Unless you accept the testimony of the Bible as
conclusive, what evidence have you of God's existence and
man's immortality?--GLADSTONE.
The same evidence that we would have of the existence of
the ocean were one drop of water withdrawn, of the life of a
forest, were a single leaf to fall. The Bible did not create
man's belief in God's existence and his own immortality, but
of this belief, old as Zoroaster, antedating Babylon, was the
Bible born. It is simply an outward evidence of man's
inward grace. I do accept the testimony of the Bible, but
only as one of a cloud of witnesses. In questions of such
grave import, we cannot have too much evidence; hence it
is strange indeed that anyone should make the Bible the
sole foundation of his faith, should take his stand upon an
infinitesimal portion of what the world knew in ages past.
The Bible is but one of many sacred books in which man
has borne witness that he is the favored creature of an
Almighty Being, but one voice in a multitude singing
hosannas to the Most High, a single note in the mighty
diapason of the universe.
A hundred men are shipwrecked upon an island in the
Arctic Ocean. By day and night they dream of absent
friends, of mother, wife and child, the pleasant meadows or
the sunny hills of their distant homes. Hourly they scan the
horizon with eager eyes. Daily they ask each other, "Is
there hope?" All former animosities are forgotten, for they
are brothers in misfortune. One declares that the island
lies in the pathway of a regular line of steamers, and that
they must soon be rescued. This view is approved by
many, and their hearts beat high with hope. Their
sufferings are borne with cheerfulness, their
hardships appear trivial, for their probation is soon to
pass and they will be at home. Another avers that they are
too far north to be reached by the ocean liners, but that a
whaler will soon be due in that vicinity, and all will be well.
This view is approved by some, and thus there are two
parties confidently expecting succor, but from different
sources. A third studies the map, notes the advanced
season, inspects the food supply and shakes his head.
"We shall be lost," he says; "desire has misled your
judgment; you do but dream." Do the two parties that
entertain hope strive, each to disprove the theory of the
other, and unite in persecuting the dissenter? No; they
reason together, each anxious to ascertain the truth,
knowing that it will profit him nothing to believe a lie.
Suddenly a cry is heard, "A sail!" Do those who put their
trust in the whaler turn their backs to the sea and say, "Oh,
H--l! that's only one of those regular steamship heretics! no
rag of canvas will he discover!" Do those who were
destitute of hope decline to look? No; all rush to the shore,
and strain their eyes to penetrate the mist, little caring
whether it be whaler or steamer, so they do but see a ship.
When one makes out the vessel, he is not content until the
eyes of others confirm his vision, and all look, not with the
jealous hope that he may be wrong, but with an earnest
prayer that he may be right. That island is this little earth,
its shipwrecked mariners all sons of men; yet how different
we set about determining whether, from out the everlasting
sea that encircles us, there comes indeed a Ship of Zion to
succor and to save!
What one man believes or disbelieves is a matter of little
moment; for belief will not put gods on High Olympus, nor
unbelief extinguish the fires of Hell. Man can neither create
nor uncreate the actual by a mental emanation. If Deity
exists, he would continue to exist did a universe deny
him; if he exists not, then all the faith and prayers and
sacrifices of a thousand centuries will not evolve him from
the night of nothingness. There is or there is not a life
beyond the grave, regardless of the denial of every atheist
and the affirmation of every prophet. Then what boots it
whether we believe or disbelieve in God's existence or
man's immortality? Nothing, in so far as it concerns the
factual; much, in that upon our hopes and fears is based
our terrestrial bane or blessing. Banish all belief in God,
eliminate the idea of man's responsibility to a higher power,
make him the sole lord of his life and earthly good his
greatest guerdon, and you destroy the dynamics of
progress, the genius of civilization. Man has a tendency to
become what he believes himself to be. Consciously or
unconsciously, he strives with less or greater strength
toward his ideal; hence it is all-important that he consider
himself an immortal rather than the pitiful sport of Time and
Space; a child of Omniscience, rather than the ephemeral
emanation of unclean ooze. Had man always considered
himself simply an animal, his tendencies would have been
ever earthward; believing himself half divine, he has striven
to mount above the stars. True, many great men have
been Atheists; but they were formed by ancestry and
environment permeated by worship of Divine power.
