Royal Rubbish.

Upon the occasion of the celebration of his eighty-sixth birthday last week the German emperor made a very notable speech in reply to an address by a deputation of conservatives from the Reichstag. He said the times were very serious; anarchy threatened both sovereign and people. The worst doctrines were promulgated, and well-intentioned people were led astray. He therefore considered it necessary to again remind the country what the crown of Prussia was. It was a symbol of absolute authority given by God, and not to be taken away by man.

This latter remark is said to have made a deep impression upon those who heard it. No wonder it did; and this deep impression, stripped of diplomatic hypocrisy and translated into plain and profane English, probably was that Wilhelm was a damned old fool,— an impression, however, which is no very new one in Germany.

Yes, there is no mistaking the signs of the times. The doctrines of anarchistic socialism are being promulgated throughout the world, and in Germany especially are rapidly absorbing the social democracy. It is a harmless thing for Wilhelm to fall back on God with his shaky old traps of despotism. God has had to shoulder worse rubbish than he. By natural limitation this royal old coon of Hohenzollern must soon come down. His successor will probably again seek to repair the throne with divinity finishings but the old concern is worm-eaten and bound to crumble and rot. It must come down, and the royal tribe must go. This “God-given” trick is becoming very diaphanous. Take away your army of a million blind-folded butchers, Wilhelm, and let us see how long God will back you against man.

Church and State.

Liberals complain of the oppressions of the church; they say, and truly, that the church is the favorite or the State. But they forget that, were it not for the State, the church would be powerless for evil in this direction. Behind the exemption of church property, the Sunday laws, Bible in the schools, etc. stands the State, enforcing by the power of every bayonet these unjust discrimination. The State has ever been the executive arm of the church. Her judges, her sheriffs, her jailers have sentenced, have hung, racked, burned, exiled, and imprisoned the sentenced heretics in all ages. To-day she forces upon us the morality of the church, and our refusal to conform to the standard ecclesiastic is tantamount to rebellion against the State. The latter power stands pledged to compel us to speak and act in church channels. Let us open our eyes and take a square look at the work before us.

E. C. Walker.

The State Its Own Outlaw.

But for our firm conviction that the State is doomed by its own depravity, we should be exceptionally at some of the features of the anti-Mormon bill. This infamous instrument of outrage upon the rights of conscience not only provides that a person shall be punished for practising [sic] his religion, but literally makes it a crime for him to believe that his religion is true.

A winning point, however, for the Mormons, if they only knew how to utilize it, is the fact that the crime of believing that polygamy is sanctioned by God is to be punished by dismissing the religious martyr from full fellowship with the State. If the Mormons were only bright enough to accept the penalty as an honor, and be thankfully rid of fellowship with an organization composed of such thieves and bigots, they would be on the way to do humanity a great service.

Of course the State is so lost to shame and decency that it continues to tax by force those whom it by force expels from the machine; but this should all the more animate the Mormons to wage an uncompromising war of abolition upon so shameless an institution. Those who are expelled from full fellowship with the State because of their religious opinions can do no better service than to strike hands with those who are forced into fellowship with it against their will, and move for its utter abolition.

So far as being deprived of fellowship with such a State is concerned, the Mormons should immediately send a memorial to Congress, thanking it for the honor conferred, and reminding it that enforced obligation to pay taxes under such circumstances rests on the same moral basis as ordinary brigandage, and can only be tolerated so long as fate permits the victim to remain the under dog.

St. James on Liberty.

[From the Memphis “Free Trader.”]

“But whoso looketh into the perfect Law of Liberty and continueth therein, he being, not a forgetful bearer, but a doer the work, this men shall be blessed in his deed.” — General Epistle of St. James.

When the people of the earth are sufficiently Christianized to adopt that “perfect law of liberty and continue therein,” two-thirds of all the sorrow and suffering that afflict humanity will end. It is a melancholy reflection, it is a dark and depressing reflection, that all the blood ever shed on earth, every war, every battle, every murder, every civil wrong, came from that desire which the devil puts into the souls of men, to hold rule over their fellow mortals. This devilish desire to rule others is directly contrary to the “perfect law of liberty” taught by St. James.

