this inundation of zeal, to imbue the minds of youth with a knowledge of the doctrines and duties of Christianity, as inculcated by the United Church of England and Ireland. 66 To this we owe the characteristic fact of the church militant, in its literally militant character, with the greatest captain of the age at its head, assembling to institute a college, whose distinguishing aim shall be " to mix up with the various branches of literature and science, the doctrine and DISCIPLINE of Christianity." The words of the great captain are hailed with indecent cheers, by the holy regiment. The Times, that reports the proceeding of this theologico-military confederacy, at the Freemasons' Tavern, on the 21st ult., invidiously avoids satisfying our anxious curiosity, whether the great slaughterman of Waterloo had his swinging long knife with him on this occasion; the brandishing of which, as he spoke of discipline, would have been calculated to give such impression to his eloquence, as might have made the fasting crows look out for another victory. Yet, however convinced I may be," says the man of blood," of the benefits of the system in contemplation, I cannot claim the honour of having been its original inventor. That praise is due solely to the governors and dignitaries of the church." And then, to be sure, the governors and dignitaries of the church give the man of blood another round of applause, for thus virtually acknowledging their supernatural inspiration. "I call upon you," says the man who led so many thousands to destruction, "to make an effort worthy of this great country, to educate the youth of the metropolis, to enable them to PERFORM, in their several stations, the duties which they owe to the sovereign and to the state; and above all, to instruct them in the knowledge of their God." And thereupon, the men in black, that know so much about God, give the man with the knife, who slew so many of God's creatures, another round of APPLAUSE. "And then," said the bloody man again," they will thus become acquainted with the precepts and examples on which all their duties are founded: they will be satisfied and contented with their lots in this life, and will learn to repose hope on the di vine mercy hereafter." And then the men of the long robe gave the man with the long knife another round of applause; and all the people were astonished, and began to say one unto another, whence hath this man this wisdom and these words, that such wonderful things do show forth themselves in him? My imagination pictures to itself the military prophet, with all his blushing honours thick upon him, un ting in his own person the accumulated honours of statesman, soldier, and priest; head of the state, head of the army, head of the church, chief politician, chief cut-throat, and chief priest. I hear the whispers of Mokanna's secret sentiment, in the midst of all his triumph; I hear him chuckle forth his soul's united pride and scorn of the vile sycophants that surround him, to the clergy, saying, "Ye wise, ye learned, who grope your dull way on, Like superstitious thieves, who think the light, "Ye too, believers of incredible creeds, Whose faith enshrines the monsters that it breeds, LALLA ROOKн. And who, think ye, should be on the committee of this Ecclesiastical cabal, for providing for the morals of the rising generation, and for giving to all future waiters at the Dog and Duck, the advantage of a college education, which he, quondam High Priest of the mysteries of Colytto, when in that capacity, never could have looked for? Who, but he, the Fire Alderman, the City Cicero, who found out the Catilinarian conspiracy to set the Thames on fire, produced the materials of the intended universal conflagration out of the foot of a worsted stocking, and exclaimed in open senate "O fortunatam, natam me consule Romani." Thrice happy London, which, if it hadn't been for me, would have been undone ! He-that, Wiseacre of Wiseacres, that worsted-stocking Kern, that shew'em up, of the Dog and Duck, that convenience of frail virtue, that wipe-glass of sinners, my immediate Prosecutor and Persecutor, who holds me in prison, that he and such as he may be the exclusive caterers for the morals of the city of London; he, whose malice and ignorance overthrew the single Areopagus that aimed to inculcate virtue on the basis of Reason and Science: to raise forsooth an University on its ruins, to qualify his successors with the morals necessary for waiters at the Dog and Duck, or to 'train them up in the way, to dance attendance on the votaries of illicit love, or follow in the march of legalized murder. Well! well! I'll say no more on such a wicked subject! I cannot, however, but rejoice in the still hopeful augury, which these indications present. Excessive follies and egregious crimes in general