LIBERTY AND OUR OWN PERCEPTIONS.

THAT men should dare to trust in their own perceptions, that they should venture upon the sea of life guided by their own reason and experience, was one of the noblest lessons taught by the ancient philosophers. The greatest Greek was perpetually insisting upon it as the first step towards real selfdevelopment; and until we make it the maxim of our schools, and have it freely proclaimed by our spiritual teachers, it will not be well with us in England. And yet, what spiritual teacher, bound, as they all are, by the fetters of a creed and articles, will undertake to become its apostle? The mere mention of such an enormity,' is sufficient to loose the hornets, and they sting without mercy. There is no doctrine so intensely hated as this, and for the simple reason that there is none so threatening to the emoluments and dignity of the modern spiritual guides. True it is, that, generally adopted, there would be more thought, more manhood, more honesty, self-respect, and individuality of character; but these are not loveable to the said spiritual guides, and are viewed as the deadly enemies of things as they are. If men dared to believe their own perceptions, then, what would become of the existing social system, which is trying to maintain itself apart from justice and nobleness of aim? What of our parliaments, without statesmen or wise patriotism? What of our aristocracies, without virtue, genius, or valour? What of our churches, which are trying to do without religion? It is not difficult to answer what would become of them. Every man knows; and, had all the courage to speak out what they know, the results would be seen in the purification of our national life. Every sensible man knows that there is but one answer to be given to such a question, and hence it is, that, through recreancy to their perceptions, they conclude it will be much better to go on as we are, than to venture upon such serious changes. We are to accept the existing condition, though bad, confessedly bad, and thus must cling firmly to the horns of the altar although the God has deserted it.

But, in such a case, does not prudence dictate the necessity of making sure that we can go on? When a man has broken his leg, he calls in the medical man, who, by the aid of splints and bandages, endeavours to persuade the broken ends to reunite. When reunion is found to be impossible, then amputation is decided upon as the only means left through which to preserve life.

VOL. III.

F

But what if the patient resolve rather to go on as he is, than to venture upon so great a change as losing a member? How long will that continue? Is there no such thing as gangrene? Happy were it for him, who is so terrorstricken at the thought of a knife, could he go on, but in all such matters nature is inexorable. Her commands are absolute-remove the useless parts. And if disobeyed, swift and sharp comes the dread messenger to close all the disobedient one's concerns with earth. Is it not even so with nations? Can they grow strong with rottenness at their hearts? Such growth would be a novelty in history. The entire past concurs in declaring that there is but one certain means of preservation, and that is to excise all which has gone dead. Let it remain, every man meanwhile seeing its condition, and behold to "go on without excision" is to go down the yawning gulf of ruin, to make a band of fellowship with worms and other companions of the dead.

In England, however, we are labouring diligently to keep the dead and the living still together! We are endeavouring to persuade ourselves that the dead are not dead, although our own perception is so clear. We must not believe what we see, only believe what we are told to believe. Bishops are great spiritual chiefs, who teach us nobly, and lead us into all kinds of beautiful action, and finally land us in heaven; they are unspotted human exemplars of every virtue, full of charity, long-suffering, love, and tenderness-according to the theory. Our perceptions lead us to conclude otherwise, but we are not to believe them at all; are to "tread them down as insinuations of the father "of lies," and so go on, believing the Episcopal fathers to be the embodiments of virtue. All around us is an ocean of Cant, which all men know to be Cant. Turn which way we may, and there is a lie upon our path. The great British and Foreign Bible Society, the Missionary, and similar Societies, are all full of love for the heathen; the officials are all "anxiously desirous of speading "the scriptures," but, as it now turns out, they are equally anxious to receive their salaries of from £400 to £600 per annum. All men knew this, all perceive the nature of the masks that are worn; but who dare to utter what they know?

Instead of uttering their convictions, the great majority employ themselves in trying to cheat their consciences. They build a church to God, a chapel to the devil, and try to keep friendly with both. It pays better, and is a means of preserving peace. So is a strong dose of opium: it is an excellent means of procuring quietness. They labour to persuade themselves that things are not so bad as they seem; or that, even if they are, all will come right by-and-bye, without any meddling of theirs. The church teaches them to pray, "Give us peace in our time, oh Lord!" why then trouble thenselves about the unborn centuries? They succeed in half-persuading themselves that a mixture of good and evil is beneficial, and when they are getting on very famously in pecuniary matters, they come to believe that there is no evil except in speaking against what is established, or in acting according to their perceptions and reason.

