Bygones Worth Remembering Volume Ii Part 12

It is worth while recording the curious, not to say ignominious, ways from which justice to new thought has emerged. In the 5 and 6 Victoriae, cap. 38, 1842, the trial of eighteen offences were removed from the jurisdiction of Justices of the Peace in Quarter Sessions and transferred to the a.s.size Court. Persons accused were often subject to magisterial intolerance, ignorance and offensiveness.

Among the transferred offences were forgery, bigamy, abductions of women. "Blasphemy and offences against religion," often of doubtful and delicate interpretation, were two of the subjects taken out of magisterial hands and placed under the decision of better-informed and more responsible judges. "Blasphemy" was the general t.i.tle under which atheism, heresy, and other troubles of the questioning intellect were designated. "Composing, printing or publis.h.i.+ng blasphemous libels," were included in the list of subjects to be dealt with in higher courts. Thus better chances of justice were secured to thinkers and disseminators of forbidden ideas. This new charter of thought, which conceded legal fairness to propagandism, was not the subject of a special statute, but was interpolated in a list, which read like an auctioneer's catalogue, eluded Parliamentary prejudice, which might have been fatal, had it been formally submitted to its notice.

In the same manner the Affirmation Act, which changed the status of the disbeliever in theology from that of an outlaw to that of a citizen, crept into the Statute Book through a criminal avenue. A Bill to admit atheists, agnostics, or other conscientious objectors to the ecclesiastic oath, to make a responsible affirmation instead, was twice or thrice thrown out of the windows of Parliament. Sir John Trelawny used to say Mr. Gathorne Hardy (afterwards Lord Cranbrook) would rise up, as I have seen him, with a face as furiously red as one of his own blast furnaces at Lowmoor, and move its rejection. It was pa.s.sed at last by the friendly device of G. W. Hastings, M.P., the founder of the Social Science a.s.sociation, in a Bill innocently purporting to better "promote the discovery of truth" by enabling persons charged with adultery to give evidence on their own behalf.

Then and there a clause was introduced which had no relation to the extension of the right to give evidence, but upon the exemption of an entirely different cla.s.s of persons from the obligation of making oath.

Adulterers appear always to be Christians, since no case is recorded in which any party in an adultery action professed any scruple at taking the oath. Yet the Bill set forth that "any person in a civil or criminal proceeding who shall object to make an oath," shall make a declaration instead. When the Bill became an Act secular affirmation became legalised. Thus by a clause treading upon the heels of adultery, the witness having heretical and unecclesiastical convictions was enabled to be honest without peril.

In 1842, as I witnessed at the Gloucester a.s.sizes, no barrister would defend any one accused of dissent from Christianity, but apologised for him and proclaimed his contrition for his sin of thinking for himself.

Slave thought of the mind, chained to custom, could be defended, but not Free Thought, which is independent of everything save the truth. By the Act of 1869* atheists ceased to be outlaws, and were henceforth enabled to give evidence in their own defence. Wide-awake and vigilant as a rule, bigotry was asleep that day. Thus by circuitous and furtive paths the right of free thought has made its way to the front of the State.

* 32 & 33 chap. 68, Evidence Amendment Act

CHAPTER XLI. LAWYERS' LICENCE

The extraordinary legal licence of disordered and offensive imputation has been limited since 1842. In those days, officers of the law, who always professed high regard for morality and truth, had no sense of either, when they were drawing up theological indictments. In the affair at Cheltenham I delivered a lecture on Home Colonies (a proposal similar to the Garden Cities of to-day), to which n.o.body objects now. As I always held that discussion was the right of the audience, as self-defensive against the errors of lecturer or preacher, an auditor, availing himself of this concession, arose in the meeting and asked: "Since I had spoken of duty to man, why I had said nothing of duty to G.o.d"? My proper answer was, that having announced one subject, the audience would have a right to complain that I had trepanned them into hearing another, which they would not hear willingly. Such a reply would have been received with outcries, and the Christian auditor would have said, "I dare not answer the question--that I held opinions I was afraid to disclose." All the while the questioner knew that an honest answer might have penal consequences, which he intended to invoke. Christians in those days lacked winning ways. I gave a defiant answer, which caused my imprisonment. There was no imputation in my reply, which merely produced merriment.

