PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION. AFTER the lapse of ten years-though still involved in the cares of business-I have snatched the time to re-issue this Canto, along with the present collection of Poems, and other trifles, with the object of furthering what I very humbly but sincerely believe to be the advancing light of Truth, so unmistakeably held aloft for the welfare of humanity and the downfall of priestcraft by the Divine hand of Science-the true Gospel of the All-wise, Almighty God-the "Good" Ordainerthe otherwise" Unsearchable," but for the eternal order everywhere displayed in nature (or creation) around us—an order so infinitely divine and immutable as to justify, nay, certify, that the instinctive longing of the human soul after knowledge, goodness, truth, and immortality, was not given in vain, but is destined yet to know God better, and approach nearer and nearer to the Infinite Mind or Spirit of Reason that sustains, or created an order so divinely perfect. I incline to believe with Plato, that beauty, goodness, and justice are eternal. Pope, in his "Universal Prayer," speaks like a true child of God, groping in the dark, seeking knowledge, when he wrote— "Thou Great First Cause, least understood, Who all my sense confined To know but this, that Thou art good, And that myself am blind. "Yet gave me in this dark estate Left free the human will." And Socrates, the truly sublime workman and sage, left the world a noble legacy and example, not only by his death in the cause of truth, but by such God-like injunctions as "adhere to truth, justice, goodness, duty, for their own sakes, and for the love of your brother man, heedless of creed or tribe;" also, "that men should think for themselves, and accept nothing as true that contradicts the moral and intellectual principles of their being." Such noble, because true, precepts may well make us blush for Christianity as promulgated by its gospels, and but too often practised by its "disciples." Would to God that Jesus, the martyred Nazarene, had, like Socrates, His fellow-martyr in the cause of truth, left His precepts in His own handwriting, without ambiguity, parable, mystery, or so-called miraculous agency! What a world of fiend-like cruelty, horrible inquisitorial torture, and petty pretended "soul-saving," sectarian persecutions, poor credulous humanity would have been saved from! What has "Immaculate Conceptions," "Transubstantiations," Papal Infallibility, baptism or nonbaptism, Free Church or State Church, believer or unbeliever, got to do with the immutable and true gospel of the living God? Poor mockeries! to suit the designs of human priestcraft. When will the immortal soul break through all such spider-like meshes, and, escaping, stand before the All-wise, the Almighty Ordainer-the Just but "Good" Father (Who is everywhere)-unfettered and free? Compared to the noble. precepts of Socrates, it is almost an insult to humanity to believe that Luke can have correctly recorded this saying attributed to Jesus, "If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple." And all who refuse to carry out this inhuman violation of natural affection and honour are to be contemned as worse than worthless, "Neither fit for the land, nor for the dunghill, but to be cast out." But, in these remarks, I lift no pen against the Scriptures, as they are liable to endless interpretations, and have been but too often used as the prolific cause of virulent controversies, and worse than useless theological discussions; even tempting great and otherwise respected statesmen to abdicate the honourable throne of political leaders, and to descend to bandy words and measure pens with ecclesiastical scarecrows. Indeed, it were wise for humanity, even now, after the lapse of nearly nineteen centuries, to read and ponder over the words of the learned Hebrew doctor, Gamaliel, the Pharisee, a man held in high "reputation among all the people," for, when Peter and the other apostles were brought before the then high priest, and accused of preaching the "new doctrine" of Christianity, maintaining belief in miracles, salvation to all (no matter how wicked) who believed in Jesus, but eternal damnation to every one who either could not, or would not, believe that "the God of their fathers had raised Him up to be a Prince and a Saviour for to give repentance to Israel" (to Israel only ?)" and forgiveness of sins:" saying, "We are His witnesses of these things, and so is also the Holy Ghost Whom God hath given to them that obey Him." And when the assembled people were for stoning Peter to death for preaching what they sincerely thought blasphemy, as Protestants might do now, against the pretended infallibility of Peter's successor, the Pope, Gamaliel prudently said, "Ye men of Israel, take heed to yourselves what ye intend to do as touching these men; for, before these days, rose up Theudas, boasting himself to be somebody, to whom a number of