm grasp of the mighty truth of conversion.
There is a lowering of the standard of the claims of
Christ and a base sort of apology for introducing the
paramount matter at all. God forsooth must be recom-
mended to His creatures' acceptance. An audience is
begged, just for a moment, ten minutes at farthest, to
listen to the voice of God after they have encored
Belinda Trill. The managers of the entertainment
often upon a Sunday evening seem to feel it encumbent
upon them to apologize for venturing to intrude the
Deity upon a company which has just been thrilled by a
melody, and appear to appeal to the people to bear them
witness that the tit-bits of religious instruction now to be
endured have been well wrapped up in a concert pro-
gramme.
The Gospel, when it is presented, seems to have cut
away from it everything that could offend susceptibilities.
Instead of a rousing call to " Hear, People, what the
Lord thy God saith unto thee, stand trembling and
abashed before the Judge of all the Earth," we have a
preparation of soothing syrup. If the text be " Do this
and Live" the "don'ts" are minimised, the "does"
are neglected, and the "mays" are enlarged. But all
such devices of winning over the masses to the side of
Christ are utterly vain ; souls world-drugged sleep on,
while those that are sick can easily tell the difference
between medicine and syrup, and they will not turn from
the healing draught because it is necessarily bitter.
Those who feel no sin-sickness are only maintained in
their indifference by a method of evangelizing the world,
which consists in hiding under a bushel of "attractions"
the very Light which it is the business of the church to
b PURITANISM IN POWER.
hold aloft in its solitary grandeur a method too which
entirely lacks apostolic sanction and example.
All the while the deep internal thirst of the few who,
in all ages and all countries, find themselves strangers
among the many, remains unsatisfied .
To them it is not an easy Gospel that either convinces
or allures. Let its summons be never so dread and uncom-
promising ; lets its claims be never so absolute and its
requirements never so high, it will answer to expectation
and to need in proportion as it exacts much and sur-
renders nothing to the crudity of unregenerate nature.
In the mongrel evangelical churches of the present
day the pilgrims and strangers find themselves alone.
Vain is the attempt to mingle together those two
incongruous and for ever immiscible elements the
Church and the World. What God has separated let no
man join together. The unscriptural proceeding has
destroyed the sanctifying influence of the church ami
prevented it receiving its due quota of converts from the
World. Those who do come into communion are for the
most part maintained in a false security and hypocriti-
cal conformity to forms and ceremonies which in their
cases have no meaning.
It may be well here to dwell upon the phenomena
which the two classes respectively present.
It is matter of common knowledge and observation
that there is an order of man called " Christian " in the
narrow Evangelical sense who is of an entirely different
type from the ordinary man of the world. He and his
kind are evidently in possession of a secret, or in a con-
spiracy of hypocrisy which is an enigma to everyone else.
Strange to their former companions, and, it may be, to
their former selves, they are welcomed as old congenial
associates by Sectaries who never saw them before, but
between whom and them there is evidently understand-
ing and agreement, mutual and complete.
THE CHURCH AND THR WORLD. 7
Objects of suspicion and aversion to the people who
are not in their secret, they are all the while seeking to
use scraps of time and strength, saved from devouring
occupations, in a way which may witness to their desire
to follow humbly in the footsteps of the Servant and the
Son of Man.
The phenomenon repeats itself in every generation : is
a persistently recurring factor in the evolution of the
series of humanity : and is therefore an everlasting
witness to the truth of its foundations and the divinity of
its source.
The private history of the Christian of past genera-
tions is continually repeating itself in every succeeding
one. Now as formerly then as now, men, women, and
even children, at different stages of their life's history,
become as if they had heard a voice from heaven which
no one else had heard, and seen a sight which no one
else had seen.
It is as if the cross, like a huge magnet, were moving
ever o'er the sons and daughters of men, and here and
there, from palace, cottage, workshop and mine, souls
discover their affinities to God and their disaffinities to
the sinful world, and cry, glancing upwards, " Lord,
God, we waited for Thee. Now Thy cross has con-
quered us. Oh, give us to be extended upon Thy
cross of loving self-sacrifice for evermore ! "
Such is the external witness, the objective view.
Internally, subjectively, the revolution is not less complete.
To the man who has been Cross-electrified, life's enigma
has received its solution, its purpose clears itself from
everything trivial and subordinate, conflicting voices of
desire are silenced, and one, sweet but awful imperative,
sounds in the religious consciousness the Master's voice,
which never can be neglected without infinite distress
and certain loss. The True and the Highest having been
perceived and welcomed, a light is set up in the under-
8 I'l TJTANISM IN POWER.
standing of the soul, by which the relative importance of
all worldly things can he truly estimated. A shifting, a
re-adjustment, a re-casting takes place of all former
estimates, comparisons, values and selections. The
whole group of motly facts and possibilities common to
human existence falls into position, duly graded in
relative importance to that True and that Highest which
the new-born soul welcomed as made known.
In this newly established order those earthly objects
which will advance the disciple in his new-found know-
ledge establish for themselves the highest claim and win
his readiest preference, while those less, or least adapted
to that end are proportionally disesteemed. There is, in
short, Light, full and clear upon human duty, and in
that light, peace with God, though there may be plentiful
tribulation in the world. The one great unsettled
concern having been so blessedly settled, God's child.
amid all his sorrows, has an inward peace, constant,
deep and undisturbed. God is his joy. God is his stay.
God is his reward. His sleep is peaceful as an infant's,
broken by smiles sometimes, visions of light and kisses
of comfort after some exceeding pain. Care for the
future, whether in this world or the next, he has cast
upon his never failing Friend. He feels, he knows, that
the world is at his feet, that to him, poor, feeble, witless
combatant, it yet will turn its kinder side and leave him
quite enough, aye, vastly more than will suffice to carry
him to a world where the bread that perisheth is not
known. The common and ordinary ambitions of men are
by him contentedly resigned, while he seeks rather con-
sistently to pursue that pilgrim path which so many
generations of Christians have trod before him, and
without shipwreck to faith or following, to end his songs
of Zion in Zion itself, where Lord and subject, Master
and servant, Father and child, shall meet in joy together.
With the man of the world, how different ! Originally
THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD. 9
standing upon the same ground of the absence of all
merit to the one has been granted a revelation which
has electrified his whole being, and altered for evermore
his moral attitude towards all existing things to the
other that revelation has been denied. The things that
constitute life to the one are simply unknowable incon-
ceivable to the other.
While that revelation from ubove is suspended, held in
abeyance, deferred, the attitude of the happy elect
towards the unprivileged world is clearly indicated by the
Saviour Himself ; it should be one of sorrowful sympathy,
leading to earnest prayer under persecution for their
forgiveness, after His own example upon the cross.
The typical man of the world has no standard by which
he judges of the importance of pursuits and aims. He is
swayed by no mastering impulse, impelled by no
undeviating current, attracted by no polar scar. As far
as the objects which engage his attention go, and into
which he throws his energies, he lives a hand-to-mouth
existence, not knowing or caring to what he may give
himself to-morrow. He gyrates and darts about like an
insect, being able to give no reasonable account of his
repose at one moment, or his intense activity the next.
He wants to kill time, to evade thought, to postpone
death, to enjoy himself if he can. He believes in what
he can catcli with his hands and try with his teeth, and
that it would be a pleasant enough world if it were not
for the canting Christians. He leans towards the men
and the things that are condemned by the Church, and
if he is confronted by a principle that is stricter than his
own, by a disinterestedness that he cannot comprehend,
by a zeal for God which is to him the sure mark of
hypocrisy, immediately the whole man bristles up in an
attitude of hostile suspicion. " You must get at the
back of these Christians and you will find something."
It is the old Roman and the modern Chinese superstition
10 PURITANISM IN POWER.
over again. " They are crucifying babies, they are
boiling babies' eyes for soup." Go to the "All-night "
meetings of the Salvation Army and you will find the
blessing that is popular. You have not gone far enough.
Try again ! He brings his sound old head, stocked with
all manner of methods and maxims for managing men,
to accomplish the glorious object of advancing the
interest of No. 1, and he thanks society for presenting
him with some difficulties and problems in the use of this
burglar's tool chest. He likes the " wicked world "
because it is wicked. He will meet craft with craft,
knowledge with better knowledge, law with law. He
will do as he is done by. Parry and thrust, thrust and
parry. If he could only thrust those d d meek-eyed
Christian sneaks out of the world, he could be happy
enough. And he brings his old seasoned body to bear
all the indulgences that flesh can compass, making it
know every artful device for correcting excess and
recuperating energy. In the last stages of decline he
will still clutch the cards with which he played the game of
life, and while he refuses the parson with disgust, would
catch an expiring gleam of satisfaction if the undertaker
were admitted so that he might do him in the bargain
for his coffin.
It is thought by the simple that to the worldling there
comes, or will come, ere the end, some startling and ter-
rible revelation of eternal things. That is a mistake the
exception, not the rule. The worldling dies as the beast
dies, without an intimation of what shall be hereafter.
If the worldling be a woman, she will throughout
deal with things as she finds them, and cherish no desire
to make them worse or better. She despises those who
are not " up to " others and who will not avenge insults
with usury. To gain victories is her passion, to prove
herself more than a match for the cleverest rogues.
Incapable of respect for any who are morally better than
THE CHUECH AND THE WORLD. 11
herself, she can admire a bold criminal, almost love such
a one, if that sentiment in any worthy sense could find
a lodgment in her breast. But for the milksops who will
not give blow for blow, hatred for hatred, she has un-
feigned contempt, could set her heel upon them with cold
white face while she bent her head to catch up her hair.
She is descended from that past order of females who,
though professing Christianity, could shrug their
shoulders, mince crumbs between their teeth, and cry
" Hoity-toity ! what is the world coming to ? " when they
could no longer send small boys up crooked chimneys,
and who were amazed that the Government should make
such a fuss over the blacks in Jamaica when the
" blacks" that came from smoky chimneys and the want
of climbing boys were an evil of such magnitude.
This class of woman is utterly insensible to the misery
she can occasion through the indulgence of an unbridled
tongue and temper and a selfishness that makes one
gasp. No light from the eternal world ever fell upon
her conscience, and she is sincerely incapable of feeling
that she ever committed a single sin. About the sins of
her neighbours and the demerits of everybody in general,
however, she is full and will talk on by the hour. It
would be a real disappointment to her if it could be
demonstrated that any of her charges were not true ;
they ought to be true, if they are not. Here, as in the
other case, it would be a great mistake to suppose that
some wonderful apocalypse will take place at last, and
that the soul crushed beneath its sense of a cruel and
worthless life ^Yill plead hard for mercy. Nothing of the
kind. In the presence of death and in the prospect of
judgment this heart is perfectly unawed. The soul has
lost all spiritual susceptibilities, if it ever had any ; its
walls have no windows, or its windows have become
darkened by the dust of earth ; moral paralysis has set
in, feeling is lost.
12 PURITANISM IN POWER.
If suddenly, before such a one, the veil that hides it
from the invisible should be withdrawn, and the spirit
assume an investiture answering to the earthly body, we
could almost hear the shrill cackle rising in the vaults of
Heaven, as it calls the shining ranks of angels to witness
that never in all its born days did it do anything amiss :
but as for other people, she would ask them to listen
since in eternity there was plenty of time while she
brought her railing accusation against the remaining
millions of mankind !
The angels blush and sovereign Love and majestic
Righteousness motions that the creature be removed,
even as one would treat a puppy, when, speechless with
sorrow and indignation, you beheld it fly at an open
bible and tear out Isaiah !
These are the extremes ; vast is the number of those
who occupy a medium position, not hostile to good, but
incapable of following it or making sacrifices for it with
the conscientious zeal of a voluntary disciple of Christ.
In some cases the apparatus of moral instincts seems
to want nothing in correctness and completeness when
compared with Christian convictions ; nothing except the
motive power which will compel their practical manifesta-
tion when self-interest would leave them idle. See
that man amiable, able, ready to do any friend a good
turn, and especially leaning in sympathy towards those
who have a failing which has cost them friends elsewhere.
Resorted to for information, for immense power of work,
and for the faithful and efficient discharge of everything
undertaken a man, the type of thousands, who in his
day serves his generation well and as a father, a man
of office, public and private, and as a citizen leads a
career of unquestioned usefulness which many an
acknowledged follower of Christ might envy, and in
many respects worthily copy. And yet this man,
though just and humane, more just and humane than
THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD. 13
ever the constitution of society allows him to make
manifest, will through life cherish a deep-rooted suspicion
and aversion towards the members of Christ's Church.
Sunday is to him a white elephant. .The intense
exercise of his mental faculties and the dissipating
excitement of large business and official duties, lead him
to crave for something analogous upon the day of rest.
What is offered him is something with which he has not
a grain of sympathy nor the power of comprehending it.
He has no acquaintance with that which causes the
hymn to brighten the eye of the singer and the prayer
to lift the worshipper above the surroundings of the
pew ; attendance at church or chapel is a tiresome con-
cession to a stupid custom, and preaching a weariness of
the flesh. The Sunday is a day of intolerable tedium,
mercifully alleviated by business letters in the morning,
and by the dropping in of an old friend in the evening,
who with his pleasant familiar face will turn on the
homely cheerful current of secular talk a talk that will
of course concern itself with anything and everything in
the world except Man's Future and Man's God. If the
old friend should not turn in, perchance some regardful
son will turn out to pay a visit to his venerable father ;
will sing him a good rollicking drinking song to cheer
him up, and clap him on the back, if the old man in his
crazing chorus should reach high A.
Such is the " Day of da,ys " to the man of the world.
This type in the woman of the world exhibits less of
justice and humanity, in both of which the sex are
deficient, and a yet greater narrowness of sympathy and
intellect. The woman will not be brought to confess sin,
or to wear any yoke. The strong point of the weaker
sex is that they are faultless.
Some of them are of minds so petty that a subject so
great and noble as Eeligion cannot possibly be squeezed
into them. They seem capable of calling upon nurses to
14 PURITANISM IN POWER.
neglect the dying upon babes to remain unborn the
sun itself to pause upon its burning axle-tree while they
prove to the listening universe that they are right in
respect to the number of muffins.
Possibly heredity here also, extending back to many
generations, may account for the impossibility of belief.
For the woman may be most regular in her attendance
at places of worship, since such is the proper thing, but
every message from book or preacher flies past her to
find some other mark.
Or we may take another type a woman of more mind,
and more genial and attractive than the kind we have
been considering. Clever and accomplished, she has a
keen relish for all worldly amusements and all worldly
devices. At the same time she is without a particle of
vice, and evinces a winning readiness and a most
serviceable helpfulness on behalf of all friends and
relatives. Outside this circle however she knows nothing
of obligation. The world beyond of suffering humanity
is to her simply a part of the constitution of the universe.
Being made so, it would be the maddest thing in the
world to hope to alter it. At all events, she will never
allow the thought of it to shade her cheerfulness, or
abate her enjoyment of every worldly assembly and
every decent vanity to which she may get access.
She is a good and clever manager of her house, and
gains the affection of her children, who always love ready
and cheerful people. And, indeed, a nice creature she is
in every way, except that in her composition a religious
soul seems to have been left out. There is no "aching
void," no comprehension of the want, no prayer for
Peace and Light.
In addition, we may point to the men of Arts and genius,
who are wholly and solely devoted to the exercise of
some faculty with which they are abnormally endowed.
Eeligious observances the Christian calendar even an
THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD. 15
enemy at the gates will not stop these moonstruck chil-
dren from playing upon their single string. The fiddler
will scrape, and the painter will paint, if permitted, up
to the blast of the last Trump. The musician feels that
it is his calling in life to work at playing, while the
painter believes it is his to find his exhausting play in
working.
The mechanician must invent Sundays and week-days
alike ; and if by chance he finds himself in church, his
wits will work the whole time about remedying the ven-
tilation, or guessing how the roof is hung, or perchance
hammering away at the same problem which kept him
awake all night long. And yet what a debt do the
greater kind of such men lay the world under ! What
treasures of art, music and invention are their legacies
to after generations !
Say it is all self pleasing, ambition and necessity, you
cannot deny the solid utility of their lives, or refuse to
allow that industry was their virtue, and wonderful
development of original faculty their achievement.
Many indeed have prostituted their powers to base em-
ployment, and all of them would be the better for being
St. Cecilias and St. Lukes, but none the less they serve
their day and generation, and contribute to the world's
advancing march, and, as real though unconscious ser-
vants of the Church and of the World, must stand
acquitted of having entirely missed life's end.
And was it not Watts who got his first fruitful notion
concerning the steam-engine when sitting in a Scotch
kirk '? This great benefactor of his species never was a
religious man. To the day of his death he satisfied his
intellect with machines, and his emotions with bosh
novels.
We can discern, then, amid an infinite variety of inter-
vening species, at all events, three main types of men of
the world.
16 PURITANISM IN POWER.
(a,) Those who are avowedly hostile to the church.
(b,) Those who simply don't comprehend (the largest
class) .
(c,) Those whose master faculty concerned with
matter blinds them to the world of spirit.
Now the above three types are mainly found among
the middle classes. They are discernible, but only
sparely and with less distinctness in the lower classes.
Confining ourselves, then, to the middle classes we can
understand the contentment of the orthodox Puritans
among them at the proofs here afforded of the conformity
of scriptural declaration to actual fact. Here are classes
of persons as easily distinguishable from the church as
antelopes from serpents and monkeys from men. The-
ology is triumphant. The Bible and observation testify
to the same truth. There are only two classes of man-
kind : the one the favourites of Heaven children of the
Kingdom ; the other, the rejected foes children of
wrath.
17
CHAPTER II.
GOD'S HIDDEN TKEASUliE.
WHEN a theology has been formulated by a privileged
class, among a privileged order, and founded upon
examples and experiences peculiar to that order ; and
when the privileged class does not in its examples, and
cannot in its experiences, conform to the experiences and
the condition of the great masses of mankind -then
that theology is not likely to stand the test of examin-
ation, either by Kevelation or the facts of life and con-
sciousness.
Evidently the analysis we have made so far does not
exhaust the classes into which mankind may be even
superficially divided. We have got so far as (a,) Alien ;
(/>,) Foreign ; (c,) Pagan ; all distinct and without com-
plexity, but a class larger perhaps than the three put
together has not yet been named. We mean the King
Saulites the men who are prophesying among the pro-
phets to-day, and to-morrow are seeking for David to tune
away an evil spirit. The men whom God elects to honour,
and finally, so far as this life is concerned, disowns and
condemns to dishonour who are in and of the church
to-day, and in and of the world to-morrow who are
swayed by two conflicting influences, summoned by
two Lords, and are not held in constant service by either
of the masters who seek to master them. The struggle
proceeds throughout life, it is the accentuated experience
of all men the emphasized manifestation of the grounds
of moral responsibility the demonstration that proba-
tion is the fact of life which is essential to moral
education to the inward knowledge of Good and Evil,
and to the true knowledge of the Character of God.
18 PURITANISM IN POWER.
The same struggle which in the Saulites commonly
appears to end disastrously is in a less acute or less
balanced form common to all men. But the former,
fatally dowered with special communications from the
opposed kingdoms of Light and Darkness, are set forth
for an example ; and the now glorious, now tragic inci-
dents of their history form the theme of moralists, and
point many a tale. The Saulites thus come in as a class
siii r/cneris, which cannot be referred to either the Church
or the World, for they are alternately found in both.
They resemble the seafaring population of our ports,
who are landsmen or seamen according to circumstances,
but who do not on that account abolish the distinction
or add a third to the dual residential division of mankind
into dwellers upon sea and dwellers upon land.
But larger far than any of the groups of manifested
Church and Worldsrnen is the immense sea of human
beings whose moral quality is undeveloped whose will
has never had fair pla} r unto whom the Great Revealer
of what is in Man has never consciously drawn nigh
upon whom neither the shadow nor the glory of the
Cross has streamed a group about whom the class
which made Theology knew next to nothing, either by
experience or imaginative sympathy. The late Henry
Dunn wrote much about a "third class," by which he
appears to have meant a species of neutral person,
neither good nor bad, who perpetually halted between
two opinions, or was devoid of any a Saulite without
effective communication with either of the opposed king-
doms of Light and Darkness, to whom, consciously,
moral action seemed as impossible as physical motion to
an oyster. This rather uninteresting class possessed great
attractions for the late Henry Dunn, who believed that
these human oysters might be found to hold pearls when
examined upon another strand. And it was their claims
upon a rational Theology that led him to promulgate
GOD'S HIDDEN TREASURE. 1{)
his view that there was another probation for all men,
and that Hades resounded with the preaching of the
Gospel.
While cordially agreeing with the inference, we think
his adherence to the commonly accepted view of Church
and World, hut with the addition of a third class, a
mistake. And his third class does not really describe or
comprehend that largest portion of mankind of which
we have begun to speak, viz., those who have not been
in contact with the Christian Eevelation at all, and
about whose moral quality it could not therefore be said
that they are neutral, since the great dividing and
deciding test has never been applied.
When, therefore, we have discovered two genera
among the upper, middle, and lower-middle classes of a
Christian country corresponding to the scriptural defini-
tions of Church and World, and when we have ac-
knowledged that the Saulites are movable quantities in
cither, there yet remains the largest portion of man-
kind undistinguished. We have found nothing specially
applicable to the heathen world, and nothing applicable
to the dense unprivileged populations of our great cities
nothing applicable to the majority of mankind who
pass away in infancy and early years.
Of the heathen world I will here only say that I
believe it, like the world at large, to be constantly
under God's care, and that in dim degree Church and
World are separable within it, even amid the shadows of
lalse and partial religous lights.
What I maintain of the heathen world is, that the
bulk of it, as also the bulk of the race in all lands,
likewise the great majority of those who pass away as
infants* or children, constitute a human territory whose
c I do not say nil infants, because some are born incomplete, and
immortality cannot te predicated of living human matter, only of
living men.
20 PURITANISM IN POWER.
moral quality is unknown even to itself, and can only be
foreknown by God. The gospel, and the gospel alone,
orthodox theologians will allow, reveals man to himself,
as well as God to man. Those peoples to whom the
gospel never comes, and those stratifications in the
Christian masses at home down to whom gospel
blessings never filter, do not and cannot on that account
know themselves or be known by others to belong to
either Church or World. They may appear evidently
to be born to do evil to point downwards as inevitably
as the sparks fly upwards ; but that is common to all
men ; for all men at the period of moral consciousness,
if unassisted by the grace of God, tend downwards.
Their true moral quality is only discernible when Christ
being preached, whether by Providence, Evangelist, or
Book, is inwardly revealed that is the test the refiner's
fire the summons heard.
This vast human territory, which passes into eternity
with its moral quality unrevealed in Time, must surel}-
contain many rich lodes of precious ore, wealthy mines
of choicest jewels, known to God alone.
It will be admitted that this is presumably so in the
case of infants and children departing early from this
world, and who could give no sign of moral quality,
their characters being undiscovered to themselves and
unknown to any human being. It need not be presumed,
it is demonstrated regarding adults in heathen countries
and the heathen of Christian lands the masses who in
the main are sacrificed on the shrine of modern com-
mercial progress.
It can be demonstrated, we say, for what do we find ?
The missionary goes to a heathen people in whose level
of morality he sees little that differs from his own
Christian land, the custom of polygamy excepted, and he
preaches Christ. In due time for it never fails, if
persevered in men start out from their fellows, drawn
GOD'S HIDDEN TREASURE. 21
to that uplifted cross whose magic magnetism lifts every
spirit that is left truly free, free from the working of
heredity, free from the pressure of the life around them,
free from influences from the nether world. One after
another converts come, and it is demonstrated that
among these heathen masses are the souls of martyrs,
apostles, and prophets ; or let this glorious gospel of
the grace and love of God be preached at home, amid
the slums, and straightway humanity becomes then
discovered to itself and revealed to earth and heaven.
Men listen ; are startled as though a chime dropped
from the belfry of heaven. They are caught, moved,
transformed. The cursing carter no longer terrorises
his home. The smith beats out new music upon the
anvil of his daily lot.
Let Mather go to found a mission among the Fishers
of the North Sea, and soon it is discovered that among
these outcasts the gold and jewels that have exhibited
themselves elsewhere turn up here also. The ore was
there all the time, for when Mather starts his mission
what do we find ?
" It's just five years since I first tried to take the right
" road. Some of my friends was goin' on board the
" ' Thomas Gray,' and they came to my ship, and I didn't
" know what they could want me for. But I went with
" them, and some friends spoke to us about God and His
" love, and when they was done, I felt myself of a sudden
" so full like of the love of God that I stood up there and
' ' then and gave myself to God . And that very same
" night my wife, who is now a good Christian woman, was
" on her knees praying for me and hopin' God would
" make me lead a better life ; and afore she was done God
" came to her heart, and she writes to me and says that
" she had found God and would I try to do the same ?
" And when I got to my vessel, I writes to her and says, I
' ' had given my heart to my Father and I would try to be
22 PURITANISM IN POWER.
" a better man and lead a better life. And her letter and
" rny letter crossed each other, and I gets hers the same
" morning as she has mine. And she writes and says that
" she sat down in the kitchen and had a cry for a good long
"hour, because she was full of joy. I was not one of
" the best, I wasn't ; my house was, as I may say, a hell
t: upon earth, and my children was afraid of me, and they
" were right, for I was bad and cruel in the drink. But it
" is all changed now, and I have kept on the good road as
" well as I could, and we are happy. I trust, my friends,
" that I shall go on trying to be a good man till the Lord
" Jesus is pleased to call me, and that is all I can say."
Similarly sudden the conversion of a child, whose
conscience mission preachers had roused but had
not quieted. " I was walking down a street," she says,
" about seven o'clock one morning (I can Fee the place so
"well), feeling utterly hard and cold, my soul bereft of
" anything like love to God, when suddenly the question
" flashed across my mind, coming straight from heaven I
" believe, ' Why don't you love Me? ' And almost immedi-
" ately a strange power took possession of me and light
" flooded my soul, while a voice, still and soft, seemed to
" murmur, ' We love Him because He first loved us.'
" I looked about bewildered. The street was quite
" still. There was not even a milkman yet to disturb the
" quiet. A strange transformation had taken place in my
" heart, that was sure, for I was no more cold and hard as
'before, but felt literally 'illuminated' with love and
" light. Yes ! I knew what it was to love God, really and
" truly, for the first time !
" Somehow or other I had an idea that the devil would
" come and tell me I was dreaming, and that my
"conversion was not a fact. So, wishing to settle the
" matter as clearly as possible, and catching sight just
" then of a piece of brass let into the pavement, marking
'a spot where some martyrs had been burned to death
GOD'S HIDDEN TREASURE. 23
" in the Beformation days, I went forward to it and,
" standing there, gave myself over to the Lord." (Major
Adelaide Cox, in All the World, October, 1888.)
Now this vast tract of human beings who are not
discovered to themselves, not classifiable under either
Church or World, and whose free choice and destiny
only God foreknows, would, if a third class be asserted,
seem to offer itself for that distinction ; but we say
rather that it is no class at all can be ranged under
none, the doers of righteousness and the workers of
iniquity in heathen and semi-Christian countries not-
withstanding, for such self-classification does not prove
more than consciousness of responsibility and retribution,
or a partial regime of grace under enormous dis-
advantages ; it does not bespeak an effectual and absolute
differentiation of the men by a new creation on the one
side, and a declared rejection on the other, as the
preaching of the cross does. Hence w r e can call this
vast tract of human beings mankind morally unclassed
and unclassifiable until the gospel reaches them; we
still discern but two classes existing, Church and
World polarities induced among the unclassified by the
magnetism of the cross.
Theologians have made a profound difficulty of the
delay that has taken place in making the Gospel cognis-
able to the entire mass of mankind, but the difficulty
rests upon the assumption that the work of Christ which
the Eevelation of Jesus Christ to John teaches us is the
theme of heaven's song, is only operative and applicable
here, in the Time state, an assumption for which there
cannot be produced the shadow of a Scripture proof.
Infants and young children, if they are to join in
heaven's worship, must have a knowledge of the Song of
the Lamb communicated to them, must indeed come under
the same indispensable dominion of Faith, Love, and
free service, which are the gates and realities of salva-
'24 PURITANISM IN POWER.
tion to adults. And the masses in heathen lands, with
the degraded victims of a high civilization shut out
from the lamp and from the crutch of knowledge and of
material progress these must also know what others
know ; have equality of opportunity afforded them for
worshipping and serving the Christ of God, before He
can say to them, "I never knew you;" "Depart from
Me, ye workers of iniquity."
Will anyone say that had not Mather started the
North Sea Mission the souls who slipped from icy decks
into the devouring waters, or who during life had heard
of the Saviour's name only in connection with an oath,
would have gone into perdition, where for ever that saving
knowledge could not come ? He or she who holds that
view must have odd notions of Justice and of God.
Ilather do we say that it is amongst this tract of unclass-
ified humanity that the largest fruit of the Redeemer's
Cross and Passion will be found. The proof of it lies
in the specimens of Christians that are produced when
the Gospel claims its own.
No truer descendants of the apostles are to be found than
what that unconsidered tract of humanity furnishes, so
long as they are left to work as voluntary evangelists in
their own sphere, and are not taken out of it and ruined
by becoming paid, professional agents. Heavenly bloom
and beauty too often perish then.
It has been the ignorant and clumsy resource of those
who felt the necessity of declaring something in reference
to departed infant children, and also of giving to the
Saviour the majoiity of souls for His portion, to point to
the millions of babes who die in infancy as the obvious
preserves by which Satan's victories are to be redressed
and surpassed.
But what a poor, weak makeshift is this ! " Jesus
came " to seek and to save that which was lost, not that
which had never straved.
GOD'S HIDDEN TREASUEE. 25
Let us suppose our country fits out a costly expedition
to put down Arab slave trading in Africa. Should we
have a right to be satisfied if the Arabs were left in
possession of their captives, and the expedition boasted
of success because a large territory, not visited by the
Arabs at all, was believed to be secure from attack ?
The expedition went to seek and to save that which
was lost, and, lo ! it returns leaving the lost to perish,
and shouting over the fact that an inaccessible range of
mountains cut off the slave dealers from some millions
of a very feeble folk, whom forsooth it would claim as
having rescued from the enemy ! No honour is given to
Christ by such a theology as that.
And as if the perfectly neutral quality of a babe's soul,
which had never exercised itself in a single moral act,
could possibly commend itself to the sympathy of the
Saviour equally with the storm-beaten, battered soul of
the poor father and mother, upon whom had lain for
long years the bitter strain and struggle of life at low
water mark. The father and mother, both of them,
victims of an unrighteous condition of Trade, Commerce,
and Society, both of them robbed in their wages and both
of them indispensable servers of their day and genera-
tion fined by the School Board, out of wretchedly
insufficient earnings, for not sending their children to
school wiien the bairns had nothing to eat for their break-
fasts, or their assistance was urgently wanted at home ;
assailed by temptations peculiar to chronic poverty, while
other temptations common to all men are sharpened and
weighted by the same impecuniosity. Are we to be told
that the parents will undoubtedly go to perdition, while the
babe, a little lump of pure unadulterated selfishness, which
never did a stroke or suffered a wrong, or fought a battle,
or performed a service that this piece of moral pro-
toplasm will as certainly shine in glory as its poor,
battered, victimised and suffering parents will as certainly
2ti PURITANISM IN POWER.
shiver in hell '? This really laughable travesty of Justice
and triumph of spiritual discernment must be placed to
the credit of the theologians !
But what are the conclusions to which we are con-
ducted? They are as follow :
(1,) That the two classes into which the Scriptures
divide mankind have their counterparts in all countries
where the Cross is preached and the Church is revealed
among men.
(*2,) That in all countries the largest class consists of
men whose religious choice has never been evoked, and
who, though by nature tending downwards, are all of
them salvabh by the same agency which creates the
Church of Christ. That until these have clearly experi-
enced and definitely rejected the powers of the world to
come put forth for their Salvation, they are not spiritu-
ally classed, and that in this unclassed, undetermined
condition the vast majority of the human race go out
from this life to enter upon the next. Not indeed with-
out any appeal from Nature, instinct, or conscience, but
such appeals, so wanting in completeness and so beclouded
by error, as to constitute no sufficient test, such as the
sword of the Spirit accompanying the preaching of Christ
supplies. And that in this territory of unclassed man-
kind lies hidden from every eye but that of the Eternal
the purest gold, the richest treasure of Apostles, Prophets,
Martyrs unrevealed.
(3,) That the terms Church and World are relative
rather than absolute terms are not descriptive of two
moral species of mankind, but arise from the subjective
perception by one class the Church of alienation in its
deepest sympathies and convictions from the prevailing
sentiment surrounding it. The perception of the Church
may at any time be only partially right, but while it is
real and clear, although a faulty one, then its perception
of "World" is relatively a true one, and supplies all
GOD'S HIDDEN TREASURE. 27
the discipline and the state of conflict which the existence
of Church and World was designed to afford.
Church and World conie into existence wheresoever
and whensoever the Gospel is preached. In an inferior
degree Church and World are facts in all lands, Moham-
medan and heathen as well as Christian. The Greek and
Roman civilizations knew the distinction the Hindoo
and Chinese civilizations know it now. It is not foreign
to the tribes of Africa. But in the perfect, absolute
and Christian sense, Church and World came into
existence only with the entrance of Gospel light. Then
all that is not lighted is World to the illuminated, and
rightly so ; but such a subjective revelation of the nega-
tive and vacuous condition of other souls carries with it
no Scripture authority for pronouncing judgment upon
them is not to be understood as objectively true ; it
simply summons the individual disciple to separate him-
self from those who would hinder him in walking in the
light that for the time is his guide. Christians assured
of this that in true following of their Light is Salvation,
have rushed to the conclusion that all those not helpful
to them in doing likewise must of necessity come short
of Salvation, an error gross and lamentable as the
infirmity and limitation of the spiritual faculty even in
the greatest saints.
But when it is once perceived that the "World"
stands simply for "not Church," and that "Church"
stands for all men everywhere who have received a
light from the Father of their spirits which to them-
selves is superior to the current perceptions of their
fellow-men, then the relative character of these terms
prevents any mistaken notion of them as unerring and
comprehensive significants, under which all mankind, by
the verdict of fallible Christian professors, can be truly
ranged.
Church and World are not a true and absolute differ-
28 PURITANISM IN POWER.
entiation of the masses of mankind. Such a coarse
analysis could never proceed from the Divine mind.
A true analysis of the spiritual stages of development
existing in the world at any one period, would involve
their assignment to hundreds of thousands of ranks and
orders.
But as the message of the Gospel is one, so the result
of preaching it is necessarily the creation of two classes
only those who believe and avow it, and those who do
not : the class of receivers having an objective existence
as believers, and bringing forth fruits new and strange
to men naturally : the class of non-believers having
also apparently an objective existence, as such, but really
only a subjective existence to the believers : for whereas
Christian consciousness is a sure guide, and by its
decisions we shall all be judged, human judgment as to
the state of others is most liable to err, and Christ has
expressly warned His followers not to pronounce it.
29
CHAPTEK III.
MODERN EVANGELICAL PRACTICE.
THE distinction that we have been considering between
the " Church " and the " World " has been recognised as
fundamental to the true conception and ordering of
church life by all evangelical communions up to recent
times.
Ecclesice striving to conform themselves to apostoh'c
models have made it a principal object to realise the dis-
tinction in the admission of members, and in after
church discipline.
The calling of Christians to be pilgrims and strangers
in a world foreign to their sympathies and hostile to
their views a world to which they were to die in order
that they might be truly alive to God this was a con-
stant theme of pulpit instruction, and members of the
evangelical branch of the Church of England, with all
evangelical Nonconformist Churches, exemplified the
doctrine in puritanical abstinence from the modes of
dissipating time and distracting thought which were cus-
tomary among those that stood " without."
Not dead to noble literature or the charms of dramatic
representation could its poisonous seasoning be ab-
stracted ; not soulless with regard to music or art, they
yet eschewed whatever in these involved a perilous pro-
pinquity to standing in the way of sinners and sitting
in the seat of the scornful. They were content to be con-
sidered sour, morose, unsocial, hypocritical, so long as
they felt they were not forfeiting the right to sit in the
heavenlies with Christ Jesus so long as they knew they
were "come unto mount Sion and unto the city of the
living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumer-
able company of angels, to the general assembly and
30 PURITANISM IN POWER.
church of the Firstborn, which are written in heaven,
and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just
men made perfect. And to Jesus the Mediator of the
new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that
speaketh better things than that of Abel " Abel the
iirst martyr to the enmity of the world.
They were content to hear constantly ringing in their
ears the Apostle's counsel : " Finally, brethren, whatso-
ever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, what-
soever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely,
whatsoever things are of good report ; if there be any
virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
Those things, which ye have both learned, and received,
and heard, and seen in me, do : and the God of Peace
shall be with you." (Phil. iv. 8, 9.)
And if any should deride their satisfaction with such
visionary entertainment, and mistake the distaste of a
heavenly palate for the constraints of a miserable fear,
they would at any time be ready to witness for their
substantial reward and present enjoyment, being ready to
say with Christian in " Pilgrim's Progress " when temp-
ted by Apollyon, " To speak truth, I like His service, His
wages, His servants, His government, His company and
country better than thine; therefore leave off to persuade
me further ; I am His servant and I will follow Him."
And in acting thus, the past Evangelicals (for the order
is nearly extinct) only gave effect in another form to
that unquenchable desire for a nearer and holier com-
munion with God than an unguarded and promiscuous
intercourse with men admitted of, which led to the
institution of Brotherhoods and Sisterhoods, living in
unworldly seclusion from the tide of sin and folly that
rolled around the monastery and convent walls.
The Church of Itome in its marvellous policy of adap-
tation to all human aspirations that would not threaten
its authority, provided in the monkeries and nunneries
MODERN EVANGELICAL PRACTICE. 31
for the felt need of men and women who in Protestant
times would simply have joined themselves to some
dissenting communion, or " sat under " the lowest of the
low Church clergymen.
And there is no part of the system of Rome which
deserves so great a respect from Protestantism; none
which approaches so nearly the primitive Puritan
practice of separation from the godless world, as that
conventual and monastic system, in despising and con-
temning which Protestantism has wantonly cut itself off
from the finest tradition of the early Christian ages, and
landed us in this nineteenth century in the exhibition of
a religious practice which is neither pilgrimage nor war-
fare, neither exclusive devotedness to Christ nor avowed
conformity to the world ; neither church nor world nor
devil wholly, but a decent patchwork of God and Mammon
mixed, which is as likely to shield sinful souls from
blame as the garments of mixed woollen and linen were to
escape the disapproval of the Jewish priests.
The fruit of the ancient Puritan practice was such as
the Church has not been able to attain under any other
system.
The withdrawal of the individual professor from the
world, and his voluntary association only with Christians
in the technical puritanical sense, necessarily begat a
certain appearance of indifference to the interests of the
wider circle of mankind. But in reality it was never so.
The sure and certain effect of men coming into vital
fellowship with the second Adam is a truer and deeper
sympathy with the entire race. Hence these narrow
puritanical psalmsingers, so-called, were found stirring up
the world to a sense of the iniquity of the slave traffic,
and were ever the first champions of any cause that was
appealing to heaven for justice. Wilberforce and Knibb,
Clarkson and Buxton, Newton and Cowper, were Evan-
gelical Puritans.
32 PURITANISM IN POWER.
True it was that the craft of Mammon rendered their
victory nugatory so far as the welfare of the Freedmen
was concerned ; for the eyes of good men had not then
been opened to the really bitterer bondage of free
labourers when left to treat unorganized with unassail-
able capitalist employers.
That, however, does not invalidate the worth of their
active testimony for righteousness. All that can be said
is that, since they were not pecuniarily interested in the
traffic, their philanthropy was cheap. We have plenty
of cheap philanthropy still among men of very inferior
disinterestedness. The human sense of justice and
natural heart of sympathy will show itself ready to decry
oppression everywhere but in England. If it is gently
hinted " Look at home," then the eye suddenly loses its
power of vision and the tongue is paralyzed to the root.
Modern civilization rests like all previous ones upon
slavery, and therefore is not Christian. This in passing.
Beautiful were the characters which this puritanical
system produced. Men and women so living grew up
into types of holy heavenly character, peaceful, calm,
such as are not to be found in the present day except
among men of very advanced age.
Grant that the calm was to a great extent due to their
being unmoved, unagitated by the clamorous call to heed
the world without. God's time for that had not come ;
the Puritan character had first to leave its witness, bear
its fruits, and strike its roots in the national conscience.
Jewish isolation must precede the scattering of evan-
gelists and the resounding din of the Glad Tidings.
The Church, like a garden walled around, did bring
forth fruits, the like of which we do not see to-day.
What reverence ! What dignity ! How the tongue moved
in the stately measure of the sacred writers. What
refinement of thought and manner, the two being
intimately associated. What holy elevation in the
MODEBN EVANGELICAL PEACTICE. 33
religious exercises. How select the reading. How
choice the companionship. How holy, how exquisitely
happy the sabbath days, which to others who are not in
the secret would appear charged with the insupportable
tedium of gloomy ascetics. Child life grew sweetly
under the Puritan roof; dissociated from harmful
fellowships, like Israel lost in the wilderness ; made to
feel with salutary and peaceful awe that God was every-
where, and not alone at Beulah, Swallow lane.
Narrow as the cloister life of monks, it was yet bright
with visions pure and lovely, and stretching into far
eternity.
How steadily did the lamp of piety burn in the hushed
air of sanctity and peace that walked with the elders as
they trod together the straight and narrow path ; no
flickering of the flame; no twisted revelation of foul
smoke ; onward through Emmanuel's land they marched,
guarding the child life given them with an awful sense
of responsibility ; witnessing death with a dread and
solemn mindfulness of the momentous issues of life, but
laying their youthful offspring in the grave with a faith
which had little support from their creed.
In expectation of maternity the Puritan mother was often
with her bible ; after childbirth bearing herself with the
humble thankfulness of one who had been respited from
the Great Assize.
How tender, how reverent, how godly ! How worthy
of a being like man and of a Being like God, and of that
sacred and wondrous thing the physical world, was
Puritan life in the married relation.
It is all passed away : the sabbath sanctity ; the rare
flavour of the holy day. How shocked was the spirit of
childhood, reared in such an atmosphere, by anything
that ill-comported with the hallowed sanctities of such a
home !
When relations belonging to the " world " rushed in, in
3
84 PURITANISM IN POWER.
gay garments, in the quiet of the sabbath afternoon, and
untwined a rigmarole about assemblies, balls and routs,
untwisting out of their set every thread of composed
reflection upon themes of a different order, and putting
an unusual constraint upon the Christian courtesy of the
household heads how with the loud talk and laugh and
slam of the doors, the little group in the glooming
parlour would feel that the "world" was indeed shut
out, and circling round the fire in order to call back the
vanished G-enius of the day, the reverend sire and his
beloved mate would raise a hymn together, launching
the notes with a reverend humility, as truly unworthy to
sing praises so high, while the children gladly joined,
nor felt the day at all a weariness, or any hankering after
making one of the discordant company that had gone.
Very humdrum all of it in the estimation of those who
are not in the secret to those to whom solitude brings its
skeleton, and to whom company, and giddy company, is
the most welcome distraction of thought. But to
Puritans young and old to whom God was ever near
to be alone was only to be nearer. To have the
thoughts left free was for them instantly to use their
liberty in flying home home to God man's final rest,
" in his enjoyment to be blessed." Stupid indeed to those
not in the secret, but in that glooming room, within the
ancient garments of the sire, and behind the plain folds
of the soberly draped matron, there were holy flames of
love and faith always burning illumining the con-
sciousness of God, exalting with their revelations every
view and operation of the mind, in a manner at once
incomprehensible to the world and a reprover of its
ignorant notion that Puritanism is not joy and peace
in believing.
And when from amidst the circle of the Puritan
household one of the children stepped out to join the
Church, how solemn and orderly were all the proceed-
MODEEN EVANGELICAL PEACTICE. 35
ings. Men of repute, sound in the faith and godliness,
would be deputed to visit and speak with the candidate,
who, with a trembling sense of utter unworthiness, would
speak with intensity of conviction of the call that God
had given him or her. The visitors report to the Church ;
the Church, with a thrill of joy, desires of the candidate
a few confirmatory words. These in the case of a
female are falteringly given ; by the male, often with
detail of absorbing interest. A few testing questions are
put and answered, and the ordeal of Baptism awaits the
neophyte.
A few days after in a crowded chapel the congregation
are circling round the Baptistry. They sing :
" Around Thy grave, Lord Jesus,
Thine open grave we stand,
With hearts all full of gladness
To keep Thy blest command ;
So Thee in faith we follow,
And trace Thy path of love,
Through the strange solemn waters
Up to Thy throne above.
" Lord Jesus ! we remember
The coldness of Thy tomb,
The silence and the darkness,
The grave clothes in the gloom :
After Thy cross and passion,
The deep sleep came at last ;
O'er the eternal radiance
The mortal shadow passed.
" But now Thou art arisen !
Thy travail all is o'er ;
Once Thou for sin hast suffered,
And Thou wilt die no more !
Crowned with immortal honour,
Because of that dark bed ;
Give us to share Thy triumph,
Thou First-born from the dead !
36 PURITANISM IN POWER.
" Into Thy death baptized,
O let us with Thee die :
And clothe us with Thy risen life,
And wholly sanctify ;
So freed from the old nature,
And ransomed by Thy blood,
May we pass on to glory,
Alive with Thee to God."
And then the candidates before the crowd make holy
witness of their faith and consecration. Descending to
the flood their bodies were laid in the cold tomb, where,
symbolically, life unto sin and self was left behind, and
rising again unto Resurrection life, evermore they walk in
holy joy in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit, to
take their place among the children of the First-born from
the dead. Hallelujah ! The impressiveness of the cere-
mony was here often marred by a long and untimely
polemic, but as often by a loving exhortation to come
out from the world and do likewise.
Since those days the method of reception, the require-
ments from candidates, have all been altered in the
direction of affording increased facilities.
A busy minister enters a family of young persons and
suggests that the children should be communicants as
well as the parents. Formerly all was left to the initia-
tion of the candidate ; now the prompting conies unso-
licited from without (in many cases, we do not say all,)
scruples are removed, objections to the ordeal of visita-
tion by members and testimony before the assembled
Church are met by the minister undertaking that his
own report will suffice, and these safeguards may be
dispensed with. The pathway is further smoothed by
altering the day of the observance of the Baptismal rite
from Sunday to Wednesday, when the audience will be so
much fewer. Alas ! for the days of namby-pamby, and
my blessing and yours too, Reader, with it, upon the
Salvation Army, to whom uncomplaining endurance of
MODERN EVANGELICAL PEACTICE. 37
hardship is not strange, and who, when suffering
wrongfully, make no parade of their grievances, and
lodge no claim for compensation.
In this paltry and equivocal manner a number of
young people, whose hearts have never been seriously
affected towards God or against the World, are induced
to believe that they have passed the strait gate and
entered upon the narrow way. They are numbered with
a number of professed followers of Christ, the majority
of whom we may charitably suppose have really under-
gone a change, corresponding to the symbolism of the
Baptismal waters, but others of whom, like those just
brought in, are unable to avow a real bond of sympathy.
And having only the dimmest notion of that order of
thought which reigns supreme in the hearts of the truly
converted, they are led to give up further strivings
after the knowledge of Divine things, if ever they
seriously entertained them, and by their perfunctory service
and their worldly worship add to the general unreality
that pervades every department of the modern evangelical
and non-evangelical Nonconformist Churches. The lack
of genuine vitality is made up by fussiness. The active-
minded minister has to read the announcement of coming
events. They supply engagements for every evening and
two afternoons in the coming week. If there are Bible
classes it is well, and if a prayer meeting it is also well, but
both are getting rare in these days. The most melan-
choly announcement of all is the soiree or church tea
meeting a meeting which might be made a truly
valuable exercise if the assembly would commence
throwing the pew cushions and hassocks at each other,
and knocking off some of the Deacons' wigs, but
which, as usually gone through, is far more depressing
than a funeral. It is intended to furnish an opportunity
for the church and congregation to manifest brotherly
love one towards another.
38 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Brotherly love indeed ! Yes ! After cautious enquiry
has been made concerning the stranger's heavenly
acquaintance ? No ; verily ! But after his profession,
his income and his social standing ; then, if satisfactory,
brotherly love galore ! Meanwhile we will listen sym-
pathetically to the missionary declaiming against caste
in India, and pray for its downfall there, while we work
for its maintenance here.
Among the announcements is not unfrequently one
about the laying the foundation stone of a New Congre-
gational or Wesleyan church. Stones, we should say,
for by a happy thought it has been remembered that the
Church is built upon the foundation of the Apostles, of
whom there were twelve, and that, therefore, twelve
foundation stones laid by twelve notabilities, credited
truly or untruly with having long purses, may by God's
blessing result in twelve purses being laid down at the
same time. Why it should have escaped notice that the
Church is not only built upon the Apostles but also upon
the Prophets we cannot say ; probably it has not escaped
attention, but upon consideration was ignored. Certain
of the Prophets are reported to have written about other
profits with an "f," and to have made odious comparisons
between them and righteousness. No one questions that
middle class voluntary Dissent builds its churches out of,
and upon, its profits ; it would stretch credibility to
assert that they are invariably built upon the foundation
of the heroic denouncers of fraud and champions of the
oppressed, who in the Jewish days heralded the coming
of the Just One.
The ordinary course of church ministration has been
changed to meet the indeterminate and mixed character
of the church and congregation.
It used to be considered that for Christians to meet
together for prayer and mutual exhortation to love and
good works was apostolic. The " exhortation " found
MODERN EVANGELICAL PRACTICE. 39
favour with few professional preachers, as it seemed to
trench upon their special function, but the prayer meeting
for voluntary supplication had the approval of all pastors
until the free churches became altered in their constitu-
ents. Taste for and power in free prayer then declined, and
the church members did nothing in the way of following
the apostolic counsels. They delegated all to the one-
man pastorate. The prayer meeting in many, if not
most, Nonconformist churches has ceased to be, or it is
only kept up by small associations within the church,
say, of Sunday school teachers or lay missionaries who
having earnest work on hand and being thoroughly
united in carrying it on, feel the need and the * joy of
praying together for its prosperity.
Together with the prayer meeting, morning Sunday
schools have in many churches been discontinued, and
this has been further improved upon by a general consent
to attend to Public Worship only once in the day.
The general failure of spiritual appetite and determin-
ation to consult ease and indulgence have further led to
an outcry against long prayers and long sermons, so that
it has quite become the fashion to recommend churches
and church services on account of the light strain they
will impose upon the attention of the congregation.
That is to say, the recommendation of religious worship
is now the abundance of the music and the paucity of
instruction and appeal. The less of God the better.
While in the secular world all vendors of utilities appeal
for custom upon the ground of the quantity they will give
for the money, and when newspapers challenge patron-
age on the score of the many columns of news (and pap)
they supply, the Christian ministry appeals for support
on the ground that at such and such places of spiritual
refreshment the supply afforded is the scantiest possible.
"Here," they virtually say, " are the meagreest prayers,
the shortest sermons, and the least reading of the
40 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Scriptures." But how utterly hollow is the pretence
that these accommodations to " the age " are indications
of "progress," instead of lamentable decay !
And how untrue it is that men are really unable to
bear the strain of long discourse, and after a long week's
work ought to be spared it. Let Gladstone, at Bingley
Hall, refute the pretension. There eighteen thousand
people crushed and jammed themselves together in an
unventilated market, the occupants of the top rows of the
gallery literally bent against the slant of the ceiling, young
men fainting from heat and pressure, handed along
limp over the heads of survivors there did these eighteen
thousand people listen for nearly two hours to the closely
reasoned speech of the veteran orator, upon a question
that concerned none of them so intimately as that of
life and death, God and eternity. Listened with intense
appreciation and sustained attention so much so that
nature exhausted with standing, with heat, with atten-
tion, with crush, did not fly for relief the moment the
orator had ended, but on the contrary burst into one
majestic tribute of admiration and enthusiastic devotion.
It was almost as if the four winds of heaven had been
let loose, and the fountains of the great deep had been
broken up. The people recognised reality upon the
platform.
A real heart in real sympathy with the masses, and
bent upon the inauguration of another path in social
legislation. Against obloquy, against scorn, against
antipathy, standing to lead the vast army of the uncon-
sidered populace, to further economical enfranchisement,
first of all in Ireland, and then in England it was this
that drew the thousands to Bingley Hall ; and instead of
asking the preacher to be short, they lamented when he
ceased.
It has ever been so with earnest men who are known
disinterestedly to take up, advocate and live for the
MODERN EVANGELICAL PRACTICE. 41
cause of the people. They will have followers. When
the cause of Eighteousness is proclaimed to be the cause
of God, neither music nor brevity need commend the
preacher.
The appeal to the masses is made upon similar
principles. They are provided with a maximum of
music of entertainment, and a minimum of God.
Since God is not in the thoughts of the multitude day
by day, it is assiduously made known that the audience
will not be asked to entertain the conception for longer
than ten minutes. What an attraction ! The God whose
glories fill eternity whom eternity cannot exhaust
the effulgence of whose gloiy waxes with the cycles of the
worshipping life of heaven He shall be apologised for
as an unwelcome intrusion upon the secular vacuity of
the crowd ! It is guaranteed that God shall not be on
view for fifty minutes of the hour. But it is not thus
that crowds are interested. There was a preacher who
drew multitudes after him, without any attractions. He
made God first himself nothing. What you want,
People ! is not music, not recreation, primarily. Your
want is Eeligion. This I present to you in bidding
you "Bepent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand."
The concessions made to the world in the quantity of
no- God are liberally conceded also to the professing
church.
The service is minced up into as many attractive
morsels as possible, and the sermon is cut down from
forty minutes to twenty-five or twenty. Not only
shortened, but spiced and pointed, not so much to entice
the heart as tickle the ear. Such, however, is the
impatient spirit of a people who will daily read about
twenty columns of the newspapers, buying two or three
evening editions after the morning one, that sermons of
twenty minutes upon God are felt to be wearisome, and
the innovation is advocated of forty minutes or longer
42 PURITANISM IN POWER.
upon politics, science or anything else. It is indeed most
true that God is in politics and science, but He is not in
either as He is self declared in Jesus Christ. We are
persuaded that it is not of Jesus Christ that men are
tired. He never fails to draw. The congregations of
to-day are weary of sermons which are neither honest
and telling exposures of an unchristian civilization nor
clear, devout and exalting expositions of the glorious
gospel. Being neither one thing nor the other, they are
without appeal to the uneasy, aching, vexed and wind-
tossed people ; and although the attendance in the
evening is not wholly discarded, it is in large cities very
much reduced, and the abstention is increasing. The
churches themselves have lost their former power as
nurseries of Christian character. They are a mob of
miscellaneous people, gathered one scarcely knows how
or why under the banner of some popular preacher the
vital element residing chiefly in the band of Sunday
school teachers, whose operations are seldom sympa-
thetically regarded by the Church.
A heterogeneous congeries of middle-class people, half
of whom know not wherefore they are come together ;
and yet many of them pressed ignorantly into service a
pious remnant, it may be, through lack of wealth
possessing but a trifling influence ; such Churches, in
which discipline is practically never exercised, perform
no office of intrinsic and special value as religious
agencies. Their raison d'etre has gone. The atmosphere
grows daily more worldly and the isolation of members
one from another daily more marked. The wealth of
the people and style of the services daily more oppressive
and forbidding to the humble-minded and the humbler
placed. The old Puritan-simplicity has departed, and
the old Puritan-strength with it ; the net characteristic
of Church operations in the present day being signified
by the term Religion* dusipation.
MODERN EVANGELICAL PRACTICE.
The consequence of all this is that the very design of
an elect church has been frustrated. Its value to the
world was to consist in its severe example of godly
pilgrimage, maintained by association in nurseries for
spiritual growth and culture. Instead of preserving
their purity and ancient strength the Nonconformist
churches have attempted to leaven the world by stripping
the salt of its special savour, with the result that the
World has affected the Church much more than the
Church has affected the World, and that as really power-
ful spiritual forces those churches have been on the
decline for many years.
44
CHAPTER IV.
THE TESTIMONY OF SCEIPTUEE.
WE have been considering the Scripture evidence and
the evidence of fact for the existence of two classes of
mankind the Church and the World. And we have
shown how injurious are the consequences of any
failure to recognise this distinction in the theory,
constitution and practice of Christian churches.
We have now to enquire whether this separation of
mankind under the present dispensation into two classes
implies separation in eternal destiny. Whether the
existence of an elect church and its destiny was to be
the final issue of the incarnation of the Son of God, and
whether His title of Saviour of the World is a misnomer
or not. Whether the master key to the meaning of the
Scriptures is not Salvation, and the salvation of all men,
and whether the elect church presuming it to be as
different from the world as angels from men has not
given to it a ministry to the world, corresponding to
that angelic ministry which is given to those who are
heirs of the church's salvation. The church being
appointed to minister to the world, not alone as the
potential provider of its own succession, but as to those
whose birthright is not conferred only because it is not
claimed, who have not entered upon their inheritance
because their heirship is postponed.
What we have to look into the Scriptures for is,
whether social as well as individual salvation is the
theme, and whether the latter, as exhibited in the elect
church, is not to be contributory to the former. Whether
the historical portions are not a setting forth of the
preliminary design which is contributory to the primary,
the primary object being the salvation of the whole
THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTUKE. 45
world. Whether punishment and doom, earthly and
heavenly, are not indications of God's determination
never to give up the reformation and redemption of His
creatures, there being a salvation by fire as well as by
grace a salvation, inferior but real, vessels of wrath
fitted for destruction, destined to come out of the potter's
fire reclaimed, and from the pit of clay re-made into a per-
manent shape of beauty and meetness for the Master's use.
Whether the Incarnation does not imply salvation of the
entire human family, instead of an insignificant portion
only, and w r hether the language used in Scripture indica-
tive of the condition of the wicked, is not necessarily
true of their present condition, without of necessity
implying fixity in misery for ever. Whether the de-
struction of the ungodly does not imply a Divine mind
operating to destroy ungodliness, the satisfaction sought
being the destruction of their sin, which, when accom-
plished by punitive separation from God and His chosen,
must entitle them to subordinate rank in the company of
the Redeemed. Whether God is not the same yesterday,
to-day, and for ever, and w r hether place and time can
have anything to do with altering the permanent attri-
butes of His character. Whether man is not constantly
under the Divine training, and whether, since faith and
repentance are both of them gifts from heaven, it is not
certain that the deprivation of these gifts, experienced
by unbelievers now, must be followed by a bestowment
of the same at a later period, when the lesson of their
banishment has been learned.
Now the master key to the Biblical theme we find in
Romans, chapters v. and vi., where the parallelism
between the first and second Adam is complete. It is
an offence to all fair and honest interpretation of clear
language, to distort these passages so as to make them
yield a sense certainly not expressed and therefore
evidently not intended.
46 PURITANISM IN POWER.
It is significant that in the earliest chapters of the
Bible we have the Church and the World revealed in Cain
and Abel, and an explicit proof of God's care of the
world and the maintenance of educative discipline over
it, in the fact that Cain besought God, and God affixed
a mark to his forehead to be a protection against anyone
attempting to slay him. We have guilty Cain's selfish
prayer answered, and God's patronage bestowed.
The salvation of Noah was not of himself alone, but
joined with seven other persons, and with beasts of the
earth also, suggestive of the incorporation with man-
kind of the inferior creation in the redemptive scheme
of God.
Lot's daughters and the city in which they took refuge
are spared for Lot's sake ; and when Abraham is blessed
it is said, " In thee shall all the families of the earth be
blessed." " All the families," it is needless to point out,
can never be recognised in the wretchedly few who
represent the elect church at present.
But still more significant is the way in which the lineal
descendants of the Father of the Faithful, and of the
other ancient types of Christ, are made, as it were, to
travel outside of the seed of the promise and to include
individuals from surrounding unprivileged and heathen
nations nations expressly excluded from that light which
was vouchsafed to the Jews only.
The first instance is that of Abraham's firstborn,
Ishmael. Because of the barrenness of Sarah, according
to the custom of the tribe and the day, Sarah's maid
Hagar, an Egyptian, was given Abraham to raise up
seed. But Egypt, in Scripture, stands as the representa-
tive of the World in contrast to the Church, which is set
forth by Israel. Thus the very first child born unto the
Father of the Faithful was, under Divine guidance, to
be a proof of the designed incorporation of the World in
the blessings promised to the Church.
THE TESTIMONY OF SCKIPTURE. 47
Accordingly Ishmael, though he had not the same
blessing as Isaac, was yet blessed in a limited and
inferior degree. And Ishmael is a type a type like
Esau of the worldly man who lives in and for the world,
and cares not for the higher spiritual blessings.
It is significant, also, that Hagar and Ishmael are
separated from Abraham's house, and from the further
light and privilege that would otherwise have come to
them. It is decreed that these two classes of men should
exist. It is decreed that the veil should be cast over the
hearts and minds of alien peoples, until the same God
who has appointed unto men their habitations and their
spiritual privileges shall see fit to remove it consistently
with human free agency.
Note that there is a special Providence over those
whom God cuts off from sharing the privileges of the
elect. Abraham's own firstborn is on the point of
perishing for lack of water, when an angel appears to
show the mother a spring. May we not hope and believe
that that thirsting nigh unto death of the benighted
heathen world for something more satisfactory than their
corrupt human systems, will be met in the angelic world
by a direction to the Eiver of Life, clear as crystal,
which flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb ?
When Sarah dies, the wife of the Father of the Faithful
is indebted to the generous offer of the people of the
land the reprobate Hittites for a burying place.
Ephron would have made Abraham a present of the
cave of Machpelah. This however Abraham would not
allow ; but in the land of strangers, and by the courtesy
of the heathen, the Father of the Faithful had a
burying place sealed to him. All through the sacred
history, and down to our times, the indebtedness of the
church for benefits and services rendered by the world is
manifested.
When Isaac marries there is a repetition of the en-
48 PURITANISM IN POWER.
forced inclusion of strange blood into the line of the
chosen seed.
Two nations struggle together in Rebekah's womb
the Church and the World, hostile and incapable of
understanding one another from the dawn of life to its
close, but both necessarily destined to blessing, though
blessing of a different order and degree.
When Jacob supplanted his brother in a manner so
mean that it reveals God's purpose to involve yet glorify
His character by singling out for His salvation the most
despicable of men and nations, Esau cried out, " Hast
thou not a blessing for me, even me, my Father?"
And he had a blessing. This whole matter of blessing
is very significant of the federation of mankind and the
federal character of the gospel scheme. The blessings
were real and effective that the Patriarchs bestowed upon
their offspring, and they were granted irrespective of
faith or an} r spiritual qualification. They were blessed
because they were sons of the faithful Patriarch, and the
faith of the father was rewarded upon the children even
without their being required to exercise faith of the same
or any kind. As in these days we say in an evan-
gelical appeal, " What you require to know is that God
loves you," so then the motive to good works on the part
of the descendants of the Patriarchs was this, " Knoir
and remember always that God has pronounced His
blessing upon you. Let that shame you."
Jacob being promised Rachel is defrauded by his
father-in-law and compelled to marry Leah also. Here
again some additional alien blood is brought into the
direct line, proof after proof being afforded that Abraham
is not to be a father of blessing to one select race alone,
but must loop in now and again outsiders so that the
seed shall be complicated with the blood of all nations.
Here again fresh departures take place ; Rachel is
barren, Leah bears. Rachel gives unto Jacob Bilhah
THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE. 49
her maid, who bears. In due time Leah, ceasing to bear,
Zilpah is given to Jacob, and bears him several sons.
Now we know not of what race Bilhah and Zilpah were, but
since Sarah had an Egyptian for a maid, it is not
improbable that their handmaids w r ere either Egyptians
or natives of the country, in which case we have further
proof that the world is to be incorporated with the
church in Abraham's promised blessing. The very fact
that the blessing came originally unsought and un-
deserved, a free gift of the divine favour, is an indica-
tion of the nature of the designs of God which warrants
our cherishing the largest hopes in reference to the
entire world.
Mark further the singular history of Jacob's descend-
ants. Joseph is carried into Egypt to save life, the life
of the world ; though unhappily being a son of Jacob,
he drove a desperate hard bargain with the people on
behalf of Pharaoh, a hard bargain which is typical of
all business transactions, and was in itself bad morality
and utterly false to the Christian ideal.
The imperfection of all human types to set forth the
character of Christ was never more strikingly manifested
than by this transaction, which fastened the doom of
virtual slavery upon the Egyptians from that generation
until now.
But note Joseph's career. He marries a daughter of
Poti-pherah, priest of On. He was providentially cut off
from marrying one of his father's relatives. He was
compelled to form an alliance with Egypt, the type of
the world ; and what is especially noteworthy, the
descendants of this alliance are by Jacob incorporated
with the sons whom he blesses on his death-bed, and they
became part of the twelve tribes. Egyptian blood
mingles with the seed of the promise and is blessed with
that seed. Joseph brings his two children and places
his eldest next his father's right hand. Jacob, however,
4
50 PURITANISM IN POWER.
crosses his hands, and places his right hand upon the
head of the youngest. Throughout the record we
perceive this determination to cross man's expectations
and to exalt the humble and the meek, to pass by what
is highly esteemed among men, and to crown with divine
favour those wiio in this life are condemned to an inferior
lot.
The Jewish people as a nation illustrated the same
rule of procedure, for it was a nation ever inconsiderable
and despised ; nevertheless, the seal of God's favour was
upon it, betokened as much by fearful judgments as by
seasons of prosperous peace ; what the world contemned
God exalted to be the channel of divine communication
and the vesture of the Incarnate Word.
To resume. The seed of Jacob multiply in Egypt, and
it is in the highest degree unlikely that intermarriages
did not take place between Israel and her future
masters. It is certain that subsequently those masters
would claim master's privileges of their helpless slaves,
and that so on the most extensive scale the seed of the
world would be intermingled with the promised seed.
We now arrive at a time when Moses appears upon
the scene.
Educated in the court of Pharaoh; skilled in all the
science of the time, and with prospects of heirship to the
throne, this man, nurtured in a palace (it is the history
of most philanthropists), is led by his very luxuries to
look with additional sympathy upon the sufferings and
toil of his kindred.
The lawgiver gives law to himself and slays one of
the oppressors. He felt he was called to judge among
the people and to let the oppressed go free.
It was an act against the world which drove him into
the wilderness of Sinai and to the house of a priest of
that place who was destined never upon earth to know
his God as Moses was to know Him. And he marries
THE TESTIMONY OF SCEIPTUKE. 51
one of this priest's daughters. Here another loop from
the heathen is taken into the line of Christ.
And note the dependence of the Church upon the
World. Note what conspicuous benefit Jethro conferred
upon Moses, when, upon coming out to see him, as his
son-in-law led the people past, he perceived that the
work was too much for him, and counselled him to
appoint seventy elders who should judge the smaller
matters, only bringing the weightier ones to him. Who
inspired Jethro to do this ? It is a notable thing alto-
gether. Moses who had direct inspiration from God how
to act, is providentially left to learn a lesson from the
world made dependent upon the world for valuable
counsel on a practical, not a spiritual matter. It is the
way of the world. It can show Moses how to save his
body, not his soul. But then Jethro says " Farewell ! "
and retires to his twilight knowledge of God. He will
not hear the thunders of Sinai, when the atmosphere
trembled to bear the holy commandments. He will remain
a Priest of On, giving sundry wise counsels to his people
alway. Shall he have no reward ? Two sons of Moses
have sprung from his daughter. Jethro's blood is
mingled with the promised seed.
We have already seen the dependence of the Church
upon the World in the case of Sarah's grave, and, in
passing, may say if the covenant made with the barbarous
Hittites was so sure that Jacob and Joseph could after-
wards have their bones laid in the same place, how much
more reason have we to rely upon the covenant made by
God with Abraham, that in him should all the families
of the earth be blessed. Joseph, we have seen, was
indebted to Pharaoh for promotion and provision for his
father and his brethren. Moses was carefully trained in
all the wisdom of Egypt. For forty years Midian pro-
vided him with a home. Now there was One who said,
even a cup of cold Water given to a disciple, in the name
52 PURITANISM IN POWER.
of a disciple, should in no wise lose its reward. Can we
believe that those who ministered to Christ's ancestors
will be forgotten by Him, even though "the name of a
disciple" was barely perceived?
Pursuing the same theme, we find David in his
extremity succoured by Achish, king of Gath, who gave
him Ziklag for a city, where he dwelt a year and four
months. When Solomon commences to build, it is Hiram,
king of Tyre, who furnishes timber and skilled workmen.
Thus the Temple in which the Divine glory was to dwell
was built of materials contributed by neighbouring idol-
aters ; and when it is opened, Solomon prays that not
alone petitions from the Jews might have favour, but
also the plaint of the stranger.
The cruel institution of slavery is softened by the con-
sideration that through its means the outlying heathen
were brought into contact with the chosen people, and
became in a sense ministers to them, a ministry that
the God of the Jews is not likely to ignore.
We may pass at once to the history of Jesus. As an
Infant, He accepted the gifts of the Magi, those wise
men from the far east, who, like the Queen of Sheba
departing from Solomon, after depositing their gifts, had
to return to their own country without even a word of
wisdom or of love to ponder from the lips of the Greater
than Solomon, whom they were to know no more.
They saw His star in the east and they worshipped Him,
and now "go back, simple men, with the incense of the
stable in your nostrils, much good may your travail do
you." A Babe in the food-trough of oxen ! Thus early
would He signify that He gives His flesh for the life of
the world. But the star of the Babe has set. It is the
star of the King that the wisest now watch for.
The Holy Child received the protection of Egypt, the
type of the world, and grew to manhood under the
government, however unrighteous, of Pagan Rome. He
THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE. 53
drank of water raised for Him by the woman of Samaria,
and communicated in return the living stream. The
most beautiful of His parables is that of the Good
Samaritan. He was continually making reference to the
world- wide scope of His salvation, and to His judgments
as going beyond, and therefore their " destructiveness "
limited to this life. Having lost a disciple at the fare-
well feast, He found another beside Him on the cross,
that so, in fellowship with the World, He who as Infant
received the spices of the wise, might as Man die in the
grateful incense of a fool redeemed ; and He went before
him into Paradise, that the poor World's outcast might
have a royal welcome there.
His gospel was delayed in its appearance until the
world was prepared, by Greek philosophy and by Roman
jurisprudence, to embody the message in adequate ter-
minology and in orderly civil life. Thus the Pagan
civilizations, as well as the ethical training of the Jewish
race, paved the way for Christian progress. The apostles
profited by Roman protection against Jewish persecution.
Instances abound in the Acts of the manner in which
the Pagan outsiders incidentally furthered the progress
of the Evangel, and even the barbarous people of Melita
are requisitioned to show favours to the infant Church,
and exhibit to the shipwrecked mariners and prisoners
" no little kindness." They linked the apostle to a
Roman soldier; was it that both should hereafter be
linked in glorious liberty ? The Pagan feats in arts and
arms and law were certainly immense. I feel the full force
of the criticism that the Gospel makes triumphs as signal
among savage tribes as ever it makes among the semi-
civilized communities of China and India, or did in the
civilization of the ancient world ; but my answer to that
is, that the mission-preaching of to-day to savage
tribes is the consequence of its introduction into the
world when the World had furnished the cradle for the
54 PURITANISM IN POWER.
infant Church. I do not feel the force of the suggestion
that God uses the World as His instrument and then
casts it away. It is not so that we expect the benign
Governor of the universe to act. Even accidental, un-
designed co-operation with a work of signal benefit to
mankind is usually recognised by earthly sovereigns as
worthy of acknowledgment. The hut that gives shelter
to the prince when hunting the chamois in the Alps, was
not built for that purpose by the peasant, but the sover-
eign, having used it, will make some acknowledgment.
The smack that conveys a retreating king from his
rebellious subjects was not built for the purpose, but,
being used and actually helpful, it is right to recognise
the service. And so when the Lord's cause prospered
by reason of preparations made for it by the intellects
and efforts of Pagan nations, although made without any
knowledge of the great purposes their achievements
would subserve, we can scarcely imagine that the Divine
Father will simply use the instrument and destroy it
afterwards. That of course is possible to sovereignty
simply, but Sovereign is God's lowest title.
We revert now to our original investigation the
manner in which the World was taken up into the
seed of Abraham. And what do we find with regard
to Judah, the head of the tribe from which our Lord
sprang ?
This Patriarch, who shines as the mediator for Joseph
among his angry brethren, and as the son who could
not bear that his father Jacob should lose Benjamin,
also revealed in other relationships the prostitution of a
tender nature and the reverse of the self-denying mood.
His peculiarity was a liking for Gentile companionship a
taste for the World ; and this led him astray more than
once. First, when he took to wife the daughter of a
Canaanite, who bore him wicked sons, cursed by
Canaanite heredity, and next when hastening to his
THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE. 55
friend the Adullamite, he shamefully sinned in the
matter of Tamar, incognito.
The issue of Tamar, who we have every reason to
believe was of Canaanite extraction, was Pharez, and
Pharez stood in the direct line of our Lord's ancestry.
It was the tribe thus distinguished by its special
alliances with heathendom that was selected to give
birth to the Saviour of the World. He took not on
him the nature of Abraham alone, but grasping,
like Samson, the twin pillars that support the House
of Humanity laying hold on the one hand of the
seed of Canaan, and on the other of that of Israel
mighty to save both Church and World He stands,
bowed in humility, not for destruction, but for salvation
the Church's one foundation and the World's derided
but solitary hope.
But even this was not sign enough. The sinful nation
of Moab must also be brought into relationship with our
Lord. We have it in the story of Euth. And yet
again the Hittites must be looped into the royal
line the heavy sin of David being overruled to effect
this purpose.
It is interesting to note how the nations concerned
in the previous history of Israel appear again upon the
scene at our Saviour's advent and appear for blessing.
The Samaritans were the poor Babylonians settled in the
Holy Land at the time the Jews were carried away
captive. These were blessed by the ministry of our
Lord. The proselytes of Arabia, assembled at Pentecost,
no doubt furnished a contingent to the baptized. The
Ethiopian eunuch stands for Midian and Moab, only
Egypt is left out.
Enough has been said to show that the sin of man
enters into the very scheme of man's redemption,
and that by the terms of the Abrahamic covenant,
expanded and expressed by patriarchal conduct, the
56 PURITANISM IN POWER.
World is heir of blessing, an heir of God, though not a
co-heir with Christ or His Church; the families of the
world blessed hi Abraham, though not with the special
blessing of the chosen tribe ; and that the Church herself
like her Lord is heir of heathen blood pledge and token
of a redemption wide as the one blood from which all
nations spring. No greater libel was ever published than
when Pilate affixed upon the Cross, " This is Jesus the
King of the Jews." He was much more than that. In
the veins which emptied themselves for the healing
of the world ran reputedly the blood of Egyptian,
Canaanite, Moabite, Hittite the vilest sinners and the
greatest saints. " To this end was I born," said He to
Pilate, "and for this purpose came I into 'the World that
I might be a King." Yea, verily, King of the entire
families of the World.
57
CHAPTER V.
THE TESTIMONY OF SCKIPTUEE Continued.
GOD'S care for the World, as well as for the Church,
is throughout Scripture history abundantly displayed.
Perhaps the most impressive of all proofs of this is
given in the history of the Gibeonites and the vengeance
inflicted upon Saul's house on account of their ill treat-
ment. When the land languished under famine for
three years, and the seven sons of Saul fell together to
fertilise the fields, then was it made awfully clear that
there is a God watchful of all unrighteousness and sure to
avenge it.
But the care of God for the World is shown on the
largest scale in the history of Joseph ; there we find that
one of the royal line is, by the malice of his brethren, sold
into Egypt, where he becomes the means, not only of
saving the lives of the brethren who would have slain
him, but also the lives of the Egyptians in the years of
drought. He was God's ordained Saviour of Church and
World alike, His special work in the world was just that,
and if there is any blessing in good and righteous govern-
ment (although the way in which the ownership of the
land was handed over to Pharaoh is a mystery greater
than the Trinity) then the Providence which gave to Egypt
Joseph, to Israel Moses, and to Babylon Daniel, was a
Providence which gave unmistakable proof of its interest
in the welfare of the World.
The Babylonish captivity was a reversal of the bless-
ings which Jewish slavery brought to the slaves. Here
the people blessed were the masters, for surely many must
have been elevated in their notions of God and duty by the
songs of the captives, when they hung their harps upon
the willows by the waters of Babylon and wept when they
58 PURITANISM IN POWER.
remembered Zion. God's judgments upon the heathen
nations the burden of so many prophecies attest the
inextinguishable interest that God maintains in the
moral condition of "His offspring." Why should His
Prophets have the burden of Judgment given them to
utter, if it were not to teach us something more than the
anger of God against sin '? These heathen nations were
providentially debarred from the light of Sinai and the
Mercy Seat, and yet they are to be and were judged.
The conviction is borne upon us that salvation must be
the ultimate object of their judgment, that their judg-
ment must be of the nature of that which the Apostle
Paul inflicted upon Hymenseus and Alexander, that they
might learn not to blaspheme. It can never be rationally
maintained that God evinces an absorbing interest in the
morals of His children up to the point of chastising them
expressly upon moral grounds, but that He deliberately
places out of their reach the possibility of the chastise-
ment being productive of any benefit, by making it
eventuate in utter, actual and final destruction.
Nevertheless such a conception of the Divine procedure
is entertained by those Christians who hold " conditional
immortality " views, a conception that shocks more
minds than are attracted to it, as possibly truer than
the dogma of endless judgments. Nothing is more
distinctive of Christ's life and teaching than His
apparent determination to go outside what was expected
of Him and to act in defiance of orthodox propriety.
He was continually shocking public opinion by trans-
gressing the limits of " respectable " companionship, and
by the declaration of eternal hope for characters who
were popularly obnoxious and piously damned. Nay,
further, He explicitly damned the people who of all
others deemed themselves saints.
Thus He opens the eyes of clamorous Bartimeus and
immediately afterwards made the extortionate Zaccheus
THE TESTIMONY OF SCKIPTURE. 59
His repentant disciple. He speaks of the Gentiles as
being preferred before the Jews, and of those who should
come from the east and the west and the north and the
south, to sit down to the banquet of heaven while the
children of the Kingdom are shut out.
He further offended every religious and social prejudice
by choosing for His companions poor fishermen of
Galilee ; by showing Himself gracious to sorrowing,
sinful women ; by bidding a toll collector .become a
chosen disciple, and by making friends of a Syrophce-
nician. It was the expansiveness of His charity, His
>w-Jewishness that made Him so hated of the Jews.
And when, having finished the work that was given
Him to do, He started the disciples upon theirs, His
commission was, " Go ye into all the World, and preach
the Gospel to every creature" The Gospel the glad
tidings was something with which every creature
had to do. Not a puzzle, a problem, a trap, a
Sphinx's riddle " solve or die" but a Herald of Joy.
"Behold, we bring you glad tidings of great joy, which
shall be to all people : for unto you is born this day in
the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord."
It was news of blessing which it is as impossible for
every creature to escape as it is to escape the punish-
ment due to sin and the miserable consequences of
unbelief. He that believeth not is condemned already,
judged at once ; but let any creature turn again to the
Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the
world, and straightway he is saved.
Undoubtedly the Apostolic commission and the
Church's present function have reference to the peculiar
character of the present dispensation, in w r hich the
Church the first-fruits is to be gathered out from
the World ; but why is it to be gathered out ? What
is the meaning of thousands of years elapsing in the
preparation of this costly instrument, the Church a
60 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Church that for its perfecting requires that it should
live and work among hostile and ignorant contemporaries,
that the World should surround it and that the World
should remain the World until the dispensation runs its
course ? What object can there be but this that every
creature to whom the Gospel is sent should by the
Church's co-operation with her Head finally obtain and
enjoy it ; the few as first-fruits now, the many as the
harvest hereafter '?
When we come to consider the great main doctrines
of the New Testament and the Gospel scheme, we shall
see that they irresistibly lead to the conclusion that the
World will ultimately share in its own proper degree in
the blessings first of all conferred upon the Church.
We will take a few of the cardinal doctrines of the
Christian faith as understood by Protestants.
(1,) The Incarnation of the Son of God.
(2,) That Jesus Christ came to seek and to save that
which was lost, and to destroy the Devil and all his
works.
(3,) That by grace we are saved through faith, and
that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God.
(4,) That Jesus Christ came into the world to call out
of it an Elect Church, which should be a kind of first-
fruits of His creatures.
(5,) That Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day,
and for ever, and is the Saviour of the World.
Let us take them in order :
(1,) The Incarnation of our blessed Lord is the charter
of universal salvation.
There were Fathers of the ancient church who mooted
the question whether the Incarnation would not have taken
place in any case, apart from the creation of man having
issued in sin. Whether it was not the primary object of
creation to bring many sons unto glory, the Incarnation
being a step consequent upon creation and implied in it ;
THE TESTIMONY OF SCKIPTUKE. 61
and certain moderns, unknown to fame, but of profound
insight, have continued the speculation with a regard to
sin being prior to the material universe, and have
considered that for the expulsion of sin from that
universe an Incarnation and conquest over the Evil-one
in human nature were inevitable.
We need not do more than mention this speculation ;
enough is afforded us with Scripture warranty in the
fact that Jesus Christ took not on Him the nature
of angels, but took on Him the seed of Abraham,
in whose seed all the families of the earth were to be
blessed.
We have already shown how many and various were
the bloods that entered into the Messianic ancestry, but
we dwell upon St. Paul's emphatic declaration that God
has made of one blood all men to dwell upon the face
of the earth, and then remembering that Jesus Christ
was partaker of this flesh and blood, we are irresistibly
led to the conclusion that His incarnation is the pledge
of the Eedemption of the whole : and not alone of the
human race, but of that entire creation of which man
is the flower and crown. The earth is the Lord's and
the fulness thereof the Lord's for redemption, advance-
ment, progression, exaltation, until what is now the
" foot-stool " becomes the jewel of the hand and the
diadem of the brow. The elixir of eternal life has been
dropped into the veins of humanity, the anointing oil
has descended upon the head of the race and ran
down to the skirts of Creation's garment all is for
triumph and victory. " Behold I make all things new."
Proleptically it is a saved world now. Christ the Lord
has come. God was manifest in the flesh. The Lord is
risen indeed. "Lift up your heads, ye gates, and be
ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory
shall come in. Who is this King of glory ? The Lord
strong and mighty, He is the King of Glory !"
62 PURITANISM IN POWER.
(2) That Jesus Christ came into the world to seek and
to save that which was lost, and to destroy the works of
the Devil.
One would imagine that those who held and preached
this doctrine could not stop short of the conclusion that,
since the entire race is lost, the entire race will ultimately
be found. The lost condition of mankind is not ques-
tioned, neither should the power of the seeking Saviour to
effect His object. Who will limit the Holy One ? Those
blessed lips have uttered parables expressly prohibitive
of the notion that the Good Shepherd seeking His sheep
will fail to find them, or owning His lost coinage will be
careless about recovering it. Especially is the idea
counteracted by the other Scriptures which teach that
Jesus Christ came to destroy the works of the Devil.
Now that part of the Devil's evil work which the
Incarnate Saviour would especially aim to destroy is
undoubtedly his hold upon men's souls to their spiritual
destruction. Christ came to destroy that hold of the
Devil upon men's souls, hence the certainty that His
victory will be complete. He will divide the spoils that
He has taken.
It will of course be objected that the declaration
of Christ's purpose to seek and to save that which
was lost applies to this life only. But where, we
would ask, is the authority for this dogma ? It has
no Scriptural warrant whatsoever. It may be said, " It
needs none, it is self-evident that the Gospel message
is a message to men in the flesh. Its ' believe ' and
' believe not ' apply to this life only, and it is implied
that Repentance and Faith are impossible in the life tc
come, and if possible would avail nothing to remit the
consequences of not exercising them here and now." If
that be indeed so, then we will boldly say that the
Almighty has in the conditions of human existence, in
the constitution and ordering of human affairs, con-
THE TESTIMONY OF SCEIPTURE. 63
structed a trap of fiendish efficacy for the destruction of
immortal souls. It would be impossible for any but a
God to imagine or execute a plan so perfectly adapted,
not to save, but to destroy. For what do we find ? We
have in the human race to-day, not a herd freshly
thrown upon the fields from the hands of the Creator, but
the accurate product of the sins, follies, ignorances,
mistakes and calamities of all preceding generations.
Not a cast of the eye, a curl of the lip, a flashing
thought, an evil desire, a debasing tendency, a mon-
strous delusion, a crass stupidity, a tone of voice, a
gait of carriage, an instinctive capacity, or an instinctive
incapacity, a habit of mind, a skill of hand, a com-
petence or incompetence, a bias to sense, or a bias to
spirit, an upward or a downward look, but comes upon
each successive generation in strict obedience to law,
the direct irreversible inheritance of all the past back to
the first ancestor unto whom a human spirit was
imparted. In the sense, then, that God, as supreme, is
the Author of human history, the Creator of each unit
of each generation is responsible for the way in which
he is handicapped for the race. Mankind is a tree the
idea is hackneyed, but not its application. If the Boot
be evil, so are the branches. What has been done to
save the root in its first planting and aftergrowth?
Putting the sacred history of a chosen tribe on one side,
an answer honouring to God it is difficult to find. We
can only judge of the difficulty by a comparison of
human standards of duty.
What follows is written in deepest reverence and
fullest faith that we have only truly to believe in Jesus
Christ as the express image of the Father's glory, in
order to escape any sinister consequences from the
honest contemplation of the facts ; for such faith
conveys an assurance that nothing earthly can disturb,
that the glorious future contains the remedy and the
64 PURITANISM IN POWER.
explanation of the past, and that faith's vision, clarified
by love, is never deceived when it holds to the perception
that right and wrong in God and man are necessarily the
same, and that it is permissible, humbly and reverently,
by that light to judge of the future destiny of others as
well as of present duty for ourselves.
We proceed, then, to ask what would any society, Pagan
or Christian, say of the father who would cast his
children upon an island and leave them to forage for
their food ? That, however, is how God has placed the
human race. God Himself only knows how many wars,
atrocities, animosities, treacheries, and crimes of all des-
criptions, have been due to the simple but most pregnant
fact, that with life God has made no provision for its
support, but left His children in a situation the safest
possible to breed division, injustice, hatred, variance,
wars, and oppressions of all description. The struggle for
existence remains to this hour the tragic factor of the
bloodiest and saddest pages of history. This struggle
was God's appointment for the Root of which we are the
branches.
Again, what would be thought by any human
tribunal of the father, who, being all-wise himself, and
deliberately placing his children in a situation where,
above all things, knowledge was salvation, made no
provision for their instruction, but left them to forage
for knowledge as they were left to forage for food, and to
die in myriads alike from ignorance and from want?
But that is the situation in which the Root was placed of
which we are the branches.
What would be thought of the father who, knowing
the infinite supremacy of the moral over the material,
and that his personal dealing with his children was
necessary to bring them to his own mind in the matter,
yet studiously kept himself aloof from the bulk of his
family, and only vouchsafed a revelation of his will to an
THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE. 65
insignificant portion of it, the rest being left to dubious
lights of their vain and sinful imaginations, only
mitigated by imperfect guesses on the part of a few
superior but orphaned intelligences? Yet that is the
situation in which the Koot was placed of which we are
the branches.
What would be thought of a Government which should
send out a colony of its subjects, making no provision
for their support, no attempt at enlightening them as to
the country they were placed in, the proper treatment of
its soil, the way to obviate or abate its pests and plagues
and to combat its diseases, neither any provision for
literary or religious culture, but simply left them alone,
shot like rubbish upon a waste plot, and then from the
eyrie of its own ordered and civilized kingdom waited to
see what would come of it, meantime complacently
counting the bones of the fallen? Yet such has been
the treatment of the human race of which we are the
descendants, beneath the eye of heaven.
The calm, wise, philosophic Christian heart has a stay
against the dreadful disquietude of such enquiries, in its
undoubted acquaintance with the real character of God
and its unshakable faith in His blessed prophecy of the
future.
Let the bloodless Scientist step forth and assay the
riddle ! Even he will tell us " All has been for the best."
In the seeming lawlessness and want of all foresighted
benevolent design there was really a law of progress
working, which albeit at the cost of the suffering and the
wrongs of myriads has conducted the race to its
present height of material supremacy and insight into
nature's modes.
Had this nineteenth-century prophet been born 6000
years ago, and been inspired to see this present century,
he would have soothed the calamities of his era by
testifying that the future will explain the evil present.
66 PURITANISM IN POWER.
" Calm yourselves, poor mortals, and endure your
heavy disabilities, all will be justified in after ages
by the discovery of the the telephone, and by the
multiplication of men like ME."
And in like manner the humble Christian, contemplat-
ing the fact that the tree of humanity was planted and
reared under conditions immediately most evil and only
long subsequently beneficial, and that over the greater
number of mankind even now the evil reigns and the
nascent good has not developed he perceiving amid the
disflowered branches of a languishing root one blooming
cluster, the saved Church, and above all the Rose of
Sharon, is bold to predict health and beauty for the
entire assemblage, when the longer fruitfumess of the
future will make the long barrenness of the past to be
forgotten. Like the Scientist, he says the future will
justify the past. The possibilities of human nature, the
destiny of human souls is never hung upon the brittle
thread of human life, opening upon a scene in which
everything is against its prosperous march.
The child we have seen is born the heir of all the
races' errors in the past, while only in Christian lands
can it be added, and also heir of godly tendencies through
pious ancestry. As the education of the child commences
at the mother's breast, whether the child's future is to
be blessed or banned, depends to an enormous extent
upon the kind of parents it has, and not less upon the
opportunities they possess of giving it a chance for
knowledge and for virtue.
Let anyone consider to what a complete and irreversible
extent children are moulded by the example, as well as
influenced by the heredity of parents, and they will
discern in the lack of fitness in these first guardians of
human life ample reasons for the multiplied failures
that follow. It is, to be sure, gloriously true that the
creative might of the Holy Spirit drives right through
THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE. 67
and against all the native opposition to His victory that
arises from this or any other cause ; but that only points
more evidently to the one conclusion to which we would
conduct the reader.
Man is set by God himself in an evil condition from
which nothing but His own grace and power can relieve
him. Man cannot choose his mother or his father, and
yet upon these depend the first mouldings of his plastic
infancy. The child cannot remedy his father's dis-
ability to give him a fair chance.
For the unfitness of the mother, and the lack of
resources in the father, God is responsible, as well as for
all the darkness brooding over the nation, all the regnant
cruelty of the material superstition and the flagrant
iniquity of the national laws. At the same time, in spite
of all these oppressive disadvantages, He can reach down
and save His own with His Almighty arm, and He alone
can do it. The question, then, becomes one of God's
willingness to save the lost ; and if we do not see them
saved in this life, whether God has condemned His will
to incessant and irreparable mortification through the
operation of infinite contingencies affecting the tenure
of mundane existence, such being also His decree.
Those contingencies, consider them ! Beginning with
the ignorant mother's want of knowledge as to the right
treatment of diseases and accidents, or the want of means
to procure the right remedies when known ; and next
attending upon the entrance upon " life " in the learning
of a trade and the pursuit of it when learnt. Instruc-
tive and suggestive are the figures adduced by Govern-
ment Inspectors, and statistics showing how much human
life is abbreviated, or, in the orthodox view, chances for
salvation abridged, by the various unhealthy trades.
