Dean Mansel said: “If there be one fact recorded in Scripture which is entitled, in the fullest sense of the word, to the name of a miracle, the Resurrection of Christ is that fact. Here, at least, is an instance in which the entire Christian faith must stand or fall with our belief in the supernatural.... A superhuman authority needs to be substantiated by superhuman evidence, and what is superhuman is miraculous” (pp. 3 and 35 of Aids to Faith, 4th ed.).

Canon Mozley said: “Miracles and the supernatural contents of Christianity must stand or fall together” (Bampton Lectures, 1865).

Dean Farrar said: “However skilfully the modern ingenuity of semi-belief may have tampered with supernatural interpositions, it is clear to every honest and unsophisticated mind that, if miracles be incredible, Christianity is false” (The Witness of History to Christ, Hulsean Lectures for 1870, 2nd ed., p. 25).

Bishop Westcott said: “The essence of Christianity lies in a miracle, and, if it can be shown that a miracle is either impossible or incredible, all further inquiry into the details of its history is superfluous from a religious point of view” (The Gospel of the Resurrection, 3rd ed., 1874, p. 34). See also Archbishop Trench’s Notes on Miracles.

This has been made abundantly clear by the unanimous reply of a large number of Bishops to a correspondent of the Record, who had written letters to them stating that he had heard that “not a single Bishop on the bench to-day believed in the miraculous in religion” (reported in the daily papers towards the close of January, 1905).

Thus, in the introduction to Pastor Hsi (a book of which 24,000 copies were printed between 1903 and 1905), the Rev. D. E. Hoste, General Director of the China Inland Mission, not only expresses this belief, but seeks to explain why devil-possession should now be chiefly confined to heathen lands. “Careful observation and study of the subject have,” he says, “led many to conclude that, although in lands where Christianity has long held sway the special manifestations we are now considering are comparatively unknown, the conditions among the heathen being more akin to those prevailing when and where the Gospel was first propagated, it is not surprising that a corresponding energy of the powers of evil should be met with in missionary work to-day.” He would have us believe, apparently, that the atmosphere of holiness in Christendom is so overpowering that the Devil and his crew are rendered less active! Taking him seriously, can he also explain how it is that God permits devils to perform such pranks? Not only is the house “swept and garnished” that they may “enter in, and dwell there”; but in the case of Saul we are told that they were purposely sent by God! (See Luke xi. 25, 26, and 1 Sam. xviii. 10 and xix. 9.)

The importance of this question is brought home to us by Mr. Benn in his History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, where he says (p. 454): “The witness of Jesus to the Fatherhood of God as a personal spirit amounts to no more than his witness to personal devils as authors of disease; and the witness of the Evangelists to their Master’s authorship of the Sermon on the Mount is less unanimous than their witness to the destruction by diabolical agency of the Gadarene swine.”

Bishop Ingram attaches the utmost importance to the truth of this miracle. In a sermon published in the Church Times of October 7th, 1904, he is reported to have said: “It is the worst policy of defence to throw over the miracle of feeding the five thousand, or our Lord’s power over disease and death, and then expect to keep the faith of the world in His incarnation, His Virgin-birth, and His resurrection.”

Dr. Moncure Conway relates, in his Autobiography, how it was a spiritualist sÉance which made him realise the kind of frenzy that took possession of those early Christians who really believed that a dead man had returned to life. See also Professor Lombroso on “spiritualistic” phenomena, p. 396.

Persons who have never spent their lives, or a portion of their lives, among the heathen, have never had their faith put to the fullest test, for in such an environment they would find faith’s difficulties considerably enhanced. I remember, a few days after my arrival in India, a certain Bishop looking me in the face and, with a kindly hand upon my shoulder, saying: “You will find life much more difficult in India.” He referred, of course, to the religious life, and was quite right, although, probably, he was thinking chiefly of the example that I should find set me by my fellow Christians; while, as mine was largely a camp life, it was more the insight into the belief of my native companions which affected me. There, all around you, are simple folk believing in what you know to be absurd; you are brought face to face with ignorance and superstition; you see how faith can be misplaced, and how trusting natures can be deceived. It sets you thinking whether, after all, you too may not be deceived; whether the possession of an unlimited capacity for faith has the virtue in it which the priest tells you it has, whether, in fact, faith is a reliable guide. Should you attempt to convert an educated native, you not only find that the task is hopeless, but that you are asking him to accept a belief which is as unfounded and unproven as the one he already holds. Anyone wishing to form some idea of an experience of this sort should read The Bible: Is it the Word of God? by Thomas Lumsden Strange, formerly a judge of the High Court of Madras. The way the observations are cast in the shape of a conversation between a student of the Bible and a cultured native of India brings home many Bible difficulties which largely escape the notice and consideration of the devout. I have taken my illustration from this book.

(My best thanks are due to Mr. C. T. Gorham for permitting me to make a free use of his notes on the Enc. Bib.)

In case the reader may jump to the conclusion that this is a work compiled by collecting the most heretical views from all parts of the globe (as I was informed by the librarian when I inquired for the book in a Cathedral library), let me call attention to the list of contributors, among whom will be found many English ministers of the Gospel. For instance:—

The rapid advance of Bible criticism in late years is well seen by comparing articles in Dr. W. Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible (1860), in the EncyclopÆdia Britannica, signed W. R. S. (between 1875 and 1888), and in the EncyclopÆdia Biblica (1899 to 1903). Even the comparatively conservative Hastings’s Dictionary (1898–1902, with extra volume 1904) contains articles which would have been condemned as heretical half a century ago. Speaking of the Enc. Bib. and Hasting’s Dictionary, Mr. Benn remarks (in his History of Rationalism) that, “as regards the Old Testament, their respective attitudes do not essentially differ, Wellhausen’s theory being accepted by both.”

For a popular account of this interesting discovery (upon the site of Susa, the ancient city of the Persian kings, in December, 1901) see The Hammurabi Code, by Chilperic Edwards.

The sceptical theory is that, had it been genuine, the passage would not have been overlooked by all the early Christian writers in the various disputations with objectors, and especially by Tertullian, who quoted largely from his works, and the ecclesiastical historian Eusebius, who was zealous in his defence of the Faith and greedy of materials with which to support it. (An important French student of Tacitus holds that the whole Annals is medieval!) On the other hand, the style is thoroughly Tacitean, containing a number of words and expressions elsewhere used by the author, and more or less characteristic of him, yet without any such elaborate over-imitation as we should expect to find even in a skilful forgery. Nor is the subject-matter perhaps less characteristic, while the MS. evidence is in favour of the passage being genuine. Taking it to be so, what, after all, does it amount to? Merely this. Christ was put to death by Pontius Pilate, and a very large number of Christians were put to death in a horrible manner by Nero. The passage occurs in Tacitus, Annals, XV., 44, and runs as follows: “Consequently, to get rid of the accusation, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called by the populace ‘Christians.’ Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in JudÆa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred of mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt to serve as a nightly illumination when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle.”

Presumably my informant was referring to the legend of St. Veronica, since the equally absurd History of the Likeness of Christ (translated by E. A. Wallis Budge) closes with these words: “And the angel took the likeness from where it was standing, and he removed it; and no man hath ever seen it since.”