Yet my indictment said I "was a wicked, malicious, evil-disposed person," and that I "wickedly did compose, speak and utter, p.r.o.nounce and publish with a loud voice, of and concerning the Holy Scriptures, to the high displeasure of Almighty G.o.d, and against the peace of our Lady the Queen." Every sentence was an outrage, and nearly every word untrue.

I was not wicked, nor malicious, nor evil-disposed. I did not compose the speech--it was purely spontaneous. I never had a loud voice. I never referred to the Holy Scriptures, and I only disturbed the peace of our Lady the Queen by a ripple of laughter.

I carried no arms. I was known as belonging to the "Moral Force Party"

in politics, and was entirely unprepared to attack any person, let alone one Omnipotent with "force of arms." The imputations in the indictment were not only untrue, but contained more blasphemy than was in the mind of any one to utter. I called the Judge's attention to the atrocity of the language of the indictment He did not say there was anything objectionable in it, which showed that the morality of the Bench was not higher at that time than the morality of the magistrates. In the _Cheltenham Chronicle_, known in the town as the Rev. Francis Close's (afterwards Dean of Chichester) paper, I was described as a "miscreant"

for the answer I had given to my auditor. Mr. Justice Erskine had no word of reproof for the infamous term applied to me.

As I have elsewhere said, I spoke in my defence upwards of nine hours.

The length was owing to the declaration of one of the magistrates (Mr.

Bransby Cooper) that the Court would not hear me defend myself. Why I defended myself at all, was from a very different reason.

No barrister in those days would defend any one charged with dissenting from the Christian religion. The counsel always apologised to the jury for the opinions of his client, which admitted his guilt. This was done at that very a.s.sizes at which I was tried. A Mr. Thompson, a barrister in Court, who we mistook for a son of General Perronet Thompson, also at the Bar, was engaged to defend George Adams, charged with an act of heresy. The false Thompson expressed contrition for Adams, without knowing or inquiring whether it was true that he felt it. Neither counsel nor magistrate nor judge seemed to think it necessary that what they said should be true.

Thus my justification of the seeming presumption of defending myself was the fact that no counsel would defend us without compromising us. I had no taste for martyrdom. I did not want martyrdom; I did not like martyrdom. Martyrdom is not a thing to be sought, but a thing to be submitted to when it comes.

This narrative shows that, in one respect, legal taste and truth have improved in my time.

CHAPTER XLII. CHRISTIAN DAYS

Many religious thinkers, ecclesiastical and Nonconformist, whose friends.h.i.+p I value, will expect from me in these autobiographic papers some account of the origin of opinions in which they have been interested. Sermons, speeches, pamphlets, even books have been devoted to criticism of my heresies. It is due to those who have taken so much trouble about me that I should explain, not what the opinions were--that would be irrelevant here--but how I came by them. That may be worth recounting, and to some serious people perhaps worth remembering.

Confessions are not in my way. They imply that something it was prudent to conceal has to be "owned up." Of that kind I have no story to tell. An apologia is still less to my taste. I make no apology for my opinions. I do not find that persons who dissent from me, ever so strenuously, think of apologising to me for doing so. They do right in standing by their convictions without asking my leave. I hope they will take it in good part if I stand by mine without asking theirs.

My mother did not go to the Established Church, to which her father belonged. She had natural piety of heart, and thought she found more personal religion among the Nonconformists than in the Church.

She attended Carr's Lane Chapel, where the Rev. John Angell James preached--who had a great reputation in Birmingham for eloquence and for his evangelical writings. He was notorious in his day for denouncing players and ambitious preachers seeking to excel in the arts of this world; which caused the town people to say that he was dramatic against the drama and eloquent against eloquence. His name, "Angell" James, begat a belief that it was descriptive of himself, and that his doctrines were necessarily angelic. It seems absurd, but I shared this belief, and should not have been surprised to hear that he had some elementary development of wings out of sight At the same time, Mr. James gave me the impression of severity in piety, and my feeling towards him was one of awe, dreading a near approach.