The cry of the manufacturer in the potteries is, " We
need the influx of strong bodies from the country, for
our operatives die out in the third generation." What
68 PURITANISM IN POWER.
tales could Sheffield tell of premature decline ! What
early graves dot the cemeteries in linen-spinning Ulster !
What chronic bronchial affections attack the dust-
breathing employes, whether through fraudulent adul-
terations of cloth in Manchester, or unavoidably in mills
and collieries. The Life Insurance Companies and the
Accident Assurance Companies are guided by accurate
statistics when they raise the premiums upon workmen's
lives, and refuse to insure men in certain employments at
all. But are we to suppose that the everlasting destiny
of a human being depends in any way upon his accidental
choice of a trade, or that to the grievous misfortune of
being the conscript of civilization is attached the graver
loss of a shorter chance for eternity ? Of course this
topic might be indefinitely enlarged. We might go on
to ask, can our chances for salvation be made to depend
upon whether we are able to see through a stone wall
or not, so as to detect defective drain pipes and unsus-
pected cesspools at the foot of stair-cases. We lose
three children by it. One was our grief, and departed
in darkness. Shall we decide that the cesspool cut off
for ever his chance of repentance ?
We are quite able to rise above the secondary causes and
the immediate agencies, and to touch by faith Him whose
hand is upon the springs of all the forces in the universe,
and causes the intricate loom to work out the pattern of
His choice. That does not really affect the point of our
contention, which is, that if in this life only have men a
chance of knowing their Eedeemer, then, as before stated,
the Almighty has, in the conditions of human existence,
in the constitution and ordering of human affairs, con-
structed a trap of fearful efficacy for the destruction of
immortal souls. It would be impossible for any but a
God to imagine or execute a plan so perfectly adapted
not to save but to destroy.
If this mortal life of ours means an3 r thing, it is for
THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE. 69
Education men were made, and for a Creator to propose
the education of immortal creatures, and yet to expose
that education to the infinite chances of human freedom,
acting amid uncontrollable forces, foreseeing that at best
and farthest the period of such education would be
absolutely incomparable with the Eternity during which
its incompleteness was to rule, is a conception utterly
incredible to a thoughtful mind.
It might be properly asked, can the training and educa-
tion of an immortal being possibly be accomplished in so
short a period as seventy years one fourth of which is
childhood, and one-tenth decay ? Who will dare to say
that the choicest saint that ever lived had not something
more to learn to make his just spirit perfect ? And yet
it is dogmatically laid down as among the unchallenge-
able statements of Scripture that human education ends
with life below. If so, the society of heaven must be
excessively raw scarcely agreeable to all of us.
But if it be said the spirits of the just do go on to
perfection in another state, but the lost go on to be
further lost, I marvel that in the Godhead there should
be no resources enabling the seeking Saviour to continue
His quest after His lost sheep when they have passed
hence into another world.
I know I can be met here by the text, " It is appointed
unto men once to die, and after death the judgment."
What, however, does this signify more than saying to the
sinner, " To-day you are committing a sin, you will be
judged to-morrow ? " We are always being judged. To-
morrow judges to-day. To-day we suffer or rejoice on
account of yesterday. The morrow that follows the life
of to-day must be a morrow of judgment, absolutely must
be so. But what is this but also to say that education
does not end here. I am judged to-day, not for the sake
of judgment, but for the sake of education, and when life's
day being over I am judged in Eternity, the object still
70 PURITANISM IN POWER.
is education. The judgments of God are the world's
great hope as well as awful warning. The judgments
of God evince His determination that His children shall
not escape Fatherly chastisement, shall not be plucked
out of His hands by their own self-will, but in spite of
themselves endure the discipline which makes for sonship,
and learn obedience through the things they are made to
suffer.
What should we think of a monarch who should
address his "son and heir" thus: "I desire you to be
" educated for your high calling, but it all depends upon
"the use you make of the next week, and it will be
" necessary for you to have instruction from a minister
" of mine who is on his way from a far country. If my
" minister should arrive in time, and you receive well the
" instruction he imparts, your education will be con-
" tinued throughout the rest of your youth. If on the
" other hand, by any chance, he should not arrive within
" next week, or if arriving, you should not immediately
" understand his lessons, I will stop any further attempt
" to educate you. You shall not only be disinherited, I
" will also cast you out of my palace to herd with the
" untaught animals of the field?" Such is the grotesque
gospel of, for instance, the China Inland Mission a
noble institution, nobly originated, sustained and led,
only equalled in apostolic fervour by their Jesuit prede-
cessors, but with a gospel little less tainted by human
misconception than was theirs.
When our Saviour said, " Think not that those
upon whom the Tower of Siloam fell were sinners
above others in Jerusalem, Verily I say unto you
that, unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish,"
He declared that the falling of the tower upon the
victims was unrelated to their spiritual deficiency,
but that there was a perishing vitally related
to the want of repentance. Let them beware of in-
THE TESTIMONY OF SCEIPTURE. 71
curring that. Nothing is uttered excluding the idea of
repentance in another state. The China Inland Mission-
ary, however, stands before the Chinese convert, whose
eyes are brimming with tears, and virtually says to him :
" We arrived here 19th September last, and have made
" you a new creature in Christ Jesus. Had we arrived
" earlier we should perhaps have saved your father, who
" you say died on the 17th. As it is, he is now consum-
" ing in the everlasting burnings. No! not 'consuming,'
" doomed to endure the torments in unending keenness.
" We found on arriving and preaching to you that the
" truth met with a ready acceptance on your part, so we
"judge that it might have been also in the case of your
" father; but owing to the freshet in the river we arrived
" too late to preach to him, and now his eternal
" destiny is fixed. Were there any preaching of the
" gospel after this life, and your father were privileged
" to hear, very likely he would repent and believe, but
"God has made no such provision for immortal souls.
" Their destiny depends upon the degree in which the
" Church can cope with the task of evangelising the
" World and upon the brief flicker of existence here."
This is the doctrine virtually preached in China, where
ancestors are worshipped and where the joy of the
convert at his own deliverance is awfully dashed by
consuming grief at the fate of beloved relatives who
have gone before. " Oh ! why did you not come
sooner ? " they mourn.
(3,) That by grace are ye saved through faith, and that
not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.
This declaration of man's impotence to save himself
and God's plenitude of power and goodwill to save him
the cardinal doctrine of the Calvinistic theology, if
rightly regarded, should set at rest for ever the question
of Universalism.
It is expressly stated as belonging to the character of
72 PURITANISM IN POWER.
God that He is no respecter of persons. It is also
expressly stated that He wills to save an Elect Church
whose salvation depends, not upon anything they have
done or can do, but entirely upon the free favour and pre-
vailing grace of God Himself. No possible faith in the
Righteousness of God can consort with a belief in His
deliberate intention to save a few expressly by the
bestowment of Divine Power, and to withhold that aid
from others in order that they may be condemned.
The conception is repugnant alike to reason and to
feeling. The God who could act so would not be able to
save those whom He is said to save, because being
Himself unrighteous He could not possibly become the
imparter of righteousness to others. The only possible
Saviour of men is one who Himself is Righteous; so that
any rational faith in the salvation of the Elect must
depend upon a faith that God's scheme of salvation
embraces the World also. In truth, the more it is
considered, the more evidently it will appear that the
salvation of the Elect Church is the charter and
guarantee of the ultimate salvation of the World.
Every saved man is a voice crying in the wilderness that
all men will one day be saved, whiclj is only echoing
Christ's own words, " And I, if I be lifted up, will draw
all men unto Me." A lifting up which implies presenta-
tion to all men, so that there must be a preaching of
the Cross in the life to come.
If salvation- is God's gift, and God is love ; if His
grace is not exhaustible ; if He who has taught us to
return good for evil, and to love our enemies, may be
counted upon to set us a perfect example of obedience to
these precepts in His own conduct then the ultimate
salvation of the race is attached to the character of
God Himself. Let that character be once truly appre-
hended and any doubt or fear, lest all men should not
come ultimately to know and love Him, must disappear
THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE. 73
in the radiance of a conception no less true than
glorious.
(4,) That Jesus Christ came into the world to call out
of it an Elect Church, which should be a kind of first-
fruits of His creatures.
Our consideration of the preceding thesis led us to
deal with the inferences world-ward which necessarily
flow from the election of a saved Church but much
remains to be said.
As Christ was the first-fruits from the dead, so the
believers under gospel preaching and the Spirit's ministry
are the first-fruits of dead humanity. They are the
sheaves betokening the harvest. For, as before argued
(and decided upon the ground of God's character), since
all the possibilities of repentance, faith and salvation
depend upon the Sovereign dispensation of Divine Grace,
why may not all humanity be privileged to receive the
same gifts from God '?
The freedom, so-called, of the human will will here be
brought forward to invalidate any argument drawn from
the Will of God being revealed as anxious and able to
save men.
This doctrine of the freedom of the human will is
responsible for more fundamental misconceptions respect-
ing the nature and being of man God's power to save
him and his future destiny, than any other metaphysic
that has entered into theology. The Sovereignty of
God is confronted by another sovereignty superior to it,
and we are assured that in the vast majority of cases
man's will will prevail to frustrate the purpose of the
Divine Will to save him.
The possibility of so setting at defiance the purposes
of the Creator is conceived to be essential to the respon-
sibility of the creature. But that is the merest assump-
tion. We see every day that moral responsibility can be
recognised and be fruitful in shaping conduct when the
74 PURITANISM IN POWER.
issues of a limited freedom are by no means either
irreversible or eternal.
Will any one say that there can be no moral responsi-
bility in home or school unless the contrariety of the
children to the will of the authority extends to complete
frustration of the will of the parents and the intention
of the schoolmaster '? And in civil law will the threat of
no lesser punishment than death avail to keep men from
evil ?
Let us bring these idle theological speculations to the
test of reason to the daylight of Lay common sense.
We say that the facts of existence warrant the follow-
ing dicta :
(1,) That no human will is absolutely free, its freedom
is that of a tethered bird, it has its divinely imposed
limits preventing it escaping its master's hands.
(2,) Limited freedom is all that is necessary to
establish moral responsibility and to conduce to moral
education.
(3,) God never designed to entrap His creatures into
self-destruction by endowing them with a faculty that
must prove their ruin; but on the contrary, watches over
His creatures with the design of saving them even from
the consequences of their own sins, ignorances, and
follies, the whole object being training and education
with ultimate redemption in view. First-fruits imply
after-fruits.
(4,) Man's will being influenced by God's Holy Spirit
and by Satan's evil spirit is, pro tanto, not free in any
single act of obedience or disobedience. His responsi-
bility is never complete, absolute only partial. His
will is never more free than is requisite to his arriving at
a true knowledge by experience of the nature of Good
and Evil.
When we come to look at the results of the preaching
of the Gospel to the poor, we see what a glorious future
THE TESTIMONY OF SCEIPTURE. 75
there is for the triumph of Christ over what superficially
appears the alienated will of men.
The trophies made in the Home Mission fields are fre-
quently of characters who had the worst of reputations,
and were the terror of their neighbourhoods. These
men and women, when " saved," become the very
brightest ornaments of the Christian profession, and are
in their proper persons proof positive of the innate
capacity, the intrinsic possibilities residing in every
human spirit of putting on the likeness of Christ. The
question occurs, if this is so in such cases, will the
chances be denied to others, simply because either
mission agents never visited them, or because they
have passed from this room of God's school-house into
another '?
And here we may profitably consider the last named
accepted doctrine of the orthodox.
(5,) That "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-
day, and for ever."
We turn for argument again to the terror of a godless
neighbourhood. At a certain point in his history he
hears of the love of Jesus and becomes a changed man.
Soon after he is struck down by a falling crane and
killed. Now, if he had not heard the story of Jesus' love
before the accident, the orthodox would say, he has
surely perished in his sins. But the accident having
being postponed, he finds a loving Saviour who redeems
him. I would seriously ask, how does such a view
consort with the assertion that Jesus Christ is the same
yesterday, to-day, and for ever ? What eternal differ-
ence can it make to the Saviour whether His sheep
return to the flock on the 12th September or the 30th
October? And what conceivable warrant have we for
saying that Jesus Christ is not the same on 30th October
as on 12th September? and that His character, ador-
able when presented to men in Time, is no longer adorable
76 PURITANISM IN POWER.
when in Eternity they come into actual acquaintance
with it '?
It is but faintly men can set forth the fulness of
Christ's sympathy and love here, hut the souls departed
this life are brought into nearer and clearer acquaintance
with that glorious Being.
What was the consequence when men possessed with
devils met with Christ on earth ? They cried out, and
the Saviour bid their evil guests depart. He is the same
to-day as He was then ; and poor souls going out of this
life under the domination of evil agencies, will only go to
encounter the same loving Lord of all principalities and
powers, who lives to unbind every yoke and to set every
captive free.
When we remember the rock-like steadfastness of those
men whom the city missionary has converted, their
tender sense of their past lives as wasted, and their earn-
est endeavour to make the remainder compensate in some
degree for that waste, we are entitled to expect that
the same feelings would animate them if Christ, meeting
them unconverted upon the shores of Eternity, were to
change them suddenly into His own dear followers. They
would then look back upon their past, their day on earth,
and find in it the strongest reason for showing themselves
the worthiest disciples in another world. That recollec-
tion would never forsake them, but be an abiding stimulus
to make the life beyond more gloriously new.
Should any refuse to credit God with such intentions,
1st him bethink him of what he may have seen some
day in the slums of a great city. A circle of the ragged
and the poor gathered round about a street performer
(and my blessing with yours, Reader, upon all harm-
less street performers, who for a few moments in the
dark and dreary days of the poor smooth away a
crumple of care and afford the children a chance for a
smile and a pirouette upon the pavement). Well, let
THE TESTIMONY OF SCKIPTURE. 77
the reader bethink him of such a circle, and in the midst
of it a man causing a canary in a cocked hat to fire a
pistol and a poodle to dance and walk in and out of the
performer's legs as he paces round in a manner that
excites the astonishment and amusement of all. A man
in the crowd who is dining off his pipe, after trudging
London in vain for work, lifts it from between his teeth,
and a timid smile, like a lost sun-ray that finds itself
alone upon the dark storm-cloud, steals upon his
countenance for a moment, while the careworn child,
whose ears are stinging from the furious blow of her
poverty-vexed mother, forgets her trouble for a moment
and lets the beer jug dangle from her finger.
It is not given to many to lead a life so useful as that
of the humble professor. What patience is implied in
the training of those humble animals ! How man}^ times
did he try and try again before he succeeded in bending
them to his will and making them new creatures, never
thinking to destroy them, but persisting in looking for
ultimate success and finally accomplishing his desire.
Now, shall we credit God with less patience or more, a
weaker or a stronger will, a greater or a lesser power, an
energy sustained by a purer or more selfish motive ?
The whole argument rests upon the view which is
taken that life is a school, that this brief stage of
it differs in that respect not at all from the entire
remainder, and that God as the Teacher will ever exercise
a marvellous patience and a persistent will.
Or think again of the unwearied efforts of the
mechanical inventor or the scientific investigator. What
a heroism of patience, what a constant victory over
chagrin, disappointment and wasted means and labours !
How many the studied arrangements which have to be
abandoned, and how immortal seems the hope which
beckons on to new contrivances, new experiments, new
laborious scrutiny and theorising so as finally to win
78 PURITANISM IN POWER.
the new tool for the service of mankind, or to bring to
the birth for the first time the blushing product of an
elemental marriage never before consummated !
But the popular idea of God is as of one who lacks all
the qualities which make a worker great and worthy.
One who in his impatience at the want of immediate
success ends the experiment by breaking his instruments
and throwing away his subject ; and heedless of the
unknown possibilities of good latent in human nature,
marches about in the laboratory of this world, smash-
ing his apparatus, damning his raw material, and
swearing that the brief and wholly inadequate experi-
ments of Time shall never be renewed !
Against this utterly preposterous but popular delusion
we set the precious revelation that " Jesus Christ is the
same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." If that means
anything, it means this, that the Saviour who never
confronted sin or calamity without pronouncing for its
cure, will assuredly display the same character in all
departments of this universe and towards mankind in all
stages of their life's history. This life or the next, this
world or another, can make no difference to Him. He is
the Saviour of the world for ever and for ever, and we can
certainly form no adequate conception of the glorious
results of the preaching of the gospel that continually
proceeds in Hades.
The river of human souls that we have been taught
to believe is pouring daily down to the abyss of destruc-
tion is in reality pouring in this great volume to meet
with new and fairer opportunities than this life ever
afforded. It is due to the mass of men that a further
probation be granted them. What is for the most part
granted them here is no fair probation at all, it is only
paltering with truth to assert that it is otherwise. There
must be a Gospel probation for all men, and if that
probation comes not here it must be afforded elsewhere.
THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE. 79
Now there is a passage of New Testament Scripture
which expresses this view of the everlasting relationship of
man to God. I allude to Acts ii. 47, " And the Lord added
to the church daily such as should be saved," or as the
Revised Version more correctly renders it, " such as were
being saved." Humanity, we say, is always "being
saved," whether in heaven, earth, or hell. We have
already noticed the crude and ignorant notion that
saints going out of this life with a plentiful efflorescence
of deficiencies and defects in their characters will
suddenly and magically blossom into perfect angels.
They will assuredly be judged and suffer loss for their
inconsistencies, and will have to go on in Christ's school,
learning lessons and making further progress. And the
sinners that are damned are damned because it is the
only treatment that for the time will do them any good.
They have not yet learned the exceeding bitterness and
exceeding folly of sin. They have not been humbled
sufficiently to cry for mercy, and hence are damned as
the first process to their after redemption.
And now look up to the starry heavens and behold the
parable in which all this truth of God is luminously
revealed. There you will perceive the eyes of heaven
looking down in orbs of varying splendour upon our dark
world, some burning intensely with undimmed lustre,
others veiled in haze melting into bluer depths. The
glabrous nebulae, the wandering disintegrated comet, the
steadfast constellations and the orderly progressive
planets the astronomer will tell us that each and all
are either worlds or in the process of becoming so :
they are all in the various stages of "being saved."
Some indeed are mere vortices of raging fires, in which
storms of flame and unimaginable convulsions succeed
one another perpetually. Others have passed through this
stage of lawless law and are quieting down to a condition
in which vegetable life can presently appear. Others,
80 PURITANISM IN POWER.
again, give indications of similarity to our world, and are
possibly the abode of intelligences like man. But all
are destined to tread the same pathway to ultimate
honour and higher usefulness ; the very centres of
tempestuous and burning disorder being meanwhile
available for the light and warmth, the life and guidance,
the order and beauty of countless smaller and dependent
orbs. They are all in the process of being made into
worlds, but an elect few have already become so, and they
are the first-fruits or prophecies of the ultimate worldship
of the rest.
81
CHAPTER VI.
ETEENAL COMPENSATION.
THE thought must often have crossed the minds of
devout Christians that the question to be considered in
reference to the destiny of the majority of mankind is
not the question of Eternal Punishment, but rather of
Eternal Compensation. It has been the misfortune of
theology unavoidably perhaps that its framers have
been men whose position and experiences have been far
removed from those of the "common herd," so called.
A professor of theology implies a person who has had
resources, patronage, privilege, and promotion. It is not
from such upper circles as those that a true theology can
ever spring. We want a miner of Eisenach to supple-
ment the theology of the friend of Electors and the
betrayer of the peasants' revolt preachers in the courts
rather than Court preachers not Governors of Geneva
or Presidents of Theological Seminaries, American or
European, but voices from the deep we want men who
have done more than taste the common lot men who
have lived it. A carpenter's son will do for us, Him of
Galilee. Perhaps the theology of such a one will differ
from that of the Professors.
If we would clear our minds of cant we would honestly
acknowledge that to the majority of human beings life is
not a blessing, but a curse, and that were it not for
men's shrinking from the unknown possibilities of the
hereafter, suicides w r ould be taking place every hour. In
fact, as all sensible persons will acknowledge, it is the
bitterness of human life that sustains the passion for
opiuni and strong drink; and the temporary forgetfulness,
which indulgence in these induces, is itself a species of
suicide.
G
82 PURITANISM IN POWER.
It will perhaps be allowed that to children brought
into the world tainted with incurable disease, causing
anguish every day, life is not a blessing, and that to
healthy children, reared in homes where poverty is
incurable, and deepens with the growth of the family,
only the invincible spirits and hopes of childhood pre-
serve them until the period when they, too, will fly for
relief to the suicide of the dram. Let it be remembered
that if the former are to be counted by thousands, the
latter must be counted by millions. It will be admitted
that nothing can exceed the hopeless woe of a wholly
ill-assorted marriage ; and yet these are far more common
than the well-assorted ones, and, considering the perfectly
fortuitous manner in which life-long unions are brought
about, are likely to continue to furnish the major portion
of the misery of mankind. Who can estimate the
wretchedness of the home where there is a drunken
father or a drunken mother, a ruinous son or a worthless
daughter? But these are to be counted by millions.
What shall we say of the Arab slave-train, driven to the
African coast, each individual in it with as good a
natural title to a blessed life as the Archbishop of
Canterbury? W T hat of the doomed existence of women,
but especially widows, in India and China ? Here we
come upon hundreds of millions ! And what of the
monotonous starvation endured by the cultivators of the
soil in almost every country under the sun, the creators
of wealth everywhere since the world began being stripped
to the bone by the plundering classes. We say the
question forced upon our consideration, in reference to
these and similar, is not one of everlasting punishment,
but of eternal compensation. Is the race, as a race, never
to know health, competence, and justice ? What about
the prevalence of false, cruel, and debasing superstitions ?
What about the national exclusion, as in China, of the
precious day-light of real knowledge ? What about that
ETERNAL COMPENSATION. 8
most ancient of all institutions, the continued vigorous
prosperity of unrighteous and corrupt governments?
What oceans of unavoidable human misery are implied
in the bare mention of these things ! Truly the free
grace and favour of God are not at all discernible in the
course and ordering of this world. Man the privileged
classes excepted, pays dearly for everything he is per-
mitted to enjoy, and the rain that blesses one quarter of
the world is paid for by the drought and discomfiture of
a neighbouring continent. When it comes to the last
each man pays for his suffering life by his death.
It is the same in the lower orders of creation, most
evidently in those creatures that minister to man. The
quiet browsing of the happy beasts ; the gambols of the
cows at eventide, surfeited with succulent grass and
sunshine ; the frisky life of lambs ; the free roaming over
downs ; the huge contentment of the shaggy sheep, as he
chews the cud and weighs the problems of this mighty
world, while a crow equally sage and happy settles on his
shoulder to whisper a solution in his ear all has to be
paid for to the uttermost farthing.
It is paid for when the dazed beasts leave the
peaceful fields for ever, are driven down the maddening
streets, beaten into the railway truck, are shunted on
sidings, lowing unavailingly for water or, with a storm of
blows, are jammed down the steamer's gangway, in the
hold gore one another when the billows beat the hull, are
lifted out, or poked and beaten or tail twisted out, half
dead, and lick thick puddles as they pass to slaughter.
Paid for to the uttermost farthing by the silvery sheep
when bitten by the shearer's clip, when barked at and
leaped at by a ubiquitous dog for hours together, flung by
the ferryman one on the top of the other, packed toge-
ther on the steamer's deck under a sweltering sun, so
that the sailors walk upon their staggering backs, while
their unavailing bleat serenades the passengers. Paid
84 PURITANISM IN POWER.
for to the uttermost, by the important hen with its
bustling happy brood, and the goslings whose pond is all
their own, and the handsome duck swirled by the river's
current, and the sage goose whose common rights his
outstretched neck shows he is amazed you should dis-
pute. All has to be paid for the chanticleer's gay crow :
the morning scatter of sufficient food; the grateful
rescues from the practical jokes of cat and dog ; the
attentions of the children to their farm-yard pets all is
paid for, when the feet are tied together and the living
bundle is handled like a log, when, crushed down under
the netting in the long railway journey, a despairing neck
or crested head struggles through an opening and is
dumb with astonishment at the new world of cruelty
and barbarism that has surprised its early youth.
Grace, gift, favour are nowhere apparent but in the
gospel. Search and see among the dicta of heathen
philosophers if they have a word to say on behalf of the
brute; but the same Book which reveals the infinite love
of God in Christ, says that the threshing ox shall not be
muzzled, that the bird shall not be robbed of her brood,
that the kid shall not be seethed in its mother's milk,
that the ass shall not strain under the same yoke with an
ox. We have another Book than creation in which to
discern the lineaments of God. It is therefrom we are
commissioned to preach the gospel to every creature ; for
whereas in nature and in the ordering of the world's
present affairs, it is pay, pay, pay no joy gratis
anywhere : in the gospel of God's Son it is free
grace, free love, free favour. Pardon for nothing, love
for nothing, life for nothing. For nothing, did I say ?
Ah ! no ; not for nothing the cost was hea\y, but God
provided it.
To look closer home, there are six particulars in which
the masses of men seem placed in circumstances entitling
them to compensation (1,) Evil homes ; (2,) Evil
ETERNAL COMPENSATION. 85
trades ; (3,) Economical robbery ; (4,) Physical and
mental disability ; (5,) Innocent ignorance ; (6,) Cosmic
calamity.
Evil Homes. It is true of all life, especially of human
life, that the commencement influences the whole subse-
quent career. The influences of home are permanent ;
every repetition of an evil example is a retracing by the
graver of a line which is already a life-mark. Day
succeeds day, and the potter's clay of the unformed
child-character is being moulded into a shape which it
should never have been pressed into. Granted that the
individual personality is free and supreme, and under
influences of grace and power from on high can set at
defiance the laws of causation and tendency ; can make
the sun stand still till the battle against evil ends in its
favour ; granted that thus it is with God's elect how
about the rest ? And whether the issue be so or not, the
miserable scenes of evil homes hang about the neck of
memory keepsakes that cannot be given away. This is
the fate of perhaps one-half the population of the most
Christian country. Is there a more pitiable spectacle
conceivable than that of the daily deterioration of noble
and aspiring natures, under the friction, the assaults, the
miasmatic influences, the stifling deprivations of cruel
and evil ^ ad stinting and starving homes?
(2,) dvil Trades. I want to know if it is necessary
to cut short the once healthy lives of millions of working
people by 10, 15, 20, and 30 years, making the major
portion of the life that is lived a deepening and incurable
disease ? I want to know if that is necessary, which I
deny, or, what is the same thing, if it is, and has been,
the means by which a wondrous civilization is main-
tained if there shall be no compensation for it to the
victims? Upon the orthodox assumption that there is
no after-probation, this abridging of human probation
upon the scale that actually occurs is a prodigious thing.
86 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Do the wealthy manufacturers, who are the mainstay of
the nonconformity which teaches this, adequately realise
that the everlasting destiny of their " hands " is probably
hung upon the degree of ventilation, or the degree of
adulteration in the factory ? Do the caterers for fashion
realise it when they set about introducing a perfectly
needless but novel article compounded with poisons, and
in the production of which children and girls are abso-
lutely slain? I want to know, if, for the loss of health
and the loss of life, there is to be no compensation
especially since other people have been compensated for
their trouble in slowly killing their workpeople the
employer by his profits and the public by wearing a
fashionable colour! What a noble altar on which to
be sacrificed !
But there are needful and necessary labours, as well
as others, wholly vain, in which life is damaged and
destroyed. Is there to be no compensation for the men
who walk the sewers to save the city from a plague, or
lose their lives in tunnelling, and quarrying, and mining ;
in navigating and carrying; in milling, paint-making,
flax spinning, potterying, cutlerying, and glass blowing?
It is not only the employers who are responsible for
making the best of a bad business ; God also is respon-
sible, by whose ordination all things happen. Will He
ignore or accept His responsibility, above all things, to do
justice and judgment in the universe ? We believe He
will, as being the Just One.
(3,) Economical Robbery. It can no longer be doubted
by those who have given any attention to the subject,
that the best distinctive characterization that could be
named for the working classes is that they are the
robbed classes. This indeed might be truly stated of
entire nations under a corrupt Government ; they, as
subjects, are all robbed ; they labour and toil, and bring
to the birth, only that those who toil not, nor spin, may
ETERNAL COMPENSATION. 87
snatch it from them. The useful classes everywhere are
robbed by the useless. This is a universal law. In
almost every working man, woman, or child you behold
a victim of robbery. To go into the details of this
robbery would be nauseating robbery by false measure-
ment and false weight, robbery by fines, robbery by
"truck," robbery in hours, robbery in price of raw
material given to be worked up, robbery in quality of
same, robbery in nonpayment for slight defects, robbery
in rent, robbery in deferring settlements, robbery in
compulsory sick and benefit funds ; the seaman robbed
in his victuals, and robbed of his safety in a bogus
Plimsoll's mark. From the first moment he is able to be
of service in the world, to the last in which his powers
fail him ; the working man and others just above him
all, in short, who are helplessly dependent upon em-
ployers, landlords, capitalists, are robbed. It is the
commonest and most universal experience of those who
are the backbone of the State. Seven men out of every
twelve are victims of robbery. If all had what they
worked for and what was really due to them, there would
be no poor and fewer rich, none of the misery and degrada-
tion of poverty, none of the mischiefs of illgotten gain.
Now there was One who commended a man called
Zaccheus, because he said, "And if I have defrauded
any, I will restore him fourfold." Those people who
are defrauded in this life, and who will never get com-
pensation here, will not God undertake to see them
righted? Is He not the supreme Knight-errant, whose
eyes run to and fro throughout the world, noting every
helpless captive, registering every wrong with purpose
to deliver, to judge, to compensate ?
(4,) Physical and mental disability. Physical whether
inherited sins of the fathers coming upon the children,
or by accidents occurring through the guilty negligence
of others, or, for it does happen, wholly unavoidable in
HS PURITANISM IN POWER.
some necessary calling. Mental whether congenital
and constitutional, or occurring through shock, distress,
or lack of educational advantages. In no single case
where life-long burden, mortification, contempt, hostility,
disparagement, abuse, mean advantage-taking, cruel
suffering, and deprivation of the goods of life, follow
upon the innocent but hapless entail of physical or
mental disability, can we believe the righteous Ruler of
the world will ignore a claim to compensation?
Some of the most golden hearts and noblest natures
in the world, through some fatal mental or physical
defect, rather hinder than help when they call upon
their powers to do their best in the service of others.
How bitter the cup which such are called upon to drink !
The bars of disability confine the soaring eagle ; the
sword of the knight-errant snaps at every stroke. But
methinks I can see that the strongest and most joyful
angels of the future, w r hose brows are beaded with the
diamond sweat, which is their crown for serviceable
work, will be the transfigured men and women who now
travail in the battle of their physical or mental defects.
With glad surprise they will feel the bold pinion grow
upon their shoulders, so that the work beyond their
reach on earth shall be found, absorbed, wrought upon,
inbreathed and breathed into, beyond a critic's scorn by
the new powers of the compensating world to come.
(5,) Innocent Ignorance. It is truly a shocking con-
templation the hordes of human beings, who innocently
suffer from their ignorance. Inexpressibly pathetic when
the mother, seeking to relieve the wailing child, admin-
isters a remedy which only aggravates the disease. Think
of the terrible penalties that attend the innocent trans-
gressions of ignorant children, who cannot be always
under their parents' eyes, especially among the poor.
Wickedness, it may be said, has slain its thousands, but
ignorance its tens of thousands. Now there is nothing
ETERNAL COMPENSATION. 81)
morally chargeable against men for not earlier, or better,
or more universally discerning the laws of the terrible
machinery amidst which we live. Men of science are
God's messengers sent to bless us by turning everyone of
us away from our ignorant transgressions, and we bless
God for them ; but their words have not reached to the
ends of the earth as yet ; and when Governments would
heed them, they are weakened by the obstructions of
powerful vested interests. Surely the Loving and
Just One is not indifferent to suffering that is not due to
sin ; suffering that smites the babe, the child, the good,
the pure, the Saint, who have not had the means
of interpreting some occult precept of the veiled
Demiurge, and simply for that are .smitten by his
pitiless sword. There must be compensation for the
victims of unimmoral ignorance we say there must be,
simply on the ground that God is just.
(6,) Cosmic Calamity. The flood, the earthquake, and
the storm. The plague, pestilence, and famine. The
drought the doing of the sun spots, the envelope of
comets' tails, some day perhaps a crash into a more
solid body. It is evident that knowledge, holiness
all fail man here. He is a fly upon the wheels of
nature and a fly that has no wings. Not one of the
seeming adventitious woes of the world come without
our Father " Verily, verily I say unto you, not a
sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father," and
the "very hairs of your head are numbered." Oh ! rolling-
sun, there is a might that is mighter than yours. There
is a love more enduring than your fires, for they will go
out, but that will illumine eternity ! There is an axis upon
which all things turn, and that is the Justice of God's
throne. Therefore do we look for compensation to the
victims of cosmic calamity. The millions of Chinese who
perished through the bursting banks of " China's sorrow "
first flood, then famine following upon it. The robbery
90 PURITANISM IN POWER.
by nature of the painful Agriculturist's reward ; his har-
vest, duly earned, withheld ; shall not the Lord of the
harvest judge for these things by paying the husbandman
in the world to come ? There is nothing so absolutely verifi-
able in history as the " Power that makes for righteous-
ness." Judgment long delayed reward long postponed
befalls at length. It is the same God yesterdaj 7 , to-day,
and for ever ; and He who lets no wrong be done by man
to man without its sure revenge, will never allow an
injury to be inflicted by the natural work of His hands
without awarding compensation in the future. If He
employs cosmic calamity as an instrument in the myste-
rious march of human progress and moral training (and
who can doubt it '?) He will acknowledge liability for
the compensation of those who, as individuals, suffer
for the benefit of the race. The view opened up by these
considerations is of the most cheering character. We
contemplate the future state as a permanent court for the
reparation of human wrongs and sufferings ; and as the
individuals are legion, whose causes must of necessity be
pleaded before the Just and Holy God, we have guaran-
tees for felicitous awards countless in number, and ever-
lasting in their duration.
But where, the astonished reader may gasp out, where
have you scriptural warrant for all this ? Briefly, in the
words of the Saviour Himself "Blessed are ye that
mourn, for ye shall be comforted. Woe unto you that
laugh now, for ye shall weep. Blessed are ye that
hunger now, for ye shall be filled."
Irrespective of moral desert, the determination of God
to redress and compensate for earthly inequalities oi
opportunity and happiness is everywhere apparent.
' He everywhere hath sway,
And all things own His might ;
His every act pure blessing is
His path unsullied light."
ETERNAL COMPENSATION. 91
Stick to that. No thought like that hut has its basal
fact in God. It has flashed from the Father of Lights
with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
Are the multitudes who mourn now many, and who
innocently hunger many? Then you can measure the
laughter and the plenty of the other world.
God has reserved His best wine till the last. We, here
at the table of this world, are feasting upon the dregs only
of His Fatherly love. The sensitive conscience of the
Christian will ever constrain him to cry out that mercies
surpass all his deserts, and in such holy light as is given
him to live by, so will he. But to all men the dread
responsibility of that light is not communicated, and of
the sorrowing victimised masses it may certainly be said
that they are jointly and severally summoned by the
Sermon on the Mount to sit down in some ante-chamber
of the Kingdom of Heaven, where the angels shall be
bidden to bear out now the wine that has been kept
until the last, and where the Governor of the feast will
explain the parable of their lives and lead them into the
glorious riches of His gospel truth. Amen.
BOOK II.
A NATIONAL CHURCH,
95
CHAPTER L-
A NATIONAL CHUECH.
IF, as we have endeavoured to show in the preceding
pages, salvation is for all men, although there are
"first-fruits," ordained to be the first recipients, and in a
higher degree than the "after-fruits" if that is true,
then it follows that a church organization for nations, as
well as freely associating eclectic churches for the "first-
fruits," is the fitting embodiment of the idea, and the
proper instrument for affecting the practical religious
results of that ordained procedure.
A national church, so far from being non- scriptural
in idea, is the main thought of Scripture. For the
universal kingdom of Christ is the ultimate of its entire
contents, and in the various references to this glorious
consummation, it would appear that mankind will
preserve its divisions into families and kindreds and
nations and kingdoms, the " saved nations " (saved as
nations) being subject with their kings to the kingdom
which is over all.
Ordinances for religious worship and teaching a
vehicle for the religious sentiment, and an instrument
for religious culture would necessarily enter into the
polity of the saved nations, and be the special care of the
subject rulers.
That the nations will be judged and that the ever-
lasting kingdom will be established upon the destruction
of Christ's enemies is indeed abundantly evident, but it
is no less clear that the issues of judgment are inex-
pressibly glorious.
If we look into the prophetic Book of Psalms what
cheering prospects are unfolded.
"All the ends of the world shall remember and turn
96 PURITANISM IN POWER.
unto the Lord : and all the kindreds of the nations shall
worship before thee. For the kingdom is the Lord's,
and he is the governor among the nations." Ps. xxii.
'27, 28.
" Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity
captive : thou hast received gifts for men ; yea, for the
rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among
them." Ps. Ixviii. 18.
" The Kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring
presents: the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts.
Yea, all kings shall fall down before him : all nations shall
serve him Prayer also shall be made for him
continually; and daily shall he be praised All
nations shall call him blessed Let the whole earth
be filled with his glory." Ps. Ixxii. 10, 11, 15, 17, 19.
"All the kings of the earth shall praise thee, Lord,
when they hear the words of thy mouth. Yea, they shall
sing in the ways of the Lord : for great is the glory of the
Lord." Ps. cxxxviii. 4, 5.
"All nations whom thou hast made shall come and
worship before thee, Lord; and shall glorify thy
name." Ps. Ixxxvi. 9.
"Arise, God, judge the earth; for thou shalt inherit
all nations." Ps. Ixxxii. 8.
It is in the light of such passages that we understand
their apparent converse.
"Pour out thy wrath upon the heathen that have not
known thee, and upon the kingdoms that have not
called upon thy name." Ps. Ixxix. 6.
" The wicked shall be turned into hell and all the
nations that forget God." Ps. Ix. 17.
Judgment is evidently mercy's herald. Bunyan's
dream may be reversed, Then I saw that even from the
gate of hell there was a way that led unto the Mercy Seat,
where the Son of Man judges man.
The point, however, of these references is, that National
A NATIONAL CHUKCH. 97
Churches are implied throughout ; the mention of Kings
identifies the ruling authority of the nations, and their
worship must be indicative of a national act expressed
through organised religious facilities.
If we turn to the Prophets the national idea is still
predominant.
"And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the
mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the
top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the
hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many
people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the
mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob ;
and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in
his paths : for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the
word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge
among the nations, and shall rebuke many people : and
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their
spears into pruning hooks : nation shall not lift up
sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any
more. house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in
the light of the Lord." Isaiah ii. 2-5.
"Of the increase of his government and peace there
shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon His
kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment
and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The
zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this." Isaiah ix. 7.
"In that day shall there be an altar to the Lord in the
midst of the land of Egypt and a pillar at the border
thereof to the Lord. And it shall be for a sign and for
a witness unto the Lord of hosts in the Land of Egypt :
for they shall cry unto the Lord because of the oppressors,
and he shall send them a Saviour, and a great one, and
he shall deliver them. And the Lord shall be known to
Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that
day, and shall do sacrifice and oblation; yea, they shall
vow a vow unto the Lord and perform it. In that day
7
98 PURITANISM IN POWER.
shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria,
even a blessing in the midst of the land : Whom the
Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt un-
people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel
mine inheritance." Isaiah xix. 19-21, 24, 25.
"Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the
earth : for I am God, and there is none else. I have
sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in
righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every
knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. In the Lord
shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory. "-
Isaiah xlv. 22, 23, 25.
"Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest
not, and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee
because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy one of
Israel; for he hath glorified thee." Isaiah Iv. 5.
"And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kin^s
to the brightness of thy rising. The nation and king-
dom that will not serve thee shall perish ; yea, those
nations shall be utterly wasted. The people also shall
be all righteous: they shall inherit the land for ever.
A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a
strong nation: I the Lord will hasten it in his tirne."-
Isaiah Ix. 3, 12, 21, 22.
" And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon
to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all
flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord."-
Isaiah Ixvi. 23.
"From the rising of the sun even unto the going down
of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles ;
and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name }
and a pure offering, for my name shall be great among
the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts." Malachi i. 11.
In the New Testament the national idea is not
obliterated by the predominant insistence of the New
Revelation upon the relation of true religion to every man's
A NATIONAL CHURCH. 99
soul. That indeed is fundamental to all religion, and was
the special herald of the dispensation in which a spiritual
kingdom was to be founded, scattered among world
powers, until the period of incubation passed the
kingdom of heaven upon earth should spring to the
touch of Christ's returning feet, and commence its
lasting worldly sway.
The national idea, so far from being lost sight of, is
emphasized and its scope made universal. Old Testa-
ment prophecy dealt with nations bordering upon the
Jewish, and by whom the chosen people were historically
affected ; the new Eevelation lifts up its disciples' necks
to behold a vista far beyond that the heavenly dove
flying over the floods of iniquity to discover fruit unto
God upon other hills of Zion, far, far away.
This was the note of the herald angel, the teaching of
the parables, the commission to the Apostles, the burden
of the tongues of fire, the prophecies of the Epistles.
The key note of the Gospel is Cltrist the King; not
over hearts alone over principalities and powers, reveal-
ing His Lordship over laws of nature and the unseen
spirits of the under world, arid only declining the robe of
worldly empire because the time to wear it was not yet.
He deprived Himself of power before kings, only that
He might take it again, and received condemnation at the
bar of their iniquitous tribunals, in order that He might
hereafter judge the world in righteousness, and rule the
people in equity through ecclesiastical and civil courts,
the very opposite of those by which He suffered.
He broke down the Jewish "hedge" and made the
inflated fanatics know that Abraham's blessing to all
other nations was contained in Him. He sent His disciples
forth to preach His Gospel to every creature poured His
Spirit of Pentecost upon proselytes as well as colonists,
and bade His disciples be of good cheer, because He
would be with them to the end of this Age, when He
100 PURITANISM IN POWER.
would come again to restore the kingdom unto Israel,
and through the spiritual Israel, a righteous Rule to the
ends of the wide world. " Other sheep I have, which are
not of this fold : them also I must bring" (not abolish-
ing their otherness their nationality), " and they shall
hear my voice : and there shall be one fold, and one
shepherd." John x. 16. Yes, other sheep in every
national variety many nations, but one fold ; and
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
one Shepherd the Shepherd and Bishop of all souls.
"And the angel said to them, Fear not : for behold,
I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to
all people." Luke ii. 10.
" I say unto you, That many shall come from the
east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and
Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the
children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer
darkness : there shall be weeping and gnashing of
teeth." Matt. viii. 11, 12.
(Compare with the foregoing, Rom. xi. 26: "And so all
Israel shall be saved.")
" Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall
be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth
the fruits thereof." Matt. xxi. 43.
" One is your Master, even Christ : and all ye are
brethren." Matt, xxiii. 8.
"0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, . . your house is left
unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see
me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that
cometh in the name of the Lord.*' Matt, xxiii. 37-39.
" And this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in
all the world for a witness unto all nations ; and then
shall the end come." Matt. xxiv. 14.
" Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost : Teaching them to observe all things
A NATIONAL CHUKCH. 101
whatsoever I have commanded you : and, lo, I am with
you alway, even unto the end of the age." Matt, xxviii.
19, 20.
" For Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just
man and a holy, and observed him ; and when he heard
him, he did many things, and heard him gladly. "-
Mark vi. 20.
" The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation ;
and she besought him that he would cast forth the
devil out of her daughter. But Jesus said unto her,
Let the children first be filled (first-fruits) : for it is not
meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the
dogs. Yes, Lord : yet the dogs under the table eat of
the children's crumbs. And he said unto her, For
this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy
daughter " (after-fruits) .Mark vii. 26-29.
" Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the
fruit of the vine until that day that I drink it new in
the kingdom of God." Mark xiv. 25.
" He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the
Highest : and the Lord God shall give unto him the
throne of his father David : And he shall reign over
the house of Jacob for ever ; and of his kingdom there
shall be no end. He hath holpen his servant Israel, in
remembrance of His mercy ; As He spake to our
fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever." Luke i.
32, 33, 54, 55. (Similarly Zacharias Luke i. 68-79.)
" A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy
people Israel." Luke ii. 32.
" Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven,
so in earth." Luke xi. 2.
" Ye are they who have continued with me in my
temptations. And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my
Father hath appointed unto me ; That ye may eat and
drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones
judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Luke xxii. 28-30.
102 PURITANISM IN POWER.
" Thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from
the dead the third day : And that repentance and
remission of sins should be preached in His name
among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." Luke xxiv.
46, 47, 48.
" Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin
of the world." John i. 29.
"We have heard him ourselves, and know that this
is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world."-
John iv. 42.
" Now is the judgment of this world : now shall the
prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up
from the earth, will draw all men unto me." John xii.
31, 32.
" Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also
which shall believe on me through their word ; that
they all may be one ; as thou Father art in me,
and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that
the world may believe that thou hast sent me." John
xvii. 20, 21.
" Feed my lambs. Shepherd my sheep. Feed my
choice flock." John xxi. 15, 16, 17.
"He (Caiaphas), being high priest that same year,
prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation ; And
not for that nation only, but that also he should gather
together in one the children of God that were scattered
abroad." John xi. 49, 51, 52.
" For the promise is unto you, and to your children,
and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord
our God shall call." Acts ii. 39.
" Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the cove-
nant which God made with our fathers, saying unto
Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the
earth be blessed." Acts iii. 25.
" Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I
perceive that God is no respecter of persons : but in every
A NATIONAL CHUKCH. 103
nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is
accepted with him." Acts x. 34, 35.
" Send men to Joppa, and call for Simon, whose sur-
name is Peter ; Who shall tell thee words, whereby thou
and all thy house shall be saved." Acts xi. 13-15.
"And to this agree the words of the prophets ; as it is
written, After this I will return, and will build again
the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I
will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it
up: that the residue of men might seek after the
Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is
called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things. "-
Acts xv. 15 17.
'' God hath made of one blood all nations of men for
to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined
the times before appointed, and the bounds of their
habitation ; That they should seek the Lord, if haply
they might find him, though he be not far from every
one of us." Acts xvii. 26, 27.
" Be it known therefore unto you, that the Salvation of
God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear
it." -Acts xxviii. 28.
"Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the
Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also." Eom. iii. 29.
"... blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the
fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel
shall be saved." Eom. xi. 25, 26.
"For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee
shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God."
Eom. xiv. 11.
" That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the
same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the
gospel." Eph. iii. 6.
"That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of
things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under
the earth ; and that every tongue should confess that
104 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."-
Phil. ii. 10, 11.
"And, having made peace through the blood of his
cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him,
I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in
heaven." Col. i. 20.
" I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications,
prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for
all men ; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that
we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness
and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight
of God our Saviour ; Who will have all men to be saved, and
to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one
God, and one mediator between God and men, the man
Christ Jesus ; Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be
testified in due time. Whereunto I am ordained a
preacher and an apostle, (I speak the truth in Christ,
and lie not ;) a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and
verity. I will therefore that men pray everywhere,
lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting. "-
1 Tim. ii. 1-8.
These passages, cursorily selected, are only offered to
show that individualism is not the predominant note in
Scripture, that the order of the Divine concept is the
nation, the tribe, the family, the man, and then from the
man back again to the nation a saved family of nations
being the object consistently contemplated. The calvinistic
theology contemplates the man only, and is not unscrip-
tural so far, but in resting at the point of the individual it
comes wofully short of the scriptural scope and idea.
Wofully short too of accomplishing the non-individual
aims of Scripture in the readiest manner and on the
most extensive scale possible.
Make the man right, say the evangelicals, and by-and-
bye the family, the tribe, and the nation will right them-
selves. It is only theoretically true. The reigning
A NATIONAL CHUKCH. 105
world powers, as hisbory abundantly testifies, are able to
stamp out the divine fire when burning only among
individuals, and were the scientific atheistic spirit in
England to-day to grasp the reins of power, it would
soon indict religious enthusiasm as inimical to its secular
prosperity, and put the mission preacher and district
visitor among the disturbers of the peace.
Practically the righteous Nation must be aimed at it
is God's procedure and by Providential aids it must
be historically born before it becomes.
We have God selecting Abraham, not to rest alone in
him, but that he might become the Father of a chosen
people and a source of blessing to all other nations.
When his seed came into degraded suffering bondage in
Egypt, Moses might make individual converts, but that
would never have saved the nation. The entire people
must be lifted out of ungodly conditions and placed
under an ecclesiastical and civil polity framed for its
culture and growth in real greatness. This was done
miraculously ; the age of miracles is passed, though it
is returning upon us, and in the night will batter at our
doors ; but to the eye of faith there is even now a burn-
ing bush and an awful whisper, and the rod of Moses is
tendered to the Church's hands. The prophets who
criticised the nation were after all its product ; and the
departures they denounced were not aberrations from
codes and customs which were the spontaneous creation
of associated individuals disciples of Moses, but they
were departures from a law framed for a nation before it
was one ; framed for a nation whose legacy of institu-
tions provided for it ab extra, maintained the piety and
hopes of one of its tribes, which finally gave birth to a
man, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, who alone fulfilled
the law and made it honourable, and alone surpassed it.
We say, then, the order of the Divine procedure is from
the man to the nation, and from the nation to the man,
106 PURITANISM IN POWER.
the nation acting upon the man and the man reacting
upon the nation, so that the prophets horn within the
nation's borders shall wax in greatness and not wane.
It is of course to the Jewish polity we must look for
the triumphant vindication of a National Church, and
with that, of the doctrine of universalism to which it is
logically allied.
The mere fact that God should have selected a nation
in its totality to be a chosen people, unto whom to com-
municate knowledge of the Divine will, is itself a
declaration of the Divine purpose to save the world.
For why take an entire people if the calvinistic individ-
ualism exhausts the Divine mind upon the matter. If
half a tribe had been selected and the other eleven and a
half tribes been left in heathen darkness, it would be con-
sistent with Evangelical theology. Instead, we have special
religious knowledge imparted to the entire nation, with
provision for letting no child or slave remain in ignorance,
Church privileges open to all, a special priesthood avail-
able for all, ordinances and sacrifices enjoined upon and
made suitable for all.
To all alike, we say, were given saving ordinances, the
first of which was Moses himself. Moses, the Saviour of
the Jews, was the Saviour -of the entire people. He did
not leave a single Jew behind in Egypt. This i'act is of
immense significance. It is the purpose of Christ to
lead the whole world from the bondage of sin, through
the wilderness of retribution, into the promised land of
eternal felicity. The Paschal Lamb was slain in every
household, its blood was sprinkled on every lintel and
door-post, and it was effectual to ward off the Angel of
Death from every Israelite. We say the dealing of God
with the Jews is indicative of His purpose and method
in regard to the entire human race. And in order that
this purpose might be clearly apparent, Egypt is made
temporarily reprobate, but the Prophets explicitly declare
A NATIONAL CHURCH. 107
that the good things first given to Israel shall afterwards
be shared by her and Assyria ; similarly when ten tribes
are lost on account of their sad departure from the holy
ordinances committed to them, and when the remnant
for a like reason endure the captivity in Babylon, the
captives are returned to their native kingdom ; and
respecting the lost sheep, we have parables of our Lord
in which to read their future fate and the explicit declara-
tion of the Apostle, that "all Israel shall le saved."
What more could be done or said to reveal to us the
bearing of the parable of Jewish history upon the
true interpretation of Gospel promises, and the true
ecclesiastic polity for Christian states ?
When our Lord stood in Nazareth and proclaimed
deliverance to the captive, and the opening of the prison
house to them that are bound, He proclaimed that His
Gospel was not for the righteous, but for sinners, for
nations judged and sent into captivity, for criminals cast
into prison. The very sections of mankind that the
Pharisee and the Calvinist alike dismiss to the mercies
of God's sword, He the rejected of His family and
kinsmen said should taste the acceptable year of the
Lord. The words had gone forth from those blessed
lips, which it were bootless to think of staining with
blood by dashing Him headlong from the height before
His hour had come. He surveyed the wide receding
purple of the plain, the stains of Lebanon covered by
God's snow, the glistening silver of the summer sea
a landscape, wide and glorious as His promise and, lo !
their captive was delivered from their hands !
It is a poor and faulty philosophy which would
arbitrarily cut off the New Testament from all connection
with the Old, and maintain that with the institutions and
scheme of the latter we have now nothing to do. It is
easily said, but it is amazingly crude and questionable.
How can it be conceived of the immutable Jehovah that
108 PURITANISM IN POWER.
His declared mind and will for the religious and civil
polity of a people have undergone so complete an
alteration that He has so completely left former things
behind and severed every Christian fruit from every Jewish
root, that the two economies are to be regarded as
antithetically unrelated, and the detailed record of Jewish
institutions and history occupying so large a portion of
revelation are to be viewed as having no practical lessons
for us to-day? We cannot so conceive of the All- wise
Jehovah. How much more agreeable to right reason is
it to enter upon the examination of God's dealings with
His chosen people with the holy expectation that therein
we may find revealed to us the eternal principles which
should underlie the civil and religious polity of every
nation under the sun in the belief that God has not
revealed Himself as a God of individuals only, but a God
of nations, and as He has given us Divine direction as
units, and as families, so also as nations, and that
looking into the history of a chosen nation with this
object we shall have clear guidance upon the questions
of national education and religious ordinances, also upon
the land laws, master and servant, treatment of brutes,
with commerce and banking. Not expecting to find per-
fection in the institutions given to a people in a very
immature state of development, but clear direction upon
principles, which continually applied under the broader
and brighter beams of the Christian revelation should
advance nations in righteousness and consequent
happiness, and make them one by one so many chosen
homes of God.
The Jewish dispensation is frequently and correctly
spoken of as a temporal one. And this is one of the most
evident principles underlying its polity. Its great lesson
for us and for all rulers is that "the Lord is for the
body." A clear revelation is made of God's intimate con-
cern in the temporal welfare of His creatures; He has
A NATIONAL CHURCH. 109
not placed them here as upon a spring board from which
they are to leap into heaven, but as upon meadow amid
whose green pastures they are to lie and feed, blessing
the God who made and bountifully provided for them,
and then taught by sun and shower, by drought and
plenty, be taken to the higher and the better land beyond.
God magnifies and glorifies this human life of ours,
almost to the apparent exclusion of any life beyond, in
the whole of the Jewish economy and history. This is
the logical order earth life comes first ; attention to
that is the first need of man. I am for that, said the
God of the Jews. My people shall have manna and water
from the rock. I will not put them off when dying for
thirst by promising them heaven as a compensation.
Follow My example, ye rulers. Feed your people first.
Board schools come after that unless you want my curse
to fall, where infants without breakfast nod or swoon
upon your Board School forms.
And the manna fell just enough for each enough
for all no more. Follow that, ye rulers, saith the Most
High God. Mountains of wealth and ditches of penury are
not My order. That spirit is from beneath and not from
above. My order the eternally divine order is equality
of privilege for all the sons of men.
Settled in Canaan, the land shall not be heaped
together in private hands, but return to the inheritance of
families at the year of jubilee. Touching is the tender
thoughtfulness for the poor the stranger and the slave.
There is indeed one patronised class that runs through
all history. Blessed are they who belong to it, the class
of the poor, the suffering, and the wronged God is their
Patron God will avenge them and that right early.
The principle of national patriotism stands out boldly
in the Jewish economy and history. The people
were to cherish then* traditions, love their own, and
while just and merciful to strangers ever remember that
110 PURITANISM IN POWEK.
the seed of Abraham, their brethren, had first claim upon
their care. A lesson for all nations this, and standing
neatly at right angles with the national blessings con-
ferred upon us by the Cobden School. The Englishman
to-day expatriates his children, sighs for the Chinese
to take their place, and sweetens his cup of satisfaction
with continental rather than colonial sugar.
Education was free and religious. It was conducted
at every feast : in the home, and by the nations' priests
and scribes.
Keligious ordinances were provided by a special national
endowment for all the people, high and low, religious
and profane ; discipline was exercised, sudden, miraculous
and dread, but that very discipline in cutting them off
from the family recognised the offenders as children.
The institution of the Jewish Sabbath is one of the
foundation principles for the polity of nations that has
done more for the happiness of mankind than any other
custom handed down from antiquity. It is a custom
which has made the character and the pre-eminence of
Englishmen and will lend grit and integrity, sobriety,
stability and reverence, as well as joy and satisfaction to
every nation which keeps it in the Jewish spirit. To
keep a seventh day as a Saturnalia is not Jewish and still
less Christian. Woe be to that people who having a
pearl placed within their hands cast it to the swine.
Woe to England if she looks sneakingly across the
channel for an additional gloss to her day of rest, instead
of finding it in the smiles of her white slaves released
from the toil of bearing congregations to popular preachers,
and firing the furnaces and serving the shifts of factories
that know not Moses. He who said that the sabbath
was made for man would be the first to enforce the sermon
from Mount Sinai against the modern practice.
If working men are beguiled into advocating the
opening of museums and picture galleries on Sundays,
.A NATIONAL CHUBCH. Ill
innocent in itself as the licence may appear, the results
in augmented street traffic and in a breach of the
national sentiment, which is the only guarantee for the
retention of the toilers' privilege, will speedily awaken
them to the folly of their course. Perish your pictures,
your science and your curiosities, if to see them on
Sunday, instead of upon Saturday half-holidays, work-
men must forego a clearer vision of nature and of God,
and the knowledge which surpasses science, all now
depending upon the retention of a Puritanical Sunday.
To the Jew the Sabbath, no less than his other religious
Feasts, was a day of joy. We can little comprehend the
gladness with which the tribes went up from the four
corners of their little land to worship at Jerusalem. The
periodical picnics would excite the family happily for
weeks beforehand. The tribal fellowship, the national
patriotism, the faith and fidelity to their religious
tradition, were all maintained and intensified by these
seasons of recurring joy. Business and marketing were
united to the religious and the social purpose. Happy
indeed are the people whose God the Lord is. Maintaining
fealty to Moses, the dew of blessing rested on their
branches, their cattle multiplied upon the hills, and the
clusters swelled beneath the verdant vine. No nation
was permitted to insult their State and liberty. But
heathendom, covetousness, and pleasure made them fail,
the Sabbaths and the Feasts were violated and unprized,
until, year by year, Ichabod writ large was on her altars,
and the majesty and glory, the liberty, and the very
existence of the Jewish state were gone.
Now r the further value of this institution of the Jewish
Sabbath consists in this that it implies a National
Church. For how, it may be asked, could national
obedience be rendered to the prescribed keeping of reli-
gious feasts without a National Church, of which each
subject of the State was also a member ?
112 PURITANISM IN POWER.
It may be said that the Sabbath cannot now be truly
and wholly kept in any part of England where the Parish
Church is in ruins, other places of worship non-existent,
and neighbouring ones inaccessible.
Best for the body is a keeping of the Sabbath, and so
is a sober family festival, when the wage-earner, released
from servitude, can once a week dine with his family.
These are blessings in which the horses upon the common
also share ; but we want more than they. And so we
come to the last and greatest respect in which Jewish
polity is a beacon to the nations. The nation of the
Jews had a divinely instituted National Church.
To imagine that the Jewish Church has no eternal
and abiding significance that its identity with the entire
nation was not meant to teach us anything, is too
crudely conceived to call for serious refutation.
The mind and will of God manifested in the institu-
tions provided for a chosen people cannot be summarily
dismissed from the controversy by conjectures and
assumptions of that kind. The Jewish people were set
for a sign, and everything that belonged to them was
significant ; if anything, their National Church system
most of all.
And here is no question of types and shadows that
have passed with the advent of the things they heralded:
nor of the institution of a priestly tribe and sacrificial
functions which in the Christian development would
necessarily disappear. It is with these, as attached and in-
separable from the realized principle of a National Church
Establishment for the Jewish nation, that we alone have
to deal. And we ask why this principle of a National
Church is not to be placed in the same category with the
prohibition cf making slaves of brethren ; with the pro-
visions against the accumulation of land by individuals ;
with the institution of a seventh clay's religious festival ?
Why should not the principle of the institution of a
A NATIONAL CHURCH. 113
National Church be also regarded as a model to Christian
people for all time ?
It will help us to answer this question to remember
that in addition to the individual life, there is the family
life, the municipal life, and the national life ; that God
deals with mankind in all these relations, and that His
judgment of men thus incorporated is not affected by
exceptions in the conduct of individual members of the
corporation, provided those members are subordinate.
The family is judged by the acts of its head, the city by
those of its representative rulers, and the nation by its
national deeds. In each case there may be individual
exceptions and protesters against the conduct which
ensures the blessing or the curse, but that does not affect
the result, which is regulated by the federal behaviour.
(The compensation to individuals who are innocently
implicated being referred to a future state.)
These relationships, it is true, belong to the Time
state. Eeligion is also for the Time state. It has been
man's marked peculiarity in every clime and in all time.
He is constituted a religious animal. Eeligion is as
necessary to his human existence as food. It is the first
duty of nations to provide for their children, not only as
animals, but men.
Have we facts to go upon in declaring that God deals
with man in the family, the municipal, and the national
relationships ? Surely we need not hesitate here. His-
tory, sacred and profane, is crammed with examples.
The question is, Did Christ when He came to inaugurate
a new dispensation also dissolve all the primary and
fundamental bases of society, and mean that henceforth
religion should concern itself solely with segregated
atoms of humanity, each disciple, as it were, literally
seated in the heavenlies, effectually separated from the
world, and having his own damp cloud, single harp, and
separate palm, or was it intended to be a new and living
8
114 PURITANISM IN POWER.
force energizing and transforming every existing group
and future combination of men existing as co-partners in
the Globe ? Was the new religion simply the erection of
a spiritual kingdom which should hover above and about
the earthly kingdoms as a flame surrounds its wick, or
was it finally to penetrate the wick and make it too
luminous ? Did it come as the Eedeemer of Men before
they were angels and the Salvation of human life before
it was done with ? and, Did it bring invitations to the
world at large and proclaim a Divine goodwill to deliver
man from every evil, both in this world and the next ?
We cannot answer these questions in the only way that
reason suggests, without corning to the conclusion, that
the principle of a National Church was a living and
abiding principle in Judaism which Christianity never
meant to destroy ; but only allowed to be buried like a
seed for a period, in order that it might afterwards have
a more glorious resurrection.
To argue the contrary is virtually to cease to recognise
the importance or even the suitability of family worship,
or, sooth to say, public worship of any sort; for the
doors are customarily open, and, were they not, into the
selectest circle of elected disciples a Judas might enter.
Is this so or not ? Is it the case that in most congrega-
tions of dissenters the gathering is quite as promiscuous
as any which may be found in an established church '?
And is it the case that Sunday Schools are opened and
closed by religious exercises in which few but the
teachers seriously partake, while it is obvious they cannot
possibly be dispensed with ? If these things are so, the
grounds upon which Church establishments are objected
to, as inconsistent in their design and realization with
the spiritual nature of a true Church, are necessarily
traversed, and the practical value of the contention
reduced to nil. While, on the other hand, if there be
any value in public worship (as few will dispute there is
A NATIONAL CHURCH. 115
in family and Sunday School worship), then, in the
attempt to furnish the entire nation with facilities for
its observance, a national scheme must be incomparably
more efficient than any competing voluntary enterprises.
We assume then
(a,) That the Christian religion is intended to be
taught to and observed by all men.
(b ,) And that it is the will of its Divine Founder that
for its propagation and right observance every teaching
and worshipping facility that can be afforded by the
family, the school, the town and county authority, and
the nation should be used for that end.
(c,) That this will may be inferred from, and was
unquestionably exemplified by, the institution of the
Jewish Church.
And we say that in the attempt to furnish the entire
nation with facilities for the teaching and observance of
Christ's religion, a national scheme must be incomparably
more efficient than any competing voluntary enterprises.
It must be so, in the first place, because for the com-
plete and efficient occupation of the ground, national
revenues will alone suffice.
It is so, in the second place, because no single sect of
the numerous brood pretends to have obtained the
popular suffrage or, we will say, to have attracted con-
vinced disciples, in a clearly predominant degree.
As the free churches are at present constituted and
worked (we for the time exclude consideration of the
Wesleyans and their offshoots) they have necessarily be-
come the religious homes of members of the middle class,
to the exclusion of their more numerous poorer brethren.
This is broadly true of the towns where Dissent is
strongest. And the reason is not far to seek, it is one
indigenous to the voluntary system, incapable of elimina-
tion under our present conditions, and while fraught with
mischief to the religious life of the existing members
116 PURITANISM IN POWER.
dooms any attempt to spread the system universally to
absolute and merited failure.
That reason is in brief
That the expensiveness of the Free Church Organization
and Pastorate is such, and the luxury and accessories of
worship have become so advanced, that the voluntary
taxation submitted to can only be supported by the
comparatively rich.
The accumulation of riches for the purpose of their
display is one of the chief crying sins of the time, but
when their display takes the form of a rivalry in religious
liberality and philanthropic doles, then the sins of avarice
and pride are made to wear the appearance of heavenly
virtue, and for this virtue both the genuine and the
spurious sort alike depending upon wealth the Free
Churches afford an unbounded opportunity.
An opportunity which is nevertheless insufficiently
availed of, for notwithstanding that by a natural process
the chief men in every " strong " congregation are the
rich men, the general condition of Free Church finance is
one of anxious struggling to make both ends meet, and as
the struggle increases a pious desire is chronically enter-
tained that more hearts (or purses) may be opened, and
that the multitudes which are prayed for to flock in may
in the main have been prosperous in trade.
From struggling churches, many of them hopelessly
involved in debt, and depending for existence upon the
chance display of gifts of startling magnitude from
Societies were gold goes farther than godliness to secure
a sympathetic fellowship from places luxuriously
equipped to provide a sumptuous sipping of Gospel sweets,
the multitudes of toiling, struggling, defrauded and often
despairing peoples turn self-respectingly away, and by the
patronage of some " strong " congregations are offered
Mission Halls instead, receptacles for that painful
poverty which it is desirable should not needlessly molest
A NATIONAL CHURCH. 117
the comfort of the mother Church. In order to complete
this scheme for reaching the masses and doing national
work to Mission Halls will have to be added Bagged
Kooms ; and thus at the end of nineteen centuries we
find the communion of Saints preceded by a sorting of
them into first, second, and third class, and a request
that they will be seated in the several compartments !
But, oh ! when He who planed away the inequalities of
planks went forth from Nazareth with shavings creeping
after Him and clinging lovingly to His robe, to preach the
Kingdom of His Father God, He never dreamt of that !
And neither have the founders of National Churches
ever dreamt of it. As a hen spreadeth herself to gather
her brood beneath her wings the lordly pile of the National
Church lifts itself above the murky dwellings of the
populous parish, and invites the lowliest as well as the
wealthiest within its doors.
The child of the gutter who has never trodden grass
beneath its feet may there "consider the lilies" as they
bloom upon the altar. A vision of grandeur and of
beauty expands itself in gem-like window, mysterious roof
and storied fresco, and sordid poverty is regaled with sight
of spotless linen, as the righteousness of Saints, worn by
Billy Tucker the news boy and Sam who was once in jail,
and Tommy Lamkin the carpenter's son, with others who
now in state majestical parade from the vestry to the
chancel, and raise sweet song to Him who "putteth down
the mighty from their seat, and exalfceth the humble and
the meek, who filleth the hungry with good things and
sendeth the rich empty away."
But this by the way. Our point at present is, neither the
predominating sovereigns, nor the sparse pence of the Free
Church congregations can suffice for national work. The
Churches are continually driven to their wits' end not a.
long way in many cases to meet the demands made upon
them. What with the competition in organs, in steeples
118 PURITANISM IN POWER.
and in bribing popular preachers to stay who have got a
higher bid for their eloquence, they know not which way to
turn to meet the treasurer's deficit, much less can they con-
template setting up the same chronic impecuniosity and
harassing struggle for trade existence in every corner of
England, though limiting their aim, to the provision of
second and third class accommodation only. And this
brings us to the consideration of the second reason, why
competing voluntary systems can never compete with, or
do, the work of a National Church. No single sect has
such a preponderance of adherents, relatively to the
population, as to invest the attempt to make it nationally
acceptable with any prospect of success, even if the
financial position were not, for the same reason an
insuperable barrier.
The singular part of the business has now to be
exposed. The position, as above stated, is frankly
accepted by denominational leaders, and all they ask is
that England may be left to be partitioned between
them. They profess each one to be a depositary of some
vital truth which it is so necessary to emphasize and
illustrate that it would be treason to strike their several
flags and abandon their badges, and yet when they come
to a village of 500 inhabitants where there are already
four conventicles besides the Parish Church they will
forbear to add a fifth to the number. But why should
that precious interpretation of Scripture which brought
into existence a powerful denomination with a great
tradition be denied to these villages ? Why should pre-
cious souls suffer by this treason to truth ? In reply it may
be said We do, indeed, alone possess the only correct
card showing the way to Zion, but we leave these good
people to find their way by more circuitous routes, and
pray that they may not take an entirely wrong turning.
But here we are brought into great amazement. How
dare depositaries of a vital truth, which they are ap-
A NATIONAL CHURCH. 119
pointed to witness as against the sister churches, forbear
their witness before four competing denominations, and
how can they defend the principle of regulating their
witness by the financial possibilities of different localities ?
And why should the denizens of wealthier towns be
privileged by the safest and best direction, while villagers,
because poor villagers, must be left with only a partial
illumination ? Either the denominational distinction is
vital and essential, or it is not. If essential in the town,
it is equally so in the village ; if not in the village, it can
be dispensed with in the town. By their methods of plant-
ing themselves for the propagation of their views, the
several denominations implicitly surrender their several
raison d'etre.
But it was never so with the founders of a National
Church. Her dogmas and doctrines once settled and
defined, cultured and adequate expounders and defenders
of her faith shall be placed in every hamlet aye, even
in every wilderness as well as spread in every quarter
of every town.
The result of handing over England to voluntaryism
w r ould be precisely analogous to that which we see
attending the present economical cultivation of the
soil.
Only those districts would be put under cultivation
which promised to bring additional strength to the de-
nomination or, in economical language, would "pay."
Eegardless of the fact that it is the duty, as it is also the
interest of every Christian state to submit every human
heart, as well as every allotted and cultivable tract of
land, to the test, whether it can only bring forth weeds
or not, and that the worst soil of human nature can, by
Gospel grace, be transmuted to the best, we should
see England with great waste patches, except where, as
in Worcestershire, a single denomination, prompted by a
layman, has determined that colporteurs shall do, to the
120 PURITANISM IN POWEK.
extent of their means and power, that duty which the
lack both of parochial and free church agency had left
undone.
The Jewish Church being one with the state Moses,
the Legislator, being an inspired prophet of God, and
.kings frequently uniting to their office Priestly functions,
were meant to teach this great lesson to the nations
that there is really no distinction between the sacred
and the secular. All things secular, so called, are really
sacred legislation most obviously so.
The strange idea has, however, possessed the minds of
muddled moderns that the true conception of a State is
the incalculably mean one of a glorified policeman and
rate collector, and that to neither or both of these func-
tionaries can be properly committed the care of Christ's
Church.
Let us regard the question, as we are entitled to regard
it, in reference to the free self-governing state of England
and then ask, May not a nation justly expect to groan
under unjust laws if religion has not entered into the
principles of its legislation ? and how is practical religion
to permeate legislation if our legislators are not religious
men ? and if, perceiving that, we pack Parliament with
religious men, how can Parliament be deemed unfitted to
deal with matters of religion ?
This confusion about things sacred and secular is
really little creditable to the acumen or common sense
of Christian thinkers, and is especially to be wondered at
in men who are constantly declaiming against the dedi-
cation and consecration of people, places, and buildings
to religious uses as a matter of superstition. They, on
their part, would absolutely rail off the holy work of
legislating for a nation and call it secular nothing truly
sacred but what pertains to the four walls of a con-
venticle. Whereas Religion is perpetually crying in deaf
ears the sentiment of the Pagan Poet, " Nothing that
A NATIONAL CHURCH. 121
belongs to humanity is foreign to me. Everything
human falls within my province."
Streets are to be swept as in God's sight, for that His
children should suffer sickness through the neglect of a
Municipality is a challenge to His rod.
The water must be pure that His children are given to
drink pure as the mountain fountain of which Moses
was the engineer. The people must be fed this is
primary. God took His children to a land of plenty,
not of scarcity a good land not a vile starveling inheri-
tance, such as our laws, because deemed a secular
instead of a sacred business, have made for great masses
of our people.
To educate the nation is a sacred thing, and cannot
possibly be done as it should be done, unless religion be
made its basis and its crown.
To teach the people trades is also sacred, not secular.
They are not to be taught to adulterate. They are not
to be poisoned and mauled quite needlessly. Nobody is
to be mulcted in a premium for giving a boy to add to
the profit of a master, and no apprentice's labour is to
be beautifully exploited by being charged for as journey-
man's work, without the boy or the parent getting a
share.
To legislate for hours of labour and for employer's
liability is sacred, not secular ; there is, properly speak-
ing, nothing secular in any branch of legislation, because
man is a sacred being for whom Christ died.
To abolish the iniquitous robbery called "truck" is a
holy and a sacred thing more holy far than the con-
struction of the Athanasian Creed unless, indeed,
amended so as to read, " Whosoever will be saved must
believe that he who enslaves the spending of a man's
wages and sweats sweaters' pay will, without doubt,
perish everlastingly." To crack upon the head, without
hope of resurrection, the crazy and hypocritical pretence
122 PURITANISM IN POWER.
that there can ever be freedom of contract between
wealth and want, is a sacred, not a secular thing.
To rescue crews and captains of "ocean tramps " from,
the deplorable alternative of going to sea in an overladen
coffin or being left without employment, is a sacred, not
a secular w T ork, and so is a purging and revolution of
that system of insurance which protects capital at the
expense of life, and of that unfettered licence in loading
which permits unhallowed risks to be run and human
beings to be sacrificed on no nobler altar than that of
competitive carrying.
What a huge waste of time, energy and money is repre-
sented by the whole machinery of Insurance Fire, Life,
and Marine. The same being true of Sick and Burial
Clubs. Unless a Commonwealth is capable of taking upon
itself the redemptions that these societies accomplish
and so doing away with the temptation to murder upon the
high seas, to arson, and to the massacre of thousands of
innocents for the sake of burial fees, it is not worthy to
be called a Christian Commonwealth. The Nation should
be the only Insurance Company. To draw attention to
these things is a sacred, and not a secular, duty, as is
also the furthering of legislation that would do away
with the house farmer and permit the industrious poor
to retain such a proportion of their wages after payment
of rent as the wealthier classes are able to do.
To preach in season and out of season that the codes
and conventions of " Business " can by no constraints or
apologies whatever be reconciled with the laws of the
Kingdom of God, is a sacred, and not a secular task ;
and that the men, who in Parliament shall legislate with
this in view, are in advance of the morality of the Pulpit
and fully competent to take in hand both the doctrine
and the government of the Church. They would
probably deem that, to establish throughout the length
and breadth of the land teachers and preachers of this.
A NATIONAL CHURCH. 123
holy doctrine Christianity recovered and applied men
who should be independent of wealthy supporters and
removed from want, is the first necessity, as it is the
alone saving health of nations.
Why should it be deemed that a representative assem-
bly to which Christians, in the vital puritanical sense,
have the best reason to enter, should be unable to decide
upon religious questions any the less, because they are
daily applying religious doctrine in the work of righteous
legislation ?
In order to prove that their principles are right, do the
Liberationists want to deplete the House of Commons of
its Christian members, and to reduce the functions of
Parliament rigidly to those of the watchman and tax
gatherer ?
They are behind the age, and know not what they are
talking about. Law-making is as holy to-day as when it
was thundered from Sinai, and the first and last qualifi-
cations for a Parliamentary candidate are not an avowal
of party-faith (save the mark !), not enlistment in any of
the idly tournarnenting ranks Tory, Liberal, Eadical
Eed Eags pick-locks to the Treasury no ! none of that
simply the faith of a Christian and a pledge to make
it operative and powerful in every branch of law.
Am I to be told that men of this stamp are
moved by the Spirit when they meet in a chapel vestry
and decide to heighten the steeple to compete with the
neighbouring church, but that of necessity they leave the
Spirit behind them when they enter St. Stephen's to
debate upon the teaching, the housing, the health,
wealth, and salvation of the people?
Is God ruling as Head of His church in the crowded,
or scanty, church meeting whose every member is a
subject of the nation, yet not ruling as Head of His
church in that assembly where laws are made for the
subjects of the nation ? The contention is illogical and
124 PURITANISM IN POWER.
absurd, unspiritual and unreal, unphilosophical and
untrue.
The only rational faith of a Christian is that Christ as
Head of His Church militant in the world is exercising
His Headship on its behalf in every corner of the globe.
That He makes His Headship imminent everywhere, from
the highest State functionary to the lowest ; in the
meanest as in the most exalted legislative assembly ; that
He really and absolutely inspires, directs, controls every-
thing that touches the interests of His spiritual kingdom,
and is presiding in every council where those interests
are involved.
That Father who notes the fall of a sparrow and
counts the very hairs of our head takes some interest
presumably in every piece of law-making and adminis-
tration throughout the world. Least of all could this
be questioned when the branch of a nation's polity under
consideration is that of its National Church. And so
in the election of Bishops by the Sovereign. It is a vain
and atheistic conception, consistent only with the denial
of God in history and an abandonment of faith in a
Divine Providence, to hold for a moment that every cotu/c
d'elire is not indited by a Divine hand as truly as ever
the tablets of Moses.
He who with equal concentration of creative energy
and Fatherly concern spins a planet or turns the spindles
in a spider, overrules the vote of Mary Barton, when
Little Bethel is electing a pastor, and gives the final turn
to the battle between Queen and Premier as to who shall
be Primate of England. Either that or infidelity.
And the truth of this position is not invalidated by a
reference to the sale of the Empire by Eoman Soldiers
or the schemes of a Medici to plant a Pope in the Vatican,
any more than it would be by an allusion to the Jewish
people as rejectors of the King whom God had sent them.
In the plan and ordering of this world's history the
A NATIONAL CHURCH. 125
counsel of God stands fast, and every Divine principle
whatsoever when sent current in the rnuddy ways of
wordly life suffers prejudice in its course.
We therefore revert to the original question, leaving
the reader to supply the answer.
Is the Jewish Church a lesson for nations or is it not'?
and is the history of its partial failure and that of others
in modern times any disproof of the divinity of the
principle, or barrier to the belief that it will one day be
brilliantly vindicated ?
One thing is clearly noticeable in these latter days, the
National idea is in the ascendant, and the failure of the
Free Churches is everywhere confessed. At the same
time a remarkable National Establishment for Education
has come into existence ; has silenced the querulous
opposition of its opponents by a splendid success and
taken a position from which it will never be overthrown.
The Board Schools are the complete and sufficient vin-
dication of a National Church, and suggest the direction
in which reform of the latter should be undertaken.
These schools are churches, partially, provided by the
nation wherever required, and have shown themselves
capable of shutting up competing voluntary schools. The
latest and the best appliances for education are always at
command, the teachers are a trained efficient body, and
by almost general consent prayer, praise, and the reading
of God's word form part of the daily exercise. Here then
we have the ordinances of public worship provided and
supported by the nation for the nation, and the subtlest
casuist, the most dissident dissenter, dare not say that the
principle of a National Establishment is not implicit in
the system.
Will they venture to say, " Oh ! but they teach no
creed." Why it is from the Free Churches themselves
that we hear every week, "We hold no creed and will
have none formulated." The Baptists have reduced
126 PURITANISM IN POWER.
their creed to the two words "believers' immersion":
if asked, believers in what? no one will dare to formulate
an answer.
If the Baptists are nebulous, emitting some light, the
Congregationalists are hazy, emitting none ; from them it
is utterly impossible to extract a creed, so that from
neither of these wings of the Free Church army can any
argument consistently proceed against a National
Establishment, when at the sani3 time they concede the
inestimable benefits of our Board School system.
To teach the people to read and sum is to provide
them with a valuable defence against the robbery to
which they are constantly exposed. To teach them to
read in an age of halfpenny newspapers and penny
awfuls, without at the same time introducing them to
the noblest library in the world, which to know is a
Liberal education we mean the Bible is not to
be characterized as a grievous mistake, but rather as
an inexcusable crime. And as the general voice of
the nation, instinctively right and kind, brusquely
filliped the Nonconformist leaders in spite of the logical
inconsistency, and decided that the Bible the children
shall have ; the leaders were obliged to swallow their logic
and summon a pious resignation, while the whole ground
for objecting to a National Establishment crumbled
beneath their feet. The current of Education has been
washing away the foundations of the Liberation Society
ever since it began to run. The children are being
taught what it is the first necessity for a human creature
to know 7 , and taught it at the National expense.
It can never be a sufficient answer to say that a
religious book in the Board School is superfluous, since
it may be found in another Free School on Sundays,
because to leave the book out of the Board School is
explicity to declare to the children that it is a Book that
can be dispensed with for the uses of daily life. Instead
A NATIONAL CHURCH. 127
of being placed at the top it would by that course be
dropped to the lowest place of ignominy : happily the
nation, left to decide the matter apart from the dissenting
drum, has saved the Bible and its own witness for
Christianity.
In the establishment and working of Board Schools
the nation has joyfully, unanimously and distinctly
declared that it is in favour of providing for its children
means of grace and ordinances of worship out of funds
levied by common consent. It has shouldered to the
wall those sinister friends of Christianity, who would
begin their mission by blackballing the best of books and
would aim to make education a means of the moral
elevation of the masses, while depriving the moral
teacher of a standard of appeal, and compelling him to
raise his children's thoughts no higher than the cane.
It is an unworthy insinuation, obviously unwarranted
by facts, to allege that to the Board School cannot safely
be committed the teaching of religion, since none but a
religious man can do it without injury. Of course,
dogmatic teaching is not in the question but, apart from
that, who will be bold enough to say that the ranks of
Board School teachers do not contain a large minority,
perhaps a majority of religious men in the vital
puritanical sense? And if that be the case, to such extent
the objection does not apply, while of the remaining body
of teachers it might be said, if not enlightened and
convinced Christians, they are put in the best way of
becoming so, by being required daily to use those words
w r hose entrance giveth life to the soul.
Have the advocates of secular instruction ever con-
sidered what injuriousness they would inflict upon
religiously-minded teachers by prohibiting the simple
liturgy now in use ?
We find then that the case for a National Establish-
ment has received unexpected and enormous succour in
123 PURITANISM IN POAVER.
the very hour of its seeming extremity by the conduct of
the nation in reference to its education. It can no
longer be denied that the English people are prepared to
provide national funds for a universal system of Bible
reading and Christian worship that the Board Schools
are nurseries of the Christian faith Established
Churches, minus sacraments. And here also we see
illustrated the place, function, and origin of a Xational
Voluntaryism. There is an individual and there is a
national voluntaryism. The latter ensues upon every
act of a freely elected legislative assembly. The national
will as to Education found expression in an Act of
Parliament, and not less in the by-laws as to Bible
reading which the freely elected School Boards enacted.
Voluntaryism in religious matters is hence removed from
its prescriptive confinement to individual decisions and
made to feel that the collective fiat is no less its home.
Let the constituents of a legislative assembly be truly
representative of the religious sentiment of a nation, and
who will challenge its State enactments as in conflict with
the principle of a Free Church in a Free State? There is
no conflict when the representation is real. The Board
Schools are in reason and in fact, voluntary schools and
a State Church may be a voluntary Free Church. Indi-
vidualism is retiring before Collective Man, and the
progress of really representative institutions is making
hash of the old distinctions between Church and State.*
:;: NOTE. Mr. Halley Stewart, M.P., is reported to have said,
" There is no difference between Church life aud Political life,
both have for their object the elevation of humanity. If party
conflict be objected to, so must the strife of sects."
129
CHAPTER IL
THE SPUEIOUS VOLUNTABYISM OF THE FEEE
CHURCHES.
VOLUNTARYISM ! it is of the very essence of Christianity.
Alone among religions, that of Jesus Christ asks nothing
from the worshipper ; only the acceptance of a gift,
precious and costly beyond measure. All the giving and
the cost are on the side of God. To beggared and help-
less man are only left a tearful eye and ready heart.
Enough !
When the Lord and Master sent forth the twelve to
preach His Kingdom, He bade them take the wages
offered by the grateful, and no more. Devils deserted
their human tenements at a word. Lepers grew ruddy
as the cherry. The dead arose. What is the price?
cried the joyful people. We will borrow what we cannot
pay, though Jehovah knows the interest is high.
Bring us a loaf and one or two small fishes. Thanks
be to God and Thee. Now as touching the price ye
spake of, the Master said unto us, " Freely ye have
received, Freely give " but that the workman was
worthy of his meat, John the Baptist took nothing
from you, neither does Jesus Christ. We go far hence
to-night, knowing not where we shall lay our heads, but
Peace be to this house in His name.
When Paul and Barnabas received their commission
to the Gentiles at the hands of Peter, James and John,
who seemed to be pillars, no charge was laid upon them
to organize ecclesiastical revenues only this, that they
should remember the poor (saints at Jerusalem), which
also Paul was forward to do. So that He who was God's
Free Gift to men, ministered to them freely while on
earth, offered Himself freely upon the cross, and breathed
0.
130 PUKITANISM IN POWEE.
Himself freely into His ministers and messengers that
they might exhibit everywhere the unbought largess of
His soul.
A simple bubbling well, amid the grass, said, " Taste
me." The peasants tasted, it was bitter then sweet it
made them well. The Lord of the soil saw them coming
through His fields by night and bearing away the water
in larger and yet larger jars, so He put up gates which
swung open at the touch of a child, He made walks
across His fields to guide the people's feet in ways of
peace and safety straight to the wholesome water. He
walled it round for cleanliness and protection, and then
bade them cast away fear and doubt and come both day
and night. What is the price? It is "without money
and without price." The Master said unto me, "Freely
ye have received, Freely give."
Had we divining rods and knew how to use them,
possibly beneath many a hard and apparently hopeless
tract of earth the rod would reveal to us running streams
of health. But we all carry about with us divining rods
with which to touch, not earth, but heaven. Let us but
touch the heart of God with one true prayer, and forth-
with will be set gushing in our own hearts wells of water
springing up unto everlasting life, which not the absence
of any church organization or membership, nor the want
of church ordinances, nor deprivation of any sacrament
can do anything effectually to suppress. This artless,
simple, costless thing the unbought love of God in
Christ, has been seized hold of by self-appointed spiritual
Lords over God's heritage, who verily are not careful to
spare the flock.
The rent veil has been busily stitched up by ecclesias-
tical fingers, and a toll-collector placed at the corners.
The gateway to God made of the Cross has been captured
by interested persons, and now instead of swinging freely
open is turned into a turnpike. That poor people
SPUKIOUS VOLUNTARYISM. 131
should "get the gospel for nothing" is the sorest tribu-
lation of the beneficed ministers of the so-called " Free "
churches. They turn in their study chairs in misery
and vexation, if they find that a zealous city missionary
has got a congregation to attend his services Sunday
morning and Sunday evening, without being burdened
with pew-rents or member's subscriptions ; and minis-
terial persecution will never quit that man until he has
been seduced by a Eeverend title and a white cravat to
quit the wilderness of sin in which he was a blessing, for
a superior neighbourhood, where he can " sell " the
"truth" and work the collecting boxes on his own
behalf with some prospect of success.
The same determination that the Gospel shall never be
offered freely stains the record of Missionary proceedings
abroad. At first the Gospel God's free gift is worthily
represented by a man who seeks the souls of his hearers,
not their tribute. But if and .when a convert is seen to
be touched by a prophet's fervour, and in any spare time
left him by his daily avocation preaches with great
success among, his countrymen, hands must be laid upon
that man, the plague of allowing the Gospel to be got
for nothing must be stopped, the native church must be
told its duty, which is, that every company of believers
should burden themselves with the support of a brother
in idleness secular idleness who should minister to
them in holy things ; and this is henceforth made the
chief end, the apex, the pinnacle of excellence in the
missionary edifice, the providing of native churches with
native pastors who are saddled for their support upon
those churches, and it would be a miracle if fervour
and success did not forsake them at the change.
The boast of the Missionary Societies should be not in
the number of Pastors who have been put upon the
natives, but in the number of native evangelists who are
working without money and without price, shepherding
132 PURITANISM IN POWER.
the people all the more successfully because they are
manifestly seeking, not theirs, but them. Times have
indeed changed since the days of the Apostles. Then if
the earth was taxed, Heaven was free ; but now the
toiler straightens his tired back to bear first the demand
of the landlord for his share of the produce, then the no
less imperious claim for interest on necessary loan,
afterwards the officer of the Civil Euler, dunning for his
tax, and when the threshing floor is almost clean swept,
there succeeds the smooth unquestioning application of
the Gospel vendor and his rattling money box. This
comes of the unfortunate persuasion so gratefully re-
ceived by many that Jesus Christ came into the world
to add another to the genteel professions.
But the mark of True Churches will ever be, that they
conform to the command given to the twelve : " Freely
ye have received, freely give." The one persistent aim
should be to make the Gospel " without money and
without price," all gifts being gathered for the poor
saints only. The religion of Jesus Christ was never sent
into the world to add to the intolerable burdens which
chartered villainy has laid upon the poor. It came into
the world to undo every burden unrighteously imposed
and to do so without fee. How different, alas ! have
been the aims and methods of the so-called "Free"
churches. They have ended in making the Gospel one
of the costliest luxuries of the age, and the farther they
have gone, the more candidly have they let it appear
that to compass the religious needs of the whole people
does not enter into their programme. It is contrary to
the genius of the Free Churches to remember the poor
which Paul was so forward to do. They avowedly cater
for prosperous people, for upon secular prosperity they
depend ; it is the very breath of their life.
One has only to read attentively the speeches of the
leaders of Nonconformity and to take stock of the reports
SPURIOUS VOLUNTARYISM. 133
of the state of their churches in the colonies to perceive
that the great body and mass of the people are entirely
left out of their calculations ; they propose nothing re-
garding them ; they do not even mention them. We
can almost hear them say in every page, " That class,
"you know, we don't contemplate. God has given us
"the fat pastures of the middle class. It is perhaps a
" matter of thankfulness that God, in His mysterious
" Providence, has raised up the Eitualists and the Salva-
" tion Army to take up the work that class, you know
" which we have always neg , I meant to say
" negatively supported."
Why they should be so mightily content with a
system which places beyond their reach the greater
part of the nation, and why they should think divine the
church principles and order which compel them to
"neg " that greater part, belongs doubtless to Faith
as it does not to reason. But the reason why they should
rest on social inequality and desire its maintenance is
plain. Voluntary churches are nothing if not wealthy.
