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THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
rov<i fxev yap 7rov>;povs ov fxyj voTe /3eXTLov<s Troirjo-ere, tovs 6\ 
 XP>?o-Toi'9 €is Wyi/ iaxoLT-qv a6ufXLav e/xySa/Xetre. — ^SCHINES, In 
 Ctesijjhon, p. 79. 
 
THE 
 
 SEEVICE OF MAN 
 
 AN ESSAY 
 
 TOWARDS 
 
 THE EELIGION OF THE FUTURE. 
 
 JAMES COTTER MORISON. 
 
 LONDON: 
 KEGAN PAITL, TRENCH & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 
 
 1888. 
 
i^TfiC riyhtg of translation and of reproduction are reserved.) 
 
PREFACE 
 
 I HAVE not been able, in consequence of illness, 
 to finish this work according to its original plan. As 
 I may not be in a position to carry it to its proper 
 conclusion, I should like, as briefly as possible, to 
 mention what I wished to add to that already 
 written. 
 
 After the last chapter in the volume, my inten- 
 tion had been to discuss one or two urgent social 
 and economical questions which are daily growing 
 in importance, even amounting to peril if satis- 
 factory answers to them cannot be obtained. 
 
 It is generally admitted by all serious and sober 
 observers, that a large social transformation is at 
 once desirable and inevitable. The present condi- 
 tions can, one would think, give satisfaction to no 
 one. The enormous increase of wealth consequent 
 on the application of the steam-engine to industry, 
 has to a very small extent been followed by a 
 
Yi PBEFACE. 
 
 corresponding spread of general well-being sucli as 
 was at one time not unreasonably expected. Even 
 before the commencement of the present depression 
 of trade, there were many unpleasant features in 
 the manufacturing system of Western Europe. But 
 profits were high, and, till within a recent period, 
 seemed likely to increase. The workmen, by 
 judicious and resolute strikes, were able to demand 
 and obtain better wages ; and, although, even in the 
 most flourishing centres of industry, much pauperism 
 and misery among the unskilled workers were 
 generally present, so long as the revenue, in Mr. 
 Gladstone's phrase, '' went up by leaps and 
 bounds," these minor social evils were not likely to 
 attract notice. But, as everybody now knows only 
 too well, a great change has come over the world 
 in the last ten years. Profits in nearly all trades 
 are diminishing, and will probably diminish still 
 more. Hitherto, capitalists have been the chief 
 sufferers ; but it cannot be long before the workmen 
 will have their turn of loss in the form of decreased 
 wages. At the present rate of decline, a point will, 
 before long, be reached, when the employer will get 
 little or no return for his capital invested in manu- 
 factures, and when the workman will be able to get 
 no adequate wage for the labour he gives. 
 
PBEFACE. vii 
 
 I do not pretend to say that if I had been able 
 to treat this question with the fulness I desired, I 
 should have been able to throw light on a subject 
 which has puzzled more competent persons than 
 myself. In truth, I fear I should be considered a 
 Job's comforter at the best. Mv view is that the 
 present industrial system is less capable of mending 
 than ending, and that it is, in fact, doomed to a not 
 remote extinction. And this, not because it is offensive 
 to persons of fine taste, and destroys rural beauty 
 (the artistic view) ; nor because it makes a few 
 capitalists very rich, and leaves many workmen very 
 poor (the current Socialist view) : but because it can- 
 not continue on its own lines ; that with more than 
 a fair field and plenty of favour, it is yet breaking 
 down from inherent vices for which there is no 
 remedy. 
 
 The industrial system had its origin in the latter 
 half of the last century, when Watt and Arkwright 
 brought the power of steam to bear on the produc- 
 tion of commodities. With her easily accessible 
 coal and iron, England had an immense start of the 
 continental countries ; and for a long time was the 
 mart of the world. So long as other countries were 
 content to buy our commodities instead of producing 
 them themselves, the arrangement was highly satis- 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 factory— to Englishmen ; and it lasted long enough 
 for many of tliem to believe that it was a law of 
 Nature that Briton-s should make and sell goods, 
 and foreigners should buy them. But in time the 
 foreigner took heart, and thought he also would like 
 to make and sell commodities. The result has been, 
 tliat most of our old customers have become our 
 rivals; and they compete with us not only in their 
 own markets, which they artfully shield by protective 
 tariffs, but in the barbarous markets of the world in 
 China, East Africa, and elsewhere. 
 
 But the competing foreigner has come late into 
 the field ; and trade and commerce offer no longer 
 the same returns which they did when England, 
 with her many advantages, set out on her industrial 
 career. Competition is now everywhere of the 
 keenest, and cheapness of production the primary 
 object. The result is a race in which no competitor 
 can absolutely win, but one in which all must, in 
 process of time, become exhausted. For there is no 
 fixed goal to be reached ; the goal flies before the 
 runners, and the first in the race cannot avoid 
 ultimate collapse. In each country manufacturers 
 compete among themselves, while they compete also 
 with their foreign rivals. Constantly improved 
 machinery enables a larger out-put at less cost to be 
 
PBEFACE. ix 
 
 tlirown upon the market, with the obvious effect, 
 now distressing everybody, of a well-nigh universal 
 glut, and a growing cheapness never before wit- 
 nessed. In the mean time, profits on capital and 
 wages of labour are tending to the vanishing point ; 
 and the only question is, how long it will be before 
 that point is reached. 
 
 It is obvious that the conditions of trade and 
 commerce are nearly wholly changed within the 
 last fifty years. A small and industrious population 
 like the English, commanding an extensive sea- 
 board, good harbours, and a large commercial 
 marine, surrounded, moreover, by neighbours chiefly 
 agricultural, could obtain a world-wide trade which 
 moved the wonder and envy of contemporaries. But 
 it was a beau ideal of commercial success which 
 cannot be repeated by imitators, nor even kept up 
 by its original inventors. Our Manchesters and 
 Liverpools were once without rivals in the world. 
 Now they have to contend with an ever-increasing 
 competition, which has already told on their pros- 
 j^erity, and must, in the near future, tell still more. 
 Add to this, that the vastly improved means of 
 transport are now more and more bringing com- 
 mercial competitors into one great race-course. The 
 English farmer is exposed to competition from 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 America, Eussia, and India; and crushed by importa- 
 tions of corn from those countries which, owing to 
 soil, climate, or greater cheapness of labour, have 
 a great advantage over England in the cheap pro- 
 duction of cereals. Any industry may be killed, as 
 it were by enchantment, in an old country, by the 
 discovery of new means of cheaper production on 
 the other side of the globe. The instability of 
 industries is frightful. The commercial atmosphere 
 is more uncertain and capricious than the physical 
 atmosphere, though that is generally taken as a 
 symbol of uncertainty. It is as if our weather were 
 sensitive to, and influenced by, the cyclones of the 
 Indian Ocean ; or the terra jirma of our quiet island 
 were shattered responsively by earthquakes in 
 Japan and South Carolina. It is little to say that 
 such facts were not dreamed of in the olden time. 
 Tliey would not have been deemed possible in the 
 recent days of Cobden and Peel. 
 
 Some persons in England, and many abroad, 
 believe that these evils are traceable to Free Trade, 
 and recommend Protection or Fair Trade as a 
 remedy. It were much to be wished that so simple 
 a cure were possible ; for the threatened evils are 
 so great, that it is not a time to be punctilious on 
 economic or any theories. The difficulty is to show 
 
P BE FACE. xi 
 
 how the exclusion of foreign goods here would tend 
 to force the purchase of our goods by foreigners ; for 
 that is what a revival of trade means. We may 
 keep out the foreigner as much as we like, but would 
 he much care ? Could any form of retaliatory tariff 
 enable us to dispense with corn, cotton, wool, wine, 
 tobacco, silk, etc., purchased from abroad or from our 
 own colonies ? We want to sell : refusing to buy 
 is no remedy if our old customers are churlish, or, 
 for reasons of their own, indifferent to our wares. 
 On the other hand, the evidence is very far from 
 being in favour of Protection, even in the countries 
 which still maintain it. 
 
 One could wish, indeed, that it was less clear 
 than it is ; that the evils under which modern 
 industry is suffering were of so slight a nature as 
 a reform of tariffs or any fiscal or economic change 
 could remove. We could bear our woes with a more 
 patient mind if all depended on the " bugbear " of 
 Free Trade being promptly exploded. We have no 
 such consolation. The root of the mischief lies 
 deeper : in the exorbitant over-production made 
 possible by the marvellous improvement of machinery, 
 and in the increased facility thereby of dispensing 
 with manual labour. 
 
 Great efforts are made to show that a general 
 
xii PREFACE. 
 
 glut of commodities is not a source of evil, and that 
 the appreciation of gold has been the cause of the 
 extraordinary fall in prices. To those who hold 
 this view, I would put the question why ivory and 
 whalebone have not fallen in price, but, on the 
 contrary, have steadily risen in price during the 
 last decade ? The plain answer, surely, is, that the 
 enhanced price of these commodities is owing to the 
 fact that elephants and whales not being capable of 
 manufacture, nor, till yet, of artificial cultivation, the 
 demand for ivory and whalebone has exceeded the 
 natural supply, and the price of those articles has 
 consequently gone up some 50 per cent. Oysters 
 offer an even more instructive example. Every 
 man of middle age can remember when oysters were 
 sold in the shops at sixpence and eightpence a dozen, 
 and how they rose a few years ago to prohibitory 
 prices of three, four, and even four and sixpence a 
 dozen. The greatly diminished demand whicb 
 followed in consequence, coupled with the attention 
 devoted to oyster-culture, have at last caused a turn 
 in the market, and now oysters are cheaper than they 
 have been for years. These instances cannot be 
 explained away. The old economic doctrine, that 
 when demand exceeds supply prices will rise, and 
 when supply exceeds demand prices will fall, is one 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 :ni 
 
 which is assailed in vain. If cotton yarns, pig-iron, 
 silver, and many other commodities are cheaper than 
 ever they were, it is because there is so much more 
 of them than ever there was. Some points even in 
 political economy are ascertained and beyond dispute. 
 
 If it be asked what inference I draw from 
 such facts, the answer is that it is a melancholy 
 one. I believe we are approaching to a great 
 catastrophe in our industrial system, which will be 
 a calamity without precedent since the Black Death 
 of the fourteenth century. 
 
 The praises of the steam-engine are on every 
 tongue, and its merits are obvious enough to a super- 
 ficial glance. Whether it will turn out a benefactor 
 in the long run remains to be seen. It, clearly 
 enough, greatly increased wealth, but it did nothing 
 for its moralization or more beneficial distribution. 
 It also vastly increased population, which is a more 
 questionable boon ; or, to speak plainly, a curse. 
 But we have it, and certainly shall not lay it aside 
 till we are compelled. Now, the proper and direct 
 effect of all machinery is to diminish largely the 
 cost and the amount of manual labour required in 
 the production of commodities. In the first instance, 
 this result was so masked by the rapid growth of 
 English trade, that an increased demand for labour. 
 
xiv PREFACE. 
 
 in form of " hands " serving steam-engines, was 
 brought about. The folly and wickedness of work- 
 men who smashed steam engines was pointed out 
 with much unction in the early part of this century. 
 Thousands of hands, it was asserted, and quite 
 truly, were employed in the cotton trade, where 
 only hundreds were employed before. But a great 
 change has come over the world with the vastly 
 improved machinery of later years. It no longer 
 admits of doubt that machinery is a rival, and 
 tending to become a triumphant rival, of labour. 
 As competition becomes keener, and the cost of pro- 
 duction an ever more serious consideration to the 
 manufacturer, even the great expense of new plant 
 is worth the saving produced by a less expenditure 
 in wages. The ideal of manufacture now, would be 
 production without *' hands ; " except, perhaps, a 
 stoker and an engineer. Every day new contri- 
 vances are discovered by which human labour can 
 be dispensed with. Were trade expanding, instead 
 of contracting, there might be a compensation in the 
 need of more workers to serve the greater number of 
 machines. But in our present condition the result 
 is doubly injurious to the working classes. Produc- 
 tion of commodities by means of improved machinery 
 is made cheaper, and an already glutted market still 
 
PBEFACE. 
 
 XV 
 
 more flooded at prices barely remunerative, at the 
 very time that the merit of the improved machinery 
 chiefly consists in doing with less manual labour. 
 
 It is difficult to see from what quarter an improve- 
 ment of this condition of things can be expected. Is 
 not that condition more likely to get worse ? The 
 race for cheap production is so severe, that each trade 
 and nation in turn is forced to strain every nerve 
 in order to keep abreast of its rivals. The well- 
 known tendency of profits to a minimum is exempli- 
 fied as it never was before. The cost of production, 
 and the selling price of the manufactured article, 
 must before long coincide. And then what will 
 become of the interest of the capitalist and the 
 wages of the artisan ? 
 
 If the mass of even civilized mankind were not, 
 as Carlyle said, mostly fools, great relief could no 
 doubt be rapidly attained by saving the immense 
 sums now squandered on armaments unparalleled in 
 human annals. And the removal of all fear of war 
 would be even a greater gain than the suppression 
 of war-budgets. But men must pay for their follies 
 and passions ; and they do pay, heavily enough. The 
 cost of indulgence in international jealousies and 
 hatreds, even between European countries at the 
 present day, would be difficult to exaggerate ; and 
 
xvi PBEFACK 
 
 even one of the supposed choice products of civiliza- 
 tion, a free and popular press, has become a large 
 source of evil. It is hardly saying too much that 
 the main occupation of most of the newspapers of 
 Europe is to inflame international animosities. Over 
 and over again, war has been barely averted between 
 nations whose populations had every interest, and 
 probably every desire, to keep the peace, but which had 
 been worked up to a pitch of fury against each other 
 by the incendiary fustian served up to them by their 
 daily newspapers. We narrowly escaped war with 
 France, when diplomatic complications ensued after 
 the Orsini conspiracy : and how nearly we grazed a 
 fratricidal war with our American kinsfolk, after the 
 affair of the Trent, dwells in all memories. Whatever 
 difficulty trained diplomatists may have had to settle 
 either of these disagreements, there can be no ques- 
 tion that they were greatly aggravated by the inces- 
 sant pouring of oil on the flame of international 
 discord by the newspapers of all the countries con- 
 cerned. The greatest misfortune which Europe has 
 experienced in modern times — the war between 
 France and Prussia — was largely, if not wholly, 
 brought about by the reckless mendacity and venom 
 of the Parisian press ; which, untaught by experi- 
 ence, seems again disposed to repeat its unpatriotic 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 xvii 
 
 blunders. Not that I think the French press more evil- 
 minded than the press of other countries ; it is only 
 more clever, sparkling, and stimulating, and there- 
 fore more dangerous, than its rivals in other lands. 
 
 But valuable as would be a general disarmament 
 and cessation of wars and rumours of wars, simply 
 as affording a pause, a breathing-space, in the midst 
 of our really social troubles, these palliatives would 
 not produce a solution of those troubles ; they would 
 only postpone them for a season, priceless as that 
 postponement would be. If the war waged by can- 
 non and rifles were to cease, the more bitter war of 
 commercial rivalry would remain, probably fiercer 
 than ever, as there would be no competing interest 
 to engage men's minds. 
 
 One would think that it was obvious to casual 
 observation that we are commencing to descend an 
 incline, down which we shall move with accelerated 
 speed, to be brought up at last in general calamity. 
 The difficulty of taking new views of old things and 
 conditions, can alone blind men from seeing the fate 
 before them. The numbers of the unemployed in all 
 large centres are growing from year to year. The 
 palliatives of charity, public-works, state-aid in 
 every form, are still talked of as if there were hope 
 in them. But before the century is at an end, the 
 
 b 
 
xviii PBEFACE. 
 
 illusion will have vanished. The production of 
 wealth, as it has obtained in the past, can continue 
 no longer. The State will be impoverished along 
 with individuals ; and with increasing charges will 
 have less revenues to meet them. Then we shall 
 know what a general or universal commercial cata- 
 strophe really means, when the famishing unemployed 
 will not be counted by thousands, but millions ; when 
 a page of the Times will suffice for the business 
 advertisements of London; and when the richest will 
 be glad to live on the little capital they have left, 
 never thinking of interest. 
 
 No moralist or preacher ever had such occasion 
 to point out the deceitfulness of riches, as will soon 
 be afforded by the industrial collapse. For upwards 
 of a century wealth has been produced with a speed 
 and in a volume quite beyond precedent in former 
 times. If the wealth of Nations were enough to 
 ensure their prosperity and happiness, the countries 
 of Western Europe should be now in a state of 
 unprecedented bliss. It may be doubted if there 
 was ever more misery in the midst of more wealth. 
 Morality is avenged at last ; and the great lesson 
 being brought home, that wealth and its production 
 are not the first nor even the second chief interests 
 of a State ; that the commonwealth demands some- 
 
PREFACE. xix 
 
 thing else and more from its citizens than a unique 
 pre-occupation to make their own fortunes. 
 
 Bad, however, as the industrial and economic 
 situation is, there is reason to fear that it may pre- 
 sently be made worse by rash and ill-considered 
 attempts to mend it. I am very far from thinking 
 with Mr. Herbert Spencer, that '' all Socialism in- 
 volves slavery," as I believe that there is a good 
 Socialism as well as a bad ; a Socialism of love and 
 mutual help, and a Socialism of hatred and spoliation. 
 One must shut one's eyes to obvious facts not to 
 realize that, under the mask and name of Socialism, 
 projects fraught with evil to all classes, but especially 
 to the poor, are being pushed forward with a zeal 
 which is certainly not according to knowledge, and 
 which is difScult to regard as according to honesty 
 of purpose. The condition of growing distress into 
 which large numbers of the population will inevit- 
 ably fall in a near future, must offer a correspond- 
 ingly wider field for demagogic arts ; which are 
 none the less effective because they are as old as 
 history, and flourish naturally In all periods of 
 social suffering. Famine, or even short rations, are 
 not calculated to put men in a philosophic frame 
 of mind ; and even the honest and Intelligent work- 
 man who has had no breakfast, and does not know 
 
XX PREFACE. 
 
 where he will get a dinner, very naturally lends a 
 willing ear to speakers and writers who tell him 
 that all his troubles might soon be ended if only 
 the ''selfish rich" were made to disgorge a portion 
 of their ill-gotten wealth, procured by the sweat 
 of his brow, but which unjust laws have transferred 
 from him to them. The fact is, that one can only 
 lament that such a short and easy solution of the 
 social difficulty as a transfer of wealth from the rich 
 to the poor, could not be put in practice. With all 
 its violation of the commandment, " Thou shalt not 
 steal," it would be a boon and a relief from the 
 chronic care and sadness which now oppress the 
 deserving poor and rich alike. But it is precisely 
 at this point that such proposals break down. And 
 a little reflection shows that the suggested remedies 
 would promptly aggravate every existing evil, and 
 add an endless number to those we have. 
 
 The singular thing is, that in such a commercial 
 country as ours, it should be forgotten or over- 
 looked that trade depends in buying and selling ; 
 and that in every purchase and sale two parties are 
 concerned, one of whom cannot be coerced. Legis- 
 lation, popular agitation, and resolute combined 
 action, brought to bear on special points, may do 
 mucli, though not always so much as is often 
 
PBEFACE. xxi 
 
 thought ; but there is one thing which they cannot 
 do : they cannot make people buy goods which they 
 refuse to buy. The producer, whether capitalist 
 or workman — who, though often enemies in their 
 private relations, are partners with regard to the 
 public— may have any number of trials of their 
 own ; but if they cannot succeed between them in 
 producing goods of a quality and at a price which 
 induce the public at home or abroad to buy, they 
 may say and do what they like ; they will remain 
 without customers. No man of business, from the 
 largest merchant to the petty shopkeeper, is ignorant 
 of this fact. Yet, it is despised or ignored, as a 
 paradox unworthy of notice, by those who urge 
 that work is to be provided by the State for the 
 unemployed, whether there be a demand for it or 
 not. What is the contention ? A number of men 
 are out of work ; it is heartrending to think that 
 they, their wives and children, are starving. There- 
 fore, the State, or the parish, or somebody, ought 
 immediately to improvise work for them. What 
 work? This is rarely specified with accuracy. If 
 remunerative work — work which it would pay any 
 individual or corporation to take in hand — is it not 
 certain that the natural cupidity of mankind would 
 long ago have found it out and made a profit by 
 
xxii PREFACE. 
 
 it ? If it is not remunerative, who is to bear the 
 loss of useless work, of work of less value when 
 performed than its primary cost ? The State or the 
 ratepayers, will probably be the answer ; with the 
 obvious assumption that the State or local bodies 
 can bear any strain or expense. To inquire whence 
 the State acquires its funds, and whether in a con- 
 dition of decaying prosperity those funds may be 
 regarded as of unlimited expansion, would no doubt 
 be considered by the theorists to whom I refer, as 
 suggested by middle-class cupidity and meanness. 
 
 Now, the modest demand only is " the construc- 
 tion of wholesome, cheerful homes for the people by 
 the municipalities and county boards ; " " feeding 
 children gratuitously in all board-schools, in order to 
 check the physical deterioration only too noticeable 
 among the infants of the rising generation." " The 
 undertaking of useful works for which there w^as 
 admitted need in the various districts ; such as 
 embankments, roads, etc. : the establishment of light 
 relief works and factory-work for women — all this to 
 be arranged by the local bodies and the State in 
 conjunction, the wages being determined by a board 
 of assessors, and the profits, if any, divided equitably 
 among the people employed." Further, it is of the 
 highest importance that " the people employed " 
 
PREFACE. xxiii 
 
 should not over-work themselves ; and this is to be 
 prevented by law — " an eight-hours' day, limited by 
 law, in all Government employment." And then the 
 conclusion with great serenity is drawn, " that these 
 measures would benefit the workers, if carried out, 
 is very clear." * 
 
 About the benefit to the workers from this scheme 
 there will certainly be, in some minds, grave doubt 
 as to its being very clear. But that point may be 
 left for future discussion. The singular charac- 
 teristic to be noticed in these reformers, is their 
 extreme modesty and timidity in '' asking for more " 
 of what they consider already as their own. If 
 " wholesome, cheerful homes for the people," and the 
 feeding of children in board schools are to be pro- 
 vided gratuitously by the public, one cannot see the 
 logic or common sense in refusing to provide boots, 
 stockings, corduroys, indeed, all that a working-man 
 may require, either as necessaries or luxuries. 
 Really, it is not worth while higgling about details 
 when the principle is admitted ; and it would be 
 better to say at once that it is the duty of all the well- 
 to-do people to support all the indigent *' gratui- 
 tously," and so end the matter. 
 
 * Letter in the Times, November 17, 1886, signed, " H. M, 
 Hyndman." 
 
xxiv PBEFACK 
 
 There is no immediate reason to fear that the 
 thoroughly shrewd and reflective English artisan of 
 the better class has been seduced by the sophistries 
 of the officious friends who assume to plead his 
 cause. He is pretty well acquainted with the real 
 facts of the case ; and though quite willing, and 
 very rightly, in a rising market, to support a well- 
 planned strike, he looks with coldness on Utopians 
 who are equally ignorant of capital, labour, or hard 
 work. But the intelligent and skilled artisan is an 
 aristocrat among the great mass of workers, whether 
 unemployed or not. He, hardly less than the 
 capitalist, is threatened by the multitude of the 
 unskilled labourers surging around him ; and even by 
 the scarcely lesser multitude of highly-skilled loafers, 
 who have become convinced that it is more profitable 
 to bawl out that they " have got no work to do," 
 than to attempt to find work and do it. 
 
 For the moment there appears to be no hope of 
 staunching a morbid, or rather, a maudlin sentimen- 
 tality — lor genuine benevolence is out of the question 
 — which insists upon the immediate relief of hunger, 
 however produced. The evil results which must 
 follow such a policy if persevered in, have been often 
 pointed out ; especially by Mr. Herbert Spencer in 
 his articles, " The Man versus the State." '' The 
 
PREFACE. XXV 
 
 deserving poor," Mr. Spencer remarks, " are among 
 those who are burdened to pay the costs of caring 
 for the undeserving poor. As under the old Poor 
 Law, the diligent and provident labourer had to pay 
 that the good-for-nothings might not suffer, until 
 frequently under this extra burden he broke down 
 and himself took refuge in the workhouse — as at 
 present it is admitted, that the total rates levied in 
 large towns for all public purposes have now reached 
 such a height that ' they cannot be exceeded without 
 inflicting great hardship on the small shopkeepers 
 and artisans who already find it difficult enough to 
 keep themselves free from the pauper taint ; ' so 
 in all cases the policy is one which intensifies the 
 pains of those most deserving of pity, that the pains 
 of those least deserving of pity may be mitigated." * 
 In other words, every effort is now made by a 
 misdirected public sentiment to check the beneficent 
 effect of natural selection, which promotes the survival 
 of the hardy, the strong, and the capable, but, on the 
 contrary, to shield the production of the " unfit," the 
 weak, the stupid, and the worthless. 
 
 At this point we reach a full view of the great 
 problem of population. The profound thinker and 
 benevolent man who first propounded it, has received 
 * "Man versus the State," pp. 71, 72. 
 
XX vi PBEFACE. 
 
 the usual reward of sages and prophets, for seeing 
 further and feeling more deeply than their contem- 
 poraries. Malthus and Malthusianism have long been 
 by-words of scorn and reproach ; and. oddly enough, 
 two parties, usually most hostile to each other, have 
 united in this one object of casting obloquy on him. 
 Christian priests of all denominations, anxious to re- 
 press sexual irregularities, have counselled and pro- 
 moted early marriages from purely religious motives. 
 On the other hand, Democratic Socialists, in their war 
 against Capital and its ow^ners, have maintained that 
 it was only owing to the selfish greed of the rich 
 that the poor could not multiply to the limit of their 
 physical capacity. Between the two. Christians and 
 Socialists, Malthusianism has been met with an hos- 
 tility which has few parallels in modern controversy. 
 And even to this day one must consent to be a 
 social pariah, to stand forth as its supporter. 
 
 At last the evils of over-population are becoming 
 too obvious to be gainsaid. Mr. Bradlaugh, with a 
 courage which will no doubt be acknowledged after 
 his death and when the fight is won, has borne the 
 penalty of appearing as a champion of common- 
 sense and human well-being. Not only over-popula- 
 tion generally, but the disproportionate increase of 
 the " unfit " and unworthy, is attracting attention. 
 
PBEFACE. xxvii 
 
 The provident and the thoughtful marry late and 
 have few children. The criminal and the reckless 
 classes propagate ad libitum. An excellent review 
 of an excellent book in the Pall Mall Gazette of 
 November 9, ISSG, thus refers to the subject. 
 Speaking of Mr. Arnold White's recent work, " The 
 Problems of a Grreat City," it says, " He is convinced 
 that the way things go now, it is the feeblest, the least 
 moral, and most worthless classes of the community 
 which multiply the most rapidly. It is the pauper 
 and the criminal class which supplies the human 
 rabbits who multiply in the warrens of our great 
 city. The educated and the well-to-do increase much 
 less rapidly. Hence the annual increase in the popu- 
 lation proceeds mainly from the classes which add no 
 strength to the nation ; and those who are constantly 
 within half-a-crown of starvation, are those who 
 bring forth the multitude of the diseased and in- 
 capable children who bubble out of the ground for 
 torment in this world if not in the next. . . . He 
 stands aghast, like all Malthusians, at early and im- 
 provident marriages ; and appalled at the spectacle of 
 the criminal and pauper class, with low cerebral 
 development, renewing the race more rapidly than 
 those of higher attainments. He demands that 
 statesmen should no longer stand idly by, watching 
 
xxviii PREFACE. 
 
 the multiplication of the unfit, and the survival of 
 the weakest and worst of the community. He would 
 have them interfere, by imprisoning for life all 
 habitual criminals, not as a punishment, but in order 
 to prevent them from multiplying their kind." 
 Nothing can be more certain than that we shall soon 
 have a great many more views of this sort. The 
 human race, in old countries at least, by its reckless 
 propagation, is getting jammed into an impasse 
 from which there is no escape. If it has not wisdom 
 enough to limit, or rarher, diminish its numbers by 
 prudence. Nature will take the matter in hand, 
 and with her summary processes of pestilence and 
 famine make such a sweep as will somewhat amaze 
 the world. 
 
 " Si nolles sanus, curres hydropicus." 
 
 The criminality of producing children whom one 
 has no reasonable probability of being able to keep, 
 must in time be seen in its true light, as one of 
 the most imsocial and selfish proceedings of which 
 a man nowadays is capable. The right of A. to 
 marry, and to leave to B. the task of keeping his 
 children, has ceased to be a matter of grim humour. 
 A. and his prolific spouse must be made to realize 
 that few evil-doers are more injurious to the world 
 than they are. They may be models of virtue 
 
PBEFACE. xxix 
 
 according to conventional ethics, but those ethics 
 are out of date. The barren prostitute, on whom 
 they probably look down with scorn, does not at 
 any rate aid in swamping the labour-market, nor 
 even in recruiting her own class as they do. We 
 may hope that, in the worst of times, the honest 
 proletary will not selfishly refuse to share his half 
 loaf with his famishing fellow. But, for the sake of 
 the race, we may also trust that he will peremptorily 
 refuse to share his crust with his reckless brother's 
 eight or ten children. 
 
 These and many kindred topics bear obviously 
 on the Service of Man. That Service will not be 
 made lighter or simpler in a democratic Age. The 
 complexity of social problems is so great, they need 
 regarding from so many points of view, their right 
 solution is so important, their wrong solution so 
 perilous, that they can no longer be left to any 
 official or limited class of inquirers. They concern 
 all citizens ; and few duties in our day are so impera- 
 tive as their earnest, persistent, and reflective study. 
 They do not happily need much book-lore. Clear 
 heads and resolute hearts, aided by eyes open to the 
 facts around them, will for this purpose more avail 
 than academic culture. The modern man in search 
 of well-being has two ends to bear in mind : First, 
 
XXX PBEFACE. 
 
 his own self-cultivation, especially of his heart, as 
 incomparably most important both to his own hap- 
 piness and that of others. Secondly, it behoves him 
 to help his fellows to the extent of his power, by 
 such improvements in the practice and theory of 
 life as he can make good by sound reasons. In 
 this direction I admit that he may encounter not 
 prosperity, but persecution or even worse ; but if he 
 is a true man he will not mind that. Nor will the 
 probable gloom of the coming time daunt brave 
 hearts. There is a mauvais pas before us all, which 
 we must get over as best we can. But nerve and 
 resolution can do wonders ; and men never appear 
 and act so much to their advantage as when put 
 undisguisedly on their mettle. Not by the promise 
 of soft and smooth things are they attracted, but by 
 the difficult and the dangerous. Bad as the forecast 
 is, and great as the suffering before long may be, 
 if only adequately realized and faced with neither 
 panic fear nor thoughtless hope, the situation might 
 begin to improve almost at once. If only the de- 
 vastating torrent of children could be arrested for 
 a few years it would bring untold relief. 
 
 The Service of Man is too honourable and in- 
 spiring a service to let us doubt that it will be 
 wanting in worthy recruits. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Introductory ... ... .•• ••• 1 
 
 II. The Decay of Belief ... ... ... H 
 
 III. Why Men hesitate ... ... ... ... ^0 
 
 IV. The Alleged Consolations of the Christian 
 
 Religion ... ... ... ... 57 
 
 V. On Christianity as a Guide to Conduct ... 86 
 
 VI. Morality in the Ages of Faith ... ... 117 
 
 VII. What Christianity has done ... ... 168 
 
 VIII. The Service of Man ... ... ... 241 
 
 IX. On the cultivation of Human Nature ... 269 
 
THE SERVICE OF MAN". 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 A RUINED temple, with its fallen columns and broken 
 arclies, has often been taken as a suggestive example 
 and type of the transitory nature of all human 
 handiwork. '' Here we see " — so runs the parable 
 of the moralist — " the inevitable end of man's most 
 ambitious efforts. Time and the elements cast down 
 and consume his proudest fabrics. He builds high, 
 and decorates with sculptured ornament his palaces 
 and fanes. But his work is hardly finished before 
 decay begins to efface its beauty, and sap its strength. 
 Soon the building follows the builder to an equal 
 dust, and the universal empire of Death alone 
 survives over the tombs of departed glory and 
 greatness." 
 
 The parable of the moralist is only too true. 
 
2 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 Decay and death are stamped not only on man and 
 his works, but on all that surrounds him, on all that 
 he sees a,nd touches. Nature herself decays as 
 surely, if not as rapidly, as the work of his hands. 
 The everlasting hills are daily and hourly being 
 worn away. Alps, Andes and Himalayas, are all 
 in process of a degradation of which there is no 
 repair. Nay, the Sun himself, the universal author 
 and giver of life in our planet, is only a temporary 
 blaze — a fire perhaps already more than half burnt 
 out, hastening to its final consummation of cold and 
 lightless ashes. And probably no other fate is in 
 store for the countless stars which bespangle the 
 nightly firmament. The animalcule, whose existence 
 is measured by a summer's day, and the galaxy which 
 illumines the heavens for millions of ages, are alike 
 subject to the common law of all life — growth, decay, 
 and death. 
 
 Some may think that an exception ought to be 
 made to this statement in favour of the perennial 
 vitality of Truth. Truth, it will be said, does not 
 wear out, decay, and die. The Elements of Euclid are 
 as true now as they were two thousand years ago. 
 Truths obtained by induction and verified by experi- 
 ment, or by correct deduction from true principles, do 
 not change and pass away with the generations of 
 men who hold them. It is therefore rash, such 
 
INTBODUCTORY. 3 
 
 objectors would say, to assert that all things con- 
 nected with man are destined to ultimate extinction. 
 His reason is independent of time, and has that in 
 it which belongs to eternity. All must see this in 
 regard to the incontrovertible truths established by 
 science ; many see it in tuitions of the mind, and 
 others in doctrines of religion supposed to be divinely 
 revealed. It is often added, that it is fortunate for 
 man that, amid the constant change going on in the 
 phenomenal world, a permanent reality does exist, 
 on which he can lay hold — eternal truth. 
 
 It would be careless to overlook the importance 
 of this counter-statement. About the permanence 
 of truth there can be no question. Whether it be 
 obtained by observation, generalization, or deduction, 
 verified by experiment and proof, we may safely 
 assert that such truth will last as long as the human 
 mind remains constituted as it is. But does that 
 entitle us to claim eternal duration for any truth ? 
 No one believes that the human race will last for 
 ever. There is a probability amounting almost to a 
 certainty, that neither man nor his dwelling-place 
 will exist beyond a certain, though it may be a very 
 large number of years. Now, when the human 
 race shall have ceased to exist, would it be correct 
 to say that the truths cognized by the human mind 
 will survive it ? This could only be maintained by 
 
4 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 an idealist, who should place their continued exist- 
 ence in some extra-mundane Eternal Mind — as that 
 of God — which may be an article of faith, but hardly 
 of reason. Moreover, if true propositions can exist 
 after all the minds which could affirm them have 
 disappeared, why should they not exist before the 
 phenomenal appearance of those minds ? Can we 
 consistently say that the propositions of Euclid 
 existed in the Carboniferous era ? If so, why not 
 assert that all the truths yet to be discovered in the 
 remote future exist at present ? There is no question 
 that things undreamt of in the philosophy and 
 science of to-day, will be trite commonplaces two or 
 three thousand years hence. But are they truths 
 now or yet ? Not only they are not, but the great 
 probability is, that if they were expressed in words 
 now, they would be denounced as wild and danger- 
 ous errors. 
 
 So that it is still legitimate to say that even 
 truth exists for a time, while we admit that verified 
 truth will have a duration co-equal with that of the 
 human race. 
 
 It is to be observed, that the only truths that 
 belong to this permanent class, are the truths of 
 simple observation, or of rigorous scientific inference. 
 They have always been few in number, if compared 
 with the multitude of propositions held to be true 
 
INTEODUCTOBY. 5 
 
 by the mass of mankind. They are now increasing 
 with unprecedented rapidity, owing to the great 
 development of the scientific spirit in modern times. 
 They obviously stand quite apart from the truths 
 supposed to be derived from divine revelation. The 
 latter differ from them both as to the method by 
 which they were obtained, and especially in their 
 durability. Lengthy as may seem the existence of 
 the great religions of the world when measured by 
 our small scale of chronology, yet their transitory, 
 not to say ephemeral, character, is manifest to reflec- 
 tion, and even to observation. Gro where we will on 
 the earth's surface, we find traces of bygone men — 
 of their tombs, of their ashes, their temjjles — which 
 testify to the former existence of religious beliefs 
 now extinct. These beliefs embodied the most 
 precious and profound of all truths in the devout 
 conviction of those who held them, but they were 
 so far from permanent that often they move the 
 wonder and even the laughter of after-ages. Perish- 
 able as are brick, stone, and marble, they have 
 outlived in countless instances the faiths which once 
 wrought them into majestic architecture in their 
 own honour. Temples often survive their creeds by 
 thousands of years. Wind, rain, and frost disinte- 
 grate the roof and the walls of a shrine with more 
 or less rapidity, according to climate ; but they are 
 
6 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 not so swift or potent to destroy the material fabric, 
 as knowledge and science are to undermine the con- 
 ceptions and assumptions on which the religious 
 beliefs were founded, and for which the sumptuous 
 fanes were erected in a spirit of reverence and 
 sacrifice. 
 
 Not less marked in another respect is the differ- 
 ence between the truths derived from religion and 
 the truths derived from science. The truths of 
 science are found to be in complete harmony with 
 one another. Where this harmony is wanting, it is 
 at once felt that error has crept in unawares. We 
 never give a thought to the alternative hypothesis, 
 that truths in different sciences or departments of 
 knowledge may be inconsistent and mutually hostile, 
 and yet remain truths. On the contrary, we find 
 that the discovery of new truth has invariably 
 among its results the additional effect of corroborat- 
 ing other and older truths, instead of conflicting 
 with them. In the history of science it has often 
 happened that a newly-discovered truth has proved 
 ii consistent with prevalent opinions, which had the 
 sanction of tradition in their favour. But the posi- 
 tion has always been felt to be intolerable, and that 
 one of two things must happen — eitlier the new truth 
 must reconcile itself with the old opinions, by the 
 necessary modification ; or the old oj)inions must 
 
INTBODUCTOBY. 7 
 
 reconcile themselves with the new truth by a similar 
 process. In astronomy the heliocentric theory, 
 and in biology the circulation of the blood theory, 
 produced the latter result, and revolutionized those 
 two sciences by expelling a number of previously 
 unsuspected errors. In modern times, on the other 
 hand, the plausible theory of spontaneous generation 
 has been forced to beat a retreat through its proven 
 inconsistency with older truths firmly established. 
 
 Now, with regard to the truths announced with 
 the credentials of a divine revelation, we find a very 
 different state of things. There seems to be no 
 exception to the rule, that the older religions grow 
 the more infirm do they become, the less hold do 
 they keep on the minds of well-informed and 
 thoughtful men. Their truths, once accepted without 
 question, are gradually doubted, and in the end de- 
 nied by increasing numbers. This fate hajDpened to 
 Greek and Eoman polytheism, and according to all 
 appearances it is now happening to Hindooism, Islam, 
 and to both Protestant and Catholic theology. We 
 have to consider what a very surprising fact that is, 
 on the supposition that any one of these religions is 
 true. All the chief dogmas of the Christian and 
 Mahometan Creeds have been for several centuries 
 before the world. They once were not only believed, 
 but adored. Now the numbers of those who doubt or 
 
8 TEE SERVICE OF MAIS. 
 
 dispute them are increasing every day. Time has not 
 been their friend, but their enemy. Instead of be- 
 coming more firmly rooted in men's esteem and con- 
 viction, instead of revealing unexpected connexion 
 and compatibility with other truth, instead of being 
 supported by an ever-growing mass of evidence 
 which would make their denial insane rather than 
 unreasonable, they are seen more and more to lack the 
 proofs and credentials never wanting in the case of 
 genuine truth, from which they differ in this impor- 
 tant respect — that, whereas scientific truth, though 
 often disputed and opposed on its first presentation 
 to the world, invariably ends by becoming absolutely 
 certain and unquestioned, religious conviction begins 
 with undoubting acceptance, and, after a shorter or 
 longer period of supremacy, with the growth of 
 knowledge and more severe canons of criticism, 
 passes gradually into the category of questioned and 
 disputed theories, ending at last in the class of 
 rejected and exploded errors. 
 
 That the world, in its cultivated portions, has 
 reached one of those great turning-points in the 
 evolution of thought which mark the close of an old 
 epoch and the opening of a new one, will hardly be 
 disputed by any well-informed person. The system 
 of Christian theology and thought which arose out 
 of the ruins of the Roman empire has been gradually 
 
INTRODUCTOBY, 9 
 
 undermined, and its authority so shaken that its 
 future survival is rather an object of pious hope than 
 of reasoned judgment. Apologists, indeed, are not 
 wanting, they were perhaps never so numerous ; but 
 they cannot stem the torrent which is rushing away 
 from theology in the direction of science, and that 
 negation of theology which science implies. Re- 
 garded as a question merely of speculation, the crisis 
 is one of the most interesting which the world has 
 seen, only to be compared to the transition from 
 polytheism to Christianity in the early centuries of 
 our era, and to the great Protestant revolt from 
 Rome. But the speculative interest pales before the 
 momentous practical interest of the crisis. A trans- 
 fer of allegiance from one set of first principles to 
 another, especially on subjects relating to morals and 
 conduct, cannot be effected without considerable loss 
 of continuity and order by the way. Many will halt 
 between the two regimes, and, owning allegiance to 
 neither, will prefer discarding all unwelcome re- 
 straint on their freedom of action. The corruption 
 of manners under the decaying polytheism in the 
 Roman world, the analogous corruption during the 
 Reformation and the Renaissance, offer significant 
 precedents. It would be rash to expect that a tran- 
 sition, unprecedented for its width and difficulty, 
 from theology to positivism, from the service of God 
 
10 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 to tlie service of Man, could be accomplished without 
 jeopardy. Signs are not wanting that the prevalent 
 anarchy in thought is leading to anarchy in morals. 
 Numbers who have put off belief in God have not 
 put on belief in Humanity. A common and lofty 
 standard of duty is being trampled down in the 
 fierce battle of incompatible principles. The present 
 indecision is becoming not only wearisome, but in- 
 jurious to the best interests of man. Let Theology 
 be restored, by all means, to her old position of 
 queen of the sciences, if it can be done in the light 
 of modern knowledge and common sense. If this 
 cannot be done frankly, on the faith of witnesses who 
 can stand cross-examination in open court, let us 
 honestly take our side, and admit that the Civitas Dei 
 is a dream of the past, and that we should strive to 
 realize that Regnum Hominis which Bacon foresaw 
 and predicted. 
 
( 11 ) 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE DECAY OF BELIEF. 
 
 Opinions and systems of thought as well as institu- 
 tions which enjoy a considerable lease of life in the 
 world, have many of the characteristics of organisms, 
 or at least of organs belonging to animated beings. 
 The fact that they came into existence and survived 
 during a longer or shorter period, proves that 
 they discharged a function of more or less utility ; 
 that they were in harmony with the surrounding 
 conditions, and hence, found both exercise and 
 nourishment for their support. If in time they 
 gradually cease to discharge a useful function, be- 
 come atrophied and disappear, their case is almost 
 exactly parallel to the rudimentary organs found 
 in so many animals, which, having ceased to be of 
 use, become shrunken and meaningless, and only 
 persist in an abortive form by virtue of the law of 
 heredity. Such organs in the body politic resemble 
 these analogues in the body natural, in that they 
 
12 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 often continue to exist long after their presence has 
 ceased to subserve any useful purpose of life. The 
 common trait of rudimentary organs belonging to 
 either category, biological or sociological, is that 
 they survive their use, that they are nourished and 
 live at the expense of the organism in which they 
 exist, and long after they have censed to make any 
 return for the support they obtain. In the animal 
 world, rudimentary organs may or may not be 
 noxious to the organism in which they inhere : in 
 the social organism they unquestionably are so, 
 especially by their occupying the room and prevent- 
 ing the development of active and efficient organs 
 which would succeed and replace them. 
 
 That the Christian religion is rapidly approach- 
 ing, if it has not already reached, this position, is 
 a part of the thesis maintained in these pages. 
 The decay of belief now general over Christendom, 
 may be regarded from two points of view, and 
 traced up to two distinct causes, one rational, the 
 other moral. The current faith has come increas- 
 ingly into conflict with science in proportion as the 
 latter has extended in depth and area. The isolated 
 points of collision of former days have been so 
 multiplied, that the shock now is along the whole 
 conterminous line between science and theology ; 
 and it would not be easy to name a department 
 
TEE DECAY OF BELIEF. 13 
 
 of inquiry wliich has not, in some measure, con- 
 tributed aid to the forces arrayed against the 
 popular belief. More important still is the changed 
 tone of feeling with regard to this subject. Time 
 was, and even a recent time, when the prestige of 
 Christianity was so great, that even its opponents 
 were overawed by it. But now men are ready to 
 openly avow that they find a great deal in the 
 Christian scheme which is morally shocking ; and 
 in the estimation of many minds nowadays, probably 
 the moral difficulties outweigh the intellectual. 
 
 Nothing is more common than the assertion 
 that any objections now made to Christianity are 
 worn out sophisms, which have been answered and 
 disposed of over and over again by previous apolo- 
 gists. Sometimes we are told that the objections are 
 as old as the time of Celsus, and were refuted by 
 Origen ; but, generally, Bishop Butler is the favourite 
 champion who is credited with a preordained victory 
 over all opponents, past, present, and future. Butler 
 was so great a man, and his work, considered as 
 a reply to the shallow deism of his day, was in 
 many respects so successful, that it argues a certain 
 irreverence for his character to load him with false 
 praise and unmerited laurels. But these claims, often 
 made for Butler and others, have their interesting 
 and instructive side. They show how little apt 
 
14 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 the theological mind is to see the real points at 
 issue, and to recognize the full gravity of the 
 present crisis. To suppose that arguments directed 
 against such disputants as Toland, Collins, or Tindal 
 — pertinent as they might be, and, indeed, for the 
 most part were — are equally potent when directed 
 against the methods and results of modern science, 
 implies a complete misconception of the true bear- 
 ings of the question under discussion. In the early 
 eighteenth century, the light of science had hardly 
 got beyond the first glimmerings of dawn. Mathe- 
 matics and astronomy were the only sciences which 
 had passed into the positive and final stage. 
 Chemistry, geology, biology, historical criticism, 
 were not yet in a position to speak with authority 
 even on subjects in their own province, and were far 
 from being in possession of vast stores of verified 
 truth obtained by rigorous application of correct 
 methods, such as now impose respect on the most 
 ignorant and careless. The deists were, to say the 
 least, as unscientific as the theologians. Their 
 fancies about the " light of Nature," which was to 
 replace the Christian religion, were as arbitrary 
 and absurd as any mythological legend. Tindal 
 declared the light of Nature to be "a clear and 
 certain light which enlightened all men," and from 
 this fact he inferred that "our duty both to God 
 
THE DECAY OF BELIEF. 15 
 
 and man must, from the beginning of the world to 
 the end, remain unalterable, be always alike plain 
 and perspicuous ; " a doctrine which had the serious 
 defect of being contradicted by the total experience 
 of the human race. Butler had no difficulty in 
 showing that to advance such opinions, was to 
 " talk wildly and at random." No blame attaches 
 to the deists, able and worthy men most of tbem, 
 for not transcending the knowledge of the age. 
 They attempted prematurely to solve a problem, 
 before the means of solution were at hand. What 
 they would have liked to do was to give a rational 
 explanation of Christianity as an historical phe- 
 nomenon ; but they had neither the historical nor 
 the scientific knowledge requisite for such an under- 
 taking. They consequently fell back on such vague 
 metaphysical conceptions as the " light of Nature," 
 and essayed to show that Christianity was not 
 mysterious, or that it was as old as the creation — 
 mere sophisms which they probably believed, but 
 which were quite incapable of scientific proof. 
 
 It is not a little surprising that apologists in 
 the present day should be able to deceive themselves 
 as to the immeasurable distance which separates 
 arguments of this kind from the inferences un- 
 favourable to theology deduced from science. The 
 object of science is not to supply hostile data for the 
 
16 TBE SERVICE OF MAN, 
 
 use of agnostics against religion ; though there is 
 reason to think that many do believe that to be its 
 chief end and aim. The object of science is know- 
 ledge, the increased number of those truths which 
 are capable of verification and proof. If here and 
 there its conclusions conflict with the current theo- 
 logy, the fact is of secondary importance, and of no 
 permanent interest at all to science as such, which is 
 concerned with positive, not negative, results. Every 
 statement and proposition in the most elementary 
 scientific primer probably conflicts with some theo- 
 logy or other. Yet it often seems to be assumed 
 that the sole or the chief object of the labours of 
 scientific men was to find means and arguments to 
 damage the Bible. Scientific men^ a most hard- 
 worked and industrious class, have a better appre- 
 ciation of the value of time, and of the wisdom of 
 minding their own business. They, no doubt, come 
 upon results which are fatal to the currently received 
 opinions about the Bible. But these results interest 
 them much less than they do those who are assured 
 that the Bible is the Word of God. The tables have 
 been turned since the days when Science timidly 
 sued for leave to examine nature, and to draw a few 
 conclusions of her own. Then Theology was queen, 
 and made her power felt. Inquirers worked then, 
 so to speak, with a halter about their necks, and 
 
THE DECAY OF BELIEF. 17 
 
 were anxious, above all things, to appease their 
 mighty enemy by every mark of deference and doci- 
 lity. Now the old sovereign has become the sup- 
 pliant — a rather importunate and intrusive suppliant 
 — but still by her demeanour, if not her words, ad- 
 mitting that she has been discrowned. She no 
 longer, with haughty bearing, issues her anathemas 
 on the progress of the human mind, but she is in 
 great anxiety to show that, appearances notwith- 
 standing, this progress is not incompatible with her 
 pretensions. Geology seems to contradict Genesis 
 in a very direct and final way. '' That is all your 
 mistake," says Theology ; " Geology and Genesis are 
 in most perfect union ; in fact, the science confirms 
 the Scripture so wonderfully, that each reflects light 
 on the other." The fact that the geology thus 
 warmly accepted now, was once resisted with energy 
 and anger as an impious and futile science, is passed 
 over. New light as to its harmony with Scripture 
 was not noticed, until it had attained a position of 
 power which made it more desirable as a friend than 
 as a foe. The fact is suggestive. 
 
 A convenient mode of showing the way in which 
 science has cut the ground from under the feet of 
 theology, will be a quotation from a once famous 
 and remarkable book, which, in its day, and for a long 
 time after, was regarded, with justice, as a powerful 
 
 c 
 
18 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 piece of argument in favour of the current religion. 
 Dr. Samuel Clarke was a man of considerable ability, 
 and of very great attainments ; he was also a man 
 of high and honourable character, and his Boyle 
 lectures, commonly known as his two Discourses 
 " On the Being and the Attributes of Grod," and 
 on " The Truth and Certainty of the Christian 
 Revelation," enjoyed an immense popularity, not 
 only at home but abroad, all through the eighteenth 
 century. The book is now read only by the curious 
 in religious archaeology. In an elaborate argument, 
 intended to show that although the Christian doctrines 
 " may not be discoverable by bare Reason unassisted 
 by Revelation, yet when they are discovered by 
 Revelation they are found most agreeable to sound, 
 unprejudiced Reason," Clarke proceeds to prove 
 that the account in Genesis of the formation of the 
 earth is entirely credible, in the following passage : 
 " That, about the space of six thousand years since, 
 the earth was without form and void, that is, a con- 
 fused chaos, out of which God formed this beautiful 
 and useful fabrick we now inhabit, and stocked it 
 with the seeds of all kinds of plants, and formed upon 
 it man, and all other specimens of animals it is now 
 furnished with — is very agreeable to right reason. 
 For though the precise time, indeed, when all this 
 was done, could not now have been known exactly 
 
THE DECAY OF BELIEF. 19 
 
 without Eevelation ; yet, even at this day, there are 
 remaining many considerable and very strong rational 
 proofs which make it exceedingly probable (separate 
 from the authority of Eevelation) that this present 
 frame and constitution of the earth cannot have been 
 of a very much longer date. The universal tradition 
 delivered down from all the most ancient nations of 
 the world, both learned and barbarous ; the constant 
 and agreeing doctrine of all ancient philosophers 
 and poets concerning the earth's being formed within 
 such a period of time out of water and chaos ; the 
 manifest absurdities and contradictions of those few 
 accounts which pretend to a much greater antiquity ; 
 the numbers of men with which the earth is at 
 present inhabited ; the late original of learning and 
 all useful arts and sciences ; the changes that must 
 necessarily fall out naturally in the earth in vast 
 length of time, as by the sinking and washing down 
 of mountains^ the consumption of water by plants, and 
 innumerable other such like accidents, — these, I say, 
 and many more arguments drawn from Nature, 
 Reason, and Observation, make that account of the 
 earth's formation exceedingly probable in itself, 
 which, from the revelation delivered in Scripture- 
 history, we believe to be certain." * 
 
 * " Truth and Certainty of Christian Revelation," p. 187 ; 
 edition 1724. 
 