“Justin Martyr the Apologist, who, from his birth at Shechem, was familiar with Palestine, and who lived less than a century after the time of our Lord, places the scene of the nativity in a cave. This is, indeed, the ancient and constant tradition both of the Eastern and the Western Churches, and it is one of the few to which, though unrecorded in Gospel history, we may attach a reasonable probability” (see p. 20 of the cheap edition [1906] of Farrar’s Life of Christ). The grotto of the manger in the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem is certainly a cave. Embedded in the rock is a much-kissed silver star bearing the inscription: “Hic de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus natus est.”

The Vishnu PurÂna speaks of his being shot in the foot with an arrow. Other accounts state that he was suspended on a tree. “On raconte fort diversement la mort de Crishna. Une tradition remarquable et avÉrÉe le fait pÉrir sur un bois fatal (un arbre), ou il fut clouÉ d’un coup de flÈche” (quoted from Mons. Guigniaut’s Religion de l’AntiquitÉ, by Higgins; Anacalypsis, vol. i., p. 144). In the accounts given in the MahÂbhÂrata, Vishnu PurÂna, and Bhagavat PurÂna, the slaying is unintentional, but predestined. There appears to have been a crucifixion myth in ancient India; but Godfrey Higgins’ assumption that Krishna was crucified rests mainly on an oversight of the archÆologist Moor (see J. M. Robertson’s Christianity and Mythology, pp. 294–9).

“With the remarkable exception of the death of Jesus on the cross and of the doctrine of atonement by vicarious suffering, which is absolutely excluded by Buddhism, the most ancient of the Buddhistic records known to us contain statements about the life and the doctrines of Gautama Buddha which correspond in a remarkable manner, and impossibly by mere chance, with the traditions recorded in the Gospels about the life and doctrine of Jesus Christ” (quoted from p. 50 of Bunsen’s Angel Messiah).

Maya dreams that she is carried by archangels to heaven, and that there the future Buddha enters her right side in the form of a superb white elephant. Rhys Davids relates this legend on p. 183 of his Buddhism, and in a footnote he says: “Csoma KorÖsi refers in a distant way to a belief of the later Mongol Buddhists that Maya was a virgin (As. Res. xx. 299); but this has not been confirmed. St. Jerome says (Adversus Jovin., bk. 1): ‘It is handed down as a tradition among the Gymnosophists of India that Buddha, the founder of their system, was brought forth by a virgin from her side.’” In Samuel Beal’s Romantic History of Buddha (from the Chinese version) we read of Buddha’s miraculous birth, and that there is ground to assume the prevalence of this belief for centuries before Christ. Bunsen, again (p. x. of his Angel-Messiah), speaks of the “Virgin Maya, on whom, according to Chinese tradition, the Holy Ghost had descended”; and elsewhere (e.g., pp. 10 and 25) he adopts this version of the legend. Dr. Knowling, in his apologetic work, Our Lord’s Virgin Birth and the Criticism of Today, pp. 53–4, lays stress upon the grotesqueness of the idea that a man should enter his mother’s womb in the form of a white elephant. But, as Dr. Rhys Davids explains (p. 184 of Buddhism), there is nothing bizarre when the origin of the poetical figure has been ascertained. The belief was borrowed from the older sun-worship, “the white elephant, like the white horse [cf. Rev. vi. 2 and xix. 11, 14], being an emblem of the sun, the universal monarch of the sky.”

Dr. Rhys Davids’s remarks on the early growth of myths concerning Buddha, coming as they do from a champion of the Christian cause, are full of significance for anyone who permits himself to think and who keeps an open mind. He says (p. 182 of Buddhism): “The belief soon sprang up that he could not have been, that he was not, born as ordinary men are; that he had no earthly father; that he descended of his own accord into his mother’s womb from his throne in heaven; and that he gave unmistakeable signs, immediately after his birth, of his high character and of his future greatness.”

We have a perfect illustration of the possibility and rapidity of the legend-making process in the nineteenth century. The Bab (or “gateway”) was a Persian reformer who suffered martyrdom at the hands of the authorities in 1850. Within forty years an evidently mythical version of his life was current among his followers in the form of a Gospel. Babism inculcates a high morality, and there is a likelihood of its becoming paramount in Persia. For further information on this new religion see Life and Teachings of Abbas Effendi, by Myron H. Phelps (Putnam).

It is true, as Dr. Knowling points out (p. 56 of The Virgin Birth), and as I have personally seen, that in the inscriptions and scenes in the temple of Luxor “we have at least some elements of the glorifying of sensual desire which is so far removed from the chaste restraint and simplicity of the Evangelists.” But the parallel is not a whit the less admissible because the same story appears in a fresh garb to suit the higher ideals of a new religion.

Most of Viscount Kingsborough’s life and fortune was devoted to his illustrated work, Antiquities of Mexico (nine volumes and a portion of a tenth volume, imperial folio, London, 1830–48). No anti-Christian spirit inspired his labours; on the contrary, he attempted to prove a Jewish migration to Mexico. Though the attempt failed, he bequeathed to posterity an invaluable work on the ancient religion of Mexico.

Conyers Middleton, formerly principal librarian of Cambridge University, tells us that in the temples of Æsculapius all kinds of diseases were believed to be publicly cured, by the pretended help of the Deity, in proof of which there were erected in each temple columns of brass or marble, on which a distinct narrative of each particular cure was described. There is a remarkable fragment of one of these tables still extant, and exhibited by Gruter in his collection (just as it was found in the ruins of the temple of Æsculapius in the Tiber island), which gives an account of two blind men restored to sight by Æsculapius, in the open view, and with the loud acclamation of the people, acknowledging the manifest power of the god. Compare St. Matthew ix. 27–30. Is it not truly marvellous to think that exactly the same sort of thing is going on at the various miracle-working shrines of Christendom at the present moment? Is it not also surprising to hear certain divines in our own country speak of the alleged miracles of the early Church as if they were real, and as if it were a sort of lost art due to our poorer faith in modern times? I am referring to sermons preached lately from various pulpits on the subject of Christian Science and Faith-cures.

In the Nineteenth Century for March, 1905, Mr. Slade Butler points out, in his article on “The Greek Mysteries and the Gospel Narrative,” that in the first century after Christ these mysteries, in one form or another, had become the recognised religion of the Greek world. Mr. Butler takes in turn all the main features of the Gospel narratives, and shows their close resemblance to incidents of the Greek mystery-dramas. The baptism of John, the triumphal procession in honour of Jesus, His clearing of the temple, the cursing of the fig tree, the Last Supper, the mocking of Jesus in His death-agony, are shown to have striking parallels in the sacred mysteries of the Greeks.

Dupuis, The Origin of all Religious Worship, pp. 135 and 258; Higgins, Anacalypsis, vol. ii., p. 102; Knight, The Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology, p. xxii., note, and p. 98, note.

