Church Reform Part 4

But this is not the case with those who now attend the Church, their attendance is upon form, ceremony, mystery, hypocrisy, which is the real meaning of the whole present business of the Church: hypocrisy, or dramatical acting, set forth in a mystery, without a mixture or accompanying revelation; and like the flimsy gildings of a theatre, or the spangles of an actress' dress, gilded over with a little moral exhortation, that you may observe or not, as you please, so as you are a cheerful payer of all dues, rates, and oblations. The first revision wanted in the Church is a translation of the revelation from the dead language of its mystery, into language comprehensible by all. Consequent upon such a revision would be, that the paris.h.i.+oners would take the management of their own Church Property into their own hands, and recover and hold THEIR MOST SACRED RENT OF t.i.tHE, on recovery of the knowledge that they are the first and inalienable proprietors of the land.

My subject is so far novel as to justify a little repet.i.tion. That twice two is four need not be repeated; but where the human being is enveloped in a cloud of verbose mystery, that cloud can only be dispelled by continued flashes of moral lightning. So I will return to methodical statement.

The mystery of the existing Church, in all its grades of dissent, having set forth and caused the belief of a temporal and local existence of the personated principles of Deity, as distinct and separate from ourselves, in imitation of the Pagan Mythology, and not as simulated beings; it is requisite, as matter of proof, sooth and truth, that a case of clear human history of the circ.u.mstances be first made out, the doing of which my knowledge, after trial, challenges; and if that could be done, the more difficult task would remain, to prove, that such beings, the authors of such circ.u.mstances, as could be historically proved, were super-human. If the first cannot be done, the clumsy mystery falls to the ground, as the Dagon of the day, before historical criticism: and if the first be done, and the second cannot bear the light of scientific and philosophical criticism, the mystery is still but a mummery, which belief can no longer prop, nor physical power farther propagate; it is thrown into the crucible of moral criticism, and men will not longer consent to believe that the same causes will demonstrate differing effects, nor that varying causes may be made to demonstrate the same effect.

I have read in public prints of your creditable attendance at the Royal Inst.i.tution of Albemarle Street, on the demonstrative Lectures of Mr.

Faraday in the Science of Chemistry. When there, were you asked to believe anything?

Was not everything demonstrated, so that the words were verified by the acts of the Lecturer? If Mr. Faraday had played you _hocus pocus_ or legerdemain tricks, as a pretence of chemistry, would you have been satisfied? If he had told you of strange and incomprehensible things, which he could not demonstrate, would you have believed?--I think not: I give you credit for a better state of mind. Take a lesson from the inference, and grasp this truth, that the Royal Inst.i.tution in Albemarle Street is the best Church in the country, and is, in reality, the nearest existing approach to the Catholic Church of Christ. It would be rational, it would be wisdom, if all were spending their Church time at such lectures, who are old enough to receive such instruction.

I hope it will not offend you, nor be an untruth, to say, that you learnt something on every occasion of attending Mr. Faraday; that you, a Secretary of State, there found you had something to learn; and that a field was there opened to knowledge, which would, had it pleased you, before all other occupation, have wisely and usefully engaged the whole time of your remaining life. On the other hand, in the spirit of truth and charity, but of free enquiry, allow me to ask, if you could ever say the same, after an attendance at Church, on leaving, that you had learned something that was, without pretence, matter of real learning, an acquisition in knowledge possessed, that was not previously known in your school-hours and as a matter of school-business, or that might not have been learned from a book at home?

I extend the question, in asking, whether anything that may be taught a boy at seven years of age, is improved on, by an attendance on the present state of the Church to seventy or four score years of age?

If not, and I say--No, to what good purpose does this expensive establishment exist? Or, may it not be put to a better purpose? and if it may, why not? To talk about Church Reform, without doing something that shall tend to a full amount of practical and permanent good, is to insult the Nation; because the existing state of the Church is really a burthen and a grievance, and of no general utility.

No Church was ever reformed by and with the consent of its Priesthood.