20 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 This passage shows what a comparatively easy 
 matter the defence of the Bible was in Dr. Clarke's 
 day. He could, without fear of serious contradiction, 
 make assumptions which no one would venture to 
 make now. The " strong rational proofs," which 
 show that the earth cannot be much more than six 
 thousand years old, would be hard to find. Why the 
 shrinking and washing down of mountains was 
 evidence of the recent date of the earth is difficult to 
 see ; and the " consumption of water by plants," im- 
 plying that the water of the globe was being rapidly 
 used up and annihilated, is an interesting example of 
 old notions on chemistry. In the earlier discourse 
 on the existence of God, Clarke had been enthusiastic 
 over the support given to his thesis by the dis- 
 coveries of his day : — 
 
 *' If Gralen, so many ages since, could find in the 
 construction and constitution of the parts of the 
 human body such undeniable marks of contrivance 
 and design as forced him then to acknowledge and 
 admire the wisdom of its Author, what would he 
 have said if he had known the late discoveries in 
 anatomy and physic, the circulation of the blood, the 
 exact structure of the heart and brain, the uses of 
 numberless glands and valves for the secretion and 
 motion of the juices in the body; besides several 
 veins and other vessels and receptacles not at all 
 
THE DECAY OF BELIEF. 21 
 
 known or so much as imagined to have any existence 
 in his days, but which now are discovered to serve 
 the wisest and most exquisite ends imaginable ? " * 
 
 Bacon's famous maxim, that " a little philosophy 
 inclineth men's minds to atheism ; but depth in 
 philosophy bringeth men's minds back to religion," 
 is now being reversed. The early glimpses of the 
 marvels of nature afforded by modern science un- 
 doubtedly were favourable to natural theology in 
 the first instance. Knowledge revealed so many 
 wonders which had not been suspected by ignorance, 
 that a general increase of awe and reverence for the 
 Creator was the natural, though not very logical, 
 consequence. But a deeper philosophy, or, rather, 
 biology, has rudely disturbed the satisfaction with 
 which " the wisest and most exquisite ends " were 
 once regarded. It is now known that for one case 
 of successful adaptation of means to ends in the 
 animal world, there are hundreds of failures. If 
 organs which serve an obvious end justify the 
 assumption of an intelligent designer, what are we 
 to say of organs which serve no end at all, but are 
 quite useless and meaningless ? Such are the rudi- 
 mentary organs in plants and animals, the design of 
 which seems only to point to an unintelHgent de- 
 signer. " Some of the cases of rudimentary organs 
 * Page 103. 
 
22 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 are extremely curious — the presence of teeth in foetal 
 whales which, when grown up, have not a tooth in 
 their heads, and the presence of teeth which never 
 €ut through the gums in the upper jaws of our un- 
 born calves. . . . Nothing can be plainer than that 
 wings are formed for flight ; jet in how many insects 
 do we see wings so reduced in size as to be utterly 
 incapable of flight, and not rarely lying under wing- 
 cases, firmly soldered together." * Again, " Eyes 
 which do not see, form the most striking example 
 of rudimentary organs. These are found in very 
 many animals which live in the dark, as in caves or 
 underground. These eyes often exist in a well- 
 developed condition, but they are covered by mem- 
 brane, so that no ray of light can enter and they can 
 never see. Such eyes, without the function of sight, 
 are found in several species of moles and mice which 
 live underground, in serpents and lizards, in am- 
 phibious animals (Proteus, Ccecilid), and in fishes ; 
 also in numerous invertebrate animals which pass 
 their lives in the dark, as do many beetles, crabs, 
 snails, worms," etc.f Another strange instance is, 
 " the rudiment of a tail which man possesses in his 
 3 — 5 tail vertebrae, and which, in the human embryo, 
 stands out prominently during the first two months 
 
 * " Origin of Species," p. 450. 
 
 I Haeckel, "History of Creation," vol. i. p. 13. 
 
THE DEC AT OF BELIEF. 23 
 
 of its development. It afterwards becomes com- 
 pletely hidden. The rudimentary little tail of man 
 is an irrefutable proof of the fact that he is descended 
 from tailed ancestors. In woman the tail is generally 
 by one vertebra longer than in man. There still 
 exist rudimentary muscles in the human tail which 
 formerly moved it." * 
 
 That facts of this nature, which have only been 
 a short time before the world, should fail to convince 
 theologians brought up in a completely different 
 order of ideas, is in no wise surprising. The due 
 weight of facts will no more be allowed than the 
 due weight of arguments, by minds which habit 
 and education, and, perhaps, even a sense of duty, 
 have combined to bias against them. But the effect 
 on the younger and succeeding generations is very 
 great, and is already perceptible. When theology 
 was attacked in front with metaphysical arguments, 
 such as were used by the old deists, it was able to 
 make a very stout and plausible resistance. But 
 now its position, in military phrase, has been turned ; 
 the heights around it and behind are occupied by 
 an artillery which render further defence impossible. 
 Take the instance of the origin of man. The whole 
 scheme of Christian theology is meaningless except 
 on the assumption of the fall of man from a primi- 
 * Haeckel, " History of Creation," vol. i. p. 290. 
 
24 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 tive state of innocence and virtue. Unless theolo- 
 gians are prepared to throw over St. Paul, they 
 must hold that " as in Adam all die, even so in 
 Christ shall all be made alive." Perhaps no one 
 doctrine ever believed by man has had a more 
 terrible history than that of " original or birth-sin," 
 which, as the Ninth Article says, is " the fault and 
 corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally 
 is ingendered of the offspring of Adam ; whereby 
 man is very far gone from original righteousness, 
 and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that 
 the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit ; and 
 therefore in every person born into this world, it 
 deserveth God's wrath and damnation." But if 
 ever a thesis was demonstrated, it is that man has 
 not fallen, but risen, and that from the lowest level of 
 animal existence. No court of justice ever witnessed 
 a more complete discomfiture of an unfounded claim 
 to a noble title and estate, than the defeat of this 
 theological claim for man, that he was made in the 
 image of God, placed in Paradise in a state of purity, 
 from which he fell through disobedience. The result 
 is serious. The New Testament endorses the fall in 
 the most emphatic way ; the Incarnation itself had 
 no other object than that of neutralizing its effects. 
 Yet it is proved to be a mere fiction of a primitive 
 cosmogony. 
 
THE DECAY OF BELIEF. 25 
 
 The general rejection of miracles is another 
 symptom of the decay of belief. The once active con- 
 troversy as to the possibility of miracles has become 
 nearly extinct, because one of the parties to it has 
 been growing steadily in numbers and authority, 
 while the other party has declined. The refuters of 
 Hume address constantly decreasing audiences, and 
 the belief in miracles will shortly (like the belief in 
 witchcraft in the seventeenth century) die a natural 
 death among the educated classes. The notion that 
 the testimony of men, however worthy and sincere, 
 can sufSce to establish a miraculous event, is no 
 longer felt to be serious. The testimony of credible 
 witnesses is valueless, unless they be competent 
 witnesses as well — competent to observe with 
 patience, accuracy, and coolness, the alleged facts. 
 Were such observers present at the working of the 
 miracles in Palestine which Paley patronizes ? The 
 argument against miracles has gained immensely in 
 force since Hume's day through the growth of the 
 historic method, and the larger conceptions of human 
 evolution which have led to the incipient science of 
 sociology. Hume's principle was tersely and fairly 
 enough stated by Paley thus : — " That it is contrary 
 to experience that miracles should be true, but not 
 contrary to experience that testimony should be 
 false ; " a true statement, but not beyond the reach 
 
26 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 of plausible objection, as Paley showed. The moment 
 we introduce the historic element, the question seems 
 transferred to a higher court. Primitive, early, and 
 unscientific man, is at all times and everywhere 
 prone to see miracle in everything that appears odd 
 or strange to his limited experience. Ignorant of 
 nature's laws, he finds no difficulty in assuming their 
 violation ; he lives in an atmosphere of fiction, fable, 
 and myth, and much prefers a miraculous explanation 
 of an event to a rational or real one. The belief in 
 miracles is universal in wholly unscientific times. 
 With the growth of culture it diminishes ; with the 
 extension of science it disappears. Miracles are 
 never supposed to occur except where and when an 
 antecedent belief in them exists. In other words, 
 the belief in miracles depends not upon objective 
 facts, but on the subjective conditions of the 
 witnesses' minds. 
 
 Paley tried to parry the obvious objection that the 
 best way to silence the gain say ers of miracles would 
 be to repeat them. " To expect, concerning a miracle, 
 that it should succeed ujoon repetition, is to expect 
 that which would make it cease to be a miracle ; 
 which is contrary to its nature as such, and would 
 totally destroy the use and purpose for which it was 
 wrought ; " * a remark less acute than Paley's re- 
 * " Paley's Evidences : Preparatory Considerations." 
 
THE DECAY OF BELIEF. 27 
 
 marks usually are. Assuming that a miracle reveals 
 the presence of a supernatural power, why should its 
 repetition destroy its miraculous character ; above all, 
 why should it destroy its use ? If miracles are in- 
 tended to convert the stiff-necked and hard of heart, 
 what more likely way of bringing them to submission 
 than the repetition of miracles ? And according to 
 Scripture, this was precisely the way in which 
 Pharaoh, King of Egypt, was humbled. He resisted 
 the miracles wrought by Moses and Aaron with stub- 
 bornness all through the first nine plagues ; but the 
 universal slaying of the first-born broke even his 
 spirit. Such must always be the effect of repeated 
 miracles ; and there can be no doubt that even at this 
 day, in the midst of all this science and scepticism, if 
 miracles were again wrought in a public place and 
 manner, so as to remove the suspicion of trickery 
 and legerdemain, the effect of them would be greater 
 than ever it was. Suppose a prophet of God were 
 to appear among us, and announce that he had a 
 revelation to make. According to Paley, his only way 
 of making it would be by miracle; he therefore would 
 perform miracles. As all difficulties vanish before 
 Almighty power, one miracle would be the same as 
 another to him ; and let us suppose him to walk on 
 the water, down the centre of the Thames, from 
 Putney to Mortlake. May we not be sure that one 
 
28 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 such achievement would produce a sensation per- 
 fectly overwhelming, not only in London, but to the 
 furthest limits of the civilized world ? If he rapidly 
 followed up this miracle by others — fed with a few 
 loaves the crowds on Hampstead Heath on a Bank 
 Holiday, or those on Epsom Downs on the Derby 
 day ; gave sight to a man notoriously blind from his 
 birth, or raised from the dead a putrescent corpse 
 which had lain four days in the grave — can we 
 remotely conceive a limit to the excitement which 
 would ensue ? Would not such a reaction against 
 current scientific notions set in, as would sweep 
 everything before it ? Supposing always that 
 the miracles were bond fide miracles, such as are 
 assumed to have been wrought in Judasa some 
 eighteen hundred years ago, we may even be sure 
 that many, if not all, of the chief men of science 
 would be among the most impressed, if not the most 
 excited, and be prompt to own that they had made 
 a great mistake in asserting the invariability of 
 nature's laws. A complete recast of the philosophy 
 of the inductive sciences would be one of the least 
 results of a manifestation of genuine miracles. As 
 for its effect on the cause of religion, there can be 
 little room for doubt. The passionate yet hopeless 
 yearning, which now fills so many minds, to retain a 
 rational belief in the supernatural, would be replaced 
 
THE DECAY OF BELIEF. 29 
 
 by a serene joy over the triumph of Mth. It may 
 suit Paley to say that repetition of miracles would 
 destroy their use, but he must be a lukewarm 
 theologian who does not at times wish from the 
 depth of his heart that an authentic miracle could be 
 produced. Yet it is at this momentous crisis in the 
 religious affairs of the world, when the enemy is 
 carrying one position after another, and has all but 
 penetrated to the citadel of belief, that no miracles 
 occur — that no miracles are claimed, except, indeed, 
 of the compromising species made at Lourdes, and 
 now and then of a fasting girl exhibited in Belgium 
 and in Wales. When no one doubted the possibility 
 or the frequency of miracles they abounded, we are 
 told ; that is, when by reason of their number and 
 the ready credit accorded to them, their effect was the 
 least startling, then they were lavished on a believ- 
 ing world. Now, when they are denied and insulted 
 as the figments of a barbarous age, when the faith 
 they might support is in such jeopardy as it never 
 was before, when a tithe of the wonders wasted in the 
 deserts of Sinai and the "parts beyond Jordan" would 
 shake the nations with astonishment and surprise 
 — when, in short, the least expenditure of miracle 
 would produce the maximum of result — then miracles 
 mysteriously cease. This fact, which is utterly be- 
 yond contest, has borne fruit, and will yet bear more. 
 
30 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 Instead of a short chapter, a long volume would 
 be needed to set forth in detail even a spicilegium 
 of the rationalistic arguments which have operated 
 to produce a decay of belief Any one interested in 
 the subject will easily find them in the appropriate 
 quarters — in the attacks on, and still better, in the 
 defences of, the Bible. The width of the breach be- 
 tween reason and faith, between theology and science, 
 is hardly denied ; and the noteworthy fact is, that only 
 one of the parties hopes for, or believes in, an ulti- 
 mate reconciliation. Reason and science have made 
 up their minds on the subject, and would gladly 
 leave it alone, and attend to their own affairs. It is 
 theology that cannot resign herself to a permanent 
 quarrel, and is always pursuing science with a 
 mixture of entreaty and reproach, and begging the 
 latter to hear her cause over again, and not to say 
 with cruel harshness that the separation is for good 
 and all. We may, therefore, leave this side of our 
 subject with a concluding observation. 
 
 On no point were apologists more confident than 
 on the impossibility of explaining the uprise of 
 Christianity otherwise than by a supernatural 
 principle. In the words of Archbishop Whately, 
 " No complete and consistent account has ever been 
 given of the manner in which the Christian religion, 
 supposing it a human contrivance, could have arisen 
 
THE DECAY OF BELIEF. 31 
 
 and prevailed as it did. The religion exists ; that is 
 the phenomenon ; those who will not allow it to have 
 come from God are bound to solve the phenomenon on 
 some other hypothesis less open to objection ; they 
 are not indeed called on to prove that it actually did 
 arise in this or that way, but to suggest (consist- 
 ently with acknowledged facts) some probable way in 
 which it may have arisen, reconcilable with all the 
 circumstances of the case. That infidels have never 
 done this, though they have had nearly two thousand 
 years to try, amounts to a confession that no such 
 hypothesis can be devised, which will not be open 
 to greater objections than lie against Christianity/' * 
 The passage is interesting on other grounds than 
 the particular one with which we are concerned, and 
 leaves us the alternative of a low opinion either of 
 Whately's candour or of his perspicacity. The 
 suggestion that infidels had or could have been " try- 
 ing " for nearly two thousand years to concoct an 
 hypothesis adverse to Christianity, could only be 
 based on a strange ignorance of the state of the human 
 mind during at least three-fourths of that period, 
 or on the safety of such an innuendo in the dark 
 ages when the " Logic " was published (1829). But 
 this need not detain us. The important point to 
 observe is how completely Whately's assertion that 
 * "Logic," bk. iii. § 17. 
 
32 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 a rational explanation of the origin of Christianity 
 has never been given has, by the biblical and his- 
 torical studies of the last half century, been over- 
 thrown. Strauss, F. Ch. Baur, Keim, and Hausrath, 
 to name only the chief writers, have made the early 
 history of Christianity at least as intelligible as other 
 scholars have made the early history of Rome. To 
 the unhistoric minds of the eighteenth century, the 
 uprise of a religion in Palestine in the first century, 
 claiming supernatural authority, seemed as ex- 
 traordinary and unaccountable as a similar pheno- 
 menon would have been in Paris or London. The 
 religious passions, especially among uncivilized races, 
 were at once disliked and misunderstood. Even 
 Robertson the historian could only see in the Cru- 
 sades '' a singular monument of human folly." There 
 was supposed to be no alternative between a truly 
 divine revelation and an artful fraud designed by 
 priests for their own benefit. Whately's phrase, 
 *' supposing Christianity a human contrivance," points 
 to this crude notion. With enlarged conceptions 
 of the variety of man's nature, and historical develop- 
 ment, the spontaneous appearance of such a religion 
 as Christianity is now seen to be quite natural and 
 regular in such an age as the first century. The 
 mythopoeic faculty of the human mind at certain 
 stages is capable of more wonderful achievements 
 
THE DECAY OF BELIEF. 33 
 
 than any exhibited in the New Testament, and is 
 at this day in full operation in British India, weaving 
 legends and creating gods with unchecked luxuriance. 
 Meanwhile the historical character of the Gospels, 
 and the Acts of the Apostles, and the genuineness 
 of several epistles ascribed to St. Paul, have been 
 gravely impugned, and, in the opinion of many, 
 seriously damaged ; an opinion not shaken by the 
 counter-efforts of the Christian aj)ologists. Again, 
 the fortress of theology has been surrounded and 
 commanded by the forces at the disposal of know- 
 ledge. 
 
 But mere rationalism, however cogent to some 
 minds, often remains powerless on others, and those 
 frequently possessing the best qualities of intellect 
 and character. The deepest change which this age 
 has seen in reference to men's attitude towards the 
 current theology, has taken place, not in the region 
 of the understanding, but in that of the heart. It is 
 not so much that the Bible, with its miracles and 
 legends, is felt to be untrue and incredible by the 
 trained reason ; a great number of theological dogmas 
 are felt to be morally repulsive and horrible, by the 
 more humane conscience of modern times. This 
 change of sentiment is so great and far-reaching, 
 that there is no wonder that its import is imperfectly 
 seized, or even wholly missed by those whom the 
 
 D 
 
34 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 accidents of education and surroundings have pre- 
 served from its influence. It is a cliange not less 
 momentous than that which placed the Christian 
 converts of the Eoman period in a position of pas- 
 sionate hostility to the immoralities and indecencies 
 of decaying polytheism. Even divines are becoming 
 aware that the eternity of hell-torments is a doctrine 
 of waning efficacy, on which it is easy to insist too 
 much. Some are discovering that it lacks Scriptural 
 authority, and beseech us not to believe that any- 
 thing so dreadful is delivered in the Word of God. 
 The minimising of irksome tenets is a frequent re- 
 source and an unfailing symptom of decaying faiths. 
 Julian and his pagan sophists essayed to spiritualize 
 offensive Greek myths. There is no ground for 
 doubting the bona fides of such attempts, but they 
 rarely succeed. The obvious question, " If your new 
 interpretation is the right one, why was it not dis- 
 covered before ? why did what you admit to be 
 dreadful error receive apparently for a long time 
 Divine sanction ? " cannot be answered ; and the 
 question is followed by another : " If your predeces- 
 sors taught error in the dogmas you discard, what 
 guarantee have you to offer that those dogmas which 
 you still maintain may not some day be discovered 
 to be equally untenable ? How can you be sure that 
 your successors, when hard pressed by the science of 
 
TEE DECAY OF BELIEF. 35 
 
 their day, will not, like yourselves, find good reasons 
 for throwing them over ? " The eternity of hell 
 torments is a doctrine discarded by a number of 
 divines, who yet cling to the doctrines of the Incar- 
 nation and the Atonement. There is nothing to 
 assure us that, in a hundred years' time, these also 
 will not be discovered to be unscriptural. 
 
 The Christian theology, in its main features, was 
 evolved during the most calamitous period which 
 the human race has lived through in historic times. 
 The decline and fall of the Roman empire still 
 remains the greatest catastrophe on record ; the slow 
 death protracted over ^yq centuries of the ancient 
 world. Every evil afflicted men in that terrible 
 time ; arbitrary power, the most remorseless and 
 cruel ; a grinding fiscality, which at last exterminated 
 wealth ; pestilences, which became endemic and de- 
 populated whole provinces ; and, to crown all, a series 
 of invasions by barbarous hordes, who passed over 
 the countries like a consuming fire. It was in this 
 age that the foundations of Christian theology were 
 laid — the theology of the Councils and the Fathers. 
 The conception of God, of His relation to, and deal- 
 ings with, the world, was evolved in a society which 
 groaned under unexampled oppression, misery, and 
 affliction. Needless to say, it was an age of great and 
 almost morbid cruelty : the games of the circus were 
 
36 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 a constant discipline of the inhuman passions. After 
 the empire had vanished, for long centuries there 
 was no great improvement. The barbarism of the 
 Prankish period may be seen at full length in the 
 pages of Gregory of Tours. The Carling empire 
 was an oppressive tyranny ; the Feudal Age, one of 
 lawless rapine on the part of the strong, and cower- 
 ing anguish on the part of the weak. It was in this 
 evil time that the Christian Theology was evolved, 
 commencing with the great doctrines defined by the 
 Fathers, and afterwards reduced to a logical system 
 by the scholastics, especially by St. Thomas, the 
 Angel of the schools. 
 
 With such visible rulers of the world before 
 them, it is no wonder that men formed very dark 
 and cruel notions of the invisible ruler, who disposed 
 of all things. Cruelty, injustice, arbitrary power, 
 were too familiar to be shocking, too constant to be 
 supposed accidental or transitory. The real world 
 before their eyes was taken as a dim pattern and 
 foreshadowing of the ideal world beyond the grave. 
 God was an Almighty Emperor, a transcendental 
 Diocletian or Constantine, doing as he list with his 
 own. His edicts ran through all space and time, 
 his punishments were eternal, and whatever he did 
 his justice must not be questioned. And thus those 
 words came to be written, " Therefore hath he mercy 
 
THE DECAY OF BELIEF. 37 
 
 on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he 
 hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth 
 he yet find fault ? For who hath resisted his will ? 
 Nay but, man, who art thou that repliest 
 against God ? Shall the thing formed say to him 
 that formed it. Why hast thou made me thus ? Hath 
 not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump 
 to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto 
 dishonour?" * which, probably, have added more to 
 human misery than any other utterances made by 
 man. St. PauFs teaching fell on a fertile soil. For 
 some fifteen hundred years the human conscience 
 was not shocked by it. Since the rise of the Ar- 
 minian theology there has been a gradual and 
 growing revulsion of feeling, and now it is said 
 plainly that the " potter has no right to be angry 
 with his pots. If he wanted them different he 
 should have made them different." The pretensions 
 of *' an omnipotent devil desiring to be compli- 
 mented " as all-merciful, when he is exerting tlie 
 most fiendish cruelty, are no longer admitted in 
 abashed silence. But if the great difficulty of hell and 
 eternal punishments were happily surmounted, there 
 remain, in the whole Christian scheme of redemption, 
 moral iniquities and obliquities which no good man 
 of the present day, whatever his religion or theology, 
 * Komansix. 18-21. 
 
38 TEE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 would willingly be guilty of himself. The notion 
 that God wanted to be propitiated by the death of 
 the innocent Christ, is a thoroughly base and bar- 
 barous one ; natural enough in rude ages, when 
 costly sacrifice was a recognized mode of appeasing 
 angry deities, but repellent now. Hardly the most 
 depraved man, in his right mind, would accept the 
 vicarious punishment of one who had not offended 
 him, in lieu of one who had. A high-minded man 
 would endure almost anything rather than counte- 
 nance such an enormity. The idea is barbarous, 
 well worthy of Chinese conceptions of justice, 
 content if the executioner gets a subject to operate 
 on, but indifferent whether it be the culprit 
 or not. Yet this cruel and barbarous notion is 
 the centre of the Christian religion ; at least, it 
 has not yet been discovered to be unscriptural, I 
 believe. Again, Satan may well give latitudinarian 
 theologians trouble in this world as well as in 
 the next. When they have explained away his 
 eternal function of tormenting souls in hell, they 
 will have to extenuate his strange temporal avoca- 
 tions on earth, and to explain how they can be 
 permitted by a merciful Grod. A follen angel of 
 vast skill, subtlety, and guile, is allowed to tempt 
 men and women, even young children, to commit 
 sin, to allure them away from Christ, to jeopardize 
 
THE DECAY OF BELIEF. 39 
 
 tlieir hopes of Paradise. And God, who permits this, 
 is supposed to hate sin. If he had wished sin to 
 abound, what could he have done more than to 
 allow the arch-fiend, aided by legions of minor 
 devils, to go about like a roaring lion seeking whom 
 he may devour, with constant access to men, nay, to 
 their most inward minds, whispering evil thoughts, 
 stimulating criminal passions, and, however often 
 driven away by holy prayer, ever renewing his 
 assaults on poor souls, up to the last moment of 
 mortal agony, when he oftener succeeds than, fails 
 in carrying them off to his place of torment. Christ's 
 petition, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver 
 us from the evil one," has never been heard, or it 
 has not been granted. We are always being led 
 into temptation ; we are never delivered from the 
 evil one on this side of the gates of death. A super- 
 natural being who wrecked man's felicity in Paradise, 
 and brought sin and death into the world, is ap- 
 pointed to the office of tempting men at all times, 
 in all places, throughout life ; he is able to enter into 
 the minds of his victims and pervert their souls, in 
 society and in solitude, in sleep, and even in prayer, 
 capable of assuming all disguises, even to appearing 
 as an angel of light. A human seducer, however 
 artful and vile, is restricted as to times and oppor- 
 tunities in corrupting the innocent. Satan has 
 
40 THE SERVICE OF 3IAN. 
 
 constant and invisible access. Now, a parent or 
 guardian who allowed children under his charge 
 to associate with bad characters, would be justly 
 condemned as wanting in a sense of duty and 
 humanity. But God permits something infinitely 
 worse, by the whole difference between an immortal 
 evil spirit and the most profligate of earthly tempters. 
 Let any human father try and imagine the anguish 
 with which he would see his innocent, inexperienced 
 daughter walking arm-in-arm with an accomplished 
 and fascinating seducer. Would not his instan- 
 taneous step be to put an end to such corrupting 
 intercourse ? Would not public opinion largely con- 
 done violent measures on his part, if it should appear 
 that the designs of the villain had been crowned 
 with a calamitous success ? Yet the heavenly father 
 is supposed to see this and far worse every hour 
 and minute of the day ; to see the young, the weak, 
 the unprotected, assailed by a supernatural tempter, 
 his own creature, his rebel angel, wholly evil and 
 malignant ; and to see him succeed in his attempt 
 to ruin souls. And then the betrayed, poor human 
 victim, not the fiend, is punished. The fiend, indeed, 
 is punished, but not for these acts against humanity. 
 The righteous God promptly avenged insubordina- 
 tion and disrespect to himself. But ever since man's 
 creation Satan has had compensations. His do- 
 
THE DECAY OF BELIEF. 41 
 
 minion is ever extending (as all orthodox theolo- 
 gians admit that the number of the damned far 
 exceeds that of the saved), and he is well entitled 
 to boast in the words of the poet — 
 
 " To reiga is worth, ambition though in Hell ; 
 Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." 
 
 The old answer to such considerations was that they 
 were horribly profane, and " must be put down with 
 a strong hand." They impiously meddled with 
 " mysteries " which man in his fallen state could not 
 fathom, but must reverently adore. To which it is 
 now replied, that there is no mystery at all in the 
 matter. Barbarous and cruel ages have ever gene- 
 rated barbarous and cruel religions. Nay, obscene 
 and revolting rites and practices, which cannot be 
 named, have been and still are sanctioned by religion. 
 These were outgrown by the progressive nations of 
 the West when Christian monotheism prevailed. 
 And now Christian monotheism is sharing the fate 
 of its predecessors ; it is being superseded by the 
 growing conscience of mankind. 
 
 But the fact is that these somewhat old-fashioned 
 controversies about the credibility of miracles, the 
 evidences of Christianity, the authenticity of portions 
 of Scripture, and similar topics, are now dwarfed and 
 overshadowed by a far mightier question which has 
 come to the front with great rapidity in tbis age. 
 
42 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 The being and attributes of a Grod have been a subject 
 of esoteric discussion in the schools of philosophers 
 for centuries, but only recently have been seen to pass 
 from the closet to the market-place, and to become 
 one of the deepest questions of the day. No 
 more surprising change of fundamental conceptions 
 will be recorded by the future historians of philo- 
 sophy, than that which has supervened in the last 
 twenty-five or thirty years in reference to the idea of 
 Grod. Up to a recent time the sturdiest sceptics as to 
 the truth of revelation were mostly deists or panthe- 
 ists, and often repudiated atheism with warmth. The 
 wittiest scoffer who ever attacked Christianity, Yol- 
 taire, was a firm deist, and declared that if Grod did 
 not exist he would have to be invented. The ex- 
 treme school of Diderot and D' Holbach, even in the 
 sceptical eighteenth century, failed of a wide accept- 
 ance. Now the conception of God is freely treated 
 by many of the leaders of philosophical and scientific 
 opinion as a transitory phase of thought which 
 the growth of knowledge has finally terminated. 
 The natural history and evolution of the idea of Grod 
 is traced in calm outline from its cradle to its grave — 
 from its nascent form in Animism to its metaphysical 
 presentation as an inscrutable First Cause, the abso- 
 lute, unconditioned, and unrelated to the phenomenal 
 world. The idea of God has been " defecated to a 
 
THE DECAY OF BELIEF. 43 
 
 pure transparency," as one eminent writer phrases it ; 
 it has been " deanthropomorphlsed," to use the 
 language of another. A new and widely-current 
 word has been invented to designate the large class 
 of persons (mostly persons of exceptional knowledge 
 and ability) who refuse to entertain any more the 
 idea of a single divine Being, maker of all things in 
 heaven and earth. Agnostics are to be met with on 
 every side; the place of honour is given to their 
 articles in the most popular monthly reviews; and, 
 just as in the fourth century the mysteries of the 
 Trinity and the Incarnation were discussed in the 
 streets of Constantinople by shopkeepers and their 
 customers, so now, at dinner parties and gatherings 
 of both sexes, the existence of God emerges from time 
 to time as a topic of conversation, ending often in 
 negative conclusions. Every middle-aged man can 
 remember a time when such a transformation of 
 sentiments and opinions would have appeared beyond 
 the pale of possibility. 
 
 As in the case of the Christian theology, the 
 difficulties are twofold, intellectual and moral, which 
 have extinguished in many minds the traditional 
 belief in a Supreme Being. So long as men were 
 able and content to believe in an anthropomorphic 
 deity — an infinitely glorified and exalted man — then 
 difficulties were not perceived ; a feeling also of reli- 
 
44 THE SERVICE OF 31 AN. 
 
 gious awe daunted the mind from looking up and 
 scrutinizing even its own conceptions with a steady 
 gaze. But the growth of knowledge and a higher 
 morality have made the conception of an anthropo- 
 morphic God less and less endurable, even to professed 
 theologians, who have been as ready as philosophers 
 to dehumanize the deity. But the difficulty is that, 
 in proportion as the conception of God is stripped 
 of its human attributes and removed away into the 
 absolute, in the same proportion does the conception 
 cease to offer an object capable of exciting human 
 sympathy, and, what is not less important, does it 
 cease to be conceivable. '' Similarly, with the logical 
 incongruities, more and more conspicuous to growing 
 intelligence. Passing over the familiar difficulties — 
 that sundry of the implied divine traits are in con- 
 tradiction with the divine attributes otherwise 
 ascribed ; that a god who repents of what he has done 
 must be lacking either in power or foresight ; that 
 his anger presupposes an occurrence that has been 
 contrary to his intention, and so indicates defect of 
 means — we come to the greater difficulty : that such 
 emotions, like all emotions, can exist only in a con- 
 sciousness which is limited. Every emotion has its 
 antecedent ideas, and antecedent ideas are habitually 
 supposed to occur in God. He is represented as seeing 
 and hearing this or the other, and as being emo- 
 
THE DECAY OF BELIEF. 45 
 
 tionally affected thereby. That is, the conception of 
 a divinity possessing these traits of character neces- 
 sarily continues anthropomorphic, not only in the 
 sense that the emotions ascribed are like those of 
 human beings, but also in the sense that they form 
 parts of a consciousness which, like the human con- 
 sciousness, is formed of successive states. And such 
 a conception of the divine consciousness is irrecon- 
 cilable with the unchangeableness otherwise alleged, 
 and with the omniscience otherwise alleged. For a 
 consciousness, constituted of ideas and feelings caused 
 by objects and occurrences, cannot be simultaneously 
 occupied with all objects and all occurrences through- 
 out the universe. To believe in a divine conscious- 
 ness, men must refrain from thinking what is meant 
 by consciousness — must stop short with verbal pro- 
 positions ; and propositions which they are debarred 
 from rendering into thought, will more and more fail 
 to satisfy them. Of course like difficulties present 
 themselves when the will of God is spoken of. So 
 long as we refrain from giving a definite meaning to 
 the word' ' will,' we may say that it is possessed by 
 the Cause of all things, as readily as we may say 
 that love of approbation is possessed by a circle ; but 
 when, from the words, we pass to the thoughts they 
 stand for, we find that we can no more unite in con- 
 sciousness the terms of the one proposition than we 
 
46 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 can those of the other. Whoever conceives of any 
 other will than his own, must do so in terms of his 
 own will, which is the sole will directly known to him, 
 all other wills being only inferred. But will, as such, 
 is conscious, if it presupposes a motive, a prompting 
 desire of some kind ; absolute indifference excludes 
 the conception of will. Moreover, will, as implying 
 a prompting desire, connotes some end contemplated 
 as one to be achieved, and ceases with the achieve- 
 ment of it ; some other will referring to some other 
 end taking its place. That is to say, will, like emo- 
 tion, necessarily supposes a series of states of con- 
 sciousness. The conception of a divine will, derived 
 from the human will, involves, like it, localization in 
 space and time ; the willing of each end excluding 
 from consciousness, for an interval, the willing of 
 other ends, and therefore being inconsistent with 
 that omnipresent activity which simultaneously works 
 out an infinity of ends. It is the same with the 
 ascription of intelligence. Not to dwell on the 
 seriality and limitation implied as before, we may 
 note that intelligence, as alone conceivable by us, 
 presupposes existence independent of it and objective 
 to it. It is carried on in terms of changes primarily 
 wrought by alien activities — the impressions gene- 
 rated by things beyond consciousness and the ideas 
 derived from such impressions. To speak of an in- 
 
THE DECAY OF BELIEF. 47 
 
 telligence which exists in the absence of all such 
 alien activities, is to use a meaningless word. If to 
 the corollary that the First Cause, considered as in- 
 telligent, must be continually affected by independent 
 objective activities, it is replied that these have 
 become such by act of creation, and were previously 
 included in the First Cause ; then the reply is, that, in 
 such case, the First Cause could, before their creation, 
 have had nothing to generate in it such changes as 
 those constituting what we call intelligence, and 
 must therefore have been unintelligent at the time 
 when intelligence was most called for. Hence it is 
 clear that the intelligence ascribed answers in no 
 respect to that which we know by the name. It is 
 intelligence out of which all the characters constitu- 
 ting it have vanished." * 
 
 On the moral side it is found impossible to re- 
 concile the attributes of mercy and benevolence in 
 the Creator with the condition of the animal world, 
 which presents an almost continued scene of carnage 
 and cruelty, and has done so from its commencement. 
 Not only are the stronger carnivora fashioned and 
 armed for the purpose of hunting and killing their 
 prey — a gazelle or antelope, in a state of nature, is 
 compelled to fly three times daily for its life — but 
 innumerable parasites exist in the bodies and at the 
 * Herbert Spencer, Nineteenth Century Eeview, 1885. 
 
48 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 expense of animals generally much their superiors. 
 " Of the animal kingdom as a whole, more than half 
 the species are parasites." If each individual species, 
 as Agassiz said, is an " embodied creative thought of 
 God," his benevolence must be acknowledged to be 
 of a sin^rular character. 
 
 The best apologists admit that a mere meta- 
 physical deity, an absolute First Cause defecated to a 
 pure transparency, is not enough. What they wish 
 to restore is a belief in the God to whom they learned 
 to pray by their mother's knee. And they are 
 abundantly justified from their point of view in such a 
 wish. The only God whom Western Europeans, with 
 a Christian ancestry of a thousand years behind 
 them, can worship, is the God of Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob ; or, rather, of St. Paul, St. Augustine, 
 St. Bernard, and of the innumerable " blessed saints," 
 canonized or not, who peopled the Ages of Faith. 
 No one wants, no one can care for, an abstract God, 
 an Unknowable, an Absolute, with whom we stand 
 in no human or intelligible relation. What pious 
 hearts wish to feel and believe is the existence, '' be- 
 hind the veil " of the visible world, of an invisible 
 Personality, friendly to man, at once a brother and 
 God. The unequalled potency of Christianity as a 
 religion of the heart, has ever consisted in the ad- 
 mirable conception of the Man God, Jesus Christ. 
 
THE DECAY OF BELIEF. 49 
 
 Even a power hostile to man, if conceived as em- 
 bodied in a person, has been felt preferable to vague, 
 passionless, unintelligent force; because a hostile 
 person could be propitiated, could be appealed to, 
 could be brought over to mercy and good-will by 
 prayer and sacrifice. That is to say, that an an- 
 thropomorphic God is the only God whom men can 
 worship, and also the God whom modern thought 
 finds it increasingly difficult to believe in. 
 
50 TEE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WHY MEN HESITATE. 
 
 The series of arguments and considerations against 
 the current theology, of which a very imperfect 
 summary was attempted in the last chapter, might 
 seem sufScient to bring about a rapid extinction of 
 the vulgar belief; and possibly that extinction is 
 not so far off as both those who wish it, and those 
 who deprecate it, may be apt to think. Still, what- 
 ever may be the case in France and Germany, 
 Christianity, if moribund, is by no means dead, in this 
 country at least: the land which has done most to 
 work out the philosophy of evolution, is perhaps still 
 the most Christian in faith and practice remaining 
 in the world. The question arises, why has ration- 
 alism, after such brilliant victories, not triumphed 
 completely ? Why is the British Sunday without a 
 parallel in Europe ? Why on that day are museums 
 and theatres still closed, and the churches and 
 
WHY MEN HESITATE. 51 
 
 chapels full ? The obvious answer that we are the 
 most conservative of races is not satisfactory. We 
 can overturn quickly enough institutions with which 
 we are really discontented. The inference is, that 
 the mass of Englishmen, in spite of the wide pre- 
 valence of agnostic views, are not yet satisfied in 
 their hearts that an improved substitute for Christi- 
 anity can be found. Intellectually, their allegiance 
 to it has been much shaken, but their feelings have 
 not been changed in a similar degree. This may be 
 explained in two ways. First, a certain slow-footed 
 sureness in the national character, which refuses to 
 move with haste in matters of paramount importance. 
 Among the peoples who embraced the Eeformation, 
 the English were the most tardy in their open and 
 general revolt from Eome. Secondly, in no country 
 has Christianity of late years been less offensive to 
 any class of dissidents. Unlimited i-eligious liberty 
 has permitted every shade of religious or irreligious 
 sentiment to assert itself after its own heart, in 
 its own fashion. Even the established church, 
 once so insolent and oppressive, has, on the whole, 
 shown a wise spirit of compromise and toleration, 
 and is, perhaps, less hated now than at any past 
 period of its history. A touch of genuine persecu- 
 tion would long ago have caused an explosion, 
 which would not only have annihilated the establish- 
 
52 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 ment, but have reacted injuriously on tlie other 
 sects. 
 
 In the absence of the stimuhis given by per- 
 secution even to unpopular opinions, agnosticism 
 has had to make its way on its own merits, so to 
 speak, on a fair field, and certainly with no favour. 
 Among certain groups, with whom intellectual culti- 
 vation is the main business of life, it has had a great 
 success, far greater than could have been expected 
 in only a recent past'; but it has not extended and 
 penetrated through the great mass of the middle and 
 upper classes. And the obvious reason is, that 
 agnosticism, so far, has not only not had feeling with 
 it, but it has had feeling against it. A belief in the 
 unknowable kindles no enthusiasm. Science wins a 
 verdict in its favour before any competent intellectual 
 tribunal ; but numbers of men, and the vast majority 
 of women, ignore the finding of the jury of experts. 
 They cling passionately to the belief in the super- 
 natural ; they listen even with patience and flattering 
 hope to the deeply suspicious and suspected professors 
 of spiritualism and thought-reading, athirst for a 
 hint, a suggestion, an evanescent fact, which would 
 lighten the gloom of the grave. Above all, they 
 will believe, in spite of science and the laws of their 
 consciousness, in a good God, who loves them and 
 cares for them and their little wants and trials, and 
 
WHY MEN HESITATE. 53 
 
 will, if they only please him, take thein at last to his 
 bosom, and " wipe the tears for ever from their 
 eyes." 
 
 " A I'enfant il faut sa mere, 
 A Tame il faut son Dieu." 
 
 In this respect, at least, Carlyle was a true son 
 of his age, and expressed one of its deepest heart- 
 pangs in that bitter cry of the Everlasting No : — " To 
 me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of 
 Volition, even of Hostility : it was one huge, dead, 
 immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead 
 indifference, to grind me limb from limb. the vast, 
 gloomy, solitary Grolgotha, and Mill of Death ! Why 
 was the Living banished thither companionless, con- 
 scious ? Why, if there is no Devil ; nay, uidess the 
 Devil is your God ? " That is the true voice of a 
 Christian man who has lost his faith. Some thou- 
 sand or fifteen hundred years of Christian training 
 has given this passionate turn to the feelings, this 
 infinite craving for sympathy with the Invisible 
 Lord ; who must exist, men fondly say, because to 
 doubt him is to despair. Again Carlyle is repre- 
 sentative : " Fore-shadows, call them rather fore- 
 splendours — of that Truth, and Beginning of Truths, 
 fell mysteriously over my soul. Sweeter than Day- 
 spring to the Shipwrecked in Nova Zembla ; ah ! like 
 the mother's voice to her little child that stra3^s 
 
54 TEE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 bewildered, weeping, in unknown tumults ; like soft 
 streamings of celestial music to my too exasperated 
 heart, came that Evangel. The Universe is not dead 
 and demoniacal, a charnel-house with spectres ; but 
 godlike, and my Father's ! " 
 
 How little the celestial music soothed the exas- 
 perated heart of the care-laden man, his tragic 
 biography is a melancholy witness. 
 
 Though perhaps the chief, the yearning for 
 divine sympathy is not the only ground of men's 
 hesitation to follow the guidance of intellect in this 
 matter. The idea still prevails that Christianity is, 
 after all, the best support of morality extant. What 
 system of ethics, it is asked, can compare with the 
 Sermon on the Mount ? There are even some who 
 hold that paradise and hell can ill be spared ; the 
 one as incentive to good, the other as a deterrent 
 from evil. How can you expect, it is inquired, self- 
 sacrifice, devotion to duty, if man is to die the death 
 of a dog, and to look for no hereafter ? It is assumed 
 as obvious to common sense that in that case we 
 shall eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Self-in- 
 dulgence the most gross, crime the most unscrupu- 
 lous, are taken for granted to be the natural and 
 spontaneous predispositions of man, if he did not 
 dread having to pay dear for them in the next 
 world. Wickedness and sin are what he naturally 
 
WHY MEN HESITATE. 55 
 
 likes, virtue and righteousness what he naturally 
 
 detests. The pleasures of lying, robbery, impurity, 
 
 and murder are beyond dispute ; they would fill the 
 
 cup of enjoyment to the brim, could one only get it 
 
 without fear of after-consequences in the lake of 
 
 brimstone. Who can be so ignorant of human 
 
 nature, nay, of his own heart, as to doubt of these 
 
 all too fascinating temptations and attractions ? As 
 
 it is, even with the fires of Tophet flaming in the 
 
 distance, men cannot resist their allurements, or 
 
 prefer 
 
 " The lilies and languors of virtue 
 To the roses and raptures of vice." 
 
 Therefore, it is only too certain that a general 
 abrogation of Christianity would be at once followed 
 by a reign of universal licence ; and, by the lower 
 order of apologists, it is not seldom broadly hinted 
 that that is the desired result. Take away the 
 mingled fear and hope of a future state of rewards 
 and punishments, and what possible check can be 
 imagined to the universal indulgence of unbridled 
 desires ? 
 
 Without staying to point out that reasoners of 
 this class, whatever their other merits, cannot be 
 complimented on their estimate of human nature, 
 and that they, at least, can with little grace reproach 
 any opponents with degrading man, we have to 
 
66 TEE SEMVICE OF MAN. 
 
 remark that the conclusions of the reason, so far as 
 they are adverse to Christianity, are here met not 
 with arguments but with threats, with appeals to the 
 passions of a very powerful kind ; and that it can 
 excite no surprise that, on the whole, passion has the 
 advantage in the conflict. We shall try to examine 
 these points with some care, and inquire (1) if 
 religion has really been in the past the solace and 
 consolation it is asserted ; (2) whether Christianity 
 is such a stay and support to morality as it is said 
 to be ; and (3) whether a general outbreak of 
 crime and debauchery may be expected as a natural 
 result of the disappearance of the established 
 theology ? 
 
( ^7 ) 
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 
 THE ALLEGED CONSOLATIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 RELIGION. 
 
 It is worthy of remark that, in proportion as Chris- 
 tianity has met with intellectual opposition, a pro- 
 gressive tendency has been shown by divines to 
 veil the harsher and more inhuman features of their 
 creed. The older race of theologians, with no fear 
 of criticism before their eyes, spoke out freely ; they 
 preached high doctrine, and found an austere pleasure 
 in dwelling on the awful judgments of God. The 
 small number of the saved, the multitude of the 
 damned, the narrowness of the way which leads to 
 life, the breadth of that which leads to destruction, 
 were topics on which they loved to dwell and the 
 congregations to ponder. To a large extent this 
 tone has been dropped, and replaced by one to which 
 it is the direct contrary. Preachers prefer to dwell 
 on the cheerful and bright side of religion — on its 
 glorious promises, on the delights of the Heavenly 
 
58 TEE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 Jerusalem. They certainly speak with much less 
 unction of the " wrath to come ; " and if they say 
 nothing to impair the belief in God's justice, which 
 leads him to punish sin with endless torments, they 
 enlarge more on his " mercy," and " the things he 
 hath prepared for them that love him." In some 
 cases, religion is chiefly recommended as offering a 
 graceful and pleasing appendix to life, as depriving 
 death of its sting and the grave of its victory, and 
 opening a prospect up to the sunlit heavens, amid 
 clouds and glory and the most sublime scenery that 
 can be imagined. 
 
 This change of tone which, as a broad matter of 
 fact, cannot, I apprehend, be denied, has followed on 
 as a wide result of the great humanitarian movement 
 which began towards the middle of the last century. 
 When legislation and manners were equally marked 
 by cruelty ; when criminals were tortured to death, 
 and prisoners kept in noisome dungeons reeking 
 with jail fever and swarming with vermin ; when 
 popular sports largely consisted in inflicting pain on 
 men and animals — it is no wonder that gloomy and 
 inhuman views of reh'gion passed without challenge, 
 or even with favour. The alteration of feeling, 
 together with its cause, were quaintly expressed by 
 an American divine, who had been reproached by 
 an English visitor for too slight an insistence on 
 
CHRISTIAN CONSOLATIONS. 59 
 
 the eternal damnation of the wicked : " Our people 
 would not stand it, sir," was the reply. But the 
 point which more immediately concerns us is whether 
 the old religion of terror, or its modified and softened 
 modern version, was, or is such a source of solace 
 and inward joy as is commonly assumed. Any one 
 who has had the privilege of knowing intimately 
 one of those rare and beautiful souls in whom a 
 single-hearted piety seems spontaneous, would be 
 slow to deny that such solace may exist. The meek 
 and chastened spirits do occasionally know that peace 
 of God which passeth all understanding. But it is 
 equally certain that that peace is subject to painful 
 interruptions, and that almost in exact proportion 
 with the growth of a tender and watchful conscience 
 does the liability to such eclipses increase. It is 
 the presumptuous, not the truly devout, who dwell 
 always in a complacent conviction of their acceptance 
 and favour with Grod. All spiritual doctors abound 
 in warnings against the two opposite dangers, on 
 the one hand, of over-confidence, self-righteousness, 
 Pharisaism; on the other, of despair and hopeless 
 despondency of ever pleasing God. The proud con- 
 tent of the Pharisee can never be put to the credit 
 of religion, as it is the temper which is most of 
 all condemned by true piety. " Humility, and 
 modesty of judgment and of hope, are very good in- 
 
60 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 struments to procure mercy and a fair reception at 
 the day of our death ; but presumption or bold opinion 
 serves no end of God or man, and is always impru- 
 dent, even fatal, and of all things in the world is its 
 own greatest enemy ; for the more any man presumes 
 the greater reason he has to fear." "" Any solace, 
 therefore, of this kind, derived from religion, must be 
 repudiated and struck off the account as illegitimate 
 and in a manner fraudulent — a deadly spiritual sin 
 seizing the reward of perfected saintliness. It is the 
 anxious and careworn penitent whom we have to con- 
 sider, those who, when they have done all that they 
 can, still regard themselves as unprofitable servants. 
 Theologians prescribe elaborate remedies against 
 despair as a " temptation and a horrid sin ; " but it 
 is a sin to which the humble, the meek, and the truly 
 devout are exposed, and not the wicked and worldly. 
 How often it has been pushed to the destruction of 
 reason, resulting in religious madness, the statistics 
 of insanity are there to show. Even when it stops 
 short of this fearful consummation, and appears 
 in the milder form of desponding anxiety, and fear 
 lest the sinner has lost favour in tlie sight of God, 
 those moments of coldness and tediousness of spirit 
 form a heavy deduction from the hours of peace and 
 happiness enjoyed between, as every book of devo- 
 * " Holy Dying," ch. v. s. 6. 
 
CHRISTIAN CONSOLATIONS. 61 
 
 tion, from the Psalms downward, abundantly shows. 
 '' My God, my God, look upon me ; why hast thou 
 forsaken me : and art so far from my health, and 
 from the words of my complaint ? my God, I cry 
 in the day-time^ but thou hearest not : and in the 
 night-season also I take no rest." 
 
 Thomas a Kempis denies that the truly contrite 
 sinner has any ground even to hope for consolation. 
 " Lord, I am not worthy of thy consolation, nor of any 
 spiritual visitation ; and therefore thou dealest justly 
 with me when thou leavest me poor and desolate. For 
 if I could shed tears as the sea, yet should I not be 
 worthy of thy consolation. Wherefore I am worthy 
 only to be scourged and punished, because I have 
 grievously and often offended thee, and in many 
 things greatly sinned. So then, on a true account, 
 I have not deserved even the smallest consolation." ^ 
 
 Cardinal Wiseman, in his preface to the English 
 translation of the works of St. John of the Cross, 
 has the following remarkable passage : " It may be 
 considered a rule in this highest spiritual life that, 
 before it is attained, there must be a period of severe 
 probation, lasting often many years, and separating 
 it from the previous state, which may have been 
 one of most exalted virtue. Probably, many whom 
 the Catholic Church honours as saints have never 
 
 * " Imitation," iii. 52. 
 
62 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 received this singular gift. But in reading the 
 biography of such as have been favoured with it, we 
 shall invariably find that the possession of it has 
 been preceded, not only by a voluntary course of 
 mortification of sense, fervent devotion, constant 
 meditation, and separation from the world ; but also 
 by a trying course of dryness, weariness of spirit, 
 insipidity of devotional duties, and, what is infinitely 
 worse, dejection, despondency, temptation to give up 
 all in disgust, and almost despair. During this 
 tremendous probation, the soul is dark, parched, and 
 way less, as earth without water, as one staggering 
 across a desert, or, to rise to a nobler illustration, 
 like Him remotely who lay on the ground on Olivet, 
 loathing the cup which He had longed for, beyond 
 the sweet chalice which He had drunk with His 
 apostles just before." A prince of the Church may, 
 no doubt, be trusted to speak correctly on this matter. 
 In order to show that these afflictions are not 
 peculiar to Catholics, a few sentences may with ad- 
 vantage be quoted from tlmt strange book of Bunyan's, 
 " Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners : " — 
 ''And now was I both a burden and terror to myself; 
 nor did I ever so know as now what it was to be 
 weary of my life and yet afraid to die. Oh, how 
 gladly now would I have been anybody but myself, 
 anything but a man, and in any condition but my 
 
CHBISTIAN CONSOLATIONS. 63 
 
 own ; for there was nothing did pass more frequently 
 over my mind than that it was impossible for me to 
 be forgiven my transgression and to be saved from 
 wrath to come. ... I found it hard work now to 
 pray to God, because despair was swallowing me 
 up. I thought I was, as with a tempest, driven away 
 from God, for always when I cried to God for mercy 
 this would come in, ' 'Tis too late ; I am lost : God 
 has let me fall, not to my correction, but to my con- 
 demnation.' About this time I did light on that 
 dreadful story of that miserable mortal, Francis Spira 
 — a book that was to my troubled spirit as salt when 
 rubbed into a fresh wound. Every sentence in that 
 book, every groan of that man, with all the rest of 
 his actions in his griefs ; as his tears, his prayers, 
 his gnashing of teeth, his wringing of hands, his 
 twisting and languishing and pining away under 
 that mighty hand of God that was upon him, were 
 as knives and daggers in my soul. Especially that 
 sentence of his was frightful to me : ' Man knows the 
 beginning of sin, but who bounds the issues thereof? ' 
 Then would the former sentence as the conclusion of 
 all fall like an hot thunderbolt against my conscience ; 
 for you know how that afterwards, when he would 
 have inherited the blessing, he was rejected, for he 
 found no place of repentance, though he sought it 
 carefully with tears. 
 
U THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 " Then should I be struck into a very great 
 trembling, insomuch that at sometimes I could for 
 whole days together feel my very body as well as 
 my mind to shake and totter under the sense of this 
 dreadful judgment of Grod that should fall on those 
 that have sinned that most fearful and unpardonable 
 sin. I felt also such a clogging and heat at my 
 stomach, by reason of this my terror, that I was 
 especially at sometimes as if my breast-bone would 
 split asunder : then I thought concerning that of 
 Judas, who, by his falling headlong, burst asunder, 
 and all his bowels gushed out." 
 