We have it on the authority of a Christian Father that the Pagans adored crosses; for Tertullian, a Christian Father of the second and third centuries, writing to the Pagans, says: “The origin of your god is derived from figures moulded on a cross” (Apol., chap. xvi.; Ad Nationes, chap. xii.). At the present moment, both in Europe and America, the Egyptian cross or “life” sign is a fashionable ornament, under the name of crux ansata (or cross with a handle). Its pious wearers are, of course, quite unaware that it is the phallic emblem! Could anything more conclusively demonstrate the prevailing ignorance of comparative mythology?1

“A very valuable date, later than which we cannot place the origin of the story, may be derived from the colophon at the end of the last chapter of the book. It is there stated that the Abhinish Kramana SÛtra is called by the school of the Dharmaguptas Fo-pen-hing-king.... We know from the ‘Chinese EncyclopÆdia,’ Kai-yuen-shi-kian-mu-lu, that the Fo-pen-hing was translated into Chinese from the Sanscrit (the ancient language of Hindostan) so early as the eleventh year of the reign of Wing-ping (Ming-ti), of the Han dynasty—i e., 69 or 70 A.D. We may therefore safely suppose that the original work was in circulation in India for some time previous to that date.” (Quoted from the Introduction to Mr. S. Beal’s Romantic History of Buddha.) Thus, as the writer of the article on the Gospels in the Enc. Bib. observes, when referring to the parallels: “The proof that the Buddhistic sources are older than the Christian must be regarded as irrefragable.”

Very similar ceremonies are to be found among the heathen to-day. For instance, something very like our Eucharistical rite is performed in modern Japan. Looking on at a service in a Shinto temple, I was much struck by the extraordinary similarity of the whole ceremony. It was a sort of High Mass with Gregorian music. The blessed wafers are not eaten on the premises, but are taken away by the worshippers to be used in time of sickness. The worshippers, I may mention, were all of the poorer and more ignorant classes.

Regarding this, Mr. Grant Allen remarks: When Dionysus became the annual or biennial vine-god victim, “it was inevitable that his worshippers should have seen his resurrection and embodiment in the vine, and should have regarded the wine it yielded as the blood of the god.”

At the winter solstice the sun seemed to the ancients to be commencing its annual journey round the heavens. Accordingly, December 25th was considered to be the sun’s birthday, which was annually celebrated by a great festival in many parts of the heathen world—in China, India, Persia, Egypt, and also in ancient Greece, Rome, Germany, Scandinavia, Great Britain, Ireland, and America. Similarly, at the vernal equinox, the sun, which has been below the equator, suddenly appears to rise above it, and so, usually upon a date calculated by the pagan astronomers (and corresponding roughly to our Easter), we find that throughout a considerable portion of the ancient world, after mourning the sun’s death (sometimes for a period of three days), the Resurrection was celebrated with great rejoicings. Primitive man regarded all sensible objects as instinct with a conscious life. He noted the changes of days and years, and the objects which so changed were to him as living things. The rising and setting sun, the return of summer and winter, became a drama in which the actors were his friends or enemies. It was no allegory, but, strange as it appears to us now, all an absolute reality.

Christ’s birth was ultimately placed at the winter solstice, the birthday of the sun-god in the most popular cults; and, while that is fixed as an anniversary, the date of the Crucifixion is made to vary from year to year in order to conform to the astronomical principle on which the Jews, following the sun-worshippers, had fixed their Passover. This ignorance of the early Church concerning the dates of the Jesus’ birth, death, and “resurrection,” is an exceedingly suspicious circumstance. If the fundamental verities were an objective fact to the early Christians, how could the dates have been so utterly forgotten that dates belonging to idolatrous superstitions had to be adopted? It is perplexing enough that God should have allowed the memory of His Son’s life on earth to be handed down for a considerable time by tradition only; but that He should have permitted such lapses of memory and the substitution of the dates of pagan festivals is to me altogether inconceivable. It could not but raise suspicion concerning His revelation in future thinking generations. We have a certain knowledge of the dates of comparatively unimportant events in the world’s history, ages before the Christian era. If these important dates could be forgotten, what else may not have been forgotten; what else may not have been substituted in the place of forgotten incidents? Again, did not the disciples and their converts celebrate the anniversaries of these great events? And, if so, on what dates? The question is of more importance than perhaps at first sight it appears to be. The public will soon be asking the Church for a satisfactory explanation, and she must be prepared to furnish it. In the Daily Telegraph, during the Christmas of 1904, the public were informed that “the most erudite archÆologists and professors of Church history confess that there is not a particle of evidence, either Biblical or traditional, for the claim of December 25th to be the birthday of Christ, and that everything goes to prove that our existing festival of the Nativity was introduced to replace the heathen festival of the ‘sol invictus’ in Southern Italy, and of the Yule or Winter solstice festival among the ancient Teutons.” Again, in the Daily Graphic during the Easter of 1905, the public will have read that “there is no particular sanctity in the ‘Table to Find Easter,’ based as it is upon the calculations of a pagan astronomer who lived four hundred years before Christ.” In France the Christian names of the four statutory holidays have been abolished by law. Christmas is called the Festival of the Family, and so on. The time is coming, and is even now at hand, when the English public will discover ugly facts about Christianity without having to read books published by freethinking firms—books which the parson advises us to leave severely alone.

The following from a sermon by the Bishop of Manchester, preached in Manchester Cathedral on Sunday, September 4th, 1887, forms a striking exception to the rule. “The sufficient answer,” says the Bishop, “to ninety out of a hundred of the ordinary objections to the Bible, as the record of a divine education of our race, is given in that one word—development. And to what are we indebted for that potent word, which, as with the wand of a magician, has at the same moment so completely transformed our knowledge and dispelled our difficulties? To modern science, resolutely pursuing its search for truth in spite of popular obloquy and—alas that one should have to say it—in spite too often of theological denunciation!” (Quoted by Professor Huxley in his essay on “An Episcopal Trilogy.”) Would that there were equal candour all round! But this indebtedness of theology to science in spite of itself is certainly one of the many workings of the Holy Spirit which are quite inexplicable. All the more so when we remember that truth-seeking scientists are, nowadays, usually Agnostics.

We have the witness of the Christian Fathers. Justin Martyr, after describing the institution of the Lord’s Supper (1 Apol., chap. 66), goes on to say: “Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithra, commanding the same thing to be done. For that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of the one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn.” Tertullian intimates that “the devil, by the mysteries of his idols, imitates even the main parts of the divine mysteries. He also baptises his worshippers in water, and makes them believe that this purifies them of their crimes. There Mithra sets his mark on the forehead of his soldiers; he celebrates the oblation of bread; he offers an image of the resurrection, and presents at once the crown and sword; he limits his chief priest to a single marriage; he even has virgins and his ascetics (continentes).” (PrÆscr. c. 40. Cp. De Bapt. c. 5; De Corona, c. 15. Quoted on p. 322 of J. M. Robertson’s Pagan Christs.) We have also the witness of modern discoveries. For example, Professor Franz Cumont, in his work, Les MystÈres de Mithra, gives a photograph of a recently-discovered bas-relief, representing a Mithraic communion. On a small tripod is the bread, in the form of wafers, each marked with a cross.

