Theism :: :: University of Virginia Library

Consecrate yourselves to God, all ye youths and maidens!
Ere the world benumb your fresh feeling or sin harden your conscience.
Know that others have found God, as ye have not yet found him;
But seek ye after him, and ye shall find him also:
Delight yourselves in him, and he shall give you the desire of your hearts.
Seek him in the open field or in the shrouded wood,
Under the evening sky or in the solitary chamber.
Take with you words, and turn to him, and say:

“Oh Author of our spirits, Perfector of souls,
With thee strength dwelleth in repose, and no passion is in disharmony;
But the passions of youth are untamed, and we do but move toward perfection,
And Desire often seduces from Goodness or Ease deters from Duty.
Yet wisely were we made by thee, and thy Will must be best for us;
Early to submit were our prudence, and sweetly to obey, our happiness;
And when we know that we seek thy will, we know that we become thy servants.
Lo! here we resign all baser desire, we consecrate ourselves to be thine,
We will struggle to be as thou approvest; to be pure, as thou art pure,
Unwarped by perverse passion, unspoiled by selfishness,
Active for every good work, sympathizing with every good cause,
Haters and scorners of the wrong, lovers of good and of good men.
So will we aspire to thee, that we may be thine now and always,
To live before thy open eye, and to die into thy secret bosom.”

Speak to him thus, or to this effect, knowing that he reads all your heart;
Knowing that his light searches your dark corners, and sees your unknown faults.

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Fear not to meet his piercing gaze, shrink not from his eyes of flame,
But stand before them true-heartedly, to let them burn up your sin.
Oh, how will it cleanse your conscience and strengthen your best purposes.
How will it put to shame all unkindness, all impurity, all worldliness and pride!
Ye who admire heroism shall grow heroic, and the compassionate more tender,
And the generous more self-sacrificing, and the prudent more self-possessed.
Every virtue shall be strengthened, and every vice shall be crippled,
From the day that ye solemnly consecrate your all to the Ever Present God.
For every impulse shall fall into its own place, and learn its due subordination,
And become the meek minister of the soul, or the pleasant amuser of its weariness,
The strong combatant for the right, or the sharp hunter after the true.
And your natures shall become enlarged, as they expand toward God:
Your insight shall be deeper and your survey broader,
Your selfishness shall become prudence, and your prudence unselfish,
Loving your neighbours, loving your country, and mankind, and the Right.
When the faithless trembles at truth, your faith shall but grow stronger,
And where the hypocrite is feeble, your sound heart shall be mighty.
Only aspire after perfection, and tell this out to God,
And ere long ye shall find him and know his exceeding great joy.
He shall make with you a covenant of grace and of truth,
And shall fill you of his own fulness and visit you with his Spirit,
And he shall be your well-known Lord, and ye shall be his conscious servants,
Equipped for life and careless of death, aspiring after eternity,
Sighing over your own unworthiness, yet certain of Almighty Love.

Postures of Devotion.

Between the body and the mind of man is a close sympathy,
But the mind is the natural ruler, the body is the servant,
Obeying and denoting the inward actions.
The postures of reverence, of desire, of hope are not arbitrary:
They are prompted by nature, and their absence would be unnatural.
So too when a man addresses God, if the heart be chastened,
The voice, the countenance, the whole body will duly sympathize;

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And if solitude be granted, and no circumstances hinder,
Most natural is it for the worshipper to abase himself before God,
Whether by sinking on the knee or by momentary prostration,
Or by lowly sitting on the ground with face upturned;
Or otherwise by reverential standing with hands uplifted.
He who waits meekly on his lord with collected mind,
Cannot use frivolous motions or careless demeanour:
And though wisdom forbids any painful postures,
Or whatever by its annoyance may distract from devotion,
Yet equally does it dissuade such luxury of ease
As may tend to slumber and to the lulling of the mind.
Strong and weak bodies have their several proprieties,
Nor may one herein become a low to another.
Yet each who is upright, and seeks after God,
Learns easily in what postures he is most collected,
Least prone to wanderings or diversion of thought.
Those postures are to that man rightful and religious.
Let not one presume to dictate absolutely to another,
Yet let none treat these matters as small or unimportant.

There is a scrupulosity, which makes some men unhappy,
If from morning to evening they have not sunk upon the knee;
As though kneeling were prayer, or were essential to worship.
This is a weakness, and may be called a superstition:
Yet if a man have not yet learned to worship otherwise,
To him the loss is grave, when life's hurry forbids to kneel;
And if he persevere in conscientiousness, his weakness will drop off.
More pernicious is the error of that overbold spirituality,
Which, trusting to its inward power, disuses formalities of prayer.
For though, in the flood-tide of some holy sentiment,
When God's glorious mercy has thrilled through veins and heart,
Worship and aspiration, whether one stand, walk or sit,
May seem natural as breath, in every free interval;
Yet he who expects such heavenly frames to abide
Without his own fostering and without thoughtful effort,
Will be sadly undeceived by a terrible reverse,
By untractable deadness, or by lapses into old sin.

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Nay, the more we are favoured by the instirrings of God's Spirit,
The more anxiously must we cherish and invite that presence
By sacred meditation and by solemn seeking;
Knowing that it is better to die than to go back in holiness,
And that backward we shall go, if we trust to that which is attained.
Moreover, though affected postures may be a hypocrisy,
Nothing is easier to the upright than to detect his own hypocrisy,
If merely the first ascents of spirituality have been reached.

By all means then, if possible, live in worship and in aspiration;
But in order that it may be possible, arouse yourself to effort,
Waiting on and seeking after the Unseen at set time and place;
Addressing him by formal act and in solemn posture,
Not perhaps for many minutes, yet surely with collected earnestness;
Nor subjecting your liberty to other men's command;
Yet wisely using the experience of others,
Until it be superseded by fuller experience of your own.
So shall forms help life, and become full of life,
And nature shall grow spiritual, and God's spirit be our nature.

Joy and Consolation.

Joy is not to be expected from meditations on an Afterworld,
On which some would have our minds fondly dwell.
For by the wisdom of our God no material is surely given,
On which either desire or imagination may repose.
Otherwise, might preoccupation of heart on a nobler scene
Draw away energies needed for improving the present.
A little garden in this world is given for our culture,
Little in itself, great for us, too great alas! for most of us.
On this must we bestow ourselves, undistracted by the future;
Just as the sailor in a strong breeze, when sails are to be shifted,
Thinks not of his country nor of his wife nor even of his God,
But of the sails and of the ship, of the winds and waves.
Yet the knowledge that he has a country and a home recruits his forces,

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Filling his heart in short intervals with pleasant memories
And stimulating him in turn with sweeter hopes.
So may the belief in a future, hidden deep in the background,
Be as a fortress of support to spirits that else might faint,
When the armies of Evil are mighty and God seems not to rule.

In truth Joy must not be sought for, or it never will be won;
But Consolation may justly be sought by the heart outworn,
And Consolation is a precious balm sometimes possible to be given,
In calamity, under oppression, and under loss by death.
Hopes of a future life afford topics of comfort,
Only where speaker and hearer have a common faith,
And this is in truth far rarer than some imagine.
Where faith or care of a future life is weak,
Scarcely will you comfort a mourner by asserting it.
Or if a man mourns lawfully, yet selfishly,
For having lost one who was useful and a present comfort,
One who was not loved with pure unselfish love,
Poor is the consolation to the mourner, that his lost friend lives.
He grieves for his own present loss, which is real and solid,
Unchanged and unchangeable by spiritual doctrine.
Worldly sorrows crave after worldly reliefs,
Except where the crisis may lift the heart above itself.
Yet the father will not regain his child, nor the wife her husband;
And as to the positive loss, so far as it is personal,
If religion supply it, this is by the doctrine of a Present God,
Sympathizing, supporting, ordaining wisely,
Not by the doctrine of a Hereafter, which still withholds the lost.
Never will Faith be strengthened by exercise too hard.
Spiritually to believe in a Heaven, is an act for the spiritual;
To rejoice that a lost friend is there, belongs to the unselfish.
To the many, a better consolation is sympathy and small kindness,
And pointing to like sorrows which have been bravely borne,
And to the duties which forbid too absorbing a regret.
Such topics Nature everywhere teaches to the tender,
And the tender heart which uses them is itself a consolation,
Tho' wrapt in dark Paganism or in lonely Atheism.

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But blessed are those who find God's Love ever present,
Light amid darkness, peace amid confusion,
A true Consolation, a solid present fact.
If Faith cannot alway be joyful, yet may it alway be strong,
Comforted by the fixed assurance, that God even now reigneth.

Deadness of Soul.

“My heart is dull and is cold: it might be of stone:
I hear truth concerning things holy, and it moves me not,
Although my knowledge abideth and my convictions are unchanged.
When I would meditate on the most High, my thoughts wander;
When I would pray to him, I cannot; for I have no desires;
When I would praise him, my perceptions of his presence are too faint,
And I am ashamed of my barrenness and of the emptiness of my spirit.
And I ought to be more ashamed, I ought to be more humbled;
But apathy is my vexation, want of penitence my humiliation.
How shall the faithless cure his deadness, or life rise out of death?”

O Brother, who puttest such questions, thy case is very common.
Nothing has happened to thee, but happens to all mortals;
And if sincerely thou wishest for cure, relief is at hand.
If no wilful and conscious sin be thy malady, but only deadness,
Springing from causes unknown, or from vague negligences;
Win for thyself a little leisure from the distraction of other things,
And let thy mind fall back upon primary and certain truth,
Truth which is rooted in the intellect, though sentiment have palled.
Certain is it that the God of Heaven has ordained virtue and holiness;
Certain that he is the fountain of holiness to his loving children;
Certain that he rejoices to pour streams of life through their hearts,
When there is no obstacle on their part, and they do not themselves shut him out.
If thou hast once known this, thou assuredly knowest it still;
If thou hast never known it, learn it now at length, O Brother!
Yield up to him thy soul, however feebly, yet sincerely,
Expecting, or trying to expect, some inward blessing from him.

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Why should he be less merciful to thee, than to so many others?
Thousands, who have sought him, have found him; and so shalt thou.
Does he claim our hearts, and will he refuse to warm them?
Or does the Lord of life expect us to give life to ourselves?
Life cannot come out of thyself; imagine it not:
Life can flow only out of God; and freely doth it flow,
Ungrudging, unreproaching, satisfying, enheartening.
O remember, if on any day thou haply wast tender before him,
Touched by some sense of his mercy, or smitten by his immensity;
And know that the law of his Spirit is Onward and Forward,
And his past favours are but small foretastes of the future.
If business or study or the world have preoccupied thy thoughts,
This may have been wrong and sin, and may hereafter be grieved over;
But now, care less to grieve than to remedy the mischief,
If an excess of things lawful have shut out thy sight of God.
Turn thee to him, thoughtfully, patiently, undistractedly,
And tell him of all thy deadness, though thy very moan be feeble:
But much rather claim of him, as a creature should claim of its Creator,
That he will do the Creator's part and breathe into thee his breath.
Raise thy expectations high! fear not to hope too much!
Nay, believe that his love is zealous to seize occasions to bless thee.
Oh how quickly does his holy power re-enter the upright,
Softening their incrusted souls and watering them with refreshment,
Till they are melted by mercy and adore with gratitude.
And thou too, if thou art upright, and cherishest no hidden sin,
No cursed inward disease, corrupting thy vitals,
Thou too shalt presently bless the Holiest and adore
With wondering admiration and humble consciousness.
But oh! if his love and mercy abound still more to thee,
And thy whole heart become tender and thy whole soul aspire;
Then lose not thy opportunity; but let prayer gush forth freely,
That never may again long-abiding deadness win upon thee.
Make thou a covenant with the Highest, that he shall give thee life:
Make a covenant with thyself, to remove whatsoever obstructeth.

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Despondency of Providence.

Who art thou, O man, that mournest inwardly, and sayest:
“I cannot rejoice in God, although I revere him.
I long to believe in his Judgments and to know his Providence;
But my hope is faint and feeble, and will not rise into Faith,
When I see the prevalence of wickedness; and alas! I am sad of heart;
For it seemeth that those who most love God and most ought to live,
May perish earliest and for ever, by reason of their love to him.
Therefore I am downcast, and I cannot rejoice in God,
If it is to signify nothing before long, of what kind men are.”

