Prose-Poems and Selections. Robert G. Ingersoll. g j -' M ' ' '■ . iuMumiii, .. » ■ .,. , „ — _,__. ^Ttf— ^ ■^"'^■'"'^ft^ ^-7 ^ . 5b 110 s ^ ^ N *AV %->,■> ^\ •S-^ \ -I PROSE-POEMS SELKCTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS AND SAYINOS OF Robert G\ Ingersoll. P'IFTH EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED. NEW YORK. C. P. FARRELL. 1892. \b' f^^: Enta-ed according to A£l of Congress, in the year :S84, by C. P. Farrei. ip the office oi the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. 0. iLL KIGHTS RESERVED. ^ P ,X0 ECXLER, PRINTER, 35 FULTON S PUBLISHER'S PREFACE. HE publisher alone is responsible for the selection of the material in this volume. It has required no special skill to include the well-known orations and tributes which have become classic ; but the real difficulty, where there is so much to choose from, has been to exclude. For the present, the publisher contents himself with this collection, which he hopes will be welcomed by the real friends of intellectual freedom. C. P. Farrkll. Washington, D. C, March /, iSS^. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. HE generous and very gratifying reception of " Prose-Poems," and the continued demand, have led to this new issue. The former edition has been revised, and at the request of many friends of the author enlarged, so as to contain much additional material and some of Mr. Ingersoll's latest utterances. C. P. Farrell. A^nv York, January, 1886. CONTENTS. Oration delivered on Decoration-Day, 1882, BEFORE THE GrAND ArMY of THE Republic, at the Academy of Music, N. Y., A Tribute to Ebon C. In- gersoll, A \' isioN of War, . At a Child's Grave, Benefits for Injuries, We Build A Tribute to the Rev. Alexander Clark, The Grant Banquet, , Apostrophe to Liberty, A Tribute to John G. Mills, The Warp and Woof, The Cemetery, Originality, Then and Now, Voltaire Lazarus, What IS Worship? . Humboldt, God Silent, . 90 Alcohol, 91 Auguste Comte, 93 _ The Infidel, 95 ' Napoleon, 97. 25 The Republic, 100 31 Dawn of the New Day, lOI 37 Reformers, 103 42 The Garden of Eden, . 106 43 Thomas Paine, 107 The Age of Faith, . 117 45 Origin of Religion, 119 49 The Unpardonable Sin, . 122 57 The Olive Branch, 123 59 Free Will, '25 63 The King of Death, 130 65 The Wise Man, 131 69 Bruno, .... K^3 71 The Real Bible, . 139 75 Benedict Spinoza, 141 84 The First Doubt, '45 85 The Infinite Horror, 147 87 N.\TURJE, ... • '53 CONTENTS. Night and Morning, The Conflict, . Death of the Aged, The Charity of Extrav- AGANXE, Woman, . . . . The Sacred Myths, Inspiration, Religious Liberty of the Bible The Laugh of a Child, The Christian Night, My Choice, Why ? Imagination, Science, If Death Ends All, Here and There, How Long? . Liberty, Jehovah And Brahm The Free Soul, Life .... Tribute to Henry Ward Beecher, , Tribute to Courtlandt Palmer, The Brain, The Sacred Leaves, . Origin and Destiny, What is Poetry ? 157 161 164 165 169 181 184 1S5 188 189 192 193 195 '97 '99 205 287 34S 349 2S5 367 My Position, . Good and Bad, . The Miraculous Book, Orthodox Dotage, . The Abolitionists, Providence, The Man Christ, . The Divine Salutation, At the Grave or Benj. W. Parker, . Fashion and Beauty, . Apostrophe to Science, Elizur Wright, The Imagination, No Respecter of Persons, Abraham Lincoln, The Meaning of Law, What i.s Blasphemy ? . Some Reasons, . Selections, Love The Birthplace of Burns, Mrs. Ida Whiting Knowles, Art and Morality, . Tribute to Roscoe Conklin, Tribute to Richard H. Whiting, Mrs. Mary H. Fiske, Horace Seaver, . The Music of Wagner, . Leaves of Grass. . ORATION. ON DECORATION-DAY, j8S2, BKIORE THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC^ AT THE ACADEMY OP MUSIC, NEW YORK. ORATION. Delivered on Decoration-Day, 1882, be/ore the Grand Army of the Republic, at the Academy of Music, New York. HIS day is sacred to our heroes dead. Upon their tombs we have lovingly laid the wealth of Spring. This is a day for memory and tears. A mighty Nation bends above its hon- ored graves, and pays to noble dust the tribute of its love. Gratitude is the fairest flower that sheds its per- fume in the heart. To-day we tell the history of our country's life — recount the lofty deeds of vanished years — the toil and suffering, the defeats and victories of heroic men, — of men who made our Nation great and free. We see the first ships whose prows were gilded by the western sun. We feel the thrill of discovery when the New World was found. We see the oppressed, the serf, the peasant and the slave, men whose flesh had known the chill of chains — the ad- venturous, the proud, the brave, sailing an unknown sea, seeking homes in unknown lands. We see the settlements, the little clearings, the block-house and the fort, the rude and lonely huts. Brave men, true women, builders of homes, fellers of forests, founders of States ! Separated from the Old W^orld, — away from the heartless distinctions of caste, — away from sceptres and titles and crowns, they governed themselves. The\' defended their homes; they earned their bread. Each citizen had a ^•oice, and the little villages became republics. Slowly the saxage was driven back. The days and nights were filled with fear, and the slow years with massacre and \\ar, and cabins' earthen floors were wet with blood of mothers and their babes. But the savages of the New World were kinder than the kings and nobles of the Old ; and so the human tide kept coming, and the places of the dead were filled. Amid common dangers and common hopes, the prejudices and feuds of Europe faded slowly from their hearts. From every land, of every speech, driven by want antl lured by hope, exiles and emigrants sought the mysterious Continent of the West. Year after year the colonists fought and toiled and suffered and increased. They began to talk about liberty — to reason of the rights of man. They asked no help from distant kings, and they began to doubt the use of paying tribute to the useless. They lost respect for dukes and lords, and held in high esteem all honest men. There was the dawn of a new da\-. They began to dream of independence. They found that they could make and execute the laws. They had tried the experiment of self-goyernment. They had succeeded. The Old World wished to dominate the New. In the care and keeping of the colonists was the destiny of this Continent — of half the world. On this day the story of the great struggle between colonists and kings should Ije told. We should tell our childrLii of the contest — first for justice, then for freedom. We should tell them the history of the Declaration of Independence — the chart and com])ass of all human rights: — .'\11 men are ecpial, and ha\'c the right to life, to liberty and joy. 12 ORATION. This Declaration uncrowned kings and wrested from the hands of titled tyranny the sceptre of usurped and arbitrary power. It superseded royal grants, and repealed the cruel statutes of a thousand years. It gave the peasant a career ; it knighted all the sons of toil ; it opened all the paths to fame, and put the star of hope above the cradle of the poor man's babe. England was then the mightiest of nations — mistress of every sea — and yet our fathers, poor and few, defied her power. To-day we remember the defeats, the victories, the disasters, the weary marches, the poverty, the hunger, the sufferings, the agonies, and above all, the glories, of the Revolution. We remember all — from Lexingt9'n to Valley Forge, and from that midnight of despair to Yorktown's cloudless day. We re- member the soldiers and thinkers — the heroes of the sword and pen. They had the brain and heart, the wisdom and the courage, to utter and defend these words: "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." In defence of this sublime and self-evident truth the war was waged and won. ORATION. 13 To-day we remember all the heroes, all the gener- ous and chivalrie men who eame from other lands to make ours free. Of the many thousands who shared the gloom and glory of the seven sacred years, not one remains. The last has mingled with the earth, and nearly all are sleeping now in unmarked graves, and some beneath the leaning, crumbling stones from which their names have been effaced by Time's irrev- erent and relentless hands. But the Nation they founded remains. The United States are still free and independent. The •" government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed," and fifty millions of free people remember with grati- tude the heroes of the Revolution. Let us be truthful ; let us be kind. When peace came, when the independence of a new Nation was acknowledged, the great truth for which our fathers fought was half denied, and the Constitution was in- consistent with the Declaration. The war was waged for liberty, and yet the victors forged new fetters for their fellow men. The chains our fathers broke were |)ut by them upon the limbs of others. " Freedom for All " was the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, through seven years of want and war. In 14 ORATION. peace, the cloud was forgotten and the pillar blazed unseen. Let us be truthful : all our fathers were not true to themsehes. In war they had been generous, noble and self-sacrificing ; with peace came selfishness and greed. They were not great enough to appreciate the grandeur of the principles for which they fought. Thev ceased to regard the great truths as ha\ing uni\ersal application. " Liberty for All " included only themselves. They qualified the Declaration. They interpolated the word " w hite." They obliterated the word "All." Let us be kind. W'e will remember the age in which thev lixed. We will compare them with the citizens of other nations. They made merchandise of men. , The\' legalized a crime. The\' sowed the seeds of war. But the}- founded this Nation. Let us gratefullv remember. Let us gratefully forget. To-day we remember the heroes of the second war with England, in which our fathers fought for the freedom of the seas — for the rights of the Ameri- can sailor. \\"e remember with pride the splendid ORA 1 K^N. 15 victories of Hric ami Champlain and the wondrous achievements upon the sea — achicvcnunts that covered our navy ^vilh a ;ve and Taney, Hope and Fear, and wove the wondrc-us tapestries whereon we find pictures of g'ods and fairy lands and all the legends that were told when Nature rocked the cradle of the infant world. THE CEMETERY. X that vast cemeter}^ called the past, are most of the religions of men, and there, too, are nearly all their gods. The sacred temples of India were ruins long ago. Over column and cornice, over the painted and pictured walls, cling and creep the trailing vines. Brahma, the golden, with four heads and four arms ; \^ishnu, the sombre, the punisher of the wicked, with his three eyes, his crescent, and his necklace of skulls ; Siva, the destroyer, red with seas of blood ; Kali, the goddess ; Draupadi, the white-armed, and Chrishna, the Christ, all passed away and left the thrones of heaven desolate. Along the banks of the sacred Nile, I sis no longer Avander- ing weeps, searching for the dead Osiris. The shadow of Typhon's scowl falls no more upon the waves. The sun rises as of yore, and his golden 66 THE CEMETERY. beams still smite the lips of Mcmnon, but Memnon is as voiceless as the Sphinx. The sacred fanes arc lost in desert sands ; the dusty mummies are still waiting for the resurrection promised by their priests, and the old beliefs, wrought in curiously sculptured sione, sleep in the mystery of a language lost and dead. Odin, the author of life and soul, Vili and Ve, and the mighty giant Vmir, strode long ago from the icy halls of the North ; and Thor, with iron glove and glittering hammer, dashes mountains to the earth no more. Broken are the circles and crom- lechs of the ancient Druids ; fallen upon the summits of the hills, and co\ered with the centuries' moss, are the sacred cairns. The divine fires of Persia and of the Aztecs, have died out in the ashes of the past, and |Jiere is none to rekindle, and none to feed the holy flames. The harp of Orpheus is still ; the drained cup of Bacchus has been thrown aside ; Venus lies dead in stone, and her white bosom heaves no "more with love. The streams still murmur, but no naiads bathe ; the trees still wave, but in the forest aisles no dryads dance. The gods have flown from high Olympus. Not even the beautiful women can lure them back, and Danae lies unnoticed, naked to THE CEMETERY. 67 the Stars. Hushed forever are the thunders of Sinai ; lost are the voices (jf the prophets, and the land once flowing- with milk and honey is but a desert waste. One by one, the myths have faded from the clouds ; one by one, the phantom host has disappeared, and one by one, facts, truths and realities have taken their places. The supernatural has almost gone, but the natural remains. The gods have fled, but man is here. Nations, like individuals, have their periods of youth, of manhood and decay. Religions are the same. The same inexorable destiny awaits them all. The gods created by the nations must perish with their creators. They were created by men, and like men, they must pass away. The deities of one age are the by-words of the next. The religion of our day, and country, is no more exempt from the sneer of the future than the others have been. When India was supreme, Brahma sat upon the world's throne. When the sceptre passed to Egypt, Isis and Osiris received the homage of mankind. Greece, with her fierce valor, swept to empire, and Zeus put on the purple of authority. The earth trembled with the tread of Rome's intrepid sons, 68 THE CRMHTERV. and love grasped with mailed hand the thunderbolts of hea\-en. Rome fell, and Christians, from her ter- ritory, with the red sword of \\ar ear^'ed out the ruling nations of the world, and now Christ sits upon the old throne. WHio will be his successor? ORIGINALITY. N argument is new until it has been answered. An argument is absolutely jy^ fresh, and has upon its leaves the dew of morning, until it has been refuted. All men have experienced, it may be, in some degree, what we call love. Millions of men have written about it. The subject of course is old. It is only the presentation that can be new. Thousands of men have attacked superstition. The subject is old, but the manner in which the facts are handled, the arguments grouped — these may be forever new. Millions of men have preached Christianity. Cer- tainly there is nothing new in the original ideas. Nothing can be new e.xcept the presentation, the grouping. The ideas may be old, but they may be clothed in new garments of passion ; they may be 70 ORIGINALITY. given additional human interest. A man takes a fact, or an old subject, as a sculptor takes a rock : the rock is not new. Of this rock he makes a statue : the statue is new. And yet some orthodox man might say : " There is nothing new about that statue ; I knt)w the man that dug the rock ; I know the owner of the quarry." ■ Substance is eternal ; forms are new. So in the human mind certain ideas, or in the human heart cer- tain passions, are forever old ; but genius forever gives them new forms, new meanings ; and this is the perpetual originality of genius. THEN AND NOW. ?-#^ ^IXCE the murder of Hypatia in the fifth century, when the poHshed blade of Greek philosophy was broken by the club of ignorant Catholicism, until to-day, su- perstition has detested every effort of reason. It is almost impossible to conceive of the com- pleteness of the victory that the church achie\-ed over philosophy. For ages science was utterly ignored ; thought was a poor slave ; an ignorant priest was master of the world ; faith put out the eyes of the soul ; reason was a trembling coward ; the imagination was set on fire of hell ; every human feeling was sought to be suppressed ; love was con- sidered infinitely sinful ; pleasure was the road to eternal fire, and God was supposed to be happy only when his children were miserable. The world was 72 THEN AND NOW. governed by an Almighty's whim ; prayers could change the order of things, halt the grand procession of nature, — could produce rain, a\'ert pestilence, famine and death in all its forms. There was no idea of the certain ; all depended upon divine pleasure — or displeasure, rather ; heaven was full of inconsistent male\olence, and earth of ignorance. Everything was done to appease the divine wrath. Every public calamity was caused by the sins of the people ; generally by a failure to pay tithes. To the poor multitude, the earth was a kind of enchanted forest, full of demons ready to de\'our, and theological serpents lurking with infinite power to fascinate and torture the unhappy and impotent soul. Life to them was a dim and mysterious labyrinth, in which they wandered weary and lost, guided by priests as bewildered as themselves, without knowing that at every step the Ariadne of reason offered them the long lost clue. The very heavens were full of death ; the light- ning was regarded as the glittering vengeance of God, and the earth was thick with snares for the unwary feet of man. The soul was supposed to be crowded with the wild beasts of desire ; the heart to be totally corrupt, prompting onlv to crime. \'irtues were re- THEN AND NOW. 73 garclcd as deadly sins in disi^uisc. There was a continual warfare being waged between the Deity and the Devil, for the possession of every soul ; the latter generally being considered victorious. The flood, the tornado, the \'olcano, were all evidences of the displeasure of heaven, and the sinfulness of man. The blight that withered, the frost that black- ened, the earthquake that devoured, were the messengers of the Creator. The world was governed by Fear. Against all the evils of nature, there was known only the defense of prayer, of fasting, of credulity, and devotion. Man in his helplessness endeavored to soften the heart of Ciod. The faces of the multi- tude were blanched with fear, and wet with tears. The world was the prey of hypocrites, kings and priests. My heart bleeds when I contemplate the suffer- ings endured by the millions now dead ; of those who lived when the world appeared to be insane ; when the heavens were filled with an infinite Hr)Rk()K who snatched babes with dimjjled hands and rosy cheeks from the white breasts of mothers, and dashed them into an abyss of eternal flame. 74 THEN AND NOW. Slowly, like the coming of the dawn, came the grand truth that the universe is governed by law ; that disease fastens itself upon the good and upon the bad ; that the tornado cannot be stopped by counting beads ; that the rushing lava pauses not for bended knees, the lightning for clasped and uplifted hands, nor the cruel waves of the sea for prayer ; that paying tithes causes, rather than prevents, famine ; that pleas- ure is not sin ; that happiness is the only good ; that demons and gods exist only in the imagination ; that faith is a lullaby sung to put the soul to sleep; that de- votion is a bribe that fear offers to supposed power ; that offering rewards in another world for obedience in this, is simply buying a soul on credit ; that knowl- edge consists in ascertaining the laws of nature, and that^isdom is the science of happiness. VOLTAIRB, VOLTAIRE. HEN Voltaire was born, the Church ruled and owned France. It was a period of almost universal corruption. The priests were mostly libertines. The judges ^^■ere as cruel as venal. The royal palace was simply a house of assignation. The nobles were heartless, proud and arrogant, to the last degree. The common people were treated as beasts. It took the Church a thous- and years to bring about this happy condition of things. The seeds of the revolution were unconsciously being scattered by every noble and by every priest. They germinated in the hearts of the helpless. They were watered by the tears of agony. Blows began to bear interest. There was a faint longing for blood. Workmen, l)lackened by the sun, bent by 78 VOLTAIRE. labor, looked at the white throats of scornful ladies and thought about cutting them. In those days, witnesses were cross-examined \\ith instruments of torture. The Church was the arsenal of superstition. Miracles, relics, angels and devils were as common as rags. Voltaire laughed at the evidences, attacked the pretended facts, held the bible up to ridicule, and filled Europe with indig- nant protests against the cruelty, bigotry, and in- justice of the time. He was a belie\er in God, and in some ingenious way excused this God for allowing the Catholic Church to exist. He had an idea that, originally, mankind were believers in one God, and practised all the virtues. Of course this was a mistake. He imagined that the Church had corrupted the human race. In this he was right. It mav be that, at one time, the Church relatively stood for progress, but when it gained power, it became an obstruction. The system of \^oltaire was contradictory. He described a being of infinite goodness, who not only destroyed his children with pestilence and famine, but allowed them to destroy each other. While rejecting the God of the Bible, VOLTAIRE. 79 he accepted another God, who, to say the least, allowed the innocent to be burnt for loving him. Voltaire hated tyranny, and loved liberty. His ar- guments to prove the e.xistence of a God were just as groundless as those of the reverend fathers of his day to prove the divinity of Christ, or that Mary was the mother of God. The theologians of his time maligned and feared him. He regarded them as a spider does flies. He spread nets for them. They were caught, and he devoured them for the amusement and benefit of the public. He was educated by the Jesuits, and sometimes acted like one. It is fashionable to say that he was not profound. This is because he was not stupid. In the presence of absurdity he laughed, and was called irreverent. He thought God would not damn even a priest for- ever : — this was regarded as blasphemy. He en- deavored to prevent Christians from murdering each other and did what he could to civilize the disciples of Christ. Had he founded a sect, obtained control of some country, and burned a few heretics at slow fires, he would have won the admiration, respect and love of the Christian world. Had he only pre- tended to believe all the fables of antiquity, had he 8o VOLT A I KH. mumbled Latin prayers, counted beads, crossed him- self, devoured the flesh of God, and carried fagots to the feet of philosophv in the name of Christ, he might ha\e been in hea\en this moment, enjoying a sight of the damned. Instead of doing these things, he wilfully closed his eyes to the light of the gospel, examined the bible for himself, advocated intellectual liberty, struck from the brain the fetters of an arrogant faith, assisted the weak, cried out against the torture of man, appealed to reason, endeavored to establish universal toleration, succored the indigent and de- fended the oppressed. These were his crimes. Such a man ( lod would not suffer to die in peace. If allowed to meet death witli^a smile, others might follow his example, until none would be left to light the holy fires of the auto da fe. It would not do for so great, so successful an enemy of the Church, to die without leaving some shriek of fear, some shuddering cry of remorse, some ghastly prayer of chattered horror, uttered by lips covered with blood and foam. He was an old man of eightv-four. He had been surrounded with the comforts of life ; he was a man VOLTAIRE. «I of wealth — of genius. Among the hterary men of the world, he stood first. God had allowed him to have the appearance of success. His last years were filled with the intoxication of flattery. He sto;xl at the summit of his age. The priests became anxious. They began to fear that God would forget, in a multiplicity of business, to make a terrible ex- am;jle of Voltaire. Toward the last of May, 1778, it was whispered in Paris that Voltaire was dying. Upon the fences of expectation gathered the unclean birds of superstition, impatiendy waiting for their prey. "Two days before his death, his nephew went to seek the cure of Saint Sulpice and the Abbe Gautier and l)rought them into his uncle's sick chamber, who being informed that they were there, 'Ah, well!' said Voltaire, ' give them my compliments and my thanks.' The Abbe sjjoke some words to him, ex- horting hini to patience. The cure of Saint Sulpice then came forward, having announced himself, and asked of Voltaire, elevating his voice, if he acknowl- edged the divinity of our Lord Jesus Ghrist. The sick man pushed one of his hands against the cure's coif, shoving him back, and cried, turning abruptly to 82 VOLTAIRE. the Other side, ' Let me die in peace.' The cure seemingly considered his person soiled, and his coif dishonored, by the touch of the philosopher. He made the nurse give him a little brushing, and went out with the Abbe Gautier." He expired, says W'agniere, on the 30th of May, 1778, at about quarter past eleven at night, with the most perfect tranquillity. Ten minutes before his last breath he took the hand of Morand, his valet de chambre. who was watching bv him, pressed it and said : " Adieu, m\- dear Morand, I am gone." These were his last w ords. From this death, so simple and serene, so natural and peaceful ; from these words so utterly destitute of cant or dramatic ttiuch, all the frightful pictures, alKthe despairing utterances, ha\e been drawn and made. From these materials, and from these alone, have been constructed all the shameless calumnies about the death of this great and wonderful man, compared with whom all of his calumniators, dead and li\ing. were and are but dust and vermin. More than a century ago Catholicism, w rapped in robes red with the innocent blood of millions, holding in her frantic clutch crowns and scepters, VOLTAIRE. 83 honors antl gold, the keys of heaven and hell, trampling beneath her feet the liberties of nations, in the ])rt)ud moment of almost unixersal dominion, felt within her heartless breast the deadly dagger of X'oltaire. From that blow the Church never can recover. Livid with hatred, she launched her impotent anathema at the great destroyer, and igno- rant Protestants have echoed the curse of Rome. \'oltaire was the intellectual autocrat of his time. From his throne at the foot of the Alps, he pointed the finger of scorn at every hypocrite in Europe. He was the pioneer of his century. He was the assassin of superstition. Through the shadows of faith and fable, through the darkness of myth and miracle, through the midnight of Christianity, through the blackness of bigotry, past cathedral and dun- geon, past rack and stake, past altar and throne, he carried, with chixalric hands, the sacred torch of reason. LAZARUS. HAT became of La We never hear of him again. It seems to me that he would have been an object of great interest. People would have said: " He is the man who was once dead." Thousands would have inquired of him about the other world ; would have asked him where he was when he received the information that he was wanted on the earth. His experience would have been vastly more interesting than everything else in the New Testament. A returned traveler from the —one who had walked twice ■would have been the most interesting of human beings. When he came to die again, people would have said : " He is not afraid ; he has had experience ; he knows what death is." But, strangely enough, this Lazarus fades into obscurity with " the wise men of the East," and with the dead who came out of their graves on the night of the crucifixion. shores of Eternity- through the valley of the shadow- WHAT IS WORSHIP ? pray O do justice ; to defend the right ; to be strength for the weak, — a shield for the defenceless ; to raise the fallen ; to keep the peace between neighbors and nations. This is worship. Work is worship. Labor is the best To fell the forest, to subdue the earth, to delve in mines for the love of woman. This is worship. To build a home, to keep a fire on the hearth, to fill with joy the heart of her who rocks the cradle of your child. This is worship. The poor ]:)oy ships before the mast — comes home and puts within his mother's hand a purse snatched from the peril of the sea. This is worship. The poor widow working night and day keeping the fatherless together, — bearing every burden for the lov^e of babes. This is worship. 