John Morley, the strongest and sanest of modern English statesmen, says:

"Cobden had an intrepid faith in the perfectibility of man. His doctrine was one of non-intervention; that the powerful can afford to be lenient; that mankind continually moves toward the light if not too much interfered with. By his influence the darker shapes of repression were banished from the education of the young; the insane were treated with a consideration before unknown; the criminal was regarded as a brother who deserved our gentlest consideration and patience; the time-honored and ineffective processes of violence and coercion fell into abeyance, and a rational moderation and enlightenment appeared on the horizon. He elevated and refined the world of business, just as he benefited everything he touched. His early death at the age of sixty-one seemed a calamity for England, for we so needed the help of his generous, gentle and unresentful spirit. He lived not in vain; yet years must pass before the full and sublime truths for which he stood are realized."



THOMAS PAINE

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; 't is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. —Paine, in "The Crisis"



Thomas Paine was an English mechanic, of Quaker origin, born in the year Seventeen Hundred Thirty-seven. He was the author of four books that have influenced mankind profoundly. These books are, "Common Sense," "The Age of Reason," "The Crisis," and "The Rights of Man."

In Seventeen Hundred Seventy-four, when he was thirty-seven years old, he came to America bearing letters of introduction from Benjamin Franklin.

On arriving at Philadelphia he soon found work as editor of "The Pennsylvania Magazine."

In Seventeen Hundred Seventy-five, in the magazine just named, he openly advocated and prophesied a speedy separation of the American Colonies from England. He also threw a purple shadow over his popularity by declaring his abhorrence of chattel slavery.

His writings, from the first, commanded profound attention, and on the advice and suggestion of Doctor Benjamin Rush, an eminent citizen of Philadelphia, the scattered editorials and paragraphs on human rights, covering a year, were gathered, condensed, revised, made into a book.

This "pamphlet," or paper-bound book, was called "Common Sense."

In France, John Adams was accused of writing "Common Sense." He stoutly denied it, there being several allusions in it stronger than he cared to stand sponsor for.

In England, Franklin was accused of being the author, and he neither denied nor admitted it. But when a lady reproached him for having used the fine alliterative phrase, applied to the king, "The Royal British Brute," he smiled and said blandly, "Madame, I would never have been so disrespectful to the brute creation as that."

"Common Sense" struck the keynote of popular feeling, and the accusation of "treason," hurled at it from many sources, only served to advertise it. It supplied the common people with reasons, and gave statesmen arguments. The Legislature of Pennsylvania voted Paine a honorarium of five hundred pounds, and the University of Pennsylvania awarded him the degree of "Master of Arts," in recognition of eminent services to literature and human rights. John Quincy Adams said, "Paine's pamphlet, 'Common Sense,' crystallized public opinion and was the first factor in bringing about the Revolution."

The Reverend Theodore Parker once said: "Every living man in America in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six, who could read, read 'Common Sense,' by Thomas Paine. If he was a Tory, he read it, at least a little, just to find out for himself how atrocious it was; and if he was a Whig, he read it all to find the reasons why he was one. This book was the arsenal to which the Colonists went for their mental weapons."

As "Common Sense" was published anonymously and without copyright, and was circulated at bare cost, Paine never received anything for the work, save the twenty-five hundred dollars voted to him by the Legislature.

When independence was declared, Paine enlisted as a private, but was soon made aide-de-camp to General Greene. He was an intrepid and effective soldier and took an active part in various battles.

In December, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six, he published his second book, "The Crisis," the first words of which have gone into the electrotype of human speech, "These are the times that try men's souls." The intent of the letters which make up "The Crisis" was to infuse courage into the sinking spirits of the soldiers. Washington ordered the letters to be read at the head of every regiment, and it was so done.

In Seventeen Hundred Eighty-one, Paine was sent to France with Colonel Laurens to negotiate a loan. The errand was successful, and Paine then made influential acquaintances, which were later to be renewed. He organized the Bank of North America to raise money to feed and clothe the army, and performed sundry and various services for the Colonies.

In Seventeen Hundred Ninety-one he published his third book, "The Rights of Man," with a complimentary preface by Thomas Jefferson. The book had an immense circulation in America and England. By way of left-handed recognition of the work, the author was indicted by the British Government for "sedition." A day was set for the trial, but as Paine did not appear—those were hanging days—and could not be found, he was outlawed and "banished forever."

He became a member of the French Assembly, or "Chamber of Deputies," and for voting against the death of the king came under suspicion, and was cast into prison, where he was held for one year, lacking a few weeks. His life was saved by James Monroe, America's Minister to France, and for eighteen months he was a member of Monroe's household.

In Seventeen Hundred Ninety-four, while in France, there was published simultaneously in England, America and France, Paine's fourth book, "The Age of Reason."

In Eighteen Hundred Two, Thomas Jefferson, then President of the United States, offered Paine passage to America on board the man-of- war "Maryland," in order that he might be safe from capture by the English, who had him under constant surveillance and were intent on his arrest, regarding him as the chief instigator in the American Rebellion. Arriving in America, Paine was the guest for several months of the President at Monticello. His admirers in Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia and New York gave banquets in his honor, and he was tendered grateful recognition on account of his services to humanity and his varied talents. He was presented by the State of New York, "in token of heroic work for the Union," a farm at New Rochelle, eighteen miles from New York, and here he lived in comparative ease, writing and farming.

He passed peacefully away, aged seventy-two, in Eighteen Hundred Nine, and his body was buried on his farm, near the house where he lived, and a modest monument erected marking the spot. He had no Christian burial, although, unlike Mr. Zangwill, he had a Christian name. Nine years after the death of Paine, William Cobbett, the eminent English reformer, stung by the obloquy visited upon the memory of Paine in America, had the grave opened and the bones of the man who wrote the first draft of our Declaration of Independence were removed to England, and buried near the spot where he was born. Death having silenced both the tongue and the pen of the Thetford weaver, no violent interference was offered by the British Government. So now the dead man slept where the presence of the living one was barred and forbidden. A modest monument marks the spot. Beneath the name are these words, "The world is my country, mankind are my friends, to do good is my religion."

In Eighteen Hundred Thirty-nine, a monument was erected at New Rochelle, New York, on the site of the empty grave where the body of Paine was first buried, by the lovers and admirers of the man. And while only one land claims his birthplace, three countries now dispute for the privilege of honoring his dust, for it so happened that in France a strong movement was on foot demanding that the remains of Thomas Paine be removed from England to France, and be placed in the Pantheon, that resting-place of so many of the illustrious dead who gave their lives to the cause of Freedom, close by the graves of Voltaire, Rousseau and Victor Hugo. And the reason the bones were not removed to Paris was because only an empty coffin rests in the grave at Thetford, as at New Rochelle. Rumor says that Paine's skull is in a London museum, but if so, the head that produced "The Age of Reason" can not be identified. And the end is not yet!

* * * * *

The genius of Paine was a flower that blossomed slowly. But life is a sequence, and the man who does great work has been in training for it. There is nothing like keeping in condition—one does not know when he is going to be called on. Prepared people do not have to hunt for a position—the position hunts for them. Paine knew no more about what he was getting ready for than did Benjamin Franklin, when at twenty he studied French, evenings, and dived deep into history.

The humble origin of Paine and his Quaker ancestry were most helpful factors in his career. Only a working-man who had tasted hardship could sympathize with the overtaxed and oppressed. And Quakerdom made him a rebel by prenatal tendency. Paine's schooling was slight, but his parents, though poor, were thinking people, for nothing sharpens the wits of men, preventing fatty degeneration of the cerebrum, like persecution. In this respect, the Jews and Quakers have been greatly blessed and benefited—let us congratulate them. Very early in life Paine acquired the study habit. And for the youth who has the study habit no pedagogic tears need be shed. There were debating-clubs at coffeehouses, where great themes were discussed; and our young weaver began his career by defending the Quakers. He acquired considerable local reputation as a weaver of thoughts upon the warp and woof of words. Occasionally he occupied the pulpit in dissenting chapels.

