"THE LAW WITHIN THE LAW."

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 2, 1 November 1883, Page 3

"THE LAW WITHIN THE LAW."

Cambridge, loth March 1643.” “ TO MAJOR GENERAL CRAWFORD.” Sir, — “ The complaints you preferred to my Lord against your Lieut. Colonel both by Mr. Lee and your own letters have occasioned his stay here. ***** “ sir, The State in choosing men to serve it takes no notice of their opinions; if they are willing to serve it that satisfies. I advised you formerly to bear with men of different minds from yourself ; if you had done it when I advised you to it I think you would not have had so many stumblings in your way. It may "be you judge otherwise ; but I tell you my mind —I desire you would receive this man into your favour and good opinion. I believe if he follow my counsel he will deserve no other respect from you. Take heed of being sharp or too easily sharpened by others against those to whom you can offer little but that they square not with you in every opinion concerning matters of religion. If there be any other offence to be charged upon him —that must in a judicial way receive termination.” * * * Your humble servant, Oliver Cromwell, This is a letter worthy of remark in more than one way, but its chief teaching centres in the fact of its being a preaching of toleration by an intolerant person. Few would be found to differ from the view of Cromwell’s character which asserts him to have been impatient of contradiction to any of his well-considered lines of thought and action ; politically he was the greatest iconoclast the realm of Britain ever knew ; a man who saw through the tinsel of outward shows, and showered merciless blows upon the poor old graven images which had held men’s eyes in awe for centuries. And socially the influence of his work was greater even *than in its political significance ; only one restraining power held the Revolution from degenerating into an Anarchy of society, when that society had seen its most sacred symbols and idolized safeguards broken down beneath the feet of the puritan soldiers. The restraining power was the intense religious feeling in the heart of the Great Soldier—a feeling so utterly beyond the puny “ dilletante ” religious life of the present day that not one in a thousand of us can believe that it ever did exist in all its passionate breathing life in the breasts of a whole nation. But the fact is there, patent to all who will take the trouble to interest themselves in the subject, and not one of those who do so but will close the study saying “ The truth is clear, these men thought and acted in the light of their religion ; it is idle to try to explain their motives and actions by the one careless explanation ‘ Cant and Hypocrisy ! ’ There was faith, there was power, there was law in their view of life.” But the effect of this religion was deep intolerance ; that which they considered the rule of conduct for themselves must be made the rule for all others : especially was this evident in the dictates of their Chief; there was to be no Popery, no Antichrist in England then—Agnosticism was not even dreamt of, so needed no prevention. Reading his character thus, does not the letter which commences this article seem like a paradox, a startling falling away, and rejection of all those ideas by which his life was guided ? A mere appearance only, for in reality this letter shows he had for a moment falling upon him a ray of higher light ; he emerges from the bondage of the

lower law into the glory of the Higher Law, seldom able to pierce through the dusty windows of a soul whose early education and narrow surroundings had obscured the ability to receive such glorious messengers. Justice broke in, human feeling glowed warm, and the brotherhood with earnest manhood melted the ice of intolerance and formalism which had crystallized about his heart. So he says, " Here is your brother; recognize the good in him, look through the outer husk of him, and if you can only measure him by your wooden-headed standards of creed and —beware !"