86 WHAT IS WORSHIP? The sad and weeping wife stays with and bears the insults of a brutal husband for the sake of little ones. This is worship. The husband, when his wife is prematurely old with grief and pain, sits by her bed and holds her thin wan hands as rapturously and kisses them as passionately as when they were dimpled. This is worship. The wife clings to the husband fallen, lifts him from the gutter of degradation, holds him to her heart until her love makes him once more a man. This is worship. The industrious father, the toiling, patient mother, practice every self-denial to educate their children, — to lift them with loving pride above themselves. This is ^worship. And when such children are ashamed of such parents because they are homely and wrinkled and ignorant, — this is blasphemy. The boy with his mother's kiss warm on his lips fights for his native land, — fights to free his fellow men, — dies by the guns. This is worship. He who loves, worships. HUMBOLDT. T the head of the great army of investiga- tors stood Humboldt — the serene leader of an intellectual host — a king by the suffrage of Science "and the divine right of Genius. And to-day we are not honoring some butcher called a soldier, some wily politician called a statesman, some robber called a king, nor some malicious metaphysician called a saint. We are honoring the grand Humboldt, whose victories were all achieved in the arena of thought ; who de- stroyed prejudice, ignorance and error — not men ; who shed light — not blood, and who contributed to the knowledge, the wealth, and the happiness of mankind. W^e honor him because he has ennobled our race; because he has contributed as much as any man b8 HUMBOLDT. living or dead, to the real prosperity of the world. We honor him because he has honored us, because he labored for others, because he was the most learned man of the most learned nation — because he left a legacy of glory to every human being. We associate the name of Humboldt with oceans, continents, mountains, and volcanoes ; with the great palms, the wide deserts, the snow-lipped craters of the Andes ; with primeval forests and European capitals ; with wildernesses and universities ; with savages and savans ; with the lonely rivers of un- peopled wastes ; with peaks and pampas and steppes and cliffs and crags — with the progress of the world — with every science known to man, and with every star glittering in the immensity of space. Humboldt adopted none of the soul-shrinking creeds of his day ; wasted none of his time in the stupidities, inanities and contradictions of theological metaphysics. He did not endeavor to harmonize the astronomy and geology of a barbarous people with the science of the Nineteenth Century. Never, for one moment, did he abandon the sublime standard of truth. He investigated, he studied, he thought, he separated the gold from the dross in the crucible of HUMBOLDT. 89 his great brain. He was never found on his knees before the altar of superstition. He stood erect by the grand tranquil column of Reason. He was an admirer, a lover, an adorer of Nature, and at the age of ninety, bowed by the weight of nearly a century, covered with the insignia of honor, loved by a nation, respected by a world, with kings for his servants, he laid his weary head upon the bosom of the universal Mother — and with her arms around him, sank into that mysterious slumber known as death. GOD SILENT. HERIi is no recorded instance where the uplifted hand of murder has been par- ahzed — no truthful account in all the literature of the world, of the innocent shielded b)- Cod. Thousands of crimes are being committed every day. Men are, this moment, King in wait for their human prey. Wi\'es are whi|jped and crushed — drixen to insanity and death. Little chddren are begging" for merc\' — lifting imploring, tear-filled eyes, to the brutal faces of fathers and mothers. Sweet girls are being de- cei\'ed, lured and outraged ; but God has no time to prevent these things — no time to defend the good and to prtitect the pure. He is too busv numbering hairs and watching sparrows. ALCOHOL. BELIEVE that alcohol, to a certain de- gree, demoralizes those who make it, those who sell it, and those who drink it. I believe from the time it issues from the coiled and poisonous worm of the dis- tillery until it empties into the hell of crime, death, and dishonor, it demoralizes everybody that touches it. I do not believe that anybody can contemplate the subject without becoming prejudiced against this liquid crime. All you have to do is to think of the wrecks upon either bank of this stream of death — of the suicides, of the insanity, of the poverty, of the ignorance, of the distress, of the little children tugging at the faded dresses of weeping and despairing wi\'cs, asking for bread ; of the men of genius it has wrecked ; of the millions who have 92 ALCOHOL. struggled with imaginary serpents produced by this deviUsh thing. And when you think of the jails, of the almshouses, of the prisons, and of the scaffolds upon either bank — I do not wonder that every thoughtful man is prejudiced against the damned stuff called alcohol. AUCxUSTE COMTE. iXABLE in some thinp^s to rise above the superstitions of his day, Comte adopted not only the machinery, but some of the prejudices, of Cathohcism. He made the mistake of Luther. He tried to reform the Church of Rome. Destruction is the onl)' reformation of which that church is capable. Ev'Cry religion is l)ased upon a misconception, not only of the cause of phenomena, but of the real object of life ; that is to say, upon falsehood ; and the moment the truth is known and understood, these relii^ions must fall. In the field of thought, they are briers, thorns, and noxious weeds ; on the shores of intellectual discovery, they are sirens, and in the forests that the l)ra\e thinkers are now penetrating, they are the wild beasts, fanged and monstrous. You cannot reform these weeds. Sirens cannot be changed into good citizens ; and such wild beasts, 94 ' AUGUSTK CO.MTI'. c\cn wliLMi tamed, arc of no ])ossil)lc use. Destruc- tion is the only remedy. Reformation is a hospital where the new j)hiloso]jhy exhausts its streni;th nursini;" the old relig'it)n. There was, in the hrain of the ^reat Frenchman, the dawn of that happ)- da\' in which humanity will be the onl)' religion, gootl the onl\' god, happiness the only ohj^'ct, restitution the onh' atonement, mistake the only sin, and affection, guided ])y in- telligence, the only savior of mankind. This dawn illuminated the darkness of his life, and filled his eyes with ])i-oud ami tender tears. A few \-ears ago I asked the superintentlent of Fere La Chaise if he knew w here I could imd the tomb of Auguste Comte. He IkuI never heard even the 'liame of the author of the Fositixe I'hilosophy. I asked him if he had e\ er heard of Napoleon Bonaparte. In a half-insulted tone, he replied, "Of course I ha\"e, wh\' do \-ou ask me such a question?" "Simply," was my answer, "that I might have the opportunity of saN'ing, that when everything con- nected with Napoleon, e.\ce])t his crimes, shall have been forgotten, Auguste C\)mtc will be lovingly remembered as a benefactor of the human race." THE INFIDEL. that ijlcO effort has l)cen spared in any age of the world to crush out opposition. The Church used painting, music and archi- tecture, simply to de^^n-ade mankind. But there are men that nothing can awe. ■['here ha\e l)een at all times brave spirits e\en the gods. Some proud head has always been aboxe the waves. In every age some Diogenes has sacrificed to all the deities. True genius never cowers, and there is always some Samson feeling for the pillars of authority. Cathedrals and domes, and chimes and chants : temples frescoed and groined and carxetl, and gilded with gold; altars and tapers, and paintings of\irgin and babe ; censer and chalice, chasuble, paten and alb ; organs, and anthems and incense rising to the winged and blest ; maniple, amice and stole ; crosses 9D THE INFIDEL and crosiers, tiaras and crowns ; mitres and missals and masses ; rosaries, relics and robes ; martyrs and saints, and windows stained as with the blood of Christ — never, for one moment awed the brave, proud spirit of the Infidel. He knew that all the pomp and glitter had been purchased with Liberty — that priceless jewel of the soul. In looking at the cathedral he remembered the dungeon. The music of the organ was not loud enough to drown the clank of fetters. He could not forget that the taper had lighted the fagot. He knew that the cross adorned the hilt of the sword, and so where others worshiped, he wept. NAPOLEON. LITTLE while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon — a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a deity dead — and gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern A\-orld. I saw him walking upon the l)anks of the Seine, contemplating suicide. I sa\\- him at Toulon — I saw him j)utting down the mob in the streets of Paris — I saw him at the head of the army of Italy — I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tri-color in his hand — 1 saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids — I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of Prance with the eagles of the 90 NAPOLEON. crags I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavahy of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster — driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris — clutched like a wild beast — banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force cif his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea. I thought of the orphans and widows he had made — of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and^of the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said, I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the amorous kisses of the Autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant, with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky — with my children NAPOLEON. 99 upon my knees and their arms about me — I would rather have been that man, and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as Napoleon the Great. Till' RFJ'UIUJC. 'f/N the rc])ul)lic of miiul, one is a majoritv. There, all are luonarehs, aiul all are c(|uals. The Ivrannx' of a inajorit\' e\en is un- known, r.aeh one is erowneel, seepterecl and throned. L^pon e\'ei"\- hrow" is the tiara, and around e\'ei'\' form is the im- perial ]:)iu'ple. ()nl\' those are i^ood eiti/ens who ex|jress their honest thoui^hts, and those who perseeute for oiMuion's sake, are the onl\- traitors. There, nothing" is considereil infamous except an a])i)eal tt) brute force, antl nothin;^' sacreil but lo\-e, Iibert^^ and joy. 'Idle church contemplates this re])ul)lic with a sneer. rrt)m the teeth of hatretl she draws back the lij)s of scorn. She is tilled with the spite and spleen born of intellectual weakness. Once she was egotistic; now she is en\-ious. Once she w ore upon her Iiollow breast false t!,"ems. supposing' them to be real. Thex' ha\e been shown t(~) be false, but she wears them still. She has the malice of the cau'>"ht, the hatretl of the exposed. DAWN OF IHE NEW DAY. impossible. EYOND the universe there is nothing, and within the unixerse the supernatural does not and eannot exist. The moment these great truths are understood and admitted, a belief in general or special providence becomes Prom that instant men will cease their vain efforts to please an imaginary being, and will give their time and attention to the affairs of this world. They will abandon the idea of attaining any object by prayer and supplication. The ele- ment of uncertainty will, in a great measure, be remcned from the domain of the future, and man. gathering courage from a succession of victories o\-er tlie obstructions of nature, will attain a serene grandeur unknown to the disciples of any super- stition. The i)lans of mankind will no longer be I02 DAWN OF THE NEW DAY. interfered with by the finger of a supposed omnipo- tence, and no one will believe that nations or indi- viduals are protected or destroyed by any deity whatever. Science, freed from the chains of pious custom and evangelical prejudice, will, within her sphere, be supreme. The mind will investigate with- out reverence, and publish its conclusions without fear. Agassiz will no longer hesitate to declare the Mosaic cosmogony utterly inconsistent with the demonstrated truths of geology, and will cease pre- tending any reverence for the Jewish scriptures. The moment science succeeds in rendering the church powerless for evil, the real thinkers wall be outspoken. The little flags of truce carried by timid philosophers will disappear, and the cowardly parley will give place to Victory — lasting and universal. REFORMERS. OST reformers have infinite confidence in creeds, resolutions and laws. They think of the common people as raw material, out of wdiich they propose to construct institutions and govern- ments, like mechanical contrivances, where each person will stand for a cog, rope, wheel, pulley, or bolt, and the reformers will be the mana- gers and directors. They forget that these cogs and wheels ha\-e opinions of their own ; that they fall out with other cogs, and refuse to turn with other wheels ; that the pulleys and ropes ha\'e ideas pecu- liar to themselves, and delight in mutiny and revolu- tion. These reformers have theories that can only be realized when other people have none. Some time, it will be found that people can be 104 REFORMKRS. changed only by changing their surroundings. It is alleged that, at least ninety-five per cent, of the criminals transported from England to Australia and other penal colonies, became good and useful citizens in a new world. Free from former associates and associations, from the necessities of a hard, cruel, and competitive civilization, they became, for the most part, honest people. This immense fact throws more light up(Mi social tjuestions than all the theories of the world. All people are not able to support themselves. They lack intelligence, industry, cunning — in short, cai)acity. They are continually falling by the way. In the midst of plenty, they are hungry. Larceny is born of want and opportunity. In pas- sion's storm, the will is wrecked upon the reefs and rocks of crime. The complex, tangled web of thought and dream, of perception and memory, of imagination and judg- ment, of wish, and will, and want — the woven wonder of a life — has ne\'er yet been raveled back to simple threads. Shall we not become charitable and just, when we know that every act is but condition's fruit ; that Nature, with her countless hands, scatters the seeds RKl-Ok.MERS. 105 of tears and crimes — of every \irtLie and of every joy; that all the l)ase and vile are victims of the l>lind, and that the «;o()d and great have, in the lottery of life, by chance or fate, drawn heart and brain ? THE GARDEN OF EDEN. T is not true that man was once perfectly pure and innocent, and became degenerate by disobedience. The real truth is, and the history of man shows, that he has advanced. Events, like the pendulum of a clock, have swung forward and backward, but after all, man, like the hands, has gone steadily on. Man is growing grander. He is not degenerating. Nations and individuals fail and die, and make room for higher forms. The intellectual horizon of the world widens as the centuries pass. Ideals grow stronger and purer ; the difference between justice and mercy becomes less and less; liberty enlarges, and love intensifies as the years sweep on. The ages of force and fear, of cruelty and wrong, are behind, and the real Eden is beyond. It is said that a desire for knowl- edge lost us the Eden of the past ; but whether that is true or not, it will orive us the Eden of the future. THOMAS PAINB. THOMAS PAINE. "^^^"' IIOMAS PAINE was born in Thetford, iingland. He canic from the common peo])lc. At the a^e of tliirty-seven he left linglancl for America. He was the first to perceive the destiny of the New World. He wrote the pamphlet " Common Sense,'" and in a few months the Con- tinental Congress declared the colonies free and independent States. A new nation was boril Paine having aroused the spirit of independence, gave every energy of his soul to keep that spirit alive. He was with the army. He shared its defeats and its glory. When the situation became desperate, he gave them " The Crisis." It was a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, leading the way to freedom, honor, and victory. The writings of Paine are gemmed w ith compact statements that carry conviction to the dullest. Day no THOMAS PAINE. and night he labored for America, until there was " a government of the people and for the people." At the close of the Revolution, no one stood higher than Thomas Paine. Had he been willing to live a hypo- crite, he would have been respectable, he would have died surrounded by other hypocrites, and at his death there would have been an imposing funeral, with miles of carriages, filled with hypocrites, and above his hypocritical dust, there would have been a hypo- critical monument covered with hypocritical praise. Ha\-ing done so much for man in America, he went to France. The seeds sown by the great infidels were bearing fruit in Europe. The Eighteenth Century was crowning its gray hairs with the wreath of progress. Upon his arrival in France he was elepted a member of the French Convention — in fact, he was selected about the same time by the people of no less than four Departments. He was one of the committee to draft a Constitution for France. In the Assembly, where nearly all were demanding the execution of the king, he had the courage to vote against death. To vote against the death of the king was to vote against his own life. This was the sublimity of devotion to principle. For this he was THOiMAS PAL\E. Ill arrested, imprisoned, and doomed to death. While under tlie sentence of death, while in the gloomy cell o\' his j)rison, Thomas Paine wrote to Washington, asking him to say one word to Robespierre in favor of the author of " Common Sense." Washington did nt)t repl)'. lie wrote again. The answer was silence. In the calmness of power, the serenity of fortune, Washington, the President, read the recjuest of Paine, the prisoner, and with the complacency of assured fame, consigned to the waste-basket of forget- fulness the patriot's cry for help. " Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-sized monster of ingratitudes. Those scraps are good deeds past which are devour'd As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done." In this controversy, my sympathies are with the prisoner. Thomas I^aine, having done so much for political liberty, turned his attention to the superstitions of his age. He published "The Age of Reason;" and from that day to this, his character has been maligned by almost every priest in Christendom. He has been held up as the terrible example. Every man 112 THOMAS I'AINi;. who has expressed an honest thouj^dit, has been warningly referred to Thomas Tainc. All his ser- viees were forgotten. \o kind word fell from any pulpit. His devotion to })i-iiiciple, his zeal for human rights, were no longer remembered. Paine simply took the ground that it is a contradietion to call a thing a rexclation that comes to us second-hand. There can be no re\elation be}'ond the first com- munication. All after that is hearsay. He also showed that the prophecies of the Old Testament had no relation whatever to Jesus Christ, and con- tended that Jesus Christ was simply a man. In other words, Paine was an enlightened Ihiitarian. Paine tht)Ught the Old Testament too Ijarbarous to have been the work of an infinitely benex'olent God. He attcTcked the doctrine that saKation depends uj)on belief He insisted that every man has the right to think. After the publication of these \iews every false- hood that malignity could coin and malice pass was gi\'en to the world. On his retui-ii to .\merica, after the election to the Presidenc\' of another infidel, Thomas Jefferson, it was not safe for him to appear in the pul)lic streets. He was in danger of being THOMAS PAINE. 113 mobbed. Under the \'ery Hag he had helped to ])Ut ill hea\en his rii;hts were not respeeted. Under the Constitution that he had suggested, his hfe was inseeure. He had lielped to give liberty to more than three millions of his fellow-citizens, and they were willing to deny it unto him. He was tleserted, ostracized, shunned, maligned, and cursed. He en- joyed the seclusion of a leper ; ])ut lie maintained through it all his integrity. He stood by the con- victions of his mind. Never for one moment did he hesitate or wa\er. He died almost alone. The moment he died Christians commenced manufacturing horrt)rs for his death-bed. They had his chamber filled with devils rattling chains, and these ancient falsehoods are perpetually certified to by the respectable Chris- tians of the present day. The truth is, he died as he had lived. Some ministers were impolite enough to visit him against his will. Several of them he ordered from his room. A couple of Catholic priests, in all the meekness of hypocrisy, called, that they might enjoy the agonies of a dying friend of man. Thomas Paine, rising in his bed, the few embers of expiring life blown into ilame by the breath of 114 THOMAS PAINE. iiulignalioii, hatl the j^oodiicss to curse tbeni both. His physician, who seems to ha\e been a med- dling fool, just as the ct)ld hand was touching" the patriot's heart, whispered in the dull ear of the dying patriot: "Do you believe, or do }ou wish to belie\e, that Jesus Christ is the son of Ciod ? " And the reply was : " I ha\e no wish to believe on that subject." These were the last remembered words of Thomas Paine. He died as serenely as ever mortal passed away. lie died in the full possession of his mind, and on the \er\' brink and edge of death, proclaimed the doctrines of his life. Every Christian, every philanthropist, every be- liever in human liberty, should feel under obligation to Thomas Paine for the splendid service rendered by him in the darkest days of the American Revolu- tion. Ill the mitlnight of Valley Forge, "The Crisis" was the first star that glittered in the wide horizon of despair. E\-cry good man should remember with gratitude the bra\'e words spoken by Thomas Paine in the French CcMuention against the death o( Louis. He said : " \\'c will kill the king, not the man. We will tlcstro)- monarchy, not the monarch." TIKIMAS TAINI'. II5 Thomas Paine was a clianipion, in both hemis- pheres, of human hherty ; one of the fouiulers and fathers of this Reinibhc; one of the foremost men of his age. He never wrote a word in favor of injustice. lie \\as a despiscr of slavery. He abhorred tyranny in every form. He was, in the widest and best sense, a friend of all his race. His head was as clear as his heart was good, and he had the courage to speak his honest thought. He was the first man to wa'ite these words : " The United States of America." He proposed the |)resent I-'ederal Constitution, and furnished every thought that now glitters in the Declaration of Indei)endence. Thomas Paine \vas one of the intellectual heroes — one of the men to whom we are indebted. His name is associated forever with the Great Re|)ublic. As long as free government exists he will be re- membered, admired and honored. He lived a long, laborious ajid useful life. The world is l)etter for his haxing lixed. For the sake of truth he accepted hatred and re])roach for his portion. He ate the l)itter bread of sorrow. His friends wire untrue to liim because he was true to himself, and true to them. He lost the respect of Il6 THOMAS PAINE. what is called society, but kept his own. His life is what the world calls failure and what history calls success. If to love your fellow-men more than self is goodness, Thomas Paine was good. If to be in advance of your time — to be a pioneer in the direc- tion of right — is greatness, Thomas Paine was great. If to avow your principles and discharge your duty in the presence of death is heroic, Thomas Paine was a hero. At the age of seventy-three, death touched his tired heart. He died in the land his genius defended — under the flag he gave to the skies. Slander can- not touch him now — hatred cannot reach him more. He sleeps in the sanctuary of the tomb, beneath the quiet of the stars. THE AGE OF FAITH. ^?()R a thousand years faith reigned, with scarcely a rebelhous subject. Her tem- ples were "carpeted with knees," and the wealth of nations adorned her count- less shrines. The great painters prosti- tuted their genius to immortalize her vagaries, while the poets enshrined them in song. At her bidding, man covered the earth with blood. The scales of Justice were turned with her gold, and for her use were in\-ented all the cunning instruments of pain. She built cathedrals for God, and dungeons for men. She peopled the clouds with angels and the earth with slaves. The veil between heaven and earth was always rent or lifted. The shadows of this world, the radiance of heaven, and the glare of hell mixed and mingled until man became un- certain as to which country he really inhabited. Man 1 l8 TIIK ACV ()!• lAl 111. tlwrlt in an iinii.il woiKl. lli' mistook his ideas, his (hxanis, lor \ca\ thins^s. His Icars hi'camc terrible aiul maheioiis monsters. lie h\ecl in tiie mitlst ot tmit'S and laiiies, n\ni|)hs and n.iiatls, L;c»liHns anil l^hosts, witehes antl w izartls, sprites and spooks, deities and de\ iks. Tlie t)hseure and glooni\' deptlis were liiled with ekiw and wint;' — with luak antl hoot', with leerim;- looks and sneerins.;- mouths, with the maliet' of delormitx', w ith the cunnin<; of hatretl, and with all the slim\- lorms that fear ean draw and l)aint upon tlu^ shadow \ ean\as ot the tlaik. It is cnoui;h to make' (^uc almost insane- w ith i)it\' to think what man in the K>ni;- nij;ht has suffert'd ; of tlu' tortures he has entlurod, surrouiuiid, as he suj)- j)osed, \i\ malii^nant powers, anil elutehed h\ the tieree plvrfntcMiis of the air. No wonder that he fell uptui his tremhlinL; kiu-es — that he Iniilt altars and reddened them e\in with his own Mood, Xo wonder that he implored ii^norant pi'iests and impudent mai;ieians l\>r aid. \o wdiulei- th.it he er.iw led s^roxelin;.;- in the ilust to the tempK's door, and there, in the insanity of despair, besought the deaf gods to hear his bitter cry of agony and fear. ORIGIN (W RIiLK^ON. ' !