It is very necessary to understand exactly what the theory of natural selection is and is not; because champions of the Faith, even when believing in Evolution, base some of their arguments on the alleged collapse of the Darwinian theory. Thus, in Present-day Rationalism Critically Examined, the Rev. Professor George Henslow affirms that, while the theory of Evolution stands on an impregnable basis, Haeckel’s Monism and Rationalistic agnosticism are based on Darwin’s doctrine of natural selection, and he enters upon an elaborate argument—covering sixty pages of his book—to show that the origin of species by means of natural selection is false, and that the primary cause of Evolution is the definite action of the environment, combined with the adaptive powers of the living organism. Such arguments, coming from a clergyman having scientific attainments, are likely to impress the average Christian reader and confuse the main issue. Natural selection is “the action of the environment” (see The Origin of Species, chap. iv.), and even if it were not, and if natural selection (or elimination) were not the primary cause, the doctrine of the action of environment will suit the Monist just as well.

Regarding the minor, but not unimportant, part played by sexual selection, Darwin writes: “For my own part, I conclude that of all the causes which have led to the differences in external appearance between the races of men, and to a certain extent between man and the lower animals, sexual selection has been by far the most efficient” (Descent of Man, ed. 1871, ii., 367).

Scientists who are advocates of the Christian cause are not always as candid as one could wish. While the Church cited Sir Richard Owen “as an authority against the Darwinian theory, especially in its application to man’s descent, there remained in the memory of his brother savants his lack of candour in never withdrawing the statement made by him, and demonstrated by Huxley as untrue, that the hippocampus minor in the human brain is absent from the brain of the ape.” (See p. 172 of Mr. Clodd’s Pioneers of Evolution. See also remarks by Sir Charles Lyell, pp. 485 and 486 of his work, Antiquity of Man. On p. 290 he further tells us that “we may consider the attempt to distinguish the brain of man from that of the ape on the ground of newly-discovered cerebral characters, presenting differences in kind, as virtually abandoned by its originator.”)

The greatest importance has been attached to a discovery in Java, made in 1894 by Eugene Dubois. The remains consisted of the crown of the skull, two teeth, and a femur belonging to a creature for which the name Pithecanthropus erectus has been invented. This pithecanthropus excited the liveliest interest as the long-sought transitional form between man and the ape. Professor Haeckel writes concerning this in his book, The Evolution of Man, vol. ii., p. 633: “There were very interesting scientific discussions on it at the last three International Congresses of Zoology (Leyden, 1895; Cambridge, 1898; and Berlin, 1901). I took an active part in the discussion at Cambridge, and may refer the reader to the paper I read there.” (It has been translated by Dr. Gadow, under the title of The Last Link.) Since then we have Professor Keasbey writing in 1901 that the remains have been “pronounced genuine,” and Professor Packard, in 1902, that it is now “generally recognised.”

Again, to give a still more recent “find,” Dr. Andrews, who accompanied the Geological Survey of Egypt, has (as mentioned by Professor Ray Lankester in his lecture at the London Institution on November 2nd, 1906) discovered a remarkable skull (now in the Natural History Museum) which is the connecting link between elephants, ancient and modern, and other mammals.

There have also been discoveries of missing links among the living. The duck-bill, a four-footed animal which lays eggs, is an important link between reptiles and mammals. Cuvier, the celebrated French naturalist, a persistent opponent of the evolutionary doctrines advanced by Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, did not believe it possible that any four-footed animal could lay eggs, and it was not till long after his time, and, indeed, only quite lately, that the statements of the natives were verified, and the eggs of the duck-bill actually found.

This Family Tree of Life will enable him to form a brain-picture of the various steps in the evolutionary process:—

[Note.—It is now generally admitted that man goes back at least 200,000 years.]

“Astronomers tell us that there are some 500,000,000 suns visible from our earth, many if not most of them larger than our sun, and all of them presumably surrounded by planets at least as important as our earth; and to maintain the old theological view of the supreme value of this little insignificant planet in the eyes of the ‘Almighty Ruler’ of such a universe, or to suppose that He would send His ‘Only Son’ to die for us little cosmic microbes, is presumption which, when one thinks of it, really seems to amount to insanity” (quoted from p. 108 of Richard Harte’s Lay Religion).

“God,” says Canon Liddon, “is banished from the world by deism, which puts nature in His place” (Some Elements of Religion, pp. 56–7). The seventeenth and eighteenth-century deists, however, did not deny the personality of God, but the fact of revelation. “In recent theology deism has generally come to be regarded as, in common with theism, holding in opposition to atheism that there is a God, and in opposition to pantheism that God is distinct from the world, but as differing from theism in maintaining that God is separate from the world, having endowed it with self-sustaining and self-acting powers, and then abandoned it to itself” (Enc. Brit., art. “Theism”).

Archdeacon Wilson avers that “We dare not deny the name of Christian to such as live in Christ’s spirit and do His will, though they know not for certain how God manifested himself in Christ, and will not profess a certainty they do not feel.” Again, he argues that “We rest on the broad ground of the vast experience of the world, and the testimony of our own conscience, that Christ has lifted mankind up, and shown man what is good; and this we may describe as bringing man to God, and revealing God to man. This redemption, salvation, we acknowledge as a fact. He who has this faith in Christ, and lets it work its natural result in making him more like Christ, deserves to be called a Christian.” This does, indeed, give plenty of latitude—far more, in fact, than the Church as a body seems likely to give for some time to come. It, and the Rev. R. J. Campbell’s “New Theology,” will certainly enable many who are in reality non-Christian theists to continue calling themselves Christians.

In the chapter on “God” there is a striking exposition of the very latest arguments for and against Theism. The opinions of Messrs. Ward, Newman, Smythe, Le Conte, Fiske, W. N. Clarke, Croll, Aubrey Moore, Iverach, Dallinger, Ballard, Rhondda Williams, Profeit, Kennedy, W. James, and Royce are all considered. Many pious Christians may have read the apologists’ criticisms of Haeckel’s well-known work, The Riddle of the Universe, but few will have studied the work itself, and still fewer these clear and convincing replies to the criticisms. It cannot be on account of the cost, as a copy of the cheap edition of either of these works can be obtained for 4½d.

With regard to phenomena at present popularly known as spiritualistic, but for which scientists have now adopted the term “metapsychical,” the following declaration by Professor Lombroso (appearing in the review La Lettura, November, 1906) is of considerable interest. “As the result,” he writes, “of our researches, I have been bound to admit the conviction that these phenomena are of colossal importance, and that it is the plain duty of science to direct attention towards them without delay.” N.B.—The Professor, when interviewed subsequently by the Turin correspondent of the Standard, repudiated any suggestion of supernatural agency, and said: “All spiritualistic phenomena can be understood and explained without any reference to the intervention of the supernatural. Spiritualists affirm that the soul is an emanation from God, while I contend that it is an emanation of the brain. This is the whole thing in a nutshell. You therefore see how, from this point of view, I cannot be called a spiritualist—at least, in the sense in which the term is generally understood. Almost all spiritualistic phenomena can be classed among those positive facts which science can explain.” However, in an article contributed by him to the Grand Magazine for January, 1907, and entitled “Why I became a Spiritualist,” Professor Lombroso admits that he has felt himself “compelled to yield to the conviction that spiritualistic phenomena, if due in great part to the influence of the medium, are likewise attributable to the influence of extra-terrestrial existences, which may, perhaps, be compared to the radio-activity which still persists in tubes after the radium which originated them has disappeared.” Professor Cesare Lombroso, it may be mentioned, is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Turin, and the author of standard works on criminology, hypnotism, and psychology, as well as of a number of valuable treatises relating to cerebral study. Two of his publications, Man of Genius (1891) and Female Offender (1895), have been issued in English.

