UC-NRLF 
 
CAUK)HIA 
 
 Circulating Library, 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 
 1 
 
 
'""" "'-. . 1.- -.-.., 
 ' '* H A ;;; ,3 .; ' , 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON, 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE HENRY MARTIN. 
 
 " Veritas temporis filia" 
 
 LONDON : 
 WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET. 
 
 1890. 
 
IOAN STACK 
 
This from the humblest in the ranks 
 Of Thought rebellious ; and content 
 The bowman if his sheaf be spent 
 Only in harassing the flanks 
 Of prideful Wrongs great armament. 
 
 i 
 
 Though Pain must aye of Life be part, 
 Nor while the ivorld shall spin its round 
 May Sin be slain or Evil bound 
 By league of hand and brain and heart, 
 At least, may Falsehood be discrowned. 
 
 105 
 
^-nr^s 
 
 PROEM. 
 
 A MIGHTY monarch lived of old, an empire wide and fair was his ; 
 Unfathomable oceans rolled 'tween realm and realm far provinces 
 Whose kinglets were his vassals true, by him alone upheld in place, 
 And, rendering their homage due, existing only by his grace. 
 By wondrous kingly craft he bound these units in one system vast, 
 That so his watchful eye was round the whole of his dominion cast. 
 
 His single will did hold in check these realms diverse, nigh numberless ; 
 Each prince thereof obeyed his beck. Potent to punish or redress, 
 Avenge all crime, and right all wrong ; to slay or save, to crush or raise, 
 Howe'er remote, high-placed, or strong, howe'er concealed in hidden ways 
 The evil-doers or the good, so wise and powerful was he : thus, 
 His kingship was a fatherhood, just, merciful, ubiquitous. 
 
 Though, pity 'tis, for us are lost the precious archives of his reign, 
 Beneath the mould of many a host, on long-forgotten battle-plain, 
 'Neath cities buried in the sands, lay certain tablets graven o'er ; 
 These came to light, in many lands ; thereby we know that, long before 
 Recorded epochs of our race, there did exist such realm as his, 
 Though now the curious cannot trace that ancient kingdom's boundaries. 
 
6 PROEM. 
 
 This monarch, with some deep intent, but unrevealed (nor scroll nor 
 
 stone 
 
 Is left for our enlightenment, so this must needs remain unknown), 
 Conceived a method passing strange to practise with a certain isle 
 One small, but fair, and within range of his own trumpets for a while. 
 He suddenly, not deigning word of change in purpose to the few 
 There dwelling (a barbaric herd), all signs of sovereignty withdrew ! 
 
 His court, his ministers, his seat of judgment, and his glittering guard 
 Were straight removed afar ; complete was the abandonment ; nor ward,. 
 Nor aid, nor countenance of him had that lone people any more. 
 Savage they were, yet weak, and dim of intellect, and harassed sore 
 On every side by ruthless foes : where should they look for help to- 
 
 whom ? 
 Royal force withdrawn, great were their woes, and miserable seemed 
 
 their doom. 
 
 This king had ever sought to train his people to rely in chief 
 On their own strength and skill ; in vain their supplications for relief 
 Ere they had strenuously wrought their utmost all that in them lay, 
 Of craft or talent leaving naught untried, and in th' incessant fray 
 Acquitting them as valiant men, well plying hand or wielding blade ; 
 Then for he knew and not till then, did he put forth his hand to aid, 
 
 . What, then, had moved their father-king to leave them in such plight as- 
 
 this? 
 
 Not wrath at some great trespassing, for sure such method were not his; 
 His anger raged not, blind, to smite alike the greater and the less, 
 Making his enemies to bite the dust in mere vindictiveness 
 (Like one whereof we read) ; his laws were plain, their penalties direct ; 
 His proclamation ran : " Such cause, inevitable such effect." 
 
 Propitiation had no part no power availed not a whit ; 
 
 Nay, all untutored in such art, this simple race knew naught of it. 
 
 Neither vicarious sacrifice ; one, sure, had been accounted mad 
 
PROEM. 7 
 
 To name such thing, and in their eyes iniquitous the judge that bade 
 The culprit go unpunished, free, because a guiltless substitute 
 Stood ready 'neath the gallows-tree ; such freak had struck them wonder- 
 mute. 
 
 They looked to reap as they had sown, nor other outcome held they 
 meet ; 
 
 For thus their king had taught, and shown how that the fruitage, rank 
 or sweet, 
 
 Would follow, poisoning or to bless, as surely as the day to night. 
 
 For law to lack that steadfastness these folk had deemed a piteous 
 plight. 
 
 (Though seeming stern, methinks that mode were in the end more mer- 
 ciful, 
 
 And more king-worthy than a code caprice or wrath may render null.) 
 
 Thus much these island-dwellers knew, and 'twas sufficient for their needs. 
 Small knowledge ; yea, but known for true, of greater worth than all 
 
 our creeds. 
 
 And this each did apply within the round of his necessities. 
 What arts he had were naught akin to ours : small craft was his 
 To build, and little skill of hand to work in wood and stone ; for aught 
 Of this, if needed in the land, the king's deft-handed agents wrought. 
 
 And for the rest ; to guard his den, where lay his love and little ones, 
 From hungry beast or hostile men, and so to train his agile sons ; 
 To risk his life to find them food, or lose it shielding them from harm ; 
 The mother so to rear her brood that, fleet of foot and strong of arm, 
 Quick of resource and sharp of eye, subtle of wit and brave of heart, 
 They held their own, nor feared to die sufficed this, they'd done 
 their part. 
 
 So were they left. But since on none, before, was condemnation passed 
 But always the transgressing one well knew how came he to be cast 
 For death or durance, this, their doom to be abandoned by their 
 king 
 
8 PROEM. 
 
 Seemed the more cruel from one of whom they ne'er had dreamed so 
 
 hard a thing. 
 
 Long on the lofty cliffs, the steep confining them within their home, 
 Across the void the vaporous deep they watched for him again to 
 
 come. 
 
 He came not any more to them. How fared he died to whom 
 
 bequeathed 
 
 His glorious realm and diadem, to us no word hath history breathed. 
 (Remember ye, these things befell ere Clio took in hand her style.) 
 What records have been found but tell the tale of this deserted isle. 
 Moreover, they are hard to read, and hidden from the ken of most, 
 Who little reck thereof; indeed, for them they are as good as lost. 
 
 Albeit, he who had bereft this tribe of help and rule benign, 
 On many a monument had left his cypher set in deep design ; 
 And wrought devices that displayed far-seeing and judicious care 
 In divers plans right deftly laid to make their island safe and fair. 
 Innumerable proofs remained some plain to all, some buried far 
 That there, in ages past, had reigned one wiser than our wisest are. 
 
 The generation that had seen the splendours of his sovereignty 
 
 Passed from the earth ; their sons might glean somewhat of how it used 
 
 to be, 
 
 But as these dwindled, year by year, that period and that king became 
 First a bright memory, then a mere tradition, then naught but a name. 
 The all-sufficient code he framed, since it had been but day by day 
 And only orally proclaimed, soon slipt from all men's minds away. 
 
 Yet still one law one primal rule, well called of gold nay (for it lights 
 The dim soul of the veriest fool, and glimmers for the blindest wights) 
 Of purest diamond-crystal, say, set indestructible, a gem 
 Flashing sure guidance with a ray unquenchable illumined them, 
 Or would, had they but followed it, and dealt in all things as it led ; 
 So simple to the dullest wit, yet in its scope unlimited. 
 
PROEM. 9 
 
 Though there it shone amid the dark for any to discern that would, 
 Long years elapsed and none did mark that relic in close neighbourhood ; 
 Until some honest soul by strong conflicting impulses perplext, 
 Fain to do right and shun the wrong, yet by misgivings sadly vext, 
 'Mid many pathways puzzled sore, and wandering as in a maze, 
 Urged this and that way straight before him suddenly beheld it blaze. 
 
 Right glad he called unto his kin the seekers, thinkers, and the sage 
 (For such lived, surely, even in that rude and unenlightened age). 
 These gathered, curious, round the prize, and one, a patriarch, hale 
 
 though hoar, 
 
 Close scanning it with eager eyes, exclaimed, " Behold 'tis graven o'er ! 
 It bears the very seal of him the cypher-royal of that wise one 
 Of olden time, whereof our dim and differing traditions run. 
 
 " We know this signet ; we have conned it set on many a beauteous 
 
 thing, 
 
 Of marvel and of awe beyond our ken and our interpreting. 
 But see ! this lies within our reach ; we grasp it, and on every side 
 Its flash illuminates, for each a revelation and a guide. 
 How many a dark and crooked path had this made plain and luminous ! 
 Who sayeth now that king, in wrath departing, had forgotten us ?" 
 
 So the wise ones their fellows taught that first of rules to understand ; 
 And, finding it so good, they sought for other tokens from that hand ; 
 And others found they by and by ; but deeper hid, and needing more 
 Skill to decipher and apply the signs and principles they bore ; 
 In course of time these, too, became diffused and known among them all, 
 Giving them handicraft to frame fair things from rough material. 
 
 So cities did they build, where lay the swamp and wilderness of weeds ; 
 Right goodly structures fashioned they, adapted deftly to their needs, 
 Wrought wondrously in wood and stone, changing the aspect of the 
 earth, 
 
io PROEM. 
 
 So that their fathers had not known 'twas the same land that gave them 
 
 birth. 
 
 So grew and flourished they ; but ne'er a higher law, a better plan, 
 Unto those islanders was e'er revealed for man to deal with man. 
 
 Yet those who have explored their isle, and studied all their works and 
 
 ways, 
 
 Declare them prone to greed and guile ; and doubt if in these later days 
 Their sum of happiness be more (though proud and prosperous they be) 
 Than under that old King before he disappeared beyond the sea ; 
 Because that primal rule, though plain 'twas writ for all, scarce any keep, 
 So do they work each other's bane, and make the weaker ones to weep. 
 
 A foolish race, to suffer such a martyrdom of pain and grief ! 
 
 Though duped, still credulous, they clutch at this and that to find relief ; 
 
 Their idols, e'en their gods they change, throning disthroning them 
 
 at will, 
 And some may be of a sort most strange ; these help not, nor can stay 
 
 the ill. 
 
 Poor sufferers ; within each one lieth the remedy ; for sure 
 Themselves have wrought their woes, and none but they themselves can 
 
 work the cure. 
 
NflTIONUL SECUUR SI 
 
 ' 7 
 
 (Bethnal Green Branch,) 
 ** LIBRA HALL,** 
 
 R 
 
 A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 TAKE, my son, upon thy journey this memorial of me ; 
 
 In the race and in the tourney let this token be for thee 
 
 Not the mere words of thy father the reflection of his thought ; 
 
 Old world-truths long patent, rather, taken from rich mines, and wrought 
 
 Into missive form to win thee from the Specious to the True, 
 
 And to stir thy soul within thee to pursue and cleave thereto. 
 
 Dowered or no with ample measure at capricious Fortune's hands 
 Blessed or no with ease and leisure, if thou'lt but discern, there stands 
 One attendant at thy shoulder, One to thy young eyes, maybe, 
 Seemingly of aspect colder than the others beckoning thee. 
 If that One thou wilt but follow, she shall gift thee more than all ; 
 When all else hath proved but hollow, her delights shall never pall. 
 
 Take her hand ; for she will light thee unto many a treasure-store, 
 And for all thy pains requite thee, though the toil thereto be sore. 
 She with runic song will charm thee on the march and at the halt ; 
 And she none the less will arm thee for defence and for assault 
 With the weaponry thou needest for the battle-day to come, 
 If her tutelage thou heedest, nor forsak'st as burdensome. 
 
12 A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 So thy monitress shall dip thee in her waters by the heel, 
 
 And, invulnerate, equip thee but with other gear than steel. 
 
 For the slayer and the smiter hath not honour as of yore ; 
 
 'Tis the keen and cogent writer swayeth peoples more and more ; 
 
 By the singer and the speaker shall humanity be stirred, 
 
 And armaments prove weaker than the lightnings of their word. 
 
 Heed, my son, heed that thou givest keen attention to the Tale 
 Of the land wherein thou livest, piercing through the specious veil 
 Woven by ingenious writers, glittering-hued and gem-bedecked, 
 Gaudy-wrought with crowns and mitres ; peer beyond this, and detect 
 How in what plight fared the many, while the prideful, ravening few 
 Strove for kingship ; let not any pageantry obstruct thy view. 
 
 Sycophancy o'er that Story hath a dazzling glamour flung, 
 Hiding in a haze of glory (so yclept to lure the young) 
 Murder, rapine, lust, and plunder of defenceless, harmless folk ; 
 Dastard ruffianism under kingly robe and ermined cloak ; 
 Ruthless grinding of the tillers and the toilers and the meek, 
 Usurpation by the killers and the spoilers of the weak. 
 
 Chroniclers these things indited (whether by design or no), 
 So the shallow and short-sighted give no thought to look below, 
 'Neath the blazonry concealing grievous wrongs and cruelties ; 
 Read thou them with heart and feeling, not with mere scholastic eyes. 
 Recollect, too, in an age when few could read, and fewer write, 
 Fewer still dared pen a page unpleasing to the monarch's sight. 
 
 From such partisan narration copyists have handed down 
 
 Unto each young generation the tradition of a crown 
 
 By its contact sanctifying ; so, for any crowned thing 
 
 Dolt, poltroon, or God-denying lunatic once throned as King, 
 
 At his sovereign will and pleasure sorrowing men must toil and bleed, 
 
 Yielding up their lives and treasure to subserve his pride and greed. 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON. 13 
 
 This, that Tale, as mostly writ, perpetuates in youthful minds ; 
 Compassion is benumbed by it ; the common herd, the serfs and hinds, 
 To eyes of embryo Chathams are of small account as grains of sand, 
 By King and Kaiser, Queen and Czar tossed easily from hand to hand. 
 So surviveth the idea thus ever nourished anew 
 That God ordained the eirth to be a portion for the prideful few. 
 
 Most tenacious that tradition, though with million evils fraught ; 
 Breeding slaves whose manumission is but slowly, hardly bought. 
 Right Divine ! The first king given Saul (say Books that cannot lie) 
 Was sent to mark the wrath of Heaven ; with monition from on high 
 Warning of the traits of royal anointed ones their gentle ways. 
 Loyalty ! Yea, my son, be loyal to Conscience only all thy days. 
 
 Are, then, all men equal ? No ; for none to rule and none be ruled, 
 Things were ne'er designed so ; but be ye not by phrases fooled. 
 Sovereignty is to the strongest, that is so, and aye will be ; 
 Once 'twas he of sharpest, longest sweep of sword and war-axe he 
 Who, his way to kingship winning by his courage, proved his claim ; 
 So it was in the beginning ; 'tis the same now yet not the same. 
 