Such thoughts are burdening indeed, and cannot be scolded away:
For even if they be faithless, yet faith comes not by self-reproach.
Yet of one thing ought every one to be sure, that all God's ways are right;
And if we knew them more fully, the wise would justify all:
Nor can that sadness be right, which surmises that he is wrong;
But as God rejoices in his work, so shall we, when wise, rejoice in it.
If therefore he has caused thee to revere him, and has won thy heart,
See how reasonable and rightful it is to be cheerful and courageous.
If sin has seduced thee, be sad on thy own account; but be not sad for his doings:
Yea, tho' this be thy last hour, rejoice in God's greatness:
Rejoice to believe that the All mighty is All wise and All good:
Rejoice that thou art admitted to bow before him.
Rejoice that thy past and thy present do not darken his face,
But thou mayest gaze straightforward into his blessed eyes.
What art thou, to be honoured by a consciousness of his presence?
What is his condescension, to dwell within thee and guide thee!
Look not to the dark outside of other men's fortunes;
(For God's purposes ill show on the surface to the half-wise;)
But look into thine own heart, whereon he has written his law,
And if thou art just and kind, be sure he is juster and kinder.
He doeth, and will do, all things aright, now and hereafter,
All things for thee, all things for all; for none is like to him.
He is alone in his immensity and in his majestic loveliness,
Which sheds calm peace on the heart which seeks his loneliness.

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Trouble not thyself to search into his government of the world,
Until first thou hast learned to rejoice absolutely in him.
Rejoice in his goodness, I say, rejoice in his wisdom;
For to believe his goodness and wisdom is a mere rudiment of Faith.
After thou art become full of peace from Faith, with some faint joy,
Then Insight may increase, and new Faith from Insight:
And afterward mayest thou discern spiritual things spiritually,
And more profitably search into God's government of the world,
When gladdened by simpler trust and made wise by livelier hope.
For Despondency is a bad counsellor concerning the works and ways of God,
And the faithless, who wants to see all, dooms himself to know nothing.

Modern Martyrdom.

In things spiritual, as in mechanism, the strain should fall upon the strong,
Who ofttime suffers for the weaker, yea and by the weaker;
Nor does the wisest man easily become known to the many.
For if a man a little surpass his fellows in wisdom,
And largely share their errors, they can estimate his wisdom;
And knowing him superior, they may even gladly submit,
And choose him to be their leader, their teacher or their magistrate.
Men thus superior are valuable in daily life,
Needful, and never to be despised, but surely worthy of honour.
Yet from such men new principles do not easily come forth;
Rather, their task is to bring out the best from old principles,
And save what is old and good, but to discourage the new.
Also, sharing the errors of the crowd, they love its sympathy,
And fear to lose reputation, if they gain new light too fast.

For if a man largely surpass his fellows in wisdom
And forsake many of their errors, they ill discern that he is wise;
For, the unwise have no test of wisdom, when it is far above them.
If he have knowledge which they appreciate, or station and birth,
He may thus win respect, and lessen evil suspicion.
But if his wisdom be only moral, spiritual, religious,

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Yet subversive of ideas which time has consecrated,
The more surpassing is his wisdom, the greater is the public odium.
For, time is naturally regarded as the test of truth,
And to oppose what all believe seems to be a proof of falsehood,
Nay, and seems to uproot all foundations of belief:
For, the unthinking forget that their nation is not the world,
And the many know not what other nations believe,
Nor what meed of honour is due to foreign thought.
Hence evil surmise, slander, ill-will and hatred
Fall naturally to the lot of those eccentric in religion,
Whether in truth they are much above or much below the nation.

Such suspicions are inevitable; nor need they be deadly,
But will have healthy action when we are a little wiser,
When humility and justice take deeper root.
For, no principles of man's nature which are of deep necessity
Can ever be wholly bad, or without appointed duty;
So too what is called Bigotry has its rightful place,
Though, when duly corrected, we cease to call it Bigotry.
For lightly to propound novelties is an evil work,
And lightly to unsettle men's notions on things sacred
Is a grave social offence, much to be reprobated.
And if, through mere ignorance unavoidable to man,
A wise innovator is awhile looked on as a mountebank,
And meets with suspicion, aspersion and various losses,—
Loss of friends, loss of promotion, of trade and money,—
These are the payment which he makes in proof of earnestness,
A payment guaranteeing that he shall say nothing lightly,
And distinguishing him from those who trade in novelty.
Nor do these losses permanently repress truth,
For they leave to him life, the means of life, and free speech;
And if truth is a little retarded, yet it takes deeper root.
Such are the worst mischiefs which Bigotry brings,
Where Justice is strongly upheld by impartial law:
And they will yet be further lessened, when justice occupies the heart,
And kindliness is allowed sway, and calm thought is stronger.

Under dark Superstition, when it holds the scourge of Law,

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Deadly indeed are the horrors worked by Bigotry;
Especially where dynastic and priestly jealousy are combined.
Awful have been the sufferings of the martyrs of truth,
Great still are their hardships in many places.
So much the more must those, who are in comparison free,
Bear lightly that which remains for Conscience' sake,
Aware that if all shrink to suffer at all for truth,
Truth can never obtain advocacy or proclamation.

Alas! can those be zealous for truth at all,
Or conscious of higher knowledge, or faithful to their light,
Who, when fully assured that a system of religion is unsound,
So veil their dissent under cautious conformity,
That never is the plain faith of their hearts avowed?
Many compromises of practice may be needful,
For the sake of those around us, in a choice of difficulties;
Long may be the diffidence and caution of the young:
But to pass through life, after the judgment is fixed,
Permanently hiding away one's deliberate belief,
Is to abandon our task as servants of truth,
And must grieve God's Spirit and overcloud our own mind.
Those who have least to endure, and least need valour,
Are called on to be foremost; nor may one lay down for another,
How much of ill-will he shall voluntarily encounter.
But there are limits to suppression, which if you outstep,
You become false to yourself, false to mankind:
And as death for conscience' sake has been a high duty,
So some loss for conscience' sake may easily be ours,
And the man cannot love truth, who resolves to endure none.
Oh, if you prize virtue; oh, if you worship God;
Detest the idea that any riches or preferment
Can compensate a dissembler for a debasing slavery,
Which stamps on him feebleness and secret self-contempt.
Let each therefore judge himself, as surely God judges him.

Learn rather that it is an honour not dearly bought
To endure reproach, exclusion and partial poverty,

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In the noble cause for which ancient martyrs died, —
Martyrs for truth, even when their notions were erroneous,
Since they chose horrible death, rather than be false at heart.
To be added to their band is generally a cheap honour now,
And is fruitful of good, if truth only is our aim.
For he who cheerfully suffers loss for truth,
Defying the opinion of his immediate public,
Not being soured in mind nor possessed by vanity,
Removes the main obstacles which keep good men dark,
Prejudice, habituation, and wrongful fear of man.
And fearless steadiness gradually wins respect;
So that the faithful confessor of truth gets ever stronger,
And imparts some strength to the more wavering also.
Often is it seen, that high talents are feeble,
For want of a fearless and downright conduct;
While the man who is faithful to his light and brave,
Grows clearer in judgment, purer in discernment,
Larger in heart, and stronger for every good work.

“Martyr” is the Greek word for Witness.

Perfect and Imperfect Virtues.

While the soul is winning a virtue, it is in frequent struggle;
And in the grandest natures the struggle is sometimes greatest:
For every part of man is for service, and all our instincts are good.
It is well that the passions be strong, as well as the desires and affections,
If only mind, conscience and soul be firm enough to guide them.
Nor is that the noblest nature, in which the animal man is puny;
But that is noblest, in which all elements are strong and all in harmony.
In the mightiest soul may often be the stiffest battle,
When Passion is stubborn to its bent, but the Mind is steeled to conquer.
Such a soul gets many a wound and carries many an old scar,
Though it win a noble victory and bring on itself no dishonour.

Yet while the struggle lasts, it is war and not peace;
The victory is about to be won, but it is not won as yet;

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The virtue is militant, not triumphant;
It is imperfect, even if soon to be perfected.
But there are many battles, which are not to last for ever.
All the passions which bring pleasure may be tamed and can be tamed,
Until they become servants and faithful soldiers of their conqueror,
And fight under his standard, and rebel or mutiny no more.
Then the virtue is perfect, and the soul thus far is in harmony,
Obedience is without struggle, and even is pleasant,
For the lower nature has become loyal, and is happy in subjection.
Up to this point is Perfect Virtue attainable to man.

But that class of passions is the smallest part of man,
And such perfection will one day be a common attainment,
Expected of all good young men and taken for granted.
Far different is the case with other sorts of virtue.
“Bear and forbear,” was the precept of ancient wisdom:
To forbear is not always a finite task, and to bear is infinite.
To forbear from pleasure, may be easy; from anger, difficult:
Also to forbear from harsh words, which are deserved, but unprofitable,
Or unsuitable from us, or certain to carry us too far.
Pain cannot be pleasant, nor uneasiness ever be made easy,
And where is pain and distress, there is more or less of struggle
And some strain on the soul, so that it has not divine repose;
Thus neither can its virtue attain divine perfection.
When affection is wounded by the death of one beloved,
Or wounded morally by his unkindness or unvirtuousness,
To bear the sorrow wisely is never without struggle:
Nor to bear men's unreasonableness and injustice and petulance,
Or to bear hardship and want, and live laborious and contented.

No eye but God's eye knows the virtues of the humble poor,
Of harshly treated servants and of many who linger in sickness,
And of daughters or wives who to the sick are ministering angels.
Wonderful often is their virtue, and by the force of long habit
Toil ceases to distress them and ill-treatment seems not to irritate.
Almost might one think that such virtue had become perfect,
Where habit and affection and sweet cheerfulness soften hardship.
And to the multitude of mankind the highest reach of virtue

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Is from the self-denials of affection in the heart of family-life,
Or from the self-denials of obedience to superior command,
With contentment and gentleness and thanksgiving to God.
Single acts of heroism, noble and heart-filling,
Are performed often by common men, whom we had not guessed to be virtuous;
Yea, by many who (to our knowledge) do not aim at virtue in general:
But the spur of some high moment exalts their goodness;
Nor might their virtue last long, though in short struggle it is glorious.
The long trial of life is the real test of attainment.

Want of leisure and press of duty, concerning which is no choice,
Keep the multitude engaged in a routine of life;
Nor is their mind widened by knowledge, nor can their aims reach far:
No ambitious virtues can seduce them, and their path is plainer.
But those who abound in Leisure, with wealth or knowledge,
Are open to new virtue and to much new vice.
How to bestow free time, is a problem for each to answer
According to his means and capacity and bent;
And therein Selfishness has wide room to lead astray.
Those who have grown strong, are bound to higher tasks,
And, when the Good has become easy, to pursue the Better,
And to find what is their task, and perform it manfully.
High duties require labour, or at least permit not ease:
Yet many brave men and women have devoted themselves wisely,
Earning a virtue which to the outward eye is without blemish,
Though we know it could not be perfect nor its battle cease,
Unless man's flesh could become iron and his heart a millstone,
And weariness never oppress his body and mind.

The purer is man's conscience, the higher is his thought of Duty.
Duty is a taskmaster, who prescribes endless work;
And the higher Virtue rises, the more she herself aspires,
That Right Sentiment, everywhere and always, may be in ascendency;
That the love of God be ardent and kindliness to man unfeigned,
And Religion rule the heart and the heart fill the life.
Such virtue is infinite, and never fully to be won,
Always imperfect and often self-reproaching,
Bathed with weeping regrets, and longing for self-sacrifice,

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Not to pamper ascetic pride nor to mortify the flesh,
But to be able to do more good and to win to the love of goodness;
Or to establish the Right among men, and remove the traps of Ruin,
And elevate us and adorn us and strengthen us and ennoble us.

Who shall speak fitly of that virtue, sublime though imperfect,
The virtue of the hero-saint, hidden, yet visible to the open eye,
For the good of others resolute and surrendering its all,
Large-hearted to imagine, vigilant to act, unwearied to persevere?
It is sorrowful, yet alway rejoices; humble, yet very confiding;
Aware of human ignorance, yet bold to track divine mysteries.
It exists not save in the deep of soul and patient of thought.
It thrives with man's whole nature,—intellect, fancy, conscience,—
And dwindles with the cramping of genius or narrowing of knowledge.
Therefore its diffusion is for future ages or future worlds,
When mutual love and prudence shall better conspire,
And the lack of one shall be supplied by the riches of many.

Moral Contagion.

The sick sheep is driven away by the rest of the flock,
Lest haply its breath be a pestilence or its touch infectious.
The bird released from captivity, which has forgotten wild instinets,
Is persecuted by its fellows, lest it propagate the forgetfulness.
No weak or crippled brute finds mercy or pity with its species;
For strength is their Virtue, and to be infirm is a Vice.

Wild man also is inly spurred to stop the progress of contagion,
The contagion of deadly disease, the contagion of evil example,
The contagion of cowardice or of disobedience to the chief.
Wise barbarians forbid the contagion likewise of vice,
Whatsoever ruins the body or defiles the domestic hearth.
They disgrace the drunkard, and scourge the adulterer;
They hang the harlot, and drown abominable profligates.
They forbid traffic in fiery drinks, and banish the traffickers.
When Priest and King join against wine, drunken tribes become sober.