The Two Guiteaus.

To the Editor of Liberty:

I was lately riding in the cars with “a God-fearing and a God-serving man,” who represents the old type of orthodox Christian and is a leading pillar in one of our churches. Knowing that he was one of the Rhode Island State Board of Prisons, Charities, and Correction, I asked him, in connection with the Guiteau trial:

“Do you believe in capital punishment, sir?”

“Well, sir,” he replied, “on rational, human, utilitarian grounds I do not, but, inasmuch a God’s will, as expressed in his Holy Word, is above my weak fallible human reason, I am compelled to believe in it, and therefore I believe that Guiteau ought to be hung.”

Now, wherein is this Christian’s position any different from Guiteau’s? In order to make it plain let me put the two positions side by side.

Guiteau.

I do not believe in killing and would not, of myself, harm a fly. I personally bore no ill will to Garfield, but, inasmuch as God’s will is above mine, I obeyed the divine command and killed the president. I am sorry I caused him so much suffering; but God’s will be done, and not mine!

Orthodox Fellow Christian.

I do not believe in judicial killing. It is contrary to my human feelings. I personally would not kill Guiteau, but inasmuch as God’s will will is above mine, I succumb to the divine command. I am sorry for the poor ill-starred fellow in his sufferings, but, in my capacity as a Christian citizen, I obey the divine command and kill him; but God’s will be done, and not mine.

If Guiteau is hung, the Christian State will murder him in accordance with the very same logic which it professes to abhor in him. Is any further comment necessary with your intelligent reader?

Crankus.

A Glorious Meeting.

The mass meeting of trades unions in Cooper Union, New York, on January 30, was the most significant and gratifying move that has been made since the so-called Irish land war began.

The Irish race, by nature of their organism, are easily ridden by superstition. The Pope has always sat in the Irish saddle with greater assurance than in any other. Blood-sucking priests have always found the Irish skin the thinnest to prey upon. With such a people — sympathetic, domestic, and deeply endeared to their traditions — the nationality craze easily finds a lodgment, and short-sighted, designing politicians are ever ready to make use of it in order to divert the attention of the people from the bottom causes of universal industrial slavery.

But this meeting stood on a thoroughly broad and de-nationalizing basis. As the splendid resolutions put it, the Irish cause was “humanity cause;” it was “Labor’s Cause.” Germans, Russians, Americans, Scotch, English, and Irish,— all clasped the brotherly hand in the grand resolve that the curse of landlordism was not local and national, but universal and human (or rather inhuman), and a part of the great scheme of usury against which Labor is everywhere called upon to wage an uncompromising war of extermination.

In asking the Irish to de-nationalize, as far as possible, their grand struggle, we would by no means look lightly upon their exceptional persecutions as a nation. But were these persecutions simply political and national, the Irish would have no especial claim to the co-operation of other nationalities. Since, however, the curse which afflicts them is one which threatens, and actually afflicts, more or less, the working masses of every other nation, they simply assert a just demand when they call upon working people everywhere to stand by them.

To attempt to argue down a superstition is the slowest process. Here and there a level-headed Irishman has sense enough to brush aside the ridiculous nonsense of expecting an “Irish republic” to do better by those who labor than does the ruling British machine. But these men are exceptions, and their voices is easily rub-a-dubbed down by the blatant nationalists.

It is useless to remind these rub-a-dub-dub, Irish republic, national flag enthusiasts that this American republic is severer on the tenant class, under its laws, than is England; but perhaps we can put it in another form with more effect. Place the Irish landlord class of America beside the Irish rent-paying class. Is the former any less merciless to its tenants than is the English landlord in Ireland? If the Irish landlord in this American republic is usurious-blood-hound, would he be anything less in an Irish republic? No, it is the system that must be crushed, and the system thrives just as audaciously under one form of government as another. The fact is that the State, without monopoly and usury as its main pillars, ceases to be the State.

It will take long to get these bottom facts into the heads of the masses, but such meetings as the one in Cooper Union are most gratifying helps in that direction. The masterly genius which moves the “Irish World” was never displayed to greater credit than on that occasion, and Liberty shouts thrice, Bravo! upon the whole affair.

