LUCIFER

Vol. I.LONDON, FEBRUARY15TH, 1888.No. 6.

“Truthis the Voice of Nature and of Time—Truthis the startling monitorwithin us—Nought is without it, it comes from the stars,The golden sun, and every breeze that blows....”—W. Thompson Bacon.“... Fair Truth’s immortal sunIs sometimes hid in clouds; not that her lightIs in itself defective, but obscuredBy my weak prejudice, imperfect faithAnd all the thousand causes which obstructThe growth of goodness....”

“Truthis the Voice of Nature and of Time—Truthis the startling monitorwithin us—Nought is without it, it comes from the stars,The golden sun, and every breeze that blows....”

“Truthis the Voice of Nature and of Time—

Truthis the startling monitorwithin us—

Nought is without it, it comes from the stars,

The golden sun, and every breeze that blows....”

—W. Thompson Bacon.

“... Fair Truth’s immortal sunIs sometimes hid in clouds; not that her lightIs in itself defective, but obscuredBy my weak prejudice, imperfect faithAnd all the thousand causes which obstructThe growth of goodness....”

“... Fair Truth’s immortal sun

Is sometimes hid in clouds; not that her light

Is in itself defective, but obscured

By my weak prejudice, imperfect faith

And all the thousand causes which obstruct

The growth of goodness....”

—Hannah More.

“What is Truth?” asked Pilate of one who, if the claims of the Christian Church are even approximately correct, must have known it. But He kept silent. And the truth which He did not divulge, remained unrevealed, for his later followers as much as for the Roman Governor. The silence of Jesus, however, on this and other occasions, does not prevent his present followers from acting as though they had received the ultimate and absolute Truth itself; and from ignoring the fact that only such Words of Wisdom had been given to them as contained a share of the truth, itself concealed in parables and dark, though beautiful, sayings.[146]

This policy led gradually to dogmatism and assertion. Dogmatism in churches, dogmatism in science, dogmatism everywhere. The possible truths, hazily perceived in the world of abstraction, like those inferred from observation and experiment in the world of matter, are forced upon the profane multitudes, too busy to think for themselves, under the form ofDivine revelationandScientific authority. But the same question stands open from the days of Socrates and Pilate downto our own age of wholesale negation: is there such a thing asabsolute truthin the hands of any one party or man? Reason answers, “there cannot be.” There is no room for absolute truth upon any subject whatsoever, in a world as finite and conditioned as man is himself. But there are relative truths, and we have to make the best we can of them.

In every age there have been Sages who had mastered the absolute and yet could teach but relative truths. For none yet, born of mortal woman inourrace, has, or could have given out, the whole and the final truth to another man, for every one of us has to find that (to him) final knowledgeinhimself. As no two minds can be absolutely alike, each has to receive the supreme illuminationthroughitself, according to its capacity, and from nohumanlight. The greatest adept living can reveal of the Universal Truth only so much as the mind he is impressing it upon can assimilate, and no more.Tot homines, quot sententiæ—is an immortal truism. The sun is one, but its beams are numberless; and the effects produced are beneficent or maleficent, according to the nature and constitution of the objects they shine upon. Polarity is universal, but the polariser lies in our own consciousness. In proportion as our consciousness is elevated towards absolute truth, so do we men assimilate it more or less absolutely. But man’s consciousness again, is only the sunflower of the earth. Longing for the warm ray, the plant can only turn to the sun, and move round and round in following the course of the unreachable luminary: its roots keep it fast to the soil, and half its life is passed in the shadow....

Still each of us can relatively reach the Sun of Truth even on this earth, and assimilate its warmest and most direct rays, however differentiated they may become after their long journey through the physical particles in space. To achieve this, there are two methods. On the physical plane we may use our mental polariscope; and, analyzing the properties of each ray, choose the purest. On the plane of spirituality, to reach the Sun of Truth we must work in dead earnest for the development of our higher nature. We know that by paralyzing gradually within ourselves the appetites of the lower personality, and thereby deadening the voice of the purely physiological mind—that mind which depends upon, and is inseparable from, its medium orvehicle, the organic brain—the animal man in us may make room for the spiritual; and once aroused from its latent state, the highest spiritual senses and perceptions grow in us in proportion, and developpari passuwith the “divine man.” This is what the great adepts, the Yogis in the East and the Mystics in the West, have always done and are still doing.