 If we admit that such periods of depression are 
 at last more than compensated by the ecstasy which 
 may follow them, yet it is obvious that the religious 
 life, in its highest forms, is very far from uniformly 
 leading through paths of pleasantness and peace, 
 as is sometimes assumed. A state bordering on 
 despair, which lasts for years, is no light matter; and 
 it would be no conclusive proof of a carnal mind to 
 hesitate before encountering such anguish, even with 
 the ultimate certainty of its transmutation into in- 
 effable joy. But, as Cardinal Wiseman tells us, there 
 is no certainty of such in this life : only in heaven 
 can the Christian hope for an adequate return for his 
 spiritual trials in this world. " If in this life only 
 we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miser- 
 
CHBISTIAN CONSOLATIONS. 65 
 
 able," said St. Paul of himself and fellow Christians ; 
 and it follows that neither in the design nor in the 
 result is Christianity adapted to confer the highest 
 earthly happiness : it is not a present solace, but the 
 promise of one hereafter. A future life, however, 
 is one of the most enormous, assumptions, without 
 proof, ever made ; and yet, on this immense postulate, 
 all the alleged consolations of religion of necessity 
 hang. By considering the case of the truly religious, 
 we have discussed the question, on the most favour- 
 able terms to Christianity, as a source of happiness. 
 The profoundly pious are at times refreshed with the 
 " beatific vision " in the course of their pilgrimage. 
 But there are numbers of the half-converted, the 
 worldly, the openly wicked, who believe enough to 
 be full of anxiety and fear, and yet never attain to 
 assurance of complete peace with God ; and perhaps 
 these constitute the majority of professing Christians. 
 If you obtain access to their inmost thoughts you 
 will rarely find that religion has been a consolation 
 to them, but a perpetual source of inward unrest and 
 alarm, though they never have had the strength 
 or the grace to turn finally to God. These pains 
 of the spirit are by no means the only trials which 
 the Christian has to encounter. The prevalence of 
 heresy and schism has ever afflicted devout men in 
 proportion to their devoutness. One of the pecu- 
 
66 TEE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 liarities of this age, indeed, is the extraordinary- 
 cessation of controversy and absence of new doctrines 
 within the Christian communion. Never, perhaps, 
 since the Council of Jerusalem, has there been so 
 marked an abeyance of serious theological dispute. 
 Middle-aged and old men, who can remember the 
 Tractarian controversy, and the Grorham controversy, 
 when the country was filled with tumult about 
 matters of faith, can appreciate the strange, great 
 calm which now prevails. Whether true believers 
 have any reason to rejoice in the change may be 
 doubted. The differences within have been followed 
 by far more serious hostilities from without, and 
 it is the deadly war with the sceptic and the infidel 
 which justly pre-occupies the earnest thoughts of 
 Christian men. This last state, which is worse than 
 the first, tends to make us forget how painful were 
 the anxieties as to the threatened prevalence of 
 '* grave error," whenever serious controversies arose ; 
 what fiery pamphlets were published by deans, arch- 
 deacons, and even by bishops ; what agitated letters 
 appeared even in the secular newspapers ; what 
 meetings were convened, and what danger to Chris- 
 tian verity was apprehended if the faithful did not 
 see to it. The world has rolled so far away from 
 this state of things, that even those who witnessed 
 it, retain but an imperfect recollection of the remote 
 
CHBISTIAN CONSOLATIONS, 67 
 
 scene. Who can easily recall the excitement con- 
 sequent on the publication of so anodyne a work 
 as Professor Jowett's edition of St. Paul's Epistles ? 
 How difficult to remember the time when the illus- 
 trious Master of Balliol was a persecuted man, 
 considered more than passing rich with forty 
 pounds a year, for teaching Greek as it had not 
 been taught by a Regius professor from time im- 
 memorial ? But faith was still lively and vigilant, 
 even in that recent past — a very pale reflection of 
 its former brightness no doubt. To realize what it 
 once was, and what mental distress it could cause, 
 we must have recourse to reading ; and, with such 
 historical imagination as we can command, revive an 
 extinct controversy ; not one of the mightier dis- 
 putes of the sixteenth century, the dust-cloud of 
 which reached up to the heavens and obscured the 
 stars ; but a relatively minor one, and only an 
 episode in that, the fate of Jacqueline Pascal. 
 
 Jacqueline, the younger sister of Blaise Pascal, 
 was remarkable for talent and beauty even in her 
 own family, in which beauty and talent were here- 
 ditary gifts. Like Pope, she lisped in numbers, 
 and composed verses which were not contemptible 
 before she had learned to read. Her grace of 
 person and manner caused her to be invited to 
 play in a comedy before Richelieu, and though 
 
68 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 only nine years of age, she so charmed the Cardinal 
 that he recalled her father, who had incurred his 
 displeasure, from exile. We have letters of hers 
 written in her twentieth year, in which she gives to 
 her sister, Madame Perier, a lucid and intelligent 
 account of a conference between her brother Blaise 
 and Descartes, when they discussed the discovery of 
 the barometer, and the phenomena of atmospheric 
 pressure. But religion already occupied all her 
 thoughts, and she resolved to become a nun of Port 
 Koyal, though, out of deference to her father's wish, 
 she refrained from taking the veil until after his 
 death. " She made all her preparations in my 
 presence," says her sister, Madame Perier, " and fixed 
 the fourth of January as the day for entering the 
 convent. On the eve of that day she begged me to 
 speak about it to my brother, to avoid taking him by 
 surprise. . . . He was much touched, and retired very 
 sad to his room without seeing my sister, who was in 
 a small apartment where she was wont to pray. She 
 did not leave it till my brother had gone, fearing 
 that the sight of her might give him pain. I gave 
 her the tender messages he had charged me with, 
 after which we all went to bed. But I could not 
 sleep. Although I approved heartily of her resolu- 
 tion, its magnitude so filled my mind that I lay awake 
 all night. At seven the next morning, as I saw that 
 
CHBISTIAN CONSOLATIONS. 69 
 
 Jacqueline did not rise, I thought that she also had 
 not slept, and I found her fast asleep. The noise I 
 made awakened her, and she asked me the time. I 
 told her, and inquired how she felt, and if she had 
 slept well. She replied she was well and had had a 
 good night. Then she arose, dressed herself, and went 
 away ; doing this, as all things, with a tranquillity 
 and composure of soul which cannot be conceived. 
 We took no farewell of each other from fear of breaking 
 down, and I turned away from her path when I saw 
 her ready to go out. In this way she left the world ; 
 it was the fourth of January, of the year 1652, she 
 being twenty-six years and three months old." 
 
 Sister Jacqueline, of Saint Euphemia Pascal, was 
 for nine years a nun at Port Eoyal, and became sub- 
 prioress and mistress of the Novices. In the latter 
 character, the duty of teaching young children to 
 read devolved upon her, and she introduced into the 
 convent the new system of giving merely the phonetic 
 value of the letters and not calling them by mis- 
 leading names, which was the invention of her brother 
 Blaise, and obtained afterwards great renown in the 
 " Grammaire Generale" of Port Royal. But the 
 pious Jansenist foundation was already doomed. 
 The Jesuits had not yet avenged the Provincial 
 Letters. Strong with the support of the pope and 
 the king, they produced a formulary, the signature 
 
70 THE SERVICE OF MAN, 
 
 of which was compulsory on all ecclesiastics. It 
 referred to the eternal question of the Five Proposi- 
 tions, and declared that they were in the book Augus- 
 tinus of Bishop Jansenius, and were contrary to 
 the faith. Much subtlety was employed to find a 
 means of signing it in a non-natural sense, and the 
 chiefs of the Jansenist party, to escape destruction, 
 visibly wavered. But Jacqueline, like her brother 
 Blaise, was made of sterner stuff, and resisted all 
 compromise with passionate zeal. At last the great 
 authority of Arnauld and Nicole prevailed upon their 
 followers to accept the bitter cup prepared for them 
 by their enemies. Pascal swooned away when this 
 decision was taken. Jacqueline yielded at last to 
 the pressure of her superiors, and signed the 
 formulary, but with such grief and anguish of soul 
 that she predicted she would die of it ; as indeed she 
 did in less than six months. 
 
 The af&iction of the just and the prosperity of 
 the wicked has always been a serious difficulty to 
 pious persons who combined reflection with devotion. 
 '' Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, 
 are mighty in power ? Their seed is established in 
 their sight with them, and their offspring before 
 their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, neither 
 is the rod of God upon them." * And the prophet 
 
 * Job xxi. 7-9. 
 
CEBISTIAN CONSOLATIONS. 71 
 
 goes on to say in his anguish — " God hath dehvered 
 me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands 
 of the wicked. . . . He breaketh me with breach upon 
 breach, he runneth upon me hke a giant. . . . My face 
 is foul with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow 
 of death ; not for any injustice in mine hands : also 
 my prayer is pure." * Probably few religious persons 
 have escaped the bitterness of feeling that they were 
 unjustly chastened, that the rod of Grod was upon them 
 and not upon the wicked. They no doubt repelled 
 the thought with an ''Apage Satana 1 " regarding it as 
 a snare of the tempter. But because the thought was 
 banished from the mind, was the load removed from 
 the heart ? This is a trial which theologians must 
 admit is all their own — a clear addition to the weary 
 weight " of all this unintelligible world." Agnostics 
 at least, when smitten by the sharp arrows of fate, 
 by disease, poverty, bereavement, do not complicate 
 their misery by anxious misgivings and painful 
 wonder why they are thus treated by the God of 
 their salvation. The pitiless, brazen heavens over- 
 arch them and believers alike ; they bear their trials, 
 or their hearts break, according to their strength. 
 But one pang is spared them, the mystery of God's 
 wrath that he should visit them so sorely. The 
 exceeding bitter cry of the dying Jesus, ^' My God, 
 * Job xvi. 11, 14-17. 
 
72 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 my Grod, why hast thou forsaken me ? " never comes 
 
 to their lips, for it never rises in their hearts. " Jesus, 
 
 when He had cried again with a loud voice, yielded 
 
 up the ghost." A fitting yet terrible end of the 
 
 Passion ; for what more awful thought could come to 
 
 a devout believer in Grod than that he was forsaken 
 
 of God ? It may well have been this, even more 
 
 than the nails through his feet and hands, and the 
 
 spear in his side, which broke the heart of the Son of 
 
 man, and made Him yield up the ghost. Christ's 
 
 followers have discovered consolations and viatica in 
 
 the hour of death which were denied Him. But the 
 
 most truly humble and devout at times find their 
 
 chief anguish there where they have most looked for 
 
 relief. A more pious. God-fearing woman than the 
 
 charming French poetess, Madame Desbordes 
 
 Yalmore, could not easily be found. But her life 
 
 was one long scene of bitter trial, poverty and 
 
 bereavement. At last the cup runs over, and this 
 
 plaintive cry escapes her : '' Yes, Camille, it is very 
 
 poignant ; here I am alone, without brother or sisters, 
 
 alone and severed from all the dear souls I have so 
 
 loved, without the consolation of surviving them and 
 
 being able to accomplish their desire, which was 
 
 ever to do some good. . . . What can one say in the 
 
 presence of these decrees of Providence ? If one 
 
 has deserved them, the case is more sad. I often 
 
CHBISTIAN CONSOLATIONS. 73 
 
 search my heart and try to find out what may have 
 caused me to be so heavily smitten by our dear 
 Creator ; for it is impossible for his justice to punish 
 thus without a cause, and that thought very often 
 suffices to overwhelm me." * 
 
 The above extracts will probably be considered 
 sufficient to show that it is by no means so plain as 
 it is often assumed to be, that the loss of the Christian 
 religion would deprive men of an immense con- 
 solation and an abiding source of inward happiness 
 amid the trials of life. There is a serious set-off on 
 the other side, and this was admitted with no diffi- 
 culty in the days when the faith was menaced by no 
 danger. " Do not seek," says Jeremy Taylor, '' for 
 deliciousness and sensible sweetness in the actions of 
 religion, but only regard the duty and the conscience 
 of it. For although, in the beginning of religion 
 most frequently, and at other times irregularly, Grod 
 complies with our infirmity, and encourages our 
 duty with little overflowings of spiritual joy and 
 sensible pleasure and delicacies in prayer, so as we 
 seem to feel some little nearer of heaven, and great 
 refreshment from the spirit of consolation ; yet this is 
 not always safe for us to have, neither safe for us to 
 expect and look for ; and when we do, it is apt to 
 make us cool in our inquiries and waitings upon 
 * Sainte-Beuve, " Nouveaux Lundis," vol. xii. 
 
74 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 Christ when we want them ; it is running after him, 
 not for the miracles, but for the loaves ; not for the 
 wonderful things of God and the desire of pleasing 
 him, but for the pleasure of pleasing ourselves." * 
 Nowadays, the effort made is in the opposite direc- 
 tion, and to dwell on the "sensible pleasures" and 
 " delicacies in prayer," in order to enhance the con- 
 trast between the bright glory and prospects afforded 
 by the religious life, and the gloomy and hopeless 
 future which are supposed to afflict the infidel. The 
 object now is to make religion attractive, and it has 
 been pursued with very marked success. Let any one 
 compare the taste and beauty of a choral service in a 
 modern church or cathedral, with the harsh and 
 grating ugliness which made " going to church " 
 in the days of our youth an ascetic exercise. The 
 coarse, untutored voice of the village shoemaker or 
 tailor, who acted as clerk ; the hideous boxes called 
 pews ; the dolorous and droning music ; the whole 
 framed in a choice specimen of Georgian architecture, 
 barbaric with white-wash and clumsy ornament, 
 will still return to the memory in a dreamy mood. 
 These things have goue, and are replaced by what 
 is very often a real artistic success ; good music 
 and singing, the dim religious light of stained 
 windows, flowers, mosaics, or paintings, in churches 
 * " Holy Living," cap. iv. § 7. 
 
CHRISTIAN CONSOLATIONS. 75 
 
 often not untouched by the spirit of mediaeval 
 beauty. This great reform in the ordering of divine 
 service has passed beyond the limits of the Establish- 
 ment, and penetrated even among the dissenters, 
 whose chapels no longer display the resolute de- 
 formity of a past age. The outward change has 
 been preceded and accompanied by a deeper inward 
 change ; the doctrine of terror has been laid aside, 
 and replaced by a doctrine of mildness and hope, 
 so much so that few realize the gloomy horrors of 
 the old creed. The younger generation has hardly 
 an idea of the dismal spiritual pit in which their 
 fathers lived. In the eighteenth century the case 
 was still worse. The chill shade of relig:ious dread 
 spread beyond the circle of the professedly devout, 
 and darkened life and literature. Od ly profane 
 revellers passed out of it, and their example was not 
 edifying. In what a cavern of black thoughts did 
 Samuel Johnson pass his life, and what a fearful 
 '' Horror of the Last " gat hold of him in his latter 
 days. Edward Young, who inveighed against wealth 
 and honours in order to obtain them, adjusted with 
 skill and care the strains of his venal muse to the 
 popular taste, and sang that 
 
 '* A God all mercy is a God unjust." 
 Few books in the last century were more popular 
 with serious persons than the "Meditations" of James 
 
76 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 Hervey, which ran through numerous editions when 
 it first appeared, and was still a favourite with pious 
 folk in the earlier portion of the present century. 
 Such pompous and tawdry fustian one would hope 
 could hardly have been accepted for eloquence, had 
 it not been supposed to convey vital religious truth. 
 As a poetaster of the day expressed it : — 
 
 " In these loved scenes what rapturous graces shine, 
 Live in each leaf, and breathe in every line ; 
 What sacred beauties beam throughout the whole, 
 To charm the sense and steal upon the soul." 
 
 Soul and sense are charmed in this wise : — 
 
 " The wicked seem to lie here, like malefactors in 
 a deep and strong dungeon; reserved against the 
 day of trial. 'Their departure was without peace.' 
 Clouds of horror sat lowering upon their closing 
 eyelids ; most sadly foreboding the blackness of dark- 
 ness for ever. When the last sickness seized their 
 frame, and the inevitable change advanced ; when 
 they saw the fatal arrow fitting to the strings ; saw 
 the deadly archer, aiming at their life ; and felt the 
 envenomed shaft fastened in their vitals — good Grod ! 
 what fearfulness came upon them ! What horrible 
 dread overwhelmed them ! How did they stand 
 shuddering upon the tremendous precipice, exces- 
 sively afraid to die, yet utterly unable to live. — 
 ! what pale reviews, what startling prospects. 
 
CHRISTIAN CONSOLATIONS. 77 
 
 coDspire to augment their sorrows ! They look 
 backward ; and behold ! a most melancholy scene ! 
 Sins unrepented of, mercy slighted, and the day of 
 grace ending. They look forward, and nothing 
 presents itself but the righteous Judge, the dreadful 
 tribunal, and a most solemn reckoning. They roll 
 around their affrighted eyes on attending friends, 
 and, if accomplices in debauchery, it sharpens their 
 anguish to consider this further aggravation of their 
 guilt, That they have not sinned alone, but drawn 
 others into the snare. If religious acquaintance, it 
 strikes a fresh gash into their hearts, to think of never 
 seeing them any more, but only at an unapproachable 
 distance, separated by the unpassable gulph." * 
 
 Will any one presume to say that for one death- 
 bed which has been smoothed by religion, a thousand 
 have not been turned into beds of torture by such 
 teaching as this ? 
 
 But we must go back to the palmy days of Cal- 
 vinism, to Scotland in the seventeenth century, to 
 realize fully the revolting devil-worship which once 
 passed under the name of Christianity, and, what is 
 more, really was Christianity, gospel-truth, sup- 
 ported by texts, at every point taken from scripture. 
 No class of literature lies buried deeper in oblivion 
 than old-fashioned theological literature. Its brilliant 
 * " Meditations among the Tombs," vol. i. p. 94. 
 
78 TEE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 but transitory life is followed by a perennial death, 
 from which there is no resurrection. Dead divinity 
 is the- deadest thing that ever lived. Only now and 
 then a literary historian recalls one of these vanished 
 spectres ; the mass of believers are content to ignore 
 their spiritual ancestry. Take the case of the 
 Rev. Thomas Boston, a minister of the Church of 
 Scotland, who lived in the latter end of the seven- 
 teenth and beginning of the eighteenth century. 
 Boston was one of the most shining lights of the 
 Scottish Church, and his most famous book, " Human 
 Nature in its Fourfold State," was for a long period 
 almost placed on a level with Holy Scripture. 
 It is certainly a very wonderful book, written with 
 great power, and eloquence of a kind which might 
 well impose upon readers who accepted the writer's 
 premises. It seems written in a white heat of sus- 
 tained passion, in which the devil-worshipper (for 
 Boston is nothing else), persuaded that he has con- 
 ciliated his devil for his own purposes, deals damna- 
 tion on all poor wretches not so favoured, with an 
 exultant and fiery joy which is really astounding 
 to witness. The man would have delighted, one 
 would say, to be a stoker in the infernal regions. 
 Out of a volume of five hundred pages I select a 
 page or two which are nothing but average speci- 
 mens of a tone of thought which I apprehend would 
 
CEBISTIAN CONSOLATIONS. 79 
 
 be generally repudiated by theologians nowadays ; 
 so far have we declined from Christian verity.* 
 
 " Consider what a God he is with whom thou 
 hast to do, and whose wrath thou art liable unto. 
 He is the God of infinite knowledge and wisdom ; so 
 that none of thy sins, however secret, can be hid 
 from him. He infallibly finds out all means, where- 
 by wrath may be executed, towards the satisfying of 
 justice. He is of infinite power, and so can do what 
 he will against the sinner. How heavy must the 
 strokes of wrath be, which are laid on by an omnipotent 
 hand ! Infinite power can make the sinner prisoner, 
 even when he is in his greatest rage against Heaven. 
 It can bring again the several parcels of dust out 
 of the grave, put them together again, re-unite the 
 soul and body, summon them before the tribunal, 
 hurry them away to the pit, and hold them up with 
 the one hand, through eternity, while they are lashed 
 with the other. He is infinitely just, and therefore 
 must punish ; it were acting contrary to his nature to 
 suffer the sinner to escape wrath. Hence the execut- 
 ing of this wrath is pleasing to him ; for though the 
 Lord hath no delight in the death of a sinner, as it 
 is the destruction of his own creature, yet he de- 
 lights in it, as it is the execution of justice. ' Upon 
 
 * Boston's book first appeared in 1720. It has been repub- 
 lished by the Eeligious Tract Society. 
 
80 TEE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 the wicked lie shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, 
 and an horrible tempest.' Mark the reason : ' For 
 the righteous Lord loveth righteousness ' (Ps. xi. 
 6, 7) ; ^ I will cause my fury to rest upon them, 
 and I will be comforted' (Ezek. v. 13); 'I also 
 will laugh at your calamity' (Prov. i. 26). Finally, 
 he lives for ever, to pursue the quarrel. Let us 
 therefore conclude, ^ It is a fearful thing to fall into 
 the hands of the living God. ' " * 
 
 Again, in another place of the same chapter, 
 Boston says, ''There is wrath upon his soul. He 
 can have no communion with God ; he is ' foolish, 
 and shall not stand in God's sight' (Ps. v. 5). . . . 
 There is war between Heaven and them (natural 
 men), and so all commerce is cut off. . . . God casts 
 a portion of worldly goods to them, more or less as 
 a bone is thrown to a dog; but, alas! his wrath 
 against them appears, in that they get no grace. . . . 
 They lie open to fearful additional ^Dlagues on their 
 souls, even in this life. Sometimes they meet with 
 deadening strokes, silent blows from the hand of an 
 angry God ; arrows of wrath, that enter into their 
 souls without noise. ' Make the heart of this people 
 fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, 
 lest they see with their eyes' (Isa. vi. 10). God 
 
 * T. Boston, " Human Kature in its Fourfold State. The 
 Misery of Man's Natural State," Motive 4. 
 
CHBISTIA N CONSOLA TIONS. 81 
 
 strives with them for a while, and convictions enter 
 their consciences ; but they rebel against the light ; 
 and, by a secret judgment, they receive a blow on the 
 head ; so that from that time they do, as it were, live 
 and rot above ground. Their hearts are deadened, 
 their affections withered, their consciences stupefied, 
 and their whole souls blasted ; ' cast forth as a branch 
 and withered ' (John xv. 6). They are plagued with 
 judicial blindness. They shut their eyes against the 
 light ; and they are given over to the devil, the god 
 of this world, to be blinded more (2 Cor. iv. 4). 
 Yea, ' Grod sends them strong delusions, that they 
 should believe a lie' (2 Thess. ii. 11). Even conscience, 
 like a false light on the shore, leads them upon rocks, 
 by which they are broken in pieces. They harden 
 themselves against God, and he leaves them to Satan 
 and their own hearts, whereby they are hardened 
 more and more. They are often ' given up unto vile 
 affections' (Rom. i. 26). . . . Sometimes they meet 
 with sharp fiery strokes, whereby their souls become 
 like mount Sinai, where nothing is seen but fire 
 and smoke, nothing heard but the thunder of God's 
 wrath, and the voice of the trumpet of a broken law, 
 waxing louder and louder, which makes them, like 
 Pashur (Jer. xx. 4), ' a terror to themselves.' God 
 takes the filthy garments of their sins, which they 
 were wont to sleep in securely, overlays them with 
 
 G 
 
82 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 brimstone, and sets them on fire about their ears, so 
 they have a hell within them." 
 
 It may be doubted if, among all the aberrations 
 of the human mind, anything so horrible as this was 
 ever attained elsewhere ; and this was the creed of 
 the poor Scots for more than two hundred years. 
 In reading the works of such a man as Boston, one 
 is tempted to admit one of his favourite dogmas, 
 that the heart of man is deceitful above all things 
 and desperately wicked. He evidently gloats and 
 revels in the ideas of wrath, brimstone, fiery strokes, 
 stunning blows, and all the apparatus of his infernal 
 torture-chamber. There is a sort of concupiscence of 
 lust in his passion for cruelty ; it tickles his prurient 
 appetite, and reaches to a depravity almost insane. If 
 he stood alone, the case would be merely one of patho- 
 logy ; but he was a representative man, and spoke in 
 the names of millions in this country and abroad. The 
 power of the human mind to throw up and nourish 
 poisonous growths of this kind is a very sad and 
 regrettable one. It has stained with blood many 
 pages of history, and is not, one is sorry to say, an 
 abomination confined to Christians. The inhuman 
 fanatics of the French Revolution, Marat, Herbert, 
 Fouquier-Tinville and Robespierre, are inferior 
 specimens of the same breed. But their lust of 
 cruelty, hideous as it was, had not the infinite scope 
 
CEBISTIAN CONSOLATIONS. 83 
 
 and transcendental character of Boston's ; yet tlae 
 Reign of Terror in France, which lasted but a few 
 months, is still pointed to by Christians as a supreme 
 instance of the wickedness into which unbelievers 
 inevitably fall. The reign of terror in Scotland, 
 which lasted two centuries, is quietly dropped out 
 of memory, or certainly is never consigned to the 
 everlasting infamy which is supposed to have over- 
 taken the atheists. On the whole this is an advan- 
 tage, and the less we deal in retrospective anathema 
 the better ; but then all parties should benefit by the 
 amnesty. Even Carlyle, who ever remained a sort 
 of distorted Calvinist, could see that nothing was 
 gained by '^ shrieking " over the horrors of the 
 French Revolution ; and agnostics would do well 
 to abstain from hard words about Calvinists. De- 
 terminists and evolutionists must hold that all 
 phenomena of the human mind, whether welcome 
 or otherwise, had a very good reason for their 
 existence, in that they were caused like any other 
 phenomena. Calvinistic or Terrorist principles can- 
 not be too forcibly condemned, discouraged, or coun- 
 teracted. Like frightful forms of disease they show 
 what terrible evils human nature is exposed to. But 
 we do not properly blame disease, if we are wise ; 
 we strive to combat it and prevent its recurring 
 again. The poor victims of disease, whether mental 
 
84 TEE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 or physical, rather deserve our pity than our scorn. 
 They contracted it because they were exposed to its 
 noxious germs. The antecedent evolution of Scot- 
 land and France had produced the moral miasma 
 and the minds ready to receive it, which led to the 
 breaking out of those two dreadful pestilences, Scotch 
 Calvinism and French Terrorism. While they pre- 
 vailed in their greatest virulence, the minds of men 
 were deformed and made hideous, as their bodies 
 might be by small-pox or elephantiasis. 
 
 In this slight retrospect over the darker side of 
 theology, I should misrepresent my meaning if I 
 seemed to blame the men who held opinions, according 
 to my view, very pernicious. Our war should be not 
 w^ith men but with dogmas, principles. The dogmas, 
 under the conditions, were inevitable, just as the 
 Plague of London, under the then conditions of over- 
 crowding and neglect of cleanliness, was inevitable. 
 But we cannot blame the men who suffered from 
 the Plague ; we cannot even blame their ignorance 
 of the laws of health, because they could not then 
 have known better. We now do know better, and 
 we keep down the Plague. In the same way, Cal- 
 vinism was a creed held by men who could not know 
 better. The antecedent history of Scottish thought 
 had led to a superstitious adoration of a fragment of old 
 oriental literature, the Bible, which was supposed to 
 
CEBISTIAN CONSOLATIONS. 85 
 
 contain the authentic will and testament of the Creator 
 of the universe. This supposed divine word had been, 
 so it was thought, somewhat kept in the background 
 and slighted by the powerful Catholic Church, which 
 had reigned supreme for centuries, and pressed on 
 men's minds with no light yoke. Every word of 
 this old oriental book, very interesting and valu- 
 able in its own way, as a specimen and picture of 
 primitive culture, was imagined to be in the hand- 
 writing of the Most High. Every bloody deed 
 recorded, every fantastic and horrible thought enun- 
 ciated, such as must appear in such a document or 
 collection of documents compiled in such an age, 
 was regarded as approved and authenticated by 
 Almighty Wisdom. When these and similar facts 
 are considered, it does not seem inexplicable that 
 the Scotch and other Calvinists thought and acted 
 as they did. They came to horrible results and 
 conclusions, but these were logical conclusions from 
 the premises. Similarly Rousseau and Robespierre 
 were the most logical of men. The fault lies in the 
 premises, in the one case, that the Bible is the word 
 of God ; in the other, that the Contrat Social is the 
 utterance of pure reason. 
 
86 TEE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 CHAPTER y. 
 
 ON CHRISTIANITY AS A GUIDE TO CONDUCT. 
 
 The next point to be considered is whether the 
 Christian religion is really so strong and efficient a 
 support of morality as it is common to suppose. An 
 affirmative answer is generally taken for granted, as 
 if the case were too obvious to admit of doubt or 
 even of argument. The purity and elevation of the 
 ethics of the gospel are indeed often asserted to be a 
 sufficient proof of its divine origin. Those theo- 
 logians who wince somewhat under the scientific 
 argument against miracles, recover all their self- 
 possession when they dwell on the ethical side of their 
 creed. If the casting out of devils from demoniacs 
 is admitted to present difficulties, on the ground that 
 it was and still is a common Eastern superstition 
 to regard lunatics as possessed by evil spirits, a 
 superstition which the evangelists shared with their 
 countrymen and contemporaries, it is maintained 
 
CERISTIANITY AND MORALS, 87 
 
 that the Sermon on the Mount is its own evidence of 
 divine inspiration. " Never man spake like this 
 man." The spiritual depth and sublimity of Christ's 
 teaching must, it is argued, be superhuman, from the 
 fact that to this day it has never been surpassed 
 or approached, and never will be in the most remote 
 future. It is agreed that all the great changes and 
 improvements that have been made in public and 
 private morals, between pagan and modern times, 
 must be set down to the vivifying effects of Chris- 
 tianity, which has raised woman, struck the fetters 
 from the limbs of the slave, moralized war, conquest 
 and commerce, in short, done every good thing that 
 has been done in the last sixteen or eighteen centuries. 
 This is that moral evidence for Christianity which is 
 far more convincing than the evidence derived from 
 works of power. Not that the latter is to be slighted 
 or ignored ; but one speaks to the heart, and must 
 abide valid and persuasive through all time ; the 
 other addresses the head, and perhaps may not always 
 be equally cogent. 
 
 Now it will not be necessary for the purpose of 
 this inquiry to dispute the claims thus advanced. 
 Many of them indeed are obviously without founda- 
 tion, as the raising of the status of women, and the 
 liberation of the slave. But, for the sake of argu- 
 ment, and to avoid complicated side issues, let them 
 
88 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 be granted ; and even then we maintain that it can 
 be proved that Christianity is not favourable to 
 morality in the way and degree commonly supposed. 
 And by morality is meant right conduct here on 
 earth ; those outward acts and inward sentiments, 
 which, by the suppression of the selfish passions, 
 conduce most to the public and private well-being 
 of the race. 
 
 Paley, with that clear, but at times somewhat 
 cynical, common sense which marked his acute 
 intellect, is willing to admit that " the teaching of 
 morality was not the primary design " of the gospel. 
 " If I were to describe," ie goes on to say, " in a 
 very few words, the scope of Christianity, as a 
 revelation, I should say, that it was to influence 
 the conduct of human life, by establishing the proof 
 of a future state of reward and punishment, — ' to 
 bring life and immortality to light.' The direct 
 object, therefore, of the design is, to supply motives, 
 and not rules ; sanctions, and not precepts. And 
 these were what mankind stood most in need of. 
 The members of civilized society can, in all ordi- 
 nary cases, judge tolerably well how they ought 
 to act : but without a future state, or, which is the 
 same thing, without credited evidence of that state, 
 they want a motive to their duty ; they want, at least, 
 strength of motive, sufficient to bear up against the 
 
CHBISTIANITY AND MOBALS. 89 
 
 force of passion, and the temptation of present 
 advantage. Their rules want authority. The most 
 important service that can be rendered to human 
 life, and that, consequently, which, one might expect 
 beforehand would be the great end and office of 
 a revelation from God, is to convey to the world 
 authorized assurances of the reality of a future 
 existence. And although doing this, or by the 
 ministry of the same person by whom this is done, 
 moral precepts or examples, or illustrations of moral 
 precepts, may be occasionally given, and be highly 
 valuable, yet still they do not form the original 
 purpose of the mission." * In other words, the 
 purpose of the mission was to make men fit for a 
 future state of reward, and to supply sanctions 
 which would deter them from conduct which would 
 make them fit for a future state of punishment. 
 Salvation in the next world is the object of the 
 scheme, not morality in this ; and although the two 
 objects may occasionally coincide, it is only a casual 
 coincidence. Such difference of ends must lead to 
 a difference of means. The road which is intended 
 to lead to happiness in heaven, must diverge from 
 the road which is intended to lead to happiness 
 limited to this earth. And if anybody says that he 
 does not see the necessity of such divergence, that 
 * " Evidences of Christianity," Part ii. cap. 2. 
 
90 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 happiness in heaven may well be only a prolonga- 
 tion of happiness on earth, he may be asked to 
 reflect on the inevitable dwarfing and subordination 
 of this life, a transitory space of a few years, to a 
 prospect of eternal life in heaven. Clearly, if this life 
 is only a short, probationary trial-scene, preparatory 
 to entrance upon eternity ; if, moreover, conduct 
 here is supposed to influence or decide our status 
 there, happiness in this life is not a thing to be 
 considered by prudent and thoughtful persons ; 
 and the conduct which conduces to happiness, 
 either in ourselves or others, here, is evidently a 
 trivial matter compared to the conduct which con- 
 duces to happiness hereafter. An eternal future 
 must, in minds capable of even remotely realizing 
 such an idea, overwhelm and crush into insignificance 
 a minute, temporal present. Even a long temporal 
 future suffices to do this. The inconveniences, for 
 instance, of a sea-voyage which is going to land 
 us in an abiding home in the Colonies or India, are 
 borne with comparative equanimity or indifference, 
 on the ground that they will soon be over, that 
 it does not very much matter, as the real object 
 is not to live happily at sea, but to prepare for 
 happiness and prosperity in the distant land for 
 which we are bound A colonist does not prepare 
 the outfit of a seaman, does not look upon the 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MORALS. 91 
 
 ship which carries him as his permanent dwelling- 
 place. He no doubt secures what comfort he can 
 at sea ; but, if he is a wise man, his meditations are 
 directed to his future life on land beyond the 
 ocean. It would be very questionable prudence in 
 him to learn seamanship or navigation, to study 
 charts, and make himself master of the position of 
 shoals and rocks. He would say that such matters 
 concerned persons who intended to pass their 
 working lives on the sea, whereas he had wholly 
 different objects in view ; the soil, the climate, 
 and the crops proper to the country he intended 
 to inhabit, were the things that concerned him. 
 The parallel only fails in the inadequacy of the 
 analogy between the longest life in a colony, and 
 eternal life in heaven. If life is only a short 
 voyage, destined to terminate in paradise or hell, 
 what thoughtful person could care how he passed 
 it? If, moreover, he were told on good authority, 
 or such as he considered transcendently good, as being 
 divine, that happiness during this life's voyage was 
 more than likely to risk eternal happiness hereafter, 
 his indifference to happiness here, would probably 
 become enmity to it. He would lend but a care- 
 less ear to those who urged him to study the con- 
 ditions and follow the conduct, often painful and 
 irksome, which conduced most to earthly happi- 
 
92 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 ness. He would say, as good Christians Lave 
 always said, '' That is not the one thing needful. 
 What do I care for happiness in this vale of tears ? 
 My thoughts are naturally engrossed with the 
 means of securing eternal happiness in the world 
 which is to come." And the reply would be dic- 
 tated by prudence and common sense. How it 
 happens that, as a matter of fact, so few persons, 
 who yet believe, or say they do, in the future 
 state of reward and punishment referred to by 
 Paley, by the admission of all preachers, take 
 this serious view of their position and duties, is 
 a matter of interesting inquiry, but one which 
 does not concern us at this moment. 
 
 If these arguments are sound, and I scarcely 
 apprehend that they will be disputed, it follows that 
 on a priori grounds we should be justified in con- 
 cluding that morality would be waived as an end, in 
 comparison with salvation, among the most devout 
 Christians. And this is what we find does happen. 
 It happens also in all churches and sects, sliowing 
 that it is not an accidental but an essential character- 
 istic of the Christian scheme. But this is a very 
 inadequate statement of the case as it really stands. 
 It is not going too far to say, that the doctrine of 
 all Christians in the final result is antinomian and 
 positively immoral. They do not only not support 
 
CHBISTIANIT7 AND MOBALS. 93 
 
 and strengthen morality as they claim to do ; they 
 deliberately reject and scorn it. They place on a 
 level the most virtuous and the most flagitious 
 conduct, carried on throughout a long lifetime ; and 
 this certainly must be held to be putting as great an 
 affront on morality as it is possible to inflict. 
 
 As these assertions may be regarded as savouring 
 of paradox, I proceed not to give more or less plausible 
 reasons for accepting them as true, but to prove them, 
 and that by the most authoritative utterances of 
 representative Christian doctors. 
 
 It is admitted by all Christians that man is saved 
 only through the merits and passion of Christ. But 
 difficulties arise concerning the true doctrine of 
 justification. The Protestants, speaking generally, 
 hold that man is justified by faith alone. The 
 Catholics hold that co-operation with grace is needed 
 on the part of man, to ensure salvation. It will not 
 be necessary to enter the labyrinth of subtle dis- 
 putations which have surrounded this question from 
 the days of the Reformation. To the impartial 
 spectator it would appear that the Catholic view is 
 the more rational, and the Protestant the more 
 scriptural. But this domestic quarrel among theo- 
 logians does not concern us at this moment, inasmuch 
 as all Christian doctors agree that true repentance 
 and turning to God, however these may be brought 
 
94 TEE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 about, are rewarded by salvation. Past sins, nay, a 
 whole life of sin, if repented of before death, are a far 
 less obstacle to entrance into paradise, than the most 
 exemplary and virtuous life, if unaccompanied by 
 true faith in Christ. And this, surely, is to discoun- 
 tenance morality in the most direct way, making it 
 the '' filthy rags " of which the Calvinists have so 
 much to say. That this is the genuine doctrine of 
 all Christians I proceed to show by a few quotations. 
 The Established Church may well come first with 
 the eighteenth article of her creed. " They also are 
 to be had accursed that presume to say, That every 
 man shall be saved by the Law or Sect which he 
 professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life 
 according to that Law, and the light of Nature. For 
 holy Scripture doth set out unto us only the Name 
 of Jesus Christ, whereby men must be saved." 
 
 True faith and repentance at the last moment, even 
 in articulo mortis^ are sufficient to blot out a life of 
 sin. " There never was a doubt in the Church," says 
 Dr. Pusey, " that all who die in a state of grace, 
 although one minute before they were not in a state 
 of grace, are saved. . . . We know not what God 
 may do in one agony of loving penitence for one who 
 accepts his last grace in that almost sacrament of 
 death."* Thus penitence is everything and morality 
 * " What is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment," p. 115. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MOEALS. 95 
 
 nothing. Years of sin which may, whicli are sure 
 to have caused widespread moral evils, to have 
 been a source of corruption and leading astray to the 
 weak and the ignorant, are all obliterated by one 
 moment of loving penitence ; that is, they are obliter- 
 ated as regards their effects on the sinner's status in 
 the next world. He is washed in the blood of the 
 Lamb, and goes to glory. But the partners and 
 companions of his sins, whom he probably seduced, 
 the women he ruined, the youths his example 
 depraved, they survive and will be punished, unless 
 indeed they follow his example to the letter, and close 
 a life of wickedness by an act of timely repentance ; 
 and in that case, like him, they will be as well off 
 as if they had led the most virtuous of lives. Can 
 any one presume to say that such doctrine encourages 
 morality ? What could discourage it more ? 
 
 The Article just quoted, and the words of Dr. 
 Pusey, may be allowed to stand warrant for the 
 English Church in this particular. Now, let us turn 
 to the Catholic Church. And we will take as her 
 representative an illustrious Saint and Doctor, whose 
 works have received the approbation of his superiors, 
 St. Alphonso de' Liguori. In the first chapter of a 
 book called "The Glories ofMary,"itis written: "We 
 read in the life of Sister Catherine, of St. Augustine, 
 that in the place where she resided, there was a 
 
96 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 woman, of the name of Mary, who in her youth was 
 a sinner, and in her old age continued so obstinate 
 in wickedness, that she was driven out of the city, 
 and reduced to live in a secluded cave ; there she 
 died, half consumed by disease, and without the sacra- 
 ments, and was consequently interred in a field like 
 a beast. Sister Catherine, who always recommended 
 the souls of those who departed from this world, with 
 great fervour, to Grod, on hearing the unfortunate 
 end of this poor old woman, never thought of pray- 
 ing for her, and she looked upon her, as did every 
 one else, as irrevocably lost. One day, four years 
 afterwards, a suffering soul appeared to her, and ex- 
 claimed, ' How unfortunate is my lot, sister Catherine ! 
 Thou recommendest the souls of all those that die, to 
 Grod ; on my soul alone thou hast not compassion ? ' 
 ' And who art thou ? ' asked the servant of God. ' I 
 am,' she replied, ' that poor Mary, who died in the 
 cave.' * And art thou saved ? ' said Catherine. * Yes,' 
 she answered, ' by the mercy of the Blessed Virgin 
 Mary.' ' And how ? ' ' When I saw myself at the 
 point of death, loaded with sins, and abandoned by 
 all, I had recourse to the Mother of God, saying, 
 " Lady, thou art the refuge of abandoned creatures : 
 behold me at this moment, abandoned by all ; thou art 
 my only hope; thou alone canst help me; have pity on 
 me." The Blessed Virgin obtained me the grace to 
 
CHBISTIANITY AND MORALS. 97 
 
 make an act of contrition. I died, and am saved ; and 
 besides this, she, my Queen, obtained that my purga- 
 tory should be shortened, by enduring, in intensity, 
 that which otherwise would have lasted for many 
 years. I now only want a few masses to be entirely 
 delivered ; I beg thee to get them said, and on my 
 part, I promise always to pray for thee to Grod and to 
 Mary.' Sister Catherine immediately had the masses 
 said ; and after a few days that soul again appeared 
 to her, shining like the sun, and said, ' I thank thee, 
 Catherine : behold, I go to Paradise, to sing the 
 mercies of my God, and to pray for thee.' " * 
 
 Nothing can be more plain. A life from youth 
 to old age continued in " obstinate wickedness," is 
 cancelled by an act of contrition, and, after a short 
 purgatorial purification, the sinner appears '^shining 
 like the sun." Could a life of blameless self-denial 
 and virtue have led to a better result ? The book 
 I quote is full of such stories. Here is another : — 
 
 " Belluacensis relates, that in an English city, 
 about the year 1430, there was a young nobleman, 
 called Ernest, who, having distributed the whole of 
 his patrimony to the poor, became a monk, and in 
 
 * " The Glories of Mary," translated from the Italian of St. 
 Alphonso de' Liguori, founder of the Congregation of the Most 
 Holy Redeemer. By a father of the same congregation. Page 19. 
 London,. 1852. 
 
98 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 the monastery to wliich he retired led so perfect a 
 life, that he was highly esteemed by his superiors, 
 and this esteem was greatly increased by their know- 
 ledge of liis tender devotion to the most Blessed 
 Virgin. It happened that the city was attacked by 
 the plague^ and the inhabitants had recourse to the 
 monastery, in order that the religious might help 
 them by their prayers. The abbot commanded 
 Ernest to go and pray before the altar of Mary, 
 forbidding him to leave it until he should have re- 
 ceived an answer from our Blessed Lady. The 
 young man, after remaining for three days in prayer, 
 received an answer from Mary to the effect, that 
 certain prayers were to be said : this was done, and 
 the plague ceased. After a time Ernest cooled in 
 his devotion towards Mary : the devil attacked him 
 with many temptations, and particularly with those 
 against purity, and also to leave his monastery. 
 From not having recommended himself to Mary, he 
 unfortunately yielded to the temptation, and resolved 
 to escape by climbing over a wall. Passing before 
 an image of Mary which was in the corridor, the 
 Mother of God addressed him, saying, ' My son, why 
 dost thou leave me?' Ernest, thunderstruck and 
 repentant, sunk to the ground, and replied, 'But, 
 Lady, dost thou not see that I can no longer resist ; 
 why dost thou not assist me?' "^And why hast 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MORALS. 99 
 
 thou not invoked me ? ' said our Blessed Lady. ' If 
 thou hadst recommended thyself to me, thou wouldst 
 not have fallen so low ; but from henceforth do so 
 and fear nothing.' Ernest returned to his cell, his 
 temptations recommenced, again he neglected to re- 
 commend himself to Mary, and at last fled from his 
 monastery. He then gave himself up to a most 
 wicked life, fell from one sin into another, and at 
 length became an assassin ; for, having hired an 
 inn, during the night he used to murder the poor 
 travellers who slept there. Amongst others, he one 
 night killed the cousin of the governor of the place. 
 For this crime he was tried and sentenced to death. 
 It so happened that before he was made a prisoner, 
 and whilst evidence was being collected, a young 
 nobleman arrived at the inn. The wicked Ernest, 
 as usual, determined to murder him^ and entered the 
 room at night for this purpose ; but lo ! instead of 
 finding the young man, he beheld a crucifix on the 
 bed, all covered with wounds. The image cast a look 
 of compassion on him, and exclaimed, ' Ungrateful 
 wretch ! is it not enough that I have died once for 
 thee ! Wilt thou again take my life ? Be it so. 
 Raise thy hand, strike ! ' Filled with confusion, 
 poor Ernest began to weep, and sobbing, said, ' Be- 
 hold me, Lord ; since thou shewest me such mercy, 
 I will return to thee.' Immediately he left the inn, 
 
100 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 to return to his monastery, there to do penance for 
 his crimes ; but on the road he was taken by the 
 ministers of justice, was led before the judge, and 
 acknowledged all the murders he had committed. 
 He was sentenced to be hung, without having the 
 time given him to go to confession. He recom- 
 mended himself to Mary, and was thrown from the 
 ladder ; but the Blessed Virgin preserved his life, 
 and she herself loosened the rope, and then ad- 
 dressed him, saying, ' Gro, return to thy monastery, 
 do penance, and when thou seest a paper in my 
 hands, announcing the pardon of thy sins, prepare 
 for death.' Ernest returned, related all to his abbot, 
 and did great penance. After many years, he saw 
 the paper in the hands of Mary, which announced 
 his pardon ; he immediately prepared for death, and 
 in a most holy manner breathed forth his soul." * 
 
 It is quite clear that an ardent zeal to save souls 
 is compatible with great indifference as to bodies. 
 One would like to know what became of tlie poor 
 travellers whom the ruffian Ernest murdered in their 
 sleep. Was time granted them to make an act of 
 contrition ? But it is absurd to take such a narra- 
 tive au serieux. What is serious is the unmistakable 
 character of the teaching implied. And can any- 
 thing be imagined more cynically immoral ? Here 
 * " The Glories of Mary/' p. 48. 
 
CHBISTIANITY AND MORALS. 101 
 
 is a man represented as falling into the most abomin- 
 able anti-social crime which it is possible to commit. 
 The wretch deserved a hundred deaths for his das- 
 tardly midnight murders ; conduct more injurious 
 than his to society simply cannot be conceived. Yet 
 he is not only saved from the gallows by the Mother 
 of God herself, but his life is prolonged in order 
 that he may have time to repent and to get his 
 precious soul taken to heaven, a place which, by the 
 way, if it contain many such characters as he, 
 would offer very unpleasant company to moral men. 
 
 And let no one reject with impatience the above 
 specimens of Christian teaching on the ground that 
 they are not Christian at all^ but abject popish super- 
 stitions and inventions. Our next witness to prove 
 that in this matter all Christians agree in vilipending 
 a moral life and conduct, and placing it below a life 
 of crime, provided the latter be terminated by an act 
 of repentance and turning to God in time to cheat 
 the devil, shall be the Eev. C. H. Spurgeon, who 
 will not be suspected of any leaning to Eomish 
 error. This is what he says : — 
 
 " Eegeneration is an instantaneous work, and 
 justification an instantaneous gift. Man fell in a 
 moment .... Shall the devil destroy us in a moment, 
 and Jesus be unable to save us in a moment ! "* Again, 
 
 * " Jesus at Betliesda; " a sermon delivered by C. II. Spur- 
 geon, April 7, 1867. 
 
102 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 " My dear hearer, whoever thou raayst be, whatever 
 thy past life may have been, if thou wilt trust Christ, 
 thou shalt be saved from all thy sin in a moment ; 
 the whole of thy past life shall be blotted out ; there 
 shall not remain in God's book so much as a single 
 charge against thy soul, for Christ, who died for thee, 
 shall take thy guilt away, and leave thee without a 
 blot before the face of God." Again, "Ah! my 
 friend, let me assure you . . . that there is hope for 
 the vilest through the precious blood of Jesus. No 
 man can have gone too far for the long arm of 
 Christ to reach him. Christ delights to save the 
 biggest sinners. ... ye despairing sinners, there 
 is no room for despair this side the gates of hell. If 
 you have gone through the foulest kennels of 
 iniquity, no stain can stand out against the power 
 of the cleansing blood. . . . You great sinners shall 
 have no back seats in heaven ! There shall be no 
 outer court for you. You great sinners shall have 
 as much love as the best, as much joy as the brightest 
 of saints. You shall be near to Christ ; you sliall 
 sit with him upon his throne ; you shall wear the 
 crown ; your fingers shall touch the golden harps ; 
 you shall rejoice with the joy which is unspeakable 
 and full of glory .... Thirty years of sin shall be 
 forgiven, and it shall not take thirty minutes to do 
 it in. Fifty, sixty, seventy years of iniquity shall 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MOBALS. 103 
 
 all, disappear as the morning's hoar-frost disappears 
 before the sun." * 
 
 Two things are to be remarked in connection 
 with these quotations : first, that we have here a 
 singular agreement on one particular point, among 
 divines who usually are in complete antagonism. 
 Dr. Pusey, St. Alfonso de' Liguori, and Mr. Spurgeon, 
 may be regarded as representatives of opinions as 
 widely divergent as could well be found among men 
 calling themselves Christians. Yet they agree in the 
 opinion, that no amount or duration of sin can be 
 accounted as a bar to salvation, provided a suitable 
 act of repentance or contrition has been performed 
 on " this side of the gates of hell." They differ at 
 once, if you ask for details as to how the act of con- 
 trition or repentance is to be carried out. Mr. 
 Spurgeon bids the sinner turn to Jesus. St. Alfonso 
 tells him to have recourse to the Mother of God ; the 
 mere words of which precept the great Baptist 
 minister would probably regard as savouring of 
 blasphemy. But the result is the same. A long 
 life devoted to sin can be blotted out in a moment by 
 a change in the sinner's mind. Secondly, this result 
 has exclusive reference to the next world. By the 
 hypothesis in each case, the life in this world is sup- 
 
 * " A Sermon to Open Neglecters and Nominal Followers of 
 Eeligion ; " March 24, 1867. 
 
104 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 posed to be as good as over ; and it Las been a life of 
 iniquity, says Mr. Spurgeon, of obstinacy in wicked- 
 ness, says St. Alfonso. But paradise is attained, 
 nevertheless. Now, can this doctrine be regarded as 
 one leading to morality in this world ? Must it not, 
 rather, have a directly opposite effect ? As many as 
 believe it, and how many millions have, are invited, 
 nay, entreated to believe also that it makes absolutely 
 no difference as to their future welfare whether 
 they lead virtuous lives here below, or the most pro- 
 fligate ; provided they repent a moment before death. 
 Preachers may insist as they will on the dangers 
 of deferring repentance to the last, on the awful 
 results which will follow if the sinner is suddenly 
 cut off, without having had time to make his peace 
 with God. One part of their teaching destroys the 
 effect of the other part. They admit, they proclaim 
 that repentance, however late, will take the sinner to 
 heaven. Human nature being as it is, we cannot 
 wonder that the result in this world is varied, and 
 on the whole very unsatisfactory. The minute 
 minority of naturally pious and tender minds embrace 
 the cross with passion and ardent love, not unmixed 
 with holy fear ; they realize fully that they stand in 
 jeopardy every hour ; they work out their salvation 
 in fear and trembling, and not unfrequently are ex- 
 posed to a strain too severe for their faculties, and 
 
CEBISTIANITY AND MORALS. 105 
 
 they become, like Pascal, morbidly anxious about 
 their future state, or, like Cowper, they pass the 
 limits of sanity, and fall for a longer or shorter time 
 into utter despair. But these are the small minority 
 of dmes (T elite. The bulk of mankind are common- 
 place all round, in their virtues and vices equally ; 
 and they languidly believe and languidly practice 
 their belief; but so imperfectly and perfunctorily, 
 that it is the universal complaint and lamentation of 
 preachers of all denominations, that the world lieth 
 in wickedness and is dead in its sins. Nothing 
 could be more frank and candid than Mr. Spurgeon's 
 language to his congregation on this head : "You sin, 
 and yet you come to a place of worship, and tremble 
 under the word ; you transgress, and you weep 
 and transgress again. . . . You are as religious as 
 the seats you sit upon, but no more ; and you are as 
 likely to get to heaven as those seats are, but not one 
 whit more, for you are dead in sin, and death cannot 
 enter heaven." * Bourdaloue, the greatest preacher 
 in the classic age of French pulpit eloquence, said : 
 " Nous sommes Chretiens, et nous vivons en paiens ; 
 nous avons une foi de sj)eculation, et dans la pratique 
 toute notre conduite n'est qu'infidelite. Nous croyons 
 d'une fa^on, et nous agissons de I'autre .... Avoir la 
 foi, et vivre en inlideles, voila ce qui fait le prodige. 
 * " A Sermon to Open Neglecters," etc. 
 