The phenomena Professor Lombroso refers to are those which have induced such eminent scientists as Wallace, Lodge, Hyslop, Barrett, and Crookes to remain or to become supernaturalists. One, and to my mind the chief, reason why these metapsychical phenomena are, as Professor Lombroso tells us, of colossal importance—why science should direct attention towards them without delay—is that, so soon as they are universally acknowledged to be manifestations occurring in obedience to one of Nature’s laws—a law as yet not fully understood—the last excuse for belief in the supernatural will have vanished. Supernaturalism will receive its death-blow, and Rationalism be infused with fresh life.

In defining his philosophic position he admits his own “inability to accept either popular Christianity or scholastic Theism” (see his Postscript, p. 521). He is of opinion that both the metaphysical argument for God’s existence and the arguments for a God with moral attributes must be rejected, and “the man who is sincere with himself and the facts, but who remains religious still,” must soothe “his perplexed and baffled intellect” with “a trustful sense of presence” (ibid, pp. 445–8). A careful perusal of his book, however, makes it tolerably clear that this feeling of the presence of Spiritual Beings is simply a hallucination.

Chet Ram, the founder of a sect whose numbers, according to the last Indian census, “are increasing day by day,” began by being a Hindu, and then became the disciple of a Mohammedan fakir in the Punjab. After following him for some years he had what he described as a vision of Christ, who revealed Himself as the author of salvation, and commanded him (Chet Ram) to build a church and to place within it the Bible. He was himself illiterate, but immediately began to proclaim the divinity of Christ, and was soon followed by disciples recruited alike from the Hindus and the Moslems. It is “religious” experiences such as these which continue to deceive even educated men and women, and hinder the growth of Rationalism.

“It is impossible to leave the history of witchcraft without reflecting how vast an amount of suffering has, in this respect at least, been removed by the progress of rationalistic civilisation.... It is probable that no class of victims endured sufferings so unalloyed and so intense.... All these sufferings were the result of a single superstition, which the spirit of Rationalism has destroyed.” (See pp. 137–8 of Lecky’s Rationalism in Europe, Longmans, Green, & Co., 1904.)

The following are some further notes on the spread of Christianity:—

When, after more than three centuries, the spread became fairly rapid, owing, as we have seen, to circumstances of a distinctly mundane character, what was the effect on public morality? The Roman Empire passed its zenith in the first half of the second century—under Stoics. Historians agree that it was declining all through the third century. On the other hand, it was making fresh progress morally in the fourth century. It deteriorated morally after A.D. 380–90, the date of the triumph of Christianity! Do these facts bear out the Christian contention that Christianity purifies empire?

If we continue the history of Christianity’s spread, we find similar samples of Divine Providence and similar samples of moral progress. Take, for instance, the facts connected with the conversion of the barbarians, as related by the author of the apologetic work, Beneficial Influence of the Ancient Clergy. We learn that “Many a deviation from primitive simplicity, dangerous though it might justly seem to the integrity of the Roman faith, was productive of consequences the most momentous to tribes who reverenced principally the pomp and mysterious ceremony attendant on the faith which they embraced, and would have scorned to bow down before priests or altars whose faultless humility merely recalled the rude shrines of their native forests.” Also we learn that “the lavish piety of barbarian sovereigns” directed “the plunder of suffering lands into the capacious coffers of the Church.” Although this led to “the most fatal period of clerical corruption,” our apologist is yet able to see in it the guiding hand of Providence establishing “the constant grandeur of the ecclesiastical edifice”!

In Central Europe it was by force of arms that Charlemagne succeeded in spreading Christianity. “It cannot be doubted,” we are told, “that the conquering hosts of the Franks were far more effective in the conversion of Central Europe than could have been the most self-denying of missionaries, or the most undoubtedly miraculous of Italian relics.” This fresh spread took place towards the close of the eighth century. After a hundred years or so for the leaven to work, we should expect to see a distinct advance in morality among both the clergy and the laity. We find, on the contrary, that during the whole of the tenth century the spectacle presented by society was “revolting.” “Not only did the clerical body present sure tokens of that gigantic cancer which was wasting the energies of the Church, but their degeneracy was relieved by nothing that was noble or praiseworthy among the laity.”

“Eternity is at best but an artificial idea; in reality, it is no true idea at all, since we cannot conceive it; it is only the negation of an idea, being, in fact, the negation of that which passes away. When we begin discussing eternity we see that, from the point of view of natural science, nothing is eternal except the ultimate particles of matter and their forces; for no one of the thousandfold phenomena and combinations under which matter and force present themselves to us can be eternal” (Weismann on Heredity, vol. ii., p. 74 [Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1892]).

The Rev. Henry Scott Jeffreys, of Sendai, contributed a paper, entitled “Some of the Native Virtues of the Japanese People,” to the Japan Evangelist. The following are some, out of many, exceedingly significant admissions:—“After seven years’ residence among this people, I wish to place on record my humble testimony to their native virtues. I refer to virtues that belong to the Japanese people without reference to their faith. In this connection it may be said that perhaps the most remarkable part is their devotion to ethics alone, utterly divorced from religion. They love virtue for its own sake, and not from fear of punishment or hope of reward.... They have eliminated from their system of ethics not only heaven and hell, but God also.... To be sure, there are religions (so-called), both native and foreign; but they have little effect upon the popular conscience.... The conversion of this people to the Christian faith is a most complex and perplexing problem; not because they are so bad, but because they are so good.”

It is customary to scout the idea of State control as the panacea for social evils. One is warned against grandmotherly legislation, interference with the liberty of the private individual, etc. I may be permitted, therefore, to give an illustration of its beneficial effect. The Gothenburg system, by which the liquor traffic is judiciously controlled, has, in spite of all opposition, fought its way victoriously, and is now adopted, although partly modified, in most towns in Sweden, and also in Norway and Finland. Thus the evil effects of drink have been considerably mitigated; intemperance, pauperism, and vice have been reduced. Would not legislation of this nature for the removal of England’s greatest curse be far better than half-hearted measures that are palliative rather than remedial? Now that the Church has taken up the temperance cause, could she not bring her great influence to bear towards the introduction of some such system, pitting herself against vested interests? Remarkable work is being carried on by the Danish temperance societies on the basis of allowing their members to regard beer of low alcoholic strength as a temperance beverage. Australia has been watching New Zealand in the matter of drink reform, and the Government of New South Wales, at any rate, has found it necessary to fulfil pledges given at the last general election, with the result that, among a certain class, there is an immense diminution in the temptation to drink. Where the nature of the case demands it, more drastic remedies must be applied. Thus Belgium has forbidden the very presence of absinthe within her borders, and in Switzerland—in some of the cantons, at all events—the authorities have made up their minds to prohibit the manufacture and sale of absinthe. Even in China an edict has now been promulgated for the abolition of the use of opium, and an anti-opium movement is spreading which bids fair to embarrass the interested abettor of the vice—a Christian Government.