 Who governeth, who beareth sway, unto whom do the people yield ? 
 
 Not the gilt manikins that play with weaponry they cannot wield : 
 
 Not the small puppets tricked in gauds and robes belonging to the Great, 
 
 Whom hungry Opulence applauds, expectant, at the palace-gate. 
 
 The sovereign power that moveth men these weaklings cannot stay nor 
 
 stem, 
 J Tis nigh maturity, and then lo, it shall make an end of them. 
 
 Look thou discerningly, and see how Forms whereout the life has fled 
 Do exercise authority and awe the multitude, though dead : 
 Until the slowly-gathering storm in hearts of men that hate deceit 
 Breaks fierce, and sweeps away the Form that was but hollow and a 
 
 cheat. 
 
 So shall the new supplant the old that hath become corrupt and foul ; 
 Help thou the fabric to re-mould which shelters but the bat and owl. 
 
14 A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 The order of the world is change 'tis trite as two and two are four ; 
 Yet but in form, an aspect strange but masks phenomena, no more. 
 Say some : " All truth has been foretold ; naught can be better than our 
 
 best; 
 
 Unto one faith the soul must hold as final, else are we unblest." 
 Grasp thou this truth, as old as time, yet blinked and blinked from age 
 
 to age 
 From the first quickening mass of slime all things have grown from stage 
 
 to stage. 
 
 Of genesis, keen search hath solved thus much for us : We know that One 
 From protoplasmic pulp evolved such types as graced the Parthenon. 
 As in primordial forms, brute Strength blind, blundering, cruel won 
 
 foremost place, 
 Till, after countless aeons, at length, wide-eyed, endued with skill and 
 
 grace- 
 Nay, majesty, the tawny king roamed peerless, mighty-voiced and grand, 
 At sound whereof each living thing quailed, knowing none might him 
 
 withstand ; 
 
 So 'mong the psychal forces, blind conglomerated embryons, 
 
 That swam in dimly pregnant mind (when our far sires were but the 
 
 sons 
 
 Of anthropoids) the first of all that came to perfect form and birth 
 Was that grand quality we call by name of Courage ; and its worth, 
 Right quickly recognised, made chief him that did most thereof display ; 
 Yet 'twas but as an outer leaf within whose folds all virtue lay. 
 
 These first-born twins by right shall rule ; for where men dwell the truth 
 
 will hold 
 
 That there will also dwell the fool, the dastard, and the sordid-souled : 
 These twain, but under other forms more subtle and less gross, shall 
 
 reign, 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON. 15 
 
 What revolutionary storms soe'er may rage, what gods be slain. 
 These two the peoples so applaud so heartily revere as true, 
 They even bow before the gaud and garb that appertain thereto. 
 
 He of the loyalest heart, and who with readiest love and sacrifice 
 Doeth sincerest homage to the truly Great and Strong and Wise, 
 At mumming counterfeits thereof the sharper-barbed shaft will wing ; 
 The quicker gibe, the louder scoff, and the more bitter taunt will fling 
 When Littleness, Ineptitude, and stolid Selfishness are seen 
 With royal insignia endued, and aping the majestic mien. 
 
 He that doth most revere the High, the Holy, the Sublime, the True, 
 More keenly and more jealously with closer scrutiny doth view 
 The idols set before his 'eyes and shrined for his adoring gaze ; 
 And if discerned for falsities, in sharper scorn, in fiercer blaze 
 Of anger doth his soul outbreak : him the more mighty impulse stirs 
 To overturn them, and awake their duped and drowsy worshippers. 
 
 But bethink thee, when a nation deems it fortunate indeed, 
 Braying fulsome adulation of its monarch if he lead 
 But a life of due abstention from the scandalous and vile ; 
 As 'twere gracious condescension if he do not more defile 
 The regalia than his fathers, and but stay the hand malign : 
 Such the royalist beslathers with laudation nigh divine. 
 
 See, if the sovereign do but feign propriety, th' idolaters shout 
 
 Pseans in nauseating strain ; if she do but display throughout 
 
 A decent, inoffensive life the graces of the homeliest dame, 
 
 The virtues of the humblest wife, and do no flagrant deed of shame, 
 
 In grateful admiration prone, the pack of cringing flunkeys cry, 
 
 " Sure ne'er was such illustrious one as this our demi-deity !" 
 
 See the servile always loyal acclaim with blatant, flattering breath 
 One bedecked in trappings royal, with naught of regal underneath ; 
 One who reigneth but by reason of collateral descent 
 
1 6 A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 From a plotter of high treason to the people : he had rent, 
 Save for thwarting, into tatters the thin fabric of their rights, 
 Leaving care of kingly matters to licentious parasites. 
 
 One whose right to rule derives through yet another's tainted blood, 
 E'en that king whose name survives, a synonym for dastard-hood ; 
 Genius hath the record graven of that doubly treacherous one, 
 Verily the falsest craven that did e'er pollute a throne ; 
 More contemptible defacer of the scutcheon of his race 
 Blacker-hearted one and baser ne'er did squat in Alfred's place. 
 
 A right deriving through a strain but little purer than of these ; 
 That of a scion called to reign, yet half afraid to cross the seas 
 To guard his faithful people's weal of such a kingly sort was he ; 
 Nor wit nor heart, nor soul to feel the sacrament of sovereignty ; 
 A libertine, and of the worst the cold, ungallant, churlish breed ; 
 First of the alien kings that cursed this land with most prolific seed. 
 
 And in his train there flocked at beck the jay, the vulture, and the kite ; 
 With hungry eye and craning neck they followed, scenting spoil ; a 
 
 flight 
 Of famished harpies, from their nigh-exhausted feeding-grounds un- 
 
 cooped, 
 
 Chuckling in gutturals to descry a prey so fat and foolish, swooped, 
 With keen tenacious talons, swift upon these fair and fruitful lands ; 
 And highest place was bribe or gift from George's blowsy harlot's 
 
 hands. 
 
 On, through his progeny, devolves th' insignia that in the eyes 
 Of miscalled loyalty absolves from all that sovereignty implies. 
 To re-narrate the lives and rule of these anointed ones would be 
 To stir a foetid sewage-pool a foul, unlovely work : but we 
 Are bidden to behold with pride the constitutional device 
 Whereby their seed are sanctified. Say, Demos, are they worth their 
 price ? 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON. 17 
 
 No spark of heroism, no gleam of genius nay, of intellect 
 Did one display to half redeem their negligence ; 'mong these elect 
 There stood no right true man, much less a leader and a chief of men : 
 Nameless, unbridled lecherousness, the cock-pit and the gambling den, 
 The brutal pugilistic duel such were the pastimes of them all ; 
 Finding their sport but in the cruel, their pleasure in the sensual. 
 
 There reigned not one whose soul aspired above the sordid and the 
 
 coarse : 
 
 Ignoble, bestial, they bemired the fount of honour at its source, 
 So that the taint thereof became contagious even to the best ; 
 Since they that bore the kingly name were creatures the unkingliest 
 The dolt, the sot, the debauchee, the coxcomb, and the gamester-cheat ; 
 Strength, Courage, Genius these royal three were thrust for such from 
 
 Harold's seat. 
 
 Through such devolves this sacred right this subtle, sanctifying grace, 
 Unto this last ; and, lo, a sight a sham enthroned in Wisdom's place, 
 With dandy-sycophants set round to intercept the vulgar groan. 
 Since Sloth and Avarice are crowned, needs must be Valour mocked 
 
 for one 
 
 Brutal-tongued as craven-hearted, star-bedizened, struts and swells 
 In the garb of a departed hero, brave, if nothing else. 
 
 Mark ye that alien race ; with one tradition are they all imbued, 
 
 For subjects fraught with evils uncomputable in magnitude. 
 
 All of that line were from their birth upon one baneful fiction fed ; 
 
 That though for most be dole and dearth, long labour-ache and lack of 
 
 bread, 
 
 There must no due nor tribute fail to fill their goblet to the brim, 
 Though the rich wine be pressed by pale emaciate Misery hunger-grim : 
 
 That there must be for them no lack of splendour or emolument, 
 Though men be mad with want, and black each heart and brow with 
 
 discontent : 
 That though the outcry of distress make sad the sunlight, there must be 
 
1 8 \ A SO JVC FOR MY SON. 
 
 No gaud, no gem, no plume the less to grace their glittering pageantry : 
 That peoples live to pleasure them not they to guard the people's weal, 
 The flood of human ills to stem, the mass of misery to heal. 
 
 The care that chiefly stirreth these royal dullards to activity 
 Is to make safe and hide the keys of their vast wealth from scrutiny ; 
 Possessions filched from a befooled and blinded people in the past, 
 When common rights were over-ruled ; when Brunswick's swarm of 
 
 harpies cast 
 Rapacious glance o'er many a wide and fair demesne, and clutched at 
 
 them, 
 Seizing, with claim quick ratified; and none did dare the theft condemn. 
 
 The least of their concerns, the last to trouble their repose serene, 
 Is care for those whose lives are passed in constant jeopardy between 
 The wolf that must be stayed within, and vampires threatening from 
 
 without ; 
 
 Who, pinching, toil and, sorrowing, spin unceasingly, in carking doubt 
 Of how to win the morrow's meal. Such be not kingly cares ; yet loyal 
 Should workers be, and proud, as leal purveyors to the Stomach Royal ! 
 
 One instinct only, but one thought, did and doth dominate them all 
 To grasp and to retain, but naught bestow ; nay, making constant call, 
 With most imperial impudence, upon the toilers' little store 
 To add to their magnificence and their aggrandisement the more. 
 A vulgar and a vulturous line ! nor true nor firm in anything 
 Save to insist on their divine prerogative of plundering. 
 
 Shall a system of succession giving unto such as these 
 
 Richest realms for a possession hold a nation to its knees ? 
 
 Shall the profligate inherit them, the miser, and the fool, 
 
 It being held as merit that they do but feign to rule ? 
 
 Shall the shades of tyrants buried fleece us through their feeble sons ? 
 
 Give thy answer from the serried ranks of the rebellious ones. 
 
, " 
 
 cd 
 
 Be it thine to swell the number i i in Tin I iliFTi iTijirtmii'l __ *'s^ 
 
 Shall this heavy thing encumber any more the weary land ? 
 
 Be it thine to join the others who have pondered on the wrong, 
 
 And to animate thy brothers, for the battle will be long. 
 
 Seek thy place among their forces, gathering silently but fast, 
 
 With thy talents, thy resources, all the faculties thou hast ; 
 
 Striving so to scatter seedful truths abroad that they shall bring 
 The unthinking to grow heedful, till they recognise this thing 
 This begilded idol standing open-mouthed and hungry-mawed, 
 Tribute, tithe, and toll demanding, fed by statutory fraud 
 To be futile, false, and hollow ; so to undermine its base 
 That they who are to follow thee shall drag it from its place. 
 
 Living, as thou dost, possessing liberty of thought and deed, 
 See thou valuest that blessing, for 'twas won right hardly ; heed 
 Whose high heroism wrought it aye, and mark in spite of ivhom ; 
 Whose self-sacrifices bought it, though at price of fiery doom ; 
 Who' maintained it 'gainst incessant royal encroachment, subtly planned, 
 And bequeathed it to the present us their children, this their land. 
 
 Mark the foes thereof, gigantic truly ravening Greed and Pride, 
 And Another, belching frantic malediction far and wide. 
 Mark her well, for thou wilt meet her at each step of thy advance, 
 E'en through life ; but, to unseat her champion, needs but tip thy lance 
 With the crystal Truth she hateth, 'tis the thing she most doth fear ; 
 Yet must watch, for aye she waiteth to attack thee from the rear. 
 
 Ere our fathers (as thou learnest) brake their fetters link by link, 
 Time was when the studious, earnest seekers, all who dared to think, 
 And to speak the thought that stirred them, though 'twere only under 
 
 breath, 
 
 W.ere it new, had need to gird them for a conflict to the death 
 With a monster keen as ruthless, quick in craft as cruel of hand : 
 Thou but seest her tottering, toothless, and this canst not understand. 
 
20 A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 Thou art free to think and utter whatsoe'er thou deemest right ; 
 
 But did thy forefathers mutter truths now popular and trite, 
 
 Quick as panther and as direful in ferocity nay, more, 
 
 Straight upon them sprang an ireful Church that never then forbore 
 
 Were it suckling mother, tender maid, or prattling little one 
 
 In her savage hate to rend her victims limb from limb ere done. 
 
 Thou art free to love thy brother, and to fare with him as thine, 
 
 Though he worship at another and, to thee, an unknown shrine. 
 
 This is worth thy recognition, for it was not always so 
 
 It had wrought thy soul's perdition, nor so very long ago ; 
 
 If to such thou hadst but given food and drink for kinhood's sake, 
 
 Thou hadst lost thy hopes of Heaven it had brought thee to the stake : 
 
 Look around thee, and thou seest fearless, open-mannered folk ; 
 If thou to their thought agreest not, thine own thou needst not cloak. 
 Long as thou dost naught offensive to thy fellows' sense or weal, 
 Thou needst not be apprehensive, and thy deed or word conceal : 
 Neither monarch nor his minion, priest nor titled popinjay, 
 Dare disturb thee for opinion uttered in the public-way. 
 
 Slow, to this, hath been our progress ; only since the realm was rent 
 
 From the clutches of that Ogress, hateful, yet omnipotent, 
 
 And her sorcerous fortress shaken, were the people's eyes unsealed, 
 
 Did the minds of men awaken ; for the tyrant's doom had pealed 
 
 Pealed, but ere the retribution be exacted to the full, 
 
 Ere the day of restitution, long the strife and terrible. 
 
 Slow, through outrage, dole, and slaughter, our deliverance, even since ;: 
 
 For the Hag's misgotten daughter, harlot to a lecher-prince, 
 
 Sitting throned but little lower than the mother sat before, 
 
 Proved as pitiless in power, wreaking penalties as sore ; 
 
 And, as in succubcean dream, the wise discerned a monstrous thing 
 
 God's Truth revised, maintained supreme by grace of an ungodly king I 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON. 21 
 
 But the shrewd were set a-thinking, witnessing a thing so odd ; 
 Wakeful, once fooled by a winking Virgin and a wafer-God, 
 Sundry of them 'gan to search, and e'en to eye the Book askant : 
 There might be a king and Church exchanging winks significant ! 
 Thus strange doubts were set abrew, since now it was declared enough 
 To hold the doctrine stamped as true by such an one as Butcher Bluff ! 
 