These were great times in England—the air was all athrob with thought and feeling. A great tidal wave of unrest swept the land. It was an epoch of growth, second only in history to the Italian Renaissance. The two Wesleys were attacking the Church, and calling upon men to methodize their lives and eliminate folly; Gibbon was writing his "Decline and Fall"; Burke, in the House of Commons, was polishing his brogue; Boswell was busy blithering about a book concerning a man; Captain Cook was sailing the seas finding continents; the two Pitts and Charles Fox were giving the king unpalatable advice; Horace Walpole was setting up his private press at Strawberry Hill; the Herschels—brother and sister—were sweeping the heavens for comets; Reynolds, West, Lawrence, Romney and Gainsborough were founding the first school of British Art; and David Hume, the Scotchman, was putting forth arguments irrefutable. And into this seething discontent came Thomas Paine, the weaver, reading, studying, thinking, talking, with nothing to lose but his reputation. He was twenty-seven years of age when he met Ben Franklin at a coffeehouse in London. Paine got his first real mental impetus from Franklin. Both were workingmen. Paine listened to Franklin one whole evening, and the said, "What he is I can at least in part become." Paine thought Franklin quite the greatest man of his time, an opinion which, among others held by him, the world now fully accepts.

* * * * *

Paine at twenty-four, from a simple weaver, had been called into the office of his employer to help straighten out the accounts. He tried storekeeping, but with indifferent success. Then it seems he was employed by the Board of Excise on a similar task. Finally he was given a position in the Excise. This position he might have held indefinitely, and been promoted in the work, for he had clerical talents which made his services valuable. But there was another theme that interested him quite as much as collecting taxes for the Government, and that was the philosophy of taxation. This was very foolish in Thomas Paine—a tax-collector should collect taxes, and not concern himself with the righteousness of the business, nor about what becomes of the money.

Paine had made note of the fact that England collected taxes from Jews, but that Jews were not allowed to vote because they were not "Christians," it being assumed that Jews were not as fit, either intellectually or morally, to pass on questions of state as members of the "Church." In Seventeen Hundred Seventy-one, in a letter to a local paper, he used the phrase, "The iniquity of taxation without representation," referring to England's treatment of the Quakers. About the same time he called attention to the fact that the Christian religion was built on the Judaic, and that the reputed founder of the established religion was a Jew and his mother a Jewess, and to deprive Jews of the right of full citizenship, simply because they did not take the same view of Jesus that others did, was a perversion of the natural rights of man. This expression, "the natural rights of man," gave offense to a certain clergyman of Thetford, who replied that man had no natural rights, only privileges—all the rights he had were those granted by the Crown. Then followed a debate at the coffeehouse, followed by a rebuke from Paine's superior officer in the Excise, ordering him to cease all political and religious controversy on penalty.

Paine felt the smart of the rebuke; he thought it was unjustifiable, in view of the fact that the excellence of his work for the Government had never been questioned. So he made a speech in a dissenting chapel explaining the situation. But explanations never explain, and his assertion that the honesty of his service had never been questioned was put out of commission the following week by the charge of smuggling. His name was dropped from the official payroll until his case could be tried, and a little later he was peremptorily discharged. The charge against him was not pressed—he was simply not wanted—and the statement by the head exciseman that a man working for the Government should not criticize the Government was pretty good logic, anyway. Paine, however, contended that all governments exist for the governed, and with the consent of the governed, and it is the duty of all good citizens to take an interest in their government, and if possible show where it can be strengthened and bettered.

It will thus be seen that Paine was forging reasons—his active brain was at work, and his sensitive spirit was writhing under a sense of personal injustice.

One of his critics—a clergyman—said that if Thomas Paine wished to preach sedition, there was plenty of room to do it outside of England. Paine followed the suggestion, and straightway sought out Franklin to ask him about going to America.

Every idea that Paine had expressed was held by Franklin and had been thought out at length. Franklin was thirty-one years older than Paine, and time had tempered his zeal, and beside that, his tongue was always well under control, and when he expressed heresy he seasoned it with a smile and a dash of wit that took the bitterness out of it. Not so Paine—he was an earnest soul, a little lacking in humor, without the adipose which is required for a diplomat.

Franklin's letters of introduction show how he admired the man—what faith he had in him—and it is now believed that Franklin advanced him money, that he might come to America.

William Cobbett says:

As my Lord Grenville has introduced the name of Edmund Burke, suffer me, my Lord, to introduce the name of a man who put this Burke to shame, who drove him off the public stage to seek shelter in the pension-list, and who is now named fifty million times where the name of the pensioned Burke is mentioned once. The cause of the American Colonies was the cause of the English Constitution, which says that no man shall be taxed without his own consent. A little cause sometimes produces a great effect; an insult offered to a man of great talent and unconquerable perseverance has in many instances produced, in the long run, most tremendous effects; and it appears to me very clear that the inexcusable insults offered to Mr. Paine while he was in the Excise in England was the real cause of the Revolution in America; for, though the nature of the cause of America was such as I have before described it, though the principles were firm in the minds of the people of that country, still it was Mr. Paine, and Mr. Paine alone, who brought those principles into action.

Paine's part in the Revolutionary War was most worthy and honorable. He shouldered a musket with the men at Valley Forge, carried messages by night through the enemy's country, acted as rear-guard for Washington's retreating army, and helped at break of day to capture Trenton, and proved his courage in various ways. As clerk, secretary, accountant and financier he did excellent service.

Of course, there had been the usual harmonious discord that will occur among men hard-pressed and over-worked, where nerve-tension finds vent at times in acrimony. But through all the nine long, weary years before the British had had enough, Paine was never censured with the same bitterness which fell upon the heads of Washington and Jefferson. Even Franklin came in for his share of blame, and it was shown that he had expended an even hundred thousand pounds in Europe, with no explanation of what he had done with the money. When called upon to give an accounting for the "yellow-dog fund," Franklin simply wrote back, "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn." And on the suggestion of Thomas Paine, the matter was officially dropped.

Paine was a writing man—the very first American writing man—and I am humiliated when I have to acknowledge that we had to get him from England. He was the first man who ever used these words, "The American Nation," and also these, "The United States of America." Paine is the first American writer who had a literary style, and we have not had so many since but that you may count them on the fingers of one hand. Note this sample of antithesis: "There are but two natural sources of wealth—the earth and the ocean—and to lose the right to either, in our situation, is to put the other up for sale."

Here is a little tribute from Paine's pen to America which some of our boomers of boom towns might do well to use:

America has now outgrown the state of infancy. Her strength and commerce make large advances to manhood; and science in all its branches has not only blossomed, but even ripened upon the soil. The cottages as it were of yesterday have grown into villages, and the villages to cities; and while proud antiquity, like a skeleton in rags, parades the streets of other nations, their genius, as if sickened and disgusted with the phantom, comes hither for recovery. America yet inherits a large portion of her first-imported virtue. Degeneracy is here almost a useless word. Those who are conversant with Europe would be tempted to believe that even the air of the Atlantic disagrees with the constitution of foreign vices; if they survive the voyage they either expire on their arrival, or linger away with an incurable consumption. There is a happy something in the climate of America which disarms them of all their power both of infection and attraction.

Ease, fluidity, grace, imagination, energy, earnestness, mark his work. No wonder is it that Franklin said, "Others can rule, many can fight, but only Paine can write for us the English tongue." And Jefferson, himself a great writer, was constantly, for many years, sending to Paine manuscript for criticism and correction. In one letter to Paine, Jefferson adds this postscript, "You must not be too much elated and set up when I tell you my belief that you are the only writer in America who can write better than your obliged and obedient servant—Thomas Jefferson."

Paine was living in peace at Bordentown in the year Seventeen Hundred Eighty-seven. The war was ended, the last hostile Britisher had departed, and the country was awakening to prosperity. Paine rode his mettlesome old war-horse "Button," back and forth from Philadelphia, often stopping and seating himself by the roadway to write out a thought while the horse that had known the smell of powder quietly nibbled the grass. The success of Benjamin Franklin as an inventor had fired the heart of Paine. He devised a plan to utilize small explosions of gunpowder to run an engine, thus anticipating our gas and gasoline engines by nearly a hundred years. He had also planned a bridge to span the Schuylkill. Capitalists were ready to build the bridge, provided Paine could get French engineers, then the greatest in the world, to endorse his plans. So he sailed away to France, intending also to visit his parents in England, instructing his friends in Bordentown with whom he boarded, to take care of his horse, his rooms and books with all his papers, for he would be back in less than a year. He was fifty years old. It was thirteen years since he had left England, and he felt that his transplantation to a new soil had not been in vain. England had practically exiled him, but still the land of his birth called, and unseen tendrils tugged at his heart. He must again see England, even for a brief visit, and then back to America, the land that he loved and which he had helped to free.

