University of Virginia Library

IV. THE PARLIAMENT OF THE WORLD.

There was a night, when a band of earnest men, who believed that
God might be adored and man be loved without the medium of church
or creed, assembled in the solitudes of a mountain cavern. They were
but few in number, and yet it seemed as if all the nations of the earth had
sent their representatives to this secret Congress of Brotherhood, this obscure
Parliament of Love.

History, or that fabric of falsehood, which is promulgated to the world
as history, does not record the names of these men, who formed the
little band; and yet, their deliberations went forth from that mountain
cavern over all the world, like the voice of a Regenerating Angel.

The fair-haired German was there; and by his side the Spaniard, with
his bronzed cheek, and eye of fire. There, the Italian, full of the ancient
glory of his land, and the Frenchman, with his story of Protestant and
Catholic wars. The Swede, the Dane, the Hungarian, and the Turk,—
all were mingled in that band. Even the far land of the New World was

represented there in the person of a Colonist, fresh from the witchcraft
murders of New England.

These men, grouping round a rock which started from the cavern floor,
talked with each other in low, earnest tones. A single torch, inserted in
the crevice of the rock, gave its faint light to the scene, and dimly revealed
their various costumes, and the passions as various, which flitted
over each face.

Near that rock, a solitary figure towered erect, his face and form concealed
by a dark robe.

While all the others conversed in agitated whispers, he alone was
silent.

Not a gesture betrayed his emotion, nor indicated that he was in truth
any thing but a dumb image of wood or stone.

There was but one in the little band who knew his name.

Wherefore this assemblage in the mountain cavern of Germany, at
dead of night, by the faint ray of a solitary torch?

Wherefore these signs, by which the various persons recognised each
other? and what meant that password in the ancient Hebrew tongue,
which echoed round the place until the gloomy arches seemed agitated
into voice by the sound?

It will be remembered, that this meeting took place when the first quarter
of the seventeenth century was near its close.

The German, with his fair hair and blue eyes, arose—

“Reformations are in vain for my fatherland. A new Luther must
arise and work out a broader and bolder Reformation. The last has but
substituted one creed for another—Germany festers with the unburied
corses of those who have been slain in the war of Creeds. The Reformation
only agitated the atmosphere in which Kings and Priests swelter
into bloated power. It left the Poor where it found them—there, under
the hoofs of Priest and King, doomed to dig and die, whether a Pope or
a Synod reigns. Earth calls to God for a new Reformation, which shall
overlook the world, as with the eye of God himself, and behold in God
but the common Father of all mankind; in nations and races, however
divided or styled, but a common family of Brothers.”

As the German took his seat upon a ledge of rock, near the central
rock, a murmur of deep emphasis filled the cavern.

Then, one by one, the members of the little band arose, and spoke the
thought of their souls freely, and with no fear upon their faces.

The Spaniard rose—

“In Spain exists the Inquisition—”

As if these words comprised all that man can know of degradation, all
that Priests can inflict, or Kings contrive, in the form of Murder, he said
no more.

Next the Frenchman—

“St. Bartholomew's corses have not yet mouldered into dust,” he said,
and was silent.

After he had ceased, an Irishman arose. He had no word to utter, or
perchance his heart was too full for words. He laid upon the rock, in
the rays of the light, some leaves of withered shamrock, and a broken
harp. The withered leaves and the broken harp were stained with blood.

Without a word, the Irishman glided into the shadows again.

Then the voice of the Englishman was heard—

“Some time ago there was a war in my native land. The People, that
vulgar race, whose life is comprised in three words—we are born, we
suffer, we die!—The People, I say, came up bravely to that war, and
spoke with an ominous murmur to an anointed King, telling him in their
rude way, that he was but a man. That, forgetting his Manhood in his
Kingship, he had committed murders enough to have hurled a thousand
men to the scaffold. Therefore, said the People, King as you are, with
the royal blood of twenty generations in your veins, with the anointing
oil of all the Priests in the land upon your brow, you must die.

“They put their King to death upon the scaffold, and said in the face of
God and Man—`We will have no more to do with Kings. They have had
the world long enough for their Murder ground—long enough have they
set men at one another's throats, and turned the Image of God into an
engine of carnage.' This was a brave thing, which the English People
said, but the time was not yet come; they had not yet learned the great
lesson of our order. First, Union; then Freedom; and last Brotherhood.

“They could not yet recognise in God, but a loving Father of all mankind,
nor in nations and races, but a family of Brothers.

“Therefore, after having put their King to death, and buried the word
`King,' with his headless body, they became the slaves of Faction. They
quarreled about creeds and forms, leaving the great fact of all Truth—
Brotherhood among men—a dumb and mangled thing beneath their
bloody feet.