 Search, nor cease till thou hast mastered all the story of this time, 
 Spite of glozers of that dastard crowned embodiment of crime. 
 Mark the hybrid Church that flung its shadow o'er the people's homes 
 The blood-sodden soil whence sprung its roots : its victims' catacombs 
 Are underneath it ; and, above, the fumes of burning flesh lie dense. 
 Yet will thy teachers maunder of its " civilising influence." 
 
 Thou must needs be keen to sunder fact from fable ; when thou hast, 
 Thou wilt clearly see that under mighty empires in the past 
 (For thee, as the Tale thou connest, re-arising from their dust), 
 Long as men were truthful, honest, sober, merciful, and just, 
 Free were they to make oblation to that form of the Divine 
 Worthiest of their adoration that they deemed the holiest shrine, 
 
 Where or whatsoe'er conceived they the Omnipotent to be ; 
 Whatso'er ideal believed they truest, worshipped they. Thus free 
 Were the peoples till that day when there appeared in Eastern lands, 
 Girt with spears and armed array, a Symbol borne by bloody hands ; 
 And its heralds, stern and dolorous, showed thereon a legend writ, 
 Of a sort to catch the timorous, and to win the weak of wit ; 
 
 Of a sort to breed deniers of a righteous Judge on high ; 
 
 To beget a race of liars feigning to believe a lie ; 
 
 To engender strife ; to deaden pity in the human soul ; 
 
 Smiling lands to blast and redden, turning gladness into dole ; 
 
 Hearts of men to break or harden wheresoe'er its shadow fell, 
 
 Till it filled our Father's Garden with the flames and shrieks of Hell ; 
 
22 A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 Till the earth, for most, became a place of horror and despair, 
 And the highest, holiest Name a name to curse with only ; ne'er 
 Theretofore had persecution, deaf to ruth and frenzy-blind, 
 Wrought such havoc and pollution in the conscience of mankind. 
 Ne'er wept the world so, seeing done such bloody work at human hands ; 
 Nay, through Time's glass had never run such ruddy and tear-sodden 
 sands ! 
 
 Thou wilt see that mankind oweth these things to a cursed creed ; 
 Wherefrom, surely as there groweth deadly bane from hemlock-seed, 
 Issued forth a raging devil armed with torch and rack and rod ; 
 Hear it : Work he good or evil, man shall not be judged of God 
 jRy the things that he achieveth ; nay, his soul shall live or die 
 By the things that he believeth, and be blessed or banned thereby. 
 
 Herein, as close-coiled within the cobra's egg lies poison-death, 
 
 Lurks the baneful origin of madnesses whereat the breath 
 
 Chokes in utterance. Mark and ponder well the outcome of that Lie ; 
 
 All the beauty, all the wonder writ for us 'twixt earth and sky, 
 
 Set as secret lessons, hidden only that they may be sought, 
 
 All became a book forbidden, harbouring a demon Thought. 
 
 Foul and fanged and fast-engendered crawled its offspring o'er the earth, 
 Vilifying all that rendered human life of any worth ; 
 Smiting, numbing, and besliming, with envenomed tooth and tongue, 
 All man's faculties for climbing up beyond the mists that hung 
 O'er his spiritual being at the dawning of his mind 
 God-gifts for his own self-freeing from the woes of humankind. 
 
 All his blessed, wondrous dower of loving heart and subtle brain, 
 All his glorious, mystic power of intellect they would have slain, 
 Had these things not been of Heaven ; mingled with but mortal clay, 
 Crushed and trampled (but as leaven, ever working weal), they lay 
 Stricken, fearful of betraying stir of thought or sign of life, 
 Neither song nor speech essaying, for the horror that was rife. 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON. 23 
 
 See the deadly poison lurking in that fatalest of creeds ; 
 
 Trace the virus spreading, working ; the malignant things it breeds, 
 
 Multiform and pestilential ; see, at last, these coalesced ; 
 
 Witness, then, an all-potential monster rear its hydra crest, 
 
 All the tyrannies uniting to itself, and with its breath 
 
 Making foul the earth, and blighting souls with spiritual death. 
 
 Mark : its dupe, his mind infected, paralysed, and made afraid, 
 In his mad mistrust rejected, as insidious, the aid 
 Wherewithal his God supplied him, his equipment for the fight 
 Given to sustain and guide him in his struggle t'wards the light : 
 So that he became a creature cowering as if under ban, 
 Terror-struck, with scarce a feature of the brave and honest Man. 
 
 For dominant, and clad with might, behold this Incubus, the Church, 
 Loud-denying him his right to freely reason, think, and search ; 
 Aye, his right inalienable, to discern by fearless quest 
 Whether tales be fact or fable, whether things abide the test 
 Furnished for his self-protection, set within his heart and soul 
 For a safeguard and direction through the mists that hide his goal. 
 
 Rights, these, that by man may never be surrendered but with shame ; 
 Duties, these, that whosoever shirks and delegates the same 
 Doth do so at his peril ; yea, the tyrant king and priest shall grind 
 And devour him as their prey ; him soul and body shall they bind, 
 Strip and yoke to serve their lust : nor shall the gods be pitiful, 
 But leave such craven in the dust, degraded and contemptible. 
 
 What but trial and search incessant, and audacious questioning, 
 From the dim Past to the Present, hath availed man anything ? 
 Pensively his gaze projecting over earth and into space, 
 Fearlessly the false detecting truly 'twas by these our race 
 Won its victories and mounted arduously, stage by stage, 
 Through the centuries uncounted from the first strong Thinker's age. 
 
24 A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 The primeval man that cowered ape-like in his dwelling-place, 
 Rock-hewn cave or nest embowered, but beheld Panthea's face 
 Dark with menace ; he but saw around, below and overhead, 
 Threatening forms of fear and awe, but phantoms dire and forces dread 
 Lightning-bolt and thunder-crash, keen winter's biting blast and stress, 
 Were as foes that seemed to dash their strength against his nakedness. 
 
 Plagues and evils that attacked him famine, drought, and pestilence ; 
 Maladies and pains that racked him, aidless in his impotence ; 
 Havoc of the fearsome quaking, cracking earth beneath his feet ; 
 Ruin of the storm-cloud breaking, wrapping him with flaming sheet ; 
 Fire and flood that left him bare of shelter and bereft of kin 
 These for aeons cowed him ere the first true seer discerned therein 
 
 The inscrutable Creator's emissaries grim and stern, 
 High-commissioned inculcators of the precept " Seek and Learn ! 
 Seek throughout thy habitation, search thine whole environment ; 
 All its deep interpretation learn thou, and let none prevent ! 
 All to sense or soul existent put thou sharply to the proof \ 
 Search and scrutiny persistent ply these for thine own behoof." 
 
 These the ministers that scourged him into effort self-reliant ; 
 This the mandate high that urged him to investigate, defiant 
 Of the cunning fetish-monger and the cursing mystery-man ; 
 Servile to their craft no longer, nor obeisant to their ban, 
 Strove he, baffling their endeavour to intimidate his mind ; 
 Else had he remained forever destitute, abased, and blind. 
 
 Ours had been a story bare of soaring thought and lofty deed 
 Had our fathers failed to dare the priestly ban, and given heed 
 To the cursing crew that bade them search no farther. But behold, 
 He whose ancestor, skin-clad, nomadic roamed the woods and wold, 
 Hunger-driven, making war with plaited noose and flint-stone axe, 
 Hath linked the levin to his car, and scaled the heights of parallax. 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON. 25 
 
 Look back, in imagination, to the twilight of his prime 
 
 From thy safe and hard-won station to the uncomputed time 
 
 When he, on his first awaking to the powers that lay in him, 
 
 From the bonds of terror breaking, into the assailants grim 
 
 That so harassed and pursued him, shot the arrows of his thought, 
 
 Fronting them that erst subdued him with his weapons newly wrought. 
 
 When he had discerned the sources of his maladies and woes- 
 Found the elemental forces not to be malignant foes, 
 But benign, though minatory, agents pliant to his skill 
 Grown resourceful, deft, no more he cowered when they wrought him ill ; 
 .Seeing in their tumult other than consuming wrath and death ; 
 Learning that the bounteous Mother for our weal thus laboureth. 
 
 Then arose that spectral Terror 'mong the peoples to condemn 
 Energy and Thought as error, cursing and arresting them. 
 'Neath its hateful domination man, distraught by new alarms, 
 At its tyrannous dictation flung aside his proper arms ; 
 Conscience, test of reason, these he straight abandoned for its creed, 
 ,So that he became an easy prey to priestly craft and greed. 
 
 Though the bigotry that brought him to such pass is yet alive 
 In the Church that aye hath taught him but to suffer not to strive ; 
 Ever, since she drilled and schooled him not to question, but obey ; 
 Ever, since the Fathers fooled him, since the pontiffs held their sway- 
 Playing, in the name of Heaven, the lecher, murderer, and thief 
 Hath his progress been the even measure of his disbelief. 
 
 Disbelief that revelation lit but one the Hebrew race ; 
 
 Disbelief in a salvation by capricious act of grace ; 
 
 In man's pre-ordained perdition ere he issued from the womb ; 
 
 In a priest's divine commission to assign reward or doom ; 
 
 In a Deity demanding of His creatures tyrant-wise, 
 
 Reason, Thought, and Understanding slain as grateful sacrifice. 
 
26 A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 So far as he hath rejected these things, and his mind thereof 
 Cleared and purged and disinfected (spite of pharisaic scoff), 
 Just so far is he enabled to pursue his quest for Truth, 
 And to read aright the fabled stories of his planet's youth ; 
 Verily to love his neighbour, though in thrall to idols base ; 
 And undauntedly to labour for the welfare of his race. 
 
 As his old false beacon crumbled, and its red glare flickered dim, 
 So with a more truly humbled spirit hath he worshipped Him ; 
 More devoutly sought His presence, and more duly kept His law ; 
 Leaving theories of His essence for the dogmatist to draw 
 Heir of the patristic spiders that with futile labour spun, 
 Analysers and dividers of the High and Holy One. 
 
 In so far as he hath broken from the bondage of that Creed, 
 Freely searched and thought and spoken, fearing not nor giving heed 
 To the Church's curse the flaming torture here and afterward ; 
 Lies, though crowned, as lies proclaiming, by their menace undebarred 
 So far hath he rendered fertile regions barren heretofore, 
 Ploughing up the tangled, sterile waste of " theologic " lore ; 
 
 Through its murky labyrinth clearing pathways unto regions new, 
 Into daylight pioneering seekers of the high and true ; 
 Judging with a wider vision of his future by his past ; 
 Wak'ning to his true position in the universal vast ; 
 Loftiest peak and deepest ocean forcing to declare their tale, 
 And the stellar atoms, motion measuring by rule and scale. 
 
 As his mind refused submission to the yoke, and dared rebel, 
 
 It regained its strength volition, paralysed beneath that spell ; 
 
 It uprose, re-animated, from its servitude to fear, 
 
 And his soul was liberated from the dungeon dark and drear 
 
 Builded by his crafty masters to obscure it and confine, 
 
 And devised that so his pastors might distort the Light divine. 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON. 27 
 
 As he hath escaped that prison, and his captors hath defied, 
 
 So he hath advanced and risen ; nay, the more he hath denied 
 
 Credence to his priestly teachers, more he hath been just and kind 
 
 Unto all his fellow-creatures, with a justice unconfined 
 
 To one sect or race or nation ; with a mercy unwithheld 
 
 E'en from him who seeks salvation elsewise than from books of eld ; 
 
 Elsewise than in basest barter as the price of guiltless blood ; 
 Yielding to the Peasant-Martyr but the claims of brotherhood ; 
 Thinking not to buy redemption whensoever he hath erred ; 
 Seeking not to win exemption from the penalties incurred 
 To escape the retribution following with unfaltering tread 
 By a dastard substitution of another in his stead. 
 
 As he hath revolted, turning in deep loathing from that Lie, 
 So have cultivation, learning all the useful arts whereby 
 Human suffering and affliction find relief made speedier way ; 
 For the Church's malediction and her forces' whole array 
 Ever have been set to bar the march of all that maketh free 
 Ever hath she striv'n to mar the dawning smile of Liberty. 
 
 Study well the annals pages blood-writ and aglare with flame 
 
 Of her empire through the ages of her undisputed claim ; 
 
 When all Christendom obeyed the voice of her as voice of God, 
 
 When, omnipotent, she swayed the destinies thereof, and trod 
 
 On the necks of prince and Caesar aye, with courtesy sharp and scant. 
 
 Swiftly bringing to their knees her vassal-kings recalcitrant. 
 
 With dominion unresisted, with authority supreme, 
 Binding, loosing as she listed, oh, what grand and glorious dream 
 Had been realised for waiting, suffering mortals, even here, 
 Had she striv'n towards abating sorrow in this lower sphere ! 
 Feeble Right had never yielded unto Wrong's tyrannic might 
 Had her armed strength been wielded as its champion in the fight. 
 
28 A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 The chivalry of Europe leapt her beck and bidding to obey ; 
 
 Had but her uplifted sceptre been the signal, in that day, 
 
 Not for her too zealous legions, led by Craft and urged by Greed, 
 
 To invade and plunder regions unenlightened by her creed, 
 
 But to set the weak and lowly victims of the despot free, 
 
 All had testified the Holy Spirit moved her verily ! 
 
 Thus enthroned, and in her hands the keys of Heaven and of Hell, 
 Clothed with power unchallenged stands the record that she used it 
 
 well ? 
 
 Witness, ye who perished under cruelest torments at her hands 
 In the furnace, torn asunder rise and speak, ye, from the lands 
 In the old days given over to her for a pastorate, 
 Prom the hallowed graves that cover you, the brave, the wise, the great ! 
 
 Bear your witness, O ye sainted victims of her ruthless might, 
 Whom her virulence attainted of the crime of seeking light 
 Crime of groping upwards through the blackest night the world hath 
 
 known ; 
 
 When right loud and piteous grew the universal sob and groan : 
 When o'er every homestead hovered shadows fraught with fire and doom, 
 And when Learning's lamp was covered, quenched in sacerdotal gloom : 
 
 When at every hearth sat terror, lest the father, wife, or son 
 Were accused, suspect of error, and their gladsome days were done ; 
 Lest, unwittingly, by word light-spoken, they perchance had strayed, 
 And quick Spite had overheard, rejoicing, so they were betrayed 
 To the Church's cruel purgation to the torture (ne'er the less 
 Wrought she thus by inspiration of the God of Righteousness !) : 
 
 When fanatical Suspicion lurked alike in cot and hall, 
 
 And the Holy Inquisition shed a horror over all ; 
 
 For it spread a net so none might hope to hide beyond its reach, 
 
 Nor escape the toils it spun for snaring winged Thought and Speech 
 
 Subtly set to trap and strangle such in whatsoever guise, 
 
 And of purpose to entangle Knowledge in a web of lies. 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON. 29 
 
 Bear your witness, O ye martyrs done to death but not o'erawed, 
 Were not her Decretal charters forgeries, and based on fraud ? 
 This the monkish scribes oft muttered in their cups, but ne'er avowed 
 Till the patent fact was uttered in the market-place, aloud : 
 Say, ye, if by her endeavour Truth and Justice might prevail 
 Witness, ye ! or did she ever fight against them tooth and nail ? 
 