I am of opinion that the Bishops and Clergy ought not to be consulted in this affair:--they are not the Church; but the ministers or servants of the people, which form, or ought to form, the Church. A Royal or Parliamentary Commission, with unlimited powers of enquiry, is the first power necessary with which to commence this subject of Reform in the Church.

If we did not know human nature, history affords the warrant, that the Bishops and Clergy generally will follow the profits of the Church: those in the reign of the Tudors changed back and forward five times from Catholic to Protestant. But under this proposition of mine, what dignity is evident in the change! Instead of making the Bishops overseers and the Clergy generally actors of a drama, I purpose to put the whole structure of the human mind under their superintendance and guidance: not to be dealt with as now, but really to be educated in all attainable knowledge. My purpose is as practicable as that any other person can teach any kind of knowledge. Give the human being a better occupation of time, let the human mind expand where it may, and you guarantee perpetual peace and improvement, with dignity to every cla.s.s of men, with injury to none.

The change which I propose will be tantamount to a national change from diseased and crippled infancy to healthy adolescence. General man has not yet had fair play. No Nation, the history of which is known, has made a real effort to promote the happiness of all its members. Cla.s.s has preyed upon cla.s.s; idleness has been claimed as a privilege on one side, and slavery, through force, been made an inevitable duty on the other. For the furtherance of such a state of society, superst.i.tion has been encouraged, that a pompous cla.s.s might be decorated to preach submission among the labourers to the Spirit of Tyranny and Imposture that was riding riotously over them. There can be no liberty and solid happiness among a superst.i.tious people; and all attempts, at what is called political reform, that leave the people mentally rotting in superst.i.tion, will be abortive. I take credit for one fact--that there has been no change made in the political spirit of this country through any other medium than warfare with superst.i.tion; for the baneful and blighting spirit of that superst.i.tion admitted not of the thought of any other change.

There is a glimpse of light latent to show that all the monastic inst.i.tutions, the temples, the abbeys, priories, convents, nunneries, the mysteries, the churches, synagogues, and oratories, were originally inst.i.tuted as schools of useful knowledge; and for what other good purpose could they have been inst.i.tuted? The better part of the human mind is now making an effort to restore the purity of that state of things. Nothing short of this can tend to harmonize the human race in their several nations, with this improvement upon the past, that all, and not a cla.s.s only, be educated. It was this education of a cla.s.s only that has created all the mischief of superst.i.tious society. The cla.s.s educated has imposed untruths upon the uneducated cla.s.s, until education itself to that cla.s.s became swallowed up in imposture; and now both preacher and hearer may be truly said to be alike ignorant of all the great truths that are important to man, and necessary to social welfare.

In the way in which the Bible is now read, after being printed, no preachers or teachers are necessary: to have been taught to read is sufficient. Give every man his Bible from Church Property, after teaching him to read, and the present Church business is completed: but much otherwise is my view of the subject. There is not a man living that has now a thorough understanding of the contents and meaning of the Bible. Many are working for the restoration of its lost science; and it is a subject worthy of a Church.

It may startle a First Lord of the Treasury into new thought, to be told, that neither of the Books of the Bible is a piece of human history, not a history of beings like you, me, or any one else. I have given up all idea of the kind as untenable and indefensible. It may startle the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is supposed to have the counting or reckoning of millions of money yearly, and contemplating that Giant of Despair--the Debt, to be told, that the Bible is fundamentally a mathematical book; and that he who does not so understand it, understands it not at all, or but in a very small degree, as to its moral bearing. The Duke of Suss.e.x can give you an opinion on this head, as to the Bible being a book of algebraical science; though, perhaps, he would not like to say it applied to astronomical motion, and was a record of time so calculated through myriads of ages. A Bishop should understand this. It is a book of much more importance than has been made of it in the last thousand years in England. If the Bishops were required to have studied this book before they took office, we should find them generally as lean and as sallow as a lawyer who has to wade through the statutes at large, and law reports as large, for his sort of knowledge; a knowledge that I do not like, and will have none of, but what is forced upon me. No kind of knowledge is requisite to make a modern Bishop. The very origin of the t.i.tle of a Bishop is that of an astronomical seer, a looker-out or overseer of the subordinate offices of science. There is a plenty of work, so as to allow of no idleness in any office of the Church, if justice be done to the people; and I will not grudge a thousand pounds a-year as a salary to a competent Bishop, or even more than that, if the Property of the Church will afford it. Ignorant fools they must have been, to have allowed so important, so honourable and dignified an office to become corrupt, and to fall into disrepute among the people.

