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without knowing it. For the likelihood is as great on the one side as on the other.

And, curiously enough, this Buddhism had its "Constantine," in a King Asaka, who first raised it to the dignity of a state religion in India. This man attained the throne by fraud, and then had all his brothers put to death, in order to cut off every chance of rivalry. Within four years of acquiring the throne he had reduced the whole of Central India to his rule, and was master from the valley of Cashmere to the banks of the Nerbudda, from the mouth of the Indus to the Bay of Bengal. After his conquests, he was induced to turn his attention to Buddhism, and, after a short study, he fully embraced it, making it the state religion of his empire. Some say that this change of religion was accompanied by a total change in his conduct, so that from being known as Asaka the Furious, he became known as Asaka the Virtuous. It may be so, yet we cannot forget that Cranmer called Henry VIII. a noble, pure, and religious king, or that the same was said, over and over again, of Constantine. And Asaka, too, shed a deal of blood, even after he became a Buddhist. Ah! yes; but that was in his civil capacity. There's the rub, for that is the excuse all persecutors and bloodshedders adduce. Still we know that this king made the necessary concessions, and was proclaimed a Buddhist; he at once dismissed the sixty thousand Brahmins formerly fed at his expense, and spent his money, as well as other people's money, very liberally in building monasteries and sacred shrines. A Chinese traveller fully confirms this statement, for, on his road from Anderab to the South of India, and from the delta of the Indus to the mouth of the Ganges, he saw fifty large topes, besides numerous temples, all ascribed to Asaka. There is no doubt, either, that many of the Buddhist cave temples, now lying in ruins, were the work of this ruler, and hence we know that the new creed must have gained great power, It had been fortunate for India, however, if Asaka had opposed, rather than supported it; for, like Christianity, it lost considerably through contact with the State. Both of them were based on ideas widely at variance with ordinary state notions, and when they were dandled upon the knee of kings, as kings, undoubtedly they contracted, through their priests, certain stains, which have never since been removed. The kings have used them to increase their own power and importance, and the unmistakable aim of their founders was directly contrary to this.

P. W. P.

SOUTH PLACE CHAPEL SUNDAY EVENING LECTURES. BY P. W. PERFITT, PH. D.

THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES,

(Continued from page 368.)

BUT, looking at this passage as liberally as we can, we recognise in it the utterance of a man who is disgusted with all things, as most young men are, at least, the majority of those who read and think; of the thoughtless we say nothing. They go out into life, high in hope and full of cheerfulness, being perfectly confident that if they do but earnestly labour for good, good will inevitably follow, as the harvest follows the sower, when blessed with rain and sunshine. Then, in a little time, behold things wear a dark aspect-the clouds of disappointment gather thickly to lower upon their path; the hopes, kindled within them, are touched as

by an unkindly frost, and the seed they have sown seems to have been worse than if it were actually cast away-all their labour, and love, and sacrifice, appears to be wholly lost, and they have no reward for all their labour. It now follows with many, that despair fastens upon their hearts, all the things of earth seems to have suddenly lost their beauty, and, with subsequent mood of mind, these "injured ones" ask, Why should we continue to live? They have sought to know the truth, to divine the future, and behold, after all their trials, they have been beaten back, baffled and worn. What better, then, they ask, than to hurry out of a world which has treated them so unkiudly? Thus comes the thought of suicide to the young, and by their own hands do they perish. But not all; for some of them are wise enough to tread onward until it is discovered that perhaps, after all, it may be that it is with themselves and not nature with whom the error lies. They will live and fight, and still endeavour to learn the whole truth, and, as it frequently happens with such men, they become great and good in the daily battle of life. They ultimately solve the problem in another way, than in that of suicide, and grow into the conviction that their grand error, at starting, lay in this, that they hoped too much and did not fairly estimate their own powers of resistance and endurance; they then laid the foundation of the after disappointments. The sorrow was not created for them but was brought about by themselves, and, thus enlightened in after years, they discover a beauty and glory in life, which, at first, was undreamt of. But another class remains: a class of men who still continue in life, but who can scarcely be said to live. These have paused at the verge of suicide, and, having arrived at the conclusion that to work good is impossible, they ask themselves whether there are not pleasures to be enjoyed, which it is worth living to enjoy? Shall they leave the world in disgust, or live in it, and, while looking down with supreme contempt upon the preachers of goodness, mercy, and love, enjoy the rising passions of the hour, and bask in the sunshine of pleasure. True, indeed, they say, that all is emptiness, all is vanity, all is following after the wind, yet, is not the grave vanity also? And, being so, as they cannot turn aside so as to get beyond the range of vanity, will it not be better to live and have what they can, though it be only vanity, than vainly die, and sleep the eternal sleep, as unconscious as are the earth-bound rooks, and the clods of the valley, in whose bosom they sleep.

