APPENDIX (continued 2)

The first bishop of the Roman Church in the diocese of Moray (dating about A.D. 1115) by some means obtained possession of the Culdee Church, which had long been established at Birnie, near Elgin—a simple building of wood and clay. The present church was built about A.D. 1150. Here the first four bishops lived and died in all simplicity; but Richard, the fifth bishop, removed the seat of the diocese to Spynie, and there a stately palace was erected overlooking the lake, and in 1215 a site was chosen for a cathedral. But Andrew de Moravia, the seventh bishop (a son of the powerful family of Duffus^[82]), deeming this site too isolated, and otherwise inconvenient of access for the people, obtained the sanction of Pope Honorius (about 1224) to build the cathedral at Elgin on the fertile 428banks of the river Lossie. This was accordingly done, and the noble building was completed ere the middle of the century, as were also twenty-two manses as residences for the canons, all enclosed within the great precinct wall. The canons were the clergy of parishes in all parts of the diocese.

But misfortunes soon began, for the cathedral and the manses were partially burnt in 1270, and in 1390 the ruthless Wolf of Badenoch (Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan) raided the town and set fire to the cathedral, destroying the nave and roof and all woodwork. The great steeple, which is said to have been a hundred and ninety-eight feet in height, was cracked by the heat, but the western steeples and beautiful stone arches resisted the fire. All the manses were totally destroyed.

Only twelve years elapsed ere the town was again raided by another “noble savage,” namely, Alexander Macdonald, son of the Lord of the Isles, who plundered whatever had escaped the covetous Wolf. After this the work of rebuilding the cathedral progressed slowly, the most energetic worker being Bishop John Innes, who was consecrated in 1407 and died in 1414—a brief seven years, in the course of which he also erected the Bishop’s House in Elgin, and carried out important works at Spynie.

At the time of the Reformation no damage was done to the noble pile, but eight years later, in 1568, the Privy Council ordered that all lead should be stripped from the cathedral churches of Elgin and Aberdeen and sold for the maintenance of soldiers, the sheriffs and bishops being commanded to assist the spoilers. It seems certain that the nave and side aisles were covered with slates and the chapterhouse with freestone slabs, and that the lead only covered wooden spires crowning the three steeples to protect them from rain and frost. Every trace of spires and steeples has disappeared, doubtless from that cause.

This mean and sacrilegious theft was the first step towards 429the destruction of the grand old cathedral, and met its just reward, in that the vessel on which the lead was shipped at Aberdeen for sale in Holland foundered on its voyage.

In 1637 a terrible gale unroofed the choir and blew down the rafters. On 28th December 1640 Gilbert Ross, the iconoclastic Presbyterian minister of Elgin, in company with the lairds of Brodie, of Innes, and others, took upon him to destroy the beautiful carved woodwork, their special spite being directed against the Rood screen, separating the nave from the choir, on one side of which was depicted the Day of Judgment, and on the other the Crucifixion—all in colours and gold so rich that neither had faded or tarnished, although for well-nigh eighty years they had been exposed to rain and snow, sun and frost, which had free access to the unroofed temple.

Mr. Ross, being of a utilitarian spirit, had the woodwork cut up and brought to his own house as fuel. In those days, ere lucifer matches were invented, it was very desirable to keep sufficient fire smouldering all night to secure a kindling for the following morning, but it was found that the wood so sacrilegiously hewn down would not keep alight, so that it was necessary each morning to kindle fresh fire by means of the cumbersome flint and steel, which required such patience ere light could be obtained.

When, ten or twelve years later, a party of Cromwell’s soldiers were quartered here, they could find nothing left for them to destroy save the beautiful stone tracery of the great windows, and this they did most effectually, especially in the western window over the grand porch.

In 1711 the great steeple fell, crushing the whole body of the building, and for the next hundred years this mass of finely-hewn stone served as a convenient quarry for the builders of modern houses in the town, while the cathedral precincts became the receptacle for all the dirt and rubbish of the town.

Not till the beginning of the present century was there 430a trace of even antiquarian reverence for this sacred spot. Then, happily, an enlightened provost was elected (Mr. King of New-mill) who commenced the work of protection, and in course of time the Board of Public Works was induced to take the matter in hand and undertake such repairs as have prevented further decay, and preserve at least a memorial of how nobly our ancestors could once build.

Though all the bishops were buried here, few of their tombs bear any inscriptions. Among those of most special interest are a large, bluish slab on the south side of the choir, beneath which lies the quiet dust of Bishop Andrew de Moravia, the founder, under whose energetic supervision it is probable that the stately building was completed. Once it was covered with fine brass, but that, of course, was soon pillaged.

Another grave of interest, which can still be recognised by a sculptured stone showing a recumbent figure in episcopal robes, is that of Columba Dunbar, who was Bishop in A.D. 1430. He was a son of the Earl of March, and nephew of John Dunbar, Earl of Moray, and was himself a powerful noble who, on his journeys to Rome and to the Council of Basle, travelled with a retinue of thirty servants. He died in his palace at Spynie, and was buried in the cathedral, in the north transept, in the aisle of St. Thomas the Martyr, now known as “Dunbar’s Aisle.”

Near his dust lies that of Sir Alexander Dunbar of Westfield, son of the fifth Earl of Moray. He died in 1498, and is represented as a recumbent figure in armour, having his armorial bearings on his breast-plate. Both these monuments were much injured by the fall of the great steeple, which totally destroyed so much that was interesting and beautiful.

Among the modern memorials is a slab of red granite in the chancel, above the high altar. It was placed there in 1868 to the memory of the Rev. Lachlan Shaw, who died 431in 1777, aged ninety-one, and was buried here. He was the author of a very valuable History of the Province of Moray, up to his own times.

Two burials of interest in the last century were those of the very latest Duke of Gordon and his wife. He died in London, 28th May 1836. His body was brought by sea, and landed near Gordon Castle, whence it was conveyed to Elgin. On 31st January 1864 Elizabeth, his widow, died at Huntly Lodge, and she was buried beside the Duke in the last available space in the family vault beneath the ruins of the cathedral.

Lastly, I must not fail to claim reverent notice for the humble grave of a truly devout lover of the cathedral, namely, John Shanks, one of the earliest keepers appointed to protect the ruins, when the whole place was still a wilderness of dirt and rubbish overgrown with tall grass, brambles, and rank nettles. By his own exertions, without any one to help him, this frail old man gradually cleared away the rubbish, laying bare the original outlines of the building, and collecting such sculptured stones as had escaped the spoilers. On his tomb is the epitaph written by Lord Cockburn:—

“Here lyes

JOHN SHANKS, Shoemaker in Elgin,

Who died 14th April 1841, aged 83 years.

“For seventeen years he was the keeper and the shower of this Cathedral, and while not even the Crown was doing anything for its preservation, he, with his own hands, cleared it of many thousand cubic yards of rubbish, disclosing the bases of the pillars, collecting the carved fragments, and introducing some order and propriety.

“Whoso reverences the Cathedral will respect the memory of this man.”

The fine parish church of St. Giles, which likewise was destroyed by the malignant “Wolf,” was ere long rebuilt, and held its position as “The Muckle Kirk” till the year 1826, an ugly but venerable building, which for six hundred 432years had been the centre of worship in its successive phases—Roman Catholic, Reformed, Episcopal, and Presbyterian. The two latter prevailed alternately from A.D. 1560 to the present day, changing seven times, and the internal fittings of the church having to be altered accordingly, with very quaint effect.

Of course the chief changes were effected after the Reformation, when all the altars were removed, and the side aisles, formerly left free for private worship, were filled with hideous pews, as were also the galleries erected in every available corner, and apportioned to all the trades. There was the shoemakers’ loft (always well filled), the glovers’ loft (these were once a numerous body, but they dwindled away till only two remained, and when they died that craft disappeared from the town). The blacksmiths had their loft, as had also the tailors and weavers, who sat in a corner so dark that they could see nothing. For the carpenters a special loft was erected, A.D. 1751, perched so very high as to seem extremely insecure. The merchants of the town occupied a gallery, which was hence called “the guildry loft,” and the magistrates sat in state in a great pew of carved oak, beneath a canopy of the same. There was a considerable amount of old carved oak about the church, and the emblems of the various crafts were carved on all the trades’ lofts. The north galleries were apportioned to the chief heritors of the parish, namely, the Earls of Fife, Seafield, and Moray, and their tenants and friends.

Prior to 1753 the roof of the church was of open woodwork, showing the strong rafters, from which hung antique brass chandeliers, suspended by chains of twisted iron. Though picturesque, the open roof was voted draughty, so it was then plastered, and altogether the appearance of the building was as unlike our reawakened views of seemly church architecture as could well be imagined, notwithstanding five massive pillars and arches on either side. Four of these on each side were square, and the central one 433circular. They and the walls were supposed to date from the twelfth century, having withstood the flames which destroyed the roof and all woodwork when, in 1390, the church was burnt by the ruthless Wolf of Badenoch.

Accustomed as we are to fine churches, brilliantly lighted for all evening services, it is strange to think that till a quarter of the nineteenth century had elapsed, this, the principal church of the county, was only lighted once a year,^[83] on the evening of the first Sunday of November, when the half-yearly celebration of the Holy Communion involved extra services. Then only were candles placed in the four old chandeliers, twelve in each. The pulpit and the precentor’s seat were likewise illuminated. The magistrates and all master tradesmen had their own candlesticks, as had also each family and many private individuals, so that the gloom was in a measure dispelled by about five hundred flickering candles, most of which must have been tallow, with long wicks constantly requiring snuffing, while the poorer folk could only afford rush-lights, so the light could not have been very brilliant; and as doubtless many candles were snuffed with fingers, the result, combined with the then prevalent habit of spitting on the floor, is not suggestive of cleanliness!