“At this time, a bold Son of the People cast his eyes about him, and
saw the danger of his brethren. He saw the word `King' start into life
again from the headless body of Charles the First—he saw the People
once more kneeling in their blood, under the iron feet of Power.

“He determined to save his race, but, alas!—pity us, good Lord, for
we are weak!—he could think of no better way of saving his people
from the name of `King,' than by usurping the Power without the Name.

“Therefore, the Lord delivered him not into the hands of his enemies,
but to the remorse of his own soul. Delivered his great heart to the
terror of the Assassin's steel—delivered his giant intellect, blinded and
bound, like the Samson of old, to that terror which fears a shadow, and
trembles at a sound.

“At last he died, and England, forgetful of the blood which had been

shed to achieve her freedom—forgetful even of the greatness of that
Brewer, who had made the name of Protector nobler than the name of
Emperor—England, I say, forgetful of the brave men who had died,
by tens of thousands, to redeem her from the name of King—England
rushed to the grave of Charles the First, and took the crown from his
fleshless skull, and put it on the head of Charles the Second, and hailed
him—`King!'

“Yes, my brothers, Charles the Second is King in England now, and
while he reigns, there is a headless trunk amid the offal of the ditch, there
is a bleeding head nailed up to scorn, upon the gate of London. That
headless trunk, and that bleeding head, once embodied the Soul of Oliver
Cromwell.”

The Englishman could say no more. Charles the Second on the
Throne, and Oliver Cromwell's body cast forth to feed the hunger of
dogs, Oliver Cromwell's head nailed up to the gate of London—it was
enough.

The Representatives of the Nations uttered a groan for fallen England.

Then, one by one, these men gathered from the quarters of the globe,
—assembled at the mandate of some Invisible Chief, or by the watch
word of a universal brotherhood—arose and told, in various ways, in
every tongue, the same story.

Kings everywhere, Priests everywhere, and everywhere slaves.

It was a horrible catalogue of enormities, which fell from the lips of
these brethren.

Indeed, it seemed as if the World—its men and women, its little
children, and its babes unborn—had been given up by some ferocious
Destiny into the hands of Superstition and Murder.

The Turk, the Arab, the Hindoo, and the Swede, all told the same story
in various forms. In every land a King, and for the People nothing but
chains and graves.

There was a black man in the throng; from his voice and manner
it appeared that he had received the education of the white race.

The story that the black man told, was of petty Kings, on the soil of
Africa, selling the flesh and blood of Africa to eternal bondage in a New
World. A bondage that had no parallel in the history of crime, for
under the name of Servitude, it comprised Murder, Incest, Blasphemy.

As the word “New World” fell from the black man's lips, a shudder
agitated the throng.

“Slavery in the New World!” cried the German—“Alas! Alas! then
God has indeed given the earth into the power of Satan—”

“Do not blaspheme,” said the voice of an aged Swede—“The New
World is the last altar of Brotherhood left on the surface of a desolated
globe. We have looked to the East for light—it will come from the East;

but it is in the West that the light will reveal to us the perfect image of
human brotherhood.”

At this word the Representative from the New World arose. Every
one was silent; they all gazed upon his rugged features and backwoods-man
attire with an absorbing interest.

“The New world is the last altar of human Brotherhood!” he said,
echoing the words of the aged Swede—“There was a band of friendless
exiles, driven from the shores of England by the lash of persecution.
They sought a Home and an Altar in the forests of the New World.
They landed one day, on a Rock which they called Plymouth, and the
red men of the woods bade the wanderers welcome.—Brothers, this was
not many years ago, and yet I stand among you, an exile and an outcast
from the New World—”

“An exile and an outcast from the New World!” His words were
echoed on every side.

“He has committed some horrible crime—” and the aged Swede
shrunk from the side of the Colonist.

“Yes, I am guilty of crime—a horrible crime. I could not believe in
my neighbor's creed. I could not think that Murder was any the less
Murder, because it was done by grim Priests, in the name of God, and
the victims were old men and defenceless women. Yes, yes—I have
stood upon the soil of the New World, and seen men given up to the cord
and scaffold, because they could not believe in an Orthodox Protestant
creed—”

—“Even as I, a Spaniard, have seen them racked and burnt in the Act
of Faith of an Inquisition!”

“But I have seen that Image which we love in a Wife, reverence in a
Sister, adore in a Mother—I have seen the Image of Woman lashed naked
through the streets, amid the jeers and prayers of cadaverous Priests,
who saw the blood start from the quivering flesh, and shouted, `Scorn to
the Heretic, Praise to our God.' This on the soil of the New World—
this in the land which God hath set apart as the most sacred altar of
human Brotherhood!”