And destiny devised that it was to be fifteen years before he was again to see his beloved "United States of America."

Arriving in France, Paine was received with honours. There was much political unrest, and the fuse was then being lighted that was to cause the explosion of Seventeen Hundred Eighty-Nine. However, of all this Paine knew little.

He met Danton, a freemason, like himself, and various other radicals. "Common Sense" and "The Crisis" had been translated into French, printed and widely distributed, and inasmuch as Paine had been a party in bringing about one revolution, and had helped carry it through to success, his counsel and advice were sought. A few short weeks in France, and Paine having secured the endorsement of the Academy for his bridge, went over to England preparatory to sailing for America.

Arriving in England, Paine found that his father had died but a short time before. His mother was living, aged ninety-one, and in full possession of her faculties. The meeting of mother and son was full of tender memories. And the mother, while not being able to follow her gifted son in all of his reasoning, yet fully sympathized with him in his efforts to increase human rights. The Quakers, while in favor of peace, are yet revolutionaries, for their policy is one of protest.

Paine visited the old Quaker church at Thetford, and there seated in the silence, wrote these words:

When we consider, for the feelings of Nature can not be dismissed, the calamities of war and the miseries it inflicts upon the human species, the thousands and tens of thousands of every age and sex who are rendered wretched by the event, surely there is something in the heart of man that calls upon him to think! Surely there is some tender chord, tuned by the hand of the Creator, that still struggles to emit in the hearing of the soul a note of sorrowing sympathy. Let it then be heard, and let man learn to feel that the true greatness of a nation is founded on principles of humanity, and not on conquest. War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances, such a combination of foreign matters, that no human wisdom can calculate the end. It has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes. I defend the cause of the poor, of the manufacturer, of the tradesman, of the farmer, and of all those on whom the real burden of taxes fall—but above all, I defend the cause of women and children—of all humanity.

Edmund Burke, hearing of Paine's presence in England, sent for him to come to his house. Paine accepted the invitation, and Burke doubtless got a few interesting chapters of history at first hand. "It was equal to meeting Washington, and perhaps better, for Paine is more of a philosopher than his chief," wrote Burke to the elder Pitt.

Paine saw that political unrest was not confined to France—that England was in a state of evolution, and was making painful efforts to adapt herself to the progress of the times. Paine could remember a time when in England women and children were hanged for poaching; when the insane were publicly whipped, and when, if publicly expressed, a doubt concerning the truth of Scripture meant exile or to have your ears cut off.

Now he saw the old custom reversed and the nobles were bowing to the will of the people. It came to him that if the many in England could be educated, the Crown having so recently received its rebuke at the hands of the American Colonies, a great stride to the front could be made. Englishmen were talking about their rights. What are the natural rights of a man? He began to set down his thoughts on the subject. These soon extended themselves into chapters. The chapters grew into a book—a book which he hoped would peacefully do for England what "Common Sense" had done for America. This book, "The Rights of Man," was written at the same time that Mary Wollstonecraft was writing her book, "The Rights of Women."

In London, Paine made his home at the house of Thomas Rickman, a publisher. Rickman has given us an intimate glimpse into the life of the patriot, and told us among other things that Paine was five feet ten inches high, of an athletic build, and very fond of taking long walks. Among the visitors at Rickman's house who came to see Paine were Doctor Priestly, Home Tooke, Romney, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the Duke of Portland and Mary Wollstonecraft. It seems very probable that Mrs. Wollstonecraft, as she styled herself, read to Paine parts of her book, for very much in his volume parallels hers, not only in the thought, but in actual wording. Whether he got more ideas from her than she got from him will have to be left to the higher critics. Certain it is that they were in mutual accord, and that Mrs. Wollstonecraft had read "Common Sense" and "The Rights of Man" to a purpose.

It was too much to expect that a native-born Englishman could go across the sea to British Colonies and rebel against British rule and then come back to England and escape censure. The very popularity of Paine in certain high circles centered attention on him. And Pitt, who certainly admired Paine's talents, referred to his stay in England as "indelicate."

England is the freest country on earth. It is her rule to let her orators unmuzzle their ignorance and find relief in venting grievances upon the empty air. In Hyde Park any Sunday one can hear the same sentiments for the suppression of which Chicago paid in her Haymarket massacre. Grievances expressed are half-cured, but England did not think so then. The change came about through thirty years' fight, which Paine precipitated.

The patience of England in dealing with Paine was extraordinary. Paine was right, but at the same time he was as guilty as Theodore Parker was when indicted by the State of Virginia along with Ol' John Brown.

"The Rights of Man" sold from the very start, and in a year fifty thousand copies had been called for.

Unlike his other books, this one was bringing Paine a financial return. Newspaper controversies followed, and Burke, the radical, found himself unable to go the lengths to which Paine was logically trying to force him.

Paine was in Paris, on a visit, on that memorable day which saw the fall of the Bastile. Jefferson and Adams had left France, and Paine was regarded as the authorized representative of America; in fact, he had been doing business in France for Washington. Lafayette in a moment of exultant enthusiasm gave the key of the Bastile to Paine to present to Washington, and as every American schoolboy knows, this famous key to a sad situation now hangs on its carefully guarded peg at Mount Vernon. Lafayette thought that, without the example of America, France would never have found strength to throw off the rule of kings, and so America must have the key to the detested door that was now unhinged forever.

"And to me," said Lafayette, "America without her Thomas Paine is unthinkable." The words were carried to England and there did Paine no especial good. But England was now giving Paine a living—there was a market for the product of his pen—and he was being advertised both by his loving friends and his rabid enemies.

Paine had many admirers in France, and in some ways he felt more at home there than in England. He spoke and wrote French. However, no man ever wrote well in more than one language, although he might speak intelligently in several; and the orator using a foreign tongue never reaches fluidity. "Where liberty is, there is my home," said Franklin. And Paine answered, "Where liberty is not, there is my home." The newspaper attacks had shown Paine that he had not made himself clear on all points, and like every worthy orator who considers, when too late, all the great things he intended to say, he was stung with the thought of all the brilliant things he might have said, but had not.

And so straightway he began to prepare Part Two of "The Rights of Man." The book was printed in cheap form similar to "Common Sense," and was beginning to be widely read by workingmen.

"Philosophy is all right," said Pitt, "but it should be taught to philosophical people. If this thing is kept up London will re-enact the scenes of Paris."

Many Englishmen thought the same. The official order was given, and all of Paine's books that could be found were seized and publicly used for a bonfire by the official hangman. Paine was burned in effigy in many cities, the charge being made that he was one of the men who had brought about the French Revolution. With better truth it could have been stated that he was the man, with the help of George the Third, who had brought about the American Revolution. The terms of peace made between England and the Colonies granted amnesty to Paine and his colleagues in rebellion, but his acts could not be forgotten, even though they were nominally forgiven. This new firebrand of a book was really too much, and the author got a left-handed compliment from the Premier on his literary style—books to burn!

Three French provinces nominated him to represent them in the Chamber of Deputies. He accepted the solicitations of Calais, and took his seat for that province.

He knew Danton, Mirabeau, Marat and Robespierre. Danton and Robespierre respected him, and often advised with him. Mirabeau and Marat were in turn suspicious and afraid of him. The times were feverish, and Paine, a radical at heart, here was regarded as a conservative. In America, the enemy stood out to be counted: the division was clear and sharp; but here the danger was in the hearts of the French themselves.

Paine argued that we must conquer our own spirits, and in this new birth of freedom not imitate the cruelty and harshness of royalty against which we protest. "We will kill the king, but not the man," were his words. But with all of his tact and logic he could not make his colleagues see that to abolish the kingly office, not to kill the individual, was the thing desired.

So Louis, who helped free the American Colonies, went to the block, and his enemy, Danton, a little later, did the same; Mirabeau, the boaster, had died peacefully in his bed; Robespierre, who signed the death-warrant of Paine, "to save his own head," died the death he had reserved for Paine; Marat, "the terrible dwarf," horribly honest, fearfully sincere, jealous and afraid of Paine, hinting that he was the secret emissary of England, was stabbed to his death by a woman's hand.