This algebraical reading of the Bible subdues all idea of contradiction to any science, geology for instance, chemistry or any other science, as well as of the apparent language of the book in letter to letter. For instance, the letter-objecting Infidels have laid great stress on Moses being set forth as having seen G.o.d; when the author of the Gospel according to Saint John says "No man hath seen G.o.d at any time." This is ignorantly set down as a clear contradiction. The explanation is, that _Moses was not a man_; and then there is no appearance of contradiction.

One is mythologically, and the other morally, true.

The Hebrew and Greek alphabets, being numerical as well as literal signs, which was probably the case with all other ancient languages, and these acc.u.mulating large numbers, by additional points, it is impossible that we can have a clear understanding of the meaning of their mythological sacred books, without a full algebraical knowledge of the language; and this explains how the letter killeth or stupifieth, while the spirit or knowledge of the entire meaning alone giveth life or understanding. The deepest investigators of the Hebrew Bible of this day maintain that it should be algebraically understood as a book of astronomical science--as a record of time by astronomical motion, which, physically speaking, can alone be the WORD OF THE WORKS OF G.o.d.

The only true religion must be founded in man's reasonable comprehension; all other pretences to it are presumptions and nonsense to be condemned. We may as properly speak of religious horses and cows, as of men who are ignorant of the subject, substance and meaning, of what is religion. Saint Anthony's preaching to fishes is not without its simile in the practical part of that which has been mistakenly called the Christian Religion. That which is in practice, under the name of the Christian Religion, among many grades of Dissenters, is a disgrace to the government of the country, and to the name of civilized society: it grows worse and worse. Madness is beginning to be added to mystery; or is now produced by the mystery without the key of revelation. Through revelation there can be healthy excitement and enthusiasm; but none through mystery.

Our King is not now the head of a Church, nor the King of a People: he can only be truly described as the head or King of Dissenters, which is an office much more troublesome and dangerous than honourable. To his Ministers, the present state of religious mind must be a prolific source of trouble; and has, I believe, made them persecutors, where the inclination of their own hearts was not coincident with the act. The Dissenters are now much less tolerant than the law-established Church; and if they are not undermined by my proposition, it will not take them many years to undermine that Church, or to demand a share of its property. To be able to see this, it is only necessary that we be acquainted with the workings of human nature, where not under the controul of knowledge.

I am not content that the Established Church shall stand merely as one among Dissenting Churches; no Minister of State should be so content: the King is thereby dishonoured, and the State in disorder. I would have it a Church morally dominant and militant against all error, as it always should be, and as it was in the beginning. The meaning of the word militant has been entirely lost, in the growth of mystery and decay of revelation in the Church. There is a great talk now about revelation, or of something revealed in the Church; but there is no reality in the revelation. There is a mystery pregnant with revelation; but not in itself the revelation. It is a fountain of knowledge, but the genius of man must draw it out. It is good for nothing, but has caused a world of mischief, where read and understood as merely by the letter, as we read an ordinary book of history. The Church now wants the revelation or spirit. Not one of those existing has a particle of spirit.

My proposition for a Reform will annihilate infidelity as well as dissent. There is no infidelity toward knowledge. It has been ignorance all through, on both sides, that has raised the cry of infidelity: each has been unequal to teaching. The Infidel has rejected that literal reading which the professing believer could not defend; because he did not understand its relation, as mystery to revelation. Both, in fact, have been alike Infidels. If I have been the chief of Infidels, I will atone for it in becoming the chief defender of revelation, and the faith, as it is in Christ Jesus, and not as it is in any Dissenting Church. Already the ignorant Infidels murmur at what they mistakenly call my apostacy, while no member of any existing Church holds out a hand to my welcome.