106 TRE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 . . . Ah! Chretiens, faisons cesser ce prodige,accordons 
 nous avec nous-memes ; accordons nos moeurs avec 
 notre foi ; autrement qne n'avons-nous pas a craindre 
 de cette foi profanee, de cette foi scandalisee^ de cette 
 foi deshonoree ? " * 
 
 Again, he says : " N'entend on pas dire sans cesse 
 que tout est renverse dans le monde, que le dere- 
 glement y est general ; qu'il n'y a ni age, ni sexe, 
 ni etat, qui en soit exempt ; qu'on ne trouve presque 
 nnlle part ni religion, ni crainte de Dieu, ni probite, 
 ni droiture, ni bonne foi, ni justice, ni charite, ni 
 honnetete, ni pudeur ; que ce n'est partout, ou 
 presque partout, que libertinage, que dissolution, que 
 mensonges, que tromperies, qu'envie de s'aggrandir 
 et de dominer, qu'avarice, qu'usure, que concussions, 
 que medisances, qu'un monstrueux assemblage de 
 toutes les iniquiies."f 
 
 " The title of Christian," says Wilberforce, " im- 
 plies no more than a sort of formal general assent 
 to Christianity in the gross, and a degree of 
 morality in practice, little, if at all, superior to 
 that for which we look in a good Deist, Mussulman, 
 or Hindoo." J 
 
 It seems difficult to reconcile these candid ad- 
 
 * *' Sermon sur la Religion Chretienne." 
 t " Opuscules : Petit Numbre des Elus." 
 I " Practical View," cap. iv. , 
 
CHBISTIANITY AND MORALS. 107 
 
 im'ssions by eminent authorities with the current 
 claim made for Christianity as a supremely moraliz- 
 ing influence. But we can hardly be wrong in 
 tracing the general failure of preachers to arouse 
 their flocks to the fact, already dwelt on, that they 
 undo with one hand what they do with the other ; 
 that, anxious above all things to save souls in the 
 next world, and making that infinitely the most 
 important object, they one and all present the 
 doctrine of Justification, though varying much from 
 one another in minor points, in a form which 
 necessarily depreciates the value of morality in this 
 world. With one voice they tell men that all they 
 do is evil and wicked, and that there is no health 
 in them. They dwell with exaggerated language 
 on the sinfulness of sin, and the extent and vile- 
 ness of human corruption. But, except in a few 
 special cases of unusually sensitive natures, they 
 do not awaken the prick of conscience ; men 
 feeling in a dumb, inarticulate way, that their 
 tone is unreal and conventional^ or even merely 
 professional. Even when they do alarm the con- 
 science, they as promptly send it to sleep again by 
 their doctrine that a moment's repentance can put 
 everything straight, and that one plunge in the 
 blood of the Lamb will remove all the guilty 
 stains from a sinner's soul. Mr. Spiirgeon, in 
 
108 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 the sermon from which I have already quoted 
 some passages, avows this very openly. "It is 
 the easiest thing," he says, "in the world to im- 
 press some of you by a sermon, but I fear me you 
 never will go beyond transient impressions. Like 
 the water when lashed, the wound soon heals. 
 You know, and you know, and you know, and 
 you feel, and feel, and feel again, and yet your 
 sins, your self-righteousness, your carelessness and 
 wilful wickedness cause you, after having said, 
 ' I go, sir,' to forget the promise and lie unto 
 Grod." But the eloquent preacher had apparently 
 forgotten what he had himself said on the previous 
 page, or at least he had not sufticiently weighed 
 the natural effect of his words. "Thirty years of 
 sin shall be forgiven, and it shall not take thirty 
 minutes to do it in." It is no wonder if men and 
 women, with hearts and minds made dull and 
 heavy with toil and trouble, should remember more 
 easily and pleasantly the consolation conveyed in 
 the last remark than the objurgation of the previous 
 one ; and should dwell more on the efficacy of 
 repentance when once set about, than on its im- 
 mediate need and urgency. Consequently, we find 
 that it is the most scrupulous and tender consciences 
 which have most difficulty in embracing the great 
 Protestant dogma of justification by faith alone. 
 
CEBISTIANITY AND MOBALS. 109 
 
 '^ The essence of Luther's gospel is this : that a 
 person so affected, that is, with scruples of con- 
 science, has only one great struggle to go through 
 in order that he may attain the indefectible promise 
 of eternal salvation, and that the struggle is not 
 against those sins, but against his own conscience, 
 which would fain impede his full assurance of 
 immediate pardon." * The records of execution 
 show, on the other hand, that malefactors of the 
 deepest dye have often little or no difficulty in 
 turning to Jesus when circumstances compel it. 
 This is acknowledged by the Christian Observe?' : f 
 *' Thousands of deeply penitent and humble-minded 
 persons have lived many years, and perhaps died in 
 a state of deep depression, because they could not 
 attain to that confident assurance that their sins 
 were pardoned, w^hich they were told was essential 
 to salvation ; while murderers have gone to the 
 gibbet, exulting in strains of rapture, as though 
 they were being carried to the stake as faithful 
 martyrs of Jesus Christ." 
 
 But the most momentous authority for holding 
 a life of wickedness on earth immaterial, and no 
 impediment to the promptest ascent into heaven, 
 
 * Ward, " Ideal of a Christian Church : " second edition, 
 p. 171. 
 
 t Jan. 18-14, p. 16. 
 
no THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 provided an act of contrition lias been performed in 
 time, has yet to be cited. It is that of Christ him- 
 self as he hung upon the cross. " And one of the 
 malefactors which were hanged, railed on him, saying. 
 If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other 
 answering, rebuked him, saying. Dost not thou fear 
 God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation ? 
 And we indeed justly ; for we receive the due reward 
 of our deeds : but this man hath done nothing amiss. 
 And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when 
 thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said 
 unto him, Yerily I say unto thee. To-day shalt thou 
 be with me in paradise." * 
 
 This is almost exactly parallel with the case 
 cited by St. Alphonso of the woman " who was a 
 sinner." Though it is not mentioned in the gospel, 
 we may suppose and grant that the penitent thief 
 made a due act of contrition ; that Christ was able to 
 see to the bottom of his heart, and that he truly 
 repented him of his sins. Does that in the least 
 remove the slight which Christ passed upon morality 
 by taking him to paradise in spite of his past evil 
 life ? What did his repentance do to cancel that ? 
 The evil that he had done in the world was still left 
 working behind him ; his bad example; the insecurity 
 to person and property involved in his robber's career; 
 * Luke xxiii. 39-43. 
 
CHBISTIANITY AND MORALS. Ill 
 
 the pain and suffering he had caused in any case ; all 
 his immorality, in short, was left to work on, and 
 contributed, no doubt, its share to that frightful 
 depravity of the Jewish nation which made them at 
 last insupportable to the Eoman world. Yet, was he 
 punished or made to do penance, to make amends 
 to the society he had injured ? The human law did 
 indeed give him his deserts, by hanging him as a 
 thief and probably a murderer, and so far morality 
 was avenged. A powerful deterrent was applied, not 
 unlikely to prevent others from doing likewise. But 
 Christ undid all the effect of that salutary severity 
 in a moment, when he promised him immediate 
 salvation, and for what ? For deferential speech 
 to himself, which the hypothesis that Christ saw 
 to the bottom of his heart will not allow us to reo-ard 
 as a piece of artful time-serving, suggested as politic 
 in his desperate circumstances ; but which, without 
 that hypothesis, would undoubtedly be open to such 
 a suspicion. Thus preachers have the very highest 
 authority for asserting that turning to God, even at 
 the last moment, will save a soul in the next world, 
 the admitted object of Christianity ; and agnostics 
 have equally a right to declare that Christianity 
 thereby shows itself hostile to morality in this world. 
 The penitent thief's life, we may assume, was a 
 pernicious one as far as this world was concerned. 
 
112 THE SEBVICE OF 3IAN. 
 
 What good could his repentance do to any denizen 
 of this earth ? If it be said that it might lead others 
 to repent after a life of crime, the answer is, that in 
 proportion as they resembled him they also would be 
 qualifying for heaven, and not for well-doing in this 
 world. Man may injure his fellows in their most 
 vital interests ; he may rob, murder, " go through the 
 foulest kennels of iniquity ; " there shall not remain in 
 Grod's book a single charge against his soul, pro- 
 vided he looks to the bleeding Lamb. On the other 
 hand, the best of good works are of no account, are 
 worse than " filthy rags," and no doubt have the 
 nature of sin " unless they be consummated in real 
 vital communion with Christ." It would not be easy 
 to conceive a doctrine more injurious to morality than 
 this Christian scheme, on which the morality of the 
 world, as on the surest foundation, is supposed to rest. 
 Indeed this inherent opposition between morality 
 and the gospel has been held by large sections of 
 Christians as an article of faith. " Luther," says 
 Moehler, " not only taught that Christ had not come 
 to impart to men a purer ethical code, but even 
 maintained that he had come to abolish the moral law, 
 to liberate true believers from its curse both for the 
 past and for the future, and in that way to make 
 them free. The evangelical liberty which Luther 
 propounded, announces that even the decalogue shall 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND MORALS. 113 
 
 not be brought into account against the believer, nor 
 its violation be allowed to disturb the conscience of 
 the Christian, for he is exalted above it and its con- 
 tents." Moehler goes on to say that the reformers 
 refer to Christ not as the strengtliener and sanctifier, 
 but exclusively as the forgiver of sins; " they regarded 
 the mediator only in his capacity of pardoner." 
 The great Catholic divine is at pains to show the 
 superior moral tone of his communion in this re- 
 spect. But the extracts just cited from St. Alphonso 
 de' Liguori prove that the Catholic Church has no 
 advantage over the Protestant on this point. The 
 Virgin takes the place of Christ as a free pardoner 
 of the grossest sins, in consideration of an act of 
 contrition and genuine repentance. 
 
 To the above considerations, it may be added 
 that the doctrine of grace is j^resented in a way 
 to become a standing rebuke and depreciator of 
 morality. '' Humility," says Canon Liddon, " is 
 the condition and guarantee of grace ; and, as St. 
 Augustine says, there is no reason, apart from the 
 grace of Grod, why the highest saints should not 
 be the worst of criminals." * In that statement I 
 suj)pose all theologians would concur. But it is 
 easy to see how fatal such a doctrine is to a 
 systematic culture of morality. If, at any moment, 
 
 * "Oxford Sermons;" VI. 
 
 I 
 
114 TEE 8EBV1CE OF MAN. 
 
 the best men may become tbe worst, and vice versA, as 
 they may be touched by grace or not, it is obvious 
 that morality is a figment of the fancy, having no 
 substantial existence or foundation in the nature 
 of things. The difference is not between good and 
 bad men, whose goodness or badness depends on 
 their moral endowment plus the training they re- 
 ceive, but between the recipients of grace and the 
 non-recipients ; and these are interchangeable ac- 
 cording to the good pleasure of God. We can 
 never tell, therefore, whether the greatest sinner 
 now, may not become the greatest saint before' his 
 end ; nor whether the best of men may not 
 suddenly become prodigies of wickedness. This 
 unknown factor of Grace vitiates all calculation. No 
 doctrine more inconsistent with the facts of human 
 nature can well be conceived^ and therefore no 
 more misleading guide of conduct could be adopted. 
 Imagine such a theory applied to agriculture, and 
 that there was no reason, apart from the grace of 
 God, why the most fertile soil should not become the 
 most barren, or the reverse. If such were the case, 
 what inducement would a farmer have to choose 
 good land, and cultivate it with care ? The worst 
 land might serve him as well as the best, and 
 bring him overflowing crops ; and that with no 
 effort on his part, for " God giveth the increase." 
 
CEBISTIANITY AND MORALS, 115 
 
 He has only to wait or pray for fertilizing grace. 
 Or apply it to the raising of horses or cattle. The 
 grazier or breeder cannot trust to the qualities of 
 his stock. His thoroughbreds may suddenly become 
 valueless animals, which no one would take at a 
 gift; while his neighbour, who had nothing but 
 screws and low-breeds, has all at once a mag- 
 nificent collection of superb cattle. Men differ at 
 least as much as animals in their inherited qualities ; 
 and to say that a man naturally courageous, high- 
 minded, benevolent, and just, can become vile 
 and cruel, cowardly or criminal, is not a whit less 
 irrational than to say that a thoroughbred Arab 
 can become a cart-horse. The faulty theory leads, 
 as a matter of course, to disastrous practice. It is 
 no exaggeration to say that the vigilant, pains- 
 taking cultivation of the moral side of man's nature 
 has never been taken in hand with earnest persistence, 
 because theology has always been celebrating the 
 power of grace, to the depreciation of ethics. A 
 miracle of grace, which removes the heart of stone 
 and replaces it by a heart of flesh, might always 
 be expected, or at least hoped for. Punctual per- 
 formance of the moral law, social duty to the com- 
 munity and individuals, could well be postponed 
 without harm, in view of the celestial trans- 
 figuration which converts a sinner from a bond- 
 
116 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 slave of Satan into a saint of God. If this conversion 
 takes place in the last hour or minute of life, we have 
 seen that by the unanimous consent of theologians of 
 all schools, it is enough ; the object has been attained ; 
 a soul has been saved ; the sinner's past wicked- 
 ness has been blotted out, as regards its effects ujjoii 
 him. But its effects on society are not considered, 
 and the result must be, and is, solely injurious to 
 morality so far as it relates to conduct in this 
 world. That depends on the performance of social 
 duty ; salvation depends on repentance and the 
 subjective attitude of the soul towards God. And 
 this repentance is powerful to cancel any number 
 of previous breaches of the moral law. In other 
 words, morality is not the one thing needful, but 
 repentance is. 
 
( 117 ) 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 MORALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 
 
 In the previous chapter we saw on the best evidence, 
 that of eminent doctors in various denominations, 
 that true Christian doctrine postponed morality to 
 repentance ; and that salvation in the next world 
 depended on other things than good conduct in this. 
 The obvious inference was, that under such a scheme 
 morality must necessarily be more or less slighted 
 and undervalued, and that the alleged support afforded 
 to ethics by the Christian religion must be either 
 denied or considerably diminished. It will be per- 
 haps useful to confirm this abstract deduction, by 
 examples taken from the past of the actual working 
 of Christian doctrine. If only a tithe of the compli- 
 ments which it is usual to pay that doctrine be true, 
 it is clear that the more we retrograde into the 
 ages where it held undisputed sway over men's 
 minds, the more moral we ought to find the public 
 
118 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 and private life of the world. Wickedness and 
 crime are assumed to be the natural result of neglected 
 religion. No other cause is usually thought of in 
 explaining the atrocities of the French Ee volution. 
 Here we see, it is remarked, the proper effect of 
 atheism, and forsaking of the divine light of the 
 gospel. Again, the corruption and immorality of 
 the lower Roman Empire show what becomes of man 
 when left to himself. The line of argument is too 
 familiar to need further repetition of it. Now, we 
 may profitably consult history as to the truth of these 
 assumptions. Do we find, as a matter of fact, that the 
 Ages of Faith were distinguished by a high moral- 
 ity? Were they superior in this resjDect to the 
 present age, which is nearly on all hands acknow- 
 ledged not to be an age of Faith ? The answer must 
 be in the negative. Taking them broadly, the Ages 
 of Faith were emphatically ages of crime, of gross 
 and scandalous wickedness, of cruelty, and, in a word, 
 of immorality. And it is noteworthy that in pro- 
 portion as we recede backward from the present age, 
 and return into the Ages of Faith, we find that the 
 crime and the sin become denser and blacker. The 
 temperature of faith rises steadily as we penetrate 
 into the past, almost with the regularity which marks 
 the rise of the physical temperature of the air as we 
 descend into a deep mine ; but a neglect and defiance 
 
MOBALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 119 
 
 of morality are found to ascend in a corresponding 
 ratio. This, it must be owned, is an anomalous 
 result, if morality be indeed so dependent on Chris- 
 tianity as is commonly supposed. When all men 
 believed and doubted not, we should have found, 
 according to the Christian hypothesis, a godly world ; 
 devout people living always with the great Day of 
 Judgment before their eyes, crushing down the lusts 
 of the flesh, in view of the tremendous penalties pre- 
 pared for those who indulged them. But we find 
 nothing of the kind. On the contrary, we find a 
 state of things to which our imaginations are scarcely 
 able to do justice in these comparatively tame and 
 moral days. A progressive improvement has taken 
 place in men's conduct, both public and private, but 
 it has coincided not with an increase, but with a 
 decay, of faith. This, beyond any question, is the 
 most moral age which the world has seen ; and it is 
 as certainly the least believing age since Christianity 
 became the religion of the West. The inference is 
 plain, that Christianity has not been so favourable 
 to morality as is usually assumed. 
 
 Let us turn back, and take a brief excursion 
 through the ages behind us. 
 
 The present century need not detain us long. 
 Most persons would admit that the state of morals 
 when George the Fourth was king left much to be 
 
120 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 desired. The scandals of the court were bad enongli ; 
 but no court, however bad, can compromise a nation. 
 The mass of the population was coarse, insolent, and 
 cruel, and permitted things which would not be 
 tolerated for a moment now. That there were ex- 
 ceptions, not only of individuals, but of whole though 
 small classes, no one would deny. The Clapham 
 Sect was a conspicuous example in a corrupt world ; 
 and many of the dissenters w^ere truly pious, god- 
 fearing people, who had turned away from the pre- 
 vailing grossness. But these were only fractions of 
 the nation. The general tone was low, violent, and 
 brutal. The drinking, gambling, prize-fighting, 
 cock-fighting, bull-baiting England of the Eegency, 
 is hardly to be realized in these decorous days ; 
 though old men " still creep among us," who can 
 partly resuscitate it for us, if carefully questioned. 
 Let one of those venerable seniors be induced to 
 describe the condition of London in his youth, and 
 no hearer will have any doubt as to the extraordinary 
 change for the better which has taken place in the 
 last two generations. 
 
 From this century we pass into history ; and as 
 the object is to ascertain the moral tone of previous 
 ages, let us quote the following passages from a 
 writer, who was selected by common acclamation as 
 " the great moralist," and was one of the most brave. 
 
MOBALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 121 
 
 noble, and conscientious men who have ever lived, 
 Samuel Johnson. 
 
 '' He talked of the heinousness of the crime of 
 adultery, by which the peace of families was destroyed. 
 He said, ' Confusion of progeny constitutes the essence 
 of the crime ; and, therefore a woman who breaks 
 her marriage vows is much more criminal than a 
 man who does it. A man, to be sure, is criminal in 
 the sight of God ; but he does not do his wife a very 
 material injury, if he does not insult her ; if, for 
 instance, from mere wantonness of appetite, he steals 
 privately to her chambermaid. Sir, a wife ought not 
 greatly to resent this. I would not receive home a 
 daughter who had run away from her husband on 
 that account." * This was Johnson's settled opinion, 
 as, eleven years after, we find Boswell recording 
 another conversation, in which the same thought 
 recurs. '' I mentioned to him a dispute between a 
 friend of mine and his lady, concerning conjugal 
 infidelity, which my friend had maintained was by 
 no means so bad in the husband as in the wife. 
 Johnson. Your friend was in the right, Sir. Be- 
 tween a man and his Maker it is a different question : 
 but between a man and his wife, a husband's infidelity 
 is nothing. They are connected by children, by for- 
 tune, by serious considerations of community. Wise 
 * Croker's "Boswell," chap. 21. 
 
122 THE SEBVIGE OF MAN. 
 
 married women don't trouble themselves about in- 
 fidelity in their husbands." * 
 
 Now, this is a very good instance of the im- 
 provement which has taken place in the course of 
 the last hundred years. That very offence for 
 which Johnson said he would not receive his 
 daughter home, if it were committed by a husband, 
 is now so universally admitted to be an injury of 
 the most serious kind, that the statutory law of 
 the land does precisely what Johnson said he 
 would not do, give protection to the injured wife. 
 
 As we go further back in the century, we make 
 a visible approach to the state of nature. Cowardly 
 murders and brutal outrages are perpetrated almost 
 with impunity and very little loss of credit by 
 people of the highest rank. The exploits of the 
 Mohocks must have rendered the streets of London 
 in the reign of Queen Anne considerably more 
 dangerous and disgusting than any Californian 
 diggings frequented by the rabble and outlaws of 
 Europe and America in the early days of the gold 
 discoveries. A contemporary says, '^ There are a 
 certain set of persons, amongst whom there are some 
 of too great a character to be named in these 
 barbarous and ridiculous encounters, did they not 
 expose themselves by such mean and ridiculous 
 * Ibid., chap. 69. 
 
MOBALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 123 
 
 exploits ; " and their portrait is thus drawn by the 
 Spectator: — " A set of men who have erected them- 
 selves into a nocturnal fraternity, under the title 
 of The Mohock Club, a name borrowed, it seems, 
 from a sort of cannibals in India, who subsist by 
 plundering and devouring all the nations about 
 them. The president is styled Emperor of the 
 Mohocks, and his arms are a Turkish crescent. 
 Agreeable to their name, the avowed design of 
 their institution is mischief, and upon this founda- 
 tion all their rules and orders are founded. An 
 outrageous ambition of doing all possible hurt to 
 their fellow-creatures is the great cement of their 
 assembly, and the only qualification required in the 
 members. In order to exert this principle in its 
 full strength and perfection, they take care to 
 drink themselves to a pitch that is beyond the 
 possibility of attending to any motive of reason 
 and humanity, then make a general sally, and 
 attack all that are so unfortunate as to walk the 
 streets through which they patrol. Some are 
 knocked down, others stabbed, others cut and car- 
 bonadoed. . . . The particular talents by which these 
 misanthropes are distinguished from one another, 
 consist in various kinds of barbarities which they 
 execute upon their prisoners. Some are celebrated 
 for a happy dexterity in tipping the lion upon 
 
124 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 them, which is performed by squeezing the nose 
 flat on the face, and boring out the eyes with 
 their fingers. Others are called the dancing- 
 masters, and teach their scholars to cut capers by 
 running swords through their legs. ... A third 
 are the tumblers, whose office is to set women on 
 their heads, and commit certain indecencies, or rather, 
 barbarities, on the limbs which they expose." * Slit- 
 ting noses, cutting people down the back, and 
 putting women in tubs which were rolled down 
 Snow Hill, were among their diversions. 
 
 The manners and customs of persons of quality 
 were those of semi-savages. Thackeray, who knew 
 the period well, does not go too far when he says, 
 "You could no more suffer in a British drawing- 
 room, under the reign of Queen Victoria, a fine 
 gentleman or a fine lady of Queen Anne's time, 
 or hear what they heard and said, than you would 
 receive an ancient Briton." This is the manner in 
 which '' gentlemen " quarrelled in the good old 
 times : Sir Cholmley Dering, knight of the shire 
 for Kent, and Mr. Thornhill fought a duel, in 
 which the former was killed. This caused a judicial 
 inquiry, and " the first Evidences were such as 
 related to the quarrel begun at the Toy at Hampton 
 Court, April 27, 1711, who deposed that at an 
 * Spectator, No. 324. 
 
MOBALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 125 
 
 assembly of about eighteen gentlemen met there at 
 that time, a difference happened between the 
 deceased and the prisoner. Upon their struggling 
 and contending with each other^ the wainscot of 
 the room broke in, and Mr. Thornhill falHng down, 
 had some teeth struck out by Sir Cholmley Bering's 
 stamping upon him." * Naturally a duel followed. 
 " They fought," says Swift, " at sword and pistol 
 this morning in Tuttlefields, their pistols so near 
 that the muzzles touched. Thornhill discharged 
 first, and Bering, having received the shot, dis- 
 charged his pistol as he was falling, so it went 
 into the air." Thornhill was convicted for man- 
 slaughter, but he was apparently soon abroad 
 again, as he was murdered by two men, who 
 stabbed him on horseback, five months afterwards, 
 at Turnham Green. 
 
 The well-known case of the murder of Will 
 Mountford, the actor, by Lord Mohun and Captain 
 Hill, in a ruffianly ambuscade, would seem well 
 suited to show the profligate temper and degraded 
 public opinion in the reign of William the Third. 
 The incident is thus related by Thackeray : — 
 
 " My lord's friend, a Captain Hill, smitten with 
 the charms of the beautiful Mrs. Bracegirdle, and 
 anxious to marry her at all hazards, determined to 
 * Ashton, " Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne," ch. 38. 
 
126 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 carry her off, and for this purpose hired a hackney 
 coach with six horses and half a dozen soldiers to 
 aid him in the storm. The coach with a pair of 
 horses (the four leaders being in waiting elsewhere) 
 took its station opposite my Lord Craven's house in 
 Drury Lane, by which door Mrs. Bracegirdle was 
 to pass on her way from the theatre. As she passed, 
 in company of her mamma and a friend Mr. Page, 
 the captain seized her by the hand^ the soldiers 
 hustled Mr. Page and attacked him sword in hand, 
 and Captain Hill and his noble friend endeavoured 
 to force Madam Bracegirdle into the coach. Mr. 
 Page called for help ; the population of Drury Lane 
 rose ; it was impossible to effect the capture, and, 
 bidding the soldiers go about their business, and the 
 coach to drive off, Hill let go of his prey sulkily, and 
 he waited for other opportunities of revenge. The 
 man of whom he was most jealous was Will Mount- 
 ford, the comedian. Will removed, he thought Mrs. 
 Bracegirdle might be his ; and accordingly the 
 captain and his lordship lay that night in wait for 
 Will, and as he was coming out of a house in Norfolk 
 Street, while Mohun engaged him in talk. Hill, in 
 the words of the Attorney -general, made a pass and 
 run him clean through the body." * 
 
 Mohun was tried for the murder by his peers 
 * " Lectures on the Humourists." 
 
MORALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 127 
 
 of the upper house, and acquitted by sixty-nine votes 
 against fourteen. " One great nobleman," says Ma- 
 caulay, " was so brutal and stupid as to say, After all, 
 the fellow was but a player, and players are rogues." * 
 This on the first blush seems downright atrocious. 
 But there are slightly extenuating circumstances 
 connected with the case which make it a degree less 
 horrible. In the first place, the murder and the 
 judgment, as Macaulay points out, were generally 
 condemned by public opinion. In the second place, 
 the Lords were actuated by a violent espi^it de corps^ 
 and defending their privileges which were being 
 attacked by the Commons. That which largely 
 neutralizes these considerations is the fact that 
 Mohun was a popular character in London, and 
 that the anecdotists speak very kindly of his practical 
 jokes. In the next reign he was singled out for 
 honourable distinction, and accompanied " Lord 
 Macclesfield's embassy to the Elector of Hanover 
 when Queen Anne sent the Garter to H.E. High- 
 ness." 
 
 Were the men of that generation infidels, 
 despisers of God's Holy Word, and demorahzed by 
 a dreary disbelief in the unseen world ? On the 
 contrary, they were fanatically religious. Their 
 zeal about spiritual matters was fervid in the ex- 
 * Macaulay's "History of England." 
 
128 THE SEBYICE OF MAN. 
 
 treme. A hint that the Church was in danger filled 
 them with gloomy passion. As soon as Sacheverell's 
 trial began " it took up all men's thoughts, so that 
 other business was at a stand. It was clear from 
 the very outset of the trial, that the popular favour 
 was wholly on the doctor's side. He lodged in the 
 Temple, and came every day in solemn procession 
 through the Strand to Westminster Hall. As he 
 passed, great crowds gathered round his coach, 
 striving to kiss his hand and shouting, ' Sacheverell 
 and the Church for ever ! ' Those who would not 
 join in the shouts were often insulted or knocked 
 down. The ardour of the multitude was even less 
 justifiably shown by their attacks on some meeting- 
 houses, in which the pews were demolished and 
 burned." '" The connection between Christianity and 
 morality does not seem very plain here. 
 
 If we now cross the Channel and examine the 
 condition of morals under the Old Monarchy of 
 France, we shall find that the record "of Catholicism 
 in this respect is in no wise purer than that of the 
 rival communion. It is a common opinion that the 
 very great licence of manners which distinguished 
 the French upper classes in the latter part of the 
 eighteenth century, was one of the many evil results 
 of the prevalent infidelity propagated by Rousseau, 
 * Lord Stanhope, " Keign of Queen Anne," chap. 12. 
 
MOBALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 129 
 
 Diderot, and Yoltaire. But such an idea has no 
 foundation. Corrupt as was the society which read 
 the novels of Louvet and the younger Crebillon, it 
 was in a variety of ways superior to the society to 
 which Bossuet and Bourdaloue preached, and which 
 flocked to hear the sacred dramas of the spotless 
 Racine. The whole of the reign of Louis XIY. was 
 marked by a great depravity of manners, and this 
 depravity was found quite compatible with an osten- 
 tatious and possibly sincere attachment to religion. 
 The king, in spite of the gross immorahty of his 
 private life, was a bigot in matters of faith, and he 
 was not an ungraceful or inadequate representative 
 of the people who looked up to him as to an almost 
 supernatural being. No stress need be laid on the 
 laxity of the gay lords and ladies who filled his 
 brilliant court, although if a firm belief in Chris- 
 tianity were the safeguard of pure morals, as it is 
 supposed to be, their lives present an unaccountable 
 anomaly ; for, as Bourdaloue said to their faces, they 
 lived like pagans though they believed like Christians. 
 The point of interest for us is to note how largely 
 Christianity failed to overcome the flesh and the 
 devil, even in an age when it had entirely its own 
 way, was zealously supported by the State, and able 
 to wield its tremendous sanctions without pause or 
 hesitation, xind, again, what we have to take most 
 
 K 
 
130 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 account of, is the average tone and temper of public 
 opinion with regard to crime and immorality. 
 Sporadic and exceptional crime may occur in any 
 age, and yet cast no reflection on the average 
 standard of morals. It is otherwise when immorality 
 is common, if not general, and wdien a life of great 
 licence and scandal may be passed without attracting 
 discredit or remark. And this rule applies especially 
 to the conduct of ministers of religion. If the 
 clerical order can indulge in abandoned courses 
 without exciting reprobation, we may be sure that 
 we do an age no injustice in pronouncing its standard 
 of morality to be low. When the officers of an 
 army give an example of cowardice and insubordi- 
 nation, we know what to expect of the rank and file. 
 We have many instances during the reign of 
 Louis XI Y. which show the great corruption of the 
 clergy in that age, and the little resentment or 
 surprise which it caused. The lives of some of the 
 most prominent ecclesiastics were openly scandalous. 
 The famous Cardinal de Eetz led a life of which any 
 decent layman would now be ashamed. But it may 
 be said that de Eetz was one of those political church- 
 men who took orders merely with ambitious views 
 to worldly advancement, and who ought not to be 
 considered as true clerics. He also lived in times of 
 revolution, when men's morality is apt to break down. 
 
MORALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITR. 131 
 
 So we will pass liim over. These remarks do not 
 apply to Harlay de Cliampvallou, archbisliop of 
 Paris. He lived in times of profound internal peace, 
 lie never played any part in politics, and he was for 
 years the ackoowledged leader and representative of 
 the French Church. lie was permanent chairman of 
 the Assembly of tlie French Clergy, and a preacher 
 of such popularity and power that during a course 
 of his Lenten sermons, the church was kept open 
 at all hours, and footmen, in order to retain the best 
 places, were forced to spend the whole night in them. 
 Yet he was a man of profligate private life, and not 
 so very private, as his amours were notorious. 
 *' Notre Archeveque de Paris, 
 
 Quoiqu'il soit jeune, a des faiblesses ; 
 
 Voyant qu'il en avait trop pris, 
 
 II a re tranche ses mattresses ; 
 
 Les qiiatre qu'il eiit autrefois 
 
 Sout a present roduites a trois." 
 
 Several great ladies of the Court, la Marquise de 
 Gonville, la Marechale d'Aumont, Madame de Bris- 
 seu, were among his conquests, but Madame de 
 Bretonvilliers was his mattresse en tltre, as la Mon- 
 tespan was of Louis XIY. He was not even content 
 with these irregularities, but carried off by force 
 Mademoiselle de la Yarenne, a public singer, the 
 mistress of a gentleman named Pierrepont. The 
 latter avenged himself in a w^ay characteristic of the 
 
132 THE SEE VICE OF MAN. 
 
 age ; he lay in wait with three men, seized the faith- 
 less Varenne (who seems to have made no objection 
 to the exchange of a poor for a rich lover) as she 
 was returning to the house the archbishop had 
 given her, and had her unmercifully beaten with 
 rods. It was probably his only mode of retaliation. 
 Meddliug with Monseigneur and his pleasures was 
 attended with danger and punished severely. Two 
 priests who had lampooned him w^ere sent to the 
 galleys, one for life. One of the archbishop's 
 mistresses was the Countess of Northumberland, a 
 former favourite of Charles II. The prelate used to 
 visit her in a convent of Benedictines at Conflans. 
 He died suddenly at a good old age in the presence 
 of his last " amie," la Duchesse de Lesdiguieres, and 
 had his funeral oration pronounced by le pere Gail- 
 lard. It appears there was some little trouble in 
 finding a preacher, a fact creditable to the time, as 
 far as it goes. 
 
 The convents, not without reason, had a bad 
 reputation. Louis XI Y., who was not a man to 
 speak evil of religious orders, said of the Carmelites, 
 *' Je savais bien qu'elles etaient des friponnes, des in- 
 triceuses, des ravaudeuses, des brodeuses. des bou- 
 quetieres, mais je ne croyais pas qu'elles fussent des 
 empoisonneuses." * " There were often," says Mi- 
 * Madame de Sevigne, " Lcttres/'Oct. 15, 1G77. 
 
MORALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 133 
 
 cbelet, ^' twelve parlours in a convent, in which each 
 nun, without beiug* heard, could converse with her 
 lover or a female intriguer yet more dangerous." * 
 But Protestants and infidels are only too ready to 
 believe evil of convents, as if they all must neces- 
 sarily be nests of iniquity, a most unjust supposition. 
 Port Eoyal at this very time contained women of 
 angelic purity. We may therefore leave them, and 
 pass to the lower ranks of the secular clergy. 
 
 A good example of the tone of public opinion 
 with regard to clerical irregularity will be found in 
 the following story : — 
 
 '' On the 7th of November, 1665, the cure of 
 Saint-Babel was condemned to death for a crime lie 
 had committed three years before. He was a man 
 of parts, intelligent in matters of business, but carried 
 away by his passions, and not particular in setting 
 a good example in his parish. He was especially 
 ill-famed for his amours, and amusing stories were 
 told about him, amusing if the tone had not been 
 connected with sin and wholly unbecoming his 
 sacred profession. He was accused in the w^orld of 
 having instructed his female parishioners in an 
 entirely novel manner, and having inspired them 
 with a love remote from the love of God. His turn 
 for gallantry would show itself at such unseasonable 
 * "Ilistoire de France : Louis XIV," note iii. 
 
134 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 moments, that on one occasion, having been sent for 
 by a good woman in mortal sickness to hear her 
 confession, he neglected to administer to her the 
 Sacraments, in order to amnse himself in winning 
 the affections of a girl to his liking, whom he found 
 in the house ; and thought no more of the salvation 
 of the mistress, in his design against the honour of 
 the maid. He forgot his character as a priest as 
 soon as he had seen her personal charms, and love 
 overcame duty. Instead of listening to the confes- 
 sion of the one, he employed his time in making his 
 declaration to the other ; and far from exhorting the 
 sick person to die piously, he solicited her who was in 
 good health to live in sin ; and taking her by the hand 
 and the chin, he said, ' What a trial it is for me to 
 be called by a person whom age and sickness have 
 reduced to extremity, and what a joy it would be to 
 come and see you who have youth and beauty. I 
 own that I do not like to hear the story of past sins 
 which these good old women relate to us, and that 
 the sins of youth are much more agreeable. Let 
 madame your mistress think over the way in which 
 she has passed her years, and let us consider how we 
 will pass ours ; let her examine and see if she has 
 sinned, and let me know if you can love one who 
 loves you. Do not be surprised if you see me 
 abandon my duties in order to satisfy my inclination, 
 
MOBALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 135 
 
 and, if you love me, regard me as a man and not as a 
 cure, and reflect that you can be at once my mistress 
 and my parishioner, and that you will find in me a 
 pastor and a lover equally devoted.' " 
 
 This worthy priest was not interfered with for 
 this and similar indiscretions. He came to an un- 
 timely end by being hanged for the more serious 
 offence of murder, into which he was tempted by a 
 natural exasperation at having been placed in a 
 ridiculous and painful position by one of his flock. 
 It happened thus. At a short distance from his 
 parish he had a grange in which he kept not only 
 his corn and fruit, but, when occasion required it, the 
 young women whom he fancied. He took reason- 
 able precautions to ensure privacy, and even diverted 
 a road which ran past the grange, in order to escape 
 the curiosity of passers by who might feel a wish to 
 inquire what he was doing in his retreat. Still 
 suspicion was excited, and a peasant more enter- 
 prising and mischievous than the rest, artfully closed 
 the door of the grange and fastened it on the out- 
 side, when he had good reason to think that the 
 cure was within, as, indeed, lie was, w^ith a young 
 woman, whom he had chosen out of his own church. 
 The imprisoned pair were forced to wait till liberated 
 by a chance wayfarer, and the exposure of the cure 
 was complete. He vowed a terrible vengeance on 
 
136 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 his betrayer, and soon carried it out by having him 
 beaten to death. The very next day he said mass 
 for the defunct, but the friends of the latter brought 
 the cure before a local tribunal, which acquitted 
 him. It was only three years later, when a special 
 commission of judges, known as Les Grrands-jours 
 d'Auvergne, were sent by Louis XIY. to suppress 
 the unbridled crime in Auvergne, that M. Gruillaume 
 Boyer, the cure in question, came by his deserts. The 
 Church did all it could to save him. But Colbert 
 w^as at the head of affairs, and lay -justice had its way. 
 Now, to whom are we indebted for this interest- 
 ing story ? To no other than the illustrious Flechier, 
 the eloquent preacher who became bishop of Nimes. 
 His "Memoires sur les Grrands-jours d'Auvergne," are 
 among the choicest pieces of French prose of the early 
 classical period, not without a flavour of" bel esprit " 
 and " preciositeV recalling the Hotel de Rambouillet, 
 but still, by their finesse and style, worthy of the 
 Great Age. But all must admit that the tone of sly 
 humour, in Avhich the crimes of the priest are recorded 
 is very singular, and conclusive that clerical irregu- 
 larities were considered objects rather of mirth and 
 pleasantry than of serious reprobation. Would any 
 clergyman, especially of so high a character as 
 Flechier, dream of speaking of them in such a strain 
 now ? 
 
MOBALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 137 
 
 We will now take the case of the famous Abbe 
 cle Choisy, as illustrating the kind of life a churchman 
 might lead under Louis XIY., not only without dis- 
 credit but with general respect and esteem. The Abbe 
 de Choisy came of a good family ''of the robe," that is 
 to say, he belonged to that rich and powerful class of 
 hereditary civil servants who carried on the govern- 
 ment of the old French monarchy. His position in 
 the world is sufficiently shown by the fact that his 
 mother, a woman distinguished by her wit and fine 
 manners, could say to the young Louis XIY. that if 
 he wished to become a polished man he ought to 
 frequent her society. One may suppose she did not 
 neglect the education of her son, and we know, 
 indeed, that she loved him to excess. This was the 
 result of her bringing up. After leaving the 
 theological seminary, for he w^as intended for the 
 Church from the first, Choisy immediately became 
 an actor, or rather an actress, and for several months 
 appeared on the stage at Bordeaux. His mother_, in 
 his childhood, had taken pleasure in dressing him as 
 a girl, partly, perhaps, from private whim, but more 
 probably to please the perverted tastes of Monsieur 
 (Duke of Orleans), the king's brother, who had a 
 passion for wearing female attire. Choisy was 
 nothing loath, and soon surpassed his Royal High- 
 ness in liis fondness for a woman's costume. In order 
 
138 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 to gratify his propensity lie bought a house, as he 
 himself tells us, in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau, in 
 the centre of the '' bourgoisie of the people," that he 
 might "dress himself as he liked, among folk who 
 would not complain of anything he did." He soon be- 
 came noted for his elegant female attire, and though 
 his sex was well known, no one seems to have been 
 scandalized. So far from that, his services were re- 
 quested in the parish church to present the holy 
 bread and collect the offertory. He became one of 
 the attractions of the church, and a source of great 
 profit to his employers. In one day he collected 
 two hundred and seventy-two livres. People came 
 from other parishes when it was known he was 
 going to collect. " I will admit," he says, " that in 
 the evening at the salut (the benediction) I ex- 
 perienced a great pleasure. It was night, when the 
 talk is free. I heard several times, in different parts 
 of the church, people saying, * But can it be true that 
 that is a man ? He has good reasons for wishing to 
 pass for a woman.' " 
 
 It may well be supposed that this comedy was 
 continued beyond the walls of the church, for objects 
 less innocent than making strangers stare. Choisy 
 took a large country house near Bourges, where he 
 passed as la Comtesse des Barres, and spent four 
 years in a round of systematic seduction. Details 
 
MOBALITT IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 139 
 
 cannot be given ; they are to be found in his own 
 narrative by the curious in such moral monstrosities. 
 Even more singular than his turpitudes is the chuck- 
 ling cynicism with which he relates them. Yet he 
 never lost caste for his rascality. Once only, 
 apparently, was he reproved, by the Due de Mon- 
 tausier, who told him he ought to be ashamed of 
 himself for such conduct; but his clerical brethren 
 seem to have been as accommodating as he could wish. 
 When he went to Bourges, he imparted his secret to 
 the cure, which, as he says, it was only fair to do. But 
 the cure was not in the least scandalized, and came 
 to dine and sup at the rake's house, sitting at table 
 with the innocent little victims, mere children often, 
 of the latter's licentiousness. But that is not all. 
 When the Cardinal de Bouillon went to Rome to 
 attend the Conclave for electing a new Pope, he took 
 Choisy with him as his " conclaviste." He after- 
 wards occupied the same post in the service of the 
 Cardinal de Retz (a worthy pair), and took a part, if 
 we may believe him, in the election of Odescalchi 
 (Leo XI.). He lived till eighty, and was doj/en of 
 the French Academy, when he died in great 
 honour as a man of wit and fine manners. It is 
 needless to add that he was " converted " before the 
 end, with what profit to the world does not appear. 
 Scotland and Spain share the bad pre-eminence 
 
140 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 of having been, each in their way, the most fanatical 
 nations in Europe. It would be difficult to say in 
 which of the two religion was made most repulsive 
 and inhuman. In both countries nearly every 
 object was postponed to the protection and propa- 
 gation of the national faith. But Calvinism in 
 Scotland was more blighting and deadly to all things 
 beautiful than Catholicism in Spain. Terrible as 
 it must have been to know that the invisible eye 
 of the Holy Office was fixed upon your movements, 
 and even upon your thoughts, and that at any 
 moment you might disappear behind its dreaded 
 walls, only to emerge in a San Benito in the ghastly 
 procession to an Auto da Fe, yet Spanish life was 
 not blackened and gnawed into hideousness by the 
 Spanish Inquisition as Scottish life was by the 
 Scottish Inquisition. After all, there was joy, 
 laughter and song in Spain ; there were poetry and 
 painting ; Cervantes, Calderon, and Murillo, bright 
 children of the South in whom the world still finds 
 delight. But in Scotland every green and whole- 
 some thing was smitten as by a black frost. " To 
 be poor, dirty, and hungry, to pass through life in 
 misery, and to leave it with fear, to be plagued with 
 boils and sores and diseases of every kind, to be 
 always sighing and groaning, to have the face stream- 
 ing with tears and the chest heaving with sobs ; in 
 
MOBALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 141 
 
 a word, to suffer constant affliction and to be tor- 
 mented in all possible ways ; to undergo these things 
 was deemed a proof of goodness, just as the contrary 
 was a proof of evil. ... It was a sin to go from 
 one town to another on Sunday, however pressing 
 the business might be. ... No one on Sunday should 
 pay attention to his health, or think of his body at 
 all. On tiiat day horse-exercise was sinful; so w^as 
 walking in the fields, or in tlie meadows, or in the 
 streets, or enjoying the fine weather by sitting at 
 the door of your own house. To go to sleep on Sun- 
 day before the duties of the day were over was also 
 sinful, and deserved church censure. Bathing, being 
 pleasant as well as wholesome, was a particularly 
 grievous offence ; and no man could be allowed to 
 swim on Sunday. It was, in fact, doubtful whether 
 swimming was lawful for a Christian at any time, 
 even on week days, and it was certain that Grod had, 
 on one occasion, shown his disapproval, by taking 
 away the life of a boy while he was indulging in 
 that carnal practice." * Life must have been made 
 intolerable by a system of spies and informers who 
 were paid for delating breaches of the Sabbath.f 
 
 * Buckle, " nistoiy of Civilization in England," vol. ii. p. 
 395-398. Buckle corroborates every statement by redundant 
 evidence. 
 
 t Chambers's "Domestic Annals of Scotland,"' vol. iii. 
 p. 344. 
 
142 THE SERVICE OF MAN, 
 
 '' Sometimes a brother and sister, or a man and liis 
 wife, walking quietly together, would find them- 
 selves under the observation of the emissaries of 
 the Kirk. In short, if fanatical belief in Christianity, 
 coupled with the most intemperate zeal in enforcing 
 the precepts of the Bible, could have made a people 
 moral, the Scotch should have been a moral people 
 towards the middle and end of the seventeenth 
 century. Nearly a century of gospel-teaching at 
 the highest pressure should, if Christianity be as 
 favourable to morality as is commonly supposed, 
 have produced very marked results, in the form of 
 correct and orderly living. 
 
 The reality does not correspond with this pleasing 
 inference. Indeed, to judge from the accounts left 
 us by Spalding and other contemjjoraries, the coun- 
 try districts of Scotland presented a savage scene 
 of lawless violence, frequently ending in murder. 
 Gentlemen, neighbours, and often relatives, quarrel 
 and fight and kill each other like barbarians, with 
 or without provocation. However, homicide, which 
 of all crimes in a peaceful state of society is the 
 most injurious and detested, is often viewed with 
 strange leniency in periods agitated by fervent 
 religious and social or political revolution. In the 
 eyes of ferocious partisans, killing is no murder, 
 when it thins the ranks of their enemies. This 
 
MORALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 143 
 
 was the case in Scotland at the time referred to ; 
 it was so in France, both under the Eed and 
 White Terror ; and only recently it was the 
 same in Ireland. We will, therefore, pass over the 
 Scotch mansla3ang of the seventeenth century, 
 and refer to that milder form of vice which has 
 nearly usurped the name of " immorality " for its 
 own exclusive use in familiar speech, illicit inter- 
 course between the sexes. On no part of ethics 
 have Christians of all denominations laid greater 
 stress than on chastity, yet with far less result in 
 the way of producing purity of manners than might 
 have been expected, even among those who made 
 a particular display of religion. 
 
 In 1G40, a portion of the covenanting army was 
 under General Monro, on its way from Banff to 
 Aberdeen. '' Then Monro and his soldiers," says 
 Spalding, "marched that night (Friday) to Turriff; 
 Saturday, they marched therefrae to Inverurie and 
 Kintore ; Sunday, they marched therefrae to Aber- 
 deen, and by the way, at Bucksburn, they had a 
 sermon taught by their own minister." They no 
 doubt "hungered and thirsted by the way," and 
 could not pass the Sabbath, though on military duty, 
 without hearing the Word. But when they reached 
 their quarters in Aberdeen, their behaviour left 
 much to be desired. "Of the performances of the 
 
144 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 covenanting troops occasionally posted in Aberdeen,, 
 we hear from tlie commissary clerk of ' daily de- 
 bocliing ' and ' drinking,' night walking, combating 
 and swearing, and bringing sundry honest women- 
 servants to great misery. Sixty-five of this honest 
 sisterhood were delated before the church courts ; 
 twelve of them, after being paraded through the 
 streets by the hangman, were banished from the 
 burgh. Several were imprisoned in a loathsome 
 vault, while others, more fortunate, found safety in 
 flight." * What was done to the pious profligates 
 who had brought them to this '' great miser}'" does 
 not appear. Later on in the century, the General 
 Assembly felt called upon to proclaim a general fast 
 on account of the backslidings of the people. " There 
 hath been a great neglect^" they say, " of the worship 
 of God in public, but especially in families and in 
 secret. The wonted care of sanctifying the Lord's 
 Day is gone, cities full of violence, so that blood 
 touched blood. Yea, Sodom's sins have abounded 
 among us — pride, fulness of blood, idleness, vanities 
 of apparel, and shameful sensuality." f And there is 
 no reason to believe that this is one of the rhetorical 
 exaggerations of sinfulness common to religious 
 persons in moods of depression. Referring to a 
 
 * Burton, " History of Scotland," vol. vi. p. 322. 
 
 t Chambers's " Domestic Annals of Scotland," vol. ii. p. 42. 
 
MORALITY IN THE AGES OE FAITH. 145 
 
 slightly earlier date, Mr. Chambers says, " The 
 number of cases of uncommon turpitude in a time 
 of extraordinary religious purism forces itself upon 
 our attention. . . . Offences of a horrible and un- 
 natural kind continued to abound to a degree which 
 makes the daylight profligacy of the subsequent 
 reign (Charles the Second's) shine white in com- 
 parison. ' More,' says Nicoll, ' within these six or 
 seven years, nor within these fifty years preceding' 
 and more.' Culprits of all ages, from boys to old 
 men, are heard of every few months as burned 
 upon ihe Castle Hill of Edinburgh. Sometimes two 
 together — young women who had murdered their 
 own infants — were frequently brought to the same 
 scene of punishment. John Xicoll states that ou 
 one day, October 15, 1656, five persons, two men 
 and three women, were burnt on the Castle Hill for 
 offences of the several kinds here glanced at, while 
 two others were scourged through the city for 
 minor degrees of the same offences." * 
 
 The meaner vices of fraud and cheating, often 
 supposed to be modern inventions from which the 
 ])ious old times were free, were not uncommon in 
 Edinburgh in the seventeenth century. '' The beer, 
 ale, and wine sold in the city were all greatly adulte- 
 rated. It was customary to mix wine with milk, 
 * Chambers's " Domestic Annals of Scotland," vol. ii. p. 242. 
 
 L 
 
146 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 brimstone, and other ingredients. Ale was made 
 strong and heady with hemp seed, coriander seed, 
 Turkish pepper, soot, salt, and by casting strong 
 wash nnder the cauldron when the ale was brewing. 
 Blown mutton and corrupted veal, fusty bread and 
 light loaves, false measures and weights, were 
 common. In all these particulars the magistrates 
 were negligent, so that the people were abused and 
 neglected." * 
 
 One does not see how, under the head of morals, 
 the people of the Ages of Faith were superior to the 
 people of to-day. When we consider that the com- 
 petition was much less severe than it is now ; that 
 the size of the towns was many degrees smaller than 
 at present ; and that the opportunities of escaping 
 observation and piuiishment now afforded by our 
 immense cities were then correspondingly less, we 
 must admit that the average of morality was sin- 
 gularly low, although the average of religious belief 
 and zeal was singularly high. The few extracts 
 quoted above give a most inadequate impression 
 of the general violence, grossness, cruelty, and 
 licence of the period during which every effort 
 was made and almost every other worthy object 
 was sacrificed with a view to making the people 
 devoutly Christian. We have surely a right to 
 * Chambers's "Domestic Annals of Scotland," vol. ii. p. 240. 
 
MOBALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 147 
 
 say, after so large and protracted an experiment, 
 that the moralizing element in Christianity has been 
 over-estimated. Here was Christianity at work with- 
 out any competing principle ; it was zealously sup- 
 ported by the secular power ; yet we find crimes of 
 '' uncommon turpitude " co-existing with •' extraor- 
 dinary religious purism." Ifc is not an answer to 
 say that but for Cliristianity matters, bad as they 
 were, would have been worse; and for this good 
 reason, that a great improvement in decency, order, 
 and civilization generally, coincided in Scotland with 
 a marked decline in religious fervour, such as set in 
 about the middle of the last century. What is true 
 and quite fair to allege is, that the Scottish people in 
 the seventeenth century were in that stage of semi- 
 barbarism in which no moral principle is able to 
 take a firm hold. Only the slow growth of know- 
 ledge and industry can civilize such a people. But 
 this is the doctrine of evolution, not of grace. The 
 latter, as emanating from Almighty power, can no 
 more be arrested or withstood by imperfect de- 
 velopment in the race, than by moral degradation 
 in the individual. At least, that is the theory. In 
 practice, we may observe, the growth of morality 
 depends on conditions widely remote from those 
 which flxvour the vigour and tenacity of theological 
 beliefs. As already shown, Christianity preaclies 
 
148 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 salvation in the next world, not morality in this ; 
 and according to the rules laid down, we may not 
 doubt that numbers of the Scotch, in the darkest 
 jDeriod, after the commission of every crime against 
 human ethics, were at last touched by grace and 
 were saved, or at least should have been. The point 
 does not admit of verification, and we therefore can- 
 not tell whether celestial happiness did supervene as 
 a compensation for the miseries of a barbarous exist- 
 ence on earth. The fact remains, that those miseries 
 were not mitigated, but were often very much in- 
 creased by a fanatical belief in the words of Scripture. 
 The cruelty and injustice perpetrated in obedience 
 to the disgusting superstition about witchcraft, a 
 thoroughly scriptural tenet, fill up one of the most 
 horrible pages in the history of mankind. Sorcerers 
 were burnt in batches of four, ^ve, and even of nine 
 at a time on the Castle Hill. But the more zealous 
 spirits were not satisfied. " There is much witchery 
 up and down our land," says Eobert Baillie ; " the 
 English be but sparing to try it, but some they 
 execute." * Our sympathy is justly given, in the 
 first instance, to the wretched victims ; but the 
 mental anxiety and terror of their persecutors must 
 have been no light burden. 
 
