Contemporary Review,. Fortnightly Review, Nineteenth Century, Cornhill Magazine, IV. THE LITTLE ONES AND THE LAND, VIII. SOUTH AMERICAN BIRD-MUSIC, 323 333 340 345 358 363 370 377 380 382 • 383 For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. A MIDNIGHT ASCENT OF THE SCHWARTZ HORN. (10,300 feet above the sea.) J. 'NEATH an uncertain moon, in light malign, We trod those rifted granite crags, whereunder, Startling the midnight air with muffled thunder, Flowed infant founts of Danube and of Rhine: Our long drawn file in slow deliberate line Scaled stair on stair, subdued to silent wonder; Wound among mouldering rocks that rolled asunder, Rattling with hollow roar down death's decline. Still as we rose, one white transcendent star Steered calmly heavenward through the empurpled gloom, Escaping from the dim reluctant bar Of morning, chill and ashen-pale as doom; Where the day's chargers champing at his car Waited till Sol should quit night's banquet room. Moonshine and dayspring, with swift impulse swept A splendor of the skies that throbbing leapt Down to the core of passionate flame ter rene A star that ruining from yon throne remote, Quenched her celestial yearnings in the pyre Of mortal pangs and pardons! At that sign The orient sun with day's broad arrow'smote Black Linard's arrogant brow, while influent fire Slaked the world's thirst for light with joy divine. JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. Note on Sonnet 3.- - The most striking episode in this pageant of dawn was the shooting of a large meteor from the centre of the sky above our heads down into the brightness of the still unrisen sun, crossing the morning star, while the moon was setting far away over the Bernese Oberland. I have ventured to treat this phenomenon, not from the scientific point of view, but as it appealed to the imagination upon that high summit, with all the congregated Alps around us waiting for the touch of day. J. A. S. Academy. From The Contemporary Review. OATHS: PARLIAMENTARY AND JUDICIAL. BY THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH. SHOULD THEY BE ABOLISHED? Ir is much to be regretted that the question which heads this article should have been raised in a manner singularly unfavorable to its calm and reasonable discussion. invented for the sake of promoting party; a state of things in which legislative measures are less and less considered with reference to their own nature and probable results on society, and more and more with reference only to their effect upon the fortunes of some one or other of our political parties. Once sucked into that vortex, all questions, however, in their own nature apart from or above politics, The circumstances which have given are dragged down and swept round and rise to it, and which are forcing it on to a round like fragments of a wreck in a final solution, are too unhappily familiar whirlpool, to emerge at last twisted and to need recital here. But their result has battered out of all semblance to their been that a question of grave importance original shape. In this English maeland interest, of which equally religious strom of ours we see just now Parlia men might reasonably take, and have mentary Oaths whirling about in comtaken, different views, has been distorted pany with Free Education, Laborers' into one between religion and atheism, or Allotments, Compulsory Vaccination, Derather into one between religion and ceased Wives' Sisters, Female Suffrage, a single atheist, whose name certainly Sunday Closing, Local Option, and many neither softens nor sweetens any contro-another piece of social flotsam and jetversy with which it is connected. Those who advocate the abolition of the Parliamentary oath are consequently, and in many cases most unjustly, accused of a desire to facilitate the entrance into Parliament of atheists in general and of Mr. Bradlaugh in particular. While, on the other hand, those who do desire this are able to shelter themselves under the plea that many whose Christianity is unquestionable are desiring the same thing. Still more unfortunately the question has passed into the domain of party politics; the two great parties in the State having, the one all but unanimously, and the other very largely, espoused opposite sides in the dispute. This is nearly the same thing as saying that it has passed out of the domain of reason and into that of passion and unreason. For in England, nowadays, government by party. not at any time perhaps the most perfect form of government is passing into something very different - namely, government for party. A state of things, that is to say, in which parties are no longer formed for the sake of promoting principles, but in which principles are The word judicial refers, strictly speaking, to oaths of office taken by judges or magistrates. To avoid circumlocution, however, I use it in this article as signifying oaths taken in a court of justice. sam, no one of them in itself of a party nature, but all of them capable of being utilized for party purposes, and being so utilized accordingly. In fact, English life is becoming so saturated and flavored with politics of the baser sort, that we are being rapidly reduced to the condition of the pauper Scotch lunatic, whose insanity had taken the form of the belief that he was a rich man faring sumptuously every day, but who complained that though his table was always spread with the richest variety of dainties, yet somehow or other everything he partook of tasted of por ridge. At such a moment it needs some courage for a minister of religion, and espe cially for a bishop, to meddle with such a thorny question as this. Whatever he may say upon it will, in all probability, bring upon him the wrath, and, what is more to be dreaded, the misconstruction, of one or other of the parties, religious or political, engaged in disputing it; possibly of both, if he aims at being impartial. Nevertheless, in the interest of something higher and better than self or party, I venture to offer for the consideration of reasonable men a few thoughts which have influenced my own mind on this subject, and which may perhaps commend themselves to their minds. And in so doing I shall avoid as far as possible all the angry or unsavory associations now linked with it. I shall try to argue it as I might have done if no such person as Mr. Bradlaugh had ever existed, or as if we had never known the blessings of party government, nor tasted the sweet reasonableness of a general election. It may, I trust, help to this end if I begin by pointing out that, whatever else our present Parliamentary oath was designed to effect, it was never designed to keep atheists out of Parliament. It was and is strictly a political test, and political too in a sense and for a purpose happily quite remote from modern English poli tics. It is dynastic. Its object is to secure in the council of the sovereign the presence of those only who are loyal to the reigning dynasty. It binds the person