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All early religion bids the rulers to stay public immoralities;
All simple nations feel that law is founded on morals,
Else it were not sacred, nor could righteously punish,
Nor could claim to be God's ordinance, or give dignity to the magistrate.
Thus early law is moral, and aims to extend morality,
And honours virtuous marriage, and disgraces its neglect,
And roots up traffic in sin, which is a contagion of deadly ruin.
Under such law weak peoples grow mighty, and the pious intelligent,
Though philosophy still be infantine, and religion superstitious.

But when through the advances of knowledge superstition is undermined,
And national creeds fall asunder and dissent is common,
And with wealth and prosperity manners become pampered and corrupt,
And traffic in vice brings revenue and convenience to the rulers,
And superstitious fears vanish, and no truer religion takes root;
Then practical atheism domineers in every affair of State,
And the theory grows up that Expediency alone rules in Politics,
That the State is unmoral, and Statesmanship rightly atheistic,
And that it befits not the law to take cognizance of vice and sin.
This is one way by which moral rule is disorganized,
And State, King, Law, are desecrated and undermined.

Or it may be, the rulers stop not at checking public vice,
That which universal conscience pronounces to be crime or sin;
But they will forbid honest inquiry and ingenuous doubt,
And repress mental speculation and the noble pursuit of truth,
And punish novel opinions, and burn the bodies of the faithful.
Then unless the whole mind of the nation can be stunted,
Men's conscience is shocked at the cruel injustice,
And an outcry is made to restrict the sphere of the ruler;
And honest haters of bigotry put forth the deadly doctrine,
That law is unmoral, and may not punish immorality;
That magistracy is public lackeydom, to do things convenient,
As a popular menial, to pave, sweep and light the streets,—
To tax, to fine, to imprison, to scourge, enslave or hang;
Having nothing moral, nothing religious; and therefore may not persecute.

Never shall England be righteous and wise, until this error is unlearned;
Until, as of old, it is understood that magistracy is sacred,

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That public life should be pure as private or even purer,
That law must prevent, rather than punish, crime otherwise abounding,
Must stop vicious contagion and traffic in sin,
And make morality its first aim, wealth its second.
Thus shall vice be stopped from without, and virtue grow up from within.

Foundation of the State.

When we are able to do good, to do it becomes a duty;
Thus to Power is attached many moral duties.
And wherever high Power is held permanently by any,
If Goodness be joined with it, it avows those duties,
And is acknowledged also by the weaker as Ruling.
Wisdom likewise is needed, with Goodness and Power,
To make the rule of these wholly beneficial:
And if all three endowments could exist in high degree,
Then the rule would indeed seem supernatural and divine.
God is our Ruler, because he is powerful, wise and good;
Man, when powerful, becomes a ruler, even if not wise and good:
But wisdom and goodness make the rule welcome,
Nor can it be long ere it will be felt as legitimate.

To see the germ of State-power, consider how men deal with children.
If a man, strong and thoughtful, see two children quarrelling,
And one child is ready to do deadly harm to the other,
The man will interfere and will separate them by force,
And will hinder the harm and rescue the weaker child,
Whether the children consent, or consent not, to his arbitration.
No compact has been made, direct or implied;
Yet his forceful interference is right and justified,
Because his service is needed and there is none else to do it.
So, in a wild country, without institutions of law,
Where otherwise would be anarchy and unchecked outrage,
Honest men who have strength and weapons and power of movement,
Combine in some fixed compulsory organization,

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Whether as a republic or under some honoured chief,
To suppress public crime and supply public needs.

Violence to the person, robbery and theft,
Are doubtless the offences which first and chiefly demand repression.
Yet dream not that these contain the whole duty of the State,
Or that the immorality of crime is no reason for punishment.
The worst offences are offences, expressly because immoral.
Murder and robbery are therefore everywhere punished:
And other doings also, widely different from these,
Which tend to public corruption, are punished in all wise States;
Some even by taking away life, and that among ourselves.
When deeds confessedly immoral are left without penalty,
It is either because the whole nation is too corrupt for the law,
Or because the lawmaker has a weak sympathy with offenders,
Or because it might lead to tyrannies worse than the offence,
Especially when it is hard to define the immorality.
Seduction of woman is unpunished, if the lawmakers foresee their sons' guilt;
And they punish gambling the more feebly, when many of themselves are gamblers;
And they do not punish ingratitude, because it cannot be defined.
Yet never will Law and Government be therefore held not moral:
Pre-eminently moral is its nature and its essential effort:
To promote virtue in the citizens is in truth its fittest aim,
Though disguised by bigots and by the war against bigotry.
Error has imagined that ancient tales are religion,
That such religion is morality, and that its denial is punishable:
Others, in reply, have denied that immorality is punishable,
Which is against all history, all fact, and all reason.
Let confessed immorality be punished, more appropriately than hitherto:
This shall never prove that historical doubt is immoral,
Or that to punish the search after truth can be other than tyrannical;
But above all things it shall aid us toward a purer state.

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Loyalty and Allegiance.

After the rape of the Sabines, or of the wives for Benjamin,
The captured damsels were nothing but slavish concubines;
And could they have escaped even by fierce violence,
All would sympathize with them and applaud their deed,
So long as the relation was that of unwilling slave,
Unsoftened by conciliation and unsanctioned by mutual pledge.
But if, through despair of a better lot, or won by blandishments,
They accept affection and learn to love in turn,
Then from mutual trust rises mutual Loyalty,
And fit Allegiance between husband and wife;
But the violences of the past are blotted out and buried.

Nearly such is the case with many peoples towards their rulers,
Who by foreign or mercenary armies have trampled them down;
Yet, if afterward the rule be just and equitable,
And the conquered are admitted into manly equality,
Generally will the nation forget and forgive the past,
When the doers and the sufferers of the violence are dead.
Those who have been born in the newer state feel what they are,
But less concern themselves to reflect what their fathers once were.
If their pride be still hurt and their manliness offended,
By a rule which depresses their noblest and ablest men,
This will gall them as a palpable fetter of the conquest,
And may utterly prevent any sense of Loyalty.
Terrible is such a relation to subjects and to rulers alike,
A baleful curse entailed on posterity by old violence,
When the rulers dare not conciliate the ruled.
Yet if there be no exclusions for race or religion,
And conquered with conquerors become blended in society,
One citizenship unites them in moral Loyalty,
And the nation embraces the rule as Legitimate and as Its Own.

To be well ruled is a good thing; to be ill ruled is a bad thing;
Yet to be ruled by one's rightful ruler is better than to be well ruled,
And we wish not to be well ruled by a protector not our own.

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So feels every woman, and so feels every nation.
The damsel torn from her family, while the rape is fresh,
Resents her captor's blandishments, and scoffs at his “protection,”
If he vow that he will protect her better than any other man;
For she claims a rightful protector, one who is her own,
Far more than one who will be strong and wise or kind;
And rather would she have a husband of her choice, lord of her heart,
Though he were less wise and strong, and not always even kind,
Than a violent lord who forsooth professes to rule wisely.
So too, if in some evil moment France and Russia could combine,
And should oppress England suddenly by twofold invasion,
And should overthrow our royalty and impose a new rule,
Maintained round our necks by foreign forces;
If in every castle we saw French and Russian soldiers,
French or Russian magistrates in every city, town and village;
It would bring nothing of comfort to be told that their rule was good,
More wise, impartial, energetic than of the old dynasty.
Even if this were true, we should bitterly disdain such blessing,
Feeling neither thanks nor loyalty for a usurper's favours;
But should know our right and duty to expel force by force,
In the very first crisis which might give hope to our efforts.
Such as is English nature, such is human nature everywhere,
Nor can there be Loyalty, till hurt feelings have been appeased.
To conquer, is generally a greater or a smaller crime:
To inherit a conquest, is a direful perplexity.
But a first duty of the heir, if he cannot disown the heritage,
Is to appease, to conciliate, to soothe just resentments,
To honour patriotism and give it a noble field,
So as to enlist true patriotism on the side of Loyalty,
And make Allegiance possible to the virtuous.
Until this is achieved, the best rule is but barbaric,
Forcible, hollow, transitory, bound by no moral band.

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Patriotism.

That voice of many peoples, which is the voice of God,
Has in every age and country extolled Patriotism;
A virtue widely diffused in unhonoured multitudes,
Yet needing rare occasions to make it eminent in one man,
Chiefly those of calamitous times, when under mighty foreign force
A people is oppressed, but vainly struggles to unite itself;
Until some heroic leader, winning their confidence,
Combines their action and achieves deliverance,
Often by some violent deed of sudden slaughter,
(As many a time in Israel, and many a time in Greece,
And many a time also in modern Europe,)
When in no other form can war be initiated,
And when the war in itself is rightful and honourable.
Or, when that commonest of tragedies is enacted,
That a prince violates the trust reposed in him by his country,
And overturns the laws by the power given him to sustain them,
And calls resistance Treason, and slaughters the innocent:
Then perhaps one or many stand up on the side of right,
Imperilling life and fortune and sacred honour,
And in the name of the nation and of law and of liberty
Rise up against the prince to re-establish lawful rule.
Success in such an effort is praised in every land,
Is honoured in history, and by the severest moralists;
Yet success would be impossible, if no one might act
Without being first secured that action would be successful.
Mere success cannot justify, if the deed beforehand was wrong;
And if beforehand it is right, it is justified without success.
Nothing can result but feeble and selfish conduct
And unjust judgment, to the worshippers of success.
That Patriotism may exist, it must be based on Principle.

A Nation is often a real and sharply defined body,
Self-recognizing as a Family, conscious of mutual duty,
Of mutual affection and of mutual right;

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In so much that to lay down even life for its safety
Is an ordinary sacrifice, expected from common men,
A sacrifice nobly made by untaught and homely virtue.
What a world of meaning lies hid in that simple fact!
What a depth of value in the idea of Nationality!
What more can a son do than die for his mother?
Yet common men are expected to die for their country:
And without such Patriotism no nation could long be safe,
Neither in possessions, nor in persons, nor in laws, nor in religion.—
To undervalue this virtue is to undervalue the State itself,
And stability of law and all manly freedom.

There are times and countries where confusion has so long reigned,
That good men differ what ruling power is lawful;
And where doubt is wide-spread, to treat it as Treason is tyranny.
There are other cases where Insurrection is a sacred right or duty,
As to which sound Morality is clear and unhesitating:
Where it is manifest that the Power which claims dominion
Does not govern a country, but occupies it with war;
When armies overawe everything, suppressing civil courts,
And leaving no rule to equitable and even law,
But mis-governing on system, by soldiers, spies and constables;
Chiefly if they be armies of foreigners, and if in all high office
Mere foreigners domineer, striving more for power than for right.
Cruel and terrible is the guilt of choosing such a posture,
Which stirs up to rightful resistance the heart of true patriots,
And makes war on Nationality, a name dear and sacred
As the name of wife and mother to every sound-hearted man.—
But alas! great empires yield not even rights to fellow-men,
And need many deep sufferings yet to teach them Justice.

Capital Punishment.

No man of sound mind will disparage morality
Merely because morals have grown up out of customs.

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In the order of history so has God ordained,
That wild Instinct comes first and tempering Reason follows,
Not creating, but forbidding, selecting and guiding.
Out of Instinct arise Customs, many of them pernicious:
But Custom chastened by Reason engenders Morals,
And Morals attain ripeness by the collision of diverse nations.

Nor will any sound mind disparage State-punishments,
Although they were at first deeds of high-handed caprice,
As we see among savage tribes; where the priest and chieftain
Are sometimes of accord to punish sin and crime justly,
But sometimes gratify pride and insolent ferocity,
And stir their warriors to crime under pretence of punishing.
But the rule of Law at length terminates Caprice;
And Law which is even to all is dreadful to all if unjust,
Hence its injustices become corrected in all nobler races.

If the State did not punish, no growth of Law were possible,
Nor any steady advances in national morality,
Nor permanent elevation of a people, nor much of individuals.
State-punishments are manifestly right, and none dare to blame them;
Yet some who deprecate forfeiture of life, so reason against it,
As to reason against all public penalties whatsoever;
While they urge that it grew out of the uncontrolled ferocity of chieftains,
Out of merciless caprice and self-willed pride.
Such reasoners otherwise also betray hatred of all punishment:
For if scourging the body be proposed, they make outcry,
Saying that it is torture, and torture is not punishment,
But is barbarous and hardening, and demoralizes even spectators,
And unteaches compassion and prepares for crimes of violence.
And if hard labour be proposed, that they deprecate as unequal,
As cruel to the weak of body and nothing but slow torment.
To transportations and to all exile they have valid or strong objection,
And to punishment of the purse they avow animosity,
As enabling the rich to revel in crime at a price easy to him,
While it falls severely on the more tempted poor man.
And in imprisonment they find evils direful and unjust:
For solitary imprisonment breaks the spirit and makes men idiots,

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And social imprisonment depraves the less criminal by the worse,
And taints all as with pestilence, and ruins after-reputation,
Even to those whose virtue may have escaped utter wreck.—
Evidently then, if we would not explode all punishments entirely,
Of punishments, as of taxes, we must be contented with the least hurtful.