 We will now, for a few moments, turn our atten- 
 * Chambers's " Domestic Annals of Scotland," vol. ii. p. 244. 
 
MOBALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITE. 140 
 
 tion to Spain, the single European country which 
 rivalled Scotland in its zeal for religion. 
 
 One of the liveliest accounts of that interestini!^- 
 nation will be found in the letters of a French 
 lady, who went to Spain in 1679 to attend upon 
 the young queen Henriette, the daughter of the un- 
 fortunate Henrietta of England, sister of Charles II. 
 I confine my extracts to the matter in hand — -the 
 union, or rather, the disconnection of morality and 
 religion. 
 
 '' The frequent assassinations in this country, on 
 account of some affront or other, seem to authenticate 
 these facts. If a man receives a box on the ear or 
 a stroke in the face with a hat, nay, with a handker- 
 chief or a glove ; if he be called a drunkard ; or a 
 reflecting word happens to p;iss on his wife's virtue, 
 these must be wiped off with no less than the blood 
 of the aggressor, and that by assassination. For 
 they say it is not just that, after a signal affront 
 received, the offended party should put his life in an 
 equal balance w^ith the offender. They are so tena- 
 cious of revenge that they will not lay aside an 
 injury for twenty years after : if they happen to die 
 before they accomplish it, they will recommend the 
 same upon their death-beds to be executed by their 
 children. I had it from credible hands that a certain 
 person of note, dreading the revenge of his enemy. 
 
150 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 went to tlie West Indies, where lie staid twenty 
 years, till hearing that Loth he and his son were 
 dead he returned to Spain, yet not without changing 
 his name for his greater security ; but in vain, for, 
 notwithstanding all his precaution, the grandson of 
 his enemy, though not above twelve years of age, 
 found means to hire a ruffian, v/ho assassinated him 
 soon after his return. 
 
 " Most of their assassins are natives of the city of 
 Yalentia, a wicked generation, who will venture at 
 anything for money, and are always provided with fire- 
 arms that will discharge without noise, and stilettoes. 
 ... I was told that a certain Spaniard of note having 
 agreed with one of these Bandoleroes, as they call 
 them, of Yalentia, for a certain sum of money to 
 dispatch his enemy, but a reconciliation being made 
 soon after betwixt them, he acquainted the Bando- 
 lero with it, desiring him not to put his design into 
 execution, though at the same time he allowed him 
 the money as a voluntary gift. But the assassin 
 replied that he scorned to have any of his money 
 without deserving it, to do which he must either 
 kill him or his enemy. The gentleman being 
 willing to preserve his own life, was forced to let 
 him put in execution what he had designed against 
 the other, imless he would have resolved to seize 
 him, a thing of dangerous consequence in Spain, 
 
MOBALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 151 
 
 where these ruffians are so numerous and so closely 
 united that they are sure to revenge the quarrel of 
 any of their companions, which makes Spain the 
 most doleful theatre of tragical scenes in the 
 universe. 
 
 " What is more surprising than all the rest is, 
 that as well those who leave no stone unturned to 
 put their revenge in practice, as those who put them 
 in execution, should engage themselves in certain 
 devotions for the success of their enterprizes, at the 
 very time they are going to give the mortal wound 
 to an innocent person of their own religion and 
 country." * 
 
 Now as regards the Spanish observation of the 
 seventh commandment. '' The Spaniards are so 
 kind-hearted to one another in love-affairs, that if a 
 man meets his mistress in a place where he has no 
 opportunity of conversing with her in private, he 
 need only go into the next house and to request the 
 master (whether he know him or not) to give him 
 the opportunity of talking with a lady of his ac- 
 quaintance in private in his house, and he is sure it 
 will scarce ever be refused." What is meant by the 
 euphemistic term '' talking," is made clear by the 
 following strange disclosure. " I remember that 
 
 " " The Ingenious Letters of the Lady's Travels into 
 
 Spain," Harris's Collection, ii. p. ToT), ed. 1705. 
 
152 THE SEBVICE OF MAN, 
 
 talking tlie other day with the Marchioness 
 d'Alcannizas, one of the greatest and most virtuous 
 ladies of the court, she frankly told us that if a 
 gentleman should be alone with her for half an 
 hour in a convenient place, and not ask her the last 
 favour, she should think he despised her, though 
 she should, at the same time, not grant his request." 
 
 Again, Ave have to notice the co-existence of a 
 very low moral tone with the most exalted religious 
 zeal, and passionate religious belief. 
 
 It is unnecessary to proceed through the previous 
 centuries with so much detail, otherwise it would be 
 easy to show that the sixteenth century was fiir 
 more immoral, in the widest sense of the word, than 
 the seventeenth. The court of the later Valois is 
 painted for us by the garrulous Brantome ; and one 
 fails to see how it differed, except for the worse, 
 from tlie Court of Caligula or Commodus. 
 
 The Italians were more refined, but even more 
 wicked, and impressed the English of Elizabeth's 
 reign, by no means a squeamish or fastidious folk, 
 with a " sense of the rottenness of the country wdience 
 they obtained their intellectual nourishment, with a 
 sense of frightful anomaly, of putrescence in beauty 
 and S2Dlendour, of death in life, and life in death." ^ 
 No one would expect better things of the fifteenth 
 * "Eiiphorion," b}- Vernon Lee. 
 
MOBALITY IX THE AGES OF FAITH. 153 
 
 century, in Avliicli the Wars of the Roses in England, 
 and the final struggle against English domination 
 in France, had the usual effect of protracted warfare 
 in injuring morality. 
 
 That the fourteenth century, the era of the great 
 Schism, of the captivity of the Popes at Avignon, 
 and of the Black Death, should have been a period 
 of extraordinary licence and crime cannot surprise 
 us. Both civil and ecclesiastical government were 
 impaired by the events of the time, and pestilence is 
 usually followed by moral irregularities. 
 
 So, we pass these ages over, and stop for a 
 moment in the thirteenth century, the age jMr 
 excellence of beautiful things, when chivalry is 
 supposed to have been in its noble prime, when the 
 Church exerted a calm and serene sovereignty over 
 the kneeling nations, when mediaeval art reached its 
 supreme and chaste perfection, when the philosophy 
 and theology of the Latin Church culminated in 
 works almost as intricate and wonderful as the maze 
 of pinnacles, flying buttresses, arches, and columns 
 which, surviving still in the cathedrals of Amiens or 
 Chartres, sing us a deceptive siren song of beauty 
 which lures us to their epoch as to a Golden Age. 
 It was';very far from a golden age. ^)n the con- 
 trary, it was an age of violence, fraud, and impurity, 
 such as can hardly be conceived now. We will take 
 
154 THE SEEVICE OF MAN. 
 
 it in its ideal moment, in the reign of St. Louis, the 
 Lest of kings, and perhaps the best man who ever 
 lived. We will take as a witness one of his most 
 trusted and valued friends, Eude Eigaud, Arch- 
 bishop of Rouen, and we will see what he says of 
 the morals of the clergy of his own diocese which, 
 like a good pastor as he w^as, he was constantly 
 visiting for the purpose of discipline and reform. 
 
 The Registrum Visitatlonum, or the diary of 
 the pastoral visits of Archbishop Rigaud, forms a 
 quarto volume of upwards of six hundred closely 
 printed pages. It extends from the year 1248 to 
 1269. Eigaud had been a Franciscan monk, a 
 student at Paris of scholastic philosophy under our 
 famous countryman, Alexander of Hales, and at 
 an early j)eriod acquired reputation as a preacher 
 of uncommon eloquence. A tradition obtained that 
 he had been elevated to the archiepiscopal see of 
 Eouen, where he had gone to preach, on account 
 of the impression produced by his piety and learn- 
 ing on the Chapter. Eigaud wished to refuse the 
 proffered dignity, but his professions were dis- 
 regarded, the Pope, Innocent IV., relieved him of 
 his vows to reject ecclesiastical honours, and he 
 was consecrated archbishop in the month of March, 
 1248. In the month of July, in the same year, 
 he began his pastoral visitations. He travelled 
 
MOBALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 155 
 
 jibout from monastery to monastery, and sometimes 
 was entertained at tlie expense of the monks, but 
 ]nore often at his own. Indeed, the religious houses 
 seem frequently to have been In debt, and hardly 
 in a position to give worthy hospitality to so great 
 a lord as an archbishop. He often discovered, 
 both among the secular and the regular clergy, 
 very unclerical habits and amusements, sometimes 
 innocent, at other times very much the contrary. 
 He found the nuns of St. Arnaud had fallen into 
 the evil practice of singing the Psalms and Hours 
 to the Ylrgin with unbecoming haste — " cum nimia 
 festinatlone et precipitatione verborum," and ordered, 
 very properly, that one verse should not be begun 
 till a previous one had been finished. The nuns, 
 moreover, did not observe the rule of silence ; and 
 ate meat in the infirmary as often as three times 
 a week. A sick sister would have two or three 
 healthy friends to see her, and regale them with 
 a more dainty repast than the usual convent fare. 
 They all had a measure of Avine, but some drank 
 more than others, which was not allowed. Some 
 even gave wine to persons outside the convent, 
 without obtaining leave ; for this offence they were 
 made to go without wine the next day. The nuns 
 also had a fondness for linen chemises and sheets, 
 which were against the rule, and these luxuries 
 
15(3 THE SERVICE OF MAN, 
 
 were forbiddeu. On the whole, the convents for 
 women, which Rigaud visited, seem to have been 
 fairly correct, and certainly did not afford examples 
 of the gross licentiousness of the monks and priests. 
 Many of the latter fell under episcopal censure 
 for irregularities which would not nowadays be 
 considered very serious^ and give a notion of 
 a rollicking, schoolboy ish tone, which has an odd 
 effect. Riding about on horseback in an unclerical 
 garb is noted with disapprobation, and seems to 
 have been a common fault. Buying and selling 
 horses was hardly so venial in a priest ; no more, 
 perhaps, was the keeping of dogs for hunting 
 purposes. But it was easy to do much worse. 
 One is surprised to find charges of drunkenness 
 constantly recurring. Frequenting taverns and 
 playing at dice were certainly unbecoming in a 
 clergyman, especially when carried so far as to 
 cause the priest to leave or lose his clothes in 
 the public-house, ^' aliquando amittit vestes suas 
 in tabernis." One is glad to see that Archbishop 
 Rigaud would not stand such indecorum, and de- 
 priv^ed the incumbent who had been guilty of it 
 of his living. But these transgressions are insig- 
 nificant, both in number and gravity, compared with 
 the incessant sin of incontinency, which is alleged 
 on nearly every page in the most aggravated form. 
 
MOBALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 157 
 
 Priest after priest is charged with immoral conduct, 
 some with married women, some with keeping two 
 mistresses at once, one w^th incest with his own 
 niece.* 
 
 Without a certain monotony of repetition, it i& 
 impossible to convey the impression produced by 
 this protracted catalogue of clerical disorders. " We 
 found the priest of Nesle in ill repute, on account 
 of a certain woman who is said to be pregnant 
 by him ; lie also trades, and ill-treats his father, 
 who is the patron of the church he holds. This 
 parson fought with a certain knight wnth a drawn 
 sword amid a clamour and concoimse of his friends 
 and relations." y 
 
 " The priest of Gonnetot was charged with crimi- 
 nality with two women, and he went to the Pope 
 about the matter, and when he returned he is said 
 to have offended again. The priest of Wanestan- 
 
 * " Item presbyter de Mesnilio David est inobediens et habet 
 pueros suos secum, et concubinam alibi : item diia3 se invenerunt 
 in domo ipsiiis et se verberaverunt inviccm. Item presbyter de 
 Sancto Eichario infamatus de qnadam conjiigata, paroclnana 
 sua. Item presbyter Sancti Eemigii notatus dc ebriositate, 
 iK>n defert capam, ludit ad talos, freqnentat tabernam, et ibi 
 mnltociens verbeiatiir. Item Magister AValterus presbyter de 
 Grandi Curia, infamatus est de propria nepte et de niinia pota- 
 tione." — "Regest. Visitationum Arch. Eothomagensis,'' par Tb. 
 Eonnin, Rouen, 1852, pp. 20, 21. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 19. 
 
158 THE SERVICE OF JilAN. 
 
 villa was accused witli reference to a woman, one 
 of his own parishioners, and her husband on that 
 account departed over sea. He kept her eight years, 
 and she is pregnant ; he also plays at dice and 
 drinks too much; he frequents the taverns, does 
 not abide in his church, and goes with a hawk 
 on his fist whenever he lil?:es. Also the priest of 
 Bray-sur-Seine is accused with reference to a 
 certain woman ; and because she refused to live in 
 the presbytery, he went to live with her, and had 
 his food and corn brought to her house. Also the 
 priest of Saint-Just haunts taverns, and drinks till 
 he is full up to the throat. Also Lawrence, priest 
 of Longoeil, keeps the wife of a man who is 
 abroad ; she is called Beatrice Yaleran, and he 
 has a son by her.* We found that the priest of 
 Panlyu was famed for incontinency with a maid- 
 servant of his, and likewise with two other women, 
 who afterwards bore him two sons ; also he is 
 noted for inebriety ; he sells his wine, and makes 
 his parishioners drunk. Tlie priest of Auberville 
 is seriously noted for incontinency, and lie married 
 a certain woman with one of his servants, in order 
 that he might have free access to her. Also he 
 had relations with a certain Englishwoman, whom 
 he kept a long time, and sinned with her again 
 * " Regest. Yisitationum Arch. Eothomagensis," p. 20. 
 
yiOBALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 159 
 
 after being corrected by the arc] i deacon ; also with 
 the daughter of a poor woman who lives hard by 
 the cross." * 
 
 Although the nuns, compared with the priests, 
 appear to have been well-behaved, we occasionally 
 meet with convents in which there were great dis- 
 orders. '' Wo visited the convent of the Blessed 
 Mary of Almeneschiis. There are thirty-three nuns. 
 All are possessed of property : they have saucepans, 
 copper-kettles, and necklaces. They contract debts 
 in the village, and eat and sit at tables in groups. 
 Each nun has money given her to provide for her 
 table and her kitchen. Many are absent from Com- 
 pline and Matins, and drink after Compline. Sister 
 Theophana is given to drink. They have no regular 
 time for confession or communication. Sister Hola 
 lately had a boy by one Michael of Yal Guido. 
 Secular persons freely enter the cloister and talk 
 with the nuns. They never dine in the refectory. 
 Dionisia Dehatim is accused of ill-conduct with 
 Nicholas de Bleve. They quarrel finely in the 
 cloister and the choir. Alice, the cantatrix, had a 
 boy by a man named Christian. Also the prioress 
 formerly had one boy. They have not got an 
 abbess, as the last recently died."f A most im- 
 
 * '' Rcgest. Yisitatioiuim Arcli. Iiothomagensis," p. 25. 
 t Ibid., p. 82. 
 
IGO TEE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 proper set of ladies, certainly, considering their 
 vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The 
 strange thing is that Archbishop Rigaud did not 
 visit them, so far as appears, with any censure ; 
 perhaps their wealth and social position made it 
 impolitic to do so. Indeed, the grosser sins of the 
 flesh are treated with what we should consider 
 singular mildness. Early lapses from virtue, and 
 even later ones, are pardoned on promise of reform. 
 Only in the case of hardened and persevering sinners 
 are strong measures taken. " We warned them," 
 says Rigaud — and in one case ''them" included 
 Master Walter, the priest of Grandcure, who 
 cohabited with his niece — " we warned and 
 threatened them that if we found them again 
 accused of similar misdeeds we would punish them 
 severely." * And it would not be right to suspect the 
 archbishop of a weak toleration of vice for acting so 
 leniently. The number of offenders was so great 
 that if he had suspended or expelled them all, he 
 would have had few or no priests left to serve the 
 diocese. He probably did the best which the 
 circumstances permitted ; which was, on proof of 
 repeated guilt, to obtain from the culprit a written 
 promise of reform, together with an undertaking 
 to leave his church and the country in case of a 
 * " Regest. Yisitationuni Arch. Eothomagensis," p. 21. 
 
MOBALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 161 
 
 relapse into his former depravity. Eigaud has pre- 
 served for us a great number of these documents, 
 signed, sealed, and sworn to, by the penitents, and 
 they are extremely curious. In the first place, they 
 show beyond doubt or cavil that the charges were 
 true. Habemus confitentes reos. In the next place, 
 the poor priests seem heartily ashamed and sorry, 
 and own without ambiguity, in often crude language, 
 the faults they have committed ; though probably 
 the drawing up of these confessions was not en- 
 trusted to them, but confided to the sterner pens of 
 the archbishop's secretaries ; they acknowledge that 
 if they fall again they will have nothing to say for 
 themselves; that they will give up their curacies 
 without the noise or fuss of a trial — sine strepitu 
 judicii — and go away. This appears to have been a 
 great point, to get rid of them quietly; no doubt 
 because a refractory or litigious priest, especially by 
 appealing to Eome, could give rise both to trouble 
 and scandal.* 
 
 * " Universis presentes litteras inspecturis, Kadulphus 
 rector ecclesise de Sana Villa Kothomagensis diocesis, salutem. 
 Noverit universitas vestra quod cum super irregularitate com- 
 missa a me, ut dicebatur, pro eo quod, suspensus et excommuni- 
 catus, dicebar celebravisse divina : item super crimine fornica- 
 tionis et adulterii quod dicebar commisisse cum Eobina penildore 
 de Nova-villa : item super eo quod dicebar lusor ad taxillos, et 
 frequentator tabernarum : item super eo quod dicebar capel- 
 lanum capellae de Kocherobiis vulnerasse graviter cum falcone 
 
 M 
 
162 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 The next witness I would like to call was a 
 cardinal, an intimate friend and co-reformer of the 
 great Hildebrand, Pope Grregory YII., the Blessed 
 Peter Damiani. Unfortunately, the very nature of 
 the crimes with, which he charges the clergy is so 
 monstrous, that it is impossible, even '' in the 
 obscurity of a learned language," as Gribbon said, to 
 give an idea of their character. Dean Milman can 
 only distantly refer to Peter Damiani's "odious 
 book," the " Liber Gomorrbeanus ; " and quotes the 
 title of the first chapter as an adequate indication of 
 its contents. Any modern must follow his example. 
 
 in capite ; essem apud bonos et graves, et maxime apud reve- 
 rendum patrem Odonem, Dei gratia, Rothomagensem arcliiepis- 
 copum adeo diffamatus, quod dictus pater, nolens dissimulare 
 premissa, nolebat super premissis ad inquisitionem contra me 
 procedere, et secundum inquisitionis exigentiam me canonicse 
 subicere ultioni. Tandem ego, quaerens a dicto patre non judicium 
 sed veniam, promisi, sine vi, sine dolo dicto patri spontaneus, 
 quod praedictam ecclesiam meam resignabo, et babebo pro 
 resignata, quandocunque dicto patri placuerit ; volens et conce- 
 dens quod idem pater possit me privare eadem ecclesia sine 
 strepitu judicii et juris solemnitate in aliquo non observata, 
 quandocunque suae sederit volnntati. Eenunciavi autem 
 spontaneus quoad premissa exceptioni de vi et de metu et 
 litteris a sede apostolica contra premissa concedendis seu etiam 
 impetrandis, et omni auxilio juris canonici vel civilis competenti 
 seu competituro per quod dictae resignatio et privatio imped iri 
 valeant vel differi. Juravi praeterea spontaneus, tactis sacro- 
 sanctis evangeliis, me contra premissa vel aliquod premissorum 
 per me nee per alium non venturum " {Ibid., p. 658). 
 
MORALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 163 
 
 It must suffice to say, that no tiling in Aristo- 
 phanes, Athenaeus, or Petronius, gives a picture of 
 more bestial depravity than the one drawn by a 
 prince of the Church of the manners of his clerical 
 contemporaries. It is " unspeakable," and with that 
 remark we must leave the subject. But what about 
 grace, what about belief in Grod, Christ, and the 
 Bible ? What about the deterrent effect of the 
 fear of hell, of the purifying effect of the hope of 
 heaven ? These are questions to which an answer 
 were desirable. 
 
 And now, what is the moral to be drawn from 
 this unpleasant but necessary review ? We have 
 seen that not in one country nor in one age, but all 
 through the Ages of Faith, the most flagrant breaches 
 of the moral law are quite compatible with the most 
 fervent and complete belief in Grod, in the Bible, 
 and, in short, in Christianity. The usual answer to 
 this objection is that these people may have had 
 faith, but it was not living and saving faith. They 
 believed like the devils, and perhaps did not always 
 tremble like them as well. So let it be. Mere 
 faith, unless it be of a particular kind, is not enough. 
 The heart must be touched by grace, as well as the 
 mind disposed to assent to certain dogmatic proposi- 
 tions. But Agnostics say no more and no less. 
 The touching of the heart is everything, and assent 
 
164 TEE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 to propositions next to nothing. It is abundantly 
 plain that assent to Christian dogmas offers the 
 slenderest guarantee that it will have the desired 
 effect in touching the heart. There never was a 
 moment, from the first teaching of Christianity till 
 the present day, when sincere pastors have not 
 deplored the condition of the greater part of their 
 flocks. That the whole world lieth in wickedness 
 is the constant burden of their conlplaint. Could 
 better proof be required or given that the supposed 
 connection between belief and morality is illusory ? 
 And it is easy to see that this is not an accidental 
 but a necessary result. By laying all the emphasis 
 of its teaching on repentance and the subjective 
 attitude of the soul towards God, and not on good 
 works performed to individuals and society, Chris- 
 tianity has not applied its force in the right direction 
 for producing the maximum of morality. As this 
 was not its aim, it cannot be censured for not having 
 attained it. But it is open to us to point out that 
 this misdirection of force largely accounts for the 
 low morality of the past, and is one of the chief 
 causes of the decline of theology in the present. It 
 is proved by an experience of eighteen hundred years, 
 that the tremendous sanctions which Christianity 
 wields are inoperative on the majority of minds. 
 They do not realize them ; the threats are not heard, 
 
MOBALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 1G5 
 
 as it were, by the inward spirit. The immediate con- 
 nection between wrong-doing and going to hell is 
 not grasped. Hell is a long way off, is not visible, 
 and its deterrent efficacy is weakest when the attrac- 
 tion of sinful pleasure is strongest. Only minds 
 of a fine, imaginative power, and naturally tender 
 consciences, seize the whole import of the Christian 
 message. This fact alone would put Christianity 
 at a disadvantage in dealing with the bulk of man- 
 kind. Few persons care for remote dangers or 
 evils ; they banish them from their minds, as 
 suggesting gloomy thoughts, and trust to the 
 chapter of accidents to escape them entirely. When 
 preachers enlarge every Sunday on the peril of the 
 unrepenting sinner's condition, and tell him that he 
 may at any moment be summoned before the dread 
 tribunal of an angry God, the young and the strong 
 and the giddy accord to them but a languid assent. 
 They feel in robust health, sudden death by accident 
 or disease is the great exception, and pleasure is 
 very delightful, and within reach. It is a maxim 
 of jurisprudence that prompt punishment for wrong- 
 doing is vastly more efficacious than even severer 
 penalties long delayed. Suppose ordinary crime 
 were punished, not with the greatest dispatch com- 
 patible with justice, but at a remote period in after- 
 life, say twenty or thirty years after its commission, 
 
166 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 would not the deterrent effect of the criminal law 
 be even less than it is ? But this is by no means 
 all. In addition to this disadvantage, Christian 
 priests have one and all placed a greater one in their 
 own way as teachers of morality, by their doctrine 
 of repentance and consequent salvation. When, like 
 St. Alphonso de' Liguori, or Mr. Spurgeon, they 
 teach that any amount of crime and sin can be ex- 
 punged in a moment by sincere contrition and 
 turning to God, even in the last hour, they remove 
 from the cause of morality in this world all the 
 force and urgency of their exhortations, and transfer 
 them to celestial happiness beyond the grave. If 
 they had been able to preach that good works, and 
 good works only, would take men to heaven, they 
 would have occupied a relatively strong position. 
 If they could have said to men, " It matters not how 
 sorry you are for having done amiss, you must 
 smart for it all the same," they would have had a 
 powerful lever to keep men in the right way. But 
 they were tied down by the terms of the divine 
 deed and testament, and forced to use very different 
 language. The lamentable doctrine of Original Sin, 
 and all that flowed from it, the washing away of 
 sins, flight from the wrath to come, forced them 
 to show that, after all, heaven was open, if certain 
 conditions were complied with, heartfelt repentance. 
 
MORALITY IN THE AGES OF FAITH. 167 
 
 turning to Jesus, confession of sins, receiving the 
 sacrament ; and that, in that case, previous crime 
 or virtue made no difference ; all men justly lay 
 under the sentence of God's wrath, and if he chose 
 to pardon, it was only out of the unspeakable riches 
 of his grace. It was not for man to make terms. So 
 that by exaggerating human depravity and making 
 all men worthy of hell, they came to admit very 
 bad characters into heaven. And quite rightly, 
 from one point of view. Salvation was their object, 
 not morality. They have not aimed at it, and they 
 have not attained it. 
 
163 THE SERVICE OF MAN, 
 
 CHAPTER YIT. 
 
 WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE. 
 
 In attempting to estimate the past, we are exposed 
 to two opposite temptations, either of which may 
 lead US into serious error. We may be so im- 
 pressed by the recent advance of knowledge, and 
 the enlarged power of man over nature, the pomp and 
 brilliancy of modern material progress, that we turn 
 with disdain from the humbler science and per- 
 formance of our ancestors, and, comparing their 
 poverty with our own riches, complacently draw 
 flattering conclusions to our own advantage. This 
 disposition is a common mark of energetic but un- 
 educated minds, of people who have made their way 
 in the world by force of character, and who nourish 
 a sort of grudge against learning and scholarship. 
 On the other hand, it is a tone so repulsive to 
 minds which have made themselves acquainted with 
 the past, that these are apt to fall into the opposite 
 extreme, and to see with over-clearness the seamy 
 
WHAT CEBISTIANITT HAS DONE. 169 
 
 side of the present. The wealth and noisy progress 
 of the present do not impress persons of this type 
 with much respect. They pronounce them to be 
 vulgar and commonplace, and purchased at far too 
 great a cost ; nay, by the ruin of numerous lovely and 
 precious things, which the present age does not 
 miss, only because it is too deeply buried in sordid 
 cares and frivolous pleasures to know anything 
 about them. If one class points to the triumph of 
 industry and the victories of steam, the other draws 
 attention to the meanness of our Art, and the foul 
 defacement of natural beauty, and even the pollution 
 of the air we breathe and the water we drink bv 
 factories, tall chimneys, and the ubiquitous scream- 
 ing tyrant, the railroad. The admirers of the 
 present look out upon the world which it is their 
 intention to subdue, as conquerors. They are 
 always for " opening up" new countries, which they 
 say conduces to trade and the spread of civilization. 
 The lovers of the past reply that the march of so- 
 called civilization should rather be called the spread 
 of ruin, vice, and disease ; that the traders look upon 
 the world rather as buccaneers than as honest men, 
 that they regard it as their oyster which they mean 
 to open with a steam hammer. The interchange of 
 taunts and reproaches goes on in amoebic response, 
 as of peasants in an idyll, and no doubt will not 
 
170 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 readily be brought to a close. It is referred to here 
 in order to exhibit the difficulty of a task which, at 
 one time or another, we are nearly all of us compelled 
 to undertake, to estimate and fairly judge the past, 
 if for no other purpose than lighting up and 
 enabling us to direct the present. 
 
 A clear perception of the road we have travelled 
 is one of the best indications of our probable course 
 in the future, whether that course be a straight 
 line or a curve. It is obvious, if society be an 
 organism, and few nowadays would deny the fact, 
 that, in order to understand it, we must study its 
 life, behaviour and habits, on the most extended 
 scale. The present is a transitory phase, which is 
 as insufficient for this purpose as a day or an hour 
 would be for the biological study of one of the 
 higher animals. Both those who wish to break 
 with the past and ignore its teaching as so much 
 dross — the revolutionists ; and those who on various 
 grounds can think of nothing better than an im- 
 possible return to it — the reactionaries ; will find, 
 and indeed have found already, though the extremes 
 of neither party are very docile to the lessons of 
 experience, that knowledge alone can throw light on 
 our path, and that to take sentiment or passion as 
 our guide is to court catastrophe. Kevolutionists, 
 who are too impatient and headstrong to wait for 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITT HAS DONE. 171 
 
 the slow but sure effects of evolution, and reaction- 
 aries, who are too selfish or stupid to admit the 
 changes which evolution demands, are equal enemies 
 to progress and human well-being. Incessant and 
 minute change is one of the conditions of life, but 
 great and sudden change is disease, and no change 
 at all is incipient death. One of the numerous mis- 
 fortunes which afflict mankind is the difficulty of 
 inculcating this truth ; it appears to be profoundly 
 offensive to the vulgar of all classes, the majority 
 of the race. A salutary change, let us suppose, is 
 obviously required ; it is announced and advised by 
 a reflective individual or group here and there. If 
 they are not too obscure and insignificant to fail 
 wholly in attracting notice, a clamour arises against 
 their monstrous and unheard-of opinions ; for critical 
 turning-points occur in the speculative as well 
 as the practical order ; modes of thought and 
 doctrines at times need reforming as much as insti- 
 tutions ; they cannot be listened to, they are sub- 
 versive, atheistic, destructive of man's best interests, 
 and so forth. The change does not take place, or 
 oftener it is not overtly admitted as needed or salu- 
 tary ; it is kept down and arrested, as far as possible, 
 even ignored. But it is going on underground, as 
 it were ; its partisans increase, and their anger also, 
 till at last comes a time when the dammed up 
 
172 THE SERVICE OF MAN, 
 
 current has accumulated an energy which over- 
 powers all obstacles, and it dashes furiously forward, 
 scattering devastation along its course. This is the 
 abstract history of all revolutions in Church or State, 
 in thought or practice. 
 
 These considerations, even if they be deemed over- 
 trite and obvious, are not out of place as introductory 
 to the subject of this chapter ; an attempt to estimate 
 the action of Christianity in the past. In the last 
 chapter it was viewed in relation to its effect on 
 morals ; and facts were adduced which seemed to show 
 that in that respect its operation had been far less 
 salutary and decided than it is customary to assume. 
 At the same time it was shown that morality was 
 never the special objective of Christianity, and there- 
 fore any failure to foster morality could not justly 
 be made a reproach against it. No system can be 
 blamed for not accomplishing what it never attempted 
 to do. Luther would have read the previous chapter 
 without discomposure. He would have said, " No 
 doubt ; the object of Christianity is to save men's souls 
 in the next world, not to make them moral in this. 
 And it does save. That is all I want." On this ground 
 his position is unassailable. Modern apologists have 
 usually forsaken his inaccessible heights, and put in 
 claims, which seem to be more than disputable, for 
 their religion as a guardian of morality. But this is 
 
WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE, 173 
 
 only one side of a large subject. A doctrine so wide 
 and powerful as the Christian has many other sides, 
 and its energy as a social factor is not to be limited 
 to one point of view. Christianity has had an 
 immense influence on politics, literature, and philo- 
 sophy ; it has moulded the minds and characters of 
 many of the most distinguished persons who have 
 adorned the human race. But neither its blind 
 friends nor its blind foes can be expected to do it 
 justice, and possibly full justice will never be done 
 to it till it has ceased to exist. Still, an estimate 
 of its value as a social doctrine must ever appear as 
 one of the most important problems presented by 
 history, an attempted solution of which is almost 
 imposed on serious students who are sufficiently 
 withdrawn from theological prepossessions to regard 
 Christianity neither with love nor hatred, but with 
 that sympathy and respect justly due to one of the 
 greatest phases of human evolution. 
 
 In the learned and profound investigations of 
 continental scholars concerning the origin of Christi- 
 anity and the growth of the early Church, sufficient 
 attention has not always been accorded to the 
 precise time and place in the order of human 
 evolution in which that religion arose. This is not 
 intended as a reproach to such illustrious men 
 as Strauss, F. C. Baur, Keim, Hausrath, and 
 
174 TEE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 Renan. Thej had more immediate work of a 
 specialist kind to do, and might well leave the 
 placing of Christianity in world-history to others. 
 But the point is of great importance. It may 
 with reason be doubted, if the fact is as often remem- 
 bered as it should be, that Christianity arose amid 
 the corruption and decay of the greatest civilization 
 which the human race had seen, amid the death- 
 throes of the ancient world. From the fact that the 
 New Testament was written before that corruption 
 and decay had assumed their final and fatal form, 
 that St. Paul lived and preached in Antioch the 
 Beautiful ; visited Athens while its citizens still 
 retained enough of the old inquiring spirit to " spend 
 their time in nothing else but either to tell or to 
 hear something new ; " and at last came to martyrdom 
 in Eome while the deceptive bloom of imperial 
 splendour still flushed the cheek of the dying mistress 
 of the world — it is often assumed that this proud 
 heathenism and pagan glory were overthrown by 
 the meek and unlearned disciples of the Gralilean 
 prophet of God. Nothing can be less true than this 
 assumption. The soft autumnal calm, and purple 
 tints as of an Indian summer, which lingered, up to 
 the Antonines, over that wide expanse of empire, 
 from the Persian Gulf to the Pillars of Hercules, and 
 from the Nile to the Clyde, broken as it was by the 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 175 
 
 year of Revolution of a.d. 69 and the black tyranny 
 of Domitian's reign, was only a misleading transition 
 to that bitter winter which filled the half of the 
 second and the whole of the third century, to be soon 
 followed by the abiding dark and cold of the Middle 
 Ages. The Empire was moribund when Christianity 
 arose. Indeed, Rome had practically slain the 
 ancient world before the Empire replaced the effete 
 Republic. The barbarous Roman soldier who killed 
 Archimedes absorbed in a problem, is but an instance 
 and a type of what Rome had done always and every- 
 where by Greek art, civilization and science. The 
 Empire lived upon and consumed the capital of 
 preceding ages, which it did not replace. Popula- 
 tion, production, knowledge, all declined and slowly 
 died. The Christian apologists, headed by St. 
 Augustine, were justly indignant at the pagan 
 slander which attributed the fall of the Empire to the 
 spread of Christianity. Their answer to the objection 
 was complete, as we can see far better even than 
 they did themselves. But what they could not be 
 expected to see, and what we can see very well is, 
 that the fall of the Empire, including the loss and 
 ruin of the old philosophy and knowledge, was an 
 indispensable condition of the spread of Christianity. 
 If the blood of the martyrs was truly said to be 
 the seed of the Church, the decay of knowledge was 
 
176 TEE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 an equally needed pre-requisite. It will not be 
 denied that this decay of knowledge was present and 
 startlingly rapid. After the silver age which ended 
 nobly with Tacitus and the younger Pliny, Latin 
 pagan literature almost ceases to exist ; and the 
 falling off in the form is not more striking than in 
 the value and quality of the contents. All super- 
 stitions revived and flourished apace in the ever- 
 waning light of knowledge. A shudder of religious 
 awe ran through the Eoman world, and grew more 
 sombre and searching with the progressive gloom and 
 calamities of the time. A spirit wholly different 
 from the light-hearted scepticism of the Augustan 
 age and later Eepublic stirred men's hearts, and the 
 strongest minds did not escape it. "The pagans 
 were not one whit behind the Christians as regards 
 belief in miracles and in a future life." * The sun of 
 ancient science, which had risen in such splendour 
 from Thales to Hipparchus, was now sinking rapidly 
 to the horizon ; and when it at last disappeared, say, 
 in the fifth century, the long night of the Middle 
 Ages began. 
 
 But it was in this period of decaying knowledge 
 and civilization that the Christian religion was 
 elaborated and constituted in the historical form 
 
 * Hausrath, " Neutestamentliclie Zeitgeschichte," vol. iii. p. 
 489. 
 
WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE. Ill 
 
 which it practically still wears. The creeds and 
 chief dogmas of the Church were worked out in 
 the period which extends from the Council of 
 Jerusalem to the Councils of Nice, Chalcedon, 
 Alexandria, and Ephesus. No evolutionist would 
 think of speaking in any but respectful terms of 
 the great churchmen who laid down the lines along 
 which European thought was destined to travel 
 for a thousand years. The sneering tone of sceptics 
 in the last age is wholly out of place, and arose 
 from pure ignorance of the laws which govern 
 social and intellectual development. The Nicene 
 Creed in the fourth century after Christ was as 
 natural and legitimate a product of the conditions 
 of the time, as was the Socratic philosophy in the 
 fourth century before Christ. What we have to 
 note is, that the Nicene Creed was the product of 
 an age of decay, of disaster, and approaching death, 
 so far as civilization and science were concerned. 
 In every light, one of the most memorable, and in 
 many respects one of the most noble of human 
 compositions, it yet, as it could not fail to do, bears 
 the marks of its birth-time ; and that time was one 
 of extreme calamity, of growing gloom, ignorance 
 and misery. Within two centuries of its jDromul- 
 gation, the Grseco-Roman world had descended 
 into the great hollow which is roughly called the 
 
 N 
 
178 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 Middle Ages, extending from the fifth to the fifteenth 
 century, a hollow in which many great, beautiful 
 and heroic things were done and created, but in 
 which knowledge, as we understand it, and as 
 Aristotle understood it, had no place. The revival 
 of learning and the Renaissance are memorable as 
 the first sturdy breasting by humanity of the hither 
 slope of the great hollow which lies between us and 
 the ancient world. The modern man^ reformed 
 and regenerated by knowledge, looks across it, and 
 recognizes on the opposite ridge, in the far-shining 
 cities and stately porticoes, in the art, politics, and 
 science of antiquity, many more ties of kinship and 
 sympathy than in the mighty concave between, 
 wherein dwell his Christian ancestry, in the dim 
 light of scholasticism and theology. 
 
 The birth of Christianity being on this wise, 
 viz. having taken place in an era of decay and 
 death of art and philosophy, of knowledge^ of 
 wealth, of population, of progress in every form, 
 and the absence of these things having been one 
 of the chief negative conditions of its growth and 
 prosperity, we must look for the sources of its 
 nourishment in another direction than these ; not 
 in knowledge, or the eager questioning spirit which 
 leads to knowledge, but in the humble spirit which 
 believes and accepts on trust the word of authority ; 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 179 
 
 not in regulated industry, which aims at constant 
 increase and accumulation of wealth, but in the 
 resigned poverty which, scorning this world, lays 
 up riches in heaven ; not in political freedom and 
 popular government, which aims at the progressive 
 well-being of all, but in the stern rigour of arbitrary 
 power, wliich coerces the vicious and refractory into 
 a little order during their brief sojourn on earth. 
 In the decline and fall of Rome, or, as it would be 
 better to say, in the final ruin of ancient civiliza- 
 tion, the conditions favourable to this order of 
 beliefs or doctrines spontaneously emerged. It is 
 obvious that there could be no question of free 
 institutions or settled industry in an age chastened 
 by every scourge of war, pestilence and famine ; by 
 arbitrary tyranny and military despotism. Know- 
 ledge, again, is even more sensitive than capital to 
 the influence of public and widespread calamities, 
 inasmuch as the love of knowledge is rarer and 
 feebler than the love of wealth in most minds. To 
 a man of the fifth century, on the look out for any 
 sphere of activity for his energies, no prospect pre- 
 sented itself in the least similar to what such a 
 man would see now, or would have seen in Athens 
 under Pericles, or in Rome under the Sci23ios. 
 Public life existed as little as it does at this day 
 in Russia. The pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's 
 
180 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 sake was out of place in a time wlien daily ex- 
 istence was not safe from the swords of successive 
 barbarian hordes, or failing these, from the more 
 cruel onslaught of the merciless tax-collector. That 
 is to say, all the outlets through which modern 
 energy is chiefly expended were then closed ; a man 
 could not serve the state as a citizen, he could not 
 serve knowledge as a man of science, he could not 
 augment wealth as an artisan or master of industry. 
 
 There was only one thing left for him to do — 
 to serve God. 
 
 The last and perhaps the most important legacy 
 left by the ancient philosophy to the world was 
 the doctrine of monotheism, the belief in a single 
 supreme Grod. The evolution of this capital idea 
 has never yet been traced with the care it supremely 
 deserves. The common notion that it was wholly 
 derived from the Jews is quite unfounded. The 
 germs of it may be found in Grreece in the earliest 
 speculations of the Ionic and Eleatic philosophers. 
 It gradually made its way, by the force of its inherent 
 rationality, against manifold opposition, and among 
 the Stoics reached a. distinctness and elevation little, 
 if at all, inferior to the highest Jewish conception 
 of Jehovah. The Christian deity was a union of 
 the two monotheistic conceptions, the Greek and 
 the Jewish. Each element was necessary for the 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 181 
 
 conception to attain its full universality and power. 
 The Jew never quite transcended his notions of a 
 tribal God, who had been in an exclusive way the 
 God of his fathers from the beginning ; the God of 
 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in whom he had a sort 
 of ancestral right of property, who was bound to 
 him, and to whom he was bound, by covenants and 
 mercies and promises, such as no other nation ever 
 imagined. The Jew was, therefore, on a footing 
 of familiarity and intimacy, so to speak, with his 
 God, to which the metaphysical Greek, with his 
 wide discourse of reason, never attained. To the 
 Jew, God is the great companion, the profound and 
 loving, yet terrible, friend of his inmost soul, with 
 whom he holds communion in the sanctuary of his 
 heart, to whom he turns, or should turn, in every 
 hour of adversity or happiness. Hear the Psalmist : 
 " God, thou art my God ; early will I seek thee. 
 My soul tliirsteth for thee, my flesh also longeth 
 after thee, in a barren and dry land where no water 
 is. For thy loving-kindness is better than the life 
 itself: my lips shall praise thee. Havel not remem- 
 bered thee in my bed, and thought upon thee when 
 I was waking ? Because thou hast been my helper, 
 therefore under the shadow of thy wings will I 
 rejoice." * On the other hand, the very closeness and 
 * Psalm Ixiii. 1, 2, 4, 7, 8. 
 
182 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 specialty of the Jew's relation to Jehovah, made his 
 conception of the deity unsuitable to the office of a 
 cosmopolitan God. I venture to suggest that perhaps 
 the opposition of Peter and the Jndaizing Christians 
 to the wider views of St. Paul, arose as much from 
 a reluctance to part with their national God, as 
 from the narrow, ceremonial scruples to which it 
 is ascribed. The Greek was as inferior to the Jew 
 in the depth and intensity of his religious sentiment, 
 as he was superior in mental reach and philosophic 
 power. For him, God is the deity of the intellect 
 rather than of the heart ; He is the symbol of 
 " eternal law all-ruling," * and the Hellene all but 
 attained to the impersonal and unknowable reality 
 behind phenomena, which the last word of recent 
 philosophy propounds as the only rational object 
 of worship. 
 
 When these two, each in its way, powerful and 
 stimulating notions of God coalesced into one, as 
 they did in the teaching of St. Paul, the effect on 
 the moral and spiritual world was as that of a new 
 force, a new centre of gravity to wliich all thoughts 
 and feelings naturally tended with an irresistible 
 attraction. The rationality of monotheism as com- 
 pared with polytheism, of the idea of one all-ruling 
 
 * " . . . cTret ovTC f3poTOL<i yipas aXXo tl jxel^ov, 
 ovT€ OeolSi y KOLvov del vofJiov iv Blkt] vfxve'iv" 
 
 Cleanthis Hymn., 37, 38. 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY SAS DONE. 183 
 
 deity, instead of the anarchy of a crowd of gods 
 and goddesses thwarting each other, recommended 
 the doctrine to all superior minds, as infinitely truer, 
 simpler, and better. Knowledge had progressed 
 far enough to make the uniformity of nature a 
 credible result of the operations of an eternal mind ; 
 but it had not gone far enough to exclude the notions 
 of miracle and of providential interference on the part 
 of the deity with human affairs. Moreover, the 
 God of the Jews had become, through St. Paul, the 
 God of the universe, and the " Father of all ; in every 
 age, in every clime adored." The influence of the 
 combined ideas on contemporary minds, as it is 
 shown in the writings of the Fathers, is very striking. 
 A tone of exultation and radiant joy seems to possess 
 them when they refer to the new-found, central 
 object of their worship, which contrasts not only 
 with the sad, desponding tone of the pagans, but 
 even with Israel's delight in Jehovah, which is 
 rarely Mathout a touch of gloom and foreboding, 
 and with the meek resignation of the Middle Ages, 
 which tremble even more than they believe. Com- 
 pare the Te Deum of St. Ambrose with the Dies 
 Tree of Thomas of Alano. The two hymns are 
 parallel, often nearly identical, in thought, but pro- 
 foundly divergent in sentiment. The one bright, 
 full of hope and trust in God ; the other sombre 
 
184 THE SEE VICE OF MAN. 
 
 and anxious and care-laden, almost to the verge of 
 despair. Such was the difference between the fifth 
 and the thirteenth centuries. The earlier Christians, 
 reminded, no doubt, by the paganism which still 
 survived, are never weary of setting forth the 
 superior grandeur and consolation of their faith as 
 compared to that of polytheism ; and it is quite easy 
 even for us to see how incalculably the religious 
 sentiment must have been intensified, when its 
 scattered rays, dispersed among a crowd of deities, 
 were all united in the barely tolerable splendour of 
 one Almighty God and Lord. Nowhere does the 
 passionate adoration, and flow of unbounded devotion, 
 show itself with more fervour and power than in 
 the Prayer for all Conditions of Men in the Alexan- 
 drian Liturgy. The original makes the fragments 
 of it which have survived in modern Liturgies 
 appear very pale and tame. Here is a short s]3eci- 
 men : — 
 
 " King of Peace, give us thy peace, keep us in 
 love and charity, be our God, for we know none 
 beside thee : we call upon thy name ; grant unto our 
 souls the life of righteousness, that the death of sin 
 may not prevail against us or any of thy people. 
 Visit, Lord, and heal those who are sick, according 
 to thy pity and compassion ; turn from them and 
 from us all sickness and diseases, restore them to and 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 185 
 
 confirm them in their strength. Eaise up those who 
 have lingered under long and tedious indispositions ; 
 succour those who are vexed with unclean spirits. 
 Eelieve those who are in prisons or in the mines, 
 under accusations or condemnations, in exile or in 
 slavery, or loaded with grievous tribute." * 
 
 With these intense and absorbing feelings running 
 in a deep but, after all, narrow channel, the Western 
 European world turned to meet and advance into 
 that dread and frightful time designated as the Fall 
 of the Eoman Empire. How a fragment or a germ 
 of civilization escaped destruction in that great 
 catastrophe it is not easy to say. It is admitted on 
 all hands that a great debt is owing to the Christian 
 bishops of those days, who were the only officials 
 clothed with authority and honour, who survived the 
 wreck of the Roman bureaucracy. Although this 
 fact redounds rather to the credit of episcopacy than 
 of Christianity, still a fair ciiticism must admit that 
 as without the previous dignity and prestige obtained 
 by the Christian religion, bishops would not have 
 been there, or in a position to discharge their func- 
 tions, the final result must be credited to the new 
 faith. It is the more incumbent upon us to acknow- 
 ledge and assert this, as at a later date the part 
 played by Christianity in politics was very nearly 
 * Bunsen, " Analecta Ante-Nicena," pp. 24, 109. 
 
186 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 wholly evil. In attempting to estimate, as was 
 proposed, tlie utility of Christianity in the past, it 
 will simplify our task if we divide the subject under 
 three heads, and consider its Political, Philosophical, 
 and Spiritual action in the world. 
 
 1. The Political action of Christianity. wing- 
 to well-known historical reasons, the natural and 
 legitimate action of the politics suggested or ap- 
 proved in the New Testament w^as a long time in 
 showing itself. The courtliness of the bishops who 
 incensed Constantine and Theodosius, was evidence 
 that Christian prelates, as such, had no objection to 
 arbitrary power. But that is hardly a reproach, 
 when nothing but arbitrary power was possible. 
 Under the Catholic feudal regime the Church was 
 more often in an attitude of hostility to the secular 
 power than in alliance with it. While the Church 
 was the rival of the State, and bid high for supre- 
 macy, it could not coalesce with the State, and sup- 
 port its despotic pretensions. But when, at the end of 
 the Middle Ages, the monarchies of Europe definitively 
 got the upper hand, and aimed straight at arbitrary 
 power, the Church, so far from opposing, was only 
 too ready to help them. A number of texts, which 
 had been overlooked before, were cited to prove the 
 absolute duty of every Christian man to yield passive 
 obedience to kings and governors. It was one of 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 187 
 
 the most critical turning-points in human evolution. 
 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the battle 
 of freedom was fought out. All the monarchies of 
 Europe were moving with rapid strides towards 
 despotism. Nothing can deprive the Dutch of the 
 honour of having been the first to step into the 
 breach and defend, against apparently overwhelming 
 odds, the cause of liberty. The English followed 
 them, nobly but somewhat tardily, under Cromwell. 
 All through this bad time, the Christian Church 
 threw its whole weight on the side of oppression ; 
 and the point to be noticed is, that it had the fullest 
 scriptural warrant for its action, and could not con- 
 scientiously have done otherwise. We have all long 
 ago forgotten the opposition of our Jacobites to 
 freedom, and the narrow escape we had of falling 
 under arbitrary powder. The weak and worthless 
 Stuarts, with their immense ambition and feeble 
 faculties, were not the chief danger. That lay in 
 the adherence to their pretensions of such saintly 
 men as Bishop Ken, and such noble champions of 
 moral purity as Jeremy Collier. And these men, 
 as they believed all scripture, believed also these 
 texts : " Let every soul be subject unto the higher 
 powers. For there is no power but of Grod : the 
 powers that be are ordained of God." '' Submit 
 yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's 
 
188 THE SEE VICE OF MAN. 
 
 sake." '^ Servants, be subject to your masters with 
 all fear ; not only to the good and gentle, but also to 
 the fro ward." Professor Sewell, commenting on 
 these passages, says with complete truth, " It is 
 idle, and worse than idle, to attempt to restrict and 
 explain away this positive command. And the 
 Christian Church has always upheld it in its full 
 extent. With one uniform, unhesitating voice it has 
 proclaimed the duty of passive obedience." * 
 
 It may be objected that the Puritans and other 
 Christian sects have taken a different view of their 
 relio'ious duties, and shown themselves brave cham- 
 pions of civil freedom. To which it may be replied, 
 that the Puritans, when they were oppressed by 
 Laud and Charles, showed the common human faculty 
 of looking away from and ignoring inconvenient 
 facts which told against them and their cause ; they 
 passed over these parts of scripture. Even Locke, 
 in his answer to Fihner, never attempted to expound 
 these formidable texts in a sense favourable to his 
 arguments ; like the able controversialist that he was, 
 he felt that the less said on that subject the better. 
 But further, the Puritans, by their partiality for the 
 Old Testament, became almost Jewish in sentiment, 
 and imbibed a portion of the anti-monarchical spirit 
 of the Hebrew prophets and priesthood. It was not 
 * "Chiistian Politics," p. 111. 
 
WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE. 189 
 
 one of these who would have said, " Let every soul 
 be subject unto the higher powers." And, yet, again, 
 the Puritans, when they became supreme in America, 
 showed that they could be as oppressive and intole- 
 rant as any Catholics or Anglicans in Europe. 
 
 It is not necessary to expatiate at any length 
 on the import and effect of this authentic Christian 
 and scriptual teaching. We can easily afford to 
 let bygones be bygones. But when the most im- 
 modest and unfounded claims are put forward in 
 behalf of Christianity as an unfailing and universal 
 benefactor to mankind, we may certainly be allowed 
 to point out that for two centuries it was a con- 
 sistent and determined enemy of human liberty and 
 welfare. It took the side of the Stuarts, Bourbons, 
 and Hapsburgs against their subjects, and it was 
 bound to do so by its own principles. An agnostic 
 may pardon this, as one of those errors of which 
 the past is full. " But a Christian, who believes in 
 the perennial value and beneficence of his doctrine, 
 must, one would think, experience certain qualms 
 in moments of retrospection. 
 