In their volume, The Making of the Criminal (Macmillan & Co.), Messrs. C. E. B. Russell and L. M. Rigby confirm the now generally accepted view that it is, as a rule, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one that the habitual criminal is made, and show that juvenile crime is a product of the wretched economic, social, and family condition in which so many unhappy children are born and have to live. The criminal is also recruited, as Dr. W. D. Morrison points out (in a review of their book appearing in the Tribune, December 12th, 1906), from those whose home and social antecedents may be good enough, but who are themselves either mentally or physically below the average of the general community, and who, therefore, when times are bad, drift insensibly into crime. When to all this unfavourable environment we add an unfavourable heredity, we get a conjunction of circumstances against which it is quite impossible for the unfortunate to contend, even though he be aided by the “gift of freewill” and by all the intercessory prayers of the Churches. The Borstal system and other remedies recommended in The Making of the Criminal are excellent in their way, but can be regarded only as palliatives. They deal with the criminal after he has been made. What is wanted is, to quote Dr. Morrison, “a wise and progressive statesmanship which will cut off crime at its roots—a statesmanship which will devote itself with care and foresight to ameliorating the whole material and moral conditions of existence of the workman, the woman, and the child.” And this statesmanship will take an enlightened view of the population question, recognising that it is in the diminution of the struggle for existence, not in the rise of the birth-rate, that the material and moral condition of the people can be ameliorated.

A quarter of a century ago Proctor remarked (see pp. 203–4 of his essays, Rough Ways Made Smooth) that the phenomena of hypnotism “promise to afford valuable means of curing certain ailments, and of influencing in useful ways certain powers and functions of the body.” He recognised “possibilities which, duly developed, might be found of extreme value to the human race.” Since these words were uttered this branch of science has not stood still, and there seems every prospect that his prophecy will be fulfilled in the near future. There are now cliniques for hypnotic treatment in France (Dr. BÉrillon’s in Paris, for example), Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Holland, Switzerland, and America. “The commencement of the present revival of hypnotism in England, from its medical side, was apparently due to Dr. Lloyd Tuckey, who happened to be in the neighbourhood of Nancy in August, 1888, and visited LiÉbeault out of curiosity” (see p. 35 of Dr. Milne Bramwell’s Hypnotism: Its History, Practice, and Theory [Alexander Moring, Hanover Square, London; 2nd ed., 1906]).

The following are some of the facts about the matter which should be clearly understood and widely made known:—

(1) “The object of all hypnotic treatment ought to be the development of the patient’s control of his own organism” (see p. 436 of Hypnotism: Its History, Practice, and Theory).

(2) The hypnotic control may be obtained without any effort on the part of the operator, the effort formerly supposed to be required being purely imaginary, and the hypnotic state being, in fact, obtained without any operation whatever. Indeed, it has now been found that for curative purposes the “suggestion” may be conveyed without throwing the patient into the hypnotic condition, and that anyone not absolutely an idiot or insane may be amenable to the treatment.

(3) “Both ‘Scientist’ [the author is speaking of Christian Scientists] and Suggestionist also use the same method for creating belief—namely, Assertion.... Assertions are not made clumsily, ignorantly, and at random, as assertions are in our daily intercourse, but are made skilfully, with a purpose, and with a knowledge of the effects they will produce” (see p. 9 of the late Richard Harte’s The New Psychology; or, The Secret of Happiness [Fowler & Co., London and New York]). Is this one of the reasons why the believer is able to continue a believer in spite of all disproof? Certainly he is constantly repeating assertions, and sometimes these must get through to his subliminal consciousness—his subjective mind.

(4) Auto-suggestion. The suggestion should be made when you are composing yourself to sleep. Dr. Bramwell tells me that the best time is on first waking in the morning, before dozing off again.

(5) “Many cases of functional nervous disorder have recovered under hypnotic treatment after the continued failure of other methods.... Further, the diseases which frequently respond to hypnotic treatment are often those in which drugs are of little or no avail. For example, what medicine would one prescribe for a man who, in the midst of mental and physical health, had suddenly become the prey of an obsession?” (see p. 435 of Hypnotism: Its History, Practice, and Theory).

(6) “The volition is increased and the moral standard raised” (see p. 437 of Hypnotism, etc.). “Experience proves that ‘principles’ instilled into anyone while in the hypnotic condition become irrevocably [?] fixed in the mind” (p. 3 of Richard Harte’s Hypnotism and the Doctors). Thus degenerates, dipsomaniacs, morphinomaniacs, kleptomaniacs, sexual perverts, and other unfortunates, may be reclaimed.

(7) “‘Suggestion’ is of universal application, and of incalculable power for good in almost every department of human life.... The three principal ways in which suggestion (which has been called ‘the active principle’ of hypnotism) affects human beings beneficially, in addition to curing diseases, are: By facilitating education; by preventing crime, and reforming the criminal; and by raising the general standard of manliness—of courage, of independence of character, and of respect for self and others” (ibid, pp. 2–4).

Note.—“The Medical Society for the Study of Suggestive Therapeutics” was constituted at the close of 1906. Let us hope that it will soon rival the flourishing French SociÉtÉ d’Hypnotisme et de Psychologie.

“This is the great problem in a nutshell: to improve the quality and diminish the quantity of mankind—that is, in proportion to the means of securing for each a truly human life.” “Is not the quality rather than the quantity of children the thing to be aimed at?” (Mona Caird and Lady Grove on “The Position of Women,” see pp. 118 and 128 of the Fortnightly Review for July, 1905). Besides, “if we continued to maintain the high birth-rate of the mid-Victorian epoch, it is certain that, in the course of a few generations, there would be no elbow-room left in our little islands. Already, indeed, Great Britain is, from many points of view, over-populated. If all the people who are now crowded together in the slums of our great towns were scattered over the country, there would be practically no country left. England would have become a vast suburb. That is not an ideal to which any patriotic Englishman would care to look forward. Space and quiet are essential for the development of some of the best qualities of human beings, and those persons who too hastily regret a decline in the birth-rate must explain how they propose to reconcile these essentials with an unlimited increase of our present population” (The Daily Graphic, August 7th, 1905, art. “A Declining Birth-rate”).

Over-population spells strife, squalor, vice, crime—misery. Dr. Barnardos and “General” Booths may get over the “unemployed” difficulty by schemes for emigration to Canada and elsewhere; but this is, at best, only a very temporary remedy. As it is, thousands of white men are living and dying in climates for which they are unadapted; while in some cases—in certain portions of Africa, for example—they are ousting and making life a burthen to the races that are adapted. We have only to look far enough ahead to discover that the time must come when the world would so teem with human-kind that even a Bishop of London or a President Roosevelt would have to cry “Hold! Enough!”

At the present moment this problem presses for a very early solution in India. For many months in the year, as I have again and again seen with my own eyes, masses of the agricultural population are entirely without employment. Hence the constantly recurring famines, or partial famines, in years of bad or indifferent rainfall. The population problem, being intimately connected with many another problem, is one of the utmost gravity; but, so long as men hold that to increase and multiply is the command of God and a duty we owe to the State, it will never be rightly, never be sensibly, solved. P.S.—Millions are starving in China now (February, 1907).

