"better for a man than to eat and drink, and let his soul enjoy good in his labour." All comes from God, and the secret of happiness is to enjoy and care not, for God gives pleasure to these who will eat and drink, but heaps care and pain upon all who will care for the morrow. وو The doctrine here laid down is undoubtedly the doctrine of gross selfishness, and disregard of the interests of others. All the modern evangelical spiritual explanations fail in their aim of either modifying the Epicureanism or in toning down the theory of selfishness which is made the corner stone of happiness, and as if the writer feared some philosopher would come with other doctrines and win away his converts, he proceeds in the third chapter to bolster up his ideas by enforcing the doctrine of fatalism, "all things have their courses; their appointed "time, their fixed period. There is a time for smiles and a time for tears; there is "a time fixed for killing and a time for healing; or, in other words, he means to say that all things that happen were ordained to happen long ago. They do not happen by accident, neither are they brought about by independent human agency, but all were immutably fixed, and hence the question, seeing that all things are already resolved, why should we trouble ourselves about the evils and miseries of others? "What profit has he that "labours from that with which he wearies himself?" Yes, what profit ? Poor, miserable worm, what canst thou do? Canst thou change the course of nature or modify the condition of man? How shalt thou do this when thou art but a child of circumstances, and canst not make one hair white or black? Toil on and wake up to learn that all thy toil is valueless, and that through toil thou hast lost the pleasures which would have been thine. Toil on for the good of others, and give thy whole life away in order to win them a measure of good, but be sure in the end, says the Preacher, that thou shalt discover not only that they have not been benefited through thy labour and pain, but also that thou hast really inflicted evil upon thyself. Hence he repeats his advice, and enforces it as the result of his experience that "there is nothing better "for a man than that he should rejoice and enjoy good his life long," and all the means of happiness are supplied by God. The Preacher never preaches Atheism, but always a low form of Theism. "When a man eats and drinks, and enjoys "good through all his labour, this is the gift of God. I know that whatever God "does, that shall be for ever. Nothing can be added to it, and nothing taken "from it; and God does it that men may fear before Him. That which is, was long ago, and that which is to be has already been, and God recalls that which is "past. Therefore, O, Man, let thine heart rejoice in the good things of life; for although this is vanity, yet all else is also vanity, and there is no good or free thing under the sun which thou canst either alter, improve, or bring into another condi tion. God alone does all. tr kr This, however, is but the opening, and, as many critics urge, "is nothing more "than the utterance of a lofty spirit which is dissatisfied with the existing condi"tion of things.' It is not the whole, "but only a part, and, indeed, is but a showing up of that one side of general scepticism which affects the ardent, inquir ing mind, and which needs such medicines as are administered in the three open"ing chapters." If medicines are to be employed with a view to healing, then, indeed, those of the three opening chapters are strangely selected, for, to my mind, they seem better adapted to killing than curing. Their sole aim is to paralyse all our active powers, and the close of the third chapter has, in too many cases, achieved a success. We go out into the world, and looking as young students upon the phases of life, are apt to draw conclusions which our experience afterwards reveals to be unsound. There is injustice holding up its head and treading with its heels upon the weak and the innocent, nor do we see that power is at our disposal to check the wrong-doer and set the guiltless free. We see this, and are sorrowful; but, anon, the conviction rises in the mind that this wrong action will not ever continue, and that He who seeth in secret will do justice in the end to the wronger and the wronged. This thought rising up in the mind of earnestly inquiring youth, * Wade on "The Preacher," p. 259, edit. 1743. 66 works for good, and prevents the spread of doubt and disgust, so that our power to work for good is not destroyed. But the author of this book does his best to destroy the impression, and thus to cut away the last plank upon which youth sees any security. He says:- Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place "of justice there was iniquity, and in the place of righteousness iniquity. "Then said I in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there "shall be a time for every employment and for every work to be judged."* So far we have the ordinary conclusion, at least with those who have conceived the idea of a future life, and this idea he now controverts. He has mocked at change, at the thought of wisdom, at the hope of ultimate good achieved through labour, and now proceeds to deride the idea of ultimate justice, by arguing that there is no immortality for man. And this he asserts in language so plain, that while desirous of rendering the full meed of justice to others, I have long felt no man can fairly understand in any other sense than that I now state. The words are unmistakable, and as if to render it impossible for them to be understood in any other sense, he elsewhere repeats the ideas, and thus does his best to annihilate the hopes of immortality. The passage I allude to is found in the same chapter, and is as follows:I said in my heart, concerning the sons of men, that God wiil prove them, and see that they are like the beasts. For that which befalls the sons of men, befalls "also the beasts; one lot befalls both. As the one dies, so dies the other. Yea, "there is one spirit in them, and a man