 2. The influence of Christianity on speculative 
 thought has been far more salutary than it has 
 been on politics, and this not from any accidental 
 circumstance, but in consequence of essential 
 qualities in the doctrine itself. It cannot be a mere 
 
190 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 accident that of the three monotheistic religions, 
 Christianity alone has produced elaborate systems 
 of theology, which in depth and compass can com- 
 pare with any systems of philosophy, ancient or 
 modern. The Jews and Mahometans have each 
 had their disputes and controversies inside their 
 own confessions, from which the odium theo- 
 logicum has not been wanting ; but their puny 
 differences cannot be compared to the s|)lendid, far- 
 reaching discussions which have repeatedly filled 
 the Christian Churches with the most vigorous and 
 brilliant intellectual life. The subject cannot be 
 treated adequately here. It will suffice to point to 
 the intellectual revival which followed the spread 
 of Christianity, and gave to the world the whole 
 literature of the Fathers, Greek and Latin, in the 
 third, fourth, and fifth centuries, at the very time 
 when pagan literature had fallen into sterility and 
 decrepitude. Even Gibbon, no favourable witness, 
 acknowledges this. Of all writers who have used 
 Latin as their mother tongue, it is no e:saggeration 
 to say that St. Augustine is by for the most original, 
 suggestive, and profound. He is a genuine thinker, 
 not a mere rhetorician like Cicero, Seneca and the 
 rest. The controversies of the fourth century, which 
 have given rise to much tasteless ridicule, notably 
 the Arian controversy, and the witticism suggested 
 
WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE. 191 
 
 that it was preposterous that the world should 
 be divided into hostile camps by a diphthong, these 
 controversies were mentally the most stimulating 
 discussions, not only which the age admitted of, 
 but which have ever occupied men's minds. All 
 the faculties of the reason and logical understanding 
 were brought into play, subtlety the most acute, and 
 discourse of reason the most lofty. When the 
 western world sank into barbarism in the sixth, 
 seventh, and eighth centuries, theological controversy 
 largely ceased ; it was a sufficient task for the West 
 to keep alive, and intellectual luxuries had to be 
 dispensed with. But the moment the warmth of 
 reviving civilization returned to the stiffened minds 
 of the West, deep and searching controversies re- 
 commenced. It would be interesting to show 
 how all this mental activity sprang immediately or 
 remotely from the central Christian doctrine, the 
 Divinity of Christ. A long struggle was needed to 
 establish that doctrine, but it was worthy of a long 
 struggle. The difference between " homoousion " 
 and " homoiousion " is only that of a single letter, 
 but as Emile Saisset well said, " Probe the matter 
 to the bottom ; between Jesus Christ, man, and Jesus 
 Christ, man-God, there is infinity ; there is, if one 
 may so speak, the whole thickness of Christianity." 
 The subsequent controversies, the Monothelite, the 
 
192 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 Monopliysite, and others, are obviously due to the 
 same origin ; and all through the following ages, the 
 Scholastic period, the Eeformation, the Jansenist 
 and Jesuit epoch, down to Strauss and Moehler, 
 the same great doctrine has been, in a greater or 
 lesser degree, a potent stimulus at once of philoso- 
 phical inquiry and historical research. 
 
 3. It is in the action of Christian doctrine on the 
 human spirit, that we see its power in the highest 
 and most characteristic form. Neutral or injurious 
 in politics, favourably stimulating in the region of 
 speculative thought, its influence on the spiritual 
 side of characters, naturally susceptible to its action, 
 has been transcendent, overpowering, and un- 
 paralleled. The restriction to characters '^ naturally 
 susceptible " will probably be resented, but it cannot 
 be denied. The great mass of men have at all times 
 been feebly sensitive to the higher spiritual in- 
 fluences of Christianity. It is a fact which all 
 preachers of every denomination are for ever de- 
 nouncing and lamenting. The true Christian saint 
 is the rarest product in every Christian Church. 
 What is even more noteworthy is, that the terrible 
 menaces of God's wrath and damnation which, till 
 quite recent times, have been universally believed by 
 Christian men, have been equally inoperative ; and 
 this to such a degree, that the truly converted and 
 
WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE. 193 
 
 repentant sinners, those who have set about working 
 out their salvation in fear and trembling, have ever 
 been lost in wonder and horror at the reckless folly 
 of the bulk of mankind in leading the lives they 
 did, coupled with their nominal beliefs. Convinced 
 and earnest Christians are always compelled to 
 regard it as madness, or a superlative proof of 
 Satan's power. Yolumes of quotations could be 
 given from the highest and best authorities in sup- 
 port of this, as every one conversant with religious 
 literature will be aware. I will restrict myself to 
 two, taken from the works of illustrious men, each 
 in his own confession among the brightest examples 
 of Christian virtue, Blaise Pascal, and Richard 
 Baxter. Pascal says : — 
 
 " Rien n'est si important a I'homme que son etat ; 
 rien ne lui est si redoubtable que I'eternite. Et ainsi, 
 qu'il se trouve des hommes indifferents a la perte 
 de leur etre, et au peril d'une eternite de miseres, 
 cela n'est point naturel. lis sont tout autres a I'egard 
 de toutes les autres choses : ils craignent jusqu'-aux 
 plus legeres ; ils les preVoient, ils les sentent ; et ce 
 meme homme qui passe tant de jours et de nuits 
 dans la rage et dans le desespoir pour la perte 
 d'une charge, ou pour quelque offense imaginaire 
 a son honneur, c'est celui-la merae qui sait qu'il va 
 tout perdre par la mort, sans inquietude et sans 
 
 o 
 
194 TEE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 emotion. C'est une chose monstrueuse de voir dans 
 Tin meme coeur et en meme temps cette sensibilite 
 pour les moindres choses, et cette etrange insensi- 
 bilite pour les plus grandes. C'est un enchantement 
 incomprehensible, et un assoupissement surnaturel, 
 qui marque une force toute-puissante qui le cause." 
 ('' Pensees," chap. I.) 
 
 Baxter says, '^ Can you make so light of heaven 
 and hell ? Your corpse will shortly lie in the dust, 
 and angels or devils will shortly seize upon your 
 souls, and every man or woman of you will shortly 
 be among other company and in another case than 
 you are now. ... what a place you will be in 
 of joy or torment ; what a light will you shortly 
 see in heaven or hell ; what thoughts will 
 shortly fill your hearts with unspeakable joy or 
 horror ! What work will you be employed in ? To 
 praise the Lord with saints and angels, or cry out 
 in the fire unquenchable with devils ? And should 
 all this be forgotten ? And all this will be endless 
 and sealed up by an unchangeable decree. Eternity, 
 eternity will be the measure of your joys or sorrows, 
 and can this be forgotten ? And all this is true, 
 sirs, most certainly true. When you have gone up 
 and down a little longer, and slept and awaked a 
 few times more, you will be dead and gone, and 
 find all true that I now tell you ; and yet you can 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 195 
 
 now so mucli forget it. You shall then remember 
 that you heard this sermon, and that this day, in 
 this place, you were reminded of these things, and 
 perceive these matters a thousand times greater than 
 either you or I could here conceive ; and yet shall 
 they be now so much forgotten ? " * 
 
 That these are only fair samples of the tremendous 
 stimulants applied by preachers to awaken Christian 
 sinners to a sense of their guilt and danger, will be 
 admitted, I suppose, on all hands ; and yet it is 
 equally admitted that they are practically of very 
 slight effect. Baxter, a few pages before, had declared 
 that " the most will be firebrands in hell for ever." 
 And no theologian with a character to lose, till 
 quite recent times, would have had a doubt about it. 
 On theological grounds the matter is sufficiently 
 perplexing. True believers, like Pascal and Baxter, 
 have at all times found that in this particular the 
 conduct of men was hardly to be explained. If they 
 believed God's promises and threats, why were their 
 lives such a practical denial of faith in them ? The 
 real answer, which divines could not be expected to 
 give, was that the bulk of men had neither sufficient 
 logic, imagination, or tenderness of heart and con- 
 science to assimilate the whole importance and 
 bearing of the Christian scheme. A strong head, 
 * Baxter's "Call to the Unconverted." 
 
196 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 which accepted the premises of the Christian doctrine, 
 would not hesitate to work out the conclusions. But 
 the majority of men have not strong heads. A 
 powerful imagination, which realized the awful pros- 
 pect of a future judgment, and the eternity of bliss 
 or woe consequent upon it, would be only too much 
 appalled by the thought ; as cases of religious mad- 
 ness sufficiently show. The truly meek and tender- 
 hearted, again, have a natural turn for piety ; as we 
 see by the negroes, who seem to obtain a saintly 
 spirit of detachment and self-renunciation with far 
 greater ease than the more energetic races of Western 
 Europe. But when among the Western Europeans 
 the saintly character, under the combined influences 
 of education and natural endowment, is evolved, the 
 result, as might be supposed, is far more striking, on 
 account of their superior fibre and temperament and 
 general brain-power. The true Christian saint, 
 though a rare phenomenon, is one of the most won- 
 derful to be witnessed in the moral world ; so lofty, 
 so pure, so attractive, that he ravishes men's souls 
 into oblivion of the patent and general fact that he 
 is an exception among thousands or millions of pro- 
 fessing Christians. The saints have saved the 
 Churches from neglect and disdain. The hope, 
 even the assertion, has always been that all men 
 could be like them, if only — the condition is not 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 197 
 
 easily reduced to words, and cannot be stated in 
 a manner generally satisfactory, but the implication 
 always is that but for some fault in man, or the 
 wiliness of Satan, sanctity might be universal. It 
 would be as rational to say that the poetry of 
 Shakespeare, the music of Beethoven, and the geo- 
 metry of Lagrange, were accessible to all men. 
 The genuine saint is a moral genius of a peculiar 
 kind ; he is born, not made ; though, like all men of 
 genius, he is sure sooner or later to acquire the best 
 education and that most adapted to his powers. 
 Saintliness is not confined to Christianity. There 
 have been Pagan and Mahometan saints ; and it 
 would not be easy to find, even in the Christian 
 Calendar, men more naturally saintly than Marcus 
 Aurelius and Abu Beker. What needs admitting, 
 or rather proclaiming, by agnostics who would be 
 just is, that the Christian doctrine has a power of 
 cultivating and developing saintliness which has 
 had no equal in any other creed or philosophy. 
 When it gets firm hold of a promising subject, one 
 with a heart and a head warm and strong enough to 
 grasp its full import and scope, then it strengthens 
 the will, raises and purifies the affections, and finally 
 achieves a conquest over the baser self in man, of 
 which the result is a character none the less beautiful 
 and soul-subduing because it is wholly beyond 
 
198 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 imitation by the less spiritually endowed. The 
 " blessed saints," are artists who work with unearthly 
 colours in the liquid and transparent tints of a loftier 
 sky than any accessible or visible to common 
 mortals. 
 
 Perhaps there is a certain rashness in attempting 
 to illustrate these remarks by concrete instances of 
 saintly detachment and self-renunciation. Hagiology 
 is not a favourite form of literature nowadays ; and it 
 must be admitted that in the lives of many saints, 
 especially of mediseval times, unpleasant traits and 
 circumstances connected with the superstitions of 
 the age are often found in close neighbourhood with 
 virtues the most beautiful and attractive. Equity 
 demands that we should make the same allowance 
 for men's erroneous moral conceptions of duty, as we 
 do for their erroneous conceptions of intellectual 
 truth, in accordance with the standards and culture 
 of the times. We do not think worse of a phi- 
 losopher's intellect, who lived in antiquity or the 
 Middle Ages, because he held a number of absurd 
 opinions and theories in astronomy, chemistry, 
 and biology. Those who believe in the empirical 
 origin of moral truth, are bound to be consistent 
 and show the same charity in the one case as in 
 the other. If we take the case of Saint Louis, 
 King of France, we must admit that a man of a 
 
WRAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE. 199 
 
 more saintly character never, perhaps, existed. If 
 we consider the temptations to which his high 
 position necessarily exposed him, and the complete- 
 ness with which he surmounted every unholy and 
 selfish thought or act, it is difficult not to regard 
 him as the best man that ever lived. Yet it is 
 obvious that in many instances his notions of duty 
 were very wrong or perverted. But though his 
 conscience may not have been always enlightened, 
 his h^^ 3 was ever right. His abortive and ruinous 
 crusades " were the cause of vast misery and harm ; 
 but we cannot wonder that so devout a man strove 
 to carry out one of the great religious ideas and 
 duties of the time, and none the less so because 
 symptoms were arising that the paramount nature 
 of the duty was beginning to be questioned. In his 
 private life he saw sometimes amiss — saw duties 
 where none existed. I refer to his exaggerated sub- 
 mission to the imperious temper of his mother, his 
 excessive and often repulsive self- mortifications. 
 But this being fully allowed, there remains a clear 
 surplus of untarnished virtue rarely surpassed. 
 
 There are few tests of a man's spiritual condition 
 more searching and decisive than the temper with 
 which he bears unmerited insult and railing speech. 
 I do not refer to mere self-command, to the self- 
 respect which forbids an answer in kind, and im- 
 
200 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 poses an external calmness of manner on a swelling 
 indignation within. The man of the world, when it 
 suits him, can attain to this much, which yet is not 
 little, considering the common "impotentia" of man- 
 kind. The question is not one of self-mastery under, 
 but of superiority to, insult, v/hich feels no anger or 
 resentment at insolence or contempt ; and this not 
 from an abject and craven spirit, but from living in 
 a plane of feeling up to which personal insult does 
 not reach. This equanimity in no wise prejudges 
 the question whether injurious language should not 
 be reproved, and in some cases punished, as by a 
 judge for contempt of court. We are only concerned 
 with that serenity of spirit which is not touched or 
 wounded by opprobrious speech, and all will admit 
 that it is a very rar^ gift. The following anecdote 
 told of St. Louis, shows the way in which he 
 endured insult : — 
 
 As he was sitting in the Court of Parliament, 
 the highest tribunal in France, a woman named 
 Sarrette, who was interested in a suit then 
 being heard, and perhaps dissatisfied with the 
 decision, exclaimed to the king, " Fie, fie ! a fine 
 king of France you are ; much better were it if 
 another were king. You are only the king of the 
 monks and friars, and the wonder is you are not 
 turned out of the kingdom." The ushers wanted to 
 
WHAT CHEISTIANITY HAS DONE. 201 
 
 strike the woman, and expel her from the court. 
 But Louis would not allow it, and said, " What you 
 say is very true, and I am not worthy to be king. 
 It would have been much better had it pleased God 
 that another had been put in my place, who knew 
 better how to govern the kingdom ; " and he ordered 
 his chamberlains to give the woman money. In this 
 last act most moralists would admit that Louis was 
 mistaken. To reward a scold for unseemly conduct in 
 a court of justice cannot be considered justifiable. 
 A fine and imprisonment might have taught Sarrette 
 a useful lesson ; it is clear that she needed one. As 
 a jurist the king was to blame. But the meekness 
 of spirit, which could suggest such an answer to a 
 king and judge, in reply to a gross insult, was surely 
 very wonderful. 
 
 Louis's justice, temperance, and entire self- 
 abnegation in every relation of life are too well 
 known from one of the most charming of mediaeval 
 chronicles, the " Memoires " of Joinville, to make 
 it needful to dwell upon the subject. But to the 
 above-cited example of his humility, it may be well 
 to add an equal proof of his firmness, and that in 
 presence of that very priesthood to whom he was 
 accused of being submissive. " I saw him another 
 time," says Joinville, "at Paris, where all the bishops 
 informed him that they wished to speak with him ; 
 
202 THE SEBVICE OF MAN, 
 
 and the king went to the Palace — the law-courts — 
 to hear them. There was Gruy, Bishop of Auxerre, 
 who spoke to him as follows, in the name of all the 
 prelates : ' Sire, the lords who are here, the arch- 
 bishops and bishops, have charged me to tell you 
 that the Christian faith is perishing in your hands.' 
 The king made the sign of the cross, and said, ' But 
 tell me how this comes to pass.' ' Sire,' resumed 
 the bishop, *the reason is that people nowadays 
 think so lightly of excommunication, that they allow 
 themselves to die rather than be absolved, and will 
 not give satisfaction to the Church. The bishops 
 request you, sire, for the love of Grod, and because 
 it is your duty, to give orders to provosts and 
 bailiffs that all who have remained excommunicated 
 for a year and a day should be constrained, by the 
 seizure of their goods, to receive absolution.' To 
 which the king replied, that he would willingly 
 command it in those cases in which guilt was clearly 
 proven. Whereupon the bishop answered, that the 
 bishops would not consent, at any price, to that 
 condition, and that the royal power had no right to 
 take cognizance of ecclesiastical causes. Then the 
 king said that he would not interfere ; and that it 
 would be against God and reason to force people to 
 obtain absolution when the clergy did them wrong. 
 ' And I will give you an example of this,' he went on 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 203 
 
 to say — Hhe case of the Earl of Brittany, who pleaded 
 in a state of excommunication for seven years 
 against the prelates of his province, and with such 
 effect that the Pope has condemned them all. If, 
 therefore, I had compelled the Earl of Brittany to 
 seek absolution in the first year, I should have 
 sinned against God and him.' And the prelates 
 had to submit," says Joinville ; " and I never heard 
 that the subject was brought up again." There was 
 no false humility here, but, on the contrary, rare 
 strength, for all it was so softly spoken. Some 
 years after, Louis published the famous Pragmatic 
 Sanction, the French equivalent to our English 
 Statute of Praemunire, which laid the foundation of 
 the liberties of the Galilean Church in opposition to 
 the See of Rome. 
 
 I do not merely admit, but strongly maintain, that 
 St. Louis was a man of such moral elevation and 
 tenderness of nature, that in whatever age of the 
 world he might have lived, and whatever creed he 
 had held, he would have been distinguished as just, 
 upright, and self-sacrificing in an unusual degree. 
 But I think it equally certain that living when he 
 did, at the brightest moment in the Ages of Faith, 
 when the emotional effect of Christianity was at its 
 height, and least disturbed by intellectual opposi- 
 tion, his spirituality was intensified by his creed, 
 
204 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 till he seems more like one of the aDgels who bow- 
 before the Great White Throne than a denizen of 
 common earth. And this is the legitimate and 
 consistent result of Christian training carried to its 
 final perfection by lofty and heroic spirits ; a complete 
 transcending not only of the sin and corruption of 
 the world, but a passing away from and beyond the 
 world, and human needs and relations, an upward 
 ascent towards the City of Grod, even before the end 
 of life. The highest crown the Christian can win is 
 that of martyrdom, suffering death for the faith ; by 
 which no benefit is ever supposed to be conferred on 
 men except, perhaps, the example left for imitation 
 by others. The true Christian martyr does every- 
 thing for Christ. He forsakes all to follow him, and 
 goes to his doom rejoicing that he has been found 
 worthy to suffer for his name. The original mould in 
 which Christianity was cast cannot be altered ; that 
 of a small congregation of meek and lowly men, 
 exposed to the assaults of the " power of darkness," 
 which was allowed to prevail for a season. For them 
 the world was no continuing city, for they sought one 
 to come. In the " tabernacle of this present life they 
 did groan, being burdened," and were "willing rather 
 to be absent from the body and to be present with the 
 Lord." The notion that the world can ever be a place 
 of peace and virtuous happiness is never countenanced 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 205 
 
 in the New Testament. The Christian is always 
 considered as one in the midst of a hostile and evil 
 society, from which he must keep apart ; and, if only 
 he is prepared, the sooner he can leave it the better. 
 We find, accordingly, martyrs almost without ex- 
 ception professing, no doubt sincerely, the utmost 
 gratitude for being delivered from this mortal life. 
 As Sir Thomas More said, " St. Cyprian, that famous 
 bishop of Carthage, gave his executioner thirty pieces 
 of gold, because he knew he should procure unto 
 him an unspeakable good turn ; " and More himself, 
 when about to suffer, and the executioner asked him 
 forgiveness, kissed him, and said, " Thou wilt do me 
 this day a greater benefit than ever any mortal man 
 can be able to give me." Heroic constancy, even to 
 death, is the note of the martyr, and indeed of every 
 true Christian. And it is this transcendental 
 character of Christian perfection which has ever 
 made it at once such an imperfect fosterer of morality, 
 and such a stimulator of spirituality and heroic 
 passion. No vestige of self may be suffered to 
 remain in the true confessor's heart, in which every 
 human desire must be burnt up by love of the 
 Redeemer. A man must " hate his father, and 
 mother, and wife, and cViildren, and brethren, and 
 sisters, yea, and his own life also," to be a true 
 disciple of Christ. How utterly unequal average 
 
206 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 human nature is to this transcendent pitch of self- 
 sacrifice, the past and present record of Chri«tianity 
 sufficiently proves. But some have been equal 
 to it, and the heroism of the saints has been illu- 
 minated by a radiance which seemed to descend 
 direct from heaven. At all times and in all sects, 
 the blood of martyrs has been the seed of the 
 Church. To men, constituted as they are, the 
 voluntary and deliberate laying down of life by 
 confessors for conscience' sake, is always the most 
 impressive and soul-subduing of spectacles, con- 
 quering even the cruelty of the persecutors who 
 are consenting unto their deaths. The " face of an 
 angel," remarked in the protomartyr Stephen, is not 
 to be forgotten, and works miracles of conversion and 
 remorse in the solitude of the conscience, when the 
 ghastly scene of the stoning without the city, or the 
 burning in the market-place, returns to the memory 
 in the silent watches of the night ; and the faith and 
 meekness of the sufferer rise up like accusers from 
 the world of spirits. The meekness and docility 
 of the victims are a cardinal point. All bravado 
 and self-assertion dim the lustre of the martyr's 
 crown. " It has been a reproach to the sufferers in 
 the Marian persecution that, smitten on one cheek, 
 they did not invariably turn the other cheek to the 
 smiter ; " and the remark is true. If we compare the 
 
WHAT CEBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 207 
 
 carriage of Eowland Taylor with tliat of Sir Thomas 
 More we are sensible of the difference. There can 
 be no question as to the single-hearted piety and 
 self-devotion of either. But More, partly perhaps 
 by reason of his superior culture and humanist sense 
 of the " becoming," showed a sweet resignation which 
 contrasts favourably with the boisterous humour and 
 self-consciousness of Taylor. " His degradation was 
 performed by Bonner : the usual mode being to put 
 the garments of a Roman Catholic priest on the 
 clerk-convict, and then to strip them off. Taylor 
 refused to put them on, and was forcibly robed by 
 another ; and then, when he was thoroughly fur- 
 nished therewith, he set his hands to his side and 
 said, ' How say you, my lord, am I not a goodly fool ? 
 How say you, my masters, if I were in Cheap should 
 T not have boys enough to laugh at these apish 
 toys?' The final ceremony was for the bishop to 
 give the heretic a blow on his breast with his staff. 
 The bishop's chaplain said, ' My lord, strike him not ; 
 for he will sure strike again.' ' Yes, by St. Peter 
 will I,' quoth Dr. Taylor. ' The cause is Christ's, and 
 I were no good Christian if I would not fight in my 
 master's quarrel.' So the bishop laid his curse on 
 him, and struck him not. When he went back to 
 his fellow-prisoner^ Bradford, he told him how the 
 chaplain had said he would strike again, and ' by 
 
208 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 my troth/ said he, rubbing his hands, ^ I made him 
 believe I would do so indeed ! ' " 
 
 The saintly spirit would seem to be wanting here. 
 Indeed, the temper which has fitted men for martyr- 
 dom has always been liable to the perversion of a 
 fierce fanaticism and stubbornness, in which meek 
 resignation is replaced by a savage combativeness 
 regardless of consequences. In his subsequent 
 behaviour, Taylor rose to a much higher strain. 
 The scene on the February morning, by St. 
 Botolph's church, where his wife and children had 
 waited for him, " suspecting that he might he carried 
 away ; " the dialogue in the gloom, " for it was a very 
 dark morning, and the one could not see the other," 
 reach the extreme of tragic pathos. " His daughter 
 Elizabeth cried, saying, ' my dear father ! Mother, 
 mother, here is my father led away ! ' Then cried 
 his wife, ' Rowland, Rowland, where art thou ? ' Dr. 
 Taylor answered, ' I am here, dear wife/ and stayed. 
 The sheriff's men would have led him forth, but the 
 sheriff said, ' Stay a little, masters, I pray you, and 
 let him speak to his wife.' Then came she to him, 
 and he took his daughter Mary in his arms, and he 
 and his wife and Elizabeth knelt down and said the 
 Lord's Prayer. At which sight the sheriff wept 
 apace, and so did divers others of the company." It 
 is needless to repeat further one of the best-known 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 209 
 
 scenes in Englisli history. The point to be noticed 
 is, that Taylor rose to the height of saintliness in 
 proportion as he laid aside his haughty carriage. 
 His answer to the sheriff, who asked him, after his 
 martyr's ride through Essex to Suffolk, how he fared : 
 ^' Well, God be praised, master sheriff, never better ; 
 for now I know I am almost at home ; " and his meek 
 expostulation to the miscreant who threw a fagot at 
 him, " which brake his face, so that the blood ran 
 down his visage : " "0 friend, I have harm enough ; 
 what needed that ? " attain to the summit of Chris- 
 tian resignation. 
 
 The death of Sir Thomas More has ever been 
 regarded as one of the most sublime examples of 
 Christian fortitude on record. His perfect sweet- 
 ness and self-possession have melted all hearts. He 
 did nothing to provoke his fate, but on the contrary, 
 everything that his conscience allowed him in order 
 to escape it. At no time was he aggressive or 
 self-asserting. When condemned, his carriage was 
 at once meek and manly. 
 
 " When Sir Thomas was come now to the Tower- 
 Warfe, his best-beloved childe, my aunte Eooper, 
 desirous to see her father whome she feared she 
 should never see in this world after, to have his last 
 blessing, gave there attendance to meete him ; whome 
 as soone as she had espyecl, after she had receaved 
 
 p 
 
210 THE SERVICE OF MAN, 
 
 ■upon lier knees his fatlierlie blessing, she ranne 
 
 hastihe unto him ; and without consideration or care 
 
 of herselfe, passing through the midst of the throng 
 
 and guarde of men who with billes and halberds 
 
 compassed him round, there openly in the sight of 
 
 them all embraced him, not able to say anie word, 
 
 but: Oh, my father ; oh, my father! He liking well 
 
 her most naturall and deare affection towards him, 
 
 gave her his fatherlie blessing ; telling her, that 
 
 whatever he should suffer, though he were innocent, 
 
 yet it was not without the will of Grod ; and that 
 
 she knew well enough all the secrets of his hart, 
 
 counselling her to accommodate her will to God's 
 
 blessed pleasure, and bade her be patient for her 
 
 losse. She was no sooner parted from him and 
 
 gonne ten steppes, when she not satisfied with the 
 
 former farewell, like one who had forgotte herselfe, 
 
 ravished with the in tire love of so worthie a father, 
 
 having neither respect to herselfe nor to the presse 
 
 of the people about him, suddenly turned back, and 
 
 ranne hartihe to him, tooke him about the necke 
 
 and diverse times togeather kissed : whereat he 
 
 spoke not a word, but carrying still his gravity, 
 
 tears fell also from his eyes ; yea, there were very 
 
 few in all the troupe who could refrain thereat from 
 
 weeping, no not the guards themselves.'' * 
 
 * " Life of Sir Thomas More, Knt.," by his great-grandson, 
 Thomas More, Esq., i^. 264, eel. 1726. 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 211 
 
 To give one more instance of Christian martyrdom; 
 none the less tragic, because it was enacted not 
 amid the tumult and profanity of a public execution, 
 but in the inner chamber of a man of genius. At 
 thirty years of age, Blaise Pascal determined to 
 " give up the world," and began that course of 
 mortification and prayer which, there can hardly 
 be a doubt, shortened his days. He forsook his 
 scientific labours, by which he had won, as a youth, 
 a foremost rank among the mathematicians of 
 Europe, devoted himself to reading the Scriptures 
 and meditating his great work on the Christian 
 religion ; of which only fragments, in the form of the 
 immortal " Thoughts," were ever achieved. The 
 physical privations and pain to which he subjected 
 his emaciated body are described at length by 
 his sister, Madame Perier, in a biography which 
 for simple grace and pathos rivals the best of 
 Walton's '' Lives." To avoid wandering and worldly 
 thoughts when engaged in conversation, " he took 
 an iron girdle full of sharp points, which he placed 
 next to his flesh ; and when conscious of an impulse 
 to vanity, or even a feeling of pleasure in the place 
 where he happened to be, he struck the girdle with 
 his elbow in order to increase the pain of the 
 punctures." He ate a certain regulated quantity of 
 food, whether hungry or not, never exceeding it. 
 
212 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 however good his appetite, and never eating less, 
 however great his loathing ; and this, on the ground 
 that taking food was a duty, which was never to 
 he accompanied hy any sensual pleasure. "When his 
 sufferings were acute, and his friends expressed 
 commiseration, he would answer, *' Do not pity me ; 
 illness is the state natural to Christians, because it 
 places us in the condition we ought ever to be in — 
 suffering evils, deprived of all the pleasures of sense, 
 freed from all the passions which afflict us through- 
 out life, without ambition, without cupidity, in the 
 continued expectation of death." He mortified his 
 affections not less than his body, and said that we 
 should never allow any one to love us with fondness ; 
 in fostering such attachments we occupied hearts 
 which ought to be given solely to God ; that it was 
 robbing Him of that on which He set most store. 
 "It is not right that others should attach themselves 
 to me. Even if they do it willingly and with 
 pleasure, I should deceive those in whom I excited 
 such a feeling. Am I not about to die ? — the object 
 of their love then will perish. As I should warn 
 people against believing a falsehood, however 
 profitable to me, I should warn them not to attach 
 themselves to me ; for their duty is to spend their 
 lives in striving to please God, or in seeking him." 
 At his death there was found sewn up inside the 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 213 
 
 lining of his doublet, two small pieces of parchment 
 and paper, on which were written in identical words 
 a series of brief sentences, of which the meaning was 
 misconceived by Condorcet, who first published 
 them. The supposition was, that it was a '' mystic 
 amulet," which Pascal had worn next his person 
 out of superstitious motives. Its real character is 
 perfectly clear : a solemn record of the hour and 
 date of his conversion to God and to a life of 
 asceticism : — 
 
 The year of grace, 1654. 
 
 Monday, 23rd of November, St. Clement's Day, pope and martyr, 
 
 and others in the martyrology. 
 
 Eve of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others. 
 
 From about half-past ten at night, till half an hour 
 
 past midnight. 
 
 Fire. 
 
 God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob ; not of philosophers 
 
 and learned men. 
 
 Certitude, certitude. Feeling, joy, peace. 
 
 God of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Deum meum et Deum vestrum. 
 
 Thy God shall be my God 
 
 Oblivion of the world and everything save God. 
 
 He is only to be found by the way taught in the Gospel. 
 
 Greatness of the human soul. 
 
 Righteous Father, the world has not known thee, but I have 
 
 known thee. 
 
 Joy, joy, joy ! tears of joy. 
 
 I have left him — 
 
 Dereliquerunt me fontem aqm\3 vivae. 
 
214 THE SEBVICE OF 3IAN. 
 
 My God, wilt thou forsake me ? 
 
 May I not be separated from him for ever. 
 
 This is life eternal, to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus 
 Christ, whom thou hast sent. 
 
 Jesus Christ — 
 
 Jesus Christ 
 
 I have left him : I have fled from him, denied him, crucified 
 
 him. 
 
 May I never he separated from him. 
 
 He can only be kept by the way taught in the Gospel. 
 
 Eenunciation entire and sweet. 
 
 Entire submission to Jesus Christ and to my director. 
 
 Eternal joy for one day's suffering on earth. 
 
 Non obliviscar sermones tuos. Amen. 
 
 " What a noble mind is liere o'ertlirown," will 
 probably be the thought of many readers. And yet, 
 why should that thought arise? Doctrinal differ- 
 ences apart, can there be a doubt in any candid 
 mind, that Pascal strove with all the force and 
 sincerity of his powerful mind and passionate nature 
 to attain Christian holiness, and that he threw him- 
 self at the foot of the cross as completely and un- 
 reservedly as a human being could ? Are his 
 austerities and mortifications objected to ? The 
 foj^m of his asceticism may be questioned by different 
 schools of theology ; but no earnest, thorough-going 
 Christian exists, who does not deny himself one way 
 or another, and admit asceticism in principle. In- 
 deed, asceticism represents a tendency in human 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 215 
 
 nature far wider than Christianity, and though 
 Hahle to frightful perversions, is one of the noblest 
 qualities possessed by man. It is one of the higher 
 forms of courage, which not only endures or disdains 
 suffering, but positively courts it, and finds a 
 passionate and fiery joy in the sharp sting of pain. 
 If man had instinctively the universal horror of 
 pain, which some moralists suppose him to have, he 
 would never have been a hunter or a warrior. The 
 delight of self-mastery in some natures, easily gets 
 the upper hand, and leads, according to circumstances, 
 to the voluntary search for danger and suffering, 
 or to the stern refusal of sensuous pleasure. '' Qujb 
 major voluptas quam fastidium omnis voluptatis ? " 
 asks Tertullian. The spirit of self-sacrifice is just 
 as much a factor of human nature, as the spirit of 
 self-indulgence, though, like all the higher gifts, less 
 common. The deplorable thing is, that the precious 
 gift should be wasted and thrown away on useless 
 objects. The hero who suffers to save others, con- 
 tributes a direct and tangible good to the world by 
 his action, and even a higher good indirectly by his 
 example. The ascetic who tortures himself to please 
 a cruel god, does equal harm in both ways, to him- 
 self and others. Even the old Hebrew saw this 
 when he wrote that his Lord " would liave mercy, 
 and not sacrifice." As regards Christian asceticism, 
 
216 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 especially in tlie grosser forms of physical, self-in- 
 flicted torture, it is a subject which has not received, 
 it would seem, the attention it deserves from Church 
 historians. It arose early in the Church, which 
 like the austerer philosophic sects, the Stoics and 
 Cynics, was led, by the calamities of the decaying- 
 Eoman Empire, to take a gloomy and despondent 
 view of the moral government of the universe, and 
 to see the finger of an angry God in the incessant 
 woes with which mankind were then scourged. 
 And, indeed, it is not easy to see, on Christian 
 principles, how voluntary and unmerited suffering 
 can be supposed to be displeasing to God. The 
 whole scheme of Redemption supposes that God was 
 so pleased with the sufferings of the innocent Christ, 
 that, in consideration for them, he forgave guilty 
 man. The sufferings of Jesus were entirely volun- 
 tary ; his buffetings, scourgings, crucifixion, were all 
 endured to expiate man's sin ; the ransom for his 
 disobedience, the precious blood-shedding which 
 obtained innumerable benefits. If Christians would 
 imitate Christ, should they not do so in this particu- 
 lar, the most characteristic of his office ? If agony 
 unspeakable, borne by the Divine Son, the Lamb 
 without blemish, was well-pleasing to his father, 
 why should it be otherwise in sin-stained man? 
 Protestant notions on this subject may be more 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 217 
 
 rational, but tliey are far less scriptural. The whole 
 idea of Christianity, as given in the New Testament, 
 is steeped in suffering. " Blessed are they that 
 mourn ; " " Blessed are they which are persecuted 
 for righteousness' sake." Why? Because "great is 
 their reward in heaven." The worship of the Man 
 of Sorrows was not intended for the tender and the 
 comfortable. " Whosoever will come after me, let him 
 deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. 
 For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it ; but 
 whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the 
 gospel's, the same shall save it." Those who assume a 
 tone of sneering and contempt for the mortifications of 
 the Catholic saints, show that they are true heretics 
 in the primitive sense of the word, inasmuch as they 
 choose and select those words and parts of Scripture 
 only which suit their preconceived views. Let us 
 be rationalists by all means ; but let us be consistent 
 rationalists, and consider the Bible as an interesting 
 fragment of ancient Semitic literature. Those who 
 profess to regard it as the Word of God, and yet 
 ignore and neglect some of its clearest precepts, are 
 not consistent. Any vitality which the Catholic 
 revival of these latter years may have had in Europe 
 or America, is clearly traceable to its superior defer- 
 ence to the paramount and universal authority of 
 those Scriptures which all Christians admit as binding 
 in the last court of ajDpeal. 
 
218 TEE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 To return, however, to our more immediate 
 subject — the spirituality of mind stimulated by 
 Christianity, in the higher types of the Christian 
 character. 
 
 Within quite recent times, three women have 
 died, who, for complete detachment and recollection, 
 for profound sincerity and devotion to the Cross, 
 may justly be regarded as the equals of any of the 
 saints of old. 1 do not for a moment pretend to 
 say that there have not been others equally devoted 
 and sincere. Probably there have been many, to 
 me unknown. But these are incontestably eminent 
 enough in Christian virtue, to serve as types of that 
 spirituality which is the most characteristic result 
 of profound Christian belief consistently carried out. 
 The result is in many ways touching, and beautiful 
 in the extreme. It is such flowers of exquisite 
 perfume and beauty, grown in the garden of the 
 soul, which still arrest the attention of a rationalistic 
 age. And nothing can show how far the modern 
 world has drifted away from the old Christian point 
 of view, than the fact that these three sweet saints 
 have made so slight an impression upon it. Had 
 they lived and worked as they did, in the Ages of 
 Faith, their tombs would already have become sacred 
 shrines, to which troops of pious pilgrims would be 
 crowding to kneel and pray. Sister Agnes Jones, 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 219 
 
 Mother Margaret Hallahan, and Sister Dora Pattison, 
 are the three pious women to whom I refer. Their 
 lives have been written by loving hands ; and, in the 
 long series of religious biographies, more touching 
 and graceful portraits would not easily be found. 
 Amid many points of difference as to theological 
 opinion, social position, and character, they yet had 
 striking points of likeness. The passionate love and 
 affection with which they inspired all who came 
 within their influence, show what warm-hearted, 
 generous natures they possessed. Language seems 
 to fail their biographers in attempting to render 
 the devotion with which they were regarded. A 
 dying pauper in the Liverpool workhouse, said he 
 thought he was in heaven when Agnes came to his 
 bedside. A patient of Sister Dora " stood up and 
 reverently pulled his forelock as if he had pronounced 
 the name of a saint or angel," every time he men- 
 tioned her. Of Margaret it is written, "What 
 struck me most in our dearest mother, was her 
 largeness of heart, and the total absence of self in 
 all her words and actions." A common trait of 
 these remarkable women was a splendid physique 
 and immense bodily strength. Agnes, the least 
 distinguished in this respect, was yet capable of 
 enduring extraordinary bodily fatigue. " After a 
 whole night on duty in St. Thomas's Hospital, she 
 
220 THE SEBVICE OF 3IAN. 
 
 thinks it lazy to go to bed, and spends the day in 
 walking and paying visits." * Of Dora, the surgeon 
 of the Epidemic Hospital said : " Sister Dora could 
 sit up all night and work all day with little or no 
 rest ; and, as far as I could judge, she was neither 
 physically nor mentally the worse for it. Her 
 strength was superhuman. I never saw such a 
 woman." And this will not appear an overstate- 
 ment in the light of the following anecdote. " A 
 delirious patient, a tall, heavy man, in the worst 
 stage of confluent small-pox, threw himself out of 
 bed in the dead of night, and with a loud yell rushed 
 to the door before she could stop him. She had no 
 time for hesitation, but at once grappled with him, 
 all covered as he was with the loathsome disease. 
 Her combined strength and determination prevailed, 
 and she got him back into bed, and held him there 
 by main force until the doctor arrived in the morn- 
 ing." y Margaret, if possible, was still stronger. Her 
 biographer says : " Possessed of extraordinary mus- 
 cular power, she was rather proud of hearing herself 
 called as strong as Samson ; and when about seven- 
 teen years of age, seeing some men hesitate to lift 
 a great iron stove, she thought to put them to shame, 
 and carried it unassisted to the top of the house." 
 
 * " Life," by her sister, p. 160. 
 
 t " Life," by Miss Lonsdale, p. 159. 
 
WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE, 221 
 
 All three were brave, but Dora was lion-hearted 
 beyond compare, and would face drunken ruffians 
 in the slums of Walsall, into which the police would 
 only venture with caution. 
 
 All had powerful minds, though in no one of 
 them had education been carried very far. Indeed, 
 Margaret was wholly illiterate, and never mastered 
 orthography, geography, or arithmetic. Agnes 
 had the usual education of a young lady of family 
 and position forty years ago. Dora probably was 
 the best trained of the three. But native vigour 
 of mind supplied all defects, and each showed a great 
 faculty of government and organization, though in 
 different degrees. Agnes, who died young, had not 
 time to show her full power ; but the last three years 
 of her life, in charge of the Liverpool workhouse, 
 with its fifteen hundred inmates, testified to her 
 gifts in that direction. Dora was a lovely, fascinating 
 despot, bending all hearts and wills by her supreme 
 charm and force. Margaret was a born ruler, 
 with thoroughly imperial qualities, who could have 
 governed a state in perilous times as well as she 
 governed her convents. If one might venture, in 
 short, to imitate the nomenclature applied to the great 
 Scholastics, we might call Agnes, the Soror Angelica, 
 so ineffably meek, resigned, and nunlike she was, 
 for all her Protestant training ; Dora, the Soror 
 
222 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 Practica, witli her -anequalled power of achieving 
 work, whatever it might be ; Margaret, the Soror 
 Dorninatrix, by reason of her grand and imposing 
 mind and character, which, in spite of her low birth 
 and want of culture, made her more than the equal 
 of the scholars, nobles, and ecclesiastics of her own 
 Catholic Church. 
 
 'Now, is it not evident tliat all these women were 
 simply women of extraordinary genius ? Dora's con- 
 versation was bewitching ; her alternate humour 
 and pathos were the delight and solace of her 
 nurses and patients ; and made an observer say that 
 it was easy to see that she might have been a great 
 novelist, if she had not chosen to be something- 
 greater and better. Margaret, though she could not 
 spell the simplest words, showed, in her incessant 
 correspondence, great powers of style. Agnes, though 
 inferior to either in these respects, always writes 
 with a simple, clear, and direct vigour which proves 
 what a calm, strong brain she had. No one of them 
 gave a thought to literature, but one sees that 
 literature was easily within their reach, if they had 
 aimed at it. Their distinction was founded on cha- 
 racter, the supreme quality ; warm, fearless hearts, 
 exquisite tenderness of conscience, passionate self- 
 sacrifice, and devotion to duty. Christians by training 
 and inclination, they realized in their fervent hearts 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 223 
 
 tlie meaning and purport of the Gospel. According 
 to the terms of their belief, " they forsook all and 
 followed " Christ in their several ways — the Evan- 
 gelical Agnes, the High-Church Dora, the Catholic 
 Margaret. But even their pious biographers admit 
 that, apart from the gifts of grace, which they were 
 not likely to undervalue, their natural powers and 
 endowments w^ere extraordinary. Of Margaret it is 
 said, that even at the first meeting, the most promi- 
 nent features of her character could not escape notice ; 
 " the firm will, the clear and rapid judgment, the 
 boundless power of sympathy, which won her the 
 title of ' everybody's mother.' " Miss Lonsdale tells 
 us how '' a hard, sarcastic Scotchman," who was a 
 professed unbeliever, remarked of Dora, whose patient 
 he had been, " She's a noble woman, but she'd have 
 been that without her Christianity." That is just 
 the simple fact of the matter. Such heads and 
 hearts as these are the property of no creed ; they 
 are the choice products of that maligned human 
 nature, which theologians tell us is cursed and 
 lost, unless it believes this or that article of faith. 
 If the saintliness of these holy women depended upon 
 their creed, why do not the thousands and millions 
 who hold the same creed exhibit a like saintliness ? 
 ^' God did not give them the grace," is the theo- 
 lo£>;ical answer ; and some are still satisfied witli it. 
 
224 THE SEE VICE OF MAN. 
 
 But tlie answer is evidently becoming unreal and 
 meaningless. The doctrine of heredity and varia- 
 tion has deprived it of all weight. Strong minds 
 and fervent hearts, like strong bodies, depend upon 
 organization ; on the constitution and cpality of the 
 brain. But brains " are begotten, not made," and 
 grace never made a weak brain strong. 
 
 The contemplation of these remarkable women 
 suggests one or two more interesting points of view. 
 
 1. An experience of some eighteen centuries may 
 be considered conclusive as to the limited hold which 
 Christianity is capable of taking on mankind at 
 large. From the days of St. Paul to the present 
 time, the apathy and worldliness of the great mass 
 of men and women calling themselves Christians, 
 has been the constant lamentation of all sincere 
 preachers. Indeed, the parable of the Sower clearly 
 announces that the fact was to be expected. The 
 seed foils in four different places, and only in one 
 does it bear fruit — where it fell on good ground. The 
 Wicked one, the want of root, the cares of this world, 
 and deceitfulness of riches, prevent its growth in the 
 other places, which are evidently supposed to cover 
 by far the larger area ; and the parable of the 
 Marriage of the King's Son, with its conclusion, 
 '' Many are called but few are chosen,'' leaves no 
 doubt on the matter. The obvious deduction is, 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 225 
 
 that Christianity is only adapted to a very limited 
 number of minds ; that, for one reason or another, 
 the many, called as they may be, will not " hear tlie 
 word and understand it." And this is exactly what 
 has happened without interruption, for nearly two 
 thousand years ; Christendom has never been evan- 
 gelized, nor near being evangelized. Even the 
 smallest and most select communities of religious 
 persons have their backsliders and formalists, who 
 are, to use Mr. Spurgeon's words, as religious as 
 the seats they sit on. The high Calvinists boldly 
 face the difficulty, and say, ''No doubt; the great 
 mass of mankind are predestined from all eternity 
 to damnation ; it is only the elect who are really 
 Christians, and go to heaven." Calvinism is out of 
 fashion now, and reproached with suggesting very 
 unpleasant notions as to the moral character of the 
 Deity ; but it is consistent and scriptural ; I do 
 not say sensible or orthodox. So far from Chris- 
 tianity being the universal religion it is affirmed 
 to be, it is not even adapted to the majority of its 
 own believers. You must have a very fine and 
 peculiar organization to be a true Christian ; a 
 special genius, which generall}^ declares itself in 
 early life, as special genius is apt to do. A Sister 
 Agnes or Mother Margaret take to vital religion 
 with the spontaneous affinity that Mozart took to 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 music, Newton to mathematics, and Keats to poetry. 
 Eeligious genius, in its highest form, is as rare, per- 
 haps more rare, than genius in any other form ; and 
 exalted piety is as unattainable to the common herd 
 as exalted poetry. Bishop Ullathorne, who must have 
 had large opportunities of seeing nuns and others 
 who aimed Avith special earnestness at a religious 
 life, yet declares of Margaret that she was distin- 
 guished from every other holy soul that he had been 
 acquainted with, by three extraordinary gifts, which 
 he mentions ; her peculiar love of Grod ; the pain it 
 cost her to turn from Him to self-introspection ; and 
 her angelic purity. " Eare as suns," he says, " are 
 those souls which seem to act on other souls like a 
 sacramental power, shedding the rays of their own 
 inward sense of Grod and vital warmth of spirit into 
 the souls that come within the sphere of their 
 action." * And similar testimony as to the rarity of 
 the endowments of Sisters Dora and Agnes are forth- 
 coming from those who have had wide experience of 
 religious persons. Yet, good as these pious women 
 were, I suppose no priest or theologian would say 
 that they had attained the furthest limit of Christian 
 perfection. They all thought in their humility that 
 they had fallen far short of it. What hope, then, is 
 there for souls less richly endowed ? 
 
 * Preface to " Life of Mother Margaret." 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 227 
 
 And let us observe, how tins pursuit of a spi- 
 rituality utterly beyond attainment by ordinary 
 mortals, beautiful as it is when attained, operates 
 injuriously on the morality of average men and 
 women. The standard proposed is so exalted, that 
 instead of attracting the ordinary person to aim at 
 reaching it, it discourages and repels him. He is 
 inwardly conscious that he cannot possibly reach it, 
 even if he tries ever so much. His preacher will 
 probably tell him that, if he trusts in his own 
 strength, he can do nothing ; but that if he will only 
 put all his trust in God and Christ, the end will be 
 attained. But that is just what he is unable to do. 
 He is exhorted to exert a spirituality of mind which, 
 by the hypothesis, he has not got. It is like telling 
 a man that, if he will only fly, he will reach great 
 altitudes. He has not the wings. Even the saints 
 have generally had long periods of probation and 
 wrestlings with God, before they could attain to that 
 detachment, spirituality and perfect faith, which 
 enabled them to perform the act of complete self- 
 renunciation required. Yet it is recommended to 
 the common multitude, as if it were the easiest thing 
 in the world. 
 
 And what is the result ? Setting apart the openly 
 profane and wicked, who do not give a thought to 
 the subject ; and, without denying it, simply ignore 
 
228 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 Christianity ; the bulk of worldly, unconverted be- 
 lievers pass their time in a middle state between sin 
 and repentance; believers, but not doers, of the 
 Word ; wishing they could embrace their religion 
 with entire earnestness, but too well aware that, 
 constituted as they are, they are unable to do so. 
 Of course, reference is made only to the true-hearted, 
 honest folk who transgress from weakness, and not 
 to the spiritually dead Pharisee who has no doubt 
 about his righteousness. Such, are on all hands, 
 admitted to be worse than the publicans and harlots 
 But the mass of common-place people who go to 
 church or chapel, who are neither very good nor 
 very bad, neither exceptionally clever nor stupid, 
 the enormous middle class of mediocrities, fairly just, 
 conscientious, and kind-hearted, can it be denied 
 that they are constantly deterred from embracing 
 a serious view of life's duties, just because a standard 
 of such exalted perfection is proposed to them, that 
 they know, it is no use attempting to reach it. 
 They perhaps try, and fail, and they are more dis- 
 heartened than before. They then live with a mildly 
 evil conscience, knowing that they ought to do better. 
 But they are at once told that that is not enough ; that 
 they must do their best ; that they must be ^^erfect, as 
 their Father which is in heaven is perfect. Then they 
 do less than they could, out of sheer, weary dejection. 
 
WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE. 229 
 
 In what other art or science do teachers begin by 
 placing the most arduous problems before their 
 pupils ? Young mathematicians are not set to work 
 on the Differential Calculus in their first lessons ; 
 young artists are not expected to draw like Andrea, 
 and colour like Titian. But the young catechumen is 
 told that the first thing he must do is '' to renounce 
 the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanities 
 of this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts of the 
 flesh." For the first precept of the first lesson, this 
 must be admitted to be rather hard. How many 
 saints, after a long life's progress in holiness, have 
 been equal to it ? To renounce the devil and all his 
 works cannot be easv, if all that we are told of 
 Satan's power be true. But the " good child " is 
 told that he must do this at once. By a subsequent 
 after-thought on the part of the compiler, the learner 
 is warned that he cannot do this and a great many 
 other things of himself; he needs God's special grace, 
 "which he must learn to call for by diligent prayer." 
 Probably, to nine children out of ten " dihgent 
 prayer," commanded in this way, appears even more 
 obscure and meaningless than renouncing the pomps 
 and vanities of this wicked world. How cruel and 
 heedless to place the last stage of spiritual evolution 
 at the threshold of the neophyte's progress. The 
 whole Catechism and the larger part of sermons and 
 
230 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 Christian teaching are pervaded by the double error 
 of supposing that the highest religious emotions are 
 attainable by all, and that they may be inculcated at 
 the earliest period of life. " My duty towards Grod, 
 is to believe in him, to fear him, and to love him icitli 
 all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul^ and 
 u'ith all my strength^ Perhaps the most prompt 
 and certain way of checking an emotion in others, is 
 to tell them that it is their duty to feel it. Tell any 
 one he ought to feel grateful, and you will probably 
 make him ten times more ungrateful than he was 
 before. We may be sure that no one ever loved 
 Grod, for being told that it was his duty to love 
 him. Wise and good mothers, by gentle and in- 
 direct precept and very direct example, have led 
 their little ones to piety; but then they used 
 the subtle language of the heart. The unreality 
 and inefficacy of sermons, chiefly depend on the 
 transcendent disproportion between the doctrine 
 preached, and the capacity to receive it by the 
 audience addressed. A mixed congregation, con- 
 sisting of men whose thoughts are absorbed in 
 business, and women occupied with dress and frivoli- 
 ties, are spoken to in language which would not be 
 inadequate to the spiritual needs of angels. The 
 result is a discrepancy between faith and practice, 
 which the profane are not slow to tax with hypocrisy. 
 
WRAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 231 
 
 Neither religion nor morals gain by such exagge- 
 rations ; only the scoffers at all goodness, who delight 
 in pointing out that so-called religious people are 
 no better than their neighbours. To get the best 
 you can out of men, you must not ask more than 
 they can give. But if you ask for that in the proper 
 way, nearly all but the thoroughly bad will respond. 
 By asking for the impossible, you get little or 
 nothing, or worse than nothing ; a conviction that 
 religion is grimace, and a disbelief in the possibility 
 of virtue. 
 
 And now let us contemplate these three saints 
 from another side ; that of the value of their work, 
 its usefulness in this world, and its j^ower of 
 diminishing human suffering. 
 