As the Church goes now, it is not required that its Ministers be learned men: they have nothing to do for which talent is requisite--it is a mere school-boy's task; and even among the Dissenters, where the prayer and preaching is extemporaneous, it is not learning, but memory and habit, that are required. In the Church, as I would have it reformed, not only learning but talent to teach would be necessary; and the Ministers would rise to Bishoprics, not through family or political interest, but through preparation and capability to fill the office; for it would be required of them to be first-rate scholars and practical men in display of science, that sort of science, too, of which they are now so much afraid--the unlimited knowledge of things, rather than of languages.

In what cla.s.s of ages do we place the dark ages of man's history? To whose account are they placed? To the Pagan, Jew, Mahometan, Infidel, or whose? I blush for the Church when I consider it--to the account of that _misnomer_, the _Christian Church!_ So your pretended light to lighten the Gentiles, made them all darker, did it? Yes, it did and does, as your Church has mistaken it! And none of you are yet out of the fog created by the mystery. Not one of you has gained light of mind sufficient to dispel a particle of that fog of the dark ages. You are all, as Churchmen, as dark as any of those who lived in the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, or any other century; talk about your Reformation, Printing Press, Bible Societies, Dissenters, or what you please! The admission which has been made, not by the adversary, but by the Church itself, that the dark ages are within its reign, is decisive of the question as between me and any who may oppose me. Let it not be said, that the fault was in the Roman Catholic Church, and that it has been removed. I deny the a.s.sumption; the fault is not removed, nor has any Church made the least improvement on that called Roman Catholic. The fault lies in the remaining unrevealed mystery of the Church and the Sacred Scriptures. As far as Church is in question, this Nation is as dark as ever it was, and such is the case throughout Europe. There is much thick darkness to be yet dispelled; before our gentility is enlightened. We are precisely in the same error as the Hindoos, to whom we send Missionaries; and though we talk about civilization, we have it not. Our general state of society would shock the moral feelings of an American Indian. There are, in reality, but two distinct states of society: the superst.i.tious and the civilized, the dark and the light.

Can any man reasonably say, that we have yet pa.s.sed the superst.i.tious state? Are we not rather in the very depth of it; the light of a few individuals, now and then visible, acting upon the whole like flashes of lightning on a dark night, are seen and spent quickly, lost or buried in the general darkness, though effects may be left? The liberty which I have won in prison, to make the printing press bear upon this darkness, is the first unextinguished light that has been set up and kept burning.

I now desire to light the seven candles of the English Church from my lighted torch. I would not be presumptuous if I saw any other man putting himself forward to propose this necessary business. It is not in me conceit: it is a pa.s.sionate desire to do good and to leave the world better than I found it. So many years of imprisonment (this being the tenth) must shorten the period of my life, so I grow the more anxious to do the more while I remain a bubble on the sea of matter borne. Not that I despair of eternal life, but I learn from the Gospel that I must provide it for myself.

In the present state of the Church, there is no sufficient and satisfactory motive given for keeping holy the sabbath-day; there is no reason given for holding a sabbath. I state it as a necessary civil inst.i.tution for the improvement of the human mind, since labour to live is the condition of life. While the honest labourer is following his social avocation through six days, I would have his children going through a course of education by the Ministers in the Church, their especial office--"suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of Heaven"--and on the seventh, or sabbath day, I would have such discourses, such teaching in the Church, as should be suitable to the united presence of both old and young. This would be a satisfactory motive to keep that day holy; and such, as far as I can see, was the evident purpose of the Sabbath and of the Christian Church. No other use of the Church can be more hallowed; no purpose more sacred; no employment more dignified to the minister as well as to the people. When Peter, in the Gospel, is called upon to feed the lambs of Christ, what was meant?--to feed them with gra.s.s? No! to feed the infants of the Church with true and useful knowledge; not to do which is treason to society and breach of trust in the Ministers of the Church. Oh! here is a fine field open, in which the lambs may gambol and grow up in spiritual stature, without living to be led like sheep to the slaughter! Knowledge is the proper business of the Church, and the people's only spiritual interest; and this is the foundation of a Catholic Church and of a Christian Religion, that is to bring peace on earth and good-will among men, which have not yet been seen, notwithstanding the supposed promise of the mistaken mystery for the last seventeen hundred years, so many centuries of a sinking state of things, of a fall of man from the light into dark ages! Let there be light in the Church and the people shall be enlightened. The true Church is now eclipsed by the mystery, and is a dark body. The knowledge of the revelation will be the extinction of the mystery, the light of the Church, and the salvation of the people from war, pestilence and famine.