Some years after, I held a discussion of several nights with the Rev.

W. J. Winks, of Leicester, who wrote to Mr. James to make inquiries concerning me. In 1881, some thirty-five years after the discussion, Mr. Winks' son showed me a letter which Mr. James wrote in reply saying: "Holyoake was a boy in my Sunday School five years. He then went, through the persuasion of a companion, to Mr. Cheadle's for a short time, then to the Unitarian school (I believe entered a debating society), and became an unbeliever. He is a good son and kind to his mother, who is a member of one of our Baptist churches."

The Rev. Mr. Cheadle, of whom Mr. James speaks, was a Baptist minister.

It is true I went to his church--my sister Matilda became a member of it--but I never joined it The ceremony of baptism there was by immersion. It seemed poetical to me when I read the account of baptism in the Jordan; but I could not make up my mind to be baptised in a tank.

The reason, however, that I gave at the time was the stronger and the true one--that I did not feel good enough to make a solemn public profession of faith. Mr. James was misinformed; I never belonged to a debating society.

It was very good of him to write of me so, when he must have been very much pained at the opinions he believed me then to hold. A man may speak generously privately, but he means it when he says the same thing publicly; and Mr. James did this. He wrote to a similar effect in the _British Banner_ at the time when the Rev. Brewin Grant was painting portraits of me in pandemonium colours.

A small Sunday School Magazine came into my hands when I was quite a youth. It was edited by the Rev. W. J. Winks. As communications were invited from readers, I sent some evangelical verses to him. The first time of my seeing my initials in print was in Mr. Winks's magazine.

After a time, partly because the place of wors.h.i.+p was nearer home, my mother joined a little church in Thorpe Street, and later one in Inge Street. They were melancholy little meeting-houses, and, as I always accompanied my mother, I had time to acquire that impression of them.

A love of art was in some measure natural to me, and I thought that the Temple of G.o.d should be bright, beautiful and costly. As I was taught to believe that He was always present there, it seemed to me that He should not be invited (and all our prayers did invite Him) into a mean-looking place. It was seeing how earnestly my mother prayed at home for the welfare of her family, how beautiful and patient was her trust in heaven, and how trouble and misery increased in the household notwithstanding, that unconsciously turned my heart to methods of secular deliverance. She had lost children. I remember the consternation with which she told us one Sunday night that her pastor, the Rev. Mr.

James, had stated in his sermon his fearsome belief that there were "children in h.e.l.l not a span long." That Mr. James believed it seemed to us the same as its being in the Bible. Another time he preached about the "sin against the Holy Ghost, which could never be forgiven, either in this world or the world to come." My mother's distress at the thought made a great impression upon me. A silent terror of Christianity crept into my mind. That one so pure and devout as my mother, who was incapable of committing sin knowingly, should be liable to commit this, and none of us know what it was, nor how or when consequences so awful were incurred, seemed to me very dreadful.

The first death at home of which I was conscious, occurred at a time when Church rates and Easter dues were enforced and augmented by a summons. None of us were old enough to take the money to the public office, and a little sister being ill, my mother, with reluctance, had to go. A small crowd of householders being there on the same errand, she was away some hours. When she returned, my sister was dead; and the thought that the money extorted by the Church might have succoured, if not saved the poor child, made the distress greater. My mother, always resigned, made no religious complaint, but I remember that, in our blind, helpless way, the Church became to us a thing of ill-omen. It was not disbelief, it was dislike, that was taking possession of our minds.

A man in my father's employ, who was superintendent of a Congregational Chapel School at Harborne, a village some three or four miles from Birmingham, asked me to a.s.sist as monitor in one of his cla.s.ses. I was so young that John Collins, who preached at times in the chapel, took me by the hand, and I walked by his side. The distance was too far for my little feet, and in winter the snow found its way through my shoes. Collins afterwards became known as a Chartist advocate, and was imprisoned in Warwick Gaol with William Lovett, on the ground of political speeches. They jointly wrote the most intelligent scheme of Chartist advocacy made in their day. Elsewhere I have recounted incarcerations which befel many of my friends, proving that, within the memory of living men, the path of political and other pilgrims lay by the castles of giants who seized them by the way.