God’s Wicked Partners.

Charles Guiteau claims that he is Lord’s partner, and that the Almighty was accessory before fact to killing of Garfield. For this Mr. Guiteau is bitterly denounced by Christians as a blasphemer and an impious wretch, and regarded with holy horror by the Lord’s anointed. These good people are inconsistent. They have addressed to the throne of grace such remarks as this: “Oh Lord! Thou hast in Thine infinite wisdom seen fit to chasten us by removing our beloved leader and taking him unto Thine own bosom. Humbly we bow before thee, and murmur, Thy will be done!” If such pulpit utterances signify anything and are not mere gospel gush, intended to flatter the Almighty by conveying the impression that the speakers would not for a moment suppose that anything could be done on earth without his knowledge or consent, they mean that the killing of Garfield was the act of God, that the murder was deliberately planned by Omnipotence for some inscrutable reason, and that it was executed in furtherance of and in accordance with some sacred scheme for the good of the World. If the Christian god is omnipotent, he could have prevented the killing, and the fact that he did not do so indicates that he desired the death of President Garfield. Guiteau, according to the Christian doctrine, merely executed the will of God. It cannot be argued reasonably that he was merely the blind instrument of God a that God simply permitted him to follow the course that has wicked passions and malignant heart dictated, leaving him responsible for the deed as for the motives that prompted it: for Guiteau had no personal motive, and has asserted repeatedly that God commanded him to kill Garfield. He was in the confidence of the Almighty from the beginning. If it was God’s will that Garfield should die, God was the instigator of the homicide, and Guiteau was his partner. If the killing was the most damnable and atrocious crime in history, then God is the most atrocious villain the world ever heard of, and Guiteau is no more responsible than the bullet which inflicted the death wound.

But God’s inconsistent apologists argue that there is no evidence of the copartnership beyond Guiteau’s own assertions, and that the Almighty would never select as his partner a man who had committed adultery, cheated landladie, and done other disreputable thing Christians abhor. It is strange that God did not select as his partner some trusted preacher of his word — some holy man who never did anything wrong in his life, and whose claim of inspiration would be accepted as true. Why did he not commission some regularly inspired preacher of the gospel, whom he had already called to serve him at a good salary, to murder Mr. Garfield? Was it because he intended to shirk the responsibility and leave his partner in the lurch, and thought he could spare Guiteau better than Beecher or Talmage or some other meck and lowly follower of the cross? Then why did he not select some professional murderer, who by law ought to be hanged anyway, some “Billy the Kid,” or some great military leader with the blood of thousands on his hands?

Guiteau is not half as bad a man, even admitting that he is sane, as some of those who figure in history and the Bible as being on familiar terms with Jehovah. The Lord has had some very wicked partners on earth. One of them led a band of outcasts and cut-throats for forty years, and, acting under direct orders from the head of the firm, occupied himself in murder, rapine, and plunder during a large portion of the time. The partnership between Moses and the Almighty is accepted as a fact upon no better evidence than the alleged statements of Moses himself and there is no proof that Moses was a more truthful man than Guiteau. Ever since the invention of religion certain men have claimed for themselves divine right to rob, murder, and oppress their fellows. They have called themselves kings, emperors, czars,— all partners of the Lord,— and, under authority of the senior member of the concern, have committed colossal crimes, kept hordes of hired murderers busy killing men, robbed millions of human beings of every natural rights, violated every principle of morality, lived most vicious lives, died pious deaths, and gone straight to eternal glory and everlasting bliss. Partners of the Lord have made bonfires of human flesh, broken living human frames upon the rack, and filled the ears of Infinite mercy with the agonized groans of suffering morality. There is no crime however hideous, no outrage however cowardly, no meanness however despicable, that has not been committed by acknowledged partners of the Lord.

No, Guiteau is not too wicked nor too depraved to be an accomplice of the Almighty, and his claim of divine complicity in his deed rests upon ground every bit as good and reliable as John Calvin’s or Moses’s or Kaiser Wilhelm’s. If there were any such thing as consistency in Christianity, it would have to either accept him at his own estimation or admit that he is a lunatic; but there is no such thing, and therefore Christian ministers approve of hanging him, while the read “collects” and pray God to forgive his own partner in crime.