And amid the din, escape being impossible, and also undesirable, Thomas Paine wrote the first part of "The Age of Reason."

The second part was written in the Luxembourg prison, under the shadow of the guillotine. But life is only a sentence of death, with an indefinite reprieve. Prison, to Paine, was not all gloom.

The jailer, Benoit, was good-natured and cherished his unwilling guests as his children. When they left for freedom or for death, he kissed them, and gave each a little ring in which was engraved the single word, "Mizpah." But finally Benoit, himself, was led away, and there was none to kiss his cheek, nor to give him a ring and cry cheerily, "Good luck, Citizen Comrade! Until we meet again!"

* * * * *

A great deal has been said by the admirers of Thomas Paine about the abuse and injustice heaped upon his name, and the prevarications concerning his life, by press and pulpit and those who profess a life of love, meekness and humility. But we should remember that all this vilification was really the tribute that mediocrity pays genius. To escape censure, one only has to move with the mob, think with the mob, do nothing that the mob does not do—then you are safe. The saviors of the world have usually been crucified between thieves, despised, forsaken, spit upon, rejected of men. In their lives they seldom had a place where they could safely lay their weary heads, and dying their bodies were either hidden in another man's tomb or else subjected to the indignities which the living man failed to survive: torn limb from limb, eyeless, headless, armless, burned and the ashes scattered or sunk in the sea.

And the peculiar thing is that most of this frightful inhumanity was the work of so-called good men, the pillars of society, the respectable element, what we are pleased to call "our first citizens," instigated by the Church that happened to be in power. Socrates poisoned; Aristides ostracized; Aristotle fleeing for his life; Jesus crucified; Paul beheaded; Peter crucified head downward; Savonarola martyred; Spinoza hunted, tracked and cursed, and an order issued that no man should speak to him nor supply him food or shelter; Bruno burned; Galileo imprisoned; Huss, Wyclif, Latimer and Tyndale used for kindling—all this in the name of religion, institutional religion, the one thing that has caused more misery, heartaches, bloodshed, war, than all other causes combined. Leo Tolstoy says, "Love, truth, compassion, service, sympathy, tenderness, exist in the hearts of men, and are the essence of religion, but try to encompass these things in an institution and you get a church—and the Church stands for and has always stood for coercion, intolerance, injustice and cruelty."

No man ever lifted up his voice or pen in a criticism against love, truth, compassion, service, sympathy and tenderness. And if he had, do you think that love, truth, compassion, service, sympathy, tenderness, would feel it necessary to go after him with stocks, chains, thumbscrews and torches?

You can not imagine it.

Then what is it goes after men who criticize the prevailing religion and shows where it can be improved upon? Why, it is hate, malice, vengeance, jealousy, injustice, intolerance, cruelty, fear.

The reason the Church does not visit upon its critics today the same cruelties that it did three hundred years ago is simply because it has not the power. Incorporate a beautiful sentiment and hire a man to preach and defend it, and then buy property and build costly buildings in which to preach your beautiful sentiment, and if the gentleman who preaches your beautiful sentiment is criticized he will fight and suppress his critics if he can. And the reason he fights his critics is not because he believes the beautiful sentiment will suffer, but because he fears losing his position, which carries with it ease, honors and food, and a parsonage and a church, tax-free.

Just as soon as the gentleman employed to defend and preach the beautiful sentiment grows fearful about the permanency of his position, and begins to have goose-flesh when a critic's name is mentioned, the beautiful sentiment evaporates out of the window, and exists only in that place forever as a name. The Church is ever a menace to all beautiful sentiments, because it is an economic institution, and the chief distributor of degrees, titles and honors.

Anything that threatens to curtail its power it is bound to oppose and suppress, if it can. Men who cease useful work, in order to devote themselves to religion, are right in the same class with women who quit work to make a business of love. Men who know history and humanity and have reasonably open minds are not surprised at the treatment visited upon Paine by the country he had so much benefited. Superstition and hallucination are really one thing, and fanaticism, which is mental obsession, easily becomes acute, and the whirling dervish runs amuck at sight of a man whose religious opinions are different from his own.

Paine got off very easy; he lived his life, and expressed himself freely to the last. Men who discover continents are destined to die in chains. That is the price they pay for the privilege of sailing on, and on, and on, and on.

Said Paine:

The moral duty of a man consists in imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God manifested in the creation towards all creatures. That seeing as we daily do, the goodness of God to all men, it is an example calling upon all men to practise towards each other, and consequently that everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty.

* * * * *

The pen of Paine made the sword of Washington possible. And as Paine's book, "Common Sense," broke the power of Great Britain in America, and "The Rights of Man" gave free speech and a free press to England, so did "The Age of Reason" give pause to the juggernaut of orthodoxy. Thomas Paine was the legitimate ancestor of Hosea Ballou, who founded the Universalist Church, and also of Theodore Parker, who made Unitarianism in America an intellectual torch.

Channing, Ripley, Bartol, Martineau, Frothingham, Hale, Curtis, Collyer, Swing, Thomas, Conway, Leonard, Savage—yes, even Emerson and Thoreau—were spiritual children, all, of Thomas Paine. He blazed the way and made it possible for men to preach the sweet reasonableness of reason. He was the pioneer in a jungle of superstition. Thomas Paine was the real founder of the so-called Liberal Denominations, and the business of the liberal denominations has not been to become great, powerful and popular, but to make all other denominations more liberal. So today in all so-called orthodox pulpits one can hear the ideas of Paine, Henry Frank and B. Fay Mills expounded.



JOHN KNOX

The repentance of England requireth two things: First, the expulsion of all dregs of popery and the treading under foot of all glistering beauty of vain ceremonies. Next, no power or liberty must be permitted to any, of what estate, degree or authority they be, either to live without the yoke of discipline by God's word commanded, or to alter one jot in religion which from God's mouth thou hast received. If prince, king or emperor would enterprise to change or disannul the same, that he be the reputed enemy to God, while a prince who erects idolatry must be adjudged to death. —John Knox



John Knox the Scotchman, Martin Luther the German, and John Calvin the Frenchman, were contemporaries. They constitute a trinity of strong men who profoundly influenced their times; and the epoch they made was so important that we call it "The Reformation." They form the undertow of that great tidal wave of reason and commonsense called the Italian Renaissance. And as the chief business of the Hahnemannian school of medicine was to dilute the dose of the Allopaths, and the Christian Scientists confirmed the homeopaths in a belief concerning the beauties of the blank tablet, so did Luther, Calvin and Knox neutralize the arrogance of Rome, and dilute the dose of despotism.

Knox, Luther, and Calvin were hunted men. They lived stormy, tumultuous lives, torn by plot and counterplot. Very naturally, their religion is filled with fever and fear, and their God is jealous, revengeful, harsh, arbitrary, savage—a God of wrath.

Only a bold man, rough and coarse, could have defied the reigning powers and done the work which Destiny had cut out for John Knox to do. His power lay in the hallucination that his utterances were the final expressions of truth. Had he known more he would have done less.

Life is a sequence, and we are what we are because this man lived. To the memory of John Knox we acknowledge our obligation; but we realize that for us to accept and adopt the conclusions and ideals of one who lived in such tempestuous times is no honor to ourselves, nor to him.

The Christian Church has preached five special phases of belief, as follows: First, Religion by Definition; Second, Religion by Submission; Third, Religion by Substitution; Fourth, Religion by Culture; Fifth, Religion by Service.

All of these phases overlap, more or less, and the difference in sects consists simply in the amount of emphasis which is placed upon each or any particular phase. And this is largely a matter of temperament.

The Catholic Church emphasizes definition above all things. You are told the nature of evil; the Godhead, the trinity, the sacraments, the "elements" are explained, and the syllabus and catechism play most important parts. Before you are confirmed you have to memorize many definitions: little girls of ten glibly explain the difference between a mortal and a venal sin, and boys in knee-breeches discourse upon the geography of other worlds, and the state of sinners after death.