The writer of Ecclesiastes was of this latter class. With him there was no object or emotion which bore not the impress of vanity. Life had no real sacredness, and death no vital consolation. The love of the mother and the tenderness of the bride; the merry laugh of innocent childhood, and the wise monitions of age, were alike valueless and full of vanity. So that, as he moved through the city, you could have cried after him, Behold the bloodless man, the man who recog nises nothing noble, or beautiful, or good in the lives of his fellow-men! And there are men in our own age and country who endeavour to win us over to a belief in this proposition, as if it were an eternal truth; men who labour to indoctrinate us with the idea that we cannot do better than live to enjoy what is, for, as they whiningly proclaim, the hour cometh when all possibilities of enjoyment will have passed for ever away. They are cool, passionless, and hope-riven men; and when we get their real estimate of the heroisms of old, it comes to this, that it is summed up in the sentence, "They were the works of good-natured, well-meaning fools." A sneer is ever upon their lip, and contempt is written upon their countenance. Eternal truth they know not, but only know the seeming truth of their own hour. There is not a noble aim or impulse which they do not discredit, and when the pious soul speaks of an hereafter, they treat the saying as the child of a disordered fancy. Rare exceptions can possibly be cited, but, as a rule, we may say that the men who have no thought beyond the grave, soon decline into the state in which, like the writer of Ecclesiastes, they have no thought beyond themselves, and such men are as a leprosy in a nation. Here was this man looking out upon life, and seeing only emptiness and vain struggles, and his teaching sunk to the lowest we can conceive of. And here I may observe, that, as compensation seems to be the unerring law, we find it also in connection with Bible reading. It is common

the intelligent and independent members of society to regret that the Bible is not read with the same intentness, acuteness, and critical spirit with which other books are read. And it is sorrowfully said that Bible readers go on from chapter to chapter without pausing to work out in their own minds the real principles laid down in the text. This is but too true, but in the case of Ecclesiastes the result has been that, through not pausing to think, many a pure mind has escaped the contamination of the unholy principles and immoral doctrines laid laid down in this book. They have read them with the physical eye only, and, fortunately, with the mental eye have not seen them. But we will rapidly glance over these objectionable teachings.

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But let us see what he teaches, what are his views of life; he has gone away in thought to work the problem of life, and we will read his solutions! "So I returned, "and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun; and behold the "tears of the oppressed, and they had no comforter, and, on the side of their oppressors, there was power; but they had no comforter. Wherefore I praised "the dead, which are already dead, more than the living, which are yet alive; yea, "better is he, than both they,which hath not been, who hath not seen the evil "work which is done under the sun. ." Yes, he saw that, beneath the sun, there was robbery and wrong, the strong unjust trod the weak ones under their heel, and the fair creation groaned beneath the pressure of sin. The unjust ones had no power strong enough to cope with them, and pluck them from their thrones of injustice; and the weak had none to comfort them, none to cheer them in their desolation. What, then, shall be done? Shall the angel Pity alone be left to keep watch over such scenes and sufferers; or shall a voice go forth to waken the dead, and make them preach from their graves the doctrines of redemption, battle, and victory? The man who sees sin, and does not endeavour to blot it out; who sees wrong done, and strives not to punish the wrong doer; or who sees innocence bathed in suffering and sorrow, caused by the cruel conduct of oppressors, and does not pause to speak the word of hope and comfort, or to strike the blow of redemption; is he not a coward, who dishonours the life he bears? It is said that we are to honour "the Preacher," because he points out the fact that sin exists, and that wrong is daily done; but surely something more is needed in order to render a man worthy of honour. In our day, this is the ordinary course; and, although it may prove most profitable to the man's pocket to pursue such a line, it is more profitable to his soul to pour out the deserved denunciations, and of greater importance that he labours to prevent their continuance. But this is repudiated by the Preacher: he saw no advantage in labour, hence he says: "If "thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of justice and "judgment, in a province, be not moved, marvel not at the matter; for He that is "higher than the highest regardeth, and there be higher than they."+ Do not trouble about that oppression, neither let it wound your soul, or irritate you into adopting strong courses in order to bring about a change-it is not your suffering, it is not your wrong, so leave it to God who can see, and do not waste your time in vainly endeavouring to work a cure.

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LONDON PUBLISHED BY M. PATTIE, 31, PATERNOSTER ROW, AND GEORGE

GLAISHER, 470, NEW OXFORD STREET.

Printed by W. Ostell, Hart-street, Bloomsbury,

THE PATHFINDER,

A JOURNAL OF

PURE THEISM AND RELIGIOUS FREETHOUGHT,

THE ORGAN OF INDEPENDENT RELIGIOUS REFORM.