But we also know, that with a few exceptions, no man of the world, no materialist, will ever believe in the existence of such adepts, or even in the possibility of such a spiritual or psychic development. “The (ancient) fool hath said in his heart, There is no God”; the modern says, “There are no adepts on earth, they are figments of your diseasedfancy.” Knowing this we hasten to reassure our readers of the Thomas Didymus type. We beg them to turn in this magazine to reading more congenial to them; say to the miscellaneous papers on Hylo-Idealism, by various writers.[147]

ForLucifertries to satisfy its readers of whatever “school of thought,” and shows itself equally impartial to Theist and Atheist, Mystic and Agnostic, Christian and Gentile. Such articles as our editorials, the Comments on “Light on the Path,” etc, etc.—are not intended for Materialists. They are addressed to Theosophists, or readers who know in their hearts that Masters of Wisdomdoexist: and, thoughabsolutetruth is not on earth and has to be searched for in higher regions, that there still are, even on this silly, ever-whirling little globe of ours, some things that are not even dreamt of in Western philosophy.

To return to our subject. It thus follows that, though “generalabstracttruth is the most precious of all blessings” for many of us, as it was for Rousseau, we have, meanwhile, to be satisfied with relative truths. In sober fact, we are a poor set of mortals at best, ever in dread before the face of even a relative truth, lest it should devour ourselves and our petty little preconceptions along with us. As for an absolute truth, most of us are as incapable of seeing it as of reaching the moon on a bicycle. Firstly, because absolute truth is as immovable as the mountain of Mahomet, which refused to disturb itself for the prophet, so that he had to go to it himself. And we have to follow his example if we would approach it even at a distance. Secondly, because the kingdom of absolute truth is not of this world, while we are too much of it. And thirdly, because notwithstanding that in the poet’s fancy man is

“... the abstractOf all perfection, which the workmanshipOf heaven hath modelled....”

“... the abstract

Of all perfection, which the workmanship

Of heaven hath modelled....”

in reality he is a sorry bundle of anomalies and paradoxes, an empty wind bag inflated with his own importance, with contradictory and easily influenced opinions. He is at once an arrogant and a weak creature, which, though in constant dread of some authority, terrestrial or celestial, will yet—

“... like an angry ape,Play such fantastic tricks before high HeavenAs make the angels weep.”

“... like an angry ape,

Play such fantastic tricks before high Heaven

As make the angels weep.”

Now, since truth is a multifaced jewel, the facets of which it is impossible to perceive all at once; and since, again, no two men, howeveranxious to discern truth, can see even one of those facets alike, what can be done to help them to perceive it? As physical man, limited and trammelled from every side by illusions, cannot reach truth by the light of his terrestrial perceptions, we say—develop in you theinnerknowledge. From the time when the Delphic oracle said to the enquirer “Man, know thyself,” no greater or more important truth was ever taught. Without such perception, man will remain ever blind to even many a relative, let alone absolute, truth. Man has toknow himself,i.e., acquire theinnerperceptions which never deceive, before he can master any absolute truth. Absolute truth isthe symbol of Eternity, and nofinitemind can ever grasp the eternal, hence, no truth in its fulness can ever dawn upon it. To reach the state during which man sees and senses it, we have to paralyze the senses of the external man of clay. This is a difficult task, we may be told, and most people will, at this rate, prefer to remain satisfied with relative truths, no doubt. But to approach even terrestrial truths requires, first of all,love of truth for its own sake, for otherwise no recognition of it will follow. And who loves truth in this age for its own sake? How many of us are prepared to search for, accept, and carry it out, in the midst of a society in which anything that would achieve successhas to be built on appearances, not on reality, on self-assertion, not on intrinsic value? We are fully aware of the difficulties in the way of receiving truth. The fair heavenly maiden descends only on a (to her) congenial soil—the soil of an impartial, unprejudiced mind, illuminated by pure Spiritual Consciousness; and both are truly rare dwellers in civilized lands. In our century of steam and electricity, when man lives at a maddening speed that leaves him barely time for reflection, he allows himself usually to be drifted down from cradle to grave, nailed to the Procrustean bed of custom and conventionality. Now conventionality—pure and simple—is a congenitalLIE, as it is in every case a “simulationof feelings according to a received standard” (F. W. Robertson’s definition); and where there is any simulationthere cannot be any truth. How profound the remark made by Byron, that “truth is a gem that is found at a great depth; whilst on the surface of this world all things are weighedby the false scales of custom,” is best known to those who are forced to live in the stifling atmosphere of such social conventionalism, and who, even when willing and anxious to learn, dare not accept the truths they long for, for fear of the ferocious Moloch called Society.