has no pre-eminence over a beast; for all "is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again. "Who knows the spirit of man whether it goeth upward, and the spirit of a beast "whether it goeth downward to the earth? And so I saw that there is nothing "better than that a man should rejoice in his labours, for that is his portion. For "who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?" I repeat my conviction, that the ideas in this passage are so distinct that I cannot see how, consistently with truth, any reasoning man can understand it otherwise than as denying the immortality of the soul. And yet I find men asserting that "there is here a dis"tinct admission of man's immortality." Chalmers uses these words, but, certainly, any man who now used the same words, would be treated as denying what Chalmers, and a host of others, say is here admitted. What is meant by the absolute assertion "That man is like unto the beast. Yea, there is one spirit in "them, and a man has no pre-eminence over a beast. All go to one place"? To say that this is " a distinct admission of man's immortality," is simply to make a complete mockery of human language, and to reverse the ideas it conveys. The immortality of the soul was not only not believed by the writer, but was positively denied; he did not merely take the negative side and say, that as a tenet he did not believe it, but the positive side, and declared that it was not true. And in doing this, he only imitated many, nay, the majority, of his Hebrew countrymen. They believed not in the heathen doctrine, for the "Pagans" were the first who taught it. As we have seen, it was believed by the Egyptians, and it is only natural to suppose that some traces of it remained amongst the Jews, not as a religious dogma, but as a philosophical idea upon which to speculate. Other nations with whom the Hebrews came in contact also believed it, and hence it was that gradually a sect arose who, as in the time of Christ, believed in the doctrine. So that although we say this author repudiated what is now one of the fixed religious ideas, we do not question his Hebrew orthodoxy, or charge him with perversion, from the common thought of his time and country. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY M. PATTIE, 31, PATERNOSTER Row, and George GLAISHER, 470, NEW OXFORD STREET, Printed by W. Ostell, Hart-street, Bloomsbury. THE PATHFINDER, A JOURNAL OF PURE THEISM AND RELIGIOUS FREETHOUGHT, THE ORGAN OF INDEPENDENT RELIGIOUS REFORM. OR, AN ENGLISH RECTOR IN SEARCH OF A CREED. CHAPTER IV. THE LESTER FAMILY. HERE, before plunging into the sea of narrative required in order to display the character of our hero, it will be for the convenience of the reader that the. history of the Lester family shall be fairly stated. George, or Colonel Lester, as he was more generally called, was the younger son of a younger son of one of the best and bravest of our old English squires. He had gentle blood in his veins but no money in his purse. His father was as brave a soldier as any who fought on the field of Plassy, and equal in honour to the best that ever wore mail. As with the Napiers, valour seemed to run in the family blood; but, unhappily, speculation had shivered their fortunes. Our hero's great-grandfather was one of the wealthiest men in England-a man who used to boast of its being in his power to endow each of his nine children with a ducal fortune; which was true enough, but they never received aught. Born in the year 1697, he was but twenty-three years of age when the South Sea Bubble burst, spreading consternation and ruin through the country. More through accident than good management, although then in possession of his large estates, he had escaped being involved in that catastrophe, and ever afterwards Squire Lester used to chuckle over the "judgment he had displayed in keeping his fingers out of that fire." On one occasion, when dining with the elder Gibbon, he roughly, but good-naturedly, asked, "how, as a business man, he could have been led into joining such a pack of thieves, to be robbed and mocked by them as he had been." The father of the historian replied, that he "had been duped because of taking the word, and reputed characters, of men as being worthy of all credit;" to which he added that," they who conceived themselves the least liable to be defrauded were not unfrequently made the heaviest victims." The old squire answered with a good-humoured, self-satisfied laugh, declaring that he was not to be taken in by words or current reputations; but, before twelve months had passed, he woke up one VOL. V. NEW SERIES. VOL. I. 2 B December morning to find that his bank had stopped payment, his gentleman steward had fled, and that he was poorer by nearly a quarter of a million than he had been when he retired to rest on the preceding night. Poor, although still rich comparatively, his mirth and liberality went together; for from that hour all his efforts were directed to the task of refilling the treasure chests of his family. The younger sons were now informed, that, to win bread, before eating it, was their first duty; and Raymond, the youngest of all, then about eighteen, made his way to India, where, as a follower of Clive, he saw service, gained wealth, and, in a somewhat painful manner, discovered that he had a liver. He was in Trichinopoly, under the brave Laurence, when it was besieged by the French in 1754, and was one of that glorious little band which suddenly turned out to resist and conquer the party that, during the night, had entered the city by escalade, and who conceived the victory to be already won when they marched through the streets-not knowing what Harrison, Lester, and others had in store for them. It was frequently said of him, after his return to England, that he was one of the twenty-three who, in 1756, escaped suffocation, out of one hundred and forty-six, confined in the black hole, or fortress-dungeon, of Fort-William, in Calcutta; but that was a popular error; for although he might have been, he was not there, and simply because of