 Do they tell thee I am railing at a phantom of the past, 
 
 And but foolishly assailing one who long ago was cast 
 
 Out from her assumed dominion : one whom those she sought to harm 
 
 Have been fortunate to pinion, disentitle, and disarm ; 
 
 One now moribund, and bearing rule no more for peace or strife, 
 
 Ghastly-hideous only, wearing but similitude of life ? 
 
 Who is this, be-mitred, standing but a step below the throne, 
 
 Sworn, gold-gorged yet more demanding what is this proud-visaged 
 
 one 
 
 But that ancient tyrant's daughter yea, her own true child is she, 
 Albeit the angry beldame brought her forth in hate, abortively ; 
 For this offspring doth inherit all the jealous arrogance 
 All the persecuting spirit that hath barred mankind's advance. 
 
 On her front she bears the naevus aye, her prideful parent's mark, 
 And her rule had been as grievous, merciless, malign, and dark, 
 But that our brave fathers slipt the meshes round about them spun ; 
 Challenged, vanquished, and stript her of her weapons one by one. 
 Though she feigneth well beware ! her cursings, petulant and shrill r 
 Tell us how the world would fare had she the power to work her will. 
 
 All the subtleties devised to awe, bewilder, and delude, 
 Whereby the Mother terrorised the superstitious multitude ; 
 All th' accumulated lore the pious falsehoods, forgeries, 
 Frauds and fables all her store of craftily-designed lies, 
 Wrought and writ to fright unlearned, credulous, and simple folk, 
 Hath the cunning daughter turned to account, to fit her yoke 
 
30 A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 On the indolent successors of the earnest men who taught 
 Their papistical oppressors not to harass honest thought. 
 She hath flourished, for a season, for the populace are loth 
 To re-vindicate their Reason, lain for centuries in sloth ; 
 And the many, at the present, murmur drowsily her cant 
 Are but dully acquiescent where our sires were protestant. 
 
 Like her parent, she hath striven aye to practise on their fears ; 
 
 Like her parent, she hath thriven on their blood and sweat and tears ; 
 
 Like her, she hath sought to darken every beacon save her own. 
 
 As ye love your freedom, hearken and take heed mistrust the crone ! 
 
 Blindly-stubborn is her temper, sanguined is her banner's hue, 
 
 Haughty is her crest, and "Semper eadem " her legend true. 
 
 Search her record : In each movement tending to the commonweal, 
 To enlightenment, improvement in the arts to soothe and heal, 
 Check disease, and overcome it ; or to free our fellow man ; 
 Or, when from some hard-won summit, keen explorers in the van, 
 Beyond her narrow ken, discovered tracks to guide or lights to cheer, 
 She hath lagged behind and hovered, shrieking curses, in the rear. 
 
 Mark her method now : Thou notest when the vanguard hath prevailed 
 
 'Spite her savage ban and protest, and the innovation, hailed 
 
 Far and wide with acclamation, thriveth, an established thing 
 
 To a purblind generation, heedless of her hindering, 
 
 She (whom, truly, nothing shameth), having wrought her best and worst 
 
 To retard and damn it, claimeth to have blessed it from the first ! 
 
 Do they tell thee I but fight a hoary and disabled foe 
 E'en as he that doth but smite a wounded giant, stricken low : 
 For she, though diseased and dying, certain service wrought of yore, 
 Hospice and relief supplying when the earth was given o'er 
 For apportionment among the fiercest hearts and sharpest swords ; 
 When the strongest they that swung the mightiest blades became its 
 lords ? 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON. 31 
 
 That her word was to contentious, savage rulers as a law 
 When none other the licentious, predatory hordes might awe : 
 Preaching Peace Goodwill, as ne'er such message had been preached 
 
 before, 
 
 Daring all things to declare the symbol and the word she bore : 
 Fair-built sanctuaries founding 'mid a rough world's strife and clash, 
 'Mid the ravaged lands resounding ever with the battle-crash ? 
 
 That her walled domains afforded for the studious and the sage 
 
 Sheltered safe-guard 'mong the hoarded wealth of the Augustan age ; 
 
 Lodgment for the priceless olden scrolls wherein the few might seek 
 
 Lore and solace in the golden wisdom of the lucid Greek ; 
 
 Refuge and retreat for weary sinners in her cloistered shades, 
 
 So their last days were less dreary, passed among her glebes and glades ? 
 
 Do they tell thee this same Power, gigantic-looming, seeming-cruel, 
 Made a citadel and tower for Peace and Love, while dubious duel 
 Truth 'gainst Falsehood, Right 'gainst Might was waged before a 
 
 passive God ; 
 
 That its champions turned the fight, and, lo, where'er its legions trod 
 The holy, final Truth dispelled the darkness for mistaken men ; 
 Thought, grown presumptuous, was quelled : so He made bright His 
 
 face again ? 
 
 Do they bid thee, in the manner of this Faith's apologists, 
 Mark the progress of its banner ; its emergence from the mists, 
 Dubious, fabulous, concealing its first consecration, till, 
 Triumphing, it waved o'er kneeling millions, bowed in heart and will ? 
 Naught but God's own grace could speed it thus, all conquering, from 
 
 its prime ! 
 (So, e'en, will the Christian plead), and, with a confidence sublime, 
 
 Ask what Faith inspires the powers, the foremost, mightiest of the race, 
 And, like a rock-built beacon, towers refulgent o'er the rest ? What 
 
 place 
 Upon the habitable earth hath it not reached and lit ? What land 
 
32 A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 Lying within the globe's wide girth, whose people grasped the vigorous 
 
 hand 
 
 Its roving followers out-held, but, prospering greatly, hath become 
 A place, where, erst, the savage dwelled, for peaceful men to make a 
 
 home ? 
 
 Lo, the regions wild that flourished where this Church hath shed her 
 
 seed; 
 
 Lo, the thriving peoples nourished on her sweet and gentle creed ; 
 Lo, the honour of thy daughters and the freedom of thy sons 
 Are secure where'er her waters have baptised the faithful ones. 
 Though schismatical polluters made the stream thereof as brine, 
 Yet these blessings (say thy tutors) prove its fount to be divine. 
 
 'Tis a fair defence, and subtle, but it toucheth not the mark ; 
 
 Tis the method of the cuttle seeking to escape the shark, 
 
 But with a difference, e'en this : The finny one obscures his track, 
 
 Making the enemy to miss its prey, in clouds of fluid black. 
 
 Christian, from point to point hard-pressed, getteth the sun in rear, 
 
 and lo, 
 Flashing in light from heel to crest, would daze his adversary so. 
 
 Thou doughty champion, mouthing Peace and Love and Holy brother- 
 hood, 
 
 Thy shield is pierced ; 'twere time to cease thy sophistry. Behold, the 
 blood 
 
 Of myriad victims to thy creed hath splashed thee to the very brow ; 
 
 Dost think them dead and dumb indeed? They cry unto us even now I 
 
 That light thou deem'st about thy head rayed down from the Eternal 
 Throne, 
 
 A halo on thy banner shed is seen for other than thine own. 
 
 That light thou takest for a sign of Grace upon the conquests won 
 Beneath thy Symbol, doth but shine in spite of it ; yea, for that sun 
 Long struggled dimly ere it brake, resplendent, through the dire eclipse 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON. 33 
 
 That followed in thy standard's wake. That sunshine whose glad 
 
 radiance tips 
 Height after height puts thee to shame ; yet, being shameless, thou, 
 
 forsooth, 
 Wouldst arrogate it in the name of one thou persecutedst Truth. 
 
 Thy Truth, thy Symbol (called thine), thy Revelation, and thy Creed ! 
 Were these things verities divine, our plight were piteous indeed. 
 We know thy Church was ever wont to slay, or, were't a deathless thing, 
 To steal, and claim, with brazen front, 'twas nurtured 'neath her sheltering. 
 Thy holy books these he who runs may read for fabulous and forged. 
 Thy golden plunder this our sons may hope to live to see disgorged. 
 
 Thy Light My precious Truth indeed ! What higher, deeper, nobler 
 
 truths 
 
 To guide the pilgrim, or to lead the ductile minds of babes and youths ; 
 To draw men from pursuit of pelf, so they shall labour for the sake 
 Of others rather than of self have ever been revealed than spake 
 The gentle Buddha, and the wise Confucius, Plato, Socrates, 
 Whose wisdom shall endure when dies thy barbarous deity ? and these 
 
 But gathered up wide scattered grains, and uttered forth in speech of 
 
 gold 
 
 The echoes of forgotten fanes come down to them from times untold : 
 Yet in beneficence and worth these are as purest gems to dross 
 By side of aught wherefor the earth must thank the prophets of the 
 
 Cross. 
 We know thy crafty Church but thieved these gems and set them as her 
 
 own, 
 Though generations have believed them to be hers and hers alone. 
 
 Of new ? She hath bestowed one jewel unique yea, verily she hath ! 
 A triune deity more cruel, more fierce in his insensate wrath, 
 More savage in his jealous hate than any of the idols whom 
 
34 A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 He cursed and could not tolerate ; more slow to save, more swift to 
 
 doom, 
 
 More hideously unjust to man or virtuous or vile and more 
 Ferociously vindictive than were any that had reigned before. 
 
 Thy Symbol, that thou callest thine, and showest unto infant eyes 
 
 As shaped in Heaven thy God's own sign, for thee descended from 
 
 the skies, 
 
 Ne'er sacred held before : this is but borrowed by thy Church and ta'en, 
 Like all her other properties, from many an ancient pagan fane 
 Where rose the sacrifice and psalm to Baal, Moloch, Ashtaroth ; 
 Zeus, Adonai, Serapis, Brahm ; Osiris, Isis, Pasht, and Thoth. 
 
 In old Phoenicia, Babylon, Etruria, Ind, and hoar Thibet, 
 On obelisk and pylus on the banks of farthest Nile, was set 
 That symbol ; aye, and there it bore significance of fructuous life, 
 Unnumbered centuries before 'twas borne by her in bloodiest strife ; 
 Long long before she taught mankind the proper hue thereof was red, 
 Its shape a hiked blade designed the blood of infidels to shed. 
 
 Her scriptures, she would teach our youth, were writ by trembling scribes- 
 
 the while 
 God's awful voice pealed forth His truth, and His own hand did guide 
 
 the style, 
 
 His lightnings playing o'er the scroll made holy by His very word ; 
 He sealing with His seal the whole ! Yea, every child that tale hath 
 
 heard 
 
 From lips of Christian priest, and tongue of minister most sanctified, 
 Charged by thy Church to train the young in truthful ways and thus 
 
 they lied. 
 
 Her new Evangel, she would teach, was writ by apostolic hands 
 By sainted witnesses, who each fared forth o'er the Judaean sands 
 Ever attendant on their Lord, so every wondrous work he wrought 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON. 35 
 
 And every precept, word for word remembering all, omitting naught- 
 They wrote upon the sacred page, e'en as 'tis set before our eyes : 
 So tells she them of tender age ; thus, knowingly, again she lies. 
 
 Her Gospel by whose hands 'twas writ thou know'st no more than any 
 
 child. 
 
 Her canon who determined it ? Were the manifold scriptures piled 
 (As Pappus saith) upon the floor, the Council praying for a sign ; 
 When, lo, the Books Inspired leapt o'er the false, and proved themselves 
 
 divine 
 
 By self-arrangement on the top, so were the lowermost cast out ? 
 This tale sufficed, then, to stop the mouths of any who might doubt. 
 
 A murk, wherein the keenest miss all clue for certain guidance, lies 
 O'er that Jew's apotheosis, o'er the inception and the rise 
 Of the tradition of his life. Unknown his place and year of birth ; 
 'Mong the conflicting stories rife, which can we count of any worth ? 
 'Twas not till after centuries three that any book thereof was held 
 As of supreme authority, and pious faith therein compelled. 
 
 And many a zealous scribe did add thereto whate'er he deemed they 
 
 lacked, 
 
 Portents and miracles none forbade ; such fraud was thought a pious act. 
 Thou knowest thou wouldst not hang a dog upon such shadowy evidence 
 As thou dost fish from out that fog of fable with such diligence 
 To prove thy Gospel from the first was held as God's own Testament ; 
 Yet on such proof thy Church hath cursed all who denied 'twas Heaven- 
 sent. 
 
 To terrify or to beguile those who her precious Word denied, 
 No artifice no fraud so vile, so infamous but she hath plied, 
 No forger but whose guilt she shared. Well knoweth she the tome she 
 
 quotes 
 
 As Holy Writ was but declared the Word of God by human votes 
 Eliminating from a mass of manuscript pseudonymous 
 The Books ye impudently pass as wrought by miracle for us. 
 
36 A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 Her Creed she putteth forth as one the Galilean did impose 
 
 On his disciples, as the Son co-eval with the Father ; those 
 
 (She would imply) did verily hear how that salvation might be bought 
 
 Did hearken to announcement clear thereof, and reverently caught 
 
 The blessed phrases as they fell from him in ecstasy sublime, 
 
 And so transmitted them, thus well attested, even to our time. 
 
 If shrinking from that lie direct, yet do thy priests convey the same 
 To children ere they can reflect from whence their Sabbath bogies came. 
 Canst tell us unto whom, and when, that Man e'er spake one word of it ? 
 Had Mary, or the Magdalen, or the first Twelve e'er heard of it ? 
 This creed by Heaven revealed to thee who holds it ? who hath ever held 
 It in its pristine purity ? did mystic Paul when he rebelled ? 
 
 We know that 'tween the year of grace that saw the martyred Nazarene 
 And that when first thy creed we trace, long centuries did intervene. 
 We know thy formula (that binds but those whom it hath made as fools) 
 Was long evolving from the minds of fanatics of various schools ; 
 Know whose authoritative voice cried, " Quibblers, cease ! the Faith 
 
 define ! 
 " Ye cannot? Then will / make choice, and say what shall be held 
 
 divine !" 
 