Look around you, reader; study the accounts given by world-known travellers, recall the joint observations of literary thinkers, the data of science and of statistics. Draw the picture of modern society, of modern politics, of modern religion and modern life in general before your mind’s eye. Remember the ways and customs of every cultured race and nation under the sun. Observe the doings and the moral attitude of people in the civilized centres of Europe, America, and evenof the far East and the colonies, everywhere where the white man has carried the “benefits” of so-called civilization. And now, having passed in review all this, pause and reflect, and then name,if you can, that blessedEldorado, that exceptional spot on the globe,whereTRUTHis the honoured guest, andLieandShamthe ostracised outcasts?You cannot.Nor can any one else, unless he is prepared and determined to add his mite to the mass of falsehood that reigns supreme in every department of national and social life. “Truth!” cried Carlyle, “truth, though the heavens crush me for following her, no falsehood, though a whole celestial Lubberland were the prize of Apostasy.” Noble words, these. But how many think, and how many willdareto speak as Carlyle did, in our nineteenth century day? Does not the gigantic appalling majority prefer to a man the “paradise of Do-nothings,” thepays de Cocagneof heartless selfishness? It is this majority that recoils terror-stricken before the most shadowy outline of every new and unpopular truth, out of mere cowardly fear, lest Mrs. Harris should denounce, and Mrs. Grundy condemn, its converts to the torture of being rent piecemeal by her murderous tongue.

Selfishness, the first-born of Ignorance, and the fruit of the teaching which asserts that for every newly-born infant a new soul,separate and distinctfrom the Universal Soul, is “created”—this Selfishness is the impassable wall between thepersonalSelf and Truth. It is the prolific mother of all human vices.Liebeing born out of the necessity for dissembling, andHypocrisyout of the desire to maskLie. It is the fungus growing and strengthening with age in every human heart in which it has devoured all better feelings. Selfishness kills every noble impulse in our natures, and is the one deity, fearing no faithlessness or desertion from its votaries. Hence, we see it reign supreme in the world and in so-called fashionable society. As a result, we live, and move, and have our being in this god of darkness under his trinitarian aspect of Sham, Humbug, and Falsehood, calledRespectability.

Is this Truth and Fact, or is it slander? Turn whichever way you will, and you find, from the top of the social ladder to the bottom, deceit and hypocrisy at work for dear Self’s sake, in every nation as in every individual. But nations, by tacit Agreement, have decided that selfish motives in politics shall be called “noble national aspiration, patriotism,” etc.; and the citizen views it in his family circle as “domestic virtue.” Nevertheless, Selfishness, whether it breeds desire for aggrandizement of territory, or competition in commerce at the expense of one’s neighbour, can never be regarded as a virtue. We see smooth-tonguedDeceitandBrute Force—theJachinandBoazof every International Temple of Solomon—called Diplomacy, and we call it by its right name. Because the diplomat bows low before these two pillars of national glory and politics, and puts their masonic symbolism “in (cunning) strength shall this my house be established” into daily practice;i.e., gets by deceitwhat he cannot obtain by force—shall we applaud him? A diplomat’s qualification—“dexterity or skill in securing advantages“—for one’s own country at the expense of other countries, can hardly be achieved by speakingtruth, but verily by a wily and deceitful tongue; and, therefore,Lucifercalls such action—aliving, and an evidentLie.

But it is not in politics alone that custom and selfishness have agreed to call deceit and lie virtue, and to reward him who lies best with public statues. Every class of Society lives onLIE, and would fall to pieces without it. Cultured, God-and-law-fearing aristocracy being as fond of the forbidden fruit as any plebeian, is forced to lie from morn to noon in order to cover what it is pleased to term its “little peccadillos,” but whichTruthregards as gross immorality. Society of the middle classes is honeycombed with false smiles, false talk, and mutual treachery. For the majority religion has become a thin tinsel veil thrown over the corpse of spiritual faith. The master goes to church to deceive his servants; the starving curate—preaching what he has ceased to believe in—hood-winks his bishop; the bishop—his God.Dailies, political and social, might adopt with advantage for their motto Georges Dandin’s immortal query—“Lequel de nous deux trompe-t-on ici?”—Even Science, once the anchor of the salvation of Truth, has ceased to be the temple ofnakedFact. Almost to a man the Scientists strive now only to force upon their colleagues and the public the acceptance of some personal hobby, of some new-fangled theory, which will shed lustre on their name and fame. A Scientist is as ready to suppress damaging evidence against a current scientific hypothesis in our times, as a missionary in heathen-land, or a preacher at home, to persuade his congregation that modern geology is a lie, and evolution but vanity and vexation of spirit.