Indeed some men boldly protest, that "if we take our own perceptions, our "own convictions as our guides, we shall infallibly be ruined." And in order to establish this monstrous proposition, they cite cases from history, in which the evil consequences of error are exhibited. Let it be granted that, through following their own perceptions, men have mistaken the course of the planets, the consequences of certain political measures, and so forth; but is the evil all upon one side? Put all of this kind of evil which can be collected into one scale, and then all the evils which have resulted to men from following the guidance

of ignorant priests, ambitious statesmen, and charlatan leaders of all kindsdespite their own perceptions-into the other scale, and which will kick the beam? There is no doubt in the mind of any about the result, and should be none about the course of conduct it prescribes. We may put on the blinkers and refuse to see, but our folly does not remove impediments from the path. And so with the evils of which such loud complaint is heard, we can see and estimate them all; their origin and growth are well known; and when we summon up courage to walk by our own light, their day of despotisin will rapidly draw to its close.

Our strength lies in believing our own perceptions. In that way only can we become men. The present false system leads to the destruction of individual freedom. Society is rapidly destroying the man, in order to convert him into a pin or a cog in the mechanism. He must not decide for himself, but his party shall decide for him, and he must abide by their decision. They may decide that David was a most excellent man; that the murder of the first-born in Egypt was a Divine act of love and mercy; and that people will be sent to hell entirely irrespective of what they are and do; and, having decided, he is called forward to sign, swear, and be obedient. Cranmer told Edward VI. that if he would sign the warrant for the burning of Anne Askew, he, as Archbishop, would be answerable to God. This is the modern doctrine. We must sacrifice our own convictions, and society will then be answerable for us. But what if the bond be refused, and we are held responsible for ourselves-what then?

Away with such folly, and let us remember that all men who have been worthy of blessing have been at war with society. Our Wickliffe found that truth was upon one side, and society upon the other; between these he stood to survey, and then went over unto that which lives for ever. The brave Savonarola, the brave Huss, the brave Servetus, with others equally noble, found that men were fondly clinging to the false, and fondly caressing it as the true; all these saw a truth which was not perceived by others, and, disregarding the accursed doctrine that men must abandon their own perceptions, in order to be guided by the voice of authority, they clave with their hearts unto the reality of things, and died as martyrs while vindicating the right of man to adhere to his own perceptions. When Luther rose up to teach, he was speedily made conscious of the fact that society and he must part company. It might come over to his truth; he could not go over to its bigotry and ignorance-could not even recognise its authority. Columbus and Harvey, Stephenson and Brindley, all, in fact, who have done anything in the world, have had to commence with the system of believing their own perceptions. There is not a single truth we possess, not a step in progress we have taken, not a single blessing we inherit, that was secured in any other way. All we have rests upon freedom and individuality. Society, in its collective capacity, breeds only death; it is through the individual that new life is imparted. It was not through swimming with the tide that Hampden achieved his renown. And we, who would be worthy of claiming him as one of our national heroes, shall do well to remember that it is only by turning away from the old paths that we can achieve discoveries.

In every man there is an unknown quantity of power, which needs freedom for its manifestation; society would crush it, but the treasure is for each to employ as he lists. Go on with the stream, and life is scarcely worth living for. To be the bond-slaves of a lie, is, of all slavery, the most intolerable. The black man, with manacled limbs, is acknowledged by all men to be a sad

sight in the nineteenth century, and we, who dwell in England, are inclined to believe that the slave-life is an intolerable burden, which points to suicide as a happy relief. But what is a manacled limb to a manacled soul? To be enslaved in thought is a millionfold worse than to wear fetters round the body. And the calamity about this is, that the men who wear the chains have helped to rivet them on. They are their own enemies and taskmasters. For who can enslave him whose soul scorns the fetters? The white Englishman who submits as the willing slave of popular opinion-who dares not utter his convictions into the ears of society; who shrinks from the truth as from a calamity-is, to our thinking, the most painful exhibition upon which the eye can rest. And when he is conscious that he is flattering hypocrisy, is bending the adulatory knee before Cant, or is doing the amiable and polite to well-known knaves and fools, the wonder to our mind is, that the earth yawns not to swallow him up. He is one of the most grievous eye-sores in creation, for when the soul is subjected to the unreal, to the unwise, or to the impure, then, indeed, Darkness has triumphed over Light, and the Shechinah has been .rampled upon by the feet of unclean swine.