And thus speaks every mighty brain, every great soul who has been a leader of his people, a prophet to his disciples, a moulder of the shape his nation shall take after he has passed away. Their deeds, and the deeds of their interpreters (alas!) have become history ; their " revelations" after being the bread of life to thousands, become mouldy to the growing wants of their descendants. Happy indeed is it when their teachings have not become worse things than these, when their names have been turned into war-cries, and their religious symbols embroidered on flags floating over fields of carnage and the martyr's dungeon. But those who read of these men with eyes wide opened will see points of light touching the old darkness everywhere, and those points of light are the in-breakings of the Higher Law upon the minds of religious men. Before we attempt to show how this light fell, let us try to understand something of what this light is. Is there any higher law outside Necessity,outside social observances, outside the many " revelations" of the thousand creeds; a law in which the men of any recognized belief, or of no definite belief, can take refuge and find strength ? Is there any common mental standingground on which the man who explores the star-depths and classifies the fossils to-day can take his place side by side with Moses and Paul, Buddha, Mahomet, and Cromwell. Surely there is. Among the mutable shifting things of the world one law stands so inexorably unchanging, so strongly speaking through the Eternal Silence that it should be called Divine, because it is clothed with what seems to us the attributes of Divinity. That law is " Nothing of good is lost" —a constant metamorphosis, but a constant progression, a slow widening out of Today's narrow dark movements into a Beyond where "we lose ourselves in light". And it is the outer beams of of this glorious Light-Sea which have fallen through the ages here and there upon the souls of men exalted by their intelleectual force into leaders of their fellows, raising them for a moment from the baser doctrines they had evolved from their surroundings. Let us notice some instances where the law comes clear from the past. When the adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter formulated the creed which has been the religious guidance and the national safeguard of his people ever since, that creed, stript of its priestly dress, was one of the lowest ever offered as the mental nourishment of a portion of our race, (it was not fitted or even proffered save to the chosen people) teaching as it did the dreadful dogma "The spoils to the Victor!" Keep your bodies strong and healthy, your family arrangements pure, your laws just to each other, and your reward shall be—eternal life after death ? Nonot a word of it. Serenity of conscience and intensity of moral beauty ? No, but worldly success—permission to murder the peaceful inhabitants of the land of Canaan, and become the owners of the "land flowing with milk and honey." This teaching had its result and its partial attainment; in the days of the Captivity and the Dispersion it was very poor food for the soul, but in the days of Joshua and of Solomon there was power in the motor of the Mosaic creed— Help yourselves, and you will be helped." Could that prophet who uttered a doctrine so cruel have seen one glimpse of the Higher Law ? Listen. " Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor and needy in thy land" " Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons nor take a gift." " Love therefore the stranger." " Thou shalt not see thy brother's ox or sheep go astray." " Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped." " Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite, for he is thy brother." Note how the human struggles through the priest, how the heart triumphs over the brain, and makes the urger to bloodshed kindred with the patriot he would destroy and the women he would massacre.

Let us pass over the records of a few generations, and stand by the side of Paul as he reasons in the light of a more cultivated age. He has told us all about predestination, how God from the commencement of the world doomed millions of his yet unborn creatures to the unquenchable flames, how God's anger with the world's wickedness could only be appeased when men had murdered his own son, how " the powers that be are ordained of God" (the Borgian Popes for instance), and that he who loves not the name of Christ is condemned already. Then, while we stand aghast to hear the threatenings, the terrors and the dismal folly of such a representation of a Divine Being, suddenly from the dry blasted trunk of this grim Creed breaks forth a blossom of human kindness, a flower of human brotherhood—" If I give my body to be burned but have not Love, it profiteth me nothing." " Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three ; and the greatest of these is love."