Without a belief in his own semi-divinity to lead the race
onward and upward, the conditions which produce a
Voltaire or Ingersoll were impossible. Civilization is further
advanced than ever before, and Atheism more general; but
those who employ this fact as argument against religious
faith forget that a body thrown upward will continue to
ascend for a time after it has parted from the propelling
power. Atheism is in nowise responsible for human
progress, for Atheism is nothing--a mere negation--and
"out of nothing nothing comes." A belief in God affords
man a basis upon which to build; it is an
acknowledgment of authority, the chief prerequisite of order;
but in Atheism there is no constructive element. While it
may be no more immoral to deny the existence of Deity
than to question the Wondrous Tale of Troy, history
teaches us that, considered from a purely utilitarian
standpoint, the most absurd faith is better for a nation than
none; that the civic virtues do not long survive the sacrifice;
that when a people desert their altars their glories soon
decay. The civilization of the world has been time and
again imperiled by the spirit of Denial. When Rome began
to mock her gods, she found the barbarians thundering at
her gates. When France insulted her priesthood and
crowned a courtesan as Goddess of Reason in Notre
Dame, Paris was a maelstrom and the nation a chaos in
which Murder raged and Discord shrieked. To-day we are
boasting of our progress, but 'tis the onward march of
Jaganath, beneath whose iron wheels patriotism, honesty,
purity and the manly spirit of independence are crushed
into the mire. We have drifted into an Atheistical age, and
its concomitants are selfishness, sensationalism and sham.
The old heartiness and healthiness have gone out of life,
have been supplanted by the artificial. Everything is now
show and seeming--"leather and prunella"--the body social
become merely a galvanic machine or electric motor. In
our gran'sire's day "the great man helped the poor, and the
poor man loved the great"; now the great man
systematically despoils the poor and the poor man regards
the great with a feeling of envy and hatred akin to that of
which the French Revolution was born. Character no
longer counts for aught unless reinforced by a bank
account. Men who have despoiled the widow of her mite
and the orphan of his patrimony are hailed with the acclaim
due to conquering heroes. Our most successful books and
periodicals would pollute a Parisian sewer or disgrace
a Portuguese bagnio. The suffrages of the people are
bought and sold like sheep. The national policy is dictated
by Dives. Men are sent to Congress whom God intended
for the gallows, while those he ticketed for the penitentiary
spout inanities in fashionable pulpits. The merchant who
pays his debts in full when he might settle for ten cents on
the dollar is considered deficient in common sense. The
grandsons of Revolutionary soldiers, who considered
themselves the equal of kings and the superior of wear the
livery of lackeys to obtain an easy living. Presidents save
seven-figure fortunes on five-figure salaries and are
applauded by people who profess to be respectable.
Governors waste the public revenues in suppressing
pugilistic enterprises, begotten of their own encouragement,
only to be reelected by fools and slobbered over by
pharisees. Bradley-Martin balls are given while half a
million better people go hungry to bed. Friendship has
become a farce, the preface of fraud. Revolting crimes
increase and sexuality is tinged with the infamy of the
Orient. Men who were too proud to borrow leave sons who
are not ashamed to beg. In man great riches are
preferable to a good name, and in woman a silken gown
covers a multitude of sins. The homely virtues of the old
mothers in Israel are mocked, while strumpets fouler than
Sycorax are received in society boasting itself select. Why
is this? It is because the old religious spirit is dormant if
not dead; it is because when people consider themselves
but as the beasts that perish, they can make no spiritual
progress, but imitate their supposed ancestors. Religion is
becoming little more than a luxury, the temple a sumptuous
palace wherein people ennuied with themselves may
parade their costly clothes, have their jaded passions
soothed by sensuous music, their greed for the bizarre
satiated by sensational sermons.