Everything about them calls for coin and coin everlast-
ingly, and they are by long practice skilfully expert in
making the cause of coin appear to be the cause of
Christ, so that the nourishing condition of a church is
estimated, not so much by attendance or devoted work,
but mainly by the amount of its subscriptions. To roll
up debts heedless of their power to discharge them to
plunge into all kinds of superfluous alterations, addi-
tions, and attractions, and then (because the sum is not
large enough to make a strong appeal to the public with)
to conjure up yet another luxury, and to christen the
whole outlay by the sacred epithet, the " cause of
Christ " this is one of the stock methods of the free
churches. And after a congregation has nobly struggled
to reduce the debt, making sacrifices for the poorest and
smallest of causes the selfish adornment of worship
134 PURITANISM IN POWER.
(for if the church was truly free and open, without pew
rents, it would be a different thing) the weaned and
harassed people find their toil is the toil of Sisyphus,
and all has to be begun over again. For their leaders
having a firm faith that the chapel screw should be
always turning; that it keeps the people together to cast
a net of debt about their shoulders ; and the Pastor
having an ignorant notion that they are for the most
part "making money like anything," and that the fever
of " covetousness " must be checked by a Godly treat-
ment of perpetual bleeding ; whereas, in truth, the
permanent condition of the " pew " is, for the most part,
one of desperate struggle to " keep up appearances," and
that, not at all from choice, but bitter necessity, for to
hold on at all, the lie must be kept up I say the leaders
who, being men of substance, are ever ready at the shep-
herd's call to harass the flock, take care that some new
plea for further outlay shall immediately be found, and
not the church, but the world also, shall be made to
know by another bevy of collectors how much they are
doing for the " cause of Christ."
Now voluntaryism, to be genuine, should not suffer an
appeal. The true voluntaryism seeks the objects of
its benevolence. It enquires which of the innumerable
company of professional charities, which of the infinite
number of distressed families and individuals has
claims upon its gifts, and " in secret," according to the
Master's command, it bestows.
The spurious voluntaryism is the result of appeal, of
artifice, of dunning, of leech sticking, not seldom of
flattery and cajolery. It offers to blow a trumpet for the
almsgiver, and not only to let the left hand know, but
the whole country (or rather the whole denomination,
which is certainly not all the country). It asks not
whether the desired donor is a Christian, but if he can
be got at, caught, and to what extent bled, and the best
SPUEIOUS VOLUNTARYISM. 135
methods of attacking him on his weak side. It would
have the person appealed to spared the trouble of enquiry
as to priority of claims, of decision after conviction ; it
would precipitate judgment by the bold assertion that
this, THIS is the cause of Christ be it new organ, new
stoves, or new varnish (the last painter having so adul-
terated his wares that after the people had sat down
they could not get up again, but had to sing sitting
" Here for ever would we be"), and so having prevailed
the foraging party consisting of a minister (a faultless
harmony in black and white), a popular alderman,
celebrated for his oil, and a breezy whirl-away successful
Evangelical, whose large business powerfully influences
every request he makes to the expectant satellites of his
rolling concern, take their departure with chuckling
satisfaction, and at the door-step meet a rival troop on
similar depredation bent. With a joke they pass them by,
and, lo ! on the opposite side of the street they see a
column advancing from the very preserves they had
planned to descend upon next. After a pious and parlia-
mentary objurgation upon the copious eloquence of one
of their colleagues, which had detained them so long,
they now with chastened spirits consider whether they
should wait upon the angry bee to-day, or leave him till
next week when he may have filled his thighs again
with honey. Alas ! for the weighted bee, it flies low and
slow ; in order that it may mount upward the voluntary
churches are ready to strip it bare.
Meanwhile, huddled into a corner of the office first
entered, has been standing long, waiting for justice, not
charity, a group of dusty toil-marred men, who have
come to prefer a suit against some miserable scrimping
of their usual pay. The faultless harmony in black and
white has brushed past them on going out, the effulgent
alderman and the effervescing Evangelical Maecenas, if
they noticed them at all, would only do so as men notice
136 PURITANISM IN POWER.
an unwelcome whiff from a noxious manufacture a
manufacture which is necessary to our commercial
greatness as it would appear is also the manufacture
of widows and orphans for, cowering behind the soiled
and battered group is another tearful suitor, the widow
of a chief mate, who told his friend ere he left the port
that it was impossible, without fine weather, his over-
loaded steamer should reach her destination. The
respectable foragers for charity having departed trium-
phant, it is now the turn for helpless poverty to plead
for justice.
The loud-voiced wrangle commences. It is deemed
impertinence for Labour to urge its case. What case
could poverty ever have ? It is ever, unless organized,
submission or starvation. The widow is, perhaps, re-
minded of the act of God, who is apparently held
responsible for submerging Plimsoll's mark; at all events
for the present all these suitors are finally bundled out
and go empty away. A portion of the trumpeted alms
that went out with the first party would have made them
all glad. Next morning the same office is Fluttered by a
litter of ladies, for the attractions of sex are brought in
to solidify argument, and finally some Sisters of Mercy,
with white wings flapping above a blue sea of serge, come
with a basket neither do they depart empty away, and
that very night they carry alms to some of the very
houses to which justice was denied.
Going home from the worry, and the stress, and th<-
strain of the daily battle, business men are next way-
laid by a guerilla army of little children sent out to beg
for the missionary societies, and the shillings that would
have paid for needed milk in the families of defrauded
labour are extracted by a handsome boy in a velvet suit,
because he is a neighbour's son in the lofty crescent.
How pleased must the Lord of the harvest be with all
these goings on. He was called the Just One.
SPURIOUS VOLUNTARYISM. 137
One of the most successful means of replenishing the
ever deficient treasury of the Free churches is by the
application of the . business screw. A trader having
large dealings with wholesale merchants, or wholesale
people soliciting business with smaller traders, employ
the screw in the one case, or suffer themselves to be bled
in the other, with a practical end in view.
To say that the religion of Jesus Christ in the system
of the Free churches gains any credit thereby, is against
reason and against truth. It is viewed as a part of the
farce of Life, an addition to the threads of falsity, hum-
bug, and cant, with which the warp and woof of modern
society is so abundantly furnished.
Is it necessary to allude to bazaars, when certain
people make up for a long abstinence from godless
amusements by a senseless carnival, upon a pious plea.
Bazaars, in the furnishing of which womankind exhausts
itself in the solution of the problem how to make the
greatest number of the most useless articles, and to
commit the greatest number of murders of flying
moments for the gloiy of God who gave us life. Bazaars
in which indeed " the price of a thing is what it will
bring" and commercialism enjoys an apotheosis, its
most objectionable principles being piously practised in
the interest of Christianity. In this case, however, the
sport, although originally provided by the labours of the
poor, is not made at their expense, and as the fun of
plundering one another is not attended by any awkward
reflections, Bazaars are indeed felt to be " as good as a
play," and furnish a needed vent for spirits that have
suffered depression by an overdose of sermons and tea
fights.
Another prominent means of replenishing the hungry
Exchequer of Voluntaryism is found in the doctrine
that the Divine blessing and favour upon our
business schemes and enterprises are to be secured by
138 PURITANISM IN POWER.
timely and sufficient sacrifices upon God's altar. The
extent to which this doctrine is believed in and practised
is almost incredible. The poor Italian peasant who pays
his priest to bless his crop, whether or no he has applied
the right manure or sown the right seed, is a reasonable
and moral being in comparison with the Company
promoter who conceives the notion that God will influence
investors to believe his prospectus on account of a
previous tribute from the wages of unrighteousness.
The same superstition will lead men to give donations
when they are head over ears in debt donations which
would amuse the persons who have loaned to them all
the capital they possess, were it not that they too ven-
ture a pious hope that such liberality may give them an
additional security. And untaught by experience after
experience, that God disowns all such impious attempts
to chain them to their immoral chariot of progress
they will go on in the very spirit of the Neapolitan saint
worshipper, who imagines his fault lay only in his choice
of the altar, and disregarding the leaven of un-
righteousness within the scheme having tried the
shrine of chapel building, ministerial salaries, Sunday
schools, Salvation army and Dr. Barnardo they will look
out for the latest canonized novelty and believe that will
at last help them in their new raid upon the public
especially if they can get upon the Board of Directors
" a really Christian man."
These extraordinary combinations of the Evangelical
theology with the wordly aim and spirit are mainly due
to the way in which Voluntaryism is vaunted and
worked. A ministry entirely dependent upon the gifts
of the wealthy readily evolves the maxim, "Get all you
can and give all you can," while the laity delightedly
catch up a saying absolutely at right angles, in its first
member, with the Master's precept, and make practical
comment upon it in this wise, " Get all you can without
SPURIOUS VOLUNTARYISM. 139
being righteous overmuch, and if you fall over the line
you can condone your sin by giving all you can." The
whole absurdity arising from the diligently propagated
belief that the world is to be saved by money, and that
if only Christians would consecrate their substance in
sufficient degree the world would be won to Christ in a
generation (this class of speaker and writer always
ignore the fact that each generation comes into the
world blank barbarians, and that thus no permanence is
possible in the results of Christian labour).
Now the idea that the world is to be saved by money
is absolutely foreign to the entire teaching of Christ and
His Apostles and opposed to all ecclesiastical history.
" Thy money perish with thee," is the indignant
rejoinder of the Apostle when a blinded deceiver thought
to purchase the powers and companionship of the Holy
Ghost by his unlawful gains. " Lay not up for your-
selves treasures upon earth," is the emphatic precept
of the Master. Ye must not be as the Gentiles, one
exercising lordship over the other. One is your Master,
even Christ, and all ye are brethren.
The Primitive Church made its marvellous conquests
over the debased subjects of the Eoman Empire, not by
means of its money, but its martyrdoms.
With the genesis of any great historical movements in
religion, money has never yet been connected. It was
Wycliffe's "poor priests" that sowed the seeds of the
Eeforrnation in England, and the German Eeformer
himself only ceased to be spiritually powerful when he
basked under the patronage of the great, and abandoned
the peasants' cause. It is the plutocracy of the Free
Churches which is to-day destroying them lifting them
annually at a greater distance from the masses of the
people and making them more and more frankly admit,
that in the nature of things, their sphere as voluntary
churches must remain among the moneyed classes,
140 PURITANISM IN POWER.
while commoner agencies, worked by proxy at a distance
from the people themselves, and by money donated by
the wealthy members, is to fill up what is seen to be the
enormous gulf between a National provision for religious
nurture and the only system open to Nonconformity.
But what a travesty of Christ's idea ! To make wealth
the line of separation ! And not alone a separation
between Church and World, but likewise between poor
Christian and rich Christian !
If pressed and pushed into a corner upon this
question, honest dissenters would be obliged to confess
that it appears absolutely necessary to the existence of
society and to the growth of fine specimens of " robust ''
Christianity (meaning by " robust " champions of the
Liberation Society) that there should exist a great
inferior substratum of socially lost humanity which
should furnish the materials for cheap labour, upon
which our commercial greatness and the Voluntary
system in fact depend, and in the correction of whose
vices, together with charitable ministration to whose
distresses, the prosperous middle-classes gathered into
Nonconformist Churches are exercised in the Christian
virtues.
It is the basest and paltriest conception that ever found
shelter in a human brain, and the most unchristian.
The clergyman who, with his curates, lives in the pain-
fully depressing desert of slums which constitute his
parish, and deems all men, women, and children within
its area the flock which Christ has given him to feed
who calls and owns them members of the Church of
England because Christ died for all men, and who visits
them all, seeking not theirs, but them ; and for experience
sake will take up his abode in a common lodging-house,
to fall sick in the same impure atmosphere which its
inmates breathe, and to have the wastrels offering with
awkward kindness, eggs for his breakfast table to make
SPURIOUS VOLUNTARYISM. 141
him stronger that Parochial system and that man have
caught a glimpse of the Divine ideal, out of sight nearer
the true one than anything voluntaryism has displayed.
The denial of hope and honour to that portion of the
body corporate which is " the more necessary " was
never Christ's idea ; and it was His chief claim to
recognition as the Messiah that under His ministry the
poor had the Gospel preached unto them. The com-
munion which He established for the remembrance of
His death till He came again, had as its central idea
the equal participation by His followers of everything
necessary alike for the -body as the soul. Until that day,
when in the name of Christ economical justice shall be
done to the masses, we will reverence and uphold that
system which at all events embodies the Divine idea of
religious equality as opposed to the Nonconformist
Churches in which the same is patently outraged.
Let it be remembered there can be no wealth without
correlated poverty (the small accumulations of thrift
and abstinence to make provision against age and
accident of course excluded). There can be no great
gains apart from the possession of an inheritance in-
juriously large the oppressive use of evil laws a
gambling pursuit of business or iniquitous dealing as
between producer or consumer. The fair reward of
exerticn of brain or muscle will never yield either wealth
or want. The Free Churches in basing their prospects
of success upon their power to attract the rich piety of
the country, and to induce it perpetually to disgorge in
relief of want and in sustenance of missions, are postu-
lating the permanence of that reign of unrighteousness
which it was the very purpose of Christ to overthrow.
Of course the Free Churches are not entirely composed
of wealthy persons; but for those members who are
not, the atmosphere is likely to be neither agreeable
nor wholesome.
142 PURITANISM IN POWER.
The fact is the general insincerity and falseness of
modern life extend to the gifts of the sanctuary. People
give out of proportion to their means because it is
expected of them ; and when they are at their wits' end
to meet their obligations, they are yet found putting down
their names for sums which they owe elsewhere.
It may be said that is a matter for individual con-
science with which the system has nothing to do ; but
I say that it is the voluntary system as worked which
popularizes the notion that the measure of the good
Christian is the length of his purse and his readiness
to empty it for all that Nonconformity requires. There
are always a number of vulgar people who are allowed
prominence on account of their money, and these persons
anxious to make a display of their means are for ever
discovering some "cause of God" a presentation bust;
silver tea service ; purse of money and everyone who
does not follow at a decent distance the large figures of
Mr. A. or Mr. B. are made to feel that they have dis-
appointed the collectors, or, worse still, they have been
detected and it is whispered about in the flagrant
delinquency of being poor.
This practical inquisition into means, this tyranny of
a prying curiosity into circumstances, tested perpetually
by appeals for subscriptions to fads, goes on perpetually
in Dissenting Chapels.
And it is always " the cause of God." It is the cause
of God to pay one's debts, to help one's aged parents, to
relieve widows and orphans, to minister to the sick, and
at one's own expense freely to preach the Gospel. Above
all, it is the cause of God to withhold one's hands from
bribes, and to cleanse one's soul from lies ; which may
often be found an impossible task to those who spread
their peacock's tail of guineas to amaze beholders.
The consideration which the wealthy and withal
generous member meets with, is matched by the uncom-
SPUKIOUS VOLUNTARYISM. 148
promising and complete drop which is administered to
the brother who has offended by becoming poor.
Perhaps he departed for one of the colonies, in the
odour of becoming substantiality. Being in that con-
dition acceptable to both God and man, the Church and
congregation made a great tea-meeting for him, and
bade him farewell with worthy and genuine good feeling.
A few years elapse and the feted individual is again a
worshipper in the chapel. No congratulatory groups
attend his entry no tea-meeting hails his return he is
quietly dropped. But if he was of any strength to the
" cause " before, he is far more likely to be a strength
to it now. For in the wilderness he lost a child, his
house was burned down, and locusts devoured his crops.
It was after the last protection had been stripped away
that God's own arms came round about his soul to warm
it ; but he is dropped, and with his spiritual riches he
hies elsewhere, for the place that knew him knows him no
more.
It is the determination to go expensively to work that
swings the door inwards for the successful -man, and
outwards for the poor unfortunate. The denomination
must keep up with the times ; and it is always ready to
clap a full-blown church apparatus and organization
upon any humble group of Christians who may have
spontaneously commenced Christian fellowship and work.
And how often has this very thing spoiled it all, and
prevented all after-growth !
The little gathering of humble persons are renting a
room the meetings are full of enthusiasm the Sunday
School crowded. But, alas ! it is determined to make a
" stated place of worship of it " to erect a grand stone
chapel, with five or six foundation stones : and no sooner
is this done than the spirit of the thing evaporates.
The group is lost in a building too large for it a freezing
formality creeps into the services, and the newly-formed
144 PURITANISM IN POWER.
church commences a long dragging existence ; pulling
money out of poor people, harassed tradesmen, and
bewildered business men, who know not whether they
are standing on their heads or on their heels whether
they are not virtually bankrupt when they give large
sums away.
Not that we would have religious edifices of all degrees
of inferiority to suit the social differences prevailing. We
would rear the fretted roof, emblazon the windows, and
lift the spire. We would have the sweet and solemn
sounds of choir and organ ; albeit such things are
subordinate throughout to prayer, to teaching, and to
work, which are the best parts of worship. But such
provision it belongs to national resources to make. It is
perfectly true that real spiritual culture is independent
of these aids to devotion, and that the elaboration of the
means may obscure and obstruct the end. This is not
our present consideration, but rather we desire to point
out that the ends to be served b}' noble buildings and im-
posing ceremonials are suitable to a National Church,
dealing with the masses of the people; while the smaller
and scattered companies of the pilgrim church are only
hindered in their special work and function by being led
to come after, at an immense distance, the august cere-
monial of the National Establishment. The noble cathe-
dral we know and the Parish church with its village of
the dead, embosomed in green, gathered beneath its ivy-
mantled tower, and the spreading yew we know but
what are these ? These pigmy cathedrals ? this Brum-
magem Parish church? this hybrid conventicle and
minster ? announcing, too, its anthems beforehand, like
any first-class National Establishment. It is so remark-
ably suggestive of Susan's attempt to dress up like her
mistress on Sunday afternoons ; and when it makes drafts
upon Susan's purse, which she is unable to meet without
withdrawing aid from her young sister and aged mother,
SPURIOUS VOLUNTARYISM. 145
Susan is in many ways injured by the useless imitation.
When it is the case of a wealthy free church spending
its ample means freely, it suggests the difference between
the brand new country seat of the retired speculator and
the neighbouring towers which have reflected the suns
of centuries.
The objection we take to the voluntaryism of the Free
Churches as spurious no less applies to the Salvation
Army. This organization has grown and thriven because
it was the first uncompromising declared effort to reach
the masses whom the middle-class shop-gospellers were
natively incompetent to deal with. They let down the
Gospel net in strange waters and brought up everywhere
a marvellous number of strange fish men and women
wanting, natively, in culture, refinement, and often in
the power to read, who yet, under the culture of God's
Spirit, became teachers and preachers of remarkable
pith and power. When they had spelt out in a corner
the easiest words of a text, the meaning of the long
words which baffled them flashed upon them, and they
could discourse upon the inner and spiritual truth of the
passage with more power and perhaps more truth than
the learned commentator. Human life was their school.
They spake only of what they knew. But the grand
movement has been marred by the money question by
the idea that Salvation Army barracks and training
schools, and bands, and bonnets and watches were essen-
tials to the progress of the work. The captains and
majors were thrown upon the district " invaded" for their
supplies, only an inadequate quota being guaranteed,
the result being a truly necessary, but not the less
deplorable concentration of attention on the part of the
officers to the collection part of the business, which, in
season and out of season, is sure to be introduced.
Expensiveness cannot here be charged. The officers fare
poorly, live plainly, and the buildings are unadorned.
10
146 PUfllTANISM IN POWER.
But why buildings at all? unless the rental of any
water-tight roof in wintry weather. Why brass bands ?
Why so many paid officers ? Not a meeting in room or
street but is closed by a collection, letting the people be
sure of one thing, that these men and women desire
from them something more than surrender of their
hearts to Christ. WTien by the Eailway Arches at
Plymouth a circle is made on Sunday morning, the
brass instruments and two drums facing a bevy of Salva-
tion lasses, and the spaces between filled up by some
curious children and vacant sailors ; when the Boss of the
business, straddle-legged, marches up and down like a
skipper upon the deck of a rolling vessel ; when a
quondam general servant pirouettes within the ring,
almost bringing her fists into the faces of the interested
listeners as she darts from side to side ; w r hen she tells
of the famishing children of the drunkard rushing at
her three buns, and makes the groundless prediction,
confidently, that if they will come to Christ they will
never be out of work (although the year book of every
denomination will show a number of pious pastors
who are out of harness), some good impression will
probably be made, but it is certainly not improved
upon by the finale of the meeting. The big drum is
whirled into the centre of the ring, and the object of the
effort appears now to be silver not souls ; or, leastways,
coppers ; for the Boss, appealing to some dozen children
and fifteen saunterers, suggests that they should at least
have five shillings from such a meeting, whereupon four
halfpennies are bounced from his pocket and hop upon
the drum-head to encourage the others ; a few more
copper tokens are aimed from the crowd, and the Boss,
showing his disappointment, appeals again. It is
remarkably like the proceedings at some street circus
performance " Only another halfcrown, ladies and gen-
tlemen, and up goes the donkey." The four coppers
SPURIOUS VOLUNTARYISM. 14?
from the Boss's pocket is not the least singular part of
the affair, for what he has given he will surely take back
again, the gathering being for local sustenance. It
would fluster the deacons if the congregation, after
putting money in the plate, came and asked to take it
home again.
Now you may search from Genesis to Eevelation and
will not find anything that can be twisted or tortured
into a sanction for these specimens of voluntaryism.
Christ and His Apostles knew nothing of this sort of money
question. In the days when Christianity was leavening
the Koman Empire with a power that brought down pre-
sently the whole system of its idolatry, Christians placed
no faith in the magic of money, and would have refused
any such aid if tendered by their pagan neighbours. Our
Lord had much to say about men getting rid of their
possessions, but never asked that the surrender should
benefit Himself, His disciples, or His propaganda only
the poor so much otherwise, that when He sent forth
His twelve to preach the kingdom He forbade them
taking any money with them, and inferentially would
forbid them receiving any. The voluntary hospitality of
those who gladly heard their word was to be their sole
support. This was necessary to itinerant evangelists ;
had they been commissioned to settle in several districts
we cannot doubt but what they would have been com-
manded to work for an ensample to their flock, and that
they might the better comprehend the common burden
and know the prevalent economical injustice.
The propagation of the new Faith, however, demanded
itinerants at that stage ; and even afterwards when
churches had been planted and were to be sustained in
the ordination of Timothy, and Paul's recommendations
as to bishops and elders there is nothing provided for
support, the inference being that the matter was no
part of a divinely constituted order, but was left to the
148 PURITANISM IN POWER.
free determination of bishop and people, the warning
being given that this matter would give rise to the most
grievous corruption and oppression in latter days,
" grievous wolves" making their appearance who would
" not spare the flock."
St. Paul, who counted it to be his chief glory that he
had made the gospel free because he would not be a
burden to anyone, undertook in the chivalry of his
noble disposition the defence of those who are not so
scrupulous. Is it not so always ? The apologists for
those who are content with a lower ideal of duty, and
appear to be unjustly assailed, are generally those
who have adopted and subjected themselves to a rule
that would exclude criticism and attack. And so chival-
rous Paul puts in his word for those who are "working
not at all " in the burdensome worldly way, but only in
the sweet ministry of Christ's word. His master had
taught him to work while he preached the kingdom.
Christ, when he left the carpenter's bench, although His
ministry forced Him to itinerate, never gave up work and
w r ould not suffer it in His disciples. To prepare for it,
He got up when it was day, and retired from it when the
sun was setting. It must never be forgotten or over-
looked that the ministry of Christ was twofold, to the
bodies and to the souls of men, and that He and His
disciples worked hard at curing the one, whether they
succeeded or not in vitalizing the other. The carpenter
of Nazareth became the heaven-endowed Physician and
Surgeon with a train of assistant physicians and
surgeons who went about Palestine without carriages and
without fees, preaching the Kingdom of God and healing
the sick. It has been the habit of preachers and com-
mentators to regard all this work for the salvation of
men's bodies as quite beside the main purpose of the
Eevelation of Jesus Christ, which is made out to be
exclusively a scheme for the redemption of man as soul
SPURIOUS VOLUNTARYISM. 149
and spirit an egregious error which the consideration of
a temporal economy over the Jews for two thousand
years should have saved even careless enquirers from
falling into. But this by the way. Christ and His
disciples were more than brain-workers, they were a
hard-working ambulance corps, and almoners upon oc-
casion to starving people. Brain work is in a way harder
than manual work, but is seldom attended by any equal
subjection of mind and body to irksomeness and painful
constraint, or as in modern civilization to conditions
positively injurious to health and life. It is therefore
that our sympathising High Priest did not release Himself
from anything of the kind, but trained His disciples to
manual and mental exercises in the service of complete
humanity which left them scarcely any time to eat.
The passage frequently referred to as substantiating the
claim of teachers of divine truth to be supported by the
labours of other men is that in Eomans xv. 26-27, when
the Apostle Paul tells of those in Macedonia and Achaia
whom it pleased to make a certain contribution for the
poor saints at Jerusalem, adding, " and verily their
debtors they are, for if they have been made partakers of
their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister to
them in carnal things." Now it is evident at a glance
that this passage establishes nothing to the point, for in
the first place the poor saints at Jerusalem neither in
person nor by proxy had ministered to the Gentiles of
Macedonia and Achaia, they were too poor either to go
themselves or to send others. What the Apostle has in
view is the contribution made by the Jewish world to the
Gentile world of a special divine revelation of which they
were constituted the trustees, and since the Gentile had
nothing comparable to it to render the Jewish world in
return neither its arts, science, nor philosophy being
able to weigh against a single Psalm of David's, to
say nothing of his greater Son he justly says, and
150 PURITANISM IN POWER.
" verily their debtors they are." It is but meet to
remember that nation in temporal things, from whom
such splendid spiritual gifts proceeded. He himself as,
not only a Jew, but also an Apostle and the actual
messenger of the glad tidings, would naturally have had
the first claim, but he renounces all idea of it, and will
convey the whole fruit to the poor at Jerusalem, whose
claim is just and justly met, according to his Master's
precept.
The other passage is in 1 Cor. ix. 14, "Even so hath
the Lord ordained that they who preach the gospel
should live of the gospel." The reference is obviously
to itinerant preachers missionaries some of them
" leading about a sister and wife," and giving trouble and
causing controversy in consequence. As we have already
said, the claim of the itinerant preacher is one that
cannot obviously be refused, as only knife grinders,
gipsies, and umbrella menders are understood to be in
possession of peripatetic professions. The Apostle
claims for those who had something new and true of
priceless worth to communicate that they should not be
hindered in their calling by the want of things necessary,
they were to receive hospitality a living as they went
from place to place, but this is not the same as establish-
ing the claim of a resident presbyter. Such claim has
no place in the instructions thereon to Timothy.
The free churches, then, to vindicate their claim to the
name, must furnish free preachers of the gospel and free
pastors likewise, taking the oversight of the flock, " not
for the sake of filthy lucre," but willingly in fulfilment of
a sacred charge to " Feed Christ's sheep." It dare not be
alleged as against the possibility of laymen engaged in
the ordinary associations of life undertaking the pastorate,
that they would have no time for visiting, for, in truth, the
neglect of visiting is the great defect everywhere alleged
against Nonconformist ministers and a portion of the
SPURIOUS VOLUNTARYISM. 151
clergy. Lay pastors would perchance meet their flocks in
the way of business upon the exchange, at the quay, in the
streets, at the office, in the factory, and if physicians, in
the sick-room dearly beloved Lukes. Then, without
ever going to the homes at inconvenient hours, the
pastor and flock would meet in the highways of the world
and could interject into the stream of necessarily
sordid, although often nobly comprehensive and intensely
interesting commercial surveys and discussions, those
themes of higher and eternal moment, the consideration
of which, just at those moments of commercial exchange,
is a far more effective method of exalting business by
righteousness, than leaving the reference to be made on
an especial day, set apart from business, and by a man
totally unacquainted with it.
And the intelligent sympathy of the lay pastor would
be so much more tender and true and just. For harsh-
ness, narrowness, and unjustness for heartless ignoring
of the special difficulties of struggling competitive
existence in a world full of the evil which chartered
selfishness and unescapable tyranny have filled it, com-
mend me to the professional ecclesiastic. From the
height of his secured income and accorded privileges he
looks down upon storm- tossed humanity, and deals out
to it the ethics of the Academy. Upon the Bench he
is the severest of magistrates, and in private his want
of sympathetic comprehension of what the situation of
others demands is the measure of his ignorance of what
the common lot really is. I mean these remarks to
apply especially to the Nonconformist ministry ; there
are numerous splendid examples to the contrary in the
Establishment, where men have made it their duty to
know something of that life of the masses which Non-
conformist ministers leave out of contemplation except
at a distance ignorantly and uncharitably to denounce it.
The Lay Pastor need want neither in scholarship nor
152 PURITANISM IN POWER.
eloquence if these be considered essential to the
husbandry of souls. Some of the greatest orators of
our time have not been professional ministers, and in
this age of education literary attainments are getting
commoner every day. What, according to the pro-
fessional estimate, would be lacking to them would be the
aids and instructions of the Theological denominational
College Colleges founded to accentuate matters of mint,
and tithe, and cummin, not to insist upon those weightier
matters upon which agreement between Christians is
fundamental and necessary. This final adornment of
the denominational Theology seems to be getting out
of the good graces of the Denominational Leaders them-
selves, who of late apologize for the existence of
Theological Colleges by eager explanations that they
exist to protest against the necessity of Creeds ! A
curious reason for going to the expense of endowing and
maintaining them.
Now, it will be found upon a candid examination
that no great religious teacher has ever risen who did
not depart from the teaching of his Theological College
using that term in the broadest sense, as indicative of
his alma-mater in religious knowledge. Augustine and
Origen, Arnold of Brescia, Donatus, Luther, Calvin,
Zwingle, Wycliffe, Wesley not to mention McLeod
Campbell, Jukes, Erskine of Lirlathen, Eobertson of
Brighton, Edward White, Henry Dunn, and others who
have followed in their train, such as Canon Farrar
all of them modified or discarded the teaching of
their Theological Colleges. They were spiritual lumin-
aries, and owed none of their light to the Academies
which were instituted to crystallize theology. The
Theological College that is open to every man is that
ancient one in which Enoch walked, and which conducted
him to God its alumini are the called, chosen, and
faithful disciples of Christ its Theological tutor is the
SPURIOUS VOLUNTARYISM. 153
Holy Spirit, who is perpetually fresh, original, advanc-
ing, suffering neither conscience, affections, nor intellect
to know pause, or to rest and be thankful ; but ever to
reach forward to the things that are before, forgetting
the things that are behind.
There is room, then, for yet another fellowship and
missionary organization one which shall be established
expressly to assert the fact that the Gospel is the gift
of God, and therefore is freely preached to all men.
The fundamental basis of the fellowship, which might
be fitly named the Companionship of Christ's Ambassadors,
should be
(1,) All preaching and teaching of the glorious Gospel
to be absolutely free.
(2,) All the ambassadors meeting expenses out of the
means provided by their own honest labour (as Sunday
school teachers and local preachers now do).
(3,) Any gifts offered to be absolutely refused as
payment for preaching Christ's Truth, the offerers being
recommended rather themselves judiciously to relieve the
poor.
(4,) Pastoral duty to be undertaken in the same spirit
and upon the same terms.
(5,) Clear evidences of a " New Birth " (which is a
thing as definite, perceptible, and demonstrable as a
lighted candle) to be the sole credentials for companion-
ship.
(6,) Criticism, censure, and excommunication to be
founded upon moral departures, and no other ; such
moral declension to include slackness in the work, and
the evident preferential pursuit of the ordinary worldly
ambitions.
It is believed these conditions will exclude the in-
tellectually, physically, and spiritually unfit. For the
Companionship would set it forth as the object of its
existence, its purpose to teach certain things taught by
154 PURITANISM IN POWER.
the original Apostles things which they knew, and the
knowledge of which was their essential qualification: e.g.,
(a) The Supernatural Being and character of Christ
Jesus, as God manifest in the flesh.
(6) That God commended His love toward us, in
that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us the
Just for the unjust, to bring us unto God that so the
matchless love of the Good Shepherd, in giving His life
for the wandering sheep, should reconcile the world
unto Himself, and be the sanction of His own Apostles*
precept, that we should likewise lay down our lives for
the Brethren.
(c) Christ's glorious resurrection and ascension to-
the right hand of the Majesty on high where He ever
liveth to make intercession for us, and to grant repent-
ance and remission of sins.
(d) The declaration of the ascension angels, that as-
He went up so shall He in like manner come again, to
judge the world in righteousness and rule the people
hi equity to set up the first and last Just Kingdom upon
earth.
(e) The Power of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter
Regenerator, Sanctifier, Revealer.
(/) That by grace are we saved, through Faith, and
that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God.
(g) That consequently we are justified by our Faith
and not by works, which without Faith are impure and
imperfect, and utterly inefficacious for Salvation.
(h) For Salvation consists in the heavenly impartation
of a new and supernatural life the gift of God in
Christ which necessarily works by love, and produces-
fruits incomparably more divine than those wrought
under a sanction of legality, which lack the vital
principle of Repentance toward God and faith in our
Lord Jesus Christ.
(?) That the Lord Jesus Christ will associate His-
SPURIOUS VOLUNTARYISM. 155
followers with Himself in the judgment of the World,
and the establishment and ordering of His everlasting
Kingdom.
These are the fundamental things which the Apostles
knar. Knew far more truly than the philosopher knows
the properties of the air we breathe or the " solid "
ground beneath our feet. For, in fact, the only thing
that man can positively know is God. Of God he can
make sure and predicate with certainty His attributes,
that He is love and that in Him is no darkness at all ;
but there is not a single " element " the entire attributes
of which have been or can be disclosed to the physicist's
torturing examination. God our Father is perpetually
offering Himself to us for our examination. Prove me !
Prove me ! Try me ! Know me ! Taste and see that
the Lord is good, and that His tender mercies are over
all His works. And whereas when we moved by the
captivating view of nature's surface, lift the veil and
penetrate her secret working, are struck with wonder,
but also disappointment, and the more we know of her,
the more our moral displeasure deepens to disgust with
the knowledge of God it is just the other way. We
commence with our doubts, and go on to rejoice in Him
as a son with his father, as a soldier with his captain, as a
man with his friend, and He tells us that this disappointing
immoral nature is no revelation of His real character
that it is a necessary stage in the evolution of the
Permanent Perfection, and, being imperfect, is destined
duly to disappear and give place to all things new.
So that the knowledge of the Scientist is concerned with
the transitory and imperfect, while the child of God
alone can reach a true knowledge of anything, and that
of God the Perfect and the Eternal.
The Companionship of Christ's Ambassadors might
therefore truly style themselves the New Gnostics,
and oppose to the uncertain gropings and hesitating
156 PURITANISM IN POWER.
apologetics of the Materialists, the strong song of clear-
sighted faith and love in Him that is True. " We know
that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an under-
standing, that we may know Him that is true, and we
are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ.
This is the true God and eternal life."
Since the Companionship of Christ's Ambassadors
would put it forth, that they existed to teach the things
they knew, of course no one who did not know those
things would offer to join the fellowship. The scientist
scorns to attempt to speak of that of which he knows
nothing or next to nothing. This fact, that only
Gnostics could be admitted, would dispense with creed.
The men who could not preach Jesus Christ crucified
and raised again, and that He is the Saviour of all men,
especially of those that believe, because they had no
certain knowledge of it, would of course keep aloof,
and with them the whole body of Unitarians and
semi-Unitarians, atonement-deniers, works-justifiers,
and sacerdotal- sacrament-mongers. These children of
God He suffers to be involved in confusion and error, to
be encompassed by doubts and difficulties, and to be
drawn away from the simplicity and sufficiency of
Christ, and while thus their light is obscured, they have
no life-giving message for men. The man that is in
doubt ought for ever to hold his peace. The only men
who are entitled to speak and to be heard are the men
who know, and the Christians, in the vital puritanical
sense, are the only men who, in religion, know anything.
"We speak that we do know"; it is the tone of
Apostleship to the end of time.
Into this fellowship the scarcely literate Salvation
Army captain could be welcomed. He or she, like the
last real convert in India, China, or Africa, would speak
the same things as the whole Church of God would
know them, not having been taught them by men, except
SPUKIOUS VOLUNTARYISM. 157
mediately, but by God. He or she would doubtless
preach hell torments for all who did not believe ; that is
only their limited grasp of a grand fundamental verity
the absolute certainty of retribution for sin about which
we all know far more than about the law of gravitation.
That limited conception will clear itself and correct itself
in time, as the preachers know more of the love of God
and what His retribution is designed to effect ; the Com-
panionship will make even the preaching of a crude hell
fire no barrier to fellowship. The one requisite will be
ability to talk in the language of saved Christians of
their own deficiency and Christ's sufficiency, and to show
forth their faith and regeneration by their new fruit unto
holiness.
Now who will join us ? I appeal to men and women
everywhere who know that they are in Him that is True,
to show forth the everlasting freeness of His love by pro-
claiming it freely to all men. No pews, no tolls, no pay, no
begging, no purse, no scrip. The pilgrim's staff, the
loins girt, the feet shod with the preparation of the
Gospel of Peace ; no special garb, but jewellery abjured
and cleanliness remembered to be next to godli-
ness. Forsake your luxurious lolling pews for the
delightful learning that comes from imparting what you
know. Strew God's deserted garden with your happy
faces and make it echo with your earnest words : "Freely
ye have received, freely give." Heaven itself will receive
a deeper tone of joy, and the Lord who freely offered
Himself up without spot to God for us all, will hail with
a "well done, good and faithful servant," those who
make it clear to the world that He came to free it from
every yoke the taxes of the "voluntary" churches most
of all.
158
CHAPTER III.
THE PROGRESS OF RITUALISM.
KING HAL had coarsely cut the country free from
Rome and left the common people to the kindly
protection of the law and the neglect of the elect.
Lollardism driven inwards had been burrowing with
its leaven underground, but presently rose ferment-
ing to the surface, and king and statesmen perceiving
the strength and genuineness of the irrepressible move-
ment, hooked it to their private chariots of avarice and
licence and broke from Vatican restraints.
The unfettered spirit of Lord Cobham was stalking
through the land, shaking his red-hot chains to encourage
his followers and to bind his foes, but the untoward
result of the blossoming of Wycliffe's tree was that the
lenient landlordism of the Abbey was exchanged for that
of the rapacious Lord, and Emmanuel's land was vomit-
ing forth paupers to hang for robbery or the guilt of
starving.
Protestantism went on, and the Lord Protector
Somerset providentially punished the Papacy for its
unconscionable robbery of poor England in first-fruits,
tithes, and annates, by grabbing them for the Crown and
for himself. Rome has been ever since affectionately
desirous of the return to the true fold of that sheep
whose shearing was so profitable.
Protestantism went on, and a hatred of Rome (not the
world) became the religion of Englishmen. It was a
prejudice not without its value. A nation with a preju-
dice against things that look evilward, and towards those
that look good ward, or, still better, God ward, may be
saved by its prejudices as the Jews were.
But while railing against Babylon, England itself was
THE PEOGKESS OF KITUALISM. 159
building Babel's towers and with Babylonian slaves, for
Babylon, with its luxury laid in servitude, stands ever in
contrast to Jerusalem the city of the free, the equal,
and the endowed. And so the new Babylonianism,
lengthening its cords and strengthening its stakes, went
on to accomplish the deeper degradation of the masses ;
and the Church, which exposed the Papal indulgences
once granted to the laity, allowed its clergy to dispense
indulgences to themselves.
In Wales Sunday sent one village to wrestle with
another, and the Parson, fetched from the tavern, and
commencing " Dearly beloved brethren," would startle to
their holes three starved mice, his most attentive hearers.
The Nonconformists had gone out of her and slunk
into the back streets, with even less interest in the people
than the Church. At length the Spirit took a two-edged
sword the Brothers Wesley and hewed the devil out
of his strongholds in the neglected land.
Whitefield and Berridge, Cowper and Newton, Wilber-
force and Lady Huntingdon, kept watering the protestant
soil, but only where Wesleyanism brought into the new
reformation the comprehensive organization which the
Establishment suggested, did anything like a glimpse of
the new Jerusalem appear, and in the church itself
"Low" meant high above the common people, and
" High '' meant low. Mary Unwin let it appear that the
gulf which separated her from Mary the maid was some-
thing as insuperable as that which divided Lazarus from
Abraham, and when Cowper threw a blanket to the
Olney poor at Christmas time, haggard children danced
about like witches in Macbeth. We see the common
people in the etchings of Eowlandson and Gilray as well
as their pastors and masters Hogarth's " March of the
Guards to Finchley," and his moral series.
It was not a pleasing representation, and factory
labour was to make the reality more offensive than the
160 PURITANISM IN POWER.
caricature. Protestantism went on, without having
given a word of direction to Howard to reform the
prisons, or Raikes to rake the children from the gutter,
or Romily to humanize our Draconian code, or Brougham
to bring the lamp of knowledge to the people's darkness.
The church people congratulated themselves that if the
people did not go with them to prayers, neither did they
themselves go with the multitude to do evil, and the
dissenters kept " marching through Emmanuel's land to
fairer worlds on high."
It was at such a time that a silver voice arose Sunday
after Sunday in the lofty aisles of Oxford's University
church. It spoke with the quiet penetrating worshipping
fervour which has ever since distinguished the best
specimens of the High Anglican school.
It cast forth a string of vocal and intellectual pearls
and paused, then cast forth another string. It was a
passing bell, chiming the requiem of complacent evan-
gelicalism in the Protestant Church of England, and the
key note of the new teaching was this, which John
Henry Newman read with rapt and peculiar emphasis,
" Jerusalem which is from above is free, which is the
mother of us all."
Falling into the error of supposing that there can
ever be such a thing as authority in matters of faith,
since faith is something that can never be made, im-
posed, imparted or received, but only begotten, the
new men were struck by the nonsensical character of a
pact or compromise between Crown and Clergy as to
things to be believed and taught, and naturally turned
to the unbroken tradition of Peter's chair as offering
superior vouchers for valid supremacy to anything that
had assumed to rule the church in England, hence
they commenced laboriously, and it must be added, dis-
ingenuously, to prove that the Anglican branch was still
in things spiritual one with the Catholic church.
THE PKOGKESS OF RITUALISM. 161
It had not struck them that formal sacramental union,
with an ecclesiastical authority assuming to represent
Christ's See on earth, was positively nothing in com-
parison with the only real spiritual junction which faith
effects when it receives and adores the invisible Lord and
Head of His body the Church ; that consequently it is a
matter of comparative indifference, except for practical
liberty and progress, in what way any nation may attach
its organized Christianity to the machinery of the State.
It is impossible for the State to make the creed,
abstractedly as a State, but the people composing the
State having agreed together under guidance of Peter's
king invisible, such creeds, defensive against positive and
negative error as may for the time suffice, may cheerfully
be subscribed to, always in subjection to that allegiance
which conscience owes to Christ.
Whatever theorizers may say, God does use nations
and kings and kingly power and organized national
instrumentality for the spiritual interests of His kingdom.
It is impossible for a church militant to exist on any
other terms. She being in the world, the Kuler of the
world will make any power or dominion which His wisdom
may select the instruments of His will concerning her.
And to make a stand at an abstract idea yclept "the
State," and maintain that State interference and control
vitiate the cardinal principle of the relations that should
exist between the secular and the spiritual autonomy, is
to cast confusion upon the nature of that concrete thing
the State, which, when free, is nothing other than the
church itself in its capacity as legislative guardian of
the common interests, and when legislating with reference
to the church, having special reasons for expecting
divine illumination and guidance. All of course depends
upon the State being free, but we are entitled to discuss
this question entirely with reference to the situation of
England in the present day, and without reference, for
11
162 PURITANISM IN POWER.
instance, to Russia, where the Lutheran faith has
recently been proscribed. We are considering a Nation
truly free, and a Church truly free, and the union and
incorporation of two free things must consist with the
maintenance of freedom in each.
The pouits that attracted the new men most were
undoubtedly: (1,) The blissfulness of resting the weary,
question-haunted soul upon a foundation of authority
unimpeachable because Divine (an authority, by the way,
offering itself daily for such decisive ending of doubt
to every man having power to pray).
(2,) That fascinating and imperishable ideal of a Divine
authority set up over all earthly kings and princes, whose
function should be the guardianship of justice and virtue
the wide world over, and the extirpation of evil by the
propagation of the Christian verities the Catholic
adding and the dispensing of sacramental grace denied
by Puritans.
It is this central idea of a Kingdom of Heaven upon
Earth into which all men are brought by God's covenant
of love in Christ, and from whose blessed constraints and
privileges they only deprive themselves by constant
striving against grace it is this which the Church of
England before Newman's time practically ignored, and
which Nonconformists have always consistently denied
but it is an idea essentially divine it is an idea which
its false embodiment in the Papal system can never
deprive of Scriptural authority, or impugn the final
accomplishment in integrity and perfection.
Those who " know that they are in Him that is true "
are bound to proclaim unto all men that an everlasting
High Priest is daily presenting the merits of His own
sacrifice on their behalf that a Divine Intercessor and
Mediator and Advocate is always in attendance before
the Altar and the Throne that is withdrawn into the
highest Heavens that a Holy Spirit's energies shed
THE PROGEESS OF RITUALISM. 163
down from above, and not communicated by Episcopal or
any other hands, is constantly dropping upon thirsty
souls, renewing the soil of their heavenly graces, and
presenting the perfume of their praises and their prayers,
together with those of the whole Church, to the Father
and Redeemer of all and these great and eternal truths
should be made manifest to the multitude by a national
organization for worship, teaching, and work, in which
no single member of the nation is to be considered as
wanting in claim for membership and attentive care.
The callous or, more truly, despairing indifference of
men to the unjust oppressions of their fellows arises
from a failure to recognise aright their equal participation
in God's covenant of love " How can I suffer my
brother thus to be wronged, for whom, equally as for me,
Christ died ? " This idea the Papacy in the days of its
prime efficiency worked for the release of the serf and
the mitigation of middle-age oppressions of all kinds.
The Reformation set Protestants free of the idea that
all men had a sanctuary from the man- slayer in the
privileges of the Church. Unless vitally united to Christ
in the Puritan sense, they were under His wrath, and
being under God's eternal wrath, their temporary suffer-
ings at the hands of wicked men being so inconsiderable
an amount of what it was their lot to endure, were scarcely
worth a charitable effort to remove. Here was logical
room for the apathy of bands of Pilgrims " marching
through Emmanuel's land to fairer worlds on high."
If the masses are cut off from God's covenant of grace
if Hell is their portion for ever it matters little to
abstract from their portion an inappreciable fragment of
duration. Proceed then, my lordly spoliators; enclose
the common lands, abolish the Abbey alms without a
substitute ; let prisoners hang or rot in gaol ; what is all
that compared with what God is going to inflict upon
them !
164 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Hence Newman is listened to ; he surely has a diviner
idea than that ; he, too, knows that he is in Him that
is true.
And a Church authority above kings and princes is
not that, too, absolutely Divine an adumbration of
the rule of Christ and His Saints over the whole world ?
Church authority and Church privileges, both had
been wounded if not invalidated at the Keformation ; the
diseases of human society demanded their restoration
the Oxford School would do it. Of course the intellect
and spiritual intelligence of the country perceived the
drift and meaning of the moment, while the superficial
multitude only caught at gowns, genuflexions, and
altar candles.
Even at the present day it is amazing to see men like
Canon Farrar speaking as though ceremonialism in the
High Church signified no more than display, and deplor-
ing that divisions should arise upon matters of triviality.
There is nothing trivial in a single piece of symbolism
introduced in defiance of the Protestant rubrics, each
and all have their definite and significant bearing upon
the Catholic position that God's delegated authority in
the world is centred in the one True Church that to
this all men and all humanly constituted authorities
must bow 'that the one True Church has supernatural
powers vested in her Priesthood which are for the salva-
tion of the world. It is to these positions every item in
the innovations points white gown for black, eastward
position, depth of prostration all intended to exalt that
wondrous priesthood which at will can call the Omni-
present from the universe and fix Him in a spot of dough ,
and after administrating a final ta-ta to the miracle (a
curiously familiar sequel to the preceding adorations),
dons a mobcap, having for the present done with
humility, and parades its covered crown before the bare-
headed congregation.
THE PBOGBESS OF RITUALISM. 165
Quietly the poison worked. The exaltation of sacerdotal
authority requires for its supplement the apotheosis of
those who believed in it. Hence the calendar of saints.
And lest the scriptural all-sufficiency of Christ should
overshadow the authority which He committed to His
man-mediatorial Church, the Virgin is brought into
the scheme of the human mediatorship, and that most
blasphemous horror is consummated the implied affirma-
tion that the Heart of the Eternal Saviour who loved
His Church before the foundation of the world, and loves
it eternally by the necessity of His Being, requires to be
moved to compassion by the intercession of a Creature !
Give us the Hymn Book we will lead the people
gradually insert "mother dear" compose a "crisp
Litany " in her honour. By the multiplication of Altars,
the Central and Supreme, as Protestants hold, is dimmed
in glory, and the jewels on the Pontifical tiara have room
to shine.
Divine simplicity spake thus: "If any man sin, we
have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous." Catholic authority introduces a Heavenly
heirarchy and an army of intercessors, and will profes-
sionally guide the soul to the most successful pleaders in
the Court of Heaven.
Confession follows the supernatural Priesthood with
the keys auricular confession youthful contamination
the shock of Innocence the inception of evil thought
and habit not imagined before, by men who should sow
holy thoughts in the heart, as God sows stars in the
sky. Abomination ! And with confession comes the
creeping of that leprous veil over the transparent
honesty of the Protestant English character. The eye
acquires a covert glance, speech acquires reserve, the
thoughts acquire the Jesuit's tortuous course. Alas !
for the old English name and fame when its open-
eyed free youth take to answering the catechising, and
166 PURITANISM IN POWER.
submitting to the authority of the quack physicians of
souls. Family secrets divulged, family spies introduced
the interests of a Mother Church the salvation of
dear Protestant souls paramount what mischief
incalculable is here ! Let us confront it with Divine
simplicity. " If we confess our sins, He is faithful and
just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness." And with confession and absolution
of sins and the imposition of penance come the
analysis of sins into mortal and venial, and the classi-
fication of these into various degrees. Anything more
destructive of the true spiritual consciousness, and more
at variance with fundamental truth in the region of the
soul's actual relationship to God cannot be conceived.
Men's sins altogether escape analysis, definition, esti-
mation, outside the court of the individual conscience.
There is one alone that can judge truly regarding them,
and that is God. Sins are entirely relative to light, to
conditions and to privileges matters inscrutably hid
from fellow-mortals and incapable of being dealt with by
any theological faculty.
Sins are relative to the cultivation of the conscience
and the religious progress of the race. Under the
tutelage of the Spirit the area of known duty grows
daily like a cloud, and with it sun-tipped with light
from on high the shadows of failure under the new
responsibility.
This generation has not the same conscience as the
last ; the truth and number of its intuitions have
increased. The next generation will have a higher
conscience than the present. Such is the painful but
allotted climb of man, when once he catches the Father's
voice, " Thou art My son, this day have I begotten thee."
It is well to be a bird and scream over the wild sea
waves with the joy of absolute freedom from law and
conscience and physical constraint. It is well to note a
THE PROGRESS OF RITUALISM. 167
comrade's fall under the shot of a passenger's gun, and
immediately to turn and rend your lately flying and now
dying partner. This is well for those who with all their
flying will find no resting place above the clouds.
The Court of Borne if it is to define a people's Faith
(a solecism in thought) or draw up a quantitative and
qualitative analysis of its sins, must be omniscient,
infallible, possess indeed all the attributes of Deity sit
in session every day and issue new editions every hour.
There is palpably no qualitative difference in sins the
quality of all is the same disobedience through defect
of love.
The Irish emigrant when crossing the Atlantic
produces upon the merry deck a piece of treasured turf.
Standing upon it with one foot and flourishing a
shillalagh he shouts out, " Erin for ever ! I have found
ye once more." It is only a small piece of turf, but
most truly a bit of his native soil. What is the
" smallest " sin, so called, but a fragment of the bog in
which Humanity is planted ?
Sin is the product of two realities, occult to any
extraneous human authority, viz., the knowledge by
God of the creature and the knowledge by the creature
of God. It is an infinite thing, undefinable, like God
Himself. Wesleyan doctrines of perfection ! are ye
the offspring of amazing simplicity, or the proof of the
blinding and indurating power of dogmatic theology?
Hunt the rainbow, my Wesleyan friends, and the horizon !
" I suppose, Fred, the curates of St. Mary have asked
you to confession ? "
" Sir, I never confide my private affairs to another."
Could anything exceed the Jesuitical character of that
answer ?
The question for Englishmen to consider is indeed not
alone the certainty of simple gospel verities perishing
under the spread of High Anglican influence not alone
168 PURITANISM IN POWER.
the supplanting of spiritual by sacramental grace and
the sense of fellowship with the Living Lord by the
adoration of an Idol Mystery not alone the creation of
a priestly caste claiming authority by virtue of spiritual
functions and supernatural powers. Not the affront
done to the Majesty on High and His co-equal Son by
the establishment of creature worship and the de-
preciation of the Lord's sympathy and the intercessory
power of the Great High Priest. Those are terrible
corruptions and dangers indeed, but another evil truly
national and not less deplorable would be the certain
alteration of the national character, incalculably for the
worse, by Catholic qualifications of the Lie. The moral
characteristic which most clearly reveals the creed and
worship in all countries, is the encouragement or other-
wise given to the Lie in speech in affirmations or
denials, in integrity of motive in the habit of going
straightforwardly or crookedly. Now it is matter of
common knowledge that truth flourishes most in
Protestant soil and the Lie finds in Catholic countries
its congenial habitat. There are exceptions it is true,
such as the Dissenting Principality of Wales, but what
is written is broadly true. The Saxon and the Scot have
ever been in the van of the truth- speaking Protestant
nations, and the Catholicising of England would in-
fallibly change that proud and precious national
character. Language would become the veil of thought :
the priestly casuist would be ever at hand to reduce the
qualms which the more unsophisticated conscience of the
confessor would own. The free, open, simple-minded,
honest Scot and Saxon would debase themselves with
some of the shifty insincerities of the Catholic Celt,
who under the long tutelage of the Papal faith, abetting
ceaseless plots against a Protestant Kule, has made of
Ireland a place where the verification of facts is im-
possible, and the search for truth has to be pursued
THE PROGRESS OF RITUALISM. 169
upon evidence unstable as a morass and with bottomless
contradictions awaiting it. Let it be for ever remembered
that Protestant Truth and National Truth go together.
It has long since been observed that the congregations of
the High Churches have a peculiar physical type. They
seem to be a gathering of all the low facial angles
and splay feet. So that the three divisions of the
Anglican Church might be styled the Short, the
Sound, and the Silly the " Short " standing for the
Evangelicals, whose creed is sound so far as it goes, but
short of the whole truth the " Sound " for the
Broad Church, which is relatively the soundest of the
three and the third standing for the Kitualists which it
is impossible not to style Anserine.
In addition to these presumptive evidences of religious
hue we shall have the far more lamentable indication
supplied by the spice of Jesuistry injected into artless
natures.
Happily, however, there are indications that the Bitu-
alistic or, rather, Komanist revival has reached its limits,
and that we may anticipate a healthy reaction. The
pull of the High Church was undoubtedly being felt
beyond the bounds of the Establishment. All the dis-
senting bodies yielded something to the tendency.
Ministers resumed gowns that had been discarded.
They retreated into the apse, accompanied by the deacons
when attending to the Lord's Supper. Services became
floridly musical in certain chapels a Liturgy, in others
an anthem, and in very many the Psalms for the day
were regularly introduced ; and even the Quakers were
stirred into the occasional indulgence of a hymn. The
only insoluble and incorruptible order of public worship
was that of the Plymouth Brethren, who left the
organized churches alone, and copied nothing. But
they were always much given to explanations of Jewish
ritual and to plans of Solomon's Temple, and they
170 PURITANISM IN POWER.
allowed their souls, when wearied of harping upon one
string, a sop to their chordal aspirations by frequent
attendance at the vespers of the Parish Church.
This addition to the beauty, if not to the power of
Nonconformist worship, was going on when the Ritualists
took steps backward to primitive simplicity ; began
the monotonous howlings of the Gregorian Chant and
the abomination of a Quaker-like "plain song." The
Priest, moreover, in gorgeous garments going to a pulpit
which, with an affectation of humility, was made of
kitchen skewers.
These, however, are innocent matters mere shell
The body, the kernel, was the distinct sacerdotal claim
which the ritual betokened. And for the acute develop-
ment of this, the action of the Liberation Society is
largely responsible. Instead of attending to their own
business and awaiting the downfall of the Establishment
in God's good time, as a result of their own growing
spiritual influence over the people, the Nonconformist
ministers for the people were ever in the mass, quite
lukewarm kept hammering away at the prerogatives of
the Establishment, with the acerbity of persons per-
sonally injured, and the perseverance of the most disin-
terested searchers after truth ; with the result, that after
forty years' wandering in the wilderness of apathetic
popular support, their expensive propaganda has left
them farther from the promised land than ever, and from
being assailants they have been turned into alarmed and
anxious apologists for their very existence.
With the threat of disestablishment ever dangling
before them, it was natural that the Church of England
should seek to ground upon its ecclesiastical traditions,
its reasons for occupying quite a unique position among
the sects, should disestablishment eventually occur.
"We should fall altogether in line with the sectaries,"
they may be imagined to have said, " should we abandon
THE PROGRESS OF RITUALISM. 171
"our Catholic holding; but if we assert an unbroken
" apostolical succession and full inheritance in the super-
" natural gifts and powers reserved to those in valid
"orders, we shall still be pre-eminent although discon-
"nected from the State; we may indeed, with fuller
" liberty, and walking off with the spoils of the disendow-
"rnent settlement, blossom into complete conformity
" with Eome, and arrive at such authority among the
" masses, that practically the Mother Church shall be
" above the State, and the fullest claims of Denison
" and Lincoln be appeased."
The Catholic revival is largely the child of the
Liberationist propaganda.
Happily, however, as we were saying, there are signs
that sacerdotal progress has reached its limit, and from
the Church of England itself help is coming from the
faithful Episcopate in the north. The Protestant
Cathedrals of Liverpool and Manchester, amid teeming
populations, send forth no uncertain sound.
Canon Eawstorne, preaching in Manchester Cathedral,
on Whit Sunday, 1889, uncompromisingly demolishes
sacerdotal exclusiveness. After asserting that the
tongues of fire rested upon the whole company present,
and not alone upon the Apostles, he thus proceeds :
" The event of Pentecost was, in fact, an ordination on
" the most splendid scale, and with the most enduring
"effects an ordination of every single Christian then
"present, and of every single Christian to the end of
" Time, to be one of that Koyal Priesthood which is
" qualified (as the same St. Peter said in later years, not
" forgetful of Pentecost) to offer up spiritual sacrifices
" acceptable unto God, through Jesus Christ, to show
" forth the praises of Him who hath called them out of
" darkness into His marvellous light. . . . Nor was
" there any function of the Church so apparently sacer-
"dotal that the whole body of the Church (or what we
172 PUEITANISM IN POWER.
" now call the laity) did not take part in it. If there
" were an officer or minister of the Church to be ap-
" pointed, the election was made in the midst of the
" disciples and by them ; when discipline had to be
" exercised all took part in the trial ; the verdict given,
" and the sentence passed were those of the majority ; the
" forgiveness or absolution of the offender upon repen-
" tance was also the work of all. Even when a question
" of doctrine was at issue, the whole Church, as well as
" the Apostles and Elders, was admitted to the delibera-
tion. And public teaching and public officiating
" continued free at least to the male sex all might
" prophesy, one by one, so that all may learn, and all be
" comforted, and ' the men ' might pray in every place,
" lifting up holy hands, without wrath and disputing."
This is but the echo of the late Bishop Lightfoot's position.
In words still more distinct and emphatic he resumes
" And the word will begin to spread again far faster
" than it has done for many, many centuries, wherever
" the truth becomes recognised again, that the Pentecost
" fire has fallen upon all, so that, as Tertullian says, the
" Church exists complete wherever two or three members
" of it are met, saltern laid, though only laymen. When
" the Church regains the consciousness that everyone of
" its members is a priest, and may exercise sacerdotal
" functions when occasion calls for them, then the
" Church will go complete wherever Christians go able
" to perform all its functions, able to propagate itself, and
" it will be smitten with the curse of barrenness no more.''
The position taken in this last paragraph even goes
beyond what most Nonconformist ministers are prepared
to concede, the small remnant of Rome being clung to
in the claim exclusively to baptize and to dispense the
Lord's supper.
The consistent evangelicalism of Bishop Ryle of
Liverpool is well known. The See of Gloucester and
THE PKOGKESS OF EITUALISM. 173
Bristol is, or rather was, also a marked example of
fidelity to protestant standards. Hereford and Wor-
cester stand somewhat midway. Notwithstanding, the
strength and popularity of the High Anglican section
are the most obvious features of the Church in Eng-
land to-day. If we listen attentively on some still
Sunday morning when we are late for service, and
watching with only half a mind a swarm of tadpoles
in the sunny shallows of a field pond, we may hear the
High Anglicans throughout England twisting round on
their heels towards the altar at every doxology, and
twisting back again in the satisfaction of a meritorious
performance, as if the points of the compass had any
relation to conscience and to God. And you may wonder
how long it may take to turn those tadpoles into frogs.
There is however a point of the compass to which God
would have us look, not for worship, but for work.
It is because the High Anglican party have steadfastly
turned and looked at the "East End" in all our towns,
and found it impossible as they beheld humanity there
to say, " Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to
the Holy Ghost ; as it was in the beginning, is now, and
ever shall be. Amen." It is because of this and its
practical consequences in zealous devotion to the outcast
flocks, that the High Anglicans hold their ground and
will maintain it, until their example has altered the
attitude of the Puritan star-gazers, and they commence
the realization of Christ's kingdom upon earth.
As the key and centre of the sacerdotal claims in the
corrupted Christian church are found in the unnatural
development given to the simple rite in which our Lord
wished His passion to be remembered until He came
again to reap its fruits our next chapter will concern
itself with what that ordinance really was what it did,
and what it did not imply.
174
CHAPTER IV.
THE LOED'S SUPPER.
EVEN the lizard upon the rock knew that something
unusual was in the air. It had palpitated with the bleat-
ing of lambs for days hundreds of lambs thousands of
lambs tens of thousands of lambs. Vultures, poised in
the empyrean, had gloomily watched the long trains of
caravans wending their way to the sacred metropolis ;
and as one after another turned the point at which a
confined prospect of bulging slopes gave way to the
extended panorama of the holy city the domes and
towers of Herod's temple, o'er-topped by the castle of
Antonia a burst of praise issued from a hundred lips.
Company after company and psalm after psalm suc-
ceeded breaking upon the air, as on a summer's day
the long Atlantic swell breaks, in cheerful thunder on
the shore.
The sun was westering to the inland sea, and long,
sharp and prone fell the shadows from the vaunting
towers down to Kedron's hidden trickle. Gehenna, sunk
in gloom, had its rising vapours touched into a sullen
glow, while Upper Olivet, right up to the cedars which
seemed pilgrims from Lebanon rooted to the spot, stood
in Hoods of gold.
Many were the groves and gardens then. The city
might be high-pitched Torrington, looking out on woods
and bowers. Where now are rock and rubbish outside
the modern walls, houses and orchards clustered down
the steep. Away towards the north and west was a
spreading suburb of which not a trace remains, and all
was seething with a fervent life.
The lizard on the rocky highway is now splashed with
dust, and gives one leap, while the surging clatter of the
THE LORD'S SUPPER. 175
caravan passes down creak of buckskin greasy scrape
upon the saddle pad of camel's bossy foot agile tread
of ass straining and jingling of the towering furniture,
with an occasional long slide upon the steep descent,
followed by the drivers' shouts, drowning the chatter of
an animated and brightly coloured company, gay with
the pleasure of the annual pilgrimage, and glad of the
opportunity of combining the business of a fair with
attention to a sacred and traditional festival.
Like all the cruel countries of Europe, Jerusalem had
not tender wreathing mists, and all its features stood out
with the rigid distinctness of the moral law. But nature
has attempted some compensation in granting to such
parts the dim uncertain olive, which would, if it could,
look sweetly veiled in blue. This evening clumps of
these trees are rimmed with brighter hues as the slanting
sunbeams search out and shock their modesty. Gray is
the limestone of the city's base ; gray are the triple tiers
of the temple courts where now the bleating is less
strenuous ; blue are the shadows on the marble gates
whose Corinthian columns are gold-flecked upon the
west. But here in front, on either side the descending
caravan and all around, the great mass of purpling
heights is confronted by a foreground rioting in colour.
The ground has broken out in festival. Lively in the
sun is the thin spring grass, and in and out among corn
field and meadow and verdant slope run flaring companies
of the poppy, flox, gladiolus and holly-hock ; the ground is
sprinkled with pimpernel and white moon-daisies ; bands
of marigold add to the gay garniture, and all these giddy
flowers lay their checks against the ash- white sepulchres
W 7 hich bestrew the lower slopes, and will not in after
years be able to prevent the beholder from recalling the
blood of sprinkling and the great drops of Gethsemane.
The tents are thick white tents. Aquilla and Priscilla
have made some of them with pre-Christian honesty.
176 PURITANISM IN POWER.
White men, white women oh ! it is an innocent crowd
by its garments ! What thronging at the gate ! The
intensity of satisfaction at again beholding the holy
city felt by the aged is as nothing compared to the joy
which fills the breast of him who sees it for the first
time. This youth dismounting from the caravan is
absorbed in strong emotion ; his dark blue eye flashes
light ; it is his first glimpse of the home of his Imperial
race, and it is beneath the heel of the conqueror ; the
great square towers of Antonia look down upon the
sacred rites in the temple enclosure. Forty years hence
and the blood of this beardless boy will be sprinkled on
the lintels of this gate.
What a din there is ! A confused intermingling of the
languages of Syria, Greece, and Borne, and the patois
of Galilee and Samaria.
Make way for the Pharisee ! Two roguish youths
inadvertently rush him against Mildred, the Egyptian
fishmonger, who also looks like a leper, whereat the
Rabbi turns in abhorrence, and the laughing eyes of the
miscreants are hidden in his broad phylacteries. Toot-;i-
toot ! somebody more fortunate is giving alms at the
street corner, bless him ! What a surging throng
mounting the ascent to the court of sacrifice ; and equally
dense the crowd that is descending, each having upon
his shoulders a lamb that had been slain. For the
trumpet had sounded, and the evening sacrifice had been
offered, and again the blare of the Levites proclaimed
that the Passover Lambs were to be offered, whereupon,
admitted twenty at a time, each representative of the
household had put the knife to the victim's throat, and
the end priest of a row with golden flagons, facing
another row with silver ones, had caught the crimson
flood, and commenced to hand it onwards to the altar,
receiving from the next above him an empty flagon
in return. Thus for hours had the line of priests been
THE LORD'S SUPPER. 177
carrying the innocent blood, chanting antiphonically the
while, and the bleating in the pens was looser and less
loud. Above the varied crowd rose here and there the
bust of a Roman officer, calm, stern and cynical. His
was the race which had learnt the secret of Empire in
allowing to the tributaries full play for their superstitions.
Let the priests but teach the people to render unto Caesar
the things that are Csesar's, and they will back up their
religious ceremonies as though Tiberius were the object
of their worship. And yet the conquerors and conquered
had a bond of affinity in the common deficiency in arts.
The practical worldliness of the Roman compelled him to
borrow the Fine Arts from Greece, and the spiritual
unworldliness of the Hebrew had left him destitute of
their rudiments. The God-sense deadened the aesthetic
by the superior beauty of the Holy One. The people of
the earthen Altar had made their temple square ! Could
anything artistically good come from a cube ? It was
when the rabble shouted " Crucify Him ! " that Archi-
tecture heard the word for which it waited, and the
miraculously perfect temple plan was laid, in which height
and length, and breadth and depth, and the mutual co-
operation of every stone in the building in giving comfort,
aid and support to its fellow, gave to the world an emblem
of Divine and human love sermons in stones, of which
the eye and heart of Christendom never tire.
But now some 150,000 eviscerated and spitted
creatures have been borne to earthen ovens, and the
blood of sacrifice has purchased for the offerers the Feast
of Joy. The streets are clearing, lights are twinkling,
the upper rooms are filling. To men from Bethany, how
looks the City now ? Down out of sight a blood-red line
lies on the offing of the Mare Magnum. The mounting
shadows have finally engulfed the highest slopes, and
Olivet, black and pale, faces the Temple towers tipped
with flame. The last belated searcher for spinning
12
178 PURITANISM IN POWER.
pennies from yesterday's overturn gives up the que^t.
No more bleating from the Temple Courts there is but
one more spotless Lamb to sacrifice.
Sadly and slowly, slowly and sadly walks the group
from Bethany. The Master is in front pondering
moodily the followers come behind. A crisis is at hand
they feel it ; but oh ! what doubts and fears have
intruded upon their former mounting prospects. They
had divided the Kingdom among themselves down to
settling their places at the Eoyal table or rather they
had begun at the finish and now when popular acclaim
had hailed their Lord and Master King, He had let the
echoes die away and talked of crucifixion, and something
stranger resurrection. Moreover, instead of the elate
spirit of the conqueror, He is bowed with a troubled spirit,
and they durst not speak to Him. Unseen, unrecognised
they pass beneath the green and darkening sky, and now
have followed to the indicated house, entered the court-
yard, mounted the stairs, and passed into the furnished
room. With the kingdom still in view, and notwith-
standing tormenting doubts and fears, the old strife for
precedence has recommenced, when lo ! He who yester-
day lifted His small scourge and swept the Temple clean
of traffickers He who spilled the tables piled with gold
and silver, mixing all oxen, sheep and doves together,
and with each man's money pile overturning all his
hopes of profit driving the money changers off with the
stinging suggestion that they were thieves and robbers
this wondrous Being whom none dared to restrain any
more than a storm, now takes unto Himself a towel,
girds Himself as slaves are wont, and commences to wash
the feet of His disciples. Taught by this, they finally
are seated in a natural order.
To add brightness to the feast, it was customary t"
put gay cloths upon the couches. The Master in the
central seat of honour may have reclined upon stuffs of
THE LORD'S SUPPER. 179
Tyrian purple, and Judas below Him pressed a leopard's
skin. John was above his Master.
It was one of the traditions by which the Rabbins had
made void the law, that the Keepers of the Passover,
instead of standing in the attitude and apparel of Pilgrim
departure, should have followed a Roman custom, and
reclined luxuriously at the table. Our Lord in the
closing days of a worn-out dispensation made no altera-
tion, and the unauthorized posture allowed of the long
discourses of that memorable hour. But in truth it was
a new departure that the world was soon to take.
Avenging Justice, passing over the accumulated guilt of
the Piace, was to smite the Shepherd's head the First-
born Son of God and of Redeemed Humanity, and let the
flock go free. He, too, who was born upon the census
taking the preliminary of new and oppressive taxing
yokes, was now laying in His blood and buried Body the
edifice of liberty to the captives of unjust Governments
and emancipation of Labour from the whip and scourge,
the law and yoke of Almighty Mammon. It might have
been the hour of heavenly intoxication of divinest
rapture. But how could that be with those who, having
known that Just One three whole years, were told the
rest of their dark journey must be unattended by that
splendour ?
Israel's yoke, too ! Israel's yoke ! The gibe of the
heathen ! When would the Kingdom be restored ? For
over fifteen hundred years now they had been celebrating
this Passover a perpetual remembrance of God's
deliverance of enslaved labour from Egyptian bondage ;
and now the very precincts of the Holy Courts were
invaded by the heathen conqueror, and his heavy tribute
galled the necks of every class. How near seemed the
accomplishment of their dreams ! Every month and
every miracle widened the prospect and advanced their
expectations. Here was a King who owned no servitude
180 PURITANISM IN* POWER.
to Nature. There had been monarchs who, after sub-
duing many nations, were bidden by a vile ulcer in their
stomach to resign their crown. But here was one who
could yoke the winds to His chariot, and visiting the
battlefield of a triumphal victory, could speak into
existence the lost limbs of the crippled, and stamping
the ground, recruit his regiments from the dead. Would
not Israel be avenged ?
But mingled with all these da}' dreams were the
strange starlight glories of His spiritual thought, He
had opened to them already the gates of a New
Kingdom the Empire of Love. Just now He had
washed their unwilling feet, and rebuked their strife for
Lordship. Peter was convinced that He ruled in their
hearts, and as a Teacher simply, bereft of earthly power
and wealth, could command their lives. A new Kingdom
had then already been established. They twelve No !
What was that the Master said ? One of them should
betray Him '? Oh, impossible ! With the full confidence
of present loyalty, and yet with sad mysterious dread,
for of late they had begun to learn that only one human
heart could be depended upon they severally put the
query, "Is it I?" Peter beckons to John ; John leans
back on his Master's breast, where his locks have risen
and fallen as sea birds on an ocean swell, and, lifting his
sad eyes, looks and whispers the enquiry, "Who is it,
Lord?" The Master takes a bunch of herbs, dips them
in the sweet fruit sauce and hands to Judas next behind.
Sunk in sorrow now aggravated by this harassing con-
jecture the disciples relapse into inattentive contem-
plation But a door has clapped the air is lighter a
wave of balm seems to have comforted all hearts a star
falling from the sky, behind the lattice window, lifts the
lids of Peter, and looking round he counts eleven and
the Lord.
Now can the feast begin ! " With desire have I desired
THE LORD'S SUPPER. 181
to eat this Passover with you before I suffer : For I
say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof, until it
be fulfilled in the Kingdom of God." The deliverance
from the Egyptian yoke was good ; it has been cele-
brated it revealed God's perpetual mind towards
economical injustice and oppression. But there are
other yokes from which that and all similar proceed,
which He had come into the World to save His children
from. So when the third Passover Cup had been
reached, the Feast was merged into a memorial of this
Greater Good this deliverance of the World from its
deadness towards God, and its consequent deadness
towards brother man. The foundations of the New Era
must be laid in self-sacrifice. " This is my body, broken
for you: eat ye all of it" a brother's equal share of
the necessary of life is handed round. Likewise the
cup, after He had blessed it, " This cup is the New
Testament in my blood: drink ye all of it" divide it
amongst yourselves. " I will not henceforth drink of
the fruit of the vine, until I drink it new with you in my
Father's Kingdom. I appoint unto you a Kingdom, as
my Father hath appointed unto me ; that ye may eat
and drink at my table in my Kingdom, and sit on thrones
judging the twelve tribes of Israel."
" Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified
in him." " A new commandment I give unto you,
That ye love one another ; as I have loved you, that
ye also love one another. By this shall all men
know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one
to another."
Up into the stillness of that sacred chamber, where
choking hearts heard only their own beating and the
Master's voice, there crept the far-off sounds of gather-
ing tumult in the streets blows and cries and execra-
tions ; it rose like wind, clamoured near the doors, and
passed away some Samaritan beaten by the Jews.
182 PURITANISM IN POWER.
" Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep
and lament, but the world shall rejoice : and ye shall
be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.
And ye now therefore have sorrow : but I will see you
again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man
taketh from you."
The sound of crushed clamour comes from the Castle
of Antonia. The Procurator is feasting with his friends,
and Emilius Rufinus, drunk with Falerian wine, and
enraged that his slave has failed to procure the sturgeon
he desired, has flung his dagger at him, and it neatly
stuck between his ribs whereat the Cappadocian slave-
cook plucks it out and flies at the throat of his
Master, until the guard has rolled his head beneath
the table.
" righteous Father, the world hath not known thee:
but I have known thee, and these have known that thou
hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name,
and will declare it : that the love wherewith thou hast
loved me may be in them, and I in them."
They have sung a hymn together and passed out
into the night, descending almost deserted streets, which
echo with the hum of words and chants from every
dwelling down to the black depths of Kedron, and
along till the favourite garden is reached home of the
retiring Olive, meet place for solitude and prayer. Did
the Master blame His sorrowing disciples for submitting
to the urgency of exhausted nerve and feelings? Did
He with irony address them " Sleep on now, and take
your rest"'? Ah, surely no! These are the comments
of men ignorant of more than the shallows of an average
heart. Words and deeds, to which after-ages will refer,
are rightly pitched in a key unnatural to contemporary
uses.
Lights are twinkling in the High Priest's palace.
Lights are twinkling in the barrack towers. Lights
THE LORD'S SUPPER. 183
are descending the steep, and issuing from the gate.
The tramping is partly irregular and partly the
measured tread of the legions, and one foot leads to
the well-known spot, not so far from the Potter's
field.
# * * *
She was not there before ! No, she had rushed out of a
cloud in white amazement !
184
CHAPTER V.
THE LOED'S SUPPER Continn^L
IT is passing strange that an ordinance so simple, and
to the unsophisticated mind so clear and natural in its
intention, should have been made the ground for theories
the most monstrous and irrational, affronting the under-
standing and conflicting with the essential spirituality of
the Gospel scheme, while running counter to every
apostolic reference and exposition, and to every index
afforded by the practice of the primitive church. Not so
strange, however, if we remember that the ingenuity of
fallen man has ever been exercised to discover some
escape from the consequences of his fall, or, let us say,
the appointed conditions of his earthly discipline ; and
that the possibility of establishing a privileged order,
which by virtue of supernatural powers and prerogatives
should creditably sustain pretensions to live without
common labour by taxing the toiling flock, was altogether
too potent a temptation to fail of supplying plausible
supports to corrupt interpretations of our Lord's lan-
guage, and the historical realization, to the world's woe,
of the order of a professional Christian Priesthood.
What that professional Christian Priesthood has done to
confound men's notions of the exquisite reasonableness
of Christ and Christianity what it has done to enslave
the understanding, to poison conscience, to blind moral
perceptions, to frustrate and discount the God-given
intuitions of souls innocent of the Priestly perversions-
let the humiliating record of ecclesiastical history attest,
and the degrading superstitions of the Greek and Roman
churches in the present day confirm. A beholder of
what passes for religion among the inhabitants of Russia
and South America, not to speak of nearer home, must
THE LORD'S SUPPER. 185
be haunted by the query : Has Christianity, so repre-
sented, done anything for the elevation of mankind, or
the reverse ? Now the basal foundation of all Christian
Priestly assumption, whereby claims are made to yield
up the contents of the burdened heart and of the pocket
treasure, whether light or weighty the bottom pretension
rests just upon a fraudulent and ridiculous interpretation
of the nature and design of the simple and natural
observance which our Lord instituted and commended as
always accessible to bring Himself to memory, and to
set forth the love which His Spirit and example beget
in His disciples.
In these days, when a flood of Sacramentalism is
rolling over the Protestant Church of England and
removing the landmarks of the Reformers and of Evan-
gelical theology, it is of prime importance to draw
attention to the absolute vacuum that exists in Scripture
in place of any breath of inspiration favouring the
heathenish notions that have been imported into the
essential character of the institution.
Obviously the vantage ground that its perversion
affords to Priestly pretensions is enormously efficacious.
The men who can bless a wafer into the body, soul, and
divinity of Jesus Christ can do anything. The ignorant
masses will have them to bless their horses and mules
into good behaviour, their cows into fountains of milk,
and their fields into certain productiveness. Their
Priests will be able to get rain for them, as well as
unseal the obdurate fountains of God's mercy, and open
the fast doors of the heart of Christ that is, they may
be got to do these things if properly paid for it. Behold
the prostration of the befooled masses of Christendom at
the foot of the Priest !
To get at the heart of the ordinance we must bear in
mind the dual nature of man and his heirship in both
the material and spiritual worlds. It being the purpose
18G 1TIUTAN1SM IN POWER.
of Christ to redeem humanity that is, man in the first
stage of existence necessarily his redemption as heir of
the material world must accompany, if it do not precede,
his redemption as heir of the spiritual. In reason, and
in experience, a degree of emancipation from bondage in
the material sphere must precede man's emancipation
from spiritual thralls, and the All-wise God evidenced
His sanction of this view when He did not attempt a
moral renovation of Israel until He had first brought
them out of Egypt. The Passover was the celebration
of man's redemption from economical subjection his
restoration to dignity and freedom in the material world ;
no longer with bent head and anguished heart, unable
to attend to the words of Moses or of Christ, even when
they speak of corning deliverance, but standing erect,
able to look up at the heavens and hail the Star of
Bethlehem.
The Lord's Supper took up into itself all the signifi-
cance of the Passover, and added thereto man's
redemption from the bondage of sin and his introduction
to the glorious liberty of the children of God. And this
by the memorial of a Divinely perfect Life, attaining its
consummation in an example of Infinite Love and
unsurpassable unselfishness.
It is the unphilosophical severance of Judaism from
Christianity that is responsible for the obscuration of the
Passover in the superimposed ordinance of the Supper.
The organic connection and vital continuity of the two
dispensations should never be lost sight of.
To the Jews it was given to bear in perpetual remem-
brance the glorious deliverance the Almighty had effected
for them from Egyptian bondage. It was their first and
principal Feast truly a feast of first-fruits since they
were first of the nations to be delivered from economical
oppression b}' the stretched-out arm of God. The words
of the prayer, according to the Mishna, could be used by
THE LORD'S SUPPER. 187
the poor of all countries: "He brought us forth from
bondage into freedom, from sorrow into joy, from
mourning to a festival, from darkness to a great light,
and from slavery to redemption. Therefore let us sing
before Him, Hallelujah ! " The unity in privilege and
destiny of the Commonwealth was set forth in the
extreme care taken that the corporate completeness and
soundness of the slain victim should not be infringed
not a bone of it must be broken. There were forty
stripes for the offender against this rule. All in the
room must be partakers of the Lamb, whose unbroken
integrity set forth the oneness in life and death, in self-
sacrifice and in privilege, which should characterize
Humanity when redeemed.
And when He who, at the time when Palestine was
moved from end to end about the taxing, and those
injurious assessments which gave spoils to court families
and fortunes to rascally publicans when the "Just"
One, reputed Son of Joseph, "a just man and devout,"
appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself it
was the sin of selfish domination and unbrotherly un-
kindness as well as forgetfulness of God that He set
Himself to slay. It was the Passover He selected as the
appropriate root and source of the New Feast of
Brotherly Love and memorial of Brotherly Sacrifice.
Christians were meant to take up the Jewish Passover
and remember it for ever. The memory of the Deliverer
born amidst the taxing to set His people free the
memory of Him in whose presence Zaccheus shelled his
selfishness as a serpent sheds his skin, was to produce
like reformation in respect of certain practices among
His little flock until the Lord should come again to set
up for ever His world- wide dominion of absolute equit}\
Not a bone of Him was broken He died intact that He
might redeem the world intact, and allow of no rupture
of the earthly from the heavenly inheritance, of the physi-
188 PURITANISM IN POWEIl.
cal from the spiritual, of the body from the soul of man, in
the affair of redeeming His own dear race and children.
The "right discerning of the Lord's Body" was the
due perception of it as broken for the brethren a
sacrifice for their sins and the benefits of that sacrifice
and great example held in memory to be the appropriate
spiritual food of their souls, continually resorted to : even
as natural food the broken bread must furnish bodily
support. Matter for matter ; spirit for spirit. That the
reception of the actual flesh and blood of our Lord should
have any effect upon the spirit of man is one of those
conceptions which defy rational vindication. But the
physical element in the Feast is all important. It was
the Divine intent to leave an everlasting memorial of the
right of brethren to equal portions in the common
worldly inheritance of the race. The Agape the Love
Feast of Humanity, is postponed for its final and
complete realization, until the Lord shall come again
but until then, when Christ shall eat and drink it new
with His followers in the Kingdom of His Father, its
coming is set forth in every communion service. The
offence of the Corinthian Church, for which St. Paul
rebuked it, was that instead of making the Supper an
adumbration of Fraternity in Equality, they introduced
class distinctions and outraged its essential principle.
The rich shamed the poor by the prodigality of their
display : and while one was hungry another was
drunken. This was not to discern the Lord's body,
unbroken in its structure though broken in its flesh,
that all might be forgiven ; and that selfishness slain in
His followers by the example of the Head, should never
sanction as a Christian order of Society hunger for the
many and repletion for the few. They who thus
remember our Lord eat and drink damnation to them-
selves, not discerning the Lord's body.
It is amazing how even clear-headed Protestant
THE LORD'S SUPPER. 189
dissenters have allowed a glamour of the Sacramental
system of Rome to infect their view of the simple
ordinance. As if it mattered what the elements were !
The very glory and excellence of the institution lie in
its accessibility to all at any time. The common and
ordinary food of the country will ever serve. Bread-fruit
and cocoa-nut milk in the South Pacific. Blubber and
train oil in Lapland. What acrimonious feuds have
arisen about fermented wine among babes in spiritual
understanding, while the infants have raised not the
least objection to fermented bread !
It was of course perfectly immaterial what the
elements were, so long as they were wholesome solids
and liquids, the common food of the people. For
the charm of the institution consists in this, that
every household meal, or public banquet, could
be turned into an Agape a supper of the Lord.
Small chance of Christ being forgotten when every
meal may bring Him specially to remembrance.
And how enormously powerful for goqd might be the
recollection, if attached by habitual practice, to the table
observances. Would it not tend to stop contention, to
rebuke vanity, to stay slander, to urge to earnest,
holy and Christ-like living? And how inspiring and
comforting to impart this meaning, whether the feast be
a welcome or a Fare-thee-well, " Welcome Brother !
for our Lord has bid us all sit down at the Gospel
feast. Fare-thee-well, Brother ! it is only till the Lord
shall come." And the humblest may use his solitary
meal so as to bring Another to his company. The
Dock Labourer under sentence of the " sack," may,
while he munches bread and cheese and drinks chicory
from his can, as he sits upon the lumber of the quay,
remember One who never dismisses from His service
those who love His work, and who has gone to prepare a
place for him from which he will never be discharged.
190 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Not only as regards the elements, likewise as regards
administration silly superstitions linger where they
might least be expected. Wesleyan Local Preachers
may preach, and Congregationalist and Baptist lay
preachers may divide the Word of Life, from the pulpit
but for the blessing and distribution of the "consecrated"'
elements only an ordained minister is deemed the proper
officer. It is a torn hem from the Romish tucker whicli
grown men might be expected to have discarded. At
one little gathering of Christians it was desired that a
communion service should be held on the occasion of
the visit of an old friend. Trouble, however, appeared in
the countenances of the Elders and it was announced
regretfully by one of the number that the communion
service must be dispensed with, as, although Bread
was present, a certain good brother had forgotten the
Wine. The President pro iempore, however, was unable to
perceive the insoluble nature of the problem, as a goblet
of good clear water confronted him upon the table.
Avowing his conviction that water would do as well, if
not better than Wine, the service was duly proceeded
with, and appeared to lack nothing in comforting
stimulus; nevertheless the membership cast furtive
glances at one another when it was over and seemed
much to question the regularity of its proceedings. The
more serious of them them of the straiter sort, seemed
possessed of a doubt as to whether they had not really
" broken a dog's neck, eaten a mouse, and taken the broth
of abominable things between their teeth ! ' '
Now, in view of all and sundry, these childish super-
stitions, let it be noted that the Passover was the
abnegation of the official priest, and that it w r as the festival
in which priestly functions devolved upon the Laity. The
victims were slain, not by the Levites, but by the heads of
households severally. It is true the blood was jerked at
the foot of the altar by a Priest, but the offering up
THE LORD'S SUPPER. 191
the slaying of the victim was effected by an uncon-
secrated man. The festival, however, consecrated him
he did so by a perpetual ordinance of Jewish law. And
the Priestly function of teaching was also in this festival
to be undertaken by the household head. Children
asked him what it signified, and he taught them of God's
great deliverance from economical subjection. It was
meet then that the Christian dispensation, which was
to be distinguished by the Priesthood and Kingship of
all Believers, should be ushered in by an ordinance dove-
tailed into the Jewish Passover, when every householder
became a teaching priest, and celebrated the deliverance
of his people from an oppressive King.
Little more remains to be said but the obvious need
of the present age is a revival of Judaism, for the pur-
pose of concentrating Religious thought upon worldly
Righteousness, and a revival of Quakerism, to separate
Ritualism from Religious thought.
192
CHAPTER VI.
SACRAMENTS CONSIDERED.
To get rid of the Priest, then by which God forbid that
I should mean the student of Holy Writ, the curate of
souls, or the Gospel Evangelist but that character and
function which has been falsely imported into, and
imposed upon, the Ministers of Christ's Truth and
servants of His Church to get rid of the Priest we
must get rid of the Sacraments.
Succession to the Apostolic miraculous powers and
authority by magical manual transmission The
entire Papal scheme and tradition under which the
Kingdom of God upon earth is conceived of as a pro-
vision of human conduits for the mechanical distribution
of Divine grace by means of things called Sacrament-,
administered by persons called "priests," to obedient
sons of the Church called " laity " The comparative
subordination and disparagement of the Canon of
Scripture, the exaltation of Church authority, the
Fathers, Tradition, and the Apocrypha The with-
holding of the Bible from the common people, the
subordination of teaching to ceremonies, and of sermons
to sacraments all these things hang together, and rest
as upon their foundation and warranty upon a view
of two simple symbols and helps to the plantation of
Christianity everywhere, which view has not a shadow
of Scriptural authority, and is at polar variance with
the very nature and essentials of Religion. In the
name of common honesty and common sense, where
did the ecclesiastical conception of a " Sacrament "
come from ? The name and thing are alike absent from
the Scriptures Judaism was innocent of Sacraments.
The rite of circumcision was a sign and nothing else ;
SACRAMENTS CONSIDERED. 198
no pretence is made that it communicated a spiritual
gift. The Paschal Lamb ! It was mutton and nothing
more strengthened limbs about to march into the
desert but as to conveying a distaste for Sin, or con-
firming faith in the living God, the human race in the
days of Moses had not advanced so far in folly as to
imagine it. It would be a curious way of curing people
prone to idolatry to provide them with a fetish to begin with.
The Eomish idea of a Sacrament, which in various
degrees still tarnishes the purity of Protestant con-
ceptions, except perhaps among the Baptists and Quakers,
is, that a Sacrament is a Divinely instituted rite in
the observance of which the subjects (voluntary or
involuntary) are brought into a new relationship with
God, or become the recipients of a peculiar donation
from the Holy Spirit not otherwise conferred. Now,
nothing of this kind was known to Judaism.
The Jews stood in a peculiar relationship to God prior
to any single institution, under the Levitical economy.
As heirs of Abraham, their election among mankind by
God's free grace universally stood, whether they were
circumcised or not, or never kept a feast. The only
Sacrament in the Eomish sense they knew was God
Himself. He was the sole source of spiritual power and
of miraculous energy in the physical sphere. Circum-
cision was a sign, and nothing more, of a prior fact.
The Passover a memorial, and nothing more, of a grand
national deliverance. As for the morning and evening
sacrifices, the Scape Goat, and the various presentations
in thanksgiving or for trespass, they were signs and
symbols, deep, solemn, and affecting ; but their entire
value lay not in themselves but in the great spiritual
realities of Eepentance, Faith, and Obedience, which
were prior to and inseparable from their due observance.
Moses, in Midian, could do without one of them. He
was closer to God for the absence of them, but for
13
194 PURITANISM IN POWER.
the poor, crude, degraded slaves of Egypt, they were
designed as helps, symbolic teaching and discipline.
Never, however, were they permitted to imagine that the
victims upon the altar, or the sprinkled blood, were in
themselves channels of a magical moral influence, or
that, multiply sacrifices as they might, they could gain
the Divine favour while neglecting the essentials of a
heart that was circumcised and a will that was sacrificed.
With what awful indignation did the inspired Prophets,
speaking for Jehovah, repudiate a ritualism from which
the essentials of worship were absent.