There are other men, wise and cautious, who in comparing valid penalties,
Disapprove life-forfeit in the ordinary code of peace,
Not because wrong in itself, but because not the best of punishments.
To reason against such, belongs not to this place:
But it is suitable nevertheless to protest here and enforce,
That to punish by scourging, by mutilation or by killing
Is for some offences justifiable and may peculiarly be wise,
And that to decry it from the doctrine of compassion is absurd.
In fact, this is visible in every extreme case,
As when robbers or mutineers behave as maniacs and as devils.
To destroy them, until they are disarmed, is our duty,
And so to punish them, as to deter others from like crime.

What form of death-punishment may most deter imitators,
Must depend in part on the sentiments of a people:
But whichever will most deter, that is most merciful.
Nor, where cruelty and outrage have been deep and horrible,
Can strict retaliations be forbidden by Justice,
As, to torture the torturer; though Expediency may forbid.
But it is often true that the mere destruction of the guilty,
(Though it be a partial removal of a pest,) deters but little,
Since it is quickly forgotten, just as loss of life in war.
Then to deter, most fitting is some permanent mutilation,
(So have all Orientals and the old Romans known,)
As, to lop off the right-hands of bands of murderers,
Turning them adrift to beg their bread everywhere,
And display to millions the penalty of direful guilt.
It belongs not to this place to discuss the Expedient,
But to avow that where crime has been extreme and hideous,
Penalties of this nature, permanent and visible,
Inflicted, not promiscuously, but on actual convicts,
Are Righteous and Merciful, fit to be used upon occasion.

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Most persons discern all this, when confronting widespread horrors,
But they want imagination to preconceive such horrors;
And they shriek against the cutting short of ten or twelve guilty lives,
Unable to foreshape what a growth of guilt it prevents.
He indeed who has once poisoned with success and with impunity
Becomes an adept in poisoning and is hardened in his art;
But violent murder unchecked becomes both a habit to one man,
And a league of crime to many; and engenders brigandage,
Which has to be put down by war and by massacre,
With loss of many good lives beside those of the guilty.
But what is most strange in some men's spurious mercy,
Is their reasoning from the doctrine of Immortality.
They would not wish guilty souls to be hurried into judgment,
Before time has been given to repent of their evil deeds!
Were there no future judgment, they would more lightly kill!
Thus they deprecate not death, but distrust God,
And suppose him to be unmerciful in the other life!
To reason with such superstition is probably hopeless.
Yet we will briefly protest, that in removing a murderer,
We take a life most worthless here on earth,
Worthless to the individual equally as to society.
For, what is rightly called murder makes after-virtue impossible;
And to be removed from earth is best for such a man,
Who can no longer be a trusted inmate of the human family.

And why is human life to be respected as sacred?
Not because it is given by God; for so is the life of beasts.
Not because the soul is immortal; this can but lessen the loss of life.
But clearly because the man is a moral existence,
A fraternal member of the human family.
When he no longer can claim to be within this description,
His life becomes cheaper than that of a useful beast.

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Prevention of Crime.

When one child in a family is notorious for wickedness,
He is to the parents a disgrace as well as a sorrow:
For from wiser training better result might be hoped;
So great is the power of adult over tender minds.
The same judgment with equal truth applies itself to nations,
That to them also it is an infamy to abound with criminals.
If crime pervades all orders, probably the whole people is corrupt,
Too vicious to bring a remedy to its own diseases,
Though in time they may be outgrown, if they belong to mere early barbarism.
But if the higher ranks have intelligence and some virtue,
With nothing of fierce crime and reckless brutality,
And affect to be civilized and humane and just;
Then to such it is a brand of shame before God and man,
If brutality and crime be wide-spread in the lower orders.
For, these latter, like to mere animals or helpless children,
Are in great measure the creatures and the sport of circumstance,
Which forms their habits and limits their character,
As is testified by the monotony of countenance, sentiment and mind:
And those who are entrusted with intelligence and government,
Those who enjoy wealth and leisure by the toils of the many,
Are despicable and guilty if they apply their leisure to selfishness
And overlook the untrained, who live neglected and debased.

When institutions have decayed, or have not grown with a nation's growth,
So hard (through the conflicts of opinion) is their renewal,
That wealthy refinement finds an excuse for inactive selfishness,
Saying that it disdains political squabbles and endless talk.
Such a nation may need the scourge of abounding crime,
Threatening its daily life and damping its happiness,
To force it into preventing crime as well as punishing.
And when it has been found that death-punishments, though necessary,
Do but feebly deter, because life is so worthless to the brutalized,
Evidently the right course both for Prudence and for Mercy
Is to study to make life more valuable to the wretched,

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By alluring them to pure pleasures suited to their attainment,
By seeking fit occasions for the interchange of sympathy,
And breaking up their too exclusive mutual society.
The task is too vast for individuals unaided by Law,
Yet every public man can do much by word and small example,
And many private men can aid to establish the Faith,
That to prevent crime is pre-eminently the duty of the State;
Against that false pernicious doctrine, so powerful to impede,—
Fruit of spurious Economy and spurious “Voluntaryism,”—
Which forbids the dwellings of the poor to be made a public question,
Or the study of their virtue, or the prevention of their pauperism.
How such things may be regulated, it is for Politics to discuss:
But let no one think, that, by calling himself a religious man
And affecting to be too spiritual for political duties,
He can shake off responsibilities which are naturally his.
Nay: but true religion will teach him to be a thoughtful citizen,
Studying the public welfare, and not his own table only.

The Twofold Law.

He is not yet righteous, who only doeth righteous deeds,
But he who doeth them from deliberate choice of righteousness.
Such a man is God's freeman, constrained by no law,
Save by the law of his conscience, which is God's own voice within.
While this law is intelligent, and conscience bears full sway,
Other law is not needed, nor punishments, nor judge,
Nor petty rules of form, and of time, and of place,
Fettering manly discretion and overriding special proprieties.
For the life that is within will find out all delicate detail,
The rightest place, and time, and mode for each thing.
But the outward law is general, unexcepting and coarse,
Blind as to everything special, and counting on blind obedience,
The obedience of slaves, not freemen; of children, not of men.

The child is too ignorant to be guided by inward discretion;

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The slave of sin and crime is constrained by punishment.
For such the spirituality of religion is not yet a law,
Nor has it any penalties, nor any sufficient training.
The child must be kept under the tuition of the parent,
And slavish-hearted men under the moral training of law.
The law of the land fulfils not its purpose and the ordinance of God,
Unless it be guardian to those who cannot yet have discretion;
Unless it put down all traffic in sin, which corrupts the weak;
Unless it teach right to the ignorant, and save the outcast from despair.

The law of the land becomes honourable, when it studies moral aims,
And plants the orphan in families, and trains the untaught to labour,
And fences up the paths of crime, and prevents evil habits,
And cherishes the purity of woman, and watches over the rights of the weak,
And when the innocent are destitute, has a care lest they be made criminal.
Such law is a glory to the land; such law is a blessing from God,
Spreading abroad virtuous habits among the multitude of the ignorant;
Whose virtue is to be industrious and honest and simple-hearted,
Innocent of great offences, and docile to the wiser.
Then, if amid them are found churches which teach a higher doctrine,
And live by the law of the Spirit, in the faith and love of God;
Quickly will such a people run and listen meekly within the church,
And will learn its best lessons, and practise nobler duties;
Until the child grows to be a man, by God's Spirit within,
And the bondman is adopted into the full liberty of the freeman.

If Christians were wise and cared more for goodness than for riddles;
If with all their heart and might they loved the souls of their brethren;
They would join heart to heart, hand to hand, voice to voice,
And would claim that the State seek chiefly for moral ends.
They would know their worst foes to be immoral politicians
And all other traffickers in men and women's virtue;
A slave-trade more hateful than all other slave-trades,—
For here soul and body both together are bought and sold,
While the law-makers look on, and talk about interests and freedom.

Ah! will the Churches ever cry out against real iniquity,
Against seduction of women and against the hell-fire of drinks?
Will they ever demand that the law shall be moral and the statesmen true?

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Or shall their silence and apathy suggest spiritual death,
That God has forsaken them, that they know not his law,
Which is supplanted by forms and rites, by creeds and jargon,
And care not for either law, —whether the law of the land be moral,
Or whether the law of the churches be that of the Spirit?

Pomps and Vanities.

All Christendom affects to renounce Pomp and Vanity:
Between Protestant and Catholic there is here no schism.
He who is baptized into Christ, and puts on Christ,
Is buried with Christ to sin and vanity!
“The Pomps and Vanities of this Wicked World”
Are pre-eminently denounced in the Anglican ritual.
Yet what are in truth these Pomps and Vanities,
If not such things as are the life of Sovereigns,
With full sanction of all high dignities in Church and State,
Whose example corrupts a whole nation into vanity?
If any one avow that the theory is erroneous,
Which deprecates Wealth and condemns the lust of the eye,
He is treated as an enemy of divine Truth.
Yet if any one in earnest espouse the theory,
So far as to denounce Pomps and Vanities as evil,
He is scorned as a Puritan, or hooted as a Republican.

Nevertheless, it abides as a certain and dreadful truth,
Attested by Statistics in unsentimental figures,
That in proportion as Courts are brilliant and their Armies gay,
Their pageants numerous and their drawing-rooms thronged,
Their theatres and their operas and their festivals splendid;
The more do harlots abound, and society becomes rotten,
And crime pervades the life, and whole Classes are Dangerous.
It therefore is not for nothing that Religion has decried worldly pomp,
With foreboding instinct loathing prodigal glitter;
Nor can he who fosters Evil cheat Evil of its prey,

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Though he be King or Bishop, or a Soldier hating Puritanism.
Such things are easy for the open eye to understand,
But few, alas! are earnest in the battle against Evil.
Our National Religion is the tool of the richest classes:
What conduces to their honour and convenience, they espouse;
What reproves their darling habits, this they fiercely reject.

Luxury.

He who has many duties needs many aids
Of servants, of clerks, of horses and carriages,
Nor will any one begrudge him the means and skill
Which spare useful time and save high energies;
Though the same means and skill and sumptuous outlay,
When applied to no nobler end than that of living for Self,
Be reproved as Luxury in an ignoble sense.
He in whose hand is vast wealth, blamelessly inherited,
If he apply it to his own ease, without other visible iniquity,
Earns certainly no public praise, and yet but feeble blame,
Blame, less as a citizen, than on religious score:
For his Luxury is thought to harm the man only, not the public.
Nor may this be untrue, while the Luxury is eccentric,
The whim of an individual, not the Object of Life with a class;
But in the latter case it is baneful to the entire community.
For if luxuries are held needful, not to duties, but to rank,
To all born in one class, be they rich or dependent,
Then whatever the style of life with the richest of the class,
Nearly the same is expected of the poorer and of the young.
Then the young men dare not marry virtuous wives, if poor,
And daughters are sold by parents into splendid misery,
And marriage is profaned, and marriage vows are broken,
And wealth becomes an idol shamelessly worshipped,
And fathers tell their sons that profligacy is better than poverty,
And the wealthy become heartless to the sufferings of the poor,

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While they live apart in proud ease out of sight of misery;
And class separates from class through the whole nation,
And the poor live in masses, on trades created by luxury,
Liable to suffer from mere vicissitudes of the market
And from the fitful caprices of fashionable demand.
All men know these evils, but most men despair of remedy.
The remedy will come, when the rising generation gains heart
To love virtue more than wealth and more than a parent's smile;
To court as friends whoever are noblest in mind,
To marry for virtue, with or without wealth;
To live in a simplicity which keeps them independent,
Defying the tyranny of fashion and despising the pride of life.

The Elect.

Shall Religion always take up but a small part of mankind,
A mere gleaning left to God after Worldliness has reaped the harvest?
That which ought to be to man's soul as light and warmth and food,—
That which is cheap as the light, poured down freely from God,—
Shall it be for ever the portion and privilege of the few?

Truly this cannot be for ever: long has the faith stood sure,
That righteousness shall spread over Earth and reign over the peoples,
Banishing sin into corners, till it disappears as an insanity.
For as Truth conquers Falsehood, so must Right conquer Wrong,
And Religion triumph over Atheism and over all the hosts of Paganism:
For the Better is the Stronger; and the stronger will rule.
Nevertheless every victory has its necessary conditions,
Which those must fulfil who would win the victory.

We are born into the world, we live and work in the world;
We cannot go out of it, nor choose but breathe its air.
Let spiritual teaching do its best, yet we learn first from mothers,
From nurses, from domestics, from the whole family around us,
From companions and playmates, from fellow-workmen and masters,
From the habits of business and principles of the world.