In the Carr's Lane Sunday School I was considered an attentive, devout-minded boy. All the hymns we sang I knew by heart, as well as most parts of the Bible. The only cla.s.sic of a semi-secular nature my mother had in her house was Milton's "Paradise Lost"; we had besides a few works of ponderous Nonconformist divines, of which Boston's "Fourfold State" was one, to which I added Baxter's "Saints' Everlasting Rest." I devoured whatever came in my way that was religious. Being thought by this time capable of teaching the little that was deemed necessary in an Evangelical Sunday school, I came to act as a small teacher at the Inge Street Chapel. These people were known as Paedo-Baptists--what that meant not a single wors.h.i.+pper knew. The point of doctrine which they did understand was that children should not be baptised when their small souls were in the jelly-fish state and knew nothing. When their little minds had grown and had some backbone of sense in them, and some understanding of religious things, the congregation thought that sprinkling them into spiritual fellows.h.i.+p might do them good.

Though my mother admitted that adult baptism was more reasonable, she never listened to the doctrine of baptism by immersion. She disliked innovation in piety. She had great tenacity in quiet belief, and thought public immersion a demonstration--very bad bathing of its kind--and might give you a cold.

Few young believers showed more religious zeal than I did in those days.

On Sunday morning there was a prayer on rising, and one before leaving home. At half-past seven the teachers were invited to meet at chapel to pray for a blessing on the work of the day. When school commenced at nine o'clock the superintendent opened it with prayer, and closed it at eleven with another prayer. Then came the morning service of the chapel, at which I was present with my cla.s.s. That included three prayers. At two o'clock school began again, opening and ending with prayers by the superintendent, or by some teacher who was asked "to engage" in it, in his stead. At the close of the school, another prayer-meeting of teachers was held, for a blessing on the work done that day. At half-past six evening service took place, which included three more prayers. Afterwards, devout members of the congregation held a prayer-meeting on behalf of the work of the church. At all these meetings I was present, so that, together with graces before and after meals three times a day, and evening prayers at time of rest, heaven heard from me pretty frequently on Sundays. Many times since I have wondered at the great patience of G.o.d towards my unconscious presumption in calling attention so often to my insignificant proceedings. Atonement ought to include the sin of prayers.

Nor was this all. At chapels in Birmingham (1834), when anniversary sermons had been preached on Sunday by some ministers of mark, there would commonly be a public meeting on Monday at which they would speak, and to which I would go. On Tuesday evening I went to the Cherry Street Chapel, where the best Wesleyan preachers in the town were to be heard.

On Wednesday I often attended the Carr's Lane sermon. Thursday would find me at the Bradford Street chapel, where there usually sat before me a beautiful youth, whose sensuous grace of motion gave me as much pleasure as the sermon. I remember it because it was there I first became conscious of the charm of human strength and proportion. I had the Greek love of beauty in boys--not in the Greek sense, of which I knew nothing.

On Friday I generally went to the public prayer-meeting in Cherry Street, because Wesleyans were bolder and more original in their prayers than other Christians. In frequenting Wesleyan chapels I could not help noticing that their great preachers were also men of great build, of good width in the lower part of the face. Afterwards I found that their societies elsewhere were mostly composed of persons of sensuous make.

Their preachers having strong voices, and drawing inspiration mainly from feeling, they had boldness of speech; and those who had imagination had a picturesque expression. Independents and Baptists often tried to solve doubts, which showed that their convictions were tempered by thought to some extent; but the Wesleyan knew nothing of thought--he put doubt away. He did not recognise that the Questioning Spirit came from the Angel of Truth. To the Wesleyans, inquiry is but the fair-seeming disguise of the devil, and to entertain it is of the nature of sin.

These preachers, therefore, knowing nothing of the other side, were under none of the restrictions imposed by intelligence, and they denounced the sceptics with a force which seemed holy from its fervour, and with a ferocity which only ignorance could inspire. So long as I knew less than they, their influence over me continued. Yet it was not vigorous denunciation which first allured me to them, though it long detained me among them--it was the information I had received, that they believed in universal salvation, which had fascination for me. There was something generous in that idea beyond anything taught me, and my heart cleaved to the people who thought it true. This doctrine came to me with the force of a new idea, always enchanting to the young. Had I been reared among Roman Catholics, I should have wors.h.i.+pped at the church of _All_ Souls instead of the church of One Soul. Any Church whose name seemed least to exclude my neighbours would have most attracted me.