^' Yfa^lr AN, in liis ii^iioraiuc, supposed that Jail plu'iioiiu'iia were produced by sonic ^ intcllii;'ciit jjowcrs, and w ith direct w.f- 5 creiice to him. 'l"o prescrxc friendly i) fM-^"! , . -1.1 1 J ^f^y^ C relations with these powers was, and Q '^ still is, the ol)jeet of all relij^^^ions. Man knelt throuj^h fear and to implore assistance, or throui^h gratitude for some faxor which he supposed had been rendered. lie endeavored by su|)plication to a|)pease some bcini;- who, for some reason, had, as he believed. Income enraged, 'i'he li^htniiiL;- and thunder terrified him. In the presence of the xolcano he sank u])on his knees. The ^reat fori:sts filled with wild and ferocious beasts, the monstrous ser- l)ents crawling- in mysterious de])ths, the boundless sea, the flaminp^ comets, the sinister c:clipses, the awful calmness of the stars, and, more than all, the I20 ORIGIN OF RELIGION. perpetual presenee of death, convinced him that he was the sport and prey of unseen and mahgnant powers. The strange and frightful diseases to which he was subject, the freezings and burnings of fever, the contortions of epilepsy, the sudden palsies, the darkness of night, and the w ild, terrible and fantastic dreams that filled his brain, satisfied him that he was haunted and pursued by countless spirits of evil. For some reason he supposed that these spirits diftered in power — that they were not all alike male\o- lent — that the higher controlled the lower, and that his very existence depended upon gaining the as- sistance of the more powerful. For this purpose he resorted to prayer, to flattery, to worship and to sacrifice. ,To pacify these spirits was considered of infinite importance. The poor barbarian, knowing that men could be softened by gifts, gave to these spirits that which to him seemed of the most value. With bursting heart he would off"er the blood of his dearest child. It was impossible for him to conceive of a god utterly unlike himself, and he naturally supposed that these powers of the air would be affected a little at the sight of so great and so deep a sorrow. It was with the l)arbarian then as with the civihzed now — one class lived upon and made merchandise of the fears of another. Certain persons took it upon them- sehes to appease the gods, and to instruct the people in their duties to these unseen powers. This was the origin of the priesthood. The priest pretended to stand between the wrath of the gods and the help- lessness of man. He was man's attorney at the court of heaven. He carried to the invisible world a flag of truce, a protest and a request. He came back with a command, with authority and with power. Man fell upon his knees before his own servant, and the priest, taking advantage of the awe inspired by his supposed influence with the gods, made of his fellow-man a cringing hypocrite and slave. THE UNPARDONABLE SIN. DDI^N your hands with human blood; bhist by slander the fair fame of the inno- cent; strangle the smiling child upon its mother's knees; decei\e, ruin and desert the lieautiful girl who lo\'es and trusts vou, and your case is not hopeless. Eor all this, and for all these, you may be forgiven. Eor all this, and for all these, that bankrupt court established by the gospel, will gi\-e you a discharge; but deny the existence of these di\ine ghosts, of these gods, and the sweet and tearful face of Mercy becomes li\-id with eternal hate. IIea\en's golden gates are shut, and you, with an inhnite curse ringing in your ears, with the brand of infamy upon your brow, commence your endless wanderings in the lurid gloom of hell — an immortal \'agrant, an eternal outcast, a deathless convict. THE OLIVIL BRANCH. 1877. f li ha\-c f()Ui;'ht md hated cn()U_; thtnisch cs in niai-iia;^c with women oKKr than tluinseh cs in lUlL^iuni, so nian\- huri^laiaes to one nunxler in i'ranee, or so many persons (.irixcn insane l)\- reH;^ion in the United States. It is assertiil that these facts eonehisix el\- show that man is aetid upon ; that, hehinti each thought, I'.u h (.heam, is the effieient cause, antl that the doctrine (A' moral rcsponsibiHl)' has been dc- stroNcd b\' statistics. lUil, does the fict lliat about so many crimes arc committeil on the .i\ er,i_i;e, in a i;i\ en popul.ilion. or th.it so m.niN .ni\ thini;s .ue done, pro\ e tluit there is no freedom in hum.m action ? Suppose a popul.ilion o\ ten thous.uul persons; and suppose, further, th.il the\ aw free, .uul th.it the\' h.i\e the UMi.il w.mts ol m.mkind. Is it not rc.ison- able to s.i\ th.it the\- would ,u t in some waN' ? They cert.iinU w ould take mcasui-es to obl.iin Uhx\, clothing', and shelter. If thest- pcitple dilfired in intellect, in surroundiip^s. in tempcr.iment. in strength, it is re.ison- able to suppose lh.it .ill would not be ciju. illy sue- i'Ki;i'; WILL. 1 27 ccssful. Under such tii-cunistauccs, may \vc not safely infer that, in a liulc while, if the statistics were proijerly taken, a law of a\(iai;e wcnild appear? In other words, U'cc people would act; and, Ijeinij; diffci-- ent in mind, hod)-, and circumstances, would not all act exacll)' alike. ;\ll would not \)c alike aitcd U|)on. The de\iations h-om what mii;ht ])c thought wise, or |-ii;lu, would sustain such a relation to time and lunubers that the\' eould be expressed by a law of averaj^e. If this is true, the law of average does not establish necessity. l)Ut, in my supposed case, the people, after all, are not free. They have wants. They are under the necessity of feediuL;-, clothin;,;', and shelterini; them- selves. To the extent of their actual wants, they are not free. llverv limitation is a master. Every finite being is a prisoner, and no man has ever yet looked above or beyond the prison walls. ()ur highest conception of liberty is to Ijc fn;e horn the dictation of fellow prisoners. To the extent that we have wants, we arc not free. To the extent that we do not have wants, we do not act. 128 FREK WILL. If wc arc responsible for our thou_i;'hts, we oug-ht not onh' to know how the)- are fornietl, but we ouoht to form theuL If we are the masters of our own minds we would be able to tell what we are going- to think at any future time. li\-identl\-. the food of thought — its \'ery w-arj) and woof — is furnished through the medium of the senses. If we open om" exes, we cannot help seeing. If we do not stoj) our cars, we cannot help hearing. If any thing touches us, we feel it. The heart beats in spite of us. The lungs suppl)' theiiiselves with air without our knowledge. The blood pursues its old accustt)med rounds, and all our senses act without our leave. As the heart beats, st) the brain thinks. The will is not its king. As the l)lood flows, as the lurfgs expand, as the cncs see, as the ears hear, so the brain thinks. I had a dream, in which I debated a question with a friend. I thought to m)'self : " This is a dream, and )et I can not tell what my opponent is going to say. Vet, if it is a dream, I am doing the thinking for both sides, and, therefore, ought to know in advance what mv friend will urge." But, in a dream, there is some one who seems to talk to us. I'Ki:m will. 129 Our own brain tells us news, and presents an unex- l)ected thoug-ht. Is it not i)()ssil)le that each brain is a field, where all the senses sow the seeds of thought? Some 'jf these fields are mostly barren, ])()or, and hard, i)r(,- ducing only worthless weeds; and some grow sturdy oaks and stately palms; and some are like the tropic world, where plants and trees and vines seem royal children of the soil and sun. THI'. KING OF DHATH. ^2. 0\V is it known that it was claimed, during the life of Christ, that he had wrought a miracle? And if the claim was made, how is it known that it was not denied ? Did the Jews believe that Christ was clothed with miraculous power? Would the\- ha\ e dared to crucify a man w ho had the power to thrill the dead with life ? Is it not wonderful that no one at the trial of Christ said one word about the miracles he had wrought? Nothing about the sick that he had healed, or the dead that he had raised ? If Christ had w rought the miracles attributed to him ; if tie had cured the maimed, the leprous, and the halt; if he hail changed the night of blindness into blessed day ; if he had wrested from the fleshless hand of avaricious death the stolen jewel of a life, and clothed again with throbbing flesh the pulseless dust, he would have won the love and adoration of mankind. If ever there shall stand u])t)n this earth the king of death, all human knees will tinich the ground. THIi WISH MAN. HE wise man relics upon evidence, upon demonstration, upon cxjKTicncc, antl occupies Iiinisclf with one world at a time. lie perceives that tliere is a men- tal horizon that we cannot pierce, and that l)eyond that is the unknown — inknowable. He endeavors to examine only that which is capable of beiny; examined, and considers the theological method as not only useless, but hurtful. After all, (iod is but a guess, throned and established by arrogance and assertion. Turning his attention to those things that have in some way affected the condition of mankind, the wise man leaves the unknowable to priests and to the believers in the "moral goxernment " of the world. lie sees only natural causes and natural results, and seeks to induce man to gi\'e up gazing into void and empty space, that he may give his entire attention to the 132 llll': WISI'. MAX. woild in which hr h\rs. IK' sees lliat rij^hl and wnui!^ do not tlrprnd npon liu- arhilrars will oi i.'\c'n an inlimlr hrini;, Inil U|)on thr nature of thin_<;s; thai tlu\- Avc relations. no[ entities, and that they cannot exist, so far as we know, ap.nt Uo\u human e\iHi"ience. it nia\- l>e that men will tinall\- see that selhshness and self-sacri!ici' ai'e both mistakes ; that the hrst devours itself; that the second is not demanded 1)\ the i^iuul.and thai the hail an' unworthy of it. It ma\ be that ouv lace h.is ne\ er been, and nt'xer will be, desiTN inj; o\ a m.ulN i". Some time we ma_\' see that justice is the hi^lu'St possible form oi mercy and lo\e, aiul that .dl should not onl\ be allowed, but compelled, to reaj) exactb' w hat the\- sin\ ; that in- dustr\- should not sujtport idleness, and that they who waste the spring, aiul summer, and autumn ot tluir li\es, should bear the winter when it comes. The fortunate should assist the \ictims oi accident; the strong- should defentl the weak, anil the intel- lectual slunild lead, with lo\ in;.;- hamls, the menial l>oor; but lustice should remo\ i' the bandai;"e from her i-\-es lon>;- enough to disliui^uish between the xicituis anil the unfoitunate. BRUNO. Ill', iiioht of the middle a,<;-cs lasted for a thoiisaiid )'c;ars. Tlic first star that ciiriclicd the horizon of tliis universal L;loom was (Jioi"(lano iJiamo. IK: was ^^^y^"^ the herald of the dawn. ^ ^ He was horn in 1550, was educated for a jjriest, hecanie a ])oiuinican friar. At last his reason revolted against the doctrine of transuhstanti- ation. He could not l)elie\'e that the entii-e Trinity was in a wafei", or in a swallow ol wine. He could not l)elie\-e that a mail (ould devour the Creator of the uni\'ei-se hy eating' a i)ii't;e of bread. This led him to investiL;'ate other doi;inas of the ("atholic church, and in ex'cry diiec tion he found the same contradictions and impossibilities su|)|)orted, not by reason, but by fiith. Those W'lio loxed their (..•neniies threatened his life. He was obli'-ed to flee from his nati\'e land, and he 134 BRUNO. became a \ ajj^alxind in neaiiv every nation of Europe. He declared that he fought, not wiiat priests beheved, but what they j)retentled to l)elie\'e. He was dri\'en from his native country l)ecause of his astronomical opinions, lie had K)st confidence in the bible as a scientihc work. He was in danger because he had discoxered a truth. lb' fled Id I'ngland. He gave some lectures at O.xford. lie found tliat institution controlled by the priests. He fouiul that they were teaching nothing of importance — onl\- the i!U|)ossible and the hurtful. He called Oxford "the widow of true learning." There were in linghuul, at that time, two men who knew more than the rest of the world. Shakespeare was then ali\e. -^Brunt) was drixen from England. He was re- garded as a dangerous man, — he had opinions, he inquired after reasons, he expressed confidence in facts. He tied to France. He was not allowed to remain in that countr\\ He discussed things — that was ent)ugh. The Church said, " move on." He went to Ciermany. He was not a belie\xr — he x\as an investigator. The Germans wanted believers; they regarded the whole Christian system as settled ; they BRUNO. 135 wanted witnesses ; they wanted men who would assert. So he was driven from Germany. lie returned at last to his native land. He found himself without friends, because he had been true, not only to himself, but to the human race. But the world was false to him because he refused to crucify the Christ of his own soul between the two thieves of hypocrisy and bigotry. He was arrested for teaching that there are other worlds than this ; that many of the stars are suns, around which other worlds re\olve ; that Nature did not exhaust all her energies on this grain of sand called the earth. He believed in a plurality of worlds, in the rotation of this, in the heliocentric theory. For these crimes, and for these alone, he was imprisoned for six years. He was kept in solitary confinement. He was alloA\ed no books, no friends, no visitors. He was denied pen and paper. In the darkness, in the loneliness, he had time to examine the great questions of origin, of existence, of destiny. He put to the test what is called the goodness of God. He found that he could neither depend upon man nor upon any deity. At last, the inquisition demanded him. He was tried, con- demned, excommunicated and sentenced to be burned. 136 BRUNO. According- to ProfcsstM" Draper, he believed that this world is animated by an intelhgent soul — the cause of forms, but not of matter; that it li\es in all things, e\en in such as seem not to li\e ; that e\erv- thing is reatl}- to Ijecome organized ; that matter is the mother of forms, and then their grave ; that matter and the soul of things, together, constitute God. He was a pantheist — that is to say, an atheist. He was a k)\er of nature, — a reaction from the asceticism t)f the church. lie was tiietl of the gloom of the monaster\-. He ioxetl the fields, the wootls, the streams. He said to his brother-|)riests : C\)me out of your cells, out of )'our ilungeons ; come into the air and light. Throw away your l)eads and your crosses. Gather tlowei's ; mingle with )'our fellow-men ; have wiv^s and ehihhxn ; scatter the seeds of joy ; throw away the thorns and nettles of ytnu* creeds ; enjoy the perpetual miracle of Life. On the sixteenth da\- of February, in the )ear of grace 1600, b\- the triumphant beast, the Church of Rome, this philosopher, this great antl splendid man, was burned. He was offered his liberty if he would recant. There was no (rod to be offended bv his recantation, and yet, as an apostle of what he HRUNO. 137 believed to be the truth, he refused this offer. To those who passed the sentenee upon hiiu he saitl : "It is with greater fear that ye [)ass this sentence upon nie than I receive it." This man, (greater than any naturahst of his chis' ; grander than the martyr of any rehgion, ched wilh'ngiy in defence of wliat he beiie\-ed to be the sacred truth. lie was great enough to know that real reh'gion will not destroy the joy of life on earth ; great enough to know that iinestigation is not a crime — that the really useful is not hiddi'n in the mysteries of faith. He knew that the Jewish records were below the level of the et the ral)bis and the priests, the ignorant zealot and the eruel bigot, feeling that this quiet, thoughtful, modest man was in some way forging weapons to be used against the ehureh, hated him w ith all their hearts. He did not retaliate. He found excuses for their acts. Their ignorance, their malice, their misguided and rexengetul zeal excited only pity in his breast. He injured no man. lie did not live on alms. He was poor — and vet, with the wealth of his brain, he enriched the world. On Sunday, February 21st, 1677, Spinoza, one of th-d" greatest and subtlest of metaphysicians — one of the noblest and purest of human beings, — at the age of fortv-four, passed tranquilly away ; and notwith- standing the curse of the SN-nagogue under which he had Vwcd and most lovingly labored, death left upon his lips the smile of perfect peace. 'THE FIRST DOUBT. HH first doubt was the womb and cradle of progress, and from the first doubt, man has continued to advance. Men began to investigate, and the church C)f=>r^ began to opjjose. The astronomer ' scanned the heavens, while the church branded his grand forehead with the word, " Infidel ;" and now, not a glittering star in all the \ast expanse bears a Christian name. In spite of all religion, the geologist penetrated the earth, read her history in books of stone, and found, iiidden within her bosom, souvenirs of all the ages. ( )ld ideas perished in the retort of the chemist, and useful truths took their places. One by one religious conceptions have been placed in the crucible of science, and thus far, nothing but dross has been found. A new world has been discovered by the microscope ; everywhere has been 146 THE FIRST DOUBT. found the infinite ; in every direction num has investi- i^ated and explored, and nowhere, in earth or stars, has been found the footstep of any being superior to or independent of nature. Nowhere has been dis- covered the shghtest evidence of any interference from without. These are the subhme truths that enabled man to throw off the yoke of superstition. These are the splendid facts that snatched the sceptre of authority from the hands of priests. THE INFINITE HORROR. F there be another life, the basest soul that finds its way to that dark or radiant shore will lune the e\XTlasting ehance of doing right. Nothing but the most cruel ignor- ance, the most heartless superstition, the most ignorant theology, ever imagined that the few days of human life spent here, surrounded by mists and clouds of darkness, blown over life's sea by storms and tempests of passion, fixed for al! eternity the condition of the human race. If this doctrine be true, this life is but a net, in which Jehovah catches souls for hell. The idea that a certain belief is necessar\' to saKation unsheathed the s\\ords and lighted the fagots of persecuticMi. As long as heaven is the re- ward of creed instead of deed, just so long will every orthodox church be a bastile, every member a prisoner, and every priest a turnkey. 148 THI>: INl'INITI' HORROR. In the estimation of i;ood orthodox Christians, I am a criminal, Jjecause I am trying to take from loving mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, \vi\es, and lovers the consolations naturally arising" from a belief in an eternity of grief and pain. I w ant to tear, break, and scatter to the winds the God that priests erected in the fields of innocent pleasure — a God made of sticks, called creeds, and of old clothes, calletl myths. I ha\e tried to take from the coffin its horror, from the cradle its curse, and put out the fires of revenge kindled by the savages of the past. Is it necessar)' that hea\en should borrow its light from the glare of hell ? Infinite punishment is infinite cruelty, endless injustice, immortal meanness. To worship an eternal gaoler hardens, debases, and poHutes the soul. While there is one sad and break- ing heart in the unixerse, no perfectly good being can be perfectly hapjn-. Against the heartlessness of this doctrine every grand and generous soul should enter its solemn protest. I want no part in any heaven where the saved, the ransomed, and redeemed drown with merry shouts the cries and sobs of hell ; in w hich happiness forgets misery ; where the tears of the lost increase laughter and deepen the dimples Till': INI-INITI': HORROR. 149 of joy. The idea of hell was born of ignoranee, biutaliU', fear, eowardice, aiul re\enge. This idea tends to show that our remote ancestors were the lowest beasts. Only from dens, lairs, and caves ; only from mouths filled with cruel fangs ; only from hearts of fear and hatred ; only from the conscience of hunger and lust ; only from the lowest and most debased, could come this most cruel, heartless, and absurd of all dogmas. Our ancestors knew but little of nature. They were too astonished to investigate. They could not divest themselves of the idea that everything happened with reference to them ; that they caused storms and earthquakes ; that they brought the tempest and the whirlwind ; that on account of some- thing they had done, or omitted to do, the lightning of vengeance leaped from the darkened sky. They made up their minds that at least two vast and powerful beings presided over this world ; that one was good and the other bad ; that both of these beings wished to get control of the souls of men ; that they were relentless enemies, eternal foes ; that both welcomed recruits and hated deserters ; that one offered rewards in this world, and the other in the 150 THE INFINITE HORROR. next. Man saw cruelty and mercy in nature, because he .imagined that phenomena were produced to punish or to reward him. It was supposed that God de- manded worship ; that he loved to be flattered ; that he delighted in sacrifice ; that nothing made him happier than to see ignorant faith upon its knees ; that above all things he hated and despised doubters and heretics, and regarded investigation as rebellion. Each community felt it a duty to see that the enemies of God were converted or killed. To allow a heretic to live in peace was to invite the wrath of God. Every public evil, every misfortune, was accounted for by something the community had permitted or done. When epidemics appeared, brought by ignor- ance and welcomed by filth, the heretic was brought out^and sacrificed to appease the anger of God. By putting intention behind what man called good, God was produced. By putting intention behind what man called bad, the Ue\ il was created. Leave this •' intention " out, and gods and devils fade away. If not a human being existed, the sun would continue to shine, and tempest now and then would devastate the earth; the rain would fall in pleasant showers; violets would spread their velvet bosoms to the sun. THE IXFIMTIi: HORROR. I5I the earthquake would devour, birds would sing and daisies bloom and roses blush, and volcanoes fill the heavens with their lurid glare ; the procession of the seasons would not be broken, and the stars would shine as serenely as though the world were filled with loving hearts and happy homes. Do not imagine that the doctrine of eternal re- venge belongs to Christianity alone. Nearly all religions have had this dogma for a corner-stone. Upon this burning foundation nearly all have built. Over the abyss of pain rose the glittering dome of pleasure. This world was regarded as one of trial. Here, a God of infinite wisdom experimented with man. Between the outstretched paws of the infinite, the mouse, man, was allowed to play. Here, man had the opportunity of hearing priests and kneeling in temples. Here, he could read, and hear read, the sacred books. Here, he could have the example of the pious and the counsels of the holy. Here, he could build churches and cathedrals. Here, he could burn incense, fast, wear hair-cloth, deny himself all the pleasures of life, confess to priests, construct in- struments of torture, bow before pictures and images, and persecute all who had the courage to despise 152 THE INFINITE HORROR. superstition, and the goodness to tell their honest thoughts. After death, if he died out of the church, nothing could be done to make him better. When he should come into the presence of God, nothing was left except to damn him. Priests might convert him here, but God could do nothing there. All of which shows how much more a priest can do for a soul than its creator. Only here, on the earth, where the devil is constantly active, only where his agents attack every soul, is there the slightest hope of moral improvement. Strange ! that a world cursed by God, filled with temptations, and thick with fiends, should be the only place where man can repent, the only place where reform is possible. Masters frightened slaves with the threat of hell, and slaves got a kind of shadowy revenge by whis- pering back the threat. The imprisoned imagined a hell for their gaolers ; the weak built this place for the strong; the arrogant for their rivals; the van- quished for their victors ; the priest for the thinker ; religion for reason ; superstition for science. All the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable, grew, blossomed, and bore fruit in this one word — Hell. NATURE. OT^rf ATURH, so far as we can discern, without l^ |E I) passion and without intention, forms, rji^^lJy*ilS transforms, and retransforms forever. She neither weeps nor rejoices. She produces man without purpose, and ob- htcratcs him without regret. She knows no distinction between the beneficial and the hurtful. Poison and nutrition, pain and joy, hfe and death, smiles and tears are ahi>:e to her. She is neither merciful nor cruel. She cannot be flattered by wor- shij) nor melted by tears. She does not know even the attitude of prayer. She appreciates no difference between poison in the fangs of snakes and mercy in the hearts of men. Yet religious people see nothing but design everywhere, and personal, intelligent inter- ference in everything. They insist that the universe has been created, and that the adaptation of means to I 54 N A 1 Li Kli. ends is perfectly apparent. They point us to the sunshine, to the flowers, to the April rain, and to all there is of beauty and of use in the world. Did it e\er occur to them that a cancer is as beautiful in its development as is the reddest rose ; that what they are pleased to call the adaptation of means to ends, is as apparent in the cancer as in the April rain? How beautiful the process of digestion ! By what ingenious methods the blood is poisoned so that the cancer shall have food ! By what wonderful contrivances the entire system of man is made to pay tribute to this divine and charming cancer ! See by what admirable instrumentalities it feeds itself from the surrounding quivering, dainty flesh ! Sec how it gradually but surely expands and grows ! By what marvelous medianism it is supplied with long and slender roots that reach out to the most secret nerves of pain for sustenance and life ! What beautiful colors it presents ! Seen through the microscope it is a miracle of order and beauty. All the ingenuity of man cannot stop its growth. Think of the amount of thought it must have required to invent a way by which the life of one man might be given to produce one cancer? Is it NATURE. [55 |jo.ssiblc to look upon it and doubt that there is design in the universe, and that the inventor of this wonder- ful cancer must be infinitely powerful, ingenious and good ? Man has no ideas, and can have none, except tliose suggested by his surroundings. He cannot conceive of anything utterly unlike what he has seen or felt. He can exaggerate, diminish, combine, separate, deform, beautify, improve, multiply and com- pare what he sees, what he feels, what he hears, and all of which he takes cognizance through the mediuni of the senses ; but he cannot create. Having seen exhibitions of power, he can say, omnipotent. Hav- ing li\ed, he can say, immortality. Knowing some- thing of time, he can say, eternity. Conceiving something of intelligence, he can say, God. Having seen exhibitions of malice, he can say, devil. A (ew gleams of happiness ha\'ing fallen athwart the gloom of his life, he can say, heaven. Pain, in its number- less forms, having been experienced, he can say, hell. Vet all these ideas ha\-e a foundation in fact, and only a foundation. The superstructure has been reared by exaggerating, diminishing, combining, separating, de- forming, beautif\ing, im])ro\-ing or multi])lying reali- 156 NATURE. ties, SO that the edifice or fabric is but the incongruous grouping of what man has perceived through the medium of the senses. It is as though we should give to a lion the wings of an eagle, the hoofs of a bison, the tail of a horse, the pouch of a kangaroo, and the trunk of an elephant. We have in imagina- tion created an impossible monster. And yet the various parts of this monster really exist. So it is with all the gods that man has made. Beyond nature man cannot go, even in thought — above nature he cannot rise — below nature he cannot fall. NIGHT AND MORNING. j^^j LOOK. In gloomy caves I see the sacred serpents coiled, waiting for their sacrificial _^^^ prey. I see their open jaws, their restless )^ii)' tongues, their glittering eyes, their cruel .