That revelation, according to the gospel itself, I take to be, that, as knowledge is the only distinction between man and any other animal, the more can be acc.u.mulated for him in the Church, the more good will be done, and the more he will be saved from evil. Existing things can alone be the subject of man's knowledge, and it is of more importance to him to know their properties than their time or history. Now, nothing of the properties of existing things is taught in the Church; but through the medium of the mystery remaining unrevealed, unexplained, or untranslated in our language, every thing is falsified to man's credulous view and consideration, by the ministers of the Church; nature appears to him distorted, and he lives without certainty, and dies deceived as to the future. Knowledge is as infinite as existing things, and man's power of acquisition illimitable. It is, then, a proper labour and business, and moral duty, of each generation of men, to leave behind them, for their successors, the largest possible amount of knowledge. This is true wealth, and will increase the value of all other wealth: without knowledge, other wealth is mere animal gratification. The spirit of knowledge gives life and new properties to everything, as far as man's use of it be in question. The Church is the proper fountain of this knowledge; should be the public library, the parish laboratory for investigations, the school for infants and adults, and everything that is auxiliary to the acquisition and extension of knowledge. From all I can trace, I verily believe that such was the original purpose and construction of the Christian Church; and that back to this it may be easiest and best reformed.

I am confirmed in the opinion, that putting knowledge under the form of an allegorical mystery, for the purpose of confining it to a cla.s.s, has been the cause of the mistake and its declension, and of the scholar's fall from a former higher estate of knowledge. Decidedly do I conclude, that our stock of knowledge is much below the quant.i.ty possessed some two or three thousand years ago, when the holders of the sacred books held the revelation with the mystery. I am sure it may be recovered, if fairly and earnestly sought. I see an impulse gathering over both Europe and America for the recovery of that knowledge. The Church was inst.i.tuted to become the repository of knowledge; and all would have gone on well, but for the ancient system of deceiving what were and are called the vulgar--of having a double doctrine, the exoteric and esoteric, telling the people one thing and understanding quite another among themselves. Such were deceivers and not teachers of the people; and though the revelation has really been lost, lost I may say, as a just punishment for the wickedness of so deceiving the people, the successive Clergy has been ignorantly deceivers and not teachers of the people. They have inherited the exoteric or mysterious doctrine, and have not inherited the esoteric doctrine or the revelation of the mystery. This they have to learn, before they can reform their Church, or, before any one can reform it for them.

I am confident enough to say, that you have no other ground on which to reform the Church, than that which I am proposing. Whatever other step you take will only be an aggravation of the evil of which you have now to complain; or of which others complain. If the Bishops have one item of wisdom among them, they will take me by the hand, and put their houses in order this way: if not, you and they may dissipate the existing Church Property, which you say you will not do; and after, we shall begin to form such a-new, and recover what we can of that property. I shall not despair of taking an active part in this thorough Reform of the Church while life remains: the People can do it for themselves, if Clergy, Ministers and King will not consent. It is what I began to do in my house in the year 1828, in critical and philosophical lectures and free discussion on the Sunday: an example which I am happy to see followed in many parts of this metropolis, and which will go on, if it be not cordially met, until it swallows up the Church and all the Churches.

The true meaning of Church, is STATE OF MIND. Church is the state of mind. It is not made up of building and clergy; but of the people, the proper depositaries of mind. Property belonging to the Church is property belonging to the People, sacred to the preservation, strengthening, and increase of mind or knowledge. It has been monopolized dishonestly by the Clergy; and, in that sense, they have been robbers as well as deceivers of the people. This is the matter to be reformed, and nothing short of this will be reform. In t.i.thes, the people stand as the original proprietors of the land, the true inheritors of its t.i.thes and first-fruits. Other rent is a minor consideration of value in labour or capital bestowed on the land. We must come back to this by some means or other.