All the fertility of attendance at chapels recounted did not, as the reader will suppose, produce any weariness in me, or make me tired of Christianity. The incessant Bible reading, hymns, prayer, and evangelical sermons of Carr's Lane, Thorpe Street, and Inge Street did tire me. There was no human instruction in their spiritual monotony. My mind aches now when I think of those days. When I took courage to visit various chapels, the variety of thought gave me ideas. The deacons of the Inge Street Chapel bade me beware that "the rolling stone gathered no moss."* Yet I did gather moss.

* Thomas Tusser, of the sixteenth century, to whom the phrase is ascribed, said: "The stone that is rolling can gather no moss."

Though I was then hardly fifteen, the other teachers would gently ask me if I would engage in prayer in their meetings, which meant praying aloud among them. The idea made me tremble. I was very shy, and the sound of my own voice was as a thing apart from me, for which I was responsible, and which I could not control. Then, what should I say? To say what others said, to utter a few familiar scriptural phrases, diluted by ignorant earnestness, seemed to me, even at that time, an insipid offering of praise. Then it occurred to me to notice any newness of thought and expression I heard in week-day discourses, and with them I composed small prayers, which brought me some credit when I spoke them, as they were unlike any one else's. But only once--at a Friday night's church meeting--did I pray with natural freedom. Afterwards I avoided requests to pray, as I thought it unreal to be thinking more of the terms of the prayer than the simple spirit of it, and I hoped that one day fitting language would become natural to me.

It is proof that my mind was as free from scientific inspiration as any saint's, since I had no misgiving as to the effect of prayer. If Christianity were preached for the first time now to well-to-do people, able to help themselves, it would be treated like Mormonism in America; but to the poor who have neither money nor reflection, Christianity, as a praying power, is a very real thing. People who have no idea that help will, or can, come in any other way, are glad to think that it may come from heaven. It had never been explained to me that low wages were caused by there being too many labourers in the market, or that ill-health is caused by poor food and hard condition. It was my daily habit to pray for things most necessary and always deficient, not for myself alone, but for others to whom in their need I would give, at any cost to myself--to whom, if disinterested prayers were answered, any G.o.d of sympathy would give. Yet, though no prayer was answered, it did not strike me that that method of help failed. Prayer was no remedy, yet I did not see its futility. Had I spent a single hour only in "dropping a bucket into an empty well, never drawing any water up," I should not have continued the operation without further inquiry. It never struck me that, if preachers could obtain material aid by prayer, or knew any form of supplication by which it could be obtained, they might grow rich in a day by selling copies of that priceless formula. No Church would be needy, no believer would be poor.

In those days Christianity was a very real thing to me. What was part of my conviction was also part of my life. So far as I had knowledge, I was like the parson of Chaucer, who--

"Christ's love and his Apostles twelve Taught, and _first he followed it himselve_."

This I did with a zeal of spirit which neither knew nor sought any evasion of the letter.

At this time there came to Birmingham one Rev. Tully Cribbace, a middle-aged man with copious dark hair, pale, thin face, and earnest, unceasing speech. The zealous members of many congregations went to hear him. He interested me greatly. He rebuked our Churches, as is the way with new, wandering preachers--_without appointments_--for their want of faith in the promise of Christ, who had said that "Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do." I had the belief, I had asked in His name; but nothing came of it. With insufficient clothing I had gone out in inclement weather to wors.h.i.+p, or to teach, trusting in that promise that I should be protected if no gifts of clothing came from heaven. No gifts did come, but illness from exposure often did. In a very anxious spirit I went to Mr. Cribbace's lodgings in Newhall Street, where he had said inquirers might call upon him. When he asked me "what I wished to say," I at once, not without emotion, replied, "Do you really believe, sir, what you said? Is it true that what we ask in faith we shall receive? I have great need to know that."