" To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices
unto me? saith the Lord, I am full of the burnt
offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts ; and I
delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of
he goats. Bring no more vain oblations ; incense is an
abomination unto me ; the new moons and sabbaths,
the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with ; it is
iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons
and your appointed feasts my soul hateth : they are a
trouble unto me ; I am weary to bear them. And when
ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from
you : yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear :
your hands are full of blood." Isaiah i. 11, 13-15.
Then follow terms of salvation without any sacra-
mental reference whatever. " Come now, and let us
reason together, saith the Lord : though your sins be
as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow ; though
they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If
ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of
the land : but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be
devoured with the sword : for the mouth of the Lord
hath spoken it." Isaiah i. 18-20. Similarly Micah.
"Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow
myself before the high God? Shall I come before
Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old ?
SACEAMENTS CONSIDERED. 195
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or
with ten thousands of rivers of oil ? Shall I give my
lirst-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body
for the sin of nay soul? He hath showed thee,
man, what is good ; and what doth the Lord require of
thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk
humbly with thy God ? " Micah vi. 6-8.
If the sacramental idea was unknown to Judaism, was
it introduced by Jesus Christ ? It is sufficient to point to
the gospels passim for the answer to this question. The
baptism of John to which He submitted was a testimony
to the truth and righteousness of John's teaching, and a
sanction of the rite as a practical method of testing
obedience and confirming vows eminently useful in the
propagation of any creed. As to the descent of the
Holy Spirit that ensued, this marks the baptism of the
Lord from every other ; for Christian baptism is a sign
and symbol of a prior spiritual experience, the essential
precedes the symbol. In the case of our Lord, the
special manifestation of Divine favour was subsequent,
not prior, to the ordinance. Moreover, it was John's
baptism of repentance, and not into the name of the
Father, Son, and Spirit, hence it has no bearing upon
the " sacrament " of His own baptism. We do not find
that he anywhere required His disciples to be baptized
before they followed Him. From the record it does not
appear that any of the Apostles were baptized.* If His
baptism were a sacrament "in the Eomish sense,"
evidently our Lord's first business would be to make His
disciples and especially His apostles submit themselves
to it ; but the thought of a " sacramental " rite nowhere
appears in any portion of His expressed requirements.
It is true Jesus and His disciples did baptize, but they
took it up or left it alone just as seemed expedient or
* NOTE. The baptism of two of the Apostles, by the Fore-
runner, and of Paul, by Ananias, is not to the point.
196 PURITANISM IN POWER.
convenient ; it was clearly a non-essential, merely a help
to children in the faith.
The Sermon on the Mount is absolutely innocent of
sacramentalism. And when we come to the Lord's
Supper, as we have already seen, nothing but the
perverse ingenuity of a prejudiced understanding could
import into the Passover feast, rebaptized and endowed
with new and higher indications, anything more sacra-
mental than belonged to the original festival ; which
the more clearly appears when we enquire, what did the
Apostles do in reference to the so-called sacraments?
Did they make baptism, or rather repentance and faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ the essentials to discipleship ? If
their preaching produced the latter, did they insist upon
immediate attention to the former ? We have the clearest
evidence that while ready at all times to baptize true
believers, they never made the matter an essential.
Being simply a sign and symbol ; having secured the
fruit the substance, they were indifferent as to the
shadow, except in so far. as it appeared helpful to con-
firming the converts in the new way.
Paul thanks God that he was " sent not to baptize, but
to preach the gospel," and as to the Lord's Supper, its
common and social and unecclesiastical character was its
most apparent feature. The early disciples met together
to take a love-feast which had two delightful references.
It celebrated their deliverance from the bondage of
triumphant selfishness into the freedom of a real Brother-
hood, in which the needs and rights of all were under
common guardianship, and it also celebrated their
deliverance from the bondage of sin and death, through
the unselfish sacrifice of their dear and glorious Elder
Brother who had opened to them the gates of Immor-
tality, and who was coming to eat and drink with them
again in the Kingdom of His Father.
We nowhere find the Apostles making attention to this
SACEAMENTS CONSIDERED. 197
festival a test of discipleship. It is recommended
as helpful, never spoken of as an essential. The
essentials were all implied in the fact of discipleship,
neither is the ordinance of the Supper ever spoken of as
a means of grace differing from any other occasion for
the exercise together of mutual love and faith and
hallowed recollection and worship. The Master's
spiritual presence might be expected anywhere, where
hearts with one accord were swept by repentance,
watered with tears, and adorned by obedience. Then
love, having opened the doors and windows in comes the
Master to fill them all with joy.
Neither Peter nor Paul makes the " Sacraments " the
burden of his Epistles ; so far from that, they appear to
be studiously ignored. It will not do to say they are con-
stantly implied, for Paul is never occupying himself
with planting fit administrators of " Sacraments" among
the infant churches. He appoints deacons and elders
chiefly, and when presbyters, gives them no special charge
either about baptism or the Lord's Supper, as witness
the Epistles to Timothy. Were St. Paul possessed by
the modern fancies, the Epistles to Timothy would be
found urging attention to the observance of the Lord's
Supper as the great end and object of his own ordination
and the discipleship of his converts. There is absolutely
no mention of it at all. Not only does not the word
" Sacrament" or anything equivalent to it occur in either
Testament, there is also an entire absence of such termin-
ology as "administering the ordinance," "celebration,"
" eucharist." The Scriptural term is " Communion,"
which expressly guards against the assumption of any to
be a "celebrant" or an administrator in the assembly.
In short, the absence of the Sacrificing Priest and of
the "Sacramental" notion is the conspicuous feature
of the New Testament.
And accordingly we find that Churches get along
198 PURITANISM IN POWER.
under the most diverse views as to the frequency with
which it is expedient to observe the Lord's Supper. In
Scotland it is mostly quarterly, half-yearly, or yearly.
In Papal countries it may be several times daily. In
Eussia it is obligatory only once a year, and the most
extraordinary preparations are made in anticipation.
Among Protestant Dissenters it is either weekly or
monthly. Now does not common sense decide the'
Churches themselves being judges that an ordinance
which may be attended to or not with such an extra-
ordinary laxity as to its recurrence, cannot be an
essential, but -ever a symbol merely? Would it do to
say, " You may pray daily, it is true, but really need not
do so more than once a year " '? And the same with
repentance and obedience. If proof were needed that all
the essentials of Church membership and all its proper
fruits can abound without any " Sacraments " at all, it
is to be found in the little groups of Christians ministered
to by City Missionaries. There may be seen some of the
most glorious instances and convincing evidences of the
reality of saving faith men and women having "put
on" Christ, and walking in the beauty of a new and
holy life, while never (under the silly and jealous
restraints imposed upon City Missionaries by professional
and ordained Ministers) allowed the opportunity of either
Baptism or Communion. It may, however, be con-
fidently said they are never a penny the worse for the
deprivation. Communion among the Wesleyans means
" a penny a week and a shilling a quarter " given, not
received and among other Dissenters it means to a
poor servant girl, for instance, that she is henceforth to
undertake her share of the Church's obligations (pecuni-
ary, not Godward), so that whatever spiritual efficacy is
supposed to attach to the " Sacraments," they must at
all events be paid for, and the character of free grace is
taken from. them.
SACRAMENTS CONSIDERED. 199
I would advise all the little groups of Christians to
which Town and City Missionaries preach the Gospel to
go on cheerily without the Sacraments having got the
Thing, they would be children to cry for the Shadow,
especially when it appears to be taxed, and what God
made a wide and open door has a toll gate put across it.
In fact, this opportunity for the toll gate lies at the root
of the whole of the rubbish about " Sacraments "
things of purely human invention of which the
Scriptures know nothing, except this That what the
" Sacraments," so-called, profess to do for men, One
Man, the Incarnate God Jesus Christ, has once and for
ever accomplished by the sacrifice of Himself, " the Just
for the unjust, to bring us unto God."
This, although there is no Scripture warranty for the
term, is the Great Sacrament for the Eace which we
celebrate in the Supper. And, furthermore, there is
provided for men a " Sacrament" of Baptism, which is
by the Holy Ghost Himself, and the Gracious Spirit of
God, blowing through the world where it listeth, needeth
not to wait for font, water, priest or sponsor, but just
opens blind eyes and kisses into life dead souls, and says
" It is finished." The symbol may follow, but it is non-
essential Salvation is already based, rooted in the
Eternal.
Allusion jnust be made to the Society of Friends,
who exhibit a Home missionary zeal, and an evangelical
fervour as genuine as any other body of Christians, and
yet not one of them having anything to do with "the
means of grace " elsewhere accounted of such value.
We conclude, then, that Scripture has nothing to say
about " Sacraments." They exist in the Church with-
out warranty in her oracles or sanction from her Head.
Two practical methods of securing the faith of converts
was commended to the Apostles that is all. The
Apostles, by their recorded acts and by their written
200 PURITANISM IN POWER.
epistles, regarded them as practical, but supplementary
not fundamental and made no breach of their Saviour's
command in using or neglecting them at will. But upon
the essentials the Apostles did insist, and made them the
sole qualifications for Christian membership, these
essentials being "Repentance towards God and faith
in our Lord Jesus Christ.
And was not this strictly in harmony with the manner
of the injunctions given. The Commission to the
Apostles was first to preach ; the baptizing is evidently
secondary in thought and place. The words, " Do this
in remembrance of me, and as oft as ye eat this bread
and drink this cup," etc., evidently leave all to Love as
to frequency or to means. The essential thing is the
remembrance and the Brotherly Communion ; both can
be realized, disconnected from an ecclesiastical rite. To
the devout Christian the remembrance of his Lord is the
natural bent and poise of his spirit. Let circumstances
bend and beat it downwards and away from its native
position, immediately, when released, it flies back to one
true centre its loving remembrance of Christ. It is
superfluous to such a man to go to a set ordinance to
remember Christ ; his last mental glance at night is
there his first thoughts at waking mount upward there.
The remembrance of his Lord is like a singing river in
his soul, that goes on night and day for ever and for
ever.
If, however, it be thought that it is expedient to
make practical use of the symbols for the better main-
tenance of a vigorous hold on the essentials, and for the
public exhibition to the world of suggestive and signifi-
cant ordinances, let both Baptism and the Lord's Supper
be attended to in the spiritual manner ; and as for the
unscriptural and unwarranted sprinkling of Infants, let
it continue dissociated from water, which, as so applied
and to an involuntary subject, has no meaning whatever;
SACRAMENTS CONSIDERED. 201
let it be continued in an ordinance of the public Dedica-
tion of new born children to the service of the Lord and
the benefits of the Christian Commonwealth. This is
entirely in harmony with Jewish precedent the dedi-
cation in the temple, and with Christian thought, which
expressly includes children in blessings secured by
parents without abolishing their individual responsibility.
The ordinance of the Lord's Supper might be more
impressively observed by a nearer approach to the mode
of the original institution. Let a number of tables,
suitable to the accommodation of groups of twelve to
fifteen persons each, be duly ranged in the place of
meeting. Upon the spotless cloth will be placed a central
plate containing small rolls of bread, and a flagon hold-
ing water, milk, or wine, as the company may prefer
the teetotalers will of course choose their own tables
and the non-abstainers theirs, but possibly grace may
enable a strayed brother to taste what is given without
creating a disturbance, although he may have got acci-
dentally into the wrong box. Then a Presiding Elder,
having been previously appointed for the several tables,
and all being assembled, let all rise and repeat solemnly
and loudly together the Apostles' Creed, followed by
meditation, seated. TJae Presiding Elder at each table
shall then say : " Ye are clean, but not all. Verily,
verily, I say unto you, one of you hath betrayed the
Lord."
Followed by heart searching and painful meditation,
each sighing within his sinking but penitent spirit,
"Lord, is it I?"
Then the Elders at each table should read 1 Cor. xii.
23 33, and afterwards, in the following chapter, which
is a commentary upon the meaning of " discerning the
Lord's body," beginning at the 12th verse : " For as the
body is one, and hath many members, and all the
members of that one body, being many, are one body :
202 PURITANISM IN POWKR.
so also is Christ," down to the 25th, 26th, and 27th
verses, which read : " That there should be no schism in
the body ; but that the members should have the same
care one for another. And whether one member suffer,
all the members suffer with it : or one member be
honoured, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are
the body of Christ and members in particular." The
discerning of the Lord's body is therefore perceived to be
a double star, one revolving round the other. We
behold the body of our Lord broken upon the Cross for
His body the Church, that out of the disintegrating
warring elements of individualistic selfish existence
might be evolved a new Commonwealth, jointed and
unbroken in its mutual love and sanctified by the Faith
that is in Him.
Together with or in place of 1 Cor. xii. might be read
Eph. iv., commencing with the 4th verse : " There is one
body," and ending with the 16th verse: "Maketh
increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love."
Then may follow thanks for the elements and the
Prayer of Consecration as in the Church of England
Prayer Book, substituting for the phrase, " may be par-
takers of His most blessed Body and Blood," "may be
partakers of His most blessed Spirit."
The Presiding Elder shall then break the little loaves
upon the central plate, saying, in the tender and majestic
cadences of the Liturgy, " Take and eat this in remem-
brance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy
heart by faith with thanksgiving." Each little group at
the several tables will then reach forth hands to the
central dish and take a brother's portion. Likewise,
also, the cup. From the flagon the Elder will pour it
into the common chalice and say, " Drink this in remem-
brance that Christ's Blood was shed for thee, and be
thankful. For as oft as ye eat this bread and drink this
cup ye do show forth the Lord's death till he come."
SACRAMENTS CONSIDERED. 203
The Supper being thus partaken, the Presiding Elder
shall read John xiv., first three verses, and add, "Brethren,
our Elder Brother, the Lord Jesus Christ that great
Shepherd of the sheep has said that He will come
again and keep this feast new with us in His Father's
kingdom."
Then shall all the congregation, at all the tables,
standing, say: "Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus."
And, having sung a hymn, the assembly will disperse.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SACRAMENTAL PUEGE.
IF, then, the Puritans of England really believe that
there is no Royal road to Heaven that there are no
obtainable substitutes for the painful and thorny paths
of repentance, self-denial and perpetual spiritual
conflict that no Society exists upon Earth divinely
constituted to absolve sinners in the room of Christ and
further to connect Salvation with priestly efficacy in the
magical transmutation of matter into Divine corporeity, to
be believingly received for the cleansing of body and soul.
If travesties of the Truth of this kind are deplored by
-them as over- spreading the land through the spread of the
Romish heresy within the pale of the Anglican Church-
then their duty as Patriots and Christians is clear, viz.,
to flock into the National Church for the claiming of
Parishional rights and to agitate in and out of Parliament
for a binding compulsion upon the clergy to adhere to
the original doctrinal foundations, and where these are
faulty to have them puritanically amended.
It is futile to say that this would be inconsistent with
the true principles of the relationship of the Church to
the State. Here at once we get boggled by the absurd
conception of the State as an abstract entity, which in
some mysterious, unintelligible and miraculous manner
exists apart from the people and to the necessary
prejudice of religion ; whereas the common sense view of
Church and State is that the State is the People
adjudicating upon the sum total of the National interests
and the Church is the People adjudicating upon
Religious interests only.
Instead, then, of weakly waiting for Disestablishment,
which would simply mean a barren and contemptible vie-
THE SACRAMENTAL PURGE. 205
tory for the redress of purely imaginary social grievances
if the Puritans of England are Puritans and men, they will
simply lay hold of the Church of England and make it
what they will. So long as she is a National Church,
connected with the State, they can do this. If they
succeed in disestablishing her, they will have economically
established and endowed, with the compensations due to
existing interests, the most powerful Popish propaganda
at present existing in Europe.
We avow this because abundant proof could be
adduced that the mass of the people are and were
soundly protestant at heart, but have been stealthily
drawn into the Piomish net by an active, able and
zealous band of Proselytizers.
It would be most unchristian to ignore the piety of
these men. It is astonishing what a lot of top-hamper
the religion of Jesus Christ will bear without utterly
crushing out its vital principle. We see fish able to
swim the sea which carry a whole colony of parasites;
and the towering ash, which spreads its transparent
fingers to the sun, may fancy it has something to glory
in, in the shock of dark, insidious, baleful ivy, which
hides and swells its trunk. Neither is it necessary to
deny varieties to piety, and that there is to be found
among the cloistered, cultured sacramentalists a caste of
Christian character an exquisite flavour of meek and
peaceful sanctity which reveals a quality caret to the
"robust " aggressive political Protestants of the Day.
Puritans may learn much, very much, from the
ecclesiastical system and doctrines they are bound to
disavow and in great part to destroy. Let them store
the honey while they extract the sting. We say, then,
that it is the present pressing duty of Puritans to flock
bodily into the National Church, and having obtained
Parliamentary Eeforms, conferring powers upon the
Parishioners to elect their Pastors, we should speedily
'206 PURITANISM IN POWER.
see a volt-face throughout the length and breadth of
England. Because the existing cowed, defeated, and
compromising section of Evangelicals within the Estab-
lishment would then be reinforced by the whole of the
Wesley ans, the Congregationalists, the Baptists, and the
Salvation Army, also, God willing, by the Plymouth Breth-
ren, and all sensible Quakers. With this accession to the
ranks, the high Anglican party would be nowhere, and
they would very properly turn their eyes towards the
Tiber. This exodus from the meeting-houses would not
necessarily close any of them. The congregations would
remain members of the various sects, and at the same
time English Churchmen. Their attendance at the
National Church, already very customary and daily
extending, would then be larger and more frequent ; but
not exclusive ; except as they sincerely preferred that
indefinable charm which accompanies solemn, soothing,
peaceful worship in august and hoary fanes, redolent
with comprehensive charity and the sacred memories
of a nation's past. The man who cannot find God out-
side the boundaries of his own paltry sect has scarcely
nibbled at that great thing Religion. God can break
through the thicket of the grossest Ritualism, and
transform it into a burning bush where Moses waits.
The Puritans of England having then come to a sense
of their duty, and flocked back again into the home of
Wycliffe and Latimer and made that home by the help
of their own Parliament, what they mean it shall be, to a
grateful and rescued nation we should presently see a
pleasant spectacle. With pious reverence and decent
care the parishioners would proceed to remove those
Popish symbols and those altar adornments, which had
perverted the celebration of the Feast of Love, human
and Divine. The altars themselves would be wheeled
out from their East End recesses, and brought forward
among the congregation, to be known henceforward as
THE SACRAMENTAL PUKGE. 207
useful tables only. The reverent sound of the saw
would be heard piously cutting down the rood from the
screen ; saws for wood, stone and metal would be solemnly
used to bring down the Virgin Mary everywhere from
her perch. Pictures of the Crucifixion as well as the
Crucifixes would be carefully removed, and every candle,
small or tall, not wanted to enlighten our darkness,
would be put into the bag. Altar cloths, with Eomish
legends, would be lifted off with jealous care, and the
bundle of eucharistic vestments with its weight of gold
and silver thread would be unceremoniously chucked out
into the cart. Silly, tawdry, and theatrical flags would
be fetched from aloft and go after the vestments. Mass
Bells and Thuribles, Naviculas, Dalmaticas, Maniples,
Stoles and Birettas would, with all the scarlet linen of
the acolytes, add to the now bulky accumulations.
At this point it would be necessary to make some national
preparations for the Funeral Pyre ; and to make the
occasion memorable, the selection of some central spot,
where the entire pile could be consumed together with
appropriate ceremonial, would commend itself to the
Protestant leaders. Since it would be found that the
south had suffered more than the north from the Papal
Invasion, that solitary plain, which in Wiltshire holds
the dumb signals of former Priestly domination, would
offer itself as most appropriate for the holocaust.
Thither, therefore, it would be designed that trainloads
of discarded Ecclesiastical properties should proceed.
But first a rate would have to be arranged with the
Eailway Companies. Being invited to tender their
charges for the carriage of the sundries the lynx-eyed
traffic managers would be for drawing fine distinctions
and charging more for Virgin Marys than for other
Saints, and refusing to take altar candles at the
scheduled figure for lay dips. After prolonged contro-
versy an all-round figure for "Popish lumber" is
208 PURITANISM IN POWER.
arranged, and one chairman of a prosperous Eaihvay
Company, known as a Protestant Champion, induces his
Board to carry the lumber for nothing ; whereupon a
rival Company, not to be outdone, offers, in addition, to
tip it into the sea. A healthy religious sentiment thus
discovering itself among most of the Companies, in due
time the unique traffic is accommodated upon miles of
trucks, and steams towards Stonehenge from every
branch Eailway in the kingdom. No one's susceptibilities
were to be shocked, the white feather of the Locomotive
was to be a banner of Peace, and as it steamed with an
apologetic cough through the glades and groves of sweet
Eden England, the engineers had instructions to whistle
softly as on Sundays. Great expectations would be excited
at the various roadside stations by these strange arrivals,
and sundry persons would be observed to take off their
hats as the trains ran in. Papal historians of this, to
them, unhappy period, when the Nonconformists, by flock-
ing into the National Church, spoiled their game for the
conversion of England, when it was on the point of
success, might afterwards relate that a horse being
required to draw a truck out of a siding was presently
found to be blind. It would be more to the purpose if it
could be related that truck 666, full of Virgin Marys,
being put off at the village of Clacton with a hot box, it
was noticed that during its stay all the women in the
place forgot to brawl, and slander, and clack lies.
As might be expected there would be quite a congestion
at Salisbury miles of Popish lumber blocking the line
and delaying the transport of troops to Portsmouth,
which w r ould excite the utmost energy of the officials to
get rid of the rubbish speedily. And yet the labourers
could not be speeded ; they involuntarily paused as some
of them lifted a tarpaulin and gazed upon the calm
sweet face that looked down upon the treasured Child :
others were ready to chuck vestments into the lorry, but
THE SACRAMENTAL PURGE. 209
when it came to crucifixes they struck work and who
could blame them ? Strong are the laws of association.
Young kids, however, issuing from the Eailway Companies'
offices, men who had formerly assisted in shunting thirty-
nine or forty articles of the Church of England, volun-
teered to continue the discharge, and secretly conveyed
some sacred ornaments to a covert place of safety.
Barring such trivial exceptions as these, the whole mass
of meretricious adornment, symbolism and frippery,
the entire apparatus of magical man mediation and
saintly hierarchical worship is finally conveyed with a
multitude of candles which no man can number, straight
to the magical circle of stones which are a perpetual
memorial of a fallen superstition and an extinct caste.
It is a solemn day for England when the entire mass,
piled high and even higher than the neighbouring spire
of Salisbury, is ready for ignition and awaiting the
sacrilegious torch. Who could have imagined that the
Papacy had made such progress in free Protestant
England a mountain had arisen upon the plain ? Did
anyone plead for works of art ? They were pointed to
the sailing clouds above them, and to the girdle of
rolling land cushioned with purple woods, and it w r as
said, "The highest beauty is ever with you, new every
morning and fresh every evening." The pile seemed
never to be completed though the hour had struck.
" Thanks ! breathless messenger ! you have brought us
a rosary from the Virgin's chapel of the vicar of St.
Chad's. Well, for Faber's sake, we will forgive him."
" Now to the Lord a noble song
Wake every heart, wake every tongue ;
Hosanna to the Eternal Name,
And all His boundless love proclaim.
" See when it shines in Jesus' face,
The brightest image of His grace,
God in the person of His Son
Has all His mightiest works outdone.
14
210 PURITANISM IN POWER.
" The spacious eartli and spreading flood
Proclaim the wise and powerful God ;
And His rich glories from afar
Sparkle in every rolling star.
" But in His looks a glory stands,
The noblest labour of thy hands ;
The pleasing lustre of His eyes
Outshines the wonders of the skies.
" Grace ! 'tis a sweet, a charming theme ;
My thoughts rejoice at Jesus' name I
Ye angels, dwell upon the sound ;
Ye heavens, reflect it to the ground.
" Oh ! may we live to reach the place
Where He unveils His lovely face ;
There all His beauties to behold
And sing His name to harps of gold."
The great multitude, spreading out in a radius of near
half a mile, takes up the noble song, and it rolls away in
a mighty cadence like the chanting of the sea, making
the ground to shake and the heavens to drop an un-
witting tear.
If not the Archbishop of Canterbury, then the presid-
ing elder reads Psalm xcvii. :
"The Lord reigneth ; let the earth rejoice; let the
multitude of isles be glad thereof. Clouds and dark-
ness are round about him : righteousness and judgment
are the habitation of his throne. A fire goeth before
him, and burneth up his enemies round about. His
lightnings enlightened the world; the earth saw and
trembled. The hills melted like wax at the presence of
the Lord, at the presence of the Lord of the w r hole earth.
The heavens declare his righteousness, and all the people
see his glory. Confounded be all they that serve graven
images, that boast themselves of idols : worship him, all
ye gods. Zion heard, and was glad; and the daughters
of Judah rejoiced because of thy judgments, Lord.
For thou, Lord, art high above all the earth : thou art
THE SACRAMENTAL PURGE. 211
exalted far above all gods. Ye that love the Lord, hate
evil ; he preserveth the soul of his saints ; he delivereth
them out of the hand of the wicked. Light is sown for
the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart.
Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous ; and give thanks at
the remembrance of his holiness."
" Now shall we light such a candle in England as the
Papacy never shall put out."
The pile is fired just as the sun, parting a bank of
cloud in twain, looks from a boiling sea of gold, and
adds his ruby to the mounting glow. It cracks, it splits,
it shakes, trembles, collapses ; the top, the sides, the
jumbled paraphernalia, are speedily all in one red burial
blent. High and yet higher ascends the burning
incense smoke, straight up and up, until it begins to
spread like a ghostly palm tree, and its pendent crown
is fingered by the wind and braids the peeping stars
within its mesh. The nestled sheep have kneeled and
risen, ears pricked, eyes anxious, and huddled together
as blasts of light and darkness fall upon them. Owls
and bats have fled scared away, but all the winged
insects of the plain which that day were visiting
the expanse of flowery field, are here to-night in
swarms and myriads, careering among the sparks and
rushing intoxicated by a delusive glory into a con-
suming fire.
All that night the Semaphore ; its fragrance visited
the most distant towns, and ships at sea watched in
awe the burning mountain.
" clap your hands, all ye people : shout unto God
with a voice of triumph. For the Lord most high is
terrible : he is a great king over all the earth. He
shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under
our feet. He shall choose our inheritance for us, the
excellency of Jacob whom he loved. . ... The
princes of the people are gathered together, even the
212 PURITANISM IN POWER.
people of the God of Abraham : for the shields of the
earth belong unto God : he is greatly exalted."
And all that night through every Parish Church in
England moonbeams streamed upon everything that was
seemly, beautiful and of obvious use. No vase of flowers
was touched, no sculptor's art dishonoured, which was
dissociated from a creed corrupt. The old original
fair and cheerful countenance of the healthy daylight
Protestant faith settled once again upon every darling
focus of the nation's hope, and the " Princes of the
people " speeding homeward knew that English Pro-
testantism was for ever saved.
213
CHAPTER VIII.
THE RITUALISM OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.
To purge the land of Sacramentalism is not to purge it
of Ritualism. Ritualism has its due place in both civic
and religious functions. The avenues to the soul are
many, and the desirable emotion that is not evoked by
one sense may be excited by another. The train of
thought and feeling that is stagnant before a pictorial
reminder may be unsealed and set flowing by the first
bars of a sacredly associated tune.
It is therefore the Quakers and Brethren come to be
injuriously ascetic in the matter of aids to worship and
ceremonial procedure. If we have two legs it seems a
work of supererogation to use one only, and the man
who offers to play me upon one string when his instru-
ment has four is a fool for his pains. The Rainbow offers
to me the choice of many colours, why therefore should
I confine myself to Quaker's drab, which also is not
there ?
I will rather take counsel of the infinite variety and
matchless splendour of the material universe and rejoice
in the revelations of the thought of God.
The Ritualism of the National Church will be as grand
and impressive as ever was conceived, and vastly more
practical and instructive.
There will be baptizings every Sunday, on a truly
comprehensive scale, because most of the people will
require to be done over again every seven days ; the
ceremonies attaching to these will however be private.
We may preach as we will about the masses never
entering churches, but if the masses were to issue from
their highly rented dens, carrying colonies in the
children's hair and infection in the children's rags,
214 PURITANISM IN POWER.
difficulties insuperable would arise as to the gladness of
their reception. We are supposing a resettlement of the
Church before a resettlement of the social economy of
the nation, and hence having to deal with the mon-
strously diseased condition of things in which we are now
economically placed, the Baptistry of the National
Church will be placed outside, and consist of spacious
baths, hot and cold. The Bell for Baptism, Infant and
Adult, for all who will apply, rings at half-past nine.
The first process is to strip them of their filthy rags,
which are marked and ticketed, and sent to the scalding
tank in the beginning, for due completion by drying and
pressing and mending afterwards, so that at the close of
the service they are received again fit to wear and not
contagious. After divesting themselves of these the
candidates for Baptism are received into the hot and cold
water compartments. Worthy women are ready with
sponges to dab into the children's eyes and cleanse their
matted hair and wipe their worn and ulcered feet after their
lustrations have been complete. Like attentions are
paid to adults by attendants upon the separated sexes.
Then sweet lavender, otto of roses, and other unguents
are sprinkled upon them, and they are ready to put on
the Church's beautiful garments for worship.
Beautiful, that is, in their simplicity, consisting of the
altogether lovely Protestant, not Romish surplice, which
falls into folds of matchless grace and dignity ; the only
decoration being a fillet of pale blue, to distinguish the
worshippers from the officiating choir and ministers,
whose fillet will be of gold, with purple hoods. For the
women and elder girls a cap and pendant veil falling
behind would also be provided ; the fragrant heads of the
anointed children could display their curls uncovered.
Complete woollen undersuits would have to be kept for
use by those whose garments were being cleansed and
repaired.
THE RITUALISM OF THE NATIONAL CHUECH. 215
The first practical sermon will thus have been preached
upon the text, " Cleanliness is next to Godliness " and
in every Parish the Church Baths or Baptistry will
adjoin the Porch.
It would of course be the case that not everyone would
-require to be baptized, but all would require to doff the
garments of vanity for those of simplicity, or to cover the
shame of their vain glory by a surplice of white and a fillet
of blue. The ladies would no longer distract the atten-
tion of worshippers by the towering follies, the extravagant
wings, or the ridiculous diminution of their head gear.
All would be taken off before the Porch was passed, and
the cap and veil and surplice, levelling all ranks and
orders and distinctions, alone be worn. The coachman
and the earl, the washerwoman and the countess, the
bumptious financier, the lordly landowner, the prosperous
merchant, the great manufacturer, the skilled musician
and the fashionable doctor, not forgetting the famous
pleader and the Lord Mayor, would be undistinguishable
in their surplices of white and fillets of blue from the
crowd of every rank, order and degree, in which they
were lost as raindrops in a shower.
How joyful are the silver bells ! Before the Lord of
the whole earth these busy bees and drones, whose honev
getting has been so disproportionately stored, are here for
worship ; at all events, in equal want of mercy and for-
giveness. And how by the simple act of putting off
their meretricious adornments are not the women enabled
to get quit of self-consciousness and to worship the Lord
in the beauty of holiness, while the poor having cast off
their filthy garments, and mechanics got rid of the
external defilements of their trades, and all appearing
sweet and clean in the robes of beautiful simplicity
belonging to the Sanctuary none challenging notice or
distinction on account of dress before another, and all
exhaling from their persons and attire the mingled scents
216 PURITANISM IN POWER.
of flowers and fragrant herbs, there is presented the fore-
taste, for a flash of time, of that coming period when the
incense of a human family equal in privilege, dignity,
and worthiness shall ascend up to Heaven continually.
Mindful of the benumbing effect of continual repetitions,
and yet of the soothing power of sacred reminiscence,
the Parliamentary Reformers of the National Church
will take care to add to the liturgical services, while
ordering that each in turn shall rule a week together.
The first week of the four shall know only the present
venerable form intact. Then in successive weeks the
three new Liturgies, each one, however, comprising the
General Confession, Absolution, Apostles' Creed, and
Litany, with the Prayer of St. Chrysostom. These new
forms could be refreshed by additions at the end of
every ten years, and the Prayer Book kept within
bounds by the subtraction of the Psalms, Epistles and
Gospels of the day, the new version of the Bible being
used instead. Then might the Cathedral Chapters wear
a less blase appearance when they march in to the daily
services. Presbyterians like Principal Tulloch, and
Nonconformists, to whom the service is fresh, are invari-
ably struck by its classic dignity, restfulness, majestic-
pathos and truly God-like comprehensiveness but there
is only one piece of literature that will bear incessant
reiteration without losing its impressiveness, and from the
exhaustless resources of Holy Scripture the Prayer Book
should be reinforced. The Artist who being struck by a
noble scene sits down to paint it, finds its sway over his
faculties abate as his labours are protracted, and it is a
common experience that should a gust of wind blow dowi i
his easel, in the picking up of his flying picture upon a
new and accidental spot, he finds that there, not where
his kicked down camp stool rests is the spot he
should have chosen but all the same he may be mis-
taken, and the new love daily worshipped would decay
THE RITUALISM OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 217
into common-place and staleness. The truth is God has
made us to be charmed by the various, the contrasted,
and the new. He has also given us to find rest in the
habitual and to be governed in our emotions by laws of
association. A due regard to both requirements will
make of the new Prayer Book an oratorio in which there
will be a constantly recurring theme the present dearly
beloved form, but likewise hebdomadal recurring change.
Needless to say the execrable retrogression to shrieking
inconsequential Gregorian howlings, and the repulsive
poverty of " plain song " would end with the stoppage of
the downgrade Rome wards.
The matchless richness of our English Protestant
harmonies would flood all Parish Churches as they still
do our exquisite Cathedrals. The English Protestant
Choral Cathedral Service has no rival and no second in
the World.
But it is in the Church as the Nation's Judgment Seat
that her unique value would be found. Until the blessed
time when the repression of Truth-speaking shall cease
in consequence of the evolution of a Co-operative Com-
monwealth, under which none will be tempted to deal
unjustly with his brother until then the National Church
would perform the invaluable function of being the
Public Reprover and Truth Teller.
What iniquities are now done in the dark, and none
ever will denounce them publicly. The Poor have no
friends to speak for them, but the National Church would
be the friend of all the oppressed and the candid friend
of the oppressor.
It is bootless to deal out in sermons general denuncia-
tions of vices without making particular applications
and giving detailed examples such are simply passed on
to our next neighbour. " I thowt a said^whot a owt to
'a said, an' I coom'd awaay."
There should be a naming of names and a giving of
218 PURITANISM IN POWER.
facts. At present the Kail way Companies expose to
Public view the names of persons convicted of riding
without tickets, and cases in the courts of Law come to
public knowledge through the open courts, and in too
much detail and with no discretion through the Press.
But apart from these channels there is no institution for
upholding to Public reprehension the doers of wrong in
the various cases which never could constitute ground
for legal process, or where the costliness of Justice must
necessarily exclude the needy from its benefits. It is
here the National Church would find its work. It would
speak from the housetops, denouncing to Public execra-
tion the falseness, the meanness, the rapine and the
nauseous humbug of competitive commerce, as well as
the common catalogue of crimes to which reprobation
has been hitherto mistakenly confined.
Into the ears of the National Ministers would come
tales from all quarters, and from the pulpit the criminal
authors and their deeds would be denounced name by
name and fact by fact.
How utterly incapable are the voluntary Free Churches
of fulfilling such a function! There the object is to make
everything comfortable for everybody, so that everybody
may "make the best of both worlds"; money making
must in no wise be interfered with, for upon the making
of money and the purchase of indulgences in commercial
sins by "ransom-gifts," and charities, the whole success
of the voluntary system depends.
Only a National Church independently established
upon the national exchequer can speak with unfettered
authority, and she would commence her Commination
Service by lighting a series of candles upon a tier of
shelves.
These represent a number of persons whose church
standing and privileges are to be pronounced forfeit, by
reason of various acts of iniquity.
THE RITUALISM OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 219
The church is crowded from end to end, none know-
ing upon whom the thunder-clap will fall. Devouring
gloom swallows up the vaulted roof, and only a spare
jet here and there helps the congregation to their places.
At the altar end the towering cluster of candles reveal
a choir clad in black, and officiating ministers also in black.
They have chanted the Penitential Psalms and read
passages from the Prophets and St. James. Then the
presiding officer ascending the dais commences the
special function of the day.
The lihiwdilan Tin Plate Company after signing an
agreement to restrict the make of tin plates, so that the
ring of Liverpool buyers may no longer turn the trade
round their little fingers, are convicted and denounced
for working surreptitiously at night and exceeding the
stipulated out-put, thus playing false with all their
colleagues and injuring the prospects of improved
returns to the associated masters, and better wages in
consequence to the various hands. " We can only
extinguish the candle of the resident manager, but I
will give you, with his name, those of the Board of
Directors, and these gentlemen are now cautioned that
they must intervene to stop the scandal." Then follow
the names, John Sly, &c., &c., and an extinguisher
symbolically cuts off the manager from the children of
light and the congregation of the just.
The Patent " Ever-striking Match Company, Limited."
This Company, after signing an agreement to a certain
scale of pay, have been discovered guilty of keeping the
promise to the ear and breaking it to the hope by now
ordaining that a gross shall mean thirteen dozen instead
of twelve, and that in addition to finding paste and
twine the workers are to be charged so much for living
near the factory, instead of having to lose their time by
walking in from a distance, as so many others have to
do. The bottom note of the organ trembles through the
220 PURITANISM IN POWER.
building as the partners' names are uttered, and three
candles are extinguished on the altar.
The Right Honourable Courtly Knight having engaged
a governess, speaking live languages, to teach ten
children, and suddenly dismissing her without compen-
sation because she fell ill, his candle is put out from the
congregation of the just.
A.B. being bankrupt and his bankruptcy being proved
to be due to the heedless extravagance of his wife and
children, who made purchases without his knowledge and
consent, and indulged in guilty and foolish rivalry with
their neighbours, their candles are put out from the congre-
gation of the just, while that of the injured man remains.
P.Q., for working his factory Sunday after Sunday
and only allowing his hands one Sunday in three, is
hereby cast out from the congregation of the just ; like-
wise 'his daughters, for living in utter sloth and frivolity,
while their " hands " cannot call the Sunday their own,
must and hereby are made to share his condemnation.
E.S., for pernicious adulteration of beer, and T.U. for
poisonous properties in aerated waters, are cut off from
the company of the faithful.
V.W., for inveterate bounce, bunkum, and plain lying in
all manner of trade advertisements is similarly condemned.
X. Y. and Z. three workmen the first a plumber, for
making work for the undertaker, instead as. he intended
for himself, when called on to repair a sanitary mischief ;
the second a painter, for engaging to put two coats of
paint before the varnish and only putting one ; and the
third a glazier, for "accidentally on purpose" breaking
three panes of glass when required to repair one ; these,
though tempted by slackness of work, being old offenders,
are cut off from the congregation of the just.
Lady Flare for continual harshness and injustice to
her maid is hereby extinguished.
The Clydach Coal an<l Iron Company, for agreeing to
THE RITUALISM OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 221
pay their men according to a signed new scale, and then
at the first pay day attempting a trick in the weights
and conditions of work, whereby the men and local
tradesmen were put to the loss and expense of a strike
for six long weeks, until the company had put on honesty
once more. " Only the manager's candle can be put out,
as the shareholders are so numerous, but I will read you
some of the principal names, who are hereby called upon
to investigate and make restitution."
A Nincompoop B.D., for getting appointed to a free-
church pulpit through reading sermons not his own,
must cease to shine.
Roderick Careless, for stabling his valuable horse away
from his copper- works, but suffering his men to be need-
lessly poisoned, and paying them nothing in the time of
their sickness, is cut off from the congregation of the just.
Thomas Try on, for building a row of houses in frau-
dulent contempt of the sanitary authority, and thereby
causing a number of deaths from typhoid fever, and
also for exacting exorbitant rents, is cast out from
fellowship with the righteous.
By this time the number of lighted candles is much
diminished. As the service proceeds a deeper and deeper
gloom falls upon the people, and a diversion is effected
by the singing of the Miserere.
The last echoes are dying in the upper darkness, when
the officiating minister again steps forward.
TUe Rickety Coal and Iron Company, for habitual
breaches of the truck act, whereby they have defrauded
their workpeople for a quarter of a century, heaping up
to themselves wrath against the day of wrath " the
resident director is hereby excluded from the company of
the just. The company's shareholders include the Hon.
and Eevd. Burdened Sole, and Cecil Just, M.P."
Christopher Sareall, for wilful and persistent overloading
of his vessels, whereby captains and crews are frequently
22'2 PURITANISM IN POWER.
endangered, and one ship has recently gone down with
all hands, his candle is consigned to utter darkness.
Then follows a series of simple and direct offences.
At the mention of one case an Arum lily by the altar is
bent to breaking at the stalk, and while it hangs stoop-
ing to the ground, the image of a youth is splashed
with mud and tumbles from its pedestal to the floor.
As the chilly clack resounds throughout the edifice a
disturbance is heard among the people a man has torn
off his garb of holiness and is hurrying from the doors.
The next case is that of a weakly, wicked woman, whom
pride, wealth, and idleness, made a copy of the wife of
Potiphar ; her candle is put out.
And so are the candles of numerous drunkards, like-
wise of neglectful parents, and disobedient and evil sons
and daughters, bad masters and mistresses, and faithless
servants.
The end is reached at last, and upon the towering
candle screen not a solitary taper is left lighted.
In the midst of the shuddering darkness the choir
bursts forth with the Dies Irce, followed by the Benedicite,
'Omnia Opera, into which some new antiphonies have
been introduced :
Bless the Lord, O ye slum destroyers ;
Praise and magnify His name for ever.
Bless the Lord, New Houses healthy, comely ;
Praise and magnify His name for ever.
Bless ye the Lord, lost Children, owned, adopted ;
Praise and magnify His name for ever.
Bless ye the Lord, O outcasts, welcomed, tended ;
Praise and magnify His name for ever.
Bless ye the Lord, whose sweating cheat is ended ;
Praise and magnify His name for ever.
Bless ye the Lord, Rent Nation, healed, united ;
Praise and magnify His name for ever.
Bless the Lord, if ye dare, ye robber-rich, affrighted ;
Praise Him and magnify your crime for ever.
Bless ye the Lord, who come, your sins confessing,
And seek to share again the Just man's blessing.
THE RITUALISM OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 223
The choir have followed the blessing with a triple Amen,
and now, while the green, gray light of Moon and Stars
show through the wan windows, and all the solid shafts
and arches seem soft and moving and mysterious clouds,
the crowded mass of worshippers feel their way by help
of small and scattered jets, until they stand once more
beneath the stars and that steadfast sphinx-like face of
heaven, which makes no sign and rains on every mortal
the same impartial rays which testify of nothing but of
nature's impassibility and moral indifference testifies
no more of sin storing up judgment to come than the
stolid unchangeable electric accumulator testifies to the
charge upon charge that the feverish motors lay upon it,
and which are noiselessly treasured until the time for
leaping forth into action comes.
224
CHAPTER IX.
THE RITUALISM OF THE NATIONAL CHUECH-
Continued.
BUT the Day of the Return of the Penitents! Let us
hasten to the brightness of that hour. From earliest
dawn belfry calleth unto belfry, and the bells go almost
off their heads with joy. They run furiously down the
gamut, trip each other up, and fall to embracing one
another in the merriest confusion. Start fair, indeed !
They have too long watched the races of dying genera-
tions to think of such a thing ; but now it is fun, not
earnest it is pure sympathy makes them all jangle
together and cannon one another. They have a duty to
perform, and that is to lead the revels, and if any pre-
sumptuous ringer would presume to restrain them, they
will twist a rope's end round his body, lift him into their
joyful company, give him a bit of cold tongue for break-
fast, and gently let him down again. The Bevels ! I tell
you ; for it is sunny, showery June the month of
Flowers. Who has not sweet-brier in her breast? who has
not lavender '? who has not lemon thyme '? Let them go
to the Market Place and buy without money and without
price. Who has not Roses ? Ah ! there I have you ;
you should have your basket full of them, or how will
you pelt back again ? The whole of Moreton's Charity
will be there all the little maids with .their baskets full
of them ; and Hamilton's Orphanage will be there with
sweet-williams and double stocks. The battle will be
furious at St. Michael and All Angels', and the church-
yard will be strewed with ammunition.
Quite true ! the entering congregation literally trod
upon the flowers. Oh ! it was the maddest, merriest
scene when the snuffy old Mayor got a rose in his nose,
THE EITUALISM OF THE NATIONAL CHUKCH. 225
and hiccuped and made an extra double chin, as if any-
one should be offended to be hit under the nose with a rose,
especially when it was landed straight by the hand of the
orphan he had adopted ! Well, but now it is time to be
sober. The children and the elder children have had a
good laugh for once in their lives, and are perspiring and
inwardly cachinnating to a degree that obliges them to
shout, or, at all events, to whisper ventriloquially that
is, " Show me Schopenhauer ! Let me demolish that man
with the twinkle of my joyful eye. Oh, lead me to the
Nineteenth Century ! Let me ' go for ' the Pessimism
of the age ! I'll do for it and no mistake, trust me !
when the Keturn of the Penitents comes round."
Here they are ! the ouly downcast faces ; for are they
not penitent ? Two and two, in black garments of con-
fession women and men. From the Clergy House they
have walked up the strewn path their own past days
without any fragrance until now and a thronged and
pressing crowd curiously scanning, and with respectful
sympathy and satisfaction recognizing notable delin-
quents, who are here to make amends.
liobes of beauty are allowed the Clergy on that day
purple, and gold and white. The choristers flame in
carnation, and joyful pennons and banners, with words
of welcome and peace and consolation, are held aloft in
the Procession. Oh ! it is a festive church almost
gaudy ! They are everywhere the flowers are, and, for
that matter, the butterflies too ; and that idiotic
swallow he is everywhere, except at the open door,
which would let him out.
At the East end is the great candle screen, each candle
wearing its extinguisher with the delinquent's name
inscribed. The penitents are ranged choir-wise, facing
each other upon the platform of confession, and the
singers peal forth the anthem, " I will arise and go tu
my Father." There is a special service for this day,
15
226 PURITANISM IN POWEE.
and the gospels consist of the parables of the lost sheep
and of the lost piece of silver.
Then comes the hour of the Penitents. The first to
step forward to the front of the platform was a well-
known character at the Plymouth Brethren's meeting.
Ever forward to speak and great in symbolic exegesis, he
acquired the confidence of the brethren and sisters, who
thought it would be nice indeed if this brother could
show them the way to cover their cedar wood with gold
as Solomon did the temple. And the good brother
mentioned "Steamers" and "dividends, D.V." A num-
ber of the " Lord's people " took shares, but it was a
case of Hezekiah stripping the Temple for Sennacherib.
He came again for more, while the dividends came not.
The Penitent is here to day. He confesses that it was
folly and sin for him to expect that God would take
shares in his steamers, as if He needed the tithes he was
ready to promise in case. He avows now that neither
are riches promised God's children, nor idleness per-
mitted them, and having surrendered everything to his
creditors down to his gold watch, he has accepted a
situation in a deaf and dumb institution, where if he
speaks he can do no harm. His candle is lighted. His
black robe is taken from him, and he is robed in the
Church's white. Immediately a Gloria bursts from the
choir, and is taken up somewhere out of sight. The con-
gregation look up and, behold ! in the clerestory is posted
another choir, which hands the chorale up to loftier
heights, and it is confidently believed beyond the roof to
a place on high, where it is in harmony with an eternal
song.
The celebrated promoter of Bubble Companies is next
He also traded upon a religious profession, and induced
scores of " believers " to become shareholders, and he
also ruined them. He now makes his confession and
with it a pronouncement of his inability to do more than
THE RITUALISM OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 227
surrender Hoyland, with its stables and coverts and
fishponds complete, also Lynwood-by-the-Sea, and all his
interest in Gamble, Scramble & Co., with the benefit of
his advice to sell out as fast as possible. He will devote
himself for the remainder of his life to making wholesome
ginger beer, in brown stone jars (he is about to advertise
his trade mark when the officiating minister checks him,
and whispers, " Only your confession is required "). His
candle is lighted, and the robe of reconciliation restored
to him. Again the Gloria and the Gloria in Excelsis.
Step on to the platform the five Directors of the
Rickety Iron Co., with the chairman at their head.
Their restitution for the robbery of Truck takes the shape
not of the founding of a museum, or the building and
endowing of an orphanage, but the painful search for and
finding out of the men who in the past twenty-five years
were in their employ, and the sending them money
orders and cheques for profits wrongfully taken at the
Company's shop. The whole of the congregation clap
their hands, which on that day is permitted, but a
wag whispers to his fellow, " Don't you wish they may
get it. It is a death-bed repentance, the Company is
moribund now." Nevertheless, five candles are relighted,
five shining robes replace the sable gowns, and the
choirs peal forth their Gloria.
Christopher Saveall. All he can do now is to enter the
order of St. Peter, for the comfort and relief of sailors.
He cannot raise the dead from the bottom of the sea.
He devotes his gains to the families of the bereaved
and a portion to the election expenses of Mr. Plimsoll.
Jonah Slaughter, who would not fence in his perilous
machinery, nor stop it working when it needed to be
cleaned or the gear adjusting, sorrowfully confesses that
he cannot bring back to life Elias James, whose body
was broken upon the wheel, or Martha Price, whose
hairs and blood besprinkled the factory walls. The walls
2-28 PURITANISM IN POWER.
have been whitewashed, but the stains look upon him in
the dark. He has, however, bought a glass eye for the
boy Edwin Hook, and the best cork legs that could be
made for Janet Brown, Edgar Thomas and Julia Snape.
Seventeen new fingers and thumbs, Edison's patent, have
been fixed to the hands of eight children, and three arms
with springs to the mangled bodies of Peter Daley, aged
twelve, Andrew Scott, thirteen, and John Ball, twenty-
two, but their real compensation cannot be until the
Resurrection.
When all have made their confession there are still
many candles which remain unlighted, in fact the
majority. Prayer is made for their speedy restoration.
To the Penitents the officiating minister hands severally
an Electric lamp, saying to each in turn, " Keep thou thy
conscience clear as this light." Then to a final Anthem
of rejoicing they file down the aisles again, the people
standing, and saying as they pass, " We bid you welcome
to the congregation of the Just ; we wish you good luck
in the name of the Lord." There are feasts ; there are
games ; the solemn and the festive Agape.
Ring out, wild bells ! Aye, you may ring rnadly now !
You have something to ring about. The destruction of
those other Rings, the ringing of the world together.
229
CHAPTER X.
INTERLUDE. FATHER ANGELUS.
THE steps are steep that conduct us to the height
where the Carmelite monastery overlooks the billowy
expanse.
The Father in rope-girdled habit and sandalled feet
has been working in the convent garden, and now as he
stands to rear a fallen bean and give it a chance to lift
its head among its fellows, the girdle of his tonsure is
silvered by the sun, and his black straight figure sends
its shadow along the ground and up our waist.
He courteously acknowledges our salutation and
accedes to our request to tell him something of his past
history. " I need not," said he, " detail to you my early
life. It is known to my friends that I early suffered
disappointment in a quarter where I trusted to find
married happiness, and that afterwards I endeavoured
to benumb my wounded affections by an intense devotion
to business. My father left me a little patrimony, which
was the basis of my speculations, and having succeeded
in adding to it by my first fortunate stroke, the appetite
for gold and the excitement of gambling on the great
scale seized me, and I became known upon the stock
exchange as one of the most fearless and ingenious of
Company promoters. I will not weary you with a list of
the Companies that I started ; members of the Royal
families of England and Germany were interested ; I had
audience of the cream of Society, who waylaid me in my
chambers and besought me to put them upon my share
lists. We sold out that is, their Royal Highnesses and
I when I gave them the tip, and after hauling in our
scores and even hundreds of thousands, we left the rest
of the poor beggars to stand the crashes that invariably
230 PURITANISM IN POWER.
succeeded. Skipping over much of inferior interest, I
will come to my final coups. You are aware what a
power of combination the telegraph and telephone have
given us. Well, a company was formed to take over
the milch cows of the United Kingdom. It took time,
required a deal of delicate handling, but at last not an
udder in England, Scotland, or Wales but was owned
by the Consolidated Milk Company, Limited. Share-
holders were to have their milk at a normal price, hence
an immediate and increasing demand for shares which
ran them up to a fabulous figure ; and many of the
original investors selling out for a fortune, were glad,
when their children got sickly, to buy back again at an
enormous premium.
" I sat in my office in Bolt court, and could almost control
the wagging of the tails of every cow in the Kingdom.
Each animal had stamped upon its buttock ' C.M.C., Ltd.'
that was the mark of the Beast. We ran the price of
milk up to 10/- the quart ; the children of the poor
died wholesale, and concurrently there was a great
advance in the price of chalk. Calves' brains also came
into great demand. Of course there were indignation
meetings, but they failed, because almost everybody
of influence had a share in some similar monopoly,
and our questions and revelations turned the anger of
the people upon the professed philanthropists of the
platform.
"A general participation in unlimited speculation with
limited companies weakened every group in opposition,
but the mob assaulted the milk carts, and we had an
escort of infantry, and then of cavalry, trotting about
the streets morning and afternoon to protect the sacred
rights of property, freedom of contract, &c., &c.
" By these means the children of the poor continued to
die, and the rich shareholders waxed rich exceedingly.
People said it was a double advantage, as the State was
INTERLUDE. FATHER ANGELUS. 231
being rid of the dangerous classes, and labour was shown
to be suckled at the breasts of capital.
" Some curious results scarcely to be anticipated
occurred. When milk got to 7/6 a pint, the rich rejected
champagne and invited their friends to a supper of sky
blue. The fashion spread until in the general compe-
tition to ape their betters, the beverage of the well-to-do
came to be milk and water, and to save the rates prisoners
got beer instead of skilly.
" Of course, Ireland was our constant difficulty, the
priests would not permit the people to enter the Eing,
and an immense emigration of the English labourers
into Ireland set in, as unto a land flowing with milk and
honey. Manufacturers commencing to thrive under the
protective policy of Home Eule, work was found for all
of them, and for the first time in history Ireland was
pacified.
" We heard of a cargo of goats coming from Italy and
we had it neatly sunk ere it reached the harbour ;
gold, you know, will do anything. We were next
endangered by an attempt to introduce the wretched
cattle of India, but we hired Brahmin priests through-
out the length and breadth of the land to proclaim,
that to so dispose of the sacred animals was sacrilege,
and the project of our enemies was doomed. We had,
too, a great deal of trouble with the importation of con-
densed milk from Switzerland. Cans came in daily
through the parcel post. We saw this would ruin us, so
we had our Agents on the continent who packed
dynamite in cans with the nearest possible imitation of
the Jones' Company's brand. A few post offices were
blown up and post office officials discharged for life, when
the Government refused to transmit any more tinned
goods.
" How long did we last ? Until the new ministry came
in no longer. All the stock party cries subsided,
232 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Disestablishment, Ireland, Eight Hours' Bill, Allotments,
Leasehold Enfranchisement, even the Temperance cause
was ruined along with the Breweries. Throughout the
length and breadth of the land, from morning until
evening, there was but one cry heard, and that was
' Milk ! '
" It was discovered that the Liberals were the greatest
shareholders in the new company, being out and out
sticklers for freedom of trade ; and that was enough,
the whole people rejected them ; for while the rich were
getting their milk cheap the poor were getting it dear, or
not getting it at all.
" A mob stormed the house of the Liberal Prime
Minister and stole his milk. ' We don't want your
milk, we can drink champagne,' said his prig of an
eldest son, and he was murdered upon the spot. The
country called aloud for the Tory democrats to succeed.
Our enemies called them the ' Wet Nurses,' but when
they took office the country was saved, while our
Company was ruined.
" You know, however, the Revolution that ensued?"
" And then you came here ? "
" No ! I had one more fling this time at meat. We
owned all the stock in the three kingdoms, and bought
up all the ranches in Canada and South America.
We sent beef up to a pound a pound, and Ireland
imported mutton from Australia. It was of course
necessary to use the Woking Crematorium night and
day, for the consumption declined. There was a row
about that when we had to keep a noble hearse waiting
while our animals were being disposed of, but we got
over it.
" W T hat beat us at last was a little Board School Master
with a white face and pimples."
"How?"
" He went about through the country preaching a
INTERLUDE. FATHER ANGELUS. 233
dietary fad of his ; and when at last we offered Beef at
only 4/6 per Ib. the people were all Vegetarians.
" That, however, was only a temporary blow, since the
people also took to white faces and pimples, and then
thought better of it. What gave us the final finish was
.a man who broached the novel and ridiculous doctrine
that Christianity had something to do with Business.
" The Pope, who had left Eome for Dublin Castle,
sided with the people on this question and against the
Protestants, showing how the Papacy had frequently
interfered with Business in past ages, and how Cardinal
Manning had assisted to end the London Dock Labourers'
strike. The Holy Father insisted that Business did owe
allegiance to Religion, and he suggested as an alternative
for the want of beef fasting and fish.
" It was thus that the work of the Reformation was at
last undone and the Pope got his own again in England.
" The milk business, as you know, seated a new
dynasty upon the throne, did away with drunkenness,
and pacified Ireland.
" The meat monopoly restored England to Dublin
Castle and the Catholic Faith.
" It is not given to many men," added Father Angelus,
" to play such a part in history."
* * * *
From the oratory we survey one of the widest and
most diversified landscapes in the kingdom.
Range after range of rolling and of peak-shaped hills,
flecked with soft woods that run to forests at their base,
or send their scouts into the plain. Hills that decline
the glittering mirror of the river, and retire behind each
other to penetrate the secret of the farthest mists, which
hold in thrall a gaunt gray crater, that only rises ghost-
like from the ground to prophesy of rain.
The Black Friars have their Abbey at the river's bend,
and the tall chimneys of the Little Sisters rise above a
234 PURITANISM IN POWER.
belt of sheltering beech. The rift between two hills is
softened by the smoke of a busy forge, the beat of whose
machinery is as the muffled beating of the heart.
Toll ! Toll ! the Angelus ! The maiden a toy doll
in the distance stops with the udder in her hand. The
reaper's horse is checked in full career. The plough-
man stays his team and lifts his eyes above the ground.
The white plume of the express train riding gaily
through the trees seems to stop behind a coppice for a
prayer ; and does not the white flash of the cataract,
posed upon its purple cushion, hang for a moment in
suspense ? At all events, the Heart has ceased to beat,
and the swarthy workmen cross their breasts and pray ;
and away 'mid the mountains the sun has lighted up a
quivering spark it is the silver effigy upon the
Cathedral Church of "our Lady of Brecon" pronouncing
its benediction upon the scene.
235
CHAPTER XI.
THE EITUALISM OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH-
Concluded.
THE National Church, as now, would be the most fitting
exponent of the National Thanksgiving for a year of
Plenty. At the Harvest festivals the co-operation of
every kind and description of Association should be
sought. The Trades organizations with their bands
and banners ; the Charity Schools with theirs ; the
Firemen and Police ; the Reformatory Schools ; the
Railway men ; the Seamen's Union ; Representatives of
the Army and the Navy, with Military bands. The entire
varied life of our complexly differentiated civilization
should be in evidence on that day. " Let everything
that hath breath praise the Lord." Beasts of the field,
decorated with flowers, should be led in the procession.
Trophies of fruit and corn and fodder should press the
decorated wains. At the head should march the bands
of the National Clergy. The Bishop, with his crozier,
preceding the Chapter of his Cathedral, and the choir
alone giving forth sweet sound, the instruments reserving
their performance for the Religious Service that is to
follow. When the whole of the bands and voices, having
practised the music some weeks before, unitedly bless
God, that to their land that year has fallen the golden
apple of special favour, a mighty rushing sound shakes
the edifice and a tongue of fire descends upon the
preacher.
The Farmer, perhaps, may be the only man dis-
quieted, for he knows that, under the disease of our
commercial system, which turns good food to poison, he
might be the richer for a scantier yield, and that the
news of dearth and scarcity abroad is the most solid
ground for his unqualified praise and satisfaction.
236 PURITANISM IN POWER.
But the year of dearth, of plague, pestilence and famine,
and sudden death national humiliation and disaster.
Such seasons, especially when the nation has lain too
long under the corrupting sun of a too great prosperity,
are wholesome, and subjects for thanksgiving as well of
national humiliation, repentance and prayer. The
National Church is the fitting vehicle for the expression
of the national sentiment, while her ministers declaim
against the national sins, and urge the case of wounded
Justice, that ever looks to Heaven for redress. It is the
National Church that should speed the Fleet upon her way
and welcome the shattered remnants that return. The
National Church should speak an independent word on
every question of the nation's policy, denounce concessions
to unchristian sentiment, and for ever counsel incurring
risks, dangers, and losses, rather than purchase a hollow
peace and present safety by a base surrender of Christian
principle. The National Church should say in tones
that statesmen would be bound to heed, because the
nation stood behind the speakers " Let us as a people
be prepared to suffer and to lose rather than do wrong "
though knowing well that the Righteous Nation never is
forsaken ; while the temporizing politicians, who imagine
they are strengthening the stakes, are really sowing
dragons' teeth and planting judgment rods. Whether
the war is radically right or not the National Church
must see the man beneath the soldier and commit the
departing Army to its God. And when it returns a
moiety each man with life-long memories of human
carnage, and some fellow silent who should first greet the
diminished host upon its native soil ? Surely the Clergy
of that Church which blessed its proud departure and
the thunder of whose organs mingled with the blow o
their trumpets in so many festivals of the florid year.
It is the National Church, too, must speak the
independent word in every contest between Capital and
THE RITUALISM OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 237
Labour. The mediatrix between brethren, artificially
made enemies by the working of a godless and unchristian
social scheme. Standing between living Capital and dead
Labour, she would do her best to stay the plague of
strikes until the odious polity was reformed. It is the
function of the National Church to voice the nation's
thanks for every good gift of God to the world and to
their nation, be it in Science, Literature, or the Arts ; be
it in the services of the children as Inventors, Discoverers,
Mechanicians, Statesmen, Teachers, or examples of admir-
able behaviour in various situations.
There should be a festival of thanksgiving for Chaucer
and Spenser, Milton and Shakespeare, Pope, Addison,
Goldsmith, Cowper, and Coleridge; for Wordsworth,
Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens, &c.
The Church will never condone moral delinquency on
account of intellectual brilliancy, therefore only with due
reservations and qualifications will she give God thanks
for Byron, Goethe, and George Eliot.
She will pronounce to the great congregation her Index
Expuryatorius as she has a right to do.
She will thank God for Bacon and Newton, Harvey
and Jenner, Priestly, Faraday and Black, likewise for
Smith, of Edinburgh, Pasteur, of Paris, and a blessed
host of benefactors of mankind whose work was their
reward.
She will thank God in lordly festival for Alfred Kussell,
Wallace, Charles Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley, and Dallinger,
and for the Man in the Iron Mask, who is now tremb-
ling on the brink of greater physical discoveries than the
world has dreamed of.
She will give her rewards will the National Church ;
she will now ask for a cure for hydrophobia and for a
paraffin lamp that will not prove a demon of destruc-
tion. Successful candidates will be put on the Eoll of
Benefactors and be decorated bv her with honour.
238 PURITANISM IN POWER.
The National Church will thank God for the precious
but pitiful company of Artists. Men doomed to pay for
the keenest happiness in their work by the bitterest dis-
appointment in its sale. Bees whose honey is ever stolen
by the money lender and the picture dealer. Prophets
whose sepulchres profitless post-mortem adulation will
adorn.
The National Church will give God thanks for Hogarth,
Hilton, Reynolds, Wilkie, Blake, Faed, Frith, and Holl,
and borrowing the specs of the Academy she will spy out
Holman Hunt. She will bless bountiful Heaven for
Landseer, Millais, Brett and Hook, for Turner, Pyne,
Davies (W. H. B.), Morris, Murray and Peter Graham,
likewise for Gilbert, Birket Foster, Leech, Doyle, Tenniel,
Dore', Linley Sambourne and Hablot K. Browne. For
Chantrey, Boehm, Pioubilliac and Foley, and for that
Christian genius of the Lambeth Potteries, who would
have made his fortune long ago, if he had not shocked
Society by remaining in the class of the Carpenter of
Nazareth.
The National Church will give God thanks for Purcell,
Handel, Haydn; for Beethoven, Mendelssohn and
Mozart; for Wagner, Schubert, Gounod, Balfe and
Sullivan.
She will render praise for Brindley, Hargreaves, Ark-
wright, Watt, George Stephenson, James Murdoch, Edison,
and many thousands of working mechanics who, unknown
to fame and deprived of any share in the fortunes they
make for others, continue to invent and to suggest and to
start mechanical improvements of all kinds, with never
an acknowledgment, either verbal or tangible, from the
country whom their inventions are supposed to bless.
It is indeed doubtful if they do bless at all, when in
the present constitution of Society the value of a machine
is reckoned by the degree in which it will vex and threaten
the living of a fellow man.
THE RITUALISM OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 239
The National Church will give God thanks for the
great past masters in Architecture, and for one solitary
modern who was not an Imitator Joseph Paxton. She
will also bless God for Wren, the builder of St. Paul's, but
may piously wish that the cuckoo Wren of the Parish
Churches had never been born. She will reconcile her-
self to the Victorian copyists, patchers and piece workers,
and mention with respect the names of Elmsley, Water-
house, Pearson and Gilbert Scott, and lament that for
our sins one Street was spoiled by law.
She will wonder why the red-handed murderers of poor
Queen Anne are allowed to continue in existence.
The National Church will mention before Heaven with
thanksgiving the heritage of such teachers as Sir Thomas
Moore, Sir Thomas Browne, Eichard Hooker, John
Bunyan, Bishop Leighton, Wycliffe, Wesley, Kingsley,
Stanley, Newman, Robertson, Ruskin, Martineau, Maurice,
Chalmers, Channing, Tennyson, Farrar, Faber.
For the bright band of pure writers who have laid
in high morality the foundations of American literature
for Longfellow, Whittier, Irving, Emerson, Lowell,
Holmes, Bryant, and H. B. Stowe she will thank God
as for lights to rule the marching of the great New
World.
The Political Economists and Metaphysicians having led
the world into fogs quite gratuitously she will discreetly
leave unnamed, and few are the Historians to which, for
the same reason, she can allude with commendation. For
absolutely at this very late time of day it has been
discerned that there is an "Economic basis of History,"
as if History ever had more or other than two bases
Economics and Religion, i.e., the struggle for the life that
now is, and for that which is to come. Macaulay shows
glimpses of reason in this regard, but the man who dis-
closes most penetration into economical causes is the
much decried Allison, whose style too is more clear and
240 PURITANISM IN POWER.
enjoyable than most. The amusing discovery that
there is an Economic basis of History is matched b}'
the dawning conviction of modern Divines that Religion
has actually something to do with Business.
For genuine Philanthropists and high-minded States-
men the National Church will render devoutest thanks,
but this part of the service will obviously be short.
Looking beyond her shores, the National Church will
give God thanks for England's interest in the great
minds and hearts of other lands. She will thank God
for Kepler, Galileo and Tycho Brahe ; for Columbus,
Vasco de Gama, Marco Polo and Monsieur de Lesseps,
for the giants of the Renaissance, for the Inventor of
printing; for Martin Luther, John Calvin, Pascal, Fenelon,
Bossuet, and with important reservations for Voltaire.
She will bless Heaven for Dante, Cervantes, Lopes de
Vega, and \vith qualifications for Moliere, Rousseau,
Hugo and Dumas. She will mention Schiller, Bunsen
and Humboldt, and praise God for Lavoisier, Le Verrier,
Liebig and Lussac, for Galvani, Linnaeus, Cuvier and
Pasteur. Likewise she will give thanks for Piubens,
Rembrandt, Correggio, Murillo, Titian, and that the
modern French School is no worse than it is. She will
also pray for a Continental Architect, and a bit of Conti-
nental landscape, unspoiled by law and order.
The National Church will devoutly thank High
Heaven for Marx, Mazzini, and Schulze-Delitsche ; for
Owen, and Proudhon and Gregory the Great. She cannot
be indifferent to the lesser lights, which, undistinguish-
able on account of their number, form a milky way of
glory across the dark face of society's moral sky. She
will hold high Festival on All Saints 1 Day. Not to
glorify the mythical performances and miracles of
mediaeval saints, but coming nearer our own home and
times to mention with thanksgiving the continuation of
the line. She will make mention of the Doctor, who
THE RITUALISM OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 241
persisting in attending upon his diphtheritic patients when
threatened himself, at last falls a victim to his sense
of duty, of whom it might be said, at a great distance
from Another, he saved others, himself he could not save.
Of the Sister who, anointing the cancerous breast of a
poor woman, took the malady in her hands ; of the heroic
son or daughter who, being left by death of both parents
sole guardian of a family, held the fort and fed the
garrison until relief came in providential openings for the
young ones and their provider. For the Rescuers who
perished in seeking to save the lost ; for the strangers
.who sank exhausted after saving strangers from a watery
grave ; for the scion of a noble house, born to wealth and
hereditary distinction, who cast aside his pomp and
prospects and entered into the lowly lot of the suffering
poor, to bring to them a brother's help and heart.
Countless is the number, Glory be to God ! of those who,
lost in a crowd of similar bright souls, obtain neither
notice nor distinction, such as did the stars which were
set in darker and emptier periods of our history.
In the annual catalogue of Christ's dear followers read
to the congregation on this sacred festival, it will be
strange if every parish in the kingdom does not furnish
its examples of greater or lesser brilliancy. A brief and
modest record of the simple facts would accompany the
recital of each name ; the people would be exhorted
to " Go and do likewise," and the anthem, " Blessed are
the dead who die in the Lord, yea, saith the Spirit, for
their works do follow them," will be piously sung.
Thus will the National Church vitalize the spiritual
faculty of every man. She will see God in everything
and everything in God. Appointed the witness for the
great verity, that Christ is the Saviour of all men,
especially of those that believe, she will, by symbol,
ceremony and significant festivals, appeal to that native
and common consciousness of God and gocdness in the
16
242 PURITANISM IN POWER.
masses, which exists as a thing real but widely differ-
entiated from the fuller religious consciousness of
regenerated souls.
She will stand for the Church of the Catechumen as
distinct from the Church of the Baptized, though compe-
tent to include and build up both ; for the Church of the
Jews as distinct from the Church of the early Christians ;
for the Church of the disciples of our Lord, before
Pentecost bid them step up higher to the fuller knowledge
of heavenly mysteries and Apostolic acquaintance with
God's saving grace.
And while her congregations are gathered together, her
towers and spires, holding aloft the captive lightning of
the clouds, will signify to wayfarers by land and sea
that in this world's night, the light that lighteth every
man is being there adored.
"With doors swinging open all the day, and a nearer
heaven, with the Church's constellations, brought down
above the town when the sun has set, the Church of the
nation's love would call and spread her wings for all her
wandering brood by day, and smile with eyes of light
upon their larger attendance in the evening.
Meanwhile there would always be a Pilgrim Church,
which these gorgeous ceremonials would only superfi-
cially attract, and could never in themselves and apart
from sound and solid Evangelical teaching (such, how-
ever, need never be absent from them) suffice to draw
from attendance at their custoniaiy " conventicles,"
except on occasions of National interest.
In these " quiet fanes of prayer " no adventitious aids
to devotion are found necessary. There only white walls,
plain windows, goodly square ceilings, oak painted
benches the utmost decoration a nailed-up text. The
singing may start with quivering uncertainty, and be..,
maintained by a number of old men arid women out of
tune ; nevertheless the hearts keep in tune, and the
THE RITUALISM OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 243
man who takes his place at the desk to speak may be
able to quicken the finest emotions and to make alert
the noblest faculties of the soul, because he is en rapport
with the people he is addressing. His spiritual history
is fundamentally identical with theirs and theirs with
his. He discloses to them the firmament of Scripture,
irradiated to its farthest corners by the Sun of Righte-
ousness. He brings forth from the shrine of his heart
the God who has condescended to make it His temple.
He pourtrays the glories of the invisible, dwells upon
the Mediatorial offices of the blessed Son, exalts the All-
sufficient one, and draws his hearers within the Courts
of the Most Holy. With the eyes of their soul and with
the ears of their heart they hear and see, and are
spiritually glad, more than they whose corn and whose
wine are increased, and with a wholesome and awful sense
of the Eternal and the Unseen they renew their vows
to walk as seeing Him who is invisible, and to come not
into the judgment of the ungodly. The inner chiselling
of a soul more beautiful than the time-worn features
shows through the fleshy envelope and sets a peculiar
seal of softness and of dignity upon the face.
This worship, to those not en rapport so bare, so
cold, so unadorned is delightful even to the child who
has been brought into the same spiritual plane ; but the
masses of mankind will never be brought into that plane
during the age that is, the Scriptures assert it, and
history ever makes them true.
244
CHAPTER XII.
THE NATIONAL CHURCH OF THE FUTURE.
THE glory and excellence of the National Church are,
that while it, and it alone, can embody, reveal, and
exhibit the dim, but so far as it goes, real, religious sen-
timent of a great community of men a national
entity it, at the same time, can conduct all the opera-
tions of spiritual husbandry conducive to the regeneration
of men, and form within its borders members of that
elect church to which Nonconformity has given special
witness. Of course the Church of England has its
pilgrim church to quite as great a degree as ever the
Dissenters had, and by special missions and prayer
meetings, adapting what Nonconformists and Wesleyang
have found of value, it could now leave the outside sects
without a rational plea for self-exclusion, except on the
score of its modern disease in the subordination of the
Scriptures and the exaltation of the Sacraments. The
only safe and permanent cure for this will be the entire
abolition of the Sacraments, as never designed for
anything but as means to an end, and the end being
frustrated by the corruption of the means, the Christian
consciousness in its clear freedom as to what is and is
not essential, can erase theim from the Christian
ordinances. At the same time consciences must be free,
and if any think that it is incumbent upon them to be
baptized and to celebrate the Lord's Supper, they might
do so, but not in the National Church ; the co-existing
Nonconformists who thought so would then be the only
Ritualists.
The National Church, then, in the first place, is a
Church without Sacraments, and hence cut off absolute!}'
from Rome and all Rome's ways.
THE NATIONAL CHUKCH OF THE FUTURE. 245
In the next place her Apostolical succession, so-called,
will cease and determine. The order of Priests will
expire, or rather be merged into the general assembly of
the Church of the Firstborn, whose names are written in
heaven, and all of them written there as Kings and
Priests unto God. Being then anointed and ordained
with authority so high, it needeth not the imposition of
any human hands to confirm it. Official Priesthood
lapses and the Priesthood of Believers supervenes.
The Bishops being already elected by the conge d'elire
of the Sovereign, it is only a step further in the same
direction to have every Parish Clergyman appointed by
the State, that is, by the free and sovereign people in
their executive capacity, acting really under God, to whom
all power belongs. Anglican " orders " would then
mean the orders of the Government, and the pre-
tence of Apostolical succession disappear. Of course
preparation and Episcopal examination, together with
parishioners' election, would precede the Government
appointment.
As to the financial basis of the whole the Consoli-
dated Fund, annually voted, would supply the means of
securing the Churches proper independence, without
infringing upon the voluntary principle. The injustice
of burdening one industry, and that so precious and im-
portant a one as agriculture, with the support of the
National Church, would then disappear. All other
interests, as in duty bound, would contribute and relieve
the farmer of a portion of that honour which has been
hitherto reserved to him alone the honour of upholding
the most sacred, the most precious, the most beneficial
of the national institutions.
A National Church so founded would speedily draw
into its arms the great majority of the dissenting sects.
Only the Nonconformist Eitualists would stand out, and
they would probably come to be called, in the mass,
246 PURITANISM IN POWER.
" Sacramentarians," or " Sacramentalists. As there is.
nothing like schism for the undue magnifying of minor
differences, the Nonconformist Ritualists might ultimately
be expected to go over to Rome, whither the High
Anglicans, upon the Parliamentary reform of their
Church, had long before preceded them. In this exodus
the Plymouth Brethren, who grab the cup and the
bread from anyone whose praise is in all the churches,
may be expected to lead the way.
Meantime it would be no part of the government to do
the least thing towards hastening the fizzling out of the
Dissenters. Every little group of earnest men testifying
for the spiritual and against the material is of incalculable
value. It never can be statesmanship to touch with the
besom of destruction or the finger of scorn a single living
spiritual force existing amid the people. Not a Chapel,
not a Sectarian College, not the most insignificant of
sectaries, so long as their tenets were socially harmless,
but would be recognised with honour as simply off- shoots
of the one great National Establishment the voluntary
choice of the entire people.
I can imagine the horror of the ecclesiastic at a Church
being supposed to receive her doctrines and authority
from such a source, but the ecclesiastic must be informed
that the free choice of a people who have received the
Bible into their hearts has a higher and diviner sanction
than an (Ecumenical Council, a College of Cardinals, or
any number of Bishops and Deans in Convocation.
The minds and hearts of the English people have been
so leavened by the uncorrupted word of God, that only
let the Christian conviction of the Nation be truly repre-
sented in Parliament, as it will be when Puritans awake
to their duty, and it may be trusted to make and
amend Articles of Religion, to prescribe doctrine and to
abolish sacraments, and at the end of its work leave the
Church of England and the Christian verities standing
THE NATIONAL CHUECH OF THE FUTURE. 247
more obviously than ever on imperishable foundations
of Scriptural, that is to say, Divine authority.
The Parliamentary National Church will thus have
equal age and greater claim to lineal descent from the
Apostles than any other that puts forward the assump-
tion. But it will take a long time to destroy the fons et
origo of Papal and soul-destroying error the faith in
magical sacraments. That sad fact must not prevent
the exhibition of real Christian union among all the
Churches, and meantime the Society of Friends will have
a grand opportunity of testifying to the all-sufficiency of
the Inward Light, the Spirit's guidance the sacramental
value of genuine faith, and love and obedience apart from
any and every Church ordinance Churches, of course,
and all their ordinances being simply means to ends.
The way in which the fundamental Union of all
Christians might be exhibited would be easy with the
aid of a National Church. All the Paul, Apollos and
Cephas denominations would unite in the grand National
Thanksgivings and Commemorations which would take
place, as previously indicated, in the Churches of the
people. And since the Eoman Catholics would be the
single exception to the general concord, it would be the
part of Protestants to modestly and charitably testify
against their blindness and bigotry, by going themselves
to sing a Te Dcum in the Catholic Churches and Cathe-
drals. Protestants should thus recognise the incalculable
obligation which they are under to that Church from
which the Eeformers sprang, and which preserved and
handed down to them the Sacred Becord. As for the
Jews they should be roundly compelled to open their
Synagogues to the Gentiles. If aliens avail of religious
liberty to practise intolerance they must be given notice
to open their doors or withdraw. The colonization of
Palestine would thus be accelerated.
A word must be said upon the rescue of our lovely
248 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Cathedrals from possible architectural degradation and
defilement by the intrusion of Roman Catholic abomina-
tions. The National Church, with Nihilism towards
Sacraments for its only "ism," would effectually save our
matchless Gothic temples from losing the heavenly purity
that passed upon them with their Protestant Baptism.
What is it that shocks and jars and offends upon the
Continent, and robs many glorious interiors of that per-
fect dignity and grace and chaste sublimity which mark
the best of our Cathedrals at home ? Is it not the bar-
barous and tawdry theatrical concomitants of Catholic
mummery at the altar and side chapels ? Artistically, it
is utter abomination. If we could get a sacramental and
Protestant purge of these Cathedrals, they might, some
of them, compare with the gems of our own land but if
ever architecture was conceived suited to receive its last
exquisite finish by the simple process of stripping it of
excreta it is the Gothic of our Protestant Cathedrals.
One shudders at the hideous defacement that would
ensue were a row of disgusting pictures of the stations of
the cross to be stuck against the clustered columns of
Exeter or Wells. It makes one ill to imagine a pile of
wooden steps in the choir of Gloucester painting and
tinsel red damask and sloppy yellow candles, sacred
effigies in wood, hospital trophies in wax, and the thou-
sand and one abominations that stamp Roman Catholic
Worship as essentially ugly, foul, and barbarous, beyond
artistic redemption. The builders of the Cathedrals a
body of inspired men w r hom God sent into Europe to make
it ready for the coming of His Son were, by the witness of
their work, all of them sound Protestants at heart. It is
Protestantism, and Protestantism alone, that has done
them justice, and those grand men will never rest easy
in their graves until what Protestants have done for their
architecture in England, shall be done for them likewise
throughout the length and breadth of Western Christendom.
THE NATIONAL CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 249
But men like the Bishop of Lincoln would lay their
palsying sacrilegious hands upon the virgin purity of
these lovely fanes, and destroy at once the chaste beauty
of the Christian architecture and the glory of the
Christian faith.
Eome touches nothing that she does not deform. She
began by disfiguring her classic inheritance. The
inspired freemasons of the thirteenth century, and the
builders at Florence and Pisa, gave her a reputation for
Art which she never did anything to deserve and has
since done everything to disprove.
The dumpy clumsy ugliness of St. Peter's, and the
attempt to defeat perspective in the colonnade, as con-
trasted with the noble dignity and grace of St. Paul's,
London, typically reveal how Protestantism elevates the
taste as well as purifies the understanding. It is the
same with music and vestments. Protestantism exalts
the organ and choral harmony, until what seems
heavenly perfection has been achieved in cathedral wor-
ship. With Eome the organ dwindles into a puny wardrobe
of flutes, and the choir, monotonously howling, is clad
like charity children. The celebrant at mass is a heap
of clothes a cross between a monk and a buffoon.
Ugliness is Home's mark ; beauty is blessedly allied to
the system that opposes her.
But we must now draw this section to a close. We
have suggested:
(1,) That the Eevelation of God's purpose to save the
entire race logically gives place for a National Church.
(2,) That this is the Divine idea for all nations as
revealed in the Jewish polity.
(3,) That not Individualism alone but distinctly
Nationality is the governing principle of Divine appeal,
promise and threatening. That not only men but nations
are the appointed witnesses to the reality of a Divine
Providence and the truth of a supreme moral Governor.
250 PURITANISM IN POWER.
(4,) That it is possible for a Nation with free institu-
tions to reveal a National character and also a Religious
Life.
(5,) That an organ for the manifestation of its Reli-
gious Life as a Nation should be the first care of a
Christian State.
(6,) Such an organ, while definitely Christian in its
main foundations, must be used as a means of securing
the better reign of justice among men, rather than for the
advocacy of theological opinion, and confine itself to the
preaching of Christ always Christ as the Saviour of
men by His Incarnation, Death and Resurrection.
(7,) That the Government of the National Church can
be safely committed to a people who in the main love
their Bibles.
(8,) That the Disestablishment party, if they would
become Reformers, would speedily enable the Nation to
make its Church truly and acceptably National.
(9,) That it is the duty of all Dissenters to flock
into the National Church, and to be so represented
in Parliament that the needed reforms may proceed
forthwith.
(10,) That no one but an Atheist could consistently
maintain that Christ's Headship of His Church is
affected b}^ its alliance with the State.
(11,) That a Protestant purge of Papal ornaments by
Parliamentary action would scare the Romish doves back
to their dove-cotes and restore the Church to its inde-
feasible Protestant Character.
(12,) That the root of all evil in Church theologies and
of all misguidance of penitent truth-seekers is to be
found in the priestly corruption of the true meaning and
intent of the " Sacraments," so-called ; this too affording
a foundation for all ecclesiastical assumption of dominion
over individual consciences and the State itself. The
National Church therefore must be a Church witJioitt
THE NATIONAL CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 251
Sacraments. The naked souls of the people will have
contact with the naked heart of God.
(13,) That the Ritualism of Home, having taken its
departure, the Ritualism of Righteousness might
profitably supervene.
(14,) That free associations of members of the Pilgrim
Church of the Elect can have their assemblies for mutual
worship and edification, while abiding as members of the
National Church, to which every child belongs as its
birthright.
(15,) That the National Church in Protestant England
can add to the number of the Pilgrim Church of the
Elect, while also ministering to the dimmer religious
consciousness of the masses of the people the " World."
(16,) That it is not the purpose of God, either now or
hereafter, to bring the human family into an equality of
spiritual privilege. That the Church exists for the
World and the World for the Church, and that the after-
born can never overtake the first-born ; but that all will
be saved, i.e., destined to continued progress from their
respective and prescribed levels at the start.
(17,) That the reasons wiry all are not permitted to
start from the same level and with equal advantages
upon the path of upward progress, are known alone to
Him who is the Judge of all the earth, and must be
trusted to do right ; but that the higher privileges of the
Pilgrim Church of the Elect must compel it to become
the servant of the World.
(18,) That a National Church will afford the Pilgrim
Church a means of serving the World, in a way impos-
sible of accomplishment by isolated and nationally
unrelated sects.
(19,) That the cost of the National Church should be
shared by all interests in the country, and would
naturally be that portion of the National expenditure to
which Dissenters, above all people, would rejoice to
252 PURITANISM IN POWER.
assent : since this application of the taxes delightfully
contrasts with the support of war and criminal jurispru-
dence, or even the support of colleges, schools, lunatics
and stuffed monkeys.
(20,) That the vote for Church purposes in a free
representative legislative assembly is the freewill offering
of the people.
(21,) That thus a National Establishment and the
Voluntary Principle are completely reconciled.
(22,) That the entire principle of a National Church is
conceded in the present Establishment and conduct of
Board Schools.
(23,) That Protestants might with advantage and
suitability testify to the fundamental Unity of Christendom
by annually singing a Te Deum in the Eoman Catholic
Chapels.
(24,) That the Free Churches are doomed to extinction
as a means of Christianising the people, since they rest
for their support upon the riches of individual members ;
and the success of their efforts at home and abroad is
made dependent upon a moiety of their adherents
heaping up unrighteous gains, and afterwards essaying
to " ransom " their souls by prodigious gifts to the
"cause."
(25,) That the Established Church is therefore (niaugre
the Primitive Methodist, the Salvation Army and the
Town Missions) the only Church of the poor, and the
home of modest and wide hearted men.
(26,) That the National Church must be the chief
agent in promoting the coming Social Pieform.
(27,) That the function of the State is to save men,
and the function of the Church is to save men, and one
God is over all.
BOOK III.
COMMUNISM BY A CONSERVATIVE.
255
CHAPTER I.
INTKODUCTOKY.
WE commenced this Work by a Book setting forth
the evident design of God the Father Almighty
to save every one of His redeemable creatures. The
universal reign of moral law over the religious animal
Man is of itself sufficient to suggest that He who came
to fulfil the Law, and accomplished His mission, would
become the Saviour of all over whom the moral law
reigned.
Our Second Book naturally succeeded with an argument
for a National Church, based upon the fact that all men,
elect and non-elect, stand in a definite relation to God as
objects of His redeeming Mercy. That all men have a
birthright in Christ, though not all the same birthright
Jacob and Esau having blessings both, though not the
same. That it is fitting, expedient and God-honouring
that this Divine Truth should have its exemplary
exponent and objective manifestation in the establish-
ment of a National Church.
"VVe attempted to show how miserably Nonconformity
has failed and must ever fail, by reason of its voluntary
basis, to fulfil a national mission to the poor of the
earth.
We showed that the church principles of the Anglican
and Eoman Communions, albeit affiliated to a gross,
debasing, and unspiritual conception of God, inseparable
from their sacramental theories, have in them neverthe-
less that element of Truth which preserves them in the
power they unquestionably wield the Truth, namely, of
the common, though not unconditional, salvation that
God meant by His appearing in Jesus Christ, not to
mock men by a message of srorld-wide scop which
256 PURITANISM IN POWER.
should affect only a fringe of the ocean of humanity, but
really meant what He said when He declared, " And I,
if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me " the
" will " being not predictive only but purposeful.
Now the connection between correct views of the
character of God and the concept which men form of
their duties towards their fellows is manifestly close.
Let the notion be ingrafted that it is God's purpose to
save only His elect few and to damn the remainder, and
the course of conduct that such a believer will allow
himself in towards his unprivileged brethren will,
whether he dare consciously acknowledge it or not,
really be affected by a like arbitrary partiality. He will
perceive in existing social conditions only the earthly
counterpart of that future state in which the masses are
preserved in misery while the few escape and it will
appear to him but a small addition to the immeasurable
woe awaiting the lost, that they should be here deprived
of all that can alleviate the sorrows, or brighten the
scant ease of their mundane existence. The mischievous
influence of Butler's argument may support his
conclusions, and he may imagine that the course and
order of human society, no less than that of nature,
albeit both are in a constant flux and doomed by
prophecy and inherent progress to catastrophe and
change, yet furnish an analogy confirming the credibility
of dogmas respecting the eternal fixed decrees of the
immutable Jehovah !
But once let it be recognised that every man is our
Brother in Christ Jesus that in Him we all have a
birthright and our action towards our Brother must
necessarily be radically affected. We shall be daily
called upon to remember that we must all appear before
the judgment-seat of Christ, to give an account of
the deeds done in the body and will be judged with
special reference not to the sins we have committed
COMMUNISM BY A CONSERVATIVE. 257
immediately against God's most holy majesty not on
account of the offence taken at our neglect to worship Him
in a prescribed order, or by help of divine sacramental
mysteries to be received at the hands of their appointed
" stewards " (as if there was any mystery about the
conditions of acceptable worship, or any mystery in the
Christian Religion itself, except the eternal and un-
fathomable mystery of God's love in Christ) not a word
about such offences is revealed but we shall be judged
with special reference to this only that we did not
recognise in our afflicted and perishing brother a brother
of Christ, even when obviously " least " like unto Him.
We are expressly forbidden to judge our brother even
upon the most overwhelming evidence that he has
surrendered himself to Satan. We are " to do good
unto all men, especially those who are of the household
of Faith." Hence is authorized that petition in the
liturgy of the National Church, which won the ungrudg-
ing encomium of Eobert Hall a petition so accurately in
sjTnpathy with the sermon on the Mount and the vision
of judgment that God should "have mercy upon all
men " ; for He who bids us exercise the same may be
counted upon to set us the example.
This being understood, the whole course of thought
the whole manner of action in relation to our fellow
creatures, experiences a change. Any conception of
church organization which excludes our brother from
recognition, as, if not one of the elect, at all events one
of the redeemed children of God a child in whom God
is interested and whom He is determined to save will be
discarded ; and as a consequence the ostracism of social
caste will stand with less support than ever, and the
serene contentedness with which the interests of the
many are now sacrificed to the few, will, or should be,
exchanged for a determination that the reign of
injustice shall cease, and that Christ shall wear the
17
258 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Crown of the Social Saviour, the Economical Reformer
of human life.
Unreal and unnatural notions of the Future State
have also much to do with prevailing errors. If this
life were viewed as Christ viewed it as a specially
designed introduction to similar activities under
essentially similar, though exalted, conditions in the life
to come the responsibility of discharging its duties
aright would face men hour by hour, and compel them to
justice. Scripture warrants us in belidving that the
next stage of our being will be the proper and natural
sequence to this, and that probably terrible reprisals and
reversals of conditions will be experienced there.
The prominent position that the deliverance of the
Tews from Egyptian bondage holds in the thought of the
inspired writers has also been constantly overlooked.
As a matter of fact, alike in the historical books and
in the Psalms and Prophets, the great theme of grati-
tude to God, which the Jews were biddsn eternally to
remember, is that great economical deliverance. And
mark how the solidarity of mankind is set forth by this
and the indissoluble nature of the bond which unites
the privileged to the unprivileged. For here are the
freed and triumphant Jews bidden eternally to give
thanks at the remembrance of God's goodness to
generations long since laid in the grave.