Now that lightning has become man’s ministering servant, and one magic touch floods home, church, or street with vivid electric light, it is really very difficult to realise how different all this was even in the last century. I myself can recollect the housemaid’s box containing flint and steel and tinder, with which to kindle a spark should the smouldering kitchen fire have died out in the night. Just imagine how wearisome was such a process on a cold winter morning, and how great was the advance when the first large, coarse, lucifer matches were invented. Well do I remember their strong sulphurous smell, and that of the servants’ tallow candles, flaring and guttering. And in all 434the cottages the only lamp was that small iron cruisie, specimens of which are now treasured as antiquarian curios.

The old church narrowly escaped being the scene of a dire tragedy, for on a certain Sunday in 1669, just after the congregation had “scaled” (i.e. dispersed), the roof of the nave fell in with an awful crash. The timber (which for three hundred years had supported the heavy slabs of freestone which were used instead of slates) had decayed, and at last suddenly gave way. The annals of the burgh record a meeting, “in the South Yle of Saint Geilles Church,” for considering the rebuilding of the said church, “laittlie fallen.”

Five years elapsed ere the necessary repairs were effected, after which all was secure till 1826, when symptoms of decay were again detected in the roof, and though the walls, pillars, and arches were so strong that they would doubtless have stood for centuries, and the old church could have been preserved at comparatively small expense, the town authorities decided, to the dismay of the people, that the whole must be pulled down, and a modern church of Grecian design be erected in its stead. The Holy Communion was celebrated for the last time in the venerated building of such varied memories, on the 1st October 1826, and the following day our good old friend Dr. Rose, minister of Drainie (near Gordonstoun), preached the thanksgiving sermon, and few of his hearers failed to share in the regret he expressed at the doom of the time-hallowed building. But no time was allowed for reconsideration, and no sooner had the congregation dispersed than the contractor commenced his work of demolition by unslating the roof, and two months later the destruction was complete, and included the carting away of a vast quantity of human bones from beneath the church and the surrounding street, which for five hundred years had been the hallowed “God’s-acre” of the burgh.

435Just two years later, October 1828, the first service was held in the new church, the congregation being summoned by the self-same bells which had called their forefathers for so many generations to worship. The account of them, culled by Mr. Robert Young from the annals of the burgh, is so interesting that I venture to quote it:—

“The larger one, for sweetness and clearness of tone, is equal to any in Scotland. It is said to have been recast in 1589 or 1593. The little bell, called ‘the minister’s bell,’ bears the following inscription—‘Thomas de Dunbar, me fecit. 1402.’ It therefore was the gift of the Earl of Moray, and is a venerable relic of Roman Catholic times.

“The big bell was rent in 1713 by a woman striking it violently with a large key, for the purpose of rousing the inhabitants to quench a fire which had broken out in the town during the night. It was recast 17th August 1713, at the head of Forsyth’s Close, by Albert Gelly, founder, from Aberdeen, the expense being defrayed by the magistrates; and it is stated that upon this occasion many of the rich inhabitants of Elgin repaired to the founding-place, and cast in guineas, crowns, and half-crowns, and the poorer people smaller silver coins during the time the metal was smelting, which contributed to enrich the sound as well as the substance.

“On the king’s birthday, 4th June 1784, it was over-rung and rent by the boys of the town, when it was taken down and recast at London on the 17th October the following year, having the names of the magistrates cast upon it. The expense was again paid by the town. Since that time no further accident has occurred. It has continued to pour out its sweet sounds daily, morning and evening, and to summon on Sundays the congregations of the various churches in the burgh to public worship, and may continue to do so for ages to come.”

It must be confessed that from a picturesque point of view Old Elgin in the first half of the seventeenth century must have been a very much more interesting town than it is now. Besides the fine old houses of the cathedral dignitaries—the dean and canons—all the principal county families had their “house in town,” occupying both sides of the High Street, and foot-passengers walked beneath low arcades formed under the projecting houses. All these were pulled down by degrees.

Curiously enough, though there is nothing to suggest that Elgin was ever enclosed by walls, it had four gateways, 436which were all standing till about a hundred years ago—namely, the East Port, the West Port, the Lossie Wynd Port, and the School Wynd Port. It is supposed that each had a portcullis, which was pulled down at night, but if so, they had been removed at some earlier period. These gateways being narrow, and a hindrance to modern traffic, their removal was decreed towards the end of last century.

Speaking of the separate “lofts” in the old church assigned to each trade, the gradual changes in these, as recorded in the annals, are interesting. In the thirteenth century we find mention of gardeners, carpenters, builders, armourers, shoemakers (called sutors), tailors (called cissors), and glaziers, whose rare art entitled them to a French or Latin name—vitrearii. About the year 1650 seven crafts were recognised in the burgh—i.e. saddlers, smiths, metallers, tailors, shoemakers, weavers, and butchers. But by the end of the century only six are named—namely, smiths, tailors, glovers, shoemakers, weavers, and carpenters—and these held the “exclusive right of exercising their own trade,” any outsider venturing to encroach on their privileges being forthwith prosecuted—a tyranny which became intolerable, and was finally swept away after the Reform Bill was passed.

While the Loch of Spynie was still an arm of the sea, bringing cargoes from France, Holland, and Germany, there and to Lossiemouth, within two miles of Elgin, there was a considerable foreign trade; but even allowing for a large export, the amount of malt manufactured in the town was startling. There were between thirty and forty kilns and barns, each substantial stone buildings about a hundred feet in length, for malting and drying the grain; and in A.D. 1697, out of a population of three thousand persons, no less than eighty were professional brewers and distillers. One of these showed that within three months he had brewed four thousand gallons of ale and four hundred gallons of aqua vitæ, alias whisky. Considering the very large amount of foreign 437wines, brandy, and gin, which were imported from abroad, either above-board or by smugglers, we may infer that the home consumption of our ancestors was considerably in excess of that of their degenerate descendants.

I record this with something of the feeling of the man who, when he heard any very bad story, always said: “Now, I DO like to hear that. I say to myself, ‘I know I am bad, but I am NOT so bad as that!’”

It is, however, satisfactory and interesting to learn that early in the eighteenth century the malting-trade had so fallen off that the kilns were given over to the weavers, and were filled with their looms, each a centre of busy work, and this continued till well into the nineteenth century, when hand-looms gradually disappeared before the steady advance of spinning-jennies and other machinery.

It is really very difficult to realise how few of the modern comforts which we deem necessities existed a hundred years ago. Even in so important a burgh as Elgin there seems to have been no attempt at lighting the streets, and the first reference thereto in the burgh annals is in November 1775, when the Council considered the propriety of so doing, and decided to lay the matter before the principal inhabitants and the trades, in consequence of which, in the following February, “Mr. William Robertson was authorised, when he went to London, to purchase twenty lamps, and also to buy caps for these lamps.” This tentative effort was, however, soon given up, and once again the streets were left in total darkness through the long, long hours of winter nights.

Prior to eight o’clock, there was here and there a faint ray from a solitary lamp or candle in some shop window, but after that hour all was darkness, and if any convivial entertainment was prolonged till after dark (remember that sixty years ago the dinner-hour was generally about 3 P.M., and tea and card-parties began at 6), each party of guests was escorted home by a servant carrying a lantern; and very necessary was this precaution, for not only were there no 438side pavements for foot-passengers, and carts were left standing all night at the sides of the streets, but filth of every description was there accumulated.

But in 1830 a giant step in advance was made, and the town was lighted with gas. At that time almost every one who journeyed at all did so on horseback; so there were scarcely any private carriages in the town—only a few post-chaises for hire at the principal inn, and to hire one of these for conveyance to an evening party would have been deemed ostentatious extravagance. Even two sedan-chairs, which were imported for this purpose about 1818, obtained small patronage.

As regards the state of the streets, the town annals contain various suggestive entries. In September 1776 the magistrates resolved to stop the practice of thrashing and winnowing corn upon the street, and there depositing heaps of stones and manure. They therefore empowered “the officer who keeps the keys to secure and detain whatever corn and straw may be found thrashing upon the street, and the dung or stones flung thereon, until trial.”

In the following year the barking of dogs at night on the High Street was declared to be so annoying that their owners were required to keep them indoors, under a penalty of five shillings fine, and that the offending dog be shot.

In 1778 the Council took note of the spouts or scuttles projecting from holes in the side-walls of many houses, through which all manner of filth was constantly ejected into the street, endangering the clothes of passers-by. It was therefore ordained that these holes should all be filled up. Large dunghills or “middens” were, however, allowed to lie undisturbed in all the narrow wynds, at the doors of the houses, breeding frequent fevers.

In 1818 it was recorded that the streets were full of holes, dangerous to carriages and horses; and even so late as 1822 there were no side pavements, and the safest place to walk was the raised ridge in the centre of the street known as 439the “kantle of the causey,” or crown of the causeway, which was in fact a ridge of stepping-stones, which in wet weather afforded the only means of picking one’s way dryshod. The road sloping downward on either side ended in wide open gutters, which carried streams of rain-water and sewage to open ditches and larger gutters (which were often so flooded as to be impassable), whence they flowed into the river Lossie.