 We know what wranglings 'twixt enraged be-mitred disputants were rife ; 
 What conflict long and fierce they waged, how tigerish was their hateful 
 
 strife 
 Around the quiddities thereof ; what frauds what deeds of blood and 
 
 shame 
 
 (Well meriting the pagan's scoff) they wrought therefor ere it became 
 Defined and formulated, firm established, fixed by royal decree. 
 We trace how, from the triple germ Fear, Hate, and crass Credulity 
 
 Up-grew the baneful, hideous thing thy creed, that after centuries seven 
 A half-barbaric Frankish King approved as final and of Heaven ! 
 The voices that have turned the scale in Council, voting "False or 
 True?" - 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON. 37 
 
 The hands that made that vote prevail, and gave thy Faith its form and 
 
 hue, 
 That shaped and set thy precious jewel, were those of savage monsters 
 
 twain, 
 Most pious, infamous, and cruel e'en Constantine and Charlemagne. 
 
 Thus through thy Church's whole career bloodguiltiness and guile are 
 
 seen. 
 
 Slaying in fury, and in fear denying such hath ever been ; 
 Aye crafty to conceal the Truth of Falsehood quick to take avail ; 
 These were her methods, and, in sooth, 'tis but of late they 'gan to fail. 
 Deceit and false pretensions these have marked her every word and 
 
 act; 
 And this the dullest student sees when he her progress hath re-tracked. 
 
 Saladin's sword had slept in sheath, nor had the sceptic cared to cast 
 These wickednesses in the teeth of her whose reign is over-past, 
 But for her stubborn attitude and ineradicable guile. 
 Stern, sulphurous dogma t'wards the rude she holds, and, with the 
 
 Augur's smile, 
 Dispenses where strong Doubt is rife (being cloven-tongued and double 
 
 faced) 
 Her Waters of Eternal Life diluted to the drinker's taste. 
 
 Arrogantly she doth persist in claims that crumble at the test 
 
 Of Reason, the keen analyst. Though the well-proved the trustiest 
 
 Pilots of Intellect her ark have left, a floundering derelict ; 
 
 Though of authority stripped stark, a spectacle, she stands convict 
 
 Of million immoralities, her oracles discredited, 
 
 Yet, obstinate, she still denies all light divine but that she shed. 
 
 We of the wider hope and thought, would she recant, are willing still 
 
 To recognise the good she wrought as partly balancing the ill. 
 
 But, lo, she is as one that stands upon the main-truck's footing small, 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 And cannot, though right fain, use hands to clamber down without a 
 
 fall. 
 
 For her no more to claim to be sole mouth-piece of the Holy One 
 Would hasten such catastrophe as needs must leave her clean undone. 
 
 But, till that day, nor truce nor cess of conflict will there be, nor lack 
 Of eager-souled recruits to press, impetuous, to the attack. 
 Each morn that dawns, each sun that sets, beholds her enemies' advance, 
 Beholds enrolment of cadets. Her dupes are wakening from their 
 
 trance ; 
 
 No gear but hatred of deceit they need to rout her and compel 
 Her veterans to make complete surrender of her citadel. 
 
 Long as she uttereth the lie of a primeval curse shall we 
 
 Assail her and her deity as most unholy ; long as she 
 
 Across the grave at man doth fling her blasphemous malignities ; 
 
 Long as she doth assert a single claim as being more than this 
 
 One evolutionary force, one factor in the growth of good, 
 
 That sped our race along its course t'wards universal brotherhood. 
 
 Maybe ye ask : If God ne'er spake direct to Moses on the Mount, 
 Nor, taking flesh, taught by the Lake of Galilee if this we count 
 As fable, dubious is our plight. What certainty what guarantee 
 That Right, in human eyes, is Right, that Sin is really Sin, have we ? 
 Whence came the Decalogue, whereto ye yield obedience -from Man ? 
 How, then, are ye assured 'tis true, and part of the Almighty's plan ? 
 
 Setting our sacred creeds aside, if souls must ever be content 
 
 To take mere human voice for guide, no surety, but bewilderment, 
 
 Must be our wretched state for aye. Though men taught truth before 
 
 our Lord, 
 
 They did but stumble on the Way ; 'tis now attested by his Word. 
 On what foundation would ye build, to what firm bed-rock would ye go, 
 If that prediction were fulfilled which tells our System's overthrow ? 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON. 39 
 
 Such words evince that deep disease wherefrom ye must be shaken free 
 The soul's desire for slothful ease, its craving for Finality. 
 Buddha the wise can here instil a truth into the Christian mind : 
 " Though many a veil may lift, there will be ever veil on veil behind." 
 That rock immutable ye seek, nowhere exists for soul or sense ; 
 Man ever built, and grew from weak to strong, upon Experience. 
 
 And what is that whereon ye base such servile, blind, unquestioning 
 
 faith 
 
 Is it not this : That in such place in Scripture such an one " thus saith " ? 
 The Church of Rome was wise to make her claim.* Of what avail to us 
 A Voice that long aforetime spake, unless it be continuous ? 
 Ye hold your Book for true, I wis, because ye are so told ; what then ? 
 Why, ye have nothing more than this -faith in the faith of other men. 
 
 We yield in reverence to none, nor chary of due praise are we 
 
 For that immortalised One type of divinest charity. 
 
 Whether of flesh, in part -or whole, or if but an ideal wrought 
 
 And imaged forth from out the soul of sad humanity ; though naught 
 
 But a sweet-featured myth to whom the quickened conscience of the age 
 
 Clung struggling for deliverance from the grossness of Rome's tutelage.. 
 
 Or man or mythus, we revere that Figure hallowed and enshrined, 
 Than whose was ne'er more simple, clear, yet blessed message to man- 
 kind; 
 
 We grant its truth as from above, yet hold we what it hath of good 
 Not more of God than is the love, the selflessness of motherhood ; 
 Than the heart-impulse to adore and deify th' heroic-souled 
 That moved our ancestors before a song was sung or tale was told. 
 
 We hold the spirit breathed therein not more divine than was the flame 
 That glowed in others of our kin whose lives illumed the past ; the same 
 That tipped the tongue of Cicero, and guided Euclid when he wrought 
 
 * Claim to Papal Infallibility. 
 
40 A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 As pioneer to whom we owe the scaling-steps of highest thought ; 
 That kindled Curtius* to his leap, Leonidas to bar the pass, 
 Damon his plighted word to keep, and lit the heart of Pythias. 
 
 But think'st thou 'twas th' inherent worth the dazzling truth of this, thy 
 
 creed, 
 
 That moved the princes of the earth to foster it and spread its seed ? 
 Those crafty savages were keen to see that naught within their ken 
 Could prove so mighty a machine for making slaves of sturdy men. 
 They judged aright ; they had the wit to hail and echo its commands, 
 To urge its precepts, and to fit the gentlest to their iron hands. 
 
 Right willing converts did they prove ; what creed more welcome to the 
 
 strong ? 
 
 For lo, a voice as from above forbade resistance unto wrong. 
 They grasped a faith so full of grace and promise as a very jewel 
 It taught submission blind and base to tyranny, however cruel ; 
 It taught endurance dumb, inert, under the burden and the rod : 
 Slight need the despot to convert ; small marvel 'twas proclaimed of 
 
 God! 
 
 The charity ye name of Christ lit not the heart of prince or priest 
 To mouth and prate thereof sufficed ; and of the blessed Three the 
 
 least 
 
 Enforced in deed, as though of small avail to save the soul, was this ; 
 But all the parasitic, all the stupefying falsities 
 Devised by zealotry of old, that stultified the nascent faith, 
 Were forced upon mankind to hold e'en under penalty of death. 
 
 These falsehoods and the priests thereof we gird our loins to assail; 
 At these we fling the gibe and scoff, if other speech may not avail. 
 These, consecrated, championed, borne abroad at point of sword and 
 lance, 
 
 * The birth, ministry, and crucifixion of Jesus are not one whit better attested, 
 historically, than is the heroic deed of Curtius. There must have been a certain 
 divinity in the moral atmosphere to generate the earlier legend. 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON. 41 
 
 Though hideous nightmares that the morn shall scatter, yet forbid 
 
 advance. 
 
 These spectres, still, on Sabbath days start up across the pilgrim's path, 
 And shriek aloud in all the ways the gospel of eternal wrath. 
 
 The name wherewith ye would attest and stamp these blasphemies hath 
 
 been 
 
 The motto of the crudest and blackest fiends the world hath seen ; 
 The lip-cry of man's direst foes ; their invocation as they lit 
 The martyr's pyre and watched his throes : for this we loathe the sound 
 
 of it. 
 
 Nay, it but stiffeneth our knees when mouthed by you in the same breath 
 With such profanities as these, for 'tis a very Word of Death. 
 
 Was it omniscience to reveal truth of such import as concerned 
 All humankind's eternal weal, by means and in such wise as turned 
 The warrior's sword, the zealot's tongue, the student's heart against 
 
 their kin ; 
 
 Ne'er to disperse the mists that hung, opaque, around its origin ? 
 Was't loving mercy so to word such message that it wrought to man 
 More hurt and misery, and stirred more strife than aught since Time 
 
 began ? 
 
 Was it omnipotence to vouchsafe but such ill-guarded testament 
 
 As hath been borne to us, a waif upon the flood of accident ; 
 
 A transcript torn, defaced ; a scroll not more attested nay, less well 
 
 Than any glyphic mummy-roll ; one that but few can even spell ; 
 
 And one whose garbled fragments set most learned doctors by the ears 
 
 O'er their decipherment even yet, while reverent Scepticism sneers ? 
 
 If thy religion be the true, and doubt thereof be deadliest sin, 
 Among the bold heresiarchs who found naught of saving grace therein 
 Whom must ye count ? Accursed, lost, and driven from their Father's 
 face 
 
42 A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 There, 'mid the shrieking holocaust, thy God exacteth ye must place 
 The gentlest, purest, noblest sons of earth, the selfless and the sage ; 
 The grandest, the sublimest ones, who wrought for love, nor looked for 
 wage. 
 
 Writhing, incarcerate, among the flame-tormented there must be 
 The paladins of Thought, of Song, of Science, of Philosophy, 
 The fruits of whose life-labour bless uncounted millions of their kind ; 
 Whose music lightens toil and stress, awakening in the worldliest mind 
 Echoes in holiest antiphon ; whose work illumes, relieves, and saves 
 Even the pharisee that on the Sabbath spits upon their graves. 
 
 Whom must ye count as surely saved, and set among the seraphim ? 
 They that with human ashes paved the blackened earth ; they that 
 
 made dim 
 With tears the eyes with anguish mad the hearts of millions of their 
 
 kin ; 
 They that but cursed the world, and bade its children sow no hopes 
 
 therein ; 
 They that but sorrow wrought, and death ; the cruel, the craven, and 
 
 the foul ; 
 Each monster that with dying breath but gasped thy creed and saved 
 
 his soul. 
 
 Meseems this gospel-truth hath need of many an apologist ; 
 How comes it, if 'tis God's irideed? Betake thee unto church, and list 
 To the State-hireling hypocrites, who, finding godliness great gain, 
 Renounce their conscience and their wits. To make th' eternal mystery 
 
 plain, 
 
 Yea into Nay they deftly change and Nay as deftly into Yea ; 
 Syntax inspired they re-arrange, and with the words of Scripture play 
 
 E'en as a juggler with his balls ; by subtleties tortuous, serpentine, 
 They prove the infamous and false to be the gracious and divine ; 
 A message of despair to man if words hold meaning they translate 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON. 43 
 
 As solace ; everlasting ban as blessing ; and, the while ye wait, 
 Fables that in our race's youth bemused the barbarous will be 
 Transmuted into holy truth by theologic alchemy. 
 
 The honest souls who truly find glad tidings of great joy in this 
 
 We pity, as we do the blind, nor grudge their miserable bliss. 
 
 But Falsehood throned ne'er lacks its troop of mercenaries, base as 
 
 bold, 
 
 Traitors to Intellect, that stoop to sell their supple tongues for gold ; 
 Blasphemers of most impious sort, most infidel and mischievous ; 
 On such, with justice, we retort these epithets they fling at us. 
 
 No lie too monstrous, and no wrong, for learned pundits to maintain 
 As true and Heaven-ordained, so long as the great multitude remain 
 Too fearful or too indolent to use their spiritual eyes, 
 And speak their inmost thought ; content egregiously to subsidise 
 Self-interest to defend a Faith that filleth with such goodly things 
 Its hierophants, and halloweth the tyranny of priests and kings. 
 
 What spiritual faith soe'er what dogmas touching things divine 
 Could thrive in the same atmosphere, find kindred sustenance, and 
 
 twine 
 
 Round the same hearts where grew such foul, pestiferous, and bitter bane 
 As ripened in the jealous soul of bigot Ferdinand of Spain, 
 And filled the brains that could devise the Inquisition's devilment 
 Of such, all human sense outcries " A lie ! a lie self-evident !" 
 
 Whatsoever faith could flourish in the mental soil and air 
 
 That could generate and nourish fanatism till it bare 
 
 Such horrid fruitage as the work of St. Bartholomew's red night 
 
 (When torch and arquebuse and dirk wrought service in the Church's 
 
 sight), 
 
 As the cruel work of Calvin's hands Alva's, the crimes of Benedict 
 And pious Torquemada, stands at Reason's bar thrice self-convict. 
 
44 A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 A creed belief wherein can stir to strife whereof the logic leads 
 
 The sanctimonious murderer to perpetrate atrocious deeds ; 
 
 A creed that could engender hate so merciless in man that he 
 
 Could torture, burn, and mutilate his kin with equanimity 
 
 For immaterial mistake in mysteries beyond all ken ; 
 
 A faith that, firmly held, can make a hell of earth and fiends of men, 
 
 Betokeneth its origin betrayeth whence it was inspired 
 Beareth its condemnation in the curse of those whom most it fired. 
 Humanity revolts thereat, calm Intellect derides it all, 
 And Science, silent, long hath sat weaving its winding-sheet and pall. 
 Time shall demolish and efface that hideous falsity, and bring 
 To birth a better cultured race, unfrighted by the fatal thing. 
 
 Nay, the evangel ye pretend was sped to earth from Heaven direct 
 Did never in such wise descend ; therein keen, reverent eyes detect 
 No revelation breaking through the order that we see around ; 
 Nor heaven nor earth proclaims the True. Your theologic scheme is 
 
 found 
 
 To be of human germ and growth, born of the fertile heart and brain, 
 And, like all earth-seed, holding both of goodly fruit and deadly bane. 
 