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And as long as the world's atmosphere remains corrupt,
So long will it poison the feeble, the less noble and less fortunate;
And spiritual doctrine comes too late, to purify and to heal,
And wins but a few, and leaves the majority untouched.
The corruptions of one day will undo the preachings of a year,
And traffickers in sin will tempt weakness fatally.
Let virtue in maturity have the spirit of martyrdom,
But from the immature and from learners none may expect this:
And without it, how can a corrupt world be overcome?
When falsehood is made honourable in all high places,
And frauds are current in trade, and despotism exacts cringing,
He who seeks to be virtuous must have a martyr's spirit;
For to be crushed and starved hangs over the unyielding,
Nor can common men afford to keep a conscience.
While this subsists, the religious can be but few;
For, sin is strong before virtue's strength can ripen.
Thus the evil and the good of Society are in implacable war;
The good must destroy the evil, or be undermined by it.
The spiritual must resolve to trace mischief to its origin,
And to purify the streams at their higher fountains,
In the family, at the market, in the counting-house, on the farm,
In the shop, the courts, the parliament, the council-chamber.
For while their daintiness abandons the world to its courses,
The world in turn will be a curse on their spiritualism:
So has it always been, and so will it ever be.
As the Church prizes her life within, she must cherish virtue without,
Must attack all pollutions and public sins,
And demand virtue in the law, honour in its guardians,
Truth and plain-speaking and uprightness and justice,
If the kingdoms of this world are ever to be kingdoms of our God.

The present is child of the past, parent of the future:
What we sow, others will reap; fruit of our sloth or thrift.
Oh dream not, that if ye who should be God's servants are idle,
He will come down with angels to do your neglected work,
Accoutred in kingly pomp, with weapons irresistible,
And so will purge out iniquity from among mankind.

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Nay, but on you lies the task of purifying the world,
If in any sense or degree ye are the Light or Salt of the earth:
And that Church will best show the earnestness of its faith,
Which sets itself resolutely to root up the causes of sin,
Purifying the outward air, and removing traps from the weak.
So and so only shall a Church grow broader and stronger:
So and so only shall the Elect swell into multitude.

Political Expediency.

Reasoners abound, who would persuade us that Public life
Cannot bow, as Private life, to the sway of Right and Wrong:
Because (say they) the sacrifices which Virtue often claims
Are here on too great a scale to be equitably expected;
And the greatness of a result justifies contempt of a principle.
A private man, who discovers that his dealing is wrongful,
Must withdraw, must apologize, must make restitution:
But if a Great Power has perpetrated a crime,
Has wantonly bombarded a city or destroyed a fleet,
Through passion and petulance or the pride of strength;
The Great Power cannot afford to indulge in repentance,
To confess, to lament, to repay whatever can be repaid;
But must persevere in the evil deed and plunge deeper into guilt,
Lest it harm its credit by daring to own its wrong.

This doctrine is whispered perpetually in private circles,
And it unquestionably influences the deeds of statesmen;
Yet rarely, if ever, dare they utter it to the public,
Lest it rouse the indignation of “the stupid good people;”
Nor do they ever endure it as a plea against themselves
On the part of another, that he could not afford to be just;
But they press Treaties against the weak, though violently obtained,
And claim their observance, cost what it may to the other side.
As the old Greek knew neither justice nor mercy to barbarians,
Except so far as Treaty and Oath might have stipulated;

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So do these politicians know of no political rights of men,
Until they have been professed and ratified in Treaties.
Then however, at least, they acknowledge the law of Right.

But believe not thou that Public life has any rule more true
Than the rule of Right and Wrong, which is supreme in private life.
Believe not that Wrong, by the hugeness of its scale,
Can ever become anything than Wrong more direful.
Believe not that the great virtues of Justice, Truth and Modesty
Can less suit the greatest powers than the very least.

If ever a Great Power has made a false step
Through the error of its servants and human infirmity;
To confess, to apologize, to restore and to repay
Would come with grace more graceful by reason of its strength,
And would gloriously initiate a real international morality.
The weak and the tottering may in some cases truly plead,
That the sacrifices due to virtue would be to them destructive,
And that they cannot afford to consult tender conscience:
Wretched and absurd is the plea; yet it may be a true one,
Though it strictly proves that they have no right to exist.
But a truly Great Power can always afford to be virtuous,
And surely strengthens itself by consistent sacrifices to virtue.
It is not the Great Power, but the foolish and wicked statesman
Who dares not apologize, but prefers to incur fresh guilt.
Such men are the curse of nations and disgrace of Christendom,
A pest to morality both public and private.
To the public they talk plausibly of Justice and Right and Treaty,
But in their dark councils crooked Expediency domineers,
A topic rightful in its place, but not rightful against Justice.

No statesman dares to enter upon a great war,
Without pretending to his nation that Justice is its ground and aim.
For where great sacrifices, great exertions are needed,
Where men must step forward to die as willing victims,
Or submit to mutilations and to lingering diseases,
Where wives, mothers and orphans must resign their dear protectors;
Even the statesman feels how needful is the high argument,
Which can derive support from a holier Will above us.

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But to appeal to God in a war of mere Expediency,
(As if other nations had not their Expediencies also,)
Is felt to be profanity, by the worshippers of a Universal God.
God is a just judge, and favours no special people;
God smiles on no cause but on a Sacred cause,
Nor is mere Expediency sacred, but only the Just and the Right,
Nor is any war defensible, on which we cannot invoke a blessing;
Therefore it must be sacred, and must visibly so rest upon the Right,
That the enemy is, and ought to know that he is, Wrong.
This is always pretended in the manifestoes of statesmen;
Who hereby confess that in the greatest of national affairs
The Just and the Unjust are clear enough to be paramount.
Never therefore allow crafty pleaders to assume,
That the dealings of nations, “by reason of their magnitude,”
Must be judged by other laws than the Right and the Wrong,
When war, the greatest of them all, is to be judged by Right and Wrong.
Nay, but as the stars obey the same laws as the clods of earth,
So no human affairs are too great for moral law.

Political Vacillation.

Unscrupulous Ambition often goes straight at its mark,
Trampling down in its course the bodies and souls of men,
Sometimes aiming only at wretched self-aggrandizement,
Far oftener deluding itself by patriotic notions,
By dynastic fanaticism or blind religion.
Those who are moved by passion may be erring, yet are brave;
And moreover their passion may generally be counted on,
Nor does it easily entrap and ruin by vacillation.
Such Ambition may be terrible, but is not despicable,
Except as we pity great powers unworthily applied:
And even when its track is desolating as a hurricane,
It is possibly a high agent for destroying untractable evil.

Far other is the statesman whose polestar is Expediency,

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A “polestar” which dodges him in orbits incalculable.
He abhors passion as a frenzy, and he means to be reasonable:
His darling ideal perhaps is moderation and compromise:
Moral principles with him are “unpracticable crotchets,”
And sticklers for the Right he calls “cantankerous” and “pedantic.”
As a true man of the world, who must behave politely everywhere,
He has torn out of his heart all virtuous indignation
And learnt to smile sweetly on guilt in all high places.
Men who have thoroughly subdued noble and just hatreds,
And have enthroned the spirit of icy calculation,
Disliking enthusiasm as an unmanageable nuisance,
Are habitually timid, vacillating and feeble.
Seldom can they understand the generous movements of nations,
Or even judge how the heart of their own people is set.
At the enmity of any small knot of fanatics, they tremble.
With good intentions, they never know what is right;
For they call the Expedient right; and Expediency ever changes.
Scarcely do they succeed, before they dread to succeed too well,
Lest their allies or their supporters become too powerful;
Lest they soon wish the humiliation of him whom they are exalting,
Or desire the restoration of another whom they are deposing.
Often rash to begin, they always leave off feebly,
And abandon in treaties whatever has been won in war.
Nor can there be any end or limit to their blunders,
Unless they could attain divine foresight of the future.
For he who would guide international affairs by Expediency,
Needs an infinite mind to comprehend unnumbered contingencies;
Else the seeming good becomes evil and the evil good,
When friends turn to enemies and enemies to friends,
As must happen, if each seeks but for his own interest.
Naturally then and rightly these politicians are cowards,
Bullies perhaps of the weak, but cowardly to the strong;
Cowardly to fanatics; false friends to the weak who trust them.
In the high affairs of States, where the happiness of millions is involved,
He alone can be brave, who has a positive ruling passion;
Whether that passion be ambition and strong fanaticism,

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Or whether a passionate love of the Right and the Just,
For which man was made, and for which men may die.
Following Expediency, we become cheats, cowards, and fools;
Following Right for Right's sake, we become both brave and wise.

The Order Of Progress.

For flowers and for fruits God has ordained their own seasons,
And each thing comes forward in its proper time and order.
Nor can any skill of cultivator, or any offering of prayer,
Bring the fruit before the flower, or ripe harvest in time of spring.
There are unwise parents, who desire manly minds in children;—
Who grudge to their little ones puerility and sportiveness;
And do not understand, that the child's first task is to thrive,
Growing robust and active and healthy and cheerful.
With such robustness of body gentle minds well suit,
And that unfolding of the intellect which the brain can safely bear:
But all attempts at the premature, we know to ensure failure.

As thus the body grows up earlier than mind and soul,
So its instincts likewise are earlier and more urgent,
Earlier, not to the child alone, but to every human person.
While fierce hunger presses a man, mental instincts are benumbed,
And nature bids him to ravin like a beast for his food,
Postponing spiritual thoughts, the lack of which is less pinching,
Till, the finite appetite being sated, he may have leisure for the infinite.

Whither do we chiefly look for virtue and for moral wisdom?
Seldom perhaps to those who are overladen with grandeur or wealth,
Yet assuredly far less to those who are extreme in poverty.
The man who is enslaved by work, has not leisure time,
Whether to train his mind to study or his heart to devotion,
Nor often is it in him to bring up his children to virtue:
And though under extreme penury there be found of pure religion
A few glorious examples, yet very few they are.
Dire hardship and penury generally make men hopeless,

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Hopeless and improvident, hardy and hard-hearted,
Reckless of their own lives, reckless of others' rights,
Unsympathetic, and difficult to win to virtue.
Now when hardship and poverty is universal to a people,
And all their morals have grown up under it,
They may have certain high virtues in the midst of barbarism,
And be truthful, generous and noble, though fierce and revengeful:
But when indigence is hopeless in the midst of wealth and luxury,
Then its power to harden and corrupt grows terrible.
For, in the heart of the ignorant poor, Desire breeds Envy,
And Envy pours into them a belief of Injustice,
And evil Suspicion follows, and they become untractable.
Such men are hardly approachable by religion.
Hence in every most wealthy country, where civilization is old,
Now live thousands upon thousands of dangerous citizens.
Nor in all the world are they anywhere more formidable
Than in the countries which boast to be called Christendom.
Let the reader calmly weigh this dreadful and disgraceful fact,
And he will scarcely fail to understand its causes.

Individual Christians have understood them and avowed them,
And have won honour to the name of Philanthropy:
But hitherto Philanthropy has been the distinction of a few,
Nor ever with us has been incorporate in Religion
As an ordinary complement of every man's duty.
The Churches cannot help being proud of the Philanthropists,
Yet the philanthropic doctrine blends ill with that of most Churches,
Which retain as eternally true what was true for a little while.

Under the ruthless and sensual empire of the Pagan Cæsars,
To purify the social fountains and stop the occasions of sin
Was a task too enormous to enter an apostle's mind.
So neither was it commanded in their sacred books,
Which do but advise to palliate misery,
Treating it as inevitable under the empire of devils.
Thus Paul and Peter bid look to a kingdom after death,
But abandon the kingdoms of this world as hopeless,
Until Christ descend from heaven in the glory of his Father.

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For Patriotism and Philanthropy those times gave no scope.

Three classes of men impede moral and spiritual progress;—
Preposterous spiritualists, the selfish rich, and hardened politicians,
Who play into each other's hands and sustain evil.
The first, talking highly of spiritualism or perhaps of creeds,
Make light of the moral training, which ought to precede,
By industry, by rights, by physical well-being,
By kindly intercourse with the richer in pleasant relaxation.
The selfish rich, who thrive on vice or on injustice,
Or dread every change, lest it bring some inconvenience,
And by resisting all change hinder improvement;
These men are still guiltier, because more selfish.
But guiltiest of all are the hardened politicians,
Who, deliberately and knowingly, calculate their course,
Who speculate on votes and prejudices and animosities,
And, to gain their own advancement, stir up evil passions,
Whether national pride and territorial ambition,
Or bigotry, or evil conservatism, or base cupidity,
And mean fear of small taxes and other meannesses.
Such men, dealing largely in trickery and evil influences,
Seldom dare to offend the vicious, nor can promote virtue.
When evil has multiplied through many generations,
Vast is the effort to remove it, nor will one method suit all;
But every place may need its special remedies,
Most by purely local action, a few by foreign help.
But first of all must it be made a precept of Religion
And a precept of Politics, to root up the causes of Evil;
It must become a Creed, that debasement is unnatural,
Is therefore unnecessary, and is surely preventible;
That it is our duty to prevent, and will be our blessing;
That those who promote the body's welfare, aid the mind;
And that the Moral must precede the Spiritual, in national growth,
Though a few, out of immorality, be rescued into Spiritualism.