What interest, it might be asked, should the Jew of
to-day take in an event which took place so long ago and
touched his kindred so many generations back. What,
indeed ! If he possessed the soul of an antique Calvinist,
who has just been reading one of Spurgeon's sermons,
he would manifest no interest at all. He might be dis-
posed to rejoice and give thanks that he himself was -a
son of a free man, but the fact that his remote ancestry
had been slaves would affect him slightly. God, how-
ever, would never allow the Jews to forget that they
COMMUNISM BY A CONSERVATIVE. 259
were One. It was God's design to teach the world
through the Jews that it was One Nation, and that
all the generations of it are linked together in His
redeeming purpose formed before the earth was framed.
And as the Jews were ever to remember that they once
were bondmen in Egypt, and hence were never to
attempt to bring into bondage their own people, or to be
unjust to their temporarily permitted slaves, so it is
intended that the world should learn through them the
guilt of bringing any brother into bondage, since the
world is the child of the Free and Sovereign God, and
He saves it alike by the flow of His heart's blood and
the lightning of His wrath against unrepented sin.
That this Egyptian bondage has existed among all
nations from the earliest dawn of civilization it requires
little reflection to understand ; for civilization up to the
present time has always meant the organized plunder of
the masses. And while civilization has immensely
enlarged the scope of human freedom for those who
have enjoyed its wealth, that freedom and wealth for the
few have invariably been purchased by the involuntary
slavery and poverty of the many. The fruits of civilization
without its roots, in human misery and degradation, is
the problem of to-day.
The situation of the industrial classes is disguised and
complicated, but at the bottom it is one of slavery to
capital, which is the mother of civilization, so-called.
And tacitly (not for the world avowedly) the Christians
of the nineteenth century are content that it should be
so. They see no help for it. Many are ready to call
out, "Who will show us any good way out of this
pitiable corner?" But being soon certified that no way
out is possible, they resign themselves to the mysterious
dispensation of Providence ; only vowing that, by God's
help, their children shall not slip over the edge into the
gulf which yawns beneath their uneasy bank of privilege.
260 PURITANISM IN POAVER.
Others, less magnanimous, coldly perceiving that any
attempt to grant or obtain for the masses at the bottom
of the social scale a better position, would entail upon
themselves the necessity of accepting a worse; while
ready to help poverty to the extent of their means, are
glad to acquiesce in the belief that it would be a species
of impiety to attempt any great ameliorating scheme
that the privileges of the middle and upper classes are
to be held and prized upon the terms which are common
to all civilizations that have yet appeared God being
thanked that they, the privileged, are not as the other
men, the majority, are, and glad to believe also that the
poor do not feel as keenly as their betters, who are made
of finer clay.
That the masses of the world must remain cut
off from social and religious privileges seems especi-
ally the tacit faith of Nonconformists.
Dr. Dale, of Birmingham, when he visits Australia, is
not moved to desire that the working classes of his own
country should attain to an equal degree of prosperity
with those of the colony, but rather gives utterance to
the wretched anticipation that the Australians will one
day be importing inferior races (a direct blow to the
labouring classes), and getting these to produce their
wealth and bear their burdens.
This unblushing avowal of a consent to a civilization
founded upon the servitude and degradation of the
masses may probably be buttressed by the Doctor's belief
in Conditional Immortality, and would thus afford an
interesting instance of the practical bearings of creed.
But to do him and the creed justice, the bulk of his
brethren of all schools of thought would be ready to
side with him in the Australian reflection.
The Rev. Guinness Eogers frankly identifies Non-
conformity with the middle classes, and is anxious to
disarm suspicion of the safe Liberalism of the Libera-
COMMUNISM BY A CONSERVATIVE. 261
tionists, by making it clear they would take up with no
extreme programme. In this he truly reflects the senti-
ments of the bulk of his co-religionists ; nevertheless,
there is one layman who has arisen to flutter them
by the advocacy of strange and heretical economical
doctrine, whom, for certain very good reasons, they will
not excommunicate. Albert Spicer is the advocate
of Henry George's land proposals, and him they will
tolerate.
The straining efforts now being made to show the
working classes that it is the Free Churches who have
always been their friends and should now be resorted to
for sympathetic leadership, while they do honour to the
individual men who have spoken sincerely and well, as
during the London strike, and acknowledged that they
appeared in the fray rather late in the day ; these efforts
cannot blind the people to the inherent want of accord
and sympathy which inevitably possesses the middle
classes when summoned to take sides in a labour struggle.
This instinct of the middle class is sure, and moreover
true, that the advance of labour means its own decline,
and the justice of this development does not render the
prospect less disagreeable. The Preachers know very
well that only in generalities they taught consideration
for "inferiors." They argued the injury to the master and
mistress of absenting themselves from public worship,
and never asked for the appearance of the maid from
the kitchen, or the coachman from the mews these
might have had no souls. They knew that trams and
busses brought multitudes to their places of worship,
and never invited the congregation to enquire whether
these Sunday toilers had a rest on other days or not,
nor did they manifest any practical concern as to
whether the gospel reached them or no. They knew, or
might have known, that thousands of workmen were em-
ployed about mines, factories, railways, canals and docks
262 PURITANISM IN POWEK.
on Sunday, but how far what was unavoidable, should be
met by relay men sharing the duty at intervals, and how
far unnecessary labour might be and therefore should be
discontinued, they troubled not themselves to enquire.
The persons to be saved were those who were lucky enough
to be born or to clamber above the manual toilers;
They addressed themselves to the lucky, and left the
unlucky alone ; in other words, they did not seek to
save that which was lost.
Some of them are repenting now, it is true, and
Andrew Mearn's work at the Memorial Hall is a proof of
the sincerity of that repentance ; but is it not too late ?
Some of the ministers are now getting as much in
advance of the people as they formerly lagged behind.
But the flocks follow misdoubtingly, and the masses
regard the new Prophets as the Christians of Jerusalem
regarded Saul of Tarsus after his conversion. May they
prove themselves to be Pauls, indeed, pleaders with their
people to receive Onesimus not now as a servant, but
above a servant, a brother beloved.
Now it was expressly designed by the Saviour that
His coming into the world should effect an undoing of
burdens should give liberty to the captive. How sig-
nificant that He came as the Carpenter's Son ! It is the
common cant to overlook the economical and social
significance of this fact, and to lay all the. stress upon
Christ as a Deliverer from sin. But while that is the
primary and central motive of His Advent, it must ever
be regarded as designed to carry with it consequences of
farthest reach in the renovation of earthly life. Begard-
ing these consequences the defeat of the reign of sin, of
which unrighteousness is chief, it is also true that Jesus
Christ came into the world to be the Eedeerner of the
class into which He was born. He was- born to set His
people free. He chose for the depositaries of His doc-
trine men mainly poor and despised an honest toll
COMMUNISM BY A CONSERVATIVE. 263
collector, several fishermen and others, whose honesty
was sufficiently revealed by their poverty. Miserably
cramped and narrow as were the understanding and
spiritual attainments of these men at first, they had the
open ingenuous spirit of their class, and must have
been vastly more congenial to the temper of the miracu-
lous Carpenter than any members of the upper orders,
who regarded such with supercilious contempt, while the}'
scrupled not to live upon their labours. And, oh ! how
these spiritual children grew as they walked with Him !
He saw in them the pledges of the glorious beauty of
that Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, whose Epiphany
must await the similar elevation of the outcast masses.
It was in person that He called Peter, James and John,
Andrew, Levi and the rest, and in person He will come-
again to call their successors in this age. He will meet
the outcast of the Churches, and their eyes will be opened
to know and to adore Him, in a time when the last shred
of the supernatural has been eliminated from the faith
of Christendom, and men will worship they know not
what.
It was the intention of the Messiah to found a King-
dom among men. The object of the creation of an
animal is animal perfection, that of man made in the
image of God as to his moral capacity moral perfection.
A righteous Kingdom upon earth can alone foster this ;
a Kingdom in which righteousness shall find its oppor-
tunity and reveal itself in every existing institution. To
overturn all unrighteousness in human society and
realize upon the globe a pattern community and King-
dom-of-Heaven-ruled men this was His design. Such
a Kingdom must needs rest upon a moral reformation
which must precede it. But this moral reformation
itself is hindered by the want of fundamental changes in
the political and social constitution. Christ's Kingdom
can never come if His followers decline the path of the
264 PURITANISM IN POWER.
social and political Eeformer. It is a huge and mis-
chievous mistake to hold and teach that all that is
wanted to redeem the modern world are personal faith in
and following of Christ, because the opportunity for
carrying out Christ's precepts is not afforded in a society
where the means of living, in all but few departments,
must be sought and found in unrighteous ways.
Men and women who are not merely servants, or who
do not cultivate the soil, or make something with their
own hands, cannot get a living entirely righteously in the
present order. Political and social changes are necessary.
An interest in politics, while at the same time leaving the
issues peacefully in God's hands, is a duty of Christians
in the present day.
Puritanism has been right in pursuing her pilgrim
path hitherto, leaving the hireling politician to pursue
ids way knowing that the King of kings was over all.
Like the Jewish nation, withdrawn from the wider
world for special training and education, her retirement
was necessary to the formation of her character and
power. One thing at a time is God's way the shaping
of the Instrument and then its use. But the time has
now 7 come wiien this part becomes her no longer when,
rising to the height of the great prediction that the
Saints shall possess the Kingdom, she shall reach forth
her hand to the prize of her high calling of God in
Christ Jesus, and in a religious spirit and for religious
ends seek Political Power in all its varieties, in order
.that the coming Kingdom of the Lord may be prepared.
While other men would strive for this Power from
motives of self-interest, the Puritan would seek it
from an urgent sense of duty, and would use it even
against his own interests, supposing they were dependent
upon the continuance of wrong-doing.
The abolition of the old Political parties and watch-
words would follow as a matter of course. Tory, Whig,
COMMUNISM BY A CONSERVATIVE. 265
Liberal, Eadical would each and all give place to
Christian, understood in the Puritan sense. Purged of
his elementary Calvinism, and possessed of the true
Calvinism which conducts to and involves Universalism,
the Puritan, recognising in every man a fellow-heir in
Christ, will strive zealously that Christ's brethren be
not defrauded, and that Christ's righteousness rules
among his countrymen.
The consequences of the Kingdom and dominion of the
nations passing gradually into the hands of the Saints of
the Earth would indeed be momentous and blessed, but
that will never receive its final accomplishment until the
Lord Himself returns. And this preparation for His
coming will assuredly awaken the deepest hostility
among worldly men, culminating in open persecution by
worldly powers. Now, as formerly, Christ is rejected by
the World which He redeems. If Puritanism could
inarch triumphantly to places of earthly dominion, she
would reveal her lack of the spirit of her Lord. Only by
struggle and conflict, only against obloquy, hatred and
persecution will she fight her way ; and when she has
succeeded in a degree that threatens Babylonian slavery
everywhere, then will the " Kings of the earth set
themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against
the Lord and against his anointed, saying, Let us
break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords
from us " ; but then, also, "He that sitteth in the heavens
shall laugh : the Lord shall have them in derision." "He
shall speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his
sore displeasure." "And he shall set his King upon his
holy hill of Zion, and declare the decree, Thou art my
Son ; this day have I begotten thee." "Ask of me, and I
will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and
the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession."
Local Government will first receive the Puritan's
attention. The press of the ignoble company of
266 PURITANISM IN POWER.
interested property-owners who seek only the means of
saving themselves in rates, thwarting the application of
beneficent legislation and exercising a corrupting influence
upon Government Inspectors and Local Sanitary Super-
visors this gang will be shoved back to the wall, and
the Puritan-workers of Eighteousness, the Saviours and
the Guardians of the Poor, will take their places. The
Puritans will be Nihilists, knowing no name but Christ,
and no party but their own. They will vote en Hoc for
men of their own order.
Puritan Guardians of the Poor would know how to
respect the poverty that simply came of under-paynient or
of intermittent employment. They would welcome the
proposals of Herbert V. Mills and the Home Coloni-
zation Society, which, relying upon precedents and proof
in the successful Pauper colonies of Holland, offers to
redeem the unfortunate from an unjust social slur by
giving them the means of working for their self-support.
At the same time witnessing against the retention of
lands in idleness, while men are idle too. It is perhaps
because the realization of Mr. Mills' scheme would
answer a thousand objections to Communistic Socialism
that its progress into popular favour is so slow.
Parliamentary representation would of course receive
the most earnest attention of the Puritans men would
itevote themselves and their means to reach this avenue
to Power. No longer the special preserve of the wealthy,
the Puritan army finding the means of supporting their
members for conscience sake men of principle and
conscience, and with a holy, unselfish purpose ever
in view; possessing also qualifications for the duty
natural and acquired such would enter St. Stephen's in
numbers that would speedily tell upon the tone of the
debates and the character of the measures. If office
were offered any of their number, of course they would
accept it, not as a bribe to silence, but as a new vantage
COMMUNISM BY A CONSERVATIVE. 267
ground for witness and for work towards the righteous-
ness of the Kingdom. Even as things have gone, it i&
by the Christians that our Legislation has been mainly
modified. The unquenchable virility of that insoluble
thing Christian principle has availed in tiny groups, and
even single men, to force reforms upon an apathetic or a
hostile House, as witness Wilberforce, Eomily, Shaftes-
bury, Plimsoll. What marvellous triumphs await us
when a solid phalanx of representatives all of them
servants of Christ, and therefore servants of men urge
irreconcilably their enthusiasm of humanity upon the
adder ears of the obstructive section !
In Foreign Politics the same influence would be felt.
The reception we accorded to foreign Potentates visiting
our shores would not be measured by a base expediency,
but by the same standard by which a Christian would make
choice of friends. We have distinctly showed on more
than one occasion in the present reign that we worship
Power, and not God. Power, did I say ? I should have
said a rotting Mohammedan despotism which is doomed
to impotence in the next imbroglio. And should we
not cry shame upon ourselves for allowing Germany to
oust us from the Camaroons ? The people whom Alfred
Sakcr and his daughter had evangelized who beheld the
German agents rushing about the country planting the
German flag, and who appealed to England to take them
under her protection we basely abandoned to un-
righteous force. Whose was the moral right to rule that
people ? The power which was besought to protect them,
or the nation which they dreaded and resisted ?
We beheld Bell Town and Victoria in flames and
despicably acquiesced ; but assuredly the God of nations
will make us pay for it.
In the same base and craven spirit we allowed the
Tahitians to be dragooned into accepting the talons of
the Eagle and the intrigue of the Priest, and, as if this
268 PURITANISM IN POWER.
mark of National and Christian dishonour were not
sufficient, we made haste to treacherously abandon
Madagascar to the pranks of the same perfidious
marauder. Oh ! for an hour of Cromwell. Our fleets
should have stood off Tamatave, Camaroons, and Papawe
and England would speak, "Hands off, ye robbers, or
the Lord's lightning will play upon you." Has it come
to this, that we Christians of the nineteenth century
believe that it is a legitimate function of our fleet to force
opium upon unwilling Chinese ; and against the entreaties
of native chieftains to compel traffic in our poisonous
firewater, sometimes without other alternative in barter
further, that it may be used to bolster up bondholders'
claims in Egypt but when helpless people who have
welcomed our Missionaries look to us to protect them
against the insidious approaches of mercenary and per-
fidious marauders, we must allow unrighteousness free
course and tamely permit our legitimately exercised
Christianising and civilizing influence to be ousted and
defaced ? Puritanism indeed wants power. Unless the
God of the Jews has gone out like an old star, the policy
inspired by the disinterested pursuit of righteousness
and duty to our neighbour, especially the oppressed, will
always be found the policy of National safety as well as
of honour.
And because we have not been consistent in our past
career, and it can be proved against us that we too have
profited by a cool disregard of the rights of the weaker
that is no reason why we should not resolve now to
abstain and also stay the guilty hand of others. For who
will hold that the man who has once lied is morally com-
pelled to go on lying for ever, and the man who has once
seen a prison for theft should never, if he wants to be
respected, allow himself to remain outside? It is true
that we do employ our fleets for the suppression of the
slave trade that is to say, we recognise the duty of
COMMUNISM BY A CONSERVATIVE. 269
interfering with the trade of our neighbours, but not with
our own.
Puritanism would make short work of the opium traffic ;
it would abolish it by reducing the strength of the Indian
Army so useful an institution for unprovided sons and
feel that India was better protected by a smaller force,
cut down to make room for righteousness, than she could
be by a larger one, supported by the wages of iniquity.
Should any degenerate modern Puritans regard such a
course as crazy, admitting that faith in Providence may
have its sober use when all human possibilities are
exhausted (I see the grin which spreads upon the features
of the materialist reading this), and that it has its place
in the sphere of individual and family life, but can never
enter into the political considerations of a nation then
I would ask what their Christian faith amounts to, and
if they have ever read the histories of Gideon and of
David, of Ahab, Asa, and Hezekiah, or if they regard
them as all moonshine ? Do they believe that the God
of the Jews still rules in the heavens, or has He gone
out like an old star ?
It is Judaism that must come to the help of Chris-
tianity in these degenerate days. It is the Jews that
summon us to faith in Christ. We know the contrary
position that may be taken up. It may be said, and with
truth, that however men may misgovern, God never
abdicates that His purpose is always carried out, and
His will always done, in the end that the Church has
simply to look to her own spiritual culture, for by attend-
ing to that she cannot fail to lighten the world, while if
she dabble in politics she may only make a conflagration.
That even Leviathan Evil has a hook put into its nostrils
by the Supreme, and the impotent lashings of its tail are
made to further the progress of the vessel of God's
Church. All this is true but only half the truth for
it belongs to an Age, but not to all the Ages not to that
270 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Age to come, upon the confines of which we stand and
for which we are summoned to prepare. "Fear not,
little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you
the Kingdom." These words were not spoken of a spiritual
Kingdom into which they had already come, nor of the
canonization of the Apostles into lesser Deities, who
should receive the spiritual allegiance of their fellow-
men the blasphemous conception of Rome. They were
spoken to the Apostles as representative of the whole
Church, and the Kingdom mentioned was obviously the
government of the World not, of course, excluding the
inheritance beyond the grave, which was theirs in the
possession of Faith before the Kingdom future was
alluded to.
For a right understanding of the import of the
promise we must go back to Judaism, and the days when
a Prophet was a Lawgiver and Judge, and the Composer
of the Church's Hymns and Music led the Nation's
armies into battle.
We know that in the past, as in the present, men when
seeking to accomplish their own ends are really advanc-
ing God's, and that the Reformation in England was a
notable example of the fact. " Egad ! " said Harry to his
Lords, " here is an unquenchable religious enthusiasm,
let us turn it to our own advantage by despoiling the
monasteries, and as for the poor God bless them ! "
So also was my Lord Somerset and his Council not so
much concerned with Reformation as with Confiscation
its most admirable and comfortable concomitant.
This manner of the World's progress, in which the
poor have always lost, or, if they gained anything, as in
the French Revolution, it has been only crumbs from the
table which they spread for their " betters " this pro-
tracted story of the neediest always faring the worst, will
end and be reversed when the Church's little flock
assumes the reins of Universal Rule. And the time for
COMMUNISM BY A CONSEEVATIVE. 271
the commencement of the new era is now, and the place
this land of England, in which democratic freedom has
won its most perfect triumph.
Mr. Game's indictment of our policy in India in
connection with the drink traffic ; Mr. James Thompson's
indictment of our policy in East Africa, from whence he
says our good name and prestige have gone, by our
betrayal of the late Sultan into the power of Germany,
which, hypocritically professing to desire the abolition of
the slave trade, is simply endeavouring to consolidate
her hold upon stolen lands, and is throwing the country
into anarchy all this is a tacit rebuke to slumbering
Puritans, and a loud summons to wake from sleep and
take in hand the Governmental work to which they are
destined i
How humiliating has been the part that Christian
politicians have had to play in the past. They have
gone about nominating men for Parliament, the best
they could get ; and so long as they uttered some parrot
party-cry, and had the indispensable wealth and influence,
what enthusiasm has been thrown into electoral conflicts,
what a world of work has been gone through, all for the
advantage of sending a graceless, often a characterless,
party-vote into the House ! How can legislation worthy
of Christian England proceed from representatives whose
Christian faith and party-faith are only worn as cloaks
for personal ambition ? We want a Parliamentary
career to be invested with the dignity of a sacred mission,
and men to consecrate themselves to it as equal to the
highest in which the Lord co-operates with man.
It is, however, with the bread and butter politics of
the poor of our own country that Puritanism would first
and chiefly concern itself. It would not roam the earth
to redress a grievance while a glaring one was staring it
in the face unaltered. The family household . would
rightly have the first attention, and the rest of the
272 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Empire and the world come afterwards ; and the facts
that would touch it would not be the delicate suscepti-
bilities of dissenting ministers, sighing for disestablish-
ment, but rather the physical necessities of strenuous
toilers dying while at work, as well as starving out of it.
The poor have been always told to wait until some
cherished fad of the middle classes has been secured
Eeligious Equality, for instance ! How serenely con-
temptuous are its advocates of Plimsoll's mark and all
such sublunary or subaqueous matters ! But into some
circumcised ears the word of the Master is now sounding
the admonition that it is the weak and they that have no
helper that should have the first care of the prosperous.
So that in the forefront of all political and social
questions they would place the condition of the poor,
and the rescue of the employed, from every injury and
oppression, that in the nature of their occupations and
relations to the capitalistic and competitive system it is
possible by legislation to set them free. And when
Puritans came to tackle these questions, they would find
that they went down to the very roots of the existing
order, and pointed to the need of a reconstruction upon
Christian, and not Pagan lines. That although much
might be done in patching the old garment, and by
pouring some new wine into the old bottles, yet that the
new Christian legislation would inevitably rend the rag
which is covering society so scantily and burst the
bottles from which wealth has drunk without refresh-
ment. That, in fact, Puritanism is called to power to
turn the world upside down and inside out to separate
itself from archaic iniquity as the Christian church
stepped out from Judaism, its success depending upon
the completeness of its detachment from the old, and its
single-minded and whole-souled welcome of the new.
For it might naturally be expected that when Christ
came He would not leave standing and unaltered social
COMMUNISM BY A CONSERVATIVE. 273
usages and economical principles and practices that had
been in existence from the beginning among all Pagan
nations. If His religion be the fount of the purest
morality if an absolute standard of rectitude is neces-
sarily one having the authority of conscience and a
divine sanction in a miraculous revelation, then it could
not but be expected that, apart from this, the institutions
of mankind would become unjust and need repair and
even removal when a Social Legislator came.
18-
274
CHAPTER II.
EXPLANATIONS AND CAVEATS.
BUT it would be a great mistake to suppose that because
the old must be superseded therefore it was unnecessary.
Judaism was as necessary to its supplement in Christi-
anity as Individualism is necessary to its resultant
Communism. We must take a large view of human
destiny and the successive steps by which it is advanced.
We must also understand what w r as the end of man's
creation. That end is undoubtedly a moral one; and
the testing and probation of the human spirit under
infinitely various conditions, and by every conceivable
means through which its quality and insufficiency may
be demonstrated, would appear to be the method . of
Providence for the accomplishment of this end.
The final confession that in every trial, humanity,
unaided by its Maker, fails, and that under the most
favourable, as under the most prejudicial conditions, it
still corrupts its way upon the earth when left alone ;
this will assuredly be extorted from the record of the
race, before the cycle of its changes is complete, and to
God will be ascribed the glory of being the sole cause of
its redemption.
It is not, therefore, with any brilliant and delusive
expectations that coming changes will introduce a reign
of human perfectibility that we will proceed to plead
their justice and their real worth. Man and society will
assuredly fail again, even after a Christian Common-
wealth and a righteous Communism have been established.
The new cycle will have its brilliant spring of promise,
its summer of content, its fading Autumn, and finally
its winter ruin, with branches swirling in the air.
Why then work at all, if final failure is the end ? The
EXPLANATIONS AND CAVEATS. 275
answer is, that conflict for beneficial change is a prime
benefit in itself, a condition of the highest life ; that
winter ruin comes only after long summer days, and
finally that in every death there is the promise of higher
life.
The highest life is hid for humanity with Christ
in God, and not until its manifestation in the sons of
God at His appearing in His kingdom will the sons of
men enter upon a path of enduring progress and
felicity.
It is necessary to the completion of human probation
that selfishness should be made the condition of success,
in order that opportunity should be given for the
exercise of that divinely ingrafted virtue which finds its
reward in declining success upon such terms. The cup
of the iniquity of human avarice, greed and unscrupulous
pursuit of mammon power is not yet filled up. Individu-
alism and competition have yet depths into which they
must descend before the flower of human imperfection
has reached its perfection and the fiat goes forth, "Cut it
down." This age of Babylonian Commercialism has yet to
reach its height in which shall be exhibited the utmost
degradation into which outcasts of civilization can be
plunged, and the equal degradation that attends a mon-
strous plethora of wealth, which no mortal can carry
without criminality. These are the purposes of God, to
wit, the continual demonstration of human moral
impotence, the everlasting proof that in God alone can
man live and move and have his real being ; the unvary-
ing evidence that no form of government yet devised
possible for man will guarantee him against oppression
and wrong or secure his progress ; that for these he must
look beyond'himself, even to the King of kings, who only
can establish a throne in righteousness.
But the education of the Eace is all the while advanc-
ing. Individualism and competition have wrought
27ti PURITANISM IN POWER.
marvels in evoking human faculties and energies, and
have raised the "whole level from which the next genera-
tion will start. None the less must an entirely different
order succeed the present ; for not only is every day's
development bringing about the nearer accomplishment
of that issue, it is also rendering the more necessary
and more feasible an order whose characteristics will be
exactly opposite. Competition in its last stages will not
only oblige but introduce Co-operation. Individualism
will rush to Communism to preserve dear life, and all
this is accomplishing the cycles of human probation,,
human education, and ultimate universal progress ; for
the ultimate of life is never pause, but progress.
Let Puritans be clear about their duty. Not one of
them must for a moment believe that he should forsake
his accustomed endeavours to reach men on their
spiritual side, taking to them that which alone can make
man truly free, and instead enter upon a socialist propa-
ganda. This latter he may do, nay, ought to, but never
at the cost of leaving the other undone, for spiritual
freedom is much more to a man than ever economical
enfranchisement can be. To elevate the standard of
morals, and to create and enlarge the capacity for
spiritual enjoyment, is a much higher end than to elevate
the standard of comfort. Do we not know that a man
may issue from a dismal hovel, erect and glad of soul,
full of comfort, peace and high aspiration in his spirit,
while another man may crawl from a palace to a carriage
a cowering and a wretched slave ?
It is well for the species that our civilization has
provided us with such contrasts, proofs of how little the
most adverse fortune can affect true life, and how
unavailing is the entire world to satisfy a hungry soul.
It is because continual poverty, anxiety, toil, unhealth,
unstrength lead men into prison houses of sin and pain
and brutish God-forgetfulness, and because this is in
EXPLANATIONS AND CAVEATS. 277
most cases needless, and, if not wholly caused, is im-
mensely aggravated by the mammon of unrighteousness
it is therefore that poverty must be fought against, and its
abolition declared, on grounds of charity, righteousness,
and Christian duty.
The double aim of striving for economical as well as
spiritual emancipation must therefore be pursued,
but never to the detriment of the power put forth for
the latter. If the oil will not support a duplex wick let
the light of Christian doctrine and example be alone
upheld : only be assured of this, God cannot be deceived
as to the measure of your strength, the reality of your
opportunity, or the genuineness of the reason which will
be given for your decision. Woe unto those who decline
the Lord's battle !
Nevertheless, so paramount are the interests of man in
the Gospel genuinely preached, that again, I say, should
any Christian worker be led by anything in this section
of this book to give up the preaching of regenerating
doctrine and converting grace, and to take up instead,
rather than along with it, a mission for Economical
Eeforrn if that were the only and legitimate tendency of
the book, it should be regarded as a poisonous obstacle to
the highest progress. Note, however, the strict connec-
tion in our Lord's ministry between the physical and the
spiritual redemption of man. He enjoined upon His
disciples the same method which He Himself pursued,
and for which He fitted them. They were to heal the
sick and preach the Kingdom of God. We have heard
expounders talk lightly of Christ's miracles of mercy,
expressly bidding us beware of supposing that they were
of any consequence in comparison with the religious
truth to which they witnessed. They are the bell of the
universe tolling to call attention to the sermon, that's
all never a welcome dinner bell. This is. really
theology gone crazy. Were the groans of the sufferers
278 PURITANISM IN POWER.
of no consequence? Were the agonizing entreaties of
parents nothing? Is a widow losing an only son a
circumstance of no moment ? Are withered arms plaj 7 -
things in the battle of life, palsy a joke, and leprosy
and devils inconsiderable accidents in human experience ?
Was the long tramp of a hungry multitude homewards a
matter of irrelevant concern to the mission of Jesus ?
Here is indeed lunar madness ! All Christ's miracles of
mercy were substantive predictions of His triumph over
physical disabilities for the sake of humanity in the Day
of His Eeign. They were more than that, but they were
never less than that. So then, you Christian teachers,
3*011 have got your marching orders, " Heal the sick and
preach the Kingdom." Poverty makes many sick ;
poverty makes many die ; poverty makes many sick at
heart, dark of mind, diseased in soul. The struggle to
live divides brethren, spreads the disease of war, and
establishes permanently the sickness of selfishness.
You must heal men's standing malady, and by striking
at its root.
But here conies the scientific Socialist with his recom-
mendation to stick there and never mind the Kingdom.
His grievance has some sad truth in it. He says the
poor have been told to console themselves for the want
of earthly comforts and the denial of justice by looking
forward to a world to come, where they will be sure to
get their dues. Religion, he says, has ever been used
for the moralizing of the poor, that they may be the better
servants of the rich, and the redress of their wrongs has
always been postponed to the Day of Judgment.
Let us then, in vision, see them all redeemed and
without any preaching of the Kingdom. Presto ! what a
row of Villas, each with its pony chaise, its patent
wringer, steam potato peeler and little dog crying for
want of sport, no beggars to bark at and its tail made to
wag by machinery when master comes home. No
EXPLANATIONS AND CAVEATS. 279
steeple in sight no bell in the air. * * * Screams
from the bedroom, and frightened children running from
the house, tearing down the magnum bonum peas and
the Madame Besant roses, because Father has hung
himself for very weariness.
Diogenes in your tub, come stand in our light and
blot out this vision !
Here we are again in the Switzerland of our modern
civilization ; mountainous heights of prosperity, sunny
vales and dark and chill crevasses of the hidden
destitution. Shall we roll it down to Flanders and
without the Kingdom? We know indeed a day is
coming when every valley shall be exalted, every
mountain shall be laid low, but it will be in connection
with the coming of Him who holds the keys of two
Kingdoms in His girdle and is not satisfied that His
followers should have a continuing city here, even under
His own blessed rule.
In the poverty of our Lord there was nothing degrading
nor unhappy. He had freedom of locomotion and
complete leisure to work and to rest, how, when, and
where He pleased.
His disciples were similarly blessed and guaranteed
against absolute want alike by the power of their Master
and the devotion of followers. The meal of bread and
fish excited gratitude and praise, and it was a small
matter that the Son of Man had not where to lay His
head, when, whatever the pillow, the dreams were
glorious and a happy morrow succeeded every day.
It was not the years of ministry that were sacrificial
only those of the long drudgery at Nazareth, undergone
for the redemption of Labour and Capital chained to its
desk the veriest slave.
In cancelling Poverty we should cancel also super-
fluity, and the slavery of the rich as well as of the poor.
Before we have done we shall show how in the new
280 PURITANISM IN POWER.
order there may be strong stimuli to energies
opportunities and calls for sacrifice varieties, heroics,
tragedies, if they must be all, in short, that in the
present evil order is valuable for moral discipline,
development and for conscious happiness but all
redeemed from sordid motive and having for their object
moral and intellectual progress at home, the conquest
of disease, and the welfare in the regions beyond of the
races committed to our care.
Thus shall the general abolition of Poverty and
the removal of the stain of habitual injustice be un-
accompanied by any weakening of moral fibre in the
sons of plenty, while it closes many a festering sore in the
sons of want. And life will not be less, but greatly
more worth living, when burdens are removed, leisure
is enlarged, Truth can speak to listening ears, Charity
rejoices in her widespread reign, and the warriors of
Righteousness carry the warfare of the Commonwealth
into every clime. But all in connection with the Kingdom
and the King.
281
CHAPTER III.
PEELIMINARY OBJECTIONS TO ANY FUNDA-
MENTAL CHANGES IN SOCIETY, UPON SCRIP-
TURAL GROUNDS, CONSIDERED.
IT will appear to certain minds a fatal preliminary
objection to any fundamental change in the order of
Society, that the Scriptures afford precedents for all its
present main features, and that our Lord Himself in His
parables, by using without criticism such features for
the illustration of His truth, has implicitly lent them
His divine sanction.
Before we can estimate the value of this objection we
must consider two things : (a,) The evolution of Society ;
(6,) The evolution of its Redemption.
It is a profound mystery, but an undoubted truth, that
civilization, whatever its value (and I am prepared to
discount it heavily), has made its advance by a path of
unrighteousness, cruelty and widespread suffering.
Slavery appears to be essential to its start. Capital
would never have been accumulated without it, neither
would the earth have been compelled to its best fruition,
and the Arts and Sciences, which are the handmaids of
luxury, would have remained in an immature and worth-
less condition. Government and Law, Constitutions, War
(and War has been a great educator) would never have
attained their past dimensions and perfection without
the start that slavery gave to them. In the savage
State Government is the Father of the People. In the
civilized State Government is an organization for
despoiling them and protecting their oppressors. This
organized robbery of the people is in these days
.euphemistically called " protecting " them.
Slaveiy and civilization are still allied. The slaves
282 PURITANISM IN POWER.
have changed their denomination, but not their economi-
cal situation except for the worse. Formerly the slave
had one master, now he has many. On the estate he
offered his cheek to the smiter and was done with ; now
he is smitten in the factory, then in his rented room, and
lastly in the shop where he buys. Three masters are
engaged in despoiling him employer, landlord, and
purveyor ; to which, in despotic countries, a fourth must
be added an iniquitously taxing Government. It is
questionable whether, as regards personal liberty, he is
better off than formerly, while, as regards care and anxiety,
he is infinitely worse.
Society advancing in this manner, its prime and
chiefest want, apart even from any considerations of a
future state, was a right knowledge of the character of
God and the nature of His Eule.
This was partially revealed in an unmistakable man-
ner by the deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian
bondage, and by the Levitical economy. God was
shown to be everlastingly on the side of the slave and
against his oppressor, but also equally on the side of any
just, humane and righteous master. Hebrew slavery
was something so utterly different from Eoman or negro
slavery, and so far superior to the lot of the free Jews
working for sweaters in London, that it is a great pity
it cannot now be restored in the interests of human
freedom.
In the fulness of time Christ came to reveal still more
of the character of His Father that being still the
deepest need of Humanity ; and He taught, " Call no
man master ; for one is your Father, even God, and all
ye are brethren." Here the ultimate of Society was
foreshadowed, but its progress upon existing lines was
not contested. To communicate to man spiritual freedom
was Christ's work. The best, the greatest, the urgent
gift came first; for he who is the slave of Sin can never
OBJECTIONS TO FUNDAMENTAL CHANGES. 283
be made free, though a legion move at his command,
and freedom for the spirit could make men indifferent to
bondage.
" Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage ;
He who into God's Kingdom conies
Hath Freedom's heritage."
But if Christ in pursuit of His mission required to
illustrate His truth from surrounding facts, does His
use of these facts sanction their morality or ordain their
continuance? Assuredly not; the contention is pre-
posterous. One thing at a time is God's plan. One,
thing at a time is necessarily every teacher's plan.
Spiritual Enfranchisement first Economical Enfran-
chisement reserved for a future fulness of time not
then near.
Thus Jesus Christ appears in one aspect that which
superficially strikes us perfectly indifferent to Politics,
dealing with man only as His brother, and, therefore,
heir of the Universe. But in another aspect, in every
line of His teaching, He was thrusting under the wedges
which were to topple over the entire existing structure of
Society, and He knew it and He meant it.
Hence it is perfectly inapplicable to the question before
us to adduce our Lord's parable of the wicked servants
as an eternal sanction of the relationship of landlord
and tenant an argument which would excommunicate
freeholders and make monastic communism immoral or
the parable of the talents, in support of the eternal
rectitude of usury or that of the hired labourers, in
favour of taking advantage of men's necessities. Had
it been possible for our Lord to have appeared earlier,
later, or elsewhere, His illustrations would have been
drawn necessarily from the life that surrounded Him
the point not being that the Truth illustrated lent
everlasting sanction to the circumstances used, but
284 PURITANISM IN POWER.
only that all the institutions of Society, as they have
successively appeared, had divine sanction for the time
and having been allowed, and deemed by the All-Wise
essential to the evolution of Humanity, necessarily con-
tained elements analogous to the eternal relationship
existing between God and His human children. They
would, therefore, lend themselves as illustrations of the
truth of that relationship. Had our Saviour appeared
in Eome and issued His doctrine there, He would have
found illustrations in Eoman slavery. St. Paul rejoices
in being a bondslave of Jesus Christ. Did the Apostle
claim his Master's sanction of War when he spiritually
applied the armour of the soldier to which he was
bound ? or have we authority for the restoration of the
Olympic games and Roman shows because they furnished
him with the most impressive illustrations of the Christian
race?
As to the parable of the hired labourers, viewing it apart
from the principle just enunciated, it is dead against the
present profit system of employment. For the master
in his ridiculous defiance of modern political economy,
instead of taking the lowest wage accepted as his standard
in the engagement of further labour, continued to improve
upon it in the most generous manner, and in fact showed
himself a perfect fool of a farmer the sport of his benev-
olence. None the less the first man engaged, not having
been beaten down in any degree, should not have envied
the better luck of his brethren, but have been content to
abide by his freely made contract. The parable, apart
from its main purpose, certainly rebukes envy at the
superior fortune of others and enforces contentment with
what comes of the best use of our judgment and free will.
We are trained by experience, and the just God over all,
imparting to every man severally as He wills, will in the
end prove that He has been impartial, just and kind to
all His creatures.
OBJECTIONS TO FUNDAMENTAL CHANGES. 285
We have said we must have regard to the evolution
of man's redemption, and have already indicated the
periodic and gradual character of its advance. The great
Head of the Eace having appeared to strike off men's
spiritual fetters, He is next to be looked to to accom-
plish their Economical deliverance. Man in the dual
departments of his being will then be freed. A Sancti-
fied Soul will no longer be imprisoned by the clamorous
exigencies of the Body. Christian Society will open a road
for its aspirations and activities, by laying low that un-
conquerable hedge of insufficiency of moderate means, and
placing within the reach of all worthy citizens a temperate
allowance of this world's goods, for want of which so many
noble lives have been frustrated, bent and twisted, and
hindered of their Natural End. He comes again to set His
people free. Free by the bestowment of His Spirit and
participation in His character they are to be further
freed by the universal plenty and justice of His Earthly
Kingdom. This is what is now before Humanity its
next great step in the path of upward progress.
What, then, does the appeal to Scripture against any
further progress of Society mean ? Does it mean that
because Abraham was the friend of God we can go back
to chattel slavery and remain God's friends? Does it
mean that every human institution Jesus did not criticise
He implicitly commended that all the humanitarian
progress that Society has made since Anno Domini has
been anti-christian in proportion as it has differed from
uncensured practices, principles, and institutions of the
year 33 ? If it does not mean this what does it mean ?
286
CHAPTER IV.
PBOPOSITIONS IN ARGUMENT.
THIS section of the book confines itself to the support of
the following propositions :
I. That Poverty is, and will be to the majority of
men, injurious.
As to bodily well-being, injurious to all men. As to
spiritual health and progress, injurious to most.
(It can never be defended that the deepest poverty,
with all its disabilities and disqualifications, can overcome
the power of Puritan conviction to hold on its way tri-
umphant. Lazarus must have possessed the faith of
Abraham to be afterwards received into his bosom.)
II. That Poverty is wholly unnecessary in the age in
which we live, even were our population greatly multi-
plied.
III. That Poverty, being injurious to the masses and
wholly unnecessary, it becomes the bounden duty of a
Christian State to extirpate it.
Again :
(a,) That Riches (or superfluity) for most of the Indi-
vidual possessors are injurious.
(&,) And for the State dangerous, working Injustice
and producing Poverty.
(c,) That this is so through the working of the prin-
ciple of Private Property in the sources of wealth the
instruments of production and the means of existence.
(d,) That when the sources of wealth, the instru-
ments of production and the means of existence are
held and used by the nation for the common good
Private luxury will cease and reappear alone in Public
institutions where it will be wholly beneficent.
And Private possessions in the means of existence will
PROPOSITIONS IN ARGUMENT. 287
be limited to day by day supplies, regulated by a tem-
perate estimate of the requirements of health and
comfort.
(e,) And work will then be conferred upon those who
are most in need of it the idle Eich.
(/,) That thus Social Caste w r ill be destroyed and
mental, physical and moral caste alone exist.
Lastly, the following propositions will be defended :
(1,) That Trouble is a necessary ingredient in the Cup
of Life, if that Cup is to do us good.
(2,) That there is a trouble which, in excess and
confined to the individual, degrades, i.e., the economical
trouble, and there are troubles which refine and exalt,
such as sickness, bereavement, soul discipline, the endu-
rance of wrong, altruistic sympathy, national crises
struggles for great ends.
(3,) That only the trouble which degrades and the
riches which corrupt will disappear normally from the
new order, leaving the natural troubles incident to
human existence to exercise their blessed moral influ-
ence, and indirectly to minister, not only to human
elevation, but also to human happiness.
(4,) That the present state of the world offers a prac-
tically limitless field for the pursuit of great ends in the
advancement of the species. That consequently the
relief of individuals from care for their own maintenance
will not oblige them, for want of opportunity, to relax
their energies, but will enable them to hearken to the
call for strenuous exertion, self-sacrifice and devotion,
this time to great causes, and will free millions to engage
in them, who now stoop to the earth in the life-long
effort to pay bills.
(5,) That thus the new order will conduce to moral
progress and not to sensual indulgence, which the
extremes of Poverty and Pdches both at present favour.
(6,) That notwithstanding the obvious claims that
288 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Radical Social Reform makes upon Christian nations, we
need not expect that it will be brought about without
force, since society rests upon force and can only be
reset in its foundations by the same.
(7,) That Force, forbidden to be originated by Puri-
tans, is nevertheless at hand, and their work is to.
prepare for its arrival, and their subsequent conscientious
co-operation.
(8,) That the means for this preparation are : The
formation of two Companionships : (,) Of Christ's
Ambassadors ; (&,) Of Christ's Kingdom ; with the aid
and co-operation of the National Church.
Finally will be considered :
(9,) Methods by which these two Companionships
must now be started and proceed.
Propositions I. and III. may be taken as granted, with-
out proof.
The next chapter will therefore concern itself with the
second Proposition that Poverty is wholly unnecessary
in the age in which we live, even were our population
greatly multiplied.
289
CHAPTER V.
POVEKTY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
UNNECESSAEY.
" Man wants but little here below,
Nor wants that little long."
THE condition of the Labouring Classes is the " open
sore " of the world.
Even wealthy England offers no exception, although
her statisticians have calculated that her annual income
would afford 130 per annum to every adult man, and
that a valuation of her capital in 1885 yields an average
of 1350 per family.
Holland, relatively to her population, is reckoned the
next wealthiest kingdom, and there Richard Heath avers
that the pauperization of the people is proceeding at an
accelerated ratio, and that she is " hastening to the
gulf which yawns beneath every city in Europe and
America."
Before we can comprehend how such a strange result
should attend the progress of civilization we must call to
our help a parable.
We must conceive a family settlement beyond the
confines of civilized law and custom, and innocent of
their traditions and modern developments.
The Farm is of ample extent to meet every real
requirement of a numerous family, and produces every
commodity that can minister to a high degree of
comfort and enjoyment. Land, practically limitless in
extent, surrounds it on every side, and the future of the
increasing household is thus guaranteed. In short, as
respects fertility, variety of products and boundless
extent, the settlement is a microcosm of the United
Kingdom and its enormous colonies and dependencies.
19
290 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Farmer B. works his farm entirely by the labour
supplied by his own children. Each acquisition to the
family circle, when capable of work, is an addition to its
wealth ; for the origin of Bent, a thing unknown to this
happy community, was due to the fact that land returns
to the cultivator a surplus beyond subsistence needs. In
the words of Professor Thorold Eogers, " The capital fact
" in the history of Rent is that agriculture, however rude
" the industry may be, can always produce more than is
" necessary for the husbandman's maintenance and that
" of his family." He gives the labourer five persons to
his family and twenty acres, assigns a third of the land
to the supply of human food, and the other two-thirds
to fodder and cattle ; estimates the produce at a quarter
per acre (a third only of the modern yield), and he derives
the result that the labourer will grow seven quarters of
food for the consumption of five persons. " But," con-
tinues the Professor, "five quarters are sufficient food for
" them. The remaining two over and above will supply
" seed and rent. I leave out, for the sake of simplicity,
" the same set of facts for the remaining two-thirds.
" Now, historically, it was on this over-surplus that the
" ancient lord laid his hands, and called it rent."
The family of Farmer B. manifest a variety of gifts.
One son with a bias towards machines, beholding his
sister making stockings and his mother overtired at the
loom, invents improvements which abridge the toil and
increase the productiveness of both. Like inventiveness
applied to the instruments of husbandry results in a
considerable accession of fertility, without any overlord
presuming to lay a tax upon the accruing surplus. The
consequence of the increase of the family, and of the ever
new conquests they make in the domain of nature, is
that they enjoy an abundance of leisure as well as
plenty, the pre-requisites for progress in Letters, Arts
and Science. Poets, artists, architects, philosophers are
POVERTY IN THE KINGDOM UNNECESSARY. 291
able to blossom, and the settlement has been able to
accumulate so great a store against the blasts of fortune
that, without anxiety, the whole family could remit its
customary labours for an entire year, in order to under-
take the building of a bridge, or a church, or an infir-
mary, the making of a road, or the clearing of a forest
tract, the erection of machinery, and of houses and
workshops. For the use of their capital, that is, for the
wise employment of the stored-up results of their
previous labour, they of course pay no interest, and
consequently their undertakings entail upon their pos-
terity no payment of pensions to an idle class the
descendants of money or produce lenders of a previous
generation. Having no wretched disinherited children
from whom to dread an erneute, and content to meet the
risk of external foes by their own united strength, the
settlement is dispensed from the expenses of Jurispru-
dence, Government and Police.
In these goodly circumstances the family are situated,
as children of nature in a truly divine order, when a
dreadful calamity befalls them.
Possessed by an evil lust of idleness, avarice and
dominion, one of the brothers, in concert with other two
whom he has corrupted, murders the Father and head of
the family, seizes the keys of the store, and with the
blunderbusses of himself and imps defies the vengeance of
his unarmed brethren and sisters. The Junto of three
henceforward reduce the remainder of the family to
slaves. Eefusing any labour themselves, and exacting
increased application from the others, the quantity of
stored-up capital increases, and with it the poverty of
the serfs.
All is now changed ; the mechanician continues to
invent, but his labour-saving appliances only result in
some of his brothers and sisters being cast out of the
settlement to the forest wilds beyond, as persons for
292 PURITANISM IN POWER.
whom there is no employment and who may therefore
be left to starve. The Junto encourage the inventor to
proceed, with the consequence that the starving company
of the outcasts become a nuisance. They could clear
farms and cultivate for themselves if supplied with
capital, that is, a portion of the stored results of labour
devoted to further production, but the Junto holding the
keys and the blunderbusses refuse any loans, unless on
terms of interest and security, which the impoverished
cannot offer. To keep away the nuisance the Junto have
a high wall built, and they make soldiers and police of
some of the slaves, who are to shoot down any who may
attempt to get back to their own farm again. Spectral
forms ever and anon climb the height and look over the
rampart. They see that the inventor is still at work,
and they know that the very men who are now employed
x upon making new machines will, on account of their
efficiency, be presently cast outside into the forest.
And so it proceeds, until (for no parable will go entirely
upon all-fours) we must assume the inconsistency of an
external government, ow r ning some dependence upon the
serfs, and making some attempt to alleviate their position.
The device adopted is to encourage them to combine and
get up fights against the Junto, while the soldiers and
police stand round to see that nothing further is at-
tempted by the serfs than passive resistance by active
starvation. The workers drop their tools and refuse to
cultivate and manufacture, unless allowed more grain
from the store and shorter hours. The descendants of
the Junto stand with their backs to the store and feed
well, while the workers get thinner. To reduce the
malcontents to submission, the Junto people, with
Government permission, send messages to the outcasts
over the wall, and get a number of them, by large bribes,
to cultivate in the faces of their starving brethren.
While all this is going on, not only the strikers and
POVERTY IN THE KINGDOM UNNECESSARY. 293
the capitalists, but also the farm is going to the bad;
weeds accumulate, blight is not arrested, and stock
suffers from neglect.
Victory falls now to one side and now to the other.
When the result is the concession of a standard instead
of a false pint of peas to the workers, then it is a great
victory for the strikers, who rush back rejoicing to their
tasks ; and having been led by the curse of the situation
to regard their blood relations from over the wall as
enemies, they pursue them with howlings and brickbats
until these escape wounded into the wilderness again, and
a sort of peace descends upon the settlement, but only
for a season.
This is the point to which we have now arrived in the
history of civilization and nearly 2000 years after Christ.
And the highest and best light that English delegates
could give the German Emperor when consulting them
upon his problem, at the Berlin Conference, was con-
veyed in the recommendation to give still greater facilities
for workmen to combine, so that the battle might
become general, perennial and acute. Such are the new
guarantees for the peace of Europe and the World. How
evident it is that, so far, boasted progress has brought
no science into political economy at all, and that Chris-
tianity has been shamed and smothered by incorporation
with a system of social polity at war with its first
principles, and by being dragged like a sumpter mule in
the rear of an army whose direction it has been powerless
to ordain. Let Puritans now with full political power
within their reach answer why direction should not issue
from themselves.
Considering the question in the abstract I can leave
the reader to interpret and apply the parable himself,
and to answer the question whether Poverty is necessary
in the United Kingdom.
He will perceive that in the realization of the family
294 PURITANISM IN POWER.
ideal poverty can have no place, and that the family
ideal is the only practical and prosperous, as it also is
the only just and divine principle for States. That the
fall of man everywhere takes place when the co-operative
principle is exchanged for individual competition, and
that the persistent aim of Christians must be to undo
the consequences of this Fall, and re-erect upon the ruins
of murderous Individualism the fair temple of Co-opera-
tive prosperity and strength.
He will remember there was a time when the largest
portion of the labouring classes had an interest in the
soil, and that they were subsequently dispossessed of
their national inheritance.
He will know that machinery, whatever its collateral
benefits, afflicts and threatens every generation of
artisans. That labour-saving appliances never help
labour except into the workhouse, but that the artisan
who has been undone by the remorseless progress of
inventions could, in an Empire like that of England,
have been the subject of State-assisted Emigration and
Colonization in a degree amply sufficient to meet the
necessities of men ejected from the workshop, and of
children too numerous even for the new machines.
Before coming nearer to the actual position another
passing word in reference to the Berlin Conference. The
Peace Society brought forward its plea for disarmament,
recommended by the assertion that it would go far
towards the solution of the problem considered. It is
difficult to understand how thoughtful and intelligent
persons could advance such an argument. Under our
present economical conditions it should have been evident
that standing armies are the salvation of the proletariat
in every State where the taxation is justly proportioned
to means.
They are productive of a double benefit. First of all
in taking out of the labour market some hundreds of
POVERTY IN THE KINGDOM UNNECESSARY. 295
thousands of the most formidable competitors the
young men ; and secondly in constituting the best of
home markets in stability and security for the industries
which support the army and navy. And this is done in
England mainly through the Income Tax, which the
working-classes escape.
Practically, standing armies are a form of Insurance
against non-employment and depreciation of wages, which
the wealthier classes are kind enough to undertake on
behalf of their poorer brethren.
The progress of civilization has been happily accom-
panied by a passion for military armaments, or its con'
sequences would have been much direr. If the taxes
levied from the upper classes for the support of standing
armies were left to the tax-payers, it is certain that not
nearly so large a proportion of them would go to the
employment of home labour, to the benefit of their day
and generation, as is the case when the Government
immediately expends them upon contracts for the
services.
When a Trades Union withdraws a portion of its
members from the shops in order to support wages, it
succeeds at the expense of strike funds. The Government
does for the working classes on the largest scale what the
Unions are always attempting, but at the cost of the
classes above them : making sure that a portion, at all
events, of the annual profits of trade shall go to irrigate
the home industries, instead of in the purchase of Dutch
orchids, German microscopes, and Italian pictures.
If, then, the working classes had respect simply to their
material interests, they would invariably vote for the
Government which went for an increased expenditure
upon armaments. Eetrenchment in that department is
detrimental to their interests. ^Retrenchment may
proceed in other departments, and reform in the adminis-
tration of all, with national benefit, but situated as we
296 PURITANISM IN POWER.
are, the placing of contracts in the ship-building yards
of the North, and in the Midlands for small arms and
artillery, is the sure harbinger of prosperity to the work-
ing classes.
After securing that the Government shall spend largely
in preparations for war the wise artisan will next use
every means for the preservation of peace, so that the
nation shall wear its fine army and navy, as a man wears
a ring, merely for show, or benevolently, to give employ-
ment to the jewellers.
Of course it would be better if the Government con-
tracts were for plough-shares and pruning hooks instead,
especially while our Colonies are empty of population.
Before commencing a closer examination of our means
of avoiding poverty, we may profitably consider the situa-
tion of the masses of the people in " barbarous " countries.
The missionary who enters a native village in Africa
does not find that a large portion of the inhabitants are
working in the bowels of the earth, that a larger portion
are cooped up in factories, and that those who are at
work in the fields have no interest in the crop. He finds
a free, privileged, and leisured community, who have
been enjoying, like aristocrats, the pleasures of the chase,
and have plenty of time for Parliamentary debate as
well as for sport.
In the sunny glades of the forest they are merrily pre-
paring a raid upon the elephant, but they can leave off and
gather with the dignity and leisure of free men to inspect
the stranger and listen to what he has to say to them.
In Manchester the missionary would find a con-
siderable population underground, most of the women
and children chained to tireless machinery, and no
audience possible until the bell rang, when stunted, care-
worn and unhealthy-looking hands would hurry past
him, unable to stay for a word. Ere an hour has sped
the streets are full again, and while the factory gates are
POVERTY IN THE KINGDOM UNNECESSARY. 297
still open to the returning army, a wretched hurdy-gurdy
with the bowel complaint induces some bare-headed,
draggle-tailed girls to commence a waltz upon the sloppy
pavement soon over. When the bell rings again, the
waltzers scamper through the closing gates, and the
hurdy-gurdy changes its tune to " Eule Britannia ;
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves."
The introduction of Christianity to Africa would be an
unmixed blessing if it were not followed by the civilizer.
All that the tribes need is deliverance from superstitious
fears, cruel customs, the black heart, Arab slave-trading
and the medicine man. Christianity can be trusted to
effect this, and, if left alone, there might be evolved in
Africa a civilization less proud and materially mighty,
but contrasting with that of Europe in being really
Christian that is to say, not flagrantly unjust. What,
however, have the present doomed inhabitants to hope
from the Congo Free State and German colonization,
or from the latest Swedish expedition, which, after
making working men who accompany it pay for the
expense of going out, undertakes to reward them by
grants of land ! Whose land ?
Let us now consider in what the income of our nation
consists, and we shall better comprehend whether poverty
is necessary, even as we are.
The entire income of this civilized State of England is
derived from its labours in the Factory and the Field,
and under the Field, and from its business as Carriers,
Foreign Merchants and Bankers. Payment for produce,
service in transport, and for loans and profits upon
foreign merchanting, constitute the main resources of
the United Kingdom, to which must be added the dis-
bursements within its borders of wealthy foreign
residents, who spend in England incomes derived from
the labours of other nationalities.
If a man invents a new industry such as bicycle
298 PURITANISM IN POWER.
making, he will do very little to add to the income of the
nation unless he can get foreigners to buy. The home
market will simply injure other existing trades. The
individual who goes in for the bicycle will have to give
up the purchase of a harmonium or something else, but
if France were to take up with the fashion and send us
all the orders, it would be a real addition to our income.
Similarly if it became the fashion for men to wear two
hats, one upon top of the other, the increased business in
the hat factories would be no addition to the national
income. But if negroes were made to believe that their
good thick skulls and natural wool were not enough for
them, and sent us palm oil for hats, that would be
a real addition to the national income. If we supplied
Africa, we should have the market for palm oil in our
hands, the world would have to come to us, and we
should have the carriage besides.
The negro might be very foolish in labouring for so
useless an article. It might be a sign that Africa was
not progressing, but the reverse. It would, however, be
of distinct benefit to this country that she should act
thus foolishly, and an additional service would be con-
ferred upon us if the female negro (who probably did
most of the work for the male hat) should determine to
labour an hour a day longer in order to purchase stays,
John Bright expatiated upon the stimulus to all our
industries that would arise from the natives of India
being induced to wear an additional piece of cloth. It is,
of course, the foreign trade alone that adds to our income
so far as manufacturers are concerned, but every allot-
ment given to a labourer to cultivate, every piece of
moorland reclaimed for agriculture is also a real
augmentation of national resources, as is likewise every
addition to our flocks and herds. To buy all our food by
the products of the factory, while we leave our land
weed-grown, is national folly and worse.
POVERTY IN THE KINGDOM UNNECESSARY. 299
Further, we may understand that to sanction the con-
struction of two docks, when one is already only half full,
and of two railways running through the same district,
and to allow canals that could do a great deal of the
traffic to be bought up by the railway monopoly, are
also proofs of the national waste and foolishness that
attend the parliamentary success of individual schemes.
We shall understand, too, that any amount of going to
and fro on the part of the resident population does not
add to the national income, though it may increase
railway dividends, and that the carriage of the goods we
export, the foreigner pays, and thus adds to our income,
while the carriage of Swiss cottons to Leeds is at the
expense of the national income, although it too may
increase railway and steamboat dividends, since
Switzerland is farther from Leeds than Manchester.
The interests of the carrying people are by no means
synonymous with the interests of the nation. It is the
interest, as we well know, of steamship companies to
induce working men to invest their savings in mad
emigration enterprises, thus depriving the mother
country at once of skill and capital. This also is due to
Individualism. But if we get up a great exhibition and
bring shoals of Americans to our shores and drain the
continent of its pleasure-spending classes, then we shall
add to the national income for that year.
France added to her income last year, not from the
Lyons Railway, but from the Chemin de fer du Nord,
with its freightage of English gold. All this may appear
very elementary, but it is helpful.
The foreign trade that only displaces a home industry
is no good to us may be a distinct evil. Should
degenerate France acquire a universal passion for Scotch
whisky, and pay for it in early potatoes or pretty stuffs,
we should only vex Highland agriculture and the
manufacture of Bradford woollens and Scotch tweeds for
300 PURITANISM IN POWER.
the sake of developing an industry that of distilling
which does not employ half the number of hands.
The ideal foreign trade is that in which we receive in
payment for our exports something really needed by
ourselves or the world, which we cannot ourselves pro-
duce ; for instance, gutta percha and Esparto grass, in
exchange for rails and cloth, or, as formerly suggested,
palm oil for hats. England may become the emporium
for Europe in many commodities, as she is now for wool
in consequence of our trade with Australia.
The innocent proposition of the Cobden Club to the
Berlin Conference must have alleviated the dulness
of the proceedings. Germany, at all events, which
already inundates our home market with her untaxed
importations is not likely to see that her income will be
increased, or that her hold upon our market requires
assistance, by asking or inducing her people to forsake
home for English manufactures.
In truth, whether the Policy of a nation should be that
of Free Trade or Protection entirely depends upon its
peculiar situation, absolutely and relatively to other
nations. Of this we may be sure, that neither policy
without qualifications and inconsistencies is wise. A
rise in the price of agricultural produce would be hailed
by the Cobdenites as a proof of the benefits of Free
Trade, while if the same advance took place through the
impost of a duty, they would exclaim that the country
would be ruined. I, for my part, would rather suffer
through a mistake in national policy than through the
conspiracy of a gang of capitalists ; but why the shot
should kill in one case and not the other is past the
comprehension of mortals.*
* " We grumble at the few light taxes imposed by the Chancellor
of the Exchequer on what we eat and drink, but the middlemen
of commerce, who come between the honest producer and the
deceived purchaser, lay ten times heavier imposts all round."
Daily Telegraph, 30th April, 1890.
POVEKTY IN THE KINGDOM UNNECESSARY. 301
Let the voters be assured that the party which will
advocate Free Trade without any reservation is a mad
party ; and that as far as the lot of the working poor is
concerned their fortunes would be, on the whole, safer in
the hands of a party which is not in the main composed
of the exploiters of labour.
So far as we have gone we have seen the paramount
importance of foreign trade, and can perceive that to
the struggle for barbarian markets the capitalistically
conditioned nations of Europe are now inevitably
committed.
To inoculate primitive races and lower civilizations
with the disease of wanting things neither conducive to
their elevation nor necessary to their happiness is con-
sidered to be so great a blessing that payment may be
forcibly taken beforehand in, for instance, good African
land, for this boon of civilization and example of Christian
morality.
To support the chronically impoverished workers at
home, against whom Capital is permanently on strike,
these new markets must be sought and made, while the
home markets must be as certainly depressed, owing to
the cheapest labour being demanded in consequence of
the competition with other trading nations.
And there is no trade so profitable as that with savages,
many hundreds per cent, is considered reasonable. No
wonder then that the dark continent is occupying the
attention of Europe, and that its best defence, a deadly
climate, is not invincible against the entrance of the
spoilers.
All this too calls for armaments. It is trade, more
than the fall of man, that is the cause of war. Great
traders must always be great military and naval powers.
Let us now r see who are the indispensable providers of
the National Income. I think we may comprise them
all under the following classes :
PURITANISM IN POWER.
Food, warmth, and vehicle producers.
Carriers.
Storekeepers.
Inventors.
Managers.
Educators.
Eegistrars.
All that is necessary to a really high standard of
civilization may be ranged beneath these heads ; for
instance, " Warmth producers " include, of course,
Builders; and "vehicles" comprise ships, without ex-
cepting bicycles or balloons ; " Storekeeping " includes
Banking; and " Managers " include Foreign Merchants ;
"Educators " may include the Clergy and Physicians ; and
" Eegistrars" all sorts of Book-keepers and Book-makers,
scientific, library and historical, and the national service
of one newspaper with its local editions.
Besides the above-named contributors to the national
income (for Physicians, as maintainers of physical, and
the Clergy, as ministering to moral, health, are both
contributory), we must take account of the contributions
made by the disbursements of persons of independent
means who derive their incomes from businesses
abroad. Relatively to their own countries and the
exploiting of labour which their dividends involve, these
absentees are the worst burdens upon their native coun-
tries. But if by making England the model home of
rural and urban beauty, a paragon in sanitary science,
a lesson in combined order and freedom, where labour
reaps its due and repays justice with ardent loyalty and
cordial peace ; if by such conditions we make it the
most attractive spot upon the globe, we may welcome
the wealthy strangers to the economical teachings and
example we present, and own the advantage of pupils
whose spendings repay the inhabitants for their un-
prejudiced and cordial reception.
POVERTY IN THE KINGDOM UNNECESSARY. 303
Another class of contributors to the national resources,
though to a minor extent, are the Artificers who confer
upon comparatively worthless raw material the some-
times priceless value of rare Art. If the clay in the hand
of the pottery designer exceeds in attractiveness what
other nations can achieve, or a fashion should set in for
our ware abroad, then we may indeed convert our clay to
gold. The home market is comparatively worthless to
this end, and only valuable in so far as it keeps money
circulating at home which might otherwise go in Sevres
china or Japanese ivory ; but every piece of art pottery
sold abroad is real gain to us, in a degree exceeding the
gain from the sale of the ruder ware, since the surplus
value conferred by a single art workman may be great.
This principle applies, of course, to all the Fine Arts.
If our sculptors, architects, musicians, and painters
were sought for abroad and spent their foreign gains at
home, they would confer not only honour but profit upon
their native country; and while a Madame Adelina
Patti dispenses blankets and comforts at Craig-y-Nos, we
make exchanges in allowing a Gibson to chisel the
people at Borne, 'and a Holman Hunt to astonish the
donkey drivers of Jerusalem alike by his colour "values"
and his resolve to withstand their impositions.
The people of Japan (or rather the dealers, who
themselves are innocent of Art) are just now coining
money by the rage that has set in for their Art
workmanship in Europe. We are the losers, unless to an
equal degree we can prevail upon other nations to prefer
our Art productions. The Cobden school will of course
tell you that we do not lose, that for every import there
is a corresponding export ; and they will stick to this,
with a white face, after they have resolved to cancel their
resolution to present the president of their club with his
portrait, by Madox Brown, and to substitute instead an
ivory throne from Japan, knowing that the Japanese
304 PURITANISM IN POWER.
dealer will put the proceeds in a hole in his garden, or
build a Pagoda !
Not only wealthy foreigners resident in England, and
Artists with foreign customers, are contributors to the
national income, we must include also money lenders r
not to ourselves, but to Foreign Powers and our Colonial
possessions. With the system of rent and interest that
at present prevails, the social reformer is at war, but
while great changes are slowly being evolved, we must
take stock of the actual contributors to, and the actual
burdens upon, the national resources.
It is a legitimate and proper function of a mother
country to loan capital to its colonists, and to do it with
wisdom and moderation; nevertheless, as a nation,
not leaving it to private financiers or Insurance Com-
panies ; and this ought to be done on the principle of in-
terest and redemption annually, the former being scarcely
more than sufficient to pay for keeping the account.
Our loans to other and Foreign States being not of equal
security may of course have a higher rate of interest.
It is estimated we receive annually 42,000,000 from
foreign loans at present, and 48,000,000 from other
investments abroad.
We may now recapitulate our list of contributors to
the national income. Food, warmth and vehicle pro-
ducers, Carriers, Storekeepers, including the National
Bank ; Inventors, Managers, including foreign exchangers ;
Educators, including physicians, the clergy and nursery
maids ; ^Registrars, including science and literature, and
the editors of the single newspaper ; Foreign loaners and
investors ; Artists, whose work is patronized by foreigners,.
and Foreign residents living upon their foreign means.
These are the sources of our national income. It is got
in the last resort entirely from labour labour employed
upon our own soil, in our own factories, or labour em-
ployed abroad, but also it is labour aided by intelligence
POVEKTY IN THE KINGDOM UNNECESSARY. 305
and capital. The total that labour thus aided brings
to the United Kingdom annually is computed to be
about 1,300,000,000, of which about 250,000,000
are thought to be annually saved. Take 50,000,000 off
this as proceeds of English capital invested abroad, the
interest of it being paid by foreign labour, and a fur-
ther 40,000,000 or 50,000,000, the interest on foreign
loans, also paid by foreign labour or taxation, and there
are still 150,000,000 saved by capital out of the busi-
nesses which the English worker, as Artisan, Carrier,
Storekeeper, Registrar, Inventor, Manager, and we might
add Preacher, keeps running year by year.
The savings thus properly belonging to this country
would give 18 15s. to every family in it. If each
family's interest in the savings could be recognised, in
ten years every family would be possessed of a capital
sum of 187 10s. Mr. Giffen calculates that the
capitalized value of the United Kingdom as a going
concern in the year 1885, would yield to each family of
five persons 1350. We have evidently a margin where-
with to deal with the problem of poverty. But, as Mr.
Giffen says, " there is no doubt that, as regards the dis-
tribution of wealth in the United Kingdom, the average
is made up most unevenly. For convenience sake the
figures are reduced to so much per head or per family,
but the actual distribution is a different matter."
We may now set ourselves to consider the classes who
do not contribute to the national income, but who live
upon it, and these include certain sections of the working
classes who, no less than their employers, are useless cum-
berers of the ground, being engaged in the production of
useless or pernicious articles for their own and others'
consumption, or in the service of pride and luxury.
But this, and the further consideration of the reserve
we possess for solving the problem of poverty, will occupy
another chapter.
20
806
CHAPTER VI.
POYEETY NOT NECESSARY Continued.
WE have been considering the creators and contributors
to the fund which the nation has for spending its
Income-furnishing classes. We have now to consider
the classes who more or less idly and uselessly live upon
that fund, and the large part of the population whose
employments are due to the artificial tastes of the
luxuriously spending classes and the drinking habits of
the poor ; whose industry is therefore to a great extent
misdirected ; also certain branches of commercial activity
and of the professions which could entirely be done away
with and their present functions superseded, with
immense advantage in economy and efficiency, by the
State.
It is obvious that the Income-providing classes should
receive such a share of the wealth that they produce as
that they should not only be exempt from anxiety and
want, but should also be recognisable as receiving from
the Commonwealth that meed of honour and regard
which is the due share of individuals whose functions
are the most indispensable and laborious by whose
industrial skill and toils the whole society is nourished,
and upon whom as its sole and necessary foundation it
actually rests.
And it is equally obvious that whatever other classes
of industrials are brought into existence through the
demands of a wealthy class for luxuries and inutilities,
and as ministers to pride and ostentation such
industrials and dependents, together with the classes to
which they minister, should be regarded as strictly
superfluous, dispensable and injurious members of the
Commonwealth, who have no right to be born and for
POVERTY NOT NECESSARY. 307
whom no seat at the table of the Commonwealth should
be placed until the children who provided the feast have
had their full and healthy portion.
As it is, we know that the providers of the feast are
now often clamouring at the gate for crumbs, while the
workmen whose callings are created by the demands of
luxury and the servitors of the idle rich are well
remunerated in proportion as their services are least
useful and their work least onerous.
Socialists should take into account that they will have
to deal, not only with the opposition of the dispensable
possessors of wealth, but also with the large number of
pernicious trades and callings which are created by the
disbursements of injurious superfluity. Before the
struggle for the new and just social order is terminated
a large contingent of the more intelligent, if less
principled, of the working classes will be found backing
up, from interested motives, the old abuses. Let it be
so, Puritans will never back from the fight on that
account. It is their mission to turn the world upside
down, and they will begin by seeing to it that every
class whatsoever shall go short, until the people who
furnished the feast are fed. They will turn the jockey
to the plough-team and Jeames without his plush to the
plough-tail, and stand the consequences.
Chief among the non-producers whose functions
could be beneficially undertaken by the State are the
Landlords. The Landlord class are the prime moulders
of the civilization of every country, and have hitherto
contributed most to its legislation and administration.
Indirectly they have augmented the National Income
by laying such burdens of rent upon the cultivators that
they have had to farm well or starve. In recent years
many of these have lost their entire capital in fulfilling
the obligations of their leases.
The Landlord class also flourishes by being able to
308 PURITANISM IN POWER.
impose an octroi upon all articles of consumption in our
towns and cities. The octroi is not collected at the
barrier, but is indirectly obtained by the machinery of
ground rent, which, if it do not tax every article sold in
the shops, ruins the shopkeepers.
The Landlord by his wealth and power exhibits the
heights of freedom, culture and independence to which
humanity can attain, when once its economical servitude
is overcome. His lordly castle and ravishing park open
a vista to cramped toiling humanity of what is possible
to human life with ample means. The very extremes of
the contrast are an inspiration.
The State with means still ampler could call each one
of its wealth-producing subjects to sit among these
princes enjoying in the common Park and the Palace
of the Commune that dignity of environment and that
real dignity of person which attach to those who have
fulfilled indispensable obligations and have earned their
right to the portion which they enjoy.
As to the administrative efficiency which the leisured
landlord class has given to Government, and the law
making which has so excellently consulted their interests
and consolidated then* power, this can be nowadays
dispensed with also. The proof lies in the history of the
American War of Independence, in which a single
generation furnished generals of the greatest capacity,
diplomatists and statesmen second to none, and original
law makers who gave to the world a model constitution.
Could not the workers help themselves again ?
The next class of non-providers of Income who must
be mentioned are those who live entirely upon dividends
from home investments.
Home Dividenders and Stock Brokers contribute nothing
to the National Stock ; their expenditure sets in motion
wheels of industry and gives employment to the classes
who feed and clothe and shelter them, but so would the
POVEBTY NOT NECESSAKY. 309
wheels of industry turn and employment be given were
the dividends left at the disposal of those who
contributed labour and skill to the product, instead of
such an undue share going to those who contributed
nothing but capital. The State is quite competent to
administer to labour the capital it requires, and to see
that the result blesses first of all the living agent and
not the dead tool or its sleeping provider. Next we can
dispense with :
The Insurance Companies, Life, Fire, Marine, and all
Sick and Provident Associations. The State is good for
little if it cannot provide for all the contingencies which
such organizations are designed to guarantee us against,
and the State alone can do so with absolute economy and
security. It is a painful reflection the mass of mis-
spent money and the multitudes of uselessly occupied
men and premises which this Insurance business
represents. It is a fine example of the diseased condition
of modern civilization the scrutiny into the lapsing of
insured lives ; into the real accidency of fires ; into the
causes of so large a disappearance of babies ; into the
integrity of losses on the sea.
The hosts of people who are living and faring
sumptuously upon all this corruption of prudential caution
the Commonwealth will end it, when the State becomes
the wealthy Father of every child, when every dwelling
or store burnt to the ground will be a real loss to the
community, and every loss at sea be felt as a real
disaster. Then we should have at our disposal a very
serviceable body of active-minded citizens whom we
could put to catching rats and weasels, snaring bull-
finches, or otherwise helping to diminish the depredators
upon the common fund.
Next we could do away with the entire class of shop-
keepers, and all the advertisement-mongers and providers,
icith the newspapers who live by their means.
310 PURITANISM IN POWER.
The State which takes orders for our stamps could also
take orders for our grocery, and the State which delivers
our letters and parcels with such punctuality could be
reckoned upon to deliver our milk and meat in time for
both breakfast and dinner. The State as a manufacturer
turns out even now excellent coins, arms, ships and
clothing, and its convicts build admirable dwellings, as
well as forts, docks and piers.
Co-operative stores have saved millions to consumers.
The doing away with those utterly useless articles shop-
keepers and advertisements would save millions upon
millions to the nation, rendering poverty an inexcusable
criminality. The shopkeeper of to-day is a person who
should be held in the deepest respect by those who pay
their bills ever} r six months or two years, or not at all.
They have in him a friend who pays them the greatest
deference, while he almost snubs the cash customer who
is made to pay for all the losses upon the booked business.
The shopkeeper presents in the conduct of his business
all the wastefulness that pertains to an armed peace.
His army of assistants are kept standing at their posts,
laboriously doing nothing until customers appear. His
gas flares away inside and outside, whether customers
come or not. His advertisements, gas bill, idle assis-
tants, show front, and extortionate ground rent are the
ridiculously needless burdens which competitive society
saddles upon his income. The landlord loves to keep
things so. Divide ct impcra. Every man struggling to
outdo his neighbour gives him the ground rent.
Nevertheless, at present, the smaller shopkeepers are
distinctly helpful to the workers' cause. The small
shopkeeper is the poor man's banker, and many a strike
has been brought to a successful termination by the credit
he has given. But the poor man by his small purchases
and his booked score pays dearer for his food than any
other class, as he likewise is made to pay heaviest for his
POVERTY NOT NECESSARY.
rent. The rule is invariable where wages are least, they
go least far. Thus there is a double blessing in low
wages ; they bless both him that gives and him who, as
landlord or shopkeeper, receives.
To cleanse the whole current of our modern existence
from the advertising visitation would be a wondrous
mercy. The Egyptian plague of flies could scarcely be
more ubiquitous or irrepressible than is this odious and
degrading modern tyranny. And the whole of the press,
religious and secular, lends itself, without hesitation,
discrimination or conscience, to providing new channels
for the flood of falsity, bombast and folly, with which
England is flooded day by day in this precious era of
triumphant lies.
With the vendors of real utilities, who in the new
order will find/'' .iployment in the national co-operative
store, will also, of course, disappear the dealers in foreign
utilities which we can produce as well or better at home ; and,
with still better reason, all dealers in foreign in utilities.
Some important manufactories must be next reckoned
among the hurtful burdens upon the National Income,
notwithstanding that they give markets to the agricul-
turist. The effect of doing away with three parts of the
production of Breweries and Distilleries would be not only
to stop an awful waste in the profitable expenditure of
earnings, but also eventually to turn the land devoted to
malt and hops to the production of solid and nutritious
food. There would be no harm in our continuing to
brew for a foreign export trade, to supply the real wants
of civilized people and our colonists abroad.
Tobacco manufacturers are distinctly a non-producing
class, although employers of labour. They add nothing
to the National Income, for they do not export. They
only divert to an expenditure on the whole pernicious,
and unhappily increasing, the income that other workers
have amassed.
312 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Tobacconists as well as brewers must be absorbed and
superseded by the State.
Manufacturers of inutilities and nonsense articles for home
consumption must also be reckoned among the national
burdens which might be turned to the relief of Poverty.
It is the idlest response to say that any manufacture
capable of giving employment to the poor should be
upheld. We are now dealing with a substantive income
made, and with the chronic poverty of the people who
made it. It is no remedy for that poverty, and no sola-
tium to justice, that another class of poor workers should
be called into existence by the expenditure of that income
in useless ways. The wages so paid should have been
left in the pockets of the original producers of the income
which is found to be so far in excess of real needs that it
suggests all manner of foolish and hurtful expenditure.
For all I know there might be employment afforded by
the introduction by the Chinese of the practice of opium
smoking in England. It might become an industry so
considerable that the Government, even when the stand-
ard of the invader threatened Dorking, would, without
reproach, revert for consolation to the drug. Should a
patriot who demanded resistance to both the foreign
fashion and the foreign foe be answered by the plea that
the former, at all events, gave employment to labour ?
Other parasites upon the National Income are the mere
speculators and gamblers in commodities and the entire
betting fraternity. The speculator in these days is a
hurtful and needless personage. He never employs him-
self except with the hope of raking from the nation's purse
into his own. The National service may use his wits to
the advantage instead of the prejudice of the public.
Domestic sen-ants maintained fur show and not for use
are also parasites. Redundant Government officials
redundancy in the army, navy, and police redundancy
amongst the clergy and ministers of other denominations
POVEKTY NOT NECESSARY. 313
redundant newspapers and their staff's redundant law-
ijers (the laws of a Commonwealth might be printed
on every pocket handkerchief) redundant private
schools Artistes with only English patrons all the
before-mentioned classes constitute in the mass the
reserve which we possess for dealing with the problem
of poverty. Any diminution in the numbers' or revenues
of these sections of society would not affect the National
Income in the least. It would only leave a larger surplus
in the hands of the wealth-producers. The incomes of
these classes represent in part the foolish and in part
the wicked misuse of the means of existence which God
has placed within the nation's reach. But the gravest
indictment is the subversion of social justice, which the
support of these supernumeraries involves and implies.
There is no true civilization, however splendid the
external show, where Justice cannot hold her own, where
she is draped and honoured with the lip and temple
service, but habitually denied the sceptre and the crown.
It is true we have numbered among the providers of
the National Income those Landlords and Dividenders
whose means come from abroad, while they honour our
shores with their disbursement, and any radical trans-
formation in our social aspect might tempt them to
spread their wings and flee. It might, however, turn
out that the realization of a social state in which a high
civilization should be unaccompanied by even the shadow
of Poverty, and would exhibit very diminished immorality
and no social disease, would present such invincible
attractions to persons in search of healthy and lovely
cities, joyous people and rooted social security that the
flock of wealthy visitors, desirous of dwelling in our
midst to study, while they enjoyed our institutions,
would prove positively embarrassing. But we have not
yet done with the reserves available to meet the just
claims of the wealth-producers.
314 PURITANISM IN POWER.
We have to ask ourselves why the lives and fortunes,
the weal and woe of millions who have brought skill and
judgment, labour and capital to the production of certain
needed commodities should be jeopardized, undone, and
made dependent upon the thing called market jjmvx, and
why the inconsiderable accident of a greater or less
quantity of metallic medium being in the cellars of a
Bank should plunge a great nation into a panic and
absolutely carry widespread ruin and desolation into the
hearths and homes of innocent people. Surely no
circumstances could be named which carry such a
damning indictment against the intelligence and progress
of the species as these economical phenomena. In every
other department intellect and skill have made wonderful
achievements ; in Political Economy alone man still
crawls helplessly on the ground and his reason must
surrender to the meanest insect. The ants could teach
him a better household economy than his highest
philosophers in this department have yet attained. In
fact his wisdom is to look backward ; the further he has
gone forward in civilization, the farther he has diverged
from the right line.
What can be more humiliating than the following
extracts from Mr. Giffen's review of the accumulations
of capital in the United Kingdom in 1875-85. The
increase in these ten years he finds to be 17 per cent.,
but in the decade immediately preceding it had been
40 per cent. Nevertheless there had been no decrease in
the rate of production of commodities. " Commodities,"
he says, " have been increasing with comparative
steadiness," but "prices changed," and "the change
must be held to be determined by changes in money sad
not in commodities."
" It (money) moves at one time in such a way as to
keep prices in equilibrium, or even make them, and all
property valuations with them, rise ; at another time it
POVERTY NOT NECESSARY. 315
either diminishes or only grows so slowly that all money
prices and property valuations with them fall."
Was ever anything more absurd than the fortunes and
progress of the human species being tacked to the
contingent movements of the currency ?
We are further told that on account of the speed with
which we are producing actual wealth, our several
incomes will cease to progress as formerly, and may even
diminish. Here are the words, " I may be permitted to
add, that if in future commodities are to progress as
they have done in the past, then, unless money changes
dynamically, prices must continue to fall and income
tax and property valuations must increase more slowly
than they otherwise do, or even dimmish."
Again we read, "It is already permissible to anticipate
that the next valuation of the United Kingdom may
show about as slow a progress as that of the last
decade, and not the rapid advance of the years 1855-75.
The same in other countries. The reason being, not
that real wealth the wealth in things is not pro-
gressing at as great a rate as it did before, but that the
material of which money is made, notwithstanding the
constantly new appliances for the efficiency of money,
does not alter in such a way as to maintain prices at
their former level."
The reader will perceive that there is no chance of the
country progressing in its former ratio, unless it ceases
to be so efficient and industrious in the production of
" real wealth." The storehouses of the country may be
laden with greater plenty than ever, and yet its inhabi-
tants be shorn of their former power to make their
natural demand an effective demand, and all forsooth
because " the material of which money is made does not
alter in such a way as to maintain prices at their former
level." And this, notwithstanding the multiplication of
cheques and other instruments of credit the Clearing
316 PURITANISM IN POWER.
House system and the fact that two great countries
might trade together for a year and remit the balance in
a handful of bullion !
Surely human intelligence has reached its nadir, even
with the world's 6000 years of history.
Equally intelligent are the methods for warding off
national poverty ; the} 7 consist in restricting the produc-
tion of "real wealth." We must hope for bad harvests
in some other countries and not too plentiful a harvest
in our own. We must determine to put our cotton mills
on half time to blow out certain blast furnaces to give
our colliers a holiday, and to come to an agreement with
Tinplate works to stop production. By these methods
all except the wage workers will be made more secure.
The "nation which lives in the cottage " must go short
of wages in order that the " country " may recover its
trade prosperity and that the income tax (as a con-
sequence of less industry and less production of real
wealth) may show its customary rate of increase ! These
are truly astounding paradoxes. And mirth at the-
absurdity of the situation is rebuked by the reflection
that the description is true to fact. It is even so and no
otherwise, that the prices of necessaries can be maintained
at a remunerative level. The money expression of value
ever operates to restrain instead of to expand production.
The dilemma in which the Kace is thus placed is the
final and abiding proof of the degradation of intellect as
well as morals to which Individualism leads. At this
advanced stage in the world's history we find the very
first concern of nations the provision for the household
barred by a political economy which directly operates for
the impoverishment of the many and the enrichment of
the few which punishes every worker for doing his best,
confers reward upon those who bring least to the markets,
and penalties upon the most prolific producers.
The Philosophers of the Chair who expound this
POVERTY NOT NECESSARY. 317
malific economy have never trod the Exchange, and are
ill situated to observe the correspondence between their
facts and theories.
They will tell you that there is a " law " of " supply and
demand," whereas there is nothing of the character of
law attaching to the phenomena thus designated. They
will tell you that this " law " determines price, whereas
there are controlling influences brought to bear upon prices
which are practically independent of supply and demand.
They will tell you that Labour dispossessed from one
branch of industry always threatens wages in another, and
that the Capital which fails to be remuneratively employed
in one department of production will forthwith remove
intact like a park of artillery, to commence operations in
another field. To their view Labour and Capital run
about the country, or go out of it, as readily as mercury
roams over a tray and falls over its edge. They find
" law " everywhere and make no account of a progressive
conscience political education organizations to defend
wages, and combinations to reduce them monopolies
which can corner competitors and "rings" which set all
theories at defiance. It would be hard to find anywhere
the price which is regulated simply and absolutely by
supply and demand. It is the resultant of many other
forces, accidents and conditions, and these are increasing
in complexity every day. Trade corporations can fix
prices, just as professional guilds can fix fees and Par-
liaments and Town Councils can fix fares and Eailway
rates. A minimum wage to workers is not at all beyond
the Parliamentary capacity.
There is nothing in the world less reasonable and more
unscientific than the manner in which prices vary in the
markets. It is, of course, always sought to place them
upon some solid basis of fact and logic, but never with
any real success. The influences which determine them
are not the operation of any " law " ; they are partly
318 PURITANISM IN POWER.
occult, partly accidental, but chiefly blind guessing and
groping, or impudent empiricism and humbug. " The
price of a thing is what it will bring." Now if as a
matter of fact the entire prosperity of nations depends
upon prices, it is a strange condition for the world to find
itself in, that the settlement of this all-important factor
is in reality based upon nescience and knavery !
Why should there be no fixed relationship between
intrinsic worth and exchange value ? Here is a row of
cottages to be put up for sale. At 2 p.m. certain persons
are prepared to bid up to 3000 for them. Before the
sale commences, however, the prospective bidders have
found out one another, and the exchange value has fallen
by one third. What has happened ? An earthquake, or
a thunderbolt? Nothing of the kind, only this the
vendor has been discovered to be in straits, and all the
bidders are within the ring. The same thing in principle
goes on on every Exchange. Price is a register of the
measure in which either Vendors or the Public have
abused their power. The Public get a vast number of
things far too cheap, if Labour cost were fairly reckoned,
but of the prices they do pay only a residuum reaches
the producer. Salesman, employer and landlord share
the plum, and present the sweated worker with the stone.
What can be more indefensible than the manner in
which prices are made to rise or fall. When rumour of
a great disaster to a fishing fleet sends up the price of
seal oil, no one waits for verification ; all stocks are held
for more money, although they were laid in in a year of
plenty. An invention for recovering a chemical from a
waste product affects the prices of the mineral until the
patent is bought up by a syndicate and prices are restored.
Thus the nation and the world are deprived of a valuable
discovery because of private interests involved. The
Chancellor of the Exchequer is about to put a duty upon
sugar, immediately all the sugar bought beforehand is
POVERTY NOT NECESSARY. 319
raised to the consumer. When the Colonial meat comes
into Smithfield, the buyers first agree to withhold their
bids that the importation may be discouraged, and finally
become purchasers in order to retail it at the price of
English. There is a ring in American corn, and before
it has touched a single baker all the bread in the town
is dearer. There is a reduction of twopence in the duty
upon tea, and the poor who buy in ha'porths and ounces
see never a share of the benefit. There is a temporary
rise in coals, and a Gas Company takes the opportunity
to weed out and dismiss to the pavement the old servants
who have grown grey in its service, while at the same
time it raises the price of its gas permanently 5d. per
thousand feet.
Through the American civil war cotton importations
cease, and linen, which is not affected by the war at all,
goes up by leaps and bounds. All this is simply humbug !
Prices are taught from the Chair to be mainly regulated
by the cost of production, which again is mainly due to
the standard of discomfort to which Labour can be
driven. Actually the main factor in the regulation of
prices is humbug.
With almost equal disregard of real necessity, supply
is undertaken to meet demand, or rather and always
in the case of the artificial luxuries continually foisted
upon a harassed public supply comes first and demand
is forced into existence afterwards. Under the hiring
system and redemption instalments the lives of poor
servant girls and of the wives of poor working men are
made a burden to them, as they are wheedled into taking
sewing machines, watches, and what not, from vampires
who will drag them in strings to the County Court, if the
usurious tax, with interest added, fails of being paid to
the bitter end.
Why is the Cotton Lord adding to his numerous mills ?
He cannot tell you any more than his neighbour who is
320 PURITANISM IN POWER.
adding to his floor-cloth factory. Both of them have
made fortunes in the business, and so they know no better
channel for investment, but there has been no serious
attempt by either to sound the actual relationship of
supply to demand. They continue helplessly marching
on in the same direction, like the man with the cork
leg. The Philosopher of the Chair will tell you that
here we are beholding the operation of the invariable
law of demand and supply. What we are beholding is
quackery, waste and venture not an atom of science
or of law. A few years later and the Cotton Lord, after
deeply prejudicing the trade, is a ruined man, and the
floor-cloth manufacturer has to refurnish his mill
entirely for the production of linoleum. Now the
construction of every mill, every machine, every railroad,
every dock, every tram, every steamer, every house not
scientifically ascertained to be really wanted is a waste
of national resources, and the introduction of disease
into the commercial movement.
Surely after twenty-five years' experience of Limited
Liability we may arrive at the conclusion that the
amount of capital applied to further production is regu-
lated, not so much by any ascertained demand, as by the
degree in which the investing public can be gulled.
But time would fail to hint at a thousandth part of
the crimes and follies and the disgraceful ineptitude that
fatally dogs the steps of Individualism.
Here then are three additional reserves wherefrom to
meet the just claims of the wealth-producers.
(1,) The ending of the currency craze.
(2,) The deletion of humbug from settling exchange
values.
(3,) The really scientific adjustment of supply to
demand.
But the Master-remedy is the substitution of an
organized for a disorganized Industrial State.
POVERTY NOT NECESSARY. 321
With the introduction of Communism the owls and
bats of the Cavern and the imps who mock at blind and
stumbling Man take their departure. All is light, sweet
reasonableness and peace. The helpful Guardians of
the Eace appear take the wounded Pilgrim by the
hand undo his bandages, lead him to the Day and to
the Mountain Summit.
While as yet, however, we linger in the Cavern,
certain practical remedies are proposed, which even
as we stand are adequate to banish Poverty. They
are :
(1,) All Breweries, Distilleries and Public-houses to
be bought out by the Government, which shall be the
sole manufacturer and vendor of alcoholic liquor.
The Temperance Crusade is a hopeless one, so long as
it remains undoubtedly true : (,) That alcohol supplies a
real need, as well as an injurious excess ; (b,) That its
nature is seductively to increase demand ; (c,) That the
enormous power of a Trade Interest is ever exerted to
stimulate the demand for an article which is dangerously
seductive in itself.
Individualism can scarcely show a more cogent reason
for its extinction.