Yet—we must hope it was from some higher point!—water was daily brought from the Lossie in pails for cooking purposes, and clothes were carried to the river-bank to be washed. There were comparatively few wells in the town, either public or private, and it was not till 1850 that the town was fully supplied with pure water.

As regards firing, our ancestors were wholly dependent on peat and wood. It was not till the year 1754 that a ship loaded with coals came to Lossiemouth, the first cargo of the kind known to have been received at that port. The demand was so small that “the importer could not dispose of 100 barrels, but the country soon found out the value of the fuel. On 11th July 1768 the magistrates purchased from Thomas Stephen, senior, merchant in Elgin, 40 chalders of coals, deliverable at Lossiemouth, for behoof of the inhabitants of Elgin, at the price of 21 shillings and sixpence Scots (1s. 9½d. per barrel), a very considerable price for those days. On the 10th September they purchased 22 chalders additional from Alexander Davidson, shipmaster in Aberdeen, at 1s. 10d. per barrel.”

To ensure early hours, it was the duty of the town drummer to rouse the inhabitants at 4 A.M., and to go the round of the town a second time at 5 A.M., lest perchance they might have fallen asleep again; and in like manner at 9 P.M. he and his drum went round to give notice to all wise folk that it was time to sleep, because

“Early to bed and early to rise

Makes a man healthy, and wealthy, and wise,”

440and that

“He who would thrive must rise at five,

Though he who has thriven may lie till seven.”

The town annals record that in 1769 George Edward, tailor, was appointed to this office, and as regards the healthiness of the system, there could not be a better example than himself, for he never knew ache or sickness till disabled by old age, and his son, who succeeded him in office, carried on the tradition of his father.

In those days few people ever left their homes. In the whole parish of Elgin there were not more than four gigs in use, and it was a very rare thing for any one to go so far as Edinburgh; few indeed had ever visited London. There was no public conveyance north of Aberdeen. A mail-coach was started about 1812 to run between Aberdeen and Inverness. This it did very slowly, being run by only a pair, and those between Elgin and Torres are said to have been very decrepit old horses.

About the year 1819 a four-horse coach was started, which, leaving Inverness at 6 A.M., reached Aberdeen at 10 P.M. The original mail-coach followed suit, and the competition improved matters. About 1826 “The Star” was started, to leave Aberdeen at 8 A.M. and reach Elgin at 5 P.M. Other local coaches were started, but were frequently half empty. In 1835 “The Defiance” was started. Well do I remember it with its first-class team, and the scarlet coats of the cheery driver and guard, whose brass horn was the signal that news from the south was arriving.

In those days postage was so costly that letters were few and far between. So small was the correspondence even in the beginning of the nineteenth century, that the mailbags containing a very few letters were carried by a post-rider on horseback three times a week. And now our half-a-dozen heavy posts each day are too few for the present generation, who must needs telegraph about every trifle, often to the exceeding disgust of the country recipients of totally unnecessary 441messages, for which they have to pay large sums as porterage.

“The Defiance” continued to keep up its credit, till it was driven aside by the arrival of the railway, which was somewhat late in the day, as the idea that so gigantic an undertaking could ever pay, was considered preposterous, more especially the Highland line between Forres and Perth, crossing barren mountains. However, energetic men pushed the matter, and bit by bit from the year 1846 onwards, local railways were made, and finally in 1865 all were amalgamated under the name of The Highland Railway Company, with branches in every direction, and crowds of busy folk and tourists from every corner of the world—a change indeed since 1800! with the solitary post-runner and an occasional gig or post-chaise.

One very important reason against travelling on wheels was that till quite recent times there were no bridges: small streams were crossed on stepping-stones, and large ones by ferry-boats, and when rivers were in flood, passengers had to wait till the waters subsided, sometimes being detained for days in most uncomfortable quarters, while each year had a record of persons drowned in rashly attempting to ford the rivers.

With the exception of an old wooden bridge which crossed the Spey at Boat of Bridge, and which was ruined at the time of the Reformation, and a few other slight wooden bridges, there were none north of Aberdeen till the early part of the sixteenth century, when the first stone bridge over the Lossie was erected—a single arch founded on each side on the rock, and consequently so secure that it remains in use to this day. Unmindful of the wisdom of the earlier builders, a two-arch stone bridge across the Lossie was built in 1814, but being founded on gravel, it was swept away in the flood of 1829. Now we have stone or metal bridges for road or rail in every direction.

442

Note E

Anne Seymour Conway was the only child and heiress of Field-Marshal Conway, second son of the first Lord Conway. In 1747 he married Lady Caroline Campbell, daughter of John, Duke of Argyle, and widow of the Earl of Aylesbury. By her previous marriage she had another daughter, who married the third Duke of Richmond. The mother and daughters were all beautiful.

Anne Seymour Conway married the Honourable John Damer, eldest son of Lord Damer, afterwards Earl of Dorchester. He proved a worthless spendthrift, and on his father refusing to pay £70,000 for his gambling debts, he shot himself, after a riotous supper at the Bedford Arms in Covent Garden. Thus his young widow was left free to devote her long life to her loved art, and to the congenial society of the most cultivated of her generation.

When quite a young girl she had been taught by Mrs. Samon to model dainty statuettes in wax; but when only eighteen, being provoked by a sneer from David Hume, the historian, she set herself to chisel his bust in marble, and succeeded so admirably that she then studied anatomy under the best masters available. Her uncle, Charles Fox, and her cousin, Horace Walpole, encouraged her wish to excel, and the former was wont to say that “he prided himself more upon her talent than upon his ancient descent.”

She worked very rapidly, and produced spirited groups of horses and deer. Among her best-known busts are those of Mrs. Siddons, Miss Berry, Miss Farren, Horace Walpole, one of Charles Fox, which she gave to Napoleon, three of Nelson, one of which she presented to William IV., and which is now at Windsor Castle; another is in the Council Chamber at the Guildhall. She executed a statue of George III., a bust of Queen Caroline, and many others.

The two heads of Thamesis and Isis on Henley Bridge are her handiwork, the latter being a portrait of her friend, 443Miss Freeman of Fawley Court. The Academy in Florence awarded high honour to her life-like dog; while Horace Walpole gave her osprey eagle the place of honour in his gallery at Strawberry Hill.

On his death he left to her that fascinating home with all its contents, but on the death of her mother, who lived there with her, she made it over to the next heir, Lord Waldegrave, together with £2000 per annum assigned for its upkeep. She then bought York House, Twickenham.

In 1828, being eighty years of age, she died and was buried in the church at Sundridge, Kent, where her mother was already laid, probably because Coombe Bank in that parish had long been in the possession of the Argyll family.

Her tablet in the chancel of the church describes her as

“Sculptrix et Statuaria Illustris Femina.”

By her desire, her working tools, apron, and the leash of her favourite little dog, Fidele, were buried with her.

Note F Conditional Immortality

Most Christians have been brought up to such implicit belief in our being all necessarily immortal, that the mere suggestion that the plain literal teaching of the Bible is that immortality is a conditional, special gift, is generally received with grave disapproval. Yet if the references to this subject are read without preconceived convictions, all seem to prove that although God created man capable of Eternal Life, man did not secure the gift, and I find nothing whatever to show that immortality either of soul or body was then conferred on him.

The story of man’s first disobedience simply records the warning, “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die,” followed by the curse, “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.” There is not a word that could 444possibly suggest that immortality was conferred on him, to enable him to endure eternal punishment for temporal sin. On the contrary, everything goes to show that the Gift of Immortality was specially reserved. “Lest” (having now sinned) “he take also of the Tree of Life, and eat, and live for ever,” man was driven out of Paradise, and cherubim and a flaming sword were placed to guard the approach to the Tree of Life.

Observe that before he sinned he was not debarred from eating of it. He had the option of doing so, but did not.

No sooner had the Devil succeeded in inducing man to subject himself to the penalty of death, than One stronger than he undertook to take man’s nature upon Him that by His perfect Sacrifice He might “destroy death, and him that had the power of death, that is, the Devil,” and obtain the right to bestow on man the Gift of Immortality. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have Everlasting Life.” In Romans ii. 7 St. Paul says that to those who by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for Immortality, God gives Eternal Life.

Again, in the plainest and simplest words we are told that “The wages of sin is death” (simple death—not miraculously preserved life in torture), “but the Gift of God is Eternal Life, through Jesus Christ.” This Gift of Life is the key of the whole Gospel—the “good news” concerning Him, in knowledge of Whom standeth our Eternal Life. “Whom truly to know, is Life Everlasting.”

Having thus “brought Life and Immortality to light through the Gospel,” Christ is justly said to have abolished Death; and now He proclaims to all, “Whosoever will, let him take the Water of Life freely.” Now, for the first time since the expulsion of man from Eden, do we hear again of the Tree of Life, no longer guarded by a flaming sword, but as the gift which Christ offers to His redeemed. “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the Tree of Life, which 445is in the midst of the Paradise of God.” “Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the Tree of Life.”

The horrible doctrine of the eternity of evil has developed as the natural sequence of a belief in inherent immortality. If once we fully grasp the grand central truth that everlasting life is ours solely through union with Christ, Who is our Life, the Pagan theories of a hell as meaning everlasting life in torture, crumble away almost of their own accord, yet by their lurid light men have for centuries distorted the words of Scripture, forcing them to fit their preconceived ideas.