 Priestcraft, in league with temporal powers, by arts of pharmacy malign 
 Extracted from the holiest flowers that round the soul of man did twine 
 The very sweetest, fairest plants that in his teeming heart-soil sprang, 
 Most deadly drugs, intoxicants, like to curare and to bangue, 
 That paralysed his human-hood and sunk him into stupor dull, 
 Or maddened him to deeds of blood and infamies unspeakable : 
 
 The while, his spiritual lords throve, plundering him bereft of sense, 
 And, by the murderous dirks and swords of fanatics, gained opulence. 
 So doth the sovereign of to-day, whose treasury is overfilled, 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON. 45 
 
 Draw gold for hoard or vain display from potent poison-drops distilled 
 From the God-given wholesome grain. Twin foes, these, of the 
 
 commonweal ; 
 They thrive but by the lack and bane of those they feign to guard and 
 
 heal. 
 
 We grant 'twas piety did move patristic zealots to surround 
 The jewels Charity and Love, that were to them as newly found, 
 With laboured safeguard of their own hard masonry cemented fast, 
 And set them in such altar-stone as, walled and sheltered from the blast 
 Of stormful times, should aye withstand, even unto the end of days, 
 The stroke of sacrilegious hand : for this we yield them meed of praise. 
 
 A monument of zealous care for holiest things that structure stands ; 
 
 But they that built were unaware that Truth, howe'er divine, expands 
 
 That Thought was destined to be free ; and thus their edifice became 
 
 A citadel for Tyranny right glad of sanction to proclaim 
 
 Th' immutability of things whereby the fair and fruitful earth 
 
 Was but the appanage of kings, to feed their lusts and make them mirth. 
 
 The fabric piety designed became the hold of all to whom 
 
 The brighter promise for mankind foretold a surer, swifter doom ; 
 
 Of all man's foes the federated despots that foresaw their fall 
 
 In each and any change of state that tended to the weal of all ; 
 
 Of all the prideful powers that sought to crush, enslave, and render dumb 
 
 The peoples, and to stifle thought. But now that fortress hath become 
 
 A fortress but in phantasy. For as the trellised creepers hide 
 Some mouldering ruin from the eye, so through the soil on either side 
 Pity and Humankindness sprung, a verdant bine whose clustering boughs 
 With thicket overgrowth have hung the walls of that stern prison-house, 
 Have interlaced into a mass of densest foliaged evergreen, 
 High-mantling, so by none that pass can any masonry be seen, 
 
46 A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 Nor sign of structure anywhere. Part, and peer through that wall of 
 
 leaves 
 
 No solid barriers are there ! He who so penetrates perceives 
 The living tendrils have in-grown and crumbled the cement away 
 From base to cope ; each loosened stone is honeycombed with such 
 
 decay 
 
 They are no more than fragile crust, and at the leagued assailants' blow 
 The whole would topple into dust. Faith's stronghold now is even so. 
 
 Ye who in chorus mouth the words of unintelligible creeds 
 
 (With prayers that are but welded sherds of censers found among the 
 
 weeds 
 
 O'ergrowing pagan altars), say, know ye at all whose work they be ? 
 Know ye whose mandate ye obey, saying, " Three in One, and One in 
 
 Three," 
 
 With other jargon intricate, that neither ye nor any sage, 
 Howe'er inspired by pious hate, can find upon your sacred page ? 
 
 Zealous for holy-days and feasts, none of these things ye know nor 
 
 care; 
 But, smiling, pay your unctuous priests to prophesy smooth things and 
 
 fair; 
 
 To promise you salvation, though ye play the murderer and thief 
 E'en to your very death-day, so ye but profess the true Belief 
 That thus of sin ye may be quit ; exhorting only that ye strive 
 To hold the Faith, nor fail one whit, and save your wretched souls alive. 
 
 As in the days of Constantine, faith subsidised becometh proud. 
 Th' imperial creed is the divine for courtiers, for the servile crowd 
 That ever hasten to avow belief in any patent fraud, 
 And scramble eagerly to bow to any fetish, and applaud 
 Whatever mummery it please the Dandy-Royal to make the mode ; 
 Whose tongues, as supple as their knees, can paean merge in palinode. 
 
A SONG FOR MY SON. 47 
 
 Ye that of Christian England prate, ye smug believers, sleek, serene, 
 Would ye behold a wondrous great conversion, such as ne'er was seen ? 
 Ye feign to ban the demon Doubt ; let but its voice speak from the 
 
 throne 
 
 The million-throated realm would shout the heresy it dares not own. 
 Ye copy, as ye do the cloth and cut of royalty's pantaloons, 
 Your Christianity and both unto your souls are equal boons. 
 
 A foolish Faith, a barbarous Creed, at best, are these ye feign to hold. 
 How long will't be before ye heed this truth, as simple as 'tis old : 
 Nor God nor son of God can save the sinner from the doom of sin, 
 Nor any from the circling wave of consequence to all within 
 The influence of the evil thing. This faith, firm-held, made manifest 
 In every act, shall surely bring salvation to the sinfullest. 
 
 Of this the wise were well-assured a thousand years before your Christ ; 
 Since whom it hath become obscured, the Church declaring it sufficed 
 To grovel, suppliant, craven-wise, for pardon through another's blood 
 Shed in vicarious sacrifice and sanctified such dastard-hood ! 
 Thus wrought she ills the most malign, in that her discipline did draw 
 Mankind from faith in the Divine Immutability of Law. 
 
 The narrow hopes, the selfish aims, the horror of her sacred page 
 Aglare with Hell's tormenting flames, our stupor 'neath her tutelage, 
 Are as a nightmare of our youth. Thank God, whate'er where'er He be, 
 Who from her paralysing " Truth " hath set our fainting spirits free ! 
 Free to proclaim abroad aloud the frauds, the infamies she wrought 
 To hold man's soul enslaved and cowed, and maim the pinions of his 
 thought. 
 
 Free to approach that Altar High she hath ensanguined and defaced ; 
 To bid our spell-bound brother lie no longer grovelling, self-abased, 
 In sordid sanctimonious dust, and teach him that his winged career 
 
48 A SONG FOR MY SON. 
 
 ' ' : 
 
 Is hindered but by* sdf-ifiistru strand bounded only by his fear ; 
 
 That, high or deep*, there iieth ria&ght that's, needful for the sons of men 
 
 Beyond the grasp of human thought, or out of range of mortal ken. 
 
 The storm that shall disperse the blight of falsity and fear she cast 
 Approacheth ; to our hopeful sight the scud thereof is flying past ; 
 Men's souls, like buds in arid land, are all athirst, and pray 'twere here 
 To freshen, so they might expand. 'Twas long a-brew, and in her ear 
 It jrumbleth but as yet afar ; so sniffs she high, and in her pride 
 Still thinks to stay the dawn, to bar the sunshine, and arrest the tide, 
 
 Aye, the dawn of a to-morrow when the righteous shall prevail, 
 And the bloodshed and the sorrow she hath wrought be as a tale ; 
 The sunshine of great gladness in deliverance from her creed 
 That drove men into madness, being set before the deed ; 
 The tide that shall o'erleap her when it riseth in the day 
 Of the tempest that shall sweep her and her blasphemies away ! 
 
(Bethnal Green Branch, ) 
 * LIE7.A HALL,*- 
 
 CHAPTER AND VERSE 
 
 FOR STATEMENTS MADE OR IMPLIED IN THE FOREGOING. 
 
 With acknowledgment s> for material^ to the Writings of MRS. ANNIE BESANT, 
 JULIAN, MR. BRADLAUGH, SALADIN, MR. G. W. FOOTE, and Others. 
 
 THE object of this Appendix is to assist the young investigator to a 
 knowledge of certain important facts, especially of Church history, 
 which are studiously veiled or ignored in the ordinary books of instruc- 
 tion, and are admitted by tutors only with extreme reluctance. The 
 reason of this concealment must be that the truth is in reality some- 
 thing very different from, or even the exact opposite of, what is 
 generally taught. 
 
 " A plotter of high treason to the people " /. 16. 
 
 See any English History, reign of James I., for account of that 
 monarch's disputes with the House of Commons ; and the sturdy oppo- 
 sition to his pretensions maintained by his second and last Parliaments. 
 See, also, how all the principal offices of State were filled by the 
 creatures of Buckingham, who ruled the king as he pleased. 
 
 Sophia, the grand-daughter of James I., having married the Duke of 
 Brunswick, was the ancestress of the present reigning family of Guelphs. 
 
SO CHAPTER AND VERSE. 
 
 " One whose right to rule derives through yet another's tainted blood " -p. 16. 
 
 As the right to the crown was transmitted, through the "tainted 
 blood " of James II., to Queen Anne, the failure of whose issue brought 
 the House of Brunswick to the throne of England, it may be said of 
 Victoria that her " right to rule derives " through James II., the grand- 
 son of James I. That such a creature as James II. should have been 
 held as transmitting the sacred right of sovereignty to his offspring is 
 the fact the writer wishes to emphasize for consideration. 
 
 " Genius hath the record graven of that doubly treacherous one " p. 16. 
 See Macaulay's portrait of James II., done in indelible ink. 
 
 " A scion called to reign, yet half afraid to cross the seas 
 To guard his faithful people's weal " -p. 16. 
 
 See Thackeray's " Four Georges " and Hallam's " History." 
 
 " Bemired the fount of honour 
 
 So that the taint became contagious even to the best " /. 17. 
 
 The Triennial Parliaments were lengthened by a corrupt majority. 
 For the committal of the Septennial Bill there was a majority of seventy- 
 two ; and about eighty-two members of the House had either fingered 
 Walpole's gold or pocketed the bank-notes left " by accident " under 
 their plates. 
 
 In the ten years which preceded the Septennial Act the sum 
 expended for Secret Service was .337,960. In the ten years following 
 the passing of that Act the sum expended for Secret Service was 
 ^1,453,400. 
 
 See records of the reign of George I. 
 
 " Mark ye that alien race ; with one tradition are they all imbued " /. if. 
 It was gravely maintained (by the Stuarts and their adherents) that 
 the Supreme Being regarded hereditary monarchy, as opposed to other 
 forms of government, with peculiar favour ; that the rule of succession, 
 in order of primogeniture, was a divine institution, anterior to the 
 Christian, and even to the Mosaic, dispensation ; that no human power 
 could deprive the legitimate prince of his " rights ;" that his authority 
 was necessarily always despotic ; that the laws by which, in England 
 and other countries, the prerogative was limited were to be regarded 
 merely as concessions which the sovereign had freely made, and might 
 
CHAPTER AND VERSE. 51 
 
 at his pleasure resume ; and that any treaty into which a king might 
 enter with his people was merely a declaration of his present intentions, 
 and not a contract of which the performance could be demanded 
 (Macaulay). 
 
 Anyone whose duties have brought him within the circle of the 
 Court of Victoria, and into personal contact with the chief members 
 of the Guelph Family, must have discerned the scarce-concealed 
 resentment they feel at the constitutional restraints imposed on them. 
 They are arrant Stuarts in temperament and disposition, with the 
 Hanoverian miserliness and stolidity superadded. They by no means 
 heartily accept their position, exalted and luxurious though it be ; and 
 even the careless observer " in close attendance " can see their mental 
 attitude to be that of injured divinities, charing under a wrongful depri- 
 vation of much of their due freedom, splendour, and prerogative by a 
 pestilent democratic spirit. (G. H. M.'s note ; compared with, and 
 abundantly corroborated by, those of others who have had the same 
 opportunities of observing as himself.) 
 
 " The care that chiefly stirreth these royal dullards to activity 
 Is to make safe and hide the keys of their vast wealth from scrutiny " p. 18. 
 
 In no single matter did Queen Victoria display such great and 
 anxious activity as in that of preventing the publication of the Prince 
 Consort's will, which has never been proved. 
 
 " Brunswick's swarm of harpies " -p. 18. 
 
 George I. brought with him no wife to England, but he was accom- 
 panied by at least two of his mistresses ; and our peerage roll was 
 enriched by the addition of Madame Kilmansegg as Countess of 
 Darlington, and Mademoiselle Erangard Melosine de Schulenberg as 
 Duchess of Kendal and Munster, Baroness of Glastonbury and Countess 
 of Faversham. 
 
 Lord Chesterfield says of George I. : " No woman came amiss to 
 him, if she were only very willing and very fat." 
 
 John Heneage Jesse, in his " Memoirs of the Court of England," 
 speaking of the Duchess of Kendal, the Countess of Platen (George I.'s 
 co-partner in the murder of Philip, Count Konigsmark), and others less 
 known to infamy, says : " George I. had the folly and wickedness to 
 encumber himself with a seraglio of German prostitutes." The Duchess 
 of Kendal had .7,500 a year, the profits of the place of Master of the 
 Horse, and much other plunder from the national purse. 
 
52 CHAPTER AND VERSE. 
 
 11 To grasp and to retain, but nought bestow " /. /<?. 
 
 During the present reign only, the Royal Family has obtained from 
 the nation tiventy-four million pounds, while 1,225,000 people have died 
 of starvation in Ireland alone. 
 
 Queen Victoria's first message to Parliament was a request for pro- 
 vision for her mother, and her last a request for provision for her grand- 
 daughter. 
 
 Her numerous progeny are all kept by the nation ; for Her Majesty, 
 though fabulously rich indeed, " rich beyond the dreams of avarice " 
 is too mean to maintain her own children. 'The people support them, 
 and in most extravagant idleness ; they never did anything, and never 
 expect to do anything ; they are the recipients of public charity, which 
 does not change its essence because administered by special Acts of 
 Parliament (G. W. Foote's " Royal Paupers "). 
 
 " Mark the hybrid Church that flung its shadow o'er the people's homes" /. 21. 
 
 Neal, in his " History of the Puritans," vol. i., p. 28, says : "Reign of 
 Henry VII 7. There was a very odd execution. of Protestants and 
 Papists at the same time. Three Protestants, all clergymen and 
 
 Lutherans, were sent to the Tower for offensive sermons Four 
 
 Papists were, by the same Act, attainted for denying the King's supre- 
 macy. The Protestants were burned and the Papists hanged." Thus 
 bloodily was founded the Church established by law. See also Lord 
 Herbert of Cherbury's account of the cruel enforcement of the Statute 
 of the Six Articles. 
 