Next to Religion by Definition is Religion by Submission, and usually they go together. Persons too stupid to define can still submit. Service is not an essential, and in fact service without definition is usually regarded as hideous, "the righteousness of an unbeliever being as filthy rags." However, if it were not for the service rendered by the monks, priests and nuns, the Catholic Church could never have retained its hold upon humanity. Its schools, asylums, hospitals and houses of refuge have been its excuse for existence, and the undoing of the infidel. But service with the Catholic Church is emphasized only for the priesthood—the laity being simply asked to define, submit and pay. Culture and character are left to natural selection, and the thought that any person but a priest could have either is a very modern hypothesis. In way of Religion by Definition, Saint Paul was the great modern exponent. That the Theological Quibblers' Club existed long before his time we know full well. In fact, the chief invective of Jesus against Judaism was that it had degenerated into a mere matter of dispute concerning intricate nothings.

When Paul was brought before Gallio, the brother of Seneca, Gallio paid his respects to the same quibbling propensities against which Jesus had inveighed, by saying, "If it were a matter of wrong or of wicked villainy. O ye Jews, reason would that I should bear with you: but if they are questions about words and names and your own law, look to it yourselves; I am not minded to be a judge of these matters."

Pity and piety have nothing necessarily to do with Religion by Definition. We can all recall men of acute minds who thought themselves pious, who had bartered their souls away in order to become senior wranglers. Intellect lured them on into wordy unseemliness; their skill in forensics became a passion, and to embarrass and defeat the antagonist became the thing desired, not the pursuit of truth. They fell victims to their facility in syntax and prosody—semi- Solomons in Scriptural explanations, waxing wise in defining the difference 'twixt hyssop and myrrh.

Forty years ago no town in America was free from joint debates where the disputants would argue six nights and days together concerning vicarious salvation, baptism, regeneration, justification and the condition of unbaptized infants after death. Debates of this kind set the entire populace by the ears, and at post-office, tavern, grocery, family table, and even after the disputants had gone to bed, reasons nice, and subtleties hairsplitting were passed back and forth, until finally the party getting worsted fell back on maternal pedigrees, and epithet took the place of logic.

If the matter ended merely with the weapons of wordy warfare, it was fortunate and well, for these eyes have seen a camp-meeting where singletrees, neck-yokes, harness-tugs and scalding water augmented arguments concerning foreordination as taught by John Calvin and freewill as defined by John Knox.

Theological wrangles belong essentially to a pioneer people: an earnest, stubbornly honest people, whose lives are given over to a battle with the elements and the brute forces of Nature, always argufy.

Submission is not recognized in their formula except as a word, and their abnegation takes the form of a persistent pursuit of the thing desired, by following another trail. Such persons are always very proud, and the thing upon which they most pride themselves is their humility, and absence of pride.

"Morality comes only after physical self-preservation is secure," says Herbert Spencer, and with culture it is the same, and so the word is not in the bright lexicon of pioneers. All of their service is of the Connecticut variety—if you need things, they have them for sale. And so we get the wooden-nutmeg enterprise, and the peculiar incident of the New Haven man at the Pan-American Fair, who sold wooden nutmegs for charms and bangles. But one day, running out of wooden nutmegs, he went to a wholesale grocer and bought a bushel of the genuine ones, and these he palmed off upon the innocent and unsuspecting, until he was brought to book on the charge of false pretenses. Human service, as taught by Jesus of Nazareth, has only been tried in a very spasmodic way, except for advertising purposes. The world has now, for the first time in history, reached a point where as a vital problem the production of wealth is secondary to the question of how we shall distribute it. And so the Religion of Service is being seriously considered, and perhaps will soon be given a trial. The man who said that the number of marriages was in exact ratio to the price of corn spoke wisely. What he meant was that physical well-being directly affects all of our social relations. It is exactly the same with our religion. Economics and religion are very closely related. People in a certain physical environment have a certain religion. A tired and overworked people, enslaved as chattels or by the spirit of the times, find solace in a mournful religion, and a haven of rest hereafter— also, in the contemplation of a Hell for those who believe differently from what they do. They sing, "All Days Will Be Sunday By and By," or "Sweet Rest in Heaven." If they are oppressed by debt and mortgages that gnaw, they sing, "Jesus paid it all, yes, all the debt I owe." A warlike people whose wealth has come from conquest will shout the English National Hymn and take joy in such lines as "Confound their knavish tricks," expressed as a prayer.

The Religion of Culture flowers best in those with seven generations of New England clerical ancestry, or a carefully pruned F. F. V. family-tree. It goes with just a little and not too much C. B. & Q. and Old Colony eight per cent guaranteed, or wide ancestral acres. Most Unitarians and Episcopalians hold a caveat on culture and have character by the scruff. The Religion of Culture has a flavor of thyme and mignonette, and a gleam of old silver plate handed down as heirlooms. It means leisure, books on the shelf, well-filled woodsheds, and cellars stocked with vegetables.

It is leisurely, kindly, intelligent, gentle beautiful. The Religion of Culture is exclusive, and slips easily into social caste, which is spiritual and mental ankylosis. Its disadvantages are that to pursue culture is to frighten her far afield, and have her elude you. To strive for character is to lose it.

People who strive for health are headed for the sanatorium, for vitality plus comes only to those who do not think much about it; and likewise character is evolved best by those who forget character and lose their lives in service. Dyspeptics are people who have no faith in their digestive apparatus.

The Reformation revolved around Definition and Substitution. We escape the doom we deserve through the death of some one else. This belief in Substitution goes with an age that never doubted the beauty of capital punishment, and was worked out by men familiar with block, broadax and basket. Luther, Calvin and Knox possessed the elements of Submission, Character and Service only in rudimentary form. Substitution and Definition were their cornerstones.

* * * * *

That sturdy reformer, Martin Luther, was born in Fourteen Hundred Eighty-three. He was nine years old when Columbus turned the prow of his caravel to the West and persistently sailed on.

Luther's father was a miner—a day laborer—and the lad's childhood was grim and cheerless. He sang on the streets, and held out a ragged cap for pennies. His fine, sweet voice caught the ear of a priest, and the boy's services were used at the altar. The lad was alert, active, intelligent, ambitious. Very naturally he was educated for the priesthood. He became a monk, and evolved into a preacher of worth and power.

A prosperous and successful church always produces a class of dignitaries given over to sloth and sensuality. From a sublime idea, with a desire to benefit and to bless, the church degenerates into an institution for the distribution of honors, and an engine for punishment for all who oppose it. To Martin Luther religion was a matter of the heart, and his soul was filled with the thought of service. At the same time he had ability in the matter of definition. He began calling upon the Church to reform, and demanding that priests repent. Very naturally the priests thought it absurd for Luther to try to bring the righteous to repentance. They laughed. Later they scowled. Then they called on Doctor Luther to mend his manners, and not make the Church and himself ridiculous in the eyes of the world.

Had Luther had an eye on the main chance he would at this time have pulled in his horns, and chosen other texts, and been promoted in due course to a bishopric; for although the man was small in stature, yet he carried the crown of his head high and his chin in. What he had before simply stated he now began to prove. The small hand of authority, gloved in imitation velvet, here lifted Luther out of a position of power and honor as "District Vicar," a place that spelled promotion, and put him back as a grade school-teacher. Had the Pope been really infallible and the church authorities all-wise, they would have killed Luther, and that would 'a' been an end on 't. Leniency just then was an error in judgment. Luther set about bolstering his mental position. The more he thought about it, the more firmly convinced was he that his cause was just.

Where thinkers are, there is thought. Thinkers think anywhere, in country, village, town—in prison. Wittenberg was obscure, more than half of the students were charity boys, the professors were thin, dyseptic and glum, or fat and opinionated—all repeated the things they had been taught, save Martin Luther alone.

And on the thirty-first day of October, Fifteen Hundred Seventeen, Luther tacked upon the church-door his ninety-five theses, and offered to debate them 'gainst all the Church Fathers that could be mustered.

Trite, indeed, are the propositions now. Rome has really accepted them all, even to that one which hints that we, too, are divine in degree, just like our Elder Brother. Challenges on the church-doors of colleges were common, but coming from a semi-silenced priest, and directed at the Pope's emissary, ah! that was different. Even at that, the whole affair would have been lost in local oblivion, had not the few zealous boys who loved Luther started their two printing-presses in the cellar of the church, and worked night and day pulling proofs. The printing-presses did it! Without the typesetter, the make-ready man, and the sturdy lads who pulled the lever, Luther's voice would not have reached across the campus.