This being true, the question of evidence of God's existence
and man's immortality becomes the most important ever
propounded. The devout worshiper points to his Sacred
Book; but we have had Sacred Books in abundance so far
back as we can trace human history, yet the wave of
Atheism, of Unbelief, rises ever higher and higher--
threatens to engulf the world. After nearly nineteen
centuries of earnest proselyting less than a third of the
world has accepted Christianity, and in those countries
professedly Christian, Atheism flourishes as it does
nowhere else. Of more than seventy million Americans,
less than twenty-four million are church communicants, and
it is doubtful if half of these really believe the Bible.
Beecher criticized it almost as freely as does Ingersoll,
while a number of prominent preachers of the Briggs-Abbott
brand are even now explaining, in the pulpit and the press,
that it is little more than a collection of myths. The people
are drifting ever further from the Book of Books, and the
pulpit appears ambitious to lead the procession. It is idle to
urge that man should believe the Bible; for man should
believe nothing, man can believe nothing but what receives
the sanction of his reason. He is no more responsible for
what he believes or disbelieves than for the color of his
eyes or the place of birth. He may deceive the world with a
false profession of faith, but can deceive neither God nor
himself. The mind of even the worst of men is a court in
which every cause is tried with rigid impartiality, with
absolute honesty. A fool may mislead it, a child may
convince it, but not even its possessor can coerce it; hence
to command one to "believe," without first providing him
with a satisfactory basis for his faith, were an idle waste of
breath. A man is no more blamable for doubting the
existence of Deity than for doubting aught else that may
seem to him absurd. He doubts because the
evidence submitted is unsatisfactory, or his mind is
incapable of properly analyzing it. Probably none of the
Sacred Books ever yet convinced an intelligent human
being that there is aught in the universe greater than
himself. I do not mean by this that the Bible and the Koran,
the Zend-Avesta and the Vedas are all false, but that there
is lack of sufficient evidence that they are true. Those who
accept them do so because they harmonize with their own
half-conscious religious conceptions, because their truth is
established by esoteric rather than by exoteric evidence.
All attempts to supplant Buddhism and Mohammedanism
by Christianity have proven futile, and that because the
former do while Christianity does not voice the religious
sentiment of the Orient, a sentiment which exists regardless
of their Sacred Books, and of which the latter are but
indications. You can no more demonstrate the truth of the
Bible to a Hindu than you can demonstrate the truth of the
Vedas to a Christian, for in either case outward evidence is
wanting and the subject is not en rapport with the new
doctrine. It is not infrequently urged that evidence sufficient
to convince Mr. Gladstone should likewise convince Col.
Ingersoll. And so it doubtless would in a court of law; but in
matters spiritual what may appear "confirmation strong as
proofs of Holy Writ" to the one may seem an absurdity
absolute to the other. Neither had the pleasure of Moses'
acquaintance. All witnesses of his miracles have been
dead so long that their very graves are forgotten. There is
nothing in the accounts, however, violative of Mr.