 " No pretence can be more opposed to the facts of history than the 
 pretence that the Reformation was the work of the Church of England 
 reforming itself. Had Henry VIII. obtained the Pope's sanction to his 
 divorce from Catherine, he would never have rejected the Papal supre- 
 macy ; but he found the Romish Church standing in his path to Anne 
 Boleyn, so he struck it down and cast it out of his way. One of the earliest 
 acts of the new Church was to legalise Henry's union with Anne, and it as 
 readily divorced her, when Henry was weary of her, as it ha.d divorced 
 Catherine. It proved itself ever willing to pander to that monarch's 
 lust or hate, and has ever since been an abject and contemptible 
 creature of the Crown." (See Mrs. Besant's " Sins of the Church of 
 England.") 
 
 "Thus free were the peoples, till that day when there appeared in Eastern lands, 
 Girt with spears and armed array, a Symbol borne by bloody hands " /. 21. 
 
 " The policy of the emperors and senate, as far as it concerned reli- 
 gion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by 
 
CHAPTER AND VERSE. 53 
 
 the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various 
 modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all con- 
 sidered by the people as equally true, by the philosopher as equally 
 false, and by the magistrate as equally useful. And thus toleration pro- 
 duced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord " (Gibbon, 
 ." Decline and Fall," chap, ii., sec. i). 
 
 " Constantine had a father-in-law (Maximian) whom he impelled to 
 hang himself; a brother-in-law (Licinius) whom he ordered to be 
 strangled ; a nephew, about twelve years old (Caesar Licinius), whose 
 throat he ordered to be cut ; an eldest son (Crispus) whom he beheaded ; 
 and a wife (Fausta) whom he had suffocated in a hot bath " (Voltaire). 
 
 " He (Constantine) pursued the great object of his ambition through 
 the dark and bloody paths of war and policy ; and, after the victory, he 
 
 abandoned himself, without moderation, to the abuse of his fortune 
 
 As he gradually advanced in the knowledge of [Christian] truth, he 
 proportionably declined in the practice of virtue ; and the same year of 
 his reign in which he convened the Council of Nice was polluted by 
 
 the murder of his eldest son" (Gibbon, "Decline and Fall," 
 
 chap. xx.). 
 
 " Ever, since the Fathers fooled him, since the pontiffs held their sway " /. 25. 
 
 B. H. Cowper, a champion of Christianity, in his " Introduction to 
 the Apocrypha," p. 25, says, speaking of the Early Fathers: "Ancient 
 invention and industry even produced sundry scraps about Herod, 
 Veronica, Lentulus, and Abgar, wrote epistles for Christ and his mother, 
 and I know not how much besides. No difficulty stood in the way ; 
 ancient documents could easily be appealed to without necessarily exist- 
 ing; spirits could be summoned from the other world by a stroke of the 
 pen, and be made to say anything ; and sacred names could be made 
 the passport to fictions ad libitum." 
 
 Pope Boniface VIII. (1295-1303) had his predecessor, Celestine, 
 put in prison, where he died. He styled himself King of Kings ; he 
 trafficked in Indulgences, and declared all excluded from Heaven who 
 disputed his claim to universal dominion. He persecuted the Ghibel- 
 lines, and ordered the city of Prieneste to be entirely destroyed. He 
 was publicly accused of simony, assassination, usury, of living in con- 
 cubinage with his two nieces, of having children by them, and of using 
 the money received for indulgences to pay the Saracens for invading 
 Italy. 
 
 See "Frauds and Follies of the Fathers," by J, M. Wheeler, and 
 Ranke's " Lives of the Popes." 
 
54 CHAPTER AND VERSE. 
 
 " Ever hath she striven to mar the dawning smile of Liberty "p. 27. 
 
 Pope Gregory XVI., in an encyclical letter, dated August, 1832, 
 says : " It is from that most fetid fountain, Indifferentism, springs the 
 absurd and mistaken notion that Liberty of Conscience is to be 
 recognised and vindicated. What has prepared the way for this most 
 pestilent error is, that ample and immoderate Liberty of Opinion which 
 
 is spreading far and wide, to the ruin of Church and State This 
 
 is the aim of that worst of all liberties, that never-enough-to-be-execrated 
 and detestable Liberty of the Press (hue spectat deterrima ilia ac 
 nunquam satis execranda et detestabilis libertas artis libraries, ad scripta 
 quczlibet edenda in vulgus) " (John Robertson, Coupar Angus). 
 
 Study, also, the votings of the English bench of Bishops against 
 every measure for relieving or enlightening the people, down to the last 
 extension of the franchise. 
 
 "Bear your witness, O ye martyrs done to death but not o'erawed, 
 Were not her Decretal charters forgeries and based on fraud ?" / 29. 
 
 For an account of the forgeries known as the Decretal Epistles 
 and the Donation to Constantine (described by Gibbon as the two 
 magic pillars of the spiritual and temporal monarchy of the popes) 
 see Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," chap, xlix., sec. 2; "Chambers's 
 Encyclopaedia," article " Canon Law ;" Mosheim in his section on the 
 ninth century ; and Robertson's " History of the Christian Church." 
 
 " Are but dully acquiescent where our sires were protestant " p. jo. 
 The orthodox upholder of the authority of the Bible, loud in praise 
 of the Reformers who fought for that as the sole basis of their faith, 
 quite overlooks the fact that they honestly and sincerely believed in the 
 complete harmony of Reason and the Bible ; they had no doubts what- 
 ever to smother concerning the entire agreement of the two. But could 
 they revive, with our fuller knowledge, and be called upon to decide 
 the question as now presented to us, to settle the new difficulties which 
 cause such frantic and pitiable attempts at reconciling the patent 
 absurdities of Scripture with the latest discoveries of Science, who can 
 doubt that they would to-day be among the champions of Freethought 
 and Reason, as against Scriptural authority ? 
 
 " She (whom truly nothing shameth), having done her best and worst 
 
 To retard and damn it, claimeth to have blessed it from the first !" p. jo. 
 Note the volte-face executed by the Christian Church with regard to 
 the question of Slavery, both in the West Indies and the United States. 
 
CHAPTER AND VERSE. 55 
 
 Note the bitter opposition made, especially by the Scotch clergy, to 
 the introduction of the use of anaesthetics. 
 
 Note the Church's opposition to the Education Acts. 
 
 Compare her attitude towards Charles Darwin, on the first appear- 
 ance of his " Origin of Species," with her half-hearted, surreptitious 
 adoption of his theory on its endorsement by the scientific sense of 
 Europe ; and behold her hear her now, precisely in the spirit of the 
 patristic forgers and interpolaters, doing bare-faced and flagrant violence 
 to the " Holy " text in order to square it with the doctrine of Evolution. 
 
 Note the gymnastic efforts of Mr. Gladstone, in his "Proem to 
 Genesis " (most probably written at the request of a deputation of 
 distressed bishops), to prove that the so-called Mosaic account of 
 Creation accurately pre-figures the cosmic plan now, after long research, 
 proved to be the true one. Observe the sublime and eminently Chris- 
 tian arrogance with which he relegates the noble discoverers in astro- 
 nomy and geology to the position of mere journeymen, who but fill in 
 the details of the vast panorama limned in grand, but perfectly correct, 
 outline by that inspired artist, the author of the Book of Genesis ! 
 
 " We know thy Church but thieved these gems and set them as her own " /. 33. 
 Translation of the text of Confucius Text of St. Matthew (whoever he 
 B.C. 500 (Josephus Tela's edition, may have been) vi. 12. 
 1691), Maxim 24. 
 
 Do to another what you would Therefore all things whatsoever 
 he should do unto you ; and do ye would that men should do unto 
 not unto another what you would you, do ye even so unto them ; for 
 not should be done to you, Thou this is the law and the prophets, 
 only needest this law alone ; it is 
 the foundation and principle of all 
 the rest. 
 
 Confucius, on being asked, " What do you say concerning the prin- 
 ciple that injury should be repaid with kindness?" replied: "With 
 what, then, will ye repay kindness ? Nay, recompense injury with 
 justice, and kindness with kindness." 
 
 There was no sane, practical maxim taught by Christ that had not 
 been enjoined by such teachers as Thales, Solon, Pythagoras, Confucius, 
 Plato, Socrates, the Brahmins, the Peripatetics, the Therapeuts, and the 
 Stoics. 
 
 See Moncure D. Conway's " Sacred Anthology " for numerous other 
 instances of moral maxims, old and long current before the time of 
 Jesus, and now incorporated among his supposed sayings. 
 
56 CHAPTER AND VERSE. 
 
 " Thy Gospel, by whose hands 'twas writ thou knowest no more than any child " 
 
 - A 35- 
 Faustus, Bishop of Riez, A.D. 472-490, declared it to be " certain that 
 
 the New Testament was not written by Christ nor by any of his Apostles, 
 but a long while after them by some unknown persons who, lest they 
 should not be credited when they wrote of affairs they were little 
 acquainted with, affixed to their works the names of Apostles, or of such 
 as were supposed to have been their companions" (see Lardner's 
 " Credibility," vol. ii., p. 221). 
 
 It is still uncertain when, in what language, and by whom the Four 
 Gospels were written. Probably not one of the gospels, as now known, 
 existed in the first century ; and the Fourth Gospel could not have 
 existed in the lifetime of Papias, who died A.D. 164. Jesus and his 
 apostles must have spoken a corrupt Hebrew tongue, called Syro- 
 Chaldee ; and it is maintained by learned authorities that the Greek 
 text of the New Testament is a translation from Latin MSS. No 
 original MS. of any one of the gospels is extant, the oldest being pre- 
 sumably of the fourth or fifth century. These facts do not detract from 
 any intrinsic merits the gospels possess ; but they do very seriously 
 affect the credit of the Church that represents these books to be con- 
 temporary documents by eye-witnesses of the events related therein. 
 
 " The Council praying for a sign " /. jj. 
 
 In A.D. 325 was held the first Council of Nice, under the presidency 
 of Constantine. At this Council a definite creed was first formulated 
 and declared necessary for salvation. 
 
 At this Council, says Pappus in his " Synodicon " (written at about 
 that period), the Canon of Scripture was determined. 
 
 " 'Twas not till after centuries three that any book thereof was held 
 
 As of supreme authority " /. 35. 
 
 Dr. Lardner says : " The canon of the New Testament had not 
 been settled by any authority that was decisive and universally acknow- 
 ledged, but people judged for themselves as to the genuineness of 
 writings proposed to them as apostolical, even so late as the time of 
 Cassiodorus, A.D. 526." 
 
 "And many a zealous scribe did add thereto whate'er he deemed they lacked " -p. 35. 
 
 Mosheim says, in " Ecclesiastical History," vol. i., pp. 358, 359 : 
 
 "The greatest and most pious teachers of the fourth century were 
 
 nearly all infected with this leprosy" (of fraud). He alludes to the 
 
CHAPTER AND VERSE. 57 
 
 " base audacity of those who did not blush to palm their own spurious 
 productions on the great men of former times, and even on Christ him- 
 self and his apostles, so that they might be able, in councils and in 
 their books, to oppose names against names and authorities against 
 authorities. The whole Christian Church was in this century over- 
 whelmed with these disgraceful fictions." 
 
 No period in the history of the world ever produced so many 
 spurious works as the first two or three centuries of our era. No fable 
 could be too gross, no invention too transparent, for men's unsuspicious 
 acceptance, if it assumed a pious form. The name of every apostle or 
 Christian teacher, not excepting that of the great Master himself, was 
 freely attached to every sort of religious forgery. 
 
 See Bishop Ellicott's "Cambridge Essays for 1856," pp. 175, 176; 
 and Gibbon's " Decline and Fall," chap, xv., p. 207. 
 
 We know from Origen, AD. 250, that Celsus, an Epicurean philo- 
 sopher, who wrote A.D. 160, complained that the Christians were 
 perpetually altering and correcting their gospels. 
 
 See, further, " Chambers's Encyclopaedia," where, under the article 
 " Bible," the keen and careful reader will find admissions of such great 
 uncertainty as to the authorship and date of production of the various 
 books of the New Testament, as render it impossible for any mind 
 (except the theological) to reconcile them with the idea of a Revelation 
 of the highest importance direct from God, the reception of which is 
 absolutely necessary to the salvation of every human being. 
 
 See also the Preface to the recently-issued Revised Version of the 
 Bible. In that Preface the impartial reader will discern, through the 
 sonorous euphemisms and sanctimonious vapourings of the authors, a 
 real and direct charge of dishonest translation against previous trans- 
 lators; and an admission that the revisers themselves are extremely 
 doubtful as to whether they have succeeded in rendering God's meaning 
 as He intended. How does this square with the Sixth Article of the 
 Church ? and how does it harmonise with her tone towards her Sunday- 
 school pupils, and that of her missionaries towards the heathen ? 
 
 " The tome she quotes 
 As Holy Writ was but declared the word of God by human votes " -p. 35. 
 
 The Council of Laodicea, held in A.D. 366, excluded (by vote) the 
 apocryphal writings from the canonical Scriptures ; but, in A.D. 397, the 
 Council of Carthage declared (by vote) those writings to be of equal 
 value with the rest of the Bible. The Church of Rome sides with the 
 Council of Carthage, the Church of England with that of Laodicea. 
 
IHlHUii.iL ULUULhll OUblLI || 
 
 (Bethnal Green Branch,) 
 
 E, ROMAN Re, E. 
 
 .S 
 
 Which of these two Court^ilS Wa3 gUided unio all truth by the Holy 
 Ghost ? The English Church, to be consistent, must hold the bishops 
 composing the latter Council to have been miraculously and infallibly 
 inspired equally with the writers of the Gospels. But logic and theology 
 are irreconcilable opponents. 
 
 I "Did mystic Paul when he rebelled ?" /. 36. 
 
 Against the Church of Jerusalem, at the head of which was James 
 (the brother of the Lord) ; which was composed of the actual hearers 
 and authorised expounders of the teachings of Jesus ; and which was 
 established before there was time for his words to fade from their 
 memory) or to be modified by novel doctrines (I am assuming the truth 
 of the Church's own tradition). To that Church, of James and Peter, 
 Paul was in sharp and direct opposition ; nor were the two parties ever 
 really reconciled. The efforts of our Doctors of Divinity to heal or 
 hide that breach are vastly entertaining. (See Francis W. Newman's 
 " Against Hero-Making in Religion." ) 
 
 " Whose authoritative voice cried, * Quibblers, cease !' " -p. 36. 
 See Gibbon, ibid, chap, xxi., p. 321, paragraph "Indifference of 
 Constantine." 
 
 " How tigerish was their hateful strife "p. 36. 
 See Gibbon, ibid, the whole of chaps, xxi. and xlvii. 
 
 " Thy creed, that after centuries seven 
 A half-barbaric Frankish king approved as final and of Heaven " -p. 36. 
 
 At Verden, in A.D. 782, Charlemagne caused 4,500 Saxon prisoners 
 to be massacred in cold blood (White's " Elements of History "). 
 