The office of King, as head of the Church, is a clerical office--the crown both of the Church and the State; and, for the sustentation of its true splendour and dignity, the man or woman filling the office should be the first scholar and most wise and virtuous being of the Nation.

Whether this is a principle to be conveyed by hereditary descent, I do not stop to enquire; but the true hereditary principle of church office is talent and moral character; upon which, I doubt if any improvement can be made for purposes of state. Originally, in this island, Church and State were but one. The branching into two has been the result of wars and evil pa.s.sions, to distinguish between the instructive and the destructive offices, hierarchy founded upon knowledge would be equal to all that society wants as government. State, as well as Church, signifies the People. As the latter relates to their minds, knowledge, or spiritual affairs, so the former expresses their politics and civil arrangements, their local and temporal affairs: they may be well united in one common interest, and under one common authority, in the reign of a people devoted to the acquisition of knowledge.

It is matter of curious observation to see how the use of names among political parties is abused, and how they get reversed in applicable meaning. The cla.s.s that has lately taken the t.i.tle of Conservatives, is the cla.s.s that, by the showing of this letter, has been destructive of everything valuable in our Inst.i.tutions, so that we have the name only left, without any virtuous principle that formerly existed in those Inst.i.tutions. We have the evidence of this in all the present difficulties of the country, both in Church and State. The ancestors of this cla.s.s have not known how, or not cared to preserve those ancient Inst.i.tutions in their original purity; and the cla.s.s now wanted is the cla.s.s of Restoratives, of men whose knowledge, wisdom, honesty and virtue, will enable them to purge out the acc.u.mulated errors of centuries, and restore the Inst.i.tutions of the country to their pristine purity. I grant that this cla.s.s is not found among the men who are commonly called or claim to be called Radical Reformers: there is as much ignorance in that cla.s.s as in any other. But they certainly are not likely to be more destructive than they who call themselves Conservatives; for these have left nothing to be destroyed. The true and real aim of the men now called Radicals is to begin something a-new. Their profession of respect for existing Inst.i.tutions is hollow, hypocritical and deceitful. I have had acquaintance enough with them to know that; and more than for the reminiscence of which I can now find respect. Still they will supersede both Tory and Whig, if these do not something upon the principle of a true restoration of Inst.i.tutions to original and best principles. I would have the Radicals treated as the Dissenters: leave them no ground of complaint, and so annihilate them.

A wise King or a wise Minister would see that the time is now come at which that step should be taken, and that further delays will be dangerous to every man in office. Necessary Inst.i.tutions, if destroyed for a time, will rise again. I fear no kind of change as to the prospect of future advantage.

Is not the idea horrible, and of the worst description, that a Church and King, or Church and State, should exist and hold together on no better tenure than a military power; than that of an army constantly under arms to keep the people from carrying their complaints to an extent disagreeable or alarming to the men in office? Yet such is all that you can boast of in the present state of the Inst.i.tutions of the country. These Inst.i.tutions did not originate under the protection of an army; nor did they, at their origination, require an army to protect and keep them in existence. An army is a disgraceful appendage, and destructive of every good principle in the Church:--it is not an honourable appendage to the office of King. To the people, it is a burthen and an immoral pest; less requisite in this island than in a continental nation. Give the people knowledge in their Churches, and they will soon dispense with an army.

Evils acc.u.mulate because there is error at the bottom. There is now no People's Church: it is, as now existing, a Church of the Clergy, engrossing and wasting a large property of the people's due to a most valuable social purpose. The Dissenters have only made the matter worse, in new exactions for no new benefits. Not one t.i.ttle of good, not a particle of utility, now proceeds from the Clergy toward the people.

They are obstacles to the people's welfare, and their use of means of provision for a new and better Church.