having been sent away from Fort William on service" when Surajah Dowlah began his attack. But although he was not there during that night of agony so minutely described by Holwell, he was present when the brave Clive, stirred to action by that atrocious crime, captured Calcutta itself, thus redeeming Fort William and restoring British ascendancy. Not long after he took part as one of the 750 Englishmen who fought in the battle of Plassy, when not only Bengal but the reversion of all India was won for the British nation. The night before the day of battle Captain Lester was sadly annoyed on hearing that Clive had called a Council of War -the only one he ever called-which decided upon a retreat. It was perfectly true, as urged by many who argued for retreating, that they had but 2500 natives to assist their own force of 750 Britons in fighting an army composed of 68,000 native soldiers; but, as Raymond Lester conclusively asked, "what use could there be in counting noses at a time like that, when it was the spirit of the men not their numbers which should be estimated." Grumbling at his hard fate, he began to retreat, but returned at double-quick time when the news came hurrying on that "Clive would fight," no matter what any Council said against it. The battle was gloriously fought, and Clive thanked Lester upon the field for the heroism he had displayed. He deserved it all; but while fighting bravely, he overlooked not that his object in going to India was to find a fortune; and in the latter pursuit he succeeded so well that, when the commission was on its way instructing and authorising Warren Hastings to act as Governor-General, Raymond Lester was sailing the Indian Ocean on his return home, laden with wealth and crowned with honour. In the year 1775, at the age of 37, Captain Raymond Lester led Louise, the accomplished second daughter of Colonel Vansley to the altar, "when,' as the newspapers said, "in presence of a numerous and brilliant party, they were married at St. George's, Hanover Square," and from that period up to the close of 1786, the said Louise boasted each year of having given another Lester to the world. There was nothing remarkable in their married life; Captain Lester ate curry, re-fought his battles over his Port, was frequently heard to complain of his leg (from which a ball had been extracted after Plassy), and paid his medical attendant a considerable sum annually for attending to his liver, which appeared to need a deal of regulating. It was nearly the close of 1786 when the last son of the brave Captain was born, to whom, out of compliment or gratitude to King George the Third, who, just before that happy event, at a levee, had inquired kindly of Lester about "his liver," the name of "George was given. According to the custom of the age, especially with the Church and Crown party, the child in due course was taught to look up to his king with an amount of reverence little inferior to that with which he was to look up to his God. Such was the lesson, but the pupil was not an apt learner. Not that he ever became what is called a liberal,' such a profession he scouted as alike unworthy the character of a scholar and a gentleman; he was only a discontented Tory, and had the modern system been in vogue of adopting the measures while denouncing the principles of political opponents, there is no reason to doubt of George Lester having voted for the liberal measures. Captain Raymond Lester was wealthy, but hardly capable of fairly estimating the nature of various speculations in which he was induced to embark his money. The close of the last century was fatal to the wealth of thousands. A wild revolutionary flame had spread over Europe, which operated to cramp trade, and finally ruined many of the best and most honourable merchants. Although not a trader in the strict sense, Lester suffered with others, and in one case, in consequence of the abstraction or destruction of a set of valuable deeds, he found himself minus, not only of all the profit he had realised since his return from the East, but of a considerable portion of his original capital. The men, learned in legal affairs, who were consulted, gave it as their opinion, that a court of law would restore what he had lost; but, although, through the pressing solicitations of his friends, he acted upon the legal advice, his forebodings of the future were very gloomy. He dreaded a Chancery suit even more than a return of his liver complaint. This happened in the year 1801, and believing his son George to be as able to push his fortune in India as himself had been, he applied for and obtained him a commission, hence it was that a second fortune-seeking Lester, while yet a mere boy, landed at Bombay, just when the fame of Tippoo Saib and a knowledge of the Mahrattas was being spread over the world. It cannot be said that the young officer was a soldier by choice, very few Englishmen are so. They have a marvellous power of adapting themselves to circumstances, and when soldiering becomes a duty, they can don the regimentals and perform the duties as well as others can who take more naturally to it, and generally speaking a great deal better. Lester had received an abundance of cautions before leaving home, the object of his father evidently being to teach him how to avoid contracting a liver complaint, which he declared to have been the curse of his life. The young soldier did not absolutely forget or under-estimate all those sage advices, but although particularly temperate in his habits, he did not reduce many of them to practice. He never indulged in mess-table revelry, being preserved from that by a wild, and ill-regulated, antiquarian curiosity. He had no system of study, but was moved by a love of the antique and marvellous, and this led him to devote all his spare hours to the examination of whatever was near him of the remains of Ancient India. He had not been many hours in Bombay before his arrangements were complete for visiting the islands and cave temples of Salsette and Elephanta. And in after years, while exhibiting to admiring |