Look, for instance, at the general character of the illustrations used by Our Lord and His inspired servants, as symbols of the doom of the unsaved. If they intended to suggest continuity of existence under most adverse circumstances, they would certainly have made use of such figures as are most enduring in a furnace—such as minerals or metals. So far from this, every type seems purposely selected to denote utter frailty and the most perishable nature, or the most evanescent, such as “smoke,” “the early dew that passeth away,” “light clouds,” “a dream when one awaketh.”

Of enduring materials, such as metals, we hear only when they are “to be tried in the fire” for their own purification, to make them fit for the Master’s use, as when “He sits as a Refiner of Silver,” patiently waiting till the purified metal reflects His own image.

But the swift destruction of those who will not accept His salvation is invariably compared to that of the most fragile substances—“an earthenware vessel broken to pieces” (frail, crumbling eastern pottery), “a garment eaten by the moth,” “thorns cut up and burned in the fire,” “bundles of tares tied up ready for burning, BEFORE the grain is garnered” (Matt. xiii. 30), “as stubble devoured by fire,” “like withered grass,” “as wax melteth before the 446fire,” “like burning tow,” “like chaff in the furnace of unquenchable fire” (that is, a fire which will burn till there is no more fuel to consume), like wood or hay—in short, every image suggests the most total and absolute destruction of whatsoever is cast into that furnace.

To those who refuse “Him that speaketh from Heaven,” St. Paul has told us that “Our God is a Consuming Fire”—not a Preserving Fire which shall endow whatever is thrown into it with miraculous vitality in order to enable it to endure torture for Ever, and Ever, and Ever, without being consumed.

The same Master Who told us that He came to seek and to save lost men, told us that He will also say: “Those Mine enemies which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before Me.” They would not accept His gift of enduring life, so even the life which they have is taken from them. That He will utterly destroy His enemies is most plainly revealed, but by swift destruction, not prolonged existence in agony.

How can any one believe that He Whose Name is Love would choose from His realm of perfect bliss, to look for ever and ever upon the beings He once so dearly loved, enduring never-ending agony, which is only made possible by His miraculously endowing each with the capability of continued existence in ceaseless enmity to Himself—or else uttering vain agonised prayers, to which (still more incredible) He can listen unmoved throughout Eternity. Which of the creatures in whom He has kindled one spark of His love could endure to know that this mass of individual misery was to continue day and night for ever and ever, while they themselves were in perfect bliss?

Apart from the certainty that the divine flower of mercy CANNOT thus wither and die in Heaven, the eternal suffering of human beings necessarily implies the eternal continuance of evil, and therein an everlasting triumph of the Devil, whereas we are expressly told by St. John that the 447Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the works of the Devil. And the same reason is given by St. Paul, “That through Death, He might destroy him that had the power of Death, that is the Devil.” St. Paul has also told us that “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is Death.”

Not till this is accomplished can Christ’s victory be completed. The Lord of all Creation must reign alone in His universe, and THAT CANNOT BE till every trace of the consequences of sin—the work of the usurper—has been utterly effaced.

Then, only when all things that do offend have been totally and for ever destroyed, can His perfect reign begin on that “new earth, wherein dwelleth only Righteousness.”

Then, too late, it will be known how large a share of antagonism to God has resulted from the false teaching about His revelation concerning future life and death. I doubt whether in any other way has His love been so persistently “wounded in the house of His Friends,” as by this unjust misconstruction of His words.

The marvel is how Christians can have gone on from generation to generation, blindly accepting such horrible tradition. It can only be accounted for by the belief that the devil has persuaded them to hold this dark, discoloured glass between themselves and God. Yet they do hold it, and cling to it, quite as strongly as to any article of the creed, and it is only too certain that a multitude of really earnest Christians will buzz like angry hornets round any one who ventures to suggest a future less appalling than the hell of their imagination—that most subtle device of the adversary to misrepresent God, and estrange men from His love.

Yet from the careless attitude of even earnest Christians it is impossible to believe that they in the smallest degree realise the meaning of the eternal duration of such a life in death, otherwise their whole lives would of necessity be 448absorbed in one agonised effort to rouse their fellows to repentance.

As an instance of the perverted meaning attributed to many passages, take such an one as 1 John v. 11–13: “God hath given to us Eternal Life, and this Life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath Life; and he that hath not the Son of God, hath not Life.” This statement is in the plainest words reiterated throughout the Gospel, yet so skilfully has the enemy sown his tares amid the good seed, that men’s perverted reading of this and all kindred verses is: “He that hath the Son shall have Life after Death, and he that hath not the Son shall live for ever in torment.”

Is not this precisely the meaning commonly attached to the same message as spoken by St. Paul? “As sin hath reigned unto Death, so might grace reign unto Eternal Life by Jesus Christ our Lord.” “The Wages of Sin is Death, but the Gift of God is Eternal Life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Surely these words are very clear; but the sower of tares has so skilfully added his evil grain, that wherever in the Holy Scriptures we find this contrast of death and eternal life, men mentally insert the word “Eternal” before “Death,” and thus entirely pervert God’s message of Love.

To me this view of Christ’s work, that the Eternal Life now begun in me by Him is the special gift which He died to obtain for me, is infinitely more precious and love-inspiring than was the belief that the primary object of His dying for us was to save us from an immeasurable intensity of punishment which in my secret heart I felt to be in excess of my own deserts, or those of my fellow-creatures. Whereas now I can realise that the life which I NOW live, I live by the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself for me. Thus the dreaded hour of the separation of body and soul which we call Death, becomes merely an unpleasant incident in life nowise affecting its continuity.

449I believe the choice of life to be entirely in our own option. If any one prefers that death shall be to him the end of life and love, he has only to glide along, and (always allowing for the last awful awakening to judgment, and to realise what he has failed to secure) I believe that he will eventually cease to exist in any form.

For my own part, I prefer the certainty of an eternity in light and love, WHICH CAN ONLY BE SECURED BY ACCEPTING IT NOW, as the gift freely offered to each one of us. And having accepted it, with my whole heart, of course, I do most earnestly wish that all I care for here should do likewise, that we MAY BE TOGETHER FOR EVER in that life of light and gladness.

If any one cares to go deeper into this subject, I would refer them to the volume which first awoke my own interest in it, The Glory of Christ in the Reconciliation of all things, with special reference to the Doctrine of Eternal Evil, by the Rev. Samuel Minton, M.A., of Worcester College, Oxford, published in 1869 by Longmans, Green and Co. (Of course the doctrine of the Eternity of Evil is a natural sequence of a belief in Inherent Immortality.)

Amongst other authorities whom he quotes are Martin Luther and Archbishop Whately. The former says, “I permit the Pope to make articles of faith for himself and his faithful, such as, that the soul is Immortal.” The latter says, “To the Christian all this doubt would be instantly removed if he found that the Immortality of the Soul was revealed in the Word of God. In fact, no such doctrine is revealed to us.”

Life in Christ, by the Rev. Edward White, published about thirty years ago, came as a revelation of undoubted truth to many perplexed Christians, who felt that their gravest difficulty crumbled to nothing if the human soul was not created immortal. But so certain was the storm of opposition which would encounter any Christian teacher or worker who ventured to proclaim the new light which had 450dawned on his own soul, that comparatively few had the courage to face it. (Just as men who love the Episcopal Church too dearly to leave it, are compelled to make such mental reservations as enable them to repeat that arrogant definition of the Christian faith said to have been composed by a French Archbishop in the fifth century, which is so unjustly attributed to poor St. Athanasius, and which, I am told, was not adopted at Rome till the middle of the tenth century, though it seems to have been accepted in England about the eighth century.)

In his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, vol. ii. p. 212, Bishop Gore says:—

“Careful attention to the origin of the doctrine of the necessary immortality or indestructibility of each human soul ... will probably convince us that it was no part of the original Christian message, or of really Catholic doctrine. It was rather a speculation of Platonism taking possession of the Church.”

In his book on Bishop Butler, the late W. E. Gladstone wrote:—

“Another consideration of the highest importance is that the natural immortality of the soul is a doctrine wholly unknown to the Holy Scriptures, and standing on no higher plane than that of an ingeniously sustained, but gravely and formidably contested, philosophical opinion.... We may perhaps find that we have ample warrant for declining to accept the tenet of natural immortality as a truth of Divine Revelation.”—Studies on the Works of Bishop Butler, p. 197.

As regards the teaching of the Old Testament, or even of Jewish tradition, it is certain that natural immortality could not possibly have been understood, else how could the Sadducees, who denied any life after death, have formed so strong a party?

The sect of the Sadducees seems to have originated about B.C. 250, and that of the Pharisees about B.C. 150. Whereas the former denied that there was any Resurrection, the Pharisees believed in an immortality which doomed the wicked to endless torment, and the righteous to transmigration. The latter doctrine is plainly implied in the question 451which was asked by the disciples regarding the blind man to whom Jesus gave sight, “Did this man sin, or his parents, that he was born blind?” It is mentioned as an article of faith by several Jewish writers, including Josephus. (Quoted by Dr. Pusey, Everlasting Punishment, p. 69, 3rd edition.)

When Christ put the Sadducees to silence (Matt. xxii. 31–34), it was by telling them of the CONTINUITY OF LIFE of those who, while yet on earth, have attained to be the recognised servants of God.