 Gibbon, in his " Decline and Fall," chap, xlix., sec. 2, speaking of 
 Charlemagne, says : " Of his moral virtues chastity is not the most con- 
 spicuous ; but the public happiness could not be materially injured by 
 his nine wives ...... the various indulgence of meaner or more transient 
 
 amours, the multitude of his bastards whom he bestowed on the Church, 
 and the long celibacy and licentious manners of his daughters, whom 
 the father was suspected of loving with too fond a passion." 
 
 Among the severities of Charlemagne was his institution of the 
 Secret Tribunal of Westphalia, a sort of inquisition appointed to punish 
 the heresy of the Saxons. This terrible system lasted till 1650, when 
 the elector, Frederick William, shocked at its enormities, effected its 
 abolition (White's " Elements "). 
 
CHAPTER AND VERSE. 59 
 
 Charlemagne died A.D. 814. 
 
 In A.D. 809 the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle condemned the Greek 
 Church of damnable heresy. What was this deadly sin of the Greek 
 Church ? Simply this : it refused to give credit to a forgery introduced 
 surreptitiously into the creed by Recared, King of the Spanish Visi- 
 goths, at the Council of Toledo in 589. At that Council the Western 
 Church had wanted to prove the Trinity, so it had slyly foisted into the 
 creed the duplex word, " filio-que " (and the Son) : " I believe in the 
 Holy Ghost proceeding from the Father [filio-que and the Son]." 
 " We will not have it," said the Greek Church ; " it is not in the bond." 
 " You must have it," said the Western Church ; " and, if it is not in the 
 creed, it ought to be there." "We wont have it," said the Greeks. 
 " You shall have it," said the Romans. And the two Churches have 
 been cat and dog ever since. 
 
 Charlemagne made a law that anyone who rejected the words from 
 the creed " salvus esse non potest" The Council of Toledo had said 
 " Filio-que ;" the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle said " Filio-que ;" Recared 
 and Charlemagne voted for " Filio-que." The Greek Church cried 
 " No filio-que ;" Pope Leo III. cried " No filio-que ;" and ancient 
 creeds up to A.D. 589 had declared " No filio-que." Three against 
 four; so the " filio-ques " carried it; and "filio-que" it is up to the 
 present day in the Latin and English creed. 
 
 The Holy Ghost " proceeds from the Father and the Son " because 
 a Gothic King of Spain had the audacity to make the interpolation, and 
 Charlemagne had the arm of strength to insist that whoever would not 
 accept the forgery could not be saved ! This is the way our doctrines 
 have been made for us. (See Julian's "Pillars of the Church," 
 Appendix.) 
 
 " Thus through the Church's whole career bloodguiltiness and guile are seen" 
 
 -/ 37- 
 
 In nothing has the Church been so consistent as in the implac- 
 ability and meanness of her methods towards those who either silently 
 ignore her pretensions, or oppose them with the weapons of reason. 
 Since Hypatia gashed and hacked to death piecemeal, under the 
 shadow of the crucifix, by a Christian mob instigated by a Christian 
 patriarch down to the latest preacher deprived of his benefice, her 
 mode of answering the arguments of doubters has been the same in 
 spirit as that of Cyril of Alexandria. The power only, not the will, has 
 been lacking in these later days ; for the modern equivalents of the 
 rack and stake are her last recourse against unanswerable objectors. 
 
 The method adopted by the saintly Fathers of the fourth century 
 
60 CHAPTER AND VERSE. 
 
 against Porphyry affords an instance of peculiarly despicable malignity. 
 "Porphyry, a Platonist (A.D. 233-305), acquired the surname of the Vir- 
 tuous ; and he brought such formidable objections and such unanswerable 
 arguments against the Christian legend that all his real writings were 
 burnt by the order of the Christian Emperor Theodosius, A.D. 388 ;" and 
 only such fragments of his writings as Christians themselves had " con- 
 troverted " and garbled, or as, torn from their context, stood as 
 orthodox admissions, were permitted to come down to us. 
 
 This is an illustration of the early Christian manner of conducting 
 theological debate. 
 
 "Whether (Christ was) of flesh in part or whole " / 39' 
 
 The facts cited below go far to justify the impartial truthseeker in 
 doubting whether the Jesus of the Gospels is a strictly historical 
 character. 
 
 We do not possess the unimpeachable testimony of a single writer 
 known with certainty to have been an eye-witness of Jesus. A mass of 
 manufactured testimony relating to him, purporting to be that of his 
 contemporaries, has at last been abandoned as wholly fictitious, though 
 zealous Christians still present it as genuine where they know they are 
 safe from contradiction. Paul an impracticable mystic and egotist, 
 the perfect prototype of a Salvation Army captain never saw Jesus, 
 and disdained everything in the way of evidence concerning him. 
 
 The epistles attributed to James and Jude, 2 Peter, and 2 and 3 
 John are of most doubtful authorship ; some of them speak of matters 
 of ecclesiastical polity which had no establishment or existence until 
 long after the first century ; and the Apocalypse has been accepted and 
 rejected by Council after Council. 
 
 i Peter and i John, the least disputed of the writings of supposed 
 companions of Jesus (but which may easily have been altered and 
 "corrected " by later hands), contain only some vague allusions which 
 might be construed as those of eye-witnesses of his sufferings. 
 
 The authorship of the writings attributed to Barnabas, Hermas, 
 Clement of Rome, Ignatius, and Polycarp is matter of great dispute ; 
 but, whoever the authors were, they display an egregious readiness to 
 believe and assert, on the merest hearsay, miracles the most monstrous, 
 grotesque, and futile ; and their writings, in their entirety, are most 
 inconvenient witnesses for "the Truth." Of the four so-called 
 evangelists it is sufficient to say that divines are driven to the most 
 laboured efforts, the most strained interpretations amounting even to 
 absolute misreading of Scripture, and to the wildest guessing, in order 
 
CHAPTER AND VERSE. 6r 
 
 to fix the identity of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John with any person 
 named in the Bible. 
 
 Such is the untrustworthy, dubious, and even shadowy character of 
 the witnesses who attest the events of the life of Jesus. 
 
 Now as to perfectly independent testimony : 
 
 The nearest contemporaries of Jesus whose writings we have are 
 Seneca, who was about twenty years old at the supposed date of the 
 Crucifixion ; the elder Pliny, who was about ten years old at that 
 period, and lived to the age of fifty-six ; Philo, who lived from B.C. 20 
 to A.D. 45 ; and Josephus, who lived from A.D. 37 to 93. 
 
 Neither Seneca, Pliny, nor Philo makes the least allusion to Jesus ; 
 though the first two made a particular study of everything in the way of 
 the marvellous. (See Gibbon's remarks on this in " Decline and Fall," 
 chap, xv.) 
 
 In Josephus occurs a passage ("Antiquities," bk. xviii., chap, iii.) 
 mentioning " Jesus called Christ." This passage was first quoted by 
 Eusebius on whose testimony all Ante-Nicene ecclesiastical history prac- 
 tically depends who exults over it as a prodigious prize, his exultation 
 itself serving to awaken suspicion that it was another of his own audacious 
 forgeries. (For his capabilities in that line see Lardner's "Credibility.") 
 
 The passage is now universally admitted to have been interpolated 
 between the time of Origen, A.D. 230, and that of Eusebius ; A.D. 316 
 (see Gibbon's " Decline and Fall," chap, xvi., p. 214, footnote). 
 
 But one other allusion occurs viz., "to James, the brother of 
 Jesus " (" Antiquities," bk. xx., chap. ix.). But, as this has not been 
 so persistently flourished in the face of the sceptic by Christian 
 evidence-mongers, we may well suspect a passage which they are chary 
 of adducing. 
 
 It is a patent fact that the world contains no record of any other 
 character whose existence as a real personage was denied, and even dis- 
 claimed, as soon as ever it was asserted, as was the case with Jesus. See 
 in Lardner's " Credibility " the number and variety of " heresies " 
 current in the first and second centuries a period commonly jepre- 
 sented by the clergy to their ignorant hearers as an age of sweet concord 
 of belief and harmonious piety among Christians. 
 
 It is also undeniable that the year and even the place of the birth 
 of Jesus are unknown ; that the length of his ministry and the date of 
 his execution are equally uncertain to the student of history ; that the 
 name of Jesus was as common among the Jews as the name of Smith 
 is with us; that the word "Christos," signifying "the anointed," is 
 given to all the Kings of Judah and Israel, and to other potentates 
 
62 CHAPTER AND VERSE. 
 
 such as Cyrus, King of Persia, but the translators have studiously 
 rendered it as Christ only in relation to Jesus ; and that the nearer we 
 get to that period, the more do we find diversity of opinion as to 
 whether Jesus was a man or a myth, and the more extravagant and 
 grotesque are the stories of him and his doings. We also find Irenaeus, 
 A.D. 177, declaring that the ministry of Jesus extended over ten years, 
 and that Jesus lived to be fifty years of age ("Against Heresies," 
 bk. ii., chap. xxii.). 
 
 The ordinary Christian, densely ignorant of the history of his own 
 faith, is unaware that the 25th of December was an ancient pagan 
 festival. The zodiacal sign of the Virgin then shows on the eastern 
 horizon, the sun is one degree above the solstitial point, and the year is 
 new-born. Thus, on that day, were born (of virgin mothers) all the 
 sun-gods of antiquity. The Latin Church, in the second half of the 
 fourth century, fixed that day as the birthday of Christ : and by such 
 arbitrary fiat has a baseless priestly fiction survived as a historical fact 
 through twenty generations of unthinking believers. 
 
 The legends of Jupiter, of Bacchus, of ^Esculapius, of Horus, of 
 Ching-mou, and of certain Babylonian deities, present collectively every 
 miraculous incident related of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of 
 Jesus. The legends of Osiris and of Chrishna are each startlingly 
 similar, even in minute details, to the Christian story. And to Horus 
 were applied the titles, Good Shepherd, Lamb of God, Bread of Life, 
 the Door of Life, the Fan-bearer, and the Truth. The characteristically 
 arrogant assumption of Christian writers, that the Chrishna legend was 
 borrowed from their gospel, has been demonstrated to be as false as 
 most other " Christian evidences " prove to be on critical examination. 
 (See J. M. Robertson's " Christ and Krishna.") 
 
 " The paladins of Thought, of Song, of Science, of Philosophy " /. 42. 
 Jeremy Bentham La Place Schiller 
 
 Lord Bolingbroke Gibbon George Eliot 
 
 Giordano Bruno Goethe Harriet Martineau 
 
 Denis Diderot Grote George Sand 
 
 David Hume R. W. Emerson Charles Dickens 
 
 Humboldt Thomas Carlyle Henry Hetherington 
 
 Victor Hugo Heinrich Heine Robert Burns 
 
 Charles Darwin Garibaldi Shakespeare 
 
 John Stuart Mill Shelley Spinoza 
 
 Robert Owen Longfellow Benjamin Franklin 
 
 The mighty minds, the large and tender hearts of these, were never 
 
CHAPTER AND VERSE. 63 
 
 confined by the narrow creeds and articles of the Christian Church ; 
 the spirit breathed in the writings even of those whom she impudently 
 claims as believers (Shakespeare, Burns, and Dickens) gives the lie 
 direct to her central dogmas, and is daily working their dissolution. 
 At the bare mention of the names of Voltaire and Thomas Paine 
 fashionable orthodoxy shudders with horror, without ever having 
 read a single line of their writings, or having acquainted itself with a 
 single detail of their lives, except the fact that they believed in an 
 infinitely more just and merciful deity than Jehovah. The ostracism of 
 these two noble names from polite conversation among Christians is 
 another instance of the mental servitude of the " respectable " classes to 
 an unscrupulous clergy. 
 
 Two more utterly selfless, generous champions of liberty and 
 humanity never lived than Voltaire and Paine : throughout their lives 
 they fought valiantly against every form of tyranny, cruelty, and super- 
 stition ; and, as a consequence, the placeman and the priest have foully 
 aspersed their characters, pursuing their memories with the most despic- 
 able and malicious falsehoods. 
 
 "The while, his spiritual lords throve, plundering him bereft of sense " /. .//. 
 See Jortin, vol. iii., p. 228, concerning the "millennial craze " : " It 
 was one of those frivolous and senseless notions which the priests in- 
 dustriously cherished for the sake of lucre." " At the close of the tenth 
 century it was believed that the end of the world was approaching, the 
 clergy having assiduously prepared men's minds for the expectation. 
 Hence it came to pass that an innumerable multitude, leaving their 
 possessions, and giving them to churches and monasteries, repaired to 
 Palestine, where they were told that Christ would descend from Heaven 
 to judge the world. Others solemnly devoted all their goods to 
 churches and to the clergy, and entered into their service ,as bond- 
 slaves, performing a daily task." 
 
 See also Ranke's " Lives of the Popes." 
 
 " Ye who in chorus mouth the words of unintelligible creeds 
 (With prayers that are but welded sherds of censers found among the weeds 
 O'ergrowing pagan altars) " /. 46. 
 
 The Nicene Creed was first formulated at Nicaea at the Council 
 held there A.D. 325. 
 
 The Apostles' Creed was first received into the Latin Church, in its 
 present form, in the eleventh century ; but some parts of it were formu- 
 lated in the fourth and fifth centuries. 
 
64 CHAPTER AND VERSE. 
 
 The Athanasian Creed was received into the Western Church in 
 670. Not until the reign of Charlemagne was the doctrine of the 
 Trinity asserted and enforced with the minute and emphatic delineation 
 it presents in the Prayer Book. 
 
 See Gibbon's " Decline and Fall," chap, xxi., for account of the 
 Arian controversy through the reigns of Constantine and his sons. He 
 says, in an aside : " As those princes presumed to extend their des- 
 potism over the faith as well as over the lives of their subjects, the 
 weight of their suffrage sometimes inclined the ecclesiastical balance ; 
 and the prerogatives of the King of Heaven were settled or changed or 
 modified in the cabinet of an earthly monarch." 
 
 Christianity conquered Paganism, but Paganism infected Chris- 
 tianity. The rites of the Pantheon passed into her worship, and the 
 subtleties of the Academy into her creed (Macaulay). 
 
 And, to conclude, in the words of the learned Bunsen : " It should 
 long ago have been acknowledged that our present popular and school 
 chronology is a fable strung together by ignorance and fraud, and 
 persisted in out of superstition and intellectual lethargy." 
 
 I (Bethnal Green Branch,} 
 \ -* LIBTA HALL,*- 
 
 78,LIBRAr?, ROMAN R 
 
IX 
 
 fefii