The “Affirmations” of Free Religion.

Listening from time to time to the orators of Free Religion and reading occasionally the Free Religious journals,— or journal, perhaps we should say,— one discovers a certain assumption, put forward with a somewhat orthodox disregard of that much-vaunted Christian grace known as “humility,” to the effect that the true Free Religious liberal is not a merely negative creature, full of all manner of denial, but a person of truly positive and affirmative characteristics; in brief, that the small number of Free Religionists are easily distinguished from the vast herd of so-called liberals who have broken out of the old Evangelical enclosure by this simple sign: the former are builders; they no longer pass their unquiet hours in tearing down the tottering faith of the fathers; on the contrary, they consecrate their intellectual and religious energies all to the service of a new free religious civilization, of which the chief corner-stone is none other than that same spotless morality their Christian brethren have so long denounced as of no more worth than so many “filthy rags:” the latter,— the Tom, Dick, and Harry class,— which comes forth pell-mell, heaven knows how or when, from the four winds,— are simply and only destroyers; they lay waste, or would if they could, all that the ages, with infinite toil and sacrifice, have constructed, leaving but barren earth and howling wilderness to tell of their mighty deeds; they have no outlook into the future, showing them the fair and grand creations of a stately and imposing civilization; they are only intent on tearing down, tearing down, tearing down; they seem to say, “This is our mission, after us the devil.”

The words are ours, but the spirit that inspires them, as we said, is borrowed from the Free Religious teachers. It is the Free Religious estimate of liberal values. Our esteemed contemporary, the “Index,” is fond of often laying out the liberal its dots of differentiating color. It classifies and reclassifies, ever making up its new slate according to its conception of moral pennyweights, or the avoirdupois of spiritual or intellectual culture. And, of course, in strictest regard for that inherited Christian “humility” to which we have alluded, it magnifies the importance of that select and not numerous class of most irreproachable men and women whose sole decorous organ it is. All of which is, doubtless, as it should be, since there is not the slightest suspicion to be cast over its profound and utter sincerity.

Yet, all the same, in the interest of our common humanity, it would be quite defensible, in whomsoever might essay the task, to puncture, at least, with a cambric needle, the swelling bubble of this Free Religious positivism to which the finger of the “Index” so often and so lovingly points. And the simple defence would be that the aforesaid globular apparition is inflated with somewhat on which hungry human nature positively can not feed and long survive.

True, we are not greatly alarmed in view of any rapid spread of this rainbow-hued heresy, and doubt not it will collapse in due season of its own vacuous accord; but there are, as we know, a goodly number of most excellent and noble-minded people who have been led astray by the fascinations of its polished speech and the subdued glamour of its aestheticism, as well as by the claim to superior position amid the up-building forces of this our so needy and patiently-waiting world.

Therefore we speak. For their sakes,— if haply our words may reach ears that hear,— we gently bid them turn their eyes and behold the delusion.

What, then, we ask, is there to support the Free Religious claim to a positive or affirmative attitude?

To waste no words, we bluntly put our questions.

Free Religion no longer gives its time to denying, let us say: (1) the existence of the orthodox deity; (2) the atonement, or mission of Christ; (3) the future life of rewards and punishments; (4) the reality of one incarnate devil, who stole into Paradise and destroyed the bliss of our first parents, and since has been going about as a lion roaring and seeking whom he might devour.

Well, in the place of this, and of much more we might here restate, what does Free Religion affirm?

Does it affirm God in any shape? What affirmation stands instead of the rejected Christi’ What does it say affirmatively of the future life? And how does it dispose of that somewhat extended area of territory so long undisputedly occupied by his Satanic majesty, whom Milton was wont to describe as being in his own conceit “all but less than he whom thunder hath made greater”?

To put these questions is sufficient. Everybody knows Free Religion not only does not attempt to replace these old affirmations with new affirmatives; it glories, instead, in the profession that its constituent parts are all at sea in regard to them, drifting hither and thither at their own free will.