involve in themselves the principle that is one day to bring down correction on the guilty head. Never will mankind owe their emancipation to the wisdom or prudence of their oppressors. The tyrant's hand relaxes not its grasp till death unnerves it. In the scramble for influence, desperation or triumph will drive one or other of the belligerent universities to turn honest. The Infidel or Latitudinarian faction will be forced to unfurl its true colours; and when they shall but once have tasted the sweets of conscious integrity and manly freedom, they will never return again to the beggarly elements, in which their time-serving, sneaking, quibbling, cowardly-scotch would-be infidel, institution originated. I can keep patience with honest rogues, who tell us what they mean, and let all the world see what, tis they drive at, their Additional Churches Bill, with power to Churchwardens to make Infidels pay for them: and their men of blood, Dukes, Earls and Lords-throwing down their thousands for King's Colleges and King's Bayonets to dragoon the brute people into Christian discipline, and teach them to be content with their lot, to order themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters, and "to repose hope on the divine mercy hereafter." Because this, we understand, this is fair play, this is Aristocracy, as Aristocracy. But roguish-honest men (language wants a word of sufficient indignancy for their despicable character) draw heavily on our patience. To know what we know that they cannot but know to see enlightened intelligence and consummate abilities holding the candle to the child's game of make-believe, lending aid to the villainy that it hates, and subserving the folly that it despises, or going about to achieve the eventual liberty and emancipation of the mind by tricky stealth and witty cunning, by undeclared and covered attacks. O! tis pitiful, and shows but a pitiful ambition in the knaves that use it. Your's truly, ROBERT TAYLOR. P.S.-My heart is much cheered in having this week to acknowledge the encouraging letter, and the subscription from Edinburgh, announced in your 26 Number. Whoever shall live to see the day-certain it is, that a millionth part of the enemy's means in our hands would overthrow their strongest. One Areopagus established on an independent foundation, but in two or three of our principal cities, and one honest clever man in each of them, so that truth and reason could but get a hearing: and the work is done. ARCHIEPISCOPAL PALACE, I think I never in my life stumbled on so gross and egregious an instance of argumentative unfairness-as the anonymous attack on my Syntagma, (which I have only time to notice en passant) in your last, p. 17. It's author seems to aim at nothing but showing his powers of quibbling and chicane. To be sure, I have work enough cut out, if I am to be bothered with propositionsthe like of which I never made, or to have such as I have made, carried a thousand miles beyond their scope. Let him refute what I have said-not what he falsely charges me with having said. R. T. To the Editor of "The Lion." Bristol, July 1, 1828. SIR,-Your note, in No. 25, vol. I, p. 794, on the supposed necessity of deceiving the vulgar, reminded me of a defence of that hypocritical maxim by a scientific acquaintance of mine, who argued, "that there must be a national religion to keep alive the fear of future punishment, and the hope of reward-to awe the vulgar, and excite them to virtue, and that Sabbath lectures were the best mode of promoting the design, as they combined instruction with amusement, and kept the multitude from idle habits." My reply was, that I had yet to learn how hypocrisy and fraud could operate to make a nation virtuous, or that " superstition, which never had anything but ignorance for its basis-which never had more than a disordered imagination for its guide," could possibly be beneficial to man. anything is true, if it be in the power of reason to recognize right and wrong; then, "all error is prejudicial to man ;" and if the Sabbath cannot be employed in a political, moral, and economical point of view, more beneficially than by blinding peoples' understanding, in order to pick their pockets, then it is high time to lay it aside. If Take away your jails and your gibbets, and multiply your preachers of incomprehensible nonsense trifold, and crime and plunder would increase in equal ratio. To induce the bulk of the people to act rationally and virtuously, they must be taught rational principles, not a system of humbug; what does it avail to teach the keeping the Sabbath, while these teachers themselves labour and earn more on that day than their deluded hearers do in six days? It would be an amusing occupation on a Sabbathday, to peep into the kitchens, coach-houses, and stables of the dignitaries of