Gladstone's conception of Deity, hence he finds no difficulty
in accepting them. To Col. Ingersoll, however, there is
something ridiculous in the idea of the Creator of the
Cosmos become a bonfire and holding a private confab
with the stuttering Hebrew. He demands undisputable
evidence, it is not forthcoming, and he brands the
story as a fraud. For the same reason that Mr. Gladstone
accepts the miracles of Moses he accepts Christ as the
Savior; for the same reason that he denies the burning
bush, Col. Ingersoll denies Christ's divinity. The story of a
suffering Savior appeals directly to Mr. Gladstone's heart,
but it gets no further than Col. Ingersoll's head. The one
tries it by his sympathies, the other by the rules of evidence
that obtain in a court of law. In summing up, Col. Ingersoll
might say: It has not been demonstrated to the satisfaction
of this court that Jesus ever claimed to be "the only
begotten Son of God." The testimony to the effect that he
raised the dead, walked upon the waves, came forth from
the grave and ascended bodily into Heaven, appears to be
all hearsay, and by witnesses of unknown credibility. If we
consider the impression made upon his contemporaries, we
find that his miracles and resurrection failed to convince
those best qualified to analyze evidence. He seems to
have been regarded as nothing more than a popular
religious reformer or schismatic. From the New Testament
we learn that he did not found a new faith, but lived and
died in that of his fathers--that it is impossible to follow the
instruction of Jesus without becoming in religion a Jew. As
he was the sixteenth savior the world has crucified, his
tragic death does not prove him divine. As immaculate
conceptions were quite common among the Greeks and
Romans, with whom both he and his immediate following
came much in contact, I incline to the view that he entered
the world in the good old way.
Granting the correctness of such a conclusion, it does not
necessarily follow that Jesus was not heaven-sent, or that
he was in any way unworthy the love and veneration of the
world. The proposition of the eloquent Father Brannan that
Jesus was either in very truth the only begotten Son
of the Father, or an impious fraud deserving execration, is
only tenable on the supposition that the language attributed
to him by New Testament writers is properly authenticated.
When we remember that the art of printing had not then
been invented; that Christ wrote nothing himself; that the
record of his life was probably not composed until he had
been long dead; that the besetting sin of the East is
exaggeration; that it was the custom of the Greeks, in
whose language the New Testament was first written, to
assign a heavenly origin to popular heroes, we must
concede that there is some reason for doubt whether Jesus
ever claimed to be other than the son of Joseph the
carpenter. Granting that his life and language are correctly
reported, that he was indeed Divinity: The fact remains that
a vast majority of mankind decline to accept him as such;
that while the church is striving with so little success to
raise his standard in Paynim lands, Atheism is striking its
roots ever deeper into our own. The church should
recognize the fact that no man is an Atheist from choice.
Deep in the heart of every human being is implanted a
horror of annihilation. A man may become reconciled to
the idea, just as he may become resigned to the necessity
of being hanged; but he strives as desperately to escape
the one as he does to avoid the other. Does the church
owe any duty to the honest doubter, further than the
reiteration of a dogma which his reason rejects? When he
asks for evidence of God's existence, Judaism points him to
the miracles of Moses, Christianity to those of Jesus,
Mohammedanism to the revelations of its prophet; and if he
find these beyond his comprehension or violative of his
reason, they dismiss him with a gentle reminder that "the
fool hath said in his heart there is no God." He retorts by
accusing his critics either of superstitious ignorance or rank
dishonesty, so honors are easy. He is told that if he
doesn't perform the impossible--work a miracle by altering
the construction of his own mind--he will be damned, and is
touched up semi-occasionally by the pulpiteers as an
emissary of the devil. Being thus put on the defensive, he
undertakes to demonstrate that all revealed religions are a
fraud deliberately perpetrated by the various priesthoods.
