into the following amiable protestation:-" Amid all this furor against receiving black slave earnings for the churches, no one seems to point out the inconsistency of accepting white slave wages [slaves have no "wages"]. Yet what else [but white slave wages] are the contributions, wrung by mean piety, in every possible way, from our credulous and religious poor, by collecting agents of Church and Dissenting Missionary and Bible Confederacies ?" (H., vol. i., p. 322.) Is this an honourable description of Missionary and Bible Societies, or a truthful account of the condition of our "religious poor," who feel it an honour to join the widow's mite, and equal, in the eye of their beloved Redeemer, the costly gifts of the wealthier Christian? Is it decent, from the man who is a professional beggar from the working classes, who has kept open a "shilling list" from that day to this; who has already begged a thousand pounds beyond fair gains of his trade; and who is now trying to beg twelve hundred pounds more, to set himself up in a bookshop? What would not the poor black slave give, to obtain the position of our "white slaves,"—the "religious poor" of Scotland and England,— who feel it no oppression, but a privilege, to contribute their quota to the Gospel which they love? Yet our "conscientious unbeliever," in his aristocratic contempt for "religious poor," who feel freer and richer than he is, declares of the following poetry, "the familiar howl' is as just as it is striking and appropriate." "O we have seen of labour wan, Yon solemn croucher seek The lonely dole of the withering man, Nor care for his sunken cheek. "We've marked the wake of a whining few, Their prim and pious look, Stride off with a very farthing too, From pauper in his nook. "Ah! then-all this, yea more and more, The groan-earned sin give back ; 'Tis murder's wages, O restore To the white slave as to the black." Thus do they seek to sow hatred between wealth and poverty; light up the spark of enmity towards religious agents; and breathe the hot blast of sullen discontent into the minds of the "religious poor," and call it "Another reading of the text, 'Peace on earth, and good will towards men:'" (vol. i., p. 232.) We prefer the old reading, and repudiate this hideous burlesque of the Christian religion, this humane effort at poisoning the fountains of religious benevolence, this secular and Cosmopolite brotherhood, that would stifle and repress, as a "familiar howl," that magnanimous shout of the "religious poor,"-"give back the slaveholder's money," touch not the price of blood,for which the humanitarians and utilitarians would substitute the sullen and selfish howl-"we are poor ourselves, our wages the wages of murder!" No! "the farthing from the pauper's nook" makes the pauper a king; and, from the lofty throne of his Christian benevolence, he may look down with pity on your philanthropical or philansterian philosophers, whose work of "good-will" is to collect "shillings" from "white slaves," to "exalt the book-trade into a profession," calling their shop "an institution," denouncing "Bible confederacies," and from mere good will describing Exeter Hall as "the Palace of Humbug." If this be a true description, these men should reign there. CONFESSIONS OF A CONVERTED INFIDEL. THE following considerations, to a very great extent, satisfied my mind, although, perhaps, they might not, and may not satisfy the minds of other sceptics: 1st. After all, might there not be a real difference, in kind as well as degree, between the mind of a man, and that, for instance, of a dog? Did it really follow that, because the manifestations of both were, in many important respects, alike, they were identical? If there were many important resemblances, I could not but observe that there were equally important differences. It could not be doubted that the intelligence of the one was indefinitely superior to that of the other; that between the highest state of development of the human spirit, and that of the most intelligent of animals, there was almost an infinite distance. Contrasting the soul and its attainments, as manifested in a Newton, a Bacon, a Shakespeare, or a Milton, with the soul and its attainments, as exhibited in the most remarkable of brutes, the points of agreement seemed indeed exceedingly scanty, while the points of difference were literally incalculable. Possibly, this might arise from a difference in kind. Why was it that, in the one case, there were the most subtle, penetrating, foreseeing, deep operations of intellect, appreciating the minutest beauties of form, seeing the most mysterious relations alike of organic existences and of unorganised matter-not lost amid the vastness of the starry worlds, nor confounded by the minuteness of atomic details-conversant at once with the almost inscrutable movements of human nature, and the outer manifestation of material things-now walking amid the orbs of heaven, and now exploring the secret depths of humanity-and in that of the other, there was little besides the mere exercise of the senses? What could be the reason that, in the one, there was the capacity of limitless improvement; and in that of the other, the limits were so extremely narrow that they were at once without difficulty reached, and never surpassed? Why could a man learn anything, and the wisest dog almost nothing? How that, among the human species, progress was the law-and among the brute, fixedness, nonadvancement, the rule? What reason could be assigned that, among men, learning and knowledge, intelligence and wisdom, could and did accumulate from age to age, and from generation to generation, indefinitely-and among brutes, intelligence and knowledge could neither be accumulated nor transmitted? Was all this, as Atheists contended, simply owing to the superior organisation of the human brute? Was it because man had better brains and better hands? Hardly credible this. Monkeys had not only tolerably well-constructed brains, but also pretty nimble hands; and yet they, with their better material organisation, made no more real improvement than