G.o.d is the subject of man's adoration. But what is G.o.d? Man is but an idiot if he professes adoration beyond his understanding. Indeed, wors.h.i.+p is but a synonymy of reason and its cultivation; and as we say:--_how can we reason but from what we know?_ so we may as truly say:--_how can we wors.h.i.+p what we do not know?_ There is no wors.h.i.+p without knowledge; all other pretence to it is idolatry and superst.i.tion. I have not s.p.a.ce to enter upon this topic largely here; but a voluminous treatise on the word G.o.d will be the subject of my next Essay. For the purpose of this ill.u.s.tration of what the Church is, and what it ought to be, I can say correctly, that G.o.d, as the aggregate of existence, is known to be a physical and moral power. We have distinct ideas of this two-fold power. The American Indians, who speak of G.o.d as a Great Spirit, make the best general definition of the word that can be made, and appear to me to have the clearest, purest and wisest idea of Deity, as far as the regulation of their actions by that word is in question,--the pursuit of knowledge, by the use of letters and figures excepted. It corresponds with the emphatic declaration of the Gospel according to Saint John, chap. iv., v. 24:--"G.o.d is a Spirit, and they that wors.h.i.+p must wors.h.i.+p in spirit and in truth"--which means what I have before stated, that they must know what they wors.h.i.+p before they can wors.h.i.+p. There is evidence of physical as well as moral spirit. Both are seen in man, and const.i.tute what may be termed the Spirit of Man.

The one in man is wors.h.i.+pped or cultivated by attention to health; the other by attention to mental improvement or increased acquisition of knowledge. Speaking of G.o.d, as the aggregate and source of physical and moral spirit, of which man is a part or unit, we experience that we cannot alter our physical construction, or physical spirit, other than by attention to rules of health in the law of nature; but we can, by study and labour, greatly alter the state of mind or moral spirit. It is here we draw from G.o.d as from a fountain; and this asking, seeking, drawing from G.o.d, const.i.tutes the whole principle of right prayer and wors.h.i.+p, and the structure of the true Christian Church; other than which, I declare, is wors.h.i.+p of the Devil and not of G.o.d. And I do not shrink from saying, that, as revelation is light and knowledge of G.o.d, and mystery is darkness and presence of the Devil, there has not through the last fifteen hundred years, the dark ages, throughout Europe, been carried on any other kind of wors.h.i.+p than Devil-wors.h.i.+p, and evil has been the fruit thereof. It was under this knowledge that I was moved to exhibit the effigy of the Devil arm in arm with the Bishop, in the front of my house and in several prints, for which I am now suffering imprisonment, like all other martyrs to truth, punished for acting upon my knowledge. My purpose was good, to open the eyes of my neighbours and pa.s.sers by. It might have inconvenienced some of them; but such is the effect of every newly-published truth in eradication of error: your Reform of the Church, be it what it may, will inconvenience the Bishops and some of the Clergy. There would be no Devil, if there were not pleasure in h.e.l.l as well as in Heaven; as pardon can be had by asking for it. If all evil were naturally punished, we should not want penal laws.

As true wors.h.i.+p is a getting of a knowledge of G.o.d, so it follows, that the Ministry of the Church should consist of a teaching that knowledge, which is not now the case; for nothing as knowledge is in the Church taught.

There can be nothing more clear in mathematical demonstration, than that, as G.o.d is a Spirit, of which man may partake, the partic.i.p.ation must increase with that only which can increase in man--the amount of his knowledge. The whole declaration of the Christian Creed, read by the spirit, is, that G.o.d is the Spirit of Knowledge, the thing known, the principle of omniscience; and that man approaches and lives with G.o.d, as his mind expands in the acc.u.mulation of knowledge. A Bishop may write or preach spiritually or metaphysically by the year, and he can make no more of the word G.o.d, of his Church, or of himself, than I have made.

The subject now wants a radical reform in the human mind.