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OR, AN ENGLISH RECTOR IN SEARCH OF A CREED.
A TALE; BY P. W. P.

CHAPTER V.

THE THREE MAN-TRAPS AT ROSE HALL.

"IT is finally decided, Ella, that I travel to Crosswood on Friday. My letters this morning leave me no option; but you need not remove until next week."

"I rejoice to hear it; for, George, although I have no desire to leave this dear old home, and all our friends, still, now that you have received the gift of the rectory, and we must remove, I shall be glad when we have got settled quietly down again."

"Indeed, you cannot desire it more than I do; for, having been so long away from home, I quite luxuriate in the thought that I shall soon be able to enjoy all the advantages which the having a home of one's own confers."

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'But, brother, you have not told me how it has been decided about going to the rectory-house. Shall you go direct to it, or shall you, until my arrival, set up your tent at Rose Hall with our new-found relatives-those Poinders ?

"Why, my dear sister, do you say those Poinders,' in that peculiar manner? They are cousins of ours, although newly found; but you seem to have conceived a dislike to them."

"I plead guilty to the charge, and yet when I tax myself to find the cause there is none I can think of. The only substantial reason I appear to have lies in this, that, although they knew our dear parents so well, the fact of their relationship was never breathed. Neither father nor mother could have suspected it; the Poinders knew all about it, but said nothing. Even when mother died, they sent only the condoling letter of ordinary friends. This conduct appears to me to have been uncandid to our parents and ungenerous to ourselves. I may judge unjustly, but it is that conduct which makes me suspect their professions of friendship."

Ella had suspicions which were far from being groundless. The Poinders
VOL. V. NEW SERIES, VOL. I.

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were cousins of George and Ella. A Poinder, who had acquired wealth as a trader before undertaking to set up as a squire, had married one of the Miss Lesters of a collateral branch, but knowing that the Colonel, unto whom he had been introduced at Southampton, was not a man of wealth, he had strictly forbidden his timid wife to reveal the family connection. With the wealth of a nabob, the senior Poinder possessed the spirit of a huckster, and the toadyism of a dilapidated flunkey; he invariably remained silent when plain speaking was likely to open the way for his being troubled for money, however small the sum, and, indeed, for any other assistance; but he was ready to kiss the earth on which a man of influence stood. Now, however, that George Lester had been presented with the rectory of Crosswood, worth six hundred a year, the old trader felt not only that, as a relative, he would prove a valuable acquisition, but he had also persuaded himself that there were some great people in the background who were pushing him on. In fact, he had arrived at the conclusion that George possessed influence, and this was all he desired to learn in order to show him great kindness. Rose IIall, the country-seat of the Poinders, stood on the edge of Crosswood; and hence it was that, when the old trader knew the living had been given to George, he wrote to express his "great delight," was proud to recognise "the family connection," and was very pressing that, for a time, the young rector should reside at the hall. The younger Poinders were instructed to promote this proposal, and they wrote accordingly. Ella strongly objected to her brother going there, and was glad to hear him say,

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No, I shall not go to the hall, at least not to stay, until you come. have written a brief letter declining, for the present, to accept their kind invitation; and, Ella, although I cannot tell why, yet I feel disquieted about their having so pointedly run down the rectory. In several of their letters they spoke of it as a sort of a dilapidated barn, a miserable shed, in which to rest would be impossible."

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"And Miss Margery wrote to me, desiring I would let you know that papa would not think of stabling his horses in it ;' those are her words." "It is very strange; for I have heard, from excellent sources, that the house is in pretty good condition, somewhat old-fashioned and sober, but perfectly sound and habitable."

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"That is what I believe, for Jane, in her letter this morning, declares it to be a perfect Paradise, and she says that all is in readiness for our reception." Doubtless, Jane has let her imagination play somewhat freely; still there can be no doubt of the Poinders having exaggerated the defects, and I am at a loss to understand why.'

Ella smiled archly as she observed, "But I can understand it. You lords of the creation imagine us women to be incapable of solving difficult problems, while we believe that you consider many points to be difficult which, in truth, are particularly simple. I understand their reason, and because of that, I am glad you have refused the invitation."

"Ella, do not speak in riddles, but just inform your benighted brother how the case stands. Now that breakfast is over, I will cheerfully fancy myself to be one of the wandering knights of old, and you shall be the Fairy Queen who has descended, or ascended, just as your queenship pleases, to give me instruction. Now, like a good fairy, do run on.

This was more easily commanded than done, for although Ella was particularly plain-spoken, she felt a degree of hesitation about expressing her opinions upon this matter. After a brief pause, however, she asked,

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