But now, by rapid movement, we pass to the ground Free Religion will claim it has occupied with a most determinedly affirmative state of mind,— to wit, to the ground of man’s moral life here upon earth. It has made the “earthward pilgrimage,” and planted itself strongly in the ethic realities of our present existence. In other word, it has reduced religion to a practical basis, linking it inseparably with world’s morals.

Well, far be it from us to deny that here is happy thought,— one which should find a place in the book and volume of everybody’s brain and heart. But the vital question is, has it done what it thinks it done?

One of the pet phrases of its organ has for some time been, “for supernatural, Christian morality we would substitute natural, scientific morality.” Strain your eyes now, good friend, whoever you are, and tell us just how far this process of substitution has proceeded. Awaiting your response, we fill time with our own report. Not a solitary new affirmative moral dogma has Free Religion reared. Possibly we are blinded and can not see, but to our honest vision there appears not one grand moral affirmation Free Religion has vouchsafed to stand its own peculiar property amid the roar and bustle of “denial” with which it is claimed the liberal air has been filled.

This is the decisive point at which we arrive. Has free Religion affirmed anything whatsoever in its own name as one of the new up-building forces of this our modern time? To our mind this is the answer which must come from fact and truth, “No, not one thing.”

Do we say this gleefully? No, by no means; but sorrowfully, yet not so much for the world’s sake, as for the sake and of the souls of the friends we count organized seriously and solemnly under the Free Religion banner.

The proof of what we say is not far or hard to seek. But the limits or our space now forbid more than the statement which follows: In every important case where Free Religion make a united affirmation, it is close to be observed that the Christian world makes the very same; that, therefore, Free Religion is affirming an old force and not a new one. Not that it must necessarily not affirm a thing because Christian do yet so affirm. Let no one mistake that for charge we bring. Its boast is that it is especially affirming new forces of higher civilization than any yet attained. But when we look for those new forces, they do not, by any affirmation Free Religion makes, put in an appearance.

Now, on the contrary, be it observed, on every new issue upon which mankind is to-day ethically divided, Free Religion is silent. The members of the body, for the most part, cling to the old, conservative side of the living problems that confront the world. Their affirmations are all for what has been, for what is, and for what ought to be.

This is the gist of what we propose to set forth in the next issue of Liberty.

Mr. Frothingham’s Defection.

[For Liberty]

Free Religion may put on mourning now. Its ex-chef, if he has not fallen, has had his mind greatly shaken, and knows not but he must beat a retreat to the shades whence twenty years ago intellectually he emerged. “I do not want to give the impression,” he is reported as saying, “taht I recant anything. I simply stop denying, and wait for more light.” I am not surprised to find Mr. Frothingham at this point of doubting, for, though I believe him always perfectly sincere, it has ever seemed to me that his nutural frame of mind could be best imaged by a doubt. He doubted “revealed religion.” He pleaded for the “Religion of Humanity.” But his plea never leaped forth like an irresistible conviction. It sounded like what the old Christian writers called an “apology,”— an apology for his doubt. It was an argument: an intellectual stating, a lawyer-like presenting of his case,— his case against the old supernatural faith. Always well done; strong, classical, rhetorical, elegant; but not stirring one with more than a keen intellectual appreciation. “I always feel cold chills run down my back when —————— speaks,” once said an acquaintance of mine;” and when that happens, I know my soul is coming up to fever heat.” But it was not Mr. Frothlngham’s discourse that produced in my friend’s soul these responding fever heats. Yet, it can be truly said that few men have made clearer statements of what has been termed the Radical, or Liberal, position than has Mr. Frothingham. He has done great service, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, who would earnestly confess that he had been a real helper to them. He helped, as we have indicated, in resolving their doubts,— placing the weight of argument to the doubter’s side. But to quicken the believer in his belief, clearing away the contentious intellectualism that intervene between the universe of spiritualities and the soul’s vision by spontaneous spiritual affirmations which no soul could or would gainsay,— that function of the great teacher, or quickener, he did not, in any marked degree, possess. He was not, however, without that side of human nature. Especially in his private conversation, when controversy or advocacy did not come to the front, he would manifest a reserve transcendental power which not alone surprised the listener, but suggested that Mr. Frothingham was probably the “coming man.” But this suggestion was not to be realized. The view of the intellectual doubter was too habitual with him. He must leave his own direct vision for the reconstruction of old visions or old beliefs. Not contented with what he himself could believe, he must enter the arena of debate, and rid the world, by force of new arguments and profounder statements, of its errors. The “situation” had a charm he could not resist. How Free Religion stood; how much headway it made from year to year; how the old faith was affected by it, and what might be the next step,— all these considerations came up for him as for the others; he and they came consciously to regard themselves as a part of a movement in history, and were ever busy about the “logic” of it; unrestful with their ideas, unless they could also be making themselves felt as a power in the Republic, shaping events.