•^ fangs. I see them seize and crush, in ^' 1 many horrid folds, the helpless children given by mothers to appease the Serpent- God. I look again. I see temples wrought of stone and gilded with barbaric gold. I sec altars red with human blood. I see the solemn priests thrust knives in the white breasts of girls. I look again. I see other temples and other altars, where greedy flames devour the flesh and blood of babes. I see other temples and other priests and other altars dripping with the blood of oxen, lambs, and do\'es. I see other temples and other 158 NIGHT AND MORNING. priests and other altars, on whieh are sacrificed the Hberties of man. I look : I see the cathedrals of God, the huts of peasants ; the robes of kings, the rags of honest men. I see a ^\•orld at war — the lovers of God are the haters of men. I see dungeons filled with the noblest and the best. I see exiles, wanderers, outcasts — millions of martyrs, widows, and orphans. I see the cunning instruments of torture, and hear again the shrieks and sobs and moans of millions dead. I see the prison's gloom, the fagot's flame. I see a world beneath the feet of priests ; Liberty in chains ; every virtue a crime, every crime a virtue ; the white forehead of honor wearing the brand of shame ; intel- ligence despised, stupidity sainted, hypocrisy crowned; ana bending abo\'e the poor earth, religion's night without a star. This was. I look again, and in the East of Hope, the first pale light shed by the herald star gives promise of another dawn. I look, and from the ashes, blood and tears, the countless heroes leap to bless the future and avenge the past. I see a world at war, and in the storm and chaos of the deadly strife thrones crumble, altars fall, chains break, creeds NIGHT AND MORNING. 1 59 change. The highest peaks are touched with holy hght. The dawn has blossomed. It is Day. I look. I see discoverers sailing mysterious seas. I see inventors cunningly enslave the blind forces of the world. Schools are built, teachers slowly take the place of priests. Philosophers arise. Thinkers give the \\'orld their wealth of brain, and lips grow rich with words of truth. This is. I look again. The popes and priests and kings are gone. The altars and the thrones ha\e mingled with the dust. The aristocracy of land and cloud have perished from the earth and air. The gods are dead. A new religion sheds its glory on mankind. It is the gospel of this world, the religion of the body, the evangel of health and joy. I see a world at peace, a world where labor reaps its true reward. A world without prisons, without workhouses, without asylums — a world on which the gibbet's shadow does not fall ; a world where the poor girl, trying to win bread with the needle — the needle that has been called "the asp for the breast of the poor" — is not driven to the desperate choice of crime or death, of suicide or shame. I see a world without the beg- gar's outstretched palm, the miser's heartless, stony l6o NIGHT AND MORNING. Stare, the piteous wall of want, the palhd face of crime, the hvid hps of hes, the cruel eyes of scorn. I see a race without disease of flesh or brain — shapely and fair, the married harmony of form and function. And as I look. Life lengthens, Joy deepens, Love intensifies, Fear dies, — Liberty at last is God, and Heaven is here. This shall be. THE CONFLICT. bin J55\''KRV man who has good health, c\'ery f^ man with good sense, e\'ery one who has had his dinner and has enough left for suj)per, is, to that extent, a eapitalist. Every jiian with a good character, who has the credit to l)orrow a dollar, or to is a capitalist ; and nine out of ten of the great capitalists in the United States are simply successful working-men. There is no conflict, and can he no conflict, in the United States, between capital and laljor ; and the men who endea\'or to excite the en\-y of the unfortunate, and the malice of the poor, are the enemies of law and ortler. As a rule, wealth is the result of industry, economy and attention to business; and as a rule, poverty is the result of idleness, extravagance, and inattention to business, though to these rules there are thousands 1 62 TIU' CONI'LICT of exceptions. Tlie man \\li() has wasted his time, who has thrown a\\a\' his opportunities, is i\\)i to en\ \- the man who has not. I'or instance, there are si.x shoemakers workini^' in one shop. One of them attends to his business. \"ou can hear the music of his Iiammer IaW antl earh'. lie is in 1o\e with some j^irl on the next street. Me has maile up 'his mind to l)e a man ; to suecLcd ; to make st)mel)ody else hap])\- ; to ha\e a home; antl while he is workinj;', in his imaL^ination he can see his own hreside, with the lioiit fallin- on the faces of w ife and child. 'The other ti\ e <;entlemen work as little as the)' can, spend Sunda\- in dissij)ation, ha\ c the headache Mondaw and. as a result, ne\ er ad\ ance. The industrious ong, the one in lo\e, trains the confitlence of his employer, and in a little w hile he cuts out work for the others. The first thini; \-ou know he has a shop of his own; the next, a store; because the man of reputation, tln' man of character, the man of known intci^ritx', can 1)U\- all he wishes. The next tiling- )-ou know he is married, and he has built him a house, and he is happ)-. Idis dream has been realizetl. After awhile the same fi\e shoemakers, ha\in;^ pursued the old course, stand on the corner Tin-, coNii.icr 163 some Suiulay when he rides by. lie has a ear- ria<;e ; liis wife sits by his side, her face eoxered with smiles, and they ha\e two ehihh-eii, theii" e\es beamiiit;' witli j()\, and the bkie ribbons are llut- lei'ini; ill the w iiid. Theixupon, these U\v shoemakers adjourn to some nei;^hborini;' saloon and pass a res- olution that there is an iri'epressible eonllict between capital and labor. DEATH OF THE AGED. y^vi FTER all, there is something tenderly t/C . V^r^yi-^ appropriate in the serene death of the old. ^ Nothing is more touching than the death of the young, the strong. But when the duties of life have all been nobly done ; when the sun touches the horizon ; when the purple twilight falls upon the past, the present, and the future ; when memory, with dim eyes, can scarcely spell the blurred and faded records of the vanished days — then, surrounded by kindred and by friends, death comes like a strain of music. The day has been long, the road ^veary, and the traveler gladly stops at the welcome inn. Nearly forty-eight years ago, under the snow, in the little town of Cazenovia, my poor mother was buried. I was but two years old. I remember her as she looked in death. That sweet, cold face has kept my heart warm through all the changing years. THl^: CHARITY OF EXTRAVAGANCE. ffHENEVER the laboring men arc out C I of employment they begin to hate the '^■'; rich. They feel that the dwellers in \^) palaces, the riders in carriages, the i^'^y^~^H. wearers of broadcloth, silk, and velvet have in some way been robbing them. As a matter of fact, the palace builders are the friends of labor. The best form of charity is extravagance. When you give a man money, when you toss him a dollar, although you get nothing, the man loses his manhood. To help others help themselves is the only real charity. There is no use in boosting a man who is not climbing. Whenever I see a splendid home, a palace, a magnificent block, I think of the thousands who were fed — of the women and children clothed, of the firesides made happy. A rich man living up to his privileges, having the Kif) \ I K \\ \i, \\( !■ lu'.l li.Ml'.r, ill,' lu'.l liii inliii,-, 111,' lu'.l liiu-.r'., [\\c lllW-.l jM.MIIhl., ihr mo.l l.r.lllllllll ll.'W.I'., llh- lu'St (l.'llh ■,, ili>' luM I,..., I. llh Iv.l pn lni> ,, ,iihl .ill llu- II. il M> .■.m.■ lu...k . 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These thoughts render ht)ly every drop of sweat tliat rolls down the face of honest toil. I SN-mpathize with the wanderers ; with the vagrants out of em|)lo\nient ; e\en with the sad and weary men who are seeking bread Ijut not work. When I see (Mie of these men, poor and friendless — no matter how bad he is — I think that somebody loved him once ; that he was once heltl in the arms of a mother ; that he slept beneath her loving eyes, and wakened in the light of her smile. I see him in the cradle, listening to lullabies sung soft and low, and his little face is dimpled as though touched by the rosy fingers of Joy. And then I think of the strange and winding paths, the weary roads he has tra\eled, from thaf mother's arms to misery and want and aimless crime. WOMAN. OTHING gives mc more pleasure, nothing gives greater promise for the future, than the fact that woman is achieving intehec- i^_^% tual and physical liberty. It is refreshing to know that here, in our (3;, country, there are thousands of women who tliink, and express their thoughts — who are thoroughly free and thoroughly conscientious — who ha\e neither been narrowed nor corrupted by a heart- less creed — who do not worship a being in heaven whom the}' would shudderingly loathe on earth — women who do not stand before the altar of a cruel faith, with downcast eyes of timid accjuiescence, and pay to impudent authority the tribute of a thoughtless yes. They are n(^ longer satisfied with being told. They examine for themselves. They have ceased to be the prisoners of society — the satisfied serfs of hus- bands, or the echoes of priests. They demand the rii^lUs that naturally hcloiii;- to intelligent human beini^s. If \vi\es, the)- wish io be the equal o\ hus- bands. If mothers, lhe_\' wish to rear their ehiklren in the atmosphere of lo\e, lii)ert_\- antl philosoithy. 'rhe\- beliexe that woman ean iliseharr opinion's sake, his tellow- man ? Win- diil he not erw \on shall not perseeute in m\' name ; \ on shall not burn and torment those who differ iVom nou in ereed ? Why did he not plainb- sav, I am tlu' Son of Cod ? \\'hy did he not exi)lain the doetrine o[ the trinity ? Why did he WHY .'' 191 not tell the manner of baptism that \vas|)leasint; to him ? Why did he not say something positive, definite, ant! satisfactory about another world ? Why tlitl he not turn the tear-stained ho|)e of hea\'en to the -lad knowlecl-e of another life: ? Why did he -o tiunibl)- to his death, leaving the world to misery and to doubt ? IMACxINATION. T may be that a crime appears terrible in pro- portion as we realize its consequences. If this is true, morality may depend largely upon the imagination. Man can not have imagination at will ; that, certainly, is a natural product. And yet, a man's action may depend largely upon the want of imagination. One man may feel that he really wishes to kill another. He may make preparations to commit the deed ; and yet, his imagination may present such pictures of Irorror and despair ; he may so vividly see the widow clasping the mangled corpse ; he may so plainly hear the cries and sobs of orphans, while the clods fall upon the coffin, that his hand is stayed. Another, lacking imagination, thirsting only for revenge, seeing nothing beyond the accomplishment of the deed, buries, with blind and thoughtless hate, the dagger in his victim's heart. SCIENCE. ROM a philosophical point of view, science is knowledge of the laws of life ; of the conditions of happiness ; of the facts by which we are surrounded, and the rela- tions we sustain to men and things — by means of which man subjugates nature and bends the elemental powers to his will, making blind force the servant of his brain. Science is the great Iconoclast, and by the high- way of Progress are the broken images of the Past. On every hand the people advance. The Vicar of God has been pushed from the throne of the Caesars, and upon the roofs of the Eternal City falls once more the shadow of the Eagle. All has been accomplished by the heroic few. The men of science have explored heaven and earth, and with infinite patience have furnished the facts. The brave thinkers 194 SCIENCE. have used them. The gloomy caverns of super- stition have been transformed into temples of thought, and the demons of the past are the angels of to-day. Science took a handful of sand, constructed a tele- scope, and with it explored the starry depths of heaven. Science wrested from the gods their thunder- bolts ; and now, the electric spark, freighted with thought and love, flashes under all the waves of the sea. Science took a tear from the cheek of un- paid labor, converted it into steam, and created a giant that turns with tireless arm, the countless wheels of toil. z' IF DEATH ENDS ALL. *^'^ND suppose, after all, that death does end If J&l' all. Next to eternal joy, next to being '^■"- forever with those we love and those who have loved us, — next to that, is to be w rapt in the dreamless drapery of eternal peace. Next to eternal life is eternal sleep. Upon the shadowy shore of death the sea of trouble casts no wave. Eyes that have been curtained by the everlasting dark will never know again the burning touch of tears. Lips touched by eternal silence will never speak again the broken words of grief. Hearts of dust do not break. The dead do not weep. Within the tomb no veiled and weeping sorrow sits, and in the rayless gloom is crouched no shuddering fear. I had rather think of those I have loved, and lost, as having returned to earth, as having become a part IQO IF DEATH ENDS ALL. of the elemental wealth of the world ; I would rather think of them as unconseious dust ; I would rather dream of them as gurolim;- in the stream, floating in the elouds, bursting in light upon the shores of other worlds ; 1 would rather think of them as the lost visions of a forgotten night, than to have even the faintest fear that their naked souls have been clutehed by an orthodox god. But as for me, I will lea\e the dead where nature leaves them. Whatever flower of hope springs in my heart I will cherish ; I will give it breath of sighs and rain of tears. HERE AND THERE. HE clergy balance the real ills of this life with the expected joys of the next. We are assured that all is perfection in heaven ; there the skies are cloudless, there all is serenity and peace. Here empires may be overthrown ; dynasties may be extinguished in blood ; millions of slaves may toil 'neath the fierce rays of the sun, and the cruel strokes of the lash ; yet all is happiness in heaven. I'estilence may strew the earth with corpses of the loved ; the survivors may bend above them in agony, yet the placid bosom of heaven is unruffled. Children may expire, vainly asking for bread ; babes mav be devoured by serpents, while the gods sit smiling in the clouds. The innocent may languish unto death in the obscurity of dungeons ; brave men and heroic women may be changed to ashes at the 198 iii'Ur \\i) nil': l)iL;()t's slake, while lic.iNiii is lillcd willi soii!^ aiul j()\'. ( )iil (111 the widr sc.i, in (l.iiknrss ,iiul in slorin, the shipwici kid stiUL;i;K' w illi llic i iiicl w ,i\ is w hilr the .in-fis pki\ upon their -oliKn h.u|.s. I he slrci'ls (.1 ihr wi.iKl air lillcd with ihr (hsrasiik ihr (Iclornu'il ami (he hilpliss ; thr rhamhris of pain aw i iow dciI with the pair loiins of llu' suririin-^, whilr the aiit;rls lloal and ll\ in (he happ\' I'rahns of (ki\ . In hra\rn lhi'\ arc liKi happ\ to ha\(' s\inpath\ ; ton |)us\- sin^^in- to aid the iinphMin- and dislix'ssrd. 1 hrir (■\i-s all' l>hndrd; thiir rars aw ^loppriK .nul llu'ir hrarl^ aw tninrd to slonr l)\ ihr inlinilc scMishiu'SS of joN . 1 lu' sa\rd mai'incr is loo happ\ w hrii \\c torn lu's ihr shore, lo L;i\i' a nionuait's ihoii^hl to his ih-ownin;^ hrollicrs. With ihr iiuhrirrriuf o{' happi- nrs's, with ihr rontnnpl of hhss, hra\rn l)arrl\- i^kuuis at Ihr inisriirs ol Carlh. (ilirs arr drxourrd 1)\- Ihr rushing ki\a ; ihr r.nlh oprns, and thousands prri'^h ; wonirii raisr ihrir rkisprd hands toward hr.i\rn, lull ihi' m>ils ai-r loo happ\ lo aid ihrii' rhiKhrn. I'hr siuilrs oi [he drilii-s aw unari|uaintrd w ilh ihr tr.ns oi' inrn. Thr shouts ol hrascn drow n Ihr sol)s ot'i'arlh. now LONG? ]\]l dot^nia of eternal jninishment rests U|)()n i)assa_L(es in the New 'r(.:stanieiit. This infamous behcf siilncrts every idra of justice. Around the ant;cl of inniiortahty tlie ('hureh has e simply a means — it is an cn(\.. Take '^ \ from our history, our literature, our laws, our hearts — that word, and we are noui^lit I)Ut moulded clay. Liberty is the one priceless jewel. It includes and holds and is the weal and wealth of life, iahertv is the soil and lii;"ht ami I'ain — it is the |)lant antl hud and flower and fruit — and in that sacred wortl lie' all the seeds of progress, lo\'e and joy. Liberty is not a social cpiestion. Civil ecpiality is not social e(|uality. We are ecpial only in rights. No two persons are of c([ual weight, or heigiit. There are no two leaves in all the forests of the earth alike — no twai blades of grass — no two grains of sand — no two hairs. No two anythini^s in the plnsical work! arc precisely ahkc. Neither mental nor physical ccpiality can be created 1)\' law, but law recognizes the fact that all men ha\e been clothed with equal rights by Nature, the mother of us all. The man who hates the black man, because he is black, has the same spii'it as he wlu> hates the poor man, because he is \)oov. It is the spirit of caste. The proud useless desi)ises the honest useful. The parasite idleness sct>rns the great oak of labor on which it feeds and that lifts it to the light. I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not sui)erior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart — the best brain. Superiority is bt)rn of honesty, of \irtue, of charity, and above all, of the lo\-e of liberty. The superior man is the pro\i- dcnce of the inferior. He is eves for the l)lind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect bv bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others. jniKWAH AND I'.RAIIMA. '^^ ' ■' '( ''\^v'^'^ ^^^' '^*^'''-'^'^' ^'I'l^ Jehovah ever said of an>- one : " Let his ehil(h"eii be father- wile a \\i(h)w ; let his //A^-'lJ ehilch'en he eontinuaily Nai^ahoiKJs, atic jjei;-; let them seek their bread also out (Ojj'S'^ of their desolate plaees ; let the extor- tioner catch all that he hath and let the stranger sptMl his labor; let there be none to extend mercy unto him, neither let there be any to fa\'or his fatherless children." if he ex'er said these words, surely he had ne\'ei" heard this line, this strain of music, from the liindu: "Sweet is the lute to those; who have not heard the prattle of tlieir own children." jeho\ ah, " from the clouds and dai-kness of Sinai," said to the Jews: " 'I'hou shalt ha\e no other gods l)efore me. . . . Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them; ior I, the Lord thy Ood, am a 204 Ji:iIO\AII AND r.RAIIMA. jcakuis C'ichI, \isitiiif;' the inicjuitics tif the fathers updii the ehilch'en, uiilo the third aiul tourth generatit)n of tliem that hate me." Contrast this with the words put I))- the lliiuhi in the mouth of lirahma: "I am the same to all mankind. riie\- w ho honestl)- ser\e other Q-ods, in\-oluntaril\- wcMship me. I am he who partaketh of all wt)rship, and I am the reward of all worshipi-rs." Compare these passages. The tirst, a dungeon where erawl the things begot of jealous slime ; the other, great as the domed tirmament inlaid with suns. Tin; IKlili SOUL. ^j^0^VR\l\.Y every human hrino" (>u; t'lc (liL;iiity of the unit. Surely //>^^ it is worth sonulhiuL; to he one, and to );_,;->;^* feel that the eensus of the universe would J. ])c inconi])lete without counting- )'()U. A\ Surely there is i;i-antleur in kuowini;- that in the realm of tlioui^ht you are without a chain ; that \-ou ha\e the ri^ht to e\|)lore all hei_<;hts and all depths; that tlure are no walls or fences, or j)rohil)ited places, or sacred corners in all tin: vast expanse of thout;iU ; that Nour inltllect owes no alle^'iancc to any being', human oi- dixine ; that \'ou hold all in fee, and upon no t'ondition, and l)\' no tenui"e, whate\'i-r ; that in the woi'ld of nn'iul \-ou -avc relie\ed fi-oni all personal dictation, and from the ignorant lyrann\- of majorities. Surc:l\' it is worth somethini^' to feel that there are no priests, no p<)j)es, no parties, no i;;overn- 206 THE FREK SOUL. incnts, IK) kings, no gods, to whom yIEF in special providence does away ' ii k^'i ^^''t''' t'""-' ^P""'t of investio-ation, and is Jj^^ >j inconsistent with personal et^brt. Why >/:|L^/' should man endeavor to thwart the frii^ designs of God ? " Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature?" Under the influence of this belief, man, basking in the sunshine of a delusion, "considers the lilies of the field" and refuses to "take any thought Ibr the morrow." Believing himself in the power of an intinite being, who can, at any moment, dash him to the lowest hell, or raise him to the highest heaven, he necessarily abandons the idea of accomplishing anything by his own efforts. As long as this belief was general, the world was filled with ignorance, superstition and misery. The energies of man were wasted in a vain effort to obtain the aid of this power, supposed to be 2l8 PROVIDl'NCH. superior to nature. I'or countless at;es, c\'en men \\ere sacrilicetl U|)on the altar of this inipossihU' s^ctl. 'Vo please him, mothers ha\e shed the blood of their own babes ; mart\rs ha\e chanted triumphant songs in the midst of llame ; [)riests ha\c gorged themsehes with blood ; nuns ha\ e forsworn the ecstacies of lo\-e ; t)ld mill ha\e tremblingh' imploretl ; women ha\e sobbi'tl and entreated ; e\ er\' pain has been enduretl, and e\er\' horror has been perpetratetl. Through the dim long Nears that ha\-e fled, humanil\- has sufferetl more than can \)c concei\etl. Most of the niiser\- has been entlured b\' the weak, the lo\ing and the innocent. Women ha\e been treated like j)oisonous beasts, and little children trampletl upon as though they had been \ei-min. Ni^Kiberless altars ha\ i' been redtlened, e\'cn with the blood of babes; beautiful girls ha\e been gi\en to slim\- serpents, wlu)le races of men doomed to centuries ol sla\'er\-, ami e\'er\\\here there has been luitrage besontl the power of genius to express. During all these \ears t!ie suffering ha\e supplicated ; the witheretl lips of famine ha\e pra\-etl ; the jiale \ictims ha\e implored, and llea\en has been deaf and blmd. THE AL'VN CHRIST <)R the man Christ — for the reformer (QS^i'ip who l()\e(l his fellow-men — for the man ^y^^^Ai \vho l)elie\-ed in an Infinite I'ather, who woulil shield tlu' innoeent and proteet the just — for the mart\r who expeeted to he reseuetl from the eruel cross, and who at last, finding- that his hope was dust, cried out in the s^atherini^ gloom of death: " M\- ( iotl i My (iod ! \\'hy hast thou forsaken me ?" — for that ■great and suffering man, mistaken though he was, I ha\e the highest admiration and res|)ect. That man did not, as I beliexe, claim a miraculous origin. He did not pi'etend to heal the sick or raise the dead. He claimed simph' to be a man, and taught his fellow -men that lo\e is stronger far than hate. His lite was written l)y reverent ignorance. Lo\ing crt-dulity belittled his career with feats of jugglery 220 THE MAN CHRIST. and magic art, and priests, wishing to persecute and slay, put in his mouth the words of hatred and re- venge. The theological Christ is the impossible union of the human and dixine — man with the attributes of God. and God with the limitations and weaknesses of man. THE DIVINE SALUTATION. HEN I was a boy I used to see steamers !^^2 I li I go down the Mississippi with hundreds of men and women chained hand to hand, and men standing" about them with whips in their hands and pistols in their pockets in the name of liberty, in the name of civilization and in the name of religion ! I used to hear them preach to these slaves in the South, and the only text they ever took was " Servants be obedient unto your masters." That was the salutation of the most merciful God to a man whose back was bleeding. That was the salutation of the loving Christ to the slave-mother bending over an empty cradle, to the woman from whose breast a child had been stolen — "Servants be obedient unto your masters." That was what they said to a man running for his life and for his liberty through tangled swamps, and listening for the baying of blood-hounds ; and when he listened the angelic voice came from heaven : " Servants be obedient unto your masters." AT rilE GRAVE OF BENJ. W. PARKER. RIENDS and 'I'o fulfill a promise made many )-ears aL;t), I wish to sav a word. He whom wc are about to lay in the earth, was j^entle, kind and loxins^- in his life, lie was ambitious only to live with those he lo\ed. lie was hospitable, g-enerous, and sineere. He lo\ed his friends, and the friends of his frientls. He returned y,()od for good. He li\ed the life of a ehild, and died without leaving in the memory of his familv the record of an unkind act. W'ithcnit assurance, and without fear, we gi\-e him back to Nature, the source and mother of us all. With morn, with noon, with night; with changing clouds and changeless stai"s ; with grass and trees and l)irds, with leaf and bud, with flower and blorsom- ing \ine, — with all the sweet influences of nature, we leaxe our dead. Husband, fatlu'r, friend, farewell. FASHION AND BEAUTY. AM a believer in fashion. It is the dutv of every woman to make herself as beautiful and attractive as she possibly can. " Hand- some is as handsome does;" but she is nuicli handsomer if well dressed. Every man should look his very best. I am a believer in good clothes. The time never ought to ct)me in this country when you can tell a farmer's daughter simi)l\- by the garments she wears. I say to every girl and woman, no matter what the material of your dress may be, no matter how cheap and coarse It IS, cut it and make it in the fashion. I belicxe in jewelr)'. Some people look U])on it as barbaric, but in m)- judgment, wearing jewelrv is the first ex'idence the barbarian gives of a wish to be civilized. To adorn ourselves seems to be a part of our nature, and this desire seems to be everywhere and in everything. I 224 FASHION AM) lU'AirrN-. ha\'c sonictiiiics tlioui^ht that the desire fur beauty ci)\'ers the earth with lltnxers, paints the \\iiij;s of moths, tints the ehaniher of the shell, and gi\es the bird its phnnai;!.' ami its soni;. O (.laughters and \\i\es, if \-ou \\a)uld be lo\'ed, adorn \-oursehes — if )-ou would be adt)red, be beautiful ! /- APOSTROIMIl' TO SCIHNCl^ HOU aloiu' ])crf()rnicst the true miracle. \ Thou aloiU' art llic worker of real won- lers. Thou knowest the circuits of the t Tr^'V"'' \\''i'l — thou knowest "whence it conieth ^^^^^M and whither it .i^oeth." Fire is thy serv- ^ 1^ ant and lii^htnin^ thy messenger! Thou art the ,<;Teat i)hilant]iro])ist. Thou hast freed the slaxc and t:i\ili/,i-d the master. Thou hast tam^ht man to encliain, not his fellow man, hut the forces of nature — forcts that ha\e no hacks to be scarred, no limhs for chains to chill and eat — forces that never know fatigue, forces that shed no tears, forces that ha\'e no hearts to break ! 