But lo! Luther was talking to the world, not to sleepy Wittenberg! Luther was requested to appear at the Vatican—more properly, the Castle Angelo. He ignored the invitation. Another summons followed. Luther went into hiding. He was arrested, tried and condemned, and sentence suspended. He was again tried, this time by the Emperor and the Electors, and again condemned. The formal sentence of death only awaited, and then for him the fagots would flare and the flames crackle.

His friends captured him, they of the printing-presses, helped by others, and bore him away to a prison where his enemies could not follow. Many a man has been thrown into prison by his enemies, but who besides Luther was so treated by his friends! Public sentiment was with him—Germany stood by him—but best of all the printers pulled the proofs, and four-page folders edited by Martin Luther went fluttering all over the world, protesting man's right to think.

So he lived out his days, did Martin Luther, on parole, under sentence of death, working, thinking, writing, printing. And over in France a serious, sober young man, keen, mentally hungry, translated one of Luther's pamphlets into French, and printed it for his school-fellows. Having printed it, he had to explain it, and next to defend it—and also his action in having printed it. The young man's name was Jean Chauvain. He spelled it "Caulvain" or "Calvain." The world knows him as John Calvin.

* * * * *

John Calvin was a Frenchman, but it is well to remember that the typical Frenchman, like the typical Irishman and his brother the Jew, exists only in the comic papers, and on the vaudeville stage. The frivolous and the mercurial were not in Calvin's make-up.

The parents of Calvin were of that same sturdy, seafaring type which produced Millet, Auguste Rodin, Jules Breton, and other simple, earnest and great souls who have done great deeds. Calvin was the true Huguenot type.

Peasant ancestry and a nearness to the soil are necessary conditions in the formation of characters who are to re-map continents, artistic or theological. The Puritan is a necessary product of his time.

However, Calvin had the advantage of one remove from actual hardship, and this evidently refined his intellect, and relieved him of world stage-fright. His father was a notary or steward in the employ of the De Mommor family. Very naturally, the boy mixed with the scions of royalty on an equal footing, for pom-pom-pull-away knows no caste, and a boy's a boy for a' that. At twelve years of age, he felt himself quite as noble as those of noble blood, and so expressed himself to his playmates. Probably they found it convenient to agree with him. Their nickname for him was, "The Accusative."

The world accepts a man at the estimate he places upon himself. There was a De Mommor lad the same age of John Calvin, and one three years older. In his studies he set them both a pace, and so correct and diligent was he that when the De Mommor lads were sent down to Paris, the tutor insisted that John Calvin should go, too, and a benefice was at once made out for him providing that he should be educated for the priesthood. Legend has it that at this time, being then fifteen years old, he admonished his parents in the way of life, and instructed them how to conduct themselves during his absence.

At eighteen he was preaching, and soon after was given a living and placed in charge of a country parish. It was about this time, when he was between nineteen and twenty years of age, that a copy of one of Luther's pamphlets fell into his hands. It was a pivotal point. Thrones were to totter, families be rent in twain, millions of minds receive a bias! This serious, sober young priest, freshly tonsured, took the pamphlet to his garret and read it. Then he set about to refute it. Luther's arguments did not so much interest Calvin as did the man himself, the man who had defied authority.

And really Calvin did not like the man: Luther's rollicking, coarse and blunt ways repelled this studious and ascetic youth. The one thing that Calvin admired in Luther was his self-reliance. Suddenly it came over Calvin that life should be religion and religion should be life, and that in the claims of the priesthood there was a deal of pretense.

In refuting Luther he grew to admire him. He resolved to eliminate the tonsure and dress in citizens' clothes. His resolution stuck, and as soon as his hair had grown out, he went home and told his father and patron that he had abandoned theology and wished to study law. And so he was sent to Orleans and placed in the office of the eminent judge, Peter de Stella.

But theology is a matter of temperament, and instead of writing briefs, Calvin began translating Luther's Bible into French. He was requested to relinquish this pastime long enough to draw up a legal opinion concerning the divorce of our old friend Henry the Eighth.

Calvin was never wrung by days of doubt nor by nights of pain. He parted from the Church without a struggle, and adopted as his motto, "If God be for us, who can be against us?"

He again began to preach. He was a duly ordained priest in good standing—technically, at least—in the Catholic Church. He had all the confidence of a sophomore—age did not wither him, nor could custom stale his infinite variety. He questioned and contradicted everybody, young or old, regardless of position. But so cleanly was the man's mode of life, so intellectual, so personally unselfish and sincere was he, that although heretics were being burned in France by twos and sevens, yet for several years no hand was laid upon him.

Finally, in spite of the De Mommors, a legal notice was served upon Calvin, signed by King Francis in person, asking him to desist, and giving him three months to get back in the theological traces, making peace with his superiors.

Calvin always had a taste for printing, and now at his own expense he translated the "De Clementia" of Seneca into French and had the book printed, dedicating it to the king. This was his brief for clemency and at the same time an argument for free speech. Seneca's father had a college of oratory, and Seneca said: "Let the people talk. If they be right the king can not be harmed; but if they be wrong they will merely hurt themselves: kings can afford to exercise clemency."

The book was really an insult to the king, since it assumed that Francis had never read Seneca. This doubtless was a fact; but Francis, instead of studying up on the old Roman, simply issued an order for the arrest of Calvin. Calvin quit Paris in hot haste, and no doubt thereby saved his head.

Doctor Servetus, a physician and learned monk from Spain, was then in Paris giving popular lectures "against Lutherism and such other similar forms of grievous error." Servetus was a "Papal Delegate"— what we would call "a revivalist." Calvin thought Servetus had him especially in mind. So he issued a challenge at long distance to debate the issues publicly. Servetus accepted the challenge, but the arrangements fell through. Calvin found refuge in Strassburg, then at Basle, being politely sent along from each place, finally reaching Geneva. He was then twenty-four years old.

At Geneva he at once made his presence felt by attempting to organize a reformed or independent Catholic Church. For this he was asked to leave, and then was expelled, living in retirement in the mountains. Two of the syndics who had brought about his expulsion died, as even syndics do, and Calvin returned, informing the populace that the death of the syndics was a punishment upon them for their lack of welcome to a good man and true.

From this time Calvin turned Geneva into a theocracy, and the city was sacred to prayer, praise and Bible study. Students flocked from all over Christendom to hear the new gospel expounded. They came from Germany, France, England and Scotland. The air was full of unrest. And among others who came out of curiosity, to study, or perhaps because they were not needed at home, was a man from Edinburgh. He was six years younger than Calvin, but very much like him in temperament.

His name was John Knox. Servetus was a rhetorician, controversialist and diplomat—gentle, considerate, gracious. He belonged to that suave and cultured type of Catholic that wins to the Church princes and people to education and wealth. He has been likened by John Morley to Cardinal Newman.

After Calvin reached Geneva he entered into a long correspondence with Doctor Servetus, and the debate which had been planned was carried on by correspondence. Servetus proposed to Calvin that the postponed debate should take place in Geneva. Calvin replied that if Servetus came to Geneva he would burn him alive.

Now, there were really many more Catholics in Switzerland than dissenters, or "Protestants," and Servetus, knowing Calvin's weakness for exaggeration, did not take his threat seriously. So Servetus journeyed by leisurely stages southward, on his way to Naples, but he never reached there. He stopped at Geneva, like other pilgrims, "to study the new religion."

Geneva was the home of free speech, and this being so, Servetus had just as good a right there as Calvin. But Calvin looked upon the coming of Servetus as a menace, and honestly thought, no doubt, that Servetus was in the personal employ of the Vatican, with intent to collect evidence against "the new faith." Calvin aroused the community into a belief that their rights were being jeopardized.

Servetus was arrested and thrown into prison. The charge was heresy—a charge that at this safe distance makes us smile. But the humor of heretics charging heretics with heresy, and demanding that they should be punished, did not dawn upon John Calvin.

Heresy is a matter of longitude and time.

The trial lasted from August until September. Calvin supplied the proof of guilt by bringing forward the many letters written him by Servetus. The prisoner did not deny the proof, but instead sought to defend his position. Calvin replied at length, and thus did the long- postponed debate take place.

The judges decided in favor of Calvin.

The next day Servetus was burned alive in the public square.

"I interceded for him," said John Calvin; "I interceded for him—I wanted him beheaded, not burned."