Finally, some two years ago, it came to pass that Mr. Frothingham felt the stress of a new departure so strongly that he retired from his old associations and sought to regain himself in the quiet of foreign travel. He did well; and, if the report of the result, as given by an interviewer to the press, be correct, he has, in our opinion, made a decided gain upon the free religious past which he had forsaken. What Mr. Frothingham now more clearly sees is the fact that there is something in human experience corresponding to what the Christian world has proclaimed as “revealed religion.” He sees or feels that the materialistic religion coming to the front has only the intellectual basis which closes up the channels of the spirit whose in-coming into human experience is all that keeps human life fresh, progressive, and, in any true sense, alive. When he left New York two years ago, he announced that his ministrations from the transcendental, or individualistic, standpoint were at an end. He looked for no farther progress, save in the beneficent aids of social, scientific organization. It was his lapse into those materialistic moods which have more or less overtaken nearly all the liberal leaders. To-day he turns his face toward “revelation,” which is simply a word that stands for the so-called orthodox interpretation of the soul’s proclamation. As the Christian world has understood (or misunderstood) the great fact of the soul’s revelation of itself, the world is limited to an individualism of a past age. Peter, Paul, and Jesus had revelations from the soul, but no individual to-day may assume any such importance. This limitation is the Christian’s misapprehension, the truth being that all ages and all individuals may leave this open door for the soul’s entrance. Undoubtedly Mr. Frothingham saw in the Catholic clergy a certain “power behind them which must mystify the philosophers,” especially those whose life is led by speculations of the materialistic brain. These Catholics have at least some portions of the soul’s revelation by inheritance. Had they that which might and would come to them separately as individuals were they disconnected from organised tyranny, the mysterious power Mr. Frothingham speaks of would not lessen, but increase.

Mr. Frothingham’s purpose to stop denying and wait for more light is a good one. He can well afford now to let “Evangelical religion” alone: neither concern himself with its errors or its truths, nor be oppressed or elated by its strength or weakness. Its churches may or may not be filled,— what is that to a man who is conscious of his own spiritual health? For, though the light that is in him be at ebb, if he will in truth “wait,” it will come again at flood. But, if he forsakes the Free Religious organization to run after other organizations, to hear their dissertations of “revealed religion,” he will cease to be loyal to his purpose. There is a difference between waiting and going after light. In our judgment Mr. Frothingham’s greatest failure in the twenty yeary of his ministry was his unsteady reliance on the revelations of his own soul. His waiting may restore his faith therein, and clothe him with power as from on High.

Radicalism in Rhyme.

A Good Word for the Devil: Bible Musings by an Infidel. By Simeon Palmer. Boston 1881, pp. 136. See advertisement elsewhere.

Many attempts have been made by persons utterly unfitted for the task to paraphrase in rhyme the absurdities of the Bible, and to poetically satirize the dogmas of theology. But for the most part — yes, universally so far as we know — all these attempts have resulted in witless, vulgar, inharmonious jangles unworthy of the slightest attention. But none of these adjectives can be truthfully applied to “A Good Word for the Devil,” which, upon the whole, is one of the wittiest, cleverest, most skilful satires that we have seen for many a day. This becomes tho more surprising when it is considered that the author is an aged man, entirely inexperienced in literature except as a student. The book is written in the difficult metre adopted by Byron in “Don Juan,” and contains here and there a stanza that would not discredit that master poet. The author has a keen sense of the ridiculous, an extraordinary faculty for happily turning a phrase, und avast fund of information on all subjects connected with Biblical studies. More than this, he is a fearless thinker and outspoken writer. The work lacks method, and is marked at many points by crudities due to carelessness, both of author and printer. But it deals most effectively a rapid succession of keen thrusts and heavy blows at the Christian superstition, and deserves to be widely read. The treatment of the dogma of hell, introducing Joseph Cook I and his ingenious theory of Christ’s birth, fairly samples the faults and excellences of the work: therefore we append it.