Bathed in tears and blushes, the American crouched into a seat. One
groan quivered from the hearts of the listeners.

“We all looked to the New World for light, and lo! we have it, but it
is the light from the flame of persecution, the red blaze which Bigotry
has stolen from the fires of hell.”

From the verge of the circle which the brothers formed, as they clustered
around the light, a tall form advanced. It was a man clad in a
blanket, with a wampum belt wound about his waist; a man of aquiline
nose and high cheek-bones, eyes like sparks of flame, and skin that
resembled the deep red of autumnal leaves.

“I am an Indian,” he said in a guttural tone—“But the language of

your Brotherhood has become my language. The altar at which you
worship is also mine. I am an Indian. Twenty winters ago, I dwelt
among my people, beside the river which flows from the forest to the sea.
Our numbers were as the leaves in the forest, as the sands by the shore.
From the wood to the river, extended our wigwams, thick as the birds in
the sky, when the sun is low. The White Man came; he was attired in
black. There was a Cross upon his breast. He taught my People a
new Religion; he built his temple in our midst. The Great Spirit whom
we had seen in the sky, we now beheld in a Cross, and worshipped in
the form of a Silver Cup. And yet his Religion made the heart warm
within us, for it spoke of a Great Being, who had come from the sky, so
that he might suffer among men, and die despised and scorned upon a
tree, in order that all men might love one another. It was a beautiful
Religion, and we loved it. Our warriors knelt at the foot of the Cross—
our maidens placed that Cross upon their bosoms, and set it, bound with
flowers, amid the folds of their raven hair.—We loved the Religion, and
the man in the dark robe who taught us to love it, grew white-haired
among us.

“One morning in summer, as we were gathered in the temple near the
river shore—as the old man lifted the Cup on high, while our nation knelt
at his feet—a bullet pierced his brain. He fell at the foot of the Cross.
A red blaze streamed through every window—there was a sound like an
hundred thunder-claps in the air. There were an hundred dead bodies
on the floor of the temple.

“The grass without the temple was burdened with the dead—the river,
near us, grew red with blood on every wave.

“From the rocks on the opposite shore, streamed one incessant sheet
of flame.

“Evening came at last. The sun was setting. I was the only living
man, and I stood alone amid the harvest of death.”

A cry of horror pervaded the cavern.

“Who was it that did this deed? Who were the murderers—the savages
of other tribes, your foes among the red men?”

“They were white men who did this deed. They believed in the
same Being whom the man in the dark robe taught us to love.”

“Wherefore this murder?” asked the Swede.

These white men, who came upon us as we knelt in prayer, and shot
us down, and stabbed us, as we rose upon the river's wave, and pierced
our skulls as we crept into the bushes—these white men believed in the
same Cross in which the old man believed, but—” a sad smile stole over
the red features of the Indian—“they only believed in the Cross as it
was written in a Book—while the old man believed in it as it was carved
in wood or sculptured in stone. Therefore they murdered us.”

There was a pause of stillness, unbroken by a sound.

“Brothers,” cried the Indian, “I come to you in the name of the Red
Men. We melt away before the white race like snow before the flame.
They kill us with the sword, they poison us with fire-water, they sweep
us away with the plague. Help, or we are dead.”

The appeal of the Red Man touched every heart.

An Italian, with every line of his animated countenance stamped by
thought and endurance, next arose.

“Italy,” he exclaimed, “is palsied by a Nightmare, which crouches
upon her breast, and slowly drinks the blood from her heart. The Night-mare
changes its form every instant—now it is a Priest, now it is a King;
now the Priest and King, combined in one, realize the idea of an Incarnate
Devil. Help for Italy, ere the last drop of her blood is spent!”

Then by the side of the Italian appeared the dark figure of a Jesuit.
Every eye shuddered to behold him there—all wondered why he had dared
intrude upon this band of brothers—not a man but shrunk away from him,
afraid of the very folds of his dark robe.

“Help for the Catholic Church,” he exclaimed—“Help, Brothers of
Love, for that Church which once overspread the earth, and sheltered all
men under the wings of her Divine Unity! She now lies bleeding in the
hands of Princes who call themselves Priests, of Murderers who call
themselves Pastors!”

The smile that had agitated every face when he commenced, died away
in a look of sympathy as his last words fell on their ears. They extended
their hands; they encircled him.

“There is hope for man, when the Jesuit invokes the aid of Brotherhood
in behalf of the Church!”

And all the while, that solitary figure stood veiled,—speechless and
motionless—near the rock, alone amid the throng.