In a volume of Biblical notes I find the following concerning the Sadducees:—

“‘They divided the hierarchy with the Pharisees, and the Chief Council seems to have been equally balanced between the two’ (see Acts xxiii. 6–8). When Paul, in presence of the High Priest Ananias, perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the Council, ‘Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee. Of the hope and resurrection of the dead, I am called in question.’ And when he had so said, there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the multitude was divided. For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, but the Pharisees confess both. In our Lord’s time the family of Annas the High Priest belonged to this faction (Acts v. 17): ‘Then the High Priest rose up, and all that were with him (which is the sect of the Sadducees).’”

Mr. Minton points out the literal origin of many of the illustrations used concerning the awful fate of all who refuse to accept Christ’s gift of eternal life, and that His references to them were illustrations which those to whom they were addressed would certainly understand figuratively, such as those alluding to “unquenchable fires,” which all present knew to have long since burnt themselves out, having finished their work of destruction.

He quotes the Rev. H. Constable, who writes concerning the last judgment:—

“That awful scene represents the final destruction of evil, and not the eternal perpetuation of it in its most aggravated and malignant forms. All evil, physical as well as moral, represented by Death and Hades, 452has been cast into the Lake of Fire. All who have wilfully continued to be evil have been consigned to one awful place of punishment. According to their deserving is their chastisement—‘few stripes or many stripes.’ Gradually life dies out in that fearful prison. They who WOULD NOT find Life, have found Death, and the dead know not anything. There is no eternal antagonism of good and evil, no eternal jarring of the notes of praise and wailing. Evil has died out, and with it sorrow. Throughout God’s world of Life, all is joy and peace and love.”

“Then (after the accomplishment of the doom described in Rev. xx. 14, 15, and Rev. xxi. 8) there shall be no more curse, and no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain. For God Himself shall dwell with men, and shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. He will swallow up Death in Victory.

“Is it not amazing that men should profess to believe these glorious and most blessed promises and yet for one moment conceive such a possibility as that their fulfilment should be co-existent with the Eternity of Evil, and of the continued existence through endless ages of countless myriads of God’s creatures, enduring the most appalling torture, and (so far from His wiping all tears from off all faces) that the weeping and gnashing of teeth (which our Lord has told us will accompany the terrible moment when He has finally shut the door of mercy), shall continue through all eternity!

“Whereas He has said that nothing shall then exist which is not reconciled to Him.

“Lord, open the eyes of Thy servants to see the horror of horrors that their imagination has substituted for the glorious future set before us in Thy Word of a universe reconciled to Thee, and Thyself all in all.”

“Thy Will be Done.”

While touching on such solemn subjects, I cannot refrain from referring to another matter in this present life, in which the God of infinite love and compassion is maligned. He says of Himself that, “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. He doth not willingly afflict the children of men.”

He created everything in His world “very good” and very happy, and there was no pain or suffering till His enemy had succeeded in bringing in sin and consequent death. God’s will is the happiness of His children. And 453yet it is chiefly when horrible accidents occur, and in every form of sorrow and anguish, that we strive to say “Thy Will be done,” ignoring the context “as it is done in Heaven,” where His Will is done, and there is no pain, nor any grief, because His enemy who causes the suffering has no power there.

On this subject Mrs. Josephine Butler writes:

“Not until we recognise that there are two ruling powers in the world can we ever be right in our estimate of or relation to the God of Love—never till we recognise the dual government can we see straight. It is a dual government which is at war now, but with a progressive victory for the Benign and Blessed One, and defeat (with our help) for the malign one....

“Have readers of the Gospel never fathomed the significance of the words of Jesus: ‘Shall not this woman, whom Satan hath bound these eighteen years, be healed?’ Again and again He was angry with the evil spirit which afflicted men and women. God is not the author of sin, disease, pain, evil, death. These all come from another source. They are maliciously inflicted evil” [as we read in the story of poor Job and his trials—inflicted by Satan, though for some mysterious purpose permitted by God up to a certain limit]. “Yet God is ever mending, healing, bringing good out of Satan’s bad, making us heroic under pains inflicted by the enemy, walking with us through the flames and the floods of the Evil One’s creating, and making us His own companions, working for the final victory.

“Was it God who tortured the demoniac boy, whose father brought him to Christ? If it had been, would God’s Son have said: ‘Come out of him, thou foul spirit, and enter no more into him?’ ‘God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power, who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him.’”

On the other hand, of course we must not forget that some sufferings and trials are for our education. According to His own Word, “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.” And those marvellous sayings regarding our Lord Himself in His human life—that “Though He was the Son of God, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered,” and that He, the Captain of our salvation, was made perfect through sufferings.”—Heb. v. 8; ii. 10.

454But when in that awfully mysterious hour of His human agony He cried, “Thy will be done,” that surely was, because He was about to “taste death for every man,” in order that “through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the Devil” (Heb. ii. 9–14), and so by Himself enduring all, He might conquer our enemy.

Note G Intercessory Prayer

Well did Tennyson write—

“More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of;

Wherefore let thy voice rise for me like a fountain day and night.”

Little does the world know how many a mighty change has been wrought in answer to the unknown prayers of many a faithful heart. The guardian angel who thus ceaselessly pleaded for Roualeyn was a saintly woman, Davina M. ... who in her beautiful girlhood had been the one pure love of his life, and who loved him with such devotion that she stedfastly refused to link her life with his from a conviction that it would be to his disadvantage to marry beneath his own social rank. She lived to know that her life-long prayer had been granted, and soon after his death she also passed to the brighter world.

Something of that romance of sixty years ago is suggested in the poem of “Euphemia” by his niece Eisa (the Hon. Mrs. Willoughby, now Lady Middleton) in her volume On the North Wind, Thistledown, published by King and Co. In that volume and in The Story of Alastair Bhan Comyn, published by Blackwood, are woven many traditions of Morayland.

When travelling in the Hawaiian Isles, I chanced to see in a local paper some anonymous verses on intercessory 455prayer, which seemed to me so touching, that I will venture to reproduce them here:—

“I PRAY FOR THEE.

“When thou art very weak and weary,

When it is dark and all seems dreary,

And suddenly a light almost divine

Upon thy doubting eyes and heart doth shine,

And thou the way to go dost plainly see,

Know, dearest heart, that then I pray for thee.

Far off, in little chamber, I am saying

These words, all softly, and God hears me praying:

‘Dear Lord, I do not know

If all is well with him whom I love so,

But Thou canst tell.

O give him Light to see!

O with him ever be

Till all is well!’

“When with a weight of sorrow and of fears,

Crushed to the earth, thou weepest bitter tears,

Lo! gently round thee arms of tenderest love

Raise thee from depths of woe, and far above

Thou hearest a sweet voice saying ‘Trust in Me,’

Know, dearest heart, that then I pray for thee!

Then, with full heart of love to God, I’m saying

These words, all softly, and He hears me praying:

‘O Lord, perhaps to-day,

Down in the dust,

He thinks not Thou didst say—

“Heart, in Me trust.”

O save him, Lord, in love,

O lift him up above

Out of the dust.’

“When all the answering beauty of the soul

Is throbbing, thrilling with the rapturous whole

Of Nature, as on odorous summer night

The tremulous stars thy senses all delight;

Thou feelest higher joys than these can be,

Know, dearest heart, that then I pray for thee,

For at my twilight window I am saying

These words, all softly, and God hears me praying:

456‘Dear Father, as to-night

He sees the sky

With glorious beauty light,

To Thee on high,

Who this rare radiance wrought,

Raise his adoring thought

Above the sky.’

“Thus always, with full heart of love to God, I’m saying

These words, all softly, and He hears me praying:

‘Dear Lord, both he and I

Are far from strong;

To each of us be nigh,

The way is long.

Perhaps he heeds not me,

Jesus, we both need Thee;

Make us more strong.’”

As these pages are not intended for publication during my lifetime, but are my last message to many friends personally unknown to me, I venture here to quote two letters addressed to a very dear friend, in the hope that they may possibly prove helpful to some one who finds the like difficulty in coming into personal touch with the Master.

“Dear...,—The few words we exchanged last night have made me wonder whether the doubts you seemed to express were genuine, or just spoken for the sake of argument. But because I know too how many minds such as yours, intellectual difficulties do seem insuperable (their very wisdom raising earth-born clouds, which hide the truth, that to ‘babes’ seems so clear and simple), I feel that I am bound to say plainly that the result of my own fifty years of thinking on the subject has been to bind me more firmly than ever to the simplest child’s faith in the Old Story of the Cross and in The Friend whose love and presence are to me infinitely more real and more precious than those of any human being.

457“And I do feel that, knowing Him as I do, beyond all possibility of doubt—and loving Him, however unworthily—realising, as I have done even in the brightest years of life’s young morning, how utterly dark and cheerless my own life would be but for this ‘fellowship’ (St. John’s own word—1 John i. 3—so I may write it without presumption), it would be unpardonable in me not to say so plainly to any friend who may not yet have been able to realise this—the only Life-giving truth—the old, old story which Saul, the cultivated Roman Jew, the persecutor of the despised sect, was impelled to go and preach to the super-refined and learned Corinthians, that the crucified peasant Jew was in truth Incarnate God, Who saw fit ‘to humble Himself even to death on the Cross that He might make us the children of God and exalt us to everlasting life,’ and Who does care for each one of us individually.