(2,) The housing of the working classes to be entirely
taken away from private initiative, and become the first
and chief duty of Municipalities and County Councils ;
slum property being purchased at the valuation of
Government assessors without appeal, and the cost of
purchase, destruction and rebuilding laid, not upon the
Rates, but upon the Consolidated Fund, just as the cost
of rebuilding Barracks is now being done. The proper
housing of the Industrial Army is quite as much a
national concern as the housing of the soldiery, while a
moderate rent would recoup the outlay.
To lay it upon the Rates is to stint provision and
lead to jobbery.
21
822 PURITANISM IN POWER.
(3,) Concurrently with provisions against foreign
pauper immigration, the enactment of a minimum
wage. This ought to be quite as easy of ascertain-
ment and adoption as soldiers' rations, and the im-
position of maximum fares upon Railway Companies
and cabmen.
(4,) Provision for men injured at their employments
and thrown out of work by the advance of machinery
by a tax upon Dividends, falling, of course, impartially
upon Co-operative Mills, as well as upon the ordinary
Limited Liability Companies. This, by a special
receipt stamp.
(5,) Provision for sick and aged industrials, by an
onerous stamp tax upon marriages, which shall be five
times as heavy upon marriages undertaken before the age
of twenty-five as upon those consummated at a later
period.
The two preceding funds to be administered by
Elected Guardians.
(6,) Provision for the Colonization of the surplus
population by a tax upon Ground Rents, Royalties
and Ocean-going steamers. The Tax upon Ground
Rents to be assessed upon one-half of the then
current Rent the remainder and all future " better-
ment " being left available for taxation by the Local
Authority.
(7,) A large Allotment scheme, with genuine working
provisions.
The above seven measures would suffice to extinguish
Poverty even now, could we start fair, without the
wretched Entail of Individualism.
With this wretched Entail we should, however, have to
deal, and by heroic measures, affording no precedent for
the future.
(8,) All hereditary and hopeless criminals and paupers
must be forcibly seized, incarcerated and kept until they
POVERTY NOT NECESSARY. 823
die out the cost of this being laid upon the Consoli-
dated Fund.
So much for present remedies and first steps towards
a juster and happier social order. In our next chapter
we can indulge in the yet brighter prospects that unfold
themselves when we contemplate the really Co-opera-
live Commonwealth.
324
CHAPTEK VII.
POVERTY NOT NECESSARY Conclude.
WE have seen in the two preceding chapters how poverty
is the product, not of any incurable stinginess on the
part of nature, as if it failed to reward labour, skill and
science with a return commensurate with human needs,
but that on the contrary, her very bounty and abundance
have suggested the possibility of a section of mankind
working not at all, and yet living in profusion, by the
simple process of seizing the common inheritance as, for
instance, Africa is now being seized by Europe and
converting the rest of the family into slaves. We have
seen how the wealth-producers are given want for wages.
and that this enforced abstinence of theirs from partici-
pation in the fruits of their toil maintains in a victorious
existence a class of economic Lords, whose luxurious
living begets another army of retainers and artisans
no less enslaved, the existence of which, together with
the often trifling vanity and pernicious character of
their employments, is pointed to as the triumph of
civilization.
It would be no healing of the open sore of the world to
transfer the dependence of the retainers and the artisans
from the economic Lords to the present wealth-pro-
ducers to exchange few masters for many, and to
become the slave of former slaves the worst of tyrannies.
Peasant proprietorship or bequests like those of Mr.
Chantleloup, of Montreal, who left his great fortune
and brass foundry to his workmen, may do an act of
justice to those who really make the income of the world ;
but from the new order thus created would disappear the
cultured, high-minded and sympathetic master for there
are such and there would remain the same high roads
POVERTY NOT NECESSARY. 325
to inequality, the same tendencies to tread them, and
the same competitive struggle, which invariably turns
men to beasts, against their will, shoves often the
worthiest to the wall, and allows the un fittest to survive,
while insecurity of employment, wage earning, and the
disastrous growth of capitalism would all be begotten as
before, with the sure result of Poverty that unbanish-
able ghost entering unbidden at every feast, and, as it
leans against a pillar, making the whole house to rock.
We saw that notwithstanding that the closing of the
open sore in one direction only led to its breaking out in
another place the whole body corporate being in fact
hopelessly diseased under the plague of Individualism
yet it was possible even now to introduce such palliatives
as should superficially rid the community of its extremest
ills. And, as an important addition to the sources from
which aid might come, I have here now to suggest another,
namely, the recommendation, by every mark of public
honour and esteem, of the practice w T hich John Jacob
Astor, George Peabody, Sir E. Guinness and others have
inaugurated, of making large bequests for the benefit of
their poorer fellow-citizens. The administration of such
bequests might become a Public Department. As the
fashion spread, money would be flowing in every week ;
and while at one end of the scale the propagation of an
idle and luxurious race of plutocrats would be stopped,
at the other great schemes of rebuilding the whole
country, and planting colonies abroad, would be opening
to honest industry the fairer prospect ; while pensions to
decayed labourers would be enjoyed by them as legacies
without the sting of the pauper's brand. Why should
we not build a Walhalla to contain the marble statues of
the Benefactors, placing them there in their lifetime,
when they had the grace to disencumber before Mors
with his javelin compelled them ? Why not hold an
annual holiday and festival in their honour ? Millionaires
326 PURITANISM IN POWER.
seldom have many children, and it is not true to human
nature to hold that the motive with men to accumulate
is the affection they feel for generations yet unborn.
Even those with families might acquiesce in a general
law that issue in the third generation should have
a diminished interest in the estate of an ancestor, and in
the fourth generation have none at all these family
interests being gradually escheated to the State. The
Dead Hand upon posterity presuming to control it, and
the Dead Hand endowing it beyond all need of energy and
all experience of want, are institutions which must ever
give to progress a fatal wrench.
But it is not in such ameliorations the product of
humanitarian legislation and philanthropic altruism-
that the evils of the present competitive order can be
duly and permanently removed. For that blessed con-
summation the introduction of an entirely opposite
principle to that of competition must occur the principle,
namely, of co-operation on the part of every member of
the national family according to his powers, for the
purpose of dividing the fruits of the joint exertion to
every member of the family according to his needs.
Doubtless when extremes have met and the highest and
only enduring form of civilization is seen to join the
simple communism of the savage state we shall recognise
that, after all, no portion of the circuit could be spared.
Chastened by long wandering in the egoistic wilder-
ness, with eyes fully opened to the knowledge of good
and evil, subdued and vitalized by the Divine revelations
of six thousand years, and enriched with many arts and
histories, mankind may now behold the waving swords
of Eden changed into beckoning arms of welcome, and
entering through the gates of their lost Paradise, find
rest at last.
As by enchantment all the problems that defy solution
by the ablest statesmen are at once construed ; even a
POVERTY NOT NECESSARY. 327
Divine Intelligence could not preserve the life of Justice
amid a ceaseless storm of separate and conflicting
interests.
But with the merging of all interests into one the
direction of all efforts to one common purpose, the
co-heirship by the family of all the present and of all the
past peace succeeds to war the habitual strike of
capital against labour is brought to a perpetual end,
National prosperity is placed upon an imperishable basis,
and men instead of needing to strain every faculty to
prevent their brethren besting them in the race, are seen
helping the laggards to come up, and throwing behind
them the fruits that the foremost are first to find.
The currency foolery ends in a co-operative state.
" Price " would be a word for antiquaries, did not our
foreign merchandise still require it. We should labour
for nothing that was not worth exertion, and strenuously
for things formerly beyond our reach. The makers of all
inutilities and nonsense articles, such as toy skeletons
and spiders to excite giggles in the gilded salon, would be
given useful work to do. And those worn and atrophied
and blase'd wretches, whose fathers had cursed them with
a fortune, would spring to the discovery that life was
worth living after all. With how much more reason
would not the bent and broken, low-born sons of
labour
"Born only to endure,
The patient passive poor "
lend their sanction to the creed, when now for ever freed.
To present an entire conspectus of a co-operative state
is not the object of this Book. Society cannot be
pushed into a mould and retain its powers of growth. It
will take upon itself shapes of interesting and beautiful
variety in different climes, and as the result of different
evolutions. It is sufficient to show on what lines only
progress can be made what hope only will not fail.
328 PURITANISM IN POWER.
We say, then, hope is vain and progress futile unless
we make communism our final goal and co-operation our
ceaseless aim. No one can foresee the steps that lie
between our start and our attainment the future phases
of the world's enlarging light, until its broad illumina-
tion is complete. But we can perceive that brotherhood
can never be attained through blood, unless, indeed, it be
the blood of sacrifice.
Fancy, however, can indulge in pictures of what it
may not prophesy. We can perceive the enlightened
municipality girdling the grimy town with inodeJ
cottages, each with its half-acre of garden ground
attached and not until these are ready for occupation
commencing the destruction of the rookeries. We can
perceive upon the sites once occupied by slums the
manufactory, the warehouse, and the public building
rising proudly. W'e can see the heavy industries brought
to the margin of the sea, and noxious manufactories
made innocuous, regardless of expense if that impossi-
ble, surrendered, unless vital. We can behold Nature's
private boudoirs, where she holds the mirror to her
beauty, kept sacred to herself and to her worshippers.
But elsewhere every rood of land, outside the public
parks and common wildernesses, made the object of
assiduous culture. Ireland, carefully drained and roaded,
a granary in reserve, should India fail us or a European
complication baulk our lieet.
We can perceive that, instead of leisure, culture and
competence leading men to lassitude and vice, we shall
by exacting from every one his proper due of service,
engage all minds upon mechanical discoveries and
physical research. The unacknowledged honour that
now belongs to the working classes almost solely, of
being the prime originators of the multitudinous devices
which have saved and shortened labour (thus betraying
their brethren's birthright for a mess of pottage, and
POVERTY NOT NECESSARY. . 829
generously presenting an employer with a fortune) this
honour will be shared by many who were born to silver
spoons. Even material progress will make more rapid
strides, while the sparks of criminality, struck off from
quiet human nature by strokes of adverse fate, will no
longer hint of hell.
Adventure, enthusiasm, the loyalty of clans, the
Leader's inspiration and the follower's faith an outside
world still bondaged to the Egoistic rule will ask for and
use them all in the propaganda of the Commonwealth.
So backward is it in so many parts, that centuries of
labour invite the service of the satisfied. When a
beautiful variety of societies have at length appeared,
all dwelling together in the Unity of anointed brethren,
bright youth may find something to sigh for in the
lack of other worlds to conquer. And, indeed, Millen-
niums may make us mopish, since conflict is essential
to the highest life ; hence the mercy of occasional misery,
such as toothache and influenza. It is to be hoped the
doctors will remain unable to rid the world of these,
seeing we could ill spare them on the threshold of such
brilliant prospects. When we kill our cattle by electric
shock, have done with insects, and out-done the thieving
birds, life will still be tolerable on account of Fads. It
is not given to all men to see before them in nature a
storehouse of wonder, for whose investigation life is all
too short and to perceive in the sphere of moral and
spiritual advance an ascending path of equal endlessness.
For those who can, and for the charmed investigators
into the Races' Past, the passing moments will ever seem
too fast and few.
But for others will be left the innocent foible of the
Fad. Small controversies will bulge, like the balloons,
which will then be employed to discharge their ballast in
the form of tracts. The co-operative citizen, beholding a
shadow on the pavement, will look up and perceive two
830 I'L'RITANISM IN POWER.
great bodies approaching one another they are the
balloons respectively of the Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Societies.
It is horribly vexatious to the respective Secretaries
when the attraction of dissimilarity brings them together,
and they bob and pirouette as if their doctrines were
identical. The Anglo-Israelite Identification Society
Balloon is determined to separate itself from all possible
identification with the Anglo-Israelite Identification
(Germanic tribes excepted) Association, but the Fates
forbid, and in their mutual struggle to get free the
ballast of powerful and learned tracts that descends
upon the head and carpets the feet of the co-operative
citizen is found to be completely mixed, bane and
antidote together, to the scandal of all good subscribers.
If this should be deemed to parody the higher Day for
which we look, we can vouch for it that that era will be
free from the blather of the Advertiser and from the
plague of the Stockbroker's tips, and the Company
Promoter's Sunday parcels. But there will be an Identi-
fication with Israel and Judah both, in those days, about
which no controversy could exist. That glorious nation
of the Ancient Jews saw to it, under Divine direction,
that every prattler was taught the entire history, political
and ecclesiastical, of his tribe. The poems of its greatest
men the inspired predictions and exhortations of its
most eloquent Apostles were the common stock of talk.
Think of our masses, passing from life to death in
such an Empire as that of England, without ever com-
prehending how it came (although that, thank God, is
bettering), and almost innocent of its magnificent
heritage of Literature.
In well-spent holidays, too, the Jewish State set up a
sign, which we shall follow. The multiplied feasts and
festivals were not devised and demanded for the " glory
of God," but for the good of man. His toiling creature.
POVERTY NOT NECESSARY. 331
And I shall always thank the Romish Church, that after
the raging haste for despatch through day and night and
sometimes Sundays compelled at British ports when
the monster of a steamer comes to a Mediterranean port
of discharge, it drops into Saints' holidays, and the
people laugh at it.
Leisure without laziness, Leisure without licence
this will be our identity with Israel.
In the Communistic order there will be Freedom, if
you like.. Human nature will branch out and flower in
directions that the grinding conventionalities of our
caste-ridden and competition- driven order render utterly
impossible. In fact, Individualism cannot properly
exist except under the titular establishment of the
opposite principle.
We have said it is folly to prescribe beforehand the
form which the evolution of a nation is to finally assume
its structural development that is for as to ener-
gizing principle and radical foundations, these must be
previously chosen and prepared.
It may, however, be permitted an Author to indicate
what he would personally desire and expect.
It is to be assumed that the entire capital of the country
has passed under national direction. There is no longer
such a thing as Private Property in the means of life and
the instruments of production and exchange. All is for
All. The separate members of the nation will not strive
against each other, but work with and for each other ;
and as only the periods of Education and of old Age will
exempt from national service in such a temperate degree
as will contribute to joy and health, the whole body will
tend to grow in real wealth beyond its capacity to com-
sume. The Problem of that day will be entirely .changed.
" The rich we have always with us " will be the monoto-
nous complaint, uttered with a smile of triumph, and
with the turning over of schemes for the disposal of
332 PURITANISM IN POWER.
redundancy. For there will be a proper restraint upon
the growth of population.
Although land will be vested in the National Trustees.
every married citizen will have his private house, of
which, as well as of the plot of soil his humble fief
attached he would, by lottery within the Commune, be
appointed periodic tenant. These, together with any
natural history collections, works of art, or bazaar (by
which I mean nonsense) articles he may produce, would
be his private property for life. But the marriage of the
citizen would not be entirely uncontrolled. Suitability in
age, temper, principle, and physique would be impera-
tively demanded, and if the parties declined submission,
the national emigrant ships would be at their service to
take them hence, but not to any daughter settlement.
In addition, when in a family a sixth child appeared,
the Father, upon registration, would receive notice that
he and his family were placed upon the colonial list of
departures. If at the end of three months the child
appeared to have been carefully nourished and main-
tained (there would be no State nursing or barrack
breaking up of families), the family would have the option
of remaining with their friends for nine months longer ;
but if it showed signs of neglect and ill-treatment, that
household would be summarily transported to a colonial
settlement, where every additional child is an addition
to the common wealth.
But what a day of freedom in other respects it would
be ! Each would find and choose his native path ; and if
unavoidable instincts of ancestry would assert themselves
in the first few generations, and the canine teeth of the
commercial beast of prey develop within the head of
budding youth, the outside belt of competitive nations
would be " before them all to choose." No one would
mourn the departure of the nascent land-grabber, miser,
money-grubber, and labour sweater.
POVERTY NOT NECESSARY. 888
Education, of course, would be free, and its liberal
curriculum be rounded by a complete tour of the globe.
For this purpose special ships would be constructed,
replete with every convenience (not luxury), and with
every needed instrument for scientific investigation.
Every citizen of the Commonwealth would be a citizen
of the World. In this way, too, an accurate knowledge
of foreign markets would be maintained. Every student
would report his commercial, as well as his scientific
discoveries. And it goes without saying, that when all
productions for home consumption would be made for
use and not for profit, that the habit of genuine, honest,
and thorough workmanship thus engendered, even if the
morality of the executive had not risen, would cause the
goods of England to be real goods, and the brand of
" England " to sweep the markets everywhere, without
any overt design to ruin our competitive neighbours.
Their salvation would lie in copying our constitution.
Adventurous youth would be given its opportunity in
Guilds for ridding India and Africa of tigers, serpents,
and every noxious beast. A Nihilist club to do the same
for Russia might be formed ; Nihilism in this regard
meaning " no more wolves." ' The local museums at
home would be valuably enriched, and also the Com-
munal palace and pleasure park, which would continue,
with a difference, the delightful homes of England's
present Aristocracy.
It is, however, the Evangelization of the World that
would crown the edifice of England's Renovation.
Missionary societies too much now the receptacles
of ministerial failures, and made practically available for
the disposal of ministerial surplus would be superseded
by bands of independent volunteers going forth in their
thousands, aye, and hundreds of thousands, to live and
itinerate among the heathen at their own expense. Able
to teach them useful arts, acquired in the technical
334 PURITANISM IN POWER.
shops at home, as well as to light up their firmament
with the stars of Christian hope, they would not vex
them with competition, by working at trades and callings
with the natives, but would often do a stint to help and
to teach them better methods. Their means would come
from working overtime at home several years in advance,
and when their national credit on this account was
exhausted they would return home to relate unostenta-
tiously what they had accomplished, and to go on
working overtime until they had got a credit for some
further years of delightful missionary toil. By these
means the work might be expected to speed apace,
though missionary enthusiasts should remember that
every successive generation supplies us with a new
world to be evangelized.
It is thus we can dream of the Commonwealth, and
while we dream feel sure it is near.
' God's justice is a bed, where \ve
Our anxious hearts may lay,
And, weary with ourselves, may sloop
Our discontent away.
" For right is right since God is God,
And right the day must win ;
To doubt would be disloyalty
To falter would be sin."
CHAPTER VIII.
PROPOSITIONS DEFENDED.
(a,) That Riches (or Superfluity) for most individuals
are injurious.
(b,) And for the State dangerous, (corking Injustice and
producing Poverty.
THIS chapter need not long detain us. It is among
the commonplaces of moralists that Riches enervate and
corrupt.
But "What," asks the pert philosopher, looking
through his spectacles with the concentrated wisdom of
a thousand owls, " What are Riches ? "
We know this kind. It gets up after a public meeting
to consider the Royal Commissioners' Report upon the
Sweating System, or Rack Renting, and begs to put to
the chairman a poser What is Rack Renting ? What
is meant by " Sweating " ?
All intolerable abuses that have got to such a height
that they sting a whole nation into protest are to be
met by the gentle enquiry, " Are the subjects you are
debating about capable of definition? If not, my
friends," this is the unexpressed suggestion " they do
not exist and the abuses are ended ! "
These impracticable nuisances, the philosophers, can
never be brought to recognise what a practical nuisance
is, and how easily they themselves can be recognised,
although they are beyond definition. We all know that
nobody knows what riches are, which is the reason why
the whole world is pursuing after them night and day.
The philosopher in the innocence of his heart may look
at gold in another way, as something which, if found in
somebody else's purse, may give him the opportunity of
336 PURITANISM IN POWER.
enquiring if coin, as currently reported, is exchangeable
into other commodities an enquiry in the pursuit of
which he may chance to be interrupted. We can admit
the plea which prevailed with the stipendiary when he
allowed the thousand owls to carry their spectacles out
of court : " Yes ! sir, we believe you you have only
brought yourself into this painful position through
absence of mind."
By Biches we mean superfluity of real wealth in any
given society at any given period, and by " real wealth "
such things as are absolutely necessaiT to human exist-
ence in health and vigour, and also things actually
deemed desirable, though superfluous, in any given
society at any given period. The proposition is, that
superfluity of necessary and desirable things is for most
individuals injurious.
It is so because such superfluity communicates pri-
vileges which separate from the common lot, and make
life too easy to be wholesome, and likewise power over
our fellow-creatures, which may be abused.
It is injurious to the mass of men to be dispensed
from paying any toll for the use of Life's highway to
know nothing of compulsory toil and fellowship with the
toilworn and careworn. To let privilege become a
ground of cold disdain for the less fortunate (so deemed) ,
instead of an occasion for an active and practical sym-
pathy that is bad, and the evil tendency of inferior
moral natures.
It is injurious to the mass of men that there should
be no imperative call upon them to exert their faculties
to the utmost extent. It is enervating it is provoca-
tive of stagnation and decay. Only the intellectual and
the conscientious despise the lure, and lead a life of
strenuous exertion, without being economically com-
pelled.
And } r et this fatal lure was never presented to such
PROPOSITIONS DEFENDED. 337
multitudes, and especially of women, as it is to-day.
In proportion as the bulk of the wealthy sink, as human
beings, below the standard they are capable of attaining,
in the same proportion they are filled with an arrogant
pride and a lofty disdain of people leading lives far and
away worthier than their own. What could be worse
for society than the spread of a false and vulgar ideal,
and the fostering of caste upon no better foundation
than entrenched selfishness ? No less is the investment
in the average man of the unique and even awful power
of wealth a guarantee for its abuse. " Power belongeth
unto God " by right of His goodness. Man, unless the
servant of the " Power that makes for righteousness," is
certain to use Power to his own and to his fellows' hurt.
The entire of history is a demonstration that all world
Powers that have ever been have failed by reason of
human nature. The abuse of Power curseth both him
who abuses and they who are abused. Riches are inju-
rious to the most of men. Power vested in the indi-
vidual and in forms of autocratic Government has been
alike abused.
In the education of the Race this was a necessary
demonstration ; the lesson has been well learned, and
needs not to be prolonged. Riches must henceforth be
the common distinction of all good citizens, and the
power they confer diffused as the burning rays of the
sun are scattered in the glorified cloud.
Nevertheless we have to thank God for what great
riches have done to give mankind an estate of regal dig-
nity, and to exhibit human nature in its noblest moods.
They have opened to view vistas of the capacities of
human life when aided by the powers of wealth that
have been revelations of hope and desire to the whole
species. Their capacity to give pleasure may be far
below their ability to confer splendour, and the only
promise they truly keep may be that of liberty and
22
338 PURITANISM IN POWER.
influence ; nevertheless the occasional peep by the
" commonalty " into the domains of wealth has in every
age afforded the beguilement of a happy dream. The
dusty highway has been redeemed from common place,
and the wayfarer has been regaled with beauty by the
existence of the palace, backed with woods, whose occu-
pant commands every circumstance but health and
death, while the trudger is slave to his next meal.
Yet the world has been blessed by the exhibition of
the power of great wealth rightly and nobly used, as
showing how it is possible for human nature as illus-
trated by these possessors, to enjoy great powers without
abusing them, and to know great temptations only as
slain foes.
Valuable has been the lesson of the emptiness and
vanity of riches, except as so possessed.
But equally valuable has been the positive material
benefit conferred upon millions, by men who have held
their wealth and all its privileges as a trust, to be used
for the benefit of their fellow-creatures.
It is true the examples have been few and are absent
from the highest line, the most numerous instances
being found low down ; nevertheless the examples have
been given, to the honour and glory of human nature,
and never could have been given had not the inequali-
ties of our present order been called into existence.
The truly noble men who worthily discharge their
trusts work harder than many a miner, but, of course,
the comparison is ridiculous any further. Wealth is an
enormous blessing to those who recognise the trust and
discharge it faithfully.
It was to put mankind upon the exhibition of this
honour, glory and happiness that Riches became essen-
tial to the evolution of the Race. Nevertheless upon
the happiest king among men the painful reflection
must rest and abide that he owes his kingdom to the
PROPOSITIONS DEFENDED. 339
reign of Injustice. Injustice, it may be, in which he
personally has had neither act nor part, but still inherent
in the system under which his estates came and are pre-
served to him. And this injustice is none the less if
the wealth has been made by his own cleverness and
exertions in his lifetime, for it is utterly impossible that
great riches can ever come by abstract right. No eco-
nomical constitution is sound or just which admits of
great accumulations in the working lifetime of a single
member of the community. It can only be brought
about by despoiling many.
Nevertheless let every man born to a great inheritance
abide therein with God, administering his trust truly.
It shall never be taken from him justly by force, but
only by the evolution of better laws and a nearer
approach to justice in the cost of Eeforms. However
mysterious, we must bow to the incontrovertible fact,
that the onward march of Humanity has been over the
slain body of Justice. Slavery and Serfdom, Economical
subjection of the wage-earner subjection of society
generally as consumer to the pranks of capitalists these
are the roots of " Civilization " material splendour,
arts, sciences, the conquest of nature, and the decipher-
ing of her secrets from her silent page.
It will be noted, however, that, on the whole, at every
onward development less Injustice was perpetrated than
before, so that Righteousness, though lagging, still attends
the rise of Man. Without question, less injustice is
wrought to-day than at any former period, and the
peculiarity of the next epoch will doubtless be a deter-
mined preference for a moral over a merely material and
intellectual advance.
Meantime let every man, as we have already said,
hold to possessions, not dishonestly acquired, until moved
voluntarily to surrender them pour encourager les autres,
or until by formal revolutionary change the country
340 PURITANISM IN POWER.
enters upon another era. There must be no rending of
limbs, but a change of posture by the whole body. As
certain ants spring from the larva state endowed with
wings, but after a first flight disencumber themselves of
these appendages and ever after toil and crawl in
tunnels, it may be that the golden youth of England, or
some of them, may lay down the sceptre of wealth in
order to take up the wreath of Justice twined with
sacrifice. They may, on the other hand, believe it
possible to do far more good by using wealth's undoubted
power for the very purpose of expediting a change,
under which their own privileges would soon disappear.
However it be, the hand of the merely envious and
anarchic despoiler must be reddened with his own blood.
Should any of the beati possidentes be threatened by
mob law let them bare their blades and ride down upon
their assailants with the just war-cry, " God and my
right." Nothing is to be surrendered to anarchic force,
but only to the majestic fiat of a free people decreeing
in its legislature that better justice must be done, and
not attempting the impossible by choosing Injustice for
its means.
We shall ever have to fall back upon the Sovereignty,
the Fatherhood, and the Brotherhood of God. The
Sovereignty places man everywhere in conditions that
signify simply the Divine good-pleasure. The Father-
hood resolves that in and from our point of starting
progress shall be made, by the spiral path fall first.
The Brotherhood in Christ reveals the ultimate goal of
humanity.
We must never ground our action upon either phase
of the Divine Eevelation without reference to the other.
Does any one say, " Why not let all existing institutions
among mankind remain as they are, unreformed, they
are by the Divine Sovereignty"? True; but the
Fatherhood forbids. The Fatherhood began with the
PROPOSITIONS DEFENDED. 341
Sovereignty, and has marched up mankind to its present
level. "Well, then, let our Eeforms in this age be final."
No ; for the Brotherhood forbids. Man's ultimate goal
is Christ seated on God's throne. Progress must be
endless. On the other hand, does any one say, " Let
us hurl these privileged classes from their seats, and
end Injustice by conflagration " ? The reply is, " The
Sovereignty forbids." God has distributed to every
man severally as He wills. The inheritors even of
unjust privileges, acquired originally by robbery and
fraud, or the gifts of a licentious monarch, still hold
by Divine decree, because everything historical is Divine.
All evil and evil agents are God's servants ; and when
sin is accomplishing God's ends it is none the less
justly punished. Therefore our watchword must be
constant Eeform, accompanied by an unceasing righteous
consideration for its victims. The necessary and
appointed victims to Human Progress are doing God
service as much in resisting unrighteous methods as
others are in urging that sacrifices must be made. The
present fortunate possessors of Eoyalties on minerals
hold them by Divine decree, utterly indefensible as they
are, and would be justified in resisting to the death any
unjust spoliation ; but in the matter of all compensa-
tions it is Quixotic and absurd to consider more than the
third generation, and that less than the preceding. The
institution of Death was an express provision to open
the door of Reforms, since, properly speaking, the
claims of every generation are cancelled by it. It would
appear, however, that for the purpose of inculcating
the invaluable idea of the solidarity of the race, laws
of property have been permitted which oblige us to
consult the wishes of our Ancestors to all eternity a
most ludicrous thesis to hold in this small cemetery
globe. When, as now, the idea of the solidarity can hold
without this support, being to the Christian involved in
342 PURITANISM IN POWER.
the Incarnation, and to outsiders beheld in a streaming
radiance from an unacknowledged Light, then it is
time that the doctrine ended in a common- sense and
just reform.
There is a sort of men who would quarrel with the
Almighty because He did not make serpents doves, cats
horses, and themselves Angels, which is natural. How
do we know that the tywxy of the serpent is not moving
towards the irvevpa of the Angel ? Our friend should
remember that by his quarrel he is only delaying that
progress towards the Angel for which everyone in his
case is so anxious. The grand old key-note of Puritan
theology the Sovereignty of God is the Key-stone of
the Universe.
And here we must glance at the invaluable part in the
evolution of the race that Poverty has played. If Eiches
have destroyed thousands, Poverty has slain its tens of
thousands. It is the destruction of any people. But
notwithstanding it has tested mankind in a wonderful
way, and educed some of its grandest qualities.
It is open to question which is the finer spectacle
the dominion of man over circumstances conferred upon
him by wealth, or his contemptuous defiance of circum-
stances to unseat his soul when steeped in destitution.
I say it deliberately the Eace needed both the extremes
of wealth and the extremes of poverty. They form a
part of its education which it could never have foregone
without loss, just as certainly as that it has now more
to learn by the extinction of both.
How poor would humanity be without the touching
records of the annals of the poor. What shame is cast
upon the selfish and the comfortable by the brotherly
and sisterly communal assistance that is daily rendered,
one to the other, by the poorest of the poor. Sermons
by those who attend no preaching. Sermons issuing out
of the pavement of an earthly hell. What a slur is cast
PROPOSITIONS DEFENDED. 348
upon the refined self-indulgences of the nineteenth
century by the sharing of dry bread, and the man taking
to his pipe for a dinner while the meagre food goes to the
family. In one sense it is all horrible in another sense
it is all divine. We should be poor indeed without
Poverty. At this moment it is the tragic exhibition of
Poverty that is the most wholesome moral renovator in
this besotted age. While the Political Economist cries out,
"You must multiply men's wants," here sits Poverty
smiling at the curious inconsistency. We are to preach
non-contentment to every possible buyer, and content-
ment to all the poor producers. And a noble contentment
can reside with Poverty, especially when intellect brings
its own continual feasts when the Poverty is not stunt-
ing and depriving that. John Burns learning from his
Puritan mother to keep the body in subjection, and
resolving to resist the seduction of Parliamentary dinners
when St. Stephen's receives him, is a fine example. It
is from the dark depths of Poverty that the finest pearls of
Christian discipleship are being dredged up by the
Salvation Army. It has been a grand educator, but the
days of our pupilage are ending. To demonstrate how
little man really wants below if only with that little
he is left leisure and knows security this was the
necessary prelude to the Co-operative Brotherhood, in
which only real wants will be temperately satisfied and
superfluous luxury be reserved for occasional festival
and display.
We have digressed somewhat in discussing this first
proposition ; but the indulgent reader will forgive. The
second proposition asserts that riches are for the State
dangerous, working injustice and producing povertj*.
Here, again, we are among commonplaces, although
not such obvious ones as in the first proposition.
The argument is, of course, conducted, recognising the
regime of Individualism. If the State were co-operative
344 PURITANISM IN POWER.
it would be hard to prove that Riches would prove a
danger.
The smaller the territory the more valuable are Pdches
to it, since they furnish the employment which is
wanting through lack of land. The presence of numerous
rich beget the employment of numerous dependents, who
have an uncommonly good time of it, as compared with
people who are masters of crafts and work at them.
These dependents are helpless if misfortune should
overtake their patrons.
It is in the inherent power and tendency of great
Riches to work injustice that their danger to the State
lies. It is only another phase of the abuse of Power.
Detailed demonstration is in these days scarcely
necessary. The land monopoly is pretty generally under-
stood as responsible for the demoralising of the towns,
the desolation of the country, and the depopulation of
great tracts in Scotland and in Ireland.
Riches in the United States bribes Congress-men, cor-
rupts the Senate, tampers with the President, and even
denies the decisions of the Supreme Court. England
has been preserved from that last shame, but Justice in
her courts is a luxury too expensive for the poor.
It is by no means true that the rich are merely
fountains displaying wealth which must of necessity be
returned in expenditure to its source. The dependents
of the rich are not, as we pointed out in a previous
chapter, the same people as the original creators of large
incomes. Besides, the wealthy may first of all hoard,
and in the second place carry their capital abroad and
lock it up in foreign investments. Great revenues drawn
by our aristocracy from the energy, enterprise and labours
of the people of the United Kingdom have been lost to
the country by their transfer to sellers of land in the
Colonies and the United States. The burdensomeness of
landlordism at home is made the means of planting the
PROPOSITIONS DEFENDED. 345
same form of oppression in virgin States, which, but for
these acquisitions by English lords, would have offered
the emigrant a fairer chance.
We hear a general cry now that farming does not pay
even in the States ! You never hear this cry in
relation to what is known as " Business." Business
Commercial Exchange battens and fattens, just as
money lenders do, upon the helplessness of producers.
O you producers ! what noodles you were to learn
something useful and to imagine that in doing so the
world would reward you. You are the simple people
whom the whole world waits for, as crimps wait for a
crew that has been paid off. Did they not teach you at
the Board School that to work your hardest at a useful
calling was the way to starve, unless you belonged to
a strong Union with funds to back up your claims ? The
poorer the farmer the less can nature help him. When
in her most bounteous mood she pours a big harvest into
his lap, the poor man is half ruined by the kindness. He
cannot hire labour to get it in, and prices begin to
tumble. His crop of fodder is enormous, but knowing this,
dealers in store cattle have jumped the prices beyond his
capacity. It is the dealers (should be spelt Scotch wise
dielers) who are the mischief. The poverty of the
farmer is every dealer's opportunity, and " business "
prospers in the United States a country with a super-
abundance of land, while "farming does not pay " ! The
statement, if true, is the most ludicrous confession of
the impotence and injustice of modern society that could
possibly be framed.
Eiches, then, being able to bid for land and to sell it
at a profit to Kiches' second power, and to re-sell it once
again to Eiches' third power, and after a few years to
Eiches' fourth power, and then to its fifth and sixth power,
with a profit on each deal, finally breaks the back of the
man the producer, who has paid for the entire game,
346 PURITANISM IN POWER.
and we hear that " farming does not pay." It is thus
that Riches produce Poverty, and are therefore dangerous
to States ; for a populace discontented through im-
poverishment is a standing menace to the stability of
Governments.
The Power of Riches to produce Poverty is also seen
in the ease with which by combinations with other
centres of finance or operators upon the market the
prices of commodities can be tampered with in defiance
of all the supposed operations of the laws of supply and
demand. Granted that the tampering cannot last for
ever, it can work great mischief while it does ; and we
have only begun to taste what the operations of capitalists
can effect when furnished with modern facilities for
inter-communication. The Cotton Corners and Pig Iron
Rigs, Lard Lotteries, and Corn Plants the Copper and
Spelter and Tin Rings that we have seen of late are only
the gentle whiffs of the coming storm, for Babylonianism
is growing every day ; and while people are chattering
about free constitutions, an economical tyranny is being
built up under the very aegis of free institutions, which
in the degrading character of the servitude it entails
surpasses any other tyranny that the world has yet seen.
The Tyranny, however, that Capital can exercise over
general consumers in the matter of prices is as nothing
compared with the Tyranny it can and does exercise in
regard to terms of service over the Labour which is
employed by it. The ceaseless aim and labour of Capital
employed in production an aim pursued with a steady
and equal pressure day and night, like the pressure of
the atmosphere is to reduce the wages and make harder
the conditions of the human agents who are the servants
both of the machinery and its owner. There is no
remission in this war which is waged against the work-
man from his cradle to his grave, unless it be in those
exceptional times of brief duration, at lengthy intervals,
PROPOSITIONS DEFENDED. 847
when efficient labour becomes scarce, and masters dread
doing what might make their indispensable living tools
march out.
It is only amusing and mocking ourselves to think
or speak of the subjects of any Government upon
earth being free men, so long as economical dependence
upon moneyed power is the abiding condition of all
persons employed by individuals or commercial com-
panies. There is no freedom in this world where wage-
earning and rent-paying exist. The bondage is galling
and degrading, arising from the necessities of the body,
and the spirit is made subject to that vanity. The man
who has discharged his part of a contract (never a free
and just one except on miraculous occasions) should be
a free man for the rest of his time, and in the remainder
of his human relationships, but he is not so. He walks
in fear lest it should be known he attended a meeting,
lest reporters should get at his name, lest the Factory
or Mining Inspector should call for his evidence. In the
case of the rights the law has placed within his reach he
is rendered almost impotent. The Magistrates upon the
bench are employers or employers' friends. He finds
the whole world arrayed against him and his cause
the one cause which is doomed never fully and perfectly
to win. This is modern slavery in many respects far
more cruel than chattel slavery, and little less an
invasion of natural rights.
That Capital is only restrained by competition from
combinations that would make Labour pliant and de-
spised as lumps of clay, is evident. Competition is both
the protection and the ceaseless enemy of workmen. It
prevents Capital forming for any lengthened period com-
binations against Labour (though the competitionists join
hands in respecting the black lists of discharged workmen,
so that, like Jane Shore, a man must go starving from
gate to gate although really wanted inside). At the
348 PURITANISM IN POWER.
same time, however, by the everlasting underbidding of
the market, it forces attention to reducing the cost of
production, and while the higher prices demanded for
materials are admitted and paid, any attempt on the part
of Labour to put a higher price upon itself is regarded as
an imposition. Just as the rain is ceaselessly reducing
the level of the soil, so is Capital without remission ever
acting for the lowering of wages. Any new or better
machinery, instead of relieving the workman and adding
to his earnings, is immediately made use of to lower his
pay. If it leads to dismissal of hands it is bad enough,
but it also permanently lowers wages for all who are
kept on. This is done because by working faster the
attendant can produce more piece-work in a given time.
But is not the wear and tear to the human machine
greater when the iron machine goes faster? In one
cotton works piece-work paid for at the rate of 2/9 per
cwt. has come down by successive steps in 25 years to 1/1
per cwt., on account of improved machinery, and even
at that lower pay a deduction is made of I/- per week
for still another improvement. The nominal wages are
by all manner of dodges and tricks nibbled at and
brought down upon the pay-ticket. In weighing in
fines in deprivation of meal hours the encroachments
are perpetual, until at length the body of workers find
that after 5 or 10 or 20 years their wages have been
reduced 10 or 30 per cent., simply by small accretions of
petty larceny. This is called good and clever manage-
ment on the part of gaffers and superior managers. It
is the purpose for which they are engaged, to see that
the workmen do not get their due. Thus if wages are
to be simply maintained at their level of former years,
strikes on the part of the hands become necessary.
Their action is like that of volcanoes the level of the
land, in danger of sinking into the sea, is lifted again.
We have light here upon the way in which money is
PBOPOSITIONS DEFENDED. 349
made and capital accumulated. Fortunes on the greatest
scale are obtained through financial operations in which
the earnings of future generations are forestalled ; but
the ordinary process is one of paying Labour less than
its due, and getting from the purchaser more than he
should pay. The tap roots of Capital, that is to say,
are robbery in the Factory and robbery on the Mart.
I am not blind to the inherent civilizing power of
operations in the factory the discipline of law the
sharpening of faculty enforced by the merciless speed
of the machinery the dependence, the urgency, the
haste and stress, the remorseless penalties of failure
in body or brain to come up to the requirements
of the complicated organism set in motion by a blind
force, and working with steel-cold indifference and endur-
ance. Man coupled with machinery may not be \vholly
the loser, pace Mr. Kuskin. It is when he is coupled to
the Capitalistic system of competitive production that
he loses ; by attacks upon his earnings, his hours, his
self-respect, his health, even his life.
And the power of these attacks is in proportion to the
accumulation of riches in the hands of the few.
New and portentous aggregations of capital have,
however, of late years come into existence. The lim-
ited liability system gathers and consolidates the runnels
of private savings into mighty water-courses, which
either turn useful mills, or are fraudulently dissipated
and stolen. These great corporations are able to com-
bine against Labour, and do so, hence the incalculable
advantage and necessity of Labour combining likewise.
And this movement for the combination and emancipation
of Labour has we know made most hopeful progress
within recent days. The extension of Trade Unionism
is at this hour the most obvious manifestation of the
Kingdom of God. All the work of the Churches
offers nothing comparable to the exhibition of real
350 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Christianity as embodied in the practical working of
Trade Unions. There we at last see, and refresh our
souls in this wilderness by the sight the strong really
bearing the burdens of the weak, not talking and preach-
ing about it. There we do see Brotherhood, not written
up on walls, but breathed in a kiss, and pledged in a
service. Where do you expect to meet with the angels,
you people who, fresh from your robbery and oppres-
sions, vainly call upon God to refresh you with His
Spirit ? You know that in crowded, pent-up alleys the
germs of disease, the armies of living organisms, are
thickest, and that high up the Alps, amid solitary peaks
of snow, the air is almost destitute of a single germ.
Apply the illustration to social heights and depths
and to the angels. The deathless angels are surely in
crowds where man is the victim of man, and the social
heights which tower above the vales are left with scarce
a visitant from the upper air.
351
CHAPTER IX.
PROPOSITION DEFENDED.
(c,) That Hiches are injurious to most person*, and for
the State dangerous, through the working of the principle
of Private Property in the source of all Wealth, and in
the means of Production and Exchange.
IT is evident at a glance that the question "What things
are fit suhjects for private possession? " lies at the root of
the phenomenon of Poverty, always tracking the foot-
steps of wealth as Nemesis follows crime, or as shadow
follows light the area of Poverty increasing with the
bulk of wealth.
And a little reflection only is needed to force upon the
reader the conviction that the raw materials of the
globe, without which none of us can live, are not fit
subjects for private ownership.
Power in human hands is, as a rule, abused. He who
holds the means of life as against his fellow-creatures is
virtually their lord and master master of their life and
death.
Nothing affords a more melancholy proof of the readi-
ness with which mankind will become the victims of
self-delusion under the compulsion of necessity, than the
way in which the people of a country will call themselves
free, notwithstanding that they have legalized the
principle of private ownership in land.
The progress of the people walking step by step
together is absolutely and for ever impossible under
such a condition as that.
Kings and Parliament have certain defined . powers,
but the owner of the means of life to others has the
power of King and Parliament, plus a power greater than
either the power of a lawless, selfish and covetous will
352 PURITANISM IN POWER.
unrestrained by edict, or, it may be, by principle. A man
may do as he likes with his own ; and that maxim is
actually suffered to apply to the ownership of the solid
globe from circumference to centre !
We are told that the principle of the absolute owner-
ship by individuals of the several portions of the national
territory does not exist in the law. Practically, however,
Landlord licence is no more restrained than the liberty of
any holder of a merchantable commodity, except in such
matters as Railway, Dock and Canal requirements, Town
Improvements, etc., which, so far from reducing the privi-
leges of landowners, only offer them under the veil of
compulsion the very opportunity they all along desired,
viz., the privilege of bleeding the nation on the larger
scale. Like maidens anxious to be asked for, they make
a dreadful resistance to any proposal perhaps scream-
but finally yield delightedly.
That an ownership whose powers are so unique should
be courted is natural, hence we find that the great profits
made in manufacture, carrying, and exchange are
eagerly invested in land, not because it is a good invest-
ment at the price paid, but because of the Lordship it
conveys ; and then when reform in the laws is suggested
which would trench upon the interests of the owners,
it is pathetically pleaded that their investments yield
the poorest percentage as it is, without a hint that what
was deliberately purchased at so high a figure was
power, not profit a power which it is the nation's
interest to withdraw from the market, by merging all
ownership in itself.
The fortunate possessors of land under which minerals
are discovered have, however, an investment second to
none in the value of its returns. The persons who are
good enough to enter upon the search for minerals at an
enormous cost, and entirely at their own risk, have also
to pay heavy penalties in the shape of advancing the
PKOPOSITION DEFENDED. 353
Eoyalties by a certain rent paid from the commence-
ment, and which may ultimately be lost in whole or in
part, if the expected minerals are not found, or found
not workable to the extent anticipated. These covenants
read^ like a farce the costs of bestowing a fortune upon
persons who have done nothing but stipulate for the
punishment of their benefactors are so onerous.
The Landlords resent the boons tendered by specu-
lators more practically than Csesar or Cromwell refused
the Crown, by fining them for commencing to find them
a fortune, and by fining them again for leaving off!
It is on account of the onerous terms and conditions
which landed ownership exacts from capitalists venturing
upon mineral discovery and excavation that a colour-
able plea is afforded for offering to the labourer mere
subsistence wages, so that we have the scandal of
Eoyalties upon coal and iron ore which, in some cases,
exceed the price per ton which the human Agent
receives for getting them at the risk of his life. The
miner who is so remunerated may well wish for the
overthrow of this Babylonian system, and for the advent
of a time when a "man shall be more precious than fine
gold ; yea, a man than the golden wedge of Ophir."
It is partly on account of such onerous terms and condi-
tions that costs of working are pared down to an extent
that threatens the life of the workers, although it is true
that competition for market price has most to do with
that. When the search for minerals has been entirely
successful, and their working profitable, then for a series
of years a fortune is paid to the landowners in Eoyalties,
which, strange to say, are not even rated to the poor for
the support of the aged or maimed among those work-
men who were at the bottom of the whole affair. Now, if
there is a fund, daily arising from the consumption of
workmen's lives, as gas rises in the receiver, a fund
which should be drawn upon to return light, warmth,
23
854 PURITANISM IN POWER.
and cheer to the producers when their life-force has
been expended, it is the fund of the annual income of
Eoyalties. And the same fund should be made to
return a portion of the capital so often lost in explora-
tions, which the joint interest of landowner and specu-
lator recommended, but of which the attendant risks were
all nailed to one side.
We have, then, not to abolish Eoyalties on Minerals ;
they, like the tithes, are an invaluable national property.
The effect of their abolition would simply be that they
would be lost in the competitions of business, and given
away to Foreigners and to dealers' profits, with not a
moiety to consumers. Eoyalties, like tithes, must bo
jealously preserved. The London coal dues were a
valuable Metropolitan trust, which have been wantonly
given away without as yet any definite advantage to
the public.
No better application of the National property in tithes
could possibly be made than to use them in support of so
noble and beneficent an institution as a National Church,
but the Eoyalties have to be acquired for the Nation (after
just compensation, on the principles previously laid down,
of considering only the second and third generations in
diminishing degree), and then they will be for applica-
tion to the benefit of conspicuously the most deserving
persons, viz., those who have worked for the minerals
in the bowels of the earth.
Another tribute that has to be recovered for the
nation is that arising from Urban Ground Eents. If
agricultural land yields but a poor return upon capital
invested, it is abundantly compensated to the Lord, who
is also owner of Town land, by the exorbitant figures at
which sites for shops, works and houses are let at.
This oppressive taxation of the whole community whose
business requires them to reside in the place is condoned
by business folk on account of its arising in strict con-
PROPOSITION DEFENDED. 355
formity with business principles, and because certain of
them have become ground landlords themselves. What,
however, about the poor, who are unblessed by any capital
save that residing in the bodily machine, which is so
severely worked and hardly treated when engaged in
profit-making ? What, too, about persons with fixed
and limited incomes ? These, when making their pur-
chases at any of the shops, do virtually pay toll to the
ground landlord, and the shopkeeper who ventures his
future upon making a business is in the first years racked
with anxiety, and just when his strained endeavours
are beginning to yield him a margin above standing
expenses, and he sees the prospect of keeping a growing
connection, he is served with a notice that his house
rent is increased.
But it is in the rack-renting of the poorest of the poor
that House landlordism reaches the climax of its self-reve-
lation and fills up to the brim the cup of its iniquity.
That ever the poor should have been delivered over to
" business principles " is the scandal and crime of Chris-
tian States. Not alone is food a first necessity of every
human being a place of healthy shelter and nurture of
the family is equally primary. What a mockery it has
all along been to talk of the family as the saving unit of
the State, when the State legalizes the destruction of
the family by suffering extortion to drive it into one
room, with lodgers to help out the landlord's " due " !
This whole business of housing the poor, and, indeed,
the whole people, must be taken in hand by the State.
It is a national business in which the interest of every
individual is a thousand times more concerned than in
the best construction of a fighting ship or fort. " Busi-
ness principles " must not be allowed to set foot within
this sacred inclosure it is a Holy of Holies. From
Land, the raw material, we turn to Capital.
Before the raw materials of the globe can be made
356 PURITANISM IN POWEK.
serviceable to man they must be subjected to his labour,
and await also the lengthy process of the seasons. Here
comes in the necessity of capital to support the worker
in the period of the gestation of his product. And since
his demands are urgent (two or three meals a day) , w r hile
Nature is slow in the production of both plants and
animals, the possessor of that accumulated fruit of labour
called capital is practically the Lord and master of those
who cannot do any good for themselves by their labour
without his assistance. Again, we say, with regard to
capital, as we said before with regard to Land, its pos-
session by the individual is sure, as a rule, to be abused,
and it is therefore a power that can never be safely
vested anywhere but in the collective unit of the nation.
It goes without saying that if the bodies of all the
working classes, in' the popular acceptation of that term,
had been differentiated from the bodies of their em-
ployers and others, by a capacity to do without more
than one meal in three days, instead of requiring three
meals in one day, then the whole course of the history of
the world would have been changed.
It is the peculiar malignancy of Injustice towards
wage-earners that it establishes its reign upon the
weakness which it creates. "When the question, Where
shall we find the next meal? or, How shall we keep the
babes? limits the horizon of thought and defines the
bounds of endeavour, the idea of escape from bondage
by united opposition never enters but to be postponed.
There is neither hope to take it up nor time to consider it.
But when wages afford some remission from the most
urgent anxiety, the workers can dare to consider the
possibility of improvement ; and so we find that it is in
times of comparative prosperity that the Labour problem
confronts Capital with menace. A tendency to do some-
thing towards equalizing the conditions of the combatants
is increasing every day. The capital which is wanting
PROPOSITION DEFENDED. 357
to an unorganized body of strikers is found for them
by some other organized association with funds ; contri-
butions from the various Trade Unions both at home
and in the Colonies pour in, and the general public, too,
often add their quota ; so that what with the spread of
Christian humanitarian sentiment and of the principles
of Trade Unionism extending even to inter-colonial and
inter-continental relationships., the day has gone by
when any Trade struggle is left to be ended by the
triumph of the party initially the stronger. The times
are changed. The new era has begun. Capital is no
longer the complete master of the situation it once was.
A fellow feeling makes Labour the world over wondrous
kind to its several sections.
It is the dark side of this representation, that with
the growth of fellowship among workers there should
also be intensifying a feeling that class distinctions must
henceforth be more rigidly denned and the suppressed
antagonism between them be openly declared.
A class war is at our doors; and the only way to
prevent its malevolent manifestations is for the State to
become the sole capitalist and the sole employer the
consummation which, though evidently distant, all things
are bringing nearer.
And together with Land and Capital, Exchange by
which I mean both the functions of merchanting,
banking, and the circulating medium, and the instru-
ments for the transit and transfer of goods must
ultimately pass from the hands of individuals to the
State.
The tyranny of the Money-lender over the poor
farmer smitten by adverse seasons or murrain among
his flock the unassailable monopolies of Eailway and
Dock Companies must not be left to be cured by com-
petition, when that competition may itself mean a
scandalous waste of money in schemes that are not
358 PURITANISM IN POWER.
wanted and can never pay. The cure is in the State
providing one secure Bank of its own, and constructing all
the works necessary to its trade and defence on principles
the most scientific as well as economical. The Native
Country should be the home of the people amply and
splendidly and conveniently furnished, and all citizens
and subjects free to use its railways both for State
business and private pleasure, just as they use the
roads at present, having paid for the privilege in citizen
service.
The present order of society which recognises the
antagonism of every unit in the nation to every other,
and imagines that the interpretation of Liberty to any
people is the increase of their liberty to oppress one
another, is manifestly an order that is daily pregnant
with disorder. As -well find stability for a pyramid upon
its apex as hope to secure peace and progress upon such
fundamentally false lines. Still more Utopian is the
notion that Justice can ever come of it.
Governments in Christendom have set themselves the
hopeless task of reconciling the irreconcilable. The
difficulties of the problems they move so vainly to solve
are in truth insuperable under a regime of Individualism.
Possible anchorage in a haven of refuge possible prog-
ress in a prosperous path under a smiling heaven and
favouring gales there is none, outside of the establish-
ment of the Co-operative Commonwealth the National
realization of the Christian Communism.
359
CHAPTEK X.
THE MORALITY OF BUSINESS.
PAEENTHETICAL.
IT is our business in this chapter to show what is the
Morality of Business, and in that sentence is revealed
the impossibility of giving to the subject predicated a
compendious definition. We will not therefore attempt
it. If there is any one who does not know what
" business " is, he has little business in this world.
Business arises from the inter-dependence of man upon
man for the supply of various services, and is multiplied
with the multiplication of wants. This mutual inter-
dependence should afford an opportunity for the finest
morality in the performance of mutual dues, and
indeed is actually conducive to a wonderful degree of
coherence among the diverse particles of society.
The term business is capable, as we know, of various
specific and general applications. I confine myself in
this chapter to its well-understood specific application to
Trading, not excluding the professions of Medicine and
Law, and not including the profession of the Christian
Ministry, though too many of its members make it a
" business," instead of regarding it as their business to
save souls and feed Christ's sheep.
We have to consider what are the principles upon
which trading is conducted, and upon which the mutual
services demanded by the natural condition of inter-
dependence are performed.
Now the object of all business is to gain some profit
or advantage to ourselves as a recompense for skill,
labour, risk and trouble ; and this, in the great majority
of cases, not, as so frequently foolishly said from the
Pulpit, from covetousness and love of gain, but in
360 PURITANISM IN POWER.
the effort to perform the elementary and primary duty
of providing for one's own and paying one's bills.
The clergyman or minister who prepares for minister-
ing to souls immersed in the battle of life by carefully
abstaining from acquiring any knowledge of the world,
looks down from his pulpit over his congregation and
appears to be sure that everyone of them has a balance
in the bank which is stingily withheld from Church
purposes, and that their daily efforts are recorded by
adding to the accumulation. Instead of which, even
though the congregation be of the middle class, it will
be true that three-fourths of them are steeped to the
chin in a desperate struggle to make ends meet, having
either standing incomes with enlarging expenses, or
engaged in fighting with borrowed capital, or compelled
to keep up a false appearance as the only hope of
establishing the business or profession which is their
living. Every family, too, has its entail of poor
relations ; and every member of a family who has
prospered more than the rest is caught hold of by the
defeated ones and is expected to link his fate with theirs.
It is when surveying through pincettes a congregation
so situated that the ordinary preacher utters his plati-
tudes about the sin of covetousness and paying such
absorbing attention to the things of this world.
" Bless the man ! " might exclaim a striving, driven
shop woman, "it is to pay an exorbitant rent and to keep
the orphaned bairns that my gas burned in the window
up to midnight Saturday. Covetousness, indeed !
What I covet is to get clear and keep so, that's all."
And the same impecuniosity afflicts the merchant or
manufacturer whose banker upon the security of friends
is backing him up ; likewise the schoolmaster starting
with a monstrous house as an advertisement, and the
young doctor who has set up a carriage and pair as an
absolute necessity, if he is to win the fight. The homes
THE MORALITY OF BUSINESS. 361
of the lower middle class are equally enthralled by
the net of the lender. The sewing machines are on the
hiring system the pianos are being hired or redeemed
and the whole house may be furnished on the same
wretched, wasteful and fraudulent principle. Even the
clothes in the wardrobe may be hired, like the wardrobe
itself, and the very blankets on the bed be owing to a
Scotch pedlar, who calls weekly for his instalments.
Whether the business prospers or not the interest and
redemption claims go marching on with the fateful
regularity of the dinner-hour. And amid this ever
hanging cloud of indebtedness, complication and
gathering claims on the one side from relatives, and on
the other side from the money power which, spider-like,
loves to enmesh its victims, the bulk of the middle and
lower classes live lives for the most part of a hollow,
hypocritical pretence, though not designedly, but rather
under a continual inward protest against the vanity to
which the conditions of the battle of life have subjected
them. It is adding gall to wormwood to be rated on
Sunday for pursuing the god of this world with such
devotion, when the buffeting of the week, which throws
them exhausted upon Sunday's beach, has had but the
humble and holy aim of keeping the family alive and
paying bills.
To men so situated the temptation to adopt without
qualification the ordinary principles of business from
which they themselves are suffering is extreme. They
must do to others as they are done by. And as
Christian ethics would land them in bankruptcy, to the
sore discomfiture of all their creditors, even men who
profess Christianity feel bound to draw a decided line
between the ethics of the gospel, approved of by the
heart, and the ethics of business which are necessary to
one's livelihood, one's credit, "respectability," usefulness
in the church, gifts to God's treasury, and so forth.
362 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Now what are these ethics of business which admittedly
contrast with the ethics of Christ ; for the Deacons of
Nonconformist assemblies always warn their Pastor (who
is regarded as a sort of machine for lifting them to
heaven, or a tutelary saint whose prayers and mediation
on their behalf they can secure by paying him due
attentions) to leave "business" to them. What, I say,
are these ethics of business the accepted principles
and conventional rules, according to which business may
and must be conducted, if it is to be business and not
philanthropy ?
They are two :
(1,) Take every possible advantage of the ignorance,
weakness or misfortune of your brother man.
(2,) Use every superior endowment of the raw material
in favour of Labour, every discovery of the Arts and
Sciences that aids the worker, every accidental circum-
stance by which the lot of Labour becomes lightened, or
its wages lengthened, as a reason for exacting extra toll
or extra toil.
It would be far from the truth to say that these
principles are invariably applied by every business man
in every transaction. On the contrary, to the honour of
human nature, which is outraged by their bare enuncia-
tion, let it be said that they are seldom or never com-
pletely respected, and most men are anxious to take
shelter under some restrictive or protective legislation as
their excuse for yielding to them only a partial obedience.
But the typical business man would feel that his credit
as an efficient performer of his functions would be
assailed and suffer, did he not theoretically accept them
as sound and in eight cases out of ten carry them
thoroughly to their consequences. Did he invariably do
so he would be a "good" business man a " splendid "
man of business one who could be counted upon to keep
the Chapel going and send the Minister to Jericho. He
THE MOKALITY OF BUSINESS. 363
would be allowed to shade the twinkle of his cunning eye
in the vestry, and to assume the proper drawl when he
puffed out his pretentious prayer.
The man who frequently transgressed the rules and
ethics of business would be a " bad " business man a
man who would never get to be anybody in particular, or
do much good to anybody in the world. The chapel
would look over his shoulder at someone bigger, while
his family and friends would regard him either with a
degree of contemptuous compassion or with a resentful
indignation .
Now there can be no mystery about the perpetual,
the incurable, the hitherto immortal problem of poverty
and misery coexisting with disgusting profusion in the
wealthiest states.
The ethics of business we have alluded to reveal at
once the root of the cancer. It is absolutely impossible
that any other results should ensue than those that have
ensued, when the ethics of theoretically good business
practice are the ethics of the pit. And this evil is not to
be cured by simply denouncing it. There is no way of
making a livelihood, to say nothing of " making money,"
in any branch of trade, outside of the great carrying
businesses and Insurance, without conformity more or
less to the ethics of the pit. " Show us a way out and
we will gladly walk therein " is the cry uttered or
unexpressed of millions. It is not the fault of human
nature, not even of the poor quality of Christian disciple-
ship a horrible necessity shuts up men to no other
course. The fault is in the basal constitution of society,
which is at right angles with the Communism laid down
for it by the Holy Ghost.
But in saying this I am perfectly certain that mankind
had to tread every step of the way that leads to the
golden gate of the Commonwealth. It is the destiny of
man, that in marching towards his fuller moral develop-
364 PURITANISM IN POWER.
ment he should be supported by munching the fruit of
the tree of knowledge of good and evil. How could he
learn to yearn with all his heart for the Commonwealth
as he is now yearning, if he had not known by the bitter
experience of ages what the violation of the Common-
wealth really meant ?
Equally true is it that the seeds deposited in human
character by competition will be an addition to the
strength and beauty of the Commonwealth.
It will be perceived upon recalling recent remedial
legislation for the working classes, that it all amounts to
blunting the edge of the weapons which the ethics of
business sanction, or to the supply of force to the weaker
side that the contest may be more equal. It is drawing
the teeth and clipping the claws, but the animal itself
is not changed.
But how eloquent is the confession that the existing
order itself is radically bad ! How true is the tacit
acknowledgment that it needs reforming altogether !
The stress of the conflict, of course, falls with the
greatest severity upon the wage-earning classes the
weakest and upon unorganized female labour most of
all. In the constant warfare there are chances for most
of the combatants occasionally, even for the Trade
Unions, but unorganized labour is doomed never to know
a better time ; on the contrary, always to be pressed
between the upper and nether millstones of increasing
rent and diminishing wage. Commodities, it may be
noted, continually rise and fall in value, quite as often by
artificial rigging of the market as by the unimpeded pro-
cess of over-supply, or designed or accidental restriction,
while Labour is never permitted to advance a claim for a
higher valuation without immediate protestations that
works must be closed and the country will be ruined.
It is a commodity to be bought like any other, say the
employers, when they want to beat it down, but when
THE MORALITY OF BUSINESS. 365
Labour wants to get up again it seems to lose one half
of the properties of a commodity. It can fall in price
certainly, but strange to say it can never rise unless
the dire force of a strike compel it. The stage at which
Society has now arrived is one of the multiplication and
federation of organized camps of Labour, overtly consti-
tuted for offensive operations against Capital, ready to
lend mutual assistance, and in time able to command
resources, whose volume even Capital dare not despise.
These organizations on the side of Labour will necessarily
call forth additional bonds of fellowship among Capital-
ists, with the results of universal class-antagonism.
Now Justice can never describe its curve of beauty as
the resultant of two such forces warring together. Force
was never yet the mother of Eighteousness. A Eighteous
wage must be the issue of the marriage of Capital and
Labour in a Commonwealth where Co-operation is the
Constitution.
Yet, in spite of all that can be urged against the
mischief of our anarchic system of production and
exchange, we must credit competitive struggles, and the
contests between classes even, with the ingrafting and
evolution of some fine qualities of human nature. The
origin, progress and termination of a great strike are
always of immense moral service to those who help it
along and see it through, and in the daily course of
business, with all its tragic fluctuations, the hard knocks
as those of flint and steel do not occur without drawing
forth brilliant sparks of the best in human nature.
What sympathy and help to the falling and fallen !
How men will indorse promissory notes, and give
accommodation bills, and make loans free of interest,
and, taught by the straits of business, will, in their
private assistance even to rivals, get close under the
Mount of the Sermon, without making any pretence at
worship.
366 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Men are everywhere better than their creed, and they
are far better beings one toward another than the ethics
of business would sanction.
To find glass-cold, icy indifference to the struggles
and woes of poor mortals down in the valley of conflict
for the daily crust, you must ascend to the upper regions
of clerical and ministerial respectability. These favoured
mortals live in a world illumined by pieces of presenta-
tion plate, and surrounded by a zodiac of slippers.
Their knowledge of business is nil, and their acquaint-
ance with the "under world" is derived from an occa-
sional condescending chat with the City Missionary.
This does not prevent them from issuing cold advice to
distracted and outcast wage- workers, with a confidence
only equalled by their ignorance of the facts.
To the ethics of business is also due the curious phe-
nomena of prices. Prices introduce us to one of the
most grotesque regions of Political Economy. Justice is
here made sport of in a manner quite inimitable.
There is news that the phylloxera has attacked the
vintages in the south of France. Immediately the value
of all the wine in the cellars rises. Now it is singular
that wine bottled five years ago should not pay to be sold
except at the famine price of five years after. At two
o'clock wheat is standing in the market at certain
valuations ; at 2.30 a telegram states that the war of
Kailway rates in the United States is at an end, and
valuations rise.
If you are one of the innocents abroad, you may be
tempted to inquire if the bulks represented by the
samples before you have really to be brought from the
States at the enhanced rates; but on second thoughts
you hold your peace.
Edward Wild has been struggling upon his farm for
twelve years and dropping the money he started with.
Last year, however, because the locusts were marching
THE MORALITY OF BUSINESS. 367
through Texas he did middling well with his wheat
in Dorset. This year he has worked harder than ever,
borrowed more money to pay for machinery, manure
and store cattle, and moreover Nature has poured a
splendid harvest into his lap ; but, alas ! the locusts are
no longer walking through Texas. Edward Wild leaves
his morning cup half finished, and enters his barn
door. The fat rats scuttle into their corners. By-and-
bye, attracted by the stillness, they venture out again, and
by stages approach the dreaded figure, until they stand
under a heavy shoe, which covers them like a sounding
board, but does not fall.
It is all along of prices. He worked harder than ever,
Nature was more bountiful than ever, but he is ruined
because misfortune has not fallen elsewhere to poor
men over the sea and also because Nature was too
kind.
Now we ought to rub our foreheads in the dust and
confess before High Heaven that we know not good from
evil, that we call evil good and good evil, because the
market will have it so ; and that the choicest gifts of
Heaven sent down to bless the deserving get into the
wrong hands, although delivered at the right place.
The ruin of the farmer is the gain of the dealer and the
spoil of the money-lender ; and that is the disorder of
Justice to-day. The producers are at the bottom, next
come the movers about of their productions, next the
providers of capital and land, and at the top the
inheritors of fortunes. The hardest workers have the
hardest portions, the least valuable members of the
nation are troubled with excess, and between the two
the reward is in the inverse proportion to utility.
Silas Trebilco's fishing smack is straining for the har-
bour. It arrives, and the mackerel are bought by the
middleman at a fairly good profit. Half-an-hour after
W. Tregoning makes the port. He is annoyed to discover
368 PURITANISM IN POWER.
that fish caught in the same seas, and as like each other
as two peas, are apparently not so good for human food
in his boat as in Trebilco's. He is chaffering about
price when two red wings appear upon the offing.
They have a magical effect in deteriorating the value of
mackerel as human food. An hour ago they were good
fish, which a man could eat, now they are only fit for
manure. The lower prices have to be accepted. A train
draws up, barrels and boxes are packed, and the fish
speeds away to London. The two red wings draw
nearer ; they are boats with the hard-earned spoil of the
previous night, all sound and fresh in the hold. Unfor-
tunately, however, they come to hand five minutes after
the train has started. A fatal deterioration in the
quality of the mackerel ensues from this circumstance
a deterioration which could not be remedied even by the
drawing up of another train. Further, it is known to
the middleman that one of these men, Jack Prothero,
has had the misfortune to lose his trawler cut away by
a steamer and that, being distressed, he must sell at
any price.
We need not go on. Government is determined to
preserve to Jack Prothero the liberty of selling his fish
at a loss if he chooses, and will preserve his freedom of
contract. It is evidently of great importance to the
nation that Billingsgate fishermen should send their
daughters to boarding schools at Brighton, and provide
them with a handsome dowry, and that purchasers of
fish should have full liberty to pay ten times more than
they ought to if they choose. In the same way Govern-
ment will never interfere with a man's liberty to work
eighteen hours a day if he likes.
There is one branch of business that has undeniable
claims to respect, and that is the carrying trade. There
is something refreshingly straightforward in Eailway,
Canal, and Shipping operations. Goods are to be sent
THE MORALITY OF BUSINESS. 369
from one point to another, and they are actually taken
there and not deposited at some point short of the
distance bargained for. The honesty is delightful. You
take a ticket for Paddington (first class) and are not
compelled to get into a third class at Didcot, or told you
must get out at Slough and walk the rest of the way.
This is something new in business. Bulk and samples
have a curious habit of disagreeing. The first consign-
ment of cotton cloths are all right, the second consign-
ment is all wrong. There are such things as inferior
quality, short lengths, deficient weights, false trade marks,
skilful adulterations. It is the equivalent of issuing a
ticket from London to Newcastle and turning out the pas-
senger at York. The ship chartered to go to Malta does
not discharge her cargo at Gibraltar. This is refreshing,
and makes us respect the mercantile community. Un-
fortunately, however, goods intended to be put out on
land are often taken to the bottom of the sea without
compulsion, except from undermanning and overloading,
and perhaps over-insuring.
On the whole we may congratulate ourselves that the
transport of commodities is so large a part of England's
trade. It is no doubt the national enthusiasm for
honesty that has induced so many Englishmen to go
into steam shipping. But as for business generally, that
"business" which Webster discovered to have Saxon and
Dutch derivations signifying to " inspect closely," we
are driven to the conclusion that its morality will not
bear inspection.
24
370
CHAPTER XI.
INTERLUDE. THE JUDGMENT OF THE
DEMOCRACY.
" THE same thing," said my guide, "is taking place in
all the principal ports of the kingdom."
Nothing .at present but a swirl of rain. It blots the
distance, churns the muddy waters of the estuary, and
quells the impure foaming of the waves, which rise to the
intermittent sighing of the chill October wind.
The cold white frizzle passes away and the watery
veil is lifted, showing an eased but panting Nature
behind it a park of great black steamships with an
attendant court of graceful ships, barques, brigs,
schooners, yachts, launches, barges, pilot boats, fishing
boats, punts, tugs, and buoys.
It was the great northern seaport. The long low line
of its miles of docks, forested with masts, and its frown-
ing warehouses gradually cleared itself from the rising
rain-mist which, however, kept hanging over the billow-
line of the outstretched emporium, leaving its fringes
and purple pendants to dip out a mile of houses here
and to deepen the emphasis of dome and spire there,
while holding itself in readiness to swallow all up again,
as conscious that it needed much cleansing and oblivion.
It was the great northern seaport where the editor
of the Hedgehog was martyred, famous throughout the
world as the British end of the Atlantic bridge, and in
the records of the Registrar-General as supplying the
heaviest death-rate in the United Kingdom along the
margin of its docks. By soil and situation capable of
being the healthiest of cities, laissez de faire had doomed
its docker population to the worst. A dark line the
shadow of Death a broad mourning border stretched
INTERLUDE. THE JUDGMENT OF THE DEMOCRACY. 371
along its quays in the map which indicated the incidence
of mortality . Along this tract corn porters have been
recently walking in despair, because an enemy, not
conquerable like fever the progress of mechanical
invention has been taking the bread out of their
mouths.
By night this tract of country is luminous with the
flare of public -houses. The bars belch forth sprawling
and sparring inebriates, and scared children, with white
leg and foot below tattered garments, dodge in and out
of the crowds to fetch mugs of beer, or with tears in
their eyes, and in their voices, to drag their singing
mother's hand and beg her to come " home."
Walking along a main artery of this region, famous
for its unrelieved vulgarity and ever present throngs of
human temples broken and defiled, a meditative theo-
logian was stirred by the question, ' ' Can these beings
be Immortals?" and afterwards answered it for man
generally in the negative. Contempt rather than pity
the bane of comfortable theologians stirred his breast,
and the blame that belonged to a heathen constitution
of society he visited upon his almost helpless Christian
brothers. Across the estuary, from our solitary post,
we can see, as the rain-veil lifts, the landing-stage a
mass of black beetles with immortal souls. The beetles
throng the connecting bridges, and extend on either
side for miles, and backwards to the higher level of
an old churchyard.
Nothing is heard but the fitful sighing of the wind,
which ever and anon rises to a howl ; at which time the
tree below us, taken with a fit, and working all its
branches like a group of tortured snakes, makes more of
the gray water visible between its stems as .the red
leaves whirl away.
Tenders are alongside the landing-stage, and the
beetles are flowing into them. They fill the active
372 PURITANISM IN POWER.
little vessels, which now and then leave land for mid-
stream, and fasten by a black Leviathan.
Each of these ocean monsters is alive, but they are
trembling as under some dread sense of preparation.
There is a soughing in the funnel a sound of inarticu-
late threat and woe. There is a clanking of chains, a
slipping about of silent soft-footed men, a perpetual
incoming of burden-bearers with boxes a, difficulty
in getting past, a worrying, wearing dazement of pre-
paration which pauses not, each apparent ending, like
a maddening fugue of Bach's, being a coiled spring which
starts upon repeating the action. But all the sounds,
whether the dread shuddering of the funnel, or the clank
of chains, or the calls of men, or the dump of cases,
or the clang of dropping hooks, are awe-struck and
suppressed as in a Day of Judgment.
From the position, however, which we occupy there
is no sound audible. Through the occasional slants of
rain we can discern that the black beetles are crowding
the vessel from stem to stern, and that the tender has
thrown off. Suddenly a cloud of steam comes from the
funnel, and the great paddles make an arc of a revolution,
then stay while the water rinses through the blades.
Indecision seems to have seized the Leviathan. Shall
she indeed take all these men away break up the con-
tinuity of their lives wrench them from home and
country and all the amenities of a high state of civiliza-
tion which they have been accustomed to enjoy? The
answer seems in the negative; for the next movement
of the paddles is astern. Scarcely, however, have we
noted it when once more the wheels are dashed into
the main, they sustain their onward revolutions, a river
of milk flows away on either side, and above from the
funnels issues a pure and diminishing white cloud.
"It is the City of Tyre," said my guide, "carrying
away the Honourable Company of the Promoters of
INTERLUDE. THE JUDGMENT OF THE DEMOCRACY. 373
Public Companies. They were offered claims on the
gold and silver mines that they promoted, but refused
them. In England to dig they are not able, and to beg
they are ashamed, they go now to make the acquaint-
ance of plough- shares and bulls and bears."
Whew! the tree beneath us is seized with a fit, the
snakes work round larger holes, behind which gray water
races, and a cloud of seared dead leaves is whirled away.
Now for the City of Sidon. From stem to stern she
too has been in preparation sighing, shuddering in the
funnel ; below the distant scrape of shovel against fuel,
and the clap and clang of iron doors. There might be
dead in every berth and a terror of awakening them, so
noiseless and self-contained are the seamen as they slip
about.
The black specks of men come crowding her decks also,
each one with an epic perhaps of tragic interest in the
recollections of his life. And now once more a white
plume flies from the funnel, two rivers of milk flow from
the paddle-boxes, and a ship is walking off with a
population.
"These," said my guide, "who have now departed
are the Underwriters, who lived by writing their
names on policies and cheques. The State having
now assumed the ownership of all ships whatsoever,
insures itself, and the services of these gentlemen is
dispensed with. They are believed to be on their
way to induce the Americans to build ships, and in
such a manner that their services may be indispensable.
Together with this crew are associated the Managers
and Agents of the Life and Fire Insurance Companies,
who, for a similar reason the undertaking by the State
of all accidental risks have no longer a useful function
in England."
There is no apparent diminution in the black masses
crowded upon pier and stage when the tenders travel
374 PURITANISM IN POWER.
to the City of Carthage. The windy silence at the
distance from which we observe her, makes her, though
now crowded, appear a city of the dead. While we
watch her embarkment, the purple vapours hanging over
the great mart lower downwards and sweep the whole
prospect into cloudland. Down upon the buried city
hails the rain, blotting out the fleets as well, and when
it lifts again the City of Carthage has left her moorings
and is hastening to the sea. " She carries," said my
guide, " the Members of the Stock Exchange, who con-
tributed nothing whatever to the sum of the Nation's
wealth, nor did it at any time any real service. To-
day the entire shares of all speculators in land,
manufactories, and businesses of exchange and
transport are held by the people. When a new
enterprise is undertaken there is neither gross plunder
of the credulous nor enormous profit to the knavish.
Neither is there the creation of new counters wherewith
to play the gambler's game, in which every gain
means a corresponding loss to someone else. With
the Stock Exchangers go the Bankers and Bill Brokers,
Secretaries of Loan and Benefit Societies, and all the
manifold agents of societies having an excusable
foundation in the necessity of assisting persons over
the interim between having made something useful,
or brought from a distance something needed, and
getting it sold and paid for. A large number of the
individuals whose functions have been superseded by
State organization have been absorbed by necessary
additions to the number of civil servants; but a
majority, whose gambling instincts would not permit
them to fall into the prosaic path of official service,
have elected to leave their country for some other
where the people can be gulled."
The embarkation seems interminable. It is the City
of Nineveh's turn. "Those," said my guide, " are a part
INTERLUDE. THE JUDGMENT OF THE DEMOCRACY. 375
of the multitudes of Middlemen, who used to inter-
pose themselves between Producer and Consumer, and
in an age of competition could not be dispensed with.
When both buyer and seller were bitten they prospered
most. Now that production is carried on simply for
consumption, and that foreign trade has become a
branch of Government business (the only middlemen
required in that being Government Agents residing
abroad), the raison d'etre of the Middlemen at home
is gone, and the} 7 , being masters of no Art or Craft,
except that of buying cheap and selling dear, are
emigrating to the United States, where a great demand
for Waiters has sprung up through the formation in
Africa of a colony for the coloured race in America, to
which negroes from all parts are thronging,
" The Middlemen hope to gain employment to ' go
between ' the cooks in the kitchen and the guests at
the table, in the performance of which they will not
be expected as heretofore to plunder the viands en
route. With these go all the Sweaters of Labour,
down to foremen and gangers and public-house keepers,
who as overmen have required wages to be paid in their
own bars."
The winds seem to have a special spite against this
vessel, and the waves dash wrathfully against it. Our
tree is seized with the spasms once more, and a cloud of
withered leaves is whirled away. Scarcely has the
City of Nineveh walked the water when the City of
Palmyra receives the attentions of the tenders. Upon
her are gathered all the artificers of useless articles,
corresponding to the nose rings and anklets of savage
tribes. Articles de luxe, not in themselves really
beautiful or useful, but contrivances simply for the dis-
play of wealth and for the murder of time. Inventions
to make bearable the monotony and satiety of wealthy
leisure spent without felt responsibility to either God or
376 PURITANISM IN POWER.
man. The name of these productions is legion, and
before the new Era they were annually increasing. Men,
women and children rose early and retired late, and
toiled strenuously all day to multiply things of no earthly
utility to any human being, answering to no real human
need, and ministering to no healthy pleasure.
Since all work now is undertaken to minister to real
needs and to promote real pleasure, the City of Palmi/r<i
is laden deep. This Leviathan also bears away the
entire stock of vvriters, editors and artists who had
vulgarized themselves and debased the public taste in
providing Ally Sloper literature. In the new Era the
men who diligently disseminated ugliness and vulgarity,
who prostituted Art to the representation of man as a
hideous abortion, leagues below the beast in form and
nature, and who by persistence bent, twisted and finally
bound the natural preference of men's souls for the
beautiful and the true into a shameful preference for
their manufactured idol these men are offered no
choice, but are compulsorily emigrated to the land of
Dwarfs and Troglodites that Stanley has recently dis-
covered. The Society Newspapers and the Police News
died a natural death with that order of things which
provided them with matter.
But it was soon discovered that among the high
standard newspapers those marvellous products of
omnivorous scavenging, brilliant dissertation and cyclo-
pean vision there were a host that had become
supernumeraries in the advent of the new Era and,
mirabile dictn, with the extinction of Advertising. Just
before the Reformation there were newspapers for the
noon which came out at 10 a.m., and papers for the
afternoon which came out at 11 a.m. This sort of thing
necessitated the establishment of the " Midnight Sun,"
which issued its first edition at 5 p.m. Under the
tyranny of newspapers even the great Potentates of
INTEELUDE. THE JUDGMENT OF THE DEMOCRACY. 377
Literature became mere names to their dissipated de-
scendants. Children read Assize intelligence as they went
to school, wrote dictation from the noon " Star," and
took home for analysis a sentence from the " Tottenham
Court Eoad Gazette." All the wits of the competitive
era became happily concentrated upon One newspaper,
the " National Times," with local editions in every
village. Besides this there were no other save the
ever green and immortal " Punch," and a new Illustrated
Paper which combined the talents of the " Graphic "
and the " London News." The enormous addition to the
leisure of mankind by this wholesale disappearance of
competitive newspapers can scarcely be imagined, neither
the wholesomeness of a change which gave interment to
so much monstrous self-assertion, party vilification,
gambling, lying, inflammatory invective and gross
injustice to the party in power.
Mental perspective became again possible. The
ridiculous disproportion given to objects of supposed
public interest simply because they were current, and
the absurd emphasis with which trifling incidents were
treated simply because they were sensational, or supposed
to be so all this disappeared, and with it the monstrous
labouring of mountains to bring forth mice slaves of the
lamp compositors losing their eyesight small armies
of men and women concentrating every energy of body,
soul and spirit to spread the news throughout the world
that Meteor's prophecy was right, or that Captain
Corney's finals were all abroad.
The Betting Fraternity is being now transported to the
City of Thebes, and Monaco having changed its ways it
is believed that they are going to another Hell. As for
the numerous company of dispossessed Editors whom
the "National Times" could not absorb, some of the
quondam Republicans have set out for the Brazils to
restore the Empire, and other Protestants have gone to
378 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Dublin to offer their services to the Pope in aid of the
restoration of the Temporal Power. The rest of them
have chartered the City of Athens, and for a needed
change are first of all bound for the Desert of Sahara,
from whence, having mastered the dialects of India, they
will issue to inform and guide enlightened public opinion
in the Great Dependency.
Steam is getting up on board the City of Corinth.
The tenders are bringing to her a vast array of dis-
pensable " distributors," the nation having undertaken
the simple work of carrying to the people, according to
their needs, the wealth that the people unitedly produce.
The nation lives in families in houses, in all the
simplicity and elegance of a cultured and tasteful
temperance, only making acquaintance with splendour
and luxury when the Communes periodically dine in pub-
lic ; for splendour ceases to animate and excite when it
is the daily environment, and luxury, when habitually
cultivated, tends to enervate and corrupt. With the
dispensable distributors are taken the absurd company
of Mountebank Advertisers, whose liberties with the
public time and attention, as well as the style and sub-
stance of their appeals, used to form a most offensive
and degrading exhibition of one of the base fruits of
competition. Blatant self-assertion, candid lies, per-
verted ingenuity, outrageous impudence are here and
now asserted by the nation to be quite dispensable ; by
no means a necesshVy of the nation's business, but, on
the other hand, calling for a waste of money, brains,
effort and time, which should be the shame of any
people. The whole posse comitattis of this particular
district are now on board. The Poets who were kept on
the premises, and the Koyal Academicians who forsook
the high and dry walks of Art to pluck the fruits,
especially Pears, of commercial advertising the Religious
Commendators and Commentators the whole lot have
INTERLUDE. THE JUDGMENT OF THE DEMOCRACY. 379
been bought up by Barnum, a bargain, and are bound
West to adorn his show. And the hold of the ship is
dead-weighted with hundreds of tons of enamelled iron
plates stripped from the Eailway stations, whose letter-
ing used to act upon the minds of passengers like a
mustard plaster. The rest of the cargo consists of
printed waste paper and soap bubbles ; the latter in
several varieties.
Another storm of rain, this time with flakes of snow.
When it passes and shows the tree still barer of its
leaves we look for the City of Corinth and perceive that
she is well down the estuary towards the seething bar.
And two white hulls have followed her like two dogs.
" What," I enquired of my guide, " are those two ill-
looking craft, of an ashen white, round whose funnels the
lightning now is playing ? " "Those," he replied, " are
the Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, peopled from the
palaces and the slums."
It is time for the City of Babylon. This is the largest
craft of all, a very queen among its kind. This great
city receives into its capacious hold, as slaves are car-
ried, the sweaters of the Poor. The whole gang of them,
through all their infinite gradations, from the Aristo-
cratic landowner who has squeezed his tenant farmer
dry and oppressed the precarious traffic of the shop by
a usurious ground rent, to the great manufacturing
company, which fed its dividends from the Truck shop,
where, in defiance of law, wages were " satisfied " to
the satisfaction of none but the despoilers ; and from
the Factory owners who availed themselves of all
cheapening of food to make arbitrary deductions of
wages and multiplications of fines, down to the humblest
sweating tailor, or ganger of a group of Dock labourers,
who insists on paying wages at his own Public-house.
A great part of the human cargo consists also of the
landlords of the dwellings of the poor and their house
880 PURITANISM IN POWER.
farming Agents, who never attempted to put their tene-
ments in habitable condition, but were careful to exact
rents amounting to one-third and even one-half of the
tenants' total income, and all for the privilege of being
poisoned or made rheumatic.
And with these go the infamous traffickers in vice,
whose human stock-in-trade were many of them victims
of low wages, their inadequate remuneration becoming
the foil for the easier career. They are all going out to
found another City of Babylon upon the ruins of the old ;
the light of civilization having blessed the West is now
returning to invigorate the East.
" The age of capitalistic production and competition,"
said my guide, " has produced this shocking fruit, yet it
has not existed in vain. In addition to its triumph in
the material and economical sphere by the marvellous
facilities of production, which in conjunction with
science and applied mechanics it has created and stimu-
lated, it has been -of enormous service to mankind in the
field of moral culture and development of human faculty.
It has deposited in the blood of the Eace capacities and
qualities that no other era could have produced, and
those qualities have much in them of permanent value.
" That men should learn to stand stoutly upon their own
legs, and fight for their own hand and their own rights,
and being kept hanging always between the devil of
selfishness and the deep sea of Poverty, refuse to think
of the mischief to others which kept tally with every
success for themselves, knowing no escape but in the
acquisition of wealth and the using of it as a Tyrant
without conscience or law all this was necessary for the
deposit of a certain virtue in the temper of the character
of Solid Man. But this stage of the Education of the
Race is now drawing to its end.
" Instead of Capables, the dying epoch has been pro-
ducing crowds of Incapables. Idle persons without enjoy-
INTERLUDE. THE JUDGMENT OF THE DEMOCRACY. 381
ment of their means or leisure through want of a career,
while multitudes have pined and died under the ill-paid
burden of supporting them. Therefore it is that the death-
warrant of this era has been signed, and a new face smiles
behind the door, which now opens to mankind a new
career. Co-operation will eliminate in time whatever of
poison has been deposited in the later stages of com-
petition, and will then proceed to add those final germs
of vigorous health and moral beauty which will regene-
rate the race, fusing all ranks into that true Common-
wealth which is strong for all as once for some and
laborious for all as once for a favoured few, and cul-
tured in all its portions as once in only the topmost
ranges of its economical elevation.
" Then only will there be deposited in the human
character its finest qualities, and it will approach the
final type of highest manhood."
The City of Babylon is now thronged from stem to
stern, as well as in the hold. The hour has struck
the great paddles dip into the stream, and the monster
makes two rivers of milk flow from her twin breasts.
Would that Babylon had known the milk of human
kindness, instead of churning its simulacrum from the
cold salt sea ! We w r atch her to the offing, where silent
lightning gleams upon her slow descent. The sky clears
and the Tree is bare.
382
CHAPTER XII.
PEOPOSITIONS (d), (), (/) CONSIDERED.
(Vide CHAPTEK IV.)
THESE propositions should not detain us long. The first
opens with conditions applying to all three, and we have
first to consider whether the conditions are reasonable in
themselves and likely of realization in our own or some
not distant day. We recapitulate :
(d,) That u'hen the sources of wealth, the instruments of
production and the means of existence are held and used by
the nation for the common good, Private luxury irill cease
and reappear alone in Public institutions where it will be
wholly beneficent ; and Private possessions in the means of
existence will be limited to day by day supplies, regulated
by a temperate estimate of the requirements of health and
comfort.
What is there unreasonable and Utopian in the
preliminary condition to the content of this and the
following propositions ? That is to say, why should we
ridicule the idea of the Nation ever holding the sources
of its wealth for the common good ? Why should we
consider Individualism inevitable and eternal ?
One thing we are sure about, and that is, that the
entire body of the worthiest in the Nation are hugely
dissatisfied with the present basis of society even the
wealthy holding their privileges w r ith a certain shame
and a longing that it were possible to introduce some
nearer approach to universal good. Would it not be a
humiliating confession for a great and puissant people
to make, that, finding themselves involved in certain
artificial and man-made conditions, they must resign
themselves to such as though they were veritable laws of
the Universe, although they are felt to be more
PROPOSITIONS CONSIDERED. 383
injurious and intolerable day by day ? Now, so far from
our sitting down in such despair as this, we have
merely to ivill the contrary of what oppresses us and
we create the stable conditions of our redemption with
universal applause. All that portion of the nation and
it is far the largest portion which is without property
is already willing. All we have to do is to overcome the
scruples of those who possess and doubtfully enjoy,
and this consideration, that the mass of the nation,
that which works the hardest, has always lived and
worked without the hope of accumulating any property,
does away with the objection that without the prospect
of private accumulations no one could be got to work.
We have solid ground to go upon in that incontestable
fact. We can at once conclude and decide that private
ownership is not necessary to the constraining men to
put forth their best energies in work. The army of the
poor proclaim that necessity is their impulse, and the
State can create an impulse equally urgent, seconded by
a public sentiment, omnipotent.
The notion that men could not be got to work unless
property loomed in the distance is further scouted by the
number of applicants to the War Office for commissions
when a little foreign campaign is undertaken and this
by men of private means, whose urgency arises from the
need of absorbing and exciting work in the only calling
which a gentleman can engage in without losing caste.
Thus do extremes meet and the Butcher and the
Officer shake hands. The same fact of the eagerness to
enter military service without any compulsion disposes
of the objection that men would never submit to the
loss of liberty involved by becoming industrial servants
of the State. An officer of the sappers and miners is an
industrial servant of the State and so is a Paymaster.
We have only to correct the false estimate which
attaches glory to butchery and degradation to life-
384 PURITANISM IN POWEK.
supporting service, in order to make men as desirous of
acquiring National honour from enlistment in the latter
as the former. If men thirst for decorations, ribbons
are cheap, and unless we have degenerated from ancient
days a simple crown of olive, laurel or oak leaves should
suffice to call forth the best exertions, not in games,
but earnest and valuable labour.
Now the principle of National ownership for the common
good is implicit in our Fleets and Arsenals, our Public
Parks, Museums, Picture Galleries, Libraries, Board
Schools, Prisons, Asylums, Workhouses, Telegraphs,
Barracks, lloads. Wherever gas and water supply is the
property of Corporation or Local Boards the same principle
is seen. From water to food is but a single step, and the
Prince of Wales is credited with the desire to see the
watering of all towns and villages undertaken by the
Nation. The Gothenburg system of Corporations
becoming the sole Public-house Keepers is another
advance. National Bakeries, Restaurants and Dairies
would be simply an extension of the idea and in
connection with the Nationalization of the Land mean a
cheapening of food beyond anything we have seen. The
waste that Individualism involves is shocking. The
Lady farmer on butter-making days has a surplus she
knows not what to do with. She cannot let the poor have
it cheap, for fear of " shaming the shops " ; she therefore
makes presents of it to her relatives, who are not poor at
all. The same thing is done with regard to the kitchen
garden and the orchard. The surplus as it ripens must
be given away to wealthy people because " we must not
shame the shops."
Then the old objection that it is impossible to get
good work out of Public servants and that Govern-
ment Departments are models of inefficiency. It is
wholly unfair to bring into this argument the cases
of the Admiralty and the War Office alone. These we
PROPOSITIONS CONSIDERED. 385
know want reforming root and branch, and so do the
practices of the Private Contractors for Commissariat
Stores. Take other examples the Post Office. Nothing
could well be better in the matter of efficiency and
also progressive and flexible adaptation to new needs.