I have mentioned, in a former page, that the Jews can trace no nationality to the time of the Emperor Alexander of Macedon. The highest antiquity that can be given to them as a colony, is the time of Ptolomy Lagus, who began to encourage science and literature in Alexandria; and, from that time, nothing but a colony could they have ever been. It is not in a nationality that the original character of a Jew is to be estimated, but in a philosophic character dispersed among the nations; a people devoted to science; and so a chosen or select, because a learned people. There is no resemblance in character between an ancient and a modern Jew:--the name is an Asiatic name of G.o.d; and can only apply to a race of men in the sense of having perfected human nature, which it is very probable the ancient Jews had done, as far as it was then possible to do it, according to the system of initiation, through a series of discipline, into all the schools and mysteries of that time and country.

The first public reference to a stated existence of the Books of the Old Testament is the reign of Ptolomy Philadelphus. Egypt appears to have been the only country in which it can be said that a series of Kings gave encouragement to science, which appears, as far as history is witness, to have brought in the Augustan era. It became, as far as wars and tumults would permit, fas.h.i.+onable so to do, until superst.i.tion overwhelmed it and usurped all its names, leading on to the dark ages of what has been since mis-called the Christian era. Cultivation of science is the restorative power, and the only public or private act that confers true dignity on man. This is the only remedy for the disorder of the Church; and I have introduced this historical view of the Jewish name, to show how flimsy is that web of superst.i.tion which has been woven in the existing Church on the foundation of a supposed national history and origin of the Jews. Truth nowhere finds opposition in fact, date, or principle: error is opposed by endless proofs of the kind.

It remains now only that I give an outline of the historical defects of the present received view of the mystery of the Christian Religion, and then draw to a conclusion.

No record extant, or referred to, that, having been written in the first century, has mentioned the human existence of an individual of the name of Jesus Christ.

A pa.s.sage now in Josephus is a declared interpolation, inasmuch as it was first known to the world in the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, written in the fourth century, after Photius and Origen, of the third century, had written, that Josephus had not made mention of Jesus Christ.

In the writings of Philo Judaeus, an Alexandrian Jew of the first century, much is said about the Logos, in carrying out the philosophy of Plato; but not a word about Jesus Christ.

Pliny the younger, in his letter to the Emperor Trajan, written from Bythinia between the years 106 and 112, is the first to mention the name of Christ. This mention is as of a G.o.d and not as of a man: no reference is made to Judea or to Jews; and the wors.h.i.+ppers of this G.o.d he describes under the name of Christians, and as having long existed as a sect in that province. He writes as if he had heard nothing of the sect at Rome, and describes their wors.h.i.+p as an excessive superst.i.tion.

The pa.s.sage in Tacitus is rejected, as not noticed by Eusebius or any one before the fifteenth century; that it was found in a copy by Johannes de Spire at Venice.

This brings us to Justin Martyr, who can only be considered a Christian of the Platonic order, making no reference to Gospels or Epistles.

Thence we come to St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, who has very much the appearance of a Druidical Bishop rather than as a newly-appointed Christian Bishop. Irenaeus mentions the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and gives the reason why there should be four; as because there are four seasons in the year. He has many other allegorical extravagancies in his writings, and is not deemed the most respectable of the Fathers of the present Church.

In the third century, and toward the latter part of that century, near three hundred years after the supposed birth of the man Jesus Christ, we have a recognition of all the Books in the New Testament, which received the stamp of the authority of a Council of Bishops, as a selection from many similar and dissimilar books under similar t.i.tles, in the fourth century; but whether the revelation of the mystery was then understood by the Bishops does not appear.

The Epistles of the New Testament have no dates nor reference to any persons who were known to have lived at any particular time. They are not supported by, nor do they support, the Gospels. The idea of allegorism prevailed in the third century.

The Christian era was not reduced to chronology until the sixth century; and that chronology was very little used or referred to until the tenth, that the era of the Hegira of Mahomet had come much into use. The real struggle of the present Christian Church was not with the Pagan but with the Mahometan Religion, and they are near a balance of numerical power to this day. A battle in France, in the reign of Charles Martel, checked the progress of the Mahometans, and saved the entire overthrow of the mysterious Christian Church on the continent of Europe. There was a much greater similarity between the Pagan and the Christian, than between the Christian and the Mahometan Religion.