The object of the Moral Instruction League (19, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, W.C.) is to introduce systematic non-theological moral instruction into all schools, and to make the formation of character the chief aim of school life. Their contention is—and it seems a wise one—that ethical principles on which we all agree should not be associated in the schools of the State with theological principles on which we all differ. Already certain education authorities are providing for systematic moral instruction of a purely secular nature. In the West Riding scheme it is expressly stated that it is to be “part of the secular instruction,” while the Cheshire scheme emphatically lays down that the moral instruction must be non-theological. The authorities of Groton, Blackpool, Norwich, York, and elsewhere, have supplied all the teachers of their schools with copies of the Moral Instruction League’s Graduated Syllabus of Moral Instruction for Elementary Schools. The West Riding Education Authority has adopted the Syllabus, and it is now in use in the 1,270 schools, Provided and Non-Provided, of that authority. In addition to these, numerous education authorities have decided to make provision for moral instruction a part of the secular instruction in their schools.

So much that is untrue has been said about the results of a purely secular education by its strenuous opponents that it is high time for the real truth to be known. This my readers will find in Mr. Joseph McCabe’s tractate, The Truth About Secular Education: Its History and Results (Watts & Co., 1906, paper covers, 6d.).

Among some excellent works intended to assist parents and teachers in the non-theological character-training of children, I may mention F. J. Gould’s The Children’s Book of Moral Lessons, in three series (Watts & Co.), Hackwood’s Notes of Lessons on Moral Subjects, Alice Chesterton’s The Garden of Childhood (Sonnenschein), Dr. Felix Adler’s The Moral Instruction of Children (Edward Arnold), the Moral Instruction League and also the Leicester Syllabus, and A. J. Waldegrave’s A Teacher’s Handbook of Moral Lessons (Sonnenschein). Dr. F. H. Hayward’s Secret of Herbart, a powerful appeal to the teacher on the scope and urgency of his moral mission, is now re-issued at 6d. (Watts). The translation of Dr. F. W. FÖrster’s Lebenskunde, a book replete with illustrative matter for the teacher, has been undertaken by the Moral Instruction League. Mr. W. M. Salter’s essay, “Why Live a Moral Life?” is of exceptional merit. This and other ethical essays may be obtained from the Secretary of the Union of Ethical Societies, 19, Buckingham Street, Strand, W.C.; price one penny each. One of the most important contributions to ethical sociology that has appeared for many years is a work in two vols. entitled Morals in Evolution (Chapman & Hall; 1906), by Mr. L. T. Hobhouse. I venture to predict that it will ere long be recognised as the standard work on the subject. Mr. Hobhouse, it should be noted, never wavers in his assertion of the supremacy of ethics over all phases of religion.

Diaries recounting the sights seen by a lord of high degree in 1465 were published in 1851 by the Literary Society of Stuttgart. They include an interesting account of all the shrines and relics seen during his travels through Western Europe. The account of the relics which he saw in our own Canterbury Cathedral admits of no curtailment: “First we saw the head-band of the Blessed Virgin, a piece of Christ’s garment, and three thorns from His Crown; then we saw the bedstead of St. Thomas and his brain, and the blood of St. Thomas and of St. John the Apostles. We saw also the sword with which St. Thomas of Canterbury was beheaded; the hair of the Mother of God, and a part of the Sepulchre. There was also shown to us a part of the shoulder of the Blessed Simeon, who bore Christ in his arms; the head of the blessed Lustrabena; one leg of St. George; a piece of the body and the bones of St. Lawrence; a leg of the Bishop of St. Romanus; a cup of St. Thomas, which he had been accustomed to use in administering the Sacrament at Canterbury; a leg of the Virgin Milda; a leg of the Virgin Eduarda. We also saw a tooth and a finger of St. Stephen the Martyr; bones of the Virgin Catherine, and oil from her sepulchre, which is said to flow to this day; hair of the blessed Virgin [sic!] Magdalene; a tooth of St. Benedict; a finger of St. Urban; the lips of one of the infants slain by Herod; bones of the blessed Clement; bones of St. Vincent. Very many other things were also shown to us, which are not set down by me in this place.” Very many other things have also been shown to me during my travels abroad (from St. Anne de BeauprÉ in Quebec to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem) which are not set down by me in this place, and I may say that the grotesqueness of the frauds that are perpetrated is only equalled by the gross ignorance and credulity of the worshippers. The number of these “relics” scattered over Christendom must amount to thousands upon thousands. To stop the traffic in them, there is now a regulation that if you buy a relic you commit mortal sin. The relics are still sold, however; only the price is said to be for the frame or for the trouble, or something to that effect. For a description of La Bottega del Papa (the Pope’s shop) or La Santa Bottega (the Holy Shop) see Dr. Robertson’s book, The Roman Catholic Church in Italy. Regarding the early Church, see Bible Myths, pp. 434–40.

We have a striking example of this in Dean Farrar’s tractate, The Bible and the Child (James Clarke & Co., 1897). The passage runs as follows: “There are a certain number of persons who, when their minds have become stereotyped in foregone conclusions, are simply incapable of grasping new truths. They become obstructionists, and not infrequently bigoted obstructionists. As convinced as the Pope of their own personal infallibility, their attitude towards those who see that the old views are no longer tenable is an attitude of anger and alarm. This is the usual temper of the odium theologicum. It would, if it could, grasp the thumbscrew and the rack of mediÆval Inquisitors, and would, in the last resource, hand over all opponents to the scaffold or the stake. Those whose intellects have been thus petrified by custom and advancing years are, of all others, the most hopeless to deal with. They have made themselves incapable of fair and rational examination of the truths which they impugn. They think they can, by mere assertion, overthrow results arrived at by the life-long inquiries of the ablest student, while they have not given a day’s serious or impartial study to them. They fancy that even the ignorant, if only they be what is called orthodox, are justified in strong denunciation of men quite as truthful, and often incomparably more able than themselves. Off-hand dogmatists of this stamp, who usually abound among professional religionists, think that they can refute any number of scholars, however profound and however pious, if only they shout ‘Infidel’ with sufficient loudness.”

Serfdom in England was fully extinguished only in 1600, and the Act for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Colonies was passed only in 1833. For eighteen long centuries Christianity countenanced the atrocious inhumanities of the slave trade. The very irons used by the native chiefs for shackling the prisoners when handing them over to the Christian traders were made in Birmingham, and the greatest horrors of slavery have been exhibited only under the rule of the Christian slave-owner. We can form some idea of the inhumanity then displayed from the treatment of the coloured races by the white man in Africa to-day. Read, for instance, the accounts of the Congo atrocities, or of the German Colonial scandals. Read, again, some home-truths about our own Colonies in Labour and other Questions in South Africa, by Medicus (T. Fisher Unwin, 1903). The white man has indeed a burden to bear—the burden of his own iniquity. Regarding negro slavery, Dr. Westermarck clearly shows (in his work, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas) that “this system of slavery, which, at least in the British Colonies and the slave States, surpassed in cruelty the slavery of any pagan country, ancient or modern, was not only recognised by Christian Governments, but was supported by the large bulk of the clergy, Catholic and Protestant alike.”