Take again the Science and Art Department, South
Kensington or the Convict Prisons. Is it not self-
evident that the State, conducting enterprises to which
it will adapt its own laws, and with the capital of an
Empire to back it up, must inevitably surpass any
results of privately subscribed capital : a first economy
arising at the very outset from the exemption from
enormous legal expenses incurred in fighting opposing
interests in Parliamentary Committee ? If the superior
efficiency of private enterprise be still contended for,
let the inefficiency of private competition to prevent
gluts be duly weighed ; the helpless groping in the dark
as to what extent of production is really demanded,
the random guesses at the future course of trade, the
happy-go-lucky manner in which manufacturers go on
applying profits to extension of works, with scarcely a
shred of absolute fact to base their action upon, building
their hopes indeed upon running some other concern
into bankruptcy. See again the inefficiency of promoting
schemes, not because they will benefit the Nation, but
because some local Landowner, Engineer, Contractor,
Prospector will largely benefit at the expense of some
existing Dock or Bail way Company Parliament inclining
to lend its sanction whenever it possibly can to a large
expenditure of capital in order to keep the poor employed.
Capital employed in Dock and Eailway construction need-
lessly is so much life-blood of the Nation spilt upon the
ground and the effect, under competition, is to start a
general bleeding all round, until the prospect of greater
ruin compels a ruinous amalgamation. What is this
but inefficiency of the grossest kind ? Compare with it the
25
380 PURITANISM IN POWER.
proceedings of the Government in laying out its postal and
telegraphic service. Imagine it continuing the telegraphic
service along a road that leads nowhere, and when asked,
"What are you doing?" replying, "We are extending
our works, having money enough." Or imagine it
subsidizing two lines of steamers which start for the
same place the same day. That kind of waste and folly
and incompetence and inefficiency is daily going on
under Individualism. Industrial operations conducted by
a Nation would be above all things scientific, with the
beautiful and exact economies of science. Hosts of
Agents at home and abroad would supply the fullest
possible information as to probable demand, and the kind
of it, so that the painful and ridiculous spectacle of men
overtaxing themselves to produce things that are not
wanted at all would be seen no more.
The ideal of perfection in National Industrial
operations would be reached when not a muscle would
move, not a wheel would turn in the doing of anything
that was not wanted.
Could the Government be trusted to build a good
house ? Let the reader go down to Portsmouth to see the
results of Convict labour there. Objectors to State
provision of National needs would, 1 suppose, aver that
Government houses would be built on any bad foundation
be put together with mortar mixed anyhow be
drained in a manner that would guarantee fever have
walls ready to bow before pressure, and plumbing work
defective in every particular that, in short, Government
houses would be as bad as if they were built to be
disposed of instead of to be dwelt in. These State
objections to Government efficiency really will not wash
in these days of the unceasing exposure of the break-
down of Individualism.
The loss of the pleasure of initiation and profit-making
is a more valid allegation against the co-operative idea.
PROPOSITIONS CONSIDERED. 387
But it is an argument that the development of industry
is depriving of force day by day. The tendency is all for
the merging of a number of small private enterprises into
Limited Liability Companies, and the transformation of
small principals into managers or subordinates. The
pleasure of initiation and profit-making is being taken
away in an increasing degree every month.
And this is still more obviously true of distribution,
as witness the Co-operative Stores. The next step,
of course, is the unification, absorption, re-organiza-
tion and scientific direction of all these Capitals by the
State, when the warring destructiveness upon each
other and their spilt money in advertising would
have an end, setting free the nation's energies for
something more worthy and more necessary than the
costly repetition of the wearisome refrain " Me and My
Goods only." "Be sure you make no mistake in
occasionally throwing a crumb to a fellow-creature. '
" I am the only Jones."
When the present drift is duly considered, it will be
concluded that the time when the sources of wealth and
the means of existence are held and used by the nation
for the common good is not in that remote future to
which Utopian ideas are usually relegated. The Govern-
ment which already delivers parcels at our doors can as
readily deliver bread and meat for which we shall pay,
not in coin, but in service, and the result would be that
private luxury would cease (since opportunities for
private fortune-making through the impoverishment of
others would be no more) and luxury would re-appear
alone in public institutions, where it will be wholly
beneficent, private possessions in the means of subsistence
being limited to day by day supplies, regulated by a
temperate estimate of the requirements of health and
comfort. Plenty of debatable matter it may be thought.
Who will be satisfied ? All will be grumbling ! What a
888 PURITANISM IN POWER.
strange objection to be raising when to-day every seventh
person hi London dies hi a workhouse or hospital.
43,000 Board School children go to their lessons without
breaking their fast, and yet London is London from year
to year.
If it could be positively alleged against any Com-
munistic Scheme that it would produce a quarter of the
miseries which the present system inflicts upon the poor,
men would jeeringly say it stood self-condemned, and
would not last a week.
If it came to a priori arguments against stability, what
imagination could furnish a stronger supposed case of
instability than that afforded by our present actual con-
dition. And yet its essential evils and mischiefs, though
now intensified, have lasted for ages.
There is, therefore, absolutely no importance to be
attached to the objection that certain persons may be
dissatisfied under a Communistic regime. Many millions
of persons the majority have reason to be horribly
dissatisfied with our present order, and yet it works.
How much more certainly would Communism work !
How infinitely less the friction of its working !
(e,) And work will lie then conferred upon those who (ire
most in need of it-^the idle Rich.
The abiding malady of " good society " is that it has no
responsible imperative duties to fulfil. It has to make
work for itself a most melancholy necessity, attended
by very disappointing results. Physicians are called in
to prescribe for maladies that cannot be defined, and
cannot be cured so long as the patients are genteel. The
dulness of every place and of all things is unceasingly
lamented ; and undeterred by invariable failure every
round of pleasure that can in succession be trodden is
sought after to communicate zest to a jaded existence.
The exaction of National service from each and every
subject of the realm who was competent in various
PROPOSITIONS CONSIDERED. 389
degrees and kinds to render it would bring joy and hope
and health and heartfelt satisfaction to thousands of
palace homes, where genuine and appreciative laughter
is only given to one who, like Corney Grain or George
Grossmith, exhibits the vacuity and ineptitude of Society
life. It is by such unhappy people, as much almost as
the miserably poor, that the Commonwealth should be
welcomed.
(f,) Tliat thus social caste will be destroyed, and mental,
physical and moral caste alone exist.
There is no feature in the English life of to-day so
utterly and awfully unchristian as its social caste. The
degree to which it is carried in this nominally free
country exceeds, one must think, that which prevails in
any other country under the sun.
Caste feeling is neither condoned nor abandoned by
" slumming." It is, if anything, more offensive when
manifested in the patronising distribution of charity
than candidly by keeping aloof so as to show that all
persons not equal to their social superiors are properly
considered beneath their feet. The distribution of
respect and regard is in exact proportion to the do-
nothingness of the recipients. Now the Commonwealth
would precisely reverse this and distribute its respect and
regard in exact proportion to the dosomethingness of
real importance by the honourable citizens.
" And would you deprive us of the picturesque con-
trasts of wealth and poverty?" More painful than
picturesque are they not? It is a little too much to
expect us to perpetuate misery for the sake of the
drama and the tale, and in consideration of jaded sen-
sibilities and aesthetic fancies. No ; we shall gain even in
picturesque contrast by the levelling up of the down-
trodden poor. The world's rough Halls and Universi-
ties communicate a real luxury and culture of their own,
which the vapidity and insipidity of modern society
390 PURITANISM IN POWER.
much need to be refreshed by. There are noble char-
acters and striking type.s of mental capacity even among
the present " uneducated" race, which are never brought
into contrast with the results of the narrow culture of
the upper classes, in consequence of caste. But when
National service is made honourable in all by its uni-
versality, and the walls of social caste are consequently
beaten down, we shall have minds and hearts consorting
and contrasting in a manner never known before.
There is plenty of variety in the animal world, without
poverty. There is infinite variety among birds, without
subjecting any of them to starvation and the loss of
plumage. There is a fine variety in a bed of flowers, all
carefully tended and well-nourished. That will be the
type of the only caste prevalent in the Communistic
state ; and as the modern gardener sorts his kinds and
colours together and gets his most impressive effects of
harmony and contrast that way, so in the social inter-
course of the future like will seek like on grounds of
natural, not artificial affinity ; but likeness and unlike-
ness will spring out of and adorn one bed, in which all
are objects of an equal care, and none are stunted in
development for want of light and space and necessary
supplies.
391
CHAPTER XIII.
THE TKUE BABYLON.
PARENTHETICAL.
SCARED by the traditions of the flood, and proud of
postdiluvian cultivation of the Arts preserved by heredity,
they met in boundless plains periodically deluged and
resolved to build. The monotonous expanse, mountain-
less and almost treeless, no less than pride in science
to defeat the gods suggested the high tower.
Everywhere in plains architecture cultivates the high.
The low countries rear the Bruges tower and Antwerp
pinnacle, and the flat bordered Ehine reflects the steeples
of Cologne. But amid the peaks of Switzerland, and in
the neighbourhood of the Pyrenees, where contrast is not
wanted and competition would be ridiculous, Churches
dwarf and Architecture dies.
They began to build a tower high as heaven itself,
from the top of which they could shout defiance to the
Supreme. What could not Co-operation do, working with
one will to accomplish an object of supreme desire and
importance ? Heaven looked down and found that man
had discovered and was applying his last powers too soon.
Straightway the spirit of Individualism fell upon the
toiling masses. They separated into sects and began to
cultivate strange speech the more to fix their nation-
alities.
Working now with mutual jealousies, stinting, de-
frauding and baulking one another, their building
staggered, then stood still, its jagged teeth left laughing
at the scattered troops and the Impotence of . Divided
Man, but it was necessary, if the wide world was to be
subdued, that Individualism should run its course, after
which Federation on the grander scale.
392 PURITANISM IN POWER.
The plains were rich and the Hunter canie the
Hunter, who is the merchant's archetype, for they both
pursue a superfluity which perishes when possessed.
And the Hunter found peaceful people reaping three
hundredfold what the} r had sown. It was the oppor-
tunity of civilization. " We come to protect you, good
people. You must exchange the Earth's gracious pro-
tection of her plenty for our protection of armed soldiery
and priestly invocation. So, to protect you, the Euler
and the Priest must take all that Nature so bountifully
throws away upon your unworthiness, and we will leave
you just enough to live upon, and seed for the coming
year."
Civilization began. It is the first step which costs,
and a bloody step it was. The armed conqueror laid
out his princely city and began its wall. The blessedly
protected people were mustered from the wealthy fields,
and wrought within the trench. A mighty ditch must
surround an area five times London, and furnish clay
for a brick wall 300 feet high and 60 feet broad, bedded
in bitumen and reeds. Proud Babylon arose and sealed
her ruin in the very making of her defences. We can
see the struggling multitudes, long since sleeping well-
children with handfuls of blue clay, women carrying it
in their aprons, the lordly overseers lashing the lagging.
The king's commandment is urgent, of course. Each day
as he returns from his hunting he complains. Do they
stay to bury the dead, or do they cremate them in the
kilns ? What matters it, so long as the trench is deeper
and the wall goes up ? It is done four square a cir-
cuit of some 70 miles. The despot understood the ;m- ///
wrbe,
Now for the palace of His Highness. It rises like a
pack of cards square stories tapering as they succeed,
and three walls gird it round all is accomplished within
fifteen days. Yes; despotism flourishes in the plains,
THE TRUE BABYLON. 393
while freedom fights like an eagle amid the hills. The
Priest, of course, must not be overlooked. He, too,
rears his palace by help of the perishing people the
temple of Belus : gigantic images of gold are there for
Idolatry begins with civilization and on the summit is
a sumptuous bed.
And so Great Babylon is furnished to be the antagonist
of Jerusalem and the all-time Antichrist.
She is proud and skilful, scientific and worldly-wise.
Look at her situation, and the way she has improved it.
She has squatted herself down midway between the
East and West, and with her hands upon the North.
She can hunt the quarry Fortune up and down the
world. The produce of the Countries of the Euxine
and the Caspian drop down the Tigris and Euphrates,
and " the cry of the Chaldeans is in their ships," as
they strike oars to ascend 300 miles with the spices and
the gums of India. The galleons see the mighty ram-
parts and the lofty towers, in staring blue and red and
green and black and white, long before the last winding
is circumverted and they reach the bridge, which at
night is withdrawn from its piers lest the opposite sides
of the city should rob each other.
She is great in agriculture is Babylon. She has made
marvellous canals for irrigation, which have turned a
wilderness into an incomparably fruitful field. She has
provided for flood waters, and they run from lake to
lake. She has also tapped the Tigris through the delta.
She is great, too, in other Arts. It is her fancy to have
hanging gardens, a mock of the mountains which are so
far off, and she waters them from the Euphrates with a
screw. All her parallel streets as they abut the river
terminate in a brazen gate ; and the gates, of the
palace are so heavy that machines must open them.
She is skilled in pottery and the textile manufactures.
She is the Liverpool and the Manchester and the
394 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Burslem of the East. She is skilled in domestic
architecture, and her houses are three stories high.
They and the walls are fittingly embellished with the
prototypes of Doulton's ware hunting scenes men
struggling with beasts, or rather beasts with men for
man in the pursuit of wealth transforms himself into a
beast of prey the entablatures are painted and the colours
burnt in. She is great in learning too. She commits her
records to imperishable clay and burns them. Her
libraries need fear no Alexandrian fire. The inscribed
cylinders and tablets are minutely traced, and in the
mounds a lens was found. Two thousand years before
Christ as now two thousand after, in the library of
Sargon at Agane, the Babylonian student could turn up
a catalogue and ask a number as readily as we may
in the Birmingham Free Library to-day. She made
grammars of the dead Acadian tongue, wrote stories for
children, and published problems in mathematics. She
was great in Banking also, and in Law. We can audit
her Bank-books now ; she burnt them with the Creditors'
consent.
She was great in Science too. In fact, she had learnt
almost everything but Justice ! She wanted to read the
Heavens, and she got as far as the Stars. Wot ye not
that Babylon could divine ? But once her craft failed
her. She looked for the sun's eclipse, and the sun
laughed at her for days.
She was great in Arms as well. Commerce and War
hunt together always ; and, besides, the more we have
to defend the more need of our defences. Great, too,
was Babylon in cruelties. Zedekiah's eyes must be pre-
served until they have beheld his children slain then,
bring the red-hot copper basin quick !
thou virgin daughter of Babylon, where was thy
beauty ? If you had only foretold your own eclipse,
what a prophet you would have been !
THE' TRUE BABYLON. 395
Look across the Syrian desert there, almost due West,
a gulf of burning wastes divides you from another
city. There is no political wisdom in its site no
river, or access to the sea, perched upon arid hills.
She has no Arts to speak of, boasts no science. Tn her
palmiest days she had no men " who could skill to cut
timber like the Sidonians," and while you traded with
Tyre in blue cloths and broidered work, and in chests
of rich apparel, bound with cords and made of cedar,
" all she could put in the same market were natural
products of the soil wheat of Minnith and Pannag,
and honey, and oil and balm." Her greatest monarch
could get ships built by the help of his friend Hiram,
but none of his own subjects could sail them ; and
when afterwards Judah and Israel relied upon themselves
the navy was broken and lost. The city has warriors,
but they only prevail when God fights with them.
Jerusalem is light in the balances with Babylon when
the glory of this world is weighed. But let us put into
the scales the luminous Lawgiver, the sweet Psalmist
of Israel, Isaiah, Daniel and Jeremiah, and, oh! how
Babylonian glories kick the beam !
Always opposed, these two the city of the company
of faithful men, and the city of the boastful and oppres-
sive children of the world. Wherever Jerusalem is set
up there Babylon opposes her, and a gulf broader than
the Syrian desert lies between. In all times and in all
places it is so to the end of the Age, there is no
mingling of the streams, though they run side by side.
The children of Light and the children of darkness are
begotten of the same Father and sit at the same table,
but their distinctness is complete. The living world is
a striped zebra.
Babylon searched the heavens, got as far as the stars,
and rested there. Jerusalem soared above the stars,
left them behind, and forgot them, amid a radiance that
396 PURITANISM IN POWER.
made them dark, though she knew that He could bind
the sweet influence of the Pleiades, and that Arctimis
and Orion were His toys.
Jerusalem was distinguished for the spirituality of her
worship with Babylon the carnality of the Deity was
a creed. Assyria relied upon the multitudes of her
chariots and horsemen ; Salem upon the Lord her God.
Justice was the Eternal theme of the Prophets of Judaea,
and had she not crucified the Holy One and the Just
Jerusalem had never been overthrown.
In Babylon, indeed, the State did feign to protect the
slave, but in all essentials Justice was ignored. And
so ruin overtook them both. What is the Euphrates
whispering to the reeds ? What are the reeds telling one
another ? What is the brook Kedron always muttering ?
It is that God is the Judge of all the earth, and that the
blood of the innocent and the oppression of the poor
make bare His arm for vengeance. They whisper, too,
that He is coming once again to bring Judgment unto
Victory, and to establish His Kingdom in righteousness
for ever and for ever.
Ha ! thou daughter of Babylon, how art thou
despoiled !
Where now the fruitful plain ? It is a hideous, black-
ened waste in places sown with salt. Where are the
plentiful canals ? Their broken embankments march
across the flats, but their beds are dry. Only a flood
comes mooning on, unchecked and unregarded in the
deserted land. It looks here and there for something to
fertilize, and, in spreading, shallows till it sinks into a
marsh in spiritless despair. Bitterns wade the pools,
owls tenant the universal overturnings. Much of the
ancient palaces and towers have been taken to rear
neighbouring towns, but yet great cheeks of wall lie upon
the plain, furrowed deeply by tears, but not her own
Heaven's sorrows for her perfidy. See that ominous
THE TRUE BABYLON. 397
black ridge against the livid sky ! It moves as if the
ruin wore toppling once again ! No ; bj r Allah ! it is
only the lifted back of a prowling panther !
And the curse of cruelty and Injustice lingers like a
putrid odour over this grave. Dam the stream, says
the modern Turkish Pasha, and his method of getting it
done is equivalent to his adding, Damn the Peasant^.
They are summoned to the corvee throughout the
Pashalic girls, boys, women and men, and heap mud
and fascines together. They have worked, chanting the
chant that tells of painful labour, and now, Allah be
praised ! may soon hope to get back to their farms again,
for tufts of date palms still make a beggarly array, and
wild wheat springs in straggles from the ground to ask
the whispering wind what has become of Government
and men ? Allah answers the hearts in which hope is
rising by raising the level of the stream, which gives a
bull's push and sweeps the month's work away.
Pasha enjoys his hunting notwithstanding. The
defenceless gazelles are in the distance. Let fly the
falcon and the hound together. The former is soon
sticking the quarry between the horns. The affrighted
beast rolls upon the ground and the hound arrives.
Even Layard calls it " noble sport " !
The great river seems to believe in its destiny here-
after. " Men may come and men may go, but it goes on
for ever." It never grows old, and believes that " the
world is to him who waits." It keeps the secret of
Zechariah, who appears to prophesy that Commercial
iniquity will be once again set up upon its base in
Shinar, and perhaps attain to greater heights than ever.
The Karun is already open to the commerce of the West,
its turn may follow.
Meantime the secret is well kept. The tamarisk rears
its pinky spikes along its banks, the acacia spreads
its fronds, and when the breeze passes through the
398 PURITANISM IN POWER.
bordering poplars and willows they silver as they sway.
Even so may the wind of adversity make men turn their
hidden best side uppermost.
The question, however, we have to ask is, What is the
significance of Babylon in Scripture '? We know the
common interpretation given by the Eelbrmation Divines.
Is it erroneous altogether, or only by limitation and
defect? Have its largest significations hitherto been
ignored '?
To treat this question in a critical and exhaustive
manner would be impossible in this Book, but this
chapter is designed to point out the obvious insufficiency
and contradictions that pertain to the view commonly
held by Puritans, and to suggest much broader implica-
tions than have ever previously been entertained.
Jerusalem and Babylon are in Holy Scripture con-
trasted. They stand for much more than themselves.
They are set in history for object lessons to the world,
and their history is repeated in their counterparts from
age to age. There were no counterparts to Jerusalem in
the days of Babylon, but Babylon had its counterparts in
Tyre and Sidon ; in Nineveh which preceded it and
Seleucia which followed it, and was, in short, typical of
every godless world-power in existence, and it so remains.
That we should extend the significance of Babylon to
other cities is forced upon us by the striking corre-
spondence between the burden of the prophet Ezekiel
respecting Tyre, and that of the apostle John in the
Apocalypse respecting Babylon. The characteristics of
the two cities are identical so far as their commercial
aspects are concerned, and their fall is bewailed in a
similar manner by the same classes. There is, however,
a notable exception in favour of Tyre; nothing is said
about her having shed the blood of the Martyrs of Jesus,
or what in that age would be its equivalent, being the
constant persecutor of the Jews. On the contrary, Tyre
THE TRUE BABYLON. 399
and Judsea were generally on friendly terms. Hiram was
ever a lover of David. Let, however, the reader compare
Ezekiel xxvii., xxviii. with Eevelations xvii. and xviii.,
and the substantial identity of the proclaimed cities will
be apparent. This is because Babylon is simply
selected as a type, and what befalls the type will be the
doom of all the antitypes. What, then, is the special
distinction of the type ? Let the reader peruse all that
the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and
Zechariah say of Babylon, and he will be struck at once
by the prevailing and commanding emphasis laid upon
her commercial aspect, which again re-appears in
Eevelation. This is evidently primary, and other
characteristics are subsidiary. This commercial refer-
ence, it must be noted, is in connection with pride,
oppression, covetousness and fraud. It is not commerce
in itself, but iniquities attaching to the traffic of Babylon,
Tyre and Nineveh that are denounced. We find, then,
that iniquitous traffic is the main and determining
characteristic of Babylon. But there are others sub-
ordinate, and though not apparently so, really related.
First in order among the subordinates is Idolatry.
Babylon was a city of graven images. She worshipped
gold, not only as wealth, but objectively in a golden
idol, 40 feet high, and she overspread the chambers of
the Deity and all their furnishing with the same precious
metal. As the Book of Daniel testifies, she enforced her
Idolatry under mortal penalties throughout her empire.
She exactly contradicted Jerusalem in her Idolatry, which
was more gross than that of Egypt, because Egypt wor-
shipped inscrutable life, however lowly. Babylon made
its idols. But this Idolatry of Babylon was closely allied
to its commercial success. Idolatry always is. Commerce
and Idol- worship plan to run together. The games and
mysteries of Greece were piously promoted with a view
to fairs. The palmer-worm and the locust, the Priest
400 PURITANISM IN POWER.
and the Merchant together cropped the multitude.
To-day in India every idolatrous festival is an occasion
for an enormous Market. No wonder, when the object
is to attract a concourse, that Idolatry should overlook
every other consideration but the essential one of making
its worship attractive by pandering to the vices of its
votaries, and that release from the dread of the Deities'
displeasure should be made a marketable commodity
purchasable from the Temple vendors. But further.
The Idolatry of Babylon the worship of the work of
men's hands is not to be supposed as signifying nothing
more. It stands for the transference to any other object
than God of that entire subservience of body, soul and
spirit which is His due. The Idolatry of wealth, of
power, of knowledge, of woman, of self all is Babj'lonish.
Babylon represents the worship of the material and the
human, as opposed to the Spiritual and the Divine.
First, commercial ascendency ; second, Idolatrous
devotion to the world ; the third and last related
characteristic is War, including slavery and all manner
of unjust oppression. War and Commerce are Siamese
twins. Mercenary troops were as necessary to Tyre and
Carthage, Genoa and Pisa as ships and sailors. True
there have been wars enough that had no other object
than gratifying the resentment or ambition of a despot,
but the original cause of armies, whatever the uses
they may afterwards be made to subserve, is the
protection of commerce ; and the real cause of many
a prolonged struggle between nations, undertaken upon
other pretexts which have puzzled stupid historians, has
been markets and nothing else. But it would be a great
mistake to confine the significance of war in the Babylon
characteristic to Naval and Military operations. War
here stands for the rule of brute force the rule of the
strong, irrespective of justice and in the interests of gain.
Hence this Babylonish significant is the representative
THE TKUE BABYLON. 401
of the war of all unjust Governments upon oppressed
peoples, of Capital against Labour, and of Capitalistic
combinations against the public and one another : Com-
merce, Idolatry and War form the Babylonish Trinity.
Now the standing contrast to all this represented by
Jerusalem is evident. Commerce had no commanding
influence either upon her policy or character. She was
bidden by her Prophets to eschew alliances and inter-
course with neighbouring Nations. War was never her
choice, but her misfortune, and Idolatry was her acknow-
ledged sin. The supreme passion of the Jews was fealty
to the one true and invisible Jehovah, the Inspirer of her
prophets and the Giver of her immutable law and
pregnant ceremonies. No nation in the world has left it-
such a precious legacy. Each civilization in its turn has
brought some stone to the cairn of human greatness,
but Israel's pearl excels them all. She taught us that
the strength of States consists in Eighteousness, the
fruit and evidence of the worship of personified justice
and mercy, goodness. and truth ; and that States yielding
to the world's idolatries shall endure captivity in
Babylon, if haply by repentance they escape her doom.
Jerusalem, then, stands for the Church; Babylon, for
the World ; and from our extension of the Idolatry
definition it will be evident that the monotheism of the
False Prophet cannot escape inclusion ; for if commerce
in Mohammedan countries is subordinate, the idolatry of
woman is evident, and War in all its extended significance
is supreme.
What, however, about the common identification of
Babylon with the Church of Eome ?
We find actually that Catholic Countries are dis-
tinguished for their commercial inferiority to Protestant
States. The apparent exception of France may not
be dissevered from her Atheism. Eoman Catholicism
is not favourable to industry, wealth or commercial
26
402 PURITANISM IN POWER.
enterprise. Venice, Florence and Genoa were its
nearest approaches to Babylon. The Protestant Low
Countries and rebel Anglia have long since eclipsed
their commercial fame.
The teaching of the Boman Catholic Church was
inimical to the accumulation or the worship of wealth.
It based its title to consideration upon spiritual power-
not material riches. To its immortal honour be it said
its Popes and Preachers denounced Usury, undertook
the cause of the slave and the serf, laboured to make
law more just and merciful, and interposed the Church's
hand between the panting combatants of feudal Europe.
These are singular qualifications for representing
Babylon the absence of Commerce and the denun-
ciation of War !
I am aware that many a warlike intrigue was instigated
by the Holy See for the recovery or extension of its
supremacy, and that in the pursuit of her claims that
Church is still the troubler of nations. Her objective,
however, was never Babylonian. A mistaken idea that
spiritual ends were to be compassed by worldly means
in which Protestants, with a difference, have followed
her can never place her in the category of those who
deliberately war for markets.
She has, however, warred upon the Saints of the Most
High God that is undeniable. She is stained with the
blood of the Albigenses and the Huguenots, and is
blackened with the ashes of the Martyrs of the Inquisi-
tion. This, however, when her enslavement to traditional
theology is considered, should rather entitle her to
respect than otherwise. If annates and first-fruits and
Peter's pence only were in view, then it was thoroughly
Babylonian ; but in the memory of Thomas More and
many others we dare not thus regard her persecutions.
At the time she believed that it was mercy to the World
to stamp out heresy in blood ; and that to prevent whole
THE TRUE BABYLON. 403
nations burning for ever it was well to add fifteen
minutes to the eternal torments of a few. What about
Kome's idolatry ? We reply it blazes in the Mass and in
the worship of the Virgin, but not with knowledge of the
idol, which makes all the difference ; and the idolatry of
sacraments belongs to Protestants, the Quakers only
excepted. The idolatry that Eome is free from is the
idolatry of wealth, which is truly Babylonish and as
truly Protestant. Nothing is more sadly strange than
the obliquity of vision which, overlooking all the
Babylonian characteristics rampant within itself, has
led Protestantism to affix upon the Church of Eome the
mark of the Babylonian beast.
The Church that handed down to us the Scriptures
and fixed the Canon the Church of the Apostles and the
Nicene Creed the Church of Augustine, Origen, the
two Clements, Gregory of Naziansen and Gregory the
Great the Church of St. Francis of Assisi and St.
Bernard, of Pascal, Fenelon and Newman ; it is really a
joke to connect it with Babylon.
The indebtedness of the World to the Christianity of
the Church of Eome is simply enormous and can never
be discharged. It stands still for the enforcement of
Christian characteristics sadly infrequent among self-
asserting boastful " robust " Protestants. It exhibits
the Divine virtues of subjection and obedience, of
deadness to worldly things and a diligent searching
after heavenly treasure in a more obvious manner than
do any of our Protestant sects. But in truth all those
sprang from her. She is the lusty mother of all the
Dissenters. The Donatists, their counterpart in ancient
days, were her sons. The Italian Apostolicans,
Wycliffe, Luther, and Huss were all her children. We
need not defame our glorious Mother who subdued the
savages of the North and upon the ruins of Pagan
Eome erected the fair structure of cross-covered Europe.
404 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Searching, then, for tokens that Koine is Babylon we
do not find them. But when she traffics in indulgences
we see that she is adding to her other vestments a
Babylonish Garment, and when she adds dogma to
dogma and saint to saint we perceive that the Pot which
preserved the precious truth through so many ages has
acquired some Babylonian mould.
The touch of Babylon, alas ! stains all our churches.
It is not in the Church of Rome that the idolatry of
material means and self-sufficiency are most con-
spicuous.
We now draw attention to the true counterparts of
Babylon. It is strange that when so much has been
made of Rome's idolatry, the heathen world should have
been entirely overlooked. Insular Englishmen con-
cocting polemics in an age anterior to missions absolutely
overlooked seven hundred millions of men ! It is here we
must find the true Babylon in one of its most striking
differentiae. And it is a thrilling thought that we stand
upon the threshold of the downfall of the great heathen
systems of Idolatry which have dominated the world with
issues so disastrous. The present generation may
witness the wholesale abandonment of idols by India and
China; Africa will lag behind, but not for long. The
comparison of their own country with Western
Christendom and the United States, combined with
education in the Western Sciences and Arts,, is leading
the rising generation of heathendom to abandon their
ancient cults. There is a general decay of Religion
throughout the world. So soon as it is seen that
Idolatry does not pay, it will be abandoned. It has
no resting place except in self-interest, there are no con-
straining attachments to it from Divine affinities, for the
Light of Asia has become dim, and Confucius spake only
of this world. The humbug of the Priests is being
rapidly exploded. The prophecy of the downfall of
THE TRUE BABYLON. 405
Babylon is, then, the prophecy of the national rejection
of idols among the heathen ; and the glorious day is
close upon us. How glorious, let those who understand
the connection between idolatry and vice consider.
Next we may enquire of War. This, too, is doomed as
sure as Babylon must fall. War, we have said, stands for
the rule of brute force. All oppression on the part of
Governments, and of employers, and of combinations of
Capitalists against the generality, and of Capitalists
among themselves slavery in all its forms is prophesied
to fall, and with it the pomp and circumstance of the
Military and Naval article. This, too, is close upon us,
but that is not all. The key to the mystery of Babylon
is to be found in Modern Commerce, so huge in its
extent and so world-wide in its connections, that it
answers well to Babylon the Great ; and by the guiltiness
which too frequently attaches to it, justifies the expressive
if forbidding figure by which in Scripture it is described.
The downfall of Modern Commerce and the entire
fabric of our present political economy is near.
In connection with it will take place the purging of
falsity from the Churches of Christendom.
Whatever in Catholicism and Protestantism is Baby-
lonish is doomed to perish, but the largest part of
Babylon is not ecclesiastical, it is civil. Idolatry, War,
White Slavery and Commercial Iniquity will all perish
together. The disturbance to worldly " interests "
thereby will be incalculable, but from Jerusalem, where-
ever Jerusalem is set up, will arise the echo to the
heavenly song, " Alleluia ; Salvation, and glory, and
honour, and power, unto the Lord our God : For true
and righteous are his judgments : for he hath judged
the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her
fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants
at her hand. And again they said, Alleluia. And her
smoke rose up for ever and ever."
406
CHAPTER XIV.
INTERLUDE. ST. PETER SITS AT THE GATES.
HIGH are the Arches. Oh ! but they tower aloft till the
sweep of them is as the rim of worlds.
Two globose tunnels, walled and roofed and floored
with flame side by side but angle-wise, the meeting
of two ways that stretch to incommensurable divergence.
The flames are different; one is cheerful but terrible
a gateway of the sun ; the way behind it lost in a
radiance that has no part dark.
The cavernous depths of the other gate are dimly
discernible by blue glimmering palpitations, whose fires,
non-luminous, are mtensel} 7 strong. This is the entrance
to the blackness of darkness, where the sting of the
tongue of the flame is not beheld but felt.
Enthroned between the Gateways sits St. Peter. The
winds obey him and draw into the several vaults the
souls that shower downwards from the upper earth.
Those who enter into darkness endure the sting of the
black flames just in proportion to the corruption of their
souls.
The quality of the spirit either partially neutralizes or
exalts the flames' tormenting power, so that each and all
at their first introduction begin to receive in exact
accordance to their moral states.
The Blessed likewise have to pass through fire, but
upon them the bright flames act only to purify and
purge of remnant dross ; those imperfections which
attached to them, but had no roots in their consenting
will, falling from them at the flames' first purifying touch.
And then in radiance regaled by flames that scorched
not, but laved the immortals as the sea laves marble,
they pass on through the vestibule of fire.
INTERLUDE. ST. PETEE SITS AT THE GATES. 407
A breeze of cheerful music rustles in the sun-bright
Avenue, soft and sweet, the echoes wandering happily
about and refusing to lie down and die, for even echoes
are immortal there.
An awful roaring storm rages through the Cavern of
black flame. You can hear the multitudinous lament,
the gushings of tearless sighs, the abortive wrestlings
against Fate, the shriekings from fierce pain, the swaying
of uplifted arms, wrung hands, and heads that beat
the night without deliverance from misery the cries to
Justice, who to them is both deaf and blind. The awful
roaring of the storm continues to rise and fall with
the numbers that enter in, and away, far above the
blue palpitating sun of the Gateway of Despair, we can
see the smoke of the furnace ascending up on high :
from the nether pit a swarm of human creatures with
hands pressed against the face, and hair down, hanging
as a veil soaring high and still higher, until the tapering
smoke of sable figures is shot with tender radiance from
the Hill of Zion. Higher still, until the stars are
braided in the vaporous net, and whether the living
cloud is changing into stars or only hopelessly hovers
about their steadfast splendour becomes a matter of
faith, not sight.
And the constellations, whence come they ? They are
added to continuously from the Avenue of Light, where
the tongues of flame scorch only what is tainted, and
lick with healing and affection the wounds that mortals
have sustained in battling for the Eight tongues of
flame that spear with radiance the whole arc of heaven,
and lift aloft, to recruit the chorus of the morning stars,
those who shall shine in the firmament of God for ever.
Turn we to behold the showering Dead ! Down flow
the children in all the shades in which the sun has
tinted human kind, and of all the ages which capacity
to resist the evils of environment determined.
408 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Then I saw that connected with the pathway of glorious
Light there were several ante-charnbers that led into it,
and into one of them the Infant dead were taken by the
Angels. In another, those whose experience of Life's
evils had been longer were taken upon the knees of Holy
teachers, and when for the first time their uplifted eyes
were answered by the radiance of Kebuking Love, they
forgot their angry passions and their naughty words,
and a new look grew into their faces while they caught
the heavenly harmonies. Other children were there
fat, proud, greedy and contemptuous who, receiving
into a fertile soil the evil lessons of social exclusiveness,
allowed God's imprint of Natural Justice and Kindness
upon their hearts to be defaced and worn away. These
children are now made to wash the feet of the poor and
despised ones, while they hear from the other place the
cries and lamentations of the parents who had made
them proud. There was a beautiful and surprising place
reserved for children who had suffered from brutal
treatment in their homes whose lives had been one
cruel misery until the Angels whisked them hither and
with them were children whose weakness and ineptitude
when cleaning, tending, and working with the mighty
Engine forces had caused their mutilation and their
death. During the moral training which they needed
and received they were allowed to play at intervals in
the "Wronged Children's garden," where they strung
into chaplets flowers that never died.
Hard by was the Hall of Compensations, another ante-
chamber conducting to the King's Highway. Here arc
admitted all who have suffered wrongfully in mind, body,
or estate. In this Hall is made up to them that portion
of their inheritance in life of which social injustice had
deprived them, and their moral probation is continued
under happier auspices for a season. Into this chamber
pass the men who seldom knew a Sabbath's rest the
INTERLUDE. ST. PETEK SITS AT THE GATES. 40i)
men who carried people to their Sunday banquets of
spiritual food, and had themselves to go without the men,
women and children who sickened at their trades, and
when premature death terminated their sufferings sus-
tained a curtailment of their opportunities for repentance.
These are welcomed with sound of Trumpet into the
Eternal Sabbath, and their poor, dark, stunted minds are
put to school. The floor of these rooms is watered with
Kepentance.
It would be impossible to describe the look of marvel-
lous gladness with which the noble among the heathen,
by St. Peter's winds, were hurried to the Hall. The relic
of a former Sufferer had for them an extraordinary
fascination. In shape it was a cross and they were
told that that Sufferer's compensation exceeded any
other's, and that one day they would see Him as He is.
The Fathers and Mothers of the children who, in the
struggle to provide for them, seemed to lose the natural
instincts of the animal for its brood these were both
punished and compensated for the racking torment of
their casual and ill-paid labour. At the core of most
home quarrels and unnatural tempers lay the normal
money trouble, binding all thought in slavery to the
lowest and most ordinary needs. For the Poverty-be-
ridden Fathers and Mothers who were neither vicious,
idle, nor incompetent there is a sojourn in a section of
the Hall of Compensations until their true quality reveals
itself.
The Kain of the Dead continues the sheet of falling
infants and young children ever the background of the
Picture. Legs, arms, headless trunks, maimed bodies
gashed with gore. " An accidental accident," said my
Guide. Streams of the consumptive from the looms of
Manchester and Belfast ; bunches of asthmatics from
the Potteries ; livid beings from the Chemical Works.
Another tumble of maimed wretches from a great ex-
410 PURITANISM IN POWER.
plosion ; then a bevy of grim seamen with the weed about
their forms ; another bevy, and yet another. " There has
been a storm," said my Guide ; " but this murder is not
God's act, but man's." Paul's companions in shipwreck
receive some of these drowned seamen, while to others
the earthly judgment has been the prelude to a merited
Eternal one. But now a pompous Personage descends ;
he rolls his eyes fearfully about, and is caught by the winds
and borne to the cavern's gloom. Then he sinks, down,
lower and lower, drowned in fathomless abysses, while
his outstretched hand and arm are grasped ln r no deliver-
ing hand the weight of many ship-wrecked cargoes
hangs about his feet.
The Arch Promoter of many Public Companies has
nothing to say in his own recommendation when St.
Peter turns him to the left. Into each ear there enters
a whirlpool of hot wind and blows his head into a
bubble, which being burst discovers nothing but the
chambers of Chicane.
The Business Screw is his brother. His use of life
has been to squeeze and cheat and falsify and batten
upon frauds. He had never met his match until Mors
confronted him and now St. Peter. A forked black
flame enters his body like a worm, and works screw- like
round and round within his bubbling vitals. Above the
echoes of that awful place arise the shrieks of that fiery
screw as its drills within his heart.
The Landlord who seized upon a Tenant's helplessness
to exact a toll that he was unable to pay, but still less
able to resist ; and the house farmer who kept adding to
the rent wherever Benevolence or Sanitary Law compelled
an improvement in the abominable neighbourhood.
These are submitted to a rising temperature which
they are unable to resist, and they cry unavailingly,
"Woe, woe, woe is me! Can I get no reduction of this
claim?"
INTERLUDE. ST. PETER SITS AT THE GATES. 411
Groups of large Employers who took no care for the
bodies of their hands until the law compelled them, and
received no admonition from deaths absurdly pronounced
by " Crowner's Quest" as "accidental"; men who lay
in wait that they might privily catch the poor, and in the
ceaseless sweating of their wages taught them to know
Capital as their enemy, and to be equal with it in
rendering no more service than they possibly could help
these, who never toiled in the fire before, were now given
to feed the black flames of Factories, and nothing will be
deducted from their wages.
Government contractors who poisoned armies, and
shipowners who half poisoned crews ; those who
drew fortunes into their laps through imposing on the
credulous, and those who steadfastly maintained that
every wrong by which they profited was an ordinance of
God these were severally dealt with in a place where
the tormentors had been clever.
But there were some great merchants and manufac-
turers who had administered their great cures like a
province to be held for the glory of God and the fulfilment
of His Eighteousness ; and others, who on a smaller
scale, were their equals in fidelity.
These, together with Administrators of Colonies and
Dependencies Righteous Rulers, Just Judges, men in
whom the fear of man was cancelled by the love of God
Statesmen who would have escaped the charge of
hypocrisy if only they had deserved it on each and all
of these St. Peter smiled, stepping sometimes from his
throne to bid them welcome, while there were not a few
upon whom he turned and looked, whereat they did weep
bitterly, although they passed beneath the Arch of
Triumph.
Suddenly a thick and noisome air spread itself
around like the herald of a Pestilence, and a great shout
was raised which shook the nether and the upper worlds.
412 PURITANISM IN POWEK.
"Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen ! " and a mighty
Shade, whose crown was as the pinnacles of Alps, whose
sceptre was as the axle of a world, and whose robe could
reach across the seas and wrap round continents in its
corners this monstrous Shade came tumbling midst the
Dead, and Hell beneath was moved to meet its coming.
Straightway the spectres of the " Great" arose. He
of Macedon who was feeling for another world to conquer,
when a world he wot not of came up and conquered him
the mighty Conqueror of Gaul for Borne, who lost the
reality of power through lusting for its idle symbol the
Tartar of fearful fame who drank up human blood as
tropic Helios laps the sea, and the small Corsican who
made European States his playthings, and was baffled by
the feeble, wandering, aimless snow these mighty
Shades, with others of their kind, were given truce in the
expiation of their evil deeds, and stood around, tier above
tier, lending a burning glance of scorn and vengeful
salutation upon the greater Shade than all. They open
their mouths with one accord, and speak in a measured
shout " Art thou also become weak as we ? Art thou
become like unto us ? " At the thunder of the challenge
the mighty crown tumbles from the ghastly head and all
the jewels roll away as worms. " Thy pomp is brought
down to the grave," say the multitude, " and the voice
of thy viols ; the worm is spread under thee and the
worms cover thee." The Great Shade staggers and falls
prone the eyes desert their sockets and run to and fro
as livid serpents the robe which was cast about the
nations becomes a warp and woof of worms the sceptre
smitten into fragments lies as dust upon the ground.
"How art thou fallen from heaven," cry the multitude, "0
Lucifer, son of the morning : how art thou cut down to
the ground that did weaken the nations."
And from the upper world there came the echoes of a
sweet chant " The whole earth is at rest and is quiet."
INTEKLUDE. ST. PETER SITS AT THE GATES. 413
They break forth into singing " Kighteousness shall be
the girdle of His loins, and faithfulness the girdle of His
reins."
And as the Judgment sits, the Shades, blanched by the
spectacle of that Great Euin, retire and fall back upon
their beds of expiation, while delicious music fills the
sunlit highway ; and the stars of heaven, losing their
steadfastness, enter into a dance of joy, as they sing
together the 82nd Psalm: "God standeth in the
congregation of the mighty ; He judge th among the gods.
How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons
of the wicked ? Defend the poor and fatherless : do
justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and
needy : rid them out of the hand of the wicked. They
know not, neither will they understand ; they walk on in
darkness : all the foundations of the earth are out
of course. I have said, Ye are gods ; and all of you are
children of the Most High. But ye shall die like men,
and fall like one of the princes. Arise, God, judge
the earth : for thou shalt inherit all nations."
414
CHAPTER XT.
PROPOSITIONS DEFENDED.
Vide CHAPTER IV.
(1,) That trouble is a necessary ingredient in the cup
of life, if it is to do us good,
THOSE are no true philosophers who make happiness
our being's end and aim, or who imagine that by
pursuing it as a primary it will ever be attained in the
same measure as if left to come unbidden along with Duty
its inseparable friend.
Trouble is a sword which in piercing the flesh rends
also the veil w 7 hich hides the invisible from us. It
shakes our false supports, and when all seems falling
around us, it places in our vacant arms Divinity itself.
Trouble is the refiner of spirits, the dreaded visitant
which turns out to be an Angel. A world which was
designed to be a school for spirits could never be
adequately furnished without its presence. Tain is the
expectation that men can travel towards Olympus upon
the honey of Mount Hymettus. The fennel's bitter leaf
is necessary, and " they who battled and subdued a
wreath of fennel wore." The subject is too trite to be
continued.
(2,) That there is a trouble which, in excess and
confined to the individual, degrades. This is the Econom-
ical trouble, and there are troubles ivhich refine and
exalt, such as sickness, bereavement, sold discipline, the
endurance of wrong, altruistic sympathy, national crises,
disappointments and reverses in the struggle for greai
ends.
It will be observed that we say " in excess " and
" confined to the individual." For the trouble that
comes from the struggle for existence is a discipline of
PROPOSITIONS DEFENDED. 415
incalculable value when preserved within bounds, and
may be sharply felt by an entire commonwealth without
inducing the degradation that ensues when it presses
solely on the individual. It might not be at all well for a
commonwealth to be invariably prosperous and free from
all anxiety as to its supplies or its defences, but when all
suffer together it leads to greater union and sympathy,
instead of class repulsions, smouldering sense of injustice,
schism, jealousies, rending of the body corporate. The
rest speaks for itself.
(3,) That only the trouble u-hich degrades and the
riches ivhich corrupt ivill disappear normally from the new
order, leaving the natural troubles incident to human
existence to exercise their blessed moral influence, and
indirectly to minister to human happiness.
. The only point calling for exposition in the above
appears to be the expression " natural troubles incident
to human existence." We by hypothesis have eliminated
the economical trouble as unnatural, being indeed
completely artificial in England A.D. 1890, but there are
other troubles to which the wealthiest are exposed which
would admit of reduction from the artificial amount to
the natural minimum, and which are only delayed by
the retardation of the Emancipation- of the Poor. We
allude more especially to the stamping out of disease.
The Divine ideal of human life is set before us in
prophecies which speak of a man's life becoming as the
life of a tree. In all the recorded life of the Pattern
Man we have instances of His suffering enough, but
never from sickness. Now how can the public health be
better advanced than by doing away with the hideously
unsanitary concomitants of Poverty, and how is it
possible to stamp out infectious diseases when the very
classes who make and do for the wealthy and the idle,
and who are daily employed upon their garments and
handling their food, are the classes amidst whom disease
416 PURITANISM IN POWER.
is bred and holds itself as in a fastness, defying expulsion
until its nest is pulled to pieces ?
Other evils which are artificial and directly due to the
regime of Individualism are drunkenness and smoking
to excess, and partly what is known as " the social evil."
How do Temperance Reformers hope to attain their ends
when the supply of intoxicants to the public is a trade in
the hands of individuals or companies whose business it
is to increase the consumption by every possible means ?
As long as drink and milk are not Government
Departments we shall have drunkenness and typhoid
without remedy. And the same may be said of smoking
among boys, striplings, and lately women. The great
tobacco manufacturers are interested in extending the
extravagant and the unhealthy and the dawdling
indulgence throughout the country and in gathering into
the net women and children.
From this unnatural trouble to the race, excess in
smoking, as in drinking, we must look to the new order
to deliver us.
(4,) That the present state of the world offers a
practically limitless field for the pursuit of great ends in
the advancement of the species. That consequently the
relieving of individuals from care for their otrn
maintenance will not oblige them, for ivant of opportunity,
to relax their energies, but will enable them to hearken
to the call for strenuous exertion, self-sacrifice and
devotion, this time to great causes, and icill free millions
to engage in them who now stoop to the earth in the life-
long effort to pay bills.
It would be a valid objection against any social order
that it left men without any unattainable ideal, nothing
more to hope for, nothing to fight for, no call for any
other temper in humanity than complacent and satisfied
animalism.
It is not fair to judge social schemes by this standard,
PROPOSITIONS DEFENDED. 417
because the facts of the world, in the day in which social
schemes are being discussed, deprive any one of the
expectation that any but the freeest and most advanced
nations will make progress towards their realization ; and
to communicate the benefit of the great Reform after it
has been submitted to many tests will be the happy life
object of multitudes throughout many hundreds of years
to come. If we could suppose a period when each
member of mankind would be entitled to the blue ribbon
as a beast, perfectly well bred and fed, it would be time
the career of the race had terminated. This indeed is
its proper termination. When perfection has been attained
in any one respect, it is time a higher standard were
introduced. The spiritual part of man his real Being,
must never be ignored, or the fact that whatever the
ease and sufficiency of his lot here below, it belongs to
his high nature never to rest contentedly in Time, but
ever to court company with the great Immortals that
surround him and to tend towards the Infinite
perfections of the Father of all flesh. Hence there
would ever be a constant spiritual warfare, and a
struggle for advance, even should there be no call for this
attitude and temper in the crookedness of mundane
things. Unless Human Life has a moral and not
merely a material end as its objective, it is, as we have
elsewhere said, an insoluble enigma. We rejoice to know
that the true meaning of human life is moral and no
other, and that knowledge" bids us arise to condemn and
destroy whatever in our social condition wars against
the possibilities of Good in human beings.
(5,) That thus the new order will be conducive of
moral progress and not of sensual indulgence, icliich
the extremes of Poverty and Riches both at present
favour.
That the extremes of Poverty and Eiches meet in a
common liability to foster immorality (in its narrow
27
418 PURITANISM IN POWER.
acceptance) is proverbial, but this is not the entire
content of this proposition. It points to the heedless
multiplication of the species on the part of the poor,
who, alike from the fact that thrift can never avail them
against such odds as fluctuations in trade and seasons,
and from the hope of getting their children speedily to
work so as to add to the family income, disregard all
the counsels of prudence in the length of their families.
The new order would inspire its citizens with nobler
ideals than satisfaction in material and sensual things.
It would operate against added leisure being ignobly used
by the freed Labourer and would oblige Labour on the
part of those who are now corrupted by their idleness.
Above all, the Missionary propaganda of the Social
Evangel accompanying the Heavenly Evangel would
never allow enthusiasm to die. All that we now see of
energy and hope and philanthropic virtue we should
still maintain, only upon a larger scale, operating
upon a wider field and gladdened as often by triumphs
as now saddened by defeats.
Eeaders of "Looking Backward" must have been
rather disappointed at the absence of condiment in the
life depicted, and it was suggested that the quickening
stimulus that competition compels was in part supplied,
after its disappearance, by a fuller appreciation of the
sexual affinities.
Against such a view this writer earnestly protests.
If mankind is to advance it must be by the denial of
the instincts which are distinctly animal, and the culti-
vation of that "spirit" which is contrary to the "flesh.'"
Let no one fear the ridicule with which that thesis will
be met. It will be time for the human race to die out
without remainders when that thesis ceases to be accepted
as a counsel of perfection.
419
CHAPTER XVI.
PROPOSITION DEFENDED.
(6,) That notwithstanding the obvious claims that Radical
Social Reform makes upon Christian nations, ice need not
expect that it ivill be brought about without Force, since
society rests upon Force, and can only be re-set upon its
foundations by the same.
PAST History, which is the record of the abuse of Power
for the sake of robbery, or the interest of false Priests,
testifies in every line that the sole basis of any civilized
order of society that has yet existed on the National Scale
is Force. When that is said and admitted, it is implied
that Christianity has not yet begun its work of saving
Nations.
That which rests upon Force rests upon Injustice.
The Child which Christianity labours to bring forth in
this world is Justice. It is not yet born.
The triumph of Injustice, so far, has been so complete
and signalised in every Age that one is almost con-
founded by contemplating the magnitude of the triumph
of Righteousness that is to succeed and more than com-
pensate for the past.
If we confine our attention to our own Country, begin-
ning with the Norman Conquest that monstrous piece
of Injustice we observe a considerable Nation, prostrated
at the feet of a band of marauders, simply because they
have got arms in their hands.
And then commences lawless confiscation ; the wasting
of farms and villages for the creation of the chase ; the
imposition upon an impoverished people of heavier tri-
bute; the introduction of foreigners into the public
offices ; the attempted burial of the people's tongue ;
and the increase in the weight and galling nature of the
420 PURITANISM IN POWER.
yoke with every faint upheaval of the cause of Eight.
As then, so afterwards, and so still, Society in England,
as elsewhere, rests simply upon Force.
Power when enthroned was regarded as a god, and
Royal Prerogative as a kind of elemental Natural Force,
which men were entitled to protect themselves against
as best they might, but must never hope to live
without.
The amazing obsequiousness of multitudes to claims
put forward from a throne must ever lend to history its
comic vein. The encroachments of Royal Prerogative
are only to be restrained by Force. The armed Barons
extorted Magna Charta from the wretched John
because they were armed. Edward I. confirmed the new
freedom, not at all in compliance with his subjects'
wishes, but in unwilling submission to the force of his
enemies over the border, who drove him to seek his
Commons' aid.
The Force of France was afterwards indirectly exerted
to prevent the bulwarks of English freedom from being
overthrown. Subsequently Prerogative, ever on the
watch to break through and steal, encroached again
under the Tudors, and with the Stuarts undid the
liberties of Edward III. liberties which had been lost
for ever, but for the Nation's armed appeal.
But while Barons and Burgesses were securing their
own liberties by Force the multitude, stricken by
poverty and partial legislation into chronic helplessness,
lay at the feet of their Manorial Lords.
These, so jealous of the Monarch's power, used their
own without scruple against their villains. Those indeed
were less unhappily situated than their feudal counter-
parts upon the Continent, for England escaped that
heroic achievement of Injustice which consisted in ex-
empting the lands of the Nobles and the Church from
making any contributions to the public burdens.
PROPOSITION DEFENDED. 421
Their situation, however, even at its best, in that
fifteenth century which contrasts so favourably with
our own, was relatively and really so hard that Wycliffe's
poor priests found them as dry wood ready to kindle at
the fire of their words.
The Bible that standing menace of all forms of
Society in which Injustice is primary, made the villains
ask themselves, "Are we really made to be destroyed?
Surely the people is grass, for multitude and brevity of
existence ; but are we made to be cropped by fat and
idle beasts?"
At last they rose against a tax levied with scandalous
injustice, and having committed the folly of disbanding
upon a King's promise of redress, were basely cheated,
and for the time appeared to have fallen backward into
greater slavery ; for many of those, who to the shame of
Justice had had to purchase freedom, were now to her
greater shame dragged back again to villainage under
pretexts colourable or colourless.
It is the opinion of historians, nevertheless, that the
peasants' revolt was not without its gains. It did more
for them than a strike of modern days, which, if it seem
entirely to fail, yet really wards off or prevents assaults
upon wages assaults that are always imminent when
resistance is not feared. The peasants really won ; their
insurrection was quenched in treachery and blood, but
their exhibition of Force advanced their freedom, and
nothing else would have prospered so well, or prospered
at all.
No opportunity should be lost of restoring to saintly
honour and reverential remembrance the names of John
Ball and Wat Tyler. D'Aubigne', the historian of the
Eeformation, has thought fit, with customary modern
Protestant superiority to the cause and sufferings of the
Poor, to sneer at the name of Ball as he also sneered
at the peasants' revolt in Germany, and at the
422 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Anabaptist movement, which he had not the wit to
comprehend.
But the cause of the Kentish insurgents was as much
the cause of Righteousness as the truth which Wycliffe
and Luther preached was the cause of God ; and, of
course, the only reason why the poor did not win both
in Germany and England, was because their forces were
undisciplined and ill-led supplies they would have found,
though Wat Tyler's "mob," "rabble," "dregs of the
populace " add what other term of opprobium you will-
would not dirty its hands by a theft.
It was Force which crushed the Lollard movement,
and rolled back the rising tide of Reformation for a
hundred years.
It was Force which subsequently denned the bound-
aries of the Protestant States, emptied France of its
Huguenots, and Spain of its Protestant Confessors.
The ultimate rescue of Catholic Europe from the bebase-
ment of its Christianity is no more to be thwarted by
the temporary triumph of the " god of Forces " than is
the cause of the labouring poor to be given up as hope-
less, because hitherto it has remained irredeemable by
any peaceful measures of reform the force of Capital
presenting an insurmountable obstacle to a multitude
yet untrained in the virtue of organization and the
omnipotence of accumulated funds.
The Prussian Land Reforms of Stein and Hardenberg
were due to the Force of Napoleon at the battle of Jena.
Those of Denmark to the turbulence of a miserable
Peasantry.
The degree of Constitutional liberty which the
European States at present enjoy, they owe to the
Force of the French Revolution in the first place, and
to the Force of the Republican armies in the second
both being improved upon by the riots of 1848.
Our Reform Bill of 1832 would never have been con-
PROPOSITION DEFENDED. 423
ceded but for the imminence of an appeal to Force by a
determined majority. Deftly and diplomatically nothing
is left to appear as yielded to insubordination and
menace, but in reality nothing in the way of popular
rights of any real moment has ever been conceded
except to Force. The forms of Force may differ, its
action be direct or indirect, its pressure be felt or only
dreaded whichever .way it is, the radical is present in
the case of all Eeforms : not one of them takes place
except under the pressure of a threatened greater evil.
One seeming exception to this is to be found in the
emancipation of the Eussian serfs by the Czar Alexander,
but when more narrowly examined it is seen to conform
to the rule. For the Czar, vested with supreme authority
in the State, employed that Force to coerce the Nobles
into compliance. None but an absolute ruler could have
done it. It is not the first time, and apparently will not
be the last, that absolutism has favoured the cause of
the lowly. The young Emperor of Germany seems dis-
posed to advance the prosperity of his own poor by the
interposition of his Imperial Will.
It is idle to expect that the course of history will
change, aixd that for the future Force will not be
necessary in England for the achievement of funda-
mental change.
We have had minor Eeforms of the Constitution with-
out the resort to Force ; but to reform the Constitution
is a different thing from applying it to accomplish
Eighteousness.
It may be regarded as certain that the propertied
classes would allow of no reforms which affected their
privileges injuriously without resorting to the last
measures of defence.
Sufficient evidence of this readiness to appeal to Force
is afforded by the way in which strikes are met, viz., by
an appeal to the Sword of Starvation.
424 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Those who are content to bring together penniless
men to fight one another as in a cockpit, and wait with
inward satisfaction for the sure results of famine, would
not hesitate, if the way were open, to engage troops to
shoot down citizens with a legal charter of emancipation
in their hands. The disinterested Justice displayed by
St. Louis need not be expected from them.
The French King sent his Commissioners to institute
enquiries into the rightful ownership of Estates that
had come into his possession, and such as were found to
have been wrongfully alienated he restored. When the
rightful owners had disappeared he made distribution
to the poor. St. Louis is scarcely to be credited with
descendants in Protestant England.
Acquiescence we may look for in such matters as
altering the incidence of taxation, and perhaps in the
principle of a graduated income tax ; but when, although
proceeding in a perfectly peaceful, legal and constitu-
tional manner, it is found that advanced Reformers have
become so powerful in the House of Legislature as to
threaten territorial influence by a measure for the
Nationalization of Land then, if I mistake not, there
will commence a serious conspiracy against the exist-
ing popular rights.
There would be no further talk of compromise ; there
would be deliberate plotting to undo that political
machinery which might be endured when regarded as a
model ; but when it is seen, infused with steam, set to
work to lift a dead weight from the National prosperity
and independence, it becomes an intolerable spectacle,
sufficient to turn an Aristocrat into a Luddite. And
this notwithstanding that compensation would be tendered
in the measure in which it was justly due.
It would not be the first time in English history that
popular progress had been stayed and the cause of F^ee-
dom had suffered a reverse ; and it is a very optimistic
PKOPOSITION DEFENDED. 425
view to take that there is no possibility of a successful
appeal to Force to undo the really powerful engine for
reform that resides in the Constitution, but which the
people have been crass enough never to use as they might
and ought.
In such a case, however, sides and parties would be
reversed. The law-breakers, the insurgents, the "mob"
would be the Aristocracy and the Plutocracy, the Conser-
vatives would be found among the masses.
It is therefore only right to look facts squarely in the
face and to perceive the truth of things. We may sow
England broadcast with leaflets and gain conviction
among unprejudiced minds as to what is necessary in
order to real progress in the cure of social ills, and so
long as it is talk and nothing more, the privileged classes
will smile as calmly as the moon at a barking dog. It is
quite possible to convince a whole nation and yet for that
nation to be quite helpless to realise its aims. The one
effectual argument for really radical reforms is the sword.
Force can only be overthrown by Force, unless indeed
patriotic and religious conviction should lead to a voluntary
surrender of privileges, which would be a fine spectacle,
but above average human nature. But if Force is the
only remedy, how shall the Christian proceed ? He is
counselled against using carnal weapons even in self-
defence, though whether he may not use them under
national claim, and to protect the weak and the oppressed,
may be otherwise decided. He may summon Force to
his aid, but not his own, nor must it be the Forces of
this world. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the
Lord." " Be still and know that I am God." He is to
have faith that the whole intricate sum of human actions
is operating under God for the sure accomplishment, in
His own good time, of the results the Christian prays to
see accomplished. Like the piston in the Steam Engine,
running to and fro in a narrow sphere in obedi-
426 PURITANISM IN POWER.
ence to law, the Christian is really ministering energy
and vitality to the whole by his apparent detachment
from the great operations going on without. This is so
during the incubation of the Kingdom. The whole
course of Providence is regulated with a view to the
Church's triumph in the day of that manifestation.
Defeat, reverse, humiliation, persecution, death, all are
but the strange steps and processes which will conduct
surely to the glad results. The World exists for the
Church, the Church for the "World. The Christian, then,
observing the invariable course of history, perceives that
Force is necessary to any further advance of the masses
of the people, but that he is not the person to supply it.
He is, however, the person to look for it and to expect it ;
and the wise among the Puritans of to-day will read it
to be their duty to make a highway for the arrival of
that Force, superior to man's, and all-prevailing, which
in the fulness of time comes to seat the Church upon its
throne and lay the World beneath its feet.
427
CHAPTER XVII.
PKOPOSITION DEFENDED.
(7,) That this Force, forbidden to be used by Puritans,
is nevertheless at hand, and their work is to prepare for its
arrival.
" FEAR not, little Flock ; for it is your Father's
good pleasure to give you the Kingdom." They
were already subjects of the spiritual Kingdom
upon earth, and their names were already written in
heaven. The Kingdom now promised them w T as
something indeed future, but something else. It was
the Kingdom which the twelve and afterwards the seventy
were sent to proclaim, and whose joyful features
were prophetically illustrated by the blessing of Peace,
the casting out of evil spirits, immunity from noxious
insect life, healing of the sick, feeding of the multitude.
For the Kulership predicted of the Saviour was that
befitting the Son of David the Shepherd King. It was
a feeding, shepherding Eule under which the flock was
not only to be protected and led, but also fed. " Sell
that ye have, and give alms ; provide yourselves bags
which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth
not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth cor-
rupteth. For where your treasure is, there will your
heart be also. Let your loins be girded about, and your
lights burning ; and ye yourselves like unto men that
wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding ;
that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto
him immediately. Blessed are those servants whom
the lord when he cometh shall find watching : verily I
say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make
them to sit down to meat, and will come forth to serve
them. And if he shall come in the second watch, or
428 PURITANISM IN POWER.
come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are
those servants. And this know, that if the good man of
the house had known what hour the thief would come,
he would have watched, and not have suffered his house
to be broken through. Be ye therefore ready also, for
the Son of Man cometh at an hour when ye think not."
The character of the Kingdom further comes out when
Peter responds, " Lord, speakest thou this parable unto
us, or even to all ? And the Lord said, Who then is
that faithful and wise steward, whom his lord shall
make ruler over his household, to give them their portion
of meat in due season ? Blessed is that servant, whom
his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. Of a truth
I say unto you, that he will make him ruler over all that
he hath. But and if that servant say in his heart, My
lord delayeth his coming ; and shall begin to beat the
manservants and maidens, and to eat and drink,
and to be drunken ; the lord of that servant will couie
in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an
hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder,
and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.
And that servant, which knew his lord's will (to give the
household meat in due season) and prepared not himself,
neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with
many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit
things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes
(the distinction is between heathen and Christian
nations). For unto whomsoever much is given, of him
shall be much required : and to whom men have
committed much, of him they will ask the more."
But the reign of Peace and goodwill among men is
preceded by an outbreak of contending passions and
interests. " I am come to send fire on the earth ; and
what will I, if it be already kindled ? . . . Suppose ye
that I am come to give peace on earth ? I tell you Nay ;
but rather division ... Ye hypocrites, ye can discern
PROPOSITION DEFENDED. 429
the face of the sky and of the earth : but how is it that
ye do not discern this time ? "
Many years ago the writer of this book undertook an
exhaustive investigation into the question, " What is
taught in Scripture respecting the second Advent ? "
and his unprejudiced research led him to the unqualified
assurance that there was not a vestige of support for the
commonly held views concerning that great verity. The
common teaching of the Protestant Churches amounts
to a cancelling of the prophecy altogether. The " blessed
hope " of the Church and of the World is explained to
mean nothing. This astounding departure from the
practice of the Apostles and from the teaching of both
them and the Prophets is justified by taking up the
position that history has proved that their notions were
mistaken ! The misconception, however, lies with these
rash interpreters. Their own false conclusion that
nothing more is to be appropriated by Christian believers
from the stress laid upon watchfulness for the Lord's
return, than such a wholesome mindfulness of the
uncertainty of human life as daily facts enforce, should
have suggested a solution for their difficulties. The
root error is again to be found in Individualism, as
contrasted with the Human Eace. It did not enter into
the conception of these theologians that the Race
regarded as an Entity has its terms and periods, and that
what is wholesome for individual man is good for the
Human Corporate in its successive generations ; that an
event befalling the entire family of man at the same
moment must be of incomparably greater weight as
stimulus and monition, to any erratic decimation by the
fickle hand of the Destroyer that a fundamental mis-
conception attaches to the substitution of the arrival of
a curse, for the arrival of an infinite blessing. The
World's Hope is confounded with the World's Doom.
Jesus Christ came to destroy Death ; He raised the
430 PURITANISM IN POWER.
dead to life not certainly maliciously and thus gave
proof that even human life, at all events when the
Kingdom came, was something in the World's case to be
much preferred to death, or, to speak particularly, the
stage between dissolution and resurrection.
The very essence of the value of the preaching of the
Kingdom to the World, by those who were afterwards to
rule it, lay in the certainty being an uncertainty; for
time was needed to train and qualify, and fill up the number
of the rulers, and neither in this interval could they be duly
qualified without the girded loin and the burning lamp
nor the World encouraged with hope during the
prolongation of its night. The lapse of 2000 years
therefore without the fulfilment of the hope is nothing
to the point. It is however very much to the point in
connection with a right discerning of the times. For
unless blindness has fallen upon a considerable portion
of the Church of God, the times we are living in have
brought us to the very threshold of the Kingdom to
that advanced watch in the night, when, if the Son of
Man is coming in the night at all, He must speedily
appear. All references to the King's arrival indicate that
it would not be universally expected or prepared for by
His servants. The faithful would be the few. The want
of unanimity therefore upon this point among professing
Christians is only another sign of the times, indicating
the nearness of the World's majority. It is unnecessary
here to refer to the way hi which the " pilgrim "
character of the Church during this intermediate
dispensation has been ignored by -orthodox theologians
to the cherishing of expectations concerning the
"Conquest of the World for Christ" accompanied by
the grim confession that three-fourths of the population
of England never worship Him at all to the insistence
upon the growth of the stone into the mountain, and
of the leavening of the entire lump (without perceiving
PROPOSITION DEFENDED. 431
its reconciliation in the selection of an Elect Church
out of all nations) to the marvellous disparagement of
the miracles of our Lord, as if the physical ills of the
world were of no moment, and that to deliver men from
blindness and hunger and devils and death was no
object at all of His Incarnation. He came forsooth to
teach men Truth, as the Board School Teachers do in
all East Ends, without troubling Himself to know if
the World had breakfasted.
All these strange contradictions, ignorances and
confusions are to be corrected by a simple unprejudiced
and reverent understanding, taking heed to what is
written, in a matter in which the Spirit cannot speak
without the letter. And the joyful streaks that rib the
horizon when this is done are inexpressibly cheering.
We see in every release of humanity from a physical
bond, in the days of our Lord's ministry, the blessed
prophecy of the Kingdom and its exemption from
everything derogatory to the dignity and glory of
humanity. We see the extinction of Poverty and
Slavery, as well as the enlightenment of ignorance and the
enfranchisement of the spiritually bound. We see the
manservants and maidservants no longer beaten in
cropped wages and " black lists " and lock-out but
universally getting the portions that are their due. We
see Peace following naturally upon Righteousness, and
men and women dying like Simeon and Anna, having
seen the consolation of mankind dying as dies a ripple
upon the strand, rocking the lotus by the marge of
Heaven.
We are writing on the last day of the old year, and it
is a solemn but inspiring thought that it is as likely as
not that before 1890 has run its course the Kingdom
will have come.
Uniformity broken by sudden interruption is the
constant lesson of this World's law. Preached by every
432 PURITANISM IN POWER.
death and on a larger scale by every flood and frost and
storm, by every plague and earthquake. Preached by
Lisbon's crowded quay hastening downwards to be en-
gulfed, and by the telegraph girl of Johnsonstown, wiring
that the flood was coming when it came. Preached in
this dying year by the uniformity of the Empire in
Brazil being suddenly terminated, and later by the
sudden stoppage of the Empress's wounded heart.
Preached from a million housetops by the fall of
pestilence upon the Capitals of Europe as drops a blight
upon proud summer vegetation the very brutes in
their sighs calling for the Advent of the King. It is
simply in accordance with this law that the coming of
the Kingdom takes its place among the other minor
advents which mock the power of science to stay their
course. "As it was in the days of Noah, they did eat and
drink ; they bought and sold ; they planted and builded,
they married and were given in marriage, until the flood
came and took them all away, so shall it be in the day
of the Son of Man." The merchant will leave his home,
giving directions for the dinner he will never eat. The
broker on the Exchange will be plotting what startling
intelligence to concoct so as to bear down stock. The
Financier will have accepted bonds convertible in thirty
years. The Philosopher is writing his last demonstration
that religion is a folly, and the supernatural a fraud.
The Atheist is mouthing it from the public platform that
Jesus Christ was an Impostor and Science is the only
Paraclete when suddenly the uniformity of the world's
old life is broken. The Supernatural that is, the laws
of a higher sphere becoming evident in this takes place.
Miracle is beholden. There steps into the Mundane
Sphere once more the former Sufferer on Calvary, now
Head of the Eedeemed and Resurrected Race. Heaven
opens, and while mountains tremble and the sea grows
still, He, the desired of Nations, attended by ten thousand
PROPOSITION DEFENDED. 433
times ten thousand, ascends the throne of earthly
dominion and from Jerusalem sends forth His laws.
The confident expectation of this glorious event, with-
out any knowledge of the hour of its arrival, is not in
the least inconsistent with deliberate action, taking the
future into account as though it were certain to retain
its present features. For it is those who are busy keep-
ing their flocks by night, unto whom the heavens are
opened and by whom the Angels' song is heard ; and it
was upon the diligent students of astronomical science
that there arose the light of an unknown Star which
conducted them to where the young King lay. Not to
those who neglect present duty for indulgence in future
speculations, or purposeful work for mere star-gazing,
will the Heavens open with a smile, and the Eainbow
arise which is to brighten every godly eye. They
shall rather have their portion with the chaff, which
is driven away, and with the ungodly whom a storm
of wrath will sort out of the burdened world. While to
the faithful and the busy stewards those who are
intent upon doing the will of their absent Lord and
preparing for His return -He will come with welcome
and promotion.
But the return of a King to rule in Eighteousness
implies the exhibition of Force such a Force as no
unrighteousness can for an instant stand against. As
lightning chooses the path of least resistance, so will
the lightnings of the King's wrath select for their
several paths the uplifted arms of creatures in defiance
and rebellion, since these opposing forces will really be
the paths of least resistance. Hence, when the storm
has past, the heavens are gloriously bright, and the
earth having drunk in the waters of retribution, Justice
breaks forth into singing.
Notwithstanding what we have written, we can antici-
pate the verdict of the majority of even serious minded
28
434 PURITANISM IN POWER.
readers to the effect, that an event whose contingency is
so incalculable is void of practicality in its contemplation.
The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews evidently
cherished a different opinion ; for he selects for admira-
tion and imitation a list of Old Testament Saints, who
all died, not having received the promises, but were per-
suaded of them and embraced them, and confessed that
they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. The
far-off view of the heavenly city, which hath foundations
and whose builder and maker is God, had upon them an
eminently practical influence.
And if now, instead of professing Christians ranking
themselves voluntarily with those who derided the anti-
cipations of Simeon and Anna ; and with the Babylonian
Captives who turned a deaf ear to the cheery notes of
Ezekiel and Daniel, they were to live in the daily faith that
judgment may not be postponed until after death, but
may come to them in the full tide of usual activities
that every deed of unrighteousness will degrade from
rank in the coming Kingdom, and every act of Justice
will qualify for honour and promotion, would it not be
practical ? Is there any rationality in the position, that
because an event predicted to occur in the latter days
has disappointed the expectations of mankind for 3000
years, therefore it should have no longer a place in their
expectations ? Reason would suggest precisely the oppo-
site conclusion.
But superior in strength to all other arguments is
that one which is suggested by the character of God and
its revelation in the Advent already historical. May
we not reverently say, to the glory of our Redeemer,
that the Incarnation was caused and conditioned by
the need of man ? And what so powerful to bring Christ
back again ? All proofs derivable from texts shrink
before this consideration that the world is lost unless
the King returns, and man's need will condition the
PROPOSITION DEFENDED. 435
Trapova-ia. Once in humiliation, now it must be in
power. The chronic evil of the world is its odious mis-
government. All forms of it have been tried in succes-
sion, and all have proved equally facile in conferring
privileges upon the wealthy and in damning the poor.
It is the continued immemorial despoiling of the
poor that will bring the Lord Christ back again, to lead
their cause to victory. Man will be doomed to confess
that without God he can do nothing. Everywhere we
see thrones undermined by popular discontent, and those
who sit in authority scanning the future with misgiving.
Among the masses, the abandonment of hope and faith
in any established governmental deliverance and a
catching at personalities, a despairing looking about for
some man, whom, following whithersoever he might lead,
they might find to be a Saviour. It is when the Anti-
christs, one after another, have disappointed their de-
luded followers, and a great cry ascends up to heaven
for some One to come down from thence, synchronizing
with the resumption by a persecuted Church of her
ancient hope and prayer it is then on the concurrence
of these two things, the world's confessed and clamorous
need and the Church's longing for her Lord's Return,
that the hour reserved in the Father's knowledge will
have struck, and the Desire of All Nations will appear.
" And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon,
and in the stars ; and upon the earth distress of nations,
with perplexity ; the sea and the waves roaring ; men's
hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those
things which are coming on the earth ; for the powers of
heaven shall be ahaken.
" And then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a
cloud with power and great glory. And when these
things begin to come to pass, then lift up your heads,
for your redemption draweth nigh. And He spake
to them a parable : Behold the fig tree, and all the
436 PURITANISM IN POWER.
trees ; when they now shoot forth, ye see and know of
your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand. So
likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know
ye that the Kingdom of God is nigh at hand. Verily I
say unto you, this generation shall not pass away, till
all be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away : but
My words shall not pass away. And take heed to
yourselves lest at any time your hearts be overcharged
with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life,
and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a
snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face
of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray
always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all
these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before
the Son of Man." Is that practical? The temple
seemed to stand upon imperishable foundations when
these words were uttered. Its whole economy and the
entire Jewish polity were to pass away in a few years
after.
What to vain mortal eye appears more permanently
secure then our present commercial system ? Neverthe-
less, be ye sure of this, it will presently pass away as a
dream. " For yet a little while, and He that shall come
will come, and will not tarry." " He which testifieth
these things saith, Surely I coine quickly. Amen. Even
so, come, Lord Jesus."
437
CHAPTER XVIII.
PROPOSITION DEFENDED.
(8,) That the means for this preparation are : The
formation of two Companionships : (a,) Of Christ's
Ambassadors; (b,) Of Christ's Kingdom; icith the aid
and co-operation of the National Church.
THESE two Companionships correspond to the double
enfranchisement which Jesus Christ came to effect for
the world. The first in order and in importance is the
enfranchisement of the individual soul, from all which
warps its worship, misdirects its aims, and degrades its
sympathies. The second is the enfranchisement of social
man from all social conventions and constitutions, which
have been conceived in Injustice and are upheld by un-
righteous Force, with results to men of incalculable,
unmerited suffering and wrong, the arrest of the develop-
ment of millions, and the degradation of all alike
gainers and losers from the path of true progress both
spiritual and material.
The formation of these two Companionships to-day is
called for because the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ
suffers under the double infliction, that it is everywhere
seen in connection with rival and contending organizations
officered by professional advocates, and that the interests
of these lead to guilty acquiescence with the many forms
of social injustice by which worldly wealth is accumulated.
The way for the arrival of the King is not prepared
until both these departures from primitive intention is
corrected by the witness of absolute disinterestedness
in the preaching of the Gospel, and of preparedness to
secure the triumph of Justice at whatever necessary cost
to its advocates.
The Companionship of Christ's Ambassadors is a Com-
438 PURITANISM IN POWER.
panionsbip of Preachers, naturally, or we should say,
divinely adapted for that work. The Companionship of
Christ's Kingdom may include many of the preaching
order, hut their function is political and social, to make
the principles of our Lord and Saviour operative in every
department of legislation, and to overturn by constitu-
tional machinery anything that hinders that design. In
both cases absolute disinterestedness must be apparent.
The formation of the latter Companionship is especially
recommended at this time when the progress of political
reform has supplied Englishmen with machinery, which
only requires to be used in order to bring us to the
threshold of fundamental change ; for nothing but ignor-
ance of the power within their grasp, combined with the
weakness inseparable from Poverty, prevents the masses
of the nation from prosecuting the cause of their en-
franchisement with such effect as to array all the other
interests against them, and require the intervention of
the Higher Power to make them ultimately victorious.
The witness we have asked for among the preachers is
already borne by numbers among the sects who are known
as local or lay preachers ; but these work narrowly for
the interests of their own small bodies, and they also,
the Plymouth Brethren excepted, ignore the Second
Advent, neither are the numbers auywa}' adequate.
The preaching required is one that is to be prosecuted in
hamlets and in the open country as well as in the towns,
and not confine itself to buildings or even barns, but be
ubiquitous, and found in the Market place as well as the
Park, proceeding from morning until night. Its burden
is to be: "Ptepent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at
hand. As though we were Ambassadors for Christ, we
beseech you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God,"
and the glorious news of God's free mercy is to be
folio wed. by the no less glorious news of His coining to
judge the world in righteousness, and His coming soon.
PKOPOSITION DEFENDED. 439
The need of the Companionship of Christ's Ambassa-
dors is the more urgent because there are men who have
justly espoused the cause of suffering Labour, and with
great ability diagnosed its symptoms who yet have openly
disowned all ethical control from the principles of the
doctrine of Christ ; and in a manner as irrational as
it is suggestive, have discarded comradeship with the
followers of the Nazarene.
Professing a zeal for Justice, these men trample upon
it in every word of their anti-christian rage. Proposing
a reign of Peace and Good-will they commence by mal-
igning the most benevolent, and spurning the sacrifices
of the most devoted of mankind. Professing to point
the human family the path of its best enrichment they
begin by stripping it of its hopes of Immortality ; and
for the priceless treasure and consolations of God's
Spirit, they would substitute the beggarly blanket of
material comforts and discomfited science husks that
starve the souls of men, and can never become a meal
without the condiments of gratitude, contentment, and
joyful charity.
Go then, ye humble, and it may be despised followers
of Jesus, and cover the land with the testimony that
His ways only are ways of pleasantness, and His paths
only paths of peace that the working man of Nazareth
has been crowned the Lord of All, because when He
was reviled He reviled not again ; when He suffered He
threatened not, but committed Himself to Him that
judgeth righteously; that His Kingly Dominion is not
titular, nor confined to the invisible world; that it is
active throughout every age, and has conducted the
world into its present involved condition in order that
the peerless evolution of Justice from its opposite should
signalise the foundation of His omnipotent and everlast-
ing Rule.
You will know that if it is a question not of health
440 PURITANISM IN POWER.
and length of days but of moral soundness and gladness
of spirit, the man who can introduce into the domestic
relations a better and truer allegiance to reciprocal
duties, will do more for the happiness of mankind than
if wages all round were raised by 300 per cent. It is you
alone who hold the keys of man's salvation. Let your
numbers be many, let your attitude be uncompromising
and your labours unceasing. You are to be bound by
no creed, fettered to no system, and receivers of no pay.
The touch of coin for Christly service will disband you
from the fellowship. Its glory and its power will be that
its Gospel is ever free " Freely ye have received, freely
give." The Companionship should aim to be free, not
only from the trammels of multitudinous business cares,
but also from the entanglements and often killing dis-
tresses of the married relationship.
Marriage though "honourable in all" is but a con-
cession to the animal in man and to the inferior conditions
of the introductory stages of his life. He who antedates
the Virginity of the Resurrection moves with a singleness
of purpose a freedom and a force impossible to the
hack horse of a graceless household. All idols must go
down before Christ, the weakening and befooling idolatry
of sex first of all.
If you can find among the women of the period a
soul anything resembling that of those who ministered
to Jesus and who cleaved to His Apostles, rejoice in so
exceptional a find, and bid her work as you do; but do
not turn aside to the folly of a carnal union. AYe want
a band of Virgin Preachers, male and female, who shall
shame the Protestantism of Protestants, and revive with
Protestant lustre the Friars and Sisters of the great
Catholic Church.
And the same should be the Paile for the Companion-
ship of Christ's Kingdom. That Knightly order, agreed
to compass the deliverance of the world from its captivity
PROPOSITION DEFENDED. 441
to Satan and to Mammon, and to hold it for their King,
is to sit loose from every disabling human relationship
that can dutifully be surrendered or sundered. Each
member must aim to strike with an arm un weakened by
considerations for lives bound up with his the married
men are the weakness of every combination for the just
assertion of Eight against economic Might. The cause
of the children's future is betrayed by the father in
obedience to their cries. Do you, Holy Companions of
the Kingdom, enter into war with no reservations to
hinder the integrity of your self- surrender! The world
is your home, the children of the gutter are your family.
You must also have leisure for study and mental equip-
ment, for legislation asks for brains and knowledge. It
will be your part to besiege every avenue to power, and,
discarding Party cries and pledges, stand simply on the
platform of Christ's equal Justice. Seeking your suf-
frages only amongst Christians in the vital and puritanical
sense, you should be supported by the entire body of
real Christians in every electoral district. A force thus
moving with solid and irresistible momentum would bear
down all before it. In less than a decade power every-
where would be in the hands of the Christian Knights,
and Mammon, trembling like a bull in a slaughter-house,
would await the inevitable blow.
442
CHAPTER XIX.
APPEAL TO YOUNG MEN.
PARENTHETICAL.
PURITAN young men of ages from twenty-three to thirty-
three ! upon your use of this period of your lives the
future of the world depends. That it needs reforming
to the core your unsophisticated moral judgment has
convinced you ; but who is to commence the needed
work if not yourselves '? In every age it has been
youth, true to the Heaven that lies about our Infancy,
unspoiled by the traditions of the Elders, and uncon-
taminated by the suggestions of a selfish prudence, that
has helped the world forward upon its upward path.
God's anointing oil of Kingship ever fell upon the young,
and marriage has been the weak betrayal of their higher
mission.
All Israel gloried in Samuel the unmarried ; they
groaned beneath his sons who "walked not in his wa} r s."
Saul, David and Solomon their radiance departed
with their youth. It was the same with all of them.
Amaziah, Josiah, Hezekiah they all declined when the
golden cycle had been passed. John the Baptist and
the Lord Jesus Christ preserved the princely power of
their virginity. The youngest of the Apostles was the
most beloved by the Master ; and while the married Peter
seems to fall out of the running soon after he started his
apostleship, the unmarried Paul pushes the battle to the
gate right to the end of his lofty and inimitable career.
The light of Asia and the Reformer of Europe it was
as monks they moved the world. "Wesley, married to-
the Lord, could never be truly married to another, and
ever the hearts which have drunk at the well of simple
surrender to one absolute imperative the voice of God
APPEAL TO YOUNG MEN. 443
will shrink at the notion of exposing to a stranger's
criticism or arbitrament the question of obedience.
Puritan young men of England, Ireland, Scotland and
Wales ! I claim for God and His cause in this suffering
world the golden prime of your Life time, from twenty-
three to thirty-three. One hundred of you should be in
Parliament after the next Election, and some thousands
of you doing duty upon Local Boards and Councils.
The economical basis is necessary to make this a
matter of history, but that you can easily supply, you
are so rich and independent rich by the fewness of
your wants ; independent by remaining single. The
one hundred who will be in Parliament and the thousand
or more who will be in the local legislatures must be
supported, if need be, by the contributions of hundreds
of thousands of other young men, who have taken upon
themselves the vows of this warrior service for the world.
You are capable of zeal and of self-sacrifice, the Sunday-
schools attest it. It is from the ranks of the Sunday-
school teachers chiefly I expect an answer to the
call. The next Parliament is to have one hundred
Sunday-school teachers, at least, guiding the legislation
of this country on behalf of its rising generation. The
Town and County Councils, the School Boards and
Boards of Guardians are to have some thousands of
you, bringing Puritan principles, Puritan disinterested-
ness, and Puritan Justice to the adoption of permissive
measures and the administration of local law. A new
force is to be introduced into politics the force of the
Forerunners of the Second Advent of Jesus Christ, pre-
paring for and heralding His Kingly Keign. Guilty
power will bow like Herod to this new authority, and
"many things" will be done because of it, which. with-
out it would never have been attempted.
To a certainty, when you have been elected, and when
the John the Baptist guilds formed to contribute to
444 PURITANISM IN POWER.
the maintenance of the needy among you are showing
themselves faithful and efficient, an attempt will be made
by patronising the movement to make it a counter-poise
to the Labour party.
The wealthy, benevolent, and Christian Philanthropists
will regret that before you entered Parliament you had
not been "toned down" by marriage and by entering
into "business"; but being there, an unquestionable
and virile force, they will seek, by patronage, to use you
to moderate the Labour vote. You, on your parts, will
ask God that your souls may ever shine like Moses' face,
and never be "toned down" by the cares of this world
and the deceitfulness of riches. You will courteously
decline the cheques proffered for your Parliamentary
fund, and set an example to the demented Labouring
classes by showing how easy it is, even without the
payment of members, by self-denial, organization and
loyal principle, to send and keep in Parliament any fit
representative, however poor he may be.
You will go into Parliament to uphold and reinforce
the Labour Party in every righteous thing it undertakes.
You will consider that Property in Power is the ruin of
all States, and that Puritanism in Power is their sole
redemption. You will deplore that the Labouring classes
are so sunk, so senseless, so besotted, that they take the
weapons the Constitution has placed within their reach
and carry them to the armoury of their adversaries.
Like a mother bird, every gift of heaven that falls upon
their way they hasten to bring to Capital their chick.
You will chaff them, probe them, sting them into acting
as the Statesmen who laboriously acquired for them
Constitutional privileges expected they would act ; and
you will point them to your own example Puritanism
seated in Power simply because it willed it, with a
Puritan strength of will, and a Puritan capacity for
sacrifice.
APPEAL TO YOUNG MEN. 445
I fear that the working classes will not in the next
election be able to seat more than fifty men of their own
class. They might, if they rose to a comprehension of
their interests and their power, be able to seat 200 ;
but the financial strain would be heavy, and they are
too beer-besotted to pay as they ought for the pre-
liminary education of many bright spirits among them.
There is an abundance of native ability, if it was only a
little cultured so as to make its utterances more accept-
able. The class which mainly supplies the Scottish
pulpit can furnish speakers to St. Stephen's. It is only
a make-believe when people say the intelligence and ability
are with those who have the money and the culture.
It is getting annually to be the reverse the mental
strength is with the masses, but they lack the oppor-
tunity of money. They lack also the sense to use their
leisure. Every period w r hen they are out of work
furnishes them with opportunities of culture that the
hard-pressed business men in the ranks above them never
see. When they have spent the morning in hunting for
work they could put themselves to school for the rest of
the day. That is the way that the Burts and the Broad-
hursts, the Mabons and Macdonalds, the Whitefields and
Wilsons, the Tom Manns, the Ben Tilletts, and the John
Burnses put themselves in power. Yes, and by stealing
the hours from sleep, when dead-beat by a hard day's
toil.
But you Puritans will not add your note to the con-
stant reviling of the working classes. You will remember
the demoralising influence of intermittent employment
and low wages and the fearful encumbrance of the long
family ; you will comprehend that as years pass, and
hope constantly deferred has made the heart sick, and
things instead of getting better persistently grow worse
with age, and are never remedied by any amount of over-
exertion you will perceive how a chronic despair settles
446 PURITANISM IN POWER.
down upon and palsies the very manhood of this class,
so that it has no heart to listen to appeals to half starve
itself for the support of representatives in Parliament,
although it is the indispensable condition of its rescue.
You will rejoice that you are placed in power just to
help the class that is most in need of your assistance.
One hundred Puritans and fifty working-class represen-
tatives pulling together for every righteous economical
reform will clear the path, and you will vindicate the
reality of that Christian profession which, in married
Christianity and Christianity setting up in business, the
working-classes have turned from in disgust and despair.
You will point to the perfection of your organization,
based upon the Sunday-school fellowship ; the abundance
of your exchequer, regarded as a veritable " cause of
God," and your ability to live and work as a member of
Parliament upon ^200 per year, and you will gradually
shame them into using, instead of misusing their
constitutional powers.
It is now time to meet some of your objections
arising from diffidence other preferences, prior plans,
and misgivings as to your success at the polls. I am
presuming there are none among you who have sold
your souls to a violin, or have set before you as an
object in life a villa, a pony chaise and prizes at the
flower show. You have, as Sunday-school teachers,
loftier ideals than those. But one among you is smitten
by the love of knowledge and would know more first.
My young friend, dismiss the idea that you will ever
know anything in this world, except your own necessities,
and, by sympathy, the fundamental needs of others this
is the kind of knowledge that fits you for Parliament.
Beyond that there is no certainty anywhere ; not a single
individual upon this solid (?) globe knows anything
except his wants. Absolute truth and final causes are
for ever beyond us. Besides, all the natural sciences are
APPEAL TO YOUNG MEN. 447
crowded with workers, and there is no hindrance to their
progress. Splendid discoveries have been made, and more
are to follow, which the finders will scatter at your feet
and you may pick up at your leisure. It is Economical
science alone that is in a condition disgraceful beyond
description. In this department mankind has made,
comparatively, no progress at all in fact we are going-
back ; and the reason is that not a step can be attempted
without raising hosts of opponents interested in
maintaining every abuse. For other sciences the way is
always open and clear, but the path of this one is a series
of defended forts. This " kingdom suffereth violence, and
the violent take it by force." I invite you, therefore, to
throw yourself into the advancement of this disgracefully
conditioned science of Political Economy. The latest
idol of Free Trade has fallen discredited to the ground,
and the only real achievements throughout this century
have been Co-operative Stores, Gladstonian finance,
Government Savings' Bank and Insurance mutilated,
of course, by concessions to the Banking and Insurance
Companies and the Parcels Post.