'Idiou art the great physician. Thv touch hath given sight; thou hast made the lame to lea]), the dumlj to si)eak, and in the pallid face thy hand hath set the rose of healtli. 'Ihou art the destroyer of 226 AroSl-ROlMII-: TO SCII'NCH. pain. riuHi "hasl j;i\cii lh\- l)clo\ccl sleep, " ami w i"a|)t in happ\ ilrcanis the thiohbin";- iierws i)( pain. riioii art the perpelu.il proxicKnee of man — liuiicler of hiiines, pi-eser\er of lo\e antl life! Tluui ^axi'st ns [he plow ami loom, antl thou ha^t leil ami elolhed the worKl ! Thou .nl the teaehei- of e\-ei-\- \ii-lut', the I'nenu' ot i'\ rr\ \ iee, tliseo\ erei" of e\ei"\- fact. Thou hast i;i\ tn the true basis o\ morals — tlu' orii^in antl office of conscit'iice. Thou hasl ie\ ealed the nature of (t|)- lij;alion, aaul hast tauL;hl thai justice i,^ the hiyjiest form o\' lo\e. Thou hast show n that e\en self-love, ^uidetl by inlelli<^ence, embraces with lo\ in;.^' arms tlu' human race. Thou h.ist slain the mimslei-s oi supt'rslition, and thou hast !4i\en to man the one inspired book, V\\ou hast read the recortls ol the rocks, wiatten by wind anil wa\e, b\- frost .uul fu'e — ri'coi-ds that i-\ en priest- craft cammt cham^e, aiul in th\ wondrous scales hast weii;-hed tlu- .itom .uul the star ! Thou hast founded, llu- true reli^ird, he mi<;ht have been a ([uibblim^- attornew or a h\pi)critical |)arS(Mi. Lincoln w.is a man\-sitleil man, accpiaintc-d with sinilcs anil tears, complex in brain, single in heart, direct as li«;ht ; ami his words, candid as mirrors, «;.i\e till' perk'Ct im.ij;e y^\ his thought. He was never .ifiMiil to ask — ne\er too di>;nitied to admit th.it he did not know. No man hail keener wit, or kinder humoi". \lc was not solemn. Solemnity is a ma^k worn b\- iL^norance and h\i)ocris\- — it is the pref.ice, proloi^iie, and index to the cunnini;' or the stupid IK- was natural in his life and thoui^ht — .\i;k,\ii.\,m lincoin. 243 master of the slorv'-lellcr's ait, in ilhislration apt, in application |)irlt(.l, liberal in s|)cecli, siiockiniL; I'liai'i- sccs and prudes, usini;' any woid ijiat wit (ould disinfect. lie was a logician. Loi;ic is the necissary |iro(ln(l of inlelii^cnee and sinei'i"it\. It lannol l)e leaiiud. It is the child of a clear head and a -ood heart, lie was candid, and with candor often deceixcd tlu' deceitful. lie had intellect without arroj^ance, i^cnius without piide, and |-elii_;ion without cant — that is to sa\', without hi^otrx' and without deceit. lie was an oi'ator — deal-, sincere, natural. lie did not i)retend. lie did not say what he lhou,«;hl others thou;^hl, hut what he lhoui.;hl. If you wish to be sublime you must be natui-al — you must kee|) close to the <;rass. You must sit by tlu' fu'eside of the heart: aboxc the clouds it is too cold. Von must be sim|)le in your speech: loo much polish suij^gcsts insincerity. The ^reat orator idealizes the real, transfigures the (onunon, makes iven the in- animate throb and thrill, fills the ;^allery of the imagination with statues and pictures perfect in foiin and color, brings to lii;ht the i^old hoarded by nicmoi'y the miser, shows the glitterini^ coin to 244 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. the spendthrift hope, enriches the brain, ennobles the heart, and ([uickens the conscience. Between his lips words bud and blossom. If \()u wish to know the difference between an orator and an elocutionist — between what is felt and what is said — between what the heart and brain can do together and what the brain can do alone — read Lincoln's wondrous words at Ciettysl)urg, and then the speech of Iidward Ii\erett. The oration of Lin- coln will never be forgotten. It will li\e until languages are dead and lips are dust. The speech of Everett will never be read. The elocutionists believe in the \irtue of \'oice, the sublimitv of syntax, the majesty of long sentences, and the genius of gesture. The orator loves the real, the simple, the nattffal. He places the thought above all. He knows that the greatest ideas should be expressed in the shortest words — that the greatest statues need the least drapery. Lincoln was an immense personality — firm but not obstinate. Obstinacy is egotism — firmness, heroism. He influenced others without effort, unconsciously; and they submitted to him as men submit to nature, unconsciouslv. He was severe with himself, and for Al'.RAHAM LINCOLN. 245 that reason lenient with others. lie appeared to aj)oloL;ize for heins^' kinder tliaii his iVHows. lie did niereiful thint^s as stealthil)- as others eoniniitted crimes. yVlniost ashamed of tenderness, he said and did the noblest words and deeds with that charming;' confusion, that awkwardness, that is the jjerfect grace of modesty. .As a ni)])]c man, wishing to pay a small debt to a poor neighbor, reluctantly offers a luuKJi-ed-dolJar bill and asks for change, fearing that he may be suspected either of making a dis])la\- of wealth oi" a pretense of ])aynient, so Lincoln hesitated to show his wealth of goodness, even to the best he knew. A great man stooping, not wishing to make his fellows feel that they were small or mean. He knew others, because })erfectly accjuainted with himself He cared nothing for ])lace, but ever}- thing for principle ; nothing for money, but everything for independence. W'hei'e no princi|)le was inxoh c;d, easily swaved — willing to go slowly if in the right direction — sometimes willing to stop ; but he would not go l)ack, and he would not go wrong. He was willing to wait. He knew that the event was not waiting, and that fate was not the fool of chance. He 246 AMKAIIAM LINCOLN. knew that sla\cr\- liacl elcfcndcrs, l)ut no defense, and that they who attaek tlie riy^ht must wound them- selves, lie was neithtT t)rant nor sla\e. lie neither knelt nor seornetl. With him, men were neither j^reat nor small, — the)' weii: rij^iit or wron^'. Through manners, elothes, titles, ra^s and raee he saw the real — that whieh is. Heyoiul aeeident, poliew eom- l)romise and war he saw the end. He was patient as Destiny, whose untleeipherahle hieroglyphs were so dee]:)l)- gra\en on his sail and tragic face. Nothing disclosi'S ri'al character like the use of power. It is eas\ for the weak t(^ he gentle. Most peo])le ean hear aiKcrsitx . lUit if \'ou wish to know what a man reall\' is, gi\e him ])o\\er. This is the supreme test. It is the gior\' of Lineoln that, luuing almost absolute power, he m'\-er abused it, except upon the side of mercy. Wealth could not ])urchase, power cindd nt)t awe, this di\ine, this lo\ing man. lie knew no fear e.\ce])t the fear of doing wrong. Hating sla\-er\-, pitN'ing the master — seeking to cont|uer, not persons, but prejudices — he was the embtxliment of the self-tlenial, the courage, the hope, and the nobilit\- o( a nation. He spoke, not to intlame, not to upbraid, but to con- AliKAHAM LINCOLN. 247 \-iiicc. He raisctl his haiuls, not to strike, hut in benediction. He lon<;-ed to partl(jn. He lox'ed to see the pearls of joy on the cheeks of a \\ife whose hus- band he had rescued from death. Lincoln was the grandest figure of the fiercest ci\il war. He is the gentlest memory of our world. THE MEANING OF LAW. *ET it be untlcrstood that by the term Law is meant the same invariable relations of succession and resemblance, predicated of all facts springing from like conditions. Law is a fact — not a cause. It is a fact, that like conditions produce like results ; this fact is Law. When we say that the universe is governed by law, we mean that this fact, called law, is incapable of change ; that it is, has been, and forever will be, the same inexorable, immutable Fact, inseparable from all phenomena. Law, in this sense, was not enacted or made. It could not have been otherwise than as it is. That which necessarily exists has no creator. WHAT IS BLASPHEMY ? f^'O live on the unpaid labor of others. To enslave the bodies of men. To build dung-eons for the soul. To frighten babes with the threat of eternal fire. To appeal from reason to brute force, — from principle to prejudice, — from justice to hatred. To answer argument with calumny. To beat wives and children. To reward hypocrisy. To persecute for opinion's sake. To add to the sum of human misery. He who hates, blasphemes. SOME REASONS. OPPOSE the Church because she is the enemy of hberty ; because her dogmas are infamous and cruel; because she humiliates and degrades women ; because she teaches the doctrines of eternal torment and the natural depravity of man ; because she insists upon the absurd, the impossible, and the sense- less ; because she resorts to falsehood and slander ; because she is arrogant and revengeful ; because she allows men to sin on a credit ; because she discourages self-reliance, and laughs at good works ; because she believes in vicarious virtue and vicarious vice — vicarious punishment and vicarious reward ; because she regards repentance of more importance than resti- tution, and because she sacrifices the world we have to one we know not of. The free and generous, the tender and affectionate, will understand me. Those who have escaped from the grated cells of a creed will appreciate my motives. The sad and suffering wives, the trembling and loving- children will thank me: This is enough. SELECTIONS, THE HOLY TRINITY. ASON, Observation and Experience — the Holy Trinity of Science — have taught us that happiness is the only good ; that the time to be happy is now, and the wav to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us. In this belief we are content to hve and die. If by any possibility the ex- istence of a power superior to, and independent of, nature shall be demonstrated, there will then be time enough to kneel. Until then, let us stand erect. ■ CoMPARKD with Shakespeare's " book and volume of the brain," the " sacred " bible shrinks and seems as feebly impotent and vain as would a pipe of Pan when some great organ, voiced with every tone, from the hoarse thunder of the sea to the winged warble of a mated bird, fills and floods cathedral aisles with all the wealth of sound. 254 SELECTIONS. It is not essential to conjugate the Greek verbs before making up your mind as to the probabihty of dead people getting out of their graves. When a fact can be demonstrated force is un- necessary ; when it cannot be demonstrated, force is infamous. Every church member bears the marks of collar, chain and whip. Where industry creates, and justice protects, prosperity dwells. " Blasphemy " is what a last year's leaf says to a this year's bud. Every flower about a house certifies to the refine- ment of somebody. The church has already reduced Spain to a guitar, Italy to a hand-organ, and Ireland to exile. Our ignorance is God ; what we know is science. A mortgage casts a shadow on the sunniest field. A first cause is just as impossible as a last effect. SELECTIONS. 255 The combined wisdom and genius of mankind cannot conceive of an argument against the liberty of thought. I BELIEVE in the democracy of the family. If in this world there is anything splendid, it is a home where all are equals. One drop of water is as wonderful as all the seas ; one leaf as all the forests, and one grain of sand as all the stars. "Heretic" is an epithet used in the place of argument. Side by side across the open bible lie the sword and fagot. The spirit of worship is the spirit of tyranny. The intellect has no knees. The first doubt was the womb and cradle of progress. The people in all ages have crucified and glorified. The church has built more prisons than asylums. Whoever worships, abdicates. 256 SELECTIONS. \V\i do not know, wc cannot say, whether death is a wall, or a door; the beginning or end, of a da)- ; the s[)reading of pinions to soar, or the folding forever of wings ; the rise or the set of a sun, or an endless life, that brings the rapture of lo\e to every one. Thi-: roof tree is sacred, from the smallest fibre that feels the soft cool clasp of earth, to the topmost hower that s])reads its bosom to the sun, and like a spendthrift gixes its ])erfume to the air. ThosI': who ha\e climbed highest on the shining- ladder of fame commenced at the lowest round. SuPEKsrrnoN is the upas tree, in whose shade the intellect of man has withered. ^ HvI':rv creed is a rock in running water. Humanity sweeps by it. Till- churcli has furnisheil murderers for its own martyrs. Thii prodigality of the rich is tlie prox'idence of the poor. Thi-: l)est form of charity is extravagance. Mee.kness is the mask of malice. SELECTIONS. 257 I>ETTER rot in tlic windowlcss tomb, to which there is no door but the red mouth of the palHd worm, than wear the jeweled collar even of a i^od. If we are the children of (iod, he furnished us with imperfect minds, and has no ri^ht U) demand a perfect result. It is a terrible thing to wake up at ni^ht, when you are sleeping alone, and be compelled to say, There's a rascal in this bed. The little ghosts fled at the first appearance of the dawn, and the great one will vanish with the perfect day. If honest convictions were contagious, more people would have them. Superstition is tlie mother of those hitleous twins, fear and faith. Under the loftiest monument sleeps the dust of murder. Intellectual discjbedience is one of the con- ditions of progress. 258 SELECTIONS. Astronomy took its revenge, and not a glittering- star in all the vast expanse now bears a Christian name. The home where virtue dwells with love is like a lily with a heart of fire — the fairest flower in all the world. Religious persecution springs from a due ad- mixture of love toward God and hatred toward n"!an. Even intelligent self-lo\-e embraces within its mighty arms all the human race. The civilization of man increases as the secular power of the church decreases. XThe present is the necessary child of all the past. There has been no chance, there can be no interference. It is more important to love your wife, than to love God. Worship is a bribe that fear offers to power. Imposture has always worn a crown. Fear is the duncreon of the mind. SELECTIONS. 259 In all ages, hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns upon the heads of thieves, called kings. Wiiv should the church show mercy to a noble heretic whom her (iod is impatient to burn in eternal fire ? Rej-ormation has always been regarded as treason. All facts are simply the different aspects of the one fact. To obey is slavish, but to act from a sense of obli'^ation perceived by the reason, is noble. Every church is a cemetery and every creed an epitaph. Superstition is the Gorgon beneath whose gaze the human heart has turned to stone. Wherever the bravest blood has been shed the sword of the church has been wet. Logic was not buried with the dead languages. Faith is a lullaby sung to put the soul to sleep. 26o SELECTIONS. The idea that God wants blood is at the bottom of the atonement, and rests upon the most fearful savagery. The greater the crime, the greater the sacrifice ; the more blood the greater the atonement. If the people were a little more ignorant, as- trology would flourish ; if a little more enlightened, religion would perish. The orthodox church will never forgive the Uni- versalist for saying, " God is love." The science by which they demonstrate the im- possible, is theology. Theologians have exhausted ingenuity in finding excuses for God. Many of the intellectual giants of the world have been nursed at the sad and loving breast of poverty. There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven. Astronomy was the first help that man received from heaven. All religions are inconsistent with mental freedom. SELECTIONS. 26 1 Interest eats day and night, and the more it eats the hungrier it grows. The farmer in debt, lying awake at night, can, if he hstens, hear it gnaw. If he owes nothing, he can hear the corn grow. Is a God who will' burn a soul forever in another world, better than a Christian who burns a body for a few hours in this ? Few men have been patriotic enough to shoulder a musket in defence of a boarding-house. Ii' Christianity be true, there is but one little, narrow, grass- grown path that leads to heaven. To worship another is to degrade yourself Wor- ship is awe and dread, and vague fear and blind hope. Man in his helplessness has, by prayer and sacri- fice, endeavored to soften the heart of God. Every nerve in the human body has been sought out and touched, by the church. The sciences are not sirens luring souls to eternal wreck. A BLOW from a parent leaves a scar on the soul. 262 SELECTIONS. Perhaps. — It may be that the fabric of our civili- zation will crumbling fall to unmeaning chaos and to formless dust, where oblivion broods and memory- forgets. Perhaps the blind Samson of some im- prisoned force, released by thoughtless chance, may so wreck and strand the world that man, in stress and strain of want and fear, will shudderingly crawl back to sa\-age and barbaric night. The time may come in which this thrilled and throbbing earth, shorn of all life, will in its soundless orbit wheel a barren star, on which the light wnll fall as fruitlessly as falls the gaze of love upon the cold, pathetic face of death. Right and Wrong. — \\'hat is right and what is wTong ? Everything is right that tends to the happfness of mankind, and everything is wrong that increases the sum of human misery. What can in- crease the happiness of this world more than to do away with every form of slavery, and w ith all war ? What can increase the misery of mankind more than to increase wars and put chains upon more human limbs ? \\niat is conscience ? If man were incapable of suffering, if man could not feel pain, the word " conscience " never w'ould have passed his lips. si<:lfxtions. 263 Immortality. — The idea of immortality, that hke a sea has ebbed and flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear beating against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and dark- ness as long as love kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow — Hope, shining upon the tears of grief. The Soldiers.— The soldiers of the Republic did not wage a war of extermination. They did not seek to enslave their fellow-men. They did not murder trembling age. They did not sheathe their swords in women's breasts. They gave the old men bread, and let the mothers rock their babes in peace. They fought to save the world's great hope — to free a race and put the humblest hut beneath the canopy of liberty and law. Intellectual CAPiTAL.-Logic is not satisfied with assertion. It cares nothing for the opinions of the " great,"— nothing for the prejudices of the many, and least of all for the superstitions of the dead. In the world of Science, a fact is a legal tender. Asser- 264 SELECTIONS. tions and miracles arc base and spurious coins. We have the right to rejudge the justice even of a god. No one should throw away his reason — the fruit of all experience. It is the intellectual capital of the soul, the only light, the only guide, and without it the brain becomes the palace of an idiot king, attended by a retinue of thieves and hypocrites. Life. — We live on an atom called Earth, and what we know of the infinite is almost infinitely, limited ; but, little as we know, all have an equal right to give their honest thought. Life is a shadowy, strange, and winding road on which we travel for a little way — a few short steps — just from the cradle, with its lullaby of love, to the low and quiet way-side inn, where all at last must sleep, and where the only salutation is — Good night. Fear paralyzes the brain. Progress is born of courage. Fear believes — courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth and prays — courage stands erect and thinks. Fear retreats — courage advances. Fear is barbarism — courage is civilization. Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils and in ghosts. Fear is religion — couraije is science. SKLECTIONS. 265 Autumn. — The withered banners of the corn arc still, and gathered fields are growing strangely wan, while death, poetic death, with hands that color what they touch, weaves in the autumn wood its tapestries of brown and gold. Had the 109th Psalm been found in a temple erected for the worship of snakes, or in the possession of some cannibal king, written with blood upon the dried skins of butchered babes, there would have been a perfect harmony between its surroundings and its sentiments. A Being of infinite wisdom has no right to create a person destined to everlasting pain. For the honest infidel, according to orthodox Christianity, there is no heaven. For the upright atheist, there is nothing in another world but punishment. Christians admit that lunatics and idiots are in no danger of hell. This be- ing so, God should have created only lunatics and idiots. Why should the fatal gift of brain be given to any human being, if such gift renders him liable to eternal hell ? Better be a lunatic here and an angel there. Better be an idiot in this world, if you can be a seraph in the next. 266 SliLECTIONS. If it is our duty to forgive our enemies, ought not God to forgive his? Is it possible that (iod will hate his enemies when he tells us that we must love ours ? The enemies of God cannot injure him, but ours can injure us. If it is the duty of the injured to forgive, why should the uninjured insist upon having re\'enge? Why should a being who destroys nations with pesti- lence and famine expect that his children will be loving and forgiving? LiKi' other religions, Christianity is a mixture of good and evil. The church has made more orphans than it has fed. It has never built asylums enough to hold the insane of its own making. It has shed more blood than light. Grc^wth is heresy. Heresy is the eternal dawn. It is the best thought. Heresy is the perpetually new world, the unknown sea, toward which the brave all sail. It is the eternal horizon of progress. Heresy extends, the hospitality of the brain to a new thought. The throne and altar are twins, vultures from the same eccf. SELECTIONS. 267 At Hay. — Sometimes in the darkness of night I feel as though surrounded l)y the great armies of effacement — that the horizon is growing smaller every moment — that the final surrender is only post- poned — that e\erything is taking something from me — that Nature robs me with her countless hands — that my heart grows weaker with every beat — that even kisses wear me away, and that my every thought takes toll of my brief life. Givi- me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith. Banish me from Eden when you will, but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. It seems to me that the doctrine of the atonement is absurd, unjust ami immoral. Can a law be satisfied by the execution of the wrong person ? When a man commits a crime, the law demands his punishment, not that of a substitute ; and there can be no law, human or dixine, that can be satisfied by the punish- ment of a substitute. Can there be a law that demands that the guilty be rewarded ? And yet, to reward the guilty is far nearer justice than to punish the innocent. 268 SELECTIONS. GiiORCi-: Eliot. — George Eliot tenderly carried in her heart the burdens of our race. She looked through pity's tears upon the faults and frailties of mankind. She knew the springs and seeds of thought and deed, and saw, with cloudless eyes, through all the winding wavs of greed, ambition and deceit, where folly \-ainly plucks with thorn-pierced hands the fading flowers of selfish joy, the highway of eternal right. Whatever her relations may have been — no matter what I think, or others say, or how much all regret the one mistake in all her self-denying, loving life — I feel and know that in the court where her own conscience sat as judge, she stood accjuitted — pure as light and stainless as a star. Lea\-e her i' the earth : ^ And from her fair aiul unpolhitfd flesh May violets spring ! It never can be necessary to throw away your reason to save your soul. In the presence of eternity the mountains are as transient as the clouds. Christianity transferred the brutalities of the Coliseum to the Incjuisition. SELl'Cl IONS. 269 Ri'i.iGiON does not and cannot contemplate man as free. She accepts only the homas.^'^e of the prostrate, and scorns the offerings of those who stand erect. She cannot tolerate the liberty of thought. The wide anil sunnv fields belong not to her domain. The star- lit heights of genius and indixidualit)' are above and beyond her appreciation and j)()\\er. Her subjects cringe at her feet, covered with the dust of obedience. They are not athletes standing posed by rich Hfe and brave endeavor like anticjue statues, but shriveled de- formities studying with furtive glance the cruel face of power. I WANT no heaven for which I must give up my reason, no happiness in exchange for my liberty, and no inunortality that demands the surrender of my indixiduality. Hyi'OCRIS.y and tyranny — two vultures — have fed upon the hbcrties of man. To plow is to pray; to |)lant is to prophesy, and the harvest answers and fulfills. No man with any sense of humor, ever founded a reliuion. 270 SELECTIONS. Arguments cannot be answered with insults. Kindness is strength. Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of great questions every one should be serene, slow-pulsed and calm. Intelli- gence is not the foundation of arrogance. Insolence is not logic. Epithets are the arguments of malice. Candor is the courage of the soul. If you have but one dollar in the world, and have to spend it, spend it like a king ; spend it as though it were a dried leaf and you were the owner of un- bounded forests. God, in his infinite justice, damns a good man on his own merits, and saves a bad man on the merits of another. The church has been a charitable highwayman, a profligate beggar, a generous pirate. Is it possible that Christ is less forgiving in heaven than he was in Jerusalem ? Wives weary and worn, mothers wrinkled and bent fill homes with grief. The church is the stone of the sepulchre of liberty. SELECTIONS. 