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Vitality of Sin.

Virtue in most men grows up with struggles, perhaps convulsively,
Because passions which are lower in worth are strong earlier in time.
Every higher and glorious principle is in promise a Hercules,
Yet the cradle of infant Hercules is beset by monstrous snakes,
Which threaten to strangle him ere his strength can ripen;—
A fate generally encountered, unless parental care shelters.
Nor was man made for solitude or for solitary self-development;
But, as virtue begins from forcible Custom, mutually imposed,
So is it trained more perfectly under the wholesome restraints of society.
And when a people advances morally, these restraints are not cast away,
But are made wiser, juster, tenderer, more discriminating,
If the wisest and best co-operate for the general moral welfare.
But if the wisest and best cast away this care and duty,
If they delegate law-making to men whom morally they disesteem,
If they crucify their good sense as though it were a malefactor,
And fight against other good men rather than against Sin;
Who will wonder that Sin displays horrible vitality?

Oh ye who love Goodness, (and none others love God,)
Abandon your civil war, and turn against your true enemy!
Your dogmas may be correct; yet they are a trap and a curse to you,
If you value them more than that Goodness which makes God lovely;
If you take to your hearts and houses bad men who believe them,
And refuse moral union to good men who reject them;
And lay down a new standard of the Good and of the Bad,
Other than that by which you judge Jesus to have been good:—
Whom surely no one ever yet praised for his orthodoxy,
Or accepted as a good man because he believed in himself,
But because of some absolute perception of unpriestly goodness.
But even if, beset by prejudice, entangled by riddles,
Intimidated by authority, ye cannot so far break loose,
As, in judging of men, to fall back on your own first principles;
Yet at any rate, if your dogmas be the Means, and goodness the End,
Beware of subordinating the End to the Means,

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Lest God smite your religion with a deadly blast of his displeasure,
And it die, and rot, and be trampled under foot of men.

Since the beginning of the human race, never perhaps was a land
So abounding with pure love of Goodness as our dear native realm;
So full of warm hearts beating with desire for God's blessing,
Hearts that would sacrifice their all to establish God's kingdom.
England has enough goodness to strike down Sin mortally,
If she had but knowledge to stop her ears to fanaticism:
And in England is enough knowledge to direct her blows aright,
If those who possess it had force of will and moral warmth.
Awake all! sleep no longer! what? when London has ten thousand harlots,
And every year claims for our Jaganaut a thousand victims,
Shall a people that calls itself Christian fold its hands in slumber?
Or shall we, forsooth, Christianize insurgent India,
While we drug it with the fierce drinks against which Indians protest?
“Physician! heal thyself!” cry the petty kings of Africa,
Pagans, who allow no harlotry to corrupt their manhood.—
Let us in truth heal ourselves, rising in the strength of God,
That strength which already abounds in the hearts of England;
Let the good join with better or worse to extirpate avowed evil,
And five years shall now do more than ever before did fifty,
And perhaps ere long men will doubt of Sin's vitality.

Strength out of Weakness.

“Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings God will ordain strength,
That he may still the enemy and may curb the avenger.”

If all who revere these words duly pondered their import,
Each who knows his own weakness might better learn his strength.
But alas! false modesty robs too many of frankness,
Who dread to be eccentric and presumptuous and proud,
If they vent their true sentiments and unveil their moral hatreds,
Their scorn of meannesses, their indignation at injustice,
When the meanness or injustice is smoothly greeted by their elders,

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Whose conscience is grown dull by habituation to decorous wrong.
But the strength of righteousness is in truth and plain speaking,
And where truth is not yet attained, yet plain speaking leads to it.
The wilfully wicked are but few even in a wicked world;
But each is deluded by each, each sinner is comforted by each,
And what none plainly condemn seems to each in turn defensible.
It is possible to be outspoken without being immodest,
Even where it involves disapproval of the great and able.
We may feel truly that we are fallible, while avowing present convictions,
Nor needs any one to speak as though his single judgment were a Verdict;
Yet if each spoke frankly, many evils would soon be swept away:
For want of it, statesmen themselves mistake the nation's mind.
Iniquity is strong, chiefly while she can wrap herself in darkness.
Opinion is a great power, so soon as it is expressed,
But unexpressed opinion is no power at all.
Therefore do tyrants seek to smother the expression of opinion.
Therefore also he, who in a free State does not speak for the Right,
Disuses a high power given to him by God,
And does his part to allow Wrong and Falsehood to prevail.
Opinion, when expressed, acts not merely by producing terror,
(This is but a narrow and perverted view of Moral Influence,)
But by stimulating the thought of the well-meaning but apathetic,
And winning (if it be correct) the judgments of thousands.
All men value and desire the good opinion of the rest;
And though they can afford to despise fanatical reprobation,
They will not for ever despise well-grounded disapproval.
Take away from your condemnations animosity and party heat,
Love goodness and God and good men and the right,
Palliate every crime and sin so far as truth will allow,
And your protests against evil shall come with tenfold weight.
For, the Conscience of mankind is fundamentally loyal to the Right,
And when carried astray by lower passion, still rallies to truth,
If addressed by a clear voice speaking with pure motives.
Where the voice and the press are free, so far as law can make them,
The soldiers of righteousness must not say that they are helpless:
Let them show their true colours, and they will soon find their strength.

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Lawful Obedience.

When solemn inquest is made against a deed of crime,
And judges are gathered under oaths to sacred Right;
If the accused have due notice and rightful hearing,
And all forms be observed as by those who seek for Justice,
And there be no suspicion of malice or levity;
Then, if a grave verdict be announced, with sentence of law,
Man's Conscience is satisfied, and the sentence is held sacred,
Though it deal with the high question of human life;
And the officers of law may carry out the sentence,
Receiving it at second hand, without scruple or hesitation:
Else must the executors of every act re-judge the judgment,
Nor could Justice be enforced at all, if that were needed.
He who obeys lawful power in its ostensibly moral action,
Does not abdicate Conscience or become a tool of evil,
But is a rightful co-operator to a sacred purpose.

But if no forms whatever were used in aid of Justice,
If the accused were not summoned nor his defence heard,
If no effort were made for an impartial tribunal,
If no oath or pledge to Justice were taken by the judges,
If by pleas wholly extraneous a verdict were solicited,
If the judges professed to decide from special interest,
Not on grounds of general justice appropriate to the case;
Or if rage and haste and popular frenzy prevailed;
If appeal to law were rejected in favour of Party:—
Surely we could not then justify the executors of the sentence,
If it enacted injustice or extravagant revenge:
But they would abdicate Conscience, wrongfully and wickedly,
Becoming accomplices and tools in robbery or murder.

So also if a State has quarrel with another State,
And seeks a verdict from an arbitrating tribunal,
Or, where arbitration cannot be, yet aims to be impartial,
And calls an assembly, and pleads for even Justice,
And for Justice' sake desires both sides to be heard

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With publicity and gravity and caution and mature thought,
Avoiding cupidity and ambition and party-spirit;—
If this solemn assembly, pledged by oath to decide upon the Just,
Pronounce verdict against the other State, to be enforced even by War;
Then, should war be decreed, the war ostensibly is lawful:
And though by human infirmity it may still be unjust,
Yet we should exculpate the army which executes the sentence;
Nor might we condemn it as guilty of abdicating Conscience,
When it yields obedience and seeks not to judge the case.

But when the rulers of one State have quarrel with another,
And desire no arbitration nor impartial verdict,
Nor form a Court of Justice and exact oaths of Justice,
But shun public discussion and defining of the Right;
And if they call a Cabinet or a Council or a Parliament,
Plead “reasons of State” and of national Interest,
Invite deliberation on the Expedient, not upon even Right,
But talk of Patriotism as before Justice,
And explode pleas for the Just as unpatriotic,
Or as untruth to one's Party and inconvenient to those in power;
While no judicial forms and oaths or pledges are enforced:—
Then assuredly the war which is decreed under such auspices,
(As that which is decreed secretly by personal will,)
Has no ostensible marks of being righteous and sacred,
Nor can the public vote discharge private conscience.
But the army which executes a war thus decreed,
(If its grounds be unjust or its measures extreme),
Is but a band of murderers and direful robbers,
Tools of tyranny under solemn pretences.
Never will high success make their obedience lawful,
Nor can any declaration of the war lessen its wickedness.
War which is not Sacred, is execrable crime,
Piracy, murder, robbery on huge and horrible scale.

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Defensive War.

He who is suddenly assailed with deadly weapons,
Needs no arbitration, nor can wait for process of law;
But he repels force by force; and if the assailant be slain,
The slaughter will be justified, as in needful self-defence.
Just such is Defensive War, rightly understood.
If another commits a violent deed, or prepares violence,
Which must be resisted by us at once, because time presses;
If he invades a province, or occupies a castle,
Or builds a battery and brings up artillery;
Even if he have slain no one, and plundered no one,
Yet he is preparing manifest violence, and must expect violence.
A defensive war is not always a war of justice;
For a robber acts in defence, to save his stronghold;
Yet to root up the castles of pirates is just,
And to destroy the fleets with which they commit atrocities.
Nor is this less true, when the pirate is pre-eminently great,
And reigns over millions, and is called Emperor or Queen.
But, so long as barbarism shall domineer in Christendom,
Confounding in one aspect wars just and unjust,
They whose soil is assailed will always think their war to be just,
As but refusing unlimited retribution for alleged finite wrong.—
Now, expressly because, in the absence of Sacred Verdict
Which might satisfy men's consciences and justify invasion,
We do and we must applaud repulse of an invader;
Expressly for that reason every invading movement
Carries lawlessness on its face, even if it be substantially right,
And it needs elaborate justification with sharp defining of its purpose.
As we cannot blame national spirit which defends its own soil,
Therefore the more dubious is every offensive movement.
Therefore also it is abomination to leave its moral grounds obscure,
And to wrap in State-mystery the ends aimed at.—
What cannot be proclaimed openly, will do the world no good.

Confusion and darkness, terrible and fatal,

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Has come unawares over War from learned writers,
Who, seeking honourably to soften war's cruelties,
Have taught us to treat both belligerents as honourable,
And to crush our natural horror at unscrupulous ambition.
But one side is always Wrong, and generally both.
Vain also is the excuse, that Offence is but Defence,
When pleaded by him who assumes the initiative of violence,
Unsanctioned by arbitration or by verdict high and pure.
But alas! though Christian priests consecrate our colours,
And with solemn prayer commend each regiment to God,
Not yet do English Christians understand the sacredness of War,
But prostitute its weapons to be tools of secret cabinets,
For the service of conquest, of party, and of dynasties.

Military Oaths.

If some wild rover collect a band of followers,
And forming them into a company, administer solemn oaths,
That they shall follow him and obey him, though he command deeds of violence,
And shall be true to his standard, before God and man:—
No one moderately thoughtful imagines such oath to be binding,
Or that it can ever clear the bandits from a charge of guilt:
Rather, the oath itself is deemed guilty and execrable.

But wherein does this differ from a despotic Emperor,
Or from a despotic President, to whom armies have sworn obedience?
Whether the bandit chief or the emperor command an outrage,
Outrageous it abides, nor can the wrong be made right;
Nor will voluntary oaths justify the soldiers more than the bandits
In laying conscience aside, and executing a wicked deed.