Such is the actual state of things in 1888A.D., and yet we are taken to task by certain papers for seeing this year in more than gloomy colours!

Lie has spread to such extent—supported as it is by custom and conventionalities—that even chronology forces people to lie. The suffixesA.D.andB.C.used after the dates of the year by Jew and Heathen, in European and even Asiatic lands, by the Materialist and the Agnostic as much as by the Christian, at home, are—alieused to sanction anotherLIE.

Where then is even relative truth to be found? If, so far back as the century of Democritus, she appeared to him under the form of a goddess lying at the very bottom of a well, so deep that it gave but little hope for her release; under the present circumstances we have a certain right to believe her hidden, at least, as far off as the ever invisibledarkside of the moon. This is why, perhaps, all the votaries of hidden truths are forthwith set down as lunatics. However it may be, in no case and under no threat shallLuciferbe ever forced into panderingto any universally and tacitly recognised, and as universally practised lie, but will hold to fact, pure and simple, trying to proclaim truth whensoever found, and under no cowardly mask. Bigotry and intolerance may be regarded as orthodox and sound policy, and the encouraging of social prejudices and personal hobbies at the cost of truth, as a wise course to pursue in order to secure success for a publication. Let it be so. The Editors ofLuciferare Theosophists, and their motto is chosen:Vera pro gratiis.

They are quite aware thatLucifer’slibations and sacrifices to the goddess Truth do not send a sweet savoury smoke into the noses of the lords of the press, nor does the bright “Son of the Morning” smell sweet in their nostrils. He is ignored when not abused as—veritas odium paret. Even his friends are beginning to find fault with him. They cannot seewhy it should not be a purely Theosophical magazine, in other words, why it refuses to be dogmatic and bigoted. Instead of devoting every inch of space to theosophical and occult teachings, it opens its pages “to the publication of the most grotesquely heterogeneous elements and conflicting doctrines.” This is the chief accusation, to which we answer—why not? Theosophy is divine knowledge, and knowledge is truth; everytruefact, every sincere word are thus part and parcel of Theosophy. One who is skilled in divine alchemy, or even approximately blessed with the gift of the perception of truth, will find and extract it from an erroneous as much as from a correct statement. However small the particle of gold lost in a ton of rubbish, it is the noble metal still, and worthy of being dug out even at the price of some extra trouble. As has been said, it is often as useful to know what a thingis not, as to learn what itis. The average reader can hardly hope to find any fact in a sectarian publication under all its aspects,proandcon, for either one way or the other its presentation is sure to be biassed, and the scales helped to incline to that side to which its editor’s special policy is directed. A Theosophical magazine is thus, perhaps, the only publication where one may hope to find, at any rate, the unbiassed, if still only approximate truth and fact. Naked truth is reflected inLuciferunder its many aspects, for no philosophical or religious views are excluded from its pages. And, as every philosophy and religion, however incomplete, unsatisfactory, and even foolish some may be occasionally, must be based on a truth and fact of some kind, the reader has thus the opportunity of comparing, analysing, and choosing from the several philosophies discussed therein.Luciferoffers as many facets of the One universal jewel as its limited space will permit, and says to its readers: “Choose you this day whom ye will serve: whether the gods that were on the other side of the flood which submerged man’s reasoning powers and divine knowledge, or the gods of the Amorites ofcustomandsocial falsehood, or again, the Lord of (the highest) Self—the bright destroyer of the dark power ofillusion?” Surely it is that philosophy that tends to diminish, instead of adding to, the sum of human misery, which is the best.