27 1 Across the highway of progress, the church has always been building breast-works of bibles, tracts, commentaries, prayer-books, creeds, dogmas and platforms ; and at every advance, the Christians have gathered behind these heaps of rubbish and shot the poisoned arrows of malice at the soldiers of freedom. It is not necessary to understand Hebrew, in order to know that cruelty is not a virtue, that murder is in- consistent with infinite goodness, and that eternal punishment can be inflicted upon man only by an eternal fiend. Every member of a church, with a creed, like a club in his hand, stands guard over the brain of the minister. Industry is crippled, honest toil is robbed, and even beggary is taxed, to defray the expenses of Christian war. Why should a Christian believe in religious tolera- tion and yet worship a God who does not ? The school-house is my cathedral. 272 SELECTIONS. Down, forever down, with any religion that re- quires upon its ignorant altar the sacrifice of the goddess Reason ; that compels her to abdicate the shining throne of the soul ; strips from her form the imperial purple ; snatches from her hand the sceptre of thought, and makes her the bond-woman of a senseless faith. Supi-RSTiTiON is a hydra-headed monster, reach- ing in terrible coils from the heavens, and thrusting its tliousand fangs into the bleeding, quivering hearts of men. \Vhate\er the attitude of the body, the brave soul is always found erect. OlNCE the cross and rack were inseparable com- panions. There are in nature neither rewards nor punish- ments ; there are consequences. Without liberty, the brain is a dungeon and the soul a convict. Every science has been an outcast. SF.LECTIONS. 273 Thic originality of repetition, and the mental vigor of acquiescence, are all that we have a right to expect from the Christian world. In Love's fair realm husband and wife are king and cjueen, sceptred and crowned alike and seated on the self-same throne. LiiT the ghosts go ; let them cover their eyeless sockets with their fleshless hands and fade forever from the imagination of men. Will the agony of the damned increase or decrease the happiness of God ? The weakest man in the world can make as much out of " nothing," as God. BL.^sPHEMY marks the point where argument stops and slander begins. If I rob Mr. Smith, and God forgives me, how does that help Smith ? To prevent famine, one plow is worth a million prayers. In love and liberty, extravagance is economy. 274 SELECTIONS. There is a quiet about the life of a farmer, and the hope oi' a serene old age, that no other business or profession can promise. \ professional man is doomed, sonic time, to hnd that his powers are want- ing. He is doomed to see younger and stronger men pass him in the race of life. He looks forward to an old age of intellectual mediocrity. He will be last, where once he was first. Ikit the farmer goes into partnership with Nature. He lives with trees and flowers. He l^-eathes the sweet air of the fields. There is no constant and frightful strain upon his mind. His nights are filled with sleep and rest. He watches his flocks and herds as the\' feed upon the green and sunny slopes. He hears the pleasant rain falling upon the waving corn, and the trees he |:)lanted in hfs \()ulh rustle above him as he plants others for the chiklren yet to be. Sui'FOSi': the Church could control the world to- dav ? We would go back to chaos and old night. Philosoph)- would l)e branded as infamous. Science would again press its pale and thoughtful face against the prison bars. Around the limbs of Liberty would climb antl lea]) the bigot's flame. SELI'CTIONS. 275 All laws defining and punishing l)las[)heniy, making it a crime to give your honest ideas about the bible, to laugh at the ignorance of the ancient Jews, or express your real opinion (jf tlieir Jehovali, were passed by impudent bigots, and should be at once repealed by honest men. It seems to me that a belief in the great trutlis of science is fully as essential to salvaticjn as the creed of any church. Abject faith is barbarism. Reason is civiliza- tion. To obey is slavish. To act from a sense of obligation perceived by the reason, is noble. Igno- rance worships mystery ; Reason explains it. The one grovels ; the otlier soars. Tin-: first grave was the first cathedral. The first corpse was the first priest ; and when the last priest is one, the world will be free. No MAN worthy of the form he bears will, at the command of Church or State, solemnly repeat a creed his reason scorns. 276 SMLMC riONS. The BiBLK Tiiii Work; 01- Man. — Is it not infi- nitely more reasonable to say that this book is the work of man — that it is lilled with mingled truth and error, with mistakes anil faets, and reflects, too faith- fully perhaps, "the very form and pressure of its time?" If there are mistakes in the bible, certainly they were made by man. If there is anything con- trary to nature, it was written by man. If there is anything immoral, cruel, heartless, or infamous, it certainly was not written by a being worthy of the adoration of mankind. I DO not see how it is possilile for a man to die worth millions of dollars in a city full of pain, where every day he sees the withered hand of want and the whitp lips of famine ! I do not see how he can do it, any more than he could keep a pile of lumber on the shore, where hundreds and thousands were drowning in the sea. In the long run, the nation that is honest, the people that are industrious, will pass the people that are dishonest, the people that are idle — no matter what grand ancestry they may have had. SELECTIONS. 277 Give us One Fact. — Wc have heard talk enough. We have hstened t(j all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons tliat wc wish to hear. Wc have read your bible, and the works of ycjur best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans, and your reverential aniens. All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact. We pass our hats along yrjur pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact. We know all about your mouldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want a this-year's-fact. We ask only one. (iive us one fact, for charity. Your miracles are too ancient. Thi-: ei-:w have appealed to reason, to hcjnor, to law, to freedom, to the known, and to b.ajjjjiness here. The many have appealed to prejudice, to fear, to miracle, to slavery, to the unknown, and to misery hereafter. The few have said, Think ! The many have said, Believe ! "Co.ME let us reason together, saith the Lord." I accept the invitation. 278 SELECTIONS. A Day for the Poor. — A poor mechanic, working all the week in dust and noise, needs a day of rest and joy — a day to visit stream and wood — a day to live with wife and child — a day in which to laugh at care and gather strength for toils to come. And his weary wife needs a breath of sunny air, away from street and wall, amid the hills, or by the margin of the sea, where she can sit and prattle with her babe and fill with happy dreams the long, glad day. Wfien every church becomes a school, every cathedral a university, every clergyman a teacher, and all the hearers brave and honest thinkers, the dream of poet, patriot, philanthropist and philosopher will oecome a great and splendid reality. It is better to be the emperor of one loving and tender heart — and she the empress of yours — than to be the emperor of the world. There is nothing grander than to rescue from the leprosy of slander the reputation of a great and splendid man. SELECTIONS. 279 Civilization is the child of free thought. The New World has drifted away from the rotten wharf of superstition. The politics of this country are being settled by the new ideas of intellectual liberty. Parties and churches that cannot accept the new truths, must perish. OvK country will never be filled with great insti- tutions of learning until there is an absolute divorce between church and school. As long as the mutilated records of a barbarous people are placed by priest and professor above the reason of mankind, we shall reap but little benefit from church or school. I H.A.\Ti; HEi:\ in other countries and have said to myself, " After all, my country is the best." And when I came back to the sea and saw the old flag fiying, it seemed as though the air, from pure joy, had burst into blossom. I .\M in favor of the ta.xation of all church property. If that property belongs to God, he is able to pay the tax. If we exempt anything, let us exempt the homes of the widow and the orphan. 28o SRLI'CTKIXS. Bi'i' tiiovf.n's Sixth Symi'Iionv. — This sound- \\rc)ughl i)icturc of the holds and uocjds, of flowering hedge ;uul happN' home, w lu-re thrushes build and swallows f1y; and mothers sing to hahes ; this eeho of the babbled lullaby of brooks that. dall\ing, wind and fall w here meadows bare their daisittl bosoms to the sun; this jo\-ous mimiery of summer rain, the laugh of ehildren, and the rhythmic rustle of the whispering lea\ es ; this strophe of peasant life ; this perfect poem of content and love. 1'.\i:k\- religion has for its foundation a miracle — that is to sa)', a \-iolation of nature — that is to say, a falsehood. To work for others is, in rt-alit\', the only wav in which a m;m can work for himself Selfishness is ignorance. Ou r upon the intellectual sea there is room for every sail. In the intellectual air there is space for e\-er\- wing. Lo\i.; is the oidy thing that w ill pay ten per cent, to borrower and lender both. SltLIiCTIONS. 281 (ioi.i) iiii[)ovcrislics. Only the other day I was where they wrench it from the miserly clutch of the rocks. When I saw the mountains treeless, shrubless, flowerless — without even a s])ire of ^niss — it seemed to me that i^oid has the same effect upon the soil that holds it, as upon the man who lives and labors only for it. It affects the land as it does the man. It leaves the heart barren, without a flower of kindness, without a blossom of jjity. SciiiNCii; makes friends, relii^ion makes enemies. The one enriches, the other impoverishes. The one thrives best where the truth is told, the other where falsehoods are believed. ivoMi: was far Ijetter when Pa,!..(an than when (Jathtjlic. It was better to allow (gladiators and crim- inals to fight, than to burn honest men. A hI':liI':vi-:k is a bird in a cai^^e. A freethinker is an castle partinc; the clouds with tireU'SS wing. A CKi-:i-:o is the ignorant past bullying the en- lightened present. II.M'i'ixi'iss is the legal-tender of the soul. 282 SlilJ'CTIONS. A govI':knmI':n r fouiulctl upon anything;" except liberty can not and oui^ht not to staiul. All the wrecks on either shore of the stream of time — all the wrecks of cities and nations, are a warnini;- that no nation founded upon slavery can li\e. From sand- enshrouded Ro-ypt, from the marl)le wilderness of Athens, from exery fallen, cruiiiMinj;' stone of mighty Rome, conns a wail — a cry: " No nation founded on slax'cry, can stand." Orthodox ministers sit like owls on the ilead liiuhs of the tree of knowledge, and hoot the same old hoots that have been hooted for eighteen hundred years. IiVliR\' human being should take a road of his own. ' li\'er\- minil should be true to itself — should think, inxestigate, and conclude for itself. This is the diit\- a.like of paui)er and prince. Max stands with his back to the sunrise and mistakes his shatlow for (lod. Wr: go as far as we can, and the rest of the way we sav is — (".od. SKLF.CTIONS. 283 I LIKI-: to hear chiUlrcn at the tal)le ti.Uini;- what big things they have seen during the day. I hke to hear their merry voices mingUng with the clatter of knives and forks. I had rather hear that, than any opera that was ever put upon the stage. Hvi'RY day scjiiiethi ng ha|)pens to show nie that the old spirit of the inquisition still slumbers in the Christian breast. I WANT to see the time when every man, woman, and child will enjoy every human right. ThI' Cinikcii is, and always has been, incapable of a forward movement. Religion always looks back. A LI]'- will not fit a fact ; it will only fit another lie made U)V the purpose. Ki:i:i> \-our word with your child the same as you would with \-our banker. Scii:\ci<: will put another "o" in C^otl, and take a "d" from Devil. LOVE. OVE is the only bow on life's dark cloud. It is the morning and the evening star. It shines upon the babe, and sheds its radiance on the cjuiet tomb. It is the mother of art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart — builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody — for music is the voice of love. Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to joy, and make^ right royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts ; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods. ORIGIN AND DESTINY. C .|S a matter of fact, the questions of origin ^/^ '. yirl'U'-u ^^'""^ destiny are beyond the grasp of the J/^5^:S?V human mind. We can see a certain ^^ distance ; beyond that everything is in- distinct; and beyond the indistinct is the unseen. In the presence of these mysteries — and everything is a mystery so far as origin, destiny, and nature are concerned — the intclh- gent, honest man is compelled to say : " I do not know." In the great midnight a few truths, like stars, shine on forever — and from the brain of man come a (ew struggling gleams of light — a few momentary sparks. Some have contended that everything is spirit ; otliers, that everything is matter ; and again others, that a ])art is matter and apart is spirit; some, that spirit was first and matter after; others, that matter was first and spirit after, and others that matter and spirit have existed together. 286 ORIGIN AND DESTINY. But none of these people can by any possibility tell what matter is, or what spirit is, or what the difference is between spirit and matter. The materialists look upon the spiritualists as sub- stantially insane ; and the spiritualists regard the materialists as low and groveling. These spiritual- istic people hold matter in contempt ; but, after all, matter is quite a mystery. You take in your hand a little earth — a little dust. Do you know what it is ? In this dust you put a seed ; the rain falls upon it ; the light strikes it ; the seed grows ; it bursts into blossom ; it produces fruit. What is this dust — this womb ? Do you under- stand it? Is there anything in the wide universe more wonderful than this ? Take a grain of sand, reduce it to powder, take the smallest possible particle, look at it with a micro- scope, contemplate its every part for days, and it remains the citadel of a secret — an impregnable for- tress. Bring all the theologians, philosophers, and scientists in serried ranks against it ; let them attack on every side with all the arts and arms of thought and force. The citadel does not fall. Over the batUements floats the flag, and the victorious secret smiles at the baffled hosts. LIFE. "jORN of love and hope, of ecstacy and pain, of agony and fear, of tears and joy — dowered with the wealth of two united hearts — held in happy arms, with lips upon life's drifted font, blue-veined and fair, where perfect peace finds perfect form — rocked by willing feet and wooed to shadowy shores of sleep by siren mother singing soft and low — looking A\ith wonder's wide and startled eyes at common things of life and day — taught by want and wish and contact with the things that touch the dimpled flesh of babes — lured by light and flame, and charmed by color's A\'ondrous robes — learning the use of hands and feet, and by the love of mimicry beguiled to utter speech — releasing prisoned thoughts from crabbed and curious marks on soiled and tattered leaves — puzzling the brain with crooked numbers 288 LII.-E. and their changing', tangled worth — and so through years of alternating day and night, until the captive grows familiar with the chains and walls and limita- tions of a life. And time runs on in sun and shade, until the one of all the world is wooed and won, antl all the lore of love is taught and learned again. Again a home is built with the fair chamber wherein faint dreams, like cool and shadowy wales, divide the billowed hours of love. Again the miracle of a birth — the pain and joy, the kiss of welcome and the cradle-song drown- ing the drowsy prattle of a babe. And then the sense of obligation and of A\Tong — pity for those who toil and weep — tears for the imprisoned and despised — love for the generous dead, and i^the heart the rapture of a high resolve. And then ambition, ^\•ith its lust of pelf and place and power, longing to put uj)on its breast distinc- tion's worthless badge. Then keener thoughts of men, and eyes that see behind the smiling mask of craft — flattered no more by the obsequious cringe of gain and greed — knowing the uselessness of hoarded gold — of honor bought from those who charge the usury of self-respect — of power that only bends a LIFE. coward's knees and forces from the lips of fear the hes of praise. Knowing at last the unstudied gesture of esteem, the reverent eyes made rich with honest thought, and liolding high above all other things — high as hope's great throbbing star al)()ve the dark- ness of the dead — the love of wife and child and friend. Then locks of gray, and growing lo\e of other days and half-remembered things — then holding withered hands of those who first held his, while over dim and loving eyes death softh' presses down the lids of rest. And so, locking in marriage vows his children's hands and crossing others on the breasts of peace, with daughters' babes upon his knees, the white hair mingHng with the gold, he journeys on from day to day to that horizon where the dusk is waiting for the night. — At last, sitting by the holy hearth of home as evenings' embers change from red to gray, he falls asleep within the arms of her he ^\•orshipped and adored, feeling upon his pallid lips lo\-e's last and holiest kiss. Till' IllRniPLACl-: OF lUJRNS. 'l"h()iiti,li Scotland boasts a thousand nann Of patriot, kin_L; and peer, 'I'hc nol)k-st, yrandcsl of tlu-ni all Was loved and cradled here : Here lived the o'entle peasant-prince, The lo\ int;- cotter-king-, compared with wlioni tiie gri-atesl lortl Is l.ut a tilled thing. "lis hut a cot roofed in with straw, A hovel made of cla\ ; One door shuts out the snow and storm. One winilow greets the d.iy : And yet 1 stand witliin this room And hold all thrones in scorn ; For here, iiene.ith this lowl)' thatch. Love's swei'test hard was horn. Z' Within this hallowed hut I f,bed of its Sprint;', its Summer ami its Autumn. Children stej)pL(l h-om the cradle into the snow. No iaui^hter, no sunshine, no joyous, free, un- l)urtlcnetl days. God, an infinite detective, watched ihem from above, and Satan, with malicious leer, was waiting for their souls below. Between these monsters life was passed. Infinite conseciuences were predicatetl of the smallest action, and a burden greater than a (lod could l)ear was placed upon the heart and brain of c\ery child. To think, to ask questions, to doubtj to in\'estigate, were acts of rebellion. To express ])it\^ for the lost, writhing in the tlungeons below, was simjjly to gi\e e\iiUnce that the cnem)- of souls had been at work within their lu'arts. Among all the religit)ns of this world — from the creed of cannibals who de\-oured fiesh. to that of Cal- \'inists who pollutetl souls — there is none, there has been none, there will be n.one, more utterly heartless and inhuman than was the orthodo.x Congregational- ism of New England in the year of grace 1813. It A TRIHUTR. 293 despised every natund joy, hated pictures, aljliorrcd statues as lewtl and lustful things, execrated niusie, regarded nature as fallen and corrupt, man as totally depraved and woman as somewhat worse. The theatre was the vestibule of perdition, actors tiie sei"- vants of Satan, and Shakespeare a trilling wretch, whose words were seeds of death. And )et the virtues found a welcome, cordial and sincere; duty was done as understood; obligations were discharged; trutli was told; self-denial was practised for tlie sake of otiiers, and many hearts were good and trut' in spitt' of book and creed. In tins atmosphere of theological miasma, in this hideous dream of superstition, in this penitentiary, moral and .uistere, this babe first saw the imi)risoned gloom. The natural desires ungratified, the laughter sujjpressed, the logic brow-beaten by authority, the humor froxen by fiar — of many generations — were in this child, a child destined to rend and wreck the prison's walls. Through the grated windows (jf his cell, this child, this boy, this man, caught glimpses of the outer world, of fields and skies. New thoughts were in his brain, new hopes within his heart. Another heaven bent 294 A TRIBUTE. above his life. There eame a revelation of the beautiful and real. Theology grew mean and small. Nature wooed and won and saved this mighty soul. Her countless hands were sowing seeds within his tropic brain. All sights and sounds — all colors, forms and fragments — were stored within the treasury of his mind. His thoughts were moulded by the graceful cur\'es of streams, by winding paths in woods, the charm of (juiet country roads, and lanes grown indistinct A\ith weeds and grass — by vines that cling and hide with leaf and flower the crumbling wall's decay — by cattle standing in the summer pools like statues of content. There was within his words the subtle spirit of the season's change — of everything that is, of every- thing that lies between the slumbering seeds, that, half-awakened by the April rain, have dreams of heaven's blue, and feel the amorous kisses of the sun, and that strange tomb wherein the alchemist doth give to death's cold dust the throb and thrill of life again. He saw with loving eyes the willows of the meadow-streams grow red beneath the glance of Si)ring — the grass along the marsh's edge — the stir of life beneath the withered leaves — the moss A TRIIiUTE. 295 below the clri]) of snow — the flowers that give their bosoms to tile first south wind that wooes — the sad and timid violets that onh' bear the gaze of love from eyes half closed — the ferns, where fancy gives a thousand forms with but a single plan — the green and sunny slopes enriched with daisy's silver and the cowslip's gold. As in the leafless woods some tree, aflame with life, stands like a rapt poet in the heedless crowd, so stood this man among his fellow-men. All there is of leaf and bud, of flower and fruit, of painted insect life, and all the winged and happy children of the air that Summer holds beneath her dome of blue, were known and loved by liini. He loved the yellow Autumn fields, the golden stacks, the happy homes of men, the orchard's bending boughs, the sumach's flags of flame, the maples with transfigured leaves, the tender yellow of the beech, the wondrous harmonies of brown and gold — the vines where hang the clustered spheres of wit and mirth. He loved the winter days, the whirl and drift of snow — all forms of frost — the rage and furv of the storm, when in the forest, desolate and stri])ped, the brave old pine towers green and grand — a prophecy 290 A TRIBUTK. of Sprini;-. He heard the rhythmic sounds of Nature's busy strife, the hum of bees, the songs of birds, the eagle's cry, the murmur of the streams, the sighs and lamentations of the winds, and all the voices of the sea. He loved the shores, the vales, the crags and cliffs, the city's busy streets, the introspective, silent plain, the solemn splendors of the night, the silver sea of dawn, and evening's clouds of molten gold. The love of Nature freed this loving man. One by one the fetters fell; the gratings disappear- ed, the sunshine smote the roof, and on the floors of stone, light streamed from open doors. He realized the darkness and despair, the cruelty and hate, the starless blackness of the old, malignant creed. The flower of pity grew and blossomed in his heart. The selflsh "consolation" filled his eyes with tears. He saw that what is called the Christian's hope is, that, among the countless billions wrecked and lost, a meagre few perhaj)s may reach the eternal shore — a hope that, like the desert rain, gives neither leaf nor l)ud — a hope that gix'es no joy, no peace, to any great and loving soul. It is the dust on which the serpent feeds that coils in heartless breasts. l)a\' by day the wrath and vengeance faded from the sky — the Jewish God grew, vague and dim — A TRIBUTE. 297 the threats of torture and eternal pain grew vulgar and absurd, and all tlie miracles seemed strangely out of place. They clad the Infinite in motley garb, and gave to aureoled heads the cap and bells. Touched by the pathos of all human life, know- ing the shadows that fall on every heart — the thorns in every path, the sighs, the sorrows, and the tears that lie betw^een a mother's arms and death's embrace — this great and gifted man denounced, denied, and damned with all his heart the fanged and frightful dogma that souls were made to feed the eternal hunger — ra\-enous as famine — of a God's revenge. Take out this fearful, fiendish, heartless lie — compared A\ith which all other lies are true — and the great arch of orthodox religion crumbling falls. To tile a\ erage man the Christian hell and heaven are only words. He has no scope of thought. He lives but in a dim, im])overished n(jw. To him the past is dead — the future still unborn. He occupies with downcast eyes that narrow line of barren, shift- ing sand that lies between the flowing seas. Ikit (ienius knows all time. For him the dead all live and breathe, and act their countless parts again. All himian life is in his now, and every moment feels the thrill of all to be. 290 A TRIBUTIi. No one can overestimate the good accomplished by this marvelous, many-sided man. He helped to slay the heart-devouring monster of the Christian world. He tried to civilize the church, to humanize the creeds, to soften pious breasts of stone, to take the fear from mothers' hearts, the chains of creed from every brain, to put the star of hope in every sky and over every grave. Attacked on every side, maligned by those who preached the law of love, he wavered not, but fought whole-hearted to the end. Obstruction is but virtue's foil. From thwarted light leaps color's flame. The stream impeded has a song. He passed from harsh and cruel creeds to that serene philosophy that has no place for pride or hate, that threatens no revenge, that looks on sin as stum- blings of the blind and pities those who fall, knowing that in the souls of all there is a sacred yearning for the light. He ceased 10 think of man as some- thing thrust upon the world — an exile from some other sphere. He felt at last that men are part of Nature's self — kindred of all life — the gradual growth of countless years ; that all the sacred books were helps until outgrown, and all religions, rough and devious paths that man has worn with weary feet in TRIBUTK. 