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accepts the results of enlightened reason and scientific discovery. Its living Gospel is the good news of the world's advancement. In sympathy with all truth; aspiring to nobility of nature and righteousness of life; radiant as the morning with Divine Light, and wedded to universal progress, it comes forth-"like a bride adorned for her husband." This is the invisible church of "the general assembly of the first-born," whose numberless believers "worship in spirit and in truth." Its membership includes all noble men and women who unselfishly labor for mankind. Its divine ministry embraces every teacher who has the courage and humanity to speak the truth in love. Its acceptable prayer is one tireless effort to fill the world with blessing, and its most impressive sermon is a blameless life. To this ministry we are called; to this work every true Reformer is ordained. When the mortal pilgrim is weary of wandering in the arid deserts of a sensuous world, this is the true home of the soul-by the still waters of Life-that opens to receive him. This is the Church of the FUTURE.— Its altar is the conscious spirit. The true sanctuary is not the consecrated pile that human hands have upreared; nor is it the gay crowd in its courts. It is not revealed in ancient records, and does not consist in gilded shrines and imposing ceremonials. It is not external; it is inward and spiritual. Its mystical aisles never echo to the tread of infidel feet. The true church is in Man. The risen Shelley thus describes it, through Harris in the "Golden Age:"

'The church of God in man below

Methinks should like the Minister grow;
All truths His three-fold voice inspires
Should build its buttresses and spires;
Each holy deed that memory sings,
Should gleam with cherub face and wings
O'er the high altar's mystic shrine,
And Love make all the place divine."

H

CREEDS AND CONDUCT.

BY ALFRED CRIDGE.

ERBERT SPENCER, in the "Reconciliation of his

First Principles," ably, but somewhat incompletely, expatiates on that principle of adaptation, by which a creed or a form of government, corresponds, more or less, to the average condition and culture of the nations in which such prevail. Hence the necessity that persons who have outgrown the need of either or both should "qualify their disagreement with as much as may be of sympathy." "The resistance to a charge of theological opinion" he regards "as in great measure salutary;" as barbarous races need a harsh celestial as well as terrestrial rule; but that we have been rendered in some degree" organically moral" in the course of generations, "disastrous results would ensue from the removal of those strong and distinct motives which the current belief [in endless punishment, etc.] supplies."

This chapter might profitably be read by extreme radicals -religious and sociological. It would need but little qualification and addition but for two things which he leaves out of the account. The first is, that the age is outgrowing its political and theological shell, and is striving to be freer; but these religious and political forms are forced upon it by the organizations of earlier generations. In other words, church and state, having been dominant in the past, have intrenched themselves in the fastnesses of wealth and power, from which unorganized and unprotected multitudes have not yet succeeded in dislodging them. Universities and colleges, founded by the wealth of past generations, bend the

thought of the present. Even in the United States, nominally with no State-church, orthodox religionists not only secure exemption from taxation (at the expense of others) for their instrumentalities of propagation, but dip into state and national treasuries for means to sustain them. The Howard University, in Washington, is purely (though not nominally) sectarian in its character; its methods of teaching and text books are a century or so behind the age; and a late Professor, who advocated the now universally received doctrine of the "correlation of forces," reports that within three years his views were denounced by some of the other Professors as "infidel," though he himself is a Presbyterian. Yet this "University" was mainly founded upon grants from the United States of over half a million of dollars-many times more than private individuals contributed. Most, if not all, its Professors, are reported to be members of Congregational Churches. In his capacity of head of the Freedmen's Bureau, Gen. Howard succeeded, as shown by the investigation before Congress, in getting about half a million more for other sectarian educational institutions.

Now, with facts like these, and hundreds, even thousands more, that can be obtained in this country; and a knowledge of the fact that the oppression is ten times worse in Europe, it is a gross omission on the part of Mr. Spencer to reason as if the religious institutions of to-day were the result of the spontaneous expression of the religious sentiment of the age. instead of being "old men of the mountain," pertinaciously bestriding the back of modern civilization, nolens volens.

Secondly, as to the consequences, in human conduct, following the "removal of those strong and distinct motives. which the current belief supplies." So far as statistics and common observation can reach, it does not appear that this removal-so far as it has yet gone, and unaccompanied by any substitute-has produced any very disastrous results. The statistics of pauperism, insanity and crime, as connected. with religious belief, are rather scanty, it is true. Those hav

ing control of such matters being usually of orthodox affinitics, are evidently not solicitous to disseminate information on the subject. Yet, it is reasonably certain, as to crimes "of the baser sort," that the devotees of Romanism supply a larger percentage than their numbers justify; while the more gentlemanly thieves seem to be largely, if not principally, recruited from Protestant organizations. On Oct. 23, 1873, Assistant District Attorney Purdy, in the U. S. Circut Court, at New York city, speaking on behalf of the prosecution on the trial of Edward Lange, for appropriating mail bags, said that (I quote from the N. Y. Herald):

"The records of the District Attorney's office would show. that gentlemen, who, no doubt, could bring forward witnesses to prove they are persons of high moral, virtuous and Christian character, were charged with fraud and perjury. But their high character, their Christian conduct and standing, did not prevent them from robbing the Government; and then, dreading exposure, quietly stepping into the office of the Secretary of the Treasury and paying back the money they had swindled the Government out of; so that the matter might be hushed up forever. The jury would be astonished if they heard

the names of these men. * * * * There were now in court, listening to him, men like Tainter and Graham, charged with embezzling large sums of money, who, no doubt, could produce testimony that they bore a good character, and that they were in high standing in the church and in society."

In the Bureau in which I am employed, a clerk was recently discharged for swindling an official, whose accounts he had been settling, of about $800. Facts are known to me which leave but little room for doubt, that, in the same case, he swindled the Government out of a like sum. Yet his piety was of the most unctious and obvious description. He is perfectly insensible of shame, and is using his utmost efforts to secure reinstatement. Besides the above, he obtained, on false pretences, a grant of $1,000 from Congress. He is a small offender, to be sure, in comparison with the imperial

thieves of New York city and the District of Columbia; but the case is none the less exemplary. A photograph was recently taken of the "Evangelical Alliance" visitors, as they stood on the Capitol steps; and among the most conspicuous figures in the foreground is the aforesaid Psalmsinging ex-official !*

It does not appear from these and numerous similar cases; it does not appear from common experience, and it would not appear from statistics, did such exist, that "the strong and distinct motives which the current belief supplies," have a definite existence in the United States, if they have anywhere. The semi-retrogressive condition, as to religion, etc., of France and other parts of Europe, the mischievous influence of the church, and the poverty and ignorance prevalent in those countries, are believed to be largely due to the influence of the belief, among Free-Thinkers there, that orthodoxy supplies these "strong and distinct motives," and is therefore "good for women and children." The mass of intelligent men in Europe have long outgrown Catholicism for themselves, but support it for their families; hence Carlism in Spain; hence civil war in France; hence the war between France and Prussia; hence immense standing armies all over continental Europe-and all because Free-thinkers there have allowed the Catholic Church to exist, in order, as many of them suppose, to prevent the "disastrous results (that) would ensue from the removal of those strong and distinct motives which the current belief supplies." It would esem that the results of the MAINTENANCE of that belief are far more disastrous than any which could possibly ensue from its extinction.

But even granting, that much temporary injury might be sustained-by taking away these unfounded, faiths without replacing them by something more truthful-what if a more

• We are unacquainted with the facts the writer has in view, and the responsi bility of these personal references rests entirely with A. C.-Editor.

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