At all events, the choice is there, and for this purpose only have we opened our pages to every kind of contributors. Therefore do you find in them the views of a Christian clergyman who believes in his God and Christ, but rejects the wicked interpretations and the enforced dogmas of his ambitious proud Church, along with the doctrines of the Hylo-Idealist, who denies God, soul, and immortality, and believes in nought save himself. The rankest Materialists will find hospitality in our journal; aye, even those who have not scrupled to fill pages of it with sneers and personal remarks upon ourselves, and abuse of the doctrines of Theosophy, so dear to us. When a journal offree thought, conducted by an Atheist, inserts an article by a Mystic or Theosophist in praise of his occult views and the mystery of Parabrahmam, and passes on it only a few casual remarks, then shall we sayLuciferhas found a rival. When a Christian periodical or missionary organ accepts an article from the pen of a free-thinker deriding belief in Adam and his rib, and passes criticism on Christianity—its editor’s faith—in meek silence, then it will have become worthy ofLucifer, and may be said truly to have reached that degree of tolerance when it may be placed on a level with any Theosophical publication.

But so long as none of these organs do something of the kind, they are all sectarian, bigoted, intolerant, and can never have an idea of truth and justice. They may throw innuendoes againstLuciferand its editors, they cannot affect either. In fact, the editors of that magazine feel proud of such criticism and accusations, as they are witnesses to the absolute absence of bigotry, or arrogance of any kind in theosophy, the result of the divine beauty of the doctrines it preaches. For, as said, Theosophy allows a hearing and a fair chance to all. It deems no views—if sincere—entirely destitute of truth. It respects thinking men, to whatever class of thought they may belong. Ever ready to oppose ideas and views which can only create confusion without benefiting philosophy, it leaves their expounders personally to believe in whatever they please, and does justice to their ideas when they are good. Indeed, the conclusions or deductions of a philosophic writer may be entirely opposed to our views and the teachings we expound; yet, his premises and statements of facts may be quite correct, and other people may profit by the adverse philosophy, even if we ourselves reject it, believing we have something higher and still nearer to the truth. In any case, our profession of faith is now made plain, and all that is said in the foregoing pages both justifies and explains our editorial policy.

To sum up the idea, with regard to absolute and relative truth, we can only repeat what we said before.Outside a certain highly spiritual and elevated state of mind, during which Man is at one with theUniversal Mind—he can get nought on earth but relative truth,or truths, from whatsoever philosophy or religion. Were even the goddess who dwells at the bottom of the well to issue from her place of confinement, she could give man no more than he can assimilate. Meanwhile, every one can sit near that well—the name of which isKnowledge—and gaze into its depths in the hope of seeing Truth’s fair image reflected, at least, on the dark waters. This, however, as remarked by Richter, presents a certain danger. Some truth, to be sure, may be occasionally reflected as in a mirror on the spot we gaze upon, and thus reward the patient student. But, adds the German thinker, “I have heard that some philosophers in seeking for Truth, to pay homage to her, have seen their own image in the water and adored it instead.”...

It is to avoid such a calamity—one that has befallen every founder of a religious or philosophical school—that the editors are studiously careful not to offer the reader only those truths which they find reflected in their own personal brains. They offer the public a wide choice, and refuse to show bigotry and intolerance, which are the chief landmarks on the path of Sectarianism. But, while leaving the widest margin possible for comparison, our opponents cannot hope to findtheir facesreflected on the clear waters of ourLucifer, without remarks or just criticism upon the most prominent features thereof, if in contrast with theosophical views.

This, however, only within the cover of the public magazine, and so far as regards the merely intellectual aspect of philosophical truths. Concerning the deeper spiritual, and one may almost say religious, beliefs, no true Theosophist ought to degrade these by subjecting them to public discussion, but ought rather to treasure and hide them deep within the sanctuary of his innermost soul. Such beliefs and doctrines should never be rashly given out, as they risk unavoidable profanation by the rough handling of the indifferent and the critical. Nor ought they to be embodied in any publication except as hypotheses offered to the consideration of the thinking portion of the public. Theosophical truths, when they transcend a certain limit of speculation, had better remain concealed from public view, for the “evidence of things not seen” is no evidence save to him who sees, hears, and senses it. It is not to be dragged outside the “Holy of Holies,” the temple of the impersonal divineEgo, or the indwellingSelf. For, while every fact outsideitsperception can, as we have shown, be, at best, only a relative truth, a ray from the absolute truth can reflect itself only in the pure mirror of its own flame—our highestSpiritual Consciousness. And how can the darkness (of illusion) comprehend theLIGHTthat shineth in it?

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THE SOLDIER’S DAUGHTER.

(Judges xi., 6-xi., 39.)