He searches through their Sacred Books for contradictions
and absurdities, and not without success; proves that their
God knew little about astronomy and less about geography;
then sits him down "over against" the church, like Jonah
squatting under his miraculous gourd-vine in the suburbs of
Nineveh, and confidently expects to see it collapse. He
imagines that in pointing out a number of evident errors and
inconsistencies in "revealed religion" he has hit Theism in
its stronghold; but he hasn't. He has but torn and trampled
the ragged vestments of religion, struck at non-essentials,
called attention to the clumsy manner in which finite man
has bodied forth his idea of Infinity--has made the unskillful
laugh and the judicious grieve. In an ignorant age the
supernatural appeals most powerfully to the people; hence
it is not strange that revealed religion, so-called, should
have been grounded upon the miraculous; but the passage
of the Red Sea, the raising of Lazarus and kindred wonders
are not readily accepted in an enlightened era, and are
utilized by scoffers to bring all religion into contempt. We
can scarce conceive of God being reduced to the necessity
of violating his own laws to demonstrate his presence and
power. While it were presumption to ask any church to
abate one jot or tittle of its dogma, it seems to me that all
would gain by relying less upon the "evidential value of the
miracles"; that a broader, nobler basis can be found for
religious faith, one more in accord with the wisdom and
dignity of the great All-Father than tradition of signs and
wonders in a foreign land in the long ago. Had God
desired to personally manifest himself unto man, to deliver
a code of laws, to establish a particular form of worship, it
is reasonable to suppose that he would have done so in a
manner that would have left no doubt in the mind of any
man, of any age or clime, anent either his divinity or his
desires. That he has not done this, argues that all
"revealed religions" are but the voices of the godlike within
man, rather than direct revelations from without. All
religions are fundamentally the same, and each is the
highest spiritual concept of its devotees. Whence came the
gods of the ancient Greek and Egyptian, of the Mede and
Persian? If they were made known by direct revelation,
how came they to be false gods? If they were the result of
a spirit of worship inherent in all men, who implanted that
spirit? If God, he must have done so for a purpose, and
what purpose other than to enable man to work out his own
salvation? Would we not expect him to operate through
this spirit for universal guidance, rather than leave the world
in darkness while he retired to an obscure corner thereof
and practiced legerdemain for the edification of a few half-
civilized people? If we adopt the internal instead of the
external view of the origin of Judaism and Christianity, all
the other Sacred Books range themselves about the Bible
and with it bear witness that man is the creature of Design
and not a freak of Chance. We bring to confirm the
teachings of Moses and Christ and the wise Zoroaster, the
loving Gautama, the patient Mahomet, the priests and
prophets of every clime, the altars of every age, the
countless millions, who, since man's advent on the earth,
have worshiped the All-in-All. If this be not basis broad
enough for man's belief, add thereto the story of God's
wisdom written in the stars and the never-ceasing anthem
of the sea; the history of every consecrated man who
has died for man, whether his name be Christ or Damien;
the song of every bird and the gleam of every beauty; the
eternal truth that shines in a mother's eyes, the laughter of
little children and the leonine courage of creation's lord;
every burning tear that has fallen on the face of the dead,
and every cry of anguish that has gone up from the open
grave to the throne of the Living God. Were not this
"revelation" enough? Yet 'tis but the binding of humanity's
Sacred Book, of that Universal Bible in which God speaks
from the age and from hour to hour to all who have ears to
hear.
The fact that man desires immortality is proof enough that
he was not born to perish. 'Tis a "direct revelation" to the
individual, if he will but heed it--will get out of the grime of
the man-created city, with its artificialities, into the God-
created country, where he may hear the "still small voice"
speaking to that subtler sense, which in animals is instinct,
in man is inspiration. There is no error in the ordering of
the universe. It was not jumbled together by self-created
"force," operating in accordance with "laws" self-evolved
from chaos, on matter which, like Mrs. Stowe's juvenile
nigger, "jis growed." It is the work of a Master who
"ordereth all things well." Beauty might be born of Chance,
but only Omniscience could have decreed the adoration it
inspires. Hate might spring from the womb of Chaos, but
Love must be the child of Order. Pain might be begotten of
monsters, but only Infinite wisdom could have invented
Sorrow. Nature does not put feathers on fishes, fins on
birds, nor give aught that lives an impossible desire or an
objectless instinct. Then why should man desire
immortality, why should he fear annihilation more than the
fires of Hell? During a third of his life he is unconscious,
and annihilation is but an ever-dreamless sleep. Whether
he sleeps the sleep of health or that of death, an
hour and an eternity are the same to him; yet he desires
the one and dreads the other. If man's fierce longing for
immortal life is not to be gratified, then is the whole
universe a cruel lie; its wonderful arrangement from star to
flower, its careful adaptation of means to ends, the
provision for the satisfaction of every sense, an arrant
fraud, a colossal falsehood. If there be no God, then is
creation a calamity; if there be a God and no immortality for
man, then it is a crime.