“As concerns our intellectual difficulties, we can surely trust these to Him who made our minds, till He sees fit to make us capable of understanding all that now perplexes us. Our personal acquaintance with Himself is FAR CLOSER than any outside difficulty of that sort, and so I for one am content to believe that there are many things far beyond my comprehension in its present undeveloped capacity—things which I know I must accept on trust till I pass from the present caterpillar stage to the full, free-winged life when we shall know all the mysteries.

“Only once in my life was there a time—a long, weary time of sad darkness, when cold earth-born clouds closed round me, so as to shut out all the light of His companionship. I do not mean that I doubted His real presence any more than I doubt the shining of the sun beyond our visible rain-clouds, but for me there were only leaden skies, impenetrable and unresponsive, with only now and then a gleam of the blessed light. But I knew it was the just punishment of wilful wrong-doing—‘a needful time of trouble.’ (For of course in one who does know the Master 458and His love, sins which the world would not recognise as such, must rank very differently from the world’s standard, and though He has promised to be our defence, that we may not GREATLY fall, we all know too well how continually we do stumble.) But at last the earnest of forgiveness was granted in the restored consciousness of His presence—a change quite as distinct as that from the darkness of a November fog to the glad summer sunlight.

“And now with my whole soul I do thank Him for His gift of light, and I do realise ever more and more, how closely He does draw us to Himself when we WILL come to Him, and what a real and blessed possession is the Eternal Life, which is His gift to us NOW—the gift of Him ‘Whom truly to know, is Life Everlasting.’

“This is the truth which myriads have believed, acknowledging how unnecessary it is that they should understand how or why it should be, but have simply taken Him at His word, surrendering themselves wholly to Him, and have found in Him all-sufficient rest for their souls. And not only rest, but perfect sympathy and companionship.

“I know you do not class me as quite an idiot in other matters; surely, then, you can believe that it is no mere delusion which is to me so intensely real that it fills and satisfies my heart and all my being, and which makes what we call living or dying so entirely matters of contentment, because I am perfectly certain that nothing except my own wilful yielding to what I recognise as sin can possibly separate me from Him, and from the Love wherein He enfolds all who do willingly give themselves to Him to be His own.

“Though we all do instinctively shrink from revealing our inner lives to one another, yet those who have once realised all that this means, cannot but crave that all ‘who call them Friend’ should share the same secret of inward peace....”

On one occasion I sent this friend a very beautifully 459illuminated card with the words, “The Lord shall guide thee continually,” and “Underneath are the Everlasting Arms.” Much to my surprise, it called forth a letter so unlike her usual gentle courtesy, that I felt constrained to reply:—

“You and I are constituted so strangely alike in almost every respect, that from you, beyond any other friend I possess, I feel entitled to the sympathy of a true understanding all round. This is why I cannot bear that words which are to me the expression of all that is most precious and restful in life should seem to you merely ‘ridiculous charms.’ I know you only mean that keeping such words before one’s eyes is so, but when I look back over all the years of my past life, and recognise that the consciousness of ‘continual guiding’ and the sense of perfect safety in the enfolding of ‘the Everlasting Arms’ have been my own mainstay in almost every hour of every day, I feel that simply to keep such words where my outward eyes must often rest upon them does help me continually to remember that the events of my life are not a mere matter of chance, but are all being planned for me by One who loves me.

“Alas! dear, I know this does not come home to you as it does to me; and I fear that when you see me fussing over the trivial cares of every day, you must think that my daily outward life tells little of the inward peace that passeth understanding—a just inference, I own, judging from outward seeming—yet not really true, for though I so often forget for awhile, I do most truly believe that every tiny detail of everyday life IS over-ruled, and ordered for me in perfect wisdom, as I have proven through long years.

“When you told me how a very great botanist had asserted to you the impossibility of your having found the night-blowing Cactus in a country where you had actually sat up all night to paint it, I could not but think how exactly his reasoning coincided with that of the intellectual people who cannot believe what WE KNOW of the personal Love of our Lord. You know these flowers grow there, because 460you saw them. We know the Love of our dear Lord because we are conscious that He is ALWAYS present with us, and never fails or forsakes us, in sunshade or in shade.

“I quite sympathise with you as to formal ‘saying prayers,’ but if you realise that you are always in the company of a dear Friend, whose sympathy is so perfect that he understands every thought and wish of your heart, so that all day long consciously, or even unconsciously, you instinctively refer everything to Him, how can you think of a special morning and evening talk with Him as ‘saying’ a form of words, no matter how perfect?

“I do fully enter into your delight in your garden, though I have none of your scientific knowledge of plants. But apart from joy in the loveliness of flowers, I find a wondrous fascination in the perpetual showing forth of ‘the resurrection of the body that shall be’ in the ever-new miracles of glorious colour and fragrance evolved from apparently dead sticks, ugly brown bulbs, and insignificant seeds.

“All such hints from the visible world become to me increasingly precious, for the last few years have been marked by so very many wrenches in parting from our nearest and dearest, that the whole life-plant feels uprooted, at least all its fibres are loosened from Mother Earth....”

Note H

Among the most noteworthy social changes within my memory, none is more marked than the diminution in the use of alcoholic drinks of all sorts in “respectable” society.

I cannot myself remember, what was a common occurrence up to a few years before my birth, when the ladies frequently left the drawing-room before the gentlemen left the dinner-table, knowing from their prolonged absence that they would not be pleasant company. But up to thirty or 461forty years ago the amount of wine which, as a matter of course, every girl took at luncheon, dinner, and dessert, and often also at bed-time, seems strange to remember, now that fashion has happily so greatly changed. And if the girl was delicate, instead of recommending hockey or tennis, the doctor’s prescription was generally an extra bumper of port at 11 A.M.

It needed a Sir Andrew Clark to have the courage to proclaim that “Alcohol is a poison, and as such must be classed with strychnine, arsenic, and similar drugs.”

Here I must remark that although the old practice of hospitably “pressing” guests to eat is happily an abomination of the past, this is by no means the case as regards drink. If I refuse white bread at dinner, no host expresses anxiety as to whether I would prefer brown bread, or Hovis, or French roll. But in regard to wine, the variety of offers is often wearisome, ending with, “Surely you are not a teetotaller?”

And yet we know that there are a multitude of men and women to whom the use of alcohol in any form is a really grave danger, and MANY WOULD WILLINGLY ESCHEW IT BUT FOR THE DREAD OF BEING PECULIAR, AND OF HAVING ATTENTION CALLED TO THEIR ABSTINENCE. It is partly with a view to helping such as these that it is so desirable to multiply the number of total abstainers, so that this fatal standard of good-fellowship may soon become obsolete, and that it may be as much a matter of indifference whether a guest drinks wine or not as whether he eats bread.

But since we know that

“Evil is wrought by want of thought

As well as by want of heart,”

perhaps I may venture to point out to some hospitable ladies that the practice of saturating many of the most attractive sweets with brandy, rum, or liqueurs, is a most insidious source of danger to many who are honestly trying to 462conquer the “drink crave,” and whose good resolution has enabled them to resist the temptation when it comes undisguised, but who are thrown quite off their guard by the innocent-looking cream, or cake, or bon-bon, which contains quite enough of spirit to reawaken the craving for more. Surely this thought, together with the danger of temptation in our own kitchens, might avail to banish the use of alcohol from our cookery.^[84]

But quite apart from any desire to benefit our tempted brethren, the strongest reasons for total abstinence are supplied by the plain statements of the very highest medical authorities on the evil effects on the human body of even the most moderate habitual use of alcohol, Sir Andrew Clark says that more than three-fourths of the disorders in what we call “fashionable life” arise from the use of alcohol, “a poison of which even very small daily doses are injurious to perfect health, and tend to gradually enfeeble various organs, whose breakdown some day is really due to no other cause.” He asserts that it is the greatest enemy of the human race.

Sir William Gull says: “I hardly know any more powerful source of disease than alcoholic drink. I should say that alcohol is the most destructive poison we are aware of.” Dr. Norman Kerr says he has been able to trace three-fourths of his cases of heart-disease to its use. Sir Henry Thompson, in a letter to the late Archbishop of Canterbury (Temple), states that A VERY LARGE PROPORTION OF SOME OF THE MOST PAINFUL AND DANGEROUS DISEASES WHICH HAVE COME UNDER HIS NOTICE ARISE FROM THE DAILY 463USE OF ALCOHOLIC DRINKS, TAKEN IN THE QUANTITY WHICH IS ORDINARILY CONSIDERED MODERATE. “As to this fact,” he says, “I have a right to speak with authority, and I do so solely because it appears to me a duty not to be silent on a matter of such extreme importance.”

Dr. Murchison enumerates the diseases of various organs of the body which render life a burden, and which might never have occurred had it not been for the daily dose of alcohol. Dr. Alfred Carpenter says: “Alcohol is a virulent poison, and as such should be placed in the list with arsenic, mercury and other dangerous drugs.”

May I advise all who are interested in the subject to invest one penny in Sir Andrew Clark’s pamphlet, An Enemy of the Human Race, and another in Strong Drink and its Results, by D. S. Govett, M.A., Archdeacon of Gibraltar, both published by the National Temperance Depot, 33 Paternoster Row, London, E.C. The latter contains the evidence of many leading medical men, and sums up thus: “Let no man think himself or his family safe from drink’s deadly fascination. Remember how in every generation men of the highest genius have become its slaves. Every one of these was once a moderate drinker, and intended so to continue. Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.”