taking it to "be faithful, and to bear true allegiance" to the existing sovereign and his or her "heirs and successors according to law." It aims therefore at the exclusion from Parliament, not of atheists, but of traitors. It does not even, though it is an oath of allegiance to a sovereign, exclude republicans; for should the Parliament which imposes it decide at any time upon the ultimate abolition of monarchy, there would then be no "successors according to law" to whom to be faithful. All that it binds the member of Parliament to is not to attempt to overthrow monarchy during the lifetime of the existing sovereign, and meanwhile not to engage in any plot or revolution aiming at a change of dynasty. An undertaking which under the present dynasty we may safely pronounce to be superfluous. It is clear therefore that the oath in its present form was intended to be a politi cal and not a religious test, and that as a political test it is practically all but obsolete. He which a pronounced atheist could only with great difficulty be prevented from taking cannot be relied on as a religious test for the exclusion of atheists from Parliament. And further; it is manifestly impossible from the terms of the oath that it can have any such operation. For the atheist who takes it does not thereby declare himself a theist as the Jew, if he had taken the oath to which Jews objected, would have had to declare himself a Christian. That oath being "on the true faith of a Christian," did necessarily imply that the person taking it held the Christian faith. But the atheist in taking the present oath is required to say nothing whatever as to his faith. invokes against himself punishment by a Being in whose existence he has no belief. That punishment may not be a possibility in his opinion, but he is in no way bound to say beforehand whether it is so or not. He may choose to tell us this beforehand, and if he does he has no right to complain if we refuse to allow him to profane the oath by so taking it; but if he does not choose to tell us this, we cannot claim to go behind the oath and ask him what meaning he attaches to the words he is using. True, a highly conscientious atheist might decline to take even this oath because he would not even seem to believe in that which he disbelieved. this is, so far as it goes, an argument not for but against maintaining the oath, inas much as it shows clearly that its effect is to keep out only honest and honorable atheists that is to say, precisely those who, if atheists are to enter Parliament at all we should be least desirous of excluding. But It follows then from these considerations, that the present Parliamentary oath considered as a religious test is either wholly inoperative, or so partially opera tive as to be practically worse than none. If we desire a really efficient and sufficient test against atheists, we should draw up In the next place, we may observe that it does not even incidentally and indirectly act as a religious test; for no atheist that we know of has ever refused to take it;—not an oath — but a declaration which nay, on the contrary, the atheist whose should disclaim atheism as distinctly as case is now attracting such attention to it, the declaration prescribed in the act for was willing and eager to take it, and was "disabling Papists from sitting in Paronly prevented from doing so by a vote of liament" (30 Car. I., C. 2) disclaimed the House of Commons. Surely an oath transubstantiation. Whether it would be desirable or wise to provide such a decla- | him, if he speak falsely. I say a superration is a question outside the scope of this article. All I contend for here is that, short of such a declaration, no test that we can frame could possibly "disable" atheists; and that as our present oath falls far short of this, it is as a means for "disabling" them practically worthless. It is therefore absurdly uncharitable to accuse those who would abolish it of desiring to help atheists into Parliament. natural being, for this is of the essence of the oath, as involving both certain knowledge of and power to punish falsehood here or hereafter. Invocation then and imprecation are the essential parts of every oath. The particular form of the oath and the particular ceremonies that accompany it, may vary indefinitely. The swearer may sacrifice an animal; or kiss a book; or lift his hand; or touch his There are, however, other points of head; or break a saucer. He may say view in which religion, and especially the "I swear; " or " Thou hast said; " or " So Christian religion, is deeply concerned help me God;" or "So help me God and with this question, not only of the Parlia- the holy angels;" or "God and the mentary oath but of all oaths whatsoever. saints." But all these ceremonies symThe morality of oaths; their lawfulness, bolize, and all these forms of words exeven if not immoral for us Christians, bound as we are by the words of the founder of our faith; the justice or injustice of imposing them in particular cases; and even their desirableness and expediency in many cases, all enter more or less, and some of them very deeply, into the region of religion and morality; and it is with reference to these aspects of the question, rather than with reference to any merely passing political accidents or incidents attaching to it, that I propose here to discuss it. Let us then divide our subject, as we preachers would say, under the four fol lowing heads, and ask press, one and the same idea, I invoke an all-seeing witness, I imprecate the judgment of an all-ruling judge; and I tender this invocation and imprecation to you, my fellow-men, as the strongest as surance I can give you of the truth of my words or the sincerity of my promise I give you, in short, my bond, conditioned in the heaviest conceivable penalties, that what I say is true and that what I promise I will perform. 1. This is the meaning and the object of all oaths, and it is just for this reason namely, that every oath is a promise or testimony under penalty that many ob ject to it as, in its tendency, if not in its 1. Is the imposition of an oath im very nature, immoral. It practically teaches men, they say, that there are two standards of truth; one to which they may conform when they are not on their oath and one to which they must conform when they are so; and it teaches, they allege, that in the one case there will be a penalty for lying, which there will not be in the other; or, in other words, that it matters less to tell a lie than to swear one. And the result of this double standard of truth, they further say, is that the standard of veracity in common speech is lowered for all men; that whereas every one should feel that every word he utters is spoken in the presence of God, whether he be invoked or no; and that every falsehood will be punished by him, whether such punishment be imprecated or no, and that therefore every man should speak at all times as if he were on his oath men, |