In the early days of Israel’s history, whilst Israel was struggling to be a nation and a kingdom, there was a people called the Ammonites, who were making war upon the Israelites.

And we are told that the Israelites, in great distress and fear, went out of their country, into the land of Tob, to find a man named Jephthah, who was a man of mighty valour, in order to persuade him to return with them, and be the captain and leader of their army, to fight against, and save them from the Ammonites.

Now this man Jephthah was himself an Israelite by birth, but because his mother had not been legally married to his father, Gilead, the sons of Gilead’s lawful wife conspired together to drive him from his hearth, home, and country, as a disgrace to the family and to Israel; but the true reason was that they were envious and jealous of him, in like manner as the brethren of Joseph who had previously conspired against him.

For Jephthah himself was wholly innocent of having done anything to disgrace either the family or the nation. And therefore, in common justice, he ought not to have been made to suffer merely for the form and manner of his birth; over which neither Jephthah nor any of us have any control, either as to the time, when, or the manner, in which we should be born. But although Jephthah was despised and cast out as a dog, in the days of Israel’s prosperity, yet in the day of Israel’s adversity and weakness, Israel no longer allowed any mean and petty distinctions to prevent her from recognising the noble character of Jephthah, and she entreated him to forget past ill-usage, and return to be her captain and leader to save her from the Ammonites.

And as this proposal of Israel afforded Jephthah the long wished-for opportunity of returning to his country, and of establishing anhonourablehonourablereputation,thereforehe was not only ready to forget and forgive the insults and injuries which he had received in the past from his brethren, but he was also ready to return with them, and share their troubles and dangers, even to sacrificing his life, if need be, in order to save their lives and property.

Jephthah was the more willing to return and make this sacrifice because he had a daughter, an only daughter and child; and she was all the world to him, as he was to her; “for beside her he had neither son nor daughter,” and she had patiently and willingly suffered with him, and borne all his sorrows as her own.

But imagine the horror of Jephthah, after having saved the lives andproperty of his brethren and countrymen by risking his own life, at being then required, by these very brethren and countrymen, to shed the blood of his only child! Immediately after the war was over, Jephthah was required to sacrifice his daughter as a burnt offering to the Lord of Battles, for having assisted Israel to overcome the Ammonites; and so great was the love of this heroine for her father, and for everything that concerned his honour and glory, that she willingly consented to be sacrificed as a burnt offering.

Can anything be conceived more heartrending and terrible than that Jephthah should thus be required by these very brethren and countrymen whom he had saved, to shed the blood of his only child as a sacrifice, in acknowledgment that he owed his victory to miraculous assistance and favour, and not to his own skill and valour?

What to him was the deliverance either of Israel or of his brethren (who had cared naught for him), if they now required him to sacrifice the only being in the world that he loved, and that loved him, and who was therefore all the world to him?

It is true that Jephthah had made a foolish and rash vow, in the mad excitement of the moment before going into battle, that if he came out of the battle victorious, he would sacrifice, as a burnt offering to the Lord, the first thing that came to meet him from his house as he returned from the battle; but when the first person that met Jephthah was his only daughter,what could that Deity be, which accepted as a sacrifice the blood of this child?What could the religion of Jephthah’s brethren and countrymen be, that allowed and required him to commit such an evil deed?

For if Jephthah had saved his brethren and countrymen from their enemies, could they not now save Jephthah from shedding the blood of his daughter as a sacrifice, in the name of religion,whenthe very deed itself proclaimed the religion, and their conception both of religion and of the Deity, to be evil? And if his brethren and countrymen would not save his daughter, but even required him to fulfil his vow, could not Jephthah save himself and his child by refusing to commit this evil deed? But if, in order to save his own blood from being shed as a blasphemer for an atonement, Jephthah had to flee from the country as an outcast and a criminal, whither could he flee to, that would make life worth keeping? For surely the world would be no desirable place for an honest man to live in, if he had to live at enmity with men both at home and abroad, because he had made a rash and foolish vow, which no Deity worthy of being worshipped could or would require him to perform?

Because under such a sanguinary conception of religion, and of the Deity, there was no remission, or redemption either, with, or without, the shedding of blood. If Jephthah refused to shed the blood of his daughter, then both his own and his daughter’s would be shed by hisbrethren and countrymen, whilst if Jephthah shed the blood of his daughter, as a sacrifice to save his own, what remission or redemption was there in this? None!