Most noteworthy is the change in the attitude of the clergy in this matter. Fifty years ago it would have been considered infra dig. for a clergyman to be a total abstainer. Now a very large proportion of all denominations are so, and many of our Bishops and Archbishops throw the whole weight not only of their teaching, but of their very practical example into this effort to check the moral and physical ravages wrought in our own land, as well as in those other countries to which we so largely export the cruel fire-water.

This question in all its bearings formed the subject of many of Archbishop Temple’s most powerful appeals to his 464countrymen. But I cannot refrain from here quoting one passage from Dean Farrar, partly because of the one Scriptural quotation which is so frequently waged against total abstinence, namely concerning our Lord Himself having provided wine at the marriage-feast—wine which was probably the non-fermented juice of the vine. But few people seem ever to notice the Scriptural references to the Teetotalers of Judea.

Dean Farrar writes:—

“You sneer at Total Abstainers from the altitude of your worldly superiority, but the Scripture gives them its heartiest approbation. God commanded His prophets to pronounce on the Rechabites a conspicuous blessing because they abstained from wine. Jeremiah speaks of the health and happiness of the Nazarites as the flower of the youth of Jerusalem, for their strength and their beauty. Samson was a Total Abstainer, whose drink was only from the living brook, and he was the strongest man time records. John the Baptist, whom Christ calls ‘the greatest of those born of woman,’ was a Total Abstainer. The angel of the Lord in announcing his birth said, ‘He shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink, and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost.’”

Note I Use of the Rosary

This widespread tendency to the telling of beads is certainly one of the strangest developments of devotion. We are apt to consider such vain repetitions as peculiar to the Church of Rome, whereas we find that not only do some four hundred and fifty million Buddhists find solace therein, but also a vast multitude of Brahmins and Mohammedans.

Now, that Brahmins and Buddhists should thus keep a numerical tally of their devotions is strange enough, but the adoption of this spiritual treadmill by Mohammedans is more remarkable (though whoever has heard the frenzied shouts of “Allah el Allah! Allah el Allah!” can never doubt their faith in the efficacy of much speaking.) But that a

465practice so little in accordance with the spirit of Christianity could have been a spontaneous growth appears quite impossible, so it is only natural to assume that it was imported from some heathen land, just as the veneration for relics, the canonization of saints, the use of rosaries, the divers orders of monastic life, the rigid vows of poverty and asceticism, celibacy of the clergy, priestly robes and shaven crowns, processions carrying banners, chanted litanies, use of incense and holy water, and very many other ecclesiastical details—can only be accounted for on the supposition, which, indeed, is well-nigh a certainty, that they were adopted by the Christians of Egypt from the practice of the Buddhists, by whom all these things were as religiously observed long before the Christian era, as they continue to be at this day.

Concerning the origin of the use of the rosary in Christendom (not its Pagan origin, however!) Dr. Rock tells us that in early days the truly devout were in the habit of reciting the whole Psalter daily. But as a hundred and fifty psalms were certainly rather a lengthy recitation, it became customary to substitute short prayers, which might be uttered rapidly amid the stir and business of life, without requiring undivided attention. Hence a hundred and fifty short “Aves” varied by ten intervening Paternosters, and five Doxologies (thus dividing the whole into ten decades, came to be accounted as meritorious an act of devotion as the repetition of the whole Psalter.)

But as the omission of any of the number would have been esteemed sinful, and the calculation was apt to be inexact, some mechanical aid was desirable, and various expedients were devised. Thus Palladius has recorded how the Abbot Paul, who made a point of repeating the Paternoster three hundred times daily, that he kept count of his prayers by the aid of a number of small pebbles, which he dropped into his lap one by one till the tale was told. Then the simpler method of counting on a string of beads worn round the neck was suggested, and soon found favour with the devout.

The division of the Rosary into the fifteen decades of small beads for the Ave Maria, with the large intervening beads for the Paternoster, is generally ascribed to St. Dominic (born in Old Castille A.D. 1170); but there is little doubt that this use of beads was common in Spain before his time, and that it had been borrowed by the Spanish Catholics from the Mohammedan dervishes who accompanied the Moors on their invasion of Spain in A.D. 711, and who, in common with their Syrian brethren, had adopted it from nations further east.

The ordinary Mohammedan rosary or tasbih numbers ninety-nine beads, often made of sacred earth brought from Mecca, but frequently only of date-stones. Instead of a large bead to mark each tenth, a silken tassel does this duty, and assists the pious Islamite in his repetition of the ninety-nine names of God.

The Mohammedan rosary figures in a very curious ceremony practised 466on the night immediately following a burial, commonly called “the night of desolation” while the soul is believed still to abide with the body, ere winging its flight to the place of spirits. About fifty devout men assemble to perform an act of merit on behalf of the dead. After reciting certain chapters of the Khoran, they repeat “Allah el Allah” three thousand times, while one of the party keeps count on a rosary of a thousand beads, each as large as a pigeon’s egg. Between each thousand the exhausted worshippers pause to rest and drink coffee. Afterwards several short prayers are uttered, each being repeated a hundred times. The whole merit of this very severe bodily exercise is formally assigned to the deceased; and on behalf of wealthy men it is sometimes repeated for three nights running—a fact rather suggestive of the pecuniary cost of such services!

How far Christianity has improved on this original may be somewhat a nice question, for in such means of acquiring merit for the dead neither Christians nor Buddhists are lacking, and in all Catholic countries oft-told rosaries number Christian prayers for the deceased by ten thousand times ten thousand.

It is believed that this celestial abacus—this method of reckoning with heaven—originated with the Hindoos, who certainly are known to have kept count of their oft-told prayers by means of bead-strings from very early ages; but whether the invention was due to Hindoo Buddhists or Hindoo Brahmins is not known. Probably, however, the former may claim this merit, as they were so long the dominant religion of India, and indeed three centuries before the Christian era they had overspread all Asia, so that traces of their influence and teaching are discernible even where successive waves of differing faith have overswept the land.

To this day, the Brahmins of Guzerat and some other parts of India carry chaplets of one hundred small and eight large beads, made of sacred wood; and a truly devout man recites the gāyatri one hundred and eight times at the rising of the sun ere he proceeds to wash and dress his idols. This mystic sentence is a short extract from the Rig Veda—a meditation on the divine glory of the sun-god, and a prayer that the Divine Giver of Life and Light may enlighten his understanding.

The rosary commonly used by the worshippers of Vishnu numbers 108 smooth beads, made of the wood of the sacred Tulasi shrub.^[85] These represent the 108 most sacred titles of Krishna. In the course of the elaborate daily morning ritual, certain formulas of worship are repeated 108 times, count being kept by the aid of the rosary, which, together with the counting-hand, is concealed under a 467cloth or in a bag (which is called a Go-mukhi). Why this concealment is necessary does not appear, unless there is some idea of not letting the left hand know what the right is doing!

But it is equally incumbent on the worshippers of Siva, who, while reciting his 1008 names and sacred attributes, keep count of their task on rosaries of 32 or 64 rough berries of the Rudrāska tree,^[86] which are said to have originally been formed from the tears shed by Siva in passionate anger. These berries have five sides, which are considered symbolic of Siva’s five faces.

The hideous Saiva Yogis occasionally use grim rosaries of human teeth collected from funeral-pyres, a more agreeable variety allowed by the Vishnuvites being the use of lotus-seeds. The various sects have slight differences in this respect. One at least, (that of Vallabha) bestows the rosary of 108 Tulasi beads on each child as a token of church membership, when it attains the age of from three to four years, and is capable of repeating the eight-syllabled charm, “Sri-Krishnah saranam mama,” which is, being interpreted, “Great Krishna is the refuge of my soul.” Another Vishnuvite sect invests each member with two rosaries—one in honour of Krishna, and the other for the worship of Radhā.

The votaries of Ganesa, the elephant-headed god, use the seeds of the kumala, or lotus, for this purpose, while the worshippers of Surya, the Sun, prefer a string of small balls of crystal—miniatures of the great crystals which symbolize the sun on the Shinto altars of Japan.

Note J Hair Offerings

It is always interesting to note the same superstitions in divers countries. In my book on The Hebrides, page 39, I related the Gaelic-Danish legend of the “Whirlpool of Corrie Vreckan,” in which the young Danish prince might have anchored in safety had he been provided with a cable woven entirely of the long fair tresses of Danish maidens of faultless purity. But, alas! one lock had been shorn from the head of one whose fair fame was no longer spotless, so the cable parted, and the prince and his vessel were sucked down, down, in the raging waters.

I am told that in Malabar a cure for some diseases, and also a recognised penance, is being tied up to a tree and undergoing a severe flogging, after which a piece of growing hair is securely pegged into the bark, and by a sudden wrench it is torn from the head and left hanging on the tree as a votive offering.

Strange to say, this identical ceremony (minus the flogging) was long 468practised at the village of Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire. The object to be gained was the cure of ague, and a group of fine old oaks was the scene of action.

I am told that in Sunderland a popular cure for whooping-cough is to shave the crown of the head and hang the hair on a bush, in full faith that as the birds carry away the hair, so will the cough vanish. In Lincolnshire, a girl suffering from ague cuts a lock of her hair and binds it round an aspen tree, praying it to shake in her stead. In Ross-shire, where within the last fifty years living cocks were occasionally buried as a sacrificial remedy for epilepsy, some of the hair of the patient was generally added to the buried offering.