 Before I go further, I shall be met with a refusal 
 to allow the question to be stated in this way. It 
 will be said, that these ladies considered far more 
 the souls than the bodies of their patients, pupils, 
 nurses, or nuns, as the case may be ; that although 
 they strove earnestly to heal the sick, none more 
 so, yet their real and main object was to win souls 
 to Christ. I am not inclined to deny so obvious a 
 fact; but it is one with which I cannot deal, because, 
 as regards the result of their labours in that direc- 
 tion, I can form no opinion. It is wholly beyond 
 my power to verify any statement on that head. Of 
 
232 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 the numbers who died in their presence, soothed and 
 comforted, beyond doubt, by their assured faith, 
 their fervent prayers, and "tranquil, regardant 
 faces," I cannot tell whether any or none ever 
 passed "to where beyond these voices there is 
 peace." The point must be left undecided, to say 
 the least, for want of evidence of an objective kind, 
 as distinguished from evidence of a subjective kind, 
 reposing entirely on faith. Believers must be satis- 
 fied with their own belief, until they can advance 
 arguments far more cogent than any which they 
 have hitherto produced in sujoport of it. Agnostics 
 cannot be expected to argue on principles which 
 they reject. But this does not wholly remove a 
 common ground on which discussion can take place. 
 The temporal work of these good women is offered 
 to us, as a proof of what the divine spirit can do 
 when it finds fitting channels. Now, I will vie 
 with any one in celebrating the unselfish devotion, 
 the self-sacrifice, the warm love and sympathy which 
 they all showed in assuaging human suffering, 
 bodily or mental. I cannot read their lives without 
 tears, and the admiration I feel for them may be 
 truly called passionate. I regard them as inex- 
 pressibly lovely and attractive human souls, who, 
 led on by their own warm women's hearts, nearly, 
 if not entirely, conquered self, and became like the 
 
WHAT CHBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 233 
 
 beautiful alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, 
 very costly and precious, which, when poured out, 
 filled the house with the odour of the ointment. 
 But this profession does not preclude me from point- 
 ing out, that if the question is of diminishing human 
 suffering, these pious workers did not take up the 
 problem with any full sense of its magnitude ; did 
 not begin high enough up in their efforts to stop 
 the stream of evil and pain. While the value of good 
 nursing can hardly be exaggerated, it can never 
 be more than an adjunct of practical medicine. It 
 is in biological and pathological research, with the 
 object of discovering and destroying the germs and 
 origin of disease, that science now justly rests its 
 main hope of serving humanity. And is there not 
 already ample reason for looking on this hope as 
 well-founded? The anecdote, quoted a few pages 
 back, of Sister Dora grappling with the delirious 
 patient in his loathsome condition from confluent 
 small-pox, presents a graphic and even sensational 
 picture of self-devotion for the welfare of a fellow- 
 creature. The deed was heroic and admirable, 
 whether the sufferer's life was ultimately saved or 
 not. But, noAv, regard the method of science in 
 encountering disease, and this particular malady of 
 small-pox. A man of genius with his eyes open, 
 observes that milkmaids inoculated with cow-pox 
 
234 THE SEBVICE OF 3IAN. 
 
 are not susceptible to the graver contagion, and 
 Jenner, after careful and elaborate experiments, 
 announces the discovery of vaccination. There is 
 nothing to appeal to the dramatic, sympathies in 
 this, nothing to stir emotion in the ordinary spec- 
 tator. On the contrary, at the time it was con- 
 sidered to afford material for ridicule as a sample 
 of scientific absurdity. But which method has been 
 most profitable to humanity ? Have all the self- 
 sacrifices of all the Doras and Sisters of Mercy in 
 the world, spared mankind a tithe of the suffering 
 which has been prevented by vaccination ? The 
 epidemic of small-pox at Walsall, in which Sister 
 Dora played so noble a part, appears formidable and 
 shocking to us, with our modern ideas on the sub- 
 ject. But, in the last century, before Jenner, it 
 would, in the dimensions it had, have been con- 
 sidered beneath notice. Half the population might 
 have been swept away without attracting particular 
 attention. That was the way with small-pox, and 
 people were resigned. It was the finger or the wrath 
 of God, chastening men for their sins. 
 
 Now, as one might expect in these biographies, 
 in no one instance is scientific inquiry ever men- 
 tioned as a duty of the slightest importance or value. 
 It would be simple indeed to look for anything of 
 the kind in such a quarter. The point of view is 
 
WHAT CEBISTIANITY HAS DONE. 235 
 
 wholly different. God present everywhere, doing 
 or permitting all that happens, is the invariable 
 presumption. Sister Dora on one occasion offered 
 to pay a visit to a friend, " But," she added, " of 
 course, if the Master comes and calls for me, and sends 
 us in more cases, I cannot come." The '' Master," 
 of course, is God ; and the cases were cases of small- 
 pox, which he was supposed to send on the one 
 hand, and to call Dora to nurse on the other. 
 This is the prevailing tone. But in neither of the 
 Protestant lives is there any direct railing at science. 
 In the Catholic life it is very different. There we 
 meet the flash of anger and hatred for science, 
 characteristic of the theologian who fears that his 
 God is in danger. Considering her entire want of 
 scientific or philosophical culture, Mother Margaret 
 showed great penetration in her remark on this 
 subject. When she first caught sight of the 
 Britannia Bridge, she exclaimed, " Oh, how wonder- 
 ful ! But if men do such things as these, they will 
 begin to think they have no need of God." And her 
 biographers tell us she felt a certain satisfaction 
 when some of the wonderful modern discoveries 
 came to nought. She was glad to hear that the 
 laying of the first Atlantic cable had failed; and, 
 what is still worse, and is a stain on her memory, 
 she was even pleased that, '' in spite of storm-signals 
 
236 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 and meteorological theories, the wrecks on the 
 English coast increased, instead of diminishing in 
 number." * '^1 like these learned gentlemen to 
 know," she would say, " that God is master." Pro- 
 fessor Huxley once likened the temper excited in 
 some portions of the clerical world by the recent 
 growth of physical science, to the anger and alarm 
 with which the savage views the progress of an 
 eclipse ; and that the comparison was just, these 
 sentiments of Mother Margaret sufficiently show. 
 It is a favourite theme with theologians to maintain 
 that the love of God leads to the loftiest and purest 
 love of man, and 1 John iv. 20 is quoted with effect. 
 But a long experience has shown that a verse of 
 the Psalms is often a truer statement of the actual 
 fact. " Shall I not hate them, Lord, that hate 
 thee ? " Can we doubt that Mother Margaret, who, 
 for all her warm-heartedness, could rejoice in so 
 dreadful a thing as shipwrecks, just because, in her 
 narrow bigotry, she thought they were a rebuke to 
 men of science, could also have assisted at an Auto 
 da Fe without compunction, if told it was required 
 by the interests of her creed ? 
 
 The particular case we have been considering is 
 significant enough in itself, as typical of the different 
 methods of theology and science, in their contention 
 ^1 * "Life," p. 231. 
 
WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE. 237 
 
 against human suffering. But it suggests much 
 wider issues ; the whole question of the great 
 campaign against vice, evil, and misery. The 
 principle of Christian charity is to palliate and 
 assuage physical and social evils in their last and 
 extreme form. If you meet a beggar, give him alms; 
 if you have no money, divide your cloak with him, 
 as did St. Martin. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked. 
 In a word, run with prompt love and sympathy to 
 succour every case of mortal distress that comes 
 within your reach. Do this in remembrance of Christ, 
 and be blessed. He would be a cold and shallow 
 student of history who ventured to speak of this 
 spontaneous movement of the heart with disrespect. 
 The Christian care for the sick and infirm was 
 unknown to the pagan world. It was the best and 
 only thing to do under the circumstances. Science 
 was not ; and relief, such relief as could be given by 
 poor, uninstructed fellow-men, was all that could be 
 had. But science has slowly and gradually dis- 
 covered and proved that social and physical evil and 
 pain may not only be soothed, but anticipated and 
 prevented. Not that it neglects palliatives of suffer- 
 ing; on the contrary, it applies them with an efficacy 
 and power utterly beyond the conception of former 
 ages. But it does more ; it nips evil in the bud, or 
 rather in the seed, and does not wait for its full 
 
238 THE SERVICE OF 3IAN. 
 
 efflorescence before it attacks it. Physical, social, 
 and moral evil, disease and sin, it regards as so many 
 pathological conditions, which we may reasonably 
 hope to correct, modify, and, ultimately, to suppress. 
 As regards physical disease, this position would 
 hardly be questioned even by the most orthodox. 
 Several of the most formidable afflictions, to which 
 human and animal bodies are subject, have already 
 been got under control. Small-pox and typhoid 
 fever are, we may say, understood and practically 
 mastered; that is, they are not allowed to spread and 
 devastate as they formerly did. A number of other 
 maladies, with which it once seemed hopeless to 
 contend, are even now passing into the class of the 
 controllable disorders, as consumption, rabies, and 
 cholera. Similarly, with regard to pauperism and 
 other social disorders. The prompt and easy narcotic 
 of charity is not to be universally proscribed as 
 uniformly evil, but it is ascertained to be of dan- 
 gerous application, and liable to aggravate the evil it 
 pretends to cure. Pauperism can only be combated 
 with success, by that knowledge of social and economic 
 laws which corresponds to the knowledge of bio- 
 logical laws in the neighbouring science. It may be 
 proper and wise, in a given case, to divide your coat 
 with a beggar ; the only thing that a humane man 
 would or could do. But it is vastly more important 
 
WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE. 239 
 
 to ascertain the social and economic causes of the 
 beggar's existence ; and, if he be a common pheno- 
 menon, to correct those breaches of the laws of social 
 health which make his emergence possible. Again, 
 with regard to ethics. Moral evil, or sin, can only be 
 successfully corrected by such an investigation and 
 knowledge of man's mental, emotional, and physical 
 constitution, that that part of conduct which is 
 concerned with morals may be directed in a way 
 which conduces to the highest individual and social 
 happiness and well-being. In a word, the Christian 
 principle is to act from spontaneous charity and 
 benevolence with such means as are immediately to 
 hand ; to regard evil, pain and disease, as trials sent 
 by God for his own wise ends ; chastisements, 
 meant for our rebuke or guidance, to make us turn 
 to Him, and leave off caring for a temporal, wricked 
 and miserable world. The principle of science is 
 directly contrary. It has already prevented number- 
 less evils, in a way which would have appeared to our 
 forefathers quite miraculous. Admitting that there 
 will, perhaps, be always a residue of unconquerable 
 evils which science cannot hope to remove, it is 
 maintained that the resignation produced by a clear 
 view of the impossible and inevitable is more com- 
 plete than that which never wholly renounces the 
 hope of divine aid. Mother Margaret was quite 
 
240 TEE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 right in her fears ; " But if men do such things as 
 these, they will begin to think that they can do 
 without God." That thought is raj^idly spreading 
 over the civilized world. 
 
( 241 ) 
 
 CHAPTER YIII. 
 
 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 The results of the previous inquiry would seem to 
 be as follows : — 
 
 1. That a wide-spread tendency exists in this, 
 and still more in other countries, to give up a belief 
 m Christianity. And that the scepticism of the 
 present day is very far more serious and scientific 
 than was the deism of the last century. 
 
 2. That the supposed consolations of Christianity 
 have been much exaggerated. And that it may be 
 questioned whether that religion does not often 
 produce as much anxiety and mental distress as it 
 does of joy, gladness and content. 
 
 3. That by the great doctrine of forgiveness of 
 sins consequent on repentance, even in the last 
 moment of life, Christianity often favours spirituality 
 and salvation at the expense of morals. 
 
 4. That the morality of the Ages of Faith was 
 
242 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 very low ; and that the further we go back into times 
 when beh'ef was strongest, the worse it is foimd to be. 
 
 5. That Christianity has a very limited influence 
 on the world at large ; but a most powerful effect 
 on certain high-toned natures, who, by becoming 
 true saints, produce an immense impression on 
 public opinion, and give that religion much of the 
 honour which it enjoys. 
 
 6. That although the self-devotion of saints is not 
 only beyond question, but supremely beautiful and 
 attractive ; yet, as a means of relieving human suffer- 
 ing and serving man in the widest sense, it is not 
 to be compared for efficiency with science. 
 
 It is sufficiently obvious, that, unless the ten- 
 dencies which we have been considering, meet Avith a 
 strange and unexpected arrest, the result, in a not 
 distant future, must be a general disappearance of 
 Christianity from among the more advanced popula- 
 tions of the globe. In making this statement, one 
 naturally recalls the grave irony of the Advertisement 
 prefixed to the first edition of Butler's " Analogy," 
 which is often cited as affording a good example 
 of the way in which the hopes of unbelievers may 
 be deceived. " It is come, I know not how," says 
 Butler, " to be taken for granted, by many persons, 
 that Christianity is not so much as a subject of 
 inquiry ; but that it is, at length, now discovered to 
 
THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 243 
 
 be fictitious. And accordingly they treat it, as if, in 
 the present age, this were an agreed point among^ 
 all people of discernment ; and nothing remained^ 
 but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and 
 ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals, for its 
 having so long interrupted the pleasures of the 
 world." The ^'people of discernment," it is pointed 
 out, were very much mistaken in their assumption 
 that Christianity was discovered to be fictitious. The 
 " Analogy " was written nearly a hundred and fifty 
 years ago ; and, for a fictitious system, Christianity 
 still shows considerable vitality. The number of 
 new churches and chapels built, the zeal and activity 
 of the clergy and missionaries, the propagation of 
 the gospel in foreign parts, and similar facts, are 
 adduced, not without a certain tone of triumph, as 
 sufficient evidence of how groundless and shallow the 
 hopes of the " sceptic " have proved to be in this 
 particular case. Both the original text of Butler, and 
 the modern commentaries upon it, rather show how 
 remote is the scientific and historical point of view 
 from the religious, and what a far-off stage of thought 
 Butler's expressions represent. The word " fictitious " 
 alone, as applied to an ancient and wide- spread 
 religion, jars upon the ear. As if great phases of 
 human thought and feeling could be invented, like 
 a stage play, or concocted by designing priests for 
 
2U THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 the sake of gain. That this really was the current 
 deistical opinion is certain, and it was crudely 
 expressed in the famous, silly verses : — 
 
 " Natural Eeligion was easy, first, and plain ; ' 
 Tales made it mystery, offerings made it gain ; 
 Sacrifices and shows were at length prepared, 
 The priests ate roast meat, and the people stared." 
 
 A. wider knowledge of human nature, past and 
 present, has made such trivial conceptions impossible. 
 No form of the religious sentiment is now regarded 
 as fictitious ; but, on the contrary, as the serious and 
 solid result of the stage of evolution in which it 
 appears. Similarly, with regard to making Chris- 
 tianity a subject of mirth and ridicule. No one 
 with a reputation to lose, would think of speaking 
 with levity of the Christian or any religion. Nothing 
 would be considered better proof of incompetence 
 to handle such subjects than such a tone. The 
 world is older and sadder, and, on the whole, wiser 
 than it was in Butler's day. The alleged interrup- 
 tion of the pleasures of the world by Christianity, 
 is open to question as a matter of fact. Pleasures 
 in abundance, and of a sufficiently coarse kind, were 
 indulged in without difficulty in the Ages of Faith. 
 The " eat, drink, and be merry " temper is generally 
 discountenanced in theory ; and, even in practice, is 
 less rife than it was among our forefathers. 
 
THE SERVICE OF MAN. 245 
 
 In fact, the result of historical speculation has 
 been, with regard to Christianity, the same as the 
 result of biological speculation has been with regard 
 to man. Both have been taken from the isolation 
 and independence in which they were supposed to 
 exist, with reference to other members of the same 
 order ; and have been included in the larger classifi- 
 cation, which places man at the head of vertebrate 
 animals, and Christianity at the head of supernatural 
 religions. The biological view has prevailed, one 
 may say, with surprising rapidity, considering the 
 amount of prejudice which had to be overcome. 
 The historical view has naturally triumphed less 
 completely, inasmuch as scientific history is a much 
 younger science than biology. But the end will be 
 the same. Christianity is already classed, by a large 
 and growing number of the most competent historical 
 inquirers, simply as the last and the finest specimen 
 of a group of beliefs, which, in one form or another, 
 are co-extensive with humanity and history. If this 
 view should prove to be slower in gaining acceptance 
 than the biological view of the descent of man, tlie 
 reason will, probably, be not wholly referable to the 
 position of history in the order of the sciences. 
 Distasteful as it was to human vanity to prove that 
 man had descended from an anthropoid ape, which 
 again had descended from a bird or a reptile, the 
 
246 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 idea still is one wliicli can be put aside, whicli 
 ordinary folk need not think of in daily life, and 
 which involves no immediate practical consequences 
 to themselves. The final admission, that Christianity 
 is not fictitious, indeed, in Butler's phrase, but simply 
 a form of thought unsuited to a scientific age, and 
 therefore no longer tenable by an educated popula- 
 tion, is attended by far greater difficulties. Yery 
 obvious practical consequences are involved in such 
 a conclusion, which cannot readily be ignored. If 
 the belief in God, Christ, and the other articles of 
 the Christian faith must rationally be relinquished, 
 people ask — What are you going to put in their 
 ]3lace ? What rule of life do you propose to sub- 
 stitute for the one removed ? What is the successor 
 to Christianity as a religion ? Or, will it have no 
 successor ? And some even go so far as to inquire 
 what is to become of those spiritual and religious 
 instincts, which have hitherto found their exercise 
 and satisfaction in a religion now pronounced to be 
 incompatible with the new knowledge. Natural 
 instincts are not to be suppressed by the theories of 
 savaiits, however scientific ; and it is argued that the 
 religious sentiment is as much a permanent factor 
 of human nature as the logical intellect ; and must, 
 necessarily, survive its endlessly varied and often 
 unstable conclusions. 
 
THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 247 
 
 The religious sentiment, or that group of emotions 
 so called, is one thing, and the Christian or any 
 particular religion is another. The religious senti- 
 ment has, during the course of ages, assumed many 
 divergent forms, and at this day is represented in 
 the most dissimilar and diversified beliefs and cere- 
 monies. The original elements of human nature 
 are all capable of morphological development and 
 change in their manifestations, although they remain 
 fundamentally the same. Nothing could well be a 
 more permanent constituent of human nature than 
 the instinct which leads to marriage ; but few things 
 have varied more than the institution of marriage. 
 From marriage by capture, through polygamy, poly- 
 andry, down to the monogamy of modern states, 
 which still show great differences of detail in their 
 laws on the subject, the legal relations of the sexes 
 have varied with the knowledge, culture, and civili- 
 zation of the times. It is the same with regard to 
 government and civil institutions, with regard to 
 war and its usages, with regard to the notions of 
 right and wrong. What reason can be given to lead 
 us to suppose that the religious sentiment alone 
 should remain fixed and crystallized in one form, and 
 that a recent one, which supervened in historical 
 times, and was preceded by a great variety of previous 
 forms ? Obviously none. 
 
248 TEE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 When, therefore, we are asked what religion we 
 propose to substitute in place of the. old one, now 
 threatened with extinction, the answer isy that no such 
 pretension is entertained for a moment. Religions 
 are organic growths, and are no more capable of 
 fabrication than animals or plants. The notion that 
 individual men can found religions, that is, invent 
 them out of their own heads, and set them going, is 
 on a par with the notion that men can found states, 
 and create policies which last for ages. Both notions 
 were prevalent, and not irrational once, when neither 
 man nor society was conceived as subject to natural 
 laws. So, it was really believed that Lycurgus 
 founded the Spartan State, and Eomulus the Eoman ; 
 that Moses founded Judaism, and Mahomet, Islam. 
 No misconception could be greater, and none is more 
 certain to disappear. That long prepared changes 
 are often suddenly accomplished, under the inspiring- 
 leadership of a great man, is beyond question ; and it 
 is quite natural that the great man's name should be 
 associated with the change in which he took a pro- 
 minent part. But he did not make the change, in 
 the sense of founding or beginning something new, 
 which would not have existed without him. His 
 function, and it was great indeed, was to have 
 intellect enough to see the need of change, and 
 courage and Will enough to help it forward, to direct 
 
THE SERVICE OF MAN. 249 
 
 forces whicli were already at hand. All great changes 
 in Church or State exemplify this truth, in proportion 
 as we are able to observe them with accuracy of 
 detail. Nothing is more certain than that, in one 
 sense, Julius Caesar overthrew the Republic, and 
 founded the Empire of Rome. But how long had 
 such a revolution been preparing ? From the days 
 of the Scipios, or of Sulla and Marius. Or, might it 
 not be dated from the earliest constitution of Rome, 
 which rendered a municipal form of government 
 inadequate, and finally impossible for a wide Empire ? 
 All great social revolutions result from long prece- 
 dent, although, perhaps, occult growth, as partu- 
 rition, in the body physical, pre-supposes embryonic 
 growth. Similarly, with regard to the Reformation. 
 Luther, in vulgar Catholic or Protestant opinion, is 
 credited with the whole glory, or infamy, of the revolt 
 from Rome. But, from the days of Wicliffe and 
 Huss, the entire Church had been seething with 
 projects of reform ; and Luther can only claim the 
 honour of having, in the fulness of time, given the 
 critical impulse which liberated forces accumulated 
 during hundreds of previous years. 
 
 There can be no question, therefore, of making 
 and offering a New Religion to the world at the 
 present juncture. Our first task must be, to try and 
 
250 TEE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 discover what is the spontaneous tendency of thought 
 and sentiment on this matter ? What is the direction 
 which evolution may be expected to take ? If that can 
 be ascertained, a great point will be gained. Three 
 courses are always open to men called upon to deal 
 with great social and moral tendencies. They may be 
 blindly resisted ; they may be blindly stimulated and 
 hastened ; they may, by careful study and observation 
 of their nature, be largely controlled and directed; that 
 is to say, they may be dealt with in a spirit of reaction, 
 or in a spirit of revolution, or in a spirit of orderly and 
 conscious progress. Reaction, when conducted on a 
 large scale with unflinching vigour, by no means 
 always fails. The Moslem Obscurantists in Spain suc- 
 ceeded in crushing Arab philosophy.* The Catholic 
 Church has several times extirpated opinions, by the 
 efficient method of killing those who held them. In 
 Spain, Bohemia, Italy, and Belgium, Protestantism 
 was stamped out, like the rinder-pest, by prompt and 
 persevering slaughter. It is a method difficult of 
 prolonged application ; and it is generally avenged. 
 The state of religion in Catholic countries, and the 
 animosity felt towards it by large numbers of the 
 proletariat, are not encouraging examples. The 
 Protestants have not been behind the Catholics in 
 their williDgness to persecute, but they have seldom 
 * See Kenan, " Averroes." 
 
THE SERVICE OF MAN. 251 
 
 had equal power. In Ireland, however, they nearly 
 reached the highest level of performance in that line. 
 With what disaster to all of us, is now only too 
 apparent. 
 
 How evil, on the other hand, the revolutionary 
 spirit can be, has been well shown by France in the 
 eighteenth century, first, in speculation, and after- 
 wards in politics. The precipitate conclusions of 
 the philosophes, although proceeding on principles 
 fundamentally sound, as subsequent results have 
 proved, were yet marked by a heat and haste which 
 led to the Romantic reaction, and the Idealist and 
 Transcendental Philosophies, which nearly suspended 
 rational speculation for half a century. It is un- 
 necessary to dwell on the indelible harm done to 
 orderly progress by the violence of the Revolution, 
 which to this day supplies reactionaries with some 
 of their best weapons against a large and generous 
 liberalism. Perhaps the sober, prudent, middle 
 course we have mentioned, which, while frankly 
 accepting and using the new lights obtained, does 
 not exaggerate their illuminating power, is destined 
 in this age to avoid the dangers associated with 
 either of the two extremes. 
 
 The essence of practical religion at all times has 
 been Sacrifice. However the origin of religion is to 
 be explained, and anthropologists in later times seem 
 
252 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 to have elucidated the subject with much success hy 
 ancestor worship, the ghost, and other theories, 
 propitiatory sacrifice has been the unfailing mark 
 and memorial of religious belief. It is unnecessary 
 to produce evidence of a statement so redundantly 
 supported. What chiefly deserves notice in this 
 connection, is the progressive change in the character 
 of the sacrifice ; corresponding with mental evolution. 
 In earlier times, human sacrifices were, probably, 
 everywhere regarded as the most pleasing and 
 powerful with the deities. Every form of possession 
 valued by primitive people was readily lavished on 
 the altar of the gods, either to avert their wrath or 
 to secure their favour ; cattle, firstfruits especially, 
 as at once the most costly to the worshipper and the 
 most acceptable to the Divinity. In time, this gross 
 form of propitiation was transcended ; and even the 
 later Jewish prophets speak of it with disdain. As 
 the conceptions of the moral character of the gods 
 grew loftier, the notion of the sacrifices calculated to 
 please them rose in proportion. As men attained 
 to worthier ideas of moral excellence, they recognized 
 that sacrifice of their own baser instincts was likely 
 to be the most pleasing offering to a moral deity. 
 " A wise man," says a passage in the Institutes of 
 Menu, " should constantly discharge all the moral 
 duties, though he perform not constantly the cere- 
 
THE SERVICE OF MAN. 253 
 
 monies of religion ; since he falls low if, while he 
 performs ceremonial acts only^ he discharges not his 
 moral dutiesT * And the same law prescribes "con- 
 tent, returning good for evil, resistance to sensual 
 appetites, abstinence from illicit gain, purification, 
 coercion of the organs . . . veracity, and freedom from 
 wrath. "f Yet the cruelty and obscenity of the early 
 Hindu religion are beyond doubt. The frank inde- 
 cencies and immoralities of primitive creeds are in 
 time explained away by mystical allegories of the 
 most spiritual purity. " The lascivious form of a 
 naked Yenus," says Gibbon, referring to the fancies 
 of the Neo-Platonists, " was tortured into the dis- 
 covery of some moral precept or some physical truth ; 
 and the castration of Atys explained the revolution of 
 the sun between the tropics, or the separation of the 
 human soul from vice and error." J The primitive 
 meaning of the phallus in India, according to Mr. 
 Wilson, is entirely forgotten. " The form under 
 which the Lingam is worshipped, that of a column, 
 suggests no impure ideas, and few of the uneducated 
 Hindoos attach any other idea to it than that it is 
 Siva ; they are not aware of its typical character." § 
 The next point is, that primitive religion had 
 little or no connection with human welfare, apart 
 
 * Mill's " History of India," book ii. cap. 6. 
 f Ihid, X " Decline and Fall," c. xxiii. 
 
 § Note to Mill's *' India," loc. cit. 
 
254 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 from the action of supernatural beings. Its chief or 
 only object was to guard the worshipper from 
 injuries which came from the spirit-world, or to 
 procure him benefits from the same origin. From a 
 natural, mundane point of view, primitive religion 
 was oftener evil than good. It sacrificed human 
 life and property on the imaginary propitiation of 
 fictitious deities. It is highly probable, indeed, 
 that even the most horrid primitive cults were 
 indirectly beneficial, as means of discipline, and of 
 adapting to social conditions the semi-brutal instincts 
 of prehistoric man. In that respect, primitive 
 religion resembled war ; which, destructive as it 
 was in one sense, is still recognized as one of 
 the most educational phases which humanity has 
 passed through. But, just as the antagonism be- 
 tween sacrifice and morality was gradually overcome, 
 so the hostility of primitive religion to human 
 welfare was in time replaced by an approximation 
 to concord between them. The angle of divergence 
 became progressively less. Worship of the gods 
 tended more and more to coincide with the welfare 
 of man. The humanization of the various poly- 
 theistic religions of the world has been very unequal, 
 both in degree and rapidity, depending as it neces- 
 sarily must, on the unequal progress in knowledge 
 and civilization. The Hindus in three thousand 
 
TEE SEBVICE OF MAN. 255 
 
 years have made less progress in purging their 
 primitive beh'efs of their cruelty and grossness, than 
 the Eomans did in five hundred years. But the 
 general rule holds good, that a progressive people, 
 even without foreign help from more advanced 
 populations, tends to outlive the primitively bar- 
 barous and noxious elements of its creed, and to 
 retain those which harmonize with general utility.* 
 
 The Christian religion has been no exception to 
 this rule ; in fact, it would not be easy to mention 
 a religion which has profited more by the general 
 growth of knowledge and civilization than the 
 Christian. It has been claimed, not without a show 
 of reason, that it is a peculiar and exceptional 
 merit of Christianity, that it has been able to 
 aptad itself to most unequal and divergent stages of 
 culture, and that it has met the wants of barbarous 
 and civilized races with equal success. Though 
 the time is obviously approaching, if it has not 
 been already reached, when its alleged adequacy 
 to the needs of civilized society becomes more and 
 more questionable, it may be frankly admitted that 
 Christianity has surpassed all other religions in 
 its power of keeping up with human evolution. 
 
 * Polybius's testimony to the value of the Koman religion, 
 as enforcing honesty, is too well known to need quoting (lib. vi. 
 cap. 56). 
 
256 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 The fact is, no doubt, owing to the large element 
 of Greek philosophy grafted on Christianity by 
 the Greek and Latin Fathers, and even by St. Paul. 
 The religion would probably not have survived 
 into modern times, unless it had possessed this 
 elasticity and capacity of modification, which have 
 allowed it to exist side by side with the most 
 divergent beliefs on other subjects. A Catholic 
 Christian of the fifth, and one of the nineteenth 
 century, would, if they could meet in the flesh, 
 agree in reference to the Creeds of the Church, but 
 they would be able to agree in little besides. If 
 we could have a conversation with the great St. 
 Augustine, we should soon fail to find common 
 ground for argument, whether as to matters of 
 fact, principles of reasoning, or, even as to the 
 interpretation of scripture; and it may even be 
 doubted if the present able and accomplished pope, 
 who has so deep a veneration for St. Thomas 
 Aquinas, would not find a prolonged discussion 
 on things in general, difficult to maintain with 
 the Angel of the Schools. Yet, St. Augustine, St. 
 Thomas, and Leo XIIL, must be admitted to be 
 thoroughly orthodox and authentic Christians. But 
 this flexibility and adaptability of Christianity on 
 the intellectual side, are not the qualities with 
 which we are chiefly concerned at this moment. 
 
TEE SERVICE OF 31Am 257 
 
 The point I would bring out, is the incomparably 
 greater emphasis laid by modern Christians, on all 
 that concerns human well-being, than was usually 
 done by their predecessors. In the old days, the 
 Faith, holy living, and especially holy dying, were 
 the great themes of Christian preachers. The true 
 Faith was literally all-important, as, without it, you 
 were hopelessly lost, whatever else you might do 
 or be. Hence, the Faith was to be fought for and 
 suffered for at any cost. Wars, massacres, burnings, 
 tortures, were trivial considerations compared with 
 the one thing needful, which alone could lead to 
 heaven. And we know that these plagues were 
 scattered through many centuries without stint or 
 remorse. After the true Faith was gained, the next 
 chief thing was to make a good use of it, and by a 
 holy life and a repentant death, to save your soul. 
 Earthly miseries, famines, pestilences, ignorance, 
 chronic poverty, were lamentable, no doubt; but 
 the famines and the pestilences were especially so, 
 as manifestations of God's wrath, who was thus 
 chastising a wicked world. Their proper and only 
 antidote was prayer, and repentance, and humilia- 
 tion before God, who might thereby be induced 
 to stay his hand. Such afflictions were incidental 
 to the lot of man, the appropriate retribution for 
 sin, to be borne with resignation. As for combat- 
 
258 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 ing them by human means and knowledge, with 
 a view to suppressing them, if such an idea could 
 have emerged, it would have been unquestionably- 
 pronounced impious and shocking. The only re- 
 cognized form of relief was charity ; the rich must 
 give of their abundance to the poor, and they 
 would be repaid in heaven. The Church of Rome 
 gave practical effect to this view by the admirable 
 and useful institution of, first, the Freres de la 
 Charite, founded by the Portuguese Johann Ciudad, 
 1497, and afterwards of the Filles de la Miseri- 
 corde, the work of the saintly Yincent of Paul, 
 1634. Every form of praise and honour is due 
 to those good men and women, who devoted them- 
 selves without stint to the relief of human misery, 
 regardless of the more profitable pursuits of Church 
 politics and theological controversy. But the very 
 foundation of these institutions showed that they 
 supplied a great want, which had not been furnished 
 by the Church before ; and they were, after all, 
 only a small and subordinate section of the vast 
 hierarchy which had shared the dominion of the 
 world with the temporal power. St. Yincent of 
 Paul met in the ranks of the secular clergy with 
 some of his most stubborn opponents.* 
 
 Now, it is hardly too much to say, that in 
 * See Feillet, " La Misere au Temps de la Fronde." 
 
THE SERVICE OF 3IAN. 259 
 
 recent times the whole attitude of the clergy in all 
 countries has been changed with regard to social 
 questions. Nearly every form of relief now, in 
 greater or lesser degree, passes through tlieir hands. 
 The improvement of the condition of the poor 
 seems very often to be tlie chief occupation of many 
 a hard-worked parish priest. To rescue children 
 from vice and temptation, to inform their minds 
 with virtuous principles, to clothe and feed their 
 bodies, to ameliorate the dwellings of their parents, 
 and admit a ray of light and brightness into the 
 squalor of their daily lives, — these, and similar 
 objects, occupy the time and minds of Christian 
 ministers to a degree which was never even re- 
 motely approached in the past. In other words. 
 Christian doctrine, or, at least. Christian practice, 
 has been gradually brought into harmony with 
 human and terrestrial wants, so as almost to run 
 parallel with them. The world has much changed. 
 The cessation of religious controversy is a surpris- 
 ing phenomenon. In place of the storm and fury 
 with which polemics formerly filled the air, we have 
 now a great calm. The small sputter of theological 
 disputes, still occasionally heard, is as the explosion 
 of squibs and crackers com23ared to that of the heavy 
 ordnance in the mighty controversies of old. 
 
 Thus, we find two permanent factors running 
 
260 TEE SERVICE OF 3IAN. 
 
 througli the religions of the past in all their changes 
 of outward presentation ; sacrifices on the part of 
 the worshipper ; and a gradual approximation of the 
 service of the gods to the service of man. Neither 
 of these factors is the exclusive property of any one 
 religion ; and hoth of them in some degree, perhaps, 
 may belong to all. They are quite capable of detach- 
 ment and isolation from the surroundings with which 
 they are usually associated in theological creeds. 
 Sacrifice admits of almost infinite degrees both in 
 quality and quantity, from an offering of a pair of 
 turtle doves or two young pigeons, up to a hundred 
 oxen ; from the most partial control of the coarsest 
 passions, up to saintly abnegation of every impure 
 or selfish desire. And the spirit of sacrifice, the 
 postponing of self to others, the giving up what 
 the natural man loves and values, whether posses- 
 sions or cherished lusts, is so little restricted to the 
 worshippers of a God or gods, that it may be said 
 in its highest form to be unattainable by them. 
 The worshipper of a god never quite transcends 
 the hope of a recompense for his devotion ; not 
 from men, but from " his Father which seeth in 
 secret," and who shall reward him oj)enly. And 
 this feeling springs inevitably from the very concep- 
 tion of a deity, especially if he be God Almighty. 
 A creature can be on no terms of reciprocity with 
 
THE SEBVICE OF 31 AN. 261 
 
 his Creator ; he can only be a recipient from God, 
 never a readerer back of good. The very thought 
 of performing an act of kindness or sympathy to 
 God, is absurd. The infinite disparity between 
 the two beings, man and his Maker, has as a conse- 
 quence that " every good gift and every perfect gift 
 is from above.'' Only to his fellows can man be com- 
 pletely altruistic, " hoping for nothing again." That 
 numbers of men and women among the higher races 
 are capable of acts of unalloyed altruism, in which 
 there is not a vestige of after-thought tending to 
 self-advantage, will only be denied by the naturally 
 cynical, or by those educated in an evil religious or 
 philosophic system. The mother who tends her sick 
 child and scorns any counsels to spare her health 
 and strength ; the rough miner who bids his mate 
 seize the one chance of escape up the shaft, as he 
 has a wife and children, whereas the speaker is a 
 bachelor ; the surgeon who sucks diphtheric poison 
 from a dying child's throat and dies himself in con- 
 sequence, — are examples of the love and sacrifice even 
 now to be found in the nobler hearts. And it is 
 denying evolution in fact and theory, to question the 
 certainty that they will become less exceptional than 
 they now are. But, in this capacity of sacrifice 
 regardless of self we have the purest essence of the 
 best religions ; a human quality which exists, which 
 
262 TEE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 has been evolved in the long travail of the world, 
 bat which may be cultivated with prospects of vastly 
 greater increase now that its supreme beauty and 
 price are perceived and valued. When the mental 
 and moral qualities of man are regarded as subject, 
 in common with other forms of life, to the law of 
 heredity and variation, their cultivation and improve- 
 ment will be conducted on the scientific basis which 
 has already produced such surprising results in other 
 parts of the vegetable and animal kingdoms. The 
 plasticity of human nature is even yet but little 
 appreciated, though what the Spartans, the Stoics, 
 and the Jesuits succeeded in doing with their 
 imperfect empirical methods is suggestive enough. 
 But these, or the two latter, at least, only contemplated 
 the education of the individual. What is wanted is 
 the conscious cultivation, enlightened by science, of 
 society as a whole. 
 
 As regards the end to which religions have in 
 an unconscious way more or less tended — the general 
 well-being — there will probably be little difticulty in 
 admitting that it is an object which civilized man 
 has proved himself capable of attaining in a con- 
 siderable measure already. The superiority of the 
 modern nations, not only to savages but even to their 
 own not very remote ancestors, is beyond dispute ; 
 and this not only in reference to physical well-being, 
 
THE SERVICE OF MAN. 263 
 
 but to all the higher sentiments and endowments of 
 man. Imperfect as our social state still is, heart- 
 rending as the condition of the poor in town and 
 country must be pronounced to be, it is, nevertheless, 
 vastly in advance of previous conditions ; and our 
 own sensitiveness and shame on the subject, though 
 we are not yet sensitive and ashamed enough, are 
 in themselves evidence of improvement. Arduous 
 as the social problem is acknowledged to be, and sore 
 as the suffering is likely to be before it is finally 
 solved, few can deny that it is capable of solution, 
 and that by human means. The abolition of laws 
 which favour the rich and strong, and sacrifice the 
 poor and weak, has, in a small way, begun, and we 
 may depend that in a democracy it will not easily be 
 arrested. A better distribution and a moralization 
 of wealth are approaching with a rapidity which is 
 not exaggerated by the panic fears of the amazed Few, 
 who hear with astonishment and horror that the 
 world is no longer made for idlers only. The 
 period of social revolution into which we are about 
 to enter, will probably be marked by many mistakes 
 and not a few crimes. Man's capacity for blunder 
 is very great. He smarts for his blunders, and in 
 time corrects them. But the point to be noted is, 
 that the social revolution will be accomplished on 
 secular principles; that this province of practical life 
 
264 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 is once for all severed from any theological inter- 
 ference. The proletariat of Europe is resolved to 
 have its fair share of the banquet of life, quite re- 
 gardless of the good or bad things in store for it in 
 the next world.* 
 
 It comes, therefore, to this, that the spirit of 
 sacrifice evolved in the theological stage is now 
 severed from and independent of its parent. Its 
 office is no longer the same. Sacrifice to invisible 
 gods, with prayer sent up to the immortals, im- 
 ploring pardon, or peace, or some earthly good, 
 have afforded hope and consolation to the sons of 
 men, in the long, dark centuries when knowledge 
 was not ; when visible man and nature were so 
 
 * See the Times (which seldom outinns public opinion), 
 November 18, 1884. In the third leading article it is said, 
 speaking of the East London Mission : — " The great enemy 
 which has to be met in dealing with this class [the poor] is not 
 active hostility, but total and almost impenetrable indifference. 
 Hostility to the clergy, as such, cannot be said to be wide-spread 
 in London .... The London artisan looks on the clergyman 
 as at worst a man who is engaged in a work with which he 
 individually has little or no concern ; he does not interfeie with 
 the paison, and he hopes that the parson will not interfere with 
 him .... Taken in the mass, the lower classes in London are 
 too much occupied in the struggle for existence, and in the 
 attempt to make their lives endurable, to give many thoughts 
 to the other world." The writer contrasts the very different 
 temper of the Parisian ouvrier, who " regards the priest as a 
 monster ; " but he admits that there is an element of active 
 hostility to the clergy in our midst. 
 
THE SERVICE OF MAN. 265 
 
 hostile, tliat faith and trust in the unseen seemed 
 the only refuge ; that only " beyond the veil " was 
 a sure friend to be found. A bitter experience 
 has at last taught us that the immortals are deaf; 
 that no prayers, however passionate, are heard, 
 save by the care-laden hearts which utter them. 
 
 Thus, the worship of deities has passed into 
 the " Service of Man." Instead of Theolatry, we 
 have Anthropolatry. The divine service has be- 
 come human service. The accumulated experience 
 of mankind is beginning to bear fruit. Two things 
 have been ascertained with sufficient exactness to 
 serve as guides, both in practice and theory. First, 
 the kind of conduct needed by a social condition 
 such as ours, that is to say, the outlines of a 
 progressive morality suited to the present age, are 
 fairly settled. Secondly, the kind of social con- 
 dition desired, and already partially in view, which 
 shall supersede the present inferior one, is also in 
 its main features apprehended. The two factors 
 work together to one result, " complete life carried 
 on under social conditions." ^ The Service of Man 
 consists in furthering both. The higher moraliza- 
 tion of the individuals composing the social group 
 will raise the quality of the social group itself, and 
 * H. Spencer's " Data of Ethics," p. 130. 
 
2G6 TEE SEBVICE OF MA^f. 
 
 the improved group will react upon individuals, 
 and enable tliem to lead higher lives. In a word, 
 we are now in a position to pursue human well- 
 being as a conscious aim, with good prospect of 
 success. We know fairly well the road along which 
 we intend to travel, and we know the kind of 
 human co-operation needed, to enable us to do so ; 
 the type of character and disposition needed to 
 render social help. And we know, further, that 
 society possesses now, in a degree it never possessed 
 before, the means of exacting conformity to this 
 type. Public opinion, as it used to be called, but 
 for which a better expression would be, the '' collec- 
 tive conscience," is already able to impose a standard 
 of public and private morals, and to punish, with 
 penalties keenly felt, a manifest inferiority to it. 
 Even in the political world, singleness of purpose, 
 a true public and social spirit, are valued more 
 than great talent and eloquence without them. A 
 life of selfish ease and indulgence is pardoned to 
 great wealth and position with less readiness than 
 formerly ; and, with the growth of democracy, such 
 a temper must necessarily spread, both in extent 
 and intensity. 
 
 The remainder of our subject will, therefore, be 
 considered under the two aspects just indicated : 
 1^1) the improvement of the individual, and (2) the 
 
THE SERVICE OF MAN. 267 
 
 improvement of society. We can serve men firstly, 
 and perhaps chiefly, by improving ourselves, and 
 this in all respects, physically, mentally, morally. 
 Without a high standard of health, duties become 
 difficult or impossible to perform, and our whole 
 efficiency is lessened. In these days of increased 
 knowledge, when so much of youth, and even of 
 manhood, is taken up with preparatory study and 
 training, the longevity of its worthier members is 
 a distinct gain to society. A vigorous old age is 
 able to accomplish out of all proportion more than 
 several careers, however brilliant, cut short in 
 youth. Few, or none, are now likely to question 
 the value of mental improvement. It remains true 
 all the same that our notions of education are 
 lamentably inadequate, and that the higher forms 
 of it are not even conceived as possible or de- 
 sirable in our so-called universities. As regards 
 moral training, finally, no one will dispute its para- 
 mount necessity ; but the subject is obscured, and 
 the result vitiated by the emphasis laid by the 
 religious public, not on morals, but on repentance ; 
 not on the vigorous and constant performance of 
 social duty throughout life, but on making our 
 peace with God, some time, it signifies not how short 
 a time, before life closes. What humanity needs is 
 not people who lead unsocial and wicked lives, 
 
268 THE SEBVICE OF 3IAN. 
 
 and are very sorry when about to die ; when, by 
 the nature of the case, tliey can do no more harm 
 nor good ; but people who, at an early period, 
 begin to render valuable service to the good cause, 
 and continue rendering more valuable service as 
 they advance in years. We cannot take regrets 
 and repentance in lieu of work ; performance only 
 avails. To prevent misconception, even for a 
 moment, it may be added, that by performance, 
 advance in spiritual life is by no means excluded ; 
 and that the contemplative life is not placed below 
 the active life, but contrariwise, as will be seen 
 further on. 
 
 The improvement of society, again, is an object 
 to which nearly all persons will declare themselves 
 favourable. But many prejudices and passions, 
 largely incompatible with any serious improvement, 
 will need to be overcome, before our advance in 
 that direction can become as rapid and assured 
 as is desirable. 
 
 There will be no want of work for those who 
 wish to engage in the Service of Man. 
 
( 2(51) ) 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ON THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 For this service to be efBcient, it is obvious that 
 men must be adequately trained for it. From time 
 immemorial, education for some object or other 
 has been practised by mankind. The young savage 
 is taught to hunt, fish and shoot with persevering 
 assiduity. 'Every kind of war implies discipline 
 and drill, however rude. Political life, wherever 
 it exists, inevitably leads to an education fitting 
 men for the treatment of public affairs. Besides 
 these partial ends, religion, in all societies above 
 the lowest, is charged with the general and para- 
 mount end of training men in the worship and 
 service of the invisible but all-powerful Being or 
 Beings, who are supposed to dispose of human 
 happiness in this world and the next. This has 
 ever rightly been regarded as the most important 
 of all training, because it concerns every one, and 
 incomparably more momentous interests are involved 
 
270 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 in its efficient carrying out. The cultivation of 
 human nature, in some degree or direction, is as 
 old as humanity. 
 
 But the partiality and imperfection of this 
 cultivation are equally old. The daily acquisition 
 of food occupies the whole life of the savage, almost 
 as completely as it does the lives of the birds and 
 animals which he snares and kills. With the 
 growth of knowledge and wealth, wider objects 
 engage man's attention, and exact a corresponding 
 culture to secure their attainment. But these ends, 
 though wider than those of savage life, are still 
 very narrow, consisting in success in petty warfare 
 with neighbouring states, or in party struggles 
 within the primitive city. Even the worship of the 
 gods is stiffly exclusive and partial, and confined to 
 local or tribal divinities, who are ''jealous " in the 
 extreme of any rivals in popular reverence. 
 
 This imperfection of culture has continued to 
 modern times, though, with every stride in civiliza- 
 tion, it has been lessened, and replaced by some- 
 thing better and larger. Yet, it is still obviously 
 local, partial, and imperfect. Nowhere yet does the 
 aim exist to produce the best human being possible ; 
 to train all the faculties of the body, the mind, 
 and the heart, with the sole object of making the 
 most of them. Men are still trained for special 
 
THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATUBE. 271 
 
 trades and professions, for special countries, and, 
 above all, for special religions. And, in the present 
 low development of the human mind and civiliza- 
 tion, it cannot be otherwise, or at least, much 
 otherwise. But there can be no doubt that one 
 of the most assured and practical means of improv- 
 ing society, is to improve the individual men and 
 women who compose it. This is strongly but 
 vaguely expressed in the cry for education ; though 
 one is often tempted to think that none needs educa- 
 tion more than the popular clamourer for it. Still, a 
 great advance has been made in the mere recogni- 
 tion that the cultivation of individuals, however 
 imperfect, is a matter of primary importance to the 
 general welfare. Deeper views on the subject will 
 come in time. 
 
 For the purpose of this essay, we need not 
 regard the subject from this wide and public point 
 of view. We may limit ourselves to the considera- 
 tion — ample enough — of the change in the theory 
 of human cultivation, likely to follow the substitu- 
 tion of the service of man for the service of God ; 
 and w^e will do so under the three heads — (1) the 
 body, (2) the mind, and (3) the heart of man. 
 
 1. On the first we need not dwell long. Medical 
 science lias nearly solved the problem of health. The 
 amount of exercise and nourishment, the kinds and 
 
272 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 qualities of foods aiirl drinks, the limits of work 
 and relaxation, the salubrity of sites and dwellings 
 and clothing, these and similar topics connected 
 with the health of the body physical, are so fairly 
 well understood that any one with a moderately 
 strong constitution, amenable to good advice, may 
 keep in satisfactory health. Many of the worst 
 diseases have been almost disarmed, though a few, 
 like cancer, are said to be on the increase; and 
 there is a great set-off in the fact that the very 
 success of medical skill and science has produced 
 serious harm by saving numbers of weak and bad 
 constitutions, which would formerly have perished, 
 but which now survive to propagate an unhealthy 
 stock ; an evil which will be probably diminished 
 or removed by stricter views of marriage and the 
 procreation of cliildren. The paramount importance 
 of health for the adequate discharge of public and 
 private duties, can escape no one. It is probable 
 that in a reformed public opinion of the future, 
 a breakdown in health, when obviously caused by 
 excess or imprudence, or culpable ignorance, will be 
 regarded as a species of bankruptcy, and severely 
 judged. A servant of humanity has no right to be 
 unable to perform his duties to her. 
 
 2. Neither need we dwell long on the cultiva- 
 tion of the mind, interesting as is the subject, and 
 
THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATURE. 273 
 
 mucli as there would be to say about it in another 
 connection. The utility of knowledge is now obvious 
 to everybody, and nearly all departments are 
 fairly well-cultivated, some of them with splendid 
 results. Science now is quite able to take care of 
 itself, and we have no reason to fear that it will 
 not be equal to the task. The great danger is 
 specialism, which cultivates one small segment of 
 the vast circle of knowledge, and remains con- 
 tentedly ignorant of the rest. Specialism cannot 
 be spared, if only for the reason that he who is 
 not a specialist in some one thing, is likely to be 
 a sciolist in all things. But, next to the sciolist, 
 the pure specialist is, perhaps, the least efficient 
 servant of man. 
 
 3. I now come to the third, and incomparably 
 the most important, of all the forms of human culti- 
 vation, — the cultivation of the heart and feelings. 
 
 I have already, in a previous chapter, attempted 
 to show that, as a support of morality, Christian 
 doctrine and practice were inherently defective ; 
 inasmuch as that the true end of Christianity was 
 not morality in this world, but salvation in the 
 next. My object must now be to show that a 
 cultivation of human nature on positive and human 
 principles will have a different result ; first, because of 
 the different end, secondly, because of the different 
 
274 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 means and theories adopted with a view to that 
 end. 
 
 The cultivation of nature, vegetable or animal, 
 since it has become scientific, has proceeded on the 
 assumption of a universal law of causation, on which 
 were based experiment and proof. The agriculturist 
 and the grazier, aided by the chemist, have discovered 
 the most propitious conditions, foods, soils, stocks, 
 etc., for their special objects in view, and after great 
 time and pains they have fairly mastered the problem. 
 The only part of it which they have not mastered is 
 the meteorological part ; but in other respects their 
 success has been eminently satisfactory. Even pesti- 
 lences in the animal and vegetable world are stopped, 
 and prevented from spreading, if not from appearing ; 
 as the extirpation of the rinder-pest, the silkworm 
 disease, and perhaps, most remarkable of all, the 
 destruction of locusts in Cyprus, sufficiently show. 
 It was different even in the Augustan age of Rome — 
 
 " . . . alitur vitmm, vivitque tegendo, 
 Dum inedicas adhibere manus ad volnera pastor 
 Abnegat, aut meliora deos sedet omina poscens.'' * 
 
 Epidemic diseases were regarded by Jew and Gentile 
 as special proofs of the anger of the Deity ; whom 
 men sought by prayer and sacrifice to propitiate, that 
 the plague might be stayed. 
 
 * Verg., " Georg.," iii. 454. 
 
THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATUBE. 275 
 
 " Help us, Lares ! help us, Lares, help us ! 
 And thou, Marmar, suffer not 
 Fell plague and ruin's rot 
 Our folk to devastate." * 
 
 In these cases, we now look for help to the sanitary 
 inspector, or the veterinary surgeon. 
 
 JSTow, the scientific cultivation of human nature 
 needs the adoption of the same method and principles 
 as have been so fruitful of good results in other 
 departments. We must cease to believe in miracle 
 aud divine aid ; and, proceeding on the firm ground 
 of cause and effect, not expect to reap except where 
 and when we have ploughed and sown. The theo- 
 logical doctrine of grace, and the metaphysical 
 doctrine of the freedom of the will, are alike fatal to 
 a steady cultivation of human nature from a moral 
 point of view. Both presuppose an unknown factor, 
 whose presence or absence cannot be foreseen, and 
 whose action cannot be measured. *' It is here, it is 
 there, it is gone," and no one can tell why. It at 
 once upsets prevision of the future, and cancels all 
 record of and inference from the past. 
 
 An authorized expounder f of Catholic doctrine 
 remarks, " Nothing, absolutely nothing, neither little 
 nor much, can be done without the grace of Grod. 
 
 * " Song of the Arval Brothers." 
 I Power, " Catechism," vol. ii. p. 33. 
 
276 THE SEitVICE OF MAN. 
 
 We cannot do a good action, nor produce any good 
 fruit conducive to salvation, without the grace of 
 Grod." " St. Augustine," remarks Canon Liddon, 
 *' says there is no reason, apart from the grace of 
 God, why the highest saint should not be the worst 
 criminal." * In an instant, therefore a criminal may 
 become a saint, or a saint may become a criminal, 
 according to the good pleasure of God, '^ who hath 
 mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he 
 will he hardeneth." If we assume, as we surely 
 may^ that the saintly character is marked by rare 
 and precious qualities, we are made to see, on this 
 theory, by what a frail and uncertain tenure they 
 exist. It is hardly necessary to point out that this 
 doctrine must induce an indifference, almost a reck- 
 lessness, as to the cultivation of human nature, so far 
 as the heart and feelings are concerned. We cannot 
 be sure for twenty-four hours together whether we 
 shall belong to the diabolically wicked or the 
 angelically good. 
 
 The analogy between the theological doctrine of 
 grace and the metaphysical tenet of free-will is 
 obvious. They both appeared prominently together 
 in the controversy between Pelagius and St. Augus- 
 tine. Free-will is a sort of secular correlative of 
 theological grace. It delivers over man, not to the 
 * "Oxford Sermons," VI. 
 
THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATURE. 277 
 
 arbitrary inspiration of divine grace given or with- 
 held, but to the arbitrary autocracy of his own 
 power of volition ; which can do with him what it 
 pleases, if it pleases. " According to the doctrine 
 of Free-will, there is an ultimate power of choice 
 in the human will, which, however strongly it 
 may be drawn, or tempted, or attracted to decide 
 one way or another by external appeals or motives, 
 is not ruled and decided by such motives, but by the 
 will itself only." * Again, '' While there is life there 
 is hope and there is fear. The most inveterate 
 habits of vice still leave a power of self-recovery in 
 the man, if he will but exert it ; the most confirmed 
 habits of virtue still leave the liability to a fall." f 
 The close analogy, almost amounting to identity, 
 between the doctrines of Free-will and Grace, is here 
 verj clearly shown. By encouraging the idea that 
 the most inveterate habits of vice can be reformed 
 by an act of will, the paramount importance of habit 
 is masked or even implicitly denied ; that is to say, 
 that one of the most important and widely dominant 
 laws of biology is denied, or the moral nature of 
 man is withdrawn from its dominion. If the most 
 confirmed habits of virtue are no guarantee against 
 a " fall " (that means, can be destroyed by an exertion 
 
 * Mozley, " Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination," p. 217. 
 t Ibid., p. 247. 
 
278 THE SEBVICE OF 3IAN. 
 
 of the wicked will), it is obvious that patient and 
 protracted effort towards self-discipline and the 
 higher life, is so much labour lost. The subjuga- 
 tion of self and evil desires carried on for years 
 may end in a "fall," and gratification of our most 
 depraved instincts. And, contrariwise, *' inveterate 
 habits of vice " are not the serious danger one might 
 suppose, as the power of self-recovery is always 
 present and capable of throwing them off, if the 
 man will but exert it. While there is life there is 
 hope and fear ; and up to the last the criminal may 
 become a saint, and the saint a criminal, as St. 
 Augustine said. 
 
 It is evident that the doctrine of the freedom 
 of the will, supposes the phenomena of the mind 
 to be exempt from the laws and conditions which 
 regulate the rest of nature ; and the more courageous 
 metaphysicians do not hesitate to make this assump- 
 tion : " Can the knowledge of Nature," asks the 
 late Professor G-reen, " be itself a part of Nature, 
 in that sense of Nature in which it is said to be 
 an object of knowledge ? " * It is not easy to see 
 why the subject which cognizes the object should be 
 less Nature than the object cognized. The image 
 of an object in the mirror which reflects is as much 
 Nature as the object reflected. However, it is not 
 * " Prolegomena to Ethics," p. 11. 
 
TEE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATUBE. 279 
 
 necessary for the purpose in hand to make a flight 
 into the fine sether of Kantian metaphysics. If we 
 consult fact instead of fiction, we shall conclude that 
 moral qualities are, to say the least, as permanent and 
 durable as any other biological phenomena. The 
 digestive functions, the circulation of the blood, and 
 the secretions of the body, are not more periodic 
 and permanent than the passions of the mind. 
 Indeed, the latter are the more lasting and per- 
 sistent of the two groups. The liver of a miser 
 is more likely to break down in the course of his 
 life, than his passion for gold. The muscular heart 
 of the benevolent man may, and often does, fail, 
 before the spiritual heart which makes him un- 
 wearied in doing deeds of mercy. The common 
 sense of mankind has always, when not perverted 
 by the necessities of a theory, recognized the 
 permanence of moral qualities, not only in the 
 individual, but in the race — 
 
 " Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis ; 
 Est in juvencis, est in equis patrum 
 Virtus, neque inbellem feroces 
 Progenerant aquilee columbam." * 
 
 That the two doctrines just referred to, of grace 
 and of free-will, have frequently operated to the 
 
 * " Hor." iv. 4, 29. 
 
280 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 injury of morality, is proved by examples too 
 numerous to quote. Louis XY., one of the most 
 profligate men in history, was punctilious in his 
 religious exercises ; and, as Carlyle says, used to 
 catechise the inmates of his harem in the Pare aux 
 Cerfs, " that they might retain their orthodoxy." 
 But the doctrine of grace, which he had no doubt 
 thoroughly grasped, allowed him to feel that he 
 could at any time repent, and that when he did, 
 he would be freed from his sins. In one of the 
 finest historical pictures ever drawn, even by Carlyle, 
 we are admitted to the side of the " sinner's death- 
 bed," to see his anxiety for the sacraments, and how 
 he made the "amende honorable" to Grod. If it 
 be objected that this is only a sample of Popish 
 superstition, we w^ill take from a sect the most 
 opposed to Catholicism, that of the Scotch Pres- 
 byterians, the case of the famous James Erskine of 
 Grrange. Dr. Alexander Carlyle, in his amusing 
 autobiography, speaks as follows of this Protestant 
 worthy. Referring to his father's intimacy with 
 Lord Grange (Dr. Carlyle's father, like himself, was 
 a minister of the Church of Scotland), and to their 
 frequent meetings for prayer, he says : " After these 
 meetings for private prayer, however, in which they 
 passed several hours before suj)per, praying alter- 
 nately, they did not part without wine. Notwith- 
 
TEE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATUBE. 281 
 
 standing this intimacy, there were periods of half 
 a year at a time, when there was no intercourse 
 between them at all. My father's conjecture was, 
 that at those times Lord Grange was engaged in a 
 course of debauchery at Edinburgh, and interrupted 
 his religious exercises. For in those intervals, 
 he not only neglected my father's company, but 
 absented him.self from church, and did not attend 
 the sacraments, religious services which, at other 
 times, he would not have neglected for the 
 world. Report, however, said that he and his 
 associates passed their time in alternate scenes of 
 the exercises of religion and debauchery ; spending 
 their day in meetings for prayer and pious conver- 
 sation, and their nights in lewdness and revelling. 
 Some men are of opinion that they could not be 
 equally sincere in both. I am apt to think that 
 they were. ... There is no doubt of their profli- 
 gacy ; and I have frequently seen them drowned in 
 tears during the whole of a sacramental Sunday ; 
 when, so far as my observation could reach, they 
 could have no rational object to act a part. The 
 Marquis of Lothian of that day, whom I have 
 seen attending the sacrament at Prestonpans with 
 Lord Grange, and whom no man suspected of plots 
 or hypocrisy, was much addicted to debauchery. 
 The natural casuistry of the passions grants dis- 
 
282 THE SERVICE OF 3IAN. 
 
 pensations with more facility than the Church of 
 Rome." * 
 
 There are strong rumours tliat such contradic- 
 tions between faith and practice were not un- 
 known in Scotland in a more recent past. 
 
 Now let us take the milder, but not less instruc- 
 tive case of Dr. Johnson. Few men have had more 
 devout faith in God's grace, and more firm belief 
 in free-will, than Samuel Johnson. He was, in 
 intention at least, highly conscientious. In practice, 
 as he was the first to admit, he often fell short 
 of his standard of duty. We can hardly imagine 
 more fervent prayers and determined resolves than 
 he made with a view to breaking off bad habits and 
 turning over a new leaf. Yet the success was very 
 small, as we learn from the frequent repentances 
 and renewed resolves published by Boswell, e.g. : — 
 
 " I have now spent fifty-five years in resolving ; 
 having, from the earliest time, almost, that I can 
 remember, been forming schemes of a better life. 
 I have done nothing. ... God, grant me to 
 resolve aright, and to keep my resolutions, for Jesus 
 Christ's sake. Amen." f 
 
 The chief fiults with which Johnson reproached 
 himself were waste of time, procrastination, and a 
 
 * "Autobiography of Dr. Alexander Carlyle," p. 13. 
 I Boswell, anno 17G4. 
 
THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATUBE. 283 
 
 torpid laziness which made early rising almost an 
 impossibility to him. Against these faults he per- 
 petually made resolutions, and prayed fervently for 
 divine help to keep them. He resolved and prayed 
 in vain ; as we know, not only from his own con- 
 fession, but from abundant other testimony. Boswell 
 is delighted with Johnson's tenderness of conscience, 
 and " fervent desire of improvement." It did not 
 occur to Boswell that he had given, in other parts 
 of his work, ample reasons which accounted for 
 Johnson's failure on this head. Johnson's habits 
 were wholly incompatible with health of mind or 
 body, and they were peculiarly adverse to the 
 alertness of spirit of which he was always lament- 
 ing his deficiency. How could a man get up early 
 who always sat up at night as long as he could 
 find any one to keep him company? How could 
 a man retain a prompt and clear energy of mind, 
 ready for all demands, who never scrupled to 
 gorge himself to repletion whenever he had an 
 opportunity. " I never knew," says Boswell, " any 
 man who relished good eating more than he did. 
 When at table, he was totally absorbed in the 
 business of the moment ; his looks seemed riveted 
 to his plate ; nor would he, unless when in very 
 high company, say one word, or even pay the least 
 attention to what was said by others, till he had 
 
284 TEE SEBYICE OF MAN. 
 
 satisfied his appetite ; which was so fierce, and 
 indulged with such intenseness, that, while in the 
 act of eating, the veins of his forehead swelled, and, 
 generally, a strong perspiration was visible." * How 
 much of Johnson's physical suffering and moral de- 
 ficiencies were owing to his habitual gross feeding, 
 could perhaps only be determined by a physician 
 who had carefully examined the patient ; but that 
 his obesity, and shortness of breath, his low spirits 
 and choleric temper, were largely attributable to his 
 self-indulgence, there can hardly be a doubt. 
 
 If Johnson had been a determinist, and culti- 
 vated his nature on rational principles, he would 
 have known that while he retained his usual 
 habits he could not overcome his sloth. A light 
 but nutritious diet, sufficient exercise in the fresh 
 air to induce a pleasant fatigue, frequent cold baths, 
 moderation in all liquors, especially tea, and early 
 hours of going to bed, would probably, in a few 
 months, have enabled him to throw off his lethargy. 
 
 The doctrine of determinism is now so generally 
 accepted, that it will not be needful to dwell upon 
 it at any length here. The cumulative argument 
 in its favour, says Mr. Sidgwick, is so strong 
 as almost to amount to complete proof. But its 
 immense importance for the right cultivation of 
 * Boswell, anno 1763. 
 
THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATUBE. 285 
 
 human nature seems still to be overlooked, even by 
 its most illustrious advocates. Even Mr. Sidgwick 
 is of opinion that the decision of the " metaphysical 
 question at issue in this free-will controversy " * 
 does not involve any point of general practical im 
 portance. I am unable to accept this view. It appears 
 to me to be one of those cases in which right theory 
 is all-important, as guiding to right practice. 
 
 If we admit that " From the universal law 
 that, other things equal, the cohesion of psychical 
 states is proportionate to the frequency with which 
 they have followed one another in experience ; 
 it is an inevitable corollary, that all actions 
 whatever must be determined by those psychical 
 connexions which experience has generated, either 
 in the life of the individual, or in that general 
 antecedent life of which the accumulated results 
 are organized in his constitution," f we must 
 further admit that any theory which tends to 
 discredit or underrate " habit," tends to make 
 human action uncertain and vacillating, tends there- 
 fore to weaken the automatic performance of good 
 actions, which is what the well-being of society 
 demands. The free-will theory openly challenges 
 " habit," and encourages the belief that the most 
 
 * " Methods of Ethics," cap. v. 
 
 t Herbert Spencer, " Psychology," vol. i. p. 500. 
 
286 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 inveterate habit may be broken by an act of voli- 
 tion. The attention is therefore directed to the 
 wrong side of the problem. Instead of vigilantly 
 watching against the slow, insidious growth of evil 
 habits, the failure to carry out good resolutions, the 
 frequent indulgence of vicious tastes ; the mind is 
 lulled into a false security by the belief in free- 
 will, imagining itself independent and sovereign, 
 when and while it is being reduced into ser- 
 vitude. The " cohesion of psychical states " is 
 so established by their frequent succession that it 
 becomes organic. If not absolutely inseparable, 
 their cohesion is so strong, that only a violent 
 contrary passion or motive is equal to breaking 
 it. The most hardened lie-a-bed, whom neither 
 duty nor interest can rouse from his slumbers, 
 would promptly sally forth if informed that the 
 house was on fire. It is this fact, viz. that even 
 an inveterate habit may be broken by a gust of 
 passion, or a permanent mood of profound emotion, 
 which has given a semblance of rationality to the 
 doctrine of free-will. No determinist ignores or 
 underrates it. A passion of pure love has often 
 saved a man from a swarm of minor vices. All 
 the famous and sudden religious conversions from 
 evil-living to righteousness, may be traced to 
 the same principle. Ardent love, gratitude, and 
 
TEE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATUBE. 287 
 
 veneration for Christy wimi kindled, a7'e able to 
 snap the chains of habit, and sometimes to prevent 
 their being welded together again. But it is rash, 
 not to say reckless, to trust to a random cyclone 
 of the nobler passions to save us from our sins. 
 It is of the nature of cyclones to be violent, 
 but of short duration. They may never come ; 
 they are apt to be transitory. And then the old 
 cohesion of psychical states reappears, the vicious 
 habit returns, probably more virulent and domineer- 
 ing for its temporary exile, and the last state of 
 that man is worse than the first. 
 
 It is obvious, as already remarked, that the free- 
 will doctrine turns the attention away from the 
 essential and real side of moral cultivation, and 
 directs it to an unreal side. It resembles Sir 
 Kenelm Digby's famous sympathetic powder for the 
 cure of wounds. Digby professed that he would be 
 very sorry not to do his uttermost to make it clear 
 how the powder, " (which they commonly call the 
 powder of sympathy,) doth, naturally and without any 
 magick, cure wounds without touching them, yea, 
 without seeing of the patient;" and he sets forth how 
 the cure " is performed by applying the remedy to 
 the blade of a sword which has wounded a body ; 
 so the sword be not too much heated by the fire ; for 
 that will make all the spirits of the blood to evapo- 
 
288 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 rate ; and consequently the sword will contribute but 
 little to the cure. Now, the reason why the sword 
 may be dressed in order to the cure is, because the 
 subtile spirits of the blood penetrate the substance 
 of the blade, as far as it went into the body of the 
 wounded party ; and there keep their residence, un- 
 less the fire, as I said before, chase them away." 
 Now, the sympathetic powder is hardly more irra- 
 tional in surgery than the free-will doctrine is in 
 morals. In both cases the attention is directed to 
 the wrong object, and diverted from the right one. 
 While Digby was applying his remedy to the blade 
 of a sword which had caused a wound, he was giving 
 but little care and attention to the wound itself. 
 Indeed, he says that neither the wound nor even the 
 patient need ever be seen. There would have been 
 little hope of the triumphs of modern surgery if 
 this method of treating wounds had prevailed. The 
 real phenomena needing elucidation would not have 
 been studied, and a fiction would have engrossed the 
 attention of the faculty. The believers in free-will 
 have studied ethics and the cultivation of human 
 nature, as Digby studied surgery and the cure of 
 wounds. Their doctrine is the correlative of the 
 sympathetic powder applied to the blade of the 
 sword. The real facts which it behoved them to 
 investigate they have neglected. 
 
THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATUBE. 289 
 
 Experience shows that moral or immoral action 
 depends upon the previous training and character 
 of the mind, as much as healthy or morbid secretions 
 depend upon the previous habits and constitution 
 of the body. A man with a criminal nature and 
 education, under given circumstances of temptation, 
 can no more help committing crime than he could 
 help having a headache under certain conditions of 
 brain and stomach. Both the crime and the head- 
 ache result from a series of antecedent causes culmi- 
 nating in these effects. An unhealthy mode of 
 living and, perhaps, a bad constitution lead inevi- 
 tably to the one ; an evil training and, perhaps, a 
 vicious character combined, lead to the other. In 
 neither case can the Will operate directly to sup- 
 press either crime or headache at the moment. The 
 physical ailment mai/ be removed or mitigated by 
 drugs or reformed habits of living, and the moral 
 evil also may be diminished or removed by a com- 
 plete change in the ethical surroundings of the 
 patient. But neither result is certain ; and depends 
 on numerous circumstances, the age of the indivi- 
 dual, the inveteracy of the disease, the constitution 
 or character in either case. 
 
 All cultivation presupposes, in the vegetable, 
 animal, or human subject, original qualities which 
 justify even an attempt to improve them. There 
 
290 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 are soils which no farmer in his senses would think 
 of ploughing, manuring, and sowing. There are 
 kinds of vegetables and stocks of cattle which are 
 recognized as unfit for profitable culture. They are 
 left alone, either to die out or to survive in a state of 
 nature. In the same way with human qualities ; 
 some original quality is needed to begin upon. We 
 do not give an elaborate musical education to persons 
 who have no power to distinguish one note from 
 another, nor teach painting to the colour blind, nor 
 mathematics to those arrested by the Ass's Bridge. 
 In other words, cultivation is only rationally applied 
 where there is original quality capable of re- 
 ceiving it. 
 
 Certainly, the moral nature of man does not vary 
 less widely than other parts of his nature. There 
 are men whose quality is to manifest, from their 
 earliest years, a bias to vicious and malignant crime ; 
 who have no good instincts on which a moral teacher 
 can work ; who pursue their own selfish gratification 
 at any cost to others. There are also men whose 
 bias is in the contrary direction ; who, without 
 teaching, or in spite of evil teaching, show a gene- 
 rous, upright, unselfish spirit in all their dealings. 
 And these differences are congenital : such persons 
 differ as much as a cachectic constitution differs 
 from a healthy one. Without saying that in the 
 
THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATUBE. 291 
 
 one case, therapeutics, and in the other case, moral 
 training, would be quite without effect, we may 
 be sure that neither therapeutics nor moral training 
 will ever turn the bad into the good, the evil con- 
 stitution or character into the vigorous and moral. 
 
 Before drawing our practical deductions from 
 these facts, let us consider some of these implications. 
 
 Nature knows nothing of merit or desert, but 
 only of qualities : 
 
 " Alike to her the better, the worse, 
 The glowing angel, the outcast corse." 
 
 But for the well-being of man and society, certain 
 qualities in things, animals, and men, are precious 
 in the extreme, as certain other qualities are perni- 
 cious. We cultivate the one and discard, or even, if 
 possible, suppress the other. No qualities are so 
 valuable to men in society as the moral qualities in 
 each other's hearts. On nothing does happiness so 
 much depend, both immediately and remotely, as 
 upon the good or bad instincts of the fellow-men 
 by whom we are surrounded. Within certain and 
 not very narrow limits these instincts admit of 
 cultivation ; but unless originally present in some 
 degree they cannot be cultivated. Their presence or 
 absence in the individual is no merit or fault of his. 
 Nothing is more certain than that no one makes his 
 
292 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 own character. That is done for him by his parents 
 and ancestors. The hero was born with his noble 
 and fearless heart; the saint came into the world 
 with his spontaneous aptitude for good works and 
 lofty feeling ; and the moral monster, the cowardly, 
 selfish, unscrupulous criminal, was born with his 
 evil passions inherited from progenitors, near or 
 remote. No merit or demerit attaches to the saint 
 or the sinner in the metaphysical and mystic sense 
 of the word. Their good or evil qualities were none 
 of their making. A man inherits his brain as much 
 as he inherits his estate. The strong nature, the 
 vivid imagination, the tender conscience, the firm 
 will, all come by inheritance, as much as money in 
 the funds, or a noble demesne of broad acres. The 
 theological doctrine that there is no such thing as 
 merit in the sight of God, that all we have has been 
 received as a free gift, admits of a plainly scientific 
 expression, as a matter of fact.* 
 
 * On this point St. Thomas uses almost Positivist expres- 
 sions : — 
 
 " Et ideo meritum hominis apnd Denm esse non potest nisi 
 secundum praesuppositionem divinae ordinationis ; ita scilicet ut 
 id homo consequatur a Deo per suam operationem, quasi merce- 
 dem, ad quod Deus ei virtutem operandi deputavit, sicut etiam 
 res naiurales hoc consequuntur per proprios motus et operationes, 
 ad qiiod a Deo sunt ordinata3 ; diffeienter tamen, quia creatura 
 rationalis seipsum movet ad agendum per liberum arbitrium, 
 unde sua actio habet rationem uieriti ; quod non est in aliis 
 
TEE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATUBK 293 
 
 It will perhaps be said that this view does away 
 with moral responsibility ; that those who hold it 
 cannot consistently blame any crime or resent any 
 injury; that we should not on this hypothesis re- 
 proach a garrotter who half murders us; he is a 
 machine, not a man with free-will, capable of doing 
 and forbearing according to the moral law. It is 
 no more rational to blame him than it would be to 
 blame a runaway locomotive which knocks you down, 
 and mangles or kills you. 
 
 To which the answer is, that the sooner the idea 
 of moral responsibility is got rid of, the better it will 
 be for society and moral education. The sooner it 
 is perceived that bad men will be bad, do what we 
 will, though, of course, they may be made less bad, 
 the sooner shall we come to the conclusion that the 
 welfare of society demands the suppression or elimi- 
 nation of bad men, and the careful cultivation of the 
 good only. This is what we do in every other de- 
 partment. We do not cultivate curs and screws and 
 low breeds of cattle. On the contrary, we keep 
 them down as much as we can. Wliat do we gain 
 by this fine language as to moral responsibility ? The 
 right to blame, and so forth. Bad men are not 
 
 creaturis." — " Summae Theologicae," Prima Secundae, Quaestio 
 cxiv. art. prim. But for the arbitrary exception in favour of 
 free-will, this view would coincide with mine. 
 
294 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 touched by it. The bad man has no conscience ; 
 he acts after his malignant nature. The fear of 
 sharp punishment may deter him from evil-doing, 
 and quell his selfish appetites ; but he will not 
 be converted to virtue by our telling him he has 
 moral responsibility, that he is a free agent to 
 choose good or evil, and that he ought to choose 
 the good. His mind is made up to choose the bad. 
 But society, knowing its own interests, has a right 
 to exclude him from its fellowship ; not only to pre- 
 vent and punish his evil actions, but to suppress 
 him in some effectual way, and, above all, prevent 
 his leaving a posterity as wicked as himself* Society 
 
 * So Aristotle (" Ethics," lib. x. c. 9) says that some think 
 that legislators ought " aTretOova-L Sk koI a^vccrrepots oi!o-i /coXacrets 
 T€ Kol Ti/xwpta9 iTrtTtOevaL, tov<5 8' dviarovs oAws l^opit^cw.^^ Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer, arguing against the modern tendency to 
 promote the " survival of the nnfittest," remarks, " It rarely 
 happens that the amount of evil caused by fostering the vicious 
 and good-for-nothing can be estimated. But in America, at a 
 meeting of the States Charities Aid Association, held on Dec. 18, 
 1874, a startling instance was given in detail by Dr. Harris. 
 It v^^as furnished by a county on the Upper Hudson, remarkable 
 for the ratio of crime and poverty to population. Generations 
 ago there had existed a certain ' gutter-child,' as she would 
 here be called, known as ' Margaret,' who proved to be the 
 prolific mother of a prolific race. Besides great numbers of 
 idiots, imbeciles, drunkards, lunatics, paupers, and prostitutes, 
 ' the county records show two hundred of her descendants who 
 have been criminals.' Was it kindness or cruelty which, gene- 
 ration after generation, enabled them to multiply and become aa 
 
THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATUBE. 295 
 
 requires good instincts and good actions. It does 
 not want even alternate sins and repentance ; it 
 wants performance. The soldier, who deserts in 
 presence of the enemy, is deservedly shot. In civil 
 life, there are forms of criminality which are worse 
 than desertions ; they are open hostilities to the best 
 interests of humanity. 
 
 Nothing is gained by disguising the fact that 
 there is no remedy for a bad heart, and no substitute 
 for a good one. Only on good, unselfish instincts 
 can a trustworthy morality repose. " There are 
 many cases," says Mr. Bain, " where a man's social 
 obedience, the fulfilment of his bargains, his justice, 
 veracity, respect to other men's rights, costs him 
 a sacrifice with no return, while the omission leads 
 to no penalty. Simple prudence would at such a 
 moment suggest the criminal course." * And Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer says, " The truly moral deterrent 
 from murder, is not constituted by a representation 
 of hanging as a consequence, or by a representation 
 of tortures in Hell as a consequence, or by a repre- 
 sentation of the horror and hatred excited in fellow- 
 men ; but by a representation of the necessarj^ natural 
 results — the infliction of death-agony on the victim, 
 
 increasing curse to the society around them ? " (" Man versus 
 the State," p. 69.) 
 
 * The " Emotions and the Will," chap. x. p. 530. 1859. 
 
296 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 the destruction of all his possibilities of happiness, 
 the entailed sufferings to his belongings. Neither 
 the thought of imprisonment, nor of divine anger, 
 nor of social disgrace, is that which constitutes the 
 moral check on theft ; but the thought of injury to 
 the person robbed, joined with a vague conscious- 
 ness of the general evils caused by disregard of pro- 
 prietary rights. Those who reprobate the adulterer 
 on moral grounds, have their minds filled, not with 
 ideas of an action for damages, or of future punish- 
 ment following the breach of a commandment, or of 
 loss of reputation ; but they are occupied with ideas 
 of unhappiness entailed on the aggrieved wife or 
 husband, the damaged lives of children, and the 
 diffused mischiefs which go along with disregard of 
 the marriage tie. Conversely, the man who is moved 
 by a moral feeling to help another in difficulty, does 
 not picture to himself any reward here or hereafter ; 
 but pictures only the better condition he is trying to 
 bring about. One who is morally prompted to fight 
 against a social evil, has neither material benefit 
 nor popular applause before his mind ; but only the 
 mischiefs he seeks to remove, and the increased 
 well-being which will follow their removal." * 
 
 Nothing can be more clearly put. The feeling, 
 sympathetic, generous heart, which recognizes the 
 
 * " Data of Ethics," pp. 120, 121. 
 
THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATURE. 297 
 
 Ughts and claims of others, which is pained by their 
 suffering and rejoices in their joy, is declared to be 
 the only trustworthy source of that social morality 
 on which general well-being depends. In this re- 
 spect, moral conduct regarded as an art, as it is, 
 indeed, incomparably the finest of the fine arts, does 
 not differ from its inferior congeners. No one ex- 
 pects fine pictures or statues from persons devoid of 
 all aesthetic taste, nor oratorios and operas from those 
 deficient in musical ear. If the interest of society 
 requires a due proportion of altruistic sentiment in 
 each of its members, we can only expect them in 
 those individuals who are correspondingly organized. 
 While all the emotions can be cultivated, none can 
 be implanted or directly infused. In this, as in 
 other cases, we can only cultivate the good sorts, the 
 good stock, and eliminate and discourage, as far as 
 possible, the bad. 
 
 This view will very probably be regarded by 
 some as giving up the cause of morality altogether. 
 If we cannot preach the categorical imperative of right 
 action to every creature, and assume and expect that 
 every one is capable of performing it, if he chooses 
 to exert his free-will, our preaching is supposed to 
 be vain ; an insincere make-believe, itself immoral. 
 This is very probable ; and the foolishness of preach- 
 ing, as often practised, is perhaps only too evident. 
 
298 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 But it may be remarked that the cause of music is 
 not given up, because a master counsels a pupil with- 
 out an ear for music to cease attempting to sing. 
 We may preach morality as we choose, but we shall 
 only be successful with the apt scholars, those who 
 have a foundation of good instincts on which to work. 
 It is, no doubt, much simpler to assume that all are 
 equally competent ; and that, if they do not receive 
 our teaching, it is not because they cannot, but 
 because they will not. Then we arrogate a right to 
 upbraid them, to punish them for their wicked will. 
 They can, if they choose, be quite virtuous and 
 moral. It is an obvious view, recommended by a 
 bhmt straightforwardness gratifying to many minds 
 which are disposed to resent and even deny the 
 complexity of nature. 
 
 The determinist is not less but more resolute in 
 teaching morality than his free-will opponent. But 
 he demands pupils who can learn. What shall be 
 done with those who cannot learn belongs to another 
 branch of inquiry, and concerns politics rather than 
 morals. But much is gained by discarding the hope 
 of impossibilities, of ceasing to expect grapes of 
 thorns, or figs of thistles. The extirpation of thorns 
 and thistles, in the literal or metaphorical sense, 
 has its difficulties ; which we have no ground, how- 
 ever, to regard as insuperable. The object to be 
 
THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATUBE. 299 
 
 obtained is good men with good instincts ; not 
 the establishment of a metaphysical theory that 
 all men may be good if they would only choose. 
 So little do we need free-will and deliberate choice 
 between good and evil, that we want a prompt, 
 unreflecting bias towards good. The option between 
 virtue and vice cannot be left an open question. As 
 we see good dogs chasser de race, so we need 
 citizens whose leanings are to virtue's side. And we 
 are likely to get them in proportion as we recognize 
 that good men, like poets, are born, not made, and 
 only in a minor degree the product of training ; albeit 
 that training, in its own sphere, is of paramount 
 importance. 
 
 But training is not often entirely overlooked in 
 practice, even by the partisans of the doctrine of free- 
 will — a fact more creditable to their common sense 
 than their logic. The centre of the problem lies in 
 the question, how can a determinist cultivate virtue 
 or good impulses, seeing that by his principles he 
 cannot choose his desires ? How can he cultivate a 
 sense of duty, if duty depends on altruistic senti- 
 ments, of which he is perhaps devoid ? 
 
 It would be regarded as a truism rather than a 
 paradox to say that a man cannot cultivate athletics 
 without muscles. Some amount of muscle must be 
 present, on which to begin a course of muscular 
 
300 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 development. In the same way some amount of 
 congenital altruism — the tap-root of social morality 
 — must be present, or the cultivation of good im- 
 pulses, moral sentiments, or the sense of duty, cannot 
 be even attempted. We should be informed what 
 manner of man the determinist is, who is asked how 
 he can cultivate virtue on his principles. If he is 
 a base-hearted man, but sufficiently versed in psy- 
 chology to grasp the full import of the question, he 
 would answer that it was obviously impossible. He 
 would acknowledge a conscious absence of good im- 
 pulses, and that his only principle of action was the 
 gratification of self. If the determinist, on the other 
 hand, were a man of generous nature, full of meek- 
 ness, courage and love, he would reply, that cultiva- 
 tion, or the satisfaction of those impulses, was the 
 greatest joy he knew ; that though often, through 
 slackness of will, infirmity and selfishness, he failed 
 in his duty (of which he was only too conscious), yet 
 he never felt inward peace, except when cultivating 
 the garden of his soul, following the passionate ideal 
 of his heart in all benign works for others, in all 
 purifying discipline of the spirit within him. Both 
 these men would answer truly ; and the successful 
 cultivation of human nature demands that we should 
 bear in mind the answers of both. The abstract 
 science of morals needs completing and correcting 
 
TEE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATUBE. 301 
 
 for the cultivation of human nature, by empirical 
 observation of the peculiarities of individual men. 
 
 " Duty " and " debt " are the same word dif- 
 ferently written, and both mean that which is 
 " owed." I " ought " is the preterite of I " owe." 
 The French "devoir" is applied to pecuniary debt and 
 moral duty. In Greek cx^eCkco and 6j)d\r)iia show 
 the same association of ideas. Now, what do we 
 mean by a sense of duty, except a recognition of the 
 claims of others, of neighbour, family, society, or 
 Grod ? In no respect do men differ more than in this 
 sense of duty, because in no respect are men more 
 unlike than in their endowment of egoistic and 
 altruistic impulses. In some persons all sense of the 
 claims of others seems left out from the first. They 
 never seem to regard themselves as owing anything 
 to anybody ; but, contrariwise, they consider others 
 always as owing them a great deal. Even borrowed 
 money they repay with pain and regret, and often re- 
 quire the threat or the action of the law to bring them 
 to repayment. This type of character is humourously 
 exemplified in the alleged remark of a spendthrift, 
 who said of a friend less hardened than himself, " He 
 wasted his money in paying his debts ; " the use of 
 money being only excusable, it would appear, when 
 no credit was to be obtained. On the otlier hand, we 
 have natures who not only are prompt in acknow- 
 
302 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 ledging claims upon them, who would fast and 
 starve rather than withhold payment when due, but 
 who perceive debts and duties which neither society 
 nor individuals exact from them ; who willingly 
 offend the world, and, with open eyes, face its anger 
 and resentment, so they may render it a service 
 which no other is ready to offer. The saints, mar- 
 tyrs, and heroes have been of this type. Resistance 
 to passion or strong temptation can only be rationally 
 expected from a mind which combines a habit of post- 
 poning self-gratification to the interests and wel- 
 fare of others, with an ample endowment of generous 
 and benevolent impulses. The wave of egoistic 
 passion is met by a counter-wave of altruistic emo- 
 tion, and according to the character and training 
 one or the other prevails. The characteristic feeling 
 of remorse for breach of duty, or gross gratification 
 of selfish desire, is evidence of this. Genuine remorse, 
 contrition as distinguished from attrition, always 
 arises from a pain of the altruistic feelings, at having 
 returned evil for good, for having injured a loving 
 heart which deserved different treatment at our 
 hands. Eemorse is the note of tender and passionate, 
 but ill-governed natures. There is no anguish like 
 it ; but it is an anguish of which the cold and the 
 selfish are incapable. So little does it fear or wish 
 to evade punishment, that it seeks it and implores 
 
THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATUBK 303 
 
 it. The grief over our own hard-heartedness is too 
 acute to be assuaged e^xcept by sacrifice and penance ; 
 and only in bitter expiation is a slight relief 
 derived for transgression. In religious minds, the 
 reason often gives way when they have been made 
 conscious that they have sinned against and been 
 ungrateful to Christ their Lord, who for them 
 bung upon the tree, was pierced with wounds, 
 reviled, buffeted, and sj)at upon. Like St. Peter, 
 when they think thereon, they weep. In the natur- 
 ally generous and tender-hearted, it soon appears 
 and develops with the added years. Education can 
 do much to aid or check its growth. The selfishness 
 of children can be cultivated to any extent. A habit 
 of regard for others may likewise be nurtured. The 
 proverbial selfishness of princes largely depends on 
 this fact. 
 
 Recoo^nition of the " claims " of others, arisinfr 
 from a sympathetic nature^ is the root of duty, but by 
 no means the full-grown tree. The size to which 
 the tree will grow, depends upon the mental power, 
 upon the grasp of ideas, which reveals an almost 
 infinite variety of " claimants." A kind heart coupled 
 with a narrow mind, cannot conceive the higher 
 forms of duty to the State, to humanity, to unpopular 
 causes. Culture and mental force combined, regulate 
 the quality of the duty paid. The difference between 
 
304 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 abject superstition and lofty piety, depends on the 
 intellect, not on the heart of the worshipper. 
 
 In all societies, even the most savage, some 
 duties are inculcated on the young by parents and 
 elders ; and certain acts are forbidden or punished, 
 others are applauded and rewarded. The public 
 opinion of society carries on the process. The teach- 
 ing in childhood, youth and manhood, is assi- 
 milated according to the quality of the learner. 
 The meek, the modest, the kindly, receive in loving 
 trust the word of their elders. They are told they 
 ought to do this, that they ought not to do that, and 
 they accept the obligation without hesitation or 
 scruple. The mala prohihita become to them mala 
 in se, and an infraction of the rule laid down appears 
 to them monstrous and profane. In Christian 
 countries duty to God is naturally much insisted on ; 
 and if it does not appear to be always attended with 
 the desired success, the reason is not only in the 
 hardness of men's hearts, but also in the intellectual 
 difficulties involved in theism. 
 
 But whether the paramount duty be paid to Grod, 
 to the State, to humanity, to great ideas, or any 
 thing or being bej^ond self, the germ of it always 
 lies in the unselfish readiness to pay a debt, supposed 
 to be owing to another or others. And it often 
 happens that the supposition is wholly false ; that the 
 
THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATURE. 305 
 
 debt is not owed ; that it is imaginary, not real. 
 But the sense of obh'gation is not concerned with 
 the matter of a given duty, but only with the form. 
 Conscience alone is a deceitful guide ; like justice it 
 is blind ; it will do evil as readily as good. Its one 
 preoccupation is to go out of self and pay its debt, 
 duty, reverence, to object, thing or being whom it 
 wishes to serve. And this is so true, that the sense 
 of duty in its intense forms, is not content with 
 simple disregard of self; it insists on hostility to self, 
 on self-mutilation, mortification, as in the severer 
 forms of asceticism. 
 
 Passion is by no means the worst enemy to duty ; 
 as a strong sense of duty is itself a passion. The 
 passionate natures can often become the most bound 
 by it : witness St. Augustine. The cold heart is 
 the undutiful heart, the heart of stone, which loves 
 neither Ood nor man. 
 
 New duties. The man who recognizes new duties 
 above those he has been taught to observe; who 
 sees, beyond the circle of conventional obligation, the 
 dim forms of new claimants on his heart and service, 
 is a moral inventor, an enlarger of human life. 
 Those who saw the claims of the slave w^ere such ; 
 those who see the claims of animals are the same. 
 How many more such have still to be seen ! 
 
 Reward of virtue. The highest conscience has 
 
306 THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
 
 ever felt that the expectation of reward for virtue 
 was "anjustified, and ahnost incompatible with the 
 idea of virtue : " Not unto us, not unto us." " We 
 are unprofitable servants ; we have done that which 
 was our duty to do." These and similar utterances 
 are the natural and wholesome expressions of the 
 devout heart. And the instinct is right which in- 
 spires them. The moment we consider duty as a 
 debt which we owe, we feel it does not admit of 
 reward. Is a man to be paid for paying his debts ? 
 How does this view of duty account for resistance 
 to strong temptation ? 
 
 The moment we recognize that we can be in the 
 position of owing something to some one person, 
 cause, or idea, it matters not what form the payment 
 may take ; from coin of the realm up to giving away 
 one's life, it is all one ; meeting an obligation which 
 we have recognized we are under. How we came 
 by the sense of this or that particular obligation is 
 immaterial. It may come through many channels ; 
 religion, public opinion, esprit de corps, or what not. 
 Its fulness and intensity depend far more on the 
 constitution of our minds than on any external 
 influence and teaching. If we are wholly selfish, no 
 teaching will persuade us ; if we are generous, loving, 
 and heroic, we move towards self-sacrifice by a 
 natural gravitation. And the point to be especially 
 
THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATUBE. 307 
 
 noticed by those who make virtue to consist in the 
 choice of the better part, after a conflict of motives, 
 is that the greater the virtue the less there is of 
 conscious self-sacrifice. The egoist who will not 
 sacrifice the meanest of his own pleasures or passions 
 for the greatest need of others, and the hero who 
 gives his life for the '' sheep," are the opposite poles 
 of humanity. And so little true is it that virtue 
 only exists after it has gained a victory over base 
 temptation, that the very presence or possibility of 
 temptation stains its purity. In ordinary, civilized 
 life this is so. What should we think of a friend or 
 acquaintance, who, we knew, passed his time in 
 hard struggles to conquer the sins forbidden in the 
 sixth, seventh, and eighth commandments ? Yet, 
 according to the doctrine of some moralists, the man 
 who dines with us, and has not had a temptation 
 to steal our spoons, and overcome it, is not vir- 
 tuous ; if he has not lusted after the women of our 
 household and subdued his impurity, he is not 
 chaste ; if he has not been touched by an impulse to 
 murder us, finally put down, he is not a moral 
 person. 
 
 Now, as regards resisting temptation, it is 
 obvious that in proportion as we are tempted to 
 the commission of selfish sin, our character, and, 
 in a minor degree, our education, are at fault. We 
 
308 TEE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 have started with an overplus of egoistic senti- 
 ment, or we have had, by ill-education, the egoistic 
 sentiment unduly cultivated. We shall behave 
 under temptations according to our character. The 
 doctrines we hold will have little weight in the 
 final result, though they will have some. If we 
 experience strong promptings to murder, rape, or 
 theft, the chances are, whether we believe in 
 Hell or Utilitarianism, we shall gratify our passions. 
 If the altruistic element in us is fairly represented, 
 we shall hesitate, or alternately fall into sin and 
 repentance. If self has been " annulled," we shall 
 pass by the temptations, with more or less com- 
 plete unconsciousness.* 
 
 Moralists have been at great pains to show that 
 through virtue lay the only road to final and com- 
 plete happiness ; that, on the other hand, crime and 
 sin inevitably led to pain and misery. It was 
 feared that, if any doubt were allowed to rest on 
 the fact that virtue was its own reward, sensible 
 people would refuse so obviously bad a bargain. 
 As Mr. Leslie Stephen eloquently says : " Here we 
 come to one of the multiform and j^i'ofound pro- 
 blems which has tortured men in all ages. Virtue 
 — no one denies it — does good to somebody, but 
 
 * So again St. Thomas : — " Magis est non posse peccare quam 
 non peccare." — Ibid. 
 
THE CULTIVATION OF EU3IAN NATUBE. 3C9 
 
 how often to the agent? A belief in justice, as 
 regulating the universe, has been held to imply 
 (I do not ask whether rightly held) that happiness 
 should somehow go along with virtue. To give 
 up the belief in such a supreme regulation, seemed, 
 again, to be an admission that virtue was folly. 
 Yet how can this doctrine be reconciled to the 
 plainest facts of experience ? The lightning strikes 
 the good and the bad ; the hero dies in the ruin of 
 his cause ; the highest self-denial is repaid by the 
 blackest ingratitude ; the keenest sympathy with our 
 fellows implies the greatest liability to suffering ; 
 the cold, the sensual, and the systematically selfish, 
 often seem to have the pleasantest lots in life. Great 
 men in despair have pronounced virtue to be but a 
 name ; philosophers have evaded the difficulty by 
 a verbal denial of the plainest truths ; theologians 
 have tried to console their disciples by constructing 
 ideal worlds, which have served for little more 
 than a recognition of the unsatisfactory state of 
 the actual world. The problem so often attacked^ 
 will perhaps be solved when we know the origin 
 of evil. Meanwhile we have only to consider in 
 what way it is related to ethical theories.'' * 
 
 This suggestive passage shows very plainly how 
 imperfectly the older speculators grasped the pio- 
 * Leslie Stephen, " Science of Ethics," p. 398. 
 
310 TEE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 blem with which they had to deal. If virtue de- 
 pend on a number of good instincts or qualities in 
 the agent's mind or heart, benevolence, sympathy, 
 courage, and resolution, it would seem obvious that 
 no one could be benefited by these precious endow- 
 ments more than the fortunate owner of them him- 
 self Who derives so much enjoyment from a fine 
 ear for music as the musician who has one ? Who 
 profits by an exquisite sense of colour so much as 
 the artist whom land, sea, and cloud keep in an 
 ecstasy of delight ? Much more, would one say, 
 must the generous and passionate emotions of the 
 heart supply an inward fountain of happiness to 
 the richly endowed natures which possess them. 
 To ask if virtue answers, or " pays," is like asking 
 if fine health and bodily strength pay. Probably 
 no one would be without them if he could help it. 
 And yet there can be no doubt that great strength and 
 fine health often lead their possessor into pain, and 
 even death, by tempting him to overtax his powers. 
 It may be said of all the higher qualities and gifts, 
 that under certain conditions they are cajDable of 
 causing as much pain as pleasure to their owners : 
 but these owners do not wish, therefore, to be rid of 
 them. The musician who is tortured by an organ 
 out of tune, would never think of purchasing peace 
 by the loss or destruction of his musical ear. It is 
 
THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATURE. 311 
 
 the same with regard to Friendship and Love. Their 
 betrayal probably produces anguish as keen as any 
 known to the human heart. But no one capable of 
 either, would ever regret his capacity for love and 
 friendship. Those who doubt their value, or, with 
 Napoleon, hold that they are " foolish infetuations," 
 are out of court, as they have no personal knowledge 
 of qualities they despise. We need not to be told 
 what manner of man he was who declared that the 
 secret of happiness consisted in a good digestion 
 and a bad heart. And the querist, '' Why should I 
 do anything for posterity, seeing that posterity 
 never did anything for me ? " receives even now 
 this answer from Society, and will receive it with 
 greater emphasis in the future : " From you, sir, we 
 expect nothing ; but yon may expect that your 
 shameless confession of selfishness will not go un- 
 punished." The " unsatisfactory state of the actual 
 world," as Mr. Stephen says, was no doubt a great 
 hindrance in former times to a recognition of the 
 coercive power for good which Society can bring 
 to bear on the selfish and the wicked. But the 
 Christian scheme of rewards and punishments also 
 contributed to the conviction, that only by fear of 
 retribution could men be deterred from evil, and by 
 the hope of recompense be bribed to doing good. 
 A man who did not believe in hell, it was thought, 
 
312 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 even by good meu, bad no inducement to practice 
 any virtue or refrain from any vice. Dr. Jobnson 
 said be would not believe tbat Hume's apparent 
 equanimity wben dying was sincere, because, on 
 his (Hume's) principles be bad no motive to speak 
 tbe trutb. Dr. Young, in bis " Nigbt Tbougbts," 
 gave utterance probably to tbe common sentiment, 
 crude and revolting as it sounds : — 
 
 " ' Has Virtue charms ? ' I grant her heavenly fair ; 
 But if unportioned, all will Interest wed. 
 
 A Deity believed, will nought avail ; 
 Eewards and punishments make God adored ; 
 And hopes and fears give Conscience all her power. 
 
 Who tells me he denies his soul immortal, 
 Whate'er his boast, has told me he's a knave. 
 His duty 'tis to love himself alone ; 
 Nor care though mankind perish, if he smiles." * 
 
 Tbe line between " portioned virtue " and " interest," 
 does not appear bere to be very clearly drawn, and 
 virtue it is intimated can only be cbosen for a 
 valuable consideration. But we must admit all tbe 
 same, tbat in tbis respect tbe tbeologians bad tbe 
 best of tbe argument, till tbe conception of society 
 as an organism bad arisen in speculation, witb tbe 
 momentous consequences wbicb tbat involves. Tbe 
 health of an organism depends on tbe health and 
 * "Seventh Night," 1169-1182. 
 
TEE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATURE. 313 
 
 efficiency of its parts ; and the conduct and morals 
 of the individual are now seen to be no longer the 
 private concern of himself only, but very much 
 also of the society of which he is a member. His 
 vice injures and his virtue benefits the body politic, 
 as far as either influence extends. And this is now 
 so well seen, that perhaps the danger is, as Mr. 
 Mill feared, that society and public opinion are 
 tending to be too coercive and despotic, to the 
 injury of that liberty and individuality which 
 are needed for full and vigorous well-being. We 
 may certainly venture to say this much, that society 
 is now able to make knaves, whether they believe 
 their souls to be immortal or not, feel that crime 
 is connected with misery rather than happiness ; 
 and that virtue, perhaps not of the highest, but 
 yet of a fairly high standard, tends directly to the 
 agent's own comfort and peace of mind. 
 
 Now, as touching the problem which Mr. Stephen 
 says has tortured mankind for ages, the connection 
 between virtue and happiness, its solution would 
 seem to require a little more precising of what is 
 meant by happiness, than is customary in ethical 
 discussions. Obviously, happiness varies as much as 
 men vary ; and what constitutes the happiness of one 
 man makes the misery of another. The healthy and 
 the strong have different sources of happiness from 
 
314 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 the sickly and the weak. The same man at different 
 periods of life has very different forms of happiness. 
 In other words, happiness is a subjective phenomenon, 
 depending upon the conditions and character of the 
 individual. This being so, if we only consider the 
 agent, without reference to the reaction of society 
 upon him, it is obvious that no one course of conduct 
 can be assumed a priori as certain or likely in itself 
 to produce happiness. Virtue may and probably will 
 bring happiness to the virtuous man ; but to the 
 criminal and the selfish, virtue will be probably the 
 most distasteful or even painful thing in their expe- 
 rience, while vice will give them unmitigated plea- 
 sure. This view, as Mr. Stephen says, '' is calculated 
 to shock many respectable people ; " but that is not 
 a sufficient reason for rejecting it if it be otherwise 
 supported. 
 
 Now, what is a general feature common to all 
 forms of happiness, whether vicious or virtuous ? 
 Who are the people who visibly enjoy themselves ; 
 who are never or rarely at a loss as to what they 
 shall do with their time ? Is it not those persons 
 who have one or more tastes, inclinations or passions, 
 so strongly marked, that they are always ready or 
 ever thirsting for their gratification, which never 
 comes amiss ? Even the most sensual and repellent 
 vices, may so fill a mind with intense relish and plea- 
 
THE CULTIVATION OF EUMAN NATUBE. 315 
 
 sure, that the sensualist is conscious of nothing but 
 one long draught of voluptuous enjoyment. Satiety 
 may no doubt be rapidly produced, and health ruined 
 by excess ; and then the sensualist has a bad time of 
 it ; but that is because he has been deprived of his 
 pleasures, and he has nothing to fall back on when 
 his vices have left him. But that fact does not in- 
 validate the statement just made, that a passionate 
 pursuit of some one thing, whatever its character, is 
 the primary condition of that glow of pleasurable 
 feeling which we call happiness. The gambler sit- 
 ting down to the card-table, the gourmand to his 
 dinner, the book-collector buying choice and rare 
 editions, the artist creating types of beauty, the man 
 of science working out momentous problems, the 
 philanthropist seeking and relieving the wretched, 
 though all enjoying very different kinds of happi- 
 ness, have this factor in common, that they are 
 pursuing with keen appetite the object they desire. 
 They are free from the aching langour of ennui ; 
 they escape the hopeless and helpless nausea of the 
 blase mind, which is impotent even to desire. Strong- 
 desires or passions, capable of frequent and lasting 
 gratification, are the only materials of happiness. 
 
 We have next to notice that the gratification of 
 all the passions is more or less attended with pain. 
 Indeed, it would seem that all intense pleasures need 
 
316 TEE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 to be tipped with a sharp point of pain to give them 
 their full zest. The fatigue and danger of most 
 manly sports, constitute a large portion of their 
 attractiveness. As gamblers mostly end by losing 
 all their money, their vice must give them more 
 pain than pleasure, but the fact does not deter them 
 from gratifying it. The pains of the drunkard, of 
 the opium eater, of the gourmand, are notorious, but 
 are not often alone sufficient to deter from indulgence 
 in their respective vices. And to this law the higher 
 and noble?' passions offer no exception. The ambitious 
 man, say a Napoleon, is always exposed to bitter dis- 
 appointment and mishaps. The agony of a few nights 
 at Fontainebleau, just before his abdication, had 
 so changed Napoleon's countenance that his intimates 
 were shocked by it. Yet the experience was thrown 
 away upon him, and he was ready to recommence 
 the game of ambition, as soon as oj)portunity offered, 
 by his escape from Elba. Even the peaceful pursuits 
 of literature and science have their acute crises of 
 vexation and frustrated hope. Hume, the most even- 
 tempered of men, was so mortified by the failure of 
 the first volume of his history, that he would have 
 gone abroad, changed his name, and renounced 
 authorship, had not war broken out between England 
 and France. And, to complete the survey, it must 
 be added, that not even the passionate pursuit of 
 
THE CULTIVATION OF HUMAN NATURE. 317 
 
 holiness itself is without occasional sharp pain ; in 
 proof of which it is sufficient to cite the " Acta 
 Sanctorum," passim. 
 
 A passion for virtue, therefore, is not found to 
 he at any disadvantage, as compared with other 
 passions, in the occasional pain which its gratifica- 
 tion involves. If " il faut soufifrir pour etre belle," 
 it is also true, " il f^iut souffrir pour etre bon ; " and 
 it is difficult to see what is gained by attempting to 
 disguise the fact. Morahsts have been so set upon 
 edification, that they have been over-anxious to per- 
 suade men of the desirability of virtue, by expatia- 
 ting on the sweetness of its pleasures ; that virtuous 
 people had an ample quid pro quo for their virtue. 
 And so they have at times, and in one sense always ; 
 but they also have dark and bitter moments in which 
 they are ready to faint ; doubts within and dangers 
 without, yea, even death itself in isolated desolation, 
 when " all " forsake them and flee ; when the hero 
 has nothing to turn to but his own heroic heart. 
 Individuals, if left to themselves, will follow " their 
 own peculiar bent " in their choice of pleasures, 
 whether they be virtuous or vicious, selfish or self- 
 denying, voluptuous or ascetic. But there can be 
 no doubt which class Society, in its own interests, 
 will prefer that its members should choose, viz. the 
 virtuous, the self-denying, and ascetic. Indeed, the 
 
318 THE SEBVICE OF MAN. 
 
 most depraved and selfish of men, whatever his own 
 practice, will wish his neighbours to be virtuous. 
 Though he may be unjust and cruel to others, he 
 will resent injustice and cruelty to himself; though 
 a libertine himself, he will probably insist on chastity 
 in his wife, with much emphasis. Thus even the 
 bad are interested on the side of virtue, as far as the 
 conduct of others is concerned. It only needs a little 
 more improvement in society for this to be generally 
 recognized, as it is already partially recognized, for 
 the disfavour of public opinion to be sharply shown 
 to selfish pursuits and passions, and a steady, per- 
 sistent encouragement of the unselfish and social en- 
 joyments of civic life and duty. A love of good may 
 be cultivated to almost any extent, where the original 
 foundation of an altruistic nature exists. A passionate 
 ideal of excellence can so fill the mind,that no pleasure 
 is felt in anything but in efforts to realize it. " The 
 susceptibility to ideal inflammation is a peculiarity 
 of our nature, varying with constitutions, and affected 
 by various circumstances." * All the desires and 
 passions in characters of normal vigour can, in the 
 proper conditions, be thus inflamed, as they can also 
 be starved by systematic discouragement. An ideal 
 society would be one in which an ideal education 
 habitually stimulated and inflamed the good passions, 
 w^iile it starved and discouraged the bad. 
 
 * Bain, '' The Emotions and the Will," p. 496. 
 
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