And he cried for a deliverer to save him and his daughter, from this great trouble. For he had staked his life and his all upon obtaining a position and reputation for himself and his daughter at home in Israel; and now, to give up hope of this for ever, and to shed the blood of his daughter, or again flee as an outcast—what was it but a living death to Jephthah, either way, whether he remained and sacrificed his daughter, or fled to save her?

But who, in this agonising moment of Jephthah’s trouble, could raise his voice to demand, in the name of religion, this diabolical sacrifice of his innocent child?

Yes; diabolical. For what spirit, or voice, but that of a devil or fiend couldcounselmen to shed the blood of this pure and noble girl? And where could the devil or fiend be found who wouldcommitthe deed itself?

Jephthah is mockingly told that he is the fiend who must sacrifice his child, as Abraham is said to have offered Isaac. And Jephthah is told that he has no one to blame but himself, for having made the vow. But who heard the vow? or who accepted the vow? Who could he, or they be, who would require the fulfilling of it?[148]

Are they worthy of the name of brethren and countrymen who would persuade Jephthahto assassinatehis daughter, in the name of religion, or even look on at such an assassination? Would it not be blasphemy to say that a good Deity required Jephthah to kill his innocent child? And would not a good Deity release Jephthah from his vow, and forbid him to sacrifice his daughter, in like manner as the Scriptures teach us Abraham was forbidden to sacrifice his son Isaac? And if it is said, it would have been faithless and sinful of Jephthah after returning from the battle victorious, to have refused the offering of his daughter as a sacrifice; yet surely to bind Jephthah to break the Sixth Commandment, and to shed innocent blood in the name of religion, would be making the Deity that required such a sacrifice to be evil, and His worshippers to be the doers of evil; and thus Jephthah would be required to sell himself to the devil.

And how could men be other than the doers of evil, and the priests ofevil, who would counsel Jephthah to commit this evil deed, and be ready to commit it themselves if he hesitated? How? Whether Jephthah received any miraculous assistance or not, in the war, yet he was in no wise bound to surrender his personality and to become an abject slave to the supposed power that helped him. For Jephthah’s personal services were needed as an instrument to deliver and save the Israelites, or his services would not have been asked for. It was also possible that he might have given certain services, which even a miraculous power was unable to give—as we read in the Book of Judges that “Judah could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” (Judges i. 19.)[149]

And again, if all the glory of Jephthah’s victory had to be ascribed to a miraculous power, then likewise all the shame would have to be ascribed to that power also, for having ordained that Jephthah’s daughter should be the first person to meet him after the war, to paythe price of victoryto Jephthah, withdeath to his child—for whom, alone, he coveted victory.

Victory on such terms was defeat and shame, not glory; for surely such views of religious worship must be thed’evild’evilworship which the Psalmist speaks of (Psalm cvi., 37), and not the service or worship of a good God who would have mercy andnotsacrifice, as Abraham learnt when he went out of the Philistine city into the wilderness, and communed with God alone on Mount Moriah.

But it was one thing for a single individual like Abraham, at the close of a long life, to acquire the knowledge “that God would have mercy and not sacrifice”; and quite another thing for a Town, a City, a Nation, or the World, to have acquired this knowledge in its infancy; as even Abraham only acquired this knowledge by going out of the city into the wilderness, and communing alone with God.

We can well understand how impossible it would have been for Abraham even to have attempted, on his return from the mountain, to teach the Philistines the faith or gospel (that God would have mercy and not sacrifice), from the very fact that when Jesus Christ cameinto the worldto teach the faith or gospel, which Abraham had goneout of the worldto learn, Jesus was condemned by Caiaphas to be crucified with malefactors, as a blasphemer. And to this very day this doctrine of the power of Caiaphas, the adversary of Jesus, continues to be taught as the doctrine of the Church, which it is necessary to believe in order to obtain the blessing of the Church here and of God hereafter.

Therefore it is manifestly evident that after Abraham had acquired the knowledge that God would have mercy and not sacrifice, yet he could not publish it, but could only lay it up in his heart as a secrettreasure, to be disclosed in the distant future, which in the vision of his mind he saw. Meanwhile he prayed that the Lord would raise up messengers and stewards to prepare the world to receive this faith or gospel, because of its being too Herculean a task for any one person to alter suddenly the religion of a people.