* * * * *

The encyclopedia records that John Knox was born at Haddington, Scotland, in the year Fifteen Hundred Five. As to the place, there is no doubt; but as for the time, Andrew Lang, after much research, places the date as Fifteen Hundred Fifteen.

Usually men, eke women, bring the date of their birth forward, but Knox with much care set his back. He justified himself in this because, when he was twenty, he was explaining the difference between truth and error with great precision, and to give the words weight he added ten years to his age, explaining to a finikin friend that at twenty he knew more than any man of thirty that could be produced. And this was doubtless true.

John Knox came of a respectable family of the middle class. He was independent, blunt, bold, coarse, with an underground village vocabulary acquired in his childhood that he never quite forgot.

At the grammar-school he was the star scholar, and at Saint Andrews quickly took front rank and set his teachers prophesying. And the peculiar part is that all of their prophecies came true, which proves for us that infant prodigies sometimes train on.

John Knox became a priest and a preacher of power before he was twenty-five. In temperament he was very much such a man as Luther, save that Luther was considerable of a joker. Luther had more common- sense than Knox, but what Knox lacked in humor he made up in learning. In fact, his love of learning was his chief weakness. He was as self-reliant as a black Angus. At twenty-six Knox made a vow that he would no longer kneel. This led to a rebuke from Cardinal Beaton, followed by the retort courteous.

About this time he met George Wishart, and the men became fast friends. Four years passed and a chapter in history was played that wrenched the stern nature of John Knox, and for once broke up the icy fastness of his heart and caused his tears to flow. That was the burning at the stake of Wishart on the campus in front of Saint Andrews.

That his Alma Mater should lend itself to such a horrible crime in the name of justice caused Knox to break forth in curses that reached the ears of those in power, and had he not fled, the Fate that overtook Wishart would have been his.

George Wishart was of Scottish birth, but had spent some time in Germany, and had caught the spirit of Luther. All accounts agree that he was a gentle and worthy character, and very moderate in his expressions. He was a teacher at Cambridge, and his first offense seems to have been that he translated the New Testament from Greek into English, without permission.

He came to Saint Andrews and gave a course of lectures, it being the custom then for colleges to "exchange pulpits." Knox attended these lectures and heard Wishart for the first time. The Catholics making a demonstration against Wishart, Knox became one of a volunteer bodyguard.

Being on familiar terms with the great men of Edinburgh, Wishart was chosen by Henry the Eighth for the very delicate errand of going to Scotland and interceding for the hand in marriage of Mary Stuart, the infant "Queen of Scots," with Edward, the infant son of our old friend. Wishart seems to have been an unwilling tool in this matter, and his action set Catholic Scotland violently against him.

Persecution pushed him on into unseemly speech, and Cardinal Beaton set the sure machinery in motion that ended in the death of this strong, earnest and simple man who had not yet reached the height of his powers.

The fires that consumed the body of George Wishart fired the heart of John Knox, and from that hour he was the avowed foe of the papacy.

Two years later, Cardinal Beaton was assassinated by "parties unknown." But Knox, having often cheerfully referred to Beaton as "a son of Beelzebub," was accused of hatching the plot, even though he did not personally take a hand in executing it.

Shortly after the death of Beaton, Knox, believing the atmosphere had cleared, came back to Edinburgh and preached at the Castle. Soon he had quite a following, but of people who he himself says, in his "History of the Reformation," were "gluttons, wantons and licentious revelers, but who yet regularly and meekly partook of the sacrament." Knox saw plainly this peculiar paradox, that every reformer is followed and professed by lawbreakers who consider themselves just like him. These rogues who took the sacrament regularly were the cause of much annoyance to Knox, and gave excuse for many accusations against him.

Knox preached a sermon entitled, "Killing No Murder," attempting to show how, when men used their power to subjugate other men, their death becomes a blessing to every one.

The Castle was stormed by Catholics, in which a brigade of French took part. Knox and various others were taken to France, and there set to work as galley-slaves. Escaping through connivance he made his way to Geneva, attracted by the fame of Calvin.

But his heart was in Scotland, and in a year he was back once more on the heather calling upon the papal heathen to repent.

John Knox was in Geneva three different times. He was a heretic, too, and his heresy was of the same kind as that of Calvin. And as two negatives make an affirmative, so do two heretics, if they are strong enough, transform heresy into orthodoxy. To be a heretic you have to be in the minority and stand alone.

Calvin had a high regard for Knox, but they were too much alike to work together in peace. Calvin was never in England, and in fact never learned to speak English; but Knox spoke French like a native, having improved the time while in prison in France by studying the language. There were several hundred English refugees in Geneva, and Calvin appointed Knox pastor of the English church. This was in Fifteen Hundred Fifty-four, the year following the death of Servetus. Knox deprecated the death of the Papal Delegate, but looked upon it lightly, a mere necessity of the times, and "a due and just warning to the Pope and the followers of the Babylonish harlot."

When Luther was forty-two he married "Catherine the Nun," a most noble and excellent woman of about his own age, who encouraged him in his very trying position and sustained him in time of peril.

Calvin married Idalette de Bures, the widow of an Anabaptist whom he converted.

Calvin was not a lover by nature, and explained to the world that his marriage was simply a harmless necessary defi to Rome. Happily the venture proved a better scheme than he wist, and after some years, he wrote, "I would have died without the helpmeet God sent me—my wife, who never opposed me in anything." John Knox was married when thirty- eight to the winsome Marjorie Bowes, aged seventeen, the fifth child of Mary Bowes, whom he had ardently wooed in his youth. His boast to the mother that "Providence planned that you should reject me in order that I might do better," was an indelicate slant by the right oblique.

Marjorie withered in the cold, keen atmosphere of theological definition, and died in a few years.

And then Fate sent a close call for the Reformer in the daring, dashing person of Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary's mother was Mary of Guise, a French woman discreetly married to King James of Scotland. Knox always bore a terrible hatred toward Mary of Guise, and all French people for that matter, for his little term in the galleys. Hisbook, "The Monstrous Regiment of Women," had Mary Tudor, Mary of Guise, and Mary, Queen of Scots, in mind. Queen Elizabeth paid a compliment to the worth of the author by outlawing him for "his insult to virtuous womanhood."

Men who hate women are simply suffering from an overdose. Knox was a woman-hater who always had one especially attractive woman upon his list, with intent to make of her a Presbyterian. In this he was as steadfast as the leader of a colored camp-meeting.

Mary, Queen of Scots, had no more landed on Scottish soil from Catholic France than Knox fled, fearing for his head. Ere long he came back and sought a personal interview with the young queen, just turned twenty, "with intent to bring her heart to Jesus." They seemed to have talked of other themes, for "she was exceeding French and frivolous and stroked my beard when I sought to explain to her the wickedness of profane dancing."

Then Mary tried her hand at converting Knox to the "Mother Church." And as a last inducement legend has it that she offered to marry him if he would become a Catholic. Here John Knox coughed and hesitated— she was getting near his price. He was he saw the devil's tail behind her chair. He rushed from her presence, quaking with fear.

Stormy interviews followed, back up by handy epithets in which they both proved expert. It was a pivotal point. Had John Knox married Mary, Queen of Scots, there would have been no Presbyterian Church, no Princeton, no Doctor McCosh, no Grover Cleveland.

On March Twentieth, Fifteen Hundred Sixty-three, the banns were read between John Knox and Margaret "Stewart," or Stuart, daughter of Lord Ochiltree, and a forebear of our own Tom Ochiltree. The young lady was two months past sixteen years old. The Queen was furious, for the girl, being of Royal blood, "should really have consulted me before renouncing her religion for this praying and braying man with long whiskers."

There was full and just cause for indignation, for although Mary was then safely wedded to Darnley, preparing to have him assassinated (and later to lose her own head), she yet regarded John Knox as her private property.

Marriage merely added another trouble to the stormy and burdened life of our great reformer. He had successfully fought the powers of Rome; the queenly daughter of Henry the Eighth, and Anne Boleyn had found him incorrigible and given him up as a hopeless case; Calvin could not tame him; but now a chit of a girl with retrousse nose, who should have been at work in a paper-box factory, led him a merry dance, and the voice that had thundered threat and defiance piped in forced assent. December strawberries, I am told, lack the expected flavor.

When Knox died, he left a widow aged twenty-five, come Michaelmas. She wore deep mourning, and so did Mary, Queen of Scots, but Mary explained that her deep veil was merely to hide her smiles.