299 sad and painful search for truth and peace. To liim these paths were wrong, and yet all gave the promise of success. He knew that all the streams, no matter how they wander, turn and cur\'e amid the hills or rocks, or linger in the lakes and pools, must some time reach the sea. These views enlarged his soul and made him patient with the world, and while the wintry snows of age were falling on his head, Spring, with all her wealth of bloom, \\-as in his heart. The memory of this ample man is now a part of Nature's wealth. He battled for the rights of men. His heart was with the slave. He stood against the selfish greed of millions banded to protect the pirate's trade. His voice w^as for the right when freedom's friends were few. He taught the church to think and doubt. He did not fear to stand alone. His brain took counsel of his heart. To every foe he offered reconciliation's hand. He loved this land of ours, and added to its glory through the world. He was the greatest orator that stood within the pulpit's narrow curve. He loved the liberty of speech. There was no trace of bigot in his blood. He was a brave and generous man. With reverent hands, I place this tribute on his tomb. MRS. IDA WHITING KNOVVLES. 'Y FRIENDS : Again we stand in the til shadow of the great mystery — a shadow as deep and dark as when the tears of the first mother fell upon the pallid face of her lifeless babe — a mystery that has never yet been solved. We have met in the presence of the sacred dead, to speak a word of praise, of hope, of consolation. Another life of love is now a blessed memory — a lingering strain of music. The loving daughter, the ])ure and consecrated wife, the sincere friend, who with tender faithfulness discharged the duties of a life, has reached her journey's end. A braver, a more serene, a more chivalric spirit — clasping the loved and by them clasped — never passed from life to enrich the realm of death. No field of war e\-er witnessed greater fortitude, more perfect, smiling 302 A TRIHUTE. courage, than this poor, weak and helpless woman displayed upon the bed of pain and death. Her life was gentle and her death sublime. She loxed the good and all the good loved her. There is this consolation: she can nc\-er suffer more; nc\-cr feci again the chill of death; never part again fi-om thdse she loves. II cr heart can break no mori'. She has shed her last tear, and ujjon her stainless brow has been set the wondrous seal of everlasting peace. When the Angel of Death — the masked and voiceless — enters the dt)or of home, tliere come with her all the daughters of Compassion, and of these L()\e and Hope remain forever. You are al)out to take this dear dust home — to the home of lur girlhood, and to the place that was once my home. You will la\' her with neighbors whom I have loved, and who are ncnv at rest. You will lay her where my father sleeps. " Lay hcri' the earth, And from her fair and unpolluted tlesh May violets s]M-inj:i-." I never knew, I never me't, a bra\'er spirit than the one that once inhabited this silent form of dream- less clay. ART AND MORAIJTY. RT is the highest form of expression, and exists for the sake: of expression. Through art thoughts become visible. Hack of fjrnis ai"c the desire, the h)nging, thi: brooding creative instinct, the maternity of mind and the passion that gi\'e pose and swell, outline and color Of course there is no such thing as absolute beauty or absolute morality. We now clearlv per- ceix'e that beaut\' and conduct are relatixe. \\\; have outgrown the provincialism that thought is back of substance, as well as the old Platonic absurdit\-, that ideas existed before the subjects of thought. So far, at least, as man is concerned, his thoughts have been produced by his surroundings, by the action and inter- action of things upon his mind ; and so far as man is concerned, things have jjreceded thoughts. The 304 ART AND MORALITY. impressions that these things make upon us are what we know of them. The absolute is beyond the human mind. Our knowledge is eonfined to the relations that exist between the totality of things that we call the uni\'erse, antl the eftect upon ourselves. Actions are deemed right or wrong, according to experience and the conclusions of reason. Things are beautiful by the relation that certain forms, colors, and modes of expression bear to us. At the founda- tion of the beautiful will be found the fact of happiness, the gratification of the senses, the delight of intellec- tual discox'cry and the surprise and thrill of apprecia- tion. That which we call the beautiful, wakens into life through llie association of ideas, of memories, of experiences, of suggestions of pleasure past and the perception that the prophesies of the ideal have been and will be fulfilled. Art cultivates and kindles the imagination, and c|uickens the conscience. It is by imagination that we put ourselves in the place of another. When the wings of that faculty are folded, the master does not put himself in the place of the slave; the tyrant is not locked in the dungeon, chained with his victim. The inquisitor did not feel the fiames that devoured the ART AND MORALITY. 305 martyr. The imai^inative man, giving to the beggar, gives to himself. Those who feel indignant at the perpetration of \\-rong, feel for the instant that they are the victims; and when they attack the aggressor they feel that they are defending themselves. Love and pity are the children of the imagination. Our fathers read with great approbation the me- chanical sermcMis in rhyme written by Milton, Young and Pollok. Those theological poets wTOte f(jr the purpose of convincing their readers that the mind of man is diseased, filled with infirmities, and that poetic poultices and plasters tend to purify and strengthen the moral nature of the human race. Nothing to the true artist, to the real genius, is so contemptible as the "medicinal \iew." Poems \\'ere written to prove that the jjractice of virtue was an investment for another world, and that whoev^er followed the advice found in those solemn, insincere and lugubricnis rhymes, although he might be exceedingly unhappy in this world, would with great certainty be rewarded in the next. These writers assumed that there was a kind of relation between rhyme and religion, between verse and virtue ; and that it was their duty to call the attention 3o6 ART AND MORALITY. of the world to all the snares and pitfalls of pleasure. They wrote with a purpose. They had a distinct moral end in \iew. They had a plan. They were missionaries, and their object was to show the world how wicked it \\as and how good they, the writers, were. They could not conceive of a man being so happy that everything in nature partook of his feeling; that all the birds were singing for him, and singing by reason of his joy ; that everything sparkled and shone and mo\ed in the glad rhythm of his heart. The)- could nt)t appreciate this feeling. They could not think of this joy guiding the artist's hand, seeking expression in form and color. They tlid not look upon poems, ))ictures, and statues as results, as children of the brain fathered by sea and sky, by flower and star, by love: and light. They were not moved 1)\- gladness. They felt the responsibility of perpetual duty. They had a desire to teach, to ser- monizi-, to point out and exaggerate the faults of others and to describe the virtues practiced by them- selves. Art became a colporteur, a distributer of tracts, a mendicant missionary whose highest ambi- tion was to suppress all heathen joy. Happy people were supposed to have forgotten. ART AND MORALITY. 307 in ;i reckless moment, dut)' and rcsponsihility. True poetry would call them back to a realization of their meanness and their misery. It was the skeleton at the feast, the rattle of whose bones had a rhythmic sound. It was the forefini^er of warnin;^" and doom held uj) in the |)resence of a smile. These moral poets taui;ht the "unwelcome truths," and by the |)aths of life put posts on which they painted hands ])ointing at graves. They loved to see the pallor on the cheek of youth, while they talked, in solemn tones, of age, decrepitude and lifeless clay. Before the eyes of love they thrust, with eager hands, the skull of death. They crushed the flowers beneath their feet and plaited crowns of thorns for every brow. According to these poets, happiness was incon- sistent with virtue. The sense of infinite obligation should be perpetually present. They assumed an attitude of superiority. They denounced and calum- niated the reader. They enjoyed his confusion when charged with total depravity. They loved to paint the sufferings of the lost, the Avorthlessness of human life, the littleness of mankind, and the beautii's of an unknown world. They knew but little of the heart. 308 ART AND IMORALIT'S'. They did not know that without passion there is no virtue, and that the really passionate are the virtuous. Art has nothing to do directly with morality or immorality. It is its own excuse for being ; it exists for itself. The artist who endeavors to enforce a lesson, becomes a preacher ; and the artist who tries by hint and suggestion to enforce the immoral, becomes a pander. There is an infinite difference between the nude and the naked, between the natural and the undressed. In the presence of the pure, unconscious nude, nothing can be more contemptible than those forms in which are the hints and suggestions of drapery, the pre- tence of exposure, and the failure to conceal. The undressed is vulgar — the nude is pure. The old Greek statues, frankly, proudly nude, whose free and perfect limbs have never known the sacrilege of clothes, were and are as free from taint, as pure, as stainless, as the image of the morning- star trembling in a drop of perfumed dew. Morality is the harmony between act and circum- stance. It is the melody of conduct. A wonderful statue is the melody of proportion. A great picture ART AND MORALITY. 309 is the melody of form and color. A threat statue does not suggest labor ; it seems to have been created as a joy. A great painting suggests no weariness and no effort ; the greater, the easier it seems. So a great and splendid life seems to have been without effort. There is in it no idea of oljjigation, no idea of respon- siljility or of duty. Tlie idea of dut)' changes to a kind of drudgery that which should be, in the perfect man, a perfect pleasure. The artist, working simply for the sake of enforc- ing a moral, becomes a laborer. The freedom of genius is lost, and the artist is absorbed in the citizen. The soul of the real artist should l)e moved by this melody of proportion as the body is unconsciouslv swayed by the rhythm of a symphony. No one can imagine that the great men who chiseled the statues of antiquity intended to teach the youth of Greece to be obedient to their parents. We cannot believe that Michael Angelo painted his grotesque and somewhat vulgar " I)av of Judgment" for the purpose of reform- ing Italian thieves. The subject ^\■as in all probability selected Ijy his employer, and the treatment was a question of art, without the slightest reference to the moral effect, even upon priests. We are perfectly 3IO ART AND MORALITY. certain that Corot painted those infinitely poetic land- scapes, those cottages, those sad poplars, those leafless vines on weather-tinted walls, those quiet pools, those contented cattle, those fields flecked with light, over Avhich bend the skies, tender as the breast of a mother, Avithout once thinking of the ten commandments. There is the same difference between moral art and the product of true genius, that there is between prudery and Airtue. The novelists who endeavor to enforce what they are pleased to call "moral truths," cease to be artists. They create two kinds of characters — types and caricatures. The first never has li\-ed, and the second never will. The real artist produces neither. In his pages you will find individuals, natural people, who have^he contradictions and inconsistencies insepar- able from humanity. The great artists " hold the mirror up to nature," and this mirror reflects with ab- solute accuracy. The moral and the immoral writers — that is to say, those who have some object besides that of art — use convex or concave mirrors, or those with uneven surfaces, and the result is that the images are monstrous and deformed. The little novelist and the little artist deal either in the impossible or the ART AND MORALITY. 31I exceptional. The men of genius touch the unixersal. Their words and worlds throb in unison with the great eiob and flow of things. They write and work for all races and for all time. It has been the object of thousands of reformers to destroy the passions, to do awav with desires ; and could this object be accomplished, life would become a burden, with but one desire — that is to sa\', the de- sire for extinction. Art in its highest forms increases passion, gi\-es tone and color and zest to life. But while it increases passion, it reiines. It extends the horizon. The bare necessities of life constitute a prison, a dungeon. Under the influence of art the walls expand, the roof rises, and it loecomes a temple. Art is not a sermon, and the artist is not a preacher. Art accomplishes by indirection. The beautiful refines. The perfect in art suggests the perfect in conduct. The harmony in music teaches, without intention, the lesson of proportion in life. The bird in his song has no moral purpose, and yet the influence is humanizing. The beautiful in nature acts through appreciation and sympathy. It does not browbeat, neither does it humiliate. It is beauti- ful without regard to you. Roses would be unbear- 312 ART AND MORALITY. able if in their red and perfumed hearts were mottoes to the effect that bears eat bad boys and that honesty- is the best poHcy. Art creates an atmosphere in which the proprie- ties, the amenities, and the virtues unconsciously grow. The rain does not lecture the seed. The light does not make rules for the vine and flower. The heart is softened by the pathos of the perfect. The world is a dictionary of the mind, and in this dictionary of things genius discovers analogies, resem- blances, and parallels amid opposites, likeness in difterence, and corroboration in contradiction. Lan- guage is but a multitude of pictures. Nearly every word is a work of art, a picture represented by a sound, and this sound represented by a mark, and this iiiark gi\'es not only the sound, but the picture of something in the outward world and the picture of something within the mind, and with these words which were once pictures, other pictures are made. The greatest pictures and the greatest statues, the most wonderful and marvelous groups, have been painted and chiseled with words. They are as fresh to-day as when they fell from human lips. Penelope still ravels, weaves, and waits ; Ulysses' bow is bent, ART AND MORALITY. 3 13 and through the level rings the eager arrow flies. Cordelia's tears are falling now. The greatest gallery of the world is found in Shakespeare's book. The pictures and the marbles of the Vatican and Louvre are faded, crumbling things, compared with his, in which perfect color gives to perfect form the glow and movement of passion's highest Hie. Everything e.xcept the truth wears, and needs to wear, a mask. Little souls are ashamed of nature. Prudery pretends to ha\'e only those passions that it cannot feel.' Moral poetry is like a respectable canal that never overflows its banks. It has wen's through which slowly and without damage any excess of feeling is allowed to flow. It makes excuses for nature, and regards lo\-e as an interesting con\-ict. Moral art paints or chisels feet, faces, and rags. It regards the l)ody as obscene. It hides with drapery that which it has not the genius purely to portray. Mediocrity becomes moral from a necessity which it has the impudence to call virtue. It pretends to re- gard ignorance as the foundation of purity and insists that virtue seeks the companionship of the blind. Art creates, combines, and reveals. It is the highest manifestation of thought, of passion, of love, 314 ART AND MORALITY. of intuition. It is the highest form of expression, of history and prophesy. It allows us to look at an unmasked soul, to fathom the abysses of passion, to understand the heights and depths of love. Compared with what is in the mind of man, the outward world almost ceases to excite our wonder. The impression produced b\' mountains, seas, and stars is not so great, so thrilling, as the music of Wagner. The constellations themselves grow small when we read " Troilus and Cressida," " Hamlet," or "Lear." What are seas and stars in the presence of a heroism that holds pain and death as naught? What are seas and stars compared with human hearts ? What is the quarr\' compared with the statue ? Aft civilizes because it enlightens, develops, strengthens, ennobles. It deals with the beautiful, with the passionate, with the ideal. It is the child of the heart. To be great, it must deal with the human. It must be in accordance with the experience, with the hopes, with the fears, and with the possibilities of man. No one cares to paint a palace, because there is nothing in such a picture to touch the heart. It tells of responsibility, of the prison, of the conventional. ART AND MORALITY. 315 It suggests a load — il k-Ils of apprehension, of weari- ness and ennui, 'llic ])icUux: of a cottage, over which runs a \ ine, a little liouic ihalclutl witli content, with its simple life, its natural sunshine and shadow, its trees bending with fruil, its hollyhocks and pinks, its happy children, its hum of bees, is a jjfjem — a snn'le in the desert of this world. 'I'he great lady, in \el\-et and jewels, makes but a poor picture. There is not freedom enough in her life. She is constrained. She is too far away from tin: simplicit)' of happiness. In her thought thc'i-e is t(jo much of the mathematical. In all ai't you will find a touch of chaos, of libert\' ; and there is in all artists a little of the vagabond — that is to say, genius. The nude in art has rendered holy the beaut)- of woman. K\cry (ireek statue pleads for mothers and sisters, b'rom these marbles come strains of music. They ha\'e filled the heaiT of man with tenderness and worship. The\' have kindUd reverence, admir.i- tion and love. Tin- Venus de .Milo, that even mutila- tion cannot mar, tends only to the elexation of our race. It is a miracle (jf majesty and beauty, the supreme idea of the supreme woman. It is a melody 3l6 ART AND MORALITY. in marble. All the lines meet in a kind of voluptuous and glad content. The pose is rest itself. The eyes are filled with thoughts of love. The breast seems dreaming of a child. The prudent is not the poetic ; it is the matliemat- ical. Genius is the spirit of abandon ; it is joyous, irresponsible. It moves in the swell and curve of billows ; it is careless of conduct and consequence. For a moment, the chain of cause and effect seems broken ; the soul is free. It gives an account not e\en to itself Limitations are forgotten ; nature seems obedient to the will ; the, ideal alone exists ; the uni- verse is a symphonv. Every brain is a gallery of art, and exerv soul is, to a greater or less degree, an artist. The pictures andstatues that now enrich and adorn the walls and niches of the world, as well as those that illuminate the pages of its literature, were taken originally from the private galleries of the brain. The soul — that is to say the artist — compares the pictures in its own brain with the pictures that have been taken from the galleries of others and made visible. This soul, this artist, selects that which is nearest perfection in each, takes such parts as it deems ART AND MORALITY. ' 317 perfect, puts them toy,-ether, forms new pictures, new statues, and in this way creates the ideal. To express desires, longings, ecstacies, prophecies and passions in form and color; to put love, hope, heroism and triumph in marble ; to paint dreams and memories with words ; to portray the purity of dawn, the intensity and gior\' of noon, the tenderness of twilight, the splendor and mystery of night, with sounds ; to give the invisible to sight and touch, and to enrich the common things of earth with'^ gems and jewels of the mind — this is Art. TRIBUTE TO ROSCOE CONKLING Pi-livcred he/ore the Xeiu York State Legislature, at Albany, N. Y., May g. *^(1SC0E CONKLING — a great man, an orator, a statesman, a lawyer, a dis- tinguished citizen of the RepubHc, in the zenith of his fame and power has reached his journey's end ; and we are met, here in the city of his birth, to pay our tribute to his worth and work. He earned and held a proud position in the public thought. He stood for independence, for courage, and abo\'e all for absolute integrity, and his name was known and honored by man\' millions of his fellow men. The literature of many lands is rich with the tributes that gratitude, admiration and \o\c have paid to the great and honored dead. These tributes disclose the character of nations, the ideals of the human race. In them we find the estimates of 320 A TRIBUTE. greatness — the deeds and lives that challenged praise and thrilled the hearts of men In the presence of death, the good man judges as he \\ould be judged. He knows that men are only fragments — that the greatest walk in shadow, and that faults and failures mingle with the lives of all. In the grave should be buried the prejudices and passions born of conflict. Charity should hold the scales in which are weighed the deeds of men. Peculiarities, traits born of locality and surround- ings — these are but the dust of the race — these are accidents, drapery, clothes, fashions, that have nothing t(^ do with the man except t(^ hide his character. They are the clouds that cling to moun- tains. Time gives us clearer \ision. That which was merely local fades away. The words of envy are forgotten, and all there is of sterling worth remains. He who was called a partisan is a patriot. The revolutionist and the outlaw are the founders of nations, and he who was regarded as a scheming, selfish politician becomes a statesman, a philosopher, whose words and deeds shed light. A TRIBUTE 321 Fortunate is that nation ^rcat cnoug-h to know the great. When a great man dies — one who has nobly fought the l)attle of a hfe, who has Ijeen faithful t(j ever)' trust, and has uttered his highest, noblest thought — one who has stood proudly b)' the right in spite of jeer and taunt, neither stop]Kd by foe nor swxTved by friend — in honoring him, in speaking words of praise and love aboxe his dust, w^e pay a tribute to ourselves. How poor this w^orld would Ije without its graves, without the memories of its mighty dead. Only the voiceless speak forever. Intelligence, integrity and courage are the great pillars that support the State. Abo\e all, the citizens of a free nation should honor the brave and independent man — the man of stainless integrity, of will and intellectual force. Such men are the Atlases on whose mighty shoulders rest the great fabric of the republic. Flatterers, cringers, crawlers, time-servers are the dangerous citizens of a democracy. They who gain applause and power by pandering to the mistakes, the preju- dices and passions of the multitude, are the enemies of liberty. 322 A TRIBUTE. When the intclhgent submit to the clamor of the many, anarchy begins and the repubhc reaches the edge of chaos. Mediocrity, touched with ambition flatters the base and calumniates the great, while the true patriot, who will do neither, is often sacrificed. In a government of the people a leader should be a teacher — he should carry the torch of truth. Most people are the sla\x's of habit — followers of custom — believers in the wisdom of the past — and were it not for brave and splendid souls, " the dust of antique time would lie unswept, and mountainous error be too highly heaped for truth to overpeer." Custom is a prison, locked and barred by those who long ago were dust, the keys of which are in the keeping of the dead. Nothing is grander than when a strong, intrepid man breaks chains, levels walls and breasts the many- headed mob like some great cliff tliat meets and mocks the innumerable billows of the sea. The politician hastens to agree with the majority — insists that their prejudice is patriotism, that their ignorance is wisdom; — not that he loves them, but because he loves himself The statesman, the real A TRIHUTH. 323 reformer, points out the mistakes of the multitude, attaclcs the prcjudiees of his countrymen, laughs at their follies, denounces their cruelties, enlightens and enlarges their minds and educates the conscience — not because he loves himself, but because he loves and ser\-es the right and wishes to make his country great and free. With him deieat is but a spur to further effort. He who refuses to stoop, \\ho cannot be briljcd by the promise of success, or the fear of failure — who walks the highway of the right, and in disaster stands erect, is the only \ictor. Nothing is more despicable than to reach fame b\- crawling, — position by cring-. ing. When real history shall Ijc written by the truthful and the wise, these men, these kneelers at the shrines of chance and fraud, these brazen idols worshipped once as gods, \v\\\ lie the \-ery food of scorn, while those who bore the burden of defeat, who earned and kept their self-respect, wh(j would not bow to man or men for place or power, will wear upon their brows the laurel mingled with the oak. Roscoi': CoNKLiNc; A\as a man of superb courage. 324 A TKIHUTK. lie not only acted without fear, but he had that fortitude of soul that bears the consequences of the course jjursued without ctjmplaint. He was charged with being proud. The charge was true — he was proud. His knees were as inflexible as the " un- wedgeable and gnarled oak," but he was not \:un. Vanity rests on the ojiinion of others — pride, on our own. The source of \anity is from without — of pride, from within. X'anity is a vane that turns, a willow that bends, \\ith c:\^ery breeze — pride is the 'oak that defies the storm. One is cloud — the other rock. One is weakness — the other strength. This imperious man entered public life in the dawn of the reft>rmation — at a time when the country needed men of pride, of principle and courage. The institution o{ slaxerv had poisoned all the springs of power. Bef(M-e this crime ambition fell upon its knees, — politicians, judges., clergymen, and merchant- princes bowed low and humbly, with their hats in their hands. The real friend of man was denounced as tlie enemv of his country — the real enemy of the human race was called a statesman and a patriot. Slavery was the bond and pledge of peace, of union. A TRIIUJTi:. 325 antl national greatness. The teni])le of iVnieriean liberty was finished — the auetion-bloek was the cornei--stonc. It is hard to eonccive of the utter demoralization, of the political blindness and immorality, of the ])atriotic dishonesty, of the cruelty and degradation of a people who supjjlemented the incomparable Declaration of Independence with the rugitive Slave Law. 