For whilst priests continued to teach, and the people to believe that sacrifices of human beings were acceptable to God, how was the man who dared (suddenly and without the cloak of a parable) to reveal and publish the contrary, to escape being himself slain as a blasphemer, whose blood it would be doing God service to shed for an atonement? And until the world was sufficiently educated to declare the generation of him who should be unjustly slain (Isaiah liii.), it could only be like throwing pearls to swine for such an one to attempt the task.

Then from whence, and from whom could Jephthah, who had saved others, now look for the salvation of his daughter, or of himself, if he refused to sacrifice that daughter?

And, in the anguish of his soul, Jephthah rent his clothes, and bemoaned his trouble, whilst his daughter fled to the mountains to pour out the sorrow of her soul, during the few short days she had yet to live.

It is true that, in order to save her father from the cruel pain of assassinating his devoted child, the noble girl may have voluntarily leapt into the sulphurous flames on the burning altar; just as the noble Roman soldier Curtius on his horse leapt down into the dark and awful volcanic gulf as a sacrifice to save his countrymen.

But the more heroic and divine these persons were, the more demoniacal and diabolical must be the religion of those persons who required them thus to suffer.[150]

It is true that the priests of such a religion may have believed in it themselves, and may have been ready to sacrifice their own sons and daughters in like manner; but that in no wise lessens the crime, but on the contrary it intensifies it a hundred fold. How were the people to be saved from a religion, of which the priests themselves needed to be saved, whilst the priests had the sole education of the people from infancy upwards, as well as the Chief power in the State to make and unmake its laws, even to making and unmaking its kings?

Whilst the priests and rulers of the church taught such a cruel religion,[151]would not the people and priests need a Mediator to deliver and save them from practising it?

If He who mediated to deliver and save us was Himself condemned to be slain, and crucified with thieves as a blasphemer whose blood ought to be shed for an Atonement, what hope of salvation can there be for the world from such a Religion, until the people not only uplift theCrucified Jesus as having been no blasphemer, but also expose the doctrine to be evil and false which is quoted as an authority for requiring the blood of “the Just one” to be shed for an Atonement? And if it is said that we have no longer women brought like Jephthah’s daughter to be assassinated and burnt as a sacrifice, or noble men condemned to be burnt as heretics, yet we have to the present day noble men and women condemned by the Church as evil (to be accursed here and damned hereafter), simply and solely because they refuse to believe this evil doctrine of Atonement, which is oftentimes such a burden to their soul (either to accept or reject) that they are driven to the very verge of madness.

It is no uncommon thing to hear priests revile even our Queen as being no true Christian, simply because they suppose she does not believe in this evil doctrine of atonement, which is the doctrine of Caiaphas, the enemy of Christ, and not Christ’s doctrine, teaching, or gospel.

Should not such scriptural stories as these of the assassination of Jephthah’s noble daughter, of the crucifixion of Jesus, and the spilling of the blood of a whole host of martyrs, awaken men who have slumbered to rise, to hear, to see, to speak, and run to save the world from having to believe in this sanguinary doctrine, which is a stumbling-block to the Jews, foolishness to the world, and a mystery even to the teachers of it. This doctrine of Atonement can not be reconciled as either good or true; and therefore it is the cause of all progress being prevented so far as the world is dependent on the Church for progress.

Yet the man who doubts or denies the goodness of this doctrine is branded by the Church, to the present day, as a Sceptic and Atheist, whom all sound Churchmen should avoid. And for sixteen centuries the Church used its sovereign power to condemn those who rejected its doctrine of Atonement as criminals, whom it would be doing God service to burn as heretics; and the Church is only prevented from doing so nowbecause(to its great regret) it has no longer the power which it formerly had in the days of “the Inquisition.” The doctrine remains the same still, and therefore the people owe it, as a duty to the long roll of martyrs, to expose it. For it has been the cause of much evil, and even to this day it assassinates the souls of noble men and women, who incarcerate themselves in monasteries and nunneries in the vain attempt to attain a sound belief in it.

But when the Church is willing to allow (what it has refused to the present day) liberty in the pulpit for explaining the mystery and translating the truth of a “Crucified Christ,” then it will be seen that the truth is not only a light to the Gentiles, but also the glory of Israel; and the truth shall make us free.[152](John viii., 32.)

Manor House, Petersham, S.W.Rev. T. G. Headley.

Manor House, Petersham, S.W.

Rev. T. G. Headley.

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