In two years the widow married Andrew Ker, notorious for having once leveled a pistol at the Queen. The widow survived Knox just sixty-two years, and died undeceived, not realizing that she had once been wedded to a man who had shaped a great religion—one whom Carlyle, his countryman, calls the master mind of his day.



JOHN BRIGHT

I have often tried to picture to myself what famine is, but the human mind is not capable of drawing any form, any scene, that will realize the horrors of starvation. The men who made the Corn Laws are totally ignorant of what it means. The agricultural laborers know something of it in some counties, and there are some hand-loom weavers in Lancashire who know what it is. I saw the other night, late at night, a light in a cottage-window, and heard the loom busily at work, the shuttle flying rapidly. It ought to have a cheerful sound, but when it is at work near midnight, when there is care upon the brow of the workman—lest he should not be able to secure that which will maintain his wife and children—then there is a foretaste of what is meant by the word "famine."

Oh, if these men who made the Corn Laws, if these men who step in between the Creator and His creatures, could for only one short twelvemonth—I would inflict upon them no harder punishment for their guilt—if they for one single twelvemonth might sit at the loom and throw the shuttle! I will not ask that they should have the rest of the evils; I will not ask that they shall be torn by the harrowing feelings which must exist when a beloved wife and helpless children are suffering the horrors which these Corn Laws have inflicted upon millions. —John Bright



The Society of Friends—I like the phrase, don't you? The thought of having friends, and of being a friend, comes to us like a benison and a benediction. Friendship is almost a religion: the recognition in your life of the fact that to have friends you must be one is religion.

The Quakers did not educate men to preach: they simply educated them to be Friends—and live. Those who "heard the Voice" preached. Most modern preachers do not follow a Voice—they only harken to an echo. The practical test with the Quakers was whether the man heard the "Voice" or not—if so, he could preach. Men were not licensed to preach—that is quite superfluous and absurd. Those who have to listen are the only ones to decide concerning whether the speaker has heard the "Voice" or not. As it is now, we often license men to preach who can not. The ability should be the license.

For, certain it is that men who can command attention need no testimonial from a commission in lunacy. People who have lived and are living are the only ones who have a message for living men and women.

George Fox plainly saw that a paid priesthood—specialists in divinity—created a caste, a superior class that exalted the pulpit at the expense of the pew. The plan tended to suppress the pew, for all the talking was strictly ex parte. It also tended to self-deception among the clergy, for they seldom heard the other side, and in time came to believe their own statements, no matter how extravagant.

People learn to think by thinking, and to talk by talking. In explaining a theme to another, it becomes luminous to ourselves.

And so Fox foresaw, with a vision that was as beautiful as it was rare, that to educate an entire congregation you must make them all potential preachers. Then any man who rises to speak is aware that a reply may follow from his mother, his wife, his sister or his neighbor.

And so the listeners not only listened to the person speaking, but they also always harkened for the "Inner Voice" and watched for the "Light Within." In all of which method and plan dwells much plain commonsense to which the world, of necessity, will yet return.

George Fox was the son of a Leicestershire weaver, and he was himself a weaver by trade. He had thoughts and he could express them. And so he traveled and preached in the marketplaces, at crossroads, on church-steps—just the religion of friendship: simplicity, industry, directness, truth.

No priests, no liturgy, no creed, no sacraments, no titles nor degrees—a religion of friendship! You should not kill your enemy, because he is your friend who does not yet understand you. To make war on others is to make war on yourself. Do as you would be done by.

Fox had no intention of founding an organization, nor was he in competition with any other religion. Such a movement, of course, depends entirely upon the quality of the man who advocates it. George Fox had personality—character—and so people flocked to hear him speak. His plea was so earnest, so direct, so vivid, so irrefutable, that as the listeners listened, some trembled with emotion. "Quakers," a scoffer called them, and this word, flung by an unknown hoodlum, stuck like a mud-ball. The name of the particular hoodlum, like the man who fired the Alexandrian Library, still lies mired in the mud from which he formed the ball that stuck. That ball escaped the fate of the mass because it hit a great man; had the thrower thought only to have attached his name, it might have gone down the ages linked with that of greatness.

In a short time Fox found himself in troubled waters. He had offended the Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Baptists, and to save himself and his people he finally banded them into an organization. About this time William Penn appeared (with his hat firmly on his head) and organized colonies of Quakers to go to New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The Quakers refused to accept the sacrament, claiming that no one part of life was any more holy than the rest, and that no one man was any more worthy of performing a rite than another.

Parliament then stepped in and made church attendance compulsory, the sacrament obligatory, and the protest against war and advocacy of universal peace a misdemeanor.

Those early Quakers were really people who had graduated from the Church. When the scholar graduates from school the teacher is proud, and friends send flowers and kindly congratulations. When you graduate from Church the preacher declares you are lost, and the congregation calls you bad names. Up to Sixteen Hundred Eighty-nine, things were not allowed to rest even there, for you were considered by the law to be the enemy of the State. In Sixteen Hundred Fifty-six, a thousand Quakers were in prison in England on account of their religious belief, several hundred had been hanged, a few were burned at the stake, many had their ears cut off, others were branded, and many others had their tongues bored through. But strangely enough, the number of Quakers increased. A king can't kill all his people, even if they are all wrong, and so in fear the government changed its tactics.

In Sixteen Hundred Eighty-nine came the Toleration Act, which put a stop to violent persecution, retaining merely the passive sort. The Quakers were excluded from all schools, colleges and universities, and from all right of franchise and the holding of political office; like unto the fond mother who orders her child to come into the house, and then when the child does not obey, says, "Well, stay out then!"

So the Quakers stayed out, not wishing to come in, but they had to pay tithes for support of the Established Church, whether they attended services or not. This arrangement still exists in America, only it has to be worked by indirection: instead of compelling everybody to pay for the support of the clergy, we reach the same point by allowing church property to be exempt from taxation.

Persecution having ceased, the Quakers quit proselyting and therefore ceased to grow. But the traditions remained and the sentiment of friendship of man for man remained to fertilize that wonderful year, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six, the year that man was really discovered.

George Fox prepared the way for Susanna Wesley and her two great sons, John and Charles.

George Fox believed and taught the equality of the sexes. He said that God's spirit might voice itself through a woman quite as readily as through a man; and it was with this thought in mind, and the example of the Quakers before her, that Susanna Wesley harkened to the Voice and spoke to the multitude. Later came little Elizabeth Fry, with a message for those in bonds, and also for those who had a fine faith in fetters, and a belief in chains and bars and gyves and the gentle ministry of the lash.

The wisdom of the paid priesthood lies in the fact that it renders a large number of men useless for anything else. Seven years in college emasculates the man. His very helplessness then makes him clutch the Church with a death-grip. He is a sailor who can not swim.

And these advocates, incapacitated by miscalled seminaries for alluseful endeavor, become defenders of the faith and prosecutors of all and each and any who fix their hearts on such simple and Godlike things as friendship and equality. Indeed, many of these advocates abjure the relationship of the sexes, tolerating woman only as a necessity, and as for themselves personally eschew her—or say they do.

The Society of Friends being essentially a Religion of Humanity, and therefore divine, regards man as the equal of woman. John Bright was always a bit boastful that one of his maternal grandparents was a Jewess who forfeited the friendship of her family by eloping with a Quaker—there is a cross for you! Joseph Bright, the father of John Bright, never voluntarily paid church-tithes. Every year the bailiff came, demanded money, was courteously refused, and proceeded to levy on goods which were carried away, duly advertised and sold at auction.

John Bright very early in life was delegated by his father to go and bid on the chattels levied upon, and this was his first introduction into business. For a time he himself paid church-tithes, but never without the protest, "I hereby pay this tax because I am obliged to; but entering my protest because I believe that this money is not to be used for either the glory of God or the benefit of man." Later, he went back to his father's plan and let the State levy.

His religion was one of friendship for humanity, and to him man was the highest expression of divinity. Also, he believed that the love of God could never even have been imagined were it not for the loves of men and women.

* * * * *

John Bright was born in Eighteen Hundred Eleven. He was the culminating flower of seven generations of Quaker ancestry. His father was a rich manufacturer at Rochdale, and being a Quaker, did not try the dubious experiment of making his children exempt from useful work in the name of education.