the church, and to mark how piously their household establishments are employed. They keep the day, we may conclude, as sacred as the proprietors of the newspapers, post offices, mail and other coach proprie tors, hackney-coachmen, gas-light labourers, and thousands similarly situated do keep it. But, after all that can be said as to the influence of future rewards and punishments on the minds of the vulgar, it's a mere farce, for if the crimes of Constantine (too enormous for pagan intercession) could be washed away by Christian repentance and baptism, because "the blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin," will not the vulgar, who are constantly taught it, and whose children are inoculated with it, prefer a reliance on this atoning bed of roses, this soul-soothing "Fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel's veins, Where sinners, plunged beneath this flood, This is the evangelical doctrine of the day-it is this that makes Christians of the malefactor and murderer at the gallows-this is "part and parcel of the law of the land," that, in the twinkling of an eye, washes away the guilt of the culprit who may have transgressed against every other part and parcel all his life long. Would it not be much better to pay a few honest teachers, to instruct the vulgar to do whatever they pleased, so they did not do any thing that should tend to injure their fellow-creatures, rather than to teach them, that after having been guilty of every atrocity, repentance and faith in a fountain of blood, would wash away their crimes, and enable them to swim or swing to heaven and glory? Ignorance is the mother of devotion." Now devotion, as here used, implies submission, as piety is but another name for hypocrisy; passive obedience and non-resistance to spiritual pas THE LION. tors will produce a free passport to heaven, and "the joys of paradise form the bright reversion with which their spiritual leaders reward their devoted followers," while he that doubts it "shall be damned." Never has Christianity, "the pearl of great price," been so exposed in its native colours; never have its deformities been so completely analyzed, as far as my information goes, as by the learned lodger of Oakham Castle. With Ajax, he may say, "give us light, and we fear nothing." The maxim of deceiving the vulgar, is further evident by the result; crime and hypocrisy especially keep steady pace with the advance of Christianity. Pauperism and misery among those (" and the poor have the gospel preached unto them," for whom it is particularly designed, is now beyond all precedent, and this too while the revenues appropriated for the abettors and teachers of the Christian system in all its ramifications, exceed all bounds, and are unexampled in the annals of history. All religion commenced with Godmaking, and the first religious act on record in the Bible, between Cain and Abel, concluded with murder." I know this is unpopular-I know one may be damned for thinking no one else will e'er be so." All that worship, "worship they know not what." The Christian talks much about a first cause, a God, the author and preserver of all things, they will not allow that a man, a horse, or a mouse, could exist without a maker, a first cause, a God. But in imagination, they make a first cause, a God, without any cause at all: but what is still more marvellous is, their wretched system, which, in all its parts continually pulls down whatever it sets up, completely annihilates his power of preservation at a stroke. Their God created man a perfect being, but either would not, or could not, preserve him so; for man fell and was ruined: and to remedy this defect, they make of him a second cause, and he dies like a thief on a cross. This is Christianity for the vulgar. If I were to assert, that the solar system must have been produced by one hundred Gods, they would say of me, as Dr. P. Smith did of a much better man, 66 disgraceful ignorance;" but what more tangible proof can When a they produce for their one God, than I can for my hundred? supreme being wants messengers to prate and preach about him, he will give them plain directions, and they will not have occasion to split and divide by an hundred different opinions, nor will he require them to "deceive the vulgar," by making a gain of godliness." “ E. K. D. LINES WRITTEN ON A PICTURE OF A CATHOLIC DEITY, Seen in Mr. Carlile's shop-window. God's picture! well, I own 'tis very like, And well conceived, by all the brains that vapour, The effort of all painters is to strike, So they have struck Jehovah off on paper. When God sat for this picture, he was old, While from his lips and chin protrudes a stack, Oh Lord! but I won't laugh, his hair seems flying, But since to Catholics there's no denying Their claims-I think perhaps it should be so. |