God does not reveal himself to beasts, nor to men of
brutish minds. How can those who have no ear for music,
no eye for beauty, hear the melody of the universe or
comprehend the symmetry of the All? What need have
those for immortality to whom love is only lust, charity a
pander to pride, a full stomach the greatest good and gold
a god? It is these who become "motive grinders," dig
genius out of the earth like spuds and goobers, and
achieve perpetual motion by making the universe a self-
operative machine needing neither key nor steam generator
to "make it go." They pride themselves, sometimes justly,
on their reasoning powers; but the product of their logic-mill
is like artificial flowers, as unprofitable as the icy kiss of
the Venus de Medici. Of that knowledge gleaned in the Vale of
Sorrow they know nothing; of that wisdom which cannot be
demonstrated by the laws of logic they have no more
conception than has a mole of the glories of the morning.
They are of the earth earthy. To make them understand a
message God would have to typewrite it, add the seal of a
notary public and deliver it in person. They hear not the
silver tones of Memnon, heed not the wondrous messages
that come from the dumb lips of the dead. They search
through musty tomes and explore long-forgotten languages
to prove the rhapsodies of some old prophet false, while
the grave of the babe that was buried yesterday is
more than a prophecy--is an Ark of the Covenant.
* * *
THE PROFESSIONAL REFORMER.
This is preeminently the era of the reformer, and there
are few things, great or small, upon which he has not tried
his Archimedean lever with more or less effect.
Progress should ever be the shibboleth of man, but
progress and improvement are not always synonyms.
When a man becomes possessed of an idea that differs
materially from the ideas of mankind in general; when he
takes issue with the emulative wisdom of a world he
knows not how many ages old, simple modesty would
suggest that, before arrogating to himself superior
discernment, he inquire diligently whether he is really a
philosopher or a fool. When a man takes issue with the
world the chances are as one to infinity that he is wrong.
Since man's appearance upon the earth a great many
sages have graced it, and the present generation is "heir
of all the ages." Its judgment is grounded upon the net
result of thousands of years of careful study and costly
experiment, and it is much safer to trust to it than to new-
born theories.
Occasionally a man appears who can add to the general
stock of wisdom; but such men are seldom conscious of the
fact that they are wiser than the world they live in,--seldom
consider that they have a special call to embark in a
"radical reform" crusade. They know that society is an
organism, not a machine, and that it cannot be violently
transformed, any more than a man can be changed into a
demigod, or a monkey into a mastodon. They realize that
the "old order changeth, yielding place to new"; but they
also realize that the change must be slow in order to be
healthy. Nearly every change that the world has
witnessed has been slowly, almost imperceptibly wrought.
Even all governments that have stood the test of time were
the work of time. The present government of England has
been built up almost imperceptibly, and the Constitution of
the United States is but a differentiation of Magna Charta,
not a new and violent birth. It is much safer to change the
old order of human thought and action by evolutionary than
by revolutionary methods.
. . .
It has been the custom of society for many ages to make
woman the custodian of her own virtue; but in this age of
reformers it has been discovered that this is a grievous
mistake. According to the new school of morals, woman is
not competent to distinguish between right and wrong, and
even wives of mature years are sometimes "led astray" by
"fell destroyers," whom the "injured husband" feels in duty
bound to chase around the world, if need be, with a Gatling
gun. Instances where "designing villains" have "invaded
the sanctity of the home" are multiplying, and while the
world is not ready to forgive the erring woman it is daily
asked to anathematize her paramour and stand between
her husband and the penitentiary should his marksmanship
prove successful. In other words, the world is asked to
regard every man that a woman may chance to meet as
her guardian angel,--to place her honor in his keeping
instead of her own; to crucify him should he not prove as
indifferent as Adonis, as chaste as Joseph. Truly this is
very complimentary to man, but quite the reverse to
woman. It would substitute male for female virtue and
place the sanctity of the home at the mercy of strangers.