'I'iiiiik of the honored statesmen of that ignoble time \\lu) wallowed in this mire and who, decorated with dripping filth, received the plaudits of their fellow-men. The noble, the really patriotic, were the victims of mobs, and the shameless were clad in the robes o( office. P.ut let us speak no wcjrtl of blame — let us feel that each one acted according to his light — according to liis darkness. .At last the conflict came. The hosts of light antl darkness prepared to meet upon the fields of war. The question was presented : Shall the Repul)lic be slave or free? The Republican party had triumphed at the polls. The greatest man in our history was 326 A TRIBUTE. President elect. The victors were appalled — they shrank from the great responsibility of success. In the presence of rebellion they hesitated — they offered to return the fruits of \ictory. Hoping to avert war they were willing that slavery should become im- mortal. An amendment to the Constitution was proi)osed, to the effect that ncj sul)sequent amendment should e\er be made that in any wa\' should interfere w ith the right of man to steal his fellow-men. This, the most marvellous proposition ever sub- mitted to a Congress of civilized men, received in the House an overwhelming majority, and the necessary two-thirds in the Senate. The Republican party, in the moment o( its triumjjh, deserted every principle for which it had so gallantly contended, ahd with the trenlbling hands of fear laid its convictions on the altar of compromise. The Old Guartl, numbering but sixty-five in the House, stood as firm as the three hundred at Thermopylae. Thaddeus Stevens — as maliciously right as any other man was ever wrong — refused to kneel. Owen Lovejoy, remembering his brother's noljle blood, refused to surrender, and on the edge of A TRIBUTE. 327 disunion, in the shadow of civil war, \\'ith the air filled with sounds of dreadful preparation, while the Republican ])arty was retracing its steps, Roscoii CoNKi.iNG voted No. This puts a wreath of glory on his tomb. From that \()te to the last moment ot his life he was a chanijiion of equal rights, staunch and stalwart. Prom that moment he stood in the front rank. He ne\'er wavered and he ne^'er swerved. By his devotion to principle — his courage, the splendor of his diction, — by his \aried and profound knowledge, his conscientious devotion to the great cause, and by his intellectual scope and grasp, he won and held the admiration of his fellow-men. Disasters in the field, re\'erses at the polls, did not and could not shake his courage or his faith. He knew the ghastly meaning of defeat. He knew that the great ship that slavery sought to strand and wreck \\'as freighted \\ith the world's sublimest hope. He battled for a nation's life — for the rights of slaves — the dignity of laljor, and the liberty of all. He guarded with a father's care the rights of the 328 A TRIBUTE. hunted, the hated and despised. He attacked the savage statutes of the reconstructed States with a torrent of invective, scorn and execration. He \\as not satisiied until the freedman was an American Citizen — clothed with every civil right — until the Constitution was his shield — until the ballot was his sword. And long after we are dead, the colored man in this and other lands will speak his name in reverence and love. Others wavered, but he stood firm ; some were false, but he was proudly true — fearlessly faith- ful unto death. He gladly, proudly grasped the hands of colored men who stood with him as makers of our laws, and treated them as equals and as friends. The cry of " social equality " coined and uttered by the cruel and the base, was to him the expression of a great and splendid truth. He knew that no man can be the equal of the one he robs — that the intelligent and unjust are not the superiors of the ignorant and honest — and he also felt, and proudly felt, that if he were not too great to reach the hand of help and recognition to the slave, no other senator could right- fully refuse A TRinUTH. 329 We rise by raising others — and he who stoops above the fallen, stands erect. Nothing can be grander than to sow the seeds of noble thoughts and virtuous deeds — to liberate the bodies and the souls of men — to earn the grateful homage of a race — and then, in life's last shadowy hour, to know that the historian of Liberty will be compelled to write your name. There are no words intense enough, — with heart enough — to express my admiration for the great and gallant souls who have in every age and every land upheld the right, and who have lived and died for freedom's sake. In our lives have been the grandest years that man has lived, that Time has measured by the flight of worlds. The history of that great Party that let the oppressed go free — that lifted our nation from the depths of savagery to freedom's cloudless heights, and tore with holy hands from every law the words that sanctified the cruelty of man, is the most glorious in the annals of our race. Never before was there such a moral exaltation — never a party with a pur- 330 A TRIBl'TK. pose SO pure and high. It was the embodied con- scienee of a nation, the enthusiasm of a people guided l:)y wisdom, the impersonation of justice; and the suljHme victory achieved loaded even the conquered with all the rights that freedom can bestow. Roscoi': CoNKLiNCr was an absolutely honest man. Honesty is the oak around which all other \irtues cling. Without that the\' fall, and gro\'eling die in weeds and dust. He belie\ed that a nation should discharge its obligations. He knew that a promise could not be made often enough, or emphatic enough, to take the jjlace of payment. He felt that the promise of the go\'ernment \\as the promise of every citizen — that a national obligation was a personal debt, and that no possible combination of words and pictures could take the place of coin. He uttered the splendid truth that "the higher obligations among men are not set down in writing signed and sealed, but reside in honor." He knew that repudiation was the sacrifice of honor — the death of the national soul. He knew that without charac- ter, without integrity, there is no wealth, and that below poverty, below bankruptcy, is the rayless abyss A TRUiUTE. 331 of rci)LKliation. lie uidicld the sacrcdncss of con- tracts, of plighted national faith, and helped to save' and keep the honor of his native land. This adds another laurel to his br(n\-. He was the ideal representative, faithful and incorruptible. He believed that his constituents and his country were entitled to the fruit of his experience, to his best and highest thought. No man ever held the standard of responsibility higher than he. He voted according to his judgment, his. conscience. He made no bargains — he neither bought nor sold. To correct evils, abolish abuses and inaugurate reforms, he believed was not only the duty, but the privilege, of a legislator. He neither sold nor mort- gaged himself. He was in Congress during the years of vast expenditure, of war and waste — when the credit of the nation was loaned to individuals — when claims were thick as leaves in June, when the amendment of a statute, the change of a single word, meant millions, and when empires were given to cor- porations. He stood at the summit of his power — peer of the greatest — a leader tried and trusted. He had the tastes of a prince, the fortune of a peasant, 332 A TRIBUTE. and yet he never swerved. No corporation was great enough or rich enough to purchase him. His vote could not be bought "for all the sun sees, or the close earth wombs, or tlie profound seas hide." His hand was never touched by any bribe, and on his soul there never was a sordid stain. Poverty was his priceless crown. Above his marvellous intellectual gifts — above all place he ever reached, — above the ermine he refused, — rises his integrity like some great mountain peak — and there it stands, firm as the earth beneath, pure as the stars above. He was a great lawyer. He understood the frame-work, the anatomy, the foundations of law ; was familiar with the great streams and currents and tides of authority. He knew the history of legislation — the principles that have been settled upon the fields of war. He knew the maxims, — those crystallizations of common sense, those hand-grenades of argument. He was not a case-lawyer — a decision index, or an echo; he was original, thoughtful and profound. He had breadth and scope, resource, learning, logic, and above A TkinuTE. 333 all, a sense of justice. He was painstaking and con- scientious — anxious to know the facts — preparing for e\-er\" attack, ready for e\'er\' defence. He rested onl}' when the end A\'as reached. During the contest, he neither sent nor received a flag of truce. He was true to his clients — making their case his. Feeling responsibilit}-, he listened patiently to details, and to his industry there were only the limits cjf time and strength. He was a student of the Constitution. He knew the boundaries of State and Federal jurisdiction, and no man was more familiar with those great de- cisions that are the peaks and promontories, the headlands and the beacons, of the law. He was an orator, logical, — earnest, intense and picturesque. He laid the foundation with care, with accuracy and skill, and rose by "cold gradation and well balanced form "' from the corner-stone of state- ment to the domed conclusion. He filled the stage. He satisfied the eye — the audience was his. He had that indefinable thing called presence. Tall, commanding, erect — ample in speech, graceful in compliment, Titanic in denunciation, rich in illustra- tion, prodigal of comparison and metaphor — and his 334 A TRIBUTF. sentences, measured and rhythmical, fell like music on the enraptured throng-. He abhorred the Pharisee, and loathed all con- scientious fraud. He had a profound aversion for those who insist on putting base motives back of the good deeds of others. He wore no mask. He knew his friends — his enemies knew him. He had no patience with pretence — with patriotic reasons for unmanly acts. He did his work and bravely spoke his thought. Sensitive to the last degree, he keenly felt the blows and stabs of the enxious and obscure — of the smallest, of the weakest — l)ut the greatest could not drive him from conviction's field. He would not stoop to ask or give an explanation. He left his words and deeds to justify themselves. He held in light esteem a friend who heard with half-believing ears the slander of a foe. He walked a highway of his own, and kept the company of his self-respect. He would not turn aside to avoid a foe — to greet or gain a friend. In his nature there was no compromise. To him there were but two paths — the right and wrong. A TRIBUTH 335 lie was nialii^ncd, niisreprcscnted and misunder- stood — but he would not answer. He knew that character speaks louder far than any words. He was as silent then as he is now — and his silence, better than any form of speech, refuted every charge. He was an American — proud of his countrv, that was and e\'er will be proud of him. He did not find perfection only in other lands. He did not grow small and shrunken, withered and apologetic, in the presence of those upon whom greatness had been thrust l)y chance. He could not be overawed by dukes or lords, nor flattered into xertebrateless sub- serviency by the patronizing smiles of kings. In the midst of conventionalities he had the feeling of suffocation. He believed in the royaltv of man, in the sovereignty of the citizen, and in the matchless greatness of this Republic. He \\as of the classic mould — a figure from the antitpie world. He had the pose of the great statues — the pride and bearing of the intellectual Greek, of the conquering Roman, and he stood in the wide free air, as though within his veins there flowed the blood of a hundred kinsjs. 336 A TRinUTIt. And as he lived he died. Proudly he entered the darkness — or the dawn — that we call death. Un- shrinkingly he passed beyond our horizon, beyond the twilight's purple hills, beyond the utmost reach of human harm or help — to that vast realm of silence or of jov where the innumerable dwell, and he has left Avith us his wealth of thought and deed — the memory of a brave, imperious, honest man, who bowed alone to death. A tribute: COURTLANDT PALMER. FRIENDS : A thinker of ])urc thoughts, a speaker of bra\e words, a doer of generous deeds has reaehed _ _^^ . , the silent ha\en that all the dead have 4-'^(©)q - reached, and where the Aoyage of ever)' life must end ; and we, his friends, who even now are hastening after him, are met to do the last kind acts that man may do for man — to tell his \'irtues and to la}- with tenderness and tears his ashes in the sacred place of rest and peace. Some one has said that in the open hands of death we find only what they ga\'e away. Let us beliexe that pure thoughts, bra\e words and generous deeds can never die. Let us believe 338 A TRIBUTE. that they bear fruit and add forever to the well-being of the human race. Let us believe that a noble, self- denying life increases the moral wealth of man, and gives assurance that the future will be grander than the past. In the monotony of subservience, in the multitude of blind followers, nothing is more inspiring than a free and independent man — one who gives and asks reasons ; one who demands freedom and gives what he demands ; one who refuses to be slave or master. Such a man was Couktlandt Palmer, to whom we pay the tribute of respect and love. He was an honest man — he gave the rights he claimed. This was the foundation on which he built. To think for himself — to give his thought to others ; this was to him not only a privilege, not only a right, but a duty. He believed in self-preservation — in personal in- dependence — that is to say, in manhood. He preserved the realm of mind from the invasion of brute force, and protected the children of the brain from the Herod of authority. He investigated for himself the questions, the problems and the mysteries of life. Majorities were A TRIBUTE. 339 nothing to him. No error could be old enough — popular, plausible or profitable enough — to bribe his judgment or to keep his conscience still. He knew that, next to finding truth, the greatest joy is honest search. He was a believer in intellectual hospitality, in the fair exchange of thought, in good mental manners, in the amenities of the soul, in the chivalry of discussion. He insisted that those who speak should hear ; that those who question should answer ; that each should strive not for a victory over others, but for the discovery of truth, and that truth when found should be welcomed by every human soul. He knew that truth has no fear of investigation — of being understood. He knew that truth loves the day — that its enemies are ignorance, prejudice, ego- tism, bigotry, hypocrisy, fear and darkness, and that intelligence, candor, honesty, love and light are its eternal friends. He believed in the morality of the useful — that the virtues are the friends of man — the seeds of joy. He knew that consequences determine the quality of actions, and " that whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap." 340 A TRIBUTE. Ill the positive pliilosophy of August Comte he found the framework of his creed. In the conckisions of that great, sublime and tender soul he found the rest, the serenity and the certainty he sought. The clouds had fallen from his life. He saw that the old faiths were but phases in the growth of man — that out from the darkness, up from the depths, the human race through countless ages and in every land had struggled towards the ever-growing light. He felt that the living are indebted to the noble dead, and that each should pay his debt ; that he should pay it by preserving to the extent of his power the good he has, by destroying the hurtful, by adding to tlie knowledge of the world, by giving better than he had received ; and that each should be the bearer of Jif torch, a giver of light for all that is, for all to be. This was the religion of duty perceived, of duty within the reach of man, within the circumference of the known — a religion without mystery, with experi- ence for the foundation of belief — a religion understood by the head and approved by the heart — a religion that appealed to reason with a definite end in view — the civilization and de\'elopment of the human race by A TRIBUTE. 341 legitimate, adequate and natural means — that is to sav, by ascertaining the ct)nditions of progress and by teaching each to be noble enough to live for all. This is the gospel of man ; this is the gospel of this world; this is the religion of humanity; this is a philosophy that contemplates not with scorn, but with ])ity, with admiration and with love all that man has done, regarding, as it does, the past with all its faults and virtues, its sufferings, its cruelties and crimes, as the only road by which the perfect could be reached. He denied the supernatural — the phantoms and the ghosts that fill the twilight-land of fear. To him and for him there was but one religion — the religion of pure thoughts, of noble words, of self- denying deeds, of honest work for all the -world — the religion of Help and Hope. Facts were the foundation of his faith ; history was his prophet; reason his guide; duty his deity; happiness the end ; intelligence the means. He knew that man must be the providence of man. He did not believe in Religion and Science, but in the Relidon of Science — that is to sav, wisdom 342 A TRIBUTE. glorified by love, the Saviour of our race — the religion that conquers prejudice and hatred, that drives all superstition from the mind, that enobles, lengthens and enriches life, that drives from every home the wolves of want, from every heart the fiends of selfishness and fear, and from every brain the monsters of the night. He lived and labored for his fellow-men. He sided with the weak and poor against the strong and rich. He welcomed light. His face was ever towards the East. According to his light he lived. "The world was his country — to do good his religion." There is no language to express a nobler creed than this ; nothing can be grander, more comprehensive, nearer perfect. This was the creed that glorified his life and made his death sublime. He was afraid to do wrong, and for that reason was not afraid to die. He knew that the end was near. He knew that his work was done. He stood within the twilight, within the deepening gloom, knowing that for the last time the gold was fading from the West and that there could not fall again within his eyes the A TRinUTIL ,343 trcml)lin>;- lustre of another dawn. He knew that iiiglit had come, and )et his soul was filled with light, for in that night the memory of his generous deeds shone out like stars. What can Ave sa}' ? What words can solve the mystery of life, the mvstery of death ? What words can justly pay a tribute to the man who lived to his ideal, who spoke his honest thought, and who was turned aside neither by envv, nor hatred, nor contu- mely, nor slander, nor scorn, nor fear ? What words will do that life the justice that we know and feel ? A heart breaks, a man dies, a leaf falls in the far forest, a babe is born, and the great world sweeps on. By the grave of man stands the angel of Silence. No one can tell which is better — Life with its gleams and shadows, its thrills and pangs, its ecstasy and tears, its wreaths and thorns, its croAvns, its glories and Golgothas, or Death, with its peace, its rest, its cool and placid brow that hath within no memory or fear of grief or pain. Farewell, dear friend. The world is better for your life — The world is braver for your death. Farewell ! We loved you living, and we love you now. TRIBUTE TO RICHARD H. WHITING. FRIENDS: The river of another hfe has reached the sea. Again we are in the presence of that eternal peace that we call death. My life has been rich in friends, but I never had a better or a truer one than he who lies in silence here. He was as steadfast, as faithful, as the stars. Richard H. Whiting \\as an absolutely honest man. His word was gold — his promise was fulfill- ment — and there never has been, there never will be, on this poor earth, any thing nobler than an honest, lox'ing soul. This man was as reliable as the attraction of grav- itation ^ — he knew no shadow of turning. He was as generous as autumn, as hospitable as summer, and as 346 A TRIBUTE. tender as a perfect day in June. He forgot only himself, and asked favors only for others. He begged for the opportunity to do good — to stand by a friend, to support a cause, to defend what he believed to be right. He was a lover of nature — of the woods, the fields and flowers. He was a home-builder. He believed in the family and the fireside — in the sacredness of the hearth. He was a believer in the religion of deed, and his creed was to do good. No man has ever slept in death who nearer lived his creed.* I have known him for many years, and have yet to hear a word spoken of him except in praise. His life was full of honor, of kindness and of helpful deeds. Besides all, his soul was free. He feared nothing, except to do wrong. He was a believer in the gospel of help and hope. He knew how much better, how much more sacred, a kind act is than any theory the brain has wrought. The good are the noble. His life filled the lives of others with sunshine. He has left a legacy of glory to his children. They can truthfully say that within their veins is right royal blood — the blood of A TRIIiUTK. . 347 ail honest, generous man, of a steadfast friend, of one who was true to the very gates of death. If there be another world, another hfe Ijeyond the shore of this, — if the great and good who died upon this orb are there, — then the noblest and the best, with eager hands, have welcomed him — the equal in honor, in generosity, of any one that ever passed beyond the veil. To me this world is growing poor. New friends can ne\'er fill the places of the old. Farewell ! If this is the end, then you ha\-e left to us the sacred memory of a noble life. If this is not the end, there is no world in which you, my friend, will not be loved and welcomed. Farewell ! THE BRAIN. HE dark continent of motive and desire has never been explored. In the brain, that wondrous world with one inhabitant, there are recesses dim and dark, treach- erous sands and dangerous shores, where seeming sirens tempt and fade ; streams that rise in unknown lands from hidden springs, strange seas with ebb and flow of tides, resistless billows urged by storms of flame, profound and awful depths hidden by mist of dreams, obscure and phantom realms where vague and fearful things are half revealed, jungles where passion's tigers crouch, and skies of cloud and blue where fancies fly with ])ainted wings that dazzle and mislead; and the poor sovereign of this pictured world is led by old desires and ancient hates, and stained by crimes of many vanished )'ears, and pushed by hands that long ago were dust, until he feels like some bewildered slave that Mockerv has throned and crowned. THE SACRED EEAVES. l/nff. EARLY four centuries ago Columbus, " the ach'enturous, in the blessed Island of Cuba, saw happy people with rolled leaves between their lips. Above their heads were little clouds of smoke. Their faces were serene, and in their eyes was the autumnal heaven of content. These people were kind, innocent, gentle and lo\ing. The climate of Cuba is the friendship of the earth and air, and of this climate the sacred leaves were born — the leaves that breed in the mind of him who uses them the cloudless, happy days in which they grew. These leaves make friends, and celebrate with gentle rites the vows of peace. They have given consolation to the world. They are the companions of the lonely — the friends of the imprisoned, of the 35© THE SACRED LEAVES. exiled, of workers in mines, of fellers of forests, of sailors on the desolate seas. They are the givers of strength and calm to the vexed and wearied minds of those who build with thought and dream the temples of the soul. They tell of hope and rest. They smooth the wrinkled brows of pain — drive fears and strange misshapen dreads from out the mind and fill the heart with rest and peace. Within their magic warp and woof some potent gracious spell imprisoned lies, that, when released by fire, doth softly steal \vithin the fortress of the brain and bind in sleep the captured sentinels of care and grief These leaves are the friends of the fireside, and their v^ feel the freedom of the antique world ; / % ' you hear the voices of the morning, of c-^\^'A the first great singers — voices elemental ^^ as those of sea and storm. The horizon enlarges, the heavens grow ample, limitations are for- gotten—the realization of the will, the accomplishment of the ideal, seem to be within your power. Ob- structions become petty and disappear. The chains and ])ars are broken, and the distinctions of caste are lost. The soul is in the open air, under the blue and stars — the flag of Nature. Creeds, theories, and philosophies ask to be examined, contradicted, recon- structed. Prejudices disappear, superstitions vanish, and custom abdicates. The sacred places become highways, duties and desires clasp hands and become comrades and friends. Authority drops the scepter, the priest the miter, and the purple falls from kings. The inanimate becomes articulate, the meanest and humblest things utter speech, and the dumb and 382 LEAVES OF GRASS. voiceless burst into song. A feeling of independence takes possession of the soul, the body expands, the blood flows full and free, superiors vanish, flattery is a lost art, and life becomes rich, royal, and superb. The world becomes a personal possession, and the oceans, the continents, and constellations belong to you. You are in the center, everything radiates from you, and in your veins beats and throbs the pulse of all life. You become a rover, careless and free. You wander by the shores of all seas and hear the eternal psalm. You feci the silence of the wide forest, and stand beneath the intertwined and over-arching boughs, entranced with symphonies of winds and woods. You are borne on the tides of eager and swift rivers, hear the rush and roar of cataracts as they fall beneath the scven-hued arch, and watch the eagles as they circling soar. You traverse gorges dark and dim, and climb the scarred and threatening cliffs. You stand in orchards where the blossoms fall like snow, where the birds nest and sing, and painted moths make aimless jour- neys through the happy air. You li\'e the* lives of those who till the earth, and walk amid the perfumed fields, hear the reapers' song, and feel the breadth LEAVES OF GRASS. 383 and scope of earth and sky. You are in the great cities, in the midst of multitudes, of the endless pro- cessions. You are on the wide plains — the prairies — with hunter and trapper, with savage and pioneer, and you feel the soft grass yielding under your feet. You sail in many ships, and breathe the free air of the sea. You travel many roads, and countless paths. You visit palaces and prisons, hospitals and courts ; you pity kings and convicts, and your sympathy goes out to all the suffering and insane, the oppressed and enslaved, and even to the infamous. You hear the din of labor, all sounds of factory, field, and forest, of all tools, instruments, and machines. You become familiar with men and women of all employments, trades, and professions — with birth and burial, with wedding feast and funeral chant. You see the cloud and flame of war, and you enjoy the ineffable perfect days of peace. In this one book, in these wondrous Leaves of Grass, you find hints and suggestions, touches and fragments, of all there is of life, that lies between the babe whose rounded cheeks dimple beneath his mother's laughing, loving eyes, and the old man, snow-crowned, who, with a smile, extends his hand to death. /' 'r^ ^'^^^ 1 ^i^%Wm^%,^'^?x ^:^m:mM^mM^mm^^^ 015 762 339 4 c:;vft