I said that Hell had not then been invented.

We have the advantage over Bible times.

They burned or hacked the body, well contented

When death ensued; but when we’ve mocked the limbs

Or burned and buried those who have dissented,

Or won’t conform to our rehglouj whims,

We have the satisfaction of discerning,

With eye of faith, their Hell forever burning.

It would be joy to Jacob could he look

And see his brother Esan writhe in Hell,

Or Elisha see the boys the bruins shook

As a dog shakes a rat, all roasting well;

Or David, paired with Mrs. U., who took

A bath one evening, seeing him who fell

In battle by his act, show her Uriah,

Who feels that God is a consuming fire.

In this we have the advantage. Jon’than E.,

Who wrote the famous treatise on the Will,

Can look from Heaven’s battlements and see

A delicate cinder that, on earth, was El,

Or Eliery Channing. who maintained that three

Were three times one, not one, and now, in Hell

Gets his deserts. And gentle Jon’than E.

Harps louder on his harp to the blest trinity.

And J. Iscariot Cook, who once applied

The microscope to Mary, and explained

The mystery of the birth of him who died

On Calvary; that she was not impregned

By power the highest; and Old Gabriel lied

Or was mistaken; and that Mary feigned,

Or was deceived, when she broke forth in song,

Exultant that her offspring was the long

Foretold Messiah, through whose marvellous birth

All nations and all peoples should be blest,

And she should be proclaimed throughout the earth,

Happy above all mothers. Cook exprest,

Without the slightest tendency to mirth

Among his hearers, who all seemed imprest

With its importance, his belief that Jes-

Jesus was born as drones among the bees.

‘Twas partheno genesis and nothing more.

So said the latest science. Then he quoted

Jaw-breaking German gutturals; — a score

Of men to physiology devoted;

And said the person we’d been taught t’adore,

As the original Grecian word denoted,

Was a subsistence, not a person: three

Subsistences, not persons, were the trinity,

Which was a substance. Now, I cannot see

How a subsistence, which itself was nought

And could do nought, when multiplied by three,

Became the infinite God, transcending thought;

How three noughts added made infinity;

How this subsistence lived on earth and taught,

And walked about, and ate and drank and died;

Died like a man; nay, like a thief, was crucified.

Still he is confident, this Joseph C.,

That in some future state, some post-existence,

Translated into heaven, he will see,

While sitting, cheek by jowl, with th’ second subsistence,

The Devil, aided by a score of assistants,

Heaping the coals around poor Theodore P.,

While P., like Lazarus’ friend, begs Joe for water,

And Joe will see him damned first, as he oughter.

Provided always Joe can find some screen

To hang between his past and God Almighty,

So that the damning record can’t be seen.

The black and hideous record sua vita,

He hinted at, when lecturing yestreen,

In the “Old South,” when Standing Bear and Bright-eye

And ghosts, as thick as leaves in Vallambrosa,

“Declared” he must have been damned fast, this Joe, sir.

Proviso 2, that Joseph ia sustained

In his queer notions of the trinity,

By his Triune: for Joseph would be pained

Should it turn out that the Divinity

Is not a triplet; and that he impregned

Miss M., and, proud of his paternity,

Resents the insult that the heir to the throne

Is not one whit superior to a drone.

But Joseph’s dumb; that is, upon this theme.

He’s dropped the subject, never mentions it.

He knocked the key-stone out from the grand scheme;

The brethren were disgusted with it, quite.

The clergy thought him, upon this point, lame.

‘T would bring upon the sect a perfect blight.

Jesus no father? God no son? What next?

Then all religion was but a pretext.