History is repeating itself to-day, and my previous allusions to the present situation in Russia are all too brief. I would ask my readers kindly to put to themselves the following crucial questions: To what party do the religious bigots and their partisans belong? Is it not to the reactionary party, the party that sets its face against reform? On what do the reactionaries chiefly rely for the retention of their hold upon the bulk of the people? Is it not on a peasantry wallowing in ignorance and steeped in superstition? What are the actual instruments employed for maintaining their power? Do they not consist of corrupt officials and cruel Cossacks? Who are responsible for shameless acts of persecution, and, indeed, very largely for all the bloodshed, strife, and anarchy? Is it not the orthodox Church and her supporters? Is it too much to say, with the Rev. J. Lawson-Forster, that “the Russian Church has become the tool of murderers”? (Mr. Lawson-Forster expressed himself in these words when presiding at the great public meeting held at the Brondesbury Synagogue to protest against the recent outrages in Russia.) To what party do the Freethinkers belong? Are they not all, everyone of them, adherents of the party desirous of reform and of religious toleration? With regard to religious persecution generally, Christians might study with advantage Buckle’s History of Civilisation in England, or Lecky’s History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, or C. T. Gorham’s Faith: Its Freaks and Follies (Rationalist Press Association), or the latest work on the subject, Religious Persecution, by E. S. P. Haynes (Duckworth; a revised edition has now been issued by the R. P. A. at 6d.). Few realise that the favourite method for overcoming the scruples of the heretic—torture—was used in England so late as 1640.

If Major Murray had stopped short at offering us a somewhat highly coloured picture of the past and present conditions ruling among Christian nations, and at inculcating the necessity of our being in readiness to face the inevitable, few of us would be found to quarrel, in the main, with his conclusions. But when he tells us that “Peace never has been, and never will be [italics are mine], as long as the passions of mankind endure, more than a lull between the storms of war,” then the better-informed and peace-loving Rationalist will beg to differ with him. He feels that this gospel of universal hatred is being carried too far. Never is a very long time. Major Murray says: “No great nation will ever submit to arbitration any interest that it regards as absolutely vital.” Did not our British forefathers think, and with more reason, that “men of honour” could settle their disputes only by the duel? May we not trust that the decisions of learned and unbiassed judges will be equitable, and therefore that their acceptance will redound to the honour of the great nations concerned?

Natural selection, or, as we have elsewhere called it, natural murder, ceased to have full power over men on the day that man commenced to control his environment. Since then he has been constantly engaged in making nature do some work for him, in altering the environment in which he finds himself instead of letting it alter him. Now that he is equipped, better than ever before in his history, for this task, now that he has learnt more of the secrets of Nature—of her crude and cruel processes—is he going to acquiesce tamely, and make no use of his knowledge? Now the nature of the malady has been diagnosed, and now the proper remedies have been discovered, will he not set about the cure? Is the struggle for existence, with all its attendant horrors, to be perpetuated? Does the end—the survival of the fittest—justify the means—over-production and murder? Cannot the same and better results be attained by a process less crude, less cruel? Nature procures adaptation to existing environment by methods fraught with untold suffering for the sentient, and the obvious course is for man to reverse the process, bringing the environment into harmony with his existing constitution. Of a truth, nature is, as Major Murray reminds us, red in tooth and claw; but science is both able and willing to tame the shrew.

A parody appearing in an evening paper on November 29th, 1901, conveys a wholesome lesson on this subject. “Lest we forget,” I quote it at length:—

“In no field of its work,” exclaims Mr. Andrew Carnegie, “does the Christian Church throughout the whole world—with outstanding individual exceptions—so conspicuously fail as in its attitude to war. Its silence when outspoken speech might avert war, its silence during war’s sway, its failure during days of peace to proclaim the true Christian doctrines regarding the killing of men, give point to the recent arraignment of the Prime Minister, who declared that the Church to-day busied itself with questions [e.g., of vestments and candles] which did not weigh even as dust in the balance compared with the vital problems with which it was called upon to deal.” (See reports of the ceremony at which Mr. Carnegie was installed as Rector of St. Andrew’s University.)

From the Crusades to the Crimea, religion has continually been either directly or indirectly the cause of war. Protestants, who may be ready to excuse the wars undertaken to drive the infidels from the “Holy Land,” will do well to remember that Pope Innocent III., besides proclaiming the fifth of these crusades, proclaimed also the infamous crusade against the Albigenses (who opposed the corruptions of the Church of Rome), when Simon de Montfort and the Pope’s legate, at the head of half a million of men, put to the sword friend and foe, men and women, saying, “God will find his own.” In the case of that mischievous and unnecessary blunder, the Crimean War, the great masses of the Russian people saw but a spirited defence of the Cross against the Crescent, wherein, from their point of view, the infidel was being supported by renegade Christians. It was an appeal to the religious emotions of the Russian peasants—an insincere appeal, as history has discovered—that lent to the last Russo-Turkish war a fictitious popularity.

Note these lines by an eminent divine and great dignitary of the Church, Archbishop Alexander, of Armagh:—

And these by the gentle Wordsworth, the poet of sweet simplicity:—

And compare: “The very ideas and efforts which have led men to struggle against the Papal Church are exactly those which are exorcising the demon of militarism from the soul of France” (Contemporary Review for January, 1905, art. “France and Rome”). Or again the following, reported in the daily papers: “A petition to stop the war between Russia and Japan owes its inception to Signor Carlo Romissi, Deputy and editor of the Secolo of Milan. The petition has penetrated into every workshop, household, and school, and roused the people to a passionate desire for peace, not only between the belligerents in the Far East, but between all nations.” The Secolo is the most widely-read Freethought paper in Italy.

Though it may be a long time before our efforts are rewarded, is that any reason for not making a commencement in the right direction? Let me give an instance. The effort now being made to popularise the international language “Esperanto” is one such commencement. Could not the Church spare a little of her military ardour (exhibited in the arm-chair and pulpit) for supporting peaceful projects of this nature? This one, at any rate, among the many to be found on the Rationalist programme, is not contrary to her teaching; but I have not as yet heard of any ecclesiastical support to a scheme that will undoubtedly conduce to a better acquaintance between the peoples of different nationalities. It is Rationalist and liberal-minded philanthropists (Mr. W. T. Stead, e.g.) who are at present chiefly interested in the movement.

During the Boer War one was continually hearing declamations from the pulpit to the effect that war is a necessary evil. For instance, the late Bishop of Calcutta, Dr. Welldon, actually advocated war on the ground that it was a means of keeping a nation virile. Has the Boer War made us more virile? Whatever Imperial necessity there may have been for it, owing to blunders in the past and the existing condition of affairs, the certain effects of it, so far as we can see, have been the untimely destruction of some of the flower of our race, sorrow spread throughout the length and breadth of the land by many bereavements, the burden of a great debt, and the unemployed question rendered more acute than ever.

“The brotherhood of man is a long way off—it may never be reached; but as an ideal it is better worth having than that of half-a-dozen sullen empires, trading only within their own boundaries, and shut up behind high tariff walls over which they peer suspiciously, scanning one another’s exports and imports with jealous eyes, and making from time to time fawning alliances with one rival, while harbouring enmity with another, maintaining millions of men under arms and spending millions of pounds in armaments, and all the time waiting, waiting, waiting for an affrighted sun to rise upon the day of Armageddon.... But nobler things lie before us and a brighter dawn.” (See Mr. Birrell’s article, “Patriotism and Christianity,” in the Contemporary Review for February, 1905.)