Above the sophistries of his intellect, the mysticism of his dreams, he rose to the Higher Law, his mind taught unforgiveness and eternal fire to all who differed from him and would not accept his propaganda, but the light flashed into him and he cries— " Love, love, and pity for all poor suffering men." Thus too he labored with his hands, an honest independent man, living on no alms or contribution plate, disregarding personally the " lilies of the field " argument; and he is far above any consideration of " turning his cheek to the smiter" when contending with Peter or arguing concerning Apollos or Alexander the Coppersmith, or recounting his shipwrecks and fights with wild beasts at Ephesus —through broken sentences and half contradictions we have glances down into the inner Paul, and see the great force of Humanity lifting him up to us and to all who live. How little would the frozen creed of Buddha seem to promise to those with whom the sense of individuality is strong — a path leading nowhere, an enduring only of the ills and pleasures of life. Strip off those earthly desires, those longings of the flesh, says the great Teacher of Asia, rise above the follies and the weakness, the aspirations and entanglements which make up to most the sum of existence. And the crown, the victor's prize is NirvanaNothingnessNegation. How can a creed like this have been bread to the hungry souls and light to the weary eyes of the countless millions who have followed the teachings of Prince Siddartha for so many centuries, and be even now the comfort and consolation of millions who cry " We lose ourselves in Buddha !" ? The answer comes that it is because the great loving sympathy of the creed's founder glowed through the ice of his doctrine, and shone in words like these. " The succouring of father and mother, the cherishing of wife and child is the greatest blessing."— " Day by day dwell merciful holy and just, kind and true."— " Lay up lasting treasures of perfect service rendered, duties done in charity, soft speech and stainless days." — " Never will I accept private individual salvation till every soul from every star has been brought home to God." — So we see that though experience and observation made him certain that there was only one way in which the individual could attain the serene peace; which was by the avoidance of all which could produce sorrow, and rising into a lofty atmosphere of isolation—" the high Nirvana-way " —the heart of Buddha knew that so long as men existed, that delightful network of affection for parent and child and wife and friend would do more to keep men pure and holy than all the rending apart of the passions which fitted men for his snowy Paradise. The creed of Islam spread by the sword would never have carried the Crescent to victory so often had it not held within its secret a force to touch the weak and to bind the strong. More is needed than the drunkenness of victory before a Belief can rear its head in sovereignty above the other opinions of mankind ; it has to speak comfort to its wounded, and solace to its bereaved, help to the strong brain in the maze of doubt, and guidance to the seeker after wisdom. Without such teaching it could not hold its own for a generation. So Mahomet speaks to his people in words that seem to him divine. " Every good act is

charity; your smiling in your brother's face ; your

putting a wanderer in the right road ; your giving water

to the thirsty is charity."— " A man's true wealth is the good he has done in this world to his fellow men." — " There is no piety in turning your faces to the east or west, but he is pious who giveth his wealth to the orphans and the needy and the wayfarer; who is faithful to his engagements and patient under hardships and in time of trouble." Having thus cited evidence in support of the position, let us take account of the apparent discrepancy which some might take objection to, between a mere outbreaking of human feeling in the great religious leaders and that divine law " Nothing of good is lost." This stirring, this sparkling of humanity through intolerant creeds, is the manifestation in a practical way of that Higher Law. Moses in exhortations to brotherly kindness and justice recognizes in a blind way the rights of the patriot Canaanites he would treat as dogs ; Paul by his honesty and independence proclaims the goodness in those sinners his creed calls depraved and fit for eternal fire ; Buddha knows that Nirvana will never stimulate men to be kind and tenderhearted, but appeals to that sympathy of mortal desire and earth-born affection which unites mankind in one great family. So with Mahomet, Cromwell and all other religious leaders, their doctrine is intolerant, highflown, idealistic, but the soul of each of them saw in flashes the eternal evolution of Good out of Evil, and that those who differed from them were not beings of the outer darkness.

Of all men, Freethinkers should take new courage and hope in considering this. The constantly heard taunt that we are those who break down and not those who build, that we destroy but give the world nothing in place of the thing destroyed, is repeated so often that in bitterness of soul we half begin to believe it ourselves. But though never granting that if such accusation were true we should be altogether wrong (for a lie should be struck down whatever may follow) still there is a way. Let us be glad there is a way, A hope and a faith that as in the past the Truth has always been to be found, has been near the hearts even of the intolerant, it may he seen clearer and purer with every passing age, and that the future triumph of Happiness above Pain is a matter of certainty and a spring of delight. A hope that reaches beyond the grave; not built upon old documents, variously interpreted, quarrelled over, and cavilled at, but a faith born in research and nurtured in observation. Not reaching beyond the grave for each separate individual with a promise of a selfish crown and a golden city, but an utter trust in the fact that the amount of suffering in the world is daily diminishing and will diminish, that the forms of evil triumphing for a time must fade out before the stronger elements of the good which cannot be destroyed, and that the ultimate of the Scheme of Things is the perfection of our race beyond the wildest dreams of modern men. If in the very founders of religions there could beam forth a recognition of the law of universal love, far more should those who have risen above the draperies and formalities of creeds acknowledge the debt of human kindness and the bond of mortal brotherhood. In the words Zoroaster wrote in the Zend Avesta thousands of years ago—“ Let us then be of those who further this world.” Edward Tregear.