men, about four hundred, joined themselves, who was slain, and all, as many as obeyed him, were scattered and brought to nought. After this man, rose up Judas of Galilee, in the days of the taxing, and drew away much people after him; he also perished, and all, even as many as obeyed him, were dispersed. And now, I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone, for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought; but, if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it, lest haply ye be found even to fight against God." This is so true, that every one who arrogates, or has arrogated, to himself (unless in metaphor) the prerogative and infallible power of Almighty God, the sole Ordainer, and claims, or has claimed, the power, through so-called miraculous agency, to alter His immutable and divinely eternal laws, has, sooner or later, but one doom written upon his-shall I say-blasphemous pretensions. Yes! it is down, let it remain; for there is such a true and deep-rooted veneration instinctively implanted in the whole human race by nature towards the infinite Ordainer of their being, which is but too often degraded into superstition by designing priestcraft, that I could not resist the seemingly harsh expression, impelled through this heartfelt veneration on the one hand, and a sincere hatred of everything that dares to interfere with the Divine prerogative of God on the other. The present effort at this time of day to maintain and confirm the dark dogma of Papal Infallibility, and vain attempt to re-dye and revive the red spiritual mantle of Popery in this country, coupled with the shameful sectarian divisions and rents of Christ's seamless coat (the very soldiers at the cross, teaching a lesson, casting lots rather than rend it), and virulent antichristian contentions, in what is called Protestantism itself, almost verifies the words of Byron, that "Other creeds with other years will come." Only he should not have stopped there, but have said, The time will come when there shall be no creeds at all, for all shall yet know and worship the All-wise, the All-just, Almighty God for themselves "in spirit and in truth," guided by their own instinctive reason, and taught by the unchangeable and divine order everywhere displayed by the ordaining Reason of Infinity; and to which their own reason, through the restless desire of the human soul after truth and science, now knows itself to be kin; thus verifying the noble words of Jeremiah, so truly, though figuratively expressed in Scripture, "After those days, saith the Lord, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord; for I will forgive their inquity, and I will remember their sin no more." To this great consummation, all creeds, like the mammoth and other extinct species of creation on this globe, are destined to come at last. In the words of Paul, when he wrote to the Hebrews, "In that God said a new covenant, He hath made the first old. Now, that which decayeth and wareth old is ready to vanish away;" or, as he said still plainer, to be "done away with." That time will come, even on this earth, when Truth, the one gospel of God, shall flow over it like the figurative river of Ezekiel, which issued from his visionary temple, first up to the ankles, then to the knees, then the loins, until the man (or priest), who vainly attempted to measure, found at last that he could not even swim over it, being beyond his poor control, like the now rapidly flowing tide of the true gospel, the Divine order of the eternal Ordainer, which is destined, through the same law of eternal progress, to drown every baneful creed. When on this subject, I am tempted to quote from the "Gospel of the World's Divine Order," by Douglas Campbell (a book fraught with intellectual and deep thought). It says: "The religion of imagination fades before the realities of science. The universe presents itself to us, not as a kingdom where the passionate will of a monarch dominates by his power, but as a compages of proportions expressing the supremacy of reason. In this principle of proportion or order exists that, which is to man at once the foundation and the superstructure of all his knowledge, comprehending all other principles. It is, at the same time, a reality above all other realities. Every phenomenon of the known universe, and the facts named causation and design, evidences of its Author, all merge in this great principle, as the root of all we know of system, and method, and power, while uniting in one divine harmony heaven and earth, mind and matter, good and evil. Time, and what is to us eternity, are aspects and expressions of proportion or order, as infinitude is of space. Into these two then-space and order-all our experiences and reasonings merge and result. In higher spheres of existence than ours, sublimer principles, for aught we know, may rule, and related to them there may live nobler races than man. But here is enough to assure and |