Time was when the great majority of Englishmen were brave enough, and unselfish enough, at all hazards, to utter their heartfelt convictions. Without fear, and without guile, they shewed the world what nobility is possible to mankind, and how greatly the humblest may exalt their lives. Such a time will again bless us with its light, and environ us with its glory. We have slept long, and are now in the uneasy condition that precedes the awakening. We, too, shall become free from thraldom, and strong for their inevitable fight. Light and truth are with us in abundance; all that we now require to ensure our safety and progress is their recognition, and a faithful adherence to our own perceptions. Give us but that, and, immediately, there would be supplied a body of matter to form the most glorious page in our national story. The spectral forms and hideous abortions unto which, in our sleeping condition, we have bowed the knee, as unto real statesmen, God-ordained priests, and wise teachers, and which have filled the air with the taint of expediency, the poison of Jesuitries, and the most demoralising theories of life, would vanish away before that morning dawn of reality, and once more England would be rightly hailed as the land of truth, of freedom, and of manhood. That time will come, for there's life in the old land yet, with that willingnesss to learn which gives securities for progress. And as we move onward to the completion of our greater victories, what can we do better than to give ear to the sages of old, whose voices still rise ahove the din of battle, the wild exultation of triumphant revolutions, and the mighty crash when empires fell, and who are still heard teaching the all-important truths that the man who will rise must begin with faith in his own perceptions, and that the nation which would defy the ruinous encroachments of the times must never shrink from the duty of extirpating that which has perished through being lightningriven, in order to leave ample room for the free growth of that which is vital and strong.

P. W. P.

NOTICE. The PATHFINDER, Vol. I. and II. in cloth may now be had from our Publishers, Vol. I. 5s., Vol. II. 5s. 6d. Those of our Subscribers whose sets are defective, are advised to complete them without delay, as some numbers will soon be out of sale.

STUDIES OF CHURCH HISTORY.-XVII.

JULIAN "THE APOSTATE."

WE feel it is but just to a great man, whose name and character have been so much traduced and maligned by Church historians, and in connection with the history of the Church, as have those of JULIAN, "the Apostate" socalled, to review the facts connected with his career, and place his actions in their proper light. It is to this subject that we now invite our readers' attention. Julian was the nephew of the elder Constantine, of the collateral branches of whose family he and his brother Gallus were the only survivors after the wholesale murder of his relations effected by Constantius on seizing Constantinople after his father's death. Born in the year 331, Julian was six years of age on the death of his uncle Constantine in the year 337-his brother being at the same time twelve years old. The tender age of the one, and the bodily infirmities of the other (for Gallus was a sickly youth), seem to have disarmed the hatred, or moved the compassion of Constantius; and the two orphan children were allowed to live. Niebuhr says, that "the fact "that Constantius had no children had saved their lives ;" a statement which derives some support from the circumstance that he afterwards adopted them as his own children, and raised them successively to the rank of Cæsar. The probability is, however, that Eusebia, the wife of Constantius (who afterwards befriended Julian), moved her husband to spare these two helpless ones; and her intercession in their behalf would have the more weight, because Constantius must have been aware that the execution of these two orphans would have been esteemed, even by the worst of men, an act of inexcusable barbarity, and would thus have subjected him to the execration of all mankind. Whether we are to attribute this fact to the fear, the compassion, or the policy of Constantius, however, matters but little, for his character (as our readers know) was such that it is impossible to blacken it further, and were this not so, he would be so far beneath contempt as to make it a matter of indifference now in what light his character were viewed. These two thenJulian and Gallus-of all the brothers and nephews of Constantine, were saved from the general massacre of the collateral branches of the Flavian family.

Constantius, who, though a very bad man, was (as we have seen) a very zealous Christian after the fashion of those days and in the cause of Arianism, was very anxious that these two boys should be brought up in the same views. They were accordingly placed under the tuition of Eusebius, the Arian bishop of Nicomedia. Under the care of Eusebius they remained until Julian had arrived at the age of 14, Gallus being 19, when, as the historian informs us, their growing years excited the jealousy of Constantius, and he judged it more prudent to secure these unhappy youths in the strong castle of Macellum, near Cæsarea. This place had been in former times the residence of the kings of Cappadocia. Here for six years they were kept close prisoners, subjected to strict ecclesiastical surveillance.* "Their very sports," says Neander, were made to wear the colour of devotional exercises; as when they were "taught to emulate each other in erecting a chapel over the tomb of Mamas, a pretended martyr, held in special veneration throughout this district."+ Though Constantius himself had not been baptised, he took care that this ordinance of the Church should be administered to his nephews, so solicitous was he that they should be made into perfect Christians; or, rather, being "less jealous of a heavenly than of an earthly crown,' he was willing to remain without the pale of the Church, while, by driving his nephews into it, he sought to prevent any ambitious thoughts of Empire from taking possession