But you feel you lack experience. True ! It is to be
acquired as you learn to swim. Do not wait until you
know more, or the sense of your ignorance will overwhelm
you. You may have noticed the useless careers of many
students. You observe them, like boys upon the sea-
shore, getting lower in the trough of their humility as
they add to the pile of their accumulations, and you ask
them to stand upon the top and gain a wider horizon,
but they are ashamed to do that, they must make a
mountain first. Meantime a fisher lad has jumped upon
a child's sand castle, descried the signals of a barque and
saved a crew, while age and death, slowly but irresistibly
advancing like a tide, creep up to the student and bear
him and his unused accumulation both away. Kemember
that knowledge, like money, is increased by use, not
448 PURITANISM IN POWER.
storing ; and rejoice in the happy certainties of ignorance
when the subject is immaterial. John Bright knew
Shakespeare when he was young, but when he grew old
and foolish and wanted to know more, he could not tell
him from Bacon.
But here is another friend with other plans, who, in
common with you all, never dreamt of entering Parlia-
ment. His father as a mighty merchant did something to
alter the world's map and he too would marry separated
seas, pierce boundaries and establish new routes for
trade, restore provinces to fertility, and raise towns and
populations as by an enchanter's wand. You, too, my
3 r oung friend, would, if you could, have your special
breeds roaming the pampas -of South America, your
plantations where the tiger startles the cultivator, and
your crops where the fellaheen tastes that new sweet
honesty, at English hands.
You would have your depots dot the globe ; your
agents acquainting themselves with the proper facings
for a mandarin's coat, the patterns for the Indian
bazaar, the gay fancies of the Cuban slave, and the
proper shear for Australian wool. You would like your
fleets to walk on every ocean, and your steamers to be
the first to creep up unknown streams. You would be a
necessary consideration to foreign powers, your contracts
and concessions documents of state, and your operations
generally, because affecting the interests of multitudes,
necessarily entering into the plans of ministers and
affecting the policies of courts.
It is a great career, requiring big brains, immense
resources, and the capacity to sing sans souci. Fickle
markets like the moon will sweep up a tide of fortune to
your feet and incontinently sweep it back again. But it
may be a career no less worthy than~ great, and fraught
with rich experience. You will gain some knowledge of
worldly governments as artifices for visiting the delin-
APPEAL TO YOUNG MEN. 449
queneies of the poor with stern severity, and for hushing
to ohlivion the large larcenies of corrupt officials. It
will make you emphasize the " Kingdom " part of the
Lord's prayer. Even if you fill up a very scant portion
of the large outline I have indicated, you are the man
for Parliament. It is your breed who have the statesman's
breadth of view, joined to greater practical experience.
Arrange then to postpone the extension of your Merchant
career until you have given the best ten years of your
life to making individual enterprise the highway and
introduction to the Co-operative Industrial and Trading
State. All the best business brains in England will be
wanted to start the Commonwealth upon its path.
But you, my other young friend, are a born inventor ; you
have a well grounded apprehension that you would miss
following the debates through studying how to improve the
ventilation, and that an assembly in which nothing of im-
portance is allowed to proceed would prove inexpressibly
irksome to one for whom a steam engine is too slow.
Well, we will allow you only to appear in Parliament
by Petition. You will go on inventing all kinds of
useful and labour-saving appliances ; you \vill submit
them privately to the severest tests, and then you will
determine that none of them shall be made known.
You will petition Parliament, setting forth your discoveries
for lightening labour and protecting the health and life
of the worker, while greatly increasing production ; but
you will add that you have no desire to be reminded
upon your death-bed that every one of your patents
was the means of vexing the already troubled heart of
Labour that you were the actual cause of bringing many
families to social ruin ; and that while you had greatly
limited the hope and scope of the rising generation of
the poor you had actually founded some new families of
idle rich.
You will therefore testify to my Lords and Commons
29
450 PURITANISM IN POWER.
that your plans must feed the furnace, and your work-
ing models be run into the casters' moulds, until and
unless the gifts of the Good Father in human skill and
science shall cease to be so horribly perverted, and your
prayer for the Co-operative Commonwealth be realised
in your lifetime.
This other young friend is a born dramatist, and will
have matter scarcely less serious than that of legislating
in writing the people's plays. He will nevertheless go
into Parliament determined to purge the Augean stable
of popular amusements, to close the Music Halls, and
to stay the devouring tide of frivolity, by limiting the
number of theatres and allowing them to be open only
twice a week. (See my Appendix, " On the Puritan use of
the Stage.") With Puritanism in Power every village
would have a handsomely appointed theatre, and plays
that Puritans could act as well as witness with delight.
The performances would be free to all, and every Tues-
day and Friday in winter the citizens would flock to the
common resort and make it the occasion for the inter-
change of socialities, as if the place were a Social
Exchange. But to give more than two nights in the
week to pastime, although of a richly artistic, intellectual
and wholly moral order, would not consist with the
temper or convictions of co-operative citizens.
My next objector craves abstraction and devotion to a
work which is at the foundation of all civilization, and
the indispensable forerunner of the objective Kingdom of
God. He has heard the cry of the heathen. And truly
I know nothing more pathetic than what \ve have read
of dim-lighted Chinese, carefully collecting, collating,
and extracting the highest ethical portions of their
moral classics, printing them in the form of tracts and
leaflets, and consecrating their lives to rescuing, with
these poor weapons, their heathen fellow-countrymen
from lives of degradation. Think of these poor men
APPEAL TO YOUNG MEN. 451
selling up house, furniture and trade, and going forth
penniless with these heathen gospels, counting their
lives not dear to them, if they could only get their
brethren to tread in the footsteps of Confucius and
Mencius. You do well, my brother, to be haunted by
that record, and not only on account of the heathen.
You will remember the familiar story of the Brother
who bid all men go from Him while He made Himself
known unto His brethren. There on the one hand is
the heathen world with its empty sacks, conscious that
it has grievously wronged its Father, doubtful wholly of
the character, disposition, and intent of that veiled
throned Power before which it trembles, and cast into a
great perplexity for itself and little ones, all perishing
for lack of bread in their day of moral famine and desola-
tion ; and on the other hand there is the Elder Brother
whom Christendom has sold for gold, but whom heathen-
dom never knew and never deliberately betrayed; and
the bowels of this Brother are yearning to make Himself
known unto His Brethren. It is to you He looks upon
you He is depending to make Him known. From one
to another of the dark tribes Jesus will go, to weep upon
their necks, if you will let Him.
You will go then, and you will come back, and we
Puritans will send you into Parliament to testify of the
things you have seen concerning China and our opium
trade and concerning Africa and our spirit trade and
concerning India and our licensing system ; and then
you shall go back to the Ptevelation of Jesus Christ in
the world's dark corners.
But now comes the all-important question whether
you will succeed at the polls. The answer to that
depends upon whether England is a Christian country
or not. The test of that is to be made at the next
Election. Green you may be, but that means ripe for
justice ; golden, unrusted by the dews of death.
452 PURITANISM IN POWER.
The test applied will be simple and conclusive. It will
consist of the acceptance or rejection of some six score
men of the age of all the great and best Reformers, who
will be the nominees of Sunday-school Teachers, East
End Mission Workers, White Cross Guilds, and every
other organization capable of yielding proved valour
and fidelity in the cause of Christ. These candidates of
fit ability and education will have support, if need be,
from the Puritan Parliamentary fund, and they will
offer themselves as independent of every party, pledged
only to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.
The test will be whether the professing Christianity of
the United Kingdom will return these men, or prefer in
their places the Stock Parliamentary Pretenders.
Reader ! Young Reader ! Young Puritan Reader ! I
appeal to you to join this battle of the Lord. Haply
you are seated by the fire, looking into the glowing
embers which sink into ashes blue and white with
streaks of red and ochre a mockery of the former
flame ; so will your poor corpus appear when its fires
are spent. Will you choose to live and burn for others
rather than yourself, or will you be as a discarded
cigar end fainting on the pavement or a spark from an
engine, smouldering in the grass and meditating mischief
among the pines ?
The room is silent ; all that you see is a little mouse
tremblingly essaying to go forth to its universe, instinc-
tively conscious that the power reigning there is against
it. So from their holes and corners the outcasts are
beginning to look into the House of Civilization, and to ask
themselves if they are mice or men. And though silent,
the room is not unpeopled. Numerous as those viewless
organisms which strew the atmospheric sea and seek a
welcome in every higher type, the spirits of departed
generations, who perished in the slime, stand round you
waiting your decision. You have risen from your chair,
APPEAL TO YOUNG MEN. 453
turned to look upon the facing wall, and see before you
gazing from the frame the Virgin who was called to
make her choice between Diana and her Lord. She is
deaf to the voice of pleading human love ; she is deaf to
the hoarse hiss of the crowded amphitheatre ; she is deaf
to the surmounting lions' roar. One form only she can
see ; one voice only can she hear and she is calm and
glad and confident, as she renounces all and looks straight
forward into Heaven.
Ah ! You do well to cast yourself upon your knees and
give the anxious crowding spirits in your chamber peace
and praise.
454
CHAPTER XX.
METHODS BY WHICH THESE TWO COM-
PANIONSHIPS MUST NOW SET TO WOPJ\.
THE Companionship of Christ's Ambassadors is a body
that by its distinctive function clears itself from unfit
associates.
No one will offer for the work who is not first of all a
horn speaker, and secondly a born preacher.
The laborious attempts to teach elocution in Theo-
logical colleges have the effect of producing artificial
speakers, and cold or contemptuous hearers. Nothing
is so safe to kill impressiveness as the fact, easily
detected, that feeling is imported into delivery at the
proper places, just as music is marked, and that nothing
is left to spontaneous and genuine emotion. From the
fact that the Companionship will be spared the lessons
of the Professor, its oratory will be free, natural, and
therefore telling. The members of the association if
association it can be called will have but one difficulty ;
not what to say, but when to leave off. With, on the
one hand, unlimited fields of sin and sorrow to enter,
and on the other, a gospel of unlimited free grace to
proclaim, and infinite resources of Divine healing and
consolation to communicate, the pressing need of
speech will call upon every power of mind and body,
and preachers will give out, not through the scantiness
of their equipment, but simply from the exhausting
character of their happy toils.
The Companionship will have no church systems to
advocate, no sacraments to squabble about (it will not
mention them), no places of worship to recommend. It
will have but one theme Jesus Christ the only Saviour
THE COMPANIONSHIPS' METHODS OF WORK. 455
of the World by His life, His death, His resurrection
and His second coming. The Incarnate God who
revealed the hidden Deity and disclosed at once the
two ideals of the perfect Son and of the perfect Father,
Jesus Christ, triumphant Conqueror for man over
natural unconformity to divine standards of perfection,
and over that doom which stains all life with vanity and
degradation Despoiler of the grave and opener of the
gates of Life eternal Jesus Christ, the home of every
cleansed believing heart the everlasting enemy of the
enemies of man, and hence the unsparing destroyer of
all forms of iniquity.
The Companionship will not go to men with any
ulterior design of gathering them into churches, but
simply to save them, leaving them to the tutelage of
God's spirit, which may lead them afterwards to connect
themselves with existing churches, or only with Mission
Halls possibly not even with those. It will be a
matter of perfect indifference to the Companionship,
which will in no sense be denominational or ecclesias-
tical simply Evangelistic. It will seek to awaken the
soul to the universal human fact of grievous sin against
Infinite Love. It will point to the perfect harmony of
the will of the Son to the will of the Father in offering
Himself without spot to God, putting away sin by con-
fessing it for man, and suffering for it for man, that men
might l)e won to Love, from which worship and obe-
dience proceed.
If it succeed at all in that, the need and joy of asso-
ciated and stated worship will be felt by the converts,
and they will look for its gratification.
What is called "gathering into the churches" is not
always synonymous with pasturing or shepherding, the
central idea would usually appear to be funds. The
National Church would offer its asylum free.
How is the Companionship to be formed ? By an adver-
456 PURITANISM IN POWER.
tised notice in newspapers, and by announcement from
the Sunday-school desk, requesting volunteers to attend
a preliminary meeting at some Sunday or Board school,
or to send in their names and addresses ; these to be
registered by the secretary. The secretary is the only
officer, and his duties are simply the convening of the
preliminary, and subsequently the half-yearly meetings.
If the town is large he will be a district secretary ; if
under 20,000 the sole secretary. From the Sunday-
school teachers the bulk of the companions may be
expected to proceed.
Qualifications are practically assured, (1,) by the fact
of already teaching in a Sunday-school ; (*2,) by the
nature of the work to be clone.
What is the Work and how is it to be done ! The work
proposed is the carrying of the sound of the gospel of
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to every rational
being accessible only respecting the privacy of the
home waiting an invitation to enter any house.
The Companions should pledge themselves to each
other, and before God, never, if possible, to commence
to speak until they have publicly read the Scriptures.
The reading of the Scriptures in the streets and lanes,
and courts and alleys, clearly, reverently, emphatically,
intelligently and relatedly, is the one main and distinc-
tive purpose of the Companionship.
Not till that has been done should any feel at liberty
to consume a hearer's time. Twenty minutes should be
the normal time occupied in reading and speaking. It
is not desirable that prayer should be uttered in public
places. It is non-apostolic, except with the church.
Each street should have the Scriptures read, once on
Sunday, once on some week day ; oftener would be
impracticable and undesirable. But so much is to be
done, in all weathers and throughout the 3 r ear. The
preferable time would be early morning and between
THE COMPANIONSHIPS' METHODS OF WORK. 457
eight and nine in the evening. At nine working men
seek repose, and no voice should disturb them. It
would be a fine thing in factory districts to be reading
the Scriptures at 5.30 a.m. by the help of a lantern,
even if snow were falling. It would impart a glow to
some heart passing by to the lighted factory. The
Companions will not be men of salt and sugar. They
will commence the day by plunging into ice-cold water,
and that will be to them the renewal of their Baptismal
consecration. When afterwards they break their fast
with a biscuit, the unleavened bread will remind them
of the first communion. Then, Soldiers of the Cross, to
your work ! When the simple reading and the simple
speaking are over, it will be found that doors one or
more are opened and windows lifted. Some brief word
may then be added, and the standers in the doorways
unaffectedly spoken to. In summer evenings, and espe-
cially on Sundays, the pavements in fine weather will be
populous. The Companions will offer unaffected, unas-
suming conversation to any group, and if invited in to
see some sick or aged, or other person desiring conversa-
tion, then may be the opportunity for prayer no
bawling of prayer in the streets.
That is all, there is no other work to be done than
that. It is simple, but for the end contemplated suffi-
cient. The most precious part of the business will be
the personal contact afterwards, the stories you will
hear, the revelations alike of ignominy and nobleness.
If your own heart is heavy, it will be eased by the
heavier burden of others ; your burn will lose its smart
when brought before the greater fire.
This method of doing the work will obviously require
the dividing the town or district into sections, so that the
twice-a-week reading in every street may be accomplished
by the number of Companions associated. The streets
of the " west end " in every town would receive the same
458 PURITANISM IN POWEIt.
attention as those of the poorer quarters, though the
selections for reading would judiciously differ.
Of course the zeal of many will wax cold. They will
endure for a time and then fall awaj". The want of
fresh helpers should be made known in the same manner
as before. Volunteers may come from the most unex-
pected quarters. The appeal itself will be a discipline
for the churches.
But u'hat u'ill be the good of ten minutes' reading and
ten minutes' speaking twice a week, and icho is to guard
afiainst heresy ? It is hard for self-denying love to be
heretical, and I would leave God to guard against it.
The strength and permanence and progress of the work
would lie in its lack of human safeguards. There would
be no organization, that is human ; no funds, that too
is human ; no creed, save the Apostles', and to that even
no formal assent would be demanded. There would be
no human head, only a volunteer convening secretary.
The entire work would be left to prosper by reason of
the vital Puritanism of the separate Companions and not
on account of its machinery. It would rest upon God,
and upon nothing else.
What would be the good of it ? Each separate Com-
panion would be the Vicar of Christ on Earth, uttering
again Christ's own parables and sermons. The band
would summon back the talk of Palestine, and make it
heard in England. Manchester would renew the echoes
of Tiberias, and London slums the Temple teaching of
Jerusalem. "Maugre the Miracles," you say. Xo ! a
thousand times, No ! Miracles will be wrought as great
as in the times of old, and they will be the evidence of
the value of the Book. The Companions will know that
the inspiration of the Bible is different in kind and degree
from that of every other book that its contents are
miraculous, its transmission miraculous, its canonicity
miraculous, its innocent contradictions, in their nature
THE COMPANIONSHIPS' METHODS OF WORK. 459
and amount, miraculous, and in their consequences
designed ; the radiance also of its illuminating oil
miraculously limited by the imperfection of the human
wick that, in short, its imperfections make it perfect
for its end, and that historical criticism ever fails to
dissolve the impregnable rock of its distinctive verities ;
which rest, not alone upon documentary evidence, but
upon the ever living testimony of a Church, proceeding
without break from the first Christian ages and broaden-
ing as it flows.
Whatever of value belonged to the reading of the law
in Jewish synagogues, and the chanting of David's
Psalms whatever influence the words of Prophets had
in warning, rebuking, and encouraging the Jewish
people whatever value existed for the early Church in
the Epistles of the Apostles above all, whatever things
worthy of note in the discourses of our Lord such
value (for the contents are eternally applicable to human
spirits) will the reading of the Scriptures latently
possess to-day.
Let God speak first, and the human words following
be few. Miracles of the spiritual order may be con-
fidently expected.
It is unnecessary to point out the effect that would
follow upon this kind of Avork pursued for a twelvemonth
together. First of all upon the Companions who, by
their growing intimacy with the people, their helpfulness
and sympathy, would have forced perpetually upon them
the contrast between the existing order of Society and
that which Jesus foreshadowed when He called men to
a common Brotherhood. As the Companions entered by
invitation the chambers where the sick and stricken lay,
suffering from conditions of their homes and their
employments ; as going in the dark of the morning to
read before a group of cottages, they came across the
ambulance hurrying from the works ; or the lad who
460 PURITANISM IN POWER.
last evening got a candle for them, now turning a white
face towards them, his leg taken off by a molten bar
while working through the night ; as moreover, in select-
ing passages to read, they drank in more and more of
the imperative charity of that Book, there would be
begotten and maintained within their minds a stable
resolution to pray, work, and look for the establishment
of the manifested Kingdom of the Lord Christ.
There are some 700,000 Sunday-school teachers in
the country. If only 100,000 become Companions
there would be a power more than sufficient to transform
the face of England.
It will be inevitable that from the ranks of the
Ambassadors the bulk of the Companions of the King-
dom will proceed, and of them I now commence to speak.
Invitations to form this Companionship will also be
issued from the Sunday-school desk, and by advertise-
ments in the Public prints; the preliminary meeting
being held in a Sunday or Board School. In this case,
as in the other, the only secretarial duties will be the
registration of names. This kind of Book-keeping goes
on in Heaven, and the Directory of Companions amalga-
mated throughout the United Kingdom would be an
introduction to the very best society.
These Companions will be associated for the purpose
of using all the privileges of the Constitution in the
acquisition of Political Power. Every avenue and seat
of authority, from the Vestry to the House of Commons,
they are conscientiously to besiege and make it their
first business in life, after the work of the Ambassador-
ship, to gain a voting qualification, and to lay by a
consecrated fund to pay the living expenses of those
who, though poor, are fit, and through the votes of
Puritans may become elected. There need be no Treasure
or Treasurer, only a temporary collector and paymaster,
and he elected just to serve the exigencies of the hour.
THE COMPANIONSHIPS' METHODS OF WORK. 461
How then ! Will any one venture to forsake his calling to
serve in Parliament or elsewhere upon the assurance
merely that his necessary expenses will be found by the
Companions ? I recommend that with the registration
of names should also be registered the sum which each
Companion will hope to devote to the cause of Christ's
Kingdom on earth, year by year ; and that every Puritan,
as he proceeds to vote for the candidate will first lodge
a promissory note for a fixed sum in the name of the
candidate, and payable to him annually in case of his
election and during his service, providing, of course, that
the need exists. The paymaster will call for the
redemption of these pledges at stated periods, and hand
the money over to the representative as received. This
might be the procedure until a Bill for payment of
members becomes law ; but nothing will prevent candi-
dates from continuing in their own callings and so
supporting themselves, if circumstances admit ; and this,
except .partially in the case of working men, would
mostly be the case when the representation was upon
Local and Provincial Boards. All voting will be solid
plumping. The Sunday before the Election, from every
Puritan pulpit and in special Sunday-school teachers'
meeting, the name of the candidate will be announced,
and the solemn exhortation be given to vote in a solid
mass for that man and no other. In five years the bit
would be behind the teeth of the bridled world, and its
head would be turned towards Zion.
What! you exclaim, could we entrust the destinies of
the Country and Empire to a lot of well-meaning but
ignorant and inexperienced greenhorns /
Well, the test of competence hitherto accepted by
constituencies is that of business success. Is there then
no ability where there is no fortune ? and are the qualities
which have enabled a man to climb by crushing his rivals
those which specially claim to be entrusted with power ?
46*2 PURITANISM IN POWER.
I have already alluded to the war of American
Independence and the rise of the United States. To
come nearer home the names of Burt, Broadhurst,
W. Abraham (Mabon), and other workmen representa-
tives are a rebuke to that kind of talk. Put into plain
English, the sentiment cherished but unexpressed, even
among many professing Christians, is of this kind :
" To cope with the wiles of a wicked world, we want
men who can match the Devil's cleverness, and we must
excuse a great deal to the consciences of statemen and
diplomatists. The business of Government, whether local
or Imperial, is therefore one which Puritans must leave
alone." Now nothing is more abjectedly infidel, more
flagrantly recreant to Christian duty than a position so
defined and defended.
Nations, because nations, do not enjoy any immunity
from the penalties due to conduct, which in individuals
would be immoral and unjust. There is one Moral Law
for man isolated, and for man in community. Let the
history of the Jews suffice for that, but the whole of
history blazes with the same truth. What then is the
element which it is of the first importance to make pre-
dominant in every legislative assembly ? Must we aim
to make it include men of the stamp of Wentworth,
Bolingbroke and Pulteney, whose consistency was so
conspicuous, and whose cleverness was so successful? or
must we aim rather to put into power men inflexibly
bent upon Eighteousnqss, prepared to be Just and to
fear not, and owning that without the " wisdom profitable
to direct " their best abilities and exertions will turn to
vanity or ill ?
England has bred many brilliant and splendid states-
men, because the faculty has descended from father to
son with emphasis sometimes. The same thing will
occur when the democracy is put to legislation and
administration. It will grow fit and transmit its quali-
THE COMPANIONSHIPS' METHODS OF WORK. 4f>3
fications. What our legislation has lacked is not ability
hut justice. It is conscience and righteousness that the
Companions will introduce, and by the machinery of the
constitution they will coerce the hereditary diplomatists
into seating these principles in every law. The
Companions need not be statesmen in order to control
statesmen, nor legislators in order to get their ideas
embodied in law. They will vote solid for approved Bills,
and be listened to when they do speak because they
speak so seldom.
In these days of wonderful travelling the superintendent
of a Sunday-school in Aberdeen could be back in his post
every week's end after fulfilling his Parliamentary duties.
But, as we have said, it is not in Parliament alone that
Puritanism must be in power. Every Board of Adminis-
tration whatsoever Poor Law, School, Town Council,
County Council must come into their hands. The
whole Kingdom must be assailed and won, and then,
when to their amazement and confusion the forces of
unrighteous Mammon perceive that the world is slipping
from their grasp then will commence a deliberate plot
to undo the liberties of England and to persecute
Christians as such.
When it begins to be perceived that minor reforms
are but the beginning of a great Eeformation,
the end of which is nothing less than a Christian
Commonweal under which the entire resources of the
country will be held by the inhabitants who will
work together as one family on one farm when the
Puritan's strong arm, wielding a rod of iron, will threaten
every form of social iniquity then will the forces of
Mammon gather together for a determined turning back
of the advancing tide. At that hour many fair professors
of godliness, who have enjoyed reputations for religious
zeal and generous giving, will be found going over to the
enemy Scriptural proofs will be forthcoming for main-
464 PURITANISM IN POWER.
taining the old reign of Injustice, and stress will be laid
upon the duty of Christians abjuring politics altogether.
It may, perhaps, come to be argued that it betrays a
lack of faith to attempt to improve the world before the
arrival of the Omnipotent Himself. And while the
conflict is raging and Puritan Rule is violently assaulted,
then will the need of the Force essential to secure the
victory be impressively felt the cry will ascend,
" Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly," and the cry will not
be uttered in vain.
But before the final deliverance, the evil spirit which
has so long dominated the world will rend and tear it in
the hour of its departure. A discord and distress of
nations unequalled in all previous history will be at its
height. Amid the wrangling of the warring castes and
races upon the boiling fury of the elements in sympathy
with the general dislocation the Son of Man will come
with power and great glory He will touch the hills and
they will cease to smoke He will send down His word
into the heart of the earth and the earthquake will give
up the ghost. The winds will place their hands upon
their mouths, and the bowing waves will end their
worship by prostrate adoration. He will speak to the
diseases which people the deceitful gale and they will
hie them to the haunts from which they issue. He
will rebuke the spirits of the pit, and the Prince of
the power of the air will retire with all his myrmidons
discomfited. While Earth hastily wipes her lips after
the last battle blood, " He will scatter the nations that
delight in war " and amid a Universal Peace the world
will wait His law. He who first of all as Deity Incarnate
was the subject of evil world dominion, comes a second
time as Piuler and Deliverer of all so situated. He who
came first of all to rescue man from spiritual thrall conies
now to set him free from physical evils and temporal
oppression. He finds man the helpless servitor of nature
THE COMPANIONSHIPS' METHODS OF WORK. 465
an infant of days, requiring to be spoon-fed at intervals ;
the grudging mother of mankind yielding no sustenance
save to force of labour, and then, when labour has been
duly rendered, with capricious whim whispering the
seasons to disappoint the effort. He will find Capital
the stored-up fruit of Labour in the last days of the
world more capable than ever of remedying this of
using its vast capacities to disarm nature of her injurious
power and to make her the Princely giver rather than
the Relieving officer of the toiling multitude. He will
find that instead of so behaving, Capital has entered into
a guilty alliance with Nature, and made it the world-wide
rule that man's necessity shall be Capital's opportunity.
Hence, from the beginning of society until the return of
the Son of Man, Nature has stood with her foot upon
man's body and beckoned Capital, who has hastened to
the prey, gathered in the harvest, impounded the cattle
and rifled the pockets of the victim whom simply the
seasons, or circumstances, or competition, has disabled.
The Son of Man will separate these two, whom God
had never joined together for such conspiracy as that ;
but meant the very opposite that man should find in
Capital his ally, comforter, defender and provider his
sure remedy against economical discomfiture from
Nature's untamed will, and the means of so subduing that
potent mistress and eliciting her choicest gifts, that man-
kind in every age, inheriting accumulated means along
with accumulated wisdom, might go on from strength to
strength, adding virtue unto virtue. Then will cease the
struggle at arm's length with devouring destitution which
the common labourer throughout life maintains his
horizon always bounded by the Union and a pauper's
bier. Then will the more highly paid artisan cease to
wear through each winter by the deportation by degrees
of all his modest valuables to the pawnshop, and when
spring returns with its overpressure find all his extra
30
4()() PURITANISM IN POWER.
earnings absorbed in the effort to get them back a few
years of this kind of thing making his household effects
to be paid for several times over while Capital out of his
struggle is piling up its gains. Then will the question
put to a brother who complained that a brother was
depriving him of his share in the joint inheritance receive
its absent answer. It was said, " Man, who made me a
ruler or a divider among you ? " In such a state of
society as existed when the words were spoken no body
of men would think of giving the poor speaker tilt-
appointment ; but when the Desire of the Nations shall
have come the answer will be rendered, ; ' We all, by
universal acclaim, cry to you, the Just One, to become
our Ruler and the Divider between us brethren of our
birthright in this world."
CHAPTER XXI.
8UMMABY.
WE may sum up the things of which we have written.
Beginning with the fundamental fact in human life
and history man's relationship to God, we found this
to be permanently the relationship of a dependent child
towards an All- wise, All-good and Almighty Father, and
that whatever the unfilial behaviour of the offspring might
be, the Creator could not abdicate the Fatherhood which
His own act originates. We found that the final cause
of man's creation was his growth in the assumption of
the Father's image, which necessitated his acquaintance
with Evil as well as Good, so that a conscious choice
might be exercised, and the glory of forgiveness and
mercy be understood and inculcated in the learners'
filial experience. That- the long reign of social Injustice
may be attributed to the same necessity the necessity
of learning its issues by experience, so that it may be
finally condemned and its opposite adopted.
We found that when an election to special privilege
was made among men it was with the design that in the
seed of the elect founder of the chosen people all the
families of the earth should be blessed, and that this
design was providentially illustrated by the progeny of
the Patriarchs becoming affiliated to the surrounding
Pagan peoples, they being taken up into the line of
Christ.
From the time of Abraham's call there was revealed a
principle and method of conducting the education of the
race, which must prove to be the best, since God is its
author.
This method is the differentiation of mankind into
two classes, which become differentiated by the inscrut-
468 PURITANISM IN POWER.
able reconciliation of God's sovereign electing grace with
man's consciously free determination. The two classes
are the spiritually privileged and unprivileged, spiritu-
ally firstborn and later-born, elect and non-elect
Church and World which exist in their true and
proper developments alone in countries that are evange-
lised, but are not really confined to such or to any age,
being known in the twilight of non-Christian countries,
for God has His witnesses and His called ones every-
where.
We found that this method, so far from exhibiting
partiality hi God, is designed to cultivate humility and
charity, while it devolves upon the elder brethren (the
firstborn) the responsibility of evangelising the souls
and caring for the bodies of the younger brethren the
World.
We found that while all men are -saved in Christ, by
His Incarnation, atoning blood, glorious resurrection
and constant mediation, and while salvation to an}'
human creature is morally impossible without a con-
scious recognition of Christ as the revealer of the
Father's mind against sin and His self-sacrificing love
towards sinners yet, what can alone be described as
"saving faith" is not within the power of man. It is
God's free gift, and man is impotent to acquire or exhibit
the Eternal Life unaided.
That the freedom of the human Will is necessarily
limited by the creature stain a, and can never successfully
oppose the Will of God that all men should be saved
and come to the knowledge of the truth ; that neverthe-
less it is not so limited but that accountability is
chargeable against man for neglecting the grace of God,
and that such degree of moral freedom is essential to
moral discipline and progress, which is continued under
and by the judgments which defect entails.
That thus for all the sons of men there is redemption
SUMMARY. 465)
secured by Christ their living Head, but two paths,
widely different in length and character, leading to two
saved destinies.
For the World a twilight knowledge here and a
deferred revelation hereafter a path of upward aspira-
tion in many, without any satisfying apprehension, of
corrupt alienation in more, ending in purifying judg-
ments, leading to repentance, of torpid materiality in
most, from which nothing but the other World will wake
them.
For the Church conferment of supernatural and
saving grace here and now, a summons to absolute sur-
render, joyful introduction to a new and Eternal Life,
and withal a solemn call to assume the responsibilities
of the Kingdom and become our Brother's keeper.
The religion of the true Calvinist is the very opposite
of a selfish one. While utterly abjuring works as a
ground of acceptance before his Maker, he, by the
proper operation of a faith which works by love, leaves
the legalist leagues behind in unremitting charity and
unobtrusive service, desirous always to hold all that he
is and has at the absolute disposal of his Lord, though
admittedly the realisation falls short of the conscious
aim.
We found that between the Church and the World
there was in the nature of things irreconcilable incom-
patibility impossibility of amalgamation on the part of
the Church impossibility of comprehension on the part of
the World, which assumes towards the Church an attitude
of hostility as well as contempt, the truer she is in the
exhibition of her own supernatural life. That this can
neither be avoided nor altered, and constitutes a needed
discipline for the Church, maintaining her zeal, fidelity,
courage and consistency, or, on the other hand, tempting
her to fail in these.
That the blessed truth that Christ is ultimately the
470 PURITANISM IN 1>0 \VElt.
common liefuge and Home of all men, bringing forth
judgment unto victory, sheds light upon the length of
the night that has brooded over the heathen world-
That we may also entertain the expectation that the
inferior animal intelligences and the material globe itself,
everything which is related to man in his mortal life
and had touch with Incarnate Deity, is destined to pro-
gression by purging of defect, towards infinite per-
fection.
In the second Book we found that a Gospel which
meant glad tidings for all men demanded for its proc-
lamation and the embodiment of its spirit a National
Church. A church which, while externalising the great
verity that all mankind have an inheritance in God,
would by its comprehension of the elect and invisibly
firstborn, and its anathemas and judgments upon the
later-born, reflect as far as human embodiment of
Divine ideals can, the real course of Providence in the
redemption of the world. The notion was rejected
that the Jewish polity was provisional merely ; it was
maintained that it was a declaration of the Divine mind
and will concerning all national life a type to Avhich
Christian nations are bound to conform, with the dif-
ference only that belongs to Christianity as the supple-
ment of Judaism and the fulfilment of the types and
shadows of the law.
And as the Jew, although only one outwardly was
recognised as heir to the Abrahamic covenant, and
therefore to be included in all church privileges which if
they failed to make him an " Israelite indeed " opposed
to his disobedience a perfect law, and pronounced his
excommunication when persistently rebellious and im-
penitent so should each and every Christian nation
recognising God's covenant with man in Christ, open to
all its subjects, without fee and without distinction, the
SUMMARY. 471
gates of teaching and of praise, and make the National
Church an instrument for propagating national righte-
ousness, by enforcing a church discipline respecting
matters of business and social morality which legal
enactments do not embrace.
That the National 'Church alone can give a religious
inheritance to the poor, and meet the needs of every
corner of a country. That to point to the " free churches,"
so called, and assume their competence to fill the place
of a National Establishment is to fiy in the face of
glaring facts, candidly admitted by sorrowing Free
Church ministers themselves ; for, as the Rev. T. G.
Horton has recently said, when population thickens in
the city the Congregational Churches become empty,
and adjourn to the suburbs, where their dearly-beloved
middle-class supporters have gone before them ; and
this, it has been pointed out, is the direct fruit and
inherent vice of Voluntaryism, which must, does, and
will curry the suffrages of those who can support the
denomination, leaving the masses to be treated as a
separate caste, and evangelised charitably by caste
missions, caste Bible-women, caste schools, and caste
" halls." The National Church, on the contrary, would
multiply its churches and its agencies just where popula-
tion was thickest, and until slums were ended, would
put her Baptistry outside, and pass the dirtiest of the
congregation and the worker fresh from his night toil
through the cleansing waters of the bath, after which,
clothed with the Church's beautiful garment, in common
with the wealthiest, who would doff their frippery, rich
and poor would meet together without offence to any
sense, and worship the One Father and Redeemer of the
Race. The National Church would admit of teaching as
various as the character of the Apostles, whose assumed
Creed its clergy would substantially adopt. It would pro-
vide a home for the meditative recluse, the religious
472 PURITANISM IN POWER.
mystic, the scholarly expositor, the fervid evangelist, the
ecclesiastical organiser, and the political reformer. Its
Sabbath worship would give prominence to the spiritual
and subordinate the ceremonial, but its week day fes-
tivals would disclose a wealth of externals which would
distance the inferior effects of Rome. In buildings to
which Art had lent its last touch of reverent significance
functions would be gone through which would fascinate
and awe the multitude, while they thrilled with shame
or joy the parties immediately concerned. The socially
vicious and unjust would be banned with a solemn
anathema pronounced amid awful offices, and the re-
pentant be received with a joy expressed in the most
captivating and cheering ceremonials. The National
Church would stand, columnar and chaste, as a pillar
and ground of imperishable Catholic truth a marble
monument veined by the several hues with which
Wesley, AYhitefield, Maurice, Martineau and Newman
have embellished or discoloured Christian doctrine ;
but needing no supports from those sacraments which
truly were provisional and optional, and only blind the
soul to the real requirements of God. Hence the
National Church will be free from that which inevitably
tends to idolatry, priestcraft and ecclesiastical despotism.
Its " priests " would abdicate the name and only sacrifice
themselves in the service of the people.
The National Church would identify herself with every-
thing which pertained to the national life, in the spirit
of Kingsley's father, who hastened surpliced to Clovelly
Qua} 7 , read prayers and dismissed the fishing fleet witli
his blessing. She should offer thanks for every national
benefit, offer rewards for every needed discovery, and
keep a roll of secular saints, whose relics in the shape of
models of useful inventions she should keep, with a record
of their lives, in her museums of National Worthies.
She should regularly keep her All Saints' day, and drag
SUMMARY. 47')
to light for public edification the simple annals of
departed parish luminaries. She might well speed the
plough, pray over the sowing, and thankfully greet the
harvest. What can the middle-class dissenting bodies do
of this national character ? Beset with straits, debts,
difficulties and dunning they can never move with the
ease, dignitj 7 , beneficence or authority of a Church
supported by the freewill offering of a Parliament only
another name, if Puritanism will properly represent
itself, for a Church council, synod, or vestry meeting.
Alike in Canada, the United States and the Colonies,
the free churches fail to be anything else than provi-
sions for the religious luxury and ostentatious piety of
the prosperous. The nation, however, as John Bright
said, lives in the cottage, a euphemism in these days for
the slums. Vain is the effort by cozening, eye-opening
gifts from the guiltily rich, and by " General " Booth
struggling with his bonds, to meet the needs of the
populous poor.
Nobly, indeed, has the attempt been often made, but
never, except in exceptional cases when" unattached" lay-
men have set to work, and been backed by private means,
has any permanent good resulted. It is to a Christian
nation, having its Christianity reflected predominantly
in Parliament, we must look for adequate Catholic
culture to reach the masses. It is therefor we in-
vited every patriotic inhabitant of these kingdoms to
hasten back again to the Church of their fathers and
help to make it that organ for propagating holiness and
righteousness which no separate sect can hope to
become. No existing religious society need be extin-
guished, even voluntarily : every centre of religious life
and light is the most precious possession of a nation :
but by a recognition of common national duty, no dis-
tinctive truth, believed to be of importance, need be lost.
Men can assert themselves as members of the National
474 PURITANISM IN POWER.
Church and also of branch establishments at one and t he-
same time, and make both instrumental to the national
salvation.
In the course of this same second book we argued
strenuously against the moribund distinction between
things sacred and secular, and claimed for all human
institutions for the accomplishment of divine ends,
guidance and control from the Lover of Men that the-
Great Head "of the Church was presiding in every Par-
liament that was framing a just law, and that the
introduction of measures for the reform or extension of
the National Church would not certainly secure Hi-
retirement. That the whole argument respecting the
respective functions of the Church and State is too-
weak, silly and confused to be described, and that every
dissenter sitting upon a School Board, whose rules pro-
vide for the reading of the Scriptures, implicitly accepts
the whole theory of a National Church Establishment.
In the third Book we proceeded to show that the Gospel
which brings glad tidings to all men gives them chartered
privileges to a common inheritance in the earth as well
as in the heavens, and that acquiescence in the flagrant
breach of that design in the ordering of civilized society
was rendered easier by a false belief in the appointed
destiny of the majority of mankind.
We combated the notion that existing social inequali-
ties could be justified by an appeal to Scripture, and
pointed to the manifest advances that had been made in
conducting certain upper sections of the people to larger-
economical liberty, while the lowest were left more strait ty
bound than ever, and asked the reader to judge whether
a constitution of things which established capital,
privately owned, in the position of absolute and irrespon-
sible Ruler of mankind damaging the poor by im-
poverishment in order that the already rich might be
SUMMARY. 475
damaged by excess was a constitution of things either
inherently stable or possibly Divine.
We glanced at the ethics of " business " at the twin-
principles which are the guardians of its success, and we
guessed that they issued from beneath. We felt and knew
as we glanced at them that society continued to exist
because these principles were continually infringed and
we looked for Christianity to multiply the infractions
and increase the gravity of the breach, until their
authority and necessity were overthrown.
Regarding the questionable and sinister methods by
which civilization has been evolved, we felt that its
ultimate outcome, when baptized in Christianity, must
be the best apology for its previous history. But looking
at the progress from slave to serf and from serf to
Hunger's bondsman from monopoly and protection to
freedom of production and exchange from the small
results of mechanically unassisted toil, to the astonish-
ing accession to human powers brought about by physical
science and by steam machinery regarding the resulting
weakness of displaced human labour and the resulting
strength of proud possessors, owners of every thing by
which men must live we arrived at the conclusion,
justified by the page of histoiy, that force alone would
revolutionise what force now held. This force, we pointed
out, it is not allowable for Christians to employ the
incubation and future manifestation of the Kingdom of
Righteousness being in other hands than theirs. But we
signified it was the joy and duty of the Christian to look
for the arrival of that force, physical as well as spiritual,
which will accompany with amazing weight the second
coming of the Son of Man and that it was then- present
and continuous duty to prepare a highway for His
triumph.
Not alone by every man paying special heed to the
growth of Justice as a precious medicine in his private
470 PURITANISM IN POWER.
garden, but resolving also to sow it broadcast from every
seat of authority that the Constitution will place within
his reach.
And remembering how Christ at His first coming
aimed at man's deliverance first of all from spiritual
thrall, we indicated that the Puritan method must be
not to seek the social deliverance except concurrently
witli Gospel preaching, and the plain reading of Christ's
word and deeds, and David's psalms, and the Prophets
and Apostles, so that the common people may hear them
not much less often than the news-boy's cry.
The double aim and office suggested the formation of
two Companionships that of Christ's Ambassadors and
that of Christ's Kingdom.
The day is ripe for their appearing. Puritanism was
to purify itself in its hidden persecuted flow, so that it
should issue at last at the word of the Master to cover
the waste places of the world. Not until now had con-
stitutional freedom been so perfected that a peaceable
assumption of power was possible to the lowly and the
meek. But when the providential summons to herald
the approaching kingdom has been heard, and Puritans
obeying it commence to curb the reins of towering wealth,
to clear a space upon which the poor can breathe to
strike at Luxury's corruptions ; to stop all business
which means the destruction of men's souls and bodies,
and all foreign trading which means the same to in-
experienced peoples when it appears that Puritanism
has come to stay, and God only knows what next
absurdity in the name of Christianity is going to be
done then will ensue a concurrence among the evil
dominions who have prospered through the Baby Ionian
idolatries, to overthrow the Puritan ascendency, and in
the hour of that great and final conflict when faith will
be purified in the fire the needed Force will descend,
bringing salvation to the meek and confusion to their
SUMMARY. 477
foes. The Kingdom that shall never be removed shall
have arrived at last, and be set up upon its everlasting
foundations of Truth and Justice, Religion and Piety.
EPILOGUE.
Give the king Thy judgments, God,
And Thy righteousness unto the king's son.
He shall judge Thy people with righteousness,
And Thy poor with judgment.
The mountains shall bring peace to the people,
And the little hills, by righteousness.
He shall judge the poor of the people,
He shall save the children of the needy,
And shall break in pieces the oppressor.
They shall fear Thee while the sun and moon endure,
throughout all generations.
He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass :
As showers that water the earth.
In his days shall the righteous flourish ;
And abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth.
He shall have dominion also from sea to sea,
And from the river unto the ends of the earth.
They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him,
And his enemies shall lick the dust.
The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents :
The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts.
Yea, all kings shall fall down before him :
All nations shall serve him.
For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth ;
The poor also and him that hath no helper.
He shall have pity on the poor and needy,
And shall save the souls of the needy.
He shall redeem their souls from oppression and violence ;
And precious shall their blood be in his sight.
478 PURITANISM IN POWEIl.
And they shall live, and to him shall be given of the gold
of Sheba :
And men shall pray for him continually :
They shall bless him all the day long.
There shall be abundance of corn in the earth upon the
top of the mountains :
The fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon :
And they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth.
His name shall endure for ever :
His name shall be continued as long as the sun :
And men shall be blessed in him :
All nations shall call him blessed.
Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel,
Who only doeth wondrous things :
And blessed be his glorious Name for ever :
And let the whole earth be filled with his glory ;
Amen and Amen.
The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.
Psalm Ixxii.
APPENDIX.
481
APPENDIX.
(a) ON THE PURITAN USE OF THE STAGE.
THE entire amusements of the people must pass under
the control of Puritanism in Power. It will stamp out
certain classes of entertainment as it would take
measures to exterminate the plague. The origin of the
pernicious character of much that goes by the name of
amusement is not a real, natural or healthy public
demand ; it is simply the base speculation of an un-
principled caterer, as to whether human nature may not
be counted upon to descend to the low novelties, which,
in search of a living, he seeks to create and make
popular.
Here we have our old foe Individualism presenting
himself in one of his ugliest and most dangerous manifest-
ations. That a man wants a living for himself and
family, is really no sufficient reason why he should be
allowed to poison the minds of hundreds or thousands
by a morally bad book, play or picture. We cannot
rationally permit the enormous power of the Press and
the influence of the Drama to be determined in their
character by the exigencies of adventurers experimenting
for livelihood. The big potentialities of human nature
are more easily engaged for a descent towards Inferno
than for an ascent in excelsis, and can we any longer
allow swarms of quacks to push the development either
way, according as it seems to them most likely to pay ?
The difficulty, of course, would disappear were careers
of real utility provided for every subject in the state ;
but until the realization of the Co-operative Common-
wealth, Puritanism in Power must supersede the
functions, or strictly supervise the actions of the play-
31
482 PURITANISM IN POWEK.
wrights and tale writers, and leave those who are thrown
out of an evil employment to seek lowlier but honester
callings.
When a false and evil preference has been artificially
created, it is pleaded that the character of the supply
has been determined by the nature of the demand ! A
libel ! As in the case of opium, spirits and tobacco,
human nature can be made to put on cravings.
It is well known that those English men and English
women who at first experience a shock at the brutal
spectacle of a bull-fight, often end by patronising it as
frequently as the Spaniards themselves; and we can
safely say that there is not one of the now forbidden
pastimes of a more barbarous age, but would, if revived,
speedily create for itself popularity and degraded
devotion.
It has been therefore conceded, that to interfere with
the amusements of the people is a necessary function of
good Government the interference must, however, go
much farther than putting down cock, dog and man
fighting. The Public are helplessly taken in by the
people who assume the melancholy business of amusing
minds that should be superior to the need. It is for the
Government to protect them in the matter of Literature,
Newspaper, the Drama and the Show as much as it
acknowledges its duty to protect them against contagious
diseases and adulterated food. Serial newspaper stories
based upon the careers of well-known criminals, intended
to absorb the interest of thousands of readers for months
together in the embellished details of vice and crime,
should be peremptorily squashed, and the proprietors
severely fined. And dramatic representations which
familiarize spectators with depths of wickedness, and as
if actual life were not sufficiently full of tragedy and
horror, load the stage with artificially created catastrophe
such exercises in the Dramatic Art a rational and
THE PURITAN USE OF THE STAGE. 483
rigid censorship should forbid. Plays and amusements
the people will have and ought to have in due degree
and of the right kind, and of all forms of amusement
none can compare in intellectual dignity, comprehensive-
ness and charm, with that of the Dramatic Art, especially
as its " staging" has been developed in modern times.
The babyish, contemptible, and often objectionable
vulgarities which chapel people will resort to for a
pastime for their children, so long as they are not con-
tained within the walls of a Theatre, is almost as pathetic
a plea for Puritans to become playwrights as the needs
of the multitude themselves. The Dramatic instinct is
universal in man, was ministered to by the Creator in
the institutions of the chosen people, and was appealed
to by our Lord in 'every parable and sermon he uttered.
Now, even among Pagans in the classical days, the
Drama was never the seductively evil thing which
Christendom has allowed it to become in most of the
Temples of Thespis. For one thing, the plot of the
plays and the parts of the actors were not everlastingly
engaged upon that side of human life which is by no
means the most elevating, and that passion of human
nature which is by no means the most potent, abiding,
and life absorbing. Women did not appear, and the
stage was a wholesome censor of manners, a critic of
the men in power, and a provocation of public virtue.
It had need to Jbe intellectual, for it derived no aid from
the magnificent assistance which the Arts of music and
painting, mechanics, science, archaeology, as well as
consummate histrionics, are now ever ready to render it.
To-day it is capable of being made the most splendidly
powerful means of public instruction that a nation can
employ, while, at the same time, affording the loftiest
kind of gratification of the recreation order. The
Catholic Church gave birth to the drama of modern
history by its miracle plays, but the child, as it grew,
484 PUKITANISM IN POWER.
became corrupted, until it fell entirely under alien
influences, and the guardian of its youth could no
longer control its development. This control must
be recovered once more for good. Really, the land of
Shakespeare does not require to borrow its plays from
France or any other country. Let England set an
example to the world, in starting a thoroughly English
school of Dramatic Art, pure and abundant as a
mountain torrent as brilliant, fascinating, and un-
exceptionable as Scott's novels. Wanted, a Victorian
Shakespeare and Walter Scott. Newspapers please
copy. It is for the Clergy of the National Establishment
to answer the advertisement and write the plays ! The
plays so written should be acted by Puritans and
Puritanically. The County Councils should deem it as
much their business to provide amusements of the best
and highest order as it is now, by law, to furnish
elementary education for the children. The Drama
should be the night school of the Adult, and as the
Board Schools are superseding, by a national process,
the inferior class of private schools, so the splendid
provision that the County Councils would make for the
popular recreation would not leave the inferior class of
caterers a chance. The prices charged would be just
sufficient to pay expenses, no more, and for the first
time, the poor, seated in pit or boxes instead of gallery,
would see a fine play, splendidly staged, which would
lift the factory girl out of the worrying echo of the
clanging loom, and make the riveter forget the dazing
din of his boiler work, and the clerk to be refreshed after
fighting his head-splitting bundle of undigested papers,
and the drudgers of all sorts to be redeemed for a bright
two or three hours from their oppressive task work, while
the moral of the play would follow them throughout the
week.
To the dwellers in city slums the highest scenic Art of
THE PURITAN USB OF THE STAGE. 485
modern days and it is high and wonderful would
summon from afar the glimmer of the dimpling lake
overhung by the mystery of its mountain grandeur.
Anon the splendid ancient city surrounds the bay, or the
moon-beams slant across the quaint mediaeval street, or
from the glorious minster the hum of evensong steals to
tranquillize the mind, or again the stage is all alive with
the harvest merrymaker and an enchanting rural scene,
bright with an electric sun, delighting the poor eyes which
have strained over their long tasks in the gloom of a
cellar workshop.
But recreation of this captivating kind, to say nothing
of the plots and delineations of character, must, like
sunshine itself, be kept within bounds. Puritans would
see to it that the theatres were not open more than twice
a week, and upon the same days in all neighbouring
towns, so that there should be no running about by rail
to four or five evenings of theatre per week, instead of
getting just two at the outside. Pleasure of this kind
should be taken like grains of salt, since otherwise, pure,
splendid and healthy as it might be, it might establish
a habit of enervating and duty-neglecting indulgence
which could only be harmful. As the theatre is at
present Puritans do right in leaving it alone. It is their
duty to get into Power so that they may entirely trans-
form it. The indignation of a minister lately at Cardiff
who was scandalized that daughters of ministers and
deacons should have assisted at a representation of
Welsh opera, was in one aspect natural and right, in
another entirely wrong. Instead of being a " hideous
spectacle," a conscientious effort in and by Christian
means to rescue the business of amusing the people from
the hands of the Devil is as holy as suppressing the
quack doctor by establishing the hospital. The quack
doctor signifies a recurrent human need. It is vain to
say that it is hideous for Christians to be " amusing
486 PURITANISM IN POWER.
people whom they ought to convert." Conversion is not
man's work at all ; to it whether in his own case or in
that of others a man can contribute absolutely nothing.
The Church must perpetually preach the gospel, and
aim to do so to every creature, but that does not dispense
her from the duty of ministering to every mortal need of
man. In these matters we can never find bottom apart
from an appeal to scripture. There we can luminously
read that the distinctions between Church and World
will never cease not even during the Millennium that
the blessing to the world of Christ's personal reign will
be its subjection, as World, to the rule of the Church, as
Church. To that extent it will participate in Israel's
new covenant, that "all shall know the Lord from the
least even unto the greatest," but of the chosen people
only is it said His laws will be put into their minds, and
written upon their hearts ; that only is " conversion "
and the work of God's finger.
There is blessing in exterior subjection to beneficent
authority, even when there is no interior consent to the
laws obeyed, and even were this kind of salvation to be
succeeded by no other, it is God's express purpose that
the Church should be engaged in imparting it. Who
does not see that the gospel narratives abound with the
enforcement of this principle ? The victims of maladies
from which Christ's word had relieved them, besought
Him that they might follow Him, but he suffered them
not ; their world status was not to deprive them of a
blessing only mortal because it was not to be accom-
panied by a " hope full of immortality."
The disciples travelled diligently between the multitude
and the multiplying loaves and fishes, though to a cer-
tainty few of the thousands were in this life to partake
of the " living bread." If the church is to minister to
the world in no other respect than as bearers of the
message of " saving truth," then the example of Christ
THE PUKITAN USE OF THE STAGE. 487
and His disciples must be ignored, likewise the precept
of the apostle to "do good unto all men, especially unto
such as are of the household of faith." Hospitals,
Schools, Poor Law, the Drink traffic, and wholesome
literature everything must be neglected that preaching
and tracts may go on alone. Distinctly this position is
neither Jewish nor Christian; it would have exempted
disciples of both creeds from any obligations towards
their unbelieving slaves, and men generally from any
obligations towards the brute creation.
Amusements to which Christians are superior must
yet be provided by them for those who have not their
resources. "Hold your peace," said the Levites under
Nehemiah to the weeping people, " for the day is holy,
neither be ye grieved : for the joy of the Lord is your
strength." And all the people went their way to eat the
fat and drink the sweet, and send portions to those for
whom nothing was prepared, and to make great mirth,
because they had understood the words that were dis-
closed unto them.
Ministers of Keligion should go to be taught by the
Hospital staff. To the House Surgeon and Physician a
patient received is simply a fellow mortal in need.
Irrespective altogether of moral desert, the utmost
resources of human skill and science are brought to
bear by doctors and nurses for the redemption of the
man's body from mortal perdition, and the impartation
of the mortal salvation of bodily health. In doing this
they are Christ's true soldiers and servants "the Lord
is for the body."
The Theatre, moreover, could be made an instrument
of the finest teaching. In very deed the programme
should be such that a tract could accompany it without
incongruity, and true Christian preaching be embedded
in the play. It is to this complexion things must come,
and will come when Puritanism comes to power. The
488 PURITANISM IN POWER.
audience will be led up " from Nature unto Nature's
God."
Puritanism would use the stage to mirror to the
masses the great events of man's past history, would
also give vivid representations of existing " barbarous "
peoples, and show in what respect their civilization is
superior to our own. It would on all occasions advance
the social propaganda, and contrast with the blessedness
of Christian communion the hideous results of anarchic
competition. It would play with Punch's light rapier in
dealing with the lighter follies of the hour, but use
Jehovah's thunder against the scandals of lawless
Power.
All amusements, whether dramatic, operatic, or mis-
cellaneous, would come under the same salutary censor-
ship, and the sporting columns in the newspapers, which
have been the main if not the sole cause of the spread of
gambling, would under Puritanism disappear.
As a specimen of dramatic incident, into which no
love scenes enter for such are unfit for the public stage
and can never be a suitable or refining exhibition it
occurs to me to recall what I read some years ago in
George Sorrow's "Wild Wales." It is true the scenes and
characters are not of the highest order, but the story is
true, innocent and moral, and being capable of dramatic
treatment might be staged and witnessed by Puritans.
Borrow took it from the lips of a vagrant Irishwoman,
at Newport, Mon. Essentially the story is as follows :
In the early days of her widowhood she had sat at the
cottage door, upon the little farm, stopping her work as
the beggars came past and from a bowl which was
regularly supplied with oatmeal doling out a measure to
each. Her sons coming from market always replenished
her store. There were some beggars who came as
regularly as the sparrows, and among them a cripple of
an evil look. It chanced one hapless day that the sons
THE PURITAN USE OF THE STAGE. 489
not having brought oatmeal the previous night the bowl
was empty as the tramps came by. The usual salu-
tations of the petitioners were not rewarded, but all
accepted the good Catholic's explanation except the
cripple of the evil eye. He argued and stormed impor-
tunately, refusing to believe her word, and finally uttered
an Irish imprecation committing her soul to the evil one.
The poor woman recoiled within her cottage door as
struck by a poisoned dart, and the light of her heart
forsook her. The sons came home blithely with the bag
of meal, but found their mother changed ; a curse came
from her pious lips as the store was thrown aside. Now
all the former peace was gone ; her former sympathy for
the poor was curdled into hatred. The hapless ones
came limping by, looking up with smiles and confidence
for a dole this time, but were driven with curses from
the door. The sons lost heart with the domestic wretch-
edness, and the farm was rapidly going to rack and ruin.
It chanced that her malady took the special form of
objurgations against the Blessed Sacrament. This she
displayed openly at mass, and shocked the people. The
Romish Priest undertook to exorcise the evil spirit, hoping
to bring renown to mother Church in consequence. In
his study he made her utter prayers, but she remained
unmoved, her eyes being fascinated by a rubicund old
nose. This with a yell she finally seized as though
minded to tear it off. The cries and struggles brought
in the servants and assistance. Next Sunday, the
Priest, with a gold plainer upon his nose, was constrained
to confess his failure before a crowded chapel. I think
the story goes on to say that the people gathered together
to go up and burn the witch in her own house, but
finding the ruined place deserted, with the logic peculiar
to the race, they cut off the cows' tails instead. Poor
Bridget never recovered ; her sons had to leave the farm
and got scattered abroad. When Borrow interviewed
490 PURITANISM IN POWER.
her, her happy past was as it were a story told of
someone else.
Now here is matter for a moving play. First scene
Biddy sings at her wheel, and the beggars come trooping
past ; they shower blessings upon her as she empties the
generous bowl.
Scene 2. The sons confab, with the mother, and tell
amusing adventures at the fair.
Scene 8. The hapless day when there is no meal,
and the wicked cripple pronounces the awful curse.
There is opportunity here for a fine actor, portraying
the subtle psychological change which ensues : see that
most charming of Dickens' Christmas Books, " The
Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain." Scenes of wor-
ship in a church would be unsuitable for a play, and the
defamation of the Sacrament must only be alluded to,
but there is no reason why the jolly priest should not
essay his exorcism, and why his jolly masked nose should
not be seized and squeezed.
In subsequent acts and scenes we should see the mob
assembled to burn the witch's house, and have repre-
sented the wonderful power formerly possessed by the
catholic clergy of disarming and disbanding a riotous
crowd.
Following this an exciting eviction scene for non-pay-
ment of rent. The constabulary and soldiers who have
exchanged shots with the people quit the stage, and
against the darkening glow of the sunset the ruined
cottage is left to smoulder.
Demented Biddy steals alone upon the darkened scene.
A groan and an uplifted arm proceed from a prostrate
figure. She imagines it is her favourite son Mick, for
whom she feels stirring a return of affection, and hastens
with water to his lips. A shriek betrays that she is
mistaken it is the cripple the author of her calamity,
whom a random shot has fatally wounded. A struggle
THE PURITAN USE OF THE STAGE. 491
takes place within her breast, but she finally gives him
to drink. With quiet eyes he blesses her and dies, and
the curse is gone. Biddy starts up with a shriek of joy,
she has got her old heart back again, and the curtain
falls with the cascade of her tumbling laughter.
Last scene of all we see her over again, bright, peace-
ful, and sadly glad. The bowl of oatmeal is by her side,
and as the beggars come trooping past she satisfies them
all. Her wandering song of joy, weird and wilful, rises
and falls as the wheel goes round, and the song goes
round the Theatre. In the midst of it she bursts into a
flood of tears, and her arms are down in her apron, and
her gaze transfixed as " his riverence " looks in at the
window, sure enough with ne'er a bit of a nose at all at
all, and when she offers him " a drop of the crathur "
he answers by pulling out his pledge book. It was Mick
that made her cry where was he ? As they speak the
village shouts are heard afar. It is Mick, who has
returned from the States, with money to redeem the
i'arm and make his mother happy. Presently he runs
in, and with him Peter, medals on his breast won by
fighting the Germans in Equatorial Africa ; and lastly,
Patrick, who has entered the constabulary, and has got
his shorthand note book in his pocket. The tableau is
complete, and the baize goes down.
Subjects much more elevated than the above could be
found in abundance in that grand and various infinite
human life. The struggles of a drunkard in over-
coming his vice Temptations to embezzlement, under
the specious idea of temporary loan to escape from
impending disaster steadfastly resisted The curse
of the gambler's career Great gifts leading to ruin
through the want of self-control, and the career
of obscure heroes in fighting life's stern battle against
overwhelming odds The enduring rewards of virtue,
and the curse that surely lies secreted in an im-
492 PURITANISM IN POWER.
moral success The vanity of wealth, as satisfaction
for the soul. All this and countless more might
the Drama preach giving opportunity also for the inter-
ment of the Stiggins and Chadband caricatures of
Christian ministers, and the stage representation of the
real articles. Noble episodes in the history of the world
and of the nation should also be represented with con-
summate effect. Absolutely generations of Englishmen
pass out of existence without ever knowing how England
came to be. We have but faintly sketched what the
Drama might effect under Puritan control.
493
(6) ON WOMEN AND THEIE POLITICAL
ENFEANCHISEMENT.
VIEWED as citizens and subjects, the right of women
to be admitted to the franchise is indisputable, but what
logical consistency may demand, political expediency
may reasonably refuse.
There are qualifications and qualifications. The
qualifications which it is difficult for women in the mass
to lay claim to are both mental and moral. The great
and conspicuous exceptions only prove the rule, and the
opinions now advanced respecting the natural and moral
peculiarities of women are committed to the judgment of
all persons of experience.
Much has been talked and written about women by
persons not in a position to view them in a " drylight,"
while those whose observations have outlived the period
of coloration and aberration have held their peace.
We say then that women are mentally disqualified
from proving a beneficial influence in politics by their
native inability to take comprehensive views and to think
logically.
Further, they are morally disqualified by their curious
incapacity to be just and to perceive justice, by the
narrow range and shallow depth of their human
sympathy, by their inordinate self-regard, their un-
towardness to self-sacrifice, their insatiable greed of
pleasure, contented ignorance of the life around them,
and usual lack of generosity, which sounds better than
an accusation of specific meanness. From the full force
of these strictures we exclude the Puritan women-
Puritanism is a solvent which refines away our dross
an alchemy which transmutes base natures into gold.
There are women after the type of those who minis-
494 PURITANISM IN POWER.
tered of their substance to the Lord, but it must be
regretfully affirmed that were women consulted and their
decision taken before the gifts now devoted to the causes
of Eeligion and Humanity were assigned, their amount
would be reduced by fully 50 per cent.
And the action, persuasion and influence of women
to-day are the chief causes why the Treasuries of Religion
and Philanthropy are not replenished 100 per cent, more
than they are.
Unfortunately the claims of the family are generally
with wives and mothers an indefinable quantity, and no
claims outside the family and one's own relations or
intimate friends have a chance of cordial recognition.
If it is discovered that money is being given away
by the person who has hardly earned it and whose self-
sacrifice is real, there are female partners who will immedi-
ately jump to the conclusion that more must be available
for the family (feminine logic), and although the coveted
requirements may be simply some superfluous concession
to fashion and folly, they may deem it their duty forthwith
to run up a credit at the shops to the amount of their
husband's donation.
A prodigious number of women are in these days being
left fortunes the fortune maker breaks down under the
strain of his career, but leaves his wife and daughters
amply endowed. The country is covered with estates
and mansions within which ladies only are living. Do
these ladies continue the subscriptions which their
husbands began, or do they shuffle out of them? Do
they usually start new ones of their own selection '? They
are wealthy, remember, and have had no trouble and
pain in acquiring what they enjoy. They are the spoiled
children of fortune. How do they recognise the duties of
property ? Are we to excuse them any knowledge of how
the money was made, and any care or consideration for
the toilers who made it ?
WOMEN AND THEIR POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT. 495
It is true that the girls of a family think it very fine
and lady-like to know nothing of so vulgar a thing as
business, and some of them go through existence from
the cradle to the grave with a glimmering conjecture that
their father was something in iron, or something in
paper, but they don't know which, and it is the less
necessary to enquire, since the results, whether it was
paper or iron, have been highly satisfactory.
Is it likely that votes of this class would be given with
intelligence and sympathy, although the property qualifi-
cation would be unquestionable ? Far better would it be
to confer the franchise upon factory workers and wives
of sailors, miners and fishermen. The intelligence that
would be exercised by the relicts of manufacturers and
the heiresses of cotton lords would, I believe, be used to
hinder instead of to promote the progress of factory
legislation.
When the ten hours' bill was being fought, the factory
owners turned to the pen of a female economist to assist
them in stemming the advancing tide, and since Harriet
Martineau, there have been at least two other female
writers who have been engaged upon an ignorant dis-
paragement of the labour claim.
We have had, for the credit of the sex, some notable
instances of a contrary kind since then, but which class
of writer more faithfully represented the body of opinion
or of ignorance in the sex we may leave the reader
to decide.
A well-known female writer for the Christian World
lately communicated some short articles on " Towns and
their trades," and when she was shown over large works
employing many hundreds of male and female hands, it
seems never to have struck her that the way and degree
in which the trade occupation affected the health of the
workers should have a first place in her investigations.
The same impassibility and incuriosity are character-
496 PURITANISM IN POWEB.
istic of the entire sex. The lot of " inferiors " is always
taken for granted as presumably better than they deserve,
and quite serene.
I am driven to the conclusion that had women had
power in proportion to their numbers to influence
Parliament, the Factory Acts would never have been
passed even now, and that their admission to the
franchise would mean a very marked obstruction to all
beneficial progress. And if it came to selection of a
leader and loyalty to a party, the female vote would
be cast in the majority of cases in favour of some bold
but unprincipled adventurer. "Women will bear much
from and forgive much to, those who have much to be
forgiven. It is the unimpeachable character for which
they can feel no enthusiasm rather a contempt because
of its lack of a proper quantum of vices.
It is the monstrous multiplication of the class of
idle girls of the prosperous middle classes that constitutes
one of the gravest features of the time. Whereas their
puritan grandmothers used to lament that the perishing
body demanded of them the small devotion of time in
their day given to it, their grand- daughters live as if the
chief end of women was dressing. Of the majority,
not Puritans, I fear it must be said that one-sixth of
their existence is given to self-adornment, one-third to
frivolous vanities, and the remainder to excessive feeding
and sleep. They flock the churches to exhibit their
genuflexions, and they " slum " to pierce the hearts
of the unfortunate with envy at their own superior
position. And these beings are to be some of them wives
and mothers ! the fewer the better.*
Perhaps as urgent as any other call for the Co-
operative Commonwealth is that which arises from the
* As these pages pass the press, I find Ben Tillett telling the
workers he believed that many employers bore hardly upon their
servants because of the demands of their wives and daughters to
feed an ungodly vanity.
WOMEN AND THEIR POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT. 497
present mis-manufacture of the future mothers. The
girls should be yoked to the machinery of industrial pro-
duction, of youthful training, or of domestic management
quite as early as boys are now put to business, and if
they would not work, be conscientiously left to starve.
But the whole treatment of women calls for a radical
alteration.
" Civilized manners," as they are called, from the
beginning of a girl's existence, tend to force into baneful
luxuriance evil principles already native to the soil.
" Manners " really mean in the main the diligent
fostering of pride, vanity, perversity, and selfishness in
female human nature. These manners must be altered,
and a brusque indifference and impartiality be displayed
in reviewing the claims to consideration presented by
either sex. It is as pernicious as it is preposterous that
in Christendom the arrogant claim of women that every-
body and everything should get out of the way to make
room for their indulgence should be cordially conceded ;
neither nature nor scripture have a word to say in its
favour.
It may be thought that in so far as the foregoing
estimate is true it supplies a motive for conferring the
franchise as perhaps the best means of giving to women
higher and wider interests and, if possible, stretching
their minds and their hearts. If I could be sure that
such would be the case I would warmly advocate
womanhood suffrage as a pressing need of the hour.
Happily there is some useful work which the National
Church could offer to the Art trained girls of South
Kensington who are at present wasting their existence.
The revival of Architecture is one of the few really
happy features of our times. All great builders are
humble copyists of God. He who works cunningly in
stone and timber and writes the lines of striking beauty
in characters that all may read, not only blesses his own
32
498 PURITANISM IN POWER.
but many succeeding generations. Long after the builder
is dead men will revere the memory of the heart that
prompted and the Art that wrought his thought.
The poorest have inheritance in noble architecture.
They sit upon the steps of fountain statues and none
can rob them of the joy with which they gaze upon a
lordly street. Wretched people who are richer are
supposed to be compelled by business or "manners" to
rush past the beautiful frieze or architrave which cost
the sculptor so much pains to bring to victorious com-
pletion ; but the happier poor man, out of employment,
can stand with his mouth open gazing at his leisure at
the beautiful goddess Ceres and her cornucopia of plenty.
Our business, however, is with St. Paul's, and its need
of decoration. No cathedral should be anything but
gothic, but the proud pile being, as a building, a great
national possession, we can at once solicit the services of
our idle young ladies to complete it. South Kensington
has done enough for these dames to make them com-
petent copyists of supplied designs. Women wanting in
originality and invention in Art as everything else can
seldom design, and the scheme must proceed from some
masterly brain. But here is a great national work
waiting to be done. The interior of a building whose
exterior far surpasses that of St. Peter's at Rome in
elegance and proportion, contrasts with the latter in
being repulsively bare. It is susceptible of splendid
transformation by chromatic mural decoration. Let us
hope within no long period to read the following mural
tablet.
" Done in attempted expiation of the previous worth-
lessness of their lives by 4,000 young women of what are
called the upper and middle classes, whose fathers paid
for the paint. They subscribed the cost of a new bonnet
and one year's pocket money to the Benefit funds of the
Painters and Decorators Trades' Union of London."
WOMEN AND THEIR POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT. 49 ( J
After St. Paul's had been gloriously enriched Liverpool
would be fired by the example. The hapless girls of the
northern city who, while their brothers have their noses
to the grindstone, and are tied to the desk from year's end
to year's end, are running to seed for want of compulsory
duties, will, we trust, presently assail their sires thus :
" Pa, dear, we are dying, Minnie and I, to do like the
girls of London. They were six months doing St. Paul's,
wearing nasty aprons, washing their hands in turpentine
went in at seven every morning (fancy seven !) bought
hot potatoes, broke their corsets in going up ladders and
came out splendid, looking better than ever."
" But you know, dear, we have no cathedral in
Liverpool."
" That's just it, Papa, we want you to build one. I
don't want you to spend any more money on me, I can
already play three instruments and can whistle besides.
You talked of sending us to the Alps, along with cousin
Sophie, to learn the zither ; but Sophie, Minnie and I
want to do something really useful it's Lent, you know
we have already painted on plates, placques, mirrors,
wood, silk, china, leather, marble, canvas and velvet.
We have done teapots, flower-pots, and chimney-pots.
We have done every door panel and every china knob :
we have also done the soles of your slippers that you
might look nice when you take your afternoon nap, and
now we want to paint a cathedral. Oh ! do give us a
cathedral to paint."
" My dear, cathedrals cost money and are not built in
a day."
" That's the way we are always put off. I just knew
it would end that way always the same. Can't you get
up a Company to do it a syndicate (how do you spell
it s-y-n or s-i-n ?) with limited liability and that sort of
thing?"
" Build a cathedral out of the proceeds of another
500 PURITANISM IN POWER.
venture, you mean. Fetch my pipe. No ! Anabel, like
you and your paint brushes, there is not another project
left that I can varnish."
" Oh, Pa ! do think how lovely it would be we should
get up at five, you know."
" Although I can't rouse you now at eight. Well ? "
" And we should take our afternoon tea up in the
belfry, and "
" I thought you told me that the Dictator of Coniston
had decided that gothic cathedrals should be left to stand
shaded in the hues of their native stone."
" Oh, Pa dear, you are so trying; there are the cusps
in the chancel and the stalls we can carve, you know.
Oh ! I know a splendid subject for the Pulpit that
beautiful passage, you know, in which we are commended
for not toiling and spinning, and recommended to study
the fashions." .
" ' Consider the lilies,' you mean."
" Yes ! It's all the same, we are to be as rich and
glorious as Solomon without toiling for it."
" Go on this is good."
" We'll get that Pottery man at Lambeth to design it,
and Minnie will do the flower-pot and keep a lily always
living at the pulpit stairs. I'll carve the stairs, and we'll
get the man to carve the Figure the Figure, you know.
Then there's the windows I think it very unchristian to
wish all the rich people of the congregation to die in
order to get stained glass. Wouldn't you rather see me
and Minnie paint a window than let Mamma have the
gratification of putting in a memorial by-and-by '?"
Papa hitches in his chair and says, " Certainly."
"Well, then, give me a thousand pounds now to start
the subscription list and I'll ask Uncle James to do the
same. A few more and we shall have our cathedral. I
am sure there are five thousand girls dying to paint it
and we'll hand down our names to posterity."
WOMEN AND THEIR POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT. 501
" Then you've given up the idea of losing your name
at the altar ? "
" Oh, Papa, don't leave out your h's ! Say 'H-alter.'
Yes, certainly, I'm a woman's rights man now. Now,
Papa dear, give me the thousand pounds before I light
your pipe."
******
The cathedral church of St. Peter's, Liverpool, in due
time rises upon the site of St. John's, near St. George's
Hall. The prevailing meanness of the streets, through
the lack of the majesty of height, is somewhat relieved
by the gothic towers, which soar like Salisbury.
Manchester, having finished its Ship Canal, with some
millions to spare, will next erect a cathedral of pure
white marble which, in a few years, will harmonise
beautifully with the Infirmary and the Exchange.
Birmingham, whose new streets are the handsomest
and least begrimed of any Provincial Capital, will next
desire to give its idle young ladies something to do, and
a new Duomo di Firenzi and Campanilla attached will
rise upon the area of St. Philip's church.
The happy epidemic will spread to Newcastle, after
which Cardiff of course will speedily make of Llandaff
cathedral a chapel of ease.
The healthy discipline of regular employment for
months together will have done so much for many
thousands of young ladies, that they may claim some
fitness for matrimony, and will earnestly advocate the
Co-operative Commonwealth.
502
(c) TO THE ELECTORS, TOUCHING THE NEXT
APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY.
AMONG the subjects you will be called to pronounce an
opinion upon at the next general election, will undoubt-
edly be Home Rule for Ireland. It is by no means the
subject that ought to be the chief one put before the
country ; but both parties are not sorry to see that by
the action of the Irish Nationalists, it has become so.
Nothing would better please them than that this question
should go on being pulled backward and forward for
another half century, while radical social reform for
England stood postponed.
Now, the Irish question in all its bearings, with the
exception of the national sentiment, which might be
easily conciliated, is only a part of the great social
question of the whole civilized world.
It is a remarkable proof of the well-known power of
Irish people to bamboozle others, that this time they have
completely succeeded in bamboozling the masses of the
English people into the belief that their grievances are
different from those of every other nation, and that
England is inflicting unbearable tyranny upon them, in
requiring fulfilment to laws under which the rest of the
kingdom is equally groaning.
There is as much landlord oppression in England as in
Ireland, and in the United States as in England.
It is the merit of the Irish people that instead of
sitting down, tamely resigned to the heavy oppressions
connected with landlordism, they took an eccentric turn,
and said to the world at large, "The entire Rent business
is a fraud, the cultivator has the first claim." But to
take up this tenant farmers' cry, and attempt to satisfy
it, is not to remedy Irish poverty. The tenant farmers
themselves have little mercy on the labouring man.
TO THE ELECTORS. 503
Does the man who sublets his holding prove a better
landlord than the English absentee ? Is the Irish money
lender much less usurious than a Jew ?
It is high time that English Socialists sternly refused
to take up with the Irish question, save as a part of the
social revolution in which it is involved. And even the
national question is involved in it, for national idiosyn-
crasy in the part of economic reform would have little
scope in any modus vivendi arranged with England,
while she was unreformed.
Moreover, there is no inherent probability that an
independent Ireland would form a success quite the
reverse. Divided as to race and religion, into two
mutually suspicious and hostile sections, the young
nation would start upon its career meeting with Nemesis
in the shape of a powerful band of irreconcilables the
Orange and Protestant parties.
And, while Irishmen everywhere have proved that they
are excellent at capturing political power, they have also
shown themselves lamentably addicted to using their
opportunities for the perpetration of shameful jobbery.
Now nations, like certain individuals, will repeat their
history, do what you will to tempt them out of the
accustomed track. We all know the engaging and
delightful character whose friends will tell you that he
was born unlucky. It was always somebody's fault, or
the fault of the stars, that he could never succeed, but
now, once give him fair play at this propitious moment,
and the man's career is going to prove a conspicuous
success. The new chance is given, the hitherto unfortu-
nate is started once more, and, of course, in no very long
time goes the old road.
Now, Ireland may be pledged never to become prosper-
ous and contented. The elements for becoming so don't
exist in the people. It is all nonsense talking about
what England did and didn't do to her. If England's
504 PURITANISM IN POWER.
action had been precisely the same, but the people had
been English or Scotch, the entire economical result
would have been different, and Ireland would to-day be
like a garden from end to end ; and all the natural re-
sources in process of development. However you start a
tumbler pigeon, it is sure to tumble before it goes far.
There is an alternative to deferring the Home Rule
question until English claims are attended to (in which
Ireland's are involved), and that is, to grant some descrip-
tion of Home Rule and national autonomy, as an
experiment for ten years. We are strong enough to risk
that, and then, after the inevitable tumble takes place,
we can cancel the charter, and appeal to history against
listening to anything of the kind for ever after.
Of course those matchless bamboozlers will protest
before every Court in Europe that the experiment was
ended just at the wrong time (as they say all their reforms
were conceded just five minutes too late to do them any
good), and that if they had only been allowed to go on one
year longer, Home Rule would have turned out a brilliant
success. And the very grant of the experiment, with all
its attendant risk, will be handed down from father to
son as a crowning proof of Saxon oppression, and the
unfortunate issue of it be assigned to deep diplomacy
conspiring all along to bring about that result. Accusa-
tions of this kind are self-revelations. The deep
insinuations of Irishmen against every possible procedure
of then- Rulers, show what the poor Ulster men must
expect should a predominantly Catholic Parliament sit
in College Green. Surely at this time of day, Englishmen
will not be found assisting Roman Catholicism to gain
Political ascendency. All the Catholic Powers of Europe,
without one exception, have learnt the necessity of
crippling the emissaries of Rome, and we shall be forced
to do the same in Canada. What is the use of history,
and what is the value of dear-bought experience, if we
TO THE ELECTORS. 505
are to discard all their lessons as if they had never been ?
Koman Catholicism, like her creed, is semper eadem ; she
is a noted tumbler ; tergiversation and the overthrow of
civil liberty are the characteristics of her flight whenever
she is set free.
The Irish people are, in many respects, the most
delightful and amusing people under the sun, but as to
the possibility of .their ever becoming a prosperous,
righteous and strong nation, the less said about it the
better. Prosperous people are not, as a rule, either
delightful or amusing, and if the English people enjoy
the alien character of their Irish brethren, it may help
them to enjoy the Irish difficulty as well, for it will last
as long as the sun and moon and Paddy's land endure.
The ten years' experiment in Home Eule should,
however, be made. We should see some interesting
developments of Babylonianism. There would be
experiments in protection of native industries. The
poorest Irishman would have a linen instead of a cotton
shirt and keep it clean ; but we should also have
English and foreign goods smuggled in and labelled
"Limerick tweeds," "Irish honey," and "native soft
solder " ; "Kale " Irish butter, fresh from Denmark, would
be spread by a " Kale " Irish knife, made in Birmingham,
upon a loaf of home-grown wheat direct from Dakota.
The experiment should be made, and made once for all,
that candid readers of history, in after years, may judge
as between Ireland and England, and that England may
know at the end of the experiment what amount of politi-
cal power in the Parliament of the three kingdoms Ireland
should really possess ; at present she has far too much.
Turning from Ireland to England, the first question of
paramount importance for England will be the acquisition
by the nation of the Breweries and Distilleries and
Public-houses of the United Kingdom.
500 PURITANISM IN POWER.
From the success of the brewing syndicates, this
would evidently be a splendid investment of the national
money, with the additional advantage that the property '
would be bought upon the buyer's terms. The property
would be bought for the purpose of earning dividends in
an increasingly sober and healthy people. The beer and
spirits would be of the very finest and purest that could
be manufactured, instead of the poorer classes being
drugged by quantities of salt and cocus indicus to induce
thirst. In fact all our national Home policy must be in
the direction of abolishing trade as the surest road to
national wealth. The enormous profits of the business,
though it would annually diminish through the growth
of temperance and the diminished opportunities afforded,
would go in redemption of capital and reduction of
taxation.
After the drink traffic had been thus controlled, it
would be for the Government next to take into its hands
the Tobacco manufacture, and so on, step by step, until
all work and all profits came to be divided among the
people, according to their powers and needs.
But perhaps preceding in importance Home Eule or
the drink traffic is the question of the housing of the
poor.
The nation should seek to acquire for National
Administration the entire house property at present
rented to its artizans. Meantime, should it become
known that when a private philanthropist or a Corpora-
tion, desiring to add a lung to a miserable neighbourhood,
had planted an area with trees and flowers, with the
hope and prayer that it might lighten and brighten the
people's lives when, I say, it should become known that
a Babylonian landlord had forthwith clapped on sixpence
per week to the rent he was formerly extracting from the
tenants whom the philanthropist or the Corporation had
hoped to benefit then Puritanism in Power would create
TO THE ELECTORS. 507
a law to meet the case. The offenders should be stripped
further than their shirts, to discover, in the first place,
if they were really human, and next, for the convenient
application of the cat-o'-nine-tails. And should the
offenders be discovered to be not only human but also
members and deacons of Christian Churches, then the
minister and clergy who were their pastors shall be
invited to assist the executioner when he is tired at
the cart's tail. And the cart should go right round the
landlord's property, so as to catch any nosegays that
might be flung from the tenement windows.
Another great question which the electors will have
need one day to consider, but after the foregoing, is that
of Free Trade. Instead of having been settled once for
all, and its wisdom and excellence recommending it to
other nations and our own colonists, the reverse has
taken place, and we are left in the ridiculous position of
subjecting our working population to competition from
all the rest of the world, while we ourselves are shut out,
except upon most unequal terms. Why have other
nations become more strictly protectionist '? Economists
of the old school have based their system upon the
axiom that every man may be trusted to know his own
business best, and that in pursuing it by methods best
calculated to advance his individual interest, he is
undesignedly consulting the general welfare. It is only
the latter half of the proposition that Socialists impugn,
and if the former portion is true of all men in general,
may we not decide that it is true of enlightened
nations in this era of the world '? Can we suppose that
wise and able statesmen, concerned above all things
about advancing the economical welfare of their people,
should, in a bod} 7 , have gone wrong after anxiously
studying the subject and watching the effects of the two
policies for years ? Still more unlikely is it that our
own colonists, who were brought up in the free trade
508 PURITANISM IN POWER.
faith, should abandon it when put to the work of
legislating for themselves, except for some solid reason.
Have they, too, all gone wrong, and are we to come to the
conclusion that they form an exception to the human
race in general by not knowing their ow r n business best ?
Other nations, apparently, have made the discovery
earlier than ourselves, that it is for the truest health and
wealth of a people to legislate on behalf of the producers
and not the consumers. And for this solid and simple
reason, that all producers are necessarily consumers, but
all consumers are not necessarily producers. The results
of our free trade policy have been to ruin agriculture, and
to shut up increasing numbers of our flour mills, while
it is mainly responsible for impoverished and discontented
Ireland. And we have not seen the end of the ruin and
devastation, with all its connected deterioration of our
towns' populations. Is it likely that foreign nations,
beholding our wretched and ridiculous plight, are going to
follow us into the ditch ? After we had deliberately
sacrificed Agriculture to manufactures, manufacturers
are beginning to own that Nemesis has overtaken them,
and that the only classes whom Free trade has undeni-
ably enriched are the merchant class and the carriers.
If an analysis had been made of the voting in the
^Manchester Chamber of Commerce on one memorable
occasion, we doubt not it would have been found that the
votes cast for protection proceeded from manufacturers,
and those for free trade from merchant shippers merely.
It may or it may not be national policy to favour
the merchant and the carrier. It can never be policy to
consider them exclusively. The profits of the merchant
have only two sources, they are gained at the expense of
the producer or the consumer, or both. It is never wise
to put shackles upon the producer when professing to
give freedom to trade. In fact, the principles of free trade,
like those of other branches of politics, are excellent only
TO THE ELECTORS. 509
in their discriminate, not their unrestricted application.
To leave trade alone has been a principle regularly in-
fringed whenever we have effected a beneficial reform.
To abolish the slave trade was the first infringement, to
pass the Factory Acts was the second, to legalise trade
unions the third. As a nation we have advanced in
civilization by restraining the freedom of trade. Our
staple industries exist in defiance of the theories of the
Cobden School. Why do we not transport our cotton
manufacturing to the Southern States of America and to
India? Because we are able to overcome the dis-
advantages of distance from the staple and dearer labour.
Similarly there are nations which advance and nations
which exist, not by possessing Nature's greatest facilities,
but by overcoming her untowardness. Bad land gave us
good Scotch farming and a grievous soil in Germany
Liebig's Chemistry of Agriculture.
It is folly to expose the essential conditions of a
nation's healthy progress to destruction, because pro-
duction elsewhere may be cheaper. What is cheapness to
a man who has lost his wages '? Or better quality to one
who cannot purchase the worst ? States do not exist for
the accumulation of wealth, but for its proper distribution
that is to say, they ought to.
There has lately been an amalgamation of two great
milling concerns, Spiller's, of Cardiff, and Baker's, of
Bristol. In three years their average profits have been
15f per cent., but they had to explain to their dis-
contented workmen that these profits were not made in
milling, but in dealings in corn, otherwise speculation.
Now it is evident that profits made in this manner, if
due to free trade, tend not to better distribution of
wealth, but rather to injury of agriculture, the detriment
of the public, and the accumulation of wealth in a few
hands.
When foreign merchanting has put home producers
510 PURITANISM IN POWER.
out of existence, a number of our poor are created at the
same time that a rateable property is extinguished. The
producer is punished for commencing to contribute to the
national wealth by being immediately made to pay rates,
but the merchant's high stool is not rated, and if it were,
would not contribute much. He may make many
thousands a year and only pay rates upon a private
house. It is the best argument for retaining that most
odious Turkish institution the Income Tax.
We have a right to say, then, that Free Trade is a
discredited policy through its unrestricted application.
All the ends of national existence have been accomplished
in the countries that have refrained from adopting it.
Some of them have made relatively greater progress than
ourselves, and most of them at our own expense. To go
to the United States, which has wiped out its debt
with such marvellous ease at the foreigner's expense
more than its own, and say, " Don't you see how much
better you would be if you were to adopt free trade?"
is like going to a man in the plenitude of health and
insisting that he really wants medicine. It might well be
replied, " Nationally we want nothing but more content-
ment among the wage earners whom your policy would
immediately prejudice. We suffer also from the operation
of ' business principles ' to which your policy would
give greater scope."
Of course, all these problems would find their ever-
lasting end in a Communistic order. It is Individualism
that is responsible for the perpetual Sphinx's riddle.
Indeed, an objection might be laid against Communism
that it left men nothing to puzzle over not even bi-
metallism, and that it was profitable to mankind to be
eternally attempting to square the circle. The results,
as we know them, do not commend that theory. But
now to come to the immediate duty of the present. The
first is a real union for Parliamentary objects among the
TO THE ELECTORS. 511
workers, so as to secure representation commensurate
with their importance to the State.
It is unhappily true that there are caste and class
prejudices among the different grades of working men,
quite as harshly denned as among the classes above
them. Accurately as the islets of Loch Katrine repeat
themselves in the lake, the sorts and shades obtaining in
the upper sphere are reflected in the depths below.
But so long as working men are content to betray their
order by the artizan assuming airs towards the labourer,
and the settled labourer towards the wandering navvy, so
long will they be easily played upon by Party organiza-
tions, red herrings, and the appeal to the meanest
motives of human nature. The cause of Labour as a
whole will perish in their hands, and they will deserve
to continue to be represented by sham pretenders.
Englishmen are too independent, too ready also to resent
the proffered help of sincere sympathisers as an attempt
"to boss the show," ever to achieve as readily the
success which has attended political organization in
Ireland. They lack the Celts' capacity to cherish an
ideal and to follow a leader en masse. I would ask the
working men of all grades to alter their record and to
make it their chief object at the next election to send
representatives of their own order to Parliament. What
Ireland has done in so remarkable a degree ought surely
to be possible to them. Funds necessary to support
their members must be found by the workers themselves,
and can easily be found if they will stint their beer.
As to the questions of the day, seeing that in any
draft of a Home Eule scheme, Socialist principles would
have no recognition, that question with the English
working classes should hold a subordinate position. It
has been and will be drawn out as a red herring, but
if they follow it and allow their own urgent reforms to be
postponed, they will evince little judgment.
512 PURITANISM IN POWER.
The cause of Ireland is bound up with the cause of
Socialism, not with Home Rule. Meantime, of course,
English workers would advocate an extension of Local
Government in Ireland, although little is to be hoped
from it, and a Parliament in Dublin for the preliminary
discussion of purely Irish questions.
The two questions abreast of each other in importance,
which the workers of the United Kingdom may profitably
unite to promote, are the Nationalising of the Drink
Trade and the Housing of the Poor. I do not mean that
these are to supersede united effort upon the Eight Hours
Bill, Employers' Liability Amendment, and any measure
of Mr. Plimsoll's, but that they should be concurrently
urged. y y
The purchase of the Drink Interests, Avotild be strictly
a socialistic measure, would secure the adhesion of
enthusiastic temperance organizations and what is of
immense importance from the Socialist stand-point,
would familiarise the public with the principle of ex-
tinguishing individual production. It would be the
beginning of the ending of Individualism.
Communism is a generation off, perhaps two. The
Nationalization of the Land is nearer, but not much. A
determination to deal with the Drink Traffic and the
Housing of the Poor is, however, close upon us. Let us
not then spend our time idly in " shouting " for measures
for which the country is not prepared, but bend all our
strength upon three points the true and adequate
Representation of Labour, the National Acquisition of
the Drink Trade, and the Housing of the Poor. And to
you Puritans whom I have elsewhere exhorted to enter
every avenue of Power, and to use it for the Kingdom of
God and His Righteousness, I give this as your motto
In the path of obedience to God there is nothing to fear
but fear - FAREWELL.
. WHISHT 4 CO., BRISTOL.
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