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LECTURE IV.

An Unitarian minister was not long since told by one, whose state of mind, in some respects, was not unsuited to the adoption of Unitarian opinions, that he was prevented from doing so mainly by the consideration, that while Unitarian ministers claimed no higher authority for their interpretations of Scripture than their own reason, Orthodox ministers claimed the authority of inspiration, and the immediate sanction of the Holy Spirit. The answer of the minister in question was-Then the greater the pretension, the easier your faith.' The implied absurdity was not denied. And thousands are of the same way of thinking. Thousands? The bulk of men, even in this enlightened country and in this enlightened age, are taken and made captive the more readily, the more ample and showy the pretensions are. Indeed, for success you must not be scanty in your claims. If your professions are modest, you are sure to fail. It is only those who can make grandeur sit easily upon them that can impose on the multitude. But such persons may obtain converts to almost any absurdity. Proclaim it all over the land that you have discovered a medicine which will heal, not some, but all diseases, and, provided you take sufficient time and trouble, you are sure to bring thousands to your own opinion, and will be rewarded more richly than the real benefactors of mankind. Declare that you only know the right path to heaven, and that all who do not follow your guidance will infallibly be lost; believe this yourself, and insist on your conviction, you will not fail to become the founder of a sect, and, by the adoption of

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a part of his means, may rival in his success even the apostle of Methodism.

I do not assert that there was any intention on the part of Mr. Owen to avail himself of that love of the wonderful to which I have just alluded; but I know of no system in which its influence is in fact so much appealed to, nor any in which it produces more decided effects. Owenism would almost appear to have been constructed on the principle of producing the greatest results from the least possible causes. What is its aim? The physical perfection of the species. So far as its conception of happiness extends, it professes to have in store for its followers the highest, purest, and most stable happiness that man, either in his individual or social capacity, can possibly enjoy ;-abundance, ease, content; a wife, with the power of exchanging her whenever it may be pleasant; children, without any care for their sustenance or education; labor, only so far as may be healthful and satisfactory-and even this small portion is not to be borne after the age of twentyfive years.* In a word, Socialism proposes to realise its own definition of man, and make him the chief of animals.'+ No more poverty, no more ignorance, no more suffering, no more inequality :-in the words of one o its expounders, 'community' is to be a paradise on earth.' Nor is there to be a spot where this paradise is not to extend. The vision of the Catholic Church, in the pursuit of which she evil-entreated and shed the blood of many of the best and wisest of men,— this vision is to be turned into a reality, all men are to be brought to think alike, and Socialism will be the one universal faith. The wise of this world are to own themselves fools; the ministers of religion will resign

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*Owen's Lectures in Manchester, pp. 77, 78, 79. +Catechism of the New Moral World, p. 2.

Horton.

their functions; the nobility will divest themselves of their distinctions; kings and queens, of their own accord, will lay aside their sceptre and descend from their throne ;-nay, greater wonders yet-family unions will dissolve of themselves; family ties will spontaneously sunder; the father's love towards his daughter will expand into universal benevolence; and, ere very long, the whole of human society will wonder to see itself breaking up all old and time-honored institutions, ideas, and customs, and quietly, but earnestly, proceeding into that parallelogram condition of happiness, called 'Community.' Such is the pretension. But that is a poor empiricism whose means are not as small as its ends are grand. What are the means for this social revolution? Almost exclusively a system of negations. Have the apostles of Socialism discovered some hidden power of the human breast? or some latent productiveness in the elements of material nature? The greatest moral reformers of ancient or modern times have looked in the main to the boundless energies of the human soul; but these are denied; man has no power but the spongelike capacity of receiving a character made for him. Is the change to be wrought by reviving and invigorating conscience? Its existence also is denied. Are the great sanctions of eternity to be brought home to the heart in new forms and holier and more quickening power? Eternity itself is denied. Perhaps the family affections you intend to call forth into new energy, and invest them with a refinement as disinterested as it is lovely? Their existence you acknowledge, but their legitimacy you deny. Where, then, is your source of power? In the infinite Father? Do you propose to stir and regenerate the breast with that venerable and endearing name? Alas! you disown even the Supreme Intelligence of the Universe. All the ordinary forms of power you put away. Your teaching is, 'Disbelieve in man's responsibility,' disbelieve in man's internal

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power,' 'disbelieve in the sanctity of wedded love,' disbelieve in the lawfulness of family affection,'* ' disbelieve in Christ, in religion, in eternity, in a creating MIND;' and you shall be excellent and happy, provided you believe in something termed Socialism, which relieves you from all effort by declaring the omnipotence of circumstances, at the very time that it is laboring to show their impotency by turning the world upside down. Easy of belief as men are found to be, I cannot for myself imagine that Socialism could ever have assumed its actual prominence, but for the peculiar constitution of society in the present day. The greatest inequalities are confronted by the greatest discontent. The affluent and the needy are separated by a great gulf the few live in splendour, the bulk with a bare sufficiency, and many in squalidness and misery ;-learning, for the most part, seeks its own; the accredited dispensers of religion, for the most part, seek their own; and few, indeed, the welfare of the poor; and, therefore, the people now, at last, roused to see their condition and know their rights the people, many of them at least, feel an intense and jealous dissatisfaction, which inclines them to any fair shows which promise, however delusively, an improvement of their lot. And because I think them more to be pitied than blamed, I am desirous to expose groundless pretensions, and to conciliate towards an effort which must of necessity touch on things with which the Christian is familiar, and of which he needs no fresh evidence or illustration, that forbearance and favor which my Christian hearers will, I have no doubt, feel ought to be extended to those who think it their duty to adapt a part of their ministrations to the special wants of the locality and circumstances in the midst of which they are placed.

You have seen what Socialism proposes to effect; you

* Owen's Marriage System, p. 37.

have heard something of its instrumentality. Such is this new light of the whole world. If the light in it is darkness, how entire must that darkness be. It is no wonder, therefore, that amidst other fond opinions, it should have gone so far as to affirm that the cause of the universe is unknown;' and when you have considered the complexion which this self-styled philosophy wears, perhaps, my Christian friends, you will think with me that the Atheistical tendencies of this system are not likely to prove very formidable.

Let me, however, justify my intimation, that Owenism has Atheistical tendencies; and I feel this to be the more needful, not so much because the word Atheism is a word of reproach in the world, as because the imputation of Atheism to a person is very like a reflection on his understanding, if not a charge against his heart. In the case, however, of the originator of Socialism, I look for its origin in the disorder of a mind not distinguished by power, whose benevolent feelings the existing corruptions of society have made not only morbid, but averse to all established forms of truth.

But is Owenism a form of Atheism? In proceeding to what I trust will be an equitable judgment, I ask what is Atheism? Atheism is accurately described in the language of the New Testament, as 'being without God in the world.' The man, then, is an Atheist, who acknowledges no God. It does not require to make a man an Atheist, that he should positively deny the existence of a God-it is enough, if he has no God. And what is intended by the word God? The word God represents an idea, and that idea is the conception and acknowledgment of an infinite INTELLIGENCE, as the sole Creator of the Universe. So that an Atheist is one who denies, or disowns, or does not acknowledge, a creating Mind, a first great intelligent Cause of all that is. And here let it be observed, that so far as the fact is

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