It is never the oath that can justly move a soldier,
Nor national spirit nor patriotism and loyalty;
But only his own conviction that he is a minister of righteousness,
Warring for the right side, as a servant of God.
Most men feel this conviction in repelling force from their own land,

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And likewise in other cases, which touch the national conscience.
But where the cause of war is too complex for popular judgment,
Too obscure in its ground, its aims, and its chances;
As, a dynastic war waged upon foreign soil,
A war for commercial rights based upon treaty,
A war to conquer some foreign or Pagan nation,
Or a war against our own discontented colonists,
(And of such wars as these, Christian History is full,)
In such cases, I say, it is an outrageous iniquity,
Without processes of Justice, to expect soldiers' obedience.
To train men to obey absolutely the word of command,
So as suddenly to attack a nation previously friendly,
When ordered by their officer, who has secret instructions;—
Is to train them to become tools of ambition, piracy and treason.
For what if he choose to act the freebooter on his own account,
Trusting that “accomplished facts” are sure to be accepted,
And feign secret orders, or misinterpret or disobey?
Or what, if the head of the Executive plot usurpation?
The men have been accustomed to lay aside all conscience,
To ask no questions concerning Right or Law,
And to obey the commanding officer unconditionally and promptly,
However ruthless and unexpected was the deed commanded.
This very vow made by Jesuits to the General of their Order,
Has been reprobated by all Europe and pronounced abominable.
And how can any good man,—any man not wholly thoughtless,—
Any man not willing to be wicked,—enter into such vows?
Is it doubtful whether unjust wars outnumber the just?
In every war between nations one party at least is unjust;
Nor is there any great power but has made many unjust wars,
Wars both unjust and foolish, no longer defended by any,
Wars of onesided Expediency, or of hot and unseemly haste,
Or of guilty ambition, coveting territory and subjects.
And with facts so awful glaring in our eyes,
Can any one pretend that a war has ostensibly God's sanction,
And that men may ravage and burn and slaughter fellow-men,
Merely because it is commanded by a secret Cabinet?—

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Oh! but “how else are we to carry on the Government!”
If you cannot stand without brigandage, you had better fall:
But if you desire God's blessing, let martial law be reformed,
Let the Lynch law of Cabinets be replaced by Judicial Verdict,
And the engagement of a soldier may cease to be brigandage.

The Hardened Politician.

The fool hath said in his heart, “We have no law save the law of man.”
“Moral law may dwell (saith he,) in the heart of God,
But it cometh not out thence, it reacheth not to us.
No law punisheth but man's law, and no other law hath supremacy.
Come, let me do a clever sin, and men shall praise me.
Let me wound my innocent neighbour, and my king shall exalt me.
Let me argue for the wrong cause, and my party shall admire me.
Let me go through crooked ways, and I shall set the nation straight.
Let me fight for the victory of iniquity, and I shall promote the gospel.
Let me defile my soul with lies, and my mind shall grow stronger;
I will wear the trappings of ambition, and my name shall be proud in History.”

If this be wisdom, let it be plainly avowed, and published in books;
Let it be set forth in the pulpits of the clergy, and in the prayers of Parliament
Let it be boasted of by Christendom, and preached aloud to the heathen:
Let every king and nobleman rejoice in it, and have it taught to his servants,
Until these also enjoy their own sins, whatever the law may not punish,
And serve with eye-service alone, and care only for wages.
Let them study the opinion of their own class, and not the sanctities of conscience,
And practise all unpunishable iniquity, and say to themselves, It is gainful.
Ah! woe to the nation, in which such is the morality of the multitude.

But if no doctrine can be true, which great men dread to whisper,
Which kings hide from their ministers and ministers hide from their kings,
Which preachers would blush to utter, and assembled courtiers to hear,
Which diplomatists craftily dissemble, and none but fools avow;
Then foolish is that heart, which holds the doctrine as true,
And a fool the man who practises it, be he statesman, soldier or king.

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For the law of God is relentless, though the common eye fail to track it,
And it hunts down sin revengefully, when the scent has seemed to be lost.
God's punishments are known to us but in part, yet they are not the less real;
And they vindicate in time the supremacy of law, when it is violated.
Nor are conscious sins venial, nor can they be unpunished.
Even by little sins, habitual and deliberate, the conscience is corrupted,
The heart is hardened, the man is degraded, the soul is defiled,
The sight of God is shut out, and his being becomes a tradition,
And the unholy soul is as a fallen angel, who sees no place for himself in heaven.

The Considerate Politician.

Saith the considerate statesman: “This would be a sin, only that it is necessary:
The world is so imperfect, that it cannot be carried on by purity.
It were better that I needed not to corrupt the electors:
It is sad that I must speak and vote against my heart's consent.
A time, it is to be hoped, shall come, when these things shall be superseded,
But now we must carry on the King's Government as best we may.
God forbid that we forget the duties which each owes to his Party!
Arduous is the task of government, as of war, and admits not common scruples.
Public life is a hard master and demands hard service;
It orders us to stifle many misgivings, and beware of raw consciences.
But we are improving, and we shall reform: we are made for progress:
We do not bribe as much as we did, nor make quite so many drunkards,
Nor do we take money-bribes in Parliament, nor terrify the juries.
Our appointments to Bishoprics are far better, and so are our clergy:
Little by little we shall amend, and save the rising generation from evil.
Meanwhile, we must not be too scrupulous, or things will get worse;
The wrong party will get into power, who will corrupt the nation,
Will sap our religion by false priests, and do harm to European liberty.”

Truly unto thee Public Life is a hard master, O Statesman!
It makes of thee a slave, and not a servant; a tool, not a hireling;
Thou yieldest up to it not sinews only and mind, but conscience and soul.
This is necessary for the King's Government, and thou resignest thyself!

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O mighty patriot, shall not heaven and earth praise thee?
Hear, O heavens! and give ear, O earth! listento Sir Henry's sacrifice.
England, perhaps Europe, will be convulsed, unless Sir Henry become false.
To spare us countless griefs, he bears to debase his conscience;
To save us from abounding sin, he volunteers to take sin on himself.
He hardens his conscience a little, lest ours become very hard.

As the scapegoat carried off the sins of Israel, so statesmen our sins,
And their little sins are to shut out great sins, and to fortify us with mercies!
Let thorns produce grapes, and roses flourish on nettles,
If bribery and depravation and falsehood and injustice can bloom into blessing.

Truth.

That Truth is not to be observed to enemies in open war,
As not always to madmen, is received for sound morality:
Nor shall I now adventure upon that perplexing argument,
Even if it seem probable that some deeper mind hereafter
Will establish the sterner doctrine that Truth is never violable.
Let some hints here suffice, for warning and for protest.

He who, being captured by an enemy, is exposed to questions,
And from patriotic motives gives false replies,
Loses all his toil, unless he be willing upon demand
To confirm by oath most solemn every plausible falsehood.
If you shrink and shudder before such contingency,
Ask yourself, why this shuddering and painful doubt?
Perhaps you feel that Truth is due, not to your enemy,
But to God and to your own soul, and that perjury will defile you?
If it be so when oath is made, is it not the same without oath?
For God is present and hears, whether we invoke him or not,
And to deceive by word or by oath differs not in kind.
If so, will not virtue find other modes of escape,
Which save patriotism without violating truth?
May not a prisoner appeal to the patriotic principle,
And plainly avow that he will not betray his country,—

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That no truth is due from him and no truth shall be got from him,
And that he must not be trusted, and it is useless to ask his evidence?
Indeed, after such protest, falsehood itself may seem truth.
He who is bold enough so to act, may need a martyr's spirit,
But he may save patriotism and truth alike,
And may either excite sympathy and win moderation,
Or by his single suffering establish a new right of captives.

One act or word of falsehood may have its justification,
Real, or else plausible, so as to satisfy most minds,
And save the soul from the degradation of conscious guilt.
But when falsehood is not an act, but a series of acts,
A pervading principle, a tissue of life,
It cannot but debase and weaken the whole man.
Thus notoriously is it with an oppressed enslaved race,
Which lives in smouldering warfare, crushed and not reconciled,
With whom fraud becomes patriotism or natural self-defence,
So that fraud is their atmosphere, their breath, their daily life.
If we believe some systems of morality, the fraud is justifiable;
Yet hardly, alas! is virtue possible to such men,
Nor will the laxest moralist undervalue the mischief
Engrained in the whole character, where fraud is thus pervading.

So too, if a man, to attain some secular promotion,
Perform one religious act contrary to his heart's consent,
(As some have qualified for office by sacred bread and wine,
And others by subscription of articles and by oaths to statutes,)
Such falsehood is a sin and an evil, and in itself indefensible;
Yet the more isolated from the daily life, the less its corrupting force:
Especially if half-forgotten, and buried from public consciousness.
But if daily duties recall the pledge, the falsehood is a daily act.
And even without pledge, daily dissimulation taints the character;
Chiefly when it is dissimulation dictated by fear.
He who represses his solemn convictions from erring philanthropy,
May weaken his own character, but does not debase it.
But he who every day and all his life suppresses truth through fear,
May hardly escape an inward and terrible degradation.

Consider the hired advocate, whose duty is one-sided,

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Who proclaims plainly that he studies his client's interest,
And from whom none expect judicial and fair reasonings.
If such a man fail of truth by suppressions only,
Displaying a partial argument, such as fairly deserves account,
And leaving the opposite view to be unfolded by others;
Under such modest restraint, he may retain delicacy of conscience,
As we sometimes see in men assuredly noble of heart.
But if, claiming the license of his craft, he plunge into free falsehoods,
Though only when in Court, and only where avowedly an advocate;
Truly he may avoid reproach by pleading the sharp limits of his freedom,
Yet will he not avoid debasement and blunting of the conscience,
Nor ever retain a judgment severe and sensitive to truth:
But he is in training to become a shameless and unscrupulous politician,
Ever false and plausible and pliant to public crime.

And oh, how vile, how pernicious, how inexcusable,
Is the habitual falsehood which many public men practise!
They rise to address, not enemies, but countrymen and coadjutors,
Professing truth and scorning to be called liars, yet really false;
And pretend that Government cannot otherwise be conducted,
And that the malarrangements brought in by falsehood are sacred,
Worthy to be maintained by hypocrisies and endless evil.
Thus the candidate for votes speaks falsehood to the people,
And trusted ministers speak falsely to the parliament,
Arguing against their own judgment, with crafty sophistry,
Disguising public facts by suppression and by false colouring,
If they do not even step onward into direct false evidence.
And others carry into Opposition the immoralities of Office,
Being notoriously without truth, true only to their ambition,
Yet are not thought unfitted for the highest places of the State.
Who can expect righteous rule, or hope to escape retribution,
Until reputed truthfulness be essential in high magistracy,
Equally as in courteous life, where no chicanery is endured?

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Oaths and Solemn Affirmations.

An Oath consists not in any set form of words,
Nor in any deed or gesture, nor in the utterance of curses,
(As some have held it to require a conditional self-cursing,)
But it is a solemn statement made as under God's cognizance
By one reminded of his presence and avowing that he remembers it.
Atheists cannot avow this, yet they can make Solemn Affirmation.
And because many men are prone to be careless and light-minded,
Speaking without seriousness and without measuring their words,
Oftentimes it is hard to bind them to sober and strict truth,
Unless definite and solemn form be used, which admits of no mistake,
Pledging their conscience and their honour in utmost gravity.
Cruel and stupid have been many legal enactments,
Which overlook the substance of oaths and enforce their shadow,
And punish over-scrupulous Christians and refuse justice to Atheists:
Nor are all the injustices by any means yet removed.
Yet the whole controversy would vanish as an empty cloud,
Did not bigotry care more for the outside than for the reality.
Scarcely would one find the difference between Solemn Affirmation and Oath,
If the process were duly administered by a religious Judge,
Who should remind him who swears of a God listening to his words,
And after declaring the sin of treachery and its legal penalties,
Should call upon him, by whatever is sacred to him in earth or heaven,
To bear truthful witness or give truthful verdict.
Assuredly no Atheist would refuse this summons,
Nor would it have less solemnity than the kissing of a book,
Coupled with four glib monosyllables from a heartless voice:
Nor would Perjury be then less guilty, or its penalty be less,
Nor the bond of honour be slighter, nor yet the shame from its breach.

Oaths need to be extended, not to be abolished,
Since the State ought to be religious, and public duty sacred.
Oaths belong to the decision of all high and sacred right,
As between man and man, so yet more between nation and nation,
And to engagements of duty between magistrates and subjects.

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Oaths of Allegiance, of Coronation or of magisterial Office,
Oaths of affidavit and of witness, as of forensic Jury,
Oaths of solemn Treaty, as likewise of military obedience,
Have been approved deliberately in all well-ordered States,
Christian or Mussulman, or of earlier ages, far and wide:
And herein a broad and fruitful principle is conceded.
If many men are such as to be biassed by party and by convenience,
And by loves and hatreds, and by selfishness, to the neglect of duty,
Unless tied down to a solemn and well-defined avowal,
Consecrated to Honour and to Conscience and to Religion;
But, when bound by these pledges, can better be trusted:
And if, by reason of this, the oaths above named are expedient;—
Then equally expedient are oaths in cases parallel to these:
As, not only when a jury has to award twenty or ten shillings,
But when a Cabinet or a Parliament has to pronounce on foreign rights:
Nor only in interpreting the words of some ancient Treaty,
But in pronouncing Sacred Right where no treaty may exist.
Vast indeed is the field, wherein the Just is now overruled,
Both at home and abroad, in favour of crooked policy,
Not so much because public men are consciously unprincipled,
As because no sacred formula awakens their conscience to duty.

Every high public trust is committed with religious sanction,
And is duly guarded by the solemnity of an oath.
Then what reason can be pleaded, except love of malversation,
Why every one entrusted with “Patronage,” in State or Church,
Should not on each appointment solemnly avow that he selects
the Fittest Man he can find?

As in the old Roman oath of office, to promote optimum quemque.