In Ireland, at Tubber Quan, near Carrick-on-Suir, there is a holy tree beside a holy well, which are held in the deepest veneration. Thither, chiefly on the last three Sundays in June, Roman Catholic peasants make pilgrimage to worship St. Quan (whoever he may be); and having gone thrice round the holy tree on their bare knees, each cuts off a lock of his own hair and ties it to a branch as a charm against headache. By the end of June the tree is fringed with countless locks of human hair of all shades.

A recent visitor to some of these Irish holy wells enumerated amongst many other votive offerings, thirty-nine crutches, six hand-sticks, and a pair of boots!

Note K On the Medicinal Use of Animals in China and Britain

These quaint druggists’ shops were indeed a strangely vivid illustration of what must have been the general appearance of the laboratory of the learned leeches of Britain from olden times until really quite recent days—literally until the eighteenth century—as we know from the official pharmacopœia of the College of Surgeons of London, published in A.D. 1724, that unicorn’s horn, human fat, human skulls, dog’s dung, toads, vipers, worms, and all manner of animal substances, either dried, seethed, or calcined, were accounted valuable medical stores. In the same medical directory for A.D. 1724, centipedes, vipers, and lizards are especially enumerated as possessing valued properties!

It will be interesting to glance at a few of these old prescriptions as compared with those still in favour in China. Here is a letter from a French Catholic Missionary in Mongolia. “May Heaven preserve us from falling ill here! It is impossible to conceive who can have devised remedies so horrible as those in use in the Chinese pharmacopœia, such as drugs compounded of toads’ paws, wolves’ eyes, vultures’ claws, human skin and fat, and other medicaments still more horrible, of which I spare you the recital. Never did witches’ den contain a collection of similar horrors!”

469Mr. Mitford has told us how at Peking he saw a Chinese physician prescribe a decoction of three scorpions for a child struck down with fever; and W. Gill, in his River of Golden Sand, mentions having met a number of coolies laden with red-deers’ horns, some of them very fine twelve-tyne antlers. They are only hunted when in velvet, and from the horns in this state a medicine is made which is one of the most highly prized in the Chinese pharmacopœia.

With regard to the singular virtues supposed to attach to the medicinal use of tiger, my cousin, General Robert Warden, told me that on one occasion when, in India, he was exhibiting some trophies of the chase, some Chinamen who were present became much excited at the sight of an unusually fine tiger-skin. They eagerly inquired whether it would be possible to find the place where the carcase had been buried, because from the bones of tigers dug up three months after burial, a decoction may be prepared which gives immense muscular power to the fortunate man who swallows it.

I was indebted to the same informant for an interesting note on the medicine folklore of India, namely, that while camping in the jungle, one of his men came to entreat him to shoot a night-jar for his benefit, because from the bright, prominent eyes of this bird of night an ointment is prepared which gives great clearness of vision, and is therefore highly prized.

Miss Bird, when travelling in the Malay Peninsula, was eyewitness of a very remarkable scene when, a tiger having been killed, a number of Chinamen flew upon the body, cut out the liver, heart, and spleen, and carefully drained every drop of its blood. Those who failed to secure these, cut out the cartilage from the joints. She learnt that the blood, dried at a temperature of 110°, is esteemed the strongest of all tonics and gives strength and courage. The powdered liver and spleen are good for many diseases, but the centre of the tiger’s eyeball is supposed to possess well-nigh miraculous virtues. So all these treasured fragments were sold at high prices to Chinese doctors, who doubtless knew they would not lose on the retail price!

From the qualities here attributed to tigers’ blood, we can better understand how it came to pass that in the Tai-ping rebellion the Imperial troops, having captured a rebel leader at Shanghai, roasted him, and ate his heart and other vital organs in order to make them brave! The case is not unique, as in that same terrible civil war the Tai-pings were guilty of similar atrocities during the siege of Nanking, though cannibalism per se is a crime as deeply abhorred in China as in Britain.

In Perak Miss Bird saw rhinoceros’ horn selling at a high price in the drug-market, a single horn being priced at fifty dollars; and in Japan a native doctor showed her a small box of unicorn’s horn which, he said, was worth its weight in gold. He also expressed his faith in the 470value of rhinoceros’ horn. One of the said rhinoceros’ horns was, as we have seen, among the most valued treasures of the old druggist of Osaka. This horn, and that of the unicorn, which seems generally to mean the narwhal,^[87] have ever been held in high repute throughout the East as an antidote to poison, and cups carved from these horns were used as a safeguard, because they possessed the property of neutralising poison, or at least of revealing its presence.

And indeed the same virtue was attributed to them by the learned leeches of Europe. At the close of the sixteenth century, the doctors of medicine in Augsberg met in solemn conclave to examine a specimen of unicorn’s horn, which they found to be true monoceros and not a forgery, the proof thereof being that they administered some of it to a dog which had been poisoned with arsenic, and which recovered after swallowing the antidote. They further administered nux vomica to two dogs; and to one they gave twelve grains of unicorn horn, which effectually counteracted the poison; but the other poor dog got none, so he died. Similar statements concerning this antidote, and also concerning the value of elk’s and deer’s horns powdered, as a cure for epilepsy, appear in various old English medical works of the highest authority.

Not less remarkable is the efficacy supposed to attach to antediluvian ivory, more especially the tusks of the mammoths which have been so well preserved in Siberian ice that their very flesh has been found untainted. There they have lain hermetically sealed for many a long century, and now, when the rivers from time to time wash away fragments of the great ice-cliffs, they reveal the strange treasures of that wondrous storehouse. It may be a great woolly elephant with a mane like a lion, and curly tusks, or a huge unwieldy hippopotamus, or a rhinoceros, and the hungry Siberian bears and wolves fight and snarl over these dainty morsels.

Here, then, in these marvellous ice-fields lie inexhaustible stores of finest ivory, and this it is which the learned professors of the Celestial Medical Hall value so highly. So these precious tusks are dragged forth after thousands of years to be ground down and boiled to a jelly, for the cure of vulgar Chinese diseases of the twentieth century. Alas! poor mammoth!

Nor are these the only antediluvian relics which are thus turned to account. Professor H. N. Moseley tells us of the “Dragon’s teeth and bones” which he bought from the druggists of Canton, where they are sold by weight as a regular medicine, and are highly prized in the materia medica both of China and Japan as specifics in certain diseases.

They proved, on examination, to be the fossil teeth and bones of 471various extinct mammalia of the tertiary period, including those of the rhinoceros, elephant, horse, mastodon, stag, hippotherium, and the teeth of another carnivorous animal unknown. He obtained a translation of the passage in the medical works of Li-She-Chan, which specially refers to the use of this medicine. It states that “Dragon’s bones come from the southern parts of Shansi, and are found in the mountains.” Dr. To-Wang-King says that if they are genuine, they will adhere to the tongue. This medicine must not come in contact with fish or iron. “It cures heart-ache, stomach-ache, drives away ghosts, cures colds and dysentery, irregularities of the digestive organs, paralysis, etc., and increases the general health.”

Another medical authority, The Chinese Repository, published in Canton A.D. 1832, states that the bones of dragons are found on banks of rivers, and in caves of the earth—places where the dragon died. Those of the back and brain are highly prized, being variegated with different streaks on a white ground. The best are known by slipping the tongue lightly over them. The horns are hard and strong, but if these are taken from damp places, or by women, they are worthless.

From his examination of these so-called relics of the dragon (which prove to belong to so many different animals which, in successive ages, have crept to the same cave to die), Mr. Moseley points out how some imaginative person probably first devised a fanciful picture of the mythical animal combining the body of the vast lizard with the wings of a bat, the head of a stag, and carnivorous teeth, which has become the stereotyped idea of the dragon in all lands.

Even in Europe, fossil bones thus found together in caves were long known as dragon’s bones, and accounted useful in medicine. Indeed, so great was the demand for these and similar relics, that our museums and scientific men have good cause to rejoice that their ancestors failed to discover what stores of old bones lay hidden in our own sea-board caves—as, for instance, in that wonderful Kirkdale cavern where the mortal remains of several hundred hyenas were found guarding the teeth of a baby mammoth, a patriarchal tiger, a rhinoceros, and a hippopotamus. Or the caves along the Norfolk coast where Hugh Miller tells us that within thirteen years the oyster-dredgers dragged up the tusks and grinders of five hundred mammoths! Or those wonderful zoological cemeteries where the fossil bones of cave-lions, cave-hyenas, elephants, mammoths, hippopotami, woolly rhinoceros, red deer and fallow deer, oxen, sheep, and horses, lay so securely stored for untold ages beneath Charing Cross and Trafalgar Square!

Of the firm belief of the Chinese in the efficacy of medicines compounded of the eyes and vitals of a human body we have had too terrible proof, for it is well known that one cause which led to the appalling Teintsin massacre in 1870 was the widespread rumour that the foreign doctors (whose skill all were forced to admit) obtained their 472medicines by kidnapping and murdering Chinese children and tearing out their hearts and eyes. As this nice prescription is actually described in their own books as a potent medicine, the story obtained ready credence, and we all remember the result. Moreover, the same accusation has repeatedly been spread on other occasions of popular excitement against foreign teachers, and we need scarcely wonder that it should obtain credence, when we find that one of the most esteemed acts of filial devotion is for a son or a daughter to bestow a good slice of his or her own flesh, to be administered, with other ingredients, to parents suffering from certain forms of disease, which are otherwise deemed incurable. Archdeacon Grey of Canton was personally acquainted with various persons who had endured this voluntary mutilation!^[88]