Unquestionably all men should be pure; but they are not.
In fact the pure man is the exception and not the rule.
Every man who takes unto himself a wife must know this.
He knows that he places his honor in the keeping of
the woman, not in the keeping of his fellow men. He knows
that she can live as pure as Diana if she elects to do so;
that if she does not so choose she will have no difficulty in
finding companions in crime. He does know--as does the
world--that no man will attempt to "lead her astray" so long
as her deportment is such as becomes a true wife; that no
"wolf in sheep's clothing" will ever find his way into the fold
without her assistance.
It will not do. Every sane woman who has arrived at the
age of discretion is the guardian of her own honor. To
relieve her of this responsibility is to insult her intelligence.
To divide the responsibility with men of the world is to place
her on the same moral plane with the roue and the
courtesan, ready to err should opportunity offer.
It is a trifle strange that those good people who value
female purity so highly that they would reform every
roue in Christendom to secure it, have little or nothing
to say about the chief cause of hymeneal infidelity,--
loveless marriages. No woman who really loves her
husband can be untrue to him. Duty and inclination point
the same way. But if a woman does not love her husband
she will, in nearly every instance, love someone else. She
may never manifest this illicit affection by word or look--she
may not admit it even to her own heart; but no matter how
strongly armed she be in honesty, she stands within the
pale of danger. From the questionable act of bartering,
according to due forms of law and with priestly blessing, an
attractive person for wealth or social position, is a
comparatively easy step to practices no more
reprehensible, but wanting the sanction of society. Is it at
all strange that an impulsive young woman, whose parents
have persuaded her to marry a man she cordially detests,
and who is perhaps four times her age, should conclude
that moral codes are chiefly fashionable cant and that
a pretense of observing them is all that is really necessary?
. . .
While the reformers are busy saving the world it is strange
that they do not devise some method of checking the
decided misogamistic tendency of the young men of to-day.
Marriages are becoming decidedly unpopular with them,
and the result is that thousands of young men, who should
be model husbands, are living lives of but quasi-
respectability; thousands of young women who should be
honored wives and happy mothers are thrown upon their
own resources,--forced to choose between virtue and rags
and silks and shame. The latter soon learn that honest
poverty brings almost as complete social ostracism, almost
as much contumely, as dishonest finery, and, despairing of
ever becoming true men's wives, too many of them become
false men's mistresses.
Here is work in abundance for the reformer. To it, oh, ye
saviors of the world. Teach the young men of the land that
marriage is a thing to be desired, even though they be not
millionaires and no heiress smiles upon them.
. . .
The true reformer will not wait for some grand "mission,"
some mighty crusade to call him to action. The world is full
of wrong which needs no preternatural prescience to
discover--fraud which bears its name boldly upon its very
face. The true reformer will denounce fraud and falsehood
wherever found--will assail the wrong no matter how
strongly intrenched it be in prescriptive right. But he will
make haste slowly to change the fundamental principles
upon which society is founded. He will proceed cautiously,
modestly, until he does know, so far as aught is given to
human wisdom to know, that it is a "condition and not a
theory" with which he is dealing; that he earl point the
world to new truths whose recognition and adoption will
make better the condition of his species; then, if he be a
true man, he will speak, not in humble whispers, lest he
offend potentates and powers; not ambiguously, that he
may escape "the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's
contumely," but in clarion tones, like another Peter-the-
Hermit, who, bearing all, swerving neither to the right nor to
the left, preached the crusade of the Holy Sepulcher till at
last his words of fire burned through dull understandings,
into cold hearts, and steel-clad Europe quivered like a
million globules of quicksilver, then massed beneath his
ragged standard.
* * *
TRILBY AND THE TRILBYITES.