Cleanliness.

All ancient religions embraced Cleanliness in their precepts,
And prescribed minutely concerning animal-purity,
Shrinking not from details unpleasant for public reading.

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Nor was public decorum hurt; for then surely as now
Such passages of law were little obtruded promiscuously.
And Cleanliness not only is allied to personal health,
But closely concerns all our neighbours and society.
Some forms of impurity make the body an annoyance,
Or even noxious and a source of pestilence;
Such is the uncleanness of the pauperized, the reckless, the brutal.
But other forms of the same are more selfish and more guilty,
Precisely because they do not harm the individual,
Nor betray themselves in his person, yet are a pestilence to others.
With excellent reason then did ancient religion judge,
In denouncing with authority every such negligence as a sin,
And in driving away from the public throng (sacred or civil)
Every leper or unclean person who might spread a dangerous taint.

But when religion urged Cleanliness so authoritatively,
That it could not be more authoritative for Justice and Truth,
And zeal for ceremonies spread, and men made display of Holiness
By various outward purity, forgetting the inward man;
Then the precepts of cleanliness became disguised and mistaken:
And one class of men extolled ceremonial purity
As of celestial value,—the more artificial the more divine,—
And despised foreign virtue, which neglected such precepts;
While another class of men decried ceremonial purity,
And reproved all religious enforcement of cleanliness,
As confounding inward holiness with the fictitious outside:
Nay, reversing asceticism, many marvellously went forward
Into admiration of filthiness and of bodily neglect,
As denoting the true saint, raised above things earthly,
Bent to renounce or to humiliate all that vulgar minds cherish.
We have outgrown both errors; yet our system remains mutilated.
Religion fears to descend, and to meddle in things extraneous,
If now, as of old, she resume the care of cleanliness.
The State interferes in extreme cases, feebly, fitfully;
For Laws unseconded by Morals are irresolute and ill-executed.
Yet the poorest, the uneducated, the unpolished, the millions,
Endure misery, debasement, fevers, death,

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Partly from their own ignorance, partly from men's avarice,
In want of land to live on and of air to breathe:
And in turn becoming blunted to the sense of uncleanness,
And hopeless of a better state, they make no effort for a better,
But being defiled, become defilers, and aid the public mischief.
And many call helplessly on Parliament and on the Queen's Ministers,
Overworking the central machine which is overworked already,
While Philanthropy does a little, but Religion fears to speak
And add her solemn sanction, to forbid and to command.

Civilization is coeval with the dominion of Law,
Which bridles the violent, be he chief or common man,
Establishing fixed principles approved by the ablest.
And everywhere it is agreed that pure Air and pure Water,
Needful to life and health, must be held sacred by all,
And that land must belong to all, so far as is essential to life.
To pollute the healthful streams for one's own convenience,
Is a crime hated and punished, alike among the barbarous
And in all earlier civilization: and is denounced by religion
As an impious iniquity, a hideous and cruel guilt,
Until the organs of religion are confederate with Mammon.
Now, month by month, some pure stream is spoiled
For the convenience of private industry and to increase gain.
Even on the mountain side, the cottager, who dwells aloft,
Defiles the stream to the damage of those below,
And the traveller dares not drink, if he espies cabins above.
The workers of wealthy mines poison glorious mountain torrents,
Drugging them with lead or copper to save themselves petty trouble;
And the peasant groans in secret or regards it as a “landed right,”
And after some lapse of time the law counts the right valid;
Or the poor are soothed by wages, and the rich smother the law,
Or enact new statutes, which sanction their odiousness
And override the common law by which they were condemned.
So also vast cities grow up, accustomed to self-defilements,
As the pig, walled in a sty, pollutes its own bed.
Such loathsome evil have Terror and Avarice enacted,
Cooping into wretched towns those who should overspread the country,

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And changing God's pure rivers into filthy drains.
And clever men, who deplore this, and proffer sanitary aid,
Bid us trust in new sewerage and in their artful constructions,
While they inveigh against the work of clever predecessors,
Whose drains are half stagnant, or are mixed with the wells,
From which wretched thousands drink pestilence in the dry weather.
Thus underneath our cities, by curious and perishing art,
A new city is built, of Tartarean loathsomeness,
A network of brick-bowels, which perpetually decay,
Yet give no sign of decay, duly to warn those above;
Being a trap of pestilence to the following generation,
Which may moralize over our ill-workmanship and stupidity,
Just as we moralize now over the stupidity of the preceding.
Nor in a crowded city permeated by countless drains
Can any wells be counted on as permanently safe,
Nor can any one say, how long this or that spot shall be pure,
When blasts of pestilence are necessarily breathed up,
Or must burst open the drains if refused an exit.
Where Nature is destroyed and Artifice enthroned,
And pure Air and Water alike need to be bought by money,
The rich man migrates ever, as each spot in turn is corrupted,
But the poor remains of necessity, though the ground teem with disease.
Surely our contrivances are but as Crutches to a lame man,
Necessary alleviations, but not normal and desirable.
New principles are essential, the fruit of freer thought,
Before Cleanliness and Health can be normal and rightful.

Cleanliness and Health are conditions of general Virtue,
Conditions of Contentment, removing misery from Poverty.
Cleanliness and Health are the birthright of every savage:
Surely that “civilization” is barbarous which steals them from the poor.
Why should not Religion, now equally as of old,
Lift up her voice for every right of man,
And enforce duty on individuals, whether for body or mind?
Man's conscience responds to every such faithful utterance,
Nor would the ministers of religion long protest in vain.

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Rights of Animals.

How pleasant is it to see beautiful creatures, otherwise wild,
Become tame and trustful to the hand of man,
Or at least not terrified by his near approaches!
As when the gentle fallow deer loves to be fondled,
And the hare and the pheasant are not scared,
Or the stork calmly builds its nest on the housetop.
The life of such animals may be taken for man's need,
Yet it is not indifferent in what way it be taken;
Whether so as only to cut short the days of the individual,
Or so as also to distress and terrify the living,
Chasing them from pleasant haunts into distant refuge less hospitable,
And filling them with terror of man their enemy.
The more intelligent the animal, the worse the infliction;
For he remembers both the causes of danger and its neighbourhoods,
And by his sagacity shuns new encounter with the more powerful.
Thus the beaver is driven from his rivers and favourite pools.
Thus the gentle seal, massacred in heaps by sailors,
Forsakes milder seas and its well-known creeks,
Plunging into drearier mist and further ice,
Which punish not undeservedly the too relentless persecutor,
Who thought but of momentary gain by promiscuous slaughter,
And, slighting all rights of animals, was unwise for his own future.

That all living things have some rights, no one will deny;
For wanton cruelty is universally condemned:
Yet the limits of their rights have been scarcely discussed,
Nor the diverse rights of diverse animals
Under circumstances diverse, such as tame and wild.
The tame creature which receives and gives affection
Is with most humane persons a sacred life;
Nor will many approve to slaughter a pet lamb
Or a much fondled gazelle, for daintiness and avarice;
Though for any real necessity the same cannot be disapproved.

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The creatures that multiply under man's care and protection,
Which in some sense may be said to have bestowed life upon them;
These creatures, if not admitted into personal attachment,
Nor endowed with sagacity to foresee or to remember deaths,
Are slain for man's use without moral mischief;
Even if Brahmins or Vegetarians feebly object.
Not but that even here, caution may justly be entered,
Against so inflicting death as to wound those who live.
To kill a calf while the mother will grieve for it,
Does not merely shorten a life, but tortures maternal feeling,
Which exists in the cow less intelligently than in the woman,
Yet not less truly or less unfailingly:
And though man's nobler life is well fed by animal life;
Yet daintiness of appetite, though in a man, is less noble
Than maternal affection, though it be but in a cow:
And a better morality than that hitherto called Christian
Will hereafter enact the limit of our rights over the animal.

In fact, over wild creatures, which man has never protected
Nor fed, nor in any way reared, we have no direct claim:
For neither strength over weakness nor cunning over simplicity
Gives any validity of right, except for protection and government.
But the creatures which exist without mutual affection,
Having neither family life nor maternal sentiment,
Living for themselves alone, grieving for none,
Have not even the rudiments of morality or of moral rights:
And where life is wholly unmoral, we are free to take it.
Thus man captures and devours the fish of seas and rivers,
As innocently as the same fish devour one another,
Violating no tender affection nor engendering moral evil.—
Less clear by far is the case with animals intelligent and affectionate,
Which love their own comrades and resent their wrongs;
As the troops of walrus and of seal assemble for vengeance,
If but one of their own band has been harmfully assailed;
And mourn over the slaughtered, and piteously remember the place:—
Creatures sensible and kind, not less sagacious than dogs,
Curious of man's ways and of the sweet sounds of music,

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So that, but for their marine life, sea-dogs would be our faithful friends.
Surely, to harass these creatures is not without its evil
In the eye of the great God who inspires their mutual love.
Nor can other destructive commercial hunting be approved.
As, where the majestic bison ranges the prairie,
Cut off by wild forest and swamp from inhabited lands;
The hunters, incited by trade, kill the noble game without measure,
Strewing the ground with (it may be) four hundred huge carcases,
And carry away but four hundred wretched tongues!
Many such are the enormities where Law cannot reach.

While human tribes shall live on the grounds of the bear and wolf,
Driven thither by tyrannies or detained by ignorance
And by bodily habits half assimilated to the brutal,
So long the wild seal must perish for the wild man.
But the times of man's misgovernment are not to be eternal,
Nor can eternal morality be framed out of transitory facts;
And those who have learnt well that the Moral is higher than the Material,
Will not despise tender sentiment though in the bosom of ape or bear.

The Turk, the Arab, the Indian,—men individually savage,—
Are often taught by religion to revere God's gift of life,
And to abhor destroying life save for security or need.
To enjoy acts of slaughter, and the sport of killing,
Belonged (once upon a time) to none but rude barbarians,
In whom hunting had engendered a love of mere destruction.
It is reserved for modern times, and pre-eminently for Christians,
That humane and refined men should sport with deeds of blood,
Killing and wounding the timid, the gentle, the beautiful,
Not for food nor even for daintiness, but for the pride of skill.
What tender and thoughtful heart will call such pastime pleasure,
And think without compunction over the lingerings of the wounded?

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Adoration.

Religion with many men stops short in a Fear of God,
And in a sense of the Duty to thank him for his Providence.
Such religion is apt to be a limited and a dry service,
Alive chiefly at certain times or even in certain places.
Yet it is not to be despised, nor even disparaged,
But to be approved and exhorted, and persuasively led onward.
With others Religion is founded on personal Gratitude,
Conscious of private benefits, of peculiar advantages,
Both in outward circumstance and far more in things spiritual;
When the man feels how much has been given and forgiven,
And is grateful for Mercy, and wonders why he is distinguished.
This is a warmer and more generous principle,
Ripening into the love of God and into holy communion,
Though in its cruder form it endanger much personal conceit.
Yet it pervades the whole soul, and makes religion a life,
And fuses into unity the secular and the spiritual.

As generous and more noble is the religion of those,
Who, forgetting self, adore the most High for his Holiness,
Rejoicing that he is Good in himself and to all,
And that Goodness is eternal, all-mighty, all-ruling.
Such Absolute Devotion is higher than Gratitude,
Warmer also than a sense of Duty, and less outwearying;
Yet it includes within itself both Gratitude and Duty,
And holds up the high ideal of perfect Holiness,
And purifies the soul and shames away petty vices,
And enlarges it to embrace all God's creatures in its kindliness.
This is the true way to overcome Sin and the World;
Not by dwelling on our sins or depreciating things outward,
But by pre-occupying the heart with better aspirations.
If consciousness of weakness and of past sin discourage thee,
Shun the occasions of sin, but let not repentance linger over it,
As though to God and to the universe thy sin had been deadly hurt;

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But if thou know thyself defiled, then praise God for his purity,
Turn from thy sinful weakness to remember his holy strength;
And if thou hast any hate of sin, rejoice that sin cannot last,
But that thy sins and all men's sins shall be conquered and overruled
By that glorious majesty, which silent and unseen
Guides its eternal counsels toward perfection and bliss unutterable.
Whatever heart sincerely can glorify God's holiness,
Needs no permission or license other than its actual power;
And by such adoration the force of sin is quelled,
And the feeble struggler is raised into the hopeful saint.
Many might well pray less, if they would praise God more,
Praise him, both for what they are and what he is to them,
And also more signally for what he is to all.
Adoration of God is the universal and final religion,
That which shall hereafter unite the Mussulman and the Christian,
The man and the angel, in this world or in whatever world.

Dr. Henry Barth, the celebrated African traveller, appears to have made the simple and important discovery, that a Christian may disarm the bigotry of a Mussulman by chanting with him the first chapter of the Koran,—a chapter to which both Christian and Jew give a hearty assent. Might not this assume social and political importance in India?