their less favoured competitors. Monkeys had no literature, no science, no advanced stages of intelligence. In short, from the highest to the lowest, there appeared to be no capacity at all for such advancement, and the difference of organisation made no difference in the result. This I felt was a marked fact, and one which could neither be denied nor disputed. What could be the reason of it? Was it not itself enough to warrant the conclusion that man is really something different in kind; that his soul is of a truly different order? I felt that, whatever might be the nature of merely vegetable life, and whatever may be the specific characteristics of simply animal life, we never identify the two. We regard them as different in kind, just as we uniformly consider the causes of the manifestations of the properties of simple matter as very different in kind from the real causes of the manifestations of any sort of true life. Each of them, in our estimation, occupies completely different, though allied spheres, in the scale of existences. Why? Because, and only because, as it appeared to me, the properties of each differ so widely that they cannot be classed in the same category. They are different things, and must, therefore, have different causes. And is it not true that this fundamental distinction in the manifestations of intelligence, this capacity of mental advancement, as well as this vast superiority of mental power itself, is reason sufficient to justify the inference that the mind itself was not only of a higher order, but of a different kind? Could any form of mere matter be the reason of this power, and this capacity? Might not certain kinds and combinations of indefinitely refined matter, in connexion with the senses, be amply sufficient for the accomplishment of the purposes of instinct, and the lower kinds of mental development, but very insufficient, at the same time, for the purposes of true intellect? Might not the infinitely nobler nature and destinies of the latter demand something truly spiritual? Who could deny it? Certainly, nobody could prove that it did not. Strictly analysed, the whole case resolved itself into the mere presumptions of analogy. Why did I identify the two classes of phenomena ? Simply because there appeared to be great resemblances. But was this really an adequate reason? Is analogical reasoning itself always infallible? Certainly not. But, even if it were, here we have still more important points of difference than of resemblance. And what should reason determine in such a case? Surely, not that the two things were the same, but that they sprung from vastly different causes. I admitted that vegetable life existed contemporaneously in the same body with animal life. A dog, for instance, grew, and does grow, like a plant, only it carries the source of its nourishment about with itselfthe stomach, and all its requisite vessels. Yet, at the same time, there is added another, and quite a different kind of life-animal life-which consists in the addition of a brain, the nervous system, and the attached senses. These two can subsist together, though totally distinct in kind. Why, then, might it not be true that, in the case of man, the subject of an intelligence, at least as much above that of the brute, as the life of the brute exceeds that of the vegetable-why should not the brain, the nervous system, together with the senses, be a necessary preliminary to the possession of a far superior principle-the spiritual soul of man? And why should not that soul manifest itself, and display its powers through the organic functions of the whole nervous system? No reason could be assigned, except that it was needless. Nothing could be affirmed, but that, for the capacity of human intelligence, nothing more was necessary than to refine the elements of matter and organisation a little more. But this is mere presumption, and is contrary to analogy, for the reason above alluded to. It was, and seemed to me highly probable, that the functions of human intelligence demanded a soul, in the strict sense of the term, superadded to all the inferior departments. And supposing this to work through the organism-the material organism of the nervous system-there could be no difficulty in accounting for the various mental and physical phenomena which had so much embarrassed me. I could then easily see that as the organism was developed and matured, the mind must become developed and matured; and again, as the organism decayed, hardened, and diminished in power by age, the mind must seem to render obedience to the same law; just as we see the music of the most skilful player dependent upon the kind and perfection of the instrument on which he performs, or just as we see the power and direction of steam dependent upon the nature and perfection of the machinery to which it is attached. There was little need to torture physiology, and put it to the rack, to find reasons for facts which could with comparative ease be explained. Nor was it needful to select isolated and extremely rare instances of the full manifestations of the uninspired powers of mind, in the greatly impaired and sometimes mutilated powers of the organic functions. This sort of thing was never satisfactory to my own mind. It seemed far too like special pleading, and almost always appeared to betray great weakness, instead of strength of argument. For I feel that, if broad and widely extended fact, such as daily experience ought to show in such a case, could be obtained, no such anxiety as was here witnessed, to ransack the history of pathology, with a view to sustain a weak cause, would be seen. Taking things fairly, in the light I have just tried to present them in, it appeared to me there was not much difficulty in solving the whole question. At least, the difficulty was considerably lessened. (To be continued.) Just Published, price ONE PENNY, IS MAN RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS BELIEF? A LECTURE DELIVERED IN THE CITY HALL, GLASGOW, BY THE REV. BREWIN GRANT, B. A. London: